Paramount Plus gave away a very expensive product for free.
After reports that "Star Trek: Starfleet Academy" cost between $10 million and $20 million per episode to produce, the network bizarrely posted the entirety of its premiere episode on YouTube, likely in hopes of garnering interest from a wider audience.
'He goes to Starfleet Academy, makes a ton of friends, and they help him be OK with who he is.'
However the typically popular franchise hardly made a big splash, with just over 85,000 views in the first 24 hours. While the city-sized viewership would be nothing to scoff at for an independent operation, reviewers were shocked by the numbers, revealing that during its premiere, the show allegedly hit a peak of just 1,316 concurrent viewers.
The show has been heavily criticized for its obvious diversity push, with sci-fi author Brad Torgersen even calling it a "huge, gay, glee club middle finger to everyone who liked" the franchise, back in December. Torgersen blamed "theater kids" for ruining the franchise as well.
Since its debut, it has become even more apparent how deep the production went down the diversity rabbit hole. One scene was described as cadets being "required to get DEI training." In the scene, an instructor tells her students that being in the academy means "being open to the people around you" as a student is questioning his colleagues' identities.
The instructor is played by actress Tig Notaro, whose real name is Mathilde O'Callaghan Notaro.
Notaro has previously described seeing her 5-year-old son in rainbow-colored clothing — particularly for gay pride — as "incredible" and even apologized for not being active in gender politics until it affected her.
Series creator Alex Kurtzman has not shied away from revealing the show's devotion to diversity either.
"I think we're not slowing down on representation in any way," Kurtzman said according to Comic Book Club. "We're certainly planning like representation is at the beating heart of ['Star Trek' creator] Roddenberry's vision, and we've already done the work of bringing it to that new place."
"So there’s really no reason to change course there," he added.
The cast of characters also has an obvious and plainly stated agenda. The same outlet reports that a new lesbian couple will be introduced in the series, and the Klingon character, played by actor Karim Diane, will have his sexuality "explored."
Diane alluded to as much in a recent interview posted on the show's official Instagram page.
"He doesn't like to battle. He wants to love people and heal people and save people," he said about his character. "He goes to Starfleet Academy, makes a ton of friends, and they help him be OK with who he is."
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Other cast members include Zoe Steiner, who has shown up nearly nude to press junkets, and even late-night host Stephen Colbert.
Colbert announced his participation in the series in October and appears in 10 episodes as the Digital Dean of Students, which serves as a comic relief voiceover. He has already been mocked for his "absolute cringe" voice work in at least one scene.
Before the show aired, it was picked up for a second season by Paramount Plus.
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Democratic attorneys general from 12 states are suing the Trump administration in hopes of barring the Department of Health and Human Services from defunding various gender ideology initiatives.
President Donald Trump took a wrecking ball to gender ideology on his first day back in office, declaring in Executive Order 14168, "It is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female. These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality. Under my direction, the Executive Branch will enforce all sex-protective laws to promote this reality."
James noted that in New York alone, over $80 billion in funding is at risk because of the requirement that applicants comply with the president's reality-affirming order.
In addition to requiring every agency to use the term "sex" and not "gender" in federal policies and documentation, the order tasked each federal agency with ensuring that federal grant funds "do not promote gender ideology."
Pursuant to the EO, the HHS released guidance to the U.S. government, the public, and external partners that sex is an immutable biological classification and that there are only two sexes, male and female.
The HHS also issued a new policy statement indicating that recipients of health, education, and research grants subject to Title IX requirements must be "compliant with Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 ... including the requirements set forth in Presidential Executive Order 14168 titled Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government."
The Democrat-run states of California, Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington claim in their new lawsuit that the HHS' enforcement of the directives in Trump's EO violates the Administrative Procedure Act, the guarantee of separation of powers, and the Spending Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
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According to the states, the grant conditions are "impermissibly retroactive because they alter conditions attached to the funds Congress duly appropriated to HHS by imposing new conditions on existing appropriations of federal funds to the States."
They further alleged that the conditions not only constitute an attempt on the part of the HHS to unilaterally amend Title IX but are discriminatory, serving to "exclude transgender, intersex, non-binary, and gender-diverse individuals and make denial of their existence official policy."
California Attorney General Rob Bonta — who was barred last month from enforcing laws that keep parents in the dark about whether their kids are masquerading as members of the opposite sex at school — said in a statement, "HHS has overstepped its constitutional authority and ignored proper procedures in an attempt to codify its hateful agenda."
New York Attorney General Letitia James made clear what's at risk for each Democratic state: tens of billions of dollars in grant funding to ideologically captive institutions. James noted that in New York alone, over $80 billion in funding is at risk because of the requirement that applicants comply with the president's reality-affirming order.
James suggested that the directive was "cruel and unjust."
The Democrat-controlled states want the federal court in Rhode Island to declare the policy unlawful and to block the HHS from enforcing it.
Blaze News has reached out to the HHS for comment.
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Just six months after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a Tennessee law banning sex-rejecting genital mutilations and puberty blockers for minors, the high court's questions and remarks during oral arguments on Tuesday regarding two cases concerning men competing on girls' and women's sports teams in Idaho and West Virginia signal that gender ideologues are set to lose more ground.
Twenty-seven states have passed laws and/or regulations prohibiting males from participating in girls' or women's sports.
West Virginia, for example, enacted the Save Women's Sports Act in 2021, requiring public school and collegiate sports teams to require athletes to participate on teams corresponding with their sex.
Becky Pepper-Jackson, a 15-year-old male transvestite in West Virginia who has pretended to be a girl since the third grade and taken puberty blockers, sued the state's board of education as well as other officials, claiming that his exclusion from girls' sports violated both Title IX and the Constitution's Equal Protection Clause.
This case, West Virginia v. B.P.J., has been kicked through the courts and is now before the Supreme Court.
The other case taken up by the high court on Tuesday, Little v. Hecox, is highly similar.
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Lindsay Hecox, a 24-year-old male student at Boise State University who took cross-sex hormones for only one year, wanted to join the women's cross-country team, where his male physiology would serve as a tremendous advantage over his female competitors. He was unable to join the women's team on account of Idaho's Fairness in Women's Sports Act, which banned male transvestites from competing on female athletic teams.
Like the transvestite student in West Virginia, Hecox sued, claiming the Idaho law violated his constitutional rights.
Both cases were brought to the Supreme Court by the two states' Republican attorneys general with attorneys from Alliance Defending Freedom.
'If we adopted that, that would have to apply across the board.'
"Men cannot become women; their biological differences are scientifically clear. And no ideological arguments attempting to justify allowing males to enter female sports can stand against this truth," stated ADF president and chief counsel Kristen Waggoner.
The possibility that the SCOTUS will rule again against gender ideology has LGBT radicals panicking.
For instance, Erin Reed, the boyfriend of cross-dressing Montana state Rep. Zooey Zephyr (D), wrote that "depending on how the Court rules, these cases could reshape the legal framework governing transgender rights for an entire generation."
The Human Rights Campaign wailed: "As transgender youth continue to face numerous targeted attacks from health care to education, these cases mark another key moment in the fight against anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination that could have implications beyond the sports world."
GLAAD previously stated: "Similar to misleading narratives about bathrooms and other single-sex spaces, propagating inflammatory scenarios about transgender women and girls participating in sports has become a common tactic in broader attacks on trans rights and equality."
In Hecox, liberal justices raised questions about whether the case might be moot because of the transvestic student's claim that he won't attempt to compete in collegiate women's sports again; whether transvestic men with low testosterone levels might qualify as a sub-class deserving of a legal carve-out; and whether the Supreme Court could decide that while most men have an unfair advantage in women's sports, the transvestite in this particular case does not.
Idaho Solicitor General Alan Hurst argued in turn that the case wasn't moot, as Hecox has time left to change his mind about future participation; that it "will always be possible to carve the class down further"; and that an exception would not be administrable as it'd be invasive, requiring ongoing testosterone monitoring of the athlete.
Hurst — who on multiple occasions attempted to help remedy Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson's confusion — later emphasized in his rebuttal that male athletes pose a threat to women's sports, citing a 2024 U.N. special rapporteur report that indicated that "over 600 female athletes in more than 400 competitions have lost more than 890 medals in 29 different sports" as the result of male interlopers.
"Idaho's law classifies on the basis of sex because sex is what matters in sports," Hurst said. "It correlates strongly with countless athletic advantages like size, muscle mass, bone mass, and heart and lung capacity."
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The conservative justices appeared to take Hurst's point to heart and signaled skepticism about the arguments alternatively advanced by Hecox's lawyer Kathleen Harnett against the Idaho law.
In addition to noting that the Idaho legislation is not discriminatory against all trans-identifying people as it does not bar women from men's sports but only men — who enjoy physical advantages over women — from women's sports, Justice Amy Coney Barrett alluded to scientific evidence indicating that testosterone is not the only advantage enjoyed by male athletes.
On theme, Justice Brett Kavanaugh asked, "Why would we, at this point, jump in and try to constitutionalize a rule for the whole country" while there remains scientific uncertainty and "strong assertions of equality on both sides?"
Kavanaugh, who has coached his daughters' sports teams, also raised concerns about whether allowing "transgender girls to participate will reverse" the "inspiring" success of girls' separate sports over the past five decades.
While Justice Neil Gorsuch asked whether trans-identifying individuals should be considered a "quasi-suspect" class entitled to a higher standard of scrutiny on account of their alleged history of discrimination, he appeared unconvinced by the argument that excluding boys from girls' sports is a form of unconstitutional sex discrimination.
Chief Justice John Roberts pressed Harnett on whether she was challenging the distinction between boys and girls or seeking an exception to the biological definition of girls, and expressed skepticism about the possibility of such an exception.
Roberts appeared concerned about the broader ramifications of permitting exceptions to the definition of girl for a sliver minority of challengers, noting that "if we adopted that, that would have to apply across the board and not simply to the area of athletics."
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Democrat policies proudly championed in California by Gov. Gavin Newsom have for years kept parents in the dark about their children's mental health and personal circumstances — particularly about whether their kids are masquerading as members of the opposite sex at school and undergoing a so-called "social transition" with the help of school staff.
Unwilling to lie to parents in violation of their faith and ethics, and facing the prospect of retaliation or dismissal over their dissent, Christian educators Elizabeth Mirabelli and Lori West filed a lawsuit in 2023 with the help of the religious liberty group the Thomas More Society.
By October, their legal challenge targeting secretive, grooming transgender policies across the state had evolved into a class-action lawsuit involving other adversely impacted teachers as well as parents.
U.S. District Court Judge Roger Benitez delivered Democrat officials and other gender ideologues a big upset on Monday, ruling in favor of the plaintiffs and against the grooming regime.
Benitez noted at the outset of his 52-page ruling that long before the advent of compulsory education in the U.S., "parents have carried out their rights and responsibility to direct the general and medical care and religious upbringing of their child."
"It is a right and a responsibility that parents still hold," said the judge.
Benitez affirmed that "parents have a right to receive gender information and teachers have a right to provide to parents accurate information about a child's gender identity" — rights that Benitez confirmed have been violated by California officials.
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According to Benitez, "the parental exclusion policies create a trifecta of harm." For starters,
they harm the child who needs parental guidance and possibly mental health intervention to determine if the incongruence is organic or whether it is the result of bullying, peer pressure, or a fleeting impulse. They harm the parents by depriving them of the long-recognized Fourteenth Amendment right to care, guide, and make healthcare decisions for their children, and by substantially burdening many parents’ First Amendment right to train their children in their sincerely held religious beliefs. And finally, they harm teachers who are compelled to violate the [sic] sincerely held beliefs and the parent’s rights by forcing them to conceal information they feel is critical for the welfare of their students.
Benitez barred California Attorney General Rob Bonta, California Superintendent Tony Thurmond, and members of the California Board of Education from implementing or enforcing laws or policies in such a manner as to permit or require any employee in the state education system to:
The judge also ordered state education officials to prominently feature the following statement in their LGBT "cultural competency" training materials:
Parents and guardians have a federal constitutional right to be informed if their public school student child expresses gender incongruence. Teachers and school staff have a federal constitutional right to accurately inform the parent or guardian of their student when the student expresses gender incongruence. These federal constitutional rights are superior to any state or local laws, state or local regulations, or state or local policies to the contrary.
"Today's incredible victory finally, and permanently, ends California's dangerous and unconstitutional regime of gender secrecy policies in schools," Paul Jonna, special counsel at the Thomas More Society, said in a statement.
"The court’s comprehensive ruling — granting summary judgment on all claims — protects all California parents, students, and teachers, and it restores sanity and common sense," continued Jonna. "With this decisive ruling from Judge Benitez, all state and local school officials that mandate gender secrecy policies should cease all enforcement or face severe legal consequences."
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By turning school libraries into ideological spaces rather than engines of literacy, the American Library Association is sending children the damaging message that politics matters more than their education.
The situation of Elon Musk's children is a tragic example of why weakening marriage and detaching it from sex hurts children most, but also hurts all of us, and immensely.
If leftists really cared about female representation in gaming, they would celebrate Samus Aran rather than try to make her a man.
Alex Ovechkin and most of Washington Capitals players skip Pride Night ritual
Washington Capitals players from outside North America may not be as used to Pride Nights as other athletes.
On Saturday night, the Capitals celebrated alternative sexual lifestyles with their "All Caps All Love" night, posting rainbow and transgender flags ahead of their gay-memorabilia auction.
'We proudly stand with the LGBTQ+ community.'
After the NHL banned themed jerseys in 2023, some fought for the right to use rainbow-colored stick tape, and won. That is how select Capitals players decided to show their gay pride on Saturday night against the reigning champion Florida Panthers, but as the teams took the ice, viewers noticed only eight of the Capitals' 20 dressed players took part.
John Carlson, Nic Dowd, Brandon Duhaime, Hendrix Lapierre, Connor McMichael, Dylan Strome, Logan Thompson, and Trevor van Riemsdyk were the eight players spotted on video and cited in an article by outlet Russian Machine Never Breaks.
However, missing from the group was captain, and the NHL's all-time scoring leader, Alexander Ovechkin.
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Interestingly, all of the players that participated were from either the United States or Canada; none of the Capitals players born overseas participated in the stunt.
This included center Aliaksei Protas from Vitebsk, Belarus, left winger Ivan Miroshnichenko from Ussuriysk, Russia, defenseman Martin Fehérváry from Bratislava, Slovakia, and defenseman Rasmus Sandin from Uppsala, Sweden.
Despite their leader and biggest star not participating in their festivities, the Capitals went all out in their support for certain sexual preferences with promotional videos and statements.
"We proudly stand with the LGBTQ+ community, and celebrate the importance of inclusion every day," Strome, from Mississauga, Canada, said in a team video.
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"It was great," Dowd of Huntsville, Alabama, said in a post-game interview. "Every year we've put this on, guys lean into it and support it, and I thought it was another good night. I thought the Caps did a great job of showcasing it."
The team also hosted the Gay Men's Chorus of Washington, D.C., on the ice that night, but that was not enough to push them ahead of the Panthers, and the Capitals lost 5-2.
Fans in Seattle were recently outraged and piled plenty of backlash onto their Seattle Kraken team for supporting transgenderism with a themed logo, which inexplicably featured a unicorn drawn by a tattoo artist who said "queerness" inspires her work.
"Being able to be in Seattle surrounded by the queer community and being exposed to the queerness I never got to experience growing up, it inspires my work a lot," the artist said.
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