Tim Wildmon: Hey, good morning, everybody, and welcome to Today's Issues on the American Family Radio Network for this Monday, October 5, 2026. Thank you for listening to AFR and joining me. In studio is Ed Vitagliano. Good morning, Ed.
Ed Vitagliano: Good morning, Tim.
Tim Wildmon: And Fred Jackson.
Fred Jackson: Good day there.
Tim Wildmon: That's it, people. Just three of us, huh?
Ed Vitagliano: Well, when you're talking about three intellects like ours, really, do you need more?
Tim Wildmon: No, I don't think you need more.
Fred Jackson: I think more, for better or for worse.
Tim Wildmon: Kind of like marriage right here. On this show, you're going to just kind of take us or leave us.
Ed Vitagliano: And don't leave us. Please don't leave us.
Fred Jackson: Yeah, please don't leave us.
Tim Wildmon: All right, a lot coming this week. We've got Shareathon coming up, don't we?
Ed Vitagliano: We absolutely do. We have our fall Shareathon starting tomorrow morning at 6 a.m. Central time.
Tim Wildmon: We start our three-day Shareathon. We take three days in the spring and three days in the fall to dedicate our radio time to raising money.
Fred Jackson: As you say, Tim, passing the virtual offering plate or passing the hat.
Ed Vitagliano: And so that starts tomorrow. The theme of our 2026 fall Shareathon is “Stand Firm.” If we ever needed a time as Christians to stand firm in America, it is now. We have that verse. When I say we have that verse, our leadership here for the radio network, led by Jonathan Coker, takes time to pray in the lead-up to a Shareathon and seek God's direction. They felt that the Lord was leading them to 1 Corinthians 16:13-14, where the apostle Paul says, “Be on your guard. Stand firm in the faith. Be courageous. Be strong. Do everything in love.”
Tim Wildmon: I think that's a great foundation for our Shareathon this fall. It's a very important time in our country's history. I know we've said that a lot over the last 20, 25, 26 years, but it is true. There is a lot of motion under the waters, so to speak, a lot of currents and a lot of movements, and a lot of things going on spiritually. Christians need to be salt and light. We need to stand firm in the faith. We've got a big election coming up here on November 3rd, but more than that, our culture is in trouble, and we want God to move so that people come back to Jesus Christ.
Ed Vitagliano: So, Shareathon starts tomorrow.
Tim Wildmon: And I always look forward to our time of Shareathon. We met one individual who's already here, who's volunteered.
Ed Vitagliano: From Montana.
Tim Wildmon: Wayne, from Montana. He's going to be helping out. He came a day early just to say hello to everybody, so we're looking forward to it.
Ed Vitagliano: Absolutely. It's a very important time because it takes a lot of money to run this ministry, this operation, this radio network. You can only imagine what it costs with 165 stations, or whatever it is we have right now. Our folks have always responded, and I'm sure they will these next three days during our “Stand Firm” American Family Radio Shareathon.
Tim Wildmon: As I mentioned many times before, we only do Shareathons in the spring and the fall, three days each. There are some other organizations and ministries where all they do is raise money, seemingly around the clock, always asking. We don't do that here.
Ed Vitagliano: As my dad used to say, and as you quoted him, my dad used to say, “We treat people like adults.”
Tim Wildmon: So we don't beg, plead, and borrow.
Ed Vitagliano: I guess we beg a little bit.
Tim Wildmon: We do give people opportunities to give throughout the year, but in terms of our radio network, we dedicate just three days in the spring and three days in the fall. Folks will hear a lot about what we're doing. They'll hear listener testimonies. We'll talk about what the ministry is doing, why this ministry is important, and why people give and listen. We're going to try to convince folks who have not given in the past that this is an honorable, God-honoring place to give your money, and we believe that we're doing God's will in making a difference.
Ed Vitagliano: Amen.
Tim Wildmon: That's the American Family Radio Shareathon coming up tomorrow, Wednesday, and Thursday. We're going to have a lot of fun, a lot of on-air fellowship, and also raise our financial needs.
Tim Wildmon: All right, Fred. You've always got good news on a Monday morning, don't you?
Fred Jackson: Well, we've already got this morning's news, Tim. It's sad to report breaking news out of Winter Haven, Florida, in Central Florida. A multivehicle crash, including a school bus, has claimed the lives of two people this morning. The story is on AFN.net. Basically, this is what happened: The bus had been traveling along Winter Haven Road around 6 o'clock this morning when an oncoming car crossed the center line and crashed into the side of the bus near the rear wheels. The impact ripped the tire off the bus and caused it to turn over, to roll over. One person in the Jeep died, and one of the students aboard the bus passed away.
Fred Jackson: Every parent's nightmare, especially when you've got kids being picked up at 6 o'clock in the morning. In a lot of places this time of year, it's dark in the morning. It's a very tragic accident, and they're investigating, of course, as to why all of this happened. Be praying for those folks in Winter Haven, Florida. It's the start of another school week down there, and this is what parents are concerned about.
Fred Jackson: It's a wonder you don't read about more school bus crashes than we do, considering how many there are across America in the mornings.
Tim Wildmon: Let me ask you this question. I don't know the answer, and maybe this is still the case today. Do you only have the bus driver as the only adult on the school bus, or do they have chaperones today?
Fred Jackson: I think most just have drivers.
Tim Wildmon: I think it's just drivers, but my kids are grown. They have kids of their own, and they shuttle their kids to school.
Ed Vitagliano: In their own car?
Fred Jackson: In their own car.
Tim Wildmon: So I'm so far removed from bus driving. I rode the bus to school, even through high school. We had two cars, but both my parents used those, so I didn't have a vehicle. I rode the bus. Most of my friends all rode the bus, even in high school. I think young people would be horrified to do that today.
Ed Vitagliano: Horrified to do what?
Tim Wildmon: To ride the school bus as a high schooler.
Ed Vitagliano: Oh, yeah.
Tim Wildmon: What I was thinking about was having one person in charge of discipline on the bus. That's the driver, which always seemed to me to be dangerous in and of itself. Can I tell you a bus story from when I rode the bus?
Ed Vitagliano: Please do.
Fred Jackson: When I was in the sixth grade, school went from kindergarten to sixth grade, then you went to junior high school. I was one of the older kids on the bus. The bus driver, who liked me and who can blame him, said, “Hey, I want you to help keep order on the bus and be a bus monitor,” like a hockey enforcer and a bus monitor.
Tim Wildmon: You were deputized?
Fred Jackson: I was deputized, and let me tell you, it went straight to my head. I ran a taut ship. I wouldn't let kids get up and run around and then sit down. It went straight to my head. I was a dictator, a tyrant on the bus. I was older, and those kids feared me. After about two weeks of that, the bus driver said, “Hey, we're just going to go back to being a regular kid on the bus.”
Ed Vitagliano: Well, that was the fallen nature of Adam taking complete control.
Fred Jackson: I had zero control at my house when I was being raised, so I transferred that over.
Tim Wildmon: We're very sorry to hear about this bus accident in Florida.
Fred Jackson: Next story.
Tim Wildmon: We've got, what is it, four weeks from tomorrow until Election Day, I believe?
Ed Vitagliano: If you do the calculation.
Fred Jackson: It's the third.
Tim Wildmon: Yeah.
Ed Vitagliano: Nobody knows.
Tim Wildmon: Oh my, the trouble we've seen, or will see. Nobody knows our sorrow.
Ed Vitagliano: Hopefully we won't be singing spirituals. By “we,” I mean conservatives. Conservatives on that day. The polls are not looking good for a lot of conservatives across the country right now. A lot of the races are within the margin of error, as they say. I remember there was supposed to be a red wave four years ago. The conservatives and Republicans were supposed to sweep all over the place, and that didn't materialize. It was basically a status quo type of thing. It wasn't a disaster for the Republicans, but it wasn't a big gain like they had anticipated.
Ed Vitagliano: The same is true now. A lot of people are saying, “Hey, this is the year of the Democrat. They're going to win big across the country.” Maybe so, but that remains to be seen coming up in November.
Tim Wildmon: What did you say?
Ed Vitagliano: The third.
Tim Wildmon: No, Tuesday, November 3rd.
Fred Jackson: It is four weeks from tomorrow.
Tim Wildmon: So President Trump, as he announced last week, is on the road a lot, 32 days of campaigning out on the road. He's in Nebraska today, and he'll be helping out the Republican senator there, Ricketts. But there may be a little trouble in Nebraska because there are a lot of cattle farmers there, and apparently a lot of them are upset. Remember, a few weeks ago, President Trump, in order to bring the price of food down, said he was removing the tariffs on beef imports coming from places like Brazil and a couple of other countries.
Tim Wildmon: The cattlemen up there are a little upset. I'm not sure if there are going to be any protests there today. But the senator was basically telling the Associated Press, “Yeah, I'm with the farmers on this. We need to do something about cheap beef coming in from other countries, affecting the cattlemen who depend on beef for a living.”
Ed Vitagliano: President Trump is doing the right thing going state to state. I know that 32 states is a pretty tough schedule over the next month. Is that between now and Election Day? You see an asset, though?
Tim Wildmon: Well, all I'm saying is he's got to try to get Republicans excited and try to get a message across to independents. I guess it probably waits to be seen whether he's going to wind up helping or hurting, because the president is controversial simply because the economy is doing so poorly.
Ed Vitagliano: I say that there are very positive economic signs, but the two that matter the most to people, at least in terms of voters and voting, are grocery prices and gas prices. That's going to be the issue for a lot of people.
Ed Vitagliano: I think this is an example, going back to Nebraska, where states matter and states are individual political entities. A policy you put in place that might help meet prices in Michigan, Minnesota, or Florida is going to anger cattle farmers in Nebraska. That's a political reality that national leaders have to take into account.
Ed Vitagliano: The other thing for the Republicans, and the polling has been fairly consistent on this, is that when the president won the last election, he had big support from Hispanics all over the country. The polls are showing that support has diminished. Avita Duffy Alfonso of The Federalist was talking about that with Fox this morning.
Guest: These numbers are very distressing for Republicans. Republicans did better with Hispanics in 2024 than at any other time in living memory. President Trump crushed it with them. He didn't win Hispanics by running on things like “Latinx.” That doesn't move Hispanics at all. He ran on the economy. He ran on right-wing populism.
Guest: Democrats right now are doing the exact same thing. Candidates like El-Sayed and James Talarico are running sort of Zohran Mamdani, left-wing populist-style campaigns. They're not running on identity politics like they used to. They're running on class politics, and it's very effective.
Guest: The number one thing going on right now is gas prices. We have high energy costs, and the best thing, the solution for Republicans, is to wrap up the war and get those gas prices down.
Fred Jackson: There have also been some complaints among Hispanics. They don't like what they've termed the aggressive nature of Trump's crackdown on illegal immigrants. They've seen some stories where family members are being deported to third countries, not going back to the original country. That's also been a factor among Hispanics.
Ed Vitagliano: The economy is just going to be the driver of this. I mentioned to my wife over the weekend, we were on our way to church, that I had gone to get gas on Friday. We passed the gas station, and I said, “Oh, look at the price of gas.” I said, “I got gas for $3.89 a gallon,” and I was bragging because a lot of places are well over four dollars now. Some of our listeners are in states where it's even higher than that.
Tim Wildmon: It is kind of surprising that you're bragging about paying for gas when it's almost two dollars a gallon more than it was, or at least a dollar more than it was a couple of years ago. That's going to drive, I'm afraid, the turnout. It's going to drive the election, as it frequently does. This is not a winning issue for Republicans.
Tim Wildmon: Do you think the Democrats are making the appeal that they're going to bring those prices down if you elect them? Is that what they're saying?
Ed Vitagliano: Yes.
Tim Wildmon: Do they say how?
Ed Vitagliano: Of course not.
Tim Wildmon: I just wonder. I'm being serious. Do they say how, or do you just, I guess, if the other side is flailing, or something's going bad, and whatever team you're on, you take advantage of it? I remember those stickers on gas pumps with Biden saying, “I did that.”
Ed Vitagliano: Yes.
Tim Wildmon: Do you remember that?
Fred Jackson: Yeah.
Tim Wildmon: They were everywhere, and that's when gas prices were a lot lower than they are now, right?
Ed Vitagliano: They were.
Tim Wildmon: You're talking about during Biden's four years?
Ed Vitagliano: Biden got blamed for the gas prices.
Tim Wildmon: Yes.
Ed Vitagliano: There are two separate reasons in my mind why gas prices are different under Trump and Biden, as far as being elevated beyond the point where people notice them. Biden's was his crackdown on fossil fuels. Remember that?
Tim Wildmon: Shutting down the XL pipeline.
Ed Vitagliano: The pipeline.
Tim Wildmon: And then the general, what Dr. Stember used to call the environmental wacko movement.
Ed Vitagliano: Coming down on it.
Tim Wildmon: War against coal.
Ed Vitagliano: Yeah, we're continuing Obama's war against coal.
Tim Wildmon: That's the reason gas prices went up under Biden. Now they've gone up under Trump, yes, but they've gone up because of the war and the oil supply being bottlenecked around the world.
Tim Wildmon: To the average person, they may say, “I don't really care what the reason is. In fact, my wallet's hurting because of it.” But I just wonder what people are saying when you're saying gas prices and grocery prices are up and therefore that's hurting Republicans.
Ed Vitagliano: Maybe asking for rationality is beyond my expectation level when we're talking about the American voter. The masses don't really have an ideological bent one way or another. They are more concerned about the economy. They want to blame someone.
Ed Vitagliano: This is how President Trump got elected. We just heard that from the clip we played. President Trump, in part, got elected in 2024 running against the economic decisions of the Biden administration. People were suffering. He said, “I'm going to bring all this down,” and he did. Remember, gas prices came down, and people voted because they blamed Biden.
Ed Vitagliano: Now gas prices are back up. People are going to vote against, quote unquote, Trump, even though he's not on the ballot, but against Republicans for the same reason. They're not looking for detailed economic explanations. They just want to blame somebody.
Tim Wildmon: I got you. I think, don't you?
Fred Jackson: Yeah, I agree with you. I think it's basically visceral. When Zohran Mamdani got elected in New York City, part of his campaign promises included government-run grocery stores. “I'm going to bring prices down. You're going to be able to get groceries cheaper.” He also said, “I am going to control the rent,” which is also pulling much-needed funds out of your pocket. People respond to that, even if deep down inside they think it's unlikely that anyone can pull that off.
Tim Wildmon: All right, Fred. This morning we're talking about the thrust of the Democrat campaign, which is affordability.
Fred Jackson: Right. They're making some points on that. But when you look at the statistics on where the most expensive places to live in this country are, Democrats control those areas. I was looking at some statistics. Hawaii, Massachusetts, and California are the top three states in this country where it's most expensive to live. Three of the bluest states in the country are making it expensive.
Fred Jackson: I looked at California gas prices on Friday. Regular gas was over six dollars, and diesel was over eight dollars.
Tim Wildmon: It must be really nice there. What's the attraction?
Fred Jackson: Steve Hilton, who is running for governor of California as a Republican, says one of his promises is that he'll bring gas down to about three dollars a gallon. That's a big push. But most of the gas prices in these areas are not being driven by Donald Trump. They're being driven by all the extra taxes because they are socialist states, regardless of what Democrats say.
Fred Jackson: If you're going to vote against Republicans because of the affordability issue that Democrats are preaching, then you're living in these expensive states that are run by Democrats. I don't know what to say about that.
Tim Wildmon: You don't put that together?
Ed Vitagliano: When are you going to quit using logic?
Fred Jackson: I'm sorry. I'm old, cranky Fred.
Ed Vitagliano: No, you're right. That is a very good point. The most expensive places to live today are blue states. But, as Fred said earlier, a lot of times people don't make that connection.
Tim Wildmon: There are a lot of people who are upset with the war. They may not be upset with why we did what we did, which was to prevent what President Trump said about Iran getting a nuclear weapon. But it's the fact that the war has lasted and is going on, and we don't see any conclusion to it, at least right now. Don't you think some voters are frustrated by that?
Ed Vitagliano: Even apart from the economy, you mean? I think that's true. President Trump did run on “no forever wars.” The American people were fed up with the idea of a war like Iraq and Afghanistan that goes on for 20 years.
Tim Wildmon: But we're not occupying Iran.
Ed Vitagliano: I know, but that's what Trump ran on. He said, “No more wars like that.” I don't think this is going to be a 20-year war against Iran, but it shows no sign of ending. There's no exit. It's been going on now for six months, right?
Tim Wildmon: No exit ramp. How is he going to bring this to an end?
Ed Vitagliano: There are people who say we shouldn't be there. Again, whether that's rational compared to what Trump was trying to accomplish is almost beside the point when people are frustrated.
Tim Wildmon: All right. We are not frustrated.
Ed Vitagliano: No.
Tim Wildmon: We're coming back with more news and analysis after this short timeout. You're listening to Today's Issues on the American Family Radio Network.
Tim Wildmon: Hey, welcome back, everybody, to Today's Issues on the American Family Radio Network. Thanks for listening to AFR. Tim, Ed, and Fred are here.
Tim Wildmon: By the way, this Saturday, for those who enjoy college football, is a clash of the titans.
Fred Jackson: Really?
Tim Wildmon: Yeah, I know you don't keep up with it very much.
Fred Jackson: Who's that?
Tim Wildmon: Georgia plays at Alabama.
Fred Jackson: I probably will watch that.
Tim Wildmon: That'll be a big game.
Ed Vitagliano: I'm just happy for those schools because they rarely win. It's good to see some underachievers have their shot at the national headlines. It's really good to see the underdog. We always enjoy a good underdog story.
Tim Wildmon: How do you pull for Georgia versus Alabama? We have listeners in both states. I'm for you fellers. Anyway, that is a big game.
Fred Jackson: We didn't want to talk about last weekend.
Tim Wildmon: You didn't want to talk about last weekend?
Fred Jackson: No, I didn't. I put that in the past.
Ed Vitagliano: That's yesterday. That's news.
Tim Wildmon: Are you telling me that?
Ed Vitagliano: Of course. I'm a Mississippi State guy. That's my school. I graduated from it, and I didn't have a choice. I was born this way. My dad raised me this way. He didn't say, “Hey, do you want to be an Alabama fan or a Georgia fan?” No, he said, “You know what, son? You're going to learn humility, and guess what? It's going to last 50 years.”
Ed Vitagliano: Humility has done its work. If you enter this season with realistic expectations, I'm a realist. When Mississippi State went 4-0 to start off the season, we took that like the rest of us take an unexpected spring day. You say, “This is wonderful. We'll take it for as long as it lasts.”
Tim Wildmon: That's right. We know it won't last forever.
Ed Vitagliano: When you cheer for a school that doesn't win all the time, you take every victory. You savor it. You let it last for a week. Alabama's rolling in, but you're not going to pay attention to that. You're just going to focus on the W you got the week before.
Fred Jackson: Mississippi State is a baseball school, so they'll be nationally ranked every year in baseball. At least we have one sport we can count on.
Tim Wildmon: It is so. We are about a third of the way through the college football season. Your team is doing pretty well?
Fred Jackson: Yes, they're still undefeated in the nation.
Tim Wildmon: They have a pretty easy schedule.
Fred Jackson: Yeah, so they're headed to the playoffs.
Tim Wildmon: Now we have the playoffs, so we'll see what happens there.
Tim Wildmon: Speaking of sports, do you all remember when Nike went woke?
Fred Jackson: Oh, yeah.
Tim Wildmon: Nike went woke. That kind of started with Colin Kaepernick, right? The quarterback who was kneeling in the NFL during the national anthem to protest injustices in America and our history and all these things after George Floyd.
Ed Vitagliano: Is that when it was?
Tim Wildmon: I think that's when he started doing that.
Fred Jackson: I thought it was before.
Tim Wildmon: Anyway, Nike decided to make him a hero in their mind. They signed a contract with Colin Kaepernick and said, “Hey, this guy's great. He speaks for us,” even though, in my view, his message was blatantly anti-American. There are injustices in America's past, yes, but the way he framed it, Colin Kaepernick was part of the “we live on stolen land” crowd. There's nothing you could do to rectify anything. We're just a terrible country and terrible people. Nike said, “Sign us up for that message.”
Tim Wildmon: Nike also embraced transgenderism, including boys playing girls' sports. That's just stupid for an athletic footwear and apparel company to get into.
Fred Jackson: Nike got into a bunch of left-wing causes.
Tim Wildmon: Right. Well, guess what? Their stock has been on a nosedive for how many years?
Fred Jackson: It hit a 12-year low. Think about that. Nike is a titan, and they still are a very large company, but they have lost a lot of customers since they decided to go woke and go broke.
Tim Wildmon: Our family buys a lot of athletic gear because our kids and now our grandkids play youth sports. You can avoid Nike. You can buy Under Armour or Adidas. There are all kinds of companies you can choose from. You don't have to go with Nike, and a lot of people decided to go other places. There may be other reasons why their company has taken a big nosedive, but I can't explain it outside of their decision to go woke and go broke.
Ed Vitagliano: One of the things I'm looking at in a story right now is that the CEO of Nike, Elliott Hill, sent a memo to employees. It wasn't because they're expecting layoffs in 2027, because the company is not where it used to be. It's an 860-word memo, but here's the 33-word statement that stuck out. He says, “Over the past year, we've put sport at the center of everything we do. We're seeing encouraging signs of progress, but we have more work to do to win over the long term.”
Ed Vitagliano: Some analysts are saying that is evidence of the fact that Elliott Hill, the Nike CEO, is saying, “We're going back to putting sports at the center.” Nike had embraced woke social justice causes. They partnered with Dylan Mulvaney.
Tim Wildmon: That's Bud Light. That's the transgender person from Bud Light.
Ed Vitagliano: Right. It sounds like he's saying, “We're going back to putting sports at the center of what we do.” Maybe the company is going to move away from being woke. But sometimes you take a hit like that, and it takes a long time to earn your way back into the good graces of people who used to be fans.
Tim Wildmon: You're listening to Today's Issues on American Family Radio.
Ed Vitagliano: It also proves the power of the consumer. Companies would be wise to stay out of highly charged, controversial issues. It seems to me Nike thought it was taking up Colin Kaepernick's cause and that the vast majority of Americans agreed with him. But I think the vast majority of Americans were against kneeling for the national anthem, calling our country systemically racist, and promoting transgenderism. Those are fringe political-left issues that Nike tried to champion, and now it has cost them big time.
Ed Vitagliano: In the immediate aftermath of the George Floyd incident in Minnesota, I think most Americans were ambivalent about the social justice movements and the things they were promoting. But in the years since then, probably over the last four years, Americans have gotten sick and tired of it. I think a corner has been turned. People are becoming more hostile to companies that ram these things down their throats, and they are voting with their wallets.
Ed Vitagliano: Companies like Nike thought this was the wave of the future and that they were going to write it, but that wave dissipated pretty quickly after a couple of years.
Tim Wildmon: All right, you're listening to Today's Issues. Fred, what's the next story?
Fred Jackson: Election Day is four weeks from tomorrow. An often-discussed factor in elections, especially midterms, is voter turnout. We've seen in the polls through the years that even among evangelicals, voter turnout is often very low.
Fred Jackson: Over the last couple of days, the president of the Southern Baptist Convention, which has 12 million members, went public with his appeal to Southern Baptist pastors. His name is Willie Rice, and he's also the pastor of Calvary Church in Clearwater, Florida. He said pastors must step up on abortion, marriage, gender identity, and immigration, arguing that these political issues are deeply theological. Here's what he had to say.
Guest: Over the last several years, many Bible-believing, conservative evangelicals were being encouraged to be more quiet and to withdraw from the political process. Some of those voices came externally from pressure saying, “You shouldn't mix religion and politics.” But some of those voices came internally from those who said that, in order to be faithful in our mission, we needed to decouple, to divorce ourselves, as it were, from some controversial political issues.
Tim Wildmon: What do you think about that, Fred?
Fred Jackson: Who was that gentleman again?
Tim Wildmon: He is the president of the Southern Baptist Convention. He was elected as president last year at their convention.
Fred Jackson: What's his name?
Tim Wildmon: His name is Willie Rice. He's the pastor of Calvary Church in Clearwater, Florida.
Fred Jackson: Southern Baptist, 12 million people in total.
Tim Wildmon: That was his message as president.
Fred Jackson: What's really interesting is that he was right that many evangelicals seem to back away and say, “We don't want politics in our church.” I'm paraphrasing there. But what's really interesting is that churches that support the left agenda and socialism, and that are okay with abortion, don't mind having politicians and candidates come in.
Fred Jackson: The left criticizes the right when conservative churches start talking politics, but the left has been involved in intermingling churches and politics. We all know that.
Tim Wildmon: I can appreciate a pastor not wanting to embrace a political party from the platform, per se, because political parties are secular institutions. They change depending on who's in charge, and sometimes they make mistakes. However, pastors should stand firm on the moral teachings of the Bible, and the moral teachings of the Bible impact popular culture and politics.
Tim Wildmon: There is a difference between what Republicans and Democrats stand for in their platforms and their beliefs. I'm not saying Republicans are always lined up with the Bible, but if you look at the stances of the parties over the last 30 or 40 years, Republicans have been friendly to causes that Christians believe in and support, while Democrats, generally speaking, have been hostile.
Tim Wildmon: Regardless of whether you want to talk about a party, you can still talk about things like religious freedom, life, and marriage. You can talk about founding principles, and people can figure out on their own who to support based on what they've been taught in church.
Fred Jackson: Does that make sense?
Ed Vitagliano: It does. Let me make a few comments here. This first thing I'm going to say is just my opinion, and there may be pastors and church leaders who disagree. When I was pastoring for many years, my thought was, “I am not going to turn over my pulpit to a politician,” even if I agreed with that politician's general stand on moral issues.
Ed Vitagliano: In my mind, the pulpit was for preaching the gospel and teaching God's truth. I did not want to combine that pulpit with a politician who might go off the rails in years to come.
Ed Vitagliano: However, the pulpit is exactly the place for pastors to preach and teach exactly what the Scriptures say. Politics is part of culture. Culture, sociologically and biblically speaking, encompasses a people's religion, education, morality, and politics. All those things are under the umbrella of culture.
Ed Vitagliano: Where does that culture come from? It comes from the worldview, values, and beliefs of the people who live there. The gospel impacts those people, and the truth of God changes the way people think. Therefore, it is going to have a downstream effect on politics.
Ed Vitagliano: The last thing I'll say, and this is also my opinion, not necessarily the opinion of AFA, is that I think many, not all, pastors who say, “No, we don't want to get involved in politics,” are showing their cowardice. If there were a movement in this country to reinstitute slavery, every one of those pastors would speak out against that law and that movement because everyone would agree with it.
Ed Vitagliano: When they don't want to talk about politics is usually when it's something controversial. That's why I say I think it is more a reflection of cowardice. They would have no problem speaking against things that are truly horrific when everyone is on board.
Tim Wildmon: Does that make sense?
Fred Jackson: Yeah. Another consideration for a pastor who doesn't want to touch politics at all would be, “Am I going to get criticized by the left-wing media? Am I going to have protests outside my church?” I think that's often a consideration when they decide whether they want to say anything.
Tim Wildmon: If you're a minister or pastor and you think I'm wrong, and you're saying, “No, I have theological reasons for not speaking about politics from my pulpit,” then answer this question: If there were a movement to reinstitute slavery, would you speak out against it?
Fred Jackson: Surely they would.
Tim Wildmon: Of course you would. If you would, then you would get involved in politics. The question becomes whether it is simply because of the issue that you don't want to get involved, and not because of a theological issue.
Fred Jackson: That's it.
Tim Wildmon: Good for Pastor Willie Rice, the president of the Southern Baptist Convention.
Fred Jackson: Do they still elect Southern Baptist Convention presidents annually, or are they elected to a two-year term?
Tim Wildmon: They can run more than two years.
Fred Jackson: What I mean is, when you're elected, is that for two years?
Tim Wildmon: I believe so.
Fred Jackson: That's what I thought.
Tim Wildmon: That's what I thought.
Fred Jackson: For the Southern Baptist denomination.
Tim Wildmon: The next story, Fred.
Fred Jackson: Speaking of visiting pulpits, the Right Reverend AOC spoke at All Saints Catholic Church in Brooklyn on Sunday, and she shared...
Tim Wildmon: AOC, what's her proper name?
Fred Jackson: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Some people say she'd like to be the next president of the United States.
Tim Wildmon: Oh boy.
Fred Jackson: For many reasons, one is that I don't want to hear her voice giving addresses and making speeches.
Tim Wildmon: I'm sorry, but for 33 seconds, I'm opposed to a helium-induced voice.
Fred Jackson: You're a voice shaman. That's what you're doing right there.
Tim Wildmon: What is she speaking in a Catholic church about?
Fred Jackson: Let's hear it. Cut 12.
Guest: The power of community organizing and coming together to ensure that when this community stood up to ICE and rallied for the release of Jose and Adrian, we've been able to protect our community and keep us together. They want to demobilize it with cynical narratives from the right that we are divided, to make us turn against our immigrant brothers and sisters, our trans brothers and sisters, and our neighbors and siblings, and divide us along every line imaginable.
Fred Jackson: There you go.
Tim Wildmon: How many times did she say “community”? Did you hear that?
Fred Jackson: Is she running for president?
Tim Wildmon: Community is a code word for socialist.
Fred Jackson: Is it?
Tim Wildmon: Oh, yeah. You hear it from Mamdani, the mayor of New York. “Community, community.” El-Sayed in Michigan, “community, community.”
Fred Jackson: So you're saying it's like a synonym for “comrade,” like in the Soviet Union? “Hey, comrade, community,” as opposed to the oppressors?
Tim Wildmon: Yes.
Fred Jackson: The oligarchs.
Tim Wildmon: Just watch for that. I'm going to listen for that code word.
Tim Wildmon: At some time in the very near future, I would like you to bring in a clip of AOC and have it undergo some changes so that we really get the full helium effect. We'll talk to our producer Fred about that and see what we can do. I want to hear the full helium effect of a speech from AOC.
Ed Vitagliano: I don't think you really do.
Tim Wildmon: No, no. Go ahead. Next story, Fred.
Fred Jackson: We've only got a few minutes left. We've moved our bombers. The United States moved our bombers out of that base in the United Kingdom. Remember the story last week about the terrorist threat? One of the guys arrested has dual citizenship, both United Kingdom and Iranian.
Fred Jackson: We based some of our fighters, like the B-1s and B-2s, at this United Kingdom base, flying missions out of there. Apparently, over the weekend, we brought those bombers home just to keep them safe here at the home base. Our military people say we can launch missions from here just as well and refuel in the air. It's a little less convenient, but these are very expensive bombers.
Tim Wildmon: You don't want any of them to be crippled or destroyed by a terrorist attack.
Fred Jackson: It's also basically saying to the United Kingdom, “We cannot trust you to keep these big bombers safe from these guys.”
Tim Wildmon: I think these guys were testing what the United Kingdom would do.
Fred Jackson: The United Kingdom let them out on bail.
Tim Wildmon: Are you serious?
Fred Jackson: The ones who were arrested in the two vans heading toward this base appeared in court, and they let them out on bail.
Tim Wildmon: Oh my goodness.
Fred Jackson: From what I read, and correct me if I'm wrong, the reason they were caught was because a farmer or a farmer's wife saw them and reported them.
Tim Wildmon: You're right. Who knows what would have happened had she not been looking up at the right time?
Fred Jackson: The spotlight just happened to be there.
Tim Wildmon: You happened to be looking up.
Fred Jackson: Yeah.
Tim Wildmon: All right, we're out of time for this hour. Tim, Ed, and Fred are here, and we do have 25 more minutes coming after the break.
Ed Vitagliano: It's going to be good, Tim.
Tim Wildmon: That's right.
Fred Jackson: Steve Paisley has four clips of AOC for you. He's probably scrambling to try to find something right now.
Tim Wildmon: I'm plugging my ears.
Fred Jackson: We'll return after the news with more of Today's Issues on the American Family Radio Network.
Tim Wildmon: Hey, good morning, everybody, and welcome to Today's Issues on the American Family Radio Network for this Monday, October 5, 2026. Thank you for listening to AFR and joining me. In studio is Ed Vitagliano. Good morning, Ed.
Ed Vitagliano: Good morning, Tim.
Tim Wildmon: And Fred Jackson.
Fred Jackson: Good day there.
Tim Wildmon: That's it, people. Just three of us, huh?
Ed Vitagliano: Well, when you're talking about three intellects like ours, really, do you need more?
Tim Wildmon: No, I don't think you need more.
Fred Jackson: I think more, for better or for worse.
Tim Wildmon: Kind of like marriage right here. On this show, you're going to just kind of take us or leave us.
Ed Vitagliano: And don't leave us. Please don't leave us.
Fred Jackson: Yeah, please don't leave us.
Tim Wildmon: All right, a lot coming this week. We've got Shareathon coming up, don't we?
Ed Vitagliano: We absolutely do. We have our fall Shareathon starting tomorrow morning at 6 a.m. Central time.
Tim Wildmon: We start our three-day Shareathon. We take three days in the spring and three days in the fall to dedicate our radio time to raising money.
Fred Jackson: As you say, Tim, passing the virtual offering plate or passing the hat.
Ed Vitagliano: And so that starts tomorrow. The theme of our 2026 fall Shareathon is “Stand Firm.” If we ever needed a time as Christians to stand firm in America, it is now. We have that verse. When I say we have that verse, our leadership here for the radio network, led by Jonathan Coker, takes time to pray in the lead-up to a Shareathon and seek God's direction. They felt that the Lord was leading them to 1 Corinthians 16:13-14, where the apostle Paul says, “Be on your guard. Stand firm in the faith. Be courageous. Be strong. Do everything in love.”
Tim Wildmon: I think that's a great foundation for our Shareathon this fall. It's a very important time in our country's history. I know we've said that a lot over the last 20, 25, 26 years, but it is true. There is a lot of motion under the waters, so to speak, a lot of currents and a lot of movements, and a lot of things going on spiritually. Christians need to be salt and light. We need to stand firm in the faith. We've got a big election coming up here on November 3rd, but more than that, our culture is in trouble, and we want God to move so that people come back to Jesus Christ.
Ed Vitagliano: So, Shareathon starts tomorrow.
Tim Wildmon: And I always look forward to our time of Shareathon. We met one individual who's already here, who's volunteered.
Ed Vitagliano: From Montana.
Tim Wildmon: Wayne, from Montana. He's going to be helping out. He came a day early just to say hello to everybody, so we're looking forward to it.
Ed Vitagliano: Absolutely. It's a very important time because it takes a lot of money to run this ministry, this operation, this radio network. You can only imagine what it costs with 165 stations, or whatever it is we have right now. Our folks have always responded, and I'm sure they will these next three days during our “Stand Firm” American Family Radio Shareathon.
Tim Wildmon: As I mentioned many times before, we only do Shareathons in the spring and the fall, three days each. There are some other organizations and ministries where all they do is raise money, seemingly around the clock, always asking. We don't do that here.
Ed Vitagliano: As my dad used to say, and as you quoted him, my dad used to say, “We treat people like adults.”
Tim Wildmon: So we don't beg, plead, and borrow.
Ed Vitagliano: I guess we beg a little bit.
Tim Wildmon: We do give people opportunities to give throughout the year, but in terms of our radio network, we dedicate just three days in the spring and three days in the fall. Folks will hear a lot about what we're doing. They'll hear listener testimonies. We'll talk about what the ministry is doing, why this ministry is important, and why people give and listen. We're going to try to convince folks who have not given in the past that this is an honorable, God-honoring place to give your money, and we believe that we're doing God's will in making a difference.
Ed Vitagliano: Amen.
Tim Wildmon: That's the American Family Radio Shareathon coming up tomorrow, Wednesday, and Thursday. We're going to have a lot of fun, a lot of on-air fellowship, and also raise our financial needs.
Tim Wildmon: All right, Fred. You've always got good news on a Monday morning, don't you?
Fred Jackson: Well, we've already got this morning's news, Tim. It's sad to report breaking news out of Winter Haven, Florida, in Central Florida. A multivehicle crash, including a school bus, has claimed the lives of two people this morning. The story is on AFN.net. Basically, this is what happened: The bus had been traveling along Winter Haven Road around 6 o'clock this morning when an oncoming car crossed the center line and crashed into the side of the bus near the rear wheels. The impact ripped the tire off the bus and caused it to turn over, to roll over. One person in the Jeep died, and one of the students aboard the bus passed away.
Fred Jackson: Every parent's nightmare, especially when you've got kids being picked up at 6 o'clock in the morning. In a lot of places this time of year, it's dark in the morning. It's a very tragic accident, and they're investigating, of course, as to why all of this happened. Be praying for those folks in Winter Haven, Florida. It's the start of another school week down there, and this is what parents are concerned about.
Fred Jackson: It's a wonder you don't read about more school bus crashes than we do, considering how many there are across America in the mornings.
Tim Wildmon: Let me ask you this question. I don't know the answer, and maybe this is still the case today. Do you only have the bus driver as the only adult on the school bus, or do they have chaperones today?
Fred Jackson: I think most just have drivers.
Tim Wildmon: I think it's just drivers, but my kids are grown. They have kids of their own, and they shuttle their kids to school.
Ed Vitagliano: In their own car?
Fred Jackson: In their own car.
Tim Wildmon: So I'm so far removed from bus driving. I rode the bus to school, even through high school. We had two cars, but both my parents used those, so I didn't have a vehicle. I rode the bus. Most of my friends all rode the bus, even in high school. I think young people would be horrified to do that today.
Ed Vitagliano: Horrified to do what?
Tim Wildmon: To ride the school bus as a high schooler.
Ed Vitagliano: Oh, yeah.
Tim Wildmon: What I was thinking about was having one person in charge of discipline on the bus. That's the driver, which always seemed to me to be dangerous in and of itself. Can I tell you a bus story from when I rode the bus?
Ed Vitagliano: Please do.
Fred Jackson: When I was in the sixth grade, school went from kindergarten to sixth grade, then you went to junior high school. I was one of the older kids on the bus. The bus driver, who liked me and who can blame him, said, “Hey, I want you to help keep order on the bus and be a bus monitor,” like a hockey enforcer and a bus monitor.
Tim Wildmon: You were deputized?
Fred Jackson: I was deputized, and let me tell you, it went straight to my head. I ran a taut ship. I wouldn't let kids get up and run around and then sit down. It went straight to my head. I was a dictator, a tyrant on the bus. I was older, and those kids feared me. After about two weeks of that, the bus driver said, “Hey, we're just going to go back to being a regular kid on the bus.”
Ed Vitagliano: Well, that was the fallen nature of Adam taking complete control.
Fred Jackson: I had zero control at my house when I was being raised, so I transferred that over.
Tim Wildmon: We're very sorry to hear about this bus accident in Florida.
Fred Jackson: Next story.
Tim Wildmon: We've got, what is it, four weeks from tomorrow until Election Day, I believe?
Ed Vitagliano: If you do the calculation.
Fred Jackson: It's the third.
Tim Wildmon: Yeah.
Ed Vitagliano: Nobody knows.
Tim Wildmon: Oh my, the trouble we've seen, or will see. Nobody knows our sorrow.
Ed Vitagliano: Hopefully we won't be singing spirituals. By “we,” I mean conservatives. Conservatives on that day. The polls are not looking good for a lot of conservatives across the country right now. A lot of the races are within the margin of error, as they say. I remember there was supposed to be a red wave four years ago. The conservatives and Republicans were supposed to sweep all over the place, and that didn't materialize. It was basically a status quo type of thing. It wasn't a disaster for the Republicans, but it wasn't a big gain like they had anticipated.
Ed Vitagliano: The same is true now. A lot of people are saying, “Hey, this is the year of the Democrat. They're going to win big across the country.” Maybe so, but that remains to be seen coming up in November.
Tim Wildmon: What did you say?
Ed Vitagliano: The third.
Tim Wildmon: No, Tuesday, November 3rd.
Fred Jackson: It is four weeks from tomorrow.
Tim Wildmon: So President Trump, as he announced last week, is on the road a lot, 32 days of campaigning out on the road. He's in Nebraska today, and he'll be helping out the Republican senator there, Ricketts. But there may be a little trouble in Nebraska because there are a lot of cattle farmers there, and apparently a lot of them are upset. Remember, a few weeks ago, President Trump, in order to bring the price of food down, said he was removing the tariffs on beef imports coming from places like Brazil and a couple of other countries.
Tim Wildmon: The cattlemen up there are a little upset. I'm not sure if there are going to be any protests there today. But the senator was basically telling the Associated Press, “Yeah, I'm with the farmers on this. We need to do something about cheap beef coming in from other countries, affecting the cattlemen who depend on beef for a living.”
Ed Vitagliano: President Trump is doing the right thing going state to state. I know that 32 states is a pretty tough schedule over the next month. Is that between now and Election Day? You see an asset, though?
Tim Wildmon: Well, all I'm saying is he's got to try to get Republicans excited and try to get a message across to independents. I guess it probably waits to be seen whether he's going to wind up helping or hurting, because the president is controversial simply because the economy is doing so poorly.
Ed Vitagliano: I say that there are very positive economic signs, but the two that matter the most to people, at least in terms of voters and voting, are grocery prices and gas prices. That's going to be the issue for a lot of people.
Ed Vitagliano: I think this is an example, going back to Nebraska, where states matter and states are individual political entities. A policy you put in place that might help meet prices in Michigan, Minnesota, or Florida is going to anger cattle farmers in Nebraska. That's a political reality that national leaders have to take into account.
Ed Vitagliano: The other thing for the Republicans, and the polling has been fairly consistent on this, is that when the president won the last election, he had big support from Hispanics all over the country. The polls are showing that support has diminished. Avita Duffy Alfonso of The Federalist was talking about that with Fox this morning.
Guest: These numbers are very distressing for Republicans. Republicans did better with Hispanics in 2024 than at any other time in living memory. President Trump crushed it with them. He didn't win Hispanics by running on things like “Latinx.” That doesn't move Hispanics at all. He ran on the economy. He ran on right-wing populism.
Guest: Democrats right now are doing the exact same thing. Candidates like El-Sayed and James Talarico are running sort of Zohran Mamdani, left-wing populist-style campaigns. They're not running on identity politics like they used to. They're running on class politics, and it's very effective.
Guest: The number one thing going on right now is gas prices. We have high energy costs, and the best thing, the solution for Republicans, is to wrap up the war and get those gas prices down.
Fred Jackson: There have also been some complaints among Hispanics. They don't like what they've termed the aggressive nature of Trump's crackdown on illegal immigrants. They've seen some stories where family members are being deported to third countries, not going back to the original country. That's also been a factor among Hispanics.
Ed Vitagliano: The economy is just going to be the driver of this. I mentioned to my wife over the weekend, we were on our way to church, that I had gone to get gas on Friday. We passed the gas station, and I said, “Oh, look at the price of gas.” I said, “I got gas for $3.89 a gallon,” and I was bragging because a lot of places are well over four dollars now. Some of our listeners are in states where it's even higher than that.
Tim Wildmon: It is kind of surprising that you're bragging about paying for gas when it's almost two dollars a gallon more than it was, or at least a dollar more than it was a couple of years ago. That's going to drive, I'm afraid, the turnout. It's going to drive the election, as it frequently does. This is not a winning issue for Republicans.
Tim Wildmon: Do you think the Democrats are making the appeal that they're going to bring those prices down if you elect them? Is that what they're saying?
Ed Vitagliano: Yes.
Tim Wildmon: Do they say how?
Ed Vitagliano: Of course not.
Tim Wildmon: I just wonder. I'm being serious. Do they say how, or do you just, I guess, if the other side is flailing, or something's going bad, and whatever team you're on, you take advantage of it? I remember those stickers on gas pumps with Biden saying, “I did that.”
Ed Vitagliano: Yes.
Tim Wildmon: Do you remember that?
Fred Jackson: Yeah.
Tim Wildmon: They were everywhere, and that's when gas prices were a lot lower than they are now, right?
Ed Vitagliano: They were.
Tim Wildmon: You're talking about during Biden's four years?
Ed Vitagliano: Biden got blamed for the gas prices.
Tim Wildmon: Yes.
Ed Vitagliano: There are two separate reasons in my mind why gas prices are different under Trump and Biden, as far as being elevated beyond the point where people notice them. Biden's was his crackdown on fossil fuels. Remember that?
Tim Wildmon: Shutting down the XL pipeline.
Ed Vitagliano: The pipeline.
Tim Wildmon: And then the general, what Dr. Stember used to call the environmental wacko movement.
Ed Vitagliano: Coming down on it.
Tim Wildmon: War against coal.
Ed Vitagliano: Yeah, we're continuing Obama's war against coal.
Tim Wildmon: That's the reason gas prices went up under Biden. Now they've gone up under Trump, yes, but they've gone up because of the war and the oil supply being bottlenecked around the world.
Tim Wildmon: To the average person, they may say, “I don't really care what the reason is. In fact, my wallet's hurting because of it.” But I just wonder what people are saying when you're saying gas prices and grocery prices are up and therefore that's hurting Republicans.
Ed Vitagliano: Maybe asking for rationality is beyond my expectation level when we're talking about the American voter. The masses don't really have an ideological bent one way or another. They are more concerned about the economy. They want to blame someone.
Ed Vitagliano: This is how President Trump got elected. We just heard that from the clip we played. President Trump, in part, got elected in 2024 running against the economic decisions of the Biden administration. People were suffering. He said, “I'm going to bring all this down,” and he did. Remember, gas prices came down, and people voted because they blamed Biden.
Ed Vitagliano: Now gas prices are back up. People are going to vote against, quote unquote, Trump, even though he's not on the ballot, but against Republicans for the same reason. They're not looking for detailed economic explanations. They just want to blame somebody.
Tim Wildmon: I got you. I think, don't you?
Fred Jackson: Yeah, I agree with you. I think it's basically visceral. When Zohran Mamdani got elected in New York City, part of his campaign promises included government-run grocery stores. “I'm going to bring prices down. You're going to be able to get groceries cheaper.” He also said, “I am going to control the rent,” which is also pulling much-needed funds out of your pocket. People respond to that, even if deep down inside they think it's unlikely that anyone can pull that off.
Tim Wildmon: All right, Fred. This morning we're talking about the thrust of the Democrat campaign, which is affordability.
Fred Jackson: Right. They're making some points on that. But when you look at the statistics on where the most expensive places to live in this country are, Democrats control those areas. I was looking at some statistics. Hawaii, Massachusetts, and California are the top three states in this country where it's most expensive to live. Three of the bluest states in the country are making it expensive.
Fred Jackson: I looked at California gas prices on Friday. Regular gas was over six dollars, and diesel was over eight dollars.
Tim Wildmon: It must be really nice there. What's the attraction?
Fred Jackson: Steve Hilton, who is running for governor of California as a Republican, says one of his promises is that he'll bring gas down to about three dollars a gallon. That's a big push. But most of the gas prices in these areas are not being driven by Donald Trump. They're being driven by all the extra taxes because they are socialist states, regardless of what Democrats say.
Fred Jackson: If you're going to vote against Republicans because of the affordability issue that Democrats are preaching, then you're living in these expensive states that are run by Democrats. I don't know what to say about that.
Tim Wildmon: You don't put that together?
Ed Vitagliano: When are you going to quit using logic?
Fred Jackson: I'm sorry. I'm old, cranky Fred.
Ed Vitagliano: No, you're right. That is a very good point. The most expensive places to live today are blue states. But, as Fred said earlier, a lot of times people don't make that connection.
Tim Wildmon: There are a lot of people who are upset with the war. They may not be upset with why we did what we did, which was to prevent what President Trump said about Iran getting a nuclear weapon. But it's the fact that the war has lasted and is going on, and we don't see any conclusion to it, at least right now. Don't you think some voters are frustrated by that?
Ed Vitagliano: Even apart from the economy, you mean? I think that's true. President Trump did run on “no forever wars.” The American people were fed up with the idea of a war like Iraq and Afghanistan that goes on for 20 years.
Tim Wildmon: But we're not occupying Iran.
Ed Vitagliano: I know, but that's what Trump ran on. He said, “No more wars like that.” I don't think this is going to be a 20-year war against Iran, but it shows no sign of ending. There's no exit. It's been going on now for six months, right?
Tim Wildmon: No exit ramp. How is he going to bring this to an end?
Ed Vitagliano: There are people who say we shouldn't be there. Again, whether that's rational compared to what Trump was trying to accomplish is almost beside the point when people are frustrated.
Tim Wildmon: All right. We are not frustrated.
Ed Vitagliano: No.
Tim Wildmon: We're coming back with more news and analysis after this short timeout. You're listening to Today's Issues on the American Family Radio Network.
Tim Wildmon: Hey, welcome back, everybody, to Today's Issues on the American Family Radio Network. Thanks for listening to AFR. Tim, Ed, and Fred are here.
Tim Wildmon: By the way, this Saturday, for those who enjoy college football, is a clash of the titans.
Fred Jackson: Really?
Tim Wildmon: Yeah, I know you don't keep up with it very much.
Fred Jackson: Who's that?
Tim Wildmon: Georgia plays at Alabama.
Fred Jackson: I probably will watch that.
Tim Wildmon: That'll be a big game.
Ed Vitagliano: I'm just happy for those schools because they rarely win. It's good to see some underachievers have their shot at the national headlines. It's really good to see the underdog. We always enjoy a good underdog story.
Tim Wildmon: How do you pull for Georgia versus Alabama? We have listeners in both states. I'm for you fellers. Anyway, that is a big game.
Fred Jackson: We didn't want to talk about last weekend.
Tim Wildmon: You didn't want to talk about last weekend?
Fred Jackson: No, I didn't. I put that in the past.
Ed Vitagliano: That's yesterday. That's news.
Tim Wildmon: Are you telling me that?
Ed Vitagliano: Of course. I'm a Mississippi State guy. That's my school. I graduated from it, and I didn't have a choice. I was born this way. My dad raised me this way. He didn't say, “Hey, do you want to be an Alabama fan or a Georgia fan?” No, he said, “You know what, son? You're going to learn humility, and guess what? It's going to last 50 years.”
Ed Vitagliano: Humility has done its work. If you enter this season with realistic expectations, I'm a realist. When Mississippi State went 4-0 to start off the season, we took that like the rest of us take an unexpected spring day. You say, “This is wonderful. We'll take it for as long as it lasts.”
Tim Wildmon: That's right. We know it won't last forever.
Ed Vitagliano: When you cheer for a school that doesn't win all the time, you take every victory. You savor it. You let it last for a week. Alabama's rolling in, but you're not going to pay attention to that. You're just going to focus on the W you got the week before.
Fred Jackson: Mississippi State is a baseball school, so they'll be nationally ranked every year in baseball. At least we have one sport we can count on.
Tim Wildmon: It is so. We are about a third of the way through the college football season. Your team is doing pretty well?
Fred Jackson: Yes, they're still undefeated in the nation.
Tim Wildmon: They have a pretty easy schedule.
Fred Jackson: Yeah, so they're headed to the playoffs.
Tim Wildmon: Now we have the playoffs, so we'll see what happens there.
Tim Wildmon: Speaking of sports, do you all remember when Nike went woke?
Fred Jackson: Oh, yeah.
Tim Wildmon: Nike went woke. That kind of started with Colin Kaepernick, right? The quarterback who was kneeling in the NFL during the national anthem to protest injustices in America and our history and all these things after George Floyd.
Ed Vitagliano: Is that when it was?
Tim Wildmon: I think that's when he started doing that.
Fred Jackson: I thought it was before.
Tim Wildmon: Anyway, Nike decided to make him a hero in their mind. They signed a contract with Colin Kaepernick and said, “Hey, this guy's great. He speaks for us,” even though, in my view, his message was blatantly anti-American. There are injustices in America's past, yes, but the way he framed it, Colin Kaepernick was part of the “we live on stolen land” crowd. There's nothing you could do to rectify anything. We're just a terrible country and terrible people. Nike said, “Sign us up for that message.”
Tim Wildmon: Nike also embraced transgenderism, including boys playing girls' sports. That's just stupid for an athletic footwear and apparel company to get into.
Fred Jackson: Nike got into a bunch of left-wing causes.
Tim Wildmon: Right. Well, guess what? Their stock has been on a nosedive for how many years?
Fred Jackson: It hit a 12-year low. Think about that. Nike is a titan, and they still are a very large company, but they have lost a lot of customers since they decided to go woke and go broke.
Tim Wildmon: Our family buys a lot of athletic gear because our kids and now our grandkids play youth sports. You can avoid Nike. You can buy Under Armour or Adidas. There are all kinds of companies you can choose from. You don't have to go with Nike, and a lot of people decided to go other places. There may be other reasons why their company has taken a big nosedive, but I can't explain it outside of their decision to go woke and go broke.
Ed Vitagliano: One of the things I'm looking at in a story right now is that the CEO of Nike, Elliott Hill, sent a memo to employees. It wasn't because they're expecting layoffs in 2027, because the company is not where it used to be. It's an 860-word memo, but here's the 33-word statement that stuck out. He says, “Over the past year, we've put sport at the center of everything we do. We're seeing encouraging signs of progress, but we have more work to do to win over the long term.”
Ed Vitagliano: Some analysts are saying that is evidence of the fact that Elliott Hill, the Nike CEO, is saying, “We're going back to putting sports at the center.” Nike had embraced woke social justice causes. They partnered with Dylan Mulvaney.
Tim Wildmon: That's Bud Light. That's the transgender person from Bud Light.
Ed Vitagliano: Right. It sounds like he's saying, “We're going back to putting sports at the center of what we do.” Maybe the company is going to move away from being woke. But sometimes you take a hit like that, and it takes a long time to earn your way back into the good graces of people who used to be fans.
Tim Wildmon: You're listening to Today's Issues on American Family Radio.
Ed Vitagliano: It also proves the power of the consumer. Companies would be wise to stay out of highly charged, controversial issues. It seems to me Nike thought it was taking up Colin Kaepernick's cause and that the vast majority of Americans agreed with him. But I think the vast majority of Americans were against kneeling for the national anthem, calling our country systemically racist, and promoting transgenderism. Those are fringe political-left issues that Nike tried to champion, and now it has cost them big time.
Ed Vitagliano: In the immediate aftermath of the George Floyd incident in Minnesota, I think most Americans were ambivalent about the social justice movements and the things they were promoting. But in the years since then, probably over the last four years, Americans have gotten sick and tired of it. I think a corner has been turned. People are becoming more hostile to companies that ram these things down their throats, and they are voting with their wallets.
Ed Vitagliano: Companies like Nike thought this was the wave of the future and that they were going to write it, but that wave dissipated pretty quickly after a couple of years.
Tim Wildmon: All right, you're listening to Today's Issues. Fred, what's the next story?
Fred Jackson: Election Day is four weeks from tomorrow. An often-discussed factor in elections, especially midterms, is voter turnout. We've seen in the polls through the years that even among evangelicals, voter turnout is often very low.
Fred Jackson: Over the last couple of days, the president of the Southern Baptist Convention, which has 12 million members, went public with his appeal to Southern Baptist pastors. His name is Willie Rice, and he's also the pastor of Calvary Church in Clearwater, Florida. He said pastors must step up on abortion, marriage, gender identity, and immigration, arguing that these political issues are deeply theological. Here's what he had to say.
Guest: Over the last several years, many Bible-believing, conservative evangelicals were being encouraged to be more quiet and to withdraw from the political process. Some of those voices came externally from pressure saying, “You shouldn't mix religion and politics.” But some of those voices came internally from those who said that, in order to be faithful in our mission, we needed to decouple, to divorce ourselves, as it were, from some controversial political issues.
Tim Wildmon: What do you think about that, Fred?
Fred Jackson: Who was that gentleman again?
Tim Wildmon: He is the president of the Southern Baptist Convention. He was elected as president last year at their convention.
Fred Jackson: What's his name?
Tim Wildmon: His name is Willie Rice. He's the pastor of Calvary Church in Clearwater, Florida.
Fred Jackson: Southern Baptist, 12 million people in total.
Tim Wildmon: That was his message as president.
Fred Jackson: What's really interesting is that he was right that many evangelicals seem to back away and say, “We don't want politics in our church.” I'm paraphrasing there. But what's really interesting is that churches that support the left agenda and socialism, and that are okay with abortion, don't mind having politicians and candidates come in.
Fred Jackson: The left criticizes the right when conservative churches start talking politics, but the left has been involved in intermingling churches and politics. We all know that.
Tim Wildmon: I can appreciate a pastor not wanting to embrace a political party from the platform, per se, because political parties are secular institutions. They change depending on who's in charge, and sometimes they make mistakes. However, pastors should stand firm on the moral teachings of the Bible, and the moral teachings of the Bible impact popular culture and politics.
Tim Wildmon: There is a difference between what Republicans and Democrats stand for in their platforms and their beliefs. I'm not saying Republicans are always lined up with the Bible, but if you look at the stances of the parties over the last 30 or 40 years, Republicans have been friendly to causes that Christians believe in and support, while Democrats, generally speaking, have been hostile.
Tim Wildmon: Regardless of whether you want to talk about a party, you can still talk about things like religious freedom, life, and marriage. You can talk about founding principles, and people can figure out on their own who to support based on what they've been taught in church.
Fred Jackson: Does that make sense?
Ed Vitagliano: It does. Let me make a few comments here. This first thing I'm going to say is just my opinion, and there may be pastors and church leaders who disagree. When I was pastoring for many years, my thought was, “I am not going to turn over my pulpit to a politician,” even if I agreed with that politician's general stand on moral issues.
Ed Vitagliano: In my mind, the pulpit was for preaching the gospel and teaching God's truth. I did not want to combine that pulpit with a politician who might go off the rails in years to come.
Ed Vitagliano: However, the pulpit is exactly the place for pastors to preach and teach exactly what the Scriptures say. Politics is part of culture. Culture, sociologically and biblically speaking, encompasses a people's religion, education, morality, and politics. All those things are under the umbrella of culture.
Ed Vitagliano: Where does that culture come from? It comes from the worldview, values, and beliefs of the people who live there. The gospel impacts those people, and the truth of God changes the way people think. Therefore, it is going to have a downstream effect on politics.
Ed Vitagliano: The last thing I'll say, and this is also my opinion, not necessarily the opinion of AFA, is that I think many, not all, pastors who say, “No, we don't want to get involved in politics,” are showing their cowardice. If there were a movement in this country to reinstitute slavery, every one of those pastors would speak out against that law and that movement because everyone would agree with it.
Ed Vitagliano: When they don't want to talk about politics is usually when it's something controversial. That's why I say I think it is more a reflection of cowardice. They would have no problem speaking against things that are truly horrific when everyone is on board.
Tim Wildmon: Does that make sense?
Fred Jackson: Yeah. Another consideration for a pastor who doesn't want to touch politics at all would be, “Am I going to get criticized by the left-wing media? Am I going to have protests outside my church?” I think that's often a consideration when they decide whether they want to say anything.
Tim Wildmon: If you're a minister or pastor and you think I'm wrong, and you're saying, “No, I have theological reasons for not speaking about politics from my pulpit,” then answer this question: If there were a movement to reinstitute slavery, would you speak out against it?
Fred Jackson: Surely they would.
Tim Wildmon: Of course you would. If you would, then you would get involved in politics. The question becomes whether it is simply because of the issue that you don't want to get involved, and not because of a theological issue.
Fred Jackson: That's it.
Tim Wildmon: Good for Pastor Willie Rice, the president of the Southern Baptist Convention.
Fred Jackson: Do they still elect Southern Baptist Convention presidents annually, or are they elected to a two-year term?
Tim Wildmon: They can run more than two years.
Fred Jackson: What I mean is, when you're elected, is that for two years?
Tim Wildmon: I believe so.
Fred Jackson: That's what I thought.
Tim Wildmon: That's what I thought.
Fred Jackson: For the Southern Baptist denomination.
Tim Wildmon: The next story, Fred.
Fred Jackson: Speaking of visiting pulpits, the Right Reverend AOC spoke at All Saints Catholic Church in Brooklyn on Sunday, and she shared...
Tim Wildmon: AOC, what's her proper name?
Fred Jackson: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Some people say she'd like to be the next president of the United States.
Tim Wildmon: Oh boy.
Fred Jackson: For many reasons, one is that I don't want to hear her voice giving addresses and making speeches.
Tim Wildmon: I'm sorry, but for 33 seconds, I'm opposed to a helium-induced voice.
Fred Jackson: You're a voice shaman. That's what you're doing right there.
Tim Wildmon: What is she speaking in a Catholic church about?
Fred Jackson: Let's hear it. Cut 12.
Guest: The power of community organizing and coming together to ensure that when this community stood up to ICE and rallied for the release of Jose and Adrian, we've been able to protect our community and keep us together. They want to demobilize it with cynical narratives from the right that we are divided, to make us turn against our immigrant brothers and sisters, our trans brothers and sisters, and our neighbors and siblings, and divide us along every line imaginable.
Fred Jackson: There you go.
Tim Wildmon: How many times did she say “community”? Did you hear that?
Fred Jackson: Is she running for president?
Tim Wildmon: Community is a code word for socialist.
Fred Jackson: Is it?
Tim Wildmon: Oh, yeah. You hear it from Mamdani, the mayor of New York. “Community, community.” El-Sayed in Michigan, “community, community.”
Fred Jackson: So you're saying it's like a synonym for “comrade,” like in the Soviet Union? “Hey, comrade, community,” as opposed to the oppressors?
Tim Wildmon: Yes.
Fred Jackson: The oligarchs.
Tim Wildmon: Just watch for that. I'm going to listen for that code word.
Tim Wildmon: At some time in the very near future, I would like you to bring in a clip of AOC and have it undergo some changes so that we really get the full helium effect. We'll talk to our producer Fred about that and see what we can do. I want to hear the full helium effect of a speech from AOC.
Ed Vitagliano: I don't think you really do.
Tim Wildmon: No, no. Go ahead. Next story, Fred.
Fred Jackson: We've only got a few minutes left. We've moved our bombers. The United States moved our bombers out of that base in the United Kingdom. Remember the story last week about the terrorist threat? One of the guys arrested has dual citizenship, both United Kingdom and Iranian.
Fred Jackson: We based some of our fighters, like the B-1s and B-2s, at this United Kingdom base, flying missions out of there. Apparently, over the weekend, we brought those bombers home just to keep them safe here at the home base. Our military people say we can launch missions from here just as well and refuel in the air. It's a little less convenient, but these are very expensive bombers.
Tim Wildmon: You don't want any of them to be crippled or destroyed by a terrorist attack.
Fred Jackson: It's also basically saying to the United Kingdom, “We cannot trust you to keep these big bombers safe from these guys.”
Tim Wildmon: I think these guys were testing what the United Kingdom would do.
Fred Jackson: The United Kingdom let them out on bail.
Tim Wildmon: Are you serious?
Fred Jackson: The ones who were arrested in the two vans heading toward this base appeared in court, and they let them out on bail.
Tim Wildmon: Oh my goodness.
Fred Jackson: From what I read, and correct me if I'm wrong, the reason they were caught was because a farmer or a farmer's wife saw them and reported them.
Tim Wildmon: You're right. Who knows what would have happened had she not been looking up at the right time?
Fred Jackson: The spotlight just happened to be there.
Tim Wildmon: You happened to be looking up.
Fred Jackson: Yeah.
Tim Wildmon: All right, we're out of time for this hour. Tim, Ed, and Fred are here, and we do have 25 more minutes coming after the break.
Ed Vitagliano: It's going to be good, Tim.
Tim Wildmon: That's right.
Fred Jackson: Steve Paisley has four clips of AOC for you. He's probably scrambling to try to find something right now.
Tim Wildmon: I'm plugging my ears.
Fred Jackson: We'll return after the news with more of Today's Issues on the American Family Radio Network.
Tim Wildmon, Ed Vitagliano, and Fred Jackson discuss how gas and grocery prices could affect the 2026 election, along with President Donald Trump’s campaign schedule, Nebraska cattle farmers’ concerns about beef imports, and changing Hispanic support for Republicans. They also consider how the ongoing war may be affecting voters and the political outlook. The program reports on a fatal school bus crash in Winter Haven, Florida, and examines Nike’s declining stock and CEO Elliott Hill’s stated effort to put sports back at the center of the company. The hosts discuss whether consumer backlash against corporate activism has influenced Nike’s direction. Southern Baptist Convention President Willie Rice urges pastors to address abortion, marriage, gender identity, and immigration as theological issues with political implications. The hosts consider the responsibility of Christian leaders to teach biblical truth while avoiding partisan endorsements.
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