Ten Commandments Coming Back to Public Schools

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trump’s Right to Target Private Equity

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Inflation in home prices and healthcare is perhaps the biggest reason that swing voters are shifting to the Democrat side in elections. With the midterms less than ten months away, Republicans need to take initiative against a culprit: private equity.

Last week Trump announced his brilliant plan to ban private equity firms from buying single-family homes, which has put their prices out of reach for young adults. Gen Z is the pivotal voting bloc that decides elections now, and if they cannot afford a home then they are more likely to vote against Republicans.

“People live in homes, not corporations,” Trump observed. “For a very long time, buying and owning a home was considered the pinnacle of the American Dream,” but the buying up of these homes by private equity speculators has made homes unaffordable for Gen Z.

Wealthy private equity managers typically enjoy a tax rate lower than what Gen Z pays, which is the opposite of how tax rates should be structured to encourage work by young adults. Private equity managers are allowed to take much of their compensation under the lower capital gains rate, rather than the higher income tax rate that everyone has to pay on their earnings from manual labor or learned professional work.

Depreciation deductions, which are also unavailable to most family homeowners, give private equity a further incentive to invade residential real estate while outbidding Gen Z for homes. Last year private equity obtained additional tax perks from Congress, such as the ability to deduct as an expense from taxes 100% of the value of certain property in the first year of its acquisition, known as bonus depreciation.

While nationwide institutional investors reportedly own only 3% of homes, this is a misleading statistic that includes millions of homes far away from jobs for young workers. In areas highly sought by Gen Z like Atlanta, Charlotte, Dallas, Houston, Jacksonville, and Tampa mega-investors reportedly control up to 27% of single-family home rentals.

Private equity firms are sharks at extracting profits for themselves, and they jack up rental and purchase prices for these homes while Gen Z is unable to compete financially. Often private equity firms swoop in and pay cash to outbid a young couple struggling with debt.

Private equity controls trillions of dollars managed without transparency to the public, while exploiting tax loopholes unavailable to most Americans. Private equity managers do things like buy a hospital to strip it of its assets, and then sell the underlying property off to build luxury apartments, as happened in Philadelphia.

Trump’s announcement caused the stock value of Blackstone, a trillion-dollar asset management company, to drop by an astounding 9.3%, then regaining some of its losses before losing 6% on the day. This demonstrates the significance of how private equity firms have been profiting, while driving up the prices of single-family homes, to the detriment of Gen Z.

The unaffordability of homes for young adults is more than an economic crisis that is deciding elections in favor of Democrats like the New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who won 75% of the Gen Z vote. Home unaffordability also causes Gen Z to delay or not have children, which worsens the crisis of our already-declining birth rate.

Teddy Roosevelt rejuvenated a declining Republican Party at the turn of the last century when he took on powerful monopolies perceived as exploiting the public. TR, whom Trump has praised for doing “great things,” became a champion of the common man much as Trump has been.

In his first term, Trump spoke against the tax advantages enjoyed by private equity, and sought to close those loopholes. At the time private equity had its own senators, including Mitt Romney and Pat Toomey from that sector, but they are gone now after voting to convict Trump on the second impeachment which the American public rejected by re-electing him.

Private equity has been driving up the cost of healthcare, too, as it buys up practices and then cuts services, raises prices, and tries to monopolize specialties. From 2013 to 2022, 82 private equity firms acquired 423 oncology practices, which are necessary to treat cancer.

One study found that practices acquired by private equity firms charged 5.3% more for office visits than the practices that continued under physician ownership. There was a shocking 50% increase in spending on radiation therapy after private equity invaded this field.

The number of physician practices owned by private equity has increased from 816 in 2012 to more than 6,000 today, while private equity owns nearly 488 hospitals. One study in November 2022 by the MIT Sloan School of Management discovered that the negotiated prices between hospitals and insurance companies jumped 32% higher after private equity purchased the hospitals.

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.

“999 to 1 Against” Data Centers

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

As Republicans scramble for a grassroots issue for the New Year, to grow the Party as needed to be competitive in elections, opposing data centers could be the Christmas gift that keeps on giving. Local residents were “999 to 1 against” a data center planned for the town of Matthews, located in the suburbs of Charlotte, North Carolina, according to its Mayor John Higdon.

Allowing the development of a data center was on the agenda of a council meeting there in October, when it was withdrawn from consideration. If it had been approved, “every person that voted for it would no longer be in office,” Mayor Higdon observed. “That’s for sure.”

This is the reaction across the country to the efforts by Big Tech companies, including Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Facebook, to build massive data centers in the heartland of America. These projects gobble up land, electricity, and water, while creating very few jobs for the locals who have to endure the perpetual 65-decibel hum of the servers and louder backup diesel generators.

Lobbied state government officials tend to welcome these data centers, as Gov. Greg Abbott in Texas has. But often these projects are shrouded in secrecy and sprung on local residents without explaining the full risks and costs.

Texas has a dire water shortage, while data centers require enormous amounts of water to keep their computers from overheating. One data center can consume millions of gallons of water daily, the equivalent of the needs of an entire town of 50,000 people.

Prior to the invasion by data centers, a Texas agency estimated that many Texas towns and communities would face a severe water shortage by 2030. A harsh drought could accelerate that problem.

There are 411 existing data centers in Texas, second only to Virginia, and another 442 are planned for Texas, which is equivalent to nearly doubling its population in terms of water usage. Texans tap into broad but depleting underground aquifers for most of their water needs, such that data centers anywhere in Texas deplete the water supply for everyone there.

Meanwhile, since 2022 residential electricity prices nationwide have risen by 10%, while electricity prices for data centers and other commercial uses have increased by only 3%, according to a new report published by Yale Climate Connections. Data centers get favorable energy rates while homeowners are forced to make up the difference amid inflation.

If the Democrats who control California want to allow Google and Facebook to build data centers in unpopulated regions of the Golden State, then they can do that. But instead liberal Big Tech is lobbying Republican officials in other states, like Texas, to impose the costs and burdens of these monstrosities on unsuspecting local residents there.

The grassroots are rising up against this, and rightly so. A $2 billion new data center that blights the landscape, dries up the water supply, and overloads the power grid brings an estimated total of only 37 new jobs.

An outcry last year by the public in St. Charles, Missouri, blocked a data center project there by an undisclosed Big Tech company. When residents learned that 125 diesel generators would be used, any one of which could leak to contaminate the local water supply, they successfully defeated the development.

Supporters of data centers criticize the opposition by calling them NIMBYs, which is short for “Not in my back yard.” The same name-calling is used against residents who oppose resettling Somali or Afghan refugees in their communities.

But as with the refugee issue, valid objections are raised as to why people from halfway around the world are resettled far from their own homes in the backyards of those who never invited them. The homes of Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Amazon are in the States of California and Washington, so why aren’t most of the new data centers being built in those States?

Another analogy can be drawn to offshore wind turbines, which are typically opposed by local residents and yet pushed by lobbyists and corporate interests. California environmentalists are the biggest promoters of wind as an energy source, and yet Californians have not allowed a single offshore wind turbine along their own vast coastline.

Data centers externalize their many costs to burden the targeted communities, while developers line the pockets of lobbyists to push for these projects without transparency to the public. Often local residents receive little advance notice of rezoning demands.

In northeast Oklahoma, for example, Google is attempting to build one of these data centers in the town of Sand Springs, which the public is only recently learning about. Its planning commission has scheduled a vote on Tuesday, January 27, at the Charles Page High School Cafeteria on whether to approve this, giving people little time to mobilize in opposition.

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.

Somali Daycare Fraud Uncovered by Citizens

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

It has been ordinary citizens, not billions spent on federal law enforcement, that uncovered the immense daycare fraud committed by Somalis in Minnesota. In one video posted on Facebook, a Minnesota resident explains that he personally visited 40-50 Somali-run daycares in the Minneapolis area and never saw a child at any one of them.

“So one of the things that I’ve noticed is there’s an exceptional number of childcare centers that are set up mostly in Minneapolis, but also in St. Paul. And I said, wow, how many kids are there in the Twin Cities?” the Minnesotan commented to a reporter.

When he inquired at one facility about availability for his grandson, “they said, no, we’re all full, we’re all full. And they had the door open and I looked and there were no kids.”

The Minnesotan noticed this beginning five years ago, and yet the Democrat Vice Presidential nominee Tim Walz, Governor of Minnesota, bragged in his debate last year against JD Vance that Walz had made it easier for folks to run daycare businesses. The fraud is obvious to anyone who visits these centers.

The 23-year-old social media influencer Nick Shirley has aired videos of his own visits to these Minnesota childcare centers; his videos have attracted more than 116 million views on X and 1.6 million additional views on YouTube. With that publicity, there is finally movement in uprooting this fraud and holding the perpetrators legally accountable.

FBI chief Kash Patel threatens to denaturalize and deport Somali refugees responsible for this. These immigrants from a country on the equator were ill-suited to be relocated by Democrat presidents to Minnesota, where they lacked the skills and background needed to thrive in that winter climate.

As a Shirley video demonstrates, calling the phone number for one of these apparently fraudulent daycare centers results in the office of Tim Walz answering the phone, as the Governor of Minnesota. Yet he has refused to resign amid this engulfing scandal, and is running for reelection with the support of the Democrat Party.

In another video Shirley features the “Quality Learing Center” daycare which misspells the word “learning” on its own sign. Someone would have corrected that error if the daycare were really in daily operations serving many families, and the video shows that it appears empty in the middle of a weekday when it should be active.

This fraud in Minnesota could be part of a broader government-funded childcare scandal that extends to many other states. Publicly funded childcare has long been a bad idea as public policy, vulnerable to fraud, and yet even conservative states like Missouri have large programs like this.

The newly elected socialist mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, ran on a campaign of free childcare for everyone, because mothers “are giving up paying jobs to do unpaid childcare.” Zohran vowed to “implement free childcare for every New Yorker aged 6 weeks to 5 years,” and to pay childcare workers the wages of “public school teachers.”

Government-run childcare has never worked. President Nixon vetoed the Comprehensive Child Development Act of 1971, which would have established universal federally funded daycare nationwide, and he properly called it the “most radical piece of legislation” ever sent to him by Congress.

Democrats in Congress later pushed for the Act for Better Child Care Services of 1989, for federal funding of childcare centers nationwide. President George H.W. Bush successfully opposed it for not sending assistance directly to parents as tax credits, for reducing options available to parents, and for discriminating against two-parent families where one stays at home with the children.

Government-run daycare separates children from their families and marginalizes the essential role of fathers both financially and in the upbringing of children. At the time of Nixon’s veto, the communist Soviet Union was an example of the failed approach of pushing women into the workforce while government controlled the raising of their children.

It is estimated that Mamdani’s plan of universal child care for New York City could cost $6 billion, and such enormous funding is unavailable for this. Quebec tried government-run universal child care beginning in 1997, and it has been a billion-dollar step backward which 30 years later is available to only about half the population there.

Economists at MIT, the University of British Columbia, and the University of Toronto studied Quebec’s program and reported in 2015 that it caused a “sizeable negative shock” to children’s non-cognitive skills, resulting in “worse health, lower life satisfaction, and higher crime rates later in life” among boys.

On November 1, Democrat-controlled New Mexico became the only State providing universal free child care, as funded by its oil and gas revenue. Every other state, including liberal California and Massachusetts, has rejected this costly socialist approach.

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.

Voluntary Deportations Gain Steam

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

On Monday, the Trump Administration announced it is tripling its bonus to $3,000 for illegal aliens who voluntarily self-deport, along with free travel back to their homeland. Liberals can hardly complain about this Christmas gift to those who crossed our border and remained in our country in violation of our laws.

Many illegal aliens are willing to self-deport. Since Trump became president on January 20, a remarkable 1.9 million illegal aliens have voluntarily returned to their home country according to data released by the Department of Homeland Security, although some dispute this total.

Involuntary deportation costs an estimated $17,000 per individual, so it makes sense to share the savings in a way that everyone comes out ahead. There is room to sweeten this pot further while still trimming the overall expense.

The average lifetime cost of an illegal alien for American taxpayers is $100,000, with some estimates higher than that. The demands placed by these migrants on government entitlement programs, remedial education in schools, law enforcement, and our health care system are far greater than the $3,000 being offered for them to return home.

Self-deportation is the primary method by which President Dwight Eisenhower achieved the largest deportation in American history in 1954. It would have been unthinkable then for liberals to interfere with the president in removing aliens from our country.

CBS News had prepared a smear piece against Trump’s forced deportations, and scheduled it to air on its 60 Minutes show on Sunday evening. But merely two hours before airing, the newly installed CBS editor-in-chief pulled its one-sided story off the air, illustrating that Trump is winning on this issue.

Another victory for Trump came last Thursday, when Wisconsin Judge Hannah Dugan was convicted of a felony count of obstructing federal agents seeking to arrest an illegal alien who was in her courtroom on battery charges. Dugan sent the federal agents in one direction while leading the illegal alien to exit by a private jury door to evade arrest.

It is safer to arrest a suspect in a courtroom than to try to catch and handcuff him on the street, which was a point emphasized by federal prosecutors during the short trial of Judge Dugan. She has continued to collect her full salary of about $175,000 as a judge despite being a felony defendant, and she vows to appeal her conviction.

Liberals are appalled by the jury verdict, as they are accustomed to juries in D.C. rendering every verdict against Trump and his supporters. D.C. and Virginia grand juries have even refused to indict opponents of Trump, despite how indictments are nearly always automatically rendered as prosecutors request.

But Wisconsin is in middle America, and the 12 mostly rural counties that comprised that jury pool are nothing like D.C. Few if any of those jurors in Wisconsin are federal employees, as D.C. juries predominantly are, and Trump won Wisconsin in the last presidential election.

Conservatives who were once disappointed at Trump for not building a full border wall during his first term in office, because Congress failed to fund it, are seeing that deportations have nearly as strong an impact as a wall would.

There has been a 93% decrease in apprehensions at the southern border near San Diego, a 50-year record low of only 1,793 apprehensions. During the Biden Administration a year ago, there were more than 24,700 apprehensions for the same two-month period.

The termination of the catch-and-release program, whereby the Biden Administration would senselessly release illegal aliens in the United States after capturing them, is cited as one reason for the disappearance of nearly all of the illegal crossings. But surely the high-profile deportation program by the Trump Administration is the single biggest factor.

Still, some say that the deportations need to go faster in order to meet the goals set by Trump. There have not been as many workplace raids of illegal aliens as expected.

Where illegals have been arrested en masse and deported, it appears that Republican areas like Omaha, Nebraska, have been targeted more than Democrat strongholds like Los Angeles and New York. The much-publicized raid on a food plant in June in Omaha was in a swing district that Democrats hope to capture in the midterm elections.

The thousands of Democrat loyalists who staff the Department of Homeland Security still have their jobs, and have not been replaced by conservatives. Those staffers appear to be picking regions for deportation for political reasons, rather than to meet Trump’s goals.

Activist judicial rulings have also hindered deportations from Democrat strongholds. For more than two months the U.S. Supreme Court has failed to resolve an emergency petition on this issue by Trump’s Solicitor General, John Sauer, despite quickly ruling in his favor nearly two dozen times on other issues.

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.

Job Visas Are Costing GOP Elections

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

The young men who carried Trump and Republican Senators to victory last November have recently been drifting back to the Democrat Party, or staying home, in the off-year elections. The perception that top jobs in America continue to be given to foreign workers is a big reason why.

Last week Democrats flipped a Republican state house seat in a special election in Georgia, an upset that has rattled Republican leaders nationwide. A Democrat who fell short of 40% last November won this seat with a 12-point gain, signaling the potential for landslide GOP losses in the upcoming midterm elections.

Job postings for recent graduates and students have dropped by more than 16% this year on one popular website. Unemployment for recent graduates is higher than overall unemployment, a historic shift that is bad news for young men.

On Saturday the New York Times ran a long story about the dismay among young Trump supporters (dubbed zoomercons) at the continued use of the H-1B visa program that allows ambitious foreigners to grab jobs in fast-growing industries such as robotics and AI. Most of these jobs are entry-level and do not require any special skills other than an engineering degree that many unemployed American graduates have.

The job prospects for college graduates this year are near a record low. Imagine spending four or five years working hard and incurring a pile of debt, only to be unable to find employment as our own government is recruiting foreigners to fill these positions.

Google, Microsoft, IBM, Adobe, and other tech giants are run by foreigners now and, like chain migration, they tend to hire workers from their homeland. In the most recent fiscal year, 71% of H-1B visa workers came from India and 12% came from mainland China, almost none of whom is Christian or likely to assimilate into American culture.

Last week many H-1B visa holders received official notices from their consulate that their visas have been “prudentially revoked” due to their run-in with law enforcement. But these notices take effect only if the foreigner leaves the U.S., so their impact is to encourage these foreigners never to leave.

A commentator in India, lamenting the brain drain from his country, applauds Trump’s new $100,000 fee for H-1B visas, which is being challenged in court by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and a separate lawsuit by 20 Democrat-led states. Very few of the H-1B visa holders ever return to their home country, even though a visa is supposed to be only temporary.

Big Tech companies have amassed record-breaking wealth, at levels never seen before in world history. They do not need the incentive of H-1B visas, which enable them to hire lower-cost foreigners who would face deportation if they leave to work for a competitor.

It is not only Big Tech that is abusing the visa system. Professional sports, particularly baseball and basketball, are also bringing in too many foreigners to take jobs that should be going to Americans.

Many types of visas for entertainers and other highly paid workers are also being abused to give coveted positions to foreigners rather than American citizens. High-paid finance positions, such as investment banking, medical positions such as physicians, and executive management employment are going to foreigners on visas too.

It is wonderful that Trump is rebuilding American manufacturing, which traditionally offers higher wages than unskilled menial labor. But manufacturing is only 9% of the American workforce, so even if Trump were able to double that it would still not be as large, or as well-paying, as jobs in all the non-manufacturing fields that foreigners are taking on visas.

The professional baseball and basketball players who come here on visas should be sent back home after a year or two, or not allowed here in the first place. American teams can play foreign teams, including competing with them at the Olympics, and nothing is gained while much is lost by promoting and overpaying foreigners to play on American teams.

The three largest contracts in Major League Baseball have been given to foreign players. More than half of the players on the Houston Astros this past baseball season were foreign-born, despite how Texas high schools and colleges are rich in athletic talent.

One of the biggest travesties is in college basketball, where foreign players who are not serious students gobble up scarce scholarships and publicity here at the expense of American players. As budget shortfalls hit college athletic programs due to court-imposed liabilities, it makes even less sense to have foreigners playing on American college basketball teams.

There is a panoply of different visa programs available to foreigners to enter the U.S. at high salaries. These programs should all be shut down as part of the MAGA goal to protect and create good job opportunities for American citizens.

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 most important anti-feminist

Michelle Goldberg writes in the NY Times:

In 1982, Phyllis Schlafly, perhaps the most important anti-feminist in American history, debated the radical feminist law professor Catharine MacKinnon. Schlafly believed that sexism was a thing of the past; to her, if women had different roles in society than men, it was due to their distinct talents and inclinations. She herself, she said, had never experienced discrimination.

Dems Try to Thwart Republican Redistricting

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Republican redistricting is sweeping the nation, from North Carolina through Texas. Districts are typically redrawn every ten years following the census, but they can also be revised by a state legislature at any time.

Control of the House of Representatives hangs in the balance, where the majority is determined by a margin of only a few seats. Whichever side controls the House gets to decide what is voted on, and if Democrats regain power there they will surely try to impeach President Trump yet again.

The redistricting movement can allow Republicans to pick up as many as ten seats, thereby enhancing their current margin of control. The Indiana legislature is debating a plan that would yield a net GOP gain of two seats in that small state alone.

The Supreme Court gave a green light to this effort last month when it stayed a lower court decision in Texas that had blocked the redistricting effort there, which could give Republicans up to 5 more seats in that state alone. Several entrenched Democrat incumbents, including Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-TX), announced their retirement earlier this month rather than seek reelection against a younger Democrat in a newly drawn district.

Texas holds a very early primary, which is less than three months away, so the Supreme Court had to act fast to allow the redrawn lines to take effect. The High Court has not rendered a full ruling in the challenge to this, but in another case appealed from Louisiana the Court is expected to weaken a provision of the Voting Rights Act that Democrats have used to thwart Republican redistricting.

The Missouri legislature recently redrew its congressional districts, as many Democrat-controlled legislatures such as next-door Illinois have already done in the past to maximize their representation in Congress. But Democrats just submitted 300,000 signatures on petitions seeking to overturn the Missouri legislature through a vote of the people at an upcoming election.

The initiative process is allowed in roughly 20 states, and Democrats have been using it in Ohio, Missouri, and many other states to advance abortion, gambling, and marijuana. These measures enable dark money-funded groups to bypass state legislatures entirely, and that is particularly improper for redistricting, which is exclusively for state legislatures to decide.

On Monday, a Trump-appointed federal judge dismissed as premature a lawsuit by Republicans in Missouri to preserve the authority of legislative redistricting from being overturned by a ballot measure. U.S. District Judge Zachary M. Bluestone punted the issue to the Missouri Secretary of State, saying that he “has a tool at his disposal that almost no other litigant could boast — the power to declare the petition unconstitutional himself.”

While the Missouri redistricting would achieve a gain of just one GOP seat, unless it is reversed by a ballot initiative, a similar type of redistricting in Florida could net three to five new GOP seats. Currently 20 out of the 28 congressmen from deep red Florida are Republican.

Florida holds a late primary, nearly half a year later than Texas’s, on August 18 of next year. So there is plenty of time for Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Republican-controlled legislature there to do this right.

Florida, too, has a ballot initiative process that bypasses the legislature, but fortunately it requires a 60% threshold for passage while Missouri and other states require only a simple majority. In Ohio a ballot initiative attempted to establish a more Democrat-favorable process for redistricting but it was defeated last November as Trump won that state by a landslide.

Ohio has a redistricting plan expected to swing two seats to the Republican side, but a stronger plan could do even better. A decade ago Ohio sent more Republicans to Congress than it does today, even though Ohio was less Republican then.

Redistricting in Pennsylvania in 2010 was what helped convert that former Democrat stronghold into a state that Republicans can win, as they have when Trump heads the ticket. But now Democrats control the Pennsylvania legislature and the state supreme court, so there is no prospect of a new redistricting effort there helping the GOP, even though Pennsylvania voter registration is on course to give Republicans a majority next year.

The Department of Justice has sued California over its ballot initiative that would add even more Democrat-majority congressional seats. But in that case the popular vote overturned a prior initiative, not the legislature, as Democrats are improperly doing in Missouri by seeking to block the Republicans’ legislative redistricting there.

It is overdue for courts to invalidate wide-ranging ballot initiatives that encroach on the legislative function, and Judge Bluestone erred in not swatting down the Democrats’ ballot measure in Missouri. There could soon be a swift appeal of his decision to the conservative Eighth Circuit.

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 End of Migration

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

While President Trump placed a moratorium on migration to the U.S. from third-world countries, Pope Leo was speaking against migration in Lebanon. These two leaders with very different backgrounds reached the same conclusion.

The Pope was addressing Lebanon, which has the largest Christian population in the Middle East amid a Muslim majority. He declared, “There are times when it is easier to flee, or simply more convenient to move elsewhere.”

He emphasized that “it takes real courage and foresight to stay or return to one’s own country, and to consider even somewhat difficult situations worthy of love and dedication.” He urged people not to leave their homeland, adding that “we must not forget that remaining in our homeland and working day by day to develop a civilization of love and peace remains something very valuable.”

Joe Biden should have adopted that approach for the 200,000 Afghans whom he disastrously brought into our country. One of them has been charged with shooting two National Guard soldiers in Washington, D.C., killing one young woman and critically wounding a young man.

The shooter, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, was reportedly living in an apartment without beds, and repeatedly playing the violent video game “Call of Duty” before driving nearly 3,000 miles across our country to go on his rampage. This is not assimilation that is needed for an immigrant to become a productive member of American society.

Biden brought in more refugees than any other president since the end of the Cold War. In 2024 alone, Biden transported 105,500 refugees from multiple third-world countries into the United States, at a time when American college students are struggling to find jobs.

Biden’s lax immigration and refugee policy brings in future Democrat voters, which is the only way that the Democrat Party can survive demographically in the long term. Surveys show that liberal young women are much less likely to have children than conservative young women, and Republican states are growing faster than Democrat states are.

Bringing in hordes of refugees and other migrants has been done by Democrat presidents for political reasons, not because it makes sense for our country or for the migrants. It is impossible to screen so many people from primitive countries like Afghanistan, and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said that 29-year-old Lakanwal was radicalized after he resettled here.

Refugees are not even required to swear allegiance to the United States upon arrival here. It is only as a final stage in obtaining citizenship that Congress requires an oath of allegiance to our Constitution and laws.

Any foreigner unwilling to swear his full allegiance to the U.S. should not be allowed to remain here, but should be returned to his country of origin. This should be the first step, not merely the last, in every immigration program that is not discontinued.

Trump has properly ordered a “comprehensive review and a re-interview of all refugees admitted from January 20, 2021, to February 20, 2025,” which is when refugees entered our country under Biden’s policies. Trump referenced a Citizenship and Immigration Services finding that the Biden Administration “potentially prioritized expediency, quantity, and admissions over quality interviews and detailed screening and vetting.”

The Biden Administration’s policy allowed millions from all over the world to cross our southern border into our country, with no way to screen them. Many of these illegal aliens were from hostile nations, which Trump has already shut down by beefing up border security.

On November 12, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops issued its first “Special Message” in a dozen years, to address the migration issue. Although reported by the liberal media as a rebuke of Trump, in fact it included a strong statement against illegal migration.

“We recognize that nations have a responsibility to regulate their borders and establish a just and orderly immigration system for the sake of the common good. Without such processes, immigrants face the risk of trafficking and other forms of exploitation.”

Less than a week later, Pope Leo declared, “No one has said that the United States should have open borders. I think every country has the right to determine who enters, how, and when.”

In September, the Southern Baptist Convention cut its ties with a migration coalition of evangelical groups which has been criticized by Trump supporters for being too permissive toward migrants. White evangelical voters supported Trump by a record 84% in 2024 as he campaigned hard against the open-border policies of Biden and Harris.

But Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), once considered the frontrunner to become Harris’s 2024 running mate, said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that Trump’s crackdown on migrants constitutes “the U.S. Government harassing” refugees. The real harassment has been Democrats bringing in migrants who should not be here.

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.

“It’s OVER!” Trump Targets Fraud by Somali Immigrants

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

President Trump is ending the gravy train of fraud in Minnesota, much of it perpetrated by Somalis relocated here and some of the money funding terrorism back in Africa. Trump vows to end the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Somalis, which has lasted many years longer than intended.

Trump’s acting U.S. Attorney for Minnesota, Joseph H. Thompson, recently indicted six from Somalia and two others for wire fraud. They allegedly defrauded Minnesota’s Medicaid-funded housing stabilization program.

This comes after 56 people, mostly from Somalia, pled guilty in connection with a federal investigation into a Minnesota nonprofit organization called Feeding Our Future. Even the Washington Post Editorial Board expressed its outrage at the vast extent of fraud in this state run by Governor Tim Walz, who was the Democrats’ Vice Presidential nominee last November.

Trump observes that “Somali gangs are terrorizing the people of that great State, and BILLIONS of dollars are missing. Send them back where they came from.”

A total of 78 defendants associated with Feeding Our Future have been charged with crimes. In just two years, the organization increased its take of government funding from $3 million in 2019 to nearly $200 million in 2021. Meanwhile, Medicaid payments on autism claims increased by $200 million in Minnesota between 2020 and 2024, and federal charges have been filed based on alleged kickbacks to the Somali community.

Minnesota has the largest Somali population in the U.S., who were settled here under the TPS program and among whom many have become American citizens. Earlier Trump terminated the TPS program for 600,000 Venezuelans and 500,000 Haitians.

It was over 30 years ago that an ill-advised President George H.W. Bush brought Somalis into our country under this temporary program, beginning in 1991. No “temporary” program should last more than three decades as this one has.

Acting U.S. Attorney John Thompson is an experienced career prosecutor, and he sounds just like the Trump appointees as he uproots fraud by immigrants that is bleeding our scarce government resources. He estimates that the defrauding of government programs in Minnesota exceeds $1 billion.

“It’s an extraordinary problem, the fraud that’s pervasive in this state,” Thompson told a news station in an interview in July. A Somali American former investigator confirmed this problem in an article published in the Minnesota Reformer.

“Minnesota’s public programs don’t adequately guard against organization fraud,” the Somali American said. He added that many Somalis are “skilled professionals whose experience and education credentials are not recognized in the U.S.”

“Somalis inherently trust one another. This creates a vast opening for fraudsters,” he continued.

Decades ago Phyllis Schlafly criticized the lack of assimilation by refugees and other immigrants in our country. The fraudulent conduct worsens because tribal behavior dominates in these non-assimilated communities, rather than a competitive market that helps keep participants honest.

Many millions of these dollars stolen from the government in Minnesota are funneled to Al-Shabaab back in Somalia. Al-Shabaab seeks to impose strict Sharia Law in Somalia, and is affiliated with the notorious al-Qaeda.

The City Journal quotes a former official who worked on the Minneapolis Joint Terrorism Task Force to say, “Every scrap of economic activity, in the Twin Cities [Minneapolis-St. Paul], in America, throughout Western Europe, anywhere Somalis are concentrated, every cent that is sent back to Somalia benefits Al-Shabaab in some way.”

“The largest funder of Al-Shabaab is the Minnesota taxpayer,” observed another expert on terrorism quoted by the City Journal.

House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, who is a Republican congressman from Minnesota, demanded on Monday that there be an investigation into this. “Minnesota has become the land of 10,000 frauds under Tim Walz,” declared Rep. Emmer in a play on its “10,000 lakes” nickname.

News that stolen taxpayer dollars are funding Al-Shabaab terrorists “is not only a grave national security concern, it’s a slap in the face to the hardworking, law-abiding people of Minnesota,” Rep. Emmer said.

Located in East Africa on the equator, Somalian temperatures commonly exceed 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and its capital, Mogadishu, has been called the world’s most dangerous city. It was senseless for Somalis ever to be relocated to the cold climate and different culture of Minnesota in the first place.

But so many Somalis have resettled now in Minnesota that they have oversized political clout in elections there. “If you don’t win the Somali community, you can’t win Minneapolis,” observed former Minnesota state senator David Gaither. “And if you don’t win Minneapolis, you can’t win the state,” he added.

Amid all this fraud, Gov. Tim Walz seeks reelection to a third term as governor of Minnesota. Republicans are campaigning against him on this issue of rampant fraud under Walz’s watch.

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.