Anyone tired of “masking up” to enter an airport or get on a flight? There may be an end in sight largely thanks to U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY).  Although the air travel mask mandate was set to end on March 18, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) extended the mandate until April 18. But the extension begs the question, “Will it really end then?” Now Paul and others have taken real action to end the mandates once and for all.

The first promising step is S.J.Res 37. This resolution, introduced by Paul this past February, passed in the U.S. Senate recently by a vote of 57-40. Better yet, it represents bi-partisan support with eight Democrat senators voting in support of the resolution: Michael Bennet (D-CO), Jacky Rosen (D-NV), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV), Maggie Hassan (D-NH), Mark Kelly (D-AZ), Joe Manchin (D-WV), Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) and Jon Tester (D-MT). In typical fashion, U.S. Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) was the only Republican to vote against the bill.

Still, this measure, which expresses disapproval of the CDC’s mask mandate, faces significant challenges in the days ahead if it is to become law. The amount of votes it received are not enough to override President Biden’s veto threat. Moreover, proponents must garner enough support to overcome U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s reluctance to let the member of the House vote on it. But should the resolution fail to pass through its trip to becoming law, all hope is not lost.

Members of Congress, 17 to be exact, have filed a suit against the CDC which would end the federal mask requirement for passengers both on commercial flights and in airports. First names on the suit are, once again, U.S. Senator Rand Paul as well as U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), both of whom filed the suit in their home state of Kentucky. Other GOP House members: Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Paul Gosar (D-AZ), Dan Bishop (R-NC), Lauren Boebert (R-CO), Andrew Clyde (R-GA), Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Warren Davidson (R-OH), Bob Good (R-VA), Brian Mast (R-FL), Bill Posey (R-FL) and Matt Rosendale (R-MT).

One of the best implications of this suit is its potential to end the government and, especially, unelected bureaucrats’ overreach in making declarations — calling them mandates, but treating them as law. According to Rosendale, those practices are nothing more than part and parcel of

“the fear mongering narrative of COVID-19. The CDC has forced Americans to wear masks on commercial flights for two years without legal standing. A mandate is not law, and Congress never passed legislation codifying the CDC’s mask wearing demands.”

And there is science to back up the ending of the air-travel mask requirement: COVID-19 transmission on airplanes is unlikely due to the ventilation systems. These systems not only mix outdoor air with recycled air via HEPA filters, but they limit air flow between rows – a key reason behind the lack of connection between outbreaks and commercial air travel. According to an article in The Journal of the American Medical Association,

“The risk of contracting COVID-19 during air travel is low. Despite substantial numbers of travelers, the number of suspected and confirmed cases of in-flight COVID-19 transmission between passengers around the world appears small.”

Confirming this view is Sebastian Hoehl, a researcher at the Institute for Medical Virology at Goethe University Frankfurt in Germany. “An airplane cabin is probably one of the most secure conditions you can be in,” he noted.

Given the above information, it is clearly time to end the unwarranted and unscientific policy of mandating masks in airports and airplanes especially since the mandates have ended in virtually all other public places. If you’d like to be sure they do. . . .

Take ACTION: Please click HERE to contact your U.S. Representative and let him/her know how you feel about this. Also, please click HERE to let U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi know she should allow a vote on the measure.

U.S. Senator Paul seems to truly be the hero in this fight for “following the science” and for ending government overreach. Early last week, he introduced a pertinent amendment, a “separation of powers” so to speak, that would eliminate Dr. Anthony Fauci’s position as the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and replace it with three separate positions effectively limiting its power.

“We’ve learned a lot over the past two years, but one lesson in particular is that no one person should be deemed “dictator-in-chief.” No one person should have unilateral authority to make decisions for millions of Americans,” said Dr. Paul, a physician. “To ensure that ineffective, unscientific lockdowns and mandates are never foisted on the American people ever again, I’ve  introduced this amendment . . .This will create accountability and oversight into a taxpayer-funded position that has largely abused its power, and has been responsible for many failures and misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

For more information, click HERE.

Yesterday, U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) put to shame every Congressman and Congresswoman who refuses to state publicly and definitively that no medical professional should support cross-sex hormone-doping for minors or the elective removal of healthy parts of their sexual anatomy as “treatments” for disordered feelings about their maleness or femaleness.

The inspiring and courageous statements by Senator Paul occurred in a must-see exchange between Senator Paul and the pitiable Dr. “Rachel” Levine, a cross-dressing male physician whom the pandering Joe Biden has nominated to be his assistant health secretary. Of all the physicians in all of America, Biden chose a psychologically unwell man, and the reason for choosing Levine? Obviously, he was chosen because he masquerades as a woman and calls his masquerade “authentic identity.”

Senator Paul began by reminding Levine that female genital mutilation has been widely condemned:

Genital mutilation has been condemned by the WHO, the United Nations Children’s Fund, and the United Nations Population Fund. According to the WHO, genital mutilation is recognized internationally as a violation of human rights. Genital mutilation is considered particularly egregious because as the WHO notes, it is nearly always carried out on minors and is a violation of the rights of children.

Senator Paul further noted that as with genital mutilation, social forces today play a critical role in forming “trans”-cultic beliefs and practices that harm the bodies of minors:

Genital mutilation is not typically performed by force, but, as WHO notes, by social convention, social norm, the social pressure to conform, to do what others do and have been doing, as well as the need to be accepted socially, and the fear of being rejected by the community.

Evidence increasingly shows that social influences, including both the influence of social media and peers, have profound effects on adolescents, particularly on girls who tend to be more vulnerable to what are called “social contagions” (e.g., repressed memory syndrome, bulimia, and cutting) than are boys.

A study released in the United Kingdom showed that between 2009-2018, there was a 4,515 percent increase in the number of minor girls seeking to “transition,”—a shocking increase that many experts believe is the result of social media providing a distorted lens through which girls are misinterpreting their often normal feelings.

Rather than recommending waiting and counseling to get at the root causes for the confused and disordered feelings of minors, “trans”-cultists and their profiteering allies are recommending experimental medications and surgeries while banning counseling.

Senator Paul asked Levine,

Dr. Levine, you have supported both allowing minors to be given hormone blockers to prevent them from going through puberty, as well as surgical destruction of a minor’s genitalia. Like surgical mutilation, hormonal interruption of puberty can permanently alter and prevent secondary sexual characteristics. The American College of Pediatricians reports that 80 to 95% of pre-pubertal children with gender dysphoria will experience resolution by late adolescence, if not exposed to medical intervention and social affirmation. Dr. Levine, do you believe that minors are capable of making such a life changing decision as changing one’s sex?

Note U.S. Senator Paul’s inclusion of “social affirmation,” as a factor that contributes to minors persisting in their rejection of their biological sex. Affirming their delusional thinking through incorrect pronouns and restroom/locker room usage policies harm children.

Instead of answering Senator Paul’s direct and clear question, Levine dodged with a pre-memorized evasion, so Senator Paul tried again:

Let’s be a little more specific since you evaded the question. Do you support the government intervening to override the parent’s consent to give a child puberty-blockers, cross-sex hormones, and/or amputation surgery of breasts and genitalia? You have said that you’re willing to accelerate the protocols for street kids. I’m alarmed that poor kids with no parents who are homeless and distraught, that you would just go through with this and allow that to happen to a minor.

Again, Levine robotically recited the same memorized, evasive non-answer, which revealed that Levine does, indeed, support the chemical sterilization and surgical mutilation of minors who experience sexual confusion, often because of abuse and/or the toxic influence of social media.

Barely containing his justifiable and righteous anger over the destructive ignorance and dissembling of Levine, Senator Paul said what every decent American should be saying publicly and often:

Let it go into the record that the witness refused to answer the question. The question is a very specific one: Should minors be making these momentous decisions? For most of the history of medicine, we wouldn’t let you have a cut sewn up in the ER, but you’re willing to let a minor take things that prevent their puberty, and you think they get that back? You give a woman testosterone enough that she grows a beard, and you think she’s going to go back looking like a woman when you stop the testosterone? You have permanently changed them. Infertility is another problem. None of these drugs have been approved for this. They’re all being used off-label. I find it ironic that the left that went nuts over hydroxychloroquine being used possibly for COVID are not alarmed that these hormones are being used off-label.

There’s no long-term studies. We don’t know what happens to them. We do know that there are dozens and dozens of people who’ve been through this, who regret that this happened. And a permanent change happened to them and if you’ve ever been around children, 14-year-olds can’t make this decision. In the gender dysphoria clinic in England, 10% of the kids are between the ages of three and 10. We should be outraged that someone is talking to a three-year-old about changing their sex. I can’t vote for you if you can’t make a decision.

U.S. Senator Paul’s concluding statement exposed the hypocrisy and dishonesty of leftists. To leftists, the off-label use of hydroxychloroquine for the emergency treatment of a viral pandemic that was killing thousands of people worldwide was unconscionable. Why? Because successfully treating COVID-19 would have helped President Trump.

But the off-label use of puberty-blockers like Lupron, and the prescription of estrogen for physically healthy boys and progesterone for physically healthy girls are not only medically sound but also altruistic acts of love. At least the “trans” cult and its legion of allies think so.

And who are these allies? Who are the groups that gain from exploiting confused children?

Well, there are the cosmetic surgeons, endocrinologists, pharmaceutical companies, mental health “professionals,” academics, and YouTube “influencers” whose greedy hands are grasping for the filthy lucre the “trans” cult generates for them.

And then there are the pandering politicians like Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and every member of Congress who are content to say nothing as the bodies of children are destroyed. Children are expendable commodities because, unlike “trans”-cultists,” children have no power.

Listen to this article read by Laurie: 

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Rand-Paul-Confronts-Bidens-Cross-Dressing-Pick-for-Assistant-Health-Secretary_audio.mp3

We urge you to pray for our state and nation, for our elected officials in Springfield and Washington D.C.  

PLEASE also consider a financial gift to IFI to sustain our work. We have stood firm for 29 years, working to boldly bring a biblical perspective to public policy.

Yesterday, Senator Rand Paul put to shame every Congressman and Congresswoman who refuses to state publicly and definitively that no medical professional should support cross-sex hormone-doping for minors or the elective removal of healthy parts of their sexual anatomy as “treatments” for disordered feelings about their maleness or femaleness.

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In the wake of yet another video linking Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, to the sale of organs from aborted babies, lawmakers in the U.S. Senate are planning to vote to defund the inhumane organization that profits from carefully dismembering preborn babies and harvesting their organs and other tissues.

We now have a chance to do something about it.

On Monday, the U.S. Senate may vote to prohibit Planned Parenthood from receiving taxpayer funds. According to their 2013-2014 annual report, Planned Parenthood received more than $500 million of taxpayer money.

U.S. Senators Joni Ernst (R-IA), Rand Paul (R-KY), and James Lankford (R-OK) are the lead sponsors of Senate Bill 1881 (S.1881), which currently has 21 cosponsors. S. 1881 bill was announced during a July 29th press conference.

This legislation would do the following:

• Prohibit federal funding of Planned Parenthood Federation of America and any of its affiliate organizations.
• Protect federal funding for health services for women, including diagnostic laboratory and radiology services, well-child care, prenatal and postnatal care, immunizations, cervical and breast cancer screenings, and more.

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to send an email or fax to our U.S. Senators Dick Durbin and Mark Kirk, urging them  to defund Planned Parenthood. They both need to hear from you — their Illinois constituents — that Planned Parenthood shouldn’t receive a dime of taxpayer money.

More ACTION:  Please pray that our state and nation will repent from supporting this moral, political, and financial evil. Pray that your “pro-choice” family members, friends, and neighbors will finally understand that abortion is barbaric and indefensible in every situation — not just when tax dollars are being spent to support it. Pray that our state and nation will mourn the legalization of abortion, which has eradicated 60+ million innocent lives.

Spread the word! Tell your friends to contact their U.S. Senators by forwarding this email or by posting it on Facebook and Twitter using the hashtag #DefundPP.

The undercover investigation of Planned Parenthood has given us a rare opportunity of which we must take advantage. Now that Americans have been exposed to Planned Parenthood’s pernicious practices, it is our chance to cut off their federal funding, thereby saving lives.

Download a Planned Parenthood Fact Sheet or a Church Bulletin Insert.

National Day of Protest against Planned Parenthood
Saturday, August 22, 9:00 to 11:00 A.M.
Planned Parenthood, 3051 E New York St, Aurora (map)
Lead by the Pro-Life Action League

Leave it to the Republican Party to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

While nearly every poll definitively affirms that Democrats are in deep doo-doo come November, and as leftist talking heads like Chris Matthews have already conceded a likelihood that Republicans will take the U.S. Senate in the 2014 mid-term elections, many of the GOP’s highest profile personalities obtusely refuse to take yes for an answer. They’re evidently hell-bent on disenfranchising the party’s pejoratively tagged “social issues” majority.

Stupid, stupid and stupid.

From mealy mouthed moderate establishment-types like Chris Christie, to dovish libertine libertarians like Rand Paul, it seems a majority of the GOP rock stars are scared gutless to set a single yellow-nailed pinky toe on the fevered culture war battlefield. They say it’s time to raise the white flag on traditional values.

Guys, I’m here to tell you, the “social issues” aren’t going away. But keep up this fatalistic nonsense and the GOP’s Christian-conservative base just might. Morality-minded Americans are sick of it, and we will choose fidelity to principle over surrender to ill-perceived “pragmatism” every time.

Take presidential wannabe Rand Paul. This guy, who, by all appearances, was shaping up to be a thoroughbred in the 2016 primary horserace, may have just snapped a leg before the gates have even chimed open.

In a recent interview with the uber-liberal online rag, Vocative.com, Paul could hardly wait to take a matchstick to the official Republican Party “social issues” platform (i.e., the sanctity of marriage, natural human sexuality and morality, ending the abortion holocaust, religious liberty, the Second Amendment and the like.)

Said Paul:

“I think that the Republican Party, in order to get bigger, will have to agree to disagree on social issues. The Republican Party is not going to give up on having quite a few people who do believe in traditional marriage. But the Republican Party also has to find a place for young people and others who don’t want to be festooned by those issues.”

In other words, the Republican Party must become a wussified version of the Democratic Party.

Democrat-lite.

Rand, Rand, Rand. This is the same failed, tired, reach-out-to-the-needy-independents strategy that brought us Presidents Dole, McCain and Romney. What is it about the GOP that has it constantly biting the hand that feeds it, while begging for a little scratch-behind-the-ear action from the fickle fingers of “independent” indifference?

There’s an interesting aside to Paul’s Vocative.com interview. My friend and nationally syndicated talk radio host Steve Deace made an interesting point in a recent email.

Wrote Deace:

By the way, the website that Rand Paul did the interview with when he talked about needing to agree to disagree on social issues has stories titled ‘Shame Free Guide to Hookups’ and ‘Five Questions for the Creator of Direct Your Own Porn.

Can you imagine if Obama, or any national Democrat figure for that matter, gave an interview on public policy to a website that produces such content? Every conservative group in the country would be decrying how this is more evidence of America’s moral decline.

It’s also evidence, frankly, of the GOP’s moral decline and loss of its historical moorings, courage and resolve to stand firm on the transcendent, non-negotiable issues of life, liberty and the natural family, marriage and human sexuality.

If the big ol’ dumb elephant continues on this ill-fated trajectory, I can guarantee that the Christian-conservative base will abandon it, as it has abandoned us. Although we’d rather take the Ronald Reagan approach and reform the party from within, I can promise you that we will, if that becomes a lost cause, form a new, principled, conservative “values voters” third party.

If that happens, Democrats will rule the roost indefinitely.

Now that is scary.

In his email, Deace offered some wise counsel to Rand Paul and others who are squeamish on the “social issues.”

“Here’s what a libertarian like Rand Paul could say,” he advised. “Until somebody can prove their definition of ‘rights’ doesn’t cost somebody they’re already God-ordained rights, the burden of proof remains. And right now we’re seeing these new ‘rights’ costing people their free speech and religious freedom rights that were established at the founding of this republic. And that’s something Americans of all persuasions on the marriage issue should be opposed to.”

As I’ve noted before, Ronald Reagan often spoke of a “three-legged stool” that undergirds what I call “complete conservatism.” The legs symbolize a strong national defense, strong free-market principles and strong traditional social values. For the stool to remain upright, it must be supported by all three legs. If you snap off even one leg, the stool collapses under its own weight.

Why the GOP establishment seems determined to snap off the traditional social values leg, thus collapsing the entire Republican Party stool, defies all explanation.

Back in January I praised Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus for making several public pronouncements in defense of the “social issues”-conservative Republican Party platform in general and the unalienable rights to both life and religious liberty in particular.

Reince, you may want to have a sit-down with your party leadership and tell them to get their head in the game. If they don’t, we, the GOP base, may just decide to take our ball and go home.

Understand this: We “social issues” conservatives (read: complete conservatives) will never stop playing the game. But if the Republican Party doesn’t quit moving the goalposts, we may just have to go stake out a new playing field.

 Click HERE to support the work and ministry
of Illinois Family Institute.

President Barack Obama’s administration has announced that it won’t enforce money-laundering laws against banks doing business with marijuana stores, in a move designed to “facilitate illegal conduct,” says U.S. Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA)

The Obama administration calls it “Guidance to Financial Institutions on Marijuana Businesses.”

The Washington Post story about this development carried the innocuous headline, “Obama administration clears banks to accept funds from legal marijuana dealers,” when in fact the marijuana “business” is not “legal” under federal or international law.

“Marijuana trafficking is illegal under federal law, and it’s illegal for banks to deal with marijuana sale proceeds under federal law,” noted Grassley. “Only Congress can change these laws. The administration can’t change the law with a memo.”

He added, “This is just one more area in which the Obama Administration is undermining our system of checks and balances and the rule of law.”

Robert Charles, former Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, told Accuracy in Media that, despite the “guidance” from the Obama administration, banks will stay away from laundering marijuana money because of the fear of being sued. “The range of suits is enormous,” he said. “The guidelines do absolutely nothing. They protect no bank against anything. The DOJ won’t give any bank an assurance that it won’t be prosecuted under federal bank secrecy or anti-drug laws.”

Calvina L. Fay, executive director of the Drug Free America Foundation, told us, “This is yet one more example of the lawlessness of the Obama administration.  We all know that banks are federally regulated and that pot is still illegal at the federal level. This action will clearly put banks in jeopardy of violating regulations and will enable criminal activity to thrive.”

She added, “This action tells parents and grandparents that the government can no longer be counted on to do what it is intended to do: protect U.S. citizens from criminals who engage in drug trafficking, human trafficking, weapons trafficking, and other serious illegal activities that are inter-connected to the drug underworld. Rather, our government is now embracing this activity and enabling it.”

While most of the major media have been in support of what the Obama administration is doing to facilitate the spread of mind-altering drugs, some publications are sounding the alarm.

Whistleblower, a publication of WND.com, has published a special issue on the epidemic of drug use, legal and illegal, in American society. A piece by Art Moore titled, “Dude: Science contradicts Obama’s pot claims” refers to Obama as the “Choom Gang” president, a reference to his membership in a high school gang of heavy marijuana users, and notes that Obama’s claims about the relative harmlessness of pot are not sustained by the scientific evidence. Another article by Moore identifies Obama supporter George Soros, the hedge-fund billionaire, as the main force behind marijuana legalization.

Investigative reporter Michael P. Tremoglie says in an article on a site called Main St. that George Soros is only one of several big name CEOs and rich elites who are financing the marijuana movement. He also names:

• Google billionaire Paul Buchheit
• Facebook billionaire founders Sean Parker and Dustin Moskovitz
• PayPal founder Peter Thiel
• Peter Thiel, founder of Men’s Wearhouse
• John Sperling, chairman and CEO of the University of Phoenix
• Whole Foods founder John Mackey

A website called “Marijuana Majority” names dozens of other personalities backing the legalization of dope.

It appears, however, that some Republicans are moving in the direction of Obama’s soft-on-drugs policy.

Five days after the Maryland mall shootings, The Washington Times ran a front page story, “In the weeds: Paul, Christie, Perry open to softer pot laws ahead of 2016,” about possible Republican presidential candidates embracing the drug. It turned out that the Maryland mall shooter, who killed two people and then himself, was himself a pothead, and was possibly having a psychotic episode.

The Times said that U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) “has arguably been the most vocal on the subject, saying the federal government should leave the issue entirely to the states.” The Times also reported that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (R) has vowed to scrap the “failed war on drugs.”

But David Evans, the Executive Director of the Drug Free Projects Coalition and a special adviser to the Drug Free America Foundation, notes that during the George W. Bush administration marijuana use went down among young people by 25 percent. “If we had had a reduction in any other health problem in the U.S. of 25 percent, we would consider it an outstanding success,” he said. But marijuana use has been going up under the Obama administration.

Michele M. Leonhart, administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), declared in a statement issued last December that “Those who aspire to see their own or others’ children accomplish great things in life or who want to live in a nation of increasing prosperity should be very concerned about the increase in marijuana use by teenagers, including the fact that a staggering 12 percent of 13- and 14-year-olds are abusing the drug. The mixed messages being sent to America’s teens about the harmfulness and legality of using record-high-potency marijuana are obscuring kids’ awareness of the effects their use will have on them. America owes it to its children to give them the best possible start in life, so they and society are not hindered in the future.”

Her statement takes on even more significance now that Obama has disregarded the scientific evidence, declared the drug to be relatively harmless, and is encouraging banks to launder money from the marijuana traffickers.

Pro-marijuana groups are demanding that Obama fire Leonhart. But she continues to enforce the federal laws against marijuana as best she can. The DEA announced on January 27, 2014 that the owners of a “medical marijuana” dispensary in Bakersfield, California, had been charged with trafficking in both methamphetamine and marijuana.

This article was originally published at the Accuracy in Media website.