URGENT: ACLJ Takes Parental Bill of Rights to Congress

Urgent action today on Sekulow as the ACLJ takes the Parental Bill of Rights to Congress. 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. Folks, there is a Parental Bill of Rights. The ACLJ and ACLJ actually have been involved in crafting this on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. with House Republicans and the Republican Study Committee.

We have endorsed this piece of legislation as well. Today, it is going through the amendment process. We're going to walk you through exactly what the Parental Bill of Rights Act is.

But let me just read the heading from the committee. It's that parents have a God-given right to make decisions for their children. And unfortunately, many school districts, and Lord knows we've seen this, have been ignoring the wishes of parents while special interest groups try to criminalize free speech and intimidate parents from even showing up at school board meetings.

The list of rights makes clear to parents what their rights are and clear to the schools about what their duties are to the parents who really, at the end of the day, these schools, including public schools, work for the parents, the taxpayers. They work for all of us. Even if you don't have kids in public schools, you might have grandkids. Even if your kids are in private schools, you're still paying for these public schools. They work for us. They work for the American people.

It's not the other way around. So today is key because the vote in the House on the Parents Bill of Rights Act will be tomorrow. They're going through the amendment process today. ACLJ Action, if you're on, and that's at ACLJAction.org, if you're on the ACLJ Action list, you got an email today asking you to write your members of Congress, your two U.S. senators and your member of Congress. We have that special tool on ACLJ Action that, again, you just put your information in. It knows who your two U.S. senators are, who your congressman is.

If you're watching, you can see it on right now exactly what you do. We have a pre-drafted letter. We always encourage you to add a couple sentences of your own or delete it all and write your own letter. We have already had over 6,000 actions taken since this email went out just about an hour and a half ago. So we can flood Congress, and specifically right now the House of Representatives, but we want those senators to know about it as well, to say parents are speaking up and they are taking their rights back. And, folks, this is when elections have consequences because we have a conservative House of Representatives that is on the side of parents, not on the side of radical educators.

You know, it's interesting. This is not a new fight for us. We have been fighting for parental rights.

I can't even count the number of school boards I have appeared before over the last, you know, 35, 40 years. So this idea that we're fighting for parental rights is not new. What Jordan's talking about, though, is very important. Parental rights have been viewed by the federal government as almost as if they're domestic terrorists. Remember that whole issue. And at the school board meetings just about a year ago. So the reality is what Congress is doing, they're implementing an ability to put forward a plan that protects parents' involvement with their kids' education and what's going on in their schools.

It really should be bipartisan and not an issue, but that's not the world we live in right now. On Rumble 2, a couple people said I didn't get the email. You've got to be on ACLJ Action's email list. That's ACLJAction.org. And you can sign up to be on the email list. And you can actually join ACLJ Action's $25 to become a member there. But you can sign up on the email list. You can write this letter.

That doesn't cost a thing. But you wouldn't have gotten it if you're just on the ACLJ list. So just off this much smaller ACLJ Action list that we've been building just over the past year, about a little more than half the list immediately sent these letters to Congress. When we come back, we're going to walk you through what these protections would do for parents. And really, when we talk about what the protections are for the parents, we're protecting kids from radical leftist educators.

So we want you on board with this. They're voting on amendments today, but we've got 24 hours, basically, before the vote starts beginning tomorrow to really ratchet up the yes votes on the Parents Bill of Rights Act. We've talked about so many of those times. The school board meetings. Remember the Zoom classes? They said parents are banned from watching their students' classes while they were having their classes at home.

Because they didn't want them to know what their kids were being taught. No more of that. No more of that. Support the work of the ACLJ Matching Challenge. Donate today. Double the impact your donation. ACLJ.

Welcome back to Sekulow. And folks, as you're just joining us, I know a lot of people join throughout the show. Let me walk you through what the Parents Bill of Rights Act does. One. And you know, a Rumble comment came in and said, who would ever thought we'd even a million years have to be fighting to get our kids away from government and having parents' rights in the schools. But here's number one. Parents have the right to know what their children are being taught. Can you believe that we are having to fight this out?

We are fighting that, though. And I want to tell you how this works. The federal government, because some of you may say, well, what role do they have in my state public schools? They get a lot of money from the federal government through department education and grants.

Guess where that money emanates from? The House of Representatives. So they have a direct role then in instructing exactly how, if they want to keep getting those federal funds, they must operate. So the number one is parents have the right to know what their children are being taught. By the way, it's constitutionally protected. The problem, the reason you need legislation is people, courts and individual school boards are ignoring it.

And by the way, in college, this is very normal. Now, I know we're not talking about college, but for this point one, school districts must post curriculum information publicly. Now, when you're in college, they do that so you can choose which classes you want to take. States must provide the public a copy of any revisions to the state's academic standards or learning benchmarks. Parents must be giving timely notice of any school plans to eliminate gifted and talented programs.

Remember that mess out of Virginia where students who were not of a specific minority group but another minority group weren't given the same ability to engage in gifted and talented programs. Schools must provide parents with a list of books and reading materials available at the school library. Again, most of this is if the parent, now this takes parent action and parent engagement. Parents still have to be, this is not a, you don't have to do anything. This just says you have the right to do these things, which is important.

But I'm going to say something else here that I think is equally important, Jordan, and that is understand the context and the history. We've been fighting for this for 40 years. Like I said, I've been in more school board hearings than I can count. But this legislation will be the first time we've been codified in federal law.

That's right. Number two, parents have the right to be heard. Teachers must offer two in-person meetings with parents each year. Parents must be allowed to address the school board on issues impacting the education of children in the school district. Educators and policy makers must respect the First Amendment rights of parents as well as their right to assemble and have a say in their child's education. And this is because the FBI and local law enforcement were dragging parents out for getting into a back and forth with adults. Adults, including the parents, should be able to get into a back and forth with the school board.

It should be respectful, but sometimes if, Dad, as you know, it can be respectful and heated at the same time. The problem is this. There became this view within the academy that somehow parents had no role in this.

It was the idea that, well, now they're the government's children for that period of the day, which is, by the way, not supported by law. But we've had it on the curriculum issues. Remember when they were trying to have students mandatorily participate in Islamic religious activities. Not understand what Islam teaches, but actually do those exercises. Pray to Mecca, all of that. That's all part of this.

You know, Roya on Rumbleside, I'm not wanting to sound sarcastic. I need to ask. If this passes, will the FBI finally not label the parents as domestic terrorists? Isn't that ridiculous? This will make it almost nearly impossible for them to try to blatantly label parents who show up at school board meetings because now the parents, this is a parent's bill of rights. And when Congress acts, that surpasses FBI policy. Now, this is a long-term battle because this will pass the House, but then we've got to go to the Senate.

It's going to be an up-road battle there, of course, to get to the White House. But what we're working on now is to make sure that the moment we have everybody, the Senate, the President ready to go, that this has been laid out and agreed upon. So this is a key platform, actually, leading into the next election cycle, too. Yeah, and so what's happened is Congress rightly has said, you know, there has to be, now the public school boards are going to be required to disclose what's actually in the budgets and how they're being expended.

And you're saying, well, don't they do that anyway? Well, kind of, but now you have the right to know not only what your child's being taught, but where the money you're paying to send your child to school through the public school system, that means through your taxes, is actually going and how they're allocating it. So what this does is give parents an equal say in this process, and they should have more than an equal say, but right now they've been on the lower end of the spectrum on that. Yeah, number three is that parents have the rights to see the school budget and spending like you talked about and the disclosure of school district budgets in each school's budget, including revenue and expenditures. That came down a lot of that to CRT because they were paying some of those CRT speakers 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, up to $80,000 a year of your taxpayer dollars to come in and do these CRT seminars.

CRT became a big moneymaker. So now you're going to know if your school is spending money on CRT instead of actually teaching your children how to read, write, and let's be honest, to compete with the rest of the world, do math and science. Yeah, so the issue is school board meetings are about once every two weeks. Generally, that's how they work in most counties.

There's a limited amount of information. You as a parent have the right to know what's going on in your school, what's going on in your child's classroom. This gives you that right in legislation, in law, which right now the difficulty is, and like I said, I've been going to school board hearings for 40 years. The ACLJ has, and the reality is that parents are viewed as an interloper, like they have no business being there.

Well, this isn't your decision, but of course, not only is it your tax dollars, it's your kid. Listen to how, I mean, it's so insane. This is Democrats, Congressman Jim McGovern, now he's from Massachusetts, a liberal, but he's in disagreement with this, but listen to why he disagrees. It's kind of got to rub me the wrong way as a parent with kids in school.

Take a listen. 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 state's rights wants to nationalize our education system, turning Congress into a one-size-fits-all board of education for the entire country. And that's when you know they don't even read it, it's because it emanates from Republicans, and you know who doesn't like this? The school board unions, the teachers unions.

That's who's fighting all of this. Because the teachers unions think you have no rights in your own child's classroom. Right, and that's what he's saying that, well, every place should be different, so I guess, I would love to ask Jim McGovern, so you think parents should have, if a school board decides no ability to attend school board meetings, you think parents shouldn't know the curriculum? You think parents shouldn't be able to see the budget that their taxpayer dollars are paying?

Just to know? It doesn't mean the parents get to go in and do anything, just learn. Let's talk about the process of where this is. So, okay, vote is scheduled for? The amendments are voting on today, the final vote will be tomorrow in the House of Representatives.

What's the sense of it passing? It's very good, but we want people to engage at ACLJAction.org, get that letter right. We're almost at 7,000 letters being sent to members of Congress. It's very easy on ACLJ Action, because by putting in your address, we pull up your two U.S. senators, and in this case, your House member, we have the subject line ready for you.

It's support HR5, the parents bill of rights. We have the message for you. We always encourage you, add some of your own, or take all of our data and write your own letter. But you can do it very, very quickly, and this gets specifically to the people who need to see it. And again, we're right now, we just hit close to 7,000 that have been sent just this morning.

The email's only been out for about an hour and 45 minutes. So the important part of understanding this is, this has been a process, so why did this become an issue? Because parents were being shut out of their own school boards. That's a big issue.

Here's a wild part of it, too. Parents have the right to protect their child's privacy. Schools must not share student data with tech companies.

Well, this is, look, we're talking about TikTok later. Without parental permission, which means, listen, Congress put this in because they've obviously seen that there are school districts selling your kids' data. Schools must not sell student data for commercial purposes so that you don't get a bunch of things in your mail trying to sell you on different items.

And we're not talking about scholastic books here. We're talking about targeted advertising towards children, which is extremely controversial. And certainly public schools, private businesses, that's one thing.

Let them try to do that. Public schools should not be in that business. Parents have a say when schools develop or update their student privacy policies and procedures because people are starting to pay attention to their terms of services.

I know, that's exactly correct. And parents must consent. This is true, this I think is very important, before any medical exam takes place at school, including mental health or substance use disorder screenings, and before students are surveyed. So you at least get to know that the school would like to do it. And if you would like them to do it, by the way, so for all the liberals out there on all those issues, if you want them to do it, most of this applies to the K through middle school. So we're not talking about high school here. Those students make their own decisions about halfway through high school, 16 and up, you don't need parental consent on a lot of things. But these are kids we're talking about.

Elementary and middle schoolers. And all it says is the parents have to consent. It does not say you can't do mental health exams. It doesn't say you can't do substance use disorder screenings.

It doesn't say that you can't talk about gender reassignment. It says if you're going to, the parents must consent. Right. Parental consent used to be the standard. That's what it used to be required.

Okay. That's what it used to be. The parent had a consent to what was going on in the classroom. That's no longer the case.

And that's why, because these teacher unions are strong and the cities are afraid of fighting the teacher's union. That's all part of this. Absolutely. So folks, we want you to support the work of the ACLJ. Listen to all of this through ACLJ and ACLJ Action.

We're able to do it all. To work on it, to get it so that it's now on the floor of the House of Representatives. We've got about 24 hours here, maybe a little bit less, to let your voice be heard through ACLJAction.org. Make sure you support the work of the ACLJ. Double the impact of your donation.

It's a matching challenge. Month of March. Time's running out in March to double that impact. Donate today at ACLJ.org. That's ACLJ.org. Be on the front lines. Alright, welcome back to Secula. We are taking your calls to 1-800-684-3110.

That's 1-800-684-3110. Just briefly again on the parental Bill of Rights Act. I just wanted to make sure you knew the last main point. Even in light of what happened yesterday in Denver, very important. Parents have the right to keep their children safe.

Schools must notify parents of violent activity occurring on school grounds or at school-sponsored events while students protect the privacy of the students involved in the incident so that you know if there's some major fight and someone's being bullied on the playground and beaten up, that parents are going to know, not just the parent of the kid who got beaten up or the parents who did the beating, but the parents who have kids that may have just saw it or watched it. So this again, it's a full spectrum parental rights inside the US public schools, K through middle school. Alright, so let's change gears for a moment. We have filed, and I'm going to hold it in my hand. We'll put it up on the screen now. It is lengthy. It is single spaced, 56 pages, a legal brief to the International Court of Justice. It's a written statement submitted by our European Center for Law and Justice regarding the UN General Assembly's request for an advisory opinion from the International Court with respect to, quote, Israel's practices affecting the human rights of the Palestinian people in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem.

You talk about the statement, we have to put the title on, by the way. Obviously, we don't agree with that assessment. But the UN is the most hostile body in the world as it relates to Israel. There are more resolutions passed against Israel than are passed against brutal dictators around the globe. That's just the way it is. And now they've asked, the UN has asked the IHCJ, the International Court of Justice, to weigh in on this, to issue what's called an advisory opinion.

They do that. In our courts, we don't do advisory opinions. They do that in the international system as to whether there is a violation of international law by Israel protecting their own sovereign areas, including, including East Jerusalem, which is part of Israel. That tells you the scope of this. But this is a hostile regime at the UN, and we have done more than just file this brief.

You file it within the public comments section of the court, but then we went and took it a step further and contacted individual states. Absolutely. And like you said, the UN is always against Israel. And asking the ICJ to intervene is ridiculous. And even though this is an advisory opinion, and it's not binding, it shows their bias against Israel. So we went through the states that voted against this resolution, we sent them our document, and we also sent the states that abstained from voting on this resolution our document. And that gives them information because these member states can actually file documents with the court.

And so we are giving them the legal argument to make when they file these documents. What's interesting about this also, I mean, when you think about this in context, folks, we're defending Israel's rights here, okay? Iran, the Islamic Republic of Iran does more human rights violations than, they've got to be in the top 10 of worst offenders. The amount of resolutions against Iran compared to Israel, infinitesimal.

You couldn't even compare them. And yet Iran, Wes, is still the biggest threat in that region. They are still the biggest threat. They have vowed and they've not changed their promise to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. And Israel just this past week has informed Europe and the United States government that they may have to strike Iran in order to keep them from getting a nuclear weapon.

That is significant, Jay, because this is not an idle threat. Israel has vowed because it is a threat to their very existence. They have vowed that Iran must not possess a nuclear weapon.

So the fact they would inform Europe and the United States that this might be a possibility is a significant change in what's going on there. And the reason for this is because the IAEA just recently said that Israel, which is at 60% enrichment of uranium, could go to 90% in a matter of 12 days. The Pentagon looked at that report and they concurred that Iran could go to full enrichment in 12 days to 90% weapons grade and they already possess, it's 87.5 kilos.

That's 8 pounds of uranium and that is enough for one bomb. One bomb really is all it would take to totally destabilize the Middle East. The fact that they're in the process of getting it destabilizes the entire Middle East. What's interesting also is Russia, of course, brokers now a deal with Saudi Arabia and Iran. This shows you the weakness of the United States, by the way, in foreign policy. Let me take it a step further, though, on this brief that we filed. So we filed this brief. Let me tell you what the General Assembly did not ask.

The General Assembly did not ask the court to determine the legality of the thousands of indiscriminate acts of terror originating from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank areas toward the Israeli civilian population, or the legality of Israel's armed response and its security measures in light of these attacks. That they don't want to hear about. So this tells you you're in a hostile regime. So you say to yourself, well, it's a hostile court, why would we go there? You have to go there.

You have to put your position out. Even if they issue, which they probably will, an advisory opinion that's ridiculous, you've got to show up and be there. It's that important.

Yeah, it is. I mean, this is new for us because you might see a lot of our work at the ICC. ICJ is state versus state.

So it's a different process. Now, what's also unique about the ICJ is that you join the ICC. You're part of the ICJ if you're a UN member state.

So in this situation, it'll be interesting to know how Israel ultimately decides to engage this. I would imagine, unlike the ICC, where they are not a member state, and the U.S. is not a member state, like they tried to issue that arrest warrant on Putin. He's not a member of the ICC. Russia's not. And if you have to be honest, you'd have to say, because Russia's not, we make the same argument for our U.S. military and our U.S. leaders that they can't be arrested by the ICC either.

But this is different. So Israel can come before the ICJ without giving up any special kind of jurisdiction because this is state versus state, and they're an automatic member. But we do want to make sure we're ready to go in case of any decisions that may or may not be made by states and state parties. And our letter and our filing actually help those other member states that are on Israel's side because the member states can file written statements and they can make replies. So we provided them with the legal information that they can put in their written statements to the ICJ. I'll tell you this, so also, and we've appeared before the International Criminal Court in the Hague, I think we have filed some other documents previously with the International Court of Justice, but let me tell you this, folks. Our European Center for Law and Justice in Strasbourg, France is working with our offices here in the United States to prepare these documents. Because our office in Strasbourg, Strasbourg is where the European Court of Human Rights is, so we file in these various international bodies. And you get, we've gotten really good results.

And here, you may be getting a result you don't like, but they may have to temper that result and not go as far as they want to go because there's coherent arguments on the other side. But I want to take the last minute here to focus in on Iran for a moment because the Russians negotiating this deal with the Saudis, Wes, when I saw that last week, very concerned. Very concerned. It destabilized all the progress we've made in the Middle East. For example, if Israel has to attack Iran in order to defend themselves, they need overflight rights over Saudi Arabia, which in the past Saudi Arabia has given to them. Now Saudi Arabia has this new relationship, thanks to China, with Iran. All the progress that has been made over the last few years is being, the threads are being pulled apart because of what's going on with the Biden administration and their policy in the Middle East. I tell you, folks, this is serious stuff.

All right, we're going to be here for another half hour. Support the work of the ACLJ at ACLJ.org. We have a matching challenge the entire month of March. March is starting to come to a close, where you double the impact of your donation. $30 donation to the ACLJ right now at ACLJ.org. That then triggers an additional $30 from a group of donors that say we'll match all the donations that come through the month of March.

So turn your $30, that's all you'll be charged, that is tax deductible, into $60 for us at the ACLJ. Donate today our matching challenge at ACLJ.org. Announcer Keeping you informed and engaged, now more than ever, this is Sekulow. And now your host Jordan Sekulow. All right, welcome back to Sekulow. We are taking your calls too at 1-800-684-3110.

That's 1-800-684-3110. I do want to reset a bit on the ACLJ action and the support for the Printel Bill of Rights because this is something I think is so key. We've been working on this with members of Congress, specifically the Republican Study Committee, but this is now on the floor of the House of Representatives. We've got support from leadership like Congressman Scalise, Elise Stefanik, but really most of the House of Representatives and the Republicans to start a federal Parents Bill of Rights Act when it comes to K through middle school. And just the top line is that parents will have the right to know what their children are being taught, parents will have the right to be heard, that's like at school boards, parents have the right to see the school budget and spending, parents have the right to protect their children's privacy, parents have the right to keep their children safe, and when we get to the medical issues, you always used to say how difficult it was to get to Tylenol. If they're going to talk to your kids about changing their name or gender reassignment, you get to know, and it's up to you, not the school, whether you want them doing that.

And that's all it says. So this should be able to work in every state because it, what's California, why is California so mad about it? They're so mad about it because a lot of parents would step in to say, no, I need to discuss this with my child and I might want to go to like a psychiatrist or an actual doctor. Not some school teacher or nurse or counselor. What about the fact that to get Tylenol, I mean, you brought that up. You got to sign all these papers. Yeah, 100 pages of paper to give you Tylenol or an Advil. I did go to the nurse office yesterday. We signed the consent, but what our school does is within about five minutes of her in there, we already get a notice, an email, and a text, and then the nurse calls. And that's not over anything controversial.

That's like my tummy hurts. Like I said, I've been before school boards, as the ACLJ has, from coast to coast for 40 years. Getting federal legislation on this will really help because then it sets a standard at the top. Now, how does it look in the Senate? Well, I think, again, I love putting this in the Senate because you got Joe Manchin's and you got some senators who have to look towards elections. Again, is it going to be able to, even if it passes the Senate, could we override the Biden veto on this? I don't know.

What you're going to see come out hard again and what is being teased out by this, and it's why we're doing this, folks, and why we're supporting it. We're going to let the American people, I know you know this, but what's so important about us all getting behind it is we want the American people to realize that the schools are so owned by the teachers' unions. They don't want you knowing what your kids are being taught, what they're counseling your kids about, what they're medically telling them they should do, what names they're going to be using them. I mean, you know, when your kids go to school, you fill out a form. What's your kid's full legal name? What do they go by? You know, because some kids have, it could be, you know, of a buddy who's J.B. J.B. is not his full legal name, but that's, under the second part, his parents would have said, call him J.B. That's what he's called by.

That's it. They ask the parent. They don't let the student just randomly come up with names, and they'd also certainly do not let the teachers change the names of the student. But what this does is say, hey, if you want to do this school, get the parents' consent, and then you can do it. So we're still living in a very freedom kind of liberty, and I'd even say libertarian positioning of the school. But when you're talking about minors, they're not completely liberated, as you say. They don't have the same kind of rights.

The fact that we have to do this is, you can't even believe you got here, but we have to do it. That's why you said in the Senate, it doesn't take many votes to get it over the top. Many House Republicans and conservatives believe going into the next Presidential election, this could be the number one issue aside from the economy and the craziness going on in the world. Domestic issue. Yeah, number one domestic issue.

Number one domestic issue. All right, support the work of the ACLJ. You do that at ACLJ.org. That's ACLJ.org. We're in a matching challenge campaign, which means any amount you donate, we get a matching gift for.

So I'll encourage you, go to ACLJ.org. If you donate $20, we get $20. If you're watching on any of our social media, of course, subscribe. That's very important. Follow if you're on Rumble.

Share it with your friends. We'll be back with more coming up, other topics to hit. Bing Newsday, ACLJ.org or 1-800-684-3110 if you want to talk to us on air. I think there's some calls too on the Parents Bill of Rights Act.

We're talking about public schools, K through middle school, because there's a call coming in on school choice. There have been great victories going on around the country. My buddy Corey DeAngelis with Reason has been on the front lines of this, and it's been great. I know Senator Tim Scott is a huge proponent, almost all.

He's really taken a lead. But, you know, most Republicans agree with the school choice plan. But there's a lot of education that has to be done, and the teachers usually just fight back hard. Greg has called in from California on Line 1. Hey, Greg.

Hey, thank you. I'd just like to say that we really need school vouchers nationally to give parents a choice. Public schools are not improving and have no reason to improve. It's like a monopoly.

They're not doing their job. I agree with you. Let me tell you this. Vouchers, private school tuition being handled by a voucher, which is basically you take your taxpayer dollars, you know, your tax dollars, $18,000 a year goes to the school. You get that as a voucher. You pick any school you want.

You know what also improves? Not just the private schools. Guess who has to compete? The public schools. Where this gets difficult for Greg is he's in California.

Right. So what I think people are going to have to start thinking about who have kids is now if you can afford private school, you can live in California. You can choose exactly the kind of school you want your kids to go to.

Curriculum, religious, not religious, whatever. But if you're not, you're going to have to start looking at these states because as a parent, what's your number one priority is your kids' education, and you're going to have to start looking at states that have either good public school systems you can trust or maybe on top of that have these school choice programs. And I think you could actually see a wave, a movement of people. We've seen it under COVID where people got out of a lot of these dark blue states because of the schools. They left California.

They left New York. They went to places like Tennessee, Florida, and Texas. You know, it's interesting to me.

There's no doubt why Tennessee, Florida, and Texas are growing so much. Here's an interesting thing I think you've got to look at. When you remember during COVID, and everything was a Zoom class, kids were at home, they were signing in by their computer, and the teachers union did not like the fact that parents could listen into the classroom discussions. That was something that there were schools saying only the students can participate. Now think about it for the moment. These kids were at their own home, and the teachers unions were saying that.

So of course vouchers make sense, but this goes all to the idea of parental rights, and accountability to the taxpayer, to the parent in education. That is really paramount in all of this. Yeah, and I do want to get into TikTok because the head of TikTok, now is this their US, this is the head of their US subsidiary, or is this the head? This is the head of TikTok, which is the US company. Right, that's the US English name for it.

Very smooth guy. Yes, and they put out yesterday a big statement that before the testimony, that we're not going to allow anybody in. So people that don't know TikTok. It's the number one tech company in the world.

And it's video sharing, that's all it does, right? Yes, and most of their users would be kids. How old? Under 18. Okay, so their market's under 18.

Almost everywhere, even in China where it's a very different version that you would get, it's more educational, more pro-party. It's not an entertainment, and there they have limits on how long kids can be on it. Because when you're on a phone, your phone sees you. So the phone can know you're a kid.

Either you shouldn't be seeing something, or hey, you've been on long enough. And maybe parents may be able to override it with a code or something like that. But the big issue has been is TikTok has already been taking off a lot of government servers in many states across the country because of the national security concerns that China is stealing all of your information because it saves all of your keystrokes, not when you're on TikTok, when you're using your phone.

It accesses your camera, it accesses the sound. And the CCP, if you operate in China, see this is where TikTok, they try to dance around in this, we'll play it. But if you operate a business like this in China, you must give them access. So you can't, even if you're based somewhere else, if you're going to play in China, they've got to have certain access. It's why there are companies like Facebook, Will, they don't play in China.

Remember we went there? You could use a VPN at the time to maybe access your Twitter or Facebook. But that was it.

That was it. So let me give you a for real situation. They're also a news source because these videos are short form news, right?

I mean, they can get information out. China invades Taiwan. They invade Taiwan. What happens? Do you know what China's going to say? The Chinese Communist Party?

Taiwan instigated an attack. That's what they're going to do. And they're going to get to all of your phones and all of your data and flood the end zone, so to speak.

That is the concern with something like this. We should listen to what he says. Chris Xu Chu is the head of the U.S. subsidiary, which is TikTok, owned by what's called ByteDance.

Take a listen. Byte4. Let me start by addressing a few misconceptions about ByteDance, of which we are a subsidiary. ByteDance is not owned or controlled by the Chinese government. It's a private company. 60% of the company is owned by global institutional investors. 20% is owned by the founder and 20% owned by employees around the world. ByteDance has five board members.

Three of them are American. Now, TikTok itself is not available in mainland China. We're headquartered in Los Angeles and in Singapore, and we have 7,000 employees in the U.S. today.

Okay, here's a few misconceptions that we need to get through. ByteDance is headquartered in Beijing, the parent company. When he says TikTok is not available in China, it's because they speak Chinese, so the word is not TikTok.

It's a country with over a billion people, so it's going to be a name that makes sense for them. But it's the same system. Okay, so all this dancing around... Every company out of China is owned by the Chinese Communist Party. You cannot start their version of a private company without getting a green light from the CCP and usually... The owner is usually... First of all, you're not the type of person in China who can even start a business like this unless you're part of the party.

Right, 100%. And so, the way tech works, he's trying to, again, get around how tech works. They all go through the same servers from these companies. China gets the back door access.

We'll play some more of this for you, too, as well. Because this is the first time we've heard directly from... Which one should we go to next, Will?

I think 27, because it pushes back directly in that state. Okay. This is a Democrat. Which Democrat is this?

This is Anna Eshoo from California. Certainly not a conservative by any means, but an American. Take a listen. Why would the Chinese government sidestep their national law, including Article 7, Article 10, in terms of user data? Congressman, thank you for the question.

I'm glad you asked this. As I said in the opening statement, our plan is to move American data to be stored on American soil by the American companies. I understand that.

I understand that. But you're sidestepping, or I haven't read anything in terms of TikTok, how you can actually say... And you spoke in your opening statement about a firewall relative to the data. But the Chinese government has that data. How can you promise that that will move into the United States of America and be protected here? Congressman, I have seen no evidence that the Chinese government has access to that data. They have never asked us.

We have not provided. I find that actually preposterous. It is preposterous because... That's the right word. Preposterous is the right word. He's being very legally correct in the sense that they've never asked us because they don't have to ask or provide it.

The Chinese have an automatic in. So TikTok or ByteDance never has to provide it and never has to be asked. Because he wouldn't have made the first statement if the second statement were accurate. The first statement is, we plan to move all of your data here. But as Anna Eshoo pointed out, they already have all of our data. So you're talking about future data? And by the way, you say plan, you're just trying to get through a congressional hearing.

That ain't ever happening. All right. So Chairwoman Rogers asked this series of questions.

Let's play first 15, then I'm going to have 18. Just this morning, the Wall Street Journal reported that the CCP is opposed to a forced sale of TikTok by ByteDance. Quoting a CCP spokesman as saying the Chinese government would make a decision regarding any sale of TikTok. So the CCP believes they have the final say over your company. I have zero confidence in your assertion that ByteDance and TikTok are not beholden to the CCP. Of course they're beholden.

She's exactly correct. And this should not be a partisan issue, by the way. Of course they're beholden to the CCP. Now let me play you the follow-up question that was asked by Chairwoman Rogers. Can you say with 100% certainty that ByteDance or the CCP cannot use your company or its divisions to heed content to promote pro-CCP messages for an act of aggression against Taiwan? We do not promote or remove content at the request of the Chinese government. The question is, are you 100% certain that they cannot use your company to promote such messages? It is our commitment to this committee and all our users that we will keep this free from any manipulation by any government. If you can't say 100% certain, I take that as a no.

And the answer of course is no, because it's controlled and operated by the CCP. We're taking your calls on all these topics. 1-800-684-3110, 800-684-3110. Also, support the work of the ACLJ at ACLJ.org. That's ACLJ.org. Any amount you donate, we get a matching gift for and a matching challenge campaign.

ACLJ.org. And I encourage you to do that today. Again, if you're watching on any of our social media, we encourage you to share it with your friends. And again, get involved with us. Follow us, at Jordan Sekulow, at Jay Sekulow, at Logan Sekulow, at ACLJ on any of your social media, Twitter, Facebook, Truth, whatever it might be.

Of course, our good friends at Rumble. We'll be taking more calls when we come back. More comments, 800-684-3110. Back with more in a moment.

Welcome back to Sekulow. We're going to get some effects on your pocketbook in just a moment on the Fed hiking interest rates yet again, even with all these bank situations going on and people uncertain. And we've talked about that this week and last week, uncertain about their accounts, uncertain about which bank we're going to hear about next that might be falling apart.

We've heard some numbers, just under 200 banks around the world that are close to the same situation as SVB ended up in. But we do have a call coming in from a teacher and we've been talking about that Parent Bill of Rights Act. The House will be voting on tomorrow. The ACLJ ACLJ Action has endorsed this. We've been working on it. We want you to get online and go to ACLJAction.org, sign a letter to your member of Congress. We make it very easy for you.

We have a special tool for that as well. Let me just see how many people have already sent a letter since. If you're on the ACLJ Action List email, you went out 8,300 now in about two hours have told their member of Congress to vote yes on the Parents Bill of Rights H.R.

5. But I want to go to Londa, who's a teacher in public school, say she's fighting back by online one. Hi, Londa.

Hi, Jay. I just want to say that I am a teacher. There are lots of us out there like me. We are fighting this battle from within. I personally do not pay union dues. I recommend all teachers to stop paying their union dues. But more than that, speak to your union rep. Let them know how you feel. Don't be afraid to speak up.

There are a lot of us out there. And the unions have a lot of money banked, so they buy influence with lobbyists and et cetera that really aren't representative, in my opinion, of the population of teachers. Harry, these teacher unions are strong. What's your sense of this? Thank you for calling in, Londa.

We really appreciate it and thanks for fighting. Well, the teachers union has been captured by the left. And so many Americans, they may see the Biden administration as a left-wing government. The teachers union is even further to the left and up to 80 to 90 percent of teacher union dues go to push causes that most Americans, particularly most American parents, oppose.

And so I think the caller is absolutely correct. Pursuant to the Janus decision issued by the Supreme Court a couple of years ago, teachers do not have to pay union dues. Why? Because most of those dues are going for political purposes, left-wing political purposes. Jordan, when Londa was calling us, you gave her a thumbs up in the studio here that she was in. Yeah, but the pressure on the students to join the union is strong because even though 80, 90 percent is going towards politics, what they tell them is, well, they're going to cut your health care, they're going to cut your pay. We're going to make sure you get paid more even next year. We're going to make sure your health care is even better next year.

And if you don't join us, you're reaping the benefits. You're the bad guy. Yeah, exactly. But people like Londa, I can tell more, you know, probably a more senior teacher who's been through this process, maybe in a more friendly state like North Carolina or the area, and they're fighting back. But what I just want that to be an example of is she's telling you how bad it is.

Right. Like, she's fighting back. At her school, there's teachers fighting back.

They wouldn't have to use the words fighting back if there was nothing to fight. Well, these teachers unions are... This is not a made-up issue about two school boards we've seen on TV. This is every school district in every state, in every town, all across... You might live in one of the reddest states, and your school districts are still a lot of school boards out of control.

Well, no. I mean, one of the ones that got was right here near our studio, in a very conservative area, was one of the ones that made national news. One of the most conservative counties in the world. In the country. In the U.S. Yeah, in the United States.

One of the most conservative counties. And that was the school board that the government agencies were looking at as parents were exercising too much authority and control. So when we talk about these teachers unions having power, and it's really great that Lana was able to say no, but like Jordan said, they'll hit you on the economic side.

They are a force to be reckoned with. They are, but one of the things that makes teachers unions so pernicious is that they engage in activity with the teachers, I'm sorry, with the public school board to hide relevant information from parents. So the teachers unions in America, they are supporting something new called critical consciousness. What is that? Critical consciousness basically means tearing down virtually every single norm that parents teach their kids.

Why? Because norms are seen as oppressive. And so they're pushing critical consciousness, they're pushing critical race theory, they're pushing critical gender theory, and they're hiding all of this information, or they're trying to hide all of this information from parents. So this is an extremely important issue. You know, I'm looking at the Parents Bill of Rights fact sheet that we've got.

Of course, we've been involved in this fight. When you read what it is, schools, districts must post curriculum information publicly. Why would that be controversial?

Well, we know, I know the reason, don't answer it yet. Next one, states must provide the public a copy of any revisions to the state's academic standards or learning benchmarks. That kind of sounds like a normal thing. Parents must be given timely notice that many schools plan to eliminate gifted or talented programs because school districts have said that the gifted and talented programs are not fair to the other students. Now, the ridiculous nature of that is public schools should try to reach all students in all categories. Students with special needs that learn differently, students that are gifted.

And they can be the same, by the way. You can be gifted and have special needs in your learning. But the idea that you're having to say things like this, Harry, school districts must post curriculum information publicly. You know the teachers unions don't want that.

Absolutely. And it's, we need more enforcement. In other words, passing a law telling them that they must post is not enough. We need an inspector general, if you will, in virtually every single school district in America to find out what teachers are actually teaching in school. Why? Because teachers unions have basically entered into a conspiracy, often with the Board of Education in local school districts, to hide this information from parents. They recognize parents would indeed oppose some of their teaching objectives. But nonetheless, they want to push this agenda.

Why? Because they have been captured by the left. And this process has been going on for the last 20 to 30 years in the United States, coming from Frankfurt, Germany in the 1930s. I mean, it's, we were going to get to the economy. We'll get to that tomorrow. This stuff, this issue, folks, it hits every family in America. Right now, 8,300 of you, actually 8,400 of you have taken action, 8,423 at ACLJAction.org. That's a letter writing campaign right to your members of Congress, both your senators and your House, because it's going to go to the Senate.

It's going to pass the House. So it sets that up all for you. It's on the screen if you're watching the broadcast. We've got the preset letter, subject line in there. The message is ready to go. We always encourage you to add a few lines of your own. But if you've got, if you don't have a lot of time, don't worry about that. Just, just send it.

If you want to write your own message, none of that text has to be there. We just are offering that for you. We've got to get this through. It has gotten to that critical point. And we know we've all talked about those issues.

We've fought, we've defended, a parent should have the right to go to a school board meeting and speak out without fear of the FBI knocking on their door. And by the way, when you're in a hearing, you can be at the one time respectful, but also heated. You know what I mean?

You can be in an argument and be respectful. Of course. I mean, I've done them. You've done them.

I mean, we've done them. But the fact is, now is the time to fight. And you know what? The good thing about this is we give you this information, we're actually taking action about it. So, as Jordan said, go to ACLJ Action.

It's a great way to get information. But support the work of the ACLJ also at ACLJ.org. We're a matching challenge campaign. Any match you donate to us, we're getting a matching gift. You know what that means? If you donate $25, we get $50. And that makes a huge difference in our fights here in the United States and, as you've heard today, around the globe. That'll do it for the broadcast today. We'll talk to you later.