Mr. Shackelford is a constitutional scholar who has argued before the United States Supreme Court, testified before the U.S. House and Senate on constitutional issues, and has won three state landmark First Amendment and religious liberty cases in the past few years alone. He was recently named one of the 25 greatest Texas lawyers of the past quarter century by Texas Lawyer, and is the recipient of the prestigious William Bentley Ball Award for Life and Religious Freedom Defense for his leadership and pioneering work protecting religious freedom.

Amy Ridenour (pronounced RIDE - en - our) is chairman of The National Center for Public Policy Research. As the founding chief executive officer, she has since 1982 promoted the conservative perspective on U.S. domestic, foreign and defense policy issues. She frequently speaks on public policy issues and political organizing techniques and has done so across the U.S., in Central America and in Europe.

Her opinion/editorials have been nationally-syndicated. Her articles have also been independently published by USA Today, the Sacramento Bee, the Dallas Morning News, The Washington Times, the Los Angeles Daily News and many others.

Ridenour also is a member of the board of directors of Black America’s PAC, a political action committee that works to help elect more African-Americans to Congress and other elected offices.

Ridenour received the American Hero Award from the National Defense Council Foundation in 1988 and the William Paca Award from the Maryland Republican State Central Committee in 1979. A native of Pittsburgh, she studied economics at the University of Maryland at College Park. She resides in Maryland with her husband, David, and their three children.

A federal appeals court in San Francisco ruled Thursday that people do not have a Second Amendment right to carry concealed weapons in public, in a sweeping decision likely to be challenged by gun-rights advocates.

An 11-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued the 7-4 ruling, upholding a state law requiring applicants to show "good cause," such as a fear of personal safety, to carry a concealed firearm.

The judges, further, definitively dismissed the argument that a right to carry a concealed weapon was contained in the Second Amendment.

A federal appeals court ruling that gave gun control advocates a major victory Thursday underscored California’s rising importance as a center of legal and political battles over guns.

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decided in a 7-4 ruling that California counties may restrict permits for carrying concealed firearms in public. That decision overturned a 2014 ruling that prompted some California counties to relax their rules.

“It should not be minimized how big a victory this was for gun control advocates,” said UCLA law professor Adam Winkler. “Not only does it affirm the constitutionality of restrictive conceal-carry laws in California’s major cities, it also makes it less likely the Supreme Court will step in.”

Katie Walsh, the Republican National Committee’s chief of staff, was just a few hours from meeting with Donald Trump’s new political director this week when the television outside her office blared the latest news breaking out of the Trump orbit. “Christie defends Trump: He’s not a racist,” the CNN headline declared.

The scene illustrates the tricky task facing the party, which is serving as the main engine behind Trump’s presidential bid: How do you a run a disciplined campaign for a candidate who is anything but?

“He’s the nominee and he’s going to make sure his views are known,” Walsh said carefully during an interview. “He’s made that pretty clear. We will leave it to Mr. Trump to speak for Mr. Trump . . . And we will keep hitting Hillary and raising money to be ready for November.”

With the departments of Justice and Education’s new announcement on transgender access to showers, locker rooms, bathrooms, and other sex-specific facilities in schools, there is reason for concern.

The Obama administration has unlawfully rewritten law, meddling in state and local matters, and imposing bad policy on the entire nation.

Americans agree that while we should be sensitive to transgender individuals, others also have rights of privacy, safety, and their own beliefs that deserve respect and should not simply be pushed aside, especially when transgender persons can be accommodated in other ways.

The risk to the privacy and safety of women and girls is real. There have been numerous cases in recent years of men either cross-dressing or claiming to be transgender in order to access women’s bathrooms and locker rooms for inappropriate purposes. Here are six examples: