Penna Dexter
A presidential transition always involves firing federal bureaucrats that populated the previous administration. The Trump team entered office motivated and prepared for this work — and rightly so.
The Napolitan Institute, an organization founded by pollster Scott Rasmussen, recently released a poll of Washington DC-based federal bureaucrats. Sixty-four percent of those who voted for Kamala Harris for president said they would not follow a lawful order from President Trump if they disagreed with it. Forty-two percent of federal government managers,with annual salaries of $75,000 or more, said they plan to politically oppose the administration.”
Senator Rand Paul told The Daily Signal that any government employee who refuses a lawful order by the president “should be fired for cause — immediately.”
The trouble is that there are career bureaucrats — often lifelong federal employees —who are protected from termination because they are not classified as policy-making executive branch employees.
Some of these employees do influence policy.
During his first term, President Trump experienced intense opposition from certain progressive bureaucrats. So, he issued an executive order creating a new category of federal employee: “Schedule F.” These are previously-protected employees whose jobs do entail making certain decisions that impact policy. Under the Trump order, these employees would no longer be shielded from termination for “perceived disloyalty to the president and his agenda.” The rule stipulates that “the President have appropriate management oversight regarding this select cadre of professionals.”
President Biden repealed the Trump order upon entering office. And, he implemented a rule that prevents the firing of career civil servants,
Federal employees that have “policy-making and policy-influencing roles” can form part of the deep state that plagues incoming presidents when they try to implement conservative policies. That’s why President Trump is restoring Schedule F.
Congress should now consider enshrining it into Federal law.
As Senator Katie Britt of Alabama put it,  “Civil servants must serve our nation, not their political party.”

Kerby Anderson
Should parents be allowed to opt their children out of readings of LGBTQ-themed storybooks? This is the question before the Supreme Court. The case comes from Maryland, where a coalition of parents from Montgomery County contend that requiring their children to participate in instruction that violates their religious beliefs violates their First Amendment right to freely exercise their religion.
Activists have been working for decades to promote gay and lesbian views to young children in the public school system. Some of these materials have the obvious goal of indoctrinating students into this ideology. That is why the Becket Fund is representing families of Muslim, Jewish, and Christian faiths in this case.
Eric Baxter (Becket) explained, “Cramming down controversial gender ideology on three-year-olds without their parents’ permission is an affront to our nation’s traditions, parental rights, and basic human decency.” He argued, “The court must make clear: parents, not the state, should be the ones deciding how and when to introduce their children to sensitive issues about gender and sexuality.”
This case, once again, puts the high court in the center of the culture wars. The justices earlier heard oral arguments in a challenge to Tennessee’s ban on transgender surgery for minors.
Critics argue that the Supreme Court should stay out of the culture wars. My response is that they would be more than glad to avoid such cases, if it weren’t for activists trying to inject their gay and transexual ideologies into grade school classrooms.
We can hope and pray that the Supreme Court will prevent these attempts to indoctrinate young minds and allow parents to raise their children without such interference. The justices need to bring some common sense back into the public schools of America.

Kerby Anderson
It didn’t take long before the media launched what John Nolte referred to as the Hoax Machine. He was referring to the way many in the media portrayed Elon Musk’s arm movement as a Nazi salute.
But later in his article, he provided a hoax list that included nearly 40 examples promoted by the mainstream media. Each hoax on the list has a link so you can check it out for yourself.
Many of them were about false claims about Donald Trump. A few examples are the “Very Fine People Hoax” and “Trump Trashes Troops Hoax.” Each of those have been debunked by knowledgeable people who were present at the time. Of course, we cannot forget many others associated with Trump’s first term, like the “Russia Collusion Hoax”
The pandemic brought many hoaxes. A few examples were the “COVID Lab Leak Theory is Racist Hoax” and “COVID Deaths are Overcounted is a Conspiracy Theory Hoax.”
Many hoaxes involved media correspondents rushing to false conclusions or repeating false allegations. A few examples were the “Covington KKKids Hoax” and the “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot Hoax.”
And there was the prominent hoax involving Jussie Smollett. Of course, his hoax gained national attention because of who he was and what he claimed happened to him. In previous commentaries, I have listed, on a regular basis, the increasing number of fake hate crimes that misrepresent how Americans treat each other and waste law enforcement’s time and money investigating them.
The lesson here is to be skeptical and discerning when you hear or read something reported in the news or repeated on social media. The story, and the subsequent claims, may merely be another hoax.