BREAKING: Elon Musk Twitter Takeover Imminent - LEFT PANICS

Today on Sekulow, the Elon Musk takeover of Twitter is imminent.

The left is panicking. We've got a lot to talk about today on Sekulow. Keeping you informed and engaged, now more than ever, this is Sekulow. We want to hear from you. Share and post your comments or call 1-800-684-3110.

And now your host, Jordan Sekulow. We have some real breaking news as it develops because you're getting more and more mainstream outlets and some of just the reporting services like Reuter coming right out and saying that Twitter is right on the edge. They're bored of accepting the Elon Musk purchase of Twitter for him to become the majority shareholder, a 50% shareholder, and ultimately his plan, which is a more long-term plan, to take the service private. Now we talk a lot lately about big tech censorship in the United States, but of course it affects the globe because these countries are international in their reach and they could be a service for great things, for good things, for people to be able to speak out in places that are repressive governments. But instead what we've seen, and we've even heard it from former President Barack Obama, that we need more content monitoring. What Elon Musk has said is we need to get rid of the bots but let actual human beings have discussions and that the only thing that Twitter should try and monitor is actual criminal conduct. That's not free speech.

That's not coming up with ideas that might be in the minority. There is a set of speech that is not legal, of course like encouraging a crime, encouraging a criminal activity. That's not legal. The traffickers on there, the drug dealers on there, not legal. They can purge that information from there. But I think what we could see from this is for the first time one of the guys on our side when it comes to free speech taking over one of these platforms and having the opportunity to return it to what it's supposed to be about, the free exchange of ideas, the ability that you, again, and a lot of people are going to wonder, is Donald Trump going to be right back on? He will have to work through a process.

We won't have all those details yet because of all their rules and all of their processes. But what I imagine is, and from Elon Musk's own words is, this censorship police is going to focus in on actual, the bots that are there that are not real people that should be kicked off. That's a big problem at Twitter. Probably a lot of the reason a lot of you aren't even using it now is that the bots start attacking and it's not even real people.

You can tell from the language that the English is not their first language. But second, the real criminal bad actors and allow a free speech zone. I keep saying over and over, speech is speech is speech. And these big tech companies, it is great news if this is going to happen because it shifts the paradigm. It's not that we're all fighting Twitter, Facebook, Google because of YouTube and all of that and Amazon.

Because of course they've got the Washington Post and all those fact checkers. We now have got one of these platforms that is going to be more in line with where we are on speech. So it's an interesting day because you've got the big news with Twitter nearing a deal to sell itself to Elon Musk's group.

So that's very big news. And at the same time, the Supreme Court heard arguments this morning in another free speech case, this time involving a coach who gave a prayer at the 50-yard line at the football stadium. And that was deemed to be a violation of the establishment clause.

And taking it a step further, he gets fired for it. So we're going to have analysis on both. It's interesting because they're both really, Jordan, at the end of the day, they're both really free speech cases. It's about the freedom of speech and the marketplace of ideas. And it's interesting in the school prayer case, the football game prayer case, one of the arguments is that a school doesn't endorse everything it fails to censor. And the big tech companies need to learn that same lesson.

You don't have to censor everything you disagree with. And they have more legal protection from that than even a school district would because of the Section 302 and all these tech provisions we put in place to let the internet flourish. So again, I want to take your calls on this. 1-800-684-3110, you're more likely to be involved on Twitter again if this purchase does go through as it's being reported.

And if Elon Musk follows through on what he says he's going to do, which is to make this a true platform for free speech and the sharing of ideas. 1-800-684-3110, if you want to join us on air, that's 1-800-684-3110. We're at a matching challenge month and we're concerned and we work on all these issues involving your free speech rights at the ACLJ. Support us today at ACLJ.org. Double the impact your donation. That's ACLJ.org.

We'll be right back. 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. I'm covering 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 Planned 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. All right, welcome back to Sekulow. And we have some breaking news if you're not following some of the financial news. We now know that late into the night last night, the Twitter board was working with Elon Musk and the team he had assembled that put together about $46.5 billion in financing. So the initial issue was that Elon Musk was putting up a certain amount of cash and a certain amount of assets that he would, like, loan against, take out loans against. And then they kind of were putting a poison pill to make it impossible for him to buy enough shares. Then when he came back and said, no, I've actually got $46.5 billion for you, Twitter board quickly shifted. You know, this board of the woke board started realizing, well, we do have this financial, if I do share a relationship with our shareholders, if he was to bypass them, which he could, that could make them look bad and even potentially violate laws because they didn't even seriously consider something that is much higher than their current trading share price. And the idea here, though, will be, of course, the details.

The details are going to matter a lot. He still has a plan to take it private. That is still being reported. The idea will be is how quickly he gets control and how soon we start seeing the effects of that control because that this is the kind of I see this is this is like signing a contract.

The closing hasn't been done yet. I think that's a very fair way of looking at it. It was interesting, the board of Twitter initially kind of rebuffed it and but they are a publicly held company, which means that they have what's called fiduciary obligations. And those fiduciary obligations, Harry, go to your law and economics professor, go to the shareholders value. I mean, at the end of the day, you're supposed to protect shareholder value. So they've got this core principle that was basically engaged in censorship, in our view, and then you've got the economic reality of the situation.

How do you see it right now? Well, first, I would say you are absolutely correct that the members of the board of directors of fiduciary duties to shareholders, they include the fiduciary duty of loyalty and care. And so if they are seen as putting their own interest ahead of the interests of the shareholders, that constitutes a violation of their fiduciary duty and that then exposes them to a shareholder derivative suit. I suspect as well, members of the board of directors owe a fiduciary duty of care and it's very difficult to successfully bring a case in against the board with respect to a violation of a duty of care.

And I won't go into all of the details, but suffice it to say that Twitter is incorporated under Delaware General Corporate Law. The shareholders under Delaware General Corporate Law own the company. However, the board of directors, each of whom is appointed by the shareholders, they manage and they really control the corporation.

And then the company is managed on a day-to-day basis by officers. And so members of the board of directors, they have the right to fire officers. But if we want to replace members of the board of directors, this will generally require a shareholder vote. That doesn't necessarily mean, however, a shareholder meeting. Shareholders can vote by signing consent documents.

Absolutely. I want to follow that up because I think what we have to be clear here is that while no transaction is closed yet, but it looks like it's getting very close, the reality is the board controls a lot of the operational basis of the organization. That board is controlled by people that have been loyal to the existing way in which Twitter has been doing business, right? Elon Musk comes in, he is going to work with shareholders to replace that board.

I think that is a given. More likely than not he will, but it will inevitably take time unless he is able to get permission from the board to perhaps accelerate that process. This is from CNBC. They say that once Wall Street investors see that Twitter, now they do see that, is open to a person buying it and taking it private, that investor interest is going to quickly dwindle. Because long-term investors are not going to invest in this.

It's going to be a short-term kind of, can I flip it an extra four bucks with a bunch of shares. So this is directly from CNBC. It says, Wall Street will likely view the news of Twitter's openness to a bid as the beginning of the in for Twitter as a public company.

As a public company. And that it will be Musk on a path, like we said, a path which is not immediate to becoming a completely private company. But he's also committed to, you know, Elon Musk has said he's committed to freedom of speech. And Twitter, like Facebook and others, have censors and fact checkers that are usually wrong.

And the fact is that I think this will open up a more robust freedom of speech, which is better for everyone. Where I think the end of all of this for Twitter began is when the liberal media, owned by Jeff Bezos out of the Washington Post, started mocking Elon Musk and saying, you know, they're freaking out and they're so scared about that. When they work for the number two richest guy in the world. Who's clearly mad he's no longer the number one richest guy in the world. I mean, Elon Musk has a very different personal life. He's not like Bezos trying to be the richest guy in the world. But at the same time, they are definitely in competition. You look at the space programs in competition.

Amazon, what their services provide. Tesla, what they are able to do through the electric cars and being on the front line of that. You've got, but I have said this time and time again for the conservative movement to go to the next level, to fight back against the Soros's of the world, the Jeff Bezos's of the world who own the Washington Post. We're going to have to have some billionaires on our side. They may not agree with us on everything, but what they will agree on is allowing our content, allowing us to be treated fairly with sharing our ideas. It'll be up to us to convince people to join our team. And that's fine with me.

I'd prefer that. But now it looks like we do have some billionaires stepping up. We've seen Peter Thiel step up in Republican politics and we're seeing Elon Musk step up, put his money where his mouth is literally on free speech. So, Harry, both by the way, foreign guys coming from countries. Elon Musk left South Africa during apartheid because he did not want to be drafted into the all-white military, as he said, to oppress black people.

And Peter Thiel, who was a German immigrant, his family. So they both understand why it's so important to protect what America is. The freedom of speech.

So the big, the reason this is happening is because the threat on freedom of speech has been so significant as it relates to these social media platforms. So, Harry, Elon Musk is not just looking at this as a business opportunity. He's looking at it as a way to increase the ability of the free flow of information in the First Amendment.

I think that's precisely correct. And I certainly welcome this particular development. It's also important to ask this particular question, which is how far is Elon Musk willing to go in order to ensure the free flow of information?

And so that will take some time, but certainly this is a welcome development. And it's very, very important to keep in mind that this will likely have a long-term effect on so-called mainstream media. Because Twitter has followed a model which is basically pro-left wing in terms of its agenda. And it's basically censored even moderate voices who happen to make a statement that Twitter's board, basically board of free speech review, objects to. And so if you look at Twitter, it's possible, for instance, for the supreme leader of Iran to have a Twitter account and for the former President of the United States to be banned. It's absolutely bizarre, and I hope Elon Musk rebalances the scale.

This could be a sea change in social media platforms. Yeah, and it's interesting, too, the CNBC reporting that they almost have to take the deal because their Thursday earnings are coming out. They have to report their earnings and they're going to be down.

Yeah, they're way down. Which Twitter has never had a good, when it comes to actual profit, it's worth a lot. As you see, it's worth over $40 billion.

But the actual turning it into a profit-making enterprise, it's been one of the platforms that had the toughest time doing that. So I think, again, the idea of taking it private. We had a caller about that. Do we actually think that he's going to take it private? I mean, that's part of the deal. I don't think he signs a deal that doesn't allow him to at least start that process. Well, you can always take it private. I mean, a company can go private.

I mean, the shareholders can get together and buy the company. Precisely, and that is not dependent on this deal necessarily. Yeah. So, look, this is big news. We're going to keep covering it and keep talking about it and what it means. In the next segment, we're going to talk about a big case at the Supreme Court today, also on free speech. Coach prays silently at the 50-yard line and it literally becomes a federal case. So we've got some analysis on that as well, which also shows you the ACLJ.

We're able to give you information as variety, as broad-span of information as Elon Musk and the takeover of possible acquisition of Twitter and a coach praying at the 50-yard line. ACLJ filed a brief in that case. We're able to do all of that because of your support for the ACLJ.

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They want to turn your accounts off when you're trying to share information with your friends and family about candidates, your support, ideas, your support. It's very important that we defend the basic idea of our freedom of speech, support the work of the ACLJ. We've been doing this. We're in our fourth decade here of defending actual free speech, not picking and choosing at ACLJ.org.

Donate today. This is a very dynamic 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, Planned 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. I'm covering 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. Welcome back to Secular. We're taking your calls as well at 1-800-684-3110.

That's 1-800-684-3110. I love to hear from people's reactions, less freaking out about this Elon Musk news. But as conservatives, are you more likely to re-engage the platform? I think a lot of you, when Donald Trump got kicked off, you were getting banned on there and you couldn't share ideas or just thoughts without feeling like you might get censored. It's gotten pretty, if you look at the conservative world of Twitter, and we've got guys like Rick Rinnell who are certainly pushed back in fight. But if you look at big ideas being shared, what you'll see is a lot from the right who's even engaged. I'll even say it from our Twitter account. We know that that's not a place where most of you are that active anymore.

And you're always worrying about this line of are we going to get everything kicked off because of what we say about a case, literally as attorneys. So I think this Elon Musk news is huge because remember, just a week ago, the media was reporting it's dead. Elon Musk is a joke. He's the richest guy in the world. They're still calling him, but they're mocking him.

And yet, what happens when you mock the richest guy in the world? He put up a plan. He put up a plan that's basically too good for them to walk away from. Yeah, they have an obligation to the shareholders.

Let's change gears a little bit here. The major case was argued this morning at the Supreme Court of the United States involving a coach named Coach Kennedy. It involves a prayer at a football game.

It was a prayer that the coach did himself at the end of the game where he kneeled at the 50-yard line and would engage in a prayer. The school district terminated him because they said that action violated the establishment clause and endorsed religion unconstitutionally. Now we have argued at the ACLJ, and you'll hear about these cases, a series of cases involving prayer at school. The most significant one probably is the Mergens case we argued in 1990, so we're talking 32 years ago. That case authorized prayer clubs in every public school in America. But the court in that case said that the Constitution affirmatively protected prayer as a form of speech protected by the First Amendment, that a school doesn't endorse everything it fails to censor, and that there's a crucial difference between private speech endorsing religion, which is protected by the free speech and free exercise clauses, and government speech endorsing religion, which is prohibited by the establishment clause. All of those cases came into play here. Let me play you one sound bite from it. Paul Clement, our uniformist listener, general friend of ours. This is number 20.

When Coach Kennedy took a knee at midfield after games to say a brief prayer of thanks, his expression was entirely his own. That private religious expression was doubly protected by the free exercise and free speech clauses. When the school district fired him for that fleeting religious exercise out of endorsement concerns, it not only violated the First Amendment, but it ignored a veritable wall of this court's precedents that make clear that a school does not endorse private religious speech just because it fails to censor it. As much as the district would like to... That argument that Paul made is this. I'm holding the opinion in Board of Education of West Side Community Schools v. Mergens. I argued it in 1990.

And here is the... And Ken Starr, who was the Solicitor General, then argued the case alongside me. This is where it said there's a crucial difference between government speech endorsing religion, which the free speech clause protects. Private speech endorsing religion is protected by both free speech and free exercise. We think that secondary school students are mature enough and are likely to understand that a school does not endorse everything it fails to censor on a nondiscriminatory basis. The propositions that schools do not endorse everything they fail to censor is not complicated. And that became the crux of this case.

I think that Coach is going to win. But this endorsement analysis, this famous Lemon Test, is exactly that, a lemon. I mean, it can be very sour to freedom of speech and the free exercise of religion. And what everybody has to remember in these cases is that prayer is a form of speech protected by the First Amendment.

Cece? Right. Absolutely. And I think the schools think that if anything even smacks of religion, then they have to shut it down. And they don't. And I think the justices today, even in their questioning, you know, said that the Lemon Test is really not a test that they use anymore. But we'd like to see it struck down in its entirety and not just not relied upon. Yeah, I had in the Mergens case, actually, one of the arguments that we had involved some of this neutrality argument and then a little argument with a former justice of the Supreme Court, Justice Souter. This was me arguing number 16, Justice Souter and the Mergens case. And I'm saying if the student who is given this neutral option chooses to use that option to pray, the school district is forcing school children to sit there and participate in this praying ceremony.

And it seems to me that that's as far as we have to go to decide the case even on your premise. Justice Souter, in Lee v. Weissman, your concurrence footnote 9 states that if there is a neutral policy and the student and the speaker, not a state actor, engages in speech of their own choice, that even if it's religious, it doesn't violate the establishment laws. We're talking here not about a neutral choice to engage in kinds of speech. That was going on, for example, in Rosenberger. But that's exactly actually what we were talking about.

It was his own footnote that we pointed to. Also, the issue in our case involving Santa Fe, which was a prayer over a intercom system by a student, the court said that was unconstitutional but was interesting in Santa Fe because you've got to look at what all these cases actually end up saying. And what the court says in the Santa Fe opinion, which I think is applicable here, it incorporated, of course, the famous line about the crucial difference between government speech endorsing religion and private speech, which is protected by the pre-exercise clause. But it says the religion clause of the First Amendment, while they prevent the government from making any law respecting the establishment of religion, the pre-exercise clause, by no means do these commands impose a prohibition on all religious activities in our public schools. Indeed, it says, thus, nothing in the Constitution, as interpreted by this court, prohibits any public school student from voluntarily praying at any time before, during, or after the school day, which would include a football game. And another predecessor case said, neither teachers nor students surrender their rights to freedom of speech at the schoolhouse gate. Right. Just because you walk across the schoolhouse threshold door does not mean that you lose your First Amendment rights.

And that's what we're seeing. A lot of the lower courts actually ruling that you can't have religious speech in school at all. So, Santa Fe, Lee v. Weissman, Murgans, were all cases we argued. I didn't argue Lee v. Weissman, but I was counsel in that case. Of course, Santa Fe we did, Murgans we did.

Here's Justice Kavanaugh referencing those cases. Engel, Lee v. Weissman, and Santa Fe. And Santa Fe is the football case, and so that's the most relevant one here, I think. And the question here, I think, is what's different about this from an establishment clause perspective than the prayer over the loud speaker, which I think was a key fact, in Santa Fe. How would we distinguish Santa Fe from this case? So, Santa Fe is readily distinguishable. What's interesting about that case is in Santa Fe, after the court ruled and said you couldn't use the PA system, the students on their own initiative, hundreds of them in the stands, recited the Lord's Prayer at every football game.

And as the ACLU said, there was nothing they could do to stop that. That's right. So the loud speaker was kind of the key factor there, and we don't have a loud speaker in this case with this coach. And so I think there is a big distinction.

If he goes out on the 50 yard marker and kneels down and prays on his own, that is his right to do as a Christian. Alright folks, we encourage you to support the work of the ACLJ at ACLJ.org. You can double your impact of your donation this month of April. So if you're in a financial position, as we've said throughout this month, and you're able to do that, this is a great time to do it because you do double the impact. We have a group of donors ready to match all the donations that come through this month.

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It's up to you how far that matching challenge goes. Today comes 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. Keepin' you informed and engaged. Now more than ever, this is Sekulow. And now your host, Jordan Sekulow.

Welcome back to Sekulow. So we have a big case argued at the Supreme Court this morning on, again, the idea of prayer. This time it's, again, a football coach after the game, 50-yard line, takes a knee, a pretty much silent prayer.

If he's doing it out loud, he can't really hear it. If other members of the team gather, is that unconstitutional? That is still a constitutional crisis in our country. And so just a reminder that those issues are still not settled.

And we work on them daily at the American Center for Law and Justice. But in the biggest news of speech today, because we don't exactly know how the court will come out on this case, the biggest news when it comes to speech worldwide today is that Twitter has done a complete about face. So when Elon Musk initially came to Twitter, it was a mixture of cash and assets that he would be able to take out loans on. Most of that was Tesla. Then they drop a poison pill and everybody thought the deal was done. And Elon Musk was even talking about a plan B. What people on Twitter didn't realize and the left didn't realize is his plan B was not to go and create another platform or buy an existing one and put more money into it. His plan B was to go to his venture capital friends and put together a big cash offer. Well, now Twitter's got it at their doorstep, $46 billion. And that's more than he initially even said he would come to the table with by $3 billion. And now it's being reported the exact opposite of last week that they are in the final stages of accepting.

They're working late into the morning hours today of accepting this offer, which ultimately the goal is to move Twitter from a publicly traded company to a private company. This again, folks, are the new battles in speech. And it's going to take us having these billionaires, some of them, on our side. It can't just be all Soros, Bezos, Zuckerberg against us.

And to have Elon Musk step up, even though he's being criticized by the left, it's for everybody. He's a free speech guy. First thing he said he wants to get rid of is the bots on Twitter. I think the left doesn't like that because a lot of bots attack conservatives.

And they push the narrative that the Russians are controlling elections. Right. So here's what you have. This is, again, these are the new free speech fights. This is where the – look, they're in courtrooms today involving prayer at a football game as a form of speech protected by the First Amendment. And you've got a huge platform like Twitter, gigantic platform like Twitter, that has become hostile to free speech in the sense that it became taking sides.

The Ayatollah – we said this earlier – the Ayatollah from Iran is on there, but not the former President of the United States. So one's calling for the destruction of Israel and the Jewish state, and the President, they don't like his tweet, so they throw him off. So here's what's going to happen.

If Elon Musk is successful, and it looks like he could be here – I mean, these things are never closed until they're closed, by the way. I mean, that's just kind of the way these go. But if he is successful, I think what you're going to see, or at least likely to see, is that a change takes place in these platforms. And once it starts with a platform as big as Twitter, Jordan, the other ones are going to have to start playing by the right rules here because it's obvious. And we've had our own experience with Facebook. That's why we're so appreciative of Rumble, and are on Rumble, and promote Rumble, because although we're on YouTube as well, and Facebook, we get flagged a couple of times a month it seems like these days. We always get it corrected, but they always do the flag. And even when we're reading right from a document. The fact that they're getting involved in banning U.S. Presidents from using their platform, I think that's been a downfall of these social media platforms from that moment, is that they got to that level of just picking and choosing who could use it.

And by doing so, you start invoking other laws that you may be getting in trouble with, like election laws, and it's not just Section 302. So what I believe is this, ultimately this is going to be a process. It's all being reported throughout every news source that they're accepting this deal. Then we'll get the details of the deal and how long it will take to make these moves. How long does it take for him to take it from today to actually taking it private? And then will he make good on the promises as well? Let me tell you, he's going to learn real quickly. There's a bureaucracy there at Twitter, which is going to be just like a government, maybe even more hostile to implementing what he wants to do.

So he's got to make sure he's got the power to get rid of the bad apples inside these corporations. What I hope is that a lot of them just quit. I think a lot of them will. They will be a mass walkout. I'm sure Elon Musk is hoping the same thing.

Better those people walk out the door than have to even fire them. We'll be right back with Mike Pompeo on secular. 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, 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 Secular. We're joined now by our Senior Counsel for Global Affairs, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. I want to jump into it because we've got a couple of free speech news items, one on, again, the coach and then the other on the Elon Musk news with Twitter. And I want to ask you, Secretary Pompeo, between the cases like the Supreme Court case and the resistance that we saw to Elon Musk from the left, we had Washington Post journalists who were paid and owned by Jeff Bezos mocking Elon Musk on Twitter, which is an interesting move in itself. But it feels like the left, the Biden administration, we saw Barack Obama come out and say we need more content moderation. We keep hearing that from the left. Do you feel like they just they've had a moment where our speech has been nearly silenced online, or at least people are afraid to speak online.

People left the platforms online. And now they're afraid that a move like this by Elon Musk suddenly suddenly we're back online sharing our ideas. And you know what? Hey, a lot of people agree with us.

Yes, Jordan. It shows their real fear. Their real fear isn't all the different voices. It is that when our voices are heard in every place, whether that's on Twitter, whether that's at a high school football game, whether that's in our churches, they know our arguments resonate with huge portions of the American people. And our ideas, our ideas about our nation, our idea of American exceptional country, our idea that we are not a racist nation.

Those are ideas that they that frighten them. And so they resort to censorship. And we have seen that in myriad ways, not not the least of which is taking a former President off of Twitter.

But we've all seen it. We've all seen our Twitter accounts throttle. I've had folks who were following me kicked off the account. We any conservative voice in America has suffered some form of censorship and throttling in these past months. I hope not only will the Supreme Court decision go in a way that will create more opportunities for speech, but I hope that every social media platform, including Twitter, will let all voices be heard. You know, Mike, I think it's ironic in a day where there's two very different free speech cases. You've got a coach who goes to the 50 yard line, kneels, pray silently, gets fired saying he's violating the establishment clause. And then you've got Twitter, as you said, huge social media platform, supposed to be the marketplace of ideas for free speech. But instead, they they allow the ayatollah on, but they censored out President Trump.

So, you know, you've got these two cases, ironically, on the same day. I want to I want to talk to you about both and on as it relates to the social media platforms and Twitter. What we're seeing is that this fighting for a marketplace of ideas, which used to be the whole idea of freedom of speech and kind of how our country was founded, this idea of robust free speech, speech you disagree with, you handle that with speech you agree with and more speech is better.

That's how you respond. And that's what these social media platforms were supposed to be. Marketplaces of ideas. The censors got in and you shut that down. We used to call it classic viewpoint discrimination, which is what's going on. And then you've got a coach who simply kneels to pray silently and they say, oh, violating the establishment clause, even though the court in a number of cases, I argued, recognized that prayer is protected speech. So it's kind of ironic that of today you have both of these issues that you have to fight for. Very different venues, one in the Supreme Court, one in the corporate world to keep free speech robust in America.

It is pretty remarkable that they both bubble up in the same 24 hour period. You're right about different spaces, but the central idea is the same. But the First Amendment covers them both. One says you have the right to exercise your religion in the way that you choose.

That's what that football coach was doing. By the way, doing it a very rational way, a very calm way, expressing his own personal viewpoint. To your point. And then you have this huge public marketplace that has taken voices from one viewpoint and driven them out. Jay, you know what we want. We want all of these voices to be heard.

If this if Elon Musk gets this, I hope he makes sure that every lefty communist socialist voice gets heard to. Right. Bring it. Let's have let's have this debate.

Let's have this argument. Let's let all the voices be heard. Let's let them fact check our stories. Let them try and gaslight us. I think the American people can see right with the basic things we see with our eyes, we know. And this is what they fear is that we will go into these media and we will speak the truth and the world will come to see it as the truth. And their ideas will be rejected in the places that matter most in our families, in our churches and in our central institutions.

I hope the Supreme Court gets this right. And I hope that Twitter begins to permit all the voices to be heard. And that every social media platform can see that this is to their benefit and they follow suit as well.

We don't have to have a hostile takeover to get free speech. I mean, your idea, Secretary Pompeo, that we should be the content moderators, the American people, those on Twitter. If you don't like someone's idea and you think it's wrong, post why. We don't need to rely on some private company of some 20-year-old who's doing it as needed basis on contract with some random site that Facebook chooses to empower to flag your thoughts.

Let other people do that. That's what the whole idea with this was about. I want to go back a little bit, too, because as parental rights are big, what's happening in our schools is huge right now across the country. And I think, you know, it's not one of those issues going away anytime soon. We're seeing out of Florida, but other states across the country, because a lot of parents woke up during COVID and saw what their kids were being taught in these virtual schools. But if the Supreme Court goes ahead and says, you know, you can fire a coach or teacher for praying, you have to then wonder what that means for all the educators and school employees of faith out there. Because we know that while parents are starting to speak up, Secretary Pompeo, they're starting to take those elections at school board a lot more seriously.

I think that's great. Still in a majority of big cities and school boards, they'd love to be able to get a green light to kick anybody who's kind of still got a conservative view or a Christian view out of the public schools. Well, if this coach is firing stands, if the Supreme Court should permit that to stand, I think it does tell you the mission that we have to execute inside of our schools. We need to take back those school boards. We need to get conservatives entering the academy to teach. We need to make sure that kids can go to schools where their parents want them to learn the things they want them to.

We need to redouble our efforts for school choice and for homeschooling. But I hope even beyond that, I hope the Supreme Court will conclude that, no, there is an absolute place for individuals to express their own faith in a way that this football coach did his football game. This is deeply consistent with American understanding of free exercise or religion and deeply important to each of us having the capacity to live out our faith life in the way that we so choose. You know, Mike, I argued a series of cases in the 90s involving prayer or Bible activities in school. The first one was the Mergens case, which was relied on heavily by Coach Kennedy, and in that case, the court said there was a crucial difference between government speech endorsing religion, which the established clause forbids, and private speech endorsing religion with both the free speech and free exercise clauses protect. And then they said, we think secondary school students are mature enough and are likely to understand that a school doesn't endorse or support student speech that it merely permits on a nondiscriminatory basis. In other words, the proposition is that a school does not endorse everything it fails to censor is not complicated. But yet they treat religious speech as if it is subject to unique disabilities. And that is, even with – and we won that case eight to one. We won the Lamb's Chapel case, which allowed churches to utilize school facilities nine to zero. In Santa Fe, the court ruled against our position because the student used the intercom system.

But even in that case, Mike, the court said nothing in the Constitution is interpreted by this court, and this was by Justice John Paul Stevens, prohibits any public school student from voluntarily praying at any time before, during, or after the school day. So the court is poised, I think, to get rid of this lemon test, to allow finally to remove these barriers. But it's ironic that we've been having to do this for 30 years to get to this point. It's the darndest thing. It is also something that I think everyone listening today can see how important the ACLJ has been in this particular space, right, working on this really important issue. Jay, you fought this too.

Lemon is a lemon. That court case ought to go. It should have been got rid of a long time ago.

It lets progressives view, which is deeply anti-religious on those of us who want to just do what you were describing, right, to pray at any time you want to yourself in a school. This is deeply consistent with who we are as Americans. I hope the court will use this today to try and, if not get rid of lemon cabinet in ways that we don't have to continue to fight this for another decade and have huge dollars spent and people lose their jobs just standing up with the basic religious freedoms that we hold so dear here in the United States. You know, Secretary Pompeo, final question to you as well. This is, again, when we go back to the freedom of speech issue in our country, to me, and I think you said it correctly before, and I want to make it clear to everybody who's listening, anybody who clips this out, we stand for all free speech. We say bring it on. We're not afraid of the opposing view and not afraid of getting into tough conversations with the opposing view. They just have favored just shutting us down. They don't want to get into a back and forth with us on any platform, whether it's in person or online.

Jordan, let's take a couple issues of the day. We get censored because we talk about the simple fact that men shouldn't compete in women's sports at the collegiate level. We take a simple position that says, whether it's biblical or biological, there's only two genders, male and female, and that gets censored. It's because they know we're right. They're afraid that if those voices are heard, just speaking simple truth, that the craziness that they're trying to foist upon the American people will ultimately fail.

I pray that this free speech opens up everywhere, and always when we do, I'm confident that we'll get another 250 great years here in the United States of America. Thank you, Secretary Pompeo. You know the newest issue they're going to start flagging is climate change?

Yes. So if you then supported American energy independence today, which would mean drilling oil, things climate change folks don't like, do you get flagged just for saying that? So that's their new topic.

They keep choosing topic, as Secretary Pompeo said, topic after topic after topic where they can shut you down, remove you from the debate. Let's fight back aggressively. We've got people on our side now. We can fight this battle. We need your help. Support us at ACLJ.

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That is true. When I finished it up with Secretary Pompeo, it was in the news over the weekend, is that the next item Facebook is looking at putting as a priority to flag is climate issues. Now, again, you start so broadly with that, then do we as an organization support American energy independence and using lots of different ways to get there, but that would include oil and gas, things like the Keystone Pipeline. Do you just get flagged now for supporting American energy independence or for supporting the Keystone Pipeline?

Is that what's coming next for the fact checkers? Because that's basically what you're doing is you're going through a liberal wish list. It's not legislation that can get passed. And then you are cutting off the other side of the debate, which is a big part of our country, one by one by one. So you start on some of the issues that are more controversial, and then suddenly you're cutting off the debate on whether or not we should be doing more oil and gas exploration in the U.S. So you get from the controversial issues to ones that really feel like you should be able to just have a debate on in our country. You could be friends with somebody who doesn't necessarily support, who is a green energy person.

You could still be friends with that person online, or you should be able to. But if they start cutting you off and not allowing you even to get back into a back and forth exchange, you see again where these platforms are going. In a sense, they know that even though they're not treated like a traditional public forum, that they are bigger than any traditional public forum that exists in our country. So if they get to moderate and decide, and as Barack Obama has said over and over, if they are the content moderators, guess whose voice gets shut out? Ours.

Yours. You know what's so interesting about this? This has become, we used to talk about the highways and the byways, the streets and the sidewalks as the places that are, they're called, these are the traditional public forums. These are the places where you engage in free speech.

And the universities were uniquely the marketplace of ideas. But the fact of the matter is now, and you've got to be contemporary on this, the world has changed. And these social media platforms, Harry, have really become the public forums of today. They're not government owned, but they are engaging in what governments always worry about, and that is censorship.

I think that is correct. And this move is led by the elites. And so if we take a recent example, if we go back to Barack Obama's speech last week, it was massively dishonest. He claims that we need more control of speech, not less. Basically, the left has focused initially on COVID uniformity. So you had to have a uniform view on COVID. Then it became Ukraine uniformity.

And now I think Jordan is absolutely correct. They want uniformity with respect to climate change. I think it is time for the American people to push back because the left wing approach is simply a campaign of misinformation on steroids. My idea is this, folks.

I'm not from a young, young part of our generation, but certainly younger, where we were first to adapt to these new platforms and use them for political speech, political debate. And it's gotten to a point where I was very active on Twitter and still posting a lot on Twitter right now. But the activity, the back and forth, because of the bots.

So Elon Musk has talked about that. You need to get rid of the bots out. And then that also hurts their whole pitch that, oh, it's a Russian disinformation campaign.

So he wants to get rid of the bots. But the idea that I can have a liberal attacking me, calling me names, you know, all this, if I respond with my own, with the facts or my opinion, because that's what they've gotten to. For conservatives to respond on these social media platforms, I can't just come with my opinion. No, no, I've got to come up with like 15 factual sources. That's not a debate. That's just me having to do all this work because a liberal can just say, no, you're wrong.

I don't like that view. I should be able to say the same thing. Now, it might add weight to my argument.

The more facts I can bring on, that's wonderful. But I should also be able to have an opinion and a rapid fire one at that. That's the whole purpose of Twitter is I could see something and immediately have an opinion to it if I feel like expressing it. Right now, I don't feel like I've got a platform that honestly reaches the amount of people where I can honestly just say what I feel at that moment without potentially losing all of my ability to interact on social media. Which is always the concern of censorship, Harry, when especially viewpoint censorship is you close off and only allow one side of the debate.

I think that is correct. But I also think the left has engaged in a deliberate policy of closing off debate because this is part of their calculus in order to achieve complete control. If you look at some of the individuals who are very active in global affairs, they are actually celebrating the power to basically know what people are thinking in real time and basically nudge people in the correct lane. And I think at the end of the day, we all have to be wary of these attempts to limit free speech. Many people believe today that allowing free speech to continue constitutes nothing less than what?

Repressive tolerance. This is a PBS headline from this weekend. This is before the news on Twitter broke that they were in details. But this weekend, Twitter banned ads that contradict science on climate change. Twitter will no longer allow advertisers on its site who deny scientific consensus on climate change. But as people pointed out on social media, we can do all we want as the United States. But the issues with the climate, even if you want to look into that, until you get buy-in from the other major countries in the world, we're just hurting our own economy by doing this to ourselves. Russia's not doing it. India's not doing it. China's not doing it.

So if they're not going to do it, first you've got to build consensus. But second, this is what they launched. At the same time, they're about to be bought out and lose their whole company from Elon Musk because of things like this.

A guy who has an electric car company and relaunched a space program, but they're still at their final days banning ads on Twitter because it conflicts with their view of climate change. Yeah, and you've got now, and this is, I think, part of what's happening in the culture and in the country is people are speaking out and taking a stand. Here's what's good about this.

We may see a platform return to what it was supposed to be originally, which was this marketplace of ideas with quick responses. Now, there's the corporate side of this, and Harry, we only got a minute here. So what happens next? He's made the offer.

What happens? Well, I think it will likely be incumbent on the board of directors to accept the offer. Because of the monetary gain to the shareholders. Absolutely, and their failure to do so may expose them to a violation of their fiduciary obligations within the Delaware general corporate law. Yeah, so corporately, what Elon Musk did was so smart.

It was basically the offer you can't refuse because your legal liability would be too great. But people doubted that he could get it. He was being mocked by the left, and this is why they're having to close their streaming platforms. Just like they mocked his cars, then they mocked his rockets, and it's all been working out. Now he's number one, the richest guy in the world. Then they mocked and said he didn't have enough money. I love when they do this to guys like Trump and Elon Musk, and they act like, oh, they're not going to have the money to put their mouth in.

Are you kidding me? These are billionaires. They're highly successful people, and guess who their friends are? Highly successful who trust them as innovators. So if they say, let's do this, guys. They got a bunch of guys.

Yeah, let's do it. And that's what Elon Musk did, and now they've got the offer. They can't refuse.

So whatever they wanted to use through Twitter is, I think, going to be a fundamentally changed platform for good. And I think we all push and hold Elon Musk to that standard, too, as well. Don't just give away today and celebrate. Support the work of the ACLJ.

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