Jeff Clark, Dr. John Lott, E. J. Antoni, David Closson

From the heart of our nation’s capital in Washington, DC., bringing compelling interviews, insightful analysis, taking you beyond the headlines and soundbites into conversations with our nation’s leaders and newsmakers, all from a biblical worldview. Sitting in for Tony is today’s host, Jody Hice.
Well, good afternoon and welcome to this Friday edition of Washington Watch. I’m your Friday host, Jody Hice, Senior Vice President here at the Family Research Council and President of FRC Action. We are honored to have you on board with us.
We’ve got a lot coming your way today. Let me give you some of the highlights. Attorney General Merrick Garland, he delivered a fiery 22-minute speech at the annual US Attorneys Conference yesterday.
During the speech, he praised the Justice Department workforce for protecting the rule of law and for ensuring the fair and impartial application of the law. But he also hit back on critics who say that the department has been politicized and weaponized.
Our norms are a promise that we will not allow this department to be used as a political weapon. And our norms are a promise that we will not allow this nation to become a country where law enforcement is treated as an apparatus of politics. There is not one rule for friends and another for foes, one rule for the powerful and another for the powerless, one rule for the rich and another for the poor, one rule for Democrats and another for Republicans, or different rules depending on one’s race or ethnicity.
All right, friends, really, is this the same Justice Department that has prosecuted Christians for peacefully demonstrating an abortion clinics? I mean, really, is this the same Justice Department that targeted parents at school board meetings? The same group that categorized Catholics as being potential domestic terrorists, all while conducting lawfare against a former president?
That’s a pretty tough pill to swallow, what was just said. But I’ll be talking with this, with about this, with Jeff Clark. He’s the Senior Fellow and Director of Litigation at the Center for Renewing America.
He’ll be joining me here in just a few moments. And during Tuesday night’s presidential debate, ABC News David Muir stepped into the ring, so to speak, to argue against President Trump on how US crime rates have been under the Biden-Harris administration.
Crime in this country is through the roof. And we have a new form of crime. It’s called migrant crime.
And it’s happening at levels that nobody thought possible.
President Trump, as you know, the FBI says overall violent crime is actually coming down in this country.
But Vice President Harris, I’ll give you the… Excuse me, the FBI, they were defrauding statements. They didn’t include the worst cities.
They didn’t include the cities with the worst crime.
Well, I’m sure that Vice President Kamala Harris was happy to have a little assistance there. And by the way, that was just one of many that took place Tuesday night. But what does the real data reveal?
Well, John Lott, the president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, he’ll be joining me to fact check the fact checkers. We’ll have that discussion here a little bit later in the program. And then the Treasury Department reported yesterday, catch this, the interest payments, the interest payments for America’s 35-plus trillion dollar national debt.
The interest payment has now exceeded one trillion dollars for the first time ever in a fiscal year. Well, as Congress debates government spending this month, what does all this skyrocketing debt mean for our country? What does it mean for working families?
economist E. J. Antoni of the Heritage Foundation will be joining me for that discussion a little later in the program.
And then finally, FRC’s David Closson and I will be examining the biblical response to a number of stories that have dominated the news and social media this week in our weekly World View Segment, including the situation that’s been taking place in Springfield, Ohio. So we’ve got a lot coming your way today. Of course, our website, tonyperkins.com.
We, as always, have tons and tons of information available there for you, tonyperkins.com, so be sure to check that out. All right, let’s jump into our first segment, our first item of discussion today. As I mentioned a while ago in a speech at the Department of Justice yesterday, US.
Attorney General Merrick Garland praised his department staff for sustaining what he called the set of norms to guide the Justice Department’s adherence to the rule of law. Well, among the norms is to not allow the Department of Justice to be used as a political weapon. But the Justice Department under Attorney General Garland, at least, has drawn repeated criticism for both being weaponized against political enemies as well as perpetrating a two-tiered system of justice.
So what has the Department of Justice done to keep its promise to not be weaponized? Well, joining me now to discuss this is Jeff Clark. He’s a senior fellow and Director of Litigation at the Center for Renewing America.
Jeff, welcome back to Washington Watch. Always great to have you.
Well, thanks a lot, Jody. It’s good to be here and talking about this speech that Garland gave yesterday is going to be a treat, I think.
Yeah, I do too. And I don’t know if anybody who can break it down any better than you can for us. I want to begin with a clip and get your reaction to this.
If we can, let’s begin with clip number four, please.
Our norms are a promise that we will not allow this department to be used as a political weapon. And our norms are a promise that we will not allow this nation to become a country where law enforcement is treated as an apparatus of politics.
All right.
Our norms are a promise. Your reaction to this?
Look, Jody, the Constitution is our ultimate source of law. It is the superseding source of law. Federal statutes come next in the hierarchy, right?
Then you could look at federal regulations on down. But norms are not really on my hierarchy list of binding legal authorities because norms are not the Constitution. They’re not a statute.
They’re not regulations. And so I regard this as me actually having won the argument because I put out a paper quite a while ago now on the Center for Renewing America’s website called The DOJ is Not Independent. And faced a lot of initial skepticism because of the fact that after Watergate, they really did try to establish this idea that the Justice Department was independent of the president, which is totally contrary to the Constitution.
The Constitution provides that the chief law enforcement officer of the United States or what the framers in the federalist papers called the chief magistrate, not just the commander in chief, but the chief magistrate is the president of the United States and him alone. There is no reference to an attorney general in the Constitution. The attorney general was created as a cabinet officer very early, but the department was not created until the second half of the 19th century.
So the idea that its norms control over the Constitution, control over statutes is totally wrong. And so you have to start asking yourself, well, what are these norms? These norms were set up essentially to try to strip power away from the president of the United States, to create an unaccountable bureaucracy inside the Justice Department.
And that’s why we have all these problems, because the president can’t supervise these things. Now, it’s convenient for a Democrat president like Joe Biden, or would be convenient for Kamala Harris, God forbid, if she were to be elected, because they’re very happy with what the predominately Democrat career staff want to do. And as you pointed out, the department under Merrick Garland and under Joe Biden has been completely politicized and we know that Joe Biden sends them love notes from time to time through, at the very least, the New York Times, but also I think through his White House counsel.
So the idea that they have cut the president off from supervising the department is also a myth. However, you look at it, this is a misbegotten system at this point. It needs to be changed and they’re big time afraid of the fact that if President Donald J.
Trump returns to the White House, that he is going to get constitutional control of the Justice Department again, and that is not using it as a political weapon. That just means that the president, he’s the one who’s accountable to the people, and he’s going to make them accountable to him.
Oh, and of course, they’re already accusing Trump, if he were to regain the White House, that he is going to weaponize the Department of Justice. I mean, these people always seem to accuse others of the very things they themselves are guilty of. I love what you brought up about the Chief Magistrate.
That’s probably information that most people are not aware of. A great, great point there. Let me play another clip, play clip two, and then I’d like to get your reaction to this one as well.
There is not one rule for friends and another for foes. One rule for the powerful and another for the powerless. One rule for the rich and another for the poor.
One rule for Democrats and another for Republicans. Or different rules depending on one’s race or ethnicity.
All right, so I don’t know how he says it. I mean, we have the FACE Act. We’ve got prosecution of peaceful protesters at abortion clinics.
We have parents being targeted for speaking at school boards. We have failure to enforce federal statute against protesters harassing conservative Supreme Court justices at their homes. Lawfare against the president.
I mean, these are just a few examples. Are we seeing similar efforts against those on the left? Or is this all seemingly directed towards those on the right?
I think it’s virtually all directed toward those on the right, Jody. And clearly, that’s a violation of equal protection. They try to just create these new norms that in some instances are trying to recreate what we already have.
Right. We have a 14th Amendment that guarantees equal protection. Now, that applies to the states.
But that’s caused the Supreme Court to basically say there’s an equal protection component to the due process clause in the Fifth Amendment, which does apply to the federal government. So DOJ obviously shouldn’t be going around and saying, we’re going to prosecute only Republicans or only Democrats. But if you look at what they do in practice, they have definitely dropped the hammer on Republicans, conservatives, MAGA people.
And the slaps on the wrist go to Antifa, they go to the Hunter Bidens of the world. I mean, had the judge not called foul, a very sweetheart plea deal that basically would have wrapped up all of the alleged crimes against Hunter Biden would have been entered. And they had to take a step back from that and then proceed more even-handedly against him in multiple cases.
But that just goes to show you they try to do some things and make it look like they’re being even-handed, like they dropped an indictment against a Chinese woman in New York associated with Governor Hokel. But I think that was all an advanced cover operation because they really wanted to focus on their so-called next Russiagate issue against Tenant Media and Lauren Chen and conservative influencers who were involved somehow with Tenant Media. That’s their main operation to try to skew the election.
They violate equal protection issues all of the time. It’s totally unconstitutional and it’s lawless.
Let me land the plane here. We got less than a minute here, Jeff. But when Attorney General Garland talks about his department acts without fear or favor, how do you take that in really less than a minute?
Are they authentically calling balls and strikes or something else going on here?
I don’t think so, Jody. Let me use the example of parents at school boards because I was at DOJ, freshly minted political appointee as a young man at DOJ on 9-11. A few years after that, we established the seventh litigating division of the Justice Department, the National Security Division.
That was designed to go after international terrorists and to protect us from international foreign threats. That same division and its counterpart in the FBI was used to go after parents because they were upset with transgender bathrooms.
Wow. Jeff Clark, thank you so much. Ah, incredible information.
Thank you for keeping a pulse on it. Appreciate you being on Washington Watch this evening. Our friends, coming up, did crime fall during the Biden-Harris administration?
As the debate fact checkers told us. Well, we’ll have that discussion with John Lott from the Crime Prevention Research Center right after the break. Don’t go anywhere.
We’ll be back in a moment.
The news reflects the world we live in, but it also shapes it. Like it or not, what we learn about the world on a daily basis impacts our thinking, our worldview, and ultimately our action. So much of today’s media is built on a shaky foundation that could send us hurling toward harmful ideas and hopeless solutions.
Family Research Council created the Washington Stand to be a news outlet that speaks from a firm foundation. Bringing you news, commentary, and analysis of what’s happening in America and around the world, the Washington Stand is unapologetically biblical and uncompromisingly committed to truth. Equip yourself for the world we live in with a biblical worldview found daily at the Washington Stand.
Find us at washingtonstand.com. That’s washingtonstand.com.
Research has found that there are 59 million American adults who are a lot like you. There are millions of people around the country who are born again, deeply committed to practicing their faith, and believe the Bible is the reliable word of God. But that’s not all.
They’re also engaged in our government. They’re voters. They’re more likely to be involved in their community, and they’re making a difference in elections.
The problem is that a lot of them feel alone too. We want to change that. FRC wants to connect these 59 million Americans to speak the truth together, no matter the cost.
If you want to learn more about this group and what it means to be a spiritually active, governance-engaged conservative, or if you want to find out if you are one of these sage-cons yourself, join us. Go to frc.org/s-a-g-e-c-o-n, sage-con, to learn more.
Hi, I’m Georgina, an intern here at Family Research Council, and I wanted to take a moment to tell you about FRC’s incredible internship program. This three-month program is both a discipleship and a development opportunity where you get to take part in truly meaningful work and help advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and our culture. This program features hands-on professional experience here in Washington, DC.
We have weekly biblical world view training, tours around the district, opportunities to meet some of the country’s most prominent policy experts, and more. The program also includes free housing, a meal stipend, and is available in spring, summer, and fall. If you’re a young adult passionate about seeing biblical values championed in our country as a current intern, I cannot recommend this program enough.
For more information or to apply, please go to frc.org/internships. Again, that’s frc.org/internships. Apply today.
Good afternoon, welcome back to Washington Watch. I’m your host, Jody Hice. I want to play a clip from Tuesday night’s debate from ABC’s David Muir, and then we’ll move into our next segment here.
Let’s play the clip, please.
Crime in this country is through the roof, and we have a new form of crime. It’s called migrant crime, and it’s happening at levels that nobody thought possible.
President Trump, as you know, the FBI says overall violent crime is actually coming down in this country, but excuse me, the FBI defrauded, they were defrauding statements.
They didn’t include the worst cities. They didn’t include the cities with the worst crime.
Well, what an exchange there, not between the president and who he was there to debate, Vice President Harris, but David Muir with ABC News, contradicting a statement that the president said, and the president hitting back. But according to the Department of Justice data that was released yesterday, national crime rates remain elevated. They remain elevated under the Biden administration.
They are unchanged from the year before, and they are significantly higher than in 2020, which was, of course, the final year of the Trump administration. So who is the one here that needs the fact checking? Well, let’s talk about it.
Joining me now is John Lott. He’s the president of the Crime Prevention Research Center. John, welcome back to Washington Watch.
Good to see you.
Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it.
All right. So there’s a consistent White House and legacy media narrative that somehow the Biden administration has lowered crime. But I mean, just shoot straight with us.
What’s the facts with all this?
Well, there are two different measures that the Department of Justice has of crime. There’s the FBI data on crimes reported to police. But we know most crimes aren’t reported to police.
So about 50 years ago, they set up something called the National Crime Victimization Survey, done by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, to try to get a measure of total crime, both reported and unreported. So we know like about 40 percent of violent crimes are reported to police, and about 30 percent of property crimes are reported to police. And the way we know that is from the National Crime Victimization data.
And what you find is that over the last few years, while the number of crimes that the FBI has that are reported to police has gone down. The total crimes, both reported and unreported, has soared. During the Biden administration, total violent crimes, rape, robbery, ag-based assaults has gone up by 55 percent.
That’s compared to a 15 percent drop that occurred during the Trump administration. Rape has gone up 42 percent. Robbery has gone up 63 percent.
Ag-based assaults have gone up 55 percent. Those are huge increases that have occurred.
Let me step in right there. I want to make sure that I heard you. I don’t want to, excuse me for interrupting.
I want you to continue. You said violent crimes are up 55 percent under the Biden administration compared to a drop of 15 percent under the Trump administration?
That’s correct.
Wow. I’ll continue. Excuse me.
Thank you for letting me interrupt you there.
Sure. No, I mean, look, we know that the rate that crimes are reported to police has fallen, at least according to the FBI data. If you look at the FBI data alone, there’s a good reason for that, and that is law enforcement in this country, particularly in large cities, has collapsed.
You look at cities over a million, for example. In the five years before COVID, 44 percent of reported violent crimes result in arrest. By 2022, they had fallen to 20 percent of reported violent crimes.
That’s over 50 percent drop. You had an even larger drop in arrest for property crimes in those cities. Arrest for property crimes had fallen to 4.5 percent of reported property crimes.
We’ve never seen such low arrest rates since they’ve been collecting the FBI data for 70 years. What you find is that if you look at total crimes, arrests for total crimes, not just reported crimes, only 8 percent of total violent crimes result in arrest, and only 1 percent of total property crimes in those cities result in arrest. As many people know, just because somebody is arrested doesn’t mean that they’re going to be charged, alone, prosecuted, or convicted.
For many crimes in large cities, it’s true across the country though too, these criminals have little reason to fear being caught and punished. And the problem is that when people don’t think criminals are going to be caught and punished, they’re less likely to report crimes to the police. And so you’ve seen a drop in the rate that people have reported crimes to the police.
Absolutely. And when they’re not punished, the criminals just accelerate their violent behavior. We’ve only got a couple of minutes left, John.
How should, I think most of everybody really understands that crime is up, regardless of what anyone tries to say, crime is everywhere, it seems. So how should voters be thinking about crime as a national issue as we enter into this election cycle?
Well, I think you’re right that most people know that’s gone up. If you live in many major cities in the United States, and you try to go to a CVS or Walgreens, or Walmart in many cases, you’re going to see many things behind plexiglass. They know that that wasn’t the case a few years ago.
If they want to go and buy something, they have to wait for a sales clerk to come out and open the plexiglass and then stand next to them while they go and read the packages to try to determine what it is that they’re going to go and buy. People know that the companies don’t like doing that. They know that it’s very costly for them to do that.
They know that they lose sales from having to go and do that. As I said, we know that that wasn’t true a few years ago. But it’s not just property crime.
It’s violent crime across the board that you see these types of increases occurring also.
Look, Biden and Harris refused to criticize these Soros prosecutors in many places. They’re refusing to prosecute violent criminals. Harris herself many times has come out in favor of taking funds away from the police.
She was a George Soros prosecutor before there were George Soros prosecutors. People have a good idea where her values are. She doesn’t believe that punishing criminals is the way to go and reduce crime.
Wow. John Lott, President of the Crime Prevention Research Center, I want to thank you so much for joining us on Washington Watch. Extremely valuable information you brought to the table.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
All right, friends, much, much more coming your way. When we come back, I want to shift gears. We’re going to talk about for the first time ever, for the first time ever, the government has now paid more than $1 trillion in interest on our national debt.
We’ll talk more about that and what it all means right after the break.
America was a bright light until the culture gave into darkness. But we won’t. We’re in a battle for the soul of our nation, between right and wrong, between truth and lies.
At a time when the mainstream media is blocking Americans from truth, millions are searching for a source of trustworthy news that shines a light in the darkness. At this time of great need, FRC is lighting the way forward. For 40 years, Family Research Council and its partners have stood together to advance and defend biblical truth in government and culture.
Between our flagship broadcast program Washington Watch with Tony Perkins to our news outlet, The Washington Stand, FRC is providing believers across the country with news they can trust from a local world view. When you stand with FRC, you help light the way forward for America and the next generation. Go to frc.org/give.
If you’re a young adult passionate about seeing biblical values champion in our country, check out Family Research Council’s internship program. This three-month program is both a discipleship and development opportunity where you get to take part in truly meaningful work and help advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and our culture. Featuring hands-on experience, biblical worldview training, free housing, and more, this internship is a great opportunity for spiritual and professional development.
Check out frc.org/internships to apply today.
As a congressman, Jody Hice witnessed firsthand how the gradual erosion of congressional integrity has crippled America’s faith in its most essential institutions. His newly released book, Sacred Trust, Election Integrity, and the Will of the People, sounds the alarm on the attempts of career bureaucrats to subvert our elections and provide solutions to make every vote count. Help preserve election integrity and order Sacred Trust Today wherever books are sold.
Good afternoon, welcome back to Washington Watch. I’m your Friday host, Jody Hice, and we welcome you aboard. All right, probably by now, most of you are aware that the US national debt soared above $35 trillion a couple of months ago.
And now, for the first time ever, the government’s interest payments, let me repeat that again, the government’s interest payments in a fiscal year have topped $1 trillion. That is trillion, as in terrible. It’s stunning to me.
The net interest payments made by the government now exceed government spending on every other category except Social Security and Medicare. And of course, all this is coming when Congress is scrambling to try to avert a possible government shut down as they’re having to deal with the spending battle right now. What a mess.
What an urgent time. Well, joining me now to discuss this is E. J.
Antoni. He’s a public finance economist and a research fellow at the Heritage Institute.
E.
J., welcome back to Washington Watch. Good to see you.
Jody, thank you for having me again.
Well, listen, I don’t know about you. You probably saw this coming much more so than I did. I knew it was coming, but I was shocked to actually see it happen.
Give me your reaction to these numbers.
Very shocking, but not surprising, Jody, because as you’ve said, we have seen this trajectory for a very long time. We essentially knew that these very bad numbers were coming. But let’s give some context here.
So far for the current fiscal year, which is the last 11 months, we have seen interest payments on the debt, as you said, not only eclipse a trillion dollars, but account for about half of all personal income taxes collected during that same time. So I want all of the viewers to take a look at their latest pay stub, see how much they’re paying in federal income taxes, and realize that half of that is getting eaten up just by interest payments on the debt. So it’s not funding roads or bridges, it’s not funding schools or hospitals, it’s not funding social security or the military.
It is literally just interest, and the situation is getting worse day by day, month by month. Speaking of months, August was the worst deficit we have ever seen for that month. In other words, we’ve never had an August deficit this big before.
Again, things are getting worse, not better. You already said we’re over $35 trillion in debt right now. We’re going to hit $36 trillion before the end of the year.
Yeah, it’s unbelievable. All right, so I want to get into some of the specifics that you just mentioned. But before we get this, maybe before we get there, maybe just a kind of broad brush perspective, 30,000 foot view, these numbers on the rising debt, how should working families respond to this?
With a lot of anger because this money is allegedly being spent on you and yet you’re not getting any of the benefits. In fact, you’re paying for it all. It’s just an issue of you’re not paying for it explicitly.
What I mean by that is Congress a lot of times can spend money and then has to levy a tax in order to pay for that spending. So they may be spending money on you, but they’re also taking money from you. But what they’ve been doing the last four years or so is to spend all this money again allegedly on you, except they’re using the hidden tax of inflation to pay for it all.
So the government is simply creating money out of nothing, which is devaluing all the money you already have, whether it’s in your savings account or it’s coming in a paycheck. And what that does is it makes you demonstrably poor because it’s robbing you of the real value of your savings and of your income. And so they are simply taking with one hand and giving with the other.
But of course, it’s Washington, so they take a little bit off the top along the way.
Yeah, and you’re spot on. I mean, when you describe inflation as a hidden tax, that is exactly what it is. All right, we’ve been hearing again for months now that the feds are expected to lower the interest rates.
It looks like what I’m hearing probably next week, they may lower it by a quarter percentage point. Will that have any impact at all? What do you expect?
It’ll have an impact in terms of equity markets. So you may see stocks have a rally, for example. In fact, every time we get news that the fed might be cutting rates, there is a rally.
So once that is confirmed, I wouldn’t be surprised if you get yet another rally on top of that. But the issue is it’s not going to have an impact in terms of Americans daily lives, certainly not right away. In other words, your credit card interest rates at 30 percent, those aren’t going to come down appreciably.
Your mortgage interest rates of about 7 percent, again, that’s not going to come down appreciably. We’re not going to see the pre-pandemic rates of 3 percent or 4 percent anytime soon. And so in the ways in which interest rates most directly impact Americans’ lives, sadly, you’re not going to have much of an impact.
Wall Street is going to love it, though.
All right. We’ve got less than two minutes. And I’ve got to get to this.
Obviously, this kind of debt and interest rates, totally, totally unsustainable. So where do we go from here?
Down, unfortunately. You know, look, if we continue to do more of the same, you’re going to get more of the same. In other words, if the government keeps spending money it doesn’t have, if we keep borrowing ourselves into oblivion, expect more of oblivion, expect more inflation, expect a furthering of this cost of living crisis that we are all struggling under, expect home ownership affordability to get even worse than it already is.
By the way, by some metrics, that’s at a record low today. In other words, the person or the family with the median income, it has never been so difficult before for them to own a median price home. This is truly devastating American families’ finances, and it’s going to continue so long as the public policies that got us here continue.
Well, and I can tell you, having been there, done that, so to speak, now wearing the T-shirt, it doesn’t appear to me there is any political will whatsoever, really, on either side of the aisle to address this problem. But we’ve got to deal with it, has to be dealt with. EJ.,
thank you so much. Research Fellow Heritage Foundation, incredible information. Thank you for joining us today on Washington Watch.
Jody, thank you for having me.
Our pleasure. All right, friends, don’t go anywhere. Much more coming your way.
There’s been a lot in the news this past week. And we want to try to look at it from a biblical worldview perspective. So we’ll try to dice some of that up for you.
Bring it your way right after this break. So stay tuned.
The news reflects the world we live in, but it also shapes it. Like it or not, what we learn about the world on a daily basis impacts our thinking, our worldview, and ultimately our action. So much of today’s media is built on a shaky foundation that could send us hurling toward harmful ideas and hopeless solutions.
Family Research Council created the Washington Stand to be a news outlet that speaks from a firm foundation. Bringing you news, commentary, and analysis of what’s happening in America and around the world, the Washington Stand is unapologetically biblical and uncompromisingly committed to truth. Equip yourself for the world we live in with a biblical worldview found daily at the Washington Stand.
Find us at washingtonstand.com. That’s washingtonstand.com.
America was a bright light until the culture gave into darkness. But we won’t. We’re in a battle for the soul of our nation, between right and wrong, between truth and lies.
At a time when the mainstream media is blocking Americans from truth, millions are searching for a source of trustworthy news that shines a light in the darkness. At this time of great need, FRC is lighting the way forward. For 40 years, Family Research Council and its partners have stood together to advance and defend Biblical truth in government and culture.
Between our flagship broadcast program, Washington Watch with Tony Perkins, to our news outlet, The Washington Stand, FRC is providing believers across the country with news they can trust from a Biblical worldview. When you stand with FRC, you help light the way forward for America and the next generation. Go to frc.org/give.
If you’re a young adult passionate about seeing Biblical values champion in our country, check out Family Research Council’s internship program. This three-month program is both a discipleship and development opportunity where you get to take part in truly meaningful work and help advance faith, family and freedom in public policy and our culture. Featuring hands-on experience, Biblical worldview training, free housing and more, this internship is a great opportunity for spiritual and professional development.
Check out frc.org/internships to apply today.
As a congressman, Jody Hice witnessed first hand how the gradual erosion of congressional integrity has crippled America’s faith in its most essential institutions. His newly released book, Sacred Trust, Election Integrity and the Will of the People, sounds the alarm on the attempts of career bureaucrats to subvert our elections and provide solutions to make every vote count. Help preserve election integrity and order Sacred Trust today wherever books are sold.
Good afternoon. welcome back to Washington Watch. I am your Friday host, Jody Hice, and welcome you aboard.
All right, this election cycle, I don’t have to tell you, there’s a lot on the table, a lot at stake. And I want to invite you to come join us in Washington, DC, October 3rd through the 6th, for our Pray Vote Stand Summit. This, as you probably know by now, it’s a national gathering of spiritually active governance, engaged conservatives.
We call them sage gods. But this gathering, it’s all about… We’re all going to be there to recognize that change in our country right now must flow from spiritual renewal.
And we’d love to have you come join us. And I’m honored, happy to be able to tell you that registration is now open. So we ask you to come join us as we pray for our nation, we engage our government, we engage our culture, we stand for Biblical truth.
To find out more or to register today, go to the website, prayvotesstand.org, prayvotesstand.org and come on board. We look forward to seeing you. All right, there has absolutely been no shortage of news this past week.
I mean, just looking back, we’ve got Congress that returned to Washington only to be in a battle over spending and trying to avert a potential government shutdown. We had a presidential debate on Tuesday and a whole host of other developments. And so the question, of course, is, as Christians, how do we and what must we do to think biblically about all these things that have happened this past week?
And that’s why we like to conclude Friday with taking some time to have our weekly WorldView segment with David Closson. David, of course, serves as the director of FRC’s Center for Biblical WorldView. David, always great to have you on Fridays.
welcome back.
It’s a joy to be on the program with you, Jody. All right.
Listen, I know you’re on the road, you’re traveling. Thanks for taking time to to be with us. But you’ve got an event going on in Arkansas before we get into some of the other news of the week.
Tell us a little bit about what you’re doing there in Arkansas.
Yeah, absolutely. It was thrilled to be invited by a wonderful organization called Counteract USA that does a lot of reaching out to Generation Z, so high school and college students trying to help them think biblically and theologically about the news and events through a biblical worldview. So I get an opportunity to speak tomorrow and plan to just walk through the principles of the cornerstones of the biblical worldview and how that applies to some of the biggest political and cultural issues that we deal with.
So really looking forward to the opportunity.
Well, they’re in for a treat. I know I have been with you while you’ve spoken at other college campuses and I’ve been impressed. So I know it’s going to be an incredible time as you speak to those group of young people.
Let me ask you this as we roll into some other news items, David. Earlier today, there was a decision by the Nebraska Supreme Court that affects pro-life constitutional initiative there. Can you bring us up to speed on what the Supreme Court did there in Nebraska?
Yeah, Jody, really important development. So the state Supreme Court in Nebraska officially ruled that the pro-life amendment that’s going to be on the ballot can actually go into effect. There was different challenges.
Actually, Nebraska has a pro-abortion and pro-life amendment that voters are going to be able to weigh in on. It’s the only state where they’ll be confronted with both sides actually on the same ballot. So the Supreme Court ruled that the amendment does not violate the state single subject rule.
So they have a requirement that a ballot measure can address more than one subject. So there was a litigation going on. But the decision is that both of these amendments, a pro-abortion amendment, that ostensibly would allow abortion up until the point of viability.
But we know it has a very broad health exception. So really, abortion through all nine months, that’ll be the pro-abortion amendment. And then the pro-life amendment, Jody, is going to kind of keep the law where it is right now, which is the 12-week limit.
So voters in Nebraska have an important decision to make in November.
Well, they sure do. And it’s not just happening in Nebraska. That’s not the only place where abortion and life is on the ballot.
Real quickly, what are some of the other states where this issue is going to be on the ballot?
Yeah, just really, really briefly, there’s a total of 10 states, Jody. Each one’s a little bit different. Many of these are amendments to amend the state constitution.
So you’ll see Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New York and South Dakota. Again, some of these are a little bit different, but most of them, Jody, are, again, this would be Arizona, Colorado, Florida. They basically say abortion could be legal, up through viability, which is kind of the 23, 24-week mark.
But almost all of these measures, Jody, contain a very broad understanding of health. Health can be determined by an abortionist to refer to the physical, emotional, or mental health of the mother. Essentially, Jody, if these amendments pass, you will have abortion through all nine months.
Now again, in some of these states, you need to get 50 percent of people to vote for it to pass. Colorado, I believe, is 55 percent of the vote. Florida is 60 percent of the vote.
But again, every time, Jody, abortion has appeared on a ballot since Roe V. Wade was overturned. The pro-abortion side has won.
And so if you’re in one of these states, in the next 53 days, we need to be praying and we need to be advocating and just educating people, because these are extreme measures that if passed, a lot of good pro-life work, Jody, would be undone instantaneously.
Yeah. Well said. I mean, that is what’s at stake here.
And this is a critical, critical time. And that’s a that’s a good point. Let’s segue into some of the other events that took place this past week, David.
I’d like to get your thoughts on some of this. Of course, the big news, probably the biggest news of this past week had to do with the presidential debate. We’ve had a few days now, all of us to process it.
As a Christian observer, how do you think it went?
I honestly don’t think it changes the trajectory of the race, Jody. I think President Trump did a good job of pushing Kamala Harris on abortion. If you recall, he pointed out that Democrats have no limits on abortion.
He asked about seven, eight, nine months into pregnancy, and he was actually inaccurately fact checked by the ABC moderator. To the credit of the moderator, she did ask Kamala Harris what limits, if any, she had on abortion, and of course, Kamala Harris dodged it. I do think President Trump missed an opportunity.
He seemed to take the bait that Kamala Harris would throw out and go on tangents about his crowd sizes, or how much money inherited is from his father. As a Christian watching the debate, I care about truth, I care about accuracy, I want there to be an exchange of ideas. I think these policies that are debated in a forum like this, it reveals the underlining world view, the underlining premise that the basic assumptions, what we believe about is true and right and good.
And so I think there was not a lot of that that happened in the debate, Jody. And so at the end of the day, I think there was some helpful content, but I don’t think it’s going to shake up the race in a fundamental way.
So you don’t really think there was anything learned that may be new about either of the candidates, no major issue?
I don’t think so, Jody. I think I heard that it was about 60 million people that tuned in. What would be interesting though is since abortion did come up early in the debate, I wonder how many tens of millions of Americans, Jody, don’t know what the law of the land is related to abortion.
I think most Americans know that Roe v. Wade was overturned. But I think a lot of confusion remains on exactly what’s the state of play.
And I do think Donald Trump potentially did a service to tens of millions of Americans by bringing up late-term abortion and asking Kamala Harris what she believes about late-term abortion. Hopefully some Americans will hear that exchange and maybe do their homework and realize, wow, this does take place in many states. So if that happened, Jody, I think that could have been a service to the American people.
Yeah, good point, good point. I tell you, there was one part, and I’ve actually got a clip here I want to bring up and get your reaction to it. But when I saw this, I almost just came out of my seat.
It was so upsetting to me. And that was when Vice President Harris claimed that you don’t have to give up your faith to support abortion.
One does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree. The government and Donald Trump certainly should not be telling a woman what to do with her body.
All right, I’ve got some thoughts on this. Give me your thoughts on it.
I’m sure our thoughts are very similar, Jody. These comments are pretty routine for the Vice President. She has made these comments before.
I think it’s worth noting, Jody, especially for those of us who are Christ followers and want our values to reflect the values of our Lord. It was interesting that Kamala Harris, the most animated and seemingly excited that she got during the debate, was actually when she got to talk about abortion. I think that’s an indictment on her and on her worldview and on her party’s worldview.
She often says that my values have not changed. That’s her new tagline. I actually believe her on that, Jody.
I think abortion might be the one issue she has not flip-flopped on. But let’s be clear, Jody, when she says that you don’t have to give up your faith to support abortion, if she’s referring to the Christian faith, then yes, you absolutely have to cast aside the entire weight of Biblical revelation to support abortion. Support for abortion and Christian faith are antithetical, and I think we need to be really clear on that.
Yeah, absolutely. Great point. And, you know, I’m getting tired of this argument, too, of it’s a woman’s body.
The baby is not the woman’s body. It is a separate DNA, a separate human being. It is inside the woman’s body, but it is not the human’s body.
At what point do we start recognizing that the baby is an individual, unique creation, a human being by God?
Yeah. Well, Jody, what’s interesting, and I’ve written a booklet on this, The Biblical Principles for Pro-Life Engagement. It was actually fascinating when I was researching for that booklet.
I ran across a study of biologists who were actually, again, secular biologists who were asked, when does life begin? Ninety-five percent of them affirmed the view that life begins at the point of conception. I’m sure that’s not popular amongst people in the academy.
But biologists and embryologists, they understand it. And so, you know, it’s interesting, Jody, that the left often likes to posit themselves as the party of science.
Well, guess what?
Science is on our side, the pro-lifer side. Good science, good embryology, good biology tells us that life begins at the moment of conception, when sperm and egg meet. And beyond that, Jody, we have God’s Word, Psalm 139 and other texts that tell us that is exactly when life begins.
Absolutely. All right. I want to get to another couple of quick topics, and we’ve only got a few minutes here left.
But immigration also came up in the debate. Of course, some people may have been surprised when President Trump started talking about the situation in Springfield, Ohio. But whatever the situation may be or may not be regarding pets, he raised some important issues about Americans, what they’re concerned about.
How should we look at this issue of immigration from a biblical perspective?
Yeah, I think from a biblical perspective, we need to realize, Jody, when you kind of are having communities overrun with immigrants from different cultures, you’re going to find a clash of worldviews. That’s just what happens when a situation like this unfolds, Jody. I think as Christians, two very brief things.
Number one, we ought to be the people that don’t dehumanize any person. So we shouldn’t use dehumanizing language to talk about immigrants. But number two, as Christians, we believe in the rule of law.
Romans 13 tells us that government was instituted by God to promote good and to restrain evil. I think our immigration system, our broken immigration system, Jody, is exhibit A of a government failing to restrain evil. Whether we talk about drugs, whether we talk about all the other human trafficking, crime and other things that have come over the border, it’s a clear failure in a government being able to restrain evil.
So in my view, Romans 13 tells us that immigration is an issue that Christians often care deeply about because we care about people made in God’s image, but we also care about the rule of law.
Absolutely. A great point and great scriptures to back that up. All right, last point that I want to add.
I just had E. T. Antoni Heritage Foundation.
We’re talking about now our interest payments. Here the United States have topped $1 trillion. That’s more than our defense budget.
Why is this an issue that Christians should be concerned about?
Jody, the numbers are astounding. $35 trillion in national debt. I can’t even wrap my mind around that.
Besides Social Security and Medicare are interest payments. We’re just talking about the interest payments on the debt is the number three highest expense of the federal government. Which by the way, Jody, just 13 years ago, we were at $15 trillion.
So it is skyrocketed. This is irresponsible. Let me just give you two very quick verses.
Proverbs chapter 13 verse 2, Jody, says a good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children. You know what? We’re doing the exact opposite of that, Jody.
Proverbs 22, 7 tells us that the borrower is slave to the lender. As I think we need to look at this, this is a fiscal issue, but this is a moral issue. The decisions being made by policy makers in Washington DC, Jody, these are fundamentally immoral decisions.
We are making decisions saddling our children and grandchildren, but that’s, they’re never going to be able to pay back, Jody, and making them beholden to our enemies like China. And so again, this is a deeply moral problem as well as a fiscal problem.
Wow. Thank you so much, David Closson, Director of FRC Center for Biblical Worldview. Always, always great to have you to discuss these issues and just wishing you just an incredible event this evening there in Arkansas.
But thank you for joining us once again on Washington Watch today.
Thank you, Jody. God bless.
Thank you. All right, friends, that wraps up yet another week and another edition here at Washington Watch. And it’s always an honor to be with you.
Tony will be back on Monday as we get on the issues that we’ll be facing next week. But let me just remind you before we leave, this Sunday is National Back to Church Sunday. So now’s your chance.
Go back to church. I hope you will. Those of you that always do, do it again.
Have a great weekend. We’ll see you next week. You’re on Washington Watch.
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