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Join us as we explore the implications of a federal judge’s ruling in Maryland which temporarily blocked President Trump’s executive order on transgender care — a directive that aims to protect minors from chemical and surgical procedures. Meg Kilgannon provides insights into the judicial decision’s wider impact and its intersection with educational policies under the proposed leadership of Secretary nominee Linda McMahon. Additionally, we discuss the broader implications of government spending, spearheaded by Congressman Scott Perry, focusing on foreign aid and domestic reforms. As the debate over USAID’s expenditures continues, this episode puts into perspective the complex dynamics between
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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. Washington Watch with Tony Perkins starts now.
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USAID spent $2 million for sex change surgeries in Guatemala. $520 million to pay consultants to teach people in Africa about climate change. That’s not medicine. $4.5 million to teach people in Kazakhstan how to fight back against internet trolls. That’s not life-saving. $20,000 to help LGBT individuals vote in Honduran elections. That’s not medicine.
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That was Congressman Brian Mass, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, opening a hearing on Capitol Hill earlier today entitled USAID Betrayal. Welcome to this Thursday edition of Washington Watch. Thanks for making us part of your day. Well, the hearing was briefly halted today when protesters demanded continued funding for PEPFAR, a global AIDS program.
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Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to testify before this committee. My name is Max Primorak. I am a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation. I previously served at the U.S. Agency for International… Pepper saves lives!
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Restore AIDS! Pepper saves lives! Restore AIDS!
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Well, Max Primerak, former USAID deputy administrator, testified at the hearing after the demonstration, and he’ll join us later to discuss it. Also this afternoon, a federal judge in Maryland temporarily blocked President Trump’s executive order, which was designed to protect children from experimental drugs and surgeries being used to promote transgender ideology. We’ll get the details from FRC’s Meg Kilgannon. And President Trump making this announcement yesterday.
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I’ll be dealing with President Putin largely on the phone. And we’re going to meet also probably in Saudi Arabia the first time. We’ll meet in Saudi Arabia, see if we can get something done. But we want to end that war. That war is a disaster. It’s a really bloody horrible war.
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President talking about the war between Russia and Ukraine. Could an end to the war be near? We’re going to talk about that with Pennsylvania Congressman Scott Perry. Well, I’m really excited about what I’m about to announce. It is the launch of our new 13-week series, God and Government. It’s an online Bible-centered course on government. It’s designed for those wanting to know more about how government works or should work and those wanting to have an impact on the world around them. It launches this coming Monday, and a new episode will release on the StandFirm app each Monday up until May. So while you wait, you can still go ahead this weekend and you can watch the course introduction and take the pre-test to prepare for episode one, which will come out this Monday, February the 17th. So to access it, Just text the word, rather, COURSE to 67742. That’s COURSE to 67742. Or if you have the StandFirm app, you’ll find it there on the app. President Trump’s recent comments on Russia and Ukraine have European leaders scrambling to respond. Yesterday, President Trump spoke by phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin, breaking the three-year period of silence between leaders of Russia and the United States. Later in the day, President Trump spoke with Ukrainian President Zelensky, who afterwards said, together with the U.S., we are charting our next steps to stop Russian aggression and ensure a lasting, reliable peace. This is a major breakthrough. And we’re going to talk about this in just a moment with Congressman Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, who is on the Serves on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. We’re trying to connect with him. In the meantime, I want to go to Meg Kilgannon to get the latest on this ruling today out of Baltimore, Maryland, regarding President Trump’s executive order regarding the protection of children from transgender surgeries. Meg, thanks so much for joining us.
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Thanks for having me.
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So give us the latest on what this judge ruled and its effect upon the president’s executive order.
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Well, they are trying to ensure with this ruling that funding will still continue and not be threatened for hospitals and research agencies that are doing work on so-called gender-affirming care. And so some individuals who identify as transgender have sued the federal government, and this is something that the administration expected to be litigated for a long time, and it’s why they put these executive orders out so quickly, so we can get this going in the court and start this process moving.
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So will this have implications beyond the jurisdiction there of the courts in Maryland? Does this stay the president’s executive order nationwide?
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That is, I think, something that we will come to understand in the coming days. The executive order makes it clear that America is not going to fund this gender ideology in the government in any place. They’ve made that clear with the Department of Defense. They’ve made that clear that they’re certainly not going to pay for minor transitions. And so this court case is dealing with minor transitions and the hospitals that have paused temporarily making appointments for these procedures and things, and they’re trying to get those started again.
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All right. Hold that thought. I’ve got Congressman Perry. I want to go back to that story. We’re going to come back to this breaking news story out of Baltimore. I’m going to go now to Congressman Scott Perry of Pennsylvania. He, as I mentioned, serves on four House committees, including the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. He represents the 10th Congressional District of Pennsylvania. He’s also a combat veteran who retired at the rank of Brigadier General. Congressman Perry, welcome back to Washington Watch. Thanks for joining us.
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Well, it’s great to be with you, Tony. And of course, look, rapid, rapid pace, right, as you know, in Washington, D.C. And we had a hearing today on USAID. And, you know, it’s amazing that that the I hate to say it, but my my colleagues, friends on the other side of the aisle, there’s just no limit to the waste and abusive spending that they won’t support. And that’s just if Trump is for cleaning it up, therefore keeping it going. That’s just kind of where we are, unfortunately, at this point.
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Well, you talk about the rapid pace. I mean, three weeks into the Trump administration, and I mean, the fur is flying. There’s just so much going on. You know, after years of this conflict between Russia and Ukraine, it now appears that a light at the end of the tunnel could be seen, that we could see peace between those two countries. Your take on the president’s comments yesterday after having a conversation with Vladimir Putin?
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Well, I think the president was he was serious during the campaign when he said he was going to end this. I think he was serious when he said it was never going to start. Obviously, if he were, it would have been the president. Obviously, he has a relationship with both of these leaders of these two countries, and he knows what makes them tick. He probably knows what the motivation was. And I think that always in his mind, there was a solution available, but he was unable to affected from outside. And of course, Joe Biden projected weakness and that was taken advantage of. And let’s face it, President Biden really didn’t have any meaningful conversations to resolve the circumstance at all during his entire presidency. He just assumed that the American people were fine with spending billions and billions of dollars into this endless killing machine in Ukraine. And And so it’s amazing what you can get done if you’re willing to have a conversation, even if you don’t agree with the person. Listen, I don’t think that Russia has any valid claim whatsoever to being Ukraine and to have started a war there. But it’s not going to end just by sitting on your hands and not have a conversation at least.
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I mean, we have spent billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine. Thousands of lives have been lost on both sides. What does the end look like? I mean, is it just Russia going back to where they were prior to the start of this war? What do the boundaries look like?
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Well, I think, unfortunately, that Ukraine, at least in the near term, is going to have to accept some loss of its territory. I don’t like that, but I think that that’s… probably at least a partial outcome. And I think, I hope that over time, part of the deal is that Russia would walk back out of it. But it might also mean a commitment for Ukraine not to formally join NATO. And, you know, quite honestly, I don’t really know what NATO has done in my lifetime to stem the tide of Russian interference. And, you know, NATO hasn’t generally, in my mind, been completely or really successful at much of anything. That’s a big loss.
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They’ve spent U.S. money.
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Oh, yeah. Of course, everybody’s happy to spend the money of the United States of America, but that’s not what NATO was set up for. And again, you know, I think that most people, while they support NATO, would be hard-pressed to list any number of successes that NATO has had over the course of their lifetime. So if that’s the concession that that has to be made to get Russia out of Ukraine, I think that that’s one worth considering.
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I mean, when you consider who else is in NATO, i.e. Turkey, you know, I’m wondering the effectiveness of NATO as an entity as well.
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That’s exactly right. I mean, Turkey is a NATO partner and a NATO ally, but we continually find ourselves at odds with them whether it’s in Syria with the Kurds or whether it’s with purchasing of military equipment and Russia, any relationship whatsoever with China, we constantly find ourselves on a tightrope with Turkey. And that’s not how this is supposed to be. Obviously, they’re of great strategic importance to the United States and to the world, but we shouldn’t have to play this dance with them. And that’s why I say that in this case, NATO hasn’t been very effective. And I’m not sure that that’s a great loss if that’s the concession that Ukraine and the world has to give to end the war and get Russia out of Ukraine.
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Congressman Perry, I want to switch gears a little bit. You mentioned the USAID hearing you were a part of that this morning. I’m going to talk more about that later. Also going to talk about the Budget Committee meeting that is ongoing today. You were the former chair of the House Freedom Caucus. When you look at what’s happening with USAID, the exposure of the wasteful spending, but not just wasteful spending, intentionally spending U.S. dollars, taxpayer dollars to advance radical ideologies. But that’s not just USAID, it’s throughout the government. We’re looking at, you know, running a $2 trillion deficit each year. Are we close to bringing fiscal sanity, given what President Trump is committed to?
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Well, we’re closer than we have been in a long time. Tony, but we’ve got a lot of work to do. That’s what’s happening in the Budget Committee right now as we speak. They’re doing what’s called the markup. It’s probably not really going to be as much as I would like to see in reining in this just overcharged, out-of-control spending. But, you know, you’ve got to work with 434 other members, and there’s a Senate involved, too. I think the Senate, believe it or not, is going to come out with a lower number than the House is when it’s all said and done. So we’re going to have to negotiate. Now, I say that the Senate’s going to come out with a lower overall number, but they still haven’t talked about how they would reach that in the details. And so even though they might have that number getting to it, it might be something they can’t even really commit to. But I think the great news is that while somebody like me who’s been on the Foreign Affairs Committee for years now screaming from the mountaintops about all this waste, whether it was USAID or state in general, or just general government wasteful spending of taxpayer dollars, no one seemed to hear. And of course, legacy media would never report it. Elon Musk has a unique position being in charge of a major social media platform, and the microphone has been turned into a megaphone. And so The proof is that when people hear about this waste, they want something done about it.
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And hopefully it will get done. We’ve got to leave it there. Congressman, thanks for joining us. Folks, stick with us.
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During these challenging times for our nation, Family Research Council continues to serve as a watchman on the wall for faith, family, and freedom. And together, thanks to your support, we’re making an eternal impact. 2024 was a year of shining the light for biblical truth in Washington, DC. Last fall, over 1,000 spiritually active, governance-engaged conservatives gathered for the Pray, Vote, Stand Summit to pray for our nation and ensure that the issues impacting sage cons were understood and advanced. Washington Watch with Tony Perkins marked a major milestone this year, its 900th episode, and added the Washington Watch News Desk, a new production that presents the top news each day from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand published 2,000 articles of news, commentary, and podcasts in 2024, garnering over 5 million views. FRC’s outlet for news and commentary continues to pursue the truth on the issues that matter most to you and your family. And with the launch of the Stand Firm app, you can listen to, watch, and read our content in one simple place. Pray for current issues, stay rooted in the scriptures, and engage the political sphere with the community of believers on our new platform. In 2024, FRC shaped public policy and culture, organizing the National Gathering for Prayer and Repentance where members of Congress and Christian leaders came together to seek God’s intervention in America. In May, FRC called upon believers to pray for and stand with Israel by dedicating a portion of their worship services to pray for Israel’s peace, prosperity, and protection. With Pray, Vote, Stand Decision 2024, FRC and Real Life Network led a powerful evening of election night coverage to analyze the election results and pray that our nation would turn back to God. We also filmed a transformative educational course, God and Government, Launching early this year in January 2025, this series will explore the biblical and historical foundations of our government, empowering you to stand confidently in your role as a citizen of heaven and earth. Family Research Council thanks you for partnering with us, and we look forward to 2025 and standing for faith, family, and freedom.
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Looking to grow closer to God in the new year? FRC’s Stand on the Word spiral-bound journal is here to help. Dive deeper into Scripture with thought-provoking questions, note-taking space, and context for each book and author. This second edition, covering Isaiah 2 Revelation, will guide you in tracking your journey through God’s Word while deepening your faith in Christ. Order now at frc.org slash store or text journal to 67742. Perfect for you and your loved ones.
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All right, welcome back to Washington Watch. Thanks for joining us. If you’ve not yet downloaded the Stand Firm app, I encourage you to do so. You can find it in the App Store, Stand Firm, or you can text the word APP to 67742. All right, as we were talking about earlier, A federal judge this afternoon, one nominated by former President Biden, temporarily blocked President Donald Trump’s recent executive order protecting children under the age of 19 from chemical and surgical mutilation or what’s called – what the left likes to call gender-affirming care. It’s experimental. I mean it really is. It’s experimental and it’s – you know – There’s going to be a time we look back on this and people are going to be, if the Lord tarries, they’re going to look back on this just like we’re looking back on World War II and what the Nazis did and the experimentation and others. I mean, it’s grotesque. It is evil, pure evil. All right. We’re going to finish talking about this. Meg Kilgannon joining me, Senior Fellow for Education Studies here at the Family Research Council. Meg. Hi. All right, thanks for joining me today. All right, so we touched on this. This affects three?
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Three states.
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Three states.
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Maryland, Massachusetts, and New York. And actually, no funds have been denied anyone at this point. It’s just that they are in question.
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So it’s interesting, the judge says they have standing, but yet nobody’s been affected by it.
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But no one’s been harmed, right?
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Usually when this happens, like when a conservative goes to the court and the judge says, well, actually, it went all the way to, I think it was the Supreme Court on the issue of the abortion pill, Mifeprestone, that the pro-life doctors were told they didn’t have standing because it hadn’t impacted them.
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Right, right. So we see a very different application of that doctrine here with this particular judgment. There have been no denial of funding, but the hospitals are looking at this and they’re saying, well, we could lose this money, and so to avoid losing the money, maybe we need to deny these treatments.
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So this ruling, as I understand it, is in effect for 14 days. It’s a temporary stay.
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Temporary stay.
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They’ll argue their cases. But the Trump administration realized that they were going to have a lot of legal challenges to these executive orders.
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Absolutely. It’s one of the reasons that it was so great to see them issued so quickly. Yeah, because— Because they’re going to work their way through the courts, and there are many, many factors here.
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There’s shock and awe. They couldn’t keep up with them. All right. I want to switch gears to another topic that’s near and dear to your heart. Today, the president’s selection nominee for the Department of Education, Secretary of Department of Education, Linda McMahon, was in the Senate committee for her confirmation. I want to play a clip of her opening statement. Clip one, please.
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I am confirmed the department will not stand idly by while Jewish students are attacked and discriminated against. It will stop forcing schools to let boys and men into female sports and spaces, and it will protect the rights of parents to direct the moral education of their children. The opportunity before us these next four years is momentous.
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I hear that, and it’s like, Where’s common sense been all this time? It really is. It’s like a revival of common sense. All we need now is a spiritual revival to follow through with this. But, I mean, this really is encouraging.
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She did a really great job today at the hearing. The senators, the Democrat senators asked a few tough questions, but they were very – very subdued from their normal antics, especially on this topic.
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Right. This is one of their big topics.
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This is one of their big topics. And the way that USAID funding funds a lot of the radical left in international affairs and some domestic affairs. The spending at the Department of Education funds the radical left in the United States.
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They’re talking about the indoctrination industrial complex.
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Absolutely.
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This is where all the kids are indoctrinated. This is how they keep a tether on the country and the culture. But what I like about what she said is she didn’t pull any punches. She didn’t dance around it. She was very open, very clear as to stated goals and objectives. Now, I do believe she was asked about shutting down the Department of Education and what that would require.
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And she didn’t shy away from doing that either. She explained various scenarios in ways that you could wind it down. And she acknowledged that it will take an act of Congress to shut the Department of Education down. Which, you know, I guess these people on the Education Committee on the Democrat side are assuming that there won’t be 60 votes for that. But I think there are some creative ways that we could potentially get to 60 votes for that if they are generous with funding for particular programs.
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Even if the president can’t shut it down, I mean, he can empty it out.
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Absolutely can empty it out. You absolutely can move functions from one place to another. There are lots of ways that you can manage this.
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Would the executive branch have the authority to block grant educational funds, or would that require congressional action?
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I think that there are pieces of it that you can block grant to the states. And I think they’re certainly open to doing that. I mean, if someone wants to sue to stop money from coming from Washington to the states, I’d like to see that.
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Well, the interesting thing, and we’ve talked about this before, that it’s not, when you look at the overall amount of funding for education, it ranges somewhere from 7% to 10% of the educational funds come from the federal government. But, you know, 80% of the regulations and guidance comes from the federal government.
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Right, and that moral stance that comes from Washington, that bully pulpit, That is the sort of influence that comes from the government that has a profound impact on our schools.
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You know, what I think this is going to do, Meg, is we see this with the recent decision on Roe v. Wade where you had the states very quickly lining up either being pro-life or pro-abortion. As states have the ability to set the policies because the federal government gets out, there’s going to be a clear line of distinction between the states. And I think it’s going to have economic implications for those states. Those that choose conservative policies, pro-life policies, biblical policies, I think they’re going to prosper. And the others are going to watch people. They’re going to see taillights because people are going to head out of there.
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Yeah, I think that’s right, and I think we’re already seeing that. I mean, companies that are moving back to America to invest in building things here, we see this. There’s a lot of car manufacturing, for example, in Georgia and in South Carolina, right? So we see this already.
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Right-to-work states, low taxes, and mild winters. All right. Meg Kilgannon, thanks for joining us.
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Thanks for having me.
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All right. Good news. I mean, it really is. See the good things. We just need to keep praying that the Trump administration would continue heading in the right direction. I think they will. But we need to be supportive. All right, on the other side of the break, we’re going to get an update from the House Budget Committee. Congressman Ben Kline of Virginia joins us to talk about those negotiations that are going on right now. They’re doing the markup of the budget bill. So don’t go away. We’ve got lots more Washington Watch straight ahead.
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Oh, beautiful for spacious skies
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At the 2025 National Gathering for Prayer and Repentance, hundreds gathered with Christian and government leaders at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C. to pray for the nation and ask God to forgive us of our sins.
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We gather here not to appeal to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. We are appealing to heaven. Today we make our appeal not in the authority of a political party or in the name of a denomination. We come in the name and the authority of Jesus Christ. who has been given all authority in heaven and on earth, and we have been commissioned to operate in that authority.
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Father, we pray in Jesus’ name for our complacency, our greed, our pride, our gluttony, our sloth and tolerance of sin.
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Lord, your word is the food that can make America healthy again. May your word be exalted and believed in our nation again.
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Lord, we ask that you allow us to become that shining city on the hill once more for your love, your grace, and your mercy.
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We thank you for your love and your grace and your mercy, for the opportunity that you have provided us to heal our land. We ask you to do it, Lord. We ask you for the wisdom, discernment, and stamina to do the thing that you have called each one of us, all of us here, to do. May we be found faithful. We trust it, pray it, believe it all. In Jesus’ name, amen.
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Welcome back to Washington Watch. Thanks for joining us for this Thursday edition. All right, today the House Budget Committee is marking up its budget blueprint. They’re going to be going late into the night. Now, this is just one day after the Senate Republicans pushed their budget resolution out of committee yesterday by a vote of 11 to 10 along party lines. Senate Budget Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham has framed his budget blueprint as a backup plan to the House efforts, saying that he’s pulling for the one big beautiful bill. Well, now that that long-awaited bill has arrived, at least it’s almost arrived, it’s working its way through committee, let’s talk about what is in it and what it does and where it goes from here. Joining me now to discuss this, stepping out of the committee, is Congressman Ben Kline. He serves on four House committees, including the Budget Committee, the House Appropriations Committee. He represents the 6th Congressional District of the state of Virginia. Congressman Kline, welcome back to Washington Watch. Thanks for joining us. Tony, always good to be with you. So as House Budget Committee Chairman Jody Arrington highlighted this morning, this budget resolution is more than numbers on a ledger, more than just matching revenues with outlays. This is an important piece of legislation that a lot is riding on. Tell us why.
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Well, it is the key that unlocks the process called reconciliation, which is the process where we can get tax cuts through spending cuts through and we don’t need Democrat votes to do it. So it’s going to be a conservative effort, but it’s going to be over the next several months. This is the first step. where the budget committee adopts the blueprint and then the floor passes it. And then the committee’s all of the authorizing committees start digging in to find their savings so that we can pay for the tax cuts and help restore some fiscal responsibility to this budget process that’s been off track for so long in Washington.
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So talk a little bit about the annual deficit that we’ve been running and how this attempts to get at that deficit.
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Sure. Well as you know we’re more than thirty four trillion dollars in debt. The interest on the debt is more than our annual defense budget. It’s gotten so bad. Our annual deficit is running up over a trillion dollars. It’s actually closer to two trillion this year. And that’s because Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden blew open a giant spending hole in our budget with when COVID occurred and they used the Inflation Reduction Act as a vehicle to send money to their Green New Deal projects. And that money, that spigot has not been turned off. We need to turn it off so that we can reduce that deficit to levels that are start to restore fiscal responsibility and shrinking government spending is the way to do it. Donald Trump and Elon Musk have figured that out and we’re working hand in glove with them to make it happen.
SPEAKER 07 :
I would think when you combine all of this the desire to cut off that spigot if you will along with the Doge efforts that Elon Musk that you mentioned that somehow we should be able to get close to I would hope even arrive at a balanced budget. Do you see that in the future.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, I was the budget chairman of the Republican Study Committee, the largest caucus of Republicans in the House. And we passed a adopted a balanced budget, the balance in seven years. And so it is entirely possible. Now, you have to go after some programs and projects that are near and dear to the hearts of many moderate and liberal senators. And they are, if anything, clubby over there and like to stick together. So it’s going to be hard to convince them and some of my colleagues, even on our side in the House, that they need to shrink these or eliminate altogether these programs that are really just fueling waste and fraud in these programs and need to be done away with. So we’re working with Doge. And actually, it’s going to help THE WORK OF DOGE IS HELPING TO SOLIDIFY OUR SUPPORT ON AMONG THE MORE MODERATE MEMBERS BECAUSE THEY’RE SEEING JUST WHAT THE ART OF THE POSSIBLE IS.
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CONGRESSMAN CLINTON, I MEAN, YOU’RE VERY CLOSE TO THIS. YOU’RE ON THE BUDGET COMMITTEE. YOU’RE ON THE MONEY COMMITTEES. Our deficit, and I’m not talking about the debt, I’m talking about the deficit, these annual deficits that keep adding to the debt, this is unsustainable. I mean, we have to, even if it touches these sacred cows, so to speak, of some constituencies, the whole ship could sink if we don’t get this right.
SPEAKER 04 :
Absolutely right. And Donald Trump has promised and the House is not touching Social Security or Medicare benefits. Those recipients are going to continue to receive the benefits that they’re entitled to. But what we do have are things like foreign aid programs. Department of Education programs you know all of the Green New Deal energy subsidies that are going to come on the chopping block. And some folks know some of those Green New Deal subsidies have gone to folks in red states and those folks are complaining that they don’t want to see their Green New Deal subsidies go away. But for those colleagues of mine who are in those red states who are on my side of the aisle we have a responsibility to future generations to get our fiscal house in order and to get rid of these multi trillion dollar deficits that are really causing inflation to be so much worse. Right. And really hurting families.
SPEAKER 07 :
It’s immoral when we’re spending money for future generations. And we’ve got to move beyond the parochial and what helps me out in my area to looking at what impacts the entire nation. Congressman Ben Kline, I want to thank you for joining us. And we’ll obviously be tracking this as it makes its way through the committee. And I think a week after next, we’ll be out on the House floor. So it’s going to be an interesting process to watch. Thanks for joining us.
SPEAKER 04 :
Thanks, Tony. Good to be with you.
SPEAKER 07 :
All right. Well, folks, it is a big deal. I know a lot of people don’t pay attention to budget and numbers, but when you’re looking at almost $36 trillion in debt and a continual almost $2 trillion deficit, that adds up quickly. All right, don’t go away. We’re going to talk more about that next. Hello, I’m Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council here in Washington, D.C. Behind me is one of the most recognizable buildings in all the world, the U.S. Capitol. What does it stand for? Well, most people say government. But do you know the Bible talks about four institutions of government? You know what they are? And do we have a republic or a democracy? Well, what do you say? Also, what about this thing, separation of church and state? Does that mean Christians shouldn’t be involved in government? Guess what? We address those issues and more in our new God and Government course. I invite you to join us to see what the historical record and the Bible has to say about government. Join us for God and Government.
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The world is hurting, streets are filled with crime, families are broken, sin is celebrated, and God is mocked. Everywhere we look, the wages of our sin are on full display. As Christians, we know that surrender to God’s will is the solution to our biggest problems, but not everyone agrees. Even in church, we hear people say the most important thing is to be tolerant, that we shouldn’t impose a morality on other people, and that loving our neighbor means celebrating what they do. But you can’t do that. It’s not that you don’t love your neighbor. You do. But you care about God’s opinion more than your neighbor’s opinion. And this makes you different. In fact, sometimes it makes you feel alone, like you are the only one. But there is good news. You are not alone, not even close. Research has found that there are 59 million American adults who are a lot like you. There are millions of people around the country who are born again, deeply committed to practicing their faith, and believe the Bible is the reliable Word of God. But that’s not all. They’re also engaged in our government. They’re voters. They’re more likely to be involved in their community, and they’re making a difference in elections. The problem is that a lot of them feel alone too. We want to change that. FRC wants to connect these 59 million Americans to speak the truth together, no matter the cost. If you want to learn more about this group and what it means to be a spiritually active, governance engaged conservative, or if you want to find out if you are one of these sage cons yourself, go to frc.org slash sage con and take the quiz to find out. The world is hurting, and we have the solution. We can’t do it alone, but we can do it if we work together. That’s what we’re working toward every day. Join us. Go to FRC.org slash S-A-G-E-C-O-N, SageCon, to learn more. That’s S-A-G-E-C-O-N, SageCon, to learn more.
SPEAKER 07 :
Welcome back to Washington Watch. Thanks for joining us. Be sure and download the Stand Firm app if you’ve not already done so. That way you can have access to Washington Watch no matter where you go. You also get our news and commentary feed that comes to you from a biblical perspective, the Washington Stand, and my daily devotional, Stand on the Word. All of that is found on the Stand Firm app. Our word for today comes from Jeremiah chapter 17. Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord and whose hope is in the Lord, for he shall be like a tree planted by the waters, which spreads out its roots by the river and will not fear when the heat comes. This passage shows that true blessing comes from trusting God and placing our confidence in His promises. When we ground ourselves in Him, our security and our hope rest in His unchanging character rather than our own abilities or changing circumstances. Being blessed doesn’t necessarily guarantee financial abundance or an easy life. Instead, Jeremiah uses the image of a fruitful tree to illustrate how believers can flourish even when trials arise. A person who trusts in the Lord is confident, knowing God remains steady throughout the storms. He or she is prosperous in a spiritual sense, bearing fruit that benefits others and points them toward God’s grace. This person also experiences deep purpose, filling the longing for significance that many never find. By anchoring our hope in the Lord, we can face life with peace, sharing the fruit of our faithfulness and discovering our true meaning in Him. To find out more about our journey through the Bible, text Bible to 67742. That’s Bible to 67742. Earlier this morning, the House Foreign Affairs Committee held a hearing on the USAID betrayal. And if there was any doubt over the accusations of waste and abuse of taxpayer dollars at the agency, well, House Republicans brought the receipts with them.
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$3.3 million for being LGBTQ in the Caribbean and $37.6 million for sex workers, their clients, and transgender individuals in South Africa.
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That was Congresswoman Sherry Biggs of South Carolina. So what else came out of today’s hearing? Well, join me now to discuss this. Former USAID Deputy Administrator Max Primarek, who testified this morning at the hearing. He is currently the Senior Research Fellow in the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at the Heritage Foundation. Max, welcome to Washington Watch. Thanks so much for joining us. Well, thank you for having me. So it would take quite a while to go through all of the examples of the waste and abuse, but more than that, this wasn’t just You know, people neglecting to spend money. This was intentional. Talk about some of the things that really stood out you testified about today.
SPEAKER 12 :
Well, actually, it came from the top. As soon as President Biden came into office, immediately he disassembled everything that we had done under the Trump administration, international religious freedom, free market economics, and then used or misused foreign aid as a global platform to expose the woke ideology, DEI, gender fluidity, abortion, the climate agenda. And when you consider that 50% of this money stays here in Washington, D.C., not only was it a way of trying to remake the world in their progressive left-wing image, but it also provided a ton of money for all of their friends here. And we’re talking a budget that went from about $22 billion in 2020 to about $44 billion right now. So they had a huge money pot to promote this progressive agenda.
SPEAKER 07 :
Max, you were there, you came in after the Obama administration for the first Trump administration. By its nature, was this already kind of the direction that USAID was leaning?
SPEAKER 12 :
Well, absolutely. And when you look at FEC records, Federal Election Commission records on political contributions to candidates, you’ll see that State Department, USCID, but also the entire foreign aid industry, 95 percent of their political donations go to the left. When I came into USAID, the big issue was the situation of the persecuted Christians in northern Iraq, where they were victims of genocide by ISIS. And we had such difficulty trying to get the bureaucrats to accept that we should be helping them. They came up with false arguments of, oh, it’s against the establishment clause. It’s illegal. It’s anti-constitutional. And it got so bad that the vice president, Mike Pence, had to appoint myself as his envoy. And he sent me over there to Iraq for 18 months to be on the ground, have eyes and ears on the ground to make sure that the president’s agenda of helping religious minorities get executed.
SPEAKER 07 :
I remember that, Max. We actually had some conversations about that. And I had some conversations with the vice president. I also think If my memory serves me correctly, we worked somewhat with the Hungarian government to help facilitate some of that because they had a little more flexibility to actually help out those Christians.
SPEAKER 12 :
We did. We learned a lot from them. When I got there, they had a lot of good contacts. And we actually, by the end, we signed a memorandum of understanding, and we began to jointly fund programs in that part of Iraq.
SPEAKER 07 :
So the USAID goes back to John F. Kennedy. He set it up to be kind of a… and maybe a soft approach to foreign policy, to bolster humanitarian assistance and such. But it’s like any government program. Without close observation and control, it takes on a life of its own. This is from the White House, the Trump administration putting this out last week about the waste and abuse. $1.5 million to advance diversity and equity in Serbia’s workplaces. $70,000 for a DEI musical in Ireland. $2.5 million for electrical vehicles in Vietnam. $47,000 for a transgender opera in Colombia. $32,000 for transgender comic books in Peru. I mean, it just goes on and on and on. Now, you’d say, well, you know, $32,000 is not a lot. I don’t know. It’s the salary that some people make in this country. But this adds up. And that’s what we’re talking about is when you begin to cumulatively look at how this money is being spent and what it’s promoting, it’s out of control.
SPEAKER 12 :
Well, you have PEPFAR, the president’s emergency plan for AIDS relief. That’s a $6 billion a year program. That program, started by President Bush, it has saved millions and millions of lives. It was a Christian-based response to the crisis in Africa. But it got taken over by the left. They started funding international Planned Parenthood, UN organizations that promote abortion. And I was in Kenya and in Mozambique last year and meeting with a lot of Catholic, Anglican and evangelical leaders. And they were horrified by the fact that this really good godly program had suddenly become utterly corrupted using it to push the trans ideology, pushing abortion. You know well that in Africa, most of the rest of the world, they’re very conservative. And I’ve had so many of them coming to me and tell me, you know, the communist Chinese don’t require me to sacrifice my religious convictions in order to do business with them. Unfortunately, under the Biden administration, I mean, they took it in a direction that was completely extreme.
SPEAKER 07 :
Max, I’m glad you brought up those two points because I think it’s very critical because actually some of the media reports about the efforts to cut USAID are comparing it to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which is their kind of their outreach. But you’re right. There’s no there are no strings attached. to their funding now. Well I shouldn’t say that there are strings or financial strings because they end up usually foreclosing on their loan and taking the property and the minerals from these countries. But they’re not imposing some kind of immoral agenda on them like our government is doing under or what our government did do under the Biden administration. But you mentioned PEPFAR. And I’m glad you brought that up because actually today in your testimony, it was interrupted right as you were starting by demonstrators saying fund PEPFAR, fund PEPFAR. PEPFAR was funded, it was extended, and I think it comes up for reauthorization I think in March. To your point, you’re absolutely correct. And it started out 20 years ago as a as a good program, but it has been hijacked and it is not the same. But you have some of the same voices saying, oh, we’ve got to reauthorize it. We’ve got to reauthorize it. But it is the left’s agenda wrapped in the right’s title.
SPEAKER 12 :
Absolutely, and there was so much disinformation that I heard during the remarks by some of the members of Congress this morning. Number one, accusing the administration of responsibility for people dying because they’re not getting their medicines. In fact, Secretary Rubio not only gave a waiver, but the monies are flowing out there. What President Trump is doing is what the American people want. They want to make sure that every dollar we spend is in America’s interests and aligns with American values. So as the administration goes through what are something like 20,000 individual project activities funded by our foreign aid, they’re going through to make sure that all of this nonsense is taken out And this is the only way that we can reestablish the trust of the American people, that their charitable impulse, they’re the most charitable people in the face of the planet, is not being misused by people to fund things that are completely outside of the norms.
SPEAKER 07 :
Max, let me ask you this question. As there’s been kind of a suspension of USAID, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has taken over as the administrator. Is that the right approach to just basically, I think we’re eliminating most of the workforce and rolling it into the State Department? Do you think that would be the best approach in the future if we’re going to maintain any elements of USAID?
SPEAKER 12 :
Well, they’ve been put on administrative leave to give them some time to be able to look at what they want to do with the foreign aid apparatus overall. It’s not just USAID that gets money. It’s also the State Department. It’s also HHS, the Centers for Disease Control. There’s about 20 different FEDERAL DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES THAT GET MONEY. SO THEY’RE GOING TO HAVE TO WORK THROUGH THE DIFFICULTY OF THE FACT THAT PRESIDENT BIDEN CORRUPTED EVERY SINGLE NOOK AND CRANNY, AND THEN THEY’RE GOING TO MAKE THEIR OWN JUDGMENT. THE SECRETARY OF STATE HAS MADE VERY CLEAR THAT HE RECOGNIZES THERE’S A LOT OF GOOD THINGS THAT CAN BE DONE WITH FOREIGN AID, AND FOREIGN AID SHOULD BE A VERY POWERFUL WEAPON TO PROMOTE OUR VALUES AND OUR INTERESTS. And because it’s so broken, I think that he has he’s forced to take these steps.
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Well, I think that’d be the best way to just rebuild. You know, sometimes you can remodel. Other times you just got to tear it down and rebuild. I think that’s where we are at. And it’s the moment in time that we have the opportunity. But I want to go back, Max, to something because I want our viewers and listeners to clearly understand this. What you testified to today, what’s been uncovered in the spending of USAID, you just made a reference to this. This was not mission creep. It was not drift. This was intentional. This came from the White House to all agencies to basically put the pedal to the metal and advance this radical ideological agenda that advanced these anti-family values.
SPEAKER 12 :
Well, absolutely. You know, USAID, you mentioned John F. Kennedy, who founded, who started it. And it was an anti-Soviet program. It was very effective. After the fall of the Soviet Union, foreign aid was used to help integrate the former countries of the Warsaw Pact. That was very effective. But we saw already with the Clinton administration, specifically Hillary Clinton, start to push this agenda. First and foremost, the abortion agenda. And then under President Obama, we saw an acceleration of that, plus the LGBT agenda, plus the climate agenda, and then a little bit of the DEI. But I tell you, when President Biden came in, they went all out. They accelerated this. It almost seemed as if the purpose of foreign aid was not to promote our interests, but simply to serve as a money pot to promote this progressive ideology, not only overseas, but at home as well, because they created an army of politicals that support their agenda. So they They’re in the media. They’re on television. They’re on boards. They’re everywhere. So every time we have elections, they exercise completely out of proportion influence on the electorate, and it’s on the American taxpayer’s dime.
SPEAKER 07 :
Right. They were leveraging taxpayer dollars to, for instance, George Soros, who his son received the presidential medal on the final days of the Biden administration. They were leveraging U.S. tax dollars because it was basically like one of these matches. You know, we’re going to put up half and you put up half and we’re going to help fund you in what you’re doing in terms of your anti-freedom agenda overseas.
SPEAKER 12 :
Absolutely. They were also doing it with the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Gates Foundation. They were actually co-financing projects with organizations that actually had close relationships with the Communist Party of China. So it was a total mess.
SPEAKER 07 :
We’re almost out of time, Max, but you mentioned some names here that have popped back up and the Trump administration kind of getting cozy. We need to be watching some of these individuals, should we not?
SPEAKER 12 :
We should be very closely watching these individuals. Absolutely. I don’t think they necessarily turned. They just they didn’t just simply convert to Christianity all of a sudden. I think there’s some self-interest. But I trust the president. I trust his folks. They know exactly who these people are. And I think it’s our job in the think tank world to help them out.
SPEAKER 07 :
Max Pemarek, I want to thank you for joining us. Always great to see you, my friend. Thanks for the work you do. Thank you. God bless you. Well, another item to pray about as we look at going forward, all of this needs to be exposed. This is a great exercise. This is so needed. And it is a monumental moment in which, you know, this is being laid bare. And we can see it. And we’re seeing it cut and eliminated. But it needs to go down to the bare metal. and to the foundation, whatever analogy you want to use, and rebuild. We don’t need to reform or remodel. We need to rebuild in the right way, constitutionally, and in a way that is responsible. All right, folks, out of time for today. Thanks for joining us. Until next time, I leave you with the encouraging words of the Apostle Paul found in Ephesians 6, where he says, when you’ve done everything you can do, when you’ve prayed, when you’ve prepared, and when you’ve taken your stand, by all means, keep standing.
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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.
