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A Christian Law School, Restored Military Honors, And Policy Shifts That Matter
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When a culture can’t define basic words, everything downstream gets weird fast. That’s why this Good News Friday lineup isn’t just a grab bag of headlines. We talk about moments where leaders and institutions start drawing clear lines again, and why that shift matters for the future of law, policy, and everyday life.
We start with Grand Canyon University announcing a new law school built to integrate a Christian worldview throughout the curriculum. We dig into why you can’t understand Western civilization or American constitutional ideas without grappling with the Christian and biblical influences that shaped key thinkers and the broader moral framework behind rights, duties, and limits on government.
Then we turn to the military and a story tied to the 2021 Abbey Gate bombing, where U.S. Marines who ran toward danger receive upgraded valor awards after earlier recognition was downgraded. We talk about what honor, merit, and leadership look like when they’re taken seriously, and why that matters for morale and trust among active duty troops and veterans.
From there, we break down Temporary Protected Status and the administration ending TPS for 15 nations, asking the uncomfortable but necessary question: what does “temporary” actually mean when people have stayed for decades? We also hit big national ambition with a new Space Academy modeled after West Point, plus Artemis program milestones and long-term goals that stretch from the Moon to Mars. We close with Florida welfare reform that blocks benefits from being used on things like tattoos, spa services, pornography, drugs and alcohol, tobacco products, and theme park tickets.
Subscribe on your favorite podcast app, share this with a friend, and leave a review. What’s one word you think government policy has stopped defining clearly?
Good News Friday Kickoff
SPEAKER_01Welcome to the Wallboulder Show. Rick Green here with David Barton and Tim Barton, and we are so thankful that you're here with us on a Friday. It's uh we we call it Good News Friday because we love catching up on a lot of the good news you may have missed over the last couple of weeks or so. You can get more of our programming at our website, wallboulders.show. That's the radio website where you can find programs from the last few weeks and months, and then wallboulders.com for everything else. I always keep the intro on Friday short because we want as much good news as possible. David, what's the first piece of good news today?
Grand Canyon University Starts Law School
SPEAKER_02I'm going to look at a story from Grand Canyon University. By the way, do you guys know how large that Christian college is at Christian University?
SPEAKER_01I know they go back and forth with Liberty over who's the largest. Like it changes there, but there are around 100,000 online students. I don't know, I don't know how many in person.
SPEAKER_02Well, they've got 141,000 students registered for this coming semester. Wow. So that is massive. Their online program, but also in person. But the good news is they have announced that they are starting a law school, a Grand Canyon University. It's a law school they have started, and they say to integrate the Christian worldview throughout all the curriculum. And they want that because they said you cannot understand Western civilization if you do not understand Christian, and that is so right. If you don't read like the Locks and the Montesques and the Blackstones and all these guys that are philosophers, I mean they're they're all Christians. How can you look at the guys who built Western civilization? And Western civilization goes back a thousand years, not just 300 years ago, where I was citing the guys the founding fathers used, but you go back to so many of the thinkers, whether it was St. Thomas Aquinas or whatever else, all the stuff that was used to build Western civilization in Europe and bring it to America came through the Christian filter. It came through the biblical filter. And so this is really, really, really fun news that you're going to have a university of this size with this kind of uh of what I want to say. I'm I I want to say popularity or outreach. And I say that because to get 141,000 students, you got to have some some degree of people liking you and wanting to be part of you. So the fact that they're doing a law school and the fact that it will be to teach the influences on Western civilization, particularly Christianity, this is so good for the coming generations. That's you know, it's gonna take these guys 10, 12 years, maybe before they have a huge impact on things. But some of these guys are gonna end up running for legislature, they're gonna be staff legislature, they're gonna get into doing legal work, they're gonna do legislative work. This is really good stuff for the future, and this is a really good pipeline to have it coming through Grand Canyon University.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, great school. In fact, we uh we often stay there for the uh leadership congress that we do in uh in Arizona. So great campus, great, uh amazing that they're gonna have a law school. That's very, very good news. And now we're over to Tim for his first piece of good
Valor Awards Restored For Marines
SPEAKER_01news. Tim?
SPEAKER_00Well, guys, this is one that uh I I think, at least from my algorithm feed on my social media, this was all over it uh just uh a week ago, maybe. Uh this is the the the title of this, it actually was a I saw it first as a post either on I don't know, Instagram X something, but the title of this says Secretary of War Pete Heggseth just personally gave upgraded valor awards to U.S. Marines who were downgraded by the Biden administration after they ran into danger in the 2021 Abbey Gate bombings. Now, guys, mind-boggling to me uh that the the Biden administration would not have given them the proper awards relative to what they had endured because it might have made the Biden administration look bad, right? This could be like one of those things after Benghazi, and you have Democrats trying to sweep stuff under the rug and not give full acknowledgement of what happened because that shows their own culpability and their negligence and dereliction of duty and whatever else you might want to throw on that. It certainly seems like this is the case. The good news is that, and there's a video uh that shows Pete Heggseth uh actually giving these uh significantly upgraded valor awards to the US Marines who were there. So I to me, the first thing I want to highlight in good news, the first thing on top of my stack is that we actually have a commander of the military, the secretary of war, who is actually appreciating the troops for who they are and what they do. Uh, not just giving out awards because you know it's the YMCA Kids League and everybody gets an award. No, uh, he actually has prioritized the accomplishments of individuals, the meritocracy, what they're achieving. And in this case, actually going back and cleaning up some of what the Biden administration had done to not properly appreciate and honor the people that had to endure ultimately the incredibly dumb and poor decisions that happened under the Biden administration. So, really good news that we have an administration, a president, a secretary of war, who supports the military, active duty, and veterans. And this is just one more case of it. So, really quick one. But first piece of good news for me I am very grateful that the military service men and women are actually following leaders who appreciate them and honor their sacrifices.
SPEAKER_01Man, and you and you hear it for them all the time. Every time I talk to somebody that's in the military or former military, they are so thrilled with the direction and the leadership of President Trump and uh Secretary Heggs. That's just uh phenomenal. Uh okay, David, back to you, man. What's next?
Temporary Protected Status Gets Reset
SPEAKER_02Well, this one deals with some more reforms and changes happening within the immigration system. Um this is a term I'm gonna throw out a term I've heard before. I probably couldn't not probably, I could not define it for you. I could not tell you what it means, but it involves a lot of immigrants that are in the United States. But it's called temporary protected status. Can you guys tell me what that is or why it exists or how it operates?
SPEAKER_00Well, I think that what I've seen, temporary protected status is given to individuals that are more or less seeking asylum in America. There's uh been some issue identified with the country formerly where their residence was. And so they are given a temporary protective status with the understanding that once the issue is resolved in the nation where they were seeking asylum from, they can return to that nation. That's my understanding, although I could be wrong. Rick, you might have some uh correction and clarification on that.
SPEAKER_01I thought it was just we want we want what America has, so we're gonna make up some stuff so that we can No, I'm kidding. Uh yeah, I I I think the legit reason is exactly what Tim said.
SPEAKER_02Tim, you start mentioning the Biden administration. He starts talking like he's part of the Biden administration with comments like that.
SPEAKER_00Well, we're gonna have to keep him away from the edge of the stage. I don't want him to fall off and he's wandering a little bit. Uh it's it's a concern, but we're gonna watch him.
SPEAKER_02So, so it's interesting. Tim, you're on it, except interestingly, the the article they've come out with, the State Department is saying, hey, this is not for asylum, and that's a word they don't want used with it apparently, but it is a temporary protected status. And they say that you can come here for six, twelve, or eighteen months. Um, if it lasts longer than that, it has to be extended by by the government, but it's because your country has experienced armed conflict, uh, a big environmental disaster or something extraordinary that is only temporary. And you can come here temporarily, and when that extraordinary danger is passed, you can go back. And so that would be earthquakes and devastating hurricanes and things that wipe out. And so what has happened is uh the administration now has ended the temporary protected status for 15 different nations. Um the 15 nations are Haiti, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Cameroon, Nepal, Honduras, Nicaragua, Venezuela, South Sudan, Burma, Somalia, and Ethiopia. Now, those I can't tell you the disaster I would point to in most of those nations that have opened the door for them to be here by by the millions, but let me just kind of point out some of the things that that the this administration is focusing on. Um a lot of the people who are here from Somalia came here after receiving approval in September of 1991. So we're talking 35 years on temporary status because there was a revolution in 1991 and they never went home after the revolution in 1991. Or we can take Haiti. In 2010, Haiti had an earthquake. They've recovered several times. They have actually had plenty more disasters since then, but you still have people here since 2010 after an earthquake, and there was a 7.8 magnitude earthquake in Nepal.
SPEAKER_01And just to be clear, David, when we cut when we say they've had disasters, we include their own government as a disaster. Yeah, right.
SPEAKER_02That's right. That's right. They're there part of that disaster is self-inflicted. That's that's for sure. Yeah, so Nepal had a 7.8 magnitude in 2015. Uh Hurricane I man, Tim, you may not remember. Do you remember ever hearing Hurricane Mitch? Anything about Hurricane Mitch? Probably before you were cognizant of stuff like that. Is that before Mitch McConnell got sick and has disappeared?
SPEAKER_00Is that what his name was?
SPEAKER_02Rick, you might have a shot of Hurricane Mitch. Do you do you remember Hurricane Mitch? I do not know. That that was Tade? Or that was somewhere else? It was 1998 and it ravaged Honduras and Nicaragua. And so since 1998, they've been here on temporary protection. This is just unbelievable to me how anybody that's in a government agency that has specificity of what that status means, six, twelve, or eighteen months, and it's till that that disaster is gone and Hurricane Metz have recovered decades ago, they recovered from that. It just boggles my mind the way that bureaucrats can read this stuff, unless you are that Marxist mentality that you want no borders and you want to destroy all national identity, you you want to destroy the uniqueness of America. This is a great way to do it. But the good news is that for 15 different nations now, um, they are their temporary status of decades is now over and they've got to follow the law. They were brought here under a specific law, they've got to follow that law. It just I I just love to see that finally we're getting back to actually reading the documents and reading the laws under which these things operate. If we don't like the result, change the law. But don't just ignore the law because you you have a different agenda. Uh so I I think this is really good news.
SPEAKER_01I just can't believe, David, that you would define temporary, be so narrow-minded as to define temporary as less than, you know, uh it can't be a hundred years. Like I thought temporary could be, you know, death. I'm kidding. I mean, contemporary actually decades? Decades I mean, uh. And it's so frustrating because we know better. We know what that does to our country. And it's not that we don't love people, you know, and that's the other thing people would say about this, oh, well, you just don't love people because shouldn't you just let those people stay here and enjoy America? Well, then let's just let everyone everywhere in the world come enjoy America, and then no one will enjoy America because it won't be enjoyable anymore.
SPEAKER_00But guys, in the world where we can't define what a woman is, certainly they can't define what temporary means either. So no surprise on this. But by the way, like deeper level, deeper cut here, this is why it matters that we live in a society rooted and grounded in biblical truth, because that is the basis and standards of truth, of absolute. If there is no truth, if there is no Bible, if there is no God and no Jesus, then everything becomes subjective. And that's where you have some of these messes. So it is a reflection of the secularization of culture in many ways. I know it's downstream, but if there is no objective truth, then we can't define a woman. And we can't define temporary. So it is a reflection that we have lost that foundation that needs to be restored first and foremost. But yeah, not super surprising that people have struggled, but good news that we are able to open a dictionary and once again properly define what temporary means and uh remove people that uh are not here temporarily.
Where To Find The Podcast
SPEAKER_01Good news, guys. Okay, quick break. We'll be right back. We've got more good news for you folks when we return. You're listening to the Wall Builder Show.
SPEAKER_00This is Tim Barton for the Wall Builder Show, and I just want to make sure you know that you can listen to us wherever you go. If you get up in the morning, you do a workout, if you're mowing the grass in the afternoon, if you're driving somewhere, and you want the opportunity to get some insight into vocal realm from a historic, a constitutional, and a biblical perspective, hearing from incredible expert voices. We are on basically every platform that you can find. Whether it's Apple Music or iHeartRadio, Spotify, Podcast Index, Overcast, Pocket Cast. There's so many things I don't even know what all of these are. But if you go to wallbuilders.show, you will find a list of all of the places where you can listen to the program. And of course, if you already listen to podcasts, you know how to download a podcast, you know how to find us. We would encourage you to download the podcast so you can listen at your convenience. If you're not in the car, that's no problem. Download the podcast, take us with you on the road. We want to be an encouragement to you in your day. Go to wallboilder.show to find out all the places where you can stream or download.
SPEAKER_01Welcome back to the Wild Booter Show. Thanks for staying with us on this Good News Friday. And Tim's up with the next piece of good news.
Space Academy And Artemis Milestones
SPEAKER_00Guys, this one the headline says Trump signs order creating new space academy akin to West Point. Its location will be determined. Uh, I I have so many thoughts and emotions on this. Growing up, uh, there was a movie, and this is like probably gonna be lost on most people. If somebody was in a homeschool family or like really sheltered in the 80s, 90s, there's a movie called Space Camp. I don't even remember what it was about. I just remember the title. I remember having to watch it at some point. Uh, I mean, Rick, maybe for you, this is more of like Star Wars growing up, you know, explore space. But the idea that there's Space Academy is amazing and hilarious to me at the same time, especially when Trump's like, hey, we're gonna make this akin to West Point. This is like gonna be the elite of the elite. It's awesome. Okay, a lot of article left, Dad, but I'm gonna yield to you because I see you want to interject something.
SPEAKER_02I've got a suggestion for Trump. He's looking for a place for space camp. We have lots of space in West Texas. There's nothing out there. The Big Bend area is a space camp waiting to happen. We they can have all the space they want out there. There's tons of space there. And that may not be the space he's talking about.
SPEAKER_00Well, this is in conjunction with NASA, so it would not surprise me if it does show up in Texas or somewhere where there is a NASA connection. Uh so a couple of backgrounds on this. Uh again, Trump saying this, he wants this to be akin to like the United States Military Academy in West Point. Uh, the U.S. Space Academy will be for students looking to enter the U.S. Space Force, a new branch of the military Trump created during his first term. The president will also serve NASA and the civilian space flight industry. So lots of space-related things. When Trump uh also is making this motion, part of what happened as well. And this this article is from I guess the beginning of no, it would be this weekend, is when this article came out. So very recently, uh, President Trump had the crew, uh, the the NASA crew that had just had that space Artemis II uh that had that space flight. And after signing the executive order, he presented the vaunted award, which is the first given or first given to Neil Armstrong in 1978. He gave it to all four members of the Artemis II crew.
SPEAKER_02Hey Tim, by the way, there was a piece of good news that happened weeks ago that we didn't cover, but it's worth covering now. You mentioned that Artemis crew, and you remember on that space trip, we had a good news piece where that the the leader of that crew, that black man, what was his name? Uh anyway, he he read from the scriptures in space, kind of like Borman did back on Apollo 8. And he read from the scriptures, and it's interesting, there was an atheist on that crew, and a couple months ago he ended up becoming a Christian. He said, as a result of the reading that happened on the Artemis, he heard the scriptures, he listened to it, he'd been thinking about it, thinking about the guys he's with, and he came to Christ as a result. So you mentioned Artemis gives me a chance to throw in an extra piece of good news there.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's a really cool story. Uh, Dad, the four astronauts that were involved uh was NASA astronaut Reed Wiseman, mission commander. The NASA astronaut Victor Glover was the pilot, NASA astronaut Christina Coach, a mission specialist, and then Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, also a mission specialist. So those were the four people involved. All of them got the vaunted award. Uh, again, first given to Neil Armstrong in 1978. Trump gave it to them. And what's interesting, Trump in his uh comment said that they traveled further than any human has ever traveled. And when he said it, I thought, I wonder if that's really true. Uh, and apparently it is absolutely true. And I think I remember having heard this or read this at the time. Uh, what is crazy, I I never would have guessed how many miles they went from Earth, which it is further than any humans have traveled before. How many miles, guys, do you think they went from Earth? Now, just maybe like perspective, it's a couple thousand miles from east coast to west coast. So, how many miles did they travel from Earth? What's your guess?
SPEAKER_02So, do you mean the round trip mileage or the mileage to the furthest part out that they went?
SPEAKER_00Well, this is the way it's phrased. Their trajectory took them as far as blank amount of miles. Okay. So the trajectory, how far did they go?
SPEAKER_0273 million miles to the sun. Um, so they didn't go that far. Yes, right. I I don't know.
SPEAKER_00Maybe two million, two and a half million. You are so ambitious, sir. Uh, we might need to do a quick lookup. How many miles to the moon? Uh, because it's it's it's not quite that far to the moon. Rick, what are your thoughts?
SPEAKER_01I was gonna guess it was a little bit further than going to Little Rock from uh from Fredericksburg. So since the Arkansas boy 500 miles or something.
SPEAKER_00But you know, if if you did if you had traffic in Dallas, it feels like it feels like you're going to the moon.
SPEAKER_01That's right. Um, okay, so let's see. If that seemed ambitious, I'm gonna say 500,000 miles.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so so let me help both of you out. It's it's been a while since you did your eighth grade whatever uh science where you talk about the moon. Earth science.
SPEAKER_02That was that was Earth Science, yeah.
SPEAKER_00So so to the moon, the closest point is 225,623 miles. The the dark side, the far side of the moon, is 252,088 miles. So they go further than the dark side, the furthest part of the moon, but but no, they did not go 500,000. They went 252,756 miles. So over a a quarter of a million for sure, but it is the furthest any humans ever.
SPEAKER_01No way, Tim. Tim, I I I I um a round trip, they went 500. So I was right. It was just round trip, they were five. I'm just kidding. Yeah, I was kidding.
SPEAKER_00But I do want to point out Trump says that this this mission, what Artemis is doing, is a stepping stone. Artemis III is scheduled for 2027. It's gonna involve a series of challenging tests in Earth's orbit. Artemis IV is slated for 2028 and it's expected to send astronauts to the lunar south pole for the first time. And I gotta be honest, guys, when I was reading this and I saw a lunar south pole, I was like, wait a second, is there a like lunar surface on the south pole? I think I misread that and misunderstood. Uh, but to the South Pole lunar, I'm assuming that's like the south side of the moon. I I think is what that means. Um, the Artemis program's overall goal is to establish a long-term human presence on the moon and eventually send astronauts to Mars. President Trump in his comment said that he is trying to restore what has been lost because so many presidents did not prioritize and emphasize the value of kind of the American spirit that we are are are people that want to explore the unknown and et cetera, et cetera. And he wants to restore that. Uh great article, but uh guys, just on a high level, there is now a new space academy that is coming. He signed the executive order. And then, number two, there's more of these Artemis missions scheduled and Part of the schedule 2028, they're working to land on lunar south pole for the first time. And then a future objective is actually sending astronauts to Mars, which is just incredible. And good news that we have leaders that are ambitious and and want to do these kinds of things again. So this is exciting to me.
SPEAKER_01I know, David, you were joking about the space thing in West Texas. But I think since Elon Musk created a city in Texas, what's it called? Space uh uh I'm blanking on it, but it's basically like space station or something like that down in uh it's kind of close to the border. But I think that'd be a great place uh for all of these things and uh space camp and all that to happen. So, anyways, but uh all right, go ahead, David. Sorry, bad. You got uh uh I'm taking up your time for our last piece of good news.
SPEAKER_02There there are parts of West Texas that would probably make you feel like you're on the moon with nothing growing out there and lots of desert and open stuff, kind of desolate like that. But that's yeah, neither here nor there. I love West Texas, by the way. Love riding horses out there,
Florida Limits Welfare Spending
SPEAKER_02it's great. Uh, my piece of good news comes from Florida, actually, and it is something that no other state has done to this point in time. Now, it deals with welfare and welfare benefits. So there are welfare benefits, there's federal welfare, there's state welfare, all these things to assist uh people who need help. There is the what's called temporary assistance for needy families. I wonder if temporary assistance means the same thing that temporary immigration status means, decades and decades and decades. I don't know. But it says temporary assistance for needy families, um, there's temporary cash assistance, stuff like that. And what happened is DeSantis in Florida said, Hey, um, here's some things we're no longer going to let you use your welfare benefits for. Now, this kind of blows my mind that we were allowing this to be used for welfare benefits, but uh here's here's six things he banned. Um, psychic and fortune-telling services. So wait a minute, you're using your welfare money for psychic and and fortune-telling services, or tattoos, spa services, tanning, and other luxury services. So you're using your welfare money to get tattoos and go to spas, or pornography, makes sense, or you're using your welfare money to buy drugs and alcohol, uh, which yeah, it speaks for itself. Or using your welfare money for tobacco and vaping products, or uh using your welfare money to get tickets to Disney World and other places. So they've said no more on entertainment tickets, theme park admission, video games, and anything else. So those are the new six things you can't use your welfare money for. And this is the only state in the United States that has stopped welfare money from being used for those purposes. He's the first one to do this. I'm going, oh my goodness.
SPEAKER_00Well, dad, let me point out that this is something uh that we probably will bring up at our legislators' conference this fall. Uh, this is a my one of the things that we often do is try to introduce legislators to other pieces of legislation. Actually, I know many that listen to our program. So if you're listening, just know at our legislators' conference this fall, we're probably talking about this topic. If you can't afford food, you can't afford housing, but you can't afford to go get a massage, you can afford to go to Disney, you might have uh kind of misappropriated some of those funds. You might need some Dave Ramsey help more than you need the welfare help, apparently. But it's great that Florida's doing this. Dad, again, just quick go-in. This is definitely something we will advocate for many other states to follow suit on, but it's great that Florida's going that direction.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it just blows my mind that people would I I don't know, we've never needed band this before because I don't think we ever thought it'd be used in this way before. But this has now become kind of a real career job path is taking government money and finding ways to get government money and enjoy your lifestyle. And so with temporary being used here with with uh welfare and temporary being used with immigration status, maybe we're recovering what both of those words actually mean, and words do have meaning. So even that in itself is good news.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, just more good leadership from Ron DeSantis in Florida as well, right? I mean, he's only got a few months left. I bet we have a few more good news items from Florida before he's done with being governor in
Weekend Sendoff And Share Request
SPEAKER_01Florida. Anyway, everybody have a great weekend. We'll have more Wall Builders for you next week, but be sure and share the program with your friends and family. And don't forget to check it out on your favorite podcast app. You've been listening to the Wall Builder Show.
