Family · Nationwide · October 6, 2026
Federal bill would cut funds to states that force gender-transition affirmation via CPS
What Alinsky tactic is being used
3 of the thirteen rules are in play here — campaigns rarely run just one.
Rule 13
“Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”
The mechanism in Yaeli Martinez's case was isolation of one named family: her mother was placed on the state child-abuse registry while her other children remained at home, visits were cut to roughly one supervised hour a week, and she was reportedly advised by activists to hold a funeral for her daughter. Each dependency case is handled one parent at a time, in a sealed juvenile proceeding where the targeted parent cannot be seen by anyone else — the single parent is frozen, named as an abuser, and separated from any constituency that might speak for her.
Counter-Rule 13 · Radical Solidarity
Stand publicly with whoever has been singled out. Isolation is the whole mechanism; refusing it disarms the tactic.
If a family in your congregation or county is in a dependency case over this, refuse the isolation concretely: go with them to the courthouse, help them keep a dated log of every caseworker contact, and offer to hold copies of their paperwork. Ask your pastor whether the church has a named person who accompanies families to hearings, and volunteer to be that person. Do not let the first time anyone hears the family's name be when the agency says it.
Rule 3
“Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy.”
The fight is deliberately staged on ground ordinary parents have never walked: juvenile dependency court, CPS policy manuals, case-plan conditions, and clinical vocabulary. The Heritage Foundation's claim at the center of this story is that federally funded training shaped how caseworkers, doctors and judges read parental refusal — meaning the parent arrives arguing from conviction while the other side argues from a curriculum the parent has never seen. Sen. Schmitt's own framing is that parents stand before social workers and judges trained to view them as abusive.
Counter-Rule 3 · Preparation and Width
Prepare the unfamiliar ground before you are dragged onto it. "I don't know, I'll find out and come back" beats an improvised answer.
Do the reading before you ever need it, which is exactly what action items 1 and 2 are for: get your state's CPS policy manual section on the definitions of abuse and neglect, and file the records request for the training curricula. Write down the section number and effective date. When asked something you do not know at a hearing or a meeting, say you will find out and come back rather than improvising — an accurate citation a week later outweighs a confident guess tonight.
Rule 10
“The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.”
The pressure in these cases is applied by the calendar. Reporting on the bill describes proceedings dragged out for years even after parents are cleared, and one stated purpose of the bill's private right of action is to let a family reach a federal court before the case is pushed past the child's eighteenth birthday. Attrition, not any single ruling, is what ends the family — the agency keeps its staff and budget while the parents spend savings, leave work, and wear out.
Counter-Rule 10 · The Long Game
Plan in decades against a campaign built on attrition. Succession and endurance beat any single victory.
Plan on the same timescale the system does. If you are supporting a family, set up something that survives a year: a rota of two or three people for hearing dates, a shared folder of every document with dates, and a small fund so legal fees are not borne alone. Ask your federal office in writing for the bill's committee referral date and any scheduled markup, and diary a follow-up for ninety days out whether or not you hear back.
Chapter 3 sets out the rules; Chapter 15 answers each of them in turn. This is that pairing applied to this story.
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