Court of Appeals Should Halt Anti-GOP Prosecutions

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Liberal county prosecutors in heavily Democrat Fulton County, Georgia, are terrorizing a U.S. Senator, Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and the former U.S. Attorney and Time Man of the Year, Rudy Giuliani. The ultimate target of this politicized investigation is, of course, Donald Trump.

We are within 90 days of the midterm elections, when Department of Justice policy prohibits this kind of political mischief by prosecutors. Last week unhinged county prosecutors tracked down another Trump attorney, Jenna Ellis who resides in Colorado, and are forcing her to testify as they try to get at Trump.

To liberals, criticizing election fraud is a crime, and the heavily Democrat grand jury will recommend any indictments requested. Every Republican connected with Donald Trump who criticized the last election is at risk of being indicted by such Democrats, in violation of their constitutional right to speak out.

For a year-and-a-half no evidence of any crimes by these Republicans has surfaced, but as the midterm elections approach liberals rush for indictments. Last week the news was that Rudy Giuliani, Mr. Law and Order himself, is a target of the investigation.

The goal of this weaponized prosecution is two-fold. First, Democrats want something to swing the polls in order to hold onto their bare majority in the U.S. House, and second, Democrats want to make sure that no one dares question their fraud-prone elections ever again.

Billionaire Leftist George Soros, who has invested heavily in supporting radical prosecutors nationwide, must be giggling with delight. He may have found a way to turn the country blue with baseless prosecutions generating a stream of scandalous headlines against Republicans.

Sen. Graham was doing his job when he made inquiries about the reported unusual election results in Georgia in 2020, where signatures were never verified on hundreds of thousands of mail-in ballots. It is a constitutional right for all Americans to question and criticize elections, yet some liberals want to turn that into some kind of crime.

Sen. Graham should not have to answer intrusive questions under oath from a political opponent in a dusty county courtroom in Georgia, about legitimate inquiries he made concerning the election results more than a year-and-a-half ago. For liberals to spawn national biased headlines by making this an issue on the eve of the midterm elections is doubly wrong.

Sen. Graham appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit to defend his senatorial privilege under the Speech and Debate Clause. Incredibly, that court is allowing the circus in Fulton County to continue, although it temporarily delayed the process until the scope of questioning is narrowed.

Republicans should not have to answer questions by a partisan Democrat prosecutor about why and how they questioned a reported election result. No Republican is accused of fabricating votes, so there is no crime to be asked questions about.

The chilling of the First Amendment right to criticize election fraud is what Democrats want. Only a federal appellate court might stop their interference with the midterm elections.

Fulton County is overwhelmingly Democrat and it is impossible for a Republican to obtain a fair grand jury or trial there. The Georgia legislature recognized last year the likelihood of fraud in that county, and its election reform bill permits state intervention in county elections.

A retired federal judge is serving as the state election board chairman, and he said at its first board meeting that “accountability and knowing that there are people watching the processes and making sure that they are trustworthy ... that’s what we want and what the citizens want.” But that cannot happen if any Republican who criticizes the process gets harassed before a Democrat grand jury.

A Georgia state court judge shut down an attempt by the partisan prosecutor to haul a state legislator before the grand jury for hostile questioning under oath, after the revelation that the prosecutor hosted a fundraiser for his opponent. The court order prohibits the county prosecutor, Fani Willis, from publicly claiming that the legislator is a subject of the grand jury’s investigation.

After the Eleventh Circuit paused the attempt to question Sen. Graham, the Obama-appointed district judge gave him until only 9 a.m. on Wednesday to file a motion to explain how he wants the court to limit the scope of questioning. But no U.S. Senator should be subjected to any questioning by a county prosecutor of the opposing party on the eve of an election, or be put at risk of a politically motivated indictment.

The Supreme Court did not defer to a partisan recount of the 2000 presidential election in Florida, and unhinged Democrats in Georgia deserve no deference now. Their partisan attempt to interfere with the midterm elections should be stopped immediately by federal courts.

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.

Stop Political Prosecutions

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

More than a week after the gestapo-like raid of President Trump’s home, the Democrat-controlled Justice Department has disclosed nothing to justify that unprecedented action against America’s leading presidential candidate. As a first step among many to come, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) filed Articles of Impeachment against Attorney General Merrick Garland, who admitted that he approved the raid.

“Attorney General Garland has taken measures to silence the voice of millions of citizens of the United States by persecuting the former duly elected and lawful President of the United States, and potential Presidential candidate, Donald J. Trump,” the first Article of Impeachment reads.

Refusing to take questions after making a brief statement, Garland continues to stonewall demands for an explanation of his egregious violation of the constitutional rights and dignity of a prominent U.S. citizen. On Monday, under Garland’s supervision, the Justice Department filed a motion asking a court to continue suppressing the affidavit that was submitted to obtain the search warrant, and the court will hear this motion on Thursday.

Garland’s conduct is an affront to our democratic republic, and it improperly disrupts our upcoming elections in 2022 and 2024. His armed raid on the home of the leading presidential candidate while refusing to disclose the basis for it cannot stand.

For once, major news networks sided with Trump supporters in asking the magistrate judge, whose legal career includes defending the pilots and others associated with the disgraced Jeffrey Epstein, to unseal the affidavit. Judge Bruce Reinhart, whom Trump has sought to recuse from this case, has concealed the supporting affidavit filed to obtain the search warrant.

The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution prohibits raiding anyone’s home except “upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” With those immortal words the Founders put this essential safeguard into the Bill of Rights against the abuse of federal power that just victimized Trump.

Political persecutions hide behind secrecy, and transparency would help stop them. There was no justification for federal agents to demand that Mar-a-Lago staff turn off the surveillance cameras so that the agents could violate limits on the scope of the warrant without accountability.

Despite the deliberate intimidation caused by more than 30 armed agents ransacking Trump’s home, his skeleton summer staff courageously refused the agents’ improper demand to turn off the cameras. Yet there remains no accountability for how federal agents tried to hide their own misconduct from surveillance.

“This is an assault on a political opponent at a level never seen before in our Country,” Trump said on Truth Social about the raid. The following day Garland’s DOJ tracked down pro-Trump Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) while he was on a family vacation, so that three armed agents could make a surprise grab of his cell phone in front of his young children.

A personal cell phone, like one’s home, contains much private and confidential information that government has no right to see, and Trump points out that the raid against him stole his confidential documents. Rep. Perry is not genuinely suspected of any wrongdoing, and neither is Trump with respect to documents he lawfully kept as president and had the right to declassify and take with him.

Every American should be frightened by this outrageous infringement on constitutional rights for political gain. It may be impossible to seat 12 jurors who are not themselves scared by these tactics by the Biden Administration, in a future criminal trial or grand jury deliberations against a Trump supporter or even Trump himself.

Frightening his political opponents, as Biden is doing, is a threat to the survival of our Republic. Other than Rep. Greene’s valiant effort to impeach Garland, little has yet been done to bring accountability to Democrats’ one-sided persecution of Trump supporters.

One reason for this unjustified federal raid may be to goad Georgia prosecutors into indicting Trump or his supporters, and on Monday they informed Rudy Giuliani that he is a target of their witch hunt. An Obama-appointed federal judge ordered Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) to testify in Georgia before a grand jury assembled there in an effort to indict Trump supporters.

Graham vows to appeal the Obama judge’s impertinent demand, citing the constitutional provision that members of Congress “shall not be questioned in any other place” for their statements. Political issues are to be presented to American voters to resolve at the ballot box, not by hauling members of one political party before a state grand jury.

Representative government does not work when the party in power can terrorize its political rivals with surprise raids on their homes and intrusive demands to testify in one-sided investigations. The next Congress, convening in less than 5 months, must act quickly to rein in liberals’ unhinged persecutions of their political rivals.

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.

Shocking Raid of Trump Means Garland Must Go

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

By launching a surprise attack on President Trump’s home in Florida, while Trump was away, the Biden Administration has breached even its own low standard for decency. Biden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland should resign immediately for allowing it.

“My beautiful home, Mar-a-Lago, is currently under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents,” Trump said Monday evening. “They even broke into my safe!”

The supposed pretext for this raid—to recover some obscure old presidential papers for the National Archives—cannot be taken seriously. Such a trivial pursuit would hardly justify this unprecedented assault and the massive federal resources thrown at it.

Joe Biden’s presidency has brought a series of humiliating defeats for the United States. The Taliban defeated Biden in Afghanistan; millions of migrants stream across our southern border; and the Chinese Communist Party lobbed missiles at Taiwan during House Speaker Pelosi’s visit.

No, the real reason for this raid on Trump is as plain as the advancing dementia on Joe Biden’s addled face. With each successful election result this year, Trump is on track to win back the White House in 2024, and panicky Democrats are exploiting their control of the federal government to try to prevent that from happening.

This raid was executed on the 91st day before the upcoming midterm election on November 8. That timing over a non-urgent issue was apparently a futile gesture to comply with longstanding Justice Department policy to avoid upsetting the political process within 90 days of an election.

“This unannounced raid on my home was not necessary or appropriate,” Trump declared at the end of the day-long assault. “It is prosecutorial misconduct, the weaponization of the Justice System, and an attack by Radical Left Democrats who desperately don't want me to run for President in 2024 … and who will likewise do anything to stop Republicans and Conservatives in the upcoming Midterm Elections.”

For more than a year, a committee of partisan Democrats on Capitol Hill, joined by two renegade Republicans, Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, have been trying to prosecute Trump for anything under the sun. Kinzinger is already a lame duck, and Cheney is certain to receive a well-deserved comeuppance in her Wyoming primary election next week.

“Such an assault could only take place in broken, Third-World Countries”—or Ukraine, he might have added. “Sadly, America has now become one of those Countries, corrupt at a level not seen before.”

Unfortunately Ukraine, where the main opposition party is outlawed while opposition politicians are jailed or exiled, is the apparent model for how Democrats are running the U.S. government. Biden has spent tens of billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars propping up that corrupt regime, but now we learn that most of the arms we shipped to the region failed to reach their final destination and cannot be accounted for.

The raid on Mar-a-Lago is reminiscent of the predawn arrest in 2019 of Trump’s friend Roger Stone, who described opening his door and “staring down barrel of two assault weapons [and] a dozen other FBI agents in the background, all wearing night goggles, full SWAT gear, side arms, and so-on. On the ground was a large metal device used to break down a door which was unnecessary.”

Also executed in Florida, additional FBI agents even arrived by boat despite how Stone always complied peacefully and would have driven himself to any courthouse. He was ultimately pardoned for the politically motivated accusations against him.

Agents of the Deep State “essentially went through every square inch of my house, literally every square inch. They removed all of my electronics, my computer, my laptop, my iPad, a lot of computer disks, none of which” had any relevant evidence, Stone explained.

Using similar shock-and-awe, the army of FBI agents who ransacked Trump’s home and office without proper supervision may have viewed, copied, photographed, or taken more than the search warrant authorized. The Constitution limits searches to the particular items listed or area of a home set forth in a search warrant, but abusively going beyond the warrant is unfortunately common practice.

Politically motivated prosecutions will be on the ballot next Tuesday when Wyoming Republicans vote against Cheney, and again in November when all Americans can vote against incumbent Democrats at every level of our government.

Republicans running for the U.S. House and Senate must commit to stopping these abuses as soon as they retake the Congress next year. At a minimum, they should subpoena all DoJ records, emails, and personal cell phone data relating to the possible prosecution of Trump, so the public can see what is really going on behind closed doors in the politicized Department of Injustice under Biden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland.

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.

Latest Biden Fail: Monkeypox

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

As Americans try to put Covid behind us, another frightening virus has invaded our country: monkeypox, which causes hideous disfigurement one might see in a science fiction horror movie. Monkeypox originated in Africa and was kept out of our country by President Trump, but Biden has allowed it to spread to 47 of our 50 states.

The Democrat Governors of California, Illinois, and New York have declared a state of emergency, as New York City did last Saturday and San Francisco did Thursday before that. San Francisco’s mayor absurdly declared that the virus “impacts everyone equally” although nearly all cases have occurred in men who recently had sex with other men.

The Biden administration has failed to develop testing and quarantine protocols for this dreadful new virus, as his Cabinet tiptoes around political correctness about it. A week ago this administration presented Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, who is married to another man and is Democrats’ frontrunner for president based on the latest New Hampshire poll, to explain Biden’s monkeypox policy to CNN.

Pete Buttigieg claimed then that the Biden administration was “working aggressively” against this virus, when asked by CNN’s Jake Tapper whether it was “doing enough to stop the spread of monkeypox.” Liberal CNN omitted questions about blocking monkeypox at our southern border, after cases were discovered on the Mexico side in early June.

“Are there any measures that you think airlines and trains and buses need to take to stop further spread,” the Secretary of Transportation was asked by CNN. “Such as implementing enhanced screening for symptoms at airports and train stations?”

Yet Buttigieg had no answer to that obvious question, and moved on to repeat his canned talking points. The former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, has no real qualifications to become president but the intense push by wealthy Democrats for an LGBTQ married man to lead the White House makes Buttigieg their presumptive nominee after Biden.

Buttigieg is on record as opposing religious exemptions from vaccination, so if Biden has his way then millions of federal and healthcare workers, plus the military, may soon be subjected to a mandatory monkeypox vaccine. Meanwhile, the Biden administration shockingly allowed the 20 million doses of this vaccine to expire.

“This outbreak must be met with urgency, action, and resources, both nationally and globally,” the New York City mayor Eric Adams declared. He viewed Covid with such senseless seriousness that unvaccinated Brooklyn basketball star Kyrie Irving was banned from playing and he cheered his team from the stands in close proximity to other fans.

In the early days of the Covid pandemic, ordinary Americans were harshly fined and even imprisoned for keeping their small businesses open to eke out a living for themselves. Yet nothing of this sort is even suggested for dealing with monkeypox and festivals or parades spreading it.

“People are so worried about being politically correct that they are unable to function,” Trump once observed. The costly inaction by the Biden Administration on monkeypox seems to be due to its fear of crossing the LGBTQ community in any way.

Public health officials are focusing more on trying to change the name of “monkeypox” rather than limiting it. While the virus was spreading rapidly in New York City last week, its public health commissioner Ashwin Vasan sent a letter to the World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus urging him to rename monkeypox because of “potentially devastating and stigmatizing effects.”

The WHO names diseases, not viruses. The International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) has that responsibility, and it properly rebuffed this politically driven demand by Democrats to change the name of this virus, which should not have a candy-coated name.

That Committee informed NPR that the term “monkey” will probably remain part of any new name given to the virus, which may not be modified for a year or two anyway. Its data secretary informed NPR “the consensus is that use of the name ‘monkey’ is sufficiently separated from any pejorative context such that there is no reason for any change.”

Democrats know that letting the “monkeypox” virus into our country is not good for Biden’s approval rating and their chances in the upcoming midterm elections, but they should be held politically accountable for failing to keep this virus out of our country. When President Obama let the Ebola virus into the United States shortly before the midterm elections in 2014, Republicans gained 9 seats and a commanding control of the U.S. Senate.

“The window for getting control of this and containing it probably has closed,” former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb recently told CBS. That means monkeypox could sink Democrats further in the upcoming midterm elections, as yet another failure by the Biden administration to secure the American borders against foreign harm.

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.

Legislative Pardons Should Correct Unfair DC Trials

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Only 5% of Washington, D.C. voters cast their ballots for Donald Trump in 2020, reflecting how thoroughly anti-Trump the jury pool is there. It appears impossible for anyone perceived to be a Trump supporter to receive a fair jury trial in D.C.

There is a 100% conviction rate by D.C. jurors of anyone associated with Trump, while there has been a 100% acquittal rate for prominent Democrats. The jury selection process in the trial of Steve Bannon included startling revelations of how much animosity people in government-funded D.C. have for Trump and his supporters. 

In his second term as president Donald Trump would finally dismantle the Deep State, and details are already circulating of his credible plan to replace tens of thousands of federal workers to make this happen. Some jurors may fear a loss of their government job if Trump returns to power, or sooner retaliation by liberals who might post home addresses of jurors who dared to vote in favor of Trump or his supporters.

It is often said that a prosecutor can lead a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich, and a D.C. jury might even convict that ham sandwich if it were associated with Trump. It may be impossible to find 12 people in D.C. who would not face some kind of retaliation if they were to side with a Trump-supporting defendant in a trial.

Retirees and housewives are typically the most independent-minded jurors, but there are few of them in D.C. Nearly every family in that city is dependent on government in some way for income, which is why Trump received only 5% of their votes in the last election.

Trump could not obtain a fair trial on anything in D.C., and Democrats are salivating at the possibility of charging him before a jury there. It would be like a presidential debate before moderators and an audience that were handpicked to be stacked 95% against Trump.

Democrats plan to checkmate Trump by getting him before a D.C. jury on unprecedented charges. Trump-hater Liz Cheney (R-WY) has been doing everything she can to push criminal charges against Trump, while time is running out for her with less than 3 weeks left before her primary in Wyoming.

Fortunately, the Constitution does not permit unfair checkmates. When one or two political branches abuse their power, as we watch the Democrat-controlled House improperly collaborating with the Justice Department, then frequent elections in the House and its ability to check-and-balance other branches should block the overreach.

Republicans are predicted to retake control of the House of Representatives in January. Republicans should announce now that they will reverse all injustices inflicted by the Pelosi-picked committee that pursued its jihad against Trump.

The Republican House should rescind all of the Democrats’ votes for contempt, and also vote that the subpoena on which Bannon was prosecuted was invalid when issued. This should require reversal of his conviction, and dismissal of the similar charges against Peter Navarro.

The House should then pass resolutions of pardon for every target of the Democrat-controlled Select Committee on January 6th, including Bannon and others who exercised their constitutional rights as supporters of Trump. A pardon of Trump is not needed at this time but by pardoning Bannon and others the House would signal a willingness to protect Trump against any politically motivated prosecution.

Our Founders intended for the House of Representatives to be the preeminent governmental body in our country, to wield powers far in excess of all other branches of government. No one can become a member of the House without being directly elected by the people, and members must stand for reelection every two years.

Revenue-raising bills can originate only in the House, in further reflection of the Founders’ intent to give it the greatest authority. The Constitution also authorizes the House to act alone when it impeaches a president, which is something Democrats exploited twice against President Trump.

Whether the House may act alone, or with the Senate, in issuing a legislative pardon has never been decided by a court of law. In 1974, the Justice Department’s highly respected Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) recognized the lack of any federal precedents on this issue, and gave an opinion supporting a legislative pardon power by Congress concerning the president but not generally of others.

The OLC’s view was that a president cannot judge and pardon himself because of the inherent conflict of interest, and by the same logic a president has a conflict of interest concerning declining a pardon to his political opponent. It falls upon the upcoming Republican House to exercise its legislative pardon power for Trump supporters, thereby ending the political prosecution strategy pursued by Democrats.

Tyranny-by-prosecution happens in dictatorships. House Republicans should now announce their plan to protect Trump and his supporters against this injustice.

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 Overcomes Boycott by Trump-Haters

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Pandering to the liberal media, the Professional Golfers’ Association last year canceled its big annual tournament that it had scheduled at a Trump golf course. This began the PGA-led boycott of Trump's top-ranked golf courses, to the delight of Trump-haters.

Golf courses are how Donald Trump earns a living. By boycotting his golf courses, the Left cuts off Trump’s income and his financial means of funding his legal defense and political work.

But now Trump overcomes their boycott. Next week his same PGA-rejected golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey, will host an LIV tournament, and many of the top players have switched from the anti-Trump PGA to the pro-Trump LIV side.

Greg Norman, a supporter of Trump, is the CEO of LIV (pronounced as in “live free”). He will also hold another tournament this year at Trump's golf course in Miami, where tickets have already sold out.

Norman has assembled a group of Trump-friendly golfers who want to Make Golf Great Again. The anti-Trump media are treating the golfers with questions as hostile as those they ask Trump.

Hanging in the balance is whether the vicious liberal boycott of Trump’s properties – akin to a military blockade – will hold against Greg Norman’s valiant effort to breach it. The golfing world has suddenly become a proxy war over Trump’s political future.

The liberal media ambush golfers who have switched to LIV with odd questions about playing on Trump’s golf courses, which was never controversial before. “Lefty” Phil Mickelson, one of the greatest ever and the biggest name to join LIV, was impertinently asked last month, “How do you feel about playing on Trump courses?”

Implicit in that question is that someone should have qualms about playing on a golf course owned by Trump. Mickelson responded, “I care more about the quality of the test of golf, the quality of the golf course, the fan experience and their ability to see and view the golf, and the challenge of what the venue provides for the players.”

Liberals do not quit, and when reporters came after Mickelson with hostility again last week at the British Open, he became blunter in his response. “Let it go, dude. … I couldn’t be happier.”

Sergio Garcia, the Spanish golfer having many fans worldwide, played at a Trump charity golfing event nearly a decade ago after other celebrities began shunning Trump. Garcia switched to LIV, and on Monday he announced that he was leaving the hostile European circuit altogether.

The Scotland Open banned players who switched to the LIV-Trump side, but then a court issued an injunction allowing them to play. The prestigious Masters tournament in Augusta, Georgia, has not yet banned any of the LIV players from its event next spring.

An outspoken critic of LIV, Rory McIlroy, was leading the British Open this past weekend to the delight of anti-Trumpers. Now called the Open Championship, this major tourney was played at the historic St. Andrews course in Scotland, where the game was invented 250 years ago.

But with a record-setting flourish of birdies on the final 9 holes, a 28-year-old Aussie named Cameron Smith won a stunning upset on Sunday. The liberal media were shocked when Smith implied that he, too, might be interested in joining LIV, and thereby playing in its Trump-course tournaments.

Trump-haters were also apoplectic when the black NBA great Charles Barkley, an outspoken supporter of Democrats, emphatically responded to a question about his interest in becoming a television commentator for LIV. “So, to answer your question, yes, I’m gonna 100 percent meet with LIV.”

Liberals made the United States dependent on Saudi oil, yet suddenly opponents of Trump have a problem with golfers being paid by it. Because LIV is funded by Saudi Arabian investments, liberals pretend that Trump is turning his back on victims of Saudi Arabia, including a murdered journalist and those who died in 9/11.

But if critics of Trump consistently object to Saudi Arabia, then they should have complained louder against the pilgrimages by Obama and Biden to the Saudi king, and protest buying Saudi oil. The public wants tournaments at Trump golf courses, and Trump spoke more against Saudi misconduct than any other president.

Greg Norman is doing for professional golf what needs to be done to the NFL and other professional sports whose executives are more liberal than their fans. Norman, who succeeded as a golfer with 331 weeks as the world's #1 player, is taking the game back from the liberal tyrants and restoring it to the fans and players.

Players should be able to compete in an LIV tournament at a Trump golf course without fear of retaliation by the liberal-controlled PGA, who Trump observed on Monday is the real “disloyal” group. Last one out of the anti-Trump PGA should turn out its lights.

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.

How Biden Stole the Election

Ann Coulter tells how prominent Democrats have a history of not accepting election results, and writes:

The real cheating in the 2020 election — and every other election in recent memory — wasn’t that Iran, China or Chavez were manipulating our voting machines. It wasn’t the ballot harvesting allegedly exposed in Dinesh D’Souza’s movie, “2,000 Mules.” It was what liberals were doing right in front of our faces.

Democrats have what are known as “unmotivated voters.” As such, they need battalions of “Get Out the Vote” activists to track down the bored and the lazy. (Yes, the same marginalized people whom liberals claim are having their lifelong dreams of voting dashed by GOP “voter suppression” schemes can’t be bothered to get out of bed on Election Day.)

Over the years, Democrats have lured their voters to the polls with a free ride, a box lunch and walking-around money — even a gurney, if that’s what it takes. Volunteers give the voters detailed, childlike instructions on exactly how to fill out their ballots. Luckily, unionized government workers have plenty of time on their hands to “organize” voters.

Without these sorts of military-style operations, the day after the election, Democrats will find out half their voters overslept and forgot to vote.

Consequently, COVID was like manna from heaven for the left. It provided the perfect excuse to demand even more time for volunteers to round up the uninterested. No-excuse absentee ballots, mail-in ballots, drop boxes, months of early voting — all of it: Advantage Democrats.

Until Republicans stop being pushovers and shut down all mail-in balloting, all early voting, all drop boxes, and pass a federal law requiring ONE DAY, a NATIONAL HOLIDAY, to vote (which is fully within Congress’ constitutional authority), Democrats have a gigantic, unfair advantage. That’s not cheating. It’s being smarter than Mitch McConnell.

Time’s Running Out for Democrats

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Joe Biden’s approval has continued to fall, despite the Democrats’ efforts to prop him up. In the latest New York Times/Siena poll, Biden’s approval rating is down to only 33%, which is far too low for Democrats to retain control of Congress or the White House.

Early voting for the midterm elections begins in less than 3 months, with the vacation month of August in between. Time has nearly run out for Democrats to save their sinking ship.

With both Houses under Democrat control, public confidence in Congress has fallen to only 7%, as measured by Gallup. Confidence in the mostly liberal television news networks has fallen to only 11%.

Democrats had been counting on televised congressional hearings about the pro-Trump rally at the Capitol on January 6, 2021 to be the game-changer they need to retain power, but their strategy hasn’t worked. According to a new Harvard/Harris poll, 53% consider the hearings biased, 63% feel Congress should be working on more important matters, and 67% say the hearings are dividing our country.

The fizzling of implausible testimony against Trump has boomeranged against the J6 Committee. The nonpartisan Secret Service disavowed the accusations by the surprise witness Cassidy Hutchinson, whose bizarre hearsay testimony would not be allowed in a real court.

The much-ballyhooed testimony by former White House counsel Pat Cipollone was another nothing-burger. He testified that he thought Trump should have conceded the election, but Cipollone is no expert on election procedure and his uninformed opinion is irrelevant.

In December 2020, Trump supporter Patrick Byrne lambasted Cipollone, calling him a “leaker.” “Trump is lied to by his own advisers,” Byrne said then about Cipollone and others, after a meeting with them and Trump.

Flailing away, Democrats have since turned to a harmless Tweet sent out by Trump a half-month before January 6. After wasting many millions of taxpayer dollars and a year-and-a-half on this witch-hunt, anti-Trumpers resort to what was public on Trump’s own Twitter account all along.

Trump merely invited supporters to attend his own rally on January 6, which is not a crime. The harsh punishment of Trump supporters who participated in that peaceful assembly does not help Democrats.

New signs emerge that Democrats are turning against their own president. A startlingly negative assessment of Biden in Saturday’s New York Times, followed by a column there on Monday saying that he is too old to run again, suggest that Biden may become a scapegoat for liberals.

In fact, Biden is several years younger than Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, and Pelosi is younger than her own heir apparent, Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD). Election fraud, not Biden’s age, may be why people overwhelmingly reject him now.

Biden was placed in the White House through rampant ballot harvesting and the use of unattended ballot drop boxes, which were just declared illegal by the Wisconsin Supreme Court. These ballot dumps, often in the middle of the night, were done by hired Democrat ballot harvesters in battleground states.

Attorney General Bill Barr refused to investigate or challenge these and other unlawful election procedures, but instead quit and thereby left his office vacant at a crucial time. During his recent book tour, Barr had the gall to blame Trump for not spending $20-30 million of his own money to do the job that Barr should have done at the Department of Justice.

As a result of his unjustified carping against Trump, Barr was subpoenaed by Dominion in its lawsuit against Fox News. Barr will be required to answer under oath whether he had personal knowledge about voting procedures exploited by Democrats in 2020, and he can explain under oath how he did nothing to investigate anomalous results.

Election integrity is an issue that too many Republican officials have run away from for far too long. Last week’s ruling by the Wisconsin Supreme Court vindicates Trump’s position that the 2020 election was conducted improperly.

The collapse in Biden’s ratings is not due to low unemployment or any desire for gun control, which Biden signed into law amid much fanfare a few weeks ago. His low approval rating may not even be due to his age.

Instead, Biden’s problem may be that many of the votes supposedly “cast” for him in 2020 were the result of paid ballot harvesters dumping ballots into illegal absentee drop boxes. Those ballots could have been filled in for “voters” who never felt any allegiance to Biden.

If more than 80 million Americans earnestly voted for Biden less than two years ago, then Biden would have more support today. If millions of ballots were filled in by paid ballot harvesters, Biden's low approval today is partly the result of too few people wanting him in the first place.

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.

How Biden Stole the Election in WIsconsin

Slate complains:

On Friday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s Republican majority outlawed ballot drop boxes by a 4–3 vote, abolishing a reform that had made voting easier and more accessible in the state. The lead opinion—authored by the notorious fringe-right reactionary Justice Rebecca Grassl Bradley — contains alarming language casting doubt on the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s 2020 victory. It also grants credence to the GOP’s collapsing “investigation” to prove that illegal votes put Biden over the top in Wisconsin. Without a shred of evidence, the court has thrown its weight behind a dangerous conspiracy theory that helped to fuel the Jan. 6 insurrection. ...

In her opinion for the court in Teigen, Justice Grassl Bradley declared that every single drop box was illegal, and every citizen who used this method cast a ballot illegally.

The court determined that Wisconsin law required voters to deliver their votes in person to the clerk. The votes cannot be collected by bundlers, or put in drop boxes.

The law is a good law, because the bundlers and drop boxes are not authenticated.

In other words, Biden stole the election in Winsocsin, and the Democrats were about to steal another. Pennsylvania and other states also used illegal vote collection methods.

Okay, you may say, didn't the J6 committee find that AG Bill Barr advised Trump that he had insufficient proof of fraud to reverse the official vote counts?\

Yes, he said that, but the WSJ just reported his explanation:

Former Attorney General Bill Barr told a podcast recently that Mr. Trump was duly warned to get solid lawyers working to defend business-as-usual voting processes. “One of his aides went in and said, look, you need to set up a fund of $20-30 million in escrow, because lawyers don’t trust you to pay their bills, and you need to get a top-flight firm in here,” Mr. Barr said. “He ignored that advice. He did not have a legal team prepared to go and fight around the country. So a lot of these, bending of the playing field, were his own fault.”

Got that? Barr was in charge of the US DoJ, and knew that the states were violating election law. But instead of using the DoJ to enforce election law, he told Trump to use his campaign money on a team of lawyers to privately enforce election law!

In retrospect, Trump should have filed a bunch of lawsuits before the election to enforce election law. He probably thought that it was unnecessary, and Wisconsin and Pennsylvania would surely obey their own election law, and Republicans in those states were better positioned to see to it.

Back to Slate:

Electoral outcomes obtained by unlawful procedures corrupt the institution of voting” and “pollutes the integrity of the results.” Bradley complained that “hundreds of ballot drop boxes have been set up in past elections” and “thousands of votes have been cast via this unlawful method.” The alleged “illegality of these drop boxes weakens the people’s faith” in the election and calls “the results in question.”

She then went further: “If elections are conducted outside of the law,” she asserted, “the people have not conferred their consent on the government. Such elections are unlawful and their results are illegitimate.” The implication here could not be more obvious: The 2020 election was “unlawful,” so the results—and, specifically, Biden’s victory—are “illegitimate.”

Then Bradley drew a comparison between Wisconsin’s 2020 election and undemocratic, rigged contests in authoritarian nations. “Throughout history, tyrants have claimed electoral victory via elections conducted in violation of governing law,” she wrote, continuing:

For example, Saddam Hussein was reportedly elected in 2002 by a unanimous vote of all eligible voters in Iraq (11,445,638 people). Examples of such corruption are replete in history. In the 21st century, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un was elected in 2014 with 100% of the vote while his father, Kim Jong-il, previously won 99.9% of the vote. Former President of Cuba, Raul Castro, won 99.4% of the vote in 2008 while Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was elected with 97.6% of the vote in 2007. Even if citizens of such nations are allowed to check a box on a ballot, they possess only a hollow right. Their rulers derive their power from force and fraud, not the people’s consent.

This is correct. Even if you favor bundlers and drop boxes as legitimate ways to get more voters, they were not clearly auth orized by law, and they are not accepted by the public as being free and fair.

Liberal World Order: “As Long as it Takes”?

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

“This is about the future of the liberal world order and we have to stand firm,” declared Biden Administration official Brian Deese. “Liberal world order” is apparently what globalists meant all along when they spoke of a “new world order” and a “new normal.”

Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, uses the “Great Reset” to refer to the globalist vision for the future. The elite met there again in May to reassert their control over politics worldwide.

Expanding bloated NATO remains atop their agenda, by adding Sweden and Finland to its membership. This begins a process by which the United States promises to send troops to those countries if they are ever attacked, further entangling our country in the intractable conflicts of Europe.

Also called the "liberal international order," globalists insist on a system in which all the important decisions are made by phony experts who set norms of conduct without input or rejection by citizens of individual nation-states. The views of American voters are irrelevant under this scheme, as voters are then told we are bound by treaties and must participate in foreign wars.

“For as long as it takes” was the talking point chanted by Joe Biden to the press who followed him all the way to Madrid, Spain, to cover the NATO Summit to ask Biden questions he’s been avoiding. Ignoring Peter Doocy of Fox News, Biden referred to his cheat sheet and revealed that “I’m supposed to go down the list here.”

The first name on Biden’s list was an Associated Press reporter, who asked Biden about the recent pledge by the democratic G7 leaders to support Ukraine “for as long as it takes.” The AP reporter asked, “I’m wondering if you would explain what that means to the American people, ‘for as long as it takes’?”

“We are going to support Ukraine as long as it takes,” Biden responded, without directly answering the question. “We are going to stick with Ukraine as long as it takes to make sure that they are not defeated by Russia.”

Next on Biden’s list was a reporter from the Democrat-friendly New York Times, who asked Biden how his plan to cap Russian exports would affect the high price of gasoline in the United States. “Are you confident that that cap would bring down prices for American drivers?”

“How long is it fair to expect American drivers to pay a premium because of this war?” Biden apparently did not understand this simple question, so the reporter had to repeat it. “The war has pushed prices up,” the Times reporter continued, although gas prices were already rising before the war began. “How long is it fair to expect American drivers to pay that premium for this war?”

“As long as it takes,” Biden chanted again like a trained parrot, “so Russia cannot defeat Ukraine. This is a critical position for the world. Why do we have NATO?” Let’s hope no one asks Putin or Biden why he has nuclear missiles.

With that circular reasoning based on the mere existence of the unproductive NATO expanded more than it should be, Biden declared “I’m outta here.” He then ignored a roomful of reporters including Fox's Doocy who shouted questions as he left the stage.

NATO’s original purpose was to protect Western Europe from invasion by the Soviet Union, but that Communist nation disintegrated 30 years ago. Originally consisting of 12 countries, NATO membership increases to an unmanageable 32 with the addition of Sweden and Finland, and their admission doubles the length of the tense land border between NATO and Russia from 754 miles to 1,584 miles.

Biden will not defend our southern border, so he should not be committing Americans to defend a long border with Russia that is being doubled in length. “There’s going to be a new world order out there,” Biden told CEOs at the Business Roundtable on March 21, “and we’ve got to lead it,” though he never explained why.

Standing firm for the “liberal world order” is the defense asserted by the Biden Administration to $5 per gallon in gas. That was its response to a good question posed by CNN, “What do you say to those families who say, ‘Listen, we can’t afford to pay $4.85 a gallon for months, if not years. This is just not sustainable’?”

Conservative Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), fresh from her landslide primary victory against an all-out attempt by liberals to unseat her, criticized Democrats for imposing higher gas prices to prop up a liberal world order. “The White House openly stated that you’re just going to have to pay more in gas so that they can hold the ‘liberal world order,’” Boebert tweeted.

The cat is out of the bag: higher gas prices are due to Democrats’ insistence on a liberal world order. No thanks to that.

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.

Not a Muscular States-Rights Federalism

The NY Times reports:

The tearing at the seams has been accelerated by the six-vote conservative majority in the Supreme Court, which has embraced a muscular states-rights federalism. In the past 10 days the court has erased the constitutional right to an abortion, narrowed the federal government’s ability to regulate climate-warming pollution and blocked liberal states and cities from barring most of their citizens from carrying concealed guns outside of their homes.

None of these decisions have anything to do with states-rights, or a muscular states-rights federalism.

Wikipedia says:

Since the 1940s, the term "states' rights" has often been considered a loaded term or dog whistle

It explains that it is a code word used by racist Democrats.

Roe Reversal Is the Decision of the Century

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

“I never like to take credit for anything,” Donald Trump told a hostile reporter last month. “God made the decision,” he added recently about the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade. Let’s give credit where it is due: Trump went 3-for-3 on his Supreme Court nominees on the pro-life issue, and Republican Never-Trumpers were wrong to oppose him. In less than six years Trump achieved the overturning of Roe that stymied Republicans for a half-century, a feat no other Republican president attained.

All three of Trump’s High Court nominees were needed for this 5-4 margin of victory in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, to reverse Roe entirely. Justices Alito and Thomas deserve special gratitude for courageously leading their 3 new colleagues against the scourge of Roe that has long been the raison d'etre and sacred cow of the Left.

Many others, too numerous to list, deserve thanks for this spectacular triumph. Included in that list should be all who supported Trump in 2016 and all who support him now against retaliation by the Left.

Without Roe, liberals have no authority anymore for their campaigns that promote abortion. Without Roe, Democrat politicians no longer have a basis for continuing to loot taxpayers to fund abortion, which many Americans oppose.

Democrat politicians threaten political consequences over this decision, but none is likely now as may have occurred 30 years ago. Today Democrat politicians are heavily dependent on demographic groups that do not support abortion, and will not be more likely to vote for a candidate who advocates for it.

The media portrays a new War Among the States over this issue, but if so then it is a war that the pro-abortion states will lose by their declining population. Already red states gained many new congressional seats and electoral college votes in the latest census due to migration, and with pro-life laws going into effect their population growth will continue to outpace the blue states.

As the majority on the Court pointed out in its splendid decision, states were long allowed to prohibit abortion for most of our country’s history, including when the 14th Amendment was adopted. Most states did outlaw abortion, and the recent Court decision allows a return to pro-life laws that existed before Roe.

The Constitution contains nothing that supports abortion, the Court properly held. The Roe v. Wade decision was severely flawed in numerous ways that the Court picked apart.

Without a solid historical basis for legal abortion in the United States dating back at least to the 1800s, there were never any valid grounds for finding a constitutional right to it. At the time of Roe v. Wade, the national consensus was against abortion rather than in favor of it, so that could not justify creating a new constitutional right to it either.

Several states are already benefiting from a boost in carrying pregnancies to term and childbirth by prohibiting abortion. While the abortion industry has started filing lawsuits in state courts to block pro-life laws, states such as Alabama have constitutional provisions prohibiting any creation of a right to abortion.

“Trigger laws” in nearly a dozen states automatically restore bans on abortion in anticipation of the Supreme Court overruling Roe v. Wade. There is a slight delay in some of those states to await official certification of the Supreme Court ruling before unborn children are saved by this automatic ban.

This reversal of Roe creates an historic opportunity for conservatives to attract more young voters, who are increasingly pro-life. This is perhaps the only issue where young people are more conservative than their parents, and fan favorites such as Justin Bieber and Tim Tebow are outspokenly pro-life.

The only real argument by supporters of Roe v. Wade is to abide by how the Court had previously ruled, a doctrine known as “stare decisis,” but the conservative justices shredded that as inapplicable to a decision as unjustified as Roe was. Moreover, Phyllis Schlafly kept the Equal Rights Amendment out of the Constitution, so that could not help abortion although liberals filed last-ditch arguments to invoke the never-ratified amendment.

The Court correctly shut the door on the argument that abortion must be allowed in order for women to enjoy the equal protection of the laws. If a new Equal Rights Amendment attempts to create a right to abortion, then under this ruling it would have to do so explicitly, which would never pass.

The three Justices appointed by Trump referred to the “unborn” child more than a dozen times, while the Justices appointed by Clinton and Obama did not use that term even once in their long-winded dissent. The future belongs to the unborn, as the Court majority recognized and held in reversing Roe, and America will benefit from contributions by those not aborted.

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.

End Vaccine Mandates for Summer Travel

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Last Friday was the busiest travel day of the year so far, but hundreds of thousands of airline passengers were stranded by flight cancellations. Including last Thursday, more than 35,000 flights in the United States were canceled or delayed over the holiday weekend.

Nearly a third of all flights last Thursday and Friday were late in arriving. At least those travelers ultimately reached their destination, except where delays caused passengers to miss a connecting flight and then be stuck overnight in an unfamiliar city.

Hundreds of passengers were grounded at the Atlanta airport for more than 24 hours. One mother with an 11-month-old daughter was stranded without infant formula, which had gone with their checked bag to Omaha.

The delays and cancellations continued into Monday, when more than 3,000 flights bound for or departing in the U.S. were delayed, while another 370 flights were canceled by 5 p.m. ET. Thanks to public tracking by the website FlightAware, the government cannot hide this travesty.

Media stories fail to report on the underlying reason. The primary cause is not weather or similar routine disruptions, but ripple effects caused by vaccine mandates demanded by the Biden Administration and the Democrat-controlled Congress.

Like many Americans, pilots, flight attendants, and air traffic controllers are saying “no” to vaccine mandates by not showing up for work, leaving travelers deserted at airports. Neither Biden nor any Democrat has been willing to admit, four months from perhaps the biggest election of our lifetime, that their vaccine mandates were a mistake.

“A variety of factors continue to impact our operations, including challenges with air traffic control, weather, and unscheduled absences in some work groups,” was the official explanation by Delta, which canceled the most flights this past weekend. Other airlines have had numerous cancellations at other times this year.

“Unscheduled absences in some work groups” is a euphemism for disruptions caused by vaccine mandates. Public opposition to Biden’s vaccine mandates is hurting his approval rating and harming Democrats’ chances of holding onto control of Congress in the upcoming midterm elections.

Last year the pilots’ unions warned that vaccine mandates against them would result in travel chaos for many Americans, and it has. Yet airline executives failed to stand up against the Biden Administration’s demand for universal vaccination, perhaps because the executives are heavily dependent on direct subsidies from the federal government totaling more than $50 billion last year for pandemic relief.

With their credibility at stake, the public health authorities continue to insist on mandatory vaccination for the military, for federal workers, for some schoolchildren, and for pilots and other airline employees. These mandates persist despite how the fully vaccinated, boosted, and masked-up Dr. Anthony Fauci recently caught Covid anyway.

Past and future presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg threatened even more tyranny from his position as the Secretary of Transportation, which oversees the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). He says he can order the airlines to hire more workers, as if he knew how to find and train the highly skilled and dedicated people who safely operate America’s air travel network.

Buttigieg himself saw his flight from Washington, D.C., to New York City canceled this past weekend, and he drove the mere 225 miles instead. That option is not available to most travelers who are unexpectedly stranded by a canceled flight, and the astronomical cost of gasoline discourages driving anyway.

The airline travel chaos “is happening to a lot of people, and that is exactly why we are paying close attention here to what can be done and how to make sure that the airlines are delivering,” Buttigieg pompously declared. But he fails to get at the root of the problem, and instead treats this as an opportunity to expand government control of an industry that was working just fine when President Trump left office.

More regulation to try to solve a problem caused by overregulation makes no sense, and would lead to more subsidies by taxpayers of big corporations. Having the federal government dictate how many employees private airlines should have would be a wrong turn on the runway.

Meanwhile the Biden Administration pushes harder to impose Covid vaccination on everyone. On Friday FDA vaccine advisers voted 21-0 for children younger than 5 years to receive the Covid vaccine.

This affects infants as young as six months, with unknown long-term consequences. In April, a poll showed that only 18% of parents wanted to have the Covid vaccine given to their infant children.

A vaccine cannot be licensed unless its safety and effectiveness is proven by six months of data, but only two months are required under an emergency use authorization. As with adults and teenagers, the FDA exploits this same loophole to urge Covid vaccination of infants, despite how there is no genuine emergency for young children to receive this controversial vaccine.

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 says Election was Stolen

Donald Trump has released a statement, opposing the J^ House show:

Stop the Count

On Election Night, America watched as my lead grew and grew over Joe Biden, as I was set to claim another victory. By the morning of November 4th, the day after the Election, I led by 700,000 votes in Pennsylvania,1 300,000 in Michigan,2 and hundreds of thousands in Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin.3 Then, the same “little dictators” who destroyed the separation of powers made the treasonous decision to stop counting.4 These same states, who had counted millions of ballots in a single day, had to stop counting in order to count a few hundred thousand ballots over the next four days to call the race on November 7th.

Why would it take four more days to count a few hundred thousand votes when they had counted millions in one day? They needed time to traffic the ballots and manipulate the outcome of the Election. The Swamp was so determined to keep their stranglehold on power that they delayed the results of the Election so that they could find, manufacture, or produce more ballots, after they knew how many they needed to beat me. They cheated! There’s no reasonable explanation for why it took so much longer to count the few remaining ballots as opposed to the millions on Election Day – other than they needed to traffic more ballots, and it took four days to produce the ballots and do it. They couldn’t have done it without an elaborate ballot trafficking scheme.

If the J6 congressmen were honest, they would address what Trump says.

All of the voting and counting should be done on election day. There is no good explanation for doing it any other way, and no way to trust the outcome if it takes many days.

Pork and Injustice in Senate Gun Control Bill

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

With fanfare, a gun control compromise was announced by the U.S. Senate on Sunday and its supporters seek passage by the end of next week. But instead of addressing the recent mass shootings, this legislation wastes billions of dollars in handouts to liberal groups while advancing feminist ideology.

The mass shootings had nothing to do with alleged domestic violence. Yet a central part of this gun control bill is to broaden a lifetime deprivation of Second Amendment rights of men subjected to accusations by women.

Teenage boys are the worst perpetrators of the mass shootings, who typically lack any relationships with girls. Yet the Senate gun control bill jeopardizes rights and reduces job opportunities for men who have been accused by women of unwanted touching, as Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh was.

Ten Republican Senators, four of whom are retiring now at relatively young ages, support this gun control bill. None of the other six are up for reelection this year, and half of them include perennial anti-Trumpers Mitt Romney (R-UT), Susan Collins (R-ME), and Bill Cassidy (R-LA).

The 60-vote filibuster threshold in the Senate will block passage unless all ten Republicans cross over to the Democrat side on this. After wasting $54 billion on Leftist politicians in Ukraine, allocating billions more to Leftist groups in our country may not seem like much.

But a billion dollars to push enactment of gun control at the state level, such as euphemistically named “red flag” laws that can be misused, could improperly go toward tipping the scales in close elections. The billions of dollars in new funding for mental health clinics would not have prevented the recent shootings by defiant teenagers.

If mental health experts cannot distinguish between men and women, how could they reliably identify potential killers? In some cases mental health clinics can be a means to take children away from good parents, or install mental health testing in public schools to detect and deflect conservative political attitudes.

Couching feminist ideology in gender-biased terminology, the legislation seeks to close the so-called “boyfriend loophole” to cause lifetime deprivations of Second Amendment rights. A spat with a girlfriend, as many popular athletes, politicians, and others have once had, would then be misused to stigmatize and exclude for life these men from ever holding a job that entails carrying a gun.

The Lautenberg Amendment, enacted in 1996, already denies for life the Second Amendment rights of any man ever convicted of a minor misdemeanor domestic violence charge, which is sometimes broadly defined to include even offensive touching of one’s wife. Now Democrats want to expand this to enable any girlfriend to make a false accusation that could result in men being barred for life from jobs in the military, police, or other gun-carrying professions.

Johnny Depp spent millions of dollars and several years of his life to clear his name of false domestic violence accusations. But most men are unwilling or unable to do that, instead accepting a misdemeanor plea bargain; they should not permanently lose their constitutional rights and job opportunities because of it.

Gun control zealots want to expand the draconian Lautenberg Amendment, even though it would not have prevented any of the recent mass shootings by teenage boys. The Senate bill would deprive men for life of Second Amendment rights based on a mere restraining order requested by a girlfriend, which is often issued based on an unproven accusation and without a hearing for the accused.

Many injustices already arise under current law when a man does not realize that a misdemeanor offense from decades ago senselessly makes it unlawful to possess a gun for his own defense today. Rather than be warned about this or moderately fined, he faces mandatory imprisonment for owning a gun for self-defense merely because of an obscure federal law.

Harsh penalties in this draft gun control bill would be enforced by inflexible federal courts, and a bill proposed by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) seeks 5-year mandatory minimum sentences for a gun peacefully carried by someone having a minor outdated offense. Some judges like locking up someone for a long time for the “offense” of harmlessly carrying a gun, based on an outdated misdemeanor triggering a deprivation of his Second Amendment rights.

Older men, husbands, and fathers are not the people who have been committing these horrific shootings. Teenagers addicted to video games are the culprits, yet this supposedly bipartisan legislation is silent about that.

Gun rights were unjustifiably taken away from peaceful participants in the Trump rally on January 6. One who pled guilty to a minor misdemeanor petitioned the judge to restore her gun rights, which the Trump-appointed judge granted but was criticized for it by the media.

Pouring billions of dollars into Leftist groups to advocate for state gun control laws, funding bigger mental health clinics, and imprisoning older men due to an unproven domestic accusation or minor misdemeanor will do nothing to stop mass shootings by teenagers.

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.

J6 Propaganda Show Won’t Stop Trump

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

While Trump-endorsed candidates win stunning primary victories in Ohio and Pennsylvania, Democrats and the liberal media go all out with a propaganda hearing to air Thursday evening at 8pm Eastern. ABC, CBS, NBC, and every other network except Fox gang up with the same futile goal: to try to stop one man, Donald Trump.

Americans have already heard and rejected the anti-Trumpers’ fraudulent spin on last year’s January 6 rally at the U.S. Capitol, and the public has long since moved on. More Americans prefer Trump to Biden now, as we struggle to cope with the “Bidenflation,” another foreign war, and many other problems.

But rather than address real issues facing our country, Democrats and Liz Cheney (R-WY) resort to their theater of the absurd. They will present their tedious, biased version of January 6, while Tucker Carlson will compete with an honest explanation of what happened.

The U.S. Capitol is a public building, and video evidence shows that police officers opened an entrance to welcome the rally-goers inside on January 6. Other video evidence shows uncharged individuals who infiltrated a peaceful crowd and incited confrontations that day, yet government witnesses refuse to explain the active role of government agents and informants.

Liz Cheney is not a Hollywood actress, and should not embarrass herself by trying to be one. No amount of make-up can transform her dog-and-pony show into anything more than an amateurish county fair skit.

Desperate people do desperate things, and no one is more desperate than Cheney now as she faces a rebuke by Wyoming voters in her primary in two months. She is delusional if she thinks Wyoming voters support her never-ending jihad against Trump.

Congress lacks credibility with the American public, and few are fooled by its fake, self-serving investigations. The Pelosi-led House has failed to gain traction with its headline-grabbing subpoenas, contempt citations, and silly disclosures of old text messages.

A reality show about how the Deep State mistreats January 6 activists would have higher television ratings. Video from the “D.C. Gulag,” where patriots who exercised their First Amendment rights at the Capitol remain incarcerated under inhumane conditions without a trial, would attract a larger audience.

The first witnesses at the upcoming prime-time hearing should be the provocateurs who were never arrested or charged. They need to be asked why they incited the crowd, and who paid them to do that. Federal agents spend too much of their time in undercover work that borders on entrapment, eliciting alleged criminal conduct that never would have occurred without their incitement. The recent jury acquittals of men accused of trying to kidnap the Michigan governor was a repudiation of government sting operations.

The next witnesses at the upcoming J6 hearing should be the many innocent people who entered the Capitol to peacefully exercise their First Amendment rights. The public should hear about the toll that the Deep State infringement on their constitutional rights has taken on them and their families.

A real hearing would invite testimony by Trump supporters abused in the DC Gulag, who could be brought into the hearing room in shackles and chains. Then the public would benefit from testimony by their family members about how difficult this ordeal has been for them.

Television ratings might perk up from abysmally low levels if the colorful Shaman were invited to appear in costume. He was callously sentenced to nearly 3.5 years in prison for the “crime” of his entertaining protest against Vice President Mike Pence, who had planned to fly to Israel that same day rather than listen to Trump supporters.

Viewership would perk up by inviting testimony from the guy who declared he “broke the internet” by carrying off Pelosi’s podium. That was genuine entertainment by the stay-at-home dad Adam Johnson, for which he received a 75-day prison sentence, and rewatching those images would attract a larger audience than the communist-style show hearing that Pelosi and Cheney will air.

A television audience might gather if there were candid testimony about the DOJ’s biased practice of prosecuting conservatives more harshly than liberals. The unfair sentencing recommendations by the DOJ of J6 participants was criticized by federal judge Trevor McFadden: “The U.S. Attorney’s Office would have more credibility if it was evenhanded in its concern about riots and mobs in the city.”

Democrats and Liz Cheney are in panic mode now a mere 4 months away from early voting for the midterm elections. If the negative 13-point approval/disapproval rating of Biden persists then it will be a Republican landslide, which Democrats are trying anything to avert.

Fortunately, Americans dislike propaganda shows. Trump’s post-show mockery of the Pelosi-Cheney charade will be more worthwhile and interesting.

Congress was humiliated by the public on January 6. But Congress has not learned, and steps into more embarrassment for itself.

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.