A Tucson high school is short one less physics teacher after he challenged Donald Trump’s denial of the existence of more than two genders.
Les Beard, a physics teacher at Marana High School, taught his students that a certain intersex disorder, androgen insensitivity syndrome (AIS), actually caused some males to be females.
Independent journalist James O’Keefe posted a recording of Beard’s lecture on AIS captured by a student, and later reported Beard’s suspension.
JUST IN : Mr. Les Beard has been suspended from Marana High School after @OKeefeMedia released a recording of the Physics teacher telling his students that men can be women if they have androgen immunodeficiency syndrome. https://t.co/VASNdoqpIE
Beard claimed in his lecture that those with AIS were women with both female and male sex organs. Beard included a brief remark challenging the premises of President Donald Trump’s public stance and recent executive orders on gender identity.
“But usually all of these women have female sex organs, they do have male sex organs as well. So if you take an x-ray of them, you’ll see what guys have. But if you look, if you were to look at them, they look quite ordinary. So what are they? Are these guys? Mr. Trump says so,” said Beard. “And [the doctors] tell you, ‘Well, you’re really a guy,’ but none of them really believe it because they’ve been women all their lives.”
One of Trump’s first executive orders upon taking office last week declared the existence of only two genders: male and female.
All individuals with AIS have XY chromosomes, which means the biological sex of all AIS individuals is male. Contrary to Beard’s assertion, those with AIS don’t have “female sex organs.” AIS individuals don’t possess a female reproductive system: no ovaries, fallopian tubes, or uterus. Menstruation, ovulation, and pregnancy are impossible.
AIS is one of 30-odd intersex genetic disorders. Intersex disorders are conditions characterized by atypical sexual or reproductive anatomy. AIS concerns a defective bodily response to androgens, the hormones responsible for male development.
AIS mens’ bodies are unable to properly respond to androgens, such as testosterone (the primary androgen). This inability to respond to testosterone causes the underdevelopment or lack of any development of a penis as well as fully or partially undescended testicles.
As a result of their androgen insensitivity, AIS men may have genitals that appear female, but they are not female genitals. Additionally, AIS individuals may develop breasts because their bodies aren’t able to respond to androgens: the male sex hormones. For these reasons, some AIS men are raised as females — this does not make them female, however. Biologically, they are men with a genetic disorder.
In a report corresponding to the leaked audio, O’Keefe Media Group (OMG) included the following statement from Marana High School District spokeswoman Allison Benjamin:
“We are proud to provide our students with challenging academics, full extracurricular offerings, and experiences that enhance their personal growth and development. To help provide optimal learning environments for all students, we have adopted policies that provide guidance and expectations for teachers and staff, including: 1. Teaching to the state standards that are focused on course content. 2. Providing a learning environment where teachers remain neutral and refrain from sharing their personal beliefs and opinions. Our district is committed to making sure these policies are clear and honored by all staff. The administration will follow appropriate guidelines detailed in district policy to ensure all staff fulfill these expectations.”
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After Tuesday’s blunder from Arizona’s chief executive, those across the state are again questioning the competency of Governor Katie Hobbs and her staffers.
Hobbs submitted an error-ridden letter to the Arizona Congressional Delegation on Tuesday afternoon requesting their assistance in resisting the Trump administration’s federal funding freeze.
Hobbs’ letter failed to include two of Arizona’s congress members: Congressmen Abraham Hamadeh and Paul Gosar. Her letter also incorrectly claimed Trump’s federal funding freeze extended to federal assistance programs providing individuals with healthcare, public safety, veterans’ services, and financial assistance.
“Without these programs, Arizonans will be denied healthcare, families will struggle to stay housed, and communities will become less safe. The effects of this funding freeze will have impacts across the state, and weaken Arizona’s ability to care for its residents,” said Hobbs. “Congress must act. These actions directly violate the Constitution’s delegation of power of the purse to Congress and the Impoundment Control Act of 1974. Courts, including the Supreme Court, have made it clear that presidents cannot unilaterally withhold the funding appropriated by Congress for these services.”
Hobbs also threatened to sue the Trump administration over its funding freeze.
As the White House and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) clarified in a memo and other public statements preceding Hobbs’ letter, the federal funding freeze doesn’t affect programs providing direct benefits to individuals. The OMB supplemented its memo with a Q&A on the guidance.
“This is not a blanket pause on federal assistance and grant programs from the Trump Administration. Individual assistance that includes […] Social Security benefits, Medicare benefits, food stamps, welfare benefits […] will not be impacted by this pause,” said Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt during Tuesday morning’s White House press briefing.
.@PressSec: "This is not a blanket pause on federal assistance and grant programs from the Trump Administration. Individual assistance that includes…Social Security benefits, Medicare benefits, food stamps, welfare benefits…will not be impacted by this pause." pic.twitter.com/4Ifx4cm97P
The following executive orders pertain to the federal funding freeze: “Protecting the American People Against Invasion,” “Reevaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid,” “Putting America First in International Environmental Agreements,” “Unleashing American Energy,” “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing,” “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” and “Enforcing the Hyde Amendment.”
An OMB memorandum meant to offer guidance on those executive orders, M-25-13, prompted an eleventh-hour federal court injunction on Tuesday. The federal funding freeze was scheduled to take place at 5 pm on Tuesday.
On Wednesday, Leavitt confirmed that the OMB rescinded its memo to “end any confusion” created by the injunction. In effect, this provided the administration with a workaround to the court order. A follow-up OMB memo advising of its rescission directed agencies to contact their general counsel for implementation of Trump’s executive orders.
“The President’s [Executive Orders] on federal funding remain in full force and effect, and will be rigorously implemented,” said Leavitt.
As first reported by the Arizona Daily Independent, other leaders took the effort to clarify the scope of the federal funding freeze — among them, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin.
“I’ve spoken to senior officials at the White House and confirmed the temporary pause by OMB does not impact individual assistance and will not interrupt disaster recovery efforts, school and childcare funding, healthcare for seniors or low-income families, funding for our roads, meals and lunches, or any of the other misinformation that has spread,” said Youngkin. “The partisan stunt to disseminate knowingly misleading information is dangerous fearmongering and completely wrong.”
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Over 7,300 illegal aliens have been deported in President Donald Trump’s first week in office, per the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
DHS published this latest dataset on Monday. Following Trump’s inauguration, DHS and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) began posting daily updates with immigration enforcement totals.
DHS reported that among these 7,300 apprehensions were “hundreds of convicted criminals” for crimes such as sexual assault and rape, robbery, burglary, aggravated assault and battery, drugs and weapons offenses, domestic violence, suspected terrorism, firearms trafficking, kidnapping, vehicular manslaughter, driving while impaired, and possession of an illegal substance.
This latest update follows the Senate’s confirmation of South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem last Saturday as Trump’s DHS secretary.
“Ensuring Americans’ safety and securing the border is President Trump’s and Secretary Noem’s top priority,” stated DHS.
DHS also reported that their novel implementation of deportation flights returned many of these detained illegal aliens to Mexico, Jordan, Brazil, and El Salvador.
In the first week of the Trump Administration, we have fulfilled President Trump's promise to the American people to arrest and deport violent criminals illegally in the country. In one week, law enforcement officials have removed and returned 7,300 illegal aliens. pic.twitter.com/JKZYMD0f00
In remarks made Monday during the House GOP’s annual Congressional Institute conference, Trump declared his administration’s use of military planes for deportations marked a historic approach to U.S. immigration enforcement.
“For the first time in history, we are locating and loading illegal aliens into military aircraft and flying them back to the places from which they came — and made clear to every country they will be taking back their people,” said Trump.
Per data provided by ICE in their daily enforcement updates, as of Monday there were over 3,500 arrests and 2,650 detainers lodged since Trump took office.
Under Trump, immigration and law enforcement officials have also begun “enhanced targeted operations” on major hotspots for illegal aliens. On Sunday, ICE announced a partnership on such an operation with the FBI, ATF, DEA, CBP, and Marshals Service to enforce immigration law in Chicago, Illinois.
“For the record: targeted enforcement operations are planned arrests of known criminal aliens who threaten national security or public safety,” stated ICE.
Chicago considers itself a “sanctuary city.” Chicago and other cities which adopted this status are now under investigation by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, per a letter sent to local leaders on Monday. Other sanctuary cities named in that letter were New York City, New York; Denver, Colorado; and Boston, Massachusetts.
— U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (@ICEgov) January 26, 2025
Although Phoenix declined years ago to declare itself a sanctuary city officially, Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego maintains a position similar to those maintained by sanctuary city leaders. Last November, in the weeks following Trump’s election, Gallego declared that no city resources would be used for mass deportation efforts.
“I can say without equivocation that as long as I’m mayor, Phoenix will not use its police department—or any city resources whatsoever—to assist in mass deportation efforts by the Trump Administration,” said Gallego in a statement to Arizona’s Family.
Phoenix Police Department policy set years ago requires sergeant approval prior to contacting ICE.
Reportedly, Phoenix city leaders plan to meet privately for legal advice on the Trump administration’s immigration policies. The Department of Justice issued a three-page memo last week directing U.S. attorneys to investigate any state and local officials who refuse to cooperate with immigration enforcement.
“Federal law prohibits state and local actors from resisting, obstructing, and otherwise failing to comply with lawful immigration-related commands or requests,” read the memo from acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove.
The Trump administration put in a workaround to these refusals by major cities on immigration enforcement. Several days after Trump’s inauguration, then-acting Homeland Security Secretary Benjamine Huffman issued an internal memo granting immigration enforcement authority to law enforcement agents throughout various agencies, as reported exclusively by The Wall Street Journal.
Days later, the Phoenix office of the DEA announced its partnership with the DOJ and DHS in carrying out illegal alien apprehensions. Like its federal peers, the Phoenix DEA has taken to posting about their work with greater frequency since their Sunday announcement of a federal partnership.
Like Phoenix city leadership, Tucson’s city leaders vowed in a press release to not participate in any federal immigration enforcement efforts.
In his first week in office, Trump’s administration also ended the CBP One app enabling illegal entry into the border, and repealed ex-Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ memo limiting ICE agents.
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The federal government owns multiple trillions of dollars of federal assets — from land, to buildings, to patent rights, to mineral rights, to immigrant visas, to oil fields to trucks and trains and unused office furniture equipment.
The government could earn well more than $1 trillion and perhaps as much as $10 trillion by selling off these assets that are simply hoarded (figuratively) in the dark and dusty basement of government buildings. These assets could then generate added annual tax receipts once they are utilized for productive purposes.
I’m not talking about selling the Washington Monument or Yellowstone National Park. The sales could and in most cases should be limited to American citizens and American businesses.
I’m referring to NON-environmentally sensitive properties that could be put to use growing our economy and using the money to retire some of our $35 trillion national debt. The sales could and should in most cases be limited to American citizens or businesses.
It’s a win-win for taxpayers, our children (who will be handed a lower debt obligation) and the U.S. economy.
One of the most valuable assets that should be put on the auction block immediately is tracts along the electro-magnetic spectrum. The spectrum contains the invisible airwaves that power mobile phones, Wi-Fi and other wireless technologies such as 5g communications.
In the past, auctioning spectrum rights to telecommunication firms and tech companies has raised more than $100 billion for the U.S. Treasury.
Congress could raise at least another $100 billion in another round of spectrum auctions. This would sell or lease space that the military doesn’t need and that other agencies of government (such as local police and fire departments) are fine without.
This strategy would help stimulate the economy in two ways. First, as in the past, the revenues raised can offset any real or imagined revenue loss from the imperative of making the Trump tax cuts permanent.
A new report by the economic consulting firm NERA, finds that auctioning 100 megahertz of mid-band spectrum that’s licensed for 5G will boost U.S. GDP by more than $260 billion, and create 1.5 million new jobs
On at least four previous occasions, Congress has used dollars raised from spectrum auctions to offset tax cuts in reconciliation packages. That’s exactly what they should do again.
“Effectively allocating spectrum to meet the ever-growing need is critical to promoting American innovation and protecting our national security,” Chairman Richard Hudson said yesterday at the first House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Communications and Technology hearing of the new Congress.
He points out correctly that the U.S. government has been conducting spectrum auctions for the past 30 years, and they have a track record of success. They are much fairer than giving bureaucrats the power to decide who gets spectrum, which can lead to allocations that are politically or ideologically motivated, with the result that spectrum would be used inefficiently (or not at all) by beneficiaries.
Auctions are open and transparent, minimizing the risk of shady backroom deals. They ensure that the spectrum goes to those who value it most and can use it most effectively.
Anyone who is concerned about ensuring the uninterrupted connectivity of our electric grid system and our daily Internet connection should be all for these auctions — especially as the world goes wireless and communicates less through cables and more through satellite beams.
This is also critical to maintaining our technology lead against the Chinese communist government. One Chinese news agency reported last July that, “China’s 5G network now covers every city and town in the country, as well as more than 90 percent of its villages.”
We are dangerously lagging behind and without timely spectrum auctions the gap will grow wider.
Auctions of the spectrum and other federal assets will drive progress and prosperity — and raise revenue to pay for tax cuts or retire our debt that is soon to eclipse $40 trillion. What’s not to like about that?
Stephen Moore is a contributor to The Daily Caller News Foundation, a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, and a co-founder of Unleash Prosperity. His latest book is “The Trump Economic Miracle.”
The Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act or H.R. 21 passed the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives last week in a party line vote. The Republican delegation of Arizona voted unanimously in favor of the bill.
Two of the three Arizona Democrats in Congress voted against it, with Rep. Raúl Grijalva not voting.
The passage of the bill was hailed by both Congressional Arizona Republicans and the Trump administration. Congressman Andy Biggs, who recently announced his intent to run for Governor of Arizona, wrote in a post to X, “204 Democrats refuse to protect babies who survive an attempted murder. Republicans are pro-life, pro-woman, and pro-family.”
204 Democrats refuse to protect babies who survive an attempted murder.
Congressman Abe Hamadeh (R-AZ-08) issued a statement via X saying, “The Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act is a bill that supports basic human rights and the opposition of such is the support of murder. If a child survives an abortion and is denied life-saving care, they are being denied the same protection and medical care that any other newborn baby is afforded. As several of my colleagues noted today, this bill is not about abortion. This bill is about living breathing babies. Today, I voted to pass this common sense legislation to correct this egregious humanitarian crisis.”
#BREAKING: The House just passed H.R. 21, the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act.
The White House released a statement following the bill’s passage, noting its concurrence with President Trump’s Executive Order of September 25, 2020, which stated that the policy of the United States is “to recognize the human dignity and inherent worth of every newborn or other infant child, regardless of prematurity or disability, and to ensure for each child due protection under the law.”
The White House concluded “A baby that survives an abortion and is born alive into this world should be treated just like any other baby born alive. H.R. 21 would properly amend current law to ensure that the life of one baby is not treated as being more or less valuable than another. If H.R. 21 were presented to the President in its current form, his advisors would recommend he sign it into law.” Despite the advancement of the House measure, the Senate Version of the bill was stalled when a key motion to invoke cloture, ending debate, failed. Although the GOP controls the Senate as well with 53 votes, a majority of 60 is needed to invoke cloture, requiring bipartisan support.
The push to pass the bill through both Houses of Congress was timed to coincide with the March for Life on Friday in Washington, D.C., and the 52nd anniversary of the Roe v. Wade ruling.
