Penna Dexter
As the transgender agenda began to unravel, author J.K. Rowling posted her summary of the damage it’s done, including this:

Gender ideology has undermined freedom of speech, scientific truth, gay rights, and women and girls’ safety, privacy and dignity. It’s also caused irreparable physical damage to vulnerable kids.
Nobody voted for it, the vast majority of people disagree with it, yet it has been imposed, top down, by politicians, healthcare bodies, academia, sections of the media, celebrities and even the police.

Here are just three actions the Trump administration has already taken to dismantle this woke regime:
On February 5, National Girls and Women in Sports Day, surrounded by crowd of female athletes, President Trump signed an executive order titled, Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports. The president warned education institutions and their athletic associations, “if you let men take over women’s sports teams or invade your locker rooms, you will be investigated for violations of Title IX and risk your federal funding.”
Secondly, two days after Attorney General Pam Bondi was sworn in, the administration reversed its position in a case currently being considered at the U.S. Supreme Court. In December, the Court heard oral arguments in U.S. v. Skrmetti. the Biden Administration’s challenge to Tennessee’s law protecting minors from gender transition procedures. The Bondi Justice Department has dropped all opposition to the law.  .
Twenty-five other states have similar laws. A ruling in Skrmetti, will affect challenges to those laws. So, the Supreme Court will continue to deliberate and resolve this case.
Finally, pursuant to another of President Trump’s executive orders, the administration is rewriting admissions requirements, ceasing the funding of gender transition procedures and otherwise moving the military away from transgender tyranny in favor of restoring a “warrior ethos.”
There is more being done, and much more to do. And Congress must act to make sure this rejection of trans tyranny is permanent. 

Kerby Anderson
At a time when politicians are talking about threats to democracy, it might be worthwhile to consider what democracy really is. But first a disclaimer: America is a republic, not a democracy.
Professor Allen Guelzo recently wrote about “Lincoln’s Vision of Democracy.” After the battle of Gettysburg, Lincoln was asked to participate in the dedication of a national cemetery in that town. The featured orator was Edward Everett, but the short 272-word speech by Abraham Lincoln is the message we remember.
Lincoln laid out the story of the American republic in three stages: the past (“four score and seven years ago”), then the present (“now we are engaged in a great civil war”), and then the future (“we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain”).
The least examined words of the address are the triplet: “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” This was more than a rhetorical flourish. Lincoln essentially laid out the three foundations of our government.
The first is consent. We are a government “of the people.” In a previous speech, he explained that “the just powers of governments are derived from the consent of the governed.”
The second distinctive feature is the people’s voice in the affairs of governing. We are a government “by the people.” Lincoln argued that government by the people was through their laws and through elections and not by mobs.
The third element is a government that serves the interests of the people. We are a government “for the people.” Government is not for a king or an aristocracy or even for a few elites.
What is the form of government in America? It is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

Kerby Anderson
Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan may be best known for a seminal essay he wrote three decades ago. The Democratic Senator from New York said that the country back then was Defining Deviancy Down.
His concern was that deviant behavior had become so pervasive even in the 1980s and 1990s that commentators were beginning to redefine it to cope with it. He began by acknowledging that there was “always a certain amount of deviancy in society. But when you get too much, you begin to think that it’s not really that bad. Pretty soon you become accustomed to very destructive behavior.”
Anyone who has read the book of Isaiah will recognize this tendency. In Isaiah 5:20 we read, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness.”
Scott Hogenson referred to the Moynihan description of deviancy as he listed the numerous examples of what “used to be defined as medical malpractice, criminal molestation, voyeurism, and rape.” He concludes that we have defined deviancy “so downward, it’s positively subterranean.”
He reminds us that our laws are written by humans, but they are also written on the human heart. You may disagree with your neighbor, but you don’t vandalize his home. You may not like the guy who stole your parking place, but you don’t key his car.
Jeremiah wrote that the Lord declared, “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts.” The writer of Hebrews explains that God says, “I will put my laws on their hearts and write them on their minds.”
That is why Christians need to speak out against evil and not let a secular society call “evil good.” The deviancy today is even worse than in the 1980s and 1990s when Senator Moynihan lamented that we were defining deviancy down.