ACLJ Fighting Biden's FBI Overreach

Today on Sekulow, the ACLJ fighting FBI's overreach and for the life of the unborn. Keeping you informed and engaged, now more than ever, this is Sekulow. And now your host, Jordan Sekulow. Hey, welcome to Sekulow, folks.

We've got a packed show for you today on the broadcast. As you may have heard in the tease, we're going to talk to Jim Jordan, Congressman Jordan, about the FBI, the politicization, the targeting of American conservatives, the idea that they want to, how they're defining certain crimes to make it look as if there's this massive domestic violent right-wing extremism going on all over the country, when in fact they're all tied to one event. It was January 6, and the people are spread out around the country who they are going after and prosecuting.

But the way it looks on paper is that all these different violent extremists are all over the place, like behind every door you go. And so we're going to talk to Congressman Jim Jordan about that. Anti-Semitism on the rise, of course, you probably know on college campuses, but we're taking specific action in New York, specifically the City University of New York, Jeff Balaban from the ACLJ team, who also oversees ACLJ Jerusalem. A good reminder that I always like to remind you about where we have offices around the world, and he oversees our office in the heart of Jerusalem right there, but also works on the anti-Semitism in the United States.

So Jeff will be joining us as well. Logan's here with me, and I want to talk about our podcast a little bit. This week we got into some deeper issues, so people thought maybe they froze a couple weeks and saw this is funny, but does it ever get serious? It does.

It does. We talked about some of the new Supreme Court cases, we talked about what's going on in the Georgia election, we talked a lot. That was just on this week's episodes. We're dropping a new one today. And we have a new one coming out today, and we're going to obviously cover all that's happening, as well as it is a little fun to listen to. It's a good time, so make sure you are tuning in with the right spirit. It's a lot of fun.

It's at secularbrothers.com. You can also find it on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, on YouTube, and on Rumble. Rumble being one of our biggest sources, and it's really been great. It's an exciting show. We actually had, just last week alone, had 100,000 downloads and views, which we are thrilled. That's a huge number for a podcast just launching, so thank you all for tuning in.

Please tell your friends, and we hope you have, come back, enjoy it. We do it three days a week, Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. It's funnier. It's a different edge to this. We're very intense on this broadcast. I'd say it's a different edge, but I would have to say it ends up always a little bit more lighthearted.

Yeah, even if it's issues that are tough. And we're not on the same time clock, so we could be a little bit more extensive. It's more casual. I think that's a good way to put it.

I think it's more casual. I mean, look, the first 20 minutes of one of our more recent shows is pretty heavy, but it does, like you say... We're able to talk through it. Yeah, we're able to get through it, talk about the real issues that are happening. And one of the things I've said, and you've said, which is we're just being honest on it, which I think is what a lot of people have responded.

They really like the honesty that we're not shilling for just one side or the other. We are saying, here's the real implications. We're talking about politics.

We're talking about what it's really like inside. You've had the experience specifically even in Georgia politics, so we're talking about specifically how that all could play out. It's really interesting. Yeah, that's where I cut my political teeth initially was in a couple of races in Georgia, which has changed demographically since I worked there, but also is still a lot of the same players. Kemp was around. Those kind of people were around when I was coming up the process at the lower statewide elected offices. And so this is even more of a packed show that we'll get back to. So we got Congressman Jordan, Jeff Balibon joining us. Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma will also be joining us on the VA hospitals.

We talk about the life issue later in the broadcast, trying to turn those VA hospitals basically into abortion clinics. And the Biden administration is excited about this. They're not hiding this. They are telling everybody about this.

The problem is there's existing federal law that prohibits that. So we talked to Senator Lankford about that. Jeff Surtees from our team is going to update us on a Kentucky state Supreme Court case on life as well. So we got, of course, the targeting of conservatives. We've got the issue involving antisemitism. We also have life issues to cover today on the broadcast.

And Logan, there's one last thing on the podcast. We're really encouraging people to sign up through like Apple Podcasts and Spotify. We're getting a lot of viewers, which we're very visual people. Yeah.

It is what it is. People like to look at us, but we would love you to also subscribe as well on Apple Podcasts and on Spotify. Sure, it's the audio feed that really helps gets us in the rankings and gets really a bigger national.

It gets without or within and expand beyond our bubble. So it really helps if you go and subscribe there. Write a review if you're on Apple Podcasts.

That really helps too. Five-star review. We'd love it. All right, folks, go to aclj.org as always to stay updated. We'll be right back on Secula.

All right, welcome back to Secula. We're joined by a great friend of the American Center for Law and Justice, someone fighting for all of us in our nation in Washington, D.C., Congressman Jim Jordan, the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, who has been uncovering, through whistleblowers coming to Congressman Jordan, so much of this politicization of the FBI. And in a new letter to the FBI director, Congressman Jordan talks about how even when it comes to the January 6th arrest, they've politicized how they're reporting those arrests to make it look like, well, Congressman, I'll go right to you, to make it look like there's all this domestic violent extremism, DVE, going on all across the country. And it's instead of misleading people that these are all arrests stemming from a single event. Right. They're trying to make it look like there's an extremist behind every door to satisfy this narrative of Joe Biden, where he called half the country fascist, half the country extremist.

And understand the pattern here. We've had now over 14 FBI agents come to our office as whistleblowers. They come to us, I think, because they know they can trust us and they know how bad it is.

And they're willing to come to us, even in the minority, just because it's so ridiculous what's going on there. It started first with whistleblowers coming forward last year in relation to this, the whole school boards issue. And then more recently we had this whistleblower who come to us and said, look, they're cooking the books in a way that makes it look like there is domestic violence extremism everywhere. And they're so focused on, this is the troubling aspect of this too. And maybe the most troubling was they're so focused on this, they're pulling agents off of child trafficking cases to focus on this political narrative at the justice department. You know, Jim, when I read that part of your letter, I was outraged.

I mean, this idea, I'm gonna read it for everybody. In addition, the whistleblower disclosed that the FBI is sacrificing its other important federal law enforcement duties to pursue January 6 investigations, which they have a huge team on. It's not like they can't do that. The whistleblower recalled being told that the sexual abuse material investigations were no longer an FBI priority. I mean, think about, I think about that for a moment where sex trafficking is such a huge problem across the country at the border, but throughout the United States. Online pornography aimed at children where children are utilized in those videos is a huge problem. I argued a case at the Georgia Supreme Court a few years back where I was defending the state of Georgia's law on what they called predator situation was basically these people that were grooming young kids and then ultimately meeting with them.

They flew in the big First Amendment lawyer from Texas, supposedly, you know, then the state of Georgia asked me to do what I did a pro bono and we won the case. But the point is now the FBI saying, oh, you know, we're so busy with these other cases. We can't continue to make child sexual abuse and trafficking a priority, Jim. That is really dangerous.

Yeah. Well, and then couple it with what appears to have happened in Philadelphia with this homeschool family, this pastor where they're focusing on those kind of issues, all to satisfy this political narrative. I said it this way, the first whistleblower that came to us a few weeks ago on this issue of DVE cases, domestic violence extremism cases, said that they were juicing the numbers. They were pressuring agents to categorize all cases as domestic violence extremism.

And now we find out they're cooking the books. So juicing the numbers, cooking the books, all again to fit this political narrative. And as you point out, as this whistleblower told us, at the expense of protecting kids, that's wrong. And it's why if we get the majority, we're going to do everything we can to expose this and try to hold people accountable who are responsible for it.

Yeah. I mean, Congressman Jordan, one of the things that I see of all of this is that not only is the politics seeped in, but as you keep talking about diverting the resources away from the real, the bad actors. The reason why the FBI exists is to take on the worst of the worst, whether those are criminal actors inside the US that are US based, whether they're foreign terrorists, whether they are foreign cartels. And with the Fentanyl crisis, with all the drug crisis we're seeing hitting all of our communities, it does not matter where you are in the country because of what's happened at the border, those drugs are everywhere. And when they start to say, well, we got to prioritize the arrest of January 6th or the pro-life protester outside of an abortion clinic, instead of going after the really bad guys, and that's why they exist.

And can we get them back on track? Well, I think it's even worse. And the other thing that whistleblower told us is that they're using the most extreme tactics when they go after these people for political reasons, when they go after the January 6th people. The tactics that this pastor in Philadelphia area has mentioned that they're busting in the door, coming in guns drawn for a homeschool dad who was praying at an abortion clinic. So I think that is a big concern as well.

I hope we can. The good news is there's lots of these agents. I've never seen this, Jordan, where we've had now, like I said, over 14 come to us, bunch of whistleblowers that went to Senator Grassley, they're coming to Congressman Comer on the oversight committee in the House, they're coming to Senator Johnson, and they're doing that because it's so egregious, so political now that they just, I think, feel compelled. This is not the FBI they signed up for. And some of them who now come public, as you know, Dan Bongino had a whistleblower on his show, an agent on his show this past weekend, who talked about this whole area and how political things have gotten. You know, of course, and I witnessed that, as did you, firsthand when we were in the middle of impeachment proceedings for the former President of the United States. It seems to me that the leadership of the FBI is entrenched. You know, we talk about the deep state.

You don't have to dig too deep to find out who's controlling this. And of course, the question of the day is, the director, Ray, you mentioned that homeschool dad who's in front of an abortion clinic, somebody assaults his son and he pushes the guy away. The police come, they could have been an assault charge on either side. They don't write either party up. The guy files a civil lawsuit, the lawsuit gets dismissed.

Then what happens? Six days after the lawsuit's dismissed, Congressman, the Department of Justice through the FBI sends 20 agents to his house. And you know what the FBI comes out and say, because people were saying, it wasn't a SWAT team, it was just 20 agents with weapons drawn. I mean, this tells you the abuse, but where is Chris Ray on the over 100 incense of violence by groups like Jane's Revenge on pro-life crisis pregnancy centers and pro-life groups? And all that violence happened just after the leak of the draft opinion. And they did squat because we brought that up in hearings. When Chris Ray, when FBI agents went and had the wrong person in Alaska, they said she was at the January 6th event and she was not there. She was not part of the riot, was not in the Capitol, whatever. They held her for four hours, interrogated her for four hours. They had the wrong person.

Chris Ray didn't even know about it when he was in committee when I asked him the question. So that's the part that I think is so frustrating to so many Americans. Here's the darn director of the FBI.

And you can't answer some questions about incidents like what happened in Alaska and this terrible thing that happened in the Philadelphia area this past week. You know, Congressman Jordan, it's always great to have you on. And we, again, we want to continue to uncover all this information and keep those letters out. We keep covering on the broadcast.

It's great to have you on too. Again, I'm glad that those FBI whistleblowers are there coming out of that institution. We, you know, it's one that we needed our country to be functioning. Congressman Jordan, as always, we appreciate having you on. Congressman Jordan is the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, which soon could soon could be chairman very soon. And I think, again, that could help correct a lot of these problems, because when you have the leadership of the committees in Congress, the power of the purse who then are pressuring to say, you need to reprioritize.

Exactly right. And Jim Jordan's been a good friend of ours and he would be a excellent chairman of the Judiciary Committee. Let's go ahead and take Jerry's phone call. Hey, Jerry, calling from Rhode Island online. Well, if you want to talk to us in the air, 1-800-684-3110.

That's 1-800-684-3110. Hey, Jerry. Hello, team and Representative Jordan, if you're still listening, thank you for the work you're doing. Cavalry's coming, hopefully in November. Where's the inspector general when you got 14 guys coming forward as whistleblowers? Where's the inspector general?

Well, they could be. I mean, the inspector general could be commencing. They take a very long time. But those investigations, as you know, Jerry, because you know you've listened to this broadcast, could take two years. So, what you've got is, if there is a change, and there will be in November, in the House of Representatives, and Jim Jordan is the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, you know what you do? You start having real hearings and you bring these guys up and you bring them before your committee. And then the ACLJ simultaneously issues Freedom of Information Act requests about how this came out and they'll fight it.

And then we go to court. And you know what? As Andy always says, it's finding a nugget in the dirt. You find it, it's needle in a haystack. But you know what? Every single case we've had, we've found that nugget.

Every single time. There's something there you go that's breathtaking. So, that's how we're going to approach it.

And our team's working on that now at the ACLJ. Hey, folks, we're going to take a break. When we come back, we'll take your calls. 1-800-684-3110. That's 800-684-3110. Senator Hawley is demanding some things as well. Answers over that FBI raid of that homeschool dad.

We want to hear from you on that one. 1-800-684-3110. What was your reaction when you heard that?

800-684-3110. Secular Brothers Podcast, day two today. Yeah. Second episode of the week. Yep. Yeah.

So, this is week three. I watched it yesterday. You could watch it, listen to it, download it, however you do it. Go to secularbrothers.com. That's secularbrothers.com to subscribe. Put a comment there too on the ratings.

That really helps as well, secularbrothers.com. And support the work of the American Center for Law and Justice. You know, you get this broadcast into your homes five days a week on radio, on TV, on all these social media platforms, a satellite radio. Everywhere you could possibly get it, we're there. And we've got a big team behind us that puts all this together.

We say there's six people in that classroom behind us right now working this program up. So, your support of the ACLJ makes a huge difference. That's why we're able to file a brief of the Supreme Court of Kentucky today on the life issue. ACLJ.org.

It's ACLJ.org. We'll be back with more, including your phone calls. 1-800-684-3110, your reaction to the FBI raiding a father's house. So, you launched an anti-Zionism investigation at your university. And your choice is who should we go to to lead the investigation and what's happening. So, we don't have this feeling where Jewish students on campus feel like they're being targeted or like the school is endorsing this kind of target.

So, who do they go to? Well, you go to Salih Abdallah, a former employee of anti-Israel and an unindicted conspirator in an Islamic terror case. Of course, CAIR I'm talking about, the Council on American Islamic Relations. And you go to Abdallah from CAIR, who's now your diversity head at your school. You say, Abdallah, will you investigate?

You worked for CAIR. Will you investigate and make sure these Jewish students are treated nicely? So, you would think this is Jeff Balbon, our senior counsel is with us. You would think this is an episode from Larry David, right?

To curb your enthusiasm. Nobody would believe this. So, to set the state, and by the way, we're representing five faculty of CUNY universities. Do you think they would let an Israeli investigate the Palestinian student groups?

No, because we don't let Israelis come on campus to give speeches. So, of course not. Jeff, we've got this though.

We are actually filed a Title VI litigation. We're laughing. It's not funny. It's serious. But what part is really unbelievable is they pick a person affiliated with CAIR to do the investigation. You can't make this stuff up. No, I mean, you're right.

I'm glad you started the segment with laughter because you laugh or you cry. This is insane. But it is beyond belief.

It is whatever example you want. You take somebody who literally was a member of the KKK to investigate complaints of racism. It's insanity. This is CAIR is an organization that the United States government has linked to being part of Hamas's propaganda wing in America. And City University of New York, you would think they'd be a little more sophisticated than this. It's actually, this is part of the problem, Jay and Jordan.

Is this intentional? I mean, are they actually trying to tell Jews you're no longer welcome at any of our campuses because you could not create a more hostile situation for Jews on campus than to literally bring an operative, a former operative, by the way, from the Minnesota, we know what a hotbed of antisemitism Minnesota is, from the Minnesota CAIR and make them in charge of investigating antisemitism on campus. So I'm holding in my hand, yeah, I'm holding in my hand right now, a copy of the complaint that we filed with the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, US Department of Education. And Jeff, I think it's important for our listeners to know and our viewers to know what exactly we're alleging in this. And we trace incidents back all the way to 2014.

That's right. You know, there have been a number of cases brought, a number of complaints brought since, and we worked closely with the White House to change this so that Jews could be included in civil rights protections under Title VI, so that federal funds are on the line for institutions that promote antisemitism or tolerate antisemitism against students and faculty. And so we worked with that, and now we bring cases, we bring complaints, and one of them was the one that you just held up, Jay, which is against the whole system, the whole City University of New York system, which is many, many campuses and many colleges, because what we are alleging in that complaint, and it's online and people should look at it, it's almost unbelievable, years and years of antisemitism across multiple campuses. It is a pervasive system-wide situation that must be addressed at the top level. And as we see, the top level is making decisions that seem calculated to promote antisemitism rather than fight antisemitism.

But Jeff, I wish I could say these are isolated events. We've been representing professors for years. There's a report now out of Berkeley, and we're all starting to see this, and I must have gotten seven copies of this sent to me last night. And at Berkeley, at the law school, nine different law student groups have begun the academic year by amending their bylaws to ensure that pro-Israel supporters of Zionism are not allowed to speak on campus. The dean of the law school, who is a progressive, no question about it, Dean Chemerinsky, but he is also a Zionist, said, I would not be allowed to speak on my own law school campus because of the way that these students are reacting.

And they're getting away with this as if it's, okay, now it's getting a lot of attention, so maybe it shuts it down. And California uniquely has a statute called UNRRA. That is their state civil rights statute.

I have litigated that in California courts, and it's very broad protection and does not allow targeted racial or religious discrimination, among other things. So there are avenues here, but it's amazing that at Berkeley, free thought, open-mindedness, the marketplace of ideas, if you're a Jew that's pro-Zionism, you're out. That's right. And by the way, you don't have to be a card carrying anything because there's a very famous Martin Luther King quote where somebody started talking about Zionism, and he said, stop that. When you're talking anti-Zionism, you're talking anti-Semitism.

Let's be clear about this. There have been over the centuries, over the millennia, all kinds of words that are used to mean Jew that aren't Jew. They use the word, and the Nazis used bankers and globalists, and there's all kinds of words. Now, in this generation, it's Zionist. But Zionist means Jew.

That's all it really means. And so now Jews on campus are being told, your opinions aren't welcome here. Frankly, you're not welcome here. And so they're hiding their identities. By the way, you may not recall this.

Maybe you do. During the election, one of President Biden's advisors, his most prominent Jewish advisor on Jewish affairs, he actually told observant Jews like me, and I wear a yarmulke in public, told us maybe that we should stop wearing signs of our faith in public, signs that were outwardly that were Jewish. No, that's not the answer in this country. But every place that progressives dominate, in every cultural place, like campuses, that's what's happening. What's interesting too, it's not like the typical groups you'd think that would be banning these speakers. Like, this is not the Palestinian student group. I'll just go through the names. The women of Berkeley Law.

I mean, these are pretty broad. Asian Pacific American law students. Middle Eastern and North African law students.

That one maybe gets a little closer to what you'd think of a group that would ban it. The law students of African descent and the queer caucus. So again, they talk about all this inclusion and bring everybody in and don't discriminate against anyone, but at the most liberal city in the United States, the most liberal campus, college campus. I mean, known for it historically, and it's celebrated in a lot of ways for allowing this unbelievable amount of freedom of speech there, unless your speech happens to be in support, even as a progressive like the dean of the law school says, a progressive Zionist gets banned. So all speech is okay.

You can walk around naked on campus, which people do, but don't say anything about Israel. So I'm holding it again in my hand, a copy of the civil rights complaint we have filed. Jeff, what's the next move on this? Because people want to know what we expect here, and that is to get the Department of Education to begin to commence an investigation. Well, there is hopefully going to be mounting pressure in the City University of New York for them to, look, I think they need to clean house at the top. They desperately need to understand what's going on here because they have ignored one of the professors we represent. There's already been a finding of antisemitism. They already looked at it, and there's been an official finding by the government of antisemitism against him. So he's asked for there to be some redress. They're simply refusing to communicate to him. They won't talk to him, and they're just making it worse by doing things like this.

So yeah, we are hoping that by bringing this complaint, there will actually be a cost to the City University to the tune of millions and millions of federal dollars. Maybe then they'll listen. All right, thanks, Jeff. We appreciate it.

Listen, folks, we don't just talk about it. We take action. That's what we're doing, and we've got, believe me, we're looking at the situation now in California as well. Support the work of the ACLJ at ACLJ.org. And again, let everybody know how to get your podcast.

Next one will be on Monday. Sekulobrothers.com, S-E-K-U-L-O-W. We hit actually 100,000 unique viewers this week on the podcast. We're really excited about that.

Sekulobrothers.com. For decades now, the ACLJ has been on the front lines, protecting your freedoms, defending your rights, in courts, in Congress, and in the public arena. The American Center for Law and Justice is on your side. If you're already a member, thank you. And if you're not, well, this is the perfect time to stand with us at ACLJ.org, where you can learn more about our life-changing work.

Become a member today, ACLJ.org. Keeping you informed and engaged. Now more than ever, this is Sekulobrothers.com. And now your host, Jordan Sekulobrothers.

Hey, welcome to Sekulobrothers. We've got a packed show for you today on the broadcast. As you may have heard in the tease, we're going to talk to Jim Jordan, Congressman Jordan, about the FBI, the politicization, the targeting of American conservatives, the idea that they want to, how they're defining certain crimes to make it look as if there's this massive domestic violent right-wing extremism going on all over the country, when in fact they're all tied to one of it. It was January 6th, and the people are spread out around the country who they are going after and prosecuting.

But the way it looks on paper is that all these different violent extremists are all over the place, like behind every door you go. And so we're talking to Congressman Jim Jordan about that. Antisemitism on the rise, of course, you probably know on college campuses, but we're taking specific action in New York, specifically the City University of New York, Jeff Balaban from the ACLJ team, who also oversees ACLJ Jerusalem. A good reminder that I always like to remind you about where we have offices around the world, and he oversees our office in the heart of Jerusalem right there, but also works on the antisemitism in the United States.

So Jeff will be joining us as well. Logan's here with me, and I want to talk about our podcast a little bit. This week we got into some deeper issues, so people thought maybe they froze a couple weeks and saw this is funny, but does it ever get serious? It does.

It does. We talked about some of the new Supreme Court cases, we talked about what's going on in the Georgia election, we talked a lot. That was just on this week's episodes. We're dropping a new one today. And we have a new one coming out today, and we're going to obviously cover all that's happening, as well as it is a little fun to listen to. It's a good time, so make sure you are tuning in with the right spirit. It's a lot of fun.

It's at secularbrothers.com. You can also find it on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, on YouTube, and on Rumble. Rumble being one of our biggest sources, and it's really been great.

It's an exciting show. We actually had, just last week alone, had 100,000 downloads and views. Thank you, guys. Which, so we're thrilled. That's a huge number for a podcast just launching. So thank you all for tuning in.

Please tell your friends, and we hope you come back, enjoy it. We do it three days a week, Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. It's funny, it's a different edge than this. We're very intense on this broadcast. I'd say it's a different edge. But I would have to say, it ends up always a little bit more lighthearted.

Yeah, even if it's issues that are tough. And we're not on the same time clock, so we could be a little bit more extensive. It's more casual. I think that's what we said. That's a good way to put it.

I think it's more casual. We took, I mean, look, the first 20 minutes of one of our more recent shows is pretty heavy, but it does, like you say- We were able to talk through it. Yeah, we're able to get through it, talk about the real issues that are happening. And one of the things I've said, and you've said, which is we're just being honest on it, which I think is what a lot of people have responded.

They really like the honesty that we're not shilling for just one side or the other. We are saying, here's the real implications. We're talking about politics. We were talking about what it's really like inside. You've had the experience, specifically even in Georgia politics. So we're talking about specifically how that all could play out. It's really interesting.

Yeah. That's where I cut my political teeth initially was in a couple of races in Georgia, which has changed demographically since I worked there, but also is still a lot of the same players. Kemp was around. Those kinds of people were around when I was coming up to the politics at the lower statewide elected offices. And so this is even more of a packed show. Let me get back to, so we've got Congressman Jordan, Jeff Balibon joining us. Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma will also be joining us on the VA hospitals.

We talked about the life issue later in the broadcast, trying to turn those VA hospitals basically into abortion clinics. And the Biden administration is excited about this. They're not hiding this. They are telling everybody about this.

The problem is there's existing federal law that prohibits that. So we talked to Senator Lankford about that. Jeff Surtees from our team is going to update us on a Kentucky state Supreme court case on life as well. So we got, of course, the targeting of conservatives.

We've got the issue involving antisemitism. We also have life issues to cover today on the broadcast. And look, I want to just one last thing on the podcast. We're really encouraging people to sign up through like Apple podcasts and Spotify. We're getting a lot of viewers, which we're very visual people. Yeah.

It is what it is. People like to look at us, but we would love you to also subscribe as well on Apple podcasts and on Spotify shirts, the audio feed that really helps gets us in the rankings and gets really a bigger national it gets without or within and expand beyond our bubble. So it really helps if you go and subscribe there, write a review.

If you're on Apple podcasts, that really helps too. Five star review. We'd love it. All right, folks, go to ACLJ.org as always to stay updated. We'll be right back on Secula. Welcome back to Secula. We're joined by a great friend of the ACLJ and a champion for life, Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma. Senator Lankford, it's great to have you.

Let me just go right to it. You sent a letter because we have the VA secretary, Dennis McDonough, basically bragging about how they perform their first abortion. They didn't get into a lot of details.

I felt like I said this earlier in the broadcast. I feel like they almost want to get across as like they're open now as like a VA abortion clinic, even though they haven't provided those details yet. But in your letter, you clearly laid out that federal law prohibits them from providing abortion services.

So Senator Lankford, what is going on at the VA? Yeah, this is a President Biden trying to find every way he can to expand abortion in America. He is absolutely obsessed with increasing the number of abortions in America. And his new way of doing that is turning VA hospitals into abortion clinics. In 1992, Congress passed a law dealing specifically with reproductive health for women that are veterans, but in that 1992 law specifically prohibited abortions. Dennis McDonough and the President are just ignoring the law and saying we want to provide abortions to veterans.

And so we are going to do that and we're going to do it on demand in any trimester, late term, early term, doesn't matter. They're going to do abortions as much as they can. Senator, I'm holding Section 106 of the code in my hand. And it says, under it says, the Secretary of Veterans Affairs may provide to women the following health care services.

Then it lists them. Then under general reproductive health care, it says specifically not including under this section, abortions. So the law couldn't be any clearer. It says that's not under VA health care for women abortion services.

That is correct. And that is not only is it very, very clear in the law, they're also trying to get around every state law as well. States like mine that want to protect the life of every single child. They're basically putting out the welcome sign to say, hey, you can't get an abortion in the state. We're going to bring it onto federal property and we're going to do abortions here instead. And so this is again Biden trying to increase the number of abortions in America.

It is his obsession. You know, Senator, I've got a follow-up and that is this. You know, we said after the Dobbs decision that it was likely that the abortion industry was going to go into overdrive on the states. But they have a partner here and it's not Planned Parenthood I'm talking about. The partner they have in their drive is actually the Biden administration. As you said, they are so committed to this abortion issue that they're doing everything in their power to make abortion rights expanded as their reaction to Dobbs.

Yeah, that's correct. Let me give you an example that they'll say, for instance, in the VA center, they'll say, well, this is about rape and incest, or this is about health and life of the mother. But then they specifically state in that no police reports, no questions on this.

If you come in and be able to say, hey, this is a rape. You, we're not going to do any follow-up. We're just going to take your word on it.

We're going to continue to be able to move forward on it. And it's also health of the mother. So that would be any reason at all that she could say financial health of the mother, or it could be, you know what, I'm just not comfortable at this stage in my life to be able to be there.

I'm not sure that's going to work. All of those things will qualify for them to do abortions at any single stage. So even states that come in that say, we're going to limit abortion, we won't do late-term abortions. The VA is already saying, no, we're going to do abortions at any stage at any time. You know, Senator, this to me, I think it's where this post-obs world, what this is a reminder of, and what we told people is be ready for a battle. Yes, it was worth obviously celebrating, still celebrating overturning of Roe versus Wade. But now we have to take the battle, whether it's the battle in the states, like your state in Oklahoma or the federal battle, it is one that I think we need to do a lot of education for people, a lot of issue advocacy for people so they understand, because I think right now, if you look at what's happening across the country, there is an abortion movement kind of like wave happening and it's time for us to counteract it.

It is actually. We engage with people with truth and with love and we speak out for the value of every single child. We know we're encountering people that I call child deniers.

They just will not admit that that's a child in the womb and so they just deny the obvious scientific fact of a child being there and they say this is all about convenience. We're speaking out for the value of every single child. And what I simply say to people is, I understand this is a difficult challenge and there's all kinds of issues that are wrapped around this on the future, but there's a child in the process here. We've got to discuss this child and I don't think some children are valuable and some children are disposable. I think every child is valuable. And when we begin the conversation by talking about that child, then we're beginning at the spot that I think we need to be.

This is not about the convenience of adults. I'm a parent myself. Children are not always convenient. But the simple fact is, children are valuable and important and they're to be honored. And so what are we going to do to be able to honor the life and the value of every single child? Yeah, Senator Lankford, I just want to also thank you for what you wrote in your letter about abortion is not and will never be health care. Health care protects life and I think that's an important point that you made and we're very grateful that you always do stand up for life. Yeah, there's an important principle here that health care protects life, abortion takes life.

And so this is not about expanding health care options. This is about protecting the life of every single individual, no matter how tall they are. So let me ask you this, Senator, because this is going to be the question that our entire audience, whether they're watching on our social medias or TV or radio, they're going to ask this. And that is, you've got this letter out. What do you expect to happen? What can happen here? What can we do to stop this?

A couple of things. The VA first announced the policy. They put out what's called an interim final rule. They said, we're doing it. And then after the fact, and they're saying, we're taking comments on that. So this is everyone filing comments. And it's not just saying, Hey, I know an organization that filed a comment. And I believe that organization I'm encouraging individuals to file a comment on this to say, let's just let the VA know from all over the country. Here's what we believe about not only following the law, but of the value of every single child as well.

And so they've got all those comments that are there. We continue to be able to pray. We make comments, we speak out on these issues and we'll have legal challenges that are going to happen. I mean, you guys have been experts of this to be able to work through the legal challenges.

When you break the law, you should have legal consequences for that. Senator Lakeford, I know we're going to get our groups activated. We've got technology set up, you know, through our ACLJ action accounts so people can submit their own comments and issues like that. So we'll get that going and ready to go. I want to thank you for bringing attention to this because I want people to understand one, they're flouting the law and two, we're fighting back. And we've got a champion like you in Washington, DC, leading that charge for Senator James Lakeford of Oklahoma. Thanks for being with us. We appreciate it, Senator.

Thanks so much. Jordan, you mentioned ACLJ action. What, what is the next step that we do here?

Yeah. I mean, I think for ACLJ action, I know our team listens to the broadcast, so we'll be setting up, we'll get the timeline. We'll make sure it's enough time, but also timely. And, and we set up, we've done this through comment periods before that you'll be able to have a system set up or yes, it'll be a pre-drafted letter, but we actually encourage you every time on the ACLJ action, like Senator Lakeford said, adding your own text.

So when that's up and available, we will let you know on this broadcast. But it's great to hear from Senator Lakeford. And I think for everybody listening, the importance of taking action like that, like he said it, the ACLJ comment, which will be very comprehensive is very important because it comes from experts, but, but also comments from the American people are just as important when you want to put them all together.

So we help you draft your comment, but we want you always to make it personal. And when that's open and we're ready to go, we will let you know that's been lost. You know, interesting Senator Langford from Oklahoma.

We are filing a brief with the Supreme Court of Oklahoma on Monday, October 3rd on behalf of Oklahoma legislatures who are joining our brief on defending Oklahoma law. We've got calls coming in on this, 800-684-3110. We have time to take one before the break here. Let's go ahead and do it.

Yeah. Richard at Arizona online. What, Hey, Richard.

Hey, Richard. Hi, thank you for taking my call. My question would be, why is there so much money involved and who is, um, making money off of all these abortions? Well, Planned Parenthood is in the business of abortion. So, you know, they used to say that only, you know, small percentage of their operations were abortion based yet as CC has pointed out. Meanwhile, they closed up clinics all over the United States. So obviously it was not a small portion of their.

Right. Planned Parenthood and any abortion provider. They're the ones that make the money off of this. And they're the ones that control all these politicians. They're the ones that fund their campaigns and, and we see them. If you even have a Democrat, we talked about this the other day. If you have a Democrat who even says, Hey, I'm against, you know, the partial birth abortion, they get absolutely annihilated and money pulled.

So you have to be, if you're a Democrat now, you have to tow the Planned Parenthood line and be completely pro-abortion. But they are running on this. I mean, this is, this is going into the midterms.

The Democrats seem to be running on this Jordan. Yes. Well, I think it's this.

Yes. They don't want to run the economy. And that's for sure.

So, I mean, and, and, and I don't say that tongue in cheek. They really, they can't. So they thought this issue was going to be that mom middle kind of moderate vote that they've been more successful with the past couple of elections and that this would galvanize. The problem is what's the moms have trouble putting food on the table, or they have to even start thinking about like, even go up to the next level of income. Maybe you can't take the same vacation or you can't buy the new car or, you know, the issues like that, or a private school starts getting expensive, things like that. The Roe versus Wade being overturned.

First of all, people are saying it's not the parade of horribles. Like people would said, states are working through this. It's going to take a lot of time. I think economy becomes the number one issue.

They, they want abortion to be the number one issue. It won't be because of inflation, because of just general, we're going to talk about later in the broadcast. People are hurting economically and they're wondering when does it actually like, what's the fallout? Where's the fallout?

Because it doesn't feel like we've hit that point yet. No, I don't think so. All right. We're going to take your calls to 1-800-684-3110. We have a couple of lines open. 800-684-3110. Secular brothers podcast.

Go to secularbrothers.com. It's the numbers of people listening and downloading are incredible. We are taking your phone calls to 1-800-684-3110. That's 1-800-684-3110. Turning our attention to ACLJ filings in support of life. As you know, since the overturning of Roe vs. Wade, there is a ton of work to do across the country. Some of it is policy.

Some of it is issue advocacy. Some is getting out the vote and others are going into court. And we're already seeing that in Kentucky and, and, and, and Oklahoma. And we've already seen actions all over the country. So we want to update you on what the ACLJ is doing in these cases all across the country. So we, I'm going to go to Jips Erte senior counsel for the ACLJ because we've got a filing for Kentucky Supreme Court.

Jeff, tell us what's going on there on that particular one. In 2019, the Kentucky legislature passed two pro-life laws. It passed a trigger ban, which banned abortions if the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade, which of course it has done. And it also passed a six-week ban, banning abortions through six weeks of pregnancy. Well, three days after the Supreme Court reversed Casey, Planned Parenthood of Casey and Roe vs. Wade, two abortion clinics in Kentucky, the only two abortion clinics in Kentucky actually, filed a lawsuit saying that these two pro-life laws were unconstitutional under the state constitution. After a hearing that lasted about a week, they got a temporary injunction forbidding the state from enforcing those laws. But after going up and down through the appellate system on these emergency motions, the Kentucky Supreme Court stayed that injunction. In other words, it reversed that injunction.

So these two pro-life laws are enforceable as of right now. So... Jeff, what does the Kentucky Supreme Court look like as far as judicial philosophy? Conservative, progressive, liberal?

Where does it kind of fit? I would put it, Jay, fairly conservative. The Kentucky Supreme Court, yeah. Well, it did stay the injunction, so that was a good sign. The other good sign from the Kentucky Supreme Court is that it scheduled oral arguments in this case for November 15th, one week after Kentucky voters, including myself, go to the polls to vote on amendment two, to amend the constitution to say that, quote, I'll quote it, to protect human life, nothing in this constitution shall be construed to secure or protect a right to abortion or require the funding of abortion. So I think the Kentucky Supreme Court will be more than happy to move this case if the Kentucky voters amend the constitution to allow the legislature to make laws regarding abortion and abortion regulations. And that's why we're talking about that interplay, you know, with ACLJ action, with the issue advocacy, with the voting taking place, and how it could... And a case of the Supreme Court of Kentucky. And a case, but how... Like what Jeff said, I think this is important. If the voters do the right thing in Kentucky, if we get them out to vote, then you don't have to rely on judges.

That's exactly correct. And I think that's an important part of this entire strategy moving forward is we'll battle it out in court when we need to, but that's the last place you want to be. You want it up to the voters, but you want voters making good decisions. We saw a warning out of Kansas, which was, I think, just, it was too quick, too fast, not enough time for groups like ACLJ action. We did get involved, but it wasn't enough time to do a lot of issue advocacy.

This time around, these November ballot issues are going to be very different because you've got a lot more money, in a good way, being spent on educating voters. We also have a brief that we're filing in the Supreme Court CC in Oklahoma. I want to talk about that in a moment.

But also, folks, understand what's happening here. We've got this conversions of public policy through ACLJ action. We've got litigation through the ACLJ, media advocacy we're doing here. We just got an order out of the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals on our case for South Dakota, representing Governor Noem. We got a great victory there on informed consent, so post dobs. But we've got another one that we're filing at the Oklahoma Supreme Court, I think, Monday.

Yes. So, like you said, we're constantly working, and we're working on the legislative side through the ACLJ action. And we're also working through our law firm in these state courts. And so we're filing the one that Jeff just explained in Kentucky. And then on Monday, we'll file one in Oklahoma, basically saying that the legislature and the people of Oklahoma, they're the ones that get to decide that, you know, if an unborn human being is worthy of protecting or not, that's for the people in the legislature to decide, not for the court to create a right to abortion. So, Jeff, we took a very specific tack here in this brief that we filed with the Kentucky Supreme Court. What did we assert? Yeah, Jerry, we said that, listen, Kentucky Supreme Court, do you want to go down the same 50 year trajectory that the federal courts did after Roe v. Wade, with the ad hoc nullification machine, dictating whether or not judicial doctrines, well settled judicial doctrine, stand or fall in light of a potential finding by the Kentucky Supreme Court that there's a right to abortion. You know, it's what we have talked about many times, Jay, it's the abortion distortion factor, when when a judicial body makes a moral, political judgment, like one regarding abortion, it therefore sets risks, all other judicial doctrines that may interfere with that paramount right, or what they do as a paramount right. And so what we're doing is giving basically giving a warning to the Kentucky Supreme Court, look at the experience of 50 years of the federal judiciary wrestling with this issue. Do you want to do the same thing?

The answer to that question is no. Yeah. So I'm cautiously optimistic about that one. Again, as Jordan said, you kind of, on the state initiative, we were working with, I think it was the South Dakota Attorney General, on how they were wording theirs, because when you first read it, a lot of these constitutional amendments, people read them, and it's very confusing. And we're trying to bring clarity to this issue. It's one submitted by pro-abortion advocates that will appear on the ballot November for people to review, and then they'll vote in the Presidential election. And that will only appear on the ballot, they get enough signatures. This was just what would appear. And we just want the language to be clear. And all it needed was one sentence added, which the proponents of it can't argue with. This creates a constitutional right to abortion in South Dakota if you support this. Yeah.

So that's good. Jeff, overall, as you see, we only got about a minute left here. How do you view where we're going on the states right now? We've got a lot of activity, I know that. Well, it's a lot of activity, and it's a lot of important activity.

And it's real. We all knew when the Supreme Court ruled in Dobbs, that was not going to be the end of the abortion issue. It was in many ways going to be the beginning of a maybe even bigger round of litigation and advocacy that needs to take place in these in the courts and in the legislatures and so forth. But what we need to do and what we are doing through our amicus briefs is asking these courts to allow the best people to decide these fundamental issues of moral importance.

In other words, the legislature, the elected representatives, not in the case of Kentucky, a majority of seven lawyers who sit on the Supreme Court of Kentucky. Very good. Thanks, Jeff Surtees, Senior Counsel for the ACLJ. Folks, if you appreciate the work that we're doing on the life issue, let me encourage you to support the work of the American Center for Law and Justice.

You could do that at ACLJ.org. You should also be signing up for our newsletters and our email alerts and text messages. If you want to stay on top of these issues, we've covered since we've started the storm, Iran, the life issue in Kentucky and Oklahoma, the VA comments we mentioned the other day. We've got legal briefs going in on that. And coming up, we're going to be talking about what's going on in this Nordstrom pipeline, which is impacting all of Europe with our Senior Advisor, Rick Grenell. So we got a lot of activity ahead and then some interventions we've done at the UN. Support the work of the ACLJ at ACLJ.org and join ACLJ Action as well.

Yeah, that's right. At ACLJAction.org, to become a member, it's an official membership group because it's a 501c4. It's $25 a year. You can donate more than that, and we appreciate that if you will, but I encourage you to join at ACLJAction.org to make that $25 donation and to take part in the tools we have so you can speak out like on iran at ACLJAction.org.