The Vanishing Conservative Supreme Court

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

The Supreme Court is 6-3 Republican-appointed, including three justices picked by President Trump. Yet as we reach the annual end of the Supreme Court Term, which customarily wraps up before July, there are remarkably few conservative decisions to halt the advance of the liberal agenda.

For example, the Santa Clara County Office of Education in Silicon Valley has imposed a teaching guide requiring teachers to be pro-LGBTQ+ even in math problems. One of the recommended books for young children is the “Pride Puppy,” which invites three- and four-year-olds to look for certain images at a pride parade including an “intersex” flag, and a drag “king” and “queen.”

Last year the Supreme Court decided in favor of religious rights for parents in Mahmoud v. Taylor, but the opinion was so weak that school districts continue to impose the transgender curriculum on unsuspecting parents without giving them a meaningful opportunity to opt out. Parents have just sued in California over this issue that should have already been firmly resolved in favor of parents by the Supreme Court.

Trial court judges have been overwhelmingly opposed to Trump’s position on the transgender and other issues. Language in some of their decisions have been scathing against Trump, as reported by CNN, while the Supreme Court has failed to rein them in.

The Supreme Court held only 58 oral arguments this Term, which is merely a third of the number of oral arguments heard annually when liberals controlled the Warren Court in the late 1950s and 1960s. During this entire current decade the Supreme Court has heard an average of only about 60 cases per year, the lowest average since the Civil War.

A vote of only four Justices is needed for the Supreme Court to accept a case and schedule it for oral argument, and then render a decision on its merits. In important petitions for Court review, conservative Justices Thomas and Alito have often voted to “grant cert” while the three Trump appointees failed to join them, thereby ducking important issues that should be addressed.

There is a pattern in the issues that the newer Republican-appointed Justices are avoiding. Abortion, transgender, vaccine mandates, and parental rights cases are all being avoided by them.

While the aging Justices Thomas and Alito, who are courageous, continue on the Supreme Court, now is the time to establish strong precedents that can last for decades. The younger Trump nominees need merely to vote silently with Thomas and Alito, yet too often are unwilling to do even that.

Most of the Trump-appointed Justices repeatedly voted against granting cert in a string of conversion therapy cases, until they finally took a case from Colorado and declared the therapy to be a First Amendment right. That decision should have been rendered years earlier to stop the widespread infringement on conservative counselors’ freedom of speech, and by delaying the Trump-appointed Justices allowed infringement.

Far from being the bold MAGA Court that Trump supporters campaigned so hard to attain, this Court has retreated to near irrelevancy. It treads water rather than swimming, thereby inviting future Democrat appointees to take charge.

Kamala Harris gave an interview to Don Lemon last week and called for Democrats to add four more Justices to the Supreme Court at the first opportunity. If that happens, the newly empowered Justices will not timidly avoid social issues as Republicans have.

In the most recent abortion case, all of the Republican nominees except Thomas and Alito sided with abortion pill manufacturers to allow them to continue to distribute their product widely in pro-life states without an in-person dispensing requirement. Neither the Trump nominees nor Chief Justice Roberts explained their ruling, for now, in favor of the abortion pill that causes two-thirds of all abortions.

Religious liberty is supposedly fashionable with this Court, but it declined to take the appeal of Amish grade schools hit with massive fines by New York for not requiring their children to be vaccinated. New York has eliminated the religious exemption from vaccines, and the Court punted this case back to an appellate court rather than uphold a religious right to decline vaccination.

The Court refused to “grant cert” in at least three appeals concerning the unfair transgender invasion into girls’ sports, until finally taking a pair of cases that it is deciding now. The Court has repeatedly declined to grant cert in cases concerning parental, particularly fathers’, rights.

The effect of the Republican Justices declining to grant cert in significant controversies is that bad decisions by liberal lower courts are left standing. The younger Republican Justices may be worried about possible impeachment by a future Democrat majority in Congress, but if so that would reinforce the need to nominate older justices willing to stand up against D.C. liberals.

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 Movement on the March

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

On Monday the Colorado Supreme Court, by a wide 5-2 margin, ordered a Colorado children’s hospital to resume transgender treatments and surgeries on minors based on state law, even though the decision could force the hospital to lose its federal funding. The Trump Administration has taken strong action against the transgender movement, yet it marches on.

Last December the Trump administration threatened to withhold federal funding from facilities that provide transgender treatment to children, but a Biden-appointed federal judge in Oregon named Mustafa T. Kasubhai blocked that rule. Children’s Hospital Colorado had wisely suspended its program of applying hormonal treatments and puberty blockers to children due to the threatened loss of funding.

A lower court upheld the hospital’s decision against a legal challenge. Children’s hospitals depend heavily on federal funding, including their services under Medicaid, and thus ordering the hospital to continue with transgender treatment would do more harm than good.

The practice of medicine is historically regulated by state law, but since health care providers receive billions of dollars of federal funding, the Trump Administration said it would cut federal funding from facilities that continue to perform harmful procedures aimed at altering a child’s gender. Recently the American Medical Association and the American Society of Plastic Surgeons reversed their guidance on such procedures, urging a delay in transgender surgery prior to the age of 19.

Dominated by federal employees, Virginia has become like Colorado and other blue states in pushing the transgender agenda. When a police officer in Norfolk in southern Virginia objected to orders requiring him to use transgender pronouns, he was ordered to leave, stripped of his gun, suspended, and then fired.

Norfolk has historically been conservative, with many military veterans. It is alarming that police officers in Norfolk have been suspended and even fired for objecting to the use of the women’s locker room by a man purporting to be a transgender woman.

State courts in the mostly conservative states of Kansas and Montana are also imposing the transgender ideology on their residents. In Kansas last Friday, a county judge appointed by Democrat Gov. Laura Kelly issued a 117-page injunction against a good Kansas transgender law, which had been passed by the Republican legislature over her veto.

The ACLU brought this lawsuit against the Kansas ban on transgender operations and treatments for children. The county judge blocked the law based on an activist decision by the liberal Kansas Supreme Court, which invented a right of “personal autonomy” to expand abortion there even though those words cannot be found in its 167-year-old state constitution.

Meanwhile, the Montana Supreme Court has rendered multiple Leftist decisions, despite being in a red state that Trump won by 20 points in 2024. On April 14, the 5-2 court held that birth certificates and driver’s licenses must be changed to accommodate transgender demands.

The Montana Supreme Court ruled, based on its state constitution, that state agencies cannot refuse to alter birth certificates and driver’s licenses to accommodate transgender demands. Despite being born male, for example, a resident of the Big Sky Country can now change his birth certificate to state falsely that he was born female instead.

These Kansas and Montana decisions were based on their state constitutions, and the Colorado ruling was based on state law. This reasoning generally shields such decisions from review by the U.S. Supreme Court which, regardless, has avoided review of many important transgender cases that it could have decided.

The 7-2 decision last week by the U.S. Supreme Court in favor of abortion pill manufacturers was the result of all three Trump appointees crossing over to the liberal side of the Court, without explanation. Justices Thomas and Alito expressed their dismay at how well-established principles of law were disregarded to allow the continued distribution of the abortion pill without sensible safeguards such as in-person dispensing, and without compliance with a longstanding federal ban on abortion-by-mail.

The entire Democrat Party is lockstep in support of the transgender agenda, due to how Planned Parenthood supplements its revenue by offering transgender treatments. Only a few courts have been willing to defend children against harmful transgender procedures.

The U.S. Supreme Court indicated last year in the Skrmetti case that there is no right to transgender operations and treatments for children under the U.S. Constitution, but this good decision was silent about state constitutions. The Court upheld a law in Tennessee protecting minors against this harm, but this precedent does not protect children against pro-transgender state court decisions based on state law.

Under Skrmetti the federal government can act further to protect children against life-altering procedures and treatments pushed on them by the transgender ideology. In addition to withholding federal funds from facilities that promote transgender treatments, federal regulations could require transparency to the public about which facilities provide these objectionable treatments.

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.

Is SCOTUS Ducking Transgender School Cases?

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

If anyone feels that the transgender issue has been won by conservatives, think again. In the past eight days the U.S. Supreme Court has ducked not one, but two, important cases in which public schools encouraged students to socially transition to the opposite sex without their parents’ knowledge or consent.

Social transitioning means adopting a name, pronoun, clothing, and gender expression suitable to the opposite sex. Many public schools have a policy of reinforcing such behavior by students and concealing it from their parents.

The latest denial of cert by SCOTUS was on Monday, on a petition by parents which had been supported by many amicus briefs. Nearly half the states joined a brief in support of parents to be informed and have control over what public schools are doing to push their children toward transgender behavior.

In just the last two years, the Supreme Court has turned away five transgender cases in which parents object to the secret transitioning of their children in public schools. This latest denial by SCOTUS arose from a lawsuit initiated by Florida parents, in which the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit sided with the public school despite the swing vote on the three-judge panel describing the school’s treatment of the parents as “shameful.”

In that case, a 13-year-old girl had delays in development and struggled with learning, and began doubting her gender. Her parents hired a private therapist and informed the school that they were opposed to social transitioning.

But even in Republican Florida, school officials were allowed to meet secretly with the child, label her as “nonbinary,” mandate that all school personnel refer to her as “they” or “them,” allow her to use boys’ bathrooms, and prohibit anyone from informing her parents. The school rejected the parents’ objections, denied their request to participate in this process, and refused the parents’ request for school records of meetings with their own daughter.

The school was acting pursuant to a parental-exclusion policy, which the Eleventh Circuit held was “executive” conduct that parents could not prevail against. In an opinion that the swing judge sided with but said “makes no sense,” the Court held that parents must first prove that an infringement on their rights “shocked the conscience” to compel a school to comply with the parents’ request.

A week earlier, the Supreme Court likewise refused a petition by two Massachusetts parents who had “repeatedly directed their public middle school not to interfere with the upbringing and mental healthcare plan for B.F., their eleven-year-old daughter.” Despite the parents’ objections, “school officials followed district protocol and secretly facilitated B.F.’s social gender transition anyway” and treated her “as though she were nonbinary.”

The entirely Democrat-appointed First Circuit panel sided with the public school by holding that an 11-year-old’s desires had priority over parental rights, and that this transgender issue supposedly did not concern her mental health. The public school even provided counseling to facilitate the gender transition of the child despite the parents’ objections, and the First Circuit sided with the school.

With these two latest denials of cert, the Supreme Court has now denied petitions for its review from anti-parent decisions by the First, Fourth, Seventh, Tenth, and Eleventh Circuits. In each case, often over dissent by a conservative appellate judge, the federal judiciary sided with schools as they secretly transition children without the knowledge or even over the objection of the parents.

Washington, D.C., is the transgender capital of the world and the Supreme Court justices and their clerks are immersed in that culture. The percentage of law students who are transgender also continues to climb, who become law clerks at the Supreme Court to do most of the work in screening cases for review.

The Supreme Court did intervene in an emergency appeal from a case in California, to reinstate a district court injunction against a California law that prevented public schools from notifying parents about their child’s gender identity or sexual orientation. Captioned Mirabelli v. Bonta, this case continues to be litigated in federal court in California and does not directly affect the rest of the country.

This case is based on a “religious obligation to raise their children in accordance with those beliefs,” the 6-3 Supreme Court wrote in temporarily siding with the parents. California’s opening brief is due on July 6 in the left-leaning Ninth Circuit, which has previously held against parents.

It was this same Ninth Circuit that infamously declared two decades ago that a parent’s right over her child’s upbringing “does not extend beyond the threshold of the school door.” Phyllis Schlafly then led such an uproar against that arrogant denial of parental rights that the court extraordinarily amended its decision to reword its much-criticized statement. SCOTUS then denied cert in that case, too.

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.

Wanted: An Unconfirmable Attorney General

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

With the sudden departure of Pam Bondi last week, President Trump is searching for a new Attorney General. He may be looking for a new Deputy AG as well.

Under current Federal law, President Trump has the power to appoint an attorney to fill these crucial offices in an interim or “acting” capacity for up to 210 days without Senate confirmation.

A glance at the calendar reveals that this year’s midterm elections are set for November 3, 2026, which is exactly 210 days from today. Coincidence? We think not.

The next Attorney General and Deputy AG should be someone who is willing and able to accomplish the MAGA goals within that 210-day time frame, or he’ll be another failure. These 210 days (30 weeks) could be virtually all the time that remains on the clock for the second Trump administration.

No one passes a basketball to a player who ignores dwindling time on a shot clock. No coach installs a quarterback after the final two-minute warning who ignores the game clock.

The liberal media and even some of Trump’s advisers are telling him that he needs to choose a new Attorney General who is confirmable by the Senate, but that is malarkey. Trump needs an Attorney General who will get the job done before the midterms, such as someone who could not be confirmed by the weak sisters in the Senate.

Before a nominee could even be voted on by the full Senate, he would have to pass the gauntlet of the Senate Judiciary Committee, where Republicans hold a 1-vote margin that several of Trump’s best nominees have failed to clear. The RINO lame duck Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) is on that committee, and he should not be allowed to block a strong nominee.

Certain types of attorneys should be ruled out of consideration immediately. The next Attorney General should not come from a major Establishment law firm, should not be a former lobbyist or lobbyist wannabe, and should not be a former federal prosecutor.

If the next Attorney General is afraid of liberals, Congress, or the media, then he will fail to make badly needed changes at the Justice Department. MAGA still awaits a prosecution of ringleaders among more than 200 Justice Department employees who wrongfully persecuted Trump.

Many excellent candidates would do a terrific job at saving our country from the Swamp. Former Rep. Matt Gaetz, Ed Martin, Mike Davis, and Sidney Powell would be superb choices without worrying about Tillis and other RINOs.

President Abraham Lincoln did not win the Civil War by appointing an insider to lead the Union Army. After D.C.-favored generals like George McClellan failed to get the job done, it was the outcast, probably unconfirmable U.S. Grant who ultimately won the war.

Even if eventual confirmation could be assured, we don’t have time to waste on a long and agonizing confirmation process, with the clock winding down for the midterms. The next Attorney General should not subject himself to browbeating by liberals, as when Markwayne Mullin had to make a damaging retreat from Trump’s deportation agenda before he could be confirmed as Secretary of Homeland Security (which includes ICE).

The ideal candidate would be someone who views D.C. and the liberal media with contempt, as Trump does. Anyone who seeks praise on Capitol Hill or by the press should not apply for this job that requires wrestling with Swamp creatures.

If the next Attorney General cannot get the job done for MAGA in 210 days, then he should not be appointed. Coaches do not give the ball to players who ignore the game clock as it winds down to zero.

There is probably no confirmable candidate for the top two positions in the Justice Department who will fulfill the MAGA goals that Trump promised in 2024. If a majority of the senators approve of a candidate, then he is unacceptable to MAGA.

In 2020, the Senate-approved Attorney General Bill Barr abruptly quit his office early to avoid post-election issues, and then obtained a book deal for his memoir entitled “One Damn Thing After Another.” That failure would probably happen again if Trump picks a confirmable candidate to lead the DOJ.

Nearly everyone liked by senators in D.C. is angling to make a buck for himself, as many senators themselves are, too. Several have left the Senate to cash in with private equity firms, while others take lucrative corporate jobs as Barr did after being Attorney General under President George H.W. Bush.

Installing MAGA leadership at DOJ was one of the key pledges made to the American people in 2024, which helped elect Trump and other Republicans. The vacancy at the position of Attorney General makes it possible now to honor that pledge.

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.

Conversion Therapy Wins Big in SCOTUS

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Do physicians and counselors have the right to speak freely to their patients and clients? One would think that licensed professionals enjoy the First Amendment as much as anyone else, but 23 Democrat-controlled states and the District of Columbia have passed laws making it illegal for counselors to help young people go straight, in the face of confusions about sexual orientation or gender identity.

These state laws ban what is known as “conversion therapy,” a scary term that Wikipedia falsely contends is a form of child abuse. More than 100 cities and counties have also banned conversion therapy for minors, despite how local ordinances are not typically so political.

But today, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that all such laws are almost certainly invalid, because the First Amendment protects the right of professional counselors to give advice without viewpoint discrimination, even on controversial topics like sexual orientation.

In his ringing opinion in favor of the Colorado Christian counselor who brought the case, Trump-appointed Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote: “The Constitution does not protect the right of some to speak freely; it protects the right of all. It safeguards not only popular ideas; it secures, even and especially, the right to voice dissenting views.”

It is not surprising that Gorsuch was assigned to write this decision, as he is from Colorado and presided on the Tenth Circuit in Denver before going to the Supreme Court. But the strength of his opinion is refreshing, particularly given how he had declined to support granting certiorari in similar prior appeals.

Kaley Chiles, the licensed mental health counselor who challenged Colorado’s ban on so-called conversion therapy, is indeed a committed Christian, but six Justices ruled in her favor in a strong endorsement of freedom of speech regardless of religion. By a 6-3 margin the Court held that “every American possesses an inalienable right to think and speak freely, and a faith in the free marketplace of ideas as the best means for discovering truth.”

Concurring with the Republican majority, Obama-appointed Justice Elena Kagan agreed that “because the State has suppressed one side of a debate, while aiding the other, the constitutional issue is straightforward.”

The single dissenting opinion was authored by Biden-appointed Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson who, during her memorable confirmation hearing, was unable to say what a woman is. In her overwrought, cliche-ridden opinion, Justice Jackson said “the majority plays with fire in this case,” “opens a dangerous can of worms” and “we could now be standing on the edge of a precipitous drop in the quality of healthcare services in America.”

In his response to Jackson’s heated dissent, Justice Gorsuch wrote that Justice Jackson “may believe that state-imposed orthodoxies in speech pose few dangers and many benefits in this field (and who knows what others). But their policy is not the First Amendment’s.”

Although the speech ban at issue in this case attracted only one vote on the Supreme Court, it is frightening that such an onerous restriction on free speech has been passed by legislatures of nearly half our states. The gist of those state laws, which Joe Biden’s appointee to the Court would have upheld, is that doctors and other licensed professionals have no right to give their own best advice, but must convey state-approved messages to their clients or patients.

The lobbyists for those laws argue that conversion therapy has a low success rate. However there is no evidence that the rate is any worse than for other common therapies, such as for losing weight or stopping addictions.

The decision in favor of free speech is now the law of the land in the United States, but the battle is not over, because many professional societies still oppose the use of talk therapy or counseling to guide young people struggling with issues of sexual orientation or gender identity. You can expect professional counselors like Kaley Chiles to be harassed by some state licensing boards if they dare to fully exercise their free speech.

Colorado, which has become one of the most liberal states despite formerly being conservative, may not give up in its attempt to censor conversion therapy. Justice Kagan invited it and other opponents of conversion therapy to try again with a content-based restriction, rather than a viewpoint-based limitation, although it is far from clear what Justice Kagan has in mind.

A viewpoint-neutral limitation on counseling would require liberals to cut back on their grooming campaigns. Most conversion therapy bans, including Colorado’s, allow therapy to encourage transitioning to become transgendered.

Speech bans similar to Colorado’s are still the law in countries that don’t have a First Amendment, such as Canada. Originally drafted in the 1980s to ban counseling about sexual orientation, most of these laws were subsequently expanded to ban counseling about gender identity, too.

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.

Shooting, Stabbing, and Wrong-Way Trucking

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Within 24 hours of U.S. military action against Iran, a 53-year-old Muslim from Senegal allegedly shot up a bar early Sunday morning in Austin, Texas. Three were killed and more than a dozen were wounded, some critically.

Nearly two-thirds of public shootings are perpetrated by gunmen under the age of 40, so the age and timing of this massacre suggest an uncommon motive. It seems likely that this massacre was in response to developments in the Middle East, but the FBI says that it is embarking on an extensive investigation and refuses to release any information about the shooter’s motive.

The suspected assailant, Ndiaga Diagne, never entered the bar, but instead shot into it from outside. Students from the nearby University of Texas, which is one of the largest colleges in our country, had filled the bar to enjoy some weekend socializing in Austin’s entertainment district.

President Bill Clinton admitted this suspect into our country as a tourist on a B-2 visa in 2000, and then President Obama naturalized him as a citizen despite how he had multiple arrests. The reasons for those arrests remain sealed, but local authorities vow to release details about them later this week.

Ndiaga Diagne continued shooting into the bar until he was gunned down and killed by police, within one minute of their being called. The bloodshed would have been far worse in the absence of the remarkably quick and decisive action taken by the police.

Meanwhile, the State Department urged Americans to immediately leave Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria, UAE, the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Yemen, and even Israel. But Obama and Biden had a virtually open-border policy for the U.S. for twelve years, allowing many enemies to enter freely and remain without being deported.

This horrifying shooting in Austin transpired during the final weekend before election day in the Texas primary on Tuesday, with the potential to rattle hotly contested races. Republican candidates were quick to condemn the prior immigration policies of Democrat presidents that have led to this.

Casualties continue to climb from other violent attacks on defenseless American citizens by foreigners here from hostile nations. Abdul Jalloh, a 32-year-old native of Sierra Leone, viciously stabbed Stephanie Minter, 41, to death in her neck as she stood at a bus stop at 7pm in Fairfax County, Virginia, on February 23, 2026.

Jalloh illegally entered the United States in 2012, and had an immigration detainer and a final order of removal pending against him. Because of judicial interference with deportations to Sierra Leona, Jalloh was scheduled to be lawfully deported to another third-world country.

Jalloh had previously been arrested more than 30 times. The murder charge should finally keep him off the streets, but to be sure ICE has called “on Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger and Virginia’s sanctuary politicians to commit to not releasing this murderer and violent career criminal from their jail without notifying ICE.”

Jalloh’s arrest record included being charged with “rape, malicious wounding, assault, drug possession, identity theft, trespassing, larceny, firing a weapon, contributing to the delinquency of a minor, and pickpocketing,” reported the New York Post.

Yet despite all this crime, Democrat-controlled Fairfax County failed to detain Jalloh to protect the public. Like other sanctuary jurisdictions, wealthy Fairfax refuses to notify ICE before it releases violent illegal aliens in custody, in order to deliberately prevent ICE from deporting them.

The obituary for the victim Stephanie Minter said that “Stephanie will be sorely and dearly missed, with the world missing out on that beam of light we came to know so well.” She is survived by her son and her mother.

Meanwhile, an 18-wheel tractor-trailer was spotted driving the wrong way on a highway near Troy, Missouri. An alarmed observer, who had to swerve to narrowly avert a head-on collision, then filmed this and contacted police, who arrived and asked the driver some basic questions about English as it appears on road signs.

The wrong-way driver was unable to demonstrate English proficiency to the Missouri officer. Wrong-way driving is inevitable by someone who cannot understand our highway road signs. This driver was Abdiasis Ibrahim Ali from Minnesota, who is thought to be from Somalia.

When Minnesota issues a commercial driver’s license that authorizes the driving of big trucks without understanding English, it jeopardizes the safety of everyone nationwide. Fortunately, the Missouri police did not allow this driver to continue behind the wheel of this truck, but he was not arrested either.

Illinois, another state controlled by Democrats, has illegally issued one out of every five of its commercial driver’s licenses, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. A bill to punish truckers who cannot understand basic road signs, HB 2741, is moving through the Missouri legislature.

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.

“Show Cause” Tyranny by Anti-Trump Judges

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Liberal judges have found a tool for browbeating Trump’s attorneys at the Department of Justice (DOJ) on the issue of detaining illegal aliens. Akin to an unpleasant toy in the hands of idle children, the legal hammer of a “show cause” order is being overused by judges opposed to Trump’s crackdown on illegal aliens.

In the last six months, “show cause” orders have emanated from dozens of judges unhappy with how the Trump Administration detains illegal aliens without bail. Leftist judges are just fine with denying bail to Trump supporters accused of a crime, as done to hundreds of J6-ers in order to imprison them in the D.C. Gulag without a trial, and yet Democrat-appointed judges object to detaining illegal aliens without bail.

Trump’s policy is a sensible one: anyone who is in the United States unlawfully is not entitled to be released on bail from their detention. Many might “jump bail” never to be caught again, and there is no legitimate defense to being unlawfully in our country.

The Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) confirmed the validity of Trump’s policy on Sept. 5, 2025, in the Matter of Jonathan Javier Yajure Hurtado. In rejecting a request for release on bail, the BIA held that under applicable federal law illegal aliens caught in the United States are subject to mandatory detention without bail.

This is not a civil rights issue, any more than removing someone from trespassing on private property would be a civil rights issue. Their very presence in defiant trespass is unlawful and indefensible; releasing them on bail would simply facilitate continuation of the very crime itself.

Yet mostly Democrat-appointed federal district judges are demanding that DOJ attorneys “show cause,” which means explain in sworn statements, why they should not be held in contempt for implementing Trump’s policy. No federal judge can hold President Trump in contempt, so instead they are seeking to make an example of junior attorneys within the DOJ.

Under Supreme Court rulings and federal law, illegal aliens are deemed to be “applicants for admission” to the United States regardless of whether they formally applied to be admitted here. Federal law requires that such aliens “shall be detained,” without any allowance for bail to release them back into the public prior to their deportation.

Despite the clarity of the law and President Trump’s sensible policy against bail for illegal aliens, Biden-appointed Judge Sunshine Sykes in Los Angeles issued on Feb. 18 a one-sided ruling against Trump’s policy. Judge Sykes is the first Navajo Nation citizen to become a federal judge, and she was confirmed by Democrats in a narrow, nearly party-line vote of only 51–45 less than four years ago.

Judge Sykes held in favor of Plaintiff Lazaro Maldonado Bautista, who is not an American citizen and yet has lived in Los Angeles for roughly four years. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested Bautista on June 6, 2025, after deciding that he is here illegally, and denied Bautista release on bond.

Bautista was detained by DHS and ICE at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center in Adelanto, California. His request for a bond redetermination hearing was denied by an immigration judge.

Judge Sykes complained that Bautista “is but one of hundreds, if not thousands, of noncitizens with no criminal background that have been arrested and detained by the Government for being in the country without admission.” She relied on Justice Kennedy’s 5-3 decision in Arizona v. United States, 567 U.S. 387, 407 (2012) – which should be overturned – that generally “it is not a crime for a removable [illegal alien] to remain present in the United States.”

The orders by this solitary Biden-appointed, Los Angeles-based judge against the Trump Administration are breathtakingly broad and burdensome, and are contrary to the outcome of the last presidential election. This district judge demands that Trump provide a bond hearing to detained illegal aliens who request one, and that Trump post notices in English and Spanish about this on numerous government websites identified by the court.

The Trump Administration has since complied with the court order to post these notices on government websites, but is also appealing this decision to the Ninth Circuit. If necessary, the Trump Administration will surely seek review by the U.S. Supreme Court to confirm that illegal aliens do not have a right to be released on bail.

The American people voted in the last presidential election against allowing illegal aliens to roam freely in our country despite typically having broken the law in coming and staying here. This sweeping ruling by one Biden-appointed judge in Los Angeles, along with similar decisions rendered by dozens of additional Democrat-appointed judges, constitute judicial activism which the Supreme Court should swiftly shut down.

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.

Freezing Deaths, Garbage Piles in Largest Sanctuary City

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

The largest sanctuary city that defies federal immigration laws is the Big Apple in New York. Its newly elected socialist Indian-Ugandan mayor, Zohran Mamdani, just issued his 13th Executive Order, which forbids city agencies from sharing information with federal officials including the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), except as may be required by law.

“ICE is more than a rogue agency — it is a manifestation of the abuse of power,” Mamdani pompously declared. New York is currently holding 7,113 criminal illegal aliens for whom detainers have been issued by federal officials to deport them, yet Mamdani is not cooperating to turn these lawbreakers over to ICE.

Mamdani and other big city Democrat mayors are the ones most responsible for the delays in removing the criminals who never should have been here in the first place. Mamdani has prohibited ICE from entering any city property, which includes parking garages, schools, shelters, public spaces, hospitals, and absurdly even vacant lots, unless ICE has a warrant which is difficult to obtain from liberal judges.

The sanctuary policy in New York City is so strict that it prevents the police from sharing information with ICE about illegal aliens who have been arrested. New York City prohibits transferring these criminals into the custody of federal officials.

Last July the Trump Administration sued New York City officials to end their sanctuary city policy, and to enjoin local administrative regulations that interfere with the apprehension and deportation of criminals. But this lawsuit languishes before the Biden-appointed Judge Ramon Reyes in the Eastern District of New York, without a ruling that could then be appealed.

Mamdani is anticipating the arrival of ICE agents similar to the crackdown on illegal aliens that has been occurring in Minneapolis. But rather than cooperate with law enforcement, Mamdani is ramping up his resistance by creating an “Interagency Response Committee” to oppose Trump’s valiant efforts.

This committee will include the city’s chief immigration officer, the first deputy mayor, the city’s chief counsel, and senior operations managers representing all city agencies. Mamdani is commanding several of the agencies, including those overseeing its jails, to conduct an audit of their compliance with the city’s sanctuary policies against cooperating with federal immigration authorities.

“When politicians bar local law enforcement from working with DHS, our law enforcement officers have to have a more visible presence so that we can find and apprehend the criminals let out of jails and back into communities,” DHS stated through a spokesman.

Resisting immigration laws is an odd priority for Mamdani during his first two months in office, when he’s done a terrible job addressing a snowstorm and cold snap. Keeping the streets clean and residents warm should be Mamdani’s focus, rather than obstructing the deportation program on which Trump was elected.

Since January 24, 18 people have been discovered frozen to death outside in New York City. Last December, its former Mayor Eric Adams sharply criticized Mamdani’s plan to be more permissive toward homelessness, and now many homeless people are freezing to death because they are not in shelters.

“They don’t believe there should be any prisons in our city. They don’t believe that you should do encampment enforcement. … They believe in decriminalizing prostitution after all that we’ve done,” Adams said in his rebuke of Mamdani and his agenda.

Mamdani’s plan has been to allow scores of homeless people to camp out on the streets in New York City. “I went and visited those camps — stale food, human waste, drug paraphernalia, schizophrenic behavior,” Adams observed.

Mamdani’s most recent response has been to arrange for heating buses to be placed in various locations in the city, but people are reportedly having a hard time finding them. Often, they are not where people expect them to be.

Meanwhile, huge piles of garbage have been stacking up uncollected for weeks on New York City streets. Television news programs have posted videos of mountains of garbage-filled bags, along with interviews of residents outraged at how the city officials have failed to do their job of removing trash that is blocking sidewalks and attracting rats.

A heating crisis caused a record-breaking 80,000 New Yorkers to place emergency calls to 311 in January due to a lack of residential heat and hot water. As sub-zero temperatures descended on the Big Apple — whatever happened to global warming? — many were nearly frozen in their apartments because of these energy failures.

Across the country in California, there is some good news as a federal judge struck down Gov. Newsom’s law requiring ICE agents to work without masks that protect them against retaliation. The judge pointed out that this law unfairly targeted federal agents, and that it was unconstitutional because it did not also apply to California officials.

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.

Ten Commandments Coming Back to Public Schools

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

A lively oral argument filled the en banc courtroom of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit on Tuesday afternoon in New Orleans, to address this simple question: may states require the posting of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms? Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas have enacted new laws requiring this, which had been banned throughout the United States since 1980.

That was when a 5-4 Supreme Court held, in Stone v. Graham, that state legislatures could not require the posting of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms, even if privately funded. That decision was based on a judicial finding of a religious purpose, which the Court held rendered it in violation of the Establishment Clause.

The Supreme Court has since repudiated the use of a religious purpose test to evaluate state legislation under the Establishment Clause. The entire Lemon test, which was promulgated in 1971 by the Supreme Court in Lemon v. Kurtzman, is no longer good law.

The ACLU argues that a Ten Commandments display in every classroom would have a coercive effect on students. It objects to the use of the King James Version of the Ten Commandments, as found in the Book of Exodus Chapter 20, rather than Jewish or Catholic translations.

Judges peppered the ACLU side with questions about whether it would be unconstitutional to require posting the Declaration of Independence or President Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address. President Lincoln quoted verbatim from the King James Version of the Gospel of Matthew, “Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!”

The Court sought historical examples of any impermissible establishment of a religion that was remotely similar to displaying the Ten Commandments in classrooms. The New England Primer, which is called America’s first textbook, sold millions of copies for public elementary school students and included explicit teachings about the Ten Commandments.

A dilemma for the Fifth Circuit as it deliberates in the city called the Big Easy, the birthplace of jazz, is whether to discard Stone v. Graham, which was an unsigned per curiam decision written by liberal Justice William Brennan without oral argument. A majority of the outspoken judges on the Fifth Circuit indicated that they plan not to cast the first stone, an expression from the Bible, but to cast Stone aside and take the chance that the Supreme Court might admonish them for acting so boldly.

A judge opposed to the posting of the Ten Commandments fretted about a child who “believes in a multitude of deities.” In other words, some would grant a heckler’s veto to just one child who might be polytheistic, and allow that view to require taking down the monotheistic Ten Commandments liked by everyone else.

The Pledge of Allegiance is monotheistic, and Texas requires students to recite it in public school without problems. In 1789, George Washington issued his Thanksgiving Proclamation with the words, “Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will,” as an attorney defending the classroom display of the Ten Commandments pointed out.

Yet opponents of the Ten Commandments display requirement complain that this will be in every public school classroom at every level, visible from everywhere in each classroom. This will have a coercive effect, they insist, but a Fifth Circuit judge pointed out that the Stone v. Graham decision said nothing about any coercion caused by a display in a classroom.

Some prayer is allowed at public school football games now, and religious objections to pro-transgender mandates are upheld today. Amish elementary schools that were fined more than $100,000 for not requiring the children to be vaccinated were just given a second chance by the Supreme Court to overturn those penalties in lower courts.

Public school enrollment and attendance have been in a free fall, collapsing at an alarming rate. A post-Covid record was just set in Colorado with a 10,000-student annual decline in enrollment, while Broward County public schools north of Miami in Florida face a potential takeover by the state after disclosure that they are losing nearly $100 million.

Schoolchildren need the benefits of the Ten Commandments in their classrooms now, and should not have to wait for years before the good Louisiana law, which was supposed to take effect at the beginning of 2025, is implemented for their benefit.

Excluding all religious symbols from classrooms has turned them into depressing, valueless places where many kids loathe to be. Chronic absenteeism – missing more than a tenth of the school days – is rampant now and, just as Gen Z is reading the Bible more than their prior generation, posting the Ten Commandments might help boost school attendance too.

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.