Tuesday, December 31, 2019

UC Berkeley only hires Leftists

Every wonder why colleges are dominated by such leftist political beliefs? There are several explanations, but the University of California at Berkeley now scores all faculty applications for commitment to leftist beliefs before even being considered for academic merit.

See here and here for details.

Monday, December 30, 2019

Top Conservatives of 2019

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) was the conservative of the year in the Senate, despite being its youngest member in his rookie year. His landslide defeat of the entrenched liberal favorite Claire McCaskill was the biggest victory of the midterm elections, and Sen. Hawley then exceeded all expectations.

He earned a coveted seat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and quickly became its strongest member. Rather than rubber-stamp nominations as his colleagues had been doing, Sen. Hawley went to work.

He blocked the confirmation of a liberal nominated to the federal bench, despite intense pressure to stand down. Michael Bogren, who compared religious liberty by a Catholic farmer to views of the KKK, had been nominated for a lifetime position in the Western District of Michigan.

Other Senate Republicans seemed just fine with this nomination, even after Bogren aggressively defended his extreme view under questioning by Senator Hawley during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. But once Hawley led on this, other Republicans felt compelled to follow.

Bogren ultimately withdrew, enabling Hawley to set the precedent that similar future nominees will not be confirmed. Too many nominees by Presidents Reagan and the two Bushes sailed through the U.S. Senate despite being closet liberals.

Democratic candidates for president should take note also. When Ruth Bader Ginsburg was nominated for the Supreme Court despite a track record of supporting abortion and even opposing laws against statutory rape of underage girls, Republicans failed to ask her a single meaningful question and voted almost unanimously for her.

Hawley also took on Big Tech, while other senators were afraid to. He sponsored legislation against censorship by internet giants, which exclude or marginalize conservative speech.

Hawley promoted the America First agenda of Donald Trump, while other Republican senators waste their time and ours by talking about impeachment. In one of the finest speeches of the year, Hawley declared that we should adopt pro-America policies and reject the failed globalism approach of the past.

Many others also deserve recognition for standing strong for conservative principles in 2019. President Donald Trump himself, of course, has taken an inhuman amount of abuse by the Left and yet finishes 2019 with numerous impressive achievements, from the economy to the courts.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) and other House Republicans were so vigorous in their defense of President Trump that liberals could merely obtain impeachment articles which are not worth the paper they are written on. The only history that was made by Nancy Pelosi and her crew was in withholding their bogus impeachment from the Senate.

Attorney General Bill Barr did a splendid job in cutting off the gravy train that Robert Mueller and his political hacks rode for two years. Barr published reports that thoroughly discredited the false allegations by liberals against President Trump concerning the 2016 presidential election.

Barr delivered a speech at Notre Dame in October in which he criticized the mandatory LGBT curriculum which is being imposed on New Jersey public schools. He lamented “the steady erosion of our traditional Judeo-Christian moral system and a comprehensive effort to drive it from the public square.”

Barr is fighting that erosion in a case pending before the U.S. Supreme Court, on appeal from a liberal decision by the Montana Supreme Court. That state court prohibited allowing state scholarships to go to students who are attending religiously affiliated schools, a ban that undermines religious liberty.

A “shout-out” also belongs to those who stood against the Never-Trumpers in the Republican Party while they continued to nitpick and betray our president. Nikki Haley, who served as Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, exposed a scheme in the White House to go around him, which she rejected.

And let’s not forget the ordinary people who deserve recognition for their conservative actions this past year. Special thanks are warranted to the lifelong British Labour Party voters who repudiated their own political party as it lurched leftward, thereby burying it in a landslide loss not seen since before World War II.

On the other side of the world, there were the courageous protesters in Hong Kong who successfully stood against tyrannical demands by Communist China. They forced China to withdraw its extradition legislation which would have snuffed out remaining freedoms in Hong Kong by enabling China to punish Hong Kong residents through the use of the corrupt Chinese justice system.

Finally, there were liberals who also made 2019 a special year. Jeffrey Epstein did everything liberals like Bill Clinton could have asked for, including protecting him in the end.

Hunter Biden was a gift to conservatives in 2019 who keeps on giving. His dad Joe wants to defy any subpoena by the Senate to avoid explaining how the notorious Hunter ended up living in a multimillion-dollar mansion in posh Hollywood Hills.

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.

Monday, December 23, 2019

Dems Exploit Digital Advantage

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Republicans continue to be right on the issues, but Democrats are leveraging their digital advantage to win elections. With Big Tech in their corner, they expect to run over the GOP in 2020.

Consider the fortune that Mike Bloomberg has reportedly spent on social media ads, through a secretive firm called Hawkfish and other organizations. His gun control group spent more on the Virginia election than the NRA did, and Democrats scored landslides there in its recent elections.

“In God we trust. Everyone else bring data,” is a slogan used by Bloomberg, who became one of the wealthiest in the world by selling terminals to process stock market data.

He announced that he would spend more than $100 million on digital ads against President Trump. Already Bloomberg’s campaign has spent $13 million on Facebook and Google ads.

Swing voters who decide elections are more likely to be using the internet than watching television. Young voters, who were credited with electing Obama in 2008 and 2012 but then did not turn out to vote as much for Hillary Clinton, obtain their information almost exclusively online.

The viewers of cable television are senior citizens who grew up watching the tube, rather than YouTube. Relatively few elderly voters are undecided about the upcoming election, or any election, and outcomes are determined instead by the voter turnout of young people who don’t watch cable news.

Obama used digital media to turn out young voters in record numbers to elect and reelect him. Hillary Clinton, though flush with more campaign dollars than she could spend, was much less effective with this group.

President Trump knows the significance of digital communications and uses it daily through his Twitter account. He gave a boost to Republican candidates in 2019 and the outcomes would have been better if other Republicans tried as hard online as Trump does.

Bloomberg’s Hawkfish has no public website but is the “primary digital agency and technology services provider for the campaign” of Bloomberg for president, its campaign spokeswoman Julie Wood said to CNBC. It will also assist races by other Democrats in the future.

So far, the results of this digital push have been extraordinary. Dems racked up victories in conservative strongholds of Kentucky and Louisiana, winning the governorships in both in 2019, and rolled up a sweep of the statehouse in Virginia.

They have made gun control their top priority, and the Equal Rights Amendment #2, in their legislative agenda in Virginia starting on January 8th. Gun control in particular has long been the defining issue for Bloomberg since he was mayor of New York City for three terms, from 2002 to 2013, where he overcame his term limit.

He’s running for the Democratic nomination for president now, which few give him any chance of winning. But he is pouring some of his unfathomable wealth into this digital push for other Democratic candidates, and this could have a terrible impact on the 2020 elections.

His news outlet, Bloomberg News, gives all the Democratic candidates an additional advantage. Bloomberg News has promised not to cover its founder’s campaign for president, but will continue to bash President Trump for the benefit of all the Democrats.

It does not help that Big Tech is also on the side of the liberal candidates, and has nearly monopolized key parts of the internet such that conservatives are impeded from getting their message out. The ineffectiveness of the GOP in responding to Big Tech is partly due to disagreements about how to react.

Some advocate that Republicans form their own digital platforms to rival the liberal Silicon Valley leviathans. At a minimum, a GOP rival to Hawkfish should be formed, and before it is too late.

Bloomberg is hiring from the ranks of predominantly liberal high-tech companies. Former Facebook Chief Marketing Officer Gary Briggs has become the digital director of Mike Bloomberg 2020, and the former Foursquare CEO Jeff Glueck has joined Hawkfish.

The Hawkfish employees are working hard, as Bloomberg expects for all his companies. Glueck posted on Twitter that “this is a seven-day-a-week workplace through Super Tuesday and beyond.”

There is plenty of cash and enthusiasm on the Republican side to compete with the Left for the support of young people online. But it is less clear if GOP party officials will focus on young voters as necessary to win.

In the past, party consultants have soaked up millions of dollars for themselves by placing ineffective ads on television while pocketing enormous commissions for themselves. A GOP rival to Hawkfish would be better.

Many young voters do not agree with the extreme positions on abortion, the Second Amendment, and transgenderism taken by the Democratic candidates for president. But will Republicans ensure that this key voting bloc sees the GOP message online?

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, December 17, 2019

Not Just Brexit

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

The political earthquake in the election across the Atlantic, where conservatives won in a landslide, has sent shock waves to the Democratic candidates for president here. The media reports that Great Britain voters embraced Brexit and rejected socialism in handing the British Labour Party its worst defeat since before World War II.

But it is dubious that Brexit, which stands for Britain exiting the European Union, caused lifelong Labour Party voters to abandon the party of their ancestors for the first time. Rather, it is more likely that social issues are what drove the working class voters to send their elected officials to an early retirement.

Like the Democratic Party here, the Labour Party has become controlled by the university elite and by big cities. Neither party represents the working class anymore, and by abandoning these voters the politically beneficial realignment became possible.

As in the presidential election in 2016, the new ideological split is based on level of education and the starkly different social views which come from that. University professors supported Jeremy Corbyn with enthusiasm, just as they have supported the unjustified impeachment of President Trump.

Corbyn’s platform called for six years of free education for every adult, plus paid time in order to take courses. His pandering to universities and to students enrolled in them sounded similar to what leading Democratic presidential candidates have proposed here.

But this and other proposals come at the expense of the working class, and they punished Corbyn for it. He lost the election in rural England and Wales, away from the university towns.

Adopting positions popular among the over-educated, Corbyn decried what he perceived as a lack of progress on LGBT+ issues. At the so-called PinkNews Awards ceremony, he thrilled the audience by emphasizing the pronouns by which he would like to be referred, and making that seem as important as his name itself.

A candidate’s serious announcement of which pronouns to use in referring to him or her could have been a joke a few years ago in a Saturday Night Live skit. But Corbyn was completely serious, as was Elizabeth Warren in doing the same thing here.

All the Democratic presidential candidates have endorsed the Equality Act, which would render it illegal to use the wrong pronoun in the workplace. This has support among higher education, but not in rural areas where Corbyn lost his election and where Trump wins big over here.

Corbyn went on to say at the PinkNews event that “the cuts since austerity came in have disproportionately affected LGBT communities, especially sexual and mental health services. That has to change,” he declared.

While Jeremy Corbyn is often compared to Bernie Sanders, the more accurate comparison may be with progressives like Pete Buttigieg and Elizabeth Warren, who also announced “my pronouns” on Twitter. Rhodes Scholar “Mayor Pete,” son of a leftwing university professor, recently attended a lavish fundraiser in billionaire-rich Napa Valley from which leaked photos have outraged working class voters.

Issues of transgenderism and abortion can cause a voter to abandon the party of his parents and grandparents. Churchgoing voters, of whom there are still many in Britain outside of the big cities, heard from their clergy that Corbyn was going too far in his calls for abortion-on-demand.

Even the Church of England, which has historically been reluctant to wade into the abortion issue, pushed back on the extremism demanded by the Labour Party leaders running in this election. The Catholic Church in England also spoke out against the consequences if voters were to cast their ballots for the Labour Party.

A public letter on behalf of the Church of England Bishops promised that they would “vigorously challenge any attempt to extend abortion provision beyond the current 24-week limit.” Catholic bishops in Wales told voters to make respect for human life their top priority, after Labour Party leaders pledged to repeal current laws and replace them with unlimited access to abortion.

In Wales alone, the Welsh Conservative Party took six seats in Parliament which had been held by the Labour Party. Gender politics played so often by Democrats in the United States was disproven in Wales, where three of the victorious conservative challengers were women.

A 14-year-long leftwing incumbent in Wales, Madeleine Moon, was less than gracious about her defeat by another woman who is a political newcomer. She decried that her parliament district "Bridgend now has an MP with no political experience, other than three years on a parish council. We’re in a huge mess in Bridgend.”

The Democratic presidential candidates here who parrot the social stances of Corbyn may feel the same angst amid their rejection by voters. The real “mess” is in liberal political parties which have allowed themselves to be taken over by university elites.

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, December 10, 2019

Cert Denied!

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

In a stunning reversal of fortune for the abortion industry, the Supreme Court on Monday let stand a Kentucky law that requires abortion clinics to provide ultrasounds to women seeking an abortion. This may be the first time in 50 years that the Supreme Court has refused to review a significant lower court decision against the interests of abortion providers.

The pattern since Roe v. Wade is that abortion clinics and Planned Parenthood are nearly always successful in getting their petitions granted by the Supreme Court, even though only about 1% of other petitions are granted.

There have always been at least four votes on the Court to rule in favor of abortion, and only four votes are needed to grant certiorari, or “cert.”

Kentucky passed the Ultrasound Informed Consent Act, known as “H.B. 2,” which requires an abortionist to display an ultrasound and amplify the heartbeat of the unborn child for the patient prior to performing an abortion. An abortion clinic challenged this law as somehow being a violation of the First Amendment, even though no one can dispute that every required disclosure is factual and true.

As nearly always happens in these cases, the abortion clinic obtained an injunction in 2017 by a federal district court to block the law from going into effect. From there it went on appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, which presides over Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio and Michigan.

President Trump has appointed six judges to that appellate court, in a shining example of how important his presidency has been. A random assignment of a three-judge panel then heard this case.

One of the panelists was Judge John K. Bush, who was nominated by Trump and confirmed by a narrow party-line vote of 51-47 in the summer of 2017. He made the difference, as he wrote the decision for a panel that was evenly divided between the other two judges.

He ruled that the Kentucky law “requires the disclosure of truthful, non-misleading, and relevant information about an abortion.” Therefore “it does not violate a doctor's right to free speech under the First Amendment.”

But H.B. 2 “should be subjected to heightened scrutiny and deemed unconstitutional, lest our constitution dissolve, and tyranny be erected on its ruins. I dissent!” declared the Obama-appointed panelist, using even an exclamation point to punctuate her outvoted objection.

The new Democrat governor of Kentucky, Andrew Beshear, has his name on this case but he was unhelpful and the court found that he was not a proper party, in EMW Women’s Surgical Center v. Beshear. The pro-life governor Matt Bevin, who recently lost narrowly to Beshear, was the one who fought for this victory, and the continuing GOP majority in the legislature will prevent its repeal.

The abortion clinic filed unsuccessfully for a rehearing en banc, where the six new Trump judges held strong in defense of the decision. From there the abortion clinic filed a petition for cert with the Supreme Court, where petitions have been granted virtually every time that the pro-abortion side wants them.

Then the big surprise: cert denied. Multiple justices on the High Court surely disagree with the Sixth Circuit decision upholding the ultrasound law, but decided not to take this case and risk a 5-4 affirmance of the law.

The Fourth Circuit, which sits in Richmond, had invalidated another ultrasound law nearly identical to the one that the Sixth Circuit upheld. That means there was a clear split among the circuits, which ordinarily compels the Supreme Court to take a case by granting cert.

Moreover, the Supreme Court has never ruled on the constitutionality of state laws requiring an ultrasound before performing an abortion. So this case would be a perfect vehicle for the Court to bring clarity to the issue.

But ironically the circuit split might have caused the four justices who vote with abortion clinics to deny their petition this time. Had cert been granted and the Court then upheld the Kentucky law by a 5-4 vote, then that would have overturned the Fourth Circuit decision and opened the door to North and South Carolina requiring ultrasounds.

No one knows better than the Supreme Court Justices themselves where they stand on the contentious abortion issue. This denial of cert suggests that there is a 5-4 majority to uphold ultrasound laws, and other pro-life laws.

Many women who see an ultrasound then decline to have an abortion which they had previously planned to have. A picture tells a thousand words, which abortion clinics do not want their victims to see or hear.

This bodes well for another case which the Court will decide in 2020, concerning the constitutionality of a Louisiana law prohibiting abortion unless the physician has nearby hospital privileges, which are necessary for handling complications.

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, December 3, 2019

Medicare for All Illegal Aliens?

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

The rush to the Left by Democratic presidential candidates in an attempt to win its nomination has resulted in a call for Medicare for All. Nearly every Democratic candidate has endorsed the inclusion of illegal aliens in this or similar government-run healthcare programs.

Medicare for All would be a fiscal disaster, whether it includes illegal aliens or not. Elizabeth Warren first drove this train past her rivals in the polls, but it has become a train wreck as her liberal rivals question it.

Warren rose to the status of the presumptive nominee in early October as she surged to a tie with Joe Biden nationwide, and surpassed him in early states like Iowa. Then came the presidential debate on October 15, where Biden and Pete Buttigieg criticized her on stage for the lack of details in her proposal.

Since then Warren’s national support has dropped in half, down to only 14% among Democratic voters. Her support in Iowa has plummeted too, falling by 6% to only 16%.

Warren’s unexpected decline correlates with her full-throttled endorsement of Medicare for All, for which she has released details after being criticized. At a town hall on November 8, Warren confirmed that her proposal would include Medicare for all illegal aliens, too.

“Medicare for All, as I put this together, covers everyone, regardless of immigration status, and that’s it,” Warren declared there in response to a question. The local audience applauded her, but the reception nationwide to her plan has been chilly, even among likely Democrat primary voters.

Her plan would cost $52 trillion, not just billion, over ten years. She is competing with Bernie Sanders, who also supports free medical care for illegal aliens and even a moratorium on deportations.

The reality is that anyone, whether lawfully in the United States or not, can already show up at any emergency room in a hospital and receive free medical care. This has been true ever since Congress passed the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act of 1986 (EMTALA), which has contributed to hospital bankruptcies ever since.

Many illegal aliens have crossed our borders in order to show up at emergency rooms and give birth here in the United States, so that their child could claim American citizenship and thereby provide a basis for relatives to migrate here also. Known as “anchor babies,” they lack a constitutional right to citizenship but their relatives then demand entitlements.

The Democrats’ approach is the opposite of President Trump’s, who continues to work hard to reduce the enormous drag on the budget caused by people who are in the United States illegally. On August 12, Trump announced his new rule that green cards will not be issued to immigrants who are likely to become dependent on government aid.

Since 1882, federal law has prohibited the admission of anyone who is likely to become a “public charge,” or dependent on government programs at taxpayer expense. But, prior to Trump, many government programs were not even considered in evaluating whether someone crossing the border may become a public charge.

For example, government health care and housing have not been criteria for excluding an illegal alien because he is likely to become a public charge, and a drain on our budget. This omission meant that illegals and green card applicants could be milking Medicaid and free housing without scrutiny by an immigration official considering whether to allow them to stay.

New York, despite benefiting from a booming stock market on Wall Street, just announced that it expects a massive operating deficit of $6.1 billion, its largest since the Great Recession more than a decade ago. The cause is the hemorrhaging of dollars in its Medicaid program, a state program intended to pay health care costs for the poor.

New York is a magnet for illegal immigration whom its Democratic leadership has welcomed. It sends to Congress politicians who endorse Bernie Sanders, such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), better known as “AOC.”

Despite Trump’s valiant effort to reduce the issuance of green cards if the recipients are likely to become a public charge, in early October Democrat-appointed judges in three different blue states each independently blocked enforcement of Trump’s new rule. Two of these judges were appointed by Clinton, and a third by Obama.

Trump also properly attempted to suspend the entry into our country of immigrants who are likely to burden the healthcare system. Entitled Proclamation 9945, this would help preserve our scarce medical care dollars for Americans rather than foreigners.

But on November 26, an Obama-appointed judge overturned Trump Proclamation 9945. Judicial supremacy continues to block sensible orders by Trump which would protect our nation against the suffocating financial burdens caused by illegal immigration.

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, November 26, 2019

Respect Needed for Trump’s Pardons

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

The Constitution expressly grants the authority to the president to issue pardons, and this power has been repeatedly invoked by presidents beginning with George Washington. The lack of respect given to President Trump in connection with his relatively small number of presidential pardons is a disgrace.

This presidential prerogative is particularly important when the President, as Commander-in-Chief, pardons a military officer under his direct chain of command. Presidential pardons of servicemen who put their own lives on the line in defense of our freedoms should receive heightened respect by all.

Reports are that Navy SEAL Special Chief Eddie Gallagher’s platoon mutinied against him and prompted the overzealous prosecution of him for crimes he did not commit. He was nearly fully acquitted by a military jury in a system that rarely sides with an accused soldier or sailor.

A blizzard of allegations were made against Gallagher in an apparent attempt by some of his subordinates to destroy him. When it came to testifying in a court of law, however, the allegations virtually disappeared and the prosecutors should have dropped their case.

Gallagher’s acquittal at trial on all of the serious allegations against him vindicated the sailor, and embarrassed the prosecutors. But instead of backing off from their mistake, the Deep State doubled down against Gallagher.

The Secretary of the Navy, Richard Spencer, is a former Wall Street banker lacking in combat experience. His skills are not in hand-to-hand fighting against the enemy, but in navigating the bureaucracy of the Pentagon.

Spencer resisted the order by his Commander-in-Chief, President Trump, to restore Gallagher to his full rank, and to move on to more important issues. But in a textbook example of intransigence by the Swamp, Secretary Richard Spencer persisted in defying Trump’s commands concerning the Gallagher case.

Underlings, particularly in the military, should not be trying to negotiate around their superiors. Trump did not command the Navy to do anything immoral or contrary to the Constitution, and Spencer should have complied with his duty to obey orders.

After he was fired, Spencer appeared on television to criticize our President. When asked the obvious question on CBS to explain “what’s wrong with following a lawful order from the commander in chief?”, Spencer admitted, “Nothing.”
But then Spencer added that “I could not, in my conscience, do this.” His “conscience” somehow prevented him from honoring the equivalent of a presidential pardon?

Spencer and other Trump critics need to take a close look, perhaps for their first time, at Article II, Section 2, Clause 1 of the Constitution: “The President ... shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.”

President Trump’s first pardon as a president was issued to Joe Arpaio, the Arizona sheriff who fought for years on the front lines against illegal immigration. Yet the ACLU persuaded a Clinton-appointed federal judge to ignore the pardon, and the Ninth Circuit is now considering Sheriff Joe’s appeal.

It is a bit mystifying that liberals would be so resistant to presidential pardons when they were used so often by Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Clinton famously pardoned a long list of his friends during his last evening in the White House, and his supporters did not protest.

The soldiers whom Trump has pardoned are not his buddies or donors, as some of the recipients of Clinton’s pardons were. In addition to restoring Navy SEAL Chief Gallagher to his rank, Trump issued pardons to two Army officers, 1st Lt. Clint Lorance and Major Mathew Golsteyn.

Maj. Golsteyn had been awarded the Silver Star for heroism that included enduring enemy fire and assisting a wounded Afghan soldier, but was charged with murder of a suspected bombmaker based primarily on an interview Golsteyn gave on Fox News.

The notion that armchair lawyers should be prosecuting our servicemen for being supposedly too tough on the enemy lacks the support of the American people.

Yet the knee-jerk resistance by the Deep State to Trump began with his very first days in office. Sally Yates, an Obama-appointed holdover in the Justice Department, was fired for defying another policy set by the President because she disagreed with it.

Navy SEAL Special Chief Eddie Gallagher served in combat with valor, fighting hard against some of the fiercest terrorists in the world. The allegations made against Gallagher of violent wrongdoing were evidently false and never proven in court.

Trump tweeted, “The Navy will NOT be taking away Warfighter and Navy Seal Eddie Gallagher’s Trident Pin. This case was handled very badly from the beginning. Get back to business!”

The disrespect for Trump’s pardons smokes the Never-Trumpers out. Let’s hope they at least refrain from criticizing another long-standing presidential tradition, the ceremonial pardon of a live turkey for Thanksgiving.

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.

Thursday, November 21, 2019

Trump is doing what he was elected to do

The NY Times is pro-impeachment all the times, and the more it pushes impeachment, the more subscribers it gets. But it published Daniel McCarthy op-ed explaining:
President Trump was doing exactly what voters elected him to do when he asked President Zelensky to account for Ukraine’s dealings with the Bidens. It’s a question related to the overall system linking American politicians with Ukrainian interests. No doubt Mr. Trump sees that system as reflecting more poorly on Democrats than on his own party or himself. But exposing that system, whatever its partisan overtones, is both a legitimate interest of the United States and something that Mr. Trump’s voters expect of him in light of his 2016 campaign.
Yes, even if every allegation against Trump is true, it is all proper, and even carrying out the wishes of the voters.

Tuesday, November 19, 2019

Impeachment Hearings Are a Bust

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Television ratings for the impeachment hearings have been a bust, far less than the viewership during Watergate or Clinton-Lewinsky. Even the testimony of ex-FBI director James Comey and future Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh drew higher ratings than the Democrats' latest show trial.

Less than 13 million people watched the first day of impeachment hearings, which is only a tiny fraction of the audience for big football games. Polling shows that Independent voters, who will decide the next presidential election, are unplugging this in large numbers.

It does not help the Democrats that their star witness, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, has been discredited by his own supervisor, Tim Morrison. According to Morrison, Vindman is not reliable and his boss Morrison even doubts his judgment.

Morrison, the far more credible witness, found nothing improper on the telephone call held between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. In contrast Vindman appears politically biased by his own disagreement with President Trump's foreign policy, which further undermines Vindman's objectivity.

The opinionated views of Vindman and other anti-Trump witnesses hopelessly distort the hearings. Democrats have delayed testimony by those who are willing to stick to the facts, which vindicate our president.

Morrison listened in on the July 25th call and has first-hand knowledge which several of the other informants, including the so-called whistleblower, lack. Morrison and other witnesses who support Trump’s statements have not yet been allowed by the Democrats to testify publicly.

The Democrats’ game plan is to try to turn the public against President Trump before the most knowledgeable witnesses testify in his defense. On Friday Democrats relied heavily on their witness Marie Yovanovitch, the Former Ambassador to Ukraine who was replaced by President Trump and who has a history of foreign policy failures.

But Yovanovitch had an underpublicized zinger against the Democratic frontrunner for president, Joe Biden. She testified that it was improper for Hunter Biden to take a large salary from a corrupt Ukrainian company while his father Joe Biden was vice president.

Committee member Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-TX) astutely followed up by asking Yovanovitch if she ever raised this potential conflict-of-interest by the Bidens with officials at the State Department, such as George Kent, the deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian Affairs who testified two days earlier. “I don’t believe so,” Yovanovitch replied.

“No one did anything? You see why the president was a little concerned about what happened in Ukraine?” Ratcliffe quickly pointed out rhetorically.

Yovanovitch did not admit the obvious, but it was unnecessary at that point. The failure by her and other anti-Trump diplomats to flag the Bidens’ improper conduct is reason enough for Trump to raise the issue earlier this year.

Impeachment hack Adam Schiff, the Democratic Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, strained to portray Yovanovitch as a victim of bullying by Trump. Schiff even interrupted the hearing to read a tweet by President Trump critical of Yovanovitch, and Schiff pretended that it was a crime for Trump to tweet against a witness.

But it was Schiff, not Trump, who interjected the tweet into the hearing and potentially influenced the witness by reading it to her. Schiff was playing to the media, rather than attempting to ferret out the truth in a fair way.

Schiff further distorted the hearing for the purpose of the television cameras by refusing to allow Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) to release his time for questioning the witness to a female colleague, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY). Schiff apparently thought the optics would be better for his side if a Republican male rather than a female questioned the anti-Trump female witness.

But the staged impeachment hearings are failing to hold the attention of a television audience. Even former Trump attorney Michael Cohen attracted higher television ratings when he testified before a congressional hearing earlier this year.

How long the Democrats pursue impeachment amid pitiful television ratings remains to be seen. Most of the public thinks we should not be sending millions of taxpayer dollars to a foreign country with a history of rampant corruption.

There is no precedent for this bizarre inquisition into foreign policy decisions which are properly for a president to make. Another poll shows that 90% of evangelicals, the voting bloc pivotal to the election of President Trump in 2016, view the impeachment hearings as a witch hunt.

The proverbial national spotlight that Democrats hoped to shine on their impeachment show trial is dim and ineffective. Its greatest achievement may be to force the Democratic senators who are running for president to be in D.C. during the month of January, to sift through the non-evidence rather than campaign against Trump in Iowa and New Hampshire.

In less than a year these impeachment proceedings will be rendered moot by the real jury: American voters.

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.

Thursday, November 14, 2019

Impeachment testimony is fourth-hand

Here is the lead NY Times impeachment story from the top of page 1:
Impeachment Hearings Open With Revelation on Trump’s Ukraine Pressure

As public hearings began, William B. Taylor Jr., the top American diplomat in Ukraine, said he was told President Trump cared more about investigating Joe Biden than he did about Ukraine.

WASHINGTON — The House of Representatives opened historic impeachment hearings on Wednesday and took startling new testimony from a senior American diplomat that further implicated President Trump ...

Mr. Taylor testified to the House Intelligence Committee that he learned only recently of a July telephone call overheard by one of his aides in which the president was preoccupied with Ukraine’s willingness to say it would look into Mr. Biden and work by his son Hunter Biden for a Ukrainian energy firm. Immediately afterward, Mr. Taylor said, the aide had been informed that Mr. Trump cared more about “investigations of Biden” than he did about Ukraine.

A powerful witness for Democrats, Mr. Taylor appeared as Congress embarked on the third set of presidential impeachment hearings in modern times.
Got that? The best evidence is fourth-hand hearsay.

Tayloy said that he had "authority" over the "regular channel" of communications to Ukraine, but was unhappy that Trump had used others for informal communications. Last week, one of Taylor's aides said that he heard Sondland express an opinion in July about Trump cares more about exposing Biden's corruption than advancing the Deep State agenda for reviving the Cold War.

Let's hope so. Some polls have indicated that Joe Biden is the frontrunner to be elected President in 2020. If he is a crook, we need to know that.

Taylor has spent much of his career trying to revive the Cold War by putting troops on the Russian border in order to justify State Dept. budgets. Let's hope that Trump does not care to agree.

But only Trump knows what he cares about. Unless Sondland is a mindreader, he does not know Trump's state of mind. Any such opinion from Sondland is just second-hand hearsay. Taylor's aide is third-hand, and Taylor's testimony is fourth-hand.

If I went to the White House or anywhere else to push for some pet project of him, and didn't get what I wanted, then I might very well grumble that someone cares more about something else. Such grumbling could not possibly be evidence of wrongdoing.

And the pro-impeachment NY Times gushes that this is "startling new testimony"!

This is just a coup by Schiff-Nadler-Schumer, NYTimes-WashPost-CNN, and the Deep State Cold Warriors.

Schiff now claims that he doesn't know who the so-called whistleblower is, even tho Eric Ciaramella's name seems to be known to everyone else, and Schiff is known to have helped him write the complaint.
This will go down as the lamest impeachment attempt in American history.

Tuesday, November 12, 2019

Misguided Politics Drives Impeachment

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

The phony impeachment campaign by Democrats is boosted by an underlying hostility harbored within the Deep State against President Trump’s foreign policy. Long gone are the days when Democrats were the anti-war party, as their own presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) laments.

Democrats and entrenched D.C. bureaucrats are united in wanting to send more aid to foreign countries and to perpetually station our troops in distant lands. The push to impeach President Trump gained steam after he brought our soldiers home from Syria.

“The senior leaders of the U.S. national security departments and agencies were all unified” in wanting President Trump to send military aid to Ukraine, declared impeachment witness Deputy Secretary of Defense Laura Cooper. When the money stopped flowing for the globalists, they falsely alleged wrongdoing by President Trump.

“It’s in our interest to deter Russian aggression elsewhere around the world,” Deputy Secretary Cooper opined. But that is an opinion for the President, not the Deep State.

The American people elected Donald Trump to repudiate the globalist mindset that has dominated nearly every president since Woodrow Wilson. It is not an impeachable offense to stop sending money to foreign countries.

Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO), the youngest member of the U.S. Senate, is a rising conservative star who echoes the America First positions of President Trump. In a speech on Tuesday, Senator Hawley provided compelling arguments against the globalist agenda of the Deep Staters.

“The American public is rightly skeptical of open-ended commitments and rightly tired of endless wars,” Sen. Hawley declared. “We find ourselves embroiled in the longest war in our nation’s history, with no discernible end in sight.”

Our “commitments have been paid for in the dearly earned dollars of the American working class, and in the dearly precious lives of American soldiers. … We cannot remake every nation in our image.”

But there are many enemies of Trump’s America First policy. A high concentration of those enemies are in the Deep State, the bureaucracy in D.C.

The Democrats’ central witness against Trump could be Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, but his deposition was more opinion than fact. Vindman has become the new front man for the Democrats as they decided not to rely further on the secret whistleblower who did not have any firsthand knowledge of any relevant facts either.

An accused person has a due process right to call witnesses. The President should have rights at least as great as those guaranteed to criminals in our courts of law.

Yet Democrats are refusing to allow Republicans to call as witnesses the whistleblower or Hunter Biden, the son of presidential contender Joe Biden. What are Democrats afraid of?

Democrats want to avoid full display of their political motivation behind the impeachment proceedings. The common denominator among the Deep State witnesses against Trump is their disagreement with his America First policy and their disdain for Trump as our Commander-in-Chief.

Nikki Haley, Trump’s former ambassador to the United Nations, earlier rebuffed a scheme by John Kelly and Rex Tillerson to work against Trump from within his administration. She sets an example for others to defend our president.

“There’s no insistence on that call, there are no demands on that call, it is a conversation between two presidents that’s casual in nature,” Haley stated on the Today show in reference to the call between Trump and the Ukrainian president which is at the center of the planned impeachment.

Democrats allege that Trump tied military aid for Ukraine to a request that it investigate corruption concerning Hunter Biden, son of former Vice President Joe Biden. On July 25, Trump merely asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for a favor, but there was no quid pro quo.

Haley observes that it was proper for Trump to ask the Ukrainian President to probe corruption. If the Bidens were not involved in any wrongdoing, then they should have nothing to fear from such an inquiry by the distant Ukraine.

When Joe Biden was vice president, he threatened to withhold $1 billion in aid to Ukraine unless it fired Viktor Shokin, its top prosecutor. Shokin had been investigating wrongdoing at Burisma Holdings, a natural gas company which paid Biden’s son Hunter at least $50,000 a month to serve on its Board of Directors despite his lack of experience.

Nikki Haley points out that “an American should want to know the answer of, ‘Did Biden pressure the prosecutor to, you know, to do what he did?’ And I think there’s a real question there.”

Haley added that “you can question the president, but you also have to question what Biden did.” Yet Democrats refuse to allow Republicans to call Hunter Biden or the whistleblower to testify, and Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) says this failure would render any impeachment “dead on arrival.”

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.

Voices for dignity, intelligence and gravitas

Sometimes it is hard to tell whether the news media is serious with its anti-Trump bias. This NY Times op-ed letter has me stumped:
To the Editor:

A plea from 33 writers: Please use language that will clarify the issues at hand.

Please stop using the Latin phrase “quid pro quo” regarding the impeachment inquiry. Most people don’t understand what it means, and in any case it doesn’t refer only to a crime. Asking for a favor is not a criminal act; we frequently demand things from foreign countries before giving them aid, like asking them to improve their human rights record.

That is not a crime; ... But using this neutral phrase — which means simply “this for that” ... Please use words that refer only to criminal behavior here. ...

Please also stop using the phrase “dig up dirt.” This slang has unsavory connotations. ... Words make a difference.

These are parlous times, and we look to public voices for dignity, intelligence and gravitas. Please use precise and forceful language that reveals the struggle in which we now find ourselves. It’s a matter of survival.
Is this letter a spoof or not?

It is almost as if the letter read: "Please stop calling him President Trump, as that gives him too much respect, and start calling him the criminal-in-chief! Also, Deep State has unsavory connotations."

This is from 33 writers showing off their writing skills. Okay, I am impressed that they fooled the NY Times.

Tuesday, November 5, 2019

Manly Sports Carry Trump in Battleground States

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

President Trump’s high-profile support of manly sports is scoring points for him in the battleground states. While Elizabeth Warren and other Democratic contenders are absent from marquee athletic competitions, Trump is being seen by millions of Americans as an ordinary guy cheering alongside the rest of us.

On Monday, Trump welcomed the world champion Washington Nationals to the White House, after having attended Game 5 of the World Series. Its catcher, Kurt Suzuki, donned a Make America Great Again hat to the consternation of the liberal media.

First baseman Ryan Zimmerman presented a “TRUMP 45” baseball jersey to the 45th President. The Nationals’ principal owner and 18 of its 25 players attended, despite liberal pressure to boycott the event.

The handful of players who skipped this ceremony mostly did not say why, but potential liberal retaliation against Trump supporters is tainting even our national pastime. Newspaper reporters dole out MVP awards and Hall of Fame inductions, and a player who skipped the Trump event is contending for an MVP award for which votes have been cast.

On Saturday, Trump is expected to attend a college football game between the top two teams in the nation, LSU and Alabama. Dubbed the “game of the century,” this is being played deep in conservative Alabama where Trump will be running up the score on Election Day next fall.

As at any large public event, Trump receives a smattering of cheers and some organized boos, but millions of voters in the heartland appreciate his willingness to attend what Democratic candidates avoid. Trump’s appearance ringside at the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) at Madison Square Garden last Saturday was a knock-out punch with voters.

All three of these sports – baseball, football, and ultimate fighting – are manly traditions which have become politically incorrect at the liberal universities where Professor Warren comes from. Millions of women are huge fans of the same competitions which Trump attends, but liberal feminists are not.

A bikini-clad woman, known as a “ring girl,” adorns the ring for ultimate fighting. But feminists do not like that, and have succeeded in eliminating the swimsuit portion of the Miss America contest.

UFC founder Dana White welcomed Trump at Madison Square Garden, a short cab ride from his Trump Tower in New York City. During the Republican National Convention which nominated Trump, White predicted correctly that Trump’s “sense of loyalty and commitment will translate into how he will run this country.”

“We need somebody who believes in this country, we need somebody who is proud of this country, and who will fight for this country. Donald Trump is a fighter, and I know he will fight for this country.”

Trump has been doing exactly that, fighting for our country, while congressmen Nancy Pelosi and “Shifty” Adam Schiff do the opposite by concocting a scheme of secret impeachment hearings against Trump. Rather than cower in political fear in the White House as Richard Nixon did, Trump has come out swinging, to a standing ovation by the American public.

His trip to the small town of Tupelo, Mississippi, attracted a full house at the 10,000-seat BancorpSouth Arena, with many thousands more gathered outside. “I love him 100 percent,” gushed Mary Ann Gannon there. “He’s the greatest president we’ve ever had.”

On Monday night, amid the backbiting by the swampy Democrats in D.C., Trump held a rally at the 23,500-seat Rupp Arena in Lexington, Kentucky, home of the Wildcats college basketball team. “This is better than the Final Four," Trump said, to a raucous ovation inside and by thousands outside.

Even those who were not really Trump supporters are getting in on the fun. A racehorse named “Covfefe,” after a famous tweet by Trump, recently won the $1 million Breeders Cup at Santa Anita, California.

Voters are siding with Trump in the key battleground states which will decide the upcoming presidential election: Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Florida, Arizona, and Michigan. Despite all the Democratic maneuvering about impeachment, Trump leads in these states.

National polls for the presidential election have been almost meaningless, as they should be. California has the most voters but has made itself politically irrelevant by turning so far leftward.

It hurts the Democratic contenders to continue to pander to voters in California, which moved its primary earlier in order to impact the nomination. Hillary Clinton racked up millions of extra votes there, but those votes were wasted as Trump won all the battleground states.

“New Poll Shows Democratic Candidates Have Been Living in a Fantasy World,” screams the latest headline from the left-leaning New York magazine. The Democratic candidates are preaching to their own irrelevant choir, rather than reaching out to independent-minded Democrats in the battleground states where Trump is heading toward a second victory.

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 29, 2019

No More Sanctuary Cities

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

“The most dangerous and shameful attacks on the rule of law come from and in the form of sanctuary cities,” President Trump declared on Monday to the International Association of Chiefs of Police in Chicago. Applause then erupted when he said that criminal aliens should be turned over to federal immigration authorities and sent home.

Sanctuary cities interfere with that process by ordering local law enforcement not to comply with federal laws against illegal immigration. Illegal aliens are protected in sanctuary cities against being asked about their lack of citizenship, and if arrested for a crime they are not handed to federal officials for deportation.

On the ballot next week in Tucson is Proposition 205, which would make this large metropolis near the Mexican border the first sanctuary city in Arizona. It would bar local police from checking the immigration status of people they stop or arrest.

California has many sanctuary cities, but also has a wall along its border between San Diego and Mexico. Arizona, which does not have a wall and is victim to a substantial percentage of the illegal immigration flowing into our country, does not yet have any sanctuary cities.

Even some progressives are opposing the ACLU-endorsed Prop. 205 to make Tucson a sanctuary city. The costs would be staggering, and already state lawmakers are planning to assess those expenses against the city if it approves this bad idea.

Tucson Councilwoman Regina Romero, a Democrat who is expected to be elected mayor next week, is against making it a sanctuary city by Prop. 205. She points out how it would interfere with Tucson police in working with federal officials on drug crimes, human trafficking, and missing children cases.

Arizona state lawmakers are threatening to withhold $130 million annually from Tucson if its voters approve this bill to harbor illegal aliens, who cost far more than that in crimes, social services, and other entitlements. It would make sense for Tucson to foot that bill rather than burdening the rest of the state with those increased costs from illegal immigration.

Prop. 205 conflicts with a key part of an Arizona law that the Supreme Court left in place after a legal challenge. Its Senate Bill 1070 continues to require local police to make a reasonable attempt to determine the immigration status of a suspect when there is reasonable suspicion about it.

Meanwhile, President Trump’s splendid Solicitor General has filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn California Senate Bill 54, which requires officials there to obstruct deportations. The Ninth Circuit upheld the California pro-sanctuary city law despite admitting that it “makes the jobs of federal immigration authorities more difficult,” and even discriminates against federal officials performing their duties.

The often-reversed Ninth Circuit upheld SB 54 on the theory that California “retains the right” to obstruct federal law and hinder federal law enforcement. The Ninth Circuit invoked the Tenth Amendment, which can be helpful in other contexts, as having an “anticommandeering” rule against federal interference with state laws.

But this peculiar interpretation of the Tenth Amendment has already wreaked havoc beyond the issue of illegal immigration. Last year the Supreme Court misused this "anticommandeering" theory to open the door to sports gambling in all 50 states, despite the immense harm it causes.

It is a distortion of the salutary principle of states’ power to use the Tenth Amendment to uphold state laws which flout federal law enforcement against illegal immigration. These state laws, and in particular California SB 54, impose expenses on other states by attracting more illegal border crossings.

“Aliens are present and may remain in the United States only as provided for under the auspices of federal immigration law,” Solicitor General Noel Francisco explains to the Supreme Court in his petition for cert. “It therefore is the United States, not California, that ‘retains the right’ to set the conditions under which aliens in this country may be detained, released, and removed.”

Only Congress and the President can define who is here lawfully. The federal government, without interference by states, must be able to remove those who are here illegally.

Democrats in California, however, see many future voters for their party among the swarms of illegal immigrants flowing over our southern border. That state has lurched leftward as it attracts more illegal aliens with its sanctuary cities.

But as Trump’s Solicitor General elaborates, “When officers are unable to arrest aliens – often criminal aliens – who are in removal proceedings or have been ordered removed from the United States, those aliens ... are disproportionately likely to commit crimes.”

The result, the Trump Administration’s top attorney observes, is that this “undermines public safety, immigration enforcement, and the rule of law.” Both voters and the Supreme Court should reject sanctuary city laws.

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 22, 2019

Nobel Economist Discovers the Trump Effect

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Economics has been called the “dismal science,” but Robert Shiller, who won the 2013 Nobel Prize in economics, is feeling optimistic. Interviewed last Friday on CNBC’s “Trading Nation,” Shiller says a new phenomenon he calls the Trump Effect could keep the economy booming.

The Trump Effect has already been observed on many other issues, from a reduction in illegal immigration to record highs in the stock market. It skyrocketed immediately following the election of President Trump, in contrast with the election of most other presidents.

Many large countries, from Japan to Brazil to Poland, have become friendlier to the United States due to President Trump’s leadership. The Trump Effect has also caused rogue foreign leaders such as Kim Jong-un of North Korea to pull back on menacing behavior against us.

Turkey released a Christian pastor, Andrew Brunson, who was imprisoned near the end of Obama’s presidency. It is doubtful Obama could have obtained his release as Trump did, and hardly anyone ever talked about an “Obama Effect.”

The spectacular enthusiasm at Trump’s rallies are like nothing ever seen before. Recently in Dallas the line to attend started forming two days before the event, and the prior event in the blue state of Minnesota attracted a larger crowd of supporters outside the packed arena than inside.

The Nobel Prize-winning Shiller cites the Trump Effect for the ongoing success of our economy. In 2017 he predicted that Trump as president would trigger a recession, but now gives credit to the personal leadership by Trump.

“Aren’t you worried about danger of recession?” CNBC host Mike Santoli asked Shiller in a recent interview. “What about the inverted yield curve, the slowdown in global growth, or the prospect of a tariff war?”

“The inverted yield curve scare looked frightening at first,” Shiller admitted, “but nothing dramatic has happened. We’re still in the Trump era, and I think that Donald Trump by inspiration had an effect on the market — not just tax cutting.”

Consumer spending remains strong and Shiller, a Yale University professor, says “it has to do with the inspiration for many people provided by our motivational speaker president who models luxurious living.” Shiller says that Trump “makes people ashamed if they look like a loser -- no one wants to look like a loser in this culture.”

Avoiding a recession is dependent, in other words, on Trump remaining in office. The long-predicted recession could occur without Trump to keep the economy going, and Shiller considers the possibility of impeachment to be the greatest threat to continued economic prosperity.

“The big uncertainty is these impeachment hearings. If he survives that, he might contribute for some time in boosting the market,” Shiller explains.

The economic expansion is already the longest in history, which baffles many experts. Computer models predict that by now we should be in a recession.

Shiller explains, “Consumers are hanging in there. You might wonder why that would be at this time so late into the cycle.”

Obama can no longer take credit, three years after the presidential election won by Trump. The surprisingly long-lasting growth must have more recent causes, and Shiller cites patriotism as one of them.

“People here in America think this is the capitalist country par excellence. We’re proud of that, and we’re doing well right now,” observes Shiller.

Shiller sounds like someone singing the benefits of an America First agenda. This should include leadership by Trump far beyond motivating consumers to spend money, such as bringing troops home.

President Trump’s withdrawal of troops from Syria was widely criticized by politicians in both parties, but it sent an unmistakable message that the United States is not going to be the world’s policeman anymore. Our soldiers should not stand forever in harm’s way to protect people who do not even like us.

After globalists insisted that the Kurds were our friends and that Trump should not have withdrawn troops from their controlled territories in Syria, the very different truth was captured in videos of the pull-out. Ungrateful, grown Kurdish men pelted our American troops with food debris and angry slogans.

These videos confirmed President Trump’s view that American troops should come home where they can be safe and helpful to America, rather than risk their lives for people who do not respect and thank us. American soldiers have long sacrificed their own lives to help others, but the lack of gratitude in this situation confirms it is time to pull out.

Liberals have even called for building a wall to protect the Kurds, despite opposing building a wall to protect our southern border against violence and an influx of drugs. Trump is right to focus most on the people he helps the most: Americans.

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 15, 2019

Free Trade Means No Free Speech in the NBA

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Once upon a time, professional sports were popular entertainment free of political correctness, where fans and players could be themselves and say whatever they liked. Colorful basketball stars like Dennis Rodman spoke their mind on and off the court, and fans loved it.

But then Nike, a liberal corporation based in Oregon, essentially took over the National Basketball Association (NBA). The $8 billion business of the NBA became beholden to the $40 billion business of Nike, as sports journalist Jason Whitlock astutely observes.

Nike makes sports shoes but it is so well connected that it became one of 30 companies invited to join the prestigious Dow Jones average on the stock market. Nike heavily promoted the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), and got Barack Obama and Joe Biden to line up in support.

Then Donald Trump won the presidential election by campaigning against the TPP and phony free trade.

But Nike continues to pander to China anyway, and that is what drives the NBA’s censorship of anyone standing up for democracy in Hong Kong. Even a CNN reporter was muzzled when she merely tried to ask two basketball players how they felt about this lack of free speech in the NBA.

“The NBA has always been a league that prides itself on its players and its coaches being able to speak out openly about political and societal affairs,” CNN journalist Christina Macfarlane began.

She next asked whether this was still true. An NBA official immediately cut her off and insisted on taking her microphone away.

Nike is behind this censorship, yet almost no one will admit it. Fortunately at least Jason Whitlock, the African American host of Speak for Yourself, is speaking out against Nike’s manipulation of the NBA.

"This is about a President that won't cooperate with what Nike wants done," Whitlock explained. "Nike is using the NBA and its leverage over the NBA to go after this guy because they disagree with him about his policies as it relates to trade in China. It's very simple."

LeBron James, who has an estimated $1 billion contract with Nike, said a Houston Rockets executive “wasn’t educated” when he tweeted out in support of democracy in Hong Kong. LeBron’s comment was baffling until one realizes it echoes the view of Nike, his lucrative sponsor.

NBA teams are now playing exhibition games in China, but players are prohibited by the NBA from speaking to the press at any time during the tour. Far from sports bringing two nations together, instead it is inflaming the tensions.

Free trade has resulted in censorship and less freedom. The justification of free trade with China was that it would make China more like us, but instead it has infringed on our rights of free speech which have been a cornerstone of our freedom.

Nike is the same company that funded ads featuring Colin Kaepernick and touting the importance of his right to express himself. Yet Nike insists that no one in the NBA express himself by criticizing China as millions of protesters in Hong Kong are doing.

In other words, it is OK in the view of Nike to criticize the American Flag and our President, but intolerable for anyone to criticize China.

Television ratings for NBA games are not even half of what they were in the 1990s, and perhaps executives see China as a market where the league might expand. The Brooklyn Nets were acquired by a Chinese billionaire and suddenly it appears that the entire league has to cater to the Communist state.

The expectation of the British when they agreed to give Hong Kong back to China was that, by now, China would be more like the free world. But the massive crowds of Hong Kong residents who are demonstrating against China show that it has not changed, at least not for the better.

Fifty years ago, “ping-pong diplomacy” was supposed to soften the communist dictators who have run the mainland since their violent revolution. After a half-century of no progress, now we have “basketball diplomacy” pushed with the same false hope.

Diplomacy is merely a charade if one side is not allowed to speak up for its values. With the immense income that the NBA players, owners, and league executives enjoy, one would think they could at least speak their mind a bit.

And yet Nike does not let them. This big promoter of free trade is an even bigger opponent of free speech, thereby siding with China against freedom in Hong Kong and censoring others who are beholden to Nike.

Nike protected its sale of shoes in China, but cannot appease the resultant anger against LeBron James in Hong Kong. His jersey is being burned in response to his, or Nike’s, siding with the Chinese tyrants.

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.

Thursday, October 10, 2019

Lawyer wants Shrinks to pre-judge President

George Conway is a well-respected lawyer who wants to impeach Pres. Donald Trump, but his arguments do not involve any laws or legal precedents. Inside, he uses amateur psychology! We writes in Atlantic mag:
And if a Senate trial comes to pass, ... That’s when Trump’s behavioral and psychological characteristics should — must — come into play. From the evidence, it appears that he simply can’t stop himself from putting his own interests above the nation’s. Any serious impeachment proceedings should consider not only the evidence and the substance of all impeachable offenses, but also the psychological factors that may be relevant to the motivations underlying those offenses. Congress should make extensive use of experts — psychologists and psychiatrists. Is Trump so narcissistic that he can’t help but use his office for his own personal ends? Is he so sociopathic that he can’t be trusted to follow, let alone faithfully execute, the law?

Congress should consider all this because that’s what the question of impeachment demands. But there’s another reason as well. The people have a right to know, and a need to see. Many people have watched all of Trump’s behavior, and they’ve drawn the obvious conclusion. They know something’s wrong, just as football fans knew that the downed quarterback had shattered his leg.
The obvious conclusion is that Conway has Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Conway's complaints are almost entirely about Trump's personality, as if the Constitution said that impeachment is for high crimes, misdemeanors, and annoying personality types. The most annoying is that he is not easily manipulated by others. He fights back against his attackers, and his enemies hate him for it.

Tuesday, October 8, 2019

Democrats: Where’s the Diversity?

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

After a nearly 70-year-old northeastern white woman senator was nominated by the Democrats for president in 2016, Hillary Clinton then went down to a stunning defeat at the hands of Donald Trump. This time liberals promised to turn to their imaginary strength, namely their diversity, in picking their nominee for the upcoming presidential election.

So here we are. Yet the Democrats are rallying behind another 70-year-old dishonest northeastern white woman senator as their nominee, this time Elizabeth Warren.

“When did you first find out you were white?” was the essence of a hilarious question put to Warren earlier this year. After exaggerating her Native American heritage in order to boost her legal career and get on the faculty of Harvard Law School, Warren released a DNA report showing that she has very little Cherokee Indian ancestry.

For Democrats this was supposed to be the year of the African-American candidates, such as Kamala Harris and Cory Booker. Kamala Harris was poised to give us an extra bonanza in diversity, because her mother was from India and her father is from Jamaica, but she has fallen flat as a presidential candidate.

None of these candidates is getting any traction in the Democratic presidential primary. After multiple debates, with another scheduled for next week, it appears that Democrats do not really want to nominate a diversity candidate after all.

Atop the polling and ahead in fundraising is nobody but white candidates: Warren, Biden, Sanders, and Buttigieg. The diversity candidates for the Democratic nomination have all floundered.

Warren’s lack of diversity is not the only thing that she has in common with her failed predecessor, Hillary Clinton. Both apparently also have difficulty telling the truth.

Warren has bragged that she climbed her way up from an underprivileged background, describing her father as merely a janitor. But his death certificate lists him as a flight instructor in the U.S. Army, and his obituary said he was a self-employed businessman.

Elizabeth Warren has made up other things about her background. As candidate Warren she pretends that she lost her job as a public school teacher because she became pregnant.

But in 2008, in a statement captured on video, Warren told a completely different version of why she quit as a teacher. Then she said she wanted to spend a few years at home, and to return to graduate school.

On Monday the Washington Free Beacon ran a story which uncovered the minutes for the Riverdale Board of Education, which show that it unanimously approved an additional two-year contract for Warren. Two months later, the minutes reflect that it was Warren who resigned, which the Board “accepted with regret.”

Ultimately she migrated to the ultra-Left culture of liberal law professors, railing against capitalism and free enterprise. Democrats on Wall Street are so uncomfortable with her that they have signaled they will not support her as the nominee.

Meanwhile, some experts have been predicting that Hillary Clinton will reemerge on the grand stage for a rematch of 2016. After all, why settle for the cheap imitation when liberals can have the real deal, Hillary herself?

Trump is trouncing Warren in a recent independent poll of independent voters. It shows Trump leading Warren by 49% to 43%.

This is a marked improvement for Trump over a similar poll last month, when Warren was ahead of Trump by two points among independent voters. Warren does not run as well as Sanders does among independent voters, but Trump now has a comfortable advantage of 4 points over Sanders among this key demographic, too.
Warren, as a liberal law professor from Massachusetts, is not the type of candidate who could pull working class voters away from Trump. He would have a field day at his massive campaign rallies ridiculing Warren’s duplicity and her many nutty ideas.

Warren wants to impose an unconstitutional wealth tax on every American who has more than $50 million in assets. Such a tax would cause wealth to flee our country, as it has in European countries which have tried that.

Also, the threshold for the tax would be lowered and lowered, such that before long the middle class would be paying a tax on their assets, too. That would deter savings, discourage investment, and induce Americans to carry more debt.

The biggest appeal of Warren to Democrat voters is her potential electability, but if she is not more electable than Hillary then they would prefer Hillary. The media, too, would like nothing more than a rematch to redeem themselves.

Then we would have a replay of the election of 1956, when stubborn Democrats nominated the very same person who had lost in the prior presidential election, Adlai Stevenson. The Republicans won that rematch just as they had won the first time.

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 1, 2019

Dems Try to Censor Trump

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Democratic presidential candidates are trying to censor President Trump and his spokesman, Rudy Giuliani, to prevent Trump from communicating with the American people. Kamala Harris is demanding that Trump’s Twitter account be suspended.

A half-century ago liberals pretended to be supporters of free speech, but now they are its biggest enemy. “His Twitter account should be suspended,” Democratic presidential wannabe Kamala Harris told CNN on Monday.

“I think there is plenty of new evidence to suggest that he is irresponsible with his words in a way that could result in harm to other people. And so the privilege of using those words in that way should probably be taken from him,” she added.

Censorship is central to the liberal playbook to try to regain power, and then reshape America as the Far Left wants. Harris is echoing the views of Big Tech in California, which already censors ordinary Americans expressing conservative views.

Joe Biden just took that liberal censorship a step further by demanding that television networks refuse to allow Rudy Giuliani to speak in favor of Trump anymore. Even the leftwing Daily Beast admits that “rarely, if ever, has one campaign made an affirmative demand that a top aide to a rival candidate no longer be given a platform," as Biden desperately insists.

Giuliani tweeted in response, “Think of the Biden arrogance and entitlement to protection. They believe they own the media and they are demanding that they silence me.”

“They know I have incriminating facts, not hearsay, because they know what they did in selling Joe’s office to a Ukrainian crook,” he added in reference to Biden, who has the most to lose in this brouhaha.

President Trump released the transcript of his phone call with the President of Ukraine, and yet Joe Biden continues to hide behind the concealment of transcripts of his conversations with Ukraine officials during which he may have improperly intervened on behalf of his son Hunter.

The Republican National Committee has called on Biden to release his call transcripts, so that the public can decide for itself how Biden misused his position of power for financial gain for his family. But there is no transparency by the Left while it demands answers by others.

Ukraine, which has been independent for more than a quarter century, should no longer be referred to as “the Ukraine” as though it were still a vassal state of the communist Soviet Union. Ukraine’s president has fully exonerated President Trump amid the false accusations by House Democrats.

But Trump is receiving less due process and constitutional rights here at home. “Like every American, I deserve to meet my accuser, especially when this accuser, the so-called ‘Whistleblower,’ represented a perfect conversation with a foreign leader in a totally inaccurate and fraudulent way,” he tweeted.

The Sixth Amendment in the Bill of Rights guarantees the basic right of an accused to confront someone who makes accusations against him. Yet Trump is being denied this fundamental right while the Deep State circles its wagons to attain its goal of bringing down the president.

It does not matter to the Trump haters that a nothing-burger is at the center of this phony scandal. In this power struggle, Trump’s enemies care little about what the facts are, and instead try to use the process to swing public opinion in their direction.

But Trump’s political base remains rock solid, and smears from the Left are not going to alienate his longtime supporters. Trump himself shows no signs of backing down, and he is often at his best when under political attack.

The liberal Democrats have given Trump the means by which he can galvanize the American people, who are already fed up with the inside-the-Beltway mentality that prevails in the halls of Congress. Trump tweeted out a map of American counties which voted for him in 2016, and it is a massive sea of red showing his broad support.

Yet little can stop the insatiable desire of a lynch mob, which is what House Democrats have become. Ironically the biggest victim of their renewed witch hunt may be the only person thought to have a chance to defeat Trump next year: Joe Biden.

Biden’s political fortunes are being badly sullied by the mud that splatters backward onto him. It is a sign of desperation that his campaign feels the need to censor Rudy Giuliani on television, lest he embarrass Biden further with revelations about Biden’s misconduct in connection with Ukraine.

Giuliani is making up for all his prior missteps in fending off the same sharks who previously circled Trump for prior non-issues. Censorship of one’s political opponents is not something Trump would ever do, but his Democratic rivals think that censorship is the only way they can win.

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.

Thursday, September 26, 2019

Phyllis Schlafly's dying request

In early 2016, Phyllis Schlafly told this to family and friends:

I have participated in Republican national conventions for 60 years, usually as a delegate and often active with the platorm writing committee. It is the common thread to my political life, and some say that influencing the platform was my most important accomplishment.

There have been three Choice-Not-An-Echo candidates in my lifetime, and Donald Trump is the third.

I was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer 2.5 years ago, and given 6 months to live. I am living on borrowed time. All I want to do before I die to attend the Cleveland convention, support Donald Trump, and maintain the conservative planks in the platform. If I can do that, I can die in peace.
Not all of this was said explicitly, but it was all understood by everyone who knew her well. Only close family and friends knew that she was dying.

A gang of six ("G6") Eagle Forum c4 ("EFc4") dissidents had other ideas. They consisted of her daughter Anne Schlafly Cori, and longtime friends Eunie Smith, Cathie Adams, Carolyn McLarty, Rosina Kovar, and Shirley Curry. They repeatedly did everything they could to pressure Phyllis to stop making positive comments about Trump, and tried to get her to promise not to endorse Trump. She refused, of course, and endorsed Trump on the eve of the Missouri primary in March 2016.

The G6 then sought legal action to muzzle Phyllis. They had a law office teleconference that supposedly seized control of EFc4, the political organization that Phyllis founded 40 years earlier. When that did not silence her, they filed a lawsuit to confirm her ouster, remove her from the bank accounts, and fire her right-hand man, Ed Martin. It was subsequently amended with nastier claims, such as alleging Phyllis lacked the capacity to understand her actions, and that she owed the G6 millions in damages because she violated her duty to carry out their anti-Trump agenda.

Phyllis offered to comply with all of their demands on one condition -- that they allow her to keep Ed Martin thru the Cleveland convention, and then effect their takeover after that. They refused. Furthermore, they treated her as if she were yesterday's garbage.

Phyllis recognized the action as a political hit and a personal betrayal. She hired a lawyer to defend the lawsuit. She persuaded Ed Martin to help her become a Trump delegate to the Cleveland convention.

When Anne got control of Eagle Forum bank accounts, Phyllis started another organization, PSAE, that could act as a sponsor to Cleveland political activities, and that could support Trump. The G6 then tried to block that by suing PSAE.

Despite all the difficulties, Phyllis attended the Cleveland convention, helped Trump get the Republican nomination, used the assistance of Ed Martin and others, used PSAE to sponsor political events, and helped maintain the conservative planks in the platform. She died at home about a month later.

Several lawsuits remain. The court has ruled that the telephone takeover of EFc4 was invalid, and that all the claims from the G6 must be dismissed. The court has also ruled against their trick of naming EFc4 as a "nominal defendant", so that they could control the lawyers on both sides of the lawsuit. Some issues remain for a Nov. 2019 trial.

Thus the G6 lawsuits have been shown to be almost entirely bogus. Their only gripes against Phyllis personally were that she supported Trump, and that she resisted their hostile takeover.

Separately Anne has a lawsuit challenging Phyllis's decision to designate Anne's inheritance to help defray to costs of her bogus lawsuits. Trial is scheduled for Jan. 2020. Anne's chief witness is a psychiatrist whom she is paying $200k to review some hearsay opinions that Phyllis should not have been endorsing Trump. The psychiatrist had never met Phyllis, and refused to even watch video recordings of her. One of those opinions came from Eunie Smith, but she now testifies that Phyllis was right about Trump.

In the course of that lawsuit, it was revealed that Anne used her own lawyer to try to trick Phyllis into disinherit me in 2014. This will all become public, if Anne insists on taking the case to trial. The whole situation is going to get uglier before it gets resolved.

Tuesday, September 24, 2019

Trump Debunks Globalism at UN

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

President Trump’s third speech to the United Nations in as many years was a stirring rebuke of globalism. He made the compelling case for an end to the push for a borderless world.

At the 74th United Nations General Assembly in New York on Tuesday, Trump explained how nationalism is good for everyone. By focusing on the people within their own countries, leaders around the globe can bring prosperity worldwide while preserving what is cherished about each nation.

“The future does not belong to globalists – the future belongs to patriots,” Trump explained. “The future belongs to sovereign and independent nations who protect their citizens, respect their neighbors, and honor the differences that make each country special and unique.”

He is the first American President to call out the pernicious influence of globalism: “Globalism exerted a religious pull over past leaders, causing them to ignore their own national interests.” That harmful pull by the “religion” of globalism has misguided past Democratic and Republican presidents alike, he could have added.

One of the harms of globalism, Trump explained, has been the support for perpetual or endless wars. Instead, he observed, “The United States has never believed in permanent enemies.”

“Many of America’s closest friends today were once our gravest foes.” Included in the list of the “gravest foes” would be England, Germany and Japan, all of which are now among our closest friends.

Trump lambasted mass migration, by which illegal immigrants flood a peaceful nation and overrun it with crime, demands for entitlements, and hardships. “Mass illegal migration is unfair, unsafe, and unsustainable for everyone involved,” Trump pointed out.

“The sending countries and the depleted countries – and they’ve become depleted very fast – their youth is not taken care of and human capital goes to waste,” he added. In the United States, “we have taken very unprecedented action to stop the flow of illegal immigration.”

Trump sent a strong message against migration as prior presidents of both parties should have stood for, but none did. “To anyone considering crossing our border illegally, please hear these words: Do not pay the smugglers.”

Trump’s political foes already mischaracterize his speech as somehow being “aggressive” or “red meat” for Trump’s base, as Politico.com put it. But there was nothing aggressive or politicized about Trump’s remarks, which reflect his long-held views and what he was elected to do.

The Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, profusely praised Trump at a massive rally of 50,000 people in a football stadium in Houston on Sunday. Modi is one of many world leaders who support Trump.

Trump’s rejection of globalism included a warning to China about how it handles unrest in Hong Kong. “How China chooses to handle the situation will say a great deal about its role in the world in the future.”

Likewise, Trump mentioned the despair in Venezuela as an illustration “that socialism and communism are not about justice, they are not about equality, they are not about lifting up the poor, and they are certainly not about the good of the nation. Socialism and Communism are about one thing only: power for the ruling class.”

The largest neighbor of Venezuela is Brazil, which is led by another outspoken supporter of Trump. Jair Bolsonaro, who addressed the UN before Trump, has previously praised Trump’s opposition to illegal immigration and wants “to have a great Brazil just like Trump wants to have a great America.”

Trump found time during his speech to call out the media and liberal universities. “Media and academic institutions push flat-out assaults on our histories, traditions and values,” Trump rightly observed.

The Deep State, too, received recognition by Trump, and not in a complimentary way. “A faceless bureaucracy operates in secret and weakens democratic rule,” he declared.

Trump again exceeded expectations by being the finest advocate for the unborn to ever reside in the White House. He told the UN that “Americans will also never tire of defending innocent life,” and criticized how “many United Nations projects have attempted to assert a global right to taxpayer-funded abortion on demand – right up until the moment of delivery.”

While Trump says and does what he promised as a candidate, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has meanwhile caved into the far left of the Democratic Party. The same day Trump was speaking to world leaders at the UN, Pelosi opened an impeachment investigation to improperly try to weaken his authority.

The timing of Pelosi’s unpatriotic act could not have been more inappropriate. She chose the same day as Trump’s speech to the UN to try to undermine him with the politically motivated impeachment inquiry.

Globalism is a stepchild of communism, and neither should be the future. All nations should take Trump’s words to heart about making their own countries great again, and some already are.

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, September 17, 2019

Statehood for the Swamp?

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Constitution Day, September 17, marks the day in 1787 when representatives of the newly independent states along the Atlantic seacoast agreed to form a new Constitution on behalf of “We the People of the United States.” George Washington, who had presided over the contentious convention in Independence Hall in Philadelphia, transmitted the finished document to the states for ratification.

A 2005 federal law sponsored by the most senior Democrat in the Senate, Robert C. Byrd, requires all federal agencies and schools that receive federal funds to teach about the Constitution on this day. Yet many agencies and schools have defied that law by criticizing, attacking and undermining the fundamental document that was dedicated “to form a more perfect union.”

One such lawless federal agency is the District of Columbia itself, the wholly owned enclave on the Potomac River which comprises the seat of our national government. The mayor, delegate, and other officials, whose high salaries are indirectly paid by taxpayers throughout the nation, are celebrating Constitution Day by trying to overturn the very provision that created Washington, D.C.

H.R. 51, a bill to make the District of Columbia the 51st state, was introduced on the first day of the new Democrat-controlled Congress by Eleanor Holmes Norton, who has been D.C.’s non-voting Delegate for the past 29 years. The House Oversight and Reform Committee, chaired by Elijah Cummings of Baltimore, plans to hear testimony this week from Mayor Muriel Bowser and other D.C. officials.

The partisan purpose of such a move is to give Democrats in Congress two new liberal senators and one new seat in the House. The territory cast 93 percent of its votes for Hillary Clinton and only 4 percent for Donald Trump, and the Democratic Party would ensure that only very liberal politicians would represent it in Congress.

The decision to put our national government in its own separate territory, outside the boundaries of any state, was one of the pivotal compromises essential to reaching agreement at the Philadelphia convention in 1787. Perhaps James Madison foresaw the dangers of giving the “swamp” power when he wrote in Federalist No. 43 that it was an “indispensable necessity” to prevent U.S. government officials from becoming dependent on local residents who would wield too much influence.

Statehood for D.C. is not a new idea. One prior effort sought to rename D.C. as the State of New Columbia, but political correctness today prevents naming anything after Christopher Columbus anymore!

As the longstanding “delegate” from D.C. to Congress, Eleanor Holmes Norton can already serve on committees and speak on the House floor. She has federally funded offices and an official website at house.gov just like the real congressmen who represent the 50 states.

She already calls herself a “Congresswoman” and she takes positions on pending legislation, such as working against a pro-life bill introduced by Congressman Chris Smith to limit the funding of abortion in D.C. Her background includes signing the “Black Woman’s Manifesto,” which in 1970 expressed views of radical feminism and blamed capitalism for oppressing women and minorities.

She has been a supporter of legislation expanding abortion and even prohibiting states from limiting it. She has received the endorsement of EMILY’s List, a PAC that supports the election of politicians who want unrestricted, taxpayer-funded access to abortion.

Eleanor Holmes Norton is not a full voting member of Congress, at least not yet. But she would probably become one, perhaps even in the U.S. Senate, if H.R. 51 ever became law.

More than 200 congressmen, all Democrats, co-sponsor her bill to create a new state called the State of Washington, Douglass Commonwealth. The proposed name does not even sound like a real state, but political correctness run amok.

Many of the arguments for making D.C. a new state could apply to Puerto Rico and other commonwealths and territories of the United States. But the case for D.C. statehood is much weaker, because the Constitution specifically envisioned a neutral location for the federal government.

Washington’s 68 square miles were voluntarily conceded by Maryland to the United States for use as our nation’s capital, not to create a new state having equal power as itself. If the real desire is to provide representation in Congress for those who live within D.C., then the Maryland delegation could represent the people of D.C., too.

But such representation is not what the drive for D.C. statehood is really about. Instead, Democrats want two more senators to shift the balance of power to their side in the U.S. Senate.

Following the admission of Hawaii and Alaska as states, the Democratic senators from Hawaii are offset by Republican senators from Alaska. Empowering the Swamp with two partisan Democratic senators by making D.C. a state is both unconstitutional and contrary to the interests of all 50 states.

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.