BREAKING: ACLJ Sues the Smithsonian

Breaking news today on Sekulow is the ACLJ sues the Smithsonian. 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.

Welcome to Sekulow. We have a big announcement today on the broadcast. You know we've been working with students who attended the March for Life on January 20th and after the March for Life decided they would visit one of the Washington DC museums paid for with their taxpayer dollars. And so a group of students from Our Lady of the Rosary School in Greenville, South Carolina decided to visit the Air and Space Museum in Washington DC which had just reopened actually a couple of months ago. They had their pro-life beanies on which we just showed in the picture if you're watching the broadcast.

Bright blue, very common in Washington DC to see. This is because it identifies you as part of a student group. So they get harassed immediately upon entry.

And the first time they get harassed they're not sure it's actually direct harassment. They're going through security and the security guard says take off your hat. So you think okay maybe that's just to go through like the metal detector.

Fine. And then they say kind of don't put it back on. Then they see people with hats on. Including hats with political messages. These are high school students. They get what other people are wearing. They can read, they can see.

And so they see people with other messages. They see lots of people with hats on. It's freezing cold that day. I was in Washington that day.

I was in the 40s or something like that. And they put their beanies back on and they're just walking through the museum. They're not protesting. They're just walking through the museum.

They come across the Wright Brothers exhibit. And they all have said this to us because they're very specific. And that's the second time you have two security guards come up to them and start harassing them, cursing at them.

I mean using the most vile curse words you can use in front of minors. Remember they're high school students but some are minors. And then they kind of chase them out.

The students decide to leave on their own. They've said we're tired. It's been a long day. We're going out the door. And when they were going out the door, another security guard approaches them and says you may mark my day. I'm going to write you up. Now think about this.

If you're 17, 16, 18 years old, you're thinking about what's next in life is college admissions. What you might not want on your record is some write-up that I don't, again, I don't think that person even had the authority to do. But that's pretty scary. So we filed a lawsuit. The Smithsonian has apologized for this ultimately after we made it an issue by the way. They didn't apologize to that student group directly that day.

They made it an issue after it became a TV issue, an immediate issue. So in our lawsuit, we're not just demanding a declaratory judgment, which we are from the court that this was unconstitutional, that the Smithsonian cannot do this. Security guards were using very specific language like neutral zone. If you know a lot about security guards, they don't come up with constitutional law legal terms without being trained to use them. So what we want to know is what they were trained before the March for Life. And the Smithsonian opened the door to this lawsuit because they said in their statement, Logan, we also trade them after. But they didn't tell us what they trade them to do.

And I will preview this for people. This did not just happen at the Air and Space Museum. We have clients who visited other museums that day who are about to file lawsuits as well. Yeah, clearly this was some kind of directive. And yeah, using words like retraining should actually be, like you said, that's a mistake that they maybe even made by saying that because admitting that they were trained in a way that for some reason, a majority of the security guards, maybe more than just at the Air and Space Museum, were deciding to make pretty aggressive stances against pro-lifers during the March for Life. These were not people with aggressively violent or some sort of signage or something. You've seen some of those, like abortion protests. These were legit just blue beanies that said pro-life. Most people probably wouldn't even recognize or even read what they said.

And they said they were wearing them because obviously that's what their groups all wore. You got to keep people together. And there's thousands and thousands of people. I'll tell you the other museum.

You're going to love this, folks. It's a museum that can't keep track of their classified records, but they can harass you. This, in case, was a pro-life t-shirt that said pro-life generation, the National Archives. Yep. Their security also told a woman to take her shirt off.

Take your shirt off. You can't wear that here because it said pro-life generation. Are we at a point in our country that's the kind of language any security guards are going to target?

Because remember, that's a bad language coming from the Biden administration. This is misinformation and disinformation to be pro-life. We take your calls on it. 1-800-684-3110. We represent them at no cost because of your support of the ACLJ. Donate today. ACLJ.org. Donate online. Good question came in from Rubble.

I like our audience. So they asked specifically, are the security guards directly hired by the museum? So they are federal. This is the Federal Protective Services is the Smithsonian.

When it comes to the National Archives, it is the Office of Protective Services, which is run directly by the Archives. So federal employees, large training. So the Smithsonian, that's why I want to get to the training here because these officers, it wasn't just like the National Air and Space Museum decided they were going to target pro-life that day. We know that. We know now because we have other clients from other museums that this was a theme going through the training of the Federal Protective Services and Office of Protective Services.

So great question there. But just to update you, we have filed a lawsuit, the ACLJ, directly against the Smithsonian. More lawsuits are coming against other museums in Washington, D.C., all related to that day, January 20th, March for Life. We stand up for free speech in our country. We stand up for the First Amendment rights of our clients. And this is an interesting situation because they pick on young people, students, who are just going about their day, want to visit the Air and Space Museum, check out some exhibits, see some cool stuff, and go home.

And yet they make them out to be like they're engaged in some kind of illegal activity. So if you read through our complaint, it's not just about declaring that this was unconstitutional, the First Amendment, Fifth Amendment, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. We wanted injunction, damages, because as I told you, they threatened these students, Logan, with follow-up action. That's pretty scary.

Yeah, exactly. If you're these kids who are just coming to this, you're doing the March for Life. Yeah, it's brave to be out there and do the March for Life, but also you're coming from a Catholic school and these kind of things are sort of normal in that culture.

You get there, you do your marching. Well, we're here in Washington, D.C., we might as well see some of the sites. You go over to the Air and Space Museum, like I said, see some planes, see some cool stuff, and you're getting harassed. And then all of a sudden you're right. What starts flashing in your eyes, I'm sure when this starts happening, is like you said, these kids know that this stuff can last on the internet forever. You saw the situation before with kids who are out there who got kind of false identified as protesters who were getting in the face. Yeah, you've seen these things before and I'm sure that's going through their head going, well, this could be a beginning of an end situation here and that's not a good thing. But that's why we're here to make sure that this gets taken care of. And it also is clear, as you said, that the Smithsonian had completely messed up in their training because they, for some reason, had this, maybe not just the Smithsonian, they had taught whoever the security guards are that this is something that was brutal enough that they should not just ask people to leave in a polite way or ask them to change.

It got aggressive, it got profanity laced, and like you said, one of the security guards saying, yeah, this is going to make my day. This is not a good thing, especially not in Washington, D.C. It's been said by our federal government. They've set the tone that being pro-life is the enemy. Even though the Supreme Court agrees with these students, now the Supreme Court's illegitimate.

And the Supreme Court's illegitimate, pro-life speech is illegitimate, pro-life pregnancy centers. You know, the fact that they had to put up a $25,000 reward at the FBI to find the people who firebombed? Why can't they find the people who firebombed?

It's wonderful to have those rewards, but they have no leads? Why are we having to do all the work for the FBI to find anybody? Because they really don't want to.

They don't want to use their resources to find the people who are attacking pro-life pregnancy centers because those are places of misinformation, if you believe the Biden administration and the left. So this attack on pro-life speech, though, we've seen it before. I'd say it's a 2.0 situation.

And in this case, I want you to listen to the student. This is Patrick Murphy. So this is the third time they are approached by security. They are literally leaving.

They're trying to go out the door. And that's not enough. The Smithsonian security had to step in yet again.

Take a listen. A large man, as we were walking out, because we had to catch our bus, and he comes up to us rubbing his hands together saying, y'all are about to make my day. And he tells us he's got reports saying we said no to taking our hats off and we're in trouble for some odd reason. And one of the students repeats the talking point saying it's used for identification. And he wasn't having it. I then said this is a violation of our First Amendment right. This is a government funded building. Wow.

He said it's a neutral zone and that doesn't apply here. Okay. One, they pick on the wrong students.

I like to say they pick on these students who actually, they come from a classical school, they know about the Constitution, they know about the First Amendment. Right. And their response back is not, again, they don't just, they're respectful, they're nice, but they're like this doesn't seem right. They're going to question. Oh, no.

Yeah, why not? They said I couldn't believe this was happening to us. It was like a story on TV. Yeah. And here it is happening to us.

And it was like not just once, twice, three times in about a half hour. Yeah. They're being followed around the museum, changed around the museum. And we do, after representing the Tea Party groups, the IRA, this doesn't happen randomly. Yeah.

I can already tell people. We have clients from other museums. We're likely about to sue the National Archives next. So that's coming. Yeah.

It's their own security service, but it's all into this federal protective services. And again, National Archives, can't keep track of classified documents, but they can't go after your pro-life t-shirt. This one said pro-life generation. Really controversial there.

Yeah. I mean, a lot of people are watching right now, and probably they may have had this situation happen too. We have a lot of people who go do the March for Life who listen to this broadcast.

So if this happened to you, or there's something like this, or you know someone that this kind of harassment happened to, go to our website and go to ACLJ.org slash help and make sure you put in information. You never know what we can do. Obviously, we provide our legal services. There's also a way for you to get involved right now. We have launched a new petition.

You can go to ACLJ.org. You'll see it right now. There's a petition. Over 70,000 people have signed it just since we launched it. And we'd love for you to get involved that way. You can stay up to date on the case.

Yeah. So go to ACLJ.org. You can sign that petition.

That doesn't cost a thing. And we want you to stay up to speed on this. As I told you, this is just lawsuit one.

We filed the initial documents with the National Archives to preserve their information. So we've already taken some action there. I haven't actually filed the legal complaint.

If you want to read the legal complaint, it's online at ACLJ.org as well. If you have questions about this, 1-800-684-3110. We're going to talk about State of the Union. We're going to get into that.

Rick Rinnell's going to be joining us the second half hour of the broadcast. So we're going to spend a full half hour on the broadcast on politics, State of the Union. So if you've got calls and questions about that, I'd say you start putting them in the next 10 minutes or so. And we'll take those calls as well. Of course, I'll ask the question that we would usually ask the State of the Union day, which is, what would you like to hear? But what do you think we're going to hear?

And of course, give us a call at 1-800-684-3110. Another rumble comment, you know, because it amazes me that someone can wear something that's vile and profane. Of course, nothing is said to them. But you wear something that says pro-life and it's a crisis.

And it is. I mean, telling these students something is going to be written up about them. I think that's the final kicker in this situation. It's one thing to even, say, take it off and then you put it back on to kind of curse at you, which they did curse at them. It's a whole other thing to say that there's going to be some follow-up action by that officer. Like the federal government may come knocking on your door because you put your hat on. Which is what he implied as they were on their way out.

And again, these are kids that will tell you they're tired, they were just going to the museum. With words that we cannot say on the radio. No.

No. I mean- Words that your federal security guards shouldn't be saying on the job anyway. Especially the minors.

Especially groups of kids. You probably read about it on our website, by the way, if you want to know. If you're trying to figure it out, just go to ACLJ.org. We'll figure it out for you. And as well, we want you to take action here. You can sign the petition. So there's a way to get involved through our petition to defend pro-life speech. The second way you can, of course, get involved is we're able to represent all these clients and put all these resources forward.

In just the past, you know, really week that this has been building up, getting all the info, getting it all prepared because of your financial support at ACLJ. We can't do that without you. So we're able to represent the students at no cost to them. What I will tell you is still something very important here is that this initial group is always the key group that speaks up, that comes to us and we contact and is willing to go out and do to Hannity, willing to come on our broadcast, willing to put themselves forward.

Put their face forward. Because then we hear from other people. Because people think, oh, maybe this was just a security guard having a bad day or a one-off incident. And then you realize because they spoke up, these brave students speak up, and we've seen this so many times in ACLJ history, 16 and 17-year-olds speaking up for rights that become, again, major cases to define your First Amendment rights and our freedoms. Yeah, so we have brave kids and also brave parents that are willing to let their kids go out there and make these statements and be part of this because we know that it's tough. We know that it's a lot different even now than it was in the 90s or the 2000s in the social media generation. As you know, these pictures don't go away.

These faces don't go away. So there's a lot of brave people out there, a lot of brave families who are willing to take these stands, make a vocal statement about it. And we are thrilled to represent them and hopefully get some justice for them. And then that's the whole point here is to provide justice for these kids who are unjustly targeted for doing nothing. So you can be a part of it, by the way, too.

Go to ACLJ.org. We are going to take some phone calls, Jordan said. Also on the State of the Union tonight, give us a call, 1-800-684-3110. Jordan posed a good question, which is, what do you wish President Biden would say in that State of the Union? And what do you think he's going to say? What would be your top priority? And what do you know will be outspoken? Give us a call.

We'd love to hear your thoughts. 1-800-684-3110. Lines are open. But again, visit ACLJ.org right now to not only support the work, but to sign that petition supporting these pro-life kids. You can also find all the great content we put up there. That's video content. That's blogs. That is the petition content.

News articles, videos, films. So much free content available right now at ACLJ.org from some of the top leading minds in the entire movement. So go to ACLJ.org and we'll be right back later on with Rick Grenell.

1-800-684-3110. Call us now. So if it wasn't enough, we've got, again, our brand new lawsuit. It's up at ACLJ.org against the Smithsonian. We now have got the United Nations stepping in on mis and disinformation. This is the U.N. Secretary General Gutierrez speaking to the United Nations about how they are going to act on picking and choosing mis and disinformation.

Take a listen. We'll call for action from everyone with influence on the spread of mis and disinformation on the Internet. Governments, regulators, policymakers, technology companies, the media, civil society. Stop the hate.

Set up strong guardrails. Be accountable for language that causes harm. And as part of my report on common agenda, we are convening all stakeholders around the code of conduct for information integrity on digital platforms. And we'll also further strengthen our focus on how mis and disinformation are impacting progress on global issues, including the climate crisis.

So listen to that key word there. So if you're not on point with how they want you to be on the climate crisis, which we saw John Kerry talking about how they're the extraterrestrials. They're the real leaders of the world.

And that's what they're talking about was climate at Davos. And he's going around acting like a shadow President around the world, which is constitutionally questionable as well because he hasn't even been confirmed in this new position as climate czar, which is a lot more powerful than what it sounds. But now we have the U.N. stepping in. This is an organization that is full of mis and disinformation. It's anti-Semitic. It's anti-Israel. The number one country targeted by the U.N. is Israel, a country of seven million people with freedoms, democracy, the right to vote, freedom of speech, freedom of religion in the Middle East. They're the number one targeted, more than North Korea, more than China. And what the U.N. is going to try to do now is pressure outside groups, companies, corporations, businesses. And C.C.

Howe is joining us now. C.C., to walk our line or be demonized. Yeah. And it is exactly what we saw in the United States with the mis or disinformation board. That's what the U.N. is trying to do. So if you don't say and espouse exactly what the U.N.'s position is, then exactly you're going to be demonized. So we will definitely be looking at ways through the ECLJ, our NGO at the United Nations, to attack this when actual actions are taken.

He's just made the statement right now, but we'll be ready to go when there's something that's actually put on paper. Yeah. And C.C. as well, we just filed these reports. Tell people about this with the Human Rights Council on India, Pakistan, Nigeria and Myanmar. These are important as well on their human rights record.

Yeah. So the Human Rights Council is meeting their 52nd session in Geneva right now, and they have agenda items that they deal with human rights. And so we as an NGO are able to submit written reports. And we have done that, like you said, on India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Myanmar. And these are the 6th, 7th, 11th and 14th places in the world that are worse, the worst for Christians to live. And we just highlight the atrocities in each one of them. In Nigeria, a Christian is killed every two hours for their faith. In 2022, there were almost 4,000, at least 4,000 deaths and 2,300 abductions of Christians. And in Nigeria, the deaths of Christians count for 80 percent of deaths of Christians worldwide. Then we go on to Pakistan where we have an office in Pakistan, and we highlight the blasphemy law problems there. We highlight our two cases where we have two young gentlemen who have been falsely accused of blasphemy who are both being sentenced to death by hanging. We highlight the anti-conversion laws in India and how Christian persecution is just escalating there under extremist Hindus. And then finally Myanmar, who's been controlled by the Burma army since February of 2021.

And their attacks are mainly against Christians. And 3,000 deaths, 40,000 burned buildings and almost 1.4 million people displaced. So we're able to bring these things to the attention of the Human Rights Council, and we'll be able to do oral interventions later on. Yeah, I mean there's a lot happening in the world. And when that happens, when you've got a full-scale war in Europe going on, people start forgetting the kind of persecution that's going on, Logan, in so many of these countries around the world. We don't at the ACLJ, but that's the unique, because we're not just sidetracked by the news. We also have a team dedicated to the issues that, again, they pop up every once in a while. People are concerned about it, but then something else happens in the news, whether it's the Chinese spy balloon, whether it's an earthquake that's horrendous, whether it is—and by the way, Israel supplying all the support there, helping the Turks and Syrians do their disaster relief. This time around, it was bad enough where they didn't say no, which was interesting. But again, they'll still vote those countries to condemn Israel at the UN.

Yeah, while taking all of their supplies and support. Listen, we want you to go to ACLJ.org. I think it's very important. You can look at all of our international work. You can look at the work that CC does and the entire staff. I think there's so much content that maybe gets overlooked, because we only have so much time on this broadcast. We have to talk to you about what the news of the day is, like the State of the Union coming up.

We're going to talk about that later on. We've got to talk to you about our current cases, what's happening big, suing the Smithsonian. All of this is big work. All of this is intense work, and it's happening 24 hours a day all over the world. And that's why I think it's important for you to spend some time on our website. Actually look at the work we do here. We're not just some sort of news service. We're not your conservative talk radio who just goes on here and tells you what's happening in the world. We're out there. We have a huge team that's out there working the best of the best on these top topics that are life and death for a lot of people.

Yeah, absolutely. So again, go to ACLJ.org. Find out more there.

We're going to fight back against the UN on this misinformation as well. Let's go to the phones. Chris in Nevada, online one. Hey, Chris.

Hi. If the Smithsonian was a private entity, could it have kept the students out or told them to take off their hats, et cetera? A private entity, if that was their normal policy. So again, if you're targeting people, you could get in trouble over that. It might not be the same federal issues, but there's state issues as well that you run into with that. City, District of Columbia issues you'd run into. So again, if you had a policy as a private institution that no hat's allowed. Yeah, like a mall has no gang colors and that kind of thing. Yeah, sure. This isn't a private institution though, so that totally goes out the door.

It's a totally different standard. This is something paid for by you and me. Our taxpayer dollars, a billion dollars a year, goes to those Smithsonian museums. And again, not just politely asked to take off their pro-life gear.

Yeah, which is likely what a private museum. This was an aggressive, so much so again, that we're suing the Smithsonian, but they've already had to apologize and issue that they are going to have to reeducate their security team. Retrain them, yeah.

Retrain them. So that should tell you something right there. This was not a simple, and I'm sure they have the footage. This is not a simple, you know, these people weren't politely asked to leave by one security guard or asked to take off their hats. This was over and over and over profanity-laced, yelling at children for wearing a hat that just said pro-life. It happened to your kid. Your kid was told, you know, let's just say the F word about them.

And they're a young teenager. How would you feel? What would you do? Thankfully, a lot of them are brave enough to stand up because right now a lot of people wouldn't.

No, most people would not. I mean, the truth is, like I say, you have to give them a lot of credit for speaking up because they are the ones who then, other people say, you know, I think that happened to me that day. I had a similar experience. I had a different kind of run-in. Now we know it happened at your favorite National Archives. Can't find classified documents, but can find time to harass you if you have a pro-life t-shirt on and want to go view the Declaration of Independence, which that's a second lawsuit. It has not been filed yet, but it's coming.

Stay up to date at ACLJ.org. When we come back, stay to the Union tonight. Usually it's a bigger deal. Yeah, it's getting kind of swept on the rug. Yeah. I just hope you stand for McCarthy back up.

He rips it up. No, it's not going to happen. We're just walking around. Yeah. Make a scene like Nancy Pelosi. As always, make a scene. So we'll take your calls on the State of the Union.

1-800-684-3110. Our Senior Advisor, Rick Riddell, is going to be joining us on all these issues. If you don't want to miss that, coming up in the second half hour of Sekulow. Keeping you informed and engaged. Now more than ever, this is Sekulow.

And now your host, Jordan Sekulow. It's the State of the Union. It is.

Allegedly. I think people have a tough time getting through it with Joe Biden. I don't even think it's the Liberals or the Republicans. I think it's the whole country thinking that you're going to tune in.

It's been an hour and a half hearing Joe Biden be interrupted by half the group applauding and the other half not applauding. And really, he'll be full of misinformation. He's going to be focusing on what he wants to focus on, which you know is not actually going to be the issues like the border. It's not going to be the real stuff about the Chinese spy balloon. It's not going to be the real... Do you think that will even get referenced?

I think it has to, right? Yes, I think he's going to say how awesome they did. How decisive he was in ordering it to be shut down. And then the military, which there's a lot of issues I want to talk about with Rick Riddell. Because there's more information coming out about what happened to the Trump administration.

Because they said that happened to them. The Pentagon reported those UFOs and left it there. So there's obviously, we've talked about the bureaucracy in DC trying to run things aside from the politically elected leadership. And there's a reason why you put civilians in charge of the military. I think when you see these military generals, when you read the word, there's always a reason why we have a civilian-run military.

They play an important role, but we want oversight by our elected officials. Because when they think they can kind of control all the narratives, they get to control the policy, things get out of control. So we know they told Joe Biden, no!

And he didn't say, I don't care what you say. I got the Montana governor who's a Republican saying, go shoot it down over Montana. Let's shoot it down now. And I think what's interesting, he's used the word UFO, which has become pretty controversial, but not really. Because you did have people like Marco Rubio coming out a couple years ago when sort of the UFO moment happened and said, you better hope these things are aliens that they're telling us are UFOs. Because if it's China, those are like the words he said, if it's China and their tech has gotten this way or we're not able to identify what it is, it appears that maybe this whole time when now we've heard about the, we still can't identify what a lot of these things are, maybe as expected, the logical answer was the answer, which was these are foreign governments sending out highly technological things or weather balloons even.

And we're just writing it off potentially as, like you said, as UFOs or something we can't figure out to maybe fit our narrative better. But tonight is the State of the Union. They did ask in the press briefing to KJP, they asked, what do you hope he gets out of it tomorrow night? This was yesterday's. It's going to be tonight. You want to hear what she had to say?

Let's go. What does President Biden hope to achieve with his speech tomorrow night? So, you know, and I've said this before, so this doesn't change much at all, is that the President sees this moment as a critical moment, an important moment to speak directly to the American people, to talk about the last two years, to talk about where we've been and where we're going. And that is important to the President.

That doesn't change. This is his second State of the Union speech. Certainly not going to get into issues and get ahead of the President.

But, you know, the President will underscore the progress we have made during one of the most challenging times, especially in history, and the progress the American people want us to continue to make by working together in this year ahead. There's lots of words there. A lot of words, but don't watch.

It's not going to do anything. Well, when she said it was the second one, I was like, I totally forgot the first one. I have no recollection of the first State of the Union. I guess he had just become President. Yeah, it's not a State of the Union.

Technically, that's your joint address. This is really the first one. Yes.

Yes. Or is this the second? No, it's the second. That's his third time. This is his third speech.

I have no recollection of the first two. That's because it's Joe Biden. Yeah. And we got used to fun.

Yeah. You didn't know what was going to happen to Donald Trump. That last Trump one, you had, you know, Rush Limbaugh getting the Medal of Freedom in the middle of it. It was a fantastic show.

All of the Tuskegee Airmen. Fantastic show, which is really what it takes. Bono will be there. I'm just trying to drink. I feel like he's everywhere. Yeah, you know, he's got to promote, man. He's got to get out there. All right, we're taking phone calls.

Can you sell his book? I'm sure. Is Rick coming up next? Rick is coming up next. Yep, so you want to stay tuned for that. Rick Grenell coming up in our next segment. There is still some time to get your phone calls in. If you'd like to have your voice heard on the air again, State of the Union preview.

You're excited. But what do you wish he actually addressed? What were the topics you hoped he would actually cover tonight that you know won't?

You know won't. You know it's actually the problems, and we want to hear it, though, from you, our listeners. Give us a call. 1-800-684-3110. We'll take those in a couple of seconds.

1-800-684-3110. So the State of the Union is tonight. What they hope is that – well, they used to. The hope is that people actually watch. If you listen to the Biden administration read up here, it was like, there's not much to see here tonight.

Don't worry. But I want to go to Rick Grenell on a couple of issues because, Rick, starting with some political stuff, I know you have to be careful about these statements, but we're learning more and more about how this Biden administration is trying to spin while this happened under the Trump administration. And now we're hearing that the Pentagon reported it as UFOs, didn't even know what these were supposedly. I mean, so they're starting to backtrack on the story about why they didn't brief people like you or Mike Pompeo or the defense secretary about what they were finding in the sky. Look, I don't even know what the real truth is. I do know that we've got bureaucrats who are playing some partisan games like they always have without having a political team that keeps them in check, that is constantly pushing on them.

We just really don't know if we're getting the truth. This is a crisis for the intelligence community because the public thinks that they're being very partisan with the leaks and with the information they share. Now we're seeing that they kept information from the Trump team. So, look, I think this is a crisis for them. They need to realize that transparency is not political. It's their friend. They should become very transparent.

I tried to do that when I was acting DNI. I think the public right now is really sick and tired of partisan games. And if the intelligence community leadership, including Avril Haines, doesn't start coming forward with transparent information, then I think that they're going to start seeing some real problems when it comes to funding, future funding. Congress is hearing the message from the American public. Yeah, it was Senator Rubio who brought up, it was a couple years ago, Logan, you were saying this, when he made the statement about when there was a lot of talk about UFOs coming out of the information. We should have the statement. We should have the statement, yeah. He said the direct quote was, frankly, if it's something outside this planet, that may actually be better than the fact that we've seen some of these technological leaps maybe from China or from Russia. So he was already putting out there that some of this UFO talk, you know, you better hope it was aliens.

Because if not, you're not talking about international. Yeah, and it goes directly to what you were saying, Rick, is that if you're not educating the elected politicians who, whether that's the executive branch or the legislative branch who decide you're funding, the executive branch who's supposed to run your offices, if you're keeping information from them or trying to give them not the full story and acting like you're really the ones in charge, and maybe that's the message you're putting out to other leaders as well, that is a serious Washington crisis. We've talked about the bureaucracy being out of control.

This kind of underscores it. This takes it to a whole new level if you're not briefing the President, the secretary of defense, and intelligence officials. And look, this is the power of Congress. This is the Oversight Committee's power. They need to be able to say, look, if you can't be transparent, if you're going to completely demonstrate time and time again that you're partisan, then we're just not going to approve these big budget increases.

We're not going to have faith enough to spend the American taxpayer dollars on programs that are not partisan games. And so the onus is really on Avril Haines. She needs to come clean. You know, she's already been under fire from both parties because she didn't want to do certain things that the bipartisan committees were asking her to do. I think that the media plays a big role here. We talk about this all the time. But without the media pressure in D.C. on Avril Haines to be more transparent, she's going to, you know, calculate that it doesn't matter and she can ignore these problems.

I'll say one other thing for Logan's benefit. Remember that there are lots of flying objects that are unidentified and they don't necessarily mean something nefarious. Yeah, and I think that if they could utilize that to go over everything and then you kind of just push it aside and say, well, there's nothing to really see here.

And this idea, well, this is just common. And now we're starting to see maps of all the Chinese spy balloons all over the world. And it's just kind of like, again, we all know that countries are spying on each other, trying to spy on each other. There's much higher flight spying going on, there's satellite spying. But I think what Rick is just so upsetting to people is they were watching this in real time, literally from their backyard.

I think we all assume there is spying happening, but ongoing from both sides. But the fact that this was, oh, yeah, we know what it is and there it is. And we find out, Rick, that they tell us it's got explosives on it. So explosives are flying over people's houses in Missouri and they're watching it. It's a Chinese explosive device.

There it goes. I mean, it really is infuriating to people, as you could imagine. When you think about Washington, D.C., completely living in its own world, you know, we call it the swamp.

It has some funny name. But the reason why it's the swamp is because when you go there, it's devoid of fresh water, devoid of new ideas. It's all that same stale talk and the same stale property. And that's what happens in the bureaucracy of Washington.

We don't start moving these bureaucracies outside of Washington. We're going to get the same old swamp mentality. You know, Rick, it seems like on the State of the Union and the politics of this is this administration's ideas don't really push on people tuning in and playing it down. Maybe that's because they kind of know people don't want to watch Joe Biden talk for an hour and a half.

It's just kind of dull. But really not trying to make a spectacle, not trying to make an issue. And I think that the troubling part of that is not so much, again, even the American audience, but we know the world, world leaders and governments pay attention to these addresses to see, to hear kind of from the leader of the free world and to see if he's got unity from the Congress, which he does not right now, and kind of buy in from the American people on priorities and issues.

And I have a feeling his priorities and issues tonight are not going to match most of our audiences. Look, the old politicians of Washington, D.C. have now fallen into this trap where they use the State of the Union to really just tout what they think are their accomplishments. And I like the old days of the State of the Union or the Trump days of the State of the Union, where he actually talked about the future and he talked about programs that need to be done in order to make our union stronger. And that's what I miss. I miss those days where we get visionary speeches about this is what I think needs to happen in order to accomplish this goal and confront this problem.

I wish we could fall back into those days. But I think what we're going to see tonight is just a whole laundry list of Democrats saying this program is great and this is what we did for the far left and look at all these woke programs that we're doing. I think it's going to make the American people angry. We have a little U.N. news, too. The U.N. Secretary, Joe Ricks, just kind of finished on this. He's come out with a speech and he's now instructing U.N. agencies to start looking at missing disinformation.

And when you listen to this speech and the words, and we played it earlier for folks, it took a long time for him to get there, but he finishes on, you know, it'll be issues like climate change. So the U.N. setting up this idea, like the Biden administration, basically if you're not in line with us on every policy issue, you are the bad guy. And you would think an institution is dealing with war in Europe right now, a massive earthquake in Turkey and Syria, which the Israelis are providing so much support for, and Turks this time are taking that support. But they'd still vote to condemn Israel at the U.N. Rick, this idea again that we're going to see an internationalized version of a misinformation board. Before I go after the U.N., let's just hope that people, Americans are always generous and we always give in crises. And this Turkey-Syria earthquake is really horrific. I would encourage people to find local charities to give to. We're always generous. We should definitely do that.

It's massive and it's unbelievable. Look, I spent eight years at the U.N. You know that the last person in the world that should be the referee for a miss and disinformation is the U.N. secretary general. This is a body of, you know, countries that come together and it's the lowest common denominator of what we all agree.

So I can't imagine a worse idea than having them be the referee. I think what Rick said is the lowest common denominator of what you can get people to agree on. Rick's going to be joining us tomorrow for the follow-up of the State of the Union. We'll see how it goes.

Thank you for that, Rick. We'll join us back to see how Joe Biden tries to spin the balloon. I think he's going to try to sound tough on that.

That might be the one time he tries to act. And if you skip it, we'll have the clip for you. So don't worry. Yeah, I think for a lot of people it's going to be tough to get through their hour and a half. It's just stuff to get through five minutes. Yeah. The Trump ones are fun because they were spectacle. But these are just back to the old stuff. Well, and they brought people's attention to issues. That's really what you're supposed to do.

Issues and important people and important things that were happening in the world. Maybe we'll see some of that tonight. I highly doubt it. But we'll tune in so it's kind of like a whole thing. We'll watch it so you don't have to. Yeah, we'll bring in Rick to analyze it for us as well. So support the work of the ACLJ.

We come back. We're going to take more of your calls at 1-800-684-3110. That's 1-800-684-3110. That new case involving pro-life students. We filed the lawsuit against the Smithsonian. And coming next is the National Archives.

Again, an agency that can't figure out who's got the classified documents, loves the rating, former President's home, current Presidents, former VPs. But by the way, they can find time to trade their security guards to harass pro-life activists, not even protesters. The March for Life is not a protest. It's a registered event, comply with the laws of the District of Columbia. They put up staging, they have an event before, then a march up to the Capitol, the Supreme Court. We want you to support the work of the ACLJ at ACLJ.org. We can do all this. We have Rick Rinnell joining us and writing for our website.

We have Mike Pompeo doing that as well. It's because of your financial support of the ACLJ, but it's also how that core work that we do, how we have a team of attorneys to represent these students at no cost to them, no cost to their parents. And we're able to fight it out with the federal government in court. It's because of your financial support of the ACLJ, because of your donations. Go to ACLJ.org today. Donate if you can. We've also got a petition to stand with these pro-life students.

That doesn't cost a thing. Sign that at ACLJ.org. We'll be back. What do you want to see at the State of the Union tonight? 1-800-684-3110. Give us a call. We're taking your calls to 1-800-684-3110. We'll take one call on the students that we're representing, the lawsuit we filed, and we'll take State of the Union calls as well.

That's at 1-800-684-3110. So let's go to Bill in Florida online. Hey, Bill. Bill, you there? We just put him on hold, so come on, Bill.

You there? Now you're there. Go ahead. Thank you for taking my call. I was wondering if you could find out if any of these agencies did special training in anticipation of this event of having thousands of pro-life visitors in the capital city to recognize pro-lifers and to harass them on purpose.

Absolutely. I mean, part of the lawsuit is how did this happen, because we know it wasn't now a one-off, and we know that all of those – there were five different individuals involved in the three incidents just at the Smithsonian, just with the students from Our Lady of the Rosary. We know that this happened at the National Archives, so we're starting to hear from other folks this happened to who ran into the Federal Protective or Office of Protective Services security in the federal government. And they also, in their apology statement from the Smithsonian, which only happened after we made this a story, they said that there was retraining done. Well, obviously there had to be – there's training done before.

You can't just become a security official with no training. And there was no indication they were targeting anybody else with any other messages on their shirts that day. So they weren't just violating everybody's constitutional rights. They were just violating the constitutional rights of pro-life students, cursing at them, harassing them, chasing around the museum, following them around, and kicking them out with the statement of, I can't wait to report this.

There's somehow some record of them doing this. Let me go back to the phones again, 1-800-6431-10, because we're switching to the State of the Union. We'll go to Joanne at Idaho Online 3. Hey, Joanne. Hello.

Yes, I want to say thank you so much for your show, because you give us the news, and we can't find it anyplace else. And I would never watch that Biden. He lies. He has ruined our country. In two years, it's just incredible. I'm 82, and I've never seen our country this bad, ever. He lives through some turbulent times, Joanne. I mean, some very turbulent times in our country. But I think, I mean, definitely for those of us who are a little bit younger, the homelessness, the drug crisis, the FITNO crisis, just the kind of crime, just ordinary crime that we're seeing in our major cities is something that we kind of saw like 1970s-ish, kind of Jimmy Carter years, gas prices high, inflation high.

Like I said, it's been since I was born that we've had inflation at this level, exactly in 1982. But Wes, I don't think we're going to hear about that tonight. No, I don't think we are. There are so many ongoing crises in America, and things like the caller are so concerned about, and I do not expect the President to address any of those. I mean, the administration itself, whether it's our crime, whether it's border security, whether it's our national defense on any of the major issues that people care about, to say nothing of the economy, and in spite of the numbers that the President touts, people are suffering. Not only will he probably not talk about these, at least not in a forthright manner this evening, the administration itself is not addressing these issues. There are no policies in place that are fixing these issues, even though Karine Jean-Pierre swears that not only do they have a border policy, but that it's working, which absolutely just defies reality. Take a listen.

This is Karine Jean-Pierre. This is what Wes is talking about, about the border, and she talks about this plan that they have, which no one's ever seen and heard about by tonight. As you all know, we still have more work to do, and we're going to keep at it, but unlike Republicans in Congress who simply pull the political stunts and try to get in the way, we've got an actual plan to address these very challenging issues, and as you see, as I just laid out, our plan is indeed working. They extended Title 42 because a court made them. They had to do a remade in Mexico because a court made them. They were canceling those policies with nothing to replace them.

No policy to replace them. Well, and even if you lay aside the fentanyl crisis, which is literally killing hundreds of Americans a day by some reports, and you lay aside the human trafficking and the sex trafficking of minor females, just look at national security itself. Since Biden became President, we have apprehended 137 people on the border who are connected to terrorism. The year before that, last year, his first year as President, there were 98. Donald Trump's last year, there were 15.

The third year of the Trump presidency, there were three. We need to read the tea leaves. Why are terrorists coming over our border? They're not flying in. They're not overstaying their visa. They're simply walking into America.

Why are these numbers increasing so drastically? And these, Jordan, are the terrorist people on that watch list that we've apprehended. There are 1.2 million people that the Border Patrol knows they came into America. They are the gotaways who were not apprehended. Since October, over 300,000 people have gotten away. The Border Patrol knows they're here. They can't find them.

That's over 2,400 a day. And besides the 137 terrorists that we have apprehended, we do not know literally how many in that 1.2 million people are on the terror watch list. We don't know how well organized they are, whether or not they are being sent by two or three various terrorist group leaders or from around the world. Our national security is at stake. And in spite of what Karine Jean-Pierre says, there is no viable plan and no, it is not working, whatever it is. And I just think what you have to say, like Wes said, put aside this issue.

Put aside the fiddle. Put aside the sex trafficking of minors. It's a national security threat because of the terror watch list. The Chinese balloon, which again, Wes, this bizarre blaming on the Trump administration, and now they have to backtrack on that.

That worked for no time. Everybody said that is the most absurd thing. Everyone in the media said how could the elected leaders, the highest elected leaders in our country not have been briefed on this? They deflect responsibility at every opportunity. Yeah, that's it right there.

Loewy is deflecting responsibility, which is why they kind of deflected attention. In our other statement, which we played earlier, she said there's nothing to see here tonight. Yeah, nothing to see here, kind of like the balloon in the sky.

Nothing to see. Just don't pretend it's not there. And that is one of the things. They're able to create new stories that get stuff out of the news. We know that this is part of the political game, but don't be easily distracted.

That's why we're here to help you along with that. We do want you to support the work of the ACLJ. You heard at the very beginning of this broadcast all that we're doing, whether that is around the world with international crises that are happening and how we are involved in a lot of them or domestically with things that seem maybe inconsequential. You know and we know that free speech is important, and that's why we are having such an amazing response to people who want to support these kids, who are all kicked out of the Smithsonian for a simple pro-life message on their beanies, on their hats. And you can be a part of that right now. You can sign the petition at ACLJ.org. You can make a financial contribution if you'd like. You can see all the great content, video content, audio content, blogs, news articles from people you've heard all day and you hear throughout the week. And other experts in their field that we have here at the ACLJ.

Yes, so go to ACLJ.org. We need your financial support. It's how we continue to have our team of attorneys to work with these students who represent students and parents who are arrested. You know, when they stand up, others didn't speak out.

Others realized, hey, this wasn't a one-off that happened to me either. This was a government plan that day. They trained everybody to go after pro-life speech.

They're using terms like neutral zone. They're telling another group, this will be the new lawsuit that hasn't been filed yet with the National Archives. Take your T-shirt off because it says pro-life generation. Support the work of the ACLJ. We're able to do all this work at no cost to those students and parents because of your financial support. Donate today. ACLJ.org. We'll talk to you tomorrow.