On June 26, Hanna Jones faced a difficult choice: celebrate her daughter’s eighth birthday at home, or attend perhaps the most significant vote in the history of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR).
Ultimately, Jones’s family solved the problem by accompanying her to Washington, D.C., for the DAR’s 135th Continental Congress, where members debated whether to include a definition of the word “woman” to the historic, women-only organization’s bylaws, thereby preventing trans-identified males from joining.
As the anticipated three-hour meeting stretched into 12 hours, Jones texted her family that she would be unable to leave.
“My husband had his hands full with our two kids in a hotel room on her birthday, trying to make it special, while I was stuck in a room of 3,000 women who weren’t able to use the bathroom,” she told IW Features.
Jones is the Regent, or leader, of the Bonny Kate DAR chapter in Knoxville, Tennessee. Her chapter has been helping lead the resistance of DAR members against an aggressive, top-down push to allow biological men to join the women-only organization.
“[Bonny Kate] has seen tremendous growth because we are taking a public stance on this issue,” Jones said. “We’re receiving transferred members, reinstated members, and we’ve gained quite a number of associate members who just want to support our chapter for taking a more public stand against what we see as something that shouldn’t happen in DAR.”
Back in 2023, DAR members discovered that their beloved organization had been quietly allowing men with altered birth certificates to become “Daughters” for decades. Even worse, leadership had codified their inclusion into the national bylaws under the pretext of “non-discrimination.” Now, concerned members like Jones are joining forces to advocate for a return to biological reality.
“In 2025, our chapter endorsed an amendment to interpret the word ‘woman’ in our bylaws,” Jones said. “We knew that it could come up as a topic at the Continental Congress, so there was some messaging encouraging members to become delegates for their chapter to attend.”
Daughters Advocating Restoration, a group of DAR members committed to upholding DAR’s women-only legacy, reported that very few Daughters were aware of the vote to define “woman” beforehand. DAR leadership’s handling of this groundbreaking vote was criticized after the fact, with treatment of delegates and obscure voting practices coming under scrutiny. Jones was in the room and witnessed the controversial process.
“Delegate members like me were restricted to two minutes on each particular topic,” she said. “Leadership, however, was permitted to answer questions that were raised during debate with no time limit, and allowed to return to the microphone more than one time.”
Chapter delegates were also not allowed to return and vote if they left the room – even to use the bathroom or access needed medications.
“Women were making very difficult decisions between their physiological requirements and their ethics and strong feelings about this issue,” she said.
However, the same standard did not apply to everyone.
“I saw ladies who had sashes on, which meant they were in leadership positions, who were being allowed to come back under the ropes after they had used the bathroom,” she continued.
The bylaw amendment to define “woman” was not adopted at the Continental Congress, but hope remains. On July 15, Rep. Ben Cline (R-VA) introduced federal legislation to amend DAR’s congressional charter to include a definition of “woman” as “an adult human female.”
“[DAR] has embraced radical gender ideology at the expense of the women it was created to serve,” Cline told Fox News Digital, which reported on the legislation.
Jones is in full agreement with Rep. Cline.
“It is my belief that leadership has departed from our bylaws, and our goal is to return to our bylaws and our founding intent and purpose. We’re so hopeful that will happen,” she said. “There’s a tremendous amount of ground-level support for what we’re doing, but many Daughters are afraid to speak publicly about it based on fear of reprisal from leadership.”
In the meantime, Jones rests secure in the knowledge that her heritage as a daughter of the American Revolution is not something that can be taken away, despite upheaval in the organization she loves.
“Ten years from now, I may not be a member of DAR, and if we have not course-corrected by that time, if we have not gotten on the right side of history again and acknowledged our past mistakes, then my daughter won’t join either,” she said.
