Commentary: Three Cheers for Tennessee A.G. Skrmetti on His First Two Years in Office

by Judson Phillips

We just passed the two-year anniversary of Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti taking office, and it has to be said that he has exceeded even the loftiest expectations we conservatives could have had. For the first time, we have an Attorney General who is on the same page with the Legislature and the vast majority of the population, fighting the fights we want to see fought, and doing us proud in the process. Now seems like a fine moment to reflect on the gift we’ve been given, and marvel at what we might come in his next six years, if he gets the resources to keep this up.

The Attorney General has many jobs, virtually all of which matter a great deal to some person or another in our state. But there are really three areas that are the most important if you are a conservative: (1) holding the federal government to account, (2) protecting state laws and state interests from left-wing attacks, and (3) defending our citizens from the woke mind virus that has infected corporate America. On each of these fronts, our Attorney General is hitting home runs.

Let’s start with holding the federal government’s feet to the fire. We all know that President Biden and his bureaucrats are busy trying to push crazy gender ideology in our schools. Thankfully, our attorney general has already obtained a court order blocking new federal regulations that would mandate things like biological boys playing on girls’ sports teams and an order blocking federal rules that would mandate that medical providers provide (and states pay for) gender-related medical procedures.

What about protecting the state’s laws and other interests? I’m glad you asked, because this is where the rubber hits the road on the home front. And it is a place where we are getting top-shelf service. When the NCAA threated the University of Tennessee with an NIL (name-image-likeness) recruiting ban, Attorney General Skrmetti threw down, sued the NCAA, and won in a judicial smackdown that could lead to the unravelling of countless other draconian NCAA policies. And when left-wing activists came after our commonsense laws that banned sex change interventions on minors and refused to change the sex listed on our birth certificates, Attorney General Skrmetti went to the mattresses for us and came away with wins in court.

As for woke companies, just consider how Attorney General Skrmetti jumped all over notoriously woke Ticketmaster over their anti-competitive abuse of consumers and then stepped up as the first AG in the country to sue BlackRock over their use of ESG policies and the scam they have been running on consumers in furtherance of their left-wing worldview.

Attorney General Skrmetti (pictured above) has six more years in office. And he has more wins in the pipeline, if past is prologue, including in cases against the federal government over mandatory elective abortions for employers and the release of illegal immigrants in Tennessee.

If the state Legislature continues to give our Attorney General support, the sky is the limit for what we might see from that office. It is time to back up the truck and give our Attorney General whatever he needs to fight for us, because we have never seen an Attorney General like this in Tennessee.

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Judson Phillips is a Tennessee entrepreneur and one of the early organizers of The Tea Party Movement.
Photo “A.G. Jonathan Skrmetti” by A.G. Jonathan Skrmetti.