GOP Should Focus on Young Voters’ Hard Times

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Hard times have hit young Americans, who are a pivotal voting bloc. Jobs are scarce, housing is unaffordable, student debt is suffocating, and foreign labor has taken away opportunities from American workers.

A downturn in the hiring of college graduates leaves the class of 2026 victims facing the weakest job market in five years. A National Association of Colleges and Employers survey found that 51% of employers rate the job market for college grads as “poor” or merely “fair,” and only 2% said it is “excellent.”

This does not bode well on Election Day for the GOP. The landslide victory by socialist Zohran Mamdani for Mayor of New York City was propelled by young voters, despite warnings that electing him would be a big mistake.

Polling indicates that 75% of young voters in New York City cast their ballots for Mamdani, and there was a surge in youth turnout. The blowout victories by Democrats in New Jersey and Virginia were also propelled by sharp increases in turnout by young voters.

The redistricting ballot initiative in California to send more Democrats to Congress was enacted with 80% support by young voters, and a large turnout by them. While some of this is due to a superior get-out-the-vote operation by Leftist groups, young people are struggling financially today.

Young adults should not face astronomical costs for health insurance, as they are mostly healthy and typically need coverage against only catastrophic losses. They should be able to purchase low-cost health insurance that is not dependent on their employer, so that they do not lose it when they are laid off or switch jobs.

Young adults are vastly overpaying for health insurance, as they are required to fund costly care they typically never need. The current system of tying tax breaks to employer-based health insurance no longer works, as the record 14.8% of American-born, working-age men who lack a job has increased from 4.2% in 1960.

Young men today are additionally burdened by gambling debts, due to the explosion in sports gambling that is heavily promoted with advertising. One out of every four of these men is unable to pay a bill because of his gambling losses.

Only 44% of young voters aged 18-29 have any investments in the stock market, so news of Wall Street records does not help with that demographic. Most of those voters are in debt.

In an interview with Tucker Carlson weeks before he was assassinated, Charlie Kirk explained how debt has radicalized the young generation. Kirk explained that in the 1970s and 1980s, the price of a home was about three times the average income.

Today, the price of a home is as high as seven times the average income. The average age of a first-time homeowner has increased by ten years, from 30 to 40, and people are marrying later, perhaps likewise due to economic difficulties.

“Gen Z owes the most money in any generation in history,” warned Charlie Kirk in the interview. He added that young adults are not living beyond their means, but “most are actually doing this to meet their means.”

Verizon just announced its biggest layoff ever, cutting loose a breathtaking 15,000 jobs. Layoffs by large, typically profitable corporations just reached their highest level for an October in 22 years.

Ending the racket of allowing hundreds of thousands of foreigners to continue to take jobs away from American college graduates would help. For fiscal year 2025, the four highest exploiters of H-1B visas for foreigners are Amazon, Meta (Facebook), Microsoft, and Google.

Private equity is a culprit in increasing costs and eliminating jobs, and Republicans are allowing Democrats like Mamdani to take the lead in scrutinizing predatory practices. Mamdani picked as co-chair of his transition team Lina Khan, the former Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair who investigated private equity tactics.

Toys “R” Us was a well-liked retailer employing 31,000 people, until private equity acquired it in a leveraged buyout. Private equity typically loads its target with debt, and a company acquired in this way is 10 times more likely to go bankrupt as Toys “R” Us then did.

Other companies that spiraled downward into bankruptcy after being acquired by private equity include Red Lobster restaurants, Payless shoes, Party City, Sears, Envision Healthcare, and the multi-state hospital system Steward Health Care. Each time this happens, jobs and healthy competition are lost, and prices increase.

An estimated 40% of emergency rooms in our country are controlled by private equity firms, and deaths increased as a result. Billed charges for visiting an emergency room are far higher, even after adjusting for inflation, than a generation ago.

Republicans should address the economic hardship of young voters as a high priority to have any chance of electoral success.

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.

“Full, Complete” Pardons for 2020 Presidential Electors

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Fake news was working overtime on Monday by declaring, without authority, that the “full, complete” presidential pardons related to the 2020 presidential election cannot protect against bogus state charges arising from that election. The liberal media wrongly insisted that the Pardon Clause in the U.S. Constitution applies only to charges brought by federal prosecutors.

Not so. The Pardon Clause states that the President “shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.” Every attempt in court to narrow the scope of the Pardon Clause has failed.

Our system of dual sovereigns, federal and state, is subject to the Supremacy Clause, which means that state sovereignty cannot limit the scope of the Pardon Clause. It was modeled on the vast, nearly unlimited pardon power of the King of England.

The newly pardoned 77 alternate electors, federal officials, attorneys and activists who objected to voter fraud in 2020 were acting in defense of the integrity of a presidential election, and thus in defense of the United States. Their conduct is fully pardonable by the President, which Trump has appropriately done.

Yet naysayers argue that the term “United States” in the Pardon Clause means only crimes prosecuted by the federal government. If that were true, then the Supreme Court would not have upheld in Ex parte Wells (1856) the last-minute commutation of a death penalty by President Millard Fillmore of a man convicted of murder in a District of Columbia court, as there were no federal common law crimes.

Federal law never denied women the right to vote, but New York prosecuted Susan B. Anthony for voting illegally in the 1872 presidential election, and prosecuted local officials for allowing her to vote. After his reelection as our 18th President, U.S. Grant pardoned the state officials for their violation of state law, and in 2020 President Trump pardoned Susan B. Anthony for casting an illegal vote.

Just last week an all-Democrat panel of the Second Circuit ruled in favor of Trump’s argument that the charges against him in the so-called hush money case that resulted in 34 felonies should have been heard in a federal court. The charges brought by the New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg accused Trump of violating campaign finance laws during his 2016 campaign for President of the United States.

If a case can be heard in federal court, as all Trump-related cases can be, then the charges are pardonable by the president. No one credibly doubted that President Ford’s pardon of President Nixon protected him against all potential charges relating to the Watergate scandal, including non-federal ones.

The tradition of complete pardons by the president, which began with President George Washington, has always precluded prosecution of the underlying conduct in state court. Those who doubt this broad scope of the pardon power cannot cite any example of a beneficiary of a presidential pardon being prosecuted in state court for the same conduct.

Even Democrat-dominated New York courts shut down an attempted prosecution of Paul Manafort after President Trump granted him a pardon. While the rationale for that decision was based on New York’s strong rule against double jeopardy, the result was to prohibit a first-of-its-kind state prosecution of conduct excused by a presidential pardon.

The ban on slavery in the 13th Amendment to the Constitution prohibits its use “within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” This is not a reference to the federal government but to all of the States and territories, as demonstrated by the plural pronoun for jurisdiction.

The U.S. Supreme Court emphatically held after the Civil War, in Ex parte Garland (1867), that the presidential pardon “is unlimited, with the exception” for cases of impeachment. “It extends to every offence known to the law,” not merely to federal crimes.

Alexander Hamilton, a Framer of our Constitution, wrote favorably of a broad pardon power in The Federalist No. 74. Hamilton explained, “The criminal code of every country partakes so much of necessary severity that without an easy access to exceptions in favor of unfortunate guilt, justice would wear a countenance too sanguinary and cruel.”

The use of the term “United States” to mean only the federal government and only federal laws is a modern distortion of the elite in Washington, D.C., to puff themselves up. The national liberal media distorts this further by obsessively reporting on D.C. as if that enclave represented the entire United States.

As the Supreme Court recognized in Schick v. Reed (1974), the Framers of the Pardon Clause stated that this power is a “prerogative” of the President, which ought not be “fettered or embarrassed.” The presidential pardon power would be impermissibly undermined if federal charges could be refiled as state charges by an unscrupulous local prosecutor like Alvin Bragg.

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.

National Review on Phyllis Schlafly

Rachel Lu published The Rise of a Populist Influencer in the Age of Print Media, archived here, in National Review.

There are responses by Mark Hemingway and Anne Schlafly, archived here.

Lu wrote a brief rejoinder.

Lu takes some unnecessary and unfounded cheap shots.

Update: Another response is National Review Smears Schlafly.

Road Carnage Caused by Illegal Aliens

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Not one, but two triple-fatality car accidents were recently caused by illegal aliens driving trucks with commercial driver’s licenses (CDL) issued by California. Florida has investigated and uncovered devastating details about the road carnage wrought in its state by a California resident who never should have received a CDL.

Driving in India is on the left side of its roads, the opposite of here in the U.S. Speeds are typically lower in India compared with the U.S., and the high-velocity, high-congestion movement on our interstates and turnpikes is unlike travel in India.

In our country illegally from India, Harjinder Singh had failed his CDL exam 10 times within two months in Washington State in 2023, but then that liberal state granted him this license anyway. That authorized him to drive large trucks on our highways nationwide.

He next obtained a similar license from California, where he was residing this year. Driving a truck in Florida, he attempted a shockingly reckless maneuver that no American trucker would ever do.

While driving northbound in the outside lane near Fort Pierce on the Florida Turnpike, Singh unexpectedly turned his 18-wheeler across all the inner northbound lanes to make a bizarre, illegal U-turn in a median area limited to authorized vehicles. High-speed traffic behind him had no way to anticipate that swerving maneuver, and a minivan carrying three could not stop.

All three in the minivan were killed by the collision, but Singh and his passenger were uninjured. He is being held without bond in the local St. Lucie County Jail.

Singh has an insufficient understanding of English to drive a big rig on our turnpikes, as he was doing. His reckless U-turn was prohibited by signage and tradition well-known to American drivers, but he cannot read road signs if he cannot understand English.

After the crash, the U.S. Department of Transportation discovered that Singh correctly answered only 2 out of 12 questions in English. He could read only 1 in 4 road signs.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has granted 62,000 CDLs to illegal aliens, which makes the tragic accidents inevitable until the Trump Administration cracks down against California for allowing this. Merely two months later, another illegal alien with the last name of “Singh” crashed his truck on a California highway, likewise killing three in his accident.

Jashanpreet Singh, apparently having no relation to Harjinder Singh, had illegally entered our country, and was caught but then released by the Biden Administration. Gov. Newsom turned him loose on our highways to drive big trucks here.

On October 21, Jashanpreet Singh caused the deaths of three people and injured several more by rear-ending them at high speed. He has been charged with three counts of gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated and one count of driving under the influence of a drug.

Prosecutors allege that this 21-year-old, which is the minimum age for receiving a CDL for interstate trucking, was driving at a high speed in his truck. He has pleaded not guilty while his supporters demand the return to him of his Sikh turban as he sits in jail.

This Singh’s understanding of English is so poor that he has requested an interpreter at court hearings to translate into his native tongue of Punjabi for him. Punjabi is a language spoken in the Punjab region of India and Pakistan, and it is estimated that 316,000 Indian migrants into the U.S., about half of whom have settled in California, speak this language.

Sean Duffy, Trump’s DOT Secretary, has pulled $160 million in federal funding from California due to its failure to comply with federal standards in issuing CDLs to illegal aliens, many of whom cannot read our road signs. Earlier, Secretary Duffy pulled an additional $40 million in funding.

“It would have never happened if Gavin Newsom had followed our new rules,” Duffy explained. “California broke the law and now three people are dead and two are hospitalized. These people deserve justice. There will be consequences.”

New regulations issued by the Trump Administration on Sept. 26 required California and all states to verify a driver’s status in the U.S. before granting an application for CDL privileges. Despite this, California ignored the Trump Administration’s regulations by expanding Singh’s driving privileges for interstate trucking on Oct. 15, which was apparently his 21st birthday.

As Trump’s Department of Homeland Security responded on X, “This tragedy follows a disturbing pattern of criminal illegal aliens driving commercial vehicles on American roads, directly threatening public safety.”

A 20-year-old American is considered too inexperienced to receive an

interstate trucking license, and a young driver typically needs to be 25 to rent a car. Secretary Duffy should suspend California’s authority to license interstate truckers until it stops licensing 21-year-old illegal aliens unable to understand English.

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.

Conservative Triumphs Worldwide

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Called “ultraconservative” by the liberal media, Japan’s new prime minister is its first woman ever in that position. But a Japanese feminist author told NBC News that Japan attaining its first female prime minister “doesn’t make me happy.”

Sanae Takaichi takes the reins of power in Japan with strongly conservative positions on gender and marriage. She’s much more like Phyllis Schlafly than Hillary Clinton or Kamala Harris.

Takaichi opposes same-sex marriage and is against allowing married woman to keep their maiden name as their last name after marriage. She favors the Japanese tradition of male-only succession in its imperial family.

She is unlikely to support DEI. She will strengthen the Japanese military which would help us by creating a buffer against communist China, and she’ll meet next week with President Trump during his Asia trip.

She has supported tougher immigration policies in Japan. Like Trump, she is an advocate of hard work: “I myself will throw out the term ‘work-life balance.’ I will work and work and work and work and work,” she said.

Her election was made possible by support from the Japan Innovation Party, called Ishin, which the liberal media describe as far-right. The same childless Japanese feminist author, Chizuko Ueno, complained that Takaichi “sees herself as the Japanese version of Margaret Thatcher.”

The issue of women’s rights pales in comparison with the crisis in Japan of its vanishing birth rate. Its population is contracting, falling from 127 million in 2015 to only 123 million today, a trend that will soon be nearly impossible to reverse.

Japan’s population is declining at a rate of 0.5 to 1.5% annually now. That leaves fewer young workers supporting its vast elderly population.

The median age in Japan is 50 years old, meaning that half of its people are aging out of the workforce. By comparison, the median age in Florida as the place of retirement for many Americans is only 43 years old, and in booming Texas, the median age is only 36.

There cannot be economic growth without young workers, and Japan’s real gross domestic product decreased by an annualized 0.2% between the last quarter of 2024 and the first quarter of this year. Japan is burdened by the highest debt-to-GDP ratio of any developed country, a whopping 240%.

The number of childbirths in Japan dropped in the first half of 2025 by 3.1% from a year ago. A record-low 340,000 babies were born there in the first six months of this year, far too few to sustain its future.

The decline in births there is plummeting even faster than projections. While some blame male traditions in the country, the Japanese people are turning to a conservative woman to try to save them.

Takaichi’s election is part of a trend worldwide which also recently resulted in the first conservative president of Bolivia in 20 years. Rodrigo Paz won a stunning upset against Leftist control of that South American country, and he vows to establish a better relationship with the United States.

This is terrific news as Bolivia is the third-largest producer of illegal cocaine in the world. In 2023 alone, 33 tons of cocaine were seized by anti-drug efforts in that country.

The recent Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to an anti-communist in Venezuela, María Corina Machado, who was forced into hiding after the Leftist dictator Nicolás Maduro stole the election from her last year. Machado is widely considered to have won that election for president of Venezuela while campaigning on a platform of getting tough against illegal drugs and improving relations with the U.S.

When the Norway committee awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to Machado, she immediately praised Trump and called him to let him know that he should have won. Machado’s conservative positions are popular in Venezuela, and her campaign rallies drew large crowds just as Trump’s did.

The left-wing political party ruling Great Britain today – the Labour Party – has fallen to a rock-bottom 19% in public support, according to recent polling. This is less than half of its support at the beginning of last year, and the liberal media are distressed at this without understanding why.

Trust in the liberal President of France, Emmanuel Macron, fell to a record-low 14% this month according to a poll funded by the business daily Les Echos. President Trump’s approval rating in the United States is three times higher than that.

In June, Trump-endorsed conservative Karol Nawrocki prevailed in Poland over the liberal Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski. The conservative Prime Minister of nearby Hungary, Viktor Orbán, cheered this “fantastic victory.”

Back home, liberals are perplexed by Trump’s growing popularity during the Democrat-induced partial shutdown of the government. To understand better, they should take note of conservative victories sweeping the globe.

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.

Portland Protesters Deserve the National Guard

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

On Saturday night, October 4, a federal district judge blocked President Trump from deploying the National Guard to restore order in Portland, Oregon, which is notorious for the Antifa riots there in 2020 that shut down much of the city. Portland is one of the most Left-wing large cities in the United States, comprised overwhelmingly of white liberals.

Violent protesters in Portland, probably funded by radical groups from elsewhere, have spat at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, obstructed their vehicles, and even started a fire outside of an ICE facility. More recently additional protesters against ICE have shown up naked as part of their bike ride, which locals defend as a longstanding Portland tradition.

On October 8, the White House posted that “for years, an Antifa-led hellfire has turned Portland into a wasteland of firebombs, beatings, and brazen attacks on federal officers and property – yet the Fake News remains in shameful denial about the Radical Left’s reign of terror.”

President Trump has posted quotes from many in Portland about the violence they face and fear. “Yesterday morning, I was broken into again for the tenth time,” said one downtown Portland business owner. “We need help here and something needs to be done, so if [the National Guard] is what we need to do to get our leaders paying attention to what’s happening in Portland, then I think it’s a good thing.”

“Since early June, Antifa militants have laid siege to the ICE field office in south Portland,” the White House points out. “The terrorists have violently breached the facility by using a stop sign as a battering ram, hurled explosives and projectiles, burned American flags, viciously assaulted, attacked, and injured officers, doxed officers, berated neighbors, and even rolled out a guillotine.”

In a recent op-ed for TheHill.com, renowned law professor Jonathan Turley decried Democrats who have responded by denying the existence of Antifa. “Antifa was first created in the 1920s, associated with the Weimar-era German communist group Antifaschistische Aktion,” Turley observes, and “it is very real.”

Trump’s Attorney General Pam Bondi declared that “Just like we did with cartels, we are going to take the same approach, President Trump, with Antifa – destroy the entire organization from top to bottom. We’re going to take them apart.”

At first the federal judge blocked President Trump from using the Oregon National Guard. No problem for Trump, as he then directed the California National Guard to restore order in Portland, but the judge issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) against them, too.

In an expedited appeal to the Ninth Circuit, where the Republicans comprise about 40% of that court, a fortunate draw of two Trump-appointed judges was randomly assigned to the three-judge panel for this case. Their questioning was critical of a district court judge preventing a president from restoring law and order.

Some of the Portland protesters “are violent people,” the Department of Justice attorney Eric McArthur informed the appellate judges. “The president is entitled to say enough is enough and bring in the National Guard to reinforce the regular forces,” he argued.

Ninth Circuit judges Ryan Nelson and Bridget Bade, both previously appointed by Trump, seemed to agree. Their questions emphasized that the president has broad authority to establish law and order.

“It just seems a little counterintuitive to me that the City of Portland can come in and say no, you need to do it differently,” commented Judge Ryan Nelson during the oral argument. He was unpersuaded by Oregon’s attorney, Stacy Chaffin, who argued that presidential deference “has a limit, and that limit is this case.”

Oregon’s attorney insisted that the rationale given by Trump for sending in the National Guard is “untethered to the facts,” as the district court judge had held. The only appellate panel judge likely to agree with that assessment is Susan Graber, a law school classmate of Bill and Hillary Clinton who was appointed by Bill to this court.

Meanwhile, a similar standoff between local officials and the Trump Administration is occurring in Chicago. Its Mayor Brandon Johnson has only a 6.6% approval rating among Chicago voters according to one poll, while 79.9% disapprove of his performance.

As in Portland, a district court judge granted a request by Democrats to block Trump’s use of the National Guard to restore law and order in violence-ridden Chicago. But on an expedited appeal, the Seventh Circuit has already ruled in favor of Trump by partly staying that injunction against him and allowing the troops to remain in northern Illinois.

The No Kings protest this Saturday is co-sponsored by MoveOn.org, which was founded in 1998 with funding from the flying toaster screen saver. Its original slogan in 1998 was “Censure President Clinton and move on to pressing issues facing the nation.”

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.

No Nobel Prize for Trump yet

The NY Post reports:

Nobel Peace Prize winner and Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado on Friday dedicated her award to President Trump and his “decisive support” of democracy in the South American nation.

Trump said that he deserved the prize for ending 8 wars.

Prediction Markets are Gambling on Steroids

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Prediction markets have rapidly become a mega-billion-dollar industry of nationwide gambling through cell phones. These are online platforms where people bet on outcomes of almost any event, such as whether a team will win the Super Bowl, whereby the cost of the event contract is less than the amount paid out to those who guessed correctly.

This is gambling, and 20 red and blue states prohibit these bets on sports. Betting on elections has long been banned everywhere in the U.S. and, until 2005, in England, while nearly every state prohibits wagering by anyone under 21.

But new prediction markets bypass all of these sensible limitations, by accepting these bets on websites over the internet. On Tuesday the Wall Street Journal reported that the owner of the New York Stock Exchange, Intercontinental Exchange, has agreed to invest up to $2 billion in Polymarket, which is not even the largest company in this emerging market.

High school students, typically boys, are suddenly spending their time and their family’s money by wagering in this manner and through “sportsbooks,” which are apps on their phones. DraftKings and FanDuel, whose ads are pervasive, are two sportsbooks that pepper teenagers and everyone else with promotions and other enticements to gamble.

More than 2 million young men today are “NEET,” which means Not in Employment, Education, or Training. Instead, many of them are betting weekly or daily on their favorite sports teams.

Once addicted, a gambler then wants to bet on any sporting event. Illustrating how powerful this addiction is, $31.7 million was wagered in Colorado on ping pong matches earlier this year, in January alone.

The New York Times reported on Sunday that companies, most notably Kalshi, are accepting billions of dollars in bets while bypassing state regulations that protect teenagers and athletes against this vice. Congress has failed to hold any hearings on this frenzied activity that seems likely to erupt in a major scandal between now and the midterm elections next year.

Online sports gambling is illegal in California and Texas, but Kalshi circumvents their state laws in taking bets from residents there. With millions wagered on individual performances in a game, known as prop bets, the incentive for corruption or intimidation of players by gamblers is severe.

Scandals have already appeared, signaling something worse that is yet to come. Major League Baseball has for three months been investigating two errant throws by a Cleveland Guardians starting pitcher that opened early innings this past summer, as a spike in bets on whether those pitches would be a “ball” or a “strike” was flagged.

Kalshi and other companies rushing into prediction markets insist that states cannot regulate it as states have long regulated sportsbooks and traditional gambling. Instead, Kalshi and others accept only the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) as having authority over it.

But currently the CFTC has only one out of the five commissioners it is supposed to have: the Biden-appointed Caroline D. Pham. The traditional expertise of the CFTC is in regulating corn or wheat futures for farmers, not gambling on the Super Bowl and on individual performances within games.

In states that allow sports gambling, there are important limits such as New Jersey’s ban on bets on college games played within the State, and wagers on NJ college teams playing anywhere. This helps protect local college players against being pressured by gamblers to underperform.

Prediction markets ignore the 21-year-old age limit imposed by states on gambling. Litigation over the legality of prediction markets is pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third and Fourth Circuits, and in district court in Nevada, but changes are unfolding faster than courts are keeping up.

A Pew Research poll found 43% of adult Americans oppose sports betting for being harmful, while only 7% praise it. Allowing wagers on elections makes even less sense, particularly in the current climate of political violence.

Some Republicans fret about possible political repercussions from the ongoing partial government shutdown, but negative fallout from a corruption scandal or violence resulting from this gambling crisis could be worse. Twice before in American history there has been a public backlash against gambling such that it was prohibited after being allowed to flourish.

The ease of gambling on phones and the use of AI to exploit gambling proclivities make this vice more dangerous than ever before. Already in September $2.5 billion was wagered on NFL games in the prediction markets, while more than $10 billion in additional wagers were processed by sportsbooks.

Unlike sportsbooks and casinos, prediction markets do not pay any state gambling taxes, and there is no redeeming value to this activity. An estimated 90% of gamblers never seek any help for their addiction, so this is pure exploitation without any guardrail.

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.

Shut It Down, Already!

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Both the Right and Left seem fine with a government shutdown, so let the drama unfold. Republicans in Congress have proposed a clean funding bill that continues the Biden-era spending levels through November with no additional expenditures, while Democrats demand far more.

With Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) retiring next year and no longer acting as a Senate leader, his Chicken Little predictions of political disaster for Republicans from a shutdown ring hollow. Many in MAGA supported the reelection of Trump for the purpose of shutting down the government, and this appears to have been the primary goal of mega-donor Elon Musk.

Liberals use false spin for their benefit by insisting that a shutdown always hurts the Republican Party the most. The Republican Congress shut down the government for 21 days in late 1995 through early 1996, and in fact gained two Senate seats in the subsequent election, despite the Democrat Clinton prevailing over the weak Republican nominee Bob Dole at the top of the ticket.

Clinton failed to garner a majority in the popular vote after that shutdown, and Republicans held onto their majority in the House of Representatives. Republicans also maintained their large majority in state governorships, without any net loss.

Google AI says that Republicans received most of the blame for that 1995-96 shutdown but, even if true, that was decades before MAGA and the growing public opinion that the federal government needs to be shut down. The federal debt at the end of the 1995 fiscal year was only $5 trillion, while today it is grotesquely more than 7 times that amount, at a monstrous $37.5 trillion.

Public contempt for the federal government and officials in Congress is sky high. The leadership of both political parties on Capitol Hill has disapproval ratings greater than their approval ratings, in another indication that the American public would be just fine with unplugging their lavish salaries and benefits.

A recent Gallup poll found that only 23% of Americans have a favorable opinion of the federal government, while 61% have a negative view. These approval and disapproval ratings are worse than those of every other sector, including pharmaceuticals, oil, and utilities.

The federal government is plainly broken in many other ways, too. Federal workers are almost unanimously anti-Trump, and their one-sided verdicts against Trump supporters in court cases in D.C. have been appalling.

Foreign aid has continued to flow to prop up regimes in faraway lands and to fund warfare. Trump has taken laudable steps to end USAID and other foreign spending that spreads liberal harm around the world, but shutting down the federal government may be the only foolproof way to end this.

Eight months into the Trump Administration, many in MAGA conclude that it is impossible to clean house in the Swamp. Shutting down the federal government is the only viable way to end injustices wrought by the Feds.

Democrat leaders in Congress may be supporting a shutdown to appease their base of the far Left. Zohran Mamdani, a self-described socialist, is leading by a landslide in the polling for the next New York City mayor to be elected in five weeks.

Progressives complained loudly and bitterly about the Democrat leadership who agreed to the Republican bill last March to continue federal spending, because it led to trimming Medicaid funding. Progressives indicate that they may challenge the Democrat establishment next year based on their capitulation to Trump.

Meanwhile Trump’s brilliant Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, has devised a clever plan to lay off much of the federal workforce permanently, in what is called a reduction in force (RIF), if Democrats force a shutdown. Democrats are squawking because these federal workers are overwhelmingly anti-Trump, but this has not yet caused the Dems to budge on their unreasonable demands.

Liberals fulminate about how it is unprecedented to conduct RIFs during a government shutdown, but this ingenious approach is likely to succeed. While federal agencies have not traditionally implemented RIFs during shutdowns, the law is clear that they have the discretion to do this if they abide by the rules as Vought is explaining to them.

Democrats can keep the government open by enacting a clean funding bill, but instead insist that Republicans provide free health care to migrants whom Biden wrongly reclassified as “lawfully present.” Trump properly revoked that special status, which appropriately renders them ineligible for free health care, and Republicans are right to protect Americans against the medical costs of illegal aliens.

Given the 60-vote threshold in the Senate, eight Democrats must join the Republicans to keep the federal government going. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) has vowed to vote Nay because the spending is too high under the Republican bill, even without tacking on the additional Democrat spending demands.

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.

Phyllis was right about the ERA

Ted Meehan writes:

In the late 1960’s and early 70’s, as the feminist movement was rising in influence, its leaders wrote and promoted passage of an Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) presumably to guarantee the rights of women. Very few people saw any problem with agreeing that women and men should be equal under the law.

The prescient Phyllis Schlafly led opposition to passage of the ERA, and took plenty of abuse for doing so. What objection could justify opposing such a nice gesture that codified what nearly everyone already believed?

Phyllis recognized this as a legislative Trojan Horse that could force upon America, a number of unintended results that very few people approved. She feared passage would open the door to legalizing abortion. She warned that some people could use the ERA to justify men entering women’s bathrooms or locker rooms. She also believed that ERA could remove some legal protections for women – like Title IX. She was called an alarmist and was ridiculed. But a look at America in 2025 shows her to be the visionary she was.

Some public service jobs have physical requirements. A fire department or police candidate may be required to lift and carry a 200-pound man for 100 yards in under 45 seconds. If women firefighters are physically unable to perform such a task, are they disqualified? Well, no. Recognizing the unequal physical attributes of men and women, some physical qualifications were lowered – only for women – to allow some women to qualify. Discrimination lawsuits by men have not been noted. But a strict interpretation of the ERA would certainly prohibit lowering physical standards to favor one gender over the other.

The pseudo-scientific transgender movement has had nearly no effect at all on men’s sports. Can anyone recall reports of men feeling threatened by a transitioning female displacing male athletes on any sports teams? There have been none! But we regularly see controversy over female records being broken by biological males. Or females being displaced or injured after being physically overmatched by a post-pubescent biological male. We read reports of trans-identifying biological males entering female locker rooms, or bathrooms – with some even sexually assaulting the females! Once again, score this one for Phyllis Schlafly.

What about abortion? How could something like that possibly be justified by the ERA? Well, today three pro-abortion judges – Christine Donahue, Kevin Dougherty, and David Wecht (up for retention) — are citing ERA to argue that a “gender-based law” is unconstitutional. They argue that since only mothers (females) are prohibited from having abortions, then laws regulating abortion, discriminate only against women, and so they are unconstitutional. So, for these judges, the ERA contradicts and supersedes basic laws of nature! Imagine the outcry from feminists if the same abuse of logic was directed at them!

The Equal Rights Amendment is not a part of our federal Constitution, but the passage of a state version in Pennsylvania in 1971 should not be cited to declare abortion to be a constitutional right — or to require taxpayers to fund elective abortions. Our elected legislature — with approval by our elected governors — has passed laws to regulate abortion – as had been required by the since-overturned Roe v. Wade decision, with the recent Dobbs decision. Absent Roe, no federal law imposes abortion on states. Roe’s overturning should teach us that laws passed by legislators – not lawsuits by profit-motivated abortion businesses, decided by pro-abortion judges – should be the basis for governance.

Haul Jack Smith before a Miami Grand Jury

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Eight months of all talk and no action in prosecuting Leftists has left President Trump frustrated. On Saturday night, Trump publicly criticized his Attorney General, Pam Bondi, for achieving so little so far.

“Pam: I have reviewed over 30 statements and posts saying that, essentially, ‘same old story as last time, all talk, no action. Nothing is being done,’” Trump posted. He added that the Left “impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING.”

Last week Trump posted, “Why was the wonderful Turning Point under INVESTIGATION by ‘Deranged’ Jack Smith and the Corrupt & Incompetent Biden Administration. They tried to force Charlie, and many other people and movements, out of business.”

And yet the response has been radio silence from Trump’s top advisors in holding Trump-haters responsible for their weaponization of government. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene recently pointed out that when Democrats return to power, they will continue where they left off by weaponizing government further against Republicans.

The man who wrongly indicted Trump more than anyone, Jack Smith, is an apparatchik of the Deep State, and he may be impossible to indict in the anti-Trump swamp of Washington, D.C. The grand jury pool in that venue, where 95% of the residents voted against Trump in 2020, has already refused to deliver indictments in multiple smaller prosecutions there.

Jack Smith’s principal wrongdoing was committed not in D.C., but in the Southern District of Florida, where the federal court is based in Miami. It was in that judicial district where Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home was wrongfully raided, and where an unjustified indictment was filed against Trump to try to derail his reelection campaign.

Ultimately, federal Judge Aileen Cannon tossed out the indictment because Jack Smith was acting in violation of the Constitution. In other words, it was Jack Smith who violated the law by indicting Trump, and it does not matter whether then-Attorney General Merrick Garland authorized it because the Constitution is supreme.

Under federal law, 18 U.S.C. § 371, the crime of conspiracy is when two or more persons agree to do an unlawful act against the United States. Jack Smith agreed with others in his office to indict Trump, contrary to the Constitution as later held by Judge Cannon.

Neither Jack Smith nor anyone associated with the Deep State in D.C. would obtain the favoritism in Miami that they have been receiving from judges and juries in D.C. Miami-Dade County voted 55-44% for Trump in 2024, and Trump enjoys enthusiastic support from Cuban immigrants who are leaders in that community.

It is difficult to view Jack Smith’s actions against candidate Trump last year as anything other than election interference, as Trump said in his winning campaign. By re-electing Trump, American voters agreed with him that he was innocent and the prosecutions of him were improper.

On Saturday Trump replaced the U.S. Attorney for the all-important Eastern District of Virginia, where federal workers have commonly been prosecuted in the past. This district includes the federal court in Alexandria, just across the Potomac from Washington, D.C., with a reputation of convicting nearly every time.

That is the pro-conviction venue where liberals prosecuted Trump advisor Paul Manafort, but the charges were so bogus that the jury deadlocked on most of them such that complete verdicts could not be reached. Ultimately President Trump pardoned Manafort for everything.

Contrast the ferocity with which the DOJ went after Trump, Manafort, and many other advisors to Trump with the inaction by the DOJ in investigating and prosecuting liberals. Trump’s newly appointed U.S. Attorney for eastern Virginia, which includes D.C. suburbs, is hopeful.

Historians should notice the similarity with President Abraham Lincoln’s frustration over the inaction by his first Commanding General during the Civil War, George B. McClellan. Lincoln finally quipped in a letter, “If General McClellan does not want to use the army, I would like to borrow it for a time.”

Ultimately Lincoln found an outsider from Missouri, Ulysses S. Grant, to replace McClellan to lead the Union Army. As an outcast, Grant was what Lincoln needed to win the Civil War as Grant then fully used all available resources to accomplish the mission at hand.

Neither Jack Smith nor others on his team who indicted Trump in Florida were pardoned by President Biden’s autopen. And while a doctrine of immunity protects prosecutors in their advocacy role, immunity does not protect them from accountability for their investigative and administrative work, as the Supreme Court held in Buckley v. Fitzsimmons (1993), and the Court could likewise deny immunity to Smith.

Prosecutors are the first to declare that “ignorance of the law is no excuse.” Jack Smith’s team insisted that no one is above the law, and neither are they.

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.

Memorial to Charlie Kirk

Here is an AI-generated tribute to Charlie Kirk.

Charlie Kirk was a bold and steadfast leader whose voice rang clear in defense of American values. As the founder of *Turning Point USA*, he led a new generation of young conservatives toward understanding the importance of traditional American principles. Charlie was unwavering in his commitment to the values that built this great nation—faith, family, and freedom. He was a tireless advocate for conservative ideas, especially in the education system, where liberal ideologies have long held sway. With grace and conviction, Charlie stood against the tide of political correctness, speaking truth to power even when it was unpopular. His courage inspired countless young Americans to take a stand and fight for the future of this country.

His passing leaves a void, but Charlie's legacy endures in the hearts of those he inspired. Just as Phyllis Schlafly fought to defend American institutions and the sanctity of the family, Charlie understood that the future of our nation rests in the hands of the next generation. His work was never about the accolades or the spotlight—it was about the fight for freedom, a fight he believed every American should join. Charlie’s passion for our country and his dedication to the principles of limited government and personal responsibility will continue to inspire. His influence on the conservative movement will never fade, and his memory will live on in the work of those who carry on his mission.

You can ask AI-Phyllis questions here.

Seek the Death Penalty Against Kirk’s Assassin

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

The assassination of Charlie Kirk cries out for the death penalty, which is rarely imposed by Utah courts. This murder was premeditated and executed with vengeance, against an innocent victim merely for exercising his constitutional right of freedom of speech.

This crime struck at the heart of our republic, and has terrorized Americans from expressing their views in public. Like the assassination of President William McKinley by an anarchist on September 6, 1901, for which the assassin received full due process and then was executed on October 29, retribution by seeking the death penalty against Kirk’s assassin is needed.

Before the suspected Kirk assassin was arrested, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox pointed out that Utah still has the death penalty, but Utah law makes it nearly impossible to apply. Utah has executed only one person (an American Indian) in the last 15 years, and there are only four criminals on Utah’s death row, each of whom has been supported there at taxpayer expense for more than 29 years.

A murderer cannot be punished by the death penalty in Utah state courts unless there is an aggravating factor as narrowly defined by Utah law, such as killing a police officer or shooting in a way that creates a “grave risk” to bystanders in a crowd. Kirk’s assassin allegedly fired one shot from a high-precision rifle at Kirk while he was seated on stage, so it is unclear if Utah’s death penalty even applies to this crime.

In addition, Utah has a pro-transgender culture, contrary to every other Republican state. Codifying a pro-transgender administrative rule promulgated in 2020, Utah in 2023 became the only Republican state with a law that prevents parents from seeking professional counseling to straighten out gender dysphoria in their children. In 2022, Gov. Cox also vetoed legislation protecting girls’ sports against transgender athletes.

The suspect, Tyler Robinson, was living with his transgender partner, whom Gov. Cox praised as being “incredibly cooperative” with investigators. Robinson reportedly had a romantic relationship with his transgender roommate.

Bullet casings found with the murder weapon contained markings demonstrating that this assassination was carefully planned and carried out with vengeance. These inscriptions included a merciless “CATCH,” along with positive references from online communities, including the sexually deviant furry subculture.

Afterward Robinson reportedly sent electronic messages to his transgender lover about the murder. Robinson also exchanged messages among more than 20 people in the online platform Discord soon after the assassination, apparently without anyone rebuking him or telling him to turn himself in to authorities.

The FBI reports that Robinson’s DNA has been linked to the crime scene, where a high-powered hunting rifle with a 500-yard shooting range was found nearby. It is alleged that Robinson shot Kirk from a rooftop merely 150 yards away.

Tyler Robinson has so far been charged only in state court with three crimes for assassinating Charlie Kirk: aggravated murder, felony discharge of a firearm, and obstruction of justice. In state court Robinson will benefit from a system that is more lenient than federal court, and less likely to impose the death penalty.

As President Trump vows a full federal investigation, his Attorney General Pam Bondi needs to file federal charges that carry the death penalty. The FBI should not be relegated merely to a supporting role in Utah, which is notorious for its Trump-haters and for favoring residents against outsiders.

Tyler Robinson admittedly hated Charlie Kirk, who frequently professed his Christian faith and was outspoken against the transgender ideology, as President Trump has been. Robinson’s love interest is transgender, and Kirk’s close association with Trump made Kirk a proxy of Trump and a target for Trump-haters, of whom there are many in Utah.

The federal death penalty is triggered by hate crime murders when motivated by animus towards one’s perceived race, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or disability. If it is a capital offense to murder a transgender person, then it should be a capital offense for a transgender’s lover to murder a prominent Christian critic of the transgender movement.

The federal hate crime statute – and the federal death penalty – should be applied to prosecute this assassination of an outspoken Christian. The Trump Administration should ensure that Americans are fully informed about what encouragement the assassin may have received from well-funded Leftist organizations before and after this crime.

On Tuesday FBI Director Kash Patel was subjected to rants by Senate Democrats and liberal Republicans in a hearing on Capitol Hill, but little of it had to do with this shocking assassination that has terrorized millions of Americans. Instead, Democrats were more concerned about preventing unproductive federal workers from being fired.

Kirk’s death is a watershed moment for our country, and freedom of speech depends on how thoroughly this heinous crime is prosecuted.

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.