A Week Of Thanksgiving Day One With Kelly Shackelford – Following an idea suggested by one of our listeners, we are spending the week of Thanksgiving and focusing on the good news happening around us!  Join us today for day one of ‘A week of Thanksgiving.”

Air Date: 11/22/2021

Guest: Kelly Shackelford

On-air Personalities: David Barton, Rick Green, and Tim Barton

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Transcription note:  As a courtesy for our listeners’ enjoyment, we are providing a transcription of this podcast. Transcription will be released shortly. However, as this is transcribed from a live talk show, words and sentence structure were not altered to fit grammatical, written norms in order to preserve the integrity of the actual dialogue between the speakers. Additionally, names may be misspelled or we might use an asterisk to indicate a missing word because of the difficulty in understanding the speaker at times. We apologize in advance.

 

Rick:

Welcome to the intersection of faith and the culture. This is WallBuilders Live, where we talk about the hottest topics of the day from a biblical, historical, and constitutional perspective.

And today, we’re going to start something a little different. Alright, so it’s Thanksgiving week, and instead of doing our regular Monday through Wednesday interviews with folks and different topics across the culture, might be a piece of legislation in Washington DC or in state legislatures, might be an issue that we are covering or a particular case before the Supreme Court or something making its way through the courts. Instead of a single topic for the day, and then doing Foundations of Freedom Thursday, which is where we take your questions normally on Thursdays, and then on Friday, having Good News Fridays, where we just pile in as many stories as we possibly can.

We’re going to do it a little different this week. It’s Thanksgiving week, and this week, we’re going to do Good News Friday every day of the week. Now, this was the suggestion of some listeners who said, hey, wait a minute, it’s Thanksgiving week, why not just get rid of all those good news stories as keeps piling up in the stacks for David and Tim, let’s get as much out as we can, Thanksgiving week, because then we have all of those stories to give thanks for and we thought that was a fantastic idea. So that’s what we’re going to do throughout this week.

We do have a couple of interviews that we’re going to share that are just good news stories that we wanted to throw in for the week as well. But mostly, it’s just going to be Good News Friday all week long. So lots of good news stories to share with you today.

By the way, I’m Rick Green, former Texas legislator, and America’s Constitution coach. And I am here with David Barton. He is America’s premier historian. He’s our founder here at WallBuilders. And Tim Barton is with us. He’s a national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders. And we’re going to dive into those good news stories and get as much of them. Normally, I’m saying get as much of them in for the day as we can. This time, I’m saying we’re going to get as much of them in for the week as we can, or as many of them as we can for this week. So it’s going to be fun, we’re going to have a great time.

And I really want to encourage you to share these with your friends and family. I mean, this is Thanksgiving week. What a great thing to share with them. And maybe pick out a few of the stories that you share this weekend, I mean, literally, when you’re at Thanksgiving dinner, or lunch, or however you do this with your family to actually raise a couple of these stories and say, hey, I just want to share with you all this wonderful story I heard on WallBuilders Live because while there’s a lot of bad happening in the country, there’s some good happening as well.

And during Thanksgiving, we want to give thanks for all of the freedoms that we have for all the wonderful things we have in our country. Even while we talk about the tough things that are going on, I want to would encourage you to raise that at Thanksgiving lunch as well. But we want to equip you with a lot of good news to be sharing with your family during Thanksgiving as well. So let’s just jump into that first piece of good news for this Thanksgiving week, David.

David:

I’m going to deal with some science here. How many times have you heard anti-science in recent years? What do you heard before?

Tim:

Well, more specifically in the last year and a half, probably mostly started with Dr. Fauci with the vaccine mandate. And actually, I mean, even interestingly enough, he’s been on TV and said people, let’s say, they’re anti-Fauci, people that are really against me or against science as if he represents all science. But probably in the last year and a half or two years, man, almost every single day, I have seen a post on social media or heard a news media personality talk about it. So, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times.

David:

So yeah, COVID for sure, what are the topics you hear anti-science on?

Tim:

Global warming was a big deal for that.

David:

Yeah.

Tim:

Yeah. Now we’re going to think about all the leftist agenda things, it really is, so whether it be gender or climate change, or vaccines, yeah… So how far back are we going?

David:

Well, it’s interesting because I say that because one that used to be at the top of the story just even two or three years ago was embryonic stem cell research. And stem cell research used to be follow the science and you’ll do embryonic stem cell research. This goes all the way back to Clinton back when he was president, and he gave the thing that embryonic stem cell research is going to cure all diseases. And so Christopher Reeves, who broke his neck, guy who played Superman, I mean, it was going to be embryonic stem cell research that would give him his limbs back, he’d been paralyzed from the neck down and…

Rick:

John Edwards, remember him, VP, candidate for Curie Edwards got up and literally gave speeches saying they’re going to walk out of there, get up out of their wheelchairs. He sounded like it was crazy.

David:

It was. It sounds like a revival meeting. And I remember Michael Fox, same thing, you know, he had some physical problems, then it’s going to be embryonic stem cells that cured all this. And so all that was going on, and they touted that, and they touted us and Clinton all the way through. And California, you may recall a few years ago they voted for $3 billion in taxpayer funds in California to go for embryonic stem cell research, and New York did the same thing.

And so it’s really interesting to see what it is now a few years later and how quietly a change has occurred here. For example, California still had about 1.2 billion left in their funds and they diverted those funds. Even though they had been specifically voted for embryonic stem cell research by the people, they put them over into adult stem cell research, because to date, they still have zero cures from embryonic stem cell research. Here we are 40 something years later.

And on the other side, there’s more than 100 cures on adult stem cell research. But adult stem cell research was against the science, all the science, follow the science was embryonic, you need to kill unborn children, you need to destroy that embryo, and that’s what’s going to give real progress in science. Well, it hasn’t worked out.

And the latest one to jump on that just almost no headlines on this at all, but it looks that New York has done the same thing. New York had begun funding embryonic stem cell research in 2007. And now as they come to their budget for 2022, they said, you know, we’re not going to fund that anymore, we’re going to fund the other stuff, the adult stem cell research.

And by the way, for people who don’t know much about this debate because it hasn’t been there for three or four years anyway, the debate is that there are things that God has put in your body, they’re almost like light switches that you can trigger them, then in return on something your body, your body really kind of heals itself. And so there are things you can do like with injecting stem cell after knee surgery that will cause healthy cells to grow back where there’s been damaged tissue with knee injuries, the same in so many other areas.

And so the trick had been well if you need stuff for the knee, you need to take the cells out of the knee in order to put back in the knees. So it was you had to have those specific cells for their injury was. And then they said, well if he can do embryonic, that’s what they called a pluripotent cell. And a pluripotent cell was one you could trick into believing it was anything. So you could take an embryonic stem cell and convince that stem cell it was a brain cell or a nerve cell or a lung cell or whatever you needed to fight cancer or fight any disease. And you could trick it into thinking it was something else then it would heal itself, except it never worked.

Now, what’s interesting is adult stem cells, they’re pluripotent as well, and you can trick them into thinking there’s something else. You can tell adult stem cell, hey, you’re a brain cell, go fix the brain or go fix the spinal column or whatever. And so that’s where we’re finding all the progress. And it’s interesting that all the stuff that the left wanted if you disagreed with them, it was anti-science. And now even they have come over to the other side, although you’re not going to hear them admit that they got anything wrong, and I guess that movie from the 70s, the love story where O’Neill said love means never having to say you’re sorry, that’s a liberal. Liberal means never having to say you’re sorry, never apologizing, never get anything wrong, and if I do, I’ll remind you of it.

But the good news is that even the left now has gone away from saying that you need to use aborted baby parts or you need to abort babies in order to get the stuff that’s going to heal people. It’s just not that way anymore. That’s really good news that now left and right both agree that embryonic stem cell is not a winning proposition.

Rick:

Yeah, David, I remember, man, we did a lot of Good News Friday programs years ago as discovery after discovery of adult stem cell research came out. And it was actually a big staple in our Good News Friday story. So it’s just good to know that it’s all still headed the right direction and something to celebrate here at the beginning of our Thanksgiving week. So Tim, what’s your first good news story of our Thanksgiving week of good news?

Tim:

Well, I’m excited we have a chance to go through some of this massive stack of good news and some of the things on top or some of the more recent stories. And so I have several articles dealing with some of this vaccine mandate, and specifically, that things like this title was “OSHA suspends enforcement of vaccine mandate after court blocks it”.

And we have actually now seen every single appeals court in the US has had cases brought. And so they have kind of condensed those down in the Sixth Circuit is now the court that’s going to hear these challenges to the mandate. But the Fifth Circuit had an injunction, so they had to stay on what was going on. And largely, the Fifth Circuit report that came out said that there was a lot of constitutional issues, a lot of problems and overreach that was going on, which of course, is what all of us from the conservative side of the aisle have been indicating about this mandate itself.

But these articles are quite interesting, as it points out with the Sixth Circuit where. Again, all these challenges they’re not going to hear them at every single one of these different appeals courts. So they say one court is going to hear the case and it’s going to be representative for the others, and probably whatever side wins is going to get appealed to the US Supreme Court.

When you look at the makeup of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, what’s interesting about this is 20 of the 27 judges on that court were nominated by Republican presidents. And so people are very optimistic thinking that there’s a strong conservative majority which just because they’re Republican nominated somebody as a Judge or a Justice doesn’t always mean they’re conservative. Unfortunately, it’s been more so the case said the people that President Trump appointed have been much more conservative than pretty much any prior Republican president.

Nonetheless, there’s a lot of optimism. And this is one of the articles highlighting some of that conservative majority and what it looks like on the court. But as we mentioned, where this other article where OSHA has suspended enforcement of vaccine mandates after the court blocks at which that means for every business out there, anybody who is in the category that may be if you have 100 employees, or more, if you are a business owner, and you were thinking, man, let me just get this done because I don’t want to get myself in trouble because the deadline was going to be January for this OSHA mandate, well, now we can tell you hang on, don’t do anything. If there’s people in the company that want to get the vaccine, they should be able to choose to get a vaccine.

But if you are a small, or in this case not really small business owner, if you’re a business owner then you have more than 100 employees, what this suspension of the OSHA mandate means from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, and what they explained is now that the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals was going to hear the case and again, probably getting appealed to the Supreme Court, but what this means right now is to stay on that. And so you do not need to go for likely violating the constitutional and the free individual choice rights of your employees going forward. So there’s a lot of good news with this already. And I still have more things in my stack related to some of this COVID-19 vaccine requirement mandates and passports, etc.

David:

And by the way, just explain that a little bit on the process of what’s happening here. Tim, you mentioned that lawsuit in the Sixth Circuit. It’s interesting that as soon as that rule came down, I think it was the 4th of November came down, Attorney General Ken Paxton in Texas, and 27, other attorney generals instantly filed suit against it.

So, the one in Texas was picked up by the Fifth Circuit. And the Fifth Circuit, they came back with a quick ruling in two days on the 6th. They said, look, we got grave concerns, this thing is not constitutional. And so that’s where the early news got out that it looks like this is going to be dumped. And then they came back a few days later, with a really comprehensive ruling. They had really dug into it and they really had thought through their rulings, so they came back very strong. And in the meantime, all these other states had filed.

And so what happens is every single circuit court in the United States had one of these lawsuits going, and that’s where the rules of the federal judiciary say, when that happens, you just throw everybody into a lottery and we’ll pick some Circuit and one Circuit will hear it. Because what gets a case to the Supreme Court faster than anything is having all the Circuits deal with they’re having mixed decisions in various Circuits, and so it really doesn’t matter. And Tim as you mentioned, the Sixth Circuit is the most conservative Circuit, but it could have been picked up by the Second Circuit, which recently just went back to the Democrat side, Biden with his Judges, that’s flipped back the other way. So, either that or the Ninth Circuit, which has flipped back. Even one of those could have been in the lottery.

And the guarantee is just almost certain that whether it’s going to be a conservative Circuit, like the Sixth Circuit, or a liberal Circuit, like the Second or the Ninth, it’s going to get back to the Supreme Court. Just the fact that you have that many lawsuits means you’re going to hear something from the Supreme Court on this. So the Supreme Court, I mean, they know they got to pick this up, they know this is a big issue. And you can pretty much look at the philosophical positions of the judges, you know, the constitutionalist are going to come back, say this is not the jurisdiction of the federal government. And you know that those that want big government in the court are going to come back the other way.

So this is probably going to be a 4-5 decision, maybe a 6-3 decision, depending on where Roberts goes with this thing. could be even more than that actually. We had a couple of the liberal surprises recently. But nonetheless, this is why it is such a big deal. But what we’re really waiting to see right now is not how the Sixth Circuit comes down. Because I think you can pretty much say they’re going to come down against the mandate. What we’re waiting right now is just to get this thing through the Circuit courts and onto the US Supreme Court where this thing is finally going to be determined.

Rick:

Well, in effect, to speak directly to this is one of the attorneys that was right there with the Fifth Circuit dealing with this, had one of these cases that was brought together for the Fifth Circuit decision that was handed down. Our good friend, Kelly Shackleford. He was with us at the Legislators Conference and actually speaking to these legislators just a week or so ago about all the different things in the courts right now on religious liberty, and we had the chance to step out in the hallway and interview him about specifically this vaccine mandate case. And of course, he’s got our friends over at American Family Association, the Creation Museum, all these great conservative organizations.

And so we’ll get an update from him. This was before the lottery took place. So some of the things he’s talking about are setting us up for that lottery and explaining how that’s going to work, but just a really great interview with Kelly out in the hallway literally, at the ProFamily Legislators Conference. Quick break, we’ll be right back with Kelly Shackleford from First Liberty right here on WallBuilders Live.

AMERICAN HISTORY

Hi, friends, this is Tim Barton of WallBuilders. This is a time when most Americans don’t know much about American history or even heroes of the faith. And I know oftentimes we, parents, we’re trying to find good content for our kids to read.

And if you remember back to the Bible, to the book of Hebrews, it has the faith Hall of Fame where they outline the leaders of faith that had gone before them. Well, this is something that as Americans, we really want to go back and outline some of these heroes, not just of American history, but heroes of Christianity in our faith as well.

I want to let you know about some biographical sketches we have available on our website. One is called The Courageous Leaders collection. And this collection includes people like Abigail Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Francis Scott Key, George Washington Carver, Susanna Wesley, even the Wright brothers. And there’s a second collection called Heroes of History. In this collection, you’ll read about people like Benjamin Franklin or Christopher Columbus, Daniel Boone, George Washington, Harriet Tubman; friends, the list goes on and on. This is a great collection for your young person to have and read and it’s a providential view of American and Christian history. This is available at www.wallbuilders.com. That’s www.wallbuilders.com.

Rick:

Welcome back to WallBuilders Live. I am in the lobby of a hotel because I just grabbed one of the coolest attorneys on the planet who has maybe the hottest case in the nation, the vaccine mandates. Kelly Shackleford, good to see you, brother. Thanks for letting me pull you out of the Legislators Conference for a few minutes.

Kelly:

Happy to do it.

Rick:

Alright, so you’re here talking to legislators, which is great timing. But you’ve got all these cases across the country. This one at the Fifth Circuit on Biden’s vaccine mandate, you’ve got to stay on the mandate at this point. This is huge, man. You got American Family Association, Creation Museum, you got all these great clients for this particular case, but super excited about what came down. Tell us a little bit about what’s going on?

Kelly:

Well, the way it works, I mean, first what we had is Joe Biden, the President of the United States deciding that he wanted to take over every large company in the country if you have 100 more employees and that 84 million employees and tell them what their health care can be. It’s just that massive power grab. It’s unconstitutional. It violates federal statutes. And here’s what people don’t know…

Rick:

Say an overreach seems so wimpy compared to what this actually is, right?

Kelly:

And here’s what, of course, we don’t know. Yes, he took over all the companies, that includes every religious organization in the country that has 100 or more employees, churches. Okay, this is outrageous. And so we filed three lawsuits that, and the way this works under OSHA, it’s really weird. It’s not normal, like when you sue in a district court, there’s procedures you have to follow, so you file directly in the court of appeals.

Rick:

So you skip the district court?

Kelly:

You skip, and you file in there, you say, hey, they’re not applying the rules correctly. And then what happened in the Fifth Circuit is they took all the cases that were filed, one was by the state attorney general, two words by us, one was by TPP. And there’s all these different ones filed, and they just combine them. And so over a week ago, they issued an emergency stay saying that there were very concerning constitutional and statutory issues.

And a week later, they asked for briefs and everything to come in Monday and Tuesday, which we all did, and now we’ve got a decision that’s really strong. And it says what we all do, which is this is just outrageous. This is unconstitutional. It violates the statute. I mean, they’re just abusing everything. It’s like they don’t care to even try to follow the law. And so that’s great news. But what people need to really pray for is what Circuit this ends up that this weird process allows 10 days to go by. And then they look and see where all these lawsuits filed. Whatever circuits they’re filed in, those go into a hat, and on November the 16th, they’re going to draw out of a hat; one of those Circuits, all the cases which get funneled to that Circuit. So if it’s the Fifth Circuit, man, they’re in serious…

Rick:

Yeah. So it’s a great shot across the bow, but this is far from over? Yeah.

Kelly:

If you go to the DC Circuit, which is horrible.

Rick:

Wow! And this is in the enabling legislation for emergencies for OSHA, which Article 3 Section 3 allows Congress to kind of decide that appellate process, so this weird process is different…

Kelly:

And by the way, they’ve tried this, I think six times, and it’s been challenged, these emergencies, ETS; these emergencies six times they’ve done this, that they’ve been challenged. They’ve only been successful once. Okay. And this is not the one. I mean, this is so off the page. So really, it’s an important case, but I think it’s highly likely that by the time we get to January 4, this OSHA thing is not going into effect.

And here’s the thing people also [inaudible 19:26] even if it did, which is not, the federal law is still in place that gives everybody a right to religious exemption, to a medical exemption. So I mean, a lot of people are panicked over this. The reality is the law is still in place to protect everybody. I know a lot of religious people who run businesses saying what am I supposed to do? You know, what do I do if they force this mandate? I said, well, if it was me, I would say, you know what, even though this mandate comes into place, we also have protections for religious freedom, and I just want you to know I respect the law. And so if anybody asked for an exemption under Title VII, which they have a right to an exemption, I will certainly recognize…

Rick:

Yes. Yes. Invite them to make the exemption.

Kelly:

So I think we’re going to knock this out anyway. But even if we didn’t, there’s still protections for people. Now, what’s more disconcerting is things like, what those who are like in the military have been through…

Rick:

Yes. Yes. And you guys have cases there too, right. Mike Berry on your team has a lot of military members as clients, and so fighting on that front as well.

Kelly:

They have religious liberty protection. But they got an administration that’s trying to run roughshod over that. So we still have some battles to go across the board. But I feel like we’re going to win all these battles. And certainly, on this Biden mandate trying to take over all the companies, I really think that that’s going to be a victory, but this is going to be seen as a massive, unconstitutional overreaching, massive statutory overreach. And the courts have already sent a strong signal, by the way, you read this opinion from the Fifth Circuit is three Judges. Two of the three Judges are Trump’s appointee, so that tells you a little something about why it’s so strong on the Constitution. And the other is probably stronger than the two Trump guys and that [crosstalk 21:15].

Rick:

No kidding.

Kelly:

She’s like a legend on the court. So this is three great Judges to draw at random, and boy, did they issue a strong…

Rick:

I was amazed, I mean, even the opening of the opinion, basically they start with. Hey, last June, OSHA looked at this and said it’s not necessary. Why in the world are we even considering this at this point, right? It’s certainly an emergency.

Kelly:

And it’s such an emergency that we’re not going to go through the process that we’re supposed to go through under the Administrative Procedure Act to get something approved. And by the way, it’s also such an emergency that we’re only requiring it for people with 100 employees. If you’re a company with less than 100, it’s not that much of an emergency.

Rick:

And it’s such an emergency that it took us two months to put our 493-page rules together, and it’s not going to go into effect for another two months after that. I mean, it just belies all common sense completely. As I was telling you, before we went on the air, this was the first opinion I’ve read that was so full of common sense. I mean, they raised the issue of this doesn’t apply to everybody. What about the people that already have natural immunity? What about the people that have the vaccine that the government tells us is effective, so those 70%? Anyway, it’s a really good opinion.

One of the things you said, the fact that one of the things that’s bothered me is all the CEOs and company heads that have just immediately tried to implement this thing, even when just it was nothing more than a speech from the President, there wasn’t even a rule yet, do you think this decision will help give them some backbone to say, hey, let’s at least hold off and wait?

Kelly:

It should. It should. But I mean, you just wonder if some of these companies just want an excuse to force this. It’s really not very wise if you’re a CEO. I mean, you don’t want to lose good people, really. It’s kind of like our SEALs case with 35 Navy SEALs. We want to get rid of our best Navy. This is nuts. And every American knows is nuts. If you’re a CEO, and you have any brains, you realize this is nuts for you too, because you’re going to lose your best people. Let’s make sure we get rid of people that have a conscience that are very conscientious that thing about things, that have religious convictions, that maybe are even willing to lose their job, over were doing the right thing. That’s the kind of people you want.

Rick:

Tell them we want them. Well, if you’re listening, and you’re that person, you get fired, some to Texas, we’ll find a good job for you here. Yeah, the SEAL thing just blows my mind, toughest guys on the planet, right, I mean, healthiest guys on the planet. Why in the world would you get rid of? And I think between you guys and these other cases out there, it’s like 200 Navy SEALs that are against this, that’s almost a 10th of the force. I mean, that’s huge.

Kelly:

It’s credible what’s happening to people. Then I will say this. I want people to make sure and understand we’ve got a information a little pamphlet on our website at firstliberty.org where they can, whatever their situation, whether they’re military, whether they’re in school, whether they have a private employer, a government employer that lays out what the rights really are and provides exemption examples. And I’ll tell you, most people are getting their exemption, not true in the military because they’re banning everything which is illegal. But it’s true in most other places.

I don’t want people to be intimidated out. And even if you’re denied, forced denial because it’s a violation of federal law, and it will give you rights to proceed if you so want to. But realize that information is out there. If you know somebody who’s struggling, have them go to firstliberty.org, it lays out what the law is, you are protected, you can make decisions. And I can’t tell how many people have come up to me just at random, we didn’t even know that said, I know you don’t know this, but thank you, you saved my career. I have 30 years, I thought I was done, and I said we didn’t do anything we just put it online. They said no, no, it really makes a big deal. If you know somebody or it’s you or whatever, don’t despair, the law is there, you can go and reach that and hopefully, continue doing what the Lord has you do.

Rick:

Firstliberty.org, go there and get the information. What a treat to have you, Kelly. You guys, you have no idea how cool this guy is. Look, he’s about to go on stage and speak. I grab him and pull him out in the hallway. He’s calm as a cucumber, it’s like no big deal. Most people are panicking about what they’re about to speak on. And here he is, he’s got these big cases going on. Brother, I love you, man, you’re for such a time as this. God puts you in this place, you are saving so many people, their jobs, these people in the military, giving them comfort and aid supporting them. We appreciate you very much, Kelly.

Kelly:

I appreciate you.

Rick:

That was Kelly Shackleford right there at the ProFamily Legislator Conference. And guys, of course, he wanted to stay in the Fifth Circuit, which I think we all did. But Sixth Circuit, as Tim said at the beginning of the program could be really good.

David:

It could be really good. And I think what’s going to happen with this is no matter which Circuit it goes through, we talked before it’s going to head to the Supreme Court pretty quickly. And I think the court will take this, and I think they’ll move fairly rapidly on it. I don’t think this is one of those controversial decisions that you’re going to have to wait till June before they come back with their decision which they often do on religious liberty cases, or marriage cases, or whatever. I think they’ll come back with this pretty quick because the nation needs clarity and guidance on this. This has divided the nation like few things have in recent years. So I think you’ll see a pretty quick return on this decision.

Rick:

What a great way to close out our first day of our Thanksgiving week of Good News Fridays, is probably the biggest case in the country right now with all that is going on. So, good news on that front and much more good news to share with you throughout the week, so join us all throughout this Thanksgiving week for Good News Friday type programs; lots of good news to share with you. You’ve been listening to WallBuilders Live.