DC Power Grab Invites a Shutdown

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Three ostensibly unrelated events last week are more connected than the media have acknowledged. Trump was unjustifiably indicted in D.C., the credit rating of the U.S. government was downgraded, and leading House conservatives signaled they are fine with defunding the federal government after September 30.

This downgrading last Tuesday of the federal credit score stunned the Biden White House, which howled in response. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen issued a statement calling it “arbitrary and based on outdated data.”

But House Democrats are predicting some defunding of federal programs and agencies after September 30, when the federal fiscal year ends, because Republican resolve has strengthened to halt runaway government spending. Congress has adjourned until September 12, leaving the divided legislature only a dozen session days to enact a dozen spending bills to keep the lights on in D.C.

Fitch Ratings, which lowered the credit score for the federal government, has been highly respected for more than a century, as one of the so-called Big Three credit agencies. It issued a warning earlier this year; subsequently many mistakenly assumed that the bipartisan deal in June to suspend the debt ceiling until 2025 had allayed concerns.

The sham indictment of Donald Trump in D.C. has given many Republicans no alternative to defunding a federal government weaponized for political gain against them. The army of prosecutors going after Trump includes campaign donors to Biden, and their indictment is as contrived as any ever seen in federal court.

Biden’s politicized DOJ recently demanded that the court gag Trump while he campaigns for president, which would infringe on the First Amendment rights of Americans to hear what the leading candidate has to say about vital national issues. “So, based on yet another Radical Left Hoax, I’ll be the only ‘Politician’ in American history not allowed to SPEAK,” Trump posted early Tuesday on Truth Social.

The charges against Trump pretend that he entered into a conspiracy, which means an actual agreement with others to do something unlawful. Disputing an election, speaking out against suspected election fraud and encouraging others to do likewise, is protected by the First Amendment and not unlawful.

The Biden donor-prosecutors misuse the conspiracy charge to litter the indictment with statements and actions by people other than Trump, and then wrongly accuse Trump of them. Charging someone with criminal conspiracy based on the actions of someone else can be a trick misused by prosecutors when they lack criminal evidence against their target.

Instead of convincing voters as Democrats hoped, Biden political hacks have poisoned the well in D.C. such that more Republicans are ready to stop funding federal agencies and departments misused by Democrats. Fitch’s lowering of the credit rating reflects the reality that the gravy train for unproductive activity in D.C., at the expense of working Americans nationwide, will not chug along forever.

Far from repelling voters from Trump, all indications are that his support grows stronger with each abusive indictment. The disconnect by the D.C. establishment is unsustainable, and inevitably Americans will realize that they need not continue to pay for this misuse of prosecutorial power by Biden campaign donors.

The House controls the purse strings, and one of its conservative leaders is the former college wrestler Rep. Bob Good (R-VA). He stated last week that “most Americans won’t even miss” the federal government if its funding were cut off, which will happen automatically if a new spending plan is not enacted by September 30.

Republicans who opposed the June compromise on the debt ceiling feel vindicated now, as almost immediately after that deal was struck Democrats began prosecuting Trump in Florida at a waste of millions of dollars. The political hacks being funded by Congress even indicted two low-level employees of the former president, presumably to terrorize them into turning against their boss.

This outrageous misuse of taxpayers’ money by federal prosecutors justifies conservatives opposing continued bankrolling of a federal government hijacked by the Left. The conservative House Freedom Caucus has already blocked one of the dozen spending bills needed by October 1 to continue the status quo in D.C.

The most recent indictment against Trump is in D.C., where 95% of its residents and jury pool voted against Trump in 2020, while the remaining 5% fear retaliation if they side with Trump. He cannot possibly obtain an impartial jury in that city, and this case should be moved immediately to nearby West Virginia where people actually work for a living.

House Republicans can selectively defund actions by the Department of Justice, as they did two decades ago in repeatedly prohibiting the use of federal funds to remove a large Latin cross in the Mojave Desert. The House should not be funding this harassment by DOJ of Trump as he campaigns for reelection.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on PhyllisSchlafly.com, pseagles.com, and Townhall.com.

Putrid, Crime-Inducing Cannabis Spreads in Midwest

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on PhyllisSchlafly.com, pseagles.com, and Townhall.com.

Biden Sues Texas, Threatening America

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

On Monday, the Justice Department filed a lawsuit to force Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to remove bright orange buoys strung down a stretch of the Rio Grande as a barrier to illegal migrant crossings. Biden’s overly aggressive lawsuit against our second largest state puts our entire Union at risk.

This case is destined for the U.S. Supreme Court, none of whose Justices is from Texas or any other border state. Seven out of the nine Supreme Court Justices have previously worked for the federal government in D.C., including four whose prior job was on the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

Biden expects to win on the immigration issue at the Supreme Court, which ruled in his favor last month in a separate case in which Texas and Louisiana sought to compel Biden to enforce our immigration laws. Eight of the nine justices ruled in favor of Biden on the technicality of legal standing.

As Biden continues to overplay his hand by allowing millions of illegal aliens to flood our country, his latest lawsuit may be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. Placing harmless buoys in the river that divides Texas from Mexico is protective of our country, and harms no one.

Texans were raised with the motto “Don’t Mess With Texas.” Biden can poke them in the eye only so many times before a movement grows larger in Texas to assert itself against D.C.

Two months ago, the Supreme Court allowed California attorneys to sue Texas pig farmers if they do not give pigs enough space to satisfy animal rights activists. Fines and even imprisonment are imposed by this California law on pig farmers in every other state, although there are very few pig farmers in California who could be burdened by this regulatory tyranny.

Justice Kavanaugh predicted that this pig decision will pit states against each other in ways never seen before. The California law was ballot initiative Proposition 12, funded with $13 million that included millions in dark money that could have been allied with ulterior motives, and they outspent the Midwestern pig farmers by a 20-to-1 margin.

Texans and others who happened to be inside the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, have been imprisoned for many years by D.C.-based judges. Meanwhile, ballot harvesting and stuffing continues in key swing states that could extend Biden's presidency for another four years.

It seems unlikely that Texans will allow many millions more illegals to bring their crime and drugs into that state for another half-decade, based on another presidential election where courts refuse to act against potential vote fraud. The demand by our mentally incompetent president that Texas continue to open its border to a lawless invasion is the worst possible way to handle the border crisis.

Biden’s Department of Justice filed its lawsuit in the Western District of Texas, where it is likely to be handled by a Democrat-friendly judge. Despite the enormous importance of controlling crime, drugs, and migrants illegally crossing the border, this lawsuit is being directed by the Environmental Defense Section of DOJ’s Environment and Natural Resources Division.

Radical environmentalists demand removal of the floating barrier, under the specious argument that the federal Rivers and Harbors Act “is clear in prohibiting the placement of any unauthorized barriers or obstructions in the Rio Grande and other navigable waters of the United States.”

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has been weak against illegal immigration during his nearly decade-long tenure as governor, and to this day his state universities attract illegal aliens with low in-state tuition while charging Americans from other states much higher out-of-state rates. Abbott is a suspected instigator of the sham impeachment of the one Texas official who stood strong against the migrant invasion: Attorney General Ken Paxton.

Abbott knows that he could lose his next GOP primary over the immigration issue, particularly now that Trump is expected to endorse a candidate against him. So Abbott has drawn a line in the sand against Biden, and both cannot win this standoff.

A press release from the DOJ quoted the local U.S. Attorney as arrogantly declaring that DOJ “will take and support the appropriate legal action to uphold” laws supposedly justifying Biden’s lawsuit to remove the buoys. Yet video just emerged of a bridge built by smugglers of illegals in Arizona about which Biden does nothing to stop the rampant flouting of our immigration laws.

Federal judges in Washington, D.C., a town that does not have to deal with hordes of illegals sleeping in the streets as Texas does, are on Biden’s side and Democrats have the upper hand in federal courts. Biden’s lawsuit is a harmful step towards further balkanization of our country, pitting border states against D.C.

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.

Democrat Demagoguery Heats Up “Climate Reparations”

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

America’s Climate Czar, John Kerry, is in China this week meeting with its top officials about climate change, which today means everything from droughts to floods to inevitable heat waves. There was never any Senate confirmation for this office, yet Kerry reports directly to Biden without transparency for Kerry’s large staff.

The House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight and Accountability caught up with Kerry last Thursday to ask a few obvious questions. His answers were more alarming than anything genuinely caused by forever-changing weather patterns.

The committee Chairman, Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL), asked Kerry, “Are you planning to commit America to climate reparations? That is to say, we have to pay some other country because they had a flood or they had a hurricane or a typhoon or a wildfire.”

While many today are familiar with the concept of slavery reparations, being seriously considered by the liberal California politicians, climate reparations have been demanded by some countries for several years now. Natural disasters have occurred worldwide since the beginning of time, but are blamed now on energy use by industrialized nations such as ours.

“No, under no circumstances,” was Kerry’s response to Rep. Mast’s question about whether the Biden Administration will obligate our country to pay climate reparations to foreign governments. But a close review of what Kerry publicly stated elsewhere suggests that there could be a “mental reservation” lurking here.

Well known to philosophers, biblical scholars, and legal experts, a mental reservation is an incomplete response due to a perceived greater good, by relying on a private interpretation of the question asked. To reduce this, the oath taken by Members of Congress includes the phrase “without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion.”

“We have to pay” was the premise of the question, connoting a legal obligation that Kerry denied. But voluntary climate reparations are definitely being considered, and are on the agenda for the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 28) scheduled to occur on Nov. 30 to Dec. 12 in the oil-rich kingdom of Dubai.

The vehicle for climate reparations is a global “loss and damage fund,” about which Kerry needs to be pinned down. Already some NATO countries in Europe have committed to send taxpayer dollars to this fund, which has existed since last year under the UN Environment Programme office.

In an interview last January with Britain’s left-wing newspaper The Guardian, Kerry indicated the U.S. would contribute to the loss and damage fund for the benefit of foreign countries claiming to be damaged by climate change. So he considers it a voluntary contribution, but it would burden American taxpayers with a legal obligation.

“How can you look somebody in the eye, with a straight face, and not accept the notion that there are damages, there are losses? We see them all around the world,” Kerry declared earlier this year to the British press.

Kerry made similar comments to the congressional committee. Incredulous, Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) asked Kerry “why do the good folks in east Tennessee – they work very hard for their dollars – why do they have to pay for a flood in Africa or South Asia?”

Kerry responded, “We’re not specifically paying for a flood in Africa although sometimes money may go to something like that but the United States is proudly the largest humanitarian donor in the world … we try to help the world.” That opens the door to the Biden Administration sending hard-earned American dollars to the globalist “loss and damage fund,” which is climate reparations by another name.

Meanwhile, our competitors like China are using the most cost-efficient energy, coal, to its maximum benefit. In 2021, China had its biggest increase in coal use and energy consumption since 2011, and Kerry is doing nothing meaningful about that.

China approved more coal-fired power plants in 2022 than any year since 2015. Yet Kerry praised China on Monday for what Kerry called its “incredible job” of increasing renewable energy, which supplies only a tiny fraction of total energy consumption.

Kerry merely chastised China gently about coal for which it “has six times as many plants starting construction as the rest of the world combined.” We won’t be able to compete with China if our economy shifts to inefficient wind turbines and solar power.

Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA), showing that he is not intimidated by Deep State bullying of him in seizing his cell phone while on a family vacation, interjected in Kerry’s testimony to explain why world leaders give lip service to the global warming agenda. “Because they’re grifting like you are, sir,” Perry told Kerry when he invoked foreign leaders who side with Democrats, while expecting reparations.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on PhyllisSchlafly.com, pseagles.com, and Townhall.com.

Transgender Train Derails in Sixth Circuit

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles Organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on PhyllisSchlafly.com, pseagles.com, and Townhall.com.

Independence Means Staying Out of Foreign Wars

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

America celebrates our independence on July 4th, and that includes freedom from never-ending foreign wars. Yet the globalists are trying to entrap us even further in the NATO war in Ukraine, where no end is in sight and the risk of it escalating into a nuclear disaster increases.

A record-breaking crowd of 50,000 in Pickens, South Carolina relentlessly booed Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) when he took the stage at the Trump rally on Saturday. Graham is from the same rural county but is widely disliked now by ordinary Americans who oppose his pro-war positions.

Trump kept us out of foreign wars for four years and vows to end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours of becoming president again. But Biden and other presidential candidates are staunchly pro-war, and would even send American troops to fight Russia.

Too few Americans are enlisting in our Armed Services, which are not meeting recruitment goals. Beginning July 8, recruiters for the Navy will be required to work an additional day each week to try to enlist new recruits.

Last year the Army fell 25% below its recruiting goal. That was the Army’s worst recruiting year since our military draft ended in 1973.

Recruiting goals today are modest, not nearly enough to sustain a world war against Russia. The total military recruitment goal for 2022 was only 104,540 troops, out of our American population of 30 million aged 18 to 24, yet even that low goal cannot be met.

Presidential candidate Mike Pence, lacking in political support, made a surprise visit to Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky last month to pledge continued U.S. support for the war against Russia. On the same day Zelensky welcomed child climate change activist, Greta Thunberg, now 20 years old, to listen to her environmentalist agenda.

Pence declared on NBC News that “this is bigger than politics.” He then stated about Russia that “it wouldn’t be too long before they cross the border where our men and women would be required to fight.”

If Mike Pence is really open to the possibility that American “women would be required to fight” Russia, then he should not be trusted with the presidency. It sounds more like the feminists of the 1970s whose Equal Rights Amendment would have put women in combat alongside men.

Next week the nations belonging to NATO will meet in Vilnius, Lithuania, and President Biden has promised to attend. Locating this meeting near the border of Russia is provocative, as a way to try to confront Putin.

NATO, which is run by anti-American liberals, wants to add Sweden as its 32nd member, after Finland was accepted earlier this year. Any current member country can veto Sweden, however, and Turkey has threatened to withhold its consent.

Also atop the NATO agenda will be to demand an escalation of American entanglement in what has become a perpetual war in Ukraine. The United States will be asked to send advanced weaponry and to embark on a path of placing our troops in harm’s way.

“We need to be prepared that this offensive will be bloody and difficult,” NATO chief Lens Stoltenberg warned last month. But he was talking about Ukraine’s long-delayed offensive against Russia, using U.S. equipment.

Globalists at our Pentagon have already sent to Ukraine many hundreds of vehicles including Humvees and armored trucks. England has dangerously provided Ukraine with long-range missiles to be launched from military planes, in order to strike cities far inside of Russia, while Germany has sent advanced, highly destructive Leopard tanks.

This week the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by Zelensky that pompously tried to explain to us the meaning of our Independence Day and, of course, encouraged more participation by the U.S. in the war there. While extolling democracy Zelensky somehow forgot to mention that he recently canceled parliamentary and presidential elections in his own country.

Zelensky wrote that “Ukrainians took to the streets in 2014 to oust the Russian-backed dictator,” but in fact that leader had been democratically elected. Zelensky has also outlawed the Orthodox Church in Ukraine, supposedly because its leaders are sympathetic to Russia.

Apparently only two things are slowing down the globalists who want to use the American military to control the world. First is the shortage of able-bodied volunteers who are willing to enlist today, for a variety of reasons that may include their own opposition to globalism.

Trump’s spectacular rally last weekend in South Carolina with the outpouring of an America First patriotism is the other obstacle to the globalists’ agenda. This grassroots uprising against further involvement in perpetual foreign wars, attempted by politicians of both parties in D.C. who are out-of-touch with the American public, can carry Trump to reelection.

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.

Flood at the Border Sinks Biden

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

President Biden avoids and keeps far away from our nation’s wide-open southern border, where 200,000 people from all over the world crossed illegally last month and every month since Biden took office almost 30 months ago. But his chief Democrat rival, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., went to the border town of Yuma, Arizona on June 6, and had some choice words for Biden’s failed policy.

“It was like a dystopian nightmare,” Kennedy said, “with all of these desperate people flooding across the wall, in a situation that clearly could have been prevented. People from all over the world, from Africa, from Uzbekistan, from Senegal, from Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Nepal, Tibet, India, Bangladesh, Peru, Colombia, we saw all of these people, these hundreds and hundreds of people coming across.

“We’ve watched about 150 people come across in the last hour,” Kennedy continued. “Altogether, people have come across right here from 117 nations in the last couple of years. In 3 years, in total, 7 million people have come across the border illegally into our country.

“And from here, they’re put on these buses, and they’re brought to the border patrol station where they’re processed. After four or five days, they’re released on their own recognizance into our country, and most of them are never seen or heard from again.”

Where did all these millions of foreigners go after they were turned loose by the Biden administration? A clue is provided by a shocking new study from the Center for Immigration Studies, which finds that students from immigrant-led households comprise 23% of public school enrollment nationwide, and in many regions the proportion is more than 65%.

Thousands of miles away, New Hampshire public schools are harmed by the immigration deluge. Next door in Massachusetts, the percentage of public students who are in immigrant households has jumped 13 to 28% in the last 30 years.

There should not be any illegal fentanyl in New Hampshire, but gangs profiting from drugs and human smuggling distribute that deadly drug to every state. Choking off that deadly traffic is preeminent on the minds of New Hampshire voters who will soon screen the presidential candidates of both parties.

“This is not a good thing for our country,” Bobby Kennedy Jr. said after his first-hand, on-site inspection of the crisis at the border. “It is unsustainable.”

Liberals have been perplexed by how endless lawsuits and contrived indictments of Donald Trump have not slowed him down, or even made a dent in his popularity. The many reasons for Trump’s political invincibility include his unwavering commitment to America being for Americans, not foreigners.

Speaking in Columbus, Georgia, on June 10, Trump vowed that “I will immediately cancel every open-borders policy of the Biden Administration. I will use all necessary state, local, federal, and military resources to carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.”

“And to further deter illegal immigration,” Trump continued, “I will sign a Day One Executive Order ending automatic citizenship for children of illegal aliens.” Contrary to some uninformed pundits, the foolish policy of extending birthright citizenship to illegal aliens is not required by any law or court decision.

On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court dropped the ball by declaring that they would not force President Biden to stop the illegal immigration that is overwhelming our states, institutions, and communities. With only Justice Alito dissenting, the Court ruled that the courts are powerless to order President Biden and his minions to obey the laws that require him to refuse entry, detain, and deport illegal migrants.

But then on Sunday, the people of Greece delivered the opposite verdict as they handed a landslide victory to the Trump-like candidate who has cracked down against illegal immigration there. His victory was by the largest margin in Greece in a half-century, and three new political parties even more conservative did well enough to win seats in its parliament.

Kyriakos Mitsotakis won by promising to extend a border fence to a region where many migrants are currently sneaking into Greece. A week earlier, voters in the traditionally liberal Finland elected what was described as “the most right-wing government ever ... taking a hard line on … immigration.”

The previously immigrant-welcoming countries of Denmark and Sweden have also shifted sharply to the right on this issue in recent years. Denmark’s current policies include imprisonment of illegal aliens with solitary confinement and seizure of assets, in order to deter migrants from entering that small country illegally.

The worldwide populist uprising against open borders is a harbinger of our own presidential election next year. On this issue, Biden is hopelessly out of touch with the American people, and he is sure to be defeated by Trump, unless the effective campaigning by RFKJr causes Biden to withdraw first.

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.

Veto Rampage in Texas Discredits Anti-Trumpers

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott vetoed more than 75 bills before Sunday night’s deadline, mostly sponsored by conservative Texas state senators. Never before in the 178-year history of Texas has its governor vetoed so many bills passed by his own party.

Texas Republicans would override most of these vetoes if they could, but the legislature was required by the state constitution to adjourn in May until 2025. Tens of thousands of hours of work that went into all these bills were washed away by Abbott’s retaliatory strike against conservatives.

One of the bills that Gov. Abbott vetoed was SB 335, authored by conservative state Sen. Dr. Charles Schwertner (R-Georgetown). It passed the state senate by a unanimous vote of 31-0, and passed the state house by an overwhelming 119 to 19.

This bill sought to require the Texas Family and Protective Services Council, which makes recommendations to the notorious Department of Family and Protective Services, to post online videos of its meetings so that the public can see what they are doing at taxpayer expense. Yet Abbott vetoed this with a petulant message about an unrelated issue.

Another bill sponsored by one of the most conservative Texas legislators, Sen. Tan Parker (R-Flower Mound), would have authorized studying the conversion of coal-fired energy plants into cleaner nuclear plants. SB 1404 passed the senate unanimously 31-0 and passed the house nearly unanimously, yet was likewise vetoed by Abbott with the same peevishness.

Meanwhile, Abbott has refused to endorse Donald Trump for president despite using Trump’s endorsement of him to overcome a primary challenge to his reelection last year by two conservatives, former U.S. Rep. Allen West and state Sen. Don Huffines. Trump’s endorsement and a hoard of cash from wealthy donors enabled Abbott to survive his primary.

More than two-thirds of the oil and gas donations went to Abbott rather than all the other Texas Republican statewide candidates combined. There are no campaign contribution limits in Texas, so Abbott panders to multi-million-dollar donors from whom he has raised far more money than any other Texan in history.

Despite being reelected by Trump’s endorsement last year, Abbott’s refusal to endorse him now has the effect of limiting donations by these Texas mega-donors to Trump’s campaign and Trump-supporting PACs. A few anti-Trump billionaires and their egotistical mindset are making it easier for Joe Biden to win reelection next year.

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who leads the Texas Senate, prominently endorsed Trump earlier this year. That endorsement may not have sat well with the Never-Trump Republicans, including Abbott, and some view his veto rampage as a retaliation against Patrick.

Lt. Gov. Patrick pointed out that Abbott vetoed some bills as retaliation against conservative Texas Sen. Paul Bettencourt, who has been a leader in the effort to stop rampant election fraud in Harris County (Houston). “This is targeted vetoing of bills that have nothing to do with the issue at hand except Paul Bettencourt is the author of those bills,” Patrick said last Thursday in disgust.

Abbott has hurt the Republican Party in Texas with his dictator-like vetoes of many good bills based merely on who sponsored them. Even some Democrats criticize Abbott’s conduct, as State Sen. Sarah Eckhardt (D-Austin) observed about Abbott’s veto of her bipartisan bill, “This was NOT Vetoed on POLICY.”

Abbott’s retaliatory vetoes reflect how closely he is tied to RINO mega-donors frustrated by the lack of enactment of their preferred type of property tax reform. These RINO billionaires failed to provide needed financial support for Trump in 2020, and our country cannot afford a repeat of their treachery again next year.

While campaigning against Abbott more than a year ago, Allen West aired a campaign ad standing next to the unfinished border wall in Texas. West rhetorically wondered why Abbott has accomplished so little to secure the border, despite being governor for nearly a decade.

Our entire country suffers enormously from Abbott’s unwillingness and ineffectiveness about the Texas border with Mexico. Thousands pour over that Texas-Mexico border every day, bringing drugs with them that spread throughout our country.

Only a few good bills, such as the overwhelmingly popular ban on male-bodied transgenders invading women’s sports, and a ban on minors being subjected to life-altering transgender procedures, were signed into law by Gov. Abbott, who was not the real leader on either one. Nothing meaningful was supported or signed by Abbott to stem the tidal wave of illegal migrants crossing the Texas-Mexico border.

No Republican can win a future presidential election without winning Texas, yet Abbott is harming the GOP’s reputation with voters there by taking the party in the wrong direction. Governing for the benefit of a handful of oligarchs while retaliating against conservative legislators is a recipe for a long-term political disaster.

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.

The Left’s war against parental rights

Ed Martin writes:

An ideological campaign has taken shape, from schools and statehouses to courtrooms and even in to the White House, to push parents out of fundamental decisions involving their children and thus to destroy parental rights.

The Biden Administration is leading the charge. President Joe Biden himself has said, “There is no such thing as someone else’s child. Our nation’s children are all our children.” Similar sentiments have been echoed by Vice President Harris who has referred to American children as “our children” and White House Press Secretary Karin Jean-Pierre, who has similarly said, “These are our kids. They belong to all of us.”

Deep State Declares War on Trump Voters

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Until now, American voters have been allowed to select our next president without interference by federal prosecutors. In a free election the People can decide which issues are significant, such as entanglement in foreign wars, and which are petty, such as the location of some old papers from the previous administration.

But the federal workers who pursue political prosecutions of Trump and his supporters are as hostile to democracy as they are clueless about the loyalty of Trump voters. Special prosecutor Jack Smith, who disgracefully prosecuted Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell until Smith was reversed by the Supreme Court, now demands that Trump face a speedy trial, so that Smith’s office rather than the voters can decide the reelection of Trump.

Jack Smith’s unprecedented indictment will be heard by Judge Aileen Cannon, who had previously smacked down the feds after their excessive raid of Trump’s home at Mar-a-Lago last August. In that case she told the federal Trump-haters to back off, and she properly appointed a respected former judge to review the documents that were seized in the raid.

On appeal to a higher court, Judge Britt Grant, whose husband worked for nearly a decade for the Deep State at the CIA, showed improper rudeness to Trump’s attorney. Also on the panel was Judge Bill Pryor, who is often a rubber-stamp for prosecutors, and they reversed Judge Cannon’s fair ruling.

Yet now the liberal media, led by the New York Times, are complaining about the random assignment of the Trump indictment to Judge Cannon, despite her lack of any conflict of interest. What liberals dislike is her independence from politics, which is what a good judge should display.

Few Americans would base their vote on where President Trump stored boxes of documents relating to his presidency when he moved out of his residence at the White House. Many public officials take copies of documents with them when they leave office, as Joe Biden did when he left the White House in 2017 and Biden has not been charged with anything.

But many federal workers in D.C. are too virulently anti-Trump to allow the democratic process to work without interference by fanatical federal prosecutors. They have no employable skills outside of government and yet are bankrolled by an unlimited spigot of taxpayer dollars, which would have been shut off had the debt ceiling been enforced on June 1.

The timing of this federal indictment to be less than one week after suspension of the debt ceiling, which keeps the money flowing to them, seems to be more than a coincidence. The GOP majority in the House does not have to allow taxpayer millions to be spent on biased investigators taking pictures of boxes of obscure documents stored in an unused bathroom.

Trump has built successful companies and skyscrapers, employed thousands, and defeated the idol of most federal workers: Hillary Clinton. Then Trump committed unforgivable sins in the eyes of the feds by firing their FBI director, James Comey, and by pardoning the victims of Department of Justice political prosecutions, including Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.

The January 6 protests were, on top of all that, a thorough humiliation of the Deep State in D.C. for which it has been retaliating ever since. All Trump did on that day was to give a speech while serving as president, and it is very difficult to convert a presidential address into some kind of crime.

So Trump-haters hatched this plan to accuse this former and future president of “willful retention” of his own presidential papers, abusing a century-old law that has never before been used in this way. The federal bullies also indicted a U.S. Navy veteran from Guam who has been a personal assistant to Trump, Walt Nauta, over the phony separate crime of supposedly lying to the FBI as Nauta voluntarily described his service to the former president.

Local prosecutors who prosecute real crimes do not regard lying to authorities as a separate crime, yet that is the federal prosecutors’ favorite fake crime to invoke. They used it improperly against Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, in what was later discovered to have been a premeditated ambush by the FBI, and threatened the respected author Dr. Jerome Corsi with this until he publicized the injustice.

Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, famously warned Trump that the intelligence community, also known as the Deep State, has “six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.” Just before Trump was inaugurated to his first term, Schumer said on national television that “from what I am told, they are very upset with how he has talked about them.”

This new indictment proves how vindictively the Deep State will retaliate. It needs to be defunded.

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.