Transgender Movement on the March

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

On Monday the Colorado Supreme Court, by a wide 5-2 margin, ordered a Colorado children’s hospital to resume transgender treatments and surgeries on minors based on state law, even though the decision could force the hospital to lose its federal funding. The Trump Administration has taken strong action against the transgender movement, yet it marches on.

Last December the Trump administration threatened to withhold federal funding from facilities that provide transgender treatment to children, but a Biden-appointed federal judge in Oregon named Mustafa T. Kasubhai blocked that rule. Children’s Hospital Colorado had wisely suspended its program of applying hormonal treatments and puberty blockers to children due to the threatened loss of funding.

A lower court upheld the hospital’s decision against a legal challenge. Children’s hospitals depend heavily on federal funding, including their services under Medicaid, and thus ordering the hospital to continue with transgender treatment would do more harm than good.

The practice of medicine is historically regulated by state law, but since health care providers receive billions of dollars of federal funding, the Trump Administration said it would cut federal funding from facilities that continue to perform harmful procedures aimed at altering a child’s gender. Recently the American Medical Association and the American Society of Plastic Surgeons reversed their guidance on such procedures, urging a delay in transgender surgery prior to the age of 19.

Dominated by federal employees, Virginia has become like Colorado and other blue states in pushing the transgender agenda. When a police officer in Norfolk in southern Virginia objected to orders requiring him to use transgender pronouns, he was ordered to leave, stripped of his gun, suspended, and then fired.

Norfolk has historically been conservative, with many military veterans. It is alarming that police officers in Norfolk have been suspended and even fired for objecting to the use of the women’s locker room by a man purporting to be a transgender woman.

State courts in the mostly conservative states of Kansas and Montana are also imposing the transgender ideology on their residents. In Kansas last Friday, a county judge appointed by Democrat Gov. Laura Kelly issued a 117-page injunction against a good Kansas transgender law, which had been passed by the Republican legislature over her veto.

The ACLU brought this lawsuit against the Kansas ban on transgender operations and treatments for children. The county judge blocked the law based on an activist decision by the liberal Kansas Supreme Court, which invented a right of “personal autonomy” to expand abortion there even though those words cannot be found in its 167-year-old state constitution.

Meanwhile, the Montana Supreme Court has rendered multiple Leftist decisions, despite being in a red state that Trump won by 20 points in 2024. On April 14, the 5-2 court held that birth certificates and driver’s licenses must be changed to accommodate transgender demands.

The Montana Supreme Court ruled, based on its state constitution, that state agencies cannot refuse to alter birth certificates and driver’s licenses to accommodate transgender demands. Despite being born male, for example, a resident of the Big Sky Country can now change his birth certificate to state falsely that he was born female instead.

These Kansas and Montana decisions were based on their state constitutions, and the Colorado ruling was based on state law. This reasoning generally shields such decisions from review by the U.S. Supreme Court which, regardless, has avoided review of many important transgender cases that it could have decided.

The 7-2 decision last week by the U.S. Supreme Court in favor of abortion pill manufacturers was the result of all three Trump appointees crossing over to the liberal side of the Court, without explanation. Justices Thomas and Alito expressed their dismay at how well-established principles of law were disregarded to allow the continued distribution of the abortion pill without sensible safeguards such as in-person dispensing, and without compliance with a longstanding federal ban on abortion-by-mail.

The entire Democrat Party is lockstep in support of the transgender agenda, due to how Planned Parenthood supplements its revenue by offering transgender treatments. Only a few courts have been willing to defend children against harmful transgender procedures.

The U.S. Supreme Court indicated last year in the Skrmetti case that there is no right to transgender operations and treatments for children under the U.S. Constitution, but this good decision was silent about state constitutions. The Court upheld a law in Tennessee protecting minors against this harm, but this precedent does not protect children against pro-transgender state court decisions based on state law.

Under Skrmetti the federal government can act further to protect children against life-altering procedures and treatments pushed on them by the transgender ideology. In addition to withholding federal funds from facilities that promote transgender treatments, federal regulations could require transparency to the public about which facilities provide these objectionable treatments.

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.

America must put babies and mothers first

Phyllis Schlafly was right: America must put babies and mothers first
No job is more vital than motherhood
By Anne Schlafly

"Feminism has changed the way women think, and it has changed the way men think, but the trouble is, it hasn't changed the attitudes of babies at all," said my mother, Phyllis Schlafly. I am so fortunate that my mother put babies first. In the 1960s and 1970s, a new ideology was fashionable: that women do not need or want either men or babies. Phyllis Schlafly lived a fulfilling life centered on her husband and children; which was in stark opposition to the idea that single women are happier alone.

I am so happy that she did put babies at the center of the conversation, because, as her child, I was the beneficiary of her putting babies first.

The current birth dearth is not due to lack of government money; it is due to a culture that tells young women to put career first and that men are expendable. Today, 40% of births in the United States are without the benefit of marriage. And marriage is definitely a benefit for the child. Children who are raised with a mother and a father married to each other are the most privileged group in America. These children are more likely to finish school, get employed, earn more money, be happier and healthier, and also to start their own families.

Intact families should be celebrated, not economically punished by bad tax policies. A true choice for mothers is the choice to nurture their own children, not to succumb to the economic and social pressures for them to farm them out to institutional day care. Mothers should never be economically punished for raising their own children.

Babies were always the first priority for Phyllis Schlafly. She especially liked to talk to babies. Whenever she saw a baby or toddler in public, she would immediately engage in an active conversation with the child. Today, digital interactions have replaced much face-to-face communications and our daily spoken word count has diminished. Texting is a poor substitute for talking! Babies need to hear a rich variety of words in order to develop speech, especially the sound and inflection of their own mother’s voice. Institutional day care cannot provide the same vibrant, nurturing chatter that comes from a mother.

Phyllis Schlafly rightly saw that feminist ideology devalued motherhood. She started an award for the Full-time Homemaker of the Year to honor women who prioritize their babies. Phyllis asked: would you rather be in an office instructed by a boss or managing your household from your own kitchen? She rejected the phrase "working mothers" to describe employed women, because, as she said, "all mothers work all the time".

The concept of taxpayer-paid day care for young children reflects a misplaced understanding of who is responsible for their care. Young children want and need their parents, not a nanny state, to look after them. Government welfare programs encourage the disintegration of the family by leading mothers to seek government support rather than support from fathers. Subsidized day care can undermine the family unit by diminishing the provider's role in the home. Americans consider whether it is wise policy to encourage mothers to leave their babies with government employees. What most mothers desire in paid work is to work inside their home or to work a flexible schedule that allows them to prioritize their family.

Americans spent $11B more on Mother's Day than Father's Day: ReportVideo At Eagle Forum, we believe in public and private virtue, meaning taxpayer money should be spent wisely and families should have control over their own households. If Congress truly wanted to help families, it should increase the dependent deduction on income taxes. Those savings would directly benefit families, without routing taxpayer money through a government intermediary.

Here is who loses under taxpayer-paid babysitting:

The child loses because what the child most wants is mother care, not day care. Day care may be expensive, but mother care is priceless.

The mother loses because no one cares more about her child than she does. The day care worker can never be emotionally invested in the welfare of the child.

The day care workers lose because wages are still low. Increasing the supply of day care will not raise workers’ wages.

The taxpayers lose because when the government pays, prices rise (as we have seen in the ever-rising prices of college education and health care). The subsidies will ensure that the day care businesses can raise their prices without losing customers.

Stay-at-home mothers lose as they do not receive any subsidy for choosing to remain at home and raise their own children. They have resisted the social pressure to return to paid employment and place their children in institutional babysitting.

However, there are some winners under taxpayer-paid babysitting:

Day care bureaucrats win because they can expand their business models. As in education, additional government funding often goes to administration rather than workers. Instead of supporting small family-run daycares, the industry will shift toward larger, institutional services.

Politicians win by pretending to give money to the people.

No job is more vital than motherhood. We honor all mothers who choose this important job.

Anne Schlafly is the Chairman of Eagle Forum and the daughter of Phyllis Schlafly.

Another Unforced Error for the Midterms

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

As both political parties scramble for votes ahead of the upcoming midterm elections, even racing to do some last-minute redistricting, someone in the Trump Administration just committed an unforced error that could cost the GOP crucial men’s votes. On May 7, a “spokesperson” announced that the U.S. State Department would begin to revoke the passports of thousands of American citizens subject to child support orders from a family court.

Anyone whose passport is revoked while traveling abroad becomes unable to travel through international airports. The passport is the only official document proving that someone is an American citizen, and a birth certificate alone does not prove citizenship as demonstrated by the ongoing debate over birthright citizenship.

Soldiers and sailors, thousands of whom have child support obligations, could be hard hit by this new policy. While they can travel on official duty with a military ID, their dependents cannot, and thus our servicemembers need active passports to travel with their families.

In 1996, Congress inserted into the massive welfare reform bill a politically correct provision authorizing revocation of passports based on unpaid child support obligations, but administrations of both parties have wisely chosen not to enforce that law because it inflicts far more harm than good.

The State Department said it would initially revoke passports of men whose unpaid child support exceeds $100,000, which is impossible for most to pay, but subsequent revocations could be triggered by a debt of only $2,500. To restore their passports, the debts would have to be paid in full, and attorneys would be needed to clear the judgments in both the state and federal systems, a process that could take many weeks to accomplish.

In the meantime, the American men could be stranded abroad and subject to arrest by a hostile foreign government as unlawful residents. While much-needed deportations of illegal aliens appear to have dried up in the U.S., the State Department’s new policy could turn law-abiding Americans into criminals in foreign countries.

When an American citizen is accused of a crime in a foreign country, even murder, he can show his passport to the American embassy there and obtain support. Even if convicted, neither his American citizenship nor his passport is revoked, and a child support judgment is merely a financial obligation, and not a crime that justifies revoking American citizenship.

Men are the key demographic that Republicans need to attract to have a chance in the upcoming midterm elections, which makes the unexpected announcement of this new policy particularly senseless. It sounds like something Kamala Harris would have done if she were elected president, to pander to her feminist base.

Over 20 years ago the Bush Administration abruptly revoked the passport of the famed chess champion Bobby Fischer for having played a chess match in Yugoslavia, which violated a federal law that had never been enforced like that against anyone else. Fischer was then stranded with an invalid passport at Japan’s Narita airport as he tried to travel to the Philippines, and was detained for 9 months by Japanese immigration authorities.

As an American celebrity, Bobby Fischer was ultimately granted asylum in Iceland, where he had won the world chess championship against Boris Spassky in 1972. But no country is likely to grant asylum to many thousands of American men soon to be affected by this new passport policy.

Despite its misleading name, child support orders are not based on the actual needs of any child, do not have to be spent on a child, and often go to a welfare agency rather than the mom. The more that the father is denied custody and visitation, the higher his child support obligation is, and it can include above-market interest rates and attorney’s fees, non-dischargeable in bankruptcy.

States already have the means to try to enforce child support orders, such as imprisonment or denying occupational licenses or gun permits, but often decline to use such draconian tools because the father simply does not have the money. Moreover, unpaid child support obligations can result from denying the father visitation rights for his own children.

Roughly 70% of divorces are initiated by women, and among college-educated women the percentage is as high as 90%. Large child support obligations result from raising children in a fatherless home.

Revoking passports puts American citizens at risk of harm abroad. Without a passport enabling them to travel, these Americans can then be held and used as bargaining chips for a prisoner swap, as Russia did when it imprisoned a woman basketball player for alleged drug possession.

President Trump’s stated policy is to defend American citizens who are overseas. Putting American citizens at risk of being arrested in foreign countries, and held in foreign prisons, due to an arbitrary revocation of their passports is inconsistent with the goals of MAGA.

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.

Time Is Running Out

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

We’re only six months from the midterm Election Day, and only four months from the start of early voting in September. In between are the slow summer months of June, July and August.

Time is running out for Republicans to hold on to control in Congress. In a half-dozen special congressional elections, voter support for the GOP candidate has declined by 6 to 10 points compared with 2024.

A loss by Republicans of the U.S. Senate, which is considered to be roughly 50% likely, would mean the inability to confirm a conservative nominee to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court. Every one of the 47 Democrats in the current Senate votes lockstep with liberals on social issues like abortion, and a net gain of 4 seats would give them control over new federal judges.

Up for grabs in November are five Senate seats currently held by Republicans: Democrats are predicted to win Republican-held seats in Maine and North Carolina and have an edge in Ohio and Alaska, while Texas is a toss-up. The Republican candidate for Senate in Ohio is handicapped by the unpopular Vivek Ramaswamy at the top of the ticket for governor.

Gasoline prices have risen to a national average of $4.46 per gallon, and traditionally voters have rejected the party in power when gas is above $4 per gallon. The cost of gas is up 30 cents per gallon in just the last week, so the impact of this on political polling is still to come.

At the state level, twice as many Republican-controlled legislative chambers are at risk of flipping to Democratic control, as vice versa. The legislative chambers most vulnerable to flipping are the Republican-held House and Senate in the swing states of Arizona and Wisconsin, and the House chamber in Michigan, all of which Republicans won in 2024 by promising peace.

Delivering a high-level indictment for the wrongful weaponization of the federal government against Trump could be a watershed moment for MAGA voters. By now MAGA expected indictments of Jack Smith and his ilk, after U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon found that Smith was unlawfully appointed to prosecute Trump.

Trump has tried to deport Haitians and other migrants, but it appears that the promise of mass deportations on which Trump was elected has been shut down by non-MAGA White House advisers. They've also blocked RFK Jr. from picking new members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which sets vaccine policy, or firing the members of the Preventive Services Task Force, which imposed costly health care mandates.

More attention to the needs of young men, who unexpectedly swung to the Republicans in 2024, is long overdue. An initiative to improve fathers’ rights in custody disputes, for example, would send a helpful message to the voters who could re-elect Republicans.

Young women, on the other hand, are the demographic that elected the socialist Zohran Mamdani as Mayor of New York City, and they are not voting Republican for the foreseeable future. There is a widening gender gap between young men and women, with Democrats consolidating their support from unmarried women while Republicans seem to be kicking away the young men who voted for them in 2024.

According to a recent poll published on Monday by Politico, “Just 58 percent of young Republicans say they’ll vote GOP — with nearly a third selecting ‘neither’ or ‘won’t vote.’” In contrast, 85% of young Democrats – who are mostly women – plan to vote for their party this fall.

Much of this is the result of an economy that is not doing well for Gen Z. College graduates face the toughest job market in a decade, with their unemployment higher than the national average and underemployment at an astronomic 42.5%.

Young men have been pulled into the pandemic of gambling on their cell phones, and a crackdown on the predatory practices of online casinos would be welcomed relief. Sports gambling has corrupted college and professional sports, and prosecuting the few who are caught neither solves the problem nor satisfies anyone.

When asked about the prosecution of an American special forces soldier for profiting from wagers based on inside information about the raid and capture of the Venezuelan dictator Maduro, Trump said “I’m not happy with any of that stuff” and “the whole world, unfortunately, has become somewhat of a casino.”

It would be helpful to see some Teddy Roosevelt-style action against corporate cronyism that is alienating young voters who struggle with low wages, high debt, and housing prices that are out of reach. Trump should take on Big Tech and tap into the groundswell of fury by voters against the monstrous data centers that are popping up all over the country, often overloading the electric and water utilities that Americans rely upon.

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.