If Tim Kaine’s right, America’s founders were wrong



Riley Barnes appeared this week before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations for his nomination as assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. Normally, such a hearing would barely make the news. But then Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) spoke up.

You might remember the junior U.S. senator from Virginia as Hillary Clinton’s failed running mate in 2016. On Wednesday, he revealed he wouldn’t make a very good U.S. history professor either.

If rights come from God, then no politician — not Trump, not Kaine, not anyone — can take them away.

Barnes made a simple and obvious point — one that any elementary school student in a classroom still reading the Declaration of Independence (a rarity these days in public schools) would recognize. He said:

In his first remarks to State Department employees, Secretary [Marco] Rubio emphasized that we are a nation founded on a powerful principle: All men are created equal, because our rights come from God our creator — not from our laws, not from our governments.

That’s almost word-for-word from the Declaration of Independence.

Barnes continued:

We are a nation of individuals, each made in the image of God and possessing an inherent dignity. This is a truth our founders understood as essential to American self-government.

That second point, while not a direct quote from the Declaration, clearly flows from it. We have dignity because we are made by God, not by blind chance. And we have dignity above the rest of creation because we are made in His image, with rational souls and moral responsibility.

Most importantly, Barnes emphasized: “Natural rights are a blessing and an immutable reality.”

Governments change. Officials come and go. But America’s founders wanted human rights grounded in something unchanging. Rights granted by a government can be taken away by a government. Rights given by God cannot. That’s why the Declaration calls them “unalienable.”

The Kaine mutiny

Kaine’s response to Barnes was revealing. He worried that if we say rights come from God, we are on the brink of turning into theocratic Iran after 250 years of freedom from God. He insisted that governments — not God — give us our rights.

This is the logic behind much of the modern left. It explains why leftists defend ending a human life in elective abortion, treat children as property of the state that parents only borrow, and impose endless mandates on citizens — from useless masks to DEI speech codes. If rights come from the government, then the government can take them away whenever it wants.

This moment recalled then-Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) grilling Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas decades ago about his belief in natural law. “Which natural law?” Biden asked smugly, as if he had just delivered the ultimate gotcha. Like Kaine, Biden only managed to display his ignorance.

Can we know God?

Kaine claims that appealing to God makes America no different from Iran. But this ignores two things:

  1. Christianity and Islam are not the same. Islam teaches that forgiveness comes through obedience to its five pillars. Christianity teaches that justification is by faith in Christ alone; even perfect law-keeping from this day forward cannot erase past sin.
  2. The real issue is knowledge, not theocracy. Can we know the true and living God? Or are we trapped in skepticism, left to rely on politicians’ shifting opinions?

Kaine assumes appeals to God are just private religious opinions with no claim to truth. He insists we must build our laws only on government authority rather than a religious leader. But this skepticism undermines knowing everything else — including government itself.

RELATED: Self-evident truths aren’t so self-evident any more

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If there is no unchanging standard, how does any ruler know what is just or unjust, good or evil? Personal feelings? Evolutionary accidents? Political popularity? That is an incoherent theory of law. And it tells us why Democrats rely so heavily on appeals to emotion rather than sound arguments.

Why this matters

What Kaine and others like him call us to do — unwittingly — is rise to the challenge. We must show that God is real, that His existence is clear, and that rights grounded in Him are unchangeable because they rest on divine reality, not shifting political power.

It’s helpful when Democrats like Kaine stumble so publicly. They expose the intellectual vacuum at the heart of modern secularism. The question for us is whether we will rise to the moment and defend the truths in the Declaration of Independence — truths that remain self-evident because they come from God, not government.

The American project anchors freedom not in government permission slips but in the God who created us. That is what Kaine and the left cannot admit. Because if rights come from God, then no politician — not Trump, not Kaine, not anyone — can take them away. And that truth, still self-evident after nearly 250 years, remains the foundation of American liberty.

How gay ‘marriage’ made today’s gender madness possible



Gay marriage was not just a step down the slippery slope toward today’s transgender dystopia. It was the first manifestation of it. Now that a broad reawakening has exposed the harms of gender ideology and the denial of natural law, Republicans must press beyond protecting women’s sports and opposing child castration. They must return to the root of the problem: the redefinition of marriage itself.

Marriage is the foundation of human civilization, not a mere “social construct.” While many forms of loving relationships exist, only the lifelong bond of one man and one woman procreates, raises, and nurtures the next generation. That bond anchors family, faith, and culture. When the Supreme Court decreed that two men or two women living together could constitute a marriage, it blurred the difference between man and woman, mother and father. That was, in essence, the normalization of transgenderism.

To restore truth, Republicans must confront Obergefell and undo the lie that two men or two women can ever stand in for a husband and wife.

The rot spread quickly. Following the 2015 Obergefell decision, courts and legislatures treated same-sex households as identical to mother-father families, even in adoption. Thousands of children were placed into homes where the distinction between mother and father was obliterated. In 2017, the Supreme Court forced states to falsify birth certificates, treating lesbian partners as if one were the biological father.

In Pavan v. Smith, the court required Arkansas to list both lesbian partners as biological parents when one conceived through artificial insemination. The state already recognized same-sex couples under Obergefell and recorded non-biological parents accordingly.

But the plaintiffs demanded more: that their arrangement be treated as biologically identical to a natural family. Justice Neil Gorsuch, in dissent, noted that states had every interest in preserving the integrity of birth records for public health, citizenship, and genetic history. Yet the court pressed forward in defiance of nature, reason, and common sense.

Republicans must not flinch

Despite this, some Republicans now claim we can separate the fight against transgenderism from the fight against gay marriage. They are wrong. Even if one tolerates homosexuality in a secular society, that does not justify redefining marriage and giving gay couples adoption rights. Doing so enshrines the very gender-bending myth conservatives claim to oppose — the idea that man and woman, mother and father, are interchangeable.

The Kim Davis case, potentially headed to the Supreme Court next term, offers an opportunity to revisit this question. Conservatives should prepare the ground now. Republican elected officials must file amicus briefs signaling to wavering justices that this is a political priority. After Dobbs, which affirmed the Glucksberg standard that a right must be “deeply rooted in the Nation’s history and tradition,” Obergefell looks even weaker than Roe v. Wade. The court will need political momentum to act consistently with its own reasoning.

But legal strategy is not enough. Conservatives must also build political support in the states to sustain any reversal. That means pushing back against gay adoptions and re-establishing natural marriage as the baseline. You cannot ridicule transgenderism while placing a child in a household with two men and pretending the child has a mother.

Last year’s Republican National Convention stripped support for natural marriage from the party platform. Now Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has promised a presidential-style GOP convention before the midterms. That convention should be the place where Republicans right the ship, restore clarity, and rally around one of the most self-evident truths in human history.

RELATED: Trans is the natural progression from ‘gay marriage’

Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

The path forward

The fight against transgender ideology will collapse if conservatives refuse to confront its root: the redefinition of marriage. To pretend the two issues can be separated is to accept the very logic we claim to reject.

Republicans cannot stop at banning surgeries on minors or protecting girls’ sports. Those are necessary but not sufficient. To restore truth, they must confront Obergefell and undo the lie that two men or two women can ever stand in for a husband and wife.

Marriage is not a slogan or a lifestyle choice. It is the union that anchors family, culture, and civilization itself. To defend that truth is to defend reality. To surrender it is to let the entire edifice fall.

The God-given idea that helped make America great — and can save us again



Well before America’s founders drafted the Constitution, they understood that they had a national security problem rooted in economic and technological gaps.

Colonial America supplied Britain with raw materials, and the motherland traded us finished goods. That was tolerable then, despite its one-sided nature.

The intellectual property framework the founders designed democratized invention and creativity — and rewarded merit.

Then, Great Britain crossed the Rubicon. It unilaterally levied taxes on the colonies with the Sugar Act, which colonial resistance caused to be repealed. The Stamp Act of 1765 also imposed taxes without colonial consent. Then the taxes and regulations of the Townshend Acts further stirred colonial anger.

Revolutionary sentiments brewed, with public protests resulting in the Boston Massacre of 1770 and the “tea parties” in 1773 and 1774. Finally, combat broke out at Lexington and Concord in 1775.

Britain had the economic and military advantage over the largely agricultural colonies, which suffered chronic shortages of guns, gunpowder, blankets, and shoes.

Flourish by design

For America to survive as an independent nation, the model had to change. It needed to promote rapid economic and technological advancement. It needed a policy that coupled economic liberty with property rights.

The founders set a course for achieving what Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution calls “the progress of science and useful arts.” This was done “by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.”

The intellectual property framework the founders designed democratized invention and creativity — and rewarded merit. The Constitution was crafted to secure and enable an individual’s rights, including patent rights to the property someone created.

The founders understood that the ownership right would help unleash human flourishing. They had learned this from the Bible, the legacy of the Reformation, and great minds such as Edward Coke, William Blackstone, and John Locke.

Biblical basis

Property rights incentivized creative endeavors, which is precisely what the framers sought to do.

The biblical framework for invention and creativity flows from foundational truths. He who created the universe (e.g., Genesis 1:1, Job 38, Psalm 8:1-5) also claims ownership of His creation (e.g., Deuteronomy 10:14, Psalm 24:1, Isaiah 64:8).

RELATED: The American principle: There can be no blessings without God in our lives

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Moreover, God not only creates and owns, but He communicates those attributes to human beings, the creature who bears His image and is charged with stewardship of the lower creation (e.g., Genesis 1:26-30, Psalm 8:6-8, Micah 4:4). The founders applied this combination of creativity and ownership as the formula for maximizing human flourishing.

This resulted in America growing from a vulnerable agrarian society to the world’s premier industrial economy. By the 20th century, the United States led the world in economic and technological strength.

Our golden age

The golden age of American patenting started in 1836, when Congress established a dedicated U.S. Patent Office.

When someone produced a novel invention, he was awarded a patent. Applicants could appeal patent denials to impartial chief examiners — and they could obtain review in a federal court. A patent had a 14-year term from the date it was issued. Economic historian Zorina Khan notes in "The Democratization of Invention" that a seven-year extension could be provided to ensure “reasonable remuneration for the time, ingenuity, and expense bestowed” in developing and bringing an invention to market.

This system embodied the founders’ vision, implementing the biblical model of human creativity incentivized by secure ownership. This creativity-ownership combination has clearly stimulated mass flourishing in America, where we have experienced wealth creation and prosperity in vast measure.

Today, we approach the 250th anniversary of our independence, knowing what the founders did not: The American experiment turned out quite well.

Yet keen observers are less sanguine about our future.

Creative comeback

In recent years, the federal government has undermined the successful intellectual property model the founders gave us.

For example, a cardinal rule of the patent process was maintaining the confidentiality of inventions for which a patent was sought but not yet granted. But then the Clinton administration and Congress began publishing U.S. patents that were still being examined. Cutting-edge American technology was being transferred to Japan and China before an inventor’s exclusive legal rights had been secured at home.

RELATED: China’s greatest export isn’t steel — it’s industrial theft

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The 2011 America Invents Act wiped out several useful elements of the Patent Act. It established the quasi-judicial Patent Trial and Appeal Board, before which anyone can challenge and more easily invalidate issued patents. Today, the PTAB destroys value and wealth in newly created property, the very inventions that promise American leadership in the most cutting-edge technologies.

The United States is now falling behind in global technological leadership — but we must out-innovate foreign competitors, particularly China.

America must relink ownership with creativity to incentivize creativity through reliable, enforceable property rights. Secure IP rights coupled with economic freedom are pro-growth policy, just as much as the right tax policies.

To re-establish America’s technological and economic prowess, we must return to God’s design — that which the founders adopted with world-changing success.

One declaration sparked a nation. The other sparks confusion.



This week, my university emailed a Fourth of July reflection that caught my attention. It claimed the “backbone of our independence” is entrepreneurship and praised secular universities as the seedbed of innovation — and, by extension, democracy itself.

I’m all for business. Enterprise, creativity, and free markets foster prosperity and reward initiative. But business doesn’t create liberty. It depends on liberty. Markets flourish only when justice, rights, and human dignity already exist. In other words, business is a fruit of independence, not its root.

Our freedoms — legal, political, scientific, and economic — grow best in soil nourished by the belief in human dignity grounded in something greater than man.

As we celebrate Independence Day, it’s worth remembering the true foundation of American freedom. The Declaration of Independence doesn’t just announce our break with Britain — it explains why that break was just. “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” it says, “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.”

That single sentence tells us where rights come from: not from governments or markets, but from God. Human equality doesn’t rest on ability, wealth, or status — qualities that always vary. It rests on the shared reality that each of us bears the image of the same Creator.

This truth isn’t just historical. It remains the cornerstone of liberty. Without it, terms like “human rights” or “justice” collapse into slogans. If rights don’t come from God, where do they come from? Who gives them? And who can take them away?

Contrast our Declaration with the United Nations’ 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. That document says people “have” rights — but doesn’t explain why or where they come from or why rights matter. It invokes no Creator, no image of God, no natural law, no self-evident truth or moral source beyond political consensus. Rights, it suggests, are whatever the international community agrees they are.

That’s a dangerous idea. If rights come from consensus, consensus can erase them. If governments or global committees grant rights, they can redefine or revoke them when convenient. There is no firm ground, only shifting sands.

Many Americans now prefer this softer, godless version of human dignity. They invoke justice but reject the Judge. They want rights without a Creator, happiness without truth, liberty without responsibility. But rights without God offer no security — and happiness without God dissolves into fantasy. It’s a mirage.

This project of cutting freedom off from its source cannot last. Our freedoms — legal, political, scientific, and economic — grow best in soil nourished by the belief in human dignity grounded in something greater than man.

RELATED: The most memorable epocha in the history of America

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We live in God’s world. That distinction matters. A society built on contracts negotiates rights. A society built on covenants honors obligations to the truth. The difference isn’t just theological — it’s civilizational.

By rejecting the Creator, we don’t advance progress. We erase the foundation that made progress possible. C.S. Lewis put it this way: “You cannot go on 'explaining away' forever: you will find that you have explained explanation itself away.”

Explain away God, and you explain away the reason rights exist.

So this Independence Day, remember what liberty really means — and what sustains it. We’re not free because we said so. We’re free because we answer to a law higher than any court or committee. We are created equal because we are created — period.

Entrepreneurship has its place. But the American experiment wasn’t born from a business plan. It began with a declaration that acknowledged God. If we want that experiment to endure, we must not forget what made it possible in the first place.

God’s justice doesn’t sleep — and the Supreme Court just proved it



In a landmark 6-3 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Tennessee’s ban on so-called gender-affirming care for minors. Wednesday’s ruling in United States v. Skrmetti affirms the state’s authority to protect children from irreversible medical interventions, declaring that such laws do not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

Tennessee’s Senate Bill 1 prohibits medical providers from prescribing puberty blockers, administering cross-sex hormones, or performing surgeries on minors for the purpose of treating gender dysphoria. With this ruling, the court established a powerful precedent, strengthening similar laws in more than two dozen states and shielding them from federal interference.

The Supreme Court now affirms what parents, pastors, and pediatricians have known for years: Children deserve protection — not ideological exploitation.

This is more than a legal or political victory. It’s a profoundly spiritual one.

Judgment in Pride Month

The timing of the court’s decision — handed down in the middle of Pride Month — is impossible to ignore. For years, the month of June has been co-opted to celebrate sexual perversion and radical gender ideology. Parades, corporate campaigns, and cultural rituals now elevate confusion and self-expression above truth and morality.

But God’s timing often intersects with the idols of a wayward culture.

Just as He once shattered the authority of Egypt’s gods through plagues and humiliated the pagan deities of Canaan through Israel’s victories, He now confronts the false gods of modern America. The gods of Pride Month have names: self-worship, mutilation, and moral relativism.

This ruling, like Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization before it, arrived in a season when the world celebrates rebellion. But God never abdicates. He acts — often decisively.

The right to protect children

Justice Clarence Thomas, writing in concurrence, emphasized the state’s legitimate interest in protecting children from unproven and dangerous procedures. “States could reasonably conclude,” he wrote, “that the level of young children's cognitive and emotional development inhibits their ability to consent to sex-transition treatments.”

Thomas reminded the nation that legislatures — not courts — are charged with protecting the vulnerable. The Constitution allows states to say no to radical experiments on children. That’s common sense. That’s moral responsibility.

RELATED: Matt Walsh’s crusade pays off: SCOTUS protects Tennessee kids from gender mutilation

Photo by Jason Davis/Getty Images for The Daily Wire

The court’s ruling also reinforces policies advanced by the Trump administration, which has taken steps to push back against transgender mandates. The court now affirms what parents, pastors, and pediatricians have known for years: Children deserve protection — not ideological exploitation.

‘The least of these’

At its core, this decision defends “the least of these" (Matthew 25:40). In Matthew 10:42, Jesus declares, “And if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones ... truly I tell you, that person will certainly not lose their reward.”

Advocates of transgender medicine call their approach “compassionate.” But compassion doesn’t mutilate. It doesn’t sterilize. It doesn’t tell children they were born in the wrong body.

Real compassion tells children the truth: They are fearfully and wonderfully made. God knit them together in their mother’s wombs (Psalm 139:13-14). He doesn’t make mistakes.

The lie that “God got your body wrong” devastates young minds. Puberty blockers, double mastectomies, and genital surgeries don’t bring peace. They usher in trauma, regret, and permanent damage.

By upholding these bans, the Supreme Court gives children the gift of time — time to grow, to mature, and to embrace their God-given identities without the pressure of irreversible decisions.

Tear down the idols

Now comes the charge to the church. This moment demands courage.

American culture has erected new high places. Gender ideology sits at the top. It demands worship, conformity, and silence. But like King Josiah, who tore down the altars of Baal, or Gideon, who smashed the Asherah poles, Christians must act.

Now is not the time for retreat. Now is not the time for timidity. The culture may roar, but the God of heaven still rules.

The Supreme Court’s ruling reminds believers that God still moves. He has not abandoned America. He still defends the innocent. He still topples idols.

Faithfulness bears fruit

Galatians 6:9 tells us not to grow weary in doing good. This ruling is the harvest of those who prayed, labored, and stood firm when the world called them hateful. Their perseverance bore fruit — in law, in policy, and in culture.

Let this be a turning point.

Let this be the moment when the nation remembers who created it. Let this be the moment when the church reclaims its voice. Let this be the moment when truth reasserts itself — and children are protected from those who would harm them in the name of progress.

America is not forsaken. God is still at work, and His purposes will prevail.

Trump’s truth about ‘due process’ has the left melting down



Tuesday’s congressional testimony from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem turned heads for all the wrong reasons. Pressed to define “habeas corpus,” she stumbled. And while I respect Noem, this moment revealed just how dangerously misunderstood one of our most vital legal protections has become — especially as it’s weaponized in the immigration debate.

Habeas corpus is not a loophole. It’s a shield. It’s the constitutional protection that prevents a government from detaining a person — any person — without first justifying the detention before a neutral judge. It doesn’t guarantee freedom. It demands due process. Prove it or release them.

Bureaucratic inertia, activist judges, and political cowardice have turned due process into a slow-motion invasion. And the left knows it.

And yet, this doctrine — so essential to our liberty — is now being twisted by the political left into something it was never meant to be: a free pass for illegal immigration.

The left wants to frame this as a matter of compassion and rights. Leftists ask: “What about habeas corpus for migrants?” The implication is clear: They see any attempt to enforce immigration law as an attack on civil liberties.

But that’s a lie. Habeas corpus is not an excuse for indefinite presence. It doesn’t guarantee that every person who crosses the border gets to stay. It simply requires that we follow a process — a just process.

And that’s exactly what President Donald Trump has proposed.

Habeas corpus, rightly understood

Habeas corpus is the front door to the courtroom. It simply requires the government to justify why someone is being held or detained. It’s not about citizenship. It’s about human dignity.

America’s founders knew this — and that’s why they extended the right to persons, not just citizens. Habeas corpus isn’t a pass to stay in America forever — it’s a demand for legal clarity: “Why are you holding me?” That’s it.

If the government has a lawful reason — such as illegal entry — then deportation is a legitimate outcome. And yet, the left treats any enforcement of immigration law as a betrayal of American ideals.

The danger today isn’t that habeas corpus is being ignored; it’s that it’s being hijacked. The system is being overwhelmed with bad-faith cases, endless appeals, and delays that stretch for years. Right now, the immigration courts are buried under 3.3 million pending cases. The average wait time to have your case heard is four years. In some places, people are being scheduled for court dates as far out in 2032. Where is the justice in that?

This is not compassion. This is national sabotage.

Weaponizing due process

The left uses this legal bottleneck as a weapon, not a shield. Democrats invoke due process as if it requires the government to play a never-ending shell game with public safety. But that’s not what due process means. Due process means the state must play by the rules. It means a judge hears a case. It means the law is applied justly and equally. It does not mean an open border by procedural default.

So no, Trump is not proposing the end of habeas corpus. He’s calling out a broken system and saying, out loud, what millions of Americans already know: If we don’t fix this, we don’t have a country.

This crisis wasn’t an accident — it was engineered. It’s a Cloward-Piven playbook, designed to overwhelm the system. Bureaucratic inertia, activist judges, and political cowardice have turned due process into a slow-motion invasion. And the left knows it.

Abandon the Constitution?

Remember, the Constitution is not a suicide pact. But how do we balance the Constitution and our national survival without descending into authoritarianism? Abandon the Constitution? No. Burn the house down to get rid of the rats? Absolutely not. The Constitution itself gives us the tools to take on this crisis head on.

The federal government has clear authority over immigration. Illegal presence in the United States is not a protected right. Congress has the power to deny entry, enforce expedited removals, and reject bogus asylum claims. Much of this is already authorized by law — it’s simply not being used.

RELATED: Trump shrugs at immigration law — here’s what he should have said

Photo by: Rodrigo Varela/NBC via Getty Images

President Trump’s idea is simple: Use the tools we already have. Declare the southern border a national security emergency. Establish temporary military tribunals for triage. Process asylum claims swiftly outside the clogged court system. Restore “Remain in Mexico” so that the border is no longer a remote court room. Appoint more immigration judges, assign them to high-volume areas, and hold streamlined hearings that still respect due process.

That’s not authoritarian. That’s leadership.

The path forward

Trump is not trying to destroy habeas corpus. He’s trying to save it from being twisted into a self-destructive parody of itself. Leftists have turned due process into delay, justice into gridlock, and they’re dragging the entire country into their chaos.

It’s time to draw the line. Protect habeas corpus. Use it lawfully. Use it wisely. And yes — use it to restore order at the border. Because if we lose that firewall, we lose the republic.

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The courts side with drag queens over parents ... again



To this day, courts insist you have no right to bodily autonomy when it comes to coerced vaccination and forced masking. They cite the “police powers” of the state as justification. But when the state uses those same powers to regulate public nudity or sexually explicit drag shows in front of children, suddenly the judiciary rediscovers the First Amendment.

In 2023, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed SB 1438, a commonsense law that barred businesses from knowingly admitting children to “adult live performances.” The law defined such performances as any show that “depicts or simulates nudity, sexual conduct, sexual excitement, or specific sexual activities ... [such as] lewd conduct, or the lewd exposure of prosthetic or imitation genitals or breasts.” Sounds reasonable.

Republicans made a strategic blunder by conceding to the myth that judges serve as final arbiters of public policy.

Yet last week, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2 to 1 that the law violated the First and 14th Amendments.

Even before getting to the legal merits, the scope of the ruling itself highlights the absurdity of universal injunctions against laws passed through the democratic process. The plaintiff, Hamburger Mary’s — a restaurant that occasionally hosted drag shows — wasn’t under investigation or facing prosecution. Still, the court granted standing to pre-emptively strike down the entire law.

Everyone agrees the state has the authority to regulate such matters. The court’s objection? Some of the law’s terms might be too vague and could potentially affect protected speech.

Even if the court’s argument on vagueness held water, it still lacked the authority to block the entire statute. Courts may grant relief only in specific cases where enforcement clearly exceeds constitutional limits. Judges do not have the power to veto legislation — especially when most of it falls well within a state’s lawful regulatory authority.

On the merits, the claim that terms like “lewd conduct” are unconstitutionally vague is nonsense. Legislators have used this language for centuries, and it has held up in court. The 11th Circuit should have overturned the district court’s injunction. But in 2023, only Justices Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch voted to stay it.

RELATED: How Trump can dismantle the imperial judiciary once and for all

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Let’s be honest: Americans used to enjoy far more freedom and a more faithful interpretation of the First Amendment — yet still lived under far stricter laws governing public indecency. Many of those laws remain on the books. The federal government itself once enforced the Comstock Act of 1873, which banned the mailing of “obscene,” “lewd,” or “lascivious” materials — including sex education. That law could be called vague, too, but the courts upheld it for decades.

As for the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, the idea that protecting children from lewd public displays somehow undermines civil rights would have stunned the amendment’s authors. James F. Wilson, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and architect of both the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the 14th Amendment, made the intent clear. “We are establishing no new right, declaring no new principle,” he said. “It is not the object of this bill to establish new rights, but to protect and enforce those which already belong to every citizen.”

Someone should have warned Wilson that his push to secure property rights for freed slaves would one day be twisted into a supposed constitutional right to expose minors to nudity.

Beyond the absurdity of the 11th Circuit’s ruling, the larger issue lies in the unchecked power courts now claim over legislation. The Florida case highlights a troubling truth: The Supreme Court lacks a reliable five-vote majority willing to overturn lower court decisions that undermine state authority. Just last week, all three Trump-appointed justices joined a ruling that reversed a sound Fifth Circuit decision limiting the removal of criminal aliens under the Alien Enemies Act.

We must now confront the deeper problem: Courts no longer merely interpret law — they nullify it. Florida’s experience shows that even with supermajority Republican control, conservative laws will not survive unless we challenge the false doctrine of judicial supremacy. The courts have become a roadblock, not a referee.

Republicans made a strategic blunder by conceding to the myth that judges serve as final arbiters of public policy. They promised their base that stacking the courts would be enough. It wasn’t. Instead of reforming the system, they legitimized it — and now they pay the price.

That price includes a legal regime where exposing children to sexually explicit performances passes as a constitutional right.

Unless lawmakers begin pushing back against the judiciary’s overreach, even the most modest conservative reforms will continue to fall — along with every last parental right and public standard along the way.

Memo to Democrats: ‘Oversight’ isn’t a get-out-of-jail-free card



Democrats and their media allies now argue that members of Congress hold a newly invented constitutional right to storm U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities. Their claim? Elected office grants them authority to resist arrest, trespass on federal property, and even assault law enforcement — all in the name of “oversight.”

This claim fails both legally and morally. The members involved should face prosecution for any crimes they committed, along with disciplinary action in the House of Representatives. For too long, the political class has treated immigration enforcement as a mere policy disagreement — as if wanting laws enforced and wanting them ignored were morally equivalent. In doing so, the left has normalized the historically abnormal: mass illegal immigration and the sabotage of our deportation systems. It’s time to treat these actions for what they are — criminal subversion of U.S. law.

No one gets to use 'oversight' as a pretext for criminal behavior.

Start with what happened last week in Newark, New Jersey. The instigators included New Jersey Democratic Reps. LaMonica McIver, Bonnie Watson Coleman, and Rob Menendez Jr., along with Newark Mayor Ras Baraka. Baraka was arrested for trespassing and defying multiple warnings to leave the premises. According to Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin, body camera footage shows “members of Congress assaulting our ICE enforcement officers, including body-slamming a female ICE officer.” DHS plans to release the video soon.

The Democrats have mounted two defenses. First, they claim victimhood — insisting they broke no laws. That argument will not survive video evidence.

Second, they assert an absolute right to enter ICE facilities without warning under their oversight authority. Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), ranking member of the Homeland Security Committee, defended the stunt by denouncing ICE as “Trump’s stormtroopers” and promising “more oversight — and more unannounced visits.”

Thompson and others cite an appropriations law that says, “Nothing in this section may be construed to require a Member of Congress to provide prior notice of the intent to enter a facility ... for the purpose of conducting oversight.”

That phrase — “conducting oversight” — is the entire ballgame.

The fact is, oversight powers do not belong to individual members of Congress. They belong to the full House, delegated through formal committees led by majority-party chairmen. Minority members cannot issue subpoenas or demand access on their own. Without authorization from Chairman Mark Green (R-Tenn.), the Democrats on the Homeland Security Committee had no legal basis to enter — let alone rush — a secure ICE facility.

ICE’s past policy of accommodating visits reflects executive discretion, not any congressional right. No one gets to use “oversight” as a pretext for criminal behavior. Even with proper authorization, no member of Congress holds the right to use force to conduct an inspection. This is a political argument masquerading as a legal one.

U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Alina Habba has indicated she will proceed with prosecution. Her decision should rest solely on the facts — not the convenient legal fiction of “oversight amnesty.” As Bennie Thompson himself once said when chairing the January 6 select committee, “No one is above the law.”

Congress should not let this incident pass without consequences. While expulsion may prove unlikely due to the two-thirds vote requirement, the House can and should remove these members from their committee assignments. Rep. McIver currently sits on the Homeland Security Committee, where Secretary Kristi Noem is scheduled to testify this week. Let her watch from the hallway.

Iowa is poised to be first in the nation — again!



My little state of Iowa has played a pivotal role in shaping national politics for decades. It began in 1976 with the Iowa caucuses, where many viewed Ronald Reagan as a washed-up politician. Yet, the former California governor challenged a sitting president in the state’s first-ever caucus, setting off political reverberations that reshaped the Republican Party and American politics.

That same year, a little-known Georgia governor, Jimmy Carter, pulled off a major upset in Iowa, launching his path to the presidency. Decades later, Barack Obama’s road to the White House likely would have ended if he hadn’t defeated Hillary Clinton in the Hawkeye State. Iowa also made history by becoming the first state to remove three Supreme Court justices in a retention election, rejecting their ruling on same-sex marriage and striking a blow against the canard of judicial supremacy.

The gloves are off, and lawmakers are being reminded that what may have been a safe election in the past might not stay that way in the future.

Now, with fewer than four million residents, Iowa again has a chance to shift the nation’s political direction. This week, the Iowa Legislature is poised to make it the first state to strip gender identity protections from its civil rights code. And you can bet if this happens in Iowa, the impact will extend far beyond our borders, shaping the national political debate for years to come.

“It’s pretty simple,” said Chuck Hurley, vice president and chief legal counsel for the Family Leader family policy center. “A male is a man, a female is a woman. Gender identity, which was put into the Iowa Civil Rights Code in 2007, 18 years ago, has been a pathetic mistake. It’s allowed men into women’s spaces. It’s forced taxpayers to spend several million dollars on mutilating healthy body parts of people.”

So in a state where Democrats are vastly outnumbered and with President Donald Trump providing more cover than ever before on this issue by slaying Maine’s governor for her trans madness in broad daylight last week, why worry? Well, for the same reason as always: feckless Republicans.

“We already had two Republicans who have gone on the record in opposition to the bill,” said Josiah Oleson, the Family Leader’s elections director. “What’s interesting is you would expect that those Republicans would come from a weak suburban seat that is going to be a tough re-election. But the two who have actually bailed both come from pretty Republican seats that voted for Trump by heavy margins this last fall.”

“So you’re left with the option that they might actually believe this ideology, which is just ridiculous,” Oleson continued. “One of the legislators in the statement he put out in opposition to the bill said that he was afraid that if we didn't allow people to put their preferred gender on their birth certificate, that it might be a violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.”

Imagine the reaction if someone had made this argument about gender just a few decades ago — let alone in the 19th century. Anyone pushing such a position now should resign from the legislature out of shame.

Fortunately for supporters of the bill, Hurley and Oleson believe there aren’t enough opponents to block its passage. But they also know how quickly fear can spread, so they’re taking no chances. The gloves are off, and lawmakers are being reminded that what may have been a safe election in the past might not stay that way in the future.

“Looking at the legislators we're concerned about, all but one or two of them didn't even have a primary opponent when they ran this last time,” Oleson said. “But we’re talking about a fundamental issue here that if we can’t agree that a man is a man and a woman is a woman in the conservative movement, then what are we even doing here?”

Hurley added that in his 35 years fighting for legislation at the Iowa State Capitol, one of the biggest problems Republicans have always had is "the people who run for office just because they want to be liked and they get in there and they realize, ‘Uh-oh, we’ve got a very polarized culture. Not everybody likes me anymore.’”

Do they really not understand that calling themselves Republicans won’t win them votes from the transgender mob? Well, let’s make darn sure this time we make them understand. While I’d like to believe strong arguments alone could accomplish that, my experience in broadcasting has shown me that sunlight is the best medicine for the nicer-than-God Republican when he is about to do something really stupid.

Every Iowan should take note of which legislators refuse to act in the wake of the recent federal election landslide. Voters in states like Arizona, Alabama, and South Carolina will be watching to see how Iowa leads with unapologetic clarity and conviction.

As I said before, Iowa has long set national trends, for better or worse. But now, as we debate fundamental issues of reality and decency, we cannot afford to falter. Iowa must lead.

Parental rights activist sounds alarm about in-school clinics that medicalize kids without parents' knowledge



Dozens of public schools across Maine have opened in-school HealthReach Community Health Centers that offer students birth control, vaccines, mental health care, and possibly sex-change drugs.

Some parents have taken issue with the federally funded medicalization of their children's schools, especially since Maine law allows clinics to administer certain drugs and services to kids without parental consent — an opportunity that has already been exploited.

HealthReach assistant director of operations Diandra Staples admitted in October that just last year, seven out of 181 students kept their parents in the dark about services rendered at the clinics, reported WGME-TV. "They'll probably remain confidential for their safety or because they may not have support at home," said Staples.

Alvin Lui, president of the parental rights advocacy group Courage Is a Habit, is sounding the alarm that following months of controversy and debate, a Maine school board "snuck" in a vote for Dec. 5 to install one such federally qualified health center in its district.

"They have to submit their agenda within 5 business days. They waited until Thanksgiving Eve hoping no one would be paying attention through the Thanksgiving holiday weekend," Lui told Blaze News. "If by chance a few parents realize it Tuesday or Wednesday, it would be too late to alert the community. That is what this MSAD 11 school board was counting on."

The "possible approval to host a Health Clinic at Gardiner Area High School in the 2025-2026 school year" is on the agenda for the Maine School Administrative District No. 11 board's Thursday meeting, where Staples is scheduled to give a presentation.

'All will happen immediately, without parental consent.'

"We were fortunate that amazing on-the-ground parents we work with were monitoring, knowing how unethical this school board is," added Lui.

When asked about the admitted instances of "confidential" student visits and whether parents will increasingly be kept in the dark about their kids' medicalization, Lui said, "They are doing the, 'It's not happening, it's not happening that much, but it's good it's happening a lot,' line of dishonest manipulation. The reason they gave for the seven children they had to treat without parental consent (parents are 'unsafe and abusive') will be the same reason they give for the next 70 children, the next 700, and eventually all children whose parents do not agree with transgender ideology and/or birth control."

"This is the same blueprint they used for keeping transgender secrets in schools and the Transgender Trafficking Bills we've been fighting," added Lu, referencing legislation like Maine's LD 227.

Although Courage Is a Habit and other parental rights activists were successful in defeating an earlier version, Gov. Janet Mills ratified Democratic state Rep. Anne Perry's LD 227 in April. LD 227 — which Lui previously referred to as the "Transgender Trafficker Protection Act" — prohibits "interference" with abortions or sex-change mutilations, protects medical practitioners from lawsuits, and conceals the known whereabouts of interstate child runaways from their parents, among other things.

Michelle Tucker, a newly elected member of the school board who has spoken out against state-mandated policies for transvestic students, noted in October, "They are children, and maybe they're not mature enough to make these decisions without parental support."

Lui suggested that whereas parents might be willing to push back against various medical interventions at school, "Children of any age will be paired with an affirm-only counselor or therapist to put them on the transgender path. Children will be given binders and tucking for transgender reasons. Girls will be able to obtain any and all types of birth control. All will happen immediately, without parental consent."

"Ultimately, all medical decisions will be made within school grounds, without parental consent, and all that will be needed is someone at the clinic to deem the parents 'unsafe and abusive,'" added Lui.

Blaze News reached out to the MSAD 11 superintendent's office as well as to HealthReach for comment but did not receive responses by deadline.

When the idea for the clinic at the Gardiner Area High School was first floated, Lindsay Hammes, spokeswoman for the Maine Department of Health and Human Services, said in a statement to the Kennebec Journal, "The school-based health centers enhance educational outcomes for students by limiting missed instructional time for external appointments, reducing absenteeism from chronic conditions, and decreasing disciplinary actions among students needing behavioral or medical support."

Ahead of the vote Thursday, Courage Is a Habit created an online form that community members can use in the final hours before the vote to deluge the board with emails expressing their concerns about the initiative.

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