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Join us on this episode of Seculo as we dive into the recent government reopening spearheaded by President Trump and the ensuing political drama among Democrats. When AOC challenges the establishment, it creates ripples across midterm strategies, threatening to unseat long-standing party members. Discover the intricate dynamics at play, with a focus on how progressive voices like AOC and Gavin Newsom aim to reshape their party from within.
SPEAKER 11 :
As President Trump reopens the government, AOC calls to primary Democrats.
SPEAKER 09 :
Keeping you informed and engaged, now more than ever, this is Seculo. We want to hear from you. Share and post your comments or call 1-800-684-3110. And now your host, Logan Sekulow.
SPEAKER 11 :
Welcome to Sekulow. You’ve been waiting for this news. The shutdown is over. It happened late last night. President Trump, from the Oval Office, signed it, said it was time for this to all be over. There was applause. There was a lot, of course, conversation that led into it, saying none of this really had to happen. But, of course, here we are. It is over. I think this is a good day for America in that sense. However, it’s not a good day, it feels like, for the Democrats as the far-left group’s The AOCs, the squads are saying, we cannot believe this shutdown is over. You know, they called for the shutdown to end. And then when the shutdown got too close to an ending, they go, how dare you? So much so that they are calling to primary their own party members who decided to very lightly cave, if you will.
SPEAKER 03 :
You know, What I’d say this is it’s wonderful because in midterm elections, when you have the white house, the house and the Senate, traditionally that midterm, uh, you lose one of those, not necessarily both, but one. And it’s been mostly focused on the house. The Senate is looking pretty good for Republicans. So maybe that’s why AOC says this is the time to take the risk. But if you can create inter Democrat fighting at the statewide level, That filters down to those house races in the key states that they’re trying to win to flip because then you’ve got half that candidate supporters saying, I’m against the current senator. I want the radical. So what does that local… the one running for House of Representatives, they have to figure out if they’re going to endorse the challenger to an incumbent senator. It could be a mess for Democrats, but I think what AOC is, she’s making a long-term play to take the party the way of her and Mandani. I mean, she’s got a clear base in New York and Gavin Newsom. You add New York and California together and you’ve radicalized the party. I think Newsom’s a better face of the progressiveness because he acts like he’s not. He talks about his kids loving, you know, loveless into Charlie Kirk and people like that. Like he wasn’t stopping them from doing that. Yeah.
SPEAKER 11 :
All right, let’s take actually a listen directly from AOC about this. We’ll keep going.
SPEAKER 04 :
Should Judge Schumer stay as a minority leader?
SPEAKER 07 :
I think what is so important for folks to understand is that this problem is bigger than one person. And it actually is bigger than the minority leader in the Senate. A leader is a reflection of the party. And Senate Democrats have selected their leadership to represent them. And so the question needs to be bigger than just one person. We have several Senate primaries this cycle. I know I’m being asked about New York. That is years from now. I have to remind my own constituents because they think that this election is this year. We actually do have Senate elections this year. And my hope is that people across this country actually participate in their primary elections in selecting their leadership.
SPEAKER 04 :
Thank you.
SPEAKER 07 :
You didn’t really answer the question.
SPEAKER 11 :
very direct to be honest saying you know there are a lot of different primaries this cycle and we need to start looking at who can pretty much who can go i mean that is pretty wild that that is coming from a pretty major leader in the party calling for this and jordan we know historically in terms of you can maybe break it even down even from a political point of view yeah the idea of unseating someone who has been there for a while it is always a gigantic uphill battle it is
SPEAKER 03 :
unless and it’s still an uphill battle yeah but you’ve got this whole new movement i mean the fact that a 34 i think you know turning 35 uh mamdani in new york is uh took out cuomo who was very close early on he was leading way ahead had lots of money and kind of republicans and democrats were okay with him if you live in new york city and and then he leads he just does this blowout win so she’s saying well hey if you can do that if you can take on dynasties in states like new york We can take on some senators who have made it. They can do the reverse of MAGA in their own party. Will has the names, two of the ones that actually voted to reopen who are up for re-election.
SPEAKER 08 :
Well, and it’s interesting because you know what they did here very specifically. Dick Durbin and Gene Shaheen are the only two that voted for it to reopen in the Senate. They’re both retiring now. So that’s going to be a primary to see who will be that incumbent replacement. They were very strategic with that, knowing they would get the ire from the AOCs. But there’s 13 Democrats up for reelection. I think what she’s banking on is that if you can not flip the seat, but instead flip who the incumbent will be. then you can take out the leadership because the progressives of the party are not happy.
SPEAKER 11 :
All right, phone lines are open for you. We’d love to hear from you at 1-800-684-3110. And of course, this is Grandparents Week still here at the ACLJ during our Freedom Drive. Give today and your donations are doubled. We’ll be right back. Welcome back to Secular. I know a lot of you are just joining us right now. Of course, we can happily announce that the shutdown is over, that this has finally reached its conclusion, including a lot of people may have been asleep or not paying attention last night. You know what, Will? You get a lot of push notifications on your phone when there’s big news. I didn’t really get a whole lot of, hey. The government’s back open. I had to go search for it.
SPEAKER 08 :
It seems that the media has already moved on and want to push a different story at this point because their favored party didn’t get a lot of good press from it.
SPEAKER 11 :
I thought last night I was going to be like, okay, when President Trump’s going to speak, I’ll usually get a notification on my phone. I’ll go watch it when it happens. I tuned in like 15 minutes too late and caught the replay of it because it just felt like they were like, oh, it’s over? Yeah, okay, move on. That’s right. Oh, we can feed the hungry now? Good, good, good.
SPEAKER 08 :
And we’ll get to what this means with our director of government affairs, Mark Kelly, here in a minute. But Jordan, this is what is so fascinating about this is for for so long, you know, the Democrats have been saying it’s the Republicans fault. They’re blaming the Republicans for keeping the government shut down, even though we know it was the Republicans trying to pass the clean CR. But now you see. The progressives of the party, the far left of the party like AOC that are are very upset about this, basically saying they want to completely change the leadership. And the way to do that now is to primary their incumbents that are running or in the ones that are retiring, get a more progressive candidate in the Senate seat. to win that seat so that they can hijack the party even more than they already have. When you think about this and the repercussions of it, one, it shows that it was the Democrats themselves that wanted to keep the government shut down. They wanted this suffering and pain on the American people, the military not getting paid, the food stamp benefits, the SNAP program not going out. And all of the things that come with that, the airline, the air traffic controller crisis that we are facing, they wanted to continue that. And their option now is not to say, let’s try to make things better. Let’s try to legislate. Let’s try to find compromise. Instead, it’s let’s get rid of our leaders in the Senate. and go a different path forward where we can just do whatever we want and take over. They would still have the government shut down if it were up to them.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes, I mean, I think that’s what people need to understand is that the SNAP program, you wouldn’t be getting your benefits. The federal employees would miss more paychecks. The FAA would have been a disaster during Thanksgiving. It’s now looks like it will ramp up to where it’ll at least be status quo on Thanksgiving, which isn’t always the easiest time, but better than them canceling, you know, 20% of flights or even booking flights saying you might show up, but you don’t even go. And Logan, you’ve even had experience with that this week coming up. So I just think that when you combine all of this, you say, and we talked about it, they got nothing from this. except for some agreements on some votes that they’re they’re not going to win it’s it’s very i think for the american people they may have tried to you know they’ve hurt the economy so and if that does hurt president trump that hurts republicans but they own this and the kind of their the the aocs of the world and all of them coming out and saying that helps us when we say it because the the base of the democrats are saying no we we got nothing at all
SPEAKER 11 :
All right, yeah, and I want to bring in Mark Kelly here from the ACLJ in Washington, D.C. Obviously, a big moment for everyone, but I’m sure things are changing there drastically. I’ll kick over to Will, and then I’ll just take the mic.
SPEAKER 08 :
Last night, we saw a memo go out from the White House, from the OMB, that said, hey, tomorrow, November 13th, which is now today, start reopening the government. Everyone needs to go back to work. Obviously, some of these departments and agencies will take some time to catch up on back work and get to where they are. But what does it look like for the government reopening right now?
SPEAKER 01 :
Yes, I think what you’re seeing is people coming back to work. It was interesting that that memo went out last night at about 1030. And so I imagine some workers woke up this morning to the news that they were going back to work, but they’re going to come in. And as I said yesterday, I think on the show, 75% of workers were already working. So there’s going to be back work for those who were not in the office, but they’re going to get back up to speed shortly. I saw news today that about Sunday, they believe the paychecks will start going out and those will be completed by Wednesday. So those who are working without pay, those who are furloughed will all be paid. And you’re gonna see things go back to work. I think the FAA has said that it’s gonna take about a week to get back to normal. And so hopefully by next weekend when people start traveling for Thanksgiving, that airports won’t be seeing the delays and the cancellations that they were this past week.
SPEAKER 11 :
We absolutely hope so. A lot of us begin our traveling for the holidays over the next few days. Hopefully we see start ramping back up. You would think it’s sort of the modern day. The ramping back up process would be a little faster than now. I mean, it feels a little Flintstone-y to be like, all right, got to slowly work our way back into this.
SPEAKER 08 :
Driving your car with your feet like Fred Flintstone. You got to build up the momentum, right? Yeah, I was explaining the analogy. We are all making dated references here. Right, exactly.
SPEAKER 11 :
I understand. What you’re saying is no one would understand. No, it’s a Flintstones reference and I appreciate that.
SPEAKER 08 :
But I think what’s also fascinating is you’re starting to see the infighting break out among the Democrats on the Hill. I know you’ve spent a lot of time as a Hill staffer working in various positions and high levels on the Hill. What do you make of this, what we’re seeing now? Is this just reactionary? wanting to get their TV time, wanting to show that they are the leader of the party? Or do you think this does real damage to their party going forward? The way that we’re seeing the AOC types speak out and say, hey, we got to get rid of our leadership. They failed us here by failing to keep the government closed.
SPEAKER 01 :
That’s an interesting question, and I guess we’ll see it play out as we go forward. I mean, the polls did indicate the Democrats were faring a little bit better in the shutdown with the public. But we don’t know what that means long term. And I think there were some adults in the room, so to speak, in D.C. who said, you know, this has gone on long enough. They’re starting to be real pain with the SNAP program. They’re starting to be real pain at the airports. You know, the federal workers aren’t being employed and so are paid, I should say. So You know, they’re going to they’re going to see how this plays out long term. I think Chuck Schumer knew that there were members of his caucus that wanted to negotiate a deal to end this. You had people like Tim Kaine, who has a high percentage of federal workers in Virginia. And you have people like Mark Warner who voted against the deal. But I think he was probably in the kind of hope no or hope yes, vote no category. Mark Warner’s on the ballot in 2026, and he didn’t want to draw a primary opponent. And that’s a real risk right now when you have people like AOC and Bernie Sanders out there saying they’re going to recruit Mamdani-like candidates to run against them.
SPEAKER 08 :
I think we should play this from Senator John Fetterman, who had been consistently for reopening the government. He said something to the effect of it used to be a part of our party platform that we have to keep the government open. But he is also criticizing the party, but for a different reason than AOC. Let’s go ahead and roll bite one from Senator John Fetterman on CBS.
SPEAKER 10 :
to take the opportunity to remind, I vote a 91% Democratic line. And if Democrats have a problem with somebody that votes 91% of the same times as you are, more than nine out of 10 times, then maybe our party has a bigger problem. And maybe it’s not the big tent party that people need. And we want to have to win that moving forward for that.
SPEAKER 08 :
So what you start to see here, Jordan, is cracks in their base.
SPEAKER 03 :
91% is not good enough for this. Right, that’s a moderate now. If you’re 91% of the time in line with your party. For conservatives, you want people elected to vote 100%. But strategically, you look in states that are tougher to win. It’s not realistic. Susan Collins, people like that. Better to have them than somebody who’s on the left, who’s not going to vote with you 90% of the time, but is going to vote against you 95% or 98% of the time. But the fact is, I don’t think 91% is good enough for the left anymore.
SPEAKER 08 :
Well, and if you probably look at those votes, if it’s 91% of the time, it’s probably Israel and the government shutdown are the two things he voted against his party on. Yeah. I mean, in reality, the 91% figure is all of the Democrat ideology and policy perspective that he’s working with.
SPEAKER 03 :
They tried to say he’s lost his mind because he’s a Jewish senator who supports Israel and wanted to keep the government open, and he’s lost his mind. Before… And the Democrats have said that. And before they played down and said, no, he’s fine to be in the Senate.
SPEAKER 11 :
You know, so it’s so interesting how that all switched completely. It went from, yeah, he was perfectly fine when he was clearly struggling and having a lot of issues early on. He’s gotten better. They ignored that. But as soon as he started to have any kind of leanings that would be not right in line with the far, far left of the party, he now was the enemy. Right.
SPEAKER 03 :
You support Israel, how he’s got something’s got to be wrong with him.
SPEAKER 1 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 11 :
All right, well, we got a lot more coming up. I would love to hear from you right now. Phone lines are open for you at 1-800-684-3110. We’ll continue to talk about some of the ACLJ work as well in the next segment. You’re going to want to hear about some of that. Of course, it is Grandparents Week here during our Freedom Drive. And all donations, whether you’re a grandparent or not, are made, are doubled right now. That’s right, they’re matched, they’re doubled. And again, your generosity is what keeps this organization going, whether that’s our media side or our legal side. None of it happens without you. So I’m going to ask you to join with us And have your gifts doubled today at ACLJ.org or scan the QR code that’s on your screen. And of course, we are celebrating grandparents. If you are a grandparent, we’re going to talk about some of the big issues that are happening right now that are going to be affecting your grandchildren. If you have a grandparent or you had one and look, you want to honor them, this is a great time to do it as well. Again, celebrating all of what grandparents have done for us and will for the future and the future generations. I’m encouraging you to go to ACLJ.org. Again, you’ve heard about those incredible kids who are fighting for their own Jesus club and being shut down. Well, the ACLJ team is on top of that. We’ll talk about that as well, as well as a couple other new clients that have come on board over even the last few weeks. And I’d love to hear from you. Phone lines are open, like I said, at 1-800-684-3110. I see a lot of you commenting right now that you’re grand champions. Those are people that give on a monthly basis. We’ve said if you are a grandparent, we’re going to start calling you a grand champion. So make sure to tell a phone screener that too if you call in if you’re a champion or a grand champion. Love to see that in the chat. We’ll be right back with more on Sekulow. Welcome back to Seculo. Phone lines are open for you at 1-800-684-3110. We always want to give you a little bit of the news of the day, but I also want to tell you about one of our new clients here at the ACLJ. We talk about it’s Grandparents Week. It’s our Freedom Drive. It’s happening right now. It’s been a big first week, by the way, our week of Grandparents Week. I’ve been excited to see the reaction, to see so many of you comment, call in, and say you’re a part of it, whether you’re a grandparent or you’re celebrating your grandparents. I love it. I think it’s a lot of fun. It’s been a great way to celebrate what’s going on. But we have to really look at what’s happening around the country here and what’s going on in our churches and our school. And I want us to turn our attention to Colorado. You know, this has been an interesting thing. Right now, of course, the government shutdown ends. But before that, we had a lot of people who were dealing with, of course, they’re still, I’m sure, dealing with it. We’re having to get everything reopened with the food crisis that was happening. Of course, people that needed special services, needed SNAP benefits, those kind of things. And of course, as Christians, we are called to obviously feed the hungry as well. And we know that the churches have been doing that nonstop for decades and decades. People are calling out the churches. The churches have been on top of this. Quietly in the background, they have been feeding people through its existence. And we’re defending right now, and this is a brand new client, four church members. Again, this is in Colorado City. Includes two pastors who were criminally cited. Criminally cited. in this park. Why? For feeding the hungry. Feeding the needy. They’ve been doing it for years. You see some photos if you’re looking at us visually, if you’re watching on ACLJ.org or YouTube. Before the police shut the whole thing down, they said, you know what? You can’t be here. You can’t be feeding the hungry. The city has tried to make this about whether there’s too many people in it. We’re gonna talk about that.
SPEAKER 08 :
Let’s break this down, Will, because we are not gonna stand for this. That’s right. So this is a gathering that would take place on Tuesday and Thursday in a public park. And it was three different churches that would be a part of this. And they would gather. They would have worship. They would share the gospel. They would feed the hungry. It was an outreach program. This is not something this foreign concept in America of a church worshiping God and helping those in their community. I don’t know what they’re called to do. Exactly. And they’ve been doing this for years and had never had complaints or an issue But the city in Colorado decided that they did all of a sudden have an issue with it four years after they started this. And so they passed a city resolution to limit the amount of people that can be a part of a recurring use at an outdoor pavilion or public space. This also isn’t something where they were owning the space and no one could ever use it, but they did this specifically because they knew that they could shut these church groups down. You had police coming, citing them, telling them they have to shut this down. They were even asking how many people here are a member of your church, trying to separate basically how many people are being reached from this. The people that are coming here that are hungry and many are homeless and those that are a membership of the church. So this is a case of discrimination, clear and cut. It’s a violation of the First Amendment rights of our clients because at the same time, there’s even a senior fitness program that meets regularly sometimes three days in a row at this pavilion that is outside the number of participants limit that they put on. No issue there. This was specifically the city trying to target this church and shut it down because they were doing God’s work in this community, Jordan. And we’re filing a lawsuit because of it.
SPEAKER 03 :
I mean, the fact that, again, during these shutdowns, people, you know, they say, step up, help your neighbors. And this is a church who does it all the time, not just when there’s a shutdown. They always want to help their neighbors. And you don’t know if five people are going to show up, 20 people are going to show up. But we have these kind of like parking lot, public park settings so that if the bad action they’re taking is there’s too many people picking up food because their kids are hungry and they’re hungry. And this is where the city focuses on because they have this much dislike of Christians actually carrying out the true mission of Christ. I mean, think about that. No, no, it’s absurd. If this was a liberal group, by the way, of a bunch of people dressed up in weird outfits and uniforms, do you think this would happen to them?
SPEAKER 11 :
No, and look, we know from some of our friends who are even right now gearing up for the Thanksgiving events that are being held where you’re giving out turkeys and that kind of thing, and they’re seeing the demand rise significantly this year because obviously there was a lot of concern. We talked about that. I’m sure this is what happens. When you have these kind of issues, more people show up than ever before because people start looking, where can I find food? Where can I find food affordable? I brought it up the other day and it’s one of those shocking ones that CC’s Pizza. I said, CC’s Pizza decided we’re gonna do a promotion where it’s $2 for a buffet.
SPEAKER 03 :
Hundreds. Where’s the closest one?
SPEAKER 11 :
Closest one to us? Pretty close. I may have taken my kids there before recently. $2. $2 is pretty good. No, they cut it off because hundreds of thousands of people, hundreds of thousands signed up for this. That is not a sign that people are just dying to eat CeCe’s pizza. No offense to CeCe’s pizza. I like it. I’m a fan. What I’m saying is what that shows is there’s a lot of people searching for ways to get food right now and they’re in need.
SPEAKER 03 :
they’re looking for the best deal or free possible so when a lot more people show up to a public park what jordan said is right you should be celebrating that they’re showing up and talking to people in the church and in the community instead of now you are criminally charging criminally charging them not just saying disperse not just saying here’s how you get the permit which by the way they’d probably deny um that you know if they really think that they need a permit what they should have done to them is come to them and say you’re doing a great thing keep feeding the needy just fill this out here’s the process yeah Not criminal charges.
SPEAKER 11 :
If you feed people who are hungry. So what do we do now? What happens here?
SPEAKER 08 :
We sue. We are preparing a federal lawsuit to challenge this ordinance and what the city’s actions have been. Is you suing the city? As of right now the they have paused enforcement but they still have these active citations against this church we’re going to fight for their first amendment rights as well as i think it goes to a deeper problem that we’ve talked about and we’ve talked about what what comes out of these shutdowns where as soon as the government’s not able to provide then many people are like oh we should be helping the needy we but it’s groups like this that do it all the time and that is a very conservative
SPEAKER 03 :
amazing work that they’re doing and yet the city wants to shut it down because it’s not the government taking care of the people it’s the christians this is why you have to support the work of the aclj it’s so critical right now because i want you to think about this especially our grand champions out there the grandparents out there uh you know logan and i both have three kids so if both of our families got together, we’d be violating this order. We’d be criminally charged. By five. I mean, double what you need for the permit. If our parents came, you’re at 12. If then maybe you brought another friend, family member. What is… This doesn’t make… Public parks. I mean, the idea, again, I know if you’re going to like take over the park. Sure. Or you need the whole pavilion for yourself for… multiple hours but if you’re just handing out food kind of quickly as people come and we do it during these hours this time of week you think the city would say thank you here’s some more food to hand out even if they did something incorrectly there are ways to handle this that doesn’t involve criminally charging them like right there yeah or said hey here’s the process let’s work on this so in the next week you’ll be fine help you with it you’re helping people that are in need but of course not because the left only wants the government providing. They want people needing SNAP. They don’t want you relying on your community, your name. They say, oh, it takes a village. No, no. To them, it takes a bureaucracy. It takes a government. It doesn’t take the church. And when the church does step up and do what we’ve been told to do, and usually the churches don’t make a big deal about this at all. Many of you, you might go to a church and never even heard about all of the different soup kitchen programs they are funding 100% of and running with their own volunteers. That happens at churches all over, but the left doesn’t want that. They want people reliant only on the government.
SPEAKER 08 :
And just take this quote as we leave here. After doing it for four years, the pastors were informed by the chief of police that that he had been, quote, tasked with shutting down their weekly gatherings. Once again, the city could have done a lot of things, but this was discrimination against them because of their work and because it was religious.
SPEAKER 11 :
We’ve got other big topics to talk about, too, including that Jesus Club that’s happening. Of course, your grandchildren are going to be in need of your children. Again, this is Grandparents Week. And again, we’re not only celebrating grandparents that are listeners and viewers. We are also celebrating the grandparents that are with us still, and those are no longer with us. Be a part of that right now. Leave a legacy here at the ACLJ. Go to ACLJ.org. Have your donations doubled. We’ve got a second half hour coming up. Find it broadcasting live, ACLJ.org. Be right back.
SPEAKER 09 :
Keeping you informed and engaged. Now more than ever. This is Seculo. And now your host, Logan Sekulow.
SPEAKER 11 :
Welcome back to Sekulow. Phone lines are open for you. The second half hour, 1-800-684-3110. Rick Grinnell is going to join us in the next segment. Of course, we are all talking about the end of the government shutdown as well as some of the work of the ACLJ. And we’ve got a great segment last about that. And we are… Here at the, we’re starting to wrap up our grandparents week where we are celebrating grandparents. And I’m excited that this has actually been a very successful week for us here at the ACLJ. As a lot of you have turned and said, not only am I a grandparent that wants to support my grandchildren and their future, but also those who are paying tribute to their grandparents and what they meant in their life. And you can do that by supporting the work financially. And of course, donations are doubled right now. Some of that even comes to kids in school right now. We know we have a deadline right now in the high school. You heard student want to start what they call the Jesus club, a Bible club, a Christian club. And the school said, not only can you not have this Jesus club, if you want a club, it’s got to be essentially a world religions clubs. You know, you got to be able to bring in everyone from every faith and not bring them in and let them sit there and listen. Who cares? That’s fine. We’re talking about having to offer all the options of world religions. Of course, that goes against everything we know. And it goes against the law. We’ve had that settled law for many, many decades now, but the ACLJ team is always fighting and always fighting again for kids. I think that’s one of the main things that I’ve always really loved about our work here is that we’ve been able to represent kids and families the entire time in our existence. These are kids and families often that would not have the money to have legal professionals, our top lawyers in the country, working with them, our media team, get the exposure out there to millions of people each and every week. That doesn’t happen without people like you because we don’t charge them at all. All the money comes all the way we’re able to pay for our lawyers because we want to pay our lawyers. We want to pay our incredible media team. Look at the incredible amount of people that are working on this show right now. That’s only because of you. It doesn’t come from major sponsors. It doesn’t come even from, frankly, from very many major donors. The mass majority of people that give, and of course you could be one of those major donors. That’d be great. Most of the people that give, give $50, $75 once a year. A lot of times it’s during these next two months. And we encourage you to become an ACLJ champion. That’s someone that gives on a monthly basis, a recurring kind of like a membership. And right now we’re calling those grand champions for this week. They become an ACLJ grand champion if you’re a grandparent or if you are celebrating your grandparents. Just a fun little nickname there that we came up with. Scan that QR code you see on the screen or go to ACLJ.org. When you become a champion today, even your first donation is doubled. So I want you to do that. I wanted to just take a minute to make sure you all know how important this work is. If you hear advertisers in your local market, if you’re listening on radio or SiriusXM, know that money does not go to us. That goes to the network or to the broader channel. That does not go to the ACLJ. Often it’s the opposite. Often we’re paying to make sure that we can talk about whatever we want to talk about without the corporate overlords above us, without any sort of censorship above us. And that is only because of you. I want to quickly take this call to kick us into the next segment. Let’s go to Jim on line one, watching on YouTube. Jim, go ahead.
SPEAKER 05 :
All right. Thank you. And have a good day. I was going to call in on that boat last night because here in Kansas, our governor is a Republican, is a Democrat, and she is served her two terms. Our attorney general, Chris Kobach, is up for reelection. And Senator Marshall is up for reelection. Now, he has not said whether he’s running or not. We have several members in the House and the Senate. for the state that’s up for reelection. And with that vote last night, this could cause trouble for the Democrats here in Kansas. The other thing I wanted to say is on that SNAP program, I worked at a church where I was on the food pantry. And even with the SNAP, there were people who were still needing food. And I had people literally cry in my arms because the church donated to these people.
SPEAKER 11 :
Jim, exactly. And that is what we should be doing. And I want to thank you for doing that, being a part of that in your church. The church communities have been doing that for decades, for hundreds of years to this point, thousands of years, if you will, feeding the hungry, because it is a mandate that we must do. However, this is a different situation than right now. I’m thankful the government has reopened because I know there are a lot of people that are relying on those SNAP programs. But of course, that shouldn’t stop. All of you out there who decided you were going to make a big statement and say, I don’t like the president, therefore I’m going to start feeding the hungry. Well, I encourage you to keep feeding the hungry. If that’s what took you to do it, if President Trump, your dislike of President Trump is what took you to feed your neighbors, God bless you, okay? It’s good, silver lining in anything.
SPEAKER 03 :
The ACLJ will stand up for those who are trying to feed the hungry. Yeah. Because of your financial support, we can fight for them. It doesn’t cost them anything. They can continue to use their resources to feed the hungry in their community when the liberal city tries to shut them down because they want people relying on government instead of their community and their church. Support us. ACLJ.org. Donate today.
SPEAKER 11 :
Welcome back to Secular. Phone lines are open for you. We’re going to take a lot of calls in the next segment at 1-800-684-3110. 1-800-684-3110. Rick Grinnell’s joining us right now. Rick, of course, the big news of the day happened overnight. I feel like, you know, I told Will, you think you get a lot of push notifications from the mainstream media when President Trump decides to sign and end this government shutdown. But of course, I had to go do my own digging myself to figure out if it had happened. I was about 10 minutes too late. But of course, we want to get your thoughts as it’s finally over.
SPEAKER 06 :
look i think the democrats are really regretting what they did uh they could have had this deal on day one could have rolled this over and had this deal they chose not to and then they blinked and i think it is a problem for the media because they in this lead-up have not been being honest with the democratic party you know i’m old enough to remember when we’ve had issues in the republican party with leadership or losses. I’m thinking when Mitt Romney lost to Barack Obama. The media the next morning had a huge push to say, look, the Republican Party is in shambles. Look where they lost. They helped us focus on the problem areas. When Kamala… imploded. The media have not done that. They haven’t done a real focus of what happened to the Democratic Party, why they’ve lost so many men, why they’re losing young people. We’ve had conservative media doing that narrative, but the mainstream media have yet to come and force the Democrats to think about what’s been happening. I think this shutdown now shows the Democrats, their leadership is in disarray. They’re racing towards socialism and communism. The people of America who have traditionally voted for Democrats, my grandfather, these are the types of people who absolutely are abandoning them. Young people are seeing this woke way and just saying, we don’t want anything to do with it. They need to have a real conversation and real fight in the Democratic Party. The media is not helping them do that. And so they’re not having that conversation.
SPEAKER 08 :
Well, and Rick, to further that point, I want to play. This is bite seven. This is AOC talking to reporters about the leadership in the Senate and what she, as you know, de facto leader of the party in the House, is pushing for in this coming year’s midterms. Let’s go ahead and play bite seven.
SPEAKER 04 :
Should Judge Schumer stay as minority leader?
SPEAKER 07 :
I think what is so important for folks to understand is that this problem is bigger than one person. And it actually is bigger than the minority leader in the Senate. A leader is a reflection of the party. And Senate Democrats have selected their leadership to represent them. And so the question needs to be bigger than just one person. We have several Senate primaries this cycle. I know I’m being asked about New York. That is years from now. I have to remind my own constituents because they think that this election is this year. We actually do have Senate elections this year. And my hope is that people across this country actually participate in their primary elections in selecting their leadership.
SPEAKER 08 :
So, Rick, AOC is saying there’s Democrat Senate elections this year. There’s 13 of them, actually. And it sounds like she is pushing to primary members of her own party in the Senate and vocally change what has already been a drastic change in the fabric of the party, but even further. What are your thoughts on that?
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, I’m glad you played that because I think this is proof positive that the media are not helping the Democrats because they think that they should just keep this fight quiet. But the reality is, is what AOC just said should be on the front page paper of every single newspaper in America and on broadcast TV because she is laying down the gauntlet that the Democrats lost because they’re not progressive, socialist, communist enough. And that should be a debate that we want to have in the Republican Party. Let’s have that debate. Let’s talk about Mamdani in middle America. Let’s talk about the Mamdani people who are going to rise up and try to take hold of leadership in our cities. That is a disaster for America. The media are ignoring that because they’re tacitly supportive of this radical takeover. But they are going to continue losing. Normal Americans are going to be outraged and going to reject them. Maybe we should just keep it quiet so that they keep losing.
SPEAKER 03 :
Rick, it was great to see you last week in Florida and be with you there at CPAC and working on these kind of issues moving forward that CPAC is launching here in the United States and around the world. And of course, your expertise on those international issues as well, but also your expertise in politics. I mean, I think when you’re going into a midterm where usually it favors your party, the Democrats, it favors the party out of power to at least flip the house, which is very close. When you have AOC saying, let’s go after all the incumbents, I mean, it causes a mess for Senate races because Senate races are statewide. And then the House races where you may be a better chance at taking back the House than the Senate if you’re a Democrat. What does that candidate have to do? Do they have to pick between the AOC candidate now? Does that start messing up there? She actually could cause a lot of trouble in the upcoming election cycle. So I don’t want to, I mean, I kind of like, if she wants to do this, Rick, like what you said, please do it.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, I think I think that’s where I’m going with this. It’s outrageous. But at the same time, you know, from a purely political standpoint of winning and losing, and I’m very competitive person, let’s let them continue to take over the Democratic Party. I think that the the people who really care about America, the middle class, You know, class voters, the people who kind of swing either voting for Democrat or Republican, depending on who the person is. I think that they are showing that they’re rejecting socialism, communism, these types of people. Yes, the big cities like New York City. are always going to flirt with that idea and that ideology. But make no mistake, first and second generation Americans are conservative. They love America. They recognize why they left other countries. It’s the third, fourth, fifth, sixth generation white liberals who are electing people like Mamdani.
SPEAKER 11 :
question about that rick is look mondami effect is certainly going to happen and i think what is going to be very interesting and very telling and because of the way mainstream media runs of course we’re out there as independent media sources and we’re able to do that a lot of people will do it is i almost feel like there’s not going to be a way for him to lose in this situation unless there’s just something that is epically of disaster because new york we know has not been in its best place for the last few years and now you have a candidate that the media loves and And we know, as we saw even during the Biden administration, it doesn’t matter what you’re seeing with your eyes, the media is going to spin it. So if they find another dozen mom-dommies throughout the country that they can fall in love with, it is a little bit of a concern because it almost doesn’t even matter what they’re doing because the media just spins it as, look how great they are.
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, you just described California for the last 20 years. And, you know, those of us who live here understand this phenomenon. You look at Sacramento, and we’ve got some of the most radical politicians in Sacramento who are accepted by the mainstream media. The Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle. You know, they were so surprised to see Kamala fall on the national stage. This is the same mentality that they’re promoting Gavin Newsom. They think he’s normal. They think that his robotic ways and his voice and his hair and his hand gestures are all going to work in the Midwest. And, you know, I was born in Michigan. Let me just tell you, and I can’t wait for Gavin Newsom to get to Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin. He is going to fall flat on his face.
SPEAKER 11 :
Well, we’ll keep an eye on that. We’ve got an interesting couple of years coming because at least he’s saying it now. Maybe I am running for president. Who knows?
SPEAKER 08 :
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t, Will. So was he lying the previous times when he was clearly running for president and said, ah, no, no, I’m focused on California right now.
SPEAKER 11 :
I’m just going to go have a debate and all these things.
SPEAKER 08 :
That’s fair.
SPEAKER 11 :
It’s fine. I’m going to come to Nashville for no apparent reason. No incumbents running again, though.
SPEAKER 03 :
I mean, so you get two full primaries on the right and the left.
SPEAKER 11 :
yeah it’s gonna be a fun one we got a few years until until there but it feels like we’re already there in some weird way because that’s the way we’re always right there now it just feels like we never get out of that we always talk about we used to have election cycle years on this show and what we used to on their work and be like okay you kind of have two years on and then or you know maybe even a year and a half on with the election year and then like we’d have other years now it’s like it’s non-stop it’s never changing it feels like we’re always in this sort of cycle both parties what
SPEAKER 03 :
One reason why both parties are also in a very evolutionary mode right now.
SPEAKER 11 :
Yeah, and they’re making a much bigger deal about… They can go two different directions on each side. And they’re making a much bigger deal about things like the mayor of New York or midterms. Those things were not necessarily number one news stories.
SPEAKER 03 :
Off your Virginia election, they go back between Democrat and Republican governor every term. They only get one term. It’s a weird…
SPEAKER 11 :
Rick, thanks for joining us. Appreciate it. We do have a few lines open for you. I’d love to take your calls. 1-800-684-3110. We’ve only got one segment left, so this is the perfect time to call in at 1-800-684-3110. Of course, the ACLJ is hard at work. During our Freedom Drive, we’ve got an incredible team all over the world. I mean, you heard from our team from Europe this week. You’ve heard from our team in Washington, D.C. Of course, here in our media headquarters in Nashville. I want you to go to ACLJ.org, though, right now. During these special months, donations are doubled. How that works is there are other ACLJ supporters. who essentially have pledged to unlock a donation as it’s made. And there’s a lot of them. And they all come together and do this right now. So it doesn’t matter if your donation is $5 or $5,000. It will be doubled right now. So I encourage you, during our Freedom Drive, you can do this all month. But right now, if you want to do it in honor of your grandparents or as a grandparent yourself, do it right now during our Grandparents Week. I love this special week. I love doing it, but of course it only works if you support. So go to ACLJ.org. We’ll be right back with your calls and comments coming up. Welcome back to Secular. We do have about four lines open, so if you want to call in, great time to do it, 1-800-684-3110, as we are celebrating Grandparents’ Week. It’s Grandparents’ Week here at the ACLJ, and of course, to support the work of the ACLJ as we’re at it. I mean, you heard about some of our incredible cases that we have right now, whether that is a church being shut down for what? I don’t know what they were doing. What were they doing? Feeding the hungry. Or maybe it was a girl wanting to start a Jesus club in her school, and they said, you know, you can start a club, but you can’t just be Jesus. You’ve got to add in everybody else, too. You gotta make this world religions, okay? Sorry, if you think Jesus is the only way to heaven, that’s not our fault. You gotta be more inclusive. That is the world we’re living in. Of course, we know both those things, specifically the one and the girl. We know it’s ACLJ’s case and settled law for the last 30 plus years. But a lot of these schools, they don’t want that. And they’re going to fight back. And look, you never know with Supreme Court. Things can go one way or the other. Right now, we have a pretty good court, but you never know where it could go in the future. That’s why part of Grandparents Week is about the legacy. It’s about educating your children, educating your grandchildren, making sure we’re there to keep this good fight going as long as we can. And that doesn’t happen unless you support the work. I’m going to take a call. Let’s go to Chris who’s calling in Ohio on line one. Chris, you’re on the air.
SPEAKER 02 :
Hi, I am actually driving from Ohio to Tennessee right now. I’m a grandparent. And as you’re, I’m listening to you guys and I’m thinking about the election for mom Donnie in New York city. And my question is, do they validate the votes in a mayoral race? Is that possible? Because of the influx of the immigrants in that area.
SPEAKER 11 :
Chris, I’m sure they do have some sort of voter authorization here. Here’s just the truth. I think you start going down that path, it’s going to be very different. Of course, we believe there should be voter ID and all of those things that we’ve talked about for years that always feel like it is just made for fraud. Mondami won in a pretty significant landslide. I will tell you, as a friend of a lot of… I used to live in New York. I have a lot of friends that are New Yorkers. I don’t know any of them. And they are, yes, usually pretty liberal. But they are usually not like the most liberal. I don’t know any of them that voted for anyone but Mamdami. And that is, I think, really a striking thing. You know why? Because they were told Cuomo, by the way, they were kind of told he was the devil for like the last six or seven years. For different reasons. He resigned as governor. So if you’re a conservative, you didn’t like him. And if you’re a liberal, you didn’t like him. And then you had Curtis Sliwa, who is just, he’s no different than a Bernie Sanders, if you will, which is like a guy who’s just always been there in the background making noise. People like him, but Republican, but he’s not going to win.
SPEAKER 03 :
No.
SPEAKER 11 :
And then you had a young, well-spoken guy who came out there and it almost didn’t matter what he said. He was going to win. And he went. The bus would be free.
SPEAKER 03 :
The rates would be stopped. New York was going to be cost efficient, which. And much like Obama.
SPEAKER 11 :
And he wants to get rid of the NYPD. Yeah. And much like Obama was able to use social media in a way that was very strong. Yeah. I watched his content a lot. I kept getting served it, and some of it was very well done, very compelling.
SPEAKER 03 :
That’s how he actually got known, is making content.
SPEAKER 11 :
Yeah, I watched anti-Semitic rap music, but you know, whatever. But I watched even a video where he said, hey, I’m going to answer questions from your conservative family, because I’m going to be their mayor too. And it was very impressive. Now again, I didn’t agree with what he had to say, but I watched it and went… I see how if these were the three choices you had and you weren’t like the most political person, you would go, yeah, I’m going to go give the young 34-year-old guy a shot here because what we’ve had in New York has been a pretty big disaster. All he really has to do in New York is not make it somehow worse. That’s true.
SPEAKER 08 :
Here’s also a thing that the ACLJ is- Getting rid of the NYPD might do that.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, I don’t think that’s going to happen. Also running out the people who create the jobs there. I mean, the fact that Florida, again, and places like where we live in Tennessee- Open for business. I mean, not only open for business, I’ve heard from realtors, you would usually get two or three calls a day from people moving. It’s back up to those 20 calls a day things again. Because of what happened last time in New York.
SPEAKER 08 :
Here’s what the ACLJ is going to have to be focused on in New York, because we’re focused on it in Massachusetts and around the country, is the crisis pregnancy centers that are located in New York. Because a lot of the promises, the free stuff that he wants to give away, he can’t do without the governor, without the state house. But here is in his Trump-proofing NYC PDF after his election, and this is kind of the white paper about his goals. election right this isn’t the what he was running on necessarily this is the this is the plan after you elect me right so defending reproductive rights this is trump proofing new york city by the way the mamdani administration will protect new yorkers from false or deceptive information spread by crisis pregnancy centers including lies about abortion safety and medications and will enforce local law 17 forcing these centers to disclose whether they have licensed medical professionals and will also strengthen the city’s abortion access hub by doubling funding to two million dollars which confident confidentiality helps new yorkers find abortion providers and supports people living outside of new york through the process of scheduling appointments and finding financial assistance so once again
SPEAKER 03 :
That’s in his document of what his administration would do. They used to use the line of which is, I don’t like abortion, but sometimes it’s necessary. That was the line. It’s not like the first choice. So these pregnancy centers… are available to women who want to say, well, is there a way I could get some financial help to have some assistance on so I can still work my job? And I need to learn how to be a mom. And you’re going to do this all for me. Well, then maybe I want to think about having this child instead of having an abortion. They don’t even want people to even have that opportunity. or thought process that maybe I can do this even if I’m in a tough situation.
SPEAKER 11 :
Yeah, and you are really concerned about speech there in New York City. I mean, look, if you walk through Times Square, there’s often a pro-life pregnancy resource center billboard. And you start wondering, well, sure, that’s a private company that takes the money. But who knows, with the way that they have censored speech, that those could very quickly come down. And what does that look like? What does that look like when they start doing that, when you know part of his plan is to take down the pregnancy resource centers. Well, those pregnancy resource centers are advertising in Times Square.
SPEAKER 03 :
And Roe versus Wade, when it was overturned, it did not stop abortion in New York. In fact, New York made their abortion laws more liberal, more open, less restrictions, less rules. So he doesn’t have to improve. It’s like the abortion industry in New York is doing great. What he wants to do is take out what they see as competition, Logan. That’s what I was getting to. They see a pro-life pregnancy center as a competition that takes money away from their radical left cause because those causes donate directly because they’re a billion-dollar-a-year industry to their campaigns.
SPEAKER 11 :
Yeah, so we’re definitely going to start looking at what that option is. You know we did last year in Massachusetts, and we did it throughout this year in Massachusetts. Look, I’ll be honest with you right now.
SPEAKER 03 :
They’ve been doing it in New York for years, though.
SPEAKER 11 :
Look, I want to make something clear. When we did this in Massachusetts, we had a lot of you who were very interested in it up front, and I’ll be honest, okay? It seemed like an issue that people didn’t really care about if it wasn’t happening in their backyard. Yeah. Okay, so if it’s not happening to you, it feels like it gets a little silent. Remember, we’re America here. It’s why also when I talk about the work of the ECLJ, our European Center for Law and Justice, I know there’s a lot of you going, why do I care what’s happening in France? You should. It’s a small world after all, if you will. So right now, I encourage you to support the work of the ECLJ because the worldwide efforts, by the way, it’s the same calls for life. Life means the same thing in New York City as it does here, as it does in Boston, as it does in Nashville, as it does in Germany and France and in the UK. Yes, they’re very different in there. There are a lot of different laws, a lot of different rules. Make sure we’re good here. Good. All right, cool. Sorry, we had a little bit of a power outage issue happen in our studio. But with that, hey, help us keep our power bill going. Go to ACLJ.org. Make a donation today. We were good. We’re covered. There you go. They’re back on.
SPEAKER 03 :
If I wanted to say this, Logan. Because you might say, well, you know what? That’s why those people shouldn’t live in New York. That unborn child doesn’t get the choice. Absolutely. So if you’re pro-life and you’re in a state that’s basically restricted abortion as much as you can after it basically outlawed it, then we should turn our attention to saving as many children as we can from abortion in the states that have gone the other way. They have no choice of where they are in the womb.
SPEAKER 11 :
Absolutely. So with that, I’m going to ask you for the next 30 seconds. So the QR codes are on the screen.
SPEAKER 03 :
And to take on New York, Logan?
SPEAKER 11 :
Yeah. Not easy. Expensive. Not easy, expensive, and not fun. But you know what? The ACLJ team is at it strong. Go to ACLJ.org right now. That QR code’s on the screen. Let’s leave it up. Your donations are doubled. It’s Grandparents Week, of course. We’re celebrating grandparents. But it doesn’t matter if you’re a grandparent or not. You can make your donation right now at ACLJ.org. We’ll talk to you tomorrow.
