Trumpify the GOP

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Remaking a political party is difficult, but essential now as the entrenchment of a few liberal Republicans has become intolerable. Never before has anyone improved and remade a political party as Donald Trump is doing, and failure is not an option.

An obstacle is the tradition of Republican primary voters reelecting incumbents. Of the 152 primary challenges to state Republican legislators so far this year, not a single one of the incumbents has lost.

But none of those challengers had Trump’s endorsement. In the next few months, many primary challengers in battleground states will have Trump’s endorsement which gives them a fighting chance.

This Saturday Trump will speak in Michigan, a state that he won in 2016 but was taken from him in 2020 without any post-election audit. Trump reportedly won 370,000 more votes in Michigan in 2020 than in 2016, but based on a deluge of inadequately verified mail-in ballots Biden was declared the winner.

Michigan gets cold in the wintertime and depends heavily on energy and on gasoline-powered cars that can run in frigid weather. A study by AAA showed that when temperatures drop to 20 degrees Fahrenheit, which is common in Michigan where winter extends into April, the range of an electric car drops by 41%.

Conservatives should drive that issue to the bank in a state built on selling Corvettes and Mustangs. Pressing on the gas pedal should convert Michigan to the Republican side as West Virginia has, with its dependency on traditional energy.

Trump won West Virginia by a whopping 39 points in 2020, and he won Ohio by more than 8 points. Next-door Michigan should become solidly Republican too, thanks to Trump.

The biggest difference between Michigan and its neighboring Ohio is not demographics, which are similar, but the liberal Republican officeholders in Michigan. Only ten Republicans in the entire country voted for the second impeachment of Trump, but two of them were from Michigan.

Both inherited family fortunes, to which few can relate: RINO Fred Upton is an heir to the Whirlpool washing machine fortune, while his fellow pro-impeachment Republican Peter Meijer benefits from his ancestors’ supermarket chain wealth. Trump backs challengers in the primary to both, which will be held on August 2.

“Michigan demands better,” declared the 14th Congressional District Republican Executive Committee about both. “This call for censure now joins other requests made across the state that made the same request of the Michigan Republican Party.”

Upton and Meijer were two of only nine Republicans who voted to hold conservative Steve Bannon in contempt. RINOs also voted to establish the Pelosi-controlled House Select Committee, a group of Trump-haters that voted on Monday to improperly recommend criminal contempt charges against two top law-abiding aides of Trump, the conservative Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino.

The liberal infiltration of Republican leadership in Michigan has frustrated progress there. It is overdue for Republican voters to oust the RINOs in their primaries, to turn Michigan into a red Republican state as nearby Ohio and West Virginia are.

Advancing that goal, Trump has endorsed 10 state legislative candidates in Michigan, the most of any state, in addition to endorsing in 5 congressional races and 2 candidates for high office there.

Likewise, Trump is remaking the Georgia Republican party, with his high-profile rally there last Saturday amid his endorsement of several candidates for high statewide offices. But an obstacle is how money is pouring in from liberals to try to reelect anti-Trump politicians, such as the Republican Georgia Governor Brian Kemp.

Out-of-state money rains down on liberal Republicans who need to be voted out of office by conservative primary voters. Liberals see what is at stake in these primaries, and they realize that if they can prop up a RINO in his primary, then the Left prevails no matter who wins the general election.

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) has raised more than $7 million, the vast majority of it from outside of the state she is supposed to be representing, Wyoming. Her opponent should expose Cheney as a tool of the Left at this point, and demand that Cheney return donations by liberals to her campaign.

As the anti-Trump Republicans take money from the Left, they become beholden to the liberal agenda on issues that count most. Trump is doing everything he can to fumigate the GOP from this infestation by the Left, and he needs all hands on deck to right the ship as the Left increases its attempt to hijack it.

With liberal control of Big Tech, Hollywood, and the media, liberal political donations are as much as fifty times larger than conservative political donations. The only antidote to the pestilence upon the Republican Party by the Left is the assertion of the Trump brand, supporting whom he has endorsed.

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.

As Covid Subsides, Vax Mandates Remain

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

As Covid subsides, tyranny that exploited it continues. Unfair termination of servicemen, disruption of the upcoming Major League Baseball season, and interference with parental rights result from vaccine mandates.

Liberals are retreating on their mask mandates, but are doubling down on vaccines. This is because vaccine mandates are a gateway to implement the socialist agenda.

Vaccine mandates promote public allowance of abortion, through use of fetal cells in some of the mandated vaccines. These mandates control the right to travel and assemble, through requirements of vaccine passports.

Vaccine mandates also violate the patient-physician relationship, by overriding physicians who advise against the vaccine. As shown by the military discharge of personnel, vaccine mandates limit the ability to serve our country, or earn a living.

Last Friday the Army declared that it had involuntarily discharged three soldiers for not receiving the Covid-19 vaccine. A total of 2,692 Army soldiers have declined the controversial vaccine, and the Army has reprimanded 3,251 troops.

Other branches of our Armed Services have done likewise. By last Wednesday the Navy had fired 519 sailors, the Air Force had terminated 212, and the Marine Corps had discharged 1,038 Marines.

It hurts our military readiness to lose these experienced and dedicated volunteers. Donald Trump, who leads Biden by 43 points among unvaccinated voters according to a YouGov/Yahoo News poll, urged the next Congress to restore these honorable service members with back pay.

Fortunately, several courts are pushing back against the unjustified vaccine mandates. In federal appellate and district courts, Republican-appointed judges are protecting constitutional rights.

In a unanimous decision in favor of Navy SEALS, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans observed how inflexible the vaccine demands are. “Indeed, during the last seven years, the Navy has not granted a single religious exemption from any vaccination,” that appellate court wrote in U.S. Navy Seals 1-26 v. Biden, which is now before the Supreme Court.

Thousands of our finest Navy sailors requested exemptions. “The Navy has denied them all,” the court concluded before ruling against the Navy for now on this issue.

Meanwhile, vaccine requirements in Canada and New York City are disrupting the Major League Baseball season. Players engaging in spring training in Florida are being asked about their vaccination status, and some stars are not showing their cards.

Rejecting vaccine tyranny, some stars will forgo their substantial salary for games played in Toronto, Canada, where socialists continue to require unvaccinated visitors to quarantine for extended periods. The pandemic subsides, but the socialist tyranny that exploited the pandemic does not.

It makes no sense for a player to be quarantined for 14 days for a three-game series in Toronto, and it is unjustified to require that of a baseball player whose activities on the field endanger no one. But when the real game is about political control rather than public health, vaccine mandates will continue indefinitely.

The socialists who run New York City are as dictatorial as the tin-pot dictators who run Canada. New York City, where the Yankees and Mets play all their home games, extends Covid vaccination requirements after the pandemic has diminished.

New York Yankees slugger Aaron Judge was asked last week if he has been vaccinated, and he declined to say. He ranked as the 4th best player in the American League last year in voting for its Most Valuable Player.

Apparently the Yankees team officials are trying to negotiate a change to the City requirement that all employees of private employers be vaccinated. The requirement should be repealed for all employers, not just professional baseball.

Good news arrived last Friday afternoon in the district court of the District of Columbia, when it enjoined a new D.C. law that authorizes school administrators to inject the Covid and other vaccines into schoolchildren as young as 11 years, without parental consent or even knowledge. In Booth v. Bowser, Trump-appointed Judge Trevor McFadden sided with parents.

The District of Columbia insisted in court that there is no constitutional right to any religious exemptions from mandatory vaccination. The District also argued that a rate of 95% vaccination was necessary to attain herd immunity from contagious diseases, which is a far higher rate than public officials have admitted.

Only about 65% of Americans opted to receive the Covid vaccine, many forced to do so, while fewer than 50% of them have received the recommended booster shot. Most Americans have rejected the demands by Dr. Anthony Fauci and so-called public health experts about Covid vaccination and masks, as have many foreign countries.

In blocking the school vaccine mandate in D.C., the judge properly held that vaccine tyranny will not be allowed to “trample on the Constitution.” Officials pushing these vaccine mandates should be defeated in elections, too.

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.

Clean Out the Rot

The Phyllis Schlafly Report “Clean Out the Rot” By John and Andy Schlafly

“We have to clean out the rot of our failed foreign policy establishment,” Donald Trump declared at his rally in South Carolina on Saturday. Trump’s thousands of enthusiastic supporters who braved the unseasonably cold March temperatures in the Palmetto State fully agree.

Part of that “rot” is due to Republicans in Name Only (RINOs). Trump was in South Carolina to help defeat two of them, Representatives Tom Rice (R-SC) and Nancy Mace (R-SC).

Congressman Rice’s response to Trump’s praiseworthy visit to the small state was illustrative of how clueless many entrenched incumbents are. Rice referred to Trump as a “would-be tyrant,” and bizarrely compared patriots who rallied at the Capitol last year on January 6th to violence in Ukraine.

The invasion of Ukraine would never have occurred if Trump had remained in the White House, yet Rep. Rice was one of ten Republican turncoats who voted to impeach him a second time in the final days of Trump’s first term. All of those RINO congressmen need to be defeated in their primaries, and three of them have already quit in the prime of their careers.

The “rot” in D.C. bears responsibility for embracing a globalist agenda that allowed the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine to occur. Conservative Poland, one of the poorest nations in Europe, has borne the brunt of the exodus so far of 1.7 million refugees from Ukraine, nearly 5% of Poland’s population, with almost no help by wealthier liberal European countries.

Ukraine has prohibited men of fighting age (defined as 18 to 60) from leaving the country, which has created another crisis for the transgender agenda. Men who self-identify as women are not allowed to leave, while women who self-identify as men are changing back to their biological gender in order to escape.

The incredibly charitable Poland was recently sanctioned, at an estimated cost of billions of dollars, by the Leftist European countries in part for not being pro-transgender enough. Hungary was sanctioned too, although it is taking in hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees.

If the Leftist politicians who seized power in Ukraine in 2014 had been more conservative by promoting armed self-defense by its citizenry, as done in Finland and Switzerland, then Russia might have thought twice before invading, and millions of Ukrainians would have less reason to flee. Self-defense is necessary both to repel an invader and to protect against resultant looting and violence.

In 1999 Ukraine reported to the United Nations that civilians are not allowed to possess handguns. In a lawless society that results from bombing, less access to self-defense means more refugees.

Contrast that with Finland, which is generally liberal but has long valued a high rate of private ownership of guns. Finland ranks #4 worldwide in gun ownership, while the United States is #1.

The Soviet Union unsuccessfully invaded Finland in 1939, and it was Finland’s private ownership of guns that saved it. Ordinary Finnish citizens then repeatedly ambushed Soviet soldiers as they took cigarette or meal breaks.

The Soviet Union thereby lost six times as many men as Finland did, and the Soviet soldiers quickly retreated back to where they came from. It was not military jets or no-fly zones or more tanks that saved Finland, but private handgun ownership.

To this day Finland allows and encourages a fully armed citizenry, and training is widely available. Switzerland, also a small country trapped between more powerful neighbors, has maintained its independence for over 700 years the same way.

But instead of adopting a conservative approach of self-defense, the “rot” in our State Department and Europe encouraged Ukraine’s politicians to expect NATO and American intervention with billions of dollars and fighter jets. Ukraine President Zelensky himself is speaking to an unprecedented joint session of Congress on Wednesday, but the United States should not become the world’s policeman again.

The liberal rot in D.C. snuck into the massive Ukraine aid bill more gun control in the United States, without adequate debate. The Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2022 (VAWA) was rushed through a late-night session, with one Republican saying she was just trying to help Ukrainians by enacting the overall bill that sends nearly $14 billion to liberal Ukrainian politicians.

VAWA’s new gun control provision authorizes our federal government to deputize state and local officials to enforce federal gun laws. It further requires new federal investigations into all denials returned by the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), even though most of those denials are wrongly based on federal database errors.

Many including Trump have called for Biden to allow more drilling for oil to end dependency on Russia. We should also be exporting handguns to arm private citizens in countries that live in fear of invasion by Russia or China, as liberals should have been advocating for Ukraine.

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.

Stop Trying to Start World War III

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Americans do not want to go to war over a conflict halfway around the world, and our politicians should stop clamoring for further American involvement in Ukraine. Our leaders should be encouraging peace without misleading Ukrainians into fighting on in the hope that we will cripple Russia with sanctions or send fighter jets to the war zone.

The bellicose rhetoric from American politicians is worsening the conflict, rather than bringing it to a peaceful resolution. A new $12 billion aid package to Ukraine, which would extend the armed conflict and increase its casualties, is being rushed through Congress.

Ukraine was ranked as merely the 92nd most democratic country, behind even Burma in a list of 176 nations compiled by the Democracy Matrix, and it has long been controlled by a few billionaire oligarchs who milk the country for their own benefit. It formerly had a democratically elected leader who got along with neighboring Russia, but he was ousted by a leftist-funded revolution in 2014.

Russia has repeatedly offered to settle the conflict rather than crush Ukraine, but as long as Ukrainian politicians expect a lifeline from the West they have little reason to compromise. Russia demands only that Ukraine end its military hostilities, promise not to join the anti-Russia EU or NATO, recognize Crimea as part of Russia, and acknowledge the independence of the small Donetsk and Lugansk whose residents speak Russian.

Those modest demands hardly fit the liberal narrative that Russia is supposedly targeting innocent civilians or refugees fleeing the fighting. Beating war drums prolongs the bloodshed until residents leave, as more than 2 million Ukrainians have already fled.

Without support by the American people, a handful of globalists have quietly expanded NATO all the way to the Russian border, including even nations that were part of the former Soviet Union. Joe Biden endorsed this reckless expansion, which provoked the war that we now watch tragically unfold.

The immediate harm to Americans is the soaring cost of gasoline, which our politicians should be addressing instead of rushing to send lethal weapons to Ukraine. Congress should reverse the ban on new domestic oil and gas drilling which Biden announced on his first day in office and reiterated last month in defiance of a federal court order.

On Tuesday Biden banned the importation of Russian oil, and other Russian imports are prohibited except of course for materials wanted by large corporations such as titanium for Boeing, plus nickel, palladium, and cobalt for the green new deal. The oil ban hurts only the American consumer, not Russia which can easily sell that same oil elsewhere.

China can buy all the oil and any other Russian products that are blocked from being imported here. India and Pakistan have also declined to participate in sanctions against Russia, so such political stunts do not affect Russia much.

Venezuela, a country that we are already unsuccessfully punishing with sanctions, stands to gain from a ban on Russian oil. Biden is considering importing oil from the communist Venezuelan regime to replace the oil we use from Russia.

We should be producing our own oil and gas, but Biden rejects tapping into unused oil fields here. Liberal environmentalists demand that Biden continue to block our own energy production, so we will remain dependent on foreign oil until Trump is reelected.

Last week Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) publicly mused to himself, “Joe, would you pay 10 cents more a gallon to support the people of Ukraine?” Answering his own stupid question, the multimillionaire Manchin, who famously lives on a 56-foot houseboat moored in the Potomac River, said “I would gladly pay 10 cents more a gallon.”

Most Americans would be glad to pay only 10 cents more, but gas prices have surged by $2.00 a gallon since Biden was elected, while the price of diesel fuel is up by $2.50 a gallon. Truckers, farmers, and other hard-working Americans cannot afford to fill up the big rigs they need to produce and deliver the food and supplies that we all depend on every day.

Not only dollars are at stake in Biden’s misguided approach. Lives are lost when Congress pours kerosene on the fire in Ukraine.

Most worrisome are the irresponsible calls to send fighter jets to Ukraine, or to Poland in a three-way deal to replace fighter jets that Poland would send to Ukraine. This would merely escalate the war and spread it to NATO member countries that we unwisely promised to defend.

Unnecessary wars are good only for the media, weapons manufacturers, and pompous politicians, most of whom never served in combat themselves. Merely six months after the end of our 20-year war in Afghanistan, Americans oppose entanglement by globalists in another war in a faraway land that we never promised to defend.

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.

Trump Kept Putin From Invading Ukraine

From The Federalist:

A recent Harvard-Harris poll found that 62 percent of Americans believe that Russia would not have invaded Ukraine if Donald Trump were still in the Oval Office. As former senior intelligence officials under President Trump, we agree with that view.

Russia invaded Georgia in 2008 when George W. Bush was president. Russia took Crimea in 2014 when Barack Obama was president. Russia has now invaded Ukraine with Joe Biden as president. However, when Donald Trump was president, Russia did not seize territory from any of its neighbors.

During his four years in office, Trump not only successfully deterred Russia from acting against Ukraine, he effectively deterred a lot of bad behavior across the planet. He focused on ending America’s foreign wars rather than launching new ones. At the same time, he brokered the Abraham Accords to expand peace in the Middle East.

The exercise of American power to deter adversaries is a complicated business. It involves a mix of military, economic, political, and diplomatic strategies and actions that together communicate the costs of threatening U.S. national interests.

Ultimately, the art of statecraft boils down to whether a president projects American strength that deters adversaries, or projects American weakness that emboldens our adversaries.

So how did Trump succeed in containing Putin while the Russian autocrat has run wild with others in the White House? Why was he so successful at spreading peace elsewhere? We believe the long answer begins with these ten ways that Donald Trump projected American strength and kept the bad guys in check:

Rebuilt the American Military
Crusaded for American Energy Dominance
Set the Tone by Launching Surgical Missile Strikes in Syria in Early 2017
Developed Strong Relationships with Middle Eastern Nations Based on Mutual Interests
Was Ruthless with the Taliban While Winding Down the Afghanistan War
Crushed the ISIS Caliphate
Demonstrated a Consistent Willingness to Take out the Bad Guys
Stood Up to China
Strategically Used Unpredictability as an Asset in Foreign Affairs
Advanced Tough Russia Policies and Provided Lethal Aid to Ukraine while Maintaining an Open Dialogue

John Ratcliffe served as the 6th U.S. Director of National Intelligence. Cliff Sims served as U.S. Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Strategy and Communications.

Maybe Trump was a great military genius. Maybe he was lucky. Maybe the Biden administration is incredible stupid and irresponsible. Probably some combination.

Deep State Debacle in Ukraine

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Europeans do not want to merge with Ukraine, and most Ukrainians and Russians do not want that merger either. Yet the Deep State has pressed for this fantasy until the horrible conflagration ignited.

This is the so-called New World Order that leads nations into wars. In the United States and western Europe, the unelected officials who comprise the Deep State think they can force global alliances that are contrary to millennia of bonds and cultures.

On Monday, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced his new application to become a member of the European Union, in defiance of Russia. Zelenskyy requested immediate admission into the EU at a time when millions were praying instead for a de-escalation in hostilities.

The Deep State has wrongly promoted the European Union for everyone, as a sort of one-world government whose purpose is to have as many members as possible without regard to the resultant conflicts. The United Kingdom famously voted to leave the EU after it repeatedly opposed Britain’s national interest.

Ukraine does not qualify for membership in NATO or the EU, whose current members rightly oppose the admission of Ukraine. Yet both organizations are controlled by unaccountable bureaucrats who feel they do not need the consent of nations they purport to represent.

European Council President Charles Michel encouraged Zelenskyy’s ill-advised application by saying, “It is a crucial moment to close the long-standing discussion once and for all and decide on Ukraine's membership in the #EU.” The EU thereby engages in global governance without regard to the sovereign national interests in Europe or the United States.

Bill Clinton promoted global government and described it as a “web of institutions and arrangements” that seek expanding NATO eastward. Russian President Vladimir Putin repeatedly warned that Russia and its allies would not allow the former Soviet republics of Ukraine and Georgia to join NATO, but Deep Staters in our own State Department pressed for that war-inducing strategy anyway.

The European Council President Michel irresponsibly fanned the flames of war further on Monday by declaring, “#Ukraine and its people are family. Further concrete support is on its way.”

Ukraine is family, to Russia, in language, culture, ethnicity, religion, and geography. Attempts by European Deep Staters to bring Ukraine into the European Union are merely incitement for Russia and its allies to prevent it.

The United Nations estimates that 5 million refugees will flee from Ukraine, which is more than 10% of its population. They are flooding into neighboring countries that are already struggling to meet the needs of their own citizens.

This dwarfs the previous record for refugee migration into Europe, which was set in 2015 when 1.3 million Syrian, Afghan, and other refugees sought asylum. Germany absorbed many of them and subsequently Trump had to angrily confront the German chancellor for failing to pay its share of NATO expenses.

Neither European countries nor the United States really want the expected influx of refugees from Ukraine. So far, more than 520,000 Ukrainians have left with nothing more than a bag over their shoulder, expecting housing, food, and energy from the country they enter.

Hungary had built a border fence against prior refugees, while Poland began construction of a border wall to block more asylum seekers from entering through Belarus. Europe’s initial enthusiasm for accepting refugees from Ukraine may wane if the numbers grow tenfold as some predict.

Moreover, the European countries accepting the Ukrainian refugees are dependent on Russia for energy. If Europe had energy independence, then it would be far easier to address this crisis.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) has just introduced a bill for that. Biden and radical environmentalists should get out of the way, so that we could be supplying energy to our European allies instead of their dependency on Russia.

Coincidentally, on Monday the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in an historic energy appeal by West Virginia, during which justices were skeptical of regulations imposed by the EPA on energy. The obsession by some with unproven claims of man-made global warming should be sorted out in Congress, not by unelected federal agency bureaucrats.

World War I was caused by a web of entanglements and alliances that drew everyone and his neighbor into the worst war ever known. Nothing was accomplished by that war except to impoverish European countries, and enable fascism to exploit the poverty left in the wake of that so-called Great War.

Illustrating how clueless the Biden Administration is, two days before Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine John Kerry delivered a speech in Egypt on what he views as a much bigger crisis: a projected increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius in the earth’s temperature over the next 30 years. This former Democratic presidential nominee had traveled to Egypt (by private jet, of course) as Joe Biden’s Special Presidential Envoy for Climate.

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.