BREAKING: ACLJ Sues National Archives, Calls for TikTok Ban, and China Wants Its Balloon Back

Breaking news today on Secular as the ACLJ sues the National Archives and calls for TikTok to be banned, and China wants their balloon back. We'll talk about it all today on Secular. And now, your host, Jordan Sekulow. Hey, welcome to Secular. We're taking your phone calls to 1-800-684-3110.

That's 1-800-684-3110. As you know, we previously filed a lawsuit against the Smithsonian for the actions that occurred at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., harassing pro-life students who had the beanies on. We've now filed a lawsuit on behalf of a mother and daughter who were part of a Catholic high school group, as well as a Liberty Law student at Liberty University School of Law, and another Illinois activist who was with one of their relatives, because they visited the National Archives Museum, which is also a federal government museum, and they were also harassed. They had different items on. I mean, I think what we put on the screen for people for this group was, again, so you see multiple people here, three different clients. So one says, Life is a Human Right, with a pro-life beanie, pro-life generation. One just was like an old-school March for Life group, March for Life t-shirt. And they were told either to cover it up. Some of them were told actually to take it off. And, again, what we are seeing and what we believe is that bigger pattern that under these federal and Office of Protective Services, there was training that went out that day to say go after those. In fact, one of our clients, in this matter, saw people wearing pro-abortion hats and t-shirts. And they were told nothing.

They were told nothing. So we've got, this is now in federal court in two separate cases, one with the National Archives, one with the Smithsonian, at the same time talking about the National Archives, who, by the way, cannot keep track of top secret classified documents involving Presidents, former Presidents, and former vice Presidents, but they can target pro-life students in a nanosecond. We've also got, basically until next Tuesday or Monday, the National Archives has to respond to our FOIA demand on what the National Archives was doing in conjunction with the Biden administration on these classified documents. We could be in court on that one as well by next Tuesday or Wednesday, even Monday.

So that's all going on simultaneously. So whether it is on the standing up for life or finding out what the government's up to, the American Center for Law and Justice is front and center on that. So we've got two lawsuits now filed in Washington, one with the Smithsonian, one with the National Archives on the pro-life issue, and then the Freedom of Information Act demand where they've granted expedited review, but they've got to produce on Monday. If they don't, we go to federal court. We could literally be in federal court on that one next week as well. So we could have three cases in federal court dealing with these issues. So again, this is very, very important and very significant in our overall work. You're seeing the scope and nature of it from the pro-life issue all the way to national security, the ACLJ front and center. Yeah, two legal actions with the National Archives. One, hopefully they will meet their deadline, provide the documents we need.

We'll see. If not, we sue. And the other situation involving the pro-life, again, even say activists, just pro-life Americans who were there in a legal march, not protesting, but in a march who were targeted, we've actually filed that lawsuit. So that's the second lawsuit filed on behalf of pro-life Americans, a mix of students, parents, grandparents, law school students, high school students, all who had either like a pro-life hat or pro-life t-shirt on who were not protesting inside these museums, or were told either to take it off, take it, put it away, or put your shirt on inside out, and they were being harassed continually by federal security officials. And then also ACLJ Action has sent out, and we've already received 5,000 letters going into Congress on banning TikTok.

And we're talking about this with Mike Pompeo a little bit later in the broadcast. This is a huge issue. So ACLJ Action is involved in this letter writing campaign.

You get those emails. And the American Center for Law and Justice Office of Government Affairs is also now working on it, on the legal and legislative aspect of that as well. So those of you that get the ACLJ alerts, you'll be getting that one from the American Center for Law and Justice tomorrow. Very, very important issue here for national security. We're back with more in just a moment. We'll take your calls at 800-684-3110.

We are taking your phone calls too at 1-800-684-3110. As we were talking about, it does show the breadth of the work that we do at the ACLJ. On the one hand, we filed a FOIA with National Archives in the matter of the classified documents, the rating of Mar-a-Lago, the President Biden. Why this dis-treatment? Why now did you go to the Biden pin center? Why then did you go to the home in Delaware, the beach house, and then of course to the Vice President's home as well? And what started all of this? What was the purpose behind the Biden move? Was it because of the Trump move?

Was it because of something else? So again, we've got that filed and they have until Monday to respond. They put it on expedited FOIA response because they did that on the Trump documents so they kind of had to do that for the Biden documents. We'll see if that meets our criteria as a good faith response. If not, we'll have to file a lawsuit there. But we have already filed a lawsuit. So we're involved in two legal actions with National Archives because of course they can't handle classified documents. But you know what they can do? Harass you if you've got a pro-life t-shirt on.

And you're quiet. You just want to go see the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution. You're following the rules.

You know, no flash, no photography because that could damage the whole document. And they tell you take your shirt off or turn it around. Where are you supposed to, I mean all of that. Again, there were people in the museum at the same time one of our clients saw and testified to that they were wearing pro-abortion shirts and hats while they were there and no one was harassing them. So we are now in federal court.

So to be clear, we're in federal court in two separate cases. One involving the Smithsonian and then three separate incidents at the National Archives. Yeah, and it is ridiculous because like Jordan said, they were literally asked to remove their shirts.

And I know that they, you know, the National Archives is saying, oh we really don't know about this. But it sure seemed like a concerted effort. Because not only did you have all of the security guards participating in it, you even had people in the gift store participating saying you can't have that in here. So it sounds like somebody certainly told them if anybody comes in today with any kind of pro-life t-shirt on, they're to be targeted. And it is ironic that these people literally were standing next to the Declaration of Independence and all these documents that, you know, protect and declare our God-given rights to free speech. And yet they're told they have to take these shirts off.

The Constitution, the Declaration of Independence got the First Amendment of the United States Constitution guaranteeing freedom of speech. And the National Archives, which is the trust that's holding the documents, you know, it says let's target pro-lifers. But this is systematic folks. That's what we're going to find out. This is a systematic attack that was done on these students. And it's not all students by the way.

There are adults in this as well. There's a federal court in two separate cases. We're going to see what the government responds and we are prepared to move for a preliminary injunction as well.

And then at the same time as we talk about the National Archives, we're also going after them as it relates to the classified documents issue. But as it relates to the pro-life issue, here's the issue. As I see it Jordan right now, the pro-life fight is taking on a multidimensional approach right now. It's in the states as far as the right to abortion.

It's in regulations in the federal government and in the free speech arena. It's the targeting of the pro-life message. Yeah, we've also taken action because of the ability to now just prescribe through telemedicine the abortion pill RU46.

And we discussed it. If you add CVS, Walgreens, and Rite Aid together, that's 20,000 and they're all distributing it. 20,000 new abortion clinics in the United States. That was a Biden policy. And we're fighting back on that again because of the procedures that they did not follow to institute that new rule. So I mean on every matter, whether it's the actual abortion procedure itself, RU46, ACLJ taking action. Whether it is the pro-life speech, ACLJ taking action. Whether it's the pro-life pregnancy centers, ACLJ taking action. And on the crisis pregnancy centers or pro-life resource centers as they're now called, the fact is there we've got both regulatory issues, states trying to regulate them out of existence. And they are on the front lines of this fight. But we also have vandalism and now the Department of Justice is starting to look at it finally, sort of.

But that's again, it didn't happen without the ACLJ involvement in this. Right, and pregnancy resource centers, we've been representing them and defending them for decades. And we will continue to do so because as you said, they're the ones on the front line. They're the ones where the ladies are coming and getting the full information on the decision that they're making to, you know, end a life of their child. And so they absolutely are targeted all the time by the government and by individuals as we've seen with Jane's Revenge.

And so we have been defending them both from the government and the vandalism attacks. Yeah, I think let's go to the phones. 1-800-684-3110.

All this, by the way, online at ACLJ.org. Jerry in Rhode Island online too. Hey, Jerry.

Hello, team. Question on what are we seeking in the lawsuits? Are we exceeding monetary things?

Are we exceeding attempting injunctive relief? And are these entities, are they privately entities? Are these federally funded entities the federal employees?

And in fact, are we suing ourselves taxpayer-wise? All right. Here's what you got. So it's a good question. Let's put the complaint up on the screen so our audience that's watching this on any of our social media apps can see it. It's in the U.S. District Court.

I'm using right now the one that we filed today because they're basically very similar. This is the one against the National Archives. So as far as the Smithsonian is a federal entity, but not a federal agency. The National Archives is a federal agency, but they're both under federal control. One has the Office of Protective Services. The other has Federal Protective Services.

I think most of those report to either the Department of Interior or Homeland Security. So it's government. Our prayer for relief asks for a declaration that the actions violated the plaintiff's rights under the First Amendment and also under the Fifth Amendment and declare that the actions violated the plaintiff's rights under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. So that is what's called a declaratory judgment. Then we ask for an injunction, which is like a permanent injunction, we'll probably be moving for a preliminary injunction as well, enjoining all the defendants and those acting in concert with them from unlawfully targeting the plaintiffs for disparate treatment and particularly scrutiny based on content and viewpoint. I argued a case in 1990 and also in 1987, the Juice for Jesus in 87, 1990, Lamps Chapel.

Viewpoint discrimination, never constitutional, regardless of the nature of the forum. Then we want damages. So we've asked for damages against the defendants as well. And then we also have asked for training. So mandatory mandated training by the court. So there's a lot asked for in this complaint. Yeah, and I think the training part is, you know, particularly a good request because although we have seen, hey, that, you know, we are going to make sure that we train them correctly.

Well, you didn't in the first place, clearly, because this happened. Why didn't you have training before this? Now you're implementing training, but we can't trust that the training now you're, you know, implementing on your own is good. So our request is that the court approves this training to make sure that they're actually training people, that they cannot violate their First Amendment rights, their Fifth Amendment rights and their rights under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

So, you know, hopefully the court will come along and make sure that the training is adequate and not just something that we know clearly has not been adequate because these people were targeted, harassed and ultimately kicked out. You know, in a kind of a moment of levity, the National Archives was hoping we got it wrong because they wrote back and said, no, no, this happened at the Smithsonian and they linked to the Fox News article with our quotes and our interview with Sean Hannity. Yeah, so it was interesting because you sent out what's called a preservation letter, which says don't erase anything, don't get rid of anything because the litigation may ensue. They responded saying, oh, we got your letter.

Hey, look, you're confusing us with the Smithsonian and they attached a link to the Fox News interview that you did and a Fox News article and a Catholic news agency piece. So and then, of course, we said, here's the lawsuit. So then they got the lawsuit. So the lawsuit has been filed. And I think, again, it kind of shows you the scope, nature and breadth of what we're willing to do on behalf of our clients to secure their rights to freedom of speech under the U.S. Constitution. All right, folks, we're going to take your phone calls to at 1-800-684-3110.

That's 1-800-684-3110. Mike Pompeo joining us in the next segment to talk about the Chinese spy balloon because China is now saying they want it back. Joe Biden saying it didn't hurt our relationship with China in a very bizarre statement.

We'll play for you as well and get Secretary Pompeo's reaction to that. We're going to talk to him about, obviously, TikTok, which is a Chinese-owned company, CCP-owned company, which he's been very concerned about. Let's talk about what ACLJ Action just did and the ACLJ is taking action as well, but the ACLJ Action. If you go to ACLJAction.org and if you're on that email list, if you're a member, it's $25 to become an official member of ACLJ Action. You can do that at ACLJAction.org. You got an email this morning from me about how President Biden's been embarrassing us with the Chinese spy balloons, but also how TikTok is like a digital fentanyl. We've heard that language being used by a lot of elected officials and that we need to ban TikTok and the federal government needs to take action.

Joe Biden has opened the door to that. So we have a letter writing campaign at ACLJAction.org that does not cost you a thing and it's really set up with an easy tool to use. You just put your address in so you know it goes to the right.

Of course, you're right to U.S. senators, but also you're correct member of Congress. There's a draft letter, but we encourage you to add your own two or three sentences or write your own if you like. You can do that there. Again, over 4,000 people, over 5,000 people have already done that since this email went out at about 1030 a.m. Eastern time this morning. 5,367 people have already written letters. This is a letter that went out this morning.

That is amazing. And it's a much smaller email list at ACLJAction than the bigger ACLJ. Tomorrow you'll be getting an email from ACLJ that talks about what we're doing on the government fair side of this to get this resolved.

This is a huge problem in the United States. We're going to get into that with Mike Pompeo coming up. Support the work of the ACLJ at ACLJ.org.

Sign up for the email alerts at ACLJAction. Very important you do that and we'll give you more on this tomorrow on the broadcast as well. Welcome back to the broadcast, everyone, and we're joined by our Senior Counsel for Global Affairs, Mike Pompeo, former Secretary of State. Mike, I want to start with a statement from President Biden about China. It's Byte 19. Let's go ahead and play it.

Between the U.S. and China taking a big hit. No. How do you know?

I know. I talk to them. You've talked to? I've talked to Xi Jinping before and our team talks to their people. During this? Yeah, I haven't talked to him during this. But look, I mean.

I'm going to jump right in here. So, Mr. Secretary, he had to know this question was coming from Judy Woodruff. We've just said that's balloon traverse to the United States and, you know, he keeps phrasing this as competition, not enemies or not, you know, not rivals in that sense. You had to deal with Xi Jinping.

You know him. I mean, so what's your sense of the way the administration is handling this? Well, Jay, I can assure your audience that the Chinese Communist Party views America as an enemy, as an adversary.

Xi Jinping has made no mistake. He wants global hegemony. He wants to control not only countries close to his, but ours as well. And to hear our President say, I mean, it's confusing, right?

Hard to tell. Yeah, we talked to him. Well, we don't talk to him. It sounds like they've rejected our calls. They should have been chasing us down, frankly, saying we're so sorry.

We sent a PLA. That is the Chinese military balloon. That's who it belonged to. It wasn't a weather service. It wasn't their aviation weather gathering. It was the Chinese military, the People's Liberation Army balloon across our country for five days. It spied on us. And to hear our President say, gosh, that doesn't change anything, nothing different is pretty pretty darned outrageous.

But mostly it is really dangerous. Secretary Pompeo, we hear that and I think the American people just scratching their heads. They're going, what is going on in our leadership, in our country? The disconnect between our military leaders, the general from NORAD saying they just they dropped the ball. They couldn't they didn't pick this up.

And and now the absurdity as well. We've seen China say we want this back. I mean, this is the kind of boldness of the Chinese. I know the I don't think the Biden administration will do that, but it just kind of shows where they think their standing is in the world.

Jordan, I don't think they'll give it back either, but I would have never dreamed they would allow it to reverse our country for almost a week and then and humiliate our country and allow them to capture a lot of information. Not only what appears to have been signals collection antenna that were on the balloon, but also to send a message to the whole world, to our friends. Hey, America can't defend its own sovereignty against a balloon traveling at 60,000 feet, 10 or 15 miles an hour. That is that that is dangerous. That weakness is very provocative.

And Xi Jinping certainly was testing us and the Biden administration absolutely failed this particular test. We have our ACLJ action. Mike has sent a letter to our an email to our members. Now, we already received 5000 responses in about three hours about the situation with tick tock and the banning of tick tock, which we think, you know, the President said it sounded like he was at least open to it.

Will you explain? I think it's very important coming from you as a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, the CIA and as our former secretary of state, the danger of tick tocks be a tick tock app on someone's phone. Let me talk directly to parents, parents of your child using tick tock. The Chinese Communist Party is capturing lots of information about what they watch, when they watch it, how they watch it, what they watch in sequence, who their friends are, who are watching it alongside of them, what their face looks like.

Lots of data. Goodness knows how they will ultimately use that. So parents, for that reason alone, should take this off their kids' phone. Second, they are also flooding your children. They're flooding your children with propaganda. Chinese Communist Party propaganda. They're speaking to them in ways that undermine America, to talk about an American nation that is decadent and in decline and a Chinese model, a communist socialist Marxist Leninist model as the primary way that one should think about the world. They are using this both as an information collection tool and to change the minds of American young people.

We ought to ban it from not just our government phones, but from every single application should be taken off of every phone here in the United States, whether on a phone or laptop or anyplace else. I thought you sent out a tweet that I wanted to ask you about when we're talking about China, about President Xi. You said, I met Xi Jinping. He was the toughest and most evil person I encountered as Secretary of State. And it's clear that he's testing us in every direction. That is a strong statement as a former Secretary of State. Could you kind of get into a little bit more and explain to people why you picked up that feel from him?

My encounters with him, sometimes just by myself and sometimes alongside the President, were consistent. He was dead-eyed. There was no cheer. There was no joy. He didn't smile. There was no small talk. He was direct and he was vicious in the way he spoke about the things he intended to defend. And so, you know, in my book, I call it Never Give an Inch. He is the king of never giving an inch.

He literally wanted everything for him, nothing for us. It was the inverse of Ronald Reagan. It was the Chinese version of America loses, China wins. And I never saw any place where we could actually find what President Biden was talking about the opening cuts that, gosh, we're going to find places we could get along.

I never saw that. We lived through the Wuhan virus he spent across the world to kill millions of people. We suffered from lots of efforts of the Chinese Communist Party to spy on us from their consulate in Houston, Texas, which we shut down. This was a serious man intent on achieving his hegemonic objective. People forget about the embassy in Texas that was shut down.

Let's remind people, Mr. Secretary, why you took that action. So, Jay, this was the what I believe the largest spying operation ever conducted inside of the United States against the American people. They were their diplomats under diplomatic cover were collecting information about America's most sophisticated energy companies.

Think about the Beltway corridor between Woodlands and Houston ports. They were stealing information from our research universities, our medical facilities, the Texas medical system. They were using this to take them back to their country to go dump cheap products in the United States and to undermine our country. We we've known this for a while, but much like President Biden, previous administrations had just been afraid to provoke Xi Jinping and took no response.

We ultimately did. And Americans were safer for that. Last question, we only got about a minute and a half left, and that is if you were the commander in chief and the situation happened with China, with the balloon, what would have you done?

So I would have clearly recommended to the President or if I were the President, I would have shot this down long before it traversed our major military institutions, our facilities. Second, now that you have hold of the balloon, we should collect if there are Western technologies on there, which I'm confident we will find. We should make sure those components never again leave the United States and go to China. And we should sanction every PLA connected company that was connected to this balloon program.

Think of the People's Liberation Army as an extension of China's commerce. We know how to do it, Jay. We just have to be serious about protecting America.

All right. Mike Pompeo, our senior counsel for global affairs, former secretary of state, as always, thanks for being with us. Thanks for your insight on this. It's critically important. Folks, this is exactly I'm going to say this very clearly. This is exactly why you should be supporting the American Center for Law and Justice.

You just heard from the former secretary of state who dealt with the man directly, Xi Jinping. Okay? We are taking action on these items. ACLJ Action is the American Center for Law and Justice is.

And that includes legislation, includes court, whatever is necessary. Support the work of the ACLJ. Just go over to ACLJ.org and you could support us right there online. But also go to ACLJAction.org as well to get information there. That's right. ACLJAction.org, if you want to get involved in this letter writing campaign to tell Congress there's legislation prepared to go, so you're supporting members of Congress with existing legislation, it's time to ban TikTok.

It almost happened under the previous administration and there were some moves made to create a U.S. subsidiary, but the terms and services didn't change. Go to ACLJAction.org. Be part of that letter writing campaign absolutely free. Keeping you informed and engaged. Now, more than ever, this is Sekulow. And now your host, Jordan Sekulow. Welcome back to Sekulow. We are taking your phone calls to 1-800-684-3110. That's 1-800-684-3110.

Focusing in on a couple of items. One, the ACLJ, we have sued National Archives. I think this is very important.

This is separate from the Smithsonian lawsuit. In this case, we represent a similar situation. Federal security services telling people with pro-life either hats or T-shirts on. We can put them up and get on the screen what these three clients, four clients had on.

So you see various shirts and a hat, buttons. One, the throwback from 2014, life as a human right, pro-life generation. Again, they attended the March for Life that day or they were going to attend the March for Life and then they just wanted to go see the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution. And they were told to either take their pro-life clothing off or turn it around inside out. There were people at the museum at that time observed by our clients wearing pro-abortion and pro-choice T-shirts and messages on their clothing. So this, again, I think it's very important we represent a mother and daughter from Michigan who were part of a Catholic high school group, a Liberty School of Law student, and an Illinois pro-life activist. And also, I'm happy to report that the United States Congress, Congressmen and Senators, have sent a letter to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institute. Do we have a copy of that letter?

Put it up on the screen. There it is. It's signed by just about a who's who's list of Congressmen and Senators. And in it, on the third paragraph, it says the following. According to the American Center for Law and Justice, once in the museum, the students were accosted several times and told they would be forced to leave unless they removed their pro-life hats. The group all wore the same blue hat that simply said Rosary Pro-Life. Other individuals in the museum were wearing hats with all kinds of issues.

The museum staff mocked the students, called them expletives, made comments that the museum was a neutral zone where they could not express such statements. So footnote one, and that footnote is to the ACLJ release on this. So in federal court, working with Congress, and then when you talk about we added the National Archives in that lawsuit this week, which is not the only case we have with the National Archives, I might add, because we've asked for, demanded a Freedom of Information Act request that demands answers and documents on the whole issue with the top secret documents, classified documents with the Biden administration. If they don't respond by Monday, we will be in federal court on that one as well against the National Archives.

So a lot of activity going on here. What's cool about this letter is it shows you why, again, another reason to support the ACLJ. The trust we have, the relationship we have with members of Congress, they would just take a letter and cite us as the only cite when they sit this demand of questions to... We should read who's on it. You've got, of course, the two senators from South Carolina, Tim Scott and Lindsey Graham, because these students were from a school in South Carolina, because this is specifically to that Smithsonian incident. Congressman Chip Roy, Senator Ted Cruz, Congressman Norman, Jeff Duncan. I can't go through the whole list. Rick Scott, Marco Rubio, Steve Daines, James Lankford, Mike Lee, Mitt Romney. You've got Mitt Romney on the same letter with Marjorie Taylor Greene. Yeah. I mean, you're hitting the whole gamut of the groups. And I'm saying that to say this is not an ideological issue here.

This is a fundamental denial of free speech. Dan Crenshaw signed it as well. I mean, on and on the list goes. Ronny Jackson, of course, a former White House physician and now a member of Congress. And on the list goes. This tells you the nature and scope of what we're doing. And as Jordan said, their citation of authority for what happened is your American Center for Law and Justice. So, listen, your support of all of this, whether it is classified documents or it's a pro-life student, is because of your support of the ACLJ. ACLJ.org for that. We encourage you to support the work here at ACLJ.org.

Let me tell you something else. Tomorrow, ACLJ members, ACLJ Action, you're already getting the information on TikTok. We just had Mike Pompeo on. What a powerful segment that was of this broadcast. ACLJ Action has a letter out requesting you to execute a letter to Congress. Over 5,000 people have done it. ACLJ members, ACLJ mailing list, folks, email list, you're going to get an update on this tomorrow to let you know what our Government Affairs Office is doing on this as well.

So, we are hitting it literally on all cylinders. And when you listen to Mike Pompeo, we're going to get that clip out broadly. Folks, this is serious stuff.

You're not going to let the Chinese spy in the United States. All right, come back. We'll take your calls. 800-684-3110.

1-800-684-3110. Back with more in a moment. All right, welcome back to Sekulow. We're talking, too, about, of course, China, the spy balloon technology to monitor. And we now have got the U.S. government telling us why, what the Chinese were utilizing specifically the balloon for. I want you to take a listen to Senator Marco Rubio. He's been a lead on this for years. Remember, he's been talking about, hope those UFOs that have been sighted, which is not just like a joke, are UFOs and aliens and not the Chinese. And now you start wondering, is it all the Chinese?

Take a listen by 33. I thought the President should have gone before the country last week at some point and explained, look, here's what's coming our direction, here's what it is, and here's what I've decided to do about it and why. And I think people would have understood it. They didn't notify Congress until one of the news outlets was about to run with the story. And then they allowed it to basically cut a diagonal path right across the middle of the country and never explained to us it was coming or why. And I mean to us, the American public. So it's interesting because now the Chinese government, after we shot the balloon down, after, of course, they gathered all the information. I mean, you know, a little late, but it's down. The Chinese government, Colonel Smith says, give us our balloon back. Yeah, yeah, that's rich, isn't it?

It really is. One of the things I find fascinating about all the reports coming out, though, and I appreciated what Secretary Pompeo was saying. You know, the U.S. is trying to reassure the American people that as the balloon transverse the United States, they stopped sensitive communications at military bases and they tried to basically protect themselves from the surveillance of this balloon.

However, more than likely, what little I know about technology, I know a little bit about it. This balloon was probably instantly transmitting what it was seeing and hearing back to China right then. So taking it down later does not stop the fact that we don't know what kind of sensitive information that China got from the balloon. Plus, they violated sovereign U.S. airspace. They closed a civilian airport in the United States. And some sensitive activities that were going on at multiple military bases, they had to suspend them as the balloon passed over that area. This is insane.

Let me ask you this. Because it's going to tie into what we're domestically doing, why would they use these balloons? We know they've got satellites up there. We've got satellites. The Russians have satellites. The Chinese have satellites. Why are these balloons? I think largely because, especially with the signals intelligence and the photography. Explain what signal intelligence is to people.

They're monitoring any electronic transmissions to include data on your computers, voice, phones, all of that. But most satellites, low Earth orbit is around 125 miles up. This balloon was, what, 60,000 feet up?

Sometimes in the 50s. So they're able to collect a lot more information. Certainly, the aerial photography is so much better. They are valuable surveillance tools? Yes, absolutely they are. And they've been operating. Apparently, they have a fleet of 40 of them and they have been operating on just about every continent in the world. And they can control those. It's not just going with the Airstream.

Right, yeah. They are controlled by authorities, Chinese authorities somewhere. They can hover.

They can change direction. And then, yet, at the same time, we utilize this technology, by the way. Oh, I should say we did utilize this technology on the southern border. But then we decided to stop utilizing it because it's expensive.

That's right. The Biden administration is removing most of our surveillance balloons at the southern border. They say due to cost. This is an administration that loves, I mean, trillions and trillions of dollars. And let's not, you know, raise the debt ceiling, but don't cut spending. Don't balance budgets. Don't have 87,000 new IRS agents. Let's get a balloon flying over our border. But there's something, I think, more nefarious at stake here.

These are called, there's 12 of them and they're called Eyes in the Sky. And this is really so Customs and Border Patrol and CBP and others can track those gotaways. It's how they get the gotaway numbers. So we know that there were 1.2 million gotaways in fiscal year 22. There have been already 600,000 gotaways.

If you don't have these balloons, the gotaway numbers will drop. Right. So the Biden administration will technically be able to say there's been a drop in illegal border crossing because they are taking away one of the best ways to monitor the people who we can't catch.

But we can at least track. Think about that for a minute. I mean, no, I know that. So, I mean, you're right.

So you got to ask yourself, Wes, why we're spending trillions of dollars, like Jordan said, 87,000 new IRS agents, billions of dollars a year to increase on the IRS, which is going to mean nothing. It's a drop in the way. But we can't fly a balloon over the Southern border.

Yeah. These aerostats, as they're called, the Eyes in the Sky have been used since 2013. They can go up to 3,000 feet.

And Jordan's right. They're used to surveil the open parts of the border. We have miles and miles and miles where there are no ports of entry.

There are no barriers. So they use these devices to patrol those areas to try and catch people who otherwise would be gotaways. And we know that we've had over a million gotaways. They estimate that the 1.2 million are the gotaways they know got away.

They observed them somehow. They estimate there's another 600,000 gotaways that just got in. They don't even know where they crossed or where they are. And of course, keep in mind also that with all of the almost 5 million that they have apprehended at the border since Biden became President, they have apprehended 137 people on the terror watch list. That's just with the people that they caught trying to cross the border. When you look at almost 2 million more gotaways, just think of the law of averages. We literally do not know in that almost 2 million number how many of them are connected to international terror. I mean, it's staggering.

Talking about staggering, can I go away from the border for a moment? I'm watching these reports come in. It's getting some coverage. It's starting to pick up now about Russia and Ukraine. Because, you know, we're basically at the year mark of this war. And it's horrible for the people involved.

I mean, this is a terrible situation. But Russia is talking about, Wes, deploying 500,000 troops on the border in the next 10 days as well as, I mean, hundreds and hundreds of tanks and munitions. What are we looking at here? We are looking at, unfortunately, the Russian way of war. We saw this during World War II under Stalin. They simply are there to numerically overwhelm the enemy, to attack civilian targets. There are no limits to the tactics of Russian war. Their intent is to overpower and outlast whomever they're fighting.

And they do not mind, and they have proven this over and over, they do not mind sacrificing their own troops, putting them into a meat grinder, if you will, tactically, in order to simply win. And that's what they're looking to do. Wes, are they going to do this? Are they going to actually do this? I think they are, Jay.

And the result of it, what happens with Ukraine at this point, I think we don't know. They're brave. They're certainly more well-equipped than they were before.

They're putting up a brave fight. And one of the aircraft. But that, you said, by the time the pilots are trained, that's pretty quick. Even the UK is more serious about giving them jet fighters than we are, but it takes a long time to train. We've offered them a lot of Abrams tanks, which is certainly a great battlefield weapon to oppose a Russian invasion, but they're having to purchase them from the producers of the Abrams, and that's going to take up to a year, not counting the training. I think this situation, which we hear so little from the White House on, and then out of nowhere, first it was we're never going to send tanks. We sent tanks. So when they say they're not going to send F-16s, you know what Zelensky said? Well, they said they wouldn't send tanks.

And then a few weeks later, they said tanks. And we're talking about a conflict that's now going to go on another year. We say, well, this training takes time, but I think, again, the American people see the issues with China basically flaunting our own national sovereignty and the administration doing nothing about it until it was an easy move. The President hasn't even spoken to Xi since this incident. No, he was very clear on that. Can we play the beginning of that bite again?

Let's make it a little bit louder so people can hear it. Because he claims he has, and then he says, well, not since then. Yeah, so take a listen.

This is Judy Woodruff. Have relations now between the U.S. and China taken a big hit, frankly? No. How do you know?

I know. I talk to them. You've talked to Xi Jinping? I've talked to Xi Jinping before, and our team talks to their people.

During this, in a sense? Yeah, I haven't talked to them during this. But, look, I mean, the idea of shooting down a balloon that's gathering information over America, and that makes relations more worse.

I mean, Wes. What we know is that General Austin, our Secretary of Defense, called the Chinese counterpart, and the Chinese refused to take his call. We also know that Secretary of State Blinken called his counterpart, and they refused to take the call. When President Biden says we're talking to them, it's not true.

And he's on a phone call with Xi, which just shows you the respect level. Not I. Like, if they're worried. They're not worried. In fact, they're so bold as to say, give it back. You know what? This is an administration you have to actually question what might they give back at the end of the day. They also destroyed it away.

It's like to keep it from the American people about exactly how sophisticated this was. Supposedly explosive devices on it? Yeah, which were flying over our heads in Tennessee.

Was that confirmed? Yeah, it had a self-destruct. Well, it could self-destruct. That means it had explosive devices over it.

Flying over your house. That they weren't worried about? You know, this should have never gotten into U.S. sovereign space.

There's a real problem inside our top brass U.S. military. Oh, when they said we had a domain gap, and that's why we didn't get it. And then they came out and said what actually happened was it wasn't marked rush. Quickly. It wasn't a threat. It was a threat to national security and safety.

Unbelievable. All right, folks, we come back. We're going to look at the economic side of all of this, and we'll take your calls at 800-684-3110. Support the work of the ACLJ.

You can do that at ACLJ.org. Back with more in just a moment. Welcome back to SECU.

We are taking your phone calls to 1-800-684-3110. Let's play President Biden. This is at the State of the Union, living in a fantasy world. It may have been true under the Obama years, maybe some under the Bush years. It was certainly starting to change under the Trump administration, acknowledged by the Trump administration, by the way. They were not living with rose-colored glasses. But Joe Biden is treating China, if you listen to him at the State of the Union, like a China from the late 90s, early to mid-2000s.

Take a listen. We made clear, and I made clear in my personal conversations, which have been many, with President Xi, that we seek competition, not conflict. But I will make no apologies that we're investing to make America stronger. Investing in American innovation in industries that will define the future that China intends to be dominating. So why would you have to, one, apologize to the Chinese for investing in U.S. businesses?

That's one. Two, we might hope that we're in competition. They are in conflict because what have they ramped up their spending on?

Military. So let's talk about this, Professor Hutchinson, our director of policy, Harry Hutchinson, is with us. And that is, he made clear that we seek competition, not conflict, the fact of the matter, but we are in conflict. We are in conflict.

And we are in competition, too. And I guess I disagree with him, at least slightly, when he claims that we are in competition with China. The Biden administration has adopted, in my judgment, a new policy, one that is not focused on competition, but it is focused on subordinating U.S. and American interests to the interests of the Chinese government. Joe Biden says U.S.-China relations have not taken a hit in the wake of the spy balloon shoot down. To be fair to Joe Biden, a broken clock is correct at least two times a day. In this particular case, Biden is correct that the Biden administration is prepared to undermine, in my judgment, U.S. interests.

Why would he do that? Where is the Biden administration's willingness to go after China? Where is the Biden administration's demand that China fully cooperate, for instance, in determining the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, or at least face some consequences? Where is the Biden administration willing to, for instance, go after China with respect to international human rights law?

So I think at the end of the day, we are not being accurate or basically truthful with the American people with respect to our willingness to subordinate our own interests. So let me ask you this on China, because you said during our prep meeting before the broadcast that interestingly, which is shocking, because they generally, whatever the Trump administration does, they wanted to undo, they kept a lot of the tariffs in place. Explain how those work for us so people that understand what a tariff is. Well, since July of 2018, the United States has essentially been in a trade war with China. So Trump came in and he introduced massive tariffs on China. China then retaliated, and guess what?

Trump doubled down. And those tariffs are working because if you look at U.S. imports of Chinese goods, they have declined significantly since 2018. So that has been the one good thing, in my opinion, that the Biden administration has done. It has simply kept those tariffs in place. And so if you look at the composition of our imports with respect to certain goods, they have declined. For instance, in the semiconductor industry, consumer electronics.

But at the same time, imports from China have grown in specific sectors, including laptops, computer monitors, phones, video games, and the like. But overall, the Trump tariffs are working, and I have to commend the Biden administration for not reversing Trump's policy. You know, I think what we have to do here is take serious action.

So we're taking all these different steps at the ACLJ, whether that's through the TikTok ban. President Biden opened the door to it. Yes. He opened the door to it. He hasn't made the decision yet. It was the Trump administration that opened the door.

Almost did. Congress, yes, and then there was a reshuffle through a subsidiary, but the terms of service didn't change. As we say in our ACLJ action email, under the national security law in China, a company like TikTok must share their data with the Chinese Communist Party, their military, and intelligence services. They have no choice. So this tells you the—so when you're looking at the trade issues, the Chinese government, the Communist Party of China, the Chinese Communist Party, looks at trade, Harry, as a form of espionage.

Absolutely. Whereas many American leaders, they are pretty naïve in the face of what China is doing. So China has essentially announced to the world that we are going to take advantage of TikTok or some other platform to gain information, to gain an advantage, because the Chinese, they are looking at things from a long run perspective. They believe that they eventually will be in conflict with the United States, perhaps even a direct conflict. And they are also prepared to engage in intermediate conflict via Taiwan. And the United States government, in my judgment, is simply unprepared and unwilling to take appropriate measures.

We are still highly dependent on China, for instance, for pharmaceuticals. Where is the action coming from within the Biden administration? I think it's nonexistent. Jordan, let's describe for everybody, as we close the broadcast out, what we're doing at ACLJ Action. Then I'll let everybody know what we're going to be doing at the ACLJ as well. Yeah, so at ACLJ Action, if you go to ACLJAction.org— Explain to people what ACLJ Action is. We have a lot of— It's our C4 organization, so it's allowed to be more involved directly with lobbying, in a good sense, members of Congress, and political activity as well in your state level, at the federal level. And what we've asked here, it's a letter-writing campaign. Over 6,000 people have written a letter already since this email went out at 1030 a.m. this morning, Eastern time, to ban TikTok. The legislation exists. And so what we have at ACLJ Action is a tool.

You put in your name and address, and it's able then to locate your member of Congress, as well as your two U.S. senators. And we've got a pre-drafted letter for you. We encourage you to at least add a couple of your own sentences, but you don't have to if you don't want to. If you just want to send our letter, that's fine too. You can add more than two or three sentences. You can actually write your own letter if you want.

But we do have text there ready for you, so you can literally do it in a minute. And you can become an ACLJ Action member, and it is actually a membership, and that is $25 annually, and you make that donation at ACLJAction.org. That will make sure you get the email that went out this morning from ACLJ Action. You could have already written that letter to your member of Congress.

I think as Joe Biden opened the door to it, this is a time to try and actually take some bipartisan action to take this Chinese spy device out of the United States. Jordan, there are now, when we started this broadcast, you had 5,000, a little over 5,000. As of right now, as we're closing it off for our live audience, 6,209 letters have gone into the United States Congress, to the House and the Senate. And we just are in day… Yeah, they go direct.

Once you hit submit, they're there. This is incredible, folks, and what a tool this is, and what a growth aspect for the ACLJ, as well as ACLJ Action. Tomorrow, you'll be getting an email from the ACLJ that's going to let you know exactly what our Office of Government Affairs is doing on this same issue. And that's why you should be supporting the work of the ACLJ, or ACLJ Action. Join ACLJ Action for $25, ACLJAction.org, and support the work of the ACLJ by simply going to ACLJ.org. That does it for the broadcast today. A lot of information today, jam-packed, but we love giving it to you, and that's why we want you to support us at ACLJ.org. We'll talk to you tomorrow.