Rick Green [00:00:07] Welcome to the intersection of faith and culture. Thanks for joining us on this amazing Thursday. It's foundations of freedom Thursday here at WallBuilders. So it's a chance to hit some of those foundational topics. It was a founder by the name of George Mason said that no free government nor the blessings of Liberty can be preserved in any people, but by a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles. And so we do foundational principles on Thursday. So if you've got any questions about application of those principles or celebration of the 250th, the declaration coming up, maybe you want to talk about some of the principles, constitution questions, history questions, Bible questions, whatever you got. Send them in radio@wallbuilders.com that's radio@wallbuilds.com Rick Green here with David Barton and Tim Barton. And guys, I'll just jump right in, man. First one's coming from Andrew. He said, president Trump's invoking his authority under the international emergency economic powers act of 1977 IEEPA to implement tariffs. Is this constitutional? Well guys, i'm already learning something from the question. I didn't realize that that's the act that gave the president the ability to do a tariff without Congress. It makes sense now to know that there had to be one back there somewhere because otherwise, you know, you'd have to wait on Congress to do the tariff. So I guess y'all know much about this, this 77 act? Is it a blanket tariff authority for the president? 

David Barton [00:01:22] I don't know much about the act, but I know something about the way Trump is using these old laws, and I'm really impressed with it. And going back to an interview we had last week where we were talking, or actually two weeks ago now, with Bill Federer and how the tariffs were really the heart of economics for the federal government until after really World War II. I've been really impressed with how Trump has been able to say, here's what needs to be done, what laws are on the books that are supposed to do this? Going all the way back to immigration, that the 1798 law that he did, the, the alien, the alien enemies act, you know, he started using that to support people. And so what I have seen him do is he's going back and finding laws that are already on the books that already cover what he wants to be enforcing that have already been passed by Congress, already been signed by president, that this is what America is supposed to do. And he's resurrecting those old ignored laws and literally they are ignored. And so It's not that he's doing anything new, it's that he is going back and finding things that haven't been enforced and just started enforcing them. That's what really impressed me about what he's doing with tariffs as well. He's goin' back to the old stuff. 

Tim Barton [00:02:35] Well, and this is where, to me, it also reminds me where, was it his,  inaugural address or was it, his address to Congress? I don't remember which one at this point, maybe the address of Congress when he says, you know, Joe Biden kept saying we needed laws to control the border turns out all we needed was a new president, right? Where people have defaulted to saying, we need all this extra help. And one of the brilliances that's your point of what Trump has done is he's identified the laws are already there. Let's just start using the laws that have already been passed. Instead of just passing more and more and more laws, you've dad alluded to this so many times. I, and then on the program, we've talked about it many times at the book, three felonies a day that there are so many laws in place that the average American, just on a daily basis, we are committing felonys by doing oftentimes very normal, natural things. But so many laws have been passed. And at this point, most people don't even know what laws have been passed, and that's why sometimes we're committing felonies, not even knowing it at one of the ones that you pointed out before is like having a pair of pliers in your back pocket in certain towns, right? Is a felony because that may be back in the day, they thought, well, you're here to cut wire and you're a cattle rustler, whatever it might have been again, the point is that some people think we need new laws to solve problems and president Trump and his creative outside the box Thinking is sad. We've passed so many laws already. Let's just go see what laws have been passed and let's enforce the laws that we need to resolve these problems. And that's part of the brilliance of what we see in this presidency up to this point. 

Rick Green [00:04:15] When they started quoting from this alien enemies act, I nearly fell out of my chair. I was like, okay, I want to know who in the white house found this and came up with this strategy because I want shake their hand because unless you've listened to David Barton's war on radical Islamic terrorism, you know, or you've listened to WallBuilders Radio show for a while and you've heard us talk about the first war against radical Islam, or, you've heard us talked about, the whole, you know, alien and sedition acts and the Jefferson versus Adams and free speech and, and just all of those, I mean, 99.999% of America has never heard of any of that. And then here comes the president pulling this thing out of what felt like thin air and I was thinking, okay, I don't know who this was. I bet we know him. It's probably somebody that we know, whoever you are. Thank you. Thank you, thank you. We'll send you a cookie because this was absolutely brilliant. So I think you're right, David. I think it's so good to go back and find some of these that are already on the books and to your point, Tim, I can literally remember being nervous about where to file stuff in my filing cabinet because I'm thinking, I'm sure I'm breaking some IRS law by not having this with these papers or supposed to be over here with those papers or if I destroy this paper, I am going to be in trouble. It's so absurd how many laws are on the book. So yeah, this is pretty cool and I'm not familiar with that tariff one. Maybe we might be able to get a Federer back or something. 

David Barton [00:05:32] To talk about it, but I think there's some assumptions I would make with the tariff one and going to what both you guys said. What I think is remarkable about this is I don't know who the librarian is, the archivist or who they dug into, who was able to go back and go through existing laws. But, you know, we started the question is that 1977 tariff law constitutional? Well, I'm going to say, I don t know for sure, but I am going to says been on the books for 48 years has not been struck down by any previous court. And I've got to think that in the couple of generations we've most recently had, where we're super litigious, if there had been something that was really setting people off and they thought it was philosophically bad, I think that thing would have been in court and I think there would have been some kind of decision by the Supreme Court. And I think Trump would not have picked it up to use it. And that's the other thing about the way he's used it. It's not like he's taking some law and reading it with his face contorted in some direction, he's looking to the East Point to the way. It's not like he's twisting the law to say something he wants it to say. He's gone back and picked up laws that say exactly what they say and he said this is what it says and we're just going to enforce what the law already says. So I have not looked specifically at that act but I'm going to say that I think the chances are about 99 out of 100 that it's not unconstitutional just the track record we have of the way he's been doing this and the fact that hasn't been litigated in 48 years. 

Tim Barton [00:06:59] Well, and I want to go back and remind and reiterate one of the things that Solomon said, Ecclesiastes, there's nothing new under the sun. There we go. A lot of times we think we're dealing with brand new problems. And although there might be some details and nuances that are unique for our situation where we are in 2025 in America, the reality is that there there have been all kinds of issues in our nation's past and there've been legislative solutions at times to help resolve those. And so, Dad, again, to your point... Trump is not trying to make the law say something it doesn't say. He has people on his team that are going, okay, when was this dealt with? How do they do it? What laws are they passed and can we use those today? And they're literally finding laws that are already on the books that dealt with many of the problems that he's dealing with and navigating and saying, let's just enforce the law that was passed all those years ago to solve this problem again, part of the brilliance of what they've been doing up to this point. 

Rick Green [00:07:56] Yeah, good stuff. Good stuff. Second question comes from Beverly. She said, I live in the central coast of California. Our small community, Arroyo Grande. I don't know if that's how you say it or not. Isn't that a singer or anyway? Okay, that was a little bit funny, not a lot funny, but a little bit is facing a school board. 

Tim Barton [00:08:15] I chuckled. 

Rick Green [00:08:15] Thanks, Tim. 

David Barton [00:08:16] It's actually funny. You think it's funny is the funny part of it. 

Rick Green [00:08:20] I'm I'm past dad jokes, man. It's a grandpa jokes now for me. Uh, is facing a school board that is currently allowing a boy who identifies as a girl competing in girl sports and using the girls locker room and bathrooms. This is causing psychological trauma to the girls and must be stopped. My question to you, how do I calmly and directly state my views against this evil ideology? I love your show and your endless dedication to educate Americans on why America is so great. Beverly, first of all, thank you for sending in the question. And thank you for first of all acknowledging the evil that, that is being, you know, perpetrated in your, in your community. And then for having the courage to even ask, what can I do and how should I do it? So really, really appreciate you sending that in. 

David Barton [00:09:00] You know, on this one, Rick, this one got me going. It's a great question. It's something that's been going across the nation for several years. Some states have been much more successful. Some communities more successful, but there's been a lot of lessons learned on how to articulate and deal with this. But literally, this question got me goin', and I see four different levels of answers here, because you're trying to deal with a problem on the school board, and I think we start with answering her question simply. But then saying, hey, there's a second solution and third solution and a fourth solution for what she's really trying to get at. And that's a change in what goes on. So how does she articulate it? I would go back knowing where you are in California and knowing where most parts of California are. Not that everything in California is liberal, they're not, there a lot less conservatives there than there used to be, because they're all moving to the east some direction. But nonetheless, there still a lot of conservatives and still some conservative towns to the city councils. And school boards for that matter. But what you're dealing with in this situation is a fairly hostile audience when it comes to articulating biblical values, biblical principles, beliefs that God said there's a man and a woman. You're in a pretty hostile climate. So something that we covered literally a while back is called thinking biblically, speaking secularly. And you find that in that situation in the book of Acts where Paul is out bringing the gospel to people who may have never heard biblical teachings before or they're opposed to what Paul stands for, they disagree with him, they think he's a cult or a heresy, he's trying to subvert religion or whatever it is. What you find is, I think in the book of Acts there were 11 times when he addressed some group publicly. If he was in a synagogue, he quoted the scriptures. If he was not in his synagogue, he did not quote the scriptures as in Acts 17. Where he was on Mars Hill. And he said, you know, I'll look around you and I see your idol over here says to the unknown God. I wonder if you know who that is. I wonder, and he started talking about the unknown God. And then he says, you now some of your own poets have said, and they said, hey, the Cressions you know how the Cressions are. And he started taking all the things in their culture that they understood and talking about that. And you won't find him using the scriptures outside of the synagogue. And so what happens a lot of times is Christians walk into secular areas and try to act like they're in Sunday school and start talking with Sunday school language and Sunday school lessons and Sunday School values. And that literally is not a biblical thing to do, I would say. And so what happens is people say, oh, you're compromising. Jesus said not to hide your light under a basket and you're doing that by not proclaiming the gospel. No, no, no. That's not what it is at all. In the scriptures it talks about being a Jew to the Jew, a Greek to the Greeks, a Roman to the Roman, whatever. You got to communicate with people. And that's the biggest starting place is communication. And they're not going to listen if the first thing you do is trigger them and sit them off where you don't even have a conversation. That's where politics has gone today. We can't have conversations because we're all triggered by stuff. So that's, the first you need to do is go in and get some reasonable things, maybe get some medical studies or psychological stuff, or maybe even polling, you know, 79% of the nation now is doing this. And that's Democrats and Republicans and independents. You know, there's all these ways of looking at it. 

Tim Barton [00:12:29] Hey, dad, just to clarify, so 70% of the nation is doing, you mean opposing what's happinging? 

David Barton [00:12:35] Good clarification. 79 to 80% of the nation, depending on which poll is opposing the direction that Democrat Party and schools and other things are going on eliminating genders. 79 to 85% of nation thinks that there is two genders and you should respect those genders and respect gender differences. And so that's, you know, that's even in the blue states and you're hearing people like Gavin Newsom even start saying, hey, the Democrats gotta have, sit down and have a conversation on this because we're out of touch with where the people are. And so, you know, that's one way to go at it. Now, so you got to help educate the board some, have a rational conversation. You have to take what they know and move from what they know to what they don't know. You can't start with where you want them to end. You have start with where they are and move them to where they need to be. So that's the first thing. The second thing that I would say is, you need to get others to join with you so that you have more than one voice. As the Bible often says, that's confirmed in the mouth of two or three witnesses. If you go and speak, you've gone unspoken, but if you have 18 more people that all have a different perspective that reached the same conclusion, and they're not all ranting and yelling and raving, and they not all repeating everything you said, like it's a stereotype, but they're all different people expressing the same general concern in different terms, that becomes a pressure on the school board, because they can dismiss you individually. It's harder to dismiss a group that's saying the same thing and, you know, they're not all reading off the same page. So even getting students to testify, have the students say, hey, this is really bad, but man, this, this trauma, I may never overcome if you do this. Why are you not respecting my rights? Why are only respecting the rights of this group here? And so get students involved in it, get people to write editorials, get them to call into media programs or post things on social media. And not the ranting and raping kind of stuff, just the rational stuff that said, this is so out of step. So the second thing is build a little group of voices doing that. And then the third thing is, if you can't get them to change their opinion, you got to remove them. Now we're talking about some political stuff. This is where you need to get Moms for America or Moms for Liberty and start saying, okay, we got an election coming up in 15 months. We need to start working on this right now. And we're not gonna make this polarized, we're gonna get the community all riled up and angry, we're just gonna go recruit some good people with solid values that communicate well, that are not polarizing, they're respected, liked in the community, and we are gonna run them for school board, and we gonna start organizing in that direction, and so that'd be the third step, and the fourth step is look, if none of that works, it's time to move your kid to a different system. You can't leave your kid sitting in a system like that where they're going to lose their soul. You know, as scripture says, what does it profit a man? If he gains the whole world, loses his soul. You know you don't sacrifice your kids because you want to make a point or because there's no other options. There are other options, even if it's you have to get two jobs and you homeschool when you get home from the second job at night. You know whatever it is, you can find ways to do it. Ask Susanna Wesley who raised what is 19 kids including John Wesley and had life on the farm and everything else. I mean, it can be done. The answer to that question to me, there's several levels of that. And how far are you prepared to go? So again, it's thinking biblically, speaking secularly, communicating with what they know, take them from what they do know to what they don't know, leave the emotions out of it, be rational. Second thing is get others to start saying the same thing. Get it in the mouth of two or three witnesses, get kids to testify as well. The third thing is start replacing board members if that's what you need to do and don't polarize it and make it radical. Get people that are respected in the community. And the fourth thing is you gotta protect your kids. Get them out of that system, get them somewhere else where they're not gonna get corrupted on stuff that they'll lose their soul over. 

Tim Barton [00:16:40] I would also add, dad, with all four of those things, there's also a strategy in figuring out, are you in a place where you have to address the whole board or can you have a conversation with a board member? Because this is also where oftentimes we see this with state legislatures. We, at times, go and testify in committee. At times, we're testifying as expert witnesses on American history, but then we are people after us come up and give testimony. And we see the legislators eyes just glaze over and they're like, okay, say your thing, say you're two minutes and leave. And I think a lot of that happens at times of school boards where they're used to people coming in and saying things and they ignore it and they don't pay attention and you do your thing and then you leave. And so even if you have some good thoughts, it doesn't always mean it's going to be an engaging conversation or you're be able to connect with a school board. And so having, having personal conversations is always better if you and the strategy that Jesus used, we talked about often, is ask questions. I would genuinely not like trick trap questions, but some basic questions. So how do we determine what's best for the students? How do we determined for you as you're measuring this, how are you determining what's right and wrong as you trying to make decisions? And if it's okay, I mean, obviously we're, you kind of walk this path with them, but then I would give them potentially, The logical conclusion, although it could be extreme, the logical conclusion of where their thought base is going. Because if their idea is that, well, there's a biological male, but he feels like a girl in this moment, he identifies the girl, wears the dress of the girl. Then he should be allowed in the girl's locker room. Do we feel that way about the male coaches, right? How would you feel if you had a daughter and the male coach is like, you know what, today I'm wearing a dress. I feel like a girls. I'm going to the girl's locker room, the girl's shower, the girl's bathroom. What would you fill differently? So is is in your mind, is it okay if they're 17, but not okay if there are 36, right? Like, how are you determining the boundaries of what's acceptable and what's not? And part of why that matters is, once we find out how they're determining right and wrong, you can have a more honest conversation, but asking a lot of questions, logical questions, taking some of their positions to the logical conclusions, at times helps them realize, Not just how inconsistent but also how inadequate some of their logic is in applying these standards. 

David Barton [00:19:12] Great point. Yeah, that is really, really great point. Building relationships outside of public meetings and asking those kind of questions. And that's not an attack mode, but genuinely asking questions they may never have thought about before because they're so used to just repeating the soundbites. Great stuff. 

Rick Green [00:19:31] Guys, I think you just gave a master class on on how to deal with these things. So it's a great question. I think people should share this program. And then, of course, we have a new course that's going to come out July 4th. We're going to be talking action steps to and connecting people on on doing a lot of these things, so everything you just laid out, man, we need to make sure that we're teaching that all over the all over the country. Very, very good. Quick break. We've got more questions coming from the audience. When we return, you're listening to The WallBuilders Show. 

Rick Green [00:21:02] Welcome back, thanks for staying with us here on the Wall Builder Show Foundations of Freedom Thursday. And the next question is coming from John. He said, uh, dear wall builders, the recent shows with Bob McEwen and Bill Federer were incredibly enlightening and answered questions I've had about taxes and economics for a long time. I was very intrigued to hear about President Kennedy's statements in regard to the income tax. It seems to me that Kennedy, despite his personal immorality, was an agent of change that Trump is also seeking to be, and the establishment was not very happy about it, hence leading to assassination attempts. My question is, what exactly does the establishment have to lose by Trump being successful? It seems that there is a certain mystery of evil behind the veil that is profiting where they should not be. Thanks for taking my question. John, great questions. Thanks for sending it in, and we appreciate you listening. Be sure and share those programs with Bob McEwin and Bill Federer. Honestly, everybody, listen five days a week because you're going to learn something every day. I love getting to host this program because I learn every single day. There's something in every program where I go, whoa, I didn't know that. I mean, that's just good stuff. We're sharpening each other's countenance. So listen as often as you can. Okay guys, so what the question really is who's got, you know, who, I guess, and what do they have to gain for, for Trump to not be successful? And maybe it's a lot of the DOGE stuff and a lot of the things that Elon's pointing out. I mean there's a  lot people on the take right now. 

David Barton [00:22:19] You know, go back to biblical teaching. We live in a world where we see what we see and we don't see what we don' see and what we don't see is more important than what we do see. And that's why we're told in Ephesians that. 

Rick Green [00:22:31] I feel like Dr. Seuss just took over our program. 

David Barton [00:22:33] That's right. That's all right. Good. Yep. This goes to where the epistles were teaching that, look, you don't fight against flesh and blood. You fight against principalities and powers, spiritual worked in us and we're not thinking about all the demons and all the angels and all this stuff that's going and how they manipulate people and people give themselves over to be an agent for God or an agent of the enemy. I mean, look at Jesus. If Jesus got everything He wanted when He was on earth, would the earth be a better Who would suffer if Jesus got what He wanted to do? Why did people oppose Jesus? He had nothing but their best interests at heart. Everything he wanted done would have helped every single person on earth and yet they kill him over what he wants done And it's not that he wanted bad stuff. Why did they do that? Because you've got love of money. You got love a power. You've got all sorts of motivations that are always going to cancel that stuff out you know, you know spiritual leaders that didn't want to lose their power in their position you had civil leaders who didn't wanna be challenged in their authority and you had the money stuff that that the tax collectors and other that didn't want to lose their income. All Jesus did was wanted good for everybody and they killed a dude. Why? Well, of course, that's part of God's plan for our salvation. But nonetheless, Trump's got the same thing. Kennedy had the same thing. There are always going to be people who don't want to lose the power in Washington, D.C., who don' t want to looe their source of income, their money, who don t want lose their ability to control everybody else. And they don't care whether it's a Democrat or Republican in power because they have that love of money, that love of power. There are spiritual, again, back to Ephesians six, spiritual wickedness in high places. And that exists, I'll tell you, that exists just as much at the local level as it does at the federal level. It's just that you have the different fights on the different levels. So that's the kind of thing. What do they have to gain? Nothing that you're really gonna make sense and point to and say, this is why they do it. It really is a spiritual battle and there are people motivated to do the wrong thing because they listen to the wrong voices in their head and their heart. And they're just, they're not after the good of people. And it's hard for Americans to understand that some people inherently are wicked and evil and inherently want to injure others because we're always expecting the best of everybody. That's just where we're raised. That's not the way it works. 

Rick Green [00:24:57] Yeah, and you know, David, there's probably also, I mean, I think all of that is 100% true. And then there's those who are just knee-jerk reaction, wanting him not to succeed because they were so opposed to him that his success would mean they were wrong. And so they, you see it in a lot of the interviews or a lot are you listening right now, you've had conversations with family member, others in your, you ask them why they don't want Trump to succeed or why they're against DOGE uncovering this stuff and they're just mad and they can't explain why they just don't Trump to win. 

Tim Barton [00:25:27] Well, and I think some of it, too. Has been so framed by the other side that Trump winning means that Nazis are winning. 

Rick Green [00:25:34] Right, right, right. 

Tim Barton [00:25:37] That evil is winning, and so they've redefined, I mean, very Orwellian in 1984, right? They're, they're changing the definition of words, but they're redefining what success is and what it looks like. And if Trump wins and they think evil is succeeding, and so I think some of them are good hearted. They're just so deceived and misled of such bad information and I think there's being swayed at there's a whole spectrum of this, right, but I think some people. Genuinely have just bought into the narrative that Trump is bad therefore if he succeeds bad is winning and they don't want bad to win 

Rick Green [00:26:11] Well, it's a good thing it's not bad and that I'm not tired of winning. So we're going to keep winning lots of good news for us to share with you tomorrow so you don't want to miss our Friday program. And if for some reason you do miss it, you can always go to wallbuilders.show wallbuilder.show is our radio site. You can catch up on some of those programs, but be sure to share today's program. I'm, not kidding about that being a master class. I mean, those, those answers are the kind of thing you want to get in the hands of your friends and family because other school districts are dealing with the same thing. And you know, people across the country are fighting that same battle so get them those tips. Thanks so much for listening today. You've been listening to The WallBuilders Show.