Transcript

Preborn Network offers counseling, prayer and a free ultrasound to pregnant women

>> Walker Wildmon: When a woman experiences an unplanned pregnancy, she often feels alone and afraid. So many times her first response is to seek out an abortion. But because of the generosity of listeners like you, that search may lead her to a PreBorn Network clinic. Preborn offers God's love and compassion to hurting women and then provides a free ultrasound to introduce them to the life growing inside of them. The this combination brings the ultimate miracle of life to life and doubles a baby's chance at life, which is why preborn saw over 67,000 babies rescued last year alone. Meet Maddie. Maddie was in a tough situation and she wasn't sure who the father was. But after receiving counseling, prayer, and a free ultrasound at a PreBorn Network clinic, everything changed. Maddie discovered she had twins and found the strength she needed to choose life.

>> Maddie: After my first visit here, and I ended up finding out that I was pregnant with twins, and I was a little unsure in the beginning because I just had a very rough situation going on, not knowing, you know, just between two different fathers. I ended up deciding that I was going to have my twins because my, sister and her husband, you know, just prayed for me and pretty much told me that I can do this. I am strong. I was prayed for over these ladies here. And it was just overall an amazing experience that helped me decide that I was willing and I was able to go through this by the grace of God. I ended up having them when I was seven months.

>> Walker Wildmon: Yeah.

>> Maddie: So this is Analia and this is Alicia. Analia means, means by the grace of God and Elysium means gift of God. I, you know, I'm super grateful that I came here because I would not have probably had them. And, yeah, I'm super grateful for this facility.

>> Walker Wildmon: Your tax deductible donation of $28 sponsors one ultrasound. How many babies can you save? Please donate your best gift today. Just dial £250 and say the keyword baby. That's £250, baby. Or, go to preborn.com afr that's preborn.com afr 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 quit. Sacred honor is the courage to speak. Truth, to live out your free speech.

>> Don Wildmon: We also rejoice in our sufferings because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance, character, and character hope.

>> Jeff Chamblee: This is at the Core on American Family Radio.

American Family Radio focuses on value of having an excellent wife

>> Walker Wildmon: Welcome to the Core here on American Family Radio. Glad to have you with us here on the program afr.net is the URL afr.net you can get the live program and you can get the [email protected] and on the American Family Radio app. Brand new edition of the program. And we've got a lot to get to this day and this week here on afr. you're listening to at the core, turning to the last two chapter of Proverbs chapter 31. After this week we'll move on, probably move on to John, the book of John. But last chapter of Proverbs 31, 10, 11. An excellent wife who can find for her worth is far above jewels. The heart of her husband trusts in her, he will have no lack of gain. That's Proverbs 31, verses 10 and 11 talking about the value of having an excellent wife. Proverbs 31 verse 10 and 11.

Operation Christmas Child is celebrating National Collection Week this month

Well, operation Christmas Child is announcing their National Collection Week which we want to mention here on the program. And we'll mention this over the next three to four weeks, but national Collection Week this year is November 17th through 24th. November 17th through the 24th of this year is National Collection Week. There's over 5,000 drop off locations for the shoeboxes in all 50 states, including the territory of Puerto Rico. And I was gonna say the state, but the Democrats wish Puerto Rico was a state, but it's not the territory. so drop off locations in all 50 states and Puerto Rico and over 5,000 locations around the country. To learn how to pack a shoebox, view the suggestions on the type of gifts that should go in the shoebox and to find a drop off location near you, you can simply go to Samaritan, Samaritans purse.org occ samaritanspurse.org occ or just go to samaritanspurse.org right there on the homepage you'll see the Operation Christmas Child banner. So check that out. you can either donate to, have Operation Christmas Child pack and send the shoebox for you, or you can pack your own shoebox and drop it off at one of their locations. So we participate and partner with Samaritan's Purse every year. And so we'll be mentioning that over the next few weeks. But National Collection Week is the week of November 17th through the 24th here in about three weeks. So continue tracking that.

American Family Association has been using investments to engage America's largest corporations

All right, let's turn our attention to the news. we've got a very big announcement today. Came out this morning around 6am is when the op ed was published that I wrote [email protected] but those of you who listen to the program rather frequently have heard me talk about our efforts on corporate engagement. Maybe you've heard it on this program. I'm, also a weekly guest on Rob West's program on Faith Fi every Friday where Jerry Boyer and I have Boyer research. We talk about corporate engagement. But American Family association has been using our investments to engage America's largest corporations for the purpose of advancing pro family values. And so with that being said, we've spoken, at shareholder meetings with John Deere, Apple, Verizon, bank of America just to name a few. Schwab, the financial firm, Schwab and there's many others. We've got some coming up, in early 2026. But we've been presenting these shareholder proposals that are aimed at advancing pro family values in America's largest corporations. One of those proposals took place earlier this year and it had to do with the Apple Corporation, which, if you haven't heard of Apple, I don't know where you've been. But the manufacturer of the iPhone, the Apple Computer, formerly known as the Mac computer, and they've got a whole line of technological products now one of the largest, not the largest, but as of two years ago they were the largest tech company in the world. And then some of these chip makers like Nvidia took their place on the, on the S and P. But we've been engaging with these companies through the shareholder proposal process with the, with the goal of advancing pro family values in America's corporate boardrooms. So one of the proposals that we put forth was regarding child sexual abuse material, Otherwise known as CSAM and Apple early, in 2020, 2021, Apple was planning on, or at least in discussions to deploy, CSAM child sexual abuse material scanning software in their cloud environment. So if you have an icloud account, they were going to scan photos to ensure that child sexual abuse material wasn't being, stored in the icloud environment. Well, they ended up ditching the project, ditching the efforts, didn't deploy it. And there were some possibly legitimate privacy concerns around, deploying CSAM scanning software in the icloud environment. Apple said it could be used to scan for other, legal content, and could have some free speech and privacy concerns. Whether or not that's true or not, we can debate that. That's a subject for another day. But we wanted Apple to look into the legal and financial risk associated with not deploying the scanning software. Because anybody who's in the space, and studies and works on the subject of protecting children and specifically preventing the distribution of child sexual abuse material, which is a very serious crime. We wanted to know why wasn't Apple doing more on this front? And so we put forth a proposal. We got about almost 7% of the shareholders to vote in favor of our proposal, which I understand that doesn't sound like a lot and it's far from even 50%. But in the shareholder engagement world that was a pretty big deal to get 7% of shareholders on board with our proposal. And so we had multiple meetings with Apple leading up to it. They wanted us to pull the proposal. And we had multiple meetings with them and we were basically trying to get them to do more to protect miners on their devices. One of the things that came up as we were doing our research into Apple and how their, their accounts are set up on their own, the iPhones and the iPads and the computers, is there's, there's parental controls that parents can put into place for all minors under their account. All the children on your Apple account you can put in different parental controls. Well, one of the parental controls is called communication safety. And with communication safety, we realize that children age, let's say 1 to 13, they would have, the most rigorous standards and their most rigorous safety protocol in place on their account. and children couldn't even view what the device detects as pornographic imagery using the Messages app. Those images were blocked and there was no way for the child to view them. So the children are basically, if you're age 1 to 13, protected from viewing harmful pornographic material through the Messages app. All right. The vulnerability we uncovered as part of these discussions with Apple about how they can do more to protect children. What we uncovered is that children age 14 to 17, they could actually view and distribute pornographic material, pornographic images and videos using the Messages app on the iPhone or on the Apple device without parental knowledge or without parental consent. So no passcode needed, etc. You just simply bypass the disclaimer and then boom, before you know it, your 14 year old, your 16 year old is viewing explicit pornographic images and videos on their iPhone without your consent, even though they're a minor. This is even though they're a minor, they're under the age of 18. So we view that as like a, complete no brainer that Apple should be able to fix this. There is no reason, and I told Apple executives this, I said there is zero and I did all caps in my email to Apple. I said there is zero reason for you to have this double Standard for those 13 and under and those 14 to 17, there is no legal or moral reason for you to treat those two minor groups differently. And so I guess my email resonated and I told him, I said if there's a reason that you think a 14 year old should be viewing pornography without their parents consent, without their parents knowledge on the Apple device, please make the case. Let's hear the case. I would be interested to hear the case of course. Crickets. But we're pleased to announce that not even a year after those engagements and after putting forth another proposal this upcoming year which Apple once again wanted us to rescind, Apple has made changes on their devices to where all miners 17 and under have the same communication standards and the communication safety standards on by default, to where they are protected from harmful content. And their parents. Amen. Amen. And their parents will have to will be notified if they choose to try to bypass those safety standards. And so this is a very big deal, a very big victory. I wrote an op ed over it, afn.net where you can read more about kind of the inside baseball on this announcement. But this is just one of many examples where showing up is half the battle. I mean showing up is half the battle. And this is why folks, disengagement is not an option. You know, there's a time and a place for a boycott. Trust me, we know it. Target, right, look at that. And that ended up bearing fruit in the long call about nine years later. there's a time and a place for boycotts. There's a time and a place for you know, to be removed from a situation that's, that's wholly unbeneficial. But here in this instance, we needed to show up. And so American Family association, we looked at our investments, we said hey, we own shares in these companies and some of these companies are doing bad things and we think we can fix it. We think we can show up at the shareholder meetings and we think we can fix this and apply pressure. And that's what we did. And we were going after the CSAM material, which is the worst of the worst. And we're still going to be focused on that. But in the midst of going after that, we realized that even the most rudimentary of safety standards are not in place on these Apple devices. And this is just patently absurd. Nobody can justify it, having these loopholes, these vulnerabilities on the Apple devices and Parents ought to have the full control to protect their children on these devices. And so we're happy to announce that today that our efforts paid off, our efforts worked. And part of the battle was just showing up. And so we showed up and Apple ended up taking our recommendations to beef up their communication safety standards. And honestly it was an act of good faith on their part to heed our advice. They're a multi hundred billion dollar company. They didn't have to listen to us. but they did. They did because what we were saying made sense. What they were doing was indefensible. And there's a lot of risk associated as a company, as a publicly traded company. There's a lot of risk associated with failing to do everything that you can, to protect the hearts and the minds of our young people. And so Apple agreed and they made the necessary changes.

Apple removed a loophole where children could see adult rated apps on the App Store

There was also another victory, another change that Apple made on the App Store. So previously there was a loophole if you will, I call it a loophole, but it was intentionally designed this way. But there was a loophole in the App Store where children could see adult rated apps. Now they couldn't download them, but they could still view them. And so one of the things we brought up with Apple is if the children can't download the app, why would you even show it to them in the featured sections on the App Store? And of course there wasn't much of a good reason there. And so we said look guys, there's no reason. Do not let the kids see adult rated apps. If they can't download them, they don't have access to them. They shouldn't even be able to view the app in the App Store. And so Apple made that change as well. Now children can only see age appropriate apps in the App Store when they're searching for apps and on the featured sections, there on the homepage of the App Store. And so those are two big victories with Apple. Happy to announce. Go over to afn.net you can see our latest op ed there. We'll be back in a few. Hey, my name is Wesley Wildmon. And I'm Walker Wildmon and we're brothers. And our family have been leading tours to the land of the Bible for more than 30 years. Coming up in March of 2026, we would love for you to join us for something very special. A Footsteps of Paul, A journey through Greece. We'll walk exactly where the Apostle Paul walked through Athens, Ancient Corinth, Philippi and Thessalonica. you'll enjoy unforgettable experiences and meaningful fellowship with believers and with West Walker. And we'll eat well, laugh a lot, and yes, eat well again. And most importantly, we will grow in our faith. As the Bible comes alive before your eyes, you'll get to see the very things that we read about or that your pastor talks about in church. The Footsteps of Paul tour is March 17th through the 24th, 2026. Register today at ah, wildmangroup.com that's wildmangroup.com we can't wait to see you there. At the Core podcast are [email protected] now.

American Family Association announces major development in Apple communication safety for children

>> Jeff Chamblee: Back to at the Core on American Family Radio.

>> Walker Wildmon: Welcome back to the program. Second segment underway. If you missed part of the last segment, we talked about a major victory with Apple Corporation, the American Family association secured in recent months, months just announced this morning. So you can go over to afn.net to check out that op ed that I wrote that came out first thing this morning. You can read all of the information on the Apple development and we've got an email going out to our audience here in just a little while to announce that and also provide helpful tips on how parents can enable these safety, standards, these safety features on their Apple devices. And so go to, afn.net you can view the opinion piece that I wrote there this morning. The headline, the title is Major Development in Apple Communication Safety for Children. You can also go to afr.net and catch this podcast, this show in its entirety, this afternoon and go back and listen to that segment. Well, I want to cover a couple stories before hopefully we jump to our guest here in a little bit. A little bit.

The government shutdown enters its third week and there's no sign of ending

But this government shutdown is entering week three, going past week three actually, of the government shutdown. Democrats, I mean they're not even at the table, they're not even present. They're not even trying to reopen this government. And when we went into the government shutdown, I thought to myself, I've seen this before. I thought this will last about a week or two maybe and Democrats will come around and they'll, you know, they'll give in and fund the government. But part of me is wondering if something a little more sinister is at play here and not business as usual for the Democrats. I mean the Democrats are behaving as if, ah, the government shutdown, is good. It's good for them, it's good for the country. They're sticking to it. They're not giving in. And there's, there's no, no downside for them. That's the way they're acting. They're acting as if there's no downside for them on this entire government shutdown saga. And to be honest, there's no sign of it ending. There's no sign of them coming to the table and, funding the government.

40 million Americans are on food assistance because of the government shutdown

Well, to date, the ramifications of the government shutdown haven't been apocalyptic, if you will. people have been affected, don't get me wrong, people have missed paychecks that work for the government. But I think we're about to start entering a new phase of the government shutdown where it's about to be more wide spread as far as the effects. And I've got a couple clips here to back this up. let's listen to clip, two. This is going to be a local news story about how the food assistance program, such as snap, those funds are going to dry up within the next week so. CLIP 2 this morning, more than 40 million people, that's roughly one in every.

>> Walker Wildmon: Eighty million Americans are bracing to see their food assistance run out later this week. Creating a food crisis some experts say. Could be the worst since the Great. Depression, all because of the government shutdown. The U.S. agriculture Department, which administers the SNAP or Food SNAP program, announcing, quote. The well has run dry. Everyone's worried that, you know, they're not. Going to be able to feed their families. Well, there you have it. This, the, the food programs, which I did not realize how many people this service, this is, this is massive and it's really, really a problem. I'm glad this is coming to light. 40 million people. I mean, if you would have asked me how many people are on food assistance? I don't know, 10 million, 20 million, 40 million people are on a, food assistance. I think, I think the stat was about an eighth of the country his own food assistance. And typically the number of people receiving it is less than the number of people benefiting from it, if you understand what I'm saying. So, like you have one parent on the food assistance program and they're helping to feed multiple children. And so that didn't even factor that in. These are just people that are signed up for it. but those funds are about to dry up and you've already got some federal employees that aren't able to pay their mortgage, mortgage, they're not able to pay their car note. So this is, this is terrible. This is terrible on behalf of the Democrats and it's, it's terrible because of how we got here and what they're trying to do here with, the government shutdown, which they're trying to extract some major left wing policy and spending priorities by shutting the government down. And Democrats have even said, look, we don't really care about the effects of the government shutdown. This is all about leverage. That's a quote from them. This is quote, all about leverage and all about getting what we want out of this situation. and let me play one more clip and then we'll jump to our next guest. This is Democrat congressman on a CNBC. This is Congressman Ruben Gallego, from Arizona, actually. U.S. senator, my bad, from Arizona to, CNBC saying, you know, I mean, Democrats have spoken out against government shutdowns in the past. But you know, this is different, right? This is different. Clip 1. If Republicans shut down the government next time Democrats are in charge to extract whatever it is. Are you saying that's okay? Are you saying that's okay if they do that? I mean, the Republicans have done this quite a while. Yes. What did you say about it when they did it? I don't know and I don't care.

>> Walker Wildmon: Quote, I don't know and I don't care. All right, if you want to know, m. Which just shows how, how underrated these Democrats are, by the way. The fact that I don't Even know this U.S. senator from Arizona. This just shows how unpopular Congress is. Ruben Gallego. that's who you just heard there. That's the US Senator from Arizona. he, just said he was being called out by CNBC about previous standards that Democrats have set regarding government shutdowns. They've said multiple times, we've played the clips, you know, we can't have a shutdown. Shutdowns are bad. You know, everything you could say negative about government shutdowns, Democrats have done it. They've been the chief proponent, right. Of keeping the government open. Well, this U.S. senator is being questioned about, hey, in the past you've said multiple times. And he doesn't have an answer. He doesn't have an answer. And let's quote him on at least three occasions in 2013, the, this, Democrat said, quote, you can't shut down the government and still claim to be a patriot. That was in 2013. What a statement. What a statement. You talk about treating things as black and white. You can't shut down the government and still claim to be a patriot. That was 2013. In 2019, regarding a government shutdown, this Democrat said that shutting the government down is putting the country in danger. And then in 2023, this same Democrat said that in order to, that keeping the government open was, quote, putting country before party, end quote. And Chuck Schumer has multiple times, multiple times talked about how the right thing to do is to keep the government open. And this continuing resolution, mind you, this continuing resolution is something the Democrats have voted for over a dozen times. So this is not like a Republican wish list bill. This is not a Republican spending priority. This is just a bill that the Democrats have supported over a dozen, I think 13 times in the last 24 months. The Democrats have supported this type legislation and all of a sudden they want to play politics with the government spending. So, back to my point about what the motives and the intent here are, this is looking a lot more sinister than I thought. This is looking like a lot more than government, you know, political pandering than I went into this thinking it was going to be. I thought this is going to be a couple weeks. Democrats are going to, you know, prove their point or whatever, try to make their point, raise some, you know, attention, and then, you know, they'll come to the table and fund the government. But that's not, that's not the case. That's not, not what's happening here.

One possibility is Democrats trying to force Republicans to drop filibuster on spending bill

Another option that I think the Democrats could be driving at here is to try to force the Republicans to get rid of the filibuster. Or, the fake filibuster is how I described it last week. But it's this rule where you, you need 60 votes to pass a bill in the U.S. senate. And it's a, they call it a filibuster. It's really a fake filibuster. Because a true filibuster, you have to talk the entire time. This one's a fake filibuster. You basically just have to raise your hand and you can stall the piece of legislation and require 60 votes to get the legislation to continue moving through the U.S. senate. That's why I call it a fake filibuster. But right now, that, that's the holdup. All right? That's the holdup. You got this 60 vote rule. You've heard about it probably a hundred times. You got the 60 vote rule. There's only 53 Republican senators and the, so you gotta have seven Democrats come over to the Republican side to pass this government spending bill. And there's been a couple of Democrats vote for the continuing resolution, but not, not 60, obviously not enough to get the bill over the finish line. I'm wondering if the Democrats are trying to force the Republicans to get rid of the filibuster, the legislative filibuster, so that when they get in charge, it's that, that that procedural move is already out of the way. Democrats can then ram through whatever radical legislation they want to, with a simple majority. That's, that's, that's what I'm wondering if that's at play here either, that this could be a multi pronged approach. But Democrats, I don't want to give them too much credit, but I would bet they've probably thought through this. They know what they're willing to give up, how far they're willing to take this, before somebody blinks. And you've got the possibility that Democrats want to get the Republicans to get rid of the filibuster, go ahead and pass the spending bill in the name of keeping the government open. And then when Democrats get in control with a Democrat president, then they'll ram through whatever radical green New Deal, they want to ram through universal basic income. I mean the most radical of radical legislation, they'll ram through, with a simple majority. another, another possibility here. And this is a lot of, this is speculation. We'll see, we'll see what the history books write. Another option is that the Democrats are, are wanting to exert pain on the American people and say, look, see, I told you so. Voting for this big bad Trump. It was a bad decision. Almost treating the American people as kids, right? Let's give them their punishment. Let's give them what they deserve for electing the mean Donald Trump into the White House. That could be what's going on here. And so the pain being you've got millions of federal employees not getting paid, you've got air traffic delays at the airports, you're about to have food assistance programs. Their money's going to run dry. People aren't going to have food to go, money to go to the grocery store. I mean this could, this could really get pretty ugly. And Democrats are totally, totally held hostage by the radical Marxist element of their party. And that's a fact. I mean the rumors are that Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, our squad, member, aoc, is pretty much running these negotiations. That's what the word is. And when Nancy Pelosi was questioned on it, she got very defensive, very defensive. And Chuck Schumer, he didn't want to talk about it. And Chuck Schumer, by the way, Chuck Schumer and aoc, they're both From New York. So maybe Chuck Schumer doesn't want to get primaried by AOC and so he's doing whatever AOC says. Maybe. but that's. That's the word on the street, from pretty credible sources that the squad is running the negotiations. And, that's why we don't have the government open, is because AOC is in charge of the negotiations. And this is, if you don't think the Democrats have the capacity to do very evil things. Boy, where have you been? Where have you been? I mean, this is the same party that during COVID they were telling you and me that we should lose our job for not taking the poison jab. I mean, that's what they were telling us. They were telling. They were saying, you know, you're you. You don't care about people. You don't love people unless you take the shot. This is the same. The same party that was telling us, and the Democrats, and there were some Republicans that were complicit in this, too. So let's not forget that. And the Fauci's of the world, these bureaucrats with no heart, you know, they were telling us that we can't see our grandparents that are on their deathbed because of COVID Right? All the nursing home, all the. All the nurses and staff can see our grandparents, but we can't. Right? Because we're sick. Or we might be sick, and so they should just die alone. That's what we were told. We can't go in there. You can't. You can't. You can look at them through the window, right?

A lot of COVID was pushed by the Democrats, Walker Wildmon says

That's what we were told. And you look back on how Covid was handled, once again, a lot of this was pushed by the Democrats. You look how it was handled. I mean, it's so wicked. It was so inhumane. It was so wicked. I can't believe our country even went through that. And there's really been no justice, there's really been no remedy to the wrongs that were committed during the COVID era. And much of that, Much of that, not all, but much of it. Much of the insanity and the heartlessness and the dumb policies and the demonization of anybody who dared to dissent. Remember? All of this, all of this was pushed, by the Democrats and the bureaucrats. And this is the same party that's okay with killing babies in the womb. Perfectly healthy, beautiful babies created in the image of God are being taken from their mother, being taken from their family, being taken from the world every day because the Democrats worship at the altar of abortion. And this is the same Democrat party that has been promoting child sex change procedures for years. They've been pushing this nonsense. And you and I know you can't change your sex, you can mutilate your body. That doesn't make you male or female. They've been pushing this on young people, transgenderism, homosexuality for years, creating victim after victim after victim. So my point in all of this and kind of this receipt showing session I just went through is to help you understand folks, that Democrats can do some serious bad things. And to think they won't shut down the government to inflict, inflict pain on the American people is to be completely naive to the radical nature of the party. We'll be back in a few. This is at the Core on American. Family Radio with your host, Walker Wildmon.

>> Walker Wildmon: Welcome back to the program here on American Family Radio. As a reminder, we've got the video up on Facebook and X. Just go to at the Core on Facebook and on X. You can go to the American Family Radio handle. Watch the video live. Also stream.afa.net all of our video content there is available there at stream.aca.net all right, I want to jump to our guest for this segment, friend of the ministry and fighter for freedom and for sanity in education, Ryan Walters, former superintendent of education in the state of Oklahoma, now CEO of brand new organization, Teacher Freedom Alliance.

Walker Neugebauer is leading an effort to defeat teacher unions

Ryan, welcome to the program.

>> Ryan Walters: Thank, you for having me on, Walker. I appreciate all the work you guys are doing and thank you for having me back.

>> Walker Wildmon: Yeah, you and I and a couple others put together a video, on education in America, the future of education in America. And so you've been working with us on this topic for some time now. But Ryan, tell us, before we jump into some of these topics of teacher unions, etcetera, tell us about your organization you just started.

>> Ryan Walters: Well, Walker, as you know, as you've run into, and as I was running into fighting for education reform in Oklahoma, fighting for getting the Bible back in the classroom, fighting for getting prayer back in the classroom, the, number one adversary that I had every step of the way was, the teachers unions. they would spend millions of dollars from around the country to come in and fight us, launch all kind of ads against us, frankly, even pay off Republicans to come in and support their left wing agenda. as we were able to be successful in Oklahoma, we're the first state to put the Bible back in the classroom. We brought prayer back to the classroom into dei full school Choice for homeschooling, all Christian options available. put Jesus and the Bible back in our standards. You're required to teach that now when you teach history in Oklahoma, which again, I don't know how you could teach world history, US History without the Bible and Christianity. That's, that is, that's a whole other topic there. But we, got to take the fight nationally. These teachers unions, I mean the disgusting garbage we're seeing in our schools, the left wing woke indoctrination. We're seeing the transgenderism, which is, I mean, Walker, literally killing our kids. We've got kids committing suicide because they're being told that they're boys now they're girls, now they're something else. Giving them all kind of gender mutilization, drugs and therapies and all this nonsense. So, you know, I, joined up in this effort to defeat the teachers unions, take them head on, play offense, not just, you know, you know, sitting back and when they do something crazy, respond to it. No, we're going to go out, we're going to defeat them. We're going to get people to lead the unions, we're going to get states to ban the unions, and we're going to put, our schools back where they should be, in the hands of parents and families, not a bunch of left wing bureaucrat teachers union activists.

>> Walker Wildmon: You know, Ryan, I knew the teachers unions were a problem, but I didn't fully grasp until recent years the kind of the broad nature of the problem with the teachers unions and how a lot of these dues, in some states are mandatory. In Mississippi, they're not mandatory, but they're almost presented as mandatory upon enrollment. As a teacher, you don't really know you can opt out unless you ask. But talk about that, about how these teachers unions are funded and how they really don't do anything to help the classroom or the actual teachers.

>> Ryan Walters: Walker, thank you for you just, you explained that very well. One of the things they do, even in red states, we dealt with it here in Oklahoma. I was able to decrease Union membership over 80%. We ran them out of our schools here in Oklahoma because so much of what they do, even in right to work states, what they do is they present if, you know, ask a new teacher friend, ask any teacher friends of yours, when they come on board, they're 22, 23, they get all this paperwork. Sign up for this, sign up for that. Here's your health insurance. And teachers unions have fought to be just like their health insurance, just like their any kind of insurance, we're right there. We are, we are presenting the paperwork right there. At the same time. A lot of teachers sign into it, don't even know that's what it is. They don't call themselves a teachers union. They usually have a cute name, like an association or something. They don't explain that the majority of their dues go up to the nea, which is. Guys, if you don't know what the NEA is about, go look at some of the videos online, follow us on Twitter. We've got a very active account where we post a lot of these things. So you can see, oh, they have been pushing transgenderism, they've been pushing CRT, DEI. They are very clear. Over 94% of their, contributions go to Democrat candidates. So they really are a money laundering, scheme for the Democrat party is what they are. But it's kind of like the Hotel California. Remember if you remember that song there? I mean you can, you can check out but you can't ever leave, right? So what happens is once you sign up, it is this incredibly bureaucratic process to leave. And we have got teachers all over the country. I can't get out. I've written them letters, I've done all their steps. They don't let me out. I'm automatically enrolled every single year. And I didn't know I was in it. And so that's part of our fight is first of all, let teachers know what the teachers unions about because here's the reality. The majority of teachers in the teachers union don't even know what they're doing because they lie to their members. They go, oh, we're just here to give you professional development trainings. we support you with some liability insurance. My group, hey, we provide liability insurance for free. Any teacher that wants to join, hey, we'll get your back. We're not going to let you know, some left wing administrator sue you or anything like that. but what they are doing is taking your money and actively funding Democrat causes. And so we're getting all these conservative teachers going. Guys, get out. When you get out, come join the Teacher Freedom Alliance. And what we do is, hey, we give you good, the best professional development in the country. There's no crt, no dei. if you're a math teacher, we'll train you in math. If you're a history teacher, we're going to train you in history. None of that garbage is going to be there. And also we're going to protect you legally. So if they come after you like the unions do. They are so nasty. you know, they threaten teachers, they dox the teachers, bully the teachers. No, we're gonna have your back legally. And lastly, we're gonna teach you how to fight back against these tactics that can be so detrimental, to good teachers. And again, when you talk to parents, what do they want? They want a good teacher for their kids. We want to protect those good teachers and make sure that our classrooms aren't being run by social justice warriors from the teachers unions.

>> Walker Wildmon: Yeah, this is excellent. I love the idea, Ryan, of just shutting the teachers unions down, because it's one thing to counter them, which you've been doing for many years, but to actually shut them down really is the ultimate victory here, as far as stopping their toxic influence, in our classrooms. And, you know, this is where I hope we do have a lot of teacher listeners who are teachers and educators. Half, my family's got a background in education. A lot of the, my, grandparents and my wife even has an education degree.

Over 60% of funds spent in education goes to administrative costs

But, what I wanted to have you address was the fact that very little, money is actually not just teachers union dues, but none of that's making it back to the classroom. But even our tax dollars. The administrative state within the education kind of complex has been growing astronomically, like a straight line up on a chart on a graph. But the number of teachers isn't hardly growing at all. It's stagnated. And so my point is there's so much money being poured into the administration and a central office and to the districts, but very little is making it to the classroom. That's a major problem as well. And the teachers unions have done nothing to fix that.

>> Ryan Walters: Yeah, let me, let me drop a few, numbers out there to help illustrate this. You're spot on. Over 60% of funds spent in education goes to administrative costs nationally. Over 60%. That means bureaucracy. In the, in the country, we pay for more non teachers in our schools than teachers. I want to repeat that. We pay for more personnel that are non teachers than teachers in our schools across the nation. Now, most people, when they hear that, are going, what are we paying for? Well, here's what you're paying for. You're paying for. And just think about every school system. You know. You've got a superintendent, you've got an assistant to the superintendent, you've got a deputy to that superintendent, you've got a building administrator, you've got five. Look at this exorbitant bureaucratic bloat that continues to grow. And by the way, just to give your listeners another kind of, context for this, President Trump is cutting the federal Department of Education. You have less strings now from the federal government than in over 30 years in education in red states like we slash bureaucracy here in Oklahoma, you have less requirements that you have to turn in. So why are we hiring more bureaucrats when you have less that you have to do bureaucratically through our schools than ever before? That is because they are building and growing government. They are not looking out for good teachers. They are not looking out for your kids. They are doing what government does best, which is grow government. And this is where even in red state, hey, look, in Oklahoma, we increased the education budget. We increased it more than a billion dollars a year. And then we went back and had to fight because guess what? We were telling the schools and the taxpayers were saying, hey, we want our teachers to make more money. Right? We did merit pay here in Oklahoma, been wildly successful. We got over a thousand teachers on track to make six figures in Oklahoma for being top 10% of teacher in the state. Okay, it's great. You do a great job. We'll pay you more. Absolutely. But we had to force the districts to do that because they wanted to turn around and hire administrators. We said, no, no, no, no, no, we're not giving you more money to go hire more of your buddies. What we're doing is giving you more money to go in here. And by the way, money is not the problem in education.

>> Walker Wildmon: Correct.

>> Ryan Walters: There's money going around in education, plenty of money. The problem is how the money is being spent. So you got over 60% of your dollars are being spent on administrative costs, not your classroom teachers, not the supplies for your kids. And number two, just to show you how bad the teachers unions are in all this, over 60% of union dues are spent on administrative costs and political donations. So the majority of their money, you know, your teachers are going, you know, I'm paying a little bit into this. They're going to provide me professional development, right? Trainings, resources. No, they're not. They are growing their power structure to go in and be an arm of the Democrat Party. They are one of the biggest funders of the Democrat party in the nation. And so these are very important things that, again, they lie to good teachers.

Ryan Walters: President Trump is doing an amazing job on education

So again, I'm a teacher. I'm a public school teacher of over 10 years. My family is out of public school teachers. And that's part of why I'm so passionate about this mission. We've got to have good people in our schools, have to have good teachers in our schools. And the reality is, if we don't play offense here, the left has been doing this for four decades now. They created the federal Department of Education or Jimmy Carter. They've been rocking and rolling. That was the number one ask of the National Teachers Union. Create a federal Department of Education so we can partner up with them and build power into our schools. And you see what's happened. More bureaucracy, the power structure of the teachers union forcing left wing indoctrination on our kids and our teachers. And I got one warning here. President Trump is doing an amazing job. I mean, I could not speak more highly of President Trump and his education agenda, but here's my warning. If he does away with the federal Department of Education in its entirety, which he's going to, it's going to happen. He's doing a great job of doing that. But we don't eliminate the teachers union, they will fill that power vacuum. Yeah, they will become even more powerful to exert their power onto our schools, onto our state. So it is so important in this agenda when we're wanting to bring education back to families, back to communities, back to faith centered education. You've got to eliminate the teachers union too. Or we've just exchanged one evil operation for another.

>> Walker Wildmon: M. That's so good. So true. Ryan, tell our folks more about your website, your URL where they can check out, your organization and read more about your work.

>> Ryan Walters: Teacherfreedom.com. come on. And folks, this is for teachers and non teachers. We want parents, taxpayers, please sign up, help us in this initiative. Yes, free. We want you to sign up and we're going to continue to support good teachers. We're going to make sure that they know that. Hey, opt out today dot com. Go on there. Opt out of your union. We walk you through how to get out again, how to deal with that bureaucratic process and get you out. So opt out today.com then go to teacher freedom.com. please sign up. If you're a teacher, we're going to put you in this community. We got thousands of members across the country. We're going to hook you up. Hey, if you're a math teacher, we'll connect you with thousands of math teachers just like you. They want to get back to teaching math. You want to see the best professional development in the country. You want to get back to teaching the basics in education. We're going to support you any way we can. And parents Taxpayers join this fight. We've got to get our schools back. So again, we can't just fight dei, we can't just fight crt. We've got to go back to putting faith in our education system. How do kids understand what made America great if they don't understand the role Christianity played in our country's history? It can't happen. You can't understand America without that. How do you become, how do you fulfill the God given talents that God created you with if we're not teaching you the basics in math, reading, history and science? That's our mission. That's what we're here to do. And just to be clear, we are taking the fight to the teachers unions with a strategy here to get our schools back on track across the country.

>> Walker Wildmon: Excellent. Hey, Ryan, thanks so much for coming on. Appreciate it.

>> Ryan Walters: I, can't speak highly enough about your work, you guys. One of the best organizations in the country. Huge fan, of everything you guys are doing. Thank you for leading the fight and being the tip of the spear walker. Can't, tell you how much that I appreciate your work and the families across the country do.

>> Walker Wildmon: Thanks m so much, Ryan Appreciate the kind words there. Appreciate you coming on.

Ryan Walters: Shut down the teachers unions. I think we do it. At a minimum, stop the mandatory dues

That's, Ryan Walters, CEO of Teacher Freedom alliance, former superintendent of education in the state of Oklahoma. And if anybody's taken some arrows, it's Ryan. he and I were visiting when he was here in town back several months ago, and he was talking about all the, the lawsuits against himself personally. These are civil suits launched against himself as an individual, not in his government capacity. Ah, but they were targeting him. they were targeting Ryan and his wife and his family with these frivolous civil lawsuits and hundreds, of thousands of dollars was having to be spent on, litigation. So, Ryan's been taking some arrows and he's still fighting. And I think he's actually going to be more successful on this front, than even as superintendent, although he did an excellent job. Shut down the teachers unions. I hadn't thought about it, but I say we do it. I think we do it. Who has a case against why we should not shut down the teachers unions? I'm listening, I'm listening for it. Not, a good case. Not a good case. They're, they've done so much bad, so much wrong, and they're an arm of the Democrat party. So let's stop at a minimum, stop the mandatory dues. At a minimum, stop the mandatory dues. Be able to opt out. But best case scenario, we just eliminate them all together. No more teachers unions. We'll see you next time. The views and opinions expressed in this. Broadcast may not necessarily reflect those of the American Family association or American Family Radio.