Why are so many public schools in Illinois keeping so many secrets from the public? Last August, Christopher Rufo disclosed that Lurie’s Children’s Hospital, unbeknownst to parents or the general public, was collaborating with Chicago area schools to promote “radical gender theory, trans activism, and sexually explicit materials in at least four Chicago-area public school systems: District 75, District 120, District 181, and District 204.” Three of these school districts are elementary districts and one is a high school district.

We don’t know how many other school districts receive training from Lurie. But we have learned of at least one other, Palatine School District 15, another elementary school district. In January, Dawn Ravine, Lurie’s Sexuality Education Program Coordinator reportedly provided training to the District’s P.E./Health teachers during a planned institute day.

When parents learned of this training that was provided to the teachers, it came as a surprise since the District had voted to reject the National Sex Ed Standards. Why are the teachers being taught about subjects that were part of those standards, the parents asked? The District 15 school board did nothing to resolve the confusion. Instead of explaining the purpose of the training, the board Chair attacked the critics as liars at the most recent board meeting last week.

Does the school board even know why the training was held?

It appears that this training first exposed by Rufo has nothing whatsoever to do with whether or not the National Sex Ed Standards will be implemented by any specific district. Instead, it appears to be the result of guidance directed by the Illinois State Board of Education found here.

Several acts and suggested policies were developed after Governor JB Pritzker issued an executive order in 2019 to create a task force to investigate and report on creating affirming and inclusive schools to welcome, support and affirm transgender, non-binary and gender non-conforming children and adolescents.  The Task Force issued its report in January, 2020.

It doesn’t look like there was a single conservative, or even a liberal with a differing view, on the Task Force. The ACLU was represented, but neither ADF nor the Thomas More Society were anywhere to be seen. There were several students on the Task Force, but no former students who had de-transitioned. The Task Force sought the views and advice of the Trevor Project, but not the position of the Society for Evidence Based Gender Medicine. Do you suppose the Governor decided what the report would say before it was written?

The laws, regulations and suggested policies under Pritzker’s administration fully embrace the view that children suffering from gender dysphoria should be affirmed, that children should be allowed to “transition” without parental knowledge or involvement, that trans girls should be allowed to use the same facilities as biological girls and that they be allowed to play on girls teams.

Under Governor Pritzker’s guidance, the Illinois State Board of Education has set up a network of laws, regulations and suggested policies that seemingly tie the hands of local school boards. Ideologically, the board administrators and elected board members in Illinois schools mostly are not inclined to push back against the ISBE. If a majority of the board were so inclined, they likely would get advice from the board lawyers that the schools have to go along with what the state wants. Besides, they would be (and have been) told, suing the state over any issue would be very costly and not good stewardship of public tax funds.

Lost in the discussion is consideration for what is best for the children and what parents want.

Parents are not powerless, however. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled on numerous occasions that parents have a right to control what their children are taught. Given the current state of education in Illinois, it might be best for parents to home school their children or to send them to a private faith-based school that focuses on STEM subjects and English. If enough children are pulled out of school, it might prompt a more child and parent friendly environment.

If home schooling or sending children to a sane private school is not possible, the only thing that can be done is for parents to opt their children out of everything they don’t like—sex ed, SEL, counseling by any member of the school staff or any contractor, instruction on any subject other than math, science, biology, engineering, technology, English, or other subject the parents might approve. At the very least, though, parents will have to closely monitor what their children are taught in those classes–what textbooks, websites, videos, research projects, etc.

Illinois government, the ISBE, local boards along with the lawyers and administrators they hire, the teachers’ unions, and activist teachers have proven themselves to be completely secretive and untrustworthy. Inaction and inattention have brought us to this point. The result is we get exactly the government we deserve and there is nobody out there to fix it for us.

Unless parents get involved like they did in Virginia, nothing is going to change.

State Representative Mary Beth Canty (D-Arlington Heights) is working to amend the state’s compulsory school attendance laws in order to capture the hearts and minds of innocent and impressionable children. She is the chief sponsor of two bills expanding government school influence on young children. HB 3143 lowers the compulsory age and HB 2396 mandates all-day kindergarten.

In 2013, Springfield lawmakers lowered the compulsory school age from 7 to 6 years-old. Now they want to drop the mandatory age for school attendance in Illinois from 6 to 5 years of age. Some elected officials want the age to be dropped to 3 as further reading will reveal.

In last week’s State of the State and Budget Address, Governor JB Pritzker announced he wants to invest hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars in a new expanded education program called “Smart Start Illinois.”  According to his speech,

Smart Start is comprised of four elements: pre-K, childcare, early intervention, and home visiting…

Smart Start Pre-K is a four year plan that will allow access to preschool for every three and four year old in Illinois. It will increase our funding for the Early Childhood Block Grant program this year by $75 million. That’s $179 million more than when I took office.

It is clear that our government officials want to push parents out of the way. They believe that they can better educate and care for our children by teaching them the secular beliefs and values they think they should be learning.

Parents, grandparents, and church leaders have got to understand that the earlier the godless left have our children as a captive audience, the more likely the indoctrination will stick. One hour of Sunday school cannot compete with 35 hours per week of godless indoctrination. Parents, grandparents, and church leaders must understand how important it is that we remove our children from these indoctrination camps.

There is no reason for parents to hand their children over to the government that wants to usurp the God-given authority parents have to direct the upbringing of their children. Parents are best suited to decide when their children are socially, emotionally, and cognitively ready for formal education.

State lawmakers are not going to fix what’s wrong with education by forcing kids to start school a year earlier. In fact, there is evidence that education isn’t about more seat-time for kids.

Moreover, we all need to realize that there isn’t much education going on in many of our government schools. On average in Illinois, only 30 percent of students meet proficiency levels in math and only 26 percent in reading per the Illinois State Board of Education. And it’s in the single digits in many school districts. Furthermore, eight graders are now mandated to be proficient in LGBT history in order to graduate.

IFI continues to calls for Christian families to rescue their precious children from these indoctrination centers. Instead of being taught reading, math, and science, too many of our schools are focusing on social engineering, humanistic training, sexual immorality, revisionist history and other godless subject matters. In short, children are being trained in wokeism instead of a biblical worldview.

As for the legally mandated age of schooling, the decision to begin formal education rests with parents, not State Rep. Canty, JB Pritzker, or any other politician.

**UPDATED**

Take ACTION on HB 3134: Click HERE to fill out a witness slip to oppose HB 3143 – to lower the compulsory school age to 5 years-old. The Elementary & Secondary Education: Administration, Licensing & Charter Schools Committee is set to vote on this bill at 2 PM on Wednesday, March 8th.

-Fill out your name, address, email and phone number. Leave everything else blank or put self.
-Highlight “Opponent” and “Record of Appearance Only.”
-Check Terms of Agreement and click Create Slip.

HB 2396 was passed in the The Child Care Accessibility and Early Childhood Education Committee by a vote of 14-1 on Thursday, March 2nd. It will now be sent to the Illinois House floor for consideration.

MORE ACTION: Click HERE to send an email or a fax to your state representative to ask him/her to vote against the expanding role of government in the lives of Illinois children and families. Ask him or her to vote NO to both HB 2396 and HB 3143. .

You can also call him/her by Clicking HERE to find their name and number or call the Capitol switchboard.

The phone number is (217) 782-2000.

Illinois’s recent assault weapons ban has provoked more than a little consternation across the state—as it should. The ban, signed into law by Governor JB Pritzker on January 10th of this year, immediately banned the sale of “assault weapons” and magazines with a capacity greater than ten rounds. The ban also requires current firearm owners to register their now-illegal weapons with the Illinois State Police. There’s only one problem for Pritzker: The vast majority of Sheriffs in are not on board.

So far, 90 out of 102 Illinois counties’ sheriffs have stated that they will not be enforcing the ban and will not require residents to register their weapons and magazines. It’s certainly gratifying to see that Illinois might just have some Constitutional spirit left, but as Christians, we ought to consider the legitimacy of such resistance. May sheriffs (and citizens) disobey Pritzker’s assault weapons ban? The relevant passage of Scripture here is, of course, Romans 13:

Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. Therefore whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to evil.  (Rom. 13:1-3)

The Apostle Paul’s reasoning is clear: the ruling authorities are divinely appointed by God; therefore, to resist the ruling authorities is to resist God.

It appears that Illinois sheriffs who are defying the assault weapons ban are disobeying Scripture, does it not? Not so fast. Who is really resisting the higher powers here, the sheriffs or J.B. Pritzker? The highest law of the land—the United States Constitution—states that the people’s right to keep and bear arms may not be infringed. Governor Pritzker, by signing the assault weapons ban into law, is himself in high-handed disobedience against the Constitution. In other words, Pritzker is the one who’s actually disobeying Paul’s injunction in Romans 13. Those sheriffs defying the governor’s mandate are, in fact, upholding the law; the sheriffs are the ones truly acting in subjection to the higher powers.

What about citizens, then? Must owners of “assault weapons” and “high-capacity magazines” register their banned firearms anyway? The same logic applies: obey the Constitution. There is, however, an additional assurance—citizens are obeying their sheriffs. Local authorities who rightly defy Pritzker’s unlawful bill give the residents of their county an avenue to submit themselves to the higher powers (the sheriffs) so they don’t have to comply with unlawful injunctions from the state government. In other words, rejection of Pritzker’s unlawful legislation does not result in anarchy—citizens may (and should) still in good conscience obey their local authorities.

Historically, this was known as the doctrine of the lesser magistrate. When a ruler overreaches his divinely-appointed sphere of authority, lesser magistrates (like sheriffs and mayors) may interpose themselves between the citizen and the ruler, both protecting the citizens and giving them a lawful authority who may be obeyed. John Calvin puts it thus:

[P]opular magistrates have been appointed to curb the tyranny of kings . . . So far am I from forbidding these officially to check the undue license of kings, that if they connive at kings when they tyrannize and insult over the humbler of the people, I affirm that their dissimulation is not free from nefarious perfidy, because they fraudulently betray the liberty of the people, while knowing that, by the ordinance of God, they are its appointed guardians. (Institutes of the Christian Religion, Bk. IV.31)

Illinois citizens and law enforcement officers ought to take comfort in this doctrine. Law enforcement officers are no less appointed by God than Gov. Pritzker and, as Calvin says, perform an important role as the appointed guardians of the liberty of the people. They must courageously defend that liberty, interposing themselves between the state government and Illinois citizens. Citizens likewise may rest assured that they are not agents of anarchy when they disobey the assault weapons ban. On the contrary, they are simply obeying their God-appointed lesser magistrates—law enforcement officers.

There’s a grand act of un-creation taking place all across this nation. Leftists are busy with this ugly business of un-creating decency, order, justice, compassion, and beauty, and children play a central role in this ugly business. To leftists, children are both objects of un-creation and tools for un-creating society. If we want to see with greater clarity the plans leftists have for the nation, there is no better place to examine than Illinois. Let’s hover above Illinois for a few minutes to get a bird’s eye view of this dark project.

Abuse in Chicago Public Schools

On Jan. 1, 2023—a Sunday—the Office of Inspector General (OIG) for the Chicago Board of Education released its annual report on “investigations into allegations of waste, fraud, financial mismanagement and employee misconduct” between July 1, 2021, and June 30, 2022. This year’s report cost taxpayers $6.54 million.

(As a noteworthy aside, the CPS spent $97 million of federal pandemic relief money on “academic recovery + social and emotional learning supports.” Further, CPS plans on spending $430 million more of federal money over the next two years for the same academic, social, and emotional learning problems caused by the refusal of Governor J.B. Pritzker to open schools and the refusal of teachers to teach during the pandemic.)

What is revealed in this report should shock all parents of CPS students and all Illinois taxpayers:

The OIG received 1,825 complaints alleging misconduct, waste, fraud, and financial mismanagement at Chicago Public Schools, including allegations of adult-on-student sexual misconduct.” Of those nearly 2,000 complaints, the OIG opened investigations into fewer than half (39.7%).

Of those 1,825 complaints, 470 were sexual allegations.

Because of a 2018 Chicago Tribune exposé of sexual abuse in Chicago public schools, the OIG “created a special Sexual Allegations Unit” which “has grown exponentially into a team of more than 30 … staff responsible for handling hundreds of sexual misconduct allegations per year.” The OIG report describes the number of cases as “extraordinarily high case volume.”

The complaints include allegations of sexual grooming, sexual intercourse, sexual assault, sexual touching, and graphic sexual texts.

Since many victims are afraid to report sexual abuse, Illinoisans can justifiably assume that the numbers of adult-on-student sexual misconduct cases are far higher than 470.

CPS scores

Apparently, faculty are too busy abusing children to teach them how to read, write, add, and subtract. In September 2022, Wirepoints reported on the abysmal academic performance of CPS:

Student achievement remains badly sub-par at CPS. About 70 percent of CPS students in grades 4, 8, and 11 – and 80 percent or more of its tested black students – aren’t proficient in reading and math. In some schools, reading proficiency is still in the low single digits.

Sex Education Law

Shameful, sub-proficient, and stagnating test scores suggest that Illinois lawmakers—a super-duper majority of whom are leftists—don’t care about educating Illinois children, so where do their interests lie? A recent bill from Illinois Senator Ram Villivalam (Democrat from Chicago of course), points to the educational priorities of Illinois’ leftist ideologues. He proposed a tyrannical amendment to Illinois’ already offensive sex education law.

In 2021, Villivalam sponsored a bill mandating that K-12 schools that offer “health and safety” classes must include indoctrination with leftist gender theories and leftist views of homosexuality. But this bill, which became law, allowed schools to opt out of such indoctrination, which 70 percent of schools did. Can’t have that, thought Big Brother Villivalam.

So, he proposed an amendment during this recent lame duck session to remove the school opt-out option. It didn’t pass during the lame duck session, but mark my words, Big Brother Villivalam will, like the Terminator, be back.

Teachers often defend their teaching about sex by claiming they are “experts,” and by claiming what they teach is “age-appropriate,” so let’s spend a minute discussing purported teacher “expertise” and “age-appropriateness.”

Illinois teachers—including teachers in high performing suburban districts—are rarely “experts” in even the disciplines for which they were hired to teach. Don’t believe me? Ask your children’s teachers if they have advanced degrees, and if they do, ask what field their advanced degrees are in. Relatively few teachers pursue advanced degrees in biology, chemistry, physics, English literature, or history. They don’t, because it’s easier to get an advanced degree—and, thereby, increase their salary—in educational policy as opposed to biology, chemistry, physics, English literature, or history.

If they’re not experts in the field for which they were hired to teach, how are they experts in sexuality? What criteria do they use to establish their sexuality expertise bona fides?

And what criteria do they use to determine the “age-appropriateness” of sex education content. Who established those criteria. So many questions taxpayers never ask.

“Trans” policy

Sex is definitely where the “educational” interests of leftists lie, particularly deviant sexuality. Look no further than the Pritzker family that scurries about the world throwing their money and ample weight behind the effort to promote cross-dressing and child mutilation.

Governor Pritzker’s first cousin, whose transonym is “Jennifer” Pritzker, is the cross-dressing man in woman-face who tried to extort the GOP by proclaiming that if the GOP didn’t toe the line as he toes it in his lady pumps, he would take his money and move to the dark side—which he did.

He and the Pritzker family also use their money to fund university and hospital programs around the world to indoctrinate students into the “trans” cult and to mutilate the healthy bodies of children.

On a local level, upon his first election, J. B. Pritzker created a “trans” cultic task force composed of all lefties to socially construct a plan for “transing” public schools.

Now that leftists control public education in Illinois, our shameless governor/chief propagandist hopes to further diminish the influence of parents on their own children. In Pritzker’s second inaugural speech, he announced his evil plans: “I propose we go all in for our children and make preschool available to every family throughout the state,” and “let’s focus on making [college] tuition free for every working-class family.”

Get ‘em while they’re young and keep ‘em.

Research has long established that college and university faculty and administrations skew wildly left. Further, research has demonstrated that of those students who self-censor out of fear of repercussions, well over half are conservative. And this is the “learning” environment where Pritzker seeks to send more students and at taxpayer expense. Pritzker wants to cram as much propaganda into the minds of as many young people as possible, and wants you, conservative friends, to pay for this indoctrination.

To mix bird metaphors, Illinois is both a canary in a coal mine and a buzzard in a killing field.

Conservative parents, get your kids out of government killing fields now before the buzzards devour them.

It is a common assumption that Leftist views are compassionate, while conservative, biblical views are not. The assumption is so ingrained in society that it rarely gets called into question. And yet, even a superficial examination of Leftist policies and programs reveals all sorts of lies, hypocrisy, and callousness.

One of the most well-known programs initiated and promoted by the Left is the welfare system. The national welfare system was established in 1935 in response to the devastating effects that the Great Depression had on families and communities. This system was established to provide a safety net in the event that another depression hit the country.

The original intent of the welfare system as a last-chance “safety net,” however, has been abused. Today it has become the source of permanent, long-term income for many. Philosopher, professor, and author Dr. Jay W. Richards notes in his book Money, Greed, and God, the following statistic about the overuse of the welfare system and its direct link to poverty:

An experiment comparing a control group with household recipients of welfare benefits revealed that welfare is a disincentive to work. Husbands reduced their hours worked by an average of 9%, and wives reduced hours worked by 20%. Young males reduced their hours worked by 33%; singles, by 43%.

As this study notes, the overuse of the welfare system is hurting poverty-stricken communities of America. What does Scripture have to say about those who refuse to work? The Apostle Paul, in 2 Thessalonians 3:10 (ESV) says,

“For even when we were with you, we would give you this command: If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.”

Paul again, in 1 Timothy 5:8, says,

“Anyone who does not provide for their relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.”

These are just two instances when God shows his displeasure for those who refuse to work and provide for their families.

Policies on crime are another way in which the Left exacerbates poverty. The SAFE-T Act, which was signed into law by Governor J.B. Pritzker on February 22, 2021, is a prime example. In this bill, the cash-bail system, which is a means by which criminals are detained until cash-bail is posted and a way to ensure that the defendant will return to court for trial, will be ending on January 1^st. Dan Proft, host of AM 560 Chicago’s Morning Answer, identified some of the dangers of the SAFE-T Act:

In point of fact, under the SAFE-T Act, non-detainable offenses would include – by non-detainable meaning you’re released – burglary, robbery, arson, kidnaping, second-degree murder, intimidation, aggravated battery, aggravated DUI, aggravated fleeing, eluding drug offenses, drug induced homicide and threatening a public official.

The Illinois General Assembly recently made some changes to this act to try to placate critics, but the changes were minor, only involving procedures and risk assessments.

As in Illinois, Leftists control government in California. They passed Proposition 47, which designates shoplifting items valued under $950 a misdemeanor instead of a felony. Not surprisingly, thefts have skyrocketed in the state.  Barnini Chakraborty, senior reporter at the Washington Examiner, wrote an article for Fox News exposing the effects of Proposition 47:

Since Proposition 47 was passed, there has been an increase in theft across the state. Cities like San Francisco have seen organized crime rings turn shoplifting into a well-organized racket involving desperate thieves and unscrupulous black-market resellers. Among the nation’s 20 largest cities, San Francisco now has the highest rate of property crime, which includes theft, shoplifting and vandalism.

God also has much to say about the sin of theft. The Eighth Commandment says, “You shall not steal” (Exodus 20:15). In Ephesians 4:28, the Apostle Paul declares,

“Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.”

As for the thief’s punishment, God commands in Exodus 22:7 that

“If a man gives to his neighbor money or goods to keep safe, and it is stolen from the man’s house, then, if the thief is found, he shall pay double.”

It’s not hard to see that the Left’s policies–the misuse of the welfare system, the SAFE-T Act, and Proposition 47–harm individuals and communities.

God is not impartial with regard to the poor or justice, and since God is not impartial, Christians shouldn’t be either. Christians have a duty to stand against policies that go against God’s Word and to replace the lies with the truth that comes from Scripture. In Zechariah 8:16, the Lord declares,

“These are the things that you shall do: Speak the truth to one another; render in your gates judgments that are true and make for peace.”

Gov. JB Pritzker continues to make sure Illinois has more than its share of pot dispensaries. And as Illinois Family Institute warned repeatedly that what was happening in Colorado would also happen here, there are consequences. Dire consequences.

Marijuana use among adolescents has now surpassed alcohol use.

A 20-year study shows a 245 percent increase in marijuana use by children aged 6-18 since 2000, while alcohol use has steadily declined.

This is very bad news for several major reasons. Let’s start with the detrimental effect on brain development in early adolescents.

The Frontal Lobe is the largest of the four major lobes of the brain. It’s liable for final decision making, judgment and reasoning. It’s not fully developed until around the age of 25. With marijuana use, however, blood flow is slowed to the Frontal Lobe. The results can be memory loss, sluggish learning, impulsivity, lessened inhibitions, impaired judgment, and more.

There’s ample research indicating regular use can result in a permanent loss of IQ by about 8 points in adolescents. It doesn’t sound like much, but it means more college dropouts, more out-of-wedlock pregnancies, more crime, more homeless – more of things citizens don’t want and our state cannot take.

In addition to reducing IQ, early adolescent use of pot can cause serious mental health problems like anxiety, depression and schizophrenia that lead to psychotic episodes.

A National Library of Medicine’s article concluded that adolescent use of marijuana speeds up psychosis development by three years, especially for those whose parents have psychotic disorders.

“Young people with a parent or sibling affected by psychosis have a roughly one in 10 chance of developing the condition themselves—even if they never smoke pot. Regular marijuana use, however, doubles their risk—to a one in five chance of becoming psychotic,” say researchers at Harvard.

Knowing these scientific facts, you would hope any compassionate governor would be alarmed and be discouraging the use of pot. Instead, Pritzker recently marked a milestone by attending the opening of the first “social equity” marijuana dispensary. (Pritzker boasted that all 192 “social equity” licenses have been issued and more dispensaries will be opening in upcoming months.)

“Social equity” dispensaries are those that have specifically been placed in communities that have had a higher rate of past marijuana use resulting in arrests and imprisonment. This includes arrests for more serious crimes that resulted in jail time for lesser crimes due to plea bargain negotiations. These folks have all been released.

As if 192 more “social equity” dispensaries are not bad enough, Pritzker is fine with marijuana delivery – like pizzas. As long as it’s regulated. That’s a buzz word for taxed.

“At first blush, without the data in front of me, I think that as long as it is regulated, as long as we make sure that the person who is ordering it gets it, and that they’re legally allowed to, then it would seem to me like the same as somebody coming into a store,” Pritzker said, according to ABC News.

The dramatic increase in child cannabis use since 2017 coincides with a wave of decriminalization and commercialization in the US. Marijuana edibles and vaping products have been found to be the most used and are actually marketed in ways attractive to children. Although they are perceived as harmless (i.e. “medical” marijuana), this is not the case.

And adolescent marijuana exposure cases have risen since 2011 and skyrocketing from 2017 to 2020.

Since marijuana use is already on the steady rise among adolescents, making the delivery system easier will only elevate the problem. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that adolescent use of marijuana today means increased use of harder drugs when they are adults; it doesn’t take a brain surgeon to know that this will hamper tomorrow’s job growth because it hampers tomorrow’s workers. And it doesn’t take a moral scholar to know this will lead to breaking up the traditional family even more in a society that has been on the fast-track to begin with.  It does take a governor to deny these things, though, and then happily double down to accelerate the citizens’ misery. And we have a governor who does this well.

Right on schedule, the new year will bring (yet another) onerous increase in gas taxes for Illinoisans: the gas tax is set to be increased to 42.5 cents per gallon, effective January 1, 2023.  The state gas tax was 19 cents per gallon before J.B. Pritzker took office—meaning the gas tax has more than doubled in the last four years. 

Elections have consequences and people’s memories are very short. Not only did Pritzker immediately raise the gas tax upon his installment as governor in 2019, he made yearly tax hikes automatic to account for inflation. But out of caution for Election 2022, he delayed the regularly scheduled tax hike until after the election. Instead, Pritzker required gas station owners to put stickers on their pumps that said:

“As of July 1, 2022, the State of Illinois has suspended the inflation adjustment to the motor fuel tax through December 31, 2022. The price on this pump should reflect the suspension of the tax increase.”

The Illinois Fuel and Retail Association fought the overtly political and partisan law in court, but the case was thrown out. Yes, this is Illinois. Since they were still required to post Pritzker’s propaganda (or pay a $500 fine), IFRA member gas stations also planned to post signs pointing the finger at the governor for the gas tax hikes as well as a QR code that would direct customers to an online gas tax calculator.

Unfortunately, such efforts to inform the public of Pritzker’s antics were not enough. Now one piece of legislation is attempting to postpone the increase for a few months. HB 5829, if passed, would delay the tax hike until July, 2023. The bill, however, does not touch the annual automatic increases.

So what’s an Illinois citizen to do? HB 5829 does too little and is too late. It simply kicks the can down the road a short distance. Pritzker won. He has no incentive to delay the hike. Illinois gas taxes are among the highest in the nation—second only to California’s ghastly 54 cents per gallon—but Governor Pritzker appears to have his eyes set on first place. As of December 2nd, the average gas price in Illinois was $3.70 per gallon, compared with the national average of $3.38 per gallon—a 32¢ difference!

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to your state lawmakers to ask them to rescind the automatic tax increases on gasoline in Illinois. Remind them that working families are getting squeezed with inflated costs for groceries, electricity and heating. There is no good reason to automatically increase taxes on gasoline every year. Illinoisans want relief at the pump.

Lawmakers need to stop toying around with trifling measures like the proposed gas tax hike delay. Measures such as HB 5829 kick the problem a couple months down the road and give citizens the illusion of stability, but in reality, it just delays the inevitable. As long as J.B. Pritzker’s unjust automatic annual tax hike remains on the books, Illinois’s citizens are going to face greater and greater financial burdens at the gas pump. Serious action needs to be taken to protect Illinois citizens from the financial overreach of their government.

Please contact your lawmakers—something needs to change.

Friday morning, Illinois Family Institute (IFI) was unpleasantly greeted with JB Pritzker’s deceitful, divisive, anti-Christian screed—er, press release—that uses IFI to besmirch his gubernatorial opponent, the exceptional Darren Bailey. Through this screed/press release Pritzker unwittingly besmirched every conservative Illinoisan—including theologically orthodox Catholics, Protestants, Eastern Orthodox, Orthodox Jews, and Muslims.

For those who haven’t yet read Pritzker’s poisonous press release—in which he glowingly and oxymoronically refers to a “family-friendly drag show”—please allow me to take you on a brief guided tour.

It began like this:

After confessing to his deeply-rooted belief that victims of rape or incest should be forced to carry their pregnancy to term, Darren Bailey’s campaign now plans to attend a fundraiser with a radically anti-choice, anti-LGBTQ+ hate group. The Illinois Family Institute has a long history of opposing reproductive rights, marriage equality, and peddling dangerous anti-trans conspiracy theories.

Darren Bailey along with thousands of people all across the nation hold the deeply rooted belief that the product of conception between two humans is a human and as such has the right not to be exterminated—not even if conceived in the commission of a heinous crime. The good end of alleviating suffering does not justify the means of killing innocent humans.

IFI does not oppose “reproductive rights.” Rather, IFI doesn’t believe “reproductive rights” are absolute rights that include the right of powerful humans to exterminate weaker humans. We believe that when the right to control one’s reproduction comes into direct conflict with the right of another human merely to exist, the right to exist is a right of a higher moral order.

The number of people who hold these views would likely be much higher if not for the unconstitutional Roe v. Wade decision and the subsequent ideological pummeling that two generations of Americans have endured. Laws teach. In addition, our government school system controlled by leftists has been indoctrinating children with leftist views on sexuality for decades. And our myth-making machinery (i.e., the industrial entertainment complex) controlled by leftists has been propagandizing for libertinism and hedonism for even longer.

IFI’s position on the intrinsic worth of incipient human life can only be deemed “radical” by radicals in thrall to the radical belief that humans in their mothers’ wombs have no worth. The radical views of radicals like Pritzker have no objective standards regarding—well, anything. That is why they have now abandoned their prior view that abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare.” Now they embrace the view that it is morally defensible to kill a human up to the moment of her birth for any or no reason, and that Americans should be forced to pay for the execution. That’s the radical view of the radical Pritzker.

Next came Pritzker’s gripe that IFI opposes “marriage equality,” which is more linguistic gimcrackery. In plain English, IFI believes that marriage has a nature that government merely recognizes and regulates but does not create. And the central constituent feature is sexual differentiation. Leftists decided to jettison in law the most enduring, cross-cultural feature of marriage—sexual differentiation—while retaining all the others.

Does Pritzker believe that those who oppose the legalization of polyandrous, polygynous, and polyamorous marriages are opposed to “marriage equality”? Does he believe those who oppose the legalization of incestuous marriage are opposed to “marriage equality”? Does he believe those who oppose the legalization of marriage between adults and minors are opposed to “marriage equality”?

Let’s move on now to Pritzker’s tiresome, specious, and ugly allegation that IFI is an “anti-LGBTQ+” hate group.

First, Pritzker engages in some tricksy rhetorical maneuvering. He has redefined “hate” without providing his spanking new definition, and he conflates strong opposition to ideas with hatred of persons.

For cynical political utility, leftists like Pritzker call moral and ontological beliefs they detest “hate.” And they falsely claim that expressing disapproval of beliefs and volitional acts that leftists embrace constitutes hatred (i.e., detestation) of persons who embrace those beliefs and acts.

Does Pritzker apply his definition of “hate” consistently? Does he hate all IFI employees and all other Illinoisans who share the same views as IFI on the rights of the unborn, marriage, homosexuality, and cross-sex identification?

Maybe Pritzker detests people who embrace beliefs and ideas he rejects, but most people are fully capable of loving and delighting in the company of people who hold different beliefs and create lives based on those beliefs. In fact, most of us do it every day with friends, family, neighbors, and colleagues.

What a sad life Pritzker must live if he hates everyone who disagrees with his moral views. What a danger he is to the Republic if he is in a position to implement policies based on his hatred of conservatives.

Methinks leftists proclaim too much about their love of diversity and commitment to tolerance.

Second, from the link provided in his press screed, we learn that Pritzker gets his information about “hate groups” from the virulently hateful, anti-Christian Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which shares Pritzker’s penchant for prevarication. For those interested in the true story of IFI’s interactions with the deceitful SPLC, click HERE.

IFI is baffled about Prevaricating Pritzker’s curious and unsubstantiated claim about IFI “peddling dangerous anti-trans conspiracy theories.” We understand that the word “conspiracy” is an effective dog-whistle that beckons obedient leftists, but we would still like to know to what “anti-trans conspiracies” Pritzker is referring.

Is one of the alleged “anti-trans conspiracy theories” our claim that the deep-pocketed Pritzkers are funding the transnational pro-“trans” movement? If so, that’s not a conspiracy, and it’s not held by IFI alone.

New York City investigative journalist Jennifer Bilek has written a superb exposé of the creepy Pritzker family’s efforts to advance the “trans”-cultic metaphysical nonsense that is destroying bodies, hearts, minds, and families—an exposé that everyone should read.

Or perhaps the family-unfriendly Pritzker is referring to our criticism of his cross-dressing cousin, James Nicholas Pritzker (aka “Jennifer”), a former Republican who publicly threatened the GOP that he would take his deep frock-pockets and flounce home if the GOP didn’t adopt leftist positions on sexuality. But that’s not a conspiracy theory. He really did that.

Or perhaps Pritzker’s reference to “anti-trans conspiracy theories” is about IFI’s (and countless other people’s) claims that leftists are ideologically grooming children to embrace “trans”-cultic beliefs. If that’s what he calls a conspiracy theory, he doesn’t read nearly enough.

Pritzker knows that Illinois has passed laws mandating that teachers present material embedded with “trans”-cultic beliefs to children starting in kindergarten. And he himself created a task force composed of leftists to tell schools how to implement “trans”-cultic beliefs in policies, practices, and curricula. Maybe he should spend some time watching the hair-raising videos posted on Libs of TikTok in which public school teachers boast about their efforts to indoctrinate young children with “trans”-cultic beliefs.

But IFI doesn’t know what he’s talking about because he provided no evidence, and as of this writing, his campaign has not responded to our question about their allegation.

The press release from hell also included this peculiar criticism:

Bailey and his running mate, Stephanie Trussell, have repeatedly used social media to disparage the LGBTQ+ community. He denigrated transgender individuals, writing, “When a young girl decides she is too fat and develops an eating disorder, we get her psychological help. When a young girl decides she is a boy, we adjust reality to fit her desires.”

Demonstrating the wildly different ways we treat children with delusional beliefs about their weight as opposed to those with delusional beliefs about their sex does not denigrate children with gender dysphoria. It respects both reality and children’s beautiful embodiment as boys or girls. Tragically, leftists like Pritzker believe it’s loving to facilitate bodily mutilation and hateful to help children accept their bodies.

Pritzker’s anti-Christian hatred is revealed in this sentence from his press release:

Bailey has also stated that he “believe[s] in biblical marriage between a man and a woman.”

That’s it. Christian friends, remember this when you vote. In Pritzker’s view no one who believes in biblical marriage between a man and a woman is fit for elected office. Sounds remarkably like Pritzker supports an unconstitutional religious test for holding office.

Through his press release, Pritzker does what leftists have been doing for decades, and it’s a two-fer strategy: 1. Libel and malign organizations that speak politically incorrect truth boldly (that would be IFI in this case), 2. Associate conservative threats (that would be Bailey in this case) to leftist power with those organizations, thereby taking out both.

What leftists like Pritzker assume is that conservatives will continue to be intimidated by leftist name-calling. What leftists like Pritzker don’t expect is that one day conservatives will cease to care about being stigmatized and rejected by the name-calling cool kids. Leftists don’t expect conservatives to heed the words of Martin Luther King Jr. who urged those who embraced truth to refuse to be intimidated:

There was a time when the church was very powerful. It was during that period that the early Christians rejoiced when they were deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was the thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Wherever the early Christians entered a town the power structure got disturbed and immediately sought to convict them for being “disturbers of the peace” and “outside agitators.” But they went on with the conviction that they were “a colony of heaven” and had to obey God rather than man. They were small in number but big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be “astronomically intimidated.” They brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contest.

If leftist assumptions about incipient human life, abortion, marriage, homosexuality, and cross-sex identification are false—and they’re inarguably not objective or fact-based—then opposing them is good and right. In order to know what a loving act is as opposed to a hateful act, we first need to know what is true. All adults should understand that those who embrace lies will always hate hearing truth and hate those speaking it.

Written by Nance Hayes

The United States Postal Service recently announced the creation of the “Election and Government Mail Services.” This new division of the USPS was created to handle election mail issues “as part of an effort to ensure swift and secure delivery of ballots for the midterm election.”

The expansion of government and more government involvement in elections… What could possibly go wrong?

One only needs to reflect on a recent interview with J. Christian Adams, President of Public Interest Legal Foundation, to find the nucleus of the real problems related to vote-by-mail ballots in the 2020 election.

J. Christian Adams told Breitbart News Washington Political editor Matt Boyle that 15 million mail ballots were unaccounted for in the 2020 presidential election, saying,

The Election Assistance Commission, which is a federal agency … puts out a report every two years. … One of the things it has … is the number of mail ballots that were sent out, the number of mail ballots that came back, and the number of mail ballots that were straight-up rejected, meaning the election officials said there was a defect.

This is not data that we are speculating about. This is federal data, and that’s where we get the 15 million number. Fifteen million ballots were sent in the mail last year that never ever came back.

In 2020, Adams’s organization (PILF) found 350,000 deceased registrants and 40,000 duplicate registrants on American voter rolls.

Governor JB Pritzker recently signed a bill to ensure every voter be sent a “Permanent Vote-by-Mail” application.  When filled out and sent back, the “Permanent Vote-by-Mail” application allows an Illinois resident to vote by mail for the rest of their lives, or until they leave that specific address.

Can you imagine? Where will some of those applications be sent? Will they be a part of the 1 million mail ballots that were returned “Undeliverable?” In other words, over 1 million mail ballots NEVER reached their destination or the intended voter never used them.

No worries, they say. We have a great system in place in Illinois for updating and coordinating all our data, ERIC (Electronic Registration Information Center). According to ERIC:

“Each member state receives reports that show voters who have moved within their state, voters who have moved out of state, voters who have died, duplicate registrations in the same state, and individuals who are potentially eligible to vote but are not yet registered.”

So, no problem! With ERIC in place, Illinois should be in great shape. Right?

Anyone involved in election integrity in Illinois knows our voter rolls are in disarray. That is why the Illinois Conservative Union joined forces with national organization, Judicial Watch, in 2020 to sue the State of Illinois and State Board of Elections for violations of the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, for refusing to turn over the voter rolls.

Transparency and clean voter rolls in Illinois? Are you really sure that exists? As Adams stated,

“The whole thing is a mess. It can’t be repeated again. And that’s the problem with mail balloting. We’re giving the idiots at the post office control over our government.”

Yes, the whole thing is a mess. Just look at what happened in our neighboring state of Wisconsin. In 2020, for instance, 1.4 million ballots were mailed to Wisconsin voters, which was 86% of the 1.6 million votes cast.

Of those 1.4 million mail ballots, 76,308 were classified as “unknown,” while 6,458 were classified as “undeliverable.” That means a total of 82,766 mail ballots were either “unknown” or “undeliverable,” a number that is 400%greater than Biden’s certified 20,682 margin of victory in Wisconsin over former President Donald Trump.

I’d say that’s a problem wouldn’t you? As Adams explains:

“There was random chance, chaos. All of these characteristics got cranked into the election last year because of mail balloting.”

[The 2020 election] was screwed up, I think, deliberately.”  “This was a plan that was cooked up by Zuckerberg and Vanita Gupta, who’s now the associate attorney general, who was a radical left-wing organizer, and a whole bunch of union people. 

Mail balloting was a plan that was cooked up. Soros money flowed into the Vote at Home foundation. There was all sorts of money that was moving to advocate for this corrupted system in February, March, April, May [2020]. And then, there was court litigation to force us into this corrupted system. It’s no accident that 15 million mistakes were made.

Amber McReynolds is the head of the National Vote at Home Institute, a group that was funded by George Soros that was central in pushing for mail balloting.

After the election, she was appointed to the United States Post Office Board of Governors. So now, she’s on the inside of the government to advocate this.

What can we do about vote-by-mail ballots to reduce the fraud?

1.) Request a vote by mail application (VBM). Click HERE. Follow the prompts to download a VBM application.

2.) Take your VBM ballot to an early voting location. Note: search under the county where you live for locations. But if you live in the cities of Aurora, Bloomington, Chicago, Danville, East St. Louis, Galesburg, Peoria, or Rockford, search under those cities.

3.) Surrender the VBM ballot. Ask the judge to write across the VBM ballot “SPOILED.” Then vote in person on a paper ballot that you can feed through the tabulator yourself.

According to our Friends at the Illinois Conservative Union and their Election Integrity Program, this is the best way to secure your vote.

Leftists, practiced at the art of deception, do not care about anyone who lives in America. They care about one thing: acquiring and maintaining power at all costs. And they think catering to criminals will achieve that goal.

Case in point the in-credibly—as in not credibly–named Safe-T Act (Safety Accountability Fairness and Equity-Today), which passed Illinois’ irresponsible, far-leftist General Assembly and was signed into law by Governor J.B. Pritzker on Feb. 22, 2021. The most controversial provision of this 763-word behemoth that was passed under cover of darkness, takes effect on Jan. 1, 2023 and is just now receiving its justly deserved, overdue public outcry.

The controversial provision makes Illinois the first state in the country to abolish cash bail for a number of crimes that put at risk Illinoisans’ safety and public order. In the service of “equity”—which in the leftist Upside Down has nothing to do with fairness—leftists are again making the streets more dangerous. Let’s call the law the Safety for Criminals Act.

Calling the law an “abomination,” Orland Park Mayor Keith Pekau outlines the features of the law that make it a criminal’s dream:

It abolishes cash bail for almost every offense. This includes but isn’t limited to kidnapping, armed robbery, second-degree murder, drug-induced homicide, aggravated DUI, threatening a public official, and aggravated fleeing and eluding.

Offenders released on electronic monitoring have to be in violation for 48 hours before law enforcement can act.

…

And keep this in mind businesses and homeowners, officers will no longer be able to remove trespassers from your residence or your businesses.

While leftists claim to care about the safety and well-being of citizens, the manifest failures of their policies and laws prove again and again that something else is afoot.

Their unspoken reasoning about the Safety for Criminals Act goes something like this:

1.) If communities are more dangerous, then voters living in those dangerous communities will vote for government leaders who represent colossal government to take care of them.

2.) (And here’s where the real racism can be found): Voters in the most crime-ridden neighborhoods are often persons of color who typically vote Democrat and whose votes leftists desperately need, so they pass laws that will make those neighborhoods more dangerous in order to impel those voters to elect—again—leftist colossal-government leaders.

3.) Since most of the criminals in these crime-ridden neighborhoods are also persons of color, making them safe–that is exempt–from laws intended to protect the public will endear leftist leaders to voters of color—or so leftists presume.

Of course, leftists don’t speak the quiet parts out loud. Those cunning vipers have forked tongues and know how to use them.

So instead, they tell victims of crime that “equity” demands they abolish cash bail for arrestees suspected of kidnapping, armed robbery, second-degree murder, drug-induced homicide, and aggravated DUI. It’s inequitable, unjust, and unfair for impoverished suspected criminals to languish in jail while other suspected criminals are able to roam free. Equity demands that all suspected criminals roam free while awaiting trial and sentencing—or so the vipers hiss.

And when these suspected criminals are free, where do the vipers suspect they’ll go to wreak mayhem? It’s likely not Hinsdale, Inverness, or Lake Forest that will be victimized.

According to Capitol News, Will County State’s Attorney James Glasgow, a Democrat, “argued that the SAFE-T Act requires a higher burden of proof to detain accused violent criminals until trial”:

The SAFE-T Act states that all defendants “shall be presumed eligible” for pretrial release [no bail] unless prosecutors present “clear and convincing” evidence to deny the suspect pretrial release, such as proof that the suspect committed the crime and poses a threat to the physical safety of a “specific, identifiable” person.

The cynical Democrat jig is up or almost up. Voters in dangerous communities increasingly recognize that it is leftist policies and laws that have made their neighborhoods dangerous and unlivable. They know that it was Democrats who made their neighborhoods far more dangerous when they called for defunding the police. They no longer want leaders who will make government even bigger and who will pass policies and laws that make their neighborhoods more dangerous.

What’s worse for leftists is that increasing numbers of voters of color in crime-ridden neighborhoods understand that they are pawns and victims of power-ravenous leftist fear- and race-mongers. Voters of color realize they are being exploited and harmed for their votes. They can see the racist hearts beating in the chests of leftist leaders like J.B. Pritzker.

Illinois State Representative  Justin Slaughter (D-Chicago) laughably accuses Republicans of having a “bad stench of racism” for opposing a bill that will harm communities of color, as most Democrat policies do.

Slaughter also laughably claims that Democrats “want to have an understanding of the root causes of crime and violence.” Really? If so, why do so few—if any—Democrats talk about broken dysfunctional and fatherless families—a social plague incentivized and promoted by leftist policies and principles and which, in turn causes criminality and violence that ruins schools and neighborhoods causing untold suffering.

It is the systemic racism, ethically vacuous quest for power, and ignorance at the heart of the Democrat Party that leads them to believe that protecting criminals of color will lead terrorized voters of color in unlivable communities to continue to elect them.

A 25-year-old man who pretends to be a woman was kicked off a community college campus in Texas and charged with a class C misdemeanor for allegedly choking a 17-year-old female student. Like the teen victim, the strange adult man who goes by the name Averie Chanel Medlock was a member of the women’s cheerleading team. Medlock complained that the teen girl said he is a man—which he is—and that he has a penis—which he presumably does.

While Medlock may be the first female impersonator to choke a female cheerleader, he is not the first female impersonator to be a member of a women’s cheer team. A man who goes by the name “Justine” Lindsay became a member of the NFL’s Carolina Panthers female cheerleading squad—the TopCats—last March, usurping a spot from an actual woman.

TopCats entertainment director, Chandalae Lanouette, offers this sorry justification for her decision to choose a man over a woman for a coveted spot on a female cheer squad:

My goal is to create a team of individuals that are absolute fire on the field but are incredible human beings in the locker room, good friends, good people, and at the end of the day, you have to walk through the door first to get to that spot.

I’m sure a male cheerleader is “absolute fire on the field” relative to female cheerleaders, what with all that lung capacity and all those bulging muscles. I’m not sure, however, how Lanouette defines “good people,” in that a man who sashays through a women’s locker room—undressed or dressed—is not engaging in good behavior. He’s doing something profoundly unjust, immoral, insensitive, and selfish.

“Justine” Lindsay continues the trend of men replacing women in women’s sports, thereby making a mockery of Title IX which is being abused to allow “transwomen”—formerly known as men—in women’s sports and locker rooms.

Ironically, as the “trans” cult continues its long march through our institutions, the harm being done by it and its sycophantic bootlickers continues to be exposed.

Detransitioners and their parents are telling their tragic stories on websites like Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Trans (PITT) and subreddits.

Men who claim to be women are being moved to women’s prisons where they’re raping women.

England’s National Health Service is shutting down its only child “gender” clinic, the (in)famous Tavistock clinic, which saw a 4,000 percent increase in children and teens being referred for treatment for gender dysphoria between 2009-2019. An independent review of Tavistock’s “Gender Identity Services for Children and Young People” concluded that there are “significant knowledge gaps … in relation to treatment with puberty blockers.”

On July 19, 2022, the chair of the review committee, Dr. Hilary Cass, acknowledged what critics of the quack use of puberty blockers for the “treatment” of gender dysphoria in children have been saying for years:

We do not fully understand the role of adolescent sex hormones in driving the development of both sexuality and gender identity through the early teen years, so by extension we cannot be sure about the impact of stopping these hormone surges on psychosexual and gender maturation. We therefore have no way of knowing whether, rather than buying time to make a decision, puberty blockers may disrupt that decision-making process.

A further concern is that adolescent sex hormone surges may trigger the opening of a critical period for experience-dependent rewiring of neural circuits underlying executive function (i.e., maturation of the part of the brain concerned with planning, decision making and judgement). If this is the case, brain maturation may be temporarily or permanently disrupted by puberty blockers, which could have significant impact on the ability to make complex risk-laden decisions, as well as possible longer-term neuropsychological consequences. To date, there has been very limited research on the short-, medium- or longer-term impact of puberty blockers on neurocognitive development.

Deep-pocketed activists—like the corrupt Pritzker family—and medical profiteers, all of whom pretend to care about children as they experiment on them for their own selfish ends surely know there is no science to support the deceitful and fearmongering claims they make. But who needs science when leftists have been winning the culture through name-calling, stigmatization, de facto censorship, and good old-fashioned propaganda.

Leftist propaganda in the service of normalizing disordered feelings and deviant behaviors is ubiquitous. It poisons not just the professional medical and mental health industries but also the arts, social media, “news” media, businesses big and small, religious institutions, and the many-tentacled education monster. And that is where Florida’s remarkable governor comes in.

In April 2022, under Gov. Ron DeSantis’ leadership, the Florida Department of Health provided guidance based on evidence on the treatment of gender dysphoria for children and adolescents:

Due to the lack of conclusive evidence, and the potential for long-term, irreversible effects, the Department’s guidelines are as follows:

• • Social gender transition should not be a treatment option for children or adolescents.
  • Anyone under 18 should not be prescribed puberty blockers or hormone therapy.
  • Gender reassignment surgery should not be a treatment option for children or adolescents. Based on the currently available evidence, “encouraging mastectomy, ovariectomy, uterine extirpation, penile disablement, tracheal shave, the prescription of hormones which are out of line with the genetic make-up of the child, or puberty blockers, are all clinical practices which run an unacceptably high risk of doing harm.”

Then in June 2022, under Gov. DeSantis’ leadership, “The Secretary of the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration requested that the Division of Florida Medicaid review the treatment of gender dysphoria for a coverage determination.” The review set forth that “As a condition of coverage, sex reassignment treatment must be ‘consistent with generally accepted professional medical standards (GAPMS) and not experimental or investigational.’”

The review concluded the following:

Following a review of available literature, clinical guidelines, and coverage by other insurers and nations, Florida Medicaid has determined that the research supporting sex reassignment treatment is insufficient to demonstrate efficacy and safety. In addition, numerous studies, including the reports provided by the clinical and technical experts listed above, identify poor methods and the certainty of irreversible physical changes. Considering the weak evidence supporting the use of puberty suppression, cross-sex hormones, and surgical procedures when compared to the stronger research demonstrating the permanent effects they cause, these treatments do not conform to GAPMS and are experimental and investigational.

But Gov. DeSantis wasn’t done protecting children. Following the Biden administration’s extortion attempt to force schools to treat “trans” kids as if they are the sex they aren’t or lose federal money to feed impoverished students, DeSantis took action.

On July 28, Florida’s Commissioner of Education, Manny Diaz Jr., sent a letter to all public schools and private schools in Florida clarifying Biden’s extortion effort:

The purpose of this memorandum is to make you aware that the sub-regulatory “guidance” documents issued by the USDOE and USDA are not binding law, do not create any new legal obligations, and should not be treated as governing law. Indeed, the USDOE has even acknowledged in litigation that its guidance document is not binding or enforceable. …

As such, you should not treat the USDOE and USDA guidance documents as binding or otherwise modify your practices or procedures based on these documents. Specifically, for example, nothing in these guidance documents requires you to give biological males [aka boys] who identify as a female access to female bathrooms, locker rooms, or dorms; to assign biological males who identify as female to female rooms on school field trips; or to allow biological males who identify as female to compete on female sports teams. …

The department will not stand idly by as federal agencies attempt to impose a sexual ideology on Florida schools that risk the health, safety, and welfare of Florida students.

The obsession of leftists with all things sexually deviant matters because truth matters. Their obsession with promoting evil as good is destroying the foundations of civilized societies. In their ignorance, leftists (and an increasing number of “Republicans”) believe that cultural approval of homosexuality, cross-sex impersonation, and sexually undifferentiated “marriage” has no bearing on the health of a country. And because of their ignorance, things are falling apart, the centre is not holding, and anarchy is loosed upon the world.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Trans-Cult-Marches-On-Even-As-Its-Harms-Are-Exposed.mp3

In the past three days, Twitter has suspended the accounts of the well-known satirical website Babylon Bee and of Division I swimmer Reka Gyorgy. What Gyorgy and Babylon Bee share in common is a willingness to criticize the alchemical superstitions of the “trans” cult.

Babylon Bee mocked USA Today for giving the Woman of the Year award to assistant secretary of health at the Department of Health and Human Services, Dr. Richard Leland Levine, alias “Rachel” Levine, who is a man. In response to USA Today’s insulting award, Babylon Bee tweeted that it had awarded Levine its Man of the Year award. Twitter suspended Babylon Bee’s account for alleged “hateful conduct,” a suspension that will be lifted only when Babylon Bee deletes the tweet.

And the left claims they hate censorship.

Former Olympic swimmer and current Virginia Tech swimmer, Reka Gyorgy sent a letter to the NCAA and tweeted about the injustice of having to compete against a biological male—also known as a man—which cost Gyorgy a chance to swim the 500 freestyle in the NCAA finals. Gyorgy tweeted,

My finals spot was stolen by Lia Thomas, who is a biological male. Until we all refuse to compete nothing will change. Thanks for all the support retweets and follows. I won’t stop fighting.

Christian obligations

Christians should stand publicly with those who are leading the way on this transgressive nonsense, like Reka Gyorgy, Babylon Bee, and this father and mother of a female NCAA swimmer:

Princeton University law professor Robert P. George recently urged those who reject the assumptions on which the “trans” ideology is built to live with integrity:

When you’re pressed to state or list your pronouns, you’re being asked to sign up for a practice with certain ideological presuppositions. It is not, and cannot be, a simple matter of politesse. If you believe in the ideology, and don’t mind being pressed to express your loyalty to its tenets, then, by all means, be my guest. But if you don’t believe it, or if you believe it but object as a matter of principle to being pressured to make public affirmations of beliefs, then stand by your principles and don’t sign onto the practice. The key things, either way, are to recognize what’s going on and have the integrity—and courage—to stick to your principles.

If theologically orthodox Christians believe their beliefs are true, then they should act like it.

Christian failures

The courage of these parents raises the question, why aren’t all Christian parents of high school and collegiate athletes saying publicly what these parents said?

There are two reasons that account for the refusal of so many Christians to speak truth. First, many Christians refuse to stand for truth in the public square unless they are guaranteed that doing so will be cost-free. But that is not what Christ promises those who follow him. He promises that the Christian walk will be costly. He promises that Christians will be mocked and hated just as he was.

While Christians claim to admire men and women who have stood steadfastly and suffered grievously for the faith even to the point of martyrdom, many Christians teach their children by word and deed to flee from even the mildest form of persecution. Say and do nothing that will tarnish a reputation, cost a job promotion, or lose a friend.

According to the leftist, “whose truth?” crowd, there is no objective truth—oh, except every moral belief they hold. THOSE beliefs—the source of which is their reservoir of deep feelings—are absolute, objective, transcendent, eternal moral truths, disagreement with which leftists believe should cost you your reputation, your ability to earn a living, and friendships.

In a sermon series on Romans and preached over fifty years ago, Pastor Martyn Lloyd-Jones identified the second reason for Christian silence in the face of evil, a problem that has only grown since he preached about it:

Christian people are mistaking natural qualities, niceness, a cultural veneer or politeness, for true Christian grace. … How often today is affability mistaken for saintliness! “What a gracious man he is,” they say. What they really mean is this: he never criticizes, and he agrees with everybody and everything. I know of nothing more dangerous than that. … Affability is not saintliness. … We are now judging only by our own subjective feelings, by our impressions and reactions. Is there anything so dangerous?

Real love, as opposed to some saccharine, ever-affirming substitute—requires first knowing what is true.

The danger of judging only by our own subjective feelings is nowhere more obvious than in the “trans” cult. “Trans”-activists in thrall to the delusional and dangerous idea that authentic identity is constituted solely by each person’s subjective feelings are destroying lives and necessary institutions and conventions.

Will Thomas, alias “Lia,” has likely been convinced by the “trans” cult that what he’s doing is brave and important. He’s likely been convinced that he will go down in history as a much beloved hero—the Rosa Parks of the “trans rights” movement. Someone should tell Thomas that “trans” cultists don’t care about him. They don’t care about anyone or anything other than their narcissistic, solipsistic, perverse desires.

They don’t care that Thomas will lose most of his swimming buddies because men know that he is stealing places and records from women.

“Trans”-cultists don’t care about the sad life Thomas will lead going forward.

They don’t care about the young women who will not want to date a cross-dressing man.

They don’t care about all the young women who after spending a decade swimming four hours a day all year long, had this year of collegiate swimming ruined.

They don’t care about the feelings of all the women whose locker rooms were invaded by a man who openly undressed in front of them this swim season.

And “trans”-cultists certainly don’t care about Will Thomas’ eternal life.

While “authenticity” for Thomas and Levine centers on their disordered subjective desires and their rejection of material reality, for other people authenticity centers on acceptance of biological reality and biblical truth—including the importance of not bearing false witness. For those people, denying God’s creation of males and females and bearing false witness by using false pronouns are acts of rebellion against God. For those people, such dishonorable acts are profoundly harmful and unloving acts.

Those who claim to revere diversity, equity, inclusivity, tolerance, freedom, and authenticity should be first in line to defend the right of conservative Christians to live authentically Christian lives.

The “trans”-gender house is built on a sandy foundation of faulty assumptions, delusions, biased pseudoscience, and bald-faced lies, all of which are propped up by buckets of ducats from the likes of the Pritzker family, the Stryker family, Tim Gill, and “Martine” Rothblatt and by the suppression of speech. It’s an ugly evil project that is destroying bodies, minds, souls, families, churches, schools, the practice of medicine, institutions related to lawmaking, speech rights, and religious liberty. Who could possibly be behind a project of such scope and enormity?

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Gender-Pretenders-Destroying-Authenticity-and-Liberty-94.mp3

Conservatives have questioned the legitimacy of masking and the mask mandates since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Now it would appear that there are politicians in several Democratic-controlled states who agree with their conservative counterparts. Most will be ending the mandates within the next several weeks. Why they have changed their position is not entirely apparent, but we have an idea.  

States that have removed or changed their regulations – the most liberal states in the nation – include California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Massachusetts, Nevada, Oregon, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island. 

Illinois’ Governor JB Pritzker announced that the mask mandate for most public places in Illinois would end February 28th. This policy change does not include schools, health clinics, or public transportation. But school masking may also end in Illinois despite Pritzker’s objections. In a recent court decision, Sangamon County Circuit Court Judge Raylene DeWitte Gricshow ruled to strike down the mask mandate in 150 school districts involved in the suit. Governor Pritzker has asked that the Attorney General to immediately appeal the decision.

Although the governor seemingly refuses to let go of the mandates over schools, he and other Democratic governors are starting to loosen their grip over other COVID regulations. 

A recent poll conducted by Monmouth University found that the support for mandated vaccines dropped from 53 percent of those polled to 43 percent, and support for mask mandates dropped from 63 percent to 52 percent. In another poll conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation, findings showed that 70 percent of the Americans polled agreed that “it’s time we accept COVID is here to stay, and we just need to get on with our lives.” It appears that the political climate is no longer accepting the mandates and tyrannical authority that has been exercised within the blue states.  

It is also possible that the recent protests worldwide have concerned the politicians. Canada’s Trucker Freedom Convoy protest is protesting mask and vaccine mandates and is closing down bridges, blocking travel, and slowing down the supply chain. The truckers in the United States are planning a similar protest convoy starting in March.

As a result of the polls and convoy protests, politicians are concerned about the upcoming midterm elections and their ability to appeal to the masses who have become weary of COVID and the mandates. However, because “absolute power corrupts absolutely,” it is doubtful that these leftist politicians are willing to give up their power quickly, as is evident in Governor Pritzker’s unwillingness to remove the mandates from school children.

The dismissal of the mandates is also only being done at state levels. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) is still unwilling to remove the recommendations, stating that hospitalizations remain high. President Joe Biden is still trying to enforce various mandates. On Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures, U.S. Senator Roger Marshall (R-Kansas) told host Maria Bartiromo that he would introduce legislation in the U.S. Senate to end President Biden’s Declaration of Emergency and stop the Medicare Vaccine Mandate on healthcare workers. Marshall went on to say that the mandates are “about power, it’s about control.” Politicians rarely give up power and control easily. Therefore, the very fact that Democrat-controlled states are willing to let go of mandates without a fight is very telling. Perhaps they see the writing on the wall.

However, voters must remain persistent in assuring that they are not misled by politicians who want to appear as though they have a conciliatory nature. Leftists may sway less informed voters by convincing them that they are willing to modify mandates.

Take ACTION: Although we should be hopeful that more states will dismiss mask mandates, we should remain vigilant. We must ensure that leftists are not trying to influence elections through policy changes that are only meant to temporarily pacify angry voters. Please call your state and federal representatives and ask them to end the mask mandates in Illinois schools in all districts, also voice your support for ending the federal declaration of emergency and all forced mandates. Continue to stay informed as we approach the midterm elections. 

Lawmakers and union bosses are increasingly speaking out against the violence and rampant sexual abuse that plagues children in government schools across Illinois and beyond. Laws have even been proposed and passed to supposedly deal with the escalating crisis.

However, nothing is being done to address the root causes of the problem: godlessness, hopelessness, and the lack of accountability for students and adults, all of which permeate government-controlled “education” today.

Consider the gravity of the situation. At one government school in Chicago, a dozen staff members had to be removed for what were described by the district as “inappropriate adult relationships with students,” as well as for helping cover it up.

The scandal, which included adults grooming and even having sex with children, sparked national news in November. Incredibly, while the district fired most of those involved and is seeking to pull their teaching licenses, it does not appear that prosecutors were called in due to supposed loopholes in the law.

But the sexualization and abuse of children is also nothing new. According to a 2018 Chicago Tribune investigation, police investigated more than 520 juvenile sexual assault and abuse cases in the city’s government schools over a 10-year period. Hundreds of students were victimized and even raped by teachers and school employees. The stories are heart-wrenching.

In response to the horror, last month, Gov. JB Pritzker signed “Faith’s Law” (HB 1975) into law expanding the definition of “grooming” and adding protections for children against predators in schools. The measure was named after Faith Colson, who was sexually abused by a teacher 20 years ago in Schaumburg, Illinois.

“Students deserve to be safe in their classrooms, period,” declared the far-left governor, who has been a major advocate of sexualizing children in schools. “Anything short of that is a call to action and Faith’s Law is another critical step in creating and preserving safe and welcoming learning environments for all students.”

But of course, with Pritzker’s full support, government schools in Illinois are literally grooming and sexualizing students right now in the same way pedophiles do, as former teacher and celebrated activist Rebecca Friedrichs explained in a piece for the Washington Times.

From exposing children to graphic sex materials and perversion to breaking down taboos and modesty under the guise of “comprehensive sex education,” children across the state and beyond are being put in great danger by the hyper-sexualized so-called “education” being foisted on them by government “educators.”

Even two decades ago, the U.S. Department of Education reported that as many as 10 percent of children in government schools would be sexually abused by employees of the system before graduation.

“The physical sexual abuse of students in schools is likely more than 100 times the abuse by [Catholic] priests,” Hofstra University researcher Charol Shakeshaft, who researched the issue, was quoted as saying by CBS about the problem.

Violence in Illinois government schools is out of control, too. It got so bad that in 2019, the legislature felt compelled to pass a law known as the School Threat Assessment Bill (HB 1561). The measure required schools to develop threat assessment teams, protocols, and more.

But it obviously has not worked, with lawmakers and union leaders demanding more action to enforce compliance and protect students from violence. State Representatives Fred Crespo (D-Streamwood) and Tony McCombie (R-Sterling) are now co-sponsoring legislation to beef up the 2019 law.

“We hear every day more stories, unfortunately, about incidences in our schools and we need to keep our kids safe, we need to keep our teachers safe, and hopefully this will be a pro-active movement that we can do just that,” said Rep. McCombie about the bill.

Illinois Education Association (IEA) President Kathi Griffin, who is backing the legislative action, spoke out as well.  “Violence is increasing in our schools across the state,” she said in a statement last month. “Our educators should not have to constantly worry about their safety and the safety of their students.”

“This is not their problem to solve. They’re under enough stress already,” continued Griffin in her remarks urging school districts to obey school safety laws. “School administrators need to take immediate action to keep our students, staff and communities safe.”

Meanwhile, as shown by government data highlighted by the Illinois Family Institute, government schools are destroying children academically, too. Less than a third of 8^th-grade students are proficient in any core subject, the latest National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) revealed.

In short, countless children in government schools are being sexually abused and brutalized by adults and fellow students — even as they suffer academically — while government passes meaningless laws pretending to address the symptoms of the horrific problem.

Of course, the real reason that children in government schools are facing more and more violence, dumbing down and sexual exploitation by adults is that the environment is corrupt to the core — by design. It is the fruit of removing God and biblical morality from education as part of an evil agenda.

Once one understands that the goals of the architects of the government system were never to provide a sound education, true solutions such as an exodus from public schools and defunding the corrupt system can grow. That is already starting to happen, but much more urgency is needed.

Read more:

Educators Called Out For ‘Ideological Grooming’ of Student (AFR)

In March of 2020, the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Governor JB Pritzker issued a series of emergency orders. Executive Order 2020-04, issued on March 13, 2020, was the governor’s first time seizing emergency power. Under the Illinois Emergency Management Agency Act, the governor can issue a state of emergency declaring a disaster within the state, giving himself 30 days of emergency power. The governor, in a state of emergency, has complete control over all state institutions and public health. Although the measure intends to streamline governmental response in times of disaster, Governor Pritzker exploited a loophole in the law and reissued the executive order 22 times.

The governor reissued the executive order on October 15th extending his emergency powers until November 13th. At the time of the most recent order, the state had been in a continuous state of emergency for 581 days. As of October 20th, Pritzker has issued 91 executive orders, many of which have no connection to COVID. The legislature is not meeting to address this issue, and our representatives are prevented from fulfilling their duty to their constituency. 

As a result of the restrictions on the Illinois General Assembly, a great deal of state business has been left undone, and the voices of Illinois citizens have gone unheard. State Representatives Dan Ugaste (R-Geneva), Mark Batinick (R-Plainfield), Avery Bourne (R-Morrisonville), and Norine Hammond (R-Macomb) held a press conference on Wednesday, October 20th, to discuss the problem and how Republican members of the Illinois House intend to respond. Several representatives have joined together to try to end the governor’s unilateral rule. Rep. Ugaste has authored HB 843, a bill allowing the governor to extend a 30-day declaration of emergency – but only with the written approval of the Illinois General Assembly obtained within five days of the extension. This bill would also allow the General Assembly to adopt a joint resolution declaring the extension void.

Watch the video of their press conference here below:

Currently, the bill is stalled in the Rules Committee, unable to be brought to a vote in the House. The Rules Committee consists of State Representatives Greg Harris (D-13th District), Dan Brady (R-105th District), Tom Demmer (R-90th District), Jehan Gordon-Booth (D-92nd District), and Elizabeth Hernandez (D-24th District). Unless the Rules Committee meets to discuss the bill, it will not go forward. In the previous General Assembly, Rep. Ugaste authored HB 5790, a bill requiring the same approval for extending emergency rule. As the bill never went forward, Rep. Ugaste is resubmitting it to the current 102nd General Assembly as HB 843.

Unilateral rule by Governor Pritzker has created a tyrannical government in our state. The U.S. Constitution and the Illinois Constitution ensure a system of checks and balances intended to prevent dictatorships from forming and allow for the people’s representation. By utilizing a continuous state of emergency, Governor Pritzker has set himself up as a de facto king.

Pritzker has issued numerous orders without a single public debate or hearing. The impact of this tyrannical rule is devastating. Rep. Batinick noted that the broad-spectrum rules of school closures and masking are not always beneficial and may have lasting effects on income gaps and education. He also stated that, although the removal of mandates might not occur even if the legislature were meeting, nevertheless, all rules and orders should be open to a public debate in which experts could testify. Without public debate and complete transparency, the people of Illinois will continue to suffer from governmental overreach.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to let your state lawmakers know that you oppose the continued unilateral rule of Governor Pritzker and the lack of checks and balances in our state government. Please ask them to co-sponsor HB 843. Also, demand that this bill get a hearing in committee so that it can advance to the Illinois House for a vote. 

Please support the work and ministry of IFI.  

Your tax-deductible donation is greatly appreciated!