In yesterday’s report, I told you how congressional liberals were attacking the Second Amendment. (They’re still at it. Anti-gun politicians staged a sit-in on the House floor [Wednesday] morning demanding votes on gun control legislation.) Now I want to tell you about the left’s ongoing assault on the First Amendment.

California has mandated that all insurance policies must cover elective, surgical abortions as “basic health care.” At least three churches filed a federal lawsuit against the mandate, which flies in the face of the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision.

The churches also asked the Department of Health and Human Services to investigate whether the California mandate violated federal legislation, known as the Weldon Amendment, intended to protect rights of conscience.

The Obama administration ruled [Tuesday] that church health insurance policies are not protected by the Weldon Amendment and, thus, churches can be forced to pay for elective abortions.

It is hard to imagine a more outrageous and blatantly anti-First Amendment order than this. If the government can force churches to pay for abortions, it’s not far from ordering pastors to perform same-sex marriages.

Meanwhile, another First Amendment controversy has been brewing, this one related to free speech. A number of left-wing state attorneys general are attempting to prosecute global warming skeptics for fraud. They are using the brute force of big government to shut down the debate.

Thankfully, this overreach is getting serious pushback. Last week, more than a dozen conservative state attorneys general publicly warned that if climate change skeptics could be prosecuted for fraud, so could global warming alarmists like Al Gore, whose wild predictions have never panned out.

Not long ago, the left was panicking about the coming ice age, not to mention global famine caused by overpopulation and “peak oil.” I’d say the right has a far stronger case to make when it comes to prosecuting environmentalist fraud.

The Importance Of Judges

As utterly ridiculous as these examples are, they are yet more evidence of the left’s growing intolerance for religious liberty and free speech. And as I noted in both examples, these issues are being fought over in the courts. They will be decided by judges.

It is difficult to overstate the importance of this upcoming election when it comes to control of the courts. The death of Justice Antonin Scalia has left the Supreme Court evenly divided between four reliably liberal justices and four generally right of center justices.

The decision upholding an individual’s Second Amendment right to own a firearm was a 5-to-4 decision. The Hobby Lobby decision, upholding religious liberty, was a 5-to-4 decision. Both could be overturned depending on Scalia’s replacement.

That’s how important this election is. Religious liberty and the Second Amendment are at stake — and your vote will determine the outcome.

That’s right. The men and women we elect to the White House and the Senate determine the judges who sit on our federal courts.

Are you registered to vote? How about your friends and family members? You can’t vote unless you are registered. Register today.

Brexit

With all of the things we are dealing with in this country, I suspect [today’s] vote in Great Britain is not on the top of your list. The vote, dubbed “Brexit,” is shorthand for Britain exiting the European Union. It is worth mentioning because the battle taking place there is similar to the battle taking place here over fundamental issues of nationalism, globalism, sovereignty, control over borders and immigration policies.

European elites are pulling out all the stops to prevail in the Brexit vote. They are warning of economic collapse, of the British currency crashing, of England being politically isolated, of skyrocketing unemployment. Virtually every talking head on the BBC has wagged their fingers at British voters and accused them of racism, Islamophobia and xenophobia.

Given all the scare tactics, I expect the result of [today’s] vote will be to stay in the E.U. But here’s what I know for certain: If the vote is to stay, hundreds of thousands of migrants will continue pouring into England every year, changing it forever. In fact, the radical left-wing leader of England’s Labour Party is promising exactly that.

If, however, the British people vote to leave, it could be the beginning of a worldwide movement of people rising up against out-of-touch globalist elites to reclaim control of their own nations.