Rick Green [00:00:07] Welcome to Intersection of Faith and Culture. It's The WallBuilders Show and it's Friday. So we're going to jump into a lot of good news today. We call it good News Friday around here. And there's more at our website. If you visit WallBuilders Dot show, you can go scroll back to those Friday programs, get some more good news. Also, the Thursday programs, if you missed yesterday, we call them Foundations of Freedom Thursday. And we take as many of your questions as we can. And then we usually have some great interviews Monday through Wednesday. Check it out at WallBuilders Dot show for the radio programs and then wallbuilders.com for our main website. Lots of great swag there, by the way. Good Christmas presents. Yes. Go get your Christmas shopping done right there@wallbuilders.com. Not only the swag and all the cool stuff, but even just the educational materials. Man, what a great twofer. You give somebody good gift and you get them educated to be a good citizen and understand the foundations of this country. Get that Christmas shopping done over wallbuilders.com. I'm Rick Greenberg, his constitution co-chair with David Barton and Tim Barton. And they're the ones that have done all the hard work. I'm just going to sit here and listen to some good news. So, David, give us our first piece of good news. 

David Barton [00:01:07] Well, first piece of good news deals with some funding the Congress has done over the last several years, years and years and years. They never get the budgets done and they haven't done a budget in Congress, even though the even though they're required to by law, they don't get a budget done and haven't done and probably 20 years. 

Rick Green [00:01:23] That's what do you need a budget if you're spending somebody else's money and it's like an unlimited amount of money, like, why do you need a budget? You just if you ignore. 

David Barton [00:01:30] If you ignore budget, why should you put the time to create one? Because your budget. Yeah. How many trillions over the top. So what happens is usually the end of the year they have one bill that has to be funded and that's the National Defense Authorization Act called the NDAA. This is what keeps the military being funded because the Constitution requires that we fund the military every two years. We're forbidden to have a permanent standing army in the United States. The Constitution does not let us have a permanent army. We think we've got one. We don't it only last two years at a time. It has to be reconstituted every two years in Congress. That is the one bill that I can guarantee you they're going to pass every two years. But because it may be the only bill that gets passed, what they do is they put Christmas tree ornaments all over it. So this is where you're going to get all the stuff added in about gender transitioning stuff or funding. Planned Parenthood has nothing to do with the military, but because that bill is going to pass and you're not going to see Republicans vote against the military, they have to hold their nose and vote for a whole bunch of stuff they don't like just to get the military bill passed. So what happened is with all this new new focus on getting the government to be more efficient, my Josten came in to the House and said, okay, guys, we're getting the funding stuff done. And this is what keeps them from having to have all these budget extension things that they keep funding them and temporary funding measures for three months, six months, whatever. So they came in and they got the NDAA done this time. And Mike and the others intentionally put a lot of stuff in there to stop some of the stuff that's in there. So I'll just give you some of the highlights of the National Defense Authorization Act. It's now passed and it's passed without any drama. They didn't have to go through all these extensions and add in extra weeks NAD and stuff, and it's nice to get it done and I'm glad to see them be more efficient. But they now provide junior enlisted servicemen with a 19.5% pay raise, so almost a 20% pay raise for junior military members who've enlisted. They now will support the deployment of the National Guard at the southwestern border. So they will allow the military to be used in border defense with illegal aliens and drugs. They also have include all sorts of things that prevent Chinese espionage and military supply chains. So we're cracking down on China. Really good. They expanded U.S. military military cooperation. They fully fund Israel's military missile programs. So support for Israel were really high. We're funding U.S. defense initiatives in the Pacific Theater, bolster Taiwan. We're supporting Taiwan, as we promised we would. When Taiwan went back to China, they cut 31 billion in inefficient programs, obsolete weapons, etc. they now have returned to. You can only be promoted based on merit. They had gotten bad Biden and gotten D-I into the military. So you're being promoted based on whatever your identity was, not whether you were capable, but they've gone to merit based promotions. 

Tim Barton [00:04:30] Hey, Dad, let me also point out that that as as good as this is, this is why also getting someone like a Pete Hegseth in there matters because you can pass really good laws, but you could have somebody enforce them. And if you have some of these rogue three and four star generals who care more about the DEA, it could turn into one of the the Andrew Jackson is president situations when he was doing breaking some of the Indian treaties and starting to promote some of the Indian removal that was happening and that kind of early mid 1800s. And the Supreme Court there are two cases the Supreme Court and Supreme Court said, no, you you can't. You can't. Arbitrarily break a treaty to relocate natives from this land that is theirs. And Andrew Jackson, the quip is kind of attributed to him as I have a military, let's see him stop me. And and unfortunately, that's what a lot of these three and four star generals have done is they've just promoted this agenda. And so even though this is so good and it is so good, what's in this NDAA, if there's not somebody at the top who's going to pressure and enforce this, then it won't be as effective as it should be. But if you get both of these things done, when you change the standards of what we're going to fund and how we're going to fund it, and then you put a leader in that says, we're going to do all of this and we're going to get rid of all the nonsense. When you have that double, that is absolutely incredible. I know you're not done. I just wanted to kind of tag that in there of why a guy like Pete Hegseth that is so important to help carry through so much of this. Yeah. 

David Barton [00:06:04] And that is key because you can have good laws and like people execute them. And so that's as a really good point. Another thing they included is and because recruitment is down, they want to advertise the military and military always has recruitment budgets and advertising budgets and that's what you say, football games, etc.. Well, now they are prohibiting contracting with any advertising firms that blacklists conservative news sources. So those groups that won't let conservative news be on like MSNBC, I guess that means you're not going to get any more military ads because they certainly blacklist those sources, but they're not going to reward people who punish going after conservatives. They've abolished the DUI bureaucracy. So all the officers and all the others, all the offices that were put in by Biden to boost the recruitment of the military, they're all gone. They permanently banned transgender medical services from treatments for minors. So if you're in the military, don't expect the military to pay for any transgender treatments for your kids because it's not going to happen in the military. And then also countering anti-Semitism. You cannot sell any goods at any military post or exchange anywhere overseas if you are engaged in a boycott of Israel. So if you're going after Israel, your products are not welcome in U.S. military stores anywhere in the world. That's just a list of some highlights, but that's a lot of good stuff that got done in the NDAA bill this year. 

Rick Green [00:07:32] All right, Tim, let's see. I was going to guess on your show, you know, I didn't even try to guess on David because we haven't had a good news variety, regular good news variety in quite a while. And good luck. Long shot. Long shot. So I'm going to guess basketball. I don't know. You guys are always doing basketball. So is there some basketball star has done something good that you could do a good news just to make it sound like I knew what I was talking about? 

Tim Barton [00:07:52] The top of my list is sports, but actually I didn't. They didn't go there. So I remember. 

Rick Green [00:07:56] It wasn't basketball. 

Tim Barton [00:07:58] Okay. So although well, it's a family friendly program, so I'm not going to make the joke. However, it's about Boise State. For those who aren't familiar with Boise State, their football program right now. Incredible what's happening. I'm cheering for them. They're running back who was a strong Christian. And we have some family connections out of Boise State, which is also fun. Well, this doesn't have through the football program, although it's awesome. This is their volleyball team and this made headlines a couple of weeks ago and I saved up. I thought, man, this is great. We got to talk about this is some point. This is the headline. Boise State Women's Volleyball Team Forfeits Match Over Transgender Player. Now, this is not just them forfeiting a match. This the match was against San Jose State, who has a transgender woman, meaning a biological male who is identifying as a female playing on the woman's team. They already forfeited Boise State, forfeited twice to San Jose State because they're in the same conference. They're in the Mountain West Conference. But this was a championship. And with Boise State forfeiting both those games, that meant they had two losses in conference. In addition to their regular schedule they're playing. However, they still make the conference championship and then they're in the semi finals and they forfeited the semi finals of their conference championship rather than subject their females on this women's volleyball team from having to play against a biological male at San Jose State. There's actually a lawsuit going on where there was a couple of girls from the team that actually were trying to get an injunction. And the judge said, hey, you wait until the season already started. Right. It's too late now. We can't do anything about it now. But the lawsuit in the sense of the injunction to stop that the biological male from playing with San Jose State. But the judge said, look, we can't stop him from playing. Season's already going on. So you're going to have to let this this run its course. Well, the court case is still going on. But the reason and there's probably several I could point out that is so impressive is we have talked for a long time about the lack of courage and people willing to stand up and do the right things. And now we have people that are courageously standing up. And this should be a no brainer. I mean, every single parent at every single game where their team is playing against San Jose State, every single parent should have stood up and like not we in doing this. We're getting our girls playing as a biological male. I mean, this this should be a no brainer in my mind for every dad out there who loves his daughter, wants to protect his daughter. And this is not unloving. Right. Saying that we hate a transgender person. No, this is recognizing there are biological differences. God made boys and girls bodies differently. And they're not the same. We're the same in value. We believe that all men are created equal, that all humanity, all mankind, we are created equal in the image of God. But God made our bodies different. And it's one of the reasons that hundreds of years from now that if some doctor comes in and they dig up somebodies bones, they can tell if it's a male or female by the bone structure, by the body itself. God made our bodies differently. And to pretend like that our bodies are the same and we're exactly the same is is idiotic. It's intellectually dishonest. Nonetheless, we've talked about the lack of courage at times. And really one of the things we've highlighted for a long time on good news Friday is praising the people have finally had the courage to stand up. Well, guys, that's Boise State's not the only team that did this, but it's so encouraging that we are now seeing this on a very real level. Riley Gaines has been one of the leaders in this movement, Turning Point USA. There's a lot of groups out there that are helping encourage the boldness and the backbone, a lot of a lot of these college athletes. But this one is not just the athlete, it's the coaches. It's it's the university. And I guys, I'm just I'm so impressed. Boise State was always that that football team with the really weird football fields and that was what I strive for and now I'm looking on you know what I I'm I'm not like as a Texan, I'm not really drawn to Boise State. I don't I don't want to cheer for Boise State, but there's so many things about them that I'm so impressed with that I'm going to start cheering for Boise State and some of these situations because of the character and. The courage they are showing. And in this one for the Boise State women's volleyball team. Man God bless you all. Kudos to all of you. And they don't know if they're going to win this case or not. They know it cost them potentially the chance at one of the semis playing in the conference championship. They knew what it cost them and they were willing to pay the price. And that is that is such an incredible example that as a parent with a couple of daughters, I can tell my girls, hey, you follow that example because you do take what God's giving you, the gifts and abilities. You use them to the best of your ability for his glory. And ultimately, when the hard time comes, make sure you have the courage to stand up for what's right. And that's exactly what this Boise State women's volleyball team did. So kudos to them in this moment. 

Rick Green [00:13:21] And Tim, you pointed it out, But I mean, that's a sacrifice for something that they won't get back, right? Like this. Is this a moment in your life at an age and an experience that you don't get to go back and repeat? And they weighed that in the balance and said, we're going to stand up for what's right. And you mentioned Raleigh Gains. I just want to throw another one out there. Stonebridge Christian School in California and set out there, my buddy Doug Teal, he called me and he said, Hey, man, I'm flying Riley Gaines in to speak to the students at the school right now. And so she went up there and spoke to these high school girls who did the same thing you're talking about at this Christian school. And so we may even try to get the principal or somebody on from their team to talk about it. So this is it's catching on. You know, it's that thing we've said before, courage is contagious. And so when a few stand up like Riley had done, then you see other starting to stand and and this is what it's going to take. This is what will ultimately turn this because it it shines a light on the absurdity of what these girls are having to deal with, with these guys essentially stealing their trophies and their and their awards. Okay. Quick break. We'll come back and David Barton's got the next piece of good news. Stay with us. You're listening to The WallBuilders Show. 

Rick Green [00:15:32] Welcome back to the Barbershop. Thanks for staying with us, David. Where are we going next? 

Tim Barton [00:15:36] This one comes out of. 

David Barton [00:15:37] Washington, D.C., and it deals with federal courts and it actually goes to the social media platform. Tick tock, tick tock. Really popular among among young, younger folks. But there's a lot of concern by political folks and parents and others because it's really loaded up with Chinese propaganda. It's owned by a group called Bytedance, which is a Chinese company. That's the parent company that owns Tik Tok. And Tik Tok is too slow to Chinese propaganda, anti-American stuff, etc.. And so a lot of states have tried to ban this. And the parent company, Bytedance sued in federal court and said, hey, First Amendment constitution, freedom of speech and press, etc.. And it went through the courts and a unanimous decision at the D.C. Court of Appeals, which is the court immediately below the Supreme Court, they unanimously said absolutely not. They said you either sell the company to some some non-Chinese owned company or you're banned in the United States. So it looks like the federal ban and the federal ban, as opposed to the law was passed, that it goes into effect on January of 2025. And it now looks like that that ban on Tik Tok will happen in January of 2025 unless they sell to some other company. 

Tim Barton [00:16:49] And as you mentioned, the Chinese propaganda, I certainly there's a lot of propaganda, the algorithms they use to target the rising generation, that part of the propaganda is not like just China's amazing and America's bad. It really is indoctrination in so many ways. But also the data collection they do there's there's so many components to this, not just. Right this so often people, at least for me, when I hear propaganda, I often think of it in some very simplistic terms. But this is far deeper and far darker what they're doing. Yeah, there's been some reports and studies that for young people, they they're for 13, 17 year olds kind of in that age range and really even some down ten, 11, 12. But some of the more frequent videos they get deal with suicide on their tiktoks like suggestive videos for them. And it's encouraging suicides. So there's just so much of a darkness to this. China has been around for thousands of years and they think far more in the long term then do most Americans. And and unfortunately, because of that, they recognize that if they can do something to stop the rising generation, then in 20 years and 40 years and 60 years, they might be able to take back control and be the world leader and they can expand their kingdom, etc.. And so often as Americans, we are far more in the stage one thinkers where we're thinking of right now in the moment and how do we feel. And this Biden inflation's terrible and my I need my gas prices to go down. We don't often think in in the idea of generations and centuries and millennia. And I think it's one of the things that that China certainly does. And with that, this is just one of the tools in their regime for them trying to weaken America, for them trying to impact the rising generation of Americans to make them weak, dumb, fat people that are not capable of being in the military, that they couldn't stop an invasion or whatever it might look like. Right. And future generations. There's a lot behind what is going on more than just China's great. There's a lot of deepness and darkness to it and a lot of data mining. Question And so it doesn't make sense that one of your primary rivals and really enemies in a lot of ways is getting such unfettered access to American data. It absolutely makes sense that in America we're saying, hey, you know what? Just like we shouldn't be selling land by military bases to Chinese farmers like, quote unquote, farmers. Right. I'm sure there's planting corn and there's nothing more sinister about them buying land by military bases, just like we shouldn't be selling farming land to adversaries and rivals. Right. By military bases. We shouldn't be letting such data, mining and data collection be going to an enemy, an arch rival as well. So this absolutely makes sense. And of course, Domi, more lawsuits and challenges. But it does look like this will be ultimately upheld, which is really good news. 

Rick Green [00:19:55] All right. Well, Jim, right back at you, man. So what's your what's your next piece of good news? 

Tim Barton [00:19:59] Well, guys, this one just came down maybe two weeks ago. The title says Ohio Governor Signs Law Prohibiting Opposite Sex Access to Bathroom in Schools. Now, this is again, one of these, like, common sense things. It's a little mind boggling to me that that people have not given more resistance to this and certainly is reflective of culture and the marketing and part of the ideology, the worldview that's out there. But what happened is Ohio Governor Mike DeWine signed a bill prohibiting students. From kindergarten through college. From using bathrooms that do not align with their sex. Now, again, like this should be a no brainer. Boys use boys bathrooms. Girls use girls bathrooms. I certainly see some challenges with some of this that do not align with their sex because now people are saying, well, you know, sex and gender and it's subjective and etc., etc.. But the bill is titled Protect All Students Act. It was done by Rep Adam Byrd with Rep Beth Leer. And of course, they praise the governor for signing this bill as they're trying to protect students. They identified institutions of higher education, including state universities, community and technical colleges, And both private, nonprofit and for profit career colleges must use clear signage for these designations to ensure clarity for students and staff is what Byrd said about this bill, and they go on clarifying some details about this bill. But guys, to me, this is just one more good step of of part of what we're seeing in the cultural battle. And I recognize Ohio, it's maybe a little bit of a purple state, but generally it's kind of considered more red. And so we're seeing red states take some of these steps. We're certainly not seeing this happen at this point. And New York and California and some of the more noted blue liberal states. But the fact that this is happening in in red states is still, to me, very encouraging and very promising because it does seem to indicate that not everybody has lost their mind and some people still are maintaining some level of common sense. Although I will say one of the things that I'm seeing a lot more is that even though we are winning some of these cultural battles legislatively, we certainly are not doing a good job messaging. We're not doing a good job explaining and winning the conversation with so many people in the rising generation because there are a lot of people that are buying into a faulty narrative, which of course is is what happens in so many public schools and universities when you have this incredible education propaganda arm that can expand this propaganda, that that's a lot of the battle we are dealing with, which is why we often tell parents, hey, if there's if you have another option, it might be worth you exploring that other option. And as I say this, like full disclosure, I've got family members who I love and I trust I that that teach public school. I would be so happy for some of my family members if they were my kids teachers. And they talk to them all the time. I trust them. But they're not the only teachers at the school and they don't control the curriculum either. We're not saying anti public school things because we think all public school teachers are bad. It's because we recognize there's a brokenness in the system and in the ideology that is feeding these teachers, coming from these institutions, these academies of higher education, as it were. And and it's a reason, again, we would say, hey, parents, you need to think about your kids. You know, Jesus explained at one point to disciples, what does a prophet, a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul, you know, thinking, well, it's better for my kids, more opportunities? Well, maybe. But you having a kid that's more grounded and and doesn't reject and deny faith and hate God and hate America and hate family, you'd probably be more disappointed by that than you would by them having some athletic opportunity or whatever else you think might be available and affordable to them. Anyway, all that to say the good news is coming out of Ohio is that Governor Mike DeWine did sign this law prohibiting opposite sex access to bathrooms in schools, kindergarten up through universities. And that is really good news. 

Rick Green [00:24:05] The momentum continues on that issue, guys. You know, we keep seeing victories in this area. It felt like we were fallen off the cliff into total Romans one insanity. And all of a sudden, it seems like we're on our way back. David, our final piece of good news for the day. 

David Barton [00:24:18] It has to do some immigration stuff and it has to do with the fact that the federal courts are giving more and more power back to the states. And immigration is not merely a federal issue. In the case of Texas, you had Governor Greg Abbott who said, okay, the Rio Grande River between Texas and Mexico, so many people come across that river illegally. We don't have wall all the way across the border. So he erected buoy barriers across the middle of the river, down the border in the river. And that is where the border is between Mexico and Texas. They're in the river. And so he erected buoy barriers there to keep people from crossing. And the Biden administration initially sued and said, hey, you can't do that. That interferes with what we're trying to do with immigration, which was nothing. And so it went to court and the Fifth Circuit Federal Court said, no, no, no, states have a role in that. The federal law requires illegal immigrants not enter. And the states have a right to enforce that federal law, just like the feds do. So also after that, Governor Abbott went in and said, well, here's a 100 mile stretch of Texas border that has no wall, no protection. A lot of people come across. So he ordered the state to erect a razor wire along that 100 mile stretch. They put up razor wire to keep people from coming in illegally Again, Biden. The situation sued. And again, the fifth Federal Circuit Court of Appeals said no, it is upholding federal law, trying to keep illegals out. There is a justifiable purpose for that. You need to know who's coming across your borders, what they're doing, are they legal or not? And so the Court of Appeals has now sided with that. So Abbott has now ordered more razor wire erected across the border. Now, certainly with Trump in office and with Homan going after deportations to remove illegals. And no matter who's in the country, that's helping as well. But this is a good thing that the federal courts are allowing the states to participate in upholding federal laws and not putting it all on Simply the president or administration is in office at the time. 

Rick Green [00:26:13] All right, guys, out of time for good news today. Thanks for doing that research and bringing those good news stories to us. Everybody listening, you can get more good news at our website. WallBuilders.show. Scroll back through those programs and find those previous Friday programs. But really every program here on WallBuilders is a good new show because we take that biblical perspective and we take that optimistic approach, that duty is ours, results are God's, and we're going to have joy in the fight no matter what. But boy, we got a lot to be joyful about right now. Have a great weekend. We'll see you next week here on The WallBuilders Show.