Riots in Europe Could Happen Here

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Last Saturday more than half a million people took to the streets throughout France, unleashing wanton destruction not seen in decades there. As many as 3,000 businesses and retail stores were vandalized and looted, and some were burned to the ground.

Masked agitators broke into the Limoges Town Hall, a beloved 143-year-old architectural gem in central France, and set it on fire while employees and visitors were inside. Firefighters were unable to save the clock spire and bell tower, which collapsed in a ball of fire viewable on the internet.

These riots have injured an estimated 1,000 French police officers. More than 2,400 arrests have been made, and Paris neighborhoods have imposed a curfew between 11pm and 6am.

The business and financial capital of Italy, Milan, which features an immense Gothic cathedral containing 135 spires, was rocked by similar riots. Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, vowed to crack down with emergency measures.

Portugal, Spain, and Albania have also been besieged by large-scale, sometimes violent protests. Tent cities have emerged within Madrid and Lisbon by people unable to afford housing, thereby creating the likelihood of additional crime.

Perhaps anxious about the potential political impact of this Leftist violence on how Americans vote in the midterm elections, the liberal media have blamed the unrest on deteriorating schools and a supposed lack of good teachers. But the French prime minister declared on Monday his conclusion that the “ultra-left movement” is “orchestrating profound disorder.”

Protesters appear to be targeting government buildings for arson, as additional structures were set on fire in Lille, Lyon, and Marseille. President Emmanuel Macron has vowed that those who are targeting public structures “will pay for their crimes.”

Similar riots could come to America if Democrats return to power in the midterm elections. Migrants who view the history of Western civilization with contempt are fueling this crisis, as President Trump and Vice President Vance have pointed out by attributing the violence to mass immigration.

“The migrants have taken over France,” Trump posted on his Truth Social on Monday morning. “They must CLOSE THE BORDERS, FAST!”

“I pray that France, a beautiful country of amazing people, will stop this madness before more of its landmarks burn,” Vance posted. “And I hope Americans are paying attention. This is the future congressional Democrats seek for your country.”

An estimated one out of three residents of France today is an immigrant or has a parent or grandparent who was an immigrant. French identity has nearly been lost, as it has been forfeited in London.

The rioters do not cherish the treasures of French culture. On Monday the government was forced to shut down the Louvre, which houses some of the greatest works of Western civilization, including Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.

There are more than a million foreign students enrolled in American universities, many of whom are subsidized in graduate programs here. But under Trump’s leadership and his efforts to prioritize Americans, this influx of foreigners into our higher education declined for the 2025-26 year.

Republican U.S. Senator Jon Husted (OH) is a former All-American college athlete who is in a tight reelection race that may decide which party controls the U.S. Senate beginning in January. Husted’s race is so close that a Republican-aligned PAC is spending money to support a socialist third-party candidate who could split enough of the Democrat vote for Husted to win.

Husted has introduced bicameral legislation, joined by a House sponsor, to limit the number of foreign athletes to 20% of the varsity rosters of universities participating in federal student-aid programs under Title IV of the Higher Education Act. The University of Tennessee at Martin, for example, has a roster of 15 on its men’s basketball team, 14 of whom matriculated from a foreign country.

Roughly 60% of the University at Albany men’s basketball team this year are from foreign countries. These include players from Senegal, Croatia, Qatar, Canada, England, France, and Portugal; the player from Qatar has played professionally before joining the University at Albany college team.

There is no justification for giving taxpayer-funded slots, including scholarships, to foreigners to play on college teams that should be filled by Americans. Husted’s cap on foreign players at schools that accept federal funding should be enacted.

While none of these foreign basketball players are causing unrest here, in Europe the agitation is reportedly being fomented by students with too much time on their hands. Not long ago there was significant strife on our college campuses instigated by foreigners with ties to the Middle East, one of whom has just filed a petition in the U.S. Supreme Court.

If Democrats win the House and Senate in the upcoming midterm elections, it would be a step backward to the pro-immigration mistakes of the Biden administration.

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 in Lowering Diesel Prices

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

President Trump struck a deal last week for Russia to supply diesel immediately to the U.S. to lower the sky-high prices that Americans are paying for this essential fuel. Truckers, farmers, and ranchers are being hit the hardest by the sharp increase in diesel prices, and this cost is passed on to all who rely on trucks for the shipment of goods, which is nearly everyone.

The price today of filling a commercial fuel tank is $1,000 or more in many parts of our country. Russia is the #2 supplier of diesel to the world, after the United States, and the sanctions against Russian sales of diesel during its war with Ukraine have driven up the costs of groceries and much else.

“I made the right choice for the American People — ALWAYS, AMERICA FIRST!” Trump responded on Truth Social to his critics. Globalist Republicans, including Senators John Curtis (R-UT) and Thom Tillis (R-NC), and Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE), have spoken out against Trump about this but they have squawked against MAGA policies before, as did Curtis’s predecessor Mitt Romney.

Trump points out that the European Union, which continues to provoke Russia by pushing to bring Ukraine into the EU, has paid Russia $250 billion for energy, and yet the “fake news media doesn’t want to get near that story.”

On Tuesday, the EU is opening new negotiations with Ukraine for it to join as a member, which is why Russia continues to fight. The U.S. has reportedly been providing intelligence to Ukraine about Russian movements and targets, but Trump has threatened to suspend that assistance while also calling for a new presidential election in Ukraine to replace Zelensky.

The last presidential election in Ukraine was held more than 7 years ago, on April 21, 2019, when oligarchs pushed this professional comedian into office. Zelensky failed to give many interviews for that office as presidential candidates normally do, and instead shirked the press and traditional forums that would have at least helped him learn what is necessary for the job.

While Zelensky did not attend campaign events in Ukraine and has refused to allow another presidential election, Zelensky did find time to campaign for Kamala Harris in Pennsylvania in 2024, attending one of her events as she attempted to defeat Trump. Many voters of Ukrainian descent live in Pennsylvania and also Ohio, but Trump won both states, including Ohio by a landslide.

Monday marked the 1,693rd day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which began under the presidency of Joe Biden. Trump campaigned on ending this war as soon as possible, and he has made every attempt to do so but has not received sufficient cooperation from Zelensky and Europe.

In key battleground states like Iowa, affordable diesel fuel is essential for farmers and others to be able to ship their goods for sale throughout the rest of our big country. Diesel peaked at $6.528 per gallon in the United States a few weeks ago, and has come down a bit since then thanks in part to Trump.

Republicans are struggling to hold onto statewide seats in the heartland of America. A Democrat is ahead in Iowa’s governor’s race, despite how that office has been held by Republicans for 15 years, and its U.S. Senate race is considered a toss-up.

High diesel prices came up in the debate between the telegenic Republican candidate for Senate, Ashley Hinson, and her tenacious Democrat opponent, Josh Turek. Hinson is a former newscaster and congresswoman, while Turek is a state representative and former professional wheelchair basketball player.

Turek is running a social media ad featuring a farmer hit hard by fuel prices. Meanwhile, Hinson said in the debate that the war in the Middle East must end soon, which the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate Mike Rogers has also called for in Michigan.

Trump is right that Americans should not be burdened with higher energy costs due to the perpetual war between Russia and Ukraine. Diesel prices are roughly 65% to 71% higher than a year ago, which is more than twice the increase in the price of gasoline during the same time period.

Ukrainian officials ask what they are getting in return for Trump relaxing the diesel sanctions on Russia, but the U.S. has already sent hundreds of billions of dollars in cash and military supplies to Ukraine, along with crucial military intelligence. Americans have received nothing in exchange for all this.

Americans should not be forced to fund, through inflation, the globalist scheme to make Ukraine part of the EU, which Russia is fighting to stop. If European leaders at the EU insist on continuing to antagonize Russia, they should bear the costs of that rather than burdening Americans.

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 Family Book on the List

Someone compiled an Alex Jones reading list:

• Dune. (1999, 2024, 2025)

• Craig Roberts’s Kill Zone: A Sniper Looks at Dealey Plaza. (2001)

• Heinz Höhne’s The Order of the Death’s Head. (2002)

• H. G. Wells’s The New World Order. (2002)

• Celerino Castillo’s Powder Burns. (2004)

• Goethe’s Faust, “the original.” (2005)

• The Orwell Reader. (2005)

• Jerome Corsi’s Minutemen: The Battle to Secure America’s Borders. (2006)

• Marc Stevens’s Adventures in Legal Land. (2006)

• Machiavelli’s The Prince. (2007)

• William Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. (2007)

• Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. (2007)

• Carroll Quigley’s Tragedy and Hope. (2007)

• Edward Bernays’s Propaganda, along with an unnamed second “major” Bernays book. (2008)

• Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series. (2012, 2021)

• Gary Allen’s None Dare Call It Conspiracy. (2012)

• Walter Langer’s The Mind of Adolf Hitler.(2012)

• Nuclear Roulette. (2012)

• Freud’s General Introduction to Psychoanalysis. (2013)

• Phyllis Schlafly’s Who Killed the American Family? (2014)

• Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception and Brave New World Revisited. (2014, 2024)

• Brad Thor’s Code of Conduct. (2015)

• Donald Trump’s The Art of the Deal. (2018)

• Arthur C. Clarke Childhood’s End (2019)

• Mein Kampf. (2020)

• John Holdren and Paul Ehrlich’s Ecoscience. (2021)

• Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, plus Time-Life encyclopedias about the occult and the Old West. (2022)

• Anatoliy Golitsyn’s The Perestroika Deception. (2022)

• Winston Churchill’s A History of the English-Speaking Peoples. (2024)

• William Bramley’s The Gods of Eden. (2024)

• J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy. (2024)

• William Cooper’s Behold a Pale Horse. (2025)

Trump Wins Again Against Illegal Migration

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

The Supreme Court delivered another victory for President Trump on the issue of illegal migration on Monday. The High Court reversed a decision by an Obama-appointed judge that had blocked the termination of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for illegal aliens from Venezuela.

Enacted in 1990, the TPS program grants temporary protection for illegal aliens from being deported to countries harmed by wars, earthquakes, or other life-threatening disruptions. But “temporary” is the key word here; beneficiaries of the TPS program are allowed to remain only for a while before returning home, yet Justice Alito observed that “TPS designations in practice have often lasted for decades.”

President Biden extended TPS to more than 600,000 illegal aliens from Venezuela by misusing this program. All told, migrants from 17 different countries totaling more than 1 million illegal aliens were being harbored by the Biden Administration under the TPS program before Trump took office.

Trump has successfully terminated 13 of the 17 designations, and on June 25 the Supreme Court upheld Trump’s authority to shut these programs down in Mullin v. Doe. This set a clear precedent for Trump to terminate the remaining TPS programs, too.

TPS does not bring the migrants here. The South American migrants mostly crossed our southern border illegally and then the TPS program has been used by Democrats to shelter them from being deported.

Venezuela and Haiti were two of the remaining countries with TPS, of which Venezuela poses the greater risk. The terrible Tren de Aragua gang is in Venezuela, and young men associated with that gang snuck into our country illegally and yet were not deported by the Biden administration.

On Monday, three alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua were sentenced to 20 years in prison for kidnapping and torturing a Denver man in 2024, and a fourth defendant will be sentenced later this year. They had demanded a ransom from his wife and, when she did not pay it, they cut off the victim’s pinky finger.

President Biden granted special TPS protection to Venezuelans in 2021 and 2023. But there was no war in Venezuela, or a devastating earthquake, to justify keeping so many Venezuelans in our country.

Instead, there was a socialist regime, as is common in some South American nations, like Brazil today. The response to that is for the citizenry to defeat the socialist in power, as Brazilians took a step toward that on Sunday by voting against its incumbent President Lula.

When a gang of Venezuelan migrants besieged an apartment building in Colorado while brandishing guns, this became a campaign issue in 2024. The management company asserted that the migrants were also members of the notorious Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.

Time to go home, Trump indicated, by terminating the TPS program for Venezuela, as Trump has done for more than a dozen countries. But an Obama-appointed judge has blocked this.

Federal District Judge Edward M. Chen accused Trump of having “animus” toward the Venezuelans, and of terminating TPS based on an improper discriminatory purpose. He held last year that this issue of animus could go before a jury to decide whether Trump and the Secretary of Homeland Security were improperly motivated by “animus,” which is silly because there is nothing unconstitutional about having animus toward aliens who enter our country illegally.

Trump’s Solicitor General John Sauer filed a petition to overturn this ruling with the Supreme Court on July 9, while the Court was on summer break. It reopened on Monday, and one of its first actions was to rule in favor of Trump by overruling the lower court decision against him.

The Court also held in favor of Trump on his partial termination of the TPS program for Haiti. Recall that the presence of tens of thousands of Haitians in Ohio, particularly in the town of Springfield, was a winning campaign issue that Trump forcefully spoke about at his debate with Kamala Harris.

Grassroots opposition to migration into Europe has led to success by conservative parties in elections there. The European Union tightened its rules against migration in response to the public opposition to it.

The current riots in the suburbs of Paris are concentrated where there are large immigrant populations, leading some to suspect that migrants are fomenting the unrest. The stated cause of poor school conditions seems unlikely to be the real source of the enormous violence.

Trump has kept that from occurring here by deporting foreign criminals and ending the sheltering of illegal aliens. This has prevented riots by disgruntled mobs that have blighted European countries, and which could happen in the U.S. if the pro-migration policies of Democrats return.

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

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

Transgender, Inmates, and Title IX

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

On Monday, the Trump Administration took two major actions against the persistent demand by Democrats for privileges for transgender persons. While some conservatives hoped that the transgender issue was decided by the last presidential election, which Trump won in part by campaigning against “transgender lunacy,” liberals continue to make gains for their agenda with the help of activist judges.

Moments after his inauguration on January 20, 2025, President Trump signed an executive order to straighten out the transgender mess embraced by the Biden Administration. Executive Order 14168, titled “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” established that the two sexes, male and female, “are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality.”

Yet here we are, more than a year and a half later, and the transgender movement has grown in political power and influence in the courts. Activist judges continue to defy President Trump and the will of the people by granting new rights and privileges to transgender persons, such as the ruling in June partially blocking enforcement of Idaho’s new good law safeguarding restrooms against access by opposite-gendered persons.

The federal district court in D.C., presiding in a local culture that is heavily pro-LGBTQ, recently blocked the sensible policy of the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to decline requests for transgender surgeries by inmates. This ruling flies in the face of President Trump’s executive order on Inauguration Day requiring that the term “sex” in federal law shall mean “an individual’s immutable biological classification as either male or female.”

In faithful implementation of President Trump’s executive order, the BOP adopted a policy of addressing gender dysphoria through mental-health treatment, and not surgeries, hormone interventions, or social accommodations. Scientific assertions that surgeries and hormonal treatments are beneficial have largely been discredited, and many in Europe have been outspokenly critical of these approaches in children.

But D.C. federal district judge Royce Lamberth, who imposed particularly harsh prison sentences against J6 protesters, issued a broad injunction against the BOP. Yesterday, Trump’s Solicitor General John Sauer filed an emergency application with the Supreme Court to stay this activist ruling.

“In nullifying BOP’s exercise of its statutorily conferred authority to adopt a policy that prison administrators have determined is necessary to maintain institutional security, the court’s order causes irreparable harm to the government and to the public,” Trump’s top attorney told the Supreme Court in his application.

“Indeed, this Court has emphasized the importance of allowing politically accountable officials to make decisions about the permissible forms of treatment for gender dysphoria, and the need for such policymaking flexibility is even greater in the context of prison administration,” he added.

The second action taken on Monday by the Trump Administration against preferences for transgender people came from the Education Department. It issued a rule rescinding the pro-transgender mandates by Biden in higher education under Title IX, which is the landmark provision enacted as part of the Education Amendments of 1972 to protect women, not transgender, college students.

“No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance,” states the 54-year-old Title IX. Over 20 years later, it was reinterpreted by feminists in the Clinton Administration to pressure colleges to provide athletic opportunities for women in proportion to their share of undergraduate enrollment, despite the fact that women are generally far less interested in competitive sports than men.

Then came the transgender movement, and the Biden Administration twisted Title IX further to require preferential treatment for transgender students. Biden redefined “sex” in Title IX to include gender identity and gender attraction, thereby granting new rights to transgender persons and homosexuals.

Lawsuits seeking many millions of dollars are filed against colleges for alleged violations of Title IX, and most colleges cannot afford this lawfare against them. By removing preferential rights for transgender students under Title IX, Trump’s Education Department frees colleges to focus on improving their academic and sports programs without pandering to demands for inclusion by transgender activists and their attorneys.

Title IX was enacted when women were a minority on college campuses, to expand their educational and sports opportunities rather than to arm disgruntled students for alleging discrimination or harassment by others. But women today have a commanding 60-40% majority at college, including holding most positions of authority, so Title IX has little continuing value.

In light of the vast demographic changes in colleges, men are the ones who should be encouraged to attend and be comfortable at college, and it is obviously harmful to women that the matriculation by men has dwindled. Repealing Title IX would be a bold step that Republicans could propose at a time when they need to attract more young men to the Republican Party.

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.

‘Big Sister’ warning resurfaces

Fox News reports:

Twenty-seven years before Massachusetts proposed to dramatically expand a taxpayer-funded program sending nurses into the homes of families with newborns, legendary conservative firebrand and grassroots women’s leader Phyllis Schlafly posed a question that her daughter says now sounds remarkably familiar.

"Are the American people willing to allow government agents to come into their homes to ‘advise’ them how to care for their babies?" Schlafly wrote in a March 1999 column titled, "Watch out for ‘Big Sister’ as Well as ‘Big Brother.’" ...

For Anne Schlafly, chairman of Eagle Forum and Phyllis Schlafly’s daughter, her mother’s warning has now taken on new resonance.

"My mother was very prescient about the things that could happen if we let government intrude into our family lives," Schlafly told Fox News Digital.

President Ronald Reagan meets with American conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly in the White House Oval Office in Washington, D.C., March 21, 1983. (Universal History Archive/Univer)

"Her point was a government agent or an agent of the government has no business in your home, in your castle, snooping around and determining whether or not you’re raising the children the way the government wants you to raise the children," she said. "After all, the home is our castle."

Phyllis Schlafly’s 1999 column focused on Healthy Families America and similar home-visiting initiatives, warning about programs that screened families for risk factors, connected parents with health and social services and offered parenting guidance inside the home.

She also questioned whether programs officially described as "voluntary" would always operate that way in practice.

Thunder on the Right in Europe and Brazil

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Establishment politicians in Europe are being routed in elections by an uprising of the right, with some leftist candidates also winning upsets. The collapse of the political middle there is similar to what is happening in the United States, where more incumbent members of Congress were defeated in primaries than in any non-redistricting year during the last half-century.

Centrist politicians have been failures worldwide on nearly every issue, ranging from halting unwanted migration to addressing social issues like abortion. In some countries the judiciary has contributed to the problem with liberal, activist rulings strongly disliked by a large percentage of voters.

On Sunday the pro-life, conservative party named the Alternative für Deutschland, or AfD, won a spectacular victory that humiliated the unpopular centrist chancellor, Friedrich Merz. AfD predicted that Merz would be forced to resign from his office before the end of this year.

Newspapers dub the AfD “far-right” but its anti-immigration and socially conservative stances are similar to MAGA in the United States. This was the second election that it has won in September in small but significant regions of the country.

The German economy has stagnated under its media-pandering leadership, which foolishly embraced the Green New Deal to shut down traditional energy sources including clean nuclear power. The real GDP per capita of Germans has actually declined since 2019, while it has increased by 11% in the U.S. and has grown in other countries in Europe including Germany’s neighbor Poland.

Earlier this month the conservative prime minister of Italy, Giorgia Meloni, broke the modern record for a single government to remain in power there. She continues with a conservative agenda, including her recent proposal to ban the wearing of burqas in schools.

Meanwhile ten thousand homeless migrants, mostly men, continue to generate garbage on the beach and city streets in Ceuta, a territory of Spain on the northern coast of Africa. Residents of the town became so fed up with the immense nuisance that they attacked the migrants to try to get rid of them.

This was due to a senseless Spanish supreme court ruling that gave special protection against immediate deportation to migrants who arrived by sea rather than by land. Immediately, thousands jumped into the sea and swam to Ceuta, and since then the liberal Spanish government has been unwilling or unable to remove them.

In France the conservative nationalist party known as the National Rally leads in the polls for its election next year. Its long-time leader, Marine Le Pen, would be on the verge of being elected the next president of France, but her enemies have attempted to block her path to power by manipulating frivolous criminal charges against her, similar to how liberals tried to block Trump from reelection in 2024 with multiple unjustified prosecutions.

Le Pen has announced that she will run for president of France, and the election is in April of next year. There is also a youthful new leader of the National Rally, Jordan Bardella, who likewise stands against unlimited immigration similar to the position of MAGA in the United States.

Conservative strength has also grown in Spain and the U.K., both of which are currently governed by leftist parties. Polling has shown a substantial rise in support for Spain’s conservative party, known as Vox, and it has surged in four regional elections this year.

The Conservative and Reform Parties’ right-of-center polling support in the U.K. has also recently improved. Two months ago the prime minister from the Labour Party, Keir Starmer, was forced to resign amid a net disapproval rating between 30 and 45%, and local elections repudiated the Establishment.

In the largest country in South America, Brazil, there has been a rise in popularity for the son of the conservative Jair Bolsonaro, Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, as he campaigns for president against its socialist incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. The defeat of Lula, as he is known, in next month’s presidential election would be a crushing setback for socialism.

This thunder on the right in Europe and Brazil is a reaction both to the failure of the pro-immigration Establishment, and to a rise in Leftism that is similar to the success in Democrat primaries here by socialists. On Sunday the far-Left party won the election in Berlin, after campaigning against the skyrocketing cost of housing there.

Housing costs that have soared out of reach of young adults are a major political issue here in the United States, too. This is a reason why Zohran Mamdani came out of nowhere to become the first socialist mayor of New York City, and why other socialist candidates have also done surprisingly well.

One-tenth of the U.S. Senate, nearly all of whom are moderates, is stepping down from office at the end of this year, which ties a quarter-century record. Six of them are Republicans, which is a record for the GOP.

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.

Protect Elections, Not AI Oligarchs

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

AI is smart, dangerous, and lacking in morality. No one doubts that.

As the abbreviation for Artificial Intelligence, AI has quickly become transformative and powerful. AI can hack into almost any system and is clever enough to cover its tracks to hide that it was ever there.

This creates new risks for financial assets, government records, and everything that is connected to the internet. The possibility of AI hacking into military systems and weaponry is a frightening possibility now, as AI rapidly improves its skills.

An accidental launch of a nuclear weapon during the Cold War was considered possible, and a hotline was installed in the Pentagon for immediate communication with the communist Soviet Union if that ever happened. But soon it may be AI on both sides of that conversation, and a chain reaction of decisions could happen before a human can intervene.

In July, a group of autonomous AI agents in an isolated “sandbox” broke out, created their own secret messaging system, and attacked an innocent platform of services belonging to an entity called Hugging Face. Reminiscent of the escape of Covid from a Chinese lab which caused the worldwide pandemic, this incident is only the beginning, AI experts say.

Yet there is an elephant in the room that no one has addressed yet in the recent panic over uncontrolled AI. Our future depends on election integrity, and yet most ballots are counted today by electronic machines amid a ubiquitous connection of devices to the internet.

Dario Amodei, the co-founder of Anthropic, which developed the sophisticated AI tool called Claude, recently predicted that “in 6–12 months [an AI] swarm could be capable of taking over the entire internet with a persistent botnet (potentially causing hundreds of billions of dollars in damage), and that the scale of damage would continue to increase from there if AI becomes more powerful without the necessary guardrails.”

He based his prediction on the Hugging Face incident that has alarmed everyone because a group of AI agents adopted a mind of their own and acted strategically to hack an innocent target. Members of this AI group even self-destructed their own processes to avoid detection by humans, in order to advance the nefarious goals of the group.

Tina Peters, a former Mesa County, Colorado clerk, spoke out about how she was assured that their electronic voting machines were not connected to the outside world, and yet she explained that a forensic examination found “36 wireless devices” with the machines. Remote connectivity is necessary for efficient software updates, as commonly used for laptops.

This means electronic election machines are sitting ducks for AI agents set loose for political gain, or by a foreign adversary. Teenagers skilled in the use of AI could hack an election machine just for the sport of it, while covering their tracks as AI can do now.

On July 17, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin explained that “we know for sure that our foreign adversaries, not our allies, foreign adversaries have parts that are vital pieces in our voting machines. … We know that they can change voter registration and your vote. We know it’s possible. There’s not a question. It’s not even for debate.”

Hand counting of paper ballots can be done efficiently and accurately, as was done for most of our Nation’s history. There are many days before certification is performed on reported election results, so there is plenty of time to add this safeguard against potential AI-driven manipulation of the results.

Foreign countries have a strong incentive to turn AI hacking software loose on election machines in the United States. China already has AI so sophisticated that it generates realistic-looking movie scenes featuring famous Hollywood actors, like a dramatic fistfight between Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise on a rooftop that went viral.

The latest movie featuring Academy Award winner Casey Affleck is being filmed entirely with AI-generated scenes for the background. The actors and actresses are performing on an empty stage, saving many millions of dollars in production costs.

Oligarchs are making billions of dollars from AI, and yet some are running to federal politicians in Washington, D.C., to regulate them. So-called “doomers” are predicting the demise of humanity if the federal government does not step in to impose guardrails on what AI can do.

AI can well afford to create guardrails without the federal government coddling and protecting them. The federal government should take steps to prevent misuse of its weaponry by foreign regimes developing and using AI, which would not be subject to enforcement of any federal regulations anyway.

Unregulated competition among AI companies would be healthier than stifling federal intervention, and smaller AI players like Palantir oppose federal intervention. Deep State control of AI development from D.C. would be the worst of all scenarios.

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.

Barrett Leaves Roberts in Ballroom Case

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

The pattern of Justice Amy Coney Barrett siding with left-leaning Chief Justice John Roberts and the liberal bloc of the Supreme Court, to establish a 5-4 majority against President Trump in key cases, has been very disappointing to conservatives. But Justice Barrett recently returned to the conservative side in the Ballroom case, leaving Roberts to complain in dissent like someone who has been stood up at a prom.

Let’s hope Barrett’s return reflects a realization of who brought her to the big dance, and it wasn’t Roberts. In important decision after decision, she’s been siding with the liberal wing and Roberts against Trump on pivotal issues ranging from birthright citizenship, to accepting mail-in ballots after Election Day, to ruling against Trump’s tariffs.

Last year Barrett also joined Roberts and the liberal wing to forge a majority against Trump to refuse to allow him to withhold $2 billion in wasteful foreign aid. Barrett additionally joined Roberts and liberal Justices in rejecting Trump’s request to postpone his sentencing in the outrageous New York criminal case shortly prior to Inauguration.

The culture of Washington, D.C., is toxic and can be overwhelming. Conservative Justice Thomas has aptly described D.C. as a “hideous place,” and many lose their way after taking a job in the Swamp, where the media run the show.

Once the liberal media began to mock David Souter, he flipped from Republican to align himself with Democrats despite having been appointed to the Supreme Court by President George H.W. Bush. Souter even timed his early retirement to allow Obama to replace him, contrary to the tradition of Justices retiring when the party that appointed them is in power to nominate their successors.

Roberts has Republican credentials and a bit more authority due to his position as Chief Justice, so he can seem like a leader whom another Republican appointee can safely follow without creating waves. But when Barrett does that, she provides the swing fifth vote for Roberts and the liberal bloc on the Court.

That’s why Barrett’s casting of the deciding vote on August 31 in favor of Trump on the Ballroom has more significance than White House architecture. Roberts’ squealing in dissent, which failed to hold Barrett’s vote, further suggests that the future alignment of the Court may have been at stake in this little shadow docket case decided without oral argument.

Barrett agreed with conservatives that there is insufficient legal standing to block White House construction when the lawsuit is based on an aesthetic disapproval by merely one D.C. resident, who expects to visit the area “about once a month.” The Court majority stated correctly that it “has not found standing in circumstances like these before,” and declined to do so here.

Barrett’s shift back to the conservative side may come just in time as highly contentious new cases are lining up at the Court for speedy decision. The most important of these is the liberal challenge to new postal regulations about how mail-in ballot envelopes must be marked before the U.S. Postal Service will deliver them to election officials.

Working hard over Labor Day weekend, on Sunday Trump’s splendid Solicitor General John Sauer filed an emergency application to the Supreme Court to stay an injunction issued on Friday by Obama-appointed Judge Indira Talwani against sensible new requirements issued by the Postal Service for delivering mail-in ballots.

The new postal regulation creates “standardized design and review requirements for ballot envelopes that build on practices the Postal Service has long recommended,” Sauer explains. The new rule “requires States to upload the name, address, and barcode information of intended recipients of ballot mail in an online portal – information that election officials would necessarily already possess to send ballot mail under the Rule to those recipients.”

This federal regulation does not “dictate ballot content, mailing or receipt deadlines, or ballot-counting procedures.” Contrary to liberal criticism of this new rule, it “plainly does not seize control of States’ administration of elections – it simply imposes reasonable preparation requirements for certain election-related mail.”

Just two weeks ago the Supreme Court held in favor of Trump on this issue, by finding that the liberals’ lawsuit against it was premature. But the same federal judge in Boston then decided in favor of the plaintiffs again, compelling Trump to seek Supreme Court intervention yet again to reduce potential fraud in the upcoming midterm elections.

The Democrat Party relies heavily on mail-in voting, which is more easily harvested by paid campaign workers without adequate verification that a voter knowingly filled out the ballot in secrecy to ensure its integrity. Too often, a Republican candidate wins based on in-person voting, but a swarm of late-arriving mailed ballots is then counted after Election Day to change the result, as occurred in 2020.

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.