Tuesday, August 30, 2022

Biden’s Botched Border

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

By opening our southern border to endless streams of illegal aliens, and planting them throughout the United States, President Biden has effectively nullified a vast swath of U.S. law. Last month the Supreme Court upheld an injunction against Biden’s lawless policy, in a case to be argued in December.

While that case entitled U.S. v. Texas was percolating through the lower courts, there were 2.2 million encounters with illegal aliens in the last reported nine months. This surpasses the record set by the entire first fiscal year of the Biden regime and “is the worst it’s ever been,” according to Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX), whose district includes part of the border.

Meanwhile, Biden blocks lawful visitors like tennis star Novak Djokovic from playing in the U.S. Open, merely for declining the Covid vaccine. Yet Biden allows millions of unvaccinated illegal aliens to pour over our southern border because they are presumed to be future Democrat voters.

A Republican delegation visited the problem firsthand last week after hearing complaints by the sanctuary New York City Democrat mayor, Eric Adams, about how Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has bused 1,500 of the migrants to the big city. “That’s but a small taste of everyday life on the border and they’re starting to realize it is overwhelming,” said Rep. Gonzales.

Overwhelming indeed. Crime statistics from Texas show in the last year 259,000 illegal aliens were charged with more than 433,000 criminal offenses, among which there were 800 arrests for murder and more than 10,000 charges for sexual offenses.

Texas border cities were initially reluctant to join Gov. Abbott’s bold busing of migrants to liberal northeast cities. But the continued lack of attention by the Biden administration to this crisis has prompted El Paso and others to give illegals showing up in their cities a long-distance ride on Gov. Abbott’s buses, too.

The Republicans visiting the southern border included two candidates for Congress from New York. They point out how their state’s Democrats have exacerbated the problem of illegal immigration by giving driver’s licenses to illegal aliens, along with welfare, housing, and other benefits.

Many of the illegal migrants hop off the bus in more desirable conservative regions along the way, like Tennessee, if they get a chance. But officials there do not want the illegals either, and ask Abbott to keep the migrants on the buses until their destination of the Big Apple.

Chad Wolf, the former acting Homeland Security Secretary, pointed out that Biden’s catch-and-release approach to illegal aliens is illegal. Wolf observes that Biden destroys incentives for lawful immigration now that one “can simply walk across the border in the middle of the desert and be allowed to stay in the United States.”

As declared by 19 state attorneys general in their amicus brief filed with the Supreme Court in U.S. v. Texas, “In the last 17 months, the volume of unlawful immigration has soared to levels unseen in the United States in decades – and, quite likely, ever. So too have the resulting burdens placed on the States.”

They add that “the current situation at the U.S.-Mexico border is an unmitigated disaster. The number of illegal crossings per month is at levels unseen in at least a generation.”

When referring to Republicans, Democrats talk about how no one is above law, yet Biden has acted unlawfully in letting illegal aliens in. He improperly set aside Trump Guidelines that blocked the unlawful border crossings by migrants.

New York City’s “Adams talked the talk about being a sanctuary city, welcoming illegal immigrants into the Big Apple with warm hospitality,” Texas Gov. Abbott points out. “Talk is cheap. When pressed into fulfilling such ill-considered policies, he wants to condemn anyone who is pressing him to walk the walk.”

I hope he follows through on his promise of welcoming all migrants with open arms so that our overrun and overwhelmed border towns can find relief,” Gov. Abbott adds with a touch of humor. El Paso, a border city in Texas that prided itself as an Ellis Island of the southwest, is fully on board with Abbott now also.

New York City is flush with wealthy companies, many of the world’s richest people, and pompous politicians who promote its status as a sanctuary city. Yet it is reportedly straining under the influx of merely a tiny percentage of the illegals whom Biden is allowing to flood Texas, Arizona, and elsewhere.

Javier Villalobos, the Republican mayor of McAllen, Texas, observes about managing the illegals: “If we can do that, they can too. I know they can do it,” referring to New York City as it receives a relatively small handful of the overall total.

Biden halted work on President Trump’s border wall, and repealed Trump’s good “Remain in Mexico” policy. Biden deserves all the blame for this crisis.

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, August 23, 2022

Court of Appeals Should Halt Anti-GOP Prosecutions

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Liberal county prosecutors in heavily Democrat Fulton County, Georgia, are terrorizing a U.S. Senator, Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and the former U.S. Attorney and Time Man of the Year, Rudy Giuliani. The ultimate target of this politicized investigation is, of course, Donald Trump.

We are within 90 days of the midterm elections, when Department of Justice policy prohibits this kind of political mischief by prosecutors. Last week unhinged county prosecutors tracked down another Trump attorney, Jenna Ellis who resides in Colorado, and are forcing her to testify as they try to get at Trump.

To liberals, criticizing election fraud is a crime, and the heavily Democrat grand jury will recommend any indictments requested. Every Republican connected with Donald Trump who criticized the last election is at risk of being indicted by such Democrats, in violation of their constitutional right to speak out.

For a year-and-a-half no evidence of any crimes by these Republicans has surfaced, but as the midterm elections approach liberals rush for indictments. Last week the news was that Rudy Giuliani, Mr. Law and Order himself, is a target of the investigation.

The goal of this weaponized prosecution is two-fold. First, Democrats want something to swing the polls in order to hold onto their bare majority in the U.S. House, and second, Democrats want to make sure that no one dares question their fraud-prone elections ever again.

Billionaire Leftist George Soros, who has invested heavily in supporting radical prosecutors nationwide, must be giggling with delight. He may have found a way to turn the country blue with baseless prosecutions generating a stream of scandalous headlines against Republicans.

Sen. Graham was doing his job when he made inquiries about the reported unusual election results in Georgia in 2020, where signatures were never verified on hundreds of thousands of mail-in ballots. It is a constitutional right for all Americans to question and criticize elections, yet some liberals want to turn that into some kind of crime.

Sen. Graham should not have to answer intrusive questions under oath from a political opponent in a dusty county courtroom in Georgia, about legitimate inquiries he made concerning the election results more than a year-and-a-half ago. For liberals to spawn national biased headlines by making this an issue on the eve of the midterm elections is doubly wrong.

Sen. Graham appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit to defend his senatorial privilege under the Speech and Debate Clause. Incredibly, that court is allowing the circus in Fulton County to continue, although it temporarily delayed the process until the scope of questioning is narrowed.

Republicans should not have to answer questions by a partisan Democrat prosecutor about why and how they questioned a reported election result. No Republican is accused of fabricating votes, so there is no crime to be asked questions about.

The chilling of the First Amendment right to criticize election fraud is what Democrats want. Only a federal appellate court might stop their interference with the midterm elections.

Fulton County is overwhelmingly Democrat and it is impossible for a Republican to obtain a fair grand jury or trial there. The Georgia legislature recognized last year the likelihood of fraud in that county, and its election reform bill permits state intervention in county elections.

A retired federal judge is serving as the state election board chairman, and he said at its first board meeting that “accountability and knowing that there are people watching the processes and making sure that they are trustworthy ... that’s what we want and what the citizens want.” But that cannot happen if any Republican who criticizes the process gets harassed before a Democrat grand jury.

A Georgia state court judge shut down an attempt by the partisan prosecutor to haul a state legislator before the grand jury for hostile questioning under oath, after the revelation that the prosecutor hosted a fundraiser for his opponent. The court order prohibits the county prosecutor, Fani Willis, from publicly claiming that the legislator is a subject of the grand jury’s investigation.

After the Eleventh Circuit paused the attempt to question Sen. Graham, the Obama-appointed district judge gave him until only 9 a.m. on Wednesday to file a motion to explain how he wants the court to limit the scope of questioning. But no U.S. Senator should be subjected to any questioning by a county prosecutor of the opposing party on the eve of an election, or be put at risk of a politically motivated indictment.

The Supreme Court did not defer to a partisan recount of the 2000 presidential election in Florida, and unhinged Democrats in Georgia deserve no deference now. Their partisan attempt to interfere with the midterm elections should be stopped immediately by federal courts.

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, August 16, 2022

Stop Political Prosecutions

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

More than a week after the gestapo-like raid of President Trump’s home, the Democrat-controlled Justice Department has disclosed nothing to justify that unprecedented action against America’s leading presidential candidate. As a first step among many to come, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) filed Articles of Impeachment against Attorney General Merrick Garland, who admitted that he approved the raid.

Attorney General Garland has taken measures to silence the voice of millions of citizens of the United States by persecuting the former duly elected and lawful President of the United States, and potential Presidential candidate, Donald J. Trump,” the first Article of Impeachment reads.

Refusing to take questions after making a brief statement, Garland continues to stonewall demands for an explanation of his egregious violation of the constitutional rights and dignity of a prominent U.S. citizen. On Monday, under Garland’s supervision, the Justice Department filed a motion asking a court to continue suppressing the affidavit that was submitted to obtain the search warrant, and the court will hear this motion on Thursday.

Garland’s conduct is an affront to our democratic republic, and it improperly disrupts our upcoming elections in 2022 and 2024. His armed raid on the home of the leading presidential candidate while refusing to disclose the basis for it cannot stand.

For once, major news networks sided with Trump supporters in asking the magistrate judge, whose legal career includes defending the pilots and others associated with the disgraced Jeffrey Epstein, to unseal the affidavit. Judge Bruce Reinhart, whom Trump has sought to recuse from this case, has concealed the supporting affidavit filed to obtain the search warrant.

The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution prohibits raiding anyone’s home except “upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” With those immortal words the Founders put this essential safeguard into the Bill of Rights against the abuse of federal power that just victimized Trump.

Political persecutions hide behind secrecy, and transparency would help stop them. There was no justification for federal agents to demand that Mar-a-Lago staff turn off the surveillance cameras so that the agents could violate limits on the scope of the warrant without accountability.

Despite the deliberate intimidation caused by more than 30 armed agents ransacking Trump’s home, his skeleton summer staff courageously refused the agents’ improper demand to turn off the cameras. Yet there remains no accountability for how federal agents tried to hide their own misconduct from surveillance.

This is an assault on a political opponent at a level never seen before in our Country,” Trump said on Truth Social about the raid. The following day Garland’s DOJ tracked down pro-Trump Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) while he was on a family vacation, so that three armed agents could make a surprise grab of his cell phone in front of his young children.

A personal cell phone, like one’s home, contains much private and confidential information that government has no right to see, and Trump points out that the raid against him stole his confidential documents. Rep. Perry is not genuinely suspected of any wrongdoing, and neither is Trump with respect to documents he lawfully kept as president and had the right to declassify and take with him.

Every American should be frightened by this outrageous infringement on constitutional rights for political gain. It may be impossible to seat 12 jurors who are not themselves scared by these tactics by the Biden Administration, in a future criminal trial or grand jury deliberations against a Trump supporter or even Trump himself.

Frightening his political opponents, as Biden is doing, is a threat to the survival of our Republic. Other than Rep. Greene’s valiant effort to impeach Garland, little has yet been done to bring accountability to Democrats’ one-sided persecution of Trump supporters.

One reason for this unjustified federal raid may be to goad Georgia prosecutors into indicting Trump or his supporters, and on Monday they informed Rudy Giuliani that he is a target of their witch hunt. An Obama-appointed federal judge ordered Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) to testify in Georgia before a grand jury assembled there in an effort to indict Trump supporters.

Graham vows to appeal the Obama judge’s impertinent demand, citing the constitutional provision that members of Congress “shall not be questioned in any other place” for their statements. Political issues are to be presented to American voters to resolve at the ballot box, not by hauling members of one political party before a state grand jury.

Representative government does not work when the party in power can terrorize its political rivals with surprise raids on their homes and intrusive demands to testify in one-sided investigations. The next Congress, convening in less than 5 months, must act quickly to rein in liberals’ unhinged persecutions of their political rivals.

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, August 9, 2022

Shocking Raid of Trump Means Garland Must Go

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

By launching a surprise attack on President Trump’s home in Florida, while Trump was away, the Biden Administration has breached even its own low standard for decency. Biden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland should resign immediately for allowing it.

My beautiful home, Mar-a-Lago, is currently under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents,” Trump said Monday evening. “They even broke into my safe!”

The supposed pretext for this raid—to recover some obscure old presidential papers for the National Archives—cannot be taken seriously. Such a trivial pursuit would hardly justify this unprecedented assault and the massive federal resources thrown at it.

Joe Biden’s presidency has brought a series of humiliating defeats for the United States. The Taliban defeated Biden in Afghanistan; millions of migrants stream across our southern border; and the Chinese Communist Party lobbed missiles at Taiwan during House Speaker Pelosi’s visit.

No, the real reason for this raid on Trump is as plain as the advancing dementia on Joe Biden’s addled face. With each successful election result this year, Trump is on track to win back the White House in 2024, and panicky Democrats are exploiting their control of the federal government to try to prevent that from happening.

This raid was executed on the 91st day before the upcoming midterm election on November 8. That timing over a non-urgent issue was apparently a futile gesture to comply with longstanding Justice Department policy to avoid upsetting the political process within 90 days of an election.

This unannounced raid on my home was not necessary or appropriate,” Trump declared at the end of the day-long assault. “It is prosecutorial misconduct, the weaponization of the Justice System, and an attack by Radical Left Democrats who desperately don't want me to run for President in 2024 … and who will likewise do anything to stop Republicans and Conservatives in the upcoming Midterm Elections.”

For more than a year, a committee of partisan Democrats on Capitol Hill, joined by two renegade Republicans, Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, have been trying to prosecute Trump for anything under the sun. Kinzinger is already a lame duck, and Cheney is certain to receive a well-deserved comeuppance in her Wyoming primary election next week.

Such an assault could only take place in broken, Third-World Countries”—or Ukraine, he might have added. “Sadly, America has now become one of those Countries, corrupt at a level not seen before.”

Unfortunately Ukraine, where the main opposition party is outlawed while opposition politicians are jailed or exiled, is the apparent model for how Democrats are running the U.S. government. Biden has spent tens of billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars propping up that corrupt regime, but now we learn that most of the arms we shipped to the region failed to reach their final destination and cannot be accounted for.

The raid on Mar-a-Lago is reminiscent of the predawn arrest in 2019 of Trump’s friend Roger Stone, who described opening his door and “staring down barrel of two assault weapons [and] a dozen other FBI agents in the background, all wearing night goggles, full SWAT gear, side arms, and so-on. On the ground was a large metal device used to break down a door which was unnecessary.”

Also executed in Florida, additional FBI agents even arrived by boat despite how Stone always complied peacefully and would have driven himself to any courthouse. He was ultimately pardoned for the politically motivated accusations against him.

Agents of the Deep State “essentially went through every square inch of my house, literally every square inch. They removed all of my electronics, my computer, my laptop, my iPad, a lot of computer disks, none of which” had any relevant evidence, Stone explained.

Using similar shock-and-awe, the army of FBI agents who ransacked Trump’s home and office without proper supervision may have viewed, copied, photographed, or taken more than the search warrant authorized. The Constitution limits searches to the particular items listed or area of a home set forth in a search warrant, but abusively going beyond the warrant is unfortunately common practice.

Politically motivated prosecutions will be on the ballot next Tuesday when Wyoming Republicans vote against Cheney, and again in November when all Americans can vote against incumbent Democrats at every level of our government.

Republicans running for the U.S. House and Senate must commit to stopping these abuses as soon as they retake the Congress next year. At a minimum, they should subpoena all DoJ records, emails, and personal cell phone data relating to the possible prosecution of Trump, so the public can see what is really going on behind closed doors in the politicized Department of Injustice under Biden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland.

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, August 2, 2022

Latest Biden Fail: Monkeypox

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

As Americans try to put Covid behind us, another frightening virus has invaded our country: monkeypox, which causes hideous disfigurement one might see in a science fiction horror movie. Monkeypox originated in Africa and was kept out of our country by President Trump, but Biden has allowed it to spread to 47 of our 50 states.

The Democrat Governors of California, Illinois, and New York have declared a state of emergency, as New York City did last Saturday and San Francisco did Thursday before that. San Francisco’s mayor absurdly declared that the virus “impacts everyone equally” although nearly all cases have occurred in men who recently had sex with other men.

The Biden administration has failed to develop testing and quarantine protocols for this dreadful new virus, as his Cabinet tiptoes around political correctness about it. A week ago this administration presented Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, who is married to another man and is Democrats’ frontrunner for president based on the latest New Hampshire poll, to explain Biden’s monkeypox policy to CNN.

Pete Buttigieg claimed then that the Biden administration was “working aggressively” against this virus, when asked by CNN’s Jake Tapper whether it was “doing enough to stop the spread of monkeypox.” Liberal CNN omitted questions about blocking monkeypox at our southern border, after cases were discovered on the Mexico side in early June.

Are there any measures that you think airlines and trains and buses need to take to stop further spread,” the Secretary of Transportation was asked by CNN. “Such as implementing enhanced screening for symptoms at airports and train stations?”

Yet Buttigieg had no answer to that obvious question, and moved on to repeat his canned talking points. The former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, has no real qualifications to become president but the intense push by wealthy Democrats for an LGBTQ married man to lead the White House makes Buttigieg their presumptive nominee after Biden.

Buttigieg is on record as opposing religious exemptions from vaccination, so if Biden has his way then millions of federal and healthcare workers, plus the military, may soon be subjected to a mandatory monkeypox vaccine. Meanwhile, the Biden administration shockingly allowed the 20 million doses of this vaccine to expire.

This outbreak must be met with urgency, action, and resources, both nationally and globally,” the New York City mayor Eric Adams declared. He viewed Covid with such senseless seriousness that unvaccinated Brooklyn basketball star Kyrie Irving was banned from playing and he cheered his team from the stands in close proximity to other fans.

In the early days of the Covid pandemic, ordinary Americans were harshly fined and even imprisoned for keeping their small businesses open to eke out a living for themselves. Yet nothing of this sort is even suggested for dealing with monkeypox and festivals or parades spreading it.

People are so worried about being politically correct that they are unable to function,” Trump once observed. The costly inaction by the Biden Administration on monkeypox seems to be due to its fear of crossing the LGBTQ community in any way.

Public health officials are focusing more on trying to change the name of “monkeypox” rather than limiting it. While the virus was spreading rapidly in New York City last week, its public health commissioner Ashwin Vasan sent a letter to the World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus urging him to rename monkeypox because of “potentially devastating and stigmatizing effects.”

The WHO names diseases, not viruses. The International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) has that responsibility, and it properly rebuffed this politically driven demand by Democrats to change the name of this virus, which should not have a candy-coated name.

That Committee informed NPR that the term “monkey” will probably remain part of any new name given to the virus, which may not be modified for a year or two anyway. Its data secretary informed NPR “the consensus is that use of the name ‘monkey’ is sufficiently separated from any pejorative context such that there is no reason for any change.”

Democrats know that letting the “monkeypox” virus into our country is not good for Biden’s approval rating and their chances in the upcoming midterm elections, but they should be held politically accountable for failing to keep this virus out of our country. When President Obama let the Ebola virus into the United States shortly before the midterm elections in 2014, Republicans gained 9 seats and a commanding control of the U.S. Senate.

The window for getting control of this and containing it probably has closed,” former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb recently told CBS. That means monkeypox could sink Democrats further in the upcoming midterm elections, as yet another failure by the Biden administration to secure the American borders against foreign harm.

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.