GOP Should Prioritize Ending Election Fraud
Sandwiched between Trump’s high-powered meetings with foreign leaders, Trump took the time to prioritize ending fraud-prone mail-in voting. Slightly more than half of our country – 28 states – permit mail-in voting without any documented reason or excuse.
Early in August, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit Judge James Ho began his decision in favor of a voter ID law in Texas by declaring, “Mail-in ballots are not secure.” The vast majority of the world agrees and has banned the permissive mail-in voting that is allowed here.
Our postal service was never intended to conduct elections – that is not its mission. The delivery standards of our postal service have been declining, such that postmarks are no longer consistently used and letters are no longer reliably received within 3 days of being mailed.
Like the designated hitter rule in baseball that many traditional fans oppose, a team needs to use what is allowed in order to win. Campaigns should encourage Republicans to vote early, including by mail, in states that allow it, while also seeking a return to Election Day-only voting for everyone to improve election integrity.
Federal law has long required that national elections be held on only one day, and our country would be better off with a return to that gold standard for everyone. As the Fifth Circuit explained on August 4 by quoting from a report by the bipartisan Commission on Federal Election Reform, “absentee ballots remain the largest source of potential voter fraud.”
Yet liberals are in a tizzy over Trump’s new push against mail-in voting, and stories about it have displaced news about Trump’s meetings with foreign leaders. The liberal media doubts that Trump can end mail-in voting by executive order, as Trump indicates he will do.
Democrats insist there is no evidence that mail-in voting is susceptible to fraud, but they have blocked attempts by Republicans to audit signatures on mail-in ballots to check for authenticity. Some have destroyed records concerning the flood of mail-in ballots used in 2020 to elect Biden.
The Republican-controlled Congress has failed to hold hearings on this important issue, and the Department of Justice (DOJ) has failed to investigate it. Instead, Republicans like Trump’s chief of staff in 2020, Mark Meadows, remain under indictment by a Democrat county prosecutor in Georgia for questioning the massive number of mail-in ballots counted in favor of Biden to surprisingly award him that state in 2020.
Since 2020, 19 states have enacted restrictions on mail-in voting. A surge of 33 million mail-in ballots in 2020 was used to elect Biden, and there has never been a real investigation as to the legitimacy of that massive spike, which was not seen again in 2024.
“REMEMBER, WITHOUT FAIR AND HONEST ELECTIONS, AND STRONG AND POWERFUL BORDERS, YOU DON’T HAVE EVEN A SEMBLANCE OF A COUNTRY,” Trump posted the morning of August 18 prior to his high-profile meeting with European leaders. Trump is impressed by how other countries have long prohibited mail-in voting “because of the MASSIVE VOTER FRAUD ENCOUNTERED.”
As nearly half of our country limited mail-in ballots in the 2024 election, Kamala Harris received 6.3 million fewer votes than Biden did four years earlier. At the same time, Trump received 3 million more votes in 2024 than in 2020.
The Harris campaign spent $1.5 billion in 2024, which included paying for ballot harvesters, yet there is little explanation of what all that money funded. House Republicans and the DOJ should be investigating this, but have failed to.
“We, as a Republican Party, are going to do everything possible that we get rid of mail-in ballots,” Trump responded to reporters at the White House on August 18. “We’re going to start with an executive order that’s being written right now by the best lawyers in the country to end mail-in ballots.”
DOJ has spent tens of millions of dollars investigating critics of the reported election outcome in 2020, and yet apparently not a dime has been spent by DOJ on investigating rampant ballot harvesting and drop-box ballot dumps in 2020. There has been no investigation to explain the 6.3 million votes for the Democrat presidential nominee that disappeared between 2020 and 2024.
Trump’s opponents say that Germany and a few other Western countries allow mail-in voting, but only with stricter rules than in the United States such as Germany’s requirement that ballots be received by Election Day to be counted. France banned mail-in voting due to fraud, and most other European, Middle Eastern, and Latin American nations also prohibit it.
In too many of our states, mail-in signatures are not verified and ballots are accepted until 14 days after Election Day. Paid political operatives continue to have far too much influence over the harvesting of ballots.
Making Schools Great Again Thanks to Trump
“Back to school” feels different this year, thanks to President Trump’s executive orders that remove Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). Trump is also restoring the presidential fitness test that Democrats had removed.
Big-name colleges, including the University of Michigan and Columbia University, have shut down or scaled back their DEI centers due to concerns about Trump pulling federal funding from the school. Meanwhile, under Trump’s leadership, colleges in red states like Texas, Florida, and Kansas have ended their DEI programs to comply with state laws.
In March, Trump’s Department of Education ordered public schools to eliminate their DEI programs or lose federal funding. School districts for the K-12 level were told to certify that they no longer have DEI programs, while universities were informed they would lose federal funding if they refuse to terminate their DEI.
Trump officials gave public schools two weeks to comply. Instead, many blue states ran to federal court to seek an injunction against Trump, and on August 14 federal judge Stephanie Gallagher invalidated and blocked the anti-DEI letters by Trump’s Education Department.
Judge Gallagher was initially nominated by President Obama to the federal bench and, possibly as part of an unfortunate compromise, subsequently renominated by Trump in 2018. Her 76-page decision in AFT v. Dept. of Education complained that Trump had “initiated a sea change in how the Department of Education regulates educational practices and classroom conduct.”
A “sea change” in education is exactly what Americans wanted when they returned Trump to the White House, to focus on teaching basic skills rather than indoctrinating children with a liberal ideology. An appeal is likely of this decision in favor of Randi Weingarten’s teachers union.
The percentage of students who are in traditional public schools has declined to 83%, or about 50 million kids, as parents flee from school failures. Homeschooling is growing and may increase further with the advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to improve online learning.
Effective September 1, a new law in Texas (SB 12) prohibits DEI in public schools there and requires parents to be notified if their child requests to be referred to by a different pronoun. Texas bans school clubs “based on sexual orientation or gender identity.”
In May Texas also enacted an immense school voucher program, which provides $10,000 per student to attend an accredited private school instead of a public school, and up to $2,000 apiece for homeschooled children.
But this program does not begin until fall 2026, and is initially capped at $1 billion. Some conservative legislators from rural Texas, who opposed splintering their school system with this, were defeated by Gov. Abbott in order to enact this voucher program.
Democrat-controlled Illinois goes in the opposite direction, by lowering its proficiency standards without giving families enough options. Trump has threatened to take over Chicago to end the crime epidemic there, and it would be tantalizing if he could take over the Chicago public schools, too.
Even the editorial board of the liberal Chicago Tribune is complaining now about how Democrat politicians are lowering the proficiency standards there. Its August 22 headline shouted, “Illinois moves the goalposts on reading, math and science.”
“Now, scoring an 18 in English language arts and a 19 in math on the ACT will count as ‘proficient’ for high school juniors.” But an 18 is below the national average and far below the score of 30 to 34 that most freshmen at the University of Illinois attain.
Missouri enacted a statewide ban on all personal cell phones, smart watches, headphones, and tablets by public school students, with limited exceptions such as emergencies. School districts and teachers are welcoming this law and its implementation for this school year.
As to physical fitness, President Obama ended that test for public school students in 2012, which Trump is restoring so that students can again be asked to run a mile or do situps and pushups to demonstrate their physical fitness. For more than 50 years this test was given to public school students annually in gymnasiums.
Obama’s termination of the fitness test was part of the harmful shift away from competition and individual merit in education. The Democrat Party has abandoned the vision of President John F. Kennedy, who sought a stronger America and even wrote an essay for Sports Illustrated entitled “The Soft American.”
Trump inherits a nation of children who are badly out of shape, obese, and plagued by health problems. At least 20% of schoolchildren are obese, according to the CDC, and 77% of young adults are unfit to serve in the United States Armed Forces.
Chronic absenteeism has shot up to 25% of students in some school districts. A quarter of student enrollment did not show up for more than 10% of the school days last year.
GOP Should Step Up for the Men Who Elected Them
The voting bloc that swung to the Republican side last November to give the GOP control of the White House and Congress was men under 30, who have traditionally voted Democrat by large majorities. They shifted by double-digits from Biden in 2020 to Trump and Republicans in 2024.
But congressional Republicans are doing nothing for young men to retain their support, and those voters may return to the Democrat Party if this inattention by the GOP continues. For younger men and for fathers who have sons in high school, a top issue is an opportunity to compete in college sports.
Trump issued an executive order July 24 to warn colleges against eliminating more sports teams in non-revenue, or Olympic, sports. Observing that “the future of college sports is under unprecedented threat,” Trump ordered the protection of college sports that are not money-makers for colleges, which is virtually every sport except football and basketball.
Bipartisan legislation to save college sports, called the SCORE Act, will be debated in the House when it returns after the August recess. Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Cory Booker (D-NJ) have also teamed up from opposite sides of the aisle in the Senate.
But it is former President Bill Clinton’s Department of Education regulation that makes men’s college sports an endangered species on the verge of extinction. Called the “proportionality test,” it requires that colleges eliminate men’s sports teams until the proportion of men in competitive sports at a college does not exceed the overall percentage of men enrolled in academic classes there.
This quota fails to recognize that an opportunity to play sports is what men look for in deciding whether to go to college, in contrast with the typical reasons why women make that decision. Women’s overall enrollment has increased to 60% at many colleges, so the quota forces cutting men’s teams down to only 40% of sports competitors.
The Olympic sport of men’s wrestling is an example. It is safer than football and better for physical conditioning and weight control, and is booming in high schools now. Participation has increased by 25% since 2022, to attain a record 45-year high of 300,000 boys competing in this high school sport.
A half-century ago there were 155 Division I college men’s wrestling teams, but today there are only 79. That is nowhere near enough to support the demand for wrestling by boys who graduate from high school and are looking to attend college to continue their love of this terrific sport.
Newly elected conservative Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH) wrote a letter in February criticizing the decision by Cleveland State University to eliminate its men’s wrestling program. Wrestling is inexpensive, needing only a spongy mat and a coach, and this program was profitable at Cleveland State University as it has been at most colleges that have eliminated it.
“On behalf of my constituents, I would like to have an open and thorough discussion on this matter as many Ohioans, myself included, found this decision disquieting,” Sen. Moreno wrote. He pointed out that the school’s wrestlers had the second-highest GPA among Division I wrestling programs, behind only Harvard.
Save Cleveland State Wrestling brought together alumni, wrestlers at the college, and their parents, and it could easily raise any funds needed for the program. But while colleges never admit this, Bill Clinton’s Department of Education’s proportionality test is usually the real reason that these wrestling programs are eliminated.
Women comprise 55% of the student body at Cleveland State, which means that men’s sports participants can total only 45% of overall participation. Teams that have many members, like wrestling, track, swimming, and baseball, are being eliminated due to Clinton’s misinterpretation of Title IX.
In June, lawfare against the NCAA for additional compensation to college athletes culminated in a $2.8 billion settlement expected to impose enormous new financial burdens on athletic departments that are already stretched thin. This payout, which will enrich attorneys the most, will have the effect of ending many Olympic, non-revenue college teams.
“If you’re trying to stay compliant with Title IX, I don’t know how non-revenue men’s sports aren’t the sports that are more apt to be eliminated,” said Patrick Rishe, the sports business program executive director at Washington University in St. Louis. Recent examples include Grand Canyon University abruptly ending its men’s volleyball program days after it successfully reached the Final Four in the annual national tournament.
Saint Francis’ men’s basketball team was spectacular this year by qualifying for the March Madness tournament, but this college is shifting from Division I to III to avoid the tidal wave of expenses and changes about to hit. It complained that college sports are being taken away from playing for the “love of the game.”
Young men elected Republicans last November, and the GOP should help those who took them to the dance in D.C.
POTUS Trial Balloon on Pot
On August 11, President Trump floated a trial balloon to downgrade the federal ban on marijuana, and cannabis stocks skyrocketed by 25-40% on the news. This pro-marijuana change is something that the pot industry had hoped Biden would do for them, but never expected it from the Republican side.
Last November, 4 out of 5 Republican states defeated heavily funded ballot initiatives to legalize marijuana, with more than 75% of Trump’s supporters voting against the drug. Someone is giving Trump bad advice by encouraging him to give a shot in the arm to cannabis, which is the name preferred by marijuana dealers.
Marijuana farms are magnets for illegal aliens, and also exploiters of forced child labor. In July, a raid by Homeland Security at two of these farms in California netted the arrest of 361 illegal aliens, who included criminals convicted of rape, serial burglary, DUIs, and hit-and-run.
Federal law enforcement agents had to overcome more than 500 rioters who tried to block these arrests, one of whom shot at the agents while other protesters damaged vehicles. A total of 14 children were found working at these two locations.
The marijuana farms had licenses to operate, but there are many thousands of illegal marijuana farms today. In California, most of the licenses granted to grow marijuana have gone inactive, as the illegal grows run by criminal gangs have infiltrated the supply of pot.
Despite the proliferation of crime, much of it by illegal aliens, Trump is being pressured to reclassify marijuana as a less harmful Schedule III drug, like steroids or Tylenol with codeine. Currently marijuana is classified by the federal government in Schedule I, which is the category of drugs including cocaine that are prohibited for any purpose.
This reclassification by the federal government would enable marijuana sellers to take tax deductions for their business expenses, such as television and internet advertising. IRS Code Section 280E prohibits Schedule I drug dealers from deducting business expenses other than the cost of goods sold, and if this changes then pot promotion will become pervasive.
The potency of marijuana has sharply increased since a generation ago, as its THC content grew by 21% between 1995 and 2015 alone. A 2022 study found that 12% of drug-related emergency department visits were due to marijuana, most often for cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome, which is severe stomach pain and vomiting that afflicts long-term consumers of the drug.
The CDC warns that 30% of marijuana users develop cannabis use disorder, which includes an increased likelihood of “problems with attention, memory, and learning” and reckless car-driving while under the influence of the drug. Like many addictions, there is a never-ending increased craving in desperation by marijuana users for more to attain the same “high” as before.
Voters in Oklahoma rejected legalizing marijuana for recreational use in 2023, while the state has been overrun by 3,000 illegal farms controlled by Chinese gangs to export this weed to other states. In June Oklahoma’s Attorney General announced a drug bust of 40,723 marijuana plants and more than 1,000 pounds of processed marijuana.
While there has been talk about prohibiting the purchase of American farmland by China, the expansion of marijuana farms is a greater problem. In addition to Oklahoma, the States of California, Maine, Massachusetts, and Oregon all have a problem with Chinese gangs controlling marijuana operations.
Legalizing or downgrading the classification of pot was not a campaign promise by Trump, but was instead an idea raised by a donor at a fundraising event in Bedminster, New Jersey, one of the liberal states that has legalized this harmful drug. Trump’s NJ country club is not surrounded by the pot operations and their foul odor that have driven people away from California, Oregon, and Colorado.
Californians complain about the “sewer-like” smell of marijuana as it has taken over the Golden State in the last decade, without any redeeming benefits. Earlier this year the Cathedral City town council adopted a moratorium on any expansion or new opening of a cannabis business because the “disgusting” odor has diminished the quality of life for residents and harms the environment.
The proliferation of illegal cannabis farms, which become impossible to stop once marijuana is embraced, has led to rampant use of harmful pesticides and chemicals that are unlawfully dumped directly into the environment to contaminate groundwater. Yet liberal environmentalists are mostly silent about this.
In late July, New York City announced that it would refuse to renew the licenses of more than 100 marijuana dispensaries that are illegally operating within 500 feet of a school. By April, D.C. authorities had closed 50 illegal dispensaries in its pot market exceeding $4 million in monthly sales, and these drugs may have worsened its crime epidemic.
