Stop Trying to Start World War III

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Americans do not want to go to war over a conflict halfway around the world, and our politicians should stop clamoring for further American involvement in Ukraine. Our leaders should be encouraging peace without misleading Ukrainians into fighting on in the hope that we will cripple Russia with sanctions or send fighter jets to the war zone.

The bellicose rhetoric from American politicians is worsening the conflict, rather than bringing it to a peaceful resolution. A new $12 billion aid package to Ukraine, which would extend the armed conflict and increase its casualties, is being rushed through Congress.

Ukraine was ranked as merely the 92nd most democratic country, behind even Burma in a list of 176 nations compiled by the Democracy Matrix, and it has long been controlled by a few billionaire oligarchs who milk the country for their own benefit. It formerly had a democratically elected leader who got along with neighboring Russia, but he was ousted by a leftist-funded revolution in 2014.

Russia has repeatedly offered to settle the conflict rather than crush Ukraine, but as long as Ukrainian politicians expect a lifeline from the West they have little reason to compromise. Russia demands only that Ukraine end its military hostilities, promise not to join the anti-Russia EU or NATO, recognize Crimea as part of Russia, and acknowledge the independence of the small Donetsk and Lugansk whose residents speak Russian.

Those modest demands hardly fit the liberal narrative that Russia is supposedly targeting innocent civilians or refugees fleeing the fighting. Beating war drums prolongs the bloodshed until residents leave, as more than 2 million Ukrainians have already fled.

Without support by the American people, a handful of globalists have quietly expanded NATO all the way to the Russian border, including even nations that were part of the former Soviet Union. Joe Biden endorsed this reckless expansion, which provoked the war that we now watch tragically unfold.

The immediate harm to Americans is the soaring cost of gasoline, which our politicians should be addressing instead of rushing to send lethal weapons to Ukraine. Congress should reverse the ban on new domestic oil and gas drilling which Biden announced on his first day in office and reiterated last month in defiance of a federal court order.

On Tuesday Biden banned the importation of Russian oil, and other Russian imports are prohibited except of course for materials wanted by large corporations such as titanium for Boeing, plus nickel, palladium, and cobalt for the green new deal. The oil ban hurts only the American consumer, not Russia which can easily sell that same oil elsewhere.

China can buy all the oil and any other Russian products that are blocked from being imported here. India and Pakistan have also declined to participate in sanctions against Russia, so such political stunts do not affect Russia much.

Venezuela, a country that we are already unsuccessfully punishing with sanctions, stands to gain from a ban on Russian oil. Biden is considering importing oil from the communist Venezuelan regime to replace the oil we use from Russia.

We should be producing our own oil and gas, but Biden rejects tapping into unused oil fields here. Liberal environmentalists demand that Biden continue to block our own energy production, so we will remain dependent on foreign oil until Trump is reelected.

Last week Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) publicly mused to himself, “Joe, would you pay 10 cents more a gallon to support the people of Ukraine?” Answering his own stupid question, the multimillionaire Manchin, who famously lives on a 56-foot houseboat moored in the Potomac River, said “I would gladly pay 10 cents more a gallon.”

Most Americans would be glad to pay only 10 cents more, but gas prices have surged by $2.00 a gallon since Biden was elected, while the price of diesel fuel is up by $2.50 a gallon. Truckers, farmers, and other hard-working Americans cannot afford to fill up the big rigs they need to produce and deliver the food and supplies that we all depend on every day.

Not only dollars are at stake in Biden’s misguided approach. Lives are lost when Congress pours kerosene on the fire in Ukraine.

Most worrisome are the irresponsible calls to send fighter jets to Ukraine, or to Poland in a three-way deal to replace fighter jets that Poland would send to Ukraine. This would merely escalate the war and spread it to NATO member countries that we unwisely promised to defend.

Unnecessary wars are good only for the media, weapons manufacturers, and pompous politicians, most of whom never served in combat themselves. Merely six months after the end of our 20-year war in Afghanistan, Americans oppose entanglement by globalists in another war in a faraway land that we never promised to defend.

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

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

Trump Kept Putin From Invading Ukraine

From The Federalist:

A recent Harvard-Harris poll found that 62 percent of Americans believe that Russia would not have invaded Ukraine if Donald Trump were still in the Oval Office. As former senior intelligence officials under President Trump, we agree with that view.

Russia invaded Georgia in 2008 when George W. Bush was president. Russia took Crimea in 2014 when Barack Obama was president. Russia has now invaded Ukraine with Joe Biden as president. However, when Donald Trump was president, Russia did not seize territory from any of its neighbors.

During his four years in office, Trump not only successfully deterred Russia from acting against Ukraine, he effectively deterred a lot of bad behavior across the planet. He focused on ending America’s foreign wars rather than launching new ones. At the same time, he brokered the Abraham Accords to expand peace in the Middle East.

The exercise of American power to deter adversaries is a complicated business. It involves a mix of military, economic, political, and diplomatic strategies and actions that together communicate the costs of threatening U.S. national interests.

Ultimately, the art of statecraft boils down to whether a president projects American strength that deters adversaries, or projects American weakness that emboldens our adversaries.

So how did Trump succeed in containing Putin while the Russian autocrat has run wild with others in the White House? Why was he so successful at spreading peace elsewhere? We believe the long answer begins with these ten ways that Donald Trump projected American strength and kept the bad guys in check:

Rebuilt the American Military
Crusaded for American Energy Dominance
Set the Tone by Launching Surgical Missile Strikes in Syria in Early 2017
Developed Strong Relationships with Middle Eastern Nations Based on Mutual Interests
Was Ruthless with the Taliban While Winding Down the Afghanistan War
Crushed the ISIS Caliphate
Demonstrated a Consistent Willingness to Take out the Bad Guys
Stood Up to China
Strategically Used Unpredictability as an Asset in Foreign Affairs
Advanced Tough Russia Policies and Provided Lethal Aid to Ukraine while Maintaining an Open Dialogue

John Ratcliffe served as the 6th U.S. Director of National Intelligence. Cliff Sims served as U.S. Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Strategy and Communications.

Maybe Trump was a great military genius. Maybe he was lucky. Maybe the Biden administration is incredible stupid and irresponsible. Probably some combination.

Deep State Debacle in Ukraine

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Europeans do not want to merge with Ukraine, and most Ukrainians and Russians do not want that merger either. Yet the Deep State has pressed for this fantasy until the horrible conflagration ignited.

This is the so-called New World Order that leads nations into wars. In the United States and western Europe, the unelected officials who comprise the Deep State think they can force global alliances that are contrary to millennia of bonds and cultures.

On Monday, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced his new application to become a member of the European Union, in defiance of Russia. Zelenskyy requested immediate admission into the EU at a time when millions were praying instead for a de-escalation in hostilities.

The Deep State has wrongly promoted the European Union for everyone, as a sort of one-world government whose purpose is to have as many members as possible without regard to the resultant conflicts. The United Kingdom famously voted to leave the EU after it repeatedly opposed Britain’s national interest.

Ukraine does not qualify for membership in NATO or the EU, whose current members rightly oppose the admission of Ukraine. Yet both organizations are controlled by unaccountable bureaucrats who feel they do not need the consent of nations they purport to represent.

European Council President Charles Michel encouraged Zelenskyy’s ill-advised application by saying, “It is a crucial moment to close the long-standing discussion once and for all and decide on Ukraine's membership in the #EU.” The EU thereby engages in global governance without regard to the sovereign national interests in Europe or the United States.

Bill Clinton promoted global government and described it as a “web of institutions and arrangements” that seek expanding NATO eastward. Russian President Vladimir Putin repeatedly warned that Russia and its allies would not allow the former Soviet republics of Ukraine and Georgia to join NATO, but Deep Staters in our own State Department pressed for that war-inducing strategy anyway.

The European Council President Michel irresponsibly fanned the flames of war further on Monday by declaring, “#Ukraine and its people are family. Further concrete support is on its way.”

Ukraine is family, to Russia, in language, culture, ethnicity, religion, and geography. Attempts by European Deep Staters to bring Ukraine into the European Union are merely incitement for Russia and its allies to prevent it.

The United Nations estimates that 5 million refugees will flee from Ukraine, which is more than 10% of its population. They are flooding into neighboring countries that are already struggling to meet the needs of their own citizens.

This dwarfs the previous record for refugee migration into Europe, which was set in 2015 when 1.3 million Syrian, Afghan, and other refugees sought asylum. Germany absorbed many of them and subsequently Trump had to angrily confront the German chancellor for failing to pay its share of NATO expenses.

Neither European countries nor the United States really want the expected influx of refugees from Ukraine. So far, more than 520,000 Ukrainians have left with nothing more than a bag over their shoulder, expecting housing, food, and energy from the country they enter.

Hungary had built a border fence against prior refugees, while Poland began construction of a border wall to block more asylum seekers from entering through Belarus. Europe’s initial enthusiasm for accepting refugees from Ukraine may wane if the numbers grow tenfold as some predict.

Moreover, the European countries accepting the Ukrainian refugees are dependent on Russia for energy. If Europe had energy independence, then it would be far easier to address this crisis.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) has just introduced a bill for that. Biden and radical environmentalists should get out of the way, so that we could be supplying energy to our European allies instead of their dependency on Russia.

Coincidentally, on Monday the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in an historic energy appeal by West Virginia, during which justices were skeptical of regulations imposed by the EPA on energy. The obsession by some with unproven claims of man-made global warming should be sorted out in Congress, not by unelected federal agency bureaucrats.

World War I was caused by a web of entanglements and alliances that drew everyone and his neighbor into the worst war ever known. Nothing was accomplished by that war except to impoverish European countries, and enable fascism to exploit the poverty left in the wake of that so-called Great War.

Illustrating how clueless the Biden Administration is, two days before Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine John Kerry delivered a speech in Egypt on what he views as a much bigger crisis: a projected increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius in the earth’s temperature over the next 30 years. This former Democratic presidential nominee had traveled to Egypt (by private jet, of course) as Joe Biden’s Special Presidential Envoy for Climate.

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.

NATO Has Run Out of Gas

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

The upcoming polar plunge will cause temperatures across the northern United States to drop by as much as 50 degrees, during a time when war may break out in Europe. This is a reminder of how important affordable American energy sources are.

Europe is weak because it is in the grip of an energy crisis with some prices soaring tenfold in the last two years. Europe depends for nearly 30% of its oil and gas supplies on Russia, while German manufacturing is particularly dependent for energy on Russia after environmentalists forced Germany to dismantle all 17 of its nuclear power plants that did not even contribute to any climate change.

So the announcement this weekend that there would be no pre-invasion sanctions against Russia was not a surprise. If Russia further rations its energy shipments, Europe may struggle to survive a harsh winter.

Trump achieved oil independence for the United States for the first time in more than a half-century, but Biden has tried to make us dependent on foreign oil again. Biden reinstated Obama’s phony “social cost of carbon” that places a prohibitively high estimated cost on each ton of carbon dioxide released by an energy-related activity.

There is no credible evidence supporting such a “social cost of carbon,” which the good Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry has appropriately referred to as “voodoo economics.” He points out that Congress has never authorized the Environmental Protection Agency to issue regulations based on such an arbitrary estimate.

Louisiana prevailed on February 11 by persuading a federal court there to order the Biden Administration to stop using this imaginary concept to interfere with oil and gas drilling. Our country depends on new drilling to ensure our continued energy independence, and to supply our allies so that they are not dependent on Russia.

Louisiana was joined by Attorneys General representing the states of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, South Dakota, Texas, West Virginia, and Wyoming. Other states that are not big energy suppliers, such as Missouri, probably also agree with this legal challenge. Trump-appointed federal district judge James Cain sided with the states, and the Biden Administration vowed to appeal. But the conservative U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans is unlikely to reverse this good decision.

Indeed, this is the second federal judge to rule against the interference with energy production by the Biden Administration. Last year another federal judge in Louisiana ordered Biden to allow gas and oil drilling to move forward.

With gasoline prices skyrocketing to $5 per gallon in some parts of our country, and more than $7.50 per gallon in England, environmentalists’ interference with energy production is causing poverty and inflation. As Trump mocked liberals at one of his rallies this year, a debatable slight future rise in sea levels is not a valid reason to block American energy production and use now.

But rather than comply with the court ruling on Friday, the Biden Administration responded by suspending all new permits and leases for oil and gas drilling on all federal lands. As the federal government owns nearly half of all the land in 11 energy-rich western states, Biden’s moratorium on drilling essentially halts new energy production.

Overall, the federal government purports to own 640 million acres of land in our country, and its interference with energy development on that land is what drives up our energy costs and dependency on foreign suppliers. We can survive without foreign energy, thanks to Trump, but our allies cannot.

Biden’s suspension of all new drilling on federal land is as shocking as if Biden were to block the midterm elections because he did not like a judge’s ruling about it. The federal judge in Louisiana should respond by holding Biden in contempt of court.

Immediately a U.S. Senator from Wyoming, Cynthia Lummis, criticized Biden for interfering with the economy in her energy-producing state. Liz Cheney (R-WY) purports to be the congresswoman representing that same state, but she failed to speak out as Sen. Lummis did.

Sen. Lummis pointed out that Biden “has prioritized the agenda of radical environmentalists in his administration over the needs of people in Wyoming and the rest of the country.” She added that the Biden Administration made “a conscious decision to continue to attack Wyoming and our domestic energy industry in favor of progressive, unrealistic climate policies.”

Gasoline prices have increased 18 times in the last 20 days in San Diego County, California. But rather than address that by allowing new drilling, Biden blusters that NATO will inflict tremendous hardship on energy exporter Russia despite Europe’s dependency on it for energy. The real “social cost of carbon” is an unnecessary dependency on foreign countries for energy. A NATO that has run out of gas is useless to protect America’s values and interests.

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.

Democrats try to Revive the ERA

A St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial:

As galling as it might sound that even in 2022, a handful of Republican senators have moved to make sure the ERA isn’t stamped into law, there are in fact some remaining issues that need to be resolved. ...

Opponents also make some of the usual histrionic arguments that earlier generations made against the amendment: That it would tear down gender barriers, outlawing separate bathrooms and other public accommodations, a silly scare tactic.

No, not silly. Leftists are indeed trying to tear down those gender barriers.

Exploiting the Vacuum in U.S. Leadership

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Barely a year into the Democrats’ experiment of installing the hapless Joe Biden as president, crises inevitably unfold. Nobody believes that Biden can put out the fires that are being lit around the world.

Foreign leaders may perceive the next three years as an opportunity to get away with mischief that would never occur under the strong leadership of President Trump. “Politics abhors a vacuum” is the cliche that accurately describes how bad things happen when there is a void in leadership as there is now.

In our large northern neighbor of Canada, a 21st-century version of martial law was just imposed by a petty tyrant who should have resolved the trucker convoy dispute without placing the entire nation under house arrest. The western provinces of Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan and the eastern city of Quebec all oppose Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s never-before invocation of the draconian Emergencies Act to deal with peaceful protesters having legitimate grievances.

This dictatorial Canadian law authorizes the government to seize bank accounts and compel individuals and private companies to crack down against peaceful protesters. The long-term damage wrought by this infringement on civil liberties in our most important neighbor is immeasurable and could spill over into our own country.

Perhaps Biden is so quiet about the emerging dictatorship in Canada because his advisers would like to see him do likewise here. After all, Biden himself ordered private employers to impose his vaccine mandate, until the Supreme Court stopped Biden in a 6-3 vote.

In 1959 Americans were understandably alarmed when a Communist seized power in Cuba and installed a brutal dictatorship on the island just 90 miles off the coast of Florida. Canada is even closer, across a border that is the longest in the world, and a progressive takeover there could cause great damage to our country.

With his unprecedented invocation of Canada’s Emergencies Act, Trudeau asserts the power to control domestic travel, command services deemed essential, control the distribution of goods, and impose hefty fines on his own citizens. Like the inhumane retaliation against January 6th protesters by House Democrats, which included imprisonment in solitary confinement without trial, Canada’s Liberals seem bent on doing likewise to peaceful truckers.

The widespread, heartfelt public support of the truckers is obvious from the volunteer help they have received, and from the outpouring of donations. The retaliation by internet trolls who publicly disclose small donors’ identities is shocking, and such invasions of privacy and harassment should be prosecuted.

At the pricey Super Bowl, celebrities brazenly violated the mask mandate on national television, yet punishment of them is not even suggested by Democrats.

Instead the regime picks on working truckers, many of whom brought their entire families in their coaches while enduring the frigid February temperatures up north.

In a recent Maru poll, only 16% of Canadians say they would vote again for Trudeau, while Biden’s average net approval/disapproval rating has fallen to -11% across all major polls. Yet as in the United States, the Canadian media has protected Trudeau and failed to report fully on the events.

For example, it was the New York Post that reported last week how cameras caught an Antifa-affiliated Canadian hitting and injuring four peaceful protesters with his Jeep before speeding off in an attempt to escape. He then ran several stoplights and resisted arrest before finally being captured by Winnipeg police, yet the major media continue to falsely portray the truckers as criminals.

Instead of helping defuse the tyranny in our next-door neighbor and most important trading partner, Biden is focusing his diminished mental capacity on a complex situation halfway around the world between Russia and Ukraine, involving a territorial dispute of little significance to America. Biden cannot possibly understand or navigate that conflict, and Ukrainian leaders themselves have criticized Biden’s unhelpful rhetoric.

The terrifying calls by the Biden Administration for all Americans to leave the large country of Ukraine is odd when many Americans live peacefully in Russia. There does not seem to be any reason to expect that Russians would mistreat Americans in Ukraine, in contrast with Biden’s botched evacuation of Afghanistan to allow the anti-American Taliban to seize control.

Liberals are intensely anti-Russia for reasons having nothing to do with Ukraine, such as Putin’s conservative social policies.

At Trump’s Arizona rally last month, he observed that none of these crises would be happening if he were still in the White House. Trudeau was one of the foreign leaders who tried to ridicule Trump, when instead Trudeau should have tried to learn from him.

It was the Ukrainian-born member of the Deep State, Alexander Vindman, who sparked the first impeachment of Trump, and who recently sued Donald Trump Jr., Rudy Giuliani, and other Trump supporters. Yet apparently Ukraine fared far better under Trump than under Biden.

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.

Vax Mandates Must Go

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Amid weeks of the courageous trucker-led Freedom Convoy protest in Canada, many expected its liberal politicians to compromise by now on their vaccine mandates for travel. But mandatory vaccination gives officials so much power that they are unwilling to let go of it.

Vaccine mandates give liberals control over travel, employment, freedom of speech, and even our schoolchildren. Already there are laws in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. that authorize controversial Covid vaccination of schoolchildren without parental consent, or even informing parents that injections were done on their children.

The District of Columbia’s Minor Consent for Vaccinations Amendment Act of 2020 authorizes school officials to vaccinate children as young as 11 years without parental knowledge. The law even instructs insurance companies to hide the procedure on their otherwise required Explanation of Benefits form, thereby concealing from parents what was done to their own children.

The vaccine mandates do not cease with the Covid pandemic. Liberals have long sought to end parental authority over children “beyond the threshold of the school door,” as the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals proclaimed in 2005 and reaffirmed in 2020. Vaccine mandates under the guise of public health attain that Leftist goal, and far more.

In contrast with their stubbornness on vaccines, Democrats are starting to yield on their mask mandates and lockdowns, with even the New Jersey governor announcing an end to his school mask requirements beginning March 7. A new study from Johns Hopkins shows that the lockdowns were harmful rather than helpful.

While the Left retreats on masks and lockdowns, they will never retreat on vaccine mandates. It required a 6-3 decision by the Supreme Court last month against Biden’s employer mandate before he withdrew that, without admitting he was wrong.

Joe Rogan has sometimes offended with his hugely popular podcast, which has a bigger audience than cable news channels, but his questioning of the Covid vaccine is what forced him to retreat with a flurry of apologies. On Monday night Donald Trump urged Rogan “to stop apologizing to the Fake News and Radical Left maniacs and lunatics.”

In Rogan’s December 30 interview of Robert Malone, M.D., the respected scientist likened mass vaccination to “mass formation psychosis,” in which “anybody who questions” the prevailing narrative is attacked. Liberals forced removal of that podcast from Spotify and YouTube, but Rep. Troy Nehls (R-TX) placed a transcript in the Congressional Record where Nancy Pelosi has not censored it.

The independent spirit of truckers is a godsend, and their protest against Canada’s vaccine mandate has survived the chilly winter temperatures and bone-chilling politicians. After millions of dollars were donated but blocked by liberal-controlled GoFundMe, millions more have been contributed to the truckers through the Christian alternative, GiveSendGo.

Leftwing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who got his job based on the name recognition of his father, has smeared fellow Canadians as perpetrating “racist, misogynistic attacks” when they oppose his policies. The truckers responded by calling out the cowardly Trudeau, who fled the capital to hide from the truckers in an undisclosed location.

“We dare you, Trudeau, to come and speak to us to our faces,” said an activist named Wendy, who was interviewed by Breitbart News during a Freedom Convoy demonstration. At a press conference yesterday, a trucker commented on how the police, ordered to make arrests, were too embarrassed to look the truckers in the eye.

There is, of course, nothing “racist” or “misogynist” about opposing the vaccine mandates, which are opposed by many minorities and women truckers, too. The latest data indicate that nearly 40% of Americans have declined to be fully vaccinated against Covid, despite all the pressure.

The government database known as the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS, skyrockets each month and now totals more than 22,000 deaths, more than 100,000 hospitalizations, and more than a million injuries after the Covid vaccine. Peer-reviewed publications confirm vaccine-related harm.

Just two weeks ago, for example, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) admitted that “the risk of myocarditis after receiving mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines was increased” and “was highest after the second vaccination dose in adolescent males and young men. This risk should be considered in the context of the benefits of COVID-19 vaccination.”

The lead author on that paper about myocarditis, which is a serious heart condition, is Matthew Oster, M.D., who works at the CDC. Meanwhile, the CEO of a $100 billion life insurance company announced that deaths among working age (18-64) people are up 40% over pre-pandemic levels, which is the biggest increase in mortality in the history of life insurance.

Democrats should take notice, and end the vaccine passports being required in several American cities. We’re overcoming Covid on our own, and we need to overcome the Leftist mindset 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.

A Pandemic of Censorship

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

We'll survive the Covid pandemic, but the pandemic of liberal censorship is more worrisome. From the attempt to browbeat the popular Joe Rogan into silence, to a flight attendant demanding removal of a "Let's Go Brandon" mask, the thought police are causing permanent harm.

"This is not America anymore," observed passenger Adam Radogna after he was censored on board a Spirit Airlines airplane in Ohio traveling to Florida. He was required by a flight attendant to replace his mask on board because it had the humorous anti-Biden phrase on it along with the initials FJB.

No passenger would have been told to replace a mask having a Black Lives Matter slogan, and he’s right to point out the double standard. Incidents of censorship on airplanes and other places of public accommodation no longer go unnoticed, thanks to video cameras on smartphones.

Meanwhile, podcaster Joe Rogan is more popular than Joe Biden according to a recent poll, but liberals insist on eliminating his podcasts from Spotify. In an alarming new form of censorship, a few aging musicians demanded removal of their songs from Spotify in protest of Rogan.

Spotify then tried to appease the critics of Rogan, and he responded in a gracious manner. But disclaimers and apologies are never enough to appease liberals who demand censorship of alternative views with which they disagree.

Twitter and Facebook found that only a complete removal of President Donald Trump from their platforms would mollify his opponents. And even that was not enough, as the large social media platforms have gone far beyond Trump’s postings in censoring free speech.

Supposedly protecting public health from Covid-19 was initially the pretext. But as Rogan points out, “Many of the things that we thought of as ‘misinformation’ just a short while ago are now accepted as fact.”

The man-made origin of Covid, for example, was considered misinformation but has since been accepted by Fauci and others as possibly or probably true. The ineffectiveness of cloth masks has likewise gone from misinformation to accepted fact, according to authorities.

Predictably, the censorship has gone beyond Covid, and now extends to merely questioning the integrity of an election. Joe Biden can publicly declare the upcoming midterm elections to be illegitimate unless a Biden-favored election bill is enacted, but he faces no censorship for his unfounded predictions that voting rights are at risk in Georgia.

When a conservative casts doubt about the validity of the last election, the social media giants go into instant battle mode to censor those opinions. Conservative congressmen are silenced by Big Tech, while Leftist politicians can post their content without interference.

Rep. Billy Long (R-MO) is a pro-Trump candidate for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO). Last week Long uploaded his ad observing that Donald Trump “made America great, but the Democrats rigged the election.”

Rep. Long promises to “stop the Democrats from stealing another election.” This is what many Republican and independent voters want, and they have a constitutional right to hear a candidate promise it.

Yet YouTube took down Rep. Long’s video to prevent Americans from viewing it. This has nothing to do with protecting public health, combating Covid-19, or the activities at the Capitol on January 6th which Democrats misname as an insurrection.

Rep. Long responded, “This behavior by YouTube is un-American and straight from the communist playbook. Removing my ad proves my point that Big Tech certainly has and will continue to influence elections.”

He hits upon the irony that political speech is being censored supposedly to advance democracy. Democracy is undermined when Big Tech selectively blocks speech it disfavors while allowing liberal rants.

The never-ending investigation of Trump by the district attorney in Fulton County, Georgia also undermines democracy as Democrats attempt to deprive the American people of their right to elect Trump to a second term. Never-Trumpers hope that there will be an unprecedented and unjustified prosecution of Trump, in order to interfere with his increasingly likely candidacy for president in two years.

At his massive rally Saturday night outside Houston, Trump described how top attorneys at a liberal law firm have volunteered to help the Manhattan District Attorney investigate him. Such investigations should be impartial and it was shocking to hear Trump explain that his enemies have ganged up against him under the guise of a state investigation.

All this conduct by Democrats is anti-democratic. Voters should pick the next president without false, unproven accusations by a mere county district attorney being given any headlines.

Earlier this month YouTube received a letter from 80 self-described “fact-checking” organizations demanding that it censor more postings. It is “proving insufficient,” using their wording, to appease the Left that will never be satisfied until they control or influence nearly all content posted on the internet.

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.

Biden pushes for failed ERA

The NY Times reports:

New printings of the Constitution will not include a 28th Amendment. The Supreme Court will not treat it as part of the nation’s fundamental law. There will be no command from on high that women and men must be treated the same. And yet on Thursday, President Biden called on Congress “to act immediately to pass a resolution recognizing” that the E.R.A. has been properly ratified and is part of the Constitution. What’s going on? ...

Back in the 1970s, the main opposition was driven by Phyllis Schlafly, the conservative activist who warned that sex equality would lead to a carnival of horrors, including same-sex marriage. That ship sailed even without the E.R.A., of course, but in 2022 the concept of “sex” itself is being contested in ways even Ms. Schlafly’s darkest fantasies couldn’t have foretold.

A Titanic Hearing on Covid

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Thousands of Americans gathered on the national mall Sunday for the “Defeat the Mandates” rally led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose new book, The Real Anthony Fauci, has already sold more than 500,000 copies. The diverse crowd somehow got there despite airline cancellations and how cities including Washington, D.C., require proof of vaccination before customers can be served in restaurants.

The next day, Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) courageously convened a panel discussion of some of the world’s most highly credentialed experts on infectious disease. Entitled “Covid-19: A Second Opinion,” the meeting was held in the historic Caucus Room of the Russell Senate Office Building, whose marble columns and heavy red drapes have provided the backdrop to many famous congressional hearings.

Senator Johnson’s convocation may be the most important hearing in the 110 years since the Senate heard from survivors of the Titanic disaster in the very same room. Senators conducted the Titanic hearing in 1912 in order to determine why 1,500 of the Titanic’s 2,200 passengers needlessly perished in that catastrophe.

Among the witnesses this time was Dr. Paul Marik, M.D., a critical care doctor whose 500 peer-reviewed articles have been cited in over 48,000 other peer-reviewed publications. Referring to the 850,000 Americans who have died of Covid, Dr. Marik said bluntly: “These have been unnecessary, needless deaths.”

Dr. Marik was highly critical of the very expensive but “toxic” new drug remdesivir for hospitalized Covid patients, saying “The question is why. Why have cheap, safe, and effective drugs been ignored for the treatment of Covid-19 which could have saved maybe 500,000 lives?”

Another witness was Aaron Kheriaty, M.D., who was fired by the University of California at Irvine for not being vaccinated although his natural immunity provides greater protection to the virus. He said the argument for mandates collapses now that we have “clear evidence that Covid vaccines do not prevent infection or transmission of the virus.”

Dr. Kheriaty called attention to the unprecedented 40% increase in all-cause mortality among working-age adults (18-64). The public health establishment has provided no explanation for that shocking rise in mortality, which is not directly related to Covid though it may be due to its vaccines and lockdowns.

Dr. Robert Malone, M.D., testified that the vaccines “do not prevent infection, viral replication, or transmission,” so why are they mandated? They cannot produce herd immunity, Dr. Malone said, even if every man, woman and child in America is vaccinated.

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, M.D., reiterated the teaching of the Great Barrington Declaration, which he co-authored in October 2020, and testified against the lockdowns. Dr. Richard Urso, M.D., an expert on inflammation which is usually the first symptom of respiratory viruses including Covid, stressed the importance of taking medication in the first few days while the virus is replicating.

Dr. Peter McCullough, M.D., said “there are only two bad outcomes: hospitalization and death,” so the overriding need is for widely available early treatments that can be taken as soon as symptoms appear. Because Covid is “a mass casualty event,” Dr. McCullough said, we can’t afford to wait for randomized trials that are not forthcoming.

Dr. Ryan Cole, M.D., said that vaccinated people are not only getting the Omicron variant, but are getting it at a higher rate than the unvaccinated, especially if they received 2 or 3 shots. “This is why mandates are absolutely moot, irrelevant, and need to go away worldwide,” adding that “we know how to treat an upper respiratory infection” like the common cold.

Dr. Paul Alexander, Ph.D., cited the high risk of vaccinating people who have natural immunity from a previous bout with Covid. “Children should never get these vaccines,” Dr. Alexander said, noting that “properly informed consent has never occurred.”

Dr. Harvey Risch, M.D., the renowned Yale epidemiologist, denounced the mainstream media for failing to report the “very significant evidence of benefit” for both hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, shown to reduce hospitalization and death by over 50% when used for early outpatient treatment. Dr. Risch criticized “outright fraud” by the FDA in using data from hospitalized patients to exaggerate the risks of these very safe medications in an outpatient setting.

Dr. Pierre Kory, M.D., a specialist in pulmonary critical care, cited evidence from Mexico, India, Brazil, and elsewhere that Covid was virtually eradicated by the early, widespread use of cheap ivermectin. Dr. Mary Bowden, M.D., an ear, nose, and throat specialist who, unlike Dr. Fauci, has personally treated many Covid patients, told how Houston Methodist Hospital was warehousing Covid patients with ineffective treatment while impeding early treatment.

Sen. Johnson is pivotal to the battleground state of Wisconsin, and is running again for reelection to help the GOP retake the U.S. Senate. His Titanic-like hearing illustrates how essential he is to push back against biased and misguided public health policies.

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.

Never-Trumpers Exit Stage Left

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

The dramatic exit last Friday by Rep. John Katko (R-NY), who announced he would not run for reelection, may have shocked liberals but was no surprise to Trump supporters. One by one, the Republicans who voted for the second impeachment or who publicly blamed Trump for the Jan. 6th rally at the Capitol are leaving public office.

Katko was the third to prematurely retire among the impeachers, and the most significant due to his seniority and otherwise bright future. He was in line to become chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee after the predicted takeover of the House by Republicans this November.

In addition to his impeachment vote, Katko also helped draft legislation to create a 10-member commission to investigate the Jan. 6th rally. He promoted his vote last year for Biden’s first trillion-dollar infrastructure deal, which he laughably described as a "quintessentially conservative bill” despite its wasteful pork.

Across the aisle, Democrats are retiring from Congress in droves, and a recent Gallup poll shows a record 5-point advantage by the GOP among voters nationwide. That is a 14-point swing to Republicans from a 9-point lead held by Dems a year ago.

The most recent Quinnipiac poll shows that Biden’s approval rating has dropped to a record low of only 33%. Republicans are expected to gain 4 seats in the Senate in addition to winning the House if Biden’s approval rating remains below 44%, and he is far below that now.

Trump took a much-deserved victory lap Saturday night before a humongous outdoor crowd of tens of thousands in Arizona. The media rarely shows the extent of his audiences, bias that Trump criticized again, and the turnout was overwhelming despite unusually cold weather.

Standing before a roaring crowd that kicked off more planned rallies like it, Trump declared that this “year we are going to take back the House, we're going to take back the Senate and we are going to take back America. And in 2024, we're going to take back the White House.”

It will be a far stronger Republican Party, too. In addition to the departure of Never-Trumpers from Congress, members of the Administration who turned against Trump a year ago have likewise vanished from the political scene.

Prominent among them is the cabinet secretary Elaine Chao, wife of Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who has disappeared from public view after lashing out against Trump while she herself was being investigated for misconduct. As Senator Lindsey Graham pointedly asked, “Can Senator McConnell effectively work with the leader of the Republican Party, Donald Trump?”

At Saturday’s spectacular rally in Arizona, Trump rattled off the conservative agenda that prioritizes election integrity, ending mask requirements for children, protecting freedom from vaccine mandates, holding China accountable for Covid, stopping the unfair invasion by men into women’s sports, protecting the unborn, nominating better judges, and helping our veterans.

Trump praised the new breed of candidates whom he’s endorsed for office, and welcomed to the stage Kari Lake as the candidate for governor of Arizona. She declared that as governor she will build Trump’s southern wall to stop the flow of illegal aliens into our country through Arizona.

The contrast is stark between the energetic Trump-endorsed candidates, such as Kari Lake, and the dough-faced opponents of Trump, such as Katko. Despite winning office by presenting himself as a tough prosecutor, Katko admittedly spent the afternoon of Jan. 6th “holed up” inside his office with the lights turned off, in fear of unarmed Trump-supporting Americans.

Never-Trumpers should not have been frightened by the likes of the recently sentenced woman who entered the Capitol with her 14-year-old child, or by the fellow who amused the entire country by harmlessly hoisting Nancy Pelosi’s podium with a goofy grin on his face. Two unarmed pro-Trump women were killed there by Capitol police, but there has been no justice for them.

Earlier this month liberal Republicans expressed unjustified fear about comments to be made by Trump on Jan. 6th, while House conservatives declared that they wanted to listen and learn from what Trump would say. At the Arizona rally Trump delivered those comments, and they were spot on.

He observed that “it’s a disgrace to our country” that politicians are resorting to “Stalinist show trials” against those who participated in the Jan. 6th rally. He remarked that witnesses brought before the sham House investigatory committee say they "have never been treated so horribly in my life.”

It is perpetrating an “unprecedented assault on civil liberties” and engaging in a “blatant abuse of power to harass their political opponents,” he continued. Trump rightly pointed out that “it’s never happened to this extent” to misuse the powers of government to persecute political opponents as House Democrats are doing.

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.

Securing Elections is #1 Priority

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

As state legislatures open their 2022 sessions, their top priority should be election integrity. Topics such as freedom from Covid tyranny, redistricting, and rejecting critical race studies are also important, but without secure elections then all other issues are put at risk.

A new poll shows that the number of Americans who don’t believe that Joe Biden was elected fairly has grown among Republican voters. According to a Yahoo News/YouGov poll released last week, a whopping 75% of Trump voters recognize that the last election was “rigged and stolen” to hand it to the unfit Biden.

Today only 9 percent of Trump voters believe that Biden won "fair and square,” which is even less than the mere 13% who thought that a year ago. Republicans are not eating the dog food being fed by the liberal media and Democrats who insist that all must bow down to the hokey election procedures used last time.

NPR recently confirmed that two-thirds of Republicans feel that “voter fraud helped Joe Biden win the 2020 election.” One Republican was quoted as expressing disbelief that anyone would actually vote for Biden as president.

Trump has not wavered in his view of the last election, and increasingly Americans agree with him. Even New York Republicans, not known to be conservative, filed suit on Monday to block allowing 800,000 non-citizens from voting in New York City elections there.

States establish the law for elections and the time is ripe for them to ensure election integrity. This includes restoring predominantly in-person voting on one Election Day, with narrow exceptions subject to transparency about voter verification to reduce fraud, and reporting final results that same night.

On a sinking ship, Democrats in Congress rush to propose new federal legislation that would expand the opportunities for mischief. Now they want to end the 60-vote filibuster in the Senate in order to pass sweeping changes to election law that would make permanent the travesty of the last presidential election.

Two Democrats, Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), have long opposed eliminating the filibuster rule that prevents merely 50 senators in only one party from passing most kinds of legislation. Manchin has particularly endorsed the need for bipartisanship on major legislation, such as drastic changes in our election procedures.

But other Democrats are plowing ahead with their plan to rewrite election law at the federal level. Their bad bills, the first two of which have passed the House, are H.R. 1 (“For the People Act”), H.R. 4 (“John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act”), and S. 2747 (“Freedom to Vote Act”), which would expand unverified voting, prohibit requiring photo ID, and destroy election integrity in additional ways.

It’s essential to block these harmful federal bills, and equally important to enact new laws at the state level to thwart the election chicanery. New York City is beginning this year to allow illegal aliens to vote, and Democrat governors are expected to support similar moves.

Legal challenges should not deter GOP legislators as in the past. A majority on the Supreme Court is expected to affirm state authority over cleaning up their election procedures, regardless of which side benefits.

At Friday's Supreme Court hearing on Biden's suffocating new Covid regulations, the most prominent two words in the view of the Court majority appeared to be, "who decides?" In other words, is this an issue that the federal government should decide, or one that the States (or Congress) should decide?

The Constitution and two centuries of tradition confirm that the States decide election procedures, and have the authority to prevent and punish misconduct. Transparency should be mandated by all state legislatures, such that public information about who voted and their verification is made available to all in order to deter and drive out fraud.

Panicked by the poll numbers showing how many recognize pervasive election fraud, liberals found little-known Senator Mike Rounds (R-SD) to declare on Sunday that the 2020 election was fair. But he has not audited any ballots cast in battleground regions, and on Monday Trump responded by observing that Rounds “just went woke.”

States should reform their laws to restore the authority of state legislatures to pick the slate of presidential electors and, if necessary, to override reported results tainted by lack of verification. This is not a matter to be left in the hands of unaccountable courts or election officials, as picking the next president is far too important an issue for state legislatures to delegate to another branch of government.

Trump stands by to endorse the opponent of any Republican who foolishly obstructs legislation for election integrity. He has a nearly perfect track record of success by his endorsements of candidates, for the good reason that restoring secure elections is a top priority of the American people, 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.

High Noon at High Court for Vax Mandate

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

The Supreme Court takes up the issue of vaccine mandates on Friday, holding a special hearing that is nearly unprecedented in its rushed timing.

At issue are two of Biden’s mandates. One compels the vaccination or testing of everyone who works at a 100+ employee company; the other requires vaccination of every staffer at every hospital, nursing home, or health care facility that receives funding from Medicare or Medicaid.

Will we become a country of haves and have nots concerning the Covid vaccine, whereby those who sensibly decline the vaccine are segregated in cities, schools, hospitals, and concerts? The new year has rung in a slew of new “no vaccination, no service” rules in restaurants, bars, gyms, and even maintenance work in high-rise apartments.

This is not a fight in which the Supreme Court wanted to be, just as the sheriff in the famous Western movie High Noon did not want to confront the outlaws returning on the noon train after the ringleader was released from prison. Ever since the Oscar-winning performance by Gary Cooper in that 1952 classic, its title has been synonymous with an unavoidable high-drama conflict that one side must win.

Four cases have been consolidated for this historic Court hearing, two on the OSHA employer mandate and two on the Medicare health facility requirement. Biden won on his employer mandate in an appellate court, while losing on his Medicare mandate in two other lower courts.

Much of the argument on Friday will focus on legal procedure, which the Court prefers rather than getting to the heart of the failure of the vaccine strategy against Covid. Liberals increasingly disguise their politics as science, and the more they mischaracterize the Covid vaccines as good science the less willing any justice will be to challenge falsehoods by public health officials.

But a million reports to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), an official government database, tell a story very different from the Biden party line. Pro-Trump Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) was just permanently banned from Twitter after she posted official data from VAERS on the shocking number of Covid vaccine injuries.

“Note that the total number of deaths associated with the Covid-19 vaccines is more than double the number of deaths associated with all other vaccines combined since the year 1990,” concludes vaersanalysis.info, which compiles VAERS data in a more user-friendly way. This is no ordinary vaccine that Biden and his minions are imposing on the American people for the first time in American history.

The VAERS data show that the number of reported adverse reactions from the Covid vaccine has reached 983,758; the number of hospitalizations, 108,572; and the number of deaths, 20,622. British researchers published a report last June confirming the reliability of these VAERS data.

Yet the court filings by the Biden Administration make no mention of these shocking numbers of injuries and deaths posted by VAERS, as reported mostly by health care workers. It is understandable that many health care workers themselves decline to receive a vaccine after seeing how much harm it has caused to others they treat.

The lengthy oral argument on Friday may come and go without anyone mentioning these official VAERS data, which are hard to find on the internet and apparently censored on social media. A case of “the emperor has no clothes” may be on display unless someone is willing to blurt out, “but this vaccine has apparently killed more people than all other vaccines combined!”

Each Justice will have time to ask questions and make points about the legality of mandating the same vaccine that has reportedly injured a million people, while failing to end the pandemic. VAERS is maintained by the United States government, the same entity for whom the Justices work and by whom they are paid.

A century ago, the mindset of compulsory vaccination led the Supreme Court to affirm the mandatory sterilization of women thought not to be smart enough to have children. In Buck v. Bell (1927), the High Court used a precedent upholding mandatory vaccination to justify additional tyranny, relying on the same utilitarian logic that was widely accepted by progressive Democrats in the Woodrow Wilson era.

“The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. Three generations of imbeciles are enough,” ruled Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., a favorite of liberal law school professors.

The vaccine strategy for Covid was hatched by a few faceless D.C. bureaucrats in 2020, despite how vaccines were unsuccessful in responding to the Spanish flu in 1918-19 or the AIDS pandemic in the 1980s and 1990s. Their strategy has resulted in skyrocketing Covid cases in the United States compared with poorer countries that are doing better with early treatment and natural immunity.

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

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

Trump’s Passion Propels GOP

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

As we close the books on 2021, the award for worst prediction of the year was that Donald Trump would somehow fade from political influence. Anti-Trumper Karl Rove gushed last February 11 that Trump was “effectively tarnished for all time and incapable of running in 2024.”

Rep. Liz Cheney may have taken Rove’s advice or agreed with it, foolishly betting her political future on a banishment of Trump from the political stage. Instead, it is Cheney who is being shown the door and will likely be humiliated in her own upcoming primary.

Democrat John Kerry, whose presidential ambitions crashed in defeat to George W. Bush in 2004, declared in April that it will not “be possible for Trump to come back.” More wishful thinking from the man in charge of shutting down America’s energy industry, as Trump roars back to lead the Republican Party into the 2022 midterms.

In contrast with blander politicians, Trump’s heartfelt passion propels the GOP to a status that it has never had in our lifetimes. He and his outspoken supporters, such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), have turned the tables on the bipartisan Establishment in Washington.

“Good morning Deputy Warden,” Rep. Greene tweeted on a Saturday earlier this month, “How’s the DC Gulag this morning?” The “DC Gulag” refers to the inhumane jail that continues to hold dozens of Trump supporters. Kathleen Landerkin, the deputy warden responsible for the brutal conditions there, had tweeted a string of vile anti-Trump comments, before deleting her account a few hours after Rep. Greene called her out.

Fourteen congressmen, including House Republican leader Andy Biggs (R-AZ), signed a letter sent on December 16 demanding that the biased deputy warden be fired. Meanwhile judges have not held a single trial of any of the more than 725 charged in connection with the January 6th rally in D.C., despite the Sixth Amendment requiring a speedy trial and the Speedy Trial Act guaranteeing one within 70 days.

Trump has endorsed 78 Republicans for the upcoming year, a number that will greatly expand. Trump had a near-perfect record of endorsements in 2021, with only a slight miss in Texas when no Democrat qualified for the runoff such that another Republican won with Democrat votes.

A slew of tremendous new candidates have entered races based on Trump's encouragement and endorsements. Trump is bringing bold, fresh, energetic candidates into the political arena, like Joe Kent, who is challenging an anti-Trump Republican incumbent in Washington’s 3rd district.

A combat veteran of 11 overseas deployments, Joe Kent has become a leading voice in opposition to needless foreign wars which are being fomented by those who failed to heed the lessons of Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Afghanistan. Joe Kent will join a class of great Trump-endorsed Republicans who include Reps. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) and Lauren Boebert (R-CO).

Trump deserves the credit for transforming the Republican Party from a perennial also-ran status into the side favored to win. Unlike Richard Nixon and George H.W. Bush, both of whom gave up, Trump has never backed down while withstanding far greater pressure.

Phantom votes, which are ballots cast in the names of people who never personally filled them out or are not legitimate residents, were not enough to save liberals in the recent Virginia elections. As redistricting gives Republicans the opportunity to win many new seats, including 6 of Arizona’s 9 districts, phantom votes will not enable Democrats to hold onto Congress either.

A year after the divisive 2020 election, Biden has failed to deliver on his promise to unite the country, or even extend an olive branch to the 75 or so million who voted for Trump and still support him. Biden’s lack of charity to his opponents has made it politically easier for Republicans to build momentum for the midterm elections next fall.

Biden should follow the example of our first president, whose authority was challenged by the anti-tax Whiskey Rebellion in Western Pennsylvania in 1794. After he got on horseback and personally led troops to put down the armed riots, which the governor was unable to quell, President Washington pardoned the convicted offenders, although they had put him in personal danger.

It may be vindictiveness that is preventing Biden from pardoning his political opponents, in contrast with how Trump mercifully pardoned or commuted the prison sentence of Democrats including Rod Blagojevich. Or delusional House Democrats may think that their strategy of seeking revenge against Trump supporters will gain them votes next November.

Ratcheting up their sham investigations, House Democrats now demand that Republican leader Jim Jordan (R-OH) answer questions about January 6th. But the Democrat leaders are the ones who should be answering questions, starting with their inhumane continued imprisonment without a trial of Trump supporters in the DC Gulag.

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.

Voting and Vaccine Mandates

Rural America Stops Biden

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

“Why are we allowing someone that makes $500,000 to get a discount on an electric vehicle? That doesn’t make any sense to me at all,” Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) declared while stopping Biden’s $2 trillion boondoggle misnamed the Build Back Better (BBB) Act.

The socialists seeking to control our energy have no satisfactory answer to Senator Manchin’s criticism. Biden’s BBB would rob from the poor and middle class, to give to the elite under the guise of climate change.

The BBB includes a whopping $7,500 tax credit to purchase electric vehicles, which would mostly benefit the wealthy. The legislation also contains $5 billion to build electric vehicle charging stations nationwide, plus $2.5 billion for grants to mostly liberal groups to construct charging stations in disadvantaged areas.

Another $900 tax credit, which could be doubled for couples earning up to $150,000, is for those who buy a battery-powered “e-bike” to avoid the strenuous exercise of pedaling a traditional bicycle.

Rural America, speaking through Sen. Joe Manchin, has asserted itself against this endless theft by the coastal elite. Democrats are apoplectic that one of their own has torpedoed Biden’s centerpiece legislation, but Manchin is speaking for all of rural America in blocking the BBB.

It is the 39-point margin by which Trump won West Virginia that doomed Biden’s agenda. A state that Bill Clinton carried 25 years ago has swung completely to the Republican side.

Sen. Manchin first won his seat in a special election by campaigning hard against Barack Obama’s anti-coal agenda in 2010. Manchin is up for reelection in 2024 and there is no Democratic presidential candidate who will help him win with rural voters.

Without a big-city Democratic machine to deliver votes, West Virginia’s elections can’t be stolen as they are in other states. There is no Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, or Atlanta in the Mountain State, as West Virginia is known.

Election results are tallied quickly after residents cast legitimate ballots. Returns are not withheld until after Election Day as done in Democratic strongholds.

National Democrats have tried to embarrass Sen. Manchin, but it only backfired. He observed that some of the tactics used by the White House staff against him have been “absolutely inexcusable."

The true embarrassment is by liberals who vowed to enact this bad legislation. Even now top Democrats plan to hold a vote on this bill early next year, to increase pressure on Manchin.

A vote should help the GOP, as rural regions including southern parts of Illinois and New Jersey have swung sharply pro-Trump. Big cities are what have kept these states in the Democrat column, while mostly rural West Virginia is free of dominance by machine and media-driven politics.

The rebellion by rural America against cities and their media is apparently behind Manchin’s stance as much as the energy issue is. He opposed the expanded child tax credits in the BBB legislation as strongly as he opposed the green energy handouts.

Taxpayer-funded child care amounts to taking from the rural poor and giving their money to wealthier people in the cities, where fewer parents raise their own kids. In rural West Virginia most parents raise their own children, so the massive child care credits in BBB would further redistribute wealth from Manchin’s constituents.

Rural America remains an untapped reservoir of support for Republicans. There is not much more in voter turnout that can be found in big cities, but statewide elections can be swung to the GOP column by increasing the historically low turnout among rural voters.

The avalanche of 23 retirements by Democratic congressmen, including three departures nearly announced earlier this week, suggest that Manchin’s approach is in line with the political future. Two years ago, only 9 Democrats had announced retirements by this time.

These are not merely politicians at the end of a long career who are calling it quits. Young Democrats thought to be emerging leaders are also leaving Congress, which increases the chances that the GOP will retake the House in ten months.

This giving up by Democrats occurs amid new polling that shows an historic defection of the youth from Biden. Without a strong turnout by young voters, his party has no chance of holding onto power in Congress and the White House.

An independent poll by YouGov/Economist confirms that the biggest drop in support of Biden is among young voters, of whom only 29% approve of his job performance. Fully half of young voters disapprove of Biden now, giving him a negative 21 point rating by this key demographic.

This is the worst rating for Biden among any age group. The party that was built on youthful enthusiasm by the likes of JFK and Bill Clinton has become an anachronistic dinosaur that Sen. Joe Manchin is prophetic to stand up against.

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.

Congress Shows Contempt for the Constitution

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

As it votes to hold President Trump’s top aides in contempt of Congress, the Democrat-controlled House showed its own contempt for the separation-of-powers doctrine that makes a presidency co-equal rather than subservient to it. Contrary to the grandstanding congresswoman Liz Cheney, President Trump had no obligation to remove First Amendment-exercising Americans from the Capitol building on January 6th.

Cheney selectively released some private texts and emails involving Trump’s former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, and quickly distorted their meaning. She falsely insists that they show “supreme dereliction of duty” by Trump even though he was not the recipient of the communications.

Cheney, who is no longer recognized as a Republican by her own Wyoming Republican Party, is illustrating why feeding the Never-Trumpers by giving them texts and emails is a mistake. In generating some headlines in the liberal media, Cheney exaggerated their significance and violated privilege.

Cheney asserts that there were “dozens of texts” to Meadows on January 6th, but the smattering of texts that Cheney improperly read to the public show nothing illegal. Cheney should release to the public her own private communications against Trump, which would show how unfit she is to sit on a committee that falsely pretends to be impartial.

Cheney also released some private texts by a Trump family member and Fox News commentators, while concealing the identity of fellow lawmakers who texted Meadows. Apparently Cheney does not want to incur further wrath by Republicans for breaching their privacy, but she is fine with invading Trump family privacy.

These texts should be protected by executive privilege, a two-century-old doctrine first established by President George Washington. A lawyer who lives in the D.C. area with her big-firm lawyer husband, Cheney surely understands how important doctrines of privilege are to facilitate candid conversations.

As Meadows’ attorney has informed the House committee, the statute on which the House bases its authority was never intended to be used like this amid executive privilege, and never has. The House has not previously voted to hold a former member in contempt for any reason in nearly 200 years.

“The text messages leave no doubt that White House knew what was happening,” Cheney blustered, as though a building itself can have knowledge. Cheney-the-lawyer surely realizes that knowledge by one person is not imputed to another, and what Meadows knew is not proof of what Trump knew.

Moreover, Trump did not command the Capitol police force, or act as a custodian for House members who are fully capable of dealing with political protests without hand-holding by a president. Cheney is well-connected with liberals who run the House and she could have taken action herself to stifle the protests as she now insists Trump should have done.

Let’s see public disclosure of the texts by leading Dems in the House, and marvel at their obsession with criticizing Trump rather than doing their job. Let’s see public disclosure of texts and emails between Cheney and other Never-Trumpers, such as Adam Kinzinger and Mitt Romney.

None of the distortions by Never-Trumpers Cheney and others has worked against Trump, and none will. Nearly a year after the January 6th political rally, many Americans are angry at how Democrats and the Deep State continue to whine about it and even imprison peaceful participants without a trial.

The House committee lacked any legislative justification for recommending that Meadows be held in contempt for protecting the confidences of President Trump. The extent of House investigatory powers should not extend any further than what is related to potential legislation, yet the House has gone far beyond that concerning January 6th.

House Democrats and RINO Liz Cheney have so misused the Committee’s investigative powers that its finding of someone in contempt no longer has meaning with voters. First it was Steve Bannon, whose only “crime” is his friendship with Trump, next it is Mark Meadows, and ultimately Never-Trumpers will seek contempt against Trump himself.

As Meadows’ attorney points out, contempt has never before been rendered against high-level presidential staffers like Meadows who assert executive privilege. This right was established by none other than President George Washington himself, who could be found in contempt under the same approach taken by Cheney and Dems today.

Cheney ranted on Monday about texts sent to Meadows concerning the rally on January 6th, but there is nothing objectionable in those communications. A few wanted Trump to intervene in the rally in the Capitol, but that is not the job of a president.

The misleading portrayal of texts and emails provided by Meadows to the House committee, in a spirit of cooperation, illustrates that the Never-Trumpers will never be satisfied and will not stick to an honest characterization of what happened. Any evidence that departs from their anti-Trump narrative will be ignored, and every exaggeration to try to smear Trump will be attempted.

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.

Leftists Prefer Censorship over Democracy

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

The Left’s promotion of censorship has shifted into high gear. Formerly in the vanguard of demanding freedom of speech, Leftists now openly advocate for censorship of views they dislike.

There is no First Amendment freedom in Europe, where new rules are being drafted by the European Union (EU) to punish disfavored online speech. There is nothing democratic about this push for censorship.

The European Commission is the unelected body of bureaucrats that governs the European Union, whose membership fell to 27 when Britain exited in January 2020. The Commission is expected this week to approve censorship of online speech critical of LGBTQ+, which can mean anything contrary to traditional gender norms.

These new rules against free speech on the internet have not yet been fully released, but they will take aim at vocal conservatives in Poland and Hungary unsupportive of the direction in which the EU is trying to take those pro-Trump countries. Economic pressure keeps those countries inside the liberal confederation.

In April, at the Istanbul Convention, the additional Eastern European countries of Bulgaria and the Czech Republic also pushed back against the attempt by the EU to erode family values. Like Russia, all of these formerly communist countries have seen firsthand the immense harm that liberals cause, and those countries are not returning to the bad old days.

There is nothing democratic about the European Union, as these and other rules are created by a handful of Leftists without any popular support. It is ironic how liberals clamor for democracy when it suits their agenda, while doing the opposite in overriding the will of the people who are supportive of family values in Eastern Europe.

Even Ireland recently heard a public call for it to consider leaving the EU for reasons of nationalism, as espoused by its champion MMA fighter Conor McGregor. A Dubliner, McGregor pointed out that being in the EU makes the Ireland government merely “messengers” and “lap dogs” rather than the independent sovereignty the Irish people sought when they broke away from the United Kingdom a century ago.

Totalitarian new Covid confinement rules imposed by the EU against its member nations, including Ireland, sparked McGregor’s ire. There seems little point in holding elections in Ireland and throughout Europe if an unelected commission of the EU can invent and impose whatever suffocating laws it likes.

Later this week Biden is holding an online Democracy Summit to which he invited more than 100 countries, many of which, like Ukraine, have too much corruption to qualify as functioning democracies. Biden snubbed Hungary, even though it is one of the most democratic countries in the world, and Hungary promptly retaliated by vetoing resulting decisions that would require unanimity by EU member states.

A third of Americans recognize that many elections in our own country are not honest. Democracy assumes that voters should fill out their own ballots without pressure for certain candidates, but liberal political operatives harvest and deliver ballots for a candidate like Joe Biden who does not even have full mental faculties.

Fortunately, pockets of remaining democracy in the United States are reflected in how voters continue to move right in reaction to the tactics by the Left. The highly respected Cook Political Report has just changed its assessment of 3 key governor races to describe them as toss-ups after they were previously listed as leaning toward reelection of the incumbent Democrats.

These are the battleground states of Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin, all essential to the Democrats’ quest to win the next presidential election. Most notably in Michigan, with its prize of 15 electoral college votes, the incumbent Gov. Gretchen Whitmer faces continued dissatisfaction with her dictatorial lockdowns during the pandemic.

Remarkably, the Cook Report also updated its assessment of the Democrat strongholds of Oregon, New Mexico, and Maine in order to reflect growing Republican strength there. Longtime Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR) surprisingly announced his retirement from Congress, rather than stand for reelection in 2022.

The real democracy in the United States is in Republican primaries, where elections are not stolen and people are willing to vote out incumbents who fail to accomplish what they promised. On Monday that was illustrated by the entry of former U.S. Senator David Perdue into the Republican primary race for the governor of Georgia, against the turncoat incumbent Brian Kemp.

Immediately Donald Trump endorsed David Perdue, who will bring a choice not an echo, which was sorely lacking in the anti-Trump governor’s bid for reelection. Governor Kemp presided over a takeover of the state’s two U.S. Senate seats by liberal Democrats, and then he obstructed restoration of election integrity there.

A sweep of the Georgia primaries by pro-Trump candidates would be a big step toward saving our country. If liberals truly supported democracy, they would be applauding.

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.

Fauci Speaking to Bill Clinton

(Original photo credit: US NIH)

Fire Fauci

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

“Fire Fauci” should be the campaign slogan for every Republican, as the policies pursued by health official Anthony Fauci concerning Covid-19 have been a complete disaster. The emergence of a new variant should have been anticipated, but instead we learn that current vaccines may be ineffective against it.

Approaching two years into this pandemic, Americans are fed up with the pompous Fauci still in control while disrupting our daily lives. On Sunday he accused Republicans of lying, but he is the one who has put our country on a path of never-ending government control over our work, travel, and even our children's education.

He says that requiring vaccination in order to fly on a domestic airplane is possible as the Omicron variant arrives here from Africa and inevitably spreads across our country. The World Health Organization had been proceeding through the Greek alphabet to name variants, but deliberately skipped over Xi to avoid offending the Chinese dictator Xi Jinping who allowed the original to escape in 2019.

One can no longer deny that the original coronavirus almost certainly emerged from the notorious Wuhan Institute of Virology, yet for more than a year Fauci has either ducked that issue or not been asked it by the lollipop questions he receives on television. American taxpayer dollars may have even been used to develop Covid-19.

Fauci is apparently angry about being mocked by the new “FAUCI Act,” which would cut off funding for highly dangerous “gain-of-function” research in Chinese labs like the one that may have produced Covid-19. Fauci does not take criticism well, but has not heard enough of it yet from top Republicans.

Fauci declared on Sunday that “I represent science” and implied that his policies are “to save millions of lives.” But in fact his policies have fared far worse than the health record in poorer countries that successfully allow over-the-counter access to inexpensive medication such as ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine.

Fauci’s policies have resulted in patients dying in hospitals without receiving early treatment recommended by practicing physicians. To promote Fauci’s vaccine strategy, some hospitals even treat non-vaccinated patients worse than vaccinated ones.

Fauci has failed to facilitate access to early treatment and instead herded millions into vaccination by falsely invoking science. His approach is no more scientific than thinly disguised socialist approaches to other issues, such as energy.

On Tuesday, the president of Covid vaccine manufacturer Moderna predicted that current vaccines will not be effective enough against this new Omicron variant. That demonstrates the futility of the vaccine strategy imposed by Fauci and Biden on many Americans.

After nearly a year of pursuing a vaccine strategy, Fauci and Biden have not saved lives compared with other countries that have eschewed the vaccine. Now Americans are left vulnerable to new variants of the coronavirus while other countries are better prepared with their strategies based on early treatment and natural immunity.

On Monday a Trump-appointed federal judge in St. Louis, Matthew Schelp, slapped an injunction against Joe Biden and his Centers for Medicare & Medicaid (CMS) to block its mindless vaccine mandate against health care workers in 10 states funded by that federal agency. Physicians and nurses on the front lines know best and should not be ordered to be vaccinated.

Once again, the Midwest leads in freeing us from Biden’s suffocating and unhelpful vaccine mandates. Last week the immense auto workers’ union, based in Detroit, blocked the big three car companies from imposing the vaccine mandate against workers there.

Yet Biden, based on Fauci’s recommendations, attempts to require most health care workers to receive the vaccine. By issuing a preliminary injunction against Biden and his vaccine mandate, Judge Schelp explained how arbitrary and capricious it is.

He observed that the mandate could be devastating for access to care at rural health facilities, where shortages in workers are already acute. Physicians and nurses are free to quit their jobs rather than take the jab, which means that the unwanted Covid vaccine mandate has the effect of denying essential medical care to the public.

Judge Schelp found that there is not even evidence that the vaccine mandate for health care workers would slow the spread of Covid-19. He added that CMS even “admits that the continued efficacy of the vaccine is uncertain.”

Judge Schelp was dismayed at how the Biden Administration looked only at comments by the side supporting a vaccine mandate, while completely ignoring abundant evidence submitted in opposition to it. Other courts should follow Judge Schelp’s lead to protect workers outside of the Midwest.

Democrats should realize that Covid has become a losing issue for them, an albatross around their neck. They are not going to be able to scapegoat Republicans or Trump for Biden’s continuing failure on this 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 and pseagles.com.