Standing up for What is Right on Good News Friday: Today on we spend time working through David and Tim’s stack of good news articles. A bill is passed in the House to protect women and women’s sports. Texas Governor Greg Abbott works to pardon sergeant Daniel Perry. Voter integrity is being upheld in North Carolina. The Great American Family network continues to grow and do well. All of this and more, on Good News Friday!

Air Date: 5/5/2023

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

Transcript:

Rick Green
Welcome to WallBuilders. This is the intersection of faith and the culture. We’re taking on hot topics of the day from a biblical historical and constitutional perspective. You can participate first by listening today, of course, and learning but you know, also sharing with your friends and family. Take the show and, and send it out to folks on social media and through your email or any way that you can do it, text them, but get this good news in their hands. People need that good news, they need to know that the principles of liberty are alive and well that they work, that they get good results. When we infuse good stuff into the culture, we get good stuff out. If it’s all bad stuff that we’re infusing in, or we’re just letting the other side, infuse the bad stuff into the culture, then we can expect some really bad stuff to come out. So let’s make sure we’re doing our part. So many different ways you can participate- listening, as I said, sharing with your friends and family, donating. Takes fuel in the tank, as I mentioned yesterday, so make sure you go to WallBuilders.com today and make that one time or monthly contribution or over at WallBuildersLive.com. And that will help not only the radio program, but also helps with our pastors briefings and teacher training and youth training and all the different things that we’re doing in legislators training, you name it. And then of course, challenging you as always to become a constitution coach, and host these classes. Be the catalyst right there in your living room or your church. Be a part of the solution. So let’s get started with some of that good news. David Barton has our first piece of good news today.

David Barton
Well, I have been doing this so much this year. And it’s fun to keep doing it. But now that we have a new house, we’re getting new bills out of the house. And so here’s one that was passed out of the house just recently just recently…

Rick Green
We have a new house? I didn’t realize you and Cheryl had built a new house. So you…

David Barton
Oh, you hadn’t seen that? I’ve got 435 folks living in it.

Rick Green
It is your house. It’s my house. It’s Tim’s house. It’s all the listeners’ house. That’s true.

Tim Barton
I don’t think it’s new, though. I think it’s been there for a couple hundred years.

David Barton
Yeah, it seems like about 1800 that that house opened? Yes, somewhere in there…

Tim Barton
So, not a new house. But maybe we have a new group in Congress. The House of Representatives…

David Barton
We have a majority group in Congress. That, we have a…

Rick Green
You were being so serious, brother. You had such good news coming, and I had to be silly. All right. Go ahead, man. What about this new house of representatives?

David Barton
Not that any of us are ever silly on this program. So that was completely out of character, Rick. That… So what happens is they passed the protection of women and girls in sports Act. Now this is a bill that’s gone through a whole lot of the states and says, you know what? Women’s Sports means women’s sports. And that is a gender that is identifiable. And if you’re identifiable from a male gender, that’s not women and women’s sports. And so it really does pertain… And this you know, this goes back in the 60s and 70s, with Title Nine, Title Ten stuff, where they were trying to create women’s sports in colleges and give women sports and they wanted that to be a separate… and now the same people that were standing up for women’s rights are now trying to destroy them by saying, well, there’s no difference between a man and a woman. So what this does in Congress, they’ve made it really clear that no, from the Federal standpoint, if you get federal funds, if there’s federal funds involved in your school or sports, this, we’re protecting women in sports. Now, Biden has already said he’s going to veto this, if it gets there. Schumer has got the Senate controlled on the Democrat side. It may not get there. But it is really nice to have this bill even passed in one body. And by the way, there was not a single Democrat in the entire house that voted in favor protecting women’s sports. So that’s kind of a telling statement all by itself. And then another measure that went through Congress was, it’s a pro Israel vote, pro Abraham accords. Remember President Trump set up the Abraham Accords, trying to bring some more peace in the Middle East, which he did. You started seeing other Islamic nations start making peace with Israel and move their embassies to Israel. And so it’s a good thing. And that actually passed on the house by a margin of 400 to 19. So that was a bipartisan vote and good for Democrats for standing for Israel. For those of us that have a biblical perspective, we know in Genesis 12:3 that any nation that blesses Israel, God’s going to bless, any nation that won’t bless them, God’s not going to bless. And so I guess there’s a handful of Democrats that voted no, I think it was 18 Democrats that voted no on this. And so they apparently don’t believe in God or don’t want Him to bless America, one or the other, whichever it is. There was one Republican that voted against it. And on things like that I don’t necessarily say it’s bad or good until I know why they voted against it. Maybe they thought it should have been a stronger resolution for Israel. Maybe they didn’t think it’s strong enough. Or, you know, maybe they’re on the wrong side of the issue. Don’t have a clue. But overwhelmingly, bipartisan, America took a firm stand in support of Israel. And so that’s two good things out of the house in recent days.

Rick Green
Well, that’s good news coming out of the house, Tim, we still getting good news from DC or where are you taking us?

Tim Barton
No, this one is actually good news in Texas. It’s related Austin. Now the good news is not coming from Austin. And this is something I, guys I feel like I’ve already talked about this on good news Friday, but I don’t think I haven’t they have just seen this article a couple times. And I’m finally just now getting to it. But the title of the article says Texas governor seeks to pardon Army Sergeant convicted of killing gun wielding protester. And the backstory of this, Sergeant Daniel Perry, 37 years old, in 2021, in the summer, he was driving for Uber and there’s a lot of people in order to help kind of make ends meet, they will pick up a second job, get a second shift somewhere. And Uber is a way that a lot of people have found to try to make some supplemental income to help what they’re doing in their life. And in 2021, this was June of 2021. For many people, they might remember this was still kind of the season of riots in some major cities.

David Barton
No, no, that was a season of peaceful protests, is what that was.

Tim Barton
Oh,yes where they were burning down things and breaking into buildings and stealing and robbing.

David Barton
Yes, there were people protest… Portland, Chicago…

Tim Barton
Well, I mean, CNN described it as mostly peaceful as they had fires in the background. Right? That’s… It was kind of the notion… One of the things that happened in Austin is, as Sergeant Daniel Perry was driving for Uber… And this is a little bit of my recollection. The article doesn’t highlight this. This is part of what I’m remembering, is he was following a GPS and the GPS took him in the middle of a protests. And he was not intending to be there. It wasn’t what he was wanting to do. And one of the protesters had an AK 47. 28 year old, Garrett Foster. Garrett Foster approached the vehicle, there’s yelling, there’s cursing, and as Garrett Foster has an AK 47, he’s moving the AK 47 around, and Sergeant Daniel Perry has a concealed weapon on him. And he feels threatened by this. Now, his claim was that the gun was being raised. He thought it was being raised toward him. And also keep in mind, someone who’s 37, who has spent most of their adult life in the military, right? This doesn’t identify this, but we’re talking about an era where over the last several decades, we’ve been at war with terrorists who’ve been using AK 47s and…

AK 47 is a Russian assault weapon. That’s not a small, little peashooter.

No and this is what the majority of, right, the Taliban are the bad guys in the Middle East. This is the weapons they use. And so probably someone like Sergeant Daniel Perry, if he has not experienced this firsthand, over somewhere around the world, Middle East, specifically, he certainly has a lot of friends that have gone through this. And when you’re around somebody and you see them raising a weapon and your general direction, then right, you understand, it’s fractions of a second and moment that if you don’t respond to somebody raising a firearm in your direction, as they’re yelling and cussing and screaming at you and saying the bad things they’re going to do to you. If you don’t respond, you know, you are going to die. And…

Rick Green
And the context to Tim of what had happened, you know, all around that in other cities, right where we had seen, you know, a woman and her daughter, they just started jumping on the car trying to drag them out of the car. We’d seen people drug out of vehicles and beaten. I mean, that was the mindset that had to be in this guy’s head as he’s suddenly faced with that same situation.

David Barton
I mean, you’ve watched Portland, you watched Chicago, you watch Kenosha. You’ve watched city after city burn, and destruction and threatening and death and ramming cars into crowds and etc.

Tim Barton
Well, and I mean, I’m sure there’s people listening and maybe even to add context, right. And this doesn’t happen in every city. But this was happening enough that we were basically almost every single night, you were hearing these kind of stories happening from somewhere in the US and one of these major cities. And so this is not an unheard or unthought of thing, nonetheless, what happens is Sergeant Daniel Perry, he uses concealed weapon, he engages what he perceives to be the threat which was 28 year old Garrett Foster and he ends up killing Garrett Foster. This case goes to trial and the Travis County district attorney is Jose Garza now for anybody paying attention. Jose Garza also was one of the George Soros funded district attorneys and George Soros has funded so many of these districts attorneys in these major Democrat leaning cities where they’ve gone soft on crime. And specifically to understand the soft on crime, if you look at who Jose Garza did not bring charges against, the people that were vandalizing businesses and buildings and cars, the people that were starting fires. When you look at the people he did not charge with any kind of crimes with any kind of felonies, even though they were clearly breaking the law, they were clearly being destructive. This was not something that was a peaceful protest as they are destroying individuals private properties or stealing from individuals and at times as are physically assaulting people, including police officers, but Jose Garza doesn’t bring charges against all of them. He chose to bring charges against this individual.

David Barton
And he also brought charges against 18 police officers, the people that got indicted by him were not the protesters, they were the policemen who stopped the protesters and tried to protect the property and the people. And so that’s a Soros DA. We’re going to punish the cops, we’re going to let all the criminals go free. And if you’re law abiding, we don’t like you. He goes after 18 Cops? And lets all the destruction… It’s crazy, but that’s the DA.

Tim Barton
Well, and so here’s where there is good news. So as it was earlier in April, when this decision was announced, that he was found guilty. Of course he’s devastated. He loved being a soldier. He said that, you know, he just wants to be able to be with his family and hug his mom again. And now he’s going to spend the rest of his life in prison. Like he doesn’t know what’s going to happen. He was so nervous about this. And Governor Abbott came out and said, first of all, whatever the sentencing is, that Governor Abbott says, I’m going to work to pardon him, because this is ridiculous what he’s being charged with. First of all, then Governor Abbott says, secondly, he was going to make it a personal initiative to try to rein in these out of control district attorneys who are targeting not the bad actors necessarily in this. And Dad, as you mentioned, with this district attorney charging the officers bring indictments against them. This is not to say that officers should not be held accountable for bad actions if they did something wrong. But if you look at what was going on in the scenario for you not to bring charges against all of these people in the crowd, who were destroying property, destroying buildings, who were stealing, who were assaulting people, and then for you to target the officers who are trying to get this unruly crowd under control? That seems like you’re targeting the wrong individuals here. And that certainly has been the mantra and kind of the methodology of these George Soros backed and funded district attorneys. So it’s great news that in the midst of what seems like these really crazy and unjust unrighteous, ungodly positions being taken by some of these district attorneys, that in this case, you have a governor standing up and saying that, all right, you guys do what you’re going to do. But and Governor Abbott actually brought some clarity. Ken Paxton, also offered some clarity on this…

David Barton
Ken Paxton’s our attorney general.

Tim Barton
…who is the attorney general for Texas, right. So the lead attorney for Texas, they both point out that what happened during the trial, they think that the district attorney intentionally misled the jury, in a lot of the explanation, a lot of the fact finding information, intentionally misled the jury to help draw them to a conclusion, because he wanted to get a guilty sentence to, right, whatever the case was to say that you can’t shoot these protesters, even if they have guns, even if they’re waving their guns around, even if they surround your car, start yelling, cussing at you as they have a drawn weapon, you cannot engage them to defend yourself. It’s great news that in this situation, Governor Abbott, it definitely appears it’s going to do a good thing to say that he’s going to work to get a pardon for Sergeant Daniel Perry, and then try to rein in these out of control district attorneys. So this is the good news, but also where we challenge people, this is why we better pay attention. Some of these, what are seemingly maybe less significant political elections… Like well, I mean, who cares about a district attorney? Well, you better start waking up and caring about district attorneys, because they’re the ones that are upholding the law, that are penalizing the criminals, or in some cases, releasing criminals back onto the streets, when people should be in jail. And unfortunately, we’ve seen over the news recently, often, in the last several weeks, were so many of these scenarios where something really, really bad happens more times than not the individual that committed that really, really awful evil act was someone that was already on the radar of law enforcement, that had been released multiple times, put back on the street, because these district attorneys will not bring the charges against them, will not bring any kind of jail time to these individuals that should be behind bars based on their actions. So again, great news, what Governor Abbott’s going to do, first of all, trying to bring a pardon for Sergeant Daniel Perry and then secondly, reining in these out of control district attorneys.

Rick Green
Yeah, you guys know have been a very vocal critic of Governor Abbott on other things, credit to where credit is due. He’s doing the right thing here. And he jumped on it really quick, right? He didn’t wait. They go through their Board of Pardons and Paroles recommendation and all that. He immediately said, I’m going to pardon this guy, get your job done over there at the at the board…

David Barton
Like as soon as they announce the verdict. I mean, they announced the verdict, he said, okay, that’s your decision, here’s my decision. This guy is not guilty of what you guys have charged him with. And he’s not going to be convicted. And by the way, here in Texas, I might want to… And if you don’t know, the Soros attorneys, you need to look into it, if not aware of it, but they’re in a lot of the major cities across the nation. That’s where you’re seeing the explosion of crime in Chicago and what’s going on in New York City and what’s going on in so many big cities. And in Texas, we have a Soros attorney in Austin, we have one in Houston, we have one in San Antonio, we have one in Dallas, and we’re seeing the same kind of crime problem, because these guys do not want to punish the… See, The Bible says in Romans 13, that the purpose of government’s to punish the wicked reword the righteous. These guys have it exactly opposite. The Bible talks about that which is good, they call evil, and that which is evil, they call good. That’s these guys. They have everything backwards. They want to protect the criminal and they want to punish the law abider and make them the law breaker. And so you know, this is a great deal that Abbott just waiting for the jury verdict come down. If the jury had come down on the right side of justice, he would not have done anything because he wouldn’t need to. But as soon as that jury announces a verdict, and it’s made public, He says, okay I’m fixing this because this is not justice. And to his credit, he’s doing the right thing to make sure justice, which is impartial is rendered in this case.

Rick Green
A couple other quick thoughts guys, we got to get a break. We’ll come back get some more good news. But number one that the… as you were talking about, Tim, just the corruption and the way this was handled with the grand jury and the jury, that even the lead investigator said, shouldn’t be charges, shouldn’t be charges in this case and then was told by the DA, not to present evidence that would have probably kept an indictment from actually happening. So that kind of stuff is happening. And then one other quick thing on the DAs and the Soros DAs is across the country, it’s a really important thing to start fighting against this stuff and to get good DAs elected. And you know, hats off to our friends at Citizens defending freedom in Corpus Christi Texas, they’re going after a DA there that’s actually a gang member. This guy’s… It’s a horrible situation, Soros funded DA there. And there’s… I didn’t even know this was in Texas law, but a citizen can bring a suit to remove a DA. And so they’ve got that going on right now in Corpus Christi. And this guy may end up resigning because the county judge who was elected by our folks that, you know, we the people got involved, got a good county judge elected, refusing to fund this corrupt DAs defense in the case, and so he may actually… We’ll see. But that kind of stuff happening across the country. Last thing, I know, and then we’ll go to break. If you live in a really blue city where you’ve got a bad Soros funded DA, you need to be careful. You need to be super careful. And of course, we talk all the time about you know, getting trained carrying a weapon defending yourself all of that. They’re going to be against you in those situations. I try to stay out of the blue cities right now. I go speak sometimes in them and have to fly into them to go to other places. But folks, there’s a lot of these bad DAs out there. And it’s, man we got… It’s going to take us time to root them out. But it’s something to be very cognizant of and know what’s happening in your particular area.

David Barton
And Rick, let me jump in on that. Because when you look at Los Angeles and how crazy that was, the mayor of Los Angeles, Eric Garcetti, the most recent mayor was elected with 2.9% of the vote. The mayor in Houston was elected with 3.3% of the vote. I mean, these Soros DAs are getting elected, but with single digit vote. And so when people get fed up in those cities and say, no, I can organize my neighborhood, and we’re going to organize neighborhoods all over the city. I mean, even in Portland, they were so ticked at the governor, and so ticked at the mayor for letting that thing go on and on and on in Portland. Most average citizens in Portland did not agree with what was happening when they were burning the city. They’ve got to go vote. And that’s the way you get rid of the Soros DAs. They were elected, you just have to show up more often than the bad guys do. And again, we’re talking 3.3% In Houston, 2.9% in LA. There’s enough churches in either of those cities to anybody they want for DA. Get involved. This involves not just you, it involves your kids, it involves your neighbors. It involves the whole city. You got to get righteousness back. And that means righteous people have to go vote.

Rick Green
I was thinking that when you said Get your neighborhood organized. I was thinking get your church organized. And you said there’s enough churches in those areas to absolutely turn those elections around. Alright, quick break, folks, we got more good news coming your way when we return on WallBuilders.

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Welcome back to WallBuilders. Thanks for staying with us. It’s good news Friday. We’re diving right back into good news. And I think it was David’s turn, right?

David Barton
Yeah, the Supreme Court of North Carolina has done some really interesting stuff. They struck down the voter ID laws in North Carolina and said no, no. It’s essentially Open Door. Come, anybody who wants to. They made it… They’ve been struck down the restrictions on felons being able to vote. And in states felons aren’t allowed to vote. That’s one of the penalties for committing a felony is you lose your right to vote and participate in the civil process. And so the Supreme Court of North Carolina has struck that stuff down. They also went in and upheld a really bad gerrymandered map that gave Democrats so much charge and just really cooked the books. But that was before last November. Last November, they flipped the court in North Carolina. It was four Democrats, three Republicans. Now it’s five Republicans and two Democrats. And guess what? All three of those cases got reversed in the last couple of weeks. They’ve gone back and said no, no, felons can’t vote, and yes we do have voter ID laws. And we’re not going to have a gerrymandered map. We’re going to make that map fair. So this is where elections do have consequences. And for whatever reason Some Supreme Court votes in states are considered almost down ballot. They just don’t get high voter turnout. But they are so important because of what they do in a state. And so this is a really big change in North Carolina. It puts North Carolina back on the table, in a lot of ways is being competitive politically, because they’re now getting integrity back in elections. So it’s a really good thing. And by the way, we’re seeing this in other states as well, where people are starting to focus on judges. I was just in South Carolina. South Carolina had passed what is considered the most pro life abortion law in the southeastern United States. And five unelected judges on the Supreme Court of South Carolina overturn that pro life law and said no, no. The right to privacy trumps the right to life. No, no, no, it doesn’t. Right to privacy is not even in the Constitution. That’s an inferred, right, that you’ve come up with, because there is some guarantees for privacy, but not a right to privacy, like the liberals find it. So this is something that in… right now in South Carolina, they’re really working hard to get judicial reforms there. But we got to get judges under control, just like we got to get these rogue DAs under control. And they’ve got to reflect the people, not their own agendas. And so this is good news out of North Carolina.

All right, good news from DC, good news from Austin, Good news for North Carolina. Tim, where are we headed next, man?

We’re doing some media this time, and the first article I have…

Now wait. Good news in the media?

Tim Barton
Well, media being relative, it’s more like in the…

Rick Green
Hey, we’re technically the media. And it’s good news Friday. So it’s good news from the media at WallBuilders.

Tim Barton
Yeah, I mean, absolutely, right? This one is more in the TV movie genre, kind of that media arena. And the first article is Great American Family is TVs fastest growing network for second straight quarter. Which, for those who are dedicated Found… I was about to say Foundation of Freedom. No, this is Good News. Friday. I forgot what day it is. For those who are dedicated listeners of Good News Friday, you might remember we talked about there was a new family friendly network. And when they came out, some of the big names noted on there individuals like Candace Cameron Bure from Full House, left Hallmark because Hallmark was going a little more woke, changing their views of traditional human sexuality and marriages and right their kind of their holiday movie scene, whatever else. And so the Great American Media was kind of birthed. And they said, we’re going to just focus… Their CEO Bill Abbott said, we’re going to be relentlessly family friendly, but more in the traditional value since, and so now the second straight quarter, and when they first started, we had a good news Friday talking about how this was the fastest growing network in all of kind of this genre, all of cable at that time. And now for the second straight quarter, they’re still the fastest growing, and this article highlights, they have 21 original Christmas movies for 2023 and highlighting some of that stuff, which, I mean, guys, we all know, none of us are really Hallmark movie people. however, you know, maybe some of our…

David Barton
I’ve got a wife who used to be.

Tim Barton
I was going to say, right, some of our spouses or, you know, daughters, granddaughters, whatever the case might be, the women in our family probably appreciate this a lot more. But it’s great news, being able to identify that there is a great interest in this. And there are people recognizing the tone and temperature of the market, saying that we’re going to still promote the right kind of values. Along those same lines, early in April, there was a box office surprise, what this article says. His only Son… The title of the article says His Only Son was a box office surprise, maybe we shouldn’t be surprised. And it goes through highlighting when His Only Son came out… It’s a story from Genesis 22 with Abraham and Isaac and I did not see this. I don’t get to go see many movies, sometimes, unfortunately, when there’s some great faith based films out there. But it, when it released it was number three in the theaters, did very, very well. And this article goes to point out that this shouldn’t be a big surprise because when Jesus Revolution came out, right, it crushed the box office. When The Chosen had a theater release, it did very well at the box office. When there are faith based and family friendly films, they tend to do very well at the box office, which both of these just give an indication, which I think is a great thing for us to wrap our heads around, is that there are so many Americans out there who are not wanting to embrace and ingest the wokeism. They don’t want that in their lives. They don’t want it in their families. They don’t want the media they consume, and so there is a really good market, which even some of the newer cartoons that came out where if you look at Disney some of the latest releases they had, they did not do well at the box office. And then you have Mario come out, where Mario Bros is not woke at all it’s just a pure innocent story that can be entertaining along the way without promoting these agendas and messages. It’s actually more family oriented with the two Mario Brothers, right. They’re with each other and fighting for each other. But what we’re seeing is that when there is media entertainment that’s not woke, that has good traditional values, that has wholesome values along the way, It does very well with audiences. And hopefully this is something that different producers, different studios will take more and more note of. So this is just some of the good news with media on good news Friday.

Rick Green
Alright folks, we will have more good news for you next Friday, there’s always a lot of good results when we do our part. Let’s put more good stuff into the culture. And you can be part of doing that, as I mentioned at the beginning of the program, by donating to WallBuilders WallBuilders.com , by going out and sharing with other people, these programs, getting it in their hands, by becoming a constitution coach, actually inviting people into your home, or at your church, just getting people together. I’m telling you, people will need to know these truths. And our Biblical Citizenship and Modern America course, now over a million people gone through, we’ve got 24,000 coaches out there. I’m telling you, it’s having an impact and you can be the one to bring that impact to your community, you can be the catalyst for that restoration of biblical values and constitutional principles. Last thing I’ll mention to you, and I’m not sure this has come across in when I’ve mentioned it over the last couple of months, but the Patriot Academy campus in Fredericksburg, Texas, even though we just had the big groundbreaking, we’d already been working. And so we’ve got 60,000 square feet of ranges. We’ve got a big classroom already built. We’re having classes, right now. So if you’ve been looking for the best handgun training on the planet, and constitution training at the same time, our Constitutional Defense of your Family and Freedom course is the one you want to take. It’s less expensive than any around the country. It’s 100 bucks a day, way, way less than anywhere else. So come down to Fredericksburg, Texas, check out the Patriot Academy campus and get some good training at the same time. All of that information is available at PatriotAcademy.com , PatriotAcademy.com . Look for that Constitutional Defense button, and you can join us for that training. Thanks for listening. You’ve been listening to WallBuilders.