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.