Rick Green [00:00:07] It's Friday, folks. Thanks for joining us on the WallBuilders Show for a Friday. We love Good News Friday around here. David and Tim Barton have been collecting good news stories over the last couple of weeks, and they're going to share as many as we can possibly get to today. I'm Rick Green. Thank you for joining us. Wallbuilders.show is our radio website, where you can get more good news since we will not get it all in today and you'll just be yearning for more going into your weekend. So, check it out today at wallbuilders.show and then our regular website, wallbuilders.com. David and Tim? I'll keep it short because I want to hear some good news. David, what's the first piece of good news today? 

David Barton [00:00:39] Well, it deals with some international relations going on, obviously, with everything happening in Iran and Middle East have been hot spot from Gaza, Iran, Lebanon, to Jordan, everything else. And so, this one is about Syria and Syria, it's been a little over a year now, maybe coming up on two years where they had a revolution that overthrew their last leader who was a really bad dude. And the guy that came in was really questionable as to whether or not he was going to be any good or not, because he's associated with Al Qaeda and Al Qaeda, if you go back to the War on Terror under George W. Bush, Al Qaeda was, was the ones who came after the Twin Towers. Al Qaeda was the big, big fighters and they were one of the terrorist groups. And so, the question was, all right, this guys from Al Qaeda and this is not going to good, but as he pointed out, and we have mutual friends that, that had talked to him. He said, look, look in our, in our part of the, of Syria, two groups that were always fighting were ISIS and Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda, Al Qaeda was the one that protected us from ISIS and ISIS was the really crazy ones. And so, in that sense, he's connected Al Qaeda simply because they were the ones fighting ISIS and trying to defend the community. So, as it turns out, this guy has a lot more kind of Western leaning views than anybody really suspected. Now back at the time I think Trump and others had understood where he was, but a lot of critics didn't think that Syria could survive or be stable or anything else because, you got an Al Qaeda leader in there. But he's really Western leaning in so many ways. And he's tried to bring some stability. But that's such a goofed up country that it's really hard to bring stability. And so, they he hasn't been able to protect everything. And so, as a result, some ISIS forces went in and tried to free a bunch of the ISIS terrorists that he had in prison. And so, you have all these ISIS terrorists that got freed from prison, escaped because they attacked the prison and, and it's just, it's been a real mess up there. And so, what's happened is, and this is the first time I've heard about this story, but us forces went to Syria and they took all the ISIS prisoners in Syria and then moved them to Iraq. So, you have all of these ISIS terrorist that have been incarcerated in Syria, trying to keep ISIS under control. And of course Iraq, since George W. Bush really freed that country back in the War on Terror, they've been fairly stable as far as stability goes in the Middle East. They've been a fairly stable country. They've an ally. And so, they were willing to accept, and by the way, this is the part that blew me away; there were 5,700 ISIS terrorists being held in Syria, and the US moved all of ISIS terrorists into Iraq where they're not likely to get away and not likely to escape, et cetera. And first off, that blew my mind that there were 5,700 ISIS terrorists incarcerated in Syria trying to keep them off the streets. And ISIS, it's understandable now why ISIS would go in and try to free some of their comrades and get these guys out of prison. But it is significant that Trump took and moved 5, 700 ISIS terrorists to one of our ally countries who will hold them safely. And ISIS is not going to get in there and free those guys to just it's not happening given the current composition of that country. So, I thought that that's really good news to have 5,700 ISIS terrorists who are out of circulation. Now that's not near enough as far as ISIS goes, but that's a huge chunk of change. And you know, again, this was all news to me. I had no idea. I knew about Syria because our buddy has told us about Syria and the leader of Syria trying to move toward the West and the big fights, he's got with all the different factions there. And evidently Trump sees that as well. So, we helped Syria out by moving these terrorists out of Syria, putting them in a much safer place. That's good for America, it's good for the whole world. That's 5700 ISIS terrorists off the streets, that's good for everybody. That to me is a piece of good news story that came out of Trump administration that I was not aware of. 

Rick Green [00:04:56] That is one of the strangest items I think we've ever had, right? Like you have to really understand who the good guys and bad guys are. And the guys that are kind of bad, but they're good in this situation or whatever. Anyway. Yeah. Wow. And Trump again, 4D chess all over the map all over the country, Tim, your first piece of good news. 

Tim Barton [00:05:11] Yeah, well, this article came out highlighting a study from about a month ago, and the title says "Research Proves Children Need Both Mom and Dad in the Home". Now I know this is going to be a mind blower for most of the audience, but I love when research confirms the obvious that culture is denying and rejecting. So, this is according to research from the Journal of Child and Family Studies. What they found is when it comes to raising children, mothers are generally more emotionally available, self-controlled, and responsive to their children to attributes that help children feel accepted and supported. Moms also tend to be more lenient with their children than dads. Fathers, on the other hand, are generally more inclined toward discipline and structure than mothers. That does not mean dads don't enjoy time with their children. In fact, research shows that fathers are more likely to initiate active play with young children and keep them physically active as time goes on. Yet, yes, fathers may show less affection as their children grow older when compared to moms, but they are more to grant the type of autonomy that launches teens into adulthood. Researchers have found that fathers also push their children to take chances and overcome limits. While these traits are not universal, they clearly point to the differences in how mothers and fathers approach parenting. Yet despite these seemingly contradictory attributes, studies find that most couples acknowledge and appreciate the balance men and women bring to the home. Now the study goes on a long time, just continuing to affirm and highlight the things that all of us would have said were obvious and- Well, of course that's the way it is. It's why God didn't just make them male and female. God put a mom and dad over the family, knowing that together they are far better than just having one parent in the home. So that this is one of those pieces of good news that really shouldn't be that big of a news story. But given the cultural climate, rejecting this notion of moms and dads. In fact, guys, it reminds me even earlier in the week. We had a couple of programs with Katie Faust on Them Before Us with the state legislation happened up in Tennessee where people are taking active steps to help try to restore the parental understanding of a mom and dad in the home. This is research affirming that very thing, how much it benefits children when there is a mom and dad in the home. And this is not a mom that identifies the man, a dad that identifies the woman, nope, this is the biological male and female. When a mom, and dad is in the home, it's just better for the kids. 

Rick Green [00:07:54] It just seems like sanity is returning, you know, we're starting to get past some of this crazy-crazy stuff and people are starting to find their minds again. I guess David where we headed next, man? 

David Barton [00:08:05] Well, this one is very near and dear to my heart. It deals with accountability and it deals with educational accountability. It's something we covered at the Pro Family Legislators Conference, I don't know, two, three, four years ago, and it dealt with educational accountability. And it's the kind of thing where, that what we were seeing was kids are going to college, they're coming out of college with a 70, 80, $90,000 debt, and it's taken them a long time to pay off and some of them can't do it because as it turns out, If you graduate from college with a degree, only about 24% of college graduates are able to find a job in the career field in which they're trained. And so, as it turns out, college is not doing a very good job of preparing students for a career in anything at this point. They're unable to get jobs where they are trained and they have to get job elsewhere. And so, their education that they're having is not really beneficial, except for $70,000 to $80,000 debt that they have and no good job to go with it. So as a result what we're seeing is this is becoming such an obvious problem that across the country we're seeing a lot of states start saying okay it's time to start holding professors accountable because you basically have a government welfare job the state's paying for you, you're tenured you can't be fired no matter how stupid you are how stupid the things are that you talk about, we can't get rid of you because you're tenured. And it is really a good news piece to me that we're starting to say, hey, you know what, everybody is accountable and that includes professors. And so, what's happening now is right now, the university tenure reform movement is gaining steam and several states have now said, no more tenure, no more guaranteed jobs, no more guaranteed protection for professors. We're gonna start measuring the results we get. And so many states have already banned DEI that they're saying, okay. If you're still teaching DEI, you got to find another, go to California or somewhere that wants you, but we want people who can actually teach our kids something that'll be useful, that'll get them a job and a career. And so, what we're seeing now, and the latest to come on board is Oklahoma. Oklahoma, and I think there's now, I think eight states have passed that, or seven states, and there's another seven or eight in the middle of doing it. So, it's a growing trend. It's not where it needs to be yet, but the fact that it's even started. It is so hard. The educational lobby, or I don't know, there's probably a much stronger word than that. They're not a lobby. The educational mafia has had it locked up for a long time down at the legislature. I remember, it was a number of years ago, but down at that legislature, talking to legislators down there, and one of the proposals was that school educators cannot take school days to go down and lobby the legislature for higher pay and more benefits and etc. They gotta be like every other citizen and go down on their own dollar you know take a take a day of vacation and go down. But you can't, well what we found out was that 50 percent of the staff that's hired in a school is administrative staff. So, they send those part of the staff down. And this goes back to Joe Pitts when he was in Congress. He had a he was great guy out of Pennsylvania, but he had the Dollars to the Classroom Act that said, hey, we think that 65 cents out of every dollar on education should be spent in the classroom. And as that started moving to the states, they said, we can't do that. We only spend 50 cents out of every dollar in the class room; 50 cents is spent on administration. So literally they had a one-to-one match of administrators to teachers. And so, when states were trying to do that Dollars to the Classroom Act, they couldn't get a pass because they're finding out for every you've got an administrator for them. And it's just such a bloated bureaucracy. You know, we talked about this last week, even how that we we've lost 900,000 students in public schools over the last year, but there's been 700,000 new hires of, of teachers and administrators in that period of time. So, with all this craziness going on, they've had a mafia that has protected their money, protected all their benefits, et cetera. And of course, they want more money and who doesn't? Every institution I know of wants that. But right now, you're having. the states have the backbone to push back and say; we're not doing that. We're not gonna give you tenure. We're guaranteeing that you can continue to get paid for teaching everything you teach and not having results to go with it. So, Oklahoma, they now are having reviews for their professors every five years. No lifetime tenure, even tenure at community colleges and two-year institutions being phased out and replaced with renewable contracts. You're gonna have to earn your keep. And so, this is a performance accountability at all public institutions. You got here. Ohio has done the same thing. Arkansas, the higher access education act, Utah, Indiana, Texas, Florida, North Dakota, and it's just good to see that we're starting to get some common sense back into an institution that's been broken for so long that is so underperforming across the world, as well as in America. That's just some great news. 

Rick Green [00:13:22] Excellent news and a quick break. We'll be right back. You're listening to The WallBuilders Show. 

Rick Green [00:14:31] Welcome back to The WallBuilders Show, Good News Friday today and it's back over to Tim. 

Tim Barton [00:14:35] Well guys, this good news is coming from Florida, and I do want to invite you guys in June. We can all go to Disney now, and here's why. Because the headline is Gay Days at Disney World on Ice after Sponsors Pull Out. Now the on ice is a pun, that it's a slippery slope. Why? Because Gay Days is canceled at Disney this summer, June, which there are now organizations saying June should be Life Month or Family Month. We have friends in Congress around the state that are doing things to try to reframe June away from like this gay pride month for lots of reasons. But for more than 30 years in June, it's been Gay Days at Disney, Disney World specifically. And what is so great is the organization that has been leading this up, they put out a very sad announcement for them that after 35 years, they said, after careful consideration we have made the difficult decision to pause Gay Days Orlando event scheduled for June 2026, changes to our host hotel agreements have lost a key sponsorship support. Meaning that people that used to help pay for this companies and organizations that paid for this are no longer paying for it. That's great news! Continuing on, they say, and brighter challenges currently impacting LGBTQIA plus events nationwide made it impossible to deliver the experience our community deserves. So, they're announcing that they're not having Gay Days at Disney. And also, to be fair, Disney did not have this as an officially recognized event. It was a fan organized event, although a lot of the Disney personnel were very supportive and engaging and embracing of this. And not to digress, we can go on some anecdotal stories in a moment. But what fans identified is there was excessive displays of public affection, inappropriate revealing of attire, and things that just did not align with the family theme of Disney parks that were going on, and so it frustrated so many people. And guys, I can tell you, my wife wanted us to go for several years to Disney, and I kept telling her no. We, not just on the broader scale, that we're not gonna support Disney when, back when they had an executive saying that they want at least 50% of that the stars of their new upcoming TV shows and movies to be a, a, a LGBTQIA plus or minority character. And, and so they're literally trying to push some of this trans nonsense propaganda down people's throats. I said, not only are we not doing that, we had a friend that went and we saw videos on social media that affirmed what our friend told us that when they took their daughter to go get a princess dress, that there was a dude in a beard who was in a dress welcoming girls into the princess palace, whatever they were going into to go buy their princess dress. And I told my wife, I said, we're not taking our girls to be so confused by the nonsense or exposed to so much of the stuff that we're gonna do. But guys, if Gay Days is canceled, maybe we can have like homeschool days or something can return to Disney. We can redeem this. And I say this also with a little caveat because Dad, I don't know if you remember years ago, Six Flags over Texas in Arlington, they had a Homeschool Day. And I remember going on Homeschool Day and looking around, being so confused by all the guys that were walking around holding hands together. And we saw guys kissing and come to find out they had gay Six Flag. This was their event. Six Flags hosted Gay Day and Homeschool Day on the same day. It was.. 

Rick Green [00:18:24] Somebody's planning was not... 

Tim Barton [00:18:26] Oh yeah, like they clearly knew what they were doing. They're like, let's traumatize these homeschool kids. Let's put a bunch of dudes out here making out together. But hopefully that's not what we have this summer at Orlando. But guys, the fact that you have now major sponsors that aren't gonna fund this anymore. They're having to cancel Gay Days because hotels aren't giving them the discounts anymore. This is such a win in culture. This is so good news that even though we're not seeing the complete reversal of the LGBTQIA, whatever, R2D2 agenda and movement, we're now seeing all of it canceled, But we are seeing a drop off and decline from the endorsement and promotion from so much of the larger culture and that is really encouraging 

Rick Green [00:19:14] All right, Tim, the only problem with that is even if all of that happens, I still think of Disney. I just think like hot, you know, sticky popsicles. The kids were trying, you know, got all over me standing in line forever for it's a wonderful, yeah, I, I don't know, man. I mean, even if it's okay to go, I dunno, I gotta, I gotta think about how much I love my grandkids. 

Tim Barton [00:19:37] Well, obviously, but Rick, now you have grandkids. You buy them the popsicles and your kids have to deal with it. That's not your problem. 

Rick Green [00:19:44] Oh, that's true. They get it all over the kids instead of me. That's... I... Okay. I'm in let's go. No, that's good news, man These again these are big these are things that we've been fighting for a long time guys I mean I did the same thing. I told everybody no Disney. We're not going back I encourage people not to go. I mean, I I just think it's great to see the turn in the culture. David what's next man? 

David Barton [00:20:07] This has to do with something seen that our friend, Jim Enhoff, the Senator from Oklahoma passed away. Great guy. He's just a phenomenal guy, but he was maybe the first anti-climate change champion I knew in Congress. And it went back for years. And if you remember the stuff that was happening with climate change and you go back to what was called the Paris Accords, and then we had the Copenhagen treaty and then the Kyoto accords, et cetera, where the whole world got together and said, you know what? Human activity is increasing the temperature of the planet, we're all going to fry at some point, it's causing all the polar ice caps to melt and disregard the fact that polar icecaps have increased 43% in that period of time. It's all going melt and there were all these studies out I went through the studies and it they predicted that everybody in Washington DC would drown as a result because the when the polar ice caps melted it would write raise the ocean 40 feet and anything that was along the coast, it was going to wipe out roughly three fourths of the world's population because they all live along the coast within 40...and none of that ever happened. And so, we were pouring billions and tens of billions into that. And, you know, Trump has called it nonsense and he pulled us out of that thing. And that's, that's the good news is we're no longer pouring money into this. And you cannot imagine how much your car costs. That automatic shut off that you have on your engine that when you pull up to a traffic light, it shuts it off It cost about twenty-three hundred bucks extra to put that stuff on your car. And now they're finding out, you know what? We've always had climate change. Temperatures have always gone up and down There's always been cycles in the earth some hotter some colder. We had cold ages back in the eighteen hundreds and it's just it's always the cycle the human cycle. And they're so arrogant that they think humans are capable of affecting the world. Look, we set off two atomic bombs in World War II and 99% of the world never felt anything as a result of that and it hasn't damaged the atmosphere since then. And we're just, we're so proud of ourselves that we're convinced that we affect everything and we really don't. And so now that Trump has pulled out of these climate accords, it's interesting that the Paris Accords and others, most of the European nations are pulling out of this climate accords to they're, they're saying, you know? This is a lot of wasted money. We've put a lot of effort into this, and there has been no noticeable change. We've changed human behavior. You know, we we've gotten more cars off the streets, more group stuff going and it hasn't had any noticeable change except destroying economies. And so just the good news that we have actually gone back to science and doing what science says, the cycles that have always been there, you can measure these cycles for hundreds of years. We're back to actually following science rather than following philosophy and that kind of goes with the tenured professor stuff. You won't be able to keep teaching this kind of nonsense which doesn't help you get a job when you get out and it doesn't work anyway and it adds all these extra costs. There's just so many good things are coming together right now. Now a lot of this is going to take you know there's a lot people in their forties and fifties that were taught this really heavily back 20 years ago under Bill Clinton and under Obama, et cetera. It's going to take them wall to get this out of the system because this is the way they were trained, but the new generations coming up will have a different view, hopefully of climate, climate change, and man's role in the planet than what we've had in previous years. So I consider that to be really good news. It's gonna save a ton of bucks for America. It's getting to get the government out of more aspects of our life. It's, it's just going to have a lot of good effects. 

Rick Green [00:23:49] I have lost count at the number of issues that took literally decade, two decades, sometimes three decades to turn it around, but has turned around in the last couple of years or even in the last few months, really good stuff. Tim, we got time for one more, man. What you got? 

Tim Barton [00:24:05] Well, this one is going to the Seattle Seahawks. The title says, Seahawk Clint Kubiak Gifted Every Player a Bible for Christmas. What better gift? Now this is actually coming out. I think the story came out in February cause he was on a sports station and somebody had found out he had done this. And so just to read a few highlights from this, it was a sports spectrum interview that he said that the Bible was the most important gift he could have given. He said, man, every year you're trying to find Christmas gifts for guys to show them that you love them. And what better gift than that? One of the things he said in the interview is, I have learned from many chaplains that I got to be around with different teams that your identity is not your job. Our identity is in Christ. And when I learned that and I spent more time in the Word from all the mentors I had in coaching that helped me get into Bible studies and read the Word every day. It took a really heavy load off, just knowing that I'm a child of God and football is something that I do, but trying to be a good father and a faithful husband is way more important than any of that. Which already just, it's so cool that not only is there a coach giving out Bibles, but then when he's in an interview and asked about it, he's so clear on some of his faith, one of the assistant coaches, Leslie Frazier, who is actually an assistant head coach. He was asked about the gift and he said "it meant a lot. It meant a lot to everybody in our building, just that he would do that. His whole point of it was that he wanted everybody to be able to find out what it means to have a relationship with Jesus Christ. This is the starting point, having a Bible. No one should walk away from this building without having a bible." Guys, when the assistant head coach is reiterating that everybody needs a relationship with Jesus and don't leave this building without a bible, that is one more of many reasons that it's so encouraging watching what's happening in some of the sports world and seeing that Christianity is becoming trendy and cool again, and not that we want people to be Christian because it's cool and trendy, but the fact that it it's pushing back on some of this worldly opposition that we have been seeing for decades in culture. And now when you have so many noted individuals coming out boldly proclaiming their faith, that is really good news. 

Rick Green [00:26:19] Yeah. And it's, it's literally sharing the gospel, right guys. It's actually preaching truth and sharing truth and, and, helping these folks to, to get out of, you know, whatever situation they're in. I mean, in the athletic world, the temptations and everything else. So just absolutely love seeing this. What a great influence out there. Thanks, guys, for all the good news today, folks. You can get more at our website, wallbuilders.show, and then don't forget our main website wallbuilders.com. Have a great weekend. You've been listening to the WallBuilders Show.