The Charlie Kirk Show - November 28, 2025


The Real Scoop on "Separation of Church and State"


Episode Stats


Length

59 minutes

Words per minute

188.94824

Word count

11,318

Sentence count

823

Harmful content

Misogyny

10

sentences flagged

Hate speech

36

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

On this episode of the Charlie Kirk Show, we are joined by First Liberty Institute President and CEO, Kelly Shackelford, to discuss the tragic loss of Charlie Kirk and the impact it has had on the country.

Transcript

Transcripts from "The Charlie Kirk Show" are sourced from the Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool. Explore them interactively here.
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:03.000 My name is Charlie Kirk.
00:00:05.000 I run the largest pro-American student organization in the country fighting for the future of our republic.
00:00:11.000 My call is to fight evil and to proclaim truth.
00:00:14.000 If the most important thing for you is just feeling good, you're going to end up miserable.
00:00:19.000 But if the most important thing is doing good, you'll end up purposeful.
00:00:24.000 College is a scam, everybody.
00:00:26.000 You got to stop sending your kids to college.
00:00:27.000 You should get married as young as possible and have as many kids as possible.
00:00:31.000 Go start a Turning Point USA college chapter.
00:00:33.000 Go start a Turning Point USA high school chapter.
00:00:35.000 Go find out how your church can get involved.
00:00:37.000 Sign up and become an activist.
00:00:39.000 I gave my life to the Lord in fifth grade.
00:00:41.000 Most important decision I ever made in my life.
00:00:43.000 And I encourage you to do the same.
00:00:45.000 Here I am.
00:00:46.000 Lord, use me.
00:00:48.000 Buckle up, everybody.
00:00:49.000 Here we go.
00:00:56.000 The Charlie Kirk Show is proudly sponsored by Preserve Gold, the leading gold and silver experts and the only precious metals company I recommend to my family, friends, and viewers.
00:01:09.000 All right, everybody, welcome to this special long-form interview with Kelly Shackelford, who's the president and CEO of First Liberty Institute.
00:01:18.000 That's firstliberty.org.
00:01:20.000 Kelly, you were a really close friend of Charlie's.
00:01:24.000 You've been on this show many times, and it's an honor to have you in the studio because oftentimes we'd have you and it would be breaking news about something that was going on with the Supreme Court or some case that you were working that our audience needed to know about.
00:01:39.000 You're here on campus at Turning Point USA.
00:01:41.000 You're visiting and you're supporting the mission that the organization that Charlie built and this legacy that we're all trying to move forward.
00:01:50.000 And I just want to say welcome.
00:01:52.000 It's an honor to have you and we're grateful for you continuing this mission with us.
00:01:57.000 Well, it's a privilege to be a part.
00:02:01.000 I've been so proud of what you guys have done since the tragedy, the assassination.
00:02:05.000 And I look back at Charlie and I probably text or talk maybe once a month or so.
00:02:11.000 And I just was looking back at some of them.
00:02:13.000 And there was one that was like, you did it.
00:02:16.000 You won.
00:02:17.000 And I was like, what was this?
00:02:18.000 And it was a big Supreme Court case.
00:02:21.000 And just nobody, there will never be anybody like Charlie Kirk.
00:02:25.000 He's once in a generation and maybe once in more than that.
00:02:29.000 And an incredible loss.
00:02:31.000 And I still get sad as I think of things.
00:02:35.000 But I know he would be so proud of what is happening and what you guys are doing and what the Lord is doing with this horrible tragedy.
00:02:44.000 And so kudos to you guys for carrying on the mission in an incredible way.
00:02:48.000 Thank you for saying that.
00:02:49.000 And you are in a very small group of people that Charlie would look to for legal advice and especially understanding the Supreme Court religious liberty.
00:03:00.000 And, you know, you have a long history with this show.
00:03:03.000 We haven't had you on for a while.
00:03:04.000 And I was like, Kelly, we got to do this.
00:03:07.000 And so I'm glad we have the time and the schedule.
00:03:10.000 And you're, and by the way, thank you for those kind words.
00:03:14.000 I mean, we're doing our best here, you know, and but we have a sacred duty.
00:03:18.000 We really do to continue on.
00:03:20.000 I never wanted to be a public figure.
00:03:22.000 I never had any desire to be.
00:03:24.000 This was sort of thrust on all of us.
00:03:26.000 I know for Mikey and Blake, I mean, all of us are just kind of trying our best to keep the flame of liberty burning.
00:03:33.000 And I mean, that's what you're doing, though.
00:03:35.000 And so sometimes our mission in life and our calling in life is thrust upon us.
00:03:40.000 And sometimes we just have to say, yes, Lord, here I am.
00:03:42.000 Send me.
00:03:43.000 And so I think that's kind of what we're all doing because we love this country and we love what the Lord is doing right now.
00:03:48.000 We love the outpouring of this revival that's happening.
00:03:50.000 Bible sales spiking.
00:03:52.000 CPUSA faith is growing.
00:03:54.000 Our campus programming is growing like leaps and bounds.
00:03:57.000 So there's a lot of good things happening.
00:03:59.000 And you said something when we were meeting before this that it really took me by surprise and it caught my attention, and that is that you make the statement that there is more religious liberty in this country than at any other time in our nation's history.
00:04:16.000 Explain what you mean by that.
00:04:17.000 Yeah, everybody alive right now has more religious freedom than they've ever had in their life.
00:04:21.000 And that's because of the recent decisions.
00:04:24.000 And let me give a little feel for how unusual this is.
00:04:28.000 Typically, there's about 7,000 requests to the Supreme Court to take your case, and they took 56 last year.
00:04:35.000 So if three or four years ago, our goal had been for them to take one of our cases, that would be a pretty heady goal, right?
00:04:41.000 Well, they didn't take one.
00:04:42.000 They didn't take three, two, they didn't take three.
00:04:45.000 We won four religious liberty cases in 13 months.
00:04:50.000 And three of these were, I would call, landmark, like shifting 50 years of case law.
00:04:56.000 And so the Carson case, which was out of Maine, where they said, and Charlie, we talked about these, by the way, at the time, but you just don't put all this together.
00:05:06.000 For 130 years, they've said, parents, you get to pick whatever school you want, public or private, because most of their school districts don't have public schools.
00:05:14.000 Just take your voucher money and go, right?
00:05:16.000 And then they decided to make one change, but you can't pick in religious schools.
00:05:20.000 And Supreme Court said six to three.
00:05:22.000 Unconscious.
00:05:23.000 They decided that originally.
00:05:24.000 The legislature.
00:05:25.000 They got advice.
00:05:26.000 Yeah.
00:05:27.000 They got advice from their attorney.
00:05:28.000 It's like 20-something years ago that, oh, this would violate separation of church and state if you treat the Christian people the same as you do. 0.97
00:05:35.000 Everybody.
00:05:36.000 Well, and that was a huge landmark because now you can take that to any Christian, Catholic school.
00:05:43.000 Yes.
00:05:44.000 What this means is every school choice program in the country now and everyone in the future.
00:05:49.000 So think about since then, Texas has now just passed a school choice program.
00:05:54.000 From now on, you can never tell a parent that they can't pick the religious, the Christian school.
00:05:59.000 That's huge.
00:06:00.000 That's going to really impact a lot of kids, a lot of education.
00:06:04.000 I mean, 85% of the private schools are religious schools.
00:06:08.000 Yeah, of course.
00:06:09.000 So this is huge.
00:06:10.000 So that was victory number one.
00:06:11.000 Victory number two was a case on religious freedom in the workplace.
00:06:16.000 And there, what happened is we had a client who was came off the mission field and wanted to work somewhere where he didn't have to work on the Sabbath.
00:06:23.000 Strong beliefs on that.
00:06:24.000 So he went to work for the U.S. Postal Service.
00:06:27.000 And that worked fine for two years until Amazon started delivering on Sunday.
00:06:30.000 And all of a sudden, they said, look, we were going to have to force you to work on Sunday.
00:06:35.000 And he said, I'll work double shifts.
00:06:36.000 I'll do whatever else, but I can't do that.
00:06:38.000 You need to accommodate my schedule.
00:06:40.000 Well, there's a strong law protecting religious freedom in the workplace.
00:06:43.000 But 47 years ago, in a very dishonest case, the Supreme Court reinterpreted all the words to make it meaningless.
00:06:51.000 And so the Postal Service knew they could just cut him loose.
00:06:55.000 So we went to the Supreme Court.
00:06:56.000 We did something a little different than we would normally do there.
00:06:59.000 We said to the court, this decision from 47 years ago was a lie then, and it's a lie now.
00:07:05.000 You know that this is not what these words mean.
00:07:08.000 The court ruled 9-0 in our favor and restored that standard of religious freedom.
00:07:13.000 I mean, you have other cases here that I want to get to because you have been, I mean, you are the preeminent group working on religious liberty.
00:07:22.000 And beyond that, you're just a legal scholar, an expert on this stuff, and we will continue to consult you as these cases come up.
00:07:28.000 But I want to dive in a little deeper because you mentioned the separation of church and state.
00:07:33.000 Yes.
00:07:33.000 And this is, of course, taken from the 1802 letter, Danbury Baptist Association from Thomas Jefferson, where he said a wall of separation between church and state to express his belief that government should not interfere with religious freedom.
00:07:46.000 Now, let's go back to what he was probably really saying.
00:07:50.000 In 1802, America was 100% Christian, essentially, right? 0.85
00:07:54.000 For all intents and purposes.
00:07:55.000 Catholic, Christian, whatever.
00:07:57.000 So our founders were often concerned with we don't want, you know, the Presbyterians or the Anglicans or whatever taking control of becoming the state religion.
00:08:08.000 Yes.
00:08:08.000 Right.
00:08:09.000 And so that's that.
00:08:10.000 But this is not in the Constitution.
00:08:13.000 This is not in the Declaration of Independence.
00:08:16.000 And yet we have turned it into this almost mythology of America that there is a separation of church and state.
00:08:24.000 Now, in practice, obviously we know that that's impractical.
00:08:27.000 It's not possible because all legislation, all policy is an extension of morality.
00:08:34.000 It's a codification of a moral precept, which comes, of course, oftentimes.
00:08:40.000 Sometimes it comes from academia, but oftentimes, and historically, it comes from our faith, our Christian beliefs in this country.
00:08:48.000 So maybe just explain why this has become so insidious, this idea of separation in church and state, and what is true and what is not legally.
00:08:56.000 Yeah, well, number one, it's not in the Constitution, right?
00:08:59.000 I mean, what does the Constitution say?
00:09:01.000 The Constitution, this is the First Amendment, the first two clauses, said that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.
00:09:10.000 The founders did not want us to establish a national church.
00:09:14.000 They experienced that in England.
00:09:15.000 They didn't want that here.
00:09:18.000 But what happened 50 years ago in a case called Lemon, it's Lemon B. Kurtzman, is they reinterpreted the establishment clause.
00:09:26.000 And they said, well, we don't think it means just not establishing a national church or denomination.
00:09:32.000 We think it goes further than that.
00:09:34.000 And what it really means is anywhere that government is, religion can't be. 0.84
00:09:38.000 I mean, that's kind of a separation of church and state.
00:09:41.000 They use words like separation of church and state.
00:09:44.000 And normally you can't bring a lawsuit if you're offended.
00:09:47.000 That's not a basis.
00:09:48.000 But they start allowing lawsuits if you're offended by religion.
00:09:52.000 So if you wonder why nativity scenes were taken down across the country and menorah is at Hanukkah and Ten Commandments were rolled into the closet and all that, it's not because any of that is in the Constitution.
00:10:02.000 The founders would be appalled.
00:10:04.000 It's because of this Lemon case.
00:10:06.000 And it was cited over 7,000 times in the last 50 years to put down religious expression in public.
00:10:14.000 So like nativity scenes.
00:10:15.000 Nativity scenes, Ten Commandments.
00:10:18.000 You know, if some sort of religious activity occurs at school, even by a student, everybody's in a panic.
00:10:24.000 And all that's protected.
00:10:27.000 And so we've been trying to get rid of it because we knew it really created a government that's hostile to religion, which is not what the founders wanted.
00:10:36.000 They don't want the government to put their thumb on the scale in favor of one religion over another and never coercion by government.
00:10:43.000 But the idea that the government can't be pro-religion in general is ridiculous.
00:10:48.000 I mean, it would strike down the free exercise clause.
00:10:50.000 That's pro-religion. 0.64
00:10:52.000 And so we finally got to the Coach Kennedy case, which was the third of those cases I was just mentioning.
00:10:58.000 And of course, Coach is a guy who was told he got out of the Marines after 20 years.
00:11:02.000 He went coaching.
00:11:03.000 He made a promise to God that after every game, the first thing he would do, everybody's in center field.
00:11:08.000 They're making reservations for dinner after the game.
00:11:11.000 The first thing he would do is go to a knee and for 15 seconds, thank God for the privilege of coaching those young men.
00:11:18.000 And he did it for seven years until the school came to him and said, if you do that again, we're going to fire you.
00:11:24.000 And, you know, he's like, what did I fight for if I'm not going to stand up?
00:11:28.000 And what kind of example am I to these boys if I run as soon as somebody shoots at me?
00:11:33.000 And so he went to a knee and they fired him.
00:11:36.000 And unfortunately for him and for us, he lives outside of Seattle, so not exactly sympathetic courts.
00:11:43.000 And for seven and a half years, he lost.
00:11:46.000 But we finally made it to the Supreme Court and they ruled in our favor.
00:11:49.000 This was the first time, by the way, Andrew, that there had ever been a case at the Supreme Court on the rights of teachers or coaches with regard to their faith.
00:11:58.000 Huge victory, free speech, free exercise.
00:12:01.000 Coaches and teachers do not give up their First Amendment rights.
00:12:06.000 And that's what most people know.
00:12:07.000 What they don't know was within that decision, they overturned the Lemon case.
00:12:12.000 Wow.
00:12:13.000 7,000 citations.
00:12:14.000 What year was this again?
00:12:15.000 This is like a trend.
00:12:15.000 This was, yeah, like three years ago.
00:12:17.000 Three years ago.
00:12:18.000 And as of three years ago, because of the success that you guys had at First Liberty Institute, what is now the precedent that has been set?
00:12:27.000 The precedent, the new test is if there's a religious activity and it's occurring around or in government, if it's a part of our history, if it's consistent with our history and our traditions as a country, it's presumptively constitutional.
00:12:44.000 Thanksgiving holds so many memories, and I'm sure it's the same for you.
00:12:49.000 Right now, there's a girl finding out she's pregnant. 1.00
00:12:52.000 In the next couple of weeks, she's going to make a decision.
00:12:54.000 And whatever decision she makes will become her memory of this Thanksgiving for the rest of her life.
00:13:00.000 What will she be thankful for a year from now?
00:13:02.000 You.
00:13:03.000 She'll be thankful that you introduced her to her baby by providing a free ultrasound. 0.92
00:13:08.000 And she'll be thankful that she chose life as she prepares for her baby's first Thanksgiving.
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00:13:46.000 So I want to dive into this because this is something you and I were talking about before, and I think it's really important.
00:13:52.000 Okay, so Charlie, in the last months of his life, was raising the alarm bell about Islam. 0.90
00:13:57.000 He was worried.
00:13:58.000 He was seeing Epic City and Texas, Dearborn, Michigan.
00:14:02.000 You see Soron Mamdani.
00:14:05.000 And, you know, you saw that debate clip between him and Andrew Cuomo, where he essentially guilted him and shamed him, saying that you don't know the mosques that you've visited.
00:14:17.000 And so it shocked the nation outside at least New York City because it's like, oh, all of a sudden, in order to be a mayoral candidate at a big city in America, now you have to go service this new population.
00:14:30.000 Historically, there is no doubt, there is no argument that historically America has been a Christian nation, whether that be Baptists or Quakers or Anglicans or Catholics or, and you could make the case for the, there's been a Jewish presence in the country for a historical president.
00:14:47.000 So at what point, because the pushback would be like, okay, so we have more religious freedom now than we've ever had.
00:14:52.000 That's good.
00:14:53.000 Obviously, as a Christian, I want to be able to express my religious freedom.
00:14:58.000 But what is good for the goose is then good for the gander.
00:15:01.000 And now we have a rising population of Islam, of Muslims in this country.
00:15:07.000 And so what rights do they now have if it now has to fit within this other precedent of historical consistency?
00:15:15.000 Well, you know, first, people will ask a lot of times because we have synagogue cases across the country just wanting to be synagogues and they're being persecuted.
00:15:23.000 It's ridiculous that this is happening in the United States.
00:15:26.000 And they'll say, well, what about religious freedom for Muslims?
00:15:29.000 And they say, I'm worried about that.
00:15:31.000 And I always say religious freedom to do what?
00:15:35.000 That's what you got to look at.
00:15:36.000 To do what?
00:15:37.000 To pray?
00:15:38.000 Sure.
00:15:40.000 To put Sharia law in? 0.99
00:15:43.000 No.
00:15:45.000 And so take the Texas.
00:15:47.000 They built that hope.
00:15:48.000 They were trying to build that community out in Texas.
00:15:50.000 It was easily taken care of by law in Texas.
00:15:53.000 In fact, what they were doing in excluding others and doing that type of an effort probably violates securities laws.
00:16:00.000 And the attorney general is now beginning to do a securities lawsuit against them for what they were trying to do.
00:16:07.000 So I say, and it reminds me a little bit, gosh, I don't know how many, maybe 30 years ago, 25 years ago, when Bible clubs and schools became a thing and people tried to stop it.
00:16:20.000 It went all the way to the Supreme Court.
00:16:21.000 I guess in the 1980s.
00:16:24.000 And there was a great victory for religious freedom in that, yeah, you can't allow clubs at school and then exclude the Christian club or the Bible club.
00:16:31.000 And people would come to me and they would say, if we allow these Bible clubs, they're going to allow Satan clubs. 0.99
00:16:37.000 They have to allow them too, you know, because of religious freedom.
00:16:40.000 And I would say, you know, our kids say they'd love to know who they are.
00:16:44.000 Let it happen and let's see who wins.
00:16:48.000 And, you know, 10 years later, there were 33,000 Bible clubs in public schools.
00:16:54.000 And there really weren't much of the others.
00:16:56.000 Now, I know the Muslim community is more organized, but I really think the truth always wins over the darkness. 1.00
00:17:03.000 So if somebody's trying to do something and change our country, I mean, there's not a Muslim country in the world that you can find that really has religious freedom.
00:17:11.000 The reason we have religious freedom in this country, even for people who disagree with Christians, is because of the JAO Christian belief that a relationship between you and God is between you and God, and the government has no right to come in between that. 0.79
00:17:26.000 And I think that will win out.
00:17:28.000 Yeah, the sunlight.
00:17:29.000 Listen, I love the glass half-full interpretation of that.
00:17:33.000 But, you know, it's an immigration.
00:17:35.000 It's a function of immigration.
00:17:36.000 Absolutely.
00:17:36.000 The more that we import people that happen to be Muslim, the more that they're going to exercise politically their political rights, and they're going to try and leverage that.
00:17:45.000 You saw that with Zora Amdani and Andrew Cuomo.
00:17:48.000 The more that they're going to try and form communities where they get to express a cultural norm that we would not consider traditionally American.
00:17:57.000 So that's kind of the basis of my question.
00:18:00.000 So you're saying that it has to be consistent with a historic norm, right?
00:18:06.000 Yes.
00:18:06.000 So at what point does something become considered historic?
00:18:09.000 Because if I'm their lawyers and I find myself in a case, I'll be like, well, we've had Muslims in New York since, you know, this date.
00:18:16.000 Of course it's historic.
00:18:17.000 Well, not in any practice.
00:18:19.000 It's the predominant way.
00:18:20.000 It's what they're asking to do.
00:18:22.000 Well, so we have this Muslim call to prayer, right? 0.76
00:18:25.000 And there was actually a clip of this.
00:18:28.000 I think I actually have this.
00:18:31.000 So we've got, bear with me for one second here, Kelly.
00:18:35.000 I want to make sure I get these clips right because these are striking.
00:18:40.000 And here we go.
00:18:41.000 So this is the Dearborn police chief, Shaheen, on the Islamic calls to prayer blasting five times starting at sunrise daily.
00:18:51.000 Play cut 210.
00:18:52.000 Oftentimes when we take readings, Council President, it's the ambient noise that's even louder than the call to prayer, to be honest with you.
00:18:57.000 The truck will go by hit a pot wall, and it's much louder than the call to prayer.
00:19:00.000 The two or three evaluations that we have had in the last couple years have been met with compliance as soon as we've talked to the religious institutions.
00:19:08.000 It's no different than church bells that you might hear on Sunday.
00:19:11.000 So you got that, and then you've got this guy, Mehdi Hassan, who actually comes by way of the UK.
00:19:17.000 He was an MSNBC anchor, and now he's just basically a troublemaker and a provocateur.
00:19:21.000 Play cut 212.
00:19:23.000 I think that if you can play church bells, you can pray the call to prayer.
00:19:26.000 We are as American as anyone else, and don't take any BS from any.
00:19:29.000 Okay, so this is going to be their argument now as the population of Muslims increases in the country while we continue to issue 1.2 million green cards every year. 0.95
00:19:38.000 And a lot of those are coming from Muslim countries.
00:19:40.000 And now, even increasingly, if we get people immigrating from Europe, they might be Muslims.
00:19:45.000 So the point is, They're going to assert their religious freedoms because this is a country historically that has exercised a broad view of what religious freedom is.
00:19:56.000 But you're saying there's a historical precedent.
00:19:59.000 So, I'm just, again, I'm playing devil's advocate a little bit here, which is a terrible expression, by the way, to use in a religious freedom discussion.
00:20:07.000 But so, if they come in and they start saying, well, you know, it's no different than church bells, and you come in and you say, well, it has to be consistent with historic precedent.
00:20:16.000 Is there a sense of what you would look at it and say, well, because this nation is historically Christian or Catholic, that would you would have broader freedoms in those respects to exercise certain religious freedoms than you would if they want to start doing Sharia law or if they want to start doing genital mutilation, if they want to start doing just Muslim call to prayer? 0.71
00:20:36.000 Yeah, I think it wouldn't be based upon the religion, it would be based on the practice.
00:20:42.000 What kind of practices were allowed?
00:20:44.000 So, in other words, if a Christian can pray, you know, somebody could say, Well, the history was most of the prayers are Christians, so the Jews can't pray. 0.88
00:20:53.000 Well, no, no.
00:20:54.000 The whole idea was they were praying, right?
00:20:58.000 And I think the situation here with calls to prayer, that's a noise issue, right?
00:21:05.000 I mean, if the idea was that, well, we don't want them to be able to send an email to their friends and tell them to come to prayer, well, we'll allow the Christians to do it, but not the Muslims. 1.00
00:21:16.000 Well, we wouldn't say that, right?
00:21:18.000 This is a noise issue.
00:21:19.000 And if the noise is really violating and disturbing people, they need to control it with noise.
00:21:25.000 Now, the things that people are really concerned about, like creating Sharia law and things like this, those would never be allowed or consistent with our constitution in this country.
00:21:35.000 So those things would take away freedoms.
00:21:38.000 And those things, so you always have to ask yourself, what is the religious practice that they're asking for?
00:21:46.000 And is it consistent with our history and tradition if the government is involved?
00:21:51.000 If not, is it just something that is, you know, we would want to protect for all faiths?
00:21:57.000 Because that's really what the religious freedoms is about.
00:22:00.000 Yeah, I mean, in this Muslim call to prayer, when they start congregating in certain municipalities like they have in Dearborn, that's going to be an increasing issue because that's something that they demand. 1.00
00:22:09.000 They demand these five times a day prayers.
00:22:11.000 They all have to point towards Mecca and they get on their prayer mats. 0.58
00:22:14.000 And it's, you know, and I think at some level, for a lot of us, you know, it's just simply offensive because, A, we believe that, you know, and you don't have to chime in here.
00:22:26.000 This can be me.
00:22:27.000 But it's offensive because, you know, we love our culture.
00:22:31.000 We love the American Christian heritage that we have, that we inherited from England and from, you know, the Magna Carta and, you know, all the way back, the Black Road Regimen, the revivals that gave birth to American liberty.
00:22:46.000 And we hold these things dear.
00:22:49.000 And so we don't want to hear Muslim calls to prayer in our neighborhoods. 1.00
00:22:53.000 I don't want my kids to have to go to school and be taught how to be respectful to this other culture that I didn't have to grow up with, but all of a sudden they decided to move here. 0.75
00:23:02.000 And when you also think about the fact that they have 50 Muslim-majority, 50-plus Muslim-majority nations on planet Earth that they could move to, why are you insisting on moving to the West that is Christian?
00:23:12.000 Even if we're not, you know, everybody's going to church on Sunday, this is, in our turns of phrases, our rules, our norms, our customs, the holidays that we celebrate.
00:23:22.000 This is a Christian nation.
00:23:23.000 It still is.
00:23:25.000 And we're seeing this great revival.
00:23:26.000 We do not want to have to listen to the call of prayer.
00:23:30.000 And I understand you have a different challenge as a lawyer to sort of interpret the laws and the statutes on the books.
00:23:35.000 But what are the statutes on the books or what is lacking that would help protect and insulate our culture from, I would say an increasingly hostile force that wants to assert cultural dominance on Americans and the West.
00:23:50.000 Yeah, I think the idea of what you can do about different religions that would come in and really aren't religions.
00:23:58.000 They're more government and culture.
00:24:01.000 They don't assimilate. 0.98
00:24:03.000 That's problem number one.
00:24:05.000 Any religion that comes into the United States, it doesn't want to simulate. 1.00
00:24:09.000 That's the whole purpose of the United States is assimilation. 0.96
00:24:12.000 It's the melting pot, not creating a new government from some other source.
00:24:19.000 And so I think the issue there is not the religious freedom side.
00:24:24.000 the immigration and who we're allowing in and making sure that we are the united states that we we have a certain history and tradition and approach and we love diversity if they're coming here for the ideals of america freedom um but i will say i will say we don't have we don't have a problem with ethnic diversity necessarily right We have a problem with cultural diversity. 0.95
00:24:44.000 Now, it's not to say that I don't love my Italian grandmother's cannolis.
00:24:48.000 That's not what I'm saying.
00:24:49.000 Obviously, there's certain things, but if you expect to come here into this country and you expect to then matriculate your son or daughter into my kids' school, and now we have to make a carve-out for Muslim prayer five times a day that impacts my child's learning experience, 0.91
00:25:05.000 or they have to now be educated on how to be incorporated into that experience, much like we've seen candidly with the secular cult of LGBTQ plus whatever, as Charlie always called the alphabet mafia.
00:25:20.000 I mean, that was a coercive force.
00:25:24.000 It still is in many schools.
00:25:25.000 And you've had experience.
00:25:26.000 Actually, I want to play one of these cuts from yours.
00:25:29.000 I want to talk about that case.
00:25:31.000 But this is an insidious cultural coercive force that, you know, we have to, yes, the immigration is key, and I totally agree with that. 1.00
00:25:41.000 We've been hitting that hard for a long time on this show.
00:25:44.000 You know, we're doing 1.2 million green cards a year, and we don't vet for American values.
00:25:49.000 We don't vet for anything like that because we're a bunch of suckers and we get taken advantage of.
00:25:53.000 And my argument is like, can we, at least as a first step, go back to pre-1990 Immigration Act with George H.W. Bush, which took it from 500,000 green cards a year to 1.2 million?
00:26:02.000 We do not need the state of Montana every year in this country or the state of Arkansas every three years in this country with legal immigrants, especially as AI is coming. 0.99
00:26:11.000 I mean, we're already seeing Amazon has just announced they're going to probably cut about 600,000 jobs and replace them with robots over the next couple of years.
00:26:18.000 I mean, so this is coming.
00:26:19.000 We do not need this level of immigration, but the cultural implications are unavoidable, right? 1.00
00:26:26.000 And so I totally agree.
00:26:28.000 Yes, let's deal with the immigration thing first, but we already have a problem that's here, or at least a potential conflicts of interest that are here.
00:26:37.000 And you see that with the Mehdi Hassan clip.
00:26:39.000 So I'm just trying to drill down on this piece of do we have more because we have more precedent historically?
00:26:46.000 Do we have more freedoms?
00:26:47.000 Do we have more rights to this than there's going to be more practices that are more consistent with the Judeo-Christian heritage or the founding that are going to be laid in that are not going to, that wouldn't be part of history tradition from other religions.
00:27:03.000 They're not going to be.
00:27:04.000 So they're not going to be automatically presumptively.
00:27:07.000 Now, again, what we're talking about here, though, is not practices of individuals.
00:27:11.000 It's when you involve the government.
00:27:13.000 That's what the whole issue with Coach Kennedy's case and this idea of you're not doing the lemon approach where, oh, you're on government grounds.
00:27:25.000 Well, gosh, you can't do any of this religious stuff.
00:27:28.000 They said, no, no, as long as it's part of our tradition.
00:27:31.000 Now, I say all this.
00:27:32.000 We're about to argue a case at the Supreme Court in less than two months over whether you have a right to share your faith in a public park.
00:27:40.000 So you begin to wonder sometimes we begin to lose who we are as a country, but I feel good and I'm very hopeful we'll win that case.
00:27:48.000 But so that's different.
00:27:50.000 But let's go to religious freedom itself, not with on the government lawn or whatever else.
00:27:59.000 I really believe that religious freedom wins out.
00:28:02.000 It's kind of like free speech.
00:28:04.000 If somebody's saying something you don't agree with, the answer is not for the government to stop the other.
00:28:11.000 It's let's speak the truth, right?
00:28:14.000 And it's the same way with religious freedom.
00:28:17.000 Especially as a Christian, I believe, man, you allow there to be freedom.
00:28:21.000 I think that I have the truth and the Holy Spirit on my side, and you got no chance on the other side, right?
00:28:27.000 So that's what I want.
00:28:28.000 So that's one of the beautiful things about the Coach Kennedy case is all these things that we haven't been allowed to do that's created almost a naked public square, right?
00:28:37.000 We should be, I mean, I love the fact that we can have a nativity scene at Christmas on the government lawn.
00:28:44.000 We can have a menorah for Hanukkah. 0.98
00:28:46.000 And we begin to remember those moral and religious roots of our country.
00:28:51.000 And it's not the sort of naked public square like we're moving into Marxism or something.
00:28:57.000 We actually have a different mindset that actually thinks there is truth, that is not about, you know, the oppressed versus the oppressor.
00:29:07.000 It's a very different.
00:29:08.000 It's every person is valuable in the eyes of God.
00:29:11.000 You know, all those principles start to flood back into our country.
00:29:15.000 But when we remove those from the public arena, we began to lose those.
00:29:19.000 When you push the Ten Commandments in the closet and you do all these things, which is why I love, if you've seen a number of states are now passing laws, they're putting up Ten Commandments posters in their schools and they're teaching about these things as part of our history and traditions and the beginning of our laws and our thoughts in our country.
00:29:37.000 That'll really change us, I think, long term.
00:29:40.000 And I would much rather have that approach that allows for more freedom, even if there's some things that maybe people don't like.
00:29:48.000 As long as they're not infringing other people's freedoms, they're welcome to go.
00:29:53.000 What if you could make the argument that the Muslim call to prayer five times a day is infringing on my freedom not to have to hear it? 0.98
00:30:00.000 Although they would say the same thing about church bells, which is objectively a beautiful thing to hear.
00:30:05.000 I mean, you know, I mean, I would argue that even Muslims would think, you know, oh, that's a nice sounding tone. 0.99
00:30:11.000 Or maybe they don't.
00:30:12.000 Maybe that's just a trendy thing.
00:30:13.000 I think they'll have to have neutral on that.
00:30:15.000 I think they'll have to have a neutral law, whatever it is, right?
00:30:17.000 If it's a noise level, if it's the number of times a day, something, I mean, people, there is a right somewhat, I mean, you would want to make that a right in your community to not be disrupted by sounds all day, right?
00:30:29.000 I mean, it would be miserable if you were right next to one of these places and you couldn't do your business.
00:30:34.000 Of course.
00:30:34.000 No, of course.
00:30:35.000 But those laws would have to be objective.
00:30:37.000 It couldn't be, well, this religion can't do it in this religion.
00:30:40.000 Well, I don't think that's going to be a very satisfying answer for somebody.
00:30:43.000 I understand that you are bound by the laws and you have to work within a legal construct.
00:30:47.000 So this is not pointed at you.
00:30:50.000 I understand you're kind of helping me navigate through what's possible, what's not.
00:30:55.000 But I think you're right.
00:30:55.000 I mean, ultimately, this is a cultural issue that starts with immigration.
00:31:00.000 Absolutely.
00:31:00.000 And that's what we're going to have to get to.
00:31:04.000 Connection, open dialogue.
00:31:07.000 These are the things that build communities.
00:31:09.000 Charlie, Kirk, and TikTok share in that knowledge.
00:31:12.000 That's why TikTok has built a space where that kind of listening actually happens.
00:31:16.000 People don't just post, they respond.
00:31:19.000 They build on each other's ideas.
00:31:20.000 You'll see a teacher simplifying a tough lesson so it finally clicks, or a gardener sharing a trick that saved their crop.
00:31:27.000 But what matters most isn't the video.
00:31:29.000 It's what comes next.
00:31:31.000 Someone asking a question, someone else answering with a story of their own.
00:31:35.000 And suddenly, people who've never met become a community built on curiosity.
00:31:40.000 When people listen and understand, a shift happens.
00:31:43.000 Walls come down.
00:31:44.000 Ideas travel further, and connection, real connection, takes their place.
00:31:48.000 That's what listening does.
00:31:49.000 It reminds us that we're not as different as we may think.
00:31:52.000 And that's what makes TikTok so powerful.
00:31:54.000 It's a place where every post can turn into a conversation, and every conversation can make a difference.
00:32:00.000 Portions of our program are sponsored in part by TikTok.
00:32:06.000 Now, I want to pivot somewhat to this.
00:32:09.000 So the president has formed a commission, a religious liberty commission.
00:32:14.000 Yes.
00:32:15.000 Tell us about that because you are directly involved in that.
00:32:18.000 It's the first time it's ever been done in the United States.
00:32:21.000 Commissions generally report to an agency or department or something, and I think they send a report and it disappears in the back of some room.
00:32:29.000 This one's really different.
00:32:31.000 The charter of the commission is specifically to report directly and only to the president of the United States.
00:32:40.000 And we have to do this by July 4th of our 250th, which is the 250th celebration of religious freedom and the freedom of our country.
00:32:50.000 And our job is to give him direct recommendations on what he can do to secure religious freedom for the future of our country.
00:33:00.000 And so we're holding hearings and we're hearing testimony.
00:33:03.000 I think most people are shocked when they hear what's going on around the country.
00:33:08.000 And we're coming up with some recommendations.
00:33:10.000 And I have no doubt with this president that our recommendations will not be executed.
00:33:16.000 You told me some crazy stories.
00:33:19.000 Let's start with the woman that got a teacher that got fired for having a cross at her desk. 0.73
00:33:25.000 Yeah, she's this is still going on.
00:33:27.000 It's in Connecticut.
00:33:29.000 Marisol Castro.
00:33:31.000 She's a wonderful woman, 33 years teaching.
00:33:34.000 And if you could see the pictures, you know, if you see it online, they've got a desk and they've got a little wall behind them that's their personal wall.
00:33:42.000 They put their stuff on there.
00:33:44.000 And, you know, it's up in Connecticut.
00:33:45.000 There's Yankees banners.
00:33:47.000 There's Yodas. 0.63
00:33:50.000 There's all kinds of stuff.
00:33:51.000 I mean, you could put a gay pride flag if you wanted, but there's one thing that's not allowed.
00:33:57.000 She has a little cross.
00:33:58.000 It's not that big.
00:33:59.000 It's a little cross in the midst of all those personal things.
00:34:02.000 So principal, vice principal, everybody comes flooding into her room saying, you take that down. 0.91
00:34:08.000 And she's very intimidated by this.
00:34:10.000 You know, she's scared.
00:34:12.000 And they say, I'll tell you what, we'll let you put it under your desk.
00:34:16.000 And they had her mount it under her desk. 0.89
00:34:18.000 There's literally a verse for this.
00:34:20.000 Like, don't put it under a bushel.
00:34:21.000 Like, you know, it's like.
00:34:22.000 No, you're right.
00:34:23.000 You're exactly.
00:34:23.000 Because she goes home.
00:34:25.000 We have these images, so the studio is going to put them up in just a second.
00:34:28.000 Gosh, she looks like such a sweetheart. 0.87
00:34:29.000 I'm just looking at this.
00:34:31.000 Show a picture of this woman.
00:34:32.000 Her name's what? 1.00
00:34:33.000 Marissa?
00:34:33.000 Marissa.
00:34:34.000 Marisol Castro.
00:34:36.000 Marisau Castro.
00:34:37.000 Marisol Castro.
00:34:38.000 Marisol Castro.
00:34:39.000 And then go to 264.
00:34:41.000 This is the picture of the cross in question.
00:34:43.000 You can see it.
00:34:44.000 It's just like, so where she would sit, it's almost just down to her right side. 0.98
00:34:49.000 And that was a violation.
00:34:50.000 But they told her to put it under her desk, like on the side inside, under her desk.
00:34:55.000 She did.
00:34:56.000 There is a picture of that.
00:34:57.000 Yeah, there's a picture of that too.
00:34:58.000 And she, you know, she was intimidated.
00:35:01.000 All these bosses come in, and so she goes home and just starts weeping.
00:35:09.000 And as she says, as she always prays to Papa God, she said, Papa God, I failed you.
00:35:16.000 And when I go back tomorrow, I'm going to do it right.
00:35:20.000 I'm putting the cross back up.
00:35:22.000 And she went back, and you can see that cross under the desk.
00:35:25.000 She pulled it off the desk.
00:35:27.000 She put it back up on her board.
00:35:29.000 And Walked her out of the school with all of her stuff in a box like a criminal.
00:35:35.000 And they're still refusing to back down.
00:35:38.000 And again, think of, oh, separation of church and state.
00:35:42.000 It's like, look at the Coach Kennedy opinion.
00:35:45.000 Okay.
00:35:45.000 The whole argument they were making there was, well, the kids might see him pray.
00:35:50.000 It's like, and the Supreme Court said, so.
00:35:53.000 Yeah.
00:35:53.000 You know, I mean, he could wear a dress, but you can't watch him pray.
00:35:57.000 Of course he could pray.
00:35:58.000 And so there's nothing wrong with a teacher being a person of faith, having a cross around their neck, whatever.
00:36:05.000 That's part of life.
00:36:07.000 And it's like they haven't even, they can't even read the Supreme Court decision.
00:36:11.000 They have.
00:36:12.000 We've sent it to them.
00:36:13.000 This is the hostility that goes on to teachers, to kids, to parents around the country that we have to fight every day all over the country.
00:36:22.000 Yeah, I mean, and then there's this, I mean, she's just such a sweetheart.
00:36:25.000 I hope, I mean, it sounds like you guys already should have dealt with this with the Lemon case where you got that reverse with Coach Kennedy.
00:36:31.000 All of this should take care of it, but we're fighting.
00:36:34.000 We have one of the biggest law firms in the world joined us against this school district, but they're refusing to back down.
00:36:39.000 And so we're still in court.
00:36:41.000 And, you know, if people, I will say this, they could go to the Religious Liberty Commission and watch any of the past hearings.
00:36:48.000 They're really fascinating.
00:36:50.000 I would encourage people to do that.
00:36:52.000 And her testimony, which is about four to five minutes long, it was spellbound.
00:36:57.000 I mean, it had the whole place, hundreds and hundreds of people with their mouth open, just floored.
00:37:04.000 In fact, I didn't see a woman in the room who didn't have a tissue.
00:37:08.000 It was really powerful.
00:37:09.000 She spoke from her heart.
00:37:11.000 Talking about, you know, I failed you, Papa Guy.
00:37:14.000 I mean, oh, that's gut-wrenching to just hear you even say that because you know that her faith was so sincere that she knew not to hide her faith or let them persecute her.
00:37:23.000 And so she felt guilty.
00:37:24.000 I'm so proud of her as a brother in Christ.
00:37:27.000 Like, God bless her.
00:37:27.000 And you know what?
00:37:28.000 Like, that's not the type of teachers we want for our family.
00:37:31.000 Of course.
00:37:32.000 These are the people that you do want leading our children, not the ones that are doing hand signs to their neck in Nathan Hale Elementary, Lucy Martinez, that still hasn't been fired as of this recording, at least.
00:37:43.000 And so we're hoping that that happens.
00:37:45.000 And by the way, you know, some people are like, oh, well, you know, they're upset that we're saying, hey, if you celebrated Charlie Kirk's murder, that you should not be employed to teach our school at our schools, whether that be K-8 or it be a university like Illinois State, where there was a teacher's assistant who tried to flip over one of the tables of our kids that were tabling out in the square.
00:38:06.000 And that teaching assistant has been fired by Illinois State University.
00:38:11.000 God bless them.
00:38:12.000 And, you know, here's another Illinois example.
00:38:15.000 And this Lucy Martinez should be fired because you failed a fundamental decency test. 1.00
00:38:20.000 I call it life's pop quiz.
00:38:22.000 You know, you got, it's like, how do you find out the quality of the water in a glass?
00:38:26.000 Well, and it gets bumped.
00:38:27.000 It spills out.
00:38:28.000 And you find out what's inside.
00:38:29.000 Is it going to poison you?
00:38:31.000 Is it clean?
00:38:31.000 Is it whatever?
00:38:33.000 Well, she got bumped, and what spilled out was vile garbage.
00:38:36.000 And I'm sorry, but that reveals character.
00:38:38.000 You are not fit to be around students.
00:38:40.000 And so some people are like, well, you can't call on for these people to get fired.
00:38:43.000 And I'm like, well, listen, just because you're upset that somebody's going to lose their job for something.
00:38:48.000 Well, guess what?
00:38:48.000 Charlie lost his life for it.
00:38:50.000 So don't give me that.
00:38:51.000 Sometimes there are consequences for your actions.
00:38:53.000 And this should be one of those examples.
00:38:55.000 Celebrating anybody's death is unacceptable.
00:38:57.000 Totally.
00:38:57.000 There's got to be a line.
00:38:58.000 It doesn't matter who you are.
00:39:00.000 It's unacceptable in any job in this country.
00:39:02.000 1,000%.
00:39:03.000 I mean, we, you know, that should be automatic.
00:39:07.000 Especially somebody as good and wonderful and as decent.
00:39:10.000 I understand people have different algorithms and they get fed all of this stuff, which is why we've made it a point on the show to just debunk these out-of-context clips or the divorce from the argument that preceded it for 15 minutes.
00:39:23.000 And they take one little snippet and these people go around saying Charlie was a bigot or misogynist or something.
00:39:28.000 It's infuriating.
00:39:29.000 There's another story, however, that I wanted to get to because you had told me about it.
00:39:34.000 I actually still haven't seen the clip, but apparently it went viral.
00:39:36.000 So you guys are having this commission, and it's a hearing.
00:39:40.000 Yeah, it's a hearing.
00:39:40.000 Maybe paint the scene because this young man ended up wowing everybody.
00:39:44.000 Yeah, it's we that one was the day the that day was on the rights of students at public schools and the rights of parents.
00:39:52.000 So we heard some gut-wrenching stories.
00:39:54.000 I mean, a mom who had her daughter transitioned behind her back and they were keeping her in the dark. 0.78
00:40:00.000 And it's just horrible stuff you're hearing.
00:40:03.000 But the president shows up, and out of all the people that are going to testify, he picks one person.
00:40:11.000 And the person he picked is when he was 12 at this hearing, but he was 11 when this happened.
00:40:19.000 This is in Encinitas, California.
00:40:23.000 They forced in this school all the fifth graders to read a book called My Shadow is Pink to their kindergarten buddies.
00:40:30.000 Right.
00:40:30.000 So they, so this happens in my kids' school, too, where the older kid has a buddy.
00:40:34.000 Yes.
00:40:35.000 And they go through maybe a couple years together.
00:40:37.000 Maybe this was just a one-off at this school, but yeah, my daughter has this where she was three or four years older, and they kind of have a big buddy.
00:40:45.000 And so this kid was a fifth grade, 11, right?
00:40:49.000 He's going to be a big buddy to a kindergartner.
00:40:51.000 That's right.
00:40:51.000 And his job was to kind of shepherd him through the process, be a mentor, big friend, big brother.
00:40:56.000 And he gets asked to read a book about LGBT whatever.
00:41:02.000 And I think asking him to ask this little kindergartner to question their gender and to take out a paper and draw on it to show what gender they are.
00:41:12.000 So this, you know, little Shay is just a heart of gold.
00:41:16.000 And he said, I can't do that to my kindergarten buddy.
00:41:20.000 And he and another child there both went home to their parents and told them.
00:41:24.000 And the parents went to the school and said, you know, you need to be notifying the parents if you're doing something like this.
00:41:30.000 And number two, we need an exemption for our child because this would violate their faith.
00:41:35.000 The school answered, you have no right to be notified.
00:41:40.000 And we are giving no exemptions.
00:41:42.000 You know the mindset.
00:41:44.000 Well, you religious people are backwards and we have to show you how you should believe about transgenderism and all these things. 0.94
00:41:51.000 So now we end up going to federal court and we did win that it is a violation of the Constitution to not notify parents about something like this.
00:42:00.000 And you do have to provide a religious exemption.
00:42:02.000 The school, by the way, because these kids stood up, I mean, these are 11-year-olds, had a pink out the hate day to have them bullied.
00:42:10.000 Bully them.
00:42:11.000 Yes.
00:42:11.000 Yeah.
00:42:12.000 And so here we are at this hearing, and there's all these people testifying, grown-ups and everybody.
00:42:17.000 And the president calls out one person to come up to his podium, and it's Shay.
00:42:22.000 And it's the coolest thing if you watch it.
00:42:24.000 I agree.
00:42:24.000 We got the clip.
00:42:26.000 Number one, Shay could barely, I mean, it's a presidential podium, like his eyes would be barely above it.
00:42:32.000 So they have this big stool that they bring out so he can get up there.
00:42:37.000 And then he walks up to that.
00:42:38.000 And the president first comments, he has a red tie.
00:42:40.000 It looks just like what Trump wears.
00:42:42.000 He said, I love your tie.
00:42:44.000 And he gets up.
00:42:46.000 They pull the microphone way down for him.
00:42:48.000 And this kid, 12 years old, gives, you would think he's a 55-year-old professional speaker.
00:42:55.000 It was unbelievable.
00:42:56.000 He said he gave a minute.
00:42:57.000 I got a 37 second clip.
00:42:59.000 So hopefully we didn't cut out any of the good stuff.
00:43:01.000 But it sounds like it was a minute of just pure fire.
00:43:04.000 So good for Shay.
00:43:06.000 And here we'll play the clip 255.
00:43:08.000 When I was in fifth grade, my school forced me to teach my kindergarten buddy about changing his gender using a book called My Shadow is Pink.
00:43:16.000 The book said you can choose your gender based on feelings instead of how God made us.
00:43:21.000 I knew this was not right, but I was afraid of getting in trouble.
00:43:25.000 After my family spoke up, the school treated us badly, and kids started bullying me and my brother because of our faith.
00:43:31.000 And the school did nothing to stop it.
00:43:33.000 It hurt a lot, but I kept trusting God.
00:43:36.000 I believe kids like me should be able to live on faith at school without being forced to go against what we believe.
00:43:43.000 I hope no other family has to go through what mine did.
00:43:45.000 Thank you.
00:43:48.000 Just unbelievable.
00:43:49.000 Just that a 12-year-old kid can even deliver us.
00:43:52.000 And plus, I mean, you don't, you see him.
00:43:54.000 You don't see the cameras filling the walls, the room full of all these adults, the president of the United States.
00:44:00.000 Standing behind him.
00:44:01.000 And you're at the presidential podium, and he just killed it.
00:44:05.000 He totally did.
00:44:07.000 What a great young man.
00:44:08.000 What a really cool young man.
00:44:09.000 And the testimony of he and his mom, which came after the president left, where they sat, it was about five minutes, was one of the most touching things you've ever seen, too, because his mom started breaking down at times.
00:44:20.000 And here's this 12-year-old.
00:44:21.000 He would lean over and hug and support his mom.
00:44:24.000 And they were going back and forth saying things.
00:44:26.000 It was so powerful.
00:44:28.000 But it just, this should not happen, right?
00:44:31.000 And so that's why we're holding the hearings is because we want this information out.
00:44:37.000 We want people to know that this is not right.
00:44:39.000 This is against the Constitution.
00:44:42.000 And that we're going to come up with specific things that can be done to.
00:44:45.000 Can you, I mean, I don't want to put the cart before the horse here.
00:44:48.000 I know that you have a July 4th, 2026 deadline to get these recommendations to the president.
00:44:53.000 But just explore in general, what are some of the things, what are the levers that the president can pull, and how do we make some of this stuff permanent?
00:45:02.000 Well, number one, there are obvious things he can do immediately.
00:45:06.000 So, for instance, we've had Department of Education guidelines for years on religious freedom in the schools to try to help schools because there's a lot of confusion.
00:45:13.000 They're updating those.
00:45:15.000 Obviously, it'll have some of the more recent good victories, like the Coach Kennedy case, as well as the Mahmood decision that came this summer on the rights of parents over their kids in the schools.
00:45:26.000 Is that notification of in Mahmood?
00:45:30.000 They were forcing all the parents.
00:45:32.000 And this is one of those unique things.
00:45:34.000 You had Jewish parents, Muslim parents, Christian parents all together.
00:45:39.000 Well, there is some common ground with the Muslim community when it comes to parental notifications and not wanting their kids to get trans. 0.99
00:45:47.000 I mean, so there are areas where we can cooperate.
00:45:50.000 There's no doubt.
00:45:50.000 Absolutely.
00:45:51.000 And that was a huge victory in favor of parents.
00:45:54.000 They do have a right to be notified about this kind of stuff.
00:45:56.000 There is religious freedom protection.
00:45:59.000 By the way, our case I mentioned with Shea, this school district has now appealed it to the Ninth Circuit.
00:46:04.000 Of course they have.
00:46:05.000 So they haven't given up yet.
00:46:07.000 But the point is, all this is going to be, and I think in this new Department of Education guidelines that will be released.
00:46:13.000 Well, my proposal, if I can get the rest of the commissioners on the commission to agree, and I think they seemed agreeable, is I think every school district who receives federal money, which is every school district, should have to certify that they've used these guidelines and they've trained all of their administrators, all of their teachers, so that they understand the religious freedoms or parental rights that the people in their district have.
00:46:37.000 And then number two.
00:46:38.000 Well, and if they don't.
00:46:40.000 That's right.
00:46:40.000 If they don't and they refuse, pull the funding.
00:46:44.000 I mean, why should we ever give funding to a school district that is violating the United States Constitution?
00:46:50.000 And so if they are, and we gave, you saw examples like Coach Kennedy and others, who even after they won their lawsuit, the persecution continued.
00:47:00.000 They still were trying to violate the constituents.
00:47:03.000 At that point, to me, they're doing it intentionally, and they should have all their money yanked away.
00:47:09.000 Totally.
00:47:09.000 And really what should happen is the people in those communities that elect them should say, why are you costing us all this money?
00:47:16.000 Yeah.
00:47:16.000 I mean, that's, and it doesn't happen very often, to be honest.
00:47:20.000 I've been doing this a long time, 37 years.
00:47:22.000 And these school districts that do horrific things and that we nail them in lawsuits, it's like the community is not even aware.
00:47:29.000 Honestly, some of these places are so far gone, you pull their money and they'll be like, you know, good for you, you're fighting back.
00:47:35.000 And they'll be like, tax me harder, daddy.
00:47:37.000 Like, that's, I mean, honestly, that's what's going to happen in some of them.
00:47:40.000 And you know what?
00:47:40.000 Listen, they'll live with higher tax rates.
00:47:43.000 Good for them.
00:47:46.000 This is Lane Schoenberger, Chief Investment Officer and Founding Partner of YReFi.
00:47:50.000 It has been an honor and a privilege to partner with Turning Point and for Charlie to endorse us.
00:47:56.000 His endorsement means the world to us, and we look forward to continuing our partnership with Turning Point for years to come.
00:48:02.000 Now, here Charlie, in his own words, tell you about WhyReFi.
00:48:06.000 I'm going to tell you guys about whyRefi.com.
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00:48:54.000 So I want to end this conversation on kind of a question of judicial history.
00:49:04.000 Because one of the things we were talking about is that the courts really went wayward during the 50s, 60s, 70s.
00:49:11.000 And, you know, now the liberals are freaking out because there's a 6-3 majority of Republican appointees.
00:49:18.000 We lose Amy Comey Barrett sometimes, and if Kavanaugh goes wayward, Justice Roberts goes wayward.
00:49:24.000 So it's a little tenuous, but we've got over your shoulder there, we've got Justice Clarence Thomas, a picture of him on the wall, and we've got Alito.
00:49:33.000 You know, Gorsuch has been pretty good.
00:49:36.000 So the question is, just walk us through, I mean, you know, the 20th century is a long time, but if you had to kind of put it into epics or eras of liberal courts, conservative courts, there really does appear to be something that got in the water after World War II.
00:49:53.000 And maybe it took a little while to kind of metastasize, but it was in the 50s, 60s, 70s, we really got a lot of these terrible rulings, whether it's abortion or religious liberty.
00:50:05.000 Just explain, give us a 30,000-foot view.
00:50:08.000 Well, really, what we're talking about is the 60s, right?
00:50:12.000 I mean, think of the hippies, the whole, you know, sexual revolution, all the stuff that really went against all the Judeo-Christian values that the country had.
00:50:26.000 And that, you know, what I always tell people, they go, how can these judges issue these opinions?
00:50:31.000 Like, they'll say, well, that's not what the statute says.
00:50:34.000 And I would tell them, how many pastors are not doing what the scripture says?
00:50:38.000 How many of them are reinterpreting what it says?
00:50:41.000 So why wouldn't you think the judges would do the same thing?
00:50:44.000 If they're getting loose with the truth, they're getting loose with the truth.
00:50:46.000 So you had a lot.
00:50:47.000 That's where Roe v. Wade came.
00:50:49.000 That's where a lot of these decisions, I mean, I don't care what your beliefs are about abortion.
00:50:54.000 Please read the Constitution and tell me where it is in there.
00:50:56.000 It's not in there.
00:50:57.000 Every dependency.
00:50:58.000 It's a umbrella of the right to kill.
00:51:02.000 It emanated out somehow in an invisible way.
00:51:05.000 It's not in there, okay?
00:51:06.000 So that was just totally dishonest.
00:51:09.000 And so you had a lot of these really bad decisions, including on religious freedom, on all the kind of values that the country was built upon.
00:51:17.000 It's just wild to me because, you know, I wasn't alive during the 60s.
00:51:20.000 I don't know when you were born, but you think about a country that was so Christian, right?
00:51:24.000 I mean, a lot of people don't know there was a religious revival that happened in the 50s.
00:51:27.000 That's when Billy Graham's tent revivals really kicked off.
00:51:30.000 The Catholics were surging in the 1950s.
00:51:33.000 And yet somehow, upon that cultural backdrop, you had this emergence of one of the most virulently liberal Supreme Courts.
00:51:45.000 And it's just, it kind of, you know.
00:51:49.000 And then what follows that is, this is the other thing, you talk about history, is you had a Democrat Party that was committed to picking people that would get to the results they wanted to get to, right?
00:52:01.000 So they seem to never miss with their Supreme Court picks.
00:52:05.000 Whereas the Republicans, they would put a Republican on and they would be good one time and bad the next, right?
00:52:12.000 And the reason for that is the Republicans weren't picking based upon a real analysis of the life of this person.
00:52:23.000 They would pick based upon, this is the way D.C. kind of works.
00:52:26.000 Oh, so-and-so is my friend.
00:52:28.000 Trust me, right?
00:52:30.000 You know, David Souter, for instance, right?
00:52:32.000 I mean, that's how that happened is, oh, no, very conservative.
00:52:35.000 Or I've asked them, they're really good.
00:52:38.000 Asking all that, I don't care if it's your mother. 0.88
00:52:41.000 I don't trust them when it comes to a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court.
00:52:45.000 The question should be, they're 50 years old.
00:52:48.000 Show me the proof of who they are, right?
00:52:52.000 What have they been a member to?
00:52:53.000 What have they given money to?
00:52:55.000 What is their judicial philosophy that is actually lived out?
00:52:58.000 Are they willing to restrain themselves and not take power?
00:53:02.000 Are they willing to pay a price to do the right thing?
00:53:06.000 Those are the kind of questions you've got to ask.
00:53:08.000 And when you do, and what I would say is on the Republican side, everything shifted with the Harriet Myers nomination because it was another one of those.
00:53:18.000 She was a friend of President Bush's.
00:53:20.000 He really trusted her, and they picked her.
00:53:22.000 Well, she had no record to show anything.
00:53:25.000 So the base kind of finally said, I'm revolting.
00:53:30.000 And what ended up happening?
00:53:32.000 He pulled her, and they put a leado who had more of a track record of anybody that we had ever seen.
00:53:40.000 And they thought, well, he's not going to get through.
00:53:42.000 He flew right through.
00:53:44.000 Okay.
00:53:44.000 And so since then, it has all been about not what people say, but show me the proof.
00:53:51.000 And that is what is so dangerous because D.C. doesn't operate that way.
00:53:56.000 And so if you don't have a real pushback on these judges at this, especially Supreme Court, but even the Federal Court of Appeals, these are lifetime appointments.
00:54:05.000 Then you're going to end up with pushing friends because that's how everything works there.
00:54:10.000 Oh, so-and-so friends conservative.
00:54:12.000 I'll push them for this slot.
00:54:14.000 And nobody's, I'm telling you, Andrew, last time under the first Trump, the first nominees for Supreme Court, we had these people pushing these people, and we would go to the White House and say, have you read this opinion?
00:54:27.000 And we watched their hair light on fire.
00:54:29.000 Nobody had bothered to read the opinions that they had even written.
00:54:32.000 So that's the way they usually do it.
00:54:35.000 And we've got to make sure we stay with a new approach, which is who are they?
00:54:41.000 They've lived 50 years of life.
00:54:43.000 What is the proof of who they will be on the Supreme Court?
00:54:47.000 I mean, I bet if they looked at your life, Andrew, and they're trying to figure out what kind of, they would have a lot of proof points of who you are, where you stand, whether you're willing to do the right thing versus these people that hide for 50 years and then they show up and we're supposed to think, well, they're going to be really good.
00:55:05.000 Yeah, I mean, on that note, even when you said that, are they willing to pay a price for it?
00:55:09.000 And, you know, I remember when I first started working with Charlie eight years ago, it was something I had to contend with because I was living in Los Angeles at the time.
00:55:18.000 And, you know, I was like, well, listen, if I join up publicly with Charlie Kirk, there's going to be a price for that.
00:55:24.000 And ultimately, I decided, yeah, let's do it.
00:55:26.000 Like, I felt like the Lord was calling me to do it.
00:55:30.000 And when you make those kind of decisions in your life, where there's no hiding behind anything, where you have to come out and pick a side, that tells you a lot about a person.
00:55:38.000 It's hard to quantify, but it's a really important character proof point that you need to consider when you're picking these lifetime appointments.
00:55:46.000 And, you know, you're also working on this at the appellate court level and some of these district court levels.
00:55:52.000 So you guys have, I mean, I don't know what you can share, Kelly, but you guys have put together a war room of sorts to assess nominees at even the lower courts.
00:56:03.000 Tell us what you can about that.
00:56:05.000 We were tired of having to hope about nominees because, I mean, our job at First Liberty is protecting everybody's religious freedoms, right?
00:56:14.000 And, well, if you don't have good judges, they're not going to be protected.
00:56:17.000 That's a good point.
00:56:18.000 And so we were like, we've got to, and really the first time that really kind of flew in our face was when Trump was elected.
00:56:23.000 And we saw 132 judicial seats open, which is rare.
00:56:27.000 Obama had not kind of paid attention to his knitting.
00:56:31.000 And he left all these seats open.
00:56:34.000 And we were like, you know, this might be the best thing we can do for the future of religious freedom.
00:56:39.000 So we started putting a vetting division together because we thought information is good.
00:56:43.000 We'll provide information.
00:56:45.000 And we don't have, unlike everybody else, we're not pushing for a person.
00:56:51.000 We're just saying, here's the info.
00:56:53.000 Let's pick the best person.
00:56:55.000 And so we started that.
00:56:56.000 And how we are now, eight and a half years later, we have the most extensive vetting division in the country.
00:57:01.000 And it's not even close.
00:57:02.000 We have a whole team, a large team of people.
00:57:06.000 We also have very sophisticated AI experts in this area, all a part of the process to make sure that we know everything about everybody because it's too important to our freedoms.
00:57:17.000 And we just provide those so that ultimately the ultimate decision maker, the president, has the information to make good choices.
00:57:25.000 So that's our goal is, you know, in a way, I feel like my goal is, our goal as an organization, Eve, is to stand in front of the booth and say, my hand up saying nobody gets through who's not pro-religious freedom.
00:57:39.000 And if we get run over by a train sometime, then we'll get run over by the train.
00:57:43.000 But we're going to stand and do our job and make sure the information is provided so that people aren't surprised like we were for many years.
00:57:50.000 Well, it's been a great conversation.
00:57:51.000 I'm glad you're doing that.
00:57:52.000 And if you ever need any help getting people's attention with some of that information, please let me know because you're so right.
00:57:58.000 The judiciary is so critically important, not only to religious liberties, but all of our liberties.
00:58:03.000 And, you know, as the president has been the victim of this black robe tyranny, as we've seen, this is becoming more and more of an issue. 0.97
00:58:11.000 Even after the Supreme Court sort of limited some of these national injunctions, they're finding workarounds by using class actions and all this kind of stuff.
00:58:19.000 So please tell everybody how they can follow you, Kelly.
00:58:22.000 Your guys' great work at First Liberty Institute.
00:58:25.000 Well, I'd say one of the things is go to firstliberty.org, our website, and you'll see a little bit of the way down it says be an insider.
00:58:33.000 And if they sign up, every Friday, we try to send out an email that lists the four or five biggest actions of the week on religious freedom.
00:58:40.000 It might be a new lawsuit.
00:58:42.000 It might be a decision.
00:58:43.000 It might be some judges that went through.
00:58:45.000 But we try to keep everybody up to date so they can really know what's happening because most of the stuff will not appear in the middle of the day.
00:58:52.000 It's not headline news, but it affects your life.
00:58:54.000 So firstliberty.org and then Be an Insider is a great way.
00:58:57.000 Of course, we also have Twitter and Facebook and everything else that's out there that they can go and follow as well.
00:59:04.000 But I just really think so much of what's happened recently, we've been trained for 50 years about these religious freedoms that we supposedly don't have.
00:59:12.000 And because of these recent decisions, these wins, we flipped all that.
00:59:16.000 And most people have no idea what they can do now.
00:59:19.000 And so I just think people will get the information.
00:59:23.000 They're going to find out that there's a lot more they can do than they think and that can change their community.
00:59:29.000 And I hope they, you know, they even share that with other people because the more people that get emboldened, the more we'll take our country back to what it should be.
00:59:36.000 Awesome.
00:59:37.000 Well said.
00:59:37.000 God bless you.
00:59:38.000 Thank you.
00:59:38.000 And God bless First Liberty.
00:59:40.000 You guys are doing great work on behalf of the entire country, as on behalf of all us Christians and Jews.
00:59:46.000 And it's really important.
00:59:48.000 So God bless you.
00:59:49.000 And thanks for making the time.
00:59:51.000 It's a privilege to be on, Andrew.
00:59:52.000 Really was.
00:59:53.000 Absolutely.
00:59:53.000 Thanks so much.