GOP Should Step Up for Men Who Elected Them

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

The voting bloc that swung to the Republican side last November to give the GOP control of the White House and Congress was men under 30, who have traditionally voted Democrat by large majorities. They shifted by double-digits from Biden in 2020 to Trump and Republicans in 2024.

But congressional Republicans are doing nothing for young men to retain their support, and they may return to the Democrat Party if this inattention by the GOP continues. For younger men and for fathers who have sons in high school, a top issue is an opportunity to compete in college sports.

Trump issued an executive order last Thursday to warn colleges against eliminating more sports teams in non-revenue, or Olympic, sports. Observing that “the future of college sports is under unprecedented threat,” Trump ordered the protection of college sports that are not money-makers for colleges, which is virtually every sport except football and basketball.

Bipartisan legislation to save college sports, called the SCORE Act, will be debated in the House when it returns after the August recess. Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Cory Booker (D-NJ) have also teamed up from opposite sides of the aisle in the Senate.

But it is former President Bill Clinton’s Department of Education regulation that makes men’s college sports an endangered species on the verge of extinction. Called the “proportionality test,” it requires that colleges eliminate men’s sports teams until the proportion of men in competitive sports at a college does not exceed the overall percentage of men enrolled in academic classes there.

This quota fails to recognize that an opportunity to play sports is what men look for in deciding whether to go to college, in contrast with the typical reasons why women make that decision. Women’s overall enrollment has increased to 60% at many colleges, so the quota forces cutting men’s teams down to only 40% of sports competitors.

The Olympic sport of men’s wrestling is an example. It is safer than football and better for physical conditioning and weight control, and is booming in high schools now. Participation has increased by 25% since 2022, to attain a record 45-year high of 300,000 boys competing in this high school sport.

A half-century ago there were 155 Division I college men’s wrestling teams, but today there are only 79. That is nowhere near enough to support the demand for wrestling by boys who graduate from high school and are looking to attend college to continue their love of this terrific sport.

Newly elected conservative Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH) wrote a letter in February criticizing the decision by Cleveland State University to eliminate its men’s wrestling program. Wrestling is inexpensive, needing only a spongy mat and a coach, and this program was profitable at Cleveland State University as it has been at most colleges that have eliminated it.

“On behalf of my constituents, I would like to have an open and thorough discussion on this matter as many Ohioans, myself included, found this decision disquieting,” Sen. Moreno wrote. He pointed out that the school’s wrestlers had the second-highest GPA among Division I wrestling programs, behind only Harvard.

Save Cleveland State Wrestling brought together alumni, wrestlers at the college, and their parents, and it could easily raise any funds needed for the program. But while colleges never admit this, Bill Clinton’s Department of Education’s proportionality test is usually the real reason that these wrestling programs are eliminated.

Women comprise 55% of the student body at Cleveland State, which means that men’s sports participants can total only 45% of overall participation. Teams that have many members, like wrestling, track, swimming, and baseball, are being eliminated due to Clinton’s misinterpretation of Title IX.

In June, lawfare against the NCAA for additional compensation to college athletes culminated in a $2.8 billion settlement expected to impose enormous new financial burdens on athletic departments that are already stretched thin. This payout, which will enrich attorneys the most, will have the effect of ending many Olympic, non-revenue college teams.

“If you’re trying to stay compliant with Title IX, I don’t know how non-revenue men’s sports aren’t the sports that are more apt to be eliminated,” said Patrick Rishe, the sports business program executive director at Washington University in St. Louis. Recent examples include Grand Canyon University abruptly ending its men’s volleyball program days after it successfully reached the Final Four in the annual national tournament.

Saint Francis’ men’s basketball team was spectacular this year by qualifying for the March Madness tournament, but this college is shifting from Division I to III to avoid the tidal wave of expenses and changes about to hit. It complained that college sports are being taken away from playing for the “love of the game.”

Young men elected Republicans last November, and the GOP should help those who took them to the dance in D.C.

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 Cracks California’s Egg Regulations

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

No one had the guts until Trump to place the blame for higher egg prices right where they belong: on California’s animal rights regulations that add enormous costs to poultry farms nationwide. California has been misusing its ballot initiative process to regulate farmers in other states, and it’s costing everyone when we buy eggs at our local grocery stores.

Egg prices have declined recently under Trump, but they are still far higher than they should be. Some blame the avian flu, yet even after that flu has subsided, egg prices remain 69% higher today than they were a year ago.

California regulations require that all eggs sold in the Golden State, which is America’s largest consumer market, be laid only by cage-free hens. This is an enormously costly burden on poultry farmers nationwide, as some of their eggs are inevitably sold in California and thus poultry farmers in Iowa and elsewhere are forced by California to conform to its regulations.

At first, it seems impossible for animal rights zealots in California to dictate how chickens are housed in Iowa, Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and Texas, which are the top five egg-producing states in our country, in that order. Trump carried all five states in 2024, most by double-digits.

California imports up to 70% of its eggs from other states, while California is our largest consumer of eggs and nearly every other product. The U.S. Supreme Court has so far allowed California to regulate the production of goods produced elsewhere but sold in California, despite how those regulations burden farmers and residents of the other 49 states.

New automobiles today contain ugly warnings based on overregulation by California of out-of-state car manufacturers. California dictates that silly statements must be provided for virtually every product to caution about trace carcinogen levels that the federal government has found too low to worry about.

California provides for lawsuits in California state court against any out-of-state supplier, such as a farmer in Iowa, whose products might find their way to customers in California. Midwestern farmers cannot survive lawfare brought against them in California for violating its ridiculous regulations.

The Supreme Court has refused to stop this racket, ruling against one legal challenge in 2023, and on June 30 denying a petition by Iowa pork producers whom California has ordered to maintain their pigs with a minimum amount of spacing between them. Only one Justice, Brett Kavanaugh, voted in favor of Iowa pig farmers against the California regulators.

Enter Donald Trump, who criticized high egg prices during his campaign. His Department of Justice filed a lawsuit in federal court on July 9 seeking an injunction against California laws dictating how egg-producing chickens must be housed in the Midwest and elsewhere.

This lawsuit properly challenges two ballot initiatives funded by liberals in California, known as Proposition 2, which went into effect beginning in 2015, and Proposition 12, which took full effect beginning in 2024. Egg prices shot up as these laws, including a similar one passed by the California legislature, are enforced by private lawsuits seeking big judgments.

Proposition 2, as enforced against egg-producers by a California statute enacted in 2010, prohibits the sale of eggs in California unless the chickens have mobility for a majority of the day in “(a) Laying down, standing up, and fully extending his or her limbs; and (b) Turning around freely.” California punishes violators with fines, imprisonment, and private lawfare that would bankrupt any Iowa farmer.

Trump’s new lawsuit against California points out that egg production there sharply declined by 35% within a year and a half after this measure and a similar California statute took effect. Within two years, the average cost of eggs to Americans was 20% higher than it would have been without those laws, Trump’s DOJ explains.

In 2018 California made this suffocating regulation even worse by enacting Proposition 12. This proposition requires full mobility by the egg-laying hen without constant contact with other chickens or any restraint at all times of the day and night.

The hen must be able to roam freely, where it might be snatched by a chicken hawk, or reside in an expensive “cage-free housing system.” This law incorporates guidelines requiring each hen to have “a minimum of 1 square foot of usable floorspace per hen in multitiered aviaries and partially slatted systems,” while “providing a minimum of 1.5 square foot of usable floorspace per hen in single-level floor systems.”

Trump’s winning argument is that federal law preempts these bizarre California regulations. We have a national economy, and no single state should be able to regulate producers in the other 49 states.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom complains that Trump is picking on California. But Newsom and his fellow liberals have been picking on the Midwest, and Trump’s lawsuit protects poultry farmers.

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.

Unhappiness of today's women shows the folly of feminism

Opinion: Unhappiness of today's women shows the folly of feminism

by Anne Schlafly

Fewer American women are married and more women are anxious and depressed. So many are uncoupled and unmarried. Did feminism lead American women to an unhappy state of mind?

In a recent op-ed in the Post-Dispatch (“Once again, women are told they ‘can’t have it all.’ Why not?,” July 10 print edition), Los Angeles Times columnist Robin Abcarian defends feminism and attacks conservative women.

Today, a record 25% of all Americans at age 40 have never been married, compared to a mere 6% in 1980, according to the Pew Research Center. Women have almost twice the rate of depression compared to men, according to the Mayo Clinic. Young women are binge drinking more than their male peers, according to JAMA.

Today the opportunities for women seem limitless. There are no barriers to female achievement. So why are so many women tired, frustrated and alone?

The most important thing that anyone can do in life is to have a successful marriage. The fulfillment that comes from a partner in life is far better than any financial or career success. Marriage does not just happen; success in marriage requires time and attention. For marriage to be a success, the marriage needs to be the priority.

The problem with feminism is that it discounts the meaning of marriage. Feminist ideology told young women that they need a man like “a fish needed a bicycle” — a famous slogan from Gloria Steinem in the 1970s.

But women do need men — and men need women. Humans are social animals who want and need to make the ultimate connection to another person. Do we want an independent life or do we crave a connected life? Of course we want connection and for any connection to happen, women would have to make room in their lives for marriage and children.

Feminism also posits that males and females are interchangeable, but that philosophy denies biology and desire. For example, women and men experience sex in different ways. Most women do not enjoy meaningless sex, but prefer sexual relations in the context of love and romance. Most women desire children. Despite the actress Charlize Theron celebrating her string of one-night stands, most women do not find pleasure in being mistreated and abandoned by a man.

When males started to masquerade as females and invade female spaces, many feminists applauded the transitions. The promotion of transgenderism is proof that feminism is not pro-woman but pro-progressive. Progressives have attacked the few famous feminists (such as Martina Navratilova and J.K. Rowling) who have stood up for women and spoken out against men pretending to be women.

Feminism pushes a one-size-fits-all ideology on young women to abandon their emotional desires. Feminism discounts the importance of men in the lives of women. Feminism is not mainstream, but a far left ideology that seeks to crush the individual in favor of the collective.

Feminism blames “the patriarchy” for all problems, but “the patriarchy” is a straw man that does not exist. Today, nearly half of American women ages 25-34 have a college degree, but only 37% of men in the same age bracket have one, according to the Pew Research Center. No one is holding women back from career success. But feminism still counsels young women not to invest in marriage and family.

Fifty years ago, my mother, Phyllis Schlafly, had to gumption to reject feminism and to speak and write about how feminism leads to unhappy women. Phyllis did “have it all,” but she did it sequentially. Most importantly, she made space in her life for marriage and family. She was very happy.

No one is telling young women that they cannot “have it all”, but no one can possibly have it all at the same time. Life is a marathon, not a sprint. The best advice for young women is recognize that as we age, our priorities life will change.

Schlafly is chairman of Eagle Forum.

From the St. Loius Post-Dispatch

Record-breaking Victories for Trump at SCOTUS

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Another day, another headline-grabbing victory by President Trump in the U.S. Supreme Court. A string of injunctions issued against him by liberal district court judges, as typically affirmed by Democrat-majority appellate panels, has resulted in a string of rulings in favor of Trump by a 6-3 majority at the SCOTUS.

Each time there has been a strongly worded dissent by one of the three liberal justices on the Court, usually Justice Sotomayor or Jackson, as joined by colleagues in their voting bloc. The long-winded dissents are not making any difference in the outcome.

Trump’s attorney in the High Court is the Missourian John Sauer, who has set a record for quickly and repeatedly prevailing there. Sauer wrote in his emergency application in this case of Linda McMahon v. New York, “For the second time in three months, the same district court has thwarted the Executive Branch’s authority to manage the Department of Education despite lacking jurisdiction to second-guess the Executive’s internal management decisions.”

The Court then held in Sauer’s favor and authorized Trump to proceed with his firing 1,378 employees at the Education Department, which will gut this harmful federal agency as Trump promised. Within two hours of this unsigned decision by the Court, agency employees received the equivalent of pink slips.

“The Federal Government has been running our Education System into the ground, but we are going to turn it all around by giving the Power back to the PEOPLE,” Trump posted on Truth Social, while thanking the Supreme Court for his latest win.

President Jimmy Carter established the Education Department nearly 50 years ago, and conservatives led by Phyllis Schlafly have been trying to shut it down ever since. Local school boards and state legislators need the flexibility to adopt standards and curricula that are best for students, based on input from families and accountability in local elections.

There have been 24 years of Republican presidents since Carter, during which the Education Department has continued to interfere with local control over schools. Every federal initiative for education, even those by Republican presidents, has been a failure as reading and math test scores have plummeted.

In recent years, the Department of Education has become a way for liberals to require schools to embrace transgender ideology and woke indoctrination. For decades this federal agency and liberal judges have imposed a misinterpretation of Title IX to require colleges to cancel men’s sports teams to satisfy senseless numeric quotas relative to women’s sports, and to deny men due process when subjected to accusations by women.

The disbanding of the Education Department began with an executive order issued by Trump on March 20, 2025. He correctly and boldly explained that “closing the Department of Education would provide children and their families the opportunity to escape a system that is failing them.”

“Today, American reading and math scores are near historical lows. This year’s National Assessment of Educational Progress showed that 70 percent of 8th graders were below proficient in reading, and 72 percent were below proficient in math. The Federal education bureaucracy is not working,” Trump added.

Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor complained in her lengthy dissent on Monday that the Court’s decision in favor of Trump “hands the Executive the power to repeal statutes by firing all those necessary to carry them out.” But she left out that the election of Trump last November gave him the mandate to do this, and that until 1979 education was under local control.

Justice Sotomayor quoted from Trump’s campaign last year during which he promised (as slightly edited by the Court) to “close up the Department of Education” and “send all education and education work ... back to the states” “early in the administration.” Promises made, promises kept.

Some staff at these agencies are needed to reverse the weaponization of the federal government by liberals, but that is already being accomplished. Linda McMahon as Trump’s Education Secretary has declared that the “final mission” is to return authority to the states.

Last week the Supreme Court also held in favor of Trump on a different challenge to his authority to downsize the federal workforce at other agencies. Combined with Monday’s ruling, Trump can move full steam ahead on the D.O.G.E. mass firing goals that began with Elon Musk.

The Department of Justice should rank high on the list of federal agencies where thousands of employees should be laid off or fired. To this day, prosecutions continue by the DOJ that never should have been in federal court.

Fortunately, Attorney General Pam Bondi has recently dismissed one of those prosecutions, against a Utah physician who helped families avoid the Covid vaccine that they did not want. Bondi has also recently fired DOJ attorneys in a refreshing attempt to clean house.

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.

Still No Accountability for Lawfare by DoJ

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Prosecutions by the Department of Justice (DOJ) continue relentlessly as they did under Biden, overfunded without any accountability. While a few particularly unjustified prosecutions were quickly dismissed after Trump took office and a few prosecutors were fired, the recent imprisonment of Sean “Diddy” Combs after his acquittal on all serious charges demonstrates that the federal police state remains fully in power.

Congressmen continue to be terrified of the DOJ and have failed to cut its budget. While there have been attempts at downsizing other federal agencies, which the Supreme Court greenlighted by an order on Tuesday, DOJ continues with full funding and 10,000 attorneys who are all dressed up with nowhere productive to go.

The biggest trial of this year was DOJ’s recent prosecution of Diddy Combs, as initiated last year by the Biden Administration. DOJ recently spent seven weeks prosecuting Diddy at trial in a federal courtroom in Manhattan, calling 34 witnesses to testify.

The contrived basis for federal jurisdiction was the assertion that Diddy Combs, who has recorded 11 No. 1 songs while winning 3 Grammy Awards, was somehow a racketeer who violated the anti-racketeering federal law (RICO) designed for prosecuting the Mafia. DOJ’s case against the music celebrity Diddy turned on his partying and sexual activities, which are plainly not mob-related racketeering.

Misuse of a racketeering statute was the same approach taken by Georgia Fulton County prosecutor Fani Willis to wrongly charge Trump and 18 others with imaginary crimes for objecting to the reported 2020 election results there. Those improper racketeering charges remain pending against our president, although Willis was removed from the case and is appealing her removal to the Georgia Supreme Court.

In the Diddy Combs trial, the jury deliberated carefully for more than two days and found the successful rapper not guilty on all of the racketeering-related charges. While awaiting the verdict on charges that carried a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years in prison, the former altar boy and Catholic school-educated Diddy remarkably prayed with his many supporters in the courtroom.

The liberal media was furious at the not-guilty verdicts, illustrating that this was a political play against so-called toxic masculinity all along. The Biden-appointed judge then sent Diddy Combs back to prison despite his exoneration on the primary charges.

One of the jurors spoke to ABC News last week against the media blowback to the “not guilty” verdicts. The juror said the “decision was based solely on the evidence presented and how the law is stated,” and that the criticism of the jury’s decision is “highly insulting and belittling to the jury and the deliberation process.”

New York lawyer Jeffrey Lichtman, who represented the famed mobster John Gotti Jr., said that Combs is “a guy that lived a questionable lifestyle and ran a music empire” and that “the RICO charges were so out of place here.” Anna Cominsky, who runs New York Law School’s Criminal Defense Clinic, observed that “it did seem like a stretch to charge Combs with the RICO statute.”

When one legal critic of this prosecution exercised his right of free speech to point out on a podcast that the prosecutors consisted of a “six-pack of white women” against the Harlem-born black rapper, the Biden-appointed judge scolded the critic. The judge vowed to monitor the lawyer’s future podcasts, to which the attorney retorted, “As long as you subscribe, I’m all for it.”

Three times prior to the verdict the judge denied requests for bail by Combs, which is ordinarily allowed for a defendant not charged with any violence and even many who are. After Combs was mostly acquitted, the judge again denied releasing him on bail.

The same tyranny that was inflicted on many J6 defendants by imprisoning them for years in D.C. without justification is being inflicted by DOJ now against Diddy Combs, who offered to post a bond of $1 million. Diddy received a standing ovation upon his return to prison after the jury sided with him.

This imprisonment is hardly the American liberty we just celebrated on Independence Day, when a man continues to be jailed despite prevailing before a jury in federal court where almost no defendant ever wins. While some may be unsympathetic to Diddy based on allegations mostly rejected by the jury, a similar misuse of racketeering laws by prosecutors remains pending against President Trump and his supporters in Georgia.

The overbearing and overfunded DOJ that spent tens of millions of dollars trying to prosecute Trump has evidently not changed. While the J6 defendants have been pardoned for the imaginary “crime” of setting foot inside the Capitol, the tyranny by the DOJ continues.

There is no federal police power authorized by the U.S. Constitution. States, not the federal government, have authority over these issues, and the DOJ still needs to be reined in.

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.

Fireworks in SCOTUS End-of-Term Decisions

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

The U.S. Supreme Court adjourns at the end of June each year for its summer break. To do so the Justices push out every pending decision and then merrily head out of town.

Well, almost every decision. This year the Court quietly punted a contentious redistricting dispute from Louisiana to next fall, despite having already held oral argument on it. The Court also punted on the issue of boys playing in girls’ sports, despite pending appeals from Arizona, Idaho and West Virginia.

Several cases on the Court’s so-called “shadow docket” also remain undecided. Justice Alito criticizes that pejorative term for applications brought to the Court on an emergency basis in which no oral argument is held and decisions are rendered without explanation.

Many important cases resolved by the Supreme Court are from its shadow docket, such as the recent ruling allowing Trump to deport illegal aliens to South Sudan. Trump asserts the right to deport illegals to a third country when their home country refuses to take them back, and the Supreme Court held in favor of Trump on this.

But after the High Court issued its decision on June 23, the district court continued to interfere with these deportations. Trump’s marvelous Solicitor General John Sauer is back with an extraordinary request of the Supreme Court to, in essence, discipline the district court for its defiance.

With all the talk of potential defiance by Trump against the federal judiciary, district courts are the ones declining to comply with many recent rulings by the Supreme Court in favor of Trump. On Friday, Justice Amy Coney Barrett penned a decision in favor of Trump that shuts down nationwide injunctions being issued by district courts against him.

“During the first 100 days of the second Trump administration, district courts issued approximately 25 universal injunctions,” Justice Barrett observed on behalf of the 6-3 Court majority in Trump v. CASA. Yet “the universal injunction was conspicuously nonexistent for most of our Nation’s history,” she added.

In ruling for Trump, Justice Barrett pointed out that the dissent by the Biden-appointed Justice Jackson “is at odds with more than two centuries’ worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself. We observe only this: Justice Jackson decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary.”

Viewed in light of other zingers rendered recently by Justice Barrett, including her rejection of special constitutional rights for transgender persons, she may emerge as the future leader MAGA hoped for. Neither Justice Thomas nor Alito can do it all by themselves.

The ink was barely dry on this victory for Trump when Leftists began scheming how to circumvent it in the lower district courts. Their plan is to seek an unprecedented class certification of illegal aliens born in our country in order to demand birthright citizenship for them.

On Monday, Biden-appointed U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman in Maryland interrogated Trump’s Department of Justice attorney Brad Rosenberg as to whether Trump plans to deport babies born in our country. When Rosenberg properly responded that this question was purely hypothetical and thus premature, the judge gave him only 24 hours to file a written response with the court.

Rosenberg filed a two-page response on Tuesday that mostly quoted the recent Supreme Court decision, and did not add any commitments by the Trump Administration. His response did not discuss babies, who should be deported with their parents in order to keep families together as Trump has been doing.

District judges in liberal regions of our country have lashed out against Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order. Federal district judge John Coughenour in Seattle declared earlier this year that “this is a blatantly unconstitutional order,” with which the Supreme Court did not agree, while Judge Boardman has incorrectly stated that “the Supreme Court has resoundingly rejected” Trump’s view of birthright citizenship.

News reports and liberal pundits commonly repeat the falsehood that birthright citizenship is guaranteed to everyone including temporary visitors by the Civil War-era 14th Amendment. That is disproven by the fact that American Indians did not have birthright citizenship until it was established by a federal statute in 1924, more than half a century after the 14th Amendment was enacted.

Most countries, in fact, reject birthright citizenship. Israel, for example, grants citizenship to a baby born in Israel only if one of the parents is already an Israeli citizen.

The United Kingdom, long admired as setting the gold standard for a civilized society with its British Empire, likewise rejects birthright citizenship. A baby born in the United Kingdom has a right to citizenship only if a parent was already a British citizen or has permanent residency there.

Another Trump-appointed justice, Brett Kavanaugh, sparkled with his end-of-term decision in Diamond Alternative Energy v. EPA to allow fuel producers to challenge liberal California regulations banning the sale of gasoline-powered automobiles.

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.