American Family Radio thanks its sponsor, preborn. org for supporting pro life efforts

>> Walker Wildmon: We would like to take a moment to thank our sponsor, preborn. When a mother meets her baby on ultrasound and hears their heartbeat, it's a divine connection and the majority of the time she will choose life. But they can't do it without your help. Preborn needs us, the pro life community, to come alongside them. One ultrasound is just $28. To donate, dial pound250 and say the keyword baby or visit 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 equip sacred honor is the courage to speak truth, to live out your free speech. We also rejoice in our sufferings because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance, character and character.

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

>> Walker Wildmon: Welcome to the Core here on American Family Radio. Glad to be with you today on the program. Walker Wildmon, Rick Greene, we're your host each week here on at the core once again on American Family Radio Network. AFR.net is our URL, AFR.net is our website and you can also catch us on the app, the American Family Radio app. And lastly, we have the podcast uploaded each and every afternoon on your podcast store, your podcast library. Wherever you listen to podcasts, just type in the name of the program, click the subscribe or the follow button and, the latest episode will be ready to go in your library there in your podcast library.

This year is America's 250th anniversary and we're celebrating with tours

Well, let's turn our attention to the scripture. John Chapter 17 is where we are this week. John, chapter 17. Looking at the first few verses here, Jesus spoke these words, lifted up his eyes to heaven and said, father, the hour has come. Glorify your son, that your son may also glorify you as you have given him authority over all flesh. And he should give eternal life to as many as you have given him. And this is eternal life that they may know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. Verse 4. I have glorified you on this earth. I have finished the work which you have given to me. And now, O God, O Father, glorify me together with yourself and the glory which I, had with you before the world. That's John 17:1:5. A lot going on there from a theological vantage point. But clearly we see the Trinity on display and we see the fact that, Jesus has always been, just as God has always been, the alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. Jesus talks about how he was with the Father, even before the world was. That's verse five there. So, John, chapter 17, verses one through five. That's our scripture for the week. As a reminder, this is America's 250th anniversary this year. A very special, important time to be alive. And we are, celebrating this. We do these tours every year, but this is a special time that we're going to celebrate America's 250th. And we're going to places like Williamsburg, Jamestown, and Yorktown. We're also going to Washington, D.C. and we're going to Boston. All this year in 2026. The Williamsburg and the Washington portions, those are two separate trips. Those are back to back in June and September. And then the Boston trip that we're taking is in late September, just after the Washington trip, for Boston. So all of those dates, all the information you need to know, if you want to register or find out the itinerary and the pricing is available over at tours.afa.net tours.afa.net you can find out all the information you need there. But what better time, what better year to visit America's, colonial history and Boston and our nation's capital than in the 250th year, of our nation's existence? Tours.AFA.net you can find out more information there.

Israel and the United States have been at conflict with Iran since Saturday

Well, let's talk about the elephant in the room. And that's what's going on in Iran and in the Middle East. This, began, in the early morning hours of Saturday and obviously into the day and all day yesterday, where we've been at over 48 hours of conflict with Iran, both in Israel and the United States, primarily, although the coalition against Iran just continues to build even beyond what some people projected would happen. but to set this up, I want to give justice to the timeline leading up to this, because it's easy to jump into when we bombed Iran and what's happened since then, which is a lot has happened since then. And I don't know that we'll be able to cover it all. But I want to set up for the American people the level of due diligence that went into negotiations with Iran in the weeks and months leading up to this conflict. This isn't something where President Trump and Secretary Hegseth and others, Secretary Rubio just woke up one day and said, hey, we're going to bomb Iran. It's the extreme opposite of that. This was months in the making, actually. This goes back. Some of this goes back to before, this goes back to President Trump's first term. Also it goes back to immediately following the inauguration. Discussions with Iran began and of course, Israel and Iran went back and forth. You had the 12 day war last year, but now President, Trump exhausted options to get Iran to stop pursuing a couple things. Number one, nuclear weapons, but number two, the ballistic capabilities to deliver those weapons anywhere in the world. These are the types of things that Iran was seeking. And also for those who are skeptical of this, which I understand over the last 30 years of America's history and foreign entanglements, I understand the skepticism here, but let me remind you that these are things such as Iran wanting to get a nuclear weapon. Iran, producing, ballistic missile capabilities. Iran wanting to destroy both Israel and the United States. These are things and sentiments that weren't just made up by US Officials. These were things where the Iranian officials are on the record stating these things. Now, they wouldn't go on the record, say we're developing a nuclear bomb. the CIA assessed that, and we'll talk more about that. But, but as far as the ballistic missile capabilities, the desire to wipe out Israel and the US the desire to kill American troops, all of these things were public statements that Iranian officials made. So it's not as if we're just assuming what they would do or we're reading into their motives and intentions. These are actual statements that Iran has been stating for the past 40 plus years. But let's go through this real quick while the time we have left this segment. let's listen to clip four. This is about a two minute clip of the US Attempted to negotiate with Iran for the past eight months. Let's listen

>>  : today. In their desperation, the enemy is unmasked as Iranian missiles and drones rain down indiscriminately on the hotels, airports, apartments and other civilian targets of their neighbors. Cowardly terrorist tactics for. From a regime that for decades has trafficked in cowardly terrorist tactics lies, death and destruction. To this day, the Iranian leadership has built nothing except proxies and missiles and drones and deeply buried nuclear factories and facilities. Peaceful nuclear ambitions do not need to be buried underneath mountains. Last June, Operation Midnight Hammer obliterated their nuclear program to rubble. Afterward, we told them plainly, that's it. Now make a deal. They arrogantly refused. We said, rebuild it and we'll stop you again. This time far worse. Well, President Trump, Secretary Rubio, Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner. They bent over backwards for real diplomacy, offering pathway after pathway to peace. I watched it. I was there. They tried over and over and over again, earnest attempts at peace. The former regime had every chance to make a peaceful and sensible deal, but Tehran was not negotiating. They were stalling, buying time to reload their missile stockpiles and restart their nuclear ambitions. Their goal? Hold us hostage, threatening to strike our forces. Well, President Trump doesn't play those games. And as Secretary Rubio said after the Maduro raid, if you don't know, now you know. President Trump puts America and Americans first. He doesn't hesitate, and neither do our troops. The mission of Operation Epic Fury is laser focused. Destroy Iranian offensive missiles, destroy Iranian missile production, destroy their navy and other security infrastructure, and they will never have nuclear weapons. We're hitting them surgically, overwhelmingly, and unapologetically.

>> Walker Wildmon: All right, there you have it. That's Secretary Hegseth explaining to us the timeline that the Operation Midnight Hammer was meant to. Yes, it set back Iran who knows how long on their, enrichment and their, nuclear missile development, but it was more so meant as a, as a, as an operation to show Iranian leadership that, hey, we're serious about this. We're so serious about this that we'll come into Iran and we'll bomb one of your top nuclear production facilities and you will come to the negotiating table. And what Secretary Hegseth is revealing to us there is what we haven't yet been told until now, and that is that even after President Trump bombed one of their top nuclear enrichment facilities, Iran insisted that they will still get a nuclear bomb. Even after that. Secretary Hexseth and Secretary Rubio, according to what he just said there, told Iran after we bombed them in Ben Nigh Hammer that, that it's time to come to the negotiating table, that you guys cannot have nuclear weapons. And what did Iran do? According to Secretary of War, they persisted in their movement and their progression towards nuclear, capable intercontinental ballistic missiles. Up until Friday, we were still at the negotiating table with them. But what's unfortunate about this is that Iran wasn't interested. This shows how, how committed Iran was to not complying with U.S. demands. There's another factor of this, and we'll keep talking about this, hopefully paint a complete picture over the rest of the show throughout the show. But it was also revealed over the weekend that President Trump even offered, offered Iran indefinite forever nuclear power plants, because President Trump thought, if this is about having nuclear power plants, then we can work with that, because there's all kinds of nations around the world that the US Administers and facilitates nuclear power plants without having enriched uranium that can be used to build A nuclear bomb. And so President Trump even offered the Iranians, hey, look guys, if you'll, if you'll, if you'll negotiate with us, if you'll get rid of the enriched uranium, then we'll provide you uranium. we'll provide you rather we will provide you uranium for nuclear power. But as President Trump noted over the weekend, this isn't about, he actually said this on Friday right before the attack. This is, this isn't about nuclear power. Iran has vast amounts of natural gas and oil. They don't need nuclear power. And so this isn't about some need to power their cities with nuclear reactors. This is 100% about Iran reserving the right to have nuclear warheads on top of their ballistic missiles. That's 100% what this is about. And Iran I guess didn't take President Trump serious enough, but now they do. And so this is months, years of negotiation trying to talk Iran off the ledge. And as I mentioned last week, I think personally and time will tell, I think this is about more then regime change. I even think it's about a little more than even Iran having nuclear weapons or not having nuclear weapons. Now only time will tell this and over time our officials will begin to actually be more transparent with us. But I think this is equally about isolating China. I truly do, I truly think the long term, the 20 year plan here is to continue isolating China by ensuring that we have influence over the Iranian government. China's by the way, 20%, 20 to 25% of China's oil imports just got cut off overnight. 20 to 25% of China's Oil imports, the spigot just got cut off overnight. So there's a lot more going on here than nuclear weapons or regime change. We'll be back.

>>  : The AFR app is a powerful tool but it does have limitations. You can't use it to change the oil in your vehicle or get rid of carpet stains. It won't walk the dog, won't pick up the dry cleaning or take the kids to practice. But while you're doing those things, you can listen to your favorite AFR content through the app on your phone, smart device or Roku. Just go to your app store or visit afr.net listen to AFR wherever you go with the AFR app at the Core podcast are [email protected] now back to at the core on American Family Radio.

Walker Wildmon welcomes Brandy Perez Carbaugh to American Family Radio

>> Walker Wildmon: Welcome, back to this second segment here on American Family Radio. I'm Walker Wildmon. You're listening to at the core, hosted by myself and Rick Greene each week. It's good to be with you on this edition of the program. As a reminder, afr.net, we've got the show up live there. All of American Family Radio's programming live, audio [email protected] and on the American Family Radio mobile app. Let's, move to our next guest. Brandi Perez Carball is with us. Brandi is with the Heritage Foundation. She's a research associate there. And she's on to talk about America's immigration policy and our approach to immigration with the Trump administration. Hey, Brandi, welcome to the program.

>> Brandy Perez Carbaugh: Hi. It's good to be here.

Some state officials and agencies are refusing to cooperate with President Trump on immigration

>> Walker Wildmon: Brandi, this is, people may be thinking immigration, and then we've got the Iran war. What do we want to talk about? And I'm actually going to bridge the two, but because in some ways this, threat of Islamic terror and America's immigration policy are very much related, especially in light of the, ah, supposed terror attack down in Austin, Texas over the weekend, by one of the naturalized citizens there. but this gets down to, and what I want to talk to you about is what states do because there's a federal policy, there's what Immigration and Customs Enforcement are doing. But a lot of the holdup, if you will, of implementing President Trump's immigration policy agenda, a lot of the holdup is at the state level and state officials and agencies refusing to cooperate with President Trump. So break down how this works and some of the programs that these state and municipalities operate under.

>> Brandy Perez Carbaugh: Yeah. So the best policy is always when states and localities work together with the federal government to ensure public safety. And one of the ways that states can do this is by entering any of the three programs offered under ICE's 287 program. They are partnerships between states and localities and the Office of Enforcement and Removal Operations under ice. And they identify and remove criminal aliens who are amenable to remove from the United States. Under the Biden administration, we saw the worst, homeland security crisis we have ever seen. So many individuals in the terrorist watch list were intercepted at the southern border and within the United States. And now it's time to get all people out of our country.

>> Walker Wildmon: Yeah, that's exactly right. And states, most, the majority of states have cooperated, thankfully, because they're under Republican leadership. But some of them have really put up a fight against the federal government, which is really going against their oath of office to protect the homeland and protect their citizens. Minnesota's like exhibit A Minneapolis, specifically, is exhibit A of these local officials and state refusing to cooperate. how many, what is it, what is it looking like now as far as the amount of cooperation versus the amount of resistance? and are states like California cooperating with the federal government? Or are there still over a dozen or two dozen states that are just completely refusing to, cooperate with federal officials on immigration enforcement?

>> Brandy Perez Carbaugh: Not only are there some states like California who are refusing to cooperate, but there's also states like Maryland who have, explicitly banned their agencies from cooperating with the federal government. For example, Governor West Moore signed a law banning 287 agreements recently. And sheriffs are still working with ICE outside of these two, hundred eighty seven partnerships informally. But that will soon be prohibited as well because their Congress is considering a bill that would ban, states, the state and localities from notifying or transferring potential suspects to ICE without a warrant.

>> Walker Wildmon: Wow, that's shocking because it's one thing to have, like, some, you know, a few sheriffs that are like, hey, we're not doing this. But what you're talking about is the state legislature and the governor explicitly prohibiting any state law enforcement agency from cooperating with the federal government. That's just outright dangerous.

Brandy Perez Carbaugh with Heritage Foundation working on 287 partnerships legislation

but I want to talk about solutions here because you guys over at Heritage and others have been working on solutions here. And tell us about the legislation you're working on, the affirmative legislation that ensures that all state law enforcement, agencies fully cooperate with the federal government on this.

>> Brandy Perez Carbaugh: Yeah. So since Trump signed the executive order, protecting the Homeland last year, lots of states have been really proactive, like Texas, Florida and Georgia. And not only are they encouraging their agencies to, to, participate in these agreements, but they're also requiring them to do so if they are able to. And so here at Heritage, we have drafted model policies that are being adopted in several states. And one of them includes, requiring 287 partnerships. And each partnership, each model, there's three, operates differently, but they all work, in partnership with, local sheriffs and the ice, the Department of Homeland Security. And, the jail enforcement model was designed to identify and process removable aliens. the task force model, which is the one that, lots of states are choosing to participate in, serves as a force multiplier for law enforcement agencies. And so this helps states and localities actually help, DHS whenever they're in their city to carry out, removal operations. And the Warrant Service Officer program is more for smaller and rural, jurisdictions. And it allows ICE to train certified and authorized state and local law enforcement officers to serve and execute administrative warrants.

>> Walker Wildmon: Yeah, this is, this. This is good legislation that you're working on here. Heritage is across the country with multiple states, including Mississippi, our home state, where we're trying to get this passed through both chambers. once again, we've been talking to, Brandy Perez Carball with the Heritage Foundation. She's a research associate there. Brandy, tell our folks, the Heritage website how they can read more about your work and all things related to this immigration topic.

>> Brandy Perez Carbaugh: So if you go on the Heritage website, under our model legislation tab, or under our border security tab, you can see, the seven, or, I believe it's seven or eight model statutes that the Border Security and Immigration center has published. And Mississippi is considered, policies that we have written about. One of them is taxing remittance, international remittances, and the other is requiring 287 partnerships and encouraging states and localities to, participate with the federal governments in removal operations.

>> Walker Wildmon: Excellent, excellent. Heritage.org, check out their border security section. And they've got multiple pieces of model legislation circulating around the country in various states. Hey, Brandy, thanks so much for coming on. We appreciate your insight on this.

>> Brandy Perez Carbaugh: Thank you for having me.

>> Walker Wildmon: Absolutely, absolutely.

Brandy Perez Carbaugh The 287 program is a national security issue

That's Brandi Perez Carball with the Heritage foundation, research associate there on the 287 program and the multiple ways that local, municipalities can cooperate with the federal government on immigration enforcement. as you guys know, the reason this is a national security issue is because of the type of people we've been letting into our country illegally. Tens of thousands of, people that were flagged to be on the terror watch list or suspected terror watch list, came in under President Biden, some of them, many of them released into the country, into the homeland. And so, now there's concerns. There's reports of Iranian, terror cells in America. We had a terror attack over the weekend in Austin, Texas, with a, Iranian fan follower, radical, wearing a, Allah shirt and an Iranian flag shirt underneath the sweatshirt, tried to kill as many people as possible. Thankfully, law enforcement in Austin, Texas, were phenomenal. I think the Response time was 57 seconds in Austin. So, very grateful for law enforcement, there in Austin, Texas, for responding so rapidly and preventing more casualties, more fatalities there.

Trey Yingst: Secretary Rubio talks about Iran's nuclear ambitions

back to this, topic of what's going on in Iran. Obviously, we've got to watch the homeland. We've got to ensure we have secure borders. We got to know who's coming into our country. the, Secretary Rubio, talked about why this isn't really about Iran having nuclear power plants in Iran, and why this is fully about Iran reserving the right to put a nuclear bomb on the top of an intercontinental ballistic missile so that they can send it over to Israel or to the US or wherever they want to send it. this is going to be. Clip three. This is Rubio. This is pre attack, Rubio talking about Iran's real ambitions here. Clip 3.

>> Marco Rubio: What they really wanted was energy from. They could do small modular reactors, which is something that's quite affordable and achievable for a lot of countries. But when you say we want to enrich and we want to enrich deeply underground, and you have a history in the past of enriching 20 and even 60% plus you're building missiles that could potentially carry warheads, that doesn't sound to me like someone who's a country that's not interested in building weapons. So it's not just the rhetorical, it's the actions that back the rhetoric, which we simply haven't seen. Well, they don't need to enrich in order to have nuclear energy. They don't need nuclear energy, by the way. They have plenty of natural gas. But if they wanted nuclear, they could have it the way other countries have it. The fact that they refuse to get it that way, the fact that they insist not just on enrichment, but on enrichment in locations located inside of mountains, is. I think you would have to lack common sense to not know what that means or what that could mean.

>> Walker Wildmon: So there you have it. That's Secretary Rubio. I mean, how much clearer is it? I mean, President Trump is clearly a dealmaker. President Trump desires to make deals, and he'll even make deals that aren't necessarily the best deals, but they're deals for the sake of avoiding conflict like this. And of course, he's going to say it's the best deal ever, just because that's his personality. But President Trump is known to compromise on deal making for the sake of avoiding something much worse. And so it's not as if President Trump doesn't want to meet in the middle, doesn't want to be at the negotiating table. This is what President does. President Trump does for a living here. But this shows how stubborn and insistent Iran was on ensuring that they could have a nuclear bomb. Now, how far was Iran away from a nuclear bomb? I don't know. They say weeks, they say months, they say years. I don't know. But. But one thing I Don't doubt is that, that Iran was, was serious about continuing to pursue a nuclear bomb. No doubt about that. Based on their actions. Otherwise you wouldn't have a problem, giving up your enriched uranium and, getting off this program. Another thing that the secretary pointed out there, Secretary Rubio, is that Iran was doing all this enrichment underground in these deep bunkers. If you're trying to do modular reactors so you can power cities in Iran with nuclear power, why are you going deep underground in these military facilities without, oversight to enrich this uranium? One thing that makes this conflict different than conflicts in the past is you actually have multiple Arab nations in the region that are now fully supporting US and Israeli operations. This is verified now. We, we have Qatar running, military jets, running interference, taking down Iranian jets in the region. This is a very big deal. This hasn't happened in the 50 years of the US being in the region. And with the reinstitution of Israel, Obviously in the 40s and early 50s, you've never had Arab nations partner with the US and Israel against someone like Iran. But here they are doing it. This is a clip here. This is going to be clip one. This is, ah, this is Trey Yingst out of Tel Aviv, Israel talking about how Qatar is now shooting down Iranian jets. Clip 1.

>>  : Using some of the shorter range missiles to target Gulf countries, along with cruise missiles and drones. But the fact that they sent these SU24 tactical bombers to try and hit King Qatar is a significant escalation. And again, we can report at this hour that according to Qatar's Defense Ministry, both of these jets were shot down.

>> Walker Wildmon: Well, there you have it. That's Fox confirming that Qatar, or Qatar, depending on who you're talking to, Qatar has shot down Iranian jets. That's never happened. This is huge. you've got Saudi Arabia, the Crown prince there. he was actually reportedly urging President Trump to move on Iran even before he did. that's Saudi Arabia. And Saudi Arabia has pledged their full support behind the US and of course we're running military operations out of Saudi Arabia. But to show how suicidal the Iranian regime is, and was, by the way, their top military commanders are all gone. one of their spokespersons actually admitted that they've got military officials out in the field that are completely rogue. There's no central command, there's no chain of command. It's all broken. And you've got Iranian military agents out there just doing whatever they want to do. Like, no, there's no central control here, which obviously is Very dangerous. But you have Iran. They've now launched drones and ballistic missiles against, like, 14 to 15 surrounding nations. So this isn't now. This isn't just between Iran and Israel or Iran and US Assets in the region. Iran, when they went down, they had in their playbook that we're going after everybody. All of our neighbors, everybody in the region were going after all of them. And unfortunately, this is how you ended up with four US Fatalities, which is very sad, very tragic. in Kuwait, you had a tactical operations center in Kuwait that a ballistic missile hit. And sadly, you have four U.S. service members that have lost their life because of that. And so Iran, they're still, to this hour, launching ballistic missile and drone attacks at Arab nations in the region. You've got Kuwait, as of the last 15 minutes, you've got Qatar taking ballistic missile attacks. and so what you're seeing here is you're seeing Iran on its last leg. You're seeing Iran on its last leg. There's no denying that the Ayatollah has been taken out. 48 to 49 other military commanders within the first two hours of the attack were taken out. And ever since then, there's been dozens more taken out. Iran has no military structure left. From a hierarchy standpoint. Their chain of command is completely broken. What you're seeing remaining is remnants of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Core that are in their. In their. They're in their final days of operation, final days of existence, firing as many missiles and as many drones as possible, before they meet their fate. Now, what comes after this? What does. What does a changeover in regime and power and control look like there? I don't know.

Preborn network clinics offer women what abortion industry will never offer

There's signs that the current Iranian officials, which at this point were three or four individuals deep on the chain of command on the secession planning reports are they want to talk to President Trump. They want to negotiate. But President Trump has made it clear he wants full surrender by Iran. Abortion moves fast. And right now in our communities, women are being pressured to make irreversible decisions. In moments of fear and panic, they're told to act quickly or risk losing support. Many feel they have no other option. But because of you, they do. At preborn network clinics, a woman receives what the abortion industry will never offer. Compassion without pressure, clarity about the life growing inside her, real support to welcome her baby, and the hope of the gospel she's given a free ultrasound and space to breathe. And more than 80% of the time, when a mother sees her baby on a preborn Ultrasound, she chooses life. This march, preborn is believing to save 6,800 babies. But it will take 124 partners saying yes every day. Here's my ask. Pause your busy day just for a moment and become a yes right now. Just $28 provides one ultrasound. $140 helps five mothers and every dollar helps save babies and share hope. To donate, dial £250 and say the key word baby. That's £250, baby. Or visit preborn.com afr that's preborn.com afr this is at the Core on American

>>  : Family Radio with your host, Walker Wildmon.

>> Walker Wildmon: Foreign.

Dianne Pickering is President of the Mississippi Federation of Republican Women

Welcome back to the corps here on American Family Radio. Glad to have you back with us on this episode. On today's episode of the program. The show is hosted each week by myself and Rick Greene, and it's a delight each day for us to be with you and to be entrusted with, the airtime here on American Family Radio. I want to introduce our next guest. Dianne Pickering is with us. Ms. Dianne is president of the Mississippi Federation of Republican Women, and they've been doing for several years a lot of good work here in the state on legislation and candidates and elections. Ms. Dianne Pickering, welcome to the program.

>> Dianne Pickering: Thank you so much, Walker. It's a privilege and an honor to be with you today and especially to represent all the great Republican women that make up, Mississippi Federation of Republican Women.

>> Walker Wildmon: Well, I will tell you, Ms. Dianne you, guys, carry with you credibility and, some clout because all of the, folks that I talk to around the state that are running for office on occasion, they all talk about how, they need to meet with you ladies and they need to, continually foster a relationship with your organization. So, that means you have a lot of credibility in the state. Well, Ms. Dianne tell us a little bit about your founding, about, the history of your organization, and then, of course, we'll get into some of the issues you're working on today.

>> Dianne Pickering: Okay. Well, the National Federation of Republican Women was founded in 1938 by Marion Martin of Maine. How about that? Maine? we're the largest grassroots Republican women's organization in the country, with approximately over 60,000 members. We're in all 50 states, plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, and we're headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia. Now, what does that mean for Mississippi? all of those state clubs, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. If you are a member of the national organization, then that filters down to the state which we are MFRW, Mississippi Federation of Republican Women. We have 37 clubs across Mississippi. we all have a standardized set of bylaws, which we should be abiding by. And so the local clubs, once you form a local club, you become affiliated with the state organization, and then the state with a national. we're governed by an executive committee, which makes up, our elected officers, and then the board of directors, which is the elected officers. And then we have the standing committee chairs, bylaws, campaign finance, legislative membership, public relations and programs. The past MFRW presidents, all of your 37 club presidents, and the chairman of the special committees. we have two executive meetings and board of directors meetings a year, one in the spring, one in the fall. Those occur in Jackson. And we just finished our spring, which you might hear that called, Legislative Day, or it's known as Redcoat Day, where we show up at the capitol, meet with our legislators, let them know what's on our mind and how we would like them to. To vote on, certain issues. And, this year, we had Governor Reeves as our keynote speaker at our luncheon, where we had over 405 people, I think, that attended that lunch. And so it was a big day, a great day.

>> Walker Wildmon: Excellent.

Miss Dianne Pickering is with the Mississippi Federation of Republican Women

Well, Miss Dianne once again, we're talking to Dianne Pickering with the Mississippi Federation of Republican Women. Tell us a little bit about some, of the items you have been working on this session, this cycle, within the Mississippi legislature.

>> Dianne Pickering: this session we are especially today and tomorrow, because the deadline for those bills to come out of committee is Tuesday, March 3rd. So as we speak, we have some ladies that will be attending committee meetings today on House Bill 1310. House Bill 1310 is the open to Religion Act. what does that do? That allows voluntary prayer. You know, that's a constitutional right that we have. But it's a shame that we have to create a law to allow that in our public schools. But it also allows the reading of the Bible or other religious texts, and it allows individual or group participation. Now, a lot of people are saying, oh, my goodness, if we do that, then other religions are going to, you know, inflict, themselves on our children. actually, 77% of Mississippians identify as Christians. Less than 1% identify another religion. There's 18% that identify as nothing. That's really the crowd we need to be worried about, is that 18%. But there's a lot of safeguards in this bill. it's 100% voluntary. It's. You have to have written Parent consent, there's no forced exposure. It's not going to go over the PA system in the schools, and it's not going to be during instructional time. It's constitutionally sound. you remember Coach Kennedy. Yep, the Coach Kennedy case. Well, in 2022, the Supreme Court ruled that religious expression is protected under the First Amendment, and voluntary religious activity is not unconstitutional simply because it occurs in a public setting. You know, our founders never intended separation of church and state to be that you could not pray in public. So I say, as Christians, our faith, yes, it's the responsibility of the parents in church. We're not asking government, you know, to come in and, and take over our, religious education. But when we have our faith, when we walk through the schoolhouse door, we don't leave our faith, our faith needs with us. But that's House Bill 1310. So we're really hoping, and I just know that our legislators are going to do the right thing and pass that.

>> Walker Wildmon: Yeah, that's one. Yeah. The Open to Religion act, to your point, is a very good bill. I've been looking into it. We've been helping to support it, and it basically provides structure to what's already a constitutional right per the Supreme Court, and that is to have, religious studies within the school. And, as long as it doesn't interfere with instructional time, the school has an obligation to offer up, resources and space for things like Bible study and prayer. And so this is just providing some guardrails and some structure, so that students and administrators know exactly what to do, how to carry this out. well, once again, we've been talking to Dianne Pickering. Hey, Ms. Dianne tell our folks, before we let you go, your website how they can read more about your work,

>> Dianne Pickering: mfrw.org or they can actually email me at. Dianne Pickering. D I A N N E P I C K E r I n g.mfrwmail m.com all right, there you have it.

>> Walker Wildmon: Ms. Dianne Pickering, thanks so much for coming on the program. We appreciate your work.

>> Dianne Pickering: Thank you.

>> Walker Wildmon: Absolutely. That's Mississippi, Federation for Republican Women. Mississippi FRW is their website. Mississippi FRW.org is that website. And they've been helping to, not only see good candidates elected, but also see good legislation passed through the Mississippi legislature and pretty, big organization with a lot of influence. So glad to talk to Ms. Dianne

America's military capabilities are far superior to any of our adversaries

Well, I wanted to further comment on what's going on in Iran and just kind of put a bow on this conversation for today's episode. The One thing that has been a little surprising for, at least for me as I observe what has happened in the Venezuela, what has happened in other parts of the world, especially with Iran, is are, America's military capabilities are far, superior to any of our adversaries. And you can even go back to President Trump's first term. I'll never forget this. When he was told by various military officials, including the Secretary of Defense at the time, now the Secretary of War position, President Trump in his first term was told that it would take months to eliminate isis, it would take months upon months upon months to eradicate ISIS in Syria. President Trump heard that there was a general in at the time, I'm not sure if he was a general, but nonetheless a, high ranking military official that was actually stationed in the Middle east, possibly in Syria, that had a plan that it would only take days or weeks to eliminate isis. Well, the military official now, general that I'm talking about is General Kaine, who's now Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. So he was told he, had a plan with his forces in the region to eliminate ISIS in a matter of days, weeks at the most. So President Trump at the time actually heard of this and called up General Kaine and was like, hey man, what's your plan? I'm paraphrasing here at this point. what's your plan? I mean, these people say that you've got a plan to eliminate ISIS in days or weeks. Everybody else tells me it'll take six months. And so that's how General Kaine comes onto the scene. That was in President Trump's first term. Well, he's chosen as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff by Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, of course, within the last 12 months. Now he's in the position and he's overseeing all of these operations. My point in bringing all of this up is that, in the past it seems as though our military has been constrained by probably a couple of things, but mostly political calculations have constrained America's military force in the past. there's no doubt that political correctness has played a part here. Whether you're talking about women in combat, whether you're talking about rules of engagement, there's no doubt that kind of this woke era had a strain on America's military success or lack thereof. And the, I'll never forget the Benghazi fiasco where tragically, not only did American service members, but an American ambassador lost his life in Benghazi And Secretary Clinton and President Obama, they drugged their feet for hours. They refused to send in a, quick reaction force, a qrf. And Americans lost their lives. Was this about politics? Was it about what the media would say? Was it about what our adversaries would think about us? Why on earth would have we been operating with such timidity, with such restraint? And so Secretary of War Hexith comes in, President Trump comes in, General Kaine comes in, and these guys aren't playing games. We, along with Israel. Well, first off, let's not forget within the last month, this all my time runs together. Within the last month or two, we went into Venezuela, we did all this in three hours by the way, from beginning to end, three hours, we flew into Venezuela, we disabled all of their anti aircraft defense systems, including their radars, completely disabled them. M. We landed on a military base, we landed on a Venezuelan military base. And within, I don't know, less than 30 minutes on base, on site, we went into a, military compound and we killed all of the Cuban mercenary guards, like 29 of them. And our teams, whether it be Delta Force, SIL team, whatever, arrested Maduro and cuffed Maduro and his wife, got him back on the helicopter and took him back to a US warship all in under three hours with zero American fatalities. M and by the way, those were Russian and Chinese air defense systems in Venezuela. So then a month later we go over to Iran, which apparently is the big bad dog in the region. Nobody wants to mess with Iran because they're crazy. And they've got ballistic missiles and they've got all this fancy Chinese and Russian technology. And between us and Israel, we go in there and for hours we're still doing it. Now for over 48 hours, we have unfettered access to Iranian airspace and we're bombing their ballistic missile sites into oblivion. And while we're doing that, actually before we do that, we know exactly, precisely down to the room that 49 of their military commanders are. We know where they are, we know where the Ayatollah is, we know who's scheduled to meet with the Ayatollah at 8:15am local time on Saturday morning. We know who's having coffee with him, who's eating breakfast with him, exactly which room in the bunker they're meeting in. And so within a matter of 30 minutes to an hour, we've taken out 49 military commanders in Iran. And the Ayatollah and Iranian military guards, they don't even know what's going on. And now we're at the point where the complete chain of command is broken. And, That's it. And so you got China out there, saber rattling. You've got Russia over here, saber rattling. The fact of the matter is these actions are going to send a message to the rest of the world that America dominates from a military standpoint, every day of the week.

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

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