Ban Transgender Operations on Children
An emergency appeal from West Virginia, which is trying to safeguard girls’ sports teams against biological males pretending to be girls, has reached the U.S. Supreme Court. A well-reasoned federal district court decision upheld its law against a constitutional challenge on behalf of an 11-year-old, but then a majority-Democrat panel on the Fourth Circuit suspended the good law.
This case is being called the most important yet in the transgender movement, which is suddenly invading nearly every school and government program. Chief Justice John Roberts ordered the challengers to respond to West Virginia by noon on March 20, and quickly amicus briefs in support of West Virginia’s necessary law were filed.
Other federal courts have held that transgenders are entitled to a heightened form of protection under the Constitution, and that issue is now before the Supreme Court. Two years ago the Supreme Court ducked a case concerning an attempt by a school board to keep biological boys and girls out of each others’ restrooms.
In that lawsuit arising from Gloucester High School in Virginia, the Supreme Court denied a petition for certiorari on this issue of forcing transgenderism on schools. That handed transgender activists a victory by leaving intact the Fourth Circuit ruling against the school board, which declared transgender conduct to be a new constitutional right and a Title IX federal right in schools.
Aided by desires to attract attention, hordes of children are declaring an interest in being transgender now. In February it was reported that several 5th graders told their teacher that they wanted to become transgender, and when the teacher asked the Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital for advice its response was to affirm the behavior, without suggesting that the parents be informed.
“What they are teaching in schools today is insane,” Trump declared on March 13 at a campaign stop in Davenport, Iowa. “I will bring parental rights back into our school system,” he vowed by promising to cut off federal funding to public schools that push the liberal agenda.
Trump and nearly all Republicans have denounced the unfairness about biological boys invading girls’ sports, shattering girls’ records, and sometimes even causing physical injury to girls in contact sports. More is at stake than merely the integrity of girls’ sports: transgender operations inflict lifelong harm on children, and no ethical consent can be given for that.
Banning biological boys from girls’ sports would stem some of the motivation, as competition in school sports is intense with pride and college scholarships hanging in the balance. Some parents whose boys are not good enough to win on a boys’ team may be just fine with trying to transform them into girls if it means trophies, championships, and scholarships will result.
Billions of taxpayer dollars are flowing to medical universities willing to take the money and perform operations and treatments, to acclaim by liberals who see this as a way to accomplish goals that Phyllis Schlafly warned against 50 years ago. Social media applauds those on TikTok and elsewhere who announce with a dance video or photos that suddenly they self-identify with the opposite sex.
Conservative legislatures have been slow to turn off the faucet, or fire hydrant, that is watering all this. The Republican Missouri state senate adjourned one day in disarray rather than debate legislation to stop encouraging this harmful gender dysphoria in children.
A Canadian physician who was a leader on transgender treatments decades ago admits now that it was a mistake. “We were wrong,” Dr. Susan Bradley recently announced.
“They’re not as irreversible as we always thought, and they have longer term effects on kids’ growth and development, including making them sterile and quite a number of things affecting their bone growth,” she added. “I had this skepticism in the back of my mind all the time that maybe we were actually colluding and not helping” the children who wanted to switch genders.
Republicans have a majority in most state legislatures, which are convening now but many will adjourn this spring for the year or, as in Texas, for two years. Last year Texas Republicans transferred $105 million to the Texas Child Mental Health Consortium, which partly funds promotion of transgenderism in schoolchildren.
Legislation is being considered now in Texas to ban transgender procedures on children, as South Dakota enacted and Gov. Kristi Noem signed. In early March, West Virginia, which reportedly has more transgender youths per capita than any state, passed a bill banning transgender procedures on kids, but its governor has not yet said whether he’ll sign it into law.
These good state laws are immediately challenged in federal court by the well-funded transgender movement. Trump has the best record of any politician in making strong judicial appointments, which are needed now more than ever.
Trump KOs GOP Globalists
The first weekend in March featured dueling political conferences, one flush with cash from globalists hoping that Donald Trump’s rival speech would be treated as a farewell address by the 45th president. It was wishful thinking by Never-Trumpers, as instead Trump retook control of the GOP.
Trump’s nearly 2-hour speech at CPAC, which for many years has been the largest annual grassroots conservative gathering, was astounding for his vigor and enthusiasm. He called for an end of the unsuccessful influence on the Republican Party by the Bush family, Karl Rove, and Paul Ryan, who drove the party into the ground until Trump rejuvenated it.
“This is the final battle,” Trump declared to the roaring crowd gathered for him in Maryland, just outside of D.C., even though that is not Republican territory. Trump then rattled off an array of hot-button issues that form the political agenda for ordinary Americans through the presidential election next year.
The contrast between Trump and the worn-out ideas of his media-pandering rivals could not be greater. The hedge fund bosses and phony free traders who assembled at The Breakers, the posh hotel in Palm Beach, Florida, are not the crowd who will be picking the next president or electing candidates down-ballot, and it was a mistake for Trump’s rivals to see that as a path to the White House.
Ironically, it was Trump who gave prominence to the candidates who now seek to replace him as the Republican nominee for president, and their lack of gratitude to him is reason enough to prefer Trump. Nikki Haley was appointed Ambassador to the United Nations by Trump, and she was heckled by conservatives at CPAC after turning against him.
In 2018, Trump propelled Ron DeSantis to the gubernatorial nomination over a better known rival in Florida, where he won reelection in 2022 while finishing second overall in votes to its Trump-supporting Attorney General. DeSantis has not yet criticized Trump publicly, but in his 40-minute speech to globalists compared some Republicans to “potted plants” for allowing Leftists to frame the debate.
That criticism cannot apply to Trump, who relishes a good fight. DeSantis appears to be imitating Trump’s style without giving him credit.
Both Haley and DeSantis then traveled to Iowa, which remains the first contest on the Republican side and thus will set the tone for the primaries that follow. Trump enjoys enormous support among Republican officials in the early primary states, and he met with state leaders from Nevada while his rivals were auditioning before globalists.
“Failed former Congressman David McIntosh and his Globalist friends at Club for No Growth, who fought me all the way in 2016, and LOST, and then fought me again in 2020 Senate Races in Ohio, Alabama, North Carolina, New Hampshire, plus more, and LOST AGAIN, are now threatening to spend money against me,” Trump boomed. “No Growth Members know there will be RETRIBUTION!!!”, Trump added.
Trump is right about the Club for Growth, formerly led by Pat Toomey who was one of the few Senators to vote in support of the vindictive second impeachment of President Trump. Toomey then left the Senate and became a director of Apollo Global Management, a private equity firm profiting from globalism and from the notorious “carried interest” tax loophole that Trump tried to end but Toomey was an “all star” in preserving, a lobbyist told Bloomberg.
Club for Growth has lost many elections, and its campaign spending is too small to have any real influence. It spends less than half of 1% of the overall expenditures each election cycle, and Trump refers to it as “The Club For NO Growth, an assemblage of political misfits, globalists, and losers.”
Trump’s landslide victory in the straw poll at CPAC, where he amassed three times as many votes as the distant runner-up Ron DeSantis, was Trump’s record-setting sixth victory in that poll. That doubles the career victories by President Ronald Reagan in that same poll, and exceeds the four victories by the last GOP presidential nominee prior to Trump, Mitt Romney.
Trump’s speech was reminiscent of the Declaration of Independence in listing the grievances of the American People against the globalists who have run our country into the ground. Even the globalist New York Times appears to support Trump’s warning against further entanglement by the United States in the NATO war in Ukraine.
Steve Bannon quipped about the rivals to Trump, “We don’t have time for on-the-job training.” Trump’s rivals look like the seven dwarfs compared with Trump, and just imagine how much he can accomplish in a second term without anti-Trumpers like Ryan and Toomey on Capitol Hill.
Like General Douglas MacArthur vowing “I shall return” and then doing so to liberate the Philippines during World War II, Trump will return to the White House to finish the job he started.
Debt Ceiling Discipline Is Good Medicine
Biden’s Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen forecasts a catastrophe if Republicans do not increase the debt ceiling, but average Americans seem unimpressed by Democrats’ demands for another blank check on runaway federal spending. New polling shows Trump easily defeating Biden in their expected matchup next year.
Debt ceiling discipline is good medicine for the illness that plagues the federal government. Holding the line on the debt ceiling would force those who profit most from our federal government to help end its irresponsible spending.
It is difficult to see much value in the trillions of dollars being expended by the federal government annually as it has run up a $31.4 trillion national debt. That amounts to nearly $100,000 in debt for every man, woman, and child in America.
The agenda of radical environmentalism is costing more than a trillion dollars a year in federal regulations, electric car subsidies, solar and wind energy boondoggles, and limits on cost-effective energy. Ending all that should be near the top of the demands by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy as he meets with Biden at the White House to discuss fiscal accountability.
At first Biden indicated that he would not negotiate with Republicans over raising the debt ceiling, and then Biden reversed himself and asked McCarthy to sit down with him. Next, perhaps feeling the heat from radicals on the Left, Biden reversed himself again and said he would not agree to any spending cuts sought by Republicans in exchange for increasing debt.
But if anyone thought the more liberal Republicans in the Senate would cave into Biden by reflexively raising the debt ceiling, that notion is mistaken. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is reportedly unable to muster even 9 Republican votes there to increase the debt ceiling without concessions by Biden to reduce spending.
The liberal media used to claim that government shutdowns always help the Democrats, and Republicans should not dare to allow the feds to run out of money again. But that Chicken Little talk is apparently scaring no one now, when the political winds are blowing strongly toward unplugging Washington, D.C.
For the past two years the news from the capital has been a stream of harassment by the federal government of Trump, his supporters, average Americans, and now even Biden himself as classified documents are found at his home. A recent breaking story was about Mike Pence having some classified documents at his Indiana home, for which the FBI showed up in person to retrieve as though there were any significance to some old paperwork.
The Senate is uncharacteristically deferring to House Speaker McCarthy to negotiate with Biden, perhaps because McCarthy is more charismatic and tougher than the leadership in the Senate. McCarthy consistently has higher approval ratings than McConnell, whose record- low polling made it more difficult for Republicans to regain their majority in the Senate.
Much of the federal government debt is owned by foreign governments, including communist China. Like the stock market and every other investment, the free market should be the guiding principle and those who want perpetual funding of the federal government should bear some risk, too.
Federal spending is doing more harm than good. Millions are already being spent to interfere with the upcoming 2024 presidential election, which should be decided by voters rather than by Merrick Garland as Attorney General.
Harmful federal programs far outnumber helpful ones. Federal spending on the Covid pandemic totaled trillions of dollars, but the outcome was worse here than in poor countries whose governments spent almost nothing on the issue.
Federal spending on education has resulted in rampant illiteracy, leaving most high school graduates ill prepared to do college-level work. Student achievement has declined significantly in recent years, as the federal government spends billions pushing an ideological agenda rather than teaching Johnny and Janey how to read.
The federal government did nothing to protect Atlanta from the fires set by Antifa protesters in mid-January. Georgia’s Governor Brian Kemp was hobnobbing with globalists at their annual conference at a Davos, Switzerland ski resort, before his state capital was looted and at least one police car set ablaze.
Federal spending is devoted to the cushy Deep State jobs in D.C., with their lavish pensions that are driving up the federal deficit, rather than safeguarding our cities. Most federal workers look forward to early retirements that will pay them most of their annual salaries for the rest of their lives as they do nothing.
The astronomical costs being imposed by Biden’s opening of the southern border to millions of illegal aliens should be part of McCarthy’s negotiations. The debt ceiling should not be raised unless and until Biden secures the southern border to end the tidal wave of illegal migrants, who are adding trillions of dollars in future new costs.
GOP Charges Ahead on Education
Proving once again that he is in touch with ordinary Americans, Donald Trump selected education for the first video message of his 2024 presidential campaign. On January 28 Trump emphasized education in addresses in the early primary states of New Hampshire and South Carolina.
School performance fell sharply during the pandemic, as liberal governors shuttered schools for prolonged periods and required masks at the expense of learning. Children became pawns in the tyrannical measures taken under the guise of responding to Covid.
The last full year before Covid was 2019, and it was the last year that 50 million students were enrolled in public schools. That total has since fallen, and experts predict a long-term decline in public school enrollment for decades into the future.
Massachusetts, long ranked at the top nationwide in student achievement, has dropped to a 19-year low in its performance as the Democrat-controlled state pushes Leftist ideology in schools. The biggest declines in performance were by minorities and low-income students, and children who did not learn English at home.
Throughout the rest of our country, the decline in student achievement and increase in illiteracy is shocking. In Pennsylvania, the 3rd graders reading with the expected level of proficiency dropped from 60% to 50% over the last three years.
There was a red wave in Ohio in the last election, after Trump held many rallies there. Republicans increased their supermajority in its Senate, attained a supermajority in its House, and won both the governorship and the open U.S. Senate seat.
Now it’s time to cash in on that political capital by targeting the Ohio education system, which ranks in the bottom half nationally in basic reading and arithmetic skills. The very first bill introduced in the Ohio Senate was to take power away from the independent State Board of Education, which has failed to get the job done.
This bill would allow the Republican governor to appoint a new education director to establish curriculum and strong standards for academic achievement. Rather than diffusing responsibility, this legislation would establish one person to be publicly accountable for the failure to teach youngsters how to read and add.
Trump boldly calls for empowering parents to directly elect school principals, to hold them accountable for their failure to teach basic skills. A bestselling book in 1955 was Why Johnny Can’t Read, and the simple answer was because schools were not using the superior phonics method of teaching kids how to read.
Nearly 70 years later, schools are still not using phonics, and as a result perhaps 45 million Americans cannot even fill out a ballot in order to vote as they intend. Some of those ballots are being filled out for them by political hacks, who are just fine with more illiteracy.
Young adults have long been bashful about never learning how to read, rather than question why some of their friends can read but they cannot. But as traditional inhibitions disappear on social media, young people are themselves beginning to ask publicly why they were not taught to read.
Those harmed by inadequate schools are a voting bloc that Republicans can and must reach in order to win future elections. Georgia and Arizona are two swing states that Republicans must win in 2024 to capture the White House, and both rank among the ten states having the most illiteracy.
When people cannot read, then they cannot access and process independent political information needed to fill out ballots in an informed way. The higher the illiteracy, the more ballots that are filled out as part of ballot harvesting and massive drop-box dumps, and the more difficult it is to win on principle.
Meanwhile, even a liberal Republican governor has apparently gotten the message that the public is fed up with liberal ideology in school, rather than instruction on basic skills. Last year Utah’s Governor Spencer Cox vetoed a bill that would have prohibited male-bodied athletes from competing in girls’ sports, as did the liberal Republican governor in Indiana.
In both states the Republican legislatures promptly overrode those vetoes that pandered to the Left. Likewise, the Republican Arkansas legislature overrode the veto by its anti-Trump Republican Governor Asa Hutchinson of a bill prohibiting transgender medical interventions on children.
In January the Republican legislature in Utah passed a bill to prohibit transgender medical interventions on children, and its left-leaning Republican Governor Cox was smart enough to sign it into law the next day after it reached his desk. Lessons learned, with more political ground to gain ahead.
As illiteracy climbs in the United States, this new focus by Republicans on learning is a political necessity. Many traditionally Democrat voters have children in underperforming schools, and they are not learning to read as they should be.
