Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Let Texas Secure the Border

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Hidden beneath the kerfuffle about last week’s speeches on Capitol Hill, a significant debate is occurring just across the street at the Supreme Court. There the Biden Administration is asking the Court to block a splendid new Texas law against illegal aliens, SB 4, and on Monday Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed his vigorous response in full support of this law.

SB 4 strengthens the ability of Texas law enforcement officials and judges to take appropriate action against illegal aliens, including making it a state crime for them to enter or re-enter Texas unlawfully. A state judge is authorized to order a convicted illegal alien to be transported by state officials to an official port of entry along the border, where he can then be deported by the federal government back to Mexico.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit expedited this case and will hold oral argument on April 3rd, but the Biden Administration demanded an immediate injunction from the Supreme Court against this good law. The Court granted a temporary administrative stay to Biden that blocks this law pending a further ruling by the high court, which is expected later this month.

The Constitution recognizes that every State retains the sovereign power to defend itself against a foreign invasion, which is what the illegal migration over the Texas-Mexico border by millions of people, organized and directed by armed transnational drug cartels, really is. Biden has deliberately chosen not to enforce federal laws against these crimes, but he should not be able to stop Texas from enforcing its own laws consistent with the unenforced federal laws.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) recently tweeted details about another tragic death of an American caused by an illegal alien, this time in Hazelwood, Missouri. Driving in the wrong lane at more than 70 mph in a 40 mph zone without a driver’s license, an illegal from Venezuela smashed head-on into a car carrying 12-year-old Travis Wolfe, who subsequently died on March 6 after being on life support for nearly 3 months.

Texas is the nation’s first-line defense against transnational violence and has been forced to deal with the deadly consequences of the federal government’s inability or unwillingness to protect the border,” Paxton’s brief tells the Supreme Court. By trying to stop Texas from enforcing a law that he refuses to enforce, Biden harms not just Texas, but prevents all of us from defending ourselves against illegal aliens.

Paxton told the Court on Monday that “the Constitution recognizes that Texas has the sovereign right to defend itself from violent transnational cartels that flood the State with fentanyl, weapons, and all manner of brutality.” Biden interferes with this sovereign right of Texas, and in the recent primary Texas Republican voters, who hold a solid majority there, agreed with Paxton and against Biden.

For the first time in a half-century, the Speaker of the Texas House is headed to a crushing defeat at the hands of a young conservative endorsed by Paxton. Dade Phelan had ambushed Paxton last May with a surprise impeachment, after pressuring dozens of Republicans to vote with Democrats in order to try to remove Paxton from the office of Texas Attorney General, where he has protected the nation against illegal invasion by migrants.

Paxton’s endorsements carried to stunning landslide victories two challengers to incumbents on the top criminal court in Texas, which had rebuffed Paxton’s efforts to protect election integrity. A third judicial challenger endorsed by Paxton for that court also won, as did eight challengers to House incumbents; another nine challengers endorsed by Paxton forced the incumbents into the runoff election in May.

The grassroots movement for Texas independence also did well in this primary. Shelley Luther, the Dallas hairdresser who went to jail in 2020 for merely opening her salon during the Covid lockdown, was one of many who prevailed in the legislative primary after embracing a vote on “Texit,” a play on the term “Brexit” by which Britain exited from the European Union.

Continued refusal by the Supreme Court to allow Texas to defend itself against upwards of 10 million illegal aliens – more than a third of the lawful Texas population – puts Texans in a tight spot as they feel unsafe merely going to a grocery store. As Biden continues to deny Texans their right to protect themselves against the illegal invasion, it is predictable that more Texans will embrace the independence movement as the only viable option.

Biden’s DOJ has until Wednesday to reply to Paxton’s persuasive arguments against the scourge of the illegal invasion there. Our entire country would benefit if Texas were allowed to close its border with Mexico and take all appropriate steps to end illegality by migrants who have already poured by the millions into the Lone Star State.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on PhyllisSchlafly.com, pseagles.com, and Townhall.com.

Tuesday, March 5, 2024

Fear of Disunity Swings Roberts to Trump’s Side

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Signs of our country fracturing may have struck a chord with Chief Justice John Roberts, resulting in the surprisingly strong decision on Monday that ends attempts by liberals to disqualify Trump from the presidency. Roberts has disappointed conservatives for a decade, often providing the swing 5th vote for the liberal side, but he appears to be having nightmares about national disunity.

On Monday, Roberts and the Court shut down the effort to use a long-forgotten provision of the Fourteenth Amendment to disqualify Trump from becoming president again. This abruptly ends a year-long quest by Trump-haters to disqualify Trump on the pretext of the Capitol protests on January 6, 2021.

Colorado was the first state to exclude Trump from its ballot, which the unsigned decision of the Supreme Court reversed on Monday to ensure that Trump will be on the ballot there and everywhere else. The ruling was not a moment too soon, as Maine and Illinois had imitated Colorado by blocking Trump from their ballots, too.

At oral argument Roberts warned that Republican states might retaliate by removing Biden from their ballots. His concern is a chaotic future of states misusing the ballot access process in order to tip the presidential election to one side or the other.

Roberts’ decision for the Court then went far beyond the issue of ballot exclusion. To the consternation of liberals, Roberts’ ruling prohibited liberals from disqualifying Trump from the office of presidency by any other way, unless Congress enacts a law authorizing it (which it will not do).

The Court’s opinion tracks the line of questioning by Roberts at oral argument, where he fretted in speculation about practical consequences if Colorado were allowed to exclude Trump from its ballot. Roberts has always been more of a political animal than a legal scholar, preferring simple logical discussion and straightforward arguments about hypothetical scenarios.

The tell-tale sign that Roberts wrote the unsigned opinion is the reaction by the frustrated liberal Justices. Their very first sentence quoted one of Roberts’ prior opinions, as if to rebut him with his own words.

The liberal justices' confrontation of Roberts shows their desperation in being unable to persuade him in a more flattering way. Without Roberts, liberals cannot win on any Trump-related case, even if they are able to pull Justice Amy Coney Barrett to their side.

By lashing out against Roberts, the leftwing justices alienated Justice Barrett in the middle and she rebuked them for their rhetoric. Even though Barrett agreed with liberals that Roberts’ decision went further than it had to, Barrett criticized the liberal Justices for inflaming the “national temperature” at this time, rather than lessening tensions as she felt the Court should be doing.

The sweeping scope of Roberts' decision is devastating to the Never-Trumpers. Not only must Colorado allow Trump back onto its ballot, but the decision effectively prevents anyone in federal or state government from disqualifying Trump, thereby ending all schemes to prevent a victorious Trump from taking office.

The liberal justices agreed that Colorado was wrong to exclude Trump from its ballot, but shockingly wanted options left open for the federal government to disqualify Trump in other ways. It is not clear what the Left has up its sleeve for interfering with the authority of the next elected president, but additional frivolous legal actions against Trump by the Department of Justice are predictable.

In the last Trump Administration the top military brass was defiant of Trump even though he was the Commander-in-Chief. Fortunately, the Supreme Court has eliminated all the arguments by the Left of illegitimacy to the next Trump Administration.

Trump looked fit and trim in delivering a powerful televised statement in response. He thanked the Supreme Court and then turned to the ongoing politically motivated prosecutions of him, and the harm being caused by Biden letting in millions of illegal aliens.

In contrast with the highly scripted public comments by Biden, Trump covered more than a dozen issues extemporaneously, and then responded to a question from the media.

Next month the Supreme Court will hear Trump’s appeal on the issue of his presidential immunity. Liberals have little chance of prevailing as long as Chief Justice Roberts justifiably remains concerned about disunity that would result from allowing the anti-Trump circus to continue interfering with the voters’ selection of the next president.

Roberts does not want a fractured country to reduce him from Chief Justice of the United States to merely a chief justice of the swamp along the Potomac River. In a paraphrase of what Phyllis Schlafly said about her hard-fought victories, Roberts is welcome to choose any reason he likes to save our country from Leftist interference with our democratic process.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on PhyllisSchlafly.com, pseagles.com, and Townhall.com.

Tuesday, February 27, 2024

GOP’s Right to Reject Funding of Perpetual War

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

A dramatic meeting on Tuesday at the White House for sending $60 billion more to the NATO war in Ukraine was stacked 4-to-1 against conservatives. That is hardly fair but reflects the intense pressure by globalists to pour more money down this bottomless pit of war.

The two top Democrats in the House and Senate, plus Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) who does not represent a majority of Republican senators on this issue, joined with President Biden to browbeat Speaker Johnson to allow a House vote on the $60 billion supplemental appropriation. Johnson emerged from this meeting by properly saying that we need to put the crisis at our own southern border first.

Speaker Johnson is on the same side as Donald Trump, whose influence grows despite Democrats’ attempt to exclude him. Trump’s landslide victory over the globalist candidate Nikki Haley in her home state of South Carolina on Saturday continues his trajectory toward reelection in November, rendering Biden a lame duck for the remainder of his term.

The satirical Babylon Bee quipped, “Congress issued a dire warning to the American people Friday, sternly reminding voters that if they do not keep sending billions of tax dollars to Ukraine, the war might end.” American taxpayers should not be funding more bloodshed there.

Yet the newly installed Polish foreign minister, RadosÅ‚aw Sikorski, went on CNN Sunday to demand this foreign aid, pompously telling Speaker Johnson that “the credibility of your country is at stake.” Sikorski speaks perfect English because he was educated at England’s Oxford University, which has promoted globalism since the time of the first Queen Elizabeth over 400 years ago.

Sikorski would not hold his position if the prior conservative Polish government had not foolishly allowed in more than a million Ukrainian migrants. This vast influx ran the Polish economy into the ground, and its GDP plummeted from a growth rate of 5.3% in 2022 to only 0.2% and high inflation in 2023.

Meanwhile Russia appears to be thriving by producing vast amounts of oil, in contrast with Biden’s anti-energy policies that hinder our economy. Last week Rosneft, which is Russia's largest oil producer, declared a 47% increase in its net profits for 2023, totaling $14 billion, and oil funds a third of the Russian government’s budget.

Russia’s military-based economy produces far more munitions than the West. Sen. JD Vance (R-OH), who opposes more funding of the war in Ukraine, told a conference of globalists last week in Munich that Ukraine uses in a month as many Patriot missile interceptors as it takes the United States a year to make, and the Patriot is now on a five-year back order.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Army announced its elimination of 24,000 positions, partly because of the shortfall in enlistment. Recruiting into our military has fallen far below expectations, and threats by D.C. politicians to send American troops to defend the borders of small NATO member countries will not be tolerated by voters.

Phyllis Schlafly called for disbanding NATO at the end of the Cold War, and she opposed the “mission creep” that has led NATO to meddle in Ukraine, in provocation of Russia. We should not support Ukrainian president Zelensky’s ambition to capture the Crimean peninsula, where the Russian navy has been stationed at Sevastopol for 240 years.

Zelensky canceled national elections that had been scheduled for this spring, and the globalists who pretend to care about promoting democracy should object to that. There is a large constituency of Ukrainian Americans in Ohio, where their Sen. Vance outspokenly opposes continued American funding of this war.

House Speaker Johnson has a superb opportunity to attach conditions before allowing a vote on sending billions more to Ukraine. First, Johnson should demand that Biden fully close our southern border to end illegal immigration there and, second, he should halt the funding of the politicized prosecutions against Trump and his supporters.

The latest data from the Biden Administration shows that Arizona has surpassed Texas in being inflicted with the largest invasion by illegal aliens. The Border Patrol reports that 250,000 illegals entered an Arizona sector in the last four months despite the treacherous landscape there.

The shocking murder of a young Georgia nursing student and “disfiguring her skull,” while she was jogging, was charged against an illegal alien arrested twice but released. “Instead of sending him back, Biden’s failed policies allowed him to be released into the country, where he murdered an innocent American girl,” Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) tweeted.

The politicians in D.C. should focus on the many problems along our own border before sending more money to fund a boundary dispute in Eastern Europe. Trump promises to end this war by forcing Ukraine and Russia into a negotiated settlement, which is the sensible approach.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on PhyllisSchlafly.com, pseagles.com, and Townhall.com.

Tuesday, February 20, 2024

Biden Imprisons His Rivals Until They Die, Too

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

The hue and cry about the recent death of Putin critic Alexei Navalny in a Russian prison overlooks that Biden and the Deep State are trying to imprison Trump until he dies, too. Anti-Trumpers in our country have been misusing the legal system with a vengeance ever since Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Trump compared Navalny’s death, while under a three-decade prison sentence, to the relentless lawfare to imprison and bankrupt himself. Some scoffed at that comparison, but Biden and his minions are trying to treat Trump as Putin reportedly mistreated Navalny.

Trump posted on Truth Social, “The sudden death of Alexei Navalny has made me more and more aware of what is happening in our Country. It is a slow, steady progression, with CROOKED, Radical Left Politicians, Prosecutors, and Judges leading us down a path to destruction.”

President Trump properly commuted the 14-year sentence of Democrat Rod Blagojevich, but Biden has not pardoned or released any of the Trump supporters who have received even longer sentences for non-violent activity. While pro-Trump protestors are imprisoned in a Gulag as Navalny was in Russia, Biden and his media supporters applaud.

Biden’s prosecutors demanded a 33-year prison sentence for Enrique Tarrio for a January 6-related protest even though Tarrio was not even at the Capitol that day. Tarrio received a 22-year sentence, while other Trump supporters were sentenced to more than 15 years and it seems likely some will die in prison as Navalny did.

The Republican-controlled House in Congress lacks initiative, merely reacting to demands by liberals for massive foreign aid. The GOP House should condition their vote on any Continuing Resolution on a termination of all funding for the prosecutions against Biden’s political rivals.

In globalist-controlled England, the second-highest target of the Deep State has his final hearing before its top court before he is extradited to the U.S. Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, is being sought by U.S. prosecutors for what would be a show trial here followed by life imprisonment.

Federal espionage charges pending against Assange for exposing lies by the government carry a maximum prison sentence of 175 years which means that Assange, like Navalny, would probably die in a U.S. prison. To persuade a British judge to approve extradition, the Feds absurdly represented that they might allow Assange to serve out his sentence in his native Australia.

Assange has always lived outside of the U.S. and is a citizen of Australia, so this is an abuse of globalist power for the Deep State to insist on bringing him here for a trial. He and his wife predict that he’ll die in jail here if the British High Court allows the extradition.

Wikileaks published information showing how much the federal government has been lying to the American people. That should not be a crime, but embarrassing the Feds is, in their view, the most heinous crime of all.

It was Assange and Wikileaks who published 20,000 leaked emails from high-level officials at the Democratic National Committee in the summer of 2016, which proved that Democrats had lied in pretending not to be siding with Hillary Clinton. Democrats then insisted without evidence that Russian hackers trying to help Trump were the source of the emails, another lie that Assange rebuked.

That leak helped discredit Hillary Clinton during her campaign for president, and was considered to be a reason she lost to Trump. Assange has been a target for a political prosecution ever since, and globalists persuaded the UK Home Secretary Priti Patel to approve in 2022 his extradition to the U.S.

Biden’s Secretary of Homeland Security, the recently impeached Alejandro Mayorkas, has personally prevented Biden’s political rival RFK Jr. from receiving customary Secret Service protection despite multiple criminal intrusions of his home and an armed thug pretending to be a U.S. Marshal showing up at an RFK Jr. campaign event. Yet anti-Trumpers have remained silent about this mistreatment by Biden of his rival.

This is another issue that the GOP-majority House could hold a vote on, and enact a resolution calling on Biden to provide Secret Service protection for his political rivals. RFK Jr. is polling at 7% nationwide which is more than enough to justify providing him with the same protection that presidential candidates have typically received in prior elections.

Northwestern law professor Steven Calabresi calls the recent New York judgment of $355 million plus interest against Trump and his family “a travesty and an unjust political act rivaled only in American politics by the killing of former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton by Vice President Aaron Burr.” When liberals complain about a regime misusing its power against a rival, then they should look first at how Biden is doing this.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on PhyllisSchlafly.com, pseagles.com, and Townhall.com.

Tuesday, February 13, 2024

SCOTUS Should End Favoritism to Anti-Trump Prosecutors

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

The politically motivated federal prosecutors of Trump, as led by Jack Smith in D.C., have been ordered by the Supreme Court to respond in a week, by February 20, to Trump’s attorneys on an appeal that may decide the upcoming election. Democrat-appointed federal judges have allowed Smith and his political hacks to bypass ordinary procedure in seeking a pre-election criminal trial of Trump using the biased jury pool of D.C.

Ordinary procedure would afford Trump’s attorneys many months to appeal the one-sided decisions against him, but the Democrat-controlled D.C. Circuit has violated its own court rules to try to hurry a trial before the election. A verdict by jurors who voted 95% against Trump in the last election could then have an undue influence on voters nationwide.

This is the same case that prosecutor Jack Smith demanded the Supreme Court take up on an emergency basis last December, which the Court unanimously declined. Smith argued then that the issue of legal immunity for Trump’s actions as president could only be decided by the Supreme Court in an expedited procedure, such that his criminal trial of Trump in D.C. could begin.

But now Smith is expected to argue the opposite, and try to persuade the Supreme Court to allow the trial to proceed without a full appeal before the High Court. Smith’s goal is to time this criminal trial for prior to the election, which is not a proper motivation for prosecutors who are supposed to be focused on enforcing the law.

Last week the D.C. Circuit denied Trump’s assertion of legal immunity for his official actions while president on January 6, 2021. The Democrat-majority judges on the D.C. Circuit, which is the intermediate federal appellate court there, gave Trump’s attorneys less than a week to seek a stay in the High Court to prevent a restarting of this criminal trial.

Trump’s attorneys did so on Monday with their reasonable request for the Supreme Court to restore ordinary procedures, so that Trump can object to this unprecedented prosecution of actions he took while president. Absolute immunity has protected the official acts of every president until Donald Trump; otherwise politically motivated prosecutions could occur whenever the Deep State disagrees with a president.

Last week, at the oral argument in the appeal of Colorado’s exclusion of Trump from the ballot, the battle lines were drawn such that 4 Republican-appointed Justices are on the side of Trump, while 3 Democrat-appointed Justices oppose him. An Obama appointee, Justice Elena Kagan, was artful in not offending Chief Justice John Roberts or Justice Amy Coney Barrett, whose votes liberals need to prevail 5-4 in the more important criminal case.

Justice Kagan was able to pull Roberts and Barrett over to Biden’s side on the issue of dismantling the border fence in Texas, to conservatives’ dismay. No opinions were issued with that 5-4 decision last month, and perhaps no explanation will accompany the upcoming decision on whether to grant Trump’s request for a stay of the federal D.C. prosecution.

Unlike Chief Justice Roberts, Justice Barrett’s questioning in the Colorado ballot case last week contained some hopeful signs for the pending appeal of the criminal case. She repeatedly referred to “President Trump,” rather than demeaning him as the “former president” as other justices did.

Justice Barrett also pointedly questioned whether President Trump received due process while being excluded from the ballot in Colorado, which he did not. Trump’s due process was violated when the Colorado court admitted hearsay evidence from Nancy Pelosi’s one-sided J6 Committee and allowed a sociologist to criticize Trump supporters.

Early during oral argument the questioning by Chief Justice John Roberts made it apparent that he would be voting against Colorado’s exclusion of Trump from its ballot, and the liberal bloc of the Court cannot prevail without Roberts’ vote on their side. The liberal media then expressed dismay at how the Left side of the Court did not lash out at Trump, but such comments would have been futile and only alienated Barrett, whom the Left needs.

Chief Justice Roberts has spent his entire career in D.C. ingrained into the Deep State, and he fretted that Republican states would retaliate against a Democrat presidential candidate if Colorado were to prevail in excluding Trump from its ballot. Roberts framed this in terms of federal versus state power, declaring that the 14th Amendment was enacted to restrict state power rather than allow states to exclude candidates from ballots as Colorado attempts.

The good news is that Roberts’ pandering to liberals in other cases has cost him credibility with the four right-of-center Justices: Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh. Hopefully Justice Barrett realizes that Roberts is a creature of D.C., and will not be led astray by him again.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on PhyllisSchlafly.com, pseagles.com, and Townhall.com.

Tuesday, February 6, 2024

Sports Gambling Addiction Invades Super Sunday

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Sports gambling takes center stage with the Super Bowl being televised from Las Vegas on Sunday. Apps available on everyone’s phones makes betting during this game more accessible and convenient than ever before.

A small initial bet then goes into an internet surveillance system that exploits this information to target the bettor with a barrage of ads enticing him to gamble further. This is a gold mine for the online gambling companies, led by FanDuels and DraftKings, both of which are airing expensive Super Bowl ads this year as is BetMGM.

Calls to gambling addiction hotlines have already spiked in the 38 states where sports betting has been legalized. When Ohio authorized sports gambling last year, calls to the state’s gamblers’ hotline tripled in the very first month.

The New York Times recently quoted the former Senator Bill Bradley (D-NJ), who sponsored a federal ban on sports gambling as a retired professional basketball star. Some pretend that sports gambling “can now be controlled,” he said, “and I just don’t think it will be controlled. I think it will pervade the culture.”

The U.S. Supreme Court regrettably struck down Bradley’s federal ban on sports gambling in Murphy v. NCAA (2018), and all but 12 states have since legalized betting on these games. Gambling addiction has risen to an all-time high.

An employee of one NFL team, the Jacksonville Jaguars, stole $22 million from the team in order to lose virtually all of it on sports gambling. The team is attempting to recover that stolen money from the online gambling companies, but they refuse.

Last week a federal district court in New Jersey dismissed a lawsuit by another victim of gambling, declaring that casinos have no legal duty to stop taking bets by a compulsive gambler. New Jersey’s Consumer Fraud Act is supposed to shield against unconscionable acts by companies, yet gamblers as consumers are not protected as other consumers are.

More than half of college and even high school students gamble now, and one out every 5 college students admits to spending some of his student loans or financial aid on sports betting according to a survey by Intelligent.com. Many college athletic departments even partner with sportsbooks to promote more gambling to students at the college.

The highest percentage of victims are young men and their families. But wait, this year bookies are taking bets concerning Taylor Swift at the Super Bowl, on what she will wear and whether Travis Kelce will propose to her, and 20% of women aged 18 to 49 are online sports gamblers.

Known as “prop bets,” these are wagers on issues unrelated to the game, such as what shade of lipstick Taylor Swift will be wearing. Offshore gambling sites are processing bets on this and as many as 89 aspects of Swift and the Super Bowl, for all the Swifties who will be tuning in, although prop bets are illegal in some states.

Until recently, the NFL strictly kept gambling out of football, but now it has partnered with online gambling companies to tap into the profits and boost television ratings. On Monday NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said that the NFL seeks to ensure “the action on the field is genuine and without any outside influence,” but three dozen players and league officials have already been found in violation of the rules.

Holding the Super Bowl in Las Vegas this year injects more gambling into the sport. While players are told not to place any bets while there, it is impossible not to walk past a “one-armed bandit,” the ubiquitous slot machine, in that city.

Fourteen out of 15 experienced oddsmakers told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that they felt Las Vegas would never host the Super Bowl. This is like holding a fireworks competition in a dry, flammable forest despite warnings about the high risk of fire.

Studies show that 16% of gambling addicts attempt suicide, more than 20 times the rate in the general population and the highest of any addiction. Today young adults are compulsively betting through apps on their phones, including while in the shower, while driving, and in the middle of the night.

Microbetting entices sports fans to bet live on the next play, but they are competing against predictive AI tools that know the odds far better than a fan can. Scientific evidence shows that young adults do not have a fully developed ability to assess risk-benefit until age 25.

A pagan holiday was long celebrated on December 25 until Christianity displaced that with Christmas. As gambling promoters take over Super Sunday and some call for a national holiday the following Monday, it is time to rein this in by urging everyone to delete their gambling apps on their phones instead.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on PhyllisSchlafly.com, pseagles.com, and Townhall.com.

Tuesday, January 30, 2024

Texas Stands Strong While Biden Retaliates

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

If they cut it, we will replace it,” Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick declared about the razor wire along the Texas border with Mexico, after Biden won a narrowly weak 5-4 decision from the U.S. Supreme Court authorizing him to cut it. Patrick holds an unusually powerful office because it commands the state senate, and his comments join the chorus of other top Texas officials taking a strong stand against Biden’s open border.

We are putting up wire ... everywhere we can. We will continue. We will not stop,” Patrick told Fox News after visiting the border on Friday to be on hand in case Biden’s Border Patrol showed up with wire cutters. “Wisely, they did not,” Patrick added.

Biden apparently did retaliate against Texas on Friday in a different way by abruptly blocking all pending approvals for permission to export liquefied natural gas. Texas is America’s largest producer of clean-burning natural gas, which is essential to its economy and that of our entire nation.

The Texas Land Commissioner, Dr. Dawn Buckingham, observed that Biden’s unexpected order looks “more like retaliation than a sound policy decision,” coming as it did the day after “Texas took a bold stand in defending our border against foreign invaders.” The Land Commissioner oversees the oldest public agency in Texas, with authority over Texas’s immense natural resources and public lands.

In her article for the Daily Caller, Dr. Buckingham “calls on all Americans to stand up for our country. Politicians should put the interests of Americans in their hearts and send a loud and clear message to leaders in a far-off capitol in Washington, DC — keep your hands off the Texas National Guard.”

The Oklahoma GOP rebuked its U.S. Senator James Lankford for caving to the D.C. uniparty on a bill that would grant new authority to Biden, after he has opened our southern border for three years. Lankford and Democrats have hidden the details, but enough has leaked out for House Speaker Mike Johnson to declare the bill to be dead on arrival in the House.

Biden promised that he would close part of the border if given new authority by Congress, but he already has that power as he refuses to enforce existing immigration laws. Giving Biden new authority over the border is like giving an alcoholic the keys to the liquor cabinet.

Elon Musk piped up on Friday with his remarkably pointed criticism of Biden’s open border. “No laws need to be passed. All that is needed is an executive order to require proof before granting an asylum hearing,” Musk tweeted on his platform X.

That is how it used to be,” Musk added. He could have included the words “under Trump,” and highlighted how Trump’s reelection would rescue us from this border crisis.

Biden is suing Texas for its newly enacted SB 4, which authorizes state officials to arrest and deport illegal aliens found in that state. The U.S. Border Patrol should already be doing that, but instead Biden and his minions are trying to block Texas from protecting its own residents.

There has been a staggering increase in crimes of all types by illegal aliens since Biden took office three years ago. Reported encounters for illegal drug possession and trafficking had declined each year of the Trump administration, but then skyrocketed to more than five times Trump’s 2020 level for every year of the Biden administration.

Biden’s henchmen may be rethinking their strategy after 25 Republican governors – everyone except from the ultra-liberal state of Vermont – stated their full support for Texas officials in resisting the demands by Biden to cut the wire fencing. The governors sided with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott for “stepping up to protect American citizens from historic levels of illegal immigrants, deadly drugs like fentanyl, and terrorists entering our country.”

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem even offered to personally drive to Texas more wire for concertina fencing if needed. Texas should consider closing its entire border with this barbed fencing now.

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), the globalist Minority Leader in the Senate, has been obsessed with sending another $60 billion to Ukraine, in exchange for allocating a small fraction of that sum to border security. He complains now about Trump’s influence over members of Congress, but it was Biden who defiantly allowed a record number of migrants to cross into Texas last month and repeatedly sued Texas, making any potential compromise a non-starter.

Biden has had three years to prove that he can secure our borders, but instead he has done the opposite, with devastating effects on Texas and our entire country. After rejecting many opportunities to protect our southern border throughout his administration, it is insulting for Biden and Democrats to pretend that they will finally reverse their open border policies on the eve of the presidential election.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on PhyllisSchlafly.com, pseagles.com, and Townhall.com.

Tuesday, January 23, 2024

SCOTUS Worsens Migrant Crisis by Violating Texas Sovereignty

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Texans have never liked tyranny from D.C., and Monday’s 5-4 emergency ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court against the Lone Star State tosses fuel on a smoldering fire. Without explanation, five justices in D.C. authorized the Biden administration to destroy Texas-owned concertina fencing that stemmed the flow of illegal aliens near the border town of Eagle Pass.

Texas officials videoed federal agents cutting holes in the fencing last year on 20 occasions for no apparent reason other than to allow illegal aliens to enter our country. By authorizing the Biden administration to completely destroy this border fence now, this is the ninth time that the Supreme Court has granted an emergency application by Biden.

It is appalling how the Supreme Court dodges other issues to hurriedly accommodate Biden’s open-border agenda. Texas erected this barbed fencing to establish order against an overwhelming flood of illegal aliens, and the Fifth Circuit had sided with Texas pending its review.

More illegal migrants entered the United States last month than any other month in history, according to data obtained by CBS News from the Biden administration. Texas is bearing the brunt of this invasion, and merely a tiny fraction of these illegals have overwhelmed New York City where they leave their urine and poop on sidewalks, doorsteps, and near parked cars.

While paying lip service to private property and state sovereignty in other cases, two Republican appointees, John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett, switched sides to join the 3-justice liberal voting bloc to rule for Biden. Chief Justice Roberts always sides with the liberal media in high-profile close votes, so this was no surprise, but Justice Barrett’s vote against Texans’ self-defense remains unexplained.

The recent promotion of fake news about Texas officials supposedly causing children to drown in the Rio Grande by blocking access by federal agents may have been intended to influence the pro-family Justice Barrett. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has explained that the drownings were on the Mexican side, and in a court filing the Biden administration admitted that these drownings occurred before the feds sought access.

Paxton, the finest Attorney General in our country, emphasizes that Biden’s open-border policy causes these tragedies, yet the Supreme Court unwisely opens the door to more of these catastrophes by deferring to Biden. Paxton responded last week to the Biden administration’s assertion that the U.S. Constitution confers authority on the federal government to secure our borders: “When were you planning to start?”

The Biden administration has repeatedly “claimed authority to destroy property that belongs to someone else based on their assurance that doing so is necessary to enforce federal immigration laws," Paxton told the Supreme Court. The evidence “amply demonstrates the utter failure of the Defendants to deter, prevent, and halt unlawful entry into the United States.”

In June 2022 and 2023, the Supreme Court held in favor of Biden’s refusal to enforce federal immigration laws in Texas. The high court allows Biden to violate immigration laws, but then blocks Texas from protecting its residents.

The failure of the majority on the Supreme Court to explain their most recent capitulation to Biden is divisive, harmful and insulting to Texas. Biden is also suing Texas to remove its orange buoys in the Rio Grande, which the Fifth Circuit agreed to hear en banc probably to rule against Biden, but then he will also appeal that issue to the same Supreme Court that just ruled for him.

The Supreme Court’s temporary order allows Biden to continue his illegal effort to aid the foreign invasion of America,” Attorney General Paxton responded to the Court’s latest ruling. “The destruction of Texas’s border barriers will not help enforce the law or keep American citizens safe. This fight is not over, and I look forward to defending our state’s sovereignty.”

Paxton is right amid the escalating interference by the D.C. elite with local efforts to maintain law and order in Texas. Last week there was a conflict between armed Texas officials and federal agents when the Texans properly denied access by the feds to a border park.

Biden wrongly invokes federal power over the border not to implement law and order, but rather to open it to illegality that includes drug smuggling. A majority of the Supreme Court recognizes the individual right of self-defense to be armed under the Second Amendment, and they should likewise acknowledge state authority to protect itself against the lawless immigration with drugs that Biden is allowing.

Many Texans feel compelled to arm themselves in self-defense for routine trips to the grocery store, in fear of the hordes of illegals let in by Biden. Fortunately, the reelection of Trump would peacefully end this growing conflict between Texas and the D.C. elite, as Trump agrees with Texas in closing the border.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on PhyllisSchlafly.com, pseagles.com, and Townhall.com.

Tuesday, January 16, 2024

Trump’s Blowout Win Shows the Way

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Donald Trump more than doubled the tally of the runner-up in the Iowa caucuses, despite frigid temperatures 15 degrees colder than its prior record. Trump proved his mastery of grassroots politics better than his rivals, and this bodes well for him in the general election.

Trump won Iowa outright with 51% of the vote, which was really 59% when combined with the votes for Vivek Ramaswamy who promptly endorsed Trump. The globalist candidate Nikki Haley garnered a meager 19%, a pathetic voter showing for the Never-Trumpers despite nearly unlimited funding for their America Last agenda.

Trump has a far stronger campaign operation than in 2016, as his opponents begrudgingly concede now. To win Iowa so decisively, Trump developed a formidable boots-on-the-ground army of volunteers who are essential to winning elections today by getting out the vote.

Trump overcame both the popular Iowa Republican governor, Kim Reynolds, and the king of the evangelical grassroots there, Bob Vander Plaats, both of whom endorsed Ron DeSantis as he campaigned hard in every one of Iowa’s 99 counties. Trump triumphed against the relentless barrage of Leftist lawfare, which has failed to deter anyone from voting for Trump.

Iowa was the Waterloo for the Never-Trumpers, who have failed miserably in their vindictive attempts to stop Trump. Liz Cheney, Karl Rove, Mitt Romney, and their comrades should accept their crushing defeat not only in Waterloo, Iowa, but virtually everywhere in this bellwether midwestern state.

Trump’s spectacular victory was also a triumph for grassroots politics against the overpaid political consultants who wasted millions of dollars on television ads and so-called messaging. Trump built a crackerjack ground game that enlisted precinct captains who could identify at least ten Trump supporters promising to show up and vote at the caucuses.

The Trump campaign provided training to his precinct captains, which other Republican candidates typically fail to do, with the honor of receiving gold-and-white “Trump Caucus Captain” hats. These volunteers were offered the opportunity to be invited to a special Trump event at the upcoming Republican National Convention in Milwaukee in mid-July.

Joe Biden’s approval rating has fallen to 33% in the recent ABC News/Ipsos poll, the lowest recorded in 15 years. Like an aging athlete whose performance sharply declines near retirement, there is no viable way for the 81-year-old Biden to improve and no incumbent would ordinarily be reelected with such a low rating.

But Biden Democrats are counting on exploiting early and mail-in voting to reelect him no matter how low his approval rating plummets along with his mental capacity. In his victory speech Monday night, Trump vowed to end the easily corrupted early voting and more than half the state legislatures could do this prior to the general election this fall.

A Democrat-appointed federal judge in Ohio recently upheld election integrity reforms enacted a year ago by that state’s legislature. On January 8, Judge Donald Nugent ruled in favor of a photo identification requirement, a reduction in the number of drop-boxes for ballot dumps, and a tightening of rules for in-person and mail-in voting, in Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless v. LaRose.

That the State accommodates some voters by permitting (not requiring) the casting of absentee or provisional ballots, is an indulgence — not a constitutional imperative,” declared this federal judge while quoting the words of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia from the seminal decision upholding voter ID. Nothing requires states to allow the vast periods of early and mail-in voting and the use of numerous drop-boxes for ballot dumps, which blight elections.

Maintaining confidence in the integrity of our electoral processes is essential to the functioning of our participatory democracy,” the federal Judge Nugent emphasized, again quoting precedent by the Supreme Court. States have a compelling “interest in deterring, preventing, and identifying voter fraud,” and proof of the occurrence of voter fraud is not necessary before a state legislature acts to prevent it.

Relying on a 6-3 Supreme Court decision from less than three years ago, the federal court noted that “Supreme Court precedent also instructs that States are not required to wait for voter fraud — and the ensuing damage to public confidence in the electoral process — to occur before taking efforts to protect their elections. States are permitted to regulate prophylactically to prevent voter fraud before it occurs, or public confidence in elections is damaged by it.”

All states should make their elections more like the just-concluded Iowa caucuses: in-person voting on the day of the election, with all ballots counted at the polling place so that results can be announced by 9 p.m. the same evening. Republican state legislators should act swiftly in their new sessions, many of which have just begun, to adopt voter integrity laws to safeguard the upcoming presidential election against fraud.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on PhyllisSchlafly.com, pseagles.com, and Townhall.com.

Tuesday, January 9, 2024

Only Trump Can Unite Our Vast Country

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

A strong president is essential to hold our vast country together, as President Andrew Jackson did amid regional conflict in the 1820s and 1830s. Joe Biden has just kicked off his presidential campaign with two extraordinarily divisive speeches in which he demonized and declared political war on Trump’s supporters, rather than try to persuade them.

Biden delivered these political speeches in Pennsylvania and in South Carolina, the former a must-win state for him in November and the latter a must-win state in his primary. In his remarks Biden demonstrated his discordant campaign strategy of defining MAGA Republicans as enemies of America, when it is Biden who is failing with his weak leadership.

Prominent Democrats are increasingly voicing doubts that Biden can win. Even Congressman Jim Clyburn (D-SC), who is credited with delivering the nomination to Biden in 2020, stated on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday that his “problem is that we have not been able to break through that MAGA wall” of support for Trump.

Trump’s rivals candidly doubt whether an apparent election of the incompetent Biden would even be legitimate at this point. Haley, DeSantis, and Ramaswamy all stated last week that they would not necessarily accept a reported election result declaring Biden to be the winner, to the dismay of the liberal media.

Yet Haley also says that she would wait until all the prosecutions of Trump have completed and all of the appeals are exhausted, which takes many years, before pardoning him if she were president. This ongoing circus of politicized prosecutions continues to divide our country at a time when we are vulnerable to a potential impasse in budget negotiations in Congress.

The latest fiscal cliff is January 19, by which Congress needs to agree on funding the federal government to avoid a shutdown. A framework of a mammoth $1.7 trillion spending deal was announced on Sunday but fails to make the cuts that conservatives seek.

Most Republicans continue to reject the liberal narrative about the protests at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, which just had its three-year anniversary and on Sunday Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) accurately described those who remain imprisoned as “hostages.” Some 34% of Republican voters feel the disorderly conduct on that day was actually provoked by the FBI.

In the growing disunity under Biden, the mayor of New York City just sued bus companies for merely transporting illegal aliens from Texas to Manhattan. Since all these migrants were released on parole by the Biden administration to go wherever they wish, private buses should not be subject to this unprecedented retaliation for facilitating their travel.

The Biden Administration has demanded the U.S. Supreme Court allow it to remove a floating barrier erected by Texas down the middle of a stretch of the Rio Grande that separates Texas from Mexico. Texas is being forced by the D.C. elite to continue daily to accept many thousands of impoverished, illiterate illegal aliens into that conservative state.

This regional conflict is the worst we’ve seen in our lifetimes. Yet so far the U.S. Supreme Court has been missing in action despite the growing conflicts among the states, and between red states and the federal government.

The effort by blue states to keep Trump off the ballot dramatically ratchets up the dissonance. It is no longer a genuine national election if states can exclude the leading presidential candidate of the rival party from their ballot, as unfolds now.

Perhaps the Supreme Court has finally recognized its job to try to reduce regional conflicts. On Friday the High Court took swift action to intervene by accepting Trump’s request for review of the improper exclusion of him from the ballot by Democrat-controlled Colorado.

Yet the Supreme Court risks doing too little, too late on the many crises pulling our country apart. A biased conviction of Trump in the exceedingly unfair venue of D.C. would not be well-received by Republicans and red states, and the Supreme Court should not allow that divisive political manipulation to occur.

Jury selection is scheduled to begin in eight weeks against Trump in the backyard of the Deep State. Violating the Obama-appointed presiding judge’s order placing this case on a temporary hold, prosecutor Jack Smith piled on with yet another distorted filing against Trump last week, to which Trump’s attorneys properly responded by requesting sanctions against Smith.

On Tuesday, a Democrat-majority panel of the D.C. Circuit indicated its desire to allow this extremely disruptive criminal trial to proceed against Trump in the stacked D.C. venue. CNN shows Trump ahead nationwide with more than the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency, and a politically motivated criminal trial against Trump in the biased D.C. could trigger a national crisis.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on PhyllisSchlafly.com, pseagles.com, and Townhall.com.