Widening Revolt Against Globalism

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

The shocking knife attack last week on children in broad daylight in Dublin was horrifying. Five people, including a five-year-old girl, two other youngsters, and a woman, were randomly stabbed and slashed by an assailant outside the primary school named Gaelscoil Coláiste Mhuire.

For years open-border liberals have been allowing extensive immigration into Dublin, similar to what has transformed London. When news leaked that the perpetrator was an immigrant, all-night rioting in Dublin ensued.

But then the Irish prime minister lashed out against the rioters, rather than the unprovoked attacker. Nearly a week later, Irish authorities shamefully continue to withhold his identity.

The prime minister’s response was to promise new laws immediately against “incitement to hatred and hatred in general.” Though not Irish, Elon Musk dryly observed, “Ironically, the Irish PM hates the Irish people.”

An unidentified young Irishman nailed this issue with an interview that aired on Musk’s X platform. The new legislation “has been drafted specifically to silence the Irish people from opposing ... the mass immigration agenda that’s going on right now. ... Migrants or so-called refugees are being dumped en masse on small Irish towns,” he said.

He called the mass immigration imposed on Ireland by globalists a “new plantation.” That term strikes a nerve among Irish who have long used it to bitterly criticize the colonization of Ireland by English Protestants in the 1600s.

Ireland joined the European Union, which means globalist politicians running Ireland have agreed to allow entry by any citizen of any other European Union nation. Some quip that any nationality other than British is accepted in Ireland today.

But hoi polloi are revolting against globalism now. Geert Wilders of the Netherlands won a stunning victory by campaigning against globalism and vowing to hold a public referendum there to exit the EU, which he calls “Nexit,” as Great Britain did with its Brexit.

Wilders’ political party won far more seats than expected, surging above poll predictions, and has left the powers-that-be in Europe in shock. This is similar to election returns in Spain, Italy, Greece, Turkey and Finland, as globalists have been repeatedly routed by Trump-like candidates vowing to put their own country first.

Add Argentina to that growing list as the campaign theme of Make Argentina Great Again propelled Javier Milei to a landslide victory and Trump declared, “I am very proud of you.” Though smeared as “far-right” by CNN, Milei won with 56% of the vote last week as a pro-life libertarian who recognizes global warming as a “lie of socialism.”

Even many Canadians are finally fed up with globalism. The largest Ukrainian population outside of Russia is in Canada, where nearly 5% of its population, or 1.4 million people, is Ukrainian.

Last week the Conservative Party of Canada unanimously voted against a new trade agreement with Ukraine, in a humiliation of Canada’s far left prime minister Justin Trudeau who had signed the deal in expectation of full support. Instead of explaining why he thinks globalism is good for Canada, he lashed out at Donald Trump.

“The real story is the rise of a right-wing American, MAGA influence thinking that has made Canadian Conservatives, who used to be among the strongest defenders of Ukraine … turn their backs on something Ukraine needs in its hour of need,” Trudeau blustered. But no one is buying that spin any more.

In the U.S. Senate, where the much-criticized uniparty of pro-globalism senators control the agenda, a vote on sending many billions more to Ukraine is expected soon. New Speaker Mike Johnson and other conservatives in the House deserve credit for not including this in their recent continuing resolution to fund our government.

This leaves Democrats in a quandary as the presidential election heats up. Biden is closely associated in voters’ minds with an open southern border that has let in 10 million illegal aliens during his presidency.

Democrats are suddenly hinting that they might agree to modest measures to close our open southern border. But that’s just pre-election talk by Biden’s team as they see the handwriting on the wall for voters to turn against him for allowing so many illegals into our country.

Any tightening of our southern border in 2024 will just be reopened again if Biden or any Democrat were to win the next presidential election. It is not enough for Democrats to talk about closing a bit of the southern border, but instead need to take action to undo the massive amount of damage they have already caused by their open-border policies.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott just endorsed Trump for president, belatedly, as Trump visited the rampage by illegals over the Texas-Mexico border. Trump now has strong allies in Argentina, Italy, Greece, Hungary, and elsewhere as his admirers have swept to victory.

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.

Lack of Discipline in Schools is the Problem

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Students are not showing up in public school today, as attendance is no longer desired by parents. Many public schools have become places of indoctrination by the Left, or downright dangerous to attend.

No one can continue to blame this on Covid-19, when schools shut down. Absenteeism is severe long after the pandemic subsided, as in Nevada where more than a third of the students are chronically absent.

Only 42% of American adults are reportedly satisfied with schools, a 20-year low. Disillusionment with costly higher education is increasing and that may have a spillover effect on attitudes toward secondary education too.

This disappearance of students in classrooms is not merely a few teenagers skipping out for some fun, which is not new. Elementary students who need to be learning fundamental skills during that period of their life are not being taken to school.

Just five years ago only 7% of elementary public schools had chronic absenteeism by 30% of students. But in 2021-22, the percentage of the elementary public schools having chronic absenteeism shot up to 38%.

Last month the New York Times reported that the schools run by the Department of Defense for about 66,000 children of service members have been doing better than public schools in all 50 states, as measured by the widely followed National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) exam. Most of these schools are on American military bases.

The Department of Defense Education Activity schools were first in our nation on the NAEP reading and math assessments in 2022. These schools were the only state or jurisdiction to show an increase in performance in any grade or subject that year.

The U.S. Army has a larger minority population than America as a whole: 46% compared with 40%. The outperformance by secondary schools on military bases compared with other public schools is due to better discipline.

A total of 45% of students in these Department of Defense secondary schools are in low-income families, which is higher than the national average of 38%. Moreover, one-third of the children in military families move each year due to transfers of their parents, which is a hardship.

The military knows how to discipline its members, without permitting bad behavior until expulsion becomes necessary. Corporal punishment, such as swatting a misbehaving student, was allowed nationwide by the U.S. Supreme Court for public schools in Ingraham v. Wright (1977), yet states outside the South ban it.

In public schools 77% of teachers are female today, in sharp contrast with how our military is run. The overwhelming percentage of those public school teachers are liberal and opposed to any physical punishment of any kind for bad conduct.

Studies show that physical penalties for misbehavior are not any more harmful than other forms of punishment, such as repeated yelling. Many of the same students who are violent toward other students and teachers also play in violent sports like football, which create a far greater risk of injury to them than any physical discipline would.

Bringing back sensible discipline to public schools is way overdue, and would be a better focus of the never-ending special sessions in Texas where Gov. Greg Abbott just called for a record-breaking fourth legislative session on education. Even if vouchers for private schools were to pass there, the vast majority of students would remain in declining, undisciplined public schools.

A third of teachers encounter threats by students annually, yet effective punishment is not allowed. Instead, liberals are permissive about misconduct until violence occurs, and even then sometimes fail to impose appropriate penalties.

While forbidding any meaningful discipline, public schools ultimately expel students but only after an egregious rampage. The single biggest reason for the increase in homeschooling is a fear by parents for the safety of their children in public schools.

Yet rather than restore order in schools, the failed approach of Vice President Kamala Harris while she was the district attorney for San Francisco was to prosecute parents for truancy, the outdated criminalizing of non-attendance at school. When she campaigned for California attorney general she promoted enacting a state law to punish parents when their children missed more than 10% of public school.

“We are putting parents on notice. If you fail to take responsibility for your kids, we are going to make sure that you face the full force and consequences of the law,” Harris threatened parents.

Harris, Biden, and the entire Democrat Party pander to teachers unions who should be blamed for turning schools into dens of crime, drugs, and liberal ideology. A study by the libertarian Cato Institute during Covid showed that delaying the reopening of schools was not based on valid concerns about the virus and safety, but on how powerful the regional teachers unions were.

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.

GOP Should Reject Improper Ballot Initiatives

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

The “will of the people,” as expressed by outcomes of heavily funded ballot initiatives, is a canard that should be rejected by Republicans. Direct democracy was feared and opposed by our nation’s founders, who established a representative government for the United States and guaranteed “a republican form of government” to each of its member states.

Yet Republican candidates who participated in last week’s third presidential debate seemed to misunderstand this crucial point, as reflected by their senseless responses to questions about a recent ballot initiative that just passed in Ohio. Ron DeSantis, for example, unjustifiably blamed the pro-life movement for being “caught flat-footed” by Issue 1, the abortion initiative, without mentioning that God-given rights should not be decided by a popular vote.

Republicans should be defending representative government against misuse of the ballot initiative process, which allows out-of-state industries and liberal billionaires to pass laws contrary to the informed decision-making by each state’s elected representatives. Ohio’s Issue 1 will benefit the billion-dollar abortion industry, while Issue 2 will profit the expanding marijuana industry by invading Ohio with a predicted $4 billion worth of pot.

Fortunately, some members of the Ohio state legislature are rising up against this misuse of ballot initiatives to change the culture of the Buckeye State. Ohio’s elected representatives should not take a back seat or bow down to ballot initiatives contrary to what has been the well-established tradition of Ohio and our Constitution.

The passage of the radical Issues 1 and 2 in Ohio are an assault by out-of-state industries and billionaires to transform the state, and its Republican-controlled General Assembly should strongly resist this invasion. Four out of five Republicans voted against Issues 1 and 2, and that is to whom the Republican legislators should be listening, rather than a multi-million-dollar barrage of television ads.

Legislators should not be deterred by chants in the media that “the people have spoken.” Representatives exist to resist tyranny by a misled majority, and Republican officials should not abandon the pledges they campaigned on for the benefit of Ohio.

Caving in to ballot initiatives is a betrayal of representative government, and of voters themselves. By denying the rights of voters to elect representatives to protect their state’s way of life, Republicans give residents an incentive to move to Texas and other states that prohibit mob rule through ballot initiatives.

Leftists are giddy about their scheme to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to use the ballot initiative process in about 20 states (40% of our country) to enact laws rejected by legislatures there. Not content with transforming Colorado and the West Coast into havens hostile to families, liberals are exploiting this process to invade the Midwest with failed coastal values.

More Midwesterners will inevitably respond by moving to Texas, where Leftists are not allowed to override the legislature. But families in Ohio and Missouri should not have to move to protect their way of life.

In less than a year, marijuana as enacted by ballot initiative in Missouri has transformed it into a $1.5 billion mecca for pot, with pervasive billboard advertising and retail stores selling it. Child poisonings and motorcycle accidents are sharply higher, while a crisis in fentanyl-related deaths has increased too.

The Republican response to questions about Ohio Issues 1 or 2 should be that some issues are not suitable for popular vote, as most states recognize by forbidding ballot initiatives from bypassing the legislature. We don’t allow any type of initiative or referendum at the national level because our Founders who framed our Constitution wisely rejected direct democracy.

Yet the liberal media is misusing ballot initiatives to bully Republican legislators into breaking their own campaign promises on which they were elected. There is no such thing as a particular “will” of the people, and candidates should honor their campaign pledges rather than allow out-of-state billionaires to rewrite their laws in a harmful way.

Republicans reject the call for a National Popular Vote to pick our president, and instead that office is filled by the Electoral College. Republican candidates for president should campaign on defending our republican form of government against the progressive strategy of direct democracy.

Our Declaration of Independence stands entirely against infringement on God-given rights by popular vote or by any other means. That timeless document describes the concept of unalienable rights as a “self-evident” truth, yet Trump’s rivals for president seem to think everything is fair game for ballot initiatives.

The Ohio legislature, with its Republican supermajority, could immediately overturn the cannabis Issue 2 ballot initiative to prevent Ohio from becoming a decadent culture of pungent weed. The marijuana-saturated states of California and Colorado are hemorrhaging in population, and Midwest legislators should not allow liberal mistakes to transform the middle of our country based on improper ballot initiatives.

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.

Dems Despair as Trump Surges

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Liberals and their favorite media have given up on Biden as he plummets in the polls ahead of next year’s election. On Sunday the New York Times announced that Trump leads Biden in 5 of the 6 swing states, sending a signal to all liberals that Biden must be replaced as the Democrats’ nominee for president.

The filing deadline for the New Hampshire primary has already passed, and Democrat insiders have little time left before their South Carolina primary on February 3 to coalesce behind a replacement. Meanwhile, “the world is falling apart under Biden,” as 53-year-old Spencer Weiss, a Pennsylvania voter who has switched his support from Biden to Trump, told the NYT.

Biden has mishandled foreign crises from Ukraine to Israel, while letting in 10 million unemployed illegal aliens, more than the entire population of overcrowded Los Angeles County. He turns 81 years old later this month and plainly lacks the mental acuity to still be president.

Biden and his supporters have pushed transgender access to girls’ restrooms and locker rooms in schools, which sparked a walkout by students in Loudoun County, Virginia last week. In April, Biden proposed a federal rule under Title IX that would prohibit schools from categorically banning transgender students from invading girls’ sports.

Trump has led in stopping illegal immigration, which could include foreign terrorists hateful of the United States. He has also been strong against allowing male-bodied athletes to invade girls’ sports.

Michelle Obama and California Gov. Gavin Newsom are mentioned as possible last-minute replacements of Biden. Other potential candidates powerful with the insiders include Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and the same-sex married Pete Buttigieg, the Transportation Secretary who has bungled the electric car issue.

Democrat political insiders have compared their dilemma to a “five-alarm fire,” but Biden and his determined wife Jill refuse to step aside. Many Democrats who disapprove of funding foreign wars instead of domestic priorities are jumping ship: Biden’s advantage over Trump has eroded among black voters from a 78-point advantage to only 49 points.

A new poll was released by ABC News/Ipsos on Sunday, announcing that 76% of American adults feel our country is headed in the wrong direction, while only 23% see us going in the right direction. On the key issues of crime, inflation, and immigration, voters trust Republicans more than Democrats.

We are only a year from the presidential election, and barely ten months before early voting begins in some states. Worsening foreign crises and deepening economic problems, combined with an inevitable further decline in his mental capacity, mean there is no plausible way for Biden to reverse his slide.

Biden failed to file paperwork to be on the ballot in New Hampshire, while an obscure Minnesota congressman did file there, reminiscent of how Minnesota Sen. Eugene McCarthy chased the Democrat incumbent President Lyndon B. Johnson from the race in 1968. Biden is counting on support by black primary voters in South Carolina to renominate him, but a deal between Obama and an alternative could force Biden to withdraw.

Much of the angst by Democrats over Biden is due to how well Trump is surviving the onslaught of politically motivated prosecutions. None of federal prosecutor Jack Smith’s attacks on Trump has worked, while many of them have backfired.

The federal judge in the Florida Mar-a-Lago case rebuked Biden’s henchmen for wasting her time with their antics, and she has suspended the schedule in that case. It is widely expected now that a trial in that ill-advised prosecution will not occur before the election, which removes it as an obstacle to Trump’s reelection.

Federal prosecutors indicted two of Trump’s low-level aides who have not turned against Trump as Biden’s henchmen hoped. The premise of that prosecution is that Trump was endangering national security at Mar-a-Lago, an absurd allegation unsupported by the evidence.

That leaves the federal prosecution of Trump in the anti-Trump venue of D.C. as Biden’s last remaining card to play against his opponent. But that case, which was supposed to be smooth sailing for the Trump-haters, has hit rocky waters too.

Special prosecutor Jack Smith demanded and obtained a severely improper gag order to prohibit Trump from disparaging Biden’s hired guns. Trump echoed the views of many by calling Jack “deranged” and a “thug,” who then persuaded the Obama-appointed judge to censor Trump despite strong objections by the ACLU to this infringement on the First Amendment.

But on Friday the D.C. Circuit suspended the gag order, thereby enabling Trump to speak freely again. Meanwhile, Trump’s attorneys have filed a compelling motion to toss the entire case out based on the presidential immunity that protects Trump against the allegations concerning actions he took on January 6, 2021, when he was still the president.

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.

Unplug the Green Boondoggle

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Many groups and countries are lining up for new handouts by Congress, now that it is functioning again with a new Speaker. Among those with their hats in their hands for billions of dollars is the green energy industry of windmills and battery-powered cars.

Fortunately, newly inducted House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is fully supported by conservative lawmakers in the House who want separate votes on spending-neutral bills. First out of the gate is a $14.3 billion aid package to Israel that is funded by repealing part of Biden’s $80 billion IRS expansion.

On Monday, Biden’s Treasury Department announced that it will borrow the most ever for a fourth quarter: $776 billion. The multi-billion-dollar cost of the Leftist green agenda is not something we can afford to ignore anymore.

Ask Ford Motor Company. Since last Thursday afternoon, Ford’s stock has fallen by 14% in three business days on news of its losing a more-than-expected $1.33 billion in its electric vehicle (EV) unit for the third quarter, which translates into an average loss of $36,000 on every EV it sold.

Once a preeminent American corporation, Ford’s value has fallen to only $38 billion in market capitalization, and it cannot survive annual losses of $5 billion on EVs. A sharp increase in costs for raw materials needed by the batteries in EVs has cast doubt on if and when electric cars would ever be profitable to sell, despite mandates by Biden and California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

As found by a new study released by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, “the average EV accrues $48,698 in subsidies and $4,569 in extra charging and electricity costs over a 10-year period, for a total cost of $53,267.” When converted into an equivalent subsidy per gallon of gasoline, it’s as though the government paid an extra $16.12 per gallon for a conventional internal combustion engine vehicle.

Hertz took a hit in its latest earnings report due to unexpected losses from operating the largest EV fleet in the rental car industry. Hertz announced a pause in its acquisition of more EVs.

Another green energy money pit is the wasteful spending on wind power, as illustrated by the often-idle giant wind turbines visible from many highways. Despite decades of effort and billions of dollars in spending, wind power is still unable to pay for itself.

Record cold temperatures across the United States this Halloween include October snow showers in eight midwestern states. The 20 and 30-degree drops in temperature being felt from Dallas to the East Coast require affordable energy or else there will be another jolt to inflation.

In August 2000, General Electric was the most valuable company in the world, having a market capitalization of $601 billion. Today, as it loses $1 billion annually on its offshore wind farms that blight the ocean view for many Americans, the value of the company founded by Thomas Edison has fallen by more than 80%, to just $116 billion.

Wind turbines fail to produce power when it’s needed most, such as on very hot or very cold days, and their maintenance expenses are exorbitant. The inconsistent supply of energy from wind turbines causes spikes that harm the energy grid.

Rising interest rates have laid bare the billions of dollars in operating losses generated by the noisy and ugly windmills. Since low-interest loans are no longer available, green energy companies will be forced to seek billions more in subsidies from the federal government to offset mounting losses.

As the funding of the federal government expires on November 17, the liberal wastefulness of green energy will be one of many senseless entitlements seeking new handouts in the next fiscal year. “Government is too invested to let these companies go bust, and taxpayers will be charged for the repair job,” the Wall Street Journal warned last weekend.

The real federal deficit has doubled from $1 trillion (not just billion) to $2 trillion in merely one year, while Biden demands another $100 billion to spend on no-win foreign wars. House Speaker Johnson wisely separates a vote on emergency aid to Israel from a vote on the much larger spending package demanded by Zelensky in Ukraine with the support of Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) despite rising conservative opposition.

A financial collapse, typically unpredictable in its timing, becomes increasingly likely under the weight of this crushing debt. Ending subsidies for green energy and foreign wars is a great place to start to save our economy.

Due to inflation caused by the wasteful government spending, the interest costs alone on the mountain of debt run up by Biden will soon exceed our total spending on our national defense. With a new Speaker, conservatives in the House have a golden opportunity to realign our nation’s priorities.

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.

Disappearing Motherhood: Who’s to Blame?

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

A British tabloid carried a grim headline Monday announcing “America’s fertility crash,” over an article detailing the precipitous drop in the U.S. birth rate during the last 15 years. The decline was greatest in Utah, whose birth rate fell by more than a third despite the Beehive State’s reputation for large families.

Ignoring such a dire long-term trend that harms the health and happiness of the American people, our media have spent most of 2023 promoting entertainment aimed at single young women, starting with Barbie. That blockbuster movie featured an unmarried woman without children, with merely a cameo appearance by one pregnant character who is portrayed as an outcast.

The Barbie phenomenon is joined by the female pop star Taylor Swift, whose record-setting concert tour caused an unprecedented meltdown at Ticketmaster. Now the film version has broken the box office record for a concert movie, drawing mostly young women to theaters where they dance on chairs and sing off-key rather than merely watching.

Taylor Swift, herself childless and nearly 34 years old, was asked when she turned 30 whether she wants to have children. She curtly replied, “I don’t really think men are asked that question when they turn 30, so I’m not going to answer that now.”

A man’s fertility, of course, doesn’t begin falling at age 30. But every young woman should be warned how much more difficult it becomes to have children as she moves through her 30s.

Taylor Swift won’t need children to support her financially in her old age, due to her fortune. But the future of our country and the “Swifties,” as her followers are called, is less rosy in our increasingly childless society.

The percentage of women under 45 having children has fallen to barely half today. Childless young adults will eventually become an elderly population dependent on public support, but Social Security works only if there are enough young workers to fund the system on a continuing basis.

For the most part, Swifties have not been attending these concerts on dates with young men. An estimated 90% of these concert fans are women, an imbalance so severe that it has caused havoc with the availability of restrooms at performance venues.

Our nation already has a record number of women and men who are single in the 18-29 age group: 34% of women and 63% of men. Many of them have given up on seeking a relationship.

This isolation is not healthy for our society, or for young women. Single women are obese at a rate of 7-12% more than married women, and Taylor Swift had to remove a reference to “fat” in one of her music videos last year to appease her fans.

Meanwhile, the number of men who have no close friendships has increased five-fold in the last 30 years, to 15%. The hordes of young men and women who are unmarried today are having difficulty finding partners who share their political views, while Democrat politicians play gender-gap politics for their benefit.

Married women typically vote Republican as married men do. But single women vote overwhelmingly for the Democratic candidates, in part because Democrats spend billions of dollars advertising to them.

The percentage of 18- to 34-year-olds who are married today is less than half of what it was a generation ago. In liberal Seattle, it is predicted that soon the number of older teenagers and adults who have never been married will surpass the number of married residents there.

Educated women are deciding not to have children at all. About 25% of women nearing the end of their childbearing age who hold at least a master’s degree are childless.

The decline in the birth rate is something that President Trump and the Republican Congress addressed over Democrat opposition back in 2017, by instituting a $2,000 annual tax credit for each child under age 17. But this child tax credit has fallen in real value due to inflation, and a boost in it during Covid was not extended beyond 2021.

This child tax credit is paltry compared with the benefits that every newborn American contributes to our country over a lifetime. In addition to military service and other sacrifices, the average American will pay $500,000 in taxes over his life, so the child tax credit should be far higher than $2,000.

Other countries have changed their policies to encourage more childbearing. Communist China replaced its one-child policy with a two-child policy in 2016, and then ended its two-child policy in 2021 in favor of promoting having three children.

Poland’s conservative-leaning government was just ousted from power in part because it allowed Poland’s birth rate to decline to its lowest level since World War II. Our minuscule, inflation-depleted child tax credit should likewise become an election issue as our birth rate plummets.

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.

Gag Order Invites Reversal

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Democrats’ goal of censoring Donald Trump was embraced by an Obama-appointed federal judge in D.C. on Monday. She then imposed a sweeping gag order demanded by the politicized prosecutor, Jack Smith, to muzzle Trump as he campaigns for president.

Her gag order censors Trump from criticizing Jack Smith and his partisan prosecutors, any of the court’s staff who might later be viewed as including the judge, and “any reasonably foreseeable witness or the substance of their testimony.” The prosecutors can seek to hold Trump in contempt for anything he says that might be interpreted as a violation.

In layman’s terms, the gag order prevents Trump from being Trump. And that is unconstitutional for any court to do to the front-runner for president during his reelection campaign.

Nothing prevents Biden, the Democrats, and the media from exploiting the gag order by relentlessly ranting against Trump on the same topics that he is now prevented from addressing. Ads can be run by rivals while Trump is wrongfully prohibited from rebutting them, because the gag order further censors all who act under Trump’s direction.

Late-night Leftist talk show host Jimmy Kimmel quipped that the gag order shuts down Trump’s ability to criticize even him, because Kimmel is a potential witness. After all, Kimmel joked, “I don’t know about you — I saw the whole thing happen.”

A gag order is a type of prior restraint, which in other contexts would be “presumptively invalid” under Supreme Court precedents. Trump immediately vowed to appeal, correctly pointing out that this gag order interferes with democracy.

Judge Tanya Chutkan repeats the mantra that Trump will not be treated any differently from any other defendant, but no other defendant is constantly and unfairly vilified by the liberal media as Trump is. Judge Chutkan does not censor any of Trump’s critics, yet unconstitutionally prohibits Trump from defending himself as he campaigns.

The delusional Deep State thinks it can imprison Trump for supposedly violating an unlawful restraint on his speech. The gag order immediately harms all Americans by interfering with Trump’s campaign while he appeals.

Judge Chutkan took an oath to uphold the Constitution, and that includes protecting the First Amendment rights of Trump and all Americans. The weaponization of the federal government against Trump and others is an issue in the presidential campaign, and all Americans have a First Amendment right to hear what Trump has to say about it.

An impartial presiding judge is essential to due process. Yet at Monday’s hearing the Obama-appointed judge praised the prosecutors of Trump as “public servants who are simply doing their jobs,” displaying her bias in favor of a team of prosecutors who were just admonished by a different federal judge in the Mar-a-Lago documents case.

Judge Chutkan should not continue to preside over Trump’s case while praising and defending his prosecutors. Jack Smith, the taxpayer-funded biased prosecutor who has wasted many millions on interfering with the political process, may dislike being criticized but the First Amendment requires allowing it.

Yet in court the judge spoke like a CNN political host, taking umbrage at the use of the word “censorship” by Trump’s attorney despite how that is what the gag order is. At one point she reportedly leaned back in her chair and shook her head while Trump’s attorney, John Lauro, was speaking.

When Lauro stated that “President Trump firmly believes that these proceedings are brought by a politically motivated prosecutor,” the judge demanded that Lauro “tone down his language,” as delightfully recounted by CNN. There was no jury present and thus no justification for muzzling an attorney as he argued for his client.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene schooled the judge afterwards about the double standard imposed. Judge Chutkan “said the case isn’t about the court of public opinion, yet she allows the media to sit in her courtroom, the very people who craft public opinion through their headlines and stories,” Rep. Greene pointed out.

Courtrooms in D.C. have become pockets of tyranny where judges seem to care more about the media, as when Judge Royce Lamberth lashed out at Tucker Carlson in a hearing about one of the over-prosecuted January 6 cases.

Judge Chutkan infringes not only on Trump’s First Amendment right to speak out, but also on the First Amendment right of every American to hear Trump’s rebuttal of media reporting about his case. Judge Chutkan ignores the clear constitutional right of Americans to learn Trump’s responses to the media’s negative spin about this politically motivated prosecution.

Judge Chutkan declared at Monday’s hearing that “this trial will not yield to the election cycle, and we will not revisit the trial date.” With her impertinent comments, the judge has amply demonstrated why an appellate court should remove her from Trump’s case.

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.

Mexican Standoff in Texas Special Session

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

There is a Mexican standoff as Texas begins its third special legislative session, precariously close to its early primary next year. A Mexican standoff is a confrontation in which neither side has a winnable strategy, and neither side can retreat.

Education, immigration, a flourishing new community known as Colony Ridge northeast of Houston, and vaccine mandates by private entities are all on the agenda. Gov. Greg Abbott needs to rehabilitate his political reputation after he quietly supported the failed sham impeachment of Attorney General Ken Paxton.

Meanwhile, a federal appeals court heard oral argument last week on the Biden administration’s challenge to the 1,000 feet of orange buoys and barbed wire that Abbott had strung along the middle of the Rio Grande. The Democrat-majority appellate panel signaled that it would probably order Abbott to remove the buoys.

Migrants continue to flow illegally into Texas at many points along the Mexican border. Some lawmakers are casting blame on the fast-growing Colony Ridge community, where illegal residents lacking a valid Social Security number have reportedly been allowed to buy property with financing.
Yet these issues are not the biggest conflict in Texas right now. Instead, it is the fierce opposition by Texas teachers and rural Republicans to enacting a voucher program proposed by Gov. Abbott and an influential think tank, the Texas Public Policy Foundation.

A new voucher program this year in Iowa has resulted in applications exceeding projections, sparking concerns about its impact on rural areas. The Iowa law allows families to take $7,600 per student from public school funding to spend on an accredited private school.

Despite skepticism by many conservatives, Gov. Abbott has staked his political future on enacting his voucher plan. There are approaches other than leaving low-performing public schools, including Donald Trump’s proposal to allow parents to fire public school principals who tolerate poor outcomes or bad behavior.

Public school teachers are so opposed to giving parents vouchers to redeem at private schools that they are even willing to forgo the raises they had been demanding. Teachers oppose vouchers even though the Texas bill would not directly siphon funds from public schools, but instead would fund the vouchers out of general state revenues.

Senate Bill 1 (SB 1) was introduced on the first day of this special session, with state Sen. Brandon Creighton (R-Conroe) as its author. It would provide up to $8,000 in taxpayer-funded vouchers for families to pay private educational expenses, which could include tutoring, homeschooling, textbooks, transportation, and uniforms in addition to tuition.

Simultaneously SB 2 was introduced to provide billions of dollars in raises to Texas public school teachers. Boosted by revenue from higher oil prices and many Americans moving to the Lone Star State, Texas enjoys a surplus of $19 billion in its upcoming fiscal year.
Tapping that surplus, $5.2 billion in new funds would be allocated to public schools, mostly to increase teacher salaries. But Democrats are united against raising teacher pay if the tradeoff is vouchers in any form.

For example, the chairman of the Texas House Democratic Caucus, Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer (San Antonio), announced that his party’s position is “very clear: no vouchers and no deals.” Abbott vows to call a fourth special session if his voucher program does not pass.

But with illegal aliens overrunning Texas schools without the legislature doing anything meaningful about it, the contentious debate about vouchers seems like a distraction. Immigration is on the agenda but there is no leadership by Gov. Abbott or Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick for meaningful action.

With no way to vet migrants hailing from all over the world, terrorists like those who massacred innocent civilians in Israel could be slipping across our open border, waiting for an opportunity to strike Americans here. Abbott has spent $4.5 billion on Operation Lone Star, which was supposed to curtail illegal immigration but has failed to make a dent in it.

Gov. Abbott wasted five months and millions of dollars unsuccessfully trying to remove the Attorney General who has been the strongest in our country against illegal immigration, Ken Paxton. Abbott never defended Paxton against this witch-hunt, as Trump and many conservatives did.

In New Hampshire Monday night, Trump again read from “The Snake,” an allegory about the terrible consequences to a “tender-hearted woman” who invited a menacing creature into her home. Abbott and the Texas legislature should make stopping illegal immigration their top priority of this special session.

With his Attorney General sidelined for the last five months, Gov. Abbott allowed Biden’s lawsuit to halt expanding his border buoys beyond a mere 1,000 feet, when by now they should have extended the entire Texas-Mexico border, which is 1,254 miles. Texas should also be building additional walls to stem the tide of illegal migration, and cutting off their benefits.

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.

Unplug NATO’s War and Corrupt DC

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

The last-minute deal to keep the federal government open did nothing to rein in wasteful and corrupt federal spending, or avert the predicted recession. Rather than react with relief that the federal government continues on, with its misuse of prosecutorial power, the stock market declined after the Sept. 30th vote in Congress to keep the lights on.

The consumer confidence index dropped to a four-month low in September, while new home sales have fallen sharply by 8.7% as of August. Gas prices have skyrocketed, including an 80 cent increase in merely one month in California.

Yet President Biden seems oblivious to the hard times ahead in this impending recession. It is in his political interest not to say this “R” word, as this impedes his diminishing chances of being reelected.

A silver lining to the stopgap funding bill was how House Republicans blocked sending billions more to the NATO war in Ukraine. As good jobs disappear in our country, it is dismaying that some Senate leaders care more about continuing to fund bloodshed halfway around the world than taking care of our economy back home.

Fortunately, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) has led the fight against forcing Americans to fund NATO’s war to expand its membership to include Ukraine. Congress has already sent $113 billion of hard-earned American taxpayer funds to Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky without accountability of where it ultimately went.

Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), who has a large Ukrainian constituency, opposes pouring more American money into the war there. “Five years from now … you’re going to find a lot of people have gotten rich from this,” he said last month.

On Sunday, voters in Slovakia elected the party that promised to end military support for the regime in Ukraine. The election winners also vowed to oppose Ukraine joining NATO, which is what this war is about.

There is an upcoming election in Poland, which is prompting politicians there to promise an end to Poland’s involvement in this conflict. Last month the Polish prime minister announced, “We no longer transfer weapons to Ukraine because we are now arming Poland.”

Our own presidential election is a year away, and the pro-globalism Senate leadership thinks that voters will forget by then or fail to assert themselves against this looting by D.C. of America. But on Saturday the American people won on this issue of pouring billions more into this war in Ukraine.

“Senate leadership tried to get Ukraine jammed into the CR and they just got bucked,” celebrated Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), talking about the continuing resolution enacted on Saturday. Yet the next day President Biden announced that he expects more funding of this NATO war in Ukraine to pass in a separate vote, which no Republican Speaker of the House should schedule.

“There’s going to have to be a major debate in this country” about continuing to fund this war, observed left-leaning Politico. This conflict has already killed or wounded a half-million soldiers and the practical effect of funding it is to keep Zelensky in power rather than give him an incentive to negotiate for peace.

CNN admitted over the summer that most Americans oppose Congress providing more funding for this war. Among Republicans, 71% oppose sending more money there.

Phyllis Schlafly correctly predicted in 1967 that President Lyndon B. Johnson could not be reelected if the Vietnam War continued through 1968. “Johnson’s political future depends on ending the war in some way,” she wrote 56 years ago in her book against the Deep State entitled Safe - Not Sorry.

That war did continue, and as now we were entangled in it without a full debate and formal declaration by Congress. Subsequently the otherwise invincible Johnson was humiliated in his own primary and forced to withdraw from the presidential race in order to be replaced as the Democrat nominee.

As the recession takes hold and deepens in the United States, Biden and Democrats will lose badly on Election Day next year if they continue to send money to fuel NATO’s agenda in Ukraine. They can avoid talking about the recession, but they cannot avoid voters’ wrath for advancing a pro-war globalist ideology rather than America First.

The average length of recessions after World War II has been 10 months, but the so-called Great Recession that swept Democrats into power in 2008 lasted 18 months while one in the early 1980s lasted 16 months. Ballots will be cast next year while Americans are unable to keep up with the spiraling inflation and interest rates.

Democrats talk of replacing Biden as their nominee because of his age, but an equally large problem for him is trying to defend his pro-war policies during a recession. Robbing Americans further to fund perpetual foreign violence during a recession is not a successful formula for Democrats to win an election.

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.

Supreme Court Caves to Left on Racial Quotas

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

The Supreme Court sided on Tuesday with federal interference in the Alabama legislature for the second time in four months, by ordering or allowing the liberal judicial override of a redistricting plan. This misuse of the Voting Rights Act obstructs a state legislature from exercising its constitutional authority to reformulate its congressional districts based on population changes.

Some 15 years after Americans elected a black president, and long after black congressmen and senators have been elected by majority-white constituents, the Supreme Court is still falling for the liberal lie that whites won’t elect a black representative. Liberals perpetuate this fiction to increase the number of Democrat-controlled congressional districts, rather than to protect voting rights.

Alabama already has one majority-black congressional district out of seven. But liberals insist that an additional district be drawn based solely on race, even though the Fourteenth Amendment stands against racial discrimination by the government of any state.

Last June the Supreme Court pontificated against universities for basing their admissions decisions in part on race. But that same month, and again this week, the same Supreme Court held that a state legislature must redraw Alabama’s congressional districts based on the race of its voting age population, in order to create the highest possible number of majority-black districts.

A few Justices appear spooked by the possibility that the liberal media might call them racist if they do not require racial quotas in redistricting, even though that was never overtly required before. The Court implicitly adopts the false argument that a district would not elect a black Representative if fewer than half of its voters are black.

Congress currently has four African-American members representing districts with far less than a black majority: Byron Donalds, whose Florida district is 7% black; Wesley Hunt, whose Texas district is 7% black; John James, whose Michigan district is 3% black; and Burgess Owens, whose Utah district is less than 2% black. Sen. Tim Scott represents South Carolina, which is only 26% black, and is a candidate for president.

Of course, all these fine elected officials are Republicans, which is not what liberals seek. Instead, what they want is to maximize the number of Democrat-held districts, regardless of color.

The Supreme Court obliges, as two Republican-appointed Supreme Court Justices who otherwise purport to defend state sovereignty flipped to the liberal side to override the Alabama legislature. This Court that refused to touch any election issue brought by Trump is eager to appease progressives who misuse race to manipulate election outcomes.

The Court refuses to admit that it is demanding the equivalent of unconstitutional racial quotas. Yet on Tuesday, by issuing unsigned orders without comment, the Court reaffirmed its Allen v. Milligan decision last June that requires Alabama to use racial quotas in redistricting.

John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh were the justices who joined the liberal bloc to expand Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act to force this extraordinary override of a state legislature. Roberts joined despite his ruling in 2013 that Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act was no longer needed, and Kavanaugh concurred despite his caveat that “the authority to conduct race-based redistricting cannot extend indefinitely into the future.”

The fiction of liberals and federal courts pretending to prefer race-blind policies is laid bare by their racial quotas for redistricting. States should not be forced to perpetuate the balkanization of voting along racial lines, coupled with ballot harvesting strategies that in some precincts have delivered nearly every ballot for the Democrat Party.

Our Constitution is color-blind and should be interpreted that way on all issues, not just college admissions. As explained by Clarence Thomas, the senior black justice on the Court, disputes about drawing congressional districts should be resolved “in a way that would not require the Federal Judiciary to decide the correct racial apportionment of Alabama’s congressional seats.”

Every ten years a new census results in states redrawing their congressional districts to account for shifting population and the gain or loss of a congressional seat. The Alabama legislature justifiably sought to keep its southwest Gulf Coast region within one congressional district because there is a community of interest there, while plaintiffs sought to break it into separate districts in order to forge a second majority-Democrat, majority-black district.

Democrats challenged the legislature’s decision based on their theory about the “Black Belt” region of Alabama, so named for the color of its rich soil and not the color of its residents. The Alabama legislature included much of this region in a district where blacks comprised 42% of its population, which should have been enough.

By racially balkanizing Alabama, the Court reduces the likelihood that a black congressman can be elected statewide as Tim Scott has been reelected as senator in South Carolina.

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.