New Light Shone on COVID Mandates – with Mat Staver: Mat Staver is on with us, again. This time he is on to talk to us about a review on COVID mandates as Neil Gorsuch address a case related to Title 42, halting immigration during COVID. He brings to light the overreach by state and local governments with mandated masking, closing of churches, lock-downs and more. He lays it all out and presents the truth. What can we learn from this going forward?

Air Date: 06/7/2023

Guest: Mat Staver

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

Liberty Counsel

 

Transcription:

Rick Green
You found your way to the intersection of faith and the culture, it’s WallBuilders. We’re taking on those hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. That means we’re looking at whatever everybody’s talking about. We’re looking at that from, as best we can, from a biblical perspective, what’s the word of God say about it. I promise you, you want to save America? Most important thing you can do is be in God’s word every day. If you hadn’t read through the founders Bible, get you a copy of the founders Bible and make 2023, the year that you read straight through the Bible and the articles in that founders Bible, as you’re reading God’s word, then you read the articles that are applying God’s word to what’s happening in the culture and sharing stories of times throughout American history where someone applied that particular scripture that you just read. There’s just no substitute for it. I love it. I’m going back to the founders Bible myself, again this year, sharing that on social media. If you want to follow on social media, I post every day or, you know, once a week on what the reading is going to be for that week, and for each individual day, and it’ll get you through the entire founders Bible. It’s really, really a great way to dive in. So biblical perspective, and then historical and constitutional perspective- what can we learn from history about that hot topic of the day? What does the Constitution say? In other words, how do you approach that issue under our particular form of government? So that’s what we do at WallBuilders: biblical, historical and constitutional perspective, as we are rebuilding the walls, rebuilding the foundations of this nation. Greatest nation in the history of the world, folks, most powerful, most free, the wealthiest, most benevolent nation, the world has ever known. And there’s a reason for that, there’s a formula, there’s a secret sauce that produced that result. We’ve moved away from that secret sauce for years, now. It’s time to get back to it. And that’s what WallBuilders does. My name is Rick Green. I’m a former Texas legislator and America’s constitution coach. And I am thrilled and honored to be serving here with David and Tim Barton. David is America’s premier historian. He’s our founder at WallBuilders. Tim’s a national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders. And all three of us are excited to be able to serve you through this program and through the other things that WallBuilders does to reach out and impact the culture with pastors and teachers and, you know, all kinds of folks, young people, you name it, legislators, but it’s just an honor to be here and be a part of this and we appreciate you joining us here on WallBuilders. Mat Staver of Liberty Counsel with us a little later in the program, guys going to give us an update on some of the things that are going on, one of those being the Supreme Court. I say decision, it was, I guess, was it a decision or dissent, but courses just kind of went off on the tyranny, the COVID tyranny, the… what’d Steve Deace call it? COVID-stan, that took place over the last three years. So pretty good that a Supreme Court justice is basically saying the things that we three had been saying on this program from nearly the beginning.

David Barton
Yeah, it was a decision dealing with Title 42, which was the immigration type of stuff. And Title 42, the immigration stuff, there was a COVID provision put in there that allowed immigrants, required to stay on the other side of the border, not just the Remain in Mexico policy. But COVID said, You can’t come in the United States, our immigration laws are different under COVID. And so Biden repealed Title 42, the COVID restrictions. And so there were efforts in court to try to continue those in order to keep the border more secure. And so the house and others had sued, and there were plaintiffs against the Biden administration and lifting rule 42, which was the COVID rule. And it was unanimous Supreme Court decision that, no you can’t keep the COVID restrictions in place. Even if you’re trying to help immigration and stop the flow of illegal immigrants. You can’t do it this way. And that’s where Gorsuch in that unanimous opinion, he came out and said, and by the way, this should never happen. Even the first time three years ago, when COVID hit, this should never been allowed to happen. And so Gorsuch, did a huge smackdown of how bad the policy had been. Of course, we’ve been saying that for three years, or however long it’s been three and a half years, whatever it is. But it just takes a while for things to work through the court. The decision with Coach Kennedy, allowing prayer back at for him to pray at football games, again. What that take, seven years for that to get to the court and get there? So, you know, the court is nowadays getting it right much more often than they have in previous decades. It just takes a while to get there. And in the meantime, we have all this oppression from government officials, and that’s not been a good thing. So since Mat Staver is maybe the most active person in the nation on fighting these COVID restrictions… I think at one time he told us that he had more than 10,000 people who had contacted him will COVID restrictions. He had a case going in all 50 states, a case in all 50 states, imagine that, trying to litigate that much in all the states. I don’t think anybody was more active than he was, maybe some more as active but we figured it’d be good to get Mat Staver’s opinion on this, now that he’s on the victorious… Well, he was on the victorious side all along, kept winning in the lower courts. I don’t know that he lost the case and lower courts but finally the US Supreme Court has unanimously rejected all the COVID restriction notions the government was doing in previous years.

Rick Green
Well we’ll go right to him after the break. Mat Staver with us today, folks. Stay with us you’re listening to WallBuilders.

Tim Barton
This is Tim Barton from WallBuilders with another moment from American history. Founding Fathers, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson originally worked closely together, but later became ardent opponents. This troubled Dr. Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration who knew both of them very well. In the Bible, 2 Corinthians 5:18 tells us that God has given each of us the ministry of reconciliation. Dr. Rush believed this and set out to bring the two back together. It took a while, but Adams and Jefferson once again became close friends. And looking back on his role and helping bring about this reconciliation Dr. Rush stated, “It will give me pleasure as long as I live to reflect that I have been in any degree instrumental and affecting this reunion of two souls destined to be dear to each other and motivated with the same dispositions to serve their country though in different ways.” For more information about Dr. Benjamin Rush and his other remarkable achievements, go to WallBuilders.com .

Rick Green
Welcome back to WallBuilders. Thanks for staying with us. Our good friend Mat Staver, back with us once again. Mat, thanks for your time today, brother.

Mat Staver
Thank you. Good to be with you, as always.

Rick Green
I feel like we need a, you know, three hour show today because there’s so many things I want to catch up with you on but first and foremost, you know, basically had a Supreme Court Justice, Neil Gorsuch, say the things you’ve been saying for three years, we’ve been saying for three years and feels like a little bit of indication just talking about how crazy it was things went in the COVID crackdowns. What did you think when you saw that?

Mat Staver
Well, I was really pleased with this. This was in this immigration case, or this Title 42 case, Arizona versus Mayorkas, and in an 8 page opinion, Justice Neil Gorsuch blast the lockdowns and mandates and presents the truth regarding the constitutional issues in the violation of our civil liberties. He says, in fact, quote, since March 2020, we may have experienced the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country. Executive officials across the country continues issued emergency decrees on a breathtaking scale. Governors and local leaders imposed lockdown orders forcing people to remain in their homes. They shuttered businesses and schools, public and private, they closed churches, even as they allowed casinos and other favored businesses to carry on. He continues on and goes on and on about how they surveilled church parking lots, recorded license plates and issued notices warning that attendance at even outdoor services set aside all states social distancing, and hygiene requirements could amount to criminal conduct. They divided cities and neighborhoods into color coded zones forced individuals to fight for their freedoms in court on emergency timetables and then changed their color coded schemes when defeat in court seemed imminent. It is a great rebuke of what we have seen with the violation of our civil liberties. It was good to see that from the United States Supreme Court. The fact of the matter is, however, too many judges just bought the mantra of the CDC and FDA without doing their own individual research and assuming that there’s a constitutional pause button on the United States Constitution, which there’s not.

Rick Green
Man, Mat, I so appreciate you saying that last part as well, because, you know, I’m so thankful Gorsuch said all of this. But how many times throughout that three years, I mean, you brought so many lawsuits to try to stop this nonsense. And these judges too often kick the can down the road, like you said, because they bought the lies and the deception and where the court was supposed to be… and I actually said in literally April of 2020, I was like, this is not… this is going to be over quick, folks, because there’s no compelling interest here. None of this stuff is least restrictive or narrowly tailored. Don’t worry! Don’t worry! The courts are going to strike this stuff down. And then they just kept falling for it. But thankfully, I mean, and you had a lot of victories in between the, you know, the courts, you know, not taking some of this stuff. So it was wins and losses, but I agree with your statement, it was just there were way too many judges that gave into the fear. They were afraid. Ah, there’ll be blood on my hands if I don’t, you know. And man, the principles aren’t supposed to change, right? I mean, the principles don’t change for a virus.

Mat Staver
No, they don’t change just because you have a pandemic or a virus or some other scary situation that confront you. In fact, it’s during this time of fear that we can lose our constitutional freedom. And we realized how quickly that can happen. More so, I think, than either of us ever thought would be able to happen, but we actually saw it unfold. We saw it unfolded by the governors, by the local city officials, the county officials, the schools. We saw this unfold specifically in the courts. We ended up winning twice at the Supreme Court, 5:4 and then again 6:3, but it was a real struggle. This was probably no question the most intense timeframe of litigation that we’ve ever had. Having rulings coming out on Friday evening, late early Saturday morning, we had to respond by Sunday. I mean, it was wild, wild west kind of litigation. And fortunately, at the end of the day, we won. But, you know, some of these nonsensical rulings are still going on, for example, we’re still dealing with people that are being taken off, or not put back on the organ transplant list, because they refused the COVID shot for religious reasons. We’re still dealing with students and employees that have been terminated from their job. In fact, I just recently argued at the Court of Appeals for the first circuit, we got to three to zero victory, we’ll now go back to do discovery, but it’s on the main health care workers. Our lead client in this case is a 20 year veteran of nursing, she was head of the… one of the units at the hospital in the ICU. And now she’s doing construction work, because she was terminated by the mandate in Maine, issued by the Mills administration from the governor’s office.

Rick Green
Wow, man, it just doesn’t seem to end. And it is important how we see the past, right, how history is remembered and how people remember what happened here. If they think that, oh, government saved us because of all of these things, then they’ll want more of it in the future. So it’s so important to talk about these cases and talk about these principles. But I just have to say to our listeners out there llc.org I’m telling you, Mat and his team had cases going all over the country and it was wild, wild west of stuff, chaos. And they did such an amazing job with it. And it’s because of your help and your donations. So many people got defended for free and represented for free because of your help. So go to that website today and help these guys to continue that great work and to continue to bring up good attorneys. I mean Mat, that’s another thing is just having good attorneys, good judges, focusing in on raising up a new generation that believes in these principles of liberty. And you guys are doing that even now at the… oh there’s so many things I want to talk to you about, World Health Organization, I want you to… I want to talk about that fight, but you’re talking about the raising of kids right now, with the principles from the very beginning. You got a K through 12 effort going on. Tell us about that. So people can go to that website and learn more.

Mat Staver
Yes, you know, we have an educational crisis and what we see, today, with people not knowing the Constitution, not, you know, having the animosity to America and our freedom and moving towards Marxism and socialism, the disrespect that we see. All of that is because of our bankrupt education system. The public education system really has bankrupted generations, and will continue to do so unless we make a change. So for a number of years, we’ve been involved in training up young people. We’ve just now launched Covenant Journey Academy, which is a full service K-12, online Christian Academy available 24/7, 365. We have six languages: Spanish, French, Latin, German, Chinese and American Sign Language. You can begin some of these languages as early as kindergarten. It is taught… all of these 150+ courses through… K through 12 are taught by certified teachers, you know, founded upon a biblical worldview. So this is somebody that is a homeschooler, you can do all your homeschooling, part of your homeschooling or if you have a Christian school, you can do all of your Christian School, private Christian school or part of your Christian school through our affiliate program. It’s Covenant journey Academy at CJ.Academy . CJ.Academy is the website.

Rick Green
CJ.Academy . What perfect timing for you guys to come out with this because there’s so many parents that are fleeing these public indoctrination camps called public schools, government schools that have gone completely woke and Marxist. And so they’re fleeing and they’re looking for trusted sources. They’re look… okay, where can I go? Because even, I know you found this Mat, there’s even some private… and it’s a lot of private schools, but even some homeschool resources have gone woke as well. And you got to find good trusted resources. And of course, you guys have proven yourself to be biblically sound, historically sound, constitutionally sound so the fact that you’ve created this, I feel relief in knowing I can send people to this and know that it’s a good source.

Mat Staver
Well, you know, Rick, our first enrollee is enrolled in kindergarten and in pre K, she was bullied in a Christian school and three girls bullied her over the Black Lives Matter issue. She’s a Caucasian, little pre K student, she cried and was scared to go back to school. Her mom said, you know, forget about this. She talked to the individuals, the administrators at the Christian school, mind you, and they said yes, we’re familiar with we’re aware of the bullying but because of the sensitivity of BLM, we’re not going to address it. So she’s pulling her kid out and she is now going to be starting this summer in our kindergarten program. And one of the early courses she’s going to take is Spanish. She’s so excited about it. So, you know, what you’re seeing in the schools is bullying, you’re seeing critical race theory, the gender ideology, undermine parents values, religious freedom, undermining our Constitution, and the foundational principles of freedom. That’s why, you know, we’re addressing this educational crisis, one child at a time. And we’re very excited about this Covenant Journey Academy, full service online K through 12. So you can go to CJ.Academy for more information.

Rick Green
CJ.Academy, and there’s a demo. You can demo a course, you can go on there and learn all about it. It’s kids of all ages, K through 12. And an incredible, incredible team that Mat and Anita need to have assembled here. Before I let you go, Mat, I got to get an update from you on the World Health Organization and this whole sovereignty issue and the sovereignty coalition and just the things that are being done to fight this because all the things that you fought over the last three years was at least at the, you know, local state and federal court level here in the US. If we give over the decision making to an international agency that’s taken by the Chinese like this, with the World Health Organization, I can’t even imagine where we began to fight at that point. So this is really dangerous stuff. And you’ve been keeping folks updated on it. But you’re watching what’s happening over there. Do we even have I mean, you mentioned in your email today, there’s not even any member of Congress over there monitoring this.

Mat Staver
there is the ambassador that Biden has appointed to negotiate and push this forward. The United States under Biden is the biggest supporter of these 307 amendments to the International Health Regulations plus the brand new pandemic treaty that will change the WHO from an advisory organization to a legally binding entity that its dictates then will be binding upon the United States of America, and the other 194 countries total that are part of the WHO. There’s not a single member of Congress that was there. But not only did you have the ambassador that Biden has put forth to negotiate this, but also, you had Xavier Becerra, the Secretary of the Health and Human Services there. And he was going around with Ted Ross, the Director General, saying that the United States is going to commit over a billion dollars to help fund this. And some of these countries that otherwise would be skeptical of the WHO are actually supportive of this. Why? Because they are seeing a Mayo type Health Care Clinic on every corner of their village, their rural communities, knowing that they’re getting promises from this Biden administration that the United States will pay for this, globally. I mean, this is at a time when we’re not able to pay for our debts, or we’re getting close to, you know, the default timeframe. And yet, the Biden administration is promising to throw another billion and a half dollars on the table, to the WHO. I mean, this is absolutely startling. We need to wake up members of Congress. There’s HR 79, that would pull us out of the WHO, would also defund the WHO. We also can defund the WHO when we move into the next budget, which would be done by September of this year, and also Congress can investigate. They need to bring forth all these 307 amendments in the pandemic treaty and let the public know what’s going on what this Biden administration is doing.

Rick Green
Yeah. Oh, man, and what an end run around the Constitution, itself. If Biden does this, and the Senate’s already basically said, we’re not going to do our duty under the Constitution and actually ratify or not. They’re just going to let him give over this kind of power. So yeah, making sure members of Congress get riled up about this. I know there was a… oh, I think, a week or two ago a press conference with about 20 members of Congress. We need a whole lot more of them, you know, engaged on this thing. Mat, thank you for keeping us informed. Folks, I’m not kidding, I told Mat this off air, but I literally prepare for my afternoon live show I do for American Family Radio by reading Mat’s email every day. That’s my show prep. So it’s good stuff is what I’m saying. Get it. Get on the list. So you’re getting it as well. You can do that LC.org . Mat Staver, God bless you, brother. Y’all keep up the great work.

Mat Staver
Thank you. Good to be with you, as always.

Rick Green
Stay with us, folks. We’ll be right back with David and Tim Barton.

Tim Barton
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 the 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 of 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, WallBuilders.com , The American Story.

Rick Green
We’re back here on WallBuilders. Thanks for staying with us. And thanks to Mat Staver, not only for coming on the program, but as David, you said at the beginning of the program, just all the cases, all the people that they helped throughout COVID, and as he said that they’re having to continue to help, as there still some areas of insanity out there, there. I actually read the other day, guys, they’re still schools that are masking kids, in some places. There’s still parents that are keeping a mask on their kids 8-9 hours a day. This insanity may carry on for a while. I guess when you when you fill people with so much fear, it takes a lot sometimes to shake them out of that.

Tim Barton
Well, and one of the things too, Rick, I think about is that when you look at even still some the immigration policies, there still are requirements for vaccinations for people that are going through the legal immigration process trying to get their green card, trying to get a visa. There are still vaccination requirements. Now, for those coming across the southern border. Right, the the influx of more than 6 million individuals across the southern border, during Biden’s presidency, there’s not been a vaccine requirements for them. But we still have some of these nonsensical COVID policies in place. Guys, I saw an article, just maybe earlier this week, could have been last week. But it was about there was a convention, a health convention. And they determined that at that… the numbers from the convention, that of the people who were there that had gotten vaccinated, there was a higher percentage of those that had gotten COVID that were from the vaccinated than from the unvaccinated. And these are the statistics we’ve seen over and over and over again. And yet, we are still seeing policies being promoted by the Biden administration that are completely anti scientific, completely tyrannical. And people might genuinely ask, then why, if we know this is not scientific, if we know that getting a COVID vaccine does not, number one, prevent you from getting COVID. And number two, doesn’t prevent you from dying from COVID. Then why do we still have these requirements? And this is where the old adage of follow the money might come into play, when you look at the billions upon billions upon billions of dollars that the pharmaceutical industry has made since the vaccine. And we can even point to people like Anthony Fauci, who is getting a… some level of compensation. And he doesn’t have to report what it is, because unfortunately, and guys, you might speak this a little bit too, Rick, as an attorney, he might speak to this some, it is crazy to me that these medical professionals do not have to reveal how they are getting a commission or compensation from some of the medications, some of the vaccines that they are promoting, when they’re saying, oh no, this is for your health, it’s for your benefit, you need to take this vaccine. And they’re getting a commission off of every vaccine that they’re getting people to take. And the American people don’t know, that’s what’s actually happening? This is why so much of this nonsense is continuing. And hopefully, as Mat pointed out, hopefully, with this very strong decision, at least his explanation coming from Gorsuch and I mean, guys, we could get into Title 42. And why that was really silly to begin with on some level, instead of saying, well, we need to control immigration because of COVID. How about we need to control immigration, because we have a border. And that’s what we should do as a nation is make sure we have a secure border, and we know who’s coming and going in this nation across that southern border. Like that might just be logical. We shouldn’t have to have COVID as an excuse. Nonetheless, coming back to what Neil Gorsuch did for Gorsuch to explain what should have been practical all along is now super helpful. So that when you do have people try to continue to be tyrants, on some level, you at least have something judicially confirming from the US Supreme Court to say, guys, US Supreme Court said that this never should happen, it should never happen again, based on, right, a non wartime emergency that this never should have happened. So it is great news. But yet, it’s so crazy to me how much, Rick, as you said, I mean, schools that are still promoting masks. We are still promoting bad science. And the only explanation I can come up with is because there are still people promoting these false ideas and ideologies. And if you look at the networks that are still promoting the vaccines, that are still promoting some of these things, that we now know, the science is not supportive of. Those same news outlets, those same stations, watch who runs commercials on those stations, because you will see that so often they might have a program sponsored by Pfizer or some of these other companies that have the vaccines. There’s a lot more to what we are hearing about in the medical field than just what is the best medicine for individuals. And hopefully this decision from Neil Gorsuch can be something that now we have… at least have something we can point to to push back against some of this tyrannical behavior.

David Barton
And I want to add a little tag on this too, because with all of this, as we look back over the history of COVID, and what happened, it was a period of political tyranny, there’s no question about it. The blue states were a lot worse than red states on that tyranny. It was hard, hard fisted oppressiveness. And all that governors got it wrong, at least for a period of time, some of them got out of it really quick saw a dumb it was, some of them are still trying to, Tim, as you said, to keep it going to this day. That’s not good for the people. It’s not good for the political prosperity. Now I’m going to… I want to close this just by going back to George Washington, that if you want political prosperity, if you want your government to work well, you have to promote religion and morality. And so this notion that we have to separate religion from politics and religion morality from politics, will destroy the nation. And we got to get back into thinking yeah, these policies are wrong. That’s a lot of tyranny. But was my Governor promoting religion and morality at any point in his governorship? Because if he wasn’t, he’s going to destroy political prosperity and my freedom. And I hope we start using that George Washington litmus test for all of our elections going forward. Make sure you elect officials that are positive toward religion, morality, otherwise you will lose your political prosperity.

Rick Green
So many things that each and every one of us can take action on. Encourage you to do that in your community. And, you know, send the good news to us. We will have you on the program, or we’ll read your story on good news Friday. So go make some good news, and then share it with us here on WallBuilders. Thanks so much for listening today, folks. You’ve been listening to WallBuilders.