Ambush Impeachment in Texas Stole from Voters

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

The ambush impeachment and removal of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton was a shocking and undemocratic assault on the will of the voters. Paxton won reelection by 800,000 votes last November, yet merely one legislative chamber was able to override those votes with a scheme hatched in secret and sprung as a last-minute surprise.
Imagine if Congress could force the removal of a president by secretly plotting an impeachment, suddenly executed a few days later without a single public hearing. The American people would not stand for what the New York Times called “unexpected — as of a week ago there was little public indication that an impeachment could be imminent.”
Who really plotted this unprecedented theft from voters remains a closely guarded secret. Donald Trump led the way by truthing his opposition: “Hopefully Republicans in the Texas House will agree that this is a very unfair process that should not be allowed to happen or proceed—I will fight you if it does.”
Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan, who was elected by pandering to Democrats, “kept this under wraps until the end, there wasn’t a lot of time for Paxton’s defenders to react,” observes Rice University political scientist Mark Jones. It was obviously improper to deprive the voters of an elected official without first informing the public and hearing from them.
As pointed out during the brief debate on the Texas House floor, there was no justification for concealing the plot to remove Paxton from office until shortly prior to the vote. Paxton has been the leader in litigating against open borders and other unlawful policies of the Biden administration, and two months ago he opened an official investigation of Pfizer over its Covid-19 vaccine.
“For the last nine years, Ken has been the strongest conservative AG in the country. Bar none,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) stated in opposition to the ambush impeachment of Paxton. Texas Republican Party Chairman Matt Rinaldi strongly defended Paxton and described the proceeding as a “sham” that was “led by a liberal speaker trying to undermine his conservative adversaries.”
A total of 23 Republicans courageously voted against removing Paxton, while none of the Democrats did although some criticized it. The most senior Democrat in the House, the African American Harold Dutton, Jr., eloquently spoke against how improper the impeachment was.
On TruthSocial Trump exclaimed to thunderous support by tens of thousands, “MISSING IN ACTION! Where is the Governor of Texas on his Attorney General’s impeachment?”
The silent Republicans share something in common. In addition to Abbott’s shamefully going AWOL, Trump’s presidential rivals have likewise been silent, as has the senior U.S. Senator from Texas, John Cornyn.
All these Republicans depend on heavy support by dark money mega-donors, who are mostly globalist billionaires seeking their own self-serving agenda that includes an open border. DeSantis, Tim Scott, Nikki Haley, and wannabe Senate Majority Leader John Cornyn all depend on millions from this network to fuel their political ambitions.
Most of the 60 Texas Republicans who voted for Paxton’s removal probably feared retaliation by the dark money globalists, as there are no campaign donation limits in Texas. Gov. Abbott himself has been a frequent attendee to the Koch network donor confabs, whose members funnel money to those who back their agenda and try to punish those who get in their way.
The influence of globalist mega-donors is also reflected in how Texas Republicans enacted the Convention of States resolution to seek a new convention under Article V to change the U.S. Constitution. When the late Justice Scalia was asked in 2015 about the desirability of holding a new constitutional convention, he called it a “horrible idea.”
Yet to appease his ego-driven donors, Texas Gov. Abbott made the Convention of States one of his highest legislative priorities in 2017, ahead of border security and other more important issues. Republican legislators who would ordinarily oppose this were then bullied to vote for it, but on the condition it would expire in eight years.
Conservatives in ten other states have defeated this “horrible idea” of a Convention of States this year. Yet the dark money backing this deceptive attempt to change our Constitution insisted on tacking another 8-year extension to the 2017 Texas application to Congress for a convention.
Every Republican in the Texas legislature then voted this spring for a new 8-year extension on this horrible idea. These were not sincere votes, but rather the product of a campaign funding system driven by large donors.

The good news is that a Democrat state representative raised a point of order against the 8-year extension of the Convention of States, so it died when the Texas legislature adjourned on Monday. The other good news is the upcoming impeachment trial in the Texas Senate should flush out the dark money puppets seeking to overturn the election of Paxton.

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.

Biden to let Boys Play on Girls Sports Teams

The Biden administration published proposed regulations of sex discrimination in school sports, and I submitted this comment:

The proposal refers to "harm" 53 times, but never identifies the harm accurately. It is considered beneficial to have all-girls sports teams. If that is true, then allowing a boy on a girls team harms every girl on the team, every girl who is displaced, and every girl on opposition teams. The boy with gender disphoria who may identify as a girl is probably harmed as well, as the team would be catering to a dangerous delusion.

Sex is binary in humans. That is a scientific fact. Furthermore, our social order has depended on male-female distinctions for millennia. Attempts to upset that social order are based on an extremist political ideology, and not on popular opinion, law, or benefit to children. The proposed regulations should be rejected.

Here is an interview of a feminist bicycle racing champion who is unhappy about men taking over women's cycling.

GOP Should Demand End to Biden’s Open Border

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

By a stunning 20-point margin, the conservative New Democracy Party in Greece prevailed in its national election on Sunday. For decades socialists had badly governed that ancient birthplace of democracy, running up immense debt and causing other problems which the conservative leadership has since overcome.

This landslide surpassed the polling predictions, and is being described as a political earthquake. The reason for this triumph is clear: the conservative party there took a tough stance against migration, which is the opposite of what Biden is doing here.

On the eve of this election a video went viral purporting to show mistreatment of migrants, many of whom sneak in by sea. Supposedly the conservative candidate, currently its prime minister, was allowing the placement of migrants on rafts and then abandoning them in the middle of the Aegean Sea.

That video did not hurt Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis with voters. “We protected our country’s borders both on land and at sea, and reduced irregular arrivals by 90 percent,” he said at a recent campaign rally until he was drowned out by applause.

Greece was getting 10,000 migrants a month from Turkey, while Biden is allowing many times that number to enter the U.S. from Mexico. The Republican Party should take a stronger stance against this than it has, and the Greek election shows where voters are on this issue.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) should be telling Biden that there will be no deal on increasing the debt ceiling until Biden closes the southern border to illegal immigration. Texas Governor Greg Abbott should demand action by the Texas legislature before it adjourns on May 29, or else force them to return in a special session.

All of Europe has quietly reversed its pro-immigrant policy of five years ago, and now the European Union seems fine with countries closing their borders. In other words, political leaders in Europe have come around to agree with the position first espoused by Donald Trump, despite snickering against him while he was president.

Yet Republicans remain slow on this issue. It has not been a priority in the legislative session in Texas, which along with Arizona receives the largest hordes of illegals pouring into our country. Drugs come in with them, and make their way into schools and communities thousands of miles into the interior of our country.

Last week 11,000 migrants were deported after crossing our border illegally, while another 21,000 were released to await a court appearance scheduled in the distant future. Most of those migrants will never show up in court, but instead will travel to another unsuspecting American community, and if arrested there authorities will typically release them again.

Biden is not going to overcome illegal immigration this way, and probably does not want to. Many Democrats see the migrants as future voters for their party, while the globalists backing both Biden and rivals to Trump see migrants as providing cheaper labor and thus bigger profits for the globalists’ private equity investment funds.

Illegal aliens sleeping in the streets in El Paso, Texas, were being urged to turn themselves in to begin the processing for citizenship. Biden terminated President Trump’s secure border policy known as “Remain in Mexico” and then allowed Trump’s Title 42 policy to expire earlier this month.

Hours before Title 42 was set to expire, a federal judge appointed by Trump in Florida slapped Biden with an injunction against opening the floodgates now. “The Southwest Border has been out of control for the past 2 years,” Judge T. Kent Wetherell said in his court order against Biden’s open border policy.

Biden had planned to release thousands of newly arriving illegal aliens on “parole” into this country, while supposedly evaluating their applications for asylum. But as Americans painfully learned during crime waves in this country, the public is not protected against violence when criminals are out on parole rather than deported or locked up.

On CBS Face the Nation on Sunday, Miami’s Republican Mayor Francis Suarez criticized the new immigration laws signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) as "headline grabbers." The billionaire globalists funding DeSantis’s campaign, and the campaigns of other opponents of Trump, see greater profits in more illegal aliens as they work for lower wages.

Meanwhile in Texas, its Republican Gov. Abbott sent a busload of illegal aliens to Denver, which is the fifth Democrat-run city that has received busloads of migrants from Texas. As Title 42 was expiring, Gov. Abbott even bused some to Vice President Kamala Harris’s residence.

While that is good theater, it does not explain the lack of progress by Gov. Abbott in securing the Texas border. Abbott has failed to endorse Trump and failed to strengthen border security in Texas, because many Never-Trump Republican mega-donors actually support Biden’s open borders.

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.

The Leftist War on Self-Defense

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

The prosecution of an unarmed former Marine for acting in self-defense to protect passengers on the New York City subway has sparked a nationwide uproar. This latest salvo in the Leftist war on self-defense has liberals demanding additional charges against the hero.

Daniel Penny, only 24 years old, is a white ex-Marine sergeant from Long Island who wrestled down and restrained a troubled black man, Jordan Neely. With no police officers in sight, Neely was menacing multiple passengers on the moving subway train until Penny restrained Neely while asking others to call the police.

The dramatic rescue by a quick-thinking civilian is reminiscent of other recent episodes in which an ordinary citizen stepped up to save others from harm. The bystander who averted a massacre at an Indiana shopping mall last year, 22-year-old Elisjsha Dicken, was hailed as a hero then, as Daniel Penny should be applauded now.

Other passengers on the subway also viewed Neely as dangerous, and helped restrain him. Penny deserves the praise he’s receiving nationwide for acting in self-defense, and $2.5 million from 50,000 donors has already poured in to support his legal defense.

We don’t know yet what legal or illegal drugs may have triggered frightening behavior by Neely, who has a long criminal record that included punching a 67-year-old woman in the face and breaking her nose less than two years ago. A toxicology report would ordinarily be necessary before declaring a cause of death, but the New York City medical examiner is a political appointee of its Democrat mayor.

The police who were called to the scene saw no reason to arrest Daniel Penny, and no charges were initially brought even after Neely was declared dead at a hospital. Self-defense and protecting others has never been a crime, and should not become one now.

But after days of street protests demanding that Penny be prosecuted for murder, the New York City medical examiner announced that Neely’s death was a homicide caused by “compression of neck (chokehold).” District Attorney Alvin Bragg, famous for his political indictment of Trump over non-crimes, mollified the Leftist protesters by charging Daniel Penny with manslaughter.

The failure of both Bragg and the medical examiner to await the results of the toxicology report proves that politics, not medical science, is the driving force behind the manslaughter charge. It is reminiscent of the George Floyd case, with Penny being made a scapegoat just as the bystander officers in that case were.

The fake medical science in the first jury trial in the Floyd case included a prosecution witness who bizarrely invited jurors to grab their own necks, as though that would prove anything scientific about the cause of death in a criminal suspect who was intoxicated by an illegal drug. Imagine a similar stunt if Penny goes on trial in a hostile venue in New York City.

There are 100,000 unexpected deaths caused annually by illegal drugs in the United States, which is more than double the number of gun homicides. Inevitably, some drug-related deaths will occur while an erratic intoxicated person is being restrained.

When the Leftist mob calls Daniel Penny a vigilante instead of a Good Samaritan, it undermines the rule of law necessary to attain justice. If there is a rush to prejudge or find a scapegoat every time someone on drugs dies while being restrained, then self-defense will no longer be safely available to anyone.

There has been an outpouring of support for this hero, but the jury pool in New York City is not representative of the rest of our country. The District Attorney’s office has far more resources than Penny can possibly raise, while protesters are still demanding that the charges against him be upgraded to include murder.

Despite the partisan divide over this case, one New York Democrat has publicly defended the subway hero. Former Governor David Paterson said on Sunday that Penny “did something because he saw danger for other people and tried to prevent it. He did not meet the threshold where you charge someone.”

Paterson suggested that District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a fellow African-American, may have charged Penny merely because other minorities have died under similar circumstances in the past. During his single term as governor, Paterson often used his pardon power to correct injustices.

An Army sergeant convicted of killing an armed Black Lives Matter protester in Austin, despite asserting that it was in self-defense, just received a harsh sentence of 25 years in prison. Penny could be imprisoned for 15 years if convicted of manslaughter, but reasonable self-defense should not face such punishment.

Donald Trump observes that Penny ”was in great danger and the other people in the car were in great danger.” There should not be a prosecution of an unarmed Good Samaritan who acts quickly to defend others.

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.

21 States Stand Against Militant Transgenders

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Twenty-one states (and counting) stand against the transgender tidal wave by enacting legislation to protect families, vulnerable children, girls’ sports, and the right not to use a transgender pronoun. A new Tennessee law clarifies “sex” as “a person's immutable biological sex as determined by anatomy and genetics existing at the time of birth.”

Pro-transgender marketing for Bud Light beer backfired badly on the Belgian-based beer giant AB InBev. Sales for Bud Light decreased by 21% for the week ending on April 22, a third consecutive weekly decline following the company’s disastrous attempt to reposition that iconic product by insulting its traditional customer base.

President Biden’s poll numbers have also dropped sharply, to a new low of 36% from 42% only three months ago, while he pushes the unpopular transgender agenda. Biden has only 26% approval among the essential voting demographic of voters under 30.

The next three weeks will mark the climax of the biennial Texas legislature, which must adjourn by law on May 29. Militant transgender protesters and parliamentary delay tactics by their allies in the Texas state house twice blocked a key vote last week on a good bill protecting against harmful transgender child treatments, which had already passed the state senate.

While the mostly peaceful Trump supporters who entered the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 received stiff prison sentences as long as 14 years, favorable publicity showers the transgender militants who disrupted the Texas Capitol. Charges have even been dropped against one transgender protester accused of assaulting an officer there, in sharp contrast with the over prosecution of Trump supporters in D.C.

The transgender activists in Texas were interfering with a vote on SB 14, which would ban the use of puberty blockers and hormone therapy in children. Similar laws protecting children from irreversible treatments and mutilation have passed in 16 states, while 8 states have prohibited persons from using bathrooms of the opposite sex.

But 10 states are moving in the opposite direction, having enacted laws to promote the transgender agenda, even requiring conscientious physicians to provide medical interventions that violate traditional ethical principles. The militant transgenders have enormous financial and political backing as they try to enact their agenda nationwide.

Detransitioners, those who regret being victimized by transgender treatments or operations as children, are suing for the harm inflicted on them. One such lawsuit is against Kaiser Permanente for putting a 13-year-old girl on puberty blockers and testosterone, and then performing a double mastectomy at age 15, who by age 16 wanted to restore her life as a girl.

Despite the many lives being wrecked by transgender medications, the media show us confused kids who want transgender operations or seek to play on a sports team of the opposite sex. Armed with free attorney services from liberal entities, new lawsuits challenge state laws protecting girls’ bathrooms and sports.

Unfortunately, courts are likely to block some of these good state laws, as law schools keep turning out pro-transgender attorneys. The U.S. Supreme Court signaled its unwillingness to defend state laws that protect girls’ sports, when last month it denied a petition from West Virginia to reinstate its law.

Also stalled in the Texas House is a bill to protect women’s college sports, SB 15. The obstacle there appears to be opposition by the pro-transgender NCAA, which insists on using only testosterone tests as a way to pretend to protect women’s sports.

Testosterone tests are inadequate because even if the male hormone is artificially reduced, men still inherently have immense physical advantages over female athletes. For example, the average male is 5 inches taller than the average female, which gives men a decisive margin in many sports including swimming and track and field events.

The average height of players in women’s professional basketball is only 6 feet, while the corresponding average for a man in the NBA is 6 feet 6 inches. Leveling testosterone will not even out that disparity, or other sex differences such as how males are much less vulnerable to sports injuries than women and girls.

Last week a transgender athlete won a women’s cycling event recognized by the world cycling authority. While some international sports authorities are belatedly beginning to change their rules, the top American sports leagues beholden to television contracts with the liberal media are not budging.

Democrat Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. sides with girls, women, and Trump against allowing males to compete in female sports. But Biden recently issued Title IX regulations that will be used by liberal courts to invalidate state laws protecting girls’ sports against the transgender invasion.

Biden supports extremism in the transgender movement, which is where the media wants him to be. With rock-bottom approval ratings, Biden cannot win renomination without continued backing by the pro-transgender media.

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.

On the Debt Ceiling, GOP Should Unplug DOJ

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

A debt ceiling crisis was announced by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Monday, saying the deadline is June 1 for Congress to increase the $31.4 trillion debt ceiling. Suddenly President Biden invited House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to the White House, while Biden insisted he would not consider any cuts in federal spending.

McCarthy and House Republicans have already rejected Biden’s demand for a debt ceiling increase with no spending reductions. McCarthy said Biden has “refused to do his job” by announcing he would not even discuss the spending limits passed by the House of Representatives.

The lights go out in D.C. unless the GOP-controlled House agrees to keep the money flowing. As long as Biden’s Department of Justice wastes millions on interfering with the next presidential election, the GOP House should decline to increase the debt ceiling.

Many House Republicans who voted for the Republican debt ceiling bill last week have endorsed Donald Trump for reelection in 2024. Yet their bill would continue to fund the political hacks who misuse federal prosecutorial power against Trump.

Federal prosecutors have played video clips of Trump during the multi-million-dollar trials of Trump supporters accused of “parading” in the Capitol on January 6, 2021. As investigative reporter Julie Kelly explains, these trials appear to be dry runs for prosecuting Trump himself, as many Democrats dream about a federal prosecution to derail Trump’s reelection campaign.

The county-level indictment of Trump in Manhattan has remarkably boosted him in the polls, which is the opposite effect for which Democrats hoped. Meanwhile, the county prosecutor in Georgia has put her misuse of power on hold until later this year, disappointing Trump-haters.

Those feeding on federal taxes in D.C. view Donald Trump as a threat to their easy jobs and fat pensions. Their fear is justified, as Trump intends to stop D.C. federal employees from robbing ordinary Americans who struggle to make ends meet throughout the rest of the country.

No Trump supporter has received a fair jury trial in D.C., where the jury pools are filled with people who are stridently opposed to Trump. The 100% rate of jury convictions there of anyone associated with Trump is statistical proof of how unfair that venue is.

Video aired by Tucker Carlson proved that Jacob Chansley, the flamboyantly dressed Trump supporter, was welcomed by Capitol police who escorted him into the Senate chamber. If tried outside of the biased D.C., he would have been acquitted in a heartbeat with that video.

Instead, a D.C. federal judge locked up that entertaining peaceful young man for years. Finally free, Chansley has a new attorney who filed a motion to set aside his patently unjust sentence, a motion he would win if he could bring it in his home state of Arizona or any other reasonable venue.

Yet Congress continues to fund the Trump-hating D.C. prosecutors who take potshots and seek harsh sentences against whomever they dislike. Trump publicly vowed to defund the federal police and that puts him at the top of their “Most Wanted” list.

The Justice Department is also a big promoter of the transgender agenda, which the GOP House should likewise not be funding. Last week the Department’s civil rights lawyers intervened on the side of the ACLU, filing papers seeking to block a good Tennessee law that prohibits transgender mutilation of young people.

With its control of the federal purse strings, the GOP-controlled House should refuse to fund the increasingly partisan actions by the DOJ. The GOP House should say “no” to any increase in the debt ceiling unless it unplugs the abuse of power by federal prosecutors.

Any discussion of holding the line on the debt ceiling brings immediate howls from D.C., falsely asserting that government shutdowns have failed in the past. With that liberal logic, they imply Congress is powerless against a rogue DOJ seeking to indict the leading Republican presidential candidate.

History is no guide here, as never before has it been necessary to shut down the government to protect the People’s right to elect the next president. Previous government shutdowns were for less significant, less understood reasons.

Americans do not want the United States to resemble countries like Turkey, where elections are nominally allowed but the real power is held by the unelected Deep State. Today most political leaders are terrified of retaliation by prosecutors, contrary to our Constitution.

When an electrical appliance is broken and dangerous, the immediate solution is to pull its plug. The Department of Justice is broken, and any revised GOP debt ceiling bill should pull its plug.

The Constitution requires that all revenue-raising bills originate in the House. The Republicans in the House should reject any debt ceiling increase that funds the politicized abuse of power by the DOJ.

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.

End Ballot Initiatives: We Are Not a Direct Democracy

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

For most of our history, there was no process by which a private interest could initiate and enact a law by popular vote for its own benefit. Even today, this is not allowed for federal laws, and most states likewise ban this yet it was used to flip control of the Michigan legislature in the last election.

Our Founders were adamantly against direct democracy, the system in ancient Greece whereby citizens voted directly on new laws. Instead, our Constitution requires states to have legislatures to enact laws.

“The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government,” declares Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution. Courts have indicated that they are unwilling to enforce this clause, so it is up to Congress and state legislatures to protect it.

Yet some 21 states allow new laws to be enacted without approval by the state legislature, thereby creating a loophole for corporations to spend tens of millions of dollars on elections while otherwise banned from doing so. Colorado and Washington became the first states to legalize recreational marijuana, by short-circuiting their legislatures this way.

Michigan was on the road to economic recovery under its Republican legislature which held a 63-47 House majority after the 2016 election. Then Big Weed put its thumbs on the scale by placing a marijuana initiative on the ballot in 2018, spending millions to enact that Democrat-favored legislation.

The predictable side effect was to knock out more than half of the Republican lead in the legislature, dropping its majority to 58-52 and electing Democrats to statewide offices. In the 2020 election, lacking a similar ballot measure, the balance of power remained unchanged even though Democrat Joe Biden reportedly won that state.

Then in 2022, big money returned to Michigan to push through a ballot initiative for abortion. The distortion of $47 million spent for this abortion initiative enabled Democrats to take control of the Michigan House for the first time in more than a decade while reelecting the Democrat governor, attorney general, and secretary of state.

This is the tail wagging the dog. Originally intended to be an occasional check-and-balance against corporate influence over a legislature, ballot measures have become a loophole allowing monied interests to capture legislative control of a state.

The above-quoted Guarantee Clause in the Constitution requires a legislative process for enacting laws. It should be unconstitutional for a private interest group to place legislation on the ballot for its own benefit, and then pour in corporate money to pass it.

Studies show the side that spends the most on a ballot measure is almost always the winner. In 2018, the bigger-spending side won all ten of the ten most expensive ballot measure contests.

In 2017 Missouri’s Republican legislature joined the majority of states by protecting the freedom of workers not to join a labor union. But Democrats later poured more than $18 million into a ballot measure to repeal that right-to-work law.

Gambling spread throughout our country largely due to the ballot initiative process, as the gambling industry has ample funds to ensure passage of ballot measures that favor them. For more than a decade Missouri had in place a beneficial “loss limit” restriction on how much casinos could take from an addicted gambler in a 2-hour period.

Gambling interests repealed that good law by a ballot measure in 2008, as casino interests spent more than $15 million to boost their wicked industry. Both the Republican and Democrat gubernatorial candidates that year opposed the pro-gambling ballot measure, but it passed anyway as heavily funded by casinos.

Phyllis Schlafly always opposed ballot initiatives as a way to enact legislation. Along with her successful opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment in state legislatures, she also defeated the ERA when it was offered as a ballot measure in seven states.

The Ohio legislature now seeks to raise the threshold for passage of ballot initiatives for its constitutional amendments from a simple majority to 60%, but that may not be high enough or the optimal remedy. In our republican style of government, corporate mega-spending should not be allowed to try to enact new laws by popular vote.

State legislatures should narrow the scope of issues to be placed on a ballot, as many state constitutions already have a single-issue limitation. They could also seek to limit the scope of future ballot initiatives to tax- or government school-related issues.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) is a rising star who should be easily reelected next year unless liberal businesses are allowed to spend millions on the side running against him. The abortion industry may be planning to put its issue on the same ballot, and then dump ungodly sums in an effort to repeat in Missouri the distortion seen in Michigan.

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.

End Promotion of Transgender Culture

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

With the zeal of a fanatic, the transgender culture is being imposed on Americans while most of the rest of the world opposes this. The latest salvo two weeks ago was the giant brewery, AB InBev, placing a transgender on the beer can for one of its popular brands.

The public backlash was substantial, but the company issued a statement on Friday implying it would stay its pro-transgender course. Another corporate icon, Nike, has already been promoting a transgender culture with its marketing.

These professional-sports dependent companies are symptoms rather than the root of the problem. The biggest promoters of a transgender culture are not the usual suspects, but a few sports league monopolies including the NFL, NCAA, and Major League Baseball, which are government-subsidized and generally protected against antitrust laws that apply to everyone else.

The taxpayer-subsidized NFL began promoting the transgender culture last year by featuring a transgender biological male on its cheerleading team. The Dallas Cowboys are known as “America’s Team” and last year made this strategic change to its famous cheerleaders as another NFL team also did.

The Biden Administration recently promulgated new regulations that nearly require all schools to allow biological males to invade the athletic activities of girls and women. Schools that try to protect the integrity of girls sports may be hit with multi-million-dollar lawsuits under Biden’s anti-girl rewriting of Title IX.

Meanwhile, Major League Baseball browbeat Georgia Republicans into submission in 2021 by moving its All-Star Game from Atlanta to Denver in protest of a watered-down election bill that was ineffective anyway. The Georgia legislature got the message and failed to restore integrity for its elections in 2022, where Democrats again exploited early voting while obtaining a court order to change the law for their benefit.

That was brazen political intimidation by MLB while enjoying a special exemption from federal antitrust laws that limit normal businesses. Yet MLB’s political interference pales with how the NFL is promoting transgenderism while looting American taxpayers for many billions of dollars.

Next February, when more than 100 million Americans behold the half-time performance at the annual Super Bowl, the NFL could advance transgender culture further. New laws in 21 states seek to protect girls’ sports against an unfair invasion by boys, but if Republican legislators fail to stand up then the NFL, NCAA, and other sports monopolies will ram a transgender culture down our throats.

The Republican-controlled U.S. House and state legislatures should immediately act to uproot the cause, by sending subpoenas and holding hearings on sports leagues that promote a transgender culture. Ironically, the dependence of the NBA on China may keep it on the transgender sidelines, as neither China nor most nations side with liberals on this.

Congress should repeal the antitrust exemption for MLB, where teams are owned by billionaires who hardly need any protection from competition. Congress should also take steps to end the practice of television networks locking rival sports leagues out of lucrative television contracts given to the NFL.

Three of the top five golfers at the recent Masters’ tournament are part of the LIV tour, but it is locked out of good television contracts because it held a few events at Trump-owned golf courses. LIV will not be promoting a transgender culture either, while the television-controlled PGA or LPGA Tour might.

The Trump-hating media is in control of the money in professional sports, and from there Leftists are trying to impose a transgender culture on 330 million Americans. Professional sports leagues and the NCAA have grown to a nearly trillion-dollar industry, and impact culture far greater than the Rockefeller oil monopoly of more than a century ago ever did.

Defending our culture and the integrity of girls’ sports requires uprooting the source of the push for a transgender culture. A handful of pro sports monopolies and their exclusivity on billion-dollar television contracts are what Congress and the states need to eradicate.

LIV golf, as reportedly funded by Saudi Arabian billionaires, is not going along with the demand for a transgender culture. Neither is China, Russia, Japan, Africa, and most other countries, no matter what the liberal media wants.

Ironically, Trump himself was locked out by television exclusivity with the NFL when he led an upstart rival football league, the USFL, nearly 40 years ago. Trump’s lawsuit against the NFL in Manhattan ended with a jury verdict partially in his favor but without an award of sufficient damages.

Today the freight train coming down the tracks is pro sports promoting transgenderism, which they are able to do only if Congress and state legislatures continue to look the other way. It is time to overturn the favoritism given to sports league monopolies while they harm our culture.

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.

Court Rejects FDA’s Abortion Scheme

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the abortion industry pushed the FDA to approve the import and sale of the abortion pill dubbed RU-486 by its French manufacturer. The slang term “86” means to eject or throw something or someone away, so the pill’s trade name truthfully conveyed its demonic effect of throwing away a human life.

In the waning months of Bill Clinton’s presidency, the FDA responded to pro-abortion pressure by rushing its approval of this abortion drug, but only by falsely treating pregnancy as an illness, instead of a natural and healthy part of a woman’s life. Studies confirm that carrying a pregnancy to term, especially before age 30, is beneficial to a woman’s long-term health.

The FDA’s improper approval was promptly challenged more than a decade ago. But the FDA “postponed and procrastinated for nearly 6,000 days,” observed a federal court ruling in Texas on Good Friday.

Two days later, Biden’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, Xavier Becerra, lashed out against the judge’s ruling, ominously declaring that “everything is on the table.” That kind of strong rhetoric is what liberals frequently criticize Trump for.

The court’s decision cited studies showing how physically and mentally harmful the abortion pill can be to pregnant women and girls. The pill was approved by the FDA for the benefit of the abortion industry, not to help women.

“Compelling evidence suggests the statistics provided by FDA on the adverse effects of chemical abortion understate the negative impact the chemical abortion regimen has on women and girls,” ruled Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk. He added, “the abortionist that prescribed the drugs is usually not the provider to manage the mother’s complications.”

So chemical abortion is just another type of hit-and-run abortion that enriches the abortion industry, with much of that money plowed back into electing liberal politicians and judges. Tens of millions of dollars from out of state recently poured into Wisconsin to elect a supporter of the abortion industry to its state supreme court, tilting that court to 4-3 Democrat.

In states that permit ballot initiatives, such as Missouri and Ohio, the abortion industry will put initiatives to expand abortion on the ballot, and will spend many millions to pass them. That’s what the abortion industry did in Michigan last year, and as a result both houses of the state legislature flipped to Democrat control.

The author of the Good Friday decision against the abortion pill was appointed by Trump. Biden’s appeal goes to the Fifth Circuit, which boasts more superb Trump-appointed judges, and from there to the Supreme Court, which last year consigned Roe v. Wade to the proverbial ash heap of history.

More than half the abortions in the U.S. today are chemical rather than surgical. To hide the harm caused by this chemical warfare against the unborn, more than 60% of emergency room visits after taking the abortion pill are miscoded as “miscarriages” rather than as adverse effects of abortion.

Democrats view abortion as a politically winning issue for them, but that requires concealing its harmful consequences. Judge Kacsmaryk did a tremendous public service by explaining the adverse effects that Biden and the Democrats conceal.

Some of the harm is emotional, as the abortion pill typically causes the mother to see the living being she just aborted. Such video images have been posted on TikTok, to the dismay of censorship-prone liberals.

“Eighty-three percent of women report that chemical abortion ‘changed’ them – and seventy-seven percent of those women reported a negative change,” wrote Judge Kacsmaryk, citing a scientific study. “Thirty-eight percent of women reported issues with anxiety, depression, drug abuse, and suicidal thoughts because of the chemical abortion,” he continued.

The Biden Administration is not transparent about this harm, and instead pushes a destructive drug on red states that do not want it. Corporate executives whose companies have benefited from other Biden mandates, such as the CEO of Pfizer, jumped in as though on cue to insist on what Democrats demand.

Under our Constitution, legalizing and promoting chemical abortions is something that would require extensive public hearings and a vote in Congress. It should not be enacted in secret by unelected FDA bureaucrats who are lobbied or captured by the pharmaceutical industry they are supposed to regulate.

Federal law “indicates a national policy of discountenancing abortion as inimical to the national life,” held Judge Kacsmaryk while quoting a legal precedent. Indeed, a specific federal statute prohibits use of the U.S. Mail or commercial services from delivering abortion drugs across state lines.

The legality of the FDA’s process for imposing an abortion drug nationwide is for the courts and Congress to properly decide in our Republic. Some complain that this decision undermines the FDA’s authority, but that is just what a good doctor would order.

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.

Indictment Imperils the Rights of All

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

By indicting President Trump, the New York County prosecutor is infringing on the First Amendment rights of all Americans. Every American has a right to an unfettered debate and campaign by candidates, including Trump, for our nation’s highest elective office.

This indictment interferes with the 2024 presidential election by hampering the full participation of a leading candidate, and the right of Americans to benefit from his undivided attention to his campaign. One Democrat district attorney in Manhattan infringes on all these rights by indicting the front-runner Republican candidate, Donald Trump.

“The freedom to speak and the freedom to hear are inseparable; they are two sides of the same coin,” declared Justice Thurgood Marshall in 1972. Democrats are interfering with the right of every American to hear from Donald Trump without distraction by an improper prosecution.

Democrat prosecutors have the right to cast their own ballots in the presidential election, but not more than that. Trump’s ability to hold campaign rallies and meet with supporters is impeded by this and potentially other unprecedented indictments of him.

The U.S. Supreme Court should shut down this and any other criminal prosecution of a prominent presidential candidate. Federal lawsuits based on the First Amendment should be filed by Trump, the Republican Party, and any American voter to object to this governmental action against Trump.

Criminal prosecutions are an enormous distraction to any innocent victim, as Trump is. It shifts his time and focus away from devoting all of his energy to his reelection campaign.

Infringing on Trump’s free speech rights to campaign violates the rights of all Americans to hear everything that this candidate has to say. “The activity of speakers becoming listeners and listeners becoming speakers in the vital interchange of thought is the means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth,” Democrat-appointed Justice Marshall observed.

Federal courts have the full power to shut down interference with presidential campaigns by state officials and state courts. No arrest warrant issued by a state official against a leading presidential candidate should be enforceable during the campaign, particularly when an arrest is not needed to protect the safety of anyone.

Chief Justice Roberts joined three liberal Justices on the High Court to emphasize the power of federal courts to halt state court proceedings that impinge on constitutional rights. When someone is “harassed with a multiplicity of suits or litigation generally in an endeavor to enforce penalties” that would have an unconstitutional effect, then Roberts said it should be stopped.

That was less than two years ago when Roberts and the liberal Justices so stated, on an emergency appeal of an abortion-related law in Whole Woman’s Health v. Jackson (2021). “Under these circumstances, where the mere commencement of a suit, and in fact just the threat of it, is the actionable injury to another, the principles … authorize relief against the court officials who play an essential role in that scheme,” they wrote.

In other cases the Supreme Court has held likewise. In Mitchum v. Foster (1972), without dissent it shut down a state court proceeding for threatening to close the doors of a bookstore, much as the New York City district attorney’s new state court prosecution is disruptive to Trump’s presidential campaign.

This decision by the Supreme Court in halting a state court proceeding has been favorably cited by more than a thousand decisions since, including dozens of invocations by the Supreme Court itself. In Pulliam v. Allen (1984), it likewise ruled in favor of a federal court shutting down a state court process, which a federal court should do now with respect to any county-level prosecution of Trump.

Federal courts are empowered by these and other decisions to protect presidential candidates against harassment by state officials, as being done now to Trump. A presidential candidate must be allowed to devote his complete attention to his campaign without interference by a county prosecutor.

This unprecedented prosecution could further divide red from blue states, as conservatives feel strongly that the People rather than a handful of liberal prosecutors should be picking our next president. “Texit” legislation was filed earlier this year in Texas to assert independence from control by New York City and Washington, D.C.

“In a democracy, you can’t threaten to jail your opponents,” declared former President Obama in 2016. “We have fought against those kinds of things,” yet now Democrats are doing precisely that: threatening to imprison Trump.

As patriotism declines in polls and millions of immigrants fail to assimilate into our traditional culture, the glue binding our vast country together may have lost some strength. In 1857, the Dred Scott decision arrogantly denied rights to slaves rather than allow the political process to work, and a few years later our Nation broke up.

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.