The 1985 Geneva summit was highly advertised as a potential showdown between Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, the supposedly reasonable new Soviet leader. When it was over, Americans realized that behind Reagan's genial affability was a steely determination to protect our country against the threat from Soviet nuclear missiles.

Just as today's mainstream media are bent on undermining Trump's call to put Americans first in our dealings with Mexico, the media of the 1980s (led by ABC's Sam Donaldson and CBS' Dan Rather) were overwhelmingly pro-Gorbachev and anti-Reagan in their daily coverage.

Left-wing celebrities from around the world converged on Geneva to support the media narrative that a stubborn President Reagan was refusing to consider Gorbachev's reasonable proposals for world peace. Rep. Bella Abzug, actress Jane Alexander and the inevitable Jesse Jackson were giving daily interviews.

I led a delegation of 25 distinguished women leaders to Geneva to support Reagan and American nuclear superiority. The media didn't give us much coverage, but President Reagan telephoned me afterward from the White House to thank me for our support.

Reagan had been elected on a promise to "win" the Cold War against the Communist forces arrayed against America. Before Reagan, our country's foreign policy was controlled by men like Henry Kissinger, who thought victory was impossible and that his job, as he famously told Adm. Zumwalt, was "to negotiate the most acceptable second-best position" for the United States.

After three decades of steady deterioration of America's place in the world, Trump is the first candidate since Reagan who is comfortable using Reagan's vocabulary of winning. Trump has pledged to make America "win" again, instead of being cheated and outmaneuvered by our adversaries and even our so-called allies.

Trump's visit to Mexico recalls Reagan's trip to Geneva in other ways, too. At both meetings, there was one signature position on which the American refused to budge.

Reagan's no-surrender pledge was his unwavering commitment to the Strategic Defense Initiative, that is, to build and deploy a system to shoot down Soviet nuclear missiles headed for our cities. With Trump, it's his rock-solid promise to build "an impenetrable physical wall" on our southern border.

Both Reagan's and Trump's signature ideas were purely defensive weapons to which no country could have any legitimate complaint. Reagan's SDI was a non-nuclear weapon whose only function was to destroy or deflect incoming nuclear missiles.

Reagan stuck to that non-negotiable position at the summit with Gorbachev the following year in Reykjavik, Iceland. As we now know, that's when Gorby realized he could never win an open competition with the United States, so that his "acceptable second-best position" was the dissolution of the USSR over the next five years.

Likewise, Donald Trump's wall is not a provocative, but a neighborly idea to stop the rampant illegality that harms both nations along the U.S.-Mexico border. With no legitimate objection to erecting a fence, wall or other physical barrier between our two countries, Mexico should be grateful for Trump's leadership and even agree to help pay for it.

The value of a wall begins with stopping "murderers" and "rapists" from freely entering and re-entering our country with impunity, as Trump mentioned when he announced the start of his campaign last year, but it doesn't stop there. Felony assault by motor vehicle is another deadly crime that seems to be rampant by illegal aliens driving recklessly without the licenses or insurance law-abiding Americans take for granted.

The wall would also stop the plague of heroin that has exploded during the last few years of the Obama administration. Deaths from heroin overdoses surpassed deaths from car crashes last year and will hit a new record this year. Most U.S. heroin is delivered by Mexicans working for the drug cartels.

Of course, most Mexican immigrants are not murderers, rapists, drunk drivers or drug dealers. But even the good, hardworking people who come here from south of the border, both legally and illegally, have such low education and skills that they can't survive economically without massive public subsidies to provide for the care, food, shelter, health care, education and welfare of their children.

Voters finally have the opportunity to choose a president who will make America first by securing our border and ending one-sided trade deals that favor foreign workers rather than our own. Trump's strong stance in his meeting with the Mexican president demonstrates that Donald Trump is the "choice, not an echo."

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At the end of the last school year, the U.S. Department of Education on May 13 issued new transgender policies in the form of an 8-page "Dear Colleague" letter to America's public schools. The letter claimed that the 44-year-old federal law known as Title IX requires schools to recognize students' "internal sense of gender" instead of "the sex they were assigned at birth."

It's been called the bathroom rule, but the federal regulation went beyond bathrooms to include even overnight accommodations for school trips. Schools were told they "may not require transgender students to stay in single-occupancy accommodations" but must allow them to bunk with students of the gender they "identify" with, even if it's the opposite sex.

Over the Fourth of July weekend in Washington, D.C., the nation's largest teachers union, the National Education Association (NEA), declared that transgender students have a right to be "addressed by the name and pronoun that corresponds with their gender identity." The annual NEA convention adopted many other resolutions that seem designed to undermine traditional values and parental authority over students in public schools.

But in a last-minute reprieve worthy of an old Western movie, a federal judge in Texas has just called a halt to the new transgender rules. Judge Reed O'Connor of the federal district court in Wichita Falls, Texas, ruled in the late evening of Sunday, Aug. 21, that the "Dear Colleague" letter was not a valid regulation and that schools across the country are free to ignore it.

"Words should be given their ordinary meaning," Judge O'Connor wrote. "It cannot be disputed that the plain meaning of the term sex, when it was enacted following passage of Title IX, meant the biological and anatomical differences between male and female students as determined at birth."

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The Obama administration had tried to avoid a court ruling by claiming that the "Dear Colleague" letter was merely an advisory opinion and not really binding on the nation's schools. Judge O'Connor had little patience for that dodge.

The legal effect of the letter, the court said, is to force schools "to risk the consequences of noncompliance." Schools were faced with "a Hobson's choice between violating federal rules, on the one hand, and transgressing longstanding policies and practices, on the other."

Alas, Judge O'Connor's ruling came too late for schools in states where the new federal edict is already being implemented. In the Albuquerque, New Mexico, school district, which has 95,000 students, officials had already distributed a "procedural directive" requiring its 139 public schools to allow students to live in their preferred "gender identity."

For example, a male child who "identifies" as female could choose a new name and clothing style, and would be addressed or referred to as "she." The child would be allowed to play on girls' sports teams and use the girls' toilet, shower and locker facilities.

When the district policy filtered down to individual schools, principal Judith Touloumis of Carlos Rey Elementary School delivered a PowerPoint presentation to explain what the district's "procedural directive" really means. Her presentation was filled with the most extreme interpretation of what is called academic gender theory, including the statement that "biological sex must be seen as a spectrum or range of possibilities rather than a binary set of only two options."

Anyone with a child knows that children learn about the world through binary options: up or down, hot or cold, big or little, inside or outside, wet or dry, good or bad, boy or girl, man or woman. But the radical feminists, who staff women's studies departments at most colleges, have propagated the idea that we have to get rid of the "gender binary" along with the expectation of distinct roles for men and women.

"In other words," the principal's presentation continued, "from August 8, 2016, our students at Carlos Rey will be collectively addressed as 'students, Coyotes, engineers, scientists, mathematicians, etc.' No longer will it be acceptable to call our students, 'Boys and Girls' (a new paradigm shift)."

When the "new paradigm shift" was reported in the local news media in Albuquerque, it caused an uproar that forced school officials to engage in damage control. A district administrator claimed that a "simple misunderstanding was blown out of proportion," but there are no plans to rescind the "procedural directive."

What happened in Albuquerque shows that many public school officials are only too eager to enforce the transgender fad, even though the federal court decision allows schools to keep using the gender binary of boys and girls. Check your local school to see if it is confused about whether boys should be allowed in girls' restrooms and showers.

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Rahm was speaking in November 2008 about the newly elected president, Barack Obama. That was three weeks after Obama had told a campaign rally: "We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America."

With only five months left in the White House, Obama is still hard at work "fundamentally transforming" our country into something much different from the nation we all grew up in. Here are recent examples of how he is determined to transform America by undermining our common culture and language.

This month's catastrophic flooding in Louisiana is said to be America's worst national disaster not caused by an earthquake or a hurricane. While Obama continued playing golf on the exclusive island of Martha's Vineyard, his federal bureaucrats are making sure that the crisis won't go to waste.

On Aug. 16, five federal agencies issued an incredible 16-page, single-spaced "Guidance" warning relief agencies not to discriminate in the use of disaster funds. Agencies receiving funds must "post a statement of nondiscrimination" on all public notices and "should also identify a point of contact for the public to submit complaints of discrimination."

The Guidance refers to "unlawful discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin" which is prohibited by the 1964 Civil Rights Act, but it doesn't stop there. It also tries to ban discrimination on account of "limited English proficiency," which Congress has never prohibited.

The sneaky part is the way the federal Guidance includes the phrase "limited English proficiency," as if the language you speak is part of your "national origin." In fact, people from every country can and do learn English, and there is no good reason for our government to conduct official business in any other language.

The document was issued jointly by the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security, Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Health and Human Services.

The Guidance goes on at great length to require agencies to serve "LEP persons" and "LEP populations" in their own languages. Agencies are told to "provide translated materials," "translation services" and even "monolingual communication in the LEP person's language."

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The idea that federal grant recipients must provide services to "LEP persons" in their native languages other than English originated exactly 16 years ago when Bill Clinton issued Executive Order 13166 in the waning days of his administration. Federal agencies have continued to enforce that executive order by regulation, even though the Supreme Court ruled in 2001 that Clinton's order was not justified by any law passed by Congress.

Congress had a chance to stop this nonsense last month when Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, introduced an amendment to prohibit funds from being used to enforce EO 13166. King's amendment fell short by 21 votes because 50 House Republicans voted no, along with all the Democrats.

Don't assume that the only other language is Spanish. The vast wave of over 100,000 illegal immigrants who came here from Central America in the last three years includes tens of thousands of people who do not speak or understand either English or Spanish.

A recent article in the Los Angeles Times reported that "ancient Mayan languages are creating problems" because there are so few qualified interpreters. With so many new arrivals from Guatemala and Honduras, the primitive languages spoken in those countries are now more common than French in U.S. immigration courts.

Don't assume that the Obama administration is merely responding to a genuine need for services by recent immigrants who have not yet learned English. In the name of multiculturalism, the administration is actively discouraging the transition to English by immigrants and their children, and promoting other languages instead.

The $9.2 billion federal Head Start program has published "Multicultural Principles for Children Ages Birth to Five," which says immigrant children have a right to be taught in their native languages. A 32-page policy statement from the Departments of Education and Health and Human Services promotes Dual Language Learning and even warns immigrant families not to "prioritize the learning of English" because "children may inadvertently lose their home language."

We should have a national policy requiring immigrants and their children to become proficient in English. Even if they "lose their home language," that's a small price to pay for the far greater benefit of English proficiency, and the importance of a common language for all Americans.

As Theodore Roosevelt said a century ago, "We cannot tolerate any attempt to oppose or supplant the language and culture that has come down to us from the builders of this Republic."

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The song tells the story of a "tender-hearted woman" who rescues a "poor, half-frozen snake" from near death in the winter cold. "Take me in, oh tender woman," the snake cries out. "Take me in, for heaven's sake."

So the tender-hearted woman takes the snake into her own home, warms it by the fire and feeds it milk and honey: "If I hadn't brought you in, by now you might have died." But instead of saying thanks, the snake gave her a vicious bite.

"I saved you," cried the woman. "And you've bitten me, but why? You know your bite is poisonous, and now I'm going to die." "Oh shut up, silly woman," said the reptile with a grin. "You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in."

The moral of the song was clear to many in the crowd, but Donald Trump made sure that everyone got the message. "This is what is going on in our country, with our border," he told the 9,000 people who filled the Erie Insurance Arena.

"When you're listening to this, think of our border. Think of the people we are letting in by the thousands. And Hillary Clinton wants to allow 550 percent more coming in to our country. How stupid are we!"

That's right: Hillary wants to bring in 65,000 Syrian refugees, which is indeed a 550 percent increase over the 10,000 who entered this year, which in turn is a 500 percent increase over last year's intake of about 1,600. Obama is now rushing to complete his pledge to bring in 10,000 Syrian refugees by Sept. 30, despite FBI Director James Comey's testimony last October that those people can't be vetted because there are no reliable records on them.

As Trump said at the rally in Erie, "We want to help people, but we can't take a chance. We know bad things are going to happen. We know, as we allow more and more people to come in from terror areas, bad things are going to happen."

To illustrate the "bad things" that are bound to happen when "we allow more and more people to come in from terror areas," Senator Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., last week released the names of 20 people convicted of terrorism in the last three years after being admitted to our country as refugees from such countries as Iraq, Somalia, Uzbekistan and Bosnia. One of the 20 had received a special visa for Iraqi translators and subsequently became a U.S. citizen, yet he pledged an oath to the leader of ISIS.

Trump's compassionate solution for the refugee crisis is to "build a beautiful safe zone in Syria" and get the so-called Gulf States to pay for it. The Gulf States are the oil-rich kingdoms of the Persian Gulf whose existence is protected by the U.S. Navy, but have contributed nothing for the welfare of their fellow Arab Muslims in need.

"The story of 'The Snake' is what's happening to our country," Trump continued. "We're letting people in. Many of these people hate us. Many of these people don't have good thoughts. And you see what one sick wacko can do in Orlando. And then you see his father sitting behind Hillary Clinton with a big smile on his face."

That's right, the father of Omar Mateen, who murdered 49 people at the Pulse nightclub on June 12, was allowed to sit directly behind Hillary where he was visible on camera during her entire 25-minute speech. Seddique Matteen, who apparently came to the United States as a refugee in the 1980s, told reporters that Hillary Clinton "would be good for the United States, versus Donald Trump."

Before we allow any more refugees from Syria, let's take a closer look at what happened to a previous wave of refugees brought here from the East African failed state of Somalia. Starting in the 1990s, an estimated 100,000 Muslims from Somalia have been resettled in Minnesota and Maine at U.S. taxpayers' expense.

Instead of expressing their gratitude for the opportunity to live in a peaceful, prosperous nation, many Somalis have been trained by leftist community organizers to adopt an entitlement mentality, quick to complain about alleged discrimination. If that's not bad enough, a disproportionate number of their young men have supported terrorism or have even traveled overseas to join ISIS.

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The post Learn lesson of 'The Snake' -- heed Trump appeared first on WND.

The Republican platform states, "We oppose unnecessary policy changes including Selective Service registration of women for a possible future draft. We reiterate our support for both the advancement of women in the military and their exemption from direct ground combat units and infantry battalions."

The Democratic platform states, "We are proud of the opening of combat positions to women." The platform doesn't specifically say that women should be forced to register for Selective Service, as the Senate version of NDAA requires, but it does call for adding the so-called Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution, which would have the same effect.

Assigning women to combat positions would be a radical social experiment in the redefinition of gender, yet there's been deafening silence in the media. Congress hasn't held a single hearing about it.

Meanwhile, there's new evidence proving what most of us already knew, namely that women just can't perform the tasks combat jobs require, and don't want to anyway. A reporter for the Associated Press managed to get the numbers of women who tried and failed to qualify for combat roles in the Marine Corps in the six months since President Obama opened all combat positions to women.

A grand total of seven female Marines tried out for combat in the first six months since they were allowed to do so, but only one woman passed the grueling physical fitness test. Another 167 women applied for "intelligence, logistics or communications" jobs in combat units, but those jobs don't require the same level of physical fitness.

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The AP helpfully explained the math: when six out of seven female recruits failed to pass the test, that's a female failure rate of 85.7 percent. By comparison, 40 of about 1,500 male recruits failed the same test, for a male failure rate of only 2.7 percent.

The combat test included standard athletic measures of running and lifting, which an extremely fit, athletic young woman might be able to do. But the test also included combat maneuvers such as belly crawling and evacuating a casualty, which almost no woman can do successfully.

On July 6, an amendment was offered by the newest member of Congress, Warren Davidson, who won a special election on June 7 to succeed former Speaker John Boehner. The new congressman discovered that the Selective Service Administration isn't funded by the Pentagon budget after all.

So Davidson introduced a very simple amendment to the General Government Appropriations Act: "None of the funds appropriated by this Act may be used to change the Selective Service System registration requirements in contravention of section 3 of the Military Selective Service Act."

In offering his amendment, Davidson pointed out that there's been no discussion of this radical social change outside Washington, D.C. "Many families back home aren't aware of this, and especially many young women aren't aware of this."

He added, "We should be clear to the courts that we don't need them or want them to come in and decide the rule." Davidson's amendment passed by the narrow vote of 217-203, with 24 Republicans joining all but 2 Democrats voting against it.

The commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen. Robert Neller, told the AP how hard it is to open combat to women on the same basis as men. To begin with, most female Marines "are not interested at all" in combat roles, but "some want just to make it gender neutral and we'll just figure it out."

If only one woman qualifies for combat, will the Marine Corps assign her to an otherwise all-male combat unit? Apparently yes, but to provide a buffer for that woman, "the Marines will also put a female officer and a female senior enlisted leader in the combat units doing a noncombat job such as intelligence or logistics" whose physical requirements are less demanding.

Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., a former Marine who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, said, "This is what happens when you have a military decision made for political ends. If women can't do it, they'll say it's not fair" and standards will have to be lowered.

That's where another plank of the 2016 Republican platform should apply: "We reject the use of the military as a platform for social experimentation. Military readiness should not be sacrificed on the altar of political correctness."

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A platform should be a statement of principles that can last for many years, not a partisan political attack against a particular candidate. The Republican Party platform has only one reference to Hillary Clinton and barely mentions Republican candidates of the past or present, while the Democratic Party platform rants against Donald Trump 32 times.

The Democratic Party platform wants federal taxpayer dollars to pay for abortions and for the first time calls for repealing the 40-year-old Hyde Amendment, which limits federal spending on abortion. The Republican Party platform opposes the use of taxpayer dollars to fund abortion and declares that "the unborn child has a fundamental right to life."

The vacancy of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia hangs in the balance in this election, and the Democratic Party platform tells us what their top priority is. When selecting the next Supreme Court justices and all future nominations to the federal bench, Democrats promise to appoint judges who will "protect" the abortion industry.

The Republican platform explains that there is "a national crisis in our judiciary" due to activism by Democrat-appointed federal judges. "Only a Republican president will appoint judges who respect the rule of law expressed within the Constitution and Declaration of Independence, including the inalienable right to life and the laws of nature and nature's God, as did the late Justice Antonin Scalia," the GOP platform explains.

The Republican platform calls for "rebuilding the U.S. military into the strongest on earth, with vast superiority over any other nation or group of nations in the world." The Democrats' platform does not mention military superiority or "American exceptionalism," but blames Americans for a "recent uptick in Islamophobia."

A quarter of the Republican Party platform is devoted to a section entitled "America Resurgent," which sets forth the steps necessary to restore peace through strength while heeding "the wisdom of President George Washington's warning to avoid foreign entanglements and unnecessary alliances." The Democratic platform calls for enmeshing the United States in a "global network of alliances."

Republicans support women's "exemption from direct ground combat units and infantry battalions" and "reject the use of the military as a platform for social experimentation." Democrats say "We are proud of the opening of combat positions to women. Our military is strongest when people of all sexual orientations and gender identities are honored for their service to our country."

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The Democratic platform opposes "voter identification laws," which Democrats falsely describe as discriminatory. Americans are routinely required to show photo ID to board airplanes and enter government buildings, and the integrity of our elections is important enough to require meaningful verification of identity and citizenship before casting a ballot.

The Republican platform, for the first time, calls for building a wall to stop the overrunning of our southern border by illegal aliens: "We support building a wall along our southern border and protecting all ports of entry." The platform explains that amid "terrorism, drug cartels, human trafficking, and criminal gangs, the presence of millions of unidentified individuals in this country poses grave risks to the safety and sovereignty of the United States."

In contrast, the Democrats demand amnesty for the many millions of foreigners who entered our country illegally or failed to go home on time, a policy that simply encourages millions more to do likewise. The Democratic platform would grant driver's licenses, in-state tuition and citizenship for millions of illegals in our country, the vast majority of whom would then be loyal voters for the Democratic Party.

The Republican platform says: "We need better negotiated trade agreements that put America first. When trade agreements do not adequately protect U.S. sovereignty, they must be rejected," declining to endorse the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which the Democratic platform allows.

"These are the standards Democrats believe must be applied to all trade agreements, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership," is a face-saving sentence in the Democrats' platform that gives Hillary Clinton the green light to approve it with minor modifications. Last week one of her top allies, Terry McAuliffe, confirmed that a President Hillary Clinton would embrace this horrible deal, and then he tried to deny it amid an intense backlash.

Teachers' unions are the backbone of the Democratic Party, and its platform omits any reference to homeschooling. The Republican platform extols the benefits of parental control over education, and praises multiple alternatives to the failing public school system.

The sharp contrast between the Republican and Democratic platforms leaves no room for doubt about which party should receive your vote in November.

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Cruz did not disqualify himself from being a future standard-bearer merely by failing to endorse Trump, but also by failing to embrace the conservative policies that are necessary to make America great again. It was Trump, not Cruz, who succeeded in fulfilling Ronald Reagan's goal of "raising a banner of no pale pastels, but bold colors which make it unmistakably clear where we stand on all of the issues troubling the people."

Trump repeatedly and passionately demonstrated in his acceptance speech that he would stand up for Americans and do everything in his power to end the exploitation of the United States by the rest of the world. "Americanism, not globalism, will be our credo!" Trump declared, adding that "the American people will come first once again."

As Trump did throughout the campaign, he led on the fundamental issues of immigration and trade. While his rivals eventually followed his lead, it was Trump who framed the issues and forced the media to pay attention to them.

Trump explained in a compelling way the harm resulting from crime by illegal aliens. He described how he personally met with the family members of a young woman with a promising future who had been killed by an illegal alien, who was then released and still remains at large in our country.

On jobs, the Republican Party since the 1990s supported free-trade deals that have cost American workers dearly. Trump has single-handedly converted our party into one that is now pro-American-worker.

"I have visited the laid-off factory workers, and the communities crushed by our horrible and unfair trade deals," Trump declared during his speech. "These are the forgotten men and women of our country … who work hard but no longer have a voice."

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"I am your voice," Trump then said, amid thunderous applause. For the first time since Ronald Reagan, the Republican Party has a nominee who actually represents the average American worker.

An astounding 12 million non-Republicans crossed party lines to vote for Trump in the Republican primaries. The Democrats did not vote for Trump because they prefer supporting a billionaire, but because they like his positions on immigration and trade.

Trump extolled "the dignity of work and the dignity of working people." He brings back to the Republican Party the "bricklayers, carpenters, and electricians" whom he said his father was most comfortable being with.

Trump observed that "America has lost nearly one-third of its manufacturing jobs since 1997," and that NAFTA was "one of the worst economic deals ever made by our country." "Never again," Trump added.

In contrast, Ted Cruz's speech at the convention made only passing references to immigration and trade, without the substance or the passion that Trump expressed. Instead, Cruz repeated "freedom" over and over, some 23 times, declaring that "America is an ideal," and that the ideal is merely that "freedom matters."

Cruz's speech reflected the views of his mega-donors, who tend to be more libertarian than the conservative views of the average American. Leaving people alone to do whatever they like is not enough to restore the United States to military superiority or economic independence, or to achieve the many other goals set forth in the Republican Party platform.

Cruz's vision is not that of Ronald Reagan, who made the United States stronger and more prosperous as Trump vows to do. Trump emphasized in his speech his opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which he said "will not only destroy our manufacturing, but it will make America subject to the rulings of foreign governments."

Trump even pledged "to never sign any trade agreement that hurts our workers, or that diminishes our freedom and independence." Cruz made no such pledge and failed to mention the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Trump obviously meant every word in his electrifying speech, as when he expressed his genuine outrage at how "big business, elite media and major donors are lining up behind the campaign of [Hillary Clinton] because they know she will keep our rigged system in place." Cruz's speech had no such criticism of Hillary, and relied on superficial rhetorical devices like devoting much of his speech to a story about a sympathetic victim with whom Cruz had no personal connection.

The shortcoming of Ted Cruz is not only his failure to endorse the Republican Party nominee. The greater flaw is that, like Mitt Romney and others in the Republican establishment, Cruz has failed to embrace the conservative vision that Donald Trump stands for.

The post Trump's speech trumped Cruz appeared first on WND.

But on one of Trump's signature issues – his opposition to the resettlement of Muslim refugees from Syria – the Indiana governor took Trump-style executive action even before Trump. Way back on Nov. 16, Gov. Pence directed his state agencies to suspend payments to the agencies that profit by redistributing tax money to people from Syria.

Pence took that prompt and decisive action after it was revealed that at least one of the Muslim terrorists who massacred 130 people in Paris, France, on Nov. 13 had slipped into that country by posing as a Syrian refugee. Pence also relied on the Oct. 21 testimony of FBI Director James Comey before the House Committee on Homeland Security.

Comey told Congress that it's simply not possible to vet Syrian refugees adequately because there are no reliable documents or databases for those people. "We can query our database until the cows come home, but there will be nothing show up because we have no record of them."

For Pence's swift action to protect American citizens against the demands of foreigners, he was sued by one of the agencies that spends our tax money to resettle refugees. On Feb. 29, an Obama-appointed federal judge named Tanya Walton Pratt blocked Pence's order on the absurd basis that he was discriminating against Syrian refugees on the basis of their national origin.

Gov. Pence appealed the Obama judge's decision on April 11. Contrary to the claim that our government spends two years vetting Muslim refugees for terrorist sympathies before letting them in, Pence's brief quoted an April 7 story by the Associated Press reporting, "While the resettlement process usually takes 18 to 24 months, the surge operation will reduce the time to three months."

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Pence has tweeted his opposition to a complete Muslim ban, but he may change his mind by checking the polls. A series of recent polls proves that most Americans strongly or somewhat support temporarily banning all Muslims from entering our country.

In just the last month, a Reuters/Ipsos poll, an NBC News-SurveyMonkey poll, a Morning Consult poll and a Fox News poll all found that Americans support Donald Trump's proposal even if they don't support him. These polls show that substantial numbers of Democrats, African-Americans and people who voted for Obama in 2012 support a temporary ban on Muslims or people from Muslim-majority countries.

Those polls were completed before the most recent terrorist horror in Nice, France, which resulted in the mass murder of 84 and the injury of 200 more, when Mohamed Bouhlel intentionally ran over them with his truck. The terrorist's apparent targeting of women, children and families as he drove his truck in zigzag fashion to kill them has horrified millions.

The threat of terrorism is not the only reason to stop the refugees, who are bringing tuberculosis (TB) in both its active and latent varieties. TB is one of six "comeback" diseases that had been virtually wiped out in our country but are returning with refugees; the others are measles, mumps, whooping cough, scarlet fever and bubonic plague.

The same judge ruled against another of Pence's most important initiatives. On June 30, she issued a preliminary injunction against an Indiana law signed by Gov. Pence that bans abortion solely for the reason of the child's sex, race or disability (including but not limited to Down syndrome).

In India and China, abortion of baby girls based on their gender results in a disproportionate number of births to baby boys. This provides an additional reason to oppose immigration from these countries, because we do not want any immigrant groups that have far more men than women.

The same judge who blocked Pence's proper actions concerning refugees and abortion also ruled in 2011 that Indiana could not stop tax money going to Planned Parenthood. How does it happen that a single Obama-appointed judge can block the enforcement of a state legislature and governor?

Trump recently experienced firsthand the overreaching by federal judges when Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg lashed out against Trump in comments that she has since expressed regret for saying. Apologies aside, Justice Ginsburg's comments illustrated how politicized the federal judiciary has become, and both Pence and Trump are on the same page in opposing the runaway federal judiciary.

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One congressman reportedly demanded that Trump promise to protect Congress' Article I powers if he is elected. Trump tactfully refrained from pointing out how many times the Republican Congress has unilaterally surrendered its Article I powers, including the power "to regulate commerce with foreign nations."

Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona openly mocked Trump at the meeting and then bragged to reporters about their "tense" exchange. Flake, an unrepentant member of the Gang of Eight that produced the 2013 amnesty bill, has already announced plans to resurrect that discredited bill next year no matter who is elected president.

Trump's next stop was a private meeting with Sen. Ted Cruz, who inappropriately brought his campaign manager, Jeff Roe, to the meeting. Two months after suspending his campaign, why does Cruz still utilize a high-priced campaign manager to join high-level discussions with the presumptive nominee?

The answer is that Cruz never stopped running for president, and the people who spent $158 million – more than twice what Trump spent – to back Cruz in 2016 are not going away. Cruz recently set up two new nonprofit organizations to keep his key people employed, prematurely launching another run for president in 2020.

Cruz's delays in endorsing Trump and his disloyal preparations to run for president in 2020 help only one person: Hillary Clinton, which is what some Republican mega-donors actually prefer, because they are globalists who oppose Trump's stances against immigration and free trade.

The globalists will never accept Trump or anyone else who puts Americans first, and they are using Cruz to undermine Trump's campaign. Cruz's mega-donors think they can buy their way to control of the Republican Party even if Trump wins the presidency this year, and they are already funding the takeover of several conservative organizations.

These globalist money-men are also hostile to our Constitution, which they want to rewrite in a new constitutional convention, also called "Convention of States." Eric O'Keefe, who has close ties to the billionaire Koch bothers, backs the Never Trump movement and is a board member of the Convention of States project.

Attacked, debased, maligned and vilified: This foundational institution is fighting for its life. Order Phyllis Schlafly's latest book, "Who Killed the American Family?" along with her updated classic, "A Choice, not an Echo"

Justice Scalia in May 2015 called this attempt for a new constitutional convention a "horrible idea," but several of its cheerleaders were able to get on the Republican platform committee that is meeting this week. Cruz has praised the delusional proposal to add many amendments to the Constitution, and some of his donors are part of the same group that seeks to alter our Constitution.

Cruz earned support by many conservatives when he first came to D.C. four years ago. It is long overdue for Cruz to repudiate the support of these globalists who are working against Trump and against our national sovereignty.

"We will no longer surrender this country or its people to the false song of globalism," Trump promised in his April 27 foreign policy speech in Washington. That sentiment is anathema to the globalists who provide much of the money for Republican candidates.

"I am skeptical of international unions that tie us up and bring America down," Trump continued. "Under my administration, we will never enter America into any agreement that reduces our ability to control our own affairs. Americans must know that we're putting the American people first again."

When Trump vows to "put Americans first" the globalists complain about "protectionism," as if there's something wrong with expecting our own government to protect American jobs and America's economic interests.

"On trade, on immigration, on foreign policy, the jobs, incomes and security of the American worker will always be my first priority," Trump said. "Both our friends and our enemies put their countries above ours, and we – while being fair to them – must start doing the same."

In a June 22 speech in New York, Trump intensified his attack on the globalist money interests: "We'll never be able to fix a rigged system by counting on the same people who have rigged it in the first place. The insiders wrote the rules of the game to keep themselves in power and in the money."

"It's not just the political system that's rigged, it's the whole economy," Trump continued. "It's rigged by big donors who want to keep wages down. It's rigged by big businesses who want to leave our country, fire our workers and sell their products back into the United States with absolutely no consequences for them."

We've waited a long time for a Republican candidate to express these pro-American views, but Donald Trump's victory in the presidential primaries proves they are what the voters want to hear.

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Trump said his Muslim ban would be temporary.

"Until we are able to determine and understand this problem and the dangerous threat it poses," he said, "our country cannot be the victims of horrendous attacks by people that believe only in jihad."

Trump's reasonable, commonsense proposal was immediately condemned or disavowed by other presidential candidates in both parties. Even Sen. Ted Cruz said he disagreed with it, though he didn't say why.

Now that Cruz has returned to his "day job" as U.S. senator from Texas, he recently co-authored a new report with Sen. Jeff Sessions that provides powerful support for Trump's position. The report issued June 22 shows that the overwhelming majority of convicted terrorists came into our country as immigrants or refugees from Muslim countries.

Cruz and Sessions were able to determine the birthplace of 451 of the 580 individuals who were convicted of terrorism since the 9/11 attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Some 380 of the 451, or 84 percent, of these terrorists, were foreign born – and most of them came from Muslim-majority countries such Pakistan, Egypt, Lebanon, Yemen, Somalia, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Of the 71 terrorists who were born here, most were children of immigrants or refugees from Muslim countries, although the senators could not report the exact number because the Obama administration refused to provide that information. Despite four official letters from the U.S. senators on Aug. 12, Dec. 3, Jan. 11 and June 14 to the appropriate agencies of the U.S. government, Obama's appointees have refused to answer questions about the immigration status of the 580 persons convicted of terrorism in the United States since 9/11.

The definitive explanation of globalists' plans to merge the nations of North America, now in paperback: Jerome Corsi's "The Late Great USA"

Coming six months after San Bernardino, the Orlando massacre entitled Donald Trump to say, "I told you so," and he did so in a powerful speech on June 13.

"We admit more than 100,000 lifetime migrants from the Middle East each year," Trump said. "Since 9/11, hundreds of migrants and their children have been implicated in terrorism in the United States."

Trump was right to include the children of immigrants as part of the immigration problem. The Orlando shooter, Mateen, was born in the United States, but a witness said he referred to Afghanistan as "my country."

Besides Orlando, other mass killings have been perpetrated by the U.S.-born children of Muslim immigrants or individuals who were brought here as children by their Muslim parents. Examples include one of the San Bernardino killers; the Fort Hood shooter, Maj. Nidal Hasan; the Tsarnaev brothers, who bombed the Boston Marathon in 2013; and the man who killed four active-duty Marines and a sailor in Chattanooga in 2015.

Don't overlook the Muslims who entered the United States on the pretext of marriage, such as the Pakistani woman named Malik who helped her husband commit the San Bernardino massacre. The Orlando shooter's first wife, his second wife, and his second wife's first husband were all Muslims who never should have been allowed to come here.

In an interview, Trump said "there's no real assimilation" by Muslim immigrants, even in the "second and third generation." A liberal website called Politifact tried to refute that statement by citing a telephone survey of Muslims who said they wanted to become American, but the interviews were conducted in "Arabic, Farsi and Urdu" – hardly evidence of assimilation.

Other countries have recently experienced terrorist massacres directed or inspired by the Islamic State, including 130 murdered in Paris; 32 in Brussels; 45 at the airport in Istanbul, Turkey; 28 at a restaurant in Dhaka, Bangladesh; and, most recently, 200 in Baghdad, Iraq. Obviously we can't prevent atrocities in other countries, but we can and should prevent potential terrorists from coming here.

Obama, however, is doing just the opposite. He has admitted more than 5,000 so-called refugees from Syria this fiscal year and scattered them to 167 communities in 39 states. More than 99 percent of the Syrian refugees are Sunni Muslims, and only eight individuals identified themselves as Christian. The Obama "surge" of Syrian refugees is on track to reach 10,000 by September, even though FBI Director James Comey told Congress last year that there's no way to vet them adequately.

Most Syrians lack the skills to support themselves without government assistance, and Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation calculates that 10,000 refugees will cost federal, state and local taxpayers some $6.5 billion over their lifetime. If that's not bad enough, Hillary Clinton has vowed to increase the number of Syrian refugees to 65,000.

Attacked, debased, maligned and vilified: This foundational institution is fighting for its life. Order Phyllis Schlafly's latest book, "Who Killed the American Family?" along with her updated classic, "A Choice, not an Echo"

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