COMING FOR CONSERVATIVES: FBI, DOJ, and Your Bank! — Special Guest John Rich

Breaking news today on Sekulow as the ACLJ has a big victory against the National Archives. 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. Hey, welcome to Sekulow.

We are going to take your calls to 1-800-684-3110. Great show today with Mike Pompeo, Senator Marsha Blackburn, Congresswoman Claudia Tittie. A lot of issues to talk about, but right off the bat, breaking news. We've got a big ACLJ victory to announce, a really quick victory to announce. In the case involving the students targeted because of their pro-life, in this case it was shirts and clothing items at the National Archives, who cannot keep track of classified documents, but could put up a system of harassment against our clients who were students with pro-life. They were attending the March for Life, went to the National Archives to go see the Constitution, Declaration of Independence, and were harassed the entire time they were there from security guards onto people even at the gift shop.

Yeah, it's a great win. We got a consent order out of the United States government. The Department of Justice is representing the National Archives because it is a federal agency. The injunction requires that they allow... They consented to a preliminary injunction against themselves.

Yes, so let's reiterate this. We filed a federal lawsuit. We sought temporary restraining order, preliminary injunction, and damages. Damages still have to be litigated out, and the permanent injunction will have to be litigated out.

But you asked for temporary relief because there are students going back there this Friday, tomorrow. We went then into... What you do is you say, we're going to go and we're going to file a TRO. So you send the papers to the Department of Justice first because that's required under the local rules for...

They call it a meet and confer. And we said, if you don't agree to this, we're going to go to court and get this. And it went back and forth, and the end result is we got a preliminary injunction from prohibiting visitors. So no longer will prohibit visitors from wearing t-shirts, hats, buttons, other items that display protest language, including religious and political speech. And this injunction is good until January of 2025 or earlier if the court gives another order.

They also will provide a copy of this injunction to all of their security officers as well as National Archive personnel who interact with the public. And that's because some of these students were harassed even in the gift shop at the National Archives. Now, this is a separate lawsuit from the Smithsonian.

That's a different lawsuit that we're dealing with there. Now, what we're going to do on that one is we're giving the Smithsonian... Interestingly, it's not a federal agency. The Smithsonian is a federal entity. So they're not represented by the Department of Justice.

They're represented by the General Counsel's Office of the Smithsonian. So it's... I know it's confusing, but this is the nature and the scope of what we do. But this is an incredible result in five days of legal work. We got this first matter so the students and others, it applies to anyone, can go back now and exercise their constitutional rights. A huge win. Great job by our legal team across the board.

They did a great job on this. It's not over. We got the Smithsonian to go with and, of course, the permanent injunction here.

But very, very good news. And there's a copy of the order right there on the screen for those that are watching. It says consent order is signed by Judge Kelly.

He is the judge that is assigned to the case. We have a mandatory 90-day mediation. They even offered an apology and a tour of the facilities to our clients. Personal apology to each of the clients in this matter, as well as the tour. And they are going to provide this decree to all of their staff that interact with anyone from the outside, anyone from the general public. So that does not just include security officers, but includes, like you said, the docents, the people to show you around the museum, the blazers, the people at the gift shop. Everybody at the museum who interacts with the person has got this now provided to them that, hey, you are not allowed to do this.

You cannot do this. We are enjoyed from this kind of action. And we've agreed to be enjoyed by this kind of action as well. So, again, a reason to support the American Center for Law and Justice in our fight against the attack on pro-life speech, the demonization of pro-life speech. We've seen it from the Biden administration itself. And we're fighting back and we're winning against the federal government in court.

This time they're agreeing to enjoy themselves because of how outrageous this action was. Donate at ACLJ.org. That's ACLJ.org. It's how we provide the services at no cost to these clients. ACLJ.org.

We'll be right back. All right, folks, a lot to talk about going on in the United States and the world, of course, in this ACLJ victory. It's up, by the way, at ACLJ.org. You can actually see the consent order that was signed by the judge but agreed to by the National Archives as well, of course, all of us at the ACLJ and our ACLJ attorneys and all of our clients. That, again, is a three-page order, so we'll go through it again later in the broadcast, but it doesn't take a long time to read.

It's very clear. So I encourage you, if you're interested in that kind of legal side of our work, this is a good document just to read yourself to see what we're able to get done very quickly, which was an admission by National Archives that they violated the rights of these students. So we, of course, joining us is our Senior Counsel for Global Affairs, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Mike, I wanted to start with, before we get to international matters, you've been following, I know, our case against the National Archives, against the Smithsonian, for those students that were harassed after the March for Life. We got a temporary restraining order and actually a preliminary injunction now against the National Archives. They consented to this order being issued, knowing that the court would have ordered it, which they ended up doing, of course. And the point we're making with this is when these students were harassed, we went to work quickly, and we got a result very quickly. And it's very important for conservatives and pro-life individuals, Christians, others, to speak out when they feel like their rights are being denied. And here they were just passively wearing a shirt that said Pro-Life Generation, which created so much hassle for these young people.

It's really breathtaking. But we got it resolved as it relates to the National Archives. How important is it for people to fight back on these issues? Oh, this is a big deal. Bless you, Jordan, bless you and your whole team.

Your point about speed matters too. These young people's basic freedoms, their right to practice their faith, their right to speak, is now vindicated. And they can see this.

This is an unadulterated good for Americans, certainly for them. It's pretty remarkable to get into a court, get a TRO, and get a preliminary injunction this fast, this decisively, and to get the organization to admit that they screwed up. That is the power of the ACLJ, right?

It's not just the work. It is the capacity of them to say, no, we're going to be up against it. They are supported by millions of Americans. We don't want to be on the wrong side of that. And the ACLJ stepping in to defend these young people's most basic freedoms is truly glorious stuff, a wonderful outcome, and thank you for doing that. Well, we appreciate it, and we're thrilled for our clients.

You know, I always say you got to respond to the speed irrelevant at these things, and we did just that. Jordan, we've got a lot of international issues we want to get you to as well. That's right. You know, Senator Rubio's and Johnson, they're raising concerns, Secretary Pompeo, that taxpayer dollars are now flowing from the State Department to the group running the Global Disinformation Index, which tries to blacklist and actually defund conservative media. It's a total of $330,000 from two State Department-backed entities. One of those is the National Endowment for Democracy that receives nearly all of its funding from annual congressional appropriations.

And they are, again, going through and raiding. Don't go to conservative websites. Those can't be trusted. But the New York Times and Washington Post get the highest of highest grades. Well, the State Department should have no touch on any of that, and your taxpayer dollars should have no touch on any of that.

We struggle, I'll be honest. When I was Secretary of State, we struggled to get those very institutions, the National Endowment for the Arts, excuse me, the NED that you described. Even our GEC, which had an important role in pushing back against Chinese disinformation, the State Department bureaucracy was trying to take those dollars and resources and use them against, quote, domestic threat, end of quote. This is the worst of government. We need to make sure that the government is completely viewpoint neutral when it comes to how it's spending taxpayer dollars and managing the information space, which is something it should have almost no touch on, Jordan. This is bad stuff. I'm glad you all are tracking it.

You know, it's interesting. I want to follow up on that, Mr. Secretary, because we had a big public outcry when DHS, Department of Homeland Security, was going to impanel their disinformation governance board, and we pushed back strong here at the ACLJ, ACLJ Action, members of Congress as well. And that was moved aside. But we warned that it will come up in other places.

And now it is coming up in other places, as we're seeing. You know, you dealt with, of course, you were the secretary of state. You were the director of the CIA.

You were member of Congress. So you know what's going on here. This disinformation theme, though, is coming out both in national agencies, but also in international agencies. You're hearing them talk about it as well. The UN talked about it the other day, World Health Organization. So this phrase, this concept of disinformation, and we're going to censor this, I think is now a global problem. It is indeed. And I saw it.

Jay, you would know this too. When we pushed back against the ICC, the International Criminal Court, the institution begins to rise up against it. And the call says, well, no, that's disinformation.

That's the connective. You've worked in that court. When we were trying to do the good work in Judea and Samaria, simply saying Israel is not an occupying nation, the institution comes back and says, you can't speak that way. That's both illegal and it's disinformation. Their notion of trying to use disinformation as carte blanche, dissents or conservative ideas is not new. The work that we did to get rid of that disinformation work was good and important, but it is a long-time challenge when we're going to have to stay at.

And I'm counting on the ACLJ to be part of it. I remember too, Jay, us working on taxpayer funding of abortion and all these grants that were going to all these family planning institutions that were unlawful. And we were trying, it was like whack-a-mole to try to beat it back.

And we made progress, but I am confident that upon my departure, this is all now growing back. And we need to ever be mindful that they're trying to take down conservative voices from all the places that are providing fair, accurate, candid information that they simply just disagree with. Yeah. I mean, this, again, it is very troubling. It's like you said, playing whack-a-mole, Department of Homeland Security backs off with the Onina Jacobowitz and then they get caught again trying to do it.

Then they kind of back off from that. Then we find out we're actually paying nonprofit groups to do this. But going on to China as well, we keep finding different ways the Biden administration is trying to chip away at free speech. And we're seeing that with conservative Christians before we get to China. These executive agencies seem to have a directive to be on the lookout for ways to combat conservative speech. It's like they are trying to target specifically conservatives. And then they put these lists together like conservatives can't be trusted. We've seen this before, Jordan.

You all were in the middle of when the IRS was doing the same thing. So this is a repeat problem. This is not random.

This is not an error. This is a systemic effort to take conservative voices from the marketplace of ideas. Whether it's the State Department or the Justice Department saying that the biggest threat they face is white supremacy, domestic terrorism, these are dog whistles for the progressive last thing. Take down these voices.

Take the thoughtful conservative voices, factually accurate conservative voices from the marketplace of ideas and we can dominate that space. It is tragic when the government engages in this kind of behavior. And it's frankly dangerous. The Chinese Communist Party is thrilled with this kind of disinformation campaign here because it leads to American decline in ways that benefit the Chinese as well.

Don't worry. Buzzfeed news is one of their top questions. When I saw that in their Buzzfeed news. Mostly Buzzfeed now is run by like chat GPT.

They're all AI generated junk stories like listed top 10 things you like. That's what they say. That's credible.

They've had to lay off most of their staff but they're credible. President Vine is supposed to make a speech today. That speech is supposed to be about the takedowns of the balloons or whatever these were.

The three other flying objects. What's your sense of where this is going and what has happened here? If you can make sense of it.

I can't. The stories have shifted. I was happy the administration actually briefed me Ambassador Brian and former director of the DNI John Ratcliffe last evening. So we got some insights. I hope the President will share all of those or nearly all of those today.

They can be put in the open space. What we know for sure is that for five days, five and a half days, the Chinese Communist Party took a balloon that we knew had taken off from Hainan Island in China and allowed it to transit the United States, certainly damaging our global reputation and almost certainly collecting important information about how to challenge the United States airspace. A calamity for American security but frankly Jay, to your point earlier, a part of a pattern and practice of this administration of refusing to confront China, whether it's their spy operations in the country or their efforts in Taiwan. We appreciate your comments and insight as always and the situation with the latest with the military operations. I'm glad our military was successful in this but this is costing real money. We don't know what's going on.

You have a better idea but now hopefully the American people will in the next 24 to 36 hours. We appreciate it. Mr. Secretary, thanks for being with us. You know, I want to say this to our team.

We had a great win at the court. The order was issued this morning so we're able to break it to you right here on the broadcast. We're going to talk more about it later in the broadcast. We're going to go over each provision and what it actually protects.

But Mike Pompeo said this. Without your support of the ACLJ, it doesn't happen and that is whether it's this broadcast or whether it's in fact the work that we do around the globe or right here in the United States. And that's whether it's at, as Mike said, the International Criminal Court in The Hague where we represented Israel's interests.

We put forward the U.S. interests on a hearing there or going right down to a district court or to a county zoning hearing. Your support of the ACLJ is critical. We encourage you to go to ACLJ.org. That's ACLJ.org to support the work and efforts of the American Center for Law and Justice. And also you need to follow us on our social media feeds. That's at JordanSekulow, at JSekulow, at LoganSekulow, and at ACLJ.

And it's wherever you get your social media. And of course our friends at Rumble we always appreciate because they highlight the broadcast and it's a great way to stay engaged with us. We're going to take your calls when we come back. We also are going to hear from our friend Senator Blackburn coming up to discuss a lot of issues including the situation in China.

We'll come back in a moment. Welcome back to Secula. We're joined by a great friend of the ACLJ, Senator Marsha Blackburn. Does so much great work for the people of Tennessee.

She represents the entire country as well. Standing up for our conservative values, beliefs, our speech, and also fighting back against China and focusing on the Senator's work, specifically against the threat from the CCP. We've been talking about this now for weeks, whether it's the spy balloon, whether it's TikTok and the technology, whether it's the infiltration on our college campuses, and the Senator's got a comprehensive plan. A lot of people have been saying, what should the plan be to combat China in a way that makes sense because we rely so heavily on China. Senator, I wanted to ask you this because you do have a very specific plan up on your website on how to combat the Chinese Communist Party. But before we get to the specifics on the plan, I think it's important for people to hear from you.

You serve on key committees regarding this. And we've got your web address right up on our screen right now at blackburn.senate.gov slash China. How big is this threat from China? This threat from China is the biggest threat that we are facing today. You can look at what they're doing.

And I heard you playing the clip. I had said they would never, China would never have tried this. Xi Jinping would never have tried this. If we had a President Donald Trump and a Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, they knew if they did this, there would be hell to pay.

So they didn't even go there. But here is where we find ourselves in this situation. When you look at the economic front, China thinks they have us over the barrel when it comes to active pharmaceutical ingredients, critical supply chain items such as your telecommunications equipment, things that are necessary for many of our electronics and auto manufacturing and rarest minerals. They think they've cornered the market. This is why it is imperative that we repatriate and bring back and incentivize bringing back some of this advanced manufacturing so that we're not caught without. And I'm sure many of your listeners, Jay, remember when we had the heparin scare with contaminated heparin when we couldn't get antibiotics for babies. And it was because they were all made in China and the factory had blown up.

So these are things that we should not put ourselves in those vulnerable positions. Likewise, when it comes to great power competition, what do you see the Chinese Communist Party doing? They're putting spy balloons over the US. They are floating TikTok out there to surveil our people and build a virtual you of anybody that is using TikTok. They have your face. They have your keystrokes. They have your patterns. They look at through machine learning and artificial intelligence what you're looking at. They feed you more of it. They mimic you online.

They own the virtual you. When it comes to bullying Taiwan, Philippines, the Indo-Pacific, the Pacific Island nations, China is bullying them. And then China is carrying out atrocities. The Chinese Communist Party is carrying out atrocities against their own people. You look at the Hong Kong freedom fighters, the Tibetans, the Mongolians, the genocide being carried out against the Uyghurs.

The Uyghurs used as slaves for slave labor. These are all things that the Chinese Communist Party is doing. It's documented. We know we're doing it.

And they don't give a rip and flip what we think. Senator Blackburn, how do we get, because I think people even now, you could purchase a new vehicle and they'll say, all right, we're waiting for this one ship. So the car basically works, but this part of the seat's not going to work till we get that ship.

That ship is likely being made in China. There's a backlog and we've seen that all through COVID as well. So when you add the backlogs that we see through pandemic, plus that we're relying on a country that is, I don't think is now any longer just a competitor, but is really a country that looks at us as an enemy.

But an enemy they rely on too. How do we bring those technological jobs back? I think Americans want to do it.

They just need to know how do we do it? Well, and we have begun to do it with the chips. And Qualcomm, a U.S. company, is your largest producer of chips.

Of course, they work globally, but they work domestically also. And investing, companies are going to need to invest. You have states that their economic development departments are trying to recruit some of these chip manufacturers. In Tennessee, we are seeing people trying to build factories to produce battery components and chips and items that are necessary for automobiles.

We've got CoorsTek up in Oak Ridge that is very active in this space. But it takes incentivizing it coming back. And of course, I'm one of those that believes you incentivize not through grants and government money and government control, but you do it through the tax code. And you put those incentives on the back end.

If they're going to get that tax credit, then they've got to invest that money. One of the things that you're also working on changing focus here for a bit is something very close to us. You have legislation you've introduced called the Stop Taxpayer Funding of Traffickers Act.

And I want to say this. We did a comprehensive analysis for all 50 states on the legal legislation that should be adopted, which most states have now adopted, on this issue of sex trafficking and human trafficking. But this is a huge issue, and it's the stop taxpayer funding aspect of this.

Tell us what that legislation will do. You know, Jay, what we found out by working with some of our organizations that deal in human trafficking, sex trafficking, and also down on the border with our people that are working, our local law enforcement, our CBP working there on the border. Many of these traffickers, these drug kingpins, these pimps, these sex traffickers, gang leaders, they are living in government subsidized housing. They are getting unemployment and welfare benefits, and their side hustle is that they are trafficking drugs and people, and they're recruiting women, grooming women, and forcing them into sex trafficking. And one of the things pointed out to us was that they would be arrested, then they would go back to their public housing address, and they would continue to carry out their trade until such time as they were pulled into court or convicted and jailed.

So we have said as soon as they are arrested, the benefits stop. They're not going to be going home to that public housing. They are not going to be getting that welfare check.

They're not going to be getting an unemployment check. It is unseemly that there are those that are living off the taxpayer while they're carrying out something that is killing lives. We have 70,000 Americans that died of fentanyl poisoning last year, and all of that is coming across the southern border.

It is being pulled into this country by drug kingpins and drug traffickers and mules, and then you have it being made by Chinese scientists. Senator, we appreciate your hard work on all these issues and enjoy working with you and your staff, and we're going to continue to do that. Thank you for your commitment to standing up for the United States, especially with these foreign adversaries, but also protecting people that are vulnerable and with the sex trafficking legislation that you're putting forward.

It's a great idea to not reward this, and as I said, we did comprehensive legislation on it. Senator Blackburn's website address, we'll put it back up on the screen for those that are watching on our social media platforms, blackburn.senate.gov forward slash china. Great way to get information. Coming up, we've got a lot more ahead, by the way.

That's right. Again, we want you to continue listening. Share this if you're watching the broadcast with your friends and family. If you want to get in a call, this is the time to do it. 1-800-684-312. If you've got a question about our pro-life victory, a question about any of the topics we've talked about so far on the broadcast, give us a call.

1-800-684-3110. Support the work of the ACLJ. Donate today, ACLJ.org. Keeping you informed and engaged, now more than ever, this is Sekulow. And now your host, Jordan Sekulow. All right, folks, welcome back to Sekulow. If you're just joining us for the second half hour of the broadcast, a big ACLJ victory for life, a preliminary injunction issued, agreed upon by the National Archives and the Department of Justice.

That's right, and again, we're going to go through that in the next segment of the broadcast. Also, ACLJ action taking on the Pete, Secretary Buttigieg, Mayor Pete, and to hold him accountable for the East, the Ohio disaster and East Palestine as well, which is just outrageous. Outrageous that where's FEMA? You've got people saying, oh, federal government officials say they drink the water.

The Ohio governor saying I would use bottled water. And it's Ohio that is taking the lead, not the federal government or the Transportation Secretary, Mayor Pete, who has spent his time talking about racist roads that lead to beaches and racist construction workers because, oh, construction workers are not enough diversity. So even if you see people in your neighborhood doing good new construction, they don't have the color of your skin. And those construction workers who get paid so much aren't representative of you.

I don't know if anybody's ever looked over at a construction site and said, you know, his skin color doesn't match mine. I don't like him. You know, here's the problem with Pete Buttigieg. You know, he ran on the small town mayor.

Well, you know what you don't do? Don't put a small town mayor in charge of the Department of Transportation because we've got crisis in our aircraft. Okay. We've got shipping problems and we've got this derailment on our rails and, you know, and inconsistent statements coming out of the government. Anyways, we also had, as Jordan said, a big win at the U.S. District Court with the preliminary injunction. We're going to get into more of that in the next segment, but we do have calls coming in.

I want to take one now. Let's take Ronnie's call from Florida on Line 1. Hey, Ronnie. Welcome to Sekulow. You're on the air. Yeah.

Thanks for taking my call. My question was, what is the ultimate goal for these lawsuits? Are you intending to have somebody removed from the positions that, you know, how they stole the First Amendment rights of people for freedom of speech? There's three things you want to do. First, you want to make sure that the individuals can go back in and includes all Americans or anybody that's visiting and exercise their right of passive free speech, which is wearing a shirt that has an insignia that says we're the pro-life generation or whatever it might say or a bracelet they have on.

So that's number one. You want to protect their rights. So that goal, at least the preliminary injunction, is in place for until 2025. We'll get into the specifics next segment.

The second goal is to get a policy change. Well, they've already acknowledged that. So we're working through that.

They've also issued a formal apology to our clients. We're not trying to get people fired at their jobs, okay? What we are doing, though, is, and we'll talk about this more next segment, is everybody that works there is about to get, well, has gotten a copy of the consent decree as of today. Yeah, there's also damages. That hasn't been litigated in this preliminary injunction. It's also, we're talking about like ultimately what you want is a permanent injunction against this kind of behavior. We're going to see the policy and make sure there is actually one that makes sense, that they can be trained on. So while they have this preliminary injunction, which is in itself like a new policy for them, we want to make sure that's permanent, not just for this time period. And then the damages.

It will be up to National Archives. We saw this at the IRS. It'll be up to them if they want to remove any employees. In the past, they have. Well, I mean, Lois Lerner, people, you know, she gave up her job, took the fifth, sought the fifth to not have to testify, which I find in the lawyer. If they're not able to mediate this, we start deposing some of these folks. Oh, yeah. Look, we got a 90-day mediation window.

See if it can all be worked out. If not, we can actually start taking depositions before and we probably, we will. So that case is going to move forward. So anyways, we'll get more into that in the next segment.

I think C.C. Heil's going to join us. We'll go through that.

We're taking some moves on the Smithsonian as well. You've got an ACLJ action item up. We're getting a good response to that too.

That's right. We want to hold, again, Secretary Buttigieg accountable for this. You can take action by going to ACLJaction.org. We've already had 5,987 people since the email went out this morning. Again, all you've got to do is put your info in. We've got a preset letter for you as well.

We want you to add some of your own text to that. Get it in, 5,987. Let's get it above 10,000 at ACLJaction.org, right at the top of the home page. What happened in Ohio is unacceptable and the federal government's response is at the hands of Secretary Buttigieg. And where is FEMA?

The distrust in government is so high. We'll be right back on Secular. Welcome back to Secular. We are taking your calls too.

1-800-684-3110. We want to spend a little bit more time, if you're just joining us, on this victory against the National Archives on behalf of pro-life students and people that were with them as well. That preliminary injunction because one of them is returning tomorrow and so we got the order today signed by the judge, agreed to by National Archives that they violated their constitutional rights when they told them to remove their shirts and continue to harass them throughout the museum. And it wasn't just security officers there. So this order goes out not just to security officers but to everyone who interacts with anyone from the public at National Archives at all National Archives facilities, not just the one in Washington, D.C. Let me read you the first paragraph of the consent order.

This is from and is now signed by Judge Kelly. It's alleged in paragraph five of their complaint that on January 20, 2023, which was the March for Life, they were subject to a pattern of ongoing misconduct within the National Archives Museum by the defendants, the National Archives security officers and defendants, John Does and Jane Does. That's because we don't know who those individuals are by name yet.

We will when we do discovery. Who allegedly targeted plaintiffs and intentionally chilled their religious speech and expression by requiring plaintiffs to remove or cover their attire because of their pro-life messages. And then they say, and this is what's so interesting, C.C. Howell has been working on this case with us, said that the National Archives and Records Administration represents that its policy expressly allows visitors to wear these t-shirts, hats, buttons, et cetera that display protest language, including religious and political speech. Interesting, these people weren't protesting. It was passive speech. What I mean by passive speech is they were just wearing a shirt that said something to the effect of pro-life generation or had a bracelet on that said pro-life.

And that became the basis for this constitutional showdown at National Archives where these students were mistreated in an incredible way. But it's important to understand at the outset what they were engaged in. And they were engaged in classic passive speech. It's still considered speech even though it's not verbal.

Expression is the word that you would use in a proceeding. And that's protected by the First Amendment and they were interfered with. Yeah, so it was clear that the National Archives was violating the First Amendment of our clients. And we got involved very quickly.

We let them know very quickly what happened. And in this consent order, it's important to note that the National Archives literally states that they regret the actions and the events on January 20th. And they're going to remind their security personnel and their employees of the rights of visitors. And of course, a visitor has a right under the First Amendment to walk into the National Archives wearing a t-shirt that says something pro-life. That is something that is constitutionally protected. And it is very interesting that here's the National Archives where you have literally the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and they're going there to see it and their rights that are protected by those documents are being violated. So as CeCe referenced, paragraph three states that the National Archives regrets the events and will remind all of its security officers and staff that narrows facilities across the country, the rights of visitors and of the policy that allows for free speech. It was interesting because then we alleged, and it's true, that one of the plaintiffs intended to return tomorrow, Friday, and that they were going to return again, of course, for the March for Life.

So let me go to the order. And this is what happens when you are aggressive in your litigation, which we were here. So being aggressive gets a result. Here's what happens. So it says the parties consent.

And what Jordan said is right. This means the National Archives, through their lawyers, the Department of Justice under Joe Biden, the Biden Justice Department, okay, consented to and the judge signed to the following, pursuant to Rule 65 of the Rules of Civil Procedure, that's the rules about injunctions. Defendants, their officers, successors in office, employees and agents are preliminarily enjoined from prohibiting visitors from wearing t-shirts, hats, buttons that display protest language, including religious and political speech, which preliminary injunction shall terminate upon the earliest of a final judgment of this action. The court could issue a supplemental order or by January 19, 2025, which is by then we should have the permanent injunction in place. And they also say, interesting, Cece, that what the securities officers and other personnel are going to receive at the National Archives, the next paragraph. So they're absolutely going to get a copy of this consent order just to make sure that these security personnel and people at the gift store and anybody who interacts with the public will understand that this consent order is in place. And it goes on to actually say that they're going to provide our clients with a personal tour and a personal apology, which is absolutely necessary in this case because they literally violated their First Amendment rights. I think this may be a first.

I'm trying to think. Well, I guess in the IRS case, it was the same kind of acts of discrimination here. Lois Lerner did say, we don't have that anymore. I'm sure it's a hundred years ago, said we apologize. The IRS apologizes for this. Of course, there we said apology not accepted. Now we're accepting this apology, not because we got the apology.

We're accepting this apology because you know what we got? A preliminary injunction against the National Archives. But Jordan, as you said, the case is not over because now we've got the damages issued, the permanent injunction and mediation.

Yeah, that's right. I mean, so this is a great initial victory because they consented to the constitutional violation. They've admitted to the violation of the rights here.

But it's just the beginning. Now we have 90 days of mediation, which allows for discovery as well. And of course, there is a damages claim here just to make that clear to folks. So this is not just about getting a relief so that you can return to the museum without fear if you've got a pro-life shirt on, but it's also about the potential damages and harm that our clients suffered. We do have the Lerner apology. So this was the second apology that we received in ACLJ history on a case. Take a listen to this one.

They used names like Tea Party or Patriots, and they selected cases simply because the application had those names in the title. That was wrong. The IRS would like to apologize for that.

Well, she really didn't, you know, look, she didn't really believe that it was an apology. She was part of setting up this be on the lookout list. And somebody, and we're going to get to the bottom of this, folks. Somebody had a be on the lookout for pro-lifers list. Okay? Somebody, these security officers can't, they didn't come up with this on their own.

So that's where discovery comes in. It was absolutely a concerted effort. There's no way that every single security officer was targeting and saying the same thing, making these people cover up, remove their shirts, and even the gift shop person working at the gift shop, same thing. They didn't come up with it individually on their own.

They were told probably that morning, maybe they had a briefing, of course I'm speculating, but at some point someone informed them be on the lookout for these kinds of t-shirts or buttons and make sure that people know they cannot wear them in here, which was exactly wrong because absolutely they can. And it's a victory not only for our clients, but really for anybody who wants to go now to the National Archives and wear something pro-life or anything with religious on their t-shirts. So it's also interesting here is this. So it says, so we got a mediation, which means we have 90 days. You mediate, you try to work out the agreement because we've sued for damages here too, as well as we want a permanent injunction.

But there's also something else that's significant here. We have a companion case and that companion case is the Smithsonian, which is actually the first one we filed because that one hit first. And there we have not moved yet for the injunction or restraining order. However, one of our clients who we talked about the other day, yesterday on the broadcast, a client of ours, Pat Mahoney, may well be heading over there to the Smithsonian in the next week and would wear a pro-life shirt and would be under the existing policy. He's supposed to be protected, but based on what they did, we have no idea that they would be. And that gives us the ground to go get a restraining order. By the way, yesterday, if you remember on the broadcast, we talked to you about the fact that he was out in front of the embassy in China and the secret service initially said, well, the Chinese government just told us that this public sidewalk is actually China's.

So you got to get off here. Now, the captain of the secret service for that area came over and corrected the officer saying, no, no, this is a public sidewalk that's owned by the District of Columbia. It is a place appropriate for free speech. A famous case, Hague v. CIO.

Sidewalks are traditional public forum and he was allowed to do it. We are sending a letter off to make sure there's no confusion again because there's going to be more activity, I suspect, around the embassy. But again, the Smithsonian case is now the next one. We're sending them a copy, and we're probably sending it already this morning, a copy of this order that said basically, hey, agree to this or we're going back into court.

We're already in court there, but we're going to go back into court on an expedited basis. Yeah, and the same egregious, you know, facts happen there. You have security guards literally rubbing their hands together in glee of you're about to make my day because I'm going to kick you out of here because you cannot wear that pro-life t-shirt. That is ridiculous behavior. And the Smithsonian definitely needs to apologize for that, and they need to show us their policy that does not allow for that and that protects these people's First Amendment rights. Talk about damages.

He didn't stop there by just saying you're going to make my day by kicking you out. He said also he's going to write them up. These are all a lot of young people who are about to apply to college. Yeah, they need this on the record. In fact, we had some plaintiffs that did not want to get in the lawsuit because they were afraid it was going to hurt their college admissions. I mean, this is serious.

This is real stuff. But the point is, ACLJ is there. We're fighting it out, and because of you, we can do that. So we encourage you to go to ACLJ.org. That's ACLJ.org. Support the work of the ACLJ. It not only keeps us broadcast on the air, but allows our lawyers to go into court cases around the country and, frankly, around the globe.

ACLJ.org to support the work of the American Center for Law and Justice. Coming up, more issues. We're going to talk about a whole lot of issues, including China. The President is supposed to give a speech either today or tomorrow on the balloon controversy, I call it. We'll see what that is. We'll be back with more, including your calls, 800-684-3110. All right.

Welcome back to Secular. We're joined by a great friend of the ACLJ who does so much great work for our country and all Americans, especially her district, New York 24, Congresswoman Claudia Tenney. Congresswoman, let me go right to you on China. We've seen these briefings that members of Congress have received, and members have come right out after not just the balloon incident, but these other three incidents. They've come out and said everything that was said, whether this was a classified briefing or something that was behind the scenes, that basically all of it should be released and allowed for all American people to see.

Supposedly, the President's going to address the nation maybe as early as tonight, after a week after all this stuff. Your reaction initially just to this lack of transparency from the administration. First they told us the radar didn't pick it up.

Then we find out Daily Mail's got a full tracking of the balloon from the moment it took off in China and how it transversed the Pacific Ocean and into our territory. Well, this is the administration, exactly what they do. I think they're hovering for the mistakes they made and the inconsistencies in this balloon gate scandal, whether it's the first or the fourth balloon, all these discrepancies about how we're using very expensive F-22 Raptors with very expensive weaponry to shoot down a balloon that we probably could have shot with a.50 cal. I mean, this is the kind of stuff that they're trying to couch it in a classified setting when actually most of the documentation and evidence we have is already public.

People can access it. It reminds me a lot of this whole Iran nuclear deal negotiation. But we keep meeting in classified settings, and the Biden administration last year never gave us any information.

And I was like, why is this classified setting when you're just basically telling us what we can read in Al Jazeera and other news outlets? So I think they're trying to come up with a cogent, fallible spin on this that they can address to the American people. But it's long past due for Joe Biden to put this out. And I think the more they wait and the more they spin this, the more the people have less confidence in what they're actually doing. And the more our enemies see this as a complete lack of confidence on the part of the administration, which we don't need to see demonstrated over and over, whether it's Afghanistan, what's happening in Taiwan, the bumbles with China before and now including this balloon gate scandal. You know, Congressman, you mentioned like the overclassification. And we've heard that from intel officials, former secretaries of state, former director of the CIA. Also, you know, with the same line is that they use classification to cover up their mistakes for the American people. And ultimately here it was a I think it's a nonprofit group that has satellites up and anybody can access those satellites.

And they have the imagery of a Chinese balloon manufacturing facility where they manufacture these large scale, huge balloons. And so they even that was public. I mean, none of that was secret. So this idea again, I just want you to let people know that a lot of this classification is done so that we don't understand or they think we won't figure out the mistakes they're making, even though a lot of those mistakes, as you say, they're in plain sight. Yeah, I think that people see it and and people are concerned because a lot of people don't understand legally the difference between levels of classification for documents. So someone hears the term classified. They've watched, you know, these these cop shows and go, Oh, it's classified, we can't, you know, this is we shouldn't have this out.

But we've got access to it. And when they can't talk about it. And I think that what people need to understand is there's all kinds of bureaucrats, as you say, overclassifying. It's what they used as a justification to raid President Trump and then Oh, had they had to make it look good.

So they went after now they're going after Joe Biden, they went after Mike Pence, they're going after anyone and using this, this sector of Oh, my God, they're classified documents in harm, you know, in somebody's closet or something, you know, this is still not comparable to Sandy Berger stuffing documents out of the National Archives into his socks on his way out the door. So I, you know, the problem is they're able to nuance this with people who don't really understand the difference and manipulate the public. And I think this is all part of the problem when you have a public that doesn't understand what our government's about, and that it's their obligation to be self governing, to have to figure out what the truth is, and as good that we have more media outlets talking about it like your outlet, so that we can get down to the facts about this thing.

But that's what concerns me the most is how many Americans don't even understand the difference and fall prey to some of the less than less than ethical media outlets just trying to use this information to manipulate and really just wear Team Jersey on one side or the other, particularly the Democratic side. You serve on the House Science, Space and Technologies committees and that work, that committee does work on the China issue. I want to ask you the same question that I asked Congresswoman today, former Secretary of State Pompeo, Senator Blackburn just moments ago, and that is for our audience to understand how big of a threat China is to the United States.

I don't think you can understate it or overstate it. I think China is our biggest adversary on so many levels, whether it's beefing up their military, their ability to do surveillance, they've already been spying on us. Back when I first wrote my first article on China in 2016 about the almost $400 billion in intellectual property theft by the Chinese Communist Party of American companies, our innovation and our technologies, largely through these Confucius Institutes but other ways of infiltrating our business community at home and in China, it's now over $600 billion and they continue to use TikTok, buying up farmland, now surveillance balloons.

I mean, they're brazen in what they're doing and we have so many Americans and companies that don't realize how dangerous this threat is. And I'm hoping that on the Science, Space and Technology Committee, we can really expose this, but also to continue to expose it because our innovation, our technology, our ability to protect our homeland are under siege and they have been for years. This is not new and getting Americans to bring our supply chains back here, getting reasonable, responsible energy. We have a huge reliance on China for this green energy agenda with solar panels, the batteries and all this that we're relying on China for.

Most of our pharmaceuticals in terms of R&D is now being relied on in China. We can do that and we do do that so much better in this country. We just need to have honest reporting and honest assessment of this. I'm going to plan on doing some committee meetings on energy, on supply chains and things that we need to focus on, even on the Science, Space and Technology Committee so we know that China doesn't continue to get an edge on our country in terms of basically everything.

When you're talking about military superiority, technology with hypersonic satellites, aggressive satellites, now this balloon and surveillance technology, intellectual property on so many levels, they're way ahead of us and just look at the way our education system is showing that they're producing students that are much more able to handle the technological challenges of the future while our students tend to be focused on woke issues and things that aren't helping us advance against a really fast-moving target in China. You know, Congresswoman Tinney, you again stand for all of us and are working so hard in Washington, D.C. to bring clarity to this, to bring the info to the American people and to fight back and do something about it. We appreciate you so much for joining us on the broadcast today and again, folks, to learn more about what Claudia, Representative Tinney is doing through her website. Again, she's also on, I just want to mention quickly, the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, which is looking at all of this, what's flying up in the atmosphere. What do we need to combat?

Exactly right. It was great having her on today. We appreciate it, Congressman. Alright, folks, this shows you the scope today.

You've had a member of Congress, a member of the House, a member of the Senate, and the former Secretary of State and Director of the CIA on the broadcast today. Your support for this broadcast keeps all that possible. We encourage you to go to ACLJ.org for that. That's ACLJ.org and support the work of the American Center for Law and Justice. But also, let me tell you this, stay engaged and stay informed. Go to ACLJ.org to sign up for our newsletters. You should do that. And also follow us on Rumble, Twitter, True Social, Facebook, YouTube, wherever you get your social media, Instagram, at Jordan Sekulow, at Jay Sekulow, at Logan Sekulow, and at ACLJ. Talk to you tomorrow.