Is it Capitol Hill or a transgender pride parade? In some hallways, it’s tough to tell. The same Democrats who think our military should take a backseat to gender-free validation are proving it by lining the walls of House office buildings with “trans equality” flags. And in case our troops didn’t know where they ranked with Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) party, some even took down POW displays to make room.

It’s a jarring sight on the 5th floor of the Longworth House Office Building. A sea of baby blue and pink flags greets everyone who walks by — an unpleasant reminder of just where the new majority’s priorities are. Not that anyone really needed reminding. Late Thursday, Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) party made it quite clear what they thought about our service members by condemning a policy that saves our military from deadly distractions. But in the Left’s hierarchy of political priorities, keeping the troops safe has always fallen way below keeping them “tolerant.”

When the last administration unilaterally forced transgenderism on the military on their way out the door, they knew the policy was a risk. So, Ash Carter and the rest of the Pentagon had a plan. They’d wait until 2016 to leave the country with this ticking time bomb, meant to explode on the next president’s watch. What they didn’t account for, in all of their radical scheming, was a leader who would do something about it. But after one look at the $3.7 billion dollar price tag, the social science, the cost to readiness, and the Army slides on “male pregnancy” and “off-duty drag,” Donald Trump had seen enough. He pulled the plug.

For two years, liberals have blasted the president for putting national security first. They’ve called him a coward. They took him to court. They argued he didn’t have the power to change the policy — even though Barack Obama miraculously did. And Thursday, to cap it off, they took a formal vote of condemnation. In another sign of just how fanatical the Left has become, every single Democrat went against the service chiefs’ advice, the Pentagon’s research, and the men and women in uniform to make a party statement: We put transgender extremism first.

In an important show of solidarity, all but five Republicans stood by the president. Some, like top Armed Services Republican, Rep. Mac Thornberry (Texas), lashed out at Democrats for trying to politicize national security issues. Not only did they completely mischaracterize the bill, he argued, but they ignored all of the intense research and debate that went into the change. “Well before any presidential tweet,” he pointed out, “Secretary of Defense Mattis had put a delay on implementation of the policy that had previously been announced so that there could be a six-month review. I recommend that members actually read it… They’ll see the serious and thoughtful approach that the department took to this issue.”

He’s right. After digging into the science, Mattis and his team were more convinced than ever that letting this type of gender chaos into the military presents a “considerable risk” to its “effectiveness and lethality.” Congresswoman Vicky Hartzler (R-Mo.), who’s been a warrior on this issue in her own right, stood by that assessment, insisting that the Pentagon’s leaders surely know better than Congress. “Our all-voluntary military is the greatest military force in the world, and we must allow it to make the best medical and military judgment” about who serves. After all, she pointed out, military service “is a privilege, not a right.” And every day, our recruiters turn down people for things that are a lot less destabilizing than gender dysphoria.

Of the five Republicans who bucked the president — Trey Hollingsworth (Ind.), Brian Fitzpatrick (Pa.), Will Hurd (Texas), John Katko (N.Y.), and Tom Reed (N.Y.) — at least two might have regrets. In statements, both Hollingsworth and Katko scrambled to explain their votes by claiming they’d have sided with the GOP if the Pentagon made exceptions for “physical, psychological, and medically” fit people. Well, either they never bothered to read the president’s policy or they’re flat-out misrepresenting it. This has never been a ban on qualified men and women. If a recruit passes the tests and hasn’t been formally diagnosed with gender dysphoria, they’re free to join — so long as they serve as their biological sex.

Thank goodness for true House conservatives, who are willing to stand up to a party that’s willing to put POW flags in the closet so transgenders can come out of theirs. Political correctness doesn’t win wars — and it’s time we put an end to policies that pretend it does.

Originally published here.

If You Read This, Prepare to Be Microaggressed

What does the Southern Poverty Law Center know about tolerance? Based on what we know from the last two weeks, not much. But, in a desperate attempt to change the conversation from its own collapse, SPLC is back in inboxes — bossing schools around on “microaggression.”

If the SPLC were conducting a real workplace investigation, you wouldn’t know it by the group’s email production. The extremists haven’t taken a day off from fundraising or its almost comical curriculum for first-graders about the dangers of ethnic or racial PC. Of course, an organization that was just slammed with dozens of allegations of sexual harassment, misconduct, and racism is hardly a trusted source on what’s offensive. Still, what’s left of the SPLC staff is still churning out indoctrination — while the rest of its office is in complete disarray.

PJ Media’s Tyler O'Neil was just as surprised as the next person that SPLC chose Thursday to fire off instructions about six-year-old microaggression. The fiddling while Montgomery burns is an interesting strategy, especially since the target of this lecture are children who probably know better how to treat people than the leadership of the Poverty Palace. Still, Bret Turner opens the article by explaining that the younger kids are when you teach them about how to communicate with others the better.

Kids will insult each other and make each other feel bad, “but not all unkindness is the same,” he explains. “It can be particularly detrimental when the hurtful language relates to race, gender, religion or other aspects of a child’s identity. These are microaggressions: small, subtle, sometimes-unintended acts of discrimination.” Then, in what can only be described as irony, he points out that “it can be hard enough for adults — particularly adults with privileged identities — to recognize microaggressions.”

That was certainly the case at SPLC headquarters, where they didn’t just commit microaggressions — they committed macroaggression too! Dozens of current and former staff members have complained for decades about SPLC’s unjust and bigoted environment — the same one they claim to fight in missives as ridiculous as this one. As former employee Bob Moser revealed in the New Yorker, “Nothing was more uncomfortable than the racial dynamic that quickly became apparent: a fair number of what was then about a hundred employees were African-American, but almost all of them were administrative and support staff — ‘the help,’ one of my black colleagues said pointedly. The ‘professional staff’ — the lawyers, researchers, educators, public-relations officers, and fundraisers — were almost exclusively white.”

And what happened when the heat turned on management? They ordered Human Resources to scrub the question about workplace culture from the exit interviews. This is not the behavior of an organization interested in stopping “hostile, derogatory, or racial indignities.” If SPLC is interested in stopping systematic intolerance, maybe it ought to look in the mirror. Until then, the only thing children can learn from this organization is what not to do.

Originally published here.

Americans Give an ‘A’ to Trump’s Campus Reform

Could Democratic lawmakers be any more out of touch with America? Based on the latest polling, no. While they’re busy slamming the president’s order on campus free speech, the rest of the country — including liberals — is applauding it.

Like a lot of issues DNC headquarters is panning — from born-alive protections to the Mexico City Policy — Americans on both sides are thoroughly on board with this administration when it comes to making colleges a safe place for open debate. According to the Washington Times’ sneak peak of a new McLaughlin & Associates survey, almost three in four voters — 73 percent — support President Trump’s policy to withhold taxpayer dollars from universities that censor students from expressing their views.

“Most strikingly,” S.A. Miller points out, the data showed broad agreement with Mr. Trump on college free speech regardless of political party, race, sex or education level.“ Of those, 42 percent "strongly” favored it. Jim McLaughlin, whose group did the polling for Yale, said, “People are looking at this in a partisan light because it is a Trump proposal and it is almost reflexive for the Democrats to be against it. But this is a nonpartisan issue. You can’t get three-quarters of Americans to agree on too many things. Three-quarters of Americans are concerned enough about free speech that they agree with the president’s order.”

Radicals like Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), whose district happens to include U.C. Berkeley, where Hayden Williams was attacked, seethed that “President Trump doesn’t have a license to blackmail universities. He’s the president, not a dictator, and his empty threats are an abuse of power.” But if she was hoping to win over liberals, she might have a tough time. Support for the order “was greater than 70 percent for every ideological stripe, though it did come in slightly higher among Republicans (76 percent to 15 percent) than among Democrats (71 percent to 20 percent) and independents (72 percent to 19 percent).”

Men and women were equally unified, with 73 percent of both in favor. “It also unified racial groups. Hispanics gave it the most support (75 percent to 19 percent), followed by whites (73 percent to 17 percent) and blacks (67 percent to 25 percent). There was no statistically significant difference by education level either, with college graduates favoring the executive order 72 percent to 21 percent and non-college graduates favoring it 74 percent to 16 percent, according to the poll.”

In other words, Democrats might want to rethink their oppose-anything-from-Trump agenda. It’s already backfired on abortion — and who knows how much more patience the average voter has?

Originally published here.

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