Tim Wildmon: I hadn't intended to eat before lunch, but somebody brought some of those Chick-fil-A chicken nuggets and little biscuits.

Ed: They were good. Those Chick-fil-A chicken and biscuits are outstanding.

Tim Wildmon: How did you get the need to test them out?

Ed: It was kind of a ministry thing, so you were just participating.

Tim Wildmon: You weren't there for the event, but you know. Am I smacking? Hold on.

Ed: You're smacking. It's hard not to smack when you're eating a little chicken biscuit.

Tim Wildmon: We're talking about these little mini ones.

Ed: Yeah, the little mini one.

Tim Wildmon: You put the whole thing in your mouth.

Ed: Yeah, you just pop it in there.

Tim Wildmon: It's hard not to smack.

Ed: It would be insulting if you didn't.

Tim Wildmon: Then you end up talking smack, you know?

Ed: That's right.

Tim Wildmon: If you're not careful, you end up getting smacked. I went down that road far too often growing up. You talk a little smack, you get smacked. You can smack your food, get smacked, and talk smack.

Tim Wildmon: Do you remember NCIS? I still watch it some. Gibbs, played by Mark Harmon, was the eternal boat builder, and DiNozzo was one of the guys, a smart aleck. Gibbs would smack DiNozzo in the back of the head. That was my life growing up as a wise guy.

Wesley: J.J. Jasper said the other day, "Man, we watch NCIS sometimes, and I had no idea so many sailors and Marines died one a week in D.C."

Tim Wildmon: Well, you risk your life during the military.

Tim Wildmon: Welcome back, everybody, to Today's Issues on the American Family Radio Network. I'm Tim with Ed and Wesley, and Chris Woodward joins us. Good morning, Chris.

Chris Woodward: Thank you very much. Talking about NCIS, I was just in D.C., at both Dulles and Reagan Airport. You can actually buy NCIS merchandise at the airport gift shops.

Tim Wildmon: They have NCIS merchandise?

Chris Woodward: Yeah, it was a popular show. They have spin-offs, too.

Tim Wildmon: I think they're still going on, but I don't think Mark Harmon is on there anymore.

Chris Woodward: They had a prequel as well, where one of the characters was a younger man. It was set decades ago.

Tim Wildmon: How do you do that with the character?

Chris Woodward: You basically give the character a backstory, and it is set in the past.

Tim Wildmon: With a different actor or something like that?

Chris Woodward: Right.

Tim Wildmon: Wesley Wildmon is here. Good morning, Wesley.

Wesley: Good morning.

Tim Wildmon: We didn't allow you an opportunity to give your opinion on Ukraine and Russia.

Wesley: It was a little late because after y'all finished, there wasn't much more to say.

Tim Wildmon: I'm just kidding.

Wesley: I tried to keep it brief.

Tim Wildmon: You all didn't do that.

Wesley: In all seriousness, I do empathize with Dad's opinion on Trump's involvement at this point and what he's saying. Ultimately, it seems to be picking sides.

Tim Wildmon: That's not just seemingly picking sides. I mentioned right as we were going off the air, if America wants to negotiate with other countries to get minerals or whatever to benefit our country, so be it. But when it comes to picking sides in a foreign war, I'm not for that, much less the involvement.

Ed: I'm sure President Trump would argue, "I'm not picking sides. I'm trying to bring oil prices down in the U.S. and around the world to help our economy." That's probably what he would say. But the fact that he says they need a new spokesperson for it, come out against Zelensky, and he doesn't say that about Putin.

Tim Wildmon: If he said both sides need to do a better job of negotiating, or Putin needs to negotiate, I could understand. But he just seems like he doesn't like Zelensky as much as he does Putin for some reason, and I don't know exactly why that is.

Tim Wildmon: I do believe that President Trump respects power for power's sake. He respects strong leaders regardless of the moral code or the moral implications. That's my observation. When he says the leader of Communist China is a great leader over and over again, I'm going, "Why do you keep saying this?"

Ed: You expect some of that when they're meeting, in the days leading up to it and during their meeting, in political talk. But the overemphasis is a different thing.

Tim Wildmon: Well, he's said it a number of times.

Ed: I understand that a president, whether it's Trump or anybody else, doesn't want to unnecessarily get into a verbal insulting of leaders around the world.

Tim Wildmon: That's right.

Ed: Especially somebody like China, since we have so much trade with them.

Tim Wildmon: They don't have to say anything.

Ed: You could just say something neutral.

Tim Wildmon: Trump has said before, and I'm paraphrasing, "It's amazing how he can keep one billion people under control." Do you remember what he said?

Ed: I don't remember that.

Chris Woodward: I can look it up.

Tim Wildmon: I don't think we want to read that one. Talking about the Communist Chinese leader, I'm going, "He keeps them under control with guns and tanks?" He just seems to respect power for power's sake oftentimes. That's my observation.

Chris Woodward: Donald Trump has repeatedly praised President Xi Jinping for his ability to tightly control China's massive population.

Tim Wildmon: What are you reading from?

Chris Woodward: Yahoo.

Tim Wildmon: Hold on a second. I'm looking at Google. You said you're reading from Yahoo?

Chris Woodward: This is the search bar. The findings are from Yahoo.

Tim Wildmon: Oh boy.

Chris Woodward: The Yahoo article was the first thing that appeared. There are other articles as well.

Tim Wildmon: All right, what's your next story?

Chris Woodward: People continue to dunk on the WNBA. During the WNBA Finals, both the Atlanta Dream and the Golden State Valkyries sparked controversy by leaving the court and heading to the locker rooms before the playing of the national anthem. Craig Carton of OutKick, which is part of the Fox family, was on Fox & Friends this morning to respond.

Craig Carton: They're not going to survive. They've never survived. They've been subsidized by the NBA since the beginning of time, and that's going to continue because there's no market for the WNBA.

Craig Carton: They've become the most unlikable group of athletes in this country, and now I think they do it on purpose. They recognize how unlikable they are. Back-to-back nights, when you have more viewers than you might ever have, you walk out on our national anthem and show disrespect to the men and women of our military over the last couple hundred years because you're getting attention by doing it.

Craig Carton: They recognize, and I guess it's smart in a way, that nobody cares about the product on the court. So what can we do to get eyeballs? Be completely unlikable and disassociated from the American public.

Craig Carton: I can't believe that it's almost 2027 and we're still talking about players not wanting to stand for the national anthem in this country. If you want to be critical of the country, that's your thing. You can say what you want because you don't face jail time or death like you might in China. You should stand for the national anthem because that's what makes this country great.

Tim Wildmon: I was going to watch the WNBA Finals because I'm a fan of Caitlin Clark. I like her style of play.

Ed: And Sophie Cunningham?

Tim Wildmon: Yes, Sophie Cunningham, because of her stand on women and keeping women's sports fair. But it's like anything else. If your team drops out, you don't pay as much attention.

Ed: These are the WNBA Finals, and according to their league policy, they're supposed to be on the court when the national anthem is played. They weren't. Both teams were not on the court, and there was no explanation given. They should be fined.

Tim Wildmon: I think the league should fine them, and the league needs to make a statement. You don't have to put your hand over your heart, because that is forcing them to do something they may not want to do.

Ed: I think they need to be shocked.

Tim Wildmon: Shocked?

Ed: Like shocked. Put a little device on them.

Tim Wildmon: Like a Taser?

Ed: Not a Taser. A small one, just on a calf or something.

Tim Wildmon: It's pretty sad that I'm the one who's trying to be serious.

Ed: I think they should be fined heavily. Some people will say, "Well, it's freedom of speech." There's no unrestricted freedom of speech in professional sports. They have all kinds of rules and regulations. You can't curse out the referees. You can't criticize the referees in the postgame press conference, and you can't criticize the league. You can't wear something on your uniform that has not been approved. There are all kinds of rules and regulations.

Ed: The WNBA has the right to say that both teams, the coaches, and everyone will be on the court, standing on the foul line, during the national anthem. They do have that rule. If you don't comply, you will be heavily fined and face suspension. That's the way I think they should handle it.

Ed: However, I'm guessing that the people who run these teams and the league are, number one, moral cowards, and number two, in agreement with these women. They're not going to uphold their own rules and regulations. Rant over.

Wesley: I agree. Basketball, including women's basketball, is a team sport. I would almost say that the first strike should be fines and potential suspension. For strike two, don't even get to strike three. Make it an automatic forfeit.

Ed: Now you're hurting your team.

Wesley: But if both teams do it, that's a forfeit.

Tim Wildmon: Nobody gets to watch.

Ed: Cancel the game.

Tim Wildmon: All right, next story, Chris. Enough of that talk.

Chris Woodward: The grassroots organization known as Defending Education has released a new report called RISE, which stands for Rankings on Integrity and State Education. Terry Stoops is one of the people who put the report together. Terry was on Washington Watch yesterday to explain what they look at and which states were at the top and bottom.

Terry Stoops: A lot of rankings look at things like school choice policies or student performance. What we focused on are state policies regarding gender ideology, diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, parents' rights policies, teacher policies such as unionization, and foreign influence and foreign funding.

Terry Stoops: We looked at those five components, scored those five components, and combined those scores into a ranking. Those rankings formed the first-ever RISE report, which stands for Rankings on Integrity and State Education.

Terry Stoops: In our ranking, Tennessee came out number one, with Alabama a close second. No surprise to probably anyone, Illinois was the worst state in our ranking, with the District of Columbia coming in last.

Terry Stoops: This was the first report of its kind from Defending Education, but they plan to do this on an annual basis to make sure that whoever is at the top is staying at the top and to see whether those at the bottom are doing anything to improve for taxpayers.

Chris Woodward: Illinois has worse public education than the nation, including a lot of the woke ideology being taught in classrooms despite public outcry. If it's woke, it's being taught more in Illinois than in Alabama or Tennessee, where states frown on those things.

Chris Woodward: One of the things Terry mentioned in the rest of the interview, which you can find on TonyPerkins.com, is that a lot of this is driven by unions. In a state like Illinois, unions control everything. Much like somebody might not have the courage to tell the NBA or WNBA what to do, Pritzker is not going to tell a union how to train a teacher or what to do in a classroom because they're afraid of those folks.

Chris Woodward: An Arizona street preacher is suing the city of Tucson. Steve may have talked about this a little bit. We played it yesterday.

Tim Wildmon: Yes, I have audio from the attorney for David Hoffman, who was told that he could not preach the Word of God at the Winterhaven Festival in Tucson.

Ed: I've heard street preachers before. Some of them I appreciate, and some of them make me want to take their bullhorn away.

Tim Wildmon: That's all right.

Ed: It's so annoying, and it's a bad representation of the gospel message.

Chris Woodward: I've experienced that in D.C. and other big cities. Have you never been somewhere with somebody shouting Bible verses and things of that nature?

Ed: Tim, I grew up in an Italian household. Everybody shouted. Shouting does not affect me the same way it affects you.

Tim Wildmon: That was a good one, Ed.

Ed: Free speech is still free speech, whether you agree with it or not.

Tim Wildmon: I don't think you should be allowed to use bullhorns, period. This fellow was not using a bullhorn, according to his attorney. He was being very peaceful.

Chris Woodward: The reason this is so egregious is that we have the exchange between the police officer and the pastor. It was a public festival in Arizona, and a pastor was sharing the gospel message of Christ with people walking up to him.

Tim Wildmon: He was witnessing at an event, at a public event. He wasn't holding anybody on the ground. He didn't corner anybody or force them into a pool to baptize them.

Ed: He was just talking to people. If somebody wanted to talk about the Lord, he would share the gospel with them. If they wanted to walk away, they could walk away.

Tim Wildmon: The policeman came over and told him, "You can't do that."

Ed: He said, "What?"

Chris Woodward: That's what led to the pastor's attorney getting involved. Listen to the exchange between the pastor and the police officer.

Police Officer: You can't be inside here doing the preaching.

Pastor: It's a threat of arrest if I use my voice at a conversational level?

Police Officer: Yes, you could be subject to arrest.

Pastor: Can I ask them if they would like to discuss Jesus tonight?

Police Officer: I would say that's still part of the sermonizing.

Pastor: Is it amplified sound, or is it using your voice?

Police Officer: Your voice counts, too, because it's all part of the solicitation. It's communicating. It's the sending of your message, which is one of the prohibited rules.

Pastor: A young man came up and said, "What would I do if I'm lost?" Is that kind of engagement?

Police Officer: If somebody comes and you want to have this conversation, we'll talk outside the festival.

Ed: I'm sorry. I support the blue. I support our first responders. I support the police. But this cop is ignorant. He's ignorant of the law and the Constitution. I don't think he's malicious. I think he's just wrong, and he does not know. This is wrong, wrong, wrong.

Chris Woodward: AFN had the opportunity yesterday to interview this preacher's attorney, Garrett Bell. He's an attorney with First Liberty Institute out of Texas, and they represent people all over the country.

Chris Woodward: One of the downfalls of having a large national network is that somebody in Alabama might think, "That's unfortunate. I hope he wins, but this doesn't impact me." It does. Here is attorney Garrett Bell explaining why this case matters, even if you live far away from Tucson.

Garrett Bell: A public street festival is just that. It's a public space where citizens can visit, walk around, and converse with each other about different ideas. The government cannot target religious speech.

Garrett Bell: No American should want the government to be able to dictate which messages are acceptable and which ones are out of bounds. That's why you're exactly right in saying that the police officer, with all due respect, is ignorant of the law and of what we're allowed to do as citizens.

Tim Wildmon: If a couple of people were talking about the World Series, or discussing who the greatest quarterback in the NFL is, or who the greatest president is, and trying to convince someone by saying, "No, consider this, consider that," the police officer would have done nothing. He would have said that was allowed.

Ed: The police are not allowed to tell you what kind of speech is allowed in a public forum, as long as you're not violating the law. We're talking about using a bullhorn, disrupting people around you, touching them, holding them, or telling them they can't leave.

Chris Woodward: Where are we in this case? Did they win?

Ed: He just filed it, so it will be playing out for weeks at least. It will probably be settled out of court. Based on my years of helping AFN cover these kinds of things, the lawsuit often leads to a settlement.

Chris Woodward: I think it will be settled pretty quickly because there is no way the city of Tucson can think this is acceptable.

Tim Wildmon: Let me ask you a question. Don't you think that this police officer and all of his training, not just physical training but his understanding of the law, should include knowing the law before he becomes an officer?

Ed: The laws they basically understand are street crime laws, theft laws, breaking-and-entering laws, and chasing-down-a-perp laws. They're not well-versed in constitutional First Amendment law as much as they probably should be.

Tim Wildmon: Quite frankly, this police officer sounded unsure of himself. He paused and hesitated. It was ludicrous to hear a police officer passing judgment every time this pastor presented a scenario. The pastor would say, "What if someone comes up to me?" and the officer would say, "No, I don't think that's going to be allowed either," as if he were a judge.

Ed: Part of the answer to your question may be that the police officer mentioned solicitation. He may have been told that solicitation is prohibited. You can't walk up with flyers trying to persuade people to do something one way or another.

Tim Wildmon: To buy a product, I guess.

Ed: He might have been confused.

Tim Wildmon: If that's the case, I think we may be giving him a little too much credit. He should have known better, but in either case, he's about to learn.

Ed: He is.

Wesley: The officer is about to learn.

Tim Wildmon: He was wrong. He did wrong.

Ed: As you said yesterday, thank the Lord Jesus that we live in a country where that kind of speech is allowed. We're not Canada. We're not the United Kingdom.

Tim Wildmon: We live in a country where that kind of speech is allowed. And folks, let me make another pitch here. We have First Liberty, groups like that, and radio networks where we can talk about this. If you let these far-left candidates and Democratic socialists get into power, they'll shut us down.

Tim Wildmon: You may very well see us lose those kinds of rights. You talk about the Senate and appointing court justices. Put another couple of far-left justices there, and you can see our rights curtailed. I hate to always harp on that, but get out and vote.

Wesley: Your quote, "I grew up in an Italian family, and shouting doesn't affect me the way it affects you," was one of the greatest lines in the history of Today's Issues.

Ed: I just thought of that scene from the disco movie.

Tim Wildmon: What's the disco movie?

Ed: Saturday Night Fever. There's a scene early in the movie, which I haven't seen all of, where somebody hits Travolta's character in the back of the head, and he says, "He's touching my head."

Tim Wildmon: That's the reason. It's an Italian household.

Ed: Wow, that went quick.

Tim Wildmon: Stay in the line.

Ed: I wonder what the Bee Gees would have sounded like if you had pinched them. They're already way up there in their octaves.

Tim Wildmon: The Bee Gees, the Gibb brothers.

Ed: I couldn't imagine going to a concert and hearing somebody sing falsetto for two hours.

Tim Wildmon: I'm just going to tell you, I'm not pinching a guy to find out what he sounds like.

Ed: Me either.

Tim Wildmon: Three of the four of them have passed away, I think.

Ed: I think so.

Tim Wildmon: We're talking about the 1970s. We're getting close to 50 years. The first Star Wars will be 50 years old next year.

Ed: That's correct.

Tim Wildmon: The singers from the 1970s are moving on down. They're dropping like flies.

Ed: I was going to say it a little nicer, but you can't say it.

Tim Wildmon: See you tomorrow, everybody.