Walker Wildmon: Welcome to At the Core here on American Family Radio. Glad to have you with us on this edition of the show. Walker Wildmon here. The show is hosted each week by myself and Rick Green. Once again, it's good to be with you on today's program.
Walker Wildmon: Let's turn our attention to the Scripture, then we'll get into the content for today's episode. Acts chapter 20 is where we are this week, looking at verses 36 through 38. "And when he had said these things, he knelt down and prayed with them. Then they all wept freely and fell on Paul's neck and kissed him, sorrowing most of all for the words which he spoke, that they would see his face no more. And they accompanied him to the ship."
Walker Wildmon: So this is part of Paul's missionary journey in Greece, and he ended up in Macedonia and other parts of the region. And so two things here. The first one that I wanted to point out is the fact that God gives us emotions. God gives humans feelings and emotions. And these things that the Lord gives us as part of the human experience are good. They're good.
Walker Wildmon: They can be used for bad. They can be used for ungodliness. But handled properly and with biblical authority, our emotions and our feelings can be a good thing if they're channeled in the proper direction. And that's what we can take away from Acts chapter 20, verses 36 through 38.
Walker Wildmon: Well, speaking of feelings and human emotions being channeled in the wrong direction, this Lindsey Clancy trial that has actually ended in a mistrial has brought about all kinds of opinions and arguments and emotions. And boy, has it been unjust and ungodly. Just to give you the 30-second rundown before we jump into these clips, the jury ended in a mistrial because there was one juror, and it turns out he's the hero here, that would not agree to the insanity plea.
Walker Wildmon: Once again, I'm not a lawyer. I'm keeping this at a very high level. There were pretty much two options before the jury in Plymouth, Massachusetts, of which I'll actually be there here in a couple of weeks when we take our trip to Boston. But the decision before the jury, to keep it simple, was does Lindsey Clancy get off, get a lesser sentence because of insanity, which I have a fundamental problem with that plea and that legal theory to begin with, but that's a topic for another day, or is she held criminally responsible without the insanity plea?
Walker Wildmon: And surprisingly, 90-plus percent of the jury was willing to go along with the insanity plea and basically go easy on Lindsey Clancy, who murdered her own children with her bare hands. That's what we're talking about here. It's horrific.
Walker Wildmon: And to give you the context, folks, Massachusetts is off the deep end. They are liberal. They've been liberal. They've lost their minds collectively. Massachusetts is a problem, all right? And their state statute in this regard is also insane. If we want to talk about insanity, their state statute is insane. Why? Because it puts the burden on the prosecutor to prove that Clancy wasn't insane, as opposed to putting the onus, which is how most state statutes are written, on the defense to prove that she was insane, if that makes sense.
Walker Wildmon: We'll actually link to Jenna Ellis's op-ed on this. She did an op-ed or an episode on our show where she talked about the Massachusetts state statute on the insanity plea and how it flips the burden to the prosecutor to prove she is, in fact, sane when she committed the murder. So it's kind of a reverse way of approaching it compared to other state statutes. Nonetheless, let's jump into the content for this segment.
Walker Wildmon: The jurors, which were mostly females, are now speaking to the media, which is red flag number one, that you have jurors that are willing to go to the media this quickly and dog this solo hero juror that held out on what I believe would have been an improper insanity judgment or verdict. Nonetheless, listen to how calloused and lighthearted and jovial these four female jurors were talking about Lindsey Clancy's defense attorney, about how he's, quote, funny, compassionate, entertaining. You would think that we were talking about a sitcom.
Juror: It was his whole demeanor. Yeah, it was funny. There was one time, whatever he said, I don't know, but I went...
Juror: Because he was entertaining, which was good because we needed some of that.
Juror: Yeah, and arrogant at the same time.
Juror: Yes, like arrogant and entertaining.
Juror: He would go back and forth between that.
Juror: Yeah, like compassionate.
Juror: Yes, with his arrogance.
Juror: His compassion towards Lindsey was amazing.
Walker Wildmon: Folks, this is sick stuff here. And this is where collectively as a country we ought to be asking ourselves, men and women alike, what on earth are we doing, folks? What are we doing as a country?
Walker Wildmon: Once again, this is Plymouth, Massachusetts. They're uber-liberal. They've been off the cliff for a while. They've collectively lost their minds. But still, we are talking about a mother who murdered her three children with her bare hands, strategically, one at a time, after she sent her husband off to pick up food. And she knew exactly how long he would be gone because she looked it up on her GPS. She knew the length of time that she had to murder her three children. She took them down in the basement one at a time. She Googled beforehand. She searched in her search engine how to commit suicide, how to slit her wrist.
Walker Wildmon: Folks, this was all strategically planned out. This was the definition of premeditated, which those facts that came out in the trial cut directly against any claim of insanity. But you have these jurors, which were mostly female, that are now doing TV hits and joking it up about how great the defense was. He was funny. He was compassionate. He was entertaining. He was arrogant, they said, arrogant and compassionate all at the same time. What are we doing here?
Walker Wildmon: And why is this so complicated, folks? There are going to be a lot of people blaming a lot of different things and a lot of different people. You can throw the jurors under the bus. You can say the one male holdout is a hero, which I agree with. You can say that the defense has been completely gaslighting the public on this, even going as far as to go on The View or go on Good Morning America and say, well, we need President Trump to give my client a pardon. Well, first off, you bozo, these are state crimes. This is not a federal crime. Does he not know that? Or does he know that and he's trying to turn this into some political campaign, turn the Clancy trial into an anti-MAGA campaign? I mean, what are we not willing to politicize around here?
Walker Wildmon: And then let's listen to this clip. This is one of the jurors talking about basically how just disgusted she was with the one male juror that just wouldn't go along with what I believe was this fake insanity plea. Let's listen.
Juror: If rogue is the right word, every one of us, in the hours of frustration, would get up and walk the room because you just couldn't say anymore and would all go to the cart with the exhibits. He, I think, got up to the cart once very briefly and went back to his seat.
Juror: He would not interact with us and try to understand. We read to him on numerous occasions the definition of a reasonable doubt from Judge Sullivan's instruction. He actually said one day in the end, why don't we have the judge come in and read it again? And we were like, no, we have it in front of us. We don't need that. And we would highlight it.
Juror: He had the hardest time getting off the fact that Lindsey viciously killed her children.
Walker Wildmon: Well, there you have it. And what I want to point out there, there's a lot we could talk about, but at the very end of that clip, the juror, who by the way was clearly 100% in favor of granting the insanity plea, said, quote, talking about this one solo holdout on the jury, she said, quote, he just had the hardest time getting over the fact that Lindsey, you notice now we're using first names like they're a pal, that Lindsey brutally murdered her children, end quote. As if people are just supposed to get over that.
Walker Wildmon: They just sat through a weeks-long trial where, ironically, there weren't images, I don't believe, of the dead children displayed at the trial. We can show pictures of everything else. They brought in the children's pajamas and the weapon that was used to strangle the three children. I mean, this is horrific stuff. Nobody wants to sit through this.
Walker Wildmon: But these jurors sat through this and they come out of it doing media hits, laughing, talking about how great the defense was, and they've just got this utter disdain for this one juror holdout who refused to grant the insanity plea. And I actually can't imagine the pressure that this man was under, having all these women try to explain to him how he was wrong and he needed to just go along with the insanity plea, and he held out. I mean, you talk about a backbone of steel.
Walker Wildmon: And I'm being serious. Under all this pressure, you got all these women walking around the room, panting, pacing, lecturing you about how you just needed to sign off on this. And that one juror said, no, I'm not doing it. I believe that Lindsey Clancy knew what she was doing. She methodically carried out this horrendous crime, of which she and her defense have already admitted to, by the way.
Walker Wildmon: There is no disputing, for the internet conspiracy trolls out there. There is zero disputing who murdered the children. Clancy herself and her defense attorney on the record under trial admitted that she murdered the three children.
Walker Wildmon: And so this is a mistrial. It's probably going to be retried. And the state is going to have to do a better job, by the way, of, unfortunately, the onus is on them, they're going to have to do a better job of proving that Clancy wasn't insane, that she was in her right mind when she strangled her three children methodically. And the onus is on them. They're going to have to prove that, and Lord willing, they will before the next jury.
Walker Wildmon: Welcome back to At the Core here on American Family Radio. Glad to have you with us. I want to remind you that you can subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen to podcasts by simply typing in the name of the program in your podcast store or library, At the Core With Walker Wildmon and Rick Green. You can type in any of those keywords and the podcast should queue up, and you can subscribe or follow the podcast wherever you listen to podcasts.
Walker Wildmon: And lastly, I do want to give a shout out to our supporters, our listeners over in Davenport, Iowa. We were there yesterday evening. We had a great time of fellowship. We shared a meal together and got to shake the hands and speak with a lot of our supporters in that area, and they have an important election coming up in November, as many other states do.
Walker Wildmon: Speaking of elections, we have on with us now Ohio State Representative Kevin Ritter. He's on with us now to talk about some of the issues he's been working on and has worked on in the past in the state legislature, and of course he's on the ballot in the November election as well. Representative Ritter serves District 94 in the state of Ohio. I have been interviewing a lot of elected officials from Oklahoma, but Ritter is from Ohio, and he's with us now. Representative, glad to have you on the program.
Kevin Ritter: Thanks very much. I appreciate being here.
Walker Wildmon: Well, before we get into some of your work in the state legislature and why you're running for reelection there, tell our folks a little bit of your background and how you ended up in politics.
Kevin Ritter: Absolutely. My working career really followed dual paths for about the last 25 years. I've been a college professor teaching history and American government. At the same time, I've owned a sports development organization aimed at helping high school baseball players get ready for the draft and for college baseball. So really, no connection between the two other than they are passions of mine, so I've enjoyed doing those for over two decades.
Walker Wildmon: That's good to hear, and we appreciate your service in the Ohio legislature. Well, Representative Ritter, tell our folks, you've worked on a variety of issues, pro-family issues, issues aimed at protecting families and children, especially in the education system and our libraries. Give us a little update on some of the work you've done and the progress you guys have made in Ohio when it comes to these things.
Kevin Ritter: You know, I've had a great partner in the legislature. In fact, he's a pastor. His name is Jonathan Newman. Jonathan's from the other side of the state, but he and I have jointly sponsored several pieces of legislation specifically on libraries. We've got House Bill 583. It's an effort to clean up the databases that are accessed in our schools and in our public libraries.
Walker Wildmon: Yeah, we've worked with yourself and other states on the issue of libraries and databases. There's so much, it's kind of overwhelming when you start looking into it, the number of resources and things that have to be regulated. But nonetheless, this topic of protecting children, especially in our public libraries, it's a very bipartisan thing when you run the polling, and we've actually run some surveys on this.
Walker Wildmon: You're looking at 70 to 80% of the public, both Democrats and Republicans, that agree that minors ought to have their minds and their hearts protected from some of this filth, some of this obscene and pornographic material. So how has that gone in the legislature, and what kind of support or opposition have you had?
Kevin Ritter: As you said, we've had broad bipartisan support. I think everybody agrees on the issue of pornography, or most folks do. Where we're seeing a little bit of a division is on the gaming or gambling issue. It's not just pornography that might show up on what's supposed to be a curated database. It's also advertising for gambling sites, sometimes for illicit drugs as well. So it's more than just the porn issue that we're going after.
Walker Wildmon: Absolutely. Once again, we're talking to Ohio State Representative Kevin Ritter about his work in the state legislature and of course his reelection campaign that's going on now for the November midterm election. Representative Ritter, one of the topics I wanted to speak to, which you've worked on in the legislature, is workforce development legislation.
Walker Wildmon: We covered a story recently of the number of prime-age men that are sitting on the sidelines, upwards of 7 million men that are working age. I think between 18 and 29 are out of the workforce. They're not even applying for jobs anymore. They've completely given up on the workforce. So workforce development is a very big deal. Getting men back in the workforce should be a priority. So what have you done on that front?
Kevin Ritter: You know, we as a caucus have been engaged on this issue, trying to get into the public schools to make kids aware of the job opportunities that await them. I think the earlier that we can get information in front of kids, present them with opportunities.
Kevin Ritter: But I would make a cautionary note here as well. We're certainly not the Soviet Union, where we're trying to designate kids for specific careers at very, very young ages. This is all voluntary. Again, we're presenting information to kids so they can make informed choices with their parents as they prepare to head out into the workforce.
Walker Wildmon: That's very, very good. Well, Representative Ritter, we appreciate you coming on the program, and your work in the state legislature has been phenomenal. We greatly appreciate having like-minded allies at the state level that we can work with and push your legislation when appropriate. And so we appreciate you coming on. And you are on the ballot in November, right?
Kevin Ritter: Yes, sir.
Walker Wildmon: Excellent. For District 94 in the state of Ohio, we've got several stations there covering most of Ohio. So we've got listeners all across the state there. We appreciate you coming on and talking about some of your work.
Kevin Ritter: Absolutely. It's my pleasure. Thank you so much.
Walker Wildmon: That's Representative Kevin Ritter from the state of Ohio. He represents District 94. And if you go over to iVoterGuide.com, that's our recommended voter guide that's put out by AFA Action, you can type in your address and click on the state of Ohio. And in just a couple weeks, two weeks, we'll have those voting evaluations out for iVoterGuide. You can check out Representative Ritter, his profile, his voting record, his endorsements, all that information for Ohio voters, and specifically those within his district, will be available in just about two weeks.
Walker Wildmon: Speaking of elections, the midterms are just right around the corner, and we're under the two-month mark now for the midterms, under 60 days out. This is shaping up to be a very, very interesting and very intense election cycle in November.
Walker Wildmon: There's a couple of things at play here, and then I'll tell you kind of the direction I think we're going and some things that we need to do better as a conservative movement. But the House of Representatives is going to be a nail-biter. I just think it's going to be very close, and I don't know which direction it's going to fall. Are Democrats going to get the House back? Are they going to take the House? Are Republicans going to keep the House? I couldn't tell you, and I couldn't even make a good estimation. Historically speaking, the minority party usually wins it. That's what the history books tell us over the last probably 70 years, 50 to 70 years.
Walker Wildmon: But the Senate, on the other hand, I feel a little more confident in assessing and giving you an outlook. I think it would be a shocker if Democrats took the U.S. Senate. They would have to flip multiple seats in order to take the U.S. Senate. And on top of that, they're at risk in a couple of states.
Walker Wildmon: For example, in Georgia, which from a presidential standpoint has been a pretty reliable red state, although there's I think one instance in the last three or four cycles in which a Democrat won Georgia at the presidential level. Nonetheless, Democrats are at risk there because Georgia is definitely not a blue state. Some will say it's a battleground state, but statewide office for the governorship and other positions in recent cycles has been pretty reliably Republican. And so Democrats are somewhat defending that seat in Georgia.
Walker Wildmon: You go up to Michigan, and Democrats are once again defending that seat. But the Democrats have a very bad candidate there. He's on his heels. He's having to defend his positions, and they're not very good positions. He's pretty far left. And so Democrats are having to defend that seat as well.
Walker Wildmon: And so I say all that to say that the likelihood of Democrats taking over the Senate is pretty slim, just based on the sheer numbers. But all in all, we know that the Democrats are going to spend a hundred-plus million in the state of Texas. That's a fact on the U.S. Senate race there. They're going to spend over a hundred million just in Texas alone trying to flip that U.S. Senate seat and take it away from the Republicans. That's where you have James Talarico and Ken Paxton on the ballot there in Texas.
Walker Wildmon: But the most consequential, in my opinion, this cycle, the most consequential chamber is the U.S. Senate, because President Trump has the ability, per his constitutional authorities, to nominate, pick, not only executive branch nominees but also judicial branch nominees for the federal government, and these are Article III judges. President Trump has been nominating very good judges for the federal judiciary for the past over 18 months, and he needs to retain that ability to have the Senate approve of his nominations for the last two years of his term. And so that's why keeping the U.S. Senate in the control of the Republicans is very, very important from President Trump's vantage point.
Walker Wildmon: What can happen if the House of Representatives flips to the Democrats? Let's talk about that. What does that look like? Well, I've got one word, and it's called impeachment. And I know some people are rolling their eyes. Are you kidding me? Are the Democrats really going to impeach President Trump for the umpteenth time? Well, the answer is yes. If they get the House of Representatives, 100% I believe, although I'm not a betting man, that Democrats will impeach President Trump. Why wouldn't they?
Walker Wildmon: And so I think they will. Do they have a leg to stand on legally? Of course not, but they'll make up something and they'll impeach President Trump. Now, of course, it won't get through the Senate. It won't stand the light of day in the Senate. But nonetheless, they'll make a circus. It'll be a three-month circus. President Trump will have to lawyer up, and it'll be a sideshow. It'll be a sideshow that takes the attention away from the American people and President Trump's agenda.
Walker Wildmon: The problem with that, folks, is it's just another distraction. And then the legislative agenda of President Trump comes to somewhat of a screeching halt. I mean, getting the Democrats in the House to sign up on anything that President Trump wants to do, good luck with that. So that's what's at stake here.
Walker Wildmon: As I mentioned, the U.S. Senate, to me, is more important than the U.S. House, but ideally the Republicans keep both. That's the ideal situation, and it very well could happen. Redistricting is in play here.
Walker Wildmon: The one thing I want to end on and warn the conservative movement about is this perpetual pessimism that's out there, this perpetual world in the podcast world and some of the conservative world perpetually complaining about problems, some of which are legitimate problems, but not providing solutions or hope or optimism to people around the country. I think that's a problem.
Walker Wildmon: And I think there's a lot of internal disputes, internal debates within the conservative movement, of what it means to be conservative, what it means to be constitutional, what's acceptable for the movement, what's not. Those are good debates to have. We're having them right now.
Walker Wildmon: For example, the most recent one is, should the Trump administration repurpose some of these welfare programs to incentivize marriage and parenting, as opposed to disincentivizing marriage and parenting with the programs? And there's some people that say, look, I don't want government subsidizing anything. They just need to get out of the welfare business altogether. Some say we need to take these programs and repurpose them to incentivize marriage and family. So those are good debates to have. I've got my own opinion. Maybe we'll talk about it on some show.
Walker Wildmon: But we don't need to lose sight of the fact that we have been given a generational opportunity to continue building on the successes of the first Trump administration, continue to, to use the left's term, stack the judiciary with constitutional judges that are going to uphold the rule of law. The tax cuts from President Trump's first term have been made permanent, and they've built upon those. The border wall, by the way, is fully funded and being built now, and will probably be completed by the end of President Trump's term.
Walker Wildmon: The workforce for the federal government has dropped by 14%. Hundreds of thousands of the federal workers have been laid off under the Trump administration. The federal government payroll is shrinking. That's a statistical fact. When was the last time that happened? Probably before I was born. And the Democrats are on their heels. They're on defense here. And we're combating the socialist narrative with good ideas, with good solutions.
Walker Wildmon: Conservative states are continuing to shore up support, continuing to fight back against federal overreach, continuing to build a Tenth Amendment buffer, if you will, against the federal government, even under the Trump administration. Big Tech is on their heels. They're having to take moves to protect minors. We'll talk about that after the break.
Walker Wildmon: And so there's a lot going on here, but conservatives have a 6-3 majority on the U.S. Supreme Court, 5-4 on a bad day. That's kind of a big deal. And so with all the noise and with all the negativity and all the eternal pessimism that you get in the podcast world, folks, we've got a country to save. We've got a generation to fight for. And we've got to stay focused. The Marxists and the socialists, they didn't get to where they are today in one election or two elections. This has been a 40, 50-year march on America's institutions and America's entertainment industry and American government. It's going to take just as long to take this country back.
Walker Wildmon: Welcome back to the program here on American Family Radio. Glad to have you with us on the program. Well, folks, we here at American Family Association and American Family Radio are doing a lot of different things, and unlike the podcast world and the quote, influencer world of the day, we're actually fixing problems and providing solutions for the country. And that's what I want to talk about today.
Walker Wildmon: Trey Dellinger is one of our senior legal fellows with us over at AFA Action, which is our government affairs arm. And of course, he does work under the AFA umbrella as well. And Trey's back with us on the program. Hey, Trey, welcome to the show.
Trey Dellinger: Great to be with you. Always good to be here, Walker.
Walker Wildmon: Well, Trey, I get excited about the work that we do, and I do it every day. You wouldn't think I would still get excited about it, but I really do. And there's so much that we're doing here at AFA and AFA Action that is moving the ball down the field, if you will, to use a sports analogy. But we just don't have time to talk about it all, and we don't want to spend too much time tooting our own horn.
Walker Wildmon: But this topic on protecting children has been something, obviously, my grandfather Don Wildmon was focused on. That's why he protested the filth on television. But now, Trey, we're doing something that AFA's been doing for decades, and that is working to protect children from harmful content. So talk about this broadly, and then we'll jump into some of these cases.
Trey Dellinger: Sure. Well, Walker, you're exactly right. AFA has its roots in the protection of families and kids from this kind of harmful content going all the way back to the 70s and Donald Wildmon's actions to try to keep this kind of bad content off of network television.
Trey Dellinger: Now we fast forward many decades later, and the key front in that battle is the internet. And we at AFA Action have been active in working with conservative Christian state legislators in a number of states to try to craft legislative solutions to keep kids safe online. And we're trying to do that in the smartest way possible, because there are a lot of landmines that you have to navigate. You have to do it very smartly and very carefully, and you have to be up on the latest court decisions. You can't just turn out one cookie-cutter piece of legislation that applies everywhere. You have to work with legislators in each state and look at the case law in each state to make sure you're doing what's best for each state. And we work hard to do that and have had a lot of success doing it.
Walker Wildmon: Yeah, Trey, there's some momentum on our side here. Number one, this is a very bipartisan issue. Only the most depraved lawmakers would argue that children don't need to be protected online and in our libraries.
Walker Wildmon: But let's talk about this. There's been a couple court rulings recently. The first one is a recent settlement by 30-plus states' attorneys general. Talk about that ruling with Meta and the implications thereof.
Trey Dellinger: Sure. Meta, as many of your listeners may know, is the company that owns the social media platforms Facebook and Instagram. And so they are a major, if not the major, player in the social media world. The social media companies, including Meta, also including Google, the company that operates YouTube, and TikTok, were sued in a very large multi-state federal litigation that was pending in California.
Trey Dellinger: Recently, Meta entered a settlement with the state attorneys general in that case and paid a minimum of 12 and a maximum of 18 billion dollars over 10 years in order to settle the claims against them. Now, I'd like to get into a little bit of, there's some good in that settlement. There are some good things that Meta, Facebook agreed to do. But there's also some bad. There are some things that were left undone, and there's still much work that needs to be done to protect kids.
Walker Wildmon: Let's talk about those things. Meta, as part of the settlement, talk about how long this is binding. I mean, this is a settlement between private parties, between the states and Meta. Talk about some of the concessions and maybe some of the stuff that was left unaddressed.
Trey Dellinger: Sure. First, the good. The settlement is a consent settlement that will last for two phases, a minimum of five, maximum of 10 years. And there are a few core things that were good that Facebook and Instagram agreed to do in this.
Trey Dellinger: First, they agreed to do independently audited age verification. Currently, if a kid, say a 14-year-old, tries to go and create an account on Instagram, it's the honor system, essentially. There's nothing really that, or Facebook, there's nothing that actually verifies how old they are. So it's not effective. What they've agreed to do in the settlement is to use the latest technology available to actually predict and determine how old those kids are that are trying to create accounts. And it has to be verified by an independent auditor. So that's good.
Trey Dellinger: Kids under 13 under the settlement cannot create an account without parental consent. That will only be implemented after Meta has two to three years to develop that technology, but that's a good step. There is no teen access between the hours of midnight and 6 a.m., so that these notifications from Meta's platforms don't interrupt their sleep. There's no notifications during school hours, so kids aren't distracted from their schoolwork. And then finally, there's also a two-hour-per-day daily time limit for Meta platforms. So a kid cannot use either Facebook or Instagram for more than two hours a day. And there have to be breaks at 15 minutes, at 60 minutes, and 90 minutes. There has to be a periodic pause so they can't just be on it for a constant two hours.
Trey Dellinger: So those are good things. And then finally, one of the things that's a part of the addictive nature of these platforms is kids have become accustomed to getting likes and reactions on their posts.
Walker Wildmon: It's a dopamine hit.
Trey Dellinger: Yeah, it's a dopamine hit. It's no different than taking an actual physical drug. They get a brain chemical dopamine release that they want to come back to again and again. So this settlement hides the likes and reaction counts for teen posts. So that's good. And then it bans cosmetic-surgery-style filters that actually change the child's appearance, because this is encouraging people to have self-loathing and self-hatred and want to get into plastic surgery and other things that are not appropriate for kids.
Trey Dellinger: So those are the good things. But there are a lot of gaps left. There's still a lot of problems that are not covered that I can also discuss.
Walker Wildmon: Well, I want to address the counterpoint, or what people are thinking now, listening to this, that say, well, isn't this the parent's job? And to give you a brief answer, the answer is yes. The primary role of parents is to shepherd their children, to raise them in the fear and admonition of the Lord, and they have full God-given parental authority to do so, limit or eliminate their phone usage and their social media usage until they're out of the household. All right, that's point number one, pretty straightforward.
Walker Wildmon: But Trey, talk about the fact that private companies also have a responsibility here. Every private company that operates in the marketplace with commerce, provides goods and services, there are legal and civil responsibilities to ensure their products are safe for consumption, safe for the user. So talk a little bit about that.
Trey Dellinger: Sure, absolutely. There's no replacing parents. Everybody agrees with that. But this is a society-wide problem. It's difficult for the individual parent to be all places everywhere at once. Literally, in order to completely ensure your kids' safety, you either have to keep them off of social media altogether, or you would have to literally spend hours a day watching every video that they watch, which is really not practical.
Trey Dellinger: So just as you alluded to, as with any other product that we allow on the market, a company could not put out a product, a food product, for example, that contained harmful chemicals that caused kids to have cancer or to have brain damage. We wouldn't allow that, even though it's the responsibility of parents to make sure to feed their kids and to make sure their kids don't eat bad things. The companies that produce this material have a responsibility to tell the truth about what's in their products and not to put harmful products that have dangerous designs on the market. So what we're asking of the social media companies here is really no different than what we ask of people that put food on the market or people that put automobiles that teenagers drive. All of those companies have the responsibility to put out products that are not unreasonably dangerous, and we're just asking the same thing of the social media companies.
Walker Wildmon: Yeah, absolutely. And the social media and the technology industry at large, or in large part rather, has avoided this type of regulation, if you will, or this type of accountability because of various federal statutes and rulings that have basically given them immunity, if you will, for lack of a better word, to pretty much have a lot of liberty on their products and their services without a whole lot of liability risk. And that's beginning to change now.
Walker Wildmon: We've somewhat breached that firewall, if you will, that the technology industry has been holding up for a long, long time. And I think all in all, it's a good thing. I mean, I don't think litigation should be your primary means of getting things done. I think in some ways our society is too litigious. But when you can't achieve things through other means, sometimes litigation, civil litigation is one of your last options. And that's what happened here with the attorneys general.
Walker Wildmon: Trey, let's talk about this ruling. I think you said it was out of the Seventh Circuit, but there was a recent ruling that basically said that child pornography produced via artificial intelligence tools is legal. Is that right?
Trey Dellinger: Well, that's essentially correct. The difficulty was, there is an old 1970s-era Supreme Court decision called Stanley versus Georgia. And that case unfortunately held that even though it is unlawful to distribute or publish obscene material, that obscene material can be possessed by an individual in their home. The court ruled that you have a First Amendment right to possess obscene material in your home, even though the First Amendment doesn't protect the sale or distribution of obscene material.
Trey Dellinger: Now, keep in mind, this is a ruling that would have horrified the Founders. The Founders could have never imagined that the First Amendment, which was enacted and adopted to protect the free exchange of ideas, would be later abused and stretched by a liberal activist Supreme Court in the 1970s to protect sexual gratification.
Trey Dellinger: So the Seventh Circuit, the judges said, look, we really don't like the result that's coming in this case that's produced by the Supreme Court case, but we as circuit court of appeals judges don't have the ability to overrule decisions of the Supreme Court. So the case dealt with something that is a new area that we're going to have to fight against, which is AI-generated child porn.
Trey Dellinger: The court had also held in a more recent case, Ashcroft versus Free Speech Coalition in the early 2000s, that computer-generated child pornography that doesn't depict an actual person, that that is also protected by the First Amendment. So those cases are going to have to be revisited, and we're working with legislators in the states to smartly craft legislation that makes some different arguments that we think the current more conservative Supreme Court will take another look at to protect against these kind of travesties.
Walker Wildmon: Yeah, Trey, this whole AI phenomenon, it has a lot of benefits. I mean, I saw a report out of Florida. I think there was a medical system down there that saw their sepsis diagnoses or their fatality rates with sepsis patients get cut in half because they were able to detect it sooner. That was an AI-driven program. So you're like, oh, wow, that's good.
Walker Wildmon: And then you see stuff like this where they're producing child porn, arguably with AI tools, and I'm like, this is disgusting. What are we doing here? So I think our society is going to have to wade through this. And there's no doubt there's going to have to be some guardrails here. We can't have the Wild West of AI and people being harmed and this disgusting content being distributed with absolutely no accountability.
Walker Wildmon: I'll give you, we've got about 30 seconds, I'll give you the last word on this effort to protect children online.
Trey Dellinger: Sure. I want to thank everybody that listens to AFR, that supports AFA, AFA Action, and the work that we're doing. If you want to make sure that kids are safe online, if you want to make sure that we fight back against these warped court decisions to restore an original understanding of the Constitution, if you believe in the Constitution, if you believe in Christian values, support AFA and AFR and AFA Action, because we're out there working with state legislators to try to make sure that your kids and your families are protected.
Walker Wildmon: Absolutely. That's Trey Dellinger, senior legal fellow over at AFA Action. Hey, Trey, we appreciate you coming on the program.
Trey Dellinger: So great to be here. Have a great day, Walker.
Walker Wildmon: Absolutely. Folks, go over to AFAAction.net. You can read more about our work. Keep up with our news releases every other week and the work that we're doing there. A lot of progress being made on the judicial research that we're doing over at the Center for Judicial Renewal. Also with our government relations arm that Trey works for, we're drafting model legislation, working at the state level with state lawmakers, getting a lot of good things done there. And then lastly, iVoterGuide.com. Check it out. We'll see you next time.
Walker Wildmon: Welcome to At the Core here on American Family Radio. Glad to have you with us on this edition of the show. Walker Wildmon here. The show is hosted each week by myself and Rick Green. Once again, it's good to be with you on today's program.
Walker Wildmon: Let's turn our attention to the Scripture, then we'll get into the content for today's episode. Acts chapter 20 is where we are this week, looking at verses 36 through 38. "And when he had said these things, he knelt down and prayed with them. Then they all wept freely and fell on Paul's neck and kissed him, sorrowing most of all for the words which he spoke, that they would see his face no more. And they accompanied him to the ship."
Walker Wildmon: So this is part of Paul's missionary journey in Greece, and he ended up in Macedonia and other parts of the region. And so two things here. The first one that I wanted to point out is the fact that God gives us emotions. God gives humans feelings and emotions. And these things that the Lord gives us as part of the human experience are good. They're good.
Walker Wildmon: They can be used for bad. They can be used for ungodliness. But handled properly and with biblical authority, our emotions and our feelings can be a good thing if they're channeled in the proper direction. And that's what we can take away from Acts chapter 20, verses 36 through 38.
Walker Wildmon: Well, speaking of feelings and human emotions being channeled in the wrong direction, this Lindsey Clancy trial that has actually ended in a mistrial has brought about all kinds of opinions and arguments and emotions. And boy, has it been unjust and ungodly. Just to give you the 30-second rundown before we jump into these clips, the jury ended in a mistrial because there was one juror, and it turns out he's the hero here, that would not agree to the insanity plea.
Walker Wildmon: Once again, I'm not a lawyer. I'm keeping this at a very high level. There were pretty much two options before the jury in Plymouth, Massachusetts, of which I'll actually be there here in a couple of weeks when we take our trip to Boston. But the decision before the jury, to keep it simple, was does Lindsey Clancy get off, get a lesser sentence because of insanity, which I have a fundamental problem with that plea and that legal theory to begin with, but that's a topic for another day, or is she held criminally responsible without the insanity plea?
Walker Wildmon: And surprisingly, 90-plus percent of the jury was willing to go along with the insanity plea and basically go easy on Lindsey Clancy, who murdered her own children with her bare hands. That's what we're talking about here. It's horrific.
Walker Wildmon: And to give you the context, folks, Massachusetts is off the deep end. They are liberal. They've been liberal. They've lost their minds collectively. Massachusetts is a problem, all right? And their state statute in this regard is also insane. If we want to talk about insanity, their state statute is insane. Why? Because it puts the burden on the prosecutor to prove that Clancy wasn't insane, as opposed to putting the onus, which is how most state statutes are written, on the defense to prove that she was insane, if that makes sense.
Walker Wildmon: We'll actually link to Jenna Ellis's op-ed on this. She did an op-ed or an episode on our show where she talked about the Massachusetts state statute on the insanity plea and how it flips the burden to the prosecutor to prove she is, in fact, sane when she committed the murder. So it's kind of a reverse way of approaching it compared to other state statutes. Nonetheless, let's jump into the content for this segment.
Walker Wildmon: The jurors, which were mostly females, are now speaking to the media, which is red flag number one, that you have jurors that are willing to go to the media this quickly and dog this solo hero juror that held out on what I believe would have been an improper insanity judgment or verdict. Nonetheless, listen to how calloused and lighthearted and jovial these four female jurors were talking about Lindsey Clancy's defense attorney, about how he's, quote, funny, compassionate, entertaining. You would think that we were talking about a sitcom.
Juror: It was his whole demeanor. Yeah, it was funny. There was one time, whatever he said, I don't know, but I went...
Juror: Because he was entertaining, which was good because we needed some of that.
Juror: Yeah, and arrogant at the same time.
Juror: Yes, like arrogant and entertaining.
Juror: He would go back and forth between that.
Juror: Yeah, like compassionate.
Juror: Yes, with his arrogance.
Juror: His compassion towards Lindsey was amazing.
Walker Wildmon: Folks, this is sick stuff here. And this is where collectively as a country we ought to be asking ourselves, men and women alike, what on earth are we doing, folks? What are we doing as a country?
Walker Wildmon: Once again, this is Plymouth, Massachusetts. They're uber-liberal. They've been off the cliff for a while. They've collectively lost their minds. But still, we are talking about a mother who murdered her three children with her bare hands, strategically, one at a time, after she sent her husband off to pick up food. And she knew exactly how long he would be gone because she looked it up on her GPS. She knew the length of time that she had to murder her three children. She took them down in the basement one at a time. She Googled beforehand. She searched in her search engine how to commit suicide, how to slit her wrist.
Walker Wildmon: Folks, this was all strategically planned out. This was the definition of premeditated, which those facts that came out in the trial cut directly against any claim of insanity. But you have these jurors, which were mostly female, that are now doing TV hits and joking it up about how great the defense was. He was funny. He was compassionate. He was entertaining. He was arrogant, they said, arrogant and compassionate all at the same time. What are we doing here?
Walker Wildmon: And why is this so complicated, folks? There are going to be a lot of people blaming a lot of different things and a lot of different people. You can throw the jurors under the bus. You can say the one male holdout is a hero, which I agree with. You can say that the defense has been completely gaslighting the public on this, even going as far as to go on The View or go on Good Morning America and say, well, we need President Trump to give my client a pardon. Well, first off, you bozo, these are state crimes. This is not a federal crime. Does he not know that? Or does he know that and he's trying to turn this into some political campaign, turn the Clancy trial into an anti-MAGA campaign? I mean, what are we not willing to politicize around here?
Walker Wildmon: And then let's listen to this clip. This is one of the jurors talking about basically how just disgusted she was with the one male juror that just wouldn't go along with what I believe was this fake insanity plea. Let's listen.
Juror: If rogue is the right word, every one of us, in the hours of frustration, would get up and walk the room because you just couldn't say anymore and would all go to the cart with the exhibits. He, I think, got up to the cart once very briefly and went back to his seat.
Juror: He would not interact with us and try to understand. We read to him on numerous occasions the definition of a reasonable doubt from Judge Sullivan's instruction. He actually said one day in the end, why don't we have the judge come in and read it again? And we were like, no, we have it in front of us. We don't need that. And we would highlight it.
Juror: He had the hardest time getting off the fact that Lindsey viciously killed her children.
Walker Wildmon: Well, there you have it. And what I want to point out there, there's a lot we could talk about, but at the very end of that clip, the juror, who by the way was clearly 100% in favor of granting the insanity plea, said, quote, talking about this one solo holdout on the jury, she said, quote, he just had the hardest time getting over the fact that Lindsey, you notice now we're using first names like they're a pal, that Lindsey brutally murdered her children, end quote. As if people are just supposed to get over that.
Walker Wildmon: They just sat through a weeks-long trial where, ironically, there weren't images, I don't believe, of the dead children displayed at the trial. We can show pictures of everything else. They brought in the children's pajamas and the weapon that was used to strangle the three children. I mean, this is horrific stuff. Nobody wants to sit through this.
Walker Wildmon: But these jurors sat through this and they come out of it doing media hits, laughing, talking about how great the defense was, and they've just got this utter disdain for this one juror holdout who refused to grant the insanity plea. And I actually can't imagine the pressure that this man was under, having all these women try to explain to him how he was wrong and he needed to just go along with the insanity plea, and he held out. I mean, you talk about a backbone of steel.
Walker Wildmon: And I'm being serious. Under all this pressure, you got all these women walking around the room, panting, pacing, lecturing you about how you just needed to sign off on this. And that one juror said, no, I'm not doing it. I believe that Lindsey Clancy knew what she was doing. She methodically carried out this horrendous crime, of which she and her defense have already admitted to, by the way.
Walker Wildmon: There is no disputing, for the internet conspiracy trolls out there. There is zero disputing who murdered the children. Clancy herself and her defense attorney on the record under trial admitted that she murdered the three children.
Walker Wildmon: And so this is a mistrial. It's probably going to be retried. And the state is going to have to do a better job, by the way, of, unfortunately, the onus is on them, they're going to have to do a better job of proving that Clancy wasn't insane, that she was in her right mind when she strangled her three children methodically. And the onus is on them. They're going to have to prove that, and Lord willing, they will before the next jury.
Walker Wildmon: Welcome back to At the Core here on American Family Radio. Glad to have you with us. I want to remind you that you can subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen to podcasts by simply typing in the name of the program in your podcast store or library, At the Core With Walker Wildmon and Rick Green. You can type in any of those keywords and the podcast should queue up, and you can subscribe or follow the podcast wherever you listen to podcasts.
Walker Wildmon: And lastly, I do want to give a shout out to our supporters, our listeners over in Davenport, Iowa. We were there yesterday evening. We had a great time of fellowship. We shared a meal together and got to shake the hands and speak with a lot of our supporters in that area, and they have an important election coming up in November, as many other states do.
Walker Wildmon: Speaking of elections, we have on with us now Ohio State Representative Kevin Ritter. He's on with us now to talk about some of the issues he's been working on and has worked on in the past in the state legislature, and of course he's on the ballot in the November election as well. Representative Ritter serves District 94 in the state of Ohio. I have been interviewing a lot of elected officials from Oklahoma, but Ritter is from Ohio, and he's with us now. Representative, glad to have you on the program.
Kevin Ritter: Thanks very much. I appreciate being here.
Walker Wildmon: Well, before we get into some of your work in the state legislature and why you're running for reelection there, tell our folks a little bit of your background and how you ended up in politics.
Kevin Ritter: Absolutely. My working career really followed dual paths for about the last 25 years. I've been a college professor teaching history and American government. At the same time, I've owned a sports development organization aimed at helping high school baseball players get ready for the draft and for college baseball. So really, no connection between the two other than they are passions of mine, so I've enjoyed doing those for over two decades.
Walker Wildmon: That's good to hear, and we appreciate your service in the Ohio legislature. Well, Representative Ritter, tell our folks, you've worked on a variety of issues, pro-family issues, issues aimed at protecting families and children, especially in the education system and our libraries. Give us a little update on some of the work you've done and the progress you guys have made in Ohio when it comes to these things.
Kevin Ritter: You know, I've had a great partner in the legislature. In fact, he's a pastor. His name is Jonathan Newman. Jonathan's from the other side of the state, but he and I have jointly sponsored several pieces of legislation specifically on libraries. We've got House Bill 583. It's an effort to clean up the databases that are accessed in our schools and in our public libraries.
Walker Wildmon: Yeah, we've worked with yourself and other states on the issue of libraries and databases. There's so much, it's kind of overwhelming when you start looking into it, the number of resources and things that have to be regulated. But nonetheless, this topic of protecting children, especially in our public libraries, it's a very bipartisan thing when you run the polling, and we've actually run some surveys on this.
Walker Wildmon: You're looking at 70 to 80% of the public, both Democrats and Republicans, that agree that minors ought to have their minds and their hearts protected from some of this filth, some of this obscene and pornographic material. So how has that gone in the legislature, and what kind of support or opposition have you had?
Kevin Ritter: As you said, we've had broad bipartisan support. I think everybody agrees on the issue of pornography, or most folks do. Where we're seeing a little bit of a division is on the gaming or gambling issue. It's not just pornography that might show up on what's supposed to be a curated database. It's also advertising for gambling sites, sometimes for illicit drugs as well. So it's more than just the porn issue that we're going after.
Walker Wildmon: Absolutely. Once again, we're talking to Ohio State Representative Kevin Ritter about his work in the state legislature and of course his reelection campaign that's going on now for the November midterm election. Representative Ritter, one of the topics I wanted to speak to, which you've worked on in the legislature, is workforce development legislation.
Walker Wildmon: We covered a story recently of the number of prime-age men that are sitting on the sidelines, upwards of 7 million men that are working age. I think between 18 and 29 are out of the workforce. They're not even applying for jobs anymore. They've completely given up on the workforce. So workforce development is a very big deal. Getting men back in the workforce should be a priority. So what have you done on that front?
Kevin Ritter: You know, we as a caucus have been engaged on this issue, trying to get into the public schools to make kids aware of the job opportunities that await them. I think the earlier that we can get information in front of kids, present them with opportunities.
Kevin Ritter: But I would make a cautionary note here as well. We're certainly not the Soviet Union, where we're trying to designate kids for specific careers at very, very young ages. This is all voluntary. Again, we're presenting information to kids so they can make informed choices with their parents as they prepare to head out into the workforce.
Walker Wildmon: That's very, very good. Well, Representative Ritter, we appreciate you coming on the program, and your work in the state legislature has been phenomenal. We greatly appreciate having like-minded allies at the state level that we can work with and push your legislation when appropriate. And so we appreciate you coming on. And you are on the ballot in November, right?
Kevin Ritter: Yes, sir.
Walker Wildmon: Excellent. For District 94 in the state of Ohio, we've got several stations there covering most of Ohio. So we've got listeners all across the state there. We appreciate you coming on and talking about some of your work.
Kevin Ritter: Absolutely. It's my pleasure. Thank you so much.
Walker Wildmon: That's Representative Kevin Ritter from the state of Ohio. He represents District 94. And if you go over to iVoterGuide.com, that's our recommended voter guide that's put out by AFA Action, you can type in your address and click on the state of Ohio. And in just a couple weeks, two weeks, we'll have those voting evaluations out for iVoterGuide. You can check out Representative Ritter, his profile, his voting record, his endorsements, all that information for Ohio voters, and specifically those within his district, will be available in just about two weeks.
Walker Wildmon: Speaking of elections, the midterms are just right around the corner, and we're under the two-month mark now for the midterms, under 60 days out. This is shaping up to be a very, very interesting and very intense election cycle in November.
Walker Wildmon: There's a couple of things at play here, and then I'll tell you kind of the direction I think we're going and some things that we need to do better as a conservative movement. But the House of Representatives is going to be a nail-biter. I just think it's going to be very close, and I don't know which direction it's going to fall. Are Democrats going to get the House back? Are they going to take the House? Are Republicans going to keep the House? I couldn't tell you, and I couldn't even make a good estimation. Historically speaking, the minority party usually wins it. That's what the history books tell us over the last probably 70 years, 50 to 70 years.
Walker Wildmon: But the Senate, on the other hand, I feel a little more confident in assessing and giving you an outlook. I think it would be a shocker if Democrats took the U.S. Senate. They would have to flip multiple seats in order to take the U.S. Senate. And on top of that, they're at risk in a couple of states.
Walker Wildmon: For example, in Georgia, which from a presidential standpoint has been a pretty reliable red state, although there's I think one instance in the last three or four cycles in which a Democrat won Georgia at the presidential level. Nonetheless, Democrats are at risk there because Georgia is definitely not a blue state. Some will say it's a battleground state, but statewide office for the governorship and other positions in recent cycles has been pretty reliably Republican. And so Democrats are somewhat defending that seat in Georgia.
Walker Wildmon: You go up to Michigan, and Democrats are once again defending that seat. But the Democrats have a very bad candidate there. He's on his heels. He's having to defend his positions, and they're not very good positions. He's pretty far left. And so Democrats are having to defend that seat as well.
Walker Wildmon: And so I say all that to say that the likelihood of Democrats taking over the Senate is pretty slim, just based on the sheer numbers. But all in all, we know that the Democrats are going to spend a hundred-plus million in the state of Texas. That's a fact on the U.S. Senate race there. They're going to spend over a hundred million just in Texas alone trying to flip that U.S. Senate seat and take it away from the Republicans. That's where you have James Talarico and Ken Paxton on the ballot there in Texas.
Walker Wildmon: But the most consequential, in my opinion, this cycle, the most consequential chamber is the U.S. Senate, because President Trump has the ability, per his constitutional authorities, to nominate, pick, not only executive branch nominees but also judicial branch nominees for the federal government, and these are Article III judges. President Trump has been nominating very good judges for the federal judiciary for the past over 18 months, and he needs to retain that ability to have the Senate approve of his nominations for the last two years of his term. And so that's why keeping the U.S. Senate in the control of the Republicans is very, very important from President Trump's vantage point.
Walker Wildmon: What can happen if the House of Representatives flips to the Democrats? Let's talk about that. What does that look like? Well, I've got one word, and it's called impeachment. And I know some people are rolling their eyes. Are you kidding me? Are the Democrats really going to impeach President Trump for the umpteenth time? Well, the answer is yes. If they get the House of Representatives, 100% I believe, although I'm not a betting man, that Democrats will impeach President Trump. Why wouldn't they?
Walker Wildmon: And so I think they will. Do they have a leg to stand on legally? Of course not, but they'll make up something and they'll impeach President Trump. Now, of course, it won't get through the Senate. It won't stand the light of day in the Senate. But nonetheless, they'll make a circus. It'll be a three-month circus. President Trump will have to lawyer up, and it'll be a sideshow. It'll be a sideshow that takes the attention away from the American people and President Trump's agenda.
Walker Wildmon: The problem with that, folks, is it's just another distraction. And then the legislative agenda of President Trump comes to somewhat of a screeching halt. I mean, getting the Democrats in the House to sign up on anything that President Trump wants to do, good luck with that. So that's what's at stake here.
Walker Wildmon: As I mentioned, the U.S. Senate, to me, is more important than the U.S. House, but ideally the Republicans keep both. That's the ideal situation, and it very well could happen. Redistricting is in play here.
Walker Wildmon: The one thing I want to end on and warn the conservative movement about is this perpetual pessimism that's out there, this perpetual world in the podcast world and some of the conservative world perpetually complaining about problems, some of which are legitimate problems, but not providing solutions or hope or optimism to people around the country. I think that's a problem.
Walker Wildmon: And I think there's a lot of internal disputes, internal debates within the conservative movement, of what it means to be conservative, what it means to be constitutional, what's acceptable for the movement, what's not. Those are good debates to have. We're having them right now.
Walker Wildmon: For example, the most recent one is, should the Trump administration repurpose some of these welfare programs to incentivize marriage and parenting, as opposed to disincentivizing marriage and parenting with the programs? And there's some people that say, look, I don't want government subsidizing anything. They just need to get out of the welfare business altogether. Some say we need to take these programs and repurpose them to incentivize marriage and family. So those are good debates to have. I've got my own opinion. Maybe we'll talk about it on some show.
Walker Wildmon: But we don't need to lose sight of the fact that we have been given a generational opportunity to continue building on the successes of the first Trump administration, continue to, to use the left's term, stack the judiciary with constitutional judges that are going to uphold the rule of law. The tax cuts from President Trump's first term have been made permanent, and they've built upon those. The border wall, by the way, is fully funded and being built now, and will probably be completed by the end of President Trump's term.
Walker Wildmon: The workforce for the federal government has dropped by 14%. Hundreds of thousands of the federal workers have been laid off under the Trump administration. The federal government payroll is shrinking. That's a statistical fact. When was the last time that happened? Probably before I was born. And the Democrats are on their heels. They're on defense here. And we're combating the socialist narrative with good ideas, with good solutions.
Walker Wildmon: Conservative states are continuing to shore up support, continuing to fight back against federal overreach, continuing to build a Tenth Amendment buffer, if you will, against the federal government, even under the Trump administration. Big Tech is on their heels. They're having to take moves to protect minors. We'll talk about that after the break.
Walker Wildmon: And so there's a lot going on here, but conservatives have a 6-3 majority on the U.S. Supreme Court, 5-4 on a bad day. That's kind of a big deal. And so with all the noise and with all the negativity and all the eternal pessimism that you get in the podcast world, folks, we've got a country to save. We've got a generation to fight for. And we've got to stay focused. The Marxists and the socialists, they didn't get to where they are today in one election or two elections. This has been a 40, 50-year march on America's institutions and America's entertainment industry and American government. It's going to take just as long to take this country back.
Walker Wildmon: Welcome back to the program here on American Family Radio. Glad to have you with us on the program. Well, folks, we here at American Family Association and American Family Radio are doing a lot of different things, and unlike the podcast world and the quote, influencer world of the day, we're actually fixing problems and providing solutions for the country. And that's what I want to talk about today.
Walker Wildmon: Trey Dellinger is one of our senior legal fellows with us over at AFA Action, which is our government affairs arm. And of course, he does work under the AFA umbrella as well. And Trey's back with us on the program. Hey, Trey, welcome to the show.
Trey Dellinger: Great to be with you. Always good to be here, Walker.
Walker Wildmon: Well, Trey, I get excited about the work that we do, and I do it every day. You wouldn't think I would still get excited about it, but I really do. And there's so much that we're doing here at AFA and AFA Action that is moving the ball down the field, if you will, to use a sports analogy. But we just don't have time to talk about it all, and we don't want to spend too much time tooting our own horn.
Walker Wildmon: But this topic on protecting children has been something, obviously, my grandfather Don Wildmon was focused on. That's why he protested the filth on television. But now, Trey, we're doing something that AFA's been doing for decades, and that is working to protect children from harmful content. So talk about this broadly, and then we'll jump into some of these cases.
Trey Dellinger: Sure. Well, Walker, you're exactly right. AFA has its roots in the protection of families and kids from this kind of harmful content going all the way back to the 70s and Donald Wildmon's actions to try to keep this kind of bad content off of network television.
Trey Dellinger: Now we fast forward many decades later, and the key front in that battle is the internet. And we at AFA Action have been active in working with conservative Christian state legislators in a number of states to try to craft legislative solutions to keep kids safe online. And we're trying to do that in the smartest way possible, because there are a lot of landmines that you have to navigate. You have to do it very smartly and very carefully, and you have to be up on the latest court decisions. You can't just turn out one cookie-cutter piece of legislation that applies everywhere. You have to work with legislators in each state and look at the case law in each state to make sure you're doing what's best for each state. And we work hard to do that and have had a lot of success doing it.
Walker Wildmon: Yeah, Trey, there's some momentum on our side here. Number one, this is a very bipartisan issue. Only the most depraved lawmakers would argue that children don't need to be protected online and in our libraries.
Walker Wildmon: But let's talk about this. There's been a couple court rulings recently. The first one is a recent settlement by 30-plus states' attorneys general. Talk about that ruling with Meta and the implications thereof.
Trey Dellinger: Sure. Meta, as many of your listeners may know, is the company that owns the social media platforms Facebook and Instagram. And so they are a major, if not the major, player in the social media world. The social media companies, including Meta, also including Google, the company that operates YouTube, and TikTok, were sued in a very large multi-state federal litigation that was pending in California.
Trey Dellinger: Recently, Meta entered a settlement with the state attorneys general in that case and paid a minimum of 12 and a maximum of 18 billion dollars over 10 years in order to settle the claims against them. Now, I'd like to get into a little bit of, there's some good in that settlement. There are some good things that Meta, Facebook agreed to do. But there's also some bad. There are some things that were left undone, and there's still much work that needs to be done to protect kids.
Walker Wildmon: Let's talk about those things. Meta, as part of the settlement, talk about how long this is binding. I mean, this is a settlement between private parties, between the states and Meta. Talk about some of the concessions and maybe some of the stuff that was left unaddressed.
Trey Dellinger: Sure. First, the good. The settlement is a consent settlement that will last for two phases, a minimum of five, maximum of 10 years. And there are a few core things that were good that Facebook and Instagram agreed to do in this.
Trey Dellinger: First, they agreed to do independently audited age verification. Currently, if a kid, say a 14-year-old, tries to go and create an account on Instagram, it's the honor system, essentially. There's nothing really that, or Facebook, there's nothing that actually verifies how old they are. So it's not effective. What they've agreed to do in the settlement is to use the latest technology available to actually predict and determine how old those kids are that are trying to create accounts. And it has to be verified by an independent auditor. So that's good.
Trey Dellinger: Kids under 13 under the settlement cannot create an account without parental consent. That will only be implemented after Meta has two to three years to develop that technology, but that's a good step. There is no teen access between the hours of midnight and 6 a.m., so that these notifications from Meta's platforms don't interrupt their sleep. There's no notifications during school hours, so kids aren't distracted from their schoolwork. And then finally, there's also a two-hour-per-day daily time limit for Meta platforms. So a kid cannot use either Facebook or Instagram for more than two hours a day. And there have to be breaks at 15 minutes, at 60 minutes, and 90 minutes. There has to be a periodic pause so they can't just be on it for a constant two hours.
Trey Dellinger: So those are good things. And then finally, one of the things that's a part of the addictive nature of these platforms is kids have become accustomed to getting likes and reactions on their posts.
Walker Wildmon: It's a dopamine hit.
Trey Dellinger: Yeah, it's a dopamine hit. It's no different than taking an actual physical drug. They get a brain chemical dopamine release that they want to come back to again and again. So this settlement hides the likes and reaction counts for teen posts. So that's good. And then it bans cosmetic-surgery-style filters that actually change the child's appearance, because this is encouraging people to have self-loathing and self-hatred and want to get into plastic surgery and other things that are not appropriate for kids.
Trey Dellinger: So those are the good things. But there are a lot of gaps left. There's still a lot of problems that are not covered that I can also discuss.
Walker Wildmon: Well, I want to address the counterpoint, or what people are thinking now, listening to this, that say, well, isn't this the parent's job? And to give you a brief answer, the answer is yes. The primary role of parents is to shepherd their children, to raise them in the fear and admonition of the Lord, and they have full God-given parental authority to do so, limit or eliminate their phone usage and their social media usage until they're out of the household. All right, that's point number one, pretty straightforward.
Walker Wildmon: But Trey, talk about the fact that private companies also have a responsibility here. Every private company that operates in the marketplace with commerce, provides goods and services, there are legal and civil responsibilities to ensure their products are safe for consumption, safe for the user. So talk a little bit about that.
Trey Dellinger: Sure, absolutely. There's no replacing parents. Everybody agrees with that. But this is a society-wide problem. It's difficult for the individual parent to be all places everywhere at once. Literally, in order to completely ensure your kids' safety, you either have to keep them off of social media altogether, or you would have to literally spend hours a day watching every video that they watch, which is really not practical.
Trey Dellinger: So just as you alluded to, as with any other product that we allow on the market, a company could not put out a product, a food product, for example, that contained harmful chemicals that caused kids to have cancer or to have brain damage. We wouldn't allow that, even though it's the responsibility of parents to make sure to feed their kids and to make sure their kids don't eat bad things. The companies that produce this material have a responsibility to tell the truth about what's in their products and not to put harmful products that have dangerous designs on the market. So what we're asking of the social media companies here is really no different than what we ask of people that put food on the market or people that put automobiles that teenagers drive. All of those companies have the responsibility to put out products that are not unreasonably dangerous, and we're just asking the same thing of the social media companies.
Walker Wildmon: Yeah, absolutely. And the social media and the technology industry at large, or in large part rather, has avoided this type of regulation, if you will, or this type of accountability because of various federal statutes and rulings that have basically given them immunity, if you will, for lack of a better word, to pretty much have a lot of liberty on their products and their services without a whole lot of liability risk. And that's beginning to change now.
Walker Wildmon: We've somewhat breached that firewall, if you will, that the technology industry has been holding up for a long, long time. And I think all in all, it's a good thing. I mean, I don't think litigation should be your primary means of getting things done. I think in some ways our society is too litigious. But when you can't achieve things through other means, sometimes litigation, civil litigation is one of your last options. And that's what happened here with the attorneys general.
Walker Wildmon: Trey, let's talk about this ruling. I think you said it was out of the Seventh Circuit, but there was a recent ruling that basically said that child pornography produced via artificial intelligence tools is legal. Is that right?
Trey Dellinger: Well, that's essentially correct. The difficulty was, there is an old 1970s-era Supreme Court decision called Stanley versus Georgia. And that case unfortunately held that even though it is unlawful to distribute or publish obscene material, that obscene material can be possessed by an individual in their home. The court ruled that you have a First Amendment right to possess obscene material in your home, even though the First Amendment doesn't protect the sale or distribution of obscene material.
Trey Dellinger: Now, keep in mind, this is a ruling that would have horrified the Founders. The Founders could have never imagined that the First Amendment, which was enacted and adopted to protect the free exchange of ideas, would be later abused and stretched by a liberal activist Supreme Court in the 1970s to protect sexual gratification.
Trey Dellinger: So the Seventh Circuit, the judges said, look, we really don't like the result that's coming in this case that's produced by the Supreme Court case, but we as circuit court of appeals judges don't have the ability to overrule decisions of the Supreme Court. So the case dealt with something that is a new area that we're going to have to fight against, which is AI-generated child porn.
Trey Dellinger: The court had also held in a more recent case, Ashcroft versus Free Speech Coalition in the early 2000s, that computer-generated child pornography that doesn't depict an actual person, that that is also protected by the First Amendment. So those cases are going to have to be revisited, and we're working with legislators in the states to smartly craft legislation that makes some different arguments that we think the current more conservative Supreme Court will take another look at to protect against these kind of travesties.
Walker Wildmon: Yeah, Trey, this whole AI phenomenon, it has a lot of benefits. I mean, I saw a report out of Florida. I think there was a medical system down there that saw their sepsis diagnoses or their fatality rates with sepsis patients get cut in half because they were able to detect it sooner. That was an AI-driven program. So you're like, oh, wow, that's good.
Walker Wildmon: And then you see stuff like this where they're producing child porn, arguably with AI tools, and I'm like, this is disgusting. What are we doing here? So I think our society is going to have to wade through this. And there's no doubt there's going to have to be some guardrails here. We can't have the Wild West of AI and people being harmed and this disgusting content being distributed with absolutely no accountability.
Walker Wildmon: I'll give you, we've got about 30 seconds, I'll give you the last word on this effort to protect children online.
Trey Dellinger: Sure. I want to thank everybody that listens to AFR, that supports AFA, AFA Action, and the work that we're doing. If you want to make sure that kids are safe online, if you want to make sure that we fight back against these warped court decisions to restore an original understanding of the Constitution, if you believe in the Constitution, if you believe in Christian values, support AFA and AFR and AFA Action, because we're out there working with state legislators to try to make sure that your kids and your families are protected.
Walker Wildmon: Absolutely. That's Trey Dellinger, senior legal fellow over at AFA Action. Hey, Trey, we appreciate you coming on the program.
Trey Dellinger: So great to be here. Have a great day, Walker.
Walker Wildmon: Absolutely. Folks, go over to AFAAction.net. You can read more about our work. Keep up with our news releases every other week and the work that we're doing there. A lot of progress being made on the judicial research that we're doing over at the Center for Judicial Renewal. Also with our government relations arm that Trey works for, we're drafting model legislation, working at the state level with state lawmakers, getting a lot of good things done there. And then lastly, iVoterGuide.com. Check it out. We'll see you next time.
Walker Wildmon examines the Lindsay Clancy case, including jurors’ reactions to the defense and the struggle of the lone holdout juror to move past the killing of Clancy’s children.
Ohio Rep. Kevin Ritter joins Walker to discuss legislation involving libraries, education, and workforce development in Ohio.
Trey Dellinger, Senior Legal Fellow with AFA Action, also joins the program to address efforts to keep children safe online and the legal issues surrounding online protections for kids.
Live
Did you know American Family Radio is listener-supported? Your monthly financial support will allow us to continue upholding Godly values through our numerous channels, like American Family Radio, One Million Moms, The Stand magazine, and many more.
Become a Great Commission Partner TODAY to help AFR transform culture by rebuilding the family. When you donate today, you’ll get access to:
