Although few think their family is the only one struggling to keep afloat under the Biden administration’s economic war on Americans, there is comfort in seeing it confirmed by hard, cold facts.

According to Americans for Prosperity’s (AFP) Public Opinion Strategies, a whopping  75 percent of Americans reported that the increase in costs has impacted their spending over the past year. Of that 75 percent, more than 60 percent surveyed blame President Joe Biden and his leftwing policies for the inflation.  Americans are being pinched, and it is high time to speak out.

What is even more interesting about this poll is the strong sentiment about what should be done. Eighty-eight percent agree that the government needs to make it easier to produce energy domestically. A return to energy independence is not only logical but also is achievable. We are all keenly aware of its possibility thanks to the work of the Trump administration. Just days into his administration, in true Make America Great fashion, he issued an executive order allowing TC Energy to reapply for a presidential permit that would lead to reopening the Keystone XL pipeline and promising a speedy process. As a result, markets reacted favorably so Americans benefited when paying at the pump.

For reasons too baffling to be logical (Russia? Really?) and being touted under the banner of “going green,” the Obama and now Biden Administrations have both consistently used their executive power to kill not only the domestic production of oil from Keystone, but other domestic oil as well. The result is where we are at today—AAA’s National Average as of May 23 at $4.60/gallon with prices over $6.00 in many areas. Illinois, not surprisingly, is one of the most costly states, appearing red (for warning) on their national chart right alongside California and New York.

In a creative move to generate grass-roots awareness of this, AFP-Illinois hosted a “roll back the prices at the pump” event where for 2 hours on May 25 at Bleacher’s Gas station in Peoria, prices were a mere $2.38 a gallon–the cost of gas the day Biden took office. A staggering reminder of the true cost of Washington. Are you ready to take action yet?

Illinois residents’ additional burden under Democrat leadership:

In addition, a good deal of the blame for the high gas prices in Illinois should be laid squarely on Governor J.B. Pritzker’s shoulders. It was his policies that doubled motor fuel taxes from 19 cents to 38 cents per gallon in 2019. This measure not only means Illinois has the highest gas prices in the Midwest, we also have the second-highest gas tax in the nation. What’s worse is his automatic annual gas tax increases, with the tax increasing to over 45 cents a gallon in a year. But due to the upcoming election, Pritzker brazenly paused this year’s tax hike for 6 months so there will be two hikes in 2023. Are you seeing red yet?

Fox Nation has started taking action. With these new government regulations putting a stranglehold on America’s oil and gas industry, they are visiting oil-rich areas looking for solutions to drilling our way back to energy independence. Their research is making it clear that long before Biden had Russia to blame, his administration had slowed the flow of oil. And through the work of Jackie DeAngelis (and others), they are doing things such as hosting the Energy Independence Live Summit. They are taking action.

Now it is your turn:

Take ACTION: Speak up now! Click HERE to send a message to your state and federal lawmakers, letting them know that these gasoline prices are unacceptable. Urge them to enact policies that will minimize the cost of energy in general and gasoline in particular. Energy independence should be a top priority. There are no good reasons why we shouldn’t approve pipelines, drill on federal land and reduce taxes on this vitally important commodity.

Watch/listen to this Special Report segment from Fox News Channel:

The ideological and moral idiocy of “woke” Americans has not yet reached its nadir, but it’s getting close.

A complaint was filed with the Illinois Human Rights Commission by a female minor who pretends to be a boy and her parents, Tracy and Michael Yates. She alleged that she was discriminated against based on her “gender identity” when Lake Park High School District 108 in Roselle, Illinois required her to change clothes behind a privacy curtain in the boys’ locker room. She wanted to be free to undress out in the open with her objectively male peers. To heck with their feelings or rights. In mid-July, the Illinois Humans Rights kangaroo court (KC) ruled that the district did discriminate against her, arguing that minors who identify as “trans” must be given unrestricted access to the locker rooms of opposite-sex peers. (I had to file a Freedom of Information Act request to get the ruling. It is not listed with other rulings on the Illinois Human Rights Commission website.)

The commissioners—all of whom are political appointees—voted 3-0 in favor of the student. It’s interesting to note that only one of the commissioners, Robert A. Cantone, is an attorney. The other two are Michael Bigger, an insurance agent, and Cheryl Mainor, a business owner. Cantone and Mainor are Democrats, and Bigger is a liberal Republican. These are paid positions. Cantone and Mainor, Pritzker appointees, are being paid $119,000 per year. Bigger, a Rauner appointee, is being paid $46, 960 (Bigger must be bitter). In the last full calendar year, Jan. 2018-Dec. 2018, the commission met 20 times, averaging out to less than two times per month. Nice gig if you can get it.

To be clear, the KC’s foul ruling means that, for example, boys who pretend to be girls must be allowed to use girls’ locker rooms in exactly the same ways girls are allowed to use them, which means schools may not require them to change their clothes behind privacy curtains or in privacy cubicles and may not prohibit them from taking nude showers. Same goes for girls who pretend to be boys. Schools must pretend that boys who want to be girls are girls and girls who want to be boys are boys.

This also means something even more profound and disturbing. Civilized societies—as opposed to primitive and pagan cultures—recognize, respect, and accommodate the natural feelings of modesty and desire for privacy that humans experience when engaged in private acts. Civilized societies have long understood intuitively that such feelings derive from objective physical embodiment as male or female. Objective biological differentiation—that is, the sexual binary—is the reason civilized societies created separate spaces for objectively male and female humans to engage in private acts in which bodies are exposed or intimate bodily functions are performed.

The KC’s decision, however, is based on the revolutionary and arguable “trans”-cultic assumption that biological sex has no relevance to undressing, showering, or engaging in bodily functions. In the view of the KC and “trans” cult, the sole relevant factor for determining private space usage is subjective feelings. They believe that if a teenage boy wishes he were a girl, he should be treated as if he were a girl. Private spaces become symbolic tools for affirming a delusion.

The natural and good desire people naturally develop to be separate from people of the opposite sex when naked, partially dressed, showering, or performing excretory functions can be either reinforced by culture or undermined. “Trans” cultists seek to undermine it in the service of their disordered desires, science-denying beliefs, and corrupt moral code. And they seek to impose their ideology by deracinating the rights of decent people.

What’s passing strange is how exactly the Illinois Human Rights Commission concluded that opposite-sex impersonating minors must be allowed unrestricted access to the locker rooms of opposite-sex peers since the Illinois Human Rights Act—which is state law—says this:

Facilities Distinctly Private. Any facility, as to discrimination based on sex, which is distinctly private in nature such as restrooms, shower rooms, bath houses, health clubs and other similar facilities for which the Department, in its rules and regulations, may grant exemptions based on bona fide considerations of public policy.

So, how did the commissioners rationalize their ruling that public schools must sexually integrate locker rooms?  Did they claim this exemption applies only to discrimination based on “sex,” and not to discrimination based on “gender identity,” which was the basis of the student’s complaint? If so, then the exemption is meaningless.

Or did they argue that the school had provided no “bona fide considerations of public policy” that would justify the exemption? If so, what considerations would pass muster? If the obvious commonsense truth that objectively male students should not be required to undress in the presence of an objectively female peer does not constitute a bona fide consideration, what would?

The questions are moot, though, because the school district decided to allow opposite-sex impersonators full and unrestricted access to the locker rooms of their opposite-sex peers even before the KC ruled. So, much for the integrity and backbone of that district’s school board and administration.

As the incoherent, doctrinaire “trans” ideology advances, it continues to twist into even more grotesque shapes. Society is no longer expected to affirm just the damnable lies that men can be trapped in women’s bodies, that women can have penises, and that men can give birth. Now we’re expected to affirm the damnable lie that because some people are uncomfortable with the superficial conventions (e.g., hairstyles, clothing styles, activities) associated with their biological sex or because they’re drawn to the superficial conventions associated with both sexes, the human species is not binary. Allowing a few intellectually, psychologically, and morally deluded cross-dressers into opposite-sex private spaces is morphing into allowing anyone to use any private spaces they wish at any time. Public acknowledgment of the sexual binary is being forcibly erased.

A “pronoun guide” published by American University’s Center for Diversity & Inclusion exposes the efforts of “trans”-cultists to erase the binary—well, to erase the freedom of Americans to acknowledge the reality of the “gender binary”:

Don’t assume the gender of a pronoun: she/her/hers are NOT “female” pronouns, and he/him/his are NOT “male” pronouns.

Can’t leave any words behind in the wake of the “trans” revolution that suggest the human species is sexually binary. No, siree, that won’t do at all.

“Trans”-cultists aren’t just inventing new pronouns to reflect their sex-erased world. In true Orwellian fashion, they’re also redefining existing words to erase all prior traces of a world that embraced reality. George Orwell warned us what this kind of language control is intended to do in his description of Newspeak:

The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of IngSoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all… a heretical thought… should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words….  This was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words and stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings and so far as possible of all secondary meaning whatever….

[T]he special function of certain Newspeak words… was not so much to express meanings as to destroy them…. [W]ords which had once borne a heretical meaning were sometimes retained for the sake of convenience, but only with the undesirable meanings purged out of them.

How long before “trans”-cultists decide that “transwoman” is an epithet and must be banned? After all, they have proclaimed that men who masquerade as women are women. What if they decide that “transwoman”—which implies a distinction between fake-women and real women—is offensive and must be banned?

And who among us will resist sexually integrated private spaces and Newspeak mandates when the government tells us resistance is futile?

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Illinois-Human-Rights-Commission.mp3

A bold voice for pro-family values in Illinois!

Click HERE to learn about supporting IFI on a monthly basis.