00:00:50.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:01:28.000And let's try to get behind an effort that makes a very serious difference this Christmas season.
00:01:35.000We've been partnering with Prison Fellowship.
00:01:37.000They've served over 300,000 children of prisoners, coordinating Christmas blessings for prisoners' children through their annual Angel Tree program.
00:01:47.000But time is short, and it takes a lot of work to line up families.
00:02:03.000Volunteers like Dawn from Dallas know that every donation, large or small, is so important.
00:02:08.000Children of prisoners deserve to experience the love of Christ that only you can make happen.
00:02:15.000So please make sure these precious kids are never forgotten.
00:02:19.000Just go to charliekirk.com and click on the Angel Tree banner.
00:02:22.000$22 delivers joy to one child or just a gift of $220.
00:02:27.000You can bless 10 children of prisoners with a special Christmas present.
00:02:31.000Angel Tree family is also given access to a free, easy-to-read copy of the Bible in English or Spanish.
00:02:37.000So once more, please go to charliekirk.com, click on that Angel Tree banner or phone 888-206-2802 to join my campaign for prison fellowships Angel Tree this year.
00:02:48.000But please hurry, Christmas is two weeks away this Friday.
00:02:53.000I am joined by a friend of mine, someone who's a true American patriot and a fellow Christian, Kelly Shackelford.
00:02:59.000Kelly, welcome to the Charlie Kirk Show.
00:03:03.000It actually is just such God's timing because we kind of teased our audience earlier that we were going to be talking about this Texas deal and all the Supreme Court litigation fights, religious freedom, and you just happened to be coming to the office, which was awesome.
00:03:19.000That's what you do for a living at First Liberty.
00:03:22.000Talk just a second about First Liberty.
00:03:23.000I'd love people to know if you know about it.
00:03:24.000First Liberty is the largest legal nonprofit in the country that all we do is religious freedom.
00:03:28.000So if you're, you know, a fifth grade boy, Giovanni Rubio, and you're told you can bring any book to school you want during free reading time until you bring your Bible.
00:03:39.000And then you're told you can't do that at school.
00:03:53.000We represent Giovanni so that we don't just win for Giovanni, which we did, but we set a precedent that protects all of our freedoms.
00:04:01.000And so otherwise, we would all lose our constitutional freedoms.
00:04:03.000So, First Liberty, that's what we do, all religious freedom all over the country.
00:04:07.000You had an amazing testimonial of a woman that was blind outside.
00:04:10.000I was trying to give out the book of John.
00:04:12.000It's just amazing what you guys have been able to do and be able to win.
00:04:15.000So, I want to get into this Texas news.
00:04:17.000I know that you're just aware of just kind of the process, and it's actually less about the particulars, but more just about the bigger picture.
00:04:23.000You're from Texas, you guys are headquartered in Texas, right?
00:04:27.000What was the news today that came out of Texas?
00:04:29.000Well, the news was that an original jurisdiction suit was filed on the election.
00:04:33.000Now, what that means is normally if you file a lawsuit, people think you can just go to the Supreme Court, right?
00:04:39.000No, you don't just go to the Supreme Court.
00:04:42.000The way you get to the Supreme Court is you go through either a state system all the way through the highest court of the state, and then if you feel there's an issue that the Supreme Court can address, you can go from the state Supreme Court to the U.S. Supreme Court, or you can go through the federal courts, the lower court, then the Court of Appeals, and then appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
00:05:02.000And they take about less, they get about 80, you know, 8,000 requests a year, take 80 cases.
00:05:11.000What happened in Texas is the state in the Constitution, there is a very few things that you can file, and you go straight to the Supreme Court.
00:05:21.000And that is if one state goes after another state.
00:05:25.000And so, what happened is Texas sued a number of these swing states, saying, Look, you are diluting our vote and hurting our ability to have a fair election when you don't follow the Constitution in your state.
00:05:40.000And what the Constitution says is that each state gets to determine the not state, each state legislature gets to determine how you do your election.
00:05:52.000And so, therefore, whatever the state legislature said is what you have to do.
00:05:57.000And, of course, in a number of these states, they violated what the state legislature said.
00:06:02.000I mean, take let's take Pennsylvania, right?
00:06:06.000Pennsylvania said, and the law says if you're going to do these mail-in ballots, they have to be in by the time of the election.
00:06:14.000Well, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, which is Democrat, said, No, no, you know, we're going to extend that through the end of the week.
00:08:14.000She said the state law, so she's going through that, again, the Constitution says the state legislature determines who can vote, how to vote, what all that is done.
00:08:26.000Under those rules, Georgia violated those, and she said, and here's how many votes it cost.
00:08:32.000And so she shows 66,000 in some odd, I forget what the number was, people voted who were not eligible to vote age-wise.
00:08:39.000I think it was 20-something thousand voted who were not eligible to vote because they were in another state.
00:09:01.000It also says when you write a signature and say, I'd like a ballot because I have a situation where I need a ballot.
00:09:08.000When the ballot comes in with your vote, it is required under state law that you compare the signatures to make sure that it's the same person.
00:09:18.000Georgia, the Secretary of State just said no.
00:10:04.000What happened with Texas filing this is they just kind of skipped right over all this and went right into the Supreme Court.
00:10:09.000It's kind of brilliant if you want to get in front of the Supreme Court.
00:10:12.000Now, I guess the Supreme Court could say we're not going to hear it, but then who would?
00:10:16.000I mean, this is, you know, well, they can say, like they did today, that the Pennsylvania case that went up, they can say, we're not going to take it.
00:10:25.000Now, but that is a different, that's not original jurisdiction going in the court.
00:10:29.000You know, this is they have discretion to take the ones that are coming up if they want to.
00:10:35.000This one they filed in Texas means it goes right into the court.
00:10:38.000So it's not a matter of a normal case.
00:10:41.000Normally, the way things work is you, let's say you lose at the federal court of appeals.
00:10:47.000Take our Bladensburg cross, cross that's been up for 100 years.
00:10:51.000The lower court, two Obama judges say, tear down this cross after 100 years, even though it's a veterans memorial because it's on government land.
00:11:41.000Yeah, it specifically gives the Supreme Court very little jurisdiction.
00:11:47.000And so, for instance, if you go to the Constitution, I mean, I know you would advocate, read your Constitution, but this is because a lot of us just go look at it.
00:11:56.000It doesn't say how many justices, which is why they want a court pact.
00:11:59.000It doesn't say circuit court judges either.
00:12:01.000It doesn't have anything about the lower courts, a creation of Congress.
00:12:04.000And it gives them jurisdiction and says specifically that, again, if you have states suing each other, it goes in the courts.
00:13:15.000I mean, really, when you look at the real timing, you're really talking about January 6th, you know, when it goes to Congress and they have to certify the election.
00:13:35.000Just because the electoral votes are cast, it still would go to the House and the Senate.
00:13:40.000But I don't think any of that's going to happen unless something is shown in court that the American people get to see and then realize, okay, this is a problem.
00:13:51.000I wish more people could see, for instance, the filing that was done in Georgia on Friday.
00:13:57.000So it's by Cleta Mitchell, Trump campaign, because there's just been so much noise.
00:14:00.000You actually argue cases, not these types of cases, but you have to go up against judges, tough judges, I'm sure.
00:14:07.000Ninth Circuit, and you got to have all your evidence ready to go and also withstand cross-examination and all of that.
00:14:15.000So what really struck you about the Georgia case that was filed by our friend Cleta and some of the other ones?
00:14:22.000It wasn't something that was, you know, what you worry about in these cases, I mean, because it's so hard, and for good reason, overturning an election is something we don't want courts doing.
00:14:33.000We'd rather the people make those decisions.
00:14:35.000But they've got to be valid elections, okay?
00:14:37.000And so a lot of these things being filed are kind of, we're a little wild and they might require some proof.
00:14:44.000Like, you know, well, somebody did this and I think they brought in fraudulent ballots.
00:14:49.000Well, you know, people are going to argue, did they really do that?
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00:16:36.000So Cleta Mitchell, who's phenomenal, and I've known her for years, they filed in what court in Georgia?
00:16:42.000They filed in a Georgia state court and said, you know, the state law was violated.
00:16:48.000It's also violated the United States Constitution.
00:16:51.000And I'm 90% sure that that's where she filed because I think I remember looking at that when she filed it.
00:16:57.000I was looking more at what's in there, which the arguments that are made would work in federal court too, because they're saying you violated the federal constitution.
00:17:05.000But she went in and said, look, the federal constitution says that the state legislature determines the manner and the modes of the elections.
00:17:35.000And so it's a solid, it's just hard to argue with that.
00:17:39.000And I think we've got to get back to, I mean, Georgia is important not only because of the presidential election, but they're having these Senate elections.
00:17:46.000And if they violate all these things again, I mean, so getting this straight now is important for a number of reasons.
00:17:52.000So I really appreciate what Cleta Mitchell and she did that on behalf of the campaign.
00:17:59.000And I think it was a smart move, and I think it was an important move because the way our Constitution works is you can't go into court and have some local judge overturn the state legislature.
00:18:11.000You can't have the Secretary of State decide they're going to overturn the state legislature.
00:18:15.000That's not what the Constitution says.
00:18:42.000She sued a lawsuit, filed a lawsuit, and he, as the Secretary of State, settled the lawsuit by agreeing to do certain things, including not doing signature checks, which is fairly outrageous because you really open yourself open to fraud.
00:18:59.000That's the reason, and it's not just Georgia.
00:19:02.000Anywhere you go that has an absentee ballot, they have the signature verification.
00:19:06.000Because what you don't want is some sort of ballot harvesting or whatever where somebody's like sending out a lot of requests for votes, and then you send out these ballots and then they send them in and fill them out with whoever they want.
00:19:23.000You don't just send them at random so that there's thousands of them being grabbed by people in trash cans.
00:19:29.000You want to send them to the people who ask for them, and then you want those people to do their vote and send it back in.
00:19:35.000You can check both signatures to make sure it's the same person.
00:19:38.000So if I were to venture a guess, Stacey Abrams, let me tell you what we already know, and then I'm going to just fill in the piece here.
00:19:45.000Stacey Abrams raised a bunch of money, $30, $40 million from out of state, hired the best law firms, came in and engaged in lawfare.
00:19:54.000But I would imagine that she probably had a bunch of people that said, my vote didn't count, even though my signature was off a little bit.
00:21:08.000And so they're going, they're entering this agreement with the court and they feel like, okay, I've done the best I can do, but they're not thinking about who really has authority over these issues for future elections.
00:21:20.000The other thing that, by the way, is in there, I mean, there's so many.
00:21:24.000They put a box where if you ask for a ballot and you could check and say, send me a ballot and all the future ones without me asking.
00:22:52.000Look, if we, not only do our elections need to be fair and accurate and valid and not fraudulent, but people need to understand and be able to trust that that's true.
00:23:03.000If you don't have both those things, you don't have a democratic republic because people don't look at their leaders as legitimate and you've got real problems.
00:23:13.000And so this is something that is, again, sometimes everybody should be for free speech, even when it's speech you don't like, right?
00:23:22.000Even if you're on the other side of the election, you should go, we're going to lose our country if we don't get a control of this.
00:23:29.000And it's sad to see people so shallow and really not have enough intelligence to understand that this will not be good for them either when you have some sort of banana republic that you end up creating in the United States of America.
00:23:44.000So I want to ask one more piece on this, and then I want to get into the religious liberty fight that you guys are doing, especially on the lockdowns, all of it.
00:23:50.000You guys have been really amazing on it, which is, can you walk us through what a judge will be looking for?
00:23:56.000So you have to, you've argued in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, as you just said, really impressive.
00:24:00.000Your organization has won cases at the highest level.
00:24:04.000I think some of our listeners and our viewers, they email us by the tens of thousands.
00:24:09.000And you guys can do that right now, freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:24:12.000And I'll read some of these questions off for you.
00:24:14.000They say, how could a judge not overturn this?
00:24:20.000Can you add some kind of context to that, Kelly?
00:24:24.000Yeah, let me give you, I'll give you the human side and the legal side.
00:24:28.000The human side is understand that judges are human beings.
00:24:31.000So if you're a judge and you have one of these cases come and they're asking you to overturn an election, you don't want to do that.
00:24:40.000Just you'd rather somebody else decide the election.
00:24:43.000You're not starting from an impartial position.
00:24:45.000No, you're, you're like, yeah, and so that's super helpful.
00:24:48.000And then if you're, if almost all judges are elected or they're appointed by somebody who's elected, so they're, they're politically sensitive.
00:24:56.000If they just go along and kind of do their job and everything, they're fine.
00:25:01.000But if they all of a sudden hit a controversial case and they take a decision, half of the people are furious at them.
00:25:07.000Their ability to maybe be elevated or maybe run for election to a higher office are hurt.
00:25:13.000So the temptation for judge, and I'm saying good judges don't care about this.
00:25:17.000Good judges just do what's right and whatever the consequences are, so be it.
00:25:21.000And those are the kinds of people we've been getting onto the federal bench under the Trump administration.
00:25:26.000People who are originalists, they don't care about the politics, you know.
00:25:30.000But if you, so one of the big temptations, if you're a judge, is to throw a case out on what's called standing, meaning if you, you normally can't bring a lawsuit unless you were injured.
00:25:42.000And so I can't say, hey, Charlie was injured.
00:25:44.000I'm bringing a lawsuit on behalf of Charlie because this was really wrong.
00:26:09.000And if you'll watch most of these lawsuits that have been filed on election, that's how they're being thrown out.
00:26:14.000You know, you don't have, so that's part one.
00:26:16.000Part two is, you know, just because somebody sees something that says, well, this happened, or maybe even a witness says, hey, I saw them fraudulently vote.
00:27:50.000And so you're up against the constitutional kind of guardrails there.
00:27:54.000So that's super helpful to kind of help contextualize all that.
00:27:58.000So the most insightful thing you said, and I'm going to repeat it, which is that these judges actually don't want to throw out these elections.
00:28:05.000That there's actually a higher threshold than if this was just a kind of a property rights issue of someone, like an irrigation issue that someone's suing over, right?
00:28:24.000People need to put themselves in that seat and try to step back from who they're rooting for and ask if it was the other side and say, would you want to be the one to decide the election versus the people somehow?
00:28:36.000And again, I mean, good judges are going to do their job, even if everybody hates them.
00:28:41.000We need more justices like Justice Thomas, who really doesn't care.
00:28:48.000I think Amy Coney Barrett is going to be that type of justice.
00:28:51.000I think there are a lot of these lower court judges we've gotten in, federal court of appeals and district court, who are awesome.
00:28:58.000And they're going to be the future Supreme Court justices.
00:29:00.000But, you know, just realize human nature and what you're dealing with in a lot of these state courts and other places where the whole universe is landing in their court.
00:29:11.000Did you know your family can save over $800 a year just by switching to Peer Talk from Verizon ATT or T-Mobile?
00:30:41.000But the big one that hit in federal court where there was a full hearing and TRO and a federal injunction, we call it the shot heard around the world, kind of like the American Revolution, because everybody was wondering, did we lose the Constitution?
00:30:53.000And we're watching people being arrested for throwing a baseball in the park with their kids and the guy coming off the beach, being handcuffed, and all this stuff.
00:31:00.000And it was telling them they couldn't have a drive-in service.
00:31:04.000And in fact, they were going to not only criminally prosecute them, but the governor said they were going to go, they have police go around to all the churches that weekend and write down the license plates of every car in the church parking lot.
00:31:15.000And they would be visited at their home and then quarantined for 14 days.
00:31:19.000And we're like, okay, this is the case.
00:33:26.000So not only did we file our lawsuit on behalf of Christians, and plus this is a fundamental right, the right of parents to choose Christian education, to teach and inculcate the religious teaching for those Christian schools and churches and all that.
00:33:39.000I mean, this is fundamental First Amendment rights.
00:33:42.000Not only did we file it, but the Attorney General of Kentucky, Daniel Cameron, he said, I'm joining you.
00:33:51.000So the Attorney General sued his own governor with us.
00:33:55.000So we are against Brashear saying this is unconstitutional.
00:33:58.000We wanted an injunction at the district court.
00:35:19.000But the emergency is because it hasn't, the case is not over and it's not going to the Court of Appeals and then the Supreme Court and they're setting argument time.
00:35:27.000What happens is these orders come and they can go, but they're in place right now, and you're losing your, you can't wait a year.
00:36:41.000So what they're saying is, we know we don't have enough time to go into depth on this because we don't have the normal all the briefing and all the argument and all this.
00:36:49.000But we're saying that from what we can see now, there would be a majority that would rule with you on the merits.
00:36:55.000This is important because not only because this is wrong and what's going on in Kentucky shutting down all these schools is, I mean, I want you to think about this.
00:37:03.000What they're saying is, let's say you're a parent, you have a 12-year-old boy.
00:37:07.000They can go to the movie theater and sit in the movie.
00:37:10.000They can go to the Kentucky basketball game with 3,000 people.
00:37:13.000They can go over to the gambling parlor.
00:37:46.000But if we do get a ruling, it'll be just like what happened with the churches in that it'll be a signal all across the country to a lot of these governors who are out of control.
00:37:55.000This is different than the Calvary Chapel Las Vegas one.
00:38:09.000We're telling you to vacate the decision below, which was upholding the governor's order, shutting down the churches, because you need to, because you didn't have the opportunity to look at what we did in the New York, the Brooklyn case.
00:38:59.000But this whole process of Kavanaugh overseeing Kentucky.
00:39:02.000Well, you put somebody, I mean, it's kind of typical because, like, if you're a district court judge, you might come, somebody might come in with an emergency motion, what's called a temporary restraining order.
00:39:11.000Because there's some times if you don't stop something, it's over.
00:39:15.000I mean, for instance, let's say, you know, you're about to go in and speak somewhere and the state of California decides we hate Charlie Kirk.
00:39:23.000We're not going to allow him to speak in our state.
00:39:25.000Well, if you can't speak tomorrow, you don't ever get that day back.
00:39:31.000So you would have a right to get an injunction to allow you to speak.
00:39:36.000So things that you can't undo, there are a process for an emergency.
00:39:40.000Now, if it's just money, somebody can sue you later and get all the money back.
00:40:28.000So the idea that they're traumatizing and harming these kids around the country, when especially we went with the religious schools because that's the most fundamental right, the right to inculcate religion in your children, to choose that school for your children.
00:40:41.000And to have the government come in and say, we're shutting you down, we're like, you better have some serious evidence to do this.
00:41:26.000That is the changing of the future, getting these good judges on the court so that we do have good decisions for your generation and following.