Thunder on the Right in Europe and Brazil

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Establishment politicians in Europe are being routed in elections by an uprising of the right, with some leftist candidates also winning upsets. The collapse of the political middle there is similar to what is happening in the United States, where more incumbent members of Congress were defeated in primaries than in any non-redistricting year during the last half-century.

Centrist politicians have been failures worldwide on nearly every issue, ranging from halting unwanted migration to addressing social issues like abortion. In some countries the judiciary has contributed to the problem with liberal, activist rulings strongly disliked by a large percentage of voters.

On Sunday the pro-life, conservative party named the Alternative für Deutschland, or AfD, won a spectacular victory that humiliated the unpopular centrist chancellor, Friedrich Merz. AfD predicted that Merz would be forced to resign from his office before the end of this year.

Newspapers dub the AfD “far-right” but its anti-immigration and socially conservative stances are similar to MAGA in the United States. This was the second election that it has won in September in small but significant regions of the country.

The German economy has stagnated under its media-pandering leadership, which foolishly embraced the Green New Deal to shut down traditional energy sources including clean nuclear power. The real GDP per capita of Germans has actually declined since 2019, while it has increased by 11% in the U.S. and has grown in other countries in Europe including Germany’s neighbor Poland.

Earlier this month the conservative prime minister of Italy, Giorgia Meloni, broke the modern record for a single government to remain in power there. She continues with a conservative agenda, including her recent proposal to ban the wearing of burqas in schools.

Meanwhile ten thousand homeless migrants, mostly men, continue to generate garbage on the beach and city streets in Ceuta, a territory of Spain on the northern coast of Africa. Residents of the town became so fed up with the immense nuisance that they attacked the migrants to try to get rid of them.

This was due to a senseless Spanish supreme court ruling that gave special protection against immediate deportation to migrants who arrived by sea rather than by land. Immediately, thousands jumped into the sea and swam to Ceuta, and since then the liberal Spanish government has been unwilling or unable to remove them.

In France the conservative nationalist party known as the National Rally leads in the polls for its election next year. Its long-time leader, Marine Le Pen, would be on the verge of being elected the next president of France, but her enemies have attempted to block her path to power by manipulating frivolous criminal charges against her, similar to how liberals tried to block Trump from reelection in 2024 with multiple unjustified prosecutions.

Le Pen has announced that she will run for president of France, and the election is in April of next year. There is also a youthful new leader of the National Rally, Jordan Bardella, who likewise stands against unlimited immigration similar to the position of MAGA in the United States.

Conservative strength has also grown in Spain and the U.K., both of which are currently governed by leftist parties. Polling has shown a substantial rise in support for Spain’s conservative party, known as Vox, and it has surged in four regional elections this year.

The Conservative and Reform Parties’ right-of-center polling support in the U.K. has also recently improved. Two months ago the prime minister from the Labour Party, Keir Starmer, was forced to resign amid a net disapproval rating between 30 and 45%, and local elections repudiated the Establishment.

In the largest country in South America, Brazil, there has been a rise in popularity for the son of the conservative Jair Bolsonaro, Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, as he campaigns for president against its socialist incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. The defeat of Lula, as he is known, in next month’s presidential election would be a crushing setback for socialism.

This thunder on the right in Europe and Brazil is a reaction both to the failure of the pro-immigration Establishment, and to a rise in Leftism that is similar to the success in Democrat primaries here by socialists. On Sunday the far-Left party won the election in Berlin, after campaigning against the skyrocketing cost of housing there.

Housing costs that have soared out of reach of young adults are a major political issue here in the United States, too. This is a reason why Zohran Mamdani came out of nowhere to become the first socialist mayor of New York City, and why other socialist candidates have also done surprisingly well.

One-tenth of the U.S. Senate, nearly all of whom are moderates, is stepping down from office at the end of this year, which ties a quarter-century record. Six of them are Republicans, which is a record for the GOP.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on PhyllisSchlafly.com, pseagles.com, and Townhall.com.

Protect Elections, Not AI Oligarchs

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

AI is smart, dangerous, and lacking in morality. No one doubts that.

As the abbreviation for Artificial Intelligence, AI has quickly become transformative and powerful. AI can hack into almost any system and is clever enough to cover its tracks to hide that it was ever there.

This creates new risks for financial assets, government records, and everything that is connected to the internet. The possibility of AI hacking into military systems and weaponry is a frightening possibility now, as AI rapidly improves its skills.

An accidental launch of a nuclear weapon during the Cold War was considered possible, and a hotline was installed in the Pentagon for immediate communication with the communist Soviet Union if that ever happened. But soon it may be AI on both sides of that conversation, and a chain reaction of decisions could happen before a human can intervene.

In July, a group of autonomous AI agents in an isolated “sandbox” broke out, created their own secret messaging system, and attacked an innocent platform of services belonging to an entity called Hugging Face. Reminiscent of the escape of Covid from a Chinese lab which caused the worldwide pandemic, this incident is only the beginning, AI experts say.

Yet there is an elephant in the room that no one has addressed yet in the recent panic over uncontrolled AI. Our future depends on election integrity, and yet most ballots are counted today by electronic machines amid a ubiquitous connection of devices to the internet.

Dario Amodei, the co-founder of Anthropic, which developed the sophisticated AI tool called Claude, recently predicted that “in 6–12 months [an AI] swarm could be capable of taking over the entire internet with a persistent botnet (potentially causing hundreds of billions of dollars in damage), and that the scale of damage would continue to increase from there if AI becomes more powerful without the necessary guardrails.”

He based his prediction on the Hugging Face incident that has alarmed everyone because a group of AI agents adopted a mind of their own and acted strategically to hack an innocent target. Members of this AI group even self-destructed their own processes to avoid detection by humans, in order to advance the nefarious goals of the group.

Tina Peters, a former Mesa County, Colorado clerk, spoke out about how she was assured that their electronic voting machines were not connected to the outside world, and yet she explained that a forensic examination found “36 wireless devices” with the machines. Remote connectivity is necessary for efficient software updates, as commonly used for laptops.

This means electronic election machines are sitting ducks for AI agents set loose for political gain, or by a foreign adversary. Teenagers skilled in the use of AI could hack an election machine just for the sport of it, while covering their tracks as AI can do now.

On July 17, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin explained that “we know for sure that our foreign adversaries, not our allies, foreign adversaries have parts that are vital pieces in our voting machines. … We know that they can change voter registration and your vote. We know it’s possible. There’s not a question. It’s not even for debate.”

Hand counting of paper ballots can be done efficiently and accurately, as was done for most of our Nation’s history. There are many days before certification is performed on reported election results, so there is plenty of time to add this safeguard against potential AI-driven manipulation of the results.

Foreign countries have a strong incentive to turn AI hacking software loose on election machines in the United States. China already has AI so sophisticated that it generates realistic-looking movie scenes featuring famous Hollywood actors, like a dramatic fistfight between Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise on a rooftop that went viral.

The latest movie featuring Academy Award winner Casey Affleck is being filmed entirely with AI-generated scenes for the background. The actors and actresses are performing on an empty stage, saving many millions of dollars in production costs.

Oligarchs are making billions of dollars from AI, and yet some are running to federal politicians in Washington, D.C., to regulate them. So-called “doomers” are predicting the demise of humanity if the federal government does not step in to impose guardrails on what AI can do.

AI can well afford to create guardrails without the federal government coddling and protecting them. The federal government should take steps to prevent misuse of its weaponry by foreign regimes developing and using AI, which would not be subject to enforcement of any federal regulations anyway.

Unregulated competition among AI companies would be healthier than stifling federal intervention, and smaller AI players like Palantir oppose federal intervention. Deep State control of AI development from D.C. would be the worst of all scenarios.

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.

Barrett Leaves Roberts in Ballroom Case

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

The pattern of Justice Amy Coney Barrett siding with left-leaning Chief Justice John Roberts and the liberal bloc of the Supreme Court, to establish a 5-4 majority against President Trump in key cases, has been very disappointing to conservatives. But Justice Barrett recently returned to the conservative side in the Ballroom case, leaving Roberts to complain in dissent like someone who has been stood up at a prom.

Let’s hope Barrett’s return reflects a realization of who brought her to the big dance, and it wasn’t Roberts. In important decision after decision, she’s been siding with the liberal wing and Roberts against Trump on pivotal issues ranging from birthright citizenship, to accepting mail-in ballots after Election Day, to ruling against Trump’s tariffs.

Last year Barrett also joined Roberts and the liberal wing to forge a majority against Trump to refuse to allow him to withhold $2 billion in wasteful foreign aid. Barrett additionally joined Roberts and liberal Justices in rejecting Trump’s request to postpone his sentencing in the outrageous New York criminal case shortly prior to Inauguration.

The culture of Washington, D.C., is toxic and can be overwhelming. Conservative Justice Thomas has aptly described D.C. as a “hideous place,” and many lose their way after taking a job in the Swamp, where the media run the show.

Once the liberal media began to mock David Souter, he flipped from Republican to align himself with Democrats despite having been appointed to the Supreme Court by President George H.W. Bush. Souter even timed his early retirement to allow Obama to replace him, contrary to the tradition of Justices retiring when the party that appointed them is in power to nominate their successors.

Roberts has Republican credentials and a bit more authority due to his position as Chief Justice, so he can seem like a leader whom another Republican appointee can safely follow without creating waves. But when Barrett does that, she provides the swing fifth vote for Roberts and the liberal bloc on the Court.

That’s why Barrett’s casting of the deciding vote on August 31 in favor of Trump on the Ballroom has more significance than White House architecture. Roberts’ squealing in dissent, which failed to hold Barrett’s vote, further suggests that the future alignment of the Court may have been at stake in this little shadow docket case decided without oral argument.

Barrett agreed with conservatives that there is insufficient legal standing to block White House construction when the lawsuit is based on an aesthetic disapproval by merely one D.C. resident, who expects to visit the area “about once a month.” The Court majority stated correctly that it “has not found standing in circumstances like these before,” and declined to do so here.

Barrett’s shift back to the conservative side may come just in time as highly contentious new cases are lining up at the Court for speedy decision. The most important of these is the liberal challenge to new postal regulations about how mail-in ballot envelopes must be marked before the U.S. Postal Service will deliver them to election officials.

Working hard over Labor Day weekend, on Sunday Trump’s splendid Solicitor General John Sauer filed an emergency application to the Supreme Court to stay an injunction issued on Friday by Obama-appointed Judge Indira Talwani against sensible new requirements issued by the Postal Service for delivering mail-in ballots.

The new postal regulation creates “standardized design and review requirements for ballot envelopes that build on practices the Postal Service has long recommended,” Sauer explains. The new rule “requires States to upload the name, address, and barcode information of intended recipients of ballot mail in an online portal – information that election officials would necessarily already possess to send ballot mail under the Rule to those recipients.”

This federal regulation does not “dictate ballot content, mailing or receipt deadlines, or ballot-counting procedures.” Contrary to liberal criticism of this new rule, it “plainly does not seize control of States’ administration of elections – it simply imposes reasonable preparation requirements for certain election-related mail.”

Just two weeks ago the Supreme Court held in favor of Trump on this issue, by finding that the liberals’ lawsuit against it was premature. But the same federal judge in Boston then decided in favor of the plaintiffs again, compelling Trump to seek Supreme Court intervention yet again to reduce potential fraud in the upcoming midterm elections.

The Democrat Party relies heavily on mail-in voting, which is more easily harvested by paid campaign workers without adequate verification that a voter knowingly filled out the ballot in secrecy to ensure its integrity. Too often, a Republican candidate wins based on in-person voting, but a swarm of late-arriving mailed ballots is then counted after Election Day to change the result, as occurred in 2020.

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.

Return Truckin’ to American Drivers

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Truckin’ is an American pastime, and has long been a way for nearly anyone to attain the American dream. No formal education is required other than an ability to read road signs and pass a commercial driver’s license test.

The average salary of a truck driver today is $60,000, which is enough to live on with the ability to reside in an inexpensive area, or nowhere permanent at all. Strict regulations prohibit driving a truck more than 11 hours per day, and 60 on-duty hours per week, as a safeguard against overworking behind the wheel.

But foreigners who cannot read road signs or speak and understand English have flooded this job market, depressing wages for Americans and putting all of us at risk on the road. A whopping 18% of truck drivers are foreign born, and 200,000 of them lack citizenship.

Learning to drive in another country does not prepare foreign-born drivers for high-speed, construction-laden, traffic-congested American highways. At one moment a driver is making good time at high speeds of 70 mph, and then suddenly the cars ahead are stopped without warning, creating a risk of a pile-up.

Increasingly there are warnings flashed on electronic signs above our highways, but those signs are ineffective with drivers who cannot read English. Foreign drivers are also not going to understand weather alerts about icy roads or flash floods.

“Last year alone, illegal aliens with commercial driver’s licenses (CDLs) caused at least 30 deaths and many, many very seriously injured,” President Trump said on July 30. “We’ve already removed more than 24,000 non-English speakers from behind the wheel,” he added.

In the month of August alone, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) arrested 95 illegal aliens who were working as truck drivers. Some 82 of these drivers had received their commercial driver’s licenses from the Democrat-controlled states of California and New York, mostly from California.

Trump’s Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy observed that 239 people have died in vehicle crashes caused by non-English-speaking truck drivers since Trump took office in January 2025. Most of the foreign drivers who caused those fatal accidents received their CDLs from Gavin Newsom’s California.

On Monday, Secretary Duffy took forceful action to correct this outrage. He announced that the Department of Transportation is shutting down 110 driving schools for violations of English language proficiency (ELP) requirements.

Duffy commented that illegal aliens who cannot understand English “don’t deserve to be in a big rig driving on American roads endangering American citizens.” He added, “If you’re not well skilled, you’re not well trained.”

“If you’re not well licensed, you have no place driving an 18-wheeler — 80,000 pounds — on American roadways,” Duffy said. He called the 110 schools that he shut down the “greatest offenders,” and he closed another 160 schools for reasons including inadequately trained instructors.

The president of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, Todd Spencer, cheered Duffy’s decision. Spencer thanked the Trump Administration “for taking concrete actions to crack down on fraudulent training operations and restore rigorous English language proficiency enforcement.”

Incredibly, 21 Democrat-controlled states and the District of Columbia are suing the Department of Transportation, DOT officials, and the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (AAMVA) to block the DOT’s demand for AAMVA to produce records that would identify the foreigners driving trucks. A separate lawsuit from 22 Democrat states and D.C. targets the Department of Homeland Security for making an identical demand of AAMVA.

Democrats are obstructing the disclosure of these records based on contrived arguments, such as the alleged privacy of Social Security numbers in the databases. The Trump Administration already has all those numbers by administering the Social Security program, and illegal aliens shouldn’t be using them anyway.

Trump has threatened to terminate more than $10 million in federal funding to the AAMVA for refusing his reasonable request to turn over this data. Trump seeks the last five years from this CDL Information System.

On August 14, a federal judge appointed by President George W. Bush blocked a subpoena by the Department of Homeland Security to obtain 17 million CDL records. U.S. District Judge Anthony Trenga further ordered DHS to return immediately any subpoenaed documents already obtained, and not to look at what it has.

Meanwhile, the Republican-controlled Senate is taking steps to restore the requirement that beef and pork be labeled with their country of origin so that consumers know what they are buying in grocery stores. This basic labeling requirement was eliminated in 2015 over the objection of Phyllis Schlafly and Midwestern ranchers.

On Thursday, August 6, the Senate Ag Committee voted 17 to 6 to insert mandatory country-of-origin labeling, known as MCOOL, into the pending farm bill. This is beneficial to America’s ranchers nationwide, and enables all Americans to select the safer meat that is produced in our own country.

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.