Rick Green
Welcome to Good News Friday on The WallBuilders Show. This is the intersection of faith and culture. It's where we take on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. You can be a part of it at our website as well wallbuilders.com. Good place to make a contribution today. If you want to contribute to the saving of America, as we like to say, we're starting to make saving the republic. If you want to contribute to the saving of America, as we like to say, we're starting to make saving the Republic our hobby it's time to give up golf or something I don't know. Take something out of your schedule, even if you enjoy doing it. Get rid of it and replace it with saving the Republic. Becoming a Constitution coach, hosting a biblical citizenship class there in your home, at your church, or somehow being involved and helping to inform and equip the people in your life with the foundational principles that make the country great. Come alongside us. We need you, the nation needs you. Now is the time.
I'm Rick Green, America's Constitution Coach, here with David and Tim Barton, David's America's Premier Historian. Tim is our president here at Wall Builders and a national speaker and pastor, and Good News Friday is always a good time to join us. Speaker and pastor. And Good News Friday is always a good time to join us. And, jumping into good news, David Barton is going to start us off. David, how's our Friday going to start?
David Barton
Well, we're going to start with a twofer and it falls election security and voting. And two federal cases have come down just recently that are very favorable for people who are concerned over what happened in 2020, that so many state laws were violated. So many unelected state officials changed the voting laws to allow things that had never happened before. And so what we saw, particularly in battleground states and states like Michigan and states like Pennsylvania, even in Arizona a lot of the Democrat parties picked up on what those states were doing and they said in other states well, let's do the same thing here. So in Texas, what you had in Texas Democrat party in Texas went after Texas laws, the ballot security laws we have here, and they say we think that everybody should be able to vote absentee ballot without excuse for any reason whatever. In Texas it says hey, if you have a valid excuse, if there's a military thing, or if you're in the hospital, or if you're over 65, you can get a mail-in ballot. And they said we want everybody to have universal mail-in ballots in Texas and to allow Texas to say it can only be for a certain reason. Well, that violates the 26th Amendment. And so they sued. It went to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court let Texas law stand. So they sued. It went to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court let Texas law stand, and so that's good news that states are able to limit that unlimited number of absentee ballots and mail in kind of ballots, and states are able to impose restrictions on that. So that's a good piece of news. On election security that we know for sure that the less requirements you have on voting, the more fraud occurs, that the less requirements you have on voting, the more fraud occurs. Not that it can't occur at other times too, but when you have no holds barred absentee voting, mail-in voting, it's just not a good thing.
Well, this goes also to a federal court in Georgia and in Georgia. There was a lawsuit in Georgia brought by the same kind of plaintiffs, and they complained about the fact that in Georgia they have several things that they do there that they didn't think were right, and part of it deals with citizen proof. You got to prove you're a citizen to vote in Georgia, and so the legislature said here's the proof that we're going to accept for those that voted Georgia. If you're a non-citizen you can't vote, and you have to prove that you're a citizen to be able to vote here. Well, a bunch of groups sued that as well, and they went through and said no, that violates the Constitution. You're taking away from people the right to vote, even though they are illegal, whatever. And the judge in the 11th Circuit said no, this doesn't even need to go to trial, we're just going to do summary judgment on here. This is so crazy that we're not going to allow this to occur.
So these are laws that Georgia passed six years ago that had been in court for six years, and now here that's a second case in the same general vein of hey, we're going to uphold state ballot security laws. We're not going to lessen it, make it easier to cheat, we're going to make it harder to cheat, and so that's good news for Texas and Georgia. And, by the way, Texas is really good because there's six other states that have the same kind of requirements Texas has with. You have to have a good excuse for getting an absentee ballot. It's not no excuse voting. You have to have a good reason, and so that's really. We're looking at eight states here where these rulings have affected eight states and upheld voter security laws in eight states, and that is good news.
Rick Green
Yeah very good news and, of course, chipping away at it. Right, we're not expecting one big decision to change it all overnight. This is going to take time, and we're getting some of those incremental victories, just like this one, Tim. How about you, man? Where are we headed first?
Tim Barton
We're going to Wisconsin and this is something we actually talked about on Tuesday with John Graves Dan, I think you alluded to it, Maybe John in the interview as well.
I know we talked about it I don't remember who brought this up, but that in Wisconsin they have a ballot measure which the title of the headline says Wisconsin voters approve ban on Zuckerbucks type election funding, and this was something in Wisconsin.
This is a voters approved a constitutional amendment Tuesday put forward by Republicans in reaction to grants received in 2020 that were funds by donations from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, and the article points out that Mark Zuckerberg donated in the 2020 election hundreds of millions of dollars and that so much of that money went to Democrat cities and specifically, there was a lot of money that went to some of these Democrat states and actually some in Wisconsin, some major cities where it had what is believed to be a significant outcome on the election.
It's where our friend Barry Loudermilk, a congressman from Georgia, when he talks about the election, he says you know, we can't say that necessarily it was stolen, but we certainly can say it was rigged, and this is part of how it was rigged when you spend hundreds of millions of dollars to do these, quote unquote you know voter initiatives, get out the vote, education drives, but you're doing it specifically to enable and incentivize Democrats in urban areas to vote in stronger numbers. Right, this is not, and across the board, we want every American to vote more cleanly and clearly.
David Barton
And what made this really interesting, Tim, was they weren't given the bucks to the normal outside activist groups. They were given to governments themselves and to government entities in blue areas of states, not in red areas of states. They gave it to the government entities themselves. Which made it so unusual and that was why it was so reprehensible is you're paying the government to turn out a certain kind of voter rather than all voters.
Tim Barton
Well, and this is something that a lot of people recognize this is not even just suspicious activity. This is something that should not be legal. For a billionaire to come in and spend a bunch of money to have certain people that are more inclined to vote a certain way vote and not encourage all voters, et cetera. So in Wisconsin they were working to get this done and this actually ended up being a ballot initiative and the voters of the state now, what's interesting in this article it says not a single Democrat lawmaker voted for the amendment, which was then split in two questions to put on the ballot. So it was something they tried to get done through the normal legislative process. Democrats were not in favor of this, so apparently they want more outside money coming in, and this was something.
If you go back to the early 1900s, the kind of the turn of the century progressive era, when you have people like the Rockefellers, right, you have some of these big money people who, in essence, were buying elections, and it led to some laws coming in America trying to prevent billionaires from buying senators, from buying congressmen, from buying elections.
And yet this is exactly, in essence, what it appears that people like Mark Zuckerberg were doing but Republicans who control the legislature.
They brought the constitutional amendment to circumvent Democrat Governor Tony Evers, who they were convinced was going to veto the measure and amendments are not subject to the governor's veto. And so Wisconsin voters came out and they approved this measure, making sure that what were known as Zuckerbucks could not be spent in Wisconsin to influence the outcome of future elections. So, overall good news, as earlier this week we talked about what can be done to secure elections, voter integrity certainly trying to limit a billionaire funneling money to certain government entities to try to get out certain demographics to vote, that could make a difference. It's one thing, right, if you're taking out ads on news media saying, hey, we want to encourage every American, get registered, every American, your voice matters, right, that's not quite what they were doing and people in Wisconsin recognize that and they said, yeah, we don't need those millions upon millions of dollars coming into our state trying to influence the outcome of the election going forward. So that is good news coming out of Wisconsin.
Rick Green
Yeah, and it's back to that incrementalism. I mean these seem like small victories, but it's where we're. I guess what I'm trying to say is get a foothold right. We get a foothold in some of these election battles and then can grab more ground as we go. So these are very, very important victories. All right, David, what's your next piece of good news, man?
David Barton
This is another Supreme Court case and this Supreme Court case dealing with California. And in California there was a man who was moving into. He bought a piece of property. He's moving into his mobile home on that property and all of a sudden the city says, yeah, to move in, you got all these fees and all these studies you have to do. And so suddenly he's looking at $23,000 of extra permitting fees to get studies done.
And we all know Jim Garlow. He's a good friend, he was a pastor in California forever. He built a really great church down in the San Diego area and I think it took them I guess was it like five years and three years of permitting. He spent like $5 million for environmental impact studies. I mean it was just crazy what they required him to do.
And the Supreme Court said no, no, no, you can't do that. You can't have that kind of fees. You can't have that kind of fee structure. You can't do that kind of imposing that on landowners in the permitting process. Require them to have all these extra studies.
It's private property, it belongs to you. You have a right of private property studies. It's private property, it belongs to you, you have a right of private property. Now, there are some restrictions possible, sure, but this is just crazy stuff raking in money, doing all sorts of agenda-driven stuff keeping people from using their private property. So it's really good to see the Supreme Court strike back at that. We see that in so many climate agenda kind of states where they decide, or even just liberal states where, hey, we don't want a church in this area, so let's do all these extra fees and studies, and we'll run this on another three or four or five extra years and we think there may be a cross-eyed salamander somewhere in there and you need to do an environmental study on that. It's just crazy what they've done. So this is a good decision for private property owners and a good decision to help rein in some of the runaway regulatory powers, the permit stuff that's required when you try to use your own property really good news.
Rick Green
Cross-eyed salamander. I haven't seen one of those. I don't know if it would be able to see me if it was cross-eyed, but the cross-sides I like that man. I'm going to use that.
David Barton
I probably shouldn't have said that, because some agency is going to start looking for cross-eyed-
They're going to handle studies and they're going to hold up all the construction until they find out if there is a cross-side salamander out there.
Rick Green
I am so glad you shared that story. I had seen that headline and I thought, man, that's a really good sign that the Supreme Court's leaning that way, going back to protecting private property rights and even bringing up the Fifth Amendment. That it's a taking. Of course, David, you and I talk about that one. In Constitutional Live, Everybody always thinks about plead the Fifth. I don't have to self-incriminate, but it's that last part of the Fifth Amendment I like the most, which is they mess with your property and take your property. It's a taking, even if they regulate you to the point that you can't use it. That's a taking as well, even if they don't actually take possession of the property. So really important fundamental principle there. That could have been a Foundations of Freedom Thursday story as well. We're going to take a quick break, folks. We've got more good news for you when we return. You're listening to the WallBuilders Show
Break
Rick Green
Welcome back to The WallBuilders Show. It's Good News Friday. I almost said Foundations of Freedom Thursday, because that last good news story was such a foundational principle. We're headed over to Tim this time. Tim, where are we going bud? Well, this was in.
Rick Green
Georgia and the headline says Georgia joined states seeking parental permission before children joined social medias. And it outlines that Georgia lawmakers approved a bill on Friday Now this was back in march when this happened but that would require children under 16 years of age to have their parents explicit permissions to create social media accounts, at senate bill 351. It would ban social media use on school devices and school internet services, would also require pornography sites to verify whether users are 18 or over, mandate schools to provide additional education on social media and Internet use. And then it just goes through other details. It was passed in the House 120 to 45, approved by the Senate 47. And it was awaiting final approval or veto by Governor Kemp. And man, I really should have looked this up. I think it passed.
Speaker 3: 14:19
Maybe, dad, while you're doing your next article, I will look this up and confirm if this did pass or not. But this is really good news that you see states paying attention in the midst of the craziness of some of the transgender movements and when you have kids that are five, six, seven, just an incredibly young age that you have parents encouraging. Let's already start doing some of this gender transition. Let's already start doing some of these hormonal treatments, this testosterone blocker or whatever else it might be, at such a young age. It's utterly ridiculous.
I mean arguably, maybe more evil than ridiculous. I mean arguably, maybe more evil than ridiculous. But to see states taking action in an attempt to try to protect students from things, recognizing some of the dangers of what's on social media, trying those state reps and state senators working to keep these kids safe under this and I understand where there's some people, especially Libertarians freedom for all, no limits, right, we don't want anything infringed upon. And guys, we've had some interesting conversations with students that just because you're young doesn't mean you don't have the same inalienable rights as those around you. But we also recognize that we have responsibilities as adults to protect our kids, to protect the rising generation. There is a balance here and I think in Georgia they've done a good job working to protect students and finding that balance.
Rick Green
Yeah, all right, we're bouncing all over the country, guys. Wisconsin, Georgia Where'd you start us, David? What was that first story? It was Texas. You did a Texas election story, right, wasn't?
David Barton
Yeah, we did Texas and California, both of those, California, okay, and we also did a Georgia.
Rick Green
Oh man, All right. So where are we going next? Let's just hit all 50 states.
David Barton
Yes, the next one I've got is for all 50 states.
Rick Green
Oh, that's not fair. No, no, no. I want a good news from each of the 50 states. All right, Go ahead. I
David Barton
I don't know about each, but all I can do, all of 50 states, Okay, All right. And the good news starts with bad news, unfortunately, and it is that with younger generation right now we're seeing all sorts of studies that show that there is a lot of mental stress on younger generations. There's a lot of suicides, there's a lot of psychological pressure in what they're getting at school, so much pressure to transition, so much pressure on sexuality stuff that hasn't been a pressure in previous generations is now being crammed down their throats at a rapid rate and it doesn't go with what their parents told them or doesn't go with what they believe, and so we're seeing all this psychological pressure and there's this isolationism going on and, as a result, there's a really good initiative and of all people or all groups to start this it started by a meal delivery service called Parsley Box and Parsley Box said you know, there's a lot of people in the older generation that would gladly be willing to just talk to young people and befriend and give guidance and just kind of help them think through some things. And we've seen this with other studies, 120 years of polling, and one of the things we found with George Barna was that this younger generation, they are open to guidance. It doesn't matter what age you are. For most generations they want you from their generation to give guidance. But this younger generation is we just want the information, we want good stuff, and so what they have done is they have taken seniors and, and so Parsley Box has set up this hotline for young people that have any kind of trouble, any type of turmoil, any kind of indecision. You just need somebody to talk to. Here's a bunch of elderly people and they're paying really high prices of these elderly folks to be able to do this. What they're doing is they give them endless tea, endless coffee, lots of biscuits and they give them meals if they'll just be on the phones. So you have a lot of senior folks here who feel like man, I've got a lot still to offer. I've learned a lot of things in life. I wish I could share it with somebody. We've got young people say I've never been down this road, I don't know what I'm going to do, I'm all confused, and so it's really good. Now here's where it's interesting to me the polling.
So when you look at the polling, when they polled the seniors and those that were 60 years and older. They found that 49% of seniors wished that they could advise younger generations on topics ranging from financial planning to self-confidence, to health and wellness, or how to cope with change, or relationship advice All these things that they've been through and navigated sometimes successfully, sometimes not. They wish they could share what they've learned with other people, with younger generations. So that was the polling from the seniors. But polling was also done with younger generations ages 18 through 30, somewhere in that vicinity and 74% of that group said they wish they could ask older adults for guidance more frequently. And this is a big deal because we talked before that that generation, the 18 through 30 generation 68% of them have grown up in homes where a mother and father was not present in the home. So they've really grown up in single parent households, broken families, whatever, and there's just nobody to talk to. So you're looking at that high 74% wishes they could ask an older adult for guidance somehow. And grab this 84% said that they wish they could call upon the wisdom of previous generations more often. So that's, you know, here you've got polling for seniors to say, hey, we really want to be able to offer something, because we feel like we got something to offer and you got this overwhelming polling from young people saying man, we wish we could talk to some seniors.
And here was the kind of down. If there's a negative to this story, it was the self-confidence of young people. 36% of the young people worried that their problem would seem silly to the older people and they feel kind of embarrassed talking about it because it's just trivial. But those older folks understand no, no, no, that's not trivial. If it's a big deal to you, it's a big deal and we've all had to go through things that were big to us and we thought everybody else was gonna laugh at us, but no, that's not the case. And 26% of the young people lack the confidence to even ask the question.
So the biggest barrier to this being a great combination is just the self-confidence of the young people. And if there's young people listening, man, go ahead and ask the question, because these guys that have had the experience, they don't think those questions are dumb, they don't think they're silly. They've had to go through the same things and they've got a lot of guidance. So I really think this is a great combination that has come up, and kudos to Parsley Box and I don't even know who you know. I don't have delivered meals, but that's what these guys do and I think it's a great combination trying to get the best of these two generations together and helping with that, and I see that as really, really good news and hopefully you can share this with young people. Hopefully, if you're a senior and want to share some stuff with young people, get a hold of Parsley Box. Figure out how this works. The same with young people. Get a hold of Parsley Box, See who you can call to talk to. It's going to be a good combination for everybody.
Rick Green
Yeah, that is really cool, David, because I mean, we know, anecdotally right, we talk to young people that know they need advice, want advice. We know we talk to older people that know that they have a lot to offer but they don't know how to connect to young people, or they don't necessarily have young people in their life. So what a cool way to meet the needs on both ends of the spectrum there. Really, really cool. All right, Tim, what about you, man? What's your last piece of good news?
Tim Barton
today this last one is from Virginia. Governor Youngkin vetoes 30 anti-gun bills, keeping law abiding citizens armed and Democrats angry. It goes through the bills that were shot down by Youngkin. And just to give some context to this, in Virginia you do have a Republican governor, Republican lieutenant governor, but Republicans do not control the legislative chambers. Am I remembering that correctly?
David Barton
You're remembering. I'm going to ask something before you go through that list of bills. In this last election, Virginia had the opportunity to get a Republican legislature in the House and Senate and they did not. They missed it by a total of 2,000 votes in that entire state. Of what? 12, 13, 14 million people in Virginia, whatever it is, and across all legislative races. An additional 2,000 votes would have given Youngkin the majority in the House and in the Senate and he would have been able to get something done. So you've had a split legislature. It was split before. Republicans and Democrats had the House and Senate split, but now Democrats have both chambers over in the legislative side and he's the governor by himself, which is why this is so extreme. The bills you're going to talk about I mean they all came out of the Democrat House and Senate, as opposed to having a Republican House and Senate that was split. That stopped a lot of this nonsense.
Tim Barton
Yeah, and so just to run through a couple of these really quickly I know we're almost out of time, but HB2 is a Democrat bill that would ban the seller or possession of new quote assault rifles end quote and. To clarify, right, if you ask someone to assault rifle, they really don't know. But once they start breaking down the description, it's a semi-automatic rifle and it's one that looks scary. Right, I mean, that's the essence of it. It's not one that which, which also even this notion of what's an assault rifle. You are using a descriptive word that is not necessarily part of what that is right. I could have an assault can of green beans because I'm assaulting you with a can of green beans. Right, you can have a rifle, but if you don't assault somebody with it, it's not an assault rifle.
A lot of people are confused by, for example, the AR-15. They think, well, AR stands for assault rifle. No, it stands for ArmaLite rifle. It goes back to the originations of it. But anyway, there's a lot of extreme positions HB-454, hb-585, hb-799. It's so many things. Again, there's 30 of them. I don't have time to read them all and go through them all, but it's just. Some of them are just seemingly so anti-gun and ridiculous. It's not going to take guns out of criminals' hands, it's just going to prevent, limit and penalize would-be law-abiding citizens from being able to possess certain kinds of firearms. So really good he was able to veto and get rid of these.
David Barton
And let me add to that also that those 30 bills coming through the Democrat House and Senate show you exactly what Democrats would like to do with guns. They want everything gone. As you go through those bills, anything related to guns essentially they're trying to take away, and so this is what's going on across the nation. That's a good reason for people to turn out and vote If you don't want to lose your constitutional freedoms. This is what happens when you get a legislature in there that doesn't care about the constitution.
If it wasn't for Youngkin, this would be going a really bad direction of Virginia
Tim Barton
And I know we're out of time, but I just want to point out on Senate Bill 327, they describe a handgun as an assault firearm. So we've gone from assault rifle to pistols are now assault firearms. So everything is scary and nobody should own guns. Dad, to your point it seems. At least in Virginia the Democrat position is very clear. They're very anti-gun.
Rick Green
All right, folks, if you need even more good news, then go to our website for the radio program. You can get the archives there at wallbuilders.show, and that's a great place to just listen and catch up. There's a lot of different programs on there from the previous months, weeks and months, and that includes more Good News Friday programs, as well as Foundations of Freedom Thursday and then our regular guests throughout the week. So the quick and easy access to the radio archives is wallbuilders.show. That's wallbuilders.show, or you can go to our main website, wallbuilders.com. That's where you can get all kinds of equipment for your family, and I mean equipment like educational materials. I'm talking about inspiration. I'm talking about things that you will be amazed when you learn them and it'll inspire you to then teach others. So that might be where you want to sign up as a Constitution coach and start hosting these classes. Don't have to know anything yet. You just got to get people in a room and hit play. I bet everybody out there can do that. Find out more at wallbuilders.com. Thanks so much for listening today to the WallBuilders Show.