Biden Sues Texas, Threatening America

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

On Monday, the Justice Department filed a lawsuit to force Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to remove bright orange buoys strung down a stretch of the Rio Grande as a barrier to illegal migrant crossings. Biden’s overly aggressive lawsuit against our second largest state puts our entire Union at risk.

This case is destined for the U.S. Supreme Court, none of whose Justices is from Texas or any other border state. Seven out of the nine Supreme Court Justices have previously worked for the federal government in D.C., including four whose prior job was on the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

Biden expects to win on the immigration issue at the Supreme Court, which ruled in his favor last month in a separate case in which Texas and Louisiana sought to compel Biden to enforce our immigration laws. Eight of the nine justices ruled in favor of Biden on the technicality of legal standing.

As Biden continues to overplay his hand by allowing millions of illegal aliens to flood our country, his latest lawsuit may be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. Placing harmless buoys in the river that divides Texas from Mexico is protective of our country, and harms no one.

Texans were raised with the motto “Don’t Mess With Texas.” Biden can poke them in the eye only so many times before a movement grows larger in Texas to assert itself against D.C.

Two months ago, the Supreme Court allowed California attorneys to sue Texas pig farmers if they do not give pigs enough space to satisfy animal rights activists. Fines and even imprisonment are imposed by this California law on pig farmers in every other state, although there are very few pig farmers in California who could be burdened by this regulatory tyranny.

Justice Kavanaugh predicted that this pig decision will pit states against each other in ways never seen before. The California law was ballot initiative Proposition 12, funded with $13 million that included millions in dark money that could have been allied with ulterior motives, and they outspent the Midwestern pig farmers by a 20-to-1 margin.

Texans and others who happened to be inside the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, have been imprisoned for many years by D.C.-based judges. Meanwhile, ballot harvesting and stuffing continues in key swing states that could extend Biden's presidency for another four years.

It seems unlikely that Texans will allow many millions more illegals to bring their crime and drugs into that state for another half-decade, based on another presidential election where courts refuse to act against potential vote fraud. The demand by our mentally incompetent president that Texas continue to open its border to a lawless invasion is the worst possible way to handle the border crisis.

Biden’s Department of Justice filed its lawsuit in the Western District of Texas, where it is likely to be handled by a Democrat-friendly judge. Despite the enormous importance of controlling crime, drugs, and migrants illegally crossing the border, this lawsuit is being directed by the Environmental Defense Section of DOJ’s Environment and Natural Resources Division.

Radical environmentalists demand removal of the floating barrier, under the specious argument that the federal Rivers and Harbors Act “is clear in prohibiting the placement of any unauthorized barriers or obstructions in the Rio Grande and other navigable waters of the United States.”

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has been weak against illegal immigration during his nearly decade-long tenure as governor, and to this day his state universities attract illegal aliens with low in-state tuition while charging Americans from other states much higher out-of-state rates. Abbott is a suspected instigator of the sham impeachment of the one Texas official who stood strong against the migrant invasion: Attorney General Ken Paxton.

Abbott knows that he could lose his next GOP primary over the immigration issue, particularly now that Trump is expected to endorse a candidate against him. So Abbott has drawn a line in the sand against Biden, and both cannot win this standoff.

A press release from the DOJ quoted the local U.S. Attorney as arrogantly declaring that DOJ “will take and support the appropriate legal action to uphold” laws supposedly justifying Biden’s lawsuit to remove the buoys. Yet video just emerged of a bridge built by smugglers of illegals in Arizona about which Biden does nothing to stop the rampant flouting of our immigration laws.

Federal judges in Washington, D.C., a town that does not have to deal with hordes of illegals sleeping in the streets as Texas does, are on Biden’s side and Democrats have the upper hand in federal courts. Biden’s lawsuit is a harmful step towards further balkanization of our country, pitting border states against D.C.

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.

Democrat Demagoguery Heats Up “Climate Reparations”

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

America’s Climate Czar, John Kerry, is in China this week meeting with its top officials about climate change, which today means everything from droughts to floods to inevitable heat waves. There was never any Senate confirmation for this office, yet Kerry reports directly to Biden without transparency for Kerry’s large staff.

The House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight and Accountability caught up with Kerry last Thursday to ask a few obvious questions. His answers were more alarming than anything genuinely caused by forever-changing weather patterns.

The committee Chairman, Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL), asked Kerry, “Are you planning to commit America to climate reparations? That is to say, we have to pay some other country because they had a flood or they had a hurricane or a typhoon or a wildfire.”

While many today are familiar with the concept of slavery reparations, being seriously considered by the liberal California politicians, climate reparations have been demanded by some countries for several years now. Natural disasters have occurred worldwide since the beginning of time, but are blamed now on energy use by industrialized nations such as ours.

“No, under no circumstances,” was Kerry’s response to Rep. Mast’s question about whether the Biden Administration will obligate our country to pay climate reparations to foreign governments. But a close review of what Kerry publicly stated elsewhere suggests that there could be a “mental reservation” lurking here.

Well known to philosophers, biblical scholars, and legal experts, a mental reservation is an incomplete response due to a perceived greater good, by relying on a private interpretation of the question asked. To reduce this, the oath taken by Members of Congress includes the phrase “without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion.”

“We have to pay” was the premise of the question, connoting a legal obligation that Kerry denied. But voluntary climate reparations are definitely being considered, and are on the agenda for the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 28) scheduled to occur on Nov. 30 to Dec. 12 in the oil-rich kingdom of Dubai.

The vehicle for climate reparations is a global “loss and damage fund,” about which Kerry needs to be pinned down. Already some NATO countries in Europe have committed to send taxpayer dollars to this fund, which has existed since last year under the UN Environment Programme office.

In an interview last January with Britain’s left-wing newspaper The Guardian, Kerry indicated the U.S. would contribute to the loss and damage fund for the benefit of foreign countries claiming to be damaged by climate change. So he considers it a voluntary contribution, but it would burden American taxpayers with a legal obligation.

“How can you look somebody in the eye, with a straight face, and not accept the notion that there are damages, there are losses? We see them all around the world,” Kerry declared earlier this year to the British press.

Kerry made similar comments to the congressional committee. Incredulous, Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) asked Kerry “why do the good folks in east Tennessee – they work very hard for their dollars – why do they have to pay for a flood in Africa or South Asia?”

Kerry responded, “We’re not specifically paying for a flood in Africa although sometimes money may go to something like that but the United States is proudly the largest humanitarian donor in the world … we try to help the world.” That opens the door to the Biden Administration sending hard-earned American dollars to the globalist “loss and damage fund,” which is climate reparations by another name.

Meanwhile, our competitors like China are using the most cost-efficient energy, coal, to its maximum benefit. In 2021, China had its biggest increase in coal use and energy consumption since 2011, and Kerry is doing nothing meaningful about that.

China approved more coal-fired power plants in 2022 than any year since 2015. Yet Kerry praised China on Monday for what Kerry called its “incredible job” of increasing renewable energy, which supplies only a tiny fraction of total energy consumption.

Kerry merely chastised China gently about coal for which it “has six times as many plants starting construction as the rest of the world combined.” We won’t be able to compete with China if our economy shifts to inefficient wind turbines and solar power.

Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA), showing that he is not intimidated by Deep State bullying of him in seizing his cell phone while on a family vacation, interjected in Kerry’s testimony to explain why world leaders give lip service to the global warming agenda. “Because they’re grifting like you are, sir,” Perry told Kerry when he invoked foreign leaders who side with Democrats, while expecting reparations.

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.

Transgender Train Derails in Sixth Circuit

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Republican legislatures in 20 states have banned the use of irreversible gender-changing procedures on children, overcoming the governor’s veto in five of those states with a sixth override likely. But in six of the 20 states, liberal federal judges blocked these good laws in response to lawsuits by liberal groups including the ACLU and Southern Poverty Law Center.

Now comes the first appellate decision, and it’s welcome news. On July 8, two of the finest appellate judges in the country, Jeffrey Sutton and the Trump-appointed Amul Thapar, delivered a setback to the transgender agenda by ruling to reinstate Tennessee’s new law against transgender operations on minor children.

The margin was 2-1 on the Sixth Circuit appellate court, with a Democrat-aligned judge dissenting. Appeals are still pending of bad district court decisions in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, and Kentucky, where beneficial state laws were blocked by federal judges.

Other states have refused to protect children from transgender operations, and this cultural battle is far from over. In California, a recall campaign rages against a few conservatives who were elected last year to a school board near Los Angeles.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, considered the foremost health authority in our country until it mishandled the Covid pandemic, has come out entirely on the side of the transgender agenda. Recently the CDC’s website endorsed the ludicrous idea of “chestfeeding,” whereby transgender persons without breasts attempt to fake the production of breast milk with the use of dangerous drugs.

Politics is downwind from culture, and this past weekend the Netherlands crowned as the winner of its Miss Universe pageant a man competing as a trans woman. Sporting an elegant hairdo, this winning candidate had previously competed on the television show “Holland’s Next Top Model.”

The University of Cincinnati, ironically located in the same city where the Sixth Circuit presides, rescinded its reprimand of a teacher for flunking a student for using the term “biological woman.” Megan Rapinoe, the outspoken retiring player on the U.S. women’s soccer team, indicated she would welcome male-bodied trans women into that sport, even though her own women’s team was easily defeated by an under-15-years-old boys team.

The media and many judges are firmly on the side of the transgender movement, and they expect to win. A Clinton-appointed judge just ordered a public school to let a boy who identifies as a girl to use the girls’ bathroom, overriding a policy adopted by the elected school board in the town of Mukwonago, Wisconsin.

Law schools have fully embraced transgender follies, and unfortunately many courts will do likewise. The Supreme Court hires all of its law clerks from a handful of elite law schools, and those clerks perform the influential task of screening and describing cases before the Court either agrees to hear them or simply denies “cert” on a lower court decision.

The Supreme Court denied a recent application by West Virginia to reinstate its sensible law keeping boys out of girls sports, ducking this raging controversy just as the Court dodged all appeals about election fraud. For decades the Supreme Court accepted abortion cases only when the appeal was by the Left, and it will be interesting if Leftists appeal Judge Sutton’s decision against them.

Two years ago, Harvard Law School welcomed its “first transgender women of color” as teachers at the school. They joined two transgender men on the faculty, one of whom maintains a personal website that brags about “working with sex worker art collective that protested digital gentrification.”

Judge Sutton’s ruling is persuasive, and carries added weight due to his strong reputation as a “feeder” of clerks to the Supreme Court. Judge Sutton is notorious in some quarters for ruling against legal recognition of same-sex marriage in the case that was later overturned by the now-retired, left-leaning Justice Anthony Kennedy.

Tennessee’s new law, which was scheduled to go into effect on July 1st, prohibits “surgically removing, modifying, altering, or entering into tissues, cavities, or organs” of any person under the age of 18. It also bans “prescribing, administering, or dispensing any puberty blocker or hormone” to minor children.

“The State plainly has authority, in truth a responsibility, to look after the health and safety of its children,” Judge Sutton wrote with the concurrence of Judge Thapar. “Tennessee could rationally take the side of caution before permitting irreversible medical treatments of its children,” they added.

The court found it unlikely that the Supreme Court would create a new constitutional right to transgender operations, when no such right has existed in the Constitution for 235 years. “Life-tenured federal judges should be wary of removing a vexing and novel topic of medical debate from the ebbs and flows of democracy,” the Sixth Circuit majority concluded as they reinstated the Tennessee law.

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.

Independence Means Staying Out of Foreign Wars

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

America celebrates our independence on July 4th, and that includes freedom from never-ending foreign wars. Yet the globalists are trying to entrap us even further in the NATO war in Ukraine, where no end is in sight and the risk of it escalating into a nuclear disaster increases.

A record-breaking crowd of 50,000 in Pickens, South Carolina relentlessly booed Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) when he took the stage at the Trump rally on Saturday. Graham is from the same rural county but is widely disliked now by ordinary Americans who oppose his pro-war positions.

Trump kept us out of foreign wars for four years and vows to end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours of becoming president again. But Biden and other presidential candidates are staunchly pro-war, and would even send American troops to fight Russia.

Too few Americans are enlisting in our Armed Services, which are not meeting recruitment goals. Beginning July 8, recruiters for the Navy will be required to work an additional day each week to try to enlist new recruits.

Last year the Army fell 25% below its recruiting goal. That was the Army’s worst recruiting year since our military draft ended in 1973.

Recruiting goals today are modest, not nearly enough to sustain a world war against Russia. The total military recruitment goal for 2022 was only 104,540 troops, out of our American population of 30 million aged 18 to 24, yet even that low goal cannot be met.

Presidential candidate Mike Pence, lacking in political support, made a surprise visit to Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky last month to pledge continued U.S. support for the war against Russia. On the same day Zelensky welcomed child climate change activist, Greta Thunberg, now 20 years old, to listen to her environmentalist agenda.

Pence declared on NBC News that “this is bigger than politics.” He then stated about Russia that “it wouldn’t be too long before they cross the border where our men and women would be required to fight.”

If Mike Pence is really open to the possibility that American “women would be required to fight” Russia, then he should not be trusted with the presidency. It sounds more like the feminists of the 1970s whose Equal Rights Amendment would have put women in combat alongside men.

Next week the nations belonging to NATO will meet in Vilnius, Lithuania, and President Biden has promised to attend. Locating this meeting near the border of Russia is provocative, as a way to try to confront Putin.

NATO, which is run by anti-American liberals, wants to add Sweden as its 32nd member, after Finland was accepted earlier this year. Any current member country can veto Sweden, however, and Turkey has threatened to withhold its consent.

Also atop the NATO agenda will be to demand an escalation of American entanglement in what has become a perpetual war in Ukraine. The United States will be asked to send advanced weaponry and to embark on a path of placing our troops in harm’s way.

“We need to be prepared that this offensive will be bloody and difficult,” NATO chief Lens Stoltenberg warned last month. But he was talking about Ukraine’s long-delayed offensive against Russia, using U.S. equipment.

Globalists at our Pentagon have already sent to Ukraine many hundreds of vehicles including Humvees and armored trucks. England has dangerously provided Ukraine with long-range missiles to be launched from military planes, in order to strike cities far inside of Russia, while Germany has sent advanced, highly destructive Leopard tanks.

This week the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by Zelensky that pompously tried to explain to us the meaning of our Independence Day and, of course, encouraged more participation by the U.S. in the war there. While extolling democracy Zelensky somehow forgot to mention that he recently canceled parliamentary and presidential elections in his own country.

Zelensky wrote that “Ukrainians took to the streets in 2014 to oust the Russian-backed dictator,” but in fact that leader had been democratically elected. Zelensky has also outlawed the Orthodox Church in Ukraine, supposedly because its leaders are sympathetic to Russia.

Apparently only two things are slowing down the globalists who want to use the American military to control the world. First is the shortage of able-bodied volunteers who are willing to enlist today, for a variety of reasons that may include their own opposition to globalism.

Trump’s spectacular rally last weekend in South Carolina with the outpouring of an America First patriotism is the other obstacle to the globalists’ agenda. This grassroots uprising against further involvement in perpetual foreign wars, attempted by politicians of both parties in D.C. who are out-of-touch with the American public, can carry Trump to reelection.

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.