Tim Wildmon: Hey, good morning, everybody, and welcome to Today's Issues on the American Family Radio Network. Today is Monday, September 21, 2026. As always, we thank you for listening to the show, and we thank you for listening throughout the day to American Family Radio.
Tim Wildmon: I'm going to introduce the panel here today. We've got a newbie. Well, you've been on a couple of times. Parrish Alford, good morning, brother.
Parrish Alford: Tim, how are you, man?
Tim Wildmon: I'm doing great, and it's good to have you as part of our Today's Issues team.
Parrish Alford: Well, thank you. I see Camera One pointed at me. I'm a little concerned.
Tim Wildmon: Yeah, you're a newspaper man. You're not used to cameras.
Parrish Alford: Yeah. So how is my hair, and does this shirt make me look fat?
Tim Wildmon: Well, your hair's like mine, basically. It's not there on top. At least you've got a little fuzz there, but I think you're going to do fine. I think you're a camera-friendly guy.
Tim Wildmon: Chris Woodbury, good morning, Chris.
Chris Woodbury: Morning. I'm checking my comb-over.
Tim Wildmon: Well, I don't think anybody's going to be watching us for the visuals.
Chris Woodbury: Yeah, okay.
Tim Wildmon: I mean, I do get confused with Brad Pitt a lot.
Chris Woodbury: I don't think I look like Brad Pitt, but people say I do. My 13-year-old has a picture of me that she used to make me into Santa.
Tim Wildmon: Because you've got the white beard going on.
Chris Woodbury: Yeah, it's my side hustle.
Tim Wildmon: Steve, good morning, Steve.
Steve: Hey, everybody. Let me explain to people how this is going to work today on the show. This is the first time that the four of us have been together, and it's going to be for an hour and a half, or whatever it is. I hope we come out of this as sort of the Beatles of radio, that people will always remember us. We don't need to blow it here.
Tim Wildmon: Let me just go down the list of people who called in sick today: Tony Vitagliano, Wesley Wildmon, Ed Vitagliano, Fred Jackson, and Ray Pritchard.
Steve: I'm kidding about called in sick, but they're all out at the same time, thus leaving us four, with very little getting done in your news division.
Tim Wildmon: Did you have Jackson down there?
Steve: Yeah, Fred.
Tim Wildmon: Where is Fred this week?
Steve: He has been burning some PTO, which is paid time off. I don't think that's legal in Mississippi.
Tim Wildmon: He's got a doctor's prescription.
Steve: Every year he goes to The Cove, which I guess is the Billy Graham Center.
Chris Woodbury: Billy Graham Center, yeah.
Steve: They study a book of the Bible, and he comes back just so excited and energized by that. We just had a perfect storm of five of our regulars being out at the same time.
Tim Wildmon: I know Wesley and Ed are in Boston. A lot of our supporters are up there with Ed, Wesley, and Walker in Boston. They're doing the Christian Heritage Tour this week, so we wish them the best. I know they're on the ground there meeting the group tonight. So anyway, a lot to talk about. I hope everybody had a great weekend.
Tim Wildmon: One person who really didn't have a great weekend was the coach of the LSU Fighting Tigers, Lane Kiffin. Lane Kiffin. Now, just for you, Parrish, you hail from the Baton Rouge area, right?
Parrish Alford: I grew up in Denham Springs, Louisiana. It's about 15 or 20 minutes from the LSU campus.
Tim Wildmon: Close enough to hear the LSU stadium at night if they win?
Parrish Alford: Not quite that close, but close enough to have spent a lot of time on that campus as a teenager when I could scrounge a ticket and get into a game.
Tim Wildmon: Football was a big deal in Louisiana.
Parrish Alford: Yes, it is.
Tim Wildmon: LSU is also a big deal in Mississippi and Oxford. They had a big game Saturday night, and the nation was watching to see what would happen. What happened over there, Chris?
Chris Woodbury: The coach of the school where Lane Kiffin said he couldn't win because the stadium was too small defeated those LSU Tigers, 32 to 24.
Tim Wildmon: He did say that.
Chris Woodbury: He did. That was one of his reasons, but he did win there. The quarterback he wanted to take with him to LSU is still at Ole Miss.
Parrish Alford: I'm just glad the hate boils over for Parrish. You think the hate's gone?
Chris Woodbury: No, I don't think the hate's gone.
Parrish Alford: I'm just glad the nation was watching. I know a lot of people don't care about sports, but it was a big deal in pop culture. I'm glad nothing happened to take away from it. All they did was boo. Nobody threw things in the stands or assaulted Lane Kiffin or anything like that.
Tim Wildmon: In spite of his concerns to that effect earlier in the week. He was very concerned about that, and then you had the governor getting into the mix as well. Governor Jeff Landry. What did he say?
Chris Woodbury: He was questioning whether he might have to send the National Guard.
Tim Wildmon: I don't think you can send the National Guard from one state into another one.
Steve: They did in 1862.
Tim Wildmon: Well, there is that.
Chris Woodbury: Just the backstory for those who may not be familiar: Lane Kiffin left Ole Miss after they made the playoffs and decided he was not going to coach. From the perspective of his players and fans, he abandoned the team at their greatest moment of need. There's a lot of bad blood between the two schools.
Tim Wildmon: Parrish, go ahead.
Parrish Alford: I actually wrote about this last week as a freelance opportunity. The way Lane Kiffin left the program last year was unprecedented. You have schools go to other schools and make moves, even within the conference. You see that quite often. But to take different jobs all the time, to be courted publicly by two different schools, with Lane Kiffin spotted over here talking with one school and his family flying down and looking around, we're talking about Florida and LSU. It put Ole Miss in a very difficult position.
Tim Wildmon: It did. In the end, Kiffin got what he wanted, which was millions and millions and millions of dollars, and he's coaching at a program where he thinks he can win big.
Tim Wildmon: Let me say this. There is another profession, much like college football coaches, who are coy, have to remain silent, and have to finesse their circumstances. That is pastors. Am I right?
Steve: They should.
Tim Wildmon: People misunderstand me. Pastoring is a much more spiritual and important job, and far less lucrative.
Steve: Yes, I agree with that.
Tim Wildmon: But if a pastor is recruited by another church and they're pastoring a church at the time, how do you handle that, Steve? You're a pastor, and everything's going well at your church. Another church from another town calls and says, "Hey, we'd like to visit with you. We're interested in you." How do you work that out?
Steve: You book a vacation day, and you don't tell your board or anybody where you're going. You go and preach a sermon. I guess you go candidate at this new church.
Tim Wildmon: Wait a minute. Hold on. I'm writing these steps down. Not that I'm a pastor, but I'm writing them down. My dad was a pastor. Of course, my dad was a Methodist pastor, so it didn't work this way because they had a bishop and a district superintendent, and they got appointed somewhere. But in Baptist circles and other independent church circles, this is how it works.
Steve: First, take a vacation day.
Tim Wildmon: Convocation there?
Steve: Take some time off, but you don't generally tell the church. Maybe you tell your board. It depends on how you handle it.
Tim Wildmon: So you'll be undercover?
Steve: You've got to be a little bit undercover.
Tim Wildmon: I'm writing this down. Somebody ought to write a manual on how to do this.
Steve: You take your day off, and you go to the church that's recruiting you.
Tim Wildmon: What do you do then?
Steve: If they're at this point in the process, it's the only time you would take a Sunday off. You're going to go and preach a sermon there.
Tim Wildmon: You don't think your church is going to get suspicious when your vacation day is on a Sunday?
Steve: Not unless you're going to the beach with the family.
Tim Wildmon: What if the deacon at your current church says, "Hey, where are you going Sunday?"
Steve: You know what? I don't know what you say.
Tim Wildmon: You see what I mean? It's an unwinnable situation. Parrish, how do you handle it? Do you think Steve's on the right track?
Parrish Alford: I think Steve's on the right track. He gave us the first couple of steps, and the next step is probably hope and prayer that nobody posts your exhibition sermon to Instagram or Facebook.
Tim Wildmon: You don't want your current church to see your sermon at the church that's recruiting you, the church where you're trying out. I've never understood "tryout sermons." That seems kind of bizarre to me.
Parrish Alford: You don't want to see it on Facebook because you want your current church to remain unaware. You've got to be stealthy.
Tim Wildmon: I've been a part of a church where this has happened. When you're the church the pastor is coming into, you tell your congregation, "Don't post anything about this online. His church doesn't know. We're calling him." That's very effective because we know that 100 percent of the congregation listens to everything the pastor says all the time.
Chris Woodbury: Absolutely.
Tim Wildmon: All right, Chris, do you think Steve's on the right track? Just remain undercover, as he called it. I called it sneaky.
Chris Woodbury: I agree with everything Steve has said, but if the deacon or somebody asks the pastor where he's going, the pastor has to be honest. He's a man of God. You have to tell somebody. You can't lie.
Tim Wildmon: You know the one about the pastor who was a golfer?
Chris Woodbury: Yeah.
Tim Wildmon: His pastor was a golfer, and he had always wanted to play one particular course, which was about an hour or two from his home. He never had an opportunity because it was a private course. But somebody called and said, "We have an opening on Sunday morning. You can come and play our golf course."
Chris Woodbury: The pastor said okay. He did fib. He called in sick and said, "Sorry, I can't be at church this morning. You can get somebody to fill in." So he went golfing, and he got his first hole in one in his life.
Tim Wildmon: But now we can't tell anybody.
Chris Woodbury: Exactly.
Tim Wildmon: You just bingoed, Chris. The pastor can't tell anybody he got his first hole in one because he wasn't supposed to be there in the first place.
Chris Woodbury: That's proof the Lord has a sense of humor. He's going to allow you to do that, but you can't tell anybody.
Tim Wildmon: The way I heard that joke told, the pastor skips church and plays hooky. He's golfing by himself and hits a hole in one. The angels are sitting around saying to God, "How did you let him do that? Why didn't you punish him?" God looks at the angels and says, "Who's he going to tell?" That's the variation of the same joke.
Tim Wildmon: You're listening to Today's Issues on the American Family Radio Network. The truth is, there is no good way to handle that, except I guess you tell your church leadership that you're being recruited by another church and you're going to listen to what they have to say.
Parrish Alford: My grandmother said honesty is the best policy.
Tim Wildmon: Most of the time.
Parrish Alford: I'm just kidding. Don't email me, people. I agree with my grandmother. Honesty is the best policy. Your church is doing something right if other people want your pastor.
Chris Woodbury: If people don't want your pastor, that's another matter.
Tim Wildmon: It's funny to me how pastors never feel called to go to a church the size they're at.
Chris Woodbury: Right.
Tim Wildmon: The bigger church never goes to the smaller church. It's always a calling to a church twice as large as the one where they're serving. I don't know how that works.
Tim Wildmon: So Ole Miss beat LSU, and that's that.
Chris Woodbury: Yes.
Tim Wildmon: The LSU and Ole Miss rivalry continues, but life goes on now, right?
Parrish Alford: It does. No injuries, and nobody was hurt.
Chris Woodbury: I'm sure Lane Kiffin will put somebody back on the injury report before he takes them off.
Steve: I've never heard a person complain so much.
Chris Woodbury: If you're an Ole Miss fan, you're taking great pride in the fact that you applied an L to Lane Kiffin's record.
Parrish Alford: You put an L on an L.
Chris Woodbury: As you look down the rest of the schedule, Lane Kiffin was hired there because they believe he can win a national championship. The LSU perspective is that if he wanted this level at Ole Miss, surely he can win at a much greater level at LSU. You've applied an L to Lane Kiffin. He still has Texas on the schedule later this season. Texas A&M is in Baton Rouge this weekend. You start counting those Ls. If they get up to three, LSU is going to want their money back.
Steve: He's got McNeese State on the schedule.
Chris Woodbury: McNeese State is going to bring it to Baton Rouge.
Tim Wildmon: All right, what's your next story, Chris?
Chris Woodbury: There's no easy way to segue into a Trump situation with Iran, but we need to bring up Iran because over the weekend the president, the leader of the free world, posted on social media that big things are happening as he decides whether to strike Iran, following a mysterious, unplanned return to the White House from Camp David.
Chris Woodbury: The president was going to have a fellowship activity there with members of the administration and other people at Camp David. That was cut short as the president was reportedly considering escalatory strikes in Iran. Trump told Fox on Sunday that some Iranian officials are in hiding and that they cannot find anyone capable of striking a deal. He also noted that he was in deciding mode, adding that very big things are set to happen in the war between the United States and Iran.
Chris Woodbury: These two have been at it since February 28, when the United States and Israel blew a lot of things up in an operation known as Epic Fury.
Tim Wildmon: The situation President Trump faces is extremely serious. This is what I think he has been personally struggling with, although he never confesses to personal struggle. I think he would probably admit that this is a decision that is not easy to make.
Tim Wildmon: Once you've initiated a war, which we did in Iran, and bombed them in the name of stopping them from getting a nuclear weapon, whatever you believe about that, we believed that Iran was evidently very close to getting a nuclear weapon. The Iranian religious leaders have an apocalyptic view of the world, and they believe it is their job to initiate the end of it and bring in the Mahdi. That's Islamic Shia theology, which we don't have time to go into, and that's about the extent of my knowledge of it.
Tim Wildmon: Once you start the war, which we did, and the Israelis bomb as well, you have to ask how you get out of it. What's the exit strategy? You would think, when you war-plan, that you have a backup plan.
Steve: A contingency plan.
Tim Wildmon: A contingency plan. Thank you, Steve. So you have a contingency plan.
Tim Wildmon: Here's what President Trump is facing, and this is why I understand it. The United States has reached the limit of what we can do by bombing the military installations and weaponry of the Iranian military and government. The next question is, do you, as president of the United States, bomb the whole country into oblivion?
Tim Wildmon: By that I mean you start bombing water plants, the electrical grid, roads, and bridges. You basically destroy the infrastructure of a nation. How many millions of people do they have in Iran?
Parrish Alford: It's something like 100 million. It is 93.4 million people.
Tim Wildmon: You're talking about 93 million people dispersed over a country probably twice the size of Texas. I would have to look and see exactly how large it is, but I'm going off memory. Once you commit to doing that, you are all in.
Tim Wildmon: President Trump came back from Camp David and said he was in deciding mode, adding that very big things are set to happen in the war between the United States and Iran. He also said something to the effect of what I just described. He said he's having to think about wrecking the country. His question is, when and if do I blow the entire nation up, adding that they better behave?
Tim Wildmon: The ramification of doing what I've just described is that you send millions of people into dire circumstances and a humanitarian crisis. The world will condemn that. It may even qualify as war crimes. These are the kinds of things he has to consider.
Tim Wildmon: I hear people say, "You need to go ahead and finish the job." Well, finishing the job is what I've described, because I think we've bombed everything that can be bombed militarily. Go ahead.
Parrish Alford: I think the president was in a no-win situation at one point. If he knew then what he knows now, he probably would have chosen a different path. I think he would have said after Epic Fury, "Our eyes are on you. You better behave," because Iran does not act like a Western country.
Parrish Alford: Western countries, when you get to a certain point, after you've done so much damage and threatened more, say, "We give up. We're surrendering." Iran is willing to go to its last man, and there is no surrender. They're doing it because they believe in dying for their cause. It's a different mindset.
Steve: I looked up what a war crime is. It says war crimes include murder, torture, pillage, or intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population, humanitarian aid workers, religious and educational buildings, and hospitals. The use of weapons not authorized by international conventions, such as chemical weapons or cluster munitions, can also be considered a war crime.
Steve: I don't know that destroying more of their military infrastructure would fall under that definition, but you understand what I'm saying. I think that's where President Trump has been for a long time. He's withheld bombing actions that would greatly impact millions of civilians. It has become an anchor around his neck, and we're getting to election time.
Tim Wildmon: We're getting closer to an election, and this war ends in November, don't you think?
Chris Woodbury: Yes, but when you get into a situation like this, you would have thought, and I know we can't predict tomorrow, that the president, the secretary of defense, and all these people who plan would have contingency plans for everything. They say, "If this happens, we do this. If this happens, we do this."
Tim Wildmon: It seems to me they got into a situation where they said, "We didn't expect that to happen. We thought they would have caved by now, and they haven't." Do you see what I'm saying?
Chris Woodbury: We've talked about this on the show before. It started on February 28, and here we are in the middle of September. I think they thought we would have a resolution by April, and we would already have free and fair elections being discussed and scheduled. I have no way to prove that, but based on the back-and-forth and all the sound bites that Steve and I have played on the show, that seems to be the case. Now we have the world on the brink again.
Tim Wildmon: You have Saudi Arabia in a war with an Iranian proxy in Yemen. That's affecting the world oil market, not to mention the Strait of Hormuz. Gas prices are going over four dollars a gallon here in the United States. Diesel has already set a record. Diesel is at a point where people are parking their trucks and saying, "I'm not going to pay that anymore." It's a very precarious situation. We'll see what President Trump and his team do. We'll take a short timeout, and we'll be back with more of Today's Issues after this short break.
Tim Wildmon: Hey, welcome back, everybody, to Today's Issues on the American Family Radio Network. Tim, Parrish, Chris, and Steve. The four of us had never been together here before on this show because these fellows all conveniently decided to be out at the same time.
Chris Woodbury: Tim, you rattled off about five or six people there.
Tim Wildmon: Tony is missing.
Chris Woodbury: Steve went out of town. Fred's on some kind of spiritual conference, and Ray Pritchard is probably holding a conference somewhere.
Tim Wildmon: I'm excited to have you guys here.
Parrish Alford: I'm excited to be in the top ten.
Tim Wildmon: I'll be away Wednesday and Thursday, but Brent is dipping into the transfer portal to try to find somebody to help Steve.
Steve: I don't have these Lane Kiffin expectations. I can win today.
Tim Wildmon: Thanks for listening to American Family Radio and to Today's Issues.
Tim Wildmon: We're going to wrap it up with a current events news story. We know all of us are tired of hearing about Iran, but it's still in the news, and we're getting closer to Election Day 2026. We have to ask ourselves what kind of impact the current state of the Iranian war is going to have on the elections.
Tim Wildmon: Before I answer the question Steve phrased a minute ago, let me play a sound bite from this morning. It is U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz talking on Fox about the situation in Iran. According to Waltz, U.S. policies intended to hurt the economy of Iran are working.
Mike Waltz: The Iranian currency is tanking, Brian, at 2.2 million rials to the dollar now. Inflation is soaring. Their foreign currency reserves are near zero. Their ability to subsidize even gasoline, which they have done for everyday Iranians, is gone. Now we're seeing they can't even pay many of their government workers and some elements of their military. Our foot is on the neck of the Iranian economy. President Trump is not going to let up, but he's made his goal clear: They cannot have a nuclear weapon. By the way, that's not just a U.S. position. That is the United Nations Security Council's position, that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon.
Tim Wildmon: The reason I wanted to play that is because earlier in the show Steve was saying, "What do you think is going to happen this November?" If I had to say right now, as a Baptist, I'm not a betting man. I only do cakewalks and Wheel of Fortune.
Steve: You dance, too?
Tim Wildmon: Not when my pastor's looking at it.
Tim Wildmon: I would say right now the House is probably going to go to the Democrats, and the Senate is a toss-up leaning Democrat. They use things like the sample I just played to try to say that this administration is more concerned about the economy of Iran than it is about the economy of the United States of America.
Tim Wildmon: When it's not an Iran story, it's a story about Trump wanting a ballroom or Trump wanting the arch. Here's the thing: The general American public, apart from different groups and subgroups, generally votes on pocketbook and economic issues. I'm talking about kitchen-table economic issues, jobs, the gross price of food, and the essentials of life.
Tim Wildmon: Is everything going well, or is the average American voter noticing that the money is down in the bank account because the cost of living is higher, including gas prices and other things? Does that make sense to everybody?
Steve: It does.
Tim Wildmon: If that's true, then I do think your analysis is right. That favors the Democrats in this election cycle. It doesn't mean they'll wipe out the Republicans. Four years ago, the Republicans were supposed to wipe out the Democrats. They won some, but that wipeout didn't materialize. Do you remember the so-called red wave that was supposed to happen?
Tim Wildmon: It could be the same way for the Democrats this time. You could have Democrats expecting to wipe out the Republicans, but maybe they don't come out to vote as much as Republicans who fear a wipeout. You see what I'm saying?
Parrish Alford: I do. I wonder if the Iran war, which apparently is not going to be finished, could change things. If something were to happen because the president says it's close, and the war were to be over the week before the elections, would that give the Republicans any kind of boost? Would people who voted for Trump in 2024 say, "This is behind him now. Let's remember that economy"?
Tim Wildmon: This is all against the backdrop of history, which says the party in power in the White House loses at least House of Representatives seats. It happens almost every time. Go ahead, Steve.
Steve: I think Trump fatigue is better. Trump fatigue is setting in even among a lot of his traditional supporters. He's had a whole lot of unforced errors that we've talked about on this program with regard to things he has said, tweeted, and done.
Steve: On the other side of the coin, the Democrats are having their own civil war, with the socialists rising. Some people will see the choice between an economy that is not the best and simply doing away with our Constitution.
Tim Wildmon: That's a good point. I'm going to assume, just for argument's sake, that the Democrats take over the House of Representatives. It's a narrow margin right now, less than ten seats.
Tim Wildmon: The most important thing for conservatives is to maintain control of the United States Senate. The reason I say that is because it's 53 to 47 in favor of Republicans right now. You need 50 to 50 to allow Vice President J.D. Vance to break a tie.
Tim Wildmon: The United States Senate votes to confirm or not confirm federal judges, including Supreme Court nominees. If the Democrats also take over the Senate, you have big problems for President Trump and the Republicans in trying to get federal judges on the bench during the last two years of his presidency.
Tim Wildmon: The best-case scenario, and the most realistic scenario the Republicans can hope for, is that you lose the House, but that's not the end of the world. The House isn't able to get much legislation passed anyway, and it hasn't been able to since Obama was president or before because of the filibuster and its 60-vote margin.
Tim Wildmon: You don't have to have 60 votes to confirm federal judges. You just have to have 51, or 50 plus J.D. Vance, the vice president. Does that make sense, Parrish?
Parrish Alford: I understand that. The filibuster is a Senate mechanism, and you hear House members complaining all the time about not being able to get things done. It's a very real impediment to legislation. You can't even get our leaders to agree on election integrity and issues like the SAVE Act.
Tim Wildmon: You're listening to Today's Issues on American Family Radio Network. What's your next story, Chris?
Chris Woodbury: Let's go to Virginia for a moment.
Tim Wildmon: It's for Governor Spanberger, Chris.
Chris Woodbury: It sure is. In recent days, the new governor, Abigail Spanberger, and her administration, under the radar and without a big announcement, did away with a rule from the previous governor, Glenn Youngkin, that barred males from female sports and private spaces, including bathrooms, locker rooms, and changing areas.
Tim Wildmon: She's the current governor, Abigail Spanberger.
Chris Woodbury: Her administration changed the policy through executive action, which governors are allowed to do in any state.
Tim Wildmon: What is it with Democrats wanting to have girls subjected to boys in their locker rooms and competing against them in sports? Why are Democrats championing this? This is a loser.
Chris Woodbury: It's the refuge of the woke.
Steve: That's the name of a good song right there.
Chris Woodbury: Or a band, maybe.
Steve: "The Refuge of the Woke," taking the stage, ladies and gentlemen.
Chris Woodbury: That's where woke went when it left the boardrooms. The Democrats never lost it. This is the whole thing we were talking about, the battle within the Democratic Party. The far left is in favor of boys in girls' locker rooms and sports. They believe transgender men who say they are girls are girls and should be able to play against women or girls in sports and go into their changing rooms and travel with them and stay in the same hotel.
Tim Wildmon: How many Democrats really believe this? Is it just their avenue for power? They've aligned themselves as Democrats all their lives, and this is their party. This is how they've elevated from position to position, and now they're going all in for this. How many Democrats realize that this shouldn't be happening but believe this is how they achieve power?
Parrish Alford: I think it's a loser as far as an issue with the voting public. The vast majority of Americans don't want to see girls compete with boys in athletics.
Tim Wildmon: That is correct.
Parrish Alford: That's just the way it is, even among traditional Democrats who don't favor this kind of policy. But it's being pushed by the far left. It's also the latest example of what Democrats promise and then ignore and move on from generations later.
Parrish Alford: Title IX exists today because of Democrats. They were the ones who supported it in the early 1970s. For those who don't know, Title IX is a federal regulation from 1972. It guarantees that females in publicly funded schools have equal access to things like bathrooms, and it also guarantees that they have their own sports teams.
Parrish Alford: That's why Riley Gaines, former Roanoke College swimmer Lilly Mullens, and other women have been saying for a long time that their Title IX rights are being violated by having to compete against men.
Tim Wildmon: It's bizarre that a party that wants to identify itself as the champion of women doesn't want to protect girls' sports.
Chris Woodbury: It's a bizarre turn of events. If you go back to the 1960s, Democrats were the ones who fought hard for civil rights for Black and Hispanic people. In recent years, Democrats have pushed for illegal immigrants to receive all the benefits that were fought for on behalf of Black and Hispanic Americans back in the 1960s.
Chris Woodbury: That's why people in Chicago, as Chad Groening covered for us, went to a town hall meeting and tore the city council apart because they were being forced to give over property they had worked for and paid taxes for to illegal immigrants. Democrats will promise you things today and, decades from now, completely ignore you. They have done that with women in sports.
Steve: The way this happened was that Democrats were seeking power. They decided to broaden the tent and let in the alligator. They thought an alligator walking into the tent was dangerous, but they could control it. They needed the alligators because they needed more people in the tent.
Steve: In this analogy, the alligator would be the socialists, like Bernie Sanders and others. What they didn't anticipate was that the alligator was going to rise up and demand control.
Chris Woodbury: An alligator rises up?
Steve: In this case, it did. The people they let into the tent, whom they thought were going to strengthen the party, demanded to take over. That's the genesis of the civil war in the Democratic Party right now.
Steve: It's a terrible indictment of our voting public that we can have this conversation and see all the evidence about Democrats and men's and women's sports. We see video clips of high school girls being hurt in volleyball competitions when a male player hits them in the face, yet we're also having a conversation about a possible blue wave.
Tim Wildmon: When you consider all the issues people usually vote on, it's the economic ones, or at least the perception of the economy, that leads the way. But anyway, Steve, that's a good alligator-under-the-tent analogy. I always heard it was the nose of the camel under the tent.
Chris Woodbury: You're right. That's the analogy we're all familiar with.
Tim Wildmon: Somehow I had an elephant because an elephant has a long trunk and can lift the tent.
Chris Woodbury: I understand why you were confused.
Tim Wildmon: I googled this while you guys were talking. If we needed something else to worry about today, apparently an alligator can rise up on its legs and lift its body off the ground.
Steve: I learned something today.
Tim Wildmon: That would be a good trivia question for Friday. I had no idea an alligator could do that.
Tim Wildmon: You're listening to Today's Issues on American Family Radio. Thanks for listening to AFR. What's the next story, Chris?
Chris Woodbury: We have plenty here to carry us through. We could do Today's Issues overtime today.
Parrish Alford: I'm going to toss this one to Steve. It's your James Talarico and Jeff Shreve story on the so-called inclusive Bible.
Steve: There was some undercover video leaked to The Daily Caller. Somebody went into St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church in Austin, Texas, which is the home church of James Talarico, the Democratic Senate candidate in Texas who is competing against Ken Paxton.
Steve: When you join this church, they give you a Bible, which is not unusual. The problem is that they give you what they call the Inclusive Bible. The Inclusive Bible has no gendered language and has taken out controversial passages.
Steve: You're going to hear a clip of the pastor at the church. The pastor is Jim Rigby, who is known as a mentor to James Talarico. Then you're going to hear Jeff Shreve, who has programs here on AFR. I asked him about the Bible. Jim Rigby talks about the Bible not being very good on some philosophical or metaphysical issues. That means miracles.
Jim Rigby: The Inclusive Bible is good on gender stuff, but it's still not very good on the more metaphysical stuff. It's not a very good translation.
Jeff Shreve: I think it's an abomination. We have the Word of God. People who want to change it, I immediately think of 2 Timothy chapter 4, where it tells and commands us to preach the Word. They obviously want to take out language that would reprove and rebuke. We don't have the luxury to edit God's Word.
Steve: Should James Talarico get the Senate seat in Texas?
Jeff Shreve: It would be disastrous for Texas. He is very, very dangerous, as Ted Cruz said. I prefer my wolves not to wear sheep's clothing.
Steve: The latest polls I've seen have Talarico up in that Senate race in Texas by two, three, or four points. That's within the so-called margin of error, right?
Chris Woodbury: It's outside the margin of error in the last poll.
Steve: You've got a Texas poll with Talarico at 49 and Ken Paxton at 43, which is a six-point lead. The margin of error in that poll is four points.
Chris Woodbury: RealClearPolitics, which compiles everything, has Talarico up three.
Steve: That's a good poll to be aware of, and I would trust RealClearPolitics because it's a compilation of all the polls.
Tim Wildmon: Ken Paxton is really going to have to count on Texas Republicans coming out in big numbers to support his candidacy because this is a very tight race in Texas, which is unusual because Texas has always been a red state in statewide elections.
Chris Woodbury: Not always, but most of the time.
Tim Wildmon: I would imagine and hope that many people will come out and vote for Paxton who are ashamed to say it right now.
Parrish Alford: The silent Paxton vote, maybe.
Tim Wildmon: Why is that? Do you know?
Parrish Alford: Some bad press for Paxton, and things of that nature. It's like you have a Democratic candidate who is espousing all these things and contradicting the Bible, but you can't put up a candidate who can beat him.
Tim Wildmon: It's going to be close. If the Republicans lose that one, they'll have to win somewhere else.
Chris Woodbury: They would have to flip the seat in Michigan to offset the loss in Texas.
Tim Wildmon: If you lose a statewide Senate election in Texas, think about what that means. A senator is elected for six years, and you're not likely to bump them. They could be there for a long time.
Tim Wildmon: Look at what happened in Georgia. Georgia was a red state, at least it was. The state still has Republican governors, but Democrats came in and took two United States Senate seats. You wouldn't have thought that would be possible in Georgia.
Chris Woodbury: I remember promising to eat my hat if it happened.
Tim Wildmon: The times are changing. We'll see what happens in the Senate. There are a lot of close races across the country. You need to get your friends and family ready to vote in November because it will matter who shows up to vote. We'll be back momentarily.
Tim Wildmon: Hey, good morning, everybody, and welcome to Today's Issues on the American Family Radio Network. Today is Monday, September 21, 2026. As always, we thank you for listening to the show, and we thank you for listening throughout the day to American Family Radio.
Tim Wildmon: I'm going to introduce the panel here today. We've got a newbie. Well, you've been on a couple of times. Parrish Alford, good morning, brother.
Parrish Alford: Tim, how are you, man?
Tim Wildmon: I'm doing great, and it's good to have you as part of our Today's Issues team.
Parrish Alford: Well, thank you. I see Camera One pointed at me. I'm a little concerned.
Tim Wildmon: Yeah, you're a newspaper man. You're not used to cameras.
Parrish Alford: Yeah. So how is my hair, and does this shirt make me look fat?
Tim Wildmon: Well, your hair's like mine, basically. It's not there on top. At least you've got a little fuzz there, but I think you're going to do fine. I think you're a camera-friendly guy.
Tim Wildmon: Chris Woodbury, good morning, Chris.
Chris Woodbury: Morning. I'm checking my comb-over.
Tim Wildmon: Well, I don't think anybody's going to be watching us for the visuals.
Chris Woodbury: Yeah, okay.
Tim Wildmon: I mean, I do get confused with Brad Pitt a lot.
Chris Woodbury: I don't think I look like Brad Pitt, but people say I do. My 13-year-old has a picture of me that she used to make me into Santa.
Tim Wildmon: Because you've got the white beard going on.
Chris Woodbury: Yeah, it's my side hustle.
Tim Wildmon: Steve, good morning, Steve.
Steve: Hey, everybody. Let me explain to people how this is going to work today on the show. This is the first time that the four of us have been together, and it's going to be for an hour and a half, or whatever it is. I hope we come out of this as sort of the Beatles of radio, that people will always remember us. We don't need to blow it here.
Tim Wildmon: Let me just go down the list of people who called in sick today: Tony Vitagliano, Wesley Wildmon, Ed Vitagliano, Fred Jackson, and Ray Pritchard.
Steve: I'm kidding about called in sick, but they're all out at the same time, thus leaving us four, with very little getting done in your news division.
Tim Wildmon: Did you have Jackson down there?
Steve: Yeah, Fred.
Tim Wildmon: Where is Fred this week?
Steve: He has been burning some PTO, which is paid time off. I don't think that's legal in Mississippi.
Tim Wildmon: He's got a doctor's prescription.
Steve: Every year he goes to The Cove, which I guess is the Billy Graham Center.
Chris Woodbury: Billy Graham Center, yeah.
Steve: They study a book of the Bible, and he comes back just so excited and energized by that. We just had a perfect storm of five of our regulars being out at the same time.
Tim Wildmon: I know Wesley and Ed are in Boston. A lot of our supporters are up there with Ed, Wesley, and Walker in Boston. They're doing the Christian Heritage Tour this week, so we wish them the best. I know they're on the ground there meeting the group tonight. So anyway, a lot to talk about. I hope everybody had a great weekend.
Tim Wildmon: One person who really didn't have a great weekend was the coach of the LSU Fighting Tigers, Lane Kiffin. Lane Kiffin. Now, just for you, Parrish, you hail from the Baton Rouge area, right?
Parrish Alford: I grew up in Denham Springs, Louisiana. It's about 15 or 20 minutes from the LSU campus.
Tim Wildmon: Close enough to hear the LSU stadium at night if they win?
Parrish Alford: Not quite that close, but close enough to have spent a lot of time on that campus as a teenager when I could scrounge a ticket and get into a game.
Tim Wildmon: Football was a big deal in Louisiana.
Parrish Alford: Yes, it is.
Tim Wildmon: LSU is also a big deal in Mississippi and Oxford. They had a big game Saturday night, and the nation was watching to see what would happen. What happened over there, Chris?
Chris Woodbury: The coach of the school where Lane Kiffin said he couldn't win because the stadium was too small defeated those LSU Tigers, 32 to 24.
Tim Wildmon: He did say that.
Chris Woodbury: He did. That was one of his reasons, but he did win there. The quarterback he wanted to take with him to LSU is still at Ole Miss.
Parrish Alford: I'm just glad the hate boils over for Parrish. You think the hate's gone?
Chris Woodbury: No, I don't think the hate's gone.
Parrish Alford: I'm just glad the nation was watching. I know a lot of people don't care about sports, but it was a big deal in pop culture. I'm glad nothing happened to take away from it. All they did was boo. Nobody threw things in the stands or assaulted Lane Kiffin or anything like that.
Tim Wildmon: In spite of his concerns to that effect earlier in the week. He was very concerned about that, and then you had the governor getting into the mix as well. Governor Jeff Landry. What did he say?
Chris Woodbury: He was questioning whether he might have to send the National Guard.
Tim Wildmon: I don't think you can send the National Guard from one state into another one.
Steve: They did in 1862.
Tim Wildmon: Well, there is that.
Chris Woodbury: Just the backstory for those who may not be familiar: Lane Kiffin left Ole Miss after they made the playoffs and decided he was not going to coach. From the perspective of his players and fans, he abandoned the team at their greatest moment of need. There's a lot of bad blood between the two schools.
Tim Wildmon: Parrish, go ahead.
Parrish Alford: I actually wrote about this last week as a freelance opportunity. The way Lane Kiffin left the program last year was unprecedented. You have schools go to other schools and make moves, even within the conference. You see that quite often. But to take different jobs all the time, to be courted publicly by two different schools, with Lane Kiffin spotted over here talking with one school and his family flying down and looking around, we're talking about Florida and LSU. It put Ole Miss in a very difficult position.
Tim Wildmon: It did. In the end, Kiffin got what he wanted, which was millions and millions and millions of dollars, and he's coaching at a program where he thinks he can win big.
Tim Wildmon: Let me say this. There is another profession, much like college football coaches, who are coy, have to remain silent, and have to finesse their circumstances. That is pastors. Am I right?
Steve: They should.
Tim Wildmon: People misunderstand me. Pastoring is a much more spiritual and important job, and far less lucrative.
Steve: Yes, I agree with that.
Tim Wildmon: But if a pastor is recruited by another church and they're pastoring a church at the time, how do you handle that, Steve? You're a pastor, and everything's going well at your church. Another church from another town calls and says, "Hey, we'd like to visit with you. We're interested in you." How do you work that out?
Steve: You book a vacation day, and you don't tell your board or anybody where you're going. You go and preach a sermon. I guess you go candidate at this new church.
Tim Wildmon: Wait a minute. Hold on. I'm writing these steps down. Not that I'm a pastor, but I'm writing them down. My dad was a pastor. Of course, my dad was a Methodist pastor, so it didn't work this way because they had a bishop and a district superintendent, and they got appointed somewhere. But in Baptist circles and other independent church circles, this is how it works.
Steve: First, take a vacation day.
Tim Wildmon: Convocation there?
Steve: Take some time off, but you don't generally tell the church. Maybe you tell your board. It depends on how you handle it.
Tim Wildmon: So you'll be undercover?
Steve: You've got to be a little bit undercover.
Tim Wildmon: I'm writing this down. Somebody ought to write a manual on how to do this.
Steve: You take your day off, and you go to the church that's recruiting you.
Tim Wildmon: What do you do then?
Steve: If they're at this point in the process, it's the only time you would take a Sunday off. You're going to go and preach a sermon there.
Tim Wildmon: You don't think your church is going to get suspicious when your vacation day is on a Sunday?
Steve: Not unless you're going to the beach with the family.
Tim Wildmon: What if the deacon at your current church says, "Hey, where are you going Sunday?"
Steve: You know what? I don't know what you say.
Tim Wildmon: You see what I mean? It's an unwinnable situation. Parrish, how do you handle it? Do you think Steve's on the right track?
Parrish Alford: I think Steve's on the right track. He gave us the first couple of steps, and the next step is probably hope and prayer that nobody posts your exhibition sermon to Instagram or Facebook.
Tim Wildmon: You don't want your current church to see your sermon at the church that's recruiting you, the church where you're trying out. I've never understood "tryout sermons." That seems kind of bizarre to me.
Parrish Alford: You don't want to see it on Facebook because you want your current church to remain unaware. You've got to be stealthy.
Tim Wildmon: I've been a part of a church where this has happened. When you're the church the pastor is coming into, you tell your congregation, "Don't post anything about this online. His church doesn't know. We're calling him." That's very effective because we know that 100 percent of the congregation listens to everything the pastor says all the time.
Chris Woodbury: Absolutely.
Tim Wildmon: All right, Chris, do you think Steve's on the right track? Just remain undercover, as he called it. I called it sneaky.
Chris Woodbury: I agree with everything Steve has said, but if the deacon or somebody asks the pastor where he's going, the pastor has to be honest. He's a man of God. You have to tell somebody. You can't lie.
Tim Wildmon: You know the one about the pastor who was a golfer?
Chris Woodbury: Yeah.
Tim Wildmon: His pastor was a golfer, and he had always wanted to play one particular course, which was about an hour or two from his home. He never had an opportunity because it was a private course. But somebody called and said, "We have an opening on Sunday morning. You can come and play our golf course."
Chris Woodbury: The pastor said okay. He did fib. He called in sick and said, "Sorry, I can't be at church this morning. You can get somebody to fill in." So he went golfing, and he got his first hole in one in his life.
Tim Wildmon: But now we can't tell anybody.
Chris Woodbury: Exactly.
Tim Wildmon: You just bingoed, Chris. The pastor can't tell anybody he got his first hole in one because he wasn't supposed to be there in the first place.
Chris Woodbury: That's proof the Lord has a sense of humor. He's going to allow you to do that, but you can't tell anybody.
Tim Wildmon: The way I heard that joke told, the pastor skips church and plays hooky. He's golfing by himself and hits a hole in one. The angels are sitting around saying to God, "How did you let him do that? Why didn't you punish him?" God looks at the angels and says, "Who's he going to tell?" That's the variation of the same joke.
Tim Wildmon: You're listening to Today's Issues on the American Family Radio Network. The truth is, there is no good way to handle that, except I guess you tell your church leadership that you're being recruited by another church and you're going to listen to what they have to say.
Parrish Alford: My grandmother said honesty is the best policy.
Tim Wildmon: Most of the time.
Parrish Alford: I'm just kidding. Don't email me, people. I agree with my grandmother. Honesty is the best policy. Your church is doing something right if other people want your pastor.
Chris Woodbury: If people don't want your pastor, that's another matter.
Tim Wildmon: It's funny to me how pastors never feel called to go to a church the size they're at.
Chris Woodbury: Right.
Tim Wildmon: The bigger church never goes to the smaller church. It's always a calling to a church twice as large as the one where they're serving. I don't know how that works.
Tim Wildmon: So Ole Miss beat LSU, and that's that.
Chris Woodbury: Yes.
Tim Wildmon: The LSU and Ole Miss rivalry continues, but life goes on now, right?
Parrish Alford: It does. No injuries, and nobody was hurt.
Chris Woodbury: I'm sure Lane Kiffin will put somebody back on the injury report before he takes them off.
Steve: I've never heard a person complain so much.
Chris Woodbury: If you're an Ole Miss fan, you're taking great pride in the fact that you applied an L to Lane Kiffin's record.
Parrish Alford: You put an L on an L.
Chris Woodbury: As you look down the rest of the schedule, Lane Kiffin was hired there because they believe he can win a national championship. The LSU perspective is that if he wanted this level at Ole Miss, surely he can win at a much greater level at LSU. You've applied an L to Lane Kiffin. He still has Texas on the schedule later this season. Texas A&M is in Baton Rouge this weekend. You start counting those Ls. If they get up to three, LSU is going to want their money back.
Steve: He's got McNeese State on the schedule.
Chris Woodbury: McNeese State is going to bring it to Baton Rouge.
Tim Wildmon: All right, what's your next story, Chris?
Chris Woodbury: There's no easy way to segue into a Trump situation with Iran, but we need to bring up Iran because over the weekend the president, the leader of the free world, posted on social media that big things are happening as he decides whether to strike Iran, following a mysterious, unplanned return to the White House from Camp David.
Chris Woodbury: The president was going to have a fellowship activity there with members of the administration and other people at Camp David. That was cut short as the president was reportedly considering escalatory strikes in Iran. Trump told Fox on Sunday that some Iranian officials are in hiding and that they cannot find anyone capable of striking a deal. He also noted that he was in deciding mode, adding that very big things are set to happen in the war between the United States and Iran.
Chris Woodbury: These two have been at it since February 28, when the United States and Israel blew a lot of things up in an operation known as Epic Fury.
Tim Wildmon: The situation President Trump faces is extremely serious. This is what I think he has been personally struggling with, although he never confesses to personal struggle. I think he would probably admit that this is a decision that is not easy to make.
Tim Wildmon: Once you've initiated a war, which we did in Iran, and bombed them in the name of stopping them from getting a nuclear weapon, whatever you believe about that, we believed that Iran was evidently very close to getting a nuclear weapon. The Iranian religious leaders have an apocalyptic view of the world, and they believe it is their job to initiate the end of it and bring in the Mahdi. That's Islamic Shia theology, which we don't have time to go into, and that's about the extent of my knowledge of it.
Tim Wildmon: Once you start the war, which we did, and the Israelis bomb as well, you have to ask how you get out of it. What's the exit strategy? You would think, when you war-plan, that you have a backup plan.
Steve: A contingency plan.
Tim Wildmon: A contingency plan. Thank you, Steve. So you have a contingency plan.
Tim Wildmon: Here's what President Trump is facing, and this is why I understand it. The United States has reached the limit of what we can do by bombing the military installations and weaponry of the Iranian military and government. The next question is, do you, as president of the United States, bomb the whole country into oblivion?
Tim Wildmon: By that I mean you start bombing water plants, the electrical grid, roads, and bridges. You basically destroy the infrastructure of a nation. How many millions of people do they have in Iran?
Parrish Alford: It's something like 100 million. It is 93.4 million people.
Tim Wildmon: You're talking about 93 million people dispersed over a country probably twice the size of Texas. I would have to look and see exactly how large it is, but I'm going off memory. Once you commit to doing that, you are all in.
Tim Wildmon: President Trump came back from Camp David and said he was in deciding mode, adding that very big things are set to happen in the war between the United States and Iran. He also said something to the effect of what I just described. He said he's having to think about wrecking the country. His question is, when and if do I blow the entire nation up, adding that they better behave?
Tim Wildmon: The ramification of doing what I've just described is that you send millions of people into dire circumstances and a humanitarian crisis. The world will condemn that. It may even qualify as war crimes. These are the kinds of things he has to consider.
Tim Wildmon: I hear people say, "You need to go ahead and finish the job." Well, finishing the job is what I've described, because I think we've bombed everything that can be bombed militarily. Go ahead.
Parrish Alford: I think the president was in a no-win situation at one point. If he knew then what he knows now, he probably would have chosen a different path. I think he would have said after Epic Fury, "Our eyes are on you. You better behave," because Iran does not act like a Western country.
Parrish Alford: Western countries, when you get to a certain point, after you've done so much damage and threatened more, say, "We give up. We're surrendering." Iran is willing to go to its last man, and there is no surrender. They're doing it because they believe in dying for their cause. It's a different mindset.
Steve: I looked up what a war crime is. It says war crimes include murder, torture, pillage, or intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population, humanitarian aid workers, religious and educational buildings, and hospitals. The use of weapons not authorized by international conventions, such as chemical weapons or cluster munitions, can also be considered a war crime.
Steve: I don't know that destroying more of their military infrastructure would fall under that definition, but you understand what I'm saying. I think that's where President Trump has been for a long time. He's withheld bombing actions that would greatly impact millions of civilians. It has become an anchor around his neck, and we're getting to election time.
Tim Wildmon: We're getting closer to an election, and this war ends in November, don't you think?
Chris Woodbury: Yes, but when you get into a situation like this, you would have thought, and I know we can't predict tomorrow, that the president, the secretary of defense, and all these people who plan would have contingency plans for everything. They say, "If this happens, we do this. If this happens, we do this."
Tim Wildmon: It seems to me they got into a situation where they said, "We didn't expect that to happen. We thought they would have caved by now, and they haven't." Do you see what I'm saying?
Chris Woodbury: We've talked about this on the show before. It started on February 28, and here we are in the middle of September. I think they thought we would have a resolution by April, and we would already have free and fair elections being discussed and scheduled. I have no way to prove that, but based on the back-and-forth and all the sound bites that Steve and I have played on the show, that seems to be the case. Now we have the world on the brink again.
Tim Wildmon: You have Saudi Arabia in a war with an Iranian proxy in Yemen. That's affecting the world oil market, not to mention the Strait of Hormuz. Gas prices are going over four dollars a gallon here in the United States. Diesel has already set a record. Diesel is at a point where people are parking their trucks and saying, "I'm not going to pay that anymore." It's a very precarious situation. We'll see what President Trump and his team do. We'll take a short timeout, and we'll be back with more of Today's Issues after this short break.
Tim Wildmon: Hey, welcome back, everybody, to Today's Issues on the American Family Radio Network. Tim, Parrish, Chris, and Steve. The four of us had never been together here before on this show because these fellows all conveniently decided to be out at the same time.
Chris Woodbury: Tim, you rattled off about five or six people there.
Tim Wildmon: Tony is missing.
Chris Woodbury: Steve went out of town. Fred's on some kind of spiritual conference, and Ray Pritchard is probably holding a conference somewhere.
Tim Wildmon: I'm excited to have you guys here.
Parrish Alford: I'm excited to be in the top ten.
Tim Wildmon: I'll be away Wednesday and Thursday, but Brent is dipping into the transfer portal to try to find somebody to help Steve.
Steve: I don't have these Lane Kiffin expectations. I can win today.
Tim Wildmon: Thanks for listening to American Family Radio and to Today's Issues.
Tim Wildmon: We're going to wrap it up with a current events news story. We know all of us are tired of hearing about Iran, but it's still in the news, and we're getting closer to Election Day 2026. We have to ask ourselves what kind of impact the current state of the Iranian war is going to have on the elections.
Tim Wildmon: Before I answer the question Steve phrased a minute ago, let me play a sound bite from this morning. It is U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz talking on Fox about the situation in Iran. According to Waltz, U.S. policies intended to hurt the economy of Iran are working.
Mike Waltz: The Iranian currency is tanking, Brian, at 2.2 million rials to the dollar now. Inflation is soaring. Their foreign currency reserves are near zero. Their ability to subsidize even gasoline, which they have done for everyday Iranians, is gone. Now we're seeing they can't even pay many of their government workers and some elements of their military. Our foot is on the neck of the Iranian economy. President Trump is not going to let up, but he's made his goal clear: They cannot have a nuclear weapon. By the way, that's not just a U.S. position. That is the United Nations Security Council's position, that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon.
Tim Wildmon: The reason I wanted to play that is because earlier in the show Steve was saying, "What do you think is going to happen this November?" If I had to say right now, as a Baptist, I'm not a betting man. I only do cakewalks and Wheel of Fortune.
Steve: You dance, too?
Tim Wildmon: Not when my pastor's looking at it.
Tim Wildmon: I would say right now the House is probably going to go to the Democrats, and the Senate is a toss-up leaning Democrat. They use things like the sample I just played to try to say that this administration is more concerned about the economy of Iran than it is about the economy of the United States of America.
Tim Wildmon: When it's not an Iran story, it's a story about Trump wanting a ballroom or Trump wanting the arch. Here's the thing: The general American public, apart from different groups and subgroups, generally votes on pocketbook and economic issues. I'm talking about kitchen-table economic issues, jobs, the gross price of food, and the essentials of life.
Tim Wildmon: Is everything going well, or is the average American voter noticing that the money is down in the bank account because the cost of living is higher, including gas prices and other things? Does that make sense to everybody?
Steve: It does.
Tim Wildmon: If that's true, then I do think your analysis is right. That favors the Democrats in this election cycle. It doesn't mean they'll wipe out the Republicans. Four years ago, the Republicans were supposed to wipe out the Democrats. They won some, but that wipeout didn't materialize. Do you remember the so-called red wave that was supposed to happen?
Tim Wildmon: It could be the same way for the Democrats this time. You could have Democrats expecting to wipe out the Republicans, but maybe they don't come out to vote as much as Republicans who fear a wipeout. You see what I'm saying?
Parrish Alford: I do. I wonder if the Iran war, which apparently is not going to be finished, could change things. If something were to happen because the president says it's close, and the war were to be over the week before the elections, would that give the Republicans any kind of boost? Would people who voted for Trump in 2024 say, "This is behind him now. Let's remember that economy"?
Tim Wildmon: This is all against the backdrop of history, which says the party in power in the White House loses at least House of Representatives seats. It happens almost every time. Go ahead, Steve.
Steve: I think Trump fatigue is better. Trump fatigue is setting in even among a lot of his traditional supporters. He's had a whole lot of unforced errors that we've talked about on this program with regard to things he has said, tweeted, and done.
Steve: On the other side of the coin, the Democrats are having their own civil war, with the socialists rising. Some people will see the choice between an economy that is not the best and simply doing away with our Constitution.
Tim Wildmon: That's a good point. I'm going to assume, just for argument's sake, that the Democrats take over the House of Representatives. It's a narrow margin right now, less than ten seats.
Tim Wildmon: The most important thing for conservatives is to maintain control of the United States Senate. The reason I say that is because it's 53 to 47 in favor of Republicans right now. You need 50 to 50 to allow Vice President J.D. Vance to break a tie.
Tim Wildmon: The United States Senate votes to confirm or not confirm federal judges, including Supreme Court nominees. If the Democrats also take over the Senate, you have big problems for President Trump and the Republicans in trying to get federal judges on the bench during the last two years of his presidency.
Tim Wildmon: The best-case scenario, and the most realistic scenario the Republicans can hope for, is that you lose the House, but that's not the end of the world. The House isn't able to get much legislation passed anyway, and it hasn't been able to since Obama was president or before because of the filibuster and its 60-vote margin.
Tim Wildmon: You don't have to have 60 votes to confirm federal judges. You just have to have 51, or 50 plus J.D. Vance, the vice president. Does that make sense, Parrish?
Parrish Alford: I understand that. The filibuster is a Senate mechanism, and you hear House members complaining all the time about not being able to get things done. It's a very real impediment to legislation. You can't even get our leaders to agree on election integrity and issues like the SAVE Act.
Tim Wildmon: You're listening to Today's Issues on American Family Radio Network. What's your next story, Chris?
Chris Woodbury: Let's go to Virginia for a moment.
Tim Wildmon: It's for Governor Spanberger, Chris.
Chris Woodbury: It sure is. In recent days, the new governor, Abigail Spanberger, and her administration, under the radar and without a big announcement, did away with a rule from the previous governor, Glenn Youngkin, that barred males from female sports and private spaces, including bathrooms, locker rooms, and changing areas.
Tim Wildmon: She's the current governor, Abigail Spanberger.
Chris Woodbury: Her administration changed the policy through executive action, which governors are allowed to do in any state.
Tim Wildmon: What is it with Democrats wanting to have girls subjected to boys in their locker rooms and competing against them in sports? Why are Democrats championing this? This is a loser.
Chris Woodbury: It's the refuge of the woke.
Steve: That's the name of a good song right there.
Chris Woodbury: Or a band, maybe.
Steve: "The Refuge of the Woke," taking the stage, ladies and gentlemen.
Chris Woodbury: That's where woke went when it left the boardrooms. The Democrats never lost it. This is the whole thing we were talking about, the battle within the Democratic Party. The far left is in favor of boys in girls' locker rooms and sports. They believe transgender men who say they are girls are girls and should be able to play against women or girls in sports and go into their changing rooms and travel with them and stay in the same hotel.
Tim Wildmon: How many Democrats really believe this? Is it just their avenue for power? They've aligned themselves as Democrats all their lives, and this is their party. This is how they've elevated from position to position, and now they're going all in for this. How many Democrats realize that this shouldn't be happening but believe this is how they achieve power?
Parrish Alford: I think it's a loser as far as an issue with the voting public. The vast majority of Americans don't want to see girls compete with boys in athletics.
Tim Wildmon: That is correct.
Parrish Alford: That's just the way it is, even among traditional Democrats who don't favor this kind of policy. But it's being pushed by the far left. It's also the latest example of what Democrats promise and then ignore and move on from generations later.
Parrish Alford: Title IX exists today because of Democrats. They were the ones who supported it in the early 1970s. For those who don't know, Title IX is a federal regulation from 1972. It guarantees that females in publicly funded schools have equal access to things like bathrooms, and it also guarantees that they have their own sports teams.
Parrish Alford: That's why Riley Gaines, former Roanoke College swimmer Lilly Mullens, and other women have been saying for a long time that their Title IX rights are being violated by having to compete against men.
Tim Wildmon: It's bizarre that a party that wants to identify itself as the champion of women doesn't want to protect girls' sports.
Chris Woodbury: It's a bizarre turn of events. If you go back to the 1960s, Democrats were the ones who fought hard for civil rights for Black and Hispanic people. In recent years, Democrats have pushed for illegal immigrants to receive all the benefits that were fought for on behalf of Black and Hispanic Americans back in the 1960s.
Chris Woodbury: That's why people in Chicago, as Chad Groening covered for us, went to a town hall meeting and tore the city council apart because they were being forced to give over property they had worked for and paid taxes for to illegal immigrants. Democrats will promise you things today and, decades from now, completely ignore you. They have done that with women in sports.
Steve: The way this happened was that Democrats were seeking power. They decided to broaden the tent and let in the alligator. They thought an alligator walking into the tent was dangerous, but they could control it. They needed the alligators because they needed more people in the tent.
Steve: In this analogy, the alligator would be the socialists, like Bernie Sanders and others. What they didn't anticipate was that the alligator was going to rise up and demand control.
Chris Woodbury: An alligator rises up?
Steve: In this case, it did. The people they let into the tent, whom they thought were going to strengthen the party, demanded to take over. That's the genesis of the civil war in the Democratic Party right now.
Steve: It's a terrible indictment of our voting public that we can have this conversation and see all the evidence about Democrats and men's and women's sports. We see video clips of high school girls being hurt in volleyball competitions when a male player hits them in the face, yet we're also having a conversation about a possible blue wave.
Tim Wildmon: When you consider all the issues people usually vote on, it's the economic ones, or at least the perception of the economy, that leads the way. But anyway, Steve, that's a good alligator-under-the-tent analogy. I always heard it was the nose of the camel under the tent.
Chris Woodbury: You're right. That's the analogy we're all familiar with.
Tim Wildmon: Somehow I had an elephant because an elephant has a long trunk and can lift the tent.
Chris Woodbury: I understand why you were confused.
Tim Wildmon: I googled this while you guys were talking. If we needed something else to worry about today, apparently an alligator can rise up on its legs and lift its body off the ground.
Steve: I learned something today.
Tim Wildmon: That would be a good trivia question for Friday. I had no idea an alligator could do that.
Tim Wildmon: You're listening to Today's Issues on American Family Radio. Thanks for listening to AFR. What's the next story, Chris?
Chris Woodbury: We have plenty here to carry us through. We could do Today's Issues overtime today.
Parrish Alford: I'm going to toss this one to Steve. It's your James Talarico and Jeff Shreve story on the so-called inclusive Bible.
Steve: There was some undercover video leaked to The Daily Caller. Somebody went into St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church in Austin, Texas, which is the home church of James Talarico, the Democratic Senate candidate in Texas who is competing against Ken Paxton.
Steve: When you join this church, they give you a Bible, which is not unusual. The problem is that they give you what they call the Inclusive Bible. The Inclusive Bible has no gendered language and has taken out controversial passages.
Steve: You're going to hear a clip of the pastor at the church. The pastor is Jim Rigby, who is known as a mentor to James Talarico. Then you're going to hear Jeff Shreve, who has programs here on AFR. I asked him about the Bible. Jim Rigby talks about the Bible not being very good on some philosophical or metaphysical issues. That means miracles.
Jim Rigby: The Inclusive Bible is good on gender stuff, but it's still not very good on the more metaphysical stuff. It's not a very good translation.
Jeff Shreve: I think it's an abomination. We have the Word of God. People who want to change it, I immediately think of 2 Timothy chapter 4, where it tells and commands us to preach the Word. They obviously want to take out language that would reprove and rebuke. We don't have the luxury to edit God's Word.
Steve: Should James Talarico get the Senate seat in Texas?
Jeff Shreve: It would be disastrous for Texas. He is very, very dangerous, as Ted Cruz said. I prefer my wolves not to wear sheep's clothing.
Steve: The latest polls I've seen have Talarico up in that Senate race in Texas by two, three, or four points. That's within the so-called margin of error, right?
Chris Woodbury: It's outside the margin of error in the last poll.
Steve: You've got a Texas poll with Talarico at 49 and Ken Paxton at 43, which is a six-point lead. The margin of error in that poll is four points.
Chris Woodbury: RealClearPolitics, which compiles everything, has Talarico up three.
Steve: That's a good poll to be aware of, and I would trust RealClearPolitics because it's a compilation of all the polls.
Tim Wildmon: Ken Paxton is really going to have to count on Texas Republicans coming out in big numbers to support his candidacy because this is a very tight race in Texas, which is unusual because Texas has always been a red state in statewide elections.
Chris Woodbury: Not always, but most of the time.
Tim Wildmon: I would imagine and hope that many people will come out and vote for Paxton who are ashamed to say it right now.
Parrish Alford: The silent Paxton vote, maybe.
Tim Wildmon: Why is that? Do you know?
Parrish Alford: Some bad press for Paxton, and things of that nature. It's like you have a Democratic candidate who is espousing all these things and contradicting the Bible, but you can't put up a candidate who can beat him.
Tim Wildmon: It's going to be close. If the Republicans lose that one, they'll have to win somewhere else.
Chris Woodbury: They would have to flip the seat in Michigan to offset the loss in Texas.
Tim Wildmon: If you lose a statewide Senate election in Texas, think about what that means. A senator is elected for six years, and you're not likely to bump them. They could be there for a long time.
Tim Wildmon: Look at what happened in Georgia. Georgia was a red state, at least it was. The state still has Republican governors, but Democrats came in and took two United States Senate seats. You wouldn't have thought that would be possible in Georgia.
Chris Woodbury: I remember promising to eat my hat if it happened.
Tim Wildmon: The times are changing. We'll see what happens in the Senate. There are a lot of close races across the country. You need to get your friends and family ready to vote in November because it will matter who shows up to vote. We'll be back momentarily.
Tim Wildmon and the Today's Issues panel discuss President Trump's decisions regarding the conflict with Iran, including possible escalation, civilian consequences, economic pressure, rising fuel prices, and the potential impact on the 2026 elections. The panel also considers how control of the House and Senate could affect federal judicial confirmations. The program examines Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger's reported reversal of protections affecting girls' sports and private spaces, along with the panel's discussion of Title IX and transgender policies. The panel also discusses a Texas Senate race involving James Talarico and Ken Paxton, including criticism of an inclusive Bible used at Talarico's church. A Christian reflection from Don Wildmon considers freedom from sin through Christ's sacrifice.
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