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. Thanks for joining us. We've got Jeremy Dys joining us a little later. We're going to be talking about some of the movements to restore justice in this country, to actually get back to a place where we call evil, evil and good, good and not the reverse of that. If you really want to understand that and understand the principles that the nation was actually founded upon, the biblical principle of justice, even just war theory, all of those different things. Go to wallbuilders.com today. That's a wealth of information available to you there. All kinds of resources and great things you can get for the family and a lot of great things for the upcoming 250th. That's wallbuilders.com and then go over to wallbuilders.show if you want to catch up on any of the radio programs. By the way, depending on whether you're listening to us on a radio station across the country or on the podcast apps, be sure and share the program with your friends and family, easy to do on the podcast apps, just hit that share button. Just a great way to get them informed as well, whether it's one of our interviews throughout the week or Foundations of Freedom Thursdays or Good News Friday, people need this information. Your diet of information is so important right now. There's all the black pill people out there trying to depress you about America and tell you everything's lost and everything's bad. And then there's of course the leftist agenda. You need to get truth, biblical truth, and get the issues of the day from that biblical, historical, and constitutional perspective. All of that available right there at wallbuilders.show and wallbuilders.com. I'm Rick Green, America's Constitution Coach here with David Barton, America's premier historian and Tim Barton our president and a pastor and by the way, a great speaker. You need to get Tim Barton out to speak. I had to speak across the room from Tim this last weekend. And I think I had six people show up and 600 went to hear Tim because he's just got the gift. You got to get Tim Barton in. Anyway, Tim, I almost just came over to your to your room. I was gathered up my little flock, my little ducklings in my room. And I almost came over your room just as I told him, I said, we're gonna go next door and just harass Tim Barton. Is everybody ready? We'll go over, we'll take water balloons, rotten fruit, whatever it takes to go over and make Tim Barton's presentation even more lively. That would have been fun, don't you think? 

Tim Barton [00:02:10] Well, I, you know, we told our friend down at the Florida home school convention, that it seemed, it seemed a little silly that we made our friends compete about who they're going to go listen to. And Rick, I doubt that there were more people in my room than yours, but if there were, it's only because you've been there so long that they were like, you know what, Tim hadn't been here before. Let's go see what this new kid has to say. Then I'm sure the next session, they were all back heavily populating your room. But it really was so fun being there together, even though we were at the conference together, convention together, we saw each other very little, kind of like our normal real life, we're running so hard in different directions. But it's not all....

Rick Green [00:02:52]  Pass it in the hallways. Literally pass it in hallways! 

Tim Barton [00:02:55] That's exactly it. It's not often we're in the same place. Usually I'm having to come down to do some constitutional defense training or coming to speak at summer, one of the leadership congresses. Super fun things I love being part of. But it was really fun being in Florida with you. 

Rick Green [00:03:14] Hey, you know what was cool too, is I think they had 15,000 people. I mean, that's a lot of homes. Now that's maybe only like five homeschool families total. But no, seriously, I mean it was amazing the number of people now that are going into homeschooling. It's not just Florida, I mean a lot these conventions bigger than ever. And then they kind of shrunk for a while because people just after COVID didn't get together, go to conventions, that kind of thing. So it was nice to see the iron sharpening iron that happens when we come together like that, but just such a massive crowd and then they had a cool graduation for the homeschoolers. They had a dance on Saturday night for them. It was really cool to see just the thriving, joyful environment in the homeschool community. 

Tim Barton [00:03:53] It was, and you know, you've been doing this now a long time. So long that not only all your kids done, your grandkids are now starting this journey. For Gabby and I, we have a four and a seven-year-old and so this is a new journey for us and I went down to the exhibitor hall and I FaceTimed with her and I was like, you would love. Like, forget Disney World, we're down by Orlando, she would rather go to the exhibit hall and look at all of the incredible resources now available for homeschooling. But I say this also with context because there's a lot of families out there that think about homeschool and for many people it still feels overwhelming. And I think part of it's because we've been told by the academic world for so long that, you know, we have to trust them and they're the experts and we're not capable and competent enough to educate our own kids. Which of course, all of the data and polling shows the exact opposite, that kids do better when mom and dad are there and mom and that are leading on that. However, the, the overwhelming amount of resources that was there helping parents in their journey, homeschooling their kids, I mean, Dad, I know when we were traveling back in the day, there, there were, there was at least three options cause I remember, and I don't want to necessarily single them out, although we could,  but there were three different options cause we had a little bit of a smorgasbord. We kind of chose certain subjects or topics from one group or another. But overall, there weren't that many options back in the day, like there are today resources for homeschoolers. 

David Barton [00:05:33] Well, Tim, I'm even going to go back further than that, not just the options, but at the time that we decided to do homeschooling,  was the time when there was a big legal quasi -military standoff in Nebraska, for a pastor up there who was homeschooling and they came in to shut down his church because he was homeschooling. And so it was to the situation that if you homeschool at the time you guys were starting, if you were homeschooling, you were literally looking at jail time. You could be looking at jail time, but literally for homeschooling. So clearly there were not just a whole lot of options for curriculum at that point in time, because it was still such a new thing. Now that's not to say that every single state did that, that's, that's, not the case. But it is to say that you were thought to be really, really, really strange and weird if you did that. Now, of course, they made their own ways like Daniel with the, the children taken in captivity over Babylon. Let us use our food. You guys use your food. Let's see who gets the better results. Well, now homeschooling crushes the other stuff that's out there. So it's no longer the legal controversy was, but it was a big deal back in that day and there was not much curriculum. That's for sure. 

Rick Green [00:06:46] Yeah, well, Tim already aged me by telling everybody that I got grandkids now that I'm that I am homeschooling. So I'll tell you when I was homeschooled, you're exactly right, David. You didn't even answer the front door, man. You wouldn't hit under the bed if the doorbell got rang because you're afraid the whole family is going to get arrested. So it was it was that bad. But Tim's right. You walk into that exhibitor hall and it's like going to a Disneyland for homeschoolers. There's so much and it is not just the materials, it's the it's the coaching, it is the iron sharpness, the people coming alongside you. So. I'm headed to the Texas one this weekend and they literally provide homeschool coaching. So like, in other words, a homeschool family that's done it forever will turn around and help a new person that's in there just one-on-one, be there to answer the phone and chat you through stuff or whatever it might be. I just think it's so cool what we're seeing. It's almost like a new, a new level of, of, you know, an education reformation in the country with homeschooling leading the way. 

David Barton [00:07:38] But do you guys remember just a few years ago when California was trying to crush all homeschoolers and they came up initially, but the Supreme court in California ruled that, hey, you have to be a certified teacher to teach. And then they found that homeschool scores were numerous double-digit points higher than all the public-school teachers were, the parents without a teaching degree were actually getting better results in their tests than all these trained teachers in California. And the Supreme court of California reversed itself. Because the results were so high that they said, well, we clearly can't shut this down. That's back in California, still had some brains and still used them by the way. 

Tim Barton [00:08:15] Well, but guys this this is just one of the indications of some of the good stuff happening Jeremy Dys our good friend from First Liberty is gonna be jumping on with us in just a little bit. Talking about some of positive things that are happening even in the legal landscape. Now, they identified a bunch of negatives, but we are gonna talk about some positive things are happening and the reality is in the midst of conflict and the midst challenges of frustration, there's still a lot of good things happening. And we look at how far homeschooling has come, when we look the fact that at this point, we are seeing a growth in the homeschool community and then we're seeing victories all over legal landscape. It really is encouraging. 

Rick Green [00:08:59] Good stuff, guys. In fact, yeah, I mean, the stuff that's uncovered, like you said, Tim, is really bad. But the good news is the restoration of justice, that we can get some faith back in these institutions by holding people accountable for these bad things that happen. Jeremy Dys over at First Liberty will be with us when we come back from the break, and he'll be updating us on what's happening over at the Department of Justice. Stay with us. You're listening to The WallBuilders Show. 

Rick Green [00:11:30] Welcome back to the WallBuilders Show. Thanks for staying with us. Jeremy Dys back with us from First Liberty. Always good to have you, man. Thanks for coming on Jeremy. 

Jeremy Dys [00:11:36] Hey, thanks for having me. 

Rick Green [00:11:38] Hey, there's so much coming out now, you know, that, that we speculated about, or we heard a little bit about. We saw just the, the weaponization of the DOJ and all that through the, well, Biden Administration, auto- pen administration, whatever you want to call it. But apparently now starting to really get some, some evidence on this. What's this, this whole thing about the, the spying on the pro-life Christians? 

Jeremy Dys [00:12:01] Yeah, look, the President put into place, soon after coming into office, an executive order that I'll spare you the numbers and all the things that go with it, but it established a commission or a task force rather, called the Anti-Christian Bias Task Force. And his job that he gave to them was, he'd go back through the various agencies in the cabinet and figure out if or whether or how far, to what extent, did the Biden administration engage in bias towards, not just specifically religion at large, but specifically Christians? How did the government weaponize the government's laws and enforcement projects and all the things that go with that in a way that would discriminate against Christians? Or maybe they would find out that the administration actually did what they're supposed to do and have that blindfold across Lady Justice's eyes and the sword of her justice sword pointed downward, in the indication that there's inequality under the law here and, and justice is blind, right? Well, what they found is actually the opposite of that. And what's come out now is a, a nearly a thousand-page report that has mountains of evidence in it that suggests that the Biden administration really went out of its way in almost every department in the federal government to be able to work discrimination towards people of faith. That was first found with something called the FACE Act, which protected the pro-life, or it's supposed to protect any reproductive healthcare facility, whether you're pro- life or pro-abortion or otherwise, but the Biden administration went out of its way to show favor to its friends on the abortion side of things and really throw the book at pro- life Christians across the country. 

Rick Green [00:13:39] You hit on something that I think most Americans, you would think, certainly those in the middle and those that would consider themselves conservative care deeply about. Just a sense of justice and blind justice that we're all gonna be treated the same under the law and that it's wrong to go after one side, not the other, and the law should be applied equally. Is that ringing true when you guys go out there and you talk to people and this stuff comes out, is there a sense of what I would call righteous anger that the system has been turned on only one side? 

Jeremy Dys [00:14:10] Yeah, look, everywhere I talk about this, everywhere I hear people engaging on it, yes, they're just sort of mystified by the fact that this would even happen. The mystery sort of turns into frustration and anger soon after. I was in Washington, D.C. recently watching the task force has also produced a documentary, which is gonna come out later in the month of May, that is highlighting this entire report. And cabinet officials and others are making their explanations of what's happened. And every example that this documentary shows, you can just hear the crowd. Groaning and sort of grinding their teeth at it all. It's just shocking. But let me give you sort of an example of what we're talking about. Cause this is not a small, these are not small potatoes. On the FACE Act stuff in particular, where you had pro-life Christians that were protesting peacefully outside of abortion clinics, singing hymns or whatever they might be. They're oftentimes addressing for trespass release the next day and all the things. This happens; this is part of the deal with protesting. But the Biden Administration took the FACE Act and applied it to them in such a strong way that you can only describe it as having the book thrown at them, right? And one of these people is a survivor of the Holocaust. And all of these, the Biden Administration through the DOJ, were recommending maximum sentences in jail, right. I mean, up to 78 months in jail for sitting outside protesting peacefully against the act of abortion? And even when their attorneys wanted to defend them, they would ask for information from the DOJ and the DOJ refused to give that information. And on top of all that, we have emails and several emails. Indicating that the DOJ officials are joking around about the Catholic judge that was presiding over the affair, that they're questioning whether or not a juror should be allowed onto the jury because of their religious beliefs, mocking them in the entire process. Well, you would think at the very minimum this would go both ways, right? Well, because after the Dobbs decision, right, there was a lot of violence across the country. When Roe v. Wade was overturned, the left went crazy about this, started throwing bricks through windows and lighting places on fire, vandalism with spray paint and all the kinds of things like that. And it becomes clear in the report that the Biden Administration finally, finally went after some of these vandals, but only after it became completely unignorable. They had to do something with it. And then even then they only indicted a handful of people. Now we represented one of those clinics in this case. And so, I'm familiar with what happened in those situations. And I can tell you what the report confirms that the Biden administration just sort of sat on their hands. Whereas they report they're asking for like 78 months’ worth of jail time for the peaceful pro-lifers, including the lady that survived the Holocaust and protested in a wheelchair? She's got she's getting the maximum book thrown at her. But these vandals that picked up cans of spray paint and disabled security systems and things like that against my client. Well, they only saw like 14 months worth the jail time for these people. I mean, it's just shocking how one sided and obviously coordinated this was. With the Biden Administration and groups like Planned Parenthood and others. 

Rick Green [00:17:06] Not, and so not, not just throwing the book at it and trying to ruin the lives of and literally jail, you know, the people that, that are peacefully, you know, trying to save babies. But on the other side of the coin, the people that are actually violent and actually destroying things, going super easy on them, or in many cases, not even prosecuting them. It is, it is shocking and helping to get this in the context of, I mean, the, this is at the same, this was the same Biden Administration that went in, guns, you know, pointed in on kids were at Mark Howe's house at like five in the morning or six in the morning. And I think he said he didn't, he just went a lawsuit over all of that. I can't remember if that was the same case, but I mean, this is the environment we were in for those four years, that's the type of types of things that they were doing. But it does seem like we're coming out of that and that there could be some justice and that's important for getting some faith back in our institutions. I mean this needs to happen. 

Jeremy Dys [00:17:59] Yeah, and this is what I appreciate so much about this report. And one of the situations you're talking about where the pro-lifers are met by a SWAT team, guns pointed at them and all that. Hey, look, they've been pardoned finally by President Trump. And thank goodness for that. But don't forget, they'd still be rotting away in jail, including the lady who survived the Holocaust and now sits in a wheelchair. She just spent the rest of her natural life in jail, had the President not been elected. So praise God that that's a situation that is no longer the case. But what, what I like about this report the most is that it turns from sort of like, it's never turns into this whiny, well, we're upset about this and we're blaming our political opponents for that. It just matter of factl states the problem across a variety of issues, first on the FACE Act and some of the pro-life stuff, but it goes broader than that even. And it says, across all these agencies, where FEMA's denying churches relief that they're entitled to after a natural disaster. Well, like one of my clients who received the IRS for welcoming a candidate for the school board to tell her story at the church service on Sunday morning. She just walked in one day and said, well, tell us about why you're running for office. And then they prayed for her and the IRS investigated the church for violation of something called the Johnson Amendment, as if they had engaged in some sort of political activity by praying for someone who's running for office. 

Rick Green [00:19:16] So much for freedom of religion, and freedom of speech, and freedom of assembly and all of those things, right? 

Jeremy Dys [00:19:20] All the things right? And these again these are all fact-bound examples that are hard to ignore but then the report turns and says well in light of all the things we've found, here's what we're doing about it. And it starts making adjustments. They report on people that are no longer with the Department of Justice or other agencies that engaged in coordinated efforts with the groups like Planned Parenthood and others. But it says look we're adopting new policy to make sure this doesn't happen again, we're making sure that people have the rights as an employee to be able to seek accommodation for their religious beliefs, regardless of what those beliefs are, Christian or otherwise, they've got the right to be able to work here and for us to work with them. This is a case we won at the Supreme Court of the United States, by the way, that requires this now. So I'm particularly gratified that the agencies are taking that case, Grof versus DeJoy, and working with people of faith. First in the context of vaccines where I think there are 22,000 different applications for a religious accommodation in the military alone, and less than 400 of those were actually granted during the COVID nightmare that we went through. Because of our clients in the Navy SEALs. we were able to turn those numbers around and we now are seeing men that were kicked out of our military being welcomed back with open arms by Secretary Hegseth and others. So it's good to see, yes, here's the report. Here's the problems. Here's what we've found. But now this Administration is turning to say, no, this isn't too important. We're putting structures in place to make sure this kind of thing never happens again. 

Rick Green [00:20:50] It's beautiful, man, it's beautiful. Thank you for highlighting it, because I think we have to tell this the story that that's happening in order to restore faith in the institutions. You mentioned that, in fact, I ran into your colleague, Mike Barry, in the airport the other day, and I had just had a coach, actually, a Constitution Coach. He's one of our Constitution Coaches, but he's also the father of one of our scholars that just spent a year with us at Patriot Academy in Constitution City. And he was just bragging on you guys at First Liberty because he was one of the Navy guys that that he wasn't one of Seals but he was he was joined into the suit that you guys had that led with the Seals and was just, man, just so thankful for what first Liberty does. And so here's just another example of how you guys are on the front lines and helping to restore freedom, to restore faith in our institutions. So important FirstLiberty.org is the place to follow these guys and contribute and get on their email list so that you can keep up with all these cases. Jeremy, we so appreciate y'all, man. Thanks for spending some time with us here on WallBuilders today. 

Jeremy Dys [00:21:45] My pleasure, thanks for having me. 

Rick Green [00:21:47] Stay with us folks, we'll be right back with David and Tim Barton. 

Rick Green [00:23:00] Welcome back to the WallBuilders Show. Thanks for staying with us. Thanks to Jeremy Dys and first Liberty. And of course, FirstLiberty.org. Great organization, great place to support. They're involved in so many different cases out there. And then of course helping to hold these folks accountable for the evil things that happened during the Biden Administration. Guys, that's not the only area of accountability. Man, there's a lot of different areas where right now we're seeing stuff uncovered that happened years ago, but it's important not to just sweep that under the rug because it restores faith in the institutions when we finally hold people accountable, even if justice is slow, if the wheels of justice really do turn slow at least they're turning right? We're finally getting back 

Tim Barton [00:23:34] Yeah. And you know, guys, it reminds me on Monday, we talked to Colonel Kevin Boren, who is the guy in the Pentagon working with Pete Hegseth to bring some reconciliation, some restoration, restitution to those service members. Rick, like you were talking about, mentioning to Jeremy that you talk with Mike Berry, you had the gentleman whose daughter was with you from the Navy that was removed from the military for not wanting to take this experimental vaccine. And, and of course, again, there's so much more information coming out about it now that things that largely under the Biden Administration, they were trying to keep hidden and covered up. But all of this to say that we know that not only is stuff being exposed, but right now we actually have leadership in America that is working to try to make things right. And it's one thing to identify a problem. It's entirely different when you're working to resolve the problem. And, you know, guys, thinking along these lines in my mind right now, when we think about so many of the critical and negative voices out there that are condemning the President and the White House and et cetera, and I'm saying from, from the side that was generally thought to be conservative. Although, you know, when you have guys like Nick Fuentes who is now saying he's voting Democrat because he's going to stop Republicans, et cetera. You have the Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, et cetera. People that have been considered thought leaders, vocal communicators for conservative, basic fundamental common sense ideas. And now there's, there's people like, like that going in a very different direction. It is undermining the reality that we have an administration right now that not only has identified so many of these evils, but is actively working to bring restoration where there had been problems. And that is really good news. 

David Barton [00:25:27] So, you know, it's interesting. One of the things I've been noticing is that the nation is moving more and more in a pro-religious direction. We've talked in previous programs, uh, literally about what's happening with Bible reading and church attendance and stuff going up. It's interesting that there's some voices that are coming out and they're a lot more critical of things they use to support and, and, you know, whether it's a Candice Owens, or whether it's a Tucker Carlson, whatever they used to be seen as really kind of mainstream conservative. And I don't know, but whatever's happening, as spiritual stuff starts to change in the nation, they become more and more critical of the leaders who have been helping facilitate that. I mean, you have Trump calling for this national rededication. You have Trump, calling for, you know, reading the Bible and whether it's directly connected or not, who knows, but there's kind of something spiritual going on. There's certainly a pushback going and this new kind of wave that's coming toward America that's taking us more back to our roots. And more back to religious practices. 

Rick Green [00:26:27] Well, we certainly know that rededication is good. We certainly know the bringing that faith back into the public square is good and, and, and exposing a lot of the evil that happened and getting justice for it is also good. Appreciate Jeremy Dys joining us today. Thank you for listening. You've been listening to the WallBuilders Show.