Preborn Network provides free ultrasounds to women seeking abortions
>> 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. 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. 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 their convictions, no matter where they are.
>> Jeff Chamblee: We equip
>> Rick Green: 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.
Walker Wildmon: American Family Radio features John chapter 10 this week
>> Walker Wildmon: Welcome, to the corps here on American Family Family Radio. I'm, Walker Wildmon. Glad to be with you today on this brand new edition of the show. You're listening to AFR American Family Radio. Rick Greene and I, we're your host each week on the program and we've got a jam packed show with a few guests coming up in the second and the third segment. But until then, you've got me. We're in, John chapter 10 this week. John chapter 10, looking at verses 7 through 10. Then Jesus said to them, most assuredly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who ever came before me are thieves and robbers. But the sheep did not hear them. I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and, will go in and out and find pasture. The thief does not come except to steal, kill and destroy. I have come that they may have life and that they may have it more abundantly. Well, this scripture here, this passage syncs, well with the other scripture, where, Jesus refers to himself, he says that he is the only way, Jesus is the only way unto salvation. No one comes to the Father except through me. I just paraphrased that other passage. But nonetheless, the message here is that Jesus is the son of God. That's the obvious. But there's no mean and there's no means unto salvation except through Jesus. And so any false religion, any false belief system that claims that you can receive eternal life without the Messiah, it is blatantly unbiblical and blatantly unscriptural. And so, Jesus is reiterating here that he came to bring life. No one gets to the Father except through Jesus. That's what's referenced, here in John chapter 10, verses 7 through 10. All right, the Hannah's Heart conference is coming up at the end of January, which is this month, believe it or not, we're already in 2026. And this is going to be a great conference on the 30th and 31st. This is for women and families dealing with infertility, and other issues, that couples deal with related to childbearing. That's what Hannah's Heart focus is each weekend on the radio program. They're going to have their first ever conference coming up at the end of January on the 30th and 31st. And we would love to have you join us. It's going to be here in Tupelo, Mississippi at Hope Church. And you can go to afa.netevents to register. AFA.net events to register. Also, preborn is a ministry, a pro life ministry that we've been partnering with for some time now, well over a decade, maybe two. And this is the time of year where we highlight the work of preborn. And right now we're gathering preborn testimonials. All right, so these are stories and testimonies, about how preborn has impacted your life. If you've been to a preborn clinic, you've received a free ultrasound through preborn. That's what we're connecting, collecting rather over the next few weeks. 877-876-8893. If you want to call in and leave a listener's testimony about how God has used preborn ministry in your life. 877-876-8893. To call in and leave those listener testimonies about how God has used preborn ministry in your life.
The economy is still recovering from the Biden, uh, era
All right, let's, hit some of the stories this segment while we have a few minutes left. The economy, is still, recovering, if you will, from the rubbish, that was the Biden, era, and it was a disaster. And so the economy is healing, it is recovering, and things are moving in the right direction. I want to play clip one here. The forecasters on the mortgage rates said, oh, they'll never go back to where they were, which, I've just learned to refrain from using the word never. It's hardly in my vocabulary. But definitely the forecasters did not expect it to go down this quickly. So this is going to be clip one.
Mortgage rates down to 6%. Actually below 6% last week
Mortgage rates down to 6%. Actually below 6% as of late last week. Let's listen. Pretty crazy. Actually got below 6% for the first time. And as you report, almost three years, it finished a little higher, 6.2% on Friday. But that's still more than a point lower than it was when he took office in January of last year. You know, home prices have been coming down. And the president announcing another action which figures to lower home prices even more. He wants to ban institutional investors from buying homes and then renting them out. He says, you know, that's driving prices up. And the director of the, Housing Finance Agency on Fox Business this morning saying corporations should not own homes, Americans should own homes. And the president is serious. Take a listen.
>> Walker Wildmon: All right. Well, there you have it. That's a report, CNBC actually report on the, mortgage rate trends. Look, the experts, unfortunately, they typically get it wrong. I don't know why that is. It's kind of bizarre, but it happens so many times. I mean, I can't, I'll never forget this never forget. I will never forget playing a clip of a gentleman on Fox Business, which I actually looked up his name last week and found it, but I cannot find the clip. If my life depended on it, I cannot find this clip. Maybe Bobby can. We'll see. But there was this energy guy on Fox Business. He's an energy executive. He's got all kinds of companies. And he said, basically verbatim on Fox Business, he said, look, energy, look, oil won't go below 85 bucks a barrel ever again. We'll never see oil below $85 a barrel. That's, in essence, what he said. Maybe not those exact words. And I played that clip and I just said, that's just not true. I mean, that's just. You cannot make that definitive of a statement with all the volatility, all the energy policies. That's just. You just can't say that. Well, what do you know? We're down at like, what, $50 a barrel, $47 a barrel, depending on what day it is. gasthe national average below $3 now. National, average about $2.75 in some states. It's teetering around $2, at the pump. So you just can't say these things like, never. It'll never just, like folks say, mortgage rates will never go back to 3%. I don't agree with that. Here's why. Our entire modern monetary theory debt system is built on low interest rates. Right? Is it not? So, mortgage rates, I think they will at some point go back into the 3 1/2, 4% range. Will they go at, will they ever go back to 2.65, 2.75? That they were in the, in the COVID stimulus era where, you know, everyone was losing their minds? I don't know. I don't know. Maybe it'll take some kind of historic event like a Covid to get them back to where they were. But will mortgage rates be back below 5 in the fours, maybe in the 3% range? Probably. So historically speaking, they probably will because they sat there for well over a decade before the COVID pandemic. And so, that's where we are now. The point of the clip is that mortgage rates have gone from 9% under Joe Biden to 6% under Donald Trump. That's the fact. And that in under three years is what has happened. They've dropped over a percentage point just in the last 12 months. So President Trump continues to chip away at the Biden economy and really produce what is a recovering economy. At this point. And GDP in quarter four was over 5% according to the Atlanta Fed. And it's looking pretty good. And even the so called economists that make all their predictions, even they're saying that 2026 is set to be a pretty good year for the economy and for growth and for job recovery. So we'll keep tracking that. but I think that the healing on the economy and the house prices and the mortgage rates is going to happen a little quicker than the experts are suggesting. if President Trump can make such headway in just 12 months, I think the trend in the right direction will continue. But all of this, you know, relies on consistent good policy out of the states and out of Washington D.C. and I don't you know, some people that are in the, in the housing industry, they talk about how the White House and Congress really has little to do, little control over the affordability of housing, issue. I think they have some say, obviously mortgage rates are a factor, but it really is a state by state issue. And the states with more regulations and more red tape, I. E. California, they're going to have the highest housing cost. That's a fact. They're going to have the highest housing cost. And I'm not sure President Trump can do anything to make housing affordable in places like California. But in much of the country you're seeing home prices begin to drop, which is a good thing, and begin to normalize, if you will, over the last several months and with mortgage rates dropping and home prices normalizing, that's really a good sign for people that are wanting to get into a home, maybe get into their first home over the next few years. I'll tell you the time window I'm looking at and unfortunately history shows that there's going to be a Democrat back in the White House. As unfortunate as that is, the history proves that there will be, unless the Lord comes back, there will be another Democrat in the White House. And that's really unfortunate. But, this time window over the next three years of the Trump presidency is really when people are going to be doing a lot of their decision making on the economy and on housing and things like that, because you get these Democrat administrations in there and Biden, I will note Biden was one of the worst, worse than Obama as far as the economy goes. but you get these Democrats in there, like Gavin Newsom for example, what is he going to do to the economy? I mean, I didn't think it could get worse than what Biden did to the economy. But these Democrats, they are just bent on printing money by not just printing money, but regulating companies into bankruptcy and shuttering the energy industry and, you know, subsidizing all the industries that aren't profitable and giving Ukraine as much money as possible. And so the economy under a Democrat administration is just not looking good in the future. A future Democrat administration in the White House. And what's interesting is there were a lot of major CEOs, major corporations and business leaders that were, by far. They were. They were not conservative by any means, definitely not Republican. But they saw what Biden did in four years, and during the last election cycle, in 24, many of them, even publicly, definitely privately, they were just saying, we just can't do this for four more years. I mean, all the faults of President Trump, all the things you don't like, all the mean tweets, we just can't do four more. More years of Joe Biden. That's just a fact. Much less Kamala Harris. And so that's why many of them came out and, supported President Trump, because the economic instability and the geopolitical instability was just more than any business person bargained for.
You don't have AI dominance in America without President Trump being reelected
And they knew it wasn't healthy for another four years to go through that. And so many of them, especially the tech industry, they all came out behind President Trump, because you don't have AI dominance in America without President Trump being reelected, because President Biden was asleep at the wheel, probably didn't know much of what was going on. And the, his administration was by no means going to be able to facilitate this AI race that we're currently in. And I'm not suggesting that they would be anti AI or are sabotage AI purposefully, because that doesn't make sense whether you're a Democrat or Republican. But what we do know is that the energy policy under Biden, there's no way it would have kept up with the energy demands that AI has out there. President Trump and his administration are actually going to be fortunate if they keep up with the energy demands that AI is. Is coming after. And so all that to say that, the American people need to pay attention over the next three years to the economy. And when we get to the elections, whether it's midterms or the next presidential folks, we cannot forget what it was like to live under a Joe Biden presidency. We cannot forget that. And then at some point in 2028, we'll have to ask ourselves, do we want that again? We'll be back in a few.
Tim Wildmon: Spiritual heritage tours coming up in 2026
>> Tim Wildmon: Hello, everyone. I'm, Tim Wildmon, and I hope you're looking forward to a wonderful 2026. Let me tell you about a couple of things you might be interested in that we're going to go on. Those are tours. We call them spiritual heritage tours. We're going this year in June and September to Washington D.C. and George Washington's Mount Vernon. We're also going to Colonial Williamsburg and the historic Jamestown settlement. Then we're going also to Boston, Massachusetts. So all those tours are coming up in 2026. The D.C. and Williamsburg trip are both in June and September. So pick the month you want to go. The Boston trip is in September. So for all the information, the itinerary, the cost, everything you need to know about these tours, if you want to join us on a vacation with a purpose, that's what we call it, go to wildmangroup.com Wildmon Group.com is the website. Find out all the information and we'll see you on one of our 2026 tours.
>> Jeff Chamblee: At the Core. Podcasts are [email protected] now back to at the Core on American Family Radio.
American Family Radio would greatly appreciate it if you subscribed to our podcast
>> Walker Wildmon: Welcome back to the Core here on American Family Radio. Second segment underway. As a quick reminder, we would greatly appreciate it if you subscribed to the podcast. Wherever you listen to podcasts, just go to your library, your podcast store, type in at the core, click the follow or the subscribe button, and our latest episode will be queued up right there in your library on a smart device each and every afternoon. Jonathan Wolfson is with us now. Jonathan is founder and president of Wolf and Sabre Advising. He's also senior fellow over at the State Policy Network's center for Practical Federalism. And there's much more I could say about Jonathan, but we'll jump right to him. Hey, Jonathan, welcome to the program.
>> Jonathan Wolfson: Thanks so much for having me.
Jonathan Wolfson talks about property rights and environmental regulations
>> Walker Wildmon: Well, Jonathan, we wanted to have you on because of a topic that I, I gotta admit, I'm not an expert on, much less even really read up on, and that is property rights versus these environmental regulations. And anyone who kind of watched the news, regarding the California wildfires and the recovery there or the lack thereof, and then some of these federal, bureaucratic red tape that makes, home building or property development very difficult for some parts parts of the country. This is kind of the sphere that you work in. So give us kind of, a lay of the land or a little bit of background or for somebody who's not read up on this like you are, give us a little background or as far as what the problem is when it comes to environmental regulations and property rights. And then we'll jump into some of the specifics.
>> Jonathan Wolfson: Yeah, absolutely. So, as we all know, the Endangered Species act exists to protect species that are at risk of going extinct. And that's been a law that's been on the book for a long time. And there's a lot of detailed analysis that goes into identifying a species that is at risk of going extinct. Right. You've got populations that drop significantly. And I think that, you know, folks who care about being good stewards of the creation want to be careful not to see species go extinct. I think that that is a. An agreed position of most people in our country. I think that we don't want to just clear cut a forest for no reason. That said, as part of the government's job, they have to think about balancing not just protecting a random species, but also all of the other things that fall into that. And so that means that there's going to be people's property that could be affected. Because if you have a forest that you own and you happen to be a logging company and that forest is inhabited by an endangered species, if the government says that that species has to be protected and it stops you from logging there, that could be something you have to balance. Now, specifically, the Fish and Wildlife Service at the Department of the Interior is charged with enforcing a portion of the Endangered Species act, specifically dealing with what they call a critical habitat designation. And what that means is it's not a specific species, it's not the spotted owl or a particular salamander or any of those sort of things. What it is is a recognition that there is a habitat, some sort of flora, fauna, river system that is particularly beneficial for a particular species. And the Department of the Interior's Fish and Wildlife Service has the authority to go through a rulemaking process where they can designate a portion of land. And there are millions of acres of land in the United States that have been designated as critical habitats. And now these are places that the Fish and Wildlife Service believes are important to the protection of that species. But it's not the protection of that species specifically. It's. It is that this habitat is generally a important part of their ecosystem. Now the challenge becomes that a lot of individuals may have a habitat that would be good for an endangered species to live in, but there's not any endangered species that's actually there. And so if the government decides to designate something as a critical habitat but the species isn't there, there can still be government limitations. On what can be done to that property. Now, if those limitations, are really minor, then in a lot of cases, businesses, families who own that land, farmers, they're perfectly willing to do it, right? You might have a farmer who says, sure, I'm willing to go around this one spot where there's a really, really great spot for a nest for this water creature and we're going to do it. But if you suddenly say that an entire farm is prime location for this species, which we haven't seen on that property in 100 years, then suddenly that family farm gets shut down because that farm, that family isn't able to do the business that they've been in for potentially hundreds of years. And so that's what this specific regulation is about. And so the problem is, if you over designate property and you don't evaluate what are the actual costs and benefits and who are the people who are hurt, who are the people that are benefit, and how beneficial is it to have this designation as compared to all of the other conservation activity that could be taking place that then you wind up over designating and overprotecting in a way that makes people discouraged from wanting to protect those species in the first place. And so that's really what the problem is. And it's why the U.S. department of the Interior's Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed a new regulation where they say that internally at the department, in order for them to go forward with some sort of designation, they have to do a lot more internal analysis of, of the costs and benefits of taking that action. They have to look at the current activity that is taking place to try to do conservation. In a lot of cases, the states have already stepped in and they've come up with a partnership with that landowner to protect that habitat. But suddenly, if you add this federal designation, it's going to reduce the value of that land, it's going to limit the ability of the folks to use that property, and ultimately that's going to undermine the purposes of, of the Endangered Species act by giving it that sort of designation.
>> Walker Wildmon: So this is, this Endangered Species act is a federal law, correct? It is, yeah.
>> Jonathan Wolfson: Federal law, yeah.
>> Walker Wildmon: See that's where, that's where you lose me. that's because nowhere did our founding fathers envision that for the federal government to just sweep up this much power. Because what you're talking about here, and I understand this has been in place for a long time, so I'm late to the party, but, this is mind boggling that you can have a federal agency under the Endangered Species act come in and exert so much control here. M. To be able to basically lock up land, and then the landowners have to go to court, basically, unless the less agency reneges have to go to court with no way to recoup those costs, by the way. and if they win, then they're out tens of thousands of dollars in attorney's fees. And if they lose, they get nothing. Right. They're out the attorney's fees and the land. so your role, not your role, the Department of Interior's role here that they're putting forth, ah, how much more, analysis, or how much more does this make the department have to really think twice about it? I mean, what kind of specific maybe clauses are things do they have to do to justify their actions here beyond what they're already doing?
>> Jonathan Wolfson: Yeah, that's a great question. So, you know, one of the challenges is that right now the Fish and Wildlife Service has not carte blanche, but pretty broad authority to make these designations without making their analysis public. And what the, current administration has proposed, the Trump administration, Department of the Interior, Secretary Burgum's team, they're proposing that these analyses have to look at the true economic impacts. They have to look at not just the economic impacts, but they have to look at the economy of that particular area. They have to look at productivity, they have to look at jobs and any opportunity costs of designating a particular area as a critical habitat. And so as a result, and not only do they have to do that analysis, they have to make it public as part of the proposed regulation that they're putting out to designate that property. And so as a result, that allows that landowner and that family or that community to more critically evaluate that analysis. And so it's going to require a lot more work on the government's part before they intrude into people's personal lives. And that's really, and frankly why the center for Practical Federalism at the State Policy Network exists, is to help empower state legislators, state government leaders to identify places where the federal government may be overstepping the bounds where supposed to be, or where the federal government is trying to rein itself back in to its proper bounds and to encourage them to do that. And so that's really what the point of the letter that we put together with about 100 officials from, state officials from around the country, where we said to the Department of the Interior, we think that your proposed regulation makes a lot of sense. It really is a wise decision to Go forward and make it more transparent, give more accountability to the government before you make this sort of critical habitat designation. Because otherwise you're ignoring the key trade offs that are going to exist where there are human costs from making these decisions. That doesn't mean that in every circumstance it doesn't make sense to make a critical habitat designation. But we should be really careful about making those decisions to make sure that they are, number one, protecting the species that we're actually trying to protect. And number two, that they're considering all of the consequences of that sort of protection in that particular location.
>> Walker Wildmon: Yeah. When you mentioned that they can make this designation without these species actually being present, that's red flag number one. I mean that to me that should be like minimum threshold. Right. for making the designation.
Environmental regulations in California are creating barriers to rebuilding homes
Let me ask you about California. I know the vast majority of what California is dealing with is state, state regulations, maybe some federal rules. But, what's going on there? Because these, a lot of these folks haven't been able to rebuild their homes. I think there was like less than a dozen homes rebuilt in the Palisades area in a, it's been a year. I mean, this is just crazy to me. but some of that has to do with environmental regulations, doesn't it?
>> Jonathan Wolfson: No, that's absolutely right. So, you know, this, this particular regulation that the center put a comment together and got the comments from the legislators around the country, doesn't particularly deal with that situation. What a lot of the situation in California is dealing with the California Coastal Commission, which has a lot of authority to determine what can and cannot be built in California. And a lot of those rules go really far back into the 80s and 90s where there was a decision made to really try to limit any sort of development along the coast, which might have made sense if all of the houses were in place. But now those regulations are creating massive barriers to rebuilding homes which all were either grandfathered in or were permitted at some point under California Coastal Commission's rules and regulations. And so it is true that often these sorts of rules and regulations, even if they have a good purpose. Right. It might be to preserve an aesthetic of the community or whatever, what have you that good purpose may have been. In California's situation in particular, once you end up with some sort of tragic situation where you really do want to allow people to build, a lot of times these sorts of rules and regulations can stand in the way. And I think that that is why there are states around the country that have tried to figure out how to Streamline permitting processes. You had things like what Governor Youngkin did in Virginia and what they're working on with Governor Stitt's team in Oklahoma, where they're trying to make it easier for people to get permits. And hopefully California will take some lessons from those best practices where they will be able to find ways to expedite it. Obviously, at this point we're more than a year in and we're not seeing a lot of that, but hopefully we'll see that. In particular, when you look at these designations by the Fish and Wildlife Service, these can have the same sort of effects. If someone needs a federal permit for any activity on that property, once the designation hits, then they're going to have to go through a much more complicated process. So sometimes you have a situation like you had in Alabama, where there were thousands of acres of timberland which were designated critical habitat for the black pine snake in 2020, but there was only one sighting of that snake in 25 years on that property. And that designation looked like it was going to cost about $180 million in economic costs to the Skipper family. Ultimately, a federal court struck down that designation for that family. But to your point, they had to go through years of litigation and a long fight to get to that place in order to not have that designation. And so anybody who says that, oh, this is just a designation, ultimately it's really a question of is there, if they're not the species on the land could look to these sorts of stories. And there's more that we put in our comment letter of families and businesses that really were harmed just by the designation, limiting their ability to use their own property.
>> Walker Wildmon: Well, folks aren't going to like this, but after listening to a story like that, which I understand it's one of the more egregious stories, the snake, I mean, how many species have gone extinct in human history? And the answer is a lot of them. A lot of them have. so, I mean, I just don't think a, ah, species going extinct is the end of the world. That's my point. especially when you're talking about a $180 million impact on a family property and a community, that is a big, big deal. And so, and the assumption also is that, that if you don't do this, then the species will go extinct and you just can't, you cannot affirmatively make a cause and effect, analysis that firm, with when you're talking about land of this size. so, that's my unsolicited opinion on that. Hey, Jonathan, we appreciate the work that you guys do, pushing back against these big government mandates and helping the Trump administration, move things in the right direction on this rulemaking. We appreciate you coming on.
>> Jonathan Wolfson: Thanks so much for having me. Talk to you soon.
>> Walker Wildmon: Absolutely. Thanks so much.
Jonathan Wolfson: Federal bureaucracy suffocates the economy
That's Jonathan Wolfson, founder president of Wolf and Sabre Advising. He's also senior advisor or senior fellow rather over at the State Policy Network's center for Practical Federalism. And we were discussing the Department of Interior and some of the rulemaking that they're proposing to basically rein in the authority and the power that these federal bureaucrats have over private property. So this is a good rule in the history of rules with the Department of Interior. Very interesting, very fascinating discussion. There's a lot of these regulations. When President Trump and his administration talks about deregulation, this is the kind of stuff they're talking about. This is the kind of stuff they're talking about because when you examine kind of one, a, one off instance of these rules being abused, you think to yourself, you kind of shrug your shoulders and go, oh, that's not that big of a deal. Well, you add up one rule and then you multiply it by several thousand, which is the essence of what we have in Washington is more than several thousand, probably, probably tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of rules ultimately that people have to follow through this various regulations, the regulatory bodies, the economic burden of these rules and regulations coming out of Washington are strangulating for the economy. I mean it suffocates the economy. And so can you imagine the type of flourishing that can happen when you take the bureaucrats out of it? A lot of opportunity there, a lot of low hanging fruit. And that's what the Trump administration is moving towards. And that's how you can get, you know, 5% GDP, 6% GDP, and Elon Musk predicts double digit GDP. I don't know about that. We'll see. But you deregulate folks. you unleash capitalism and you unleash ultimately human flourishing, which is God's design. We'll be back in a few.
>> Jeff Chamblee: This is at the Core on American Family Radio with your host, Walker Wildmon.
Walker Wildmon leads spiritual heritage tours to Williamsburg, Washington and Boston
>> Walker Wildmon: Welcome back to the last segment of today's episode. Walker Wildmon here with you. Glad to have you with, us on the program afr, American Family Radio. We are going to Williamsburg, Washington and Boston all in 2026 this year. And we would love for you to Join us. Williamsburg and Washington. Those trips were in June and September. Boston, that trip's going to be in late September. So if you want to join us on any of those trips, you can just go over to wildmangroup.com to check out more information. Wildmangroup.com and we lead these spiritual heritage tours to Williamsburg, Boston and Washington each year. So you can go check out that all of the information, dates, pricing, etc. All right, let's, jump to our next guest. We have with us Dan Albino. Dan is senior attorney over the Institute for Justice, and continuing our discussion, today of government overreach, in this case, asset forfeiture or civil forfeiture, is what we're going to talk about this segment, and a topic that, unless you're the victim of it, you're not really familiar with it, which is what I've learned about some, of these topics. Unless you're kind of thrown into it, it's hard to really know what it's like. but that's why we got Dan with us to bring us up to speed on what he's working on. Hey, Dan, welcome to the program.
>> Dan Alban: Thank you for having me.
Civil forfeiture is a process that allows law enforcement to seize property without conviction
>> Walker Wildmon: Well, Dan, I've seen, you know, you see these different headlines of people's assets being seized or, you know, frozen, if you will. And when I read that, I think of, like, the Mafia or the drug cartels are foreign terrorists. But, this approach, if you will, or this method, is actually used more frequently and not just on the big bad guys. Right? Tell us how this works.
>> Dan Alban: That's right. So civil forfeiture is a process that allows law enforcement to seize and permanently keep your property, even without convicting you of a crime or even charging you with a crime. And yes, I think most people, to the extent they're aware of it at all, they associate it with Mafia kingpins or drug cartels. But it's used all over the country, hundreds or thousands of times a day to take property away from, people about which the police often have very little or no evidence of wrongdoing. But they find large amounts of cash or, they. They think, you know, maybe they're up to no good because they're in the wrong neighborhood and they seize the car. And under civil forfeiture, which is done under our civil laws, not under our criminal laws, police can seize the property on suspicion that the property is somehow involved in criminal activity. And then, prosecutors can move to forfeit it permanently, and they do not have to secure a criminal conviction. They don't even have to bring criminal charges. And so this happens to, everyday people all over the country. Often people who are traveling either on interstate highways or, traveling through airports, they're taking money with them for totally legitimate purposes. Everything from, you know, putting a down payment on a house to making their first and last month, rent payment, to, buying a vehicle, a used vehicle. Lots, of people need, cash in order to make their, their business work. Lots of people in the restaurant industry, lots of other industries, cash is king. And they need to travel with cash in order to buy equipment for their business. And when they get pulled over and police find, the cash, they often just seize it with really no evidence that the person is involved in any crime. It's a sort of c, cash seize cash mentality. And it victimizes hundreds and thousands of people nationwide every year.
>> Walker Wildmon: Yeah, I've never understood, you know, when you're flying international and they ask you to basically tell them you've got more than 10,000 bucks. Which I'm thinking, if I'm a criminal, why would I tell you I'm already, I'm already breaking some rule here. Maybe not a law, but, why would I, why would I volunteer up so you can dig through my suitcase? Only, only the good people actually declare the things they're supposed to declare through customs. And then they get, they get the hardest time. but, what's the deal with this cash being like something that brings automatic suspicion? I mean, because to your point, just because you've got cash doesn't equal criminality here. but what is it with this? You've got to declare 10,000 or more, and if you do, you're going to get questioned. why the automatic suspicion? Because there's other ways that the criminals transfer money beyond cash, including wire systems. so I don't know what this weird suspicion is about. Cash.
>> Dan Alban: Yeah, it's strange, but I think, over the years, law enforcement has just come to sort of assume that people with large amounts of cash are somehow involved in either money laundering or drug trafficking. And they don't really consider the possibilities that people are using it for totally legal activities. And with the civil forfeiture system, they don't have to prove that you've committed any crime. They can just take it based on, probable cause that the, that the cash is involved in illegal activity. And usually that probable cause is extremely flimsy. It's something like this person had a large amount of cash and he was engaged in interstate transport between two known drug trafficking cities on a known drug trafficking corridor. And that really just means he was traveling between two cities on a highway. And they'll say, you know, there's a large amount of cash. And drug, drug mules take large amounts of cash. And no matter how it's packaged, it's suspicious. So it's suspicious if it's rubber banded, it's suspicious if it has bank bans, it's suspicious if it's in envelopes, it's suspicious if it's loose in a bag. It doesn't really matter how you have it packaged. All of those things are ways that drug traffickers also package their money. And so everything is considered suspicious. So there's really no way out of it. Unfortunately, if you're traveling with a large amount of cash and you're stopped, it's highly likely that that cash is going to be confiscated and then the police through, through the prosecutor's office are going to move to permanently keep the money. And one of the reasons that police, like cash in particular is because, once that property is forfeited, it goes directly into an asset forfeiture fund that is typically controlled solely by the agency that forfeited the property. And it's much easier to spend cash, of course, than having to sell off vehicles at auction or have to deal with other assets, especially crypto assets or other things that might be tricky to actually liquidate. But cash is already cash. And so you just deposit it in your bank account and you can spend it. And that's really the underlying problem here, is it, it skews the incentives for law enforcement. It takes what law enforcement should be doing, focusing on stopping crime, preventing crime, investigating crime, and channels it into revenue raising. And so, you know, law enforcement agencies that want to raise their budget, or at least raise the amount of money that they can spend outside their budget, will often allocate a number of officers to do highway interdiction or airport interdiction because their agency will get to keep those proceeds. And that unfortunately, distracts law enforcement from doing their primary job and also victimizes a lot of innocent people along the way.
Kermit Warren lost his life savings trying to buy a tow truck
>> Walker Wildmon: Tell us about Kermit Warren's story. I read up about this story that you've worked on and this is not an unusual, set of circumstances. I mean what Kermit did, trying to purchase a piece of equipment is very commonplace amongst, especially the small business world. So tell us about Kermit Warren's story down in NewSong Orleans.
>> Jonathan Wolfson: Sure.
>> Dan Alban: So Kermit Warren was a client of ours. He was the head deacon of his church in the Lower Ninth Ward in NewSong Orleans. He made a living as the head shoeshine man at the Roosevelt Hotel, one of the fanciest hotels in NewSong Orleans. But during the pandemic, he got laid off because there was very few guests at the hotel and there was no real need for a shoeshine man. So he fell back to his sort of, second gig, his side job, which was, scrap, ah, metal, harvesting and towing. And he and his son were trying to make a living doing this scrap, metal in. But there was only one pickup truck, between, or one tow truck between them. And there are two adult men who needed to provide for both of themselves. And so Kermit decided they needed another tow truck to really make the business viable. And he took his life savings, which he had saved in cash, had hidden in his pantry, took it with him in a bag to Ohio to buy a second tow truck that they'd found online. when they got there, unfortunately, they found out that this was a tow truck that was actually made, it was overbuilt. It was made for hauling heavy equipment, things that he didn't really, need, for his business. He didn't need to be able to haul, you know, tractors and caterpillars and that kind of thing. And so he and his son were disappointed, but they decided to turn around and come back. And when they, when they did come back, they were buying their tickets at the last minute because they had expected they would be driving the tow truck back with them. So they bought one way tickets at the last minute with cash and all of those things trigger DEA scrutiny. And so when they got to the airport, DEA investigators, approached them after they'd gone through TSA security. TSA found the cash in Kermit's bag and alerted dea. DEA also knew about Kermit's itinerary because he purchased last minute with cash and one way ticket. They considered all of that suspicious and they confiscated his money. Even though he had all kinds of evidence that he had traveled to Ohio to purchase this tow truck. And there was zero evidence that he was involved in criminal activity. Fortunately, we were able to represent him and ultimately get his money back. But the seizure happened in November of 2020 and he wasn't, it took about six months, maybe more, to get his money back. And in the meantime he was left so impoverished he couldn't afford Christmas presents for his grandchildren. He was just scraping by. you Know, borrowing money from friends and family just to have money to eat. And we were finally able to get his property back. It was actually almost a year later that we were able to get it returned. But Kerman, had a very miserable year during that time for absolutely no reason. There was, there was no evidence he'd done anything illegal. He was involved in any illegal activity. The government tried to rely on the fact that his son lived in a high crime neighborhood and there were a number of drug transactions that occurred near his house. But the lower Ninth Ward is a high, crime area, and it doesn't matter where you live, there's a number of drug transactions that are occurring near your house. And so they had no evidence to go on, but they wanted to keep the money. And for that, Kermit had to go without his life savings for nearly a year. It kept him obviously from being able to expand his business and get a second tow truck. And, it made for a very miserable year for his son and himself.
>> Walker Wildmon: Well, and the, to me, the chief. The chief. Well, there's multiple problems here, but like, the most egregious thing about it is that when they're. The impact on the government is nothing, right? They don't lose anything. the impact on, on somebody like Kermit is, is devastating. It's life altering. And to get it wrong. I guess my point is that the downside of getting it wrong is so big, it's so monumental in the life of somebody like Kermit that you just can't afford to do that. I mean, you just can't. And that's the fundamental flaw in this process is that let's just assume that so and so is a drug dealer, that they take their money. If they're a drug dealer doing the level of money, I mean, the level of drugs, to be hauling 30,000 cash, taking 30,000 cash isn't going to do anything to the drug operation. I mean, effectively zero to the drug operation. I mean, that's like pennies in the drop of the bucket. And so, my point is that the government's not really achieving anything. Even if it is a drug. the money's being used for drugs. The method is not very effective because in the grand scheme of things, unless you're talking $500,000 million dollars in cash, you're not really disrupting what potentially could be an international or multinational drug operation. but the devastating effects when they get it wrong far, far outweigh the potential positives of, seizing these assets.
New Mexico and Maine recently passed laws that end civil forfeiture
are any states doing anything Legislatively on this, what's the policy fix?
>> Dan Alban: Yeah, so there are a handful of states that have done some great, some great things to improve their laws. The best are NewSong Mexico and Maine. both of those states have recently passed laws that end civil forfeiture and only rely on criminal forfeiture. So with criminal forfeiture you can only permanently take the property after someone is convicted of a crime. It's part of the sentencing process. And so there, someone has already had all of their rights that a criminal defendant receives. The government has had to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they committed the crime. And so it's only at that point that the person can be punished by having their ill gotten goods seized and forfeited. And so, criminal forfeiture, is really the correct solution. not civil forfeiture, which happens, you know, regardless of whether there's a criminal conviction. And often in many cases there is not a criminal conviction. So NewSong Mexico and Maine are kind of the leading lights that have, that have done the best work on that. Maine just passed its law a few years ago. NewSong Mexico passed its laws, I think it was in 2018, reforming it. And there's been a number of studies that were done on NewSong Mexico comparing it to bordering states and whether you know, abolishing the civil forfeiture had any effect on crime rates in NewSong Mexico or drug use rates in NewSong Mexico as compared to neighboring counties over the same period of time. And they found out that it did not, it did not increase drug use, it did not increase crime rates to get rid of civil forfeiture. There was effectively no real effect compared to neighboring states, like Texas and Arizona, and so, and Colorado and so, you know, it's ah, a, it's a policy that exists without any benefit.
>> Walker Wildmon: Yeah.
>> Dan Alban: That imposes tremendous costs on everyday people like Kermit Warren.
>> Walker Wildmon: Absolutely. Hey Dan, we got about 10 seconds left. Thank you so much for coming on the program. What's your website?
>> Dan Alban: ij.org we are the Institute for Justice. We represent everyone pro bono for free. And you can find [email protected] Excellent.
>> Walker Wildmon: Thanks so much Dan. Appreciate your work.
>> Dan Alban: Thank you.
>> Walker Wildmon: All right, there you have it folks. That wraps up the show. You can go, to ij.org, we'll see you next time. The views and opinions expressed in this broadcast may not necessarily reflect those of.
>> Jeff Chamblee: The American Family association or American Family Radio.
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