Rick Green [00:00:07] Welcome to the intersection of faith and culture. It's the Wallbuilders show, taking on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical, and constitutional perspective. And today they're all going to be good topics, or at least topics that end in good stories. Because it's good News Friday, we're going to get to as much as we can. So very quick intro today. Let's go for it. David, what's the first piece of good news. 

David Barton [00:00:24] Well I want to start with one of the cabinet level departments and head over that department. Head over the Department of Homeland Security is Kristi Noem, the former governor of Dakota. And so she's got that department now. And under her, we talked yesterday about the fact that in the executive branch are 400 different separate agencies. And so when you look at cabinet level, which is I think 17 different people are in the cabinet, that means each of those cabinet level folks has got 20 or 30 agencies under them. And so one of the agencies under Kristi Noem is FEMA. And so FEMA exists to help when there's emergencies and etc.. And it's interesting that here you got Kristi Norm, who's over over FEMA. And her recommendation to Trump is that we need to get rid of the Federal Emergency Management Agency the way it exists today. And she talked about the way it exists today and what it is and is supposed to help people when there's floods, fires, droughts, earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, fire, whatever it is. And I'll just, you know, I'll throw this out as something we talk about. So when you look at the Constitution, the Constitution, it has 18 things that the federal government can do. It's in contained in 17 clauses so often say 17 enumerated powers. But if you look, taking care of emergencies of the states is not one of the federally designated powers, which means it it's supposed to be in the hands of the states. And so that's that's one of those 10th Amendment issues, one of those issues that if it's not enumerate power by the Constitution, the states get to do it. And so Kristi Noem has just made the point. Look, this needs to go back to the States. She's. She was a state governor for two terms. She knows what it's like. And when you get the federal government stepping in to handle things the state should be doing, it's going to be more expensive, going to be less good. And what we saw in North Carolina, we had all those floods go on in North Carolina. And the federal FEMA wasn't there for the first one 8 to 10 days. And when they got in, they started telling people, well, you know, if you see a Trump side in the front yard, don't, don't go survey that house. We don't want to repair that house if it had a Trump. So now you're having FEMA not helping citizens emergency if they're not of the right political persuasion. And so everything about it was really bad. And then we talked even yesterday about how that DOGE and Elon Musk, his guys, have gone in and found things really quickly. He found that just I guess it was two weeks ago and that one week that that FEMA actually paid $59 million to house illegal immigrants just in that one week. And this has been going on for weeks and weeks and most of the the Biden administration. 59 million. No wonder FEMA doesn't have any money to take care of its own people with the emergencies. So you got Kristi Noem, I'm talking about it. You've got you've got Elon Musk saying 59,000,001 week. And now Trump has said, yeah, this thing needs to go away. It needs to go back to the States. This is something that should not be a federal agency. And that's really good news because not only is it more effective and cheaper, it's also constitutional. And that's a really good thing to do with FEMA is turn it back to the states, let them take care of their own people. They've got people on the ground that are going to get there quicker and help people more. It's just this is a great recommendation coming from Kristi Noem and Trump and actually Elon Musk as well. 

Rick Green [00:03:43] Yeah, I thought about two specific scenarios. Whenever she said that. One was, I think we had Tim Brooks on, I don't know, five years ago, six years ago, after a tornado that came through Arkansas there, and he was talking about how he couldn't even he was taking his tractor out, helping people move, you know, stuff. And they wouldn't even let him do it. Because, you know, he wasn't the official government person to do it. 

Tim Barton [00:04:04] I was out there there for that storm. Yes. I was there early for David Pate when the storm hit one of the guys in the church, he had several rental properties and power lines were down, trees fell down. And so we go out that night just to try to help and make sure there's, you know, nobody stuck under a tree, something going on. And so we we just do it minimum that night to make sure everybody's good. Everybody's clear. Watch out for downed wires. The next morning you get up and you see the devastation. You're going, oh my goodness. But it's I mean it's it's country Arkansas right. Everybody has got their chainsaw their ATV there. Some guys are on horseback like Tim Brooks right. Going around looking who can we help. Do we need to pull somebody out and everybody just we get to work. Nobody's waiting for anybody. You're going down roads following kind of the track of the tornado, because it was so evident where it had gone. And yeah, you are just going to see. And who's in this house. Hey, can we help? There's trees down in your yard. It's blocking your driveway. Let us cut this. Your car can get out and we're just going up and down. Help! And we do this for for probably 24 to 48 hours. It was somewhere in that gap before the first individual showed up from the government. They pull up in this vehicle. They have this white big truck they have on this vest. They get out and they say, okay, we need everybody to leave. Y'all clear the scene. And we're like, who were you? Right? You showed up and you're not here are the crew. You're not helping. What are you doing? And they said, yeah, nobody can nobody can do any work anymore. And we all look at I'm like, you know, he's got a either like a cyclops with one eye in the center of his head or like he's got to head, something is wrong with this person, and he starts giving us a rundown. And this is I actually had to to leave to go and do an event. So I left. And this is where Tim Brooks had to deal with these people, as they're telling them, they can't even on on their own estate, on their own property. They couldn't even do some basic things like tree removal, whatever it might be, because now it's all under control of the federal government and FEMA, which is just absolutely insane. 

Rick Green [00:06:09] I did not remember that you were there, Tim. I have told that story so many times about Tim Brooks because it is such a perfect example. And then the other one I thought of was, was North Carolina, because, you know, we saw the failure FEMA with all that. And and then you saw all these churches and all these ministries and our friend Steve Maxwell at CDF, I mean, I don't know how many truckloads of help he sent in and got other businesses to help him with helicopters. They sent in helicopter fuel they sent in. And then all of a sudden, I think Congress announced 20 billion. This was back like October, November. I can't remember when. This is before. Biden was helping them much at all. But Congress essentially found 20, 20 billion help. And when I heard that number, I thought, are you kidding me? Most of that's going to be wasted. Can you imagine if the taxpayers have been able to keep that 20 billion for themselves? How many more truckloads and how many more helicopters and how much faster it could have got there if you just had FEMA out of the picture completely. Which is exactly what you were saying, David, which is you know what, Kristi Noem one was talking about. And I think the failure of government over the last few years is really helping people to see or as we talked about yesterday in our foundation's program, all the waste and all the dodges uncovering. It's helping people to see what what David, you wrote about this in 2008, I believe it was in the Obama McCain election because pastors were saying, well, I just want the government to take care of the poor. And your point and no, no, no, no, the church and individual was supposed to take care of the poor. And you use that study that shows twice as much money gets to the person in need. When you let private and churches and, and philanthropic groups and individuals do it. And so I think, I think that, you know, people just couldn't see that for so long. And now they're seeing how bad it is when government does it, and they're waking up and realizing, you know what, we don't need government to do all this. We need to ask our neighbors and be a part of the solution ourselves. So really, really a piece of good piece of good news. Okay. Tim, your first piece of good news today. 

Tim Barton [00:08:00] Well, this kind of follows along the same theme. This is dealing with OPM. It says 75,000 workers took Trump and Musk's government buyout. For those that that might not remember, President Trump offered federal employees a buyout, which in this buyout they were offered eight months of pay and full benefits, eight months if they would submit a resignation, right. If they would quit. Go find a new job. We will pay you eight months to leave, which is an amazing bonus. Any and all the benefits. Incredible. And they had 75,000 people. Take them up on this now. When I first saw that, I thought that is a huge number, but that I remember yesterday you were talking about like 3 million people that work for the federal government. So 75,000, not that big. This number on this article, it identified it was 3.75% of the nation's 2 million federal employees. Now, this is employees that are part of the United States Office of Personnel Management. So the OPM and so and maybe with contract and whoever else that number could be a lot bigger up to that 3 million because online it's kind of an agreed upon number. It's a little over 3 million people that work for the federal government. But this was identifying that, that that it looked like 2 million people that work for OPM or something around that. And again, I don't know how all these numbers are broken down, but 75,000 does seem like a very big number to you realize Trump was trying to get 5 to 10% and this was 3.75%, which as we're talking about, even so much of the waste and FEMA yesterday we talked about a lot of the waste, what DOJ's doing and oversight and accountability and being able to identify all of the waste and the fraud and the abuse happening. The more the more people you hire and the more layers you have in your bureaucracy, when you have more layers of management and more layers all the way down to the people who are actually doing the work, there's there are more opportunities for waste and fraud to happen. And so seeing that 75,000 workers took up Trump on this is very encouraging to me. And it did raise an interesting question in my mind of how many of these were people that maybe were Trump supporters and. Right. Was there a balance? Were these all people that hated Trump, or were there some like, you know what, I agree. We should shrink this. Let me get out of the way. I'll go private and do something private. I'm just curious if there would be a way to find a breakdown. Although we know probably the vast majority of people that are working federal government are probably aligned on the Democrat side. And the article highlights again, another thing I think is interesting is that unions were telling the federal workers not to take the deal. They cautioned employees. This is too much of an unusual offer, don't trust it. Which it just seems like, okay, so you want the waste and the fraud, the abuse. You get the bureaucracy to be there. The government is. And this is part of what the article says. The government is currently only funded through March, raising concerns... And when I read this again, like kind of an interesting thought on the checklist, it raises the concerns over whether funding needed to pay the 75,000 people there, eight months worth of benefits and salary, if that will be there, because if not, it could violate the Anti Efficiency Act, which bars the government for spending beyond what is dictated in its budget and requires its use, federal funding as intended. So this is just one of those interesting things, as we might talk about. Right. Is there going to be a government shutdown and would Democrats want that to happen? Would that be better or worse for Republicans for Trump? But this is where there could be maybe even some of those unintended consequences, side effects that if there is a government shutdown, if there's not a budget deal that is done, then it could even impact the 75,000. But as as these unions were trying to block what was going on. Also good news a federal judge rejected a union call to block the program, finding they did not have standing to sue, meaning the president can offer you a bonus for your resignation. Totally legal. Doesn't violate any statutes. Overall, I think this is a really good news that we do have a president trying to shrink the federal government, and he is making progress making headwinds. And in this just this alone, 75,000 individuals that have agreed to this deal is already really good news. 

David Barton [00:12:27] And I'm going to jump on that and say, I think the good news is still with what's yet to come. And I was thinking about this or I don't know how much these folks got in the buyout, but they get the eight months and they're also not required to show up and work anymore, so they can take the whatever months they have left and not have to work in that time and go get a different job. And so you look at it, and we know that the average government employee gets 161% more than the average American employee. So these guys are already getting paid higher. I don't know what it is. Let's say they get 200 or 250,000 a year. I don't know if that's reasonable or not, but that's higher than the average Americans going to work and, you know, 1.61 times more. So let's say they get 200,000 a year. But what is done here? That's a lot of money. 75,000 people going to get a $200,000 back. But what he's done is some of those folks could be working for the next ten, 15, 20 years. What he's done is he's just saved you 200,000 a year on that person for the next ten, 15 years, because they're going to disappear and nobody's going to notice that the government services are any different than what they have been. We got a 75,000, 3.75% tip, said bond out of the employee staff. You're not going to notice any difference in services. But what you've done is you take in ten, 15, 20 years of that annual amount and reduce it. He has saved untold billions of dollars by doing that. 

Tim Barton [00:13:50] And dad, I'm looking this up. As you were saying it, it looks like the average is about 100,000 to 120,000 is the average for a federal employee. But you're talking about. That's the average for 3 million people. So you're definitely going to have some that are well above the average and some that are below the average, but the average is 100, 120,000, which certainly is far below, beyond and above what the average American makes. 

Rick Green [00:14:17] Yeah, David, I was thinking the exact same thing when it, when when they first started talking about this. Like why would you give anybody that much of a payout, especially federal workers that have been working from home. And we all probably imagine not doing a whole lot of work, but I think the exact same way is the best way to get to the end result, which is they're off the payroll in eight months and, you know, or the money spent now, but they wouldn't have been off the payroll at the end of the year. I do have to ask you guys, there's we're going to break. Maybe we can look it up and see and maybe, you know, off the top of your head. I've seen some posts saying that Clinton and Gore, I do remember them saying the era of big government is over. Remember how that was a big thing with them? And apparently they cut 3 or 400,000 federal jobs in their effort to shrink the size of the federal government. So it's kind of interesting if that's if that's true. We'll look when we're on the break here. We'll see. But if that's true, what hypocrites the Democrat Party are to be acting like, you know, Donald Trump. So even if we're getting rid of 75,000 jobs. If Bill Clinton and Al Gore got rid of, you know, what would it be, 4 or 5 times that? Anyway, quick break. We'll be back. We've got more good news for you when we return here on the Wallbuilders show. 

Rick Green [00:16:26] Welcome back. Thanks for staying with us here on the Wallbuilders show. It's good news Friday. We're getting to as many of those pieces of good news as we can. And yes, in that very short 62nd break, we quickly did a little fact check. And apparently the person that ran that for Bill Clinton back then was named Elaine Kamarck. If I'm pronouncing that right, and she claims that they eliminated 426,200 federal roles between January 93 and September 2000. So it's I mean, you know, it's not like, you know, balancing the budget and actually trying to have the right number of people to accomplish the task instead of four times that many is a new idea. It's just the first time it's happened in 30 years, and it just so happens it was a Democrat that was doing it 30 years ago. But you're not gonna hear that out of the Democrats. All right, David, what's your next piece of good news? 

David Barton [00:17:15] It deals the vice president, J.D. Vance, and I have been real curious about J.D. Vance and how how he was going to perform or what he was going to allow to be done. You go all the way back to to John Adams, the first vice president, and he said, then vice president is not worth a warm bucket of spit. So that was his analysis because vice president really doesn't do anything. And so my curiosity was, is Vance going to do anything? Is he going to be allowed to do anything? Is he going to take it on his own initiative? Because oftentimes what you see is the vice president carries water for the president on certain. And this is a president's doing, but he doesn't kind of get off the reservation and go do things on his own or carry messages on his own or anything else. And so I guess the big, the first real big international presence of Vance  was last week when he was over in, in Germany. And it was at an annual meeting they've had since the end of World War two. So World War two ends in 1945. Germany has now been taken out of the scene and all the other European nations get together. And so they call this the Munich Security Conference. And so every year they they have this. It's where all the European nations come together and they say, what does it look like for Europe? What would it be doing for Europe? What, what what do we need to watch in Europe. And Vance spoke there as is, is you know, that's reasonable to imagine. You remember back Trump and his first term started making all the European nations start paying more to NATO because the US was carrying so much the economic burden of what Europe was doing, defending Europe. And he made them pay their own way. And so he's still making that happen. And so there's- America has a big presence in Europe, and we have had because of what we've done, we still have because of international stuff, even as we say, you know, Trump weighed in in that war, this go on over on the eastern side of Europe with Russia and Ukraine. So that's gets ahead. And he really took on the Europeans and he called them out and he actually criticized them openly, so much so that some of the national leaders were booing him, do it during a speech and contradicting him publicly and openly during his speech. And so what he did was he challenged Europe. 

Tim Barton [00:19:33] Now I just just just out of curiosity because I know where you're going to go with this, but but if they if they publicly criticized him, I would like to turn them in to the authorities over there because because if. 

Rick Green [00:19:46] You're to. 

Tim Barton [00:19:46] Criticize somebody, I mean, that's that they, they don't look highly or not. Not to interrupt because I hate speech. 

Rick Green [00:19:54] Your goal is that hate speech. Is that what you're saying? 

Tim Barton [00:19:56] Yeah. I, I don't mean to derail the main point you're about to make, I just see some ironic hypocrisy in what happened. Anyway, I know, not that I guess I turn it back to you. 

David Barton [00:20:08] It's interesting because, Tim, the point you made, actually, I hadn't thought of it, proves the point that Vance Barnes was trying to make. On how intolerant they become of free speech and how really militaristic they become, and trying to limit things. They criticize them. And so he was talking to them about their heritage. And Europe used to be a place of freedom. And so, you know, so much of the freedom we have in America came out of the good guys in Europe that were trying to have freedom in Europe. And so he talked about how that, that Europe used to use to protect religious expression. Europe used to be a very religious oriented continent. They were for free speech and all these democratic ideals that we've had. And so Vance really took them on and went directly after them. And he noted that in Europe now they have gone into the wokeness and they're arresting conservatives are arresting conservative voices are investigating them. They're prosecuting them. They're finding them. If they have the wrong view on abortion or immigration, or if they express something on social media, they're getting arrested and fined and jailed. I saw just this week, a guy in Scotland stood outside an abortion clinic and prayed silently. And I saw the video and the cops one time said, are you praying silently? He said, yes, I am. And he got arrested because he admitted he was praying silently, but he was doing an outside abortion clinic. 

Tim Barton [00:21:28] That's you that I think that re-aired this week. I think it actually was something that happened, not this week earlier. Nonetheless, it is very clear indication of the hostility of of what is happening over in Europe with so much of they don't understand how much they're embracing a communist Marxist ideology. And some might say it's socialism, but I mean, all those are so intertwined. On some level they are very different, but they have very common grounds. Nonetheless, intolerance is certainly something that is prevalent in it, and it's something that we are seeing all over Europe and specifically in one direction, and some of them for just if they're retweeting something. Right. If if they're just sharing a meme, it's it maybe it's not even something they're expressing. They thought, oh, this is funny, I'm going to share it. It's not going to be long before you can't even like what's there. And what's ironic is there are people over in Germany, for example, that are saying how sad it is right now that half of their country is afraid to share their political position. It's because of all the hate online. No. Maybe it's because you're arresting people for sharing their opinion online. Maybe that's what it is, but they don't see the hypocrisy of what they're saying. That people are scared to post their beliefs online. And you're saying is because that there's too much hate online, as opposed to the fact you're arresting people for sharing their view if it doesn't align with what you are defining as good speech in whatever Orwellian state, your image of what JD Vance was making the point of in the first place. 

David Barton [00:23:00] And the part that that absolutely shocked me is I had no clue that the European Union right now has censorship mandates on social media if it comes from the United States. And so they're literally not allowing free speech from the United States and criticism of the European Union to even be posted in Europe. And that's I mean, that's that's back to the Hitler kind of days, and that's back to the Stalinist kind of days. And so Vance took them on about it. And what I thought was really, really interesting was German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. He disputed Vance's statement publicly, saying, it's very clear that the new American administration holds a worldview that's different from ours in Europe and Boris Pistorius, who's their defense minister, he said in the speech, and kept interrupting Vance with cries of no, no, that's wrong. And so these guys are so woke and so out there. They make our our college professors over here look pretty conservative. I guess when you look at what they're doing because they literally are shutting it down. But I was so proud of Vance for getting out there and taking a stance. And I guess I got to say that for Trump, too, because he he didn't write him in. He supported it and he acted like Vance had done it on its own. And I'm just really glad to see a vice president with that kind of boldness on something this big, taking on the wokeness and being willing to be criticized for not backing down. 

Rick Green [00:24:23] Likely a sign of even more good things to come from Vice President Vance. Tim, we got a few minutes left. You got a quick good news Friday to close us out with today? 

Tim Barton [00:24:30] Yeah. This one, the title of the article says DOGE makes cuts to education departments, a research arm totaling more than $900 million. And they're going through a breakdown. What they identified, among other things, is they canceled 89 Institute for Education Sciences multi-year contracts totaling $900 million and 29 contracts related to diversity, equity and inclusion training and education totaling $101 million. Of course, people are losing their minds that they would be stopping these. And actually, there's levels of irony. There's a Democrat senator who actually argued that we will lose education because we're not funding these basic things. She said every kid deserves a great public education, and that can't happen without these. She's a nonpartisan research and data to understand what's working, what needs to be fixed. But she was saying it in regard to what they were cutting. And the idea that we need all of this work that's happening for this nearly $1 billion in spending is crazy. But certainly when you understand what President Trump has said that repeatedly, he's acknowledged she wants to dismantle the Department of Education. And he also, through an executive order, noted that any schools or education agencies that maintain Dei programs, they would no longer be eligible for federal funding. So he's been very, very clear on this and has even other people pointed out Neil McCluskey, I think, is how you say his last name. He's director of Cato Institute Center for Educational Freedom, and he had previously said that all of the Department of Education functions that are important could easily be absorbed by other federal agencies. So anybody that really cares about some of these functions, the ones that are working, can still be utilized. But to remove the waste is always really good news. And now it looks like nearly $1 billion is being removed from waste in the Department of Education. And that's great news. 

Rick Green [00:26:29] So much good news. Today, guys, I know we've got a lot more. We will get to it next week. Don't miss our interviews early in the week and then Foundations of Freedom Thursday again next week and Good News Friday as well. But there's a lot more on our website. Be sure to visit that Wallbuilders Dot show. Thanks so much for listening to the WallBuilders Show.