On this episode of Washington Watch, Jody Heiss takes us on a comprehensive journey through the intricate world of U.S. politics and international relations. Join us as we delve into the groundbreaking rescissions package passed by the House, a significant step in showing fiscal responsibility by clawing back $9 billion in federal funding. House Speaker Mike Johnson celebrates this feat with us, a victory that signifies a turning point in decades-long fiscal management. Understanding the intricate dynamics of political maneuvering, Congressman Ron Estes joins to share his insights into additional areas ripe for financial reform and the looming challenges.
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from the heart of our nation’s capital in Washington, D.C., bringing compelling interviews, insightful analysis, taking you beyond the headlines and soundbites into conversations with our nation’s leaders and newsmakers, all from a biblical worldview. Sitting in for Tony is today’s host, Jody Heiss.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, good afternoon. Welcome to this July 18th edition of Washington Watch. I am Jody Heiss, a senior fellow here at the Family Research Council, and your Friday host. So glad to have you on board with us. Coming up on today’s program of Washington Watch, well, it was a deadline met and promises kept.
SPEAKER 01 :
The Republican Party and President Trump and everybody that works on our side has promised fiscal responsibility and fiscal discipline, and we’re delivering on those promises again tonight. I just signed our HR-4, which is our rescissions package, the first of what we believe will be multiple rescissions packages. That’s our plan. I’m delighted to send that over to the president’s desk for signature, and he’ll sign that quickly.
SPEAKER 04 :
That was House Speaker Mike Johnson taking a victory lap, a well-deserved one, I might add, after the House passed the president’s first rescissions package. By a pretty narrow vote, it was 216 to 213. It took place a little after midnight last night, this morning. And we’ll break down what it took to get that package to the president’s desk when I’m joined here in just a moment. by Kansas Congressman Ron Estes. He’s a member of the House Budget Committee, and he’ll break all that down for us. And there’s been a lot going on in Syria, where clashes between two tribes have now drawn Israel into the mix. In fact, Israel actually launched a wave of strikes this week.
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We are actively engaging all constituencies in Syria to navigate towards calm and continued discussions on integration and a stable, more prosperous future for all Syrians. To that end, we are calling on the Syrian government to lead in determining the path forward.
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That was U.S. State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce yesterday, and I’ll be joined just a little bit later in the program by Dr. A.J. Nolte of Regent University to help unpack for us what is actually unfolding now in Syria. And if you’ve been tuning in to Washington Watch this week, which I certainly hope you have, but you’ll notice that Tony’s been highlighting the need for the Trump administration to stop, to put an end to the Biden era policies that have allowed dangerous abortion drugs to literally be trafficked across state lines. And by the way, and I’ll talk a little bit more about this later, but we have a petition for that, which we encourage you to sign. You can get more info and actually sign on simply by texting the word LIFE to 67742. Again, I’ll talk a little bit more about that later. But while we’re trying to reverse these horrible policies, the pro-abortion side is working to keep them. In fact, they’re actually trying to make them even worse than what things are right now. I’ll be joined a little bit later in the program by FRC’s Dr. Chris Gasek to discuss those efforts by pro-abortionists and what you and I can do to help stop them. And then to close out the program today, I’ll be joined by David Claussen for our weekly Biblical Worldview segment to discuss some of the headlines that may have been overlooked this week But nonetheless, they are issues worth considering through the lens of Scripture. So we’ve got a lot coming your way today. You don’t want to miss any part of it. But if you do… You can certainly go to our website, TonyPerkins.com, and stay up to speed. Okay, it was shortly after midnight last night, midnight this morning, in fact, the wee hours of this morning, that the House of Representatives passed the first rescissions package requested by President Trump. The legislation claws back some $9 billion, with a B, $9 billion of already-approved federal funding. This includes things like public broadcasting and foreign aid. It was a narrow vote, as I mentioned just a moment ago, 216 to 213, but it did meet the deadline, which was today. Friends, this is… $9 billion is a lot of money, but it’s not a lot in the big picture. But this is the first time in decades that a president has successfully been able to get a rescissions package through Congress. And so will we see more coming? You just heard the Speaker say that we will. So what other areas of the federal government are ripe for pruning? Here now to discuss this and more is Congressman Ron Estes. He’s a member of the House Ways and Means Committee as well as the Budget Committee and the Joint Economic Committee. He is all over this issue. He represents the 4th Congressional District of the great state of Kansas. Congressman Estes, welcome back to Washington Watch. Always a pleasure to have you.
SPEAKER 21 :
Well, great, Jody. Thank you for having me on.
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Okay, listen, for those that perhaps have not been closely tracking all the events of this week on Capitol Hill, catch us up on what actually took place the last couple of days relating to the rescissions package and getting it to the president’s desk.
SPEAKER 21 :
Yeah, as you highlighted, obviously there’s a lot of work we need to do. One out of five dollars that the federal government spent is borrowed. So we’ve got a lot of things we need to look at. As you said, the rescission package here was the first time in decades that a president has requested that discretionary spending be pulled back. That, hey, we don’t need to spend everything that was appropriated a year or longer ago and focused on some specific areas. you know, if you look through what’s in that rescission package, the things that we were particularly pulling out, things like funding for NPR, you know, they wanted to fund drag queen programs for children and programs talking about animals need to have their own pronouns. And, you know, PBS had programs talking about white privilege. And we all heard earlier this year, all of the the horror stories coming out of the USAID in terms of the money that was being wasted around the world. Things like $3 million for electric vehicles in Vietnam and $70,000 for a diversity, equity, and inclusion musical in Ireland. I mean, I don’t know why Ireland would want to have a DEI musical, but if they do, the Irish taxpayers ought to pay for it and not American taxpayers. And so it was great to do this rescission package. I’m glad to hear Speaker Johnson reiterate today that we need to be doing more of this as we look at all of the discretionary spending that comes out of the federal government and what do we do going forward. We’ve got a lot of work to do, not just on the discretionary side with rescissions, but obviously some of those automatic spending programs as well.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, and speaking of, and I agree with you, it’s great to see the Speaker talk about more yet to come. And in fact, the White House Budget Chief Russ Vogt has said the same thing, that more rescissions are likely on the horizon. What other areas of federal government, in your opinion, may be ripe for rescissions?
SPEAKER 21 :
Well, when we look at across the discretionary course, the spending has grown so great since before COVID. If you look at going back to 2000, I believe 2019, our tax revenue has gone up. It’s gone up 46% or so. So we’ve got a lot more tax revenue coming in after we passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2017. But what we’ve seen is spending’s gone up 70%. Some of that was some temporary spending or should have been temporary spending in COVID, but now it’s gotten baked in and continued on grant programs and other areas across multiple programs. We’ve got so many programs at the federal level that are redundant. You may have four or five different programs in two or three different agencies that are designed to target the same issue. So we’ve got lots of areas to look at that. Doge Group did a great effort earlier this year in identifying some of those areas, but we need to have a constant look at that in terms of where do we spend money, where should we be spending money, and does it make sense to spend dollars in this point, particularly when we’re borrowing one out of five dollars that’s being spent.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, good point. I think Doge really did set the ball on the tee in a lot of ways. At least that’s a great starting point. Switching gears somewhat, I’m sure you probably saw the new poll that Democrats have literally hit rock bottom, all-time low. for favorability among voters, and yet they’re doubling down. They’re blasting this one big, beautiful bill and think somehow they’re going to use that as an instrument to gain voters. What do you make of their tone? Are they tone deaf to what the American people want?
SPEAKER 21 :
They really are. I mean, they don’t have a positive message. They don’t have something that they want America to be for. I mean, basically the Democrat Party has become a party of socialists that they’re looking at. How can they make government spend and dictate what people do? You know, you look at, for example, we look at the One Big Beautiful Bill, and I could talk about so many great provisions there in that, but their message out of the One Big Beautiful Bill that they opposed was because they wanted to make sure illegal immigrants got Medicaid, and they wanted to make sure that people didn’t have to work at all for the Medicaid dollars that were being given to them to provide for their health care, even as little as 20 hours a week working in a job or working or getting an education or even in a volunteer role. And so as they get more strident, trying to talk against common sense things, the American public’s turning against them. When you look at the polling data that’s out there right now, of all Americans, 72% opposition to the Democrats and the positions they’re taking in Congress. And even among Democrats, there’s a majority, 52% of Democrats are not happy that the Democrats in Congress are actually doing what should be done for America.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, it’s really, it’s amazing that they keep doubling down on the very things that are getting them in trouble. Hey, but more power to them. Alyssa, you wrote an op-ed this week that I thought was great regarding the one big beautiful bill. Tell us a little bit about that.
SPEAKER 21 :
Yeah, we’ve talked a lot about the one big beautiful bill. There’s just so much positive things in there. A lot of it was centered around the tax provisions that we needed to extend after 2017 that were going to expire this year. And there was also provisions around border security and defense. But if you really peel some of the layers back and look at some of the details, there was a whole lot of pro-family, pro-life provisions in there. And what we were wanting to really do was make sure that, for example, Medicaid funding was used not by Planned Parenthood to provide abortions. I mean, we should have Medicaid to actually help people preserve and protect life and not end it. We wanted to make sure that families could raise their children. And so we focused on increasing the child tax credit for families and indexing it for inflation. We increased a tax credit for adoption, for people to adopt families. And that’s so important now when we see the birth rate dropping down to 11.7% per 1,000. And so, you know, we need to have a continuous growth of population to make sure that America continues to grow. You look at provisions like employer-funded or child care provisions. We wanted to make sure that those were available in permanent family and medical leave to help people who maybe have a temporary illness or an issue with their family. And so we want to make sure that after these disastrous years of Biden inflation, that people were able to raise their families and have the income to provide for their family.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, it really is remarkable. It’s a first time in decades. I’ve just got to underscore that. First time in decades that Congress has actually been able to pass a bill of getting rid of wasteful spending. And so hats off to you and your colleagues. We’re very proud of you and grateful, and this is just the beginning of more to come. Thank you, Congressman Ron Estes of… Kansas, we appreciate you so much.
SPEAKER 21 :
All right. Thank you, Jody.
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All right. Have a great weekend. All right, friends, we’ve got much more coming your way. Following the break, Dr. A.J. Nolte will join me to discuss a lot going on in Syria right now. And Israel’s been dragged into it. So you want to catch what’s happening there. And we’ll cover it right after the break. Stay tuned.
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The family is the oldest, most tested, and most reliable unit of society. It is divinely created and sustained, and yet there are those who are always tampering with its values and structure. That’s why we need organizations like the Family Research Council that can effectively defend and strengthen the family.
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Family Research Council began over 40 years ago, like all great movements of God, with prayer. Today, rooted in the heart of the nation’s capital, FRC continues to champion faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. FRC is one of those bright lights that helps us focus on true north.
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And I shudder to think, had they not been here, that it could have been worse, worse, worse.
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The Family Research Council is key. It’s one of a handful of groups that I think will determine whether our children live in a country that enjoyed all of the freedom and all the opportunity that we enjoyed in this great land.
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It’s just a wonderful parachurch organization that doesn’t seek to take the place of the church, but it seeks to assist the family and the church as we try to move forward successfully, not in a defensive mode, but in an offensive mode as we seek to live our lives according to the Holy Scriptures.
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FRC is not going to be whooped. You know, we’re going to fight. We’re going to take a stand. And again, we don’t retreat.
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You will never see in front of this building here in Washington, D.C., a white flag fly. We will never step back. We will never surrender. And we will never be silent. Hello, friends, this is Tony Perkins. You know what? We just finished our 21 day family Bible challenge through the book of Matthew. And if you joined us, I pray that it has already borne fruit in your life and in your home as you place the Lord and his word at the center of your home. Now, our journey through the Bible doesn’t end here, though. The challenge was a part of our Stand on the Word Bible reading plan. And from here, we’re going to cover the rest of the New Testament. And now that we finished the book of Matthew, let me ask you, would you consider joining us for the rest of the journey through the Word of God? In 10 to 15 minutes a day, you’ll see how the good news of Jesus transformed the lives of common people, people just like you and me, and how those same people transformed the known world through the power of the Holy Spirit. I invite you to continue the journey with me and discover the life-enriching power of the Word of God. Visit frc.org slash Bible for a reading plan. That’s frc.org slash Bible to learn more.
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Welcome back to Washington Watch. Great to have you with us today. I am your Friday host, Jody Heiss. Okay, yesterday the U.S. State Department spokesperson, Tammy Bruce, confirmed that the Trump administration did not support the Israeli strikes on Syria that took place the day before. And in fact, they made very clear their displeasure with Israel. Well, the Minister for Public Diplomacy at the Israeli embassy, Swelson Netor Hassan, who himself is Druze, by the way, he had a different view. And in fact, he wrote in Newsweek, quote, as the only democracy in the Middle East that actively protects minority rights, Israel has not stood idly by. Israel is committed to preventing continued harm from being inflicted on the Druze in Syria, end quote. So what are the competing dynamics that are at play here? There’s quite a bit. And joining me now to break all of this down is Dr. A.J. Nolte. Dr. Nolte is Associate Professor and Director of the Institute for Israel Studies at Regent University. Dr. Nolte, welcome back to Washington Watch. It’s always a pleasure to have you.
SPEAKER 12 :
Thanks, Jody. It’s a pleasure to be here.
SPEAKER 04 :
All right. So let’s begin. First of all, we probably have some viewers and listeners who are not familiar with the Drews. So why don’t we begin by explaining who this group of people, who they are.
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The Druze are probably one of the more unique communities in the Middle East. They broke off from Shia Islam sometime around the 11th century, and they’ve always been, in terms of theology, a little bit secretive about their beliefs. Their beliefs are very tied in with different types of mysticism, and they brought in some elements that are probably more outside the Islamic norm or mainstream in terms of their theology, possibly from other preexisting religious traditions. We’re not exactly entirely sure. But certainly the Druze would be distinct both religiously and ethnically because they the Druze tend to keep and have tended to keep to themselves and live in often mountainous areas in the Middle East. Another thing that’s a unique hallmark of the Druze in terms of religious communities is the Druze have never sought a state for themselves. There have been a couple of times in history when the Druze have had powerful leaders in Lebanon and parts of Syria, But on the whole, the Druze tend to be very loyal to whatever state they live in. And so the Druze within Israel participate in Israeli society actively. There are members of Knesset in Likud and other parties that are Druze. And the Druze have one of the highest IDF participation rates of any of the communities inside of Israel for those who are citizens.
SPEAKER 04 :
Okay, well, break that down for us. What is the motivation, Israel’s motivation, to act on behalf of the Druze to the extent of being willing to take military action here?
SPEAKER 12 :
Well, there are a couple of dynamics, and some of them are, I would say, emotional in terms of actually domestic politics and policy, and some of them are strategic. Let me start with the domestic angle. The Druze populations in the Galilee have been citizens of Israel for a long time. They are active in the IDF. They serve in the IDF. There are also Druze communities in the Golan Heights, which, of course, Israel annexed in 1967. Those communities in the Golan have been divided from their family members, literal family members, across the fence. And in the Druze communities, it’s called the shouting fence because they would often shout messages across the fence about births or deaths in the family. And they’ve been divided since 1967. And so for those Druze in the Golan who have been fairly loyal to Israel, they haven’t necessarily taken citizenship because they didn’t want to fight their cousins, but they have been generally loyal. And in recent years, many more of them have joined. And so these Druze were, let’s just say, very much agitating for Israel to defend their cousins. And many of them were, in fact, going across the border to see family. And also some youth were maybe going to potentially fight alongside the Druze in southern Syria. And so there’s a family reason. There’s a loyalty reason because the Druze have been loyal to the state and Israel wants to reciprocate that. There’s also a practical element, which is that the Golan Heights are part of Israeli sovereign territory. And so having a little bit of a buffer and having some Druze communities on the Syrian side of the border that would have positive feelings toward Israel provides defense and depth on that northern flank. Obviously, there’s hope, I think. that one day there can be normalization with Syria. But from the Israeli perspective, hope is not a strategy. And the Druze are a known quantity. Their loyalty is known. And I think if it’s for them, if it’s a strategic choice between the Druze and the unknown but possible, we don’t know what we’re going to get when we open the box relationship with Ahmed al-Shara, Israel is going to pick the folks that it knows and the folks that have shown loyalty to Israel throughout its history.
SPEAKER 04 :
Interesting. So let’s break this down then in terms of the relationship between Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Trump here. They have seemingly been right in sync with one another for quite some time as the war was taking place and so forth. But now that seems to have developed into a disagreement here. What do you make of this apparent policy disagreement between the two?
SPEAKER 12 :
I think we should always keep in mind with President Trump that he has a lot of irons in the fire in the Middle East. He’s trying to work a lot of different relationships. And there is that Ahmed Alshara piece. And so part of the dynamic with Alshara is there’s some tension within the Sunni Arab community in the Middle East between sort of what I would call the pro-Saudi bloc And another bloc that’s more comfortable with the Muslim Brotherhood and other sort of Islamist and fundamentalist groups, and that would be led more by Turkey and Qatar. Al-Shara was backed heavily in the past by the Turks and the Qataris, but now there’s been an opening with the Saudis. And I think President Trump— wants to encourage al-Shara to join that Saudi bloc and also join the Abraham Accord. So he’s concerned about that longer term strategy. And also by criticizing Israel’s strikes on Damascus, he allows himself to be positioned as sort of an honest broker between Syria and Israel, because if he comes out in support of what Netanyahu just did, and let’s be clear, some of Netanyahu’s strikes were in Damascus on Syrian military targets. If Trump comes out in favor of that, it becomes much more difficult for him to then try to negotiate between Israel and Syria as an honest broker. So I think there’s a lot of careful diplomacy that is going into the distance that appears to be publicly created. As we know from the run-up to the situation with Iran, sometimes when there appears to be daylight between Trump and Netanyahu, we find out that there’s actually more going on. And so I wouldn’t necessarily be too concerned about this causing a permanent rupture between the two men. I think Trump is playing Middle Eastern politics and is probably playing the hand he’s been dealt about as well as he can.
SPEAKER 04 :
extremely interesting thank you so much dr aj nolte director of the institute for israel studies at regent university always you bring insightful analysis and we thank you all right friends on the other side of the break frc’s chris gasek is going to be joining me to talk about three different citizen petitions on the abortion drug myth for pristin stay tuned
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The Center for Biblical Worldview’s all-day workshops delves into the formation of a worldview, what it is, how it’s formed, when it’s formed, what that means to them personally and their churches and communities.
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My hope for people when they come to these worldview workshops is that they will come away better equipped to engage the people and the ideas that they’re living with and around. And our goal is to give people more confidence in the gospel, in the fact that what God said to us actually is true, actually is the path to happiness and human flourishing for all of us, but also more confidence in their ability to have these conversations and help lead other people to the truth.
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for Bible-believing Christians to know what God’s Word says on these issues and to learn how they can apply it to their lives. And we believe that the more Christians that we equip, that’s how we’ll change the nation.
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Hey fam, listen, Pastor Sammy here at Lighthouse Church, and I cannot tell you how equipping, how empowering, how… incredibly educating this conference has been. And so I just want to encourage anybody that either has not been part of or is thinking about hosting this event, certainly to pastors, leaders, even CEOs for that matter. This conference is lights out. Stand behind it myself. I can’t commend it enough. We’re going to be talking about this for some time to come.
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The culture is kind of squeezing in on us as God’s people, forcing those of us with biblical views to change those views or to suppress those views. It’s forcing us to engage with issues that we’ve never had to engage with. And so what this teaches us is what those issues are, what the Bible says about those issues, and then how we can critically engage our culture on these things in a way that is committed to biblical principles.
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Visit frc.org slash worldview for more information.
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Thank you so much for joining us today on Washington Watch. I’m Jody Heiss, your Friday host, and so glad to have you with us. All right, as you’ve heard on this program, no doubt, many, many times in the past, Family Research Council has been actively engaged in concerted efforts to try to raise awareness about the harm of the abortion drug Mifepristone. In fact, members of the FRC team continue to strategically engage this for the purpose of trying to reveal the truth about what these drugs actually do. And obviously, that involves abortions that these drugs cause. But also there’s the other side of it, of trying to save women from the dangerous side effects of these abortion drugs. And part of the effort that we’re all engaged in has been calling on the Trump administration to take immediate and decisive action to end the Biden era policies that have allowed these dangerous drugs to be trafficked across state lines. Well, pro-lifers, you need to know this, pro-lifers are not the only ones who are calling for policy change. The other side is too. In fact, right now, there are three pro-abortion citizen petitions that have gone to the FDA that we need to and will be speaking out against. And Dr. Chris Gasek, who’s a senior fellow for regulatory affairs here at the Family Research Council, now joins me to discuss this. Chris, welcome back to Washington Watch. Great to have you.
SPEAKER 20 :
It’s good to be with you. You know, the sort of chemical abortion, Mifepristone area is where sort of all the action is. That’s not completely true, but it’s where the action is in sort of the abortion battle, because it’s now about 60, 70 percent of abortions are done with Mifepristone. But you’re absolutely right. So, there are different levels of this, so I’m going to try and walk through this as best I can and quickly just try to give a general explanation for how all this is working. So remember that the FDA approves drugs for marketing and for sale in the United States. In other words, the drugs have to be safe and effective. They have a label. They can go into commerce under certain conditions. But that’s all it is. It’s just an approval of a drug, right? And so… At the federal level, there is a lot of action going on right now with three pro-abortion, three pro-mythopristone petitions coming in, one just astonishingly from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, what’s called ACOG. It’s the professional organization of know, the sort of supposedly legitimate, you know, medical profession, and they are just totally pro-abortion and are trying, along with GenBioPro, which is the generic maker of mifepristone, and along with the Massachusetts attorney general, who is working in common with like Tish James of New York and other blue states. They’ve filed a separate petition and all of these together are about, you know, like a hundred pages long. I mean, they’re quite substantial documents and they’re really making an effort. But the general thrust of these documents and these petitions is to get FDA to relax the conditions or the safety restrictions to eliminate safety conditions even further so that you have such de minimis control over the ability of the federal government to have anything to say about the safety of the drug that it’s almost I mean, you still would need a prescription, but it’s telemedicine, it’s all these sorts of things, so little oversight. Their mantra is that mifepristone is safer than Tylenol. I mean, this is how demented these people are. And by the way, there’s recently a paper that’s been published, I think it’s pre-published, talking about the fallacy of this whole comparison, right? But I just sort of mentioned that. So Jodiak, let me let you respond.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, I mean, it’s unbelievable that these petitions are out there trying to make this more accessible when already there’s virtually no control and it’s going back and forth across state lines, even with states that prohibit such things. We actually, speaking of this, had Erin Hawley on earlier this week, and she was talking about one of these states, a legal win in West Virginia. Can you tell us a little bit, Chris, about the dynamics between state law and federal law?
SPEAKER 20 :
I’m sorry to interrupt. This is what’s sort of interesting about the dynamics here, because you have a federal-state set of relationships, right? Right. So, Holly, Erin Holly was on, and she gave a great interview about a great opinion out of the Fourth Circuit. Here’s essentially what’s going on. Remember, we’re in this post-Roe v. Wade era. world set up by the Dobbs opinion from the Supreme Court, which basically said that in certain areas of health and safety, the states have the jurisdiction to pass laws in this area, basically the way it was before Roe v. Wade. And so, the state of West Virginia had passed a law, I mean, I don’t know the full contours of the law, but basically restricting abortion very severely. And so GenBioPro, this company that is essentially taking up the mantle of the industry of the producers of mifepristone, because the Danko, the company that was originally allowed, is just a sort of a cutout and a kind of a, it doesn’t really amount to much. So GenBioPro went into West Virginia and they essentially said that You know, and lawyers understand this, but they said that the federal approval kind of essentially preempts the ability of the states to regulate Mifepristone. And so the Fourth Circuit came back this week. And remember, the federal government, when it has a law that conflicts with a state law on the same subject, It trumps the state law, right? So there’s a supremacy clause in the Constitution.
SPEAKER 04 :
We’ve got about 30 seconds, Chris.
SPEAKER 20 :
Sure. So the opinion basically said, no, the states have the right to regulate on the matter of abortion, and the federal government only has to do with commercial products and the sort of the condition of sale of drugs. So basically what we have here is a standoff, and we need to have our folks just be aware that, you know, go to your legislatures, make sure that your legislators make sure that they’re passing pro-life state laws and that asking them to sort of, you know, help your congressmen to help on the federal level in dealing with federal restrictions and getting involved in that. Sorry.
SPEAKER 04 :
There you go. Chris Gacy, thank you so much for breaking this down for us. We appreciate it. All right, friends, don’t go anywhere. Other side of the break, our biblical worldview segment with David Clawson. We’ll be right back in a moment.
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Family Research Council is committed to advancing faith, family, and freedom from the East Coast to the West. So FRC is going to Southern California for this year’s Pray, Vote, Stand Summit, October 17th and 18th at Calvary Chapel, Chino Hills. Join us for this powerful gathering of Christians desiring cultural renewal and spiritual revival. The Pray, Vote, Stand Summit brings together Christian leaders, issue experts, and government officials for a time of prayer, inspiration, and action. Together, we will seek God’s guidance for our nation and engage in meaningful discussions on the intersection of faith, government, and culture. If the spiritual foundations and the cultural walls of our nation are to be rebuilt, we all have a role to play. May we each find our place on the wall as we build for biblical truth. Register now at PrayVoteStand.org. That’s PrayVoteStand.org.
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Jennifer, it’s so exciting to be here with you today talking about our new book, Embracing God’s Design. Who is actually going to benefit from reading this book in your view?
SPEAKER 19 :
There are so many different audiences that can benefit. The first one are counselors themselves, because we have some material in there where we really address the gender dysphoria diagnosis and what is wrong with it. We have information for people who are wanting to go back to embracing God’s design for their life.
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How should Christians think about the thorny issues shaping our culture? How should Christians address deceitful ideas like transgenderism, critical theory, or assisted suicide? How can Christians navigate raising children in a broken culture, the war on gender roles, or rebuilding our once great nation? Outstanding is a podcast from The Washington Stand dedicated to these critical conversations. Outstanding seeks to tear down what our corrupt culture lifts up with an aim to take every thought and every idea captive to the obedience of Christ. Whether policies or partisan politics, whether conflict in America or conflict abroad, join us and our guests as we examine the headlines through the lens of Scripture and explore how Christians can faithfully exalt Christ in all of life. Follow Outstanding on your favorite podcast app and look for new episodes each week.
SPEAKER 04 :
welcome back to washington watch i am your friday host jody heiss and so glad to have you on board with us listen before we get to our next guest i want to just throw out some action items for you our last guest dr chris gasek was talking about three petitions that are now before the fda to relax the standards for mifepristone going across state lines and make it more accessible And the ultimate question then comes down to what can we do about it? Well, listen, there are some practical things. I don’t know if you were catching right when he was going off. But listen, you can contact your federal representatives and urge them to reach out to the president and ask them to stand for life on this issue and to represent the states. And you can also work with your own state representatives to strengthen state laws. wherever it is that you may live. This is going to be a state issue, as you well know by now, and that’s going to continue to accelerate. And then obviously contact your federal representatives. They need to hear from you. But there’s one more action item that you can take As I mentioned a little while ago, we’re asking we need the Trump administration to take immediate action. We need them to take decisive action. We need them to end the policies from the Biden administration that have allowed these dangerous drugs to go across state lines, literally to be trafficked across state lines. So I’m encouraging you. to sign a petition that we have that does just that. The petition is calling on the Trump administration to restore and strengthen FDA safety standards for Mifepristone, and we’re asking him, his administration, to direct the Department of Justice to enforce federal law. We need that to happen. And your voice can be heard. I want to urge you to simply text the word LIFE, L-I-F-E, to 67742. Let your voice be heard on this very important issue. All right, now we come to our biblical worldview segment. And as you well know, there’s been a lot dominating the news headlines this week. But in that process, there quite frankly have been some stories that have been eclipsed. by some of those bigger ones that have been out there, but some of these issues are still worthy of our attention. And so whether it’s big or not so big, we always like to conclude the show and conclude the week for that matter with a biblical worldview discussion on some of those new items, news items. And, uh, Joining me as always is David Claussen. He’s the director of the Center for Biblical Worldview here at FRC. He’s also the author of the recently released book, Life After Roe, Equipping Christians in the Fight for Life Today. And so I urge you, if you haven’t already, get that book. It takes a look at the abortion issue from every angle, theological, political, as well as historical perspective. Great, great book. David, welcome back to Washington Watch. Always an honor to have you.
SPEAKER 16 :
Happy Friday. Great to be with you, Jody.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, thank you and happy Friday to you as well. Let me start with this, David, because I frankly have not seen a whole lot about this, but particularly within the Christian community, as we all know, in recent months, it seems as though there have been some very high profile evangelical leaders who have made some very high profile mistakes. In fact, some of them are actually no longer in ministry because of that. But this past week, one individual has been around for a long time. On the other side of the pendulum from those who have been falling away, John MacArthur passed away. and is now in the presence of the Lord. And unlike others, he ended so well. And I just wanted to kind of toss that out to you, how you might summarize the life and ministry of this great leader, John MacArthur, on evangelicalism, biblical authority. I mean, there’s a host of things to say, but what would you have to say about John MacArthur?
SPEAKER 16 :
Yeah, Jody, well, his faith is now sight. And you think about the decades of faithful ministry, you know, for literally 50 years plus, he has stood as a pillar of conviction, of courage, of clarity. it’s incredible when you think about the really worldwide impact that Pastor John MacArthur has had over decades. A phrase that we use at FRC a lot is watchman on the wall. And I think that’s a perfect term to describe MacArthur. He really has been a watchman on the wall for decades, whether it was the battle for inerrancy fought decades ago, whether it was issues related to the prosperity gospel or the excesses of the charismatic movement or egalitarianism, or even in more recent years, civil disobedience and the fact that the church is essential. We saw him take a stand during the COVID-19 pandemic during the tyrannical reign of Gavin Newsom when everything was getting shut down. But I think Jody, his legacy is expositional preaching. You know, it’s amazing. You can go listen to a John MacArthur sermon from 1979, and it sounds like it could have been preached just last week because he didn’t get up there to tell funny stories or just talk about the headlines. He preached God’s word verse by verse. You know, just very briefly, you know, personally, my own father, shortly after he came to faith in the 1970s, began listening to those cassette tapes that John MacArthur’s ministry would send out. My dad told me the other night he probably listened to over 2,000 sermons from John MacArthur. And one of the neatest gifts he gave me, my father gave me when I was in seminary, was the MacArthur New Testament commentary set. So I know the tremendous impact Pastor John’s had on my ministry. And I bet we could tell stories all over the country of the hundreds and thousands of pastors and young men who’ve been shaped by that ministry. So again, I just would have loved to hear that, you know, well done, my good and faithful servant when he entered into heaven just a couple of days ago.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, absolutely. And what a priceless gift that your father gave you. Much more valuable than 2,000 cassette tapes, which you probably would have no clue what to do with. But likewise, I’ve got tons of MacArthur’s books, and what an impact. He has had on my life as well and an honor to meet him along the way. But incredible, man. What would you say, David, as we wrap up before we go to another topic? There are so many. We have a new generation of Christian leaders. What do you think they are? many of them have learned. But what can be learned from the life and ministry of John MacArthur or MacArthur for this new generation of Christian leaders in ministry?
SPEAKER 16 :
Yeah, very simply put, Jody, I think it’s the centrality of the Bible, the centrality of the Bible, whether that’s in preaching, whether that’s in teaching. I think John MacArthur knew that fundamentally God’s people need God’s word. And he was utterly convinced that of the sufficiency and authority of Scripture. And his courage that we saw demonstrated time and time again flowed from those convictions. And so I think we need to, again, recapture in our own day that the most important principle you can kind of land on is that God’s people need God’s Word. Explain to them one verse at a time.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yep, and I don’t know of anyone who did it any better than Dr. MacArthur. Staying within the context of evangelical culture, if we will, but a different topic that pretty much has gone under the radar has been the decision of Christian TV stars Chip and Joanna Gaines. and their decision to include a same-sex couple on their show. And, of course, they’ve received a lot of pushback over that. But surprisingly, Chip has doubled down on all of this. Give me some of your thoughts on what’s going on here.
SPEAKER 16 :
Yeah, this is a pretty big story. So Chip and Joanna Gaines are known for their television program called Fixer Upper. My mother-in-law, Diana, and wife, Abby, tell me that this is a show that just a lot of people watch. A lot of people follow what they’re doing, and they present themselves as – uh… christians and that they have a kind of traditional family value uh… kind of persona about them and you like you said for the first time in their programming now they included a same-sex couple and uh… understandably there was push back and rather than kind of received that feedback Chip Gaines really has doubled down. He put a tweet out where he said something to the effect that, you know, people are quick to judge him rather than understand. And I think my response to that, Jody, is and I’m sure there have been some people who maybe been mean spirited or harsh in their critique of what the Gaines’s are doing. But I think the majority of Christians kind of pushing back or simply saying, hey, There is an incongruency between authentic Christianity on one hand and then affirming lifestyles and behaviors that are antithetical to Christianity. And so, of course, as Christians, we’re called to speak the truth and love, but we never silence the truth. We never normalize something that the Bible calls sinful. And in the case of homosexuality, 1 Corinthians 6, 9 says this is a sin that if unrepented of leads you to being unable to inherit the kingdom of heaven. And so I think, you know, as Christians kind of watching this story, I always often go to Ephesians 4.15. We speak the truth in love, but we need to be holding on to the truth. And it appears in this case, at least, that the importance of truth and standing for biblical morality is kind of being seen as maybe secondary when I think it’s certainly not.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, I mean, he made the comment something along the lines that he is a modern Christian, which implies that the biblical teaching is now updated and there’s a new set of standards. And so I think all of this is certainly possible. presenting a what appears to be a belief that scripture is old and outdated and we have new beliefs. And he’s a modern Christian this season. So so let me ask you this. How should Christians respond when someone like this, be it someone in the public eye or a friend or a neighbor, a family member who is moving away from biblical faith? the foundation of biblical truth. How is a Christian to respond to this with kindness, with openness, with truthfulness, but with effectiveness?
SPEAKER 16 :
Yeah, Jody, true kindness is never at odds with the truth. I think that we really need to understand that. You know, Ephesians 4, 15, truth and love, that’s got to be our model. Yes, we should be compassionate kind of in our tone and our posture, but we can’t redefine kindness to mean silence or, at worst, approval of what God calls sin. And so, again, I think we just need to be really clear, going back to John MacArthur, we need courage, we need conviction, and we should be winsome, but you can’t be so winsome that you actually water down basic biblical truth, which appears to kind of what is taking place in this situation.
SPEAKER 04 :
Great point. And another illustration, so let me just throw this one out to you as well to reply, because we have the other side of Chip Gaines is an individual, Pastor Luke Ash, who Tony had on the program with him earlier this week, a bivocational pastor who was fired from a Louisiana public library because he refused to use preferred pronouns. So here you have an individual who is standing on truth, suffering the consequences for doing so. But how should Christians approach these type of workplace conflicts that arise? In this case, a pastor is involved, but in other instances, people working at hospitals or schools or a variety of other places face these type of conflicts. How is a Christian to respond to this?
SPEAKER 16 :
Yeah, Jodi, and this is a situation we’ve seen unfold around the country in various workplace environments, specifically with kind of the transgender revolution. And I think what’s neat about Pastor Ash is with this situation, it’s very clear he was not being inflammatory. He knew that there was this policy in place where you had to use the pronouns of those who identify as transgender, even if they’re in conflict with the biological sex of that person. The pastor said he couldn’t do that and was fired. Again, we’ve seen this. And it seems, you know, there seems to be a shift. You and I have talked about since the election, a lot of people seem to think the transgender movement has overreached But this is an example where this has not gone away in particularly places of kind of education and places like libraries. And so, again, I think I commend Pastor Ash as an example of conviction under fire, really. No one wants to lose their job. But again, as Christians, we cannot go along with affirming something that leads people to hell. We cannot affirm an anthropology that is at direct odds with what we understand Genesis 1 and 2 to teach about our creation in God’s image, male and female. You cannot change your sex. We cannot go along with the lie that you can. And so again, I know this issue is not going to go away, Jody, but I think we need to resolve now to make sure we are the people who will only ever speak the truth. Again, similar to what I said earlier, we ought to be winsome in our posture and our demeanor, but we cannot compromise what God has revealed in his word.
SPEAKER 04 :
Absolutely. And speaking of all of this, David, and we’ve only got about a minute or so left, we’re seeing more and more states, Tennessee, for example, just recently passed a law protecting teachers and students from being forced to use pronouns like what we’re talking about here. But more and more laws like this are becoming necessary. Wouldn’t you agree?
SPEAKER 16 :
Yeah, absolutely. And one point I’ll make on that, Jody, is language is not neutral. Language reveals a worldview, where you’ll even hear the left use language like sex assigned at birth. That’s just dystopian language. And so the fact that Tennessee and other states are passing laws to protect people from coerced speech, I welcome this. Even earlier today, Loudoun County came out and said they’re not going to enforce a policy that forced teachers to use specific language to refer to transgender-identifying students. So this is all about free speech. This is about religious freedom. And it’s about the truth. And so, again, these are issues we need to continue to pay attention to. But praise God, some of them do seem to be moving in the right direction.
SPEAKER 04 :
Absolutely. And these laws obviously are helpful to everyone, but especially helpful for Christians who are working in public institutions and places where their faith is being challenged like this. Thank you, David Claussen, Director of the Center for Biblical Worldview here at the Family Research Council. Always love having you on Friday and getting your insights. Have a great weekend. Thank you, Jody. All right, friends, that wraps it up. Hope you also have a fantastic weekend. Be sure to go to church and we’ll see you again next week right here on Washington Watch.
SPEAKER 15 :
Washington Watch with Tony Perkins is brought to you by Family Research Council and is entirely listener supported. Portions of the show discussing candidates are brought to you by Family Research Council Action. For more information on anything you heard today or to find out how you can partner with us in our ongoing efforts to promote faith, family and freedom, visit TonyPerkins.com.
