MINNEAPOLIS — After a Jan. 17 counterprotest to Jake Lang’s march, members of Defend the 612’s Signal ICE Watch network shared this image, taking credit for the assault and calling it a “testament to the violence the masses applied against this reactionary march.” In the days before the event, the same Signal ICE Watch chats laid out plans for a “defensive counteraction,” posted graphics including an image depicting a bloody, hanging Klansman, and issued tactical guidance instructing participants to mask up, wear goggles, and avoid filming or documenting attendees.

Additional graphics dismissed the claim that “nonviolence is the only strategy” as false.

Minneapolis’s ICE watch network is not just “monitoring” ICE activity. Internal Signal chats explicitly describe their media work as propaganda and discuss controlling narratives and managing journalists.

While undercover in the Defend the 612 network, I accessed a vetted channel called “Central communications,” created for “external narrative-shaping strategy.” 🧵
On January 13, trans activist Elle Neubauer, using the handle “princess (she/her/fae/faer),” described allowing Madison McVan of the Minnesota Reformer to accompany him on a ride-along while following ICE by car. minnesotareformer.com/2026/01/13/in-…

I joined an ICE watch training held by Defend the 612 organizers in Minneapolis on January 8, before they began taking additional steps to conceal their identities and activities.

In the training, organizers described their goal as impeding ICE operations. They downplayed risks, delegitimized law enforcement, and encouraged participants to take risks. 🧵 Defend the 612 used Renee Good’s death as a recruitment opportunity. On the evening of January 7, they advertised an “emergency vigil” for Good, where fliers were distributed directing attendees to sign up for ICE watch on their website.

Minneapolis’s “ICE watch” network did not arise organically. My 3.5-week investigation for @CityJournal found that a well-funded group of professional activists implemented the operation, deploying a model now being used in cities across the US. 🧵 “Defend the 612” purports to be a spontaneous community effort merely filming ICE. My investigation shows it was organized with professional help. Its Signal networks are used to coordinate the hiding of illegal aliens, develop a media “propaganda” strategy, and plan violent protests, while its trainings push civilians toward dangerous confrontations.

Some of the most interesting research-based findings and insights from my new @CityJournal piece on the left’s depraved celebratory reactions to Charlie Kirk’s murder 🧵 Post analysis:

Across all platforms, there were posts and comments that celebrated, mocked, or justified the murder.

Many of the explicitly celebratory posts were concentrated on TikTok, where people filmed their reactions; some drew hundreds of thousands of likes before being removed for violating rules against celebrating violence.

On Instagram and Blue$ky, the most common posts used false or context-stripped quotes attributed to Kirk, paired with sentiments implying he hated minorities and thus deserved what happened and shouldn’t be mourned. These drew hundreds of thousands of likes and shares.

TikTok and Instagram Reels also had a large volume of one-minute mashups of out-of-context Kirk quotes, carrying the same sentiment.

Taken together across these posts and platforms, millions engaged with them in agreement.

🧵How we interpret psychological distress is shaped by the narratives around us—both cultural and medical.

This process, known as the cultural scripting of distress, involves filtering internal suffering through the frameworks available in one’s environment. Humans are meaning-making creatures. When we’re in pain, especially when the pain is diffuse or difficult to name, we search for explanations.

Adolescents are especially susceptible to this. They are actively forming their identities while navigating intense emotional shifts.

🧵There’s an Instagram creator I follow called “Mister Mainer” who makes really funny dog videos. He puts wigs on his dogs, gives them voices, and creates characters—one of them is a realtor named Karen Bark.

The videos are very entertaining, and he’s built a large following—close to 2 million on Instagram, and over 20 million on TikTok.

Lately, though, he’s been posting nonstop leftist political content—“trans rights,” “No Kings” (promoted as protesting fascism), and anti-deportation videos.

He recently lost two sponsors because they have policies against working with political creators.

He framed it as being dropped for supporting human rights. I’m sure he really believes that. I did too, for a brief period back in 2020, when I got swept up in the same social justice rhetoric. I had only a very superficial understanding of politics, but being part of a group gave me undeserved confidence in my views.

🧵A key claim behind medical interventions for minors is that being transgender is innate and immutable—something you're born with and can't change.

In Skrmetti v. U.S., the Supreme Court addressed that claim. “Immutable” appears 19 times in the ruling. In the Opinion of the Court, the Supreme Court affirmed the Sixth Circuit’s judgment, which declined to treat transgender status as a protected class—partly because it is not “defined by obvious, immutable, or distinguishing characteristics.”

🧵 Jack Turban is once again promoting his book Free to Be as an authoritative source on the science of transgender identity.

In a recent thread, he claims twin studies suggest a genetic or innate basis.

But that’s not what the research actually shows.
In his book, Turban claims there’s “strong evidence that transness has an innate biological basis.”

He cites a 2012 review of twin studies showing some identical twins both had gender identity disorder.

That might sound convincing—until you look closer.

Paris Hilton says it’s her mission to shut down the “troubled teen industry.” Youth residential treatment serves kids in deep psychiatric crisis. She suggests parents try grounding them or taking their phone.

She helped pass 12 state laws—and the fallout is already visible. 🧵 Residential treatment isn’t for teens who miss curfew.

It’s for kids who’ve made serious attempts to harm themselves or others, experienced psychosis, or cycled through multiple hospitalizations.

For many families, it’s the last hope after everything else fails.

A pro-pedophile group is training mental health providers to implement “affirmative MAP therapy”—a framework explicitly modeled on LGBT-affirmative therapy, aimed at affirming pedophiles’ attraction to minors and integrating that attraction into their identity. Researchers and therapists who work with pedophiles to prevent child abuse are doing difficult but important work. In order to get them to participate in research or seek help, they must create a nonjudgmental environment—something the public may misinterpret as condoning abuse.

🧵 Transgender people are not “born that way.”

The studies used to support that claim rely on biological evidence of gender nonconformity—traits linked to same-sex attraction or intersex conditions—and are misrepresented as proof that being trans is a biological condition. In Talbott v. Trump, Judge Ana C. Reyes asked both parties to brief the court on “questions of biology,” prompting plaintiffs to submit a 5-page brief arguing that transgender identity is both innate and immutable, and constitutes “a discernible class.” storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…

🧵The narrative that transgender people possess a “brain sex” mismatched with their body has permeated our culture.

In 2009, on the massively popular show Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, psychiatrist George Huang explained that a trans-identified boy had a “female brain”: This narrative was born from flawed studies that failed to control for key confounding variables—completely invalidating their findings—yet the media promoted them uncritically as proof that transgender people are “born that way.”

Yarden Silveira's story is among the most tragic cases of detransition you will ever read. His scathing Yelp reviews of the surgeons who harmed him briefly surfaced on social media last year, but his full story remained elusive. My new investigation for @CityJournal, featuring interviews with his family, uncovers the tragic truth of Yarden Silveira.

As a vulnerable autistic teenager, Yarden was encouraged by healthcare providers to medically transition. After suffering severe, life-threatening complications from a botched vaginoplasty—and after more than a dozen "gender-affirming" doctors refused to treat his surgeon-inflicted injuries—he is believed to have ended his life at just 23. Yarden was a gay, autistic teenager struggling to find an identity. At 15, he came to believe he was transgender, telling his family he had a "female brain" after encountering flawed studies claiming transgender people have brain regions that resemble the opposite sex.

NEW STUDY: A systematic review on effects of cross-sex hormones shows all trans-identified people on them show changes in reproductive tissue. Raises concerns of long-term health risks and quality of life of children conceived with eggs or sperm exposed to cross-sex hormones. 🧵 Females on testosterone: Structural changes in ovarian tissue occur. Most studies show egg development continues, but testosterone may reduce fertilization rates. Some pregnancies were reported with continued testosterone use—which raises unknown risks for fetal development.

A new investigation by @realchrisrufo and me examines Charleroi, a small town that has seen an influx of migrants under Biden, whose admin has funneled billions of taxpayer dollars into immigration NGOs, while local businesses capitalize on the availability of cheap labor. 🧵 Charleroi had just over 4,000 residents in 2020. Then, over a few years, ~2,000 predominantly Haitian migrants moved in, establishing businesses downtown. Strained schools are hiring translators. Car crashes, some into buildings, are also causing concern.

🚨: Tim Walz is celebrated by the left as a "champion of children" for policies claimed to benefit Minnesota youth.

But in May, he signed into law the most radical child welfare reform bill in the U.S., marking the most dangerous application of DEI principles to date. 🧵 Walz's law, the African American Family Preservation and Child Welfare Disproportionality Act, is a method to enforce racial equity by lowering the standards for removing children from homes where they may have been neglected or abused—based on factors like race.

The distress young people feel is real, but it is being misattributed to a trans-identity. Trans-identified youth often have severe emotional and behavioral issues, similar to the “troubled teen” experience, a term that was used to describe me as a teen.🧵 Studies showing that trans-identified teens frequently present to psychiatric hospitals and the ER with severe emotional and behavioral issues are common. They often have eating disorders, psychiatric disorders, autistic traits, suicidal thoughts, and self-harm.

This exchange between @JoyAnnReid and @realchrisrufo in 2021 was a turning point for me. Watching it live, I remember the anger I felt seeing her gaslighting and refusing to let Rufo finish a sentence. Until then, I had viewed the mainstream media in a positive light. 🧵 I was mostly apolitical until 2020, voting Democrat in every election since 18. I hadn’t looked into many issues deeply because I trusted what mainstream media told me. Before this exchange, I naively believed they were committed to objectivity and truth.

The concept of innate gender identity is used to justify medically transitioning children. Here’s why it’s pseudoscience 🧵

I review the biology chapter of @jack_turban's new book, which claims "transness has an innate biological basis." Biological factors are associated with being transgender, but being transgender itself is not an inherent condition one is born with.

The studies seeking to discover a biological basis for trans are discovering evidence of gender nonconformity and interpreting it as trans.

Stop calling “gender-affirming care” for minors “medically necessary” and “evidence-based”

Those words have meaning!

I explain in this thread🧵 Writing is my preferred form of communication because it allows me to be precise with my language so that I am not misunderstood.

Which is why it infuriates me when trusted authorities misrepresent youth medical transition as “medically necessary” and “evidence-based.”