Rick Green
Welcome to the intersection of faith and culture. It's the WallBuilders Program. We are taking on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. We appreciate you being a part of it. Be sure to visit our website today at wallbuilders.com Great resource for you. It's also a great place to make an investment if you care about freedom and you want to help us secure freedom for the next generation by preserving it, by bringing back that civic literacy, biblical literacy, knowing truth, so that we can prevent the lie from marching across our nation like it has been. That's up upon us. It's our duty stewardship, and we have to be good stewards of the freedom that God's given us. So check all that out at wallbuilders.com. Make a contribution today, help us reach more people with these truths and also just get you some good stuff there Lots of great books and DVDs. There's the Constitution classes. The second installment of the American story is now out. There's just a ton of stuff there is swag, all kinds of good stuff. You can get hats and shirts and start advertising for freedom, and it's a great place to become a part of the team and a part of the solution.
I'm Rick Green, America's Constitution Coach, honored to be here with David and Tim Barton. Tim Barton is a national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders. David Barton is America's premier historian and our founder at WallBuilders, and you can find out more about all three of us at the website wallbuilders.com. All right, guys, let's jump into that good news. I'm actually gonna. I'm gonna read one for you first and then, and then we'll get to your list, but I know you guys are gonna love this one.
This is a listener to the program Thomas and man has some good news for us. In fact, he suggested we talk about this on Good News Friday. He said I love the show. I wanted to share something for your Good News Friday shows. I attended a student-led Pray and Worship night at our local public high school last night. So let that one sink in for a minute, audience. While there is, he goes on to say, while there's so much darkness in our schools, it was incredible to see these students boldly proclaiming their faith among their peers in this setting. More information about this can be found at enlightenedstudents.com. That's incredible, guys. I just clicked on the link and it is. I'm watching video of students doing, you know, pray and praise and worship at public schools, so what a great way to be a light in your local school district. Enlightenstudents.com. We'll have to get one of them on the program.
Tim Barton
That is really cool, and I do wonder if they had some legal involvement and legal counsel help along the way. Obviously, after the last couple of Supreme Court decisions over the last several years, we've talked about new opportunities for students, opportunities for religious liberty and freedom like we've never seen before, and this is certainly taking full advantage of that. So, Rick, yeah, we definitely need to reach out. I find out a little more about who they are, what they're doing. That sounds pretty awesome.
Rick Green
Well, what do you guys have for good news? Are we done? That's it One good news story. Didn't we only do one good news story last week when we talked about it the whole time? We're going to try to get twice as many in this week. David, where do you want to take us first, man?
David Barton
I'm going to the US Supreme Court. The US Supreme Court has upheld, for the time being, Texas's law that allows Texas to kind of take on what Biden is not doing with immigration. So all the immigration laws that are out there that Biden is not enforcing. Texas passed the law that said look, those laws are going to be enforced. Somebody's got to do it. We're willing to do it. So under the Texas law it allows, for example, for local police officials, for state officials, whatever, to arrest anyone who's come in illegally, illegal immigrant. It also allows them a local judge to deport those people. This has all been kind of federal responsibility for the last 100 years or so. But Texas is saying it's not being done. And so the Supreme Court, for the time being, has said that law stands.
Now what happened was this law had been challenged in a lower federal court by. The Biden administration, challenged it and the lower federal judge said no, Texas's law is no good. Immigration is a federal responsibility therefore you can't do it. And when it got to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, the Fifth Circuit overturned the law. The judge said no, somebody's got to enforce the laws on immigration and the feds aren't the only one that have to follow the laws. So what happened is the Fifth Circuit upheld the law and allowed it to be appealed to the Supreme Court. So the Biden administration took this to the court, asking the Supreme Court to overturn the Fifth Circuit and just declare the law as being Texas law as being unconstitutional. And the Supreme Court refused to do that. They're not going to do that, and they pointed out even to the Biden administration they rejected their argument that states have no role in immigration.
So what this is is not only a good decision from the court, because imagine what would happen If the federal government could disobey or disregard any law it wanted to. What would happen to the rest of the nation? If whoever's president refused to uphold the laws and they're taking all to do so and they refused to uphold the laws. It would be just absolute chaos. So I think the courts have recognized that you can't just have federal laws that get absolutely disregarded. And so the Biden administration wanted to say, hey, this is a federal-only responsibility, and the Supreme Court rejected that argument.
So this is really good, because this goes back to pre-1875, 1876, when states used to have a very active role in immigration, and we've been looking at this quarter. Over the last 8 to 10 years, they've been going back more and more to the Constitution, reading it, and it appears that they certainly have gotten back into history here, where that this was a shared jurisdiction, shared responsibility, and that could be great news, considering what's been happening with the Biden administration. This allows so many states to be able to do something not just border states. Even the northern states have been complaining about all the invasion of illegal immigrants they have as well. So this allows law officials to uphold the law, and they all take a note to uphold those laws, and so this actually, for the time being, enables them to do so. Now, this has not finished yet. This may work its way back to the Supreme Court, but the fact the Supreme Court did not overturn the law, but allowed it to stand is a pretty strong message at this point, which is really good.
Rick Green
Yeah, just for good expectations and everybody not to be disappointed. We don't know. You know there's going to be a lot of back and forth. It was like the stay of a stay of a stay, and so they'll. I think it will come back to the Supreme Court and it may be quick, you know. They may actually the Fifth Circuit may finish their process sooner rather than later and it might be back before the Supreme Court. You know this term, even in the next month or two. But, yeah, really, really good sign there and I think, David, it could be, man we could see a complete overruling of US V Arizona from 2012 and finally get a decision like what Scalia wanted in that case in his dissent, which means states you can defend your border. Wouldn't that be great if they actually finally say that, which is what we've been hoping for?
David Barton
Yeah, it was interesting. The governor Abbott quickly tweeted. He said that means we can put the buoys back in the river and in the lake, we can enforce our borders again. And so he's going to go back to that. You know the earlier judge had said hey, no, you can't put those buoys out. There's the federal government responsible for enforcing the border. Well, now Texas is going to help enforce that border. That's going to benefit all 49 other states because they're all complaining. Well, I guess Hawaii is not complaining about it. So Hawaii, I don't know about Alaska, but at least 47 other states are complaining about what's happening across the southern border.
Tim Barton
Hang on a second, so if Hawaii and Alaska aren't complaining, how many other states are there?
David Barton
47 others
Alaska, Hawaii, 49, Texas is 50.
Tim Barton
Yeah, you said if it's not Alaska and Hawaii, the 47 others. I was just going to point out there's 48 others after Alaska and Hawaii.
David Barton
Well, that's okay, but Texas, along with the 47 other states, Wait, the whole problem with all of that math, you guys, is it's irrelevant, because Texas is not a state, we're a nation.
Rick Green
Wait, the whole problem with all of that math, you guys, is it's irrelevant, because Texas is not a state, we're a nation.
What are y'all talking about?
David Barton
Oh, you're right. All right, I could say that point
Rick Green
In our own minds we still are. Anyway, all right, Tim, we better get off this one before we're considered secessionist or something. What's your piece of good news today?
Tim Barton
Well, this one's coming from southeastern Indiana and this is something that definitely went viral, made some headlines. There was a student and to back up the title of this article, is It's Not Happening. High school bags down after a student refuses to remove American flag from his truck. There was a student at the school, at a high school. His name is Cameron Blasek and he had an American flag from the back of his flying on the back of his truck, and he was asked by school staff to take it down and he said no. And they said no, you're gonna have to. Well, he actually goes and he read the rules, the codes for the school, and he said look, I've read all of the policies. He said I've read through it and in the handbook, the only time the word flag is mentioned in regard to the parking lot or first of all, it's not mentioned in regard to the parking lot or driving section. He said the only time it's mentioned is in this section on flag twirling, which is definitely not what he was doing with a flag on the back of his truck. And so he said so, you have no authority to tell me to take this flag down. And, by the way, I don't know that he was trying to be rebellious, necessarily, I think he was just very strongly American. One of the things the article points out is that he's looking at joining the military once he graduates, which I have some different thoughts on that. Maybe advice for him on that, given the current leadership of our nation during the time of our military. However, on the flip side, we gotta have good people in the military, because of all, the good people get out and all we have are the woke crazies and that's not good for the nation, it's not good for the military.
Anyway, the school says, well, we don't need flags there. And the principal indicates that, well, next year we're gonna have a policy that say no flags whatsoever. Well, this gets a lot of a press, a lot of attention. In fact, there's a several dozen, a whole bunch of students that the following day, when he's told, hey, when you come back, don't have this flag. A bunch of students show up with flags on their vehicle, various stickers and shapes and sizes of flags, whatever it is American flags and showing their support.
The school eventually backs down. The principal said okay, you can keep the flag. And then they actually did a press release and what they said afterwards is we were just concerned that if we approved one flag, we might have all kinds of flags, and we didn't wanna have bad flags and crazy flags. And that could be valid. We do live in a weird world and culture that if you fly the American flag, then there's people arguing they wanna fly their Satanist flag or whatever else the case might be, and so that could be valid. Maybe the school wasn't being woke, maybe they were concerned about the wokeness of culture, the craziness of culture, and they're thinking man, we don't want all these other flags. How do we prevent that? We have to say no flags. It's possible they were good-hearted individuals, but the reality is you can fly the American flag because of the historic value and not have to fly every other flag. This is our national flag. That is a little different than some other flag some student might choose to want to fly. All that to say, the good news is the superintendent and, by the way, the superintendent's name is Andrew Jackson, which just made me chuckle as well. So the superintendent, Andrew Jackson, came out and said hey, we were just concerned that if we allowed this, it would allow all these to go there, but we are now behind the American flag. We support it.
Well, part of the reason I picked this for a good new story is because the only way we will be able to overcome some of this craziness, some of this wokeness and culture is if we have people willing to stand up when it matters and stand up for what's right, stand up for truth.
And when you have a high school student who is willing to stand up in the midst of opposition and he's standing up because he loves America, he wasn't joined the military and you have school officials and teacher superintendent telling you nope, you can't do it and you're gonna be in trouble, it took an awful lot of courage for this young man to stand up and this is what it's gonna take. We're gonna have to have people who have courage and to me, this isn't just a good new story because he gets to keep the American flag on the back of his truck. It's a good new story because we're seeing examples of people having courage, standing up for what's right, standing up for truth and, in this case, standing up for the American flag. So, overall, really good news coming out of Indiana and specifically from Cameron Blasek.
Rick Green
And there were so many pieces of that to highlight. I mean from the rallying, the kid that's willing to stand to. Didn't we just recently spend almost an entire program talking about how bad Andrew Jackson was? And now we get a superintendent that starts off going the wrong direction but was his mind was changed because of the outpouring of support. So, ah, all good stuff. Man, maybe we need to replay that Andrew Jackson program for that superintendent and say don't be that Andrew Jackson, be a better Andrew Jackson. Quick break guys. We got more good news when we return, folks stay with us. You're listening to The WallBuilders Show.
Tim Barton
Hey guys, it's Tim Barton and I want to let you know about an opportunity coming up for pastors and ministry leaders. We are doing our annual pastors briefing in Washington DC and we do this every year. We do one in the Spring, we do one in the Fall. This spring it's April 16th and 17th. This fall it is September 10th and 11th. This is one of the most significant things we do to encourage and challenge pastors in this culture we live in.
It's in Washington DC and Tuesday night we do an after hours tour of the US Capitol where we introduce pastors and ministry leaders to the history of the nation. The following day we have congressmen come and and they give a briefing on what they're doing and how God is Challenging and motivating and using them and and, frankly, most pastors, most ministry leaders, they don't know the rich spiritual hairs of the nation or what God is still doing, moving in the hearts and lives of leaders in this nation. I would encourage you if you're a pastor, ministry leader, you need to come to this. It's one of the best things we do at Wallbuilders to find out more. Go to WallBuilders.com and look for the pastors briefing.
Rick Green
Welcome back to the wall builder show. It's good news Friday. Let's jump right back in, David. What's our next piece of good news?
David Barton
Well, it's a question for you guys once the last time you've heard of this polarized Congress we have now federal Congress agreeing on anything to any significant degree. Do you recall any news story recently where the Democrats and Republicans all agreed on the same thing?
Rick Green
Would 1980s and Tip O’neil and Reagan be recent. Is that it depends on the meaning of recent, but but yeah, no, I can't think of any,
David Barton
Let’s see 44 years ago, yeah, the recent. How old are you, Rick? Oh?
Rick Green
No, comment no comment.
David Barton
Well, actually this was a 50 to 0 vote out of the Energy and Commerce Committee on a bill that would ban Tik-Tok from the United States. Now that's a big deal. For people who don't know, Tik-Tok is a really popular app and they have a lot of money. They spend advertising on other media as well, even broadcast TV, so it's really popular. But the problem is it's owned by the Chinese government and it is able to do a lot of data mining and so as you get on that app, it actually does a lot more data mining and keeps that mining. It's the kind of stuff that can be done anyway, but now China is keeping that data and keeping track of Americans and other things, and that's just not a good situation to have, where China is keeping data on Americans.
Tim Barton
Well, and also to highlight this, most people don't understand how invasive some of these apps are, which, in fairness, nearly every app on your phone, or I mean even phones in general. You have to agree to the terms of service and it's one of those things right here. To click the box, nobody reads what's there, nobody reads a fine print, and so people don't really know how invasive this is. But, dad, as you mentioned, data mining, one of the things a lot of these apps do. Whether you can get an app that's a free app and there's a lot of great things on the app, but the app will offer ads in the middle of whether it's a game or whatever kind of service app it is, and they will track these apps, even though we think, hey, if I'm not using its clothes, it's not seeing what I'm doing. No, no, these apps can part of the service agreement is oftentimes they can track what you're doing with other things on your phone, they can track what you're spending time on on your phone, and so then they're able to sell some of this information to different advertisers. They're able to sell to people that are doing research. Well, Tik-Tok is even worse, because one of the features of Tik-Tok.
One of their their terms of service you agree to is they get to have access to your keypad, but, specifically, they can have access to it all the time and they get a mirror it and they get a copy it. And so anytime you get on your keypad and you're typing Whether it be an email address, whether it be a password, whether it be a credit card number they get to have a copy of everything you're hitting as you're going. So it's like it is a far deeper thing. They are getting, then, even just tracking what you're doing on other apps. They're able to copy your keypad strokes as you are entering information. So not only does it know and by the does it know the people tracking the app that that own this content, not only can they tell where you're going and how much time you're spending there physically, not only can they do that when you're online, they actually can even track what you are typing in your messages, your private messages. So if you think you're on one of these private, secure, encrypted apps and you're on Signal, no TikTok it still can track everything you are typing on your keypad.
And so this is where, when we talk about the danger of TikTok. This is the kind of information that's coming out about TikTok where people are saying, hey, just so you know, this is part of what TikTok. Those are the reports coming out. Well, if that's true, this is why it makes sense that you would see that kind of uniformity, that kind of agreement, when you have Democrats or Republicans coming together saying you know what this could be really, really bad, that anybody is able to access this. When you talk about security risks and the fraud and all these things that could be there, all the dangers, this is part of the terms of service that people are reporting that TikTok is doing, and that's one of many reasons that this could be so dangerous.
David Barton
I mean think of how all the attacks that Chinese could launch in America with all the data they get out there, all the confusion they can cause, all the bank accounts they can empty out, all the things they can do. And so this is why literally dozens of states and city governments and state governments have passed laws banning any use of TikTok on any state devices. Like in Texas can't use it on any state device, which means all the state universities can't use it on state computers they're at the universities. So this is a big deal. Now it went all the way through. This is 50-0 in the committee, this Energy Commerce Committee. Kathy Morris Rogers, really good lady out of Washington state, was the chairman of this and she got it through and now it's gone to the full house. They voted on it. I think there were 65 members who voted against it, but it was still very, very, very strongly bipartisan.
We'll see if the Senate picks it up or not. Schumer over there, he doesn't pick up a whole lot of good stuff. That's just Democrat control of the Senate right now. So nonetheless, this is a really good law if they can get it passed. But it's certainly sent in a signal and the law does say that if TikTok will divest from Chinese ownership, if they'll let somebody else buy it, if they'll let somebody else have it, then that ban doesn't stand. But as long as it's owned by the Chinese, tiktok is not gonna be welcomed in the United States under the bill that passed the House of Representatives, and that is good news.
Rick Green
And guys, just as you guys know, I lean a little libertarian on some things and my first reaction to this when I first heard about it was, well, but then kind of like the Patriot Act, what if a bad government starts using it to decide what we can, what's canceled and what's not canceled and all that kind of stuff? And, man, I tell you what Peter Schweitzer was on Flashpoint earlier this week talking about his book Blood Money and just I mean the level of Chinese infiltration into our country and the ability that they have to do this, essentially warfare within our country dividing us, all of those things. It really made me understand a lot better why this is important to ban TikTok and it also when it gets down to the buying up of land and all that kind of stuff. I mean, there's just some things that you have to do when you're at war.
Tim Barton
And this is something too, that to make sure people understand the distinction. The federal government is supposed to protect the American people and also, right, the government exists to protect our God given rights, and so when people talk about the freedom of speech, is that's a God given right? Our government exists to protect our God given Right, but our government does not exist to protect China's rights. Yeah, right, does not exist to protect China's interest. And so for China to come and buy property in America, I don't know. If China is showing themselves to be a threat to our national security, then our government's job is supposed to stop that, to protected citizens, and this is not about taking away the freedom and ability of Americans. It's about protecting that because of China, for example, is buying up all of the land in America, all the farmland and agriculture and all these things which, by the way, they're trying to do a lot of that. That restricts what Americans can actually buy. Right, if China comes in, they buy all these apartment complexes and and people having to rent, they're renting from China. Well, we're Americans. Right, that that's not the way should work in America, that we are now indebted to some foreign nation living in our own nation. Our government exists to protect our God given rights, and every government should be protecting their own citizens rights, although we know in many communist nations right that they don't have the same view of God given rights If they believe in government given rights. So in China, no, they're not protecting the God given rights of their citizens because they don't believe in God given rights. But in America, this is one of the things that fundamentally made us different is not only that we believe in God given rights, but that the government's role was to protect its citizens. And this is where, when, when you know this, again brick back to your thought when people are saying, yeah, but the government shouldn't come and pick winners and losers or speech. This isn't about an American company, because tiktok is China funded. China's getting that data, that collection, and in China's showing themselves to be hostile and aggressive against the American people. It is a very different concept than them doing this to the Americans right now. It just gives them contrast, right? This is not like what's happening to the political prisoners from January 6th. That's an entirely different category of abuse. This is something that we would say if, if the government steps in to limit what China does to protect American citizens. That would actually be a more proper role and function of the government.
And dad, back to your point when you have a pretty much unanimous voice and once it went to the general house it wasn't quite unanimous very coming out of committee when you have that much unity and a unison, they're saying something in agreement. That clearly that says a lot for Republicans and Democrats to kind of join arms, link hands across the aisle to say we are seeing things that are not good. Rick, as you mentioned, it wasn't until you saw more this information from Peter Schweitzer's book blood money that it kind of Impacted you. I would venture to say that there's probably a lot of intel that they're getting in Congress the American people don't know. That is is also up guiding them to say, guys, this is really dangerous, we should be against it and Right, whether it's classified or where. Whatever reason they're not telling the American people all of these details when, when they're seeing something that convinces all of them there, there's probably something there. And especially if we look at the committee and see some of the people that are there and where they're standing on it, there's definitely some people. We trust their position, constitutional position as well. So I would say, overall, this is good news that we are seeing pushback against Tik-Tok.
David Barton
And, by the way, anybody who thinks that China is not an enemy is not fan of tension. Even the states are seeing this. I mean, it's a strange thing that all these Chinese farmers are buying farmland right beside our military bases all over the nation, and so we're seeing states pass law that limit the ownership of private property by Chinese Nationals in their state. We're seeing this in so many areas where the Chinese are getting into strategic areas and putting their assets around our strategic, our resources here in America. So, in addition to what the house knows that we don't know, we're seeing enough just on the outside to cause great concern, which is why it's really good that we're trying to create a distance between us and somebody who really would like to see us fall.
Rick Green
and we'll have to get Switzer on about his book but one of the things he said on flashpoint that shocked me. I had no idea there were these Chinese billionaires that have put hundreds of millions of dollars into the LGBTQ Agenda, so they've been doing that in order to tear us apart as a nation. This, this what they call Disintegration Warfare. It's real, folks, so we'll learn more about in the future. Hate to end on that for our good news Friday, but lots of good news from you guys, and we'll have more next week as well. Folks, be sure and visit our website. Make your donation there at WallBuilders.com. Come alongside us and lock shields with us. Help us get this information out to as many people as possible, but also get some good materials there at wall builders comm as well. You've been listening to The WallBuilders Show
