Point of View August 21, 2026 – Hour 2: Weekend Edition

[00:00:04] Across America, Live, this is Point of View, Kerby Anderson. Today we're going to spend some time talking about sports betting and there's a very good reason for it.

[00:00:25] Over the last couple of weeks I have continuously run into the statistic that of the Gen Z population there are a majority, some say 52%, some say 53%, who said they have bet on a sports at least once in the last year. And nearly a quarter of those so-called Gen Z investors say that sports gambling they see is their long-term financial strategy.

[00:00:55] Now again, I want to try to alert people to the fact that when you try to bet against the house, the house always wins. Bet against the casino, the casino always wins. But nevertheless there is a phenomenon out there, one of the reasons why I produce this little booklet on gambling. Of course, we've always had gambling and we have pari-mutual betting and we have lotteries and all the rest.

[00:01:18] But gambling is not investing. Even though there are some kinds of investments that are pretty much of a gamble, I'll be acknowledging to that. But why do we have so many people gambling and opportunity is one because the Supreme Court in a landmark decision said that this federal ban on sports gambling needs to be removed. And then the other is just frustration because Liberty, I'll come to you because Gen Z, they're saying, well, they have a higher unemployment rate.

[00:01:48] They don't see the typical ways of earning a living, don't seem to be working for them. They can't afford a home. And some of them are smothering under unprecedented student debt. So you put together at your, again, Know Why podcast, a very good interview, which we encourage people to watch on YouTube of online sports betting. So what did you find? Yeah, this was an interview that I did with Philip Bunn, who is actually a professor at Covenant College,

[00:02:18] somebody who I knew a little bit at my alma mater, Patrick Henry College, a long time ago. And so I've had him on the Know Why podcast a few times and he wrote an article that was actually directed toward pastors saying you need to take sports betting seriously. And so it's a great interview. People can find the link at pointofview.net. And I think it's important for all of us to understand. And there are so many angles and facets of this that I'm sure we can discuss.

[00:02:44] But one of the things is this term kind of coming up called financial nihilism. And one of the factors is that Gen Z does feel so disaffected by feeling like maybe they can't reach the American dream, that they can't pay off their student loans or they can't save up money and hit those traditional milestones that maybe their parents or grandparents hit of buying a home and then feeling confident enough to start a family.

[00:03:13] And so because of that, a lot of them have decided that they might want to just take the risk and see if they can earn money quickly, earn it overnight. And there are so many insidious facets to this, too, with just now that betting has become just merged with the iPhone. Everybody's got their smartphone and it's easier to do than ever. It's more and more addictive in nature. And it just is presented as something quick, like you could make a quick buck here.

[00:03:42] But a lot of people, young people, have just thought, well, maybe that's a better plan for me to try to get good at that than to actually invest money and save it up because it's not painting out. He also really, I mean, as I think you mentioned, it is more prominent among Gen Z men. And so if you take the loneliness epidemic and kind of men in general not working as much or not feeling like they're needed in society

[00:04:09] and spending more time on devices, then that's just another area for them to get drawn in. So there's a lot of really important aspects of this and problems that I think we need to understand before we discuss it. I think one of the saddest casualties of this growing sports betting is some athletes choose to do this as their career, right? The Dallas Cowboys are getting paid a lot of money and people are betting on them and they're engaging in their livelihood.

[00:04:39] College athletes, in a previous world, in a current world, it's a little different. But still, to some degree, these are amateurs and a lot of them, yes, are getting big NIL deals, but some of them are just the hometown guy on the golf team. And someone has found that on sports betting sites and has placed a bet on it. And then guess what? That guy has a bad round of golf because that happens. And then what does he receive? Threatening direct messages from grown men that have lost a lot of money betting on him

[00:05:08] or hateful things being yelled at him when he's not playing well from the course, all because of what sports betting is doing to sports. So I think we'll see him this fall when college football starts up again. I remember him last year. Commercials, I think probably as a result of a settlement from sports betting companies that they're being forced to run that are like, hey, people that are doing this, be nice to the athletes still. Remember, don't like cyber bully these poor college kids

[00:05:38] because you are the one that chose to place, you know, $1,000 on the performance of an 18-year-old. So it's kind of a sad dynamic. I mean, I know people, men and even some women, that do participate in sports betting in varying degrees of amounts of money, but it's all something that has become a phenomenon in the last few years since you said, Kirby. The Supreme Court has really freed it up.

[00:06:05] So I grew up in the land of casinos that is tribal reservations in Oklahoma. And those are what you think. That's, you know, someone sitting at the slot machine. I mean, you don't pull it anymore, but pressing the buttons on the slot machine and game tables. And that had some degree of barrier to entry because you had to go there. And I think you nail it when you say, like, I theoretically, just like I created a fake poll in the last section, could have, I did not, let's clarify, I could have placed sports bets while you were talking right here on,

[00:06:35] I mean, we were looking at some of the stuff, not just sports bets. I could have bet on elections. I could have bet on a culture of them. How many views Taylor Post is going to get. Yeah. When, when will Tesla, I mean, economic things, when will Tesla and SpaceX, when will they merge? If you go to these betting websites, like Kalshi is a very common one.

[00:06:57] Their, their heading has trending and then elections, politics, culture, sports, crypto, commodity, climate. You can bet on the climate. Like what is the highest temperature in Los Angeles today? Seventy percent of people betting on it have said that it's going to be 82 to 83 degrees. There's economics, there's finance, there's tech. I mean, what's going to be the best performing AI? Will the United States confirm that aliens exist?

[00:07:25] You can bet on that, which is wild. And think about how easy and quickly that can rack up, too, which is if you, that's one of the problem. Yeah. If you are wanting to maybe address this in your church or your young adults group, a great point that Philip made is to say, hey, you know, there are, it is addictive by nature. There are problematic gamblers. Problematic gambling is often comorbid with a lot of other issues and addictions like, you know, alcoholism, not always causal.

[00:07:55] But you have seen a spike ever since it was legalized and like even things like domestic violence because people get more angry. But anyway, say, is this going to be something that is attractive to a potential spouse that you are betting money all the time on things like this? You know, so I think people need to be aware of just how easy and attractive it can be. I want to keep going on this, but we're coming to a break. But the other reason I wanted to cover it is I'm hoping, as your guest pointed out,

[00:08:22] this is something that pastors and Christian leaders need to address. And that's one of the things we're talking about here today. I want to come back to some of the things that Holly talked about in terms of the negative impact that gambling has had on sports. Also, of course, we can talk about the negative impact it's had on families and the whole issue of addiction. So we have a lot more to cover. We'll do that right after this.

[00:09:00] This is Viewpoints with Kirby Anderson. You know, there are many ways to demonstrate the failure of socialism. One very effective way is to compare similar countries such as North Korea and South Korea. But another way is to compare a city that was cut in half. I mentioned both examples in my booklet on socialism and suggest you watch a recent YouTube video on the simple questions socialism couldn't answer.

[00:09:26] Now, the first half of the video gives some history of feudalism, capitalism and Marxism. But then it points to what happened after World War II when Germany and Berlin were divided. People began leaving East Berlin for West Berlin. So the East Germans built a wall around the city. It also provided a social and economic perspective on the differences between a socialist economy and a capitalist one. The video tells the story of two grocery stores 20 miles apart.

[00:09:53] In East Berlin, there are 3,000 items and just one form of mustard, not even spicy mustard. In West Berlin, the grocery store has 7,000 items because it was competing with three other grocery chains. The store in East Berlin had its prices determined by the Politburo in Moscow, who determined what products they want for their population. Prices and the supply of products in West Berlin grocery store were determined by what people buy and what the store manager occasionally adjusted prices.

[00:10:22] As you might imagine, the citizens in West Berlin enjoyed a better standard of living and live longer than the citizens of East Berlin. They also enjoyed more freedom, had more consumer choices, had less government corruption. We need to remind the young people who are promoting socialism of this social and economic experiment in the city of Berlin. I'm Kirby Anderson, and that's my point of view.

[00:10:49] Go deeper on topics like you just heard by visiting pointofview.net. That's pointofview.net. You're listening to Point of View, your listener-supported source for truth. But once again, this is an issue that we will continue to talk about. Of course, the issue that came out in January of this year was on gambling, and if you would like to get a copy of that booklet, it is available.

[00:11:17] But, of course, we will probably address this sometime in the future. Let me point you to Liberty McCarter. With this is a particular link we have to the YouTube video so that you can watch the back and forth between the two of you. Thirty-three minutes long, and I think you covered just all of the landscape. And so, again, thank you for suggesting that. Yeah, so what we talked about, we talked a little bit about the court case that we've mentioned here, how popular it is,

[00:11:44] what are some of the side effects individually and culturally, which I know we'll get into here in a minute. And, again, like the men's loneliness pandemic. And then just kind of that Christian morality position as well because, you know, people have debated gambling as an issue for a long time within the church, whether or not it's okay or in what circumstances. But what we need to think about, too, again, is just the ubiquity of it now.

[00:12:09] And one of the books he recommended, which you can find the link under the podcast video, but I'll just mention it here, too, is Addiction by Design. It talks about even how slot machines were designed to be addictive. And so these apps are utilizing a lot of the same kind of technology behind that to just give you little notifications and to kind of spike that feeling of like, oh, I won or I can do this. Here's another chance.

[00:12:34] And so we already know that iPhones are designed or smartphones are designed to be addictive in many of the apps we use. And so when you add gambling, which is addictive by nature, into that, then it's just it's not a good mix. Yes. And, again, we talked about thou shalt not covet, right? So there's one of those verses there. There's no verse that says thou shalt not gamble. But, again, let's get for just a minute into the impact that it has on sports. I told you off air I'd been on a PBS McNeil-Lair report, and we had a debate about just the negative impact.

[00:13:04] Let's take college sports as a good example. Pretty soon we're going to be watching college football. And you're ahead by maybe two points, and you're running and going down the field, and there's less than a minute left. Well, why would you kick a field goal? Well, if the sport spread was five and you're ahead by two, then all of a sudden they're saying, well, was this something that was manipulated on the game?

[00:13:28] Or did these students know that if they had bet one way or their friends had bet one way? But, again, a wise coach would not even risk kicking a field goal for the chance it might get blocked and run back. And our listeners in Alabama can remember the Auburn game, so we can go into that as well.

[00:13:47] So there are, and of course there are all sorts of examples, and early on in this booklet I remind you, of a good number of people that have actually been in the sports world who have been accused, and in many cases convicted of gambling. And there are people that are not in the Baseball Hall of Fame because of that. So just to simply say that gambling is neutral I think is turning a blind eye to some of that.

[00:14:14] And we've seen this a little bit, and I don't quite remember the facts in its entirety, but there was a dust-up between Texas Tech University and their quarterback back a couple months ago because he, in this era of transfer portal sports, at a previous school he was at, had been in trouble for gambling while on a roster. And Texas Tech, I think, had taken him to the transfer portal, and then there was a whole drama about the NCAA, and they were trying to, like, prevent him from having eligibility, and people wanted him to be eligible.

[00:14:43] And then the state regions got involved, and about 15 different lawsuits got filed. And so it's just there's this domino effect that is occurring that the NCAA and the NAIA and sports governing leagues for college athletes and even the NFL are going to have to figure out what to do with it because it's almost spawning its own litigation industry, which as a lawyer is attractive, you know, right?

[00:15:09] Like, we want to keep ourselves in business, so, like, maybe don't take my advice. But it is definitely a problem facing these organizations that they are certainly going to be dealing with. Let me come back to that because Wall Street Journal, one of the writers, talked about financial nihilism, and it does seem to me that this hopelessness, and just a minute I might even get into the fact that, again, we just passed the $40 trillion national debt, and last time when we had Holly here,

[00:15:39] we talked about the fact that we are right now in a federal government that actually spends $5 trillion, but it spends $7 trillion, but it brings in $5 trillion, and I always like to take off eight zeros and say, imagine if you're making $50,000, but you're spending $70,000, and you have a credit card debt of $400,000. That's the federal government. And so there's a hopelessness on the part of the youngest generation, and this is Gen Z,

[00:16:08] but it's also true of Gen Y, millennials, and others, and some of that has to do with just the sheer fact that our dollars aren't worth as much, and there's a real frustration out there that has caused all of this. Yeah, there is, and I think that's kind of the nuance that's missing in a lot of these talks because you will see younger Americans, both on the left and the right, I think, kind of being drawn toward more extremism or just that financial nihilism, that despair.

[00:16:38] We're talking about gambling, but kind of on the other side of things, similarly, a lot of people, our young people are saying, I think I can actually make more money as, say, an Instagram or TikTok influencer. That might be a little more popular among young women and the gambling among young men. Or a YouTuber, because you see these people who just live stream themselves all day, and then they end up making a lot of money and getting a lot of subscriptions and getting ads from gambling organizations, by the way.

[00:17:07] Yeah, DraftKings will advertise on their show. Right. But people see that. They see somebody who's just pointing a camera at themselves and talking about products or anything, and they go viral. And the thing is, most of the time for most people, that does not pan out. I think most people who end up gambling lose money. They don't get rich overnight. But that is what is attractive because, and we need to understand that. We need to understand what's the economic situation in reality like for a young person

[00:17:36] to where they think that that's a better bet, to use that term, than to actually save up and work hard. So one of the things, though, that is missing a lot of times is nuance of that recognition that, yes, we do have a lot of problems to solve, but then also imparting that wisdom and saying this is not the way to do it. This isn't wise. It's going to hurt yourself. Ultimately, it hurts other people. One of the great points that Philip made, and I'll kick it back to you, Kirby,

[00:18:03] is that Gen Z does care a lot about oppression, right? We hear that a lot. Don't be the oppressor. And the Bible actually says you don't want to get rich by oppressing the poor. Well, if you take the middleman out of gambling, think about this. Would you just take money from your friend that you know is not financially well off? No, you wouldn't. But a lot of times gambling does exploit people who aren't well off financially. And so if you take the middleman out of it and say, would you be comfortable with that?

[00:18:32] I think a lot of people would say, no, I wouldn't do that. And so we have to kind of get people to think about what's really going on behind the scenes. And, again, it's bad social policy because it certainly causes some individuals to go even further into poverty. It certainly is bad governmental policy because oftentimes, especially with some of these lotteries and other things, we're encouraging, enticing people to gamble, I should say. And then finally, it's bad economic policy because it's probably the best example of a regressive tax.

[00:19:00] The poor sometimes pay the most. If you go to a convenience store today, 7-Eleven or anything else, guess who's out there getting those lottery tickets? And so it has never made any sense. But if nothing else, back to the point that you and Philip were bringing up, this was worth an individual who teaches at a Christian school to address this issue. And he was really encouraging some of our listeners who are pastors, Sunday school teachers and others,

[00:19:30] to maybe address this issue because this has gone from being rare to routine. It's gone from being an occasional issue to, again, a quarter of Gen Z investors see sports gambling as their long-term financial strategy. There is something seriously wrong with that picture. Yeah. I mean, we talked about, again, the numbers. What was it? Over 50% of Gen Z say that they've engaged in this. And then if you think about young men, I mean, that's a huge percentage.

[00:19:57] So he was saying if you look out at your congregation and you see a young man with a smartphone, chances are that he's engaged in some kind of online betting situation. So it is pervasive. But, again, on the Know Why podcast, we want to know why, which is really digging in. You know, why is this becoming popular? Why are so many young people turning to this? And, you know, why is it a problem? And how can we get people to maybe reconsider participating? Excuse me.

[00:20:23] If you go to our website right now, you'll notice that we have a link to the Know Why podcast. There's a click where that you can click on where it says share, and that's where you can tell some other people about it, but also a place where it says learn more. That will take you to the YouTube interview. Thirty-three minutes long, great material, and if nothing else, what to know about the online sports betting craze with Phillip Bunn. And, again, if you'd like to maybe sign up, there's a way in which people can get your Know Why podcast, can't they? Yes, absolutely.

[00:20:53] If you just click on the link that's right there at pointofview.net, you can subscribe to the YouTube channel, or you can subscribe anywhere if you go to knowwhypodcast.com. We're on Apple Podcasts, Spotify. And I would encourage people to check out the links. I always have more resources in the episode description because we'll talk about studies or articles or books. I always have the guests try to recommend a book. So if people want to learn more about the issue, they really can dig in there. Take a break. When we come back, what's going on in Iran?

[00:21:21] Will that have an impact on the midterms? We'll talk about that right after this. I'm sure that you've noticed that social media is now filled with information generated by AI. Dramatic descriptions of politicians and music stars supposedly making statements about a current issue,

[00:21:47] leaning into the microphone, looking into the lens, opponents silenced. It's powerful. It's riveting. And it's all lies. Even several national television networks were recently found using enhanced pictures, meaning manipulated, falsified, literally not giving a true picture. So many liars. So much deception. Where can we turn for truth?

[00:22:14] Right here from Kirby and the team at Point of View. We need your support. Please join the Point of View Truth team today with a monthly gift of $30 or more. Together, we can shine the light of truth and dispel the darkness and deception of this day. Give now at pointofview.net or call 1-800-347-5151.

[00:22:41] Pointofview.net and 800-347-5151. Point of View will continue after this. You are listening to Point of View.

[00:23:05] The opinions expressed on Point of View do not necessarily reflect the views of the management or staff of this station. And now, here again, is Kirby Anderson. Back once again, we're going to spend a little bit of time talking about Iran, but also in some respects looking at how that may have an impact on the midterm elections, which we're in the midst of. Then we will certainly finish off with a very good piece by Penne Dexter.

[00:23:30] Defending Child Mutilation is what it's entitled, but it relates very much to the conversation we had earlier in the week because the federal government published a report, Wolves in White Coats, how doctors and hospitals pushed and profited from the fraud of gender medicine. So we will get into that as well. But Derek Hunter, which I guess Liberty you know of, especially since you know somebody that is married to him, talks about the situation in Iran is going to hurt Republicans in the fall.

[00:23:59] And his argument is simply this. It may not affect oil because I will bring some of the facts into that in just a minute. We have used the military to protect a shipping corridor through the Strait of Hormuz. By the way, if you look at economics, you look at the futures for oil three years from now, those are even further down because they figure by then the pipelines will so bypass the Strait of Hormuz. That is the case.

[00:24:27] So oil may not be as much of an issue, but distraction might be. And even so, the oil is not going to reduce the price at the pump. And if affordability is the issue, here's how the Iran war could affect the midterm elections. Your thoughts? Yeah, I appreciated this perspective. I think he has a lot of common sense here. And yes, shout out to his wife, Heather, who showed me the roast of radio back in the day when I was just getting started. That's right.

[00:24:55] But yeah, I mean, at this point, you know, it's never really been popular. And so as we get nearer to the midterm elections, then I think Americans are wanting to see this wind down, even though any change at this point is unlikely to really even have an effect like on the economy in that short of a time, I think. And so I kind of agree with what he's saying here. You know, Iran, nobody wants them to get a nuclear weapon.

[00:25:21] Nobody wants them to have missile capabilities that could, you know, target us or our allies and put us at imminent risk. But if it was going to be taken care of, it needed to be taken care of quickly and totally. And that hasn't happened. And so what's happening now, I think that he has a good sense of it, is that President Trump is just, you know, really still in his business mentality thinking that he can negotiate something that is going to work out well.

[00:25:49] And so that's not really probably going to happen because the people that you're trying to negotiate with, we've talked about, you know, multiple times this regime is so extreme that there's not any reasonableness there. And so you either have to do a total defeat or, I guess, pull out. And so at this point, it seems like we're kind of just in this waiting game of no one's really winning anything, and it's not really good for the U.S. to drag it on for a long time.

[00:26:16] And then but the United States also isn't willing to do what's needed to finish the job, which would be a hard pill to swallow. So, yeah, there's a lot of good stuff here. Well, if nothing else, it just illustrates again that if you really wanted to change everything, it would be almost a World War II kind of boots on the ground. That's not going to happen. And, of course, I want to bring this to a broader issue in terms of the midterms,

[00:26:43] because if affordability is an issue or overextending our military is an issue, then that begins to be a talking point for some of the candidates that are running against individuals that are endorsed by Donald Trump, don't you think? Yeah, it becomes a fodder for the other side to use against people in their elections. And this is kind of feel this this does feel like, you know, Trump is as Trump does. And this feels classic for him to kind of get locked in on this thing

[00:27:12] and not necessarily account for all the consequences downstream of it because he's so hyper focused on we're close to a deal. We're close to a deal. It feels a little bit like Boy Who Cried Wolf. I'm like, how many times can we be close to a deal? I remember a few that haven't worked out so well. We have one. So, yeah, I think you've gotten it right, Kirby, and that this constant like we're close to a deal, we're in, we're out. It's just there's other problems that are happening that need to be addressed.

[00:27:42] And we're losing people that are in the middle. And those are the swing voters that we need in places where there's vulnerable senators, vulnerable House members. It's not necessarily about the presidential election right now, although it could quickly become about 2028. But right now it's those critical House and Senate seats or gubernatorial elections that are going to frustrate the rest of the conservative agenda and the rest of 2028 if we don't take care of them.

[00:28:10] And, again, let's broaden it up to just a few minutes because what we have seen over the last couple of weeks is an election of an individual that is a Democratic Socialist member, card-carrying member in Florida. And I think that one makes pretty clear that that seat that was originally held by Marco Rubio will stay Republican. But then you look to Michigan and you have an individual who says,

[00:28:35] well, I'm not really a Democratic Socialist, but I'm palling around with all sorts of individuals that certainly look like that. And that might be a pickup. So in some respects, is it possible that as silly as it is that we're fighting a war in Iran, people forget about that and instead just look at the kind of issues they talk about over the kitchen table?

[00:28:58] And that's perhaps the saving grace in this situation is that the Democrats are appealing to very, like, DSA type of candidates. And I think that also loses the middle. And they're not taking that into account either. And so we have both of these sides. We've got kind of the Trump camp that's losing the middle with what's going on in Iran. We've got the really progressive leftists that are losing the middle that are on that side of the equation. So, I mean, I'm pretty much a one-side voter for the most part.

[00:29:26] But if I were kind of this middle swing voter, I would feel a little forgotten. And I think it's ripe for the taking group if someone can focus. Yes. Well, again, the interview that a lot of people talk about is where you had Megan Romer, who was the vice president, if you will, vice chair of the Democratic Socialists of America. And first is on Fox News and then later is interviewed by someone at the New Yorker.

[00:29:55] So one is kind of left of center, one is right of center. But both times she is saying, oh, yeah, I think we need to defund the police. I think we need to close down any kind of ice at the border. I'm not really sure we even need prisons. And I think it is about time to maybe get rid of the president and the Supreme Court and just have them subservient to Congress. And at this point, I'm seeing Holly's head explode. No, I love it.

[00:30:24] I'm going to cheer that on, right? Because the harder we lean into that on the left, the more the moderates vote for the Republicans regardless of what's going on there. We don't even have Jeff Mateer here to have his head explode. Yeah, that's losing people. That is crazy stuff. And there's never a nuance or, well, maybe we'll get to that someday or maybe we misspoke. You're having a few people now saying, well, you're cherry picking, you're taking something out of context. But that's just not working very well. No, that's what they have been saying. We did have one kind of mea culpa, I guess,

[00:30:54] which was Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez trying to say, woke one was crazy. But people are still saying those kinds of things. So, yeah, I mean, you're so right, Holly. The middle really is up for grabs. So people probably aren't thinking about Iran every day unless, you know, they're in the service or have loved ones who are in the service and then they're worrying about what's going on every single day. So I think, you know, at the beginning, at the outset,

[00:31:21] Secretary of State Rubio really made the best case for why we were doing what we were doing and what goals we were trying to achieve. But I think it was a very hard balance to try to strike because President Trump had said that he wasn't going to start any new wars. And that is something that's really been important to Gen Z and a lot of just kind of independent middle-of-the-road voters. So MAGA has been very supportive, but that was something that he said. And so then we're trying to, you know, accomplish this big thing in Iran

[00:31:50] without actually getting ground troops involved. It was always going to be, you know, a very hard thing to accomplish. Well, again, you will see ads about military in Iran if that works. But it doesn't seem to be working. But the woke issue does. Here, by the way, is the booklet, Woke Christianity, and this is the September issue coming out and some others, in which there are just a fairly significant number, back to the point that you made a minute ago, Holly, that there are people in the middle that are going,

[00:32:18] I can't believe that some of these individuals were even elected in the Democratic primary. And I'm hoping that even though a few of them are in really Democrat-plus particular districts, I'm hoping most of them don't end up in Congress. And if they do, I hope they don't say too much. Yeah, I mean, I guess I'm working with reverse psychology here, because I'm going to lay it out on the table, James Tallarico. Say all the stuff about trans people needing abortion care. Yeah.

[00:32:47] Say all your crazies. Tell us how you really feel. And so the people that are just like reasonable Americans that want to make a good wage and live, you know, virtuous lives can know who they might be voting for when he's saying those things. Yeah, but it seems like it's more of the sometimes the media personalities or others who are trying to give them a second chance. Like, you don't actually mean that anymore, right? And then sometimes he comes back and says, yes, I do. No, we do. Double A. Yeah.

[00:33:16] And when you have Bill Maher, who is a liberal, atheist, secular progressive, saying these people are nuts. I mean, do you need any more? Just show those clips every day, and you'll tie at least some of these candidates to that. So we'll see. But I'm thinking that Iran war might not be a big issue in the midterms, but we'll find out. Let's take a break, though. Come back with Pennedexter's commentary, which you can hear right now if you're listening on computer. We'll be back right after this.

[00:33:59] This piece of news belongs in the category, shouldn't we have done this already? The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services just announced it has finalized a rule that eliminates all federal Medicaid and CHIP funding for sex-rejecting procedures on children and adolescents. CHIP is the Children's Health Insurance Program. The American College of Pediatricians describes sex-rejecting procedures as pharmaceutical and surgical interventions intended to alter a child's physical characteristics to resemble those of the opposite sex.

[00:34:29] Through Medicaid, the federal government has been subsidizing such gender transition procedures, including for minors, in more than half the states. In January 2025, via executive order, President Trump started the process to cut off this federal funding. The process included HHS's release of a 400-page report writing a rule aimed at eliminating the funding, public comment on the rule, and final adoption of the rule. In announcing the final rule, President Trump stated,

[00:34:56] we no longer are going to pay for our innocent children to undergo these barbaric surgeries and practices, which result in unthinkable and irreversible harm to their young bodies. But why did this take so long? We've had the CAST report out of the U.K., plus our own 400-page report, both showing the lack of scientific justification for these draconian protocols. Most Americans oppose them. The rulemaking process takes time, but the urgent necessity of stopping this mutilation of children and of protecting taxpayers from having to fund this evil

[00:35:25] should have prompted Congress to act. It's great that we now have this directive, but a radical future administration could reverse it. Congress should codify it. Health care providers could skirt this rule by miscoding a patient's diagnosis or prescription. The Washington Stand reports that Planned Parenthood affiliates admit to using endocrine disorder codes instead of gender identity disorder codes to get payment for gender transitions. We need vigorous enforcement of the new rule and congressional action. For Point of View, I'm Penna Dexter.

[00:36:00] You're listening to Point of View, your listener-supported source for truth. Back for a few more minutes, let me just mention that Penna Dexter's commentary today has the rather arresting title, Defunding Child Mutilation, but again, she's pointing out the fact that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced that it has finalized a rule that eliminates all federal Medicaid and CHIP. What's CHIP? Well, that's Children's Health Insurance Program funding

[00:36:26] for sex-rejecting procedures on children and adolescents. If you were listening earlier in the week, there was this very significant report, which again comes out from the Department of Health and Human Services, and I had a chance to interview one of the individuals that contributed to that, Wolves in White Coats, how doctors and hospitals pushed and profited from the fraud of gender medicine. And so you have some of these studies coming out

[00:36:55] from the federal government, but you also have the CASS report that came from a pediatrician in the U.K. about that as well. And so this, I think, is just a good illustration that as we've talked about before with this issue of transgenderism, that is an issue that has really begun to be pulled back. This is a good example where some of these woke ideas of Woke 1.0 are not surfacing in Woke 2.0.

[00:37:24] But again, the surveys, the studies, even the justifications were all based upon myths, flaws, even outright lies. And so Liberty, this I think is good news, and this is again showing that elections have consequences. This would not happen if Kamala Harris was the president of the United States. Yeah, and I do think about that. I mean, I think that this is one of those issues that common sense Americans, whether they identified as Republican or Democrat

[00:37:51] or independent who weren't far to the left extreme, had questions about. But for a long time, Woke 1, if you want to call it that, we weren't allowed to ask questions. And finally, you had some really brave whistleblowers, often who were very progressive themselves, and they were Democrats, they were, you know, they were LGB, and they were coming out and saying, this trans kids problem, like I've been working at these clinics.

[00:38:21] And I really applaud them, because they came out against their own political party, their own political side, oftentimes were just, you know, torn apart in the media, especially in the mainstream. And you had a few publications that would even publish their whistleblower report saying, we are being pushed and pressured to perform surgeries or give these hormones and medications to kids that are harming them. Here's the ways that they're being harmed. Here's the horrible things that I've seen,

[00:38:51] and I'm not allowed to question it. I'm not allowed to push back. I'm not allowed to say this is bad for kids. And so that, I think, was kind of one of the first, you know, few pieces that kind of started the avalanche. And then, of course, now you do have an administration that is standing up against this. And one of the worst things that I guess isn't really surprising, but it just is, I don't know, one more thing to just show how crazy this was and the lengths people will go sometimes to be self-serving

[00:39:20] is how much money they were making off of this and why you saw that funnel. Meanwhile, parents are told if you don't go this route, your kid might commit suicide. And so they're pressured to do something out of fear. And meanwhile, you have the medical industry that's benefiting off of literally destroying children's lives. So, I mean, I'm so glad that we seem to be past that, but people say never again about a lot of things. And I think we also have to not be too comfortable because at some point in our lifetime,

[00:39:50] this might cycle around again. And we have to be bold to speak the truth about it. I'm thinking about Valerie Klusterman in the University of Michigan, who was an outstanding individual who was in the health care system. But then, because you wouldn't go along with some of these transgender ideas, they fired her. But again, the good news is they finally turned that around. Yeah, she ended up coming to a very favorable outcome because she had the courage to stand up.

[00:40:20] It takes people being willing to speak up, even if it means losing their jobs or having people disagree with them that they thought would be there and would agree and turn their back on them. It's the courage of individuals that are close to this issue that are willing to say, I'm not letting this slide. That's so critical. And the money, too, that you mentioned that's in it, you might have talked about this back in May,

[00:40:48] but the state of Texas had sued a hospital for performing these. And one of the outcomes was that that hospital now has to create a detransition clinic. So it's cool to see that that money that was put into it is now going to be put into reverse hand. I think that was smart lawyering on their behalf. But, you know, no, you don't have to be a lawyer for Celebrity Institute or a lawyer with the state able to sue these hospitals. I think you said it right. We just have to be willing to stand up for what's true and what's right

[00:41:17] and join forces with people like J.K. Rowling, who you would never imagine would be on our side. Right. Harry Potter author. She had books that a lot of people that are believers weren't even allowed to read because they involved witchcraft. And she suddenly became the bastion for truth briefly. So, you know, things have gone off the rails. But we needed voices like that. We needed people like Riley Gaines that were speaking about sports. We needed people. I mean, it did. Sophie Cunningham. Sophie Cunningham. It affected so many areas of our lives. And it's cool to see. I think this detransition clinic

[00:41:47] is like a first big step on undoing some of this. Yeah. And one of the things you mentioned is that some of the people that were not on our side, I'm thinking of Lisa Littman. She was at Brown University. And she was the one that says, this strikes me as social contagion. If you're not familiar, Brown University is in Rhode Island, small state in the country. And in a small town, in a small state, all the girls thought they were gender, you know, going to be boys. And as a result said,

[00:42:17] this is obviously social contagion. And they began to label her as hard right and everything. She says, look, I've never voted for a Republican in my life. I later was at a men's retreat. And one of them was a professor at Brown and talked about how they just moved her off to the side because she was willing to speak the truth, even as a liberal progressive. And that was just not to be accepted. And so we're hoping that, as you said,

[00:42:45] Liberty woke 2.0. Maybe now we don't see some of that. And Valerie and a variety of other people have won the war, but we need to be ever vigilant. So I'm going to probably do a new version of the transgender thing because now we have so many studies that demonstrate this. And as we pointed out on Tuesday, and Penna mentions this at the very end, they were so deliberate that instead of listing them as gender identity disorder codes, they used endocrine disorder codes

[00:43:14] so that they could actually misrepresent what's going on. I think some people should go to jail or at least be fine, but we'll find out how that unfolds in the future, right? Yeah. And let's remember that this was happening, this changing gender identity disorder codes to endocrine disorder codes when there was nothing actually wrong with the children's hormones. This was at the height of the body positivity movement. Yeah. So this was so hypocritical out of one side of your mouth to say,

[00:43:44] accept yourself, love who you are, love your body. And then on the other hand, oh, let's mutilate your body if you think that, you know, if for some reason you think that you're in the wrong body. And so one of the most important things that we can do is to give kids a foundation of that biblical perspective, biblical worldview of how they are created and designed and how, you know, God doesn't make mistakes and your body is good. And we just, you know,

[00:44:13] I think Christians realize like, okay, we got to start that theology young. You can probably find a pretty good biology class at a Christian school and use your school vouchers together. Yeah, that's a great way for Christians, yes, to get involved in education. I do remember one individual you actually defended who was a biology professor who actually said there are two genders and that was controversial. So here we go. I wish we had more time, but we were out of time before we're out of content. So first of all, thank you both for being here.

[00:44:42] And of course, I want to thank Megan for her help engineering the program and of course, Derek for producing the program as well. If you find yourself saying you covered a lot of this, but I'd like to read it again, all the commentaries here about everything from online sports betting and what's going on with the issue of some of the leftist issues and religious accommodation, all right there on the website. Next week, we're going to talk about the Smithsonian Institution. We're going to talk about radical Islam. So I hope you'll join us right back here on Monday

[00:45:12] on Point of View. In 19th century London, two towering historical figures did battle, not with guns and bombs, but words and ideas. London was home to Karl Marx, the father of communism, and legendary Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon. London was in many ways the center of the world, economically, militarily, and intellectually. Marx sought to destroy religion, the family,

[00:45:42] and everything the Bible supports. Spurgeon stood against him, warning of socialism's dangers. Spurgeon understood Christianity is not just religious truth, it is truth for all of life. Where do you find men with that kind of wisdom to stand against darkness today? Get the light you need on today's most pressing issues delivered to your inbox when you sign up for the Viewpoints commentary at pointofview.net

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