Point of View February 7, 2025 – Hour 2 : Weekend Edition

[00:00:04] Across America, Live, this is Point of View, and now, Kirby Anderson.

[00:00:20] Second hour today, if you'd like to join the conversation, that number is 1-800-351-1212. Liberty McCarter with us, and again, we're going to be talking about a number of other issues, including the decision to bar men from participating in women's sports. That comes not just from the federal government, now the NCAA, but let's take a few phone calls along the way because we've certainly covered a lot of issues. So let's go out to Illinois WPEO in Peoria, Illinois. Darrell, thank you for joining us today.

[00:00:51] I'm very pleased to see some of these bizarre programs finally being weeded out and terminated. But who thinks you can shut down a multi-billion dollar program and just turn off the whole thing like you turn off a car without all kinds of collateral damage?

[00:01:12] There's all kinds of food and medicine that's in transit that appears to have just been abandoned and now it's subject to theft and spoilage. Mr. Musk has all these smart people weeding out these programs. They're not smart enough just to weed out what's a problem and keep things that are really good and important?

[00:01:37] It seems to me that what I see with USAID is that because that's been put under the purview of the State Department, you would hope that the State Department would be able to address those kinds of issues. I saw a press conference the other day with Marco Rubio and I felt pretty comfortable about how he's going to handle that. But your point's well taken and that is Elon Musk or even Donald Trump can't end a program. That's going to require some kind of congressional action, I would suspect.

[00:02:07] But you certainly can begin to change it. And so in some respects, if you can't end a program, at least you can mend it. What about that? Right. And I think Darrell hits the right point. The first week of Donald Trump looked like he was just going and blowing and doing well. The second week is when he starts sending out various types of executive orders, ending certain programs and so forth. And then people say, but wait a minute, we've got people are getting this money here. There's people who need medicine and food. OK, we'll bring it back. We'll resend out this order and we'll do something a little different.

[00:02:36] And then we'll resend it out a second time. And that's and that happened with Medicaid. I mean, some of the things they're wanting to do with funding there and they came back and said, well, is Medicare and Social Security covered in that? Well, no, no, it's not. That's not. Well, it doesn't look like you're exempting it. And then what about Medicaid? Well, we mean to we don't mean to do that with Medicaid yet. So I think Daryl's got a point is that this was some of these look like they were well thought out and been spending some time on.

[00:03:02] Some of them look like they were sort of a rush job and didn't didn't say we need to be careful about doing this because of some people who will be hurt. And again, you never know what Donald Trump's going to say. I didn't know we were going to have beachfront condominiums in Gaza. Did you? Yeah. So obviously that's the case. Daryl, I think you raised a good question. I think I feel a little more comfortable because I do have a trust in certainly Marco Rubio and the State Department.

[00:03:28] But that is a big question, because one of the reasons, as we've said before, that you almost never see the ending of any program is you always have liberty, some constituency that said, well, yeah, but if we just maybe change it or tweak it, we can keep that there. And of course, the American people are saying, well, we don't mind helping needy people, but we sure be seem to be sending a lot of money to a lot of different countries, many of whom hate us. Yes.

[00:03:55] And so, you know, you have the number crunchers, I imagine, over there working with Musk. And then you've got people that are on the ground seeing that the aid that is needed and how it's actually being used. And I think Daryl raises that point of what happened in the middle there. You can say, hey, look, we need to start cutting some things. But practically, you know, it can be complicated to take follow that thread all the way through and see, well, what's it actually going to affect?

[00:04:23] But should that keep us from tackling it just because it might be complicated? No. If there's spending if there's money that's not being stewarded well, it needs to be addressed. But it's easy to just go through and cut. It's a little harder and more complicated to try to make sure that we're doing so carefully. And even to your point with the State Department, are the people at the State Department the people who have put part of the 40,000 who are going to take the buyout and leave?

[00:04:50] And even if you even if you have people there who have some background in this, just getting up to speed on all these programs and then trying to figure out, is this is this necessary? Where is it in the process? If we're going to cut it, do we cut it now? Do we cut it later? There's just so much going on there that's going to I don't think they did this very well. I would rather them had said we're going to take 90 days to figure out what we're going to cut just just to be a smoother transition there.

[00:05:19] Let's see if I can, since you and I are a little bit older. Remember the Grace Commission. Remember this? Oh, yeah. And that is where in the 1980s there was an attempt by an outside individual, a businessman, Mr. Grace, Peter Grace. And they actually then issued a report. And because the report kind of went nowhere, there was a lot of hoop and holler, but no real action. They I think this time it's almost like, OK, we're bowling a China closet.

[00:05:48] And so I think there is a problem if all you issue is a report or create another commission. But there's also a problem if you go too fast and individuals that have no sense of history about that as well. So, again, those are just some points that I think we'll be talking about. And since I mentioned Gaza, I did want to give both of you a chance to comment about that. I've already made some comments. Let's go to South Carolina on the Good News Network. Daniel, what's on your mind?

[00:06:16] Yeah, I just want to say that I'm real excited about the statement Trump made. And, you know, you mentioned that the pier was a big flop the other day, but that was Biden. Trump is an international developer. And I'm real optimistic about this. Yeah, I did mention the fact that, OK, we haven't exactly had the greatest experience there in Gaza. Remember the pier that didn't work? Yeah, it didn't work. And, of course, are we going to deploy military?

[00:06:45] Because I don't think that's going to work so well. And, of course, then as soon as he talked about wanting to move them out so we could build everything, then, of course, is ethnic cleansing and all those kinds of things. And I've heard two things from Trump. The media seem to be saying move them out permanently. I thought I understood Trump to say move them out until you get the place rebuilt. Yeah. But Egypt and Jordan do not want them. They don't want Palestinians. They don't want them. Jordan has got a lot.

[00:07:13] And the problem is the Palestinian population, this is not going to apply to all of them, but many of them are just problem people. I mean, they want to get back at Israel. They want to destroy Israel and other things. And so when you get people who are eager to overthrow governments in order to be able to have control over things, you don't want those people in your country as just as we don't want certain people in our country. For those of you that travel to Israel, and I think we have, we could just say that west coast there of the Mediterranean,

[00:07:42] this could be if you ever could remove all the tension and everything, and it could be like the Monaco of the area there because it's a beautiful place, and you could have hotels and condos and all sorts of things. But right now, of course, it is a war zone. It looks like a war zone. So there is where we find ourselves. Anyway, we took a couple calls. We'll take some more in just a few minutes, 1-800-351-1212.

[00:08:06] But I want to spend a little bit of time when we come back from the break talking about this whole idea of men in women's sports. You have seen some interesting reactions for some that have said we simply cannot ban transgender women, that is men that now call themselves women from sports. You've had most Americans saying this just doesn't seem fair. You've had, of course, the NCAA actually now wanting to bar men from competing in women's sports.

[00:08:35] And then you have ESPN saying, well, this is just trying to ban individuals who were assigned their gender at birth. So we'll come back and try to sort through that right after this. This is Viewpoints with Kirby Anderson.

[00:09:02] It didn't take long before the media launched what John Nolte referred to as the hoax machine. He was referring to the way many in the media portrayed Elon Musk's arm movement as a Nazi salute. But, you know, later in his article, he provided a hoax list that included nearly 40 examples promoted by the mainstream media. Each hoax on the list has a link so you can check it out for yourself. Now, many of them were the false claims about Donald Trump. A few examples are the very fine people hoax and Trump trashes troops hoax.

[00:09:32] Each of those have been debunked by knowledgeable people who were present at the time. And, of course, we cannot forget the many that were associated with Trump's first term. For example, like the Russia collusion hoax. Now, the pandemic brought many hoaxes. A few examples where the COVID lab leak theory is racist hoax and the COVID deaths are overcounted is a conspiracy theory hoax. Many of the hoaxes involved media correspondents rushing to really false conclusions or sometimes repeating false allegations.

[00:10:02] A few examples of those would be the Covington kids hoax as well as the hands up, don't shoot hoax. And there was the prominent hoax involving Jesse Smollett. Of course, his hoax gained national attention because of who he was and also what he claimed happened to him. In previous commentaries, I've listed on a regular basis the increasing number of fake hate crimes that misrepresent how Americans treat each other and waste law enforcement's time and money investigating them.

[00:10:29] So the lesson here is to be skeptical and discerning when you hear or read something reported in the news or repeated on social media. The story and the subsequent claims may merely be another hoax. I'm Kirby Anderson, and that's my point of view. For a free booklet on a biblical view on big data, go to viewpoints.info slash data. That's viewpoints.info slash data.

[00:10:58] You're listening to Point of View, your listener-supported source for truth. Back once again, one of the articles we've posted here, NCAA bars men from competing in women's sports. And again, earlier, if you were with us, we were talking with Tim Wildman. He was talking about the courage and really the foresight of Riley Gaines, a swimmer who has now become a political activist.

[00:11:22] And Liberty, this article is just a reminder that most Americans think it just is not fair to have men competing in women's sports. And everybody, I think, really applauded when the executive order was signed by Donald Trump. And I could see Riley Gaines over his shoulder. And I think now the NCAA says, you know, maybe that makes some sense. Your thoughts?

[00:11:45] Well, in 2023, almost 70 percent of Americans said that they were opposed to biological men playing in women's sports. And even before the election, just a few months ago, that was still a high number. That was one of the big issues that people were thinking about leading up to the election. So, yeah, I think a lot of people will agree with this, even if not everybody says it out loud. But it really it boils down to women deserve spaces that are for women.

[00:12:15] And if you are going to have equal opportunity, which we should, then especially when you get to these highly competitive levels of athleticism and professional teams, Olympic competition, then you need an opportunity for women to have the fairest competition possible, which is playing against other biological females. And obviously, you know, people have pointed out, well, there's a wide range in ability and, you know, hormones, even in women.

[00:12:45] But it's like, well, it's not that complicated. You know, women play against women. Men play against men. And, yeah, you're going to have some women that are faster and stronger and more muscular naturally. And so they're going to rise to the top. But they are having that fair opportunity because they are playing in a category with other women. And so I think a lot of people are happy to see this change. One of the things I think is so striking, and Dr. Matthews, you and I have seen this before in terms of some of the medical studies that have been done,

[00:13:14] I've seen individuals who are promoting the trans athletes saying, well, I've got this one study here, and it actually shows that there is really no difference and that even if they're taking hormone blockers, this is a fair one-on-one type of situation. But I've seen some other individuals that have said, well, yeah, that one study was a little bit questionable. But I have 13 others that should basically show common sense, that we know men and women are different.

[00:13:42] And so I think people just need to have a little bit of discernment when they hear some of these statements being made. Need to have a little discernment. And just, you know, it's been so much a part of our life. If you go to a golf course, you have the men's tees and the women's tees. It's a little closer. Yeah, I've been in martial arts for years. In the men's black belt fighting, the guys are rough. And women can be too, but the guys are bigger and other things. And you just don't want to do that. In some sports, you might be able to.

[00:14:11] You know, in the Olympic sports curling, where they push that little thing along the ice. It may be that you can have men and women mixed in there, ping pong or something like that. I don't know. There may be some differences there. But it's just in some of these really competitive, very aggressive sports, you need to have, you need to separate that. One of the reasons I posted this article is, again, you're going to see, I mentioned ESPN.

[00:14:37] They said, well, the president today signed something that actually discriminated against individuals whose sex was determined at birth. And I thought, that came from ESPN. But it did. And so I wanted you to know that at least the NCAA is recognizing what most people have understood for some time. And there's going to be a tendency sometimes to say, if it weren't for Donald Trump, in some respects he's been the tip of the spear.

[00:15:05] But once he's made some statements, it's been an opportunity then to protect women. And you, Liberty, and I have seen some women that have actually been physically hurt because of some of the policies here. Right. And one of the, in the article that you posted, it mentions Peyton McNabb, who, this was in high school, and a male volleyball player spiked a ball into her face. Yes, I saw that picture. So, you know, there is a lot of danger here.

[00:15:32] I remember I played basketball in high school, and sometimes our coach would actually have a scrimmage against the boys' team to just, you know, test us, to challenge us, and push us. But, again, these guys were friends. Okay? They weren't going to intentionally be rough and hurt us. It was more to challenge us to, you know, run as fast as we could and play against somebody who was, you know, not necessarily more skilled but physically stronger. So, again, this is just common sense.

[00:15:58] If you, and if you open the door, then you are going to have people, unfortunately, who actually take advantage of that, even if they don't truly maybe believe that they are transgender. And then you're putting, you know, young girls, young women in a position where they could get seriously hurt because you have somebody in there that doesn't have good intentions in the first place. So it's good.

[00:16:19] I think, you know, Trump has kind of opened the door for people to say what they've been feeling for a long time on this and make those policies official in their own organizations. I think in the Olympics you had men competing as women. If I remember right, in the boxing match, a man hit a woman. I was going to mention that one. And she was, it just, she said she had never been hit so hard because some of these guys have just got real strong muscles.

[00:16:45] Some of them may be, you know, it's just, it's clear there's a difference there. And if you put the men, a lot of women, and I think it's mostly men wanting to go to women, not typically women wanting to go to men. I haven't seen it either way. Yeah, that tells everything. There's been a girl who kicks, is a field goal kicker and so forth. So you do get a little bit of that, but it's clearly there's a difference there. And I think the country and the world is beginning to wake up to this. I think so too.

[00:17:14] Well, let's move on unless you have a comment or question about that. I just, again, some good news. And we like to give you that kind of news because I think that has been something a long time coming. One of the other articles I posted, the Attorney General Pam Bondi. Now, again, we don't have anybody here from First Liberty. But you don't have to necessarily be a lawyer to recognize that she has hit the ground running.

[00:17:34] And Liberty, let me just come to you for just a minute because, first of all, she wants to investigate these states that are, and sometimes they're states, cities, counties that are so-called sanctuary cities. And there's a big debate about how you define what that is. But nevertheless, she wants to address that issue. She wants to address some other issues. And one of the things she just did her first interview, I think it was with Sean Hannity, talking about the fact there's a two-tier system.

[00:18:02] You know, certain individuals are treated differently. We mentioned Hillary Clinton and actually some of those issues or the difference between the way they treated Donald Trump taking particular materials out of the White House compared to Joe Biden and whether they're next to his maverick or whether it was in Mar-a-Lago. So it just seems to me that there is an attempt by Pam Bondi to say we're going to come back to the way the Justice Department used to be. Yeah, I hope so.

[00:18:30] And, you know, we should be correcting injustice with justice, not with vengeance or lawfare. I did kind of raise my eyebrow at a quote from Trump saying I'm supposed to say she'll be totally impartial with respect to Democrats and she'll be as impartial as a person can be. You know, typical Trump statement. But let's hope that Pam Bondi herself actually, you know, proceeds with justice and a level playing field with regard to the sanctuary city policies.

[00:19:00] You know, one of the things that I just wrote about for Outlook magazine, which will be coming out soon, is how many children are being exploited by illegal immigrants in some cases and, you know, forced to work, not being in school. And so I really hope that they tackle that and that if there are places where they're kind of hiding in plain sight, that they'll be able to address that and help those children and get some of those cases solved.

[00:19:30] When Democrats ask if Pam Bondi will be impartial, we can say she'll be at least as impartial as Bobby Kennedy was, who's the attorney general under his brother, John Kennedy. And maybe even as impartial as Merrick Garland. But again, the level is so low. We set the bar so low that. But again, there are again for our younger listeners and Liberty represents the younger generation.

[00:19:57] There was a time when you honestly felt, let's think under the Bush administration, for example, John Ashcroft and people like that. You really honestly believe that they would call balls and strikes. And there was not the politicization that has taken place in the Justice Department.

[00:20:13] And I think we all long for a time in which the attorney general was an individual that almost seemed completely separate from the executive branch and would even call upon the president or call for a special investigation. If there was something the president did that was illegitimate. It was attorney general Bill Barr who went to the president to the White House on December 1st of 2020 and said, Mr. President, we cannot find as significant evidence of fraud that would give you the election.

[00:20:43] So, yes, he did that. And he had to be he ended up having to leave. But that was attorney general who told the president what he what he felt like was the case. We go all the way back to the Nixon years. And you had, of course, the the midnight massacre and a few things like that. So, again, you can look it up if you're young, because that's part of history. But there was a time in which we expected the attorney general to actually really play it down the middle. And so much so that some people said, are you sure that you actually appointed that person there?

[00:21:13] Just as we would expect Supreme Court justices. Not always that's worked out so well either. But that's been the goal. And let's see where it goes next. We come back from the break, though. We've got a federal debt. We have doge to the rescue? Question mark. We'll talk about that right after this. The Bible tells us not to worry. And yet there is a lot of worrying stuff in our world today. Thankfully, the Bible doesn't stop at telling us not to worry.

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[00:22:40] Let's pray together for God to make a difference in America. Point of View will continue after this. You are listening to Point of View. The opinions expressed on Point of View do not necessarily reflect the views of the management or staff of this station.

[00:23:09] And now, here again, is Kirby Anderson. Back once again, we're spending some time now, if we can, maybe focusing on this whole area of trying to get some control on our federal debt. And that article, I think by you, Dr. Merrill Matthews, reminds us that when we talk about debt that just keeps skyrocketing and it goes higher and higher every year, I oftentimes pull up the debt clock and just gives me anxiety to look at it. Just tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick.

[00:23:39] And every particular second, it is going up by more. But if we're going to even get close to cutting the federal debt, as you point out, and you pointed out years ago in your book, which I hold up once again, you've got to address some of the entitlements, don't you? Got to address the entitlements. And they're starting right now with looking. There is some discussion about Medicaid. Medicaid. They may be doing some cuts in that, probably some cuts in welfare, putting in a work function again.

[00:24:09] That's sort of got pulled out a little bit during the Obama years. So, yeah, I think they want to start. They're not going to do it all at once. But my goodness, we're getting started on some of these things anyway. Yeah. But nothing else, Liberty, I want to come to you because the younger you are, the more you're like, how did this happen? And, of course, we've lived through this time in which, as I point out, when Ronald Reagan took office, I don't think the national debt was $1 trillion. It was close to it.

[00:24:37] And so from George Washington to Ronald Reagan, $1 trillion, that was a pretty good investment when you think about all the things in terms of interstate commerce and the highway system and the railroads. And now $1 trillion is half of the deficit for one year. Yes, I know. It's just how did this happen? And for your generation, I think you have every reason to be upset about this because we've been seeing this unfold before our very eyes. Well, it is overwhelming.

[00:25:04] And I know that many young adults do struggle financially, whether with student loans or just inflation and interest rates and unable to buy homes. And so if you are worried about personal debt, don't look at the national debt clock or not to instill worry. But it is a big issue.

[00:25:27] And so I would just encourage young adults and young people to consider that while it might be unpopular, especially among younger generations, when you start cutting welfare, you start cutting some of those entitlements. If something doesn't change, though, then years down the line, our entire nation is going to suffer. And you're going to have a lot more people, I think, who are suffering because the nation has not been fiscally responsible and we are in so much debt.

[00:25:55] And so if I may just even address some of those concerns that I know a lot of young adults probably are facing when it comes to, okay, well, what happens to the poor? What happens to the people who are truly needy when you start cutting some of those things? Well, they're probably going to be cut. If we want to cut our national debt, they probably need to. Be preemptive now by starting to get involved in your community and address some of those needs outside of the government, get involved in food ministry.

[00:26:24] I mean, we've heard of churches who have come together and paid off the medical debt of everybody in their county. That's the kind of stuff that as Christians we should be doing and we can start doing now. But that's kind of the difference that you need to see in terms of how are we addressing our needs while still being good stewards of, you know, taxes that people pay and the money that we have as a nation. So the largest budget item in the government is Social Security.

[00:26:49] And the way you address this is you say to young people, if you want to take part, you can take, say, right now, if you're working for an employer, 12.4 percent of your income goes into a payroll tax for Social Security. 12.4 percent, half paid by you, half paid by the employer. If you could let a portion of that, say the employer continues to go to the federal government, but the other half, 6.2 percent, goes into a private account for you. That's right.

[00:27:17] Where you can't go out and day trade with it. It would go into, you know, one of a few general large mutual funds that would invest in the S&P 500 or the NASDAQ or something like that. But over time, you will become fairly quickly a millionaire. And by the time you retire, you could have a couple of million dollars. And the government would not be wouldn't owe this money. It wouldn't be an object on the federal government.

[00:27:42] And most companies have already shifted away from private pensions to 401ks. So the company may put part of that money in there. They want you to put some money in it. But we're doing this in the business world. It needs to be done in the federal government. Now, sometimes they talk about it back in the 2000s. We talked about this with George Bush. But Democrats immediately come up and say, this is terrible. We can't do this. President Trump has said not going to touch Social Security.

[00:28:10] I don't know if that means you can't let somebody say, I'm taking half of mine to do this and the other half over here. There would be a budget that we have a deficit we'd have to hit as more and more people get put money aside in their own accounts. But within 30 or 40 years, you would essentially have Social Security privatized. Yes. And again, I remember years ago when I wrote a book, I said somewhere along the line, we're going to eventually break the bank.

[00:28:34] And the one thing I didn't anticipate is that they would never, ever get to the point where they'd have to cut Social Security. So they would just print more money. And so unfortunately, that's the other issue that is affecting the younger generation is the dollar is worth less and less. Now, we went off the gold standard in 1971. And so as a result, you've seen this plunge. But then it even got worse when we have the pandemic. And of course, nobody's working.

[00:29:01] So then we will print lots of money and give everybody money. And then the inflation goes up and all the rest. And so it's a pay-as-you-go system. I know there are listeners out there right now that say, wait a minute, I paid into Social Security. My name is John Smith. And there is a little box there that says, John Smith waiting for me to get. And it's not. They send you a notice every year saying, you've paid in this and this is what you expect. But that money has gone right back out to pay for other people.

[00:29:30] And so that money is not saved anywhere. It is, they owe you money and they'll have to rely on future taxpayers to pay you that money. And there was a poll done back in the late 90s, early 2000s by Frank Luntz. It was a famous poll. He went to young people and said, which do you think is more likely? Yes, I remember this. UFOs are that you will get Social Security when you retire.

[00:29:56] And the majority said UFOs exist is more likely than I will get my Social Security. Maybe that's why the government has started saying we're seeing UFOs so that we can get distracted. Yeah, I will more likely to run into an alien and not an illegal alien, but an alien from another galaxy than I am to get my Social Security. And that is indeed the case. And they might be right. And they might be right. Before we take a break, one of the other articles I've posted is Doge to the Rescue.

[00:30:24] And first of all, I'm just thinking that I might just mention that you have the Know Why podcast, Liberty. And this is something I think maybe you're going to be talking about to the younger generation. But a lot of people wonder, okay, will the Doge cuts be enough so that my particular generation can actually receive federal funds when we eventually retire?

[00:30:45] Well, it's something that we've got to think about and that we have to think about when we're hearing about these cuts, when we're hearing about policies, is it's not just an immediate concern that we have to think about, but we have to think about the future as well. We don't want to say, okay, well, as long as I get my money or I get my loan canceled or I get whatever, let's think about our kids. Let's think about the future.

[00:31:13] And hopefully we can start working toward a nation that is a little more fiscally responsible by the time our grandkids are here. And so those are the things that we have to think about as being forward thinking in terms of these issues. And again, if we're concerned about things like welfare, then, well, let's go do something about it ourselves instead of trying to rely on the government to take care of everything.

[00:31:36] Trump is going the other direction because he has proposed that right now Social Security benefits are taxed. If you get above a certain amount, they will actually tax your Social Security benefits as income. And Trump has said he wants that to stop so that we aren't taxing it. Now, on the one hand, I agree with that because Social Security is a tax and now you're taxing. You tax me and now you're taxing the money you're giving back to me, even though it was a tax. On the other hand, we don't have a budget surplus. No, we don't.

[00:32:05] And I'm not sure we're going to be able to have a sovereign wealth fund or all these other things because we don't have the money. And again, they're talking about right now no taxes on tips, no taxes on overtime, no taxes on Social Security benefits. He just told the White House, not the White House, but the Republicans in Congress that he wants that to be part of the tax bill. I don't know if it will be, but he wants it there. Yeah. And again, I don't want to sound like Scrooge, but you know, there's only so much money and we are not bringing it in.

[00:32:34] And again, the only alternative, since we're not going to default on our debt and certainly the other alternative of trying to tax people more. Well, there's not enough. Even if you could take every dollar that Elon Musk has, it doesn't even come close to covering the debt. So sooner or later you and you can cut a little bit, but not much. And just to give you a sense of how big this is, we would have had to cut $2 trillion from last year's budget just to be balanced. Yeah. Cut $2 trillion just to be balanced.

[00:33:04] And that's just not there. So the only other alternative is, guess what? Printing more money. Yeah. And that's sad commentary. Well, we're going to take a break. And when we come back, you might want to listen to the piece by Pentatextra. If you have a computer, it's called A Deep State Disempowerment. Very good piece. And we'll talk about that. And, of course, then what if you are telling people to go and the commissioner at the Federal Elections Commission says, I'm not leaving.

[00:33:32] I was actually appointed by President George Bush in 2002. My term expired after five years. But I'm not leaving. What's going to happen then? We'll talk about that right after this. A presidential transition always involves firing federal bureaucrats that populated the previous administration.

[00:34:00] The Trump team entered office motivated and prepared for this work. The Napolitan Institute, an organization founded by pollster Scott Rasmussen, recently released a poll of Washington, D.C.-based federal bureaucrats. 64% of those who voted for Kamala Harris for president said they would not follow a lawful order from President Trump if they disagreed with it. 42% of federal government managers with annual salaries of $75,000 or more said they plan to politically oppose the administration.

[00:34:29] Senator Rand Paul told the Daily Signal that any government employee who refuses a lawful order by the president should be fired for a cause immediately. The trouble is that there are career bureaucrats, often lifelong federal employees, who are protected from termination because they are not classified as policymaking executive branch employees. Some of these employees do influence policy. During his first term, President Trump experienced intense opposition from certain progressive bureaucrats.

[00:34:58] So he issued an executive order creating a new category of federal employee, Schedule F. These are previously protected employees whose jobs do entail making certain decisions that impact policy. Under the Trump order, these employees would no longer be shielded from termination for perceived disloyalty to the president and his agenda. President Biden repealed the Trump order upon entering office. And he implemented a rule that prevents the firing of career civil servants.

[00:35:25] Federal employees that have policymaking and policy influencing roles can form part of the deep state that plagues incoming presidents when they try to implement conservative policies. That's why President Trump is restoring Schedule F. Congress should now consider enshrining it into federal law. As Senator Katie Britt of Alabama put it, civil servants must serve our nation, not their political party. For Point of View, I'm Penna Dexter.

[00:35:54] You're listening to Point of View, your listener-supported source for truth. Back once again, I might just mention that we do have posted, as we always do, Penna Dexter's commentary today. It's entitled Deep State Disempowerment. And, again, I might also mention that if you go down and click on Seymour Viewpoints, mine today is on parents and radical storybooks. That's a case before the Supreme Court. I did talk about it the other day.

[00:36:18] So let's liberty get to this one first because there is always, whenever a new administration comes in, a desire to fire certain bureaucrats. But this one has been an attempt to say, are individuals who are here not going to actually fulfill their requirements to actually serve at the whim or at the direction of the president?

[00:36:42] And I, earlier in the week, talked about one survey, which was pretty striking, that those individuals that are in the government who voted for Kamala Harris, a very high percentage of them said they would disobey a direct order from Donald Trump if they disagreed with it, even if it was a legally constituted order. So Penna's talking about the fact, well, what do you do when you have somebody that says, I'm not going to leave?

[00:37:09] And that isn't just hypothetical because the current commissioner, who's the chair of the FCC, Ellen Weintraub, was first appointed, can you believe this, by President Bush in 2002. Okay, five-year term up, but is still the acting commissioner in the FCC. And so Donald Trump said, okay, time for you to go. You are hereby removed as member of the Federal Elections Commission, effective immediately.

[00:37:37] She writes, nope, there's a legal way to replace the FEC commissioners, and this isn't. And so I'm not leaving. What about that? Well, I mean, I think Penna's inclusion of this quote from Senator Katie Britt just, you know, expresses it so well. Civil servants must serve our nation, not their political party. And you were talking about a time when the attorney general was not politicized.

[00:38:00] And so when you are a civil servant, you know, the problem is people who are in these roles but who are so politicized that they are really functioning as another branch in and of themselves. So they're making policies, but it's very partisan. And then these become, you know, long careers rather than a focus on, you know, serving potentially for a short term.

[00:38:29] And it's not really serving the American people well. Now, if they don't, if it goes against their conscience to implement certain policies or things or orders from President Trump, then they have every right to oppose that and resign and find a job that they can do with a clean conscience. But when you are in that role and your job is to execute, you know, what has been constitutionally stated, then, yeah, you're going to have to either do that or go somewhere else.

[00:38:55] And this is where I think Trump faces some challenges because Trump is in a hurry. He's a man in a hurry and he wants to get these things done. But there are these procedures that you have to go through. And you remember that Trump came in because President Obama created DACA, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. And Trump said, well, if he did it with an executive action, I'll do it with an executive action. He did not go through the Administrative Procedures Act approach. And so the court said, no, you can't do that.

[00:39:24] You've got to go through the proper approach. So for better or worse, these procedures are out there. And I hope Trump will at least pay attention to him and try to go through. Now, whether or not he's got the authority to do this with this with this FCC chairman, I don't have any idea. But he'll need to go through some of these things in order to make sure they happen. And a lot of them need to happen. What about the order or at least the offer? That's probably a better way to say it because I read that the other day of what was there. You can resign just by putting resign in your email.

[00:39:54] And I think it looks like maybe $40,000. $40,000. Which is lower than they thought. They were hoping to get significantly more. But again, you could resign and still get paid all the way to September 30th. Sounds like a sweet deal, especially if you were planning on leaving anyway. And, of course, the question has come. Does he, because Congress has to appropriate all funds, do you as the president have the right to be able to do that since it goes past the budget, which the budget ends in March right now, the extension that they have? So I don't have an answer for that.

[00:40:23] And I'm looking into the courts. But I do think, I think it's going to be interesting, and I mentioned this off the air, that if the Supreme Court takes a lot of these things, they may find with Democrats on many of these cases, in which I think you'll find Democrats saying, this is a great Supreme Court. This is a really good Supreme Court. Why in the world are we thinking about trying to go in there and rattle the Supreme Court? Yeah, so we'll see how that goes.

[00:40:47] And again, there are a number of individuals on the court right now that simply say, look, if Congress did not do its work, don't expect the Supreme Court to do it for you. So I do see that that's at least a possibility. Some other things I want to talk about, but I thought just maybe pick out one more phone call. And again, if you don't get your phone calls in, well, there's always next week as well. But we'll head out to California. KNLB, Kathy, I think you want to add some things to our conversation today.

[00:41:15] Yes, I was looking up on history of the USAID, and there was a couple of things on YouTube that I came across. And the first one, well, the first one, the USAID inadvertently funded gain-of-function research two days ago. It was, I guess, the Hill that put that out. Yes, I think there was, what, several million dollars that they funded on gain-of-function.

[00:41:45] And I don't know that that was recent. That may have been for a little while. But that's been, of course, an issue for some time now because it was going to the Wuhan Institute in China. Yeah. So you're right on that one, Kathy. Even though Anthony Fauci said they weren't doing that. Yeah. And the other thing is there's another one that came out just 22 minutes ago, and it's the truth of the matter.

[00:42:10] What's happening to the USAID, and it's being put out by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Yes.

[00:42:19] And I guess the reason why I care about this is because when you saw what happened in Judah and Samaria and how they were selling it for a high price,

[00:42:44] and people weren't getting what they needed or there was so much food that they were just selling it, and it just fueled what was going on over there in my way of looking at what I saw. And the other thing is how does this play into ESG and the World Forum Economics? Yeah.

[00:43:09] And one of the things that I'm starting to notice is everything from DEI to ESG changing. You know, one of the big proponents of ESG, which is, again, environmental social governance, was being promoted by BlackRock, and they really sort of backed off of that. But that idea originally comes from Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum. And if you'd like to read more about that, of course, we have one about the deep state. We have one about the Great Reset, and those little booklets are available. They're kind of like Cliff Notes.

[00:43:38] Remember the Cliff Notes in school? You know, just so you could get kind of a quick understanding. But there seems to be a real pushback from some of that, don't you think? Yeah. And Davos, actually, Trump was the standing room only when he spoke by teleprompter there with people standing out in line outside trying to get in because he is shaking things up so much, people want to know what he's doing. And I think we're seeing an awful lot of countries actually shifting their positions. Austria, Italy, and others.

[00:44:07] The Argentina, many other countries are moving in line with Trump. You know, men are no longer participating in competing in women's sports. The end of DEI and ESG and, I mean, what's this world coming to? Normal. Normal. What does normal look like? What does normal look like? Well, Liberty and Meryl, thank you both for sometimes sitting in for me when I'm out traveling. But I think I'm going to be here for quite a while, and I appreciate both of you being here as well.

[00:44:36] Well, don't forget, because we also would encourage you to find out more about the Know Why podcast, and that is information on the website. All the articles we've been quoting from today, including one we didn't get to by Cal Thomas, are there for you to read. I think we have a Super Bowl, so we're going to be watching that over the weekend. We'll talk about that on Monday, and enjoy the weekend. Certainly, Megan, thank you for engineering the program. Steve, thank you for producing the program. We will see you back here on Monday right here on Point of View.

[00:45:09] It was not that long ago that censorship appeared to be almost inevitable. Free speech was being attacked and strangled in many places, and some of us wondered if this was the end. But now, many feel a new sense of hope, a chance for a fresh dawn. Let me caution you. Now is not the time to relax.

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