Liberals didn’t mind when Barack Obama forced his radical social policies on our military, but they certainly don’t want President Trump rescinding them. So where do they turn? Unelected judges. That’s what happened yesterday, thanks to U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly who made the sweeping decision to keep the White House’s military transgender order from taking effect. Without the benefit of the administration’s data, military advisors, or intelligence reports, Kollar-Kotelly put herself in the position of setting a national security policy with very real consequences for our country.

As a result of her temporary injunction, the entire military will “revert to the status quo,” a dangerous environment where people like Chelsea (Bradley) Manning can serve openly, women can be forced to shower with biological men, and “pregnant males” can apply for maternity leave. Of course, the judge’s activism was celebrated by liberals, who don’t see the obvious problems of injecting Barack Obama’s social engineering back into a military that the world was finally starting to take seriously again.

For the Trump administration, which was already drafting regulations to turn the president’s July tweets into military policy, Kollar-Kotelly’s 76 pages of politically correct talking points are a frustrating bump in the road to restoring readiness. Her agenda is obvious from the opening line to the last, where she has the audacity to claim that “a bare invocation of ‘national defense’ simply cannot defeat every motion for preliminary injunction that touches on the military. On the record before the Court, there is absolutely no support for the claim that the ongoing service of transgender people would have any negative effective on the military at all.”

There was certainly enough support among the Defense Department, top brass, and service members themselves — who know better than anyone what the effects would be and have been. But unfortunately, this is where judicial activism is leading us. The courts have moved beyond legislating on issues like abortion and same-sex marriage to openly usurping the constitutional authority of the executive branch. The president’s primary task is protecting Americans. Yet now we’ve seen the courts do everything from relax the president’s immigration policy to telling the commander in chief how to run the military. And without the barest form of accountability to the same people who elected Donald Trump.

If Colleen Kollar-Kotelly wants to lead the military, she should face the people and run for president. Until then, her court should leave the policymaking to the man best informed and empowered for the job.

Originally published here.

PragerU-Tube: Conservatives Tackle Video Censorship

“We believe everyone should have a voice,” YouTube has said. Everyone, it seems, but conservatives. The Internet’s biggest video warehouse isn’t exactly new to the censorship debate. After run-ins with Lila Rose, David Daleiden, and other pro-lifers, people were already suspicious that YouTube was picking sides in the culture debates. Now, after watching YouTube block dozens of its videos, the folks at PragerU are absolutely convinced the company is policing views.

Founded by popular radio host Dennis Prager, PragerU has been producing “short, educational videos from a conservative perspective” for six years. Nothing about the footage has been remotely controversial — until now. While they cover some of the hottest political topics, the videos try to present counter-arguments to the Left’s radical vision of America. Unfortunately, YouTube has gone out of its way to silence those views, shelving as many as 50 of Prager’s videos, including: “The Most Important Question about Abortion,” “Is Islam a Religion of Peace?” “Why America Must Lead,” “The Ten Commandments: Do Not Murder,” and “The World’s Most Persecuted Minority: Christians,” among others.

Before long, the company declared them “inappropriate” for young viewers — a decision YouTube insists wasn’t politically motivated. “Giving viewers the choice to opt in to a more restricted experience is not censorship. In fact, this is exactly the type of tool that Congress has encouraged online services to provide for parents and others interested in a more family-friendly experience online.” But, as most people would agree, it’s one thing to block truly inappropriate content and another to decide that a conservative conversation about America is “unsuitable” for kids (or worse, “hate speech”). As Prager argues, “They are engaging in an arbitrary and capricious use of their ‘restricted mode’ … to restrict non-Left political thought.”

Tired of the double standard applied by these online magnates, PragerU is suing YouTube and its parent company, Google, for trying to muzzle conservatives in an open forum. “Watch any one of our videos, and you’ll immediately realize that Google/YouTube censorship is entirely ideologically driven,” Prager challenges. “For the record, our videos are presented by some of the finest minds in the Western world, including four Pulitzer Prize winners, former prime ministers, and professors from the most prestigious universities in America,” he points out.

For Google, these tactics are nothing new. Last year, the world’s biggest search engine made plenty of headlines for its promise to start combing the Web for and cracking down on “hate speech.” “Sort of like spell-checker,” Google explained at the time, “but for hate and harassment.” Apart from the obvious problems, conservatives had another legitimate concern: Who’s defining “hate?? Because if you ask many liberals, "hate” is believing in things the Left says doesn’t exist — like truth.

In the end, this case is about a lot more than liberal or conservative politics. It’s about free speech. Obviously, many on the Left are terrified that conservatives are making compelling, fact-based arguments on the issues of the day. So they will instead try everything — including gagging the opposition — to avoid open debate.

Originally published here.

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