End Ballot Initiatives: We Are Not a Direct Democracy

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

For most of our history, there was no process by which a private interest could initiate and enact a law by popular vote for its own benefit. Even today, this is not allowed for federal laws, and most states likewise ban this yet it was used to flip control of the Michigan legislature in the last election.

Our Founders were adamantly against direct democracy, the system in ancient Greece whereby citizens voted directly on new laws. Instead, our Constitution requires states to have legislatures to enact laws.

“The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government,” declares Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution. Courts have indicated that they are unwilling to enforce this clause, so it is up to Congress and state legislatures to protect it.

Yet some 21 states allow new laws to be enacted without approval by the state legislature, thereby creating a loophole for corporations to spend tens of millions of dollars on elections while otherwise banned from doing so. Colorado and Washington became the first states to legalize recreational marijuana, by short-circuiting their legislatures this way.

Michigan was on the road to economic recovery under its Republican legislature which held a 63-47 House majority after the 2016 election. Then Big Weed put its thumbs on the scale by placing a marijuana initiative on the ballot in 2018, spending millions to enact that Democrat-favored legislation.

The predictable side effect was to knock out more than half of the Republican lead in the legislature, dropping its majority to 58-52 and electing Democrats to statewide offices. In the 2020 election, lacking a similar ballot measure, the balance of power remained unchanged even though Democrat Joe Biden reportedly won that state.

Then in 2022, big money returned to Michigan to push through a ballot initiative for abortion. The distortion of $47 million spent for this abortion initiative enabled Democrats to take control of the Michigan House for the first time in more than a decade while reelecting the Democrat governor, attorney general, and secretary of state.

This is the tail wagging the dog. Originally intended to be an occasional check-and-balance against corporate influence over a legislature, ballot measures have become a loophole allowing monied interests to capture legislative control of a state.

The above-quoted Guarantee Clause in the Constitution requires a legislative process for enacting laws. It should be unconstitutional for a private interest group to place legislation on the ballot for its own benefit, and then pour in corporate money to pass it.

Studies show the side that spends the most on a ballot measure is almost always the winner. In 2018, the bigger-spending side won all ten of the ten most expensive ballot measure contests.

In 2017 Missouri’s Republican legislature joined the majority of states by protecting the freedom of workers not to join a labor union. But Democrats later poured more than $18 million into a ballot measure to repeal that right-to-work law.

Gambling spread throughout our country largely due to the ballot initiative process, as the gambling industry has ample funds to ensure passage of ballot measures that favor them. For more than a decade Missouri had in place a beneficial “loss limit” restriction on how much casinos could take from an addicted gambler in a 2-hour period.

Gambling interests repealed that good law by a ballot measure in 2008, as casino interests spent more than $15 million to boost their wicked industry. Both the Republican and Democrat gubernatorial candidates that year opposed the pro-gambling ballot measure, but it passed anyway as heavily funded by casinos.

Phyllis Schlafly always opposed ballot initiatives as a way to enact legislation. Along with her successful opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment in state legislatures, she also defeated the ERA when it was offered as a ballot measure in seven states.

The Ohio legislature now seeks to raise the threshold for passage of ballot initiatives for its constitutional amendments from a simple majority to 60%, but that may not be high enough or the optimal remedy. In our republican style of government, corporate mega-spending should not be allowed to try to enact new laws by popular vote.

State legislatures should narrow the scope of issues to be placed on a ballot, as many state constitutions already have a single-issue limitation. They could also seek to limit the scope of future ballot initiatives to tax- or government school-related issues.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) is a rising star who should be easily reelected next year unless liberal businesses are allowed to spend millions on the side running against him. The abortion industry may be planning to put its issue on the same ballot, and then dump ungodly sums in an effort to repeat in Missouri the distortion seen in Michigan.

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 Promotion of Transgender Culture

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

With the zeal of a fanatic, the transgender culture is being imposed on Americans while most of the rest of the world opposes this. The latest salvo two weeks ago was the giant brewery, AB InBev, placing a transgender on the beer can for one of its popular brands.

The public backlash was substantial, but the company issued a statement on Friday implying it would stay its pro-transgender course. Another corporate icon, Nike, has already been promoting a transgender culture with its marketing.

These professional-sports dependent companies are symptoms rather than the root of the problem. The biggest promoters of a transgender culture are not the usual suspects, but a few sports league monopolies including the NFL, NCAA, and Major League Baseball, which are government-subsidized and generally protected against antitrust laws that apply to everyone else.

The taxpayer-subsidized NFL began promoting the transgender culture last year by featuring a transgender biological male on its cheerleading team. The Dallas Cowboys are known as “America’s Team” and last year made this strategic change to its famous cheerleaders as another NFL team also did.

The Biden Administration recently promulgated new regulations that nearly require all schools to allow biological males to invade the athletic activities of girls and women. Schools that try to protect the integrity of girls sports may be hit with multi-million-dollar lawsuits under Biden’s anti-girl rewriting of Title IX.

Meanwhile, Major League Baseball browbeat Georgia Republicans into submission in 2021 by moving its All-Star Game from Atlanta to Denver in protest of a watered-down election bill that was ineffective anyway. The Georgia legislature got the message and failed to restore integrity for its elections in 2022, where Democrats again exploited early voting while obtaining a court order to change the law for their benefit.

That was brazen political intimidation by MLB while enjoying a special exemption from federal antitrust laws that limit normal businesses. Yet MLB’s political interference pales with how the NFL is promoting transgenderism while looting American taxpayers for many billions of dollars.

Next February, when more than 100 million Americans behold the half-time performance at the annual Super Bowl, the NFL could advance transgender culture further. New laws in 21 states seek to protect girls’ sports against an unfair invasion by boys, but if Republican legislators fail to stand up then the NFL, NCAA, and other sports monopolies will ram a transgender culture down our throats.

The Republican-controlled U.S. House and state legislatures should immediately act to uproot the cause, by sending subpoenas and holding hearings on sports leagues that promote a transgender culture. Ironically, the dependence of the NBA on China may keep it on the transgender sidelines, as neither China nor most nations side with liberals on this.

Congress should repeal the antitrust exemption for MLB, where teams are owned by billionaires who hardly need any protection from competition. Congress should also take steps to end the practice of television networks locking rival sports leagues out of lucrative television contracts given to the NFL.

Three of the top five golfers at the recent Masters’ tournament are part of the LIV tour, but it is locked out of good television contracts because it held a few events at Trump-owned golf courses. LIV will not be promoting a transgender culture either, while the television-controlled PGA or LPGA Tour might.

The Trump-hating media is in control of the money in professional sports, and from there Leftists are trying to impose a transgender culture on 330 million Americans. Professional sports leagues and the NCAA have grown to a nearly trillion-dollar industry, and impact culture far greater than the Rockefeller oil monopoly of more than a century ago ever did.

Defending our culture and the integrity of girls’ sports requires uprooting the source of the push for a transgender culture. A handful of pro sports monopolies and their exclusivity on billion-dollar television contracts are what Congress and the states need to eradicate.

LIV golf, as reportedly funded by Saudi Arabian billionaires, is not going along with the demand for a transgender culture. Neither is China, Russia, Japan, Africa, and most other countries, no matter what the liberal media wants.

Ironically, Trump himself was locked out by television exclusivity with the NFL when he led an upstart rival football league, the USFL, nearly 40 years ago. Trump’s lawsuit against the NFL in Manhattan ended with a jury verdict partially in his favor but without an award of sufficient damages.

Today the freight train coming down the tracks is pro sports promoting transgenderism, which they are able to do only if Congress and state legislatures continue to look the other way. It is time to overturn the favoritism given to sports league monopolies while they harm our culture.

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.

Court Rejects FDA’s Abortion Scheme

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the abortion industry pushed the FDA to approve the import and sale of the abortion pill dubbed RU-486 by its French manufacturer. The slang term “86” means to eject or throw something or someone away, so the pill’s trade name truthfully conveyed its demonic effect of throwing away a human life.

In the waning months of Bill Clinton’s presidency, the FDA responded to pro-abortion pressure by rushing its approval of this abortion drug, but only by falsely treating pregnancy as an illness, instead of a natural and healthy part of a woman’s life. Studies confirm that carrying a pregnancy to term, especially before age 30, is beneficial to a woman’s long-term health.

The FDA’s improper approval was promptly challenged more than a decade ago. But the FDA “postponed and procrastinated for nearly 6,000 days,” observed a federal court ruling in Texas on Good Friday.

Two days later, Biden’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, Xavier Becerra, lashed out against the judge’s ruling, ominously declaring that “everything is on the table.” That kind of strong rhetoric is what liberals frequently criticize Trump for.

The court’s decision cited studies showing how physically and mentally harmful the abortion pill can be to pregnant women and girls. The pill was approved by the FDA for the benefit of the abortion industry, not to help women.

“Compelling evidence suggests the statistics provided by FDA on the adverse effects of chemical abortion understate the negative impact the chemical abortion regimen has on women and girls,” ruled Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk. He added, “the abortionist that prescribed the drugs is usually not the provider to manage the mother’s complications.”

So chemical abortion is just another type of hit-and-run abortion that enriches the abortion industry, with much of that money plowed back into electing liberal politicians and judges. Tens of millions of dollars from out of state recently poured into Wisconsin to elect a supporter of the abortion industry to its state supreme court, tilting that court to 4-3 Democrat.

In states that permit ballot initiatives, such as Missouri and Ohio, the abortion industry will put initiatives to expand abortion on the ballot, and will spend many millions to pass them. That’s what the abortion industry did in Michigan last year, and as a result both houses of the state legislature flipped to Democrat control.

The author of the Good Friday decision against the abortion pill was appointed by Trump. Biden’s appeal goes to the Fifth Circuit, which boasts more superb Trump-appointed judges, and from there to the Supreme Court, which last year consigned Roe v. Wade to the proverbial ash heap of history.

More than half the abortions in the U.S. today are chemical rather than surgical. To hide the harm caused by this chemical warfare against the unborn, more than 60% of emergency room visits after taking the abortion pill are miscoded as “miscarriages” rather than as adverse effects of abortion.

Democrats view abortion as a politically winning issue for them, but that requires concealing its harmful consequences. Judge Kacsmaryk did a tremendous public service by explaining the adverse effects that Biden and the Democrats conceal.

Some of the harm is emotional, as the abortion pill typically causes the mother to see the living being she just aborted. Such video images have been posted on TikTok, to the dismay of censorship-prone liberals.

“Eighty-three percent of women report that chemical abortion ‘changed’ them – and seventy-seven percent of those women reported a negative change,” wrote Judge Kacsmaryk, citing a scientific study. “Thirty-eight percent of women reported issues with anxiety, depression, drug abuse, and suicidal thoughts because of the chemical abortion,” he continued.

The Biden Administration is not transparent about this harm, and instead pushes a destructive drug on red states that do not want it. Corporate executives whose companies have benefited from other Biden mandates, such as the CEO of Pfizer, jumped in as though on cue to insist on what Democrats demand.

Under our Constitution, legalizing and promoting chemical abortions is something that would require extensive public hearings and a vote in Congress. It should not be enacted in secret by unelected FDA bureaucrats who are lobbied or captured by the pharmaceutical industry they are supposed to regulate.

Federal law “indicates a national policy of discountenancing abortion as inimical to the national life,” held Judge Kacsmaryk while quoting a legal precedent. Indeed, a specific federal statute prohibits use of the U.S. Mail or commercial services from delivering abortion drugs across state lines.

The legality of the FDA’s process for imposing an abortion drug nationwide is for the courts and Congress to properly decide in our Republic. Some complain that this decision undermines the FDA’s authority, but that is just what a good doctor would order.

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.

Indictment Imperils the Rights of All

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

By indicting President Trump, the New York County prosecutor is infringing on the First Amendment rights of all Americans. Every American has a right to an unfettered debate and campaign by candidates, including Trump, for our nation’s highest elective office.

This indictment interferes with the 2024 presidential election by hampering the full participation of a leading candidate, and the right of Americans to benefit from his undivided attention to his campaign. One Democrat district attorney in Manhattan infringes on all these rights by indicting the front-runner Republican candidate, Donald Trump.

“The freedom to speak and the freedom to hear are inseparable; they are two sides of the same coin,” declared Justice Thurgood Marshall in 1972. Democrats are interfering with the right of every American to hear from Donald Trump without distraction by an improper prosecution.

Democrat prosecutors have the right to cast their own ballots in the presidential election, but not more than that. Trump’s ability to hold campaign rallies and meet with supporters is impeded by this and potentially other unprecedented indictments of him.

The U.S. Supreme Court should shut down this and any other criminal prosecution of a prominent presidential candidate. Federal lawsuits based on the First Amendment should be filed by Trump, the Republican Party, and any American voter to object to this governmental action against Trump.

Criminal prosecutions are an enormous distraction to any innocent victim, as Trump is. It shifts his time and focus away from devoting all of his energy to his reelection campaign.

Infringing on Trump’s free speech rights to campaign violates the rights of all Americans to hear everything that this candidate has to say. “The activity of speakers becoming listeners and listeners becoming speakers in the vital interchange of thought is the means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth,” Democrat-appointed Justice Marshall observed.

Federal courts have the full power to shut down interference with presidential campaigns by state officials and state courts. No arrest warrant issued by a state official against a leading presidential candidate should be enforceable during the campaign, particularly when an arrest is not needed to protect the safety of anyone.

Chief Justice Roberts joined three liberal Justices on the High Court to emphasize the power of federal courts to halt state court proceedings that impinge on constitutional rights. When someone is “harassed with a multiplicity of suits or litigation generally in an endeavor to enforce penalties” that would have an unconstitutional effect, then Roberts said it should be stopped.

That was less than two years ago when Roberts and the liberal Justices so stated, on an emergency appeal of an abortion-related law in Whole Woman’s Health v. Jackson (2021). “Under these circumstances, where the mere commencement of a suit, and in fact just the threat of it, is the actionable injury to another, the principles … authorize relief against the court officials who play an essential role in that scheme,” they wrote.

In other cases the Supreme Court has held likewise. In Mitchum v. Foster (1972), without dissent it shut down a state court proceeding for threatening to close the doors of a bookstore, much as the New York City district attorney’s new state court prosecution is disruptive to Trump’s presidential campaign.

This decision by the Supreme Court in halting a state court proceeding has been favorably cited by more than a thousand decisions since, including dozens of invocations by the Supreme Court itself. In Pulliam v. Allen (1984), it likewise ruled in favor of a federal court shutting down a state court process, which a federal court should do now with respect to any county-level prosecution of Trump.

Federal courts are empowered by these and other decisions to protect presidential candidates against harassment by state officials, as being done now to Trump. A presidential candidate must be allowed to devote his complete attention to his campaign without interference by a county prosecutor.

This unprecedented prosecution could further divide red from blue states, as conservatives feel strongly that the People rather than a handful of liberal prosecutors should be picking our next president. “Texit” legislation was filed earlier this year in Texas to assert independence from control by New York City and Washington, D.C.

“In a democracy, you can’t threaten to jail your opponents,” declared former President Obama in 2016. “We have fought against those kinds of things,” yet now Democrats are doing precisely that: threatening to imprison Trump.

As patriotism declines in polls and millions of immigrants fail to assimilate into our traditional culture, the glue binding our vast country together may have lost some strength. In 1857, the Dred Scott decision arrogantly denied rights to slaves rather than allow the political process to work, and a few years later our Nation broke up.

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.

Don’t Play Nuclear Chess against Russia

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

NATO’s expansion of war in Ukraine continues, misguided by unelected globalists who demand that rulers subordinate national interests to global governance. As the 2024 elections get under way, Donald Trump is the only candidate in either party who speaks out against reckless war-mongering that could spark World War III.

While Trump was expounding his pro-peace platform at an overflow weekend rally in Waco, Texas, Russian President Vladimir Putin was moving tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus along the northern border of Ukraine. Belarus is allied with Russia, so nothing can be done to prevent this.

Russia’s move horrified clueless Western globalists, who thought they had checkmated Putin by having him indicted by the International Criminal Court. Putin is obviously unfazed by that self-appointed tribunal, which lacks jurisdiction over him in Russia.

Tactical nuclear weapons are designed to deliver atomic bombs against battlefield targets, rather than destroy civilian infrastructure as was done to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. For over 75 years dropping nuclear bombs has been unthinkable, but launching nuclear arms against tanks and soldiers could be an initial step to all-out nuclear war.

What is unthinkable at the beginning of a war can become inevitable as war drags on and people are hardened by its atrocities. The vicious use of chemical weapons unfortunately became prevalent as World War I wore on, to the point where both sides began wearing gas masks.

Neither Biden nor NATO should be playing a game of nuclear chess with the grandmasters in Russia. As Biden and entrenched D.C. politicians of both parties scheme to involve the United States further in a border war on the other side of the globe, only Trump among the presidential candidates is outspoken against it.

The American people, particularly the all-important young voters, want no part of a confrontation with Russia, with the possibility that battlefield nukes could eventually be deployed. Biden and the Leftist leaders of NATO, however, continue to provoke Russia to the point where it moves nuclear weapons into position for possible battlefield use.

Pulitzer-Prize winning investigator Seymour Hersh released his account last month accusing Biden of having ordered the destruction of Russia’s Nord Stream pipelines. Less than two weeks later, another massive explosion seriously damaged the Russian built, 12-mile-long Kerch Bridge that connects Russia to Crimea.

Last year Biden declared, “If Russia invades, there will no longer be a Nord Stream 2, we will bring an end to it.” Indeed, after Russia invaded Ukraine, underwater explosions by mines evidently laid by skilled navy divers at the bottom of the Baltic Sea did destroy 3 of the 4 Nord Stream pipelines that deliver Russian natural gas to Western Europe.

The sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines forced 35 tons of chemical weapon residue to resurface after lying dormant on the seabed since being dumped there after World War II. This harmful disturbance included arsenic and mustard gas chemical agents.

In addition, the sabotage of this pipeline caused the release of 115,000 tons of natural gas in merely six days. Such a massive release of hydrocarbons would require 600 million trees a year to absorb, yet not a word from the Biden Administration about the environmental harm that resulted.

Biden’s State Department point person for Ukraine, Victoria Nuland, even said she was “very gratified” that the Russian pipeline had become “a hunk of metal at the bottom of the sea.” The Deep State’s gratification surely includes knowledge of who committed this crime, which they conceal from the American people.

The European Union concluded it was sabotage, not an accident, that destroyed these nearly 1,000-mile long pipelines that provided inexpensive energy to Western Europe. Biden refuses to confess who did it, but a President Trump would tell us.

Biden and the Deep State should not try to defeat a Russian army that has access to battlefield nuclear weapons in its own backyard. This escalating war has pushed Russia into a stronger alliance with another adversary holding many nuclear warheads, Communist China.

On Sunday Communist North Korea fired two warning missiles against the arrival nearby of a U.S. aircraft carrier. Biden has limited bandwidth for conflicts halfway around the world, and North Korea might exploit Biden’s obsession with Russia.

Recent polling shows Biden’s approval has dropped to nearly his all-time low, with only 38% of Americans approving of his job performance according to a survey by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Voters under age 45 are walking away from Biden more than any other group.

“If we don’t win this next election, 2024, I truly believe our country is doomed,” Trump told his crowd of many thousands on Saturday. Young voters are historically anti-war, and Trump can save our country by campaigning against this war.

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.

Investigate the Investigators

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Our Constitution provides ample remedies for the problems facing our Nation. Instead of waiting for the impending indictment of Donald Trump by the New York County District Attorney, our elected representatives can and should act swiftly to smoke out how improper this prosecution is.

Prosecuting attorneys enjoy enormous discretion to bring charges to grand juries, who are willing to indict even a “ham sandwich” upon request. But if a county prosecutor is allowed to indict the leading presidential candidate from the opposing party, our national elections would no longer be democratic.

On Monday the chairmen of the House Judiciary Committee and two other House committees signed and sent a letter to the New York County D.A., Alvin Bragg, demanding information about the unprecedented charges concocted against Trump. This letter led by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) states “we expect that you will testify about what plainly appears to be a politically motivated prosecutorial decision.”

Bragg has reportedly based his charges on an incident that was well known to the Americans who elected Trump in 2016 and voted for him again in 2020. Other prosecutors who had already examined the same widely publicized facts found them not to be criminal, yet this Democrat D.A. has dredged up ancient history in an obvious effort to impede Trump’s reelection in 2024.

While Bragg wastes his time trying to prosecute a former president for his non-criminal conduct, Senator JD Vance (R-OH) recently tweeted that he “allows violent criminals to walk the streets of New York City.” Referring to George Soros and his funded prosecutors like Alvin Bragg, Sen. Vance says “these people are trying to turn America into a third-world country.”

Our Constitution provides ways to respond, as it always does, by vesting the most power in the House of Representatives. That body can and should compel testimony and the production of emails by the rogue prosecutor’s office before it interferes with our upcoming presidential election.

The Speech or Debate Clause found in Article I of the Constitution confers broad immunity on House leaders and their staffs to take effective action to protect the integrity of our presidential election against such wanton interference. One Soros-funded prosecutor cannot properly hold our entire country hostage to a politically motivated indictment.

Last year the D.C. federal courts even expanded the power of the House to demand compliance with its subpoenas, in order to help the J6 Committee investigate Trump supporters. What was good for the goose then is good for the gander now, as the Republican majority should churn out subpoenas to investigate every nook and cranny of this retaliation by Democrats against Trump.

“Investigate the investigators” Trump truthed on Sunday on his Truth Social platform, where Trump has posted messages nearly hourly in recent days. Instead of campaigning for president as he should be allowed to do, Trump is forced to respond to a bogus indictment by a Democrat county prosecutor.

This sham indictment was immediately condemned by one of the lesser-known Republican presidential candidates, Vivek Ramaswamy. He criticized Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis, who were slow in condemning Democrats’ misuse of prosecutorial power and failed to defend Trump.

The New York City prosecutor “should be held accountable for the crime of ‘interference in a presidential election,’” Trump truthed on his Truth Social platform Sunday night. Biden’s Department of Justice is filled with Trump-haters, so the responsibility of providing a necessary check-and-balance on this abuse of power falls on the Republican House of Representatives.

“Remember, the same animals and thugs that would do this to perhaps 200 million people … are the communists, Marxists, RINOs, and losers that are purposefully destroying our country,” Trump added. House GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik (R-NY) truthed on Trump’s platform, “The two-tiered justice system in America is fully on display” with this prosecution of Trump.

Coincidentally, the House Republicans have been convening in Florida for their annual House Republican Issues Conference. Atop their agenda should be how to protect the leading Republican candidate for president from what a county prosecutor is doing right now to Trump.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who has already shown his effectiveness by standing strong against raising the debt ceiling, asked House committees to review what federal funding goes to county prosecutors who are interfering with national candidates like this. While that is a good first step, more is needed to protect our presidential elections against county prosecutors.

The House should immediately conduct a full investigation into who is pushing for an outdated assertion of discredited charges against Trump, even as presidential debates are set to begin in less than five months. The silver lining is that the American people may finally realize how prosecutions are increasingly being weaponized for political gain.

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.

Ban Transgender Operations on Children

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

An emergency appeal reaches the U.S. Supreme Court from West Virginia, which is trying to safeguard girls’ sports teams against biological males pretending to be girls. A well-reasoned federal district court decision upheld its law against a constitutional challenge on behalf of an 11-year-old, but then a majority-Democrat panel on the Fourth Circuit suspended the good law.

This case is being called the most important yet in the transgender movement, which is suddenly invading nearly every school and government program. Chief Justice John Roberts ordered a response to West Virginia to be filed by noon next Monday, March 20, and already amicus briefs in support of West Virginia’s necessary law have been filed.

The lower federal courts held that transgenders are entitled to a heightened form of protection under the Constitution, and that issue is now before the Supreme Court. Two years ago the Supreme Court ducked a case concerning an attempt by a school board to keep biological boys and girls out of each others’ restrooms.

In that lawsuit arising from Gloucester High School in Virginia, the Supreme Court denied a petition for certiorari on this issue of forcing transgenderism on schools. That handed transgender activists a victory by leaving intact the Fourth Circuit ruling against the school board, which declared transgender conduct to be a new constitutional right and a Title IX federal right in schools.

Aided by desires to attract attention, hordes of children are declaring an interest in being transgender now. Last month it was reported that several 5th graders told their teacher that they wanted to become transgender, and when the teacher asked the Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital for advice its response was to affirm the behavior, without suggesting that the parents be informed.

“What they are teaching in schools today is insane,” Trump declared Monday at a campaign stop in Davenport, Iowa. “I will bring parental rights back into our school system,” he vowed by promising to cut off federal funding to public schools that push the liberal agenda.

Trump and nearly all Republicans have denounced the unfairness about biological boys invading girls’ sports, shattering girls’ records, and sometimes even causing physical injury to girls in contact sports. More is at stake than merely the integrity of girls’ sports: transgender operations inflict lifelong harm on children, and no ethical consent can be given for that.

Banning biological boys from girls’ sports would stem some of the motivation, as competition in school sports is intense with pride and college scholarships hanging in the balance. Some parents whose boys are not good enough to win on a boys team may be just fine with trying to transform them into girls if it means trophies, championships, and scholarships will result.

Billions of taxpayer dollars are flowing to medical universities willing to take the money and perform operations and treatments, to acclaim by liberals who see this a way to accomplish goals that Phyllis Schlafly warned against 50 years ago. Social media applauds those on TikTok and elsewhere who announce with a dance video or photos that suddenly they self-identify with the opposite sex.

Conservative legislatures are slow to turn off the faucet, or fire hydrant, that is watering all this. The Republican Missouri state senate adjourned one day in disarray rather than debate legislation to stop encouraging this harmful gender dysphoria in children.

A Canadian physician who was a leader on transgender treatments decades ago admits now that it was a mistake. “We were wrong,” Dr. Susan Bradley recently announced.

“They’re not as irreversible as we always thought, and they have longer term effects on kids’ growth and development, including making them sterile and quite a number of things affecting their bone growth,” she added. “I had this skepticism in the back of my mind all the time that maybe we were actually colluding and not helping” the children who wanted to switch genders.

Republicans are in a majority in most state legislatures, which are convening now but many will adjourn this spring for the year or, as in Texas, adjourn for two years. Last year Texas Republicans transferred $105 million to the Texas Child Mental Health Consortium, which partly funds promotion of transgenderism in schoolchildren.

Legislation is being considered now in Texas to ban transgender procedures on children, as South Dakota enacted and Gov. Kristi Noem signed. Last week West Virginia, which reportedly has more transgender youths than any state, passed a bill banning transgender procedures on kids, but its governor has not yet said whether he’ll sign it into law.

These good state laws are immediately challenged in federal court by the well-funded transgender movement. Trump has the best record of any politician in making strong judicial appointments, which are needed now more than ever.

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 KOs GOP Globalists

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Last weekend featured dueling political conferences, one flush with cash from globalists hoping that Trump's rival speech would be treated akin to George Washington's Farewell Address. It was wishful thinking by Never-Trumpers, as instead Trump retook control of the GOP.

Trump's nearly 2-hour speech at CPAC, which for many years has been the largest annual grassroots conservative gathering, was astounding for his vigor and enthusiasm. He called for an end of the unsuccessful influence on the Republican Party by the Bush family, Karl Rove, and Paul Ryan, who drove the party into the ground until Trump rejuvenated it.

"This is the final battle," Trump declared to the roaring crowd gathered for him in Maryland, just outside of D.C., even though that is not Republican territory. Trump then rattled off an array of hot-button issues that form the political agenda for ordinary Americans through the presidential election next year.

The contrast between Trump and the worn-out ideas of his media-pandering rivals could not be greater. The hedge fund bosses and phony free traders who assembled at The Breakers, the posh hotel in Palm Beach, Florida, are not the crowd who will be picking the next president or electing candidates down-ballot, and it was a mistake for Trump’s rivals to see that as a path to the White House.

Ironically, it was Trump who gave any prominence to the candidates who seek to replace him as the Republican nominee for president, and their lack of gratitude to him is reason enough to prefer Trump. Nikki Haley was appointed Ambassador to the United Nations by Trump, and she was heckled by conservatives at CPAC after turning against him.

In 2018, Trump propelled Ron DeSantis to the gubernatorial nomination over a better known rival in Florida, where he won reelection in 2022 while finishing second overall in votes to its Trump-supporting Attorney General. DeSantis has not yet criticized Trump publicly, but in his 40-minute speech to globalists compared some Republicans to “potted plants” for allowing Leftists to frame the debate.

That criticism cannot apply to Trump, who relishes a good fight. DeSantis appears to be imitating Trump’s style without giving him credit.

Both Haley and DeSantis are traveling to Iowa, which remains the first contest on the Republican side and thus will set the tone for the primaries that follow. Trump enjoys enormous support among Republican officials in the early primary states, and he met with state leaders from Nevada while his rivals were auditioning before globalists.

“Failed former Congressman David McIntosh and his Globalist friends at Club for No Growth, who fought me all the way in 2016, and LOST, and then fought me again in 2020 Senate Races in Ohio, Alabama, North Carolina, New Hampshire, plus more, and LOST AGAIN, are now threatening to spend money against me,” Trump boomed. “No Growth Members know there will be RETRIBUTION!!!”, Trump added.

Trump is right about the Club for Growth, formerly led by Pat Toomey who was one of the few Senators to vote in support of the vindictive second impeachment of President Trump. Toomey then left the Senate and became a director of Apollo Global Management, a private equity firm profiting from globalism and from the notorious “carried interest” tax loophole that Trump tried to end but Toomey was an “all star” in preserving, a lobbyist told Bloomberg.

Club for Growth has lost many elections, and its campaign spending is too small to have any real influence. It spends less than half of 1% of the overall expenditures each election cycle, and Trump refers to it as “The Club For NO Growth, an assemblage of political misfits, globalists, and losers.”

Trump’s landslide victory in the straw poll at CPAC amassed three times as many votes as the distant runner-up Ron DeSantis, and was Trump’s record-setting sixth victory in that poll. That doubles the career victories by President Ronald Reagan in that same poll, and exceeds the four victories by the last GOP presidential nominee prior to Trump, Mitt Romney.

Trump's speech was reminiscent of the Declaration of Independence in listing the grievances of the American People against the globalists who have run our country into the ground. Even the New York Times appears to agree with Trump in warning against further entanglement by the United States in the NATO war in Ukraine.

Steve Bannon quipped about the rivals to Trump, “We don't have time for on-the-job training.” Trump’s rivals look like the seven dwarfs compared with Trump, and just imagine how much he can accomplish in a second term without anti-Trumpers like Ryan and Toomey on Capitol Hill.

Like General Douglas MacArthur vowing to return and then doing so to liberate the Philippines during World War II, Trump will return to the White House to finish the job he started.

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.

Globalists Want Their Own President

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Globalists feel now is their time to pick the next American president. Bill Clinton was groomed by the world elite for decades until they made him president, and Hillary was to be their encore in 2016 until that was foiled by Trump.

Trump remains their nemesis and his presidency stood in favor of America First and against globalism, world government, phony free trade, and perpetual foreign wars. Biden was not the candidate globalists really wanted in 2020, and was nominated only after it became obvious that none of the other Democrats had any chance of winning the general election.

But the growing discontent with Biden has spread to rank-and-file Democrat voters. Only 37% of ordinary Democrats want Biden for a second term, according to the latest poll by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Time is running out for Biden to get his numbers up with Democrats, and father time points to further mental decline by him. If credible Democrat rivals jump into the race, Biden will have to participate in debates later this year, and it is difficult to see how he would survive politically.

The first presidential debate on the Republican side will be in August in Milwaukee, where the Republican National Convention will also be held next year. Candidates who refuse to support Trump if he’s the nominee will not be allowed to participate, because RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel just required a loyalty pledge by all debate participants.

That rules out Paul Ryan and anyone like him from being relevant. Ryan just declared that he will not attend the Republican National Convention next year if Trump is the nominee, similar to how Ohio Gov. John Kasich refused to attend the convention in his home state where Trump was nominated in 2016.

Trump then ignored Kasich, who became irrelevant, and Trump single-handedly turned Ohio solidly Republican. Ryan and other Never-Trumpers face a similar exile for grandstanding now against the presumptive Republican nominee Trump.

Trump’s enemies are sock puppets of globalism, and rather than criticizing Trump they should be working to grow the Republican Party in the pivotal swing states. Ryan should have worked harder to hold onto the GOP majority in the House in 2018 and help win Wisconsin in 2020, when instead Ryan quit at a young age and carps against Trump now.

The more intriguing political backstabbing is among the Democrat insiders, where the infighting is over everything from picking the location of their national convention to which primaries will be held first. The traditional one-two sequence held by the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary disfavors Biden, who did poorly there in 2020, so he has misused his power of incumbency to demote them.

Biden’s insistence on changing 50 years of tradition shows how imperiled his political future within his own party is. By installing the small Republican state of South Carolina as first among Democrat primaries, Biden is trying to renominate himself because he ran strongest there in 2020.

But it is worse than that, because Biden is pledging our country to support a perpetual war in Ukraine as his way of appeasing globalists who control the presidential nomination process. “The strategy of politics, like an iceberg, is eight-ninths under the surface,” Phyllis Schlafly wrote in 1964 in A Choice Not An Echo, her bestselling book about this issue.

On Monday Biden sent his Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to Kyiv, Ukraine merely a week after Biden himself visited there. Our Treasury Secretary should not fly into a foreign war to pledge unlimited funding of it at American taxpayer expense, but that is exactly what globalists want.

South American countries, led by Brazil, have been attempting to broker peace in Ukraine. For that, globalists persuaded Germany to retaliate against Brazil by blocking shipment of Brazilian goods unrelated to the war.

Meanwhile, Biden oddly refuses to visit the toxic train wreck in Ohio, and dispatches his leading rival, Pete Buttigieg, to visit it instead. This posturing by Biden makes little sense if he is trying to defeat Trump, who did visit, but Biden may view Buttigieg as his more immediate hurdle for the nomination.

Suddenly there is news of an investigation of Buttigieg’s use of government planes, which may be pursued by the Biden Administration to dampen enthusiasm by the globalists for Buttigieg. He was groomed by the foreign Rhodes Scholar program as was Bill Clinton, and many globalists view Buttigieg as their first choice as Bill Clinton was.

Joe Biden has not spoken at the globalist confab in Davos since January 2017. In contrast, globalists prominently promote their favored Buttigieg on their website, touting him as “one of the most visible political figures from the Millennial generation” and even “a winner of the JFK Library Foundation New Frontier Award.”

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.

Biden’s Escalation Echoes LBJ’s Mistake

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Joe “don't know much about history” Biden, as the song goes, escalates U.S. involvement in the no-win war in the Ukraine, in an echo of how a similar no-win escalation in Vietnam ended the political career of Democrat President Lyndon Johnson (LBJ) in 1968. By surprisingly visiting Kyiv on Monday and promising increased American financial support for a corrupt regime on Russia's border, Biden is directly provoking the mighty Russian bear.

Russia’s President Putin has already responded by suspending Russia’s participation in the New START nuclear arms treaty, which is the only remaining major nuclear treaty between Russia and the U.S. Putin’s linking of nuclear weapons to Biden’s actions is a chilling reminder of the growing risks of Biden’s reckless intervention in that hopeless conflict.

Biden imperils the United States even worse than LBJ did, because Russia has far greater military firepower than North Vietnam ever had. Russia has long-range missiles that could easily reach unprotected American targets, and so does its new ally China, which reportedly sent a high-level delegation to Moscow on Tuesday in order to increase ties between those former antagonists.

Congress has not authorized this war, and the American people have never been asked to approve it. Public support for sending American weapons to Ukraine has dropped from 60% last year to less than 50% last week, according to a new poll by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

An NBC News poll last month showed that merely 41% of Americans approve Biden’s approach to this war. Young voters are more opposed to this entanglement, and they are a key swing demographic in elections.

One of the few Republicans who did well in a swing state last November was the one who spoke out against continued American involvement in this war. JD Vance won by a near-landslide with that campaign position in Ohio, where there are many immigrants from Ukraine.

Democrats should take a history lesson in how the Vietnam War issue took down LBJ in 1968, when he was at the peak of his political power and younger than age 60. He appeared invincible for reelection against a weak Republican opponent, the twice-defeated retread Richard Nixon, who had been humiliated by a 5-point loss for governor of his home state of California.

But then an unfunded, obscure senator-poet from Minnesota named Gene McCarthy, not the anti-communist Joe McCarthy from Wisconsin, challenged LBJ in the first presidential primary in New Hampshire. Resistance to LBJ’s pro-war stance enabled McCarthy to embarrass the incumbent by denying him a majority.

LBJ departed the race by the end of the month, and his vice president Hubert Humphrey was ultimately nominated by Democrats for what became a tight contest that fall. Then, as now, young voters were less pro-war than the Democrat politicians, and Nixon appealed to young voters by promising to bring an end to America’s involvement in Vietnam.

Polls today show that only a tiny percentage of voters are undecided as to which of the two major parties they will support in the next election. Republicans would do well, as Nixon did in 1968 and JD Vance did last year, to focus on young voters who do not support perpetual war.

The two ends of the political spectrum, the Right and Left, align against the middle on this issue of escalating the war in Ukraine. Moderate Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who relies on globalist support to cling to his power as the leader of Senate Republicans, is hurting our country and his party by siding with Biden on Ukraine.

While Mitch McConnell is working with his fellow octogenarian Joe Biden to push the wrong war at the wrong time, younger conservative Republicans in both chambers of Congress are speaking out sharply against it. “They can keep him,” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) stated in outrage about Biden’s prioritizing a war halfway around the world over the crisis at our southern border and the toxic train wreck catastrophe in Ohio.

As tweeted by freshman Senator Eric Schmitt (R-MO), who was elected with the support of Trump, “If you want to understand why so many Americans are frustrated right now: Biden is in Ukraine before Ohio.”

Yet globalists who profit from perpetual war in distant lands expect to win this issue in the Swamp. McConnell’s continuing support of the war gives Biden less to be worried about in his own reelection campaign for president, if Democrats renominate him.

On Saturday, at the globalist Munich Security Conference in Germany where Kamala Harris made a fool of herself last year, the prime minister of the United Kingdom recklessly vowed to provide long-range weaponry that would enable Ukraine to attack targets inside Russia. Europeans should be told not to expect U.S. help if Russia or China retaliate against them.

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.