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.