One of the largest and oldest patriotic groups is in turmoil over males being admitted as ‘daughters’—and GOP lawmakers are intervening.
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| “Experience is a good teacher, though her fees are terribly high.” |
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Good morning, happy Monday! Here are today’s top stories. |
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One of the largest and oldest patriotic groups, the Daughters of the American Revolution, is in turmoil over males being admitted as “daughters”—and GOP lawmakers are intervening.
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In California, Maryland, New York, Oklahoma, and Virginia, homeschool students are barred from public school sports. Homeschool families are pushing for access.
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Despite the hype of Chinese firm Moonshot AI's new model, China is not gaining as much on U.S. frontier models as some say, according to tech analysts.
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Multiple criminal networks involved in transnational repression on U.S. soil have been dismantled by the FBI, agency director Kash Patel told Epoch Times’s senior editor Jan Jekielek in an exclusive interview.
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🍵 Health: Do plants have consciousness? The boundaries we have drawn around perception and awareness may be narrower than we thought.
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(L–R) Sally Fink, Deb Heim, Barbara Wells, Sharon Mitchell, and Laura McDonald, members of Daughters of the American Revolution who oppose allowing males to join, gather for the group's annual Continental Congress in Washington on June 26, 2026. (Courtesy of Laura McDonald) |
Heidi Weidamann joined Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) for two reasons: She is a proud, verified descendant of Revolutionary-era patriots—and she values the female-only camaraderie DAR offers. “I wanted the privacy of a women’s group ... to commune with other women,” Weidamann told The Epoch Times.
But Weidamann, 63, of Cincinnati was dismayed to learn that over the years, males have quietly been permitted to join DAR—one of the nation’s oldest and largest patriotic societies. That revelation felt like a gut-punch. Weidamann said it hit especially hard because she recently quit a sport she loved—master’s swimming for women—after males were allowed to infiltrate it.
“Women have a right to women-only spaces and sports,” she said. Implications of the DAR transgender-member dispute extend beyond the group’s 190,000 members, Weidamann said: “It directly ties to many evolving situations around the country and the world.”
About 3,000 DAR chapters dot all 50 U.S. states, plus Guam and 12 foreign countries. More than 1 million women have joined DAR since its founding more than a century ago, DAR’s website says. The group’s internal feud over transgender-identifying members simmered for several years before it boiled over, drawing action from Republican lawmakers. Congressmembers Intervene Last month, Rep. Ben Cline (R-Va.) and Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) introduced the Daughters of the American Revolution Integrity Act. If approved, it would amend DAR’s 1896 congressional charter to expressly block males from membership. The charter gives the group clout. It also federally protects DAR’s name and insignia. It allows DAR to ask the Smithsonian Institution to accept its historic materials. (More) |
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Traffic moves past the Iranian national flag displayed on a building at Enghelab square in Tehran on June 14, 2026. (AFP via Getty Images) |
- President Donald Trump said that the United States is “low-keying” its approach to negotiations with Iran, suggesting that economic pressure on Tehran is starting to take hold.
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Republicans in Maryland filed a lawsuit seeking to keep a proposed redistricting amendment off the Nov. 3 ballot, arguing that the Democrat-led General Assembly missed deadlines for putting questions before voters that it had written into law three months earlier.
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The Senate is away for its August recess. When it returns in September, it has a long to-do list, including moving forward with a third party-line spending bill, voting on a major crypto regulation bill, and possibly taking up legislation to reform college sports.
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Democratic incumbents in Hawaii’s gubernatorial and congressional primary elections successfully fended off primary challengers over the weekend. Incumbent Rep. Ed Case won the Democratic primary for Hawaii’s First Congressional District in the early hours of Aug. 9 after beating a series of challengers, including progressive state Sen. Jarrett K. Keohokalole.
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Facing accusations from conservatives that it may be attempting to bias judges in favor of climate lawsuits, the National Academy of Sciences has removed from its website a chapter on climate science in its manual produced as a judicial reference for judges.
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North American Aerospace Defense Command F-16 fighter jets intercepted two general aviation aircraft that flew into restricted airspace over Bedminster, New Jersey, on Sunday.
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Two former NBA players announced plans to enter the 2027 draft for the top professional women’s basketball league. Enes Kanter-Freedom and Royce White, who both had significant careers in the professional men’s basketball league, said they believe they are eligible to join based on the WNBA’s current policies if they temporarily identify as female.
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An aerial view of Scarborough Shoal in the disputed South China Sea on Feb. 15, 2014. (Jam Sta Rosa/AFP via Getty Images) |
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The United States has condemned the Chinese regime’s continued efforts to establish a nature reserve at a disputed shoal in the South China Sea, a move that further blocks Filipino fishermen’s access to one of their traditional fishing grounds.
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Iran and Oman are in the final stages of establishing a new maritime route in the Strait of Hormuz, but the Iranian regime insisted that the waterway won’t reopen until the United States agrees to six demands.
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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu restated that Israel has rejected U.S. President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace’s plan for Gaza and will not withdraw until Hamas is fully disarmed.
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A dispute over immigration escalated after the government in Madrid announced border controls on Italian travelers in retaliation for Rome’s restrictions on visitors from Spain.
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OPINION: The US Back in Ethiopia, a New Hub of Major Power Competition—by Gregory Copley (Read) |
Participants attend the Yauzafest SUP stand-up paddle boarding festival on the Yauza river in Moscow on Aug. 9, 2026. (Ivanko AFP via Getty Images) |
💸 Money: What Happens to Your Pension When the Company Is Bought (Read)
🇺🇸 Thinking About America: Beyond Democrat and Republican: America’s Real Political Parties (Read)
🎨 Arts: Kings, Revolutionaries, and Thieves: Inside the Louvre’s 233-Year Story (Read) |
(Illustration by Ran, The Epoch Times) | Cleve Backster was a lie-detection expert who trained CIA interrogators. He spent his career reading the signals of human deception.
One February night in 1966, out of curiosity, he clipped the electrodes of a polygraph machine to a plant and watered it. To his surprise, the plant responded. The electrical signature was similar to what he had seen countless times before, resembling how a person would feel when they are happy or excited. The plant was apparently happy after being watered. Backster considered burning a leaf to see the plant’s reaction. Even before he struck a match, however, the polygraph needle jolted across the page, tracing a line similar to the human response to fear or stress. Backster wanted to run out into the street yelling, “Plants can think!”
The experiments were recorded in his book, “Primary Perception: Biocommunication with Plants, Living Foods and Human Cells.” Backster called the phenomenon he observed “primary perception”—the idea that awareness extends beyond the nervous system and that some form of awareness is present even at the cellular level. He believed that all plants and animals exhibit the “presence of a yet undefined perception” at microscopic levels.
The prevailing view among scientists contradicted his claim that plants are conscious. Backster faced intense backlash for his work. Experiments failed to yield reproducible results in subsequent testing.
However, the rejection didn’t conclude that plants were inert. Rather, science continued to focus on more modest phenomena, something that it could recognize, verify, and reproduce. (More) |
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—Cathy He, Madalina Hubert, and Kenzi Li. |
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