Tuesday, December 28, 2021

Trump’s Passion Propels GOP

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

As we close the books on 2021, the award for worst prediction of the year was that Donald Trump would somehow fade from political influence. Anti-Trumper Karl Rove gushed last February 11 that Trump was “effectively tarnished for all time and incapable of running in 2024.”

Rep. Liz Cheney may have taken Rove’s advice or agreed with it, foolishly betting her political future on a banishment of Trump from the political stage. Instead, it is Cheney who is being shown the door and will likely be humiliated in her own upcoming primary.

Democrat John Kerry, whose presidential ambitions crashed in defeat to George W. Bush in 2004, declared in April that it will not “be possible for Trump to come back.” More wishful thinking from the man in charge of shutting down America’s energy industry, as Trump roars back to lead the Republican Party into the 2022 midterms.

In contrast with blander politicians, Trump’s heartfelt passion propels the GOP to a status that it has never had in our lifetimes. He and his outspoken supporters, such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), have turned the tables on the bipartisan Establishment in Washington.

“Good morning Deputy Warden,” Rep. Greene tweeted on a Saturday earlier this month, “How’s the DC Gulag this morning?” The “DC Gulag” refers to the inhumane jail that continues to hold dozens of Trump supporters. Kathleen Landerkin, the deputy warden responsible for the brutal conditions there, had tweeted a string of vile anti-Trump comments, before deleting her account a few hours after Rep. Greene called her out.

Fourteen congressmen, including House Republican leader Andy Biggs (R-AZ), signed a letter sent on December 16 demanding that the biased deputy warden be fired. Meanwhile judges have not held a single trial of any of the more than 725 charged in connection with the January 6th rally in D.C., despite the Sixth Amendment requiring a speedy trial and the Speedy Trial Act guaranteeing one within 70 days.

Trump has endorsed 78 Republicans for the upcoming year, a number that will greatly expand. Trump had a near-perfect record of endorsements in 2021, with only a slight miss in Texas when no Democrat qualified for the runoff such that another Republican won with Democrat votes.

A slew of tremendous new candidates have entered races based on Trump's encouragement and endorsements. Trump is bringing bold, fresh, energetic candidates into the political arena, like Joe Kent, who is challenging an anti-Trump Republican incumbent in Washington’s 3rd district.

A combat veteran of 11 overseas deployments, Joe Kent has become a leading voice in opposition to needless foreign wars which are being fomented by those who failed to heed the lessons of Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Afghanistan. Joe Kent will join a class of great Trump-endorsed Republicans who include Reps. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) and Lauren Boebert (R-CO).

Trump deserves the credit for transforming the Republican Party from a perennial also-ran status into the side favored to win. Unlike Richard Nixon and George H.W. Bush, both of whom gave up, Trump has never backed down while withstanding far greater pressure.

Phantom votes, which are ballots cast in the names of people who never personally filled them out or are not legitimate residents, were not enough to save liberals in the recent Virginia elections. As redistricting gives Republicans the opportunity to win many new seats, including 6 of Arizona’s 9 districts, phantom votes will not enable Democrats to hold onto Congress either.

A year after the divisive 2020 election, Biden has failed to deliver on his promise to unite the country, or even extend an olive branch to the 75 or so million who voted for Trump and still support him. Biden’s lack of charity to his opponents has made it politically easier for Republicans to build momentum for the midterm elections next fall.

Biden should follow the example of our first president, whose authority was challenged by the anti-tax Whiskey Rebellion in Western Pennsylvania in 1794. After he got on horseback and personally led troops to put down the armed riots, which the governor was unable to quell, President Washington pardoned the convicted offenders, although they had put him in personal danger.

It may be vindictiveness that is preventing Biden from pardoning his political opponents, in contrast with how Trump mercifully pardoned or commuted the prison sentence of Democrats including Rod Blagojevich. Or delusional House Democrats may think that their strategy of seeking revenge against Trump supporters will gain them votes next November.

Ratcheting up their sham investigations, House Democrats now demand that Republican leader Jim Jordan (R-OH) answer questions about January 6th. But the Democrat leaders are the ones who should be answering questions, starting with their inhumane continued imprisonment without a trial of Trump supporters in the DC Gulag.

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

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

Tuesday, December 21, 2021

Rural America Stops Biden

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

“Why are we allowing someone that makes $500,000 to get a discount on an electric vehicle? That doesn’t make any sense to me at all,” Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) declared while stopping Biden’s $2 trillion boondoggle misnamed the Build Back Better (BBB) Act.

The socialists seeking to control our energy have no satisfactory answer to Senator Manchin’s criticism. Biden’s BBB would rob from the poor and middle class, to give to the elite under the guise of climate change.

The BBB includes a whopping $7,500 tax credit to purchase electric vehicles, which would mostly benefit the wealthy. The legislation also contains $5 billion to build electric vehicle charging stations nationwide, plus $2.5 billion for grants to mostly liberal groups to construct charging stations in disadvantaged areas.

Another $900 tax credit, which could be doubled for couples earning up to $150,000, is for those who buy a battery-powered “e-bike” to avoid the strenuous exercise of pedaling a traditional bicycle.

Rural America, speaking through Sen. Joe Manchin, has asserted itself against this endless theft by the coastal elite. Democrats are apoplectic that one of their own has torpedoed Biden’s centerpiece legislation, but Manchin is speaking for all of rural America in blocking the BBB.

It is the 39-point margin by which Trump won West Virginia that doomed Biden’s agenda. A state that Bill Clinton carried 25 years ago has swung completely to the Republican side.

Sen. Manchin first won his seat in a special election by campaigning hard against Barack Obama’s anti-coal agenda in 2010. Manchin is up for reelection in 2024 and there is no Democratic presidential candidate who will help him win with rural voters.

Without a big-city Democratic machine to deliver votes, West Virginia’s elections can’t be stolen as they are in other states. There is no Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, or Atlanta in the Mountain State, as West Virginia is known.

Election results are tallied quickly after residents cast legitimate ballots. Returns are not withheld until after Election Day as done in Democratic strongholds.

National Democrats have tried to embarrass Sen. Manchin, but it only backfired. He observed that some of the tactics used by the White House staff against him have been “absolutely inexcusable."

The true embarrassment is by liberals who vowed to enact this bad legislation. Even now top Democrats plan to hold a vote on this bill early next year, to increase pressure on Manchin.

A vote should help the GOP, as rural regions including southern parts of Illinois and New Jersey have swung sharply pro-Trump. Big cities are what have kept these states in the Democrat column, while mostly rural West Virginia is free of dominance by machine and media-driven politics.

The rebellion by rural America against cities and their media is apparently behind Manchin’s stance as much as the energy issue is. He opposed the expanded child tax credits in the BBB legislation as strongly as he opposed the green energy handouts.

Taxpayer-funded child care amounts to taking from the rural poor and giving their money to wealthier people in the cities, where fewer parents raise their own kids. In rural West Virginia most parents raise their own children, so the massive child care credits in BBB would further redistribute wealth from Manchin’s constituents.

Rural America remains an untapped reservoir of support for Republicans. There is not much more in voter turnout that can be found in big cities, but statewide elections can be swung to the GOP column by increasing the historically low turnout among rural voters.

The avalanche of 23 retirements by Democratic congressmen, including three departures nearly announced earlier this week, suggest that Manchin’s approach is in line with the political future. Two years ago, only 9 Democrats had announced retirements by this time.

These are not merely politicians at the end of a long career who are calling it quits. Young Democrats thought to be emerging leaders are also leaving Congress, which increases the chances that the GOP will retake the House in ten months.

This giving up by Democrats occurs amid new polling that shows an historic defection of the youth from Biden. Without a strong turnout by young voters, his party has no chance of holding onto power in Congress and the White House.

An independent poll by YouGov/Economist confirms that the biggest drop in support of Biden is among young voters, of whom only 29% approve of his job performance. Fully half of young voters disapprove of Biden now, giving him a negative 21 point rating by this key demographic.

This is the worst rating for Biden among any age group. The party that was built on youthful enthusiasm by the likes of JFK and Bill Clinton has become an anachronistic dinosaur that Sen. Joe Manchin is prophetic to stand up against.

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

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

Tuesday, December 14, 2021

Congress Shows Contempt for the Constitution

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

As it votes to hold President Trump’s top aides in contempt of Congress, the Democrat-controlled House showed its own contempt for the separation-of-powers doctrine that makes a presidency co-equal rather than subservient to it. Contrary to the grandstanding congresswoman Liz Cheney, President Trump had no obligation to remove First Amendment-exercising Americans from the Capitol building on January 6th.

Cheney selectively released some private texts and emails involving Trump’s former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, and quickly distorted their meaning. She falsely insists that they show “supreme dereliction of duty” by Trump even though he was not the recipient of the communications.

Cheney, who is no longer recognized as a Republican by her own Wyoming Republican Party, is illustrating why feeding the Never-Trumpers by giving them texts and emails is a mistake. In generating some headlines in the liberal media, Cheney exaggerated their significance and violated privilege.

Cheney asserts that there were “dozens of texts” to Meadows on January 6th, but the smattering of texts that Cheney improperly read to the public show nothing illegal. Cheney should release to the public her own private communications against Trump, which would show how unfit she is to sit on a committee that falsely pretends to be impartial.

Cheney also released some private texts by a Trump family member and Fox News commentators, while concealing the identity of fellow lawmakers who texted Meadows. Apparently Cheney does not want to incur further wrath by Republicans for breaching their privacy, but she is fine with invading Trump family privacy.

These texts should be protected by executive privilege, a two-century-old doctrine first established by President George Washington. A lawyer who lives in the D.C. area with her big-firm lawyer husband, Cheney surely understands how important doctrines of privilege are to facilitate candid conversations.

As Meadows’ attorney has informed the House committee, the statute on which the House bases its authority was never intended to be used like this amid executive privilege, and never has. The House has not previously voted to hold a former member in contempt for any reason in nearly 200 years.

“The text messages leave no doubt that White House knew what was happening,” Cheney blustered, as though a building itself can have knowledge. Cheney-the-lawyer surely realizes that knowledge by one person is not imputed to another, and what Meadows knew is not proof of what Trump knew.

Moreover, Trump did not command the Capitol police force, or act as a custodian for House members who are fully capable of dealing with political protests without hand-holding by a president. Cheney is well-connected with liberals who run the House and she could have taken action herself to stifle the protests as she now insists Trump should have done.

Let’s see public disclosure of the texts by leading Dems in the House, and marvel at their obsession with criticizing Trump rather than doing their job. Let’s see public disclosure of texts and emails between Cheney and other Never-Trumpers, such as Adam Kinzinger and Mitt Romney.

None of the distortions by Never-Trumpers Cheney and others has worked against Trump, and none will. Nearly a year after the January 6th political rally, many Americans are angry at how Democrats and the Deep State continue to whine about it and even imprison peaceful participants without a trial.

The House committee lacked any legislative justification for recommending that Meadows be held in contempt for protecting the confidences of President Trump. The extent of House investigatory powers should not extend any further than what is related to potential legislation, yet the House has gone far beyond that concerning January 6th.

House Democrats and RINO Liz Cheney have so misused the Committee’s investigative powers that its finding of someone in contempt no longer has meaning with voters. First it was Steve Bannon, whose only “crime” is his friendship with Trump, next it is Mark Meadows, and ultimately Never-Trumpers will seek contempt against Trump himself.

As Meadows’ attorney points out, contempt has never before been rendered against high-level presidential staffers like Meadows who assert executive privilege. This right was established by none other than President George Washington himself, who could be found in contempt under the same approach taken by Cheney and Dems today.

Cheney ranted on Monday about texts sent to Meadows concerning the rally on January 6th, but there is nothing objectionable in those communications. A few wanted Trump to intervene in the rally in the Capitol, but that is not the job of a president.

The misleading portrayal of texts and emails provided by Meadows to the House committee, in a spirit of cooperation, illustrates that the Never-Trumpers will never be satisfied and will not stick to an honest characterization of what happened. Any evidence that departs from their anti-Trump narrative will be ignored, and every exaggeration to try to smear Trump will be attempted.

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

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

Tuesday, December 7, 2021

Leftists Prefer Censorship over Democracy

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

The Left’s promotion of censorship has shifted into high gear. Formerly in the vanguard of demanding freedom of speech, Leftists now openly advocate for censorship of views they dislike.

There is no First Amendment freedom in Europe, where new rules are being drafted by the European Union (EU) to punish disfavored online speech. There is nothing democratic about this push for censorship.

The European Commission is the unelected body of bureaucrats that governs the European Union, whose membership fell to 27 when Britain exited in January 2020. The Commission is expected this week to approve censorship of online speech critical of LGBTQ+, which can mean anything contrary to traditional gender norms.

These new rules against free speech on the internet have not yet been fully released, but they will take aim at vocal conservatives in Poland and Hungary unsupportive of the direction in which the EU is trying to take those pro-Trump countries. Economic pressure keeps those countries inside the liberal confederation.

In April, at the Istanbul Convention, the additional Eastern European countries of Bulgaria and the Czech Republic also pushed back against the attempt by the EU to erode family values. Like Russia, all of these formerly communist countries have seen firsthand the immense harm that liberals cause, and those countries are not returning to the bad old days.

There is nothing democratic about the European Union, as these and other rules are created by a handful of Leftists without any popular support. It is ironic how liberals clamor for democracy when it suits their agenda, while doing the opposite in overriding the will of the people who are supportive of family values in Eastern Europe.

Even Ireland recently heard a public call for it to consider leaving the EU for reasons of nationalism, as espoused by its champion MMA fighter Conor McGregor. A Dubliner, McGregor pointed out that being in the EU makes the Ireland government merely “messengers” and “lap dogs” rather than the independent sovereignty the Irish people sought when they broke away from the United Kingdom a century ago.

Totalitarian new Covid confinement rules imposed by the EU against its member nations, including Ireland, sparked McGregor’s ire. There seems little point in holding elections in Ireland and throughout Europe if an unelected commission of the EU can invent and impose whatever suffocating laws it likes.

Later this week Biden is holding an online Democracy Summit to which he invited more than 100 countries, many of which, like Ukraine, have too much corruption to qualify as functioning democracies. Biden snubbed Hungary, even though it is one of the most democratic countries in the world, and Hungary promptly retaliated by vetoing resulting decisions that would require unanimity by EU member states.

A third of Americans recognize that many elections in our own country are not honest. Democracy assumes that voters should fill out their own ballots without pressure for certain candidates, but liberal political operatives harvest and deliver ballots for a candidate like Joe Biden who does not even have full mental faculties.

Fortunately, pockets of remaining democracy in the United States are reflected in how voters continue to move right in reaction to the tactics by the Left. The highly respected Cook Political Report has just changed its assessment of 3 key governor races to describe them as toss-ups after they were previously listed as leaning toward reelection of the incumbent Democrats.

These are the battleground states of Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin, all essential to the Democrats’ quest to win the next presidential election. Most notably in Michigan, with its prize of 15 electoral college votes, the incumbent Gov. Gretchen Whitmer faces continued dissatisfaction with her dictatorial lockdowns during the pandemic.

Remarkably, the Cook Report also updated its assessment of the Democrat strongholds of Oregon, New Mexico, and Maine in order to reflect growing Republican strength there. Longtime Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR) surprisingly announced his retirement from Congress, rather than stand for reelection in 2022.

The real democracy in the United States is in Republican primaries, where elections are not stolen and people are willing to vote out incumbents who fail to accomplish what they promised. On Monday that was illustrated by the entry of former U.S. Senator David Perdue into the Republican primary race for the governor of Georgia, against the turncoat incumbent Brian Kemp.

Immediately Donald Trump endorsed David Perdue, who will bring a choice not an echo, which was sorely lacking in the anti-Trump governor’s bid for reelection. Governor Kemp presided over a takeover of the state’s two U.S. Senate seats by liberal Democrats, and then he obstructed restoration of election integrity there.

A sweep of the Georgia primaries by pro-Trump candidates would be a big step toward saving our country. If liberals truly supported democracy, they would be applauding.

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

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

Tuesday, November 30, 2021

Fire Fauci

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

“Fire Fauci” should be the campaign slogan for every Republican, as the policies pursued by health official Anthony Fauci concerning Covid-19 have been a complete disaster. The emergence of a new variant should have been anticipated, but instead we learn that current vaccines may be ineffective against it.

Approaching two years into this pandemic, Americans are fed up with the pompous Fauci still in control while disrupting our daily lives. On Sunday he accused Republicans of lying, but he is the one who has put our country on a path of never-ending government control over our work, travel, and even our children's education.

He says that requiring vaccination in order to fly on a domestic airplane is possible as the Omicron variant arrives here from Africa and inevitably spreads across our country. The World Health Organization had been proceeding through the Greek alphabet to name variants, but deliberately skipped over Xi to avoid offending the Chinese dictator Xi Jinping who allowed the original to escape in 2019.

One can no longer deny that the original coronavirus almost certainly emerged from the notorious Wuhan Institute of Virology, yet for more than a year Fauci has either ducked that issue or not been asked it by the lollipop questions he receives on television. American taxpayer dollars may have even been used to develop Covid-19.

Fauci is apparently angry about being mocked by the new “FAUCI Act,” which would cut off funding for highly dangerous “gain-of-function” research in Chinese labs like the one that may have produced Covid-19. Fauci does not take criticism well, but has not heard enough of it yet from top Republicans.

Fauci declared on Sunday that “I represent science” and implied that his policies are “to save millions of lives.” But in fact his policies have fared far worse than the health record in poorer countries that successfully allow over-the-counter access to inexpensive medication such as ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine.

Fauci’s policies have resulted in patients dying in hospitals without receiving early treatment recommended by practicing physicians. To promote Fauci’s vaccine strategy, some hospitals even treat non-vaccinated patients worse than vaccinated ones.

Fauci has failed to facilitate access to early treatment and instead herded millions into vaccination by falsely invoking science. His approach is no more scientific than thinly disguised socialist approaches to other issues, such as energy.

On Tuesday, the president of Covid vaccine manufacturer Moderna predicted that current vaccines will not be effective enough against this new Omicron variant. That demonstrates the futility of the vaccine strategy imposed by Fauci and Biden on many Americans.

After nearly a year of pursuing a vaccine strategy, Fauci and Biden have not saved lives compared with other countries that have eschewed the vaccine. Now Americans are left vulnerable to new variants of the coronavirus while other countries are better prepared with their strategies based on early treatment and natural immunity.

On Monday a Trump-appointed federal judge in St. Louis, Matthew Schelp, slapped an injunction against Joe Biden and his Centers for Medicare & Medicaid (CMS) to block its mindless vaccine mandate against health care workers in 10 states funded by that federal agency. Physicians and nurses on the front lines know best and should not be ordered to be vaccinated.

Once again, the Midwest leads in freeing us from Biden’s suffocating and unhelpful vaccine mandates. Last week the immense auto workers’ union, based in Detroit, blocked the big three car companies from imposing the vaccine mandate against workers there.

Yet Biden, based on Fauci’s recommendations, attempts to require most health care workers to receive the vaccine. By issuing a preliminary injunction against Biden and his vaccine mandate, Judge Schelp explained how arbitrary and capricious it is.

He observed that the mandate could be devastating for access to care at rural health facilities, where shortages in workers are already acute. Physicians and nurses are free to quit their jobs rather than take the jab, which means that the unwanted Covid vaccine mandate has the effect of denying essential medical care to the public.

Judge Schelp found that there is not even evidence that the vaccine mandate for health care workers would slow the spread of Covid-19. He added that CMS even “admits that the continued efficacy of the vaccine is uncertain.”

Judge Schelp was dismayed at how the Biden Administration looked only at comments by the side supporting a vaccine mandate, while completely ignoring abundant evidence submitted in opposition to it. Other courts should follow Judge Schelp’s lead to protect workers outside of the Midwest.

Democrats should realize that Covid has become a losing issue for them, an albatross around their neck. They are not going to be able to scapegoat Republicans or Trump for Biden’s continuing failure on this issue.

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

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

Tuesday, November 23, 2021

Anti-Trump Tyranny in Prison Sentences

Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

When an Antifa protester used an axe to violently crash through Republican North Dakota U.S. Senator John Hoeven’s office window, the attacker recently received a sentence of merely probation, a small fine, and a return to him of his axe. His attack was captured on video and there was no doubt about his guilt.

But when a peaceful man engages in a pro-Trump rally inside the Capitol on January 6, and makes every apology imaginable afterward to the sentencing court, he receives a shocking 41-month prison sentence. He has also been held in jail all year without ever receiving a trial to which he was entitled.

His real offense and those of others receiving long prison sentences is to dare to humiliate the pompous Deep State in D.C. The message is clear: do not embarrass the Swamp creatures or else they will retaliate as harshly as they can.

Trump seems headed to win back the White House in less than three years, and will probably pardon all of them. But in the meantime the 41-month sentence of the harmless Jacob Chansley raises doubts as to why any of the hundreds charged should be pleading guilty before a merciless, anti-free-speech court.

The colorful Chansley had a winnable case had it gone to a jury trial, but he was brutally confined all year in a D.C. jail, often in solitary confinement that many consider to be a form of torture. He was denied a speedy trial even though required by federal law, and he endured hunger strikes to protest his inhumane detention.

Essentially, he was tortured by the confinement until he could be misled to plead guilty in the expectation that he would be released for time served. Instead, the court punished him incredibly harshly for engaging in a form of political protest.

Colonial patriots would be turning over in their graves if they could see how the freedoms they died for have been usurped by this deprivation of fundamental rights. Chansley is being punished for humiliating the powers-that-be.

His judge, Royce Lamberth, was furious that Chansley appeared earlier this year on 60 Minutes. The liberal website Politico speculates that Lamberth even punished another defendant with a surprisingly harsh sentence because a different, already sentenced pro-Trump protester dared to speak out on Fox News.

Defendants have a right to go on television like everyone else. Judge Lamberth told Chansley that he was looking at a sentence of 20 years but both the sentencing guidelines and custom point instead to minimal sentences for political protests. Chansley explained that "I am not a violent man. I am not an insurrectionist. I am certainly not a domestic terrorist," as a jury would have probably agreed.

Meanwhile Kyle Rittenhouse and his attorney took his case to a jury without any plea bargain. Rittenhouse was then acquitted on all charges by the jury, as presumably many of the defendants charged in D.C. would likewise be exonerated if they ever get a trial that they should have already had.

To coerce pleas of guilt by defendants who felt they were doing nothing wrong, imprisonment of them is persisting in D.C. until they break. They are denied reasonable bail and even ordinary visitations.

But while the D.C. protesters, including Jacob Chansley, were unconstitutionally denied bail to remain free pending a trial, liberal defendants are often freed on minimal bail. The man who drove his SUV into a crowd in Wisconsin on Sunday, killing 5 and wounding 40, had recently been released on merely $1,000 bail despite his arrest for allegedly running over his girlfriend too.

A Soros-affiliated prosecutor allowed that Wisconsin massacre to happen. Yet the Left is silent about allowing murderers free on bail while imprisoning political protesters indefinitely without bail.

The Capitol is a public building that should be accessible by the public. Peaceful political protests in the Capitol should not result in long prison sentences that are not imposed on Leftist protesters.

One of the better defense attorneys has pointed out that politicians make a fool of themselves often in Congress, so why the bloodthirsty prosecutions of average citizens who enjoyed it as a circus one afternoon? Apparently mocking the Establishment is considered worse than merely criticizing it.

The lengthy sentence of the Shaman protester is a setback to all Americans who value our First Amendment rights. When sentences are enhanced because a protester is outspoken or humiliated public officials, all Americans suffer from that retaliation.

Nearly a half-dozen of the Jan. 6 defendants have opted to defend themselves in court, which Judge Lamberth said he has not seen done successfully in his 35 years on the bench. One of these courageous defendants observed that “it’s a governmental strategy and tactic that if they can't convict you, they at least want to bankrupt and destroy you.”

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 16, 2021

Trump Takes the Midwest

Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Trump has opened up a breathtaking 11-point lead over Biden in Iowa, expanding on the 8-point margin by which he defeated Biden there last year. The Des Moines Register poll confirms that this key battleground state in the Midwest has turned solidly Republican, thanks to Trump.

The DMR poll, long considered the gold standard for the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses every four years, found that Trump is ahead by 76% to 15% among evangelical likely voters, 64% to 26% among rural likely voters, and 59% to 31% among likely voters without a college degree. Only 33% of Iowa adults say they approve of the job Joe Biden is doing, while 62% disapprove.

Other states in the upper Midwest will likely follow Iowa’s lead. Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota are now ripe for Trump, because he champions the American worker and talks bluntly against the idiocy of the Left.

For the upcoming midterm elections in Congress, Republicans have attained their highest-ever 10-point lead (51-41%) over Democrats on a generic congressional ballot. That is a near-impossible deficit for Dems in swing districts to overcome in order to stay in office.

A whopping 59% of registered voters responded to this ABC News/Washington Post by saying they are looking for someone new to vote for in next year’s congressional and U.S. Senate elections, rather than the incumbent. This is higher than in 1994 and 2010, when Republicans won landslide majorities in Congress during the presidencies of Clinton and Obama.

After two young Never-Trumpers in Congress from the Midwest announced they would not seek reelection, Anthony Gonzalez (R-OH) and Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), the Wyoming GOP defrocked Liz Cheney (R-WY) of the title “Republican.” On Saturday its state party voted that it would no longer recognize the unhinged Trump critic as a Republican.

The possibility of energy shortages this winter due to Biden’s war against traditional energy is pulling more people to pro-energy Trump.

“Loss of natural gas service for some customers is a very real prospect,” said Scott Carter, the president of Spire Missouri, about a looming shortage in that state.

Radical environmentalists allied with Biden have caused a pipeline serving eastern Missouri to be shut down beginning December 13th. A panel of three Democrat-appointed judges on the D.C. Circuit ordered the unjustified shutdown of a new 65-mile pipeline that carries natural gas to the St. Louis area, which has no alternative source of fuel for home heating.

Homes could go cold in Missouri as a result. “Without STL (Pipeline) in a cold winter we don’t have enough capacity in this region to serve our customers, and that’s a real problem,” added Carter.

Interference with access to energy is the result of the environmentalists who supported Kamala Harris in California, and now both her and Biden in the White House. The Midwest is squeezed by the Leftist agenda emanating from California, where cold temperatures are nothing like the deep freeze that occurs each winter in the Midwest.

After first denying reports that the White House was considering shutting down Line 5, a 645-mile pipeline which delivers oil from Canada to Michigan, the White House then confirmed it is studying that possibility. This would create shortages this winter in the Midwest and drive energy prices even higher than they already are.

Biden’s nominee for a position in the Department of Treasury, Saule Omarova, stated that she’d like to see coal, oil, and gas companies go bankrupt. A professor at Cornell University, Omarova declared about smaller energy companies that “we want them to go bankrupt if we want to tackle climate change, right?”

Although presidential nominees normally provide copies of all their published writings to the Senate committee considering their confirmation, Professor Omarova has not given the committee a copy of the thesis she wrote in Russian as a student at Moscow State University. Her thesis apparently admired Marxism, entitled “Karl Marx’s Economic Analysis and the Theory of Revolution in Das Kapital.”

Limiting our access to energy is now the principal objective of the Left, because it creates dependency on government for essential needs of human life, including fuel to travel. Leftist policies for energy control have the effect of making people more beholden to public officials: support them or they shut off the pipeline serving your home in the winter.

Only a third of Americans prepare to go on road trips for Thanksgiving next week, because high gasoline prices have made it too expensive for many to travel. Biden’s war against traditional energy has driven gas to near-record-high prices compared with the last decade.

Meanwhile, Vice President Kamala Harris is being disparaged even by liberal CNN, as its online article cited multiple anonymous Democrats sharply critical of her. The public disapproves of her job performance even more than Biden’s.

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 9, 2021

Vaccine Oppression Stopped by Fifth Circuit

Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Many suspect the California governor of vaccine injury denial during his unexplained disappearance for nearly two weeks after his booster shot, which some say is more dangerous than the original. Fortunately, a unanimous panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has blocked Biden's nationwide mandate that private employers require Covid vaccination.

Sitting in New Orleans, the Fifth Circuit presides over Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Trump-endorsed Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton led this latest charge to stop tyranny by Washington, D.C.

It has been said that the D.C. Circuit is the most important court other than the U.S. Supreme Court, but it is increasingly apparent that the Fifth Circuit may be more significant. The Fifth Circuit is acting more quickly and with greater clarity than the Supreme Court itself.

Last week the Supreme Court juggled its schedule to hold a special extended oral argument for the benefit of abortion clinics, and some justices outdid each other looking for a way to hold against a pro-life Texas law. With immense legal issues facing our country, surely the Supreme Court could have first addressed those that have long awaited resolution, such as illegal immigration.

The Fifth Circuit has no difficulty in upholding good Texas laws, which are attracting hundreds of thousands of Americans each year from the other 49 states. The Fifth Circuit does not favor abortion clinics when it schedules its oral arguments, and does not limit review to cases brought by the same small group of familiar practitioners as the Supreme Court seems to do.

Other federal appellate courts have received petitions challenging the Biden vaccine mandate, but it was the Fifth Circuit that acted. Other circuits have Trump-appointed judges on them, as does the Supreme Court but they seem lost as to which direction to head.

On the vaccine issue, the right side of the Supreme Court has been slow in recognizing that there is no constitutional authority for vaccine mandates by Biden or any public entity. If justices do not want to find a constitutional right not to be vaccinated, they should at least recognize that there is no constitutional authority to order people to be vaccinated against their will.

The flaw in Biden's vaccine mandate includes a lack of any proper congressional authorization, a lack of validity under the U.S. Constitution, and an improper delegation of power to an obscure federal agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).

OSHA was established to protect against injuries to workers. It is hardly the branch of government that should be changing the lives of nearly 100 million Americans.

Yet that is what Biden's vaccine mandate attempts to do, using OSHA as the hammer to pound his senseless nails. His approval rating and that of his vice president are plummeting as a result.

Kamala Harris’s approval rating fell to a new low of only 28% in the latest USA Today/Suffolk poll. Biden’s rating in that same poll was not much better, down to 38%.

He delayed until after the elections in Virginia and New Jersey before announcing his deadline in two months for this, which the Fifth Circuit just blocked. Voters in those two states seemed to know what Biden was up to, and delivered some spectacular upsets against entrenched Democrats.

A Republican truck driver in southern New Jersey, Ed Durr, spent only $153 on his campaign and yet defeated the most powerful Democrat in the state, Steve Sweeney. Southern New Jersey has turned from blue to red, showing that the GOP can retake the Northeast.

Sweeney has been slow to concede defeat, yet the liberal media does not blame him as it savaged Trump. Democrat Congressman Donald Norcross (NJ-01) predicts landslide Republican victories next year in the midterms.

In Virginia, Republicans swept into statewide offices and recaptured the House Assembly, after years of control by Democrats. Transgender crime in public school bathrooms resulted in surprise victories there, while the oppressive vaccine mandates probably played a role too.

Back to California Governor Gavin Newsom, who has been among the worst of the worst in forcing vaccination on others. He took his booster shot in promotion of everyone else doing likewise.

But then he canceled appearances and vanished without fully explaining why to the public. Hardly anyone expects him to be truthful when he returns from his unscheduled vacation.

Most Americans do not have the luxury of taking off two weeks from an adverse reaction to a vaccine or its booster shot. Truck drivers, for example, cannot typically afford to sit at home for two weeks while recovering from a vaccine-induced injury.

Perhaps that is why many truck drivers oppose vaccine mandates, as does the star NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers. He declared the “woke mob” is after him now that he announced that he declined the Covid vaccine.

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 2, 2021

The Great Resignation Due to Biden

Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Americans have long been among the hardest-working in the world. But Biden’s mishandling of Covid has caused millions of our best workers to quit their jobs each month.

The “Great Resignation,” as it’s being called, should be by the occupant of the White House who lacks the mental capacity to do his job. Instead, top workers in every field are the ones resigning, which leaves America without the manpower necessary to keep our great country running.

Americans expect good service, and do not tolerate long waiting lines and shortages that are familiar to people in many other countries. When hundreds of thousands are stranded at our airports, as happened when pilots did not show up for work, millions of Americans were outraged by the disruption.

More than pilots are deciding not to show up at their jobs. Amid a substantial loss in uniformed officers in Los Angeles county, homicides are up by 44% and aggravated assaults have increased by 23%.

In August, a record 4.3 million Americans quit their jobs, which was a shocking 2.9% of our entire workforce. The percentage of able-bodied men who want to be in the workforce has dropped to only 67.7%, from 69.3% in January 2020, a loss of millions of workers.

Academic experts discuss this new phenomenon but ignore that Biden’s vaccine mandates are the primary cause. Trucking and other companies are warning the federal government that they may stop doing business with it unless it backs off of its Covid vaccine mandates.

Last weekend American Airlines cancelled more than 1,900 flights, and then cancelled another 340 flights on Monday morning. Pilots and other airline employees do not like being told to take an experimental vaccine or be fired.

On Monday the socialist mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio, put 9,000 city workers on unpaid leave for being unvaccinated. An additional 12,000 applications for an exemption from the vaccine are pending in the Big Apple.

Despite the heavy promotion of Covid vaccination, it is estimated that up to 25% of New York’s finest – their police, fire, and emergency workers – remain unvaccinated by choice. In Los Angeles, the county sheriff observed that 44% of his 18,000 employees could quit, so he announced that “I cannot enforce reckless mandates that put the public's safety at risk” as the Covid vaccine mandate does.

Who is going to protect us against crime, save our buildings from fires, and arrive with ambulances in emergencies amid all these resignations? Not the handful of politicians and bureaucrats who are imposing the senseless Covid vaccine requirements.

As the Christmas shopping season begins, cargo companies may have the greatest leverage and Biden is noticing their resistance. Our country depends on these cargo companies, particularly this time of year, and Biden should be blamed if shipments do not arrive in time.

Biden’s mandate requires federal employees and contractors to be vaccinated, which affects most businesses having contracts with the federal government. But many of those companies can stop working with the federal government rather than comply with the vaccine mandate, and apparently some will opt out by walking away.

That impacts military readiness because the federal government depends on private carriers to transport soldiers and deliver goods for them. It is hardly fair to the troops for Biden to impose arbitrary requirements that are so oppressive that private companies would rather shun the government business.

“As everyone enters their high season, the Administration’s corporate COVID-19 vaccine mandate for government contractors threatens to be a major stumbling block in servicing our customers during the Holidays,” said Stephen Alterman, president of the Cargo Airline Association, as reported by Politico.

Shortages in everything from new cars to specialty items in grocery stores already plague our economy. The December 8 deadline by the Biden Administration for companies to have their employees vaccinated could cause far more shortages just in time for Christmas.

Trucking companies impacted by Biden’s mandates could lose up to 37% of their drivers, the American Trucking Association has estimated to the White House. Truck drivers, like many occupations that form the backbone of our economy, value their independence and do not like being ordered to take an experimental vaccine.

Democrats have been confident that they would defeat legal challenges to the vaccine mandates, and so far courts have rolled over and upheld whatever the public health autocrats onerously demand. But the court of public opinion is a different story, and workers are free to walk off the job at any time over this.

Millions are doing exactly that. Continuing to work or taking on a new job is a sacrifice of one’s time and part of his life, and fewer want that if it means having to quit to avoid taking another experimental vaccine or booster shot.

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 26, 2021

Gender-Confused Virginia Election

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Democrats attempt to make transformational changes in the American way of life, but the party’s progressive agenda is not playing well in the upcoming election for governor of Virginia. This state that Biden won by ten points last year has become a tossup.

The implosion of Democrats in Virginia is due to the havoc they caused by indoctrinating public school students with Leftist critical race and gender theories. The rape of a ninth-grade girl in the girls bathroom, apparently committed by a boy wearing a skirt and then covered up by school authorities, has enraged parents statewide.

The Democrat-controlled school district had recently adopted a policy that allows students to use the bathroom that corresponds to their so-called gender identity. School districts in more conservative parts of the state had rejected this Leftist policy, which was based on a law passed by the Democrat-controlled state legislature last year.

A recent poll by Cygnal of likely Virginia voters shows the Republican candidate, Glenn Youngkin, tied with powerful Clinton crony Terry McAuliffe, at 48% each. But among parents of school-age children, who represent a quarter of the electorate, the Republican leads by a landslide margin of 56% to 39%.

Another new poll by Emerson College found that education was rated as the most important issue for Virginia voters this year, far outpacing Covid-19. Not only do parents and homeowners have a direct stake in the public schools, but all citizens are affected by what young people are taught there.

School library books are another source of concern for parents. Gender Queer, for example, was found on Virginia public school shelves at taxpayer expense, even in traditionally conservative Virginia Beach.

After verifying parents’ complaints, two courageous school board members called for removing five books with inappropriate sexual content, including the sexually explicit Gender Queer. A sixth book portrays white supporters of Donald Trump as Nazis.

A publisher defended Gender Queer by describing it as resource for people who “identify as nonbinary or genderqueer” and for others to understand what that means. Another objectionable book, Lawn Boy, is about sex between two 10-year-old boys.

Terry McAuliffe may have sealed his own fate last month when he arrogantly declared, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” Some 57 percent of Virginia parents disagree, according to another new poll of likely voters conducted by Fox News.

Barack Obama pompously descended on Virginia to denounce what he called “these phony trumped-up culture wars, this fake outrage that right-wing media peddles.” Brandon Michon, a 2005 Loudoun County High School graduate who now has three young children in the same district, observed that Obama is “tone deaf” for failing to recognize that parents are responsible for the well-being of their children.

Virginia had become a lost cause for Republicans because the northern part of the state is now dominated by federal employees, contractors and lobbyists. But even many liberals are drawing the line at gender indoctrination in public schools, especially if their own kids are affected.

Laura Zorc, director of education reform at Building Education for Students Together, observed that the issue of “parental rights is on the ballot in Virginia. This is not a Republican or a Democrat issue – it’s a parents issue.”

Democrats are so desperate that a video featuring Kamala Harris urging African Americans to vote for McAuliffe has been shown at more than 300 black churches across the state. Kamala’s stunt was denounced by former Democrat Governor Doug Wilder, America’s first black governor, for possibly jeopardizing the tax-exempt status of those churches.

Putting gender-confused boys into girls restrooms or sexually explicit propaganda on school shelves does not help African Americans, nor does teaching them that they are perpetual victims of historical white supremacy. McAuliffe would promote these progressive dogmas without doing anything to genuinely help black students toward greater achievement.

The increasingly ideological curriculum compounds the longstanding problem of underachievement in a state where less than 40% of students are rated as proficient in reading and math. Even Virginia’s top-performing Thomas Jefferson High School in Alexandria has recently turned away from merit by dropping its competitive admission policy in order to seek diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).

As usual, Democrats will try to boost their numbers this election through unsupervised mail-in ballots. A lawsuit by the Virginia Institute for Public Policy (VIPP) presented sworn evidence that liberal Fairfax County issued at least 339 absentee ballots to applicants who failed to provide the last four digits of their Social Security number as required by state law.

Fortunately, Virginia does not send unrequested ballots to all registered voters as California and a few other states do. To Democrats’ dismay, early voting in Virginia shows a collapse in turnout by younger voters who previously voted for Biden.

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

These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.

Wednesday, October 20, 2021

End Public Health Dictatorship

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

The pompous oracle of a handful of bureaucrats is causing job losses nationwide through vaccine mandates. On Monday, even the football coach of the Washington State Cougars was fired merely because he declined to take the COVID vaccine by an arbitrary deadline.

Washington State Governor Jay Inslee, a Democrat who unsuccessfully ran for president on a ridiculous platform of climate change, demanded that all state employees receive the COVID vaccine by Monday or be fired. Supposedly some limited exemptions were made available but the football coach’s request for one was rejected.

Such havoc is wrought by the socialist mindset of public health. The United States has not done any better against Covid than the rest of the world, despite these arbitrary requirements of vaccination here.

Police officers of Seattle, also located in Washington State, are waving Gadsden flags from their official vehicles in protest of the vaccine mandate. The coiled rattlesnake against a yellow background is recognizable to Americans as a symbol of resistance for the cause of freedom, dating back to the Revolutionary War.

Meanwhile, another kind of news emerged on Monday. Colin Powell died from Covid despite having been fully vaccinated against the disease.

Had Powell not been vaccinated, the storyline would have been a clarion call for all the unvaccinated to drop their resistance. Instead, the liberal spin is to criticize anyone who cites this example as a legitimate reason to wonder about whether the vaccine really works and whether the mandates are justified.

Poorer countries have fared better than the United States in dealing with Covid. Early and preventive treatment in many countries, such as access to over-the-counter hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, seems more effective in combating the disease than the experimental vaccine has been.

Yet almost no court has been willing to rule against public health officials, even when they overstep far beyond their authority. Last summer the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a moratorium by the CDC on evictions by private property owners, while meekly mentioning with timorousness that the moratorium should not last forever.

Everyone from the president on down has given breathtaking deference to a small group of unelected, underachieving technocrats who pretend they know better than our physicians. Patients unlucky enough to end up in a hospital find that their own physicians cannot even prescribe them medication due to senseless guidelines issued by bureaucrats.

The vaccine mandates have consequences far beyond their dubious impact on public health. A labor shortage has developed to cause a supply chain crisis, which is restricting access by many Americans to ordinary goods that we need and casting a cloud over upcoming shopping for Christmas.

Roughly 20% of truck drivers are unvaccinated, and there is no reason why such a job should face any vaccine mandates. Their contact with others is minimal, as many truck drivers ordinarily sleeping in their own rigs during their long trips.

The cross-border truck traffic between the United States and Canada is an essential part of keeping goods flowing. A rise in vacant truck jobs could skyrocket as the vaccine mandate comes down against the trucking industry, thereby worsening the supply chain problems.

Southwest Airlines, once an exciting place to work, is experiencing no-shows by pilots which caused surprise cancellations of thousands of its flights. On Monday, employees stood outside its Dallas headquarters with signs including “jobs, not jabs” and “freedom, not force.”

Companies are trying to justify their imposition of vaccine mandates on workers by citing Biden’s edict that all employers having at least 100 employees impose the requirement of being jabbed. But doubts grow about whether the Constitution grants the federal government that authority, and no regulations have been issued requiring it.

A majority of the Supreme Court felt in 2012 that there was not a constitutional basis for imposing Obamacare, and it survived only due to a contrived interpretation of the law as a tax. But there is no tax in the vaccine mandate, so it should be as unconstitutional as Obamacare would have been.

A timid decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, which no judge signed, ordered Western Michigan University to at least have the courtesy of informing football players why their religious exemptions were rejected. The players successfully sued after their exemptions were denied, and the court should have tossed out the mandate entirely.

Football players risk far more to their health by playing the violent game than they do from possibly being exposed to Covid-19. These and other examples of overreach in imposing the vaccine mandate illustrate that this game is not about health, but about power.

Dictators grab control as long as others allow it. It is overdue for courts and politicians to end this power grab disguised as vaccine mandates.

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 12, 2021

Biden Down to 38%

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Joe Biden has declined to 38%, and not just in his mental capacity. The reliable Quinnipiac poll announced that Biden’s disapproval has risen to 53% while his approval falls to only 38%.

Interviews of ordinary Democrats confirm the dismay, as reported by Politico, that many have about their own president and his inadequate performance. Their legislation on Capitol Hill has stalled, and nothing seems to be accomplished even though Dems control both Congress and the White House.

An historically low approval rating for a president means that the candidates in his party face landslide defeats in the midterm elections, as happened in 1946, 1994, and 2010. The governor’s race in Virginia next month, once considered a safe Democrat seat amid a sea of government workers, has shifted to a toss-up.

Obama’s adviser Susan Rice is apparently making decisions in the White House now, but most of the public does not even know who she is. Biden is mentally incapable of giving a press conference or holding an event that might restore the lost public confidence in him.

No one, other than Trump supporters, is quite sure why Biden’s ratings have dropped so sharply. Some attribute it to a Covid-19 “malaise,” while others cite Biden’s mishandling of the Afghanistan pullout and the flooding of our country with refugees.

The goal of Democrats to have Biden as a placeholder in the Oval Office until an electable liberal can be found is not working. No electable Dem successor is on the horizon, and Democrats face three more years of decline until Trump will be on the ballot again.

Loud protesters greeted Biden when he went to Michigan recently, a state that he reportedly won without a meaningful audit. "We’re going to support Trump still until he’s put back in," Philip Ludwig told the Detroit News.

Trump seizes the day, in ways that only he can. On Saturday he held a spectacular rally at the Iowa State Fairgrounds, which liberals lament surpassed his earlier rallies this year.

Trump let it rip by emphasizing that he never conceded to Joe Biden in the presidential election last year, and more audits should be ordered. Despite criticizing Trump for his rhetoric, liberals are stunned that 91% of Iowa Republicans support Trump.

On stage with Trump was Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA), the 88-year-old Iowa farmer who leads his opponent by 15 points in the polls. The crowd went wild as Trump endorsed Grassley, who enthusiastically accepted the endorsement.

Everyone knows how important securing the border is to Trump, but he said that there is one issue that is even more important. That issue is ending election fraud by the Left as it steals elections.

Trump's leadership in opposing election fraud puts him a mile ahead of every other politician. The Never-Trumpers continue to deny the importance of this issue, which if not rectified will result in permanent one-party rule by Democrats.

Look no further than California, where a groundswell movement to recall its tyrannical Governor Gavin Newsom was shut down by a porous mail-in system enabling unverified voting. Then California Dems made their anything-goes style of voting permanent, which ensures it will continue to be a one-party state.

Not so in Iowa and the rest of the Midwest, where election integrity is taken seriously and Trump is immensely popular. Trump enjoys a 53% approval rating in Iowa, the same number that disapproves of Biden nationwide.

Future presidential elections and key votes in Congress will be decided by the Midwest, stretching from Pennsylvania in the east to Oklahoma in the southwest. America’s most famous painting is "American Gothic," which depicts a skeptical Iowa farmer standing next to his homely daughter, armed with a pitchfork if needed to defend their farmhouse.

That defense is needed now, as the East and West Coast increasingly rob the Midwest on energy and other issues. Drought-ravaged California just banned gasoline-powered lawnmowers, which are necessary in the fertile Midwest on a weekly basis.

There are virtually no oil, coal, or traditional car manufacturers in the eastern or western states, while all are basic to the Midwest and our Nation's economy. Semiconductor production, harmful to the environment, is big in several western states while non-existent in the Midwest.

Donald Trump is no longer a New Yorker and increasingly looks like a younger version of Sen. Chuck Grassley, whose homespun common sense has repeatedly reelected him. Democrats will need to win three big states in the Midwest to hold onto the White House, while the bellwether state of Iowa goes strongly Republican.

Meanwhile, the Left Coast controls social media and continues to censor Donald Trump there, so he filed suit last week to restore his free speech rights. Monopolization by Big Tech has made it comparable to public utilities, which cannot refuse service to political adversaries.

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 5, 2021

Vaccine Tyranny Gets Booed

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) spoke to Republican supporters on Saturday in his home state, but they turned against him when he repeated the talking points of vaccine tyrants. Thousands have lost their jobs and 16,000 have died soon after receiving the Covid vaccine, according to the official government VAERS database.

Sen. Graham, who supported Anthony Fauci and the CDC as they undermined Trump throughout 2020, suggested that everyone should think about getting vaccinated. Loud cries of “no” rained down upon him in response.

Graham retorted, “I didn’t tell you to get it, you ought to think about it.” He was then heckled again, as he and other politicians are doing nothing to protect the right to decline.

Some employees are being hit with a surcharge if their spouses decline this experimental vaccine. This injustice results because most Americans get health insurance through their employer, which puts their entire family’s health at the mercy of their company’s H.R. department.

For years Democrats demanded that insurance plans be forbidden to charge more for pre-existing conditions, saying it was unfair to force people to pay for their unhealthy lifestyles. Now liberals applaud when employers use costly insurance to punish people for merely having an unvaccinated spouse.

Courts have upheld these insurance mandates, and even allow hospitals to block patients from receiving a safe dose of prescribed ivermectin. Only about 500 out of America’s 1 million physicians courageously and consistently prescribe ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine as early treatment for Covid, despite easy over-the-counter access to these safe medications in poor countries.

Graham might as well have told his audience of patriots to “think about” submitting to a dictatorship. Fauci recently implied that unvaccinated Americans shouldn’t be allowed to celebrate Christmas with gatherings this year.

Graham repeated false talking points of the public health authorities, who simultaneously deny the health crisis at the open southern border. “Ninety-two percent of the people in hospitals in South Carolina are unvaccinated,” Graham began to say, until he was drowned out by loud cries of “no” and “not true.”

Distorting the data, some hospitals do not even test vaccinated patients for Covid. When a vaccinated person dies from Covid, it may not be reported as a Covid death.

Hospitals are beholden to unelected public health bureaucrats for funding. The quickest way for a hospital to lose profits is to report that vaccinated persons are dying, because retaliation would ensue.

We still don’t know the harm that the Covid vaccine causes in pregnancy, and stillbirths are occurring due to umbilical cord clots after their mothers received Covid vaccines. Knowledgeable health care workers are among those most resistant to receiving the vaccine, and the mandates make no exception for pregnant women.

For the second time in two months, the Supreme Court denied an application to review a mandate that infringes on the rights of thousands. Obama-appointed Justice Sonia Sotomayor just denied the application by New York City public school teachers to review the senseless mandate that they all be vaccinated or lose their jobs.

In 1905, the Supreme Court upheld a $5 fine against a minister who declined a city-mandated vaccine for smallpox. Many courts still cite that anachronistic decision even though, as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote in his cruel decision endorsing mandatory sterilization, “The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes.”

A measly $5 fine, even in 1905 pre-inflation dollars, is hardly the penalty of losing one’s job or being expelled from college. The smallpox vaccine was not experimental and unapproved as the Covid vaccine is today, which continues to be administered under an unusual Emergency Use Authorization.

Graham tried again with his crowd, asking them “how many of you have taken measles shots?” Outrage showered down on him again, with pointed shouts of “it’s not the same!”

The crowd was right; the measles vaccine was more thoroughly tested and has caused only a tiny fraction of the adverse reactions reported to VAERS on the Covid vaccine. Graham’s silly question would be like downplaying the opioid disaster by asking how many have had a glass of wine.

It is baffling that Graham and other Republicans do not realize how the Fauci mindset is transforming our nation into tyranny. Millions of voters are ready for candidates who promise to strip public health officials of their pompous authority, as Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) demanded on Monday to fire Fauci.

Mass vaccination has not ended the pandemic, here or in Israel. Authorities always knew that 70 million or so Americans would never voluntarily submit to the experimental Covid vaccine.

But enemies of liberty seized on this opportunity to control Americans in ways unimaginable two years ago. Many of the 70 million vaccine resisters are swing voters, and their support could be enough to bring election victory to candidates who stand up for them.

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 28, 2021

Wrong Kind of Crackdown at Border

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

“I promise you, those people will pay,” President Biden declared about images from our country’s southern border near Del Rio, Texas. “There is an investigation underway right now and there will be consequences.”

“Horses running them over, people being strapped,” Biden continued, with rising indignation. “It sends the wrong message around the world. It’s simply not who we are.”

Not to be outdone, Vice President Kamala Harris declared that the images evoked “some of the worst moments of our history where that kind of behavior has been used against the indigenous people of our country, has been used against African Americans during times of slavery.” She warned, sternly: “There needs to be consequences.”

What were the images that roused the president to a fury, “outraged” the vice president, and “horrified” the secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas? Merely photos of U.S. Border Patrol agents mounted on horseback, using reins to control their animals in the hilly terrain where over 20,000 migrants had just crossed the Rio Grande.

Even liberal CNN wondered how the agents could be treated fairly by an investigation to be conducted at the “highest levels,” as Secretary Mayorkas promised, after the president has already condemned them.

Biden should be cracking down on the illegal aliens crossing the border, not the good agents trying to stem the tide of lawlessness. Yet Biden vows to punish agents on horseback for using reins to control the government’s own horses amid a chaotic flow of illegal aliens.

Biden’s open border policy has resulted in 14,000 illegals camped under the international bridge connecting Texas to Mexico, while tens of thousands more are on the way to join them. There is no Covid testing for illegals without severe symptoms, while law-abiding American citizens are subjected to dehumanizing weekly testing as punishment for declining the experimental Covid vaccine.

These hordes of illegals are supposed to remain in Mexico while their applications for admission are considered, under a wise policy established by President Trump and reaffirmed last month by a 6-3 vote of the U.S. Supreme Court. Ken Paxton, the Trump-endorsed Texas Attorney General, filed a new motion last Thursday to enforce the federal court decision to restore the Trump-era Migrant Protection Protocols.

“I think they’re just trying to keep ignoring federal law, keep ignoring the Supreme Court ruling,” Ken Paxton said about the Biden Administration. It doesn’t care “about all the orders from the courts, including the Supreme Court.”

By vowing to punish border patrol agents who protect us against foreign intruders, Biden sends the wrong message that every other law enforcement officer should stand down. Why would any official risk his own job and perhaps even his freedom if Biden is going to prosecute them afterwards for enforcing the law?

The reported numbers of illegals are daunting. They include the 20,000 Haitians who recently crossed at Del Rio; 100,000 Afghans, whose resettlement Nancy Pelosi just funded with $6.3 billion; and more than 1,000,000 illegals who have surged across the southern border since Biden began occupying the White House.

These numbers can change election outcomes, which seems to be exactly what the Democrats want. Many of the refugees are being resettled in battleground states, where the margin of difference in a pivotal election can be merely a few thousand votes.

The Greyhound bus company has been punished by a $2.2 million liability for allowing federal agents to board its buses looking for illegal migrants. That was the amount of the settlement announced Monday by Washington’s leftwing attorney general, Bob Ferguson, who brags that he sued President Trump 83 times in four years.

Why are there so many illegals in Washington state, which is about as far from the southern border as any state in the continental United States? The buses were traveling from Spokane to Portland, Oregon, and border patrol agents were finding illegal aliens on those buses.

No search warrant was needed because Greyhound, which owned the buses, had consented. Cooperating with the police is not something for which anyone should be fined, and law-abiding citizens riding the buses had nothing to worry about.

Now those illegals will receive a payment from the settlement, despite being illegally on a bus, while Greyhound is being compelled not to allow federal agents on its buses to enforce the law. That restriction will encourage more unlawful immigration.

Greyhound’s private property, like that of ranchers near the border, is being taken by the insatiable demands of the open border zealots. Greyhound should be able to consent to searches of its buses for illegals, many of whom are dangerous to others as confirmed by a report of 96 sexual assaults against migrants in Panama in May and June.

President Biden created this border crisis, and should not be scapegoating the border patrol. The crackdown should be against illegals, not officers doing their job.

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 21, 2021

Trump Vindicated on Covid Origin

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

After publishing articles that wrongly disparaged anyone who suggests that Covid-19 might be a man-made virus from China, the liberal British medical journal Lancet makes a U-turn by publishing a new article harshly criticizing its prior ones. Closing off the inquiry into a man-made origin was wrong.

“Some unusual features of the SARS-CoV-2 genome sequence suggest that they may have resulted from genetic engineering,” the new article by 16 scientists says. No pathway from bats to humans nor any plausible geographic connection between wildlife and infected humans has been identified, they note.

“More than 80,000 samples collected from Chinese wildlife sites and animal farms all proved negative,” the newly published article explains.

This means another victory lap for Donald Trump. The Never-Trumpers who insisted that Trump was being anti-science were, in fact, the non-scientific ones who misled the public for more than a year.

Dr. Anthony Fauci falsely insisted in May of last year that the evidence “is very, very strongly leaning toward this could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated.” There is no credible evidence supporting Fauci’s statement, as the esteemed scientists demonstrate in their recent article in Lancet.

Fauci should be compelled to explain the basis for his statements against a man-made origin for Covid-19, which remains an enormously important medical, historical, and political issue. Fauci repeated assertions that “everything about the stepwise evolution over time strongly indicates that [Covid-19] evolved in nature and then jumped species,” which he should correct now. CNN shouted then that “Anthony Fauci just crushed Donald Trump’s theory on the origins of the coronavirus.” It boasted that the “world-renowned infectious disease expert” Fauci had debunked Trump.

“The back-and-forth over where the virus originated—and how—is simply the latest example of how Trump seeks to shape reality to fit his predetermined conclusion,” CNN declared. The real problem, CNN pretended, was that Trump and his supporters do not accept science.

Medical journals and the media continued to demonize anyone who might suggest that Covid was man-made, even calling them “conspiracy theorists.” Lancet printed articles marginalizing anyone who suggests that there was a man-made origin of this virus, allowing name-calling against their hypotheses.

But a few months ago Fauci himself began to backtrack from his prior adamant denials of the likelihood of a man-made origin to Covid. On September 17 Lancet finally published candid research debunking the liberals’ insistence on a wildlife origin.

“There is so far no scientifically validated evidence that directly supports a natural origin,” scientists led by the Frenchman Jacques van Helden wrote. As to the “no evidence” mantra that Fauci and other liberal scientists are so fond of repeating, the reality is that it was their own statements pretending there was a natural origin to Covid-19 which was without evidence.

“Although considerable evidence supports the natural origins of other outbreaks (eg, Nipah, MERS, and the 2002–04 SARS outbreak) direct evidence for a natural origin for SARS-CoV-2 is missing,” the honest group of scientists recently announced. “After 19 months of investigations, the proximal progenitor of SARS-CoV-2 is still lacking.”

So it turns out that nothing scientific supported the Never-Trumpers’ criticisms of Trump about the origin of Covid-19. There was no meaningful scientific basis for Fauci to say last year this virus “could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated.”

This year, long after Trump left office, Fauci contradicted himself on this issue, as he has on so many other aspects of this virus. In May of this year Fauci declared that he was “not convinced” that the origin was of natural origin and that he welcomes further investigation, but then oddly said that “certainly” experts “who’ve investigated it say it likely was the emergence from an animal reservoir that then infected individuals.”

The Lancet article disproves that, too, by indicating that there is no plausible geographic origin in wildlife for the virus. Ever since the onset of Covid, Fauci has apparently done nothing with his immense government budget to get to the truth about its origin. General Milley improperly protected China against any American military strike, while comrade Fauci protects it against political accountability for its virus.

Trump was right all along: China should be held accountable for the origin of Covid-19, and liberal attempts to attribute this to wildlife are unscientific. Government funding should end for any scientist who has impeded a vigorous investigation into the origin of this virus.

Real scientists welcome debate rather than censor it. Republicans in Congress have called on Pelosi to earnestly investigate, but predictably she has refused to do so while instead pursuing witch-hunts against Trump supporters.

Never-Trumpers will forever deny that Trump was right about Covid-19 and its origin, and everything else. Rather than Biden and Fauci coddling China, they should be demanding answers from it.

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

These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.

Monday, September 20, 2021

Russian Elections almost as Crooked as American Ones.

The Wash. Post reports:
MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin's United Russia party maintained its tight grip on the nation's parliament in three-day elections criticized by opposition parties and independent observers for ballot stuffing and tampering, according to election results announced by the Central Election Commission.

So what made the election dubious? The opposition was banned from social media, and there was voting over 3 days!

The three-day elections took place against the background of a sweeping crackdown on the opposition, human rights activists and independent journalists.

Opposition leader Alexei Navalny is in jail. His electoral network was declared an extremist organization in June and effectively banned. Its leaders, other opposition figures, human rights activists, human rights lawyers and independent journalists have been arrested or fled the country. Dozens of opposition candidates were barred from running or withdrew.

With voting over three days, independent observers and opposition figures complained that in many cases ballots were not properly secured during the nights. Russian social media was flooded with videos of blatant ballot stuffing and thugs intimidating observers and independent journalists.

Opposition candidates complained of cases where observers were denied access to polling stations by officials or were pushed away by unidentified thugs or arrested by police.

By contract, Donald Trump has been banned from Facebook and Twitter, American Jan. 6 political protesters are being held in jail without bail, and the recent California governor recall voting took place over 30 days. The in-person polling sites opened 10 days before election day.

Tuesday, September 14, 2021

Can Biden Compel 70M Americans?

The Phyllis Schlafly Report

By John and Andy Schlafly

President Biden’s televised threat to compel most Americans to receive the controversial Covid vaccine raises tyranny to a level rarely before seen in our great country. Going a step further, public health guru Dr. Anthony Fauci has endorsed requiring Americans to be vaccinated before being allowed to board an airplane.

These mandates are an unprecedented abuse of executive power, and the pushback is intense. Even in pro-Biden Nevada, a grassroots uprising is occurring against these “iron-fisted government-driven mandates,” as North Las Vegas Mayor John Lee put it after switching from the Democrat to Republican Party earlier this year.

The pro-vaccination bureaucrats have always known that many tens of millions of Americans would decline this mass experiment. The Covid vaccine does not even use the traditional vaccine biological mechanism, and its long-term effects are unknown.

Polling shows that the strong opposition by many Americans to taking the Covid vaccine has not changed much throughout Biden’s presidency, despite aggressive promotional campaigns. The resistance consists of not only Trump supporters, but also many on the political left.

The diverse resisters to the Covid vaccine include highly educated people, such as PhDs. These and other opponents of the vaccine are not doing so based on Trump.

Many universities have required their students to be vaccinated, even though the professors themselves are often not subject to the same requirement. Other voting constituents of Democrats, such as members of minority groups, are adamantly against being forced to be vaccinated for Covid.

In Australia, the government has prohibited the successful early treatment of Covid with ivermectin in order to push more people into vaccination. But such dictatorial approaches should not work in the United States of America.

If courts fail to block Biden’s vaccine mandate, then millions of people will simply quit their jobs. The economy would slide downward again toward a recession.

Already untold numbers of Americans have decided to not work rather than take the shot. The number of unfilled jobs increases to a new record each month, reaching 10.9 million of open positions as of the last report.

"Something's not matching up there," declared Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) on Sunday, in explaining why he’s blocking his own party’s $3.5 billion spending boondoggle. Sen. Manchin is looking for a reason why there are so many unfilled jobs, while nearly as many are on unemployment.

This mismatch is partly due to the unjustified requirement of receiving a Covid vaccine in order to get or keep a job. Biden is demanding that every company having more than 100 employees require vaccination of their workers.

“I assume I’ll lose 30% of my workforce,” the co-CEO Mehtab Bhogal of Forever Floral told the media. He pointed out that his company, which sells floral bouquets, has 130 workers and cannot afford dealing with the new vaccine mandate or funding the cost of weekly testing.

Biden’s order extends far and wide into our economy, causing trauma for many millions who are not vaccinated against Covid and do not want to be. Our economy cannot recover if more than 10% of workers soon quit their jobs or skip work, as is already happening in the airline industry which has caused flights to be delayed.

Far from encouraging employment, Biden’s vaccine mandate gives companies situated just above the 100-employee threshold an incentive to fire workers or shift to a model that uses more contractors. A wave of new layoffs could result from Biden demanding that every company with more than 100 employees take on this new burden with its accompanying costs.

Notably, 500,000 postal workers were not included as federal workers under Biden’s command. U.S. Postal Service employees receive government paychecks, but their union supported Biden for president and he’s apparently returning the favor by treating them like private employees, rather than as part of the federal government.

Public health authorities have embarked on a course that is a train wreck waiting to happen. So far courts have not slapped them down hard, but the Republican Party is rising up against this overreach.

Sleight-of-hand by the FDA on August 23 had the media running headlines about a so-called approval of the Pfizer Covid vaccine, when in fact the FDA did not approve it as advertised. Instead, the FDA merely approved a German vaccine called BioNTech, which is unavailable here, while extending the emergency authorization (not approval) of the Pfizer vaccine.

Court intervention has been stalled by the outdated 1905 Supreme Court decision in Jacobson v. Massachusetts, which allowed a state (not the United States) to require the smallpox vaccine. That decision came at a time when judges also felt there was no right to free speech by government workers, along with other rulings that have since been overruled, and the Jacobson precedent should no longer apply.

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 7, 2021

“Can’t Sit on the Sidelines Anymore”

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Herschel Walker jumps into the Georgia U.S. Senate race that is already one of the most-watched in the country. This seat is currently held by a Democrat based on porous voting procedures that Georgia has supposedly since fixed, and Republicans could regain a majority in the U.S. Senate by winning this seat next year.

Trump immediately endorsed Walker, and indeed it was Trump who vocally encouraged his longtime friend to enter this race. A former phenomenal football running back who has continued his remarkable athleticism, Walker is campaigning on the American Dream, which other Republican candidates would do well to imitate.

“I’m a kid from a small town in Georgia who lived the American Dream, and I’m ready to fight to keep that dream alive for you, too,” Walker’s effective new ad says. The American Dream separates Republicans from Democrats: Republicans believe in and promote it, while Democrats are cynical about it.

No one can doubt that Walker embodies the American Dream. Obese and bullied as a child, he embarked on a self-improvement regimen that included 1,500 pushups and 2,500 to 3,500 sit-ups every day.

An old tire is an environmental blight to liberals, but to Walker it was an opportunity to increase his sprinting speed. He would fill a tire with weights to create resistance for sprinting exercises, and went from an overweight kid to an NCAA track star in the 55m and 100m dashes.

He became a sensation throughout Georgia by leading its University of Georgia Bulldogs to the national football championship in 1980, with an undefeated season. He is considered the greatest college football player ever, finishing among the top three in Heisman Trophy voting every season and winning it once.

Outspokenly Christian, when Walker ultimately joined the NFL he was victimized by the same sort of negativity and unfair bias that has also been launched at other Christians, such as Tim Tebow, Tim Brown, and Art Monk. Walker has been wrongly excluded from the NFL Hall of Fame, while the inductions of the standouts Brown and Monk were unfairly delayed.

Bible-quoting Tim Tebow left his baseball career this summer for an NFL tryout that became a sham after liberals complained about merely giving him a chance. Tebow was not allowed to play in an exhibition game on any special teams, which is necessary for assessing a player at his level, and barely a single pass was tossed to him before he was prematurely cut.

Similar sniping occurred against Walker by liberal-controlled coaches, agents, and the media, despite how Walker had speed, strength, stamina, skill, and work ethic superior to nearly everyone else in the NFL, which kicks off its new season this Thursday. Liberals who pull the strings in the NFL do not want to admit that an outspoken Christian was one of its best players.

Guess who alone stood up for Walker against the potshots from the NFL, after Trump's rival U.S. Football League folded? Donald Trump did.

“He’s so smooth, maybe it doesn’t look like he’s putting out that effort,” Trump spoke out in 1985 in defense of Walker, who went on to become the 12th highest career NFL yardage gainer, and number one if his USFL yardage is included. Walker has been smooth as a first-time political candidate, too.

Democrats and Never-Trump Republicans must be very worried because they are dredging up 40-year-old minor allegations against Walker which he addressed himself long ago. Anti-Trumpers are clueless if they think anyone cares about peccadillos nearly a half-century ago by a charismatic football star.

Unlike past Republican presidents, Trump is putting together a winning lineup of energetic candidates who will put America first and make it great again. Trump could have had an easy retirement on golf courses and in his real estate businesses, but instead he is sacrificing for the good of our country while Biden’s family profits from politics.

Trump has so far endorsed about 30 candidates for elections this year and next, and unlike past Republican presidents Trump is not afraid to endorse a challenger to an incumbent Republican. Roughly half of his endorsements of candidates for the U.S. Senate have been newcomers to that body, and Trump is expected to influence nearly every midterm race.

Herschel Walker declared that he “can’t sit on the sidelines anymore” while Trump, like a masterful general manager of a sports team, began assembling his new political team. The playbook consists of the basic conservative principles of election integrity, less government, and pro-family.

Walker gave perhaps the finest speech at the 2020 Republican National Convention by recounting about Trump, "I watched him treat the janitors, security guards, and waiters the same way he would treat a VIP.” Walker added, “he understands that they are the people who make this country run.”

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, August 31, 2021

What Biden Left Behind

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Some $85 billion worth of America’s most advanced military technology was left behind in Afghanistan, a shocking revelation that by itself would justify President Biden’s removal from office, along with his entire national security team. Biden has given new meaning to the term “cut and run” by abandoning American citizens while permitting an immense cache of advanced weapons to be used against them.

We are not just talking about a few guns or hand grenades. The abandoned American equipment includes more than 109 helicopters, 22,170 Humvees, 8,000 trucks, 64,300 machine guns, and 358,530 assault rifles, according to the non-partisan U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO).

Jim Banks (R-IN), who is in the House Republican leadership after serving with our troops in Afghanistan, observed last week that the Taliban has “more Black Hawk helicopters than 85 percent of the countries in the world.” At least 33 Black Hawk helicopters are in the Taliban’s hands now.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan previously admitted that the Biden Administration lacks a “complete picture“ of all of the military equipment it left behind. In addition, databases of Americans and our allies are probably with the Taliban, too.

Since 2007, our troops have collected biometric data about residents of Afghanistan by using mobile technology including the Biometric Automated Toolset (BAT) and Handheld Interagency Identity Detection Equipment (HIIDE). These tools include a fingerprint reader, iris scanner, and camera, in order to build facial and fingerprint watchlists.

Placement on a watchlist in the United States can result in being kept off an airplane, which is inconvenient. But inclusion in these watchlists in Afghanistan can result in death.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki gave an unpersuasive denial of a report, by the left-leaning news website Politico, that the Biden Administration had given the names of attempted evacuees to the Taliban. The reality is that Biden has no idea whether such a list has been given to the enemy.

“First let me say there have been reports that we provided lists of people who want to leave Afghanistan to the Taliban. That’s inaccurate. That’s misreported and misconstrued,” Psaki insisted.

But last Thursday Biden himself admitted that he did know enough about such a list to respond to questions about it. He declared that he could not state “with any certitude that there’s actually been a list of names.”

The biometric database, now presumably in the hands of the Taliban, is a deadly “kill list.” It potentially provides the Taliban with photos and fingerprints of Afghans who supported or assisted American soldiers, and those Afghans now face deadly reprisal. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was reportedly vacationing at his family’s luxurious home in exclusive East Hampton, Long Island, as the Taliban was overthrowing the Afghan government. Blinken has so misjudged the rapid takeover of Afghanistan that he should resign immediately.

Incredibly, the Western-installed president of Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani, is a former Berkeley anthropology professor entirely unsuited for the challenge of his job, just as Biden is. As reported by the Washington Post, Ghani was more interested in early August in digitizing the Afghan economy than in defending against the invasion of his own capital.

“We never thought we would take Kabul so quickly,” a Taliban commander marveled. With Biden officials departed for an early weekend and the Afghan president having abruptly fled the country, there was no leadership for any earnest defense.

Military equipment can be replaced, but our trapped Americans cannot. Our equipment can now be used by terrorists against our own citizens there and elsewhere.

“If there’s American citizens left, we’re gonna stay to get them all out,” Biden declared on August 18. But Biden then broke his promise by pulling out of Afghanistan before evacuating all of our citizens who want to leave.

“We did not get everybody out that we wanted to get out,” Marine Corps Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie, Jr., admitted Monday evening as the final American troops were withdrawn from the country, even earlier than the deadline demanded by the Taliban. The remaining Americans are targets for terrorists as bargaining chips, or worse.

Under President Trump’s leadership, only 3 American soldiers died in the second half of last year in Afghanistan. Biden’s failure to secure Kabul airport and Bagram Air Base for the evacuation resulted in the horrible massacre of 13 American troops last week, nearly all in their early 20s and whose heartbreaking photos are being shared in eulogy across the internet.

While American citizens were left behind to face the Taliban alone, tens of thousands of Afghan men, women, and children are being airlifted and resettled inside our country, and there is no way to adequately vet them. Far from eradicating terrorism in Afghanistan, Biden has equipped and facilitated it.

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

These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.