MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT: Israel Prepares Nation As Middle East Tensions Grow

Major announcement as the Israeli Prime Minister prepares the nation as Middle East tensions grow. Keeping you informed and engaged, now more than ever, this is Sekulow.

We want to hear from you. Share and post your comments or call 1-800-684-3110. And now your host, Jordan Sekulow. Hey, welcome to Sekulow. We are taking your call to 1-800-684-3110.

That's 1-800-684-3110. In about 30 minutes, if you're listening to the live broadcast or watching the live broadcast right now, a speech by Prime Minister Netanyahu to the nation of Israel will be covering that as well. You don't want to miss that. We're going to discuss again the vote last night. Two major votes last night in the House of Representatives. One on impeaching Mayorkas, one on funding Israel, and what might happen next week on each of those issues as they failed to pass last night.

But again, I don't think we're done with that necessarily, though certainly you could lose some momentum potentially when you move those into next week as well. But again, there's been all this talk about now that we are in this, you know, deeper into a war stage between Israel and Hamas, what deals are left to be done to get remaining hostages that may be alive returned home. And of course, there's other countries that have interest in this as well because there's a lot of dual citizens. But it's also months into a war now. Let me tell you what the United States' interest is in this and what the people that are listening to this broadcast need to understand.

Why is this engagement important? First of all, eliminating terrorism is always important. It's a human rights issue. It's for the good of Western civilization.

But there's another fundamental issue here. The Middle East produces about 40% of the oil that comes to the rest of the world, including the United States. We're paying right now about $3.50 a gallon, which is about the national average, which is down from $5.50. Iran closes the Straits of Hormuz, which is where the oil comes from.

You're looking at $9 and $10 a gallon of gasoline. You know what the economic impact of that's going to be? Devastating for the country. Devastating for the world economy.

Put the whole economy of the globe into a recession and a serious one. Then you have the enormity of what's going on in Israel and I think the reality that's coming to play. And I hate to say this, but we were on Zoom this morning with colleagues in Israel discussing next moves, including action at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

But let me take it a step further here. The hostage situation, which I think will be discussed by Benjamin Netanyahu in the next few minutes. The reality is they are already putting out that another 35, initially they said 35 additional hostages they believe are no longer alive.

They increased that to 50. Then they said earlier it may even be as high as 75 of the 120 left. There may be less than 50 hostages alive here. So I think what Hamas is struggling with, and I hate to even give them the courtesy of using the word struggle, but what Hamas is dealing with is they're not going to be able to deliver, Jordan, anything that is being promised as part of these negotiations. So they're going to keep saying no because the reality is they can't deliver the bodies. Literally the bodies. When you say bodies, you literally mean just dead bodies.

They don't have those. They've been kind of moving all over the Gaza Strip and they've been pushed into different areas. But they have not, it's been an interesting conflict because the attacks by Hamas, the more traditional attacks by Hamas continue.

Rocks of fire continue. So as the activity increased in the south of Gaza, and Gaza, remember, is only seven miles wide and 25 miles in length, top to bottom. As it moved to the south, Hamas went back into the north and asserted control again. So they are not eliminated and I think you have to, Israel has no choice but to eliminate this threat. And our interest in that is to stabilize that region because it is one of the most important regions of the world economically, politically. But there also needs to be a focus here legally on what took place on October 7th. And what I'm talking about there is not just the issue of hostages, but the genocide that took place, the deaths that took place, the horrors and tragedies of October 7th. And we need to put the International Criminal Court in the Hague on notice that we expect justice here. And this is going to take a whole new strategy.

We'll talk about it as we get into it. There was a lot of focus on hostages and not as much focus on the 1400 plus people who were killed, who lost their life that day in those attacks. Because there was such a move to figure out what to do with hostages. As war gets deeper on, you have to kind of move on in a conflict too.

And that's just reality. We want you to, we have a special matching moment. We are relaunching as well. Go to the Supreme Court tomorrow.

ACLJ.org. Again, to double the impact of your donation. We'll explain more when we get back.

All right, welcome back to Secula. We are taking your phone calls to 100-684-31 to hit a major case, the U.S. Supreme Court, tomorrow as well. And we'll talk about that in the broadcast with the 14th amendment case. Yeah, and we do have, we extended the matching moment because of the enormity of the case.

And it's such a big case. So just go to ACLJ.org and any amount you donate is going to be doubled up today and tomorrow. Let me go to Jeff Balaban who heads up our office in Jerusalem. And Jeff, the spokesperson for the Biden administration and for Secretary Blinken reiterated yesterday that the United States' support for the establishment of a Palestinian state is the best way to ensure lasting peace and security for Israelis and Palestinians alike and greater integration for the region. This baloney, and that's being kind, this approach of a two-state solution is historically a total failure. Let's just be clear. And this is, I'm not talking about 20 years of history here. I'm not talking about 40 years of history here. I'm talking about since the modern state of Israel has been formed. They are not going to have a two-state solution.

It's just, you look at 60 years of, 75 years now of history, it just doesn't exist. But the administration is still keen on that. And what I'm trying to remind our audience is the strategic interest of the United States in the Middle East. And I think Jeff, you know, you go between our offices here domestically and in Jerusalem, but our audience needs to understand that the interest of the United States here is not just Israel's our ally, Israel's our friend. But in that region of the world, 40% of the world energy is produced. And you start closing the Straits of Hormuz, and I said this earlier, gas goes from $3.50 a gallon to $10. And you've got a world economic recession.

So I think let's start with that, then we'll get to the two-state solution. The importance of this situation in backing Israel as it relates to the interests of the United States. There's no question, Jay, and you frequently, when we talk about this internally and on the air, you talk about how the Middle East is like playing non-dimensional chess.

And so you're right, this is the political reality, but there's the economic reality as well. And this move by the Biden administration, we will, we should talk about how it is literally an existential threat to the state of Israel. But importantly for us here in America also, it is a threat to the stabilization of the entire region. I mean, it threatens to destabilize the entire Middle East. It is a huge reward to Iran, which backed October 7th and the atrocities of the genocidal attack on the Jewish state, to say we're going to reward the same terrorist organizations it backs, the same group it backs by giving them a state. And worse than that, they're forcing, they're trying to arm twist Saudi Arabia into this as well.

Because publicly Saudi Arabia has always spoken with some thought about a Palestinian state or two states, but privately the Saudis have for a long time known and expressed their views that the notion of yet another Arab state there, especially what we're talking about giving the heartland, Judea and Samaria, all of Israel's strategic depth to a massive terror state, destroys Jordan, which is the other border it would have, destroys Israel, and puts the entirety in a state of violence. Oil supplies completely disrupted, economy tanks, and basically this is a complete win for the Iranian jihadis that launched October 7th through Hamas. And I think we've got to keep reinforcing the importance of the October 7th issue here, that we don't lose sight of what took place on October 7th. That's interesting that Blinken, while he said the two state solution is the way to go here, Jordan, he also, from the United States, support for Israel's right to ensure the terrorist attacks of October 7th are never repeated.

Well, they're going to be repeated, I hate to say this, as long as you have Hamas and these groups controlling the region. And again, stressing what it means to the United States, it's our direct, not only strategic military engagement, it is our strategic economic engagement, Jordan. It's a tip of the spear on the war on terror.

And you go back to 9-11, you go back to earlier terror attacks, attacks on the USS Cole, attacks on our embassies in Africa, radical Islam has been after the United States for decades. But Israel has played a significant role in providing intelligence and also being kind of at the tip of the spear. It's not only why we support Israel in their fight to survive as a Jewish state of Israel, but Jeff, it's also why we've got bases around the world, in that region of the world, and of course it's great to have an actual ally there too, one who actually understands representative democracy, has peaceful and free and fair elections. That's not the case in some of the other countries that we work with in that region that are basically kingdoms that do not have democracy. Israel is unique and yet they have a similar government to ours on a much smaller scale where the people get to choose their leaders and a real court system, real laws, real freedoms, and that stands in the middle of a world there, that region of the world where that is not the norm, it's not even in the mindset. We saw that after some of these, quote, liberations of these countries and we expect them to somehow understand what representative democracy is overnight.

Israel does, but it goes back to this, Jeff, if they can get Israel, their goal is if we take Israel, we can then take the United States. And that includes getting us to our knees economically. Yes, all of it is just inflicting pain and harm, whether that's killing people, literally Jeff, or killing your economy.

Right, it's across the board, Jordan, and you mentioned several things. There's the economic reality, there is the destabilization. Your point about the form of government of Israel is fascinating because the result of putting the Palestinian, so-called Palestinian issue on the side because they've never made any move towards peace and negotiate with responsible Arab nations in the region was the Abraham Accords, stabilization, war and peace, very much in our economic interest in the United States. Now, why do we think that the Houthis, the rebels in Yemen, are attacking our assets? They're attacking our assets because a green light has been given as a result of October 7th. It used to be that the Saudis, on our behalf, were fighting against the Iranian-backed Houthis.

Again, these are all proxies for Iran, and let's also remember, Iran, which stands on the verge of nuclear weapons, already has weapons systems delivery that can reach the continental United States, can reach well into the heartland of America. They've expressed a desire not just to wipe out Israel but to wipe out America as well. So what the Biden administration is doing here is actually moving to completely destabilize a growing stability that was caused by cutting the whole Palestinian issue out and focusing on responsible state actors creating peace. This is a complete reversal.

I have to say, October 7th was a terrible atrocity and horrible threat to the stability of Israel in many ways, but to the stability of the world, what the Biden administration is doing is a much more serious, vaster threat. All right, let's go ahead and take Mike's call from New Jersey. Good point. Hey Mike, welcome to Sekulow. You're on the air. Hi, gentlemen. Mike, we'll come back to Mike in a minute. Yeah, let's make sure. And if you want to talk to us today, 1-800-684-3110.

That's 1-800-684-3110. Okay, so Jeff, the Secretary also, Secretary Blinken, discussed the United States' vision, quote, for a durable peace and security in the region, then again reiterated the support for the establishment of the Palestinian state, also stressed the urgent need to de-escalate tensions in the West Bank and prevent the conflict from expanding. Again, the naivete of all of this is that it's expanding because Hamas has an influence, even in the West Bank, where it's supposed to be the Palestinian Authority in control. Well, let's be very blunt about this.

It's worse than naivete, Jay, right? I mean, all the domestic coverage of this refers, I can't say all, much of the domestic coverage about why Blinken is doing this refers to the fact that the Biden administration has a domestic electoral problem with the woke part of its base that actually supported Hamas, supported the genocide and destruction of Israel. And so this is actually reaching out to them. This is not about peace, stability, camping down violence. This actually is about rewarding the violent people because they have a domestic political agenda and the coverage is very clear about it.

They're not shy about it. You know, it's interesting. I'm putting up on the screen, we have addressed two letters with a lot of legal authority, both to the Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, from the American Center for Law and Justice, really opposing this approach of trying to, the post-war strategy of this establishment of a Palestinian state. And we also sent a letter to David Cameron, who's the Secretary of State for Foreign Commonwealth and Development Affairs for the UK. And there's that letter from our European Center for Law and Justice. I was on a Zoom call this morning with colleagues, lawyers in Israel, as well as our colleagues in our European Center for Law and Justice office because the next move here, I think, is going to be to the International Criminal Court, where, affirmatively, we demand an investigation of what was illegal.

I hate to say it, you hate to use the phrase illegal because it makes it sound so trite, but it's not. That violating international law, violating the law of armed conflict, violating the Geneva Conventions, and have the ICC prosecutor focus on what took place on October 7th rather than this now, you know, let's attack Israel approach. But folks, it's the vital interest of the United States to make sure that our ally is maintained and not put in a vulnerable situation again. This was a horrible security failure on behalf of the Israeli government. There's no question about it. And eventually that's going to, they'll figure out what happened there. But this is, we are, we're four months into a conflict that's going to probably go on for over a year. That's the reality. Jeff, thanks for being with us.

We appreciate it. You know, it's a unique thing with the American Center for Law and Justice when we see our colleagues at the European Center for Law and Justice, our office in Jerusalem, our Supreme Court brief going in tomorrow domestically. When you're supporting the work of the ACLJ, you're supporting all of this. And we extended the matching moment because the enormity of the case involving the idea that a secretary of state could take a President off of a ballot on their own determination, we think fundamentally cuts against what the Constitution means and it could apply to any candidate. I mean, any state could do that, which is ridiculous. And that violates the way the Constitution is set up. So that argument is now filed before the Supreme Court of the United States. The oral argument will be tomorrow.

The briefs are already in. Your support of the ACLJ is critical. Your gifts will be doubled today and tomorrow. And if you can do a monthly donation, you become an ACLJ champion and we certainly appreciate that at ACLJ.org.

Back with more in just a moment. Welcome back to Secular Tomorrow. You will hear the oral arguments of the U.S. Supreme Court on the 14th Amendment challenge. Of course, Section 3 that's been at play. The case out of Colorado you've heard. You know what's happened in Maine.

You've seen secretaries of state. You've seen cases, court of appeals, state courts. About 17 states have been involved so far. But I will tell you that even while the Supreme Court is considering this, there are states, Hawaii is one of them, that are making moves that if they can take President Trump off the ballot, the Supreme Court ultimately allows them to do that.

They will. So there are states that are putting that in action now so that it can happen before their primaries. So it's interesting. USA Today in the newspaper said this is the biggest Presidential election case since the Supreme Court decided Bush v. Gore in 2000, which resulted in President Bush becoming the President. I actually think this is bigger than Bush v. Gore, although Bush v. Gore was outcome-determinative for an election. This is a more fundamental issue of who controls access to the ballot. And you know, the way it works in the United States is the control of the access to the ballot is actually controlled by the political parties.

That's why we have primary systems. So what you have here, and we represent the Colorado GOP in this case as a party, because they're right to put up the candidates that they want to see selected. And that means, you know, these are people that are running that then are put on a ballot, and then the people decide.

That's what's at stake. So what's really at stake here goes beyond the Bush v. Gore and was there a due process equal protection violation on the way the vote count was done in Florida, because Florida was the outcome-determinative state. As you said, Jordan, this is 17 states and it could create literal political havoc in the United States if a Secretary of State, and Andy, you've represented Secretaries of State, could on their own initiative start disqualifying candidates based on the 14th Amendment, which is a vested interest in the federal government, not the state.

That's right, Jay. The Secretaries of State should not have the unilateral authority on their own to decide who goes on a ballot and who doesn't go on a ballot. That is the right of the parties, the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, and their free association rights under the First Amendment of the Constitution to choose the candidates of their choice and to have them put on the ballot, assuming they meet the other requirements, paying a filing fee, and so forth and so on. But not for Secretaries of State, like in Maine, who decided, I just don't want him on the ballot.

Or in Colorado, I don't want him on the ballot, because I think he's an insurrectionist. That's not your choice, and I think this is a big case. Imagine that we are talking about an election case a quarter of a century after, nearly after Bush versus Gore, and we're talking about access to the ballot. Who you vote for, your right to vote for the candidate of your choice in a political election, very big. It is big, and that's why, by the way, we've extended our matching moment at the ACLJ, so when you support the work of the ACLJ today and tomorrow, your gift is going to be matched.

Go to ACLJ.org to have your gift doubled. But the magnitude of this, the enormity of the situation, is very real here, because the end result of this is, as Andy just said, it is access to the ballot that's being implemented here. Yeah, but I think that's the key, and the choice of a political party to choose the candidate they believe is best suited to run for President of the United States. And so what you're often going to see is, again, another political party, so someone who's a Democrat, or at least not a Republican, wanting to take Donald Trump off because he would likely win the primary there. So they're taking off leading candidates, and then if you switch it the other way, it would be Republicans saying, well, let's take off, you know, who's going to be the candidate who could raise the most money from the Democrat side?

Well, let's take them off. So, again, it also kind of depresses the vote. If people aren't sure if their vote's going to be counted. I mean, that's another issue why I think the Supreme Court not only is a major case, but the timing of it is huge, because we've got Super Tuesday coming up. People are already voted in it. This case has been expedited for that very reason.

So let me explain the time frame here. We filed our cert petition, I think, December 27th. The Trump people filed theirs, I think, January 4th. Within days, the Supreme Court granted review. On the 18th of January, we had to file our opening brief.

Do we have that where we can put that up on the screen for people? Yeah, so we had to file our opening brief in the case, which is what they call the red brief. That's the respondent's brief.

There it is. That was the first brief that we filed. Then they filed. And then on Monday, I mean, just a few days ago, we filed our reply brief. And tomorrow, the case will be argued. And I think we get a decision from the Supreme Court on this within two weeks, certainly before Super Tuesday. Absolutely.

It has to be before the big Super Tuesday elections take place, the primaries in the various states. What it has is the Supreme Court, I think, is very cognizant of that fact. I think the justices are aware of the fact that it's got to be a speedy decision, but a reasoned decision. I think it will be a narrow decision.

I do too. I don't think it will be decided on constitutional grounds if that can possibly be avoided. Well, it will be a constitutional ground, but like the jurisdictional constitutional ground in this sense. Is the President an officer of the United States?

He's not. Because he appoints officers. And as John Roberts said, we don't elect officers of the United States. Right.

That's what I meant. That it would be on an issue like officer rather than getting into the details of an insurrection and so forth and so on. Because I think the justices, Jay, may unanimously vote in this case that the President is not an officer, which would be an interesting decision.

It would be. I assume you've got to go into these, assuming tomorrow we're behind them. You have to because or else you, and I think our briefing showed that we got into the legal arguments of it. I didn't take, we didn't take the bait on the insurrection issue. I think the Nevada primary last night showed exactly why this is such a big problem though, because of early voting in our country. So, Nevada had this whole issue with the Republican Party, the caucus, which was actually how you get delegates.

Donald Trump won that. And Nikki Haley signed up to be the primary. This was a fight because of Democrats who control the state election system and the Republicans did like the fact they were switching to a primary state. So they said, no, we're going to still use the caucus system. In the primary, Nikki Haley is the only candidate left. And she still lost last night.

To who? More people voted for none of the above. Right. So for the Supreme Court though, that's not going to work for, you can't have none of the above running against Joe Biden.

Right. So, so the Supreme Court has to realize already we have issues with early voting in our country being too early. Talk about when you have two candidates who are in their mid seventies and you vote three months, you know, 30 days before the election.

Or late seventies or almost 80. Yeah. I mean, you know, and you're voting 30 days before. Now that we have vice President, things like that already announced by then. But think about what happened to Nikki Haley and Republicans in Nevada on the primary last night. Donald Trump effectively did win it because his name wasn't even listed. So he didn't win as a write-in, but there was an option to say, we'd support someone not on this list. Where you're correct is you cannot have a primary system where you have not on this list because you know who then your nominee is?

Nobody. Yeah. And that's what's fundamentally wrong here.

And they shove you to a conviction. It violates the Colorado's GOP's first amendment rights too. Well, I think that's the important thing. And I think we put that in that the right of association under the first amendment of a political party is being violated in Colorado. And we pointed that out.

Yeah. So folks, this is why we have again, decided to turn back on this matching moment. We think the enormity of this situation of this moment at the next really day, the day tomorrow at the U S Supreme court, of course, when that decision comes out in our constitutional republic.

And if we continue to have that right to vote for the candidates of our choice, we can't let this precedent be set. We appealed this at the U S Supreme court. We filed our brief reply brief on Monday. The fight is of course not over because tomorrow the case will be heard by the Supreme court. And we had to mobilize everyone at the ACLJ. We say everyone to not just all of our attorneys, but our teams, our broadcast teams, our social media teams, our teams that get those emails out to you and the show out to you to make sure you understood that just the gravity of the case, the importance of the case. And as a reminder, when this started, we had active cases, nearly a dozen States.

I mean, that were going on state parties. And of course this all was consolidated under the Colorado case, which, which was the first one out of their state court system. So support the work of the ACLJ. Your gift will be matched and doubled today and tomorrow. And if you can support us monthly, become an ACLJ champion, ACLJ.org forward slash vote. Keeping you informed and engaged now more than ever, this is Sekulow. And now your host Jordan Sekulow. Welcome back to Sekulow. We're taking your calls to 1-800-684-3110.

That's 1-800-684-3110. So we're going to get into what happened last night, the house of representatives as well. So we're not ignoring that, that impeachment vote on Mayorkas that failed by one vote that could occur again next week.

We'll explain that. And also a funding bill to Israel, I mean, which there were $117 billion, $117 or $17? $17 billion, right? Because you didn't have Ukraine funding and all of that on the table, just Israel. And also it had a super majority, but not a big enough super majority to pass the procedural hurdle of a two thirds, which is unusual in the house, how that can come back again next week and very soon and just pass with a regular majority. But it did send a certain kind of shockwave through the Republican party, I'd say, last night.

And it was interesting to see how the White House also decided to make their moves in this situation. So we'll discuss that. We're not shying away from those either, but what we do want to do is explain kind of what happens next to both of them. But first, I think by the time we are on air tomorrow, the oral argument should be done.

Right. So when we come to you, we should have the analysis of what actually transpired. What we'll sense from that is, Andy, what the justices are thinking, what the issues. And you've got to be careful to judge a case by oral arguments because notoriously, at least the worst oral argument I ever had, I won the case 9-0.

And then I had one that went great and we lost 6-3. But it will tell you where the justices are thinking what their thought process is. That's right, because the justices will have the opportunity to question the attorneys who will be arguing the case. And their perspectives on it will have been shaped by their reading, hopefully of the briefs that have been filed in the case and of their own view of the Constitution, the balloting process, the First Amendment and so forth.

And you can kind of tell from the questions that they ask, hopefully, where they're going, what they're thinking, how they're analyzing the situation, whether they're thinking officer is the way to go, whether they're talking about insurrection, whatever it might be. Oral argument is designed to clarify and to amplify those issues that are before the court. What I want our audience to understand is also that our work at the ACLJ in representing the GOP, the Republican parties in, I think, 17 states totally, but at the Supreme Court on the merits, we're a party to this case. The reason that we did this was it fundamentally affects your right to vote. The enormity of this case is it's your right to vote that's at stake because as Jordan was talking about, you'd start messing with the primary system, which is what's happening here.

All of a sudden, you can have none of the above. I mean, what happened in Nevada is not an anomaly if you just can knock off people off the ballot because the Secretary of State doesn't like that person. Also, the ridiculous nature of the argument that the 14th Amendment, which was passed after the Civil War, and this was to make sure that the southern states, as they were coming back into the union, would not violate the rights of individuals. It was a restraint on the states. The idea that the state can then use the 14th Amendment to say we're going to take this person off the ballot is the antithesis of what the 14th Amendment was passed to prevent. I mean, it was passed to not let the states do that.

It's a restraint on the states. There's a lot of different ways the courts can go. Let me tell you what we did at the ACLJ. We filed a petition for certiorari. We filed a briefing response to the petition for certiorari when the other side opposed it. We filed a brief on the merits, which means we're a party to the case. It's our case at the Supreme Court as well. We filed a reply brief to the Supreme Court on this merits issue. Four briefs in less than a month to the Supreme Court of the United States, and that's because of your support of the work of the American Center for Law and Justice. We extended our matching moment because of the enormity of this case and the impact it has on your right to vote.

If you want to support our work, I encourage you to do it today and tomorrow because it's going to really help us, and your gift will be doubled. It's ACLJ.org forward slash vote. That's ACLJ.org forward slash vote.

And when you do that, your gift will be doubled. Also, many of you have become ACLJ champions. That means you're supporting the ACLJ work monthly. We're over 19,150 ACLJ champions.

When we started our campaign for champions, we were, I think, well was it, not even 15,000, so just shy of 15,000. We've added almost 4,500 ACLJ champions in three months. We want to keep that going.

If you could support the work of the ACLJ monthly, ACLJ.org forward slash vote. We'll be back with more, including your comments and questions, in just a moment. 1-800-684-3110. If you want to talk to us on air. Welcome back to SEC.

We are taking your calls to 1-800-684-3110. And again, we'll be talking about what happens next on Mayorkas and that impeachment vote that failed yesterday, as well as the Israel funding that failed yesterday in the House of Representatives. People were predicting different things because it was the Republican-led House by four votes. And then, of course, the more difficult task would have been the U.S. Senate, but even the House having trouble last night.

So we will discuss that. But there's movement on the House Foreign Affairs Committee to pass a resolution on Nigeria, specifically calling on the Biden administration to reclassify Nigeria as a country of particular concern, which it was under the Trump administration. And the Biden administration took off the list. Was there ever CC&E justification for, did the U.S. get something out of removing them off the list economically? Never any justification. The removal actually happened one day before Blinken met with the President of Nigeria.

So you can assume that it was a political reason because there's certainly no facts to support it. Nigeria, of all the Christians that are killed all over the world, 90 percent of them are killed in Nigeria. I want people to hear that again because this is really important, folks. There are thousands of Christians killed every day, but the number killed in Nigeria? Yes, that's right. So if you take every Christian that's killed across the world, 90 percent of those killings happen in Nigeria. A Christian is killed specifically for their faith every two hours. One Christian every two hours is killed in Nigeria. Also, Nigeria is number six on the World Watch concern list. What does that mean for people?

And then we'll talk about the action we're taking. Right, the World Watch list actually puts the different countries across the world, who is the worst abuser of Christian human rights, and Nigeria is number six on their list. But not on the State Department list, under the Biden administration.

I mean, I think that is what is, again, they don't really explain a strategic reason. They just do it before a meeting to, what, make a President happier, to make a prime minister happy. The whole idea of Nigeria has kind of failed, which was a kind of 50-50 country of Christians and Muslims. And they had a political system set up where I think there was a President, prime minister, and they were supposed to each represent different religions.

And so if you had a Muslim prime minister for a certain amount of years, the next prime minister could be from the same party, but it would have to be a Christian prime minister. But what have we seen in the last couple of decades is the rise of radical Islam through, and this is important too, not just northwest Africa, kind of near the Middle East, and countries like Libya, and of course Egypt with the Muslim Brotherhood, but throughout North Africa. And this is, of course, again, Nigeria, a country which I don't think, again, most people would probably not know off the top of their head, if you just ask people, where do you think most Christians are persecuted? I think they'd say Iran, or maybe North Korea, or China, probably not a country like Nigeria, because on paper, there's a lot of Christians there. It's a big country, there's 150 million people there, but the Christians are just not protected by the government anymore.

The government fails to protect them in Nigeria. And we do a lot of work in the continent of Africa, I mean we have, and we continue to do, for protecting Christians. And part of our work in dealing with persecution, which is a big part of what we do at the ACLJ, we have offices dedicated to that, is our work at the United Nations and the Human Rights Council.

And we've got submissions going, we have submissions going in every quarter, and I'm not talking about one or two, what is the normal... Right, so the universal periodic reviews, where they're actually reviewing the human rights record of every single country, yes, there's 14 in each session, so there's three sessions a year, so over a five-year period, you've done all 193 countries at the UN. And we're one of the few organizations that submit on every single country. Yes, we make sure that we send in a written submission on the human rights record of every country that is up during that universal periodic review. Which that committee, even though the Human Rights Committee is not one we're fond of, have noticed and have said to us that they appreciate at least the fact that we're responding. Right, and then the Human Rights Council, the general session meets, and we send in even different written reports on that, and we have done two for this 55th session. We will send in five total, but they've kind of changed their session where we're not sending them all in at the same time. Yeah, so we've got one going on in India and one going on in Myanmar, so a lot of activity going on. We're also getting a lot of phone calls, so let's start taking those, 1-800-684-3110, that gives you a sense of what we're doing on the international scene too.

Not just in the Middle East, not just on Israel, but also fighting for Christians that are being persecuted worldwide, ACLJ, ECLJ, our offices and affiliates around the globe working on all of those. Let's go ahead back to the phones, 800-684-3110, a lot of people are calling with questions about tomorrow's argument. Yeah, we're going to Alex in Michigan online. Hey Alex. Hi guys, good afternoon, and I just want to say I appreciate you and the great work that Jay, you're doing and all your staff.

You're just an awesome guy, and I've watched you for years when you've been on television and stuff like that, and I just appreciate you. Real fast with my question, and that is, what's triggering something in my mind about what happened with the D.C. court and the judges, or what the judge decided about Trump not having this possible, only some areas of immunity and some areas not. Is it possible that with what we're dealing with, with states taking him off the ballot, is it possible that if he doesn't get in front of the Supreme Court very quickly, that we're going to be facing this issue again where states are going to say, oh, now we're looking at him that looks pretty sure that he's going to get convicted of a crime, which I hope not. You know, and by the way, if you're convicted of a crime that does not disqualify you from running for President of the United States.

So that's not a basis of disqualification. So let's, you asked a really important question, Alex, and that is the impact of the two cases. So the one case you're talking about is the Presidential immunity case. That was the one that was decided by the D.C. Court of Appeals yesterday. And in that case, they said you only have until the 14th of the month, which is next Monday, I think, right, a week from whatever it is, yeah, just the 14th Tuesday, to get your mandate, your stay application before the Supreme Court or else we're sending it back to the trial court for the trial to go forward. Now, we're not going forward in March, but it could go forward in June or July or, you know, May, June, April, May, June, July, the judge could reset it. Now, if the Supreme Court takes that case, there's a couple of ways they could go.

What I would argue, which I don't think is necessarily what the Trump lawyers will argue in the case, but this is what I would argue. There's one fundamental mistake in, well, there's multiple, but the biggest fundamental mistake in that decision was this idea that immunity evaporates the moment the President leaves office. So the immunity only applies during the four years you're in office or eight years if you're reelected, and then it's gone. Well, that's absurd because that means Presidents are subject to criminal prosecution and civil litigation for actions they took as President, and you remove the immunity, then they could be sued by anybody, not just 2,300 local district attorneys, but anybody.

Fundamental mistake. The Supreme Court, if they granted review on that, I think would unanimously hold that that holding was wrong, thus they would send it, remand it back down to the district court to say, hey, now you got to look at the thing, the immunity applies. Are these official acts or not? And that's another factual hearing you'd have to have, and that would slow the case down in that sense, but that's how I would argue. I'm not so sure that's how the Trump lawyers are going to argue, but that's what I would argue because there's a lot of things that jump out in that opinion, but that's a pretty big one. Yes, it is, and really what will be filed and what the Supreme Court will do and the timeline right now, we really don't know, but it needs to be done quickly because this is an issue everyone wants resolved. Well, they have got to file it by the 14th or else the mandate, if you don't get a stay of the mandate, and there's a lot of ways the Supreme Court could expedite review, they could take it in the normal course, they could deny review, but you got, they should be moving for that.

I'm sure they are moving for that mandate right away. Now tomorrow's case is a different case. That case is the case on disqualification from the ballot. You remember, if you're convicted of a crime, is that a disqualifying event for the purposes of running for President of the United States?

The answer to that is no. Insurrection under the 14th Amendment Section 3, if there was implementing legislation, which there isn't, and it applied to an officer, the President is not, that's how that comes into play. So those are two totally distinct cases. They have no relation to each other, but it does tell you where the body politic is right now, and that's the danger of all this. And that's why the ACLJ is engaged in this because I don't care if you're a Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Green Party, you're for Trump, you're for Biden, you're for RFK Jr., whoever, Jill Stein, it doesn't matter in this sense. The idea that you don't get to make that decision is why we're engaged in that issue and that's why we're fighting. It's so upsetting to the majority of Americans. If you understand the core reason about why we're fighting this issue, it is not about making Donald Trump President.

It's difficult for him to become President if he can't win any primaries because it's difficult to become the nominee of the party. But the future ramifications for this. I think it's easier for people to accept nasty things to do to Donald Trump. Even Republicans. How many times have we said on this broadcast, this is not a Democrat Republican issue. This has been a D.C. versus Donald Trump and kind of the new Republican thinking. And so you see a lot of state parties that we've represented. But inside Washington, D.C., there are Republican lawyers, plenty of them, working and they agreed.

You can see their briefs. They had to be some of the most conservative former jurists, conservative attorneys that are well known in D.C. They did not like Donald Trump from the beginning. And so they found that they believe, you know, that he should be barred from running. And for them, it's a political process. They could so far not figure out a way to beat him at the ballot box in a political primary.

So they just want him removed. Remember, he would not even be a write-in candidate at that point. So that's when you'd have like the, who would you want for President? None of the above wins.

And then what happened? That is a constitutional crisis. That is. Support the work of the ACLJ because of the enormity of the case where we've extended the matching moment for today and tomorrow. ACLJ.org. Any amount you donate will be doubled. Go to ACLJ.org slash vote.

And if you can become an ACLJ champion. Back with more in a moment. Welcome back. Just take your calls to 1-800-684-31 to this final segment of the broadcast. So Prime Minister Netanyahu is addressing the nation of Israel right now, this evening in Israel, and he's addressing them in Hebrew. There isn't a, right now, an English translation coming out simultaneously, but we have heard from reporters, and that's why I'm looking at that right now, about some of the main points he has said. So you've heard in the last few days, and we've talked about it here, about potential deals with Hamas on longer ceasefires to provide more hostages. Even we're talking about bodies of hostages.

So dead bodies, of course. He has announced tonight that there will not be any deal with Hamas. And quote, we will complete the complete destruction of Hamas. He told Blinken that the day after we finish this war, Secretary Blinken, Gaza will be demilitarized and Hamas will not exist. So there will not be an end to this conflict until Hamas is totally eliminated. Defeat will not include, quote, not part of Hamas, not half of Hamas, but the entire Hamas, and Netanyahu expects a complete victory.

This is what I was telling, we talked about this because this has been out in Israel, I think the U.S. media, too. No one expects this to be over inside of months, or just a couple of months, it's already been going months, but then it could go through 2024. Netanyahu said it will be months. Not, again, not years, but also not days, not weeks.

So months. Again, still a long-term battle, but I think what he said there is it's not good enough to get rid of half of Hamas. That they have to be completely destroyed. You know, it is an uphill task because it's not only defeating people as to who have become terrorists, or individual terrorists, but the mindset that these even children have been trained in that have become terrorists as well. A generational terrorist.

Yeah, I think that's right. I think what you have here is a realization to the Israeli public that this is a war. This isn't an engagement, this is a full war.

It was a huge attack on Israel, they are going to eliminate Hamas, even outside pressure saying stop is not going to stop it. The hostage situation, while tragic, don't be realistic as these numbers are coming forward, there are very few hostages still alive, it appears. So that kind of also changes the military engagement here. Yeah, but it probably opens up the military a lot because you're not having to go into a tunnel thinking that we could be... I'm going to find five hostages.

Five hostages, or it's that it was horrible where three were running out, they ended up getting shot because the soldiers didn't know who was running at them. I was on a call this morning, or conference call, Zoom, with our colleagues in Israel, and actually from around the globe, and the next action is going to be on the offensive against Hamas legally at the International Criminal Court in the Hague. We're not going to let Israel be the one that's in the crosshairs here, that's ridiculous. So that's being worked on as we speak.

Talking about crosshairs and switching gears, you explain, Mr. Political Expert, what happened yesterday in the United States House of Representatives. So for Israel funding first, which was about $17 billion to Israel, remember there have been a lot of Republicans, there have been a lot of conservatives, we've been on this group that have said, will you please put forward a bill on just funding Israel.

Don't tie it to Ukraine, don't tie it to immigration and the border, just Israel. And so last night, Speaker Johnson put forward a special resolution, which didn't go through the normal legislative process. And it's important for you, you have to have a super majority.

It's unusual in the House. So he had, there were 250 votes, including 44 Democrat votes, for this $17 billion for Israel. It got 250 votes. Under most votes in the U.S. House, that would be a big majority, because you only need 218, 217, depending on who's there. But in this vote, you needed 250, they got 250, they were about 86 or 87 votes short. So what does that mean for funding for Israel?

One move could be next week, it goes through a committee process, you voted out of a committee, still stand alone, and you assume that you're still going to get around that many votes, but you can lose a lot for 250 against 218. The question is, when you had 250, even without the two thirds, there were a lot of Democrats, a lot of pressure on the Democrats of the Senate. I know, we know for a fact that the White House was whipping Democrats against this. They don't want Israel to get the vote alone. They want it to be tied to 100 million to Ukraine and the border. Like as if the U.S. Congress has ever agreed on those three things at one time. But I will say, Republicans on this issue, 14 Republicans voted no from the Freedom Caucus because they wanted cuts tied to this.

So it was also saying stand alone, not good enough for them either. I agree, let's take another call. In order, we'll go to Harry in West Virginia online too. Hey Harry. Hi Harry.

Hello, thank you. My question is, won't this create a domino effect and start taking the immunities that everybody has? Jay mentioned lawyers for the President or others, but won't lawyers lose immunity to protect their clients or newspapermen to protect their sources? Well, I mean, there's always been, you know, throughout our history, there's been challenges on like the First Amendment privilege for reporters.

I handled a case, a big magnitude case on that just not that long ago and was successful in protecting the constitutional privilege that reporters have. But, you know, in the President's situation, it's even more amplified and I think that's the concern. So when you go to the Marbury versus Madison issue that Ceci was talking about, the concern there is you've actually made the court the super priority over the executive. Absolutely. Which is very dangerous with separation of powers.

Now it's supposed to be, go ahead. They thought the judiciary would be the weakest branch and it is turning in to be the strongest branch. What they say goes. What happened with Mayorkas?

Okay. So Mayorkas, again, you needed a majority vote. There were four, you could not lose four Republicans, right? So four Republicans and they did. So they had a Republican, well, Steve Scalise, getting cancer treatment, it's probably, no, he was not there. So if he was there. And the attorney that was in the hospital, Al Green, that they brought in into Scrubs.

Literally Scrubs. I mean, it was a little bit of a scene, obviously, but this is, this is, this is the house of, what year is it right now? 2024? Yes. This is the 2024 house where, you know, this is the year of six criminal cases against the former President of the United States and three, three US Supreme court cases about him.

You know, it's a weird, it's a, it's a bizarre time, but remember this, we weren't even looking at it. So they all saw that issue. So it could be, he'd be impeached next week, you ask?

Yes. So if Steve Scalise is back. But it failed this time. It failed, but failed by one vote. So that's the least vote. The problem was we should have known the numbers.

Yes. And there were four. And just waited. Again, there, you just had a handful of Republicans. It was just four.

And those are kind of like the four that you were not going to get. So, and who, you know, we've been looking at who, if they go to a trial, if they do get the vote, who, who would preside? Well, it's not the chief justice. The Senate pro tem. It's either the Senate pro tem, or there has been times when it has been the vice President.

So is that something to negotiate out? Samuel Chase, the justice of the Supreme court of the United States was tried in the Senate and vice President Aaron Burr presided on his. So who knows? Maybe they would preside. But it could be because of different, different branches of government involved.

So they have to do it that way. So anyway, it's not that, but it's not the chief justice. All that to say, it didn't happen. Stay tuned. We'll see what happens next week, but let me tell you what's happening tomorrow. The last phase of the Supreme court case involving taking Trump off the ballot, the disqualification is tomorrow at 10 o'clock. We will give you live analysis on this broadcast.

All of our briefs have been submitted. Support the work of the ACLJ. We extended our matching moment because of the enormity of this case.

It is huge. ACLJ.org forward slash vote. It's a matching moment, which means your gifts will be doubled. And also let me encourage you here. We are already, we've exceeded 19,150 ACLJ champions. We've added 4,500 monthly donors since we launched this in October. So we want to continue that momentum. If you can support us monthly, go to ACLJ.org, become an ACLJ champion. But again, tomorrow we'll have a live analysis. That's right. So join us throughout the broadcast, go to ACLJ.org, double your impact to your donation today. Talk to you tomorrow.