Election Integrity Gains at State Level

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

With many elections decided today by fewer than 1% of votes, election integrity has become more important than ever. Republican state legislatures should be taking decisive action to end opportunities for election fraud.

Wyoming leads the way by requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote, as Trump seeks. Previously Kansas and Arizona enacted similar laws but those have been blocked or tied up in court, and Wyoming should prepare to provide evidence of election fraud in court when its new law is challenged.

On Thursday, Wyoming HB 156 became law to ensure that voters there have presented proof of their American citizenship and residency before casting a ballot. Wyoming’s Republican Gov. Mark Gordon feebly declined to add his signature to this legislation, which became law regardless.

But also on Thursday in Texas, a liberal federal judge tossed out an election integrity law enacted in 2021 to reduce fraud in connection with mail-in ballots. Voters over 65, which is a large percentage of the voting public, and those with disabilities are allowed to cast their votes by mail in Texas without giving a reason.

The Texas legislature added a requirement that voters include an ID number to ensure that the ballots were legitimately mailed in by the person listed on it. The good law also required anyone assisting the voter to sign an oath under penalty of perjury to ensure its integrity.

In states having Republican trifectas, where Republicans control both chambers of the legislature and the governor’s office, a total of 66 election-related laws have been enacted. Nearly three times that many are working their way through the legislatures this spring.

In addition to Wyoming, other states leading on this issue are Arkansas, Utah, Mississippi, and South Dakota. The Arkansas Senate deserves particular credit for recently passing bills to improve the integrity of the process for putting an issue on the ballot for voter approval to become a law.

The Arkansas Secretary of State observed that out-of-state groups having lots of money “are able to get almost any issue on Arkansas ballots.” Nearly half the states continue to be vulnerable to the misuse of their ballot initiative process by out-of-state and even foreign billionaires to enact laws.

On the fundamental issues of abortion, marijuana, and gambling, liberals are enacting their agenda in predominantly conservative states by using hired petition gatherers to obtain signatures to qualify for the ballot. Then liberals outspend conservatives by 10-to-1 or more to pass these measures as new laws with a flood of television and internet advertising.

The conservative states need to reform this process, which is a relic from the Progressive Era early in the 20th century when state legislatures were overly influenced by corporate interests. The ballot initiative process was supposed to be a counterweight for the people to push back against corporate spending to enact laws in the legislatures.

Today, ballot measures have become the opposite, whereby big money by liberals is buying the laws they want and lining their own pockets by legalizing gambling and other bad behavior. Online sports gambling was legalized in Missouri last November by a margin of less than 3,000 votes, based on $43 million spent in support and only $9 million in opposition.

Arkansas Senate Bill 207 requires petition signature-gathering canvassers to inform, verbally or in writing, potential signatories that petition fraud is a Class A misdemeanor. This would help reduce the fraudulent collection of signatures to place a proposed law on the ballot.

Arkansas SB 208 requires that petition signers show a photo ID, which the canvassers must use to verify a signatory’s identity. Otherwise, signatures may not be gathered and included toward the minimum amount needed to place the measure on the ballot.

Arkansas SB 209 commands that the Secretary of State not recognize and count signatures on a petition for which there is a preponderance of evidence that the canvasser violated any law in collecting signatures. SB 210 requires that signatories read or have the title read to them, before signing a petition.

Finally, Arkansas SB 211 requires the canvasser to submit a sworn statement indicating compliance with all the signature-gathering laws. Without the sworn statement, the Secretary of State is ordered not to count the signatures gathered by that canvasser.

The Republican supermajorities in the legislatures in Ohio, Missouri, and elsewhere should follow this lead taken by the Arkansas Senate. Marijuana was recently legalized by ballot initiatives in Ohio and Missouri over objection by the elected representatives of the people, but the legislatures and courts in conservative states could end this misuse of the initiative process.

The Arkansas Supreme Court set the example last fall concerning harmful ballot initiatives. It properly excluded from the ballot both the marijuana and abortion-on-demand ballot initiatives that Missouri and Ohio allowed.

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 Has Options Against Judicial Overreach

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

On Tuesday President Trump called for the impeachment of a federal judge, to which Chief Justice Roberts retorted by urging an appeal instead. Roberts is apparently panicked about the prospect of many impeachments raining down on federal judges based on shocking decisions.

The recent interference by a federal court in D.C. with President Trump’s deportation of Venezuelan gang members is an egregious overreach by the federal judiciary. Presidents, not judges, are elected to protect national security against a foreign invasion.

Impeachment is not the only option available to Trump and Republicans in Congress to provide a check-and-balance against the federal judiciary as established by our Constitution. Founding Father Alexander Hamilton described the judiciary as the “least dangerous” branch because the other two branches decide what power to give it, and what rulings to enforce.

Congress has defunded the enforcement of improper judicial decisions in the past, and has withdrawn jurisdiction entirely from federal courts over many topics. Why should a federal court even have authority over a decision by a president to deport dangerous illegal aliens?

Hamilton wrote in Federalist No. 78 that federal judges have “no influence over either the sword or the purse; no direction either of the strength or of the wealth of the society; and can take no active resolution whatever. It may truly be said to have neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment; and must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgments.”

In other words, it is entirely up to President Trump whether and how to enforce a decision by a federal court. It is also entirely up to Congress whether and how to fund federal courts, define the scope of their jurisdiction, and finance the implementation of any judicial decisions.

Yet District Court Judge James E. Boasberg ordered the Trump Administration to provide details by noon on Tuesday about the deportation of Venezuelan gang members, including flight information. But the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced on Tuesday that it would not comply with Judge Boasberg’s demand for more information.

Newly confirmed Attorney General Pam Bondi and other DOJ attorneys told Boasberg “there is no justification to order the provision of additional information, and that doing so would be inappropriate” because DOJ feels Boasberg’s “oral statements were not independently enforceable.” Trump’s DOJ has already appealed and stated they “should not be required to disclose sensitive information bearing on national security and foreign relations until that motion is resolved.”

Trump’s DOJ had requested immediate reassignment to another judge because of his “highly unusual and improper procedures—e.g. certification of a class action involving members of a designated foreign terrorist organization in less than 18 hours with no discovery and no briefing from the Government.”

DOJ’s appeal has gone to the D.C. Circuit, which is dominated by Democrat-appointed judges likely to rule against Trump. From there, it will go to the U.S. Supreme Court as part of the appellate process that Chief Justice Roberts requests be followed.

The Federalist Papers as quoted above are the best source for interpreting the Constitution because its ratification was achieved based on these writings. House Republicans would do well to quote and act on what Alexander Hamilton said about how to curb the federal judiciary.

On Tuesday Congressman Brandon Gill (R-TX) immediately filed articles of impeachment against federal Judge Boasberg for interfering with this deportation of Venezuelan gang members to El Salvador. They are reportedly being held in a prison there under a contract with the United States to take illegal aliens.

Impeachment of federal judges was the approach used by President Thomas Jefferson, but it was unsuccessful. President Andrew Jackson adopted a different style of simply declining to enforce a court ruling he considered improper, as Alexander Hamilton envisioned.

The Constitution does not require the executive branch, over which the president presides, to enforce decisions that he feels are improper or unconstitutional. Our Founders intentionally dispersed power among the three branches of government as a safeguard against the judiciary or any other branch of government asserting more power than it should.

President Abraham Lincoln said, “If the opinion of the Supreme court covered the whole ground of this act, it ought not to control the co-ordinate authorities of this Government. The Congress, the executive and the court, must each for itself be guided by its own opinion of the Constitution.”

That was Lincoln’s response to the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Dred Scott case that sided with slave owners and denied all rights to blacks. “Each public officer, who takes an oath to support the Constitution, swears that he will support it as he understands it, and not as it is understood by others,” Lincoln said while repudiating that horrible decision.

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.

DOJ: Investigate the Unexplained 6.3M Dem 2020 Votes

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

The Department of Justice has more than 10,000 attorneys standing around looking for something legitimate to do, now that the Trump Administration has shut down their liberal lawfare against conservatives. Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has cost-cutters in every federal agency except, apparently, the DOJ.

Some of the high-flying DOJ projects, including prosecuting candidate Trump and two of his loyal employees in Florida, have been properly cancelled. This and other dismissals, including calling off the time-consuming DOJ prosecution of New York City Mayor Eric Adams, have left an army of DOJ attorneys with little to do.

So here’s an idea for something DOJ should investigate: the unexplained spike in 6.3 million votes that magically appeared out of nowhere to be counted for Joe Biden in 2020, which disappeared again in 2024.

Trump was credited with 74.2 million votes in 2020, which increased to 77.3 million in 2024. That 4% growth in votes reflects the overwhelming crowds and enormous enthusiasm that he generated.

But the Democrat nominee for president reportedly received 65.9 million votes in 2016, unexpectedly claimed 81.3 million votes in 2020 (an implausible 23% increase in four years), and yet only 75.0 million votes four years later in 2024. Trump has correctly pointed out that mail-in voting, which was its highest in 2020, is particularly vulnerable to election fraud.

“Anytime you have a mail-in ballot, there is going to be massive fraud,” Trump said to Dr. Phil McGraw during last year’s campaign. The Utah legislature recently enacted a bill to end the irresponsible practice of mailing a ballot to every registered voter, which large Democrat-controlled states exploit.

While the unexplained 2020 surge in Democrat votes may not by itself prove fraud, it is a big enough spike to be suspicious. 6.3 million unexplained votes exceed the total vote count for both sides in our largest city.

It is not as though the DOJ lacks the time or resources to investigate potential election fraud. Its overfunded $46 billion annual budget is being protected and replenished by Republicans’ Continuing Resolution this week.

Election integrity should be a priority in this spending. Investing merely one-tenth of 1% of DOJ’s annual budget on getting real answers about the bizarre spurt in Democrat votes in 2020 is needed.

Some attribute this sharp rise in Democrat ballots in 2020 to relaxed voting requirements due to Covid. But only if that were combined with substantial fraud could a 6.3M surge for the Democrat side be attained, and that fraud needs to be uncovered and prosecuted.

Americans need to be assured that 6.3 million unexplained votes won’t be counted for a future Democrat presidential candidate. Indeed, making sure that such phantom votes do not magically reappear from nowhere in a future election should be first on the priority list of Trump's DOJ.

Yet here we are, nearly a half-year after the 2024 results have been counted and compared to the 2020 numbers, and no analysis explains this mystery. While the media insist that no specific evidence of fraud was proved in the 2020 election, Democrats blocked independent signature verification of mail-in ballots and instead are prosecuting citizens who challenged the reported results.

While campaigning in Pennsylvania last fall, Elon Musk was asked if he believed there was election fraud in 2020. He indicated yes by observing that there were anomalies that remain unexplained.

An AI program could check for handwriting similarities on the flood of mail-in ballots included in the 2020 results, of which state officials refused to allow a transparent independent audit. It did not take long for Musk’s team to find Social Security recipients who are absurdly 160 years old, and just as quickly Musk’s team could find fraudulent ballots counted for Dems in 2020.

Private citizens and Trump's presidential advisors in 2020 should not continue to face criminal trials by Democrat prosecutors while DOJ looks the other way and does nothing about this.

Some say the overvotes were mostly in blue states like California and New York, which do not matter to the Electoral College outcome. But central to the goal of election integrity is to stamp out fraud everywhere, including fraud that falsely tilts the popular vote.

DOJ sits on its hands while Republicans continue to be prosecuted in Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, and Michigan for questioning the 2020 election. Only DOJ has the authority to supersede the Democrat prosecutors in those swing states, to get the evidence that defendants need.

Even the weak Georgia Senate is stronger than the DOJ on this issue today. That body recently passed a bill allowing defendants to recover attorneys’ fees when wrongly prosecuted, as Republican objectors to Georgia’s 2020 election results have been, including Trump himself.

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.

Some Federal Workers already Work in Person

If you missed the Pres. Trump speech, read the read the CNN transcript with embedded fact checks:

We ordered all federal workers to return to the office. They will either show up for work in person or be removed from their job.

[CNN fact check] More than half of federal workers were already working from the office full- or part-time when Trump took office,

That is reassuring. At least half of them do work in the office, at least part-time.

World Realigns Based on Social Issues

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

The stunning realignment of world powers unfolding before our eyes is largely due to social issues, not economic or geopolitical ones. Europe and NATO are run by liberals who want to embrace the transgender ideology and hold gay pride parades, while Russia has said “nyet” to that while enacting pro-life laws instead.

The liberal hatred of Russia predates the war in Ukraine, and many of the thousand-strong anti-JD Vance protesters who lined narrow snow-covered Vermont roads on Saturday were motivated by social issues. Some waved LGBTQ flags while others were part of transgender activism, both of which Russia prohibits and would exclude from territory it annexes.

In 2020, Russians amended their Constitution to ensure that marriage remains only “the union of a man and a woman,” and in 2022 Russia broadened its ban on “LGBT propaganda” to include adults. Transgender treatment is not allowed in Russia, while transgender adults cannot adopt children.

On November 30, 2023, the Supreme Court of Russia held that the “international public LGBT movement” is “extremist.” Displaying the LGBTQ rainbow flag in Russia can result in fines and imprisonment.

Pandering to liberals’ hatred of Russia’s social policies, Obama refused to attend its Winter Olympics in 2014 and spoke disparagingly of the country. In December 2016 Obama insulted Russia as a “smaller” and “weaker country,” which fails to “produce anything that anybody wants to buy except oil and gas and arms.”

Democrats falsely insisted that Trump’s presidential victory over Hillary Clinton was due to Russia, and Democrats used their fiction to disrupt two years of Trump’s first administration. Ukrainian president Zelensky, who refuses to allow an election to replace him, campaigned in Pennsylvania for Democrat Kamala Harris against Trump last fall.

The Left cannot accept any victory by Russia. When Vice President JD Vance told Zelensky at the White House that his regime is “going around and forcing conscripts to the front lines because you have manpower problems,” Zelensky did not deny it.

Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-IN) is the only member of Congress born in Ukraine. She recently described Zelensky’s government as “worthless,” and observed that “the American people want to see what we’re getting in return” for the hundreds of billions of dollars we’ve sent there.

We should stop arming Ukraine to fight for NATO’s liberal social agenda. On Sunday, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) wisely declared, “If NATO’s moving on without the U.S., we should move on without NATO. Time to leave.”

This echoes what Phyllis Schlafly said against NATO in 2016, when she wrote that NATO repudiates George Washington’s advice “to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world.” Phyllis repeatedly warned against our entanglement through NATO in foreign wars in 1996, 1998, and 1999, during the wars of NATO aggression in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Serbia.

It is not the moral duty of the United States to intervene in every foreign war. As Trump says, the Ukraine-Russia war would have been over quickly if the United States had not propped Zelensky up with aid that thereby prolonged it.

On Monday, Trump properly halted the delivery of military aid by the U.S. to Ukraine, after Zelensky harmfully declared that peace with Russia is “still very, very far away.” “This is the worst statement that could have been made by Zelensky, and America will not put up with it for much longer!” the president responded on TruthSocial.

There was in excess of $1 billion in arms and ammunition scheduled for delivery to Ukraine. Trump was right to withhold that, at least until Zelensky makes a good-faith effort toward ending a war that has killed or wounded more than a million people.

“We should spend less time worrying about Putin, and more time worrying about migrant rape gangs, drug lords, murderers, and people from mental institutions entering our Country - So that we don’t end up like Europe!” Trump tweeted on Sunday.

Russia is more like conservative states in the U.S. on social issues than Europe and Zelensky are, as Russian laws reject the trans agenda and abortion-on-demand as many states here do. Yet on Friday, Zelensky warned Trump that our country “will feel it in the future” as the next victim of Russia if we decline to continue fighting it in Ukraine.

That warning of our American president by a foreign official was both unjustified and insulting, and Trump properly admonished Zelensky for it. “Don’t tell us what we’re going to feel. We’re trying to solve a problem,” Trump responded.

Trump continued, “You’re in no position to dictate that. Remember this, you’re in no position to dictate what we’re going to feel. We’re going to feel good. We’re gonna feel very good and very strong,” and Trump’s right due to his strong leadership.

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.