Transcript

American Family Radio turns daily radio program into a podcast

>> Walker Wildmon: We inform religious freedom is about people of faith being able to live out their faith, live out their convictions, no matter where they are. We equip sacred honor is the courage to speak truth, to live out your free speech. We also rejoice in our sufferings because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance, character and character.

>> Speaker B: This is At the Core on American Family Radio.

>> Walker Wildmon: Welcome to The Core here on American Family Radio. Walker Wildmon here with you on this edition of the program. Boy, the year is flying by. We're already in May before you know, it will be in the fall, but here we are and 2025 is moving along. A lot of news to talk about, a lot of content to cover. And, we enjoy hosting the show. Rick and I do. Rick Green and I, we enjoy hosting the show with you each week. Couple of housekeeping items if you enjoy the show and you miss maybe, an interview or part of an episode. As a reminder, we do have the podcast published each and every afternoon. So in simple terms, we turn the daily radio program into a podcast. Wherever you listen to podcasts, just type in the name of the program at the core and you can click the follow button. That's one thing I learned last week. It's no longer called subscribe. That's too, too simple. We have to change it up. So now it's follow. So follow the podcast. I didn't know you could follow a podcast, but you can. You're not subscribing, you're following. so follow the podcast over on your Apple or Android device and, we'll have the latest episode queued up in your library each and every day. And as a reminder as well, we've got the video out there on Facebook and stream.aca.net if you prefer to watch the show, then you can go to stream.afa.net and create a free account. Or you can go over to Facebook at the core Facebook page and watch, the show there as well.

AFA at Home episode seven on education is available now for free

We have a brand new episode of AFA at Home being released. Actually was released late last week on Thursday evening and it's available now for free. It's going to be available until Thursday evening of this week and we, would love for you to go to stream afa.net and watch that episode. It's episode seven of our AFA at Home series and the entire topic of this episode is education in America. We have some great guests with us. Abraham Hamilton III joined us. Ryan Walters, the state Superintendent of Education in Oklahoma, joined us and others there for that episode seven. So go over to stream.afa.net all you need is a free account and you can watch the entire episode there@, stream.afa.net all right, Proverbs, chapter 11 is where we are this week. One verse here, verse three. The integrity of the upright will guide them, but the crookedness of the treacherous will destroy them. The integrity of the upright will guide them, but the crookedness of the treacherous will destroy them. The truth I want to highlight today in this week on Proverbs, chapter 11, verse 3, is that following the precepts of God, of course, the ultimate reward that is received from following the precepts of God is eternal life. That's the ultimate reward. There are, though, temporal rewards on the earth, and we have to find that dual understanding. And the reason I want to highlight this because some people get down and out when things aren't going their way and they feel as though they're living godly lives. They're following the Lord, they're seeking his face, they're seeking his will in their lives. But things just don't seem to be going right. Things just don't seem to fall into place. They just can't figure out what to do. And there's this growing frustration that we can get as humans, as fallen people that, well, I'm following the Lord, so why aren't things going my way? Well, that's probably a temporal situation you're going through. But there also is times where things do go, good, because you were obedient, to the Lord. And so I want to highlight the fact that there is very much, ah, temporal reward and temporal satisfaction, favor found when you follow the things of the Lord. And to the contrary, when you aren't obedient to the Lord, when you aren't in his will, when you aren't following His Word and His precepts, then, things will eventually fall apart. All right, they may not fall apart in the short term, but eventually things will fall apart. And I'm talking on this earth. Obviously, there's eternal judgment that you'll face, but over time, when one persistently follows the Lord, they will end up finding favor. They will end up finding peace and rest even in this life, in this earthly life. And then to the contrary, persistent disobedience, persistent, deception and evil will catch up with you even on this life. Not just on Judgment Day, but in this life as well. And so this is really an encouragement, to those who are persistently seeking the Lord, who are following his word, who are being obedient to his commands. it will, be rewarded to you, even in this life, you will see fruit and benefits, even in this earthly life when you follow, the Lord. So That's Proverbs, chapter 11, verse 3. The integrity of the upright will guide them, but the crookedness of the treacherous will destroy them.

Budget bill cleared key hurdle in House; now it goes to Senate

Let's, move into some of the stories this week. The tax legislation, the tax cuts, and what President Trump's calling the big, beautiful bill. It's really got more than tax cuts in it. It's got a lot of, lot of moving pieces. Well, it cleared a key hurdle yesterday evening, probably in the wee hours of this morning, technically, in the Senate, Budget Committee, I'm sorry, the Congress, the House Budget Committee. So it's going to move over to the Senate and will, be able to, they'll be able to put their finishing touches on it before it's going to have to go back to the House because the Senate's 99% certain they're going to make some changes to it. So then it's got to go back to the originating chamber and then it can go to the President's desk. But this is, there's mixed reviews on this legislation. There's mostly, mostly positive reviews from the Republican slash conservative side. But there's also some concerns, primarily around spending. All right. some of the parts of the bill about securing the border and funding Immigration and Customs Enforcement and cutting taxes, all of that's very much commonplace. there's unanimous consent, so to speak, amongst the conservative movement on those items. But the spending seems to be the holdup, and it seems to be the concern amongst some. And I've got to admit, I share those concerns. And I'm not at a place where we just need to kill the bill and we need to stop it and we don't need to pass it and we need to all out oppose it. I think that's unwise, too, because not extending these tax cuts would be terrible for the country and terrible for working families. And as a conservative, I'm always in favor of cutting taxes because we need less government. And when you do less government revenue, we need less government, but the spending is a problem. And according to the latest numbers, this, this budget bill only reduces spending by about a percentage and a half, about one and a half percent. And I don't think that's enough. And we'll play a clip here in a minute on Senator Scott talking about this. But Washington's deficit Problem is the problem. Capital T, Capital H, Capital E. The spending and deficit problem is the problem. And I know many of you are like, I am depending on what day of the week it is. I'm like, can we really, is there really such thing as spending too much money in Washington? I mean we're at 37 trillion. What is too much? Can't we just keep printing it? Right? Can't you just pay for the deficit by printing more? And it seems that way because we've been doing that for between 20 and 30 years as far as this racking debt. But I don't think it is sustainable. I really don't, I, really don't think it's sustainable. And I don't, I'm not saying that I want to be, want to be honest about why I think it's unsustainable and what I think the end result is. I don't think it's apocalyptic unsustainable. Like we're going to have a market crash and it's going to be the end of the world as we know it. I don't think it's going to necessarily look like that. I think it's going to be much slower than that. But the end result's not going to be pretty, it's not going to be good. And I think America will look much different on the other side of whatever kind of economic downturn is going to arise from this unsustainable debt load. But you get the devaluing of the dollar. There's a couple pieces of this puzzle that, that, that will fall into place unless we, we stop this massive deficit spending. If we, and I want to be clear, there is a clear solution here. So this isn't something where it's hopeless and there's no way to fix it. And, and it's just, it's just going to happen. It's inevitable. There's actual reforms that can take place in Washington, but there's just not the appetite for it. And unfortunately the Republican Party is, they're not the Tea Party anymore. They beat back the Tea Party so hard. there's very few of the Tea Party folks around anymore. But the deficit spending will have a long term consequence and it will begin to basically swallow the budget. The interest on the debt will over time swallow the budget where we'll be paying more to service the debt than we will on actually services that the government provides. And if you don't believe me, look at the math. Okay? We're at a trillion dollars now just in interest Payments. All right, a trillion dollars out of a roughly 6 to 7 trillion dollar budget. And so you keep this going, and then the Fed keeps the interest rates high, and we don't slow down the spending and reduce the deficit spending, then, you see where we'll blink, and then we'll be at a trillion and a half, and then we'll be at 2 trillion, 3 trillion, and boom, before you know it, we'll wake up in 10 years and 50% of the federal budget will be servicing the debt. All right? And, the problem with printing it to pay for it is that that adds fuel to the fire that escalates and speeds up the trajectory of this ballooning deficit. That is uncontrollable. And the fix is reducing spending, which means reducing the deficit, growing the economy. That's the only way out of it, is to grow your way out of it. And I think that's in large part what President Trump's trying to do here. But I don't think the spending cuts are drastic enough. I just really don't think the spending cuts are drastic enough. I was looking at 5 to 10%. When you look how much Doge has identified, there's no reason we can't reduce spending by 5 to 10%. All right, let's listen to Senator Rick Scott and his thoughts on this budget deficit.

Sen Rick Scot: Yeah, look, they've got work to do in the House. you know, every Republican I know in the House, they want this to pass, but they've got. They know that we've got to get to fiscal sanity. I want this bill to pass. I want to help President Trump get his agenda done. But, you know, we've had a 53% increase in spending with the Democrats in five years, 2% increase in population. This bill simply cut spending by a whopping 1.7%. We have got. Look at what happened on Friday. The Moody's downgraded us. You got to balance a budget. I bounced a budget when I was governor. Every year, I paid off a third of state debt. I did the opposite of what's happened at the federal level. Our credit rating went up to the highest level in the country. So this is fiscal sanity, is what we need to get interest rates down, inflation under control.

SenRick Scott: Over the Biden era, Washington has increased spending by 50%

>> Walker Wildmon: All right, so that's Senator Rick Scott out of Florida. Did you just hear the math on that? Over the Biden era, Washington has increased spending by 50%. And we're reducing the deficit. We're reducing spending by 1.5% with this bill. And here's the traditional excuse that can't be used here. This is reconciliation. All you need is Republican votes, okay? 51 in the Senate, majority in the House, which Republicans have the majority in both chambers. So we're not, it's not like we're having to cut a deal with Chuck Schumer here, all right? We're cutting a deal with ourselves, and we're only reducing the, the spending by 1.5%. These are Republicans, 100% Republicans. Okay? And under, under Obama, under, under Obama, under Biden, which was basically Obama 3.0. Under Biden, the Republicans would go on the, on the, you know, the floor of the House, on the Senate, say, oh, it's the Democrats, the Dem. We haven't. We're having to spend money because the Democrats. Well, this is 100% Republicans, and you guys can't cut more than 1.5% of $7 trillion. Give me a break. We'll be back in a few.

Tim Wildmon announces trips to Israel and Greece in 2026

>> Tim Wildmon: Hello, everyone. I'm Tim Wildmon, president of American Family association and American Family Radio. Hey, I wanted to make you aware of our trips to Israel and Greece in 2026. We're going in March. It's usually a beautiful time of the year to go in terms of the weather, and we're excited to go back to Israel for, like, our 27th or 28th time, and take a group of folks who want to see the land where Jesus walked. That's in March. And also in March, my sons Wesley and Walker are leading a tour to Greece and to what we call the Footsteps of Paul tour. Those are going to be back to back. So if you want to do both, you're welcome to do both again, Israel and Greece, two separate trips in March of 2026. For all the information, go to wildmangroup.com w I l-m o n group.com.

Podcasts are available at afr.net now back to, At the Core on American Family Radio.

Second segment features Brian Blaise on American Family Family Radio

Welcome, to The Core here on American Family Radio. Second segment underway. Glad to have you with us on today's program. Once again, you're listening to American Family Family Radio. Check out our website, afr.net for all the podcasts, all the live show links. You can listen to this show live and other shows live [email protected] a lot of different content there in audio form [email protected] well, speaking of the budget that we talked about in the last segment and, me throwing a wet blanket on it for good reason, we have Brian Blaize on with us. He's Ph.D. and president of the Paragon Health Institute. Brian also, served as Special Assistant to the President for economic policy during President Trump's first term. From 17 to 19, he was working under the National Economic Council within the White House. Brian's with us now to talk about some of these policies. Hey Brian, welcome to the program. It's great to be here, Brian.

This reconciliation package has the opportunity to make changes to Medicaid and other mandatory programs

let's talk specifically your area, your specialty if you will. Your area of focus is Medicaid and other health related policies coming out of Washington. This budget, this reconciliation package, has the opportunity to make some reforms because as I mentioned in the last segment, you only need Republican votes. It's basically whatever a Republican consensus can come together and agree on. And these, ah, quote unquote mandatory programs such as Medicaid, and there's others, they eat up a large portion of the federal budget. All right, so making changes within these programs is a big, big deal if you're talking about reducing the deficit. So bring us up to speed generally on any type of reforms, that they're talking about for Medicaid or other mandatory programs and then we'll kind of get into the nuts and bolts.

>> Brian Blaise: So there's the three big mandatory programs. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. And Social Security. Medicare really haven't been part of the discussion for this, tax and spending bill. It is Medicaid. Medicaid is a joint federal state program. The key with Medicaid is that the federal government provides an open ended reimbursement of state spending. So the more estate spends, the more money they get from the federal government. Traditionally, Medicaid was a targeted program. It was for low income children, pregnant mothers, people with disabilities and the elderly. It has been dramatically expanded. Obamacare is sort of the biggest reason why it expanded. But Obamacare expanded Medicaid to all able bodied, working age, generally childless adults, below a certain income threshold. Worse, Obamacare created a much, better deal for states, for providing coverage for the able bodied. So every dollar of spending that a state does on an able bodied childless adult, the federal government will send that state dollar nine, for a dollar of spending on a traditional Medicaid enrollee like a child or a person with disabilities, that dollar only generates $1.33 in federal funding. So states get seven times more federal funding for a dollar on the able bodied than on the vulnerable. So that's one key problem.

>> Walker Wildmon: Yeah, let's stop there. So, that's messed up. My instinct as a taxpayer is that's messed Up. All right. But, let's be more sophisticated than. That's messed up. How did we get to a point where the able bodied are better off, if you will, in Medicaid than those who are disabled or those who are, for example, children or single mothers? How did it get inverted?

>> Brian Blaise: It's a legacy of Obamacare or the Affordable Care Act. So when President Obama, signed that legislation, its goal was to increase coverage. And they tried to do it in the least costly way. Way. And it was a thought at the time that Medicaid was the least costly way to do that because Medicaid tends to pay providers very low rates. so they expanded Medicaid and they reimbursed a higher percentage of these state costs so that states wouldn't balk at sort of a, mandate from the federal government with, with a high price tag. But what we've learned is that the Medicaid expansion has been much more expensive. And it's not rocket science. Why, if the federal government is paying the entire bill, then states don't have an incentive to be cost conscious consumers. And actually they have really bad incentives because they try to bring, as many enrollees in that category as possible. So even people that aren't eligible for that category, the state makes money if they improperly classify people, since the federal government's basically paying the entire cost. So we're now left with this permanent. Well, I wouldn't say it's permanent, but this current discrimination in the program where states get far more federal money on the able bodied than on the disabled, and where the health care system now and providers are making higher rates when they serve the able bodied rather than kids, pregnant moms, people with disabilities on the program.

Brian Blaise with Paragon Health Institute discusses possible Medicaid reforms

>> Walker Wildmon: Once again, we're talking to Brian Blaize with Paragon Health Institute about Medicaid and, some possible reforms here. Brian, are the Republicans looking at any reforms or are they gonna just completely keep status quo with Medicaid as we're talking about? I mean, what type of reforms are they talking about that are legitimately on the table and not just talking points?

>> Brian Blaise: Yeah, so, one of the other problems, and then I'll get to what they're looking at doing, but one of the other problems is that states develop financing schemes, and they are able to get federal money without actual state contributions. So real quick on the example of this is it's called the Medicaid provider tax, but it's really, it's not a tax. It's just a form of Legalized money laundering where a hospital system will go to the state and say tax me and so say that hospital system pays the state $1 million in tax. The state then spends that million dollars right back on that hospital system. and then they invoice the federal government for that million dollar expenditure. So the federal government will then contribute money to the state which the state then sends to the provider. So it's a form of legalized money laundering. What Congress is looking to do in this package is to implement work or community engagement requirements on the able bodied, Obamacare expansion enrollees. So they would have to satisfy 80 hours of work a month or job training or community service in order to obtain this welfare benefit. they're also looking to strengthen state's ability to, or the tools that they have to ensure that only eligible people are enrolled for the program. And then they are taking some small steps to address this Medicaid money laundering practice. I wish they would be more aggressive in addressing the Medicaid money laundering and in addressing the problems with the federal government paying so much more for the expansion, working age population than traditional populations.

>> Walker Wildmon: The the work requirements has been something conservatives have been trying to get in for a long, long time. Do you think that, and I think that's, that's a step in the right direction. I don't think just, just doing that is aggressive enough to fix some of the issues here. But it, do you think that provision is going to be on a, on a sunset provision or do you think that's going to be permanent? Because some of these, the items that they're putting in this reconciliation bill will expire like in let's say four years or six years or eight years. do you know if that's going to sunset or do you think they're going to carry that on indefinitely unless another Congress intervenes?

>> Brian Blaise: So actually the problem with the work requirements in the initial version was that they didn't have them starting until 2029, which is after President Trump has left the White House. So it's ridiculous, right? I mean it's almost four years from now. one of the things that sort of, there's a bunch of I think very reform oriented, conservatives who are looking to improve the bill. And one of the things that they've really focused on is moving that date up, for when the work requirements will take effect. So they're now scheduled to take effect at the start of 2027. Actually I think it's December 31, 2026, in the agreement. So those would be in place starting then and they'd be in place in perpetuity. It is a good question of how they will be implemented if there is a Democratic, administration that is hostile to them. Yeah, and I do think that is, that is a, that is a concern. but these wouldn't, these wouldn't phase out. a lot of the phase out provisions are some of these temporary tax, relief provisions that President Trump campaigned on.

>> Walker Wildmon: Yeah, that, that is a concern. Wow. 2029, that was, so that was the original version of the bill. But now, now 2027, that's, that's more palatable, because we're halfway through the year. So we're talking 2020, we're talking 18 months basically. Assuming it's, assuming it's a January start, it could be a fiscal year start. But nonetheless 2027 is better than 29. but the, the spending cuts, and I know your, your primary focus is health policy, but Brian, the inability for Republicans to cut spending when they can is quite baffling to me. And as I said earlier, a lot of the money's tied up in these programs. I mean, yes, there's discretionary spending. We're spending upwards of a trillion dollars, on just The Pentagon, 800, 800,000,000 billion on spending at the Pentagon. And if Republicans can't cut more than 1 1/2% in a bill that only their caucus and their party has to approve on, I mean, it's like, I don't want to hear any more talking points about reining in spending and reducing the deficit because here we are, Trump has the momentum and 1.5% is all we got. When Doge says that there's hundreds of billions out there that can be cut.

>> Brian Blaise: I mean, I share your view. I think that if you're looking at the the federal spending so increased during COVID and we're not even looking to get back to a Covid baseline, right. We're looking to just sort of trim some of this excess. And if you look over the next decade, federal spending is projected to be $90 trillion. So you're right. I mean this is what we're looking at doing is 2% of the growth of total spending over the next decade. And most of the cuts from that baseline. Right. Are backloaded, at the end of the budget window. So I think, look, I think that it's a, Special interests have a lot of power and they create these programs and they develop constituencies around these programs. And I focus in health care. And they've developed very, you know, all these subsidy and spending programs that are very difficult to unwind. because if you try to unwind them, you get, a, constituency that you're, you know, they want to benefit from the, from all this, these subsidies and spending. So they're going to come in and fight for it. But I do think like it is, in my view, the number one reason why I do policy work is to reduce, federal spending. And we have so much inefficient and wasteful spending in our health care entitlement programs. It really is the most important, area for fiscal conservatives to get reforms because Medicaid, Medicare and Obamacare are the only part of the federal budget that is growing as a percentage of the economy, other than interest on the debt. and the financial markets are blaring warnings. Right. I mean, we've got four and a half percent, interest rates. We now spend more on interest payments than we do on, national defense.

>> Walker Wildmon: Right.

>> Brian Blaise: It's. It's horrifying.

>> Walker Wildmon: Yeah, yeah. It's ballooning and it's. It's ballooning and it's, it's near out of control. I mean, Elon Musk said when he came in to doze, we were headed towards de facto bankruptcy. That's what he said. And he's dealt with companies that, that were near bankruptcy, including X when he bought it.

Brian Blaise: We need to reorient our health policy on what matters

let me ask you, we got about, let's say two minutes left. Brian. what's your, how, how are you. What's your general sense about RFK Jr. And what he's doing over there? I mean, are they, are they moving in the right direction? Not moving fast enough. Do you like some of the things that you're seeing out of hhs? What's your general kind of review, if you will? Of what RFK Jr. M?

>> Brian Blaise: I'm optimistic of, I'm optimistic of Senator Kennedy and I really like the leadership team. I think Dr. Oz has done a nice job and he's really, he's really spreading a good message on protecting these programs for the vulnerable and getting rid of waste, fraud, abuse and bad actors. I think Marty McCary at FDA. Ah. And Jay Bhattachary at NIH. I think that they are in the big picture. So much of our health policy over the last 15 years has been focused from the left on increased spending, increased Medicaid, increased subsidies for health Insurance. And that has not made us any healthier. We have life expectancy that declined for three straight years prior to the pandemic. So I think a lot of what really matters for health comes down to work and family and marriage and community engagement, not to mention nutrition and good behaviors like physical exercise. So I think in holistic terms we need to reorient our health policy on what actually matters for health, and not on all of this stuff that the special interests and the health care industrial complex is trying to foist on us.

>> Walker Wildmon: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. 100%. Hey Brian, thanks for coming on.

>> Brian Blaise: Thank you.

Last year Preborn helped rescue over 67,000 babies from abortion

>> Walker Wildmon: All right, that's Brian Blaise. He's a PhD and president of Paragon Health Institute and worked in Trump 1.0. in the, in the White House there are National Economic Advisors, or rather the, in the White House, yeah, national economic council from 2017 to 2019. Very interesting discussion. But what Brian said there about the policy, or rather the focusing people's attention on preventing the chronic illness, on, on preventing the cancer, on preventing some of these lifestyle decisions that end up putting you in a place where you have to go on Medicaid. Right. we need to look at the root causes, which is what RFK Jr and his team are doing to to help, eventually prevent people from needing the programs. I mean you're never going to prevent everyone, but if we can cut 5, 10% off of the number of people needing these programs, that's a big, big deal. You're talking about saving a lot of money for the country. We'll be back in a.

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>> Speaker B: This is At the Core on AmericanFamily Radio with your host Walker Wildmon.

Welcome, back to The Core here on American Family Radio. Well, we have a guest this segment and we had one in the last segment. I hope you interview. Enjoy the interview with Brian Blaise with Paragon Health Institute talking about the entitlement programs and some necessary reforms that are needed to reduce the amount of money that our federal government is having to print to subsidize the programs. And you can't, you can't reduce the deficit unless you touch the programs, man. That's just, that's just it is what it is. It's like saying you want to reduce your family's budget but you don't want to talk about any categories to reduce the spending. And it's like how are we going to reduce the deficit if we don't reduce some of the categories? And so that's what Brian, was on to talk about. Well, introducing our next guest, Senator, Middleton.

Senator Mayes Middleton on Senate Bill 11

Senator Mayes Middleton from, Texas serving District 11 there is on with us to talk about a couple pieces of legislation in the Texas legislature. And Senator Middleton's on with us now. Senator, welcome to the program.

>> Senator Mayes Middleton: Hey, thank you for having me on today.

>> Walker Wildmon: Absolutely. We've got dozens of stations in Texas. We cover most of Texas and got several hundred thousands, probably a couple million listeners there throughout the week. And so you're talking to your constituency, but also we're a nationwide radio network, so hopefully we can bring some knowledge and information to folks all around the country. Senate Bill 11, I was made aware of last week and read up briefly on it and kind of what it hopes to achieve through passage. If you can get it to the finish line and get it to the governor's desk, bring us up to speed on SB11.

>> Senator Mayes Middleton: Well, that's the goal, obviously. This is, Senate Bill 11 is putting prayer back in our public schools and it establishes a period of prayer or Bible reading during school hours. And look, as we know our schools are not God free zones. And this allows students and those that work in the school to exercise their religious liberties and their faith during school hours. And you really have to ask the question, are we better or are we worse off? Since prayer was taken out of our schools in the 1960s and we all know what the answer to that is. We are worse off. So what this bill does, it allows a voluntary period of prayer, to be designated during school hours. The students don't have to participate and neither do the faculty. But something else that we know for sure is there's no such thing as separation of church and state. Right? That that is a false doctrine. It was a letter from Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist. It's nowhere in the Constitution. And at the end of the day this is about exercise of our first Amendment rights and this bill allows that. And right now it has passed the Senate and it's scheduled for a floor vote in the House, hopefully in the next week here. And if we can get it passed Senate Bill 11 on the Texas House floor, that way we can get it to the Governor Abbott's desk for signature into law. So that next step is passage in the Texas House and we need that to happen here in the next week and a half or so.

>> Walker Wildmon: Yeah. And this bill really, it's going to serve multiple purposes, but it's also going to really serve as a, as an educational, topic if you will, on the fact that our founding Fathers under, under the entire First Amendment context was Christianity was the dominant religion and the Bible was the central textbook in America's early universities. and so this false notion in our law schools today that religion means anything, right, Even Satanists are now covered under the First Amendment. And freedom of religion, that's just not true. our founding Fathers and the context of which they wrote the First Amendment, Christianity was what the religion, that they were talking about and the free exercise thereof when it comes to government, intervention. And the whole purpose here to your point about Thomas Jefferson's letter was not to prevent private citizens from exercising their faith or exercising their viewpoint, although we may disagree with it. It was to prevent government from intervening and squashing religion and squashing speech. and so people are supposed to be free, to believe what they want to believe without government intervention. And so I think this bill goes a long way to restoring values in our school system and teaching people right from wrong. and that's part of the success sequence, that helps our society do well, one More question and then we'll let you go.

Senator Middleton introduces Texas Women's Privacy Act this legislative session

I know you got to move on to something else, but the last bill I want to mention is the Texas Women's Privacy Act. This has been done in over nearly two dozen states where we protect women's, sports, we protect, their bathrooms and their changing rooms and some of these public spaces. briefly tell us about that legislation.

>> Senator Mayes Middleton: Right, so this is a very important bill. I was the author of the Save Women Sports act, which we passed last legislative session. And obviously that's the bill that keeps men out of women's college sports because as we saw, the left was fighting to take away fairness and opportunity from women. We all know Wriley Gaines, she's a hero and a champion on this. But look, we have to finish the job on that because one of the first stories I heard from Wriley when I met her is that she was aware that a man was going to play on the women's sports team because there was a man in her locker room at the University of Kentucky. And it is fundamentally wrong that men are being allowed to enter women's private spaces, whether that's restrooms, locker rooms or showers. You know, and as a dad to a three year old little girl, I don't want a man going into her restrooms. And we need to make sure that our families are safe. Because what this bill does is it keeps women and families safe by keeping men out of those private spaces. And, and we've heard a lot of examples, even here at the Texas Capitol. we had a witness in committee one day that said there's a man in the women's restroom every single day at the Capitol that just reaffirms how important this bill is, that this issue is real, that it's happening, and we need to make sure that we pass it into law this legislative session because we're ensuring safety and privacy for women, and we're not going to put up with men that are pretending to be women and compromising their safety and entering their private spaces anymore. And that's What Senate Bill 240 does, is it protects that right to privacy.

>> Walker Wildmon: Yeah, both of these bills need to get over the finish line because Texas needs to continue being a leader, on these critical issues, because there was nothing more, that the Democrats would love than to take Texas. And so, you guys got to keep the momentum going there. Hey, Senator Middleton, thanks so much for coming on the program.

>> Senator Mayes Middleton: Hey, thank you for having me on today. And thank you for highlighting these two incredibly important bills on religious liberties and protecting the safety and privacy of women and children. Two incredibly important issues for our state and for our whole nation. God bless you.

>> Walker Wildmon: Amen. Thanks so much.

Senate Bill 11 and the Texas Women's Privacy Act are pending

Senator Mays Middleton, serving District 11 there in the state senate in Texas.

And those legislation that we talked about, Senate Bill 11 and the Texas Women's Privacy act are now pending before the state legislature there. And the legislature is wrapping up pretty soon. And Texas I believe is a, every other year legislature. So they don't have an opportunity every single year to address these issues. So while they're in session they have to make the most use of their time. You know, this fundamentally flawed view of America's Constitution and our founding fathers and religion in America has really infected America's law schools. And you get these lawyers that don't understand, don't understand why the First Amendment was written and the context of the First Amendment and the fact that religion under the context of the writing of the Constitution, the dominant religion was Christianity. Now of course that wasn't the only you've got Judaism and others.

But this whole notion that Satanists can be protected under the First Amendment freedom of religion and then they can have their Satan statue at the Capitol is just not true. It's a fundamentally wrong view of the First Amendment and freedom of religion. And so this bill really starts to chip away at that false notion. And it specifically talks about prayer and the reading of the Bible at public schools, not reading of religious text because that can be misinterpreted about the reading of the Bible in public schools. And it provides an opt out provision for people, for students and teachers that don't want to participate. But I'll go back to this non legal argument of why the Bible and Christianity must be preserved in America. The Bible and Christianity is what brought us America all right? Of course through God's providence. But following God's precepts is what got us this country of this country that we're in. And it's undeniable that our country has been a beacon of hope, freedom and liberty for its existence. Has America had her problems? Absolutely. Do we have our problems? Absolutely. And I can go through a litany of items where we've gotten it completely wrong and we're still getting it wrong. But what, what brought the blessing of America is God's precepts. And our founding fathers knew that if this nation was established on the principles of the Bible and Christianity, that it could be A real place of hope and freedom.

And the stat that I go back to all the time is that America exports roughly. Now these, these stats are about a decade old, but America exports roughly 85 to 90% of humanitarian work in the world. The Muslims aren't doing humanitarian work, the atheists aren't doing humanitarian work. You actually don't see many Jewish organizations doing humanitarian work to non Jews. And so it's the Christians that are doing the vast majority of the humanitarian work around the world. And of course with that is propagating the gospel. And then you look how the, American structure of government and economics provides opportunity from people from all walks of life to flourish as humans, to thrive, to experience all kinds of opportunities. And then our First Amendment is really kind of the icing on the cake. The fact that we have freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press in this country is amazing. And so to everybody out there that thinks that we can keep America as we know it, but we can ditch religion and Christianity, is wrong. That's a fundamentally flawed viewpoint. It just won't work. And you can look throughout all of human history and you can look at modern governments, I'm talking about over the last several hundred years.

You can look at governments that tried to govern and tried human flourishing. Without the Bible and Christianity, it just doesn't work. And the primary reason that it doesn't work is because of human nature. Human nature is flawed. We're all born into sin. And when you have a bunch of men, a bunch of humans that try to govern without religion and morality. Is this sounding like our founding father's writings here? When you have humans that try to govern without religion and morality, they quickly go off track and it becomes my opinion versus your opinion. And there's no master opinion. And then you devolve into tyranny. Happens every time. Happens every time. Look at Europe. Some people say Europe's a decade ahead of us. I don't know. We've been catching up with Europe when it comes to the depravity. So I don't know that they're a decade ahead of us anymore. Maybe we're catching up with them, maybe we're surpassing Europe. But Europe has devolved into this cultureless, godless, pagan society. And, and, and on top of all the paganism and the godlessness, they've imported mass numbers of Muslims. And what's so ironic about this, this atheist and humanist viewpoint of kicking God out of everything. And we don't like the Christians. And let's, let's bash on the Jews. The irony of it all, and I'm basically describing the Democrat Party for you, by the way.

But the irony of it all, is that, is that they cozy up to the Muslims. It's so bizarre. Like they're anti religion, anti God, but then they want to hang out with the Muslims. And that's a massive voting block for the Democrats. Think Minnesota. It's bizarre, but it's only described and only made sense through spiritual thinking. And that is that these people don't really. It's not that they don't like God or religion. They don't like the God of the Bible. They might like their little G God. They don't like the God of the Bible, the one true God. And that mass importation of Muslims into Europe is absolutely going to kill Europe over time. It's happening before our eyes. We'll see you next time.

>> Jeff Chamblee: The views and opinions expressed in this broadcast may not necessarily reflect those of the American Family Association or American Family Radio.