Welcome To Good News Friday

SPEAKER_01 0:07

Welcome to the Wall Builder Show. This is the intersection of faith and culture where we examine kern events from a biblical, historical, and constitutional perspective. My name is Tim Barton. I am joined by my dad, David Barton, and our third amigo is actually on a plane right now. I have no idea where he is, what state he's hovering over, passing over. I have no idea. But Rick is on the road. Rick Green is our co-host on the Wall Builder Show. And today is Friday. It is good news Friday. Dad, so many fun things that we can talk about from

Pastors Briefing And Election Momentum

SPEAKER_01 0:40

this week. You and I have been all over the place this week. We were up in Washington, D.C. We had our annual fall pastors briefing, an incredible group of pastors. We got to meet with a lot of our congressional friends. Some of our friends in the Senate, Speaker Mike Johnson, stopped by and visited with us for a little bit on our evening spiritual heritage tour of the U.S. Capitol. It's been a busy week, but it's been a lot of fun with all the events we've been doing.

SPEAKER_02 1:11

Yeah, it's been a busy week, but and there's a lot of uh I'm glad to see a lot of energy leading into the next couple months. Uh the direction I think of America will be determined much by what happens in this election, whether we keep moving forward or whether we hit a roadblock and start moving back. But it's it's fun to see the energy that's out there. There's high energy. We saw that with the members of Congress. Um, certainly a lot of hard work going there, but we saw it too with people from all over the nation, you know, from states that that you know n don't necessarily expect this kind of activity, and we're seeing it there. So I think it was it was good in a number of ways, including just giving an indication of maybe some good things that might happen over the next few months.

SPEAKER_01 1:53

Yeah, yeah. And at our pastor's briefing, we had nearly 150 pastors uh from 20-something states, I don't remember the exact number, but it was a significant amount from all over the place. Um, and and they're fired up, ready to go back to encourage their congregations uh to engage in the process. And ultimately we talked to pastors uh about recognizing the role of the shepherd is to protect the sheep from the wolves that are coming. And here's where there's wolves in all different directions, ideological, theological, political, uh, and recognizing this is the time to get involved. And even today, uh, we are in Tennessee. We are doing a conference with our good friend Pastor Alan Jackson. He is hosting Culture and Christianity at his church, World Outreach Church in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Incredible church. And there's a list of amazing people, so many of our friends that we get to hang out with today as we do this

Seeing Washington’s Edited Constitution Copy

SPEAKER_01 2:47

conference. Um, but before we get into some of the good news, Dad, I think it's also worth acknowledging yesterday was Constitution Day. And one of these super fun things that I gotta do was go to the National Archives. Uh, I gotta see George Washington's own copy, the U.S. Constitution, as as they're working through writing the Constitution, they're printing off copies as you know that they they progress, as they get more things written, they print off copies so they can make their own edits. And the National Archives has George Washington's copy that has his own handwritten edits in it. I've seen pictures of it before. This is the first time they have ever displayed it, is what I was told when I was there. Now they've never displayed this before, which uh also boggles the mind a little bit, thinking about how many amazing treasures the National Archives has that they simply don't show, they don't display. Uh, that's probably a different conversation for later, but it was so fun being able to see George Washington's handwritten notes on this early printing of the U.S. Constitution as they are in the process of writing it at the Constitutional Convention. It was really incredible.

SPEAKER_02 4:00

And the good news with that is a lot of Americans are now able to see it. And and seeing those kind of things helps bring the Founding Fathers back into, I'm gonna say, public awareness. And so anything like that, especially in this 250th kind of year, that's a really healthy thing for Americans to kind of rediscover their history because that just has not been an emphasis in recent decades.

When Museums Teach Bad History

SPEAKER_01 4:21

Well, and Dad, I would say too, uh while I was at National Archives, it was super annoying and frustrating hearing guides tell some stories about the founding fathers and just like blatantly lying, or I mean, maybe at best case, they're butchering the story because they don't know any better. But the the things they're saying, I mean, just like so dumb because all you have to do is a quick search. Like, did this happen? And the internet will tell you no. So that they're still promoting the woke ideology, which is frustrating, which also you know goes back to why President Trump uh called out the Smithsonian and said, first of all, we're gonna put banners up out front that says this is fake history, right? That you're just lying on what's inside, which is just a kind of crazy flex on the Smithsonian. But as he acknowledged on the Truth Social Post, they haven't done a display to honor George Washington in more than 50 years, and especially the 250. It the time it would have made the most sense to have a unique display to honor the signers of the declaration, to honor George Washington. They didn't have any of that, they just kind of had their standard normal stuff and pretended like they don't need to celebrate anything special this summer. So it's great to see President Trump call that out. Um, but I mean, dad, the the the fact that we have a really incredible collection that we show people is awesome. We encourage people to come check out the museums. But if we had the stuff that the National Archive, that the Smithsonian does, I we would have this crazy struggle of what do you show when and how often, because they're the the treasures that they have is mind-boggling. And most Americans have no idea how significant the treasures are they have because they don't display them. Uh, and so the fact that at least, at least for this week, they displayed George Washington's handwritten notes, the annotations on his own early print copy of the U.S. Constitution, absolutely incredible. Well, okay, today is Friday, which means Good News Friday. We have a stack of articles that we want to go through. So, Dad, let's let's start. What is your first piece of

Midterm Stakes And Ballot Initiatives

SPEAKER_01 6:39

good news?

SPEAKER_02 6:39

I'm gonna set this up with a little background because uh we have over recent elections, every election we've heard, this is the most significant election in our lifetime. And I mean, it we keep repeating it, but it's not her purbola. It is because there's more crazy stuff that comes up than has ever occurred at any point in our lifetime. Ten years ago, we weren't doing the men and women's sports kind of nonsense that was not even really a thought, and now it's all over the nation as a policy. And so we're pushing back. And so what we've seen is every election has been more significant than the previous one because they've introduced more stupid stuff that becomes national and becomes implemented and is not just talked about as policy. And so, as I'm looking at this election, I think that this election, and we talked about this a little bit, I think this is the biggest off-year election we've had in my lifetime. Because while we're starting to see some things shift in a good direction, what President Trump has done, the you know, the lowest murder rate in in history, essentially, um, by rate, not numbers, but by rate, the lowest murder rate, the closing of the border, essentially no illegals coming across that are that are cognizant that we're cognizant of, might be smuggling, but no open borders. All that is is different. Um and so to see that, that's really good. But all of that ends with this midterm election if we cannot keep the house. And so what happens is you'll have a house that will go in a very different direction. They will change funding or try to change funding, they'll try to reduce funding to uh to border and uh to ICE and to other enforcement agencies, they'll they'll cut that funding now. Trump will undoubtedly veto that budget, and so they'll get into continuing resolutions and all the stuff they do, but they'll find ways to defund that, they'll find ways to really try to halt that agenda. And so I think that that if we can win this midterm, that we have the opportunity to do two more years with a House that's willing to work with the president, a Senate that's working with the president, and that gives us two years plus, if we can keep the Senate, we have two more years of getting some good judges on the court. And we've talked about how the fact that these Trump judges that he's put on have been key in changing religious liberty and changes the getting back to the Bill of Rights, getting back to constitutional government, getting back to limits on government, giving the states more authority, all the stuff that was not going on. So I think it's really big. And and so within that framework, I've I've kind of, you know, as I'm working in the states, the things that I see that are very uh important to me that I think could be a big help are the fact that in a lot of the blue states right now, we're seeing statewide ballot initiatives that people will vote on, but they're very red initiatives. In other words, uh something like no men and women's sports. Uh that's going in seven states. And most of those states that are doing that now are they're blue states. And that's not something the blue people will bring up, but these are brought up by popular initiatives, ballot initiatives done by the people.

SPEAKER_01 9:39

Well, and to add to clarify then, I I would actually contend those aren't red initiatives, those are common sense initiatives, and right now there's only one party that seems to be promoting common sense. So you're saying red, though those are ultimately conservative issues because you're trying to conserve the traditional value structure. That's where conservatism comes from. So I I I I I do think it's worth clarifying these aren't really red issues because these are many of them are 80-20 issues, right? This isn't like a Republican versus Democrat. Like, no, this is this is the majority of America support some of these basic notions. Now, we do know there are uh certain persuasions of individuals that are willing to cut off their nose despite their face, because if it's gonna help, you know, one side, we're just gonna automatically oppose it. But I I don't disagree with anything you're saying, other than I think I would frame it differently. I don't think these are red blue issues. I think these are 80-20 issues overall. And if any of these don't win in those states, I think literally it's gonna be because there's so much vitriol from uh opponents that show up. Not that the majority of Americans don't agree with this, but if they see it as helping uh in their mind what is the opposing enemy, then they're not gonna support it, even though fundamentally, again, like these are saying no boys and girls' sports, that's an 80-20 issue. That's not a Republican-Democrat issue. That's a basic common sense issue that the majority of Americans have very strong opinions about.

SPEAKER_02 11:14

And that's really where I was heading with that because I call it a red-blue issue because the blue legislatures will not pick that issue up. The states that have passed those those ban on men and women's sports have been Republican legislatures. But yet we're seeing that the people in these very blue states are saying, well, we want this, we're gonna have, and so they're having to go around their blue legislatures. And so I call them blue states because they're being run by blue governors and blue legislatures, but the people in those states aren't aren't all that blue, quite frankly. And so we saw even in Colorado, which is a very progressive state in their legislature, right now, 56% of Democrats support that initiative to ban men and women's sports. And there's also one in Colorado going on that that deals with uh no transgender mutilation surgeries of young people, et cetera. And so these are very likely to pass in those states where the blue legislatures have kept this stuff from even being voted on. They won't even bring it up. And so what I see with that is that's going to pull a lot of our people to the polls. Because if you're in if you're in a Colorado or some of those states, Michigan, you get pretty discouraged because you know you feel like you're in a blue state, not much you can do, although Michigan is more of a purple state than a blue state. But you feel like there's not much you can do, but suddenly you've got to wait to let your voice be heard. And so I think those ballot initiatives, and we're seeing them in a number of states. I mean, there's some good stuff in Nevada, uh, which is kind of a blue state, some purple, but kind of blue. But when you get to Maine, that's a pretty blue state. There's some great ballot initiatives there. And so I think that's gonna draw some of our people to the polls, which usually doesn't happen in a midterm election. So you could see a higher Republican voter turnout, and there's gonna be a lot of Democrat voters that say, you know what, I may be a Democrat, but I don't buy this stuff with men and women's sports. I'm just gonna sit this out. They may not show up to vote against that initiative, but they may sit home, which means they'll have less votes for their party. So I see this as a real opportunity to pick up some congressional seats you might not generally pick up. Generally, in an off-term election, the the party uh that's in power loses 27 seats. And so, since there's only about a three-seat margin now in the House, that's, you know, that's hard. 27 seats and you only got a three-vote margin, you could easily lose this thing, and Mike Johnson won't be able to move anything forward to speak of, and they'll have a Democrat House, and so everything changes. But I think that this election, there is a real chance. And then I here's the I say all that to get to this article. And in this article, uh, it headlines it says Democrats' acceptance of same-sex changes nosedived by double digits in one year. So just over the last 12 months, uh, it says Americans' moral acceptance of sex changes is at an all-time low, and so that's right now, in part, and it's plummeting due to support among Democrats. And so that's what the new poll shows that Democrats aren't going where their party's going. So Democrats' support for sex changes is down 11% just over last year. That's a massive change in Democrats. And that's not, you know, we're seeing the deal, we've been talking about the Democrats, Socialists of America, so many more showing up in the Democrat Party and they're getting elected. But this is this to me is really good news. And I can go through other stats here, but the the deal is there is evidence now that it looks like that it may not be the normal kind of turnout that we would generally have. And this might be the first time in 94 years that Republicans can actually hold the House while they're in power. Now, two other times it's happened where the the the party that was in power did it, but there were times of national crisis, like after 9-11. Once 9-11 Republicans were in, Republicans held it, Democrats would have taken it, but the whole nation unified. So you've had crisis situations where the nation unified and kept the party in power, but this is not a crisis situation. This is a normal election. And this will be the first normal election in 94 years where that possibly the party that's in power can maintain power in a midterm election. So I think this is a really big deal, and I'm just seeing things now that that encourage me. You know, we could get to the day after election and we get our head handed to us, maybe. But I just kind of think right now there's some good indications that we might be able to do something that's going to last at least if we can win this election, I think we keep it on track for maybe 15 years uh before we get back into a moral crisis of the kind of which we've been seeing.

SPEAKER_01 15:38

Well, and a lot of that too, Dad, as you're saying it, you know, depends on on if Christians show up or not. Oh, that's true. If that's true, if Christians will show up, if they will vote, uh if they won't get discouraged and stay home, uh right, if they won't have a pity party and they won't pout, that's right. If if we will be good stewards like we have been called to be, if we will show up, we can make a difference and we can win in a lot of areas. And and partly as the point you're making. In some of these states where people might have looked historically and gone, I don't see any way, right? Like in in Colorado where some of these areas, like I don't see any way Republicans are winning some of these things. No, when you have when you have Democrats that are now actually voting for conservative things in the state, it actually can swing some of the votes where they go, you know what, these Democrats that are supporting this, I don't support them. That there are indicators, to your point, that are very encouraging, but it's only encouraging if Christians show up to vote. Because if they don't show up to vote, Democrats aren't electing Republicans, uh, liberals aren't electing conservatives. Christians have got to show up at the polls. Okay, we did not get very far in good news.

How To Listen And Share

SPEAKER_01 16:49

We have a long way to go, but we need to take a quick break. We'll be right back in just a second. You're listening to the wall builder show.

SPEAKER_00 16:58

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SPEAKER_01 18:02

Welcome back to the Wobbler

Pro Athletes Getting Bolder About Jesus

SPEAKER_01 18:03

Show. This is Good News Friday. We are going through some of the headlines that you probably haven't heard about of good things happening around the nation. Uh, I have an article at the top of my stack. It's actually from The Blaze. And the headline is The Godballers Are Coming for the Rainbow. Now, when I first saw the headline, I didn't know at all what we were talking about. Uh, but as you read through it, it does make some really good points. Uh, the idea of Godballers, like this is I guess Christians in sports. When I was first reading this coming for the rainbow, I thought maybe right they're opposing some of the LGBTQIA plus initiatives, whatever that looks like. But as I read the article, there's a man named Stephen Eubanks, and he wrote a book called Godball, how athletes are saving Christianity. Now, ultimately, they're not saving Christianity. Christianity was going to be saved without their help. However, the idea is they are re-energizing Christianity in America and sports. What we know statistically, the article highlights some of this as well is that young men are the ones that are are having a resurgence of faith in America. And so many of those young men are in sports. And even though, as you look over the last couple of years and really decades, you can identify Christians that have been singled out in uh professional sports, high level, for taking Christian positions, what's happened is Americans rallied around them and more athletes stepped up because of it. So they give examples uh like uh Jordan I, well, first of all, they point out that athletes have been more inclined to pray publicly, talk about Jesus in interviews more, use social media to communicate directly with fans. They're not depending on sports writers or television uh or networks to interpret what they believe. They're literally posting it, they're saying it, they're being much more bold in their faith. But they point out there's been pushback. Uh the Chicago Bulls guard Jaden Ivey. Um, he was released for the Bulls for what they termed conduct detrimental to the team. Why? Because he criticized the NBA's embrace of the LGBTQ celebrations. He said, That's unrighteous. We shouldn't be celebrating this. So he was released. But what happened is there was a lot of people that rallied around him. And by the way, behind the scenes, there were players supporting him. You have guys like Jonathan Isaacs, who back in 2020, uh in the midst of the Black Lives Matter crave and COVID, he didn't wear the t-shirt, he didn't kneel on the anthem, uh, he he was persecuted. The article even highlights, I mean, really, even Tim Tebow took some heat because of this. More recently, though, you have the Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butler, or excuse me, Harrison Butker, uh, who faced crazy backlash after in 2024 he gave a commencement speech at uh Benedictine University defending traditional marriage and family and gender roles. It was a Catholic university, he was affirming Catholic positions, but this is basic Christian position. Ultimately is what we're talking about of marriage and family and gender roles and crazy backlash, but then his jersey was a top-selling jersey. Uh you know, they sold out of it online. Uh the Chiefs sold out of it on their store. It talks about in the article the Giants uh baseball team on Pride Night, their pitchers, Landon Roop, JT, Brew Baker, Ryan Walker. They wore the the uh ascribed hats for the evening. Um their Giants baseball hats, which had rainbows on them, but then they wrote Bible verses by the rainbow. So as an example, Roop cited Genesis 9, 12 through 16, where God promises what the rainbow is all about. Well, they got in trouble. Actually, uh, they were reprimanded by the league because you're not supposed to be able to alter or change any of your uniform. And then there was backlash. So the commissioner Rob Manfred came out and later acknowledged he said, Oh, yeah, uh, the Giants forgot to tell them that it was optional to wear the rainbow hat or not. Well, the Giants didn't tell. Was optional, which is why they pushed back anyway. It goes through this article highlighting you are seeing more and more people push back against this, and faith is becoming far more prominent inside of professional athletics. And so there is a resurgence of this. And I would say, and we we have talked about this on so many Good News Fridays over the last many years. How encouraging it is to see these professional athletes huge following, huge social media that are actually standing up for biblical truth, that are proclaiming Jesus, that are being bold in their faith. This is just an article highlighting even more of that. So really good news coming from the athletic world. Dad, what's your next piece of good news?

Texas School Choice And Public School Closures

SPEAKER_02 22:44

So, Tim, my story uh centers in Texas, but it's actually a national issue. It deals with school choice. And so school choice has become a big thing in recent decades as people have seen, well, this is not education going with my kid. This is indoctrination. They're actually having lower academic scores, but they're coming out more socialist, more whatever. This is not education. And so we've seen a lot of states move to school choice. Texas has not. But Texas did so this last term, and they implemented a school choice program, a big one. And so when that went through this year, there's 102,000 families that said, hey, we're taking the money and we're going to different places. Parents want the best for their kids, much better than the state wants for their kids. And parents are going to make sure their kids, to the best of their parents' ability, get equipped in the right way. So nobody cares about kids more than the parents do. And the state of Texas has now said, okay, parents, you have a choice to do this. What's happened is you've had 102,000 families pull their kids out of public schools. Now that is causing a lot of backlash in Texas on the public school system, which is good because it needs competition. We've always talked about competition makes everything better. Public schools haven't had competition to speak of, not at any large level. And so in Texas, they're looking at immediately doing another 100,000 families, letting them have school choice. And so what you see right away, within a couple of years, you're losing 200,000 kids in a big system. We got about 5.5 million. But what that has done is already in Texas now you have more than 100 public school campuses that have permanently closed, and 60 more are confirmed for closure next year. Now you're having to have competition. Now you're having to say, hey, we got to do a better job of educating our kids. And just as an indication of how crazy this has been, uh Crowley Independent School District, which is outside of the Fort Worth Dallas area, they have a $2.7 billion debt. And they just approved building a $150 million track and field complex with a concert venue. I say, so you're $2.7 billion in debt. Let's go build some more athletic facilities. That is not what's going to help those kids get a better education.

SPEAKER_01 24:51

Yeah, but Dad, they're going to solve that problem. They're going to do a new bond for the school. So all the people living there are going to pay higher taxes and then wonder why they're paying higher taxes on the bond they just approved to increase their taxes for the school to build the concert venue. Because every large school needs a new track and field and stadium and a concert venue, because really that's what school's about. Not like kids learning to read and write and do some basic math. Nope. That's not the focus of education, obviously, why it's failing on so many levels.

SPEAKER_02 25:22

And by the way, Tim, on that same point, I am shocked at how many uh voters do not know what a bond is, that you're actually taking out a loan against not state money, against the citizen's own pocketbook. You citizens are going to pay that money back with higher taxes. And you say, oh, we need a new athletic facility. Let's do a bond. No, no, that's coming out of your pocket. That's not state money you're talking about. You're talking taxpayer money. And I don't know the last time I've really seen many bonds voted down because taxpayers keep thinking this is a way to improve our schools. No, no, it's a way to take more of your money and it's not fixing the education problem. But that competition, that school choice bill in Texas is already having major impact in Texas. Look for all votes to start rising, we should have better education across the state as a result of this competition.

SPEAKER_01 26:11

Well, I couldn't help but think the reason that people don't know what a bond is is because the bond we've been the most educated on is Bond, James Bond. That's the bond we know. Not the one that deals with our

Final Thoughts And Weekend Sendoff

SPEAKER_01 26:24

taxes. Not to digress. There is so much more information, so much more good news. If you go to wallbuilders.show, you can look up previous programs, get more good news. We will have way more for you next week. Uh, lots of information also on the website, wallbuilders.com. Until then, God bless you. Have a great weekend. You've been listening to the Wallbuger Show.