New York Times columnist Thomas Edsall conceded that conservatives are beginning to take control of American culture in a guest essay titled "The Right Is Winning the Battle for Hearts and Minds" on Tuesday.

"The full-scale assault by the conservative movement on liberal domination of the nation’s culture has begun to deliver key victories," said Edsall, after decades of bitterness from conservatives "over the leftward tilt of academia, the literary world, the press, television and streaming video."

Edsall credited Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter, now called X, in 2022 as one of the major catalysts for conservatives gaining control of culture in recent years. X created a space where conservatives felt free to share their ideas without fearing that they may be banned or censored. Mark Zuckerberg's Meta recently followed suit and has begun rolling back content moderation on their sites, ending fact-checking and loosening restrictions on certain types of speech on Instagram and Facebook.

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Podcasts were also cited by Edsall as one of the mediums that has helped sway culture to the right, with top podcasters such as Joe Rogan endorsing President Donald Trump in the 2024 election.

Trump's appearances on multiple right-leaning podcasts even sidelined traditional liberal media outlets during the campaign. 

CEOs of the largest tech companies in the world have done an about-face on Trump in the wake of the 2024 election. From virulently opposing him in 2016 and 2020, to donating millions of dollars to his inaugural fund in 2024. Edsall credits regulatory pressure from Trump as one of the reasons for this switch.

"Trump’s threats to use the government’s regulatory apparatus to punish dissident corporations have, in turn, brought to heel major technology players that perform an important role in shaping what constitutes contemporary American culture. Google, Meta, Amazon and Apple’s Tim Cook each contributed $1 million to Trump’s inauguration celebration," Edsall said.

Trump noted this switch-up in a Dec. 16 news conference at Mar-a-Lago, stating, "One of the big differences between the first term — the first term, everybody was fighting me. In this term, everybody wants to be my friend."

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This pendulum swing of culture from left to right has also had an effect on cable news networks, according to Edsall.

"The Trump-Republican November sweep had an immediate effect on the partisan balance of power regarding cable news networks, which have long been crucial players in the dissemination of ideas, values and beliefs from the left as well as from the right," said the columnist, also pointing out that "Despite the closeness of the November election, the two more liberal cable channels, MSNBC and CNN, experienced a severe decline in viewership after Nov. 5, while Fox News ratings rose."

Anya Schiffrin, the director of the technology, media and communications program at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, claimed in an email to Edsall that conservatives are also winning on the communications front.

Schiffrin stated that "part of why the Republicans are so successful is the message rather than the medium. Republicans keep their message extremely simple and focus on topics that have salience. Explaining the nuances of crime statistics and telling people not to worry about crime is not persuasive when people go daily to CVS and see all the toothpaste and aspirin are under lock and key or feel threatened on the street or subway."

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According to Edsall, conservatives' efforts to discredit liberal talking points and policy, through social media, podcasts and other mediums, have also had a major effect on the cultural shift currently underway.

The Times columnist credited Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and the author of "America’s Cultural Revolution," with "almost single-handedly" forcing liberals to retreat on a number of issues.

"Rufo can claim credit (or blame) for the corporate and academic retreat on critical race theory; diversity, equity and inclusion (better known as D.E.I.); and the environmental, social and governance (E.S.G.) movement in corporate investing," claimed Edsall.

This pushback on progressive ideas also made its way into sports and music, as pointed out by Wall Street Journal reporters Aaron Zitner and Meridith McGraw in their Jan. 19 article, "How MAGA Is Taking Back the Culture."

"Instead of taking a knee to call for social justice, N.F.L. players are doing the ‘Trump dance’ in the end zone at football games. Mainstream entertainers, among them the country singer Carrie Underwood and the rapper Snoop Dogg, agreed to perform at events celebrating Donald Trump’s inauguration, something music stars largely shunned eight years ago," the WSJ reporters said.

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Edsall also placed blame on the elite universities across America for pushing culture to the right.

"Among the most damaging developments for the left include the failure of elite universities, bastions of liberalism, to deal with antisemitic protests during Israel’s attacks on Gaza; the current exodus of reporters, editors and subscribers at The Washington Post, a mainstay of liberal journalism; the discrediting of academia’s commitment to free speech as a result of the disclosure of their cancellation of controversial speakers; the relative absence of conservative professors in most fields; and the requirement that faculty members file annual mandatory diversity statements."

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Edsall left his readers with an ominous warning for the future.

"Trump’s corporate allies are now lodged throughout the American business community. History has shown that turning points like the one we face can be very dangerous. Once leaders with autocratic aspirations, like Trump, as well as his enabler and sidekick Musk, have risen to power, an inflamed, ascendant right follows them, wherever they go."

Therapists say survivors of the California wildfires can help their children heal from the trauma of leaving everything they know behind by continuing on with their daily routines, providing an empathetic ear and reinforcing their safety. 

While fire crews continue to combat the wildfires consuming Los Angeles County, officials as of Saturday said at least 30 people remain missing while two additional deaths brought the toll to 27.

"Many children are facing the devastation of the fires in California. As parents and caregivers, it's crucial to support children during this crisis, giving them space to share what they saw, heard, and felt," Dr. Cindy Davis, clinical director of Positive Development in Pasadena, Calif., told Fox News Digital. "Encourage them to share their experiences and be open to any form of communication. Some may repeat the same story, while others may prefer not to talk much. Let them choose when and how to share. Consider your child's experience with the disaster — did they evacuate, see homes burning, or witness fear? Use these clues to guide your conversations. For younger children specifically, pay attention to the themes in their play, as it often reflects their concerns and helps them process their feelings." 

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Dr. Gail Saltz, associate professor of psychiatry at the New York Presbyterian Hospital Weill Cornell School of Medicine, explained that the fires have caused "tremendous and ongoing loss" for both adults and children. 

"The most important thing for children now is to make them feel that they and you, their parents, are safe," she advised. "Parents should often explain, ’We are safe because’ or ‘here is our safety plan’ or ‘we need to start our safety plan and once we get there, I can answer all your questions.’ Expect and answer repeated concerns from children about safety of themselves and their loved ones. Try to do nice things together demonstrating that it feels safe for all of you, like playing a game. Remind them no matter what you have lost, the most important thing is that you are together and safe. Home is, and will be, where you are." 

One way to help children feel safe amid the chaos of relocating is letting them express their preferences about what they can control, such as a new room, school or activity, therapist Samantha Silverman, LCSW, told Fox News Digital. 

"Plan activities together to explore the new city and make it feel like home," Silverman suggested. "Maintain consistent daily routines to provide a sense of stability and security. Incorporate comforting traditions or activities that remind them of home, such as family meals or bedtime rituals. Help your child acclimate by exploring the new city together, visiting local parks, schools or libraries. Encourage participation in community or extracurricular activities to help them make new friends and build a sense of belonging."

La Jolla, Calif., child psychiatrist Josh Feder, M.D., who explained children "need extra support" during this time, advised parents to make sure their children are in a safe place with clean air and cautioned against watching news of the fires around children.

"Use alerts on your phone to get important updates," he said. "It's important to tell the truth but not make it too scary. For example, ‘Our house burned down but we are safe now.' Our job is to protect kids and make them feel as safe as we can!" 

Saltz explained that while the wildfires make for a stressful situation for both adults and children, they can make it through the hardship.  

"Human capacity for resilience is such that the majority of these people will eventually make their way through these losses to recoup their lives, but the more coping tools and support they can receive, the more likely that is and the less painful it will be," she said. 

Fox News Digital's Stephen Sorace contributed to this report. 

"The Emperor has no clothes." These are the words that went through my mind the first time my client, Mozzy Clark, recounted the abuse she endured at the hands of a man she was forced to share a cell with at the Washington Corrections Center for Women. Washington, like some other blue states across the country, created policies to allow male convicts who claim they are transgender to be housed in women’s prisons—in some cases based on nothing more than the individual’s self-declared gender identity. 

Under these policies, a man can be convicted of the most heinous, violent crimes imaginable—rape, torture, murder—and will still be allowed to serve his time in a women’s prison. Without surgery. Without cross-gender hormones. Without so much as a psychological evaluation. 

Merely reciting the magic words, "I identify as a woman," is enough to give these men access to hundreds of confined and vulnerable women who have no choice or say in the matter. And the most inexplicable part is that all the supposed gatekeepers in our society—legislators, judges, corrections officers, and civil rights organizations, like the ACLU—not only go along with it but are actively complicit in crafting and forcing these policies on the general public and the women who are most impacted by it. 

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In our recently filed lawsuit, alleging the violation of Mozzy’s civil rights by the State of Washington and prison employees, we detail how Mozzy was locked in a cage with a 6-foot-4, fully intact man who had previously been convicted of domestic abuse and child molestation. 

The lawsuit alleges that while they were forced to share a cell, the man, Christopher Williams, would fondle himself in front of Mozzy, leer at her in the shower and bathrooms, and eventually sexually assaulted her. During this time, prison officials ignored, dismissed, and laughed off her desperate pleas for help. 

Since her release, Mozzy has made it her mission to ensure that no woman suffers the same fate. That no woman’s safety is so egregiously compromised by the system charged with protecting her. 

In Mozzy’s own words: "Being alone behind bars, without my family or any support system, was punishment enough. But the trauma of being forced into a cell and sexually assaulted by a man with a long history of child molestation and extreme violence is a pain I wouldn't wish on anyone. And what’s worse is that the people in the prison whose job it was to keep us safe, it feels like they just offered us up to this man as a sacrifice to protect themselves."

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Which brings us back to the story of "The Emperor’s New Clothes." The timelessness of Andersen’s fairytale can be ascribed not only to the power of the metaphor but to the visceral reaction the image invokes in the reader: Disgust, incredulity, revelation. A grown man, parading completely naked in front of throngs of onlookers—both aware of the obscenity they are observing and simultaneously ignoring it, either due to fear of social ostracism or because they have become true believers in the mass illusion. This is why Andersen’s story, more than any other tale about collective delusions that arise out of social pressure, is the one that we still tell to this day. 

And it is this tale that has the most to teach us about the radical gender ideology that has spread like wildfire across our nation. Currently, there are dozens of violent male convicts being housed in women’s prisons, most of them in California and Washington. However, the number is set to radically increase as a result of new laws being passed by blue state legislators and precedent created by left-wing judges that requires prison assignment based on "gender identity." 

This new reality, something that would have been considered outrageous and absurd just a short time ago, is being celebrated by true believers in the transgender delusion and conveniently swept under the rug by progressives too timid to speak out against their religion’s orthodoxy. Notably, many of the men who requested to be transferred to women’s prisons have already committed violence against female inmates. 

Right now, Mozzy, on behalf of millions of vulnerable women across the country—who are trying to preserve female spaces in schools, in sports, and even in prisons—is telling us that the emperor has no clothes. If we continue to ignore her, it is at our civilization’s peril. 

The Washington Post is planning on eliminating its "gender columnist" position after the writer penned a piece that was ultimately scrapped by the paper's editors, Fox News Digital has learned. 

Monica Hesse, who made headlines in 2018 by becoming The Post's first-ever "gender columnist," will not hold that title much longer after writing a column about gender was "killed" by her editors, two sources tell Fox News Digital. It is unclear what Hesse had written in the column and what the editors objected to.

Hesse, currently a columnist for the paper's Style section, is expected to be reassigned either to its Opinions section or remain in Style as a reporter, the sources added. 

"It's sad and so unnecessary," one source told Fox News Digital. 

Neither Hesse nor The Washington Post responded to Fox News Digital's request for comment. 

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Hesse first joined The Post in 2007 as an intern for the Style team before becoming a Features general-assignment reporter until breaking ground as the paper's "gender columnist." In 2023, she was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for her columns "convey[ing] the anger and dread that many Americans felt about losing their right to abortion after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade." 

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Her gender-based commentary has also raised eyebrows among conservative critics over the years. In 2022, Hesse accused Florida's parental rights legislation removing progressive gender ideology from the classroom of being "homophobic and transphobic bills cloaked in neutral language." 

In another piece, she defended drag queens reading books to children, insisting "Drag queens are not the ones sexualizing drag story hour."

In 2023, Hesse accused critics of First Lady Jill Biden and Gisele Fetterman of "sexism" for allowing their spouses to seek office despite their mental impairments. 

"Attacking someone who is ill or elderly simply because they are ill or elderly is beyond the pale in our culture (for now, at least), even for those pundits whose flexible morals usually find a way to drain-snake around any barricades of decency," Hesse wrote at the time. "But by placing blame on the wives, these commentators get to spread harmful messages against the president and senator while having plausible deniability against charges of ableism. The commentators are not — heavens, no — throwing mud at these poor men. They are merely scolding the women who should know better. It’s ableism, with a little sexism, as a treat."

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During the 2024 election cycle, Hesse defended Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz for putting tampons in boys restrooms in schools as Minnesota governor.

"Any boy who casually was like ‘Oh you got ur period? I stashed a pad from the bathroom in my backpack in case one of my friends needed it’ -- that boy would be king stud. That boy would be drowning in prom invites," she wrote on X.

The move by The Post to eliminate its "gender columnist" position could be seen as an ideological pivot to the center as the liberal paper adjusts to the return of President-elect Donald Trump. 

Jeff Bezos, the billionaire owner of The Post who quashed his paper's endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris just days before the election, alluded to making reforms in an op-ed defending the endorsement decision. 

"Most people believe the media is biased. Anyone who doesn’t see this is paying scant attention to reality, and those who fight reality lose," Bezos wrote in October. "Reality is an undefeated champion. It would be easy to blame others for our long and continuing fall in credibility (and, therefore, decline in impact), but a victim mentality will not help. Complaining is not a strategy. We must work harder to control what we can control to increase our credibility."

A Los Angeles church is struggling to balance politics, causing some of the congregation to leave over differences.

Rev. Jonathan Hall has been trying to figure out "what’s ‘too political’ for a place of worship — or whether ‘being political’ is the whole point of the Gospel," according to a report by The Washington Post.

Hall’s First Christian Church of North Hollywood, a "politically-blended congregation," struggled with political differences before and after the presidential election, when President-elect Donald Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris in a landslide victory.

Hall, a native of Alabama, led the church north of Los Angeles for two years. He aims to unite the church, but it’s been a challenge.

"Persuading the Republicans, Democrats and independents in his pews to stay and pray with one another is getting more complicated," the Post reported.

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The Post reported further, "When he preaches what the Bible says about the mandate to care for migrants, Hall focuses on the story of Mary and Joseph rather than modern-day wanderers. He selected a book of scripture readings that sets out specific text for every Sunday, so no one could question whether his picks were making a political statement."

"And when somebody tells him they think a sermon was aimed at a specific politician, he says, ‘That’s one way to look at it!’"

Los Angeles has typically been a liberal city for several decades. The city has not voted for a Republican mayor since 1993.

Data from the presidential election in November shows that Los Angeles residents voted for Trump more than what many polls had projected. 

Trump won more votes in L.A. than he did in 2020, receiving approximately 40% of votes compared to 34%. Furthermore, Trump improved his vote share across the country, starting with conservative areas but extending into deeply Democratic states.

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Several congregants left the church due to their political differences. One of the members cited a film Hall planned to screen about Christian nationalism being "too one-sided" and "anti-Republican."

Others left after they discovered their peers were attending Trump’s inauguration. 

"Someone else walked out of services early on the Sunday after the election, feeling that a leader on the stage was too focused on consoling people who voted for Vice President Kamala Harris," the Post added.

"If you’re at a football game, one side wins, and everyone leaves. With a church [and the election], it’s like everyone is still there," Hall said. 

He went on to say, "The popcorn is still on the ground, the Coke cups, the mess. Fifty percent of people are upset, and we have to pick up the pieces."

First Christian is part of the Disciples of Christ denomination and serves over 1,000 members. The denomination’s origin was founded to "unify Christian groups who had broken over theology and worship styles."

"If I’m a good pastor, I’m both comforting you and confronting you. But I also need to be a prophet, right? You’re supposed to come to church to look for questions that will change your life."

"Before Hall, the same pastor had led First Christian for 52 years. Congregants say the late Rev. Robert M. Bock didn’t speak about contemporary political issues in church — even during the Vietnam War, which marked the start of his tenure. Hall is trying to forge a new way," the Post reported.

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