In a viral video, a Maine school board member confronted the board after he learned students could be suspended for referring to their classmates by their biological sex rather than their chosen gender identity.

Josh Tabor, who was elected as a write-in candidate for the North Berwick section of the Maine School Administrative District following his two-week campaign, had the following exchange with members of the school board:

Tabor: Just for clarification, is this the policy that’s used: if a student misuses a pronoun, they are suspended?

School board member: An intentional, yeah, that’s part of the definition of bullying.

Tabor: So if I raise my daughters to, if the person is a female, appears to be a female, to use she pronouns, and that student says, “no, I want to be something else” will my child be suspended for that?

School board member: Oh, yeah. That would be harassment.

Tabor: When I heard that students are being suspended because they are using the wrong pronoun, I was aghast. I didn’t realize that. … One is biological facts, it’s actually XX chromosome, XY chromosomes. Those are facts. We can’t change those. It doesn’t matter what our opinion is. We can’t change those things.  Those are immutable facts. And I’m wondering…my question is, are we suspending students for immutable facts? That’s what I’m asking.

School board member: Not for making a genuine mistake. If someone is doing sort of what you’re sort of doing here, and sort of trying to attack somebody because you don’t agree with it, that’s very different and I think that’s what they’re talking about is, I’m going to keep saying it, because I know it bothers you, then yes, this policy should apply.

Tabor: I think that you are out of line by assuming that I am attacking anybody.

School board member: Then I don’t know what you mean.

Tabor: I’m asking a general question.

School board member: I think it’s been answered. I think if you accidentally do it, and somebody corrects you, fine, it’s not an issue.

Another board member:  I mean, think about the other kids. So what is your goal here? That they’re allowed to be dead-named?

Tabor: I do not believe it is harmful to speak the truth.

School board member: You don’t think it’s harmful to be called something you don’t identify with?

Tabor:  I don’t think it’s harmful to speak the truth.

Students are being suspended in Maine schools for not using preferred pronouns

Berwick and Lebanon Maine Schools confirm the suspension policy

“Just for clarification, is this the policy that's used if a student misuses a pronoun, they are suspended?”

“An intentional, yeah”… pic.twitter.com/m5ThmvsnWl

— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) January 1, 2026

This is concerning. @CivilRights has been investigating similar policies in other jurisdictions as well. https://t.co/Wp6pkqzn9q

— AAGHarmeetDhillon (@AAGDhillon) January 1, 2026

Tabor explained in another forum what prompted him to run for the board:

I had a conversation with my dad. He said, “Are you going back into education?’ I said, “Hell, no. That place is a viper pit. All they do is ruin everything they touch.” I firmly believe that, and I’m in it still.

This is what my father said to me; wise words from a very wise man. He said, “Josh, you’re a firecracker; you’ve been a firecracker your whole life. I want you to think about the effect a firecracker has on the outside of a box: It makes a loud bang and a little small mark; you can have an effect from the outside. But I want you to think about the what a firecracker does if it’s on the inside of the box.”

“And I went, ‘Damn, Dad.’ Because he was right.

Editor’s note: This week, we’re reprinting some of our best stories from the past year. This piece, originally published in November, details the Biden administration’s apparent unwillingness to protect one European nation from the predations of another.

In the final months of 2022, President Joe Biden was dealing with one foreign policy crisis after another.

The crisis dominating headlines and requiring the administration’s immediate attention that year was Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But there was another conflict brewing, around 200 miles south of Russia’s border.

In December 2022, Azerbaijan set up environmental protests as a false flag to illegally block the Lachin Corridor, the only road connecting Armenia to Nagorno-Karabakh, a region inside of Azerbaijan that had been the home of ethnic Armenians for thousands of years. In the months that followed, the Azerbaijani regime in Baku ramped up its attack on Nagorno-Karabakh, as Armenian soldiers and civilians were killed in intense fighting.

Azerbaijan also cut off electricity and prevented food and aid from reaching the region, forcing around 120,000 ethnic Armenians to flee the place they had called home since the 7th century B.C.

One senior Biden administration official appeared to be the ideal person to address the growing humanitarian crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh and come to the aid of Armenians. Samantha Power, Biden’s Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), spent decades raising awareness for human rights issues, including highlighting the violence that Armenians have faced for decades. Power, a longtime journalist, gained more notoriety after publishing a book titled “A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide,” in which she highlighted the Armenian genocide, among other genocides that she argues the U.S. government failed to stop.

“She was not your average Biden administration official,” Democratic political strategist Eric Hacopian told The Daily Wire. “Because she has this halo over her head about human rights.”

Her human rights activism and writing landed Power a coveted post in the Obama administration when she was tapped to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Power had thrown her support behind Obama’s 2008 campaign, arguing that he had an “unshakable conscientiousness about human rights on the issue of genocide prevention.” Power also highlighted then-candidate Obama’s support for recognizing the Armenian genocide and “his willingness as president to commemorate it and certainly to call a spade a spade and to speak truth about it.” That recognition never came under Obama, something for which Power apologized.

Power then became one of the most influential people within the Biden administration when it came to human rights, especially with Armenia. Then the conflict with Azerbaijan exploded.

Azerbaijan’s attacks in late 2022 and 2023 were not a surprise: President Ilham Aliyev’s regime had long hinted that it would push to take control of the region. Professor Nerses Kopalyan told The Daily Wire that the Biden administration’s “inaction” on preparing for such an attack was “shocking.”

“The fact that the United States’ foreign policy establishment was privy to this information, their general inaction was quite shocking purely from the lens of humanitarianism, considering the fact that Samantha Power and the entire wing in the foreign policy structures in the Biden administration had for such a long time been very vocal and a strong proponent of humanitarian issues,” Kopalyan said.

“When it came time to walk the walk, Samantha Power and that branch of the Biden administration basically disappeared,” Kopalyan added. “So we realized that it was all talk and no action, and the blockade continued until the ethnic cleansing.”

Between November 2022 and September 2023, then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken held three rounds of peace talks with Armenia and Azerbaijan, with the Biden administration claiming that the talks “yielded results.” But whatever was discussed during the meetings was not enough to stop Azerbaijan from proceeding with its plan to uproot over 100,000 Armenians from their home. Top Biden officials also signaled that the administration would not tolerate the ethnic cleansing of Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh, a line that the Aliyev regime crossed without any consequences.

Internally, some officials in the Biden administration urged the White House to draw a red line for Azerbaijan, according to a former government official with knowledge of the situation who spoke to The Daily Wire on the condition of anonymity.

“We were certainly pushing for more fortitude on the part of the White House and the State Department in making it clear to Aliyev that there would be consequences for moving militarily on Nagorno-Karabakh,” the official said. “Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case.”

The source said that in the months prior to Azerbaijan’s offensive, “there was a sense” in the Biden administration that Baku would move militarily on Nagorno-Karabakh, adding that “there was outreach from Washington to Baku at a high level to dissuade that kind of action.”

“But that messaging was not married up with real consequences,” the former official added.

Despite Power’s apparent sympathy for the Armenian position, many Armenians believe that she left them out to dry. In the weeks and months leading up to Azerbaijan’s blockade, Power did not visit Armenia or make any major statements on aiding the Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Hacopian, who is also an Armenian political commentator, told The Daily Wire that Power and USAID were “entirely insincere” in their efforts “early on in the process” before Azerbaijan launched its major offensive.

“They were never working to get aid into that region during the illegal Azerbaijani blockade,” Hacopian said. “They simply wanted to deal with the effects of the ethnic cleansing.”

He added that it was obvious that the Biden administration wanted to take a hands-off approach to the conflict, and that Power was “not willing to take a stand.”

“She, essentially, cynically went along for the ride, not saying a word,” Hacopian said. “And the moment the ethnic cleansing started, she showed up.”

“She’s wildly reviled here because of that,” he added.

Some of that disdain for Power was captured on camera after she arrived in Armenia in September 2023. During a press conference near the Azerbaijan border, Power was heckled in Armenia by someone who shouted, “Sanction Azerbaijan or go back to your country. You don’t care. Stop the lies.”

Power did not respond to a request to be interviewed for this piece.

The former Biden official who spoke to The Daily Wire on the condition of anonymity said that once Azerbaijan had forced the Armenians out of Nagorno-Karabakh, discussions in the administration were “less about how do we punish Azerbaijan right now and more about what do we do to support Armenia in this moment.”

“We could’ve walked and chewed gum at the same time, but we didn’t,” the official said. “But I do think there was an effort to try to show up for Armenia.”