Wednesday, October 31, 2018

Ending Birthright Citizenship

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

President Trump, who frequently campaigned against the horrible practice of giving automatic U.S. citizenship to children of illegal aliens, has again startled the media by proving that he really meant what he said. In an interview released this week, Trump said he would issue an executive order stopping birthright citizenship.

“We’re the only country in the world where a person comes in, has a baby, and the baby is essentially a citizen of the United States for 85 years with all of those benefits,” Trump said in an interview for Axios. “It’s ridiculous. It’s ridiculous. And it has to end.”

Trump’s blunt talk on the issue of illegal immigration was one of the main reasons Americans elected him in 2016. Yet his opponents pretend to be shocked and horrified that he plans to deliver what the voters expected when we elected him president.

“It was always told to me that you needed a constitutional amendment. Guess what? You don’t,” he said, adding that he has run it by legal counsel. “You can definitely do it with an act of Congress. But now they’re saying I can do it just with an executive order,” Trump said.

The media insist that Trump is just “riling up his base” for the midterm election, quoting a tweet from the failed mayor of Chicago. Rahm Emanuel recently announced that he will not seek re-election in the city he has led from crisis to disaster.

Another failed politician, outgoing House Speaker Paul Ryan, pontificated to reporters, “Well, you obviously cannot do that.” Ryan went on to say, “I think in this case the 14th Amendment is pretty clear, and that would involve a very, very lengthy constitutional process.”

Actually, Ryan is half right: the 14th Amendment is “pretty clear” that birth alone is not enough to guarantee U.S. citizenship. To get automatic birthright citizenship, children must be born to parents who are “subject to the jurisdiction” of our country.

The key phrase, “subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” means more than the duty to obey our laws, which applies to everyone, citizen and alien alike. It means that to become a citizen a person must owe allegiance to the United States, and not to any other nation or state.

You are a citizen of the country or nation to which you owe your allegiance, and vice versa. Diplomats, visitors, foreign students, temporary workers, and illegal residents -- all these people are citizens of their home countries, the countries they came from, even while they are temporarily inside our borders.

American history familiar to many high school students demonstrates how wrong birthright citizenship is. Indians living on reservations were not American citizens for most of our history, despite being born in our country.

Native Americans were considered members only of their sovereign Indian tribes, until Congress extended blanket citizenship in 1924. Similarly, children born to foreign ambassadors while in the United States are not American citizens, but are citizens of their country of origin.

In their crusade against President Trump, globalists trot out alleged experts claiming that Trump’s proposal is impossible, unconstitutional, or morally wrong. But the hysterical overreaction by his critics proves how right Trump is.

“The president cannot erase the Constitution with an executive order, and the 14th Amendment’s citizenship guarantee is clear,” said Omar Jadwat, director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project. “This is a blatantly unconstitutional attempt to fan the flames of anti-immigrant hatred in the days ahead of the midterms.”

In fact, the last time the Supreme Court addressed the issue of birthright citizenship was 120 years ago, in the case of a child born to a lawful permanent resident who had what is now called a green card. The Supreme Court has never decided the citizenship of those born to persons unlawfully present in the United States, or lawfully present on temporary visas for tourism, education, or temporary employment.

The ACLU was also bitterly opposed to Trump’s policy of vetting travelers from countries that are hotbeds of terrorism. Globalists falsely characterized the policy as a Muslim ban, but it was upheld by the Supreme Court last June; Trump’s new executive order should fare just as well when it gets there.

Trump’s announced intention to fulfill his campaign promise caps another week of setbacks for globalism. In Brazil, which is called the second-largest democracy in the Western Hemisphere, the conservative nationalist Jair Bolsonaro won its presidency by a landslide of 55-45%.

That adds Brazil to the United States, Hungary, and the Philippines where conservative nationalists have triumphed on Election Day. Meanwhile, the adversary of President Trump who has led Germany down the wrong path of globalism, Angela Merkel, mercifully announced her plans not to seek reelection in a few years.

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 pseagles.com.

Wednesday, October 24, 2018

The Real Reason They Hate Trump

Yale professor David Gelernter writes in the WSJ:
For now, though, the left’s only issue is “We hate Trump.” This is an instructive hatred, because what the left hates about Donald Trump is precisely what it hates about America. The implications are important, and painful.

Not that every leftist hates America. But the leftists I know do hate Mr. Trump’s vulgarity, his unwillingness to walk away from a fight, his bluntness, his certainty that America is exceptional, his mistrust of intellectuals, his love of simple ideas that work, and his refusal to believe that men and women are interchangeable. Worst of all, he has no ideology except getting the job done. His goals are to do the task before him, not be pushed around, and otherwise to enjoy life. In short, he is a typical American—except exaggerated, because he has no constraints to cramp his style except the ones he himself invents.

Tuesday, October 23, 2018

Dems Tongue-Tied on Caravan Issue

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Democrats have not been shy to criticize President Trump on every imaginable issue ranging from the NFL to the First Lady’s choice of footwear. But suddenly nary a word from the Dems about Trump’s criticism of the caravan of illegal aliens headed toward our southern border.

“Every time you see a Caravan, or people illegally coming, or attempting to come, into our Country illegally, think of and blame the Democrats for not giving us the votes to change our pathetic Immigration Laws! Remember the Midterms!” Trump tweeted on Monday.

But where is the pervasive pushback by Dems to Trump’s tweets on this issue? Their silence is deafening.

The Senate race in Arizona casts light on why Democrats are suddenly speechless, two weeks before the midterm elections. That seat, vacated by the unelectable anti-Trump Senator Jeff Flake, has long been considered a sure takeaway from the Republican Party in the battle for control of the U.S. Senate.

This summer the Democratic candidate Kyrsten Sinema was ahead in the polls by more than ten points, apparently cruising to a landslide. But Arizona bears the brunt of illegal immigration, and as that issue heats up this race has become too close to call.

Congresswoman and veteran Martha McSally, aided by an overflow rally held by President Trump last week in Phoenix, has surged in the polls for that seat. Ms. Sinema was hurt by the surfacing of a 2003 recording of her saying that “I don’t care” if an American joined the Taliban army, which fights against U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

In Missouri, entrenched liberal incumbent Claire McCaskill was so rattled by Republican challenger Josh Hawley’s criticism of her during their recent debate that she left quickly afterward, not even staying for post-debate interviews. Pro-abortion donors have bankrolled McCaskill to a 4-1 fundraising advantage, and yet she trails Hawley.

Meanwhile, voters see photos of thousands of menacing youths approaching our southern border as part of a caravan that stretches for miles. Among them are potential new recruits for the vicious gangs, like MS-13, that plague our cities.

If Sen. McCaskill and her Democratic cohorts had supported building a wall as Trump seeks, then the massive caravan would not be a national crisis. But without a wall, young American soldiers must be put in harm’s way to try to stop these illegals from entering our country.

The presence of children among the migrants makes it even worse. Soldiers are trained to fight and kill, not change diapers for infants carted thousands of miles to cross our border illegally.

“We want to get to the United States,” said a 17-year-old migrant from Honduras, Maria Irias Rodriguez, who brings along her 8-month-old daughter and 2-year-old son, plus her husband. “If they stop us now, we’ll just come back a second time.”

That sounds like a family that could help make Honduras great again. If the migrants have American values, and not all do, then they could spread those values in their own country and help it thrive as the United States has.

There is a process for foreigners to apply to enter our country legally. That includes proper vetting of the applicants, and separating those who love America from those who might not.

Amid the caravan of many thousands could be terrorists, as President Trump pointed out while on his way to lead a massive rally in Houston for Senate candidate Ted Cruz. The 19,000-seat Houston Rockets basketball arena was virtually filled with enthusiastic supporters of Trump’s stance against the caravan and illegal immigration.

But Monday was also the first day of an extended two-week early voting period in Texas, which enables the Democratic political machine to stuff the ballot box without any real safeguards against fraud. An enormous spike in the number of early ballots compared to the last midterm election in 2014 is flooding Texas election offices.

In small Midland County, Texas, five times as many people voted on the first day of early voting compared with the same day in 2014. In the immense Harris County, where Houston is located, more than three times as many people voted early on Monday compared with four years ago.

Liberals are counting on rampant early voting in Texas, California, Nevada, Colorado, and elsewhere to give them an undeserved boost in returns. Trump has joked that the caravan of migrants is coming to the United States to vote for Democrats, and that is not far from the truth.

In traditionally low-turnout midterm elections, stuffing the ballot box can change the outcome in many races. Trump’s spectacular rallies demonstrate the popularity of his positions with the American people, and an honest election would confirm it.

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 pseagles.com.

Tuesday, October 16, 2018

Judicial Supremacy Runs Amok Against Census

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

A stirring rebuke of judicial supremacy is, remarkably, posted on the Department of Justice website. Attorney General Jeff Sessions explains how fed up he is with the continued overreach by federal judges as they repeatedly encroach on Trump and Congress.

The latest outrage cited by General Sessions is a district court order, affirmed on appeal, that compels Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to submit to a deposition about why he wants the census to ask people if they are American citizens. Liberals absurdly claim that it is racist for the census to ask that basic question, and demand that Secretary Ross answer impertinent questions in which he will be falsely accused of secretly harboring a racist motive.

Cabinet officials should not be subjected to rude deposition questioning without any factual basis. Citizenship is not a race and immigrants come in all races, so it cannot be racist to ask people who live here, and who demand entitlements like Medicaid and public schooling, whether they are American citizens.

Before Justice Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed, the Supreme Court seemed fine with allowing the deposition of Secretary Ross, a member of Trump’s Cabinet. But days after Kavanaugh joined the High Court, it put this deposition on hold pending the submission of further briefing on the matter.

President Donald Trump has successfully appointed two Supreme Court justices, 29 circuit judges, and 52 district court judges. But they are mostly in states that voted for him, while fierce pockets of resistance remain in deep blue states like California, New York and Hawaii.

An example is in New York City, where a Barack Obama-appointed federal judge named Jesse Furman is hearing a major case against the Trump Administration. Furman received that prestigious lifetime appointment when he was only 39 years old, and he will probably be elevated to a higher court by a future Democratic president.

In classic judicial activism, Judge Furman is trying to micromanage the government’s planning for the 2020 census, which is already underway. Plaintiffs and apparently Judge Furman are unhappy with how census officials plan to include a question about citizenship in the census.

It should be a no-brainer for the census to ask whether each person residing in our country is a U.S. citizen or not. That basic question was included on the main census questionnaire from 1830 to 1950, but starting in 1960 it was unfortunately demoted to a separate survey that goes to only a sample of Americans.

After the Trump Administration decided to reinstate this question on the questionnaire being sent to every household, a group of leftist organizations and Democratic officials sued Wilbur Ross as the Secretary of the Department of Commerce, which supervises the census bureau.

Only U.S. citizens are supposed to vote here, although there are numerous examples of non-citizens who were improperly placed on the voting rolls when they applied for a driver’s license. The problem is that even when non-citizens don’t vote, they are counted in the census in a way that enhances the voting power of people who do vote.

If non-citizens were evenly distributed across the United States, their presence wouldn’t dilute the voting power of U.S. citizens. But when they are concentrated in a handful of states such as California, whose population includes more than 5 million non-citizens, American citizens who live in other states are disenfranchised.

Non-citizens entitle California to at least 5 extra seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and 5 extra votes in the Electoral College, all taken from states with few non-citizens. Even within California, non-citizens are concentrated in a handful of that state’s 53 congressional districts, such as Maxine Waters’ district where only half the residents are American citizens.
In the 2010 census, which Obama supervised, 6 electoral votes were taken from the states of Missouri, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, all of which voted for Trump in 2016. That was on top of 4 electoral votes lost by those states in the 2000 census, plus another 4 lost by four other Trump states: Indiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Wisconsin.

Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania are each projected to lose another seat in Congress and the Electoral College after 2020, as are Alabama and West Virginia. States where aliens live will gain seats, and retain the seats they already won in the last two census counts.

General Sessions emphasized in his posted speech that “the Judicial branch must show significant respect for the Executive branch and Congress. I fear, in a variety of ways, that respect has been eroding.”

Calling out the “eroding” deference by the judiciary is an understatement. So is the term “judicial activism,” when the better term is “judicial supremacy” as coined by Phyllis Schlafly to describe judicial interference with good policies like Trump’s census.

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 pseagles.com.

Tuesday, October 9, 2018

Trump Fulfills Phyllis Schlafly’s Vision

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

The thrilling confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court fulfills the vision of Phyllis Schlafly in her early endorsement of Trump. By trouncing the radical feminists in this high-stakes battle for the Supreme Court, President Trump has transformed the Republican Party just as Phyllis wanted.

Kavanaugh’s 50-48 confirmation by the Senate was also a victory for the rule of law over rule by a mob. “You don't hand matches to an arsonist,” Trump declared afterwards, and “you don’t give power to an angry leftwing mob.”

It was a close call, when you consider that one woman on George Soros’ payroll almost succeeded in bringing Kavanaugh down – by screaming at Jeff Flake while he was trapped in an elevator as cameras rolled. Ana Maria Archila, the woman who confronted Senator Flake, reportedly draws a six-figure salary from a Soros-funded outfit called the Center for Popular Democracy, which grew out of the wreckage of the now-defunct ACORN.

But Christine Blasey Ford’s uncorroborated accusations were simply not credible to the fair-minded Senators. Their reigning moderate, Susan Collins, delivered a compelling hour-long speech detailing the many deficiencies.

Ford’s accusations against Kavanaugh were worse than being implausible. They were also unworthy of the heightened attention given to them by the liberal media and the 48 Democratic Senators who voted against him.

Even if Ford's accusations had some basis in fact, they were not serious enough to be considered at this late date. The Senate demeaned itself by forcing Kavanaugh to explain what he meant in his writings as a 17-year-old in his personal diary and his high school yearbook.

By her own account, Ford said she attended and drank beer at an unsupervised house party along with older teenage drunken boys. She alleges that at some point she was groped by two of the boys, whose identities remain unknown, but she admitted that everyone was fully clothed at all times.

If such a complaint had been made then, the police would not have even bothered to pursue it. It would have been such a minor, unprovable infraction that criminal charges would never have been brought.

The complete silence by Ford for 29 years afterwards suggests that even if it did happen, it was not particularly significant to her. Most likely it did not happen at all.

Yet while talking to a therapist nearly three decades later, Ford supposedly “recovered” a memory that could easily exaggerate key details and make mistakes of identity. On the basis of her recovered memory, she tried to bring down Brett Kavanaugh’s career, while keeping her own identity secret in order to avoid the risk of cross-examination.

There is a moment when a movement loses its initial credibility with the general public, and this Kavanaugh confirmation may be that moment for the #MeToo movement. The collapse of support for the reelection of Democratic Senator Heidi Heitkamp, who ultimately voted against Kavanaugh, illustrates the backlash against doubtful accusations publicized by radical feminists.

Forty years ago, in the 1970s, an earlier wave of feminism called “women’s liberation” was cresting. Led by then-ACLU attorney Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the feminists came close to putting their harmful “equal rights” amendment (ERA) into the U.S. Constitution.

But then the feminists also overplayed their hand, much as they just did with Kavanaugh. With a special appropriation of federal tax money in 1977, they held 50 state conventions for women, culminating in a national convention in Houston to promote International Women’s Year.

The nation watched in dismay as a parade of angry liberal women screamed and screeched their demands, primarily about lesbian rights and taxpayer-funded abortions. The public turned away, the ERA never garnered another state, and five states that had hastily ratified it then rescinded their previous ratifications.

A similar fate awaits the overly hyped #MeToo movement, which started a year ago in response to the lurid accusations against Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby and others. Ostensibly a protest against the proverbial casting couch, which has always existed in Hollywood, the #MeToo movement is a double standard as it does not complain about many women who willingly use sex to advance their show-biz careers.

Meanwhile, our nation benefits from the new respect for ancient legal safeguards against false accusations. These include innocent until proven guilty, the right to confront your accuser, and the need for a short statute of limitations on accusations of sexual assault.

When Phyllis Schlafly met Donald Trump on March 11, 2016, before introducing him to a cheering crowd of thousands of supporters in St. Louis, she asked the candidate to appoint judges who would defend the Constitution. With the seating of Justice Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court, President Trump has honored his pledge in a spectacular way.

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 pseagles.com.

Tuesday, October 2, 2018

No #MeToo for California’s Gender Quotas

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Americans have never supported quotas, as other countries do. We take pride in being the land of opportunity based on merit, regardless of race, creed, gender or religion.

But California just took another left turn in its newly enacted SB 826, which requires gender quotas on corporate boards. Publicly owned California companies must have at least one woman on their Boards of Directors and, for larger companies, three women by 2021.

Most companies already avoid incorporating in California, so the practical effect may be minimal. One study suggests that, despite all the hoopla, the new law will increase the number of women on Boards by a grand total of only 1 by 2021, at Apple.

But this new law is an alarming sea change. Amid the frenzied, hysterical attack against the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh, the California law reveals where the Left is really headed.

This law would not be constitutional if the Equal Rights Amendment had been ratified as feminists wanted, and even persuaded Illinois earlier this year to pass 36 years after its deadline expired. ERA prohibits any law making distinctions based on gender.

Californian Christine Blasey Ford implausibly alleges that a 17-year-old Brett Kavanaugh made unwelcome advances on her at a teenage party in 1982. Ironically, that alleged party was in the same summer that ERA died.

Flouting ERA, California Democratic Senator Hannah-Beth Jackson authored this gender quota bill, supposedly to help women. SB 826 then sailed through the California Senate by a veto-proof supermajority of 23-9, and by 41-26 in its Assembly.

This leaves California companies scrambling to find token women to put on their Boards of Directors, to replace men who may be better for the companies. People will view any woman who is on the Board of a California company with skepticism as to whether she is the token, or is there based on merit.

This also opens the floodgates to me-too legislation to create quotas for every minority or other trait, just as California already has ballots in more than a dozen foreign languages. If a quota can be created for gender, then it can be created for any group that has political heft in the increasingly liberal California legislature.

Interest groups that are particularly powerful in lobbying the California legislature include homosexual activists and transgender advocates. Not many California legislators would vote against a bill to accommodate those interest groups with their own quotas, like the one just passed for women.

Perhaps some feel there are not enough women in high-paying jobs in construction or professional sports. The California legislature could take the same “shatter the glass ceiling” approach and mandate that construction crews on public highways, or professional sports teams that play in publicly financed stadiums, must include at least one woman.

Before long we could have a woman placekicker on California football teams, not because she is the best but because no one dares vote against this concept.

Executives of companies typically reap far greater compensation than directors do, so it may not be long before the social planners demand that at least one woman be among the highest- paid officers. If SB 826 is constitutional in requiring one woman on each Board, then it would be constitutional to mandate highly compensated women, too.

Quotas are something that other, less- successful economies use, in places as far afield as Norway and India. In 2008, Norway required public companies to reserve 40% of their Boards for women, upon threat of dissolution.

Yet a decade later, there is no evidence that Norway’s law has yielded any benefits. It failed to increase the number of women working in the companies, and it has not boosted the number of female CEOs there either.

The “invisible hand” that has guided our country to the greatest prosperity in world history requires that there not be any impediments imposed to limit opportunity. Quotas have been rejected by virtually every elected national politician in the United States, including Democrats.

But the California legislature has become shockingly aggressive in defying national standards upon which our country thrives. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that the Department of Justice is suing to overturn another bill recently signed into law by California Governor Brown, which would prohibit cable companies from charging internet hogs like Google and Facebook for the immense traffic they use.

Not all feminists are pleased by California’s new gender quota for corporate Boards. No one can argue both for this California law and ERA, for example.

In California any man can consider himself to be a woman, and require acceptance as such. Olympic champion Bruce Jenner, a Californian who has declared himself to be a woman named Caitlin, will be in hot demand by companies seeking to comply with this new law.

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 pseagles.com.