California Up in Smoke, Thanks to Liberals

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

The cost of the fires in Los Angeles County is estimated to range up to $250 billion, far more than the damage done by the Great Chicago Fire which destroyed that city in 1871. The losses from the Chicago Fire, considered one of the worst in history, were a smaller inflation-adjusted $5.7 billion.

The cost of rebuilding Chicago, which was done quickly, was contained because it was funded by its own residents, businesses, donations, and architects determined to build a great city. By 1893 it held a most spectacular World’s Fair with 27 million visitors from around the world over six months, and Chicago quickly became the railroad hub for America.

New lumber began arriving in Chicago for its rebuild while there were still hot embers in burnt buildings. There was not a smoldering feeling of entitlement as seen among liberals in Los Angeles today, or demands that the federal government serve as the gravy train of handouts.

President Trump made a remarkable trip to Los Angeles to implore its residents to reclaim their property and start their own construction as soon as possible. Time is money, and extensive delay in rebuilding the devastated areas of Los Angeles could be as costly as the immediate loss in value from the fires.

But California is a regulatory nightmare where radical environmentalists obstruct construction projects at every turn. More than a decade ago Californians enacted Proposition 1 (2014) by a landslide vote of 67% to create new reservoirs to supply more water to the arid Los Angeles basin, which could have doused the fires.

Billions were allocated for the promised new reservoirs, and Congress kicked in hundreds of millions of dollars more at American taxpayer expense. Yet no new reservoirs have been built in California since 1979.

Environmentalists file lawsuits to delay or stop construction, while liberal California judges too often rule in favor of the Left there. The California Environmental Quality Act allows lawsuits to contest findings by California agencies that are required to assess the potential environmental harm of infrastructure projects.

The Palisades and Eaton fires near Los Angeles destroyed 40,000 acres, which is 20 times larger than what burned in the Great Chicago Fire. Rainfall is pouring down on Southern California in late January but nearly all of it flows into the ocean because of the lack of reservoirs there.

Currently there are only three routes to bring water to southern California, which has very little of its own. The first route is the Los Angeles Aqueduct built by the great William Mulholland in the 1900s, which brings water from the Owens River valley on the east side of the Sierra Nevada mountains.

Next is the Colorado River Aqueduct built in the 1930s, which brings water from the Colorado River at Lake Havasu, but that diminishing water supply is also needed by fast-growing Arizona. Finally, there is the California Aqueduct built in the 1960s, which is the only route to bring water from north of Sacramento where water is abundant, but that water must be shared with the enormously productive farms in California’s fertile Central Valley.

The coastal city of Rancho Palos Verdes embarked on a multi-million dollar project of “dewatering wells,” which has removed more than 112 million gallons of water to protect million-dollar homes against instability in the earth. Now that the vegetation is gone due to fires, the risk of mudslides from sudden downpours is getting worse.

While recently touring the carnage near Los Angeles, Trump, himself a builder of magnificent skyscraper apartments and hotels, and golf courses, rightly criticized the interference by liberals with the owners of burned-out property gaining access to their own land to clear the wreckage and start rebuilding now. Not next year, not next month, but immediately, Trump urged local officials to allow it.

California liberals want the rest of America to pay for their costly regulations that impede sensible construction and affordable living. The notorious California Coastal Commission asserts its own veto power over all human activity near the ocean, where much of popular California is.

Environmentalists obstruct the routine clearing of underbrush necessary to avert disastrous wildfires from spreading so quickly. When Tom Daschle was the Democrat Senate Majority Leader from South Dakota, he inserted into legislation a special provision to prohibit federal judges from interfering with the removal of underbrush in his state.

An illegal alien, already convicted of a felony, was arrested and is considered a person of interest in connection with the start of one of these conflagrations, the so-called Kenneth Fire. He was caught carrying a blowtorch near where that fire started.

California has plenty of money, and it is time for its many billionaires to pick up their oars and row their own boat to aquatic self-sufficiency within the next decade. Rural America elected Trump over fierce opposition by wealthy California Leftists, and rural Trump voters should not be burdened with the expense of restoring the liberal lifestyle that just went up in smoke.

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.

Pardons Show the Need to Downsize DOJ

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

The unprecedented number of presidential pardons as Biden exited and Trump entered the White House demonstrates that the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is out of control. DOJ has become an unaccountable, unelected branch of government that is undermining representative democracy.

Incoming President Trump, in his first few hours in office, properly pardoned more than a thousand victims of DOJ prosecutions in the one-sided D.C. venue where Trump supporters cannot get a fair trial. More pardons, such as of Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon for protecting executive privilege against the Democrats’ witch hunt against Trump, will surely be granted soon, too.

Trump’s nominee for Attorney General, Pam Bondi, faced hostile questioning during her confirmation hearings but no senator seemed interested in scaling back DOJ such that so many pardons by presidents of both parties would become unnecessary. With an annual budget of nearly $40 billion without any real oversight by Congress, DOJ spends more than the entire annual budget of many states in prosecuting whomever it likes for headline purposes.

With over 10,000 attorneys on its payroll, DOJ is more than twice the size of the biggest private law firm. The vast amount of prosecutions and civil cases brought annually by DOJ could be viewed as a jobs program for attorneys.

DOJ is the most bloated of all federal agencies, and the most destructive. A mere investigation of a small company by the DOJ inevitably drives it out of business, even if it did nothing wrong.

Yet so far the House of Representatives has been unwilling to cut the DOJ’s budget. Elon Musk has not talked much about cutting DOJ in connection with his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) downsizing project, despite how our country flourished the most before DOJ was founded in 1870.

Trump immediately suspended all of Biden’s burdensome regulations, and the Trump Administration could likewise withdraw all of DOJ’s unjustified prosecutions and appeals. DOJ has long-running litigation against Texas to remove a few buoys that protect a sliver of our southern border, for example, and DOJ should end its appeal on that issue immediately.

Many cases are pending in the Supreme Court about which DOJ should also promptly reverse its position to align them with Trump’s successful campaign pledges. One of the biggest is U.S. v. Skrmetti, in which the Biden Administration argued strenuously that Tennessee’s ban on transgender surgeries on minors somehow violates the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.

The Trump Administration could notify the Court that it fully supports this ban on transgender operations on children, as Trump was elected by opposing the “transgender lunacy.” In this and other cases throughout our country, DOJ should be promptly informing courts that the liberal stances previously taken by Biden are repudiated and withdrawn.

In another case pending before the Supreme Court, the Biden Administration is appealing a conservative ruling by the Fifth Circuit against the Food & Drug Administration for sending “manufacturers of flavored e-cigarette products on a wild goose chase” and blocking their sales. This regulatory overreach by the power-hungry FDA illustrates what Trump campaigned against, and the FDA’s appeal should be dropped in this Wages and White Lion Investments case.

In another appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court by the Biden Administration of a conservative decision by the Fifth Circuit, the Environmental Protection Agency insists that the venue for challenges by small refineries to the EPA’s burdensome clean air regulations must be limited to Washington, D.C. There the EPA enjoys the home court advantage and a big majority by Democrat-appointed judges.

The Trump Administration should withdraw this appeal and allow the decision against the EPA to remain in place, in Environmental Protection Agency v. Calumet Shreveport Refining. Trump won on his pro-energy platform against suffocating energy production with regulatory burdens, and withdrawing this appeal would fulfill his campaign pledges.

Another case pending before the Supreme Court this year is an appeal of a DOJ prosecution that reinterpreted a federal statute criminalizing false statements, by broadening it to include statements that are true but misleading as in omitting additional related information.

DOJ prosecuted the defendant under 18 U.S.C. § 1014, which prohibits making a “false statement” for the purpose of influencing certain financial institutions or agencies. The statements made by the defendant concerning a loan were true but incomplete, and would not be considered a violation of this criminal statute by many courts.

DOJ should not be using federal resources to prosecute small beer, such as factually true but potentially misleading statements on routine loans. The defendant appealed his conviction to the Supreme Court in Thompson v. U.S., and the Trump Administration should end this prosecution by agreeing that truth should be a valid defense under a federal false statements statute.

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.

Laken Riley Act Is Not Enough

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Legislation named after the dearly departed Laken Riley, a victim of a heinous illegal alien crime, should secure our border and empower President Trump to deport dangerous immigrants without judicial interference. But the bill named the Laken Riley Act accomplishes neither.

Instead, this Democrat co-sponsored legislation tries to authorize courts to rule in favor of state Attorneys General who might sue the federal government to enforce immigration laws. The recent election gave that mandate directly to President Trump, beginning in less than a week, and Congress should be strengthening his hand rather than diffusing power elsewhere.

Democrats are all-too-happy to support this bill and breathe a sigh of relief at how Republicans on Capitol Hill are failing to enact the strong policies against immigration crime that Trump campaigned on. In this narrow window of time when GOP strength is at its zenith, fresh from winning an election based on this issue, congressional Republicans are not pushing for strong border security legislation.

Nursing student Laken Riley was the victim of a horrible, despicable crime, brutally raped and murdered by an illegal alien while she was taking a morning jog on the nearby University of Georgia campus. House Republicans initially designed, introduced and approved this legislation last year in an attempt to counter Biden rather than empower Trump.

Riley’s killer was previously caught after he illegally crossed our southern border, but then released into our country under Biden Administration policy. Subsequently he was arrested but released by New York officials after being charged with attempting to harm a minor there, and he later murdered young Laken Riley while she was innocently jogging in Georgia.

This Laken Riley Act was the first bill taken up for a floor vote in the new 119th session of the House, but it is far weaker than it should be in light of the election results in November. This legislation is nothing like the strong campaign speeches given by Trump to his record-breaking audiences, and this new law will give more power to liberal judges rather than to the incoming President Trump.

This bill gives new authority to state Attorneys General, but half of them are against Trump on this all-important issue such that giving them more power does not help. Officials in sanctuary or pro-immigration cities can easily circumvent the new requirements in this legislation, and already California has allocated $25 million to frustrate Trump’s deportation of dangerous illegal aliens.

Democrats co-sponsored this misnamed (because it is too weak) Laken Riley Act in the Senate, and 48 Democrats in the House voted for this when it passed last week as H.R. 29.

Democrat senators may dilute this legislation further by amendments that the Republican Majority Leader, John Thune (R-SD), has pledged to accommodate. In its current form this bill requires the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to detain illegal aliens who have been arrested for burglary, theft, larceny, or shoplifting.

Courts typically side with illegal aliens, and the litigation envisioned by this legislation could take years to resolve. Our country cannot wait, and Trump could order DHS to begin deporting dangerous illegal aliens next week if Republicans in Congress would stand up now on this issue.

Congress should be withdrawing jurisdiction from courts over immigration issues to prevent rulings like the recent one by Obama-appointed federal Judge William Kuntz, which requires the Suffolk County, New York, sheriff to pay $60 million for complying with federal detainer requests issued by ICE. The illegal alien criminals were represented pro bono in federal court by a major law firm funded by large corporate clients.

The crimes targeted by H.R. 29 are offenses against property, even petty shoplifting. People who are in our country illegally committing property crimes should be detained, but this bill fails to prevent the monstrous violent crimes that are being committed by illegals.

Unleashing lawsuits against the federal government could mean allowing new use of the courts by liberal states against the Trump Administration. Congress has this completely backwards to expect federal courts to be fixing the flaws in our immigration system, when Congress itself should be doing that.

The U.S. Supreme Court has held that States lack Article III standing under the Constitution to compel enforcement of federal immigration laws, and no bill enacted by Congress can specifically overcome that. Reports in the media that this law will overturn a ruling based on the Constitution by the Supreme Court are false, because Congress lacks such authority.

Congress should be enacting a bill to construct a border wall and to withdraw jurisdiction from federal courts to interfere with any deportations by President Trump. Something called the “Laken Riley Act” should include meaningful protections against repetition of the unspeakable crime committed by an illegal alien against her.

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 Should Stop Funding Woke Teachers

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Beginning January 1st, public school teachers in New Jersey will be less literate but just as liberal under a revision to the state’s certification requirements. Teachers there no longer have to pass a basic skills exam required in roughly 40 states which ensures literacy and simple math aptitude.

This is a travesty in K-12 education, and Congress should not continue to fund it without strings attached. Congress spends a shocking $119 billion annually on K-12 education, which as of 2022 comprised 14% of its overall funding.

Three decades ago, the Supreme Court plainly held that “Congress is free to attach reasonable and unambiguous conditions to federal financial assistance that educational institutions are not obligated to accept,” in its Grove City College v. Bell decision. As Mark Twain quipped, “Everybody complains about the weather, but no one does anything about it,” and Congress should act on this issue now.

Test scores have not recovered to pre-Covid levels, and students are still chronically absent. There is a shortage of public school teachers not because few want these jobs, which feature many vacation days along with excellent health care and pension benefits, but because cumbersome liberal indoctrination is required for mandatory certifications demanded by teachers’ unions to protect their own power.

Regulatory reform by the incoming Trump Administration will be challenged in court on every issue, and likely blocked before taking effect. Liberals will obtain injunctions by activist federal courts in D.C. against every new administrative rule that goes against their playbook, and the D.C. Circuit is controlled by Democrat-appointed judges as seen in the lawfare against Trump and his supporters.

Reforms should be in spending legislation, similar to how Congress ended discrimination by liberal universities against military recruitment by attaching strings to federal funding. The law schools quickly complied to keep the federal money flowing, after the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the condition of accepting military recruitment on taking federal money in Rumsfeld v. FAIR (2006).

Congress should condition its funding of public grade and high schools on giving parents more control, such as choosing or firing the principals in their schools and having veto power over objectionable DEI or transgender indoctrination. Schools should be required to inform parents immediately of any transgender requests by their children.

School choice is not a cure-all, as it just failed in three recent ballot initiatives due to opposition by rural Republicans who do not want to divide their limited resources among multiple schools in sparse populations. Voters just rejected taxpayer funding of private schools in Colorado, Nebraska, and Kentucky.

But classical schools, which are thriving in Florida and Texas, are winning. Florida has established an alternative certification process for teachers at these schools, which emphasize the subjects on which Western civilization was built such as basic skills plus advanced topics like Latin, physics, and calculus.

There are 250 classical schools that have opened nationwide since 2020, and this approach has become so popular that last month a school board in south Florida voted to convert a campus into a classical school. Florida enacted a new law last April to make it easier for these classical schools to bypass the union-controlled certification process, overcoming opposition by Florida’s largest teachers' union.

With conservative teacher certification, there are more than 50 classical Florida schools teaching 13,892 students. Florida’s Education Commissioner, Manny Diaz Jr., pointed out in support of classical schools that “I have yet to find a school that is going to put teachers in the classrooms that are not going to be in the best interest of students, and certainly not going to be in the best interest of the performance of their school.”

Meanwhile in New Jersey public schools teachers must complete a Leftist preparation program, as accredited at only liberal-controlled schools, plus a burdensome requirement of 175 field hours. This typically takes an unreasonable one to two years, which means that successful STEM professionals cannot retire or take time off to teach immediately in public schools.

As in New Jersey, a few years ago Democrat-controlled New York State also ended its requirement that public school teachers pass the basic skills exam, known as the Praxis Core Test. New York eliminated this in order to promote DEI in its hiring of teachers, in contrast with McDonald’s that just abandoned the DEI agenda for its huge workforce.

Half of science and math majors indicate their interest in becoming a teacher, and high school pay in these high-demand subjects is better than many college faculty salaries. Yet a severe shortage of high school STEM teachers persists due to union-demanded certification burdens.

Rather than cut the red tape hindering certification of competent teachers, liberals drop testing requirements for basic proficiency skills. The Republican Congress should end this woke approach to education.

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.

Elon Was Wrong About H-1Bs

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

The two “Steves” in Trump’s orbit, Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon, have rebuked Big Tech’s promotion of H-1B visas, which bring in foreign workers to do entry-level engineering and other jobs. Bannon, who refers to Elon Musk and similar pro-Trump tech advocates as “recent converts,” points out that there should be “zero H-1B visas.”

There is no shortage of Americans with science, technology, engineering, or math (STEM) degrees to fill jobs at high-tech companies. In 2022 there were 17.2 million working-age Americans, mostly men, holding STEM degrees, but only half of them were employed in STEM jobs.

Half of the millions of STEM-trained Americans are unemployed, underemployed, or retrained in another field. Moreover, inflation-adjusted wages for STEM workers have barely increased since 2008, despite the high-tech boom that has made Rockefellers out of hundreds of executives at these companies.

According to Ken Cuccinelli, who served in the first Trump Administration, last year the top 30 American employers for H-1B visas, including Musk’s Tesla, laid off 84,556 workers while also seeking 34,414 new foreign employees under the H-1B program.

It’s hogwash to pretend foreigners must be brought in on visas to fill entry-level positions in Silicon Valley and elsewhere. The motivation for this theft of American jobs is how foreigners become like indentured servants of centuries ago, bound to their employers with less mobility and lower wages that depress salaries for Americans, too.

People from India and China like these visas because it gives them a path to permanent residency in the U.S. along with chain migration for their extended families. Democrats like the visas, in part because new citizens typically vote for Democrat Party candidates for president and other offices.

MAGA is for Americans to fill American jobs, not foreigners. This requires the termination of, or at least a sharp reduction in, visa programs that bring in hordes of foreigners to fill positions here and who ultimately end up running top American companies.

Nearly 100% of the many thousands of H-1B visas sought annually by Google are approved for jobs that many American engineers aspire to obtain, but are passed over in favor of foreigners. The CEO of Google is himself foreign-raised, in India, and attended college there before coming to the United States on a student visa.

Everyone who is against the offshoring of American jobs should likewise be opposed to giving many of the best jobs in our country to foreigners. The stunning America First victory in the recent election is a mandate for letting Americans have American jobs.

There is no shortage of engineering talent in the United States, where “Yankee Ingenuity” is the source of much of the prosperity today. More than 90% of the most important inventions have been by Americans, while the rest of the world copies us in their attempt to keep up.

President Trump’s uncle John, to whom Donald referred with great admiration during campaign rallies, was an American inventor and longtime MIT professor of electrical engineering. He improved X-ray technology for the benefit of many future medical patients.

Displaying the same pluck that Trump himself is adored for, in 1936 John Trump demonstrated for the media a new million-volt X-ray machine. While operating the machine two high-voltage sparks shot out and smacked him right on his nose.

Yet Professor Trump was unfazed by this attack, and kept on going with his presentation. Because the machine was electrically grounded, he declared, the sparks could not be fatal.

Elon Musk compares tech company visas to professional sports teams bringing in foreigners, but that is also harmful to Americans. The highest-paying baseball salaries are going to foreigners now, while many college basketball scholarships are granted to foreign players hoping to play in the NBA here.

Many of these foreigners do not speak English and have no desire to assimilate into our culture. These foreign athletes are not role models for American youth to play in Little League, or on high school teams.

College sports have long been beneficial in attracting young men to improve their education while partaking in healthy activities that teach them the value of hard work and sportsmanship. But when college sports scholarships go to foreign athletes instead, the result is a decline in young American men benefiting from the college experience.

Black athletes may be harmed the most by this trend to prefer foreigners over Americans in sports. In three decades the percentage of Major League Baseball that is black has declined from 19% to only 6.3% today, and fewer still are receiving the top salaries in contrast with a generation ago.

In addition to bringing jobs back to America from foreign countries, we need to end the practice of importing foreigners to take jobs away from Americans here.

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.

“Transgender Lunacy” Remains a Big Issue

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Transgender activism was on the ballot in November and lost big in the presidential and U.S. Senate races. But there is no sign that Democrats are letting up on this issue, and on Monday Biden said he “strongly opposes” a restriction on transgender surgeries on kids of service members contained in the defense authorization bill, which many Democrats voted against for that reason.

Under Biden, transgenders serve openly in our military, but Trump can end that along with banning federally funded transgender drugs and surgeries on minors. “I will sign executive orders to end child sexual mutilation,” Trump announced in Phoenix on Sunday, and “get transgender out of the military and out of our elementary schools and middle schools and high schools.”

An estimated 1.3 million adults and 300,000 youths in America identify as transgender, and those numbers have been growing rapidly due to encouragement from schools, liberal professionals, and culture. Unfortunately, Democrat-appointed judges rule for the transgender side every time, as no Democrat crosses the agenda of Planned Parenthood which has expanded into the transgender business.

In its final hours, the Senate confirmed the 235th Biden-appointed judge to the federal courts, one more than it allowed Trump to appoint in his first administration. In addition, hundreds of federal judges appointed by Presidents Clinton and Obama are still deciding cases.

Two recent decisions within the same federal circuit illustrate the immense divide between Democrat and Republican-appointed judges on the transgender issue. A Republican-appointed judge in Pennsylvania held in favor of three mothers after a teacher taught transgender identity to first-graders, while a Democrat-appointed judge in New Jersey ruled against a father objecting to transgender facilitation without his consent.

In the New Jersey case, a widowed father was dismayed to learn that the public high school where his daughter was a freshman was using male pronouns for her without his knowledge or approval. He sued in federal court to stop this abuse of his parental rights, but the court ruled against him and in favor of the school.

The student’s interest in transitioning was supported by a school club known as “Students Advocating for Equality,” or SAFE. Its purported purpose is to “promote open discussion and awareness about modern cultures and topics surrounding intersectionality while aiming to make positive contributions to [the] community and school.”

Not only did school officials conceal from the father that they were referring to his daughter by male pronouns, but they also excluded from an email teachers who would be candid with the father. Even though gender dysphoria among teenagers is known to be potentially dangerous, the father was kept in the dark and the Biden-appointed federal judge ruled against his motion for a preliminary injunction, which is now on appeal.

Trump has ingeniously proposed that school principals be elected by a vote of parents instead of by tax-salaried administrators or school boards. “If you have a bad principal that’s not getting the job done, the parents will—under the Trump administration—be allowed to vote to fire that principal,” Trump told Moms for Liberty last summer.

Trump could force that change with strong regulations from his Department of Education, which could tie federal funding to schools that allow more parental control. Similarly, new transgender regulations of schools could deny federal funding where biological males are allowed to compete as transgenders in girls’ sports.

Last week NCAA president Charlie Baker appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Republican Senators Musgrave, Kennedy, and Hawley took the opportunity to challenge him about allowing male-bodied athletes to invade college women’s sports. Baker tried to deflect pointed questioning by saying he was just following federal law, but when Sen. Hawley challenged him to identify the law he was following, he could not do so because there is none.

Almost daily a women’s sports team defaults in a scheduled match because an opponent includes a transgender player who is a biological male. Lawsuits are pending over this issue, which the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly dodged while many lower courts are pro-transgender.

At oral argument in early December in a case before the U.S. Supreme Court challenging Tennessee’s sensible ban on transgender surgeries and drugs for minors, which 26 states have enacted, all three Democrat-appointed justices spoke against this good law. Earlier the liberal Montana Supreme Court blocked a conservative Montana law that protected children against transgender procedures.

As boys who say they identify as girls are allowed into girls’ locker rooms, in Westosha, Wisconsin, an outraged father declared “I find it unacceptable that a 14-year-old girl is required to change in front of a 16-year-old boy to complete a required class in school.” In Reno, Nevada, a boy identifying as a girl “gets a front-row seat to view naked females,” complained a girl’s grandmother.

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.

Deep State: Stop Invading Our Airspace with Drones

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

As concern mounted over the wave of unidentified drones flying over populated areas of the Northeast, President Trump felt compelled to cancel his trip to his New Jersey home this weekend. Trump soberly declined to say whether he had received a classified security briefing about the drones, but pointed out that “The government knows what is happening. Our military knows, and our president knows, and for some reason they want to keep people in suspense.”

White House spokesman John Kirby is not disclosing the full story, obviously, as he’s already backed off his implausible assertion that most of the low-flying objects are really airplanes. He still insists, however, that hobbyists are behind many of these drones, which are too large, too sophisticated, and flying too late at night to be from amateurs amusing themselves.

It appears likely that the numerous high-tech drones are searching for something from their low altitude of 400 feet and less. By flying only at night they must be using sensors that can detect substances on the ground in the dark.

After four years of an open border under Biden, it’s possible that a weapon of mass destruction has been smuggled into our country. But it’s more likely that this drone operation is another stunt by the Deep State to exert power over everyday Americans, and even Trump, under the false pretense of national security.

Realistically, threats from distant lands of destruction in America are probably nothing more than a teenage boy in someone’s basement emailing a prank message. The calls to Springfield, Ohio in September that shut down its schools and hospitals were phony threats from a foreigner that were taken too seriously.

Trump said on Monday that Biden knows what is behind these drones, and that he should tell the American people. Any assumption that there would be panic about a revelation, for example, that the drones are looking for a nuclear weapon, would underestimate the resilience and healthy skepticism of the public about fake news from D.C.

The political timing of this mystery is suspect. Merely a month from Trump’s inauguration and on the eve of the annual bloated defense appropriation in Congress, whereby billions are wastefully allocated to a military having too many generals and not enough recruits, a more ingenious public relations stunt at this time for boosting expenditures is difficult to imagine.

The Deep State is demonically clever at asserting its own power and obtaining more lavish funding for itself, and may never fess up to the truth about this. Someone is probably making a fortune at taxpayer expense by providing these high-tech drones in the Northeast.

The federal government claims to have exclusive authority to regulate everyone’s airspace such that Deep State drones can buzz our homes late at night. One of these large drones, reportedly as big as an SUV or refrigerator, could crash into someone’s living room and kill innocent inhabitants there.

Part of the game plan may be to get Trump to back off from draining the Swamp and fumigating the intelligence community. This apparently military exercise is a way for the overpaid and underproductive spooks in D.C. to reassert their authority over our incoming president, even forcing him away from his summer home.

“Something strange is going on,” Trump said Monday. “For some reason they don’t want to tell the people.”

Meanwhile the usually talkative Elon Musk has been oddly silent about these drones, like the dog that didn’t bark in the famous Sherlock Holmes tale, which suggests that Musk may be selling drone technology under one of his many contracts with our military. Musk’s SpaceX has the expertise to pull off this type of operation while evading detection by Americans who have a right to know who is flying a few hundred feet over their homes.

“National security” is the phony reason given for the planned shutdown of TikTok on January 19, the day before the inauguration of Trump. Supposedly watching funny videos of children’s mishaps, embarrassing moments, and overbearing official behavior poses such a threat to our country from China that this popular rival of liberal-controlled Facebook and YouTube must be forced out of business.

Trump met with the CEO of TikTok on Monday, observing that the platform helped Trump get elected by enabling him to reach young voters. Liberals control schools, the media, and other internet platforms so TikTok is one of the few ways that a conservative message can reach them.

TikTok users and most of the American public would shrug their shoulders at a claim that a weapon of mass destruction may have been smuggled into our country, thereby supposedly justifying this intrusive drone operation. Many Americans want to know the truth about these drones, and want them out of their airspace over their homes.

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 Pardons Can Extend to Elector Cases, Too

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

The biggest furor over Joe Biden’s sweeping pardon of his son Hunter has been from Deep Staters who resist any limits on political prosecutions, which Democrats have been abusively using against Trump and his supporters. A recent headline in the liberal Washington Post screams, “The political case for limiting pardon power.”

The U.S. Supreme Court, including the eminent Chief Justice William Rehnquist, repeatedly emphasized that pardons are “rarely, if ever, appropriate subjects for judicial review” because they are the authority of the executive, including the president. The pardon clause in the Constitution extends to all crimes “against the United States.”

The Constitution broadly uses the term “United States” to refer to all the States, as in “We the People of the United States” in the Preamble. The Constitution refers in Article I, Section 8 to the “general Welfare of the United States.”

President Ulysses S. Grant pardoned officials convicted under state law for the criminal offense of allowing Susan B. Anthony to vote in the 1872 presidential election. President Grant’s power to pardon for that crime is widely supported, even though the officials were convicted under state rather than federal law.

The U.S. Department of Justice, which prosecutes federal crimes today, did not even exist prior to 1870. The only federal crimes mentioned in the original Constitution are treason, piracy on the high seas, and counterfeiting; the pardon power extends beyond those and not merely to federal crimes as some argue.

The ongoing political prosecutions of Republican electors in Arizona, Georgia, and Michigan allege crimes related to the 2020 election for president of the United States, and Trump can grant pardons to end this abuse of power by local prosecutors. These were not common law crimes such as murder or robbery which might arguably be beyond presidential pardon authority.

On Tuesday, Democrats in Wisconsin filed sweeping new criminal charges against Trump advisers and supporters based on disputes over the 2020 election, which the American People resolved in favor of Trump by reelecting him last month. These and similar charges can and should be pardoned by President Trump on January 20, as this is within the broad presidential pardon power and necessary to ensure Trump can obtain candid advice.

When the State of Colorado wrongly excluded Trump from being on its ballot for the presidential primary there earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed 9-0 that this was an improper action affecting the entire United States. The Court reversed the Colorado Supreme Court for the good of our entire Nation, just as Trump should end the political prosecutions by Alvin Bragg, Fani Willis, Josh Kaul, and Kris Mayes.

Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist No. 74 “that the benign prerogative of pardoning should be as little as possible fettered or embarrassed.” James Monroe, a popular early conservative president, granted 419 pardons.

The King of England’s pardon power, on which our constitutional pardon power is based, withstood attempts there to narrow it, other than not allowing it to extend to impeachment as our Constitution also states. An attempt at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia to remove treason from the scope of the pardon power was defeated by a vote of 8 states to 2.

Pardons issued by President George Washington and many presidents ever since have been broad in scope, such that state prosecutions did not proceed after the grant of these presidential pardons. Democrat President Bill Clinton was the first to issue a posthumous pardon in 1999, which some questioned because the deceased recipient could not accept it, but no one challenged it.

The Supreme Court held that the president’s pardon power “extends to every offence known to the law, and may be exercised at any time after its commission, either before legal proceedings are taken, or during their pendency, or after conviction and judgment,” in Ex parte Garland (1867). President Millard Fillmore granted a conditional pardon to spare the execution by hanging of a convicted murderer in the District of Columbia, as upheld by the Supreme Court in Ex parte Wells (1856).

Biden set the precedent by broadly pardoning his son, which should silence the liberal media when Trump does likewise soon for victims of political prosecutions. Democrats can hardly complain about the full use of the pardon power by Trump now, which can extend to politically motivated state prosecutions.

Our Founders would be appalled at the overbearing police state of today, whereby congressmen, Cabinet officials, and even presidents have been terrified of what low-level attorneys may do to them by filing criminal charges in biased courts. It is long overdue to rein in the tyranny by politically motivated prosecutors, federal and state, through Trump’s full use of the pardon 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.

Nationwide Injunction against Deep State FinCEN

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

A stunning setback to the Deep State from a federal district court in remote eastern Texas: Judge Amos Mazzant just issued a nationwide injunction against the new mandate that more than 30 million Americans report their personal information to the federal government by Jan. 1.

Merely 29 days from the deadline, Judge Amos Mazzant gave Americans the Christmas gift that many hoped for. The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), which is a federal agency located near Washington, D.C., is suddenly blocked nationwide from requiring that Americans report their home addresses, birthdates, and driver’s license numbers to it.

Many Americans were unaware of this new federal criminal law, which carries a penalty of two years in prison for non-compliance. Everyone involved in small local entities, other than those exempt, faced this reporting requirement for the purpose of law enforcement, including harassing federal investigations.

The two-year incarceration is particularly significant because that automatically strips Americans of their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, if found to be in violation of this Corporate Transparency Act (CTA). The actual punishment for a CTA violation may be light, but the mere possibility of being imprisoned for more than a year results in automatic deprivation of the right to possess a firearm due to another federal statute.

The federal government justified this new privacy-invading statute based on its overused monikers of supposedly combating money laundering and terrorism. The Deep State expands its federal police power by repeatedly pretending to fight such unlawful activity, when in fact the D.C. elite are really monitoring and intimidating law-abiding Americans.

House Democrats used that same excuse of supposedly eradicating money laundering and terrorism as a justification for seeking private banking records of Trump’s family members with sweeping subpoenas. The Supreme Court halted those subpoenas back in July 2020, unpersuaded by the pretext.

But at the end of 2020, Dems inserted the CTA into a 1,500-page defense appropriations bill, such that no one noticed at the time. This was set to go into effect with its draconian penalties on Jan. 1, 2025, for 33 million Americans.

Some have received notices about this requirement from their accountants, but not even CPAs can understand exactly which entities and individuals are truly subject to this law. People are being told to get legal advice that will cost thousands of dollars.

Congress lacks the constitutional authority to become Big Brother to watch so many ordinary Americans, the federal court held on Tuesday in issuing its nationwide injunction against this horrible law. “For good reason, Plaintiffs fear this flanking, quasi-Orwellian statute and its implications on our dual system of government,” the court held while ruling against the Deep State.

The CTA would turn every law-abiding American into a suspected federal criminal, subject to investigations and prosecution by the federal government for purely local activities far afield from any legitimate national concern. The political persecution of national leaders like Trump was about to come to every mom-and-pop entity organized under state law without any expectation of federal monitoring.

The six plaintiffs in this case were led by Texas Top Cop Shop, Inc, a family-operated small business in Conroe, Texas, that sells firearms locally. It has only four employees, and yet FinCEN demanded that it file by New Year’s Day personal information about some of the participants in its business.

Another plaintiff is Mustardseed Livestock, LLC, which is a small dairy farm located entirely in Lingle, Wyoming. It produces dairy for its own use, while occasionally selling surplus raw milk there, not across state lines.

The federal government has no legitimate authority over these small, local entities created under state law. The Commerce Clause grants Congress the authority to regulate interstate and foreign commerce, but that is not what Congress is doing with the CTA.

The federal judge in this case was appointed to the bench by President Barack Obama and supported by Sen. Ted Cruz as part of a compromise with respect to confirming a batch of new judges.

“Great nations, like great men, should keep their word,” Judge Mazzant wrote in quotation of Justice Hugo Black. Judge Mazzant added, “Ours is a written Constitution.” He held that the “CTA does not regulate channels of, or instrumentalities in, commerce” between states, and thus is beyond the authority of Congress under the Commerce Clause.

Other provisions of the Constitution, such as doing what is necessary and proper to regulate foreign affairs and protect national security, likewise fail to justify this intrusive snooping that FinCEN itself estimated would cost $22.7 billion in the first year and $5.6 billion in subsequent years. Selling raw milk to a neighbor does not justify this vast, costly expansion in federal police power, and Americans can breathe a sigh of relief.

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.