Trump Trounces Liberal Gov on Transgender Issue

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

The federal government has been sending billions in taxpayer dollars to states for their public schools, including Maine. Maine does not have to accept this money but if it does, then it has to comply with the conditions attached just as households can place conditions on charities that receive their donations, or donate the money elsewhere.

At the recent governors’ meeting at the White House, President Trump politely asked Maine’s Gov. Janet Mills if she is “not going to comply with” his executive order protecting girls’ sports against boys viewing themselves as transgendered, as he had heard from the media. She indicated that she would not comply, and argued instead that she is “complying with state and federal law” by allowing transgendered teenagers, born as male, to play in girls’ sports.

Trump responded that “we are the federal law” in reference to how the executive authority under the Constitution is vested in the president, and how Trump had cited the federal statute enacted by Congress. Trump then continued, “you better do it, you better do it, because you’re not going to get any federal funding at all if you don’t.”

“And, by the way, your population, even though it’s somewhat liberal, although I did very well there, your population doesn’t want men playing in women’s sports.” Mills interrupted Trump by brusquely saying, “See you in court,” and was photographed smiling smugly at her table.

“Good, I’ll see you in court, I look forward to that, that should be a real easy one,” said Trump. Then Trump added one of his trademark zingers that infuriates the Left, “And enjoy your life after governor because I don’t think you’ll be in elected politics.”

This 57-second confrontation in which Trump rebuked the entrenched liberal Maine Governor illustrated how much better Trump is than any other Republican politician. Who else would have stood up against a tough, bossy liberal woman attorney as Trump just did?

At issue is whether federal transgender policy should be carried out and enforced by elected leaders – or whether a small dissenting minority can use the courts to overcome the will of the majority. The federal government headed by Trump can and should use funding as a lever to enforce compliance by states and schools that receive the funding.

Trump’s Department of Education immediately opened an investigation into Maine schools, showing that he will follow through on this and all his campaign pledges. Nine days earlier, on February 12, Trump’s Education Department announced that it will also investigate the interscholastic athletic leagues in Minnesota and California for violating Trump’s ban on allowing boys to compete unfairly in girls’ sports.

A week earlier, Trump’s Education Department gave notice that it is investigating the Massachusetts interscholastic league and the University of Pennsylvania and San Jose State University, about this same issue. Virtually every state has an association that governs high school sports, and the league in Washington State has been considering setting up a program separate from girls’ sports for transgender athletes.

On February 20 Trump’s Department of Education also issued a statement applauding the conformance by the interscholastic athletic leagues in New Hampshire and Wisconsin with Trump’s executive order banning men in women’s sports. These are two important presidential swing states, and New Hampshire holds the first-in-the-nation presidential primary.

Trump’s shutting down of the “transgender insanity,” as he accurately describes this, is part of his overall block on federal funding of woke ideologies. On Feb. 13 Trump’s Education Department announced the termination of over $350 million in grants to promote wokeness.

The amount of federal spending on boondoggles in public education is staggering. In the small state of Maine alone, the federal government wastes more than $280 million annually in funding its public schools, which “ranked dead last on a list compiled by U.S. News comparing the quality of public high schools between states.”

Liberals have run Maine public schools into the ground. “During the 1990s, Maine typically ranked first or second on the NAEP” exams, but school policies in Maine have ruined its public schools since then, reports The Maine Wire.

Maine Gov. Mills remains defiant. The day after the public confrontation, Gov. Mills issued a written statement claiming that Trump is violating the Constitution by using federal funds to enforce compliance with his executive order, and that she is standing up for the “rights of transgender Mainers” based on the Maine Human Rights Act passed in 2021.

But missing from Mills’ statement is any recognition of the rights of girls to fair competition in school sports, as thousands of girls are being denied the right to a level playing field by the transgender invasion. Once popular, Mills’ disapproval rating surpassed her approval rating even prior to her meeting with Trump.

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.

Planes Collide with DEI

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

After Delta Airlines reaffirmed its full commitment to the DEI ideology, one of its planes crash-landed, flipped upside down, and burst into flames at Toronto Airport. Everyone miraculously survived this latest plane crash that happened once the plane was oddly cleared to land amid a crosswind having gusts up to 40 mph on its approach to the airport.

DEI means that “diversity, equity, and inclusion” are the priority in hiring and promotion, and protection against firing inept workers. President Trump has issued two Executive Orders against DEI, and many large corporations have recently rescinded or rolled back their DEI programs, including Amazon, Disney, Google, GE, GM, and Pepsi, while major banks are taking DEI off their websites.

Donald Trump’s trademark phrase was “You’re fired!” long before he ran for president. Now, as president for the second time, he’s been refreshingly firing everyone who stands in the way of transforming the federal government from DEI to a merit-based system.

Trump should consider firing those in charge of air travel safety, including investigators of these crashes. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) asserts exclusive authority over analyzing such crashes in the United States, but this federal agency is liberal like other federal agencies.

The initial statements by the NTSB chairwoman last Friday seemed to avoid holding anyone accountable for the mid-air collision last month in D.C., despite how it killed all 67 people on the American Airlines plane and a military helicopter. No collision of this magnitude should happen today, and any suggestion that no one was severely at fault is grounds for firing the investigators.

Yet at this rate no air traffic controller will be fired for this deadly collision near Reagan National Airport, even though the day before a similar mid-air collision near the same airport was averted only by an alert pilot aborting his landing and recircling. Air traffic controllers are federal employees and they adopted a policy a decade ago to make it nearly impossible to fire any of them, no matter how incompetent.

During the Obama Administration the use of a merit and skills-based exam, the AT-SAT, was deemphasized in hiring air traffic controllers. Instead a biographical test based on DEI became more important in hiring decisions in this occupation on which the lives of thousands depend daily.

An air traffic control expert, Michael Pearson, told Just the News that the numerous errors made by air traffic control in the recent D.C. crash included failing to “tell the jet that the helicopter was in sight” and failing to give timely “safety advisories” when alerted about the impending collision in the sky. In addition, the “helicopter route was horrible” while “the controller didn’t apply the rules properly,” Pearson said.

But the air traffic controllers’ association, which functions like a union in impeding the ability to fire workers, has immunized the federal employees against being fired by adopting the Air Traffic Safety Action Program. Under this policy “employees are promised that no punitive or disciplinary actions will be taken as a result of reporting errors that could impact safety, provided those errors are not the result of gross negligence or illegal activity.”

The NTSB is already protecting its fellow federal government workers by speculating that the altitude meter in the military helicopter may have somehow malfunctioned, and that a belated warning was “stepped on” by an interruption and hence may not have been heard. But air traffic controllers should ensure their messages are timely heard and acted upon, or else take immediate action to warn others as the DC controllers failed to do.

Missing from the NTSB statements is criticism of air traffic control for not alerting the helicopter pilots to divert their course until less than 30 seconds before the collision. Subsequently the air traffic controller told the helicopter pilot to fly “behind” the landing aircraft, which lacked an urgent altitude change needed.

Pete Buttigieg, who oversaw the air traffic controllers for four years in the Biden Administration, is turning the tables by demanding, “The flying public needs answers.” So while the biased NTSB withholds real answers, Buttigieg blames Trump to boost his campaign for U.S. Senate in his adopted state of Michigan.

A lawsuit has been pending for many years in federal court challenging how air traffic control hiring practices have disadvantaged qualified candidates from the leading training program, called the Air Traffic-Collegiate Training Initiative. This lawsuit, captioned Brigida v. US Dept of Transportation, was certified as a class action in February 2022 in federal court in DC.

Several hundred employees of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) have been fired by Trump, but not any air traffic controllers or their supervisors. The recent two crashes, one in Canada, suggest that replacing DEI with a merit-based system for air traffic control is badly needed.

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.

Half-Trans, Half-Free: Blue States Defy Trump

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Democrat-majority states are defying President Trump on the transgender issue, and dividing our Nation into half-trans and half-free. The free half are the states that protect girls’ sports from males invading as transgenders, and which protect both boys and girls against mutilating transgender surgeries.

This country endured “half-slave, half-free” until it became impossible to co-exist that way, as the half-slave portion insisted on complicity by the half-free portion until it was no longer willing to go along. President Trump has already put an end to federal workers signing their emails with pronoun commands to recipients for how they address the senders.

On January 28, Trump signed an Executive Order that commanded every federal agency “that provides research or education grants to medical institutions, including medical schools and hospitals” to “immediately take appropriate steps to ensure that institutions receiving Federal research or education grants end the chemical and surgical mutilation of children.”

President Trump further ordered the Attorney General to “prioritize enforcement of protections against female genital mutilation.” Trump has also ended the transgender policies of our Armed Services.

On Feb. 7 and as made public on Monday, newly confirmed (by Vice President JD Vance’s tie-breaking vote) Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth suspended all future military promotions of soldiers who have “a history of gender dysphoria.” He canceled “all unscheduled, scheduled, or planned medical procedures associated with affirming or facilitating a gender transition for Service members.”

As to boys and young men invading girls’ school sports and locker rooms, Trump issued another Executive Order terminating that for all schools receiving federal funds. Only private high schools and a few private colleges do not receive federal funding.

“The war on women’s sports is over,” President Trump announced at his White House signing of this protection against unfair competition. He thereby rescinded a Biden policy encouraging boys to compete as transgender athletes in girls’ sports, as many have.

The NCAA, which governs college sports, immediately issued a new policy in partial compliance with President Trump’s orders. The NCAA immediately disallows men, as defined not by Trump’s definition based on reproductive potential at conception but by birth certificates (which could be inaccurate) from competing in women’s sporting events while still allowing men to practice with women and thus enter their locker rooms.

Blue states including New York and Minnesota are already flatly defying Trump’s directives. Democrat New York officials have advised the many hospitals in New York City and throughout the state to continue to perform transgender surgeries on children even if that means they will lose federal funding.

A total of 23 Attorneys General from blue states have obtained a temporary restraining order (TRO) from a federal court in the blue state of Rhode Island against Trump’s freezing of federal funding of hospitals and other institutions that are performing transgender operations on children. California and 14 other blue states have told hospitals not to cancel transgender procedures or else they would be in violation of state laws against discrimination.

A few hospitals had reportedly canceled a few transgender procedures, while the ACLU and others have sued to seek an injunction blocking Trump’s order against transgender surgeries and treatments from taking effect. Federal power is at its zenith on the issue of how it spends its money, and thus Trump should ultimately prevail at the Supreme Court, but that Court may not resolve this anytime soon.

Meanwhile, the Minnesota State High School League has told schools there to continue to allow boys to compete as transgender athletes in girls’ sports. In Virginia, which has a Republican governor, schools will comply with Trump’s order against boys invading girls’ sports.

Planned Parenthood is in the business of transgender treatments, so every Democrat-appointed judge sides with that agenda. Blue state judges rule entirely for transgender activists.

On Sunday the New York Times Editorial Board stated their opinion entitled “Trump’s Shameful Campaign Against Transgender Americans,” and asserted that Trump is siding with “the worst of” U.S. history. Yet grassroots politics are confirming the opposite.

In Pennsylvania, where the Democrat voter registration advantage over Republicans exceeded 800,000 voters in 2020, that margin has fallen to less than 200,000 and continues to plummet even after the recent election. Outspoken Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA), who will face reelection there in the presidential year of 2028, observed in November that Trump’s victory may have resulted from ads saying, “Kamala is for ‘they/them.’ President Trump is for you."

More recently Fetterman described the overall political approach by Democrats today as “toxic,” particularly for the young men who shifted to vote Republican in the last election. Fetterman assessed Trump’s election victory as a “gut-check kind of vote” about which side would protect voters’ “personal view of the American way of life,” and that is President Trump.

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.

Billions to Be Lost in Super Bowl Gambling

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

The embrace and promotion of gambling by the NFL make this Super Bowl week the worst of the year for those susceptible to being victimized. And next month features March Madness, when an estimated 68 million Americans bet on the annual college basketball tournament.

Many billions are wagered on the Super Bowl, basketball games, and nearly everything else. The easy availability of gambling on phone apps and the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to promote individualized betting have vastly expanded this vice far beyond the limited horse racing of a generation ago.

Young adults, and particularly young men, are the biggest victims, according to a survey released a few months ago by Fairleigh Dickinson University. It found that 10% of men and 7% of women between ages 18 and 30 have a gambling addiction today.

Gambling causes suicides and cognitive disorders even more than other addictions, including substance abuse. A study in Sweden found that gamblers were 15 times more likely to commit suicide than the overall population.

College basketball is particularly vulnerable to corruption by gambling, as players desperate for income can alter their performance to enable gamblers to win big by betting on aspects of a game. ESPN reported on Monday that three college basketball programs are under a federal investigation into gambling rings.

Major League Baseball fired its top balls-and-strikes umpire after his gambling app account was being used by someone else to place substantial bets on baseball. Los Angeles Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani’s ex-interpreter faces federal sentencing for allegedly stealing $17 million to gamble and, while Ohtani himself was cleared, last year there was an NBA player who pled guilty to a scheme to depart games early with a phony injury and then an illness so that bets could win.

Delta Airlines recently announced its new partnership with DraftKings, a sports gambling company, to offer free gaming to passengers while in-flight. Apparently money will not be wagered through this program, but hooking idle travelers on this addiction can result.

Ever since the U.S. Supreme Court opened the floodgates to sports gambling in 2018, the sums wagered have increased. Missouri, through a ballot initiative, will soon join the 38 states plus Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, that allow sports betting.

More people seek help for their gambling addiction at this time of year, during NFL playoffs through the Super Bowl, according to the executive director of the Council on Compulsive Gambling of Pennsylvania Josh Ercole. “A lot of this has to do with the ease of access and the continued increased availability,” he said, which has sharply increased through phone apps.

These bets are not merely on the outcome of a game, but throughout the game on predictions like what the next play will be or how well a particular player performs. “Prop wagers,” short for “proposition wagers,” are pervasive now in betting on sports.

A prop wager is a bet on something within a game, such as who scores the first touchdown or kicks the longest field goal. There are nearly endless varieties of prop bets promoted to someone using a gambling app during a game, and the potential for corruption with players, particularly unpaid ones at the college level, is severe.

The longtime NFL Commissioner who built the NFL into the world’s premier sports league was Pete Rozelle, a conservative and a big fan of Phyllis Schlafly. Rozelle banned NFL games on Christmas Day, and said in 1975 that “the NFL is firmly opposed to the concept of legalized gambling on professional football.”

That is not the NFL today, as it welcomes gambling to boost its television ratings among those who place bets. The NFL insists on playing on Christmas too, so this holy day has been transformed into a day of gambling for many.

The Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit may even allow gambling on election outcomes, in a case that was argued on January 17 captioned KalshiEX v. CFTC. The plaintiff seeks to offer trading in political event futures contracts, which the Commodity Futures Trading Commission so far prohibits under its interpretation of a federal statute.

Texas, which recently opened its biennial legislative session, has admirably resisted pressure to allow sports gambling in the Lone Star State. Texas also properly prohibits ballot initiatives like the one that gambling companies just passed in Missouri.

The revered longtime Mayor of New York City, Fiorello La Guardia, who built the Big Apple during the Great Depression, worked hard to keep gambling out and was even photographed destroying slot machines with a sledgehammer. He dumped them into the river rather than allow harm from gambling.

Congress could and should prohibit sports betting, and has the authority to do so under the Commerce Clause. States, too, should prohibit sports betting as nearly a dozen have done.

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.

California Up in Smoke, Thanks to Liberals

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

The cost of the fires in Los Angeles County is estimated to range up to $250 billion, far more than the damage done by the Great Chicago Fire which destroyed that city in 1871. The losses from the Chicago Fire, considered one of the worst in history, were a smaller inflation-adjusted $5.7 billion.

The cost of rebuilding Chicago, which was done quickly, was contained because it was funded by its own residents, businesses, donations, and architects determined to build a great city. By 1893 it held a most spectacular World’s Fair with 27 million visitors from around the world over six months, and Chicago quickly became the railroad hub for America.

New lumber began arriving in Chicago for its rebuild while there were still hot embers in burnt buildings. There was not a smoldering feeling of entitlement as seen among liberals in Los Angeles today, or demands that the federal government serve as the gravy train of handouts.

President Trump made a remarkable trip to Los Angeles to implore its residents to reclaim their property and start their own construction as soon as possible. Time is money, and extensive delay in rebuilding the devastated areas of Los Angeles could be as costly as the immediate loss in value from the fires.

But California is a regulatory nightmare where radical environmentalists obstruct construction projects at every turn. More than a decade ago Californians enacted Proposition 1 (2014) by a landslide vote of 67% to create new reservoirs to supply more water to the arid Los Angeles basin, which could have doused the fires.

Billions were allocated for the promised new reservoirs, and Congress kicked in hundreds of millions of dollars more at American taxpayer expense. Yet no new reservoirs have been built in California since 1979.

Environmentalists file lawsuits to delay or stop construction, while liberal California judges too often rule in favor of the Left there. The California Environmental Quality Act allows lawsuits to contest findings by California agencies that are required to assess the potential environmental harm of infrastructure projects.

The Palisades and Eaton fires near Los Angeles destroyed 40,000 acres, which is 20 times larger than what burned in the Great Chicago Fire. Rainfall is pouring down on Southern California in late January but nearly all of it flows into the ocean because of the lack of reservoirs there.

Currently there are only three routes to bring water to southern California, which has very little of its own. The first route is the Los Angeles Aqueduct built by the great William Mulholland in the 1900s, which brings water from the Owens River valley on the east side of the Sierra Nevada mountains.

Next is the Colorado River Aqueduct built in the 1930s, which brings water from the Colorado River at Lake Havasu, but that diminishing water supply is also needed by fast-growing Arizona. Finally, there is the California Aqueduct built in the 1960s, which is the only route to bring water from north of Sacramento where water is abundant, but that water must be shared with the enormously productive farms in California’s fertile Central Valley.

The coastal city of Rancho Palos Verdes embarked on a multi-million dollar project of “dewatering wells,” which has removed more than 112 million gallons of water to protect million-dollar homes against instability in the earth. Now that the vegetation is gone due to fires, the risk of mudslides from sudden downpours is getting worse.

While recently touring the carnage near Los Angeles, Trump, himself a builder of magnificent skyscraper apartments and hotels, and golf courses, rightly criticized the interference by liberals with the owners of burned-out property gaining access to their own land to clear the wreckage and start rebuilding now. Not next year, not next month, but immediately, Trump urged local officials to allow it.

California liberals want the rest of America to pay for their costly regulations that impede sensible construction and affordable living. The notorious California Coastal Commission asserts its own veto power over all human activity near the ocean, where much of popular California is.

Environmentalists obstruct the routine clearing of underbrush necessary to avert disastrous wildfires from spreading so quickly. When Tom Daschle was the Democrat Senate Majority Leader from South Dakota, he inserted into legislation a special provision to prohibit federal judges from interfering with the removal of underbrush in his state.

An illegal alien, already convicted of a felony, was arrested and is considered a person of interest in connection with the start of one of these conflagrations, the so-called Kenneth Fire. He was caught carrying a blowtorch near where that fire started.

California has plenty of money, and it is time for its many billionaires to pick up their oars and row their own boat to aquatic self-sufficiency within the next decade. Rural America elected Trump over fierce opposition by wealthy California Leftists, and rural Trump voters should not be burdened with the expense of restoring the liberal lifestyle that just went up in smoke.

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.

Pardons Show the Need to Downsize DOJ

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

The unprecedented number of presidential pardons as Biden exited and Trump entered the White House demonstrates that the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is out of control. DOJ has become an unaccountable, unelected branch of government that is undermining representative democracy.

Incoming President Trump, in his first few hours in office, properly pardoned more than a thousand victims of DOJ prosecutions in the one-sided D.C. venue where Trump supporters cannot get a fair trial. More pardons, such as of Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon for protecting executive privilege against the Democrats’ witch hunt against Trump, will surely be granted soon, too.

Trump’s nominee for Attorney General, Pam Bondi, faced hostile questioning during her confirmation hearings but no senator seemed interested in scaling back DOJ such that so many pardons by presidents of both parties would become unnecessary. With an annual budget of nearly $40 billion without any real oversight by Congress, DOJ spends more than the entire annual budget of many states in prosecuting whomever it likes for headline purposes.

With over 10,000 attorneys on its payroll, DOJ is more than twice the size of the biggest private law firm. The vast amount of prosecutions and civil cases brought annually by DOJ could be viewed as a jobs program for attorneys.

DOJ is the most bloated of all federal agencies, and the most destructive. A mere investigation of a small company by the DOJ inevitably drives it out of business, even if it did nothing wrong.

Yet so far the House of Representatives has been unwilling to cut the DOJ’s budget. Elon Musk has not talked much about cutting DOJ in connection with his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) downsizing project, despite how our country flourished the most before DOJ was founded in 1870.

Trump immediately suspended all of Biden’s burdensome regulations, and the Trump Administration could likewise withdraw all of DOJ’s unjustified prosecutions and appeals. DOJ has long-running litigation against Texas to remove a few buoys that protect a sliver of our southern border, for example, and DOJ should end its appeal on that issue immediately.

Many cases are pending in the Supreme Court about which DOJ should also promptly reverse its position to align them with Trump’s successful campaign pledges. One of the biggest is U.S. v. Skrmetti, in which the Biden Administration argued strenuously that Tennessee’s ban on transgender surgeries on minors somehow violates the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.

The Trump Administration could notify the Court that it fully supports this ban on transgender operations on children, as Trump was elected by opposing the “transgender lunacy.” In this and other cases throughout our country, DOJ should be promptly informing courts that the liberal stances previously taken by Biden are repudiated and withdrawn.

In another case pending before the Supreme Court, the Biden Administration is appealing a conservative ruling by the Fifth Circuit against the Food & Drug Administration for sending “manufacturers of flavored e-cigarette products on a wild goose chase” and blocking their sales. This regulatory overreach by the power-hungry FDA illustrates what Trump campaigned against, and the FDA’s appeal should be dropped in this Wages and White Lion Investments case.

In another appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court by the Biden Administration of a conservative decision by the Fifth Circuit, the Environmental Protection Agency insists that the venue for challenges by small refineries to the EPA’s burdensome clean air regulations must be limited to Washington, D.C. There the EPA enjoys the home court advantage and a big majority by Democrat-appointed judges.

The Trump Administration should withdraw this appeal and allow the decision against the EPA to remain in place, in Environmental Protection Agency v. Calumet Shreveport Refining. Trump won on his pro-energy platform against suffocating energy production with regulatory burdens, and withdrawing this appeal would fulfill his campaign pledges.

Another case pending before the Supreme Court this year is an appeal of a DOJ prosecution that reinterpreted a federal statute criminalizing false statements, by broadening it to include statements that are true but misleading as in omitting additional related information.

DOJ prosecuted the defendant under 18 U.S.C. § 1014, which prohibits making a “false statement” for the purpose of influencing certain financial institutions or agencies. The statements made by the defendant concerning a loan were true but incomplete, and would not be considered a violation of this criminal statute by many courts.

DOJ should not be using federal resources to prosecute small beer, such as factually true but potentially misleading statements on routine loans. The defendant appealed his conviction to the Supreme Court in Thompson v. U.S., and the Trump Administration should end this prosecution by agreeing that truth should be a valid defense under a federal false statements statute.

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.

Laken Riley Act Is Not Enough

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Legislation named after the dearly departed Laken Riley, a victim of a heinous illegal alien crime, should secure our border and empower President Trump to deport dangerous immigrants without judicial interference. But the bill named the Laken Riley Act accomplishes neither.

Instead, this Democrat co-sponsored legislation tries to authorize courts to rule in favor of state Attorneys General who might sue the federal government to enforce immigration laws. The recent election gave that mandate directly to President Trump, beginning in less than a week, and Congress should be strengthening his hand rather than diffusing power elsewhere.

Democrats are all-too-happy to support this bill and breathe a sigh of relief at how Republicans on Capitol Hill are failing to enact the strong policies against immigration crime that Trump campaigned on. In this narrow window of time when GOP strength is at its zenith, fresh from winning an election based on this issue, congressional Republicans are not pushing for strong border security legislation.

Nursing student Laken Riley was the victim of a horrible, despicable crime, brutally raped and murdered by an illegal alien while she was taking a morning jog on the nearby University of Georgia campus. House Republicans initially designed, introduced and approved this legislation last year in an attempt to counter Biden rather than empower Trump.

Riley’s killer was previously caught after he illegally crossed our southern border, but then released into our country under Biden Administration policy. Subsequently he was arrested but released by New York officials after being charged with attempting to harm a minor there, and he later murdered young Laken Riley while she was innocently jogging in Georgia.

This Laken Riley Act was the first bill taken up for a floor vote in the new 119th session of the House, but it is far weaker than it should be in light of the election results in November. This legislation is nothing like the strong campaign speeches given by Trump to his record-breaking audiences, and this new law will give more power to liberal judges rather than to the incoming President Trump.

This bill gives new authority to state Attorneys General, but half of them are against Trump on this all-important issue such that giving them more power does not help. Officials in sanctuary or pro-immigration cities can easily circumvent the new requirements in this legislation, and already California has allocated $25 million to frustrate Trump’s deportation of dangerous illegal aliens.

Democrats co-sponsored this misnamed (because it is too weak) Laken Riley Act in the Senate, and 48 Democrats in the House voted for this when it passed last week as H.R. 29.

Democrat senators may dilute this legislation further by amendments that the Republican Majority Leader, John Thune (R-SD), has pledged to accommodate. In its current form this bill requires the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to detain illegal aliens who have been arrested for burglary, theft, larceny, or shoplifting.

Courts typically side with illegal aliens, and the litigation envisioned by this legislation could take years to resolve. Our country cannot wait, and Trump could order DHS to begin deporting dangerous illegal aliens next week if Republicans in Congress would stand up now on this issue.

Congress should be withdrawing jurisdiction from courts over immigration issues to prevent rulings like the recent one by Obama-appointed federal Judge William Kuntz, which requires the Suffolk County, New York, sheriff to pay $60 million for complying with federal detainer requests issued by ICE. The illegal alien criminals were represented pro bono in federal court by a major law firm funded by large corporate clients.

The crimes targeted by H.R. 29 are offenses against property, even petty shoplifting. People who are in our country illegally committing property crimes should be detained, but this bill fails to prevent the monstrous violent crimes that are being committed by illegals.

Unleashing lawsuits against the federal government could mean allowing new use of the courts by liberal states against the Trump Administration. Congress has this completely backwards to expect federal courts to be fixing the flaws in our immigration system, when Congress itself should be doing that.

The U.S. Supreme Court has held that States lack Article III standing under the Constitution to compel enforcement of federal immigration laws, and no bill enacted by Congress can specifically overcome that. Reports in the media that this law will overturn a ruling based on the Constitution by the Supreme Court are false, because Congress lacks such authority.

Congress should be enacting a bill to construct a border wall and to withdraw jurisdiction from federal courts to interfere with any deportations by President Trump. Something called the “Laken Riley Act” should include meaningful protections against repetition of the unspeakable crime committed by an illegal alien against her.

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.

Congress Should Stop Funding Woke Teachers

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Beginning January 1st, public school teachers in New Jersey will be less literate but just as liberal under a revision to the state’s certification requirements. Teachers there no longer have to pass a basic skills exam required in roughly 40 states which ensures literacy and simple math aptitude.

This is a travesty in K-12 education, and Congress should not continue to fund it without strings attached. Congress spends a shocking $119 billion annually on K-12 education, which as of 2022 comprised 14% of its overall funding.

Three decades ago, the Supreme Court plainly held that “Congress is free to attach reasonable and unambiguous conditions to federal financial assistance that educational institutions are not obligated to accept,” in its Grove City College v. Bell decision. As Mark Twain quipped, “Everybody complains about the weather, but no one does anything about it,” and Congress should act on this issue now.

Test scores have not recovered to pre-Covid levels, and students are still chronically absent. There is a shortage of public school teachers not because few want these jobs, which feature many vacation days along with excellent health care and pension benefits, but because cumbersome liberal indoctrination is required for mandatory certifications demanded by teachers’ unions to protect their own power.

Regulatory reform by the incoming Trump Administration will be challenged in court on every issue, and likely blocked before taking effect. Liberals will obtain injunctions by activist federal courts in D.C. against every new administrative rule that goes against their playbook, and the D.C. Circuit is controlled by Democrat-appointed judges as seen in the lawfare against Trump and his supporters.

Reforms should be in spending legislation, similar to how Congress ended discrimination by liberal universities against military recruitment by attaching strings to federal funding. The law schools quickly complied to keep the federal money flowing, after the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the condition of accepting military recruitment on taking federal money in Rumsfeld v. FAIR (2006).

Congress should condition its funding of public grade and high schools on giving parents more control, such as choosing or firing the principals in their schools and having veto power over objectionable DEI or transgender indoctrination. Schools should be required to inform parents immediately of any transgender requests by their children.

School choice is not a cure-all, as it just failed in three recent ballot initiatives due to opposition by rural Republicans who do not want to divide their limited resources among multiple schools in sparse populations. Voters just rejected taxpayer funding of private schools in Colorado, Nebraska, and Kentucky.

But classical schools, which are thriving in Florida and Texas, are winning. Florida has established an alternative certification process for teachers at these schools, which emphasize the subjects on which Western civilization was built such as basic skills plus advanced topics like Latin, physics, and calculus.

There are 250 classical schools that have opened nationwide since 2020, and this approach has become so popular that last month a school board in south Florida voted to convert a campus into a classical school. Florida enacted a new law last April to make it easier for these classical schools to bypass the union-controlled certification process, overcoming opposition by Florida’s largest teachers' union.

With conservative teacher certification, there are more than 50 classical Florida schools teaching 13,892 students. Florida’s Education Commissioner, Manny Diaz Jr., pointed out in support of classical schools that “I have yet to find a school that is going to put teachers in the classrooms that are not going to be in the best interest of students, and certainly not going to be in the best interest of the performance of their school.”

Meanwhile in New Jersey public schools teachers must complete a Leftist preparation program, as accredited at only liberal-controlled schools, plus a burdensome requirement of 175 field hours. This typically takes an unreasonable one to two years, which means that successful STEM professionals cannot retire or take time off to teach immediately in public schools.

As in New Jersey, a few years ago Democrat-controlled New York State also ended its requirement that public school teachers pass the basic skills exam, known as the Praxis Core Test. New York eliminated this in order to promote DEI in its hiring of teachers, in contrast with McDonald’s that just abandoned the DEI agenda for its huge workforce.

Half of science and math majors indicate their interest in becoming a teacher, and high school pay in these high-demand subjects is better than many college faculty salaries. Yet a severe shortage of high school STEM teachers persists due to union-demanded certification burdens.

Rather than cut the red tape hindering certification of competent teachers, liberals drop testing requirements for basic proficiency skills. The Republican Congress should end this woke approach to education.

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.