This episode of Washington Watch dives into significant national issues, starting with the Department of Justice’s establishment of a strike force. The aim is to explore newly unveiled evidence alleging that the Obama administration attempted to undermine President Trump’s 2016 victory. Congressman Tom Tiffany from the House Judiciary Committee shares his insights, discussing the possible ramifications of recent revelations.
SPEAKER 17 :
from the heart of our nation’s capital in Washington, D.C., bringing compelling interviews, insightful analysis, taking you beyond the headlines and soundbites into conversations with our nation’s leaders and newsmakers, all from a biblical worldview. Sitting in for Tony is today’s host, Jody Heiss.
SPEAKER 12 :
Good afternoon. Hope you have had a fantastic week. Welcome to this July 25th edition of Washington Watch. I am Jody Heiss, a senior fellow here at the Family Research Council and your Friday host. So glad to have you joining us today. We’ve got a lot to bring to you today. Let me give you some of the highlights. First of all, the Department of Justice has formed a strike force to assess recently presented evidence of an alleged conspiracy by the Obama administration to subvert President Trump’s 2016 victory and presidency.
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There is irrefutable evidence that detail how President Obama and his national security team directed the creation of an intelligence community assessment that they knew was false. They knew it would promote this contrived narrative that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help President Trump win, selling it to the American people as though it were true. It wasn’t.
SPEAKER 12 :
Well, that was the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, speaking to reporters after more evidence was released Wednesday, which adds to the evidence that initially came out last Friday. So what can we make all of this? Well, I’ll be discussing this in just a moment when I’m joined by Wisconsin Congressman Tom Tiffany, who is a member of the House Judiciary Committee. And yesterday, there was a court victory. It was in reference to an Oregon mom who had been excluded from adoption because she refused to play along with her state’s gender games. Well, Mallory Slate from Alliance Defending Freedom will be joining me just a little bit later to discuss that case. And we’ve been talking a lot here on this program and through various means of FRC about the abortion drug Mifepristone and the problems with the related Biden-era policies that are still in place today. Well, now we have the FDA Commissioner, Marty McCary, who maintains that he has no plans to limit access to that abortion drug. But… He says he will listen to those who have concerns. I don’t have any preconceived plans.
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Is that an issue that’s on the table for you or you’re not looking at that?
SPEAKER 11 :
You know, we always talk about every issue and we talk about them continuously. We have an ongoing review of safety data on Mifepristone. You always have to be open minded. You have to listen to different opinions and, you know, make decisions based on what you think is the right thing to do.
SPEAKER 12 :
Well, that was Dr. McCary speaking earlier today to Politico. Well, Dr. McCary, look, those who are well aware of the dangers of Mifepristone have some facts and some stats that you need to hear. And I’m honored to be joined here a little bit later in the program with FRC’s Mary Zock, who is going to be laying out some of that information as well as the right thing to do. And by the way, while we’re talking about this real quickly, let me just tell you, and I’ll hit on this a little bit more in the program, but we have a petition today. that’s regarding this issue, and you can sign it. Let me just start with this right now. Text the word LIFE to 67742 and sign that petition. Again, I’ll talk a little bit more about that later. But speaking of vulnerable lives, this week the Department of Health and Human Services located some 13,000 people unaccompanied illegal immigrant children who were lost during the Biden administration. Unbelievable number. Sadly, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Officials estimate that over 300,000 are still missing. They entered the country under Biden’s time in office. So what is it going to take to undo what the Biden administration opened? Well, I’ll be talking about this a little bit later on when I’m joined by Mark Krikorian from the Center for Immigration Studies. So we’ve got a lot coming your way. If you miss any part of it, our website, TonyPerkins.com. Be sure to check that out as always. All right. On Wednesday, the Justice Department announced the formation of a strike force to assess the recently revealed evidence regarding the Obama administration’s alleged manufacturing and politicization of intelligence. All of this was for the purpose to delegitimize President Trump’s victory back in 2016. Over the past week, the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, has put forth what you heard just a few moments ago as she described as irrefutable evidence of wrongdoing by the Obama administration. So how might this play out? Well, joining me now to discuss this and more is Congressman Tom Tiffany, who serves on the important House Judiciary Committee, and he represents the 7th Congressional District of the great state of Wisconsin. Congressman Tiffany, great to see you, my friend. Welcome back to Washington Watch.
SPEAKER 07 :
Good to see you again, Jody.
SPEAKER 12 :
All right, let’s go back. First, just talk to us about this whole Russian collusion hoax. How did it come about? When did it come about? Just kind of give us a little bit of history on this thing.
SPEAKER 07 :
You know, the thing that’s stunning to me, Jody, is that you still have nearly half the public that does not understand that that was a hoax, that Donald Trump colluded with the Russian government because the mainstream media will not tell the truth. Thank you for doing that. But I remember a couple of years ago when John Durham, the special prosecutor, came before the Judiciary Committee and I asked him point blank, was there – was there collusion that went on between President Trump and the Russians? And he says, no. I mean, he said flat out, no, that is not the case. Now, what I’m hearing from Chairman Jordan is that we have the FBI director and the attorney general that come before us Usually once or twice annually. And I think that’s going to happen here this fall. And we’re going to have a lot of questions for Pam Bondi and for Kash Patel in this regard. And I’m hopeful at some point maybe we’ll be able to get Tulsi Gabbard there also. We need to continue to tell the American people the truth because they can handle it.
SPEAKER 12 :
Yeah, and you mentioned a couple of heavyweights there. It’s great to hear that they’ll be coming before your committee, hopefully this fall. Is there anything that you can tell us so far as it relates to specifically what Director Gabbard has revealed so far? I mean, her statement that this is irrefutable evidence is a strong statement.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah, it really is. And I mean, what you hope is ultimately it corrects the historical record that there will have to be an acknowledgement when the truth is told in the historical record that it will show that Barack Obama tried to undermine President Trump. And it’s become very clear. I mean, we’ve basically known that, Jody. I mean, we served in the halls of Congress together and we basically knew this was happening. But this is really… This is bringing the documents forward that show this is what happened. And Tulsi Gabbard brought the receipts.
SPEAKER 12 :
Yeah, it really is stunning. And I want to get your opinion on this, on where all of this is going. But before I ask you that specifically, were you at all, and are you at all, surprised by this? I mean, you know, I think we all… saw, at least to some extent, what would at least seem to be a Biden administration weaponizing agencies for political purposes. Are you surprised that this information is coming out the way it seemingly is coming?
SPEAKER 07 :
No, nothing surprises me in Washington, D.C. anymore, Jody. And but it really puts a fine point on when Barack Obama said back in what is it, 2008, 2009, I am going to transform America. That is what he was trying to do. He wanted to completely change America into something else that we Americans do not recognize. This was all part of it. Donald Trump. in 2016 interrupted what was going to be the coup de grace with Hillary Clinton following up on Barack Obama, getting control of the Supreme Court, and then it was game, set, match for America.
SPEAKER 12 :
Wow. So tell us about this strike force. All right. What is a DOJ strike force and what is it precisely that they do or what are they going to do?
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah, I’m not sure exactly what they’ll be doing, but by the name, it’s very clear that they are going to get to the bottom of what has happened here, and they’re going to produce the evidence for the American people. I mean, I’m going to have questions in regards to the strike force when Pam Bondi, Kash Patel, and others, if they come before the Judiciary Committee, I’m certainly going to have questions for them about what is the strike force doing? What are you hoping to accomplish it? with it, but it’s to get to the truth because that’s, I’ve been saying all along, Jody, for a couple of years, the American people can handle the truth. Let’s give it to them. I hope the strike force helps accomplish that.
SPEAKER 12 :
Amen. Great perspective there. I asked you this a moment ago. I want to circle back to it and get your reply. What is it that you are hoping is going to come out of all of this if, in fact, the documents point to the irrefutable evidence? Where does it go from here?
SPEAKER 07 :
Well, I would suspect that as it gets closer to President Obama, that he would cite executive privilege. And I mean, if it would carry through all the way to the end, it would end up before the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court would have to decide, do you have executive privilege in this instance? I see very little of President Obama over the last few days, though he is the central player. You know, they’ve always tried to keep Obama’s star from being tarnished. Well, it was tarnished in the election of 2024 when he went to bat for Kamala. I mean, he was doing everything he could to deny President Trump his second term, and he failed. And I think his star is tarnished on the Democrat side and certainly amongst the American people. And there are those out there much like John F. Kennedy, that they don’t want the truth to be able to come out on some of these issues because it truly would show what a partisan President Obama was, though he claimed to be a healer.
SPEAKER 12 :
Do you think there will be a prosecution, criminal?
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah, I don’t know. We’re going to see. I suspect the strike force is going to have the evidence that the strike force brings forward. I think it’s going to have a lot to say in regards to whether there would be an indictment.
SPEAKER 12 :
All right, before we wrap up, Congressman Tiffany, I want to turn over to one more item. This past Wednesday, you introduced the Colleges for the American People Act of 2025, also known as the CAP Act. Tell us a little bit about this and what moved you to get this ball rolling.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah, here’s the back story. And of course, it’s an immigration story. So there’s under H-1B visas, which are people that have a extraordinary talent or something like that, that we want to bring in to the United States of America. There’s 65,000 people that qualify for H-1Bs every year. And by the way, we are the most generous country in the world. We take in nearly a million people legally. in the United States. We’re extremely generous. Well, there’s exceptions to that, and that includes the universities across America. They can bring people in like that. Well, there’s some intrepid reporters here in Wisconsin that found out there’s nearly 500 people that are employed in the University of Wisconsin system that are on H-1B visas. Why is there that many people working on H-1B visas? So what this does is sets a cap, and that cap is 65,000. If you want to bring people in, there’s no exceptions, With the H-1B, you would have to bring them in as part of that cohort of 65,000 people, making it a hard cap, no exceptions.
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How’s it being received with your colleagues?
SPEAKER 07 :
Good, good. We’ve gotten a few people to sign on. I think as more and more people find out about it, you know, it’s a bit of a, it’s got a Wisconsin focus at this point because there was good reporting that was going on in our state. But people understand what we’re trying to do there. And I mean, the American, there’s plenty of Americans that’ll do these jobs. I mean, I just saw J.D. Vance this morning where he’s talking about 9,000 people were laid off by Microsoft and then they went and put ads out to bring people in on H-1Bs. That’s not how it should work. Let’s look out for the American people first.
SPEAKER 12 :
Tom Tiffany, Congressman from Wisconsin, thank you so much for joining us today. All right, friends, stay tuned. We’ve got some good news coming out of Oregon to bring your way and we’ll do it right after the break.
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The family is the oldest, most tested, and most reliable unit of society. It is divinely created and sustained. And yet, there are those who are always tampering with its values and structure. That’s why we need organizations like the Family Research Council that can effectively defend and strengthen the family.
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Family Research Council began over 40 years ago, like all great movements of God, with prayer. Today, rooted in the heart of the nation’s capital, FRC continues to champion faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview.
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It’s just a wonderful parachurch organization that doesn’t seek to take the place of the church, but it seeks to assist the family and the church as we try to move forward successfully, not in a defensive mode, but in an offensive mode as we seek to live our lives according to the Holy Scriptures.
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In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory. Family Research Council invites you to join our Stand on the Word Bible reading plan as we reflect upon the life of Jesus, the Word who dwelt among us. Come with us and discover the glory of the Word. Read the Gospels and witness the life-changing story of Jesus, His life, death, and resurrection. Come read how Jesus transformed the lives of common people and how those same people transformed the known world through the power of the Holy Spirit. Come with us for 10 to 15 minutes a day and read the entire New Testament before the new year. Find our Bible reading plan in daily devotionals from Tony Perkins at frc.org slash Bible. Join us and stand on the word.
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Thank you so much for joining us today on Washington Watch. I’m your Friday host, Jody Heiss. All right. Yesterday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit delivered a very welcome victory, although it may be temporary. It’s nonetheless a welcome victory. It pertains to an Oregon mother who has been excluded from adopting simply because she refused to play along with her state’s gender games. And in the ruling, the court gave Oregon mother Jessica Bates the go-ahead to begin the process of adoption from foster care while her lawsuit against state officials continues. And so she is going to be able to do so without agreeing to take children to things like pride parades or using incorrect pronouns, which the left, of course, always refers to as preferred pronouns. But what does this message and this court ruling send to the state of Oregon and beyond? Well, with me now to discuss this is Mallory Slate. She’s legal counsel on the parental rights team at Alliance Defending Freedom, which is representing this Oregon mother. Mallory, welcome to Washington Watch. It’s an honor to have you.
SPEAKER 04 :
It’s so wonderful to be here.
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So first of all, tell us about Jessica, about her story and what actually led her to this lawsuit against her state.
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It’s honestly a really miraculous and beautiful story. And it unfortunately has a tragic beginning. Jessica was married with five children and her husband was tragically killed in 2017. She was left as a widow, raising five kids on her own. And yet through that, she felt very clear, clearly called and led by God to start the process to adopt and felt like she was told that the Bible says to care for orphans. And even though she was a widow, she still needed to care for orphans. So she started the process to adopt and got through the entire process. And at the very end, the state of Oregon said, You are not fit to parent and fit to adopt unless you sign a form agreeing ahead of time that you will affirm and support any child’s hypothetical future gender identity that they may adopt. When Jessica said that this violated her conscience and her religious beliefs, the state said that makes you an unfit parent. And thankfully, Jessica came to us and we sued the state of Oregon.
SPEAKER 12 :
Wow. And so the decision yesterday, this is a big deal. Tell us about that.
SPEAKER 04 :
It really is a big deal. This is one of the first opinions from the circuit court directly on this issue. And unfortunately, we’ve been seeing this across the country in so many different states where states are excluding Christians from being able to participate in foster and adoption. What the Ninth Circuit said is that adoption is not a constitutional law dead zone. It said that just because we’re dealing with adoption and foster, that doesn’t mean that you can categorically exclude Christians. And it doesn’t mean that you can violate people’s freedom of speech either by compelling their speech with pronouns, by attending pride parades. and by restricting their ability to discuss their own personal religious beliefs in their own home. These are two really important issues and really important rulings that we’re really excited to have gotten from the Ninth Circuit and hopefully we’ll begin to see in other cases as well.
SPEAKER 12 :
Wow. Man, that’s incredible. So what the state of Oregon was doing, and correct me if I’m wrong, but based on what you just said, it sounds like what they were doing was in fact discrimination itself, was it not?
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, what they’re doing is saying that in order to adopt or foster children, you have to adopt the state of Oregon’s ideological beliefs, that you have to adopt their beliefs about gender, their beliefs about gender identity. and that your religious beliefs are simply wrong. And if you hold these religious beliefs, then you are unfit to parent. And that’s simply unconstitutional as that is creating a standard that will remove a lot of Christians from the ability to adopt or foster kids.
SPEAKER 12 :
So they’re really creating an ideological litmus test and pushing a political agenda. Aren’t they doing this above the welfare of the child?
SPEAKER 04 :
Absolutely. Any child who is in foster care wants and needs and deserves a loving home, a home with parents and siblings that will care for them and love them and support them unconditionally. And that is exactly what Jessica does with her own kids and exactly what she wants to do with an adoptive child that she would love to bring into her home. These kids right now across the country are being housed in hospitals and police stations because there simply are not enough homes and families willing to enter the foster care system. We have clients across the country who are willing, who are able, and who are amazing families, and yet departments like Oregon’s are simply not allowing them to participate because of their religious beliefs.
SPEAKER 12 :
Wow. So let’s go there. You have people all across the country like that. What does the decision yesterday say not only to the state of Oregon, but beyond? Where does this go from here?
SPEAKER 04 :
I think it signals to other states and other courts that the tide is turning on this issue, that it’s very clear that constitutional rights of freedom of speech and freedom to exercise one’s religious beliefs apply within this field as well. that there is not a constitutional dead zone for just foster and adoption care where other constitutional rights don’t apply. We’ve got other cases similar to this one in Washington state, in Vermont, and we’re getting calls every single day of other families facing similar issues. And we’re very hopeful that courts will start to stop these unconstitutional policies across the country.
SPEAKER 12 :
Boy, Mallory, we join you in that hope that perhaps the days of conservative people of faith need not apply for adoption are over or coming to an end. Real quickly, 30 seconds or so, what’s next for this case? Where does it go from here?
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, what’s happened now is that we have a preliminary injunction in place. So that means that Jessica is protected while we continue to litigate this case. We will go back to the district court and we are excited to continue pursuing this case and hopefully eventually come to a final ruling that this policy is unconstitutional in the state of Oregon and across the country.
SPEAKER 12 :
Wow. Thank you so much, Mallory Slate, legal counsel on the parental rights team at Alliance Defending Freedom. An honor to have you with us today, and thank you for unpacking this very important decision for us. All right, friends, after the break, I’ll discuss what the commissioner of the FDA has been saying regarding the abortion drug Mifepristone. And it’s quite an important message he’s giving out, and we’ve got quite an important response, what he needs to hear. FRC’s Mary Zock will join me next, so don’t go away. We’ll be back.
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SPEAKER 13 :
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for Bible believing Christians to know what God’s Word says on these issues and to learn how they can apply it to their lives. And we believe that the more Christians that we equip, that’s how we’ll change the nation.
SPEAKER 20 :
Hey, fam, listen, Pastor Sammy here at Lighthouse Church, and I cannot tell you how equipping, how empowering, how… incredibly educating this conference has been. And so I just want to encourage anybody that either has not been part of or is thinking about hosting this event, certainly to pastors, leaders, even CEOs for that matter, this conference is lights out. Stand behind it myself. I can’t commend it enough. We’re going to be talking about this for some time to come.
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The culture is kind of squeezing in on us as God’s people, forcing those of us with biblical views to change those views or to suppress those views. It’s forcing us to engage with issues that we’ve never had to engage with. And so what this teaches us is what those issues are, what the Bible says about those issues, and then how we can critically engage our culture on these things in a way that is committed to biblical principle.
SPEAKER 20 :
Visit frc.org slash worldview for more information.
SPEAKER 12 :
Hope you’re having a great day. Welcome back to Washington Watch. I am your Friday host, Jody Heiss. So glad to have you joining us today. All right, we’ve been talking a lot about the abortion drug Mifepristone and the problems with the related Biden-era policies that, frankly, they’re still in place today. Well, FDA Commissioner Marty McCary, he is maintaining that he has no plans to limit access to this abortion drug But he also says that he’s going to listen to those who have concerns, and then he’ll make decisions based on what they think is the right thing to do. Well, FDA, Dr. McCary, listen up. We here at the Family Research Council have a message for you. And with me now to unpack that is Mary Zox. She’s the director of the Center for Human Dignity here at the Family Research Council. Mary, welcome back to the program. Always an honor to have you.
SPEAKER 05 :
Thanks so much for having me, Jody. It’s great to be here.
SPEAKER 12 :
Okay, so first, let’s talk about, and I know we’ve had these conversations before, but some of our listeners may not be familiar or may not remember. Let’s talk about some of the dangers of the abortion drug Mifepristone. Of course, it kills babies, but it also harms women, right?
SPEAKER 05 :
This drug is extremely harmful. The newest data that has come out shows that 11% of women experience something like sepsis, hemorrhaging, infection, incomplete abortion that requires surgery following up, an ER visit after taking this drug. It’s 11% of women. It’s shockingly high. This drug is dangerous for women, not to mention the fact that the way it is being dispensed right now through the male population without any in-person visit from a medical professional, even a medical professional, let alone someone who’s an OBGYN. This allows this drug to be a murder weapon for abusive men or women. It has been abused by abusive husbands, using it to… to drug their wives’ drinks and try to induce an abortion, and by abusive parents who have forced their teenage daughter, a mother forced her teenage daughter into taking this drug. So this drug is extremely dangerous, and it should not be approved by the FDA.
SPEAKER 12 :
Wow. So there are a couple of main actions that we’re calling on the Trump administration to take. So let’s start with the first one, which is the FDA safety standards. Can you unpack that for us?
SPEAKER 05 :
Sure. Well, as I said, this drug should not have ever been approved by the FDA, and it was only approved because of a politically motivated process. So the first thing that we’re calling for is for the FDA to completely re-examine the approval of mifepristone. Women and unborn children will not be safe from this drug until that approval is revoked. But in the meantime, we’re asking the FDA to reinstate the original $2,000 safety precautions for the drug and to strengthen those by including an ultrasound requirement. The ultrasound requirement would allow the pregnancy to be accurately dated. Almost 40% of pregnancies are redated using ultrasound because the LMP method of dating pregnancies is not not accurate usually. And then the ultrasound also allows the doctor to rule out whether or not the woman has an ectopic pregnancy. Ectopic pregnancy only occurs in 2% of pregnancies, but it results in 13% of maternal deaths. If a woman takes mifepristone and she has an ectopic pregnancy, She might confuse the severe cramping and bleeding she’s feeling for the side effects of mifepristone when really it’s a life-threatening complication from the ectopic pregnancy. So we really want to ensure those 2,000 rems are strengthened if they’re added back. And of course, those include in-person visits with the physician.
SPEAKER 12 :
Wow. All right. So the safety standards, action one. The second action is we want to have the DOJ simply enforce federal law. Tell us about that.
SPEAKER 05 :
The Comstock Act very clearly states that no abortion-inducing object or drug may be sent through the mail. It’s written right there in federal law. The Biden administration looked at that and they said, you know, we will only enforce that as narrowly as possible. So they decided to only enforce it if they could prove that the sender knew the intent of the person was to use that to induce an abortion. It hasn’t been enforced at all. It’s been left that way from the Biden administration. And it’s time for the Trump administration to stand up and say, you know, every Biden policy has to go, especially those ones that endanger life.
SPEAKER 12 :
Wow. We’ve been working, obviously, for a long time here at FRC, but particularly in this regard to protect women and unborn children. But at the same time, Mary, we’ve got a lot of pro-abortionists right now. They are working, too. They’re working hard. In fact, we’ve discussed here on this program about the citizens petition they have. Tell us a little bit about that and what they’re trying to accomplish.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, there are three citizens’ petitions, one from four states that have shield laws, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and California, one from ACOG, and one from GenBioPro, a manufacturer of mifepristone. And two of those ask for the complete removal of any safety precautions around this drug. This is just unconscionable, that they would leave women bleeding, alone, possibly hemorrhaging, possibly with life-threatening complications in their bathroom, delivering… their dead, visibly recognizable unborn baby into a toilet. So we need to work very hard, and we are working to respond to those petitions and tell the FDA this cannot happen.
SPEAKER 12 :
Mary Zock, Director of the Center for Human Dignity here at the Family Research Council, always great to have you. Thank you for your passion and your incredible leadership on this. I hope you have a great weekend. All right, friends, coming up, 13,000 unaccompanied illegal immigrant children have been found. Stay tuned.
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Family Research Council is committed to advancing faith, family, and freedom from the East Coast to the West. So FRC is going to Southern California for this year’s Pray, Vote, Stand Summit, October 17th and 18th at Calvary Chapel, Chino Hills. Join us for this powerful gathering of Christians desiring cultural renewal and spiritual revival. The Pray, Vote, Stand Summit brings together Christian leaders, issue experts, and government officials for a time of prayer, inspiration, and action. Together, we will seek God’s guidance for our nation and engage in meaningful discussions on the intersection of faith, government, and culture. If the spiritual foundations and the cultural walls of our nation are to be rebuilt, we all have a role to play. May we each find our place on the wall as we build for biblical truth. Register now at PrayVoteStand.org. That’s PrayVoteStand.org.
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There are so many different audiences that can benefit. The first one are counselors themselves, because we have some material in there where we really address the gender dysphoria diagnosis and what is wrong with it. We have information for people who are wanting to go back to embracing God’s design for their life.
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How should Christians think about the thorny issues shaping our culture? How should Christians address deceitful ideas like transgenderism, critical theory, or assisted suicide? How can Christians navigate raising children in a broken culture, the war on gender roles, or rebuilding our once great nation? Outstanding is a podcast from The Washington Stand dedicated to these critical conversations. Outstanding seeks to tear down what our corrupt culture lifts up with an aim to take every thought and every idea captive to the obedience of Christ. Whether policies or partisan politics, whether conflict in America or conflict abroad, join us and our guests as we examine the headlines through the lens of Scripture and explore how Christians can faithfully exalt Christ in all of life. Follow Outstanding on your favorite podcast app and look for new episodes each week.
SPEAKER 12 :
Well, good afternoon. Welcome back to Washington Watch. I am your Friday host, Jody Heiss, and we welcome you aboard. Before I get to my next guest, I just want to highlight some of the action items that were relevant and came up in our last segment. As I talked about with Mary Zock, we’re asking the Trump administration to take immediate and decisive action to put a stop to the Biden-era policies that have allowed dangerous abortion drugs to be trafficked literally across state lines. And so I am encouraging you to come on board with us and sign a petition calling on the Trump administration to, first of all, restore and strengthen the FDA’s safety standards for mifepristone. And secondly, we’re asking that they direct the Department of Justice to enforce federal law. And you can join us in letting your voice be heard. I encourage you, please sign on to this petition and simply text the word LIFE to 67742. That’s LIFE to 67742. And again, in advance, thank you for joining us and making your voice heard. OK, this week, the Trump administration, they completed their first six months in office. Stunning. It has been six months and how much has taken place. There’s certainly been a lot of accomplishments in that amount of time. But among some of the most notable accomplishments, if you will, has to at least include border security. The Trump administration has been cleaning up the security and humanitarian crisis that was created by the former administration’s open border policies. But this week, the Department of Health and Human Services located over 13,000 unaccompanied illegal immigrant children who were lost. during the Biden administration. I’ve got to tell you, when I heard this, I almost broke down and wept. 13,000 of these kids have been saved and found. And of course, the Trump administration now says that their goal is to try to reunite these kids with their parents or some safe legal guardian. But the sad reality is all of this is just the tip of the iceberg. Officials estimate that somewhere around 320,000 unaccompanied children who were illegally brought in this country during the Biden administration’s time as office, 300,000, we don’t know where they are. DHS Inspector General Joseph Khafari has rightly summarized the situation as just simply saying that it’s a systemic breakdown that’s putting children in grave danger of trafficking and of exploitation. So how long is it going to take to fully undo what the Biden administration did? Well, joining me now to discuss this troubling situation And what’s being done to address the problem is Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies, Mark Krikorian. Mark, welcome back to Washington Watch. Thank you so much for joining us.
SPEAKER 25 :
Glad to be here. Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER 12 :
Okay, let me just start. I think this is kind of the obvious question, at least for me. Explain to me how in the world the Biden administration could lose track of so many children.
SPEAKER 25 :
Well, there’s a special process for unaccompanied minors, and many of these really weren’t unaccompanied, but that’s the way they were dealt with, where immigration hands them over to Health and Human Services, and then they find sponsors for them. Often the sponsors are their illegal immigrant parents who paid to have them smuggled or some other relative. But what they do is their cursory follow-up is they do one phone call to sort of check up on them and see what’s going on. And it was the 300 plus thousand that they just never got any response for, and they kind of shrugged and just moved on. Their goal was getting people out of their custody, getting these young people in to make it somebody else’s problem. And so most of them probably were delivered legitimately to either family members or parents, but thousands of them, probably tens of thousands, were kind of pushed out the door fast so that they gave them to people who pretended to be their fathers, and they weren’t, to multiple kids, teenagers most of them, multiple ones to the same person. Obviously, you know, there’s something going on here. That’s why this drop in the bucket, it’s what, less than 4%, 5% that they found so far of those who were lost. Out of those, they’ve made more than 400 arrests of these so-called sponsors. There are thousands probably of people out there who just had an easier time in picking up one of these unaccompanied illegal alien kids from the Biden administration than you would have to go and adopt a dog at the pound.
SPEAKER 12 :
Wow. So what is the process? You said, I mean, I guess, you know, how do these kids get here to start with? But once they’re here, what has been the process for vetting these child sponsors? It doesn’t sound like there’s been much of a vetting process in place.
SPEAKER 25 :
No, they do something. There’s cursory vetting of proposed sponsors, but it’s especially under Biden and the HHS secretary, Javier Becerra. Their goal was, their objective was, get people out of the shelters that HHS had them in. If that meant they had to cut some corners and not do proper, not do due diligence basically, proper vetting, that was okay because job one was reducing the number of these people in their custody. Ironically, because the advocacy groups, the open borders advocacy groups, many of them Hispanic-oriented groups, were complaining that these young people were in these shelters for too long. But the result was some significant number of them ended up being handed over to traffickers or even worse, who knows what.
SPEAKER 12 :
Yeah, so a great point there. Do we have any idea the percentage of kids that we’re discussing here have been trafficked? Is there any clue or any way to track that?
SPEAKER 25 :
No, we don’t know yet. I mean, coming up with some kind of estimate would be hard. We do know, though, there’s a lot of it. And not only is there a lot of it, it’s not just… sort of whistleblowers and fringe people who are complaining about it, or even Republican politicians. The New York Times did a series of stories on these so-called unaccompanied minors who were working like, you know, 14, 13, 14-year-olds working in dangerous factories, doing graveyard shifts, working overnight around dangerous equipment. So the New York Times acknowledges that this isn’t some kind of partisan thing. This is a real problem that the Biden administration just didn’t care about.
SPEAKER 12 :
All in the name of just moving people quickly through the system rather than making sure these kids are safe. So evidently, it sounds as though there have been some changes that the Trump administration has made. I mean, we’re seeing 13,000 here in just the last few days who have been found. What changes have been made? And what additional changes do you think needs to continue or additional changes that need to be made to stop all this?
SPEAKER 25 :
The first thing is that because the border is, I won’t say totally shut down, but dramatically more under control than it has been, there’s just not that many new so-called unaccompanied teenagers coming across the border to deal with. So what the administration has to do now is try to clean up as much of the mess that Biden created as possible. And there are some things that really only Congress can do because there’s a special status, a legal status for an unaccompanied minor. And that’s become something that smugglers use. And they tell the illegal immigrant parents, give us money, we’ll bring your kid up. And the government will deliver them to you at taxpayer expense. That’s what’s been happening. Congress needs to fix that. But given current law, the administration is, I think, doing a pretty good job. And cleaning up this mess of the lost kids probably is top priority in this particular area.
SPEAKER 12 :
Yeah, absolutely. All right. So let me give you a scenario. I think we all remember earlier this month, just a couple of weeks ago, it seems that there was a raid at a marijuana farm in California. And as I recall, I think there is like 10, I think, illegal immigrant children who were found during that. So what happens to those kids? Where are they now? What’s the process when something like this raid goes down, what happens to the kids who are found?
SPEAKER 25 :
Those that are unaccompanied minors, in other words, they went through the system, were placed with sponsors. So at least under this administration, they’re going to look at these sponsors and say, okay, what’s the story? And do you guys need to be arrested? And then I assume they would either need to find new sponsors or But the law needs to be changed so that teenagers, somebody under 16, 17 years old, which is working age in Central America, let’s face it, a lot of these kids come on their own. they need to be able to be just sent back like regular illegal immigrants. They work with the home country government, make sure that they don’t fall between the cracks, but they need to be sent home. We can’t have this situation where if you pretend to come unaccompanied that this is somehow some golden ticket into the United States. And what we saw at that marijuana farm is the kind of thing we’re seeing All over the country in factories and farms and elsewhere of unaccompanied minor kids who really are basically just coming to work in many cases, or in many cases are exploited, enslaved, sent to brothels. I mean, there’s all kinds of terrible stuff going on.
SPEAKER 12 :
So we’re celebrating 13,000 that have been found. But as you mentioned, it’s just the tip of the iceberg of what’s out there. What is DHS doing to find more of these missing children?
SPEAKER 25 :
It’s very labor intensive. That’s the issue. First, what they’re going to do is just just try to do it on the phone. It’s, hello, where are you people? And if there are no answers, then they got to send people out. That’s the thing that takes a lot of time and work. But it pays off because, like I said, they’ve arrested more than 400 of these sponsors. And the ICE director earlier this week told me that there’s more coming. So there’s only so many There’s only so many people to go around. Hopefully, the new bill that the president signed, that big, beautiful bill that gave ICE and other parts of immigration a lot more money, will be able to speed this process up. But you can’t just snap your fingers and fix this. Biden and the DHS Secretary Mayorkas spent four years creating this mess, and it’s going to take a while to clean it up.
SPEAKER 12 :
Well, at least it seems we’re taking some steps in the right direction. Let me shift gears a little bit with you here as we look at Trump’s immigration policy as a whole. Last month, you wrote an op-ed titled How Trump’s Doing on Immigration. Great, mostly. So what is Trump getting right about immigration and where are some of the problem areas in your opinion?
SPEAKER 25 :
Most of what they’ve done, they’re getting right. They’re enforcing the border. And the key there is they’re not letting people who cross illegally go. because there’s still people, there’s always gonna be some people getting across the border, no matter what we do. But the reason you had the deluge under Biden is because they were just, the border patrol was ordered to just let them all go. And so if you were gonna be able to just disappear into the country, if you cross over and turn yourself in, then you’re gonna do it. Once you stop that and detain everybody, very far fewer people are gonna try to come across. That they are in a different area, which is important, but isn’t as photogenic. They are starting to crack down on foreign countries that won’t take their own people back because you can arrest an illegal immigrant. But then if his own country won’t take him back, what do you do with them? And there’s provisions in the law, there’s tools that the government can use to pressure foreign countries to take their people back. And only under this administration, only over the past six months, have they really started using those. They almost never did under Biden. The one area where there’s real problems in my opinion, potential problems, it hasn’t happened yet, is the president is talking about amnestying potentially some illegal immigrant workers because some farmers want them or hotel owners or restaurant owners. And that kind of bending the rules in the favor of business is a problem. It hasn’t really happened yet. It’s been talk mostly, but that was the warning sign that I was pointing to in that piece, along with all the other positive stuff that we’re seeing.
SPEAKER 12 :
Good point. And also in your piece, you say that border crossings have dropped to historic lows, as we’ve all watched under Trump’s policies. But you also say that the next step is reducing the number of illegal immigrants in the country. Expound on that a little bit, if you can, briefly. We’ve only got about a minute or so left.
SPEAKER 25 :
There’s always illegal immigrants coming and going. I mean, this churn, even under Biden, there were illegal immigrants leaving. What we need to do, and the administration is working on it, is obviously keep fewer new people coming in and increase the number of illegals already here leaving. They’re doing that through stepped-up ICE deportations, but they also are trying to incentivize and have some success in getting self-deportations. In other words, people to pack up and leave before they get arrested so they don’t have to get arrested. They can go back on their own terms, pack up their stuff, in a dignified way and go home. The administration is trying to create incentives to do that, some carrot and some stick. And we don’t know full numbers yet, but it is happening. And we need a lot more of that.
SPEAKER 12 :
Wow. Thank you so much, Mark Krikorian, Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies. Fascinating conversation, extremely insightful. I want to thank you for taking time out of your schedule to join us today on Washington Watch.
SPEAKER 25 :
Thank you.
SPEAKER 12 :
All right, friends, that wraps up today and this week. Hope you have a fantastic weekend, and we look forward to being with you again next week right here on Washington Watch.
SPEAKER 17 :
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