Rick Green [00:00:07] You found the intersection of faith and culture. It's the WallBuilders Show where we take on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. You can send in your questions if you'd like us to address a particular topic, because on Thursdays we take on those hot topics that you're interested in. It's Foundations of Freedom Thursday. The email is radio@wallbuilders.com radio@wallbuilders.com. Rick Green here with David Barton and Tim Barton. And guys we'll just jump right in. Heather gets the first question today and man this one's on a lot of people's minds is the dodge. She calls it a department, but is the Dodge Department illegal or against the Constitution? And even when this was talked about, the campaign goes I think we addressed it a little bit on the show about how do you go about doing this? What does the president, you know, appoint someone like an Elon Musk to do? And, you know, it's almost like an ombudsman in a in a way. But but just constitutionally, you got Democrats yelling right now and screaming and acting like, how dare you look into our how we're spending your money. So anyway, it's going to be a fun one to talk about. What do you think, Dodge illegal or against the Constitution? 

David Barton [00:01:11] Yeah, absolutely. And you're going to hear more and more. And already you see the lawsuits mounting against it, because the more it uncovers and the more brings out and the more sunlight it brings in, the things, definitely the more they want to oppose it and take it out. But I think there are some some real key elements to those that have to be considered. And part of it goes back to a decision I was just reading from Judge Jim Howe on the fifth Federal Circuit Court of Appeals is out of New Orleans. He's from Texas. But he was dealing in that case with the concept that and we talked about it before, you just can't fire federal employees, right? You can't get rid of these guys. What's the president put someone in? They have that civil service act and the Civil Service Act keeps them from being removed. And Judge Howe was pointing out, now wait a minute. If you're going to say that a federal law can keep you from holding people accountable, then it has to be unconstitutional to say that the president cannot remove someone from the executive branch, that they were put there as an employee and they're not accountable to the head of that of that branch. The executive, he said that's got to be unconstitutional. And that made me rethink what I've been saying for the last several years as well. You know, they get in this federal union and then you can't get them anymore. But you have to be able to. The founding fathers never intended for any group, any part of the federal government to be unaccountable. It just was never intended. So if you take that approach to DOGE, if DOGE is something that helps you be accountable, helps the agency, be accountable to the people. If it brings sunlight to what's going on, if it helps the people know more about government, it can't be unconstitutional in that sense because that's that's the original intent of what they wanted was for all this to be accountable to people. Now, there's a lot of lawsuits are going to happen. There's a lot of squealing going on. But bottom line, I think it's going to be a really good deal. 

Tim Barton [00:02:58] Well, and I don't think Dodge is actually targeting the the corruption to expose it to the American people. They're showing the American people so that they can sway the public or make sure they have the support of the public. But obviously, what they're doing is taking it to the president. And so when you talk about the president being in charge of the executive branch, does he have the authority to hold the executive branch accountable? Yes, of course he does. And so then anything that falls under the jurisdiction of the executive branch now, we could talk about some things shouldn't be there. Right? Like Department of Education. It shouldn't be there. And that's kind of on point. But also, we could you know, that might be a rabbit drill a little bit down the road later. But if he's having a a a individual or an agency review to make sure that there's accountability with the other agencies or organizations that are under his sphere of jurisdiction, under his umbrella of jurisdiction, that is totally, in my mind, constitutional. One of the things we have identified. Maybe maybe on air I don't I don't know. Certainly author we've talked about it is one of the dangers is if you have something like a Department of government efficiency and then you have a different president come in with a different ideology and they say, you know, we want to be efficient in climate change. We want to be efficient. And they can pick a topic. They can work to find areas that are not supporting the president's agenda and expose it. But the reality is that still seems to fall inside the purview of the executive branch and therefore the authority of the one in charge of the executive branch, the president. So certainly I don't see and guys, you can write me off if you see it differently. I don't see this as being unconstitutional at all because also the only thing they're doing is bringing to the president a report of what's going on. They don't have the authority to shut things down. They're showing the president what's going on and the president is making decisions. Now, certainly the president might give them some authority and some leeway to negotiate on his behalf. But it's this is something that is still happening through the authority and jurisdiction of the president. And it's accountability for things in the executive branch. And the president's in charge of the executive branch. So I certainly see this as being constitutional. I think people that would argue against it, I, I would love to know their explanation for why something inside the executive branch that was directed by the leader of the executive branch is unconstitutional because I certainly don't see it that way. 

Rick Green [00:05:26] Yes, almost. I mean, from a common sense perspective, it's like, wait a minute, you've been hired to be the CEO of a company and let's say your company has, you know, 2 million employees. Does everybody expect you to go do everything by yourself? Are you allowed to bring in a team and hire somebody to go run a particular department or go investigate a particular department or go review certain employees or what? Of course you'd be bringing a team with you. I mean, it'd be different if Elon Musk was out there saying, I don't care what President Trump says, this is what we're going to do. Now, that's totally different. He's you know, what's the expression about I serve at the pleasure of the president? I mean, that's what he's that's exactly what he's doing. So, yeah, I just don't get the arguments against the president of the United States being able to bring in a team that he sends out there. To review, you know, where all of these things are and then expose it. And then, you know, if they're acting on his behalf, even if they did actually fire people or are shrink departments or change budgets, as long as they're doing it on his behalf as the president, he runs the executive branch. 

David Barton [00:06:25] Well, you know, interestingly, DOGE can't fire anybody. All they can do is report the president who will make that decision. All they're doing is a fact finding. This is like FBI doing fact finding. You know, we let them do that all the time. And so that's all he's doing here is fact finding and is reporting the president who will decide, we'll keep that. Now let's get rid of it. But where they're having the legal hang up right now and this is another interesting topic. The legal hang up is like the Department of Labor has sued to say, well, no way, man. You can't have all the information because there's some sensitive employee information in there, some private information. And what do you what do you know that the federal government anyway, What what do you need that for your employees?Yeah. Why do you have it at labor and are unwilling to share it with your chief executive. So right now that the hang up in the courts has been over and the court has shown some some a little bit of leaning toward. All right. Will protect privacy, will protect their information. But you still got to be open. So right now they're losing the lawsuits on those, but they're kind of wanting, at least temporarily, the lawsuits on private information coming out. But but again, if they if those these private information is just go to the FBI, they got everybody's private files. They know what every one of us doing any way. They've been investigating all of us for how many years and however many millions of files they now have. So it's kind of ironic that the other side is starting to squeal on this one. This is exactly what they've been doing for so many years. But it's nothing more than a and I don't want to say I want to say it's an agency because they're really not an agency. It's it's an effort to inform the president of what's going on in a branch is so big that nobody knows what's going on. It not the oversight of Congress. They don't have a clue. They're being shocked about what they're finding out as the president is, as the rest are and the public. Congress is as ticked off for what they're saying, where the money is being spent and how. And it really took sunlight. And this goes back to the axiom I first heard from Bill Bennett back when he was over the department. Education with Reagan is sunlight is still the best disinfectant. And that's what's happening with DOGE, it is putting sunlight on things. 

Rick Green [00:08:25] It has been surprising how surprised members of Congress have been. Right. Like that's supposed to be the oversight. They're supposed to know where the money's going. As Alexander Hamilton said, the court has neither the purse nor the sword. Congress is supposed to have the the purse. They're supposed to know where this money's going. And how many times have we seen the press conferences where now they're going, Wow. And I'm glad they uncovered this. I had no idea that was being done. 

David Barton [00:08:45] You have to say the trick is this is how big the government is. Congress has oversight of how much money is going to each. So the put 1.7 million into Health and Human Services or whatever they have no clue were 32,000 of that is going in Peru for transgender operas you know they don't know where all that little money and 32,000 shouldn't be a lot of money. But when you're talking however many trillion it is. So Congress appropriates the money. They don't really follow through on where it's being spent or how it's being spent. They get they get a proposed budget from each department and it says, hey, we need 5 million for grants for international projects, whatever. And Congress has no idea where that goes. And so they're shocked as the rest of us, because they're finding out now how loose the strings have been with the money. They claim they need more and more money, that they have to fund these things. And man, the things they're finding now, I think this may be a good if this gets out and the public media and the national media the way it is and the conservative media, this would be a really good thing for getting the nation behind, getting the federal government under control in the spending habits. Yeah. With all the stuff, because there's got to be very, very, very few Americans that think that $50 million ought to go to Gaza to buy condoms in Gaza. You know, there's just very few that do that. 

Rick Green [00:10:00] And so many of these items are just indefensible, like there's nothing they can say that's going to make average Joe American go, that's why you spent the money there. Yeah. 

David Barton [00:10:07] But what what I can say is as part of the Department of Health and Human Services budget and we need more money for it. Right. You never know where it's going, Congressman. Don't know any more than we do. And that's why Doge has been such a revolutionary. Had a revolutionary effect already, but it's a revolutionary idea. Should have been done a long time ago. Why would the president not want to know where all that stuff's going? Yeah, there's just been too big for anybody to wrap their arms around and Trump has not seen anything is too big so far. He just is going after everything. 

Rick Green [00:10:34] You both said this on on other topics, that there's another time probably for us to talk about this. But it would be interesting to have a conversation at some point about how earmarks, you know, there was a double sided coin there. There was the people throwing in money for for pet project, and that was an earmark. But then there was also the use of earmarks to do exactly what you were just describing, David, which is where you could make it a specific expenditure. Instead of this general giving all this money. It was on the good side. It was used to control how the money was spent by that agency. On the bad side, it was used to throw in a pet project and get money spent on that. And you know, sometimes as the public. We don't dive deep enough. And so something just gets a bad name. And so everybody's against it and, you know, completely. And so then you lose some of that good side of the coin that was used it to create some responsibility with the with the money. So, you know, I think hopefully what comes out of DOGE is not only exposing the bad, but start starting to look for some. Maybe it's even business like mindset of how to have that accountability. Just total transparency of how the money is spent. Almost like a you know, everything would be online where we as citizens could go see where every penny was, was getting spent. Maybe they'll end up in a direction like that. All right. Next question is from Sergio. He said, What would it take to slap a 20th Amendment on the Constitution for congressional term limits? I know it needs a two thirds majority, but how realistic is that now with Trump strutting back into the White House on January 20th? Thanks so much for all y'all do. What a great description Trump strutted. I honestly, you know, in Texas, what do we say when they used to say George W was strutting? We said, We call that walking. Anyway. That's right. 

David Barton [00:12:07] That's normal. 

Rick Green [00:12:10] Well, it's probably the most popular amendment that's talked about, At least when I'm out there talking to folks about things we could do to rein in the federal government. Term limits is the first one out of people's mouths, typically. We have a lot of fun on the show here, debating term limits in both state and federal. I thought when I saw the what do you call it, the subject line for the email 28 the moment I thought it was going to be the didn't Joe Biden get the 28th Amendment done with Era, which we talked about on last Thursday's Foundations of Freedom Thursday. But no, he's saying how quickly could we get a 28th Amendment and and have term ends? I think people are talking about it more because of Mitch McConnell and and Nancy Pelosi and and these folks that are, you know, literally not physically or mentally capable of doing the job anymore, but they just won't step down. 

David Barton [00:12:57] Yeah. They want and you know, he asked the question, what are the chances? How realistic. I think it's more likely El Paso has a snowstorm on July the 4th than that We get this done. And I think this is a real short answer to that one. 

Tim Barton [00:13:09] Now, let me let me just remind you, Florida did get some snow not that long ago. 

Rick Green [00:13:16] That's all right. 

Tim Barton [00:13:17] We might want to think of another analogy. I'm just you know, it that kind of stuff has been happening more recently. Okay. 

Rick Green [00:13:24] Did you say David? Did you say you didn't say Florida, though? What did you say? 

David Barton [00:13:26] I said El Paso. 

Rick Green [00:13:27] El Paso. Okay. So. Well, yeah, Tim's right. I mean, a Florida can get snow. Okay, that's good. 

David Barton [00:13:33] Let's go to. Let's go to Oahu, Hawaii, and say more likely or even Cuba or something. The problem I think the problem here is and I'll just lay this out. If we were to have a constitutional amendment proposed right now to make in God we Trust, the national motto, I don't think you get it passed. I don't think you can get two thirds of the House and Senate and three fourths of the states to line up on it. I don't know of a single issue right now that is in the news or has been in the news that if we got attacked would suddenly get unified. But as far as political things floating around, I don't know of anything that you can get. Two thirds of Congress and three fourths of the states to agree on at this point in time. We're just too. 

Rick Green [00:14:11] Which is why it can't it can't originate in. Not to mention on this one, it's them limiting themselves. When have they ever limited themselves? It would only work if the states were the ones that do it and they were doing it to pull the power back from the feds to them. And term limits doesn't specifically do that, right? The amendments that I think the state legislators would propose themselves and then actually ratify are the ones that quite literally benefit them. That's the whole idea, right? If if a state legislator could say, we want to get rid of your Department of Education or Agriculture or whatever at the federal level, because we want the power at the state level that's possible to get done. 

Tim Barton [00:14:45] Well, and you guys, one of the things that we've talked about before, too, it's probably worth reminding in this moment, is even if you have a changeover in your congressmen and senators, if you're not controlling or having some kind of guardrails and boundaries around the staffers, around the lobbyists, what's going to happen is then the the corruption is going to shift to some extent. I mean, I think it's really corrupt staff, the dirty, corrupt lobbyist. But the corruption will shift away from your your Nancy Pelosi's becoming enormously wealthy. You're Mitch McConnell's becoming enormously wealthy. And it'll just be the lobbyists or whoever. And they're already making tons of money. But I don't know that it solves all of the problems people think it's going to solve. And I think a little bit like what Trump has discovered after his his first term as president, what he's doing now is the swamp is way swamp bigger than most people realize. So it's not that term limits might not have some fair just thoughts behind them or there might not be some level of effectiveness. But it's a little bit like we try to point out several times in different groups leading to the election that as much as we want President Trump to be their president, Trump can't solve all this problem by itself unless there's an awakening in in the churches, unless there's an awakening of Christians, unless we get some support from Congress in the Senate, there's only so much that President Trump can do that connecting there's only so much that having some of these constitutional amendments, although they can be good and valuable and we should pursue them, there's only so much they can do if we're not doing other things in addition to them because of the depth of some of what that corruption actually is. So not that I'm against that idea, but I think some people we have this will. 

Rick Green [00:16:29] Solve no silver bullet. Yeah they can't think of these things are so you got to reset the table you got to you got to have the controls. But it's just like passing the Constitution originally. That doesn't mean all of a sudden everything's going to fix itself. You still got to have good people in office. You still got to have educated citizens. It's all of those things. Absolutely has got to be done. Hey, guys, before we go to break, just a quick comment from one of our listeners. Susan, this is great. She's a good news Friday. She loves listen good news Friday. She said I recently had to get a new car license plate in Florida and was surprised to learn they still offer in God we trust plate. So the national motto at no extra charge my quick Internet research shows there's 20 some states offer the same, though some of those might actually charge. How wonderful to allow our country's motto to be displayed. I encourage anyone in Florida to change to this plate next opportunity and those in other states to check out their options. Hey, Susan, thanks for sending that in. That's another great way to get back to the right foundations in our country here on the Spanish to Freedom Thursday. Good plug for InGodweTrustamerica.org. That's inGodwetrustamerica.org. Our friend Jackie has done a great job there. Just I mean getting I think we're over a thousand guys a thousand different government entities now that have the national motto in God We Trust and school boards and city councils and all kinds of things. Just a great reminder when you go in there to testify or for those elected officials when they come in to do their work, that the national models and God we trust is that God consciousness we talk a lot about. And so that means individuals can do the same thing by putting it on their license plate. Really great email. Appreciate that, Susan. Quick break. We'll be back with more of your questions on our foundations of Freedom Thursday. You're listening to The WallBuilders Show. 

Rick Green [00:19:03] Welcome back to the WallBuilders Show Thanks for staying with us on this Foundations of Freedom Thursday. You can send your questions in to radio@wallbuilders.com that's radio@wallbuilders.com. Might be a constitutional question maybe a question about something that happened in history whatever that topic is that you'd like to get us to address on the program. Send it on. We'd love to have it. All right. Next one up is from Steven and he says, Howdy, my fellow Patriots. What is the point of Congress if the president can just executive order everything. Sounds like a form of tyranny. What are the limits of executive orders? Secondly, is the freedom of expression a God given right? What was the Founding Fathers original intent? Freedom of speech and freedom of expression? Wasn't the original Founding Fathers original intent, freedom of speech or freedom of conscience? Okay, Those are two big questions. We might not get to the second one. Let's hit that first one first, guys. Executive orders. What's the point of Congress? We're back to that same thing. If there's constitutional ones, there's unconstitutional ones. So how do we you know, you look at all these executive orders coming from President Trump so quickly. I'm trying to look at all of them close enough and call balls and strikes. What do you guys think about this whole idea of why are we doing so much with executive orders instead of having Congress do everything? 

Tim Barton [00:20:07] Well, Dad, I know you have a lot of thoughts on this. Guys, we talk about this a lot in general as we've been watching for now, a couple of weeks of President Trump doing these things. But I loved earlier this week, President Trump signed an executive order to bring back plastic straws. Now, this is a great example where you're going how does he have the authority like that that doesn't fall under the executive branch? But part of the executive order is overturning Biden's executive order that banned plastic straws and Biden didn't have the authority to do that. Right. So like this is this, by the. 

Rick Green [00:20:42] Way, Tim, I rank in the top five of all the amazing actions that Donald Trump has done because I'm sick and tired of the soggy straws. Okay? I'm just saying. I mean, I know, you know, we got a border, we got fentanyl, we got death, destruction, all kinds of major things. But I put plastic straws now available to me and not having to suck on that paper straw that falls apart halfway through my drink. Top five important things to be done. 

David Barton [00:21:03] I, I got. I got. I've been here for a little bit. Go through DFW airport on a regular basis, often stop at McDonald's to get tea to carry with me on the plane. I stop and I get a large half and half tea and I get the stupid paper straw in a plastic cup. If you're after plastic, take the cup out. Make it a paper cup. You have a little mini plastic straw and a huge plastic cup and you're going after the straw. It is just okay. I've been. There we go. 

Rick Green [00:21:32] It's You know what's funny, though? It it really is. I mean, it fits with what Trump's doing because these things do affect us personally. This over involvement of government trying to make decisions for he's just like common sense everywhere you turn. Boy, that's dumb. Why were we doing that? We're not going to do that anymore. Let's straighten this thing out. But to your point, Tim, he didn't just come up with, Hey, I'm tired of paper straws. I want plastic straws. He literally was reversing a previous executive order, which is, of course, a constitutional thing for him to do. 

Tim Barton [00:21:58] And this is where we also point out. I mean, Biden's executive order was never constitutional. First place. That's right. His executive order didn't apply to the executive branch. And that is where the the jurisdiction falls. If you want to measure is this constitutional? It would is again, using this analogy. I feel like I've used it a couple of times, but I'm going to say it again because I feel like it's it's a very fair and understandable analogy. If you are the owner of a Chick-Fil-A, you can have an A some kind of policy in place for all of your employees. But that policy cannot be applied to McDonald's. It can't be applied to Taco Bell. It can't be applied to five guys you're in and out or whatever else you go to. It only applies to those that you are the boss of and that's your that's your area, your line of jurisdiction. And so for the president to give an executive order can only apply to the executive branch. And then maybe the it's not an exception, but it's the one that fits a little outside the boxes. You can have an executive order to remove or overturn former executive orders, which is what this was  and those former executive orders certainly were not constitutional. But the guys here's also where you see the hypocrisy of the left being exposed like this. The levels of irony when you're going to call out President Trump for doing some of this. But you never called out Biden when he was doing these crazy executive orders that are uncosted, the ones that were literally unconstitutional. You said nothing about and the ones that are actually constitutional, you're calling him a tyrant or Hitler or he's not following like whatever accusation you give. This is where there's levels of hypocrisy on an ironic level because they're trying to uphold the standard against Trump. They didn't upholding as anybody else. And the irony is that they're actually calling out things that he actually constitutionally can do. This is within the purview of the executive branch and what the executive orders actually can be. And so where I would try to help put the boundaries in people's minds is as long as the executive order applies to things within the jurisdiction of the executive branch, it is a constitutional order and certainly the executive branch is grown far beyond what it should be. And so now there's all these agencies that fall under the quote unquote, jurisdiction of the executive branch. And those many of those agencies should never exist in the first place. But that's a deeper conversation. As long as they are there in the way this is happening now, they fall under the jurisdiction of the chief executive officer of the president of the United States. And as long as those executive orders apply to his company, to those under his authority, it's a constitutional executive order. 

David Barton [00:24:28] I will throw out three guidelines, and this goes right with what you guys might say. Number one, he can't do an executive order that supersedes the Constitution. He can't say Congress is going to have three year terms in the House of Representatives because that's defined by the Constitution. So anything that the Constitution lays out, he cannot change. Second is anything that deals with separation of powers. He cannot step in and say when when the house will meet, when it won't meet, how long the Senate meets. He can't do anything with committees. There's nothing he can do that belongs to the judiciary or to the House unless the Constitution says so. And the third thing he has to face, we the people, remember this is what happened under Covid. People finally got ticked off enough with the Covid stuff that it backfired and went back against the government. So those are the three boundaries of their time, as you just said. There's a lot of the stuff that is absolutely unconstitutional. But as Congress has given all these agencies to the president, he now has authority over those agencies. 

Tim Barton [00:25:25] And to clarify, you're not saying there's a lot of executive orders that Trump has given the negotiation or there are a lot of agencies that are not constitutional. Right. But as long as they are defined under the executive branch, he has authority to give them executive orders. And that is a constitutional thing. Now, we certainly are in favor of his move to dismantle and hopefully then eventually abolish the Department of Education. There are several more we would support being removed as well. But again, as long as they are there, he has the authority constitutionally to give an executive order to the employees that work for him. And that is all those that are in the executive branch. 

Rick Green [00:26:02] For more on that, when folks go to wallbuilders.com and get constitution alive or biblical citizenship and David teaches on that right there in the museum breaks down what's constitutional what's not constitutional with the executive orders. And Tim like you said, they call him a tyrant for doing all these things. It's just amazing to have a tyrant that gives back freedom to the people and shrinks government and make sure that people can be free. That's the first time we've had a tyrant like that. So words mean things. All right, folks, thanks for joining us today. Send those questions in to us radio@wallbuilders.com. We'll get to him next Thursday on Foundations of Freedom Thursday. And don't miss tomorrow. Good news Friday. Still trying to catch up with all the good news out there. Had so many people over the last week say how much they liked last Friday's program. Guys. They love getting that that good news. Thanks again for listening to The WallBuilders Show.