URGENT: Democrats RUSHING to Supreme Court.
SPEAKER 06 :
We got a big update on the redistricting plans as Democrats rush to the Supreme Court.
SPEAKER 03 :
Keeping you informed and engaged, now more than ever, this is Seculo. We want to hear from you. Share and post your comments or call 1-800-684-3110. And now your host, Logan Sekulow.
SPEAKER 06 :
Welcome to Sekulow for your Monday. It is May 11th, 2026. Welcome to the show we have in studio. Obviously, Will Haynes and Jordan Sekulow. Later on, it’s going to be a packed show. Billy Halliwell is joining us in studio to discuss his new special, Investigating the Supernatural. And we had him on last week. We’re going to discuss that as well. Sort of his background in the world of news commentary, editorial journalism. So we’ll discuss that. And then towards the end of the show, Rick Grinnell is going to be here. So it’s going to be a packed, packed hour. And of course, you can call in as well at 1-800-684-3110. Always the most important voice in the room is you. We’d love to hear from you. That’s at 1-800-684-3110. Many of you have started to tune in. Maybe you saw the headline on YouTube or on Rumble and you saw what’s going on. We know a lot of you had interest in the redistricting plans that came across last week. And now we have, once again, a response. You know, Republicans in Texas start this, then you had it go to California and then it went to Virginia and then it went back to the South as the South kind of redistrict everything. And now you have a group of Democrats not thrilled about this and trying to move their way to the Supreme Court.
SPEAKER 04 :
That’s right. So on Friday, the Supreme Court of the Commonwealth of Virginia put out a ruling saying that the referendum, the way it was done in the analysis that Jordan gave, basically tracked with that, it violated the state constitution, the way it was presented, the question presented. And a lot of the mechanisms violated state law, not federal law. And so the Commonwealth Supreme Court ruled that because of that, that the vote was not legally viable, that it didn’t matter because what they did, the way that they got that to the ballot was unconstitutional within the state. The leaders of the state, the newly elected Attorney General, wasted no time, issued with the House of Delegates Speaker a joint motion requesting the state Supreme Court to delay issuing its mandate, essentially the judgment saying that this does not go forward, because they want to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. That is the normal path. Once you’ve exhausted your state courts, you can have that Hail Mary attempt at the U.S. Supreme Court, But even in their motion that they filed to the Commonwealth Supreme Court, they did it so quickly, unnecessarily so, they had misspellings. They misspelled the state name. The state of Virginia.
SPEAKER 05 :
Was that possible with an autocorrect?
SPEAKER 04 :
No!
SPEAKER 05 :
How does that not pop up right away? It’s your sentence. This is who you work for. It’s your home state. I mean, like, it doesn’t pop up. And what you said, no, no, no. I got it right. My spelling’s better.
SPEAKER 04 :
Right and then they also misspelled the the word senator in that same filing.
SPEAKER 05 :
What they wrote doesn’t exist.
SPEAKER 04 :
So quickly trying to get this before the U.S. Supreme Court but Jordan it’s a tall order for them to try to get this overturned because it mostly relies on state constitutional law something that the Supreme Court is likely not going to weigh in on.
SPEAKER 05 :
I mean, the Supreme Court, in the case that’s got everybody upset on the left about the districting, said, you know, there’s a federal side to this and there’s the state side to this. And when it’s the federal side about what every state must do, I mean, they cleared the deck on that and they went back to the states and said the state Supreme Courts, they’re really the place to go and the legislatures, then to the courts if you want to challenge it. So this is one I could see the Supreme Court not taking because they’ve already answered the question clearly And I don’t think they need to rehash that. And they’ve already got a full… It wasn’t like this was on appeal and never had the trial or never got to the Supreme Court of Virginia, never got a final decision. You’ve already had an answer. Yeah, I mean, this is your last resort. And if you’re taking it seriously, maybe spell your Commonwealth’s name correctly. Yeah.
SPEAKER 04 :
Or Senator. But when we come back, there’s more because the Democrats have other tricks up their sleeve. Just wait, folks. You’re going to want to hear this.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, you don’t want to miss it. I want to hear from you. We’ll slow it down a little bit in the next segment, kind of give you a really what’s happening, where it’s going to go from here. But I do want to hear from you. If you have a question or comments, it’s actually the time to call in because we have so many guests joining us in the second half as well as in the third segment here. So next segment, I’m going to take some calls if they come in. 1-800-684-3110. That’s 1-800-684-3110. Call in right now and get your voice heard today. We’ll be right back with more on Sekulow. If you’re on YouTube right now, let me know where you’re watching from. Welcome back to Seculo. A lot of you are just joining us right now in the break. We’re able to see when kind of numbers start spiking. So I know a lot of you are tuning in wanting to know the big headline that we broke with, which was that Democrats rushing to Supreme Court. Maybe you saw that as the title. Let’s slow it down a little bit. We’ll restate what’s happening. This has to do with the redistricting. We’re also going to discuss a little bit later what’s going on with the Russia-Ukraine wars. There’s been a very interesting development, which may lead, potentially, according to Vladimir Putin, to an end to that conflict, the end of that war. It’s been many, many years now. I don’t even think a lot of us are paying that close attention to it at this point. But for those that are, I’m sure if you’re there on the ground you are, this could show some signs of heading towards an ending. We’ll discuss that a little bit later, maybe with Rick Grinnell also. And then, of course, like I said, we’re going to have on Billy Hollowell from CBN. He’s got a new special out, Investigating the Supernatural, and it’ll be out. We’ll be talking to him in the next segment. So it’s going to be packed. So if you want to call in, it’s a good time to do it at 1-800-684-3110. But let’s restate what we were discussing, and that is, Will, that Virginia Democrats, they got something to say right now.
SPEAKER 04 :
That’s right. And what we’re seeing here is that they lost at the Commonwealth-level Supreme Court on Friday, where the Commonwealth Supreme Court issued a decision saying— The state Supreme Court, for those of us—
SPEAKER 06 :
Non-fancy.
SPEAKER 04 :
Who aren’t aristocrats. That’s right. So they struck down the mechanism of which they were accepting that new redistricting map. Remember, they had to change their state law and rules for this little anomaly to try and make things fair, as they said, to redraw their map to… Right. A 10 to 1 Democrat advantage over the current 6 to 5 advantage that they currently enjoy there in the state when it comes to their congressional delegation. And the state Supreme Court said in a very well-reasoned opinion saying, hey, listen, this didn’t follow state law. uh constitutional law the way that you did this so therefore the vote didn’t matter it’s null and void you saw the hysteria online of people saying oh we got to get rid of these judges this is terrible can’t believe it and honestly democrat leaders uh not just in the state but are looking at ways to do that but jordan what happened here and it it goes back to the analysis you gave the former attorney general ken cucinelli who came on this show gave as well that What they did, the mechanism didn’t follow the law. So this isn’t some radical right-wing court coming down and striking down the only last semblance of democracy that we have in this country. It’s that they didn’t follow the rules and the court struck it down.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, I mean, they didn’t follow their own rules about how you redistrict, and they tried to do this mini-redistricting that they would have to pay for and do another redistricting after the next census in two years. So, I mean, tons of taxpayer money wasted in Virginia. And remember, a lot of this comes out of what California did. And now, what’s the pushback? Well, Tennessee decided, you know what? Let’s redraw our map, and it’s going to be tough for a Democrat to win. And you know what the Supreme Court says? We don’t look at politics. We look at you trying to put certain people, it doesn’t matter if they’re race, but you’re trying to draw districts by the intent instead of race. So making minority majority districts are somehow super constitutional. They’ve actually said, no, that’s unconstitutional.
SPEAKER 04 :
And I think we should take this phone call because one, we know that now the leadership, the Democrat leadership in Virginia is trying to go to the U.S. Supreme Court. This is kind of their last ditch effort to, well, not really, actually, because they have a few other tricks up their sleeve we’ll talk about in a moment, including one that was discussed with the minority leader of the House, Hakeem Jeffries, which is to completely fire their entire Supreme Court to get a new Supreme Court to try and undo this, what they see as injustice. But I think we should go to Bob from Florida because he has a very interesting point. And I think it’s what’s kind of missing in all of this discussion about redistricting. Bob, you’re on Sekulow.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah, guys, the thing that I wanted to discuss is obviously the Democrats are trying to do this on racial lines and that’s illegal. But what the Republicans are missing out on is look at the Northeast. President Trump got 40 to 45 percent of the vote and there is no representation. That seems to be OK on the left. And that’s done on political lines. And if they cannot figure out a way to win the messaging battle and make the Democrats openly admit that they believe that on a racial level, All minorities should be Democrats because that’s obviously not the case. They’re allowing this messaging to say you’re pulling away their right to vote. They still have the right to vote. Make them say that a white representative can’t properly serve Democrats.
SPEAKER 04 :
uh a minority district what they’re doing is they’re going back to their old playbook and and yes i i agree that that’s what’s ridiculous of this entire discussion is that in the northeast in massachusetts even in illinois actually states that are comparable in size to tennessee that they’re attacking right now saying that tennessee is trying to do this uh to be a racist thing No, you look in Massachusetts, you look in Illinois, they have states where there is a sizable percentage of people vote for Republicans have zero representatives.
SPEAKER 06 :
You could say in Tennessee, it’s not dissimilar in the fact that you have 35, 40 percent of people that aren’t Democrat voters. Maybe the presidential will say presidential. I’m sure it’s different in the midterms, different. Those kind of things. But the presidential is about 40 percent.
SPEAKER 04 :
that are voting blue well and I think that’s the point is that as soon as they point to a state they don’t like they say that’s the racism of Tennessee instead of pointing out that we’re at a place now politics this is all politics it’s the political game they’ve been playing in their states for decades doesn’t mean we have to like it exactly but as soon as you do it in a Republican state you still may not like it this maybe shouldn’t be the way this happens But the disparity here, Jordan, is that when Republicans play the game they’ve been playing for decades, it’s racism. And when they do it, it’s saving democracy.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, that’s right. So it’s okay for them to gerrymander. It’s just not okay for Republicans to redistrict following their decisions to make these very bold moves. It’s not like… Gavin Newsom hid what they were trying to do. He said, we’re going to add more Democrat seats. We’re going to take out Republican seats. So it’s purely partisan. What the Democrats didn’t understand is that once you go there, that’s where the Supreme Court says, we don’t care. Your political view is not a protected class in itself. Of course, your right to vote, things like that, that is protected. But your political party view is not. That’s not a class. In many states, and the Supreme Court’s okay with it, you can decide that day. Even in primary, what do you want to vote for? You just have to pick one, but you can still. And then again, you go into the election booth for the general election. It doesn’t matter what your party is. You can still vote for it. You can vote for different people, different parties. That’s why it’s not a protected class. They didn’t realize the can they were opening in Republican majority states like Tennessee.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, and I think also to that point is when they’re trying to say that when it’s done in the South or in a Republican state, it is racism. When it’s their states, they’re trying to protect democracy. They’re trying to make it fair. Here’s the report out of the New York Times over the weekend that leaders from Virginia were talking with Hakeem Jeffries. And here’s the idea that they were coming up with. That would be to quickly pass a law in Virginia. That would lower the mandatory retirement age for the Virginia Supreme Court. They have that there. We don’t have that in the U.S. Supreme Court. But at the state level, from mandatory retirement at 75 down to 54, which would…
SPEAKER 05 :
replace it would replace the entire state supreme court so therefore what they’re saying is supreme court of 50 and 50 and under i mean it’s 53 and under you’re good all appointed by 54 one governor with a democrat with a democrat legislature it was just elected and they get to fill the so you’re talking about court packing Instead of adding seats, they literally just… Reset. They figured out a way to have everybody mandatory retire. 54 years old. And they’re thinking it’s not age discrimination at that point. Yeah, you’re not saying you’re too old to be… Even though a lot of them do have… Like, Virginia has a mandatory requirement.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, a lot of people want to restart their careers at 54.
SPEAKER 05 :
But once again, they are… You’re getting to those positions. Yeah, we’re finally kind of… 40 to 50 years old, you’re just being considered for that.
SPEAKER 04 :
They are showing their cards here. It is all about coalescing power, and they’re going to do it through any means necessary. This is the party of no kings. this is a very um authoritarian move when you’re going to say we’re going to get rid of an entire court because of one opinion that we didn’t like an entire court one opinion we didn’t like a crazy law of this 54 year old retirement even that i i wonder if that could be challenged actually i mean because it’s so arbitrary
SPEAKER 05 :
And it’s directed directly at members. You can’t say this is so general. They picked a number to make sure it would clear the entire court. So if the 53-year-old that’s about to turn 54 has to retire. I mean, that is, again, using politics to personally take out your political partisan vendettas. And what it has done is opened up more states, red states, to say, you know what? We can play this game. And we’re not going to be ridiculous like you are, and we’re not going to have a problem, and you’re going to lose seats. And so this is what the Democrats started, and this is why there’s some renewed hope about the midterms for Republicans.
SPEAKER 06 :
Look, I want you to be on the show today. If you can, give me a call. We have a few lines open still at 1-800-684-3110. In the next segment, we’re going to bring on a guest. Billy Halliwell is going to be joining us in studio. You may have heard him last week pop on our show on Thursday. He’s in studio today, so it’s going to be fun to chat with him and obviously getting into some pretty heavy material here. Fair warning. But then we’ll continue on this discussion. Also, again, talk a little bit more news and updates with rick renell so he’s going to be joining us but if you want to be on the air this great time to do it 1-800-684-3110 to get on hold look the aclj we provide so much incredible work whether that is our work in the law or whether that’s the media side all of it goes through aclj.org if you’re looking for a great resource where you can send your friends clips show them what’s happening read get educated all of it is there no pay while needed aclj.org Welcome back to Secular. As I said, some phone lines are open. You can call in at 1-800-684-3110. We had a guest on last week, and I said, you know what? Let’s have him on again today. But also, he happened to be in studio. So he came into Nashville. I said, let’s bring you back on. Billy Halliwell’s joining us. You know him. Last week, we discussed his new film and film series, even, that is on CBN. We’re going to get into that as well. We probably should restate what that is, because it is a little bit of a departure from the work that we do here each and every day. However… Especially in our conversations, it doesn’t necessarily not relate because it feels like we are dealing with a spiritual battle that is beyond anything we may read in the news or see in the news. And you can feel it. I think a lot of people recognize it, but aren’t sure what they are recognizing. They’re just recognizing an unsettling feeling that is coming out of what’s happening in the world. And you have really done a deep dive into this.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, yeah. The film’s investigating the supernatural angels and demons. And no, you’re so right. I think people… you know, you see something, you say that was evil, right? And even atheists will say this, like that was evil. And it’s like, well, what, what about it was evil? Like, where does that come from? What does that mean? And like you guys, I come from like my day job is the news world, right? So I’m looking at the news, I’m looking at what’s happening. And the more I look at what’s happening in scripture, I’m understanding that better. So it’s kind of like taking that Ephesians six lens to it.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah. And I, this special, and again, it’s a film series available on CBN. Uh, It’s not. It’s really well done. As you said, your background in journalism, your background in really doing the work is there. So it’s not like you’re just taking the word of people and saying, yeah, 100 percent. This is authentic. This is real. You’re letting the viewer decide some of that. But also you’re going in there not as we discussed this, not as the person who wanted to be necessarily convinced of all of this early on.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, no, I mean, going into it, I’m a skeptic on every one of these stories. You know, I go in and I’m like, okay, you’re telling me you had this encounter with a demon or an angel. You’re telling me that you had this healing. Prove it to me, right? And so we take an investigative journalist approach to these topics. Our first film was on miracles. This one’s on angels and demons. And our next one is heaven and hell. And we just felt, and that’ll be near death experiences, but we just felt really strongly that if there’s evidence that these things are happening still, we should unpack it. We should uncover it. We should present it and show it. So we have reenactments and then let people make a decision for themselves. I will tell you this. I have challenged people and I’ll do it again. Now, if you watch the film and you can do that at cbn.com slash supernatural, and you have another explanation for what is going on in these stories, I want people to come and tell me and ask me.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, and I think, one, you and I have had many discussions for more than a decade now. I remember talking, having you, booking you on this broadcast back in the 2012 election cycle. We had you on weekly for a very long time talking about political news. But in this, as you say, almost feels like such a shift from the topics that we’re used to talking about. But if you were to go back and even think about Why would some of the things that are in scripture, especially when it comes to evil forces, dark forces and the way they manifested, why would they stop? Why, you know, if you go through that, even with a critical lens of we as a modern society are so quick to say, you know, that seems like a crazy story. Why would things like that stop? Then you start to look through this investigation. Is that kind of what you feel? Like, oh, when I read what’s in scripture and I read these things that were very clearly happening, not some parable or story, there is a lot of parallels with things that we even see in the world now that are unexplainable through any other lens.
SPEAKER 02 :
A hundred percent. You know, it’s funny, you look at what happens in scripture. I think a lot of us, we read the Bible as though it’s this book of fables, or even though we say we believe it, it’s like, we’re reading it differently than we would the news. And yet if those things all happened, like you were saying, why would they have stopped? But the thing for me that was the most convicting in all of this was Ephesians 6. because I’ve read that a million times as a Christian. I’m 42, I’ve literally probably a million times, and I’ve just glazed past it. And if you pause and you stop at Ephesians 6, Paul is saying we live in a world that is comprised of a spiritual battle, right? All of us are consumed with the us versus them. That’s the distraction. And that’s what culture wants us focused on. That’s what cancel culture was. That’s, you know, it’s Democrats versus Republicans. Don’t get me wrong. I love a good political battle. I think we have to have them. Those are good things, but that’s not the real battle. It tells us that Paul says the real battle is spiritual and it’s pouring over.
SPEAKER 05 :
And we also see in real life, like some of the most horrendous criminal cartels, like MS-13, who embrace Satanism. And it’s interesting because you don’t think of cartels embracing religion or having any matter, but yet that’s a big part of their indoctrination. And what we read in the Bible is that when you start welcoming that into yourself, that is when the demons show up. You’re encouraging that. And that’s when those guys can carry out these heinous acts and atrocities and it doesn’t even affect their mindset. You can see them in prison. They’re dead in the eye. And they embrace. They said, we want to embrace the devil. We want to embrace evil. We’re going to put 666 on everyone and are encouraging them to kind of take them over. And so that tracks to what the Bible says as well and the teachings both in the Old and New Testament.
SPEAKER 02 :
A hundred percent. Like, how can you understand anything that’s happening in your life, politics, the issues you just mentioned, if you don’t understand scripture, right? So I think a lot of us, even as Christians, we’re not looking through that lens of scripture to look at these events of the day. And you’re not like, a lot of times we’re like, that doesn’t make sense. How did we get to a place in this country where we were allowing children to be, you know, essentially castrate? Like, how are we allowing these things? Well, there’s a spiritual element to it. And if you’re not seeing that, you’re going to be very, very confused about everything. So, you know, But for me, selfishly, being able to look at things through that lens, it transformed me. And our hope is that people will see that evidence and start to look at everything, not just these issues of angels and demons, but everything through that lens.
SPEAKER 06 :
I see some comments coming in. And of course, I know it is brought up in this, which, of course, we did have big news last week with the UFOs. That kind of plays into your special, to your movie.
SPEAKER 02 :
It does. And I want to say this before I get into what I think. There is a battle over this, even in the church, even among Christians, about what they think is going on with UFOs and aliens. Some people believe aliens exist. They believe UFOs exist. Some people don’t. But we do deal with this in the film. We felt it was important a year ago when we were working on it. We had no idea it was going to release after. This was all happening. But, you know, we have Hugh Ross, who’s a brilliant astrophysicist. He’s in the film. And from his perspective, he believes that, you know, most of the time, 99 percent of the time, there’s a natural explanation for what people are seeing, meaning it’s military technology. It’s something else. Right. Something that we don’t know about. But there’s an explanation. But that one percent and some would say it’s 10 percent. But the smaller percentage, this residual percentage. it is something we are seeing something. So there’s no debate. People are seeing something, but what is it that they’re seeing? He would say they’re seeing a spiritual manifestation that Ephesians six, that that battle is being visualized and seen by people, meaning that maybe there aren’t really aliens. Maybe they’re just demons manifesting as aliens or being seen as such. So that would be his position on it. And I think it’s an interesting position.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah. And look again, What I like about the work that you do is though you are laying out the evidence, it isn’t definitive saying this is 100%, this is the story, this is what happened. It’s just saying here are the stories we’re hearing. And I’m sure, look, in the follow-up, it’s going to be very similar where you’re going to have people. And I think there’s going to be a whole wide range of debate on near-death experiences and everything that that opens because that opens a whole other theological debate that I do not want to have nor prepare to have. And I think what’s interesting to you, we’ve only got a minute left. Maybe we’ll keep you on for the next segment. is in this just minute is that you didn’t like we talked about before you knew opening this door was going to be tough yeah it could be dark but also wasn’t necessarily where you wanted to go but i’m happy that you’re you’re the one doing it because you’re telling it from a non-sensationalist kind of point of view yeah i want facts i want you to prove it to me and i think if you can prove it and i know we have a few seconds here left that’s fine we
SPEAKER 02 :
If we can prove that these things are still happening, okay, miracles are still happening, people are having these experiences, it opens up a whole new doorway. It’s not new, but I guess a renewed doorway of how we reach people with the gospel. If you want to reach people with the truth and you can prove that these things are happening, it’s an apologetics tool.
SPEAKER 06 :
That’s great. You can get it right now. It’s available. Yep. CBN. CBN.com slash Supernatural. And do it. You can stream it. You can order a DVD still if you’d like. There are a lot of different ways. Billy’s been a good friend of ours. We’re happy to have him on. Stick on for the next segment. We’ll let you promote it again one more time. And then we’ve got a packed second half of the show. Give me a call at 1-800-684-3110 to be on the air right now. And again, if you want to support the work of the ACLJ, go to aclj.org right now or just look at all the incredible resources that we provide, whether it’s this show or it’s all legal work. If you need legal help, it’s all there ready for you. No paywall, aclj.org. We’ll be right back. Less than a minute.
SPEAKER 03 :
Keeping you informed and engaged now more than ever. This is Sekulow. And now your host, Logan Sekulow.
SPEAKER 06 :
Welcome back to the second half hour of Sekulow. Thanks for joining us. If you missed the first half hour, you can find it later on. Archives on ACLJ.org or wherever you get your podcasts. We are there. Just search Sekulow. Search ACLJ. Pop right up. Hope you enjoy it. Phone lines, like I said, are open. We’re going to take some calls in the back, the final segment of the show. Right now. Look, we’ve been talking about sort of the breaking news of the day. We started off this conversation talking about the redistricting. Then we’re going to move on. We’re going to have a little discussion about even an update. We haven’t had an update in the Russia-Ukraine situation, but it seems like there could be an update that could signal an end to that conflict. We’re going to discuss that in the next few segments. But Billy Halliwell is still joining us. He was on the final segment. I wanted to give him just another minute of our time to make sure people see your new documentary, your new film, Investigating the Supernatural. This one is in a series of films from CBN. And really, if you’re looking for a deeper dive into what’s happening, I think this is an important one for people to see. Because like you said, it’s not just about, oh, the, you want to say almost what feels like a science fiction movie. version of angels and demons. We are talking about the real spiritual warfare that’s happening. And again, it’s biblically based, but some of these stories are pretty wild. They’re wild.
SPEAKER 02 :
I mean, they’re incredibly wild. And I think, you know, you’ve got, here’s the other thing you have doctors and this really blew my mind, you know, psychiatrists, psychologists, you know, they, that came into this documentary to share their perspective. You don’t often hear from those people, but people whose perspectives were shifted when they started engaging with people who claim to be possessed or claim to be oppressed. And once they started engaging in that thinking, oh my goodness, my skepticism has been obliterated.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, they’re dealing with science and you usually tie those two together and say, okay, well, if you’re a professor, if you’re dealing with, if you’re a doctor, there’s a lot of atheism that goes into that at this point, or a lot of at least agnosticism that happens. Look, we even had on an astronaut a few weeks ago, Butch Wilmore, who said, you know, Going to space and being stuck there for a year did nothing but reaffirm his faith because of how wild it is to experience it.
SPEAKER 04 :
You even saw from the Artemis mission that one astronaut who was saying, I am not a religious person, unlike one of the other astronauts, but when a chaplain came in, He broke down in tears, weeping, seeing the name of Jesus after being in the presence of everything they were in the presence of for that mission. And you have to think even with those are the positives of the mission. spiritual world manifesting and being seen as we go through time. But you also see how dark some of the stories that we’ve had, even you think of October 7th and all this war and in the ways that even some people’s mindsets in both American conservatism as well as the left, over things like the state of Israel and the Jewish people. And that very much spiritual things and theological things that have become such a tense thing. And in many ways, the rhetoric has gotten none other than demonic.
SPEAKER 02 :
Absolutely. I mean, how else do you make sense of the way that Israel is being framed among some people, right? There are certain podcasters and TV hosts who are saying things you could never imagine people, especially on the right saying, okay.
SPEAKER 01 :
Right.
SPEAKER 02 :
I’m not going to name names, but there’s people out there doing this and we all know who they are, you know, and then dragging a widow through the mud endlessly over and over and over again. A lot of people are saying like, what is going on here? And I think sometimes like the only explanation you can have is it has to be spiritual, especially on the Israel front. I mean, it’s just so bizarre to watch, but that’s why if we don’t have those lenses on, we’re not going to understand the headlines. We’re really not. And we’re going to miss the mark.
SPEAKER 06 :
We’ve got a packed second half here, but Billy, we’ve got one minute left. I just want you to plug away, because I think this is important. Tell people what they need to do, how they can see it. Of course, there’s more coming.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, I love it. So our next film is going to be Investigating the Supernatural, Heaven and Hell. That’ll come out next year. But if you want to watch our Angels and Demons doc, you go to cbn.com forward slash supernatural. Our first one on Miracles, you can go to cbn.com forward slash miracles to watch that one as well.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, so check out the whole series and follow Billy on all social platforms. A great follow and someone, again, who’s been a friend of ours for, at this point, decades. A long time.
SPEAKER 02 :
A long time.
SPEAKER 06 :
So, you know, go check out all of what he’s doing. We love him. So, again, that is CBN.com slash Supernatural. Go watch this new film from Billy, Investigating the Supernatural, Angels and Demons. We got, again, a lot more coverage to get through. But I want to hear from you at 1-800-684-3110. In the last segment of the show, we will take your calls and comments. So go ahead and get on hold. 1-800-684-3110. We’ll be right back. Welcome back to Sekulow. Rick Grinnell is joining us live. Rick, there’s a lot happening in your world, and there’s a lot happening, obviously, in the state of California. Maybe we’ll get to that as well, but I do want to take things, at least to start, a bit more worldwide, and there is an update here on something that we have not really had an update on in many, it feels like many, many months, if not over a year, really, it’s been a topic of interest for our audience, and that is that Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the war between Russia and Ukraine, in quotes, is coming to an end, that the matter is coming to an end. This is, again, a first update we’ve had in quite some time. I just want to get your read. When you hear something like this coming out from Putin, does this actually carry any weight to signify that maybe that this, what feels like a years-long, has been years-long war, could be starting to wrap up?
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, I know it’s a priority for President Trump to try to figure out how to get to peace here. It’s been very frustrating. And to hear Mr. Putin say this is a very good thing. I think the Russians have been the ones that have been defining a lot of what’s happening. And so what we really need is for Putin to continue down this road of talking about peace. What does it take? How does he see it developing? I think that the years that I’ve spent at the UN working in a multilateral setting with the Russians, that they are very clear in their mind that they’ve won this and that now they want to move to another phase. Now, whether or not that is true, I think that’s up for debate. But the reality is, is that having Mr. Putin move to talking about even a ceasefire for a couple of days or a vision that this is coming to an end is a diplomatic breakthrough and we need to really double down on this right now.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, as well, when you start to think about the track record of when he would invade portions of Ukraine, whether it was under President Obama and then again under President Biden, when there was no real resistance from the United States other than don’t, tough talk, words telling him not to do it, but he didn’t care. Now you see that this was something that President Trump said was a priority. But you already saw over the weekend when this three-day ceasefire was announced, President Trump put it out there, the Democrats who cannot help themselves but just be political about war, when anyone should be like, okay, great, a ceasefire so people will not be dying for three days. This is a good thing. Had to say, well, really, he’s just doing Putin’s bidding. This is nothing new. He’s the puppet. Going back to the old, you know, Russia hoax type language, But in reality, this is Putin saying the war could be coming to an end. He’s open discussing fresh European security arrangements. And he also, he mentioned an individual I want to maybe get into as well, that he prefers a negotiating partner from Germany when it comes to this, the former Chancellor Gerard Schroeder. So just kind of what are your takes on this? I know you know a lot about Germany and the politics there, but what does this mean when he’s even talking about maybe negotiating with Europe as a part of this, bringing this war to a close?
SPEAKER 01 :
Look, the Russians have always been an over ruler of the Germans, whether the Germans want to agree to that or not. Chancellor Merkel told me on multiple occasions that, you know, we Americans just don’t understand the German relationship with Russia, that they can control Russia. They’ve got certainly a working relationship and a trade relationship unlike any others. And so they have really tried to have good relations with Russia. Remember, they had the Nord Stream 2 pipeline really feeding their energy there. But it was President Obama and Chancellor Merkel from Germany, who came up with the Minsk Agreement, followed by Minsk II. And remember in that agreement, the Germans came up with this idea, and Obama, President Obama approved it, of autonomous zones. That’s what they called it, autonomous regions. What that really means is that there are regions within the Ukraine boundaries whereby Ukraine doesn’t really control, Russia doesn’t really control, we don’t really care on paper where these autonomous zones lie, but that they are going to be independent autonomous zones. That was what Chancellor Merkel came up with. I’ve talked to President Trump about these autonomous zones in the past. And I do think that this is one of those diplomatic tools that we could find a way for both sides to to agree to some sort of autonomous zones or autonomous regions. Now, the rest of Europe doesn’t like that because that creates this precedent for autonomous zones and regions throughout Europe that the Europeans don’t like. But I think what what Putin is saying is we’ve already had a great deal from Merkel and Obama in the past. How about we go back to the German idea where they really own the Germans on this process. The Germans are very weak when it comes to this, but maybe that’s the solution. If the Germans can bring along the Europeans, the rest of the Europeans, and they have some sort of autonomous zones that they can build out from like what Minsk and Minsk 2 did, I think that there’s an opening that we should look at.
SPEAKER 05 :
I wanted to ask you Rick about Iran because we had dueling proposals come out from the United States and a lot of those points were described to us we were able to go through them with people we knew those were going to be difficult some of those points difficult for Iran to accept and they then sent back their own proposal which was absurd and the president as he said didn’t like it so Do you think we are very close to going back to the combat level we were at before this short-term ceasefire to see if there could be a deal in this proposal accepted that has been totally rejected now?
SPEAKER 01 :
Look, the one thing that I do know is that President Trump is always serious about his diplomatic endeavors. He wants to solve this diplomatically, but unlike any other president, President Trump knows that there are boundaries and he’s willing to make sure that the diplomacy, when it’s stuck or comes to an end, is bolstered by what the Pentagon can do and the Pentagon does not negotiate. So that option is always on the table and that is very helpful to diplomats because the threat that President Trump has is a credible threat and other countries, our allies even, or our opponents, they all know this as a credible threat. And so let’s wait and see what happens. I know President Trump is willing to do diplomacy, military action, Very quickly, he can change. And mixing that up is exactly what we need to stay credible and to stay nimble. I will say this, though, that the Iranians have always had a credibility problem when it comes to truthfulness and when it comes to sticking to their agreements. And so our side is very clear eyed that you can’t just trust what they say.
SPEAKER 04 :
Rick, I know we’re going to be having you on again this week and we’ll talk more about this. But just quickly, President Trump is heading this week to China for a summit that was delayed because of the war in Iran. A quick preview of what you think could be some of the big ticket items that the president seems to want to bring forward as he meets with the leader of China.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, I think, look, the relationship that President Trump has with President Xi is really unique. It’s a tough relationship. It’s an honest push from President Trump. He’s willing to say, look, this is what I’d like, and I’ll play tough if I have to. I love their relationship because we don’t see it as just one-dimensional. always talking about the economy, the farmers, for instance, and President Trump really has a focus of trying to make sure that the trade deals for farming are good for American farmers. I think you’re gonna see the beginnings of a deal, if not a full deal. President Trump likes to go and push hard. So you’ll also see the media probably panic about how hard Trump is pushing. But what we do know is that he mixes it up and there can be a reward for the Chinese if, They’re willing to do it President Trump’s way, which is something that will benefit the American economy. We do know that the Chinese have manipulated our relationship with every other president before President Trump. They’ve always gotten great deals and they haven’t been truthful either. So President Trump is going to hold them to account, hopefully come back with the beginning or at least an agreement in principle.
SPEAKER 06 :
Thanks, Rick, for joining us today. We always appreciate it, and we’ll have you back on, I believe, tomorrow is what we’ll say. It’ll be a packed week with Rick Grinnell, which we always appreciate all of your guidance and thoughts. We appreciate it. With that, I do want to hear from all of you as well. We’ve heard from a lot of different guests today. We haven’t heard so much of your voice yet. So if you want to call in, this is a great time, really the last time to do it. We have a few lines open for you right now. 1-800-684-3110. If you’ve been on hold for a while, stay on hold. I will get to you in the next segment. I’m sorry we haven’t gotten to you yet. It’s just been a packed show, which we always enjoy having on some of our friends, having on some of our guests. If you like that, also let me know in the comments and we can have any of these people on. Or if you have a suggestion on who you’d like to see, Throw in their hat for doing some commentary. I’d love to see that as well. Put it in the chat if you’re watching on Rumble or on YouTube or Facebook, whatever it may be. We always have a team monitoring those comments. And I like to pop in there myself and comment as well. So we’ll be right back with more on Sekulow, but I’m going to ask you to give me a call at 1-800-684-3110. We are live 12 to 1 p.m. Eastern time each and every day. We’ll be right back on Sekulow. Welcome back to Secular. We are going to take your calls and comments probably the last two minutes or so to even get yourself on the air. So call in at 1-800-684-3110. We’re going to talk a little more about the redistricting rule. A lot of you have had discussions about that, what it means, what it looks like. And even if you don’t care about really the big news of the day, which is the Virginia is going to the Supreme Court to try to stop uh what republicans are doing it’s so confusing it’s just another political game that we’ve decided we’re going to play out on both sides and whether you agree with the idea of this sort of gerrymandering redistricting or not like i said last week unfortunately or fortunately however you may see it this is the way politics is going right now and as we have learned in the past jordan you can address this if you don’t play with the rules that you’re given right now and you take sort of this higher ground, it always ends in disaster, especially for Republicans.
SPEAKER 05 :
We see, again, this idea of replacing entire courts, replacing the entire judicial system. We want, top to bottom, a redo of Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution, Article 2, Article 3, and this whole idea that we are going to disband the federal court systems because you don’t like their policy the way they interpret the constitution they were selected by a president who was elected by the American people and then confirmed by U.S. senators who were elected by the American people and so you know good and well what their policy views were it doesn’t mean you can always predict how they outcome but it’s any time they are losing they don’t want to just try and win the argument They have to take down the system. It’s the system’s fault. It’s the constitution’s fault. It’s the white men behind the constitution who set up the Supreme court. And really it was Congress who set up the other courts. You know, it was, it was the Supreme courts here. Congress can set up ancillary courts and that’s how we got the district and and the court of appeals system in the United States. But this idea of just first it was court packing. Now it’s just dismantling and rewriting it while we still have secret courts operating that, that spy on Americans and they have no problem with that one.
SPEAKER 06 :
Let’s go ahead and take a call. Let’s go to Johnny who is calling from Tennessee. Johnny’s got some comments here. Go ahead. Good morning.
SPEAKER 08 :
Good afternoon. Yeah, I have a couple of quick comments on the redistricting in Tennessee. The one district, represented by Cohen, is a majority black district, but yet he’s a white man. And on the Virginia thing, if they retire everybody, they’ll be retiring the first and only black woman chief justice on the Virginia Supreme Court.
SPEAKER 04 :
Not only that, Johnny, she is the first African-American female to even serve on the Supreme Court of the Commonwealth of Virginia. Yes, because in reality, I don’t even know that the politicians believe their lines when they say it’s racist. They know that it is what will get the social media people, the blue sky crowd, all abuzz and putting out reels about how this is the end of America. But at the end of the day, they know it’s all a political game and you may hate it i don’t love the way that this districting works i don’t i don’t like even the fact that i was actually kind of happy tennessee had stayed out of it at this point but then the supreme court decision you can’t blame them when they’re actually trying to follow the decision from the supreme court because that district is a legacy district But at the end of the day, I’m tired of it being called all racism whenever it comes to this. We’ve seen that the demographic shifts in voting are not favoring Democrats as it is, but they’re still relying on these old sayings and these old labels of it being racism from the past. That’s not what we’re looking at here. What we are looking at is that they have been playing this game in the Northeast, in the Midwest for so long. And then they start to get a taste of their own medicine and they have to resort back to language from the 50s and 60s saying, which when there was a real time, when that was a concern, that is not what the concern is today in 2026. It is not what is coming out of the Supreme Court of the United States. It is not what the Virginia Supreme Court was dealing with. It is just ridiculous. And as Jordan was saying, you may hate it. I don’t love the redistricting game, but this is where we are today. So everyone should just call it what it is. It’s a political game. That’s the way it is. Unless every state puts in an independent commission, it’s going to continue to be this way.
SPEAKER 05 :
I mean, if you live in a state, a red state that can add more Republican seats, the Democrats open this door for you.
SPEAKER 06 :
right thank them and take advantage of it i mean what it’s it’s legal and the pushback even if they sue you minimal you’re gonna win yeah i mean i think that’s why i said is the unfortunate reality is when politics gets put into this and the rules get changed or things happen and you don’t go and play by the rules You have to kind of adjust. You either have to take, decide whether you have to decide whether. Yeah, exactly. Do you prefer the way it was or do you have to understand that you may prefer how it was, but you now have to play by the rules that are now presented in front of you. And when politics is treated like a game, that’s what happens. And unfortunately, that is the world we live in. As Will said, they will try to pretend there’s some sort of moral high ground in these states. And look, I’ve lived in a lot of these states. Lived in Virginia, lived in Tennessee, lived throughout Florida, Georgia, pretty much everywhere it’s redistricting I’ve somehow ended up living in. And I will tell you that even in some of the more bluer areas, especially in those areas of the South, in strange ways, the more blue areas is where I’ve actually seen some of the most… egregious racism up front where you cannot believe the words that are coming out of people’s mouths in the, you know, that time would have been the 2010s or the early 2000s where a lot of these areas, they may pretend to have this moral high ground. And trust me, that is the people who are voting more blue in these areas. Right.
SPEAKER 04 :
And once again, you look at what these states that tried to have this moral high ground of we have an independent voting commission like California, like Virginia. And what did they do? Honestly, Virginia’s map was pretty accurate of it being a six to five split Democrat, Republican in their congressional delegation. One of the last true purple states. Okay, fine. Yeah, that was probably the appropriate representation of the state. What did they do? They said, oh, we’re going to actually throw out our moral high ground in the name of fairness? No, worry about your own house. Keep it in order, Virginia. And what did they do? No, this is the same attorney general who is appealing this, who was saying, and all of this came out, and he still won his election, that he wanted gun violence to happen to his political opponent’s children in front of him. And when was pushback said, you don’t mean this, stop saying this is inappropriate. No, I really want this to happen. So maybe they’ll change their policy positions. These are not serious people, but now they are in positions of power. And so when you look at this and they try to throw out their own rules to try and gain an advantage, His own words are he does not care what it takes to get his ideology and his positions across the finish line, whether it be getting rid of their state Supreme Court, whether it be violence against his political opponents. That’s what we’re living with. So, yeah, if that’s what they’re going to start doing, I think you have to protect our Constitution and other states play the same game.
SPEAKER 06 :
All right. Well, that’s pretty much going to do it for the show. Well, thank you for doing that. It was a packed hour, everybody. If you want to share this show, I would encourage you to do so because you could see how far we were able to cast our net today. We were talking about everything from the war in Russia and Ukraine to the war in the spiritual realm. Back to the redistricting battles happening throughout the country. We cover a lot of ground here in an hour. This is why our show is even a little bit different than a lot of what you see throughout the country, whether it’s on mainstream news or even podcasts. We’re going to give you everything you need, hopefully in that hour of time. We do it each and every day, Monday through Friday from noon to 1 p.m. Eastern time. You can find us live. You can always call in. That is at ACLJ.org. YouTube, Rumble, however you get your podcasts, we’re there. You can find it archived later on. Again, that’s the full hour show. And again, if you want to support the work of the show and the work of the ACLJ, our legal side, our media side, all of it goes to make sure that all this provided to you at absolutely no cost, no paywalls at ACLJ.org. Make your donation today if you can and become a champion if you can. We appreciate it. Talk to you tomorrow.
