NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending July 7, 2026

● The New York Sun cuts to the heart of the issue at the heart of the harassment of the family of former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg: 

At first glance, it looks like political theater, the kind of thing that happens to a man with a national profile and enemies who know how to use it. Yet the story is really about a system that runs on unverified tips every day, grinding through false or unproven allegations for families who have no public profile and no press corps to speak up for them. 

● In Slate, Chris Gottlieb, director of the Family Defense Clinic at New York University School of Law writes: 

People of all political persuasions should be outraged that this happened—and plenty were—but they should not be surprised. Weaponizing CPS by making false allegations is all too common. And that’s because CPS enables harassment by throwing common sense—and the law—out the window when someone makes accusations involving a child. Current CPS practices allow specious accusations to hurt not only parents, but the children they are meant to protect. … 

● In The Wall Street Journal’s Free Expression newsletter, Emma Camp reminds us what can happen when “forensic interviews” go wrong, and how Buttigieg is not the only public figure to face this kind of harassment. 

● And in her response to what happened to the Buttigieg family, the head of New York City’s Family Police Agency, Rebecca Jones Gaston, demonstrated her political savvy in a column for the New York Daily News. She came out for the New York law replacing anonymous reporting with confidential reporting at a point when it took no courage – the law was passed before she got the job. Then she used the all-purpose bromide of “training” as the way to curb other needless reports. She made no mention of a more effective solution: seeking the power to screen out reports sent down to her agency by the state’s child abuse hotline. And she touted a version of “differential response” that’s so undifferentiated that some New York families find it more oppressive than a full-scale investigation. 

In other news: 

● Every state seems to have its “Senator Soundbite,” that one demagogic pol (or, in some cases journalist, and occasionally both) who scapegoats family preservation for every child abuse tragedy. In Washington State, the pol, amplified by some local media, has been crusading against a law known as the Keeping Families Together Act. In the Washington State Standard, NCCPR documents how that law has helped save children’s lives – and it’s the campaign against the law that puts children in more danger. 

● Finally! From Source NM, a story about the New Mexico governor’s child-confiscation-at-birth edict that tells the part of the story every other New Mexico news organization has largely left out; the side in which we hear from actual families and actual experts.  

You can also see the governor’s flack go full Orwell when he says: 

In each of the cases where a child was placed in safe care, the determination to temporarily remove them from their parents was made by a judge, based on the state’s risk assessment. The important decision to remove substance exposed newborns from their families is never a unilateral one by the state.” 

That is a lie. The policy requires that children covered by the edict be kept away from their parents – confiscated at birth – until a judge decides. So the decision is precisely “a unilateral one by the state.” 

Source NM is the one news organization in the state that’s consistently tried to cover all sides of child welfare debates. Until they took this story, the only place the freelancer who wrote it has gotten anything like it published was in The Guardian. 

● On the NCCPR Blog: The obligatory child welfare “task force” is formed after a child abuse death in Toledo, Ohio. Recommendations include no scapegoating caseworkers, no slandering family preservation, no push to throw more kids into foster care and not one word about a swinging pendulum. Instead, there’s a bunch of good, smart recommendations that will make children safer.  What’s wrong with these people??? :-) 

●How much is an institutionalized child’s life worth? According to the State of Minnesota: $200. I have a blog post about it. 

● Update: Last week, we noted that when family police in Texas can’t even meet the absurdly low standard for “substantiating” an allegation – a finding that can be appealed – but they still want to keep a stigmatizing record on the family, they label the allegation “unable to determine” – which can’t be appealed. We noted that the Austin American-Statesman reported on a legal challenge to that category. It involves a case in which the family police say they’re “unable to determine” if it’s neglect for a parent to give birth at home with the help of a state-certified midwife. Now, KERA Public Radio reports, the court has ruled in favor of the family.

● The Imprint reports that Bethany Christian Services, a large private foster care and adoption agency, has shown its true colors – and it’s not a rainbow flag. From the story: 

Bethany will not license or re-license parents who do not agree to a “Statement of faith and belief” asserting that marriage is “a covenant between one man and one woman” and that “God creates human beings in His image as male and female, as determined by biological sex.” 

Within a year, all staff and board members must also sign a document stating that they “personally agree and adhere to” the new policy, according to a June 10 press announcement. … 

Danni Leader, an attorney who represents foster youth in Georgia, said they have heard from three teenagers who said they’d been moved from Bethany-licensed homes because their LGBTQ+ caregivers didn’t agree with the new statement of faith. 

“Not one of those children’s placements was going to be disrupted if the statement of faith had not happened,” said Leader, who uses they/them pronouns. 

A former Vice President of the agency says: 

“Children in foster care are already navigating a system most adults wouldn’t survive a year in: caseworkers who rotate, courts that move slowly, homes that may or may not last — the last thing any of them needs is a theology test they did not request and were never asked to agree to,” Williams said. “Bethany made its choice. I’m only asking that youth and families who didn’t choose Bethany get one, too.” 

Oh, and by the way: All the LGBTQ taxpayers who help subsidize Bethany through its contracts with governments will not be getting an exemption from having to help pay for this. 

In this week’s reminder that The Horror Stories Go in All Directions: 

● From Searchlight New Mexico: 

The New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department is facing accusations it refused to take responsibility for a runaway teenage boy despite officials knowing his location, including after he was shot and wounded while he and other unsupervised teenagers played with a firearm. 

The 16-year-old boy, identified in a lawsuit only by the initials N.H., was removed from his mother’s custody, but later ran away from foster care back to her home, putting his custody into a gray area the lawsuit alleges allowed CYFD to list him as a runaway and cut him off from resources his family said they needed. The lawsuit was filed in First Judicial District Court last week. …

From The Imprint:

 Youth are being moved from Provo Canyon School, the residential treatment facility that celebrity Paris Hilton centered in her yearslong campaign to shutter the “troubled teen industry.” 

“No child should be hurt in a program that is meant to protect them, particularly programs that require the authorization of the state to operate,” Shannon Thoman-Black, director of the state licensing division, said at a press conference Tuesday. ...

Well, OK, Ms. Thoman-Black but that does raise an obvious question: Why did you allow it to go on for so long?