BREAKING: American KILLED by Iranian Drone

Breaking news today on Sekulow as an American is killed by an Iranian drone. 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. All right, welcome to Sekulow with all the conflict around the world. This was a breaking news story. Late last night, but there's been continued action, so late last night an Iranian-made drone fired by an Iranian proxy, likely that would be Hezbollah because this was in Syria, killed one US contractor, military contractor, and three other American soldiers are injured at least. We then responded with an attack on a base for that Iranian affiliate.

There's very, very careful language here. We'll talk to Rick Grenell and Mike Pompeo about that. They're going to be joining us in this first hour, half hour of the broadcast because they're not blaming directly Iran, but of course Hezbollah is controlled by Iran and we know they're operating as well. I want to put it up on the screen right now for those of you watching because when you hear that there is a US base in Syria, you might kind of be thinking an outpost like in Afghanistan with very much like CIA and secretive. This is not that.

This is very official in the sense that we've got a US flag flying. I mean, that's a base. That's a statement base. It's called a coalition base actually. Which also provides a target.

Yeah. So most of these were put in place during the primary time when ISIS was making moves in the greater Middle East, including in Syria. Which is still ongoing. It's still ongoing and we have these bases. We have probably about 900 CIA operative types, they call them contractors roughly in the region. Some US military. But as you see, there's an American flag flying here. So this was a direct attack by an Iranian proxy on a US, this is what's interesting, on a US base or at least a US affiliated base and at the same time understand that the Russians have been negotiating a resolution of hostilities between Saudi Arabia and Iran when Iran was on a trajectory under the previous administration, we'll talk to Mike Pompeo and Rick Grenell about this in a moment, to be in alliance with Israel. So this is quite a change that's taken place and this was a direct, really a direct assault on the United States.

Yeah, that's right. I mean, so you've got this base is right between Turkey and Iraq. Of course, Iran is right there.

It doesn't border, but yeah, there we've got it on the screen for everybody. So I mean, this, again, this was Northeast Syria. It's probably a wake up call to a lot of American people this morning that were still so active there. But that is why we've heard reports ISIS has been reconstituting.

This is why we have those 900 individuals, a mixer of contractors and US troops is to make sure they aren't able to create a caliphate, even in the midst of what is a very complicated situation in Syria with Assad's regime, ISIS and Iran involved. And of course the US involved. Russia was involved there as well.

No, this is the problem. Russia has been very involved. Our first book we wrote on the Middle East, after we were writers of ISIS, the second book in the trilogy was Unholy Alliance. It was Russia, Syria, and Iran. Iran seems to be the constant in all of this, whether it's Iran or Hezbollah and Iran proxy. And what a proxy war means is the Iranian Revolutionary Guards not going in there necessarily themselves, but they train Hezbollah. These are terrorist organizations operating in the Middle East and they have them go in and do their bidding.

And it's called a proxy war. We did a movie about this whole issue calling export, which was involving, it's a great movie. Interviews that we'll never get again.

I mean, these were incredible. We should probably retool that movie and get it back out now, years later, because it is relevant today as it was then. And it focused on that exact issue of this proxy war with Iran. And in a sense, we were in that proxy war last night and this morning. The war continues.

Yes. And I think that we haven't paid as much attention because ISIS was destroyed. The leader was taken out by President Trump and there has not been as much Islamic terror in the world. There was a great partnership made in the Gulf States, but that partnership has now changed.

Because Saudi Arabia, upset with the Biden administration, and some of it is the war against their prince, some of it is the war against fossil fuel, has brokered an agreement with Iran, which is unheard of. And very unfortunate that the Biden administration... Well, all the products we're making with the Abraham Accords... Making the world a more dangerous place for Americans. Yes. Again. Targeting America. American was killed. America is dead. Yeah. So this is serious stuff. All right, we're taking your calls at 800-684-3110. Coming up, our special counsel on global affairs and our senior advisor on global affairs, I'll be Rick Renaud, followed by Mike Pompeo.

Back with more in a moment. So overnight, very late last night, the news broke that an Iranian-made drone was used by an Iranian proxy. Let's be honest, that proxy is controlled by Iran. It's Hezbollah in Syria that targeted US troops as well as US contractors. A US contractor has been killed, at least three US troops have been injured by that drone attack. Then the US responded by an attack on that affiliate of Iran, as they're going to say, on a Hezbollah base. That killed eight Hezbollah fighters, I think, Will, killed eight Hezbollah fighters. Then they responded again, another attack on our base in Syria, no casualties reported from that attack. The big question now is what happens next? So the US has not responded to that attack yet. No, that's right.

But you've got an ongoing conflict. All right, let's get Rick Renaud in. Rick, of course, was US ambassador to Germany, obviously a significant role there, but also the director of national intelligence. Rick, first of all, your reaction to this move by the Iranians, the thing that concerns me in this, Rick, is we had a lot of progress under your administration, especially under the Abraham Accords. And it looked like Saudi Arabia was, although they didn't formally join the Accords, they were in line too. And now it looks like they're realigning a little bit with Iran because of Russia's brokerage here. But what is your assessment of the situation with this Iranian backed, at least, or drone attack on a US base and we lost an American? Well, look, it's clear that this appeasement strategy from the Biden administration is not working.

We've seen an increase of attacks. You can't look at the facts and not see that there has been Iranian and Iranian backed groups attacks, an increase in attacks since Joe Biden took office. Remember that one of the first things they tried to do was to immediately engage the Iranians. There was talk about paying them to come back to the table, giving away as much as they could just to get the Iranians back to a negotiation. And that whole idea was pay them, keep them close because then we might be able to monitor their nuclear weapons programs. What the Trump administration policy was is to galvanize the world, to sanction and isolate Iran.

That was working. It should have been a policy that was kept in place. But instead, you had Joe Biden who literally took the Houthis off the terrorist list. And within just weeks, the Houthis were bombing and sending missiles into the UAE.

These bad policies, these weak policies have consequences. You know, Rick, what I think people are going to be surprised about is just because it really just hasn't gotten much news coverage. Obviously, this base wasn't secret.

We showed the image of it to folks. I mean, it's a pretty serious size base, got a US flag flying. But to our audience, that we are still that engaged in Syria. And we were explaining earlier that we want to make sure that ISIS does not come back on the rise. But the issue here is that, is this the potential for a new escalation in what is a very complicated ongoing civil war? Look, the other success that Donald Trump had in Syria and the reason why ISIS was destroyed, the reason why we really calmed that situation down from when Obama, Biden, the Obama-Biden team had inflamed it, is because Russia is absolutely in control in Syria. And we need to be very clear about that. The Russian relationships with the Iranians and the Chinese right now is a growing relationship.

This is a game of high stakes chess. And the reality is, is that you have to be talking to the Russians, if you want to keep the Islamic state from rising inside Syria. The Russians are very good at controlling the Iranians when they want to be.

I'm not suggesting that the Russians are our total strategy. But if you're going to talk about calming the situation down in Syria, so that we can control, better control terrorism, you've got to have discussions with the Russians. The Russians want certain things out of Syria. They want the ports, they want oil. There should be a negotiation to keep peace or greater peace in Syria.

This is just the reality and Donald Trump did a fantastic job of it. The thing that I'm concerned with right now, one of many, I wrote a book, this was probably five years ago now, called Unholy Alliance. And it was really focused on Russia, Iran and Syria.

And the whole Jihadi threat. And then during your time in office, we saw that the relationship with Russia, our relationship with Russia improved significantly, which then brought about the stability in the region. Israel's relationship with Russia was in much better shape. You had the Gulf States joining the Abraham Accords. Iran, as you said, was being isolated. And then the first thing that the Obama, Obama, it is a continuation, the Biden administration did was try to get back into the JCPOA, which of course is the Iranian nuclear deal. And it's not happened because they're not, the Iranians aren't going to do it. But the people are saying that the Iranians are on the threshold. I don't want you to divulge anything, but you were the director of national intelligence. Do you believe that Iran is close to capability of a nuclear weapon and would they use it if they had it?

Yeah, I think the answer is yes and yes. And the reality is, is that we can't trust the Iranian regime. They lie, they've lied from the very beginning about the number of centrifuges that they told John Kerry that they had. They've lied about the heavy water production that they have done. They've been caught.

They scrub sites. There's one thing to remember is that the UN's IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency, they are scientists. They don't carry guns. They don't go into rooms or go into places where they are not automatically welcomed in by the Iranians. The Security Council of the UN is designed to be there when the IAEA wants to go check out a site and the Iranian regime says no. That then bubbles up to the Security Council and the Security Council is supposed to be the one that says, okay, let them in or we'll write a bad report on you.

There are not good consequences for the Iranian regime to deny the international community, the UN, from getting what it needs to issue a report that says that they're not seeking a nuclear weapon. So the short answer is we don't know exactly because we're not getting very good information. We have phone calls come in about this situation where a US contractor has been killed by an Iranian drone.

Three US troops have been injured. This is in Syria. Lynn in Washington State on Line 1. Hey, Lynn.

Hi. I was wondering, have we heard anything at all from President Joe Biden regarding this incident? It's late in the day already where you guys are.

Washington is open. Has President Biden said anything to the people? Well, of course, we responded by military attack.

So that's one thing. Remember, there was a response. We killed nine Hezbollah fighters and then they responded. No casualties again on the US side. So we don't know what if there will be a next response yet.

There's a written statement out from Secretary Austin, but John Kirby did make this statement to CNN that we can play right now by 27. He had a discussion with his national security team on the way up here to Ottawa in the wake of the drone strike on our base in Syria and received recommendations from the from Defense Department leaders and the intelligence community about what response options could look like. He made the decision very, very shortly in that discussion to to authorize these strikes against these particular targets.

And then, Rick, they struck back. OK, so let me ask you this. What should be the next move here for the United States?

And if Rick Rinnell was calling the shot here. So remember, I'm I'm a diplomat. I'm a long term diplomat. And then what I would just say here is we now have an American contractor that has been killed in Syria simply because the United States government is not able to talk to Russia about what's happening in Syria. We're not able to talk about Russia because of the Ukraine war because of this chaos. We literally have a diplomatic breakdown. It's now causing Americans to be killed.

It is going to get worse. I would be all for having strikes to retaliate if on the way to strikes you were having diplomatic conversations and somehow you weren't making progress. But by Joe Biden and Anthony Blinken's own admission, Jay, they have not spoken with their Russian counterparts until very recently, over a year.

There was no talk. And that's why Syria has delved into chaos. Rick, we appreciate your insight, your analysis. And again, this is an ongoing situation, but a wake up call for the American people that we still have troops, contractors and Americans in harm's way in Syria who are directly combating. I mean, Secretary Austin's statement said, Iranian Revolutionary Guards affiliated groups.

I mean, they're not holding that back. Let me say this also, though, about the American Center for Law and Justice. Just heard from our senior advisor, Rick Grenell, who's a former director of national intelligence. Coming up next is the former secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, who happened to be a senior counsel of global affairs for the American Center for Law and Justice. So we did a campaign two years ago called Now More Than Ever, needed for the ACLJ. There's a good example of it right now.

You're not getting this analysis anyplace else. And we'll work on the international tribunals to make sure that things are done correctly here and America's interests are protected, even if the administration decides not to. Your support makes a big difference. We're a matching challenge campaign at ACLJ.org. So any match you donate, we get a matching campaign, matching gift for ACLJ.org. We encourage you to do it. Let me say this also. I'm going to stay live during this break. We've got, can we do that Will or should we not? We got a lot of people that are joining us on on Rumble right now, and we encourage that as our preferred source to go to Rumble.

Encourage you to do that right now. All right, welcome back to Sekulow. Again, to reset just quickly, an Iranian drone used to strike an American base. A US contractor has been killed as well as three American service men or women injured. We then responded, killed eight Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps affiliated groups. So Hezbollah and about eight of them have been killed. They then shot back at our base again.

No one was injured. The question now is what happens next? Yes, and we are joined by our Senior Counsel for Global Affairs, former Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo. Mike, first, as Jordan just said, an Iranian-developed drone probably put in place by or manned by, directed by Hezbollah, killed an American contractor, injured other US military personnel on a base of the United States in Syria. Where does that put us?

Because this is a unique situation. You had, under your administration, you had a tremendous growth and stability in the region with the Abraham Accords. I feel like we're digressing at a very rapid rate here.

Jared, we did live this for four years. What the Iranians understand is strength and power, and they'll do this kind of thing when they observe weakness. It does feel like it's coming unraveled, not just in this particular instance, and of course it is. Our condolences go out to the contractor, the American contractor that was killed, but it feels like it's coming unraveled in the sense of a risk is higher.

The Middle East now no longer trusts the United States of America to have its back when difficult things happen, and that means the bad actors, whether it's the Houthis in Yemen or Hezbollah in Lebanon or Syria or the Iraqi militias, the Shia militias in Iraq, these folks feel freer to come after Americans because they think that the United States won't take action in response. I'm happy to see that we did. I don't know precisely, I've seen the reporting.

It's been a little bit all over about how we responded, but make no mistake about it. They would not have done this. They wouldn't have flown this drone. By the way, it's probably the same type of drone that's being used by the Russians coming from Iran in Ukraine.

They wouldn't have used this drone if they thought that the cost of them was going to exceed the benefit. We have to restore that deterrence. These guys in the White House just simply haven't figured out how to do that. You know, Secretary Pompeo, what I think people, again, they're waking up to this news. They're seeing us talking about it.

They might be surprised that we even had a base in this many U.S., whether it's contractors and a mix of other U.S. officials, men and women, and including officials, men and women in our armed forces, so not just CIA or contractors. But then we have 900 still in Syria, and things have been relatively calm, at least what's been reported in the news. But in Secretary Austin's written statement, which was interesting, to me, that he added this point, because we weren't really seeing this in the news at all, that the attack followed a series of recent attacks against coalition forces in Syria by Iranian-affiliated groups. So things have been escalating in Syria. We just weren't really learning about that in the news.

It wasn't being reported widely. Jordan, it doesn't surprise me. So those soldiers have been on the ground there for quite some time. This was the force that was leading the charge to take down the caliphate, to take down the caliphate during our years there, when we needed the Americans on the ground to assist the indigenous forces at crushing ISIS.

It was cutting people's heads off when President Obama was in office. The residual force that had remained there was attempting to secure that, provide a continued stability and deter terrorism from that region. But the fact that this is heated up, the fact that the Iranians are now feeling more free to move about the cabin, right, it's consistent with the fact that the United States for months and months and months was sitting with the Iranians at the table, trying to figure out how to make sure the Iranians had a pathway to a nuclear weapon. The fact that they knew full well that they were likely to get the sanctions lifted on their regime. The fact that the United States no longer is as close a supporter of Israel. And so the Arab states, the Gulf Arab states are not thinking, gosh, I got to hedge my bets with Iran. All of those things are of a part. It all seems disconnected. But this all drives from a central thesis, which is that when you appease the Iranian, the world's largest state sponsor of terror that has killed hundreds of Americans and thousands of people across the world, when you appease them, they're going to take advantage of it. And we saw that today. It's very interesting that you said this, Mike, because it's kind of looking at the backside of a tapestry.

It looks really pretty on the front and the backside. It looks like it's how do they get there to tie all these pieces in. And here's the thing that has me very concerned as someone that I've worked in this region for a long time. I've done work at the International Criminal Court in The Hague on issues involving the Middle East, but here's what has me the most concerned right now. It seemed like in Saudi Arabia's situation, which is a complicated relationship, no doubt, and you dealt with it firsthand, but there seemed to be cooperation between the Saudis and the Israelis. And I'm not saying that doesn't exist at all now because there was a common foe and that was Iran. And I think that Russia was able to get in there and influence the Saudis as it relates to Iran, like you said, hedging their bets. And in every alliance you see that's dangerous, it seems like the constant right now is Iran. I think that's true. I think it's true in large measure because Iran feels like they slipped a bit, like they were on the cusp of having them do something really difficult. And when President Biden was elected, they sent special envoy to go sit down and say, we told you to hang on. We told you to wait till President Trump and Mike Pompeo left and things would be better and we're going to make your life better. So you're exactly right.

Think about this. So Iran providing drones to the Russians to kill Ukrainians, yet Iran now flying a drone to kill an American today. Iranians continuing to patrol the Persian Gulf in ways that put Israeli interests at risk and the Israelis concerned about continued advancement of the Iranians in the southeastern part of Syria that threatens them in connection to Hezbollah. These are all pieces, these are all pieces of an Iran that feels emboldened, empowered. And when that happens, the central thesis, which was that if you isolate Iran, it is better for America, it falls apart.

We had them as isolated as they'd ever been. The Gulf Arab states were joined alongside of it. Some of them signed the Abraham Accords, but all of them knew that the United States was serious about protecting things that mattered to their people. And the Israelis knew that they could count on America as well. And when you do that, you put Iran in a box.

And when you don't do that, you see the kind of things you're beginning to see happen, not only in the Middle East, but all across the world as well. Mike, we appreciate it. Mike Pompeo, of course, former secretary of state, former director of the CIA, currently a senior counsel for global affairs, the ACLJ. Mike, thanks for your insight.

Again, we continue to take your phone calls to 1-800-684-31-TID. There's an interesting thing, though. In this half hour of this broadcast, the former director of national intelligence and the former secretary of state and director of the CIA, all part of the ACLJ team, talking to our audience, our members around the country, frankly, around the world on these issues. Yeah, Matt, a story where an American has been killed, three US service members injured by Iran and their affiliates with a drone strike. We fired back. We killed eight of them.

They fired back again. No casualties, thankfully, reported by the US. The question is, what happens next there? But there's not a lot of news reporting on this right now, and that's because if you don't have Rick or Nell and Mike Pompeo breaking this down for you, what I just said is about all you can say. But we were able to get deep into, why are we just learning today that things have been escalating on the ground in Syria?

Who is escalating it? That it's not just Iran and Hezbollah and Assad and these ISIS kind of affiliates and us, that there's Russia, but also that by Russia, now there's China. So you're taking every major world power is at play in Syria right now. Yeah. And that's where I said it. While a war is going on in Ukraine.

Right. And that's how you get into a war that expands at a very drastic rate very quickly. And listen, part of our job at the ACLJ, when we say to protect freedom and liberty, you got to have a country to protect.

You got to have freedom and liberty to protect for your kids and grandkids. That's why when we're doing this work, it's not just talking about it. We're taking action folks.

We brought in the leading experts in the world to figure this stuff out. We need your support at ACLJ.org. Any amount you donate, we're getting a matching gift for. So I want to encourage a stacked deductible course. Just go to ACLJ.org. Any amount you donate, we're getting a matching gift for.

If you're able to do it, we appreciate it. ACLJ.org. Back with more, including your phone calls at 800-684-3110 for the second half hour. Keeping you informed and engaged. Now more than ever, this is Sekulow.

And now your host, Jordan Sekulow. All right, welcome back to Sekulow as we analyzed this ongoing story. I mean, again, this happened late last night, the report that a US contractor, military contractors, as well as three US troops, one contractor was killed, so an American killed, and three US troops injured by an Iranian drone fired by Hezbollah at a US base. Then the US responded by attacking a Hezbollah base connected to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard that killed eight of their soldiers or fighters. And then they struck back yet again, which shows their capabilities. When we struck, it wasn't like that they were paralyzed. They struck right back. Thankfully, there were no US casualties.

I want to put it on the street again very quickly for everybody. When we talk about this US base in Syria, this is not a tent of CIA agents hiding out in a city. This is the American flag flying.

I mean, it's not a giant facility, but if you look there, there's Humvees and some major vehicles that kind of shows you the size. So right now we have a serious situation developing there. We analyzed that with Rick Rinnell and Mike Pompeo. We've also had a big win for parental rights in the US House of Representatives. This is going to be an ongoing battle through the next election cycle, certainly, because you had every single Democrat voting against the Parents Bill of Rights Act. Why? One thing, teachers unions.

Yeah, and we talked about that yesterday. The teachers unions are strong and they don't want parental involvement. You know where you saw that the most? When you had to do distance learning, the teachers unions did not want parents, because it was being done in the kids' house. They didn't want the parents to listen to the classroom, what was going on. So those days need to come to an end. So Congress- Like you're going to set up your six-year-old and not pay attention to what they're launching on their iPad, which is not good parenting, actually.

No, exactly right. But they also thought that they could get away with this. So here's what we did. We, ACLJ, an ACLJ action went to work on this. ACLJ action, more the legislative arm and getting information in.

And we had a great success this morning. House of Representatives, we won, the bill passed. It'll go to the Senate. Now what's interesting here, at the same time that that was going on- I want to say thank you to our ACLJ action supporters and people who responded. We got 15,227 people to write their own comment to Congress in 24 hours on this vote. In 24 hours, 15,000 of you utilized the ACLJ action tool on that website, ACLJaction.org, to contact your member of Congress to vote yes on the Parents Bill of Rights Act, which again, just empowers parents instead of empowering teachers unions and school boards. At the same time, the ACLJ, American Center for Law and Justice, sent in comments to the Department of Education, the Education Department, on a rollback of religious freedom guarantees being proposed by the Biden administration. These were put in place during the previous administration, protecting religious freedom on campus. And the Biden administration has proposed to take the teeth out of those regulations, the teeth where if you violate free speech rights of students, or teachers for that matter, on campus, you put your federal funding at risk. And the government wants to take- that was the only teeth in the regulation.

And they want to take that out. So we responded. Here's another interesting aspect of this. Of the about 15,000 responses on that one that came in on that particular piece of regulation by the Department of Education, 10,310 of those comments that came in were from ACLJ Action. Two-thirds. So two-thirds of the comments that came in opposing this rule change by the administration and the Department of Education, which takes all the teeth out. And we'll explain when we come back.

It's on our website at ACLJ.org. Because the teeth were very important to this. You can say all you want about, you need to protect First Amendment rights if you receive federal funds, but what's the, if you don't? Well, that's what the Biden administration wanted to take out. Yeah, because it's too hard to monitor.

It's so hard to monitor. Yes, it's so hard to monitor with thousands and thousands of bureaucrats. That are violating free speech rights of American citizens. And monitoring U.S. citizens every day at school board meetings. That they can do.

Like I said, the National Archives, they can't find documents contained by Presidents, but they can sure pick out pro-life students. Oh yeah. Or file lawsuits against pro-life sidewalk counselors. Yes.

Which all of which ended in victories for the people that were being attacked by the government, I might add. So that's a positive development. Folks, I encourage you to go to ACLJ.org. We have up on an article that Jordan did. ACLJ files formal public comments to defend religious liberty on campus. That is up right now at ACLJ.org. Support our work as well, Matching Challenge Campaign. Yeah, at ACLJ.org, you can double the impact of your donation.

That's at ACLJ. So you make a $50 donation right now at ACLJ.org. We have a group of donors say, we will match that donation.

But you've got to trigger that match. You make the initial donation, and then you double the impact. So at a time when I know things are tight, you can still double the impact of your donation at ACLJ.org.

Donate today. We'll be right back. All right, welcome back to Secchia. I want to dive right into what this passage of this House of Representatives Parents Bill of Rights Act does. So it passed again, 213 to 208, all Republicans versus Democrats.

Some Republicans voted against it, I think five, but there were no Democrats supporting this. They went lockstep with the teachers unions. And that's because of basic things like parents can know what their children are being taught. Parents have the right to be heard and offer in-person meetings with parents each year with the teachers, like teacher meetings. This is for public schools. Parents have the right to know the budgets that the school systems are putting in place for those grades.

To see the school budget spending right. To protect the children's privacy as well. That parents will have a say to develop or update their student privacy policies. And that parents must consent before there's any medical exam takes place at school, including mental health or substance use disorder screenings, and before students are surveyed. Again, not an emergency situation, but these survey and counseling situations.

That a parent of a K through middle schooler, so about K through 12 is what we're talking about, kindergarten through 12 year olds, I would say about the age group. That your parents get to know the information. And also, which I think this is a key one too, parents have the right to keep their children safe. You've got to notify parents about violent acts that are occurring at school. So those bullying attacks, violent attacks. If you've got a student who's been even arrested a few times because of attacking another student or group of students, you don't need to be finding out about the day there's a shooting at the school.

This is a common sense approach. It passed the House of Representatives. Now in the United States Senate, it's going to be a fight.

It's going to be uphill. You would think it would pass, but the teacher's union is so strong. I want to explain, this is Republicans, conservatives putting down a marker for the next election cycle.

Because this issue worked. Well, Governor Youngkin's a perfect example in Virginia. That was a state that was very purple, at best kind of blue almost. And what happened was the school issue became huge there. Parents were speaking out at school board hearings and these schools were acting like, we don't want to hear from you. These are our kids when they're in the classroom, which is not the case by the way. So Governor Youngkin ran on a policy plank that included parental involvement in the educational process, which should be nothing that is so extraordinary. You would think teachers would actually support that. All right, but I'll tell you, someone's been doing this for 40 years. We've been, I mean, I can't count how many school board hearings I've been doing in the course of my career.

So this does happen. But having federal legislation, you know what, even if it doesn't get through the Senate, it's laid down a marker. It's a marker for the next election cycle. And that's really important for parents. Are you on the side of parents or are you on the side of the school board and the teachers unions? Yeah, and it's really, and the school boards sometimes are just bullied by the teachers unions, quite frankly.

I mean, one of the big uproar was not too far from art studios, and it was in a conservative county. And these teachers unions can still wreck havoc in the administration of education with students. I mean, this is the crazy way the Democrats, like Jim McGovern from Massachusetts, try to explain that this is somehow bad and inappropriate for the federal government using your tax. Remember, this is because these schools are local and state, but they receive federal funds. They receive all of our taxpayer dollars, not just taxpayer dollars at the state level, at the federal level as well.

But take a listen to the Democrats and how they try to explain away voting for parents' rights. It turns Congress into a national school board withholding essential federal funding if local school districts don't comply with our whims. The self-proclaimed party of limited government and states' rights wants to nationalize our education system, turning Congress into a one-size-fits-all board of education for the entire country. So I'd ask Jim McGovern first, is he okay with all of us in support, which we are, of abolishing the Department of Education?

I bet not, but that was nationalizing the education. The Department of Education, the Republicans want to abolish. So he's talking about, oh, the Republicans, they want the Congress to be running the local schools, but we created the Department of Education with our taxpayer dollars at a national level. And a lot of Republicans say it's a waste and it's bad and we should be returning the money and the power to the communities, to the actual parents of those communities and the students of those communities, school choice, all of those issues.

This is why it's a bad issue for Democrats because it's not partisan. It's only partisan for them because they receive so much funding from those teachers unions. I mean, you got to understand the power of these teachers unions. They're like the last remaining most powerful union in the country. I would say, would you say one of the most powerful?

Yeah, you would say, again, like the AFL-CIO and those, not even close to the power of the teachers unions. Let's play this. You want to play this?

Which bite? Jeffrey. Okay. All right.

Akeem Jeffries. Extreme mega Republicans don't want your child to learn about the LGBTQ plus experience in America. That's not a decision that extreme mega Republicans here in Congress should make. The parents of America should be able to make that determination. That's what this allows them to do.

That's the juxtaposition of what's so insane here. It's because they're kids who write their communications. Sean Spicer has been a communication... He's joining us next.

He's going to be in the studio with us. The kids who write their communications aren't very keyed on. So he just actually endorsed it.

Trying to call it mega. Here's the first thing. Parents have the right to know what their children are being taught. Didn't he just say that parents of Americans should be able to make that determination?

That's all it says. Congress says, as long as you tell the parents, you can teach what you want, including that LGBTQ history. Just tell the parents. If that's what your school district wants to do, but you can't hide it because why?

Can't hide any of it. Might think that's not appropriate for a second grader? Do you remember years ago? It was years ago. Only up to middle school.

That's probably not appropriate for them. Yeah. Here's what's so interesting to me. Do you remember... This was years ago.

We had this... There was this curriculum in California of teaching the five pillars of Islam. Parents didn't know anything about it. The kids were bowing down to Mecca. Now, can you imagine if they were doing a Jewish or a Christian... Not learning world religion. No, it wasn't about religion. Participating in religion. But you could imagine if it was a Jewish practice or a Christian practice.

No, you can't pray. No, right. So this is... But then Akeem Jeffries just said exactly what the legislation does, the parents should make this decision in America, right? It's a parent's bill of rights, actually, is what this is. Right. And this helps push it along the way to parents' rights because the federal funding would be at stake. Here's the problem.

So this federal funding, which isn't like immediately revoked, it just can be, empowers parents. Yeah. But you know what it is? You say up is down, down is up.

Yeah. Hot is cold, cold is hot. Here's the problem. They don't read the legislation.

They just know, well, the labor union or in this particular case, the teachers union says, no, we're done. And that's the way it is. So we fought back on this, folks, aggressively.

And I mean, we produced a lot of action on this and we need to retrace what that was. If you're watching, by the way, on our social media, we encourage you share this with your friends, especially again on Rumble. Hit follow and share this with your friends. Give us a thumbs up.

We'll get into more feeds, more people watching. Let's explain exactly what we did here. I think it's very important. In 24 hours, we have a tool at ACLJ Action. It makes it very easy for you to send a message to your member of Congress directly. So not just broadly to Congress, but to your member of Congress. 15,227 of you did it on this, in support of parental bill of rights in 24 hours. 15,227 people took the time.

Now the letter's preset, but we encourage you to, you can edit it, you can write your own, you can delete all of our language and write your own. But so it can be as quick as you want, you can take as long as you want. And thank you to the 15,227 of your ACLJ supporters, ACLJ Action members who took action when we asked these last 24 hours to make sure, as you said, that we put a marker down on this issue.

Because I would love to take this to Hakeem Jeffries and just play that soundbite over and over and over again. And that's how you take a purple state and turn it red very, very quickly. So we know this is going to be, and maybe this is just for all of you to know, this is going to be a very much number one or two top issue, of course, the economy and world events are issues as well, leading into the next election cycle. And I want you all to know about that as well, how important that is.

So again, thank you. When this hits the Senate, which is going to be an uphill battle, we'll engage again and we'll let you know. We're going to rewrite the text, rewrite the letter to ACLJ Action, and we'll want you to weigh in as well. Because you can then get, even if we can't win in the Senate, we get those Senate Democrats talking about it, just like Hakeem Jeffries did. They're top Democrat in the House.

But let me tell you, the thing is, you have a problem, there's a solution. So the hope here is we actually can get a result. And it passed the House of Representatives. Like Jordan said, even if we can't get it through the Senate, first of all, now it's on everybody's radar. Every school district is aware of this.

Every town is aware of this. Every teacher is going to be aware of this. And the ACLJ said, here's the way you can respond and help us get this passed. And it passed. Now it becomes a marker for 2024 that people, parents are going to want, and it's going to be, it's going to cross the ideological spectrums.

It's going to cross the party affiliations. Parents have the right to know what's going on in their kids' school. And we know the teachers unions don't like that. They didn't like the fact that when they were ever going to do Zoom classes, they wanted Zoom classes.

They loved that, but they didn't want parents listening to what was going on in those classes. We know Sean Spicer, he is a little bit of traffic. He was trying to join us in studio live today. We'll do our podcast as well, definitely. So we'll have Sean on. His book is The Parents Go Banana. It's a kid's book, his first kid's book. There you go.

We'll talk about it on the Secular Brothers podcast, and maybe we'll be able to record something we can drop into the Secular broadcast as well. I will confirm there was traffic on the way into work this way. Unexpected. It was not a wreck.

It was just some kind of like lining on it. And then there's some weather issues as well. But we come back, I want to dive into this even deeper because I really do believe, I want to hear from you at 1-800-684-3110.

You open up the phone. Because why these children's books are becoming important to people is they want something, it's not all religious or Christian or specific, but something they can read to their kids. It's positive message so that they're learning in an appropriate level about our country, about right and wrong, and good and bad.

We think basic, fundamental American democracy, which is unbelievable, but I think things have digressed significantly since the COVID pandemic. All right, support the work of the ACLJ at ACLJ.org and the matching challenge campaign, ACLJ.org. We want to hear from you about your local schools. 1-800-684-3110, 800-684-3110. Do you want to know what's going on in your schools?

800-684-3110. All right, welcome back to Secular. So the Parent Bill of Rights Act, I do want to play Hakeem Jeffries one more time because this is the leader of the Democrat Party in the House of Representatives.

Set it up. Okay, so we passed the Parents Bill of Rights Act, which what it does is basically say, whatever you're teaching, you got to inform the parents. If they're cool with it, everybody's cool with it, fine. We're not going to get involved past that, the federal government. You'll still get your federal funds. But if you won't inform the parents and you're trying to hide the ball from the parents, we're talking about K through middle school, so about kindergarten age through 12 years old. If you do, then maybe we will withhold some of your federal funds.

Not definitely, maybe. We'll see how bad the violation was and how systemic the violations are in your school and school district and state. And this is what he had to say in response to opposing empowering parents. And listen at the end. Extreme mega Republicans don't want your child to learn about the LGBTQ plus experience in America. That's not a decision that extreme mega Republicans here in Congress should make.

The parents of America should be able to make that determination. Yeah. The teachers usually just don't like what he just said.

Yeah, I think that it was a bad misstatement. We've dealt with him before. He's Mr. Misdatement.

And if you don't know, then now you know. He's Mr. Misdatement. He has no idea. He is bought and sold by the party. But he is the leader of the Democratic Party in the house. So he can deliver statements nicely and eloquently. He did catch himself because he's not 80 years old.

Yeah, you can see at the end, his mind goes, oh no, I know what I'm about to say. And I'm about to say it should be up in the decision making of the parents. And again, that's all this bill really says.

It's not very mega. It's just American. It's not saying we are going to take conservative messages and put it into liberal cities. It's saying there are liberal cities there. And the word bloody parents just have a little bit more say in that.

And that we're okay with. This does not even ban a counselor from talking to your kids about their gender. It just says before that counselor does it, you need to know. That's it. This is the same school that you can't give your kid a Tylenol.

Yes. But all it says is, by the way, if there's a medical situation like that, you're going to be informed. It doesn't mean you can't do it. So they're not saying that you can't teach LGBTQ plus in your school district. They're just saying, you got to tell the parents you're doing it.

But there's another interesting aspect to this. And that's the provision of the law that says you can know what the budgets are. Because you know what the problem is with these schools? You don't know what the budgets are. For your school, you see this budget of $25 zillion, but you don't see a budget in the school. Where the money's going, even if it is a big budget. Yeah. I think the transparency of that is very important. I think that parents need to know, like you said, where the money's going. How much is going to football and basketball and all these alternative classes instead of reading, writing, math, and science. Yeah.

You would not think you need federal legislation on this, but you do. Well, it's got that out of control. And we know because of Virginia, we hear the stories. And it's not high school we're talking about here.

This is happening in kindergarten and first grade and second grade. I mean, this is, again, you've got a lot to learn before you start getting into niche groups history in America as a kid. AOC also has something to say. I think we should at least go to that. What is she angry about? This bill.

Yeah, go ahead. They are asking the Republican party to keep culture wars out of classrooms. Our children need urgent and aggressive educational solutions.

The American library association coming out against this Republican proposal. When we talk about progressive values, I can say what my progressive value is. And that is freedom over fascism.

No, can I say, okay, fascism. They're not requiring any curriculum here. This is not a curriculum requirement, but here's what our children need urgent and aggressive educational solutions. Who doesn't agree with that?

Everybody in math and science. If the American library association is against it, you should be for it. That's my answer to that. Cause I've dealt with them for about 40 years. Oh yeah.

They were the ones who had tried to allow pornography on public computers at the library. But don't have a Christian Bible in the school library. Exactly.

I mean, this again, and all of that progressive stuff she's talking about. If you're just, if all the parents are cool with that, that guess what, where she like represents, it gets taught and you get your federal funds. You just have to tell the parents.

No, that's just happening. Why did the hiding the ball? I know that. This is young kids need to learn about again, progressive activism. You can't even learn about progressive activism, but you can't read.

Cause you can't, you can't learn about it. And by the way, she gonna then be okay with teaching about the pro-life movement and how we overturned Roe versus Wade by our activism. Yeah.

I don't think so. Right. That's a fascist move because you got to teach if you're not teaching both and something good, which is that Americans, regardless of you agree with them or not, utilize the systems of law and protest and petitioning the government for redress of grievances to overturn a law that was a decision by a court in the 1970s, because they believe that that's killing a child and the science and technology of also confirming that. Well, you got to teach that part too. Yes. But again, it allows you to teach it as long as the parents are aware of it.

Right. And the school board authorizes it. You don't have to. And I'm not sure you even would at this age. Yeah, the difference is I think most conservative parents are going, yeah, we don't really want that discussion happening. And honestly, I just want my kids to be able to do math and science at a level that the kids in these other countries are being able to do and read and write. That's what you're doing through K through middle school. In high school, you start learning a lot more about history and get a little deeper into world history and US history. But like, how about just learning basic US history first? But they don't like that US history anymore either. Remember, they want to rewrite what our history is. Well, no, because that's the revisionist history. Right.

And we were talking about this the other day. I mean, the founding fathers are now, they don't even want it discussed. You went to George Washington University.

You said, you're not sure that'll be the name of the school in 20 years. Yeah. I mean, the Colonials.

That's the team. Yeah. I mean, now a lot of that was happening. A lot of that has stopped. There has been a pushback. Like when BlackRock announced the end of ESG investing or a pullback of ESG investing.

Do they? Why? Because, oh, banks like BlackRock are failing. Well, let me tell you.

What you're worried about now is your fiduciary responsibility, not your social responsibility. We're not going to have time to get into it today, but we talked about it in our pre-radio meeting. But let me tell you something, folks. Deutsche Bank? I'm talking about a major institute.

Now, you could say SVB was a mid-sized regional or a large regional. Okay. Deutsche Bank is a global lender, like Credit Suisse.

Okay? It's equivalent of a JP Morgan. Stock dropped 14% on Friday, 12%. I haven't looked at it as of right now, but it was down 12% this afternoon. It's one of the biggest players in the world. That's a 25% loss of value in 48 hours. Let me tell you, if Deutsche Bank falls, you're going to have a little economic impact. Yeah.

Yes. And you know what part of this is? It impacts us.

I think people hear Deutsche Bank. The war in Ukraine is part of this. It's the expenditures of this have gotten out of control. And now we've got an American debt in Syria linked to that as well. Yes.

So... So when you think that, oh, we're not actually... We don't have people on the battlefield. We do.

And one just got killed yesterday. I think the thing that we have to do here is realize, and again, what we're trying to do here is offer hope and solutions. On the Parents' Bill of Rights, we gave you a fact sheet. We gave you information.

You responded. Put the marker down. Putting the marker down, passed the House. Not likely in the Senate in all probability, but you know what? Every school district's aware of it now. And you want them all on the record, don't you, for that next election cycle when they start talking like a key... Like a Keem Jeffries.

And AOC. Exactly right. So we encourage you to support the work of the ACLJ.

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