Trump also vowed he would prohibit transgender procedures for children and prosecute left-wing officials who enacted laws that facilitate children to run away from home and begin to receive transgender procedures.

The 45th president shared these and other specific policies during his speech, which closed Friday’s proceedings at the conservative Christian summit, hosted by FRC Action. And he said, “Americans of faith are the soul of our country.”

Trump said he will overturn the Biden administration’s attempt to criminalize its political opponents—a fate the president says conservatives have in common.

“Marxists and Stalinists in the administration got a Washington, D.C., jury to convict five pro-life activists who are now facing up to 11 years in prison for simple acts of protest,” said Trump inside the Omni Shoreham Hotel.

Five members of the Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising—Lauren Handy, John Hinshaw, Heather Idoni, William Goodman, and Herb Geraghty—were convicted in August of violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act over their protest at the Washington Surgi-Clinic abortion facility.

“Under [President Joe] Biden, others are being sentenced to 10, 15, and even 20 years in prison for retribution for their political beliefs, while Antifa and other groups burn-down cities like Portland, like Minneapolis. … They kill people, they loot, they plunder, and they go free.”

“To reverse these cruel travesties of justice, tonight I’m announcing that the moment I win the election, I will appoint a special task force to rapidly review the cases of every political prisoner who’s been unjustly persecuted by the Biden administration … so that I can study the situation very quickly and sign their pardons or commutations on Day One,” the president said. “Never again will the federal government be used to target religious believers.”

Targeting believers threatens the very essence of the United States, said the former president.

For nearly 250 years, our nation has been propelled by the power of prayer and guided by the hand of God in Heaven. It was faith that led the Pilgrims across the perilous seas of Plymouth Rock. They came to Plymouth Rock, and that was a long, arduous, and deadly journey. It was faith that moved our Founding Fathers to change history forever and proclaim that our rights do not come from anywhere other than from our Creator. And it was unflinching faith that inspired generations of pastors and patriots, chaplains and soldiers, farmers, workers, laborers, and pioneers to make America the greatest country in the history of the world.

“It was God-fearing patriots like you who built this country, and it is God-fearing patriots like you who are going to save our country,” Trump added. “Americans of faith are not a threat to our country; Americans of faith are the soul of our country.”

“Through four magnificent years, I was proud to be your relentless champion for freedom, for life, for liberty, and for the great biblical traditions of Western civilization,” he said.

With patriots on his side, “this election will decide whether America will be ruled by Marxists, fascists, communist tyrants who want to smash the Judeo-Christian heritage, or whether America will be saved by God-fearing, freedom-loving patriots like all of the people in this room,” said Trump. “We’re going to take back our culture. And we’re going to make America great again, greater than ever before.”

Persecution is a shared activity on the Right, said Trump, who has been indicted multiple times by liberal prosecutors.

“The radical Left is coming after all of us, because they know that our allegiance is not to them; our allegiance is to our country and to our Creator,” said Trump. Under the Biden administration, America has become “like a banana republic. We’re like a Third World country.”

The former president then turned to a number of policies he plans to enact if he wins the 2024 presidential election, which would make him only the second president in history to serve two nonconsecutive terms in office.

“Probably No. 1 on my list … I will sign a law prohibiting child sexual mutilation—think of it, sexual mutilation—in all 50 states,” Trump said, expressing disbelief he had to address the issue. “They mutilate our children and we’re not going to let that happen.”

He also took aim at “California’s depraved new laws that strip parents of parental rights and that encourage minors to be transported across state lines for sexual mutilation,” he said. “And we will prosecute those involved in this sick California scheme for violating federal laws against kidnapping, sex trafficking, child abuse, and the deprivation of their civil rights.”

Trump also promised to clear out the federal bureaucracy indoctrinating students in extreme gender ideology.

“I will close immediately the Department of Education and we will move everything back to the states,” Trump said to applause, repeating a policy embraced by Ronald Reagan during his 1980 landslide victory over Jimmy Carter. (Trump allowed, “We’ll keep a few people there just to make sure they’re guaranteeing they’re going to teach English.”)

He endorsed school choice and promised to “sign a new executive order to cut federal funding for any school pushing critical race theory, transgender insanity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on our children,” as well as denying taxpayer funding to any school with a COVID-19 mask or vaccine mandate.

Clearing out the federal education bureaucracy constitutes one step of his plan to “totally obliterate the deep state,” the hive of unelected bureaucrats who draft regulations and enforce, or refuse to enforce, existing laws according to their own whim.

Trump took pride in appointing three of the six Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn the Roe v. Wade decision last June. The Dobbs ruling “moves the issue back to the states, which all legal scholars wanted on both sides,” said Trump.

The former president added that Democrats “are the radical ones” on abortion. “They’ll kill babies in the fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth month. And they’ll even kill babies, in some cases, after birth.” Trump, who won more votes than any sitting president in history, said Republicans have to address abortion head-on, “and if they don’t speak about it correctly, they’re not going to win.”

The Supreme Court also won Trump’s praise for its ruling in Students for Fair Admissions, which eliminated race-conscious affirmative action programs in college admissions and reinstitute “merit-based education again.”

Trump invoked the Bible when he promised to end the war between Russia and Ukraine because the world is perilously “close to World War III.”

“As the Bible says, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers.’ And I was a peacemaker,” said Trump, quoting the Sermon on the Mount. “We got out of Syria. We got out of Iraq. We defeated ISIS.”

The president held up his record on religious liberty, supporting the Little Sisters of the Poor, not enforcing the Johnson Amendment, ending “Barack Hussein Obama’s hateful and bigoted assault on faith-based adoption and foster care services,” and opposing religious persecution overseas.

On illegal immigration, Trump praised the “patriots” in the Border Patrol, whose hands have been tied by the Biden administration. “I will also use Title 42 to end the child trafficking crisis by returning all trafficked children to their families in their home countries immediately,” he said. Quoting actor Jim Caviezel’s dialogue in “Sound of Freedom,” Trump declared, “God’s children are not for sale.”

He promised to return to his fiscal policy of economic nationalism (especially against China), further tax reductions and regulatory reform, forecasting that the economic rebound will produce more revenue, as it did during his first term in office.

Trump also highlighted the importance of reliable news outlets. “We are a nation that no longer has a free and fair press. Fake news is all you get, and they are the true enemy of the people.”

Playing dramatic music underneath his speech, Trump highlighted the decline of the nation under his successor. “We are a nation that has lost its confidence, it has lost its willpower, and it has lost its strength. We are a nation that, quite frankly, has lost its way,” he said, vowing to reverse the damage in one year.

“We will take back our country with a righteous and magnificent victory on Election Day 2024.”

“In our study, the level of life satisfaction in transgender people was not increased in transgender people who had undergone gender-affirming surgery as compared to those who were unoperated,” says a study published Tuesday in BMC Public Health, a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

“[O]ur data indicate that transgender and gender-diverse people, who have undergone gender reassignment surgery feel lonelier” than transgender-identified people who have not elected to have surgery, finds a separate study by the same four researchers, originally published online May 11 in the journal Healthcare (Basel).

The researchers also reveal that people who identify as members of the opposite sex experienced greater isolation if they played sports. “[H]igher loneliness levels were significantly associated with … already having a gender-reassignment surgery [and] more than 4 [hours] a week of sports activities,” as “compared to no sports activity.”

The German experts collected the data informing both studies from those seeking transgender surgery at a Hamburg surgical center. The respondents were “104 transgender people who had joined self-help groups to get and share information about the gender-affirming surgeries performed at the Division [Department] of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgery at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf.” The facility carries out such common transgender procedures as “labiaplasty” and “breast augmentation,” as well as “other surgical services.”

One of the authors of both studies, Dr. Marco Blessmann, has chaired that university’s plastic surgery department since its creation in 2014.

Both studies also list co-author Katharina Grupp’s affiliation as a member of Blessmann’s plastic surgery department. (The university website refers to her as a member of another surgical department. Blessman’s department states that it collaborates with other departments.)

The most recent study finds that people who identify as transgender have lower overall life satisfaction than the general population—and young people suffering from gender dysphoria have worse mental health than older people. Blessmann, et al., found 31 percent of transgender-identifying people felt “dissatisfied” or “extremely dissatisfied” with life, while 17 percent said they were “satisfied” and just 1 percent felt “extremely satisfied.” People who identify as transgender were 1,290 percent more likely to describe themselves as “extremely dissatisfied” than “extremely satisfied” with their lives.

Additionally, “higher levels of life satisfaction were associated with higher age. Previously, authors described that transgender youth was associated with disproportionally high rates of depression, anxiety, suicidality, and non-suicidal self-injury.”

“Such factors are known to be associated with lower life satisfaction,” the authors write.

The latest study, released two days before the beginning of LGBTQ “Pride Month,” is sure to provoke conversation as states debate SAFE Acts to protect minors from the transgender industry and as internet searches for such terms as “am I gay” and “am I trans” have increased 1,300 percent in 19 years, even in the most conservative states.

The latest conclusions come as no surprise to experts. “This finding is sadly consistent with other studies,” Mary Beth Waddell, director of federal affairs for family and religious liberty at the Family Research Council, told The Washington Stand. “One study showed that the suicide completion rate for those that had undergone surgery was 19 times higher than the general population.”

A study taken in transgender-friendly Sweden concluded, “Persons with transsexualism, after sex reassignment, have considerably higher risks for mortality, suicidal behavior, and psychiatric morbidity than the general population.”

Despite those studies, members of the transgender surgery industry often insist children will commit suicide unless parents agree to submit their children to life-altering surgeries. “A common tactic was for doctors to tell the parent of a [girl], ‘You can either have a living son or a dead daughter,’” explained Jamie Reed, a far-left LGBT activist and whistleblower who worked for four years at the Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital.

Scientists have long known mental illness and gender dysphoria are correlated. “Clinical evidence suggests that schizophrenia occurs in patients with GID [gender identity disorder] at rates higher than in the general population and that patients with GID may have schizophrenia-like personality traits,” said a 2014 study. “Toxoplasma infection, reduced levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), early childhood adversity, and links with autism spectrum disorders, may account for some of this overlap.” A 2020 study found people who suffer from gender dysphoria are up to 636 percent more likely to have autism, as well.

“The only way individuals dealing with gender dysphoria will come to live happy, healthy, and authentic lives is by addressing the source of their dysphoria and pursuing healing,” Waddell told the Washington Stand. “Many of the individuals who identify as transgender do so because of trauma, abuse, adverse childhood experiences (which may or may not be traumatic), and other such reasons. Until these root issues are properly dealt with, these individuals will not be completely satisfied.”

Transgender-identified adolescents were more than twice as likely as to report childhood sexual abuse, 161 percent more likely to endure physical abuse, and 184 percent more likely to experience psychological abuse than their peers, according to researchers from the University of Pittsburgh. “Transgender adolescents (TGAs) exhibit disproportionate levels of mental health problems compared with cisgender adolescents (CGAs),” reported their 2021 study, published in the journal Pediatrics. “[R]esearchers should examine how more frequent experiences of abuse during childhood could contribute to disproportionate mental health problems observed within this population.”

The evidence shows the best thing parents can do for children questioning their biological identity is to prevent them from having permanently disfiguring surgeries or potentially sterilizing hormone injections. “Even the American Psychiatric Association, which supports gender identity ideology, acknowledges that a high percentage of children will desist from feelings of dysphoria if allowed to go through puberty naturally. This is why we need to pass legislation like the Protecting Children from Experimentation Act of 2023 and the End Taxpayer Funding of Gender Experimentation Act of 2023,” Waddell said.

“Allowing children to go through the natural transitions of youth without interference allows them to come into their own and make wiser decisions about their future.”

Reprinted by permission from The Daily Signal, a publication of The Heritage Foundation.

Pro-life justices will ban interracial marriage?

Vice President Kamala Harris implied the Dobbs decision somehow threatens “the right to interracial marriage.” The pro-life, constitutional ruling “calls into question other rights that we thought were settled, such as the right to use birth control, the right to same-sex marriage, the right to interracial marriage,” Harris said during prepared remarks in Illinois on Friday afternoon.

While Harris is not the first Democrat to make this charge — Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) claimed without evidence that “Republicans want to ban interracial marriages” in March — her assertion cannot be substantiated based on any of the opinions associated with the Dobbs ruling. Justice Clarence Thomas, whose forceful concurring opinion eviscerated Roe, is married to a white woman. There is no indication the former Catholic seminarian wishes to dissolve his union with Ginni Thomas.

Abortion is a broad consensus supported by people of all faiths?

On Friday, President Biden called Roe v. Wade “a decision with broad national consensus, that most Americans of faith and backgrounds [sic] found acceptable.”

Biden made the same erroneous assertion just last month. In reality Christianity, and to degrees Orthodox Judaism and Islam, reject abortion-on-demand. Nor did Americans hold a “broad national consensus” in favor of abortion at the time Roe was decided. In 1969, only 40% of Americans believed abortion should be legal during the first trimester. The late Dr. Bernard Nathanson, who founded the group now known as NARAL Pro-Choice America but later became pro-life, admitted the abortion lobby “simply fabricated the results of fictional polls” showing “60% of Americans were in favor of permissive abortion.”

Abortion pills “safely end early pregnancies”?

“My administration will also protect a woman’s access to medications that are approved by the Food and Drug Administration — the FDA — like … mifepristone, which the FDA approved 20 years ago to safely end early pregnancies and is commonly used to treat miscarriages,” said Biden on June 24.

Mifepristone, part of a two-drug cocktail used to induce early medical abortions, certainly isn’t safe for the baby. But as abortions have shifted from surgical to medical abortions, mothers have also suffered an increasing number of side effects and injuries. Women who take the “medications” touted by Biden run a 53% greater risk of visiting the emergency room than those who have a surgical abortion. “Women who had a chemical abortion followed by a second abortion of any type within the next 12 months were more than twice as likely to wind up in the emergency room,” the authors of the study, who are associated with the Charlotte Lozier Institute, said in a statement to The Washington Stand. “Consistent with CDC reports, we found the percentage of abortions performed by means of mifepristone and misoprostol increased from 4.4% of total abortions in 2002 to 34.1% in 2015. Similarly, ER visits following mifepristone abortion grew from 3.6% of all postabortion visits in 2002 to 33.9% of all postabortion visits in 2015,” the peer-reviewed study concluded.

“The safety of the abortion pill is greatly exaggerated,” said its lead author, Dr. James Studnicki.

Abortion-on-demand is a constitutional right?

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) claimed, “Six radical Supreme Court Justices have overturned nearly 50 years of precedent, stripping away the constitutional right to an abortion.” Biden likewise said, “I believe Roe v. Wade was the correct decision as a matter of constitutional law.” Numerous Democrats made similar remarks.

First, only five justices voted to overturn Roe v. Wade. Chief Justice John Roberts’s concurring opinion upheld the Mississippi law protecting unborn children from abortion after 15 weeks but would not overturn Roe.

Second, it’s impossible to fact-check an opinion but, if Biden sincerely believes Roe v. Wade is good constitutional law, he is in the smallest of minorities. The late Ruth Bader Ginsburg once described Roe as “heavy-handed judicial intervention.” A former clerk to the justice who wrote the Roe decision, Harry Blackmun, said, “Roe borders on the indefensible,” because “it has little connection to the constitutional right it purportedly interpreted. A constitutional right to privacy broad enough to include abortion has no meaningful foundation in constitutional text, history, or precedent.”

The Roe decision hardly pretended to root the judicial activists’ desired outcome in the language of the Constitution. The justices explained their creative approach to the Constitution in a prior ruling: “The Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance,” they wrote. Roe v. Wade asserted that these emanations created a constitutional “right” to “sexual privacy” which, they discovered, included the right to an abortion. Abortion is “protected by the Bill of Rights or its penumbra,” they said.

“To hell with the Supreme Court. We will defy them.”

Shortly after justices released the Dobbs decision, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) responded by saying, “To hell with the Supreme Court. We will defy them.”

While nothing requires people to endorse any Supreme Court decision, few politicians since President Andrew Jackson or former segregationist Democrat George Corley Wallace have called for actively ignoring its rulings. While dissenting from a decision may be the right choice at times, some believe it straddles the line of undermining the High Court’s legitimacy. “Sounds very insurrectiony for a member of Congress,” retorted the principled conservative group ForAmerica.

Honorable mentions

Other statements worth noting:

• Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said pro-life advocates base their actions on unbridled misogyny. “Republicans seek to punish and control women,” she wrote. “This cruel ruling is outrageous and heart-wrenching [sic]”;
• Pelosi invoked motherhood in her defense of abortion-on-demand. “American women today have less freedom than their mothers,” she said;
• Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) told Fox News the judicial majority voted to “endanger the lives of all women and all birthing people in this country.” She tweeted, “People will die because of this decision” before retweeting a link to a pro-abortion rally hosted by the Democratic Socialists of America;
• Failed 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton deemed abortion-on-demand “sacred,” a term usually reserved for human beings created in imago Dei. “Most Americans believe the decision to have a child is one of the most sacred decisions there is,” she said, claiming the Dobbs ruling “will live in infamy as a step backward for women’s rights and human rights.”

As outrageous as these statements may be, none matches the fundamental lie that the most innocent human beings are “clumps of cells” or “parasites” who deserve to lose their God-given right to life based on a 49-year-old piece of judicial fiction.

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand. Image by SaadiaAMYii from Pixabay. Article cross-posted from Washington Stand.