AI Companies Aren’t Our Masters, Yet

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Trump’s spectacular capture in January of Nicolás Maduro, the Communist dictator of Venezuela, was reportedly assisted by artificial intelligence (AI). Specifically, the AI program Claude is used in our military, and in 8 of the 10 largest companies.

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth made decisions based on multiple scenarios presented by Palantir using Claude. And this was not the first time that the U.S. Army has benefited from this AI tool.

The stunning success of this military operation involved fewer than 200 American troops, of whom 7 were injured, and several of them were visited by President Trump last Friday at Fort Bragg. Three helicopter pilots were badly wounded in their legs by machine gun fire, Trump said, while 83 soldiers defending Maduro were killed, according to Venezuela.

AI company Anthropic licenses Claude under an Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) that limits how it can be used. In rejection of these limitations, War Secretary Pete Hegseth threatens to eradicate it not just from our military, but from every vendor that sells products and services to our military by labeling Claude a “supply chain risk.”

This is a type of exclusion usually invoked only for foreign adversaries of the United States. But the irritation by Hegseth and the top brass in our military at Anthropic’s restrictions on the use of its product has worsened to the point where this harsh punishment of a complete banishment is being considered.

Just imagine if the scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb had placed restrictions on its use by the military. The military should be able to use unrestricted AI to advance our national security as our elected president thinks best.

Anthropic is not the only AI company placing restrictions on the use of its tools. Other AI companies have also attempted to limit the military applications of their programs.

Several competitors to Anthropic, including OpenAI, Google, and xAI, are chomping at the bit to secure a contract with the U.S. Armed Services and may be willing to drop the restrictions Anthropic currently insists on maintaining. But the Trump Administration complains that it would be enormously difficult to eradicate all current uses of Claude, including those by contractors like Palantir, to switch to another AI tool.

Military spokesman Sean Parnell stated, “The Department of War’s relationship with Anthropic is being reviewed. Our nation requires that our partners be willing to help our warfighters win in any fight. Ultimately, this is about our troops and the safety of the American people.”

Our military’s contract with Anthropic is worth only about $200 million, a mere pittance of Anthropic’s total $14 billion in annual revenue. Anthropic may be concerned about losing more sizable business if its tool becomes associated with military attacks.

The Vatican released a statement a year ago entitled “Antiqua et Nova” which warned that “autonomous weapons systems, which are capable of identifying and striking targets without direct human intervention, are a cause for grave ethical concern. ... No machine should ever choose to take the life of a human being.”

But there is no guarantee that China would play by the rules of Western Civilization. Our military’s AI needs to be advanced enough to defend against China’s AI in a war, while it is reasonable to limit AI to prevent it from making any unsupervised decisions to kill.

Meanwhile, an improved Chinese AI program created a video of a fistfight between actors Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise, which looks as realistic as a Hollywood movie. Despite possibly violating the copyrights on the movies with which the AI program was trained, it has gone viral and thrown Hollywood into a tailspin.

The New York Times described this 15-second clip as “more cinematic than anything so far” from AI. “In next to no time, one person is going to be able to sit at a computer and create a movie indistinguishable from what Hollywood now releases,” commented Rhett Reese, screenwriter of “Deadpool” and other movies.

The instigator of this video fistfight on a rooftop between Pitt and Cruise was the Irishman Ruairi Robinson. He said on X that this was generated by merely “a 2 line prompt in Seedance 2,” which is an AI film-generating tool by the Chinese company ByteDance.

ByteDance is the same Chinese company that developed TikTok, which upended social media platforms in the U.S. with popular short-reel videos.

Suddenly, a flood of potentially copyright-infringing material created by this Chinese AI tool is going viral online, using characters and scenes copied from popular movies. Those who would like to change a movie's ending may be able to do so privately using AI, but posting new endings could violate copyrights.

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.

“999 to 1 Against” Data Centers

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

As Republicans scramble for a grassroots issue for the New Year, to grow the Party as needed to be competitive in elections, opposing data centers could be the Christmas gift that keeps on giving. Local residents were “999 to 1 against” a data center planned for the town of Matthews, located in the suburbs of Charlotte, North Carolina, according to its Mayor John Higdon.

Allowing the development of a data center was on the agenda of a council meeting there in October, when it was withdrawn from consideration. If it had been approved, “every person that voted for it would no longer be in office,” Mayor Higdon observed. “That’s for sure.”

This is the reaction across the country to the efforts by Big Tech companies, including Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Facebook, to build massive data centers in the heartland of America. These projects gobble up land, electricity, and water, while creating very few jobs for the locals who have to endure the perpetual 65-decibel hum of the servers and louder backup diesel generators.

Lobbied state government officials tend to welcome these data centers, as Gov. Greg Abbott in Texas has. But often these projects are shrouded in secrecy and sprung on local residents without explaining the full risks and costs.

Texas has a dire water shortage, while data centers require enormous amounts of water to keep their computers from overheating. One data center can consume millions of gallons of water daily, the equivalent of the needs of an entire town of 50,000 people.

Prior to the invasion by data centers, a Texas agency estimated that many Texas towns and communities would face a severe water shortage by 2030. A harsh drought could accelerate that problem.

There are 411 existing data centers in Texas, second only to Virginia, and another 442 are planned for Texas, which is equivalent to nearly doubling its population in terms of water usage. Texans tap into broad but depleting underground aquifers for most of their water needs, such that data centers anywhere in Texas deplete the water supply for everyone there.

Meanwhile, since 2022 residential electricity prices nationwide have risen by 10%, while electricity prices for data centers and other commercial uses have increased by only 3%, according to a new report published by Yale Climate Connections. Data centers get favorable energy rates while homeowners are forced to make up the difference amid inflation.

If the Democrats who control California want to allow Google and Facebook to build data centers in unpopulated regions of the Golden State, then they can do that. But instead liberal Big Tech is lobbying Republican officials in other states, like Texas, to impose the costs and burdens of these monstrosities on unsuspecting local residents there.

The grassroots are rising up against this, and rightly so. A $2 billion new data center that blights the landscape, dries up the water supply, and overloads the power grid brings an estimated total of only 37 new jobs.

An outcry last year by the public in St. Charles, Missouri, blocked a data center project there by an undisclosed Big Tech company. When residents learned that 125 diesel generators would be used, any one of which could leak to contaminate the local water supply, they successfully defeated the development.

Supporters of data centers criticize the opposition by calling them NIMBYs, which is short for “Not in my back yard.” The same name-calling is used against residents who oppose resettling Somali or Afghan refugees in their communities.

But as with the refugee issue, valid objections are raised as to why people from halfway around the world are resettled far from their own homes in the backyards of those who never invited them. The homes of Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Amazon are in the States of California and Washington, so why aren’t most of the new data centers being built in those States?

Another analogy can be drawn to offshore wind turbines, which are typically opposed by local residents and yet pushed by lobbyists and corporate interests. California environmentalists are the biggest promoters of wind as an energy source, and yet Californians have not allowed a single offshore wind turbine along their own vast coastline.

Data centers externalize their many costs to burden the targeted communities, while developers line the pockets of lobbyists to push for these projects without transparency to the public. Often local residents receive little advance notice of rezoning demands.

In northeast Oklahoma, for example, Google is attempting to build one of these data centers in the town of Sand Springs, which the public is only recently learning about. Its planning commission has scheduled a vote on Tuesday, January 27, at the Charles Page High School Cafeteria on whether to approve this, giving people little time to mobilize in opposition.

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.

Regulation of AI Is Not the Answer

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Government regulators are champing at the bit to enact new rules to control artificial intelligence (AI) programs. The impact will be censorship of conservative speech, particularly by Democrat judges and blue states, and harm to the competitiveness of American AI just as overregulation in Europe has hindered AI development there.

Go onto Google's AI Mode and ask, "what is birthright citizenship"? Google AI responds by falsely saying it is a guaranteed right under the Fourteenth Amendment to automatically acquire U.S. citizenship if born here; the opposite of Trump’s executive order on this topic. Google is led by a foreigner who came to the U.S. on a student visa and never left.

Google's AI misleadingly declares, "Birthright citizenship is typically granted regardless of the citizenship or immigration status of the parents." The U.S. Supreme Court has never accepted this view for children of illegal aliens and those here temporarily, sometimes for the purpose of giving birth here to assert citizenship.

When asked, “Are student visas good for America?”, Google’s AI omits how these visas displace Americans from top schools. Instead, it emphasizes that “it’s crucial to address potential challenges and ensure that international students are treated fairly and have clear pathways to success in the U.S.,” as though that should be Americans’ concern.

Only robust freedom of speech can correct such bias, which requires preventing state regulators from infringing on unfettered speech by AI bots. Trump's legislative team has proposed a 10-year moratorium against state regulation of AI, a necessary measure to protect our First Amendment right to speech.

Any AI program that suggests non-”gender-affirming” therapy to offset attempts to change a minor’s gender will be quickly prohibited, and even criminalized, by Democrat regulation of AI. Already most Democrat-controlled states prohibit providing counseling to minors against transgender transitions, and this censorship will extend to AI programs unless Congress intervenes.

When ChatGPT is asked, “Is the abortion pill reversible?”, it gives a misleading pro-abortion answer in bold highlighting that “there is no scientifically proven method to reliably reverse the effects of the abortion pill.”

ChatGPT cites the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology as support for its biased statement without disclosing that the same group adamantly opposed the overturning of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court. Omitted by the left-leaning ChatGPT is that the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommends treatment to reverse the abortion pill.

Ask Google’s AI Mode, “Are transgender treatments safe?” Its misleading response is, “Generally, transgender medical treatments, also known as gender-affirming care, are considered safe and effective when provided under the guidance of qualified healthcare professionals.”

In fact, European leaders discontinued children’s transgender programs, recognizing the harm caused by transgender medical treatments to children. The Cass Review in England was critical of these treatments and was cited by Supreme Court Justice Alito in the pending Skrmetti case, which is expected to uphold a ban on transgender treatments of children as enacted in half the States.

Liberal judges will declare First Amendment protections for the speech they prefer, while upholding censorship of conservative speech on topics such as transgender treatments and abortion. A letter joined by the anti-Trump New York Attorney General Letitia James, 20 other Democrat attorneys general, and 3 territorial attorneys general opposes a proposed federal moratorium of ten years on state AI regulation.

A smaller total of 16 Republican attorneys general, with some notable absences such as conservative Texas attorney general Ken Paxton, also signed onto this pro-regulation letter. This letter is vague about any legitimate regulatory goals, and relies on meaningless platitudes to “protect consumers” or safeguard “data privacy.”

The examples provided by the letter are predominantly of legislation enacted by liberal states including California and Colorado. This letter refers to the desire of these mostly Democratic jurisdictions to ban “deep-fakes designed to mislead voters and consumers” and to prohibit algorithms “used to set rent.”

Many Democrat politicians seek to preserve their power, weaponize government against Republicans, and censor conservative speech. Under the pretext of prohibiting speech that might “mislead voters,” the regulation sought by these predominantly Democrat attorneys general will censor conservatives as Big Tech does in its AI answers.

What liberals seek today concerning AI is what they sought in the 1990s for the internet: a "gatekeeper", as Hillary Clinton put it, to prevent unfiltered information from reaching the public. Liberals control most channels of communication, and an unregulated AI is necessary for conservative political candidates and causes to have a chance.

Conservatives fought successfully against regulation of the internet, such that Trump could repeatedly win presidential elections despite the bias in the liberal media. But if allowed to regulate AI, blue states will omit or marginalize conservative responses.

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.

Planes Collide with DEI

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

After Delta Airlines reaffirmed its full commitment to the DEI ideology, one of its planes crash-landed, flipped upside down, and burst into flames at Toronto Airport. Everyone miraculously survived this latest plane crash that happened once the plane was oddly cleared to land amid a crosswind having gusts up to 40 mph on its approach to the airport.

DEI means that “diversity, equity, and inclusion” are the priority in hiring and promotion, and protection against firing inept workers. President Trump has issued two Executive Orders against DEI, and many large corporations have recently rescinded or rolled back their DEI programs, including Amazon, Disney, Google, GE, GM, and Pepsi, while major banks are taking DEI off their websites.

Donald Trump’s trademark phrase was “You’re fired!” long before he ran for president. Now, as president for the second time, he’s been refreshingly firing everyone who stands in the way of transforming the federal government from DEI to a merit-based system.

Trump should consider firing those in charge of air travel safety, including investigators of these crashes. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) asserts exclusive authority over analyzing such crashes in the United States, but this federal agency is liberal like other federal agencies.

The initial statements by the NTSB chairwoman last Friday seemed to avoid holding anyone accountable for the mid-air collision last month in D.C., despite how it killed all 67 people on the American Airlines plane and a military helicopter. No collision of this magnitude should happen today, and any suggestion that no one was severely at fault is grounds for firing the investigators.

Yet at this rate no air traffic controller will be fired for this deadly collision near Reagan National Airport, even though the day before a similar mid-air collision near the same airport was averted only by an alert pilot aborting his landing and recircling. Air traffic controllers are federal employees and they adopted a policy a decade ago to make it nearly impossible to fire any of them, no matter how incompetent.

During the Obama Administration the use of a merit and skills-based exam, the AT-SAT, was deemphasized in hiring air traffic controllers. Instead a biographical test based on DEI became more important in hiring decisions in this occupation on which the lives of thousands depend daily.

An air traffic control expert, Michael Pearson, told Just the News that the numerous errors made by air traffic control in the recent D.C. crash included failing to “tell the jet that the helicopter was in sight” and failing to give timely “safety advisories” when alerted about the impending collision in the sky. In addition, the “helicopter route was horrible” while “the controller didn’t apply the rules properly,” Pearson said.

But the air traffic controllers’ association, which functions like a union in impeding the ability to fire workers, has immunized the federal employees against being fired by adopting the Air Traffic Safety Action Program. Under this policy “employees are promised that no punitive or disciplinary actions will be taken as a result of reporting errors that could impact safety, provided those errors are not the result of gross negligence or illegal activity.”

The NTSB is already protecting its fellow federal government workers by speculating that the altitude meter in the military helicopter may have somehow malfunctioned, and that a belated warning was “stepped on” by an interruption and hence may not have been heard. But air traffic controllers should ensure their messages are timely heard and acted upon, or else take immediate action to warn others as the DC controllers failed to do.

Missing from the NTSB statements is criticism of air traffic control for not alerting the helicopter pilots to divert their course until less than 30 seconds before the collision. Subsequently the air traffic controller told the helicopter pilot to fly “behind” the landing aircraft, which lacked an urgent altitude change needed.

Pete Buttigieg, who oversaw the air traffic controllers for four years in the Biden Administration, is turning the tables by demanding, “The flying public needs answers.” So while the biased NTSB withholds real answers, Buttigieg blames Trump to boost his campaign for U.S. Senate in his adopted state of Michigan.

A lawsuit has been pending for many years in federal court challenging how air traffic control hiring practices have disadvantaged qualified candidates from the leading training program, called the Air Traffic-Collegiate Training Initiative. This lawsuit, captioned Brigida v. US Dept of Transportation, was certified as a class action in February 2022 in federal court in DC.

Several hundred employees of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) have been fired by Trump, but not any air traffic controllers or their supervisors. The recent two crashes, one in Canada, suggest that replacing DEI with a merit-based system for air traffic control is badly needed.

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.

Conservatives of the Year

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

The best test of an effective conservative is the ability to take incoming fire from the media and survive. With that in mind, let’s take a moment to recognize and thank the most courageous and effective conservatives of 2023.

Standout Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton was targeted by the media and Republican power brokers like Karl Rove, yet Paxton survived the ambush sham impeachment by his own Republican Party. Back in office, Paxton has resumed his valiant efforts to secure our southern border despite litigation by the Biden Administration to keep illegals flooding into our country.

The new Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) earns our praise for shutting off the funding of foreign wars for the remainder of 2023, despite intense pressure from the Senate uniparty led by Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY). Speaker Johnson set up a January showdown over continued funding of the federal government, while his leverage improves as Biden’s declines.

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) is the courageous congressman who made the election of Speaker Johnson possible. By moving to “vacate the chair” occupied by Kevin McCarthy, who has since quit Congress, Gaetz overcame naysayers to enable the election of the most conservative Speaker ever.

Marine veteran Harrison Floyd has accomplished the most among the 19 unfairly indicted by the politically motivated Fulton County prosecutor in Atlanta, Georgia. Floyd overcame his wrongful imprisonment as the only black defendant, and has vigorously contested the charges by subpoenaing Fulton County’s mail-in ballots, with their envelopes, and information about its electronic voting tabulation concerning the 2020 election.

Floyd looked dapper when he appeared in court as the unhinged prosecutor Fani Willis, seething with resentment against the black Trump supporter, improperly attempted to revoke his bail merely because Floyd spoke out on social media against the injustice. While the deck remains stacked against him and all 19 defendants there, Floyd has flummoxed Willis such that she has not made any progress against Trump as liberals hoped.

House Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), who is not even a member of the Judiciary Committee, outshone the Republicans on that committee by calling out the tyrannical D.C. federal judges. She filed a stinging ethics complaint against district court Judge Beryl Howell for the judge’s appallingly biased statements against Trump and his supporters while their cases are pending.

Elon Musk earns a shout-out for his outspokenness against censorship and his restoration of banned users from X, formerly known as Twitter. Musk also criticized globalists, and his ambitious plan to establish a new, non-Woke college in liberal Austin, Texas, surpasses all the liberal philanthropy combined.

In Hollywood, Kelsey Grammer overcame opposition to achieve smashing success for the Jesus Revolution film, grossing nearly four times its production cost. Grammer merits further applause for reaffirming his support of Trump in an interview with the anti-Trump BBC earlier this month.

Two musicians scored conservative triumphs this year, to the consternation of the Left in the music industry. Jason Aldean recorded the #1 hit song “Try That in a Small Town,” which extols conservative small-town values and achieved the most weekly sales for any country tune in a decade.

Oliver Anthony would win the conservative Grammy of the year, if such an award were given, for his hilarious, self-released song the “Rich Men North of Richmond.” His lyrics include “I wish politicians would look out for miners / And not just minors on an island somewhere,” referring to the liberal-controlled Jeffrey Epstein cover-up.

Not to leave out the foreign conservative stars of 2023, Javier Milei stormed to a landslide win as the new president of Argentina. He is a pro-life economist who recognizes global warming as a “lie of socialism,” while he praises Trump.

Many additional Trump-like foreign conservatives prevailed in 2023. Kyriakos Mitsotakis won as prime minister in Greece, Geert Wilders won in the Netherlands, Christopher Luxon won in New Zealand, and Robert Fico prevailed in Slovakia, all making their countries great again while rejecting globalist immigration.

Let’s not overlook courageous conservatism in sports in 2023. Twelve-time NCAA All-American swimmer Riley Gaines gave up a dental career to defend women and girls against the invasion of transgender, biological males into their sports.

“Where are the feminists?” Riley Gaines pointed out as she fights to preserve the integrity of college sports for women. “We felt violated. We felt humiliated. We felt betrayed. We felt belittled,” she said about liberal colleges allowing biological males to ruin women’s sports.

Finally, our list would be incomplete without praising the hundreds of political prisoners being unfairly punished by the tyrannical elite in D.C., for the “crime” of humiliating the Deep State on January 6. The show trials and biased D.C. judges, whose own statements reveal their partisan anti-Trump agenda, have created American heroes in those who peacefully continue to oppose this abuse of power.

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.

Globalism Failure at Davos Summit

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Predicting an imminent worldwide recession, global business elites convene at the Alps ski resort of Davos, Switzerland as they do every year in seeking to expand their policies for their own benefit. But this time even liberals are observing how fringe this annual summit has become, and many politicians are staying away.

Donald Trump has been the leader in criticizing these globalists, and his footsteps in the upcoming presidential election loom large there and at the White House. Biden is strikingly absent, and is not even sending his VP or Cabinet officials to this World Economic Forum gathering from January 16 to 23, supposedly to discuss “Cooperation in a Fragmented World.”

Perhaps the global elite have already decided to toss Biden overboard, by finding classified documents at his home and office and using the same prosecutorial modus operandi that has been inflicted on Trump. By fanning the flames of this scandal Dems could nominate a fresh new candidate, such as the carefully nurtured Pete Buttigieg who was touted as an “emerging leader” on the WEF website.

This year atop the Davos agenda are the nutty ideas for the world to eat insects instead of meat, and attain happiness by owning nothing. The common view of those gathering in Davos is that reducing the people on Earth would be beneficial in reducing energy use, but that would also reduce overall prosperity.

Elon Musk was invited but publicly declared that he would not be attending because its agenda is boring. He also commented on how the billionaire elite falsely think there are too many people on our planet, and that the “environmental sustainability movement ... has gone too far.”

Debunking an argument that the population control agenda is just a “conspiracy theory,” Musk retorted that the elite indeed want and seek less human population. “This is neither a ‘right’ nor a ‘left’ issue,” Musk said.

People are viewed by many billionaires as a threat to their wealth and hoped-for power, while Musk and Trump are special in welcoming all that the public has to offer. The billionaires who convene annually at Davos are a paranoid group who should be kept as far away from political influence as possible.

Meanwhile, news came during the second day of this conference that China’s population is actually shrinking, contrary to the fear-mongering about population growth. This is the first time since its famine more than 60 years ago that China is losing population, which a liberal New York Times headline screams is a “demographic crisis.”

China’s Vice Premier Liu He made no mention of its own demographic crisis during his speech on Tuesday at Davos. Instead, he urged the world to increase cooperation and depart from the Cold War approach, which means accepting that China has replaced the United States as the world’s only hegemonic superpower.

Chinese leaders are unable to reverse the harm they inflicted on themselves by their one-child policy that for decades forced couples to limit their families. Chinese couples today do not want to have enough children to sustain its population, which is considered by experts to be an irreversible trend now.

Meanwhile, believers in the misguided population control ideology are among the 3,000 attendees in Davos. They have turned the town of Davos into a military zone as they exclude the rest of the public from visiting.

Multiple military-style checkpoints are set up around the village to ensure that none of the hoi polloi or real reporters can see what is going on there. Many of the participants stay at the same Grandhotel Belvédère hotel that closed itself to the public to prepare.

In attendance this time is Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), who is on political life support in a state that Trump carries by 40 points, meaning it is unlikely Manchin can win reelection when his seat is up in 2024. Globalists push bans on coal production, which is central to the West Virginia economy, and Manchin may be angling for a post-Senate job by attending.

Several governors are also oddly in attendance, including Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D-IL), Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI), and Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA). The agenda of globalists in Europe would not seem to be helpful to the states of Illinois, Michigan, and Georgia, but for a half-century these conferences have been a breeding ground for distorting American policy.

The Swiss government authorized a deployment of up to 5,000 troops to protect the pampered elite who flew in on their environment polluting private jets, while pontificating to the world about their unproven theories of climate change. A warmer winter is, in fact, helping to save lives in energy-depleted Europe amid the crisis caused by the seemingly perpetual NATO war in Ukraine.

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.

Chinese-Style Censorship Threatens Twitter

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Elon Musk has 119 million followers on Twitter, the platform which he just bought for $44 billion. That’s more followers than Taylor Swift, whose concert tour ticket sales just broke Ticketmaster.

Getting similar mistreatment to what Donald Trump has endured for years, Elon Musk is now being bullied by Apple, which controls millions of iPhone users’ access to Twitter. First, Apple pulled advertising from Twitter, and now it is threatening to ban Twitter from its App Store, Musk says.

Musk tweeted at Apple CEO Tim Cook multiple times requesting an explanation, without success. Apple is perhaps the most liberal company in the world, and presumably it is doing the bidding of its own political sponsors, including China, where iPhones are made.

Apple is so tightly bound with communist China that Apple’s stock plummeted on news of unrest in China. A resurgence of a Covid-19 variant there has resulted in a return to tyrannical lockdowns, but the masses are resisting this time.

Unable to express themselves on Communist-controlled social media, Chinese citizens have resorted to waving blank sheets of white paper as the most they can say without being arrested. Such tyranny against freedom of speech here in the United States is not so far off.

Musk further tweeted on Monday morning that “Apple has mostly stopped advertising on Twitter. Do they hate free speech in America?”

Musk properly complained that “Apple has also threatened to withhold Twitter from its App Store, but won’t tell us why.”

Without hearing any response by Apple, Musk tweeted again later the same day, “This is a battle for the future of civilization. If free speech is lost even in America, tyranny is all that lies ahead.

Perhaps Apple is trying to exclude Twitter because the party bosses in China are telling Apple to crack down on freedom of speech here. Recall the outrage in China when an NBA executive merely tweeted a statement of support for freedom in Hong Kong two years ago.

Both Apple and Google banned the right-leaning Parler platform until Parler began moderating its content. Musk’s decision to reinstate Donald Trump and thousands of other users who had been banned from Twitter has raised the possibility of the California Leftist companies trying to ostracize Twitter.

“If there is no other choice, I will make an alternative phone," Musk announced. Musk has the resources to develop and market his own new smartphone, and that would be welcome competition to the oligopoly in that industry.

At Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters, which Musk should soon move to Texas, he found a cache of “#StayWoke” t-shirts in a closet. Musk shared his revelation with the world on Twitter, mocking them with “crying face” emojis.

Liberals were not amused, and Musk has been stuck too long in courthouses like the one in Biden's Delaware, where the lawsuit was filed against Musk over Twitter, and where he faces another lawsuit against him over his valuable stock in Tesla. Musk needs to consider filing some lawsuits of his own, and taking on Apple in Texas would be perfect.

There is no reason for Musk to keep the headquarters of Twitter in San Francisco or maintain its state of incorporation in Delaware. Many red states would welcome Musk relocating his company, and courts there would not entertain frivolous lawsuits against him.

Texas courts protected its citizens from the Trump-hating Fulton County, Atlanta prosecutors who have harassed nearly everyone up and down the East Coast who was seen with Trump shortly after the last presidential election, including forcing Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) to answer questions. But a Texas resident went to Texas courts to successfully quash the Georgia subpoenas on her, and Musk should take note.

Texas podcaster Jacki Pick Deason was never subjected to the humiliation that Senator Graham was put through, because Texas judges stood up for her rights while the U.S. Supreme Court failed to stand up for Sen. Graham’s.

On November 14, Biden met in-person with Chinese dictator Xi Jinping in Bali, Indonesia, for the first time since Biden became president. Biden was also scheduled to meet with other world leaders on that same trip, but Biden abruptly “called a lid” which is his expression for retiring while others continue working.

Trump has repeatedly emphasized at his rallies that other world leaders are at the top of their game in mental acuity, unlike Biden. Now the China-Apple alliance is trying to bully Musk to return to the censorship of conservative viewpoints on Twitter that could include anti-China-regime tweets, too.

The liberal media continue to use Twitter both for their own tweets, and for making news out of other tweets. Musk mocked how quickly CBS News returned to the platform after announcing last week that it was suspending its participation.

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.

San Fran Dems Should Release The Evidence

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

San Francisco is a den of GOP-hating Democrats, and now they are turning their own rampant crime and drug use into an ambush of Republicans nationwide. The evidence concerning the attack on Paul Pelosi should be released to the public before desperate Democrats spin it into their closing theme on the eve of the election.

“The whole thing is crazy,” Trump observed on a radio show on Tuesday. “The cops were standing there practically from the moment it all took place. So, you’re going to have to explain that to your audience, including me.”

Cops usually wear body cams, and 911 calls are always recorded. Release them to the public and then there can be an informed discussion about what really happened in the wee hours last Friday.

A neighbor familiar with the security systems there expressed dismay at the lack of an alarm going off, if indeed a window was smashed by David DePape as alleged. Meanwhile, the employer of DePape said he never heard DePape talk against Nancy Pelosi.

No, DePape was not part of the January 6 pro-Trump rally at the Capitol last year, nor was he a member of any MAGA political group. The misleading image posted of him on Instagram juxtaposed with a J6 rally photo was actually DePape filming a nude wedding outside San Francisco City Hall.

The Biden Administration rushed to file federal charges with a politicized narrative the first court day after the attack, while it has taken years to investigate Hunter Biden’s apparent misconduct. Meanwhile, the DOJ continues to conceal most of the affidavit it concocted for its surprise raid on Trump’s home.

Elon Musk, focusing on San Francisco as he cleans house at Twitter, tweeted Sunday morning that there is “a tiny possibility there may be more to this story” than Democrats want to admit. Immediately Leftists rebuked Musk for merely hinting that authorities may not be telling the full story, as they increasingly fail to do.

For starters, DePape is an illegal immigrant from Canada, having overstayed his visa many years ago, with serious mental problems according to those who know him. He was living like a California hippie, sometimes in a school bus near ultra-leftwing Berkeley, and has a long history of drug use.

If Democrats were not turning this incident into a late-breaking pre-election issue, it would be less important for the public to hear the whole sordid story to make up its own mind. But Democrats are running with this issue from now through voting next Tuesday, so a strong Republican response to the false finger-pointing is necessary.

The assailant is not someone whom Liz Cheney will subpoena to appear before her anti-Trump House committee before it is disbanded by the incoming GOP majority. Then again, perhaps Cheney will try to find some way to blame Donald Trump for San Francisco lawlessness.

Musk deleted his tweet on Sunday after liberals browbeat him, but on Monday Musk fired the entire Twitter Board of Directors. Many are grateful to Musk for allowing some skepticism to flourish amid the clampdown by the media and the Biden Administration against anyone who dares question their narrative.

Musk set a good precedent with his own tweet about the Pelosi incident, showing that speech should not be suppressed on Twitter as it is nearly everywhere else. Musk feels he has been cheated by Twitter officials, and newly released documents show that the Biden Administration has worked with social media to censor Americans.

Meanwhile, the mainstream media conceal the connection between drugs and DePape’s senseless attack on Paul Pelosi, which reportedly occurred in the presence of two police officers. This election cycle Democrats have been campaigning hard to expand the legalization of drugs.

Pro-Trump Kari Lake, the rising Republican star in Arizona on the verge of winning its governor’s race, shows the moxie that all Republicans should use rather than becoming defensive on the eve of this election.

“We have less safe streets, we’ve got the homeless population just exploding in huge numbers, we’ve got drugs flowing in, and the people are recognizing that it is the Left pushing terrible policies which make all of those bad things worse,” she said after the attack on Paul Pelosi.

DePape’s dysfunctional lifestyle was not that of a Trump supporter, and the political attempts by Democrats to exploit this attack on Pelosi should not sway voters. Rather than retreat, Republican candidates should point out that Democrats are the ones who are pro-drug and soft-on-crime.

Releasing the evidence concerning the attack on Paul Pelosi will help the public assess the Democrats’ politicized narrative about it. Trump and Musk are right to question whether there is more to this story than the government admits, and Republicans should demand that the evidence be made public.

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.