Can’t Win By Not Showing Up

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

The Republican Party has held a majority in all three branches of the federal government and in most statehouses, and yet has broken records for inactivity. The House has spent most of this year not in session, while the Supreme Court hears less than half the cases it did a few decades ago.

The House adjourned early in its final session before the midterms, apparently to avert an impeachment of War Secretary Pete Hegseth. But the House must reconvene next week to begin considering essential end-of-year bills, so disappearing before the midterms in order to give Hegseth six more weeks in office seemed hardly worth it.

Meanwhile, Democrats are showing up in record numbers for early voting. Nearly 59 million votes were cast prior to Election Day, mostly by Dems, exceeding the surge that occurred in the 2018 midterms, and probably exceeding the ballots to be cast on Election Day this year.

Republican candidates have not been showing up for debates and town halls, as statewide Republicans in Texas and Florida refused to debate. In the past, Republicans like Ronald Reagan had always welcomed opportunities to present their principles and values to voters, but unfortunately voters have not been able to hear from many GOP candidates this time.

In gubernatorial races nationwide, 21 of the 36 races lacked televised debates. Many of these Republicans in deep red states will win anyway, but their margins of victory are smaller than they should be, and down-ballot candidates or those in swing states are falling short.

And when the Republican candidate did attend a debate, as in Michigan for its open U.S. Senate seat, the Republican focused more on personally attacking his opponent than on advocating for policies as his opponent did. Voters were left by these debates with too little information about what the Republican candidate stands for.

It is a mistake for Republicans to take for granted that Gen Z, who are the young swing voters deciding elections today, know the positions and values of the GOP. They were not born yet when Ronald Reagan was president, and have little recollection of the disastrous domestic policies of Democrat President Barack Obama.

The Republican Party has not tried hard enough to reach these young voters who are the swing vote in elections. These voters do not watch or like cable news shows, and are not influenced by the hundreds of millions of dollars poured into political advertising in the last few weeks.

Hegseth unnecessarily alienated Gen Z with his plan to livestream the execution of the Fort Hood murderer, which seemed like a stunt to one-up the liberal media. One major poll showed that 80% of Americans opposed livestreaming the execution, and a big majority of Gen Z dislikes capital punishment anyway.

Too much of the policymaking seems designed to defy liberals rather than appeal to young voters. Getting grocery prices or health insurance premiums lower for young workers would have helped in this election, rather than trying to outdo the Left on cable television.

The cable news style of personally disparaging an opponent has not played well with Gen Z. The tactic of trying to dredge up old, anonymous social media posts and linking them to the Democrat candidate has been a failure in attracting young voters.

A hope existed among Republican candidates that big money, which arrived late in the game from Elon Musk, would rescue the GOP. But most voters had made up their minds before the big donations to PACs arrived, and the independent ads seemed geared more to elderly Fox News viewers than to Gen Z.

Republican consultants, not candidates, are the ones who benefit most from independent expenditures. Democrats wisely channeled their donations directly to candidates, who know how best to spend it while benefiting from preferential ad rates not available for independent expenditures.

Lawsuits by Republicans have been ineffective, too. Over the weekend, a federal judge dismissed a Republican lawsuit in Alaska seeking to block certification of the result there if the incumbent Dan Sullivan loses due to the other Dan Sullivan who was recruited by the Democrats to confuse.

On Monday, the Supreme Court denied an application by the Trump Administration in appeal of a ruling against its lawsuit to segregate ballots possibly cast by noncitizens in California. That state has an illegal alien population estimated to be 3 million, and Democrats there have failed to clean its election rolls while courts look the other way.

Republican candidates have been defiant toward the liberal media, as is appropriate, but too often come across as defiant toward young voters as well. The GOP attracted young voters in order to win in 2024, and needs to bring them back by reaching out to them in a positive way.

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.

Finish the Wall

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

President Trump stopped the flow of illegal aliens across our southern border by enforcing the law and deporting many of them. This is a remarkable achievement by Trump that many liberals have done everything they could to obstruct.

But illegal aliens are marching toward our border again in anticipation of gains by Democrats in the midterm elections. Already, 400 Honduran migrants were spotted entering Mexico on October 15, as they strode north on track to reach our border after Election Day.

Republicans had begun to build the long-sought border wall along the porous Texas-Mexico border, but Leftist lawfare has halted its construction. The wall is needed to prevent another influx of illegal migrants into our country once Democrats acquire some political power again.

Republicans secured funding in the One Big Beautiful Bill enacted last year for a mixture of sturdy 30-foot-high steel bollard walls, surveillance cameras, and vehicle barriers to stretch across our 2,000-mile southern border. This would bring us closer to the permanent security we need, and also save lives in the dangerous and expensive work of ferreting out elusive migrants who find a way to break into our country any way possible.

These migrants have families back home and that is where they should work toward their future. They can become active politically to import our constitutional government and Rule of Law into their own countries, for the benefit of themselves and their fellow citizens in a country where (unlike here) they speak the native language.

The Big Bend Sector includes 517 miles of the 1,254-mile Texas-Mexico border, and construction was ongoing there until federal district judge Kathleen Cardone ordered a halt on October 2. Bulldozers were merely clearing some land, but even that was too much for liberals who oppose this worthy project.

Judge Cardone has ruled in favor of illegal aliens before, as when she issued an injunction against Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s order to stop illegal aliens suspected of having Covid. This time she has enjoined construction of the border wall in the Big Bend region of West Texas, including Big Bend National Park, which is a corridor for illegal aliens to sneak into our country.

Most district court injunctions can take years to litigate through ordinary appeals, during which migrants could exploit this gap. Trump’s Solicitor General, John Sauer, has wisely taken this issue quickly to the U.S. Supreme Court by filing an application last week for the High Court to allow Trump’s Secretary of Homeland Security, Markwayne Mullin, to continue building.

Even experienced attorneys would be surprised to learn that the applicable federal statute prohibits appealing this type of injunction to the U.S. Court of Appeals, which is the typical procedure to run a case up the ladder. Instead, a provision added by the REAL ID Act of 2005 states that this district court injunction “may be reviewed only upon petition for a writ of certiorari to the Supreme Court of the United States.”

So Trump’s top attorney has done that. Sauer points out in his application that the district court lacked jurisdiction to interfere with the construction of this border wall, and thus the Supreme Court should issue a stay against the district court’s injunction and reverse it.

The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, as amended in 2005, contains a special jurisdiction-stripping provision as urged by Phyllis Schlafly for this and other issues on which liberals sue for activist rulings to interfere with implementation of the law. The statute takes jurisdiction away from federal courts for legal challenges on this issue, except for claims alleging violations of the Constitution.

There is no plausible constitutional objection to building a border wall. Sauer explained that Congress has granted the Secretary of Homeland Security “broad authority … to construct border barriers and roads ‘to deter illegal crossings in areas of high illegal entry,’ and expressly authorized the Secretary ‘to waive all legal requirements’ that he ‘determines necessary to ensure expeditious construction of the barriers and roads under this section.’”

Microsoft, meanwhile, is run by an immigrant and continues to hire many tech workers from India and elsewhere under the H-1B program. This displaces American workers and Microsoft has just announced its attempt to persuade one-quarter of its workforce — a whopping 60,000 employees — to quit in return for a buyout plan.

But workers want a job, not a cheap buyout plan. Fewer than 3,000 of these employees are expected to leave voluntarily, and an axe may fall next.

The Supreme Court set October 29 as the deadline for the plaintiffs who oppose the border wall to respond to Trump’s Solicitor General, who will then have a right to file his reply. This could become the first major decision by the Supreme Court after the upcoming elections.

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.

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.