Rick Green

Welcome to the Intersection of Faith and Culture. You picked a great day to join us it's Good News Friday. On our Fridays we try to catch you up on the victories out there, not only in the US, but sometimes around the world. But there's a lot of good stuff happening and it can get. You know, if you only focus on the negative and you only hear from the mainstream media, you're going to think it's all over. Grab your guns and canned food, go hide out at the ranch and give up. No, okay, look, have your guns, canned food and the ranch. But there's a lot of good happening and there's still a lot of great things for America to do and God's not done with us yet. So I love Good News Friday because I get a chance to hear a lot of this good news from David. Tim Barton's, a national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders, and I'm Rick Green, America’s Constitution Coach. Thanks for joining us today. Let's jump right into that good news guys. David, what's our first piece of good news?

David Barton

I'm headed to Florida and it deals with the elections coming up in November. On the November elections, there'll not only be things like the president, for sure, and there'll be senators and congressmen, a lot of governors, a lot of state reps, state senators, but there's also going to be a lot of ballot initiatives. And those ballot initiatives a lot of them, have been in court one side or the other trying to get it on or get it off, or allow a certain wording or reject certain wording, etc. And so this deals with Amendment 4 in Florida. Now Amendment 4 is going to deal it's like we've seen in several states the last two elections. It's a measure to repeal all abortion restrictions in the state and since the Supreme Court came down with the Dobbs decision, you've seen several states saying well, the Supreme Court said states can restrict, but we're going to make a state law that you can't restrict abortion in any way, shape, fashion or form in this state. That's what's up in Florida, and Florida has tended to be a more conservative, more Republican, more pro-life state. But this is a ballot initiative that would let the people decide whether they want to be pro-life or have any restrictions on abortion or not. So what happens is Florida with their ballot initiatives.

When you have a ballot initiative, you also have a clause that says you have to show the economic impact of what this will be, so that when people vote they know that oh, if I vote for this, they're going to raise my taxes because I'm going to have to pay for this, or if I vote for this, it's going to reduce taxes because it can stop government regular, whatever it is. You have to have a financial impact statement, and so in the financial impact statement there was a debate over whether the official statement can mention the word abortion in it. Now this kind of goes back to places like Ohio. They had a measure last election that they repealed every abortion restriction in the state and never used the word abortion in the amendment. So if you just show up and you're not an informed voter, you don't have a clue what you just voted to do. But in what has been a traditional pro-life state for a long time, they repealed every measure. They just said, no, we're not going to have restriction on abortion, and it didn't even use the word abortion. So in this case, the state financial impact explanation did include the word abortion and it went to the state Supreme Court because the folks pushing this amendment didn't want that word in there. Even though it's part of the amendment, they don't want to talk about it. And so the state came back six to one saying no, no, no, you can talk about this. The more information you give voters, the better it is for the state, and that's the right philosophy to have. And so I want to show you, or I want to at least read to you, the kind of things that they pointed out, because this is a very thorough explanation. People need to understand exactly what they're voting for. The financial impact statement gives voters seven key warnings.

The amendment says if you pass this amendment, it may one require the state to pay for abortions with taxpayer dollars. Oh, I didn't think about that, just thought it was a woman's right to choose, didn't know it was going to cost me money. It might increase abortions and decrease live births. It might decrease the population and thereby affect school funding. Oh, you got less kids, but you still got the same buildings, so you're going to have to tax me more to pay for all the money I need to keep the schools going because we have less students and et cetera. It says it may eliminate parental consent laws. Well, I didn't realize they do that. I thought this was an abortion issue. I didn't know it would take away my parental rights.

It says eliminate health and safety laws that require only licensed doctors to perform abortions. That's a state law. But now you're going to have unlicensed people performing abortions, chemical abortions, pharmacists, etc. Number six it may increase litigation that will cost taxpayer dollars to resolve the legal uncertainties. And number seven it will significantly reduce the number of people being born, thus reducing state growth and revenue over time. So that's their financial impact statement. All of that is accurate and true. One side does not want that to be out there. They don't want the voters to know about that when they vote. The other side does, and I just say kudos to the Florida Supreme Court for being all for truth and information. Put it out there. The good, the bad, the ugly. Let the people make the choice. That's what having a constitutional republic is all about.

Rick Green

All right, good stuff, and just a reminder we talked about this yesterday. If you missed yesterday's program, you can go get some confirmation on the fact that we're a republic, not a democracy. So be sure and listen to yesterday's Foundations of Freedom. Thursday program Tim your first piece of good news today 

Tim Barton

Well this one is coming from Kentucky, specifically the University of Kentucky. The title says the University of Kentucky to disband diversity office after GOP lawmakers pushed anti-DEI efforts.

Now, just for anybody listening, to make sure there's no confusion the DEI is the diversity, the equity, the inclusion office and many companies move this route and fortunately many of them learned that wasn't a good thing. I think Harley-David Davidson is one of the more recent ones. We saw it from Tractor Supply. We saw it from so many organizations where, just like it doesn't make sense. Do you not know who your clientele is? Tractor Supply, you're working with farmers. Harley Davidson now I get that's a European, I think it was a German company. But in America your market is not the woke left who is out riding their Harley Davidsons…just crazy.

Well, university of Kentucky is the latest to come out kind of removing their DEI office. Now, I'm not totally counting this as a slam dunk home run kind of victory, because what happened is there's a super majority of Republicans in the House and Senate in Kentucky, but they were not able to get any kind of legislation done restricting universities yet. But the University of Kentucky kind of saw the handwriting on the wall, so to speak, and so they took a preemptive action saying, hey, we're going to go ahead and kind of disband our DEI office, but they didn't fire anybody. They didn't let anybody go, they just reassigned those individuals hired in the DEI office to other offices, saying that you know, hey, we're kind of moving away from that and we're not going to do that anymore. But again, they didn't fire anybody. The president, Eli and I am not going to pronounce his name correctly, so we can just start with that understanding but Capilouto, I don't really know said in a campus-wide email that they're going to reassign these individuals on campus. The restructuring won't result in job losses. He said the core values of the University of Kentucky is still to protect academic freedom and promote a sense of belonging for everyone on campus, regardless of background or perspective.

David Barton

Now, where Sounds pretty woke to me, 

Tim Barton

well, and where there was some pushback from the super majority of Republicans in the House and Senate for their state legislative chambers, is they were asking the question how much promoting is there of these conservative ideologies on campus? Because you're saying we're going to include everybody. There needs to be equity, which means kind of this balanced equation for everybody. How much voice is there for conservatives? And so even in this response, it's questionable that there's a sense of belonging and kind of this equality of voice for conservatives.

If you look at and I'm saying this not knowing, but if you look at the professors on campus, I would be willing to bet a lot of money that the vast majority of them are registered Democrats, not registered Republicans. If you look at who is making campaign donations, I would be willing to bet the vast majority of the campaign donations that were made were not made to President Trump were made were not made to President Trump. They were probably made to Biden or Harris or back up further and made to President Obama or whoever else the case might be. However, it is good news that at least there are universities recognizing that this DEI position even though I don't think they're removing that ideology from campus that they're recognizing this is not a winnable argument. This is not the direction the American people want to go. It's not the direction that our state wants to go. So overall, it is good news. I again would caution. I don't think the university has moved totally away from this ideology, even though they're moving away from the DEI office, from those positions, which again is good news, and this is where I'll throw that one more caution out there to parents.

We are recognizing that in these universities they're becoming more strategic in how they're hiding things, just like we've seen in a lot of public schools, whether it be elementary, middle school or high schools, where they're still promoting a lot of woke indoctrination, a lot of anti-American, anti-christian, anti-even moral traditional biblical morals when it comes to human sexuality and other things. And so if there is a way to not have your kid be in some of these institutions, we would encourage it. And for so many students they think the next step is college once they finish high school and they don't recognize there's so many other opportunities, there's so many jobs out there that do not require degrees anymore and certainly that we would encourage. They need to pray and see where God's leading them and if they feel God calling them to do something where they need a degree, if you're going to be an engineer, please get a degree. If you're going to be a lawyer or a doctor, if there are certain things you we acknowledge you should get the proper training for.

But we also recognize it's only like 20-something percent of students that actually get degrees, that find a job in the field from their degree, not even the specific technicality of that degree program. And for so many parents they've seen that they've sent their kids off to college and they drank the Kool-Aid, so to speak. They were totally indoctrinated with the wokeness and for so many of them, even going to University of Kentucky, you wouldn't think that's a super liberal school, but for so many universities there are so many liberal professors, that so many kids that grew up in a Christian home that loved God, that loved their family, that loved America. At the end of their four years of college they came away not feeling the same about their family, or America or God, and so we really caution parents in the midst of this. However, the good news from this is that the University of Kentucky recognized that their DEI office was not a winning position, so they have removed their DEI office. That, overall, is good news.

David Barton

Let me jump in on a couple of things here, because Tim, those numbers is only 23.6 percent of college graduates who can get a job in their degree field. So you go through and three out of four will not be able to get a job in what they studied and they will come out averaging sixty six thousand dollars of debt. So you will incur great debt. You will become much more liberal. You will not get a job in the field that you chose and that you spent four years into, and that's how ineffective education is right now, but it is great for indoctrination and going with that. Kentucky is. I'll be careful how I say this, but there's several states that are politically schizophrenic, and I say that because, as you pointed out, Tim, Kentucky has a super majority of Republicans and conservatives in the House and Senate, and yet their governor is a liberal Democrat.

And you go, wait a minute, guys. If you're voting conservative locally, why are you voting liberal on the state level? And that would be for Arizona and that would be for North Carolina and Kansas and all these other states that when you count all the local votes, they're really conservative. Then why do you keep putting someone up top? That stops all the stuff you're trying to do at the local level. Now. Louisiana recently made that flip and they changed and now they don't have the same schizophrenia they've had for a few cycles. So just more people need to vote those same principles up and down the ballot. If you're going to say we don't want woke stuff, then don't just say that at the local level and then let it be woke at the state level. You know, work that thing all the way up so that when you have a super legislature that does pass a law saying we're not going to do this wokeness, you won't have a governor that kills that measure from going into law.

Rick Green

Yeah, a couple of quick thoughts, guys, before we go to break, because this is, of course, that Marxism is the poison and I think CRT that's the delivery mechanism, that's like how they punch it into the culture. But DEI, that's the disease, right, that comes from that poison. If you've injected CRT into the culture, then you end up with this DEI thing and man talk about bad symptoms. It's called hating each other, hate your own nation, you hate your neighbors, you're ungrateful I mean, listen to the speeches at the DNC, at least the clips I heard Billionaires claiming racism and sexism and all this. It's just nonsense completely angry and ungrateful for what they've been given. And it's because of this poison, because of this, this disease and this whole, you know, blaming everybody else. You know, because if you're responsible and you're logical, well, that's evidence of white privilege, no matter whether you're red, white, black or brown. So anyway, all that to say, now we're hiring people, pilots, air traffic controllers, all kinds of people based on color of skin and sex organs and their psychotic fetishes.

This is not good, but the pushback is really happening and that's why I think multiple good news stories that you just shared, tim, on this DEI thing Tractor Supply, harley Davidson, john Deere, immense pressure on them to reverse, and I saw where Jack Daniels actually reversed without the pressure even beginning. They just heard that they were being investigated by Robbie Starbucks, who's been, like you know, bringing attention to this on social media, and they immediately they they've already fired all their DEI people in and reverse. So maybe the tide's turning, maybe people are feeling enough pain on this, or maybe it's just the financial pressure, but the fact that a university would do it, man, that's really good news, because I can see people reversing based on financial pressure, but usually government institutions and bureaucracies and educational institutions it's so much harder to get them to change. So this to me, guys, is a huge good news story for us to really emphasize today and for people to go into this weekend being encouraged and knowing that on some of these areas where we'd been losing for decades, we're starting to see some really good news and some really good, really good turns.

Okay, quick break. I know you guys have a lot more good news to share with us, so we'll be right back. Folks, you're listening to the WallBuilders Show.

Break

Rick Green

. Welcome back. It's Good News Friday here on the wall builder show. And jumping right back into the good news david, what's your next piece of good news. 

David Barton

Well, my first piece had to deal with the upcoming election and this piece also has to deal with the upcoming election, particularly after all the stuff that happened four years ago, where there was so much doubt and so much lack of of real confidence in the election. What happened? And there were so many doubt and so much lack of real confidence in the election? What happened? And there were so many questions raised. A lot of them never got answered. You mean the most secure election in America's history? Oh, I forgot You're right, there weren't any questions I forgot?

Tim Barton

No, you can't question that, or we're going to kick you off Twitter, right, we're going to kick you off Meta. And no, you can't. No, no, no, it's worse than kick you off.

We're going to file criminal charges against you in Fulton County, georgia, and come after you. If you're an attorney and you even gave advice on the history of the 12th Amendment and your respected scholar and professor like John Eastman, we're still going to charge you anyway. Yeah, yeah, no questions at all, david. And now?

Rick Green

I dispute that, guys. We're a land that supports free speech. We've got the right to say nobody's going to come after us, not in America.

David Barton

No, wait a minute, wait a minute, yeah, exactly. So what happens is a lot of states have worked very hard to close what the state legislature saw to be loopholes in their state laws. A lot of judges agreed that laws were not upheld, but it happened that a lot of those judges agreed in the states that aren't going to uphold them this time, whether it be Pennsylvania or Wisconsin or Michigan, where states said no, no, no, you guys, when you did the elections, did not follow the state law. Nonetheless, there's a lot of states that stepped in to change their laws and do a lot, and Arizona is one of those. Georgia made some good changes. Arizona made good changes. A lot of states did.

Some states didn't make any changes, but what you had in Arizona, Arizona passed a law requiring that if you're going to vote in the state of Arizona, you have to have proof of citizenship. You have to prove that you're a citizen to vote there, and that's been a longstanding provision and it was so understood for so long that a lot of laws weren't passed on that, because it was very clear from federal on down that's what it took to be a citizen. When you become a citizen, you get the right to vote. It takes five years before you get citizenship and before you vote. Constitution makes all that clear. So what happens was the Democrats sued that law. Democrats said wait a minute, you can't do that. You can't require people to show they're a citizen to actually vote in Arizona elections. And so when it went to the federal judge, the federal judge said that yeah, that's true. And so the federal judge struck down that law and said an injunction against that law. You can't enforce that law.

Then it went to the Ninth Circuit and when he got to the Ninth Circuit, the panel in the Ninth Circuit said no, this makes sense. This is what the federal provision has been you can ask for proof of citizenship. And so the Ninth Circuit reinstated that law. But then it went on bonk in the Ninth Circuit. Because what happens when you get to a federal court usually a three judge panel there may be 20, 30 judges on the court and they'll randomly pick three and those guys and gals will sit in a panel, three-judge panel. And so the three-judge panel overturned the injunction by the lower federal judge. But then it went en banc. All of the Ninth Circuit judges got involved and said no, we don't think you should be asking whether someone's a citizen before they vote. Well, it made it to the US Supreme Court and the US Supreme Court has ruled five to four that yes, you can require proof of citizenship before you vote. Now the case is not over and done, it's just an injunction on the law.

The law can go because this law may not be finished in the court system before this coming election. So at least for this election, until it's run all the court circuits, you're going to be able in Arizona to require proof of citizenship. And so that affects about 41,000 voters who had registered on state forums and had no indication of proof of citizenship. So it will cause them to have to prove they're a citizen or be taken off the forums. So that is one way that simply following the laws can clean up a lot of voter rolls. But it's good that Arizona is doing this and Arizona has been trying to do this. But they've had a lot of pushback from Democrats on the one hand and McCain Republicans on the other hand, who have kind of joined forces against most of the conservative Republicans out there. But this is a good piece of news coming from Arizona that will have better election integrity opportunities in that state, considering that they were one of the states that were most focused last time for the irregularities.

Rick Green

All right, good stuff, tim. How about you, man, what's next?

Tim Barton

Well, this one's coming from earlier this summer and it looks like it's from Tennessee. The title says jury awards $687,000 to Blue Cross. Blue Shield scientists fired for refusing COVID-19 vaccine.

David Barton

Now, how many years has it been since this was going? Is this three, four years now? How long has it been Well.

Tim Barton

This individual was fired, it looks like in 2021, November 4th of 2021.

David Barton

So three years which says something about how long it takes sometimes to get justice in the court system. But at least you do get justice eventually if you get the patience to go through it. It just takes a while

Rick Green

Yeah, I have to eat some crow because I said all this will be over in April of 2020. Oh, the courts will never allow all this nonsense to happen. And here we are four years later and when the firings and all that was happening, I was like, oh, the courts are obviously going to give us some justice here. This will be over quick. No, three years later, but finally getting some.

David Barton

But the courts are giving justice. It's going back the right direction. It just took four years to get there.

Tim Barton

And it depends on what court year before and how that appeal takes place. Because we also guys, could look at someone like Coach Joe Kennedy, and his case is the one that was so instrumental in 2022 that the US Supreme Court, when they acknowledged that he was fired, wrongfully terminated because he had silently prayed on the 50-yard line at the end of a football game, wasn't doing anything to encourage and influence students. I mean just him privately kneeling down saying a quiet prayer, not out loud. Nobody heard him. He was fired. It took seven years before that case got to the Supreme Court and he was given justice. And I'm saying that because sometimes not everybody necessarily receives justice based on how the case is determined, and sometimes it takes far longer based on what courts you're in front of. But when it comes to the COVID vaccine we are seeing for the majority of the cases we have seen, we have seen justice prevail in some of these scenarios, and I'm saying this with a caveat, knowing that there are still I mean, you have grandmas who are still in prison from January 6th, who have not even had their trials yet. So there still is delayed justice and we're still praying for justice in many scenarios. But when it comes to something like this. Yes, Rick, to your point, it was not nearly as simple, clean or easy as it should have been,

David Barton

 or at least as we wanted it to be. 

Tim Barton

And yes, but Dad saying as we wanted it to be, I mean it should have been. We wanted it to be even quicker than it was, but it shouldn't have been this complicated because, as even in this situation, so the, the lady involved her name is is Tanja Benton, I think I'm pronouncing that correctly. But in in 2020, everything went remote because of covid, and then they said, hey, we're going to go ahead and require everybody to get the vaccine, even though she was remote at the time.

They said we're going to require everybody to get the vaccine

David Barton

 so that means she might have infected herself by being at home.

Tim Barton

Well, they said it's possible that you might have to have interactions with somebody at some time. So if you have to have interactions and you need the vaccine, and so we're going to require this, and so there was going to be, they were projecting some level of interactions going forward. Well, now it was November of 2021. So then people are back in person's not entirely remote, even though the majority of her job was still remote nonetheless she was told that you have to have the vaccine or you can't come back to work. And she pled religious conscience that she'd heard there was aborted fetal cells in this and therefore that would violate her conscience. She thought it would violate her faith and she didn't want to offend God. And she was told, well, that you can't come back if you don't have the vaccine. So she was fired for not getting the vaccine.

When this case was decided it was decided this summer she was awarded $177,000 in back pay, $10,000 in compensation and $500,000 in punitive damages, and this was according to a document made public. But what's so interesting about this and again, it's great that she is getting justice on some level for this but what is interesting about this is that we are still seeing cases in the pipeline we saw, was it this summer that the Navy SEALs finally won their case? I think that was the Supreme Court that they were wrongfully terminated. But at this point you had a lot of soldiers, a lot of special forces, who got out of the military and Trump has said if he becomes president, he would reinstate them, they would all get back pay, et cetera, et cetera. But there's still a lot of cases in the pipeline.

And guys, one more it's a super short one, but there's an ice cream shop in Savannah Georgia that has offered free ice cream cones to any kids who will come to the shop and recite the Pledge of Allegiance. And I think yesterday is when we were talking about the fact that we're a republic, not a democracy. Even the Pledge of Allegiance says that we pledge allegiance to the republic for which it stands concerning regarding the flag. But this is so cool from Savannah Georgia that you can get free ice cream.

David Barton

I'm going to add to that, because it's a chain, it's in 32 states, including Massachusetts, so they're actually giving kids in Massachusetts free ice cream if they can. So I love the fact that it's red and blue states and purple states and I think it's 32 or 34 states.

Tim Barton

42 states are participating. It's the Eskimo King of Massachusetts. They also are rewarding kids and we are totally against identifying how you want. But I'm just thinking. If I could identify the child I would totally go recite the Pledge of Allegiance to get a free ice cream cone. So still really, really cool good stuff happening Pro-God, pro-america, pro-freedom and justice happening all over the nation.

Rick Green

I'm pretty sure there's an ice cream exception on our opposition to the identifying thing. I think we have that in there. So yeah, citing the ice cream exception, all three of us claim to be seven years old and we want our ice cream and we will recite the pledge. All right, folks, thanks for listening. We've got more good news at our website. Check it out today at wallbuilders.show. You've been listening to the WallBuilder Show. The WallBuilder Show.