States Sue Biden Over Executive Order And Much More – Tune in today to hear some good news! 12 states sue Biden over a climate change executive order, ‘pro-life evangelicals for Biden’ wake up to the truth of his administration, and more!

Air Date: 03/19/2021

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, looking forward to talking about the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. And of course, today since it’s Friday, that will be a lot of good news on looking at the issues of the day from a biblical, historical, and constitutional perspective.

David and Tim Barton have been gathering good news stories. And I know when I say that, you’re probably thinking, how is that possible, there’s so many bad things happening in America today? Well, friends, it depends on where you look. No question, we got huge challenges. But because of people just like you get engaged in the process, living out your freedom, doing your duty under the Constitution, we are seeing a lot of victories across the country, mostly at the local level and the state level, obviously a disaster at the federal level. But a lot of good stuff happening at the local and state level and we want to bring you some of that good news today. Here on this Good News Friday.

Now, if you listen to the day’s program, and even with the wonderful good news stories we’re going to share. It’s not enough. There’s more good news at our website. So be sure to visit our website wallbuilderslive.com, you can get the archives of the last few weeks and months, they’re in the website. And then also you can get a list of the stations across the country where we can be heard, as well as the great opportunity available to get the website to make a contribution. Yes, make that one-time or monthly contribution, it helps to amplify our voice, helps to get this voice of truth out there, teaching and educating and inspiring citizens to do their duty. So be a part of that, go to the website today at wallbuilderslive.com.

I am looking forward to some good news this week. So what is the start of our Good News Friday, David?

David:

Well, it’s got to go back to some of Biden’s executive orders. He has cranked out executive orders, I mean, at an amazing rate, just in the first…

Rick:

No, no, no, David, I said good news, good news…

David:

It’s coming. It’s coming.

Rick:

Good news and Biden’s executive orders, I did not expect to be in the same segment.

David:

It’s coming. It took us a while to get there, but it’s coming. In the first nine days the number of collector orders he cranked out was more than what 15 separate presidents had issued throughout their entire presidency. So since then, it’s…

Tim:

I kind of don’t want to guess on what presidents those were.

David:

I bet you get most of them.

David:

I bet and I bet most of them were back in the founding era when they weren’t doing as many executive orders. But yeah, that would be interesting, that’s a side note, that’s not part of the good news. So we’ll play this game, maybe on a break. But yes, okay, I’m going to come back to that thought.

David:

Yeah, back in the founding era when they actually knew that legislators made policy and not presidents made policy, there were going to be very few. So with that, a lot of the states started saying, Wait a minute, with the way he’s cranking out executive orders, this is going to try to take over and federalize every state, you’ll lose all the distinction states, you’ll lose federalism, which is a great concept given by the Founding Fathers to separate the state governments from the federal government so that one size does not fit all. And so states, like here in Texas, our governor issued an executive order telling every agency be ready to sue and fight back and take the Biden administration to court for anything that gets into the state jurisdiction. If they start trying to run the state from Washington, you sue and go after them.

Tim:

And let’s make an important distinction here, because you just said Biden executive orders are bad, Governor Abbott executive order, good. The distinction would be that Governor Abbott’s order says, guys, make sure we are following the Constitution. And I am encouraging you in this to follow the Constitution to protect our state, state’s rights, 10th Amendment, you can go through a litany of things. But this is an executive order to encourage following the Constitution. Whereas what we’re pointing out is that there’s probably executive orders from in this case, Joe Biden, where there are things that directly violate standards and principles and even letter of the law of American law policy in the Constitution. And this is where there’s an important distinction that it’s not hypocritical, saying this executive order good, this one bad, it’s a reflection of every time a leader says follow the Constitution, that’s a good thing.

David:

And the Constitution is really clear in pointing out the jurisdictions generally between the federal and state governments. According to folks like James Madison and the Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and writings of Thomas Jefferson, generally, the feds are tasked with foreign responsibilities and domestic responsibilities go to the states. That’s why education is a state area. It’s not a foreign area. Police power, state area, not a foreign area. Now when it comes to military and borders, etc, yeah, federal areas.

So in that distinction, the Constitution gives what are called enumerated powers. It says federal government, here are 17 things you can do. And then it very specifically says after that, that if it’s not one of those enumerated powers, it belongs to the states. So according to the Constitution, unless the federal gun is explicitly given the right to do something by the Constitution, it falls to the area of states. And that’s why the Founding Fathers said those areas that belonged to the federal government are limited and definite, and those that belong to the state governments are unlimited and numerous. So there’s a big difference there.

Well, as it turns out, one of President Biden’s executive orders was a climate change an executive order to say how businesses will be run and the states, what they can do, what energy they can do, what they can manufacture, how agriculture has to work, etc. And so the climate change really is killing tens of thousands of jobs in state across the United States. States are losing control of their own businesses. And so right now you have 12 states that properly filed an executive order saying, no, no, no, you can’t do this. This is not a federal jurisdiction and you’re not going to take over all the states just because this is what you believe to be right and true.

So it’s really good to see states pushing back and saying, this is not what we’re going to allow to happen.  And it’s interesting to me that so many governors right off the bat knew right after the inauguration that this was going to happen. They saw this coming. And I’m going to extend this a little bit, Rick, and sorry, Tim, I’m going to cut into your time just a bit. But I thought…

Tim:

Dad, it’s so shocking, is ever happened never happens. Guys, this is the first time ever, I don’t even know what to do now.

David:

Since this is the first time I’m going to take liberty I haven’t taken, well, I can’t really say that, I’ve done this before. So I read this headline and I read this article, and I laughed out loud. And I laugh out loud for a lot of things, movies, etc. But I rarely laugh out loud for headlines that I see in articles that I see, but this is one of them.

It says “Pro-Life Evangelicals for Biden ‘Feel Used and Betrayed’”. And they met with President Biden for the election said his pro-life evangelicals for you, we’re going to get out and work and support you because we believe you can bring dialogue between the pro-abortion, radical Democrats and the pro-life Republicans and we can find middle ground somewhere. And we’re counting on you to do that.

Rick:

How dumb does somebody have to be to be a pro-life evangelical for Joe Biden?

David:

And believe that he is actually going to ignore all of his voting record for years, ignore the platform of his party, ignore what he campaigned on, ignore what he had on his website, and say, we’re counting on you to bridge the gap between radical Democrats on abortion and pro-life Republicans.

Tim:

And the notion that this used to be well understood is you kind of become like who you hang around. And so maybe you thought Joe Biden’s a really honorable person, and I’m not trying to necessarily criticize President Biden right now. But you look who he surrounds himself with? Let’s say that President Biden maybe wasn’t as extreme, when you surround yourself with extreme people when it comes to the issue of life that they believe not only in the murder of unborn babies, but even after they’re born in many occasions, that the doctors should still be able to take their life, you go down the list, he is surrounded himself with very extreme people that are pro-death of unborn children and you’re surprised that all of a sudden he’s consistent with all the people around him?

Dad, as you mentioned, not to mention the website and everything else you could have looked at, his own voting record for how many years, it’s really foolish to imagine that you were going to find something different than what he’s shown himself to be for all these years.

David:

And this takes me back to what were called Aesop’s Fables is about 600 years before the birth of Christ. Aesop’s Fables came out and they were to really give you kind of stories that showed moral lessons you should learn. So you study Aesop’s Fables have these moral lessons. And one was the fable of a farmer who saw a viper out in freezing cold weather, struggling and freezing to death, because snakes are cold-blooded. They’re not like mammals would be, they respond to the weather. And so there’s a snake out there freezing to death in cold. And he takes pity on that viper and he picks it up and takes it home and gets it all warm and cares for it and it turned around, bites him and kills him.

And so I use that fable not to say that anybody in this new story we’re talking about is the viper. But to say the lesson was out there that you should not expect things to act contrary to their demonstrated nature. And so here these folks are saying, hey, we’re pro-life and we want Biden to be pro-life, and we’re going to support you, pro-life evangelicals for Biden. Look, don’t expect him to act differently than his nature. And I say that to go back to the executive order.

So many governors knew that when Biden was elected, we need to get ready to defend all sorts of rights given to the States by the Constitution, because he’s going to come after that. Why did they know that? Because of his record. Because of his platform. Because of how he campaigned. He’s going to act according to his nature. And the good news is that a lot of governors saw that and they’re taking action right now to try to limit that. It is unfortunate that some people are naive enough not to believe that people act according to the nature, but they do.

Rick:

Alright guys quick break we’ll be right back, more good news when we return on WallBuilders Live.

BREAK

This is Tim Barton from WallBuilders with another moment from American history. The Second Amendment to the Constitution which guarantees to every individual the right to keep and bear arms has been targeted for years now by those who are determined to dismantle the individual right to self-protection. Opponents argue that only the militia, the military and law enforcement are to have and use firearms.

But those who wrote the Second Amendment strenuously disagreed, including founding father Richard Henry Lee, a signer of the Declaration, a president of the Continental Congress, and one of those who actually frame the Second Amendment. He declared “To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms and be taught alike, especially when young how to use them.” For more information about Richard Henry Lee in the history of the Second Amendment, go to wall builders.com.

Rick:

Welcome to WallBuilders Live, Good News Friday today, and Tim Barton’s got the next piece of good news or Tim, do we have to not let you have a piece of good news since your dad said he was going to take your time?

David:

I think we can give him 15-20 seconds here.

Tim:

You guys are so generous, man.

Rick:

20 seconds, let see how fast he can talk.

Tim:

Wow, the generosity abounds. Guys, thanks so much.

Rick:

25 seconds, we’ll stretch it.

Tim:

Okay. So this comes from the US Supreme Court, a decision that came down just very recently dealing with a student who in 2016 was at a college in Georgia, it was Georgia Gwinnett College. And he was a Christian. He wanted to share his faith, but he was told you can only share your faith if you stay in a free speech zone. There were two free speech zones on campus, which made up less than 1% of the college campus. So you can only…

David:

And they were probably in the back parking lot on the other side of the parking lot underneath a gas tank somewhere.

Tim:

Well, they didn’t give me that the layout of the campus. But what we know is this is utterly ridiculous on so many levels. Nonetheless, if you want to talk about Jesus, you can only do it on those two places that are very, very small. Well, he said, that’s fine. So he went to those places, began to talk about his faith. And police officers showed up and told him he was not to share his faith even in the free speech zones. The question might arise why, why can’t you talk about Jesus? Because the school said their policy prohibited offensive speech. And here’s one of the mind boggling things is who determines what is offensive?

When we have a language out there to say, well, we don’t allow hate speech, well, generally, I’m not in favor of somebody’s saying something offensive and hateful to somebody else. But who determines what’s offensive and hateful? And isn’t that more determined by intent and motive? And even then, that’s part of free speech that we recognize people are going to say bad things and dumb things, but we defend their right to say them. Nonetheless, the school said, no, you can’t do it.

So Alliance Defending Freedom got involved and this was back in 2016 when this happened, Alliance Defending Freedom got involved. They represent this young man at the various court levels. And the 11th Circuit actually rules that you know what, the school a couple years down the road, actually apologized, changed their mind. And so now it’s a moot case, because the school reversed their policy and so we’re going to throw this out.

And ADF and the young man argued, but at this point, they didn’t let me do it while I was there, so this is still a relevant issue for me. So this carried on to the US Supreme Court. The US Supreme Court ruled in an 8-1 decision that the university was wrong and did owe this young individual some level of financial recompense, compensation for grievance of what was done and said that no school should ever be able to do this again. So here’s the good news is the US Supreme Court has just helped set a precedent in an 8-1 ruling that colleges can’t do this. So that’s really good news. What might be the interesting…

David:

And by the way, the last word we had was about 40% of college campuses still have free speech zones like this. So this will be good news to get rid of that. Sorry, Tim.

Tim:

Well, obviously, what might be interesting is, who was that loan dissent from the Justice who did not agree?

David:

Do you know?

Tim: I do. It’s in the article. So the loan justice was actually the Chief Justice John Roberts. Now, maybe slightly in his defense, he argued that well, I don’t think we need to have the decision because, as the 11th Circuit argued, this was a moot case because the school already changed their mind. So maybe there’s a little grace given in some regard to that. Nonetheless, this is a very important precedent, letting colleges know that you can’t shut down Christian speech on campus just because they’re Christians, and they’re sharing their faith and testimony, this is not offensive to talk about Jesus. Nonetheless, good news coming from US Supreme Court here in just the last couple weeks.

Rick:

Alright, very good news, we’ll be right back. More good news here on WallBuilders Live.

BREAK

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’re parents, we’re trying to find good content for our kids to read. And if you remember back to the Bible, 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 in read. And it’s a providential view of American and Christian history. This is [email protected]. That’s www.wallbuilders.com.

Rick:

We’re back here on WallBuilders Live, is Good News Friday today. Let’s dive into some more good news. And the next one’s coming from David Barton.

David:

This one actually deals with a bill that was just passed in Mississippi that bans transgender student athletes from female sports. So this is now 15 states that are doing this. And what states are trying to do is recognize that there actually is a gender difference. And it comes out when you get into things like sports. And we’ve talked about this for several programs across the years, even had interviews with folks.

I think the first bill came out of Idaho, great legislator up there who had been an NCAA college women’s basketball coach, said there’s a big difference. She started this. And now 15 states have jumped on board and saying, hey, there is a difference between male and female, especially when you get into sports, there are biological differences. Doesn’t matter what your head may think, if your body does have a difference and it does affect others, particularly when you compete against them at levels that really kind of makes it unfair. So that’s good news. This is starting to be a pushback across the nation with this mentality that says define yourself however you want to it has no consequences on anyone else. Yes, it does.

And adding to that, here’s a court case that just came down. And it said, Miss USA, EMISS, Miss USA can reject applicants who aren’t biologically female, according to a federal judge. So the rules that pageants say that you have to be a natural born female to participate in the Miss USA pageant. And there has been objections to that. And a lawsuit was filed and said, well, I want to participate, I’m not natural born female. And the judge says, no, it is fine to maintain that standard.

So to some degree, we’re seeing some kind of pushback where policies actually recognizing the laws of nature, nature’s God, to quote from the Declaration that there are gender male and female. Four times in the Bible says that God created them male and female. So this is a distinction that you see throughout nature with all mammals. But it’s nice to see that a federal judge is moving this direction as are 15 different state legislatures. And I think there’s more to come with this.

Rick:

Yeah, it’s very good news, especially when you’ve seen this happening all over the place, and you start to think are there any sane people left? I mean, how crazy are things going to get, and then you see this push back and it gives you hope that there are people out there that are going to push back on these crazy things. So very good news. Quick break, we’ll be right back with our final piece of good news for the day. You’re listening to WallBuilders Live.

BREAK

Hey, guys, we want to let you know about a new resource we have at WallBuilders called “The American Story”. For so many years, people have asked us to do a history book to help tell more of the story that’s just not known or not told today. And we would say very providentially in the midst of all of the new attacks coming out against America, whether it be from things like the 1619 project that say America is evil and everything in America was built off slavery, which is certainly not true or things like even the Black Lives Matter movement, the organization itself, not out of statement, Black Lives Matter, but the organization that says we’re against everything that America was built on, and this is part of the Marxist ideology. There’s so many things attacking America.

Well, is America worth defending? What is the true story of America? We actually have written and told that story. Starting with Christopher Columbus going roughly through Abraham Lincoln, we tell the story of America, not as the story of a perfect nation or a perfect people, but the story of how God used these imperfect people and did great things through this nation. It’s a story you want to check out, wallbuilder.com, “The American Story”.

Rick:

We’re back here on WallBuilders Live. Thanks for staying with us on Good News Friday. Final segment of the day. So, Tim, how are we wrapping up our good news today?

Tim:

Well, there is good news in the midst of not great news, but I’m going to focus on the good part. So as we look at the stimulus package that was done, the COVID-19 relief bill, all the [crosstalk 20:38] that was in there.

David:

Are you sure COVID-19 got any relief from that?

Tim:

Well, it got less than 10%. So I’m not sure that we can really count that. This is one of the silly things about Congress, and the political games that are played that too often the American people aren’t aware of or at least don’t hold Congress accountable for the ones that are aware of it, that you’re going to call this something that has very little to do with the bill as it is. So it’s a COVID-19 relief bill. And yet the majority of the bill does not go toward relief for people dealing with COVID-19, or for those businesses or for their homes, or the people that have lost their jobs along the way. It is utterly ridiculous.

In the midst of that, we know there’s a lot of packing that happens in some of these stimulus bills. Because people say, well, people don’t want to vote against COVID-19, that’s going to look bad for him. So people say let’s add on all these additional things, because we can get a pass in the midst of this. One of the additional thing…

David:

And I think that’s why out of the Republican leadership office, they’re calling this the “Pelosi Progressive Wishlist Bill” rather than the COVID Relief Bill. Because the other the 90% of stuff in there, if most Americans saw what that 90% was, they would object to this vehemently.

Tim:

At least object to the title of it being this, because there certainly are some Americans that would support a lot of these big bailouts for states and for companies and organizations and…

David:

For blue states and for companies and for labor unions and for the cities, they get torn down by the governors who would not stop the riots that went for months this summer, I mean, they’re getting paid off for not enforcing the law. So yeah, there’s some crazy stuff there.

Tim:

And of course, Americans are having to foot the bill on this. And so people are, for example, and some more conservative states where maybe they didn’t have a shutdown and so they’ve done better in their state and, and their policies were different, so they haven’t been impacted as hard. They’re having to pay a level of taxes for states that had governors who made poor decisions anyway. So in the midst of that, there’s a lot of problems with the stimulus package. And all of that being said, some of the good things that happen were some of the provisions that got cut out and kept out of this package.

One of those things was the minimum wage. Bernie Sanders encouraged and proposed that there should be a $15 minimum wage hike bill. And then this was in the Senate. Interestingly, it failed in the senate 58-42. And there were 8 Democrats who joined with the 50 Republicans to oppose this.

David:

Wow, good for them.

Tim:

Well, in the midst of that, some of these might not be super surprising, because some of the states they’re from. Although it’s interesting, recognizing that some of them would not have been the initial thoughts, or the initial names we would have thought might have been on this. But here’s the big news from this is one of the things that even many of these Democrat senators realized is that there’s a lot more negative impact that comes from a minimum wage increase than any gain that comes.

The argument is that that people need to make more so they can live better. We forget the idea of a minimum wage and just forget the even minimum wage being a pro-thing or negative thing for a minute. When you enter into the market, whatever you enter into that wage, that’s not supposed to be where you live the rest of your life, that is an entry level position. You enter into the market, you develop skill, you develop ability, and you progress from that position. That’s not meant to be where you are the rest of your life living in that position. And so this argument for raising minimum wages, well, people need to make more money so they can support their family.

Yeah, well, I don’t disagree that you want to make more money and support your family, but you don’t make more money supporting your family by increasing minimum wage. If you were only making “minimum wage”, and you’ve been in the same job for 15 years, either you need to find a different job or maybe there’s a reason that you haven’t gotten a raise in 15 years, and you’re still making the lowest level there is. There’s been poor decision somewhere by somebody, and you need a different position or you need a different work ethic or different attitudes, something needs to change.

Anyway, the big picture of this is the senate recognize, by and large, this was not going to be a positive position to increase the minimum wage. So even though there was so much nonsense in the stimulus package, there is a lot of good news of things that got excluded from it, including some more things we can talk about upcoming weeks, things like Senator Rand Paul help stop with things related to the life and abortion issues. So we’ll deal with that on another episode of Good News Friday. But at least for now, it’s really good news this provision did not pass and so at least that is not going to be part of the stimulus package.

Rick:

Well, we’re out of time for good news today, we’ll have more good news on next Friday’s program to share with you. But I wanted to close this out with an email from one of our listeners, some good news from them. It’s Sebastian from Brooklyn, New York. And he says, “I’m so thankful that I found out about this WallBuilders Live radio program. And it’s thanks in part to all your hard labor that I’m more knowledgeable about the Bible, and for the most part more knowledgeable about American history. 

In 2 Corinthians 11:8, Paul informs the Corinthian church that he took salaries from other churches for his service while charging them nothing. And this is how I felt when I first learned about the program. I was daily learning from all of you for free, knowing that you all could have chosen to charge for listeners to listen to full guest interviews. And I appreciate you not going that route. Like I do for church prioritizing 10% of my week’s wage so that God’s house could have food after praying about this one for some time, I’ve decided that I will apply the same principle to further the work of the WallBuilders ministry. I love you all. Thank you so much. And please keep up the hard work.”

Sebastian, thank you so much for being a listener of WallBuilders Live and for applying what we’re teaching here, and being a good voice of freedom in your community. And thank you for being a listener that supports the program as well. Thanks for your contributions, and thanks for your good word and email in that in. Folks, if you want to be like that, if you want to make that contribution, you can do so at WallBuilders Live right now by clicking on that donate button. And maybe it’s a one-time contribution or like Sebastian, you want to do some sort of weekly or monthly support to the program and invest in freedom in that way. We greatly appreciate it.

Thanks so much to all our listeners out there. Thank you for listening to WallBuilders Live.