Pentagon Waste and Protecting Children from Ideological Harm

On this Monday, September 8, 2025 broadcast, Kim Monson examines two critical threats to American families: unchecked government spending draining taxpayer resources and ideological capture in public schools endangering children. John Hart of Open the Books reveals staggering Pentagon waste, while Colorado parents and a brave detransitioner expose the harms of gender-affirming practices.

Pentagon’s Billion-Dollar Spending Spree

Start listening at 32:22 – Hour 1

John Hart, CEO of Open the Books, exposes the Department of Defense’s wasteful use-it-or-lose-it spending culture that squanders billions every September. Hart’s organization tracks government expenditures at all levels and recently identified 20 areas of fiscal concern within the Pentagon. The DOD, he explains, has never passed an audit and runs everything from schools to grocery stores to golf courses, diverting resources from military readiness.

September 2024 marked one of the worst spending sprees on record. The Pentagon burned through $79 billion in a single month, more than the annual defense budgets of all but seven countries on Earth. In just the final five days, $33 billion went out the door, exceeding Israel’s entire 2023 defense budget. Among the purchases: $6.1 million in lobster tail, $16 million in ribeye steak, and $211 million in new furniture.

Hart calls on Secretary Hegseth to end this practice, noting that transparency is like oxygen for democratic accountability. Open the Books files thousands of FOIA requests annually and maintains the largest database of government spending in history, empowering citizens to hold officials accountable at every level.

“In the public square, transparency is like oxygen, that you can’t speak, you can’t argue if you can’t breathe. And so transparency provides that basic information that we, the people, have to have in order to maintain control of the government.”

John Hart, CEO of Open the Books

FTC Investigation into Gender-Affirming Care

Start listening at 70:39 – Hour 2

Jeany Rush, known to listeners as Gammy, organized this segment to highlight the Federal Trade Commission’s investigation into deceptive practices surrounding gender-affirming treatments. Rush describes the current situation as the worst medical scandal in human history, pointing to irreversible surgeries performed on minors, pharmaceutical interventions that bypass parental consent, and a multi-billion dollar industry driving these practices.

The FTC held over seven hours of testimony examining the harm to children and families. Rush urges parents to submit comments to the FTC and investigate what is happening in their local schools, where counselors often push gender affirmation without parental knowledge.

“We are right now witnessing and enabling the worst medical scandal in human history.”

Jeany Rush, Parental Rights Advocate

A Detransitioner’s Warning

Start listening at 84:44 – Hour 2

Antoinette De La Cruz shares her journey of transitioning at age 21 and detransitioning nearly two decades later after recognizing the underlying mental health issues that were never addressed. De La Cruz lost her healthy breasts, cervix, ovaries, and uterus to surgeries that she now understands were driven by unresolved trauma rather than genuine gender dysphoria. Her voice, permanently altered by testosterone, serves as audible evidence of the irreversible nature of these interventions.

De La Cruz emphasizes that what was once classified as Gender Identity Disorder has been depathologized, eliminating the mental health evaluation that might have helped her heal without medical intervention. She notes that children have no life experience to make such permanent decisions and calls for a return to treating gender dysphoria as the mental health condition it once was recognized to be.

“So I transitioned when I was 21, which is the reason why I use my story to build compassionate conversations around this topic, because I was an adult.”

Antoinette De La Cruz, Detransitioner and Advocate

Schools Hiding Gender Transitions from Parents

Start listening at 101:23 – Hour 2

Lori Gimelshteyn, founder of the Colorado Parents Advocacy Network, describes how school districts actively conceal children’s gender transitions from their parents. When a child tells a teacher they believe they were born in the wrong body, schools begin using different pronouns and names without parental notification, allowing access to facilities matching the child’s stated identity rather than biological sex.

Gimelshteyn introduces Cindy Stein, a mother whose child was befriended by a Durango High School teacher during Stein’s cancer treatment. The teacher, who has a transgender spouse, convinced the child that struggles with autism and ADHD were actually signs of being born in the wrong body. When the child ran away, the teacher harbored her for 24 hours without notifying Stein. The child is now 18, and Stein has lost all contact.

Gimelshteyn encourages Coloradans to sign the Protect Kids Colorado petition, which would place an initiative on the 2026 ballot prohibiting irreversible sex change surgeries on minors.

“And we’re seeing incredible harm where school districts have been practicing hiding gender transition. So that’s when if your child says to a teacher or a staff member at school that they actually think that they were born in the wrong body, that the school will actually start calling that child by different pronouns and a different name.”

Lori Gimelshteyn, Founder of Colorado Parents Advocacy Network