Tuesday, March 28, 2023

Don’t Play Nuclear Chess against Russia

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

NATO’s expansion of war in Ukraine continues, misguided by unelected globalists who demand that rulers subordinate national interests to global governance. As the 2024 elections get under way, Donald Trump is the only candidate in either party who speaks out against reckless war-mongering that could spark World War III.

While Trump was expounding his pro-peace platform at an overflow weekend rally in Waco, Texas, Russian President Vladimir Putin was moving tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus along the northern border of Ukraine. Belarus is allied with Russia, so nothing can be done to prevent this.

Russia’s move horrified clueless Western globalists, who thought they had checkmated Putin by having him indicted by the International Criminal Court. Putin is obviously unfazed by that self-appointed tribunal, which lacks jurisdiction over him in Russia.

Tactical nuclear weapons are designed to deliver atomic bombs against battlefield targets, rather than destroy civilian infrastructure as was done to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. For over 75 years dropping nuclear bombs has been unthinkable, but launching nuclear arms against tanks and soldiers could be an initial step to all-out nuclear war.

What is unthinkable at the beginning of a war can become inevitable as war drags on and people are hardened by its atrocities. The vicious use of chemical weapons unfortunately became prevalent as World War I wore on, to the point where both sides began wearing gas masks.

Neither Biden nor NATO should be playing a game of nuclear chess with the grandmasters in Russia. As Biden and entrenched D.C. politicians of both parties scheme to involve the United States further in a border war on the other side of the globe, only Trump among the presidential candidates is outspoken against it.

The American people, particularly the all-important young voters, want no part of a confrontation with Russia, with the possibility that battlefield nukes could eventually be deployed. Biden and the Leftist leaders of NATO, however, continue to provoke Russia to the point where it moves nuclear weapons into position for possible battlefield use.

Pulitzer-Prize winning investigator Seymour Hersh released his account last month accusing Biden of having ordered the destruction of Russia’s Nord Stream pipelines. Less than two weeks later, another massive explosion seriously damaged the Russian built, 12-mile-long Kerch Bridge that connects Russia to Crimea.

Last year Biden declared, “If Russia invades, there will no longer be a Nord Stream 2, we will bring an end to it.” Indeed, after Russia invaded Ukraine, underwater explosions by mines evidently laid by skilled navy divers at the bottom of the Baltic Sea did destroy 3 of the 4 Nord Stream pipelines that deliver Russian natural gas to Western Europe.

The sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines forced 35 tons of chemical weapon residue to resurface after lying dormant on the seabed since being dumped there after World War II. This harmful disturbance included arsenic and mustard gas chemical agents.

In addition, the sabotage of this pipeline caused the release of 115,000 tons of natural gas in merely six days. Such a massive release of hydrocarbons would require 600 million trees a year to absorb, yet not a word from the Biden Administration about the environmental harm that resulted.

Biden’s State Department point person for Ukraine, Victoria Nuland, even said she was “very gratified” that the Russian pipeline had become “a hunk of metal at the bottom of the sea.” The Deep State’s gratification surely includes knowledge of who committed this crime, which they conceal from the American people.

The European Union concluded it was sabotage, not an accident, that destroyed these nearly 1,000-mile long pipelines that provided inexpensive energy to Western Europe. Biden refuses to confess who did it, but a President Trump would tell us.

Biden and the Deep State should not try to defeat a Russian army that has access to battlefield nuclear weapons in its own backyard. This escalating war has pushed Russia into a stronger alliance with another adversary holding many nuclear warheads, Communist China.

On Sunday Communist North Korea fired two warning missiles against the arrival nearby of a U.S. aircraft carrier. Biden has limited bandwidth for conflicts halfway around the world, and North Korea might exploit Biden’s obsession with Russia.

Recent polling shows Biden’s approval has dropped to nearly his all-time low, with only 38% of Americans approving of his job performance according to a survey by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Voters under age 45 are walking away from Biden more than any other group.

If we don’t win this next election, 2024, I truly believe our country is doomed,” Trump told his crowd of many thousands on Saturday. Young voters are historically anti-war, and Trump can save our country by campaigning against this war.

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.

Tuesday, March 21, 2023

Investigate the Investigators

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Our Constitution provides ample remedies for the problems facing our Nation. Instead of waiting for the impending indictment of Donald Trump by the New York County District Attorney, our elected representatives can and should act swiftly to smoke out how improper this prosecution is.

Prosecuting attorneys enjoy enormous discretion to bring charges to grand juries, who are willing to indict even a “ham sandwich” upon request. But if a county prosecutor is allowed to indict the leading presidential candidate from the opposing party, our national elections would no longer be democratic.

On Monday the chairmen of the House Judiciary Committee and two other House committees signed and sent a letter to the New York County D.A., Alvin Bragg, demanding information about the unprecedented charges concocted against Trump. This letter led by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) states “we expect that you will testify about what plainly appears to be a politically motivated prosecutorial decision.”

Bragg has reportedly based his charges on an incident that was well known to the Americans who elected Trump in 2016 and voted for him again in 2020. Other prosecutors who had already examined the same widely publicized facts found them not to be criminal, yet this Democrat D.A. has dredged up ancient history in an obvious effort to impede Trump’s reelection in 2024.

While Bragg wastes his time trying to prosecute a former president for his non-criminal conduct, Senator JD Vance (R-OH) recently tweeted that he “allows violent criminals to walk the streets of New York City.” Referring to George Soros and his funded prosecutors like Alvin Bragg, Sen. Vance says “these people are trying to turn America into a third-world country.”

Our Constitution provides ways to respond, as it always does, by vesting the most power in the House of Representatives. That body can and should compel testimony and the production of emails by the rogue prosecutor’s office before it interferes with our upcoming presidential election.

The Speech or Debate Clause found in Article I of the Constitution confers broad immunity on House leaders and their staffs to take effective action to protect the integrity of our presidential election against such wanton interference. One Soros-funded prosecutor cannot properly hold our entire country hostage to a politically motivated indictment.

Last year the D.C. federal courts even expanded the power of the House to demand compliance with its subpoenas, in order to help the J6 Committee investigate Trump supporters. What was good for the goose then is good for the gander now, as the Republican majority should churn out subpoenas to investigate every nook and cranny of this retaliation by Democrats against Trump.

Investigate the investigators” Trump truthed on Sunday on his Truth Social platform, where Trump has posted messages nearly hourly in recent days. Instead of campaigning for president as he should be allowed to do, Trump is forced to respond to a bogus indictment by a Democrat county prosecutor.

This sham indictment was immediately condemned by one of the lesser-known Republican presidential candidates, Vivek Ramaswamy. He criticized Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis, who were slow in condemning Democrats’ misuse of prosecutorial power and failed to defend Trump.

The New York City prosecutor “should be held accountable for the crime of ‘interference in a presidential election,’” Trump truthed on his Truth Social platform Sunday night. Biden’s Department of Justice is filled with Trump-haters, so the responsibility of providing a necessary check-and-balance on this abuse of power falls on the Republican House of Representatives.

Remember, the same animals and thugs that would do this to perhaps 200 million people … are the communists, Marxists, RINOs, and losers that are purposefully destroying our country,” Trump added. House GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik (R-NY) truthed on Trump’s platform, “The two-tiered justice system in America is fully on display” with this prosecution of Trump.

Coincidentally, the House Republicans have been convening in Florida for their annual House Republican Issues Conference. Atop their agenda should be how to protect the leading Republican candidate for president from what a county prosecutor is doing right now to Trump.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who has already shown his effectiveness by standing strong against raising the debt ceiling, asked House committees to review what federal funding goes to county prosecutors who are interfering with national candidates like this. While that is a good first step, more is needed to protect our presidential elections against county prosecutors.

The House should immediately conduct a full investigation into who is pushing for an outdated assertion of discredited charges against Trump, even as presidential debates are set to begin in less than five months. The silver lining is that the American people may finally realize how prosecutions are increasingly being weaponized for political gain.

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.

Tuesday, March 14, 2023

Ban Transgender Operations on Children

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

An emergency appeal reaches the U.S. Supreme Court from West Virginia, which is trying to safeguard girls’ sports teams against biological males pretending to be girls. A well-reasoned federal district court decision upheld its law against a constitutional challenge on behalf of an 11-year-old, but then a majority-Democrat panel on the Fourth Circuit suspended the good law.

This case is being called the most important yet in the transgender movement, which is suddenly invading nearly every school and government program. Chief Justice John Roberts ordered a response to West Virginia to be filed by noon next Monday, March 20, and already amicus briefs in support of West Virginia’s necessary law have been filed.

The lower federal courts held that transgenders are entitled to a heightened form of protection under the Constitution, and that issue is now before the Supreme Court. Two years ago the Supreme Court ducked a case concerning an attempt by a school board to keep biological boys and girls out of each others’ restrooms.

In that lawsuit arising from Gloucester High School in Virginia, the Supreme Court denied a petition for certiorari on this issue of forcing transgenderism on schools. That handed transgender activists a victory by leaving intact the Fourth Circuit ruling against the school board, which declared transgender conduct to be a new constitutional right and a Title IX federal right in schools.

Aided by desires to attract attention, hordes of children are declaring an interest in being transgender now. Last month it was reported that several 5th graders told their teacher that they wanted to become transgender, and when the teacher asked the Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital for advice its response was to affirm the behavior, without suggesting that the parents be informed.

What they are teaching in schools today is insane,” Trump declared Monday at a campaign stop in Davenport, Iowa. “I will bring parental rights back into our school system,” he vowed by promising to cut off federal funding to public schools that push the liberal agenda.

Trump and nearly all Republicans have denounced the unfairness about biological boys invading girls’ sports, shattering girls’ records, and sometimes even causing physical injury to girls in contact sports. More is at stake than merely the integrity of girls’ sports: transgender operations inflict lifelong harm on children, and no ethical consent can be given for that.

Banning biological boys from girls’ sports would stem some of the motivation, as competition in school sports is intense with pride and college scholarships hanging in the balance. Some parents whose boys are not good enough to win on a boys team may be just fine with trying to transform them into girls if it means trophies, championships, and scholarships will result.

Billions of taxpayer dollars are flowing to medical universities willing to take the money and perform operations and treatments, to acclaim by liberals who see this a way to accomplish goals that Phyllis Schlafly warned against 50 years ago. Social media applauds those on TikTok and elsewhere who announce with a dance video or photos that suddenly they self-identify with the opposite sex.

Conservative legislatures are slow to turn off the faucet, or fire hydrant, that is watering all this. The Republican Missouri state senate adjourned one day in disarray rather than debate legislation to stop encouraging this harmful gender dysphoria in children.

A Canadian physician who was a leader on transgender treatments decades ago admits now that it was a mistake. “We were wrong,” Dr. Susan Bradley recently announced.

They’re not as irreversible as we always thought, and they have longer term effects on kids’ growth and development, including making them sterile and quite a number of things affecting their bone growth,” she added. “I had this skepticism in the back of my mind all the time that maybe we were actually colluding and not helping” the children who wanted to switch genders.

Republicans are in a majority in most state legislatures, which are convening now but many will adjourn this spring for the year or, as in Texas, adjourn for two years. Last year Texas Republicans transferred $105 million to the Texas Child Mental Health Consortium, which partly funds promotion of transgenderism in schoolchildren.

Legislation is being considered now in Texas to ban transgender procedures on children, as South Dakota enacted and Gov. Kristi Noem signed. Last week West Virginia, which reportedly has more transgender youths than any state, passed a bill banning transgender procedures on kids, but its governor has not yet said whether he’ll sign it into law.

These good state laws are immediately challenged in federal court by the well-funded transgender movement. Trump has the best record of any politician in making strong judicial appointments, which are needed now more than ever.

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.

Tuesday, March 7, 2023

Trump KOs GOP Globalists

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Last weekend featured dueling political conferences, one flush with cash from globalists hoping that Trump's rival speech would be treated akin to George Washington's Farewell Address. It was wishful thinking by Never-Trumpers, as instead Trump retook control of the GOP.

Trump's nearly 2-hour speech at CPAC, which for many years has been the largest annual grassroots conservative gathering, was astounding for his vigor and enthusiasm. He called for an end of the unsuccessful influence on the Republican Party by the Bush family, Karl Rove, and Paul Ryan, who drove the party into the ground until Trump rejuvenated it.

"This is the final battle," Trump declared to the roaring crowd gathered for him in Maryland, just outside of D.C., even though that is not Republican territory. Trump then rattled off an array of hot-button issues that form the political agenda for ordinary Americans through the presidential election next year.

The contrast between Trump and the worn-out ideas of his media-pandering rivals could not be greater. The hedge fund bosses and phony free traders who assembled at The Breakers, the posh hotel in Palm Beach, Florida, are not the crowd who will be picking the next president or electing candidates down-ballot, and it was a mistake for Trump’s rivals to see that as a path to the White House.

Ironically, it was Trump who gave any prominence to the candidates who seek to replace him as the Republican nominee for president, and their lack of gratitude to him is reason enough to prefer Trump. Nikki Haley was appointed Ambassador to the United Nations by Trump, and she was heckled by conservatives at CPAC after turning against him.

In 2018, Trump propelled Ron DeSantis to the gubernatorial nomination over a better known rival in Florida, where he won reelection in 2022 while finishing second overall in votes to its Trump-supporting Attorney General. DeSantis has not yet criticized Trump publicly, but in his 40-minute speech to globalists compared some Republicans to “potted plants” for allowing Leftists to frame the debate.

That criticism cannot apply to Trump, who relishes a good fight. DeSantis appears to be imitating Trump’s style without giving him credit.

Both Haley and DeSantis are traveling to Iowa, which remains the first contest on the Republican side and thus will set the tone for the primaries that follow. Trump enjoys enormous support among Republican officials in the early primary states, and he met with state leaders from Nevada while his rivals were auditioning before globalists.

Failed former Congressman David McIntosh and his Globalist friends at Club for No Growth, who fought me all the way in 2016, and LOST, and then fought me again in 2020 Senate Races in Ohio, Alabama, North Carolina, New Hampshire, plus more, and LOST AGAIN, are now threatening to spend money against me,” Trump boomed. “No Growth Members know there will be RETRIBUTION!!!”, Trump added.

Trump is right about the Club for Growth, formerly led by Pat Toomey who was one of the few Senators to vote in support of the vindictive second impeachment of President Trump. Toomey then left the Senate and became a director of Apollo Global Management, a private equity firm profiting from globalism and from the notorious “carried interest” tax loophole that Trump tried to end but Toomey was an “all star” in preserving, a lobbyist told Bloomberg.

Club for Growth has lost many elections, and its campaign spending is too small to have any real influence. It spends less than half of 1% of the overall expenditures each election cycle, and Trump refers to it as “The Club For NO Growth, an assemblage of political misfits, globalists, and losers.”

Trump’s landslide victory in the straw poll at CPAC amassed three times as many votes as the distant runner-up Ron DeSantis, and was Trump’s record-setting sixth victory in that poll. That doubles the career victories by President Ronald Reagan in that same poll, and exceeds the four victories by the last GOP presidential nominee prior to Trump, Mitt Romney.

Trump's speech was reminiscent of the Declaration of Independence in listing the grievances of the American People against the globalists who have run our country into the ground. Even the New York Times appears to agree with Trump in warning against further entanglement by the United States in the NATO war in Ukraine.

Steve Bannon quipped about the rivals to Trump, “We don't have time for on-the-job training.” Trump’s rivals look like the seven dwarfs compared with Trump, and just imagine how much he can accomplish in a second term without anti-Trumpers like Ryan and Toomey on Capitol Hill.

Like General Douglas MacArthur vowing to return and then doing so to liberate the Philippines during World War II, Trump will return to the White House to finish the job he started.

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.

Tuesday, February 28, 2023

Globalists Want Their Own President

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Globalists feel now is their time to pick the next American president. Bill Clinton was groomed by the world elite for decades until they made him president, and Hillary was to be their encore in 2016 until that was foiled by Trump.

Trump remains their nemesis and his presidency stood in favor of America First and against globalism, world government, phony free trade, and perpetual foreign wars. Biden was not the candidate globalists really wanted in 2020, and was nominated only after it became obvious that none of the other Democrats had any chance of winning the general election.

But the growing discontent with Biden has spread to rank-and-file Democrat voters. Only 37% of ordinary Democrats want Biden for a second term, according to the latest poll by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Time is running out for Biden to get his numbers up with Democrats, and father time points to further mental decline by him. If credible Democrat rivals jump into the race, Biden will have to participate in debates later this year, and it is difficult to see how he would survive politically.

The first presidential debate on the Republican side will be in August in Milwaukee, where the Republican National Convention will also be held next year. Candidates who refuse to support Trump if he’s the nominee will not be allowed to participate, because RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel just required a loyalty pledge by all debate participants.

That rules out Paul Ryan and anyone like him from being relevant. Ryan just declared that he will not attend the Republican National Convention next year if Trump is the nominee, similar to how Ohio Gov. John Kasich refused to attend the convention in his home state where Trump was nominated in 2016.

Trump then ignored Kasich, who became irrelevant, and Trump single-handedly turned Ohio solidly Republican. Ryan and other Never-Trumpers face a similar exile for grandstanding now against the presumptive Republican nominee Trump.

Trump’s enemies are sock puppets of globalism, and rather than criticizing Trump they should be working to grow the Republican Party in the pivotal swing states. Ryan should have worked harder to hold onto the GOP majority in the House in 2018 and help win Wisconsin in 2020, when instead Ryan quit at a young age and carps against Trump now.

The more intriguing political backstabbing is among the Democrat insiders, where the infighting is over everything from picking the location of their national convention to which primaries will be held first. The traditional one-two sequence held by the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary disfavors Biden, who did poorly there in 2020, so he has misused his power of incumbency to demote them.

Biden’s insistence on changing 50 years of tradition shows how imperiled his political future within his own party is. By installing the small Republican state of South Carolina as first among Democrat primaries, Biden is trying to renominate himself because he ran strongest there in 2020.

But it is worse than that, because Biden is pledging our country to support a perpetual war in Ukraine as his way of appeasing globalists who control the presidential nomination process. “The strategy of politics, like an iceberg, is eight-ninths under the surface,” Phyllis Schlafly wrote in 1964 in A Choice Not An Echo, her bestselling book about this issue.

On Monday Biden sent his Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to Kyiv, Ukraine merely a week after Biden himself visited there. Our Treasury Secretary should not fly into a foreign war to pledge unlimited funding of it at American taxpayer expense, but that is exactly what globalists want.

South American countries, led by Brazil, have been attempting to broker peace in Ukraine. For that, globalists persuaded Germany to retaliate against Brazil by blocking shipment of Brazilian goods unrelated to the war.

Meanwhile, Biden oddly refuses to visit the toxic train wreck in Ohio, and dispatches his leading rival, Pete Buttigieg, to visit it instead. This posturing by Biden makes little sense if he is trying to defeat Trump, who did visit, but Biden may view Buttigieg as his more immediate hurdle for the nomination.

Suddenly there is news of an investigation of Buttigieg’s use of government planes, which may be pursued by the Biden Administration to dampen enthusiasm by the globalists for Buttigieg. He was groomed by the foreign Rhodes Scholar program as was Bill Clinton, and many globalists view Buttigieg as their first choice as Bill Clinton was.

Joe Biden has not spoken at the globalist confab in Davos since January 2017. In contrast, globalists prominently promote their favored Buttigieg on their website, touting him as “one of the most visible political figures from the Millennial generation” and evena winner of the JFK Library Foundation New Frontier Award.”

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.

Tuesday, February 21, 2023

Biden’s Escalation Echoes LBJ’s Mistake

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Joe “don't know much about history” Biden, as the song goes, escalates U.S. involvement in the no-win war in the Ukraine, in an echo of how a similar no-win escalation in Vietnam ended the political career of Democrat President Lyndon Johnson (LBJ) in 1968. By surprisingly visiting Kyiv on Monday and promising increased American financial support for a corrupt regime on Russia's border, Biden is directly provoking the mighty Russian bear.

Russia’s President Putin has already responded by suspending Russia’s participation in the New START nuclear arms treaty, which is the only remaining major nuclear treaty between Russia and the U.S. Putin’s linking of nuclear weapons to Biden’s actions is a chilling reminder of the growing risks of Biden’s reckless intervention in that hopeless conflict.

Biden imperils the United States even worse than LBJ did, because Russia has far greater military firepower than North Vietnam ever had. Russia has long-range missiles that could easily reach unprotected American targets, and so does its new ally China, which reportedly sent a high-level delegation to Moscow on Tuesday in order to increase ties between those former antagonists.

Congress has not authorized this war, and the American people have never been asked to approve it. Public support for sending American weapons to Ukraine has dropped from 60% last year to less than 50% last week, according to a new poll by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

An NBC News poll last month showed that merely 41% of Americans approve Biden’s approach to this war. Young voters are more opposed to this entanglement, and they are a key swing demographic in elections.

One of the few Republicans who did well in a swing state last November was the one who spoke out against continued American involvement in this war. JD Vance won by a near-landslide with that campaign position in Ohio, where there are many immigrants from Ukraine.

Democrats should take a history lesson in how the Vietnam War issue took down LBJ in 1968, when he was at the peak of his political power and younger than age 60. He appeared invincible for reelection against a weak Republican opponent, the twice-defeated retread Richard Nixon, who had been humiliated by a 5-point loss for governor of his home state of California.

But then an unfunded, obscure senator-poet from Minnesota named Gene McCarthy, not the anti-communist Joe McCarthy from Wisconsin, challenged LBJ in the first presidential primary in New Hampshire. Resistance to LBJ’s pro-war stance enabled McCarthy to embarrass the incumbent by denying him a majority.

LBJ departed the race by the end of the month, and his vice president Hubert Humphrey was ultimately nominated by Democrats for what became a tight contest that fall. Then, as now, young voters were less pro-war than the Democrat politicians, and Nixon appealed to young voters by promising to bring an end to America’s involvement in Vietnam.

Polls today show that only a tiny percentage of voters are undecided as to which of the two major parties they will support in the next election. Republicans would do well, as Nixon did in 1968 and JD Vance did last year, to focus on young voters who do not support perpetual war.

The two ends of the political spectrum, the Right and Left, align against the middle on this issue of escalating the war in Ukraine. Moderate Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who relies on globalist support to cling to his power as the leader of Senate Republicans, is hurting our country and his party by siding with Biden on Ukraine.

While Mitch McConnell is working with his fellow octogenarian Joe Biden to push the wrong war at the wrong time, younger conservative Republicans in both chambers of Congress are speaking out sharply against it. “They can keep him,” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) stated in outrage about Biden’s prioritizing a war halfway around the world over the crisis at our southern border and the toxic train wreck catastrophe in Ohio.

As tweeted by freshman Senator Eric Schmitt (R-MO), who was elected with the support of Trump, “If you want to understand why so many Americans are frustrated right now: Biden is in Ukraine before Ohio.”

Yet globalists who profit from perpetual war in distant lands expect to win this issue in the Swamp. McConnell’s continuing support of the war gives Biden less to be worried about in his own reelection campaign for president, if Democrats renominate him.

On Saturday, at the globalist Munich Security Conference in Germany where Kamala Harris made a fool of herself last year, the prime minister of the United Kingdom recklessly vowed to provide long-range weaponry that would enable Ukraine to attack targets inside Russia. Europeans should be told not to expect U.S. help if Russia or China retaliate against them.

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.

Tuesday, February 14, 2023

Don’t Let Prosecutors Hijack Democracy

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Democrats think they have found a loophole in our system for electing the next president. They are misusing the power of prosecutors by planning to indict the leading Republican candidate while he is running for president.

If she can get away with it, a low-level Democrat prosecutor in Atlanta would thereby wield the equivalent of millions of extra votes, instead of just one vote by herself. It would be a form of voter suppression worse than what led to passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

The imminent report of the special purpose grand jury in Atlanta, Georgia’s Fulton County should be viewed for what it is: a violation of the Constitution by interfering with the next presidential election. The American people, not a politically partisan prosecutor, have the right to pick our next president, who must be allowed to campaign on a level playing field.

This irregular, “special purpose” grand jury was empaneled on May 2, 2022 — some 2 1/2 years after the events it was supposed to investigate. Its purpose is to approve criminal charges against Trump over his well-publicized and perfectly legitimate effort to “find” 11,780 missing votes in Georgia’s 2020 presidential election.

The Constitution contains many safeguards against usurpation of power, which was our Founding Fathers’ biggest fear. For presidents, the Constitution forbids adding conditions beyond the few that are listed there, such as a minimum age of 35 and being a natural born citizen.

The adage that “no one is above the law” should apply against partisan prosecutors, too. The Constitution gives them no role in electing the president, and no prosecutor should disrupt that democratic process.

A county prosecutor should have only the same solitary vote in a presidential election as every other American citizen, rather than misusing prosecutorial power to influence other voters. If Democrat prosecutors in Atlanta or New York City have any accusations to make against Trump, they should present their case directly to the American people only in a way any other citizen can.

The Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause protects Senators and Representatives against being harassed for their statements in Congress. But that safeguard does not apply to the leading presidential candidate, as Trump is.

Not to be outdone by his counterpart in Atlanta, another Democrat prosecutor in New York City is threatening to indict Trump over a payment made by his former lawyer more than six years ago. That is far beyond any reasonable statute of limitations, and this is yet another political ambush to disrupt Trump’s reelection campaign.

Other states should refuse to recognize these politicized prosecutions, as courts in both Texas and Illinois have already done by rejecting subpoenas from the Georgia grand jury. State legislatures should direct their courts not to honor intermeddling with a presidential race by mere county prosecutors.

The Georgia legislature itself should end the shenanigans that will cause havoc nationwide. That legislature should exclude leading presidential candidates from the authority of prosecutors in its state during presidential campaigns.

Indeed, all 50 states should refuse to lend official support to a prosecution of a leading presidential candidate. To ensure there will not be a future repeat of this interference, all state legislatures should enact legislation now to forbid local prosecutors from using taxpayer resources to impede federal campaigns by major-party candidates.

The will of the American people in choosing our next president should not be beholden to the whim of a few local officials, who are being egged on by the Leftist mob to indict Trump and his supporters. Fair elections and unfair prosecutions do not mix, and the latter must yield to the former.

The Supreme Court has allowed civil lawsuits to proceed against sitting presidents, but criminal prosecutions by low-level officials should not be permitted. They interfere with the democratic process by which the people choose the next president among candidates who satisfy the conditions stated in the Constitution.

The Supreme Court itself should cite the Constitution to block county prosecutions of presidential candidates. One county should not be allowed to dictate to every other county.

At certain climactic times in history, there is such a thing as the irreplaceable man,” Phyllis Schlafly wrote nearly 60 years ago. Today that man is Donald Trump, and our country needs to protect the right of him and others to run for president free of local interference.

The Never-Trumpers who view this as an opportunity to try to overcome their nemesis fail to realize that, if allowed, their own preferred candidate could be marginalized in a similar way.

The new House committee to investigate the weaponization of government is already off to a good start. Next it needs to issue subpoenas against the Trump-hating county prosecutors and hold them in contempt if they refuse to comply.

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.

Tuesday, February 7, 2023

Deep State’s Hot Air Shot Down

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

The Deep State in Washington, D.C. just offered to debrief Trump Administration officials about the hot air balloons that have invaded our airspace from China. But Biden was sworn into office as president more than two years ago, so hot air appears to be blowing as much from the Deep State in our country as it is from the Far East.

Apparently the shadow government in D.C. is no longer subject to the will of the American people in selecting our president. The career federal government employees admit now that they concealed information about prior invasions by Chinese spy balloons that are 200-feet tall and weigh more than a ton apiece, which reportedly occurred while Trump was president.

According to NPR, a similar breach of our airspace by immense balloons from China has occurred at least four other times the past few years, without the public apprised of this. Similar high-altitude balloons have been used for spying for more than a half-century.

This belated revelation by the Deep State about these Chinese balloons reinforces the shocking admission in 2021 by the worthless Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, that he would give advance warning to China if the United States planned an attack against it. In the last few months of the Trump presidency, Milley made two unusual phone calls to Gen. Li Zuocheng of the People’s Liberation Army.

Democrats were in control of the House Armed Services Committee then, but did nothing. Republicans called for Milley to resign but he declined to do so.

Milley is the entrenched bureaucrat who declared about education at West Point, “it is important that we train and we understand – and I want to understand White rage. And I’m White,” he added.

Milley should be called to testify about whether he, too, knew about any spy balloons from China invading American airspace, and whether that information was withheld from elected officials. Trump’s second Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper, confirmed that he was never told about this.

CNN reported on Tuesday that a balloon from China flew over Florida in 2019, while Trump was president and yet he was not informed about this. The military bizarrely asserts now that it did not become aware of this violation of our airspace until years after the fact.

It was only the public sighting of one of these balloons over Montana that caused the Deep State to admit that it has known about them, and yet done nothing. Days of indecision by Biden followed, when he should have acted decisively at the outset.

Biden says now that he ordered the latest balloon shot down as soon as the military deemed it appropriate, but then it waited until the balloon floated offshore before downing it. The military brass allowed the balloon to traverse the United States and thereby electronically send back to China immediately as much information as it could gather.

China admits that its balloon had some steering capability, which implies that its travels were being controlled by signals from the communist country. Such instantaneous communication through satellites is commonplace now.

By allowing the balloon to complete its journey across our country, the Deep State permitted China to obtain everything it wanted. Shooting it down over the Atlantic Ocean was nearly pointless.

This dilly-dallying echoes the ineffective response by Biden to China-owned TikTok, the social media platform for short videos that has upended Facebook, Google, and YouTube in attracting participation by young people. Many have observed the threat that TikTok poses to the United States as it foments and monitors addictive behavior by tens of millions of young Americans.

Meanwhile, the consequences of the power grab by unelected officials in D.C. in rejecting the authority of duly elected presidents are breathtaking. Even now, the Deep State may not be promptly obeying orders by Biden as the current president, as it apparently defied for days Biden’s order to shoot it down.

The D.C. elite fail to safeguard our southern border against invasion by illegal aliens, so it is not surprising that they fail to protect our airspace, too. Fortunately, Republicans control the House now and can hold hearings to compel answers about these repeated breaches of our border security, as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) properly demands.

The POTUS is the Commander in Chief,” Rep. Greene remarks about Biden. “We must investigate and hold accountable those who broke rank” and immediate congressional hearings on this issue are necessary to accomplish this.

Courts should end their longstanding practice of deferring to federal agencies based partly on the fiction that these bureaucrats act in the best interests of Americans. The Deep State advances the globalist interests of China rather than the people who are paying their salaries: the American taxpayers.

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.

Tuesday, January 31, 2023

GOP Charges Ahead on Education

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Proving once again that he is in touch with ordinary Americans, Donald Trump selected education for the first video message of his 2024 presidential campaign. On Saturday, Trump emphasized education in addresses in the early primary states of New Hampshire and South Carolina.

School performance fell sharply during the pandemic, as liberal governors shuttered schools for prolonged periods and required masks at the expense of learning. Children became pawns in the tyrannical measures taken under the guise of responding to Covid.

The last full year before Covid was 2019, and it was the last year of 50 million students enrolled in public schools. That total has since fallen, and experts predict a long-term decline in public school enrollment for decades into the future.

Massachusetts, long ranked at the top nationwide in student achievement, has dropped to a 19-year low in its performance as the Democrat-controlled state pushes Leftist ideology in schools. The biggest declines in performance were by minorities and low-income students, and children who did not learn English at home.

Throughout the rest of our country, the decline in student achievement and increase in illiteracy is shocking. In Pennsylvania, the 3rd graders reading with the expected level of proficiency dropped from 60% to 50% over the last three years.

There was a red wave in Ohio in the last election, after Trump held many rallies there. Republicans increased their supermajority in its Senate, attained a supermajority in its House, and won both the governorship and the vacant U.S. Senate seat.

Now it’s time to cash in on that political capital by targeting the Ohio education system, which ranks in the bottom half nationally in learning basic reading and arithmetic skills. The very first bill introduced in the Ohio Senate is to take power away from an independent state board, which has failed to get the job done.

This bill would allow the Republican governor to appoint a new education director to establish curriculum and strong standards for academic achievement. Rather than diffusing responsibility, this legislation would establish one person to be publicly accountable for the failure to teach youngsters how to read and add.

Trump boldly calls for empowering parents to directly elect school principals, to hold them accountable for their failure to teach basic skills. A bestselling book in 1955 was Why Johnny Can’t Read, and the simple answer was because schools are not using the superior method of teaching kids how to read, which is phonics.

Nearly 70 years later, schools are still not using phonics, and as a result perhaps 45 million Americans cannot even fill out a ballot in order to vote as they intend. So instead some of those ballots are being filled out for them by political hacks, who are just fine with more illiteracy.

Young adults have long been bashful about never learning how to read, rather than question why some of their friends can read but they cannot. But as traditional inhibitions disappear on social media, young people are themselves beginning to ask publicly why they were not taught to read.

Those harmed by inadequate schools are a voting bloc that Republicans can and must reach in order to win future elections. Georgia and Arizona are two swing states that Republicans must win in 2024 to capture the White House, and both rank among the ten states having the most illiteracy.

When people cannot read, then they cannot access and process independent political information needed to fill out ballots in an informed way. The higher the illiteracy, the more ballots that are filled out as part of ballot harvesting and massive drop-box dumps, and the more difficult it is to win on principle.

Meanwhile, even a liberal Republican governor has apparently gotten the message that the public is fed up with liberal ideology in school, rather than instruction on basic skills. Last year Utah’s Governor Spencer Cox vetoed a bill that would have prohibited male-bodied athletes from competing in girls’ sports, as did the liberal Republican governor in Indiana.

In both states the Republican legislatures promptly overrode those vetoes that pandered to the Left. Likewise, the Republican Arkansas legislature overrode the veto by its anti-Trump Republican Governor Asa Hutchinson of a bill prohibiting transgender medical interventions on children.

Last week the Republican legislature in Utah passed a bill to prohibit transgender medical interventions on children, and its left-leaning Republican Governor Cox was smart enough to sign it into law the next day after it reached his desk. Lessons learned, with more political ground to gain ahead.

As illiteracy climbs in the United States, this new focus by Republicans on learning is a political necessity. Many traditionally Democrat voters have children in underperforming schools, and they are not learning to read as they should be.

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.

Tuesday, January 24, 2023

Debt Ceiling Discipline Is Good Medicine

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Biden’s Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen forecasts a catastrophe if Republicans do not increase the debt ceiling, but average Americans seem unimpressed by Democratsdemands for another blank check on runaway federal spending. New polling shows Trump easily defeating Biden in their expected matchup next year.

Debt ceiling discipline is good medicine for the illness that plagues the federal government. Holding the line on the debt ceiling would force those who profit most from our federal government to help end its irresponsible spending.

It is difficult to see much value in the trillions of dollars being expended by the federal government annually as it has run up a $31.4 trillion national debt. That amounts to nearly $100,000 in debt for every man, woman, and child in America.

The agenda of radical environmentalism is costing more than a trillion dollars a year in federal regulations, electric car subsidies, solar and wind energy boondoggles, and limits on cost-effective energy. Ending all that should be near the top of the demands by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy as he meets with Biden at the White House to discuss fiscal accountability.

At first Biden indicated that he would not negotiate with Republicans over raising the debt ceiling, and then Biden reversed himself and asked McCarthy to sit down with him. Next, perhaps feeling the heat from radicals on the Left, Biden reversed himself again and said he would not agree to any spending cuts sought by Republicans in exchange for increasing debt.

But if anyone thought the more liberal Republicans in the Senate would resolve bumping into the debt ceiling, they were mistaken. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is reportedly unable to muster even 9 Republican votes there to increase the debt ceiling without concessions by Biden to reduce spending.

The liberal media used to claim that government shutdowns have helped the Democrats, and Republicans should not dare to allow the feds to run out of money again. But that Chicken Little talk is apparently scaring no one now, when the political winds are blowing strongly toward unplugging Washington, D.C.

For the past two years the news from the Capital has been a stream of harassment by the federal government of Trump, his supporters, average Americans, and now even Biden himself. The breaking story Tuesday was about Mike Pence having some classified documents at his Indiana home, for which the FBI showed up in person to retrieve as though there were any significance to some old paperwork.

The Senate is uncharacteristically deferring to House Speaker McCarthy to negotiate with Biden, perhaps because McCarthy is more charismatic and tougher than the leadership in the Senate. McCarthy consistently has higher approval ratings than McConnell, whose record-low polling made it more difficult for Republicans to regain their majority in the Senate.

Much of the federal government debt is owned by foreign governments, including communist China. Like the stock market and every other investment, the free market should be the guiding principle and those that want perpetual funding of the federal government should bear some risk, too.

Federal spending is doing more harm than good. Millions are currently being spent to interfere with the upcoming 2024 presidential election, which should be decided by voters rather than by Merrick Garland as Attorney General.

Harmful federal programs far outnumber helpful ones. Federal spending on the Covid pandemic totaled trillions of dollars, but the outcome was worse here than in poor countries where their governments spent almost nothing on the issue.

Federal spending on education has resulted in rampant illiteracy, leaving most high school graduates ill-prepared to do college-level work. Student achievement has declined significantly in recent years, as the federal government spends billions pushing an ideological agenda rather than teaching Johnny and Janey how to read.

Last weekend the federal government did nothing to protect Atlanta from the fires set by Antifa protesters. Last week Georgias Governor Brian Kemp was hobnobbing with globalists at their annual conference at a Davos, Switzerland ski resort, before his state capital was looted and at least one police car set ablaze.

Federal spending is devoted to the cushy Deep State jobs in D.C., with their lavish pensions that are driving up the federal deficit, rather than safeguarding our cities. Most federal workers look forward to early retirements that will pay them most of their annual salaries for the rest of their lives as they do nothing.

The astronomical costs being imposed by Bidens opening of the southern border to millions of illegal aliens should be part of McCarthys negotiations. The debt ceiling should not be raised unless and until Biden secures the southern border to end the tidal wave of illegal migrants, who are adding trillions of dollars in future new costs.


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.