Dr. Fauci takes the Fifth

Fire the Rest of the CDC Staff, Too

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Last Thursday dozens of staffers, both low- and high-level, walked off their jobs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), protesting the firing of the CDC director and the subsequent resignation of three senior-level executives. This defiant walkout illustrated the dangerous arrogance of this federal agency that thinks it is above accountability to the president and the American people.

In a pitiful op-ed published by the New York Times on Monday, prior CDC directors whine about the shake-up at the agency by RFK Jr., as the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS). Notably, the CDC directors under the George W. Bush and first Trump Administrations did not sign onto this protest.

This op-ed by former CDC officials absurdly tries to take credit for the CDC for an American lifespan that increased over half a century, which is due to improved hygiene and medical technology, and fewer accident fatalities. The CDC performance during Covid was so abysmal that poor countries managed the disease better than the CDC and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) did.

The former CDC directors sarcastically put the word “treatments” in quotation marks as though that cannot be a viable alternative to vaccination. Measles is known to be worse in those who have a vitamin A deficiency, as the CDC admits on its website, and RFK Jr. should be praised for promoting greater awareness about this vitamin.

RFK Jr., to whom Trump refers as Bobby, then appointed successful Silicon Valley entrepreneur Jim O’Neill as the acting director of the CDC. His first public statement right out of the gate on X was spot on: “Public health is a noble calling. When it is driven by transparent data and rigorous science, it earns public trust and keeps the world safe.”

Contrary to the measles fearmongering by former CDC officials, O’Neill implied that it was “new screening technology to detect infections from foreign travelers,” as developed by the Trump Administration, which partly “stopped the Texas measles outbreak.” He added that RFK Jr.’s good appointments have “ended the misuse of the childhood immunization schedule for Covid vaccine mandates.”

This perspective of Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) is refreshing. On Monday morning, President Trump signaled his support for RFK Jr.’s incoming new CDC leadership by saying, “It is very important that the Drug Companies justify the success of their various Covid Drugs.”

“Many people think they are a miracle that saved Millions of lives. Others disagree! With CDC being ripped apart over this question, I want the answer, and I want it NOW,” Trump added.

By asking for more transparency about what really happened in Big Pharma’s response to Covid, “I want them to … clear up this MESS, one way or the other!!! I hope OPERATION WARP SPEED was as ‘BRILLIANT’ as many say it was. If not, we all want to know about it, and why???” Trump stated.

This punctured the appeal to Trump by the Old Guard at the CDC, who tried to get on his good side by praising the first Trump Administration’s support of Operation Warp Speed. It “produced highly effective and safe vaccines that saved millions of lives during the Covid-19 pandemic,” the former CDC officials asserted.

But what about the interference by Big Pharma, the CDC, and the FDA with access by Americans to inexpensive early Covid treatments like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine? Congress funded the use of treatments other than vaccines during Covid, and several states have made ivermectin, for which a Nobel Prize was granted, available over-the-counter as is common in foreign countries.

But Big Pharma does not profit from ivermectin as it makes billions of dollars from mandatory vaccination, and every official who misled the public by disparaging ivermectin should be fired. During the Biden Administration, on Aug. 26, 2021, the CDC issued an emergency CDC Health Advisory through its Alert Network by declaring that “Ivermectin is not authorized or approved by FDA for prevention or treatment of COVID-19.”

CDC officials know that 25% of all prescriptions are for “off-label” uses that have never been specifically approved by the FDA, and never will be. It was deliberately misleading for the CDC to emphasize that the FDA had not approved ivermectin for treating Covid, because generic medication is rarely approved for additional uses, as that is costly and unnecessary.

Yet this deception by the CDC and FDA was then invoked by hospitals to deny ivermectin to patients dying from Covid, and when some courts ordered hospitals to allow the treatment to save the patients, hospitals fought for reversal on appeal. It is welcome that RFK Jr. has fired leadership at the CDC, and the mass walkout there last week shows that more house-cleaning is needed at this Big Pharma-controlled agency.

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.

POTUS Trial Balloon on Pot

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

On Monday, President Trump floated a trial balloon to downgrade the federal ban on marijuana, and cannabis stocks skyrocketed by 25-40% on the news. This pro-marijuana change is something that the pot industry had hoped Biden would do for them, but never expected it from the Republican side.

Last November, 4 out of 5 Republican states defeated heavily funded ballot initiatives to legalize marijuana, with more than 75% of Trump’s supporters voting against the drug. Someone is giving Trump bad advice by encouraging him to give a shot in the arm to cannabis, which is the name preferred by marijuana dealers.

Marijuana farms are magnets for illegal aliens, and also exploiters of forced child labor. Last month a raid by Homeland Security at two of these farms in California netted the arrest of 361 illegal aliens, who included criminals convicted of rape, serial burglary, DUIs, and hit-and-run.

Federal law enforcement agents had to overcome more than 500 rioters who tried to block these arrests, one of whom shot at the agents while other protesters damaged vehicles. A total of 14 children were found working at these two locations.

The marijuana farms had licenses to operate, but there are many thousands of illegal marijuana farms today. In California, most of the licenses granted to grow marijuana have gone inactive, as the illegal grows run by criminal gangs have infiltrated the supply of pot.

Despite the proliferation of crime, much of it by illegal aliens, Trump is being pressured to reclassify marijuana as a less harmful Schedule III drug, like steroids or Tylenol with codeine. Currently marijuana is classified by the federal government in Schedule I, which is the category of drugs including cocaine that are prohibited for any purpose.

This reclassification by the federal government would enable marijuana sellers to take tax deductions for their business expenses, such as television and internet advertising. IRS Code Section 280E prohibits Schedule I drug dealers from deducting business expenses other than the cost of goods sold, and if this changes then pot promotion will become pervasive.

The potency of marijuana has sharply increased since a generation ago, as its THC content grew by 21% between 1995 and 2015 alone. A 2022 study found that 12% of drug-related emergency department visits were due to marijuana, most often for cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome, which is severe stomach pain and vomiting that afflicts long-term consumers of the drug.

The CDC warns that 30% of marijuana users develop cannabis use disorder, which includes an increased likelihood of “problems with attention, memory, and learning” and reckless car-driving while under the influence of the drug. Like many addictions, there is a never-ending increased craving in desperation by marijuana users for more to attain the same “high” as before.

Voters in Oklahoma rejected legalizing marijuana for recreational use in 2023, while the state has been overrun by 3,000 illegal farms controlled by Chinese gangs, to export this weed to other states. Two months ago Oklahoma’s Attorney General announced a drug bust of 40,723 marijuana plants and more than 1,000 pounds of processed marijuana.

While there has been talk about prohibiting the purchase of American farmland by China, the expansion of marijuana farms is a greater problem. In addition to Oklahoma, the States of California, Maine, Massachusetts, and Oregon all have a problem with Chinese gangs controlling marijuana operations.

Legalizing or downgrading the classification of pot was not a campaign promise by Trump, but was instead an idea raised by a donor at a fundraising event in Bedminster, New Jersey, one of the liberal states that has legalized this harmful drug. Trump’s NJ country club is not surrounded by the pot operations and their foul odor that have driven people away from California, Oregon, and Colorado.

Californians complain about the “sewer-like” smell of marijuana as it has taken over the Golden State in the last decade, without any redeeming benefits. Earlier this year the Cathedral City town council adopted a moratorium on any expansion or new opening of a cannabis business because the “disgusting” odor has diminished the quality of life for residents and harms the environment.

The proliferation of illegal cannabis farms, which become impossible to stop once marijuana is embraced, has led to rampant use of harmful pesticides and chemicals that are unlawfully dumped directly into the environment to contaminate groundwater. Yet liberal environmentalists are mostly silent about this.

Two weeks ago, New York City announced that it would refuse to renew the licenses of more than 100 marijuana dispensaries that are illegally operating within 500 feet of a school. By April, D.C. authorities had closed 50 illegal dispensaries in its pot market exceeding $4 million in monthly sales, and these drugs may have worsened its crime epidemic.

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.

RFK Jr. Cleans House as MAGA Hoped

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (RFK Jr.), Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), cleared the deck on Monday of Big Pharma’s control over vaccine policy. RFK Jr. fired everyone on the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which has never recommended against any vaccine, including those later withdrawn as unsafe.

“A clean sweep is needed to re-establish public confidence in vaccine science,” RFK Jr. wrote in the Wall St. Journal, which itself has been a mouthpiece for the pharmaceutical industry. OpenSecrets.org identifies Big Pharma as the most influential group in Washington, D.C., and more than two-thirds of the U.S. Senate receives Big Pharma donations.

Many Americans have no idea what ACIP is, or understand that ACIP’s vaccine recommendations automatically become vaccine requirements for children to attend public schools. Private schools also require the same laundry list of ACIP-recommended vaccines, and Illinois this year considered legislation to require homeschool children to receive all these vaccines too.

Big Pharma’s lobbyists have cleverly obtained legal requirements in every state that automatically impose on children whatever ACIP approves. So although it appears that ACIP is merely making recommendations, in fact its recommendations become requirements for children unable to refuse the injections.

It used to be that nearly every state had a religious exemption to vaccination, and large states like California even had a philosophical exemption that did not require any religion. But Big Pharma has diligently worked to remove exemptions, such that California has neither a religious nor a philosophical exemption, while several other blue states including New York have eliminated their religious exemption.

Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) is an important part or partner of the MAGA movement that helped elect Trump along with a strong 53-47 GOP majority in the Senate. Among many stunning achievements by Trump’s Cabinet and special advisers, RFK Jr.’s overhaul of ACIP is one of the biggest and boldest reforms.

Personal observations of children after vaccination have led many to suspect that they are being harmed by injections they do not need. An alarming increase in autism, allergies, heart problems, and cancer cries out for an explanation, and one difference between younger and older Americans is that younger generations have had far more vaccines.

Covid was relatively safe in children and yet the Covid vaccine was pushed on them by ACIP, and has been required by many colleges as a condition of enrollment. In some cases children were injected with the Covid vaccine without their parents’ approval.

Hospitals give most infants the Hepatitis B vaccine soon after birth, although its purpose is to protect against a sexually transmitted disease. New Jersey, where the pharmaceutical industry has many offices, requires 3 doses of this and many other vaccines in children as a condition of merely entering kindergarten.

The liberal media understood immediately the significance of RFK Jr.’s housecleaning move, and some websites featured headlines about this with greater priority than news about the Los Angeles riots. When Tucker Carlson and James O’Keefe previously took on Big Pharma, they were soon forced out of their jobs.

The blowback against RFK Jr. will be intense, and it appears that Big Pharma already controls Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) who was initially planning to vote against RFK Jr.’s confirmation. Only a grassroots outpouring by MAHA in support of RFK Jr. caused Tillis to eventually vote in favor of him.

CNN quoted one of the fired members of ACIP as blustering that “I’ve never seen anything this damaging to public health happen in my lifetime.” The adviser asserted, “This will fundamentally destabilize vaccination in America.”

Instead, it might end vaccine tyranny in the United States, where children are forced to receive more vaccines than anywhere else in the world. American children typically receive 30 doses of vaccines by the age of one, due to how ACIP has relentlessly recommended virtually every vaccine.

Every member of ACIP whom RFK Jr. fired had been appointed by Biden, who famously abused his power by ordering all large employers to require Covid vaccination of their employees. The U.S. Supreme Court intervened on an emergency basis to block Biden’s vaccine mandate as unjustified by any law.

There has been a chorus of complaints about RFK Jr.’s mass firing from those who feed at the trough of Big Pharma. As an advisory committee, ACIP should be a diverse group that includes people who are skeptical about vaccine mandates.

RFK Jr. vows that the replacements he picks for ACIP “won’t directly work for the vaccine industry” and “will exercise independent judgment, refuse to serve as a rubber stamp, and foster a culture of critical inquiry — unafraid to ask hard questions.” This is just what a good doctor would want for MAHA vaccine policy.

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 Will Punish California for Trans Travesty

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

California just gave first-place awards to a transgender athlete in a girls’ state track championship. “A Biological Male competed in California Girls State Finals, WINNING BIG, despite the fact that they were warned by me not to do so,” Trump retorted on Tuesday on Truth Social.

“As Governor Gavin Newscum fully understands, large scale fines will be imposed!!!” Trump continued. Democrats are allowing this trans invasion of girls’ sports in multiple blue states, and it is typically not disclosed or reported unless someone speaks out.

Males are usually taller, faster, and stronger than females, and these differences are substantial in track and field events. The world record in the men’s long jump is nearly 5 feet longer than that of women’s, while the men’s high jump world record is more than a foot higher than women’s.

Hurdles for boys’ races are a half-foot higher than hurdles for girls in high school, which creates an additional incentive for boys to cross over to compete in the girls’ races. In 2023, a Massachusetts high school won the state title with points awarded to its transgender hurdler in a girls’ race.

Oregon allows any biological male to “access athletics and activities” by asserting that his gender identity is that of a girl. Only some of the competitors themselves know who the transgender athletes are, as this can be concealed from parents, spectators, and conservative media.

The second and third-place finishers in a recent Oregon high school girls’ track event protested awarding first place to a transgender, by declining to stand on the awards podium. “I just want everyone to know that this isn’t just about me or the other girl to step down. It’s about the girl in ninth place who should have had a place on that podium,” Alexa Anderson of Tigard High School told ABC’s local affiliate, KATU.

“It’s about the girl who didn’t qualify for state because they were beat by a biological male in districts,” she added. “It’s about the integrity and fairness of women’s sports.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is term-limited out in 2026 while eyeing a longshot bid for the Democrat nomination for president in 2028, admits that this is unfair. “It is an issue of fairness. It’s deeply unfair,” Newsom told Trump-supporting Charlie Kirk, adding that “I totally agree with you.”

Yet Newsom has failed to protect girls’ sports in California, and let a transgender athlete win girls’ championships. The California school sports association did allow for the podium to be shared by the top girl competitors under a hasty rule change, but only after Trump objected.

While Democrats oppose protecting girls’ sports from the transgender invasion, they are funding a $20 million project to study why young men are shifting from Democrat to Republican. The shift in this demographic has steadily progressed since beginning in 2016, continuing through 2020, and then helping propel Trump to his victory by a wide margin in 2024, at the same time that the transgender invasion has increased.

Democrat politicians are doing what Planned Parenthood wants, as they have for more than half a century. Every House Democrat recently voted against removal of the $792.2 million in federal taxpayer money that has been flowing to Planned Parenthood, and Democrat senators will do everything they can to try to reinsert that funding back into the “big, beautiful bill” that has reached the Senate.

An analysis by the Heritage Foundation of Planned Parenthood in 2023 found that the abortion giant is “trying to corner the market in so-called transgender services,” and that its transgender approach likely “makes up the bulk of the dramatic rise” in its revenue and multi-billion-dollar assets.

More than a decade ago, Planned Parenthood first mentioned providing “hormone treatments for transgender patients,” disclosing 26 centers in 10 states for these treatments in its 2014-2015 annual report. By its 2021-2022 report, Planned Parenthood had “41 affiliates provide gender-affirming hormone therapy.”

Surgical abortions in clinics have been declining in the United States, for a variety of reasons. But Planned Parenthood has grown its revenue in the transgender world to more than make up for the shortfall.

An all-out attempt to change one’s gender can rack up bills easily exceeding $100,000 per person, which some attempt to shift to taxpayers to pay for. Last year the American Principles Project estimated that overall revenues for transgender drugs and surgeries exceeded $4.4 billion in 2023.

Harmeet Dhillon, the tough and savvy new head of the Civil Rights Division of Trump’s Department of Justice, has threatened to sue California for allowing transgender athletes to win top prizes in girls’ sports competitions. At its championship track and field meet over the weekend, two first-place awards and one second-place award were given to a transgender athlete.

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.

Despite Transgender Crimes, Democrats Push Their Agenda

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

On Saturday a man with long blonde hair posted an image of himself wearing lipstick and make-up on social media, and then entered an AMC theater near Boston where he stabbed four girls watching a children’s movie. Jared Ravizza was allegedly “laughing the whole time” while he nearly killed them, the mother of three of them said.

From there, he drove to a McDonald’s in a different town, publicly urinated, and then allegedly stabbed two employees. He is also suspected of killing someone in Connecticut before going on his stabbing spree.

He was ultimately caught by police after crashing his expensive Porsche. His privileged background included living for several years among liberals on Martha’s Vineyard, while his Instagram account with 218,000 followers refers to himself as “she.”

A few weeks ago in Texas, a man who identified himself as a woman named Karon Fisher drove at high speed to strike an older man who was getting his mail, backed up over him, and then repeatedly stabbed him to death. This was caught on video and witnessed by multiple bystanders.

And in California Tremaine Carroll, a male prisoner who was relocated to a woman’s prison after he identified himself as a transgender woman, allegedly raped a woman there. Earlier this month a Biden-appointed federal judge dismissed a lawsuit brought by women inmates against this California policy, by which more than 1,600 men have sought to be housed in women’s prisons.

Last year the massacre of three children and three adults at a private Christian school in Nashville was perpetrated by Audrey Elizabeth Hale, who called herself Aiden Hale. In November 2022, five were murdered at a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colorado, by Anderson Lee Aldrich who identified himself as nonbinary in court filings, and a transgender teen was convicted of murder after a Denver-area school shooting in 2019.

Not long ago transgender inclinations were considered to be gender dysphoria, and something to be outgrown or treated as a mental disorder. Now, however, the remake of the popular Nintendo “Paper Mario” video game includes “Vivian,” a character born male but exclaiming that “it took me a while to realize I was their sister… not their brother,” while other video games also push the transgender ideology.

Biden has bet his reelection campaign on fully supporting the transgender movement. The Biden Administration has created new causes of action for lawsuits against those who do not cave into transgender demands for preferred pronouns or special new rights.

Democrat-appointed federal judges are ruling in favor of transgender rights in every case. Two weeks ago Democrats on the Eleventh Circuit ruled that a transgender sergeant in a county sheriff’s office had a right to health insurance coverage at taxpayer expense for costly transgender surgery.

The Fourth Circuit, by a vote of 8 Democrat-appointed judges to 6 Republicans, held that West Virginia’s Medicaid and North Carolina’s teachers’ and state employees’ health insurance must fully cover transgender operations and treatment. A 3-judge panel of that same court recently held that parents have no right to opt out of public school coursework that pushes their own children toward accepting tenets of the transgender ideology.

Meanwhile, male-bodied student-athletes are winning state championships in girls’ sports, often by a wide margin, in states that allow such unfair competition. West Virginia enacted a law to protect girls’ sports, but it was blocked by a federal court and the Supreme Court declined a petition to review the case.

The transgender issue may explain why Trump leads Biden in the key swing state of Arizona, despite its Democrat governor. A poll last year showed that by an overwhelming margin of 63-20% Arizonans favor keeping transgender students out of girls’ sports, by 54-27% want them kept out of girls’ restrooms, and by 51-30% Arizonans want to ban transgender operations on children.

Hollywood actor Richard Dreyfuss disparaged the transgender movement during an appearance Saturday night in Beverly, Massachusetts, in honor of the megahit movie Jaws that shattered box office records in 1975, and afterward the venue issued an abject apology emphasizing “inclusivity and respect.” The talented Dreyfuss has criticized diversity and inclusion requirements at the Academy Awards by saying “they make me vomit.”

In an interview on PBS’s Firing Line last year, Dreyfuss asked “Are we really risking hurting people’s feelings? You can’t legislate that. You have to let life be life and I’m sorry, I don’t think there is a minority or majority in the country that has to be catered to like that.”

Hollywood movies today are plummeting in popularity just as Biden is, perhaps due to their same embrace of political correctness for the transgender movement and its demands for special rights. This Memorial Day weekend saw the lowest movie box office revenues since 1995, without even adjusting for inflation.

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.

Override the Trans Travesty in Ohio

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Ohio is solidly Republican, thanks to Donald Trump’s success in winning over manufacturing workers and rural Americans, and it has a Republican governor with veto-proof majorities in its House and Senate. Yet on Friday Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine vetoed a bill that would have protected girls’ sports from invasion by biological males, and protected children from mutilation by transgender operations and treatments.

Ohio’s HB 68 is similar to what has already passed in about two dozen other states, including its neighbors of Indiana and Kentucky, each of which overrode its governor’s veto to enact a similar bill. Kentucky’s law has already been upheld by the federal Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals which sits in Cincinnati and presides over Ohio, too.

The bill passed with more than the 60% threshold required to override a veto. While all those legislators should have immediately criticized DeWine’s veto, the strongest rebuke of DeWine came from Trump himself.

“DeWine has fallen to the Radical Left,” Trump observed on his platform Truth Social. “No wonder he gets loudly booed in Ohio every time I introduce him at Rallies, but I won’t be introducing him any more. I’m finished with this ‘stiff,’” Trump added.

“What was he thinking,” Trump continued in reference to DeWine and his veto. “The bill would have stopped child mutilation, and prevented men from playing in women’s sports. Legislature will hopefully overturn. Do it FAST!!!”

Yet DeWine added insult to injury by adopting the style of flawed reasoning by the Left in order to justify his veto, as he caved into those who profit from these lucrative decisions. DeWine said he was deferring to the decision-making by a child’s medical team.

Life-changing operations on minors are not properly authorized by those who profit from performing them. As explained by Dr. Ben Carson, the former director of pediatric neurosurgery at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center, “There’s a reason why they’re called minors. They don’t really know a lot of things, and they learn over the course of time as they become mature.”

“I would absolutely, adamantly refuse, in all circumstances,” Carson said about performing transgender procedures on minors. Carson added that “I suspect that in the future we will look back on this period of transgenderism and say, ‘How could those people be so foolish?’”

Gov. DeWine cited none of the eminent authorities who favor protecting minors against life-ruining treatment. Instead, he said that “parents have looked me in the eye and have told me that, but for this treatment, their child would be dead.”

No child has ever died for lack of a sex change, while on the other side of the ledger is the immense harm that Gov. DeWine ignored. Minors subjected to transgender procedures and treatments are deprived of ever having natural families of their own, and some who regretted their treatments have sued those who performed them.

“Ultimately I think this is about protecting human life,” DeWine declared with a straight face as he opened the floodgates to a billion-dollar industry to exploit mutilation of children. He then promised to issue new regulations, but they would not protect children in any meaningful way.

As to the sports issue, Gov. DeWine provided no justification for opening girls’ locker rooms and athletic competitions to boys. DeWine previously declared that decisions about sports should be left up to leagues like the NCAA, which profits from allowing transgenders to compete while pandering to the liberal media that controls its lucrative television contracts.

Three petitions for cert are pending before the U.S. Supreme Court on similar bills enacted in Tennessee and Kentucky, which have until early February to respond. The petition against the good Tennessee law states, “The Sixth Circuit’s decision deepens an existing split with the Eighth Circuit” over a similar law in Arkansas.

But the Eighth Circuit, which sits primarily in St. Louis while presiding over seven Midwestern states, subsequently agreed to a rare initial en banc hearing of the Arkansas law banning transgender operations. That suggests the Republican majority on the Eighth Circuit will agree with the Sixth Circuit and uphold this type of law.

The U.S. Supreme Court has dodged this issue when brought to it by the conservative side, and the Left may feel emboldened that it can win at the High Court. Amid so much judicial chaos over Trump-related issues, the annual end-of-year report by Chief Justice John Roberts was devoted to silly speculation about the future of artificial intelligence (AI).

Fortunately, several U.S. Courts of Appeals throughout the middle and southern regions of our country are upholding laws against transgender procedures and boys competing in girls sports. In addition to the Sixth and Eighth Circuits, the Eleventh Circuit ruled in favor of Alabama’s law protecting children from the trans industry.

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.

Putrid, Crime-Inducing Cannabis Spreads in Midwest

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

In the first few months since passage of a ballot initiative last November, Missouri has become home to a billion-dollar recreational marijuana industry. With virtually no money available to oppose the $10 million spent by the cannabis industry to fully legalize the weed, the initiative passed by 53-47% in this traditionally conservative state.

A total of 23 states have legalized recreational marijuana now. The liberal states of Colorado and Washington were the first to do so eleven years ago, also based on ballot initiatives that have been the central part of the cannabis strategy to become the $30 billion industry that it is today.

Federal law continues to ban this harmful drug, so it remains illegal to transport across state lines. But most of the marijuana sold is grown or imported into each state illegally, and Bible-Belt Oklahoma is overrun with illegal production and related crimes even though Oklahoma voters rejected legalizing cannabis earlier this year.

The harmful potency of pot has tripled from a generation ago, and one study showed a 3- to 4-fold increase in schizophrenia over the last 20 years. One in six teenage users of cannabis will become addicted to it, and those addicted become 3.2 times more likely to inflict self-harm and die from homicide, often after they spark the violence.

The skunk-like smell of cannabis plants and production facilities are rattling liberal regions. The stench of pot smoking is far worse than cigarettes, and a Brooklyn lawmaker who seeks to ban outdoor pot-smoking in cities says that it is the second biggest complaint to his office, after trash.

California journalist Ann Louise Bardach observed the odor of cannabis operations is “like a few dozen skunks letting loose at the same time,” and many have complained about its daily effect on students in California public schools. She told the British newspaper The Guardian that cannabis production causes “respiratory ills now, asthma and weepy eyes” to some residents.

Many of the “grows,” as cannabis cultivations are called, are still illegal to avoid the taxes and regulations. Legalizing pot in California caused the black market for pot-growing to boom to compete in a crowded market that has seen prices collapse by two-thirds in the last year, while many of the cannabis operations are run by out-of-town corporations rather than local farmers.

The mega-spending on ballot initiatives is how the cannabis industry has captured and victimized nearly half of our country, including places like Missouri where the Republican legislature did not want it. Then rampant exploitation and crime flows into a state as cannabis invades.

“We literally have thousands of pounds of finished marijuana from an illegal grow and illegal source,” California Merced County Sheriff Vern Warnke announced last week. Workers “were forced to process marijuana while staying in horrible living conditions to pay back the individuals that brought them across the border,” his office explained.

"The reality of legal weed in California: Huge illegal grows, violence, worker exploitation and deaths," screamed a headline in the liberal Los Angeles Times last September. More than five years after pot was fully legalized in that state, the vast majority of sales continue to be of illegal rather than legal marijuana.

So it won't be the many family-run farms in Missouri that benefit from this new billion-dollar enticement of violence, illegal aliens, and squalid working conditions. Instead, this will bring more crime to this conservative state, due to its easy ballot initiative process.

On August 8, the people of Ohio will vote on increasing its threshold for passing a ballot initiative to 60%, as has long been required in Florida, rather than merely 50% plus 1 allowed in Missouri. In supporting this Ohio measure, Republicans including Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) seek to protect against out-of-state corporate money enacting harmful laws through the ballot initiative process.

This change in Ohio is the only way to keep pot-by-ballot-initiative out of that key battleground state, as last week the cannabis industry fell only 679 signatures short of the 124,046 total they need to put on the November ballot an initiative to fully legalize pot. They have 10 days to obtain the additional signatures, which is easily done.

Congress rejects corporate pressure to legalize cannabis, as do most state legislatures. But spending tens of millions of dollars to push through a ballot initiative is pocket change to the cannabis industry, which continues to target conservative states like South Dakota and Florida where ballot initiatives are allowed.

There are few lawful profits in the cannabis industry, as ordinary investors and small businesses have been learning the hard way while watching their capital evaporate in smoke. Instead, legalizing pot makes it possible for the illegal operations to sell their weed to the unsuspecting public.

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.

Transgender Train Derails in Sixth Circuit

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Republican legislatures in 20 states have banned the use of irreversible gender-changing procedures on children, overcoming the governor’s veto in five of those states with a sixth override likely. But in six of the 20 states, liberal federal judges blocked these good laws in response to lawsuits by liberal groups including the ACLU and Southern Poverty Law Center.

Now comes the first appellate decision, and it’s welcome news. On July 8, two of the finest appellate judges in the country, Jeffrey Sutton and the Trump-appointed Amul Thapar, delivered a setback to the transgender agenda by ruling to reinstate Tennessee’s new law against transgender operations on minor children.

The margin was 2-1 on the Sixth Circuit appellate court, with a Democrat-aligned judge dissenting. Appeals are still pending of bad district court decisions in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, and Kentucky, where beneficial state laws were blocked by federal judges.

Other states have refused to protect children from transgender operations, and this cultural battle is far from over. In California, a recall campaign rages against a few conservatives who were elected last year to a school board near Los Angeles.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, considered the foremost health authority in our country until it mishandled the Covid pandemic, has come out entirely on the side of the transgender agenda. Recently the CDC’s website endorsed the ludicrous idea of “chestfeeding,” whereby transgender persons without breasts attempt to fake the production of breast milk with the use of dangerous drugs.

Politics is downwind from culture, and this past weekend the Netherlands crowned as the winner of its Miss Universe pageant a man competing as a trans woman. Sporting an elegant hairdo, this winning candidate had previously competed on the television show “Holland’s Next Top Model.”

The University of Cincinnati, ironically located in the same city where the Sixth Circuit presides, rescinded its reprimand of a teacher for flunking a student for using the term “biological woman.” Megan Rapinoe, the outspoken retiring player on the U.S. women’s soccer team, indicated she would welcome male-bodied trans women into that sport, even though her own women’s team was easily defeated by an under-15-years-old boys team.

The media and many judges are firmly on the side of the transgender movement, and they expect to win. A Clinton-appointed judge just ordered a public school to let a boy who identifies as a girl to use the girls’ bathroom, overriding a policy adopted by the elected school board in the town of Mukwonago, Wisconsin.

Law schools have fully embraced transgender follies, and unfortunately many courts will do likewise. The Supreme Court hires all of its law clerks from a handful of elite law schools, and those clerks perform the influential task of screening and describing cases before the Court either agrees to hear them or simply denies “cert” on a lower court decision.

The Supreme Court denied a recent application by West Virginia to reinstate its sensible law keeping boys out of girls sports, ducking this raging controversy just as the Court dodged all appeals about election fraud. For decades the Supreme Court accepted abortion cases only when the appeal was by the Left, and it will be interesting if Leftists appeal Judge Sutton’s decision against them.

Two years ago, Harvard Law School welcomed its “first transgender women of color” as teachers at the school. They joined two transgender men on the faculty, one of whom maintains a personal website that brags about “working with sex worker art collective that protested digital gentrification.”

Judge Sutton’s ruling is persuasive, and carries added weight due to his strong reputation as a “feeder” of clerks to the Supreme Court. Judge Sutton is notorious in some quarters for ruling against legal recognition of same-sex marriage in the case that was later overturned by the now-retired, left-leaning Justice Anthony Kennedy.

Tennessee’s new law, which was scheduled to go into effect on July 1st, prohibits “surgically removing, modifying, altering, or entering into tissues, cavities, or organs” of any person under the age of 18. It also bans “prescribing, administering, or dispensing any puberty blocker or hormone” to minor children.

“The State plainly has authority, in truth a responsibility, to look after the health and safety of its children,” Judge Sutton wrote with the concurrence of Judge Thapar. “Tennessee could rationally take the side of caution before permitting irreversible medical treatments of its children,” they added.

The court found it unlikely that the Supreme Court would create a new constitutional right to transgender operations, when no such right has existed in the Constitution for 235 years. “Life-tenured federal judges should be wary of removing a vexing and novel topic of medical debate from the ebbs and flows of democracy,” the Sixth Circuit majority concluded as they reinstated the Tennessee law.

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.