After eight years of fundamentally transforming America, most liberals aren’t exactly thrilled to see it transformed back. Desperate to keep their legacy of lawlessness alive, the Left is taking the surest path to protecting their “progress:” fighting the leaders who would unravel it and return law and order to America. With the New Year came a new intensity to knock down any cabinet nominees of President-elect Donald Trump’s who pose a threat to President Obama’s radical gains.

To their disappointment, that seems to be almost everyone. The cabinet Donald Trump is assembling has been called a “dream team” of conservatism, which is a disaster-in-the-making for the Left’s ambitions. So, the president’s party has reacted as most people have come to expect — not by heeding voters’ message and pledging to work together, but by demonizing the men and women who will be at the levers of power in Washington. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is using every tool at his disposal to discredit Trump’s picks, including a ridiculous ethics complaint against Health and Human Services Secretary nominee Tom Price (R-GA).

Even their own statements prove what a witch hunt the effort is, as at least one watchdog group wrote, “While the information available so far on the stock trading activities of Reps. Price and (Chris) Collins (of New York) falls short of evidence that any illegal insider trading or violations of congressional ethics rules have occurred, the patterns, opportunities and remarkable financial benefits gained, and to be gained, warrant investigation.” Not to be outdone, six Democrats are also digging deep into the pockets and bank accounts of Trump’s choice for Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos. This week, in advance of her confirmation hearing, they’re demanding that she release the names of donors and the expenses of two organizations she led. “Your active political fundraising of course does not disqualify you from holding public office, but it does raise questions about whether you will be able to discharge your duties fairly on behalf of all Americans, including those without the wherewithal to contribute to causes or candidates you support,” they wrote.

But it’s Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) who’s has taken the biggest share of unwarranted criticism, as the media tries to dredge up manufactured controversies older than most of the reporters writing the stories. It’s a strategy straight out of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, the Left’s bible of political engagement. The quarterback may have changed, but the game plan hasn’t. “The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.” Then, “pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”

Well, liberals have managed to pick the targets, but so far they’ve had trouble freezing them. That’s because leaders like Jeff Sessions with decades of career accolades, accomplishments, and allies refuse to be intimidated by the Left’s smear tactics. And while the liberal media may be in the bag against the former Alabama Attorney General, plenty of people — African-Americans and Democrats included — are combatting the lies. [Yesterday], black pastors from Alabama and several other states spoke at a news conference on Capitol Hill in a show of support for President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for Attorney General, Senator Sessions.

“Americans are living in a toxic climate where the serious charge of racism is carelessly leveled against anyone with whom the left disagrees. We are here today to make it perfectly clear that this attack against Senator Jeff Sessions is baseless, and that he is more than qualified to be our next Attorney General,” said Rev. Dean Nelson, who organized the news conference and is Director of African American Outreach for FRC’s Watchmen on the Wall. (To watch the entire press conference, click here.)

Of course the Left is upset! With this attorney general, the scandals and corruption of the past will be left behind. The Constitution will be restored. And justice will return to the Department of Justice.

Originally published here.

LGBT Issues Kerry the Day

Some people have to-do lists. President-elect Donald Trump has an undo list. And thanks to Secretary of State John Kerry, most of it is already meticulously outlined in a new memo. The report couldn’t have come at a better time for conservatives, who have spent the last few weeks pointing out the social issue landmines left behind by eight years of Barack Obama. The State Department is Exhibit A, as two terms of global abortion and LGBT advocacy have left a trail of frustration in U.S. relations with other nations.

Of course, there have been a handful of people — including some Republicans — who’ve insisted that the agency has nothing to do with core values issues. Well, they don’t have to take our word for it — take John Kerry’s! He devotes 21 pages to his “accomplishments” at the department, many of which include his shared crusade with predecessor Hillary Clinton to export abortion and sexual liberalism to the “unenlightened” countries of the world. Broadly, Kerry boasted of his efforts to promote LGBT extremism abroad with the appointment of Randy Berry, the first-ever envoy for people who identify as “LGBT and intersex.” Calling it “an unprecedented effort to defend the rights of LGBTI individuals,” the secretary explains that this agenda has been a “cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy” during Obama’s second term in particular.

Among other things, Kerry highlighted the administration’s role in “mobilizing international support for” three “historic” UN resolutions “embracing LGBTI rights.” As for the financial impact of Obama’s radicalism, the State Department also launched the Global Equality Fund in 2011, whose sole purpose is to advance (read: bully) other nations into embracing Obama’s twisted views of gender, marriage and sexuality. In five years, the Fund spent “more than $33 million in 80 countries ‘in support of civil society efforts to advance the human rights of LGBTI persons.’”

As FRC pointed out last week, these social distractions all undermine and eclipse the department’s true purpose, which is to advance diplomacy and U.S. interests abroad. Unfortunately, the administration’s obsession with cultural extremism hasn’t just come at the expense of America relationships with other global leaders or taxpayer dollars. It’s also cost the agency any real progress on its statutorily defined priorities — like religious liberty. Unlike the president’s off-mission social engineering, protecting and promoting our First Freedom is a stated goal of Congress for the department that was approved by the president in 1998 as part of the International Religious Freedom Act. As usual, the president couldn’t get Congress’s approval for his far-Left offensive, so he acted alone. Now, Secretary Kerry is bragging about the pursuit of an agenda the American people didn’t want.

With America’s reputation in tatters after almost a decade of this liberal propaganda, it’s no wonder conservatives are concerned and committed to eliminating them. The Trump administration has a right — and I would argue, a responsibility — to get the activists behind this destructive campaign out of the State Department. In the end, it’s not just inconsistent with American values, but the law.

Originally published here.

Case Logic: FRC Files Brief in VA Bathroom Suit

FRC and the North Carolina Values Coalition filed an amicus brief [yesterday] with the Supreme Court in the case of Gloucester County School Board v. G.G., in which the court will decide whether to allow the Department of Education’s specific interpretation of Title IX and 34 C.F.R. § 106.33, which provides that sex-separated facilities must “generally treat transgender students consistent with their gender identity,” and whether a federal agency letter on the same topic should receive deference.

The case is more broadly about whether a local school board is free to determine that students must use the bathroom of their biological sex, and whether sex can be reinterpreted to include gender identity. The Obama administration has been hinting at the revocation of federal funds if localities such as Gloucester County take this course of action. While this case would become moot if President-elect Trump directs that such action must cease in his administration, attempts by legal activists to shoehorn “gender identity” into definitions of “sex” will persist. Thus, it is important that the court decide this case and clearly state that the statute and regulation’s definition of “sex” does not include “gender identity.”

In our brief, drafted by attorney Debbie Stewart and filed along with the North Carolina Values Coalition, we make three basic arguments on the side of the school board: (1) education policy should be decided at the local level, (2) the Obama administration DOE letter threatens the liberty of all students by invading their privacy, and (3) the same letter makes law when that should be left to the legislature. In our brief, we state:

“[T]he Departments’ decrees remove public education — a matter entrusted primarily to state and local governments — from the elected representatives closest to the people and most responsive to their concerns. Individuals are deprived of the liberty to participate in a matter of national importance in the public schools that educate their children. The ultimatums hold a ‘gun to the head’ of local authorities using an unconstitutional threat to withdraw federal funding from those who fail to comply.” Such “actions jeopardize the Constitution’s separation of powers, not only by issuing mandates that conflict with unambiguous statutory language but also by usurping judicial authority to interpret the law.”

Young children in public schools all over our land are some of society’s most vulnerable members, especially as they leave their families day-to-day to enter an environment in which they are supposed to be cared for and watched over. The Obama administration wants to force them to sacrifice their expectations of privacy at the behest of one Washington bureaucrat directing who they shall be made to use the shower or bathroom with. This is unconscionable. We hope the Supreme Court agrees and stops the legal activism by the lower courts and the administration that is driving this case and forcing an outcome on the Gloucester County School Board, which is not in the best interest of its local community.

Originally published here.

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This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins is president of FRC.