Conservative Triumphs Worldwide

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Called “ultraconservative” by the liberal media, Japan’s new prime minister is its first woman ever in that position. But a Japanese feminist author told NBC News that Japan attaining its first female prime minister “doesn’t make me happy.”

Sanae Takaichi takes the reins of power in Japan with strongly conservative positions on gender and marriage. She’s much more like Phyllis Schlafly than Hillary Clinton or Kamala Harris.

Takaichi opposes same-sex marriage and is against allowing married woman to keep their maiden name as their last name after marriage. She favors the Japanese tradition of male-only succession in its imperial family.

She is unlikely to support DEI. She will strengthen the Japanese military which would help us by creating a buffer against communist China, and she’ll meet next week with President Trump during his Asia trip.

She has supported tougher immigration policies in Japan. Like Trump, she is an advocate of hard work: “I myself will throw out the term ‘work-life balance.’ I will work and work and work and work and work,” she said.

Her election was made possible by support from the Japan Innovation Party, called Ishin, which the liberal media describe as far-right. The same childless Japanese feminist author, Chizuko Ueno, complained that Takaichi “sees herself as the Japanese version of Margaret Thatcher.”

The issue of women’s rights pales in comparison with the crisis in Japan of its vanishing birth rate. Its population is contracting, falling from 127 million in 2015 to only 123 million today, a trend that will soon be nearly impossible to reverse.

Japan’s population is declining at a rate of 0.5 to 1.5% annually now. That leaves fewer young workers supporting its vast elderly population.

The median age in Japan is 50 years old, meaning that half of its people are aging out of the workforce. By comparison, the median age in Florida as the place of retirement for many Americans is only 43 years old, and in booming Texas, the median age is only 36.

There cannot be economic growth without young workers, and Japan’s real gross domestic product decreased by an annualized 0.2% between the last quarter of 2024 and the first quarter of this year. Japan is burdened by the highest debt-to-GDP ratio of any developed country, a whopping 240%.

The number of childbirths in Japan dropped in the first half of 2025 by 3.1% from a year ago. A record-low 340,000 babies were born there in the first six months of this year, far too few to sustain its future.

The decline in births there is plummeting even faster than projections. While some blame male traditions in the country, the Japanese people are turning to a conservative woman to try to save them.

Takaichi’s election is part of a trend worldwide which also recently resulted in the first conservative president of Bolivia in 20 years. Rodrigo Paz won a stunning upset against Leftist control of that South American country, and he vows to establish a better relationship with the United States.

This is terrific news as Bolivia is the third-largest producer of illegal cocaine in the world. In 2023 alone, 33 tons of cocaine were seized by anti-drug efforts in that country.

The recent Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to an anti-communist in Venezuela, María Corina Machado, who was forced into hiding after the Leftist dictator Nicolás Maduro stole the election from her last year. Machado is widely considered to have won that election for president of Venezuela while campaigning on a platform of getting tough against illegal drugs and improving relations with the U.S.

When the Norway committee awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to Machado, she immediately praised Trump and called him to let him know that he should have won. Machado’s conservative positions are popular in Venezuela, and her campaign rallies drew large crowds just as Trump’s did.

The left-wing political party ruling Great Britain today – the Labour Party – has fallen to a rock-bottom 19% in public support, according to recent polling. This is less than half of its support at the beginning of last year, and the liberal media are distressed at this without understanding why.

Trust in the liberal President of France, Emmanuel Macron, fell to a record-low 14% this month according to a poll funded by the business daily Les Echos. President Trump’s approval rating in the United States is three times higher than that.

In June, Trump-endorsed conservative Karol Nawrocki prevailed in Poland over the liberal Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski. The conservative Prime Minister of nearby Hungary, Viktor Orbán, cheered this “fantastic victory.”

Back home, liberals are perplexed by Trump’s growing popularity during the Democrat-induced partial shutdown of the government. To understand better, they should take note of conservative victories sweeping the globe.

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.

Portland Protesters Deserve the National Guard

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

On Saturday night, October 4, a federal district judge blocked President Trump from deploying the National Guard to restore order in Portland, Oregon, which is notorious for the Antifa riots there in 2020 that shut down much of the city. Portland is one of the most Left-wing large cities in the United States, comprised overwhelmingly of white liberals.

Violent protesters in Portland, probably funded by radical groups from elsewhere, have spat at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, obstructed their vehicles, and even started a fire outside of an ICE facility. More recently additional protesters against ICE have shown up naked as part of their bike ride, which locals defend as a longstanding Portland tradition.

On October 8, the White House posted that “for years, an Antifa-led hellfire has turned Portland into a wasteland of firebombs, beatings, and brazen attacks on federal officers and property – yet the Fake News remains in shameful denial about the Radical Left’s reign of terror.”

President Trump has posted quotes from many in Portland about the violence they face and fear. “Yesterday morning, I was broken into again for the tenth time,” said one downtown Portland business owner. “We need help here and something needs to be done, so if [the National Guard] is what we need to do to get our leaders paying attention to what’s happening in Portland, then I think it’s a good thing.”

“Since early June, Antifa militants have laid siege to the ICE field office in south Portland,” the White House points out. “The terrorists have violently breached the facility by using a stop sign as a battering ram, hurled explosives and projectiles, burned American flags, viciously assaulted, attacked, and injured officers, doxed officers, berated neighbors, and even rolled out a guillotine.”

In a recent op-ed for TheHill.com, renowned law professor Jonathan Turley decried Democrats who have responded by denying the existence of Antifa. “Antifa was first created in the 1920s, associated with the Weimar-era German communist group Antifaschistische Aktion,” Turley observes, and “it is very real.”

Trump’s Attorney General Pam Bondi declared that “Just like we did with cartels, we are going to take the same approach, President Trump, with Antifa – destroy the entire organization from top to bottom. We’re going to take them apart.”

At first the federal judge blocked President Trump from using the Oregon National Guard. No problem for Trump, as he then directed the California National Guard to restore order in Portland, but the judge issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) against them, too.

In an expedited appeal to the Ninth Circuit, where the Republicans comprise about 40% of that court, a fortunate draw of two Trump-appointed judges was randomly assigned to the three-judge panel for this case. Their questioning was critical of a district court judge preventing a president from restoring law and order.

Some of the Portland protesters “are violent people,” the Department of Justice attorney Eric McArthur informed the appellate judges. “The president is entitled to say enough is enough and bring in the National Guard to reinforce the regular forces,” he argued.

Ninth Circuit judges Ryan Nelson and Bridget Bade, both previously appointed by Trump, seemed to agree. Their questions emphasized that the president has broad authority to establish law and order.

“It just seems a little counterintuitive to me that the City of Portland can come in and say no, you need to do it differently,” commented Judge Ryan Nelson during the oral argument. He was unpersuaded by Oregon’s attorney, Stacy Chaffin, who argued that presidential deference “has a limit, and that limit is this case.”

Oregon’s attorney insisted that the rationale given by Trump for sending in the National Guard is “untethered to the facts,” as the district court judge had held. The only appellate panel judge likely to agree with that assessment is Susan Graber, a law school classmate of Bill and Hillary Clinton who was appointed by Bill to this court.

Meanwhile, a similar standoff between local officials and the Trump Administration is occurring in Chicago. Its Mayor Brandon Johnson has only a 6.6% approval rating among Chicago voters according to one poll, while 79.9% disapprove of his performance.

As in Portland, a district court judge granted a request by Democrats to block Trump’s use of the National Guard to restore law and order in violence-ridden Chicago. But on an expedited appeal, the Seventh Circuit has already ruled in favor of Trump by partly staying that injunction against him and allowing the troops to remain in northern Illinois.

The No Kings protest this Saturday is co-sponsored by MoveOn.org, which was founded in 1998 with funding from the flying toaster screen saver. Its original slogan in 1998 was “Censure President Clinton and move on to pressing issues facing the nation.”

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.

No Nobel Prize for Trump yet

The NY Post reports:

Nobel Peace Prize winner and Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado on Friday dedicated her award to President Trump and his “decisive support” of democracy in the South American nation.

Trump said that he deserved the prize for ending 8 wars.

Prediction Markets are Gambling on Steroids

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Prediction markets have rapidly become a mega-billion-dollar industry of nationwide gambling through cell phones. These are online platforms where people bet on outcomes of almost any event, such as whether a team will win the Super Bowl, whereby the cost of the event contract is less than the amount paid out to those who guessed correctly.

This is gambling, and 20 red and blue states prohibit these bets on sports. Betting on elections has long been banned everywhere in the U.S. and, until 2005, in England, while nearly every state prohibits wagering by anyone under 21.

But new prediction markets bypass all of these sensible limitations, by accepting these bets on websites over the internet. On Tuesday the Wall Street Journal reported that the owner of the New York Stock Exchange, Intercontinental Exchange, has agreed to invest up to $2 billion in Polymarket, which is not even the largest company in this emerging market.

High school students, typically boys, are suddenly spending their time and their family’s money by wagering in this manner and through “sportsbooks,” which are apps on their phones. DraftKings and FanDuel, whose ads are pervasive, are two sportsbooks that pepper teenagers and everyone else with promotions and other enticements to gamble.

More than 2 million young men today are “NEET,” which means Not in Employment, Education, or Training. Instead, many of them are betting weekly or daily on their favorite sports teams.

Once addicted, a gambler then wants to bet on any sporting event. Illustrating how powerful this addiction is, $31.7 million was wagered in Colorado on ping pong matches earlier this year, in January alone.

The New York Times reported on Sunday that companies, most notably Kalshi, are accepting billions of dollars in bets while bypassing state regulations that protect teenagers and athletes against this vice. Congress has failed to hold any hearings on this frenzied activity that seems likely to erupt in a major scandal between now and the midterm elections next year.

Online sports gambling is illegal in California and Texas, but Kalshi circumvents their state laws in taking bets from residents there. With millions wagered on individual performances in a game, known as prop bets, the incentive for corruption or intimidation of players by gamblers is severe.

Scandals have already appeared, signaling something worse that is yet to come. Major League Baseball has for three months been investigating two errant throws by a Cleveland Guardians starting pitcher that opened early innings this past summer, as a spike in bets on whether those pitches would be a “ball” or a “strike” was flagged.

Kalshi and other companies rushing into prediction markets insist that states cannot regulate it as states have long regulated sportsbooks and traditional gambling. Instead, Kalshi and others accept only the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) as having authority over it.

But currently the CFTC has only one out of the five commissioners it is supposed to have: the Biden-appointed Caroline D. Pham. The traditional expertise of the CFTC is in regulating corn or wheat futures for farmers, not gambling on the Super Bowl and on individual performances within games.

In states that allow sports gambling, there are important limits such as New Jersey’s ban on bets on college games played within the State, and wagers on NJ college teams playing anywhere. This helps protect local college players against being pressured by gamblers to underperform.

Prediction markets ignore the 21-year-old age limit imposed by states on gambling. Litigation over the legality of prediction markets is pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third and Fourth Circuits, and in district court in Nevada, but changes are unfolding faster than courts are keeping up.

A Pew Research poll found 43% of adult Americans oppose sports betting for being harmful, while only 7% praise it. Allowing wagers on elections makes even less sense, particularly in the current climate of political violence.

Some Republicans fret about possible political repercussions from the ongoing partial government shutdown, but negative fallout from a corruption scandal or violence resulting from this gambling crisis could be worse. Twice before in American history there has been a public backlash against gambling such that it was prohibited after being allowed to flourish.

The ease of gambling on phones and the use of AI to exploit gambling proclivities make this vice more dangerous than ever before. Already in September $2.5 billion was wagered on NFL games in the prediction markets, while more than $10 billion in additional wagers were processed by sportsbooks.

Unlike sportsbooks and casinos, prediction markets do not pay any state gambling taxes, and there is no redeeming value to this activity. An estimated 90% of gamblers never seek any help for their addiction, so this is pure exploitation without any guardrail.

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.