California Democrats Fight to Protect Child Traffickers

Today on Sekulow, it's sad but true that California Democrats are fighting to protect child traffickers. We'll talk about that more today on Sekulow. Hey, welcome to Sekulow.

We are taking your calls to 1-800-684-3110. We want you to weigh on this at 1-800-684-3110, an issue that should not be partisan at all. How we combat child sex trafficking in the United States of America, specifically in the hotbeds of trafficking. Well, in California, which is a Democrat-run state but there are a lot of Republicans in the state legislature there.

It's a big state, very diverse. Put forward bipartisan legislation that would turn child trafficking of teenagers and children younger than 18 and make it a serious felony on par with Merson, Ardern, Arson, and Rape, which would bring longer prison terms and potential life sentences without a chance for a plea bargain. So kind of the three strikes and you're out when it comes to these 25 to life sentences. And yet, a handful of Democrats, a handful of Democrats in the California legislature blocked this move, now protecting child traffickers from more severe sentences by saying that putting them in prison doesn't stop anything.

Now I know there's been debates about the war on drugs and does that actually keep people off drugs, they just start using drugs when they're in prison and when they're out of prison. But there is a way to stop child trafficking. Get the traffickers off the street. Make sure they know that the punishment is going to be so severe that they will spend the rest of their life potentially in prison without the potential for parole. And even with Gavin Newsom's support out of California, I want you to listen to the Assembly Majority Leader, Isaac Bryan, a Democrat, talk about why they are not supporting this move. It is disgusting, folks.

I want to hear from you. 1-800-684-3110, protecting the traffickers while, again, allowing these minor children to be sex trafficked and knowing that the people in charge of it are not going to face the same kind of serious legal penalties that someone who committed a serious crime. It's not considered a serious crime in California right now.

Take a listen. All evidence has shown that longer sentences don't actually stop things from happening. All they do is increase our investment in systems of harm and subjugation at the expense of the investments that the communities needed to not have this be a problem to begin with. You know, I get that on some of these issues where we think that we have too many people in prison in the United States for too many low-level felonies. This shouldn't be a low-level felony. So what he is not telling you the truth there, the Assemblyman, is that this legislation, Logan, took this from being a regular crime, which is still a serious crime, but then would, again, elevate it to being a serious crime. And then if it's considered a serious crime, you can make these penalties that are much more severe. And by the way, we're not talking about recidivism here. We're talking about literally you're three strikes, you're out, and you're spending the rest of your life in prison. So that trafficker would be off the streets for good. That's different than a drug user or a drug dealer getting in and out of prison multiple times. Yeah, absolutely. I think when you hear these kind of – you can't even believe that these laws are being passed, that this is happening, or they're not being passed. They're being overturned. It's not shocking out of the state of California, but when this topic is sort of the number one topic right now that people are discussing this week to have something like this happen, it's just heartbreaking.

It's sad. So I think we have to always get engaged in these issues and figure out ways that we can get involved. We'd love to hear from you.

Obviously, people are still talking about Sound of Freedom this week. 1-800-684-3110. That's 1-800-684-3110 to be on the air. Also, we are right in the middle of our Matching Challenge. That's right.

For the month of July, all donations made to the ACLJ are effectively doubled. Don't you think child sex trafficking, pretty common sense, should be considered a serious felony? Right now, in the state of California, they block that move. It is not considered a serious felony. But Gavin Newsom might step in because this should be a bipartisan issue that we're all so disgusted by these traffickers that we want to put them away behind bars for life.

That's what they deserve. Give us a call. We want your insight, especially if you're in California.

1-800-684-3110. This fight is not over. California Democrats are working with Republicans to get it done. Let's get it across the line to punish these traffickers the real way. I don't give Democrats a lot of credit most of the time. Listen, the reason why this California law did not pass is because of a handful of Democrats on a committee who were opposed to ever extending longer prison sentences.

They don't care what it's for. They think that putting people in prison for long term is just bad policy. But we've got Gavin Newsom and probably the majority of the Democrats in the state legislature who were willing to vote for this in a bipartisan show of support for those who have been trafficked so that we can go after the traffickers. In the state, let me give you some facts. This is in the legislation, just so you know about how serious what we're talking about here.

The legislation was very simple. It was a Senate bill, an act to amend sections of the penal code and as amended to use the term serious felonies for human trafficking of a minor with the definition of a serious felony for all purposes, including for purposes of the three strike law. By expanding the scope of an enhancement, this bill would impose a state mandated local program. It's SB 14 serious felonies human trafficking. This is why California says they need to enact this.

The legislature finds and declares all of the following. A. California consistently ranks number one in the nation in the number of human trafficking cases that are reported to the National Human Trafficking Hotline. The cases that they actually know about, they're ranked number one. The California Attorney General notes that California is one of the largest sites for human trafficking in the United States and recognizes the serious nature of the crime. Human trafficking is among the world's fastest growing criminal enterprise and is estimated to be a $150 billion a year global industry. And you would think these Democrats would want to protect minorities within in our country who are specifically being targeted. For instance, letter D. Native American women and girls are victims of human trafficking at a much higher rate compared to the overall population. California has the sixth highest death rate of indigenous women in urban cities.

And again, it was chosen, California, as the first pilot location for the U.S. DOJ Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons Initiative. So they had all the facts and all the reasons, Andy, to say, we need to update our law. And most of the Democrats, I'll give Gavin Newsom credit again, he's going to go back to work on this because I think he realizes how bad this looks for Democrats in the States. And it was a handful of Democrats who didn't want to do this because they're totally opposed, Andy, to this idea of tough prison sentences. They want those all thrown out. They don't care if it's trafficking, murder, drug crimes. Their idea, their ideology is that long prison sentences, even life in prison sentences, somehow won't impact human trafficking. But in this case, which I see is different than the drug dealer who might get out a few times, if you put a trafficker, a major trafficker away for life, that is impacting people's lives. Substantially, Jordan, and I have put major traffickers away for life in the prosecutions that I've done in state courts as an assistant district attorney for many years.

And it is the major trafficker that needs to be put away. The aim of the Democrats here is to empty the prisons. We just want to empty the prisons because the prisons are places of harm and subjugation.

Well, of course they're places of subjugation, and they're not intended to be pleasant places, but they're intended to be places where people who cannot comport to the norms of society are put. The Senate Bill 14 in California, which was defeated by most of the Democrats' votes the other day, would classify trafficking of children and teenagers younger than 18 as a serious felony. In other words, it would raise it on a par with murder, arson, and rape, and would bring long prison terms and potential life sentences without a chance for plea bargaining. Plea bargaining is where you have promised a lesser crime if someone will plead to that in exchange for a greater crime. That is done away with.

You serve the crime that you plead to or that you're convicted of, and you go away. Do you want to go to the call? Yeah, let's go ahead and take a call. Let's go to Deborah in New Hampshire on Line 3. Deborah, welcome. I have a real website that shows my father, John Kachinas, was led off the hook by judges, and he continues to have...

I'm not sure what that would do. Yeah, it just didn't have enough facts in your information provided. Yeah, let's find out more information about that, Deborah. Sorry about that, Deborah.

I just want to be able to respond. I bet. Yeah, let's get more information from Deborah. Is Mary Ellen ready?

She's usually always ready to go. Can we go to Mary Ellen on Line 1? Yeah, let's just go to Mary Ellen. Thank you.

Mary, you're on the air. I have more questions. It's like, what money group is supporting these politicians that are not agreeing with that new bill? It's like we know China, we know the movie industry in California, that's big, and we know that this is an erosion to our social fabric in this nation. The moral ethics, it's taken this nation down, and I mean, we also know they're bringing them in from the southern border, and China's involved in some of that. So, who, who, who?

Who's behind this? Yeah, well, I mean, these are very liberal Democrats on this committee. It already passed the State Senate. So this is just at the California Assembly.

They're versed with, like, a state house. So the State Senate, with a lot of Democrats, passed this. This is a handful of radical Democrats on this committee who are against, basically, incarceration.

They believe that, again, we have overly incarcerated the United States, and listen, I think there are some crimes we probably have. But this one, when it comes to human trafficking, I think you can separate that from all the other debates and say, an individual or cartel or organized crime unit that would take teenage children away from their families and traffic them so that they can sell them for sex acts, should be punished as serious felonies. In California right now, that definition of serious felonies, Andy, does not apply to a sex trafficker. No, it doesn't, and it ought to, and this bill would have made it that. It would have brought it on a par with, as it says, murder, arson, and rape.

All offenses that carry with it, in some instances, capital punishment in the case of murders of some kinds approved by the Supreme Court of the United States for execution. But it would do what it ought to do, and that is take trafficking of minors and make it serious crimes. Not subject to plea bargaining, a way to lesser offenses. It would bring them in line with the serious felonies that they really are. And the fact that it fills up jails, and I don't know that it necessarily does, because the judge is bound by what the legislature said is the penalty, is the price that you pay. You get them off the streets.

That's what you want to do. Yeah, you disincentivize the larger organized crime units from wanting to get involved in this business because they know if they ultimately get caught or extradited from the countries of even the leadership, that they're going to face life in prison like they would for other serious crimes. Take a listen to State Senator Shannon Grove out of California. So right now in the state of California, trafficking a minor child for sex is not considered a serious felony. Arson is, bank robbery is, carjacking, things like that.

I mean, Logan, that's where I think this is absurd. You know, if carjacking is a serious felony, which it should be, it's dangerous, bank robbery, very dangerous, taking kids from their families that are minors and selling them into sex is worse than either of those to me. It's worse than bank robbery or carjacking. And yet it does not meet the same, if you were in court today as one of those traffickers, you would not be facing the same kind of potential punishment as someone who committed a bank robbery. Yeah, and the truth is the media and really social media and everything will suppress these kinds of stories.

I can tell you right now, I'm looking at you right now if you're watching on social media right now, other than Rumble, right now on our major platforms, we're having a significantly less view count because notifications didn't go out because of our title, because of things that happened, because they don't want you to hear this kind of information, whether that is on some of the other social platforms, wherever you are, if you look at the view count, I'd be like, oh, I wonder why half the amount of people are watching right now, because this information gets suppressed. But this goes into the theories that, I don't like conspiracy theories, but that Logan... Is that conspiracy? I can tell you with almost certain... No, no, what I'm saying is that builds into the theories that there is this group trying to protect these traffickers. Whether it's Hollywood or this kind of weird Epstein world that we saw developed with business leaders and stuff, that somehow they think they're above the law and they can treat human beings however they want, even if they're children, and they don't want you to focus on it, because every time you do focus on it, people want to know, why did you fly to Epstein's Island?

And what did you see there? And we've never gotten answers about that. Yeah, of course. And that plays a part into the movie, into The Sound of Freedom, and that's part of why people are on the left and people are concerned that they're saying that this is some sort of... It's just overblown conspiracy.

But when you have these moments, they're playing into it. If you want to be concerned why people are feeling like maybe you think they're stretching the truth, well, when you have moments like this where we're going, well, sex traffickers, they don't need to go to jail forever, well, then people go, wake up. This is a big problem and it plays into all of it. We'd love to hear from you.

1-800-684-3110, 1-800-684-3110. You don't even have to dip your toe into ridiculous conspiracy. It's not like any of the stuff that they'll say that it's about. This isn't conspiracy. This is just what's happening. Yeah, and the serious legislation here, folks, I mean, it found as fact that of all the states in the country, California ranks number one.

It's a real problem there. Most Democrats in the state agreed. It was a handful of far-left Democrats who have prevented this from moving forward in the state Senate to get to Governor Newsom's desk. I will say, Governor Newsom, in this act, because I think it's just a human act, you know, anybody who's got kids, family, you want these sex traffickers punished to the full extent of the law, has pledged to do something to get this to his desk, to work on it, so at least he's not backing away. Let's keep the pressure up on the Democrats who are doing the right thing on this issue because it should not be partisan at all.

As we said, they know they rank as the worst state in the country. Support the work of the ACLJ. Double the impact of your donation right now. We work on all these issues. Donate today at ACLJ.org.

Welcome back to Seculars. You know our FOIA work. We've spent a lot of time on the FBI and their targeting of conservatives, whether it's pro-life conservatives, whether it's just conservative actors, people who are too religious for them, you know, radical, traditionalist Catholics, the list goes on and on. One of those focuses though on, again, this FBI oversight that we are looking at is, you know, are they even reading the actual cases that are out there?

Not just news articles, but the cases that are out there about the fact that the government utilizing the FBI was going to social media companies and telling them what to remove, what to de-throttle basically, what not to allow to be shared widely. And Christopher Wray gets asked about it. And you would think, again, in a court opinion that was this big of a deal involving the agency he oversees, the law enforcement agency he oversees, the FBI, that he would have read it. Now before I play this, I do want to let you know if you've got calls on what's happened in California on this trafficking legislation, I want to take those calls. So 1-800-684-3110, just because we're talking about another issue, we will get back to that as well at 1-800-684-3110. But Director Wray was asked about it, how he didn't even mention this court opinion at all in his opening statement.

Director Wray, I find it stunning. You made no mention of this court opinion either in your opening statement today or in this lengthy 14-page report that you prepared on July 12th, which is eight days after the court ruling. Have you read the ruling, sir? I am familiar with the ruling and I've reviewed it with our office of general counsel. Are you deeply disturbed by what they've told you about the ruling if you haven't read it yourself? Obviously, we're going to comply with the court's order, the court's preliminary injunction.

We sent out guidance to the field and the headquarters about how to do that. Needless to say, the injunction itself is a subject of ongoing litigation, and so I'll decline to comment further. You know why it's a subject of ongoing litigation?

Because the Biden administration, Logan, appealed it. They want the power to have the FBI. So what he told you was there, was that he told the FBI agents, which we know now is, don't have these meetings. They had to cancel these meetings because they weren't about reporting on terrorists using social media or bad criminal actors. It was about conservative speech they don't like. Well, I think one of the reasons they actually said that they canceled the meeting, maybe we can find the exact quote, was the concept of we got to make sure now that we are within the protocol of now the law because all of this has shifted now. And if you know that you had to do that, it means your meetings were about what? They certainly were not. They were certainly within the scope of what was being alleged here. So the fact that they had to do that alone, they had to go in and make adjustments to their meeting schedule, cancel meetings immediately. But yeah, the discussion was certainly going to be violating these new rules.

Right. And then I want to keep playing, there's more sound here, because a lot of this was done under, oh well, this is trying to protect Americans from disinformation. Not, again, criminal actions, not terrorist actions, not drug dealers, not traffickers, just disinformation.

He gets asked, what is disinformation? Well, I want to address this real quick. So we had our team here, I told you before, we had the original title, this was talking about trafficking in the title, and it was doing very poorly on our numbers. We could see our live numbers were not on our social media online numbers.

We could see that it was being suppressed. We adjusted the title. And guess what? The numbers are going up. This is where we're living in right now.

This is where we have to be. Isn't that amazing? And they're going up to the normal numbers that we usually get, because it now has kicked back in. I mean, it's just, again, it's almost too transparent that this is what's happening. Too obvious they're doing it. Yeah.

And again, they don't want this issue being discussed. It's crazy. To me, it's such a- It's crazy.

It's crazy to watch it in real time. It's such a legitimate issue of talking about a serious crime and criminal enterprise occurring. And the new title is about disinformation, by the way.

I mean, it's not even like we've just adjusted to like, yeah, secular, we're live. But it's the one issue- Child sex trafficking. And we know that. We can't put abortion in the title. I mean, just saying that out loud is probably going to be a problem. Then you can't do trafficking? I guess we can't do trafficking. Because Sound of Freedom got too popular?

Who knows? Sound of Freedom, yeah. Yeah, Sound of Freedom got too popular. I want to play the next sound bite, though, too, because it was like, okay, you're trying to protect me from disinformation. What does that even mean? They did this under the guise that it was disinformation. Can you define what disinformation is?

What I can tell you is that our focus is not on disinformation, broadly speaking. Well, wait a minute. Yes, it is. Wait a minute. Can I answer the question?

You can in a minute. Your star witness said in the litigation, Elvis Chan, who's in charge of this, said they do it on the basis of disinformation. We need a definition of what that is. Our focus is on malign foreign disinformation, that is foreign hostile actors who engage in covert efforts to abuse our social media platforms, which is something that is not seriously in dispute.

I have to stop you for time. That's not accurate. You need to read this court opinion because you're in charge of enforcing it. Yeah, this was not about foreign disinformation. This was about American disinformation, about telling social media companies not to allow Americans to have freedom of speech on their platforms and question things, whether it was covid lockdowns, whether it was, again, whether it's the sex trafficking issue right now that I think is being dethralled on so many platforms or whether it's, again, just political views. Life, we know abortion is one that they deplatform very quickly. That has nothing to do with criminal actions. They just don't want people talking about abortion, especially if it comes from a life perspective. We're fighting a case right now where they say, well, you use murder in the title. So we can't let you share that. So we can't describe what our belief that abortion is murder and what's happening in the abortion battle because you disagree with that.

You disagree with the description. So you're going to say that we're no different than ISIS putting out propaganda about killing their opponents and killing those who, again, they believe are the enemies of ISIS. And that's how we're going to be treated as Americans and as an organization like the ACLJ. But that's exactly how we are being treated right now.

I mean, the dance that we have to do, Logan, every morning to figure out not just a good title that people are still thinking, we can't even use the best titles usually. Usually, yeah, we have to be very careful. We have a whole roundtable discussion because we do want to make sure, by the way, our content is served. You don't want no one watching.

So you have to be careful. Now, I understand sometimes it's like, well, this is not appropriate content for an advertiser to want to put their dollars, like if it's a random dishwasher company or whatever it would be or a random fast food restaurant. Like maybe it's some words that are triggered there. But the fact that it doesn't even get served to the audience is a wild thing that we've had to really adjust over the last year or two. It wasn't like that in the original days. There wasn't this suppression.

Originally, it was if you liked, followed, or subscribed, you got a notification that told you we're live. And it didn't really matter what it was because it was serving that audience. Now, it's not about serving your own audience. It's about serving the platform.

Yeah. I want to continue to take your calls at 1-800-684-3110. We're going to do that when we come back from this first half hour. So Kelly, Sandra, Marcella, stay on the line. We want to get to your calls. We just don't want to have to cut you off in a minute. We want to be able to get your question out. So stay on.

We will get to those right away. And that's on the trafficking issue. And we'll stay on that so long as calls are coming in at 1-800-684-3110.

That's 1-800-684-3110. We're not just talking about this today because of a movie. We're talking about it because in California, their state legislator had an opportunity to classify sex trafficking, child sex trafficking, as a serious felony. And they decided because of a handful of radical left Democrats that they would vote down that legislation even though it already passed the state assembly. So their version of the House now is stuck up. It passed the state senate but is now stuck in the state assembly. We even have Gavin Newsom saying he was surprised and shocked that Democrats blocked this. So we're going to continue to fight on this issue.

There is no way if arson, if carjacking is going to be considered a serious felony, then taking a teenage child and selling them for sex is not a serious felony in the state of California. Not today. Because Democrats blocked legislation. So you know what? All your conspiracies, start following them.

Start thinking more about them. Because the truth is there are people literally standing in the way of protecting the most vulnerable, the children in our country. Be right back. Support our work at ACLJ.org. Keeping you informed and engaged. Now more than ever, this is Sekulow. And now your host, Jordan Sekulow.

So I'll just update you real quickly if you're just joining the broadcast. I'll bring you right to your phone calls at 1-800-684-3110. Obviously sex trafficking has gotten a lot of new attention and I think that's a good thing because of the movie A Sound of Freedom. And yet we also have actual legislation moving through so we're not just talking about it because of the movie's success. There's legislation in California because California, even in the proposed legislation, they say they're the number one state for child sex trafficking. They have the number one problem with it. They see all these different communities that are somewhat disenfranchised being really utilized and targeted by these traffickers. And so they wanted to pass a law to upgrade the criminal charge for sex trafficking to a serious felony.

Which then puts in much more serious punishments. And a handful of radical left Democrats in the California State Assembly blocked it from getting a vote. It already passed the Democrat controlled state senate in California.

Gavin Newsom was prepared to sign it. No one saw this as a partisan issue. I know people have tried to make the movie like a partisan issue. But not when you're the number one state for child sex trafficking. No one wants their state to rank number one on that statistic. It is scary.

It is disgusting. It's kind of like the worst of the worst crimes you can commit, too, in my opinion. I mean, there's lots of bad crimes that already get the status of serious felony, but not sex trafficking.

So that's what we're talking about here. Gavin Newsom has pledged to go back and get this done and keep fighting on it so that this gets raised to a serious felony. But as of right now in California, you commit sex trafficking. You are not committing a serious felony, which means your punishment is going to be much less than someone who carjacked a vehicle or robbed a bank. So you're getting a less penalty for kidnapping children and selling them for sex than a bank robber.

Just think about that. You're getting less prison sentence, less time. You're getting probation probabilities.

You're not on a three strike plan. I mean, the list goes on and on about why elevating this to a three strike serious felony is so important. And, you know, it's a glimmer of hope that even in a state like California, we can, Logan, get to some common sense legislation that makes sense to protect kids.

Yeah. I don't know why this is even becoming a politicized issue. It's really quite disturbing as you'd expect.

I mean, I guess I can know why I can kind of put pieces together, but it's it's just crazy. It's crazy that it always happens when the spotlight is maybe the most on it. This was a few months ago. I feel like maybe this would have kind of floated under the radar. But right now, the issue is on the top of people's minds right now. And for this to happen during it is just it's unbelievable. Phone lines are completely jammed right now. Let's go and take one call before we head into the break. Let's go to let's go to Kelly, who's in Arizona. Kelly, you're on the air. Hello.

I'm grateful for you taking my call. So the question I have is this. If sex trafficking is pretty much a slap on the wrist for all intents and purposes. And some of these other things, you can't put it on social media to kind of cry out about it. What can we do? Because, yes, we can complain about it. And I hate it.

I hate it and it sucks a lot. There's two things we got to do, Kelly. We fight the legislations and we fight the legislature. We've been doing that for two decades, the ACLJ on this issue.

The first was changing the law so that the women and girls who are being sex trafficked could go to police if they could find them and tell them what was happening to them without fear of being prosecuted as a prostitute. So the sex traffickers would tell them, you go to police, they're going to put you in jail. You got a kid, they're going to take the kid away from you. So you're going to be the one that goes behind bars. We're just going to disappear.

You're never going to get me. So that was one thing that we got changed. Now we need to change the law. It's a felony in California. I want to make that clear, Kelly, but some felonies only have one year in prison. What they wanted to do was raise this to a serious felony, which is a minimum of 25 years in prison and comes with a three strike rule, which means if you get convicted for the third time of child sex trafficking, you're in jail for the rest of your life. No parole. That's what they were trying to do was elevate it to a serious felony.

And yet a handful of Democrats, these radical Democrats, and this is when you start thinking about they're kind of like radicalizing our kids, pushing sex in front of children, why they're doing that and kind of what is behind that ideology. We know we can win this. We actually have the support of Gavin Newsom. So let's come together and win it.

Support the work of the ACLJ at ACLJ.org. We'll be right back on Sekulow. Welcome back to Sekulow. Before we get to your calls, I did want to update you and we're going to still take your calls on the trafficking issue. They've got three up right now.

A couple of phone lines open. If you want to call in with your opinion, your thoughts, your kind of view on this issue of why there's pushback to even elevate this crime to a serious felony in a state like California, which admittedly in their legislation proposed by Democrats is the number one sex trafficking state of minors. So they have a real problem in their state. Gavin Newsom has acknowledged he's been working on it. Had a twenty five million dollar campaign they've run on to try to get more information out there about what you can do if you've fallen into sex trafficking and how to get out of it.

He wants to do more. I don't do this just to praise Gavin Newsom because I love Gavin Newsom so much. What I'm saying is this is not partisan. This is just decent people knowing that this is disgusting. And we need to punish these people to the full extent of the law. We'll get back to that in just a second.

I did watch it. You know, we've got ACLJ Action, our team in Washington, D.C., a lot of our government affairs team, and they work a lot on legislation and specifically the National Defense Authorization Act, which is going to be amended today and passed on the House floor soon, which would prohibit the secretary of defense from paying for or reimbursing expenses relating to abortion services and preventing any funds from being used to carry out the October 2022 memo, which said the Department of Defense will pay for your travel and will pay for your abortion with our taxpayer dollars if you're a member of the military. This amendment would strip that language from the National Defense Authorization Act. We want to fund our military to the fullest.

We want to have the best, strongest military in the world. We don't need to be paying for people's abortions with those tax dollars. They're individuals. They're states that abortion is legal in.

They can go and figure that out on their own. Why do we have to reimburse their abortions? Of course, the Hyde Amendment issues that come into play here as well are serious. So we want you to join the campaign at ACLJAction.org to ensure that Amendment 377 is included in the final house NDAA, the National Defense Authorization Act, and that would be a victory for conscientious taxpayers and a pathway forward towards a more cohesive and focused military, a military who's not focused on abortion rights but is focused on defending our country, a military not focused on abortion rights but instead is focused on making sure they have the equipment they need to be the best military in the world. So go to ACLJAction.org right now. You can take action for absolutely free, but we need you to weigh in today at ACLJAction.org because if we lose on this issue, your taxpayer dollars are going to be funding military members' abortions, even their flight or their travel, to get an abortion. We don't want our taxpayer dollars going to that murder. Make sure to go to ACLJAction and take action today.

It doesn't cost you a thing. We just want you to get your comments in, sign those petitions. Very important, and ACLJAction has been very successful at getting this to legislators.

But Logan, I do also want to get to the phones on this. You know, abortion is a huge issue. It's another day's topic, but the abortion issue of minors is a huge sex trafficking issue. You know when Planned Parenthood fights back about having restrictions on abortion for minors, like parental consent? Yeah, of course, those things. A lot of that is utilized by sex trafficking.

Right, exactly. They bring these teenage girls in for abortion, and since in some states you don't need parental consent, and they tell them, go get an abortion so they can put them back on the streets for trafficking. Let's go ahead and take some phone calls, and you can give us a call too at 1-800-684-3110. We'll take you to this segment. And next, let's go to Marcella, who's calling in Texas, who's going to hold about 25 minutes. We appreciate it. Marcella, you're on the air. That's okay.

Thank you for having me. The curious question I have is, this is literally kidnapping people's children off the street, or just, you know, an adult even. So my curious question is, why is it not being prosecuted as a kidnapping federal charge? Listen, I think that there are parts of that when you, if you arrest a trafficker and you can prove the elements of kidnapping, you could.

Again here, what we want to make sure is that the crime of sex trafficking itself is a standalone serious felony. So where you're not just having to utilize other laws to get that person somehow behind bars for a lesser period of time. But if you can add up, by the way, a kidnapping charge, and on top of that charge, you add a serious offense, sex trafficking charge, that person is going away likely for the rest of their life. So what you're trying to do is actually give prosecutors better and stronger laws to actually do something to these sex traffickers that is serious.

Putting them away for life, getting them off the streets, getting them out of the trafficking game, instead of having to cobble together a bunch of laws that may work and you still may do as part of the charge. There's no excuse for child sex trafficking not to be a serious felony in every state in the country. And right now the state that has the worst problem with it has rejected classifying it as a serious felony. That's the state of California. The good news is it's not so partisan there.

The Democrat governor and many Democrats in the state senate voted for this the good way. It was a handful of radicals who are against imprisonment basically and think that prison doesn't do anything. When you put people away for life, they're going to think twice about whether or not they're going to get into the sex trafficking game. Whether they're going to follow the footsteps of the people who are going to spend the rest of their years behind bars. If you want to spend the rest of your years behind bars as a sex trafficker, I wonder how long you survive in a federal prison.

Yeah, I don't think very long. Let's continue on and take some more calls. Let's go to Jim who's calling in Oregon on Line 5. Welcome.

Are you there? Yep, you're on the air, Jim. Okay. I was calling on the subject of disinformation. We ought to use the term alleged disinformation because disinformation gives the other side too much propaganda. It's certainly a word that has been politicized for sure.

I think you're right about that. It's like we can't use it anymore for real disinformation. Those terminologies get thrown around that now all of a sudden that word means this party, that word means the other. Yeah, and it's weird because it's just a very straightforward word and yet now I kind of, when I look at it and say, okay, instead of saying disinformation, I should use a different term. And unfortunately, I think you're right, Jim, that we've gotten to a point where people hear disinformation and they think conservatives spreading illegal or false content.

And again, this is the games they play with our grammar. It's the games they play with defining terms. And they kind of get it set in your head, whether you even are paying attention closely or not, that when you hear disinformation, it must be the conservatives putting it out and the Biden administration trying to stop it. And law enforcement trying to stop it.

But the only people doing it has to be, you know, the conservatives and Trump supporters that are involved in disinformation. So I think you're absolutely right. It's become a word that is associated now with like a specific political party. Yeah, it's like a progressive glossary of terms that get thrown around there.

That's wonderful. They need their own urban dictionary. I'm sure they have it. I'm sure it exists. I mean, it's true, though.

They're just words you can't use. Like the woke dictionary we need. Yeah, it'd be funny. Maybe FaceMake can put that out for us. Fake news was created as something against conservatives and Trump flipped it.

So you can always take a word back and flip it back onto them. So, yeah, let's go ahead. Well, yeah, we got a couple of minutes. We'll take some more calls. Give us a call. We'll take more of these.

I'd love to hear from you. One eight hundred six eight four thirty one ten for those just tuning in on some of our platforms. Welcome to the broadcast.

One eight hundred six eight four thirty one ten. Let's go to Bob in California, who's watching Facebook. You're online for. Hey, thanks for taking my call. Couple quick points. Number one, how how are they not charged with the 290 and becoming a registrant? Number two, if they go to prison, they ain't going to last. I have tons of friends in the system that are officers and they charge those people and they get in the prison system.

They won't go 25 years alive. I think you hear those stories all the time. Listen, I mean, we saw what happened to Larry Nassar, who was a disgusting medical coach for the U.S. women's gymnastics team that was abusing those girls. And he got nearly killed yesterday or two days ago, a few days ago, stabbed multiple times. They had a life saving effort.

Does anyone feel bad? Well, that's the one good thing about the people who are a lot of times in federal prison or in prison. It's like there are there's a code. There's a line and a line is not maybe murder. The line is a lot of times. What should be the line for everyone, by the way, and why we're having a problem with California is sexual abuse of children. So, yeah, you're right.

And you do that. You deserve what you get. And honestly, people don't shed a tear.

And, Bob, I don't think any of us shed a tear for these people who do this to children, whatever injuries they take or if their life is threatened, because honestly, this is one of the reasons why I still like the death penalty in some places. You know, and sometimes I'm a little nervous about it because of the jury system and all of that. Yeah. But when it comes to this issue, I say fine. Yeah. I mean, look, you had an issue in California this week.

I'm an issue where, you know, sort of the last Manson murderer who murdered Sharon Tate was released this week. And Newsom tried to block it and then he got overruled. And then he just said, fine, whatever, we're going to do this. And if you look at the details of that still, I mean, yes, it was 40, 50 years ago now. Brutal. Unbelievable. Brutal of murdering a woman and her unborn child and children and rubbing blood all over the walls. I mean, just the most disturbing thing you can imagine. And sure, it's been 50 years.

And sure, this person was probably brainwashed by Charlie. And hopefully they're no longer. Hopefully.

But released now as a free person right now in the code of a halfway house right now. There's more on this legislation we're going to get to. We come back. How California is fighting back. We've got a lot of donors in California. I know it's considered a liberal state, but the ACLJ, we get a lot of support. We appreciate that. We appreciate you in California, too, who are fighting back.

Rick Rinnell from our team is one of those members, too, of our team who is fighting back to try and save their state. My wife is from California. It's an important state to our family. It's an important state to the ACLJ and to the nation because kind of like sometimes what they do, other states end up enacting because it's such a big state and they kind of follow suit.

So if we could get some more liberal states to enact tough laws like this, that would be great to stop this child sex trafficking. Support the work of the ACLJ. These are the kind of issues we're working on. Donate today at ACLJ.org. Double the impact your donation with our matching challenge at ACLJ.org. I want to update you on a couple of things, then we're going to get to our economy as well. If you've got calls, 1-800-684-3110. Get them in now.

That's 1-800-684-3110. First, on the ACLJ action campaign for the NDAA, the National Defense Authorization Act, to strip that funding for abortion out, even paying for the travel for members of the military to go get an abortion. This is not the role for our taxpayer dollars to go to the military, but they will right now if we're not successful in stripping this language out, which could happen in a matter of days, the vote on this amendment. So once you go to ACLJaction.org, over 5,700 of you have already signed letters at ACLJaction.org, going to members of Congress telling them to support this amendment, to remove this language.

So you're joining thousands of people and it's very easy to do. If you go to ACLJaction.org, you put in your address, it pulls up your member of Congress and your senators and it's got a pre-written letter. You can edit it, you can delete the whole thing and write a whole new letter, but we encourage you to do that today. Time is running out at ACLJaction.org as we fight for life in a piece of legislation that honestly we shouldn't have to be fighting for, but we deal with reality at the ACLJ. They're trying to sneak through major abortion funding with your taxpayer dollars through a bill, which if you heard the title, National Defense Authorization Act, you wouldn't think had to do anything with abortion. Second, out of California, Senator Grove has noted that she's already modified the child sex trafficking bill to target repeat traffickers and minors and that her Democrat colleagues in the upper chamber had unanimously voted yes. Democrats unanimously voted yes in the state Senate in California. But a handful of Democrats in the Assembly have so far blocked this.

She said, we amended the bill thinking that once we got this to the Assembly it would be so easy to get out of the committee and I'm sad to hear that that was wrong. I mean, we do wonder, like, who is funding these people? Who thinks this is a good political vote to take protecting child sex traffickers?

Not a single Democrat in the California State Senate, not hardly any Democrats in the California State Assembly, just a handful to block it, and not even the very liberal governor of California, Gavin Newsom, because this issue pulls at the heartstrings of every single American. I don't care what your political views are. If you're a decent human being, you want these traffickers punished to the full extent of the law. Some of us may have distinctions on what the full extent should be. Should it be, you know, life in prison or should it be execution?

But we can all agree it should be at least life behind bars when you are a repeat sexual offender of minors. 1-800-684-31 tend to talk to us. But I do want to go to Harry Hutchinson because, Harry, we're getting new numbers on inflation. Inflation rose just 0.2% in June.

That was less than expected. Consumers have gotten a little bit of a break from some price increases, though food is still up and some items are still up. So what do we read from these numbers? We're all trying to figure out again, are we getting out of a recession? Are we going to stop raising our interest rates because of that? Could they even start lowering our interest rates because of this? How does this really impact an everyday American? First, the bottom line, I think, is we should expect the Fed to resume its policy of raising interest rates within the next three to six months.

Why is that? Because core inflation, which is quite different sometimes from what is reported, continues to rise at a fairly rapid annual rate, even though on a monthly basis it's come down a bit. What makes up core inflation?

Things like food and shelter. Shelter includes mortgages, rent, and the interest payments we make when we purchase a house. I think everyone knows that interest rates remain stubbornly high and they're forecasted to continue to remain high. As long as interest rates remain high for average customers, this is going to be an impediment to purchasing a house, but also it's going to help drive up rental rates for individuals who are not purchasing a house. So I expect that within the next six months, the Fed will continue to raise interest rates and that will indeed be a drag on the overall economy.

And I think it's going to be difficult to forecast that we are going to get out of the situation that we are currently in. I think consumers will limp along. Some months will show some progress. I think energy prices have come down. Gas prices have come down.

So those are some positive developments. And I think basically we should forecast that the consumer will tread water over the next six months to 12 months. Yeah, and those consumers that are looking to maybe get a mortgage or something where interest rates really affect that decision, you don't think they're getting any relief anytime soon?

No, I don't. And the other problem, of course, is some people have seen the size of their family rise and they would like to buy a house, but there are no buyers in certain markets. Now, certain markets are still doing really well. Some of the high-growth markets in the South, including parts of Tennessee, Texas, and parts of Florida, are doing well, but if we are looking at the economy as a whole, I think we're treading water. I mean, you name all those states, those are all states with one thing in common, no state income tax, so it kind of can balance out a little bit of that interest rate situation, where if you're trying to get out of a high tax state or a city that's failing or a state that's failing with crime and all these other issues, but you're going to get it to a no tax state, maybe it balances out a little bit better for you.

You're in a somewhat better position if you're able to move into one of these no state income tax states, even though you wouldn't be getting the full benefit because interest rates are still so high, so people that are locked into good low interest rates are not selling their homes unless they absolutely have to. I think that's really the line for most Americans. It's not the random numbers that get reported out each month, Harry. It's when will this get to a point where I can take a loan out and not pay 8%? I think you're precisely correct. So if you look at the real estate pages throughout the United States, occasionally you'll come across a house where the mortgage, the existing mortgage rate, is below 3% and it's assumeable. That is a fantastic deal right now. I saw one recently, 2.8%, and it was assumeable.

But nonetheless, that particular house took almost four months to sell in this market, and it has an assumeable mortgage associated with it. People just are still hurting. And again, the clarity out of the White House is just very weak, Logan. I think that's the issue here. We know everybody's facing it. It stops you from making the big purchases.

Yeah, absolutely. I think a lot of people have that struggle they're going through right now with inflation where they don't know. We're seeing it in a lot of the travel industry and a lot of things this summer. Summer travel is down significantly.

Why? Because people simply either don't have the money or spent the money another year. It's really interesting, and it's a really sad time in that sense because even when people are donating and working with ACLJ here, it definitely changes the way. We've actually seen sometimes in these months recently where we've had more donors, which is amazing, but it's at less dollar amounts. Right, so more of you donating to the ACLJ, thousands more donating, which is great, and we appreciate those new donors to the ACLJ or those of you who decide to act.

But the average amount has gone down because people are hurting. So we really appreciate you budgeting so that you can still support the ACLJ in our work. I can't say thank you enough for that, and this is a great time to make that donation if you've made it part of your budget because you can double the impact of your donation. So if you have to cut it back a little bit, this is a great month to donate because let's say you usually donated $50, but right now you feel like I can only donate $25.

That's great. Do it because we have a donor that's going to match that $25, which is like your $50 donation that you used to give, and hopefully we'll be able to give again soon without any issue. Support the work of the ACLJ. Take advantage of this matching challenge for us so we can expand and continue to do our work. Donate today at ACLJ.org. We'll talk to you tomorrow.