Deep State: Stop Invading Our Airspace with Drones

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

As concern mounted over the wave of unidentified drones flying over populated areas of the Northeast, President Trump felt compelled to cancel his trip to his New Jersey home this weekend. Trump soberly declined to say whether he had received a classified security briefing about the drones, but pointed out that “The government knows what is happening. Our military knows, and our president knows, and for some reason they want to keep people in suspense.”

White House spokesman John Kirby is not disclosing the full story, obviously, as he’s already backed off his implausible assertion that most of the low-flying objects are really airplanes. He still insists, however, that hobbyists are behind many of these drones, which are too large, too sophisticated, and flying too late at night to be from amateurs amusing themselves.

It appears likely that the numerous high-tech drones are searching for something from their low altitude of 400 feet and less. By flying only at night they must be using sensors that can detect substances on the ground in the dark.

After four years of an open border under Biden, it’s possible that a weapon of mass destruction has been smuggled into our country. But it’s more likely that this drone operation is another stunt by the Deep State to exert power over everyday Americans, and even Trump, under the false pretense of national security.

Realistically, threats from distant lands of destruction in America are probably nothing more than a teenage boy in someone’s basement emailing a prank message. The calls to Springfield, Ohio in September that shut down its schools and hospitals were phony threats from a foreigner that were taken too seriously.

Trump said on Monday that Biden knows what is behind these drones, and that he should tell the American people. Any assumption that there would be panic about a revelation, for example, that the drones are looking for a nuclear weapon, would underestimate the resilience and healthy skepticism of the public about fake news from D.C.

The political timing of this mystery is suspect. Merely a month from Trump’s inauguration and on the eve of the annual bloated defense appropriation in Congress, whereby billions are wastefully allocated to a military having too many generals and not enough recruits, a more ingenious public relations stunt at this time for boosting expenditures is difficult to imagine.

The Deep State is demonically clever at asserting its own power and obtaining more lavish funding for itself, and may never fess up to the truth about this. Someone is probably making a fortune at taxpayer expense by providing these high-tech drones in the Northeast.

The federal government claims to have exclusive authority to regulate everyone’s airspace such that Deep State drones can buzz our homes late at night. One of these large drones, reportedly as big as an SUV or refrigerator, could crash into someone’s living room and kill innocent inhabitants there.

Part of the game plan may be to get Trump to back off from draining the Swamp and fumigating the intelligence community. This apparently military exercise is a way for the overpaid and underproductive spooks in D.C. to reassert their authority over our incoming president, even forcing him away from his summer home.

“Something strange is going on,” Trump said Monday. “For some reason they don’t want to tell the people.”

Meanwhile the usually talkative Elon Musk has been oddly silent about these drones, like the dog that didn’t bark in the famous Sherlock Holmes tale, which suggests that Musk may be selling drone technology under one of his many contracts with our military. Musk’s SpaceX has the expertise to pull off this type of operation while evading detection by Americans who have a right to know who is flying a few hundred feet over their homes.

“National security” is the phony reason given for the planned shutdown of TikTok on January 19, the day before the inauguration of Trump. Supposedly watching funny videos of children’s mishaps, embarrassing moments, and overbearing official behavior poses such a threat to our country from China that this popular rival of liberal-controlled Facebook and YouTube must be forced out of business.

Trump met with the CEO of TikTok on Monday, observing that the platform helped Trump get elected by enabling him to reach young voters. Liberals control schools, the media, and other internet platforms so TikTok is one of the few ways that a conservative message can reach them.

TikTok users and most of the American public would shrug their shoulders at a claim that a weapon of mass destruction may have been smuggled into our country, thereby supposedly justifying this intrusive drone operation. Many Americans want to know the truth about these drones, and want them out of their airspace over their homes.

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’s Pardons Can Extend to Elector Cases, Too

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

The biggest furor over Joe Biden’s sweeping pardon of his son Hunter has been from Deep Staters who resist any limits on political prosecutions, which Democrats have been abusively using against Trump and his supporters. A recent headline in the liberal Washington Post screams, “The political case for limiting pardon power.”

The U.S. Supreme Court, including the eminent Chief Justice William Rehnquist, repeatedly emphasized that pardons are “rarely, if ever, appropriate subjects for judicial review” because they are the authority of the executive, including the president. The pardon clause in the Constitution extends to all crimes “against the United States.”

The Constitution broadly uses the term “United States” to refer to all the States, as in “We the People of the United States” in the Preamble. The Constitution refers in Article I, Section 8 to the “general Welfare of the United States.”

President Ulysses S. Grant pardoned officials convicted under state law for the criminal offense of allowing Susan B. Anthony to vote in the 1872 presidential election. President Grant’s power to pardon for that crime is widely supported, even though the officials were convicted under state rather than federal law.

The U.S. Department of Justice, which prosecutes federal crimes today, did not even exist prior to 1870. The only federal crimes mentioned in the original Constitution are treason, piracy on the high seas, and counterfeiting; the pardon power extends beyond those and not merely to federal crimes as some argue.

The ongoing political prosecutions of Republican electors in Arizona, Georgia, and Michigan allege crimes related to the 2020 election for president of the United States, and Trump can grant pardons to end this abuse of power by local prosecutors. These were not common law crimes such as murder or robbery which might arguably be beyond presidential pardon authority.

On Tuesday, Democrats in Wisconsin filed sweeping new criminal charges against Trump advisers and supporters based on disputes over the 2020 election, which the American People resolved in favor of Trump by reelecting him last month. These and similar charges can and should be pardoned by President Trump on January 20, as this is within the broad presidential pardon power and necessary to ensure Trump can obtain candid advice.

When the State of Colorado wrongly excluded Trump from being on its ballot for the presidential primary there earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed 9-0 that this was an improper action affecting the entire United States. The Court reversed the Colorado Supreme Court for the good of our entire Nation, just as Trump should end the political prosecutions by Alvin Bragg, Fani Willis, Josh Kaul, and Kris Mayes.

Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist No. 74 “that the benign prerogative of pardoning should be as little as possible fettered or embarrassed.” James Monroe, a popular early conservative president, granted 419 pardons.

The King of England’s pardon power, on which our constitutional pardon power is based, withstood attempts there to narrow it, other than not allowing it to extend to impeachment as our Constitution also states. An attempt at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia to remove treason from the scope of the pardon power was defeated by a vote of 8 states to 2.

Pardons issued by President George Washington and many presidents ever since have been broad in scope, such that state prosecutions did not proceed after the grant of these presidential pardons. Democrat President Bill Clinton was the first to issue a posthumous pardon in 1999, which some questioned because the deceased recipient could not accept it, but no one challenged it.

The Supreme Court held that the president’s pardon power “extends to every offence known to the law, and may be exercised at any time after its commission, either before legal proceedings are taken, or during their pendency, or after conviction and judgment,” in Ex parte Garland (1867). President Millard Fillmore granted a conditional pardon to spare the execution by hanging of a convicted murderer in the District of Columbia, as upheld by the Supreme Court in Ex parte Wells (1856).

Biden set the precedent by broadly pardoning his son, which should silence the liberal media when Trump does likewise soon for victims of political prosecutions. Democrats can hardly complain about the full use of the pardon power by Trump now, which can extend to politically motivated state prosecutions.

Our Founders would be appalled at the overbearing police state of today, whereby congressmen, Cabinet officials, and even presidents have been terrified of what low-level attorneys may do to them by filing criminal charges in biased courts. It is long overdue to rein in the tyranny by politically motivated prosecutors, federal and state, through Trump’s full use of the pardon power.

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.

Nationwide Injunction against Deep State FinCEN

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

A stunning setback to the Deep State from a federal district court in remote eastern Texas: Judge Amos Mazzant just issued a nationwide injunction against the new mandate that more than 30 million Americans report their personal information to the federal government by Jan. 1.

Merely 29 days from the deadline, Judge Amos Mazzant gave Americans the Christmas gift that many hoped for. The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), which is a federal agency located near Washington, D.C., is suddenly blocked nationwide from requiring that Americans report their home addresses, birthdates, and driver’s license numbers to it.

Many Americans were unaware of this new federal criminal law, which carries a penalty of two years in prison for non-compliance. Everyone involved in small local entities, other than those exempt, faced this reporting requirement for the purpose of law enforcement, including harassing federal investigations.

The two-year incarceration is particularly significant because that automatically strips Americans of their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, if found to be in violation of this Corporate Transparency Act (CTA). The actual punishment for a CTA violation may be light, but the mere possibility of being imprisoned for more than a year results in automatic deprivation of the right to possess a firearm due to another federal statute.

The federal government justified this new privacy-invading statute based on its overused monikers of supposedly combating money laundering and terrorism. The Deep State expands its federal police power by repeatedly pretending to fight such unlawful activity, when in fact the D.C. elite are really monitoring and intimidating law-abiding Americans.

House Democrats used that same excuse of supposedly eradicating money laundering and terrorism as a justification for seeking private banking records of Trump’s family members with sweeping subpoenas. The Supreme Court halted those subpoenas back in July 2020, unpersuaded by the pretext.

But at the end of 2020, Dems inserted the CTA into a 1,500-page defense appropriations bill, such that no one noticed at the time. This was set to go into effect with its draconian penalties on Jan. 1, 2025, for 33 million Americans.

Some have received notices about this requirement from their accountants, but not even CPAs can understand exactly which entities and individuals are truly subject to this law. People are being told to get legal advice that will cost thousands of dollars.

Congress lacks the constitutional authority to become Big Brother to watch so many ordinary Americans, the federal court held on Tuesday in issuing its nationwide injunction against this horrible law. “For good reason, Plaintiffs fear this flanking, quasi-Orwellian statute and its implications on our dual system of government,” the court held while ruling against the Deep State.

The CTA would turn every law-abiding American into a suspected federal criminal, subject to investigations and prosecution by the federal government for purely local activities far afield from any legitimate national concern. The political persecution of national leaders like Trump was about to come to every mom-and-pop entity organized under state law without any expectation of federal monitoring.

The six plaintiffs in this case were led by Texas Top Cop Shop, Inc, a family-operated small business in Conroe, Texas, that sells firearms locally. It has only four employees, and yet FinCEN demanded that it file by New Year’s Day personal information about some of the participants in its business.

Another plaintiff is Mustardseed Livestock, LLC, which is a small dairy farm located entirely in Lingle, Wyoming. It produces dairy for its own use, while occasionally selling surplus raw milk there, not across state lines.

The federal government has no legitimate authority over these small, local entities created under state law. The Commerce Clause grants Congress the authority to regulate interstate and foreign commerce, but that is not what Congress is doing with the CTA.

The federal judge in this case was appointed to the bench by President Barack Obama and supported by Sen. Ted Cruz as part of a compromise with respect to confirming a batch of new judges.

“Great nations, like great men, should keep their word,” Judge Mazzant wrote in quotation of Justice Hugo Black. Judge Mazzant added, “Ours is a written Constitution.” He held that the “CTA does not regulate channels of, or instrumentalities in, commerce” between states, and thus is beyond the authority of Congress under the Commerce Clause.

Other provisions of the Constitution, such as doing what is necessary and proper to regulate foreign affairs and protect national security, likewise fail to justify this intrusive snooping that FinCEN itself estimated would cost $22.7 billion in the first year and $5.6 billion in subsequent years. Selling raw milk to a neighbor does not justify this vast, costly expansion in federal police power, and Americans can breathe a sigh of relief.

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.

Icy Thanksgiving and a Failed COP29

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

The climate change agenda has become the latest way for foreign countries to loot the United States for billions of dollars. Supposedly climate change caused by carbon emissions in developed countries is bringing about natural disasters in poorer countries, such as floods and droughts, but these have been occurring since long before the use of oil.

COP29, which was the 29th annual climate conference of the United Nations, wrapped up in Azerbaijan with a shocking resentment by recipients of a mammoth new $300 billion annual handout promised to them by Western nations by 2035. This far exceeds prior pledges, but the ungrateful recipients of this handout are howling in protest that it is not enough for them.

Last year then-Climate Czar John Kerry said we would not agree to pay climate reparations, but he’s left office and the Biden Administration just told the world that we would pay billions of dollars. Playing semantics, liberals say that when these payments are voluntary then it is called a “loss and damage fund,” while if the obligation is mandatory it is called “reparations.”

If voluntary, President Trump can decline to pay them. After all, India is ranked as the worst overall polluter in the world while it also has trade barriers impeding American-made farm products, and we certainly should not pay those who refuse our goods.

The New York Times complains about the “Climate Change” that is coming to the White House on this issue, as Trump has pledged to withdraw the United States from liberal foreign agreements like the Paris Agreement. “Drill, baby, drill” is Trump’s exhortation to his nominee for the Department of Interior, Doug Burgum, to open up vast federal lands to the extraction of oil.

Under Burgum’s leadership and that of his predecessors as governor of North Dakota, it has become the second-largest oil producer in the United States after Texas. This has brought prosperity, many well-paying jobs, and population growth to the barren land that lacks the natural beauty and warm weather of California.

Colder-than-usual temperatures will grip the northern United States beginning on Thanksgiving and worsening into next week. The expected low temperature for the traditional NFL Thanksgiving Green Bay Packers game is a frigid 20 degrees Fahrenheit, possibly with snow.

This is bad news for the star Hawaiian quarterback of the Miami Dolphins, who is 0-7 in cold games. Despite the predictions of Al Gore and other liberals of devastating global warming that was going to ruin the world, cold weather continues to be a bigger problem than warm weather.

Recall how Biden and Harris offered only $750 for each household ravaged by Hurricane Helene, which is barely enough to pay for a month’s grocery and fuel expenses. Just as when we end up on the hook for most of the handouts promised by NATO officials, Democrats will have us paying victims of hurricanes in every country except our own.

Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, candidly called oil and gas a “gift from God.” China, which is the biggest carbon emitter on our planet, is still defined by the U.N. as merely a “developing” country that thereby has no obligation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or contribute payments to poor countries.

Military emissions continue to be exempt from the reporting, despite that many bombs, fighter planes, tanks, aircraft carriers, and more than a half-million military buildings are among the biggest emitters. The environmentalists who clamor for cutbacks are silent on harm caused by the Russia-Ukraine war.

In retaliation for Biden approving the use by Ukraine of launching American missiles into Russia, Putin has responded by firing its new hypersonic “Oreshnik” missile that travels too fast to intercept. These fly at 8,000 miles per hour and can travel up to 3,400 miles, easily reaching all of Europe and even our West Coast for enormous explosions.

A far greater risk to climate change is posed by the increasing likelihood of World War III breaking out. On Monday, speaking at an event for the European Policy Centre think tank, Dutch Admiral and NATO Military Committee Chair Rob Bauer warned businesses around the world to bring their production back home so that they are not beholden to foreign governments.

Bauer declared as quoted in the New York Post, “Businesses need to be prepared for a wartime scenario and adjust their production and distribution lines accordingly. Because while it may be the military who wins battles, it’s the economies that win wars.”

But wait, doesn’t this advice go against the globalist mantra that pushed the United States to send manufacturing jobs offshore in recent decades? If world war breaks out, China and Mexico could order a halt to their manufacturing of cell phones, automobiles, and other products for American consumers, crippling our economy.

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.

Deep State Invites Nuclear War

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Tuesday is the 1,000th day of the Russia-Ukraine War, and the Deep State irresponsibly escalates it further by authorizing Ukraine’s Zelensky to launch American-made ATACMS long-range missiles against targets within Russia. Pronounced “attack ’ems,” ATACMS was supplied to Ukraine by the pro-war, globalist military elite in Washington, D.C.

Ukraine quickly used a half-dozen of these missiles on Tuesday against Russian military stockpiles, which appears to be only the beginning. Soon U.S. missiles costing more than a million dollars apiece could rain down on Russia, perhaps eventually against cities, as Ukraine has forced teenagers into its army and kids may be picking the targets as in a video game.

Russia responded to the attack by updating its nuclear doctrine to declare its intention to respond, if it chooses, with nuclear missiles. President Putin signed a new document on Tuesday to the effect that “the use of Western non-nuclear rockets by the Armed Forces of Ukraine against Russia can prompt a nuclear response.”

North Korea, which also has nuclear weapons, could likewise retaliate if its troops inside Russia are killed by American-made missiles. The last time we came this close to nuclear war was during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, when Robert F. Kennedy (father of Trump’s Cabinet appointee RFK Jr.) played a pivotal role in devising a response.

Biden is allowing the globalist elite to run our government, and Americans are stuck with this for two more months until President-elect Trump is sworn into office. This reinforces the urgency of Trump being able to clean house and install his own team on the first day of his presidency, on January 20, 2025.

From a makeshift podium deep in the Amazon forest in South America that looked like a comedy skit from Saturday Night Live, Biden held a press conference about the importance of trees and then declined to take any questions about the consequences of his escalation of the Ukraine war. Biden next meandered aimlessly away from the podium and back into the jungle, giving new meaning to the term “lame duck” for officials who are on their way out of office, as Biden is.

Donald Trump Jr. tweeted, “The Military Industrial Complex seems to want to make sure they get World War 3 going before my father has a chance to create peace and save lives. Gotta lock in those $Trillions.”

The lawfare against Trump has completely failed, such that even the sentencing hearing in New York County against him was just canceled. The federal government is expected to drop all of its charges against Trump by the first week in December.

But the Deep State is trying to fill the anti-Trump void by hamstringing his presidency with the Pentagon’s own pro-war agenda. A campaign has started to try to block Trump’s appointment of Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense, partly based on the Christian tattoos that he proudly wore in the Army National Guard while deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Trump’s superb appointment of Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence is also being attacked by globalists after she endorsed Trump as “a man who wants to end wars, not start them.” Gabbard will become the top intelligence adviser to the president, having authority over all our spy agencies.

Almost no one alive recalls the last time nuclear bombs were used, to end World War II in Japan nearly 80 years ago. For many decades afterward, political movements sought to disarm nuclear weapons, but it is difficult to find any liberals sounding alarm bells against war today because the Left committed to Biden in 2020 and Harris in 2024.

World War III has become more likely due to the Deep State’s first fomenting and then mishandling the war in Ukraine. Norway, Sweden, and Finland have all just provided special information to their citizens to prepare to survive a war by stockpiling essential food and medication, and by learning what to do if there is an attack.

Democrats are failing to prepare American citizens on how to survive if there is a missile attack that destroys the internet, the power grid, or the supply chain for groceries. Norway just printed and sent 2 million copies of its pamphlet to prepare its people for war, one for each household.

The Left has hated Russia ever since it began to prohibit Pride parades more than a decade ago. Obama refused to attend Russia’s Winter Olympics in 2014 and, by authorizing Ukraine to launch American missiles at Russia, Biden is continuing the anti-Russia campaign by liberals against it.

In 2022 Biden’s hapless Secretary of Defense blurted out, “We want to see Russia weakened.” Now Democrats are putting Americans and our allies in harm’s way by provoking Russia to counterattack with missiles of its own, for a war that nearly everyone admits cannot be won.

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.

Time to Deliver on Trump’s Mandate

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Trump’s spectacular sweep of every swing state, by substantial margins, has left liberals speechless. Downsizing and layoffs are next in the liberal media, which needs to happen at the federal government too based on this extraordinary mandate by voters.

Young men under 30 propelled this victory by supporting Trump by 13%, after previously backing Biden by 15% in 2020. The biggest loser in the election was the feminist ideology of the Democrat elites who have run our country into the ground.

With a new 4-vote GOP majority in the Senate, including the tiebreaker vote held by Vice President Vance, Democrats will be unable to get their bad bills through Congress and, if they do, then Trump will veto them. We can also expect the Senate to confirm Trump’s appointments to the federal bench and to his Cabinet.

Trump’s most important appointments will be to the Department of Justice and the Department of Health & Human Services. Sweeping reforms are needed at both agencies, with strong new leadership necessary to achieve that.

Yet pressure by the Establishment is intense behind the scenes to prevent Trump from appointing an Attorney General who will clean house at the politically motivated Department of Justice. This election gives conservatives a second chance to defang the Deep State, and if we fail to do it this time then a miraculous third chance later cannot be reasonably expected.

The signs are that liberals entrenched in the DOJ are doubling down in resistance to the mandate of the People on Election Day. Many of these comrades for the Left can do the honorable thing by resigning before January 20, but few will.

Former Missouri Solicitor General John Sauer, who defeated Jack Smith in the U.S. Supreme Court on the weaponized prosecution of Trump, would be a terrific choice for Attorney General. It is essential to go outside of the D.C. Establishment to overcome the Deep State, and the appointee must be someone willing to order a full outside audit of the DOJ.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has a proven track record of overcoming a mini-Deep State in Texas that improperly impeached him and then unsuccessfully attempted to remove him from office. Paxton is battle-tested by that experience, and has the moxie to defeat the D.C. elite.

Paxton has been courageously leading on many top issues, from defending Texas’ sovereign right to secure its southern border to suing physicians who violate Texas law by harming children with transgender treatments. Paxton anticipates the lawfare by the Left to tie up Trump’s reforms with lawsuits in the one-sided D.C. federal courts.

The opposition to an appointment of RFK Jr. to a Cabinet-level position must be overcome. The Department of Health & Human Services, FDA, CDC, and NIH are politically corrupt, as demonstrated by their mishandling of Covid and interference with safe, affordable medications.

RFK Jr. has credentials and experience that far exceed those of most other candidates for Cabinet positions, and the realignment in this election was based on a promise to give him real authority. A symbolic position as “health czar” would not enable RFK Jr. to fulfill his pledge to “Make America Healthy Again” by clearing out the cabal of wrongdoers at federal agencies.

The Deep State has terrified nearly every Republican, other than Donald Trump himself, such that representative government in our Nation’s capital does not really exist anymore. It functions more like a police state, whereby the unlimited, largely unsupervised funding of the DOJ has resulted in relentless political investigations and prosecutions.

Sauer, Paxton, RFK Jr., and only a handful of other candidates for these key positions have the courage and skills to stand up against the Deep State to save our country. Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) is in that category, too, but notice how the Swamp is wrongly stifling his campaign to become Senate Majority Leader.

Trump does not need the cooperation of Congress to exercise the pardon power granted exclusively to him by the U.S. Constitution. This pardon power was modeled on the authority of the King of England, and it must be used frequently and broadly by the 47th president.

Trump could grant individual and blanket pardons on Truth Social, which would have the bonus of belittling the Deep State in addition to neutralizing it. Trump should also issue preemptive pardons, without allowing the DOJ to bankrupt its victims first.

Trump could set a further precedent for presidential authority to pardon for state prosecutions when they incorporate federal allegations as the ongoing, politically motivated prosecutions of Trump and his supporters in New York, Georgia, Arizona, and Michigan all do. Presidential power is improperly undermined when state prosecutors funded by Leftist George Soros can threaten imprisonment of the president and his top advisers.

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.

Adios to Biden and Harris

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Biden and Harris have inflicted problems that are the worst in history, for the next administration to clean up. Tens of millions of illegal aliens, violent crime and drug smuggling, declining military enlistment, and rampant inflation are all heavy burdens for the new presidential administration.

Mexico is reportedly delaying a vast horde of at least another 150,000 migrants at Tapachula, which is its southernmost city, until after our election depending on who wins. On Sunday a shootout occurred in Mexico near the California border, which left 2 Colombians dead and 4 wounded.

Another recent shootout occurred just south of the Texas border along the Rio Grande, near the Tornillo-Guadalupe International Bridge. The Mexico National Guard exchanged gunfire with a caravan of suspected drug smugglers, and afterward found three abandoned trucks, all of which had been reported as stolen in the United States, and an arsenal of 20 rifles, 19 bulletproof vests, 11 handguns, 10 combat helmets, and ammunition in excess of 2,900 rounds.

Illegal aliens are included in the census that establishes each state’s allotment in the Electoral College and the House of Representatives, boosting states that harbor illegals while depriving other states of political power. California alone has eight more congressional seats than it should, and an equal number of Electoral College votes that properly belong to conservative Midwestern states like Ohio.

An illegal alien from West Africa was caught by the border patrol in March near San Ysidro, California, but then released under the notorious policy of “catch and release” by Biden and Harris. Sidi Mohamed Abdallahi was merely given a “notice to appear” at an immigration hearing, but it is silly to expect someone who entered our country unlawfully to voluntarily show up for his own deportation.

Evidently this illegal alien moved to Chicago, where at 9:30 in the morning he allegedly began shooting at an Orthodox Jewish man walking to a synagogue. As emergency response workers and police rushed to the scene, Abdallahi allegedly shot at them, too.

The State of Illinois, not the Biden-Harris Department of Justice, recently charged him with terrorism. Many terrorists and criminals snuck into our country over the Biden-Harris open border, creating an enormous burden to find and deport them.

Meanwhile, Biden and Harris have alienated young men so badly that their enlistment in our military has fallen to an all-time low. Last year the Army, Navy, and Air Force all failed to meet their recruitment goals under Biden-Harris, due to a plummeting rate of enlistment by young men.

The Biden-Harris Administration repeatedly lowered standards to reach the military’s enlistment targets. Earlier this year the Administration even removed the long-standing requirement of a high school diploma or an equivalent test score on an exam such as the GED, but lower standards result in more dropouts during boot camp.

Since Biden and Harris entered the White House 1.7 million additional Americans have had to take on multiple jobs merely to survive. For example, this past August 264,000 Americans began part-time work to make ends meet.

A whopping total of 30% of the new jobs created under Biden and Harris has been government employment, which is simply redistributing money from taxpayers to the workers. This is not the genuine economic growth that Americans need.

Inflation exceeded salary increases for most of the four years that Biden and Harris were in office. Real wages and benefits fell by 4% during their administration.

In 2020, while Trump was president, the average price of a dozen grade A large eggs was only $1.51. By September of this year under Biden-Harris, this average price had soared to $3.81, which is more than a 100% increase.

Egg prices have increased by 40% in the last year, and jumped by nearly 20% in one month as recently as September. Far from claims by Harris supporters that inflation problems have subsided, this crucial ingredient in our diet has boosted the cost of living for many Americans, while prices for chocolate have sharply increased by nearly 38% since 2020.

Inflation has driven up the cost of groceries so much that young adults struggle to make ends meet. Housing prices are beyond the reach of the newly married, which means they will delay having children while our national birth rate continues to plummet.

The trade deficit jumped by 19.1% in merely one month, to total $84.4 billion for the month of September. As with most of the economic data reported by the Biden-Harris Administration, the originally disclosed $70.4 billion trade deficit in August was underreported and was subsequently revised to be worse.

The trade deficit reflects lost American jobs, as those goods can and should be made here by Americans. Restoring those jobs should be a top priority.

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.

Men Reject Dems’ “Vote for a Woman” Pitch

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Democrats are trying to win this election by telling men to vote for Kamala Harris because she’s a woman, but this pitch is not working. Trump leads among male voters by 16% nationally in the latest USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll, while Democrats belatedly try to overcome that lack of support by men.

A defining feature of Harris’s vice presidency, according to the New York Times, was to order a review of many years of government briefing reports about foreign women leaders, to search for gender bias. No such bias was found, but nevertheless the Deep State mandated training sessions for federal workers on how to write about women leaders in other countries.

This is beyond silly, and not what our tax dollars should be funding. It is certainly not what should be leading our country at this time of economic crisis and foreign wars.

The economy and inflation are the top two issues for likely voters, and Trump leads on both of them. Crime, gun policy, and the open border also rank highly in importance now, while the abortion issue on which Harris bases her campaign is ranked only seventh in significance by voters.

Trump has been opening his rallies by asking his crowds if they are better off now than four years ago, when Kamala Harris moved into the White House. The immense crowds respond with a thunderous “no.”

A disastrous open border, inflation, and the transgender agenda: Kamala is not going to correct any of this. She candidly admitted in one of her rare interviews that she could not think of anything she would have done differently from Biden.

Yet in one of many cringe-worthy television ads by the Harris side, Hollywood actor Ed O’Neill absurdly admonishes: “Be a man: Vote for a woman.” The Democrat strategy is to try to shame men into voting for Kamala Harris.

Another absurd ad by Democrats to induce men to vote for Harris included this zinger by an actor pretending to support Harris: “I eat carburetors for breakfast!” Car mechanics for Kamala is what campaign consultants apparently thought would persuade more men to vote for her.

Democrats have trotted out the 1980s rock star Bruce Springsteen to perform at recent Harris campaign events in Atlanta and Philadelphia, where Democrats seek early voting to carry Georgia and Pennsylvania. Trump is widely supported outside these two liberal cities, and he recently held an immense campaign rally in Pennsylvania where liberal Penn State is located.

This presidential election is about whether the ideology of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) should block a strong leader, Donald Trump, from becoming president again. Men are not buying Democrats’ attempt to win the White House based on DEI.

The prime minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy, a terrific female leader, did not campaign on a slogan of “I’m with her,” like Hillary Clinton’s failed campaign in 2016. Kamala Harris is trying to become president based on so-called “equity politics,” which often means women taking credit for what men accomplish.

Harris is the nominee only because Joe Biden has been president, not because Harris won any votes in a primary. In fact, Harris pulled out early from the Democrat primary in 2020 due to the lack of support for her.

Many prominent liberal men have declined to endorse Harris for president, such as Jamie Dimon, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett. At the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post, the successful men who own these papers each overrode their editorial staff to block them from endorsing Harris.

The Los Angeles Times’ owner asked its editorial board to do a factual comparison of the candidates so that readers could decide for themselves for whom to vote, but the liberal editors refused. Leftists have since resigned from both the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post, which is good news for the future of both papers.

A NYT/Siena poll earlier this month showed Trump leading Harris among young men by 17%, which is a historic lead for a Republican to have over a Democrat with this traditionally liberal demographic of young men. Young men are not thrilled by losing opportunities to women based on the woke DEI ideology.

Michelle Obama is campaigning for Kamala Harris with mean-spirited attacks on Trump. “You know who is nasty to me? Michelle Obama. I always tried to be so nice and respectful. … She was nasty,” Trump responded.

On the ballot is a choice between radical feminism, embodied in the DEI candidacy of Kamala Harris, as opposed to the candidate who got there based on his merit, Donald Trump. Many traditional Democrats are not persuaded by “vote for a woman” campaigning, because it takes more than that to lead our Nation out of the economic mess that Kamala Harris has caused.

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.

GOP Needs to Counter “Souls to the Polls” in Georgia

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Democrats expect to win Georgia by putting their billion-dollar war chest to use on an enormous get-out-the-vote effort there. In the first of three weeks of early voting, a record-breaking total of more than 1.5 million ballots were cast in the Peach State.

This Thursday, Democrats pull out all their stops in Georgia with a joint rally featuring former president Barack Obama, aging rock star Bruce Springsteen, and Kamala Harris. Perhaps Taylor Swift’s “cat lady” approach is no longer considered helpful to Harris’s campaign.

Pennsylvania Democrat Senator Bob Casey has remarkably begun running ads in Pennsylvania begging voters to reelect him because “he sided with Trump to end NAFTA and put tariffs on China to stop them from cheating.” That signals a shift by Democrats away from trying to defeat Trump in Pennsylvania to focus more on Georgia.

There is no registration by political party in Georgia, but reportedly a higher-than-normal 55% of the early voters have been women. The record surge in early voting there is partly the result of the Democrat political machine driving women to the polls to vote for Kamala Harris.

Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has delayed releasing the results of a state audit to remove illegal aliens from its voter rolls. Virginia and other Republican-led states have been transparent in removing noncitizens from their voter rolls, which Biden’s Justice Department has opposed.

The voter turnout in Georgia is on track to surpass its nearly 5 million ballots tallied in 2020, when Biden reportedly won by only 11,779 votes. In 2022, the Democrat political machine reelected one of the most liberal senators in the country, the black Rev. Raphael Warnock, and Republicans cannot afford to lose this state again.

Republicans wasted tens of millions of dollars on political ads in Georgia to try to defeat Rev. Warnock, and he won by 100,000 votes based on Democrats’ superior ground game. Republicans should not allow Kamala Harris to win Georgia’s 16 Electoral College votes, which Trump needs to prevail nationwide.

“Souls to the polls” is the name for the Democrat operation that drives many thousands of under-informed voters from predominantly black churches to polling booths on Sundays. This caught Republicans off guard in 2020, and the GOP campaign consultants should be doing far more in this must-win state.

Kamala Harris spent Sunday in Georgia churches urging black congregations to cast ballots for her during early voting, and they are. A large number of older voters have cast early ballots, and many of them are churchgoers.

A toll-free number is publicized by Democrats to provide a free ride to the polls, and this operation is credited with the record-breaking early turnout. The Republicans do not have anything nearly as effective in Georgia.

Brilliance on Sunday by Trump working at McDonald’s in Pennsylvania, plus Elon Musk’s rallies there, have apparently secured victory in this Commonwealth. The 810,000 voter registration advantage by Democrats in 2020, when Biden reportedly won by 80,000, has been reduced to less than 300,000 as of Monday thanks to a phenomenal grassroots voter drive.

The Cook Political Report just moved the Pennsylvania Senate battle to a toss-up, despite how the Democrat incumbent Bob Casey was way ahead just a month ago. Republicans seem certain to win a Senate majority, and could add to that with additional wins based on the manufacturing jobs issue in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

While some polls show Trump slightly ahead in Georgia, the latest Washington Post-Schar School poll shows Harris leading by 51-47% there. The side that turns out the most votes will be the one that wins this state, and probably the national election.

Fortunately, Trump has a few appearances planned for Georgia in these final two weeks before this election. It would be wonderful if Elon Musk and other Trump supporters, such as Tulsi Gabbard, could change their schedules to rush there soon too.

Musk and others were right to focus entirely on Pennsylvania during the past month, but that mission appears to have been accomplished. In response Democrats have apparently shifted their campaigning away from Pennsylvania in a new strategy to win the election with Georgia instead.

Musk should help by reacting accordingly, and start doing his rallies in this pivotal southeastern state. Long lines gather outside of Musk’s rallies and he is boosting Trump’s campaign, which is needed in Georgia now.

There is still time, and successful campaigns adapt to changes in strategy by the other side. Football teams change their plays depending on how the other team lines up on the field.

Republicans and all Trump supporters need to react to this seismic shift in strategy by Democrats. Rallies, postcards, and phone calls by Trump supporters should shift to Georgia now.

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.

Will Non-Citizen Votes Decide This Election?

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Illegal aliens are prohibited from voting in a presidential election, under a Republican-sponsored law enacted in 1996 and codified at 18 U.S.C. § 611. But illegal aliens are not told that, and many are falsely misled by Democrats to think they can vote in federal elections.

On Sunday, Trump posted about Biden-Harris’s new lawsuit against Virginia on his social media platform Truth Social that “One of the Greatest Examples of DOJ Weaponization is the fact that they are suing Virginia to put ALL of the Illegal Voters, which were fully exposed and removed by the important work of Governor Glenn Youngkin, back on the Voter Rolls.”

“Obviously, this was done so that they can CHEAT on the Election. So sad! What has happened to our once Great Country?” Trump added.

If merely one-tenth of 1% of illegal aliens cast a ballot in this election, it could illegally flip the outcome to Kamala Harris. That’s because she’s allowed 20 million new trespassers across our southern border, many of whom have settled in key battleground states like Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Georgia.

Kamala Harris’s Department of Justice (DOJ) sued Virginia on October 11, and Alabama two weeks earlier, to block them from cleaning their election rolls of non-citizens. Some Leftist-controlled cities, particularly in deep-blue Maryland and Vermont, allow non-citizens to vote in local elections.

Foreigners who are here illegally will vote overwhelmingly for Kamala Harris, of course, because she provides them lavish benefits while Trump rightly pledges to deport them. Democrats falsely accuse Trump of supposedly subverting democracy, but it is Kamala Harris and her supporters who seek to rig this election by insisting that illegal aliens remain on the voter rolls despite the efforts of Republican-led states to attain voter integrity.

It is ironic that the same liberal-controlled DOJ that violated its traditional rule against bringing politicized prosecutions within 60 or 90 days of the election is now suing to prevent voter rolls from being corrected within 90 days of the election. It is appropriate and necessary to purge illegal voters from registrations during this Quiet Period, which Trump-haters have violated anyway with their own politically motivated court filings.

“Federal law has made it nearly impossible for states to verify the citizenship of voter-registration applicants,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton recently said. “Although it is a crime for a non-citizen to register to vote, federal law restricts states from requiring proof of citizenship, and state agencies like those we lead have limited means to verify voter citizenship in many cases.”

The Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin pushes back on the recent lawsuit against him by the Biden-Harris DOJ, as he should. “With less than 30 days until the election, the Biden-Harris Department of Justice is filing an unprecedented lawsuit against me and the Commonwealth of Virginia, for appropriately enforcing a 2006 law signed by Democrat Tim Kaine that requires Virginia to remove noncitizens from the voter rolls.”

Early voting is already in full swing in Virginia, a state that is home to many liberal federal workers but also numerous veterans and solidly Republican rural regions. The tallies of how many have voted early there are so encouraging that Trump might even win this Commonwealth and its 13 Electoral College votes, which would be icing on the cake.

The northern Virginia suburbs of Arlington and Alexandria are dominated by federal workers, and Biden won these areas by more than 80% of the total vote. But the early voting in these suburbs is less than half of what it was in 2020.

Yet early voting is higher than in 2020 in western Virginia, which is Trump Country. This region is more like West Virginia, which Trump wins by 40 points, so the uptick in early voting reflects a particularly high enthusiasm among Trump voters.

Trump campaigned in Pennsylvania again Monday night, observing that “WE win Pennsylvania, WE win this Great Commonwealth, WE are going to win the whole ball game.” Harris is also spending nearly all of her time campaigning there, with far fewer appearances than Trump’s rallies, as both sides focus on this “Keystone State.”

Pennsylvania public schools have been hit hard by an influx of illegal aliens who cannot speak English. Under Biden-Harris, the number of English Language Learner (ELL) students needing expensive special instruction to learn for the first time how to read, write, and speak in English rose by almost 40% between the 2020-21 and 2023-24 school years, despite overall student enrollment declining.

One might wonder how millions who do not speak English are able to fill out their ballots. Philadelphia County, where Democrats rack up an enormous margin to overcome their losses in most Pennsylvania counties, prints its ballots in Spanish and Chinese, and assistance while voting is also allowed there.

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.