Smithsonian KICKS OUT Pro-Life Students

This is Jay Sekulow.

The Smithsonian Museum kicks out pro-life students. The ACLJ taking action, 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, Jay Sekulow. Hey everybody, welcome to the broadcast. I want to give you a little bit of breaking news on a major issue for us. You know, we talk about the pro-life issue and sometimes we're talking about legislation, other times we're talking about work at the Supreme Court of the United States. Sometimes it's, in this particular case, it's students that want to stand for life.

And in standing for life, what they're finding themselves in a situation, this has happened right now in Washington, D.C. It was after the March for Life was complete, a group of high school students, their teachers and chaperones, excuse me, went over to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. The police there kicked out the entire group of pro-life students and their chaperones for one reason and one reason only. Were they being impolite? No. Were they causing problems?

No. What did they do? They had a pro-life message on their hats. They all wore, which is very common when you see students on these field trips, and I got it up on the screen right now. It said, it was a Catholic school, it said Rosary Pro-Life.

That was it. And that became the basis upon which these kids were kicked out. And the police officers that were there for the Smithsonian went into this profanity-laced tirade against these students and their teachers.

And the outrage here is, I'd like to see if the American Civil Liberties Union will join me in this lawsuit. They're the champions of free speech, they used to be. In the old days they would have, I'm not so sure they would now.

But this is a big deal. And they wore the hats, mostly folks, because that's how they identified the students you've seen when kids are in these events. Well, I mean, they're coming after the March for Life. So the last kids are not going home to change, they're going to a hotel to change. And it's their cause, it's their passion, it's why they're there in the first place. And they're walking through the Smithsonian museums and they're asked not so politely to get out.

Well, here's what happened. The mother of two that we're representing said this, she said, her daughter just called from Washington, D.C., a dozen kids from their Catholic school in Greenville, South Carolina, just got kicked out of the Air and Space Museum for wearing a Pro-Life hat. They were told to remove their hats or leave.

The daughter told the man that they had to wear their hats. That's how they find each other in the crowd. And then they were all just kicked out, including the teachers and the chaperones. By the way, the Smithsonian receives over $1 billion a year from the government. That means we're paying for this every single year, taxpayer dollars being used to do this. So, again, the fact that you carry a Pro-Life message into an area, and it's government controlled here, does not give the government then the right to censor that message. If they had a rock and roll T-shirt on, it probably would have been fine. If they would have had some other statement, no problem. But it was Pro-Life. And that's viewpoint discrimination, it's content-based discrimination, and it's illegal. And from what we've seen, it's not like this was something that incited, like a language that incited violence or even had violent imagery. No.

This was simply- Put it back up on the screen. Rosary, Pro-Life. I mean, most people probably wouldn't even read it or notice it. And that's their school color? Yeah, again, like you said, they have to wear these things, make sure that a group stays, you've done this, you've all done it on a field trip or whatever it is.

We have to wear your school colors, you're wearing your school T-shirt that they hand out to make sure everyone is together, makes it easy for everyone to count. Sure, being Pro-Life in general can be controversial. Right now, of course, it's a hot button issue, but this was not something that really pushed any envelopes in terms of imagery or words. This is simply just Pro-Life, and that was enough to get them kicked out of one of the most popular tourist attractions. Oh, in Washington. In Washington, D.C. I mean, there are people with all kinds of expressive content on church in Washington, D.C. I mean, it's Washington, D.C. By the way, these don't become speech-free zones. I haven't used that phrase since about 1987, because that was my very first case that was involving speech, and the government entity there decided they'd create a speech-free zone, and that's pretty much what they call it.

And that's just not the way it works in the United States. In America, we have the freedom of speech, and that includes Pro-Life students in Washington, D.C. That's not an enclave immune from the First Amendment. To the contrary, it's protected speech in an area where speech should be allowed. They're not disruptive speech. It was a passive message, and it was like Logan said, they just finished the march, and they all came over there, and they didn't have time to go to their hotel. This is ridiculous.

These kids wear these hats so that the teachers can quickly identify the students in a crowd. Absurd. ACLJ going to work on this? Your support of the ACLJ makes all that happen. You're hearing about it on the broadcast? We work on it. Because of your support of the ACLJ, ACLJ.org. Back with more in a moment.

Hey, welcome back to the broadcast, everyone. We're joined now by our Senior Counsel for Global Affairs and brand-new book by Mike Pompeo, which everybody should be getting, called Never Give an Inch. I read the book in the last couple of days, and I'll tell you, for me, it was like re-leaving history in a good way, but the book is fantastic. It's available at Amazon or wherever you get your books, and it's called Never Give an Inch, and joining us is our Senior Counsel for Global Affairs, Mike Pompeo. Mike, let me ask you a question. I want to start this, and you cover this in your book, and that is this whole classified document. Obviously, you're not talking about what's happened in the last few months, but it started with classified documents in former President Trump's possession. Then it was classified documents in the current President's possession when he was the Vice President and when he was in the Senate.

Now it's multiple locations. Now it's former Vice President Pence. You know, I said the mistake that Merrick Garland made was appointing a special counsel.

He always said that regulation should be removed. It causes nothing but problems because if you name a special counsel, at this point, the Attorney General could say, you know what, this is obviously a much broader issue than I thought or that we thought. We've got to handle it differently. Don't make everything a criminal case, but they did. But how do you see this playing out?

You dealt with classified information. What's your thoughts? I don't think we'll have them.

I don't think we'll have them. We'll go back to that in a moment and we'll find out what happened there. No problem. I've got you. Can you hear me? Yeah, we can now.

I've got you. First of all, Jay, thanks for reading the book and I'll bet, I hadn't thought about that, I'll bet you did relive some memories from our time. Yeah, I sure did. I sure did. I'll bet that's true.

Something more intense than others. Go ahead. Yes, very focused on America.

Yeah. Look, on this classified document issue, I, much like the Vice President, I would have had a secure facility in my home. We would have had thousands of classified documents there. The responsibility is each of us to do them well, right?

Put them where they're supposed to be, lock them in the safe at night, close the door. Somehow that appears not to have happened. My core concern here is really twofold. One, I hope Congress gets a chance to see what was in those documents because we need to know if there was something serious and created any risk and then go mitigate that risk. So the reason for classification is important.

If it's nothing, that's good news, then we've got a separate problem. Second, make sure everybody gets treated the same, and I mean that in two ways. One, don't treat Trump one way, Pence another, and Biden yet another. These are serious things. When we have classified documents to be handled, everyone should be treated equitably, and then I write and never give an inch about this very issue. When I was a young soldier, I handled classified information then too, 40 years ago. Make sure we don't just prosecute junior people.

Whatever the standard is for proper handling of these and whatever the accountability mechanisms, it should be the same for everyone. So there's a very interesting section of this, and of course I dealt with it, and that is you discuss Adam Schiff, who Kevin McCarthy has refused, along with Eric Swalwell, to put on the Intelligence Committee. I want to get your reaction to that move by Speaker McCarthy first. What was your thoughts on that?

Fundamentally, the right decision. I'm very happy that Speaker McCarthy made that decision. I served with Adam Schiff when I was a member of the House Intelligence Committee, and then I dealt with him when I was at the CIA. He was the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, or senior member of the House Intelligence Committee. I literally, we would send stuff to them, and it would come out, and it was almost certainly him and his staff that leaked that information. And as I've written and talked about, that's just indecent.

It's not right. He had a very sensitive position. And then he used that position to go out and tell lies to the American people that he had to have known weren't true about the Russia hoax. He kept saying, wait, folks, you're going to see all this.

And you, of course, never saw it. We now know the only collusion appears to have been between a mechanical and FBI guy who now clearly was on the payroll of a Russian oligarch. So working inside of Comey's FBI, no evidence of collusion between Donald Trump and the Russians. And the hoax went on, and Adam Schiff was the primary deliverer of that hoax.

It hurt our ability to execute our foreign policy, Jay. I want to play, this is a clip we put together of Adam Schiff, it only takes about 45 seconds, and all the statements he made about the evidence in plain sight of collusion between the former President and the Russians. So there's clear evidence on the issue of collusion, and this adds to that body of evidence. There's ample evidence of collusion in plain sight, and that is true. Have Democrats found any evidence of collusion?

Yes, we have. You can see evidence in plain sight on the issue of collusion, pretty compelling evidence. And there is significant evidence of collusion. There is ample evidence, and indeed there is, of collusion of people in the Trump campaign with the Russians. I think there's plenty of evidence of collusion or conspiracy. All of this is evidence of collusion. There is significant evidence of collusion between the campaign and Russia. On page 17 and 18 of your book, you get into this whole Adam Schiff matter where he was leaking.

You know, my experience, and by the way, I laughed out loud audibly when I was reading this, when you talk about the President and talking about this whole thing with Mueller and the whole probe, and he called you my Mike, which I was my Jay. I don't know if that was a good thing or a bad thing. I'm still trying to figure that out. Only time will tell, yes. Yeah, we'll find out, I guess. You may find out sooner than not. So, yeah, my Jay always followed up with something that required a lot of sleepless nights for the next week.

That's about right. Let me ask you this. In writing the book, you're reliving kind of the key moments of your time there, Never Given Inch. You got this great story that's developed out of the Middle East. You had the Abraham Accords, which were great. Totally changed the whole Middle East dialogue.

And then you had the situation with the school in Doha, the Jewish day school that took place, just opened in the last few days. That had to be a great moment for you when you heard that and read that, that this is how far it's come in such a short period of time. It's amazing. It's completely amazing, right? When the Emiratis launched their fighter planes today, it's not to attack Israel.

It's the flying formation alongside them. I mean, it's just an idea that's just crazy 10 years ago. And it took a lot of us.

It's not just me. It was Jared Kushner, Steven Mnuchin, Ambassador Friedman, Prime Minister Netanyahu, a great group of leaders who all figured this was a nutty situation and made peace with Israel. It's really a glorious change in history. And for everybody who's out there listening, it's less likely that your child, your son, your daughter will have to go fight in the Middle East as a result of what we did.

And that always, for me, was the most important thing, keeping our kids safe, keeping our country safe. Yeah, I'm holding in my hand, for those that are seeing us on TV or on our social media platforms, this is a pen that I was given as a gift in Israel when I was representing the Israelis the first time before, maybe the second time before the International Criminal Court in The Hague. And it's obviously blue and white is the color of the Israeli flag. It was the 50th anniversary of the modern state of Israel's recognition. And when you think about the modern history of Israel, it's not a long time here. But I cannot think of another event that matches what happened with the Abraham Accords under your watch. Because while you had other peace attempts, they never really materialized anything.

They could have, but they were always thwarted. This took a totally new approach by getting other allies involved, not just the Palestinian-Israel conflict, but getting the greater Middle East involved. And it's, I mean, I think it's paid off unbelievable dividends already. And you discuss that at length in the book, by the way, it's called Never Give an Inch, Fighting for the America I Love. That seems, that had to be a very, that whole situation in the Middle East has to be very gratifying. We did good work there, good work for the American people there.

We had Iran as isolated and as broke as they have ever been. We made clear to the whole world, the United States, Israel, not an inch of daylight between us. We're going to work on the security issues. We're going to work on the important faith issues together.

We're going to be partners all the way through. And that combination let these Arab nations come to see that their position on Israel was just, didn't make sense. And now that's benefiting, America's benefiting Israelis who are traveling to Abu Dhabi and to Doha and to Bahrain. And it's just really remarkable stuff.

And I think that's going to stick because it turns out it's been the best interest of the people of each of those countries to work together, to do security together, and to build their economies together. Logan, I want to ask, I'm going to ask the secretary this, but is it correct that Adam Schiff, in announcing his next move politically, went to TikTok? Yeah, he started on TikTok and he really started on there not only to say what he was doing, but also to just have deep sorrow and sadness that he'd been removed from the committees. And he just had this emotional depressing. And of all the platforms he went to?

Of course, the one that everyone's saying to get off of. So Mike, you've been very concerned about China and concerned about TikTok, and that's what Adam Schiff chose to go on. You can't make this stuff up.

You cannot make it up. It's absolutely mind-boggling. It's surprising he didn't make the announcement with Eric Swalwell and his girlfriend standing next to him. It is crazy to say you're going to try to attract people to this thing that I know Adam Schiff knows is presenting a risk to America.

I think it tells you a little bit about who he is and what he values, and it's mostly Adam Schiff that he is interested in. There's a book by Secretary Pompeo, our Senior Counsel for Global Affairs, called Never Give an Inch, a fighting for the America I love. It's available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, wherever you get your books.

We encourage you to get it. It is a great read. Fantastic book. Thanks for being on. Congratulations on the book. Thank you all. Great job.

Thanks as always. Coming up, folks, we're going to get into a couple of other issues, some judicial nominees. Judicial nominee that didn't know what Article 2 of the Constitution was. If that was a Republican nominee, you know what happened when somebody did that? They were not confirmed because the White House pulled back their nomination. It doesn't appear to be the case in this one.

We're taking your calls also at 800-684-3110, 1-800-684-3110. Don't follow us on TikTok, but they can follow us everywhere else. ... platforms, and again, it's kind of a varying degree of evil, but you can find us on all of them. Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and of course, broadcasting every day on Rumble.

No evil there. No, free speech there at least. You can find us on Rumble, but also just go to ACLJ.org, support the work, and see all the great content. The video content, the audio content, the blogs, the news stories. So much great content that comes on ACLJ.org.

Each and every day, brand new material that you can read, that you can watch, you can share with your friends. Give us a call, 1-800-684-3110. Hey everybody, welcome back to the broadcast.

Taking your calls at 800-684-3110, 1-800-684-3110. We had a situation where you have judicial nominees, and, you know, they go up before the Senate Judiciary Committee, and you kind of see what happens and see how prepared they are. We're not prepared. The headline on NBC News is, Senator Kennedy stumps buying judicial nominees with basic question about the Constitution. Let me play it for everybody.

Take a listen. Judge, on the far end, tell me what Article 5 of the Constitution does. Article 5 is not coming to mind at the moment. Okay, how about Article 2? Neither is Article 2.

Okay. Article 2, of course, Article 1 is the, this is where it gets, it gets, folks, wacky, Article 1 is the legislative power. Article 2 is the executive power. Article 3 is the judiciary. It is, I mean, if you're going to be a federal court judge, you should know that. So, her nomination will go through, though, and she will be confirmed. Why? Because elections have consequences. Now let me play you something else.

This was the same Senator asking a Republican nominee to be a judge. This questions. Have you ever tried a jury trial? I have not. Civil? No. Criminal? No.

Bench? No. Have you ever played our federal court? I have not.

Okay. Have you ever taken a deposition? I was involved in taking depositions when I was associate at Wiley Ryan when I first came out of law school. But that, that was. Have you ever, how many, how many depositions?

I would, I'd be struggling to. You got the point. Okay. That nomination was pulled by the Trump White House. The judge who is a current state court judge is going to be, my guess is confirmed. But, Harry, this shows you, well, first of all, it shows you that when you don't, when you lose control of the Senate, these things happen. Elections have consequences.

But it shows you that it's, there are two different standings. Senator Kennedy asked the Republican questions that showed that person was not qualified and Democratic nominees that shows that person couldn't identify the constitutional framework. At least articles one, two, and three, if you want to give her a pass on article five in the amendment clause, okay, whatever.

But article one, two, and three, come on. It certainly is a problem. But the fundamental problem is there is insufficient vetting with respect to some of these nominees. And the blame for that goes to the Biden administration, number one. Number two, they failed to fully prep her for her, basically her hearing. And so we have an unprepared nominee.

We have an unprepared administration. If you focus, for instance, on article two, it's important to note article two gives the President of the United States the power to appoint an article three judge. And so in many respects, this poor nominee undercut her own candidacy for an article three judgeship. That would have been interesting if he asked article three, do you know what that, and that never came up, did it?

He went to, okay, he went to five and two. Because, you know, I said this, when we did the impeachment trial, it was one of those rare moments where you have like almost all three, well, really all three branches of government. It's in the legislative process, and impeachment is a political trial, so that's article one in the House and Senate, Congress. That's the legislative power, the branch. Then it was, of course, involving the executive, because the President of the United States is the executive, and that's article two. And then it's overseen by the Chief Justice of the United States, and he's an article three appointed judge, which is a lifetime appointment. But it just shows you the nature of how this goes. Logan, what's going to happen is she's going to be confirmed. The other nominee, who should have been pulled, was pulled.

Yeah, I think that's what you said. Elections have consequences here, sort of the proof. It kind of doesn't even matter what is said. And you hear that from some of the Supreme Court, when the Supreme Court nominations are even happening, is a, a lot of the more traditional, and I'll say traditional in an interesting way, a lot of the more old school Washington politicians that are in there, whether they're conservative or not, just go, well, you know, you're going to make it through. We know you're going to make it through, so we'll question you.

We're going to ask you questions. Of course, when it's a conservative justice, they may have to get confirmed. They'll grill them.

They'll put them through absolute torture. But when it is a more liberal-leaning justice, you have the conservatives who go, you know, we know that you're qualified even if we disagree with you, but that's just not how it works. It's not both sides.

It's not. Now, while we're talking about Washington, D.C., I want to talk about the fact that the IRS, Harry, is saying that they're letting their people still work from home. We've dealt with agents and they're working on their houses.

This is great. I make the joke, what are you doing, faxing tax returns to their home, which I guess you are, because they still do faxes, believe it or not. But here's the interesting thing. There's a Republican GOP bill that would ban telework under, and, you know, this kind of mass telework that's going on right now under a Republican bill until the tax return blockage is eliminated, because right now they're saying they're a couple of years behind in processing. Also, the mayor of Washington has said that to the President, get these federal offices back open, you're killing the economic viability of D.C.

Absolutely. And so one of the things to keep in mind is all of the decision making theoretically associated with COVID has enormous consequences. The COVID emergency, at least in my opinion, President Biden probably disagrees with me, is over. And number two, what is truly important to the American people is getting their tax returns processed on time. And right now, apparently that is not happening. And so I agree with the bill proposed by the Republicans, which would require them to return to work in the office. But we also need to hold those agents accountable when and if they do return. They really need to do the job for the American people. Keep in mind that the Democrats have passed a bill with Republican help, unfortunately, that would basically lead to the hiring of 80,000 new agents. And according to at least one survey, guess what?

Most of the new audits will likely be aimed at middle and lower middle class individuals as opposed to the wealthy. So it strikes me that we've got our priorities wrong in this particular country and the IRS is basically ground zero for demonstrating that particular point. I think this is serious, folks, and it is affecting the economic viability of downtown, but it's also affecting the efficient operation of government. Let's go ahead and take a call. Well, we'll save it. Dan and a couple of others, stay on the line there. We're going to get you after the break. We've got a whole 30 minutes of broadcast coming up.

That's right. If you don't get the second half hour on your local station, if you're listening over the air on terrestrial radio, some of the stations don't carry the full hour. And if they don't, we're broadcasting live right now. Or if you're hearing us later on, we have the whole show available.

You can find it right now broadcasting on ACLJ.org as well as on Rumble, YouTube, Facebook. You can find us on all those platforms live each and every day. So we do a full additional half hour coming up after this break. And we do have about three, four lines open right now. So if you want to be on the air, this is a great day to call Friday. If you have a question about some of the topics we've covered, give us a call. 1-800-684-3110.

1-800-684-3110. And we're going to be hitting some other topics later. Yeah, we are. And people are calling also about the latest on the documents. We just had Mike Pompeo talking about that. Listen, I've said it. I'm going to say it again. Merrick Artland, you started this thing by appointing special counsel. Now you've got two.

You're probably going to have to have three. Why don't you get rid of all of them and say, you know what? We're going to take this back and get this resolved civilly, like it should be, a document dispute, and not have the former President, the current President, and the former vice President under suspicion or under a special counsel investigation.

They haven't started the one on Vice President Pence yet, but who knows? This just tells you, folks, how important these issues are. ACLJ is front and center on all of this. We're the ones who got the FOIA into the National Archives and got expedited review. Support the work of the ACLJ at ACLJ.org.

That's ACLJ.org. We're going to be back with more, including your phone calls at 1-800-684-3110. Keeping you informed and engaged. Now more than ever, this is Sekulow. And now your host, Jay Sekulow. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the broadcast. We're taking your calls at 800-684-3110.

If you're just joining us, brand new case. Students after the March for Life with their class, teachers and chaperones, after the march was completed, went to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, very popular site in Washington, D.C. They had a – we'll put it on the screen. They wore their hat, which is how they were identified by their teachers when they were walking around. It was a light blue hat. They called the school color. It said Rosary Pro-Life.

It was obviously a Catholic school out of Greenville, South Carolina. They were taunted by the security personnel and police. There was a profanity-laced tirade against these students and teachers, and they were then asked to leave. Not asked to leave, they were told they are leaving. And this happens in the United States of America as if that's not – like Washington, D.C. is now a speech-free zone if you're pro-life.

That's not the way it works. We've got clients already. We're preparing – there's going to be litigation in this one. And we're preparing that, and we're proud to be doing it. We're standing up for life, whether it is at the Supreme Court of the United States or now it's going to be a district court in Washington, D.C. We also got calls coming in at 800-684-3110.

So let's take those. Yeah, let's go to Dan who's calling in the state of California. Dan, you're on the air. Hey, Dan. Thank you.

Morning. I used to – when I was in the Navy, I was what they call the Comsec material security officer. Yes. I had all this secret and top-secret communication material in a vault that took two of us to get into, and every year I had to do an inventory, physically cite every single document, secret and top-secret. There was a – the inventory form was unclassified, as I recall, and it had the control number for that document, how many copies there were.

Yes. And then I had to sign off that. I had physically seen it. And there was another gentleman who had to sign off that we had physically seen it.

Right. It was a dual-check system. Colonel Smith from our – from the MEACLJ, our – this will be on later, talked about how it's handled the military. Well, apparently that's not the way it was handled by any of these government officials.

And I don't think they're – I think they – you know, it's interesting. The archives said they've got a list where they kind of knew what was missing on the Trump when he left, but apparently they did not know what was missing from President Biden when he was the vice President or when he was the Senate in the Senate. Because they were checking on Trump. Because they were too busy checking on Trump. You're exactly right. Checking on Trump, going through all of his details, figuring out because why people have issues, and then of course the Biden administration and the Obama administration. And they've had a fiasco all the way – They'll give him a pass because why?

They like them. Yeah, but what a fiasco in the way they've handled it. I mean, Harry, you know, it's like – it's like looking at the Keystone Cops.

I mean, not to date myself there, but – I think you're precisely correct. The National Archives is simply an example of incompetence on steroids, and it looks like they have difficulty understanding their own accountability. And so keep in mind, with respect to Biden's classified documents, he had classified documents going back as far as his time in the Senate. Keep in mind, he took documents as a vice President. And so what is going on in this country? We can't master basic competence at the highest levels of government. So I think at the end of the day, the American people need to push to remove huge groups of people from the federal government.

Both at the National Archives, but also with respect to the classification system itself. I knew everybody knows. I mean, we don't know this for a fact, but you know, if I was betting, I would say it's more likely than that that they're going to find other documents in Joe Biden's possession, probably other documents in Trump's possession, probably other – I mean, I don't know this, but just the way it's going. But Merrick Garland weaponized the FBI by creating a special counsel in the Department of Justice. Now he had to put one on his boss, President Biden, which is, by the way, let's get rid of these special counsels. And now what does he do with the former vice President? I don't know.

My parents are good men. None of these people, all three of them, should not be subjected to this. That's what our position is. Get rid of the special counsel. Because if you have a special counsel, you know what you would do as Merrick Garland and say, you know what, call off the dogs here, call off the fight. We're going to get this thing resolved civilly because obviously there's something fundamentally wrong with our tracking system, as the caller, Dan, just said.

But instead he unleashed a whirlwind, to quote Senator Schumer, and this is what you get when you don't have really good leadership, and he is not a good leader. All right, we're going to take your calls when we come back 800-684-3110, 1-800-684-3110. Back with more in a moment. Hey, welcome back to the broadcast, everyone.

We're taking your calls at 1-800-684-3110, 800-684-3110. I want to update everybody on what we're doing in court. Okay, we had an argument yesterday at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit on a religious liberty case. We had Jeff Surtees on getting ready for a case over at the Third Circuit Court of Appeals on a pro-life case.

We've got a brand new case in Washington, D.C., and that case is, of course, on, and this is important here, folks, that case is involving students. Catholic school out there for the March for Life, all of them had on the same color, which was a school color beanie, that said Rosary Pro-Life. And for that, they were thrown out of the Smithsonian. And the teachers and the chaperones said, if they take off the hats, we can't identify them. So what if they would have had a t-shirt that would have said Rosary Pro-Life and the name of their school on the back? Would that have gotten them taken out of the Smithsonian?

And the answer is yes. But if you have another shirt on there that has a message on it, it doesn't, which is viewpoint discrimination and content-based discrimination, and the First Amendment doesn't allow it. Precisely. So if the Smithsonian staff actually understood the Constitution, they would not have engaged in this misconduct. So the Smithsonian staff said, this is a neutral area. In reality, based on what they did to these students, the staff essentially converted the museum into what? An authoritarian area.

Basically, they were excluding speech based on its viewpoint and based on its content that is clearly unconstitutional. And clearly, this is a case that the ACLJ should be proud to take. We are.

And we're preparing litigation. Let's go ahead and take a phone call. Let's go to Justin in California. You're on Line 5. Justin, welcome.

Hey, thanks for taking my call. Quick two-part question here. So first part, is Smithsonian a federal building?

I don't quite remember. And part two of it is, I mean, it seems like a dystopian reality here that like people are going to be kicked out of, if it is a federal building or any building for that matter, for wearing an article of clothing. My question is, is that covered under free speech, basically?

Yeah, both of those are really good questions. So first, let me say that the, as it relates to the building itself, we've done the research on that already. First Amendment applies to the Smithsonian. It's not a separate entity, but it's considered a federal entity. For instance, if you were to slip and fall, they're immune from suit because they're a federal agency. So you can't be immune from suit as a federal agency or a federal entity, as they call it, and then have the First Amendment not apply. The mass majority is from federal funding, is it? A billion dollars a year. Right.

So I think the Smithsonian's, there may be some gray area because you can donate to it, you can support them, you can join the Smithsonian. Look, all of them, they're excellent. They're great. This is probably more than likely some people who got out of line who don't really know what they're doing, and this is what always has happened. But it was multiple police. They do know what they're doing. This is the problem.

I know what you're saying. They may have been mis-, that'll be their defense. Oh, we're misinformed or we didn't understand. You cannot tell someone to take off your pro-life message, your pro-choice message, whatever. You said this wasn't, to clarify, because look, there are pro-life, you think of pro-life protesters. This is not a protest. I'm thinking you're thinking maybe violent imagery.

This is a high school field trip. You're thinking of violent imagery, though, maybe thinking of, this is not this. If you could watch this, if you were not listening on radio, it is a bright blue beanie that just says pro-life.

Here it is. I'm saying, for those who aren't watching, it's just a beanie that says pro-life in the school name. But I'm sure that's the school color. Yeah, no, it's nothing, as I'm saying, comparatively to maybe if they're going to say, well, this is a divisive message or this is spreading violence, none of that.

This is a, you have to really be looking out for it to even be, to notice what it is. 100% correct. All right, so we're taking your calls at 800-684-3110, but we're also taking in unlawful entrants.

And Wes Smith is here. The Biden administration is saying, hey, good news, we've got, numbers are looking better at the border. And Wes, you've looked at it and said that's just not true.

It is absolutely not true. The President bragged this week that there's a new agreement with four countries, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Haiti, that immigrants from those countries, if they apply for asylum from their own country, they can be admitted, 30,000 a month. Anyone from those countries who shows up at the border and crosses illegally, Mexico has agreed to take 30,000 a month back, sent back across the border. So the President is bragging that because of this, that the border crossings from these four countries are down 97%. What he is not telling the American people is that all the people from the other countries, those illegal crossings continue to rise. The last month we have records for, 251,847 people were apprehended crossing illegally.

That does not count the getaways. And then the other thing, Jay, that I found so interesting, you know, if you put these two things beside each other, he's bragging that we have a decrease of illegal immigration from four countries. In three months, October, November, and December of last year, fentanyl that has been caught at the border is up 241%. And that's just the fentanyl that is caught at the ports of entry. What we don't know is, we know the fentanyl is getting in another place just because the border is so porous and open because fentanyl poisoning, yes, continued to rise in America.

He fails to mention all of those. Harry, there has been, there is no real, let's be clear here on a policy standpoint, there really has not been a clear policy. I don't like calling them illegal immigrants because immigration is important and vital to our country and my grandparents were immigrants. I call it unlawful entrants. These are people that have unlawfully entered the United States.

There has to be some accountability, but you've got to first recognize that there's a problem. I think that's true, but that's the fundamental problem with the Biden administration, their inability to recognize this as a problem. In fact, the Biden administration, particularly the left-wing members of the Biden administration, are actually secretly applauding open borders. And keep in mind that Vice President Kamala Harris, she has refused to go to the border, notwithstanding the fact that she is allegedly the border czar. And now this particular problem is metastasizing throughout the country.

So now Colorado, New York State, New York City, they are now border states because many of these migrants, they are moving all around the country. And the Biden administration basically tells many of these individuals that they need to report, but the Biden administration cannot account for these illegals at any particular point in time. So we have a huge problem, and it's connected to child trafficking, it's connected to sex trafficking, and as Wesley correctly points out, it's connected to drug trafficking. And this has consequences for the daily lives of middle and lower middle class Americans. The Biden administration, folks, they are basically insulated from many of these problems. Many of them are wealthy enough to live in gated communities.

While most of us don't live in gated communities, we have to deal with the problem each and every day. You know, I want to turn our attention for a moment back to the classified document issue, because Wes, you were, you know, the archives now, we broke this late yesterday in the broadcast, National Archives is now sending out memorandums to the Presidents, former Presidents, former vice Presidents, I'm sure others as well, notifying their representatives, because at the archives you have, the President designates people to be their representatives for engaging with the National Archives. And it's to check to see if they have classified documents, because obviously this is a problem. Now, despite the fact that Merrick Garland's messed this thing up as attorney general by unleashing criminal cases against the sitting President and the former President, which is absurd on both counts, this does show a fundamental problem.

Oh, absolutely. And it's embarrassing what is going on. But the fact that the National Archives is sending this letter to the former Presidents and vice Presidents and their representatives, the fact that they feel the need to do that is also very embarrassing. And as Secretary Pompeo was saying earlier, there's so much over-classification too. Things are classified that don't need to be classified.

And then the things that are, you know, they don't have good control of. And as we talked about yesterday, the Senate, Democrat leaders in the Senate are trying to get the White House and DOJ to tell them whether or not any of these documents that they have collected impacts national security. And the White House and the Department of Justice of the United States of America is refusing to respond to the Democratic leadership in the Senate.

We don't have time. We're going to take nobody's call and we'll take it after the next statement. Yeah, we'll take all the calls. There's a couple that are on hold right now, but we also have a couple lines open.

1-800-684-3110. Always good to get your calls in here in this last segment. We're also going to be talking about some of the news that came out of the conservative media world in terms of Newsmax. Yeah, what's your sense? Newsmax has been taking off DirecTV.

Yes, and we'll discuss that in detail when we come back. We can kind of give you a bit of a rundown. But yeah, they're the latest one to fall to DirecTV, while DirecTV loses half of their customers to begin with. But beyond that, you have the removal of OAN last year. And that was their main outlet. And then now the removal of Newsmax for different reasons. We'll discuss those according to the press and according to reports. We'll go over that and what it could mean in terms of conservative media outlets and maybe the censorship of those media outlets and why it's important to have alternatives.

That's why we're here for you. Go support the work of the ACLJ. Not just a media organization, but we do provide you this show along with plenty of other great media content. Including the Secular Brothers podcast, which I listened to last night.

Your latest one was great. Yep, we did that. I will do it three days a week and kind of a more lighthearted look at what's happening in the world of news and politics and entertainment.

You can find that at SecularBrothers.com and all the other sources. You said I don't like to sign things. Sign things for me. Yes.

No, you like to sign for other people. It's fine. ACLJ.org.

You can find that whole discussion on Secular Brothers from yesterday. We'll be right back. Welcome back. We're going to take your phone calls right now. And if you want to call in, a few lines still open. 1-800-684-3110.

I'll say it slower. 1-800-684-3110. Get your phone lines. Get your phone calls in right now. Some lines are open. Let's go to Naomi, who is calling on line three in Alabama. You're on the air. Hello.

Thank you for taking my call. My question is, what is the limitations of the special counsel? And the reason I ask is because they obviously established a pattern of mishandling of the classified documents by uncovering the documents with President Biden, President Pence.

It all started, of course, with President Trump. So there could be many, many others. Oh, you're not kidding.

I mean, there could be. I was going to say, you're going to start putting special counsel for everybody that's going to find classified documents. You're going to have to have a new floor in the Justice Department called the special counsel floor.

What are the limitations? They still work for the Department of Justice. It's different than the old independent counsel statute, which was independent from the Justice Department. They had a budget. They had their staff.

And they decided which way would they go. The special counsels still report to the Attorney General. So he could shut it off. He could keep it going. He can approve or disapprove of indictments or warrants. The problem is they let this thing get out of the gate, and he put a special counsel on former President Trump. Then Biden had his issues. Then he put a special counsel there to try to appear fair. Then Vice President Pence acknowledged that he had documents. They haven't put a special counsel yet, but they have the FBI investigating. Now the National Archives is saying, hey, we've got to talk to all our former Presidents, vice Presidents. You may have classified documents.

You do get them back to us. What Merrick Harlan needs to do is pull it all back and say these are not going to be handled as criminal cases. We're going to work the access of the documents out, and we're going to fix the system.

But to take this to grand juries is preposterous, whether it's Biden, Trump, or Pence. Period. End of discussion in my view. Yeah, absolutely. Again, when we take your questions or comments, we do have some coming in about the Smithsonian issue also.

This is from Rumble. This is Yvonne Rumble, who said Jay is the taxpayer funding a Smithsonian at risk since they did this to the pro-life students. I hope not. I'm going to take them to federal court. We're going to make them pay the consequences of this. Yeah, pay something. We're going to get an injunction, hopefully. Maybe a declaratory judgment as well. Maybe damages. We'll see how all that shakes out.

I don't want the Smithsonian out of business. I want them to train their police officers that they can't arrest people or throw people out because they don't like their pro-life message here. This wasn't profanity. This wasn't protest. It was not a protest. The protest was over there. They did the March for Life. I didn't even say that was a protest. This was not, again, I think we have to make sure people who don't know are just tuning in. This wasn't some sort of violent pro-life rhetoric.

You weren't talking about showing pictures or anything like that. No, the kids were in their beanie from their March so they could be identified by their teachers and chaplains. Let's go continue with Kahlil's phone lines. Our open still.

Terry's calling from Texas. You're on the air. Yes. My comment is that we need to pass a regulation or a law that places like the Smithsonian should have to post on the outside as well as the inside that this is a free speech zone, that all thoughts and opinions are allowed so that not only the employees know that, but the people coming in know that so that if they're going to be offended, maybe they want to stay out.

You know what? Here's what it is. This was passive protected speech. You're not going to have a soapbox order inside the Smithsonian. That's why content neutral time, place and manner regulations are the way you handle it, but it can't be based on content.

And here it was. And also a passive statement on a hat doesn't create an issue. And you're right. The price of freedom is you may see something you disagreed with, but that doesn't give you the right to censor it.

You know, the neighborhood censor becomes walking around government buildings looking for people that wear signs or wear shirts you don't like, but that's not the way it's supposed to work. So anyways, we're going to federal court on that. Our team's working on it right now. Now let's go to media for a minute. I am thrilled that we're on a thousand radio stations, Sirius XM, all these social media platforms, TV, and all the other methods we use to get our message out. But conservative media on DirecTV seems to be an issue. Yeah, DirecTV, which, you know, is suffering for customers to begin with.

You're talking about a really outdated system in a lot of places. They're surviving due to some rural areas they're doing because of some communities they still exist. But really, I think they've lost upwards of 50% of their audience the last four years since their acquisition. So you have that situation and they drop One American News a couple of years ago. They said it's just too much, that there's too much disinformation, misinformation coming from One American News. Now you could say One American News is probably the furthest right, or not even furthest right, maybe to the furthest of sort of the extreme right of the sort of main platformed stations. Whether you like their content or not, they were always pretty aggressive.

Again, positive or negative. You have Newsmax, which is much more measured in the sense of, you know, their host, Sean Spicer, Rick Grenell. It's not exactly just, it's not chaos programming. And sometimes One American News can be that way as much as I've been on both of them and I got no problem with them, but it's different. They get into a dispute, and sometimes you see this with DirecTV, hey, we're dropping Fox, we're dropping this, and they get into a contractual, carriage disputes. And you see Newsmax come out and say, no, this is much more targeted. And it's content. It's based on the content we put out. DirecTV responds as, no, this is a contract dispute.

But really what it comes down to, regardless of which way you kind of end up on that, which I think we all kind of agreed, sure, it's more one way than the other. I'm sure content does play into this, is the home for conservative media is shifting rapidly, whether that's in terms of the way The Daily Wire has rolled out or the way that some of these other podcasts have rolled out, or there are other platforms that are picking up different pieces. That's why we're throwing it beyond a thousand radio stations. Yeah, that's why terrestrial media, look, there are a lot of people who have been deplatformed on a lot of different things, and they're still on terrestrial radio. Because terrestrial radio has sort of always been a conservative talk haven. Yeah, the left tried to do talk radio and it never worked for them.

They have to, as Will said, they have to have government subsidies to get left-leaning radio to work. Right. And I do think that you have to be aware that times are changing and you cannot just rest on your laurels saying you're on 900 stations when you know media is rapidly changing. So we're there, but we're also on Rumble. We're also on YouTube. We're also on Facebook.

We're also on the easiest ways to access a program. And we've seen great success on those platforms. Some of them are. Look, we can definitely tell when we talk about a subject that's maybe a little more controversial, maybe like the one we did today, that it seems like, I don't know, our numbers don't seem to be as big today. I don't think it's because you don't want to see it.

I think it's because some of these platforms decide to feature certain things. I will say this. Our friends at Rumble, they sent out the alerts.

They have the people watching. Yeah. Rumble has really been a great source.

Now, Rumble, you go to it, be prepared. They're great content. They've got great stuff on there, but it is a free speech zone, meaning there is free speech. Everywhere.

Practically every side and everywhere. There's stuff you're going to agree with, disagree with, you're going to be offended. That's the price of freedom. But that's the price. Yeah, it's the price of freedom. That's what they do.

And it's great that they exist because you don't have that. While we are on YouTube, we have never had any real problems with YouTube content. Occasionally, you'll get a strike here and there.

Very rarely have we actually had any big issues. Facebook's always a challenge. Facebook has been an up and down street for the last year or two, but Facebook doesn't seem to like the terms pro-life. Do you know what they liked?

The Jay Sekulow Band. Right, because it's just generic. And all of a sudden- We've got about 190,000 viewers.

I think 200 now. Because that's more the content they've decided they want on their platform. Yeah, I understand. But thankfully, there are places like Rumble which are growing, which are under a lot of attack. I want to say this. You've seen Rumble's had to put out a lot of statements because they've been under DDOS attacks. They've had a lot of people coming after them. We're proud to be a partner with Rumble all the time. So thanks to them. Make sure if you're watching on Rumble or if you're watching on YouTube or Facebook, make sure you do whatever the like or subscribe is.

Comment, so on. We appreciate that. And make sure you tune into the show. We do it each and every day. If you're brand new, I know a lot of people on Rumble find us for the first one because Rumble puts us right on their homepage. We appreciate that.

If you're brand new, hit that subscribe. We appreciate it. We do this show each and every day. Noon, Easter, Monday through Friday and additional content throughout the week all day long on Rumble.

Obviously on YouTube as well and on Facebook. Alright, that's going to do it for this week. We appreciate it. Everyone, hope you have a great weekend and we'll talk to you on Monday on Secula.