Yesterday a Washington Times headline read “GOP wins first Obamacare fight in Senate budget vote.” Katie Pavlich reported this at Townhall.com:

Republicans eager to show quick action against Obama’s health care law took an initial procedural step Tuesday, introducing a budget bill that would have to be considered under a parliamentary procedure that would prevent Democrats from using a Senate filibuster to protect the health care law.

Pavlich also reported that Vice President-elect Mike Pence told Congressional Republicans that President-elect Donald Trump wants Obamacare (i.e., the Affordable Care Act) repealed and sent to his desk by February 20.

With Republicans in control of both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue after January 20, the Republican Congress will be able to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA) with the help of the new president.

Candidate Trump made clear his intentions, and President-elect Trump began to make good on his commitment to repeal and replace the ACA with his choice of U.S. Representative Tom Price (R-GA) to serve as his Secretary of Health and Human Services. Rep. Price is considered one of the most knowledgeable Republicans on healthcare policy.

Since the election, a lot has been written about the challenges in repealing the ACA. The bill ran thousands of (mostly unread) pages when it was signed into law in March, 2010, and tens of thousands of pages of regulations dealing with the ACA have been added since then.

What will replace Obamacare is a work in progress as conservative health care expert Lanhee Chen explained:

It’s not that we don’t have enough ideas as conservatives, it’s that we actually have too many. A lot of thinking and research has gone on the last several years around how you create a health care system that is more consumer friendly, that pays attention to costs first, that recognizes the importance of health care in people’s lives but doesn’t believe that the federal government is necessarily well-suited to make all of those important decisions.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to U.S. Senators Dick Durbin, Tammy Duckworth, and your local U.S. Representative asking them to support the repeal of Obamacare.

Obamacare has caused many to lose their existing coverage, insurance rates to soar, policy options to be restricted, and increased the national deficit. The law has negatively affected the economy in several ways, especially by discouraging companies from hiring.

Join IFI at our Feb. 18th Worldview Conference

We are excited about our third annual Worldview Conference featuring world-renowned theologian Dr. Frank Turek on Sat., Feb. 18, 2017 in Barrington. Dr. Turek is s a dynamic speaker and the award-winning author of “I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist”

Join us for a wonderful opportunity to take enhance your biblical worldview and equip you to more effectively engage the culture:

Click HERE to learn more or to register!

Written by Katrina Trinko

So much for taking America’s “fake news” problem seriously.

Ever since Donald Trump was elected president, there’s been an abundance of hand-wringing over the “fake news” that supposedly is rampant on social media.

Yet missing has been any kind of serious searching among the mainstream media about whether it could learn any lessons from this election—and whether reporters and editors are holding themselves accountable to their supposed values of objectivity and rigorous reporting.

And a new “study” presents Exhibit A as to why the mainstream media should reconsider its own practices.

The Southern Poverty Law Center—an organization that calls the Family Research Council an “extremist group” because of its socially conservative views on LGBT matters—reported Nov. 29 that “in the 10 days following the election, there were almost 900 reports of harassment and intimidation from across the nation.”

“Many harassers invoked Trump’s name during assaults,” the report continued, “making it clear that the outbreak of hate stemmed in large part from his electoral success.”

Cue the widespread coverage:

• “Nationwide, there have been more than 867 incidents of ‘hateful harassment’ in the first days following the election, the Southern Poverty Law Center says,” reported CNN.

• “In the 10 days following the November election, SPLC said it collected 867 hate-related incidents on its website and through the media from almost every state,” wrote the Associated Press.

• NBC News headlined its piece on the study “Southern Poverty Law Center Reports ‘Outbreak of Hate’ After Election.”

• The Washington Post’s headline blared, “Civil rights group documents nearly 900 hate incidents after presidential election.”

There’s just one issue: The Southern Poverty Law Center didn’t confirm these “nearly 900” incidents actually happened.

“The 867 hate incidents described here come from two sources—submissions to the #ReportHate page on the SPLC website and media accounts,” the SPLC report states. “We have excluded incidents that authorities have determined to be hoaxes; however, it was not possible to confirm the veracity of all reports.”

In other words, who has any idea if these incidents actually happened or not?

Yet, the fact that there was no verification of these incidents didn’t stop the media from covering this “study.”

And let’s not pretend there’s no to very little chance that a Trump opponent would make up a hate crime story.

Just consider this reported hate incident in November: “The men used a racial slur, made a reference to lynching, and warned him this is Donald ‘Trump country now,’ according to the report he gave police,” reported the Boston Herald.

Yet the man wasn’t telling the truth. The Herald reported that Kevin Molis, police chief of Malden, Massachusetts, said “it has been determined that the story was completely fabricated.”

“’The alleged victim admitted that he had made up the entire story,’ saying he wanted to ‘raise awareness about things that are going on around the country,’” the newspaper added, continuing to quote Molis.

So maybe 867 hate crimes happened in the first 10 days after the election. Or maybe 5,000 did. Or maybe five did.

Maybe 10,000 did—and most of them were directed at Trump supporters, not opponents. (Let’s not forget the man beaten in Chicago while someone said, “You voted Trump.”) Who knows?

The SPLC should realize that playing around with facts is no laughing matter.

In 2012, a gunman entered the headquarters of the Family Research Council “with the intent to kill as many employees as possible, he told officers after the incident,” reported Politico. The 29-year-old man, identified as Floyd Lee Corkins II, did shoot and wound a security guard. His motivation?

“Family Research Council (FRC) officials released video of federal investigators questioning convicted domestic terrorist Floyd Lee Corkins II, who explained that he attacked the group’s headquarters because the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) identified them as a ‘hate group’ due to their traditional marriage views,” the Washington Examiner reported.

Ultimately, regardless of what the Southern Poverty Law Center does, the media shouldn’t be giving a platform to faux studies like this.

But maybe it’s not surprising, given attitudes like President Barack Obama’s. In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine published Tuesday, the president griped about the reach of Fox News Channel—and then complimented Rolling Stone: “Good journalism continues to this day. There’s great work done in Rolling Stone.”

Yes, that Rolling Stone—the news outlet that published the completely discredited University of Virginia gang rape story. In early November, “jurors awarded a University of Virginia administrator $3 million … for her portrayal in a now-discredited Rolling Stone magazine article about the school’s handling of a brutal gang rape [at] a fraternity house,” the Associated Press reported.

It’s tough to hold the media accountable when even the president seems willing to brush aside true instances of fake news.

Katrina Trinko is managing editor of The Daily Signal and a member of USA Today’s Board of Contributors.

This article was originally posted at The DailySignal.com

Written by William Choslovsky

Imagine this: Upon taking his oath of office, President Donald Trump instructs his new attorney general, Jeff Sessions, to ignore civil rights laws.

How would that go over?

Before you yell, “But we are a nation of laws!” you can thank President Barack Obama and his prior Attorney General Eric Holder for magnifying this issue.

Basically, the Obama administration made it standard operating procedure to ignore laws they thought unfashionable or unworthy.

The best example of this is marijuana.

To be clear at the outset, I am neither pro-pot nor anti-pot. And, in fact, marijuana is not even the issue — rather, the Constitution is. Marijuana is just the symptom that exposes the problem.

As pieces of paper go, our Constitution has proved remarkably durable, as it has structured our democracy for more than two centuries.

Old news now, marijuana laws are sweeping the country. More than half the states, including Illinois, have legalized some form of marijuana use.

But there is one little problem. Long ago Congress passed a law making marijuana, in all forms, illegal. No exceptions. Whether wise or not, it is the law of the land, no different from the thousands of other federal laws on the books.

Given this conflict, the question arises, can state law really trump federal law? Is marijuana really “legal” in those states?

The short answer is “no,” it remains illegal under federal law.

The constitutional lesson is simple: federal law is top dog, and it trumps all conflicting state law.

If Congress says your toilet bowl can hold only 2 gallons of water, and Illinois passes a law saying it can hold 3 gallons, Congress wins, and your toilet will have only 2 gallons to flush with.

It is called the Supremacy Clause, and it is all you really need to know to be a constitutional scholar.

But amazingly, Holder — Obama’s first attorney general — directed the Department of Justice to ignore federal law. He instructed his deputies and the FBI not to investigate, arrest or prosecute marijuana growers and users in states where it was “legal.” In short, he told them to look the other way, the rule of law be damned.

Though this issue surfaces through pot, it is dangerous, even subversive, stuff — however well-intended.

As the nation’s top law enforcement officer, the attorney general’s duty is to enforce the law — whatever it may be — not to make law. In failing to do so, he violates his oath to uphold the Constitution.

At bottom, this is no different than a rogue local sheriff choosing to enforce some laws while turning his eye on others.

To be clear, our federal law banning marijuana might be terrible. But that issue is above the attorney general’s pay grade, as his job is to enforce — not make — the law.

And the irony in all this is that there is a simple fix.

If our nation’s pot laws are terrible, then Congress can, and should, amend the existing law. Heck, it could just repeal the law altogether. It could do so in five minutes, which the Constitution allows.

But the Constitution does not allow the attorney general to simply ignore otherwise valid federal law because he, or others, think the law unwise. That is what happens in banana republics where men, not laws, rule.

Long ago, President Abraham Lincoln said: “The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly.”

And the issue — enforcing valid laws, even bad ones, until repealed — is not limited to marijuana.

The same analysis applies to other important issues of the day, including immigration laws and mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses. Good or bad, these laws should be enforced until properly repealed or ruled unconstitutional.

Obama, a constitutional scholar, understands this.

In fact, in 2014 when some liberal groups criticized him on immigration policy and called him the “deporter in chief,” he responded, “I cannot ignore those laws any more than I can ignore any of the other laws that are on the books. That’s why it’s important to get comprehensive immigration reform done.”

Yet when Congress failed to act on immigration reform, Obama tried to get his way through executive order.

“Executive order” is just a fancy way of sometimes ignoring the law.

To put things in perspective, once you start down this path, what if a state chose to legalize heroin? Or child pornography? Or better yet, it passed a law making federal taxes optional?

It is a slippery slope best avoided.

Importantly, this is not a screed against Democrats or Republicans. The Constitution is larger than both.

After all, if a Democrat today ignores pot laws, might a Republican tomorrow choose to ignore civil rights laws?

When you remove the politics, the issue and solution become clear: amend or repeal “bad” laws, but do not ignore them, as such is the beginning of chaos. Though some may scoff at these extreme examples, the underlying concept remains the same in each case: Our Constitution is supreme and must be respected.

William Choslovsky is a Chicago lawyer who appreciates selective enforcement of laws that might someday apply to him.

This article was originally posted at ChicagoTribune.com

*WARNING: NOT SUITABLE FOR CHILDREN*

Orange Coast College, a community college in Costa Mesa, CA, employs Olga Perez Stable Cox to teach classes on human sexuality. During a recent human sexuality class, Cox went on an anti-Trump/anti-Pence/anti-conservative rant which was recorded by a student and posted online. In it Cox is heard calling President-Elect Donald Trump a “white supremacist” and Vice-President-Elect Mike Pence “one of the most anti-gay humans in this country.” She further described the election of Trump as an “assault” and “an act of terrorism.”

Then in an act of astonishing hubris and irrationality, Cox condemns everyone who voted for Trump:

One of the most frightening things for me and most people in my life is that the people creating the assault are among us. It is not some stranger from some other country coming and attacking our sense of what it means to be an American and the things that we stand for and that makes it more painful because I’m sure that all of us have people in our families and our circle of friends that are part of that movement and it is very difficult. 

There is a second, less-viewed video in which Cox expresses her happiness that Orange County, California where she lives voted Democratic, saying that “Living in Orange County is scary” because it’s conservative.

Apparently not noticing the irony, Cox goes on to say that she is committed to keeping her “classroom safe.” In the service of “safety,” she tells students she will provide phone numbers they can call if they “find anyone being racist, or in any way prejudiced, or treating you in an unfair way”—with “unfair” being determined by Leftist assumptions. Last time I checked, it’s as legal to be a racist bigot as it is to be an anti-Christian or anti-conservative bigot.

Two students also report that Cox “tried to get everyone who voted for Donald Trump to stand up and show the rest of the class who to watch out for and protect yourself from.” She has a very odd way of making conservative students feel (in “progressive” parlance) “safe.”

Here’s a bit more on Cox who has no academic degrees in political science and was not hired to pontificate on matters political. She is a 64-year-old lesbian with a bachelor’s degree in sociology and a master’s degree in “Marriage, Family, and Child Counseling.”

On her faculty bio site, there is no curriculum vitae, but there is a lengthy list of sexuality resources including links to Go Ask Alice, Out Proud, Alternative Sex, Planned Parenthood, SIECUS, National Coalition of Sexual Freedom, American Civil Liberties Union, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, Human Rights Campaign, The Advocate (homosexual magazine) and two pornographic websites. She also provides links to the websites of numerous “sex educators” including Annie Sprinkle a “feminist stripper” who for a performance “art” piece titled “A Public Cervix Announcement” inserted a speculum into her nether region and invited male and female audience members to view her cervix with a flashlight—which they did.

So, California residents pay the salary of a woman who refers students to Annie Sprinkle’s website. Sheesh.

It would be interesting to learn more about what qualifies Cox to teach collegiate-level courses in human sexuality—well, other than her extensive familiarity with homosexual and pornographic websites.

The Coast Federation of Teachers, AFT Local 1911 took to Facebook to extol the virtues of Cox and criticize the student who recorded her unprofessional whining. The teachers union claims Cox “encourages open discussions on challenging and provocative issues and topics” and “skillfully allows students to respectfully present their varying opinions.” From what I saw, there was no encouragement of an open discussion” regarding the election unless asking Trump-voters to stand in a line-up encourages open discussion.

“Progressives” are usually obsessed with power dynamics, and yet there’s nary a peep from the union about the power differential between Cox and her students. After Cox accuses those who voted for Trump of being terrorists, how comfortable would the alleged “terrorists” be in challenging Cox’s provocative claims when she has the power to pass or fail them?

It’s clear that Cox had no interest in fostering dialogue or critically examining her assumptions. Her goal was to inculcate students with her beliefs using—not reason—but demagoguery.

Safety

Let’s take a quick look at the way “progressives” have redefined “safety,” which is inextricably entwined with their redefinition of “identity.”

Safety used to refer to freedom from danger, injury, or serious risk. It did not refer to freedom from exposure to unpleasant ideas, claims, or beliefs—even ideas, claims, or beliefs that criticize  beliefs and feelings that we may place at the center of our identities. Safety does not require that others respect the beliefs and feelings we place at the center of our identities or the life choices that emerge from those beliefs and feelings. To respect something means to hold it in esteem, and no one has an ethical obligation to hold all the beliefs, feelings, or volitional actions of others in esteem.

Here’s another proposition the Left should chew on: Conservatives have no ethical obligation to acquiesce to the rhetoric that they manipulate to serve their social and political goals. Conservatives have no ethical obligation to accept the Left’s beliefs about “safety.” And conservatives have no ethical obligation to accept the Left’s assumptions about what constitutes harm.

Accepting the claim of the “self-esteem movement” that irreparable harm will be done to people if their feelings, beliefs, or volitional acts are not affirmed by others has led us to a cultural place where infantilized college students seek succor in nurseries safe spaces replete with puppies and crayons following a bracing encounter with ideas they find offensive.

Identity

It’s impossible to discuss “safety” as currently construed by “progressives” without also discussing “identity” as currently construed by “progressives,” which I did earlier this year:

Homosexual activists began transforming the concept of “identity.” They sought to recast identity as something intrinsically inviolable, immutable, and good. They sought to refashion identity in such a way as to make it culturally taboo to make judgments about any constituent feature of identity. They re-imagined identity in such a way as to move homoeroticism from the category of phenomena about which humans can legitimately make moral distinctions to one about which society is forbidden to make judgments.

…Identity when applied to individual persons simply denoted the aggregate of phenomena constituting, associated with, affirmed, and experienced by individuals. Identity was “the set of behavioral and personal characteristics by which an individual is recognizable as a member of a group.”

Identity was not conceived as some intrinsically moral thing, because identity could refer to either objective, non-behavioral, morally neutral conditions (e.g., skin color) or to subjective feelings, beliefs, and volitional acts that could be good or bad, right or wrong. Prior to the new and subversive conceptualization of identity, there existed no absolute cultural prohibition of judging the divers elements that constitute identity.

By conflating all the phenomena that can constitute identity, “progressives” demanded that society should no more make judgments about feelings and volitional acts than they should about skin color.

While Cox clearly cares deeply about the “safety” of the privileged “identity” groups, one wonders if she has any interest in the “safety” of those who find their identity in Christ. The expanded redefinition of “safety” to mean insulation from unpleasant ideas is selectively enforced to apply only to those ideas that make “progressives” uncomfortable—or enraged.

End-of-Year Challange

As you may know, IFI has a year-end matching challenge to raise $110,000. That’s right, a small group of IFI supporters are providing a $55,000 matching challenge to help support IFI’s ongoing work to educate, motivate and activate Illinois’ Christian community.

Please consider helping us reach this goal!  Your donation will help us stand strong in 2017!  To make a credit card donation over the phone, please call the IFI office at (708) 781-9328.  You can also send a gift to:

Illinois Family Institute
P.O. Box 876
Tinley Park, Illinois 60477

In June of 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges that same-sex couples could not be denied marriage licenses by states. However, on December 8, 2016, the Arkansas Supreme Court correctly ruled that the Obergefell decision should not be used to re-write all state laws relating to family, parenthood, and vital records, when they are unrelated to the issuance of marriage licenses.

The decision, in the case of Smith v. Pavan, overturned a lower court decision that had declared the Arkansas law governing birth registration unconstitutional. The statute in question says that in the absence of a court order or agreement by all parents and spouses involved,

“If the mother was married at the time of either conception or birth or between conception and birth the name of the husband shall be entered on the certificate as the father of the child.”

The law had been challenged by three lesbian couples. In all three cases, one of the women had borne a child who was conceived through artificial insemination involving an anonymous sperm donor as the father. When the children were born, the couples sought to have the names of both women listed on the birth certificate as the child’s parents. The Arkansas Department of Health (ADH) refused.

The legal principle involved has long been known as the “presumption of paternity.” If a married woman gives birth to a child, her husband is presumed to be the father of that child. Something which is factually true in the vast majority of cases is simply presumed to be true under the law.

Advocates of same-sex marriage and homosexual parenting, however, seek to convert the “presumption of paternity” into a gender-neutral “presumption of parentage.” Under this view, the legal spouse—regardless of sex—of a woman who gives birth is presumed to be the child’s other parent.

In other words, they would have the law go from presuming something that is almost always factually true to presuming something that cannot possibly be factually true—namely, that two women are both the biological mother of a newborn child.

Fortunately, the Arkansas Supreme Court rejected the absurd outcome of presuming the impossible.

In a model of judicial restraint, they interpreted the words of the statute by “giving the words their ordinary and usually accepted meaning in common language.” Noting that the dictionary definition of “husband” is “a married man,” and of “father” is “a man who has begotten a child,” they concluded that “the statute centers on the relationship of the biological mother and the biological father to the child, not on the marital relationship of husband and wife.”

The court’s opinion cited an affidavit by the ADH’s Vital Records State Registrar elaborating on the rationale for this approach:

The overarching purpose of the vital records system is to ensure that vital records, including birth certificates as well as death certificates and marriage certificates, are accurate regarding the vital events that they reflect…

Identification of biological parents through birth records is critical to ADH’s identification of public health trends, and it can be critical to an individual’s identification of personal health issues and genetic conditions.

To emphasize the significance of—and differences between—biological motherhood and biological fatherhood, the Arkansas Supreme Court also cited language from a 2001 U.S. Supreme Court decision involving a question of citizenship for children born out of wedlock and outside the United States to one American parent. Ruling (in Nguyen v. INS) that Congress could treat children of American fathers differently from children of American mothers, the Court said,

[t]o fail to acknowledge even our most basic biological differences—such as the fact that a mother must be present at birth but the father need not be—risks making the guarantee of equal protection superficial, and so disserving it. Mechanistic classification of all our differences as stereotypes would operate to obscure those misconceptions and prejudices that are real… The difference between men and women in relation to the birth process is a real one, and the principle of equal protection does not forbid [legislative recognition of that fact].

Ironically, the author of the decision in Nguyen was Justice Anthony Kennedy—who also wrote the Obergefell decision on marriage.

LGBT activists, of course, will deplore the Arkansas decision. Perhaps, in the wake of Donald Trump’s election to the presidency, they and other liberals will even be tempted to lump it together with what they stereotype as other acts of “bigotry” committed by “angry white males.” Yet the Arkansas Supreme Court has a female majority—four women and three men. Three of the four women joined the majority opinion in the birth certificate case, while two of the three men dissented. And the opinion of the court was written by Associate Justice Josephine Linker Hart—a female pioneer in the legal profession in Arkansas, an Army veteran, and a woman with Cherokee ancestry.

The truth is that every child has both a mother and a father—even if the latter is only an anonymous sperm donor. The truth is that two women (or two men) alone can never conceive a new human life. The truth is that a birth certificate or registration is supposed to record the factual circumstances of a biological event—the birth of a child.

When the Obergefell decision was handed down, those celebrating it used a simple slogan: “Love Wins.” (The fallacy in that was the assumption that any and every relationship characterized by “love” is constitutionally entitled to be designated a “marriage.”)

Pro-family Americans can be grateful that, at least in the Arkansas Supreme Court, “Truth Wins.”

This article was originally posted at the FRC blog.

Last month a Woolworth store in Germany made headlines in the UK and in the U.S. for proclaiming itself to be a “Muslim” store, and therefore it would no longer carry Christmas items. There’s more to the story – as the local management of the store defended itself by saying that there was such little demand for the Christmas products, they decided the shelf space was better used with other items. You can read about it here, here and here and decide for yourself what to believe.

Christmas as controversy is not new, of course, as the debate over whether to say “happy holidays” or “merry Christmas” has long been a part of American pop culture. It even made an appearance in the 2016 presidential campaign as the question whether saying “merry Christmas” is offensive to some delicate ears. Donald Trump said often on the campaign trail that if he was elected, “we’re gonna be saying Merry Christmas at every store … You can leave happy holidays at the corner”:

“I love Christmas. I love Christmas. You go to stores, you don’t see the word Christmas. It says happy holidays all over. I say, ‘Where’s Christmas?’ I tell my wife, ‘Don’t go to those stores.’”

With the election of Trump, a writer at New York Magazine weighed in:

And so it is apparently ‘safe’ for Christians to be rude to their Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, or nonreligious friends and colleagues by regaling them with sectarian holiday greetings. The war on common courtesy has apparently been subordinated to the war on ‘political correctness.’

Dennis Prager, who is Jewish, has a different take (the video is embedded below):

I’m a non-Christian. I’m a Jew. Christmas is not a religious holy day for me. But I’m an American, and Christmas is a national holiday in my country. It is, therefore, my holiday – though not my holy day – as much as it is for my fellow Americans who are Christian. That’s why it’s not surprising that it was an American Jew, Irving Berlin, who wrote “White Christmas,” one of America’s most popular Christmas songs. In fact, according to a Jewish musician writing in the New York Times, “Almost all the most popular Christmas songs were written by Jews.” Apparently all these American Jews felt quite included by Christmas!

By not wishing me a Merry Christmas, you are not being inclusive. You are excluding me from one of my nation’s national holidays.

. . .

The vast majority of Americans who celebrate Christmas, and who treat non-Christians so well, deserve better.

So, please say ‘Merry Christmas’ and ‘Christmas party’ and ‘Christmas vacation.’ If you don’t, you’re not ‘inclusive.’ You’re hurtful.

The American Family Institute has posted a version of a naughty and nice list with its “Rating the Top Retailers and How They Market to Christmas Shoppers.” They divide up American businesses into three categories: Nice, Marginal, and Naughty — this is from their website:

Among the Nice “5-Star” companies listed are Walmart, Cracker Barrel and Hobby Lobby. At the other end of the spectrum — the Naughty kids — are companies like Barnes & Noble, Best Buy and Pet Smart. Pet Smart may carry Santa suits for dogs, but we all know Santa doesn’t exactly serve to emphasize the “Christ” in “CHRISTmas,” so that doesn’t count.

Before you head out the door for another round of Christmas shopping, visit the American Family Institute’s “Naughty (and Marginal) and Nice” list. AFA even invites recommendations for their list, though they don’t include local or regional companies — only nationally-recognized companies.

Merry Christmas!

Written by Melanie Israel

The American people have returned a pro-life majority to Congress and have elected a president committed to rolling back the Obama administration’s radical abortion policies and to appointing pro-life justices to the U.S. Supreme Court. This presents an incredible opportunity for defending innocent human life. Now is the time to act.

Executive Action

President-elect Donald Trump should act to defend life and conscience immediately after he takes the oath of office, and should:

• Reinstate the Mexico City Policy to ensure that federally funded nongovernmental organizations do not perform or actively promote abortion as a method of family planning in foreign nations.

• Enforce the Weldon Amendment to stop states from unlawfully discriminating against health care entities that refuse to pay for or cover abortions.

• Reject a proposed parting gift to Planned Parenthood through new Title X regulations designed to lock in the abortion giant’s cut of federal funds.

• Nominate an U.S. Supreme Court justice that will respect the Constitution and the right to life.

• Repeal the Department of Health and Human Services mandate requiring insurance coverage of certain contraceptives and abortifacients. Although the U.S. Supreme Court has protected the consciences of closely held businesses and religious institutions, consciences of individual consumers and employees are still vulnerable absent full repeal.

• Reinstitute Bush administration conscience protections for health care providers.

• Reaffirm states’ freedom to exclude abortion providers from state Medicaid programs.

Congressional Action

With a pro-life majority in both the House and the Senate, pursuing a life-affirming agenda is a must. Congress should:

• Pass the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act. The United States is one of only seven countries in the world that allows elective abortion past 20 weeks (5 months), at which point the baby is capable of feeling excruciating pain during an abortion procedure.

• Pass the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act. Instead of relying on a patchwork of policy riders attached to appropriation bills each year, Congress should permanently end taxpayer funding for abortion once and for all.

• Defund Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers have disqualified themselves from federal funding due to their callous disregard for human life. The money should be redirected to comprehensive health centers not entangled with abortion.

• Pass the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act. The disturbing case of Kermit Gosnell has shown there must be criminal consequences for abortionists who violate the law and refuse to provide medical care to infants born alive after abortions.

• Pass the Conscience Protection Act, which ensures that individuals get their day in court when their rights to conscience concerning abortion are violated by the government.

• End funding for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). President Barack Obama sent hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to the UNFPA despite evidence of its involvement in China’s coercive two-child policy. This funding should end.

• Repeal Obamacare. Under Obamacare, tax subsidies are available for health plans that include coverage of elective abortion, and the HHS mandate requires coverage of certain abortion-inducing drugs and devices. Both anti-life policies would disappear with Obamacare’s repeal.

Promoting a Culture of Life

The success of pro-life candidates up and down the ballot is a victory for the pro-life movement. But more importantly, it is a victory for the most vulnerable and innocent among us. Since Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton effectively legalized abortion on demand, more than 56 million children have been denied the opportunity to live.

For over 40 years, the pro-life community has worked to counter the devastating impact abortion has had on mothers and their unborn babies, witnessing to the fundamental truth that from the moment of conception, a distinct human being with inherent worth and dignity has a right to life.

Congress and Trump have an opportunity to codify important policy riders, stop the flow of taxpayer dollars to organizations that perform or promote abortion, end the inhuman practice of late-term abortions on babies who are viable or capable of feeling pain, appoint pro-life justices to the Supreme Court, and much more.

They should take action with confidence, knowing that Americans have spoken for life at the ballot box.

This article was originally posted at the DailySignal.com

Written by Tony Perkins

America may recognize same-sex marriage now — but not because voters asked it too! And if the Left thinks the Supreme Court has finally decided the issue, they’re in for a major surprise. Turns out, the court of public opinion has its own verdict on the subject — and new polling shows it’s anything but liberal.

A year and a half into this experiment in judicial activism, the opinion of most voters hasn’t budged. When asked by Wilson Perkins Allen Opinion Research if they agreed with this statement — “I believe marriage should be defined only as a union between one man and one woman” — a solid 53 percent agreed. That’s a 16-point difference between those who disagreed at 37 percent (another 10 percent were undecided). No wonder liberals had to win same-sex marriage through the courts. It isn’t nearly as popular as the Left insists it is! Sixteen months into this illegitimate ruling, nothing about the people’s opinion has changed. According to Wilson, the 53 percent support for natural marriage is identical to what it was pre-Obergefell. Even the five justices of the Supreme Court haven’t managed to move the needle on America’s views!

For once in her life, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was right. If it weren’t for the U.S. Supreme Court forcing this decision on America, redefining marriage would have taken years for the Left to accomplish — if ever. “Legislatively, we couldn’t really succeed,” she admitted in May, “but from the courts and the rest… that victory has been won.” For years, the media managed to create this phony narrative of support — even when ballot boxes and state laws told another story. It’s encouraging to see that even when the laws change, people’s understanding of right and wrong do not. Obviously, voters — especially conservative Christians — are looking for politicians who will stand up to the cultural elites and their radical agenda.

That may be one reason why Donald Trump enjoyed such overwhelming support. As the poll goes on to say, nearly six in 10 Trump voters were swayed by the pro-life, pro-religious liberty planks of the GOP platform. And, as someone who served on the RNC Platform Committee, I can tell you that the 2016 document is the most conservative it’s ever been on every issue, including marriage. So when 66 percent of voters tell pollsters that the “Government should leave people free to follow their beliefs about marriage between one man and one woman as they live their daily lives at work and in the way they run their businesses,” it’s really no surprise that Donald Trump enjoyed the record-breaking evangelical support he did. He was the only candidate in the race that showed his commitment to religious freedom, especially when it comes to giving churches the ability to speak freely about politics from the pulpit (which 53 percent support).

As I told Fox News’s Todd Starnes, the Republican Party’s platform positions on the unborn and religious liberty were the bridge between Donald Trump and Christian conservatives. And he sealed that deal in the final debate when he vividly described a partial-birth abortion and pledged to appoint pro-life justices. If the liberal press had bothered to listen to what voters believe — instead of telling them what to believe — this election wouldn’t have been nearly as shocking. Because if there’s one overwhelming message everyone should have heard on Tuesday, it’s this: the media, the courts, and the Left don’t speak for the American people.

Tony Perkins is the president of Family Research Council.

This article was originally posted at the FRC blog.