USPIE’s May 2025 Millstone Award goes to Colorado legislators who’ve joined the ‘kidnapping lobby’
They want to cut out parents entirely if they prove to be an obstacle to transgender indoctrination. This is totalitarianism, pure and simple. [Pictured: Lorena Garcia, Colorado legislator and bill sponsor]
Four Colorado state lawmakers are sponsoring a bill to take custody of children away from parents who refuse to buy into transgender lies. For this outrageous abuse of the lawmaking process, United States Parents Involved in Education (USPIE) is giving its not-so-coveted Millstone Award to them for the month of May 2025.
These folks are exemplars of what we at USPIE call the ‘kidnapping lobby. They not only think they know better than parents about what to teach children about sex, they want to cut out parents entirely if they prove to be an obstacle to transgender indoctrination. This is totalitarianism, pure and simple.
USPIE’s Millstone of the Month Award goes to “the person involved in government schools who has committed the most egregious acts against children.”
State Reps. Lorena Garcia and Rebekah Stewart, with state Sens. Faith Winter and Chris Kolker, all Democrats, are sponsoring HB 1312, which would remove children from the custody of their parents if the parents diverged from transgender orthodoxy.
The Colorado House of Representatives passed the bill on April 6. It targets kids for not going along with the fiction that their schoolmates can change into the opposite sex and bans “coercive control.” The bill has yet to progress in the Colorado Senate.
HB 1312 defines “coercive control” as including “deadnaming, misgendering, or threatening to publish material related to an individual’s gender-affirming health care services.”
“A court shall consider reports of coercive control when determining the allocation of parental responsibilities in accordance with the best interests of the child,” the summary adds.
“These provisions would effectively require parents to endorse gender ideology in order to maintain custody of their own children in a dispute,” The Daily Signal reports.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s Education Department says that children aren’t owned by bureaucrats or school officials. “Children do not belong to the government. They belong to parents,” Education Department spokeswoman Julie Hartman told The Daily Signal.
On March 28, the department sent a “Dear Colleague” letter directing schools to comply with federal parental rights laws. These include the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, which gives parents the right to inspect their children’s school’s educational records, and the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment, which gives parents the right to notice of surveys and the right to opt out their children.
The Office of Civil Rights has also launched investigations into Maine, California and Washington state for reportedly concealing student gender identity from parents.
This story reflects what the Trump administration is doing to protect children. It’s the proper role of the federal government to guarantee rights. However, parents still need to protect their children from being exposed to the idea that they can change their sex and that it should be celebrated. The only way to do that is to get your kids out of government schools and away from ‘woke’ TV, books and the internet.
USPIE aspires to create a culture where parents, empowered with the authority to choose what and how their children learn, are the undisputed primary educators of their children; where local schools operate in support of families, and where education is unencumbered by federal mandates. USPIE’s podcast, “Unmasking Government Schools with Sheri Few,” educates Americans on the various forms of indoctrination, harmful policies and affronts to parents’ rights occurring in government schools across the country.
Listen to “Unmasking Government Schools with Sheri Few” on YouTube, Facebook, Spotify and X.