Today on Sekulow, chaos as the DNC scrambles to nominate Biden. Keeping you informed and engaged. Now more than ever, this is Sekulow. We want to hear from you.
Share and post your comments. Recall 1-800-684-3110. And now your host, Jordan Sekulow. The Democrat National Committee may know it better just at the DNC. They're planning to, now this is not a throwback episode to the COVID years, just to make sure that you know this is 2024, to virtually nominate President Biden.
Which you might think, is it because of his age? Is it because they don't want to actually have a convention? They're still planning on having their convention in Chicago, but they messed up in Ohio by not getting on the ballot correctly. And you would think again, these are all, you know, longtime party activists, a former Vice President, that his team would be able to figure out how to get on the ballot. But they didn't, and then Ohio State Legislature, they deadlocked on a fix last week to get President Biden on the ballot in November. So instead, the DNC has announced that their work around this will actually be to hold a virtual roll call to ensure that Biden gets on the ballot in all 50 states. Now what does this mean? It means that when you actually go to the convention in Chicago in August, a month after the Republican convention in Milwaukee, it's kind of like those, it is kind of like those COVID conventions that we saw, Logan, because the people, if they do a nominating kind of show, that's already, that's all it is.
It's just for show to give them their airtime. And they said, you know, through a virtual roll call, we will ensure the Republicans can't chip away at our democracy through incompetence or partisan tricks, and that Ohioans can exercise their right to vote for the Presidential candidate of their choice. It's like, it's your fault that it was scheduled wrong. Yeah, I mean, you messed up the schedule and, right, you put the convention after the time, or before the time that you actually had the nomination.
Right. And so, again, I don't really, people should get on the ballot, people should be able to vote. But I think there's something else at play here that they're doing. I think that they think by utilizing this method and making it a show convention, when you have DNC conventions in Chicago in the past, they've turned pretty wild. I mean, and that was the civil rights era. We've also had some pretty wild protesting right in this era. We're going to talk about it in the next segment with Rick Rinnell about some new endorsements of the anti-Israel protesters. And top notch A-listers. And by the way, I mean, Chicago would be a pretty easy city to find a lot of those protesters, a lot of those.
So by doing this virtually, does it give them actually more control, or does it open it up to chaos? I think there's a one way or the other, but I could see if this was Donald Trump, they'd be mocking this on MSNBC nonstop. Oh, yeah. Let me remind you, he had to fight to keep his name on the ballot. We had to go to court just to make sure you could vote for him in the primary. And not because of a clerical error, because of just political prosecution. No, no, no, because secretaries of state were removing him and judges, state supreme courts like in Colorado, and ultimately was vindicated there.
But understand that. Donald Trump had to fight. Joe Biden is just going to go, oh, we'll do it virtually. Yeah, I mean, we have said, and I think Rick Rinnell is going to join us next, but I've said, you should be able to get him on the ballot.
He should be on the ballot because we don't play those kind of games. But you know, for sure, if she was on the other foot, they'd be 100% playing these games. They would be begging for the convention to go awry.
But again, that's their own scheduling problem. But of course, that was the DNC chairperson. Harrison, of course, couldn't just leave it at that, couldn't say we've made the adjustment, we're going to.
Got to go low, got to say the partisan incompetence and the partisan tricks that Ohioans can exercise and make sure Republicans can't chip away at our democracy. He's like, you screwed up. That's the end of the day. But we're going to talk about that and more coming up with Rick Rinnell in this next segment. We are going to take your phone calls at 1-800-684-3110. And hey, yesterday we told you we're only 90 champions away. Now we are under 57 new champions away from hitting our monthly goal.
A champion is someone who supports the ACLJ on a monthly recurring basis. You can do it right now. Your monthly support is helping us fight back and file those three federal complaints against major universities. Tomorrow we're filing a FOIA.
That's hard to say. Filing a FOIA over Biden funneling money to pro-Hamas causes through environmental groups and so much more, including an update on that teacher. We're going to get to that coming up here as well.
Again, go to ACLJ.org slash champions. The phone lines are open as we go to Rick Rinnell. 1-800-684-3110.
1-800-684-3110. Welcome back to Sekulow. Rick, I sent this to you last night when I saw it come across in the news that the Ayatollah Khomeini was welcoming the student protesters, the anti-Israel protesters on college campuses, to joining the branch of his, quote, resistance front, which actually refers to a loose alliance of Iran-backed terror groups and militias around the Middle East that seek to destroy Israel and kill American troops, including Hezbollah, the Houthi rebels, Islamic resistance, Hamas, and others. And, I mean, it was a number of tweets, but yet you would think that maybe these protesters would rethink what they were protesting for or who they were protesting for and what they were protesting against when they get this kind of public endorsement from Iran's Ayatollah. Jordan, you find such interesting things on your Twitter feed. I hope people are following you.
I love seeing what you find. And this was unbelievable when you sent it to me. I thought, oh, my gosh, this guy is unbelievable. You've got the leader of the radical regime that systematically denies people their human rights, lecturing America on our system, and encouraging students on college campuses to keep going because, as he says in one of those rants, that you're really part of the liberation fight. And if our college students in America and their parents can't see what's happening on these college campuses with some of these protesters, I think this tweet from Khomeini is a wake-up call.
He loves what you're doing, and this is not something to be proud of, and it's something to immediately step back and say, what am I a part of? I mean, this is someone, as I said in the tweet that you retweeted, Rick, I appreciate that. I mean, this is someone who is a murderer of religious minorities. We've had to fight to get people out there because of their faith. Women, if they don't have the right head covering on or a little hair poked, they end up dead in prison. Of course, the LGBTQ community, they have no rights whatsoever.
It's a death penalty situation. And this is who endorses this radical movement that is preaching from the river to the sea. And these statements that sometimes you don't even know what they're saying. And again, I don't even know if they know who the Ayatollah is, half these protesters. But enough of the leadership, Rick, behind this does know, and it tells me more about who they are, that they do share those kind of anti-American beliefs, not just being anti-America because of support for Israel, but anti-freedom, anti-true liberty and freedom that we fight for in the United States. One of the rants that you showed us was the Ayatollah saying to teachers on campuses that they are being noble, that they are helping the cause. And what I was struck with is that it's one thing to try to play a little psyop with young people and college students who are passionate about issues and don't always have all the information.
But it's quite another to say to the adults in the room, the teachers, the people who are educating our young people, that they are the ones who are doing the good work. And so when the Ayatollah is complimenting tenured teachers on Ivy League campuses, we've got a problem in America. It's very scary, and one of the things that really makes me angry is the ability of this regime to just run over the rule of law. You know, if you protested, if you took to the streets and you protested against your government in Iran, you were arrested, you were put forward into some sort of a judicial hearing. Some of those court cases lasted a total of three or four minutes, and these individuals were then sentenced to death for protesting. Now, they make up all sorts of things about them.
They say they did, you know, other crimes, but it's all phony. And we now are seeing Khomeini take it to the next level because he likes what's happening on our college campuses. This is a warning sign. Wake up, America. I think we need to make sure that we understand that actually American media is very strong, and these protests actually get heard and seen all over the world. It's easy for us to almost not laugh them off, but to go, these are a bunch of kids, or this is whoever it is. And people getting paid.
And people getting paid. This is no big deal. But you're having an impact where you have now world leaders. You have the Ayatollah going out there, making these statements on X, and then in an open letter, also published to the students, he brought up a lot of the kind of traditional anti-Semitic tropes in it, and I'll read it to you. Again, this is the Ayatollah's words, not my words. The global Zionist elite, good start, who owns most of the U.S. and European media corporations, or influences them by funding and bribery, has labeled this courageous, humane resistance movement as terrorism.
Can one call people a terrorist nation for defending themselves on their own land against the crimes of the occupying Zionists, and is helping such a nation and strengthening it in an act of terrorism? I mean, that is what's coming out of the Ayatollah, directly targeted at our students. So again, they feel validated, but by someone who they certainly should not feel should be on their side. Yeah, but Rick, this goes back to what you said. The fact is, he's encouraged, and it's encouraging to the regime to see this kind of protest in America.
And they're being honest about it. This kind of protest, like you said, could never happen there because the people would be shot at sometimes from the streets, rounded up and executed, so it rarely happens. When it does, we hope it might lead to something bigger when people do come together there in large movements. But this is also a leader, let's remind everyone who's endorsing protests, who has okayed direct attacks on Israel from Iran, that's okayed direct attacks on U.S. troops that have killed U.S. troops, that supports the terror groups that led the October 7th attack on Israel, Hamas. I mean, this is, again, this is one of the worst, most dangerous leaders in the world endorsing these student protests. And like you said, maybe it's time for these teachers who we know are educated and know understand more about this issue to wake up. Well, one of the things that I've thought that we should just do to our college students, university students in America is let them know that they're on the wrong side of climate change, abortion and gay rights, because they're advocating for people who don't believe in any of those things.
And I think that's an argument that would work with them. I've seen some man on the street type interviews where they ask them about what they're protesting and when they're confronted with the fact that those they're defending actually don't believe in climate change. The students are stunned. They can't believe that this is happening. Now, that's a failure of our education system. I'd like to know these university students who are so wrong and so in the dark, who trained them? Where are their parents? Because between their parents and their teachers and where they went to school, we have a failing system. And I'd like to see all of the individuals that trained some of these wacky people on our college campuses defending Hamas. I'd like to see who educated them.
That's a problem. It's kind of like, it's the generations, it's a post, like a 9-11 generation, didn't really live through that. No, they definitely did not.
Right, not even born. So that's kind of history to them. So Islamic terror is not something that was like on their mind all of the time. But they have thrown it in as part of their, it is now part of their cause. It's like, like Rick said, they throw it in as part of the cause list even though who they're supporting is certainly not throwing in those boxes. Yeah, would hate them or would kill them.
A lot of the protesters out there would be executed for what they're wearing or not wearing or their other views. I saw the Eyes on Rafa meme that's been going up around, everyone's been sharing all of the celebrities and all of that. You've seen it over and over again. And of course that has been shared, I think they said 25 times more than there are Jews on the earth.
So think about it that way. Like that's been shared like 45 million times or something wild. So they don't really understand what they're doing. They see a nice pretty graphic. And look, I have to say, as much as you want to, where you want to picture it, you have the Ayatollah reaching out to students in America.
You have these graphic displays that are very compelling. You have video evidence that feels very compelling. Of course, you're only getting one side of the story and it's not like we can't have a heart.
You should have a heart. You should go into this, you know, not thinking that every political regime just because of the flag are good people or not. But we do have to clearly identify some right and wrong here. Yeah. Rick, and I think that goes back to the issue is there's, you can get to politics and say, I like this leader, don't like this leader.
That's fine to do. But there's also the reason why we're even having this discussion about what happens next in Rafah is because of what Hamas did. And Hamas did it because of the money that Iran had to fund Hamas. And one of the things that I would build upon on that is that, you know, we just came out of several years where dissenting voices on our college campuses, that wasn't welcome. We weren't welcome to have a debate. They were shutting down debate.
They were canceling people that they disagreed with, especially conservatives. And so when you now see all of these pro Hamas voices on our college campuses and you combine that with the inability to have a calm debate, a dissenting information presented, this is a crisis for our schools. And the university teachers, the tenured professors and the administrators need to wake up. And parents also need to understand they've got power.
Don't go to these schools if they're wacky. Absolutely. And understand what your kids are being taught, too.
I mean, ask your kids about it so it's not too late. Yeah, but we're going to continue conversation as well about the situation with the Biden administration and the Biden campaign. Trying to make sure... They're on hour seven now? We're going to take calls.
1-800-684-3110. If you support Israel, put the Israel flag emoji in the chat. All right, welcome back to Secchio. Logan did ask you to put that flag in support of Israel. Now, if you're on a YouTube app that's working, we do know if you're on a desktop, it just comes like IL.
Yeah, it's very interesting, actually. Other emojis that you put around it come up. We know you clowns are out there. We're going to do that later, so don't send in the clowns yet.
We'll send in the clowns towards the end. Oh, you sent it, though. I know, but don't do it. You can do it if you want. But the Israel flag, I thought it'd be interesting.
I'm seeing thousands of you do it, but a lot of them don't come through on the desktops. That's just an interesting fact. I don't know if the American flag does that, either. Maybe they have all flags removed. I'm not sure. Let's put up USA. Yeah, put up the American flag and see what happens here.
Can you do that even? Do you want to take a quick call? Yeah, let's go. Let's go to Tim in Michigan on Line 1. Tim, you're on the air. Hey, how are you?
Great work, you guys. Thank you. My question is, a couple of months ago, I think, are these illegal immigrants or students on visas, are they allowed the rights of the Constitution? Of course. I mean, most rights of the Constitution, they're protected by. I mean, some of the rights, obviously, that flow from that, like we talked about voting if you're not a citizen, things like that, obviously don't flow directly to someone who's here on a student visa. But other rights, like the right to freedom of speech, to protest, that would all apply to those individuals. Because I know that, I can't remember her name, it was a judge just cited Second Amendment rights for an illegal guy to carry, buy and carry a weapon. Yes.
So, I mean. Yes, there was a court case about that, about a Second Amendment, if you're here in the United States, do you have to be a citizen to have a Second Amendment rights? And that decision was, no, you don't. I don't know if that's getting appealed by the gun field. But yes, you could be a student from a country that doesn't allow protests with a student visa here and be part of a protest movement. And that's not illegal.
And I don't think it should be, by the way. So yes, you do get a plethora of constitutional rights. I wouldn't say you get every single right because then you start getting into the details like voting and protection like that, some of the equal protection, some of the due process is different when you don't have full U.S. citizenship.
But for the most part, you get the right, I mean, you get off the plane to the United States, you go through the process, you're here legally, you get the rights that we guarantee people. There's a lot of new people joining us right now. I can see the numbers going up and down here. You can see when people come into the segment, I think we need to reset a little bit. People are curious what, when you see a headline, Chaos, DNC Scrambles to Nominate Biden, then we just need to reset. People might remember the story that it was, we thought, I thought Ohio was going to just fix it. Create some sort of amendment to it.
Right. So the DNC scheduled the convention too late. Was that what the process was? Too late to get on the ballot. To get on the ballot under the law in Ohio, because I think their convention is until mid or post mid August, so a month after the Republican convention that's in July. And so they were going to have a work around in the state legislature that deadlocked. So now they're doing a virtual nomination. Alabama cleared it up.
They made it work and they're like, we don't have to do all this. There were a couple of other states, same thing happened, right? The DNC is August 19th. How many states was it?
Was it just a two? It was just Alabama and Ohio. So Ohio could have just figured out a way, but instead now they're doing it virtually because DNC, the convention is scheduled for August 19th and Ohio needed to be certified to be on the ballot by August 9th. So 10 days too late. So they're going to do a virtual nomination, which means what you see on the floor that night before he speaks that, you know, they nominate. It's just a show. That'll be just for show. And now listen.
It's already 99% for show. Yes. I mean, I will say that on the Republican side, you always, this, this was with Trump too. There were, there were real protest moves.
Yeah. There were people trying to make sure or try to get people to not do it. There was all those, there was even pop, you know, celebrities putting out videos saying you don't have to do this, you know, or, you know, even Ted Cruz at the time, vote your conscience. There was people talking about maybe that may have been to the American people. I can't remember. Kid Cuccinelli initially was on the floor of the Republican convention and for Virginia and try. So there were, there, there could be some drama.
It was very short-lived and honestly, most people don't pay attention to that. They pay attention to the major speech by the candidate. But what I think we're going to is that it's that time period where yes, they've said that yes to these debates. I think that's more interesting to people probably than these conventions anyways because that was going to be all we were really going to get before was like the convention speeches and then like political rallies. Yeah. Now that we have some debates scheduled, now both of us said, do they actually happen?
We were under a month now. So you'd assume production's got to start happening right now. If they're going to do, well now we know famously President Trump doesn't really prep a hardcore for these debates. He feels like, at least historically, historically he's talked about that. He's not sitting there and doing tons of mock debates. He knows kind of what he says.
He goes in there and does it. Traditionally, you would have a lot of that prep going into such a major event. And look, the networks want it to happen. This will be one of their highest rated, CNN's highest rated show probably in a couple of years, if not ever.
I mean, just real, it will pop a huge number. So they want it to happen. I hope it happens. Again, I watched an RFK interview last night because he's saying now they're throwing more requirements at him to try to get on the debate stage. He was on Cuomo last night discussing it. And really they're clearly trying, both Trump and Biden don't want him clearly to be in that debate. And they are figuring out ways for him not to be. And I think he probably won't be.
I think that will likely be the scenario. But it makes it creative. It makes it interesting.
I'm curious how it's presented. You know, they said no audience. That's one of the things I think people are a little bummed out about.
So you won't have that sort of raucous, you know, live event feel. It will have almost a vice Presidential debate feel. I wonder if they'll be seated.
I wonder how that'll be handled. These are two guys that love just throwing out phrases. Yeah. And some wild stuff.
And wild stuff. Yeah. And Joe Biden will make claims and you kind of have to be on your toes because you'll be thinking right when he's saying it.
Because he'll say things that he did and it doesn't even add up to how old he is. Yeah. Hey, give us a call.
I would love to hear from you. He's marched with people he wasn't even old enough to march with. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. He makes up a lot of stories. You know, so you've got to kind of, if you're debating him, you don't want to let him get away with too much of that kind of.
And I think that what Presidents... They allow them in like commercial breaks to be like, hey, like, do you have like a ring, like a coach on the side? Like, do you have a guy in the corner? Not usually. Usually it's just they're standing there. Yeah. I was just curious about that.
Like when they go to break, since they're not like a corner man who comes up and be like hit them with this. There could be people that do makeup from like the network. Yeah.
Sometimes you see people go on stage. Yeah. But they're not debate.
They're not like someone involved in the campaign. All of that would be decided. So you could actually negotiate that out. Maybe they did this time. That'd be kind of cool to be like, you could live call them out on it. You do have that going on on like social media now.
Yeah. I mean, we're always have live, you know, the war rooms are going live. The Pope Pinocchio's are going. Give us a call. We'd love to hear from you. And this is headed to the second half hour of secular. We like to take as many calls as we can. There's also some news out of Supreme Court we're going to discuss coming up to involving the NRA. So I'll be pretty interesting for you guys to stick around for.
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Phone lines are lighting up. Support the work of the ACLJ. ACLJ.org slash champion. Second half hour coming up. This is our short break. Less than a minute. Keeping you informed and engaged. Now more than ever, this is Sekulow.
And now your host, Jordan Sekulow. Here's an interesting poll. Fox News is running right now. If Trump is found guilty, are you more likely to vote for him? Less likely? Makes no difference. Makes no difference was 76%.
Less likely was only like 16%. I mean, was that just asking everybody? Were that just asking Republicans?
We could probably pull it up and find out the exact number. Find that out. Because I think what that's saying is, does this affect the way you're going to vote? And most people have already decided how they're going to vote.
Right. You have a very small percentage. I was talking to my son about this last night. He's like, what's like a landslide look like? Does that ever happen? Does anyone ever win every state? Does that ever happen? We go back to the Reagan era, 49 out of 50. That's true. I was like, not really in our most recent life that a win, I told him, a landslide win is 55, 56%.
It's very rare. I mean, when was Obama years? Obama year is probably the closest to what you consider a landslide. Easy election night. And it was still under 60%. Yeah, I mean, remember, Bush and Kerry was supposed to be close, and John Kerry wouldn't concede that night. Remember with Joe... But it was still 55-plus. Yeah. It was done.
It wasn't even close. People forget about all that, too. They forget about that they didn't concede or that they called for... Stacey Abrams has never conceded. Yeah, or Hillary putting out the don't certify the election, all of her cronies.
You know, people think that for some reason Donald Trump has become the person who is the only one... He created all of these... Yeah, these talking points of don't certify, don't vote. It's like, we go back to Bush-Gore.
You go back to any of this. It is happening for most of our adult life, every election, other than maybe you could say that second Obama, the Romney-Obama, where it was just... I mean, it wasn't a landslide by any means. Romney polled very good numbers. But it was clear he was not going to win, and there was no controversy surrounding it. Other than that one, there's pretty much been some sort of controversy every time. I feel like that one was going in, going like... Yeah, I mean, Obama-McCain also. I think both the Obama years, it was over. Definitely with McCain. And then you had a little bump with Sarah Palin got in, because some activists got a little more excited. But you didn't think that could actually probably take you over where you needed to go. And then, yes, with Mitt, too, which people forget a lot.
But they weren't blowouts in the traditional sense. That doesn't exist anymore. So if you say 76%, you say, Will, is that where the poll came from?
Yeah, I'm looking for what the methodology is. All right, yeah. That poll came from NPR, PBS, NewsHour, and I thought it said InMarxist. And the Marxists, it came from.
So from Marist, maybe you could live those three together. You could say NPR and PBS, NewsHour, and the Marxists all took a poll, and it said 76%. Are they still getting our funding? PBS and those at NPR are not as federally funded as you think they are.
They are federally funded, but a lot of them are just people giving donations. But, yes, we're going to go to calls here in a minute at 1-800-684-3110. We are watching, too, of course, the trial, which is now at hour 7. 737?
737 right now. That's how long the jury's been deliberating. Does that include when they left to go back and get the jury instructions arrested again? I think they hit pause a lot. It's like a timeout. Yeah, because obviously, you know, they go home. This is like seven and a half hours NBA style, which is like the last ten minutes of an NBA game, which could go on for three hours.
That's what this is seven hours is. Yeah, it's just a lot of intentional fouling happening right now at this deliberation. Well, I think that there's now look, real look at this judge's instructions saying that this could be a reversible error, which, again, would still be that they would have to find you guilty, and then they'd have to find you guilty and then use different felonies, choose the different felonies. If that goes forward, you could actually appeal that. Now, would that appeal be?
It'd be after the election. If there is any situation- So there's a mess brewing with just the judge's instructions. If there is any situation where Trump doesn't just get guilty from a New York jury and all of this, then, wow, I mean, that's a victory. Oh, if it's like a hungry mistrial. If it's anything else, if it's anything other than just straight up guilty- Then they declare mistrial.
Yeah, it would be wild. It's a victory. Give us a call, 1-800-684-3110.
C.C. Heil is going to be joining us. You can't convict Donald Trump in New York City after they've demonized him as a right-wing dictator. He'll try to take away his properties, too. Yep.
After he's built up New York City, he's put all this money into New York. Greg Parshall is joining us as well, so we're going to have a great legal- New ACLU victory as well. Two couple legal experts here on the broadcast coming up just in the next segment.
We are still taking your calls, 1-800-684-3110. Hold those clown emojis. We haven't sent in the clowns just yet. The end of this next segment. Get them ready. We've got to fill up that chat.
We'll be right back with more on Sekulow. It was a major victory for the freedom of speech and also for conservative organizations, especially as we see- We always tell you in the states, the federal government has a lot of protections, constitutional protections. And states are sometimes where you have to watch out.
That's where we had to see that the move started to take President Trump off the ballot in states. Some were state regulatory agencies. They weren't even courts.
They were secretaries of states doing it on their own. I want to bring in Craig Parshall, a senior counsel with the ACLJ, because, Craig, the ACLJ filed a MECUS brief in a case in support of the NRA, which was basically run out of New York multiple ways. And one of the ways New York tried to run the NRA out was to make it impossible for anyone to do business with them without being threatened with an investigation. So insurance companies, I think it was Lloyd's this time, were told by the New York Department of Financial Services superintendent at the time, Maria Vullo, that if you give any of these second amendment, pro-second amendment groups, and provide them insurance, that we will then begin investigations.
If you don't, we're not going to investigate you. I mean, it's a pretty cut and dry attack on first amendment. And the Supreme Court, in a nice way to see today, decided by Justice Satomayor, nine to zero, said, no, that can't happen in the United States of America. Yes, really, this was, I think, not even a close case. I followed the oral arguments. Of course, we filed a friend of the court brief and in support of NRA. It was very clear, not just in the briefs and in the facts, but in the oral arguments, that the justices had a major problem with the way in which the large financial agency in the state of New York, which was called the Department of Financial Security Services, they regulated every insurance company in the state of New York.
You can imagine how vast that scope would be. Also, every financial institution in the state of New York. So you've had all the insurance companies, all the financial institutions in the state of New York getting a letter and then having meetings with the Department of Financial Services that regulated them, that had the power to prosecute them. As a matter of fact, Lloyd's and a couple of others were told, you know, we've looked at the record and we find some kind of small technical violations. Now, if you go deep enough in the myriad regulations that institutions like that have to follow, there's always some minor little point that they didn't dot an I or cross a T, right? So they said, we found some technical ones, we could prosecute you, you know, but we'll look away from that perhaps if you follow our persuasion that you avoid organizations like NRA that have a Second Amendment position we don't like.
And the governor of New York even seconded that publicly saying, hey, we're running NRA out of the state of New York. The Supreme Court was clear, unanimous decision saying, look, a government agency cannot do indirectly through its regulated entities and private companies. But it can't do directly, which is you can't blacklist, you can't censor, you can't suppress or discriminate against citizens or citizen organizations because of the views that they have.
You don't like you can't do it, whether directly or indirectly. But the second big point in this case is that the court made it very clear that a test, a legal test that's been on the chopping block and reviewed and criticized for years and that is, you know, at what point is the First Amendment get triggered when you have a private company like Lloyd's of London Insurance as example that then turned to NRA and said, oh, we can't ensure you anymore. And banks saying we can't do business with you anymore. At what point is it really the government doing the acting, as opposed to the private intermediary that they use as a tool to suppress or censor, and the court said look, it's either a carrot or a stick, it can be either one. It can be either an inducement through a promise, or some benefit, or it can be a threat. But either way, that's coercion that triggers the First Amendment. And that means that the government can't do it. So if they broadly interpreted this idea of how much action by the state, or by the government or an eight federal agency or state agency. You must prove before the First Amendment is implicated. And I think this is a happy result, because the First Amendment is meant, I think, to be interpreted broadly, and that's what they did.
Yeah, nine to zero. And the court, like Craig is saying, said that, you know, here, these government officials or their intermediaries, they're making coercive threats in a private meeting behind closed doors. Even the ballot box is a poor check on that official's authority, because these are behind the scenes, you know, having somebody go to it, and that you can't wield the power that way. This is a state where you had every state leader there, I mean, basically on the left, say that we're coming after the NRA, and you've seen that happen before legally with the ACLJ on the right side of the Constitution. And Craig, I appreciate you fighting for us on that issue and filing on the behalf of our members at the American Center for Law and Justice on behalf of Free Speech. And there, because it protects the ACLJ, too, and all the other conservative organizations, because they're allowed to do this. You know, they start with the NRA, and they would just do it to every single conservative group. They would say, don't insure them. I mean, you see that kind of power, and then you can't operate at all.
You take away these basic abilities, and you can't even do the work that you would hope to do. So Craig, I really appreciate that. Thanks for joining us on Sekulow and for the work that you're doing for us. I want to go to CeCe Howe, because, CeCe, we've got another victory as well from the ACLJ. Tell people about the teacher we represent.
Sure. So we represent a teacher in Texas, and we've told you about this before, where she was hauled into the principal's office after she dared to try and pray with two other teachers there at the school, well before their workday started at a flagpole. And she was threatened and told that these teachers could not pray.
They could not pray anywhere that a student could see them, in any place, not at the flagpole, not in the school, not even in a parking lot, could they pray where a student could see them. So we, of course, immediately sent off a demand letter to the school, and they kind of doubled down on their position, did change partially their position, and we had to file suit. And we went to court, and today we actually, actually yesterday, I think the judge confirmed in his ruling that the school cannot stop our client from praying where a student can see them.
And so that was really a really good win for us. Once again, it shows how the ACLJ can get involved and quickly get confirmation from a judge in this case that confirms our client can pray, in her private time, even if she's in a place where a student can see her. Logan, I look at these two issues and you say, wow, these are those issues that never stop. Liberal activists, you know, this is the superintendent for the New York Department of Financial Services. So people are not really always paying attention to who that is, but very powerful. Telling major companies, if you ensure a group like this, conservative group like the NRA, we're going to investigate you, and maybe you can't do business in New York. Or the teacher being told you can't pray. I mean, it comes up so often, so you can't let go on these because literally you can win them time and time again. You can get the 9-0 decision in the Supreme Court, but the left will not stop trying to take away your prayer or take away your right to organize.
Those two issues always. That's part of the reason why, if you go to ACLJ.org slash help, if you need help, because a lot of the times it can be handled very simply. So it goes to our legal team, they fill out that form, they say, hey, I'm not allowed to pray here. They're telling me these are my rights.
We go connect them with a lawyer immediately. And a lot of times it is people who purely don't understand the law. They've heard separation of church and state their whole life. They don't really even know what that means.
They just know that that's something people say. We're able to jump in and get it handled quickly. Sometimes we have to file lawsuits, sometimes it goes to court, sometimes it takes years, but that's important also. While there are cases that can be handled swiftly and easily with a letter or with a call, there are also the ones where you have to go fight, like this one with the NRA. We have to go fight to eventually get a 9-0 Supreme Court opinion, which by the way is becoming rarer and rarer. You see all those issues just because it's the NRA. Right, it's just like it's somewhat sadly become politicized in that sense. Let's tell you, even the liberal, these older liberal justices on the court are different than the current leftists on a college campus. In the sense that freedom of speech was more important to them being on the left or right, the First Amendment, than the fact that this was about the NRA. They could actually blind themselves to that still. But that is, let me tell you something, for how students are being taught now and what we're seeing on college campuses, I think that's less and less.
You have people who could say, well, I can separate myself from the group and say everybody should be treated the same and no one should be the carrot or the stick, like Craig said. We are heading to our last segment of the broadcast for today. We do have one line open at 1-800-684-3110. If you are on hold, we are going to get to you. So stay on hold for us. We're going to get you coming up.
And again, you got to support the work of the ACLJ. We are now, can we get an updated number? I'm going to find an updated number of how many champions we are. When we started this show, we were at 57, then we got to 50.
I'm sure it is lower than that now. Champions are those 48 away from hitting our monthly goal. You could do that right now. There's thousands of you watching right now. Become an ACLJ champion. Create an incredible baseline for us to continue operating for whether it is a teacher who wants to pray or whether it's these bigger situations.
We are always involved at so many different levels. At ACLJ.org slash champions, if you're watching, you can scan the QR code. I'll take you straight to that page.
It only takes you a few seconds to do it. All right. Cut back to me.
You're jonesing for it. I can see it in the chat that's already happening. Send in those clowns. I want to see the clown emojis of flying because it's time to hear from the most important voice in the room, and that is you. Send in the clowns.
All right. Welcome back to Sekulow. Yeah, the clowns came a-hunking.
They did. We're just live in the chat. I saw it.
So you know what? That means we got to hear from you. That is the call to hearing from what I always say, the most important voice in the room. You've heard from us. You have heard from incredible legal experts on this broadcast.
You've heard from former directors of national intelligence like Rick Grenell. But now it's time to hear from you. Let's go to calls. Let's go.
We'll go in the order in which they came in. Bill's calling online, too, who's watching on YouTube. Again, Bill, thank you for watching on YouTube. If you are on YouTube and you're new to this broadcast, hit that subscribe button. Bill, you're on the air. Hi, how are you? Good. Go ahead. I was listening to Mark again last night, and he was doing investigation, and he believes if Trump is found guilty, they may be able to appeal to the Supreme Court under the Equal Protection Clause, citing Bush v. Gore as their source.
And I was wondering what you guys thought of that. Again, I think that when you look at this initial case, if you're talking about the court case where the jury's deliberating now, it's a state court case. You could ultimately, in criminal cases where you are convicted criminally, you get to make that appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, but that's usually after multiple appeals. So could you, I mean, I'm trying to think of the Bush. I didn't hear Mark. I'm trying to think of the Bush versus Gore connection there, which was not a criminal case at all. That was a civil case that just said, stop counting the votes, remember, in Florida, in one county.
So there may be something else he's talking about there on a vote counting issue, but yeah. But on what we're watching right now, the biggest issue is this final instruction by the judge to say you can pick which felony. And now we don't know what the jury's going to do yet.
So for that to be potentially an issue that you would appeal very quickly in court, you'd have to have the jury come back with a guilty verdict and they've all chosen, or not all of them, but at least three of them have chosen or two of them have chosen different reasons why it's a felony. All right, let's continue on and take some more phone calls. I mean, that's why they've asked for the jury instruction, by the way, twice, 65 pages of jury instruction. That takes a long time to read. When they ask for it again, they don't just like hand it to you, let you read it.
And they've asked for some transcripts, they said, no, we're going to read you the transcripts. It's been a whole mess. Let's go ahead and continue on taking some of these calls. Gilbert's calling in Nevada, who is an ACLJ champion.
Gilbert, thank you so much. Obviously we are trying to hit that monthly goal right now for ACLJ champions. Under was under 50 away.
We'll get that final number again, 47, 48 away from hitting our goal. So thank you again, Gilbert, for being a continued supporter of the ACLJ, ACLJ champion. You're on the air. Oh, yes. So this is Gil Gilbert from Henderson, Nevada.
Oh yeah. I wanted to let you know, and Jay and Logan and, uh, and, uh, and, uh, John Jordan about our pride. I love you guys. I appreciate you. I've been listening to you for years and years. I am.
I am a champion or a partner or whatever. And I want to let you know that I love you. I'm a conservative Republican for Trump. I hope he gets through the case today and I hope everything goes well with him. And we hope we have him to the new President.
I hope I voted the other day already here in Nevada. And so thank you very much. God bless you. Yep. Thanks Gilbert.
Thank you for being a champion, standing with us. I think, you know, it's, I mean, the weirdest part about this case is that it took the Democrats say, well, it takes Donald Trump off the campaign trail and yet all it's done is put Donald Trump is the only, unless it's something that happens in Israel, literally the only news story is Donald Trump. Yeah. 24 seven. It just says currently on Fox, it just says Jerry currently deliberating verdict watch day two. You know, and that's, and everybody's like, wow, you can't read tea leaves, but literally that's everybody is just different.
And then a timer under it again, seven hours, 57 minutes. It is what it is. Let's keep going. Take some more calls. Let's go to Don in Florida. Let's not on the radio.
Don you're on the air. I want to run this body when you're talking about the debates, uh, I'll give you a scenario possible. What happens if Trump, God forbid he gets found guilty, then, uh, Reagan, Reagan Biden can say, well, I'm not going to waste my time debating a convicted felon. And that's the way that he can get out of this and he can definitely get out of it if he wanted to.
Yeah. I think that there's ways he could get up. I'd say that say that, but if they've agreed to, and they have to the basic demands, the, the team that gets out of it is still going to get hit pretty hard because if you've agreed to it at this point, so I think you'd have to have something else. Joe Biden knows that this was a possibility they knew a possibility would be, he would get convicted. I think Joe Biden would rather get up there on the stage with Donald Trump and be like, you're the convicted felon. You don't think Joe Biden would be using that the entire, and by the way, you would use that too.
If you were running against somebody who had just been, whether it was right or wrong, because most people who ended up voting into the general election don't have cable news on all day and night. Yeah. Those people in general, yeah.
ACLJ champions. No, we have a very specific group of people. I've always liked to say that as we very educated people that are paying attention to what's happening in the world. Most people go home, watch Jeopardy with their kids or whatever it is, try to pay the bills and they'll pay attention when there's the primary. That didn't even need to happen this year, pretty much for most of the States. So now they're going to pay attention, come, maybe they'll watch the debate maybe, but probably not.
Most of them are going to vote because they already have an idea of where they're going from. All right, we have three minutes. Let's try to take a couple of calls. Let's go to Tim. Who's calling quickly on line three in California, Tim, you're on the air. Hey Tim.
Thank you for taking my call. This effort by the Biden administration to, instead of wanting to debate, they want to do it virtually, I think is a disaster, it's not going to work. And I think as an attempt by the Democrats to win the election. Listen, I think it's just about nominating.
It will work as long as the rules are the rules that I don't think there's going to be any issue with it being on the ballot. And you know what? I don't think that's our fight. But it does show that they're not able to follow like the basic rules. And that just kind of shows you, I think when you see that this isn't the Obama, all the Obama team, this is kind of the Obama juniors are running the Biden show. The Obama team was at a different level.
And they also were used to the COVID years where you got away with basically making up rules as you went. I mean, you made up electoral rules. We all said that. We can't allow that to happen again.
So I get the concern that Tim has. But I still would rather beat people fair and square. Let him be on the ballot. And I'll beat you in Ohio. All right. Let's try to take this last call. Michael's calling real quick. Line five.
You're on the air. Yeah, I have a question about this aspect of four jurors picking one felony and another four. It's okay. What if there's overlap where amongst the first group that pick one felony that he's guilty of, two are from the first group and another two find him guilty on a second felony and amongst that second group, one of the jurors is part of that second group and three more... What happens there, right? So in that case, does his penalty go up? Does that affect sentencing because some of the jury found you guilty of multiple felonies and other jurors found you guilty of one? What the judge said is as long as you found him guilty of one of those, that each jury member picked one of the four, it would still be considered a unanimous verdict in New York and it would move to sentencing.
Now, the question goes though is how? And then Michael, like you said, this is a big problem, I think, for this case if that happens. So, again, it's an if because the jury would first have to convict on the misdemeanor.
Then when they go to the felonies, they'd have to choose different felonies, like you said, or someone choose two and another chooses one, then we go, he's been convicted this bizarre way and then you'd have another legal challenge on that conviction. All right. Well, that's going to do it for today on Sekulow. Again, I'm going to ask you to become an ACLJ champion, support our work continually on a monthly basis, be a champion of life, liberty, and freedom, create that amazing baseline for us, continue to fight, whether that's for the teacher who can't pray in public where students can see her or whether that is to the Supreme Court of the United States, we need your help.
So scan that QR code right now or go to ACLJ.org slash champions. Do it today. Thanks to everyone for listening. Thanks for all the clowns. We'll see you tomorrow.
