Point of View May 22, 2026 : Weekend Edition

[00:00:04] Across America, live, this is Point of View, and now Dr. Merrill Matthews.

[00:00:20] And welcome to Point of View, I'm Merrill Matthews sitting in for Kirby Anderson Day and this is our Weekend Edition where we look over a lot of the things that are happening over the past week, some of the policy things, some of the news, and discuss them and bring some points of view to you you might not hear otherwise. Joining me by phone is Jordan Lawrence, he is with First Liberty Institute, he's Senior Counsel there. And joining me in just a few minutes will be Lathan Watts in studio, he's with Alliance Defending Freedom.

[00:00:49] Jordan, thank you for joining us. It's good to be here. You know, I thought I'd start out talking a little bit about the economy because it's been such a big issue over the last few weeks. And one of the things that happened just a few days ago is the University of Michigan released its Consumer Confidence Survey, and it is down. It's down to 44.8. That's an all-time low for consumer confidence. And that's not good. It's not good for us as the economy.

[00:01:18] It's not good for certainly Republicans going into a midterm election. It may be good for Democrats. We don't know yet. But that consumer confidence is down. And I'm sort of feeling it myself. You know, I hear people all the time just say, prices are so high right now. It's just, it's hard for us to be able to afford things. And that can reflect politically on the upcoming election. No, I think that that's right.

[00:01:44] And I last summer, almost a year ago, bought a Toyota Camry hybrid that gets a little over 40 miles to the gallon. I thank God every time I fill up, which is not that often because of it. That was a very wise move. Yes.

[00:02:06] You know, I wish I could say I was anticipating problems, but I'm finding we're making decisions. I live in the Washington, D.C. area. My wife is going to drive down to visit some of our children in Atlanta. And I said, I want you to take my hybrid card rather than your Ford gas only car just to save money. And I think people all over America are making those kinds of decisions.

[00:02:34] Maybe they're not going to go on the car trip to go, you know, visit the relatives or, you know, go to Yellowstone National Park or something like that. And that's going to be laid at the feet of the president. I think if there is a settlement to the Iranian war and the story, straight support moves open up that will release 20 percent of the oil, the worldwide oil supply.

[00:03:03] And the prices will drop, you know, like the story with Elisha when all the food came in to Samaria that the prices drop. And I think that that will happen. But if it lingers until November, I think the Republicans are going to have some problems. You know, you make a good point because we're at Memorial Day and a lot of people drive to go see family or go to do various events and so forth. And you think twice now when gas is high.

[00:03:30] I don't know if you knew this, but I suspect your hybrid, you could probably sell that and make a nice profit right now because people are looking for those hybrids. I probably could, yes. But then you are not interested. I am not interested. No offers. Don't write to me here. You know, I did. My piece in the Hill this week talked about this a bit. I called it Trumpflation won't be temporary. And I say in there when by when inflation went up under Joe Biden, we called it Biden inflation.

[00:03:57] Inflation has ticked up under Trump, not nearly like it was under Joe Biden. And we I think it's probably fair to call it Trump face Trumpflation because some of these are our economic policies that are being engendered from the top. With Joe Biden, when he entered office, inflation was one point four percent, one point four percent. And it started ticking up shortly thereafter.

[00:04:18] And there were some of us who who thought this was maybe temporary because it was just, you know, that you had you couldn't get products to market. Ships couldn't get into unload things. So you could the Federal Reserve Bank said this is thought this was temporary and maybe would go away soon. But then Democrats passed the American Rescue Plan and other bills pumping money into the economy. And when you pump money into the economy and there's a shortage of goods that ends up just leading to inflation.

[00:04:48] And then it went up to nine point one percent in June of twenty twenty two, about, you know, 16 months after he goes into office. And that was a very high inflation rate. And people felt it hurt him. Yeah, no, exactly. And and I think it is. I think that the numbers you put in your article in the hill show that what's happened under President Trump has been less bad than it was under Biden.

[00:05:17] Right. But I think President Trump thought the Iranian situation, it would be in and out like it was in Venezuela. There wouldn't really be an effect on oil prices. I don't think they even anticipated the blocking of the Straits of Hormuz. And this has been an unexpected consequence. Now, I think it's it's more near the the reason for it is more specific and can be solved.

[00:05:47] Biden's inflation was much more systemic of spreading all the money around that sort of thing. Mm hmm. But but I think and I think President Trump is smart enough to realize he's got to settle this war and get the oil flowing again. Right. Yeah. It actually the inflation rate, it was three point three point zero when he came in. It ticked down the next three months. But then in May, it started going back up in May in twenty twenty five.

[00:06:13] And, you know, this was a result result of what he called those reciprocal tariffs, which the economy acted the market and others acted pretty badly towards that. It turns out President Trump postponed some of these, canceled some of them delayed and so forth. And so it really has not been the concern that many economists thought it did take up inflation. But now with the with the Strait of Hormuz being closed and the oil prices, those are feeding in.

[00:06:42] And the inflation rate for this past month was six percent. It was if you take out energy and food, it's four point four percent. But that's still significantly higher than we'd like to see it. And and I just just because it's going to take a little while for things to unwind, even if you got the Strait of Hormuz open today and the Iranian crisis solved, it's going to take a little while for those prices to come down. And we're we're what about four or five months out from early voting in the midterm elections.

[00:07:11] Yeah, that's right. That's exactly right. So it'll be interesting to see how this all shakes out. My guess is it'll it'll it'll calm down some, but it's not going to, I don't think, much until we get this Iranian issue resolved. And I know a lot of Republicans out there are concerned about it. Yeah. And and I I just hope somebody is proposing something to help bring some relief to the average taxpayers

[00:07:41] because the food is inflated. Other things are inflated. But the gas and the food, people see that every day. And it's just going to be a constant reminder that the economy is not in good shape for people as individuals and the way that they live their lives with their household budgets and all that sort of thing. Right. We're going to take a break now. When we come back, we're going to talk a bit about the fraud that's been going on in Medicaid

[00:08:10] and how Vice President J.D. Vance, who's been put in charge of this, he's making some some major steps. I'm very pleased with this because every administration says we want to cut waste, fraud and abuse. Almost none of them does actually do that. Vice President Vance looks like he's taking this on in a big way that will help save some money. So stay with us. We'll be back on Point of View.

[00:08:58] This is Viewpoints with Kirby Anderson. More than 60 years ago, American philosopher James Burnham wrote his famous book, Suicide of the West. He predicted that suicide is probably more frequent than murder as the end phase of a civilization. In a recent column, Tony Morley laments that many in the West engage in an unprecedented campaign of cultural self-flagellation and rejection of Western and Enlightenment values.

[00:09:26] The critics come from within and from without. Polarized critics from within perceive the downfall of the West, preaching inequality, down with imperialism, tax the rich, racial injustice and systematic oppression. The polarized critics outside the West society burn flags, chant death to America and denounce Western values. Tony Mobley also reminds us of the positive impact of Western values.

[00:09:51] Between 1800 and 2025, the average global life expectancy climbed from 28 years to roughly 73 years, while extreme poverty fell from roughly 80 percent to 10 percent. In addition to the improvement to health, we could also add the flourishing of governments and societies that provide freedom and abundance. The problem is that so many today have become detached from the systems and institutions that provided the high standards of living we enjoy today.

[00:10:19] That would include the free market, property rights, entrepreneurship, constitutional government, family values and the rule of law. Most of those ideas rest upon a biblical foundation. We face a battle for Western civilization, and Christians must stand up to defend the values that built the culture we enjoy today. I'm Kirby Anderson, and that's my Point of View.

[00:10:47] 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. And welcome back to Point of View. Joining me in studio, Lathan Watts with Alliance Defending Freedom, a good friend, been here many times. And joining me by phone, Jordan Lawrence. He is with First Liberty Institute. And, gentlemen, I wanted to talk a bit about something,

[00:11:16] an article that Kirby highlighted, which looks at J.D. Vance, and J.D. Vance was put in charge of trying to address the fraud that's out there, especially in Medicare, Medicaid programs, welfare entitlement programs. And I've written about this in the years. I've always thought it was rampant, and we frequently find out people who defrauded the government out of $10 million, $50 million, $100 million, and these things.

[00:11:45] And, J.D., every administration comes in and says, we're going to save some money by doing, by getting rid of fraud and abuse, waste fraud and abuse, and they almost never do it. It looks like it's happening under the Trump administration, and I'm very pleased because there's, let's just say, billions of dollars to be saved. And one of the articles we highlight is from the Daily Caller. J.D. Vance is finally crushing the fraudsters. And I'll highlight that for you. It's on our website at pointofview.net.

[00:12:15] But he's gone out and started finding this fraud that's out there. It's just billions of dollars. We noticed a lot of it in Minnesota. There you had Somali groups that were using this for people who, autism children and so forth, and they go and they look at the places where they said, this is the place where we're looking at these children, and they're emptier. They're warehouses or something. Nothing's happening there. And now we're looking at California, another major fraud place.

[00:12:44] And Dr. Oz, who is head of the Medicare and Medicaid CMS, he is looking at that, and they have cut off. They've seen so many places of fraud there, especially hospice places in California, that they have, I think he said he has cut off funds to several hundred organizations out there, and there's been almost no response from them. You would think if they had lots of people there that they were taking care of

[00:13:14] and the money got cut off, they would say, hey, hundreds of people are losing this funding. He's not getting almost any response. Yeah, and I think one of the ways that they, the easiest way that they got caught was these, all these hospice care places were not reporting anyone dying. So, you're either really, really good at your job, keeping these people from dying, or there is some fraud going on. And if they die, then the Medicaid or the Medicare stops.

[00:13:43] And typically, just for our listeners, if you're going into hospice, typically they think you have roughly six months left to live somewhere, six months or less. So, yes, it's, and they weren't reporting these deaths. Yeah, so that was a pretty, I think, giant red flag for them. And yeah, in the article that you posted, I think he had identified several hundred, and I think he said only about 20 people, like picked up the phone, was like, hey, what's going on? So, the rest of them were just, oh, I guess the gig is up.

[00:14:13] But I think when you have a program, or programs like this, of this size, with this much money, coming from the federal government, out into the states, down, downstream, fraud is not a bug of the system, it is a feature. Like, there's just, there's no way to keep track of that much money. And when you have that much money coming, you know, via the taxpayers, through the federal government, then back into the states, it's inevitable. Like you said, people have talked about this for years and years.

[00:14:43] And now that, you know, the vice president's, I guess, in charge of this task force, they are actually prosecuting some people. And that's, you know, really what it, I think what it takes to put a stop to it, is you have to see people go to jail for this. Otherwise, you're not creating any sort of disincentive for the next, uh, enterprising young frogster to find a way to bilk the taxpayer. Jordan, this has been going on so long. Back in 2005, and people can go and get this article,

[00:15:10] the New York Times did a multi-part study of fraud in the New York area, especially Medicaid fraud, and including dental fraud. And, uh, they, they went around and surveyed this. They found that there were dentists in the, uh, in the Bronx out there, that they had people going around with signs. They called them barkers. And if you had a Medicaid card, you could go up and get a 25, get $25 cash. And they would take your number.

[00:15:39] And then they would then take that and record various charges and send it into Medicaid. And there was one dentist who, who, who was doing more than 900 procedures in a day, right? 900 procedures in a day, including. Yeah. the, uh, and Lathan, by the way, good to talk to you. Yeah. Good to hear from you, buddy. Go way back. Uh, I am from Minnesota. I grew up in Minnesota. I went to law school at the university of Minnesota law school.

[00:16:08] So I've been more focused on that. And just yesterday, the U S attorney's office in the department of justice, uh, announced 15 more criminal lawsuits that were going on. And, uh, you know, so some of this is Medicaid, but in Medicare, but it's also some, uh, statewide, uh, projects. And Tim walls just turned a blind eye to this. Now, I think one of the mindsets is,

[00:16:35] is that this is a program to help the poor. So if you're talking about fraud or if you want to cut the money or whatever, then that's viewed as like, you hate poor people, but that's kind of like saying that the doctors who treated George Washington, uh, and emptied a quart of blood out of him and basically killed him, uh, when he was sick, uh, were are exonerated because they were just trying to help a sick man.

[00:17:03] And sometimes the solution, the motives might be good, but the solution is bad or people can take advantage of it. There was no oversight because then you're saying, oh wow, if we oversee this, I, I, I'm speaking as a, as a lifelong Minnesotan. Um, we're being mean to poor people. We're saying they're untrustworthy or something like that. So we're just going to turn a blind eye to this. And I,

[00:17:32] and I think that the people have to understand that Medicare and Medicaid are very important programs to help old folks and poor people with their medical needs. And these funds that we pay extra taxes, uh, to do on our payroll taxes are running dry. So this is not like some, you know, Trump is being mean or something like this.

[00:17:59] This is taking money out of the hands of the fraudsters and putting it back where it is needed to treat people that have actual medical needs that are poor and who are old. So this is very, very important. And I'm very glad to see the crackdown, especially in my home state of Minnesota. You know, about 15 years ago, I did a chapter for a book that new Gingrich, uh, published called paying, uh, paying the crooks. And, uh, it's, it's,

[00:18:27] it had a group of different articles in there about Medicare, Medicaid fraud, welfare fraud. And I pointed out in there, if you went to a website called mafia today, the top four articles at that particular time was on medical, care of fraud in Florida. And it mentioned that a number of the crime families in New York had moved to Florida because it was much easier to defraud the federal government. And you weren't doing it.

[00:18:54] You weren't encroaching on anybody's turf because you're taking federal money. You're not in somebody else's, you're not running drugs or, or things of that nature in somebody's area. And incidentally, and our listeners can go, uh, you can go to YouTube. 60 minutes did an interview with somebody who was in jail from Florida at this time. If I remember right, he said something like we were making, you know, we were billing $30,000 a day or so, and they finally caught us. And the real, the scandal here is if they were only billing and say five or $10,000 a day,

[00:19:24] they might well have been, uh, been overlooked. Yeah. And that's about earlier points. Like when you have this much money involved, it's impossible to keep really good track of it. But fraud is going to happen. And to Jordan's point, every dollar that is defrauded is a dollar that's not available to actually help someone who needs it. So this is, we're borrowing. Yeah. I mean, this is, you know, probably the most, um, benevolent way of,

[00:19:50] of actually seeking to help the people who need this program is to cut out the, the criminals from taking the money that is supposed to help people who are in need. But Jordan, it seems like it's so big. Can we, do you think we can get a handle on this? Well, I, I think so. I agree with you. I feel like a corner has been turned in that before this, there just seemed to be a lot of rhetoric about, you know, we got to cut down on waste, fraud and abuse. And then nothing ever seemed to happen.

[00:20:20] But this has been so palpable starting with Minnesota. And the one, I mean, the one piece of good news is that the U S attorney's office in Minnesota has been prosecuting people because Medicaid is both a federal and state program. Uh, so Tim walls is not the only, uh, executive or government state government is not the only one involved in this. And they have put, I think something like 80 people in jail. And in fact, it was so laughable.

[00:20:49] Tim wallace at one point was trying to take credit. Would they have had, he and his attorney general have basically been doing nothing and just turning a blind eye to all this going on. But the crackdown is coming. I think that, uh, we've seen a shift. And I think is this, as we're beginning to uncover this in other States, uh, I think, uh, president Trump is going to pursue this. And I think if that is well put in place, whoever replaces, even if it's a Democrat,

[00:21:18] it'd be hard to just ignore all that. We'll be back on point of view in just a minute. Where does moral truth come from? According to 58% of Americans, individuals determine moral truth. A quarter of generation Z says society determines moral truth and morality can even change over time.

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[00:22:11] And that's why point of view is relentless in our commitment to the ultimate source of moral truth. God's word. At point of view, we know that God's truth is eternal. And if we stand together, we can help more Americans apply his truth in their daily life. Help Americans find truth again by giving at pointofview.net or call 1-800-347-5151. That's pointofview.net.

[00:22:40] That's pointofview.net and 1-800-347-5151. Point of view will continue after this. You are listening to Point of View. The opinions expressed on pointofview do not necessarily reflect the views of the management or staff of this station.

[00:23:09] And now, here again, Dr. Merrill Matthews. And welcome back to our weekend edition as we look over issues that were happening this past week. Joining me by phone, Jordan Lawrence with First Liberty Institute. And in studio, Lathan Watts with Alliance Defending Freedom. And Lathan, we've talked for the last couple of weeks here on Point of View about the Southern Poverty Law Center and some of the things that are being revealed there. And now, apparently, something's going to happen. Well, it looks that way.

[00:23:39] 11-count federal indictment. So, they're finally going to have to answer to a federal court. Obviously, it's just an indictment. There's no trial date set. The government's still got to prove their case. But with all the Christian charity I can muster, this has been a long time coming. This organization stopped doing what it was set up, what it was established to do decades ago.

[00:24:08] In fact, the mid-80s, their entire legal team quit in protest. And for many years, their so-called hate map was just a map of people they don't like who disagree with their very left-wing. And the media would go to this hate map. That was – you know, they obviously – I mean, they put ADF on it. They put lots of mainstream Christian ministries on there for adhering to a biblical view of sexuality.

[00:24:34] And it's not just the inconvenience of being listed on there. And then every time the media would talk about us, they would include that parenthetical, you know, who is listed on the ADF hate map or the SPLC hate map. It is – their influence is far greater than people realize. So much so, like – and some of the work that ADF does in the corporate sector with corporations.

[00:25:00] A lot of big companies have, like, employee charity match programs where you can designate a charity you want to donate some of your money to and the company will match it. Right. And ADF was not permitted on a lot of those lists because we were on the SPLC hate group list. Yes, media relied on them far, far too often.

[00:25:23] And what came out in this indictment, wire fraud, mail fraud, money laundering, lying to a federally regulated financial institution, was that a lot of the hate groups that they were raising money to, you know, fight against, to stamp out white supremacy, they were actually funneling money to those groups. And we're not talking about, you know, just a few rednecks down the street. I mean, it was the Ku Klux Klan. Yes. It was –

[00:25:51] I bet Grand Wizard was. Right. Right. So some of – so these groups that they then tell their donors, this is why we exist, is to, you know, defeat these people, they were taking their donors' money and actually feeding it to these groups to keep them alive and keep them, you know, operating so that they can go out and raise more money. And that's, you know, that's basically the substance of the indictment.

[00:26:15] And then creating fake bank accounts to funnel the money through, which is where some of the money laundering charges come in. This is a serious case they're looking at. And raising money, they did a good job at that. I believe they have something like $700, $800 million tucked back. Yes. They are one of the – I would say one of the best funded groups certainly in this country on the nonprofit side of the ledger.

[00:26:46] So they will make the case that we were just trying to get information about what these groups were doing that we consider hate groups, and we would actually take some of that information that we got and we fed it to the FBI. So, yes, we took money to fight these groups, but this was helpful by having informants let us know what was going on. What's your response? Well, you're not a law enforcement agency. You don't get to have paid informants.

[00:27:13] Like if the federal government was doing it, I would maybe listen that, oh, yeah, this guy was a mole for us. That's not the SVLC's job. They're not a law enforcement agency. They're not trying to put these people in jail. And, yeah, I think, like I said, it's just an indictment at this point.

[00:27:35] I spent a little bit of time in the prosecutor's office my last semester in law school as an extern, and the joke is, yeah, you can indict a ham sandwich. You can get an indictment against pretty much anybody. But when the federal government brings a case like this, the last thing you want as a federal U.S. attorney or prosecutor is to come out of this with egg on your face. This is the – they had to know this was going to get a lot of attention when they did it.

[00:28:02] And so I'm pretty confident they have built a pretty airtight case, or they probably would not have brought it yet. Jordan, when you have this indictment, you start getting the open discovery, don't you? And so we may find out some things we still don't know about this that may be even more damning.

[00:28:21] Yeah, and I just want to add, and that I used to work at ADF as well, and that the Southern Poverty Law Center has gone from a group that was fighting racist groups and, you know, ones that were violent.

[00:28:36] And, you know, so decades ago with their work was quite admirable, that they've turned into basically a fundraising machine that with this insatiable appetite that they have to feed the beast with more donations. And they have stashed money in offshore bank accounts, things like this.

[00:29:00] And so they were seeing that the supply of hate was outrunning the demand. So they had to create more supply for them to do this. One of the things – now, this is not as big as the other things that we've mentioned so far. But what I thought is ironic is that – and, Latham, if I got the number wrong, I think ADF has won 18 cases at the U.S. Supreme Court.

[00:29:29] So one of those, about three or four years ago, involved donor disclosures from the state of California. And the Southern Poverty Law Center wrote – or joined a friend of the court brief supporting the Alliance Defending Freedom and never publicized that.

[00:29:51] So they were denouncing ADF while agreeing with them in a case that they won at the U.S. Supreme Court. I just think it's the height of hypocrisy and inconsistency to do that sort of thing. It was just shameless in trying to raise money to look good, and they needed additional boogeymen to beat up.

[00:30:14] And ADF and other groups like Family Research Council and others just got labeled in their drive-by smears. Jordan, what's your expectation on their fundraising? I mean, normally you would think if you're being indicted, like by the federal government, by the Trump government, Trump administration, that would be a fundraising opportunity for the Southern Poverty Law Center. But you also have to wonder if their traditional donors are going to say, you were doing that.

[00:30:42] What do you think happens to their fundraising now? Well, I hope it will go down, that people will see that they're not being served well, but they donate to. What I don't know and what I'm concerned about is they've got so much money stashed away that they can just, you know, live off the interest for a while longer and that the donor base is not quite as important as it might have been 20, 30 years ago for them. Yeah, I agree.

[00:31:11] I don't think they're going to close up shop, you know, the day after the trial. But hopefully, to your point, when people do see that, you know, what they were doing with their money, they get a little more suspicious about sending money to an organization like that. But to Jordan's point, there is a lot of money in the bank for them to work off of. Whether or not they actually learn anything from this and, you know, stop putting, you know,

[00:31:39] folks like ADF or Turning Point USA on their hate groups or Moms for Liberty, you know, or the Family Research Council. I mean, you're really grasping at straws to talk about, you know, violent extremism groups and you're putting these people on the list. I don't have any idea. Could somebody go to jail for this? Yeah, these are criminal charges.

[00:32:03] So, yeah, I haven't seen what the prosecutors, if they've said anything about what they will be pushing for. Because the next – I don't think a trial date has even been set yet. So we'll have to see. But I would be shocked if there's not heavy, heavy fines, if not jail time, if they can pinpoint the people who were actually doing it. And this would be mostly because they're defrauding donors then, you think? Defrauding donors.

[00:32:33] And then they also – one of the counts was lying to a federally regulated financial institution. So they were creating basically slush fund accounts to funnel this money so it wouldn't go directly from SPLC to the Klan or SPLC to, you know, Aryan Nation or whoever. So they were creating these other accounts, underface false names and false information. So they're also lying to a federally regulated – Is that essentially money laundering? Money laundering. Yeah.

[00:33:02] Money laundering and mail fraud and wire fraud. Well, it would – it'll be interesting to see what happens here. I suspect the Trump administration is going to press hard on this. So we've been talking about a number of things on our weekend edition. We have links to these articles on pointofview.net. So I'd encourage you to go there, look at those articles and download them and take a look at them. You can also hit the donate button while you're there.

[00:33:25] When we come back, we want to talk about another issue that we've been looking at, which is deals with AI. Stay with us. We'll be right back.

[00:33:54] Most of us carry a telephone around with us, and yet we're not talking as much as we used to. We're using our phones increasingly to communicate in ways that replace actual talking, like texting, emailing, and online ordering. Researchers at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and the University of Arizona began studying gender differences in talkativeness. The researchers discovered something even more interesting. People in general are speaking to one another less.

[00:34:19] They reviewed 22 studies covering the daily speaking of more than 2,000 participants, ranging in age from 10 to 94. The Wall Street Journal's family and tech columnist, Julie Jargon, reported on the results. From 2005 to 2019, a person speaking decreased on average 4,700 words per day, 28%.

[00:34:39] Some people might welcome the quiet, but Ms. Jargon worries that this retreat into online spaces will increase loneliness and lead to a decline in the cognitive chess game that is conversation. We like the efficiency of texting, but there's evidence it's shortening our attention spans, which can make holding a conversation harder. Valeria Pfeiffer, assistant professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and co-author of the study says, Talking to people builds skills like learning when to speak and when not to, and how to interject. It's not just smartphones.

[00:35:09] Dr. Pfeiffer cites other shifts, like fewer multi-generational households, declining community and religious engagement, and even self-checkout lines at the grocery stores, as reasons we have fewer opportunities to talk to relatives and strangers. Numerous studies show today's parents talk less to their babies, and phones are one important factor. International experts are warning of the impact of technology on the formation of secure attachment bonds within families, as well as in interpersonal relationships.

[00:35:37] Try speaking more to neighbors, to the barista, to the cashier. Sometimes choose calling over texting. Let people hear the meaning your voice conveys. For Point of View, I'm Penna Dexter. You're listening to Point of View, your listener-supported source for truth. And welcome back to Point of View. Joining me in studio, Lathan Watts with Alliance Defending Freedom, and by phone, Jordan Lawrence with First Liberty Institute.

[00:36:07] And Lathan, a few weeks ago, Liberty was here. We were doing the weekend edition, and I highlighted an article that had come out, and there is a new service where you could sign up for this. I think it was $1.99 a month, and you get a picture of Jesus on there, and you get to ask Jesus questions, and use Jesus as a spiritual advisor. This is an AI-generated picture and AI-generated responses.

[00:36:33] And we're sort of looking at this and just scratching our heads and saying, you know, if this, does somebody get sort of caught in this like an idol? And then if it comes back, do I feel like that's what I need to do? And now we've got the Barna Group coming out with an article where they did a survey out there, and they say practicing Christians expect majority-level trust, express majority-level trust in AI across most domains of personal flourishing.

[00:37:01] But it goes on to say that trust is 83% of practicing Christians worry about AI misinterpreting Scripture, and 72% worry about AI replacing the role of pastors as our spiritual leaders. And yet, according to the Barna survey, Christians are very willing to look at AI and use that to help them grow spiritually.

[00:37:27] Yeah, I read this article, and I was just baffled, as I think the Barna people are, about these responses, that they're simultaneously trusting AI on these questions of human flourishing, and at almost the same number or higher expressing doubt about the accuracy of interpreting Scripture. And I'm like, you want to ask the people who responded this, like, do you hear the words coming out of your mouth?

[00:37:56] But something is not adding up here. Jordan, you're not an AI-generated voice, are you? I am not. I am not generated by AI. Wouldn't an AI-generated voice say that? Yeah, that's right. Right, exactly. Yeah. Yes, like we're data on, you know, Star Trek The Next Generation, something like that going on here.

[00:38:21] I mean, I guess you could feed the Book of Proverbs into an AI, you know, chat GPT, and then ask questions, but you're not going to get sound advice, because at least with a human being, they're animated by the Holy Spirit. That's the first fruits of our salvation. And you're going to get, I guarantee there is no Holy Spirit working in an AI computer.

[00:38:46] And I agree with Lathan, it's just baffling how people both trust and doubt at the same time. And it just seems very spooky and scary as to how people can be misled. And I've heard of people, I don't necessarily think this was in a context of spiritual advice, but AI advising people to commit suicide. And that's horrible.

[00:39:12] And it just seems like, you know, it's not giving, you know, Christ life, Christ brings life, but this seems to be bringing death. Yeah, and I'm glad you mentioned that, Jordan, because one of the things that none of the companies that have started, you know, the varying versions of AI have been able to work out or fix,

[00:39:37] is that they all report that the AI wants to please the person who's using AI. And so it returns answers to you that it thinks you want to hear. And so those cases that you mentioned where a couple, I think it was teens, had actually committed suicide after, you know, conversations with AI, it was AI was interpreting the types of questions they were asking as if that is the answer they were looking for and gave them that answer.

[00:40:07] And that's obviously, you know, a horrible tragedy. But if you apply that to this scenario, you don't go to the Bible to find, you shouldn't be opening the Bible looking to justify the position that you already hold. You should be reading the text to tell you what the position should be. And if AI is going to tell you what you want to hear, that's like, you know, already having the conclusion that you have come up with

[00:40:34] and then just looking for a verse that you can take out of context and back it up with. You know, I've had 18 years. Yes. Yeah, exactly. You know, and I'm sure you have to, you know, had plenty of chances to speak to pastors and faith leaders before. And I always make a point to say, hey, look, yes, the Bible does have things to say about issues of our time, even, you know, some of the political issues that we debate. But if you start with a political position and then open the Bible to try to justify it, then politics is your real religion.

[00:41:03] You know, I've seen that I've seen surveys that a large number of pastors use AI to help them develop their sermons. And last October, I was in charge of our high school reunion. And I had a little committee working with me. And we said, okay, we need to start this with a prayer. Does anybody want to volunteer to do that? And one of the people on my committee volunteered to do it. And he's not trained as a minister or anything of that nature. And when we had the reunion, he did the prayer. And I sent a note to him a few days later.

[00:41:33] I said, that was really a good prayer. And he said, well, thank you. I had AI generate it. And then I tweaked it a little bit here and there. And I thought, okay, well, but it was really a pretty good job. Yeah, like anything, you know, the tool itself depends on who's using it and how you're using it. I think some ministers, pastors, you know, that I've heard from said, like, here's what I trusted to do.

[00:42:00] If I'm reading through a text and instead of taking the time myself to go read five or six different commentaries to get different viewpoints on how this has been interpreted, I may ask AI to summarize the commentaries of and feed it, you know, my favorite commentaries that I usually consult. And it will send me back a summary of what those commentaries say. And that saves me time. That I can see.

[00:42:23] But, yeah, I mean, trusting it as your spiritual advisor is – that's a whole other ballgame. Well, Vice President of Research at Barna, Daniel Copeland, says – and I'm quoting here – what we're seeing is that Christians are genuinely open to AI as a support for the domains that matter most to them – well-being, purpose, even spiritual growth. And he goes on to say the level of openness is higher than we might have expected,

[00:42:52] and it holds across multiple areas of flourishing. So apparently we've got Christians that are open to this, Jordan, and we don't know where it's going to go yet. But there's at least – I would say a red flag here. Oh, I totally agree because it is – it's just at a human level. It is not under the anointing of the Holy Spirit.

[00:43:17] And even with a human being, you can get bad advice and unwise counsel. Often do. But I think if people start looking at this, and especially if it's in this feedback loop of where the AI is trying to please the person inputting questions, that just seems like a disaster, you know, that the flesh is just going to lead you astray, you know, darkened thinking and all of that.

[00:43:43] And I'm very, very reluctant to use it except in some sort of gathering information, and then I want to check that. Because, you know, in the legal field, there's – you've probably read these reports. I mean, this is different than what this Barna report is talking about. But of lazy attorneys writing legal briefs, just having AI generate them, and they hallucinate. Siding cases that don't exist. Yeah.

[00:44:12] And so, you know, as the Bible says, and then they quote something that's not in the Bible. I mean, how do you know you're really getting accurate biblical information that's true to the scriptures? And I suspect we're talking – in one case, when you're talking about well-grounded Christians, but an awful lot of people aren't well-grounded Christians and may go and use this anyway just as a source. So it's a concern. We are looking at it here at Point of View.

[00:44:41] If you want to find out more about that article, the Barna article, I encourage you to go to pointofview.net. When we come back, we're going to look at some other issues like gerrymandering and some of the things that are happening there. If you want to give us a call, 1-800-351-1212. We'll open up the lines. Stay with us. We'll be back 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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[00:46:26] Point of View will continue after this. Cross America. Live. This is Point of View. Now, Dr. Merrill Matthews.

[00:46:55] And welcome back to Point of View. Joining me in studio, Latham Watts with Alliance Defending Freedom and Jordan Lawrence by phone. He is with First Liberty Institute. And, Latham, we've been hearing actually for several weeks now about states trying to redistrict. They're redrawing the district lines. One of this is they were doing that beforehand because President Trump pushed Texas to redistrict in kind of midterm there. And middle of the stream. And Texas has done that. Some other states were looking at it.

[00:47:24] But now the Supreme Court has come up and said, basically started saying, you can do this as long as you're doing this for political reasons. And took out the racial aspect of it because for so many years, states have tried to draw by, essentially because of the Supreme Court, some minority districts, depending upon how many you had. And I argued in the Hill a few weeks ago that this was just becoming increasingly difficult simply because we are not a segregated society anymore.

[00:47:53] You have so many people who are now multiracial people. You had two different races marrying, and they've now had children that are most. So you have multiracial families out there, and they can move and live anywhere they want. And it's just I grew up in East Texas in my early years, and you had segregated families. I mean, you had the blacks lived in one area. Whites lived in the rest of the area. That's just not the case anymore.

[00:48:20] I mean, you still have areas where you have a larger concentration of black or Hispanics or Asians or something of that nature. But I just argued it's getting increasingly difficult to just try to do this racial gerrymandering because we have people who get – if you have a person who's half black, half white, half Hispanic, half white, are they black or are they white? And they may vote either way. It's just changing. Yeah, and changing for the better.

[00:48:48] I think that's what's been missed in this entire conversation really is that I think Justice Thomas' concurrence pointed out that these majority-minority districts were never – that was never really the intent of this section of the voting rights act. Now, that was in its concurrence. I don't think it was part of the majority opinion in that case.

[00:49:09] But – and that party affiliation, so R versus D, has never been a protected class under the law. And to your point that we are more racially, ethnically diverse than we've ever been. And that's a good thing. That's a good thing. It's a good thing.

[00:49:31] It's almost akin to the conversation we had about the SPLC, that when they finally really made real progress and eliminated a lot of the enemies they set out to deal with, the demand exceeded the supply. And then they started sort of falsifying it. But the Voting Rights Act has done its job, right?

[00:49:57] And so I really – and I think that's a good thing, right? So – and I think to Justice Thomas' point on the creation of a district, that it must be a majority of racial minorities in this district, it's sort of rooted in a flawed premise that only a minority can really represent a minority.

[00:50:29] Mm-hmm. And who represent majority white districts. And so it's sort of this flawed premise that your skin color determines whether or not you could actually represent people that look like you. And that's just not the case. I mean, that's the exact opposite of dealing with, you know, racial bias. And, of course, the best example we have is a past president who was half black, half white.

[00:50:56] He identified as a black, but he won a large percentage of the vote in 2008 and then again in 2012. And then we've had a vice president who was – I think if I remember, half black, half Indian or Pakistan or something like that. I think it was a different race. She identified as black. Black, at least sometimes didn't always do that. But you've been able to get those elected and nationwide. So you didn't have to redistrict to do that.

[00:51:26] Right. And to your point about, you know, in the 60s when this was passed, there was still real segregation going on where you did have – this was sort of, quote, the black side of town and this was the white side of town. So if you were going to do something like that, it made it very easy to do, and that's just not the case anymore.

[00:51:45] But with both mobility of people being able to, you know, buy houses, move or whatever, plus racial integration of, you know, mixed race people or, you know, split households, you know, black husband and white wife or, you know, vice versa or whatever. The point being that both parties have, you know, drawn really weird lines in their states to benefit their political party.

[00:52:14] Both sides have done that for decades and decades and decades. If they were trying to minimize somebody's impact on an election, it was not based on the color of their skin. It was based on which party they were voting for. You know, the R's do it to minimize the D's and the D's do it to try to minimize the impact of the R's in their states. And that was essentially what the Supreme Court said. Like, that has been going on. It will continue to go on. And, you know, here we are.

[00:52:43] I mean, we can get into, if we wanted to, you know, the pros or cons of this current round of doing it by starting with Trump telling Texas to do it mid-decade and then somebody else responds and back and forth or whatever.

[00:52:57] But I think the thing that has been missed a lot is the success of the Voting Rights Act means that this interpretation, this wrong interpretation that you need a majority-minority district is not necessary. And, you know, Jordan, both red states and blue states have been trying to redraw the lines, but they're in Virginia by where you are.

[00:53:22] The courts have stopped them from using the map that they wanted to, which was a very strange-looking map. Yeah, I just want to say that I thank God for the action of the Virginia Supreme Court. I live in Virginia. That shut this down. That back in 2020, Virginians passed a constitutional amendment to set up a basically a nonpartisan commission to draw the lines. And they've been doing a pretty good job.

[00:53:51] We have currently six Democrats and five Republican congressional districts, and they were going to gerrymander that to shift it to 10 to 1 Democrat to Republican. And I just think that that is unconscionable, and I'm so glad that that got stopped here. So I want to just make a couple of quick points.

[00:54:16] People should read, Meryl, your article in The Hill I thought was outstanding in pointing out. I did not realize, and we've been mentioning this, how many people in the United States are now multiracial? How many married couples? I'm looking for the statistic here.

[00:54:35] I think it's, was it 28.6% of the opposite-sex couples who are married in the United States in 2022 were interracial? And that just shows that would have been illegal 50, 60 years ago until, you know, before 1967 when the Supreme Court said that was unconstitutional. And I looked up one other statistic, too.

[00:54:58] Currently, there are 60 African-American congressmen in the House of Representatives. 30 of them represent majority white districts, including Ilhan Omar and Minnesota's 5th District. So things are not 1965 anymore. Hold it there. We'll be right back.

[00:55:32] This is Viewpoints with Kirby Anderson. More than 60 years ago, American philosopher James Burnham wrote his famous book, Suicide of the West. He predicted that suicide is probably more frequent than murder as the end phase of a civilization. In a recent column, Tony Morley laments that many of the West engage in an unprecedented campaign of cultural self-flagellation and rejection of Western and Enlightenment values.

[00:56:00] The critics come from within and from without. Polarized critics from within perceive the downfall of the West, preaching inequality, down with imperialism, tax the rich, racial injustice, and systematic oppression. The polarized critics outside the West society burn flags, chant death to America, and denounce Western values. Tony Mobley also reminds us of the positive impact of Western values.

[00:56:25] Between 1800 and 2025, the average global life expectancy climbed from 28 years to roughly 73 years, while extreme poverty fell from roughly 80% to 10%. In addition to the improvement to health, we could also add the flourishing of governments and societies that provide freedom and abundance. The problem is that so many today have become detached from the systems and institutions that provided the high standards of living we enjoy today.

[00:56:54] That would include the free market, property rights, entrepreneurship, constitutional government, family values, and the rule of law. Most of those ideas rest upon a biblical foundation. We face a battle for Western civilization, and Christians must stand up to defend the values that built the culture we enjoy today. I'm Kirby Anderson, and that's my point of view.

[00:57:22] 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. And welcome back to Point of View. We're joined by Jordan Lawrence and First Liberty Institute. He is joining us by phone. Latham Watts joining us here in studio.

[00:57:48] And, Jordan, we were talking about the racial gerrymandering that has been going on and the fact that it is – they're trying to do this. But I was talking to someone yesterday who has a good bit of insight about the Hispanic community. And she mentioned to me, she said, you know, they're trying to redraw these lines, especially some Republicans, to bring in the Hispanic community because they voted in 2024, largely – much larger for Republicans than Donald Trump.

[00:58:15] But that may be changing now. And her point was, when you're trying to do this based upon past voting and how somebody's voting, even if you're not saying it's racial, we're just – these are – have been voted Republican. You could end up finding out that a group of people may decide to vote Democratic next time and ultimately undermine your efforts to try to redraw these lines to help Republicans. No, that's exactly right.

[00:58:44] In Virginia, before this last census in 2020, the Republicans controlled the legislature. They had gerrymandered it to support Republicans. And the Democrats were able to blow through that and take over both houses of the legislature. So gerrymandering is not necessarily this iron barrier to what is going on here because things shift and that sort of thing.

[00:59:12] I think the better concept, which the Supreme Court has talked about, is having compact communities of common interest. And many times those are geographic. I think one of the ways that this could be solved – so this is something a lot of people haven't been talking about. The size of the House of Representatives could be increased. They could add 100, 150 congressmen.

[00:59:37] And I think that this would do a lot to alleviate the concerns that liberals are expressing about this. The number of House of Representatives, 435, is set by statute. It was set in 1929. It has not been changed.

[00:59:58] And if all of a sudden every state had another 8 or 10 – I mean, depending on the size of the state. I mean, Texas, that would be – but I mean, if all of a sudden Alabama, for example, had twice as many congressmen – I think they have eight – and that went up to 16, it would be a lot harder to do partisan or racial gerrymandering because you just – you wouldn't have enough people to stretch out for all those districts.

[01:00:28] And I think that that's something that both sides could get behind. And probably only the people opposing it would be the congressmen that would have their power diluted if it's 600 congressmen rather than 435. Well, as you pointed out, we have 435 in Congress. Little United Kingdom has 650 members of parliament. 650. Yeah, what are they, like 60 million or something like that? Yeah, they're – right. That's an excellent point.

[01:00:57] Now, I do have some reservations about making a bunch more politicians out there, but – You read my mind. I get your point. Well taken. But the other point you make is these things change. Years ago, Virginia was a solid red state. But a lot of people – and I would argue many of them moving from Maryland because of the high taxes in Maryland – moved to northern Virginia. And a lot of these were liberals coming who – bureaucrats and others who live in – who work in Washington.

[01:01:25] But they moved to northern Virginia and largely turned Virginia blue. Yes, and, you know, like this is – you're reminding me of one other thing too, is that sometimes this complaint gets about the electoral college. That because every state gets two senators, that it is skewed towards more rural, more conservative states and this sort of argument.

[01:01:48] Well, first of all, that all shifts, that at the – around 1900 in the elections, the West and the South, which had fewer people than the Midwest or the East, were basically dominated by Democrats. Like William Jennings Bryant, that's where he won. So it was flip-flop. And then the other thing is that if you look at the 10 smallest states in terms of population today, guess what?

[01:02:18] Five have Democratic senators, both of them. The other five have both Republican senators. There is no red state bias in the U.S. Senate and therefore the electoral college in that regard.

[01:02:32] I think another thing that may be one of the law of unintended consequences that might actually be for the long-term health of our system is that, you know, whether or not it's a great idea to do redistricting mid-decade or whatever, you know, geared towards one election cycle. You still have – so like Texas, where we are, you still have – there's a finite number of Republican voters.

[01:03:00] And you're trying to create more Republican districts with the same, you know, number of Republican voters that you had in the last cycle. Now, it's going to, you know, vary with people moving in, moving out or whatever. What they may have ended up doing is creating some more competitive districts. So you're going from, you know, a district that was solid, you know, 70 percent Republican. You had to carve out some of that to create this new district. So now it's, you know, 55 or whatever.

[01:03:26] And so in some of these states, what they're going to inadvertently do is make for a more competitive general election, which I think is actually good long-term for the country. Because when you have – basically the election is the primary in a lot of districts. The way to win is to be like – if it's an 80 percent R district, you've got to be the most radical, hard-line, right-wing, far-out-there guy to win in the primary. Right.

[01:03:54] And so then the parties keep growing further and further apart because the same dynamics happening on the other side. If the entire election is the Democratic primary, the most far-out-there left-wing candidate is likely going to win the primary. And we're seeing that. So you're getting further and further apart. If the districts themselves are more competitive, it might tend towards, you know, somebody who is more generally – has more general appeal to the folks, you know, center-right or center-left in certain districts.

[01:04:23] And, you know, even though we sort of think of the country as Republican and Democrat, you've got a large percentage of independents out there. And I haven't looked at the figures lately, but generally it was roughly the same, maybe a few more Democrats than there were Republicans, and roughly 35 percent, 38 percent, something of that nature of each. And then the rest are independents. And if you're trying to draw these lines, you're going to get independents in there, and they can shift.

[01:04:49] They can change based upon what's happening in the country and what's happening in the economy. Yeah, they're a big wild card. Yeah, for sure. And so we're – I don't know where we're going to go with all this redistricting. It will be interesting. The latest – I know I was looking at Karl Rove's article yesterday, and he thinks, generally speaking, the congressional ballots are showing Democrats winning.

[01:05:16] And Karl said even if they manage to bring in a few more Republicans, it's likely going to be a Democratic win come in the House at least, maybe in the Senate come November. Yeah, go ahead, Jordan. No, I think that that's right.

[01:05:34] And so that this redistricting is not some sort of iron determinism that you can predict, you know, with certainty as to who's going to win these kind of elections. For the various reasons we talk about, people change their minds. The independents are a wild card.

[01:05:53] And if you do a lot of extreme partisan redistricting, you water down the finite number of people from your party that you want to stretch around to all these various districts. And it goes from certainty to maybe you could lose. And one of the things I point out in another article we'll look at when we come back from the break is whether or not a Jew could win the Democratic presidential nomination.

[01:06:21] We're talking about races and ethnic minorities and so forth here and whether or not you're segregating these. And increasingly, Democrats are just moving away. I mean, they're there. They're becoming very, very anti-Semitic for many of them. I don't think that it's the majority of the Democrats, but certainly a small minority of them are speaking out in ways that I wouldn't have thought before. Sure.

[01:06:45] Yeah, it's and it is an extreme on the left and there's an extremism on certain in certain corners of the right that has this problem as well. So it's it's definitely something that both both sides need to to address. I do.

[01:07:10] Maybe it's, you know, the algorithm on my phone, but I do tend to see it more on the left, I think, related to the Israel and Palestine issue. But, you know, you had Dershowitz officially leave the Democratic Party on this issue alone. So it's definitely something that they're going to have to going to have to work through. And I'm sure we will talk more about it here after the break. Stay with us.

[01:07:38] We'll be back on point of view here in just a minute. You can also go to point of view and see all these articles that we have posted there. And I'd encourage you to do that. I'd also encourage you to donate while you're there. That's always helpful for the ministry. So stay with us. We'll be right back.

[01:08:05] 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 and everything the Bible supports.

[01:08:34] 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 slash signup.

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[01:09:31] 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. And now, here again, Dr. Merrill Matthews. And welcome back to our weekend edition as we discuss issues happening this week. And we've talked a little bit here about the issue of anti-Semitism within the Democratic Party.

[01:09:59] As you mentioned, there's a small element of it in the Republican Party as well, but it's a growing problem in the Democratic Party. And one of the things that happened this week is a Democrat running for the House. The House of Representatives in Texas. This is District 35. Her name is Maureen Galindo. Galindo. She had $900,000 funding from what's called Lead Left Pack.

[01:10:24] She won 29% of the vote in her primary. The other opponent, former deputy sheriff in that county, won 27%. And so now there's a runoff going on. But Galindo has come out with some very anti-Semitic statements that has been raising questions. And some of the Democrats have been trying to push away from her. I'm reading from the Washington Post now.

[01:10:50] On May 13, Galindo wrote on Instagram that if elected to Congress, she would write a bill to declare that Zionism is anti-Semitic. And she would convert an ICE detention center located in her district into a prison with, quote, a castration processing center for, quote, American Zionists and former ICE officers. This has forced some Democrats to come out and try to separate themselves from her. Understandably so.

[01:11:18] But my goodness, Jordan, when somebody is this vocal and anti-Semitic and she is running for Congress as a Democrat and the primary is the runoff is next week. We've been in early voting. But she got the most votes in her district. It raises some eyebrows. It certainly does. And I think this anti-Semitism is very alarming.

[01:11:47] And in my lifetime, I just would have 10 years ago, if somebody would have said that both people on the right and people on the left are going to be sounding like 1930s Nazi Germany, I would have said, oh, that's not going to happen. We you know, we we saw the the bitter fruit of anti-Semitism with the murder of the Jews by the Nazi regime. And never again is that going to happen here.

[01:12:15] And I, you know, I obviously am wrong on that. But just this extreme rhetoric that we see coming out, I am concerned that guys like Governor Shapiro in Pennsylvania, who I think would be an attractive candidate for the Democrats, is not going to be able to get much traction beyond being governor of Pennsylvania. And I think this is one of the reasons why I don't know exactly why exactly.

[01:12:45] But that Kamala Harris did not pick him that now. Maybe it's my that I don't think Governor Walz is a very good governor of Minnesota, but she basically picked the weaker hand. And I think this Jewish, the fact that Governor Shapiro is Jewish, I think would happen. One of the things that I am concerned about, too, is how widespread this is going to be.

[01:13:08] If there is a vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court, for example, coming up pretty soon, one of the leading candidates, I think, who would be an absolutely excellent justice on the Supreme Court is a federal appeals court judge named David Frost from Minnesota. He's very principled.

[01:13:55] And I think that's going to be a very, very important thing. So I think that you know, the people are driving them out to other countries. They've got to learn how to peacefully coexist. And so this isn't genocide. This is people battling over the ability to live in close quarters together. And I think if they can do that, they'll solve a problem. But that might be wishful thinking. But it's not that the Israelis are the equivalent of Nazi Germany. You know, you mentioned Josh Shapiro as governor of Pennsylvania. Here he is. He's got he's got a good track record for a Democrat.

[01:14:24] He is a governor of a swing state. The other one I point out in the piece I wrote about this for the Hill was Rahm Emanuel, who has a an excellent back. I mean, I may not agree with him and all that things, but there would be there's not many people more qualified to be able to run for president and become president.

[01:14:43] But setting aside ideologies in Rahm Emanuel, having been a member of Congress for three terms, a White House chief of staff under Barack Obama, governor and a mayor of Chicago. When when Chicago was doing better than it is these days under Brin Johnson. And then and then a the ambassador to Japan for several years. And I think Rahm is running. He is writing a lot. He's discussing. He's laying out strategy and things that Democrats need to do.

[01:15:12] But he is also Jewish. And I just wonder, could he win the Democratic nomination, given even if as qualified as he is? I think he I think I go ahead. I was just going to say, I think he has this issue.

[01:15:28] But I think the other issue that is working against him in the current makeup of the Democratic Party, which seems to be controlled by the most extreme portion of that party is that I saw him on Bill Maher's show talking about how much damage the Democratic Party had done to itself with identity politics, particularly on transgender ideology. And he said, like, everyday Americans look at us and just shake their heads.

[01:15:57] We're talking about men and women's sports, men and women's locker rooms. And we're we're sticking up for the for the for the guy instead of the girl. You know, we're on the wrong side of this issue. He was pretty adamant about it. And so there's two parts really of that party that are very, very vocal and seem to have a lot of power that he would be at odds with. But I agree with you as far as his background, his connections in the party, his experience.

[01:16:27] Yeah, I think he would be a very, very good candidate, even formidable candidate. Yeah. Just like you said, I mean, I don't agree with him on political issues, but you look at his resume. He yeah, he would be a good one. But he's got he's going to have two different constituencies to to battle. Jordan. Yeah, I'm just to me, I'm just shocked that guys like Rahm Emanuel, who's eminently qualified again, too liberal for my political taste,

[01:16:56] but very qualified and the fact that he would say something so rational as the transgender movement has just been a disaster for Democrat political success. That is going to get him blackballed as a candidate. And and it's just very, very sad to just this extremism is just taking root.

[01:17:23] And, you know, I remember many of the listeners may have read Corrie Ten Boom's book about, you know, when she lived in Holland in 1940 was protecting Jews. The hiding place. And I thought like, yeah, terrible. Right. The hiding place. Yeah. Like, oh, that's just such a far away thing of the past. It's never going to happen here. I don't know. I mean, I don't know how far this could go.

[01:17:45] But it is shocking to me how this this very terrible philosophy of anti-Semitism is spreading in the United States. It is something I just believe would never happen. And it's happening before our eyes. You know, not long ago, a few months ago, Lenny Reifenstahl was a filmmaker in Germany during the 1930s.

[01:18:10] And Hitler had her do the the 1934 Nazi Party convention. And Hitler comes to power in January of 33, the 1934 Party convention. And she does the film and then they release it called The Triumph of the Will. And you can go find you can find it on YouTube and watch it. And I look at this and I'm just I'm stunned at the number of people who just go to Hitler.

[01:18:37] I mean, it's it's it's just it's amazing to me as how he was able to get that much control in so short a time. Much of it built on anti-Semitism and not a bunch of ignorant. No, low educated people. It's one of the best educated countries in the world.

[01:18:57] And we're seeing the the equivalent here of these very highly ranked universities in the United States where this kind of wrong thinking is rampant. I'm glad you brought that up because I was going to say I thought it was very, very telling that a lot of the rhetoric really heated up on college campuses, particularly in the Ivy League and some of the elite institutions after where they're chasing Jews on campus. I mean, they're shutting it down. Right.

[01:19:27] After the October 7th. I mean, you just saw these people get brutally raped and murdered. Some of their attackers were live streaming it, you know, and that's when the the Jewish rhetoric pops up, you know, and you start having these protests on campus. And like you said, like preventing Jewish students from getting into class and all sorts of other things. It's like, yeah, that's a very, very troubling, troubling sign.

[01:19:56] Well, speaking of October 7th, there's a new art, a new study out that looks at this. And we will talk about that when we come back, because that has hit the pages again. And it has revealed what many people were denying is apparently true. Stay with us. We'll be right back on point of view.

[01:20:29] Most of us carry a telephone around with us, and yet we're not talking as much as we used to. We're using our phones increasingly to communicate in ways that replace actual talking, like texting, emailing, and online ordering. Researchers at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and the University of Arizona began studying gender differences in talkativeness. The researchers discovered something even more interesting. People in general are speaking to one another less.

[01:20:55] They reviewed 22 studies covering the daily speaking of more than 2,000 participants, ranging in age from 10 to 94. The Wall Street Journal's family and tech columnist, Julie Jargon, reported on the results. From 2005 to 2019, a person speaking decreased on average 4,700 words per day, 28%. Some people might welcome the quiet, but Ms. Jargon worries that this retreat into online spaces will increase loneliness

[01:21:21] and lead to a decline in the cognitive chess game that is conversation. We like the efficiency of texting, but there's evidence it's shortening our attention spans, which can make holding a conversation harder. Valeria Pfeiffer, assistant professor at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and co-author of the study says, talking to people builds skills like learning when to speak and when not to, and how to interject. It's not just smartphones. Dr. Pfeiffer cites other shifts, like fewer multi-generational households, declining community and religious engagement,

[01:21:51] and even self-checkout lines at the grocery stores, as reasons we have fewer opportunities to talk to relatives and strangers. Numerous studies show today's parents talk less to their babies, and phones are one important factor. International experts are warning of the impact of technology on the formation of secure attachment bonds within families, as well as in interpersonal relationships. Try speaking more to neighbors, to the barista, to the cashier. Sometimes choose calling over texting.

[01:22:19] Let people hear the meaning your voice conveys. For Point of View, I'm Penna Dexter. You're listening to Point of View, your listener-supported source for truth. And welcome back to our final segment on Point of View for this weekend edition. And we ended this last segment talking about some of the anti-Semitism that's going on, especially in the Democratic Party.

[01:22:46] And I wanted to highlight an article in the free press. This is available online at pointofview.net, and you can see it. The title of it is What I Learned Cataloging the Sexual Violence of October 7. It's written by, I'm going to pronounce it, Kalkav Elkayem Levy. And it's Dr. Levy, and she has been going through and interviewing the various people, looking at the video and so forth.

[01:23:13] And she just goes through, Dr. Levy goes through what happened on October 7. And, Lathan, this is just, it's horrible stuff. And yet, when you look at the Palestinians who were praising it, dancing, some of the sexual acts that happened during this day, it's brutal, it's horrible, and yet, somehow, it ended up being anti-Jewish from perspectives of other people.

[01:23:43] Yeah, I read the article that you mentioned, and I thought maybe the most poignant point in it at the end was that her conclusion is that we, as human beings, still can't come to terms with what human beings are capable of doing. Oh, yes. Yes. And the things that she documents in this report, we literally cannot say on the air here, because there may be families listening in the car with kids in the car.

[01:24:13] It is the worst thing you can imagine does not do it justice as what was being done to these people, both men and women, young and old. And then to the point, you know, towards the end of the last segment, that when this started coming out, when this happened, that was when we saw a big explosion of, you know, these anti-Semitic rallies on college campuses

[01:24:39] or people trying to stop Jewish students from getting in the class and Jewish students having to be escorted, you know, around campus. And it just, to the point of that article, it's difficult to wrap your head around what human beings are capable of, to see this happen and then celebrate it and then also twist it into, you know, quote, anti-Zionism,

[01:25:09] that if you're not on the side of the people who did these horrific things, then you're somehow a Zionist to the point where you have a Democrat Congress and a congressional candidate promising to, you know, put people in internment camps for being Zionist. I mean, imprisoning people for a political point of view.

[01:25:33] That is a level of extremism that is completely antithetical to our founding, to the First Amendment, to free speech, to everything that we hold dear in this country, no matter who it comes from. And Jordan, one of the things I just find amazing is there are Muslims who say this could not have happened because a Muslim man would not do that. And yet we have the evidence, irrefutable evidence of it.

[01:26:03] Yeah, and I mean, I think that it might be the tenets of Islam and the Koran say this is wrong, but it actually happened. And what I think is that this wasn't even somewhat spontaneous. This was premeditated. That I think people need to remember that even though there's been a lot of conflict since between the Palestinian Arabs and the Jews in Israel since 1948 when Israel was formed.

[01:26:33] It was at a time of relative peace when October 7th happened. And what was happening that I understand was motivating this, that Israel was very close to reaching a peace agreement with Saudi Arabia, here where the holiest sites of Islam are located. And this was meant as an attempt to disrupt that process and prevent that agreement from coming into place

[01:27:01] because it basically would have displaced the Palestinian cause if the major Muslim nations are coming to making more and more peace treaties as they did under President Trump's first term. So this was meant to disrupt all of that. And this can't. I've had people say to me, well, you know, the Palestinians were just like oppressed people reacting to decades of oppression.

[01:27:30] Even if I'm not sure that's factually correct. But if it were, it cannot be morally justified because you've been oppressing me. I'm allowed to go and rape innocent women, things like this, torture them, kill people, all this sort of stuff. That's not a civilized society that does stuff like that.

[01:27:55] And this is where I think that if the Israelis are engaging in genocide, as the other side says, the people that are pro-Palestinian, what would the Palestinians do if they were in power? And I think this is a foretaste of what would happen. It would be mass destruction.

[01:28:18] It wouldn't be, oh, now we have a peace-loving, coexisting society or something like that. You know, one of the things we've seen from speakers, representatives of Hamas, is that they want to be able to see children killed, women killed, and others because that reverts back to people criticizing Israel and helps the Palestinian, or at least the Hamas cause for being able to, say, shun Israel.

[01:28:49] Yeah, I think that that's right. Now, you know, the Israel is full of people that were driven not from Germany and Poland. I mean, there are definitely those people that, you know, their grandparents or whatever immigrated back in the 1940s. But Jews that lived in Baghdad, who lived in Damascus, who lived in Algeria,

[01:29:17] and were basically driven out by the Arab governments, Muslim governments there, and they had no other place to go but to Israel. So this is, there's no other homeland for them to go back to. And I think there's got to be some sort of peaceful accommodation where everyone can get along. There's enough space for everybody. They can do this, I think, if there's a will.

[01:29:41] But I think this is Israel trying to defend itself from Hamas and others that want them utterly destroyed, as Hamas says, in its organic documents that form what it's all about. Jordan, we only have less than two minutes left, but give me a sense. Do you think moderates in the Democratic Party can take back control of this and turn that around? Or are we going to see more anti-Semitism in the Democratic Party?

[01:30:08] I think we're going to see more of it, unfortunately, because I feel like the intelligentsia is buying into this. But I think what's going to happen is there's going to be revolt by the voters that are the moderates, the independents are not going to accept this. And I think the Democrats may have to do some soul searching and throw out some of these extremists from their ranks. Well, thank you for that. And, Latham, tell us a little bit about Alliance for Defending Freedom. Well, we're very busy.

[01:30:38] As Jordan mentioned earlier, we won our 18th Supreme Court case this term, and we have actually two more we're still waiting on that we helped Idaho and West Virginia defend their women's sports laws. Still waiting on those opinions that were coming towards the end of the term. So those could be coming out here in the next couple of weeks. So very, very busy and very blessed to be continuing to win on behalf of free speech and religious liberty

[01:31:04] and sanctity of life and marriage, parental rights, more to come. And Jordan Lawrence with First Liberty Institute. And you all have had your own successes with the Supreme Court. Yes, we won a case for Gabe Olivier, the street preacher at the Supreme Court in March. And people probably remember the Coach Kennedy case, which helped defeat this wrong and extreme thinking that the Supreme Court has had on separation of church and state,

[01:31:31] which has been used as a weapon to deprive us of religious liberty all across the land. That is gone now because of First Liberty. Lawrence and Latham, thank you for joining us here on Point of View, and we'll be back on Monday. At Point of View, we believe there is power in prayer. And that is why we have relaunched our Pray for America campaign, a series of weekly emails to unite Americans in prayer for our nation.

[01:32:01] Imagine if hundreds of thousands of Americans started praying intentionally together on a weekly basis. You can help make that a reality by subscribing to our Pray for America emails. Just go to pointofview.net and click on the Pray for America banner that's right there on the homepage. Each week you'll receive a brief news update, a specific prayer guide,

[01:32:29] and a free resource to equip you in further action. We encourage you to not only pray with us each week, but to share these prayers and the resources with others in your life. Join the movement today. Visit pointofview.net and click on the banner Pray for America right there at the top. That's pointofview.net.

[01:32:55] Let's pray together for God to make a difference in our land. Point of View is produced by Point of View Ministries.