Columns this week come from Jerome Climber, Ashley Vaughan and Keith Throckmorton.
Climer talks about reforming democracy and appointing US Sentors while Vaughan opines about how women and girls should have their own sports and private spaces (an issue that former State Senator Bob Steinburg championed before it was cool to do so) and a column by Throckmorton about the importance of prayer in America.
If you have an opinion, feel free to share it — unlike many media outlets, we don’t discriminate based on your politics or position on the issues. That’s radical thinking these days. We feel that if we have an open dialogue on the issues, then we have a better chance of understanding one another.
On that note, if you want to submit a column, send it to mileslayton1969@gmail.com
STOP Electing Senators – Appoint Them!
BY JEROME CLIMER
Why is Congress so docile as President Trump rocks the global economic system with tariffs, seeks to acquire Canada, Greenland, and the Panama Canal, and attempts to fire thousands of federal workers while amassing a political war chest unheard of for an incumbent constitutionally unable to seek reelection as president?
Add to that list of big things is the fact Mr. Trump recently issued another Executive Order (EO) related to shower heads, yes, shower heads. The futility of using EOs should be clear to all in the administration because those minor-issue shower heads now illustrate an issue that has been addressed by Presidents Obama, Trump, Biden, and, once again, Mr. Trump. Their actions prove that EOs can be undone by the next occupant of the White House and frequently are. To permanently change any program, spending, or rule of the federal government, Congress must be involved.
Questions?
When it comes to making government policy, many observers ask: Does Congress, both the House and the Senate, have the ability in the modern world to meet their Constitutional obligations when it takes a majority of 535 independent actors to equate with one executive? Can a democracy function well if the media is unprepared to understand and communicate issues, not just treat political actions like sports reporting? Can the public express informed opinions on issues without clearer, unbiased information?
Over 100 years ago, reformers sold the country the idea of electing US Senators instead of appointing them. Initially, following the Constitution, Senators were appointed. Are you surprised to learn they were not always elected? No one alive witnessed that debate. Things have not been the same since.
The argument for relieving states of the responsibility to name their U.S. Senators, as required by the 17th Amendment in 1912, was that it would make the Senate more democratic and responsive to the public. Regrettably, those appealing soundbites fundamentally changed Congress and the federal government. The Founders must be either scratching their heads or spinning in their graves.
Over the past 112 years, the nature and size of the federal government have grown or, as most would say, exploded. Is there a correlation between the fact Senators are now elected and no longer appointed? Probably so.
Today, an elected Senator must deliver for the folks back home. Delivering means money for bridges, education, international aid, as well as ever larger amounts spent on Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and military while downplaying higher taxes, more borrowing, bigger deficits, and debt to pay for all those “programs.”
Do not misunderstand my point in terms of the intelligence, personalities, and skills of most US Senators. I like and respect most Senators. During my 40+ years working in Congress, some of the Members I most respected were Senators. But, to a person, they all learned to respond to the voter’s whims as opposed to reflecting their state’s interest by applying their own best judgment in setting federal policy on everything.
They all learned to raise enormous amounts of campaign money. Today, most of that money in competitive races comes from outside their home state. Not surprisingly, the average voter capable of sending a campaign a few hundred dollars pales in comparison to lobbyists influencing a corporate or union PAC to send thousands.
Most Senators vote without a detailed understanding of feedback from home voters, focusing instead on the big media image definition of the proposal. Voters feel alienated watching team voting (Rs vs. Ds) and Members keeping the lobbyist’s content and donations flowing. Come election time, voters who don’t know the details of votes on amendments and passage or defeat of legislative proposals end up responding to emotional appeals or endorsements from the voter’s preferred bell cow (union, Chamber of Commerce, AARP, church, one single issue) or pure old-party politics. On the other hand, the lobbyists know the details and support like-minded Senators regardless of where the Senator lives.
If Senators were appointed to six-year terms, as discussed by Michael S. Johnson and myself in our book, Fixing Congress: Restoring Power to the People, Senators would be entrusted and empowered to serve as wise statesmen as opposed to glorified representatives, not taking anything from most Members of the House for whom I also have great respect.
The Founders intentionally saw House and Senate members having different roles, which the 17th Amendment outright killed by making Senators more like Representatives but with 6-year terms as opposed to two. The House was to be highly reflective of voter passions and the Senate contemplative, as noted when Washington reportedly asked Jefferson, “Why did you pour that coffee into your saucer?” “To cool it,” replied Jefferson. “Even so,” said Washington, “we pour legislation into the senatorial saucer to cool it.”
With the direct election of Senators, we lost the saucers and saw passions fed, not cooled, in much of what comes out of Congress. The instantaneous, “breaking news” mindset of major media inflames those passions hourly, and it leaves a citizen unequipped to judge the advisability of the legislation. The chaos accompanying current reports on tariffs, layoffs, and international relations all illustrate this breakdown in what the Founders sought by creating a structure designed to enhance wisdom while minimizing overreaction.
Implementation Weeds
In Fixing Congress, we suggest increasing the size of the Senate by 50 members so each state could appoint three senators (as opposed to the current two). One is to be appointed every two years to serve six-year terms, subject to reappointment. Maybe one by the state’s Senate, another by the state’s House, and the third by the state’s Governor. Today, if party control of the state changes, the elected senators continue to serve without regard to their home state’s shift in direction.
The fact that Article 1 of the Constitution assigns the responsibility of setting tariffs to Congress collides with electoral reality and causes elected Members to tolerate that dereliction of duty. Elected Senate and House members of the majority party do not want to be seen opposing their elected President. So, like Democrats with Mr. Biden’s dubious decisions, there has been little resistance from Capitol Hill as the president sets, resets, delays, and modifies tariffs. Would Senators be blindly following the president on tariffs that have a major impact on their home states if they were appointed by those states? Or are they more concerned about Trump’s political war chest that he has amassed to use defeating nay-sayers or supporting “adherents” of his party? If they were appointed by the states, that war chest would be irrelevant.
For the last several decades, Congress has defaulted and punted too much decision-making to the occupant of the White House; thus, Congress lost its ability to control tariffs, as well as borrowing, growth of the federal workforce, debt, etc.
Raising tariffs can look politically desirable. But over the long run, they may start trade wars or minimize the efficiency of countries doing what they do best. It is easy to see why elected Members of Congress are happy to kick that can down Pennsylvania Ave. But, if Senators were appointed by their home states, would they be willing to tolerate tariffs that damage that home front? Tariffs on technology, lower-cost cars, and trucks, or corn or frozen rabbit parts?
Senators, not subject to the whims of popular opinion, could talk straight and remind folks that tariffs are self-defeating. If they stop the flow of imports, they raise no revenue. If they raise lots of revenue, they are proven ineffective at slowing the flow of imports.
Think about a few other current issues and how you think state-appointed Senators might view each when they did not have donors, media, and voters second-guessing their every move:
· Do voters and Members of Congress who support the tariff ideas of President Trump and the efficiencies of his advisor Elon Musk understand that nearly everything they are doing can be undone by the next Democratic majority in Congress?
· Would state-appointed Senators see the current debate of trusting Russia’s Putin versus throwing Ukraine’s Zelinski under the bus as a modern version of the historic blunders of England’s Chamberlain versus the US’s Eisenhower approach to Russia? There is little in history to suggest an agreement with Putin would last.
Would state-appointed Senators be inclined to find enough wool to pull over the public’s eyes so federal borrowing can continue to explode? Would state-appointed Senators ever have supported the gross expansion of the federal government to the point that we witness court actions to stop the firing of federal workers and the diminution of federal programs of questionable value?
The Bottom Line
It is hard to conclude that changing the way we select US senators has done much more than make people feel they are in charge. Realistically, the reformers of a hundred-plus years ago got the opposite of what they claimed. Is it now time to consider unamending?
Today, good people are elected to the Senate, and my guess is many of them would be appointed in a future world where they are dedicated to offering their wisdom as opposed to following the money and whims of lobbyists and voters influenced by outside spending, news media, or a president, trying to stack the deck with supporter’s political contributions.
Much of what the Trump team is trying to accomplish is desirable, but execution is frequently as important as the GOAL, and private business leaders do not understand the necessity of process in public affairs.
For example, Axios AM, in its April 7, 2025, edition, noted:
- “Trump could have laid out specific tariff threats for each country, given them a short period to comply with a proposed compromise on great U.S. terms, and explained his thinking before spooking the markets.
- Trump could have spent an extra month targeting spending cuts with precision — so he didn’t have to cut and then rehire people deemed more vital than first thought.
- And he could have set up a more thorough vetting program for deportation — so his broadly popular action didn’t get undermined by locking up or sending off people who are not clear-cut violent criminals.”
Looking for Bright Spots
There are positives in the chaos created by the shenanigans of 2025, as Nick Catoggio noted in Boiling Frogs: the world is now more motivated in favor of free trade, and Congress might retake its responsibility over trade policy and other policies.
A resident of Edenton who retired in 2007, Jerome Climer is co-author of a book, Surviving Inside Congress, that is available both as a regular book and in a kindle edition (http://www.amazon.com/Surviving-Inside-Congress-ebook/dp/B005E0UTUC).
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Editor’s NOTE: Back in the day, former state Senator Bob Steinburg, a conservative firebrand ahead of his time, was a leader in pursuing legislation known as HB2, a law that required individuals to use public bathrooms and changing facilities corresponding to the sex listed on their birth certificate. This law faced significant backlash and was ultimately repealed in 2020 and Steinburg may have paid a political price for speaking out on these matters. Fast forward five years later, Steinburg’s ideas on sex and biology appear to be more fashionable with General Assembly now that public opinion has swung dramatically on the issue of ensuring that women and girls have their own sports and private spaces. Column was originally published in Carolina Journal.
Middle school girl to lawmakers: Please don’t make me room with a boy
BY ASHLEY VAUGHAN
At a quiet, wooded summer camp in North Carolina, 13-year-old Chloe Button stepped hesitantly into a rustic cabin, duffel bag in hand. A lifelong Girl Scout, Chloe had always looked forward to camp — until now. She just found out that a boy claiming a female identity was assigned to sleep in her cabin.
Chloe asked to be moved to another cabin, but her request was denied. As the days passed, she struggled with growing anxiety. She changed clothes behind a towel and lay awake at night. Instead of being a retreat, the cabin seemed more like a cage. She felt trapped and alone.
Weeks later when she went back to her public school, Chloe moved through hallways lined with lockers and crowded with students. She pushed open the door to the girls’ restroom and was shocked to see a boy exiting the stall. Her stomach dropped, and she remembered the helplessness and loss of privacy she experienced at camp.
Last month, Chloe traveled to Raleigh to share her story with lawmakers in order to urge them to pass the Women’s Safety and Protection Act, Senate Bill 516 and House Bill 791, filed earlier this year.
The bill defines male, female, and sex in NC law based on biology, not identity. It also designates private spaces by biology in K-12 public schools, community colleges, UNC System colleges and universities, rape crisis centers, domestic violence shelters, and correctional facilities that receive state funds. And it repeals the provision allowing people to change their sex on their birth certificate, and requires the “sex” listed on an individual’s driver’s license and their birth certificate reflect their biological sex.
The Women’s Safety and Protection Act would not prevent Chloe’s camp experience from happening because the Girl Scouts are a private organization, but it would ensure that she does not have a similar experience on a school trip. Currently, three NC School Systems — Buncombe County Schools, where Chloe attends, Asheville City Schools, and Orange County Schools — allow boys to use girls’ restrooms. Four NC school systems — Buncombe County Schools, Asheville City Schools, Orange County Schools, and Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools — allow boys to room with girls on overnight trips.
Critics of the Women’s Safety and Protection Act have attempted to tie it to HB2 because of the controversy that bill caused in the state about a decade ago. But the reality is that the Women’s Safety and Protection Act has key differences from HB2, including that it does not affect private entities or businesses and it does not affect employment policies. It is a targeted attempt to protect girls and women in especially vulnerable spaces and situations such as school bathrooms, overnight field trips, dorm rooms, prisons, and crisis centers.
But more important is the fact that, since HB2, public opinion has swung dramatically on the issue of ensuring that women and girls have their own sports and private spaces. People have heard stories from girls and women like Chloe they understand the problem now — men and boys who adopt a female identity invade women’s private spaces and their opportunities, depriving them the right to privacy and to a fair and level playing field. Recent polls show that a growing number of Republicans and Democrats believe that our society has gone too far with transgender accommodations.
States have responded to this shift by passing legislation similar to the Women’s Safety and Protection Act in order to protect women from the harmful effects of gender ideology. Fourteen states have passed laws to segregate private spaces by biology, and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals just unanimously upheld a similar law passed by Idaho. Eight states do not allow sex to be changed on birth certificates, and at least eight states define “sex” by biology. North Carolina’s passage of the Women’s Safety and Privacy Act would be in line with a growing trend among states to protect women.
Payton McNabb is another North Carolinian whose life has been dramatically impacted by the infusion of gender ideology into society. In September 2022, Payton suffered a traumatic brain injury when a boy, competing as a transgender girl, spiked a volleyball in her face in a high school volleyball game. Then in May 2024, when she was a student at Western Carolina University, Payton encountered a man in a dress and heels in the women’s bathroom on campus. She asked him what he was doing in the women’s bathroom, and was subsequently harassed online, threatened with expulsion, charged with sexual harassment and discrimination by the school, and kicked out of her sorority.
Just last week the US Department of Education announced a Title IX investigation into Western Carolina University for refusing to ensure sex-separated intimate spaces in federally funded institutions of higher education. The announcement cited credible reports that administrators refused to update their discrimination policy to comply with President Trump’s executive order mandating sex-segregated private spaces. It also described the specific problems occurring at the school including Payton’s incident, and another female student who left a university dorm because she was assigned to room with a male claiming a female identity.
Back in 2021, the nation was shocked when a boy wearing a skirt sexually assaulted a girl in the girls’ bathroom at a Northern Virginia high school. The parents sued the school system for $30 million. Will NC lawmakers wait until a horror story happens like this in North Carolina before they act? Or will they step in now and protect the safety, privacy, and dignity of young girls like Chloe Button?
North Carolina was the first state to raise awareness to the problems caused by boys and men in girls and women’s private spaces almost a decade ago – and now it’s time to finish the job and protect women and girls by passing the Women’s Safety and Protection Act.
Ashley Vaughan is the press and policy director for NC Values Coalition.
Has America Forgotten The Power of Prayer?
BY KEITH THROCKMORTON
1 Thessalonians 5:17 (KJV) “Pray without ceasing.”
America was founded as a Christian nation. Yet, in 350 years, America overcame every obstacle, won every war, and succeeded in the eyes of the world as being the greatest nation on earth. America’s greatness was because we were a nation of faith in God and prayer. Clergy during the Revolutionary War were a powerful force and influence during our founding.
Carlos Romulo, a Philippine General renowned for his heroic activities during World War Two, charged Americans: “Never forget, Americans, that yours is a spiritual country. Yes, I know you’re a practical people. Like others, I’ve marveled at your factories, your skyscrapers, and your arsenals. But underlying everything else is the fact that America began as a God-loving, God-fearing, God-worshiping people.”
Pope Pius XII said: “The American people have a great genius for splendid and unselfish actions. Into the hands of America, God has placed the destinies of an afflicted mankind.”
Prayer to God has been necessary for who America was and came to be. Clergy during the Revolutionary War was a powerful influence on their flocks and our Founding Fathers. So likewise, presidents, military, and elected leaders openly relied on God through prayer during their positions. They set an example for everyone to follow.
After the Union Army’s devasting loss at the 2nd Battle of Bull Run in August 1862, President Abraham Lincoln confessed this: “I have been driven upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom, and that all about me, seemed insufficient for that day.”
The Battle of New Orleans occurred on January 8, 1815. The mighty British Army suffered 2042 casualties, which included 291 killed, 1,267 wounded, and 484 captured. The American Army suffered 71 casualties, which included 13 killed, 39 wounded, and 19 missing.
Many citizens of New Orleans spent the night before in the Ursuline Chapel praying and crying. Then, at the moment of serving communion, a courier entered the chapel and advised of the victory. General Andrew Jackson proclaimed: “By the blessings of Heaven, directing the valor of the troops under my command, one of the most brilliant victories in the annals of war was obtained.”
General George S. (ole blood and guts) Patton, commander of America’s Third Army, was a profane, respectful renowned, and fearless leader during WWII. He was also known as a man of prayer. There have been several recounts of his going to God in prayer.
An example of such a battle was the Battle of the Bulge. American armies, under General Patton, were restricted by bad weather. General Patton ordered Chaplain Francis O’Neill to compose a prayer. The prayer read: “Almighty and most merciful Father, we humbly beseech Thee, of Thy great goodness, to restrain these immoderate rains with which we have had to contend. Grant us fair weather for Battle. Graciously hearken to us as soldiers who call Thee that, armed with Thy power, we may advance from victory to victory, and crush the oppression and wickedness of our enemies, and establish Thy justice among men and nations. Amen.”
General Patton loved and believed in prayer. He had a two-part Christmas greeting sent to the Third Army. His Christmas Christmas message read: “To each officer and soldier in the Third United States Army, I wish a Merry Christmas. I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty, and skill in Battle. We march in our might to complete victory. May God’s blessings rest upon each of you on this Christmas Day. -G.S. Patton, Jr. Lieutenant General, Commanding, Third United States Army.”
Not long after the prayer was written and distributed, the Third Army began to pray more. Then, finally, the weather started to get better, and the day after Christmas, Patton’s Army reached the famed 101st Airborne Division, which had been surrounded and valiantly defending the city of Bastogne, Belgium. While still more battles were to be fought, the German offensive was on its way to defeat.
The prayers of the Third Army, commissioned by General Patton, is a powerful and inspired reminder of the power of prayer and also shows the boldness of an Army seeking God’s assistance in Battle, not for vengeance but to establish His justice among men and nations. But, unfortunately, it is hard to imagine that such a prayer would not be quashed today, not by the enemy on the Battlefield, but rather silenced by the forces of political correctness.
Chaplain O’Neill later said about General Patton: “He had all the traits of military leadership, fortified by genuine trust in God, intense love of country, and high faith in the American soldier. He had no use for half-measures.”
What has happened to America today!? Do we pray? If not, why?
During the late 1950s and early 1960s, anti-Christianity got a tremendous boost with the coming of the sexual revolution, denying God’s word on the subject found in the Bible. However, this “sexual revolution” was not only about sex but much more. Therefore, eliminating sex morality is a huge step in eliminating Christianity and the power of prayer. Unfortunately, in the aftermath, America has succumbed to the unGodly modern ways of the world.
Pray for America, and leave your descendants an America you would want to be left to you.
Keith Throckmorton, Fairfax County Police (Retired and Chaplain), Perquimans County, NC
