In this episode, Jenny Beth Martin is joined by Terry Schilling, President of the American Principles Project, to discuss the urgent battle against the transgender industry and its impact on children and families. They expose the dangers of gender transitions for minors, the $4.5 billion transgender industry's push for profits, and how parental rights are under attack in states like California and Minnesota. Schilling also highlights the success of legislative efforts to ban these procedures in 25 states and emphasizes the importance of electing leaders who will protect kids from harmful policies. Discover how to safeguard children from gender ideology and why protecting parental rights is crucial in today’s political landscape.
In this episode, Jenny Beth Martin is joined by Terry Schilling, President of the American Principles Project, to discuss the urgent battle against the transgender industry and its impact on children and families. They expose the dangers of gender transitions for minors, the $4.5 billion transgender industry's push for profits, and how parental rights are under attack in states like California and Minnesota. Schilling also highlights the success of legislative efforts to ban these procedures in 25 states and emphasizes the importance of electing leaders who will protect kids from harmful policies.
Discover how to safeguard children from gender ideology and why protecting parental rights is crucial in today’s political landscape.
Twitter/X: @Schilling1776 | @approject | @jennybethm
Website: https://americanprinciplesproject.org/
Documentary: Culture War: The Deadly Consequences of a Woke War Machine
Terry Schilling (00:00):
The Minnesota law that Tim Wal signed into law. It's a trans refuge law, which means this is the essentially state sanctioned kidnapping, so they'll kidnap your kid and then they'll give 'em a gender transition.
Narrator (00:13):
Keeping our republic is on the line, and it requires Patriots with great passion, dedication, and eternal vigilance to preserve our freedoms. Jenny Beth Martin is the co-founder of Tea Party Patriots. She's an author, a filmmaker, and one of time magazine's most influential people in the world, but the title she's most proud of is Mom To Her Boy, girl Twins. She has been at the forefront fighting to protect America's core principles for more than a decade. Welcome to the Jenny Beth Show.
Jenny Beth Martin (00:45):
In this episode, I'm joined by Terry Shilling from the American Principles Project to discuss the importance of protecting parental rights and the innocence of children. Terry will share the shocking truth behind the transgender industry, the policies that are putting our kids at risk and the legislative efforts underway to safeguard their futures.
Terry Schilling (01:06):
What we're building here in Jenny Beth at American Principles Project is what my donors call, oh, this is like the NRA, but for family values, right? And so the same way that the NRA protects our Second Amendment rights, our gun owners of America protects our Second Amendment rights. A PP wants to protect parental rights and the innocence of children, and what that means is cleaning up our schools, getting these pornographic materials out of our school libraries, making sure that we have age verification online for adult websites. We've had great success there. We've gotten age verification passed in 19 states now, including Georgia. Also, we've been very concerned about the transgender industry. Now, a lot of people think of this as a movement or a civil rights movement. This is an industry. It's four and a half billion dollars, and they're mutilating and sterilizing our kids.
Terry Schilling (01:56):
The more and more every single day, way too many, there's tens of thousands of children that have gone through these gender procedures that have sterilized them or removed healthy body parts. We've gotten 25 states to ban these procedures for minors, and so we want to win this presidential election. President Trump has been very strong on this issue. He wants to protect our kids from this stuff, and he also wants to protect parents from having the government weaponized against them, which we're seeing in blue states like Kamala is California and Tim Wall's, Minnesota. They're actually taking children away from their parents if the parents are against these gender procedures. But then Jenny be, this is one of my favorite issues because I have three daughters. We're protecting girls' sports. These guys are totally insane. They think that men can join women's sports in their locker rooms and showers just by claiming to be women, and we're saying, no, we've gotten 25 states to protect women's sports by keeping biological males out of that.
Terry Schilling (02:52):
That's a redundant saying, by the way. I need to cut that out of my lexicon. It's just males. We're keeping males with XY chromosomes. There's no such thing as a biological male. You're either male or female. It's just duplicative. But so a lot of people don't realize that politics in a lot of ways, Jenny Beth and I know that some people will disagree. Politics in a lot of ways is upstream of culture. It's definitely part of culture. It's how we start conversations. But when you win in politics on an issue, you have incredible momentum behind it. And when someone thinks an issue is going to hurt them and the campaign, they're not going to touch it with a 10 foot pole, and when they think it's going to help them, you're going to need the jaws of life to separate 'em from it, right? And we've seen that with other issues from the past.
Terry Schilling (03:39):
But these issues are very popular voters. Some of them have 60% margins of support around women's sports and protecting kids online from adult content. And we need to double down because the Democrats cannot moderate. They cannot counter these arguments. They are stuck with them. Kamala is copying President Trump on his economic messaging, on the border messaging, on the crime messaging. She doesn't want to defund the police anymore. She wants to give more funding to the police. They can't do it on the gender issue. We saw them Justice Summer, Joe Biden tried to say that his administration doesn't support sex changes for kids. They had to reverse that position within 24 hours because of how radical the Democratic base is. They're pregnant with it. They're stuck with it, and we need to make them pay a political price for it.
Jenny Beth Martin (04:28):
Terry, when you say that in Kamala, California and Tim Waltz's, Minnesota, those states are taking parents or children away from parents who don't agree to these surgeries, that mutilate bodies elaborate on that. What is happening in those states? Exactly.
Terry Schilling (04:47):
To paraphrase in, to summarize it, because this gets complicated legally, what they have done is they have made gender transitioning a right, even for minors. And so when in Minnesota, for example, a child at school goes through a gender class or goes through, you see a gender counselor and the school identifies them as transgender or having gender dysphoria. If they bring the parents in and the parents have any real concerns and want to pause or push the brakes on it, they will consider putting that child into protective custody. They will remove custody from the parents through DCFS or whatever the local agency is, and put that child in foster care. We saw this in California with a girl named Galee Martinez. Her mother, Abby Martinez, was actually had her daughter taken away from her by California Family Services put into foster care, and Galee ended up committing suicide within two years.
Terry Schilling (05:50):
They put her on hormone blockers, cross-sex hormones. They did all of this crazy stuff to her and changed her hormonal makeup, and then she committed suicide. Because what happens is the suicidality and the suicide rate actually increases for these people. These people need real help. They need to make sure, we need to be telling these people that they weren't a mistake, that they weren't born in the wrong body, that their bodies are perfect, that their mind is just telling them confusing things, and we need to overcome those obstacles. But when you tell people that they were a mistake from the beginning, that is a really abusive psychologically torturing thing, and it ends the lives of a lot of these people. And so they take away custody from parents in the state. But the Minnesota law that Tim Walls signed into law, it's a trans refuge law.
Terry Schilling (06:36):
And what that means is, is that if you're in a kid in a red state and your parents don't want to give you a gender transition, or it's illegal in your state to do it, and you make your way to Minnesota, some gender trafficker takes you from your red state to Minnesota, Minnesota family agencies are prohibited from working with the state agencies in that red state where you're actually from. So when the parents petition your state to return the child, they won't do it, which means this is essentially state sanctioned kidnapping. So they'll kidnap your kid and then they'll give 'em a gender transition, and we're waiting to see on this. They're using taxpayer dollars to pay for it now. But what happens when these states start going through real budget crises, they're going to then try and force the parents to pay for this stuff. That's the next step. That's my prediction for where they're going to go. It's not happening yet, but that's not in the realm, not outside the realm of possibilities here.
Jenny Beth Martin (07:32):
Who's behind this? Do we know?
Terry Schilling (07:35):
Yeah. So there is a group called wpath, and it's the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, and it's an NGO, right? But this is the conglomeration of all the people that are making money off of this. We actually just released a report on this. It's called the Transgender Industry, and you can find it@transgenderindustry.com. But we dug into the financials of the transgender industry, who's making money, how much money they're making, how much money they're making for a gender transition for male to female or female to male. All of this stuff we uncovered. So it's like a leviathan, right? There's all these different tentacles. You've got big pharmaceutical companies like AbbVie that are making money from puberty blockers. You have the hospital systems that are making money from performing these surgeries. You have plastic surgeons that are making money. You have this whole ecosystem. Now, the endocrinologists, the people that actually prescribe these hormones, you have all these people that are making tons and tons of money right now.
Terry Schilling (08:40):
It's a four and a half billion dollar a year industry, and that's not all they expect. Robbie, Catherine Anthony is the CEO of a transgender tech company. We have transgender tech companies now, and this is a called Euphoria Dobt. And what they will do, it's one of these telemedicine companies where you log in and they will prescribe you whatever hormone treatments or whatever chemical cocktail you want, they will prescribe you and deliver it to you in the mail. Robbie, Catherine Anthony did an interview. She's the CEO of this company. She did an interview a few months ago, or a couple years ago I think, where she said, right now the industry is very small, but if we're able to transition all 1.6 million trans identifying Americans, we'll be at over 200 billion a year. That's larger than the entire film industry. So think about that. You're right now, four and a half billion.
Terry Schilling (09:38):
That's a lot of money actually. And they're reinvesting the profits from that into PR campaigns, lobbying, government affairs, all of that stuff. So this isn't Jenny. I'm just so cynical now. I essentially look at everything now in America as an industry. I don't believe the narratives on the legacy media anymore. I just look at who's making money here? What are the financial interests here? And there's a lot of money to be made here. These surgeries, for example, they cost upwards of $600,000 for a female to try and become a male. And the surgeries are gruesome. Their bodies are mutilated. Even their arms and their thighs get mutilated because of the type of stuff that they have to do. Males, it's actually, this is a movement about gender equality.
Terry Schilling (10:27):
It costs more for a female to try to become a male than it does for a male to try to become a female. It's around 400 and some thousand dollars for a male to try to become a female. And so over $600,000 for a female to try to become a male, this is insane. It's absolutely devastating. We can't afford it. Where the hell are these people getting this money? This stuff didn't explode. Jenny Beth until Obama through HHS said that discrimination on the basis of gender identity was unlawful under civil rights law. Once the government got involved, once the insurance companies were forced to cover it, and taxpayers were forced to cover it, no one was getting it because they couldn't afford $600,000 to do a gender transition. But now that no one has to pay for it besides us or the people that are paying for it or so far removed for it, that's where this thing is exploding.
Terry Schilling (11:15):
So you can expect, and there's a whole pipeline. It's not just the healthcare industry, it's the schools. There's the schools, there's the cartoons. Now, there's a whole industry. Now, we didn't delve into the, we did the media abrest and the propaganda campaigns in a previous report called the Transgender Leviathan, but I'm sorry for ranting. That was a long rant, but it's so bad. It's so bad. The transgender industry is so bad. They're sterilizing and mutilating Our children and our children are our future. So they're sterilizing our future. That's how we have look at this, and that's why it's so bad.
Jenny Beth Martin (11:54):
It's cruel and it's evil because they're hurting children who look to adults to help them stay safe. And instead, these adults are putting them in harm's way, not just the immediate future, but putting them in harm's way for the rest of their lives and making them dependent on medication and drugs for the rest of their lives. It's just wrong. I don't think history will look kindly on this industry at all.
Terry Schilling (12:24):
No, no. And in fact, this issue's a lot different than abortion, right? Because the victims of abortion don't get to speak. Their lives are snuffed out. Their voices are ignored. They're flushed down the toilet essentially. But these transgender kids have voices and they're starting to speak out. There's a whole rise of what's become detransition, and these are kids, and some of 'em are actually adults, which really speaks to this. Your prefrontal cortex is fully developed when you're adult, and these people are starting to regret it. But we're going to have malpractice lawsuits that I think ultimately will bankrupt this industry and make it go the way of lobotomies. That's ultimately, I actually think lobotomies are probably less harmful to people than sex change procedures. And I say that knowing full well how horrific these sex change procedures are, especially giving 'em with children,
Jenny Beth Martin (13:17):
Right? They're just absolutely horrible. In the seats where I think you said 25 seats where you've made it illegal to do this to children, you've helped make that happen with the legislatures. Are there any seats where you've tried to make this happen and it hasn't happened yet? And if so, what are the objections? Why are people not supportive of such legislation?
Terry Schilling (13:45):
We've overcome most of the objections, and we're kind of nearing max capacity here based on which states have a trifecta of control. There are some Democrats that we're seeing that are getting on board with fighting this and opposing it. Sean Terry from Texas, she was kicked out of the Democratic Party for voting against gender transitions for minors and to ban that there. But basically, the remaining two arguments are essentially, this isn't a priority. This isn't the role of government, which is absolutely terrible. It's a terrible argument. Government's meant to protect the vulnerable. You form a government, not in my words, but in our founding father's words, the purpose of government. You form a government to secure your rights and you secure them from bad, evil people that will take advantage of you. That's what you do. You don't form a government to protect yourself from government.
Terry Schilling (14:41):
That doesn't make sense. You secure your rights through your government, and government should be smaller. It should be more limited. But you need a government to pass laws to make sure that these predatory industries aren't able to take advantage of children. And children are most vulnerable. And parents, by the way, are vulnerable to this, right? Because these gender activists and these gender industry stooges, they come in and they scare the bejesus out of these parents. They tell them that their child's life is in danger. If they don't start affirming their new gender identity and start transitioning them, that's what they tell 'em. It's the same thing with leukemia and giving people chemotherapy. Parents make tough decisions that cause a lot of pain to their children because they think it's what's best for them. They're told by experts and doctors that this is necessary pain in order to overcome this illness.
Terry Schilling (15:30):
And so that's that. And then the second thing that's very treacherous that I tell people is they say that parents should be the ones making these decisions. No, parents don't have a right to sexually abuse their children, so they definitely don't have a right to sexually mutilate their children. Parents actually should be protected from having this as an option put before them in a very coercive option. This is never, it is not usually, I'm sorry. There are some very mentally ill mothers out there and fathers that will actually want to do this because they don't view it as harmful. But most of these parents are being coerced into this, and it's just as unfair. So parents aren't freely signing up to do this to their children. They are being convinced that their child's life was on the line, and that if they don't do it, that their child will commit suicide, which is such a preposterous argue argument.
Terry Schilling (16:24):
If you just scratch the surface a little bit, you see through it. But these parents just get so scared because they love their children so much. These guys have weaponized the love that parents have for their children where they're willing to make super tough decisions that could cause pain and harm to their child in the short term for long-term benefits. And so parental rights parents don't have a right to sexually abuse their children, so they definitely don't have a right to sexually mutilate them, and they should be protected from having this choice thrust upon them as well.
Jenny Beth Martin (16:56):
Is there any federal legislation that has been introduced? Obviously with the divided Congress right now, and Biden in the White House, it wouldn't pass into law, but is anyone advocating this at a federal level?
Terry Schilling (17:09):
Yeah. My two favorite guys are Roger Marshall in the Senate. He has a bill called the Stop Experimentation on Children Act, which would ban these procedures outright. And then Doug La Malfa also has legislation that would ban this as well. And we're working with both of their teams. They've been the ones that have really stood out on this. There's lots of good leaders on this, and the political support for protecting children from the gender industry has grown immensely over the years, and we're going to work with everyone. But these are the two pieces, legislation, the leaders that we've really enjoyed working with the most, they've showed the most leadership and the most willingness to make this a serious issue for them. But also, Jenny Beth, president Trump can do a lot. If we get him into office, he can actually sign executive orders. He can defund this from the Obamacare exchanges.
Terry Schilling (17:56):
He can ban hospitals that receive taxpayer funding from providing these, right? We need to start using the left's game against them, right? They're doing it to Catholic hospitals right now. If you're a Catholic hospital that receives any taxpayer funding at all and you refuse to do abortions or gender transitions for minors, you're at risk of losing your federal funding. We need to turn this on its head. That's not how this stuff's meant to work. We need to go on offense. And anyone that's causing harm to minors especially, we need to defund them of all federal tolerance.
Jenny Beth Martin (18:30):
And I think that executive power executive orders using the power for executive orders is something that can be done. We need laws to prevent it. Because what you don't need, and what I think is causing great harm in our country right now is you have one president who comes in, they sign a whole bunch of executive orders on day one, and then you have another president who comes in who undoes that and does something else. And if we had laws, it would prevent that. If you have a law that makes it illegal, the executive orders, you don't have that chaotic swing from president to president, which I think is very harmful for our country. We have to make sure that we're educating people about this kind of issue, which you are doing extremely well, so that we can get legislators who will pass the law and just make it illegal, period. And then it takes it away from the executive branch from one administration to another.
Terry Schilling (19:33):
No, I completely agree. And this is exactly why American Principles Project engages so much in elections. So when politicians know that there's a political action committee that is building up a war chest of millions of dollars that can help support them and run campaign ads on this stuff, once people start paying a political price for gender transitions for minors, that's when you're going to start to see the bottom fallout. If we win this next presidential election and President Trump really makes the gender transitions in protecting children from them a big deal, and women's sports a big deal, you're going to start to see Democrats go crazy against each other and start to inf fight. They'll start blaming. The LGB will start going to war with the T, which is absolutely correct. LGB, the bisexual is absolutely at odds with transgenderism, which says that there is no binary, but we need to get them in fighting.
Terry Schilling (20:31):
And once you get them in fighting, sorry, you get them in fighting by winning elections on their issues and causing division, they'll start blaming the T part of that, and then they'll drop all of this garbage and they'll give a pass to Democrats to join the other side. We've got to start winning elections, and until we actually start winning elections on this, you're not going to see any legislation pass. So we need to win more elections, get this more of the mainstream candidates, not just a PP and Super pacs like us candidates absolutely need to start running their own campaign ads on this and using this on the Trump, on the stump. I'm telling you, Jenny Beth, the water's warm, even suburban women, we did focus groups all across the country in Atlanta. We sat down with suburban women, 11 out, the 12 of them were against gender transitions for minors.
Terry Schilling (21:19):
11 out of the 12, right? It's a huge opening for us. No one supports this stuff. They might get on a poll when they're talking to a stranger on the phone. You'll probably have an inflated number on there, but no one supports it. In fact, my democratic friends, when we were working on religious liberty, they were telling me, why are you working on wedding cakes? No one cares about wedding cakes and artists and florists. You should stop this gender stuff with kids. This is crazy. My ideas on fighting the gender ideology stuff came from Democrats and some of them were gay, so I don't know what to say. The water's warm guys start running campaign ads, start punching your opponent on it. It's a very soft spot for 'em. It's a huge weakness and a huge blind spot for the entire Democratic party.
Jenny Beth Martin (22:01):
Well, and it shouldn't be. It just shouldn't be really. It should just be a no-brainer. This harms kids, period. And there are some very bad people making a lot of money off of it, but at the end of the day, it harms kids and it harms kids for the rest of their lives. And that is not something that any adult should want to happen to children, period. If you're an adult and you want to go do something to your body, I don't encourage this kind of action on your body, but if that's something that you choose to do, at least you can understand the consequences. And you are an adult, but a child who can't even buy a pack of cigarettes or buy alcohol, allowing them to do something that irreversibly changes their body, it's just wrong. It shouldn't be a Republican issue versus Democrats. It should just be we're Americans and also we're human beings, and we don't want to see this happen to children in our species.
Terry Schilling (23:04):
No. Right? And to be clear, Democrats are, if they get into Congress, they would repeal all of the state laws through the federal government that are protecting kids from this stuff. That would be, I would rather, I don't want anyone smoking smoking's bad. It's kind of cool, but it's bad. It's really bad for you. But I would rather kids be able to smoke than get gender transitions, right? At least they can still have a family down the road. They might die a little bit earlier, but at least they'll be able to have a family. They'll have memories at Christmas. They'll have memories and a community of people that love them and support them that they then learn how to love. But if we're talking in orders of magnitude here, we should probably ban sex changes for kids before we ban cigarettes for kids. And I'm against cigarettes for kids. I like the age being 21 years old, but this is just insane. And these guys, if we can't protect children from gender transitions, what can we protect them from? If parents can't say no to giving their kid a sex change, what are they allowed to say no to McDonald's candy after midnight R-rated movies. What rights do parents actually have? If they can't say no, you're not getting a sex
Jenny Beth Martin (24:15):
Change. That's right. That's exactly right. And I think that the voters, democrat voters and Republican voters, like you just said, from the focus group you did, it doesn't matter which side of the political aisle you're on, Americans understand this is harmful, but the party leadership and the Democratic party leadership has decided this is going to be one of those things that's most important to them to defend, and it's really indefensible. So I'm very glad you're working so hard on it, and I encourage people when they think about going to vote in the coming days and weeks, that you're voting for people who are going to protect our kids, not harm them.
Terry Schilling (24:58):
No, that's exactly right. And my thing is I think the voters will do the right thing. They just need the leaders to talk to 'em and make sure that they understand the contrast. There's a lot that we're doing to make sure the voters know what's at stake, but it just has so much more weight coming from the candidates themselves. And so Jenny Beth, I know you're going to join me in this, but I'm telling every candidate that I meet, even if they're in Congress or out of Congress or running for Congress or Senate or whatever, if you're running for office, you need to make sure that you're making your opponent pay a price for their extremism on this stuff. They'll deny it, but you got the receipts. They all support it. They have to support it. They might not actually deny it. And in fact, I don't know if they can get away with deny it because they'll lose their base. So you win. It's a win-win. Either they deny it and they lose their base and you win or they go double down in their support of it, and then you win over the swing voters. It's a win-win. Bring it up, don't back down. Punch them twice as hard.
Jenny Beth Martin (25:58):
Very good. Well, Terry, is there anything else that we should let the audience know that you're working on?
Terry Schilling (26:05):
We've got a whole turnout operation. We're doing digital ads right now. Our ads are going to be seen tens of millions of times, and if we raise enough money, they'll be seen over a hundred million times all the way through. That's we're sending out millions of text messages. We're primarily focused Jenny Beth on the persuasion effort, and that's not, I think the get out the vote effort is so important, I think ultimately how we're going to win this thing. But we're filling a gap that not a lot of people are filling, which is the persuasion effort. And I think you guys do some great work as well, and I think you're even involved in some of the persuasion efforts as well. But we're primarily a persuasion operation and we're going after those swing voters, those soft Democrats and independents on all the extremism against the American family and our children.
Jenny Beth Martin (26:54):
Well, and we really appreciate that, and that's part of the reason why I wanted to interview you for the podcast because our 5 27 Super PAC T pretty Patriot Citizens Fund is working on getting out the vote. And we want the people who are talking to their friends and family and talking to voters to be equipped with the kind of messaging and the persuasive messaging and information and research that you've done so that they can incorporate that when they're having conversations, especially with undecided voters.
Terry Schilling (27:25):
That's the beauty of campaign ads, right? Is campaign ads force you to make a very short and quick and hard hitting argument within 30 seconds. That's what we try to really specialize in.
Jenny Beth Martin (27:38):
Very good. Well, thank you so much for joining me today. And where can people go to get more information about the work you're doing?
Terry Schilling (27:44):
So you can follow me on X and Instagram and all the social media accounts at shilling 1776 S-C-H-I-L-L-I-N-G 1776, or check us out online@americanprinciplesproject.org.
Jenny Beth Martin (27:59):
Very good. Thanks so much for joining me today, Terry.
Narrator (28:02):
Thanks, Jenny Beth. The Jenny Beth Show is hosted by Jenny Beth Martin, produced by Kevin Mohan and directed by Luke Livingston. The Jenny Beth Show is a production of Tea Party Patriots action. For more information, visit tea party patriots.org.
Jenny Beth Martin (28:23):
If you like this episode, let me know by hitting the light button or leaving a comment or a five star review. And if you want to be the first to know every time we drop a new episode, be sure to subscribe and turn on notifications for whichever platform you're listening on. If you do these simple things, it will help the podcast grow, and I'd really appreciate it. Thank you so much.