Democrats were absolutely sure that the new somewhat conservative Supreme Court and the Texas law limiting abortion would save their bacon in 2022 and 2024.

The reason is that surveys have consistently shown about 60 percent of people say abortion should be legal in most cases.

Democrats were certain that outrage about abortion restrictions would translate into voter backlash against Republicans in the coming election cycles.

But Dems and their lapdogs in the media are finding much to their disappointment that people are not talking that much about abortion in 2022. Check out this story:

As the right to an abortion in the U.S. hangs in doubt, one thing seemed clear at the outset of 2022: the issue would tower over America’s midterm elections.

But in Texas — of all places — that hasn’t been the case going into the nation’s first primary.

Airwaves are not swamped with campaign ads focused on abortion access. Candidates spend more time talking about COVID-19, immigration and the reliability of the power grid. Some rallies and events come and go without even a mention of Texas having the most restrictive abortion law in the country on the books for months now.

“It’s almost like we’ve become numb,” said Democrat Ann Johnson, a state representative in Houston.

The change has disappointed abortion rights supporters who suspect that months of court defeats has taken a toll on their side at a time when a full press is still needed. Others worry that some candidates, particularly Democrats, still don’t know how to effectively campaign on abortion even after the tumult of last fall.

“It’s a community issue, it’s a public health issue and I think to not talk about it is like super blind,” said Amy Hagstrom Miller, president of Whole Woman’s Health, which operates four clinics in Texas.

It shows that both Democratic and Republican candidates alike in Texas have concluded other issues are currently higher priorities for voters in the primary — the economy, schools and health care chief among them.

Many believe the abortion issue will return to the spotlight in the general election campaign, when candidates are facing the opposing party rather than like-minded competitors from their own, and after the Supreme Court decides whether to weaken the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling that guarantees the right to an abortion. The court’s decision on a key abortion case is expected by June.

But as the 2022 campaign begins, the Texas race has revealed cracks between the practical impact of the Texas law on abortion rights and the politics of the issue. Recent data confirmed that in the first month after the restrictions took effect, abortions in Texas fell by 60%.

Outside San Antonio this month, a forum of candidates for a seat in the Texas House — where the law known as Senate Bill 8 overwhelmingly passed a year ago — drew a crowd of more than 100 people in mostly rural Kendall County.

None of the candidates on stage talked about it, and no one in the audience asked.

“There was 45 minutes there that it could have come up, and it didn’t,” said Laura Bray, who chairs the local Democratic Party.

In her county, where President Donald Trump won 3-to-1 in 2020, Bray said Democrats purposefully avoid discussing abortion so they don’t turn off Republican voters they’re trying to win over.

What campaigns in Texas have been most emphasizing aligns with national surveys: although Democratic voters increasingly support protecting reproductive rights, a range of issues from the economy to gun control still rank higher, according to a December poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Across the country, Democrats have promised to make abortion a cornerstone of the midterm elections, saying the issue can energize their base at a time when their narrow majorities in Congress are at risk. The conventional wisdom is that abortion is more of a motivating issue for Republicans. But even Gov. Greg Abbott’s early campaign for a third term has also not heavily promoted his signing of the law, which appeared to go even too far for other GOP states where copycat measures have stalled.

“Abortion has never been one of the top issues for most voters,” GOP pollster Whit Ayres said. “It’s always overwhelmed by, in this day and age, the pandemic and the economy.”

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The county where I live in Colorado lifted its mask mandate over the weekend, and happy Latter-day Saints responded by getting rid of their masks at church today.

It was great to see everybody’s faces, and people were happy and optimistic. A week ago, when the county mandate was still in place, about half of the people in Sacrament wore masks, and the other half did not, and there was almost zero contention about this situation. One of the reasons I love living here is that most people are truly tolerant and do not feel a need to boss other people around.

On the internet, however, not so much. I get hate mail all the time claiming I am “going against the Brethren” by writing that almost all masks are and always have been useless against viruses. Sorry, the uselessness of most masks is simply a fact (strangely accepted by almost everybody now), and I prefer to live in the world of reality, not the cult world that others have created.

So, as I said, until recently masks were “mandatory” in our ward because of local county guidance, but only half of the people wore them. And now that masks are no longer mandatory, but are “highly recommended,” nobody wears them. So, it appears that at least where I live all of the Church members are “going against the Brethren” by following the science, rather than the mask cult.

(This should be obvious, but I will write it anyway: if you are immunocompromised and wear a mask, you are not part of the cult. If you are perfectly healthy and still wear a mask because of COVID, you really should reconsider because it is not good for your long-term mental and physical health. But at end the end of the day, your wearing a mask doesn’t hurt me, so do what you want. But if you feel other people around you should be forced by government to wear a mask, yes, you are part of the cult and need to reassess your life).

Here is the reality: the Church only asked us to wear masks for two reasons: 1)because governments insisted on masks and 2)many people were afraid, and the Church was encouraging kindness by asking people to wear masks around people who are afraid. So what has changed? The government guidance, that is what.

The primary reason that no Latter-day Saints should have any anger towards the Church’s actions during the pandemic is that the Church was held hostage by thousands of tyrannical governments around the world anxious for any excuse to shut down worship services. If somebody is held hostage by a kidnapper, you don’t blame the victim, you blame the kidnapper. It was the governments doing the evil, not the Church.

Does anybody remember that the churches were among the first institutions to be shut down in March and April 2020, while pot dispensaries, liquor stores and bars were all considered “essential?” Our worship services were shut down for two months, and we could only go back under strict rules including massive chemical cleaning (the science clearly showed that COVID was not spread on surfaces, but again the science didn’t matter), distancing and masking. No singing was allowed. There is no doubt that many government rules seem to be inspired by Satan and are pure evil.

I don’t blame the Brethren for doing what they needed to do to keep chapels and temples open. I don’t blame individual members doing what they needed to do to go to Church and take the Sacrament. But I do blame individual members who joined the cult and gleefully came up with excuses to boss other people around and support the government tyranny taking place all around us. I blame anybody who ever yelled at another person to “mask up” or tried to bully other people minding their own business. This was a test, fellow Saints, and if you supported the government actions that limited other peoples’ freedom, you failed the test. You should be ashamed.

Take that shame and learn from it. For the next government “emergency,” (and there will be others) always stand up for individual liberty and true tolerance. If you find yourself supporting rules controlling the actions of others, rather than supporting their free will, you should stop and realize you are on the wrong side. It’s not that difficult. As I said, almost everybody in our stake in Colorado was on the right side during the pandemic. But the stories I have heard from other wards and stakes indicate there were many, many people who failed during the pandemic. Wheat and tares, my friends, wheat and tares.

You think your child does not mind wearing a dirty face diaper?

Check out the response when kids in Nevada are informed the mask mandate is ending.

As a father of five children, I can tell you it is of course wonderful to see their joyous reaction. Few things in life are more precious than the excitement of young children.

But we should never forget — NEVER — the cruel and inhumane politicians, health leaders and teachers unions who forced our kids to wear these unnecessary filthy rags for nearly two years. In the meantime, liberate your children — take off the face coverings immediately. Your children will thank you.

(Originally published on Public Square Magazine).

Let’s not dance around this. Something creepy and dangerous is happening on our college campuses—and which has now been effectively exported to workplaces and social media everywhere. 

New York University professor Jonathan Haidt often speaks of 2014 as a turning point where he saw students move from protest and frustration about unpopular views (which had been normative and common) to beginning to claim that being exposed to these views was “psychologically damaging”—and that such speech ought to be equated with “violence.”  

That prompted Jon to join Greg Lukianoff in writing “The Coddling of the American Mind,” and to start Heterodox Academy, which has gathered thousands of professors, administrators, and students grappling with the increasingly illiberal atmosphere on campus.

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Suddenly, in the last few weeks, the media has started to report the truth on the pandemic. You know, the things that I have been reporting for almost two years now? That kind of truth.

Let’s look at several examples.

The New York Times, which has been claiming for nearly two years that all people must be forced to wear masks — and double masks! — suddenly pivoted and printed the following: “The Mask Debate — More Democratic Governors Are Saying That Masks Can Come Off In Schools.” The reporter recounted an experience of trying to talk to a friend, both masked, and not being able to hear each other. 

It was not a big deal, but it reminded me that masks have both benefits and costs… If you scroll through social media, you will find no shortage of people proclaiming that mask wearing is easy FOR THEM. I don’t doubt it. But it is not so easy for many other people, including young children, people with learning disabilities and people who are hard of hearing….The benefits of universal masking in schools remain unclear. Studies — in Florida and in England, for example — tend to find little effect on caseloads. One study that did find an effect has been largely debunked….Other experts believe that the universal mask mandates are almost worthless. Among the reasons: Medical masks are designed for adults, not children, Michael Osterholm, a University of Minnesota epidemiologist, notes. Even masks designed for children slip off their faces. Children take off their masks to eat. Add in Omicron’s intense contagiousness, and the benefits of the current mandates may be tiny.

I wrote something very similar in the summer of 2020, and my posts were marked as “misinformation” by Facebook! Meanwhile, several fellow bloggers on M* accused me of not being Christ-like, and you should see the hate-filled emails and comments I have gotten since 2020 for writing things that, in retrospect, appear actually quite logical and reasonable. More than a dozen people wrote me personal messages hoping I would die during the pandemic because I wrote things like the above, but apparently now it is no longer verboten.

How about questioning the lockdowns? Well, it turns out that a meta-analysis by professors associated with John Hopkins shows that the lockdowns are doing much more harm than good, and this story has, miraculously, made it into the mainstream media. A key paragraph from the study:

While this meta-analysis concludes that lockdowns have had little to no public health effects, they have imposed enormous economic and social costs where they have been adopted. In consequence, lockdown policies are ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument.

Huh. That sounds almost exactly like a post I wrote in November 2020 that many Christ-like Latter-day Saint readers responded to by hoping I would die from COVID! And of course such a study would have been blocked entirely by social media just a few months ago, but now you can read the study and decide for yourself. Something definitely is going on.

I conclude with a hilarious pivot by CNN TV doctor and former Planned Parenthood president Leanna Wen. In a segment on all the mask mandate terminations announced this week, Wen was asked if she agreed with the moves:

I do. There was and is a time and place for pandemic restrictions, but when they were put in, it was always with the understanding that they would be removed as soon as we can. And in this case, circumstances have changed. Case counts are declining. Also the science has changed! We know that vaccines protect very well against Omicron, which is the dominant variant. Everyone five and older has widespread access to vaccines. And we also know about ‘one-way-masking,’ the idea that, even if other people around you aren’t wearing masks, if you wear a high-quality mask, that also protects you, the wearer, too. In this case, I’m not saying — no one is saying — that no one should wear masks, but rather that the responsibility should shift from a government mandate, imposed from the state or district of a school, rather it should shift to an individual responsibility by the family, who can still decide that their child can wear a mask if needed.

“One-way-masking.” That is absolutely hysterical! That is exactly what people opposed to mandates have been saying for two years, ie, if you want to wear a mask, go for it and be “protected” but allow other people to make their own choices. Individual choice — the thing that Wen and her ilk have been opposing for almost two years — is suddenly in vogue!

The CNN host asked about dropping mask mandates at a time when there are still high case numbers in New Jersey. And Wen said:

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