What Did Trump Accomplish During His First 100 Days?

There has been much in the news about the first 100 days of the second Trump administration. It is as though the success or failure of the administration rests on the accomplishments of the first 100 days. It is true that there has been much pushback against the administration, but even left-leaning polls show President Donald Trump has high approval ratings. Victor Davis Hanson noted the following in his article published at The Daily Signal. 

But a recent poll by CNN showed that President Donald Trump had wide approval. Another poll has just come out where he was up to 54%. Given the media hostility, you would think that he would be completely negative, but he’s not. He has the confidence of the majority of the American people. Why is that? Let’s just take a quick tour of what he’s done in the first 100 days.

He has completely reversed 10,000 people coming in a day – over 300,000 a month, 12 million in four years – to essentially 97%, 98% of the border is secure. In fact, there is no open border now.

Now he has pivoted to try to address the 12 million people that former President Joe Biden not only let in but scattered all over the United States on often state, federal, and local subsidies. That’s gonna be a task. But he has shut the border....

He has revolutionized energy. There is no New Green Deal. There’s no electric vehicle mandate. We’re not going to be funding more boondoggles of high-speed rail. We’re going to burn clean coal, restore the Appalachian coal fields, those in the West as well. We’re leasing out new oil fields. We’re trying to get liquid national gas shipped to Europe, that’s in dire need of it. We’re continuing fracking.

We’re producing so much energy that the price of oil has gone – at one point in the Biden administration, it was $120 a barrel. It’s down to almost $60. And by the way, he’s not draining the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. And he won’t do that before a midterm. If anything, he will begin filling it again pretty soon.

On the diversity, equity, and inclusion front, he didn’t have to get into DEI…. He just said it’s over with because it violates the recent Supreme Court ruling that found that Harvard and the University of North Carolina were culpable for racist practices against Asian-American applicants.

The law is on Donald Trump’s side. The court decisions are on Donald Trump’s side. And now DEI is being purged from government auspices and private corporations….

And then suddenly everybody said he wiped out the stock market because he insisted on not just free trade but fair trade. And he said he was going to sanction China. And he did. Now all of a sudden we have 70 countries trying to negotiate. And as I’m speaking, nations such as Italy or Japan want to make a deal. What is a deal? A deal is they’re not going to run up surpluses at the same extent.

We have a $1.1 trillion trade deficit. Donald Trump is going to get in the next few weeks a few major nations, and once he does – to make a deal – all the others will not want to be without a chair when the music stops. They will want to follow. When they follow, China will be eager to negotiate because its efforts to get Europe on its side have failed.

If you look very quickly abroad, Donald Trump is still trying to find peace…. But he is getting frustrated by both sides [Russia and Ukraine]. And he’s putting renewed pressure.

In the Middle East, Iran is at its weakest point. Israel’s ready to take out the nuclear facilities…. And Donald Trump is not looking for an optional war. He’s telling the Iranians, “Time is running out. Settle. Dismantle your nuclear facilities or else.”

The Red Sea is open for navigation. The Houthis are in retreat….

China is very worried that its companies are gonna be delisted … from the stock market in the United States. They’re very worried. There are 300,000 students – that is their pipeline to the ex-appropriation of technology in the United States – might have to go home. There’s so many levers to pull against China and so much culpability on their part that I think they will make a deal.

So what am I getting at? Forget what the media says. Forget what his opponent said. Forget … all of these distractions. The first 100 days have been revolutionary. We’ve never seen anything like it, not during the Reagan administration, not during FDR, in terms of the magnitude of the changes. And that is why people are furious.

No one in their right mind thought anybody would try to stage a counterrevolution and be so successful in the first 100 days. [Emphasis added.]

The Biden administration made such a mess in and of our country that the Trump administration had to work quickly to plug all the holes and clean up the debris. Trump’s first administration had to clean up after the Obama administration, and Trump’s second administration now has to clean up after the Biden administration. When will Americans learn that liberal policies do not work in America? 

Why Are America’s Founding Documents Selling So Fast?

An interesting phenomenon often happens when the national administration changes. When a newly elected President of the United States starts making policy changes, people are understandably concerned. People wonder if the actions are constitutional – especially if the President represents a different political party.

Market research firm Circana began keeping track of purchases of America’s founding documents in 2004 and claims that they are selling faster in 2025 than in any previous year since 2004. Joshua Arnold believes that “the tumultuous state of America’s political affairs” could be the reason for the “rising civic interest.” 

The U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Federalist Papers have sold a combined 162,000 copies this year, Circana noted – and that’s only through mid-April. This is 76% higher than the same period in 2017, President Donald Trump’s first term in office, when these documents sold 92,000 copies, more than twice as many as in 2016. Sales totaled 58,000 over the same period in 2024 and 33,000 over the same period in 2023.

Circana analyst Brenda Connor said the record-high interest “is likely in response to the recent change of administration,” noting rising intrigue in other books about government as well. “We generally see increased sales of editions of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution every election cycle,” said Shannon DeVito, Barnes & Noble’s senior director of book strategy, “but particularly this year.”

In addition to the cyclical election spike in sales, DeVito also noted that the 250^th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, which will take place next July, may also play a role in the spiking demand.

Yet multiple analysts still suggested the record-high orders were due to “the fast and furious current political conversations and policy changes,” as DeVito put it. Indeed, political changes have been fast and furious, as the Trump administration swings the pendulum back from the Biden administration’s lawless leftism.

In less than 100 days, the Trump administration has undertaken massive downsizing and restructuring within the federal bureaucracy, slashed through one agency after another with the DOGE chainsaw, overhauled America’s tariff regime, and nearly abolished both USAID and the Department of Education. As if that weren’t enough, the Trump administration has picked fights with universities like Harvard over their rampant antisemitism, punished states like Maine over their refusal to protect girls’ sports, and played chicken with the federal court system on a host of issues. Not only has the Trump administration embraced rapid political changes, but it has also done so in ways that challenge longstanding liberal assumptions about how government is supposed to work and what it is supposed to do.

These changes evoke a range of emotions across the political spectrum. The Left is outraged, Trump’s base is enthused, while many ordinary Americans – those with only a casual understanding of politics – are merely bewildered. The question that pops into their head is, “Wait a minute, can they do that?”

And that is a legitimate question. Many Americans are not rabid political activists who broach the question merely as a prelude to a more hostile political broadside. They genuinely want to know.

But – due to another seismic shift that helps account for the record-high interest in

America’s founding documents – these curious Americans no longer trust the media to answer this question for them. In days gone by, they were too busy to research arcane legal issues for themselves. They trusted those whose job it was to research and report on the news to track down the answer for them.

Not anymore. In October 2024, Gallup recorded that a record-low 31% of Americans had “a great day/fair amount” of trust in mass media, compared to 33% who had “not very much” trust, and 36% who had “none at all.”

So, if Americans want to know what the Constitution allows, but they don’t trust the media to tell them the truth, the simplest solution is to return to the founding documents and read them for themselves….

Yet the more important – and salutary -- trend is that the increased demand for America’s founding documents indicates increased civic awareness. When Americans are studying the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution, and when they analyze the actions of their elected representatives through that lens, then they are thinking like citizens, not subjects. They will recognize the self-evident wisdom of our system of government. And these ordinary Americans will thereby be empowered to defend their system of government against all manner of authoritarian assaults.

Who Is Robert Muise?

My VIP for this week is Robert Muise, Co-Founder and Senior Counsel of American Freedom Law Center. This is a Judeo-Christian law firm that “filed a lawsuit challenging what the law firm called the state’s ‘Orwellian’ violation of its First Amendment rights.” The initial proceedings took place, and then “the case has been delayed since 2021.” Tyler O’Neil at The Daily Signal wrote the following about the case. 

“The U.S. Constitution does not permit the Michigan attorney general and the Michigan Department of Civil Rights to weaponize their government offices to target political opponents,” American Freedom Law Center Co-Founder and Senior Counsel Robert Muise told The Daily Signal on Friday. He stood by earlier comments calling the Hate Crimes Unit Orwellian.

In 2019, when he filed the lawsuit, Muise summarized Nessel’s policy this way: “We’re going to keep files on you.’ It’s Orwellian. It’s Big Brother. It’s the thought police.”

The American Freedom Law Center brought three claims against Nessel and Arbulu: violation of free speech rights under the First Amendment, violation of expressive association rights under the First Amendment, and violation of equal protection as guaranteed under the Fourteenth Amendment…..

The case proceeded in 2019, leading to depositions and discovery until both the center and the defendants filed dueling motions for “summary judgment” – asking the court to resolve the case in their favor – in January 2021.

The case remined in limbo for four years….

“On March 3, 2025, I filed a notice with the court, as I have done several other times, informing the court that our motion for summary judgment has been pending for four years and is ripe for a decision,” Muise told The Daily Signal. “In response, the court finally granted a hearing, which is scheduled for June 2.”

“As we demonstrated in our court filings, the defendants’ official endorsement of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of hate groups constitutes a concrete and particular reputational injury to my organization, the American Freedom Law Center, which is one of the many conservative groups wrongly targeted by the largely discredited SPLC,” the attorney said. “It is our hope that the court will grant our motion and stop this government attack of individuals and organizations based on their political and religious views.”

“This type of lawfare, which is engaged in by the Left, has to stop,” Muise added….

 

Does the Term “Karma” Reflect the Golden Rule?

The topic of discussion for this Constitution Monday is the fact that what goes around comes around. According to Victor Davis Hanson, this is “karma” in Eastern philosophy and religion. In Christianity, it is known as the “Golden Rule” – “Do unto others as you would like them to do unto you.” 

Hanson also discussed the danger of going too far in one direction “because there’s a force in the universe that corrects us and brings us back to the middle.” He said that this condition is called “the golden mean” in classical terms. He used the corruption seen in the American judicial system by four prosecutors over the last five years to what is happening now.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis in Georgia, who is trying to magnify a phone call that President Donald Trump made to the registrars into some type of RICO corruptive act. And it was not. And that case has been dropped.

We saw District Attorney Alvin Bragg in Manhattan try to bootstrap a federal offense – that the federal prosecutors did not want to prosecute – on a nondisclosure form and clam it was a campaign donation.

We saw former special counsel Jack Smith with the records. And that was asymmetrical because at the same time they were investigating former President Joe Biden for essentially the same crime and let him off.

And then we had New York Attorney General Letitia James on the real estate deal where she created, kind of, new laws that had never existed before on minor details about forms on real estate applications, about a loan to the Deutsche Bank that didn’t – they were happy.

But my point is this: They have exceeded what the Greeks called “hubris.” They were arrogant. They were overweening. They were self-righteous….

And what do we find out now? Jack Smith, the federal prosecutor, before he left his tenure, he went to the Covington law firm… and asked and received $140,000 of free legal services. Did he pay taxes on that? That’s above the gift tax….

Fani Willis, well, she was removed from the case, as you know, with her paramour – that she did not disclose – Nathan Wade, whom she made her lead prosecutor. They went on junkets. They didn’t record their expenses. Half of them, perhaps came from Nathan Wade’s wages that were inflated by Fani Willis. She wouldn’t turn over subpoenaed records. The court forced her to pay a fine of $54,000. They took her, as I said, off the case. Now she’s facing an investigative inquiry by the Georgia legislator. She’s in big trouble.

And then we get to Letitia James. She was the most confident and kept giving us soapbox lectures about, “No one is above the law.” It turns out that for years she was fudging on her real estate investments in an illegal fashion. But because Nemesis always deals in irony, some of the forms that she exaggerated on or lied about were the same things that she alleged that Donald Trump had done on his forms. But clearly, Donald Trump had a much better case, so far, that he didn’t do that.

She said an apartment unit had fewer rooms than it did. She said that her principal residence was in Virginia when, in fact, she was the New York district attorney, by statute she must live in New York those five years. The house that she purchased she’s not living in now. She listed her father as her husband. What am I getting at? She’s committing the same type of fraud that she’s alleging Donald Trump did.

I’ll just finish with, remember Stacey Abrams? She was the one that denied she lost the 2018 gubernatorial race. She lost by 50,000 votes. She lost it again to Brian Kemp in 2022 by even more, a greater margin.

She had a PAC or some kind of nonprofit, it had a hundred dollars in it. Then suddenly, when Biden’s on his way out of office, almost $2 billion go under her direction. And now we’re learning that she was giving millions of dollars away, bought a beautiful home, and suddenly went from bankruptcy and owing the IRS and not paying her taxes 2016 – she’s a millionaire. That’s going to be investigated.

Bottom line: Be very careful…. And no one is above the law. And all of these people felt that they were above the law. And that invisible hand of Nemesis, or God, or karma struck them down. And it’s a good lesson for all of us.

How Can We Become One?

My Come Follow Me studies for this week took me to Doctrine and Covenants 37-40 in a lesson titled “If Ye Are Not One Ye Are Not Mine.” The lesson was introduced by the following information.

To the early Saints, the Church was more than a place to hear some preaching on Sunday. The revelations used words like cause, kingdom, Zion, and, quite often, work. That may have been part of what attracted people to the restored Church. As much as they loved the doctrine, many also wanted something holy they could dedicate their lives to. Even so, obeying the Lord’s 1830 command to gather in Ohio was not easy. For many, it meant leaving comfortable homes for an unfamiliar frontier (see “Voices of the Restoration: Gathering to Ohio”). Today we can see clearly what those Saints could see only with the eye of faith: the Lord had great blessings waiting for them in Ohio.

The need to gather to Ohio has long since passed, but Saints today still unite around the same cause: to “bring forth Zion” (Doctrine and Covenants 39:13). Like those early Saints, we are invited to forsake “the cares of the world” (Doctrine and Covenants 40:2) and trust the Lord’s promise: “You shall receive … a blessing so great as you never have known” (Doctrine and Covenants 39:10). See also Saints, 1:109-11.

The scripture block for this week contained numerous principles including the following ones: (1) God gathers us to bless us (Doctrine and Covenants 37-38), (2) “Hear my voice and follow me” (Doctrine and Covenants 38:22), (3) If I am prepared, I don’t need to be afraid (Doctrine and Covenants 38:30), (4) God wants us to “be one” (Doctrine and Covenants 38:24-27), and (5) Heavenly Father wants to give me the riches of eternity (Doctrine and Covenants 38:39; 39-40).

This essay will discuss principle #4: God wants us to “be one” (Doctrine and Covenants 38:24-27). We will first look at the scripture block.

24 And let every man esteem his brother as himself, and practice virtue and holiness before me.

25 And again I say unto you, let every man esteem his brother as himself.

26 For what man among you having twelve sons, and is no respecter of them, and they serve him obediently, and he saith unto the one: Be thou clothed in robes and sit thou here; and to the other: Be thou clothed in rags and sit thou there—and looketh upon his sons and saith I am just?

27 Behold, this I have given unto you as a parable, and it is even as I am. I say unto you, be one; and if ye are not one ye are not mine. (Emphasis added.)

The Saints who gathered in Ohio came from a variety of circumstances, just as members of the Church of Jesus Christ do today. There are members of the Church who are billionaires and millionaires, and there are members of the Church who do not have housing or know where their next meal is coming from. The Lord is aware of our individual circumstances, but He also commands His people to “be one” (verse 27). This means that we need to be united in order to be God’s people. The following scripture verse comes to my mind when I consider the need for unity:

18 And the Lord called his people Zion, because they were of one heart and one mind, and dwelt in righteousness; and there was no poor among them (Moses 7:18).

How can we accomplish this kind of unity? Why do we need to be united in order to be God’s people? In his October 2021 General Conference address titled “The Peace of Christ Abolishes Enmity” (Liahona, Nov. 2021, 83-85),  Elder Dale G. Renlund of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles said the following: 

The [Covid-19] pandemic is also a spiritual stress test for the Savior’s Church and its members. The results are likewise mixed. Our lives have been blessed by ministering in a “higher and holier way,” the Come, Follow Me curriculum, and home-centered, Church-supported gospel learning. Many have provided compassionate help and comfort during these difficult times and continue to do so.

Yet, in some instances, the spiritual stress test has shown tendencies toward contention and divisiveness. This suggests that we have work to do to change our hearts and to become unified as the Savior’s true disciples. This is not a new challenge, but it is a critical one.

When the Savior visited the Nephites, He taught, “There shall be no disputations among you…. He that hath the spirit of contention is not of me, but is of the devil, who is the father of contention, and he stirreth up the hearts of men to contend with anger, one with another.” Then we contend with each other in anger, Satan laughs and the God of heaven weeps. Satan laughs and God weeps for at least two reasons. First, contention weakens our collective witness to the world of Jesus Christ and the redemption that comes through His “merits, … mercy, and grace.” … Second, contention is spiritually unhealthy for us as individuals. We are robbed of peace, joy, and rest, and our ability to feel the Spirit is compromised….

Even former enemies can become united in their discipleship of the Savior. In 2006, I attended the dedication of the Helsinki Finland Temple to honor my father and grandparents, who had been early converts to the Church in Finland. At the time, the temple district would encompass Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, and Russia.

At the dedication, I learned something surprising. The first day of general operation had been set aside for Russian members to perform temple ordinances. It is difficult to explain just how astonishing this was. Russia and Finland had fought many wars over the centuries. My father distrusted and disliked not only Russia but all Russians. He had expressed such feelings passionately, and his feelings were typical of Finnish enmity toward Russia. He had memorized epic poems that chronicled 19^th-century warfare between Finns and Russians. His experiences during World War II, when Finland and Russia were again antagonists, did nothing to change his opinions.

A year before the dedication of the Helsinki Finland Temple, the temple committee, consisting exclusively of Finnish members, met to discuss plans for the dedication. During the meeting, someone observed that Russian Saints would be traveling several days to attend the dedication and might hope to receive their temple blessings before returning home. The committee chairman, Brother Sven Eklund, suggested that the Finns could wait a little longer, that Russians could be the first members to perform temple ordinances in the temple. All committee members agreed. Faithful Latter-day Saint Finns delayed their temple blessings to accommodate Russian Saints.

The Area President who was present at that temple committee meeting, Elder Dennis B. Neuenschwander, later wrote: “I have never been prouder of the Finns than I was at this moment. Finland’s difficult history with its eastern neighbor … and their excitement of finally having [a temple] constructed on their own soil were put aside. Permitting the Russians to enter the temple first [was] a statement of love and sacrifice.”

When I reported this kindness to my father, his heart melted and he wept, a very rare occurrence for that stoic Finn. From that time until his death three years later, he never expressed another negative sentiment about Russia. Inspired by the example of his fellow Finns, my father chose to place his discipleship of Jesus Christ above all other considerations. The Finns were no less Finnish; the Russians were no less Russian; neither group abandoned their culture, history, or experiences to banish enmity. They did not need to. Instead, they chose to make their discipleship of Jesus Christ their primary consideration.

If they can do it, so can we. We can bring our heritage, culture, and experiences to the Church of Jesus Christ. Samuel did not shy away from his heritage as a Lamanite, nor did Mormon shy away from his as a Nephite. But each put his discipleship of the Savior first.

If we are not one, we are not His. My invitation is to be valiant in putting our love of God and discipleship of the Savior above all other considerations. Let us uphold the covenant inherent in our discipleship – the covenant to be one.

Why Is Correct History Important?

Families, communities, states, and nations are stronger when the rising generations are taught correct history. Various individuals and organizations often seek to hide bad history. When President Donald Trump unclassified the papers surrounding the killing of President John F. Kennedy, Americans began to get answers to their various questions about things that did not make sense.

According to Jarrett Stepman at The Daily Signal, Democrats are seeking to hide “one of the biggest scandals in American political history” – the coverup of the infirmity of President Joe Biden while he was President of the United States. Stepman believes that there is an even bigger “fiasco of the Biden presidency” – “how his administration fully leaned into the ‘great awokening’ despite his campaign message of returning to normalcy.” 

A report from The New York Times on Tuesday highlighted how Biden ultimately ceded ground to his left flank on issues such as forcing schools to allow men in women’s sports with little opposition despite his trepidation. The former president, who ran as some kind of moderate, barely performed the function of a speed bump to the Left’s desires. It’s that legacy Democrats and their media enablers will try to make you forget. With a chief executive essentially out on a four-year lid, the Left’s political machine worked on autopilot.

They flooded the country with illegal aliens, completely circumventing the laws of our nation and creating a ginormous mess for the succeeding regime to deal with. They pushed DEI into the government. They forced transgender insanity onto K-12 campuses and Easter was used to celebrate a “Trans Day of Visibility.”

They stumbled and bumbled aimlessly in foreign policy with no more of a strategy than to keep up the narrative that they were fighting for “democracy” against authoritarians while using government tools to silence their domestic opponents.

All this while the president snoozed at the beach.

As a result, Democrats were ultimately swept out of office and fell to their lowest popularity in the history of polling.

However, despite being obviously so far gone, Biden lingers like old cigarette smoke clinging to a jacket. He emerged from the woodwork recently to make a bizarre and stuttering speech that simply reminded everyone about the chasm in energy levels between him and President Donald Trump.

The Left just can’t make this problem go away, even if they want to. Some Democrats are trying to use Biden’s ill health to make excuses for their party’s failures while giving themselves the out that they had no idea Biden was in such bad shape….

Whereas up until the moment of Biden’s catastrophic presidential debate most legacy and leftwing media were still programmed to say that questions about Biden’s health were right wing conspiracies, they are now actually prodding Democrat politicians if the subject comes up at all.

Don’t think for a moment this is because of some sudden commitment to journalistic integrity or anything like that. When it became clear that Biden was no longer useful and that he had become an outright impediment to the Left’s power they turned on him.

What’s happening is that the media is going into a phone “mea culpa” mode to in part help Democrats pin their troubles entirely on Biden’s health and lack of energy rather than the Left’s policies and ideology.

The reason Biden’s successor as candidate, former Vice President Kamala Harris, was torched by Trump in the 2024 election and that nearly every demographic shifted to the right was not just because Biden was a do-nothing president (though that certainly didn’t help).

The issue was that Democrat ideas, their policies, and the cultural values they were foisting on the country were absolutely loathed. They embraced issues like defunding the police and forcing women’s sports leagues to admit biological men. On issue after issue, Democrats supported positions that were massively unpopular with Americans, though massively popular with elite institutions.

Once the legacy media narrative machine really cracked there was a bottoming out for a Democratic Party that for too long had coasted on their institutional advantages.

Now Democrats are locked into continuing support for those deeply unpopular issues despite some of the craftier members of the party trying to shift the rhetoric if not the policies.

They are banking on Americans having memory loss, just like Biden, and convincing everyone that the previous president’s failures were an anomaly, that the country hadn’t fallen into a deep malaise that they caused, and that Trump is disrupting a political system that was working smoothly and efficiently with just a bit of trouble at the top.

The media’s gaslighting and Democrat denials about Biden’s health were not the only problem, they were symptoms of a larger issue of America’s elite institutional corruption. Now that the corruption has been exposed to the American people, they are desperately trying to rewrite history.

Today’s parents should seek to have children who know what actually happened. This is a tough assignment, particularly for parents who lean left and may not want their children to know the truth about the coverup. However, if parents do not teach correct history, the information could be lost to a large portion of the American population.

By sharing the truth with their children and grandchildren, parents and grandparents can avoid the necessity for a future POTUS to “declassify” information. By ensuring that their children know the truth, they can strengthen their family, community, state, and nation.

What Are Parental Rights With Regard to Their Children’s Education?

The liberty principle for this Freedom Friday concerns the right of parents to determine what and when their children are taught. The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments this week concerning Mahmoud v. Taylor, a case about LGBTQ books being taught to young children (ages 4 or 5 to 11) in the Montgomery County public school system. A decision in the case is expected by the end of June. Fred Lucas shared four takeaways from the court proceedings in his article published at The Daily Signal. 4 

1. Coercion or Mere Exposure?

Age aside, the oral arguments before the Supreme Court centered on whether the books were mere exposure or coercion violating the religious beliefs of parents.

“You said that nothing in the policy requires students to affirm what is being taught or what is being presented in the books. Is that a realistic concept when you are talking about a 5-year-old?” Roberts asked….

Schoenfeld framed this as similar to a 1943 Supreme Court precedent on the Pledge of Allegiance in the case of Barnette v. West Virginia State Board of Education.

“I would point the court to Barnette. The kids were young. They were 8 and 10, and the court made a distinction between being required to pledge allegiance and affirm a belief in a graven image and merely being required to remain passive during the pledge ceremony, and being instructed on what the pledge was, what the flag was and what it meant,” Schoenfeld said.

[Justice Neil Gorsuch asked, “Is that exposure or is that something else for a 3-, 5-year-old?”]

Schoenfeld replied, “It is exposure to particular ideas in teaching students to be civil in the classroom.” [As a parent, I would not want my young child to be “exposed” to anything of a sexual nature.]

2. Pull Your Child From Public School, If You Don’t Like It

During the arguments, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson suggested to Baxter, the lawyer for the parents, that it’s not coercion because children can attend private schools or be homeschooled.

“Assuming there is no opt-out in this environment, are students being coerced into being in that school at all?” Brown asked.

“… I’m struggling to see how it burdens a parent’s religious exercise if the school teaches something the parent disagrees with. You have a choice. You can put them in another situation. You can homeschool them. How is that a burden on the parent?”

Baxter replied: “In the world we live in, most parents don’t have that option. We have two working parents. That’s the reality for our parents.”

Jackson countered, “In so many other constitutional doctrines, we don’t focus on whether people can afford to protect their rights.”

3. Are the Books Just There or Are Kids Being Taught Out of the Books?

Justice Clarence Thomas asked, “Are the books just there and no more or are they actually being taught out of the books?”

Baxter affirmed the books were required to be taught since being introduced in August 2022, and said the board of education suggested the books be used five times before the end of the school year.

“One of the schools, the Sherwood school in June for Pride Month, said that they were going to read one book each day to celebrate Pride Month,” Baxter said. “That was the entire point of withdrawing the opt-outs and removing even notifying parents who were not allowed to know, it was so that every student would be taught from the inclusivity textbooks.”

Plaintiffs were suing on religious grounds, including Catholic, Muslim, and Ukrainian Orthodox. Plaintiffs say they were initially offered the chance to opt out, but the school district reversed the offer. The school district has said it tried to accommodate, but the parents requests became unworkable.

The plaintiffs referred to the 1972 precedent of Wisconsin v. Yoder, where the high court held Amish families couldn’t be forced to send children to school after the eighth grade. Parents say they are asking for a far more narrow First Amendment accommodation. However,  the Montgomery County school district contends this would mean no limit for accommodations.

4. Debating ‘Uncle Bobby’s Wedding’

Both Alito and Justice Sonia Sotomayor referred to one of the books, “Uncle Bobby’s Wedding,” about a same-sex wedding.

Sotomayor asked, “So, what you’re saying is that the exposure of children to the fact that two people are getting married is coercion, that two people of the same sex is coercion?”

Baxter clarified, “Our clients have not raised that objection.”

Baxter stressed that the high court’s ruling in 2015 in Obergefell v. Hodges that legalized same-sex marriage, that “parents would be able to teach what this court called decent and honorable beliefs that same-sex marriage is immoral, according to their beliefs.”

“It’s a far stretch from that for schools to compel students to attend,” he said.

Alito argued that the book “Uncle Bobby’s Wedding” didn’t present a factual case to leave it up to the students.

“The book has a clear message. And a lot of people think it’s a good message, and maybe it is a good message. But it’s a message that a lot of people who hold onto traditional religious beliefs don’t agree with,” Alito said. “I don’t think anyone can read that and think, well, this is just telling children that there are occasions when men marry other men…. Everyone accepts this except for little Chloe who has reservations about this. And her mother corrects her. It has a clear moral message.”

Sotomayor later objected that she interpreted the book differently to mean that the little girl was worried her uncle would spend more time with his husband than her.

 

What Are Parental Rights With Regard to Their Children’s Education?

 The liberty principle for this Freedom Friday concerns the right of parents to determine what and when their children are taught. The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments this week concerning Mahmoud v. Taylor, a case about LGBTQ books being taught to young children (ages 4 or 5 to 11) in the Montgomery County public school system. A decision in the case is expected by the end of June. Fred Lucas shared four takeaways from the court proceedings in his article published at The Daily Signal. 4 

1. Coercion or Mere Exposure?

Age aside, the oral arguments before the Supreme Court centered on whether the books                 were mere exposure or coercion violating the religious beliefs of parents.

“You said that nothing in the policy requires students to affirm what is being taught or what is being presented in the books. Is that a realistic concept when you are talking about a 5-year-old?” Roberts asked….

Schoenfeld framed this as similar to a 1943 Supreme Court precedent on the Pledge of Allegiance in the case of Barnette v. West Virginia State Board of Education.

“I would point the court to Barnette. The kids were young. They were 8 and 10, and the court made a distinction between being required to pledge allegiance and affirm a belief in a graven image and merely being required to remain passive during the pledge ceremony, and being instructed on what the pledge was, what the flag was and what it meant,” Schoenfeld said.

[Justice Neil Gorsuch asked, “Is that exposure or is that something else for a 3-, 5-year-old?”]

Schoenfeld replied, “It is exposure to particular ideas in teaching students to be civil in the classroom.” [As a parent, I would not want my young child to be “exposed” to anything of a sexual nature.]

2. Pull Your Child From Public School, If You Don’t Like It

During the arguments, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson suggested to Baxter, the lawyer for the parents, that it’s not coercion because children can attend private schools or be homeschooled.

“Assuming there is no opt-out in this environment, are students being coerced into being in that school at all?” Brown asked.

“… I’m struggling to see how it burdens a parent’s religious exercise if the school teaches something the parent disagrees with. You have a choice. You can put them in another situation. You can homeschool them. How is that a burden on the parent?”

Baxter replied: “In the world we live in, most parents don’t have that option. We have two working parents. That’s the reality for our parents.”

Jackson countered, “In so many other constitutional doctrines, we don’t focus on whether people can afford to protect their rights.”

3. Are the Books Just There or Are Kids Being Taught Out of the Books?

Justice Clarence Thomas asked, “Are the books just there and no more or are they actually being taught out of the books?”

Baxter affirmed the books were required to be taught since being introduced in August 2022, and said the board of education suggested the books be used five times before the end of the school year.

“One of the schools, the Sherwood school in June for Pride Month, said that they were going to read one book each day to celebrate Pride Month,” Baxter said. “That was the entire point of withdrawing the opt-outs and removing even notifying parents who were not allowed to know, it was so that every student would be taught from the inclusivity textbooks.”

Plaintiffs were suing on religious grounds, including Catholic, Muslim, and Ukrainian Orthodox. Plaintiffs say they were initially offered the chance to opt out, but the school district reversed the offer. The school district has said it tried to accommodate, but the parents requests became unworkable.

The plaintiffs referred to the 1972 precedent of Wisconsin v. Yoder, where the high court held Amish families couldn’t be forced to send children to school after the eighth grade. Parents say they are asking for a far more narrow First Amendment accommodation. However,  the Montgomery County school district contends this would mean no limit for accommodations.

4. Debating ‘Uncle Bobby’s Wedding’

Both Alito and Justice Sonia Sotomayor referred to one of the books, “Uncle Bobby’s Wedding,” about a same-sex wedding.

Sotomayor asked, “So, what you’re saying is that the exposure of children to the fact that two people are getting married is coercion, that two people of the same sex is coercion?”

Baxter clarified, “Our clients have not raised that objection.”

Baxter stressed that the high court’s ruling in 2015 in Obergefell v. Hodges that legalized same-sex marriage, that “parents would be able to teach what this court called decent and honorable beliefs that same-sex marriage is immoral, according to their beliefs.”

“It’s a far stretch from that for schools to compel students to attend,” he said.

Alito argued that the book “Uncle Bobby’s Wedding” didn’t present a factual case to leave it up to the students.

“The book has a clear message. And a lot of people think it’s a good message, and maybe it is a good message. But it’s a message that a lot of people who hold onto traditional religious beliefs don’t agree with,” Alito said. “I don’t think anyone can read that and think, well, this is just telling children that there are occasions when men marry other men…. Everyone accepts this except for little Chloe who has reservations about this. And her mother corrects her. It has a clear moral message.”

Sotomayor later objected that she interpreted the book differently to mean that the little girl was worried her uncle would spend more time with his husband than her.

 

Did Letitia James Commit Mortgage Fraud as She Charged Trump?

Karma may be happening in New York. Democrat New York Attorney General Letitia James campaigned on getting Donald Trump and later prosecuted a case against him for alleged mortgage fraud. Now James may be prosecuted for alleged mortgage fraud by Trump’s Department of Justice. Nick Pope and Myles Morell reported on the situation for the Daily Caller News Foundation as follows. 

The Daily Caller News Foundation visited two southern Virginia properties at the center of fraud and misconduct claims made against Democrat New York Attorney General Letitia James and found that James does not appear to be a resident of either home.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency referred James to the Department of Justice for a potential investigation of alleged mortgage fraud on Monday, referring to a White Collar Fraud report presenting evidence that James may have committed mortgage fraud with one property while filing inconsistent disclosure reports about loans on the other. The Daily Caller News Foundation visited both homes in question on Wednesday, discovering that both residences are apparently inhabited by multiple people, but apparently not James.

One of the properties is a modest two-story home located in a quiet residential Norfolk neighborhood. James is alleged to have characterized the home as her “principal residence” in paperwork filed August 2023 – possibly to secure more favorable loan terms – despite serving at the time as New York’s attorney general, a position that requires primary residence in New York state while it is held….

Notably, James submitted the August 2023 paperwork for this particular home just weeks before she began her trial against President Donald Trump, which concluded with Trump being ordered to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in fines as the 2024 presidential race took shape.

Beyond the two Norfolk properties, James is also alleged to have consistently misclassified a multifamily property she owns in Brooklyn, New York, as a four-family unit instead of a five-family unit, according to White Collar Fraud. The outlet suggested that the repeated misidentification could have enabled James to secure more favorable loan terms because relevant law defines any property that holds five or more families as a commercial property, a classification that is typically subject to more stringent loan terms.

Can the United States Be a Sovereign Nation Without Borders?

My VIPs for this week highlight the U.S. military personnel being deployed to the United States-Mexico border to patrol the Roosevelt Reservation. This reservation is a 60-foot-wide strip of federal land that spans the border in California, Arizona, and New Mexico, and the deployment “is a necessary step to defend American sovereignty,” according to Brian Lonergan at The Blaze. 

A White House memorandum issued April 11 authorizes the military to take temporary control of the corridor, detain individuals attempting illegal entry, and support key security operations, including barrier construction and surveillance. With drug cartels, human traffickers, and other criminal threats exploiting the southern border, this deployment offers a direct, long-overdue response to a crisis the political class has allowed to fester for years. (Emphasis added.)

Established in 1907 by President Theodore Roosevelt to safeguard the border, the Roosevelt Reservation provides the ideal legal framework for President Trump’s latest deployment. By designating the strip as a “National Defense Area,” Trump has empowered the military to act decisively within a clearly defined legal perimeter.

Lonergan reminded his readers that former Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R), frustrated by the inaction of the Biden administration, “ordered shipping containers stacked along the reservation to block illegal crossings.” However, Ducey was succeeded by “open-borders Democrat Katie Hobbs, wasted no time removing them.”

Lonergan explained that with his memorandum, Trump directed “the Departments of Defense, Interior, Agriculture, and Homeland Security to transfer jurisdiction of the Roosevelt Reservation to the Pentagon.” With the land under the direction of the Pentagon, U.S. military troops are allowed to “detain border trespassers until Border Patrol can process them.”

This isn’t “militarizing” the homeland – it’s using federal authority to defend it….

The need for this action is clear. Even with reports of fewer illegal crossings, the southern border remains a pipeline for deadly drugs like fentanyl – which killed more than 70,000 Americans in 2023. Cartels continue to exploit weak enforcement, using remote corridors like the Roosevelt Reservation to move narcotics and human trafficking victims deeper into the country.

Critics rushed to label Trump’s deployment an overreach, but their objections don’t hold up. Some claim the move violates the Posse Comitatus Act, the 1878 law restricting military involvement in domestic law enforcement. One activist even called the strategy a “crazy” attempt to skirt the law by labeling illegal aliens as trespassers on military land. [Why not label them as trespassers? They are trespassing into the United States.]

That argument is nonsense. The Posse Comitatus Act allows exceptions during national emergencies, and Trump’s declaration of a border emergency provides that authority.

What’s more, the military role under the April 11 memorandum is narrow and lawful. It simply detains border trespassers on federal land until civilian authorities take over. This mirrors past deployments under both Republican and Democratic president. The Pentagon isn’t rounding up citizens or patrolling cities. It is securing a narrow federal corridor explicitly designated for border protection….

Cartels are opportunistic and fast-moving. They seize on any lapse in enforcement. The Roosevelt Reservation’s rugged terrain and rumored smuggling tunnels make it a prime target. A military presence deters those operations before they escalate.

Open-border activists argue that Border Patrol or local law enforcement should secure the border alone. But that ignores reality. Of the border’s 1,954 miles, more than 700 run through rugged, hard-to-patrol terrain. Civilian agencies are already overwhelmed.

The military brings what civilian authorities can’t: logistical power, surveillance technology, and manpower. This isn’t theoretical. We’ve seen it work before. In 2018, during Trump’s first term, Operation Faithful Patriot provided vital support for wall construction in high-traffic zones – reducing illegal crossings where they were most severe….

Trump’s order rests on a simple truth: A nation without borders is not a nation at all….

I have one important question: What is being done to secure the United States-Canada border? Since the cartels “are opportunistic and fast-moving,” what are we doing to stop them from moving their operations to the northern border?