ACLJ Needed Now More than Ever

This is Jay Sekulow, the American Center for Law and Justice, needed now more than ever.

Live from Washington, D.C., Jay Sekulow Live. Phone lines are open for your questions right now. Call 1-800-684-3110.

That's 1-800-684-3110. And now, Chief Counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice, Jay Sekulow. Hey, I hope everybody had a great Christmas with your family and stayed safe. And we are looking at a new year and a lot of new challenges ahead.

I think that's an understatement to say the least. We are operating with a new theme for 2021 at the ACLJ. We had our board meeting for the ACLJ and our related organizations. And the theme is the ACLJ needed now more than ever.

Why? The challenges we're going to be facing in the next four years are going to be great. I could tell you that already. The fact of the matter is, and I think we have to be clear on this, that we've been through this before. So we're not getting caught off guard by all the changes that are likely to be taking place in the next several weeks. We've done this. You already said in previous programs that earlier in the month we talked about the situation with Representative Swalwell.

And we got into that deeply. And we're going to work on it. But you have to understand that we've got to look now at a whole new slate of issues. It's going to be government accountability in ways we've never imagined before. It's going to be oversight of Congress in ways we never imagined before. We're on the threshold of a Senate election in Georgia that will determine who controls the United States Senate. That is days away. And that's going to have a big impact on all of this as well.

So you as an – we as an organization have to look at all of these factors and then say, okay, how do we best utilize our resources to defend the Constitution, to protect liberty, to protect life, to protect freedom? But this is going to be a big challenge. And I'm going to start with challenge number one. Challenge number one is the state of Georgia.

And I'm going to say this probably every day this week. You are days away from electing two United States senators. The Senate is in your hands. We effectively have seen – and this is true in any economy, of course, resident of Georgia – we are seeing a national election playing out in just days in Georgia. Jay, this is a critical election. I'm a citizen of Georgia.

I'm proud to say that the state of Georgia is in a position to make a decision as to who is going to control the Senate of the United States. And we've got to get out and vote. Don't listen to people who tell you not to vote or that your vote doesn't count or that absentee ballots are not good. It is better to vote in person if you possibly can. But remember that you hold the decision as to whether the Senate is going to be a conservative body dedicated to the proposition of law, dedicated to conservative ideals, dedicated to the propositions that we hold, constitutional, statutory, the things that we have been advocating at the ACLJ for years or not. And so your vote is going to count. It's going to be between a person who is a liberal, radical – both of them are – or someone who is conservative and who believes in the rule of law. You vote for whoever you want to vote for.

We're going to tell you this. You've got to vote. This is significant. We don't tell people who to vote for. But then it is the control of the United States Congress at stake in this.

Yeah, it literally makes the difference between a Leader Schumer or a Leader McConnell and also, Jay, whether or not there's unified one-party control of all the levers, main levers of government. Jay, I would say one thing to the election integrity question. I know a lot of people are concerned about going down to vote in Georgia.

Jay, the results on November 3 were that David Perdue won by 2 percent and all of the Republicans combined won by about a percent of over all the Democrats combined. So, yes, there's a concern about election integrity. But, Jay, everyone needs to go down and vote and exercise their constitutional option.

Harry Hutchison, our Director of Policy – I mean, we only got less than a minute here. How important is this vote? It's very, very important. So much is at stake going forward. It's important to look back to the period between 2008 and 2016 when many radical new policies were introduced. The people of Georgia can take a decision on the future of the nation, so I urge them to take this election seriously. It is serious. We're going to get into the issue that we think we're going to be facing coming up because it's serious.

Hey, we're in the last week here of the month. Your support of the ACLJ, critical now more than ever. ACLJ.org. That's ACLJ.org.

And any amount you donate, we're getting a matching gift for. So ACLJ.org. At the American Center for Law and Justice, we're engaged in critical issues at home and abroad. Whether it's defending religious freedom, protecting those who are persecuted for their faith, uncovering corruption in the Washington bureaucracy, and fighting to protect life in the courts and in Congress, the ACLJ would not be able to do any of this without your support.

For that, we are grateful. Now there's an opportunity for you to help in a unique way. For a limited time, you can participate in the ACLJ's Matching Challenge. For every dollar you donate, it will be matched. A $10 gift becomes $20.

A $50 gift becomes $100. This is a critical time for the ACLJ. The work we do simply would not occur without your generous support.

Take part in our Matching Challenge today. You can make a difference in the work we do, protecting the constitutional and religious freedoms that are most important to you and your family. Give a gift today online at ACLJ.org. Only when a society can agree that the most vulnerable and voiceless deserve to be protected is there any hope for that culture to survive. And that's exactly what you are saying when you stand with the American Center for Law and Justice to defend the right to life. We've created a free, powerful publication offering a panoramic view of the ACLJ's battle for the unborn.

It's called Mission Life. It will show you how you are personally impacting the pro-life battle through your support. And the publication includes a look at all major ACLJ pro-life cases, how we're fighting for the rights of pro-life activists, the ramifications of Roe v. Wade 40 years later, play on parenthood's role in the abortion industry, and what Obamacare means to the pro-life movement. Discover the many ways your membership with the ACLJ is empowering the right to life. Request your free copy of Mission Life today online at ACLJ.org slash gift.

Welcome back to the broadcast, everyone. Our theme for 2021 here at the American Center for Law and Justice, the ACLJ, is the ACLJ needed more now than ever, and needed now more than ever, and it really is. We're going to be posting in the days ahead pieces that Harry Hutcheson, our director of policy, has worked on, that Jordan has worked on, and others, that sets forth the policies that we're looking at having to deal with.

But I will start with this. This is from the preamble of what document Harry Hutcheson wrote. Wisely the American people continue to demand adherence to the United States Constitution, the rule of law, and accountable leaders. Representing our members and the American people, the American Center for Law and Justice has always been vigilant and forward-looking to advance our goals and mission. And Harry, that statement, our motto, if you will, our statement of purpose, mission statement, is to make sure that we defend adherence to the Constitution, the rule of law, and accountable leaders. But it's going to be a challenge in the months ahead, in the years ahead.

Absolutely. And one of the things that the ACLJ has always done, it has remained vigilant. It has remained vigilant to the principles which ground the United States. So if you look at the founding of a country, if you look at the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, that those two documents stand for the rule of law, and they also stand for limited government. We live in an era in which many radicals are driven by the intuition that the government should grow and expand and take up virtually all of our lives. We have gone through and we continue to go through, for instance, a pandemic, and in some cases that has unleashed liberal authoritarians to take control of the American people's lives. And we have stood with the American people, particularly in the arena of schools, and also with respect to freedom of worship, notwithstanding the fact that we do indeed have a pandemic. As Justice Gorsuch has said, the pandemic does not eliminate either the rule of law or the United States Constitution. You know, you mentioned the education issue, and look, Joe Biden as a President, based on what he said when he was running, it's very clear what their policies are going to be.

Centralized government, centralized education, lack of parental choice, lack of school choice, beholding to the student, the teacher unions. And I think the number that we've assisted in our school choice program and our school education programs because of the COVID situation are well over 2,000 now. And we've gotten stunning results. I mean, we've gotten everything from computer access to special needs kids being taken care of. I mean, our lawyers and staff have done just a great job.

Thousands of people have been helped. But as I'm thinking about this, Stan, I'm looking at the education factor, and we know what this could look like under the Secretary of Education, an incoming Secretary of Education. It's going to look very different.

Oh, yeah. Control and decisions made out of Washington, D.C., Jay. I mean, the playbook's already out there. And look, all of the data is very clear on this. The further away from the student the decision-making gets when it comes to a child's education, the worse that education is. It's just not tailored to that student, Jay. That's why during this pandemic, we made a very intentional effort to engage on a student by student level. You know, yes, of course, there were school districts that were having challenges how to meet individual students' needs.

But by coming alongside them, Jay, we saw real success in getting individualized plans created. And one of the things that we've advocated in Washington, D.C., and this is going to become a more significant hurdle in the years ahead, Jay, is making sure that when the federal government sends dollars down to the local and state level, that there is still some flexibility for parents to make choices for their students. Now, look, I actually think there's an opportunity in the Congress to engage in a bipartisan way on this. But you're right, Jay, the Department of Education under a Biden administration is going to be hostile to that idea.

But here's the thing. We're not going to stand down because the data and the facts are on our side. And this is the other thing I would say, Jay, the consequences are just too large. The quality of the education of our students is at stake. And if all of that power, Jay, goes to Washington, D.C., the quality of that education will suffer. You know, we have represented – you talk about the school choice, and this is where your dollars of the ACL, Jay, make a huge difference. We have already represented parents in North Carolina, California, Michigan, Nevada, Nebraska, and other states.

I know that we also had students in Texas and students in New York. In addition to our work in helping these families facing their COVID-related school issues, we've also helped on a Nebraska case where a school student was allowed to exercise their free speech rights with respect to her decision. They were allowing students to go to school to represent a church youth group program, and they were censoring her in the middle of all this. Because they use this excuse, Andy, that the Constitution, as Harry said, and Justice Gorsuch said, they're using this – you know, the pandemic is an excuse to squelch or eliminate. It's like taking an eraser and removing the First Amendment.

You don't do that. The true test of a constitutional republic is how much it adheres to its Constitution and its laws during a time of crisis. And I think Justice Gorsuch said that, as well as other justices on the Supreme Court who are conservative, right-leaning, and textual originalists. That is the test of whether a republic survives. In a time of pandemic, in a time of crisis, in a time of war, do you continue to maintain the constitutional rights that were put forward in the Constitution by the founders? Whether or not you do that is really the choice that you make, and that is important to us. We and the ACLJ have our school choice initiative. We have been involved in cases in which we have fought discrimination against religious schools, in which we have championed the ministerial exception that protects churches and other religious organizations from government interference in decisions about who leads worship or teaches religion. We have filed suits, I remember, in California against chanting and the use of incense and singing in churches.

In other words, the government needs to stay out of the churches and let us conduct our worship the way we feel that it should be conducted. And schools have been helped enormously by the ACLJ, and that is the initiative that we will continue into 2021. I will assure you, and I think there is no doubt about this, Stan, that the fact of the matter is, with the changes in Washington coming, we better buckle up here and realize that this fight is going to take on a whole new dimension. You go from an administration that was supportive to one that is hostile, we have done that before, these cases become more intense. Now, the good thing is, President Trump got three Supreme Court justices appointed, so we have a conservative Supreme Court. So when, as Andy just mentioned, issues like religious exemption so that religious schools can hire teachers in accordance with their faith and doctrine, which makes perfect sense, but it took a Supreme Court decision to get it there, those are protected. But they will try regulatory moves to squelch religious freedom or academic choice and educational choice.

There's no question. It's going to happen right out of the gate, Jay. I mean, right in the first hundred days, there's going to be regulations to roll back some of these victories, and they're going to be on a wide variety of issues.

But just to hone in on the religious freedom issue that you were talking about just now, Jay, during the Trump administration, the President put out an executive order directing every agency to look at all of its programs and make sure that religious entities were not discriminated against, to make sure they could participate in all of the funding programs without leaving their faith at the door, basically to operate as a religious entity while they served the committee. Jay, we filed formal comments in all nine of those rules and all nine of those rules are now in force. I'm telling you, in the first hundred days of the Biden administration, all of those rules are going to look to be adjusted. But Jay, this is an area I actually think we can win on, and here's why.

People on the ground are benefiting from these organizations that are serving them out of the goodness of their heart and motivated by their faith. Jay, we're already preparing now. When those rules look to be adjusted, we're going to file an opposition and we're going to try to keep them in force. Yeah, but you bring up a really important point then, and I want to go to Harry on this, and that is the fact is, I mean, we're about to enter hostile territory. I mean, we've entered hostile territory before, so it's not the first time we've done it, but we're about to enter hostile territory. Yes, I think that is an accurate look at the future.

It is clear beyond question that hostile forces actually have been marshaling and mobilizing over the past eight to ten years. And one of the things that they have targeted is religious liberty and religious autonomy. And in order to have religious liberty, you must have autonomy, and the Supreme Court in recent decisions, particularly in Our Lady of Guadalupe, has respected by a vote of seven to two the principle of religious autonomy. Without religious autonomy, as I've suggested previously, the church or the church school cannot effectively determine its doctrine.

It cannot determine who to hire and who to fire. And so we live in an era in which many people believe, for instance, that the nondiscrimination principle trumps the First Amendment of the Constitution. And I think it is clear beyond question, as Professor Michael McConnell has said, that the First Amendment is indeed our first liberty. And that First Amendment is going to be under attack. Now, fortunately, I think we've got a significant advantage in the courts now, and that's where the ACLJ comes in handy.

Why? Because we have lawyers all over the United States. In fact, we have lawyers all around the world standing for freedom, standing for liberty, fighting for you. And we will continue to do that no matter who's in the White House.

We're going to continue to fight for you. We need your support of the ACLJ last week of the month. ACLJ.org. Any amount you donate, we get a matching gift for.

I want to encourage you to do that. ACLJ.org. Your gift. Any amount you donate, we get a matching gift for.

Do it now. ACLJ.org. Music This is called Mission Life. It will show you how you are personally impacting the pro-life battle through your support. And the publication includes a look at all major ACLJ pro-life cases, how we're fighting for the rights of pro-life activists, the ramifications of Roe v. Wade 40 years later, play on parenthood's role in the abortion industry, and what Obamacare means to the pro-life movement. Discover the many ways your membership with the ACLJ is empowering the right to life. Request your free copy of Mission Life today online at ACLJ.org slash gift. At the American Center for Law and Justice, we're engaged in critical issues at home and abroad, whether it's defending religious freedom, protecting those who are persecuted for their faith, uncovering corruption in the Washington bureaucracy and fighting to protect life in the courts and in Congress. The ACLJ would not be able to do any of this without your support.

For that, we are grateful. Now there's an opportunity for you to help in a unique way. For a limited time, you can participate in the ACLJ's matching challenge. For every dollar you donate, it will be matched. A $10 gift becomes $20.

A $50 gift becomes $100. This is a critical time for the ACLJ. The work we do simply would not occur without your generous support. Take part in our matching challenge today. You can make a difference in the work we do, protecting the constitutional and religious freedoms that are most important to you and your family.

Give a gift today online at ACLJ.org. A couple weeks back on the broadcast, we talked about some of the issues that we faced when we got a hostile government and how we handle it. I think it'd be good to walk people through right now how we deal with agencies when we don't like what's happening, like the Eric Swalwell situation or what was happening to President Trump and others in our national intelligence. We now have, as a senior advisor to the ACLJ, Rick Rinnell. That's significant.

Why? Well, Rick Rinnell is a former director of national intelligence and an ambassador to Germany, a G7 country. So we have expertise that's deep on these issues. But one of the things that I think people need to understand is when we see something, when we hear something, when we're concerned about an issue, we don't just talk about it.

Talk is easy, but we do something about it. And that goes to our government accountability project. You're going to hear a lot about that this week because it hits so many areas.

And that's whether it's defending Israel, that's whether it's the abuse at the FBI, it's whether it's, you know, this stuff with national intelligence. But I think it's important to take today out because you're supporting the work of the ACLJ. And by the way, if you're watching on any of our social media platforms, this would be a great time for you to follow and like if you're on Facebook, like our page, follow it. And if you're on YouTube, we encourage you to subscribe and hit that bell so you're notified. Same thing on Rumble.

It doesn't go live on Rumble, but it's another way for you to get in. And of course, ACLJ.org. But I want to take you through the basics of what it means when we say our government accountability project's going to work. So let me start first with them before we get to the legal technicalities. An issue happens in Washington, Thanh, and you could pick a hundred of them, but so just pick one.

And then our office there, your office up there goes to work. Let's describe what that is. Sure, Jay, when it comes to our government accountability project, the things that are important are knowing where to look and who to look at. And we can draw on a long range of institutional knowledge and experience. Basically, we've been here before, Jay, so when a problem crops up and we see it abuse inside of an agency, we know not only which agencies we might need to ask about that, but, Jay, we've got a long memory on which officials have maybe abused that power in the past. So when we want to reach back and we want to issue a FOIA and ask for records involving whatever situation it might be that has arisen, you've got to know the specific office, but you also have to know the officials who might have been involved in implementing that. What we're trying to do, though, Jay, is get information that we the people are entitled to. And we sort of call them puzzle pieces because we don't know which ones we're going to need in the long run.

But you gather all the puzzle pieces together and then you start to put them together to build a narrative, not a narrative, Jay, to uncover the truth, really. How was our government operating? What were they driving at? What was their agenda?

What was their motive? And I will tell you, I mean, sometimes the picture that it paints, Jay, is one of terrific abuse. I think probably the classic example was the IRS abuse where there was political targeting of conservatives on the ground. I'll tell you, our behind the scenes effort, Jay, it's the reason that that was exposed.

No question about it. And that took both litigation and FOIA work. But then, you know, when we're talking about the Freedom of Information Act, that's a statute that allows us to get information from the government. It starts with a letter from our offices in Washington to these agencies.

And it says, give us this information on these topics. And generally, they don't. I mean, that's generally what happens. They do not. And then, Andy, we go to court.

That's right. We file a request for the agency under the statute, the Freedom of Information Act, which is a federal law that allows the public to have access to information with certain exceptions. And then nine times out of ten, the agency will stonewall us, whether it be the FBI or the State Department, which is the worst offender, or the Department of National Security or National Intelligence and so forth. And we then have to make a decision what we're going to do. And what we do is we go to the United States District Court for the District of Columbia in Washington, D.C. That's the form that has been set for enforcing FOIA requests by the public. We start out by saying that this is being made on behalf of the American Center for Law and Justice. We seek expedited process and we seek the court to intervene to issue an order to these agencies that we've sent the FOIA request to to produce the documents.

They usually then come back and then we go through a series of lengthy negotiations back and forth about what they'll give or what they won't give. Sometimes we get a good judge and that judge will order that the information be provided to us. We may get tons of information that's redacted. That means marked through in black so that we can't see what's underneath. And we have to then go back and say you redacted too much.

We can't really find out what you're giving us because it makes no sense. So it goes through a process of litigation. But it's painstaking.

It's long, as you said earlier. You're finding a nugget in a gold mine. Occasionally you'll come up with something that is really a bombshell. But you have to persist in doing it and that's what we do. And you think about this and like there are interrelations with even on foreign policy, Harry, as our director of policy. You look at and we're going to get more into this and later in the program about Iran. But we have sent Freedom of Information Act requests to the Secretary of State's office to find out what was going on with various presentations that were being made under the Obama administration regarding what? Regarding our relations with Iran and the Iran deal. That is how you get information and that office is going to be more active now more than ever.

I think that is correct. We live in an era wherein globalists and particularly elites are inherently corrupt and they tend to believe that the rules apply to virtually everyone else but the rules do not apply to them. And so it's very, very important that we have a government accountability office and the ACLJ has been extremely active in vigorously seeking to hold these elites, hold these bureaucrats accountable. So we have filed hundreds of FOIA requests.

We have received over 20,000 pages of documents in our litigation. But it's also important to keep in mind that some of these globalists and some of these elites are not in Washington. They are in state capitals and we are also active in going after state officials. And so, for instance, if you look at the state of New York and the state of Virginia with respect to their attempt to pass radical policies on abortion, it's very important to know, A, what are they thinking?

But in addition, they often refuse to enforce their own rules with respect to conscience exceptions, with respect to medical personnel who refuse to, for instance, participate. We have also looked into what Ohio, the state of Ohio, was doing in licensing an individual who was anti-Semitic and she basically wanted to see Jewish Americans to be eliminated. Yeah, through her medical practice.

Unreal. But you know what? Your American Center for Law and Justice went to work on all that. So Harry just gave you a – that is a little bit of what we do through our Office of Government Accountability and, of course, that comes under our Office of Government Affairs. So your support of the ACLJ supports all of that, including keeping this broadcast on the air. If you're watching or listening on radio, which is where most of our audience is, or watching on TV on all of our social media platforms that we have now – YouTube, Facebook, Rumble, Twitter, Periscope – support the work of the ACLJ.

We're in the last week of our matching – the last days of our matching challenge campaign. So any amount you donate to the American Center for Law and Justice at ACLJ.org is going to be doubled. Let me encourage you to go to ACLJ.org and have your voice heard.

Add your name, add your voice. Any amount you donate, we get a matching gift for. That's at ACLJ.org.

Back with more in just a moment. At the American Center for Law and Justice, we're engaged in critical issues at home and abroad. For a limited time, you can participate in the ACLJ's matching challenge. For every dollar you donate, it will be matched. A $10 gift becomes $20.

A $50 gift becomes $100. You can make a difference in the work we do, protecting the constitutional and religious freedoms that are most important to you and your family. Give a gift today online at ACLJ.org. Live from Washington, D.C., Jay Sekulow live.

And now, Chief Counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice, Jay Sekulow. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the program. We spent the first half hour as we're closing the year out kind of looking ahead. And look, there's going to be some major challenges, as I said in the first half hour of this broadcast. I don't think there's any question about it, no matter how you look at it.

It's going to be a bit of a different world. Now, the good thing is that we've got President Trump was able to appoint and get confirmed three justices to the U.S. Supreme Court. I think you're going to see the importance of that as we get into this next couple of segments of the broadcast, especially on the issues of religious liberty. So in the beginning, we talked about Freedom of Information Act requests, our litigation posture there, how our government affairs office works.

This is important to get into as well. We worked on judicial nominations because, look, the control of the judiciary is very significant as to the issue of religious freedom. Where have we seen the religious freedom issue enter this year? Primarily in response to the pandemic, the COVID, the restrictions that have been placed on churches.

And some of those restrictions were draconian in nature. Now, look, I think you've got to be cautious. Pastors are being cautious. They're limiting the numbers of people that are going to their churches. Wes, in addition to being a retired colonel in the United States Army, you're a pastor. Churches have responded cautiously, I think for the most part, responsibly.

Yeah, they really have. And yet you have the government using the guise of COVID trying to tell them not only how many people can gather in the building, but what they can do when they gather there. You can't chant, for example, you can't sing. And so, you know, the First Amendment is foundational to who we are as the American people. And that includes the free exercise of religion.

And yet, you know, more and more left leaning politicians, governors, mayors and what have you are encroaching on that fundamental freedom that's in our Constitution. You know, we're going to talk about this also during the week here, because this targeting the churches, it got to the nature, Harry, where it was absurd. I mean, the idea that you put restrictions in place in the beginning, sure, we didn't even understand the nature of what we were dealing with. But then they had a one size fits all approach to everything. You had a worship center that could hold 5,000 people. And they would say it's 25 percent occupancy or 50 people, whichever is less.

Absolutely. And so in reality, churches and religious institutions were disproportionately targeted for discriminatory regulations. And now the United States Supreme Court, at least in terms of preliminary decision making, is beginning to side consistently with churches. So just last week, there was a case involving the High Plains Harvest Church, a small Christian church north of Denver. They argued before the United States Supreme Court that the coronavirus restrictions implemented by the Democratic governor, which limited the capacity of worship services in some areas to 25 percent, or a maximum of 50 wrongly targeted indoor religious services, subjecting them to harsher rules than, let's say, Lowe's and Home Depot. And so the United States Supreme Court is now developing a pattern of providing a defense in favor of religious liberty so long as the churches are acting reasonably. The interesting aspect of that, and we're going to talk about that when we get back from the break, is the beginning, the first couple of cases were not so great coming out of the Supreme Court of the United States. Caesar's Palace won. Caesar won.

Calvary Chapel did not. We're going to talk about what happens when you add a Supreme Court justice into the mix. Pam Benn will comment in on that. But that's why this is the ultimate legacy of any President, the appointment of three justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, all in their 40s when they were appointed. All right, we're going to take a break. When we come back from the break, we're going to get more on this issue because, as I said, a couple of justices switch, a new justice appointed, and the world looks a lot different for religious liberty.

Interesting that Justice Roberts, in the beginning, not so supportive. So we'll see how that all plays out. We'll get some comments from our team on that. And again, as we are getting near the very end of the year, your support of the ACLJ is unbelievably important. This is our most important month of the year. This is our most important week of the year financially for the American Center for Law and Justice. So let me encourage you to support the work of the ACLJ at ACLJ.org. Any amount you donate, we get a matching gift for. So I encourage you, if you haven't done so, go to ACLJ.org.

Make that online gift. And again, any amount you donate, we're going to get a matching gift for. ACLJ.org.

Back with more in a moment. At the American Center for Law and Justice, we're engaged in critical issues at home and abroad, whether it's defending religious freedom, protecting those who are persecuted for their faith, uncovering corruption in the Washington bureaucracy and fighting to protect life in the courts and in Congress, the ACLJ would not be able to do any of this without your support. For that, we are grateful. Now there's an opportunity for you to help in a unique way. For a limited time, you can participate in the ACLJ's matching challenge. For every dollar you donate, it will be matched. A $10 gift becomes $20.

A $50 gift becomes $100. This is a critical time for the ACLJ. The work we do simply would not occur without your generous support.

Take part in our matching challenge today. You can make a difference in the work we do, protecting the constitutional and religious freedoms that are most important to you and your family. Give a gift today online at ACLJ.org. Only when a society can agree that the most vulnerable and voiceless deserve to be protected is there any hope for that culture to survive. And that's exactly what you are saying when you stand with the American Center for Law and Justice to defend the right to life. We've created a free, powerful publication offering a panoramic view of the ACLJ's battle for the unborn.

It's called Mission Life. It will show you how you are personally impacting the pro-life battle through your support. And the publication includes a look at all major ACLJ pro-life cases, how we're fighting for the rights of pro-life activists, the ramifications of Roe v. Wade 40 years later, the play on parenthood's role in the abortion industry, and what Obamacare means to the pro-life movement. Discover the many ways your membership with the ACLJ is empowering the right to life. Request your free copy of Mission Life today online at ACLJ.org slash gift.

Hey, welcome back to the broadcast, everyone. We're talking about some of the key issues that the ACLJ has been dealing with this year, including religious freedom, specifically for churches. Because when the pandemic first hit, the restrictions on churches were disproportionate as it relates to other institutions. Liquor stores could stay open, churches could not.

Walmart could have 50 percent capacity. A church could have 25 percent capacity or 50 people, whichever is less, no matter what the size of the worship center was. And this was discriminatory to the point where Justice Alito and Justice Gorsuch and Thomas, in a decision that first came out, in the first series of cases that went up, they were split 4-4.

When you have a tie, this was before Amy Barrett was confirmed as a justice, the lower court was confirmed. This was cases coming out of the Ninth Circuit that ruled against the churches. One quote that I remember distinctly was, and I mentioned it before the break, is that Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas can open and operate with, you know, 30 percent capacity or whatever the capacity amount was, but not Calvary Chapel. And then you had the restrictions in California that not only said you can only have 25 people there, no matter what the size of the worship center was, but you could not sing or chant.

Which goes to Wetzel's point that he made in the previous segment, that they were actually telling the churches how to conduct their service. Yeah, so much for the free exercise of religion. You know, free exercise is what that implies. You worship, you live out your faith, you affirm your faith in worship, you know, and you have complete freedom to do that.

And obviously they were violating that. And again, it's sort of scary whenever the government takes power, whether it's from a church or a school or from whatever, you know, they rarely give it back. And so, as you said, Jay, having a Supreme Court with nine justices now there is very, very important to ensure the free exercise of religion, whether it's in churches or in schools or in the military. Because, Harry, the first round of cases were split 4-4 and those were, again, affirmances of the lower courts because John Roberts did not find in favor of religious freedom, to be blunt. Absolutely. And so one of the key questions that has arisen over 2020 is this particular question.

Who is John Roberts? Is he truly a conservative or will he cave in to global elites? So Jay, I think it's very important to note that global elites persistently aim simultaneously at political and social collectivism on one hand and moral anarchy on the other. And so we've seen this play out, particularly in so-called liberal blue states where the state has taken on an authoritarian form with respect to the First Amendment. These states have allowed abortion clinics to remain open, acupuncture studios to remain open, Lowe's, Home Depot. You can remain open, but churches, which are protected by the First Amendment, were deemed what?

Non-essential. And so effectively the justices have allowed the Constitution, the language and text to be eroded and that makes little sense. So it's interesting, Harry, because Justice Gorsuch in that decision I talked about, this is what he said, I'm going to read it. It says, in Nevada, it seems it's better to be in entertainment than religion. Maybe that's nothing new, but the First Amendment prohibits such obvious discrimination against the exercise of religion. The world we inhabit today with the pandemic upon us poses unusual challenges, but there is no world in which the Constitution prevents Nevada to favor Caesar's Palace over Calvary Chapel. Now that was a dissent, but it's now the majority.

Absolutely. And it is a wonderful encapsulation of how the Supreme Court is beginning to shift before our very eyes, largely due to the persistent efforts of President Trump to nominate conservative justices who believe in the rule of law and the Constitution, the text of the Constitution. Many of the justices on the United States Supreme Court have been educated at elite law schools where they believe in what might be called a living Constitution, a living document subject to new interpretations as the times command.

If we want to amend the Constitution, we have to engage in a formal process for doing so. We cannot leave it up to unelected judges and justices. So the ACLJ, of course, involved in cases in California for churches right now that are winding their way up.

And of course, this precedent really helped. But I think I want to take a step back here and go to our director of government affairs, then Bennett, because it's not just doing the actual case that counts, but it's actually the justices that are on the court that count. And particularly in this case, since in the beginning it was not going good, not going well for the churches, because John Roberts was siding with the more liberal wing of the court to throw it off. And that presented a problem for the churches until we had a nomination and then a confirmation.

So then let's talk about that process and how important it is. So the ACLJ not just involved in the case, but actually involved in the confirmation process. Yeah, and in this case, the confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett turned that dissent from Justice Gorsuch into a majority opinion, essentially. But, Jay, it's not just the Supreme Court. I mean, that's where it's most dramatic.

That's where most people see it. But the truth is, over the course of the last four years, we've seen a dramatic makeover of the entire federal judiciary. I'll go through some of the numbers, but I'll just say the numbers that I'm going to go through, Jay, are to the credit of President Trump, to the credit of Leader McConnell, and then two consecutive chairmen of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Chairman Grassley and Chairman Graham. All four of those individuals, Jay, said we are going to make the confirmation of federal judges one of our very highest priorities. And as a result, over the course of the last four years, more than 230 federal judges are now sitting on Article III courts. You talked, Jay, about the three that are sitting on the Supreme Court. But more than 50 judges nominated by President Trump are now sitting on the Circuit Court of Appeals. I'll tell you, as of just a couple of weeks ago, that meant there wasn't a single vacancy across all of the circuit courts. Now, then you had Amy Barrett elevated to the Supreme Court.

By the way, Jay, her replacement was just confirmed by the United States Senate. So the Seventh Circuit Court is, again, that seat is filled. But the bottom line, the bottom line, one of the longest-lasting legacies of this President is going to be a judiciary that was dramatically reformed. And by the way, Jay, it doesn't have to get all the way to the Supreme Court. There have been some favorable rulings that have come out of the Ninth Circuit because you start to draw better panels when there are more good quality constitutional judges sitting on that court. But then we also have heard, I mean, let's be clear, that the Biden administration would at least discuss, and they have openly had members of the Democratic Party say they want court packing.

Yep, absolutely. And I think they're going to pursue that if they're able to. One of the key distinctions will be how many seats do they have in the United States Senate, Jay. They're going to need a majority in the United States Senate to pursue that, and they will try.

The most significant two races in the United States, other than the presidency, is the two Senate races in Georgia, let me tell you. Now, court packing brings up an interesting issue, and that is we have nine justices on the Supreme Court. Justice Ginsburg said that's worked out pretty well. Now, they have tried court packing in the past, the Democrats.

It didn't work out so well. But this time they're talking about, Harry, doing it again. But there's two ways they can do it. They could pack the court, and we'll talk about legislatively changing the number of justices. Or they get a bunch of, in the lower courts, a bunch of judges take senior status. They get paid, they hear the cases they want to hear, but the President gets replacements.

And they said there's 110 judges that would qualify for senior status if they wanted it. But let's talk about what court packing really is. Well, court packing, properly understood, is simply an executive branch attempt to rewrite the Constitution. It is an executive branch attempt to eliminate the text of the Constitution. Because the individuals that they are talking about appointing in the future are individuals who are going to side with a corrupted, if not toxic, version of the Constitution.

It is living constitutionalism. And so it will be up to the preferences of individual judges. No longer can American citizens go into court and expect an impartial arbiter to decide the case. Instead, the judges will bring their biases, and they will then put them on the scale of justice. And they will tend to rule in favor of a collectivist state. And they will therefore expand the administrative branch, the executive branch, and the power of authoritarian elites over the lives of average working men and women.

You've got a lot to look forward to. But that's why we fight. Very quickly, Wes, we've got literally less than a minute here. You're legally trained as well.

You have a law degree. What is your sense of the court packing thing? I think it could become a big issue. It could become a huge issue.

And he said he would appoint a commission, Biden did, for six months to study it. But yeah, this takes the Supreme Court and makes it a political body, almost like another legislative body in our government system. And it would be a travesty. And I think they are quite serious about it. The Senate, as you said, those two seats in Georgia are key because they would have to approve that. And it's important that the Republican Party maintains control of the Senate in order for there to be real checks and balances on some of these crazy ideas. I'm telling you, these two Senate seats are like running for President. I mean, in 20 seconds, control shifts from the Republicans and the Democrats in the Senate. It's game over. Yeah, buckle your seat, Phil.

Jay, let's say it simply. This is a national election that's happening down in Georgia here in just a couple of weeks. Don't take this line where it's not important to vote. Participate.

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Hey, welcome back, everybody. Don't forget, support the work of the ACLJ. I always say December is the most important month. The last half is the most important segment of the month. And the last week is the most important week of the month.

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ACLJ.org. All right. Let me go to an issue that is one that deserves more than 10 minutes.

And so we'll hit it later in the week, too. And that is what's going on in the armed forces, in the military. You were a chaplain, Wes, in the United States Army for many, many years, retired as a colonel.

There have been, the President put forward a series of executive orders promoting religious freedom and religious faith practices, both in the military and in life generally. What's the situation now in the military? Better? Worse?

Dangerous? You still have the groups out there, I don't know, like, I'm not going to name them. Right. Yeah, there are still groups that want to eliminate the Chaplain Corps, even though- Literally eliminate it.

Literally eliminate it. What would that mean? It would mean that, first of all, the commander's staff officer, who is there strictly to make sure the First Amendment is not violated, that's a chaplain's role. We do religious services and counseling, but the courts have said that our primary role is to guarantee the free exercise of religion. So that becomes threatened if there is no Chaplain Corps. But also- But are they actually calling for the elimination of the Chaplains Corps?

They have in the past. They've actually taken it to district courts and they've lost there because the court said, you know, you have to have a Chaplain Corps, of course the Senate does, the House of Representatives, but American servicemen and women, they are deployed literally all over the world, often in remote places where there is no church, synagogue, or mosque. And so the chaplain's there to provide religious support, but also to guarantee that individual soldiers are guaranteed freedom of speech and the free exercise of religion. President Trump's Executive Order 13798 addresses those two things in particular, that you have freedom of speech and freedom of religion in the United States military. It is key to the morale and welfare and discipline of the armed forces that we had the free exercise of religion. Soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, they do not give up that constitutional right when they enlist or are commissioned as an officer.

And it's very, very important that we continue to take that fight to the courts. My concern, of course, is hostile administrations, it's not just the President, it's hostile administrators could view religious freedom in a very different lens. And that would include a separate, strict separation of church and state view, which would inhibit military chaplains. And we've had that, listen, we've litigated those cases. Those aren't what might happen, those have happened. There are groups that are very active, I'm not going to name them.

There are groups that are very active in trying to squelch religious liberty, religious freedom for men and women in the military, including the chaplains. Yeah, and it's not just speculative, Jay, it's happened before. The same people that have done it before are going to be placed in prominent positions inside the government.

It's just going to happen. That's why we're preparing to defend against that now. Look, Jay, I would just say, I mean, here's what we say when we make the case on Capitol Hill or to the various administrations. If we're going to ask our men and women to go into harm's way and to put their life on the line for us, which is, by the way, exactly what they're asking them to do. The last thing that we should do is ask them to do that without the support of a clergy. But Jay, I'm here to tell you, it might not be at the Presidential level, it might be at a bureaucratic level.

And in some ways that's more insidious because it gets less attention, it's not as flashy. But you have to address it, even if it happens at the bureaucratic level. Because Wes can tell you this, if you get a bureaucratic order that goes through, even if it's not at the Presidential level, it's still got the force of implementation that has the same exact effect.

The men and women in harm's way are without the support of a clergy. So, Jay, we're going to have to watch for that and then we're going to have to fight it aggressively. We were very active in that, you remember, Than, during the Obama administration because there was a lot of restrictions. And Wes, you were in the military then.

Right. Yeah, even recently there have been three cases where some of these groups that we, whose names shall not go mentioned, have tried to go in. And if they can eliminate the chaplain, inhibit the chaplain corps and the free exercise of religion. In the last year, part of that has been a chaplain, because of COVID, was having chapel services outdoors in his residence on a military base. And they came in and complained and tried to get the commander to reprimand the chaplain because he was not in a chapel building designated for religious worship. So, of course, that's coming from the same, I mean, the courts would say, well, until the recent edition.

Well, right, that's fine. Yeah. And not only that, the same groups, they will go to a commander and intimidate a commander, whether it's at a brigade, battalion, or at an army level, and say, you know, this is wrong, you have to do this. And many times the commander does not know all the implications of the First Amendment and different things in the military as far as free exercise of religion. And so they will agree with this group. And that's where the ACLJ has come in and helped the commanders understand their role and the role of the chaplain and how free exercise of religion is actually played out in the military. And we have been instrumental even recently in making that happen.

Yeah. And I'll tell you something, folks, this is, again, your support of the ACLJ makes all this possible. But, Harry, you know, you talk about the titular balance of the courts on this issue. This is another one where having constitutionalists on the Supreme Court are critical.

Absolutely. And so one of the great things about changing the composition of the United States Supreme Court in favor of the rule of law, in favor of the Constitution, is that this movement basically favors average men and women in the United States. Those are the individuals who volunteer for our all-volunteer military. But then the globalist elites, they say, hey, let's deprive those individuals of their religious liberty, but we still want to benefit from the protections provided by this all-volunteer military. This makes no sense, but that is often the case with respect to the agenda of the people in Washington, D.C. The bureaucrats that Thanh talked about earlier, they really don't care about average men and women who are serving in the military, and many of them are quite distant from their own families, their own churches, their own synagogues. And so what we have is a disproportionately discriminatory approach by these elites.

Thanh brings up a good point, though. It used to be the Ninth Circuit was the go-to circuit for all this. Not so much anymore. Yeah, we're going to have to litigate these, Jay, but they always used to run to the Ninth Circuit to file them because they had an automatic slam dunk win.

Not anymore. There were 29 judges on the Ninth Circuit Court, 10 of them, Jay, 10 of them out of 29 were nominated not by a Republican, were nominated by Donald Trump. The spread on that court is now 16 to 13. And when you have to draw a panel from that ratio, guess what you do sometimes?

You draw a panel that gives you a victory. They can't go to the Ninth Circuit anymore and get an automatic win. Look how much trouble they gave the President early on on his judicial nominees.

I mean, unbelievable. And now we'll see what happens if the shoe's on the other foot. We'll also see what happens if you're in Georgia, if you're going to keep the Senate under conservative control. We'll see soon enough. All right, we don't tell you how to vote. You vote any way you want, but I'm telling you the consequences of this is very, very significant. Folks, as we close the broadcast out today, let me encourage you.

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