Gen Z Turns to Socialism in Desperation

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Gen Z men, the pivotal swing voters under age 30 who helped elect President Trump in 2024, are supporting socialist candidates in shocking numbers. As many as eight members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) could be elected to Congress in three months.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has a sky-high approval rating of 58%, more than double his disapproval rating, after Gen Z voters elected him in a landslide last fall. None of the conservative criticisms of him has made a dent in his popularity.

Some Republican consultants hope the Democrats’ shift to socialism will make it easier for Republican candidates to win in the general election. But there is no sign of a significant migration of traditional Democrats or Independents to the Republican Party.

It would help if more voters understood what the DSA really stands for. Their platform includes abolishing the Presidency, Senate and the Supreme Court, while opening our borders and emptying our prisons.

DSA members seek to abolish corporations and impose government rent-controlled housing. They want a “single payer” government-run health care system, which would cause Canadian-style shortages, and vow to “finish Reconstruction” by imposing a race-based woke agenda.

But explaining the DSA platform to young voters has not deterred them from casting ballots for the socialists. Instead, Republicans need to recognize that many young Americans are in dire financial straits, and seek to alleviate that.

Annual college tuition and expenses can exceed $100,000 at private colleges, yet D.C. politicians continue to pump money into higher education while doing nothing to bring down this exorbitant cost. Likewise for health care, such that insurance premiums surpass even mortgage payments for many young couples.

The job of government is not to impose price controls, but to rein in inflation. Yet the cost of groceries has risen by 33% since 2019.

A new Texas Public Opinion Research poll on the Senate race in Texas, which Republicans must win to keep control of the upper chamber, shows Democrat James Talarico leading the Republican Ken Paxton by 45-40%. By far the top issue for voters there is affordability and the cost of living, about which Gen Z is particularly distressed.

Mayor Mamdani’s approach to this problem is doomed to fail, as happened in Chicago, where 7 publicly subsidized Save A Lot stores are closing. Undeterred by this lesson, Mamdani promised that 5 city-operated grocery stores will sell a core basket of food at 30% less than privately owned stores, at prices fixed for an entire month to prevent the current sticker shock of many unexpected increases.

Mamdani’s first city-owned grocery store won’t open until next year in the Bronx, and the second one will not welcome shoppers until 2029, so this initiative is mostly symbolic. But to his credit, his stores will not sell lottery tickets, or alcohol and cigarettes.

The liberal Chicago Tribune, which supported the publicly funded scheme to address so-called “food deserts,” admits that “city-owned grocery stores … are not the answer.” Meanwhile, the German-owned Aldi chain, which somehow manages to sell a broad range of fresh foods and groceries at prices that average 30% less than other chains, recently announced a massive expansion with a target of 3,200 stores across the U.S.

But Republican officials have been creating an impression of pandering to oligarchs rather than making life more affordable for young people. Only 20% of Gen Z own stock outside of a retirement plan, and yet national policy seems devoted to what is good for the stock market rather than for the struggling consumer.

The Wall Street Journal recently published the best responses on this issue by members of Gen Z at college, and observations included the fact that wages have not kept pace with inflation since 2009. Rent eats up 40% of income, while medical debt is steep.

The debt that Gen Z men are incurring due to the growing addiction to gambling is staggering, too. Americans, mostly young men, are spending twice as much money on sports gambling now than on books, music, movies, and museums combined.

Congress held another ineffective hearing on the sports gambling crisis last week, again failing to make progress on this issue. Meanwhile, gambling interests are suddenly pouring many millions of dollars into elections, such that many politicians are afraid to stand up against them.

Enter the socialists with their promises to protect and help Gen Z, by improving affordability, ending the oligarchy, and stopping predatory business practices. Sometimes the socialists deregulate, as Mamdani recently did for small businesses in New York City by terminating duplicative licensing requirements.

There is still time for Republicans to announce a new “Contract with America” that was so successful in the 1994 midterm election that it became a GOP landslide. The agenda should start with what would be good for Gen Z, the key voting bloc that should not be ignored any longer by the Republican Party.

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

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

Birthright Citizenship Must Be Reversed

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

The dire consequences of the birthright citizenship decision by the Supreme Court on June 30th are sinking in. It impedes deportation and it gives millions of future votes to the Democrat Party, which is increasingly electing socialist candidates.

Texans had already been in an uproar about foreigners taking over entire communities there. Texans do not want to be subjected to future socialism as voted in by birthright citizens whose parents were illegals or sojourners.

A week after the Supreme Court’s ruling, the backlash in Texas prompted Gov. Greg Abbott to order an investigation into whether “birth tourism” is being encouraged by hospitals there. Birth tourism is foreigners coming to the U.S. to give birth here, and thereby claim birthright citizenship for their children.

Gov. Abbott took action only after several prominent Texas Republicans rebuked the Supreme Court decision and called for Texas to assert its sovereignty by refusing to issue birth certificates to children of foreigners. State Representative Brian Harrison (R-Midlothian), who previously worked in the Trump Administration, demanded that Gov. Abbott call a special session of the legislature to push back against this Court decision.

“I hope every elected Republican in Texas joins my call for immediate action. Delay is unacceptable for a state like Texas!” Rep. Harrison posted on X.

The next Texas Railroad Commissioner, which is one of the most powerful offices because it regulates the oil and gas industries, is Bo French after winning a stunning upset against the establishment candidate. He successfully campaigned against the rise in Islamic culture among migrants into Texas, and he boldly demands that Texas assert its sovereignty against the Supreme Court ruling on birthright citizenship.

“The correct response to the traitorous decision today on anchor babies is nullification,” French declared. “Texas can just do things and we should. Texas is sovereign. If I have anything to say about it, Texas will not recognize them as citizens.”

Bo French and Brian Harrison show where the next generation of Texas leaders are headed. Gov. Abbott’s call for an investigation into birth tourism may have been a reaction against the younger, charismatic Bo French, who could run against the aging Abbott for governor one day.

Politicians in D.C. have failed in their initial attempt to downplay this birthright citizenship decision. Proposals in Congress to legislate around this ruling are unlikely to succeed, both because the votes are not there and because the Court declared birthright citizenship to be a constitutional right.

There is a 25-day window for President Trump to seek a rehearing and reconsideration of this erroneous decision by the Supreme Court, which Trump said he would do. The Court has on its own initiative reheard momentous cases in the past, such as the Citizens United case about campaign funding, although it has been more than half a century since the Court has granted a request by a party for a rehearing.

Birthright citizenship is that once-in-a-century issue justifying a rehearing. The harmful impact of this on the sovereignty of Texas and every other State is at stake, just as the notorious Dred Scott decision in 1857 wrongly interfered with States that prohibited slavery.

If the Supreme Court had reconsidered and reversed its Dred Scott decision after seeing the Republican-led backlash against it, then perhaps the lives of 750,000 American soldiers would have been saved by averting the Civil War. The Supreme Court is supposed to act to unite the country, not divide it with a 5-4 decision that invents a new constitutional right for foreigners who are not even domiciled in the USA.

Chief Justice John Roberts seems unlikely to reconsider his pet theories about English feudalism to hand the future of America over to foreigners who will become voters under his decision granting them citizenship. But Justice Amy Barrett, who silently provided the swing 5th vote for Roberts’ ruling, may be willing to listen and reconsider.

A survey just conducted by the Idaho Freedom Caucus, which is a coalition of some of the most conservative legislators in our country, found that stopping illegal immigration remains the #1 issue among the grassroots. This makes the birthright citizenship decision the new equivalent of Roe v. Wade, against which Republicans campaigned for nearly 50 years until the Supreme Court overruled it.

It won’t take that long to overturn this decision that jeopardizes Texas sovereignty. States control the issuance of birth certificates, and as a practical matter they can decide whether to grant one to someone born here to foreign parents as legislation introduced in 2011 in Arizona sought to do.

This argument should resonate with Justice Barrett, who has favored state autonomy on other controversial issues such as the power of states to ban transgender procedures or to protect girls’ sports against intrusion by boys who present themselves as transgender girls.

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.

Supreme Court’s Blunder on Birthright Citizenship

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

The Supreme Court just blundered badly on birthright citizenship, undermining the credibility of the Court while devaluing American citizenship. By a mere 5-4 majority, the Court declared a new constitutional right to citizenship for millions of children of illegal aliens, tourists, and those on worker visas, which was never intended by anyone who wrote the U.S. Constitution.

This decision suddenly grants a future right to vote to millions of illegal aliens, tilting the outcomes of elections away from the candidates preferred by native-born or naturalized American citizens. Chief Justice John Roberts, who is on the Court only because millions of illegal aliens were not allowed to vote in 2004, wrote a decision that hands the future of the United States over to the children of illegal aliens and other foreign citizens.

The notion that the 14th Amendment, which was ratified nearly 160 years ago in response to the Civil War, somehow requires this result is unfathomable. As Justice Thomas explained in his 91-page dissent, this is another judicial distortion of the meaning of a constitutional amendment whose purpose was “to secure equal rights for the freed blacks.”

No Republican will be electable as president in a decade if this decision stands, because of the millions of children born to illegal aliens allowed in during the Clinton, Obama and Biden Administrations. In Republican states flooded with illegal aliens, such as Arizona and Texas, the voting power of these illegal alien children as newly declared American citizens virtually ensures a future Democrat takeover.

“I am not sure that today’s opinion will stand the test of time,” dissented Justice Thomas in his modest style. Justice Alito dissented by observing the Court “confers citizenship on virtually everyone who happens to be born in this country, including the children of ‘birth tourists,’ women who come here solely for the purpose of giving birth to a child and then promptly return home.”

Now the millions of illegal aliens who have been persuaded by the Trump Administration to return voluntarily home have a strong incentive to stay long enough to give birth to another child. Those children will then automatically have a right to vote in our elections and to legalize their lawbreaking parents.

Roberts’ decision was made possible only by the support of Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who has repeatedly given a one-vote majority to Roberts’ coalition with the three liberal justices. Barrett seems to cling increasingly to Roberts, perhaps overwhelmed by the liberal D.C. culture while taken in by Roberts’ superficial reasoning.

Dating back to his politically tinged memos as a D.C.-based government attorney in the 1980s, Roberts has always been more interested in politics than scholarship. Roberts just outdid prior liberal judicial activists by diluting the future voting power of all rightful American citizens.

This Court decision devalues American citizenship for all. No longer is citizenship reserved to the children of Americans and those who went through the rigorous process of naturalization, but now it includes anyone born in the United States to a mother who was here illegally or who traveled here for school, work, or tourism.

American citizenship now includes many millions who have no known allegiance to the United States. Many illegal aliens demonstrate their hostility to the values of our country by their criminal conduct and failure to assimilate, but the Supreme Court just prevented deportation of millions of them by declaring them to be citizens.

The response to this needs to be, as to prior calamitous mistakes by the Supreme Court, clear and unequivocal. As the future president Abraham Lincoln stated in his immediate response to the Dred Scott decision in favor of slavery in 1857, “We know the court that made it has often overruled its own decisions, and we shall do what we can to have it to overrule this.”

The Republican Party was built on opposition to the Dred Scott decision, which was decided with a larger majority (7-2) than this birthright citizenship decision. In both cases, the Court went far beyond what was needed to decide the controversy before it, as Justice Kavanaugh pointed out in his concurrence explaining that a 1940 law, which Congress can change, should have been the sole basis for this citizenship decision.

Instead of Justice Kavanaugh’s judicial restraint, the Court’s 5-member majority issued a ruling that only a constitutional amendment can change. Such an amendment on this issue would be nearly impossible, but Congress could deny any appropriations to enforce this decision as Congress did in response to court decisions to remove the Mojave Desert Cross from federal land.

Pew Research reports that American adults (who include non-voters) are evenly divided, 50-49%, on the question of whether illegal immigrants’ children born in the United States should be automatically granted American citizenship. This 49% is greater public support than Republicans have on other topics, and should become a campaign issue.

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.

Conversion Therapy Wins Big in SCOTUS

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Do physicians and counselors have the right to speak freely to their patients and clients? One would think that licensed professionals enjoy the First Amendment as much as anyone else, but 23 Democrat-controlled states and the District of Columbia have passed laws making it illegal for counselors to help young people go straight, in the face of confusions about sexual orientation or gender identity.

These state laws ban what is known as “conversion therapy,” a scary term that Wikipedia falsely contends is a form of child abuse. More than 100 cities and counties have also banned conversion therapy for minors, despite how local ordinances are not typically so political.

But today, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that all such laws are almost certainly invalid, because the First Amendment protects the right of professional counselors to give advice without viewpoint discrimination, even on controversial topics like sexual orientation.

In his ringing opinion in favor of the Colorado Christian counselor who brought the case, Trump-appointed Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote: “The Constitution does not protect the right of some to speak freely; it protects the right of all. It safeguards not only popular ideas; it secures, even and especially, the right to voice dissenting views.”

It is not surprising that Gorsuch was assigned to write this decision, as he is from Colorado and presided on the Tenth Circuit in Denver before going to the Supreme Court. But the strength of his opinion is refreshing, particularly given how he had declined to support granting certiorari in similar prior appeals.

Kaley Chiles, the licensed mental health counselor who challenged Colorado’s ban on so-called conversion therapy, is indeed a committed Christian, but six Justices ruled in her favor in a strong endorsement of freedom of speech regardless of religion. By a 6-3 margin the Court held that “every American possesses an inalienable right to think and speak freely, and a faith in the free marketplace of ideas as the best means for discovering truth.”

Concurring with the Republican majority, Obama-appointed Justice Elena Kagan agreed that “because the State has suppressed one side of a debate, while aiding the other, the constitutional issue is straightforward.”

The single dissenting opinion was authored by Biden-appointed Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson who, during her memorable confirmation hearing, was unable to say what a woman is. In her overwrought, cliche-ridden opinion, Justice Jackson said “the majority plays with fire in this case,” “opens a dangerous can of worms” and “we could now be standing on the edge of a precipitous drop in the quality of healthcare services in America.”

In his response to Jackson’s heated dissent, Justice Gorsuch wrote that Justice Jackson “may believe that state-imposed orthodoxies in speech pose few dangers and many benefits in this field (and who knows what others). But their policy is not the First Amendment’s.”

Although the speech ban at issue in this case attracted only one vote on the Supreme Court, it is frightening that such an onerous restriction on free speech has been passed by legislatures of nearly half our states. The gist of those state laws, which Joe Biden’s appointee to the Court would have upheld, is that doctors and other licensed professionals have no right to give their own best advice, but must convey state-approved messages to their clients or patients.

The lobbyists for those laws argue that conversion therapy has a low success rate. However there is no evidence that the rate is any worse than for other common therapies, such as for losing weight or stopping addictions.

The decision in favor of free speech is now the law of the land in the United States, but the battle is not over, because many professional societies still oppose the use of talk therapy or counseling to guide young people struggling with issues of sexual orientation or gender identity. You can expect professional counselors like Kaley Chiles to be harassed by some state licensing boards if they dare to fully exercise their free speech.

Colorado, which has become one of the most liberal states despite formerly being conservative, may not give up in its attempt to censor conversion therapy. Justice Kagan invited it and other opponents of conversion therapy to try again with a content-based restriction, rather than a viewpoint-based limitation, although it is far from clear what Justice Kagan has in mind.

A viewpoint-neutral limitation on counseling would require liberals to cut back on their grooming campaigns. Most conversion therapy bans, including Colorado’s, allow therapy to encourage transitioning to become transgendered.

Speech bans similar to Colorado’s are still the law in countries that don’t have a First Amendment, such as Canada. Originally drafted in the 1980s to ban counseling about sexual orientation, most of these laws were subsequently expanded to ban counseling about gender identity, too.

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.

Ten Commandments Coming Back to Public Schools

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

A lively oral argument filled the en banc courtroom of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit on Tuesday afternoon in New Orleans, to address this simple question: may states require the posting of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms? Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas have enacted new laws requiring this, which had been banned throughout the United States since 1980.

That was when a 5-4 Supreme Court held, in Stone v. Graham, that state legislatures could not require the posting of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms, even if privately funded. That decision was based on a judicial finding of a religious purpose, which the Court held rendered it in violation of the Establishment Clause.

The Supreme Court has since repudiated the use of a religious purpose test to evaluate state legislation under the Establishment Clause. The entire Lemon test, which was promulgated in 1971 by the Supreme Court in Lemon v. Kurtzman, is no longer good law.

The ACLU argues that a Ten Commandments display in every classroom would have a coercive effect on students. It objects to the use of the King James Version of the Ten Commandments, as found in the Book of Exodus Chapter 20, rather than Jewish or Catholic translations.

Judges peppered the ACLU side with questions about whether it would be unconstitutional to require posting the Declaration of Independence or President Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address. President Lincoln quoted verbatim from the King James Version of the Gospel of Matthew, “Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!”

The Court sought historical examples of any impermissible establishment of a religion that was remotely similar to displaying the Ten Commandments in classrooms. The New England Primer, which is called America’s first textbook, sold millions of copies for public elementary school students and included explicit teachings about the Ten Commandments.

A dilemma for the Fifth Circuit as it deliberates in the city called the Big Easy, the birthplace of jazz, is whether to discard Stone v. Graham, which was an unsigned per curiam decision written by liberal Justice William Brennan without oral argument. A majority of the outspoken judges on the Fifth Circuit indicated that they plan not to cast the first stone, an expression from the Bible, but to cast Stone aside and take the chance that the Supreme Court might admonish them for acting so boldly.

A judge opposed to the posting of the Ten Commandments fretted about a child who “believes in a multitude of deities.” In other words, some would grant a heckler’s veto to just one child who might be polytheistic, and allow that view to require taking down the monotheistic Ten Commandments liked by everyone else.

The Pledge of Allegiance is monotheistic, and Texas requires students to recite it in public school without problems. In 1789, George Washington issued his Thanksgiving Proclamation with the words, “Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will,” as an attorney defending the classroom display of the Ten Commandments pointed out.

Yet opponents of the Ten Commandments display requirement complain that this will be in every public school classroom at every level, visible from everywhere in each classroom. This will have a coercive effect, they insist, but a Fifth Circuit judge pointed out that the Stone v. Graham decision said nothing about any coercion caused by a display in a classroom.

Some prayer is allowed at public school football games now, and religious objections to pro-transgender mandates are upheld today. Amish elementary schools that were fined more than $100,000 for not requiring the children to be vaccinated were just given a second chance by the Supreme Court to overturn those penalties in lower courts.

Public school enrollment and attendance have been in a free fall, collapsing at an alarming rate. A post-Covid record was just set in Colorado with a 10,000-student annual decline in enrollment, while Broward County public schools north of Miami in Florida face a potential takeover by the state after disclosure that they are losing nearly $100 million.

Schoolchildren need the benefits of the Ten Commandments in their classrooms now, and should not have to wait for years before the good Louisiana law, which was supposed to take effect at the beginning of 2025, is implemented for their benefit.

Excluding all religious symbols from classrooms has turned them into depressing, valueless places where many kids loathe to be. Chronic absenteeism – missing more than a tenth of the school days – is rampant now and, just as Gen Z is reading the Bible more than their prior generation, posting the Ten Commandments might help boost school attendance too.

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.

“Full, Complete” Pardons for 2020 Presidential Electors

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Fake news was working overtime on Monday by declaring, without authority, that the “full, complete” presidential pardons related to the 2020 presidential election cannot protect against bogus state charges arising from that election. The liberal media wrongly insisted that the Pardon Clause in the U.S. Constitution applies only to charges brought by federal prosecutors.

Not so. The Pardon Clause states that the President “shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.” Every attempt in court to narrow the scope of the Pardon Clause has failed.

Our system of dual sovereigns, federal and state, is subject to the Supremacy Clause, which means that state sovereignty cannot limit the scope of the Pardon Clause. It was modeled on the vast, nearly unlimited pardon power of the King of England.

The newly pardoned 77 alternate electors, federal officials, attorneys and activists who objected to voter fraud in 2020 were acting in defense of the integrity of a presidential election, and thus in defense of the United States. Their conduct is fully pardonable by the President, which Trump has appropriately done.

Yet naysayers argue that the term “United States” in the Pardon Clause means only crimes prosecuted by the federal government. If that were true, then the Supreme Court would not have upheld in Ex parte Wells (1856) the last-minute commutation of a death penalty by President Millard Fillmore of a man convicted of murder in a District of Columbia court, as there were no federal common law crimes.

Federal law never denied women the right to vote, but New York prosecuted Susan B. Anthony for voting illegally in the 1872 presidential election, and prosecuted local officials for allowing her to vote. After his reelection as our 18th President, U.S. Grant pardoned the state officials for their violation of state law, and in 2020 President Trump pardoned Susan B. Anthony for casting an illegal vote.

Just last week an all-Democrat panel of the Second Circuit ruled in favor of Trump’s argument that the charges against him in the so-called hush money case that resulted in 34 felonies should have been heard in a federal court. The charges brought by the New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg accused Trump of violating campaign finance laws during his 2016 campaign for President of the United States.

If a case can be heard in federal court, as all Trump-related cases can be, then the charges are pardonable by the president. No one credibly doubted that President Ford’s pardon of President Nixon protected him against all potential charges relating to the Watergate scandal, including non-federal ones.

The tradition of complete pardons by the president, which began with President George Washington, has always precluded prosecution of the underlying conduct in state court. Those who doubt this broad scope of the pardon power cannot cite any example of a beneficiary of a presidential pardon being prosecuted in state court for the same conduct.

Even Democrat-dominated New York courts shut down an attempted prosecution of Paul Manafort after President Trump granted him a pardon. While the rationale for that decision was based on New York’s strong rule against double jeopardy, the result was to prohibit a first-of-its-kind state prosecution of conduct excused by a presidential pardon.

The ban on slavery in the 13th Amendment to the Constitution prohibits its use “within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” This is not a reference to the federal government but to all of the States and territories, as demonstrated by the plural pronoun for jurisdiction.

The U.S. Supreme Court emphatically held after the Civil War, in Ex parte Garland (1867), that the presidential pardon “is unlimited, with the exception” for cases of impeachment. “It extends to every offence known to the law,” not merely to federal crimes.

Alexander Hamilton, a Framer of our Constitution, wrote favorably of a broad pardon power in The Federalist No. 74. Hamilton explained, “The criminal code of every country partakes so much of necessary severity that without an easy access to exceptions in favor of unfortunate guilt, justice would wear a countenance too sanguinary and cruel.”

The use of the term “United States” to mean only the federal government and only federal laws is a modern distortion of the elite in Washington, D.C., to puff themselves up. The national liberal media distorts this further by obsessively reporting on D.C. as if that enclave represented the entire United States.

As the Supreme Court recognized in Schick v. Reed (1974), the Framers of the Pardon Clause stated that this power is a “prerogative” of the President, which ought not be “fettered or embarrassed.” The presidential pardon power would be impermissibly undermined if federal charges could be refiled as state charges by an unscrupulous local prosecutor like Alvin Bragg.

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.

Seek the Death Penalty Against Kirk’s Assassin

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

The assassination of Charlie Kirk cries out for the death penalty, which is rarely imposed by Utah courts. This murder was premeditated and executed with vengeance, against an innocent victim merely for exercising his constitutional right of freedom of speech.

This crime struck at the heart of our republic, and has terrorized Americans from expressing their views in public. Like the assassination of President William McKinley by an anarchist on September 6, 1901, for which the assassin received full due process and then was executed on October 29, retribution by seeking the death penalty against Kirk’s assassin is needed.

Before the suspected Kirk assassin was arrested, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox pointed out that Utah still has the death penalty, but Utah law makes it nearly impossible to apply. Utah has executed only one person (an American Indian) in the last 15 years, and there are only four criminals on Utah’s death row, each of whom has been supported there at taxpayer expense for more than 29 years.

A murderer cannot be punished by the death penalty in Utah state courts unless there is an aggravating factor as narrowly defined by Utah law, such as killing a police officer or shooting in a way that creates a “grave risk” to bystanders in a crowd. Kirk’s assassin allegedly fired one shot from a high-precision rifle at Kirk while he was seated on stage, so it is unclear if Utah’s death penalty even applies to this crime.

In addition, Utah has a pro-transgender culture, contrary to every other Republican state. Codifying a pro-transgender administrative rule promulgated in 2020, Utah in 2023 became the only Republican state with a law that prevents parents from seeking professional counseling to straighten out gender dysphoria in their children. In 2022, Gov. Cox also vetoed legislation protecting girls’ sports against transgender athletes.

The suspect, Tyler Robinson, was living with his transgender partner, whom Gov. Cox praised as being “incredibly cooperative” with investigators. Robinson reportedly had a romantic relationship with his transgender roommate.

Bullet casings found with the murder weapon contained markings demonstrating that this assassination was carefully planned and carried out with vengeance. These inscriptions included a merciless “CATCH,” along with positive references from online communities, including the sexually deviant furry subculture.

Afterward Robinson reportedly sent electronic messages to his transgender lover about the murder. Robinson also exchanged messages among more than 20 people in the online platform Discord soon after the assassination, apparently without anyone rebuking him or telling him to turn himself in to authorities.

The FBI reports that Robinson’s DNA has been linked to the crime scene, where a high-powered hunting rifle with a 500-yard shooting range was found nearby. It is alleged that Robinson shot Kirk from a rooftop merely 150 yards away.

Tyler Robinson has so far been charged only in state court with three crimes for assassinating Charlie Kirk: aggravated murder, felony discharge of a firearm, and obstruction of justice. In state court Robinson will benefit from a system that is more lenient than federal court, and less likely to impose the death penalty.

As President Trump vows a full federal investigation, his Attorney General Pam Bondi needs to file federal charges that carry the death penalty. The FBI should not be relegated merely to a supporting role in Utah, which is notorious for its Trump-haters and for favoring residents against outsiders.

Tyler Robinson admittedly hated Charlie Kirk, who frequently professed his Christian faith and was outspoken against the transgender ideology, as President Trump has been. Robinson’s love interest is transgender, and Kirk’s close association with Trump made Kirk a proxy of Trump and a target for Trump-haters, of whom there are many in Utah.

The federal death penalty is triggered by hate crime murders when motivated by animus towards one’s perceived race, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or disability. If it is a capital offense to murder a transgender person, then it should be a capital offense for a transgender’s lover to murder a prominent Christian critic of the transgender movement.

The federal hate crime statute – and the federal death penalty – should be applied to prosecute this assassination of an outspoken Christian. The Trump Administration should ensure that Americans are fully informed about what encouragement the assassin may have received from well-funded Leftist organizations before and after this crime.

On Tuesday FBI Director Kash Patel was subjected to rants by Senate Democrats and liberal Republicans in a hearing on Capitol Hill, but little of it had to do with this shocking assassination that has terrorized millions of Americans. Instead, Democrats were more concerned about preventing unproductive federal workers from being fired.

Kirk’s death is a watershed moment for our country, and freedom of speech depends on how thoroughly this heinous crime is prosecuted.

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.

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.

SCOTUS Can Limit Birthright Citizenship

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

When the first oral argument before the Supreme Court on a Trump policy is held on Thursday, May 15, all eyes will be on the divided nine Justices. Trump has asked the high court to rein in the power of district court judges to issue nationwide or universal injunctions against the president’s policies.

Over 100 temporary or preliminary injunctions have been issued by district judges, most of whom were appointed by Democratic Presidents Biden, Obama, or Clinton. The underlying substantive dispute is over the claim to birthright citizenship by which foreigners who give birth here then assert citizenship based on the location of the childbirth.

Our Founders would be dismayed by the theory that merely being born on U.S. soil is enough to automatically qualify for citizenship. Christians know that Jesus and his 12 Apostles were born in the Roman Empire, yet none was a Roman citizen.

Only Paul among the early Christian disciples was a Roman citizen, which he inherited from his parents who were citizens. Others earned or acquired citizenship, but no one became a Roman citizen merely by being born in the empire.

Within hours of Trump becoming president, he issued an Executive Order entitled “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship” which clarifies that American citizenship is not bestowed on people simply because they may have been born on American soil. “The Fourteenth Amendment has always excluded from birthright citizenship persons who were born in the United States but not ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof,’” Trump stated.

Trump’s brilliant executive order clarifies that children born to a mother unlawfully present in the United States and to a father who was not an American citizen or lawful permanent resident are not entitled to American citizenship. Perhaps those children can become citizens one day as other foreigners can, but merely being born here does not entitle a child to citizenship here.

Likewise, when a child’s mother’s presence in the United States was lawful but merely temporary, and the father was not an American citizen or a lawful permanent resident, then childbirth does not bestow American citizenship. This executive order took effect for anyone born 30 days after it was entered on January 20, 2025.

There has been a cottage industry of bringing pregnant Chinese mothers to California for them to give birth in a hospital here, go back to China and then claim American citizenship when their children grow up. This racket needs to stop, and the Supreme Court could end it as Trump has commanded with one of his first executive orders.

Children born to foreign diplomats in the United States are not eligible to be American citizens. Citizenship is what defines a country and its future, and must be carefully limited to those who personally or through their families have a long commitment to our values and way of life.

American Indians were not automatically citizens for nearly the first 140 years of our country, because they had not assimilated into American communities but retained loyalties to their tribes. The same is true for many of the illegal aliens brought in by Biden, Obama, and Clinton.

Children born to American parents are American citizens if they are born in the United States, and can claim citizenship here if they were born while in another country. Children born to lawful permanent residents of the United States are American citizens because they are born subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, as the Supreme Court held in 1898.

Persons temporarily present (such as tourists, workers, students, and diplomats) and persons unlawfully present (who could be removed without notice) are expected to go back home. Their children, though born here, retain the citizenship of their parents’ country of origin.

The Supreme Court is divided on the issue of birthright citizenship, and it may try to duck the issue for now. Instead it may confine itself to the procedural question presented: “Whether the Supreme Court should stay the district courts’ nationwide preliminary injunctions on the Trump administration’s Jan. 20 executive order ending birthright citizenship except as to the individual plaintiffs and identified members of the organizational plaintiffs or states.”

Several justices, including Thomas and Gorsuch, have expressed strong opposition to nationwide injunctions that extend beyond the plaintiffs in a case. But it is unclear whether they can muster a majority of the Court to end this practice that is being used frequently by liberals now against many aspects of Trump’s agenda.

Limiting the scope of the injunctions against Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order to only the plaintiffs in the lawsuits would enable his order to go into effect against everyone else. That would mean the “Secretary of State, the Attorney General, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and the Commissioner of Social Security shall take all appropriate measures to ensure that the regulations and policies of their respective departments” implement this order.

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.