Author: Penna Dexter

Penna Dexter
The massive National Defense Authorization Act passed the U.S. House of Representatives last week. The Washington Stand reports that the bill “takes a sincere stab at some of the worst forms of military wokeness.” The bill was a compromise, but the election results spoke volumes to senators who previously insisted on expanding the draft to women and on rolling back Biden transgender policies. The Washington Stand calls this a “Christmas miracle.”
The legislation strips out Senate language that would have required women to register for the draft. Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) and Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) led against this effort to draft our daughters which Rep. Roy says is “just nonsense in a country of 330 million people.”
Speaker Mike Johnson included a provision that blocks minor children of members of the military from receiving puberty blockers, hormones, and gender mutilation surgeries through military health insurer Tricare. The Speaker said, “Taxpayer dollars should never be used to support procedures and treatments that could permanently harm and sterilize young people.”
Stats from the National Library of Medicine reveal that the hormones and drugs required by a transgender person cost “upwards of $3700 per person, per year. Transition surgeries cost from $20,000 to $150,000 depending upon their complexity.
Also, according to The Washington Stand, “Sources from inside the Trump camp say priority number one is weeding out the thousands of gender-confused troops this administration welcomed into the ranks under the guise of ‘inclusion’.”
The necessity for constant care of a transgender soldier curtails the ability for that person to deploy overseas.  Family Research Council’s Senior Fellow for National Defense, Lt. Col. Robert Maginnis, says “that’s an extravagance the Pentagon cannot afford because it detracts from combat readiness.”
Under the next administration, the woke regime in the military must be rooted out. The sooner we get rid of the distractions and financial drain resulting from the current transgender policy, the better.

Penna Dexter
We are about to have our first openly transgender member of Congress. Democrat Sarah McBride won Delaware’s lone House seat and will be sworn in this January. Since Rep.-elect McBride is a trans woman (a biological male) there’s a bit of uncertainty regarding restrooms and other women’s spaces.
Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina has introduced a couple of measures aimed at protecting women and the spaces designated specifically for their use — i.e. restrooms, changing rooms, and locker rooms. One measure would prevent transgender women from using women’s facilities on the House side of the U.S. Capitol.  The other would extend that ban to all federal property.
Rep. Mace says, as a victim of abuse, “I’m absolutely, 100 percent going to stand in the way of any man who wants to be in a women’s restroom.”
Speaker Mike Johnson has not committed to a vote on either measure but stated that single-sex facilities “are reserved for individuals of that biological sex.” Rep. McBride pledged to abide by those rules, “even if I disagree.”
Still, over time, compliance will suffer. Chris Enloe, writer for The Blaze, says Nancy Mace “should be commended for fighting back against the encroachment of transgenderism.” But, on social media she touts her support for same sex marriage, stating, “I voted for gay marriage twice in fact and would do it again.”
The Blaze’s Chris Enloe points to the “dissonance between these two positions.” He says, “to support the destruction of traditional marriage — in which functional and biological differences are its most important property — is a wholesale rejection of the framework that distinguishes a man from a woman.”
It’s right there in Matt. 19:4. God’s design for marriage is based upon the way He created us: “male and female.” But, society has elevated personal feelings and discarded sex differences as a requirement for marriage.
We’re here, says Chris Enloe, because of those who tried to “erase biological realities when it was convenient.” 

Penna Dexter
The troubled Boeing Company got a new CEO in August. Early on, Kelly Ortberg began winding down DEI at Boeing. DEI — diversity, equity and inclusion — has been around for decades. Diversity requires the elevation of immutable differences — like race, age, ethnicity, religion, gender, and sexual orientation. Equity —often mistaken for equal opportunity — emphasizes equal outcomes. In favor of achieving these, employee merit is necessarily de-emphasized and therein lies the seed of DEI’s failure.
After the death of George Floyd in 2020, Fortune 500 companies launched or beefed up their DEI initiatives. But, when companies that build things take their eye off the ball, quality suffers.
For Boeing, which designs, manufactures, and sells airplanes, 2024 brought massive problems, including the midair separation of a panel from an Alaska Airlines plane, difficulties accessing quality parts, flawed flight control software, a 7–week labor strike, and a severe cash crunch.
A Boeing insider told documentary filmmaker and writer, Christopher Rufo, “An organization can prioritize excellence or diversity, but not both simultaneously.” He said, “DEI is the drop in the bucket, and the whole bucket changes. It is anti-excellence, because it is ill-defined, but it became part of the culture.”
That’s why Kelly Ortberg quietly dismantled Boeing’s DEI department.
Another American corporate giant: the country’s number one employer, Walmart announced it is abandoning DEI.
The Washington Stand reports that when DEI warrior Robby Starbuck began investigating Walmart’s policies, company executives “reached out to him.”
The company has announced it will no longer participate in the Human Rights Campaign’s LGBT shakedown campaign: the Corporate Equality Index. It pledged to remove inappropriate sexual and/or transgender products, and to cancel racial equity initiatives.
Walmart joins a growing list of companies rejecting DEI. American businesses are realizing that the woke DEI agenda is polarizing and stifling for businesses. Some are choosing to return to simply running a business.
Chris Rufo affirms, “A reckoning is underway in corporate America.”

Penna Dexter
Speaking last month before the United Nations General Assembly, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas warned that he intends to submit documents to start the process of expelling Israel from the United Nations. His reason? Israel’s refusal to cede its territory to create a Palestinian state.
U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, discussing the threat on his podcast Verdict, said if Israel is removed from membership, the United States may, itself, withdraw from the U.N.
Senator Cruz says, “If the U.N. expels Israel, the U.S. should halt all funding from America to the U.N.”
The United States is, by far, the U.N.’s largest benefactor.
In a letter to lawmakers, the senator from Texas wrote, “The effort to diplomatically isolate Israel is aimed at ultimately destroying the Jewish state, which is both obscene and antithetical to American national security interests.”
Now may be a good time to discuss U.S. participation in the United Nations. Israel is not the only point of contention.
We should also oppose the ongoing efforts at the U.N. to make abortion an international human right, and its promotion of protected class status based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
U.N. directives often find themselves being debated in Congress. Last week Congressman Nikema Williams, along with 100 Democrat co-sponsors, introduced a resolution declaring an international right to abortion. According to Stephano Gennarini, Vice President for Legal Studies with the Center for Family and Human Rights (C-Fam), “There is no international right to abortion under any treaty ratified by the U.S. government.”
C-Fam’s Friday FAX explains that the U.N. Human Rights Committee, which monitors compliance with U.N. civil rights agreements, “routinely goes beyond its mandate calling on governments to decriminalize abortion in all circumstances.”
Mr. Gennarini also says a treaty has been drafted that treats lobbying and political activity opposing pro-trans policies as crimes against humanity.
The U.S. has leverage at the U.N. Will we use it to stop this stuff?

Penna Dexter
It’s been a long time since conservatives expected fair and balanced coverage of elections by the legacy media. But the Left counts on traditional news outlets to tip the scales with favorable coverage of its candidates and issues.
True to form, major outlets like The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, NBC, ABC, and CBS covered the 2024 campaigns and handled debates and interviews in the biased way they always do. But in this election, the media’s failure to provide truthful and fair coverage hurt the Left.
Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberley Strassel writes, “So long as the left is pointing fingers, let it direct a big, fat digit at the outfit that played the biggest role in losing it the election: the U.S. media.”
We cannot place the media in one overarching category. The Journal itself is legacy media, but its editorial page skews right. Today, Americans have numerous media outlets to choose from.
And so do candidates.
Even The Washington Post points out that “Trump and his surrogates saw incredible value in tapping into a podcast ecosystem that has large numbers of young male listeners who otherwise might have skipped casting ballots.“
Meanwhile much of the media ignored, and expected voters to ignore, border chaos, higher prices, and especially President Biden’s decline. As Kim Strassel points out: “In a world with a competent press, Mr. Biden’s failing constitution would have been front page news.” Instead, the legacy media cooperated with the Democrats in covering it up. If they had done a better job reporting on it, there would have been time to hold a primary which “would have produced a tested nominee.”
Big shock: Americans didn’t buy narratives like “we’re experiencing one of the strongest economies ever” or “crime is falling.”
First Amendment freedoms include the press because the press is meant to provide politicians with “gut checks as to how their policies sit with the nation.” Traditional news outlets face a reckoning.

Penna Dexter
Election day was almost upon us — the editorial endorsing Kamala Harris had already been written — when William Lewis, CEO and Publisher of The Washington Post announced the paper would not be endorsing a presidential candidate, ending a 50-year tradition of doing so.
Immediately after the announcement, The Post began bleeding subscribers — 250,000 of them within four days. Several staff members resigned in protest. Longtime opinion writer Ruth Marcus titled her column, “The Post, the wrong choice at the worst possible time.”
Owner Jeff Bezos wrote his own column explaining that The Post can no longer ignore polling that reveals falling public trust in journalists and the media. “What presidential endorsements do,” he wrote, “is create a perception of bias.” He said, “Ending them is a principled decision.” Other newspapers — The LA Times and USA Today – took the same action citing awareness of their own “lack of credibility.”
The Washington Post is not profitable and is becoming less so. Subscribers are turning to smaller, independent news outlets and social media. But, to do good investigative reporting, a news organization needs a large infrastructure. Covering the U.S. government takes a huge staff. The Post has these things. But, Mr. Bezos wrote, his paper and The New York Times “talk only to a certain elite” and increasingly “only to ourselves.” It would be good to have a centrist DC-based paper. If The Washington Post took serious steps away from its role as purveyor of leftist propaganda, it would be better for all of us.
Mr. Bezos also reportedly told The Post’s management it needs to hire more conservative columnists. Radio host Erick Erickson suggested that, if Mr. Bezos is serious about creating a balance, the paper should also add conservative editors and reporters “to break the leftwing worldview infused into the news product they produce.”
It would take deep structural and ideological shifts for The Washington Post to shed its reputation for extreme bias.

Penna Dexter
A false abortion narrative lives in our presidential politics.
The narrative is that state restrictions on abortion passed since the Dobbs decision in 2022 are placing women in serious danger. Supposedly hospitals, fearing they’ll run afoul of state law, are refusing to treat women for miscarriages or abortion complications.
Abortion advocates, including our vice president, blame the Supreme Court for the death of Amber Thurman, age 28, following a medication abortion. She was 9 weeks pregnant with twins.
Medication abortions accounted for 63 percent of all abortions in 2023. The sustained growth in the use of the abortion pill since it was approved in 2000 is due, in large part, to the FDA’s progressive easing of restrictions on its use. (Many medical experts contend the FDA did not adequately study its safety.) The FDA approved the 2-drug regimen to be used during the first seven weeks of pregnancy and, in 2016, extended the requirement to 10 weeks’ gestation and allowed non-physicians to prescribe the drugs. In 2021 the Biden administration eliminated the requirement that women seeking a medical abortion be evaluated in person by a medical professional.
A Wall Street Journal editorial states the obvious:

“Thurman’s death affirms what antiabortion activists have argued: that the two-pill abortion regimen is far more dangerous than its advocates claim.”

Since Georgia’s abortion law bans abortions after six weeks gestation, Amber Thurman, made an appointment at a North Carolina clinic for a surgical abortion. She arrived too late for the appointment. Rather than reschedule the surgical abortion, Amber opted to begin a medical abortion. She took the first pill and drove back to Georgia. At home, days later, she vomited and passed out. She was taken to a Stockbridge, Georgia hospital. The babies had no heartbeat. Standard treatment involves an antibiotic and a DNC, but it was hours before Amber received either. She died of sepsis.
No court decision or law prevented her timely treatment.

Penna Dexter
According to statistics from George Barna, 41 million Americans who describe themselves as “born-again Christians” are “unlikely” to vote in the November elections. His research, conducted in August and September, dug deeper into the reasons for these Christians’ complacency. Family Research Council’s daily news publication, The Washington Stand, reports that 68 percent of them said they’re not interested in politics, 57 percent don’t like either of the presidential candidates, 52 percent don’t think their vote will make a difference, and 48 percent of respondents cited concerns about manipulation of election results.
It’s not just the presidency that’s at stake. FRC’s president, Tony Perkins, encourages believers to pay attention and weigh in all the way down the ballot, warning that: “Control of the House and Senate hangs in the balance.” He points out that “Governors, state attorneys general, local school boards, even comptrollers are amassing major victories in protecting children from radical gender ideology, pushing back on corporate America’s woke agenda, fighting the Biden administration’s lawless overreach, and passing sweeping pro-life and pro-parent laws.”
FRC brought several speakers and pastors to Washington DC last weekend for its Pray, Vote Stand conference. Cornerstone Chapel Pastor Gary Hamrick told the crowd, “Let me tell you what happens when we are not involved in the political process: We open the door for every evil ideology to fill the vacuum.”
In Romans 13, we read that government is created and established by God. In our nation, we have the opportunity to influence the government by choosing our leaders. Christians who do not vote shirk a crucial responsibility for stewardship. The Left is ready to pass laws that will entrench its power and make elections pointless.
Another pastor, Jack Hibbs, told the DC audience we must take every opportunity God gives us to advance His kingdom. “And,” he said, “voting is the easiest.”
If you’re not planning to vote, he says, “you need to repent.”

Penna Dexter
The New York Times recently reported on an “emerging truth” among Christians. Correspondent Ruth Graham writes, “For the first time in modern American history, young men are now more religious than their female peers. They attend services more often and are more likely to identify as religious.”
This dynamic applies only to Christians who are part of Generation Z. (Gen Z currently encompasses ages 12-27.) A survey of over 5000 Americans done last year by the Survey Center on American Life at the American Enterprise Institute found that, in every other demographic, men were more likely than women to describe themselves as religiously unaffiliated. But, the study shows that within Gen Z, the opposite is the case. As The Times’ Ruth Graham puts it: “The men are staying in church, while the women are leaving at a remarkable clip.”
A recent Wall Street Journal article outlined the metrics in which young men “keep falling behind” their female peers. Fewer are attending college. Fewer are employed. Fewer are looking for work or obtaining workforce training. Fewer feel needed.  More report being lonely. More commit suicide.
One reason more young men are in church may be that many churches are intentionally speaking to these trends. New York Times columnist Ross Douthat writes, “It may be, then, that churches that seem like home to young men are particularly well positioned to do that kind of work — stabilizing and elevating men who are currently adrift and making them more appealing as potential spouses than any currently available force in either ‘normie’ or very online culture.”
The AEI survey shows 61 percent of Gen Z women identify as feminist. Perhaps they’re not as onboard with this “macho Christianity.” Mary Harrington, author of Feminism Against Progress, coined the term and says young men are attracted to “a Christianity that is prepared to fight, to struggle, to refuse therapeutic winsomeness.”
Hopefully, these guys will invite the girls back to church.

Penna Dexter
In these days, do you sometimes find yourself struggling to discern truth from lies? Do you sense that bedrock principles regarding culture and politics are being mercilessly challenged? Do sources of information you once found reliable now seem shaky?
We’re being targeted by a powerful propaganda technique called reality suppression. In a recent Substack article, author and filmmaker, Christopher Rufo unpacks how the Left suppresses reality in order to maintain “its control over the discourse.”
Chris Rufo explains: ”the technique of reality suppression is designed to persuade your opponent not to believe what is in front of him.”
He gives three examples. One is COVID. Where did the pandemic come from? If the evidence had you convinced or at least suspicious, that it was from a lab leak, it was deemed racist or too antagonistic toward China to say so. Skepticism of the vaccine was dismissed as anti-science, The possibility of natural immunity was dismissed.
Hence, either by censorship or intimidation, reality was suppressed.
The second example of reality suppression is critical race theory. Chris Rufo brought CRT to public attention and surfaced a massive body of evidence to show how it was being taught in schools. But the Left employed its media outlets to deny that CRT even exists.   “Pure reality suppression,” says Mr. Rufo. “taking something that is obviously real, that is substantiated by evidence and just using a blanket denial to say something that exists does not exist.”
Chris Rufo’s third example is immigration — massive numbers of illegals flowing across the border and into the interior of the country. The establishment media ignores or plays down the danger of criminals, specifically Venezuelan gang members bringing murder, drugs, and human trafficking into sanctuary cities like New York, places like Aurora, Colorado, and even suburbs around the country.
To fight reality suppression, Mr. Rufo says trust your own observation and intuition.  And seek out reliable sources of information.

Penna Dexter
There’s a growing concern in the U.S. and many other countries that people are not having enough babies.
The fertility rate in the U.S. is now approximately 1.62 births per female. This is well below replacement level fertility which is 2.1 births per female.
Why should we care about this?
New York Times columnist Ross Douthat worries a lot about the declining birthrate. In his book, THE DECADENT SOCIETY, he laments that “amid all of our society’s material plenty, one resource is conspicuously scarce. That resource is babies.” He writes frequently about “the grim consequences of an aging, childless future.”
The concern is frequently highlighted in other major news sources including Bloomberg, CNN Business, The Wall Street Journal, BBC, and The Economist, with headlines like, “Global fertility has collapsed with profound economic consequences.” 
Propelled by falling birthrates, the U.S. population is rapidly aging. As the number of productive workers shrinks and the population of elderly rises, we’ll face a shortage of workers to support the older generations. This accelerates the economic pressures on childbearing-aged couples.
There are several reasons for the declining birthrate. Couples are marrying past the peak age for human biological fertility, which is 22-24. And, increasingly, people are not marrying at all. One in four 40-year-old American adults have never been married.
To many Millennials and Gen Z-ers, having kids is one of many lifestyle choices. John Stonestreet, host of Breakpoint, says that in our current culture, “we make the choice to have children or not based on convenience, enjoyment, and personal fulfillment.” For many young women, “motherhood often lands on the losing side of that evaluation.”
Elon Musk has touted the work of Kevin Dolan, organizer of The Natal Conference who describes to his audiences “a problem that will define the next century…predicated on one question. Will your children have children of their own?”
All too often, the answer is ‘no.’

Penna Dexter
It wasn’t a joke or an anomaly when, last December, a video series celebrating the Dual Income No Kids — or DINK — lifestyle went viral. Young American couples argued that their freedom to take European vacations and their ability to splurge on pets and bulk purchases at Costco are preferable to being tied down to parenthood. They said that for this reason, they likely won’t have kids.
Add to that, a new survey from the insurance company, MassMutual, which finds that nearly 1 in 4 Millennials and GenZ-ers plan to remain childless for financial reasons. Of the 1000 adults surveyed, all of whom were in the 18-43 age group, 23 percent don’t plan to have children. They said they prefer the financial freedom they’ll have by remaining childless or they think they simply can’t afford the cost of raising kids.
In July, the Pew Research organization published results of a study on childlessness. According to their report, “When asked why they are unlikely to have children, the top answer for adults younger than 50 is that they just don’t want to.” Forty-four percent of this group said, “they want to focus on other things.” And 36 percent said, “they can’t afford to raise a child.”
It does cost a lot to raise children. And the price is rising. But why?
Timothy Carney, father of six and Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute wrote a book with the title: Family Unfriendly: How Our Culture Made Raising Kids Much Harder Than It Needs to Be. Extras, like lessons, camps, travel sports, are enriching, but not crucial to childrearing. Some things we think are necessities may not be.
The baby bust resulting from our country’s below-replacement birthrate has dire financial repercussions. Our society needs those people. When millions of couples make the stark choice never to have children the country’s future and their own will certainly be impoverished.

Penna Dexter
South Dakota is one of the most pro-life states in America. Before Roe v. Wade was overturned, South Dakota had enacted 111 statutes restricting abortion, the most of any state. Under a trigger law that took effect after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision in 2022, abortion is illegal in South Dakota, except to save the life of the mother.
The state’s pro-lifers work hard to elect legislators who will protect the sanctity of human life. Now they are battling a proposed constitutional amendment that could reverse much of the pro-life legislation on the books in South Dakota.
In states that allow Initiative and Referendum, activists can go directly to voters and sometimes use deceptive language and tactics to win the PR battle and undo the work of legislators.
Post-Dobbs, six states, including purple Kansas, have enshrined abortion rights into their constitutions via ballot measure. This November, voters in nine states will consider similar pro-abortion initiatives. Make that ten states, if an extreme pro-abortion amendment ends up on the ballot in South Dakota
The passage of Amendment G could legalize most late-term abortions and reverse protections and restrictions on abortion enacted over the past 20 years.
Life Defense Fund has filed a lawsuit alleging various instances of wrongdoing during the process of gathering signatures to place Amendment G on the ballot.
An army of pro-lifers blanketed the state, hitting farmers markets and other outdoor events where paid signature-gatherers were at work. Folks even wore body cameras to record arguments being used to get people to sign. Evidence showing that Amendment G operatives were breaking laws or lying to get signatures could augment efforts to invalidate the ballot measure.
There’s also a well-organized education campaign to inform people in every South Dakota county of the extreme nature of Amendment G.
South Dakota could be a test case for defeating these pro-abortion initiatives.
To help, go to lifedefensefund.com.

Penna Dexter
Because of a new rule the Biden-Harris administration issued last spring, students in nearly half the states face some disturbing changes as they return to their schools and colleges. The rule is the result of a rewrite of Title IX of the Education Amendments, enacted in 1972 specifically to protect women and girls. Title IX forbids discrimination on the basis of sex in any federally funded education program. The new rule expands the definition of sex to include gender identity.
Title IX was a hard-won feminist goal that has resulted in groundbreaking opportunities and protections for women.
In issuing the rewrite, U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona stated, “For more than 50 years, Title IX has promised an equal opportunity to learn and thrive in our nation’s schools, free from sex discrimination.”
With the stroke of a pen, the president erased this progress.
Attorney Sarah Parshall Perry is the Heritage Foundation’s expert in Title IX.  She explains that “In over half the nation, girls and women will no longer have any sex-separated bathrooms, locker rooms, housing accommodations, or other educational programs.” Despite disclaimers, Sarah Perry says “Women’s sports are likely on the chopping block too.”
On August 1, the new Biden rule went into effect with no celebratory statement from the White House. Perhaps the administration didn’t want to call attention to the rule’s unpopularity. Twenty-six states and several membership organizations and individual plaintiffs filed a total of 10 lawsuits against the new rule. The lawsuits describe the administration’s action as illegal, unconstitutional, and “arbitrary and capricious” under the Administrative Procedure Act.
Sarah Perry says “Ultimately, the bulk of the litigation over the Title IX rule seems destined for resolution by the U.S. Supreme Court.” Meanwhile, in most of the lawsuits, the new rule is temporarily enjoined from taking effect. There’s going to be some uncertainty out there. Hopefully the Court stops this nonsense.

Penna Dexter
You’ve heard of sanctuary cities. These are municipalities that refuse to cooperate with the federal government in enforcing immigration law, thus providing a sanctuary, or safe haven, for illegal aliens, helping them to break U.S. law.
Now, a California coastal town has declared itself a “sanctuary city for parental rights.”
Huntington Beach is a great surfing spot. In WalletHub’s poll of “Best Places to Raise a Family,” it ranks number 10. The city’s school district is highly rated.
Huntington Beach Mayor, Gracey Van Der Mark is hoping to keep it that way. She has introduced an ordinance to make Huntington Beach a “Parents Right to Know” city. She wants to protect parents’ rights to be informed if their child is going through a gender “transition.”
Mayor Van Der Mark told The Daily Signal, “California is one of the most dangerous states to raise a child.” This summer, Governor Gavin Newsome signed AB 1955 which prevents school districts from enforcing any policy that requires schools to disclose  information related to a student’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression without the pupil’s consent.
AB 1955 requires schools to conceal gender transitions from parents, overriding school board policies that mandate transparency.
Some school boards have complied by enacting policies forbidding transparency. In Northern California, the Chico Unified School Board’s “parental secrecy policy” requires schools to socially transition students upon their request and states that school staff should not reveal a transgender student’s gender identity to parents. A lawsuit against this policy is pending at the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
State law currently violates parents’ constitutional rights by giving ”perfect strangers” discretion to facilitate a child’s gender transition. Huntington Beach’s mayor hopes that her “Right to Know” ordinance will pave the way for parents to sue the state to overturn AB 1955.
May God raise up courageous parents to oppose this arrogant, godless government.

Penna Dexter
School choice is a 2024 election issue and we need to hear more about it from candidates seeking public office. Gaining educational freedom is an important goal for families who live in neighborhoods with sub-par public schools. This is why black voters, more than any other race, support school choice. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Joshua Robertson, senior pastor of the Rock Church in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, encourages the presidential candidates in both major political parties to “listen to these constituents when it comes to educational freedom.”
Pastor Robertson, who is also CEO of Black Pastors United for Education, points to Morning Consult survey data which states that nearly 80 percent of black voters endorse policies like education savings accounts and vouchers. These plans allow public education funds to follow students to the schools or services that best fit their needs. He says black communities “need courageous leadership that will equip our students to thrive.”
And yes — Democrat candidates do need courage to face the opposition. While 71 percent of all voters support greater access to better education options, teachers’ unions stand in the way, claiming that choice harms public schools financially. Pastor Robertson responds to that concern, stating: “We want properly funded public schools and education freedom at the same time. It’s possible if our leaders don’t play politics.”
In an interview before the presidential debate this past June, Donald Trump said, “I’m a big fan of school choice. I think school choice is a great thing.” He added, “School choice is a big deal, and we’re going to get it.”
Actually, we are getting choice in some states.  And the recently-adopted Republican platform endorses universal school choice.
As Kamala Harris courts the votes of black Americans, she hears the cries for educational freedom. Pastor Robertson says he’d like to see her party “earn our votes” by backing school choice.
It’s wise policy and smart election strategy. 

Penna Dexter
Last year, to coincide with Labor Day, Senator Marco Rubio’s office issued a report entitled, “The State of the Working (and Non-Working) Man.” Labor Day 2024 comes amidst presidential campaigns in which the American working class is a key constituency.
Senator Rubio’s report lays some groundwork by stating that “prime age men who are not in the labor force report feeling sad and purposeless at much higher rates than men with jobs.” These men spend more time alone than those who are working. More than two thirds of these non-working men “have never married” and nearly “a third live with their parents.” Almost half of them take painkillers daily. “And they are more likely to take their own lives.”
The report points out that “working men face a crisis of their own: their outcomes and prospects in work, education and family life are dimmer than their fathers” because “they face an economy and society that no longer rewards their efforts the way they once did.”
The report cites several contributing factors: One is “mass immigration.” Another is  deindustrialization with manufacturing being replaced by a “service economy.” Writer and consultant Aaron Renn publishes a Substack newsletter which tackles challenges unique to men in our society. Mr. Renn says that although Senator Rubio supports working to reindustrialize America, it’s not a panacea. He says this report wisely avoids overpromising what can be accomplished by reindustrialization.
We need more men in what the report calls “protector” professions like policing, border patrol, and the military — areas where, arguably, expansion is needed anyway.
The report recommends eliminating the marriage penalty in federal assistance programs.  And it wisely recommends making it mandatory that able-bodied men be actively looking for work in order to receive any public benefits.
Some of the report’s recommendations unwisely expand government. We must  adopt common-sense policies that encourage men to work — and to become independent, marry, and form families.

Penna Dexter
It would be nice if we could count on the medical community to emphasize excellence and evidence over woke ideology. When we learn of transgender interventions, including life-altering surgery, being prescribed as standard protocol for young people struggling with mental health conditions, we’re wondering where the sane doctors are.
Thankfully, there are still doctors making the case for protecting children against radical transgender ideology.  In a recent op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, physician Travis Morrell filed a resolution with the Colorado Medical Society “based on the rise of transgender medical interventions both in Colorado and around the nation.”
In doing so, Dr. Morrell is drawing upon the Colorado Medical Society’s policy opposing genital mutilation. He points out that “transgender surgeries often involve mutilation.” Dr. Morrell began his medical career in gynecology and says that transgender treatments “can ruin healthy sexual function and damage reproductive ability, potentially leading to a lifetime of physical and mental ailments.” His fellow members of the society overwhelmingly stood with him.
Dr. Morrell’s resolution came before the general membership in mid-May. Members were given four weeks to vote on it and as the votes came in, passage looked likely. “But,” Dr. Morrell wrote, “by June 12 — the day before voting ended — the tide had dramatically turned, thanks to a sudden influx of votes by medical students.”
It turns out that an assistant professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine asked the medical students to quickly join the Colorado Medical Society and vote against Dr. Morrell’s resolution. One hundred fifty of them did, resulting in its rejection.
Dr. Morrell is disappointed that the students so easily switched away from supporting his protective referendum, instead siding with “unproven, unethical and unscientific medical interventions.”
He’s right to conclude that “Americans should worry that when today’s trainees become tomorrow’s doctors, they’ll put political activism ahead of patient health.”

Penna Dexter
The prominent role played by drag queens in the opening ceremonies for the Paris Olympics, was created to display France’s inclusivity and showcase the French LGBTQ+ community. James Leperlier, president of a group called Inter-LGBT, says the transgender community “has difficulty being heard.”
He told ABC news, “we are far from what the ceremony showed. There’s much progress to do in society regarding transgender people.”
Is it progress to offend Christians all over the world who are watching the Olympics?
The program’s parody of the Last Supper featured 18 drag queens and dancers posing behind a long table with the Seine and Eiffel Tower in the background. It mocks a central event of Christianity. The Last Supper was Christ’s final meal with his 12 disciples, when He instituted holy communion.
The ceremonies’ director, Thomas Jolly, previewed the opening in an interview with British Vogue. Mr. Jolly, who is gay, said his measure for the production’s success is “if everyone feels represented by it.”
Everyone?
Not according to best-selling author and cultural commentator Rod Dreher. “Right,” he responded, “except for Christians, whose most sacred moments must be mocked for the sake of queer inclusion.”
American Catholic Bishop Robert Baron, founder of Word on Fire ministries, has lived in Paris. He wonders: “Would they ever have dared mock Islam in a similar way?”
Arsonists are burning down churches all over France. As Rod Dreher points out, “Mosques are going up in France at the same rate that churches are coming down.”
“And yet,” he writes, “the contemptible elites who rule France stage this kind of blasphemous spectacle, attacking the ancestral faith of France, and what Christians still remain there.”
Christianity is declining in the West. Normally, when LGBT interests are elevated, Christianity loses. It’s becoming apparent that Christians are no longer welcome in this culture.
Rod Dreher concludes, “The Enemy knows what time it is.”
Do we?

Penna Dexter
Normal Americans are repulsed by the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump. This was a bridge too far even for people who buy in to careless “threat to democracy” rhetoric from Trump’s opposition. Their recoil reminds us that we must take care to preserve our constitutional republic.
Our system of government is meant to help our nation avoid political violence. Under constitutionalism, we have systems that allow differences of opinion on government policy to be handled by negotiation and at the voting booth.
A prominent constitutional scholar says the escalation of political violence in the last 15 years has tested the bounds of constitutionalism “pretty aggressively.”
Yuval Levin (Yoo-vuhl Leh-vn) is a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and  Editor at National Affairs and The New Atlantis. In an essay for The Free Press, Dr. Levin says the nearly-successful attempt to take out “a once and perhaps future president“ is far from a natural next step from the violence and threats of violence against public officials we’ve been seeing in recent years. He says “this moment feels like a sharp break” that “gave us a terrible glimpse of what it would be like to live beyond the bounds of our constitutional republic.”
Within a constitutional republic our differences may be stark, but there are institutions in which those disputes can be settled “through competition and negotiation.” Dr. Levin points out that, in a constitutional republic, there’s a prevailing assumption that our political victories and defeats are temporary and that the people on the other side of our political disputes “aren’t going away.”
Step outside of constitutionalism and you have “a realm of violence and pain” where “there is no expectation that the people we disagree with today will be here tomorrow and have to be accommodated somehow.”
As Dr. Levin points out, Our constitutional system exists to help us “disagree well.” We must put a stop to its degradation.