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My 'suburban mom' demographic is supposedly all in for Biden. But I'm voting for Trump.

I’m a white, college graduate, suburban mom in her 40s living in an upper middle class area. If you listen to the media, my fuel efficient SUV should be proudly outfitted with a Biden/Harris bumper sticker.

Except it’s not. Not all of us fit into a big suburban box. I have two young girls — yes, girls — and this year I’m voting for them.

In 2016, I took a chance and cautiously voted for Donald Trump based on the promises he made. This year, I’m proudly voting for him based on the promises he’s kept and the leadership he’s shown over the last three and a half years.

President Trump has done more that I support than any president in my lifetime, and certainly more than Joe Biden in his decades in Washington.

In fact, a majority of voters say they’re better off now than they were four years ago, even after eight months of a pandemic.

Police and public safety

Newsflash: This year’s election isn’t the choice between a guy who tweets or a guy who trips all over himself reading his teleprompter. The choice is between two vastly different Americas. The question is, which America do you want your kids to grow up in?

An America where the Orwellian mantra of “peaceful protests” reverberates in dismissing violence and anarchy? Where public safety is an afterthought? Where "mob rule" rules the day as we’ve seen in many Democrat-run cities across the country, as rioting and looting have destroyed businesses and ended innocent lives.

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That’s Joe Biden’s America.

An America that unequivocally condemns violence, loudly supports law enforcement, and proudly protects our families? That’s Trump’s America.

Lauren DeBellis Appell in the summer of 2018.
Lauren DeBellis Appell in the summer of 2018.

In an unprecedented move, police organizations all over the country, some of which have never endorsed a candidate before and some which had previously endorsed Democrats, are endorsing Trump this year. Paul DiGiacomo, president of the New York City Detectives’ Endowment Association said, “The safety of our members depends on this election.”

Suburban moms like me believe the safety of our families also depends on this election.

Fighting for religious freedom

For all you Christians out there upset that the president doesn’t say "please" and "thank you" on Twitter: While you were obsessing over 280 characters, Trump was actively working to protect religious freedom. That's a 180-degree turn from the Obama-Biden administration and Democratic attorneys general which sued the Little Sisters of the Poor — twice.

One of Trump’s first acts was to nominate Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, followed by Brett Kavanaugh. Both nominees had strong records of protecting religious freedom enshrined in the First Amendment — which doesn’t just protect where and how you choose to worship, but also how you choose to exercise your faith in your everyday life.

Watching the hearing for Trump’s third Supreme Court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, with my daughters, it became clear this remarkable woman is an inspiration and role model for young girls everywhere.

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Barrett is a highly respected judge, a distinguished law professor who graduated first in her class from Notre Dame Law School, and a mom of seven. She would be the first mother of young children to serve on the Supreme Court.

Yet, during the hearing we watched Vermont Democrat Sen. Patrick Leahy, who’s been in the Senate for 45 years, tell my daughters that Barrett would set women back decades. In Biden’s America, Barrett is a setback. The rest of us call her a trailblazer.

Now Biden threatens to turn the Supreme Court into his own liberal mini-Congress. He wants to form a commission to explore options that “go well beyond” adding to the court.

Got it. Stay tuned for the Supreme Court to start resembling game day on a football field with “Team Biden” jerseys instead of black robes if Biden’s elected. They’d rubber-stamp his policies, including perhaps a national lockdown over COVID-19. Now that is scarier than anything Trump has said or proposed.

Our children are political casualties

The virus has taken a toll on our children as well as our economy and physical health. Keeping our kids isolated at home learning behind a computer screen is a disaster. Working parents struggle to juggle their jobs while supervising online learning.

Meanwhile, mental health issues in our kids are on the rise. In July, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert R. Redfield said there are more suicides and deaths from drug overdoses than from COVID-19 as a result of school closures, particularly high schools. Inexplicably, some teachers unions are hijacking schools and refusing to help let kids back in the classroom. The union in my northern Virginia school district demands schools remain closed until at least August 2021.

But in Biden’s America he’ll always stand with the teachers, even when they are wrong. How do we know? Because he told them. In July he said, “You don’t just have a partner in the White House, you’ll have an (National Education Association) member in the White House,” referring to his wife, Jill Biden.

Well, our kids should not have to take one for the team because of fear that collides with facts, or the flexing of political muscle. In contrast, Trump knows lockdowns are, on the whole, a brutal failure.

Meanwhile, the economy is steadily coming back, unemployment rates are going down again; and new studies show something else is going down — COVID-19 death rates.

Two candidates, two very different Americas. For this suburban mom, the choice couldn’t be clearer.

Lauren DeBellis Appell is a freelance writer in Fairfax, Virginia, and a mom to two daughters. She was a former communications aide to Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., and the Senate Republican Policy Committee.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Suburban mom: In 2020 election, I'm voting for Donald Trump