President Donald Trump delivered one of the most fiery moments of his State of the Union address Tuesday night when he confronted Democrats over school policies that allow children to be socially transitioned without parental knowledge or consent — and, as expected, they stayed seated.
“But surely we can all agree, no state can be allowed to rip children from their parents’ arms and transition them to a new gender against the parents,” Trump declared. “We must ban it, and we must ban it immediately.”
Then he looked over at the Democratic side of the chamber. Silence. No applause. No movement.
“Look — nobody stands up. These people are crazy. I’m telling you — they’re crazy,” Trump said, pointing directly at them while Republicans erupted in cheers. “Democrats are destroying our country, but we’ve stopped it just in the nick of time, didn’t we?”
The president’s remarks came after introducing one of his guests, Sage Blair, whose story he said proves exactly why secrecy in schools must end. According to Trump, Sage was taken from her parents at age 14 after school officials in Virginia allegedly tried to secretly transition her to identify as male. Her mother, Michele Blair, sued the school district in 2023, claiming the school hid the situation from the family.
The lawsuit further alleges that Sage ran away from home as a result and was later kidnapped, drugged, and raped by sex traffickers — a nightmare scenario that Trump used to underscore what he called the real-world consequences of these policies.
At one point in the legal fight, a judge ordered Sage separated from her parents for allegedly failing to affirm her “gender identity.”
“But today, all of that is behind them,” Trump said. “Sage is a proud and wonderful young woman with a full-ride scholarship to Liberty University.”
Trump thanked Sage for her courage and reminded Americans how unthinkable this debate would have been just a decade ago.
“Fifteen years ago, if somebody said this, they’d say, ‘What’s wrong with him?’” he said. “Now we have to say it because it’s going on all over numerous states without even telling the parents.”
Trump also highlighted ongoing investigations by the Department of Education into states like California and Maine over so-called “gender secrecy” policies. The department says such rules violate the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), which guarantees parents access to their children’s education records — and that violations could mean the loss of federal funding. Funny how “transparency” suddenly isn’t so popular when parents want answers.
An advocacy group, Parents Defending Education, found that in 2025 more than 1,000 school districts across the country had policies allowing or encouraging staff to hide a student’s transgender status from parents. Those districts cover more than 21,000 schools and over 12 million students.
And yet, when Trump called for an immediate ban on these practices, Democrats sat frozen in their seats.
Apparently, protecting parents’ rights and children’s safety is too controversial for the party that claims to care about families. But Trump made his position unmistakably clear: schools should educate, not operate in secrecy — and parents, not bureaucrats, should decide what’s best for their kids.
