What do a state rep turned interim U.S. Attorney, a fired teacher turned Instagram crusader, a fringe San Diego anti-inclusion activist with a body cam, and one of the most powerful right-wing think tanks in the world have in common? They all chose a high school track meet as their battleground, and a transgender teen as their target.
This isn’t satire. It’s a coordinated, politically motivated harassment campaign cooked up in a luxury hotel ballroom by far-right operatives and brought to life by people willing to stalk a minor, film her without consent, and scream slurs from the sidelines, all in the name of “protecting girls’ sports.” What follows is the story of AB Hernandez, an elite athlete, a student, a daughter, and the latest scapegoat in a long-running campaign of fear, hate, and political ambition.
It starts in Dana Point. It ends at a podium. And every step in between is a case study in how far these people are willing to go.
Where It Started: A Closed-Door Strategy Session
In February 2022, a group of very serious, very powerful people met behind closed doors in Dana Point, California. The Council for National Policy (CNP), a shadowy think tank where Christian nationalists, GOP operatives, and billionaire donors go to brainstorm new ways to hijack democracy. A speaker is at the podium outlining a new campaign called “Protect Every Child”. The idea was to weaponize fear of transgender kids to win elections, and the outcome was that the resulting school board fights translated to an increase of Republicans at the polls.
No, really. Their plan was to identify school boards that would publicly reject basic protections for trans students, stir up “parental outrage,” and flood the media with a fake grassroots wave of resistance. There was a literal power point on it. Subtle. It was just after this meeting in Dana Point you start seeing transgender focused grievance campaigns at school board meetings all over the nation from recycled anti-vaxx school board activists who had a shiny new toy handed to them by their higher ups.
Chino Valley Becomes the Test Case
Fast forward to March 2023, and enter Bill Essayli, a California Assemblymember with a dream, and that dream involved forcibly outing trans kids at school. He introduced AB 1314, a bill so harmful that fellow legislators warned him it would literally get kids killed. Not that he cared. The bill eventually died in committee, but the real point was to plant a flag in the culture war soil. The bill gained support from conservative groups and was picked up as a potential perfectly packaged and ready to go policy for school boards to adopt individually. And they had the perfect school district to target– Chino Valley Unified.
In April 2023, the Chino Valley Unified School District, led by Christian nationalist Calvary Chapel Chino Hills picked right-wing darling Sonja Shaw, passed a resolution backing Essayli’s forced outing bill. It was truly a remarkable event with local Proud Boys and the loud, aggressive, and sometimes violent “Leave Our Kids Alone” (LOKA) crew showing up in support, because nothing says “family values” like neo-fascists and ex-gang members crashing your local school board meetings.
By July, Chino Valley Unified passed a local version of Essayli’s bill at a contentious board meeting, mandating teachers to “out” trans kids to their parents, leading to legal challenges and a court ruling that the policy violated students’ rights. The Proud Boys came back. So did neo-Nazis, LEXIT brutes, and Jan 6 cosplayers. The Parental Rights (Forced Outing) policy was furiously contested by locals, and when State Superintendent Tony Thurmond himself showed up to voice concern, Shaw kicked him out. Because of course she did.
Over the next year, this toxic little fire caught wind and spread fast. Essayli and Shaw hit the road with their forced outing policy like two grifters on a Christian nationalist sales tour hawking trauma district by district. Orange County, San Juan Capistrano, Temecula, you name it. If a school board was even slightly right-curious, they showed up with their pitchforks and policies.
But by July 2024, the state pushed back. Enter AB-1955: a countermeasure written to protect LGBTQIA+ students and shut the door on these outing policies once and for all. It passed, Newsom signed it fast, and for once, in a sea of far-right school board chaos, there was a win, for queer kids and for basic human decency.
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Rebranding Hate: “Protect Girls Sports” Emerges
However, by spring of 2024, Sonja Shaw was already expanding her side hustle: “Protect Girls Sports,” an Instagram rebrand of the same anti-trans agenda, now with sporty aesthetics. (get facts about transgender and non-binary sports participation here) Right-wing influencer and former teacher Jessica Tapia, fired from the Jurupa Valley school district for violating LGBTQ+ students’ rights, joined the movement too. Tapia had been fine tuning her martyrdom since the day she was fired, picking up anti-inclusion causes left and right. It was no surprise she jumped on the chance to side-hustle with Shaw when a chance to throw trans athletes came about. After AB-1955, the “Protect Girls Sports” crew doubled down. Tapia started naming trans athletes, posting about a San Jose State volleyball player, a Half Moon Bay teen, and eventually, in October 2024, she zeroed in on AB Hernandez, a transgender high school student athlete and rising track star.
That’s when it got especially cruel. Tapia doxxed Hernandez by name, school, and volleyball stats, and asked her followers to dig up dirt. She then began stalking Hernandez’s volleyball schedule, posting calls for opposing teams’ parents to spy on and report back about Hernandez, yes, a literal child.
Tapia was even caught lurking at one of Hernandez’s track meets, apparently gathering intel. When confronted, she scrambled to spin a cover story, claiming she was simply “catching up with a friend.” A weak attempt to mask her real agenda.
The following Instagram posts document just a glimpse of Tapia’s call to find parents to join their cause.
Doxxing, Surveillance, and Stalking a Child
Meanwhile, the coalition jumped to Riverside, where another trans athlete became their next target. In November 2024, the Protect Girls Sports lawyers at Advocates for Faith and Freedom filed a wildly dishonest lawsuit claiming a cis girl missed a varsity opportuity “because of a trans athlete.” Spoiler: she missed one meet. Still, the right-wing media machine ate it up.
Fox News got involved. Proud Boys and far-right agitators flooded Riverside Unified School Board meetings, spewing lies and demanding bans on trans athletes. Sophia Lorey, outreach coordinator of California Family Council led the mob. The California Family Council has been formally deemed an anti-LGBTQ hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Sylvie Araujo and Jose Carillo showed up, doing what they do best, intimidating teenagers (more on them later).
By December, they’d doxxed another trans student. Riley Gaines, Bill Essayli, and GOP insider Elizabeth Barcohana gleefully shared the girl’s name, school, jersey number, and Instagram photos. Because apparently a minors right to privacy and human decency doesn’t apply if you’re transgender.
The January Re-Focus: AB Hernandez Becomes the Central Target
On December 19, 2024, they tried to get Riverside Unified to pass a resolution banning trans athletes altogether. Among the attendees was a disturbing lineup of far-right agitators and extremists. Representing “Leave Our Kids Alone” were Narek Palyan, a known neo-Nazi; Manuk Grigoryan, who has referred to himself as an active or retired gang member; and Jose Carillo, who once described his role in a murder inside a movie theater. Also present were Patricia Cabada, a far-right activist previously arrested alongside Proud Boy Adam Kiefer and J6 convict Alan Hostetter (who was legally represented by Bill Essayli); Hector Gallardo, a Proud Boy; and his wife, Dez Gallardo, who allegedly assaulted journalist Lois Beckett in 2021. Rounding out the group was Sylvia Araujo. Araujo is known for Assaulting photojournalists and instigating physical confrontations in parking lots. she is also with LEXIT, and a Proud Boy associate tied to the extremist anti-choice group “Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust,” which gained notoriety for stealing fetal remains.
Their resolution failed, But the harassment continued. In January 2025, they re-focused their energy back on AB Hernandez.
Jessica Tapia resurfaced an old student newspaper interview with AB and posted it online, outing her again, face, name, everything. The online hate campaign exploded. The Traveling Circus jumped in: Shaw, Tapia, Jose Carillo, Patty Cabada, and others showed up at Jurupa Valley Unified demanding policies to ban trans athletes. Never mind that only Tapia had any connection to the district (and even that was severed when she got fired).
Hernandez’s mother sent cease and desist letters to Tapia and Shaw. Shaw, ever the professional, ripped hers up on stage at a Chino Valley board meeting. Classy.
Then Charlie Kirk and Gavin Newsom (yes, really) discussed AB by name on Newsom’s podcast. The harassment went national.
Physical encounters and harassment begin
In a stunning escalation, more of the circus started stalking Hernandez in real life showing up at her track meets. Jessica Tapia, who has no children in the district, was spotted filming AB. Patty Cabada and a woman who looked suspiciously like Sonja Shaw were also seen with cameras in hand.
At the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) preliminaries on May 10th at Placentia Yorba Linda, the crew, including Shaw, Tapia, Carillo, and others, screamed slurs at AB and her mom for hours. They had no children competing, but were allowed to stay. Viral videos circulated of them yelling, “That’s a boy!” directly towards Hernandez and the spectators. A local sheriff, tasked with keeping the peace and protecting “all” families, was spotted buying anti-trans merchandise from a vendor at the event.Meanwhile, Sophia Lorey, Sonja Shaw, and Jessica Tapia, joined by PYLUSD trustee Leandra Blades, staged a press conference just outside the track. Lorey has a documented history of bomb threats coinciding with her appearances at events where she speaks out against transgender athletes, making her presence not just inflammatory, but a serious safety risk to any gathering she attends. It was a made-for-media spectacle, clearly orchestrated as a photo op for right-wing outlets, and yet another opportunity to escalate the harassment campaign against AB Hernandez.
Sonja Shaw’s social media posts about Hernandez began attracting death threats and threats of violence against her mother and her. Shaw, legally unable to delete comments as an elected official, still could’ve turned off commenting. She didn’t. The backlash sparked by Shaw’s posts was immediate, and chilling. The Instagram comments are flooded with reactionary, hostile, and outright threatening responses. We’ve compiled a gallery of 13 instagram comments at the bottom of this page that documents just a fraction of what we were able to capture because there are far too many to add here.
May 17-24th, New faces And Encounters at Moorpark High School
By May 17, Hernandez bravely continued to compete in CIF Track meets and the stalkers got more sophisticated. Mary Davis, a San Diego agitator known for working with MAGA-aligned private investigator Amy Reichert, filmed AB at the CIF finals in Moorpark, Ca with a body cam firmly attached to her chest, she was later removed by security after demonstrating with a large poster board inside the track meet. Despite being asked not to, she filmed her again at the May 24 Masters Meet. Her footage was used by Brett A. Craig and Jennifer Sey to sell anti-trans athletic apparel online, and was also seen on Sophia Lorey’s Instagram account.
Let that sink in: A minor was doxxed, harassed, stalked, and filmed against her will so a group of adults could sell merch and fire up a hate campaign against transgender athletes.
This wasn’t random. It was a step-by-step execution of a political strategy dreamed up in a luxury hotel conference room in Dana Point by the Council for National Policy. They chose a kid. They built a campaign around her. They used her name to drive engagement, make money, and rile up their base. And it wasn’t over yet.
May 30–31: The Clovis Championship Harassment
At the CIF Championship track meet in Clovis on May 30–31, AB Hernandez showed up ready to compete, and as usual, agitators followed.
The track meet was overshadowed by a chilling warning from President Trump, who threatened to deploy local authorities to prevent Hernandez from competing. For a high school athlete, it was a terrifying and surreal threat to face, one that no student should ever have to endure.
The two-day track meet drew a familiar crowd of far-right harassers, plus a few new faces from neighboring counties.
Profiles in Harassment: Mary Davis and Beth Bourne
San Diego’s Mary Davis, a resident of Alpine, made the long drive, yet again, to Clovis (seriously, who’s covering her gas and hotel?). A quick dive into her background shows she’s been a regular right-wing agitator for years, frequently popping up at school board meetings across San Diego County; Grossmont, and even East Bay. Her home is blurred on Google Maps, and she obviously coordinates with far-right operatives, handing over body cam footage to “higher-ups.” She once authored a “Beginner’s Guide to Activism” and was briefly involved with RMNNT, a conservative Christian nationalist PAC in San Diego.
And in case that’s not enough red flags: the woman who stalked and filmed a transgender minor at multiple track meets, despite the mother’s explicit pleas to stop, is currently serving on San Diego County’s Commission on the Status of Women and Girls. Yes, you read that right. Creepy.
She was joined by Beth Bourne, a Moms for Liberty-aligned TERF troll known for harassing drag queens in Hawaii (until police removed her), and for doxxing trans-affirming teachers in Davis, CA, earning herself a restraining order. Bourne frequently posts photos of students and educators without consent, accompanied by threats and defamatory captions. She was even seen dragging her dog across scorching pavement just to scream at people painting a rainbow crosswalk. Her behavior has been so appalling, her own community launched a petition to get her fired from her job at UC Davis. Beth openly admitted that her activism has estranged her from her own non-binary daughter, something she discussed without remorse, even as she supplied FOX News with footage from the day’s events. The irony of working with the “family values” ultra conservative Christian nationalists while sacrificing her own family relationships seems completely lost on her.
Video Courtesy of @skyspider_
Several more intimidating figures gathered outside the stadium after being barred from protesting inside. Among them was Josh Fulfer, aka “Oreo Express”, a Clovis-based agitator and Proud Boys associate who filmed content for his YouTube page while joining the protest. Fulfer, who attended the January 6th insurrection in Washington, D.C., has a well-documented history of violent confrontations across the Central Valley and beyond. He’s a regular fixture at far-right protests and school board meetings throughout Southern California. On March 10th, he was even spotted in Sacramento supporting his sister as she brandished a gun at a crowd.
Inside the stadium, Sophia Lorey and Patty Cabada were distributing anti-trans literature and stirring up controversy among parents who had simply come to watch their children compete. This behavior violated CIF regulations, and Lorey was ultimately removed by security for disrupting the integrity of the event. Lorey has a documented history of bomb threats coinciding with her appearances at events where she speaks out against LGBTQ+ causes. Lorey then procedes to post a video playing victim, instead of admitting she broke the rules, got caught and faced the penalties. Sophia Lorey perfectly embodies the playbook of Christian nationalist groups like the SPLC-designated hate group she works for, the California Family Council: attack marginalized people then cry victim when held accountable.
Outside the designated safe zone created to protect the athletes, a small group of protesters grew increasingly vile, shouting into bullhorns and creating loud noises that were distracting all the athletes mid-competition. At one point, Ian McGuinness, an outspoken dad of one of AB’s competitors, decked out in anti-trans athlete gear and known for running his mouth, actually walked over and asked the protesters to quiet down. Even he thought they were being too loud. Instead of listening, the protesters turned on him and shouted back.
It was a display of pure depravity, anger and hate on full volume, directed at kids trying to compete in peace.
Video Courtesy of @skyspider_
A Podium Finish Despite the Hate
And AB Hernandez? She just wanted a chance to compete, and she wanted to do it while following the rules. She finished the championships, placed first in two categories and shared a podium per the new rules CIF decided to implement after President Trump’s Scowling threats against California and herself. But a coordinated network of far-right hate groups and individuals chose to turn her life into a battleground. They brought their culture war to her doorstep, her high school, her championship track meet, targeting her family, exposing her identity for extremists, harassing and doxxing her, and putting her safety at risk to advance their political agenda. Regardless of where you stand on trans athlete participation, any decent person should see this for what it is: cruel, dangerous, and deeply wrong. If this is how conservative adults handle their grievances, then something is profoundly broken within their movement.
You’ve made it this far—now let’s take it one step further. Bill Essayli, who has already proven himself a threat to LGBTQIA+ youth, immigrant communities, our environment, and the fair administration of justice, has been appointed interim U.S. Attorney. But his confirmation isn’t official yet.
He’s already weaponizing the role for political gain. We still have a chance to stop it.
Visit Stop Bill Essayli and sign the petition to block his confirmation. Let’s keep our communities safe.
Gallery From Hell: Threats and slurs from Sonja Shaws Instagram Page.
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