The Charlie Kirk Show - The War on the Courts with Kelly Shackelford and Garret Holdridge
Aired: 2023-05-02
Duration: 34:45


=== Lifeline for Businesses (08:30) ===

[00:00:00]  Hey everybody, fan of Charlie Kirk Show.
[00:00:01]  Kelly Shackelford joins us for a Supreme Court update.
[00:00:05]  We talk about two terrible hoaxes that resulted, one in death and a reputation smeared.
[00:00:10]  And we talk about the employee retention credit.
[00:00:13]  Our friends from COVID Tax Relief give us an update of how many of you have been able to get your money back.
[00:00:18]  It's very exciting.
[00:00:20]  Go to covidtaxrelief.org.
[00:00:22]  That is covidtaxrelief.org.
[00:00:26]  As always, you can email me your thoughts, freedom at charliekirk.com.
[00:00:30]  Subscribe to the Charlie Kirk Show podcast.
[00:00:32]  Open up your podcast app and type in Charlie Kirk Show.
[00:00:35]  Get involved with Turning Point USA and start a high school or college chapter today at tpusa.com.
[00:00:43]  That is tpusa.com.
[00:00:46]  Email me as always freedom at charliekirk.com and support our program directly at charliekirk.com slash support.
[00:00:53]  I want to thank Deborah from Washington, Rebecca from Arizona, Mike from Delaware, Tara from Michigan, Sarah from Indiana, Linda from Tennessee, and Brianna from California.
[00:01:05]  Thank you, CharlieKirk.com slash support.
[00:01:08]  Buckle up, everybody.
[00:01:09]  Here we go.
[00:01:10]  Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
[00:01:12]  Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.
[00:01:14]  I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
[00:01:17]  Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
[00:01:20]  I want to thank Charlie.
[00:01:21]  He's an incredible guy.
[00:01:22]  His spirit, his love of this country.
[00:01:24]  He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
[00:01:31]  We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
[00:01:40]  That's why we are here.
[00:01:43]  Brought to you by the Loan Experts I Trust, Andrew and Todd at Sierra Pacific Mortgage at andrewandTodd.com.
[00:01:53]  All right, joining us now is Garrett Holdridge, founding partner of Consumer Tax Advocate, covidtaxrelief.org.
[00:01:59]  That is covidtaxrelief.org.
[00:02:03]  Garrett, welcome to the program.
[00:02:05]  Tell us the good news of how our audience is doing, getting their money back from the government with the ERC.
[00:02:12]  Tell us about it.
[00:02:13]  Absolutely.
[00:02:14]  Hey, Charlie.
[00:02:15]  We're so excited to be a part of the show.
[00:02:17]  By the way, love watching you.
[00:02:19]  We have you on actually throughout the office every single morning.
[00:02:22]  Very kind.
[00:02:24]  Excited to be on the show here.
[00:02:26]  Wanted to share the news.
[00:02:27]  Last time that we were on your show here, we had 201 businesses, your listeners, that had either called in or filled out a form on covidtaxrelief.org.
[00:02:39]  We have secured $24 million so far for those businesses.
[00:02:44]  That was last time that we were on the show.
[00:02:47]  As of today, we are now at 303 businesses for a total of $32 million.
[00:02:55]  It's awesome.
[00:02:56]  Well, that's amazing.
[00:02:57]  And so just re-explain it to our audience.
[00:03:00]  Again, it's covidtaxrelief.org.
[00:03:02]  These are for business owners, entrepreneurs that stayed open during the pandemic.
[00:03:05]  Most people don't even know that this money has been allocated by Congress.
[00:03:08]  Again, I'm not a fan of all this money that's been allocated, but hey, if it's there, do your thing, covidtaxrelief.org.
[00:03:14]  Tell us about the details of the law.
[00:03:18]  Yeah, so the ERC program or the employee retention credit, it's for businesses who kept their doors open or tried to keep their doors open during the pandemic, meaning that maybe they couldn't make it through the whole thing.
[00:03:30]  But they were paying W-2 employees throughout the time that they were open.
[00:03:35]  It's a reward, basically, for these companies having done that.
[00:03:40]  Any amount of employees over two W-2 employees qualifies, and it's very simple here within our company.
[00:03:48]  The law is about 200 pages long, as you could imagine.
[00:03:52]  We have built software that parallels the IRS guidelines.
[00:03:56]  And what that means is you go to covidtaxrelief.org.
[00:04:00]  You're going to enter in your information.
[00:04:02]  It's going to take you two minutes on there.
[00:04:04]  We're going to give you a call and we're going to walk you through a eight to 10 minute questionnaire.
[00:04:08]  That questionnaire will be exactly what the IRS guidelines are.
[00:04:13]  And it's going to let you know exactly what your business would qualify for.
[00:04:18]  There's no commitment.
[00:04:19]  There's no personal sensitive information that we ask for at all.
[00:04:23]  And we don't ask for any type of payment at all.
[00:04:26]  So we want to make sure that you guys can just get to the website, figure out if the found money qualifies for your business, take advantage of it.
[00:04:35]  And you know what, Charlie?
[00:04:36]  We always tell a lot of our businesses that come through the doors in this uncertain time.
[00:04:42]  Banks are failing.
[00:04:43]  I just was listening to your show.
[00:04:44]  It's unbelievable.
[00:04:46]  This is a lifeline for so many businesses.
[00:04:48]  It's not going to last forever.
[00:04:50]  It's limited.
[00:04:51]  It's the last COVID stimulus package.
[00:04:53]  It's there.
[00:04:54]  You owe it to yourself.
[00:04:56]  I tell these businesses, you owe it to your employees.
[00:04:58]  It's not a grant and it's not a loan.
[00:05:01]  So you could use it as distribution.
[00:05:03]  You could donate it to the community or church if you don't need the money, which is hard to say at this point, but it's there for you.
[00:05:09]  And I think that everybody should be taking advantage of it.
[00:05:13]  And thanks to your audience, we've been really able to get the word out.
[00:05:16]  And thanks to you allowing us to come on the show.
[00:05:19]  It's helped you.
[00:05:20]  No, I believe in it.
[00:05:21]  And I don't, again, I'm not, I wish Congress wouldn't have passed it, but we have to live in reality.
[00:05:26]  And it's there for people that are hardworking Americans that say, hey, you know, I kept my business open and my tax, my receipts went down.
[00:05:34]  And what is there?
[00:05:36]  And so we've had over 303 businesses actually get ERC money.
[00:05:40]  And you said there's over 876 leads that have been generated at covidtaxrelief.org.
[00:05:46]  Our audience is right up there at the top.
[00:05:48]  Is that right?
[00:05:49]  Absolutely.
[00:05:50]  Absolutely it is.
[00:05:51]  I was telling your team prior to this, my goodness, when our team sees a Charlie Kirk lead per se come through, they are so excited to speak to these people.
[00:06:01]  Your audience, they've said has just been so kind, so cool, so awesome.
[00:06:05]  And these are the words that we get back from our staff.
[00:06:08]  So it's nice to hear it.
[00:06:09]  Your audience responds amazingly, and we've been helping out a ton of them.
[00:06:13]  And of the 876 that have come through that have yet to receive funds, it's coming.
[00:06:18]  The numbers, I'm sure the next time we're on your show will be much higher.
[00:06:22]  So it's a process, but it is one that we've expired.
[00:06:26]  When does the ERC expire?
[00:06:29]  Yeah, it expires in 2025, April 15th of 2025.
[00:06:35]  And that is if it goes the entire time, right?
[00:06:38]  Politicians, as we know, they kind of do as they choose.
[00:06:41]  The legislation could change, whatever the case is.
[00:06:44]  But as of right now, it's April 15th, 2025.
[00:06:47]  So we have a little bit of time left.
[00:06:49]  I encourage everybody to get it done, ASAP, so that in case any changes happen within this election or whatever it may be, you're secured.
[00:06:57]  The money's in your hands.
[00:06:58]  It's already allocated.
[00:07:00]  Take it.
[00:07:01]  And once the money runs out, money runs out, right?
[00:07:04]  And so you got to get there, COVIDtaxRelief.org.
[00:07:08]  And so, Garrett, just in closing here, what kind of businesses?
[00:07:11]  I mean, these are just mom and pops to entrepreneurs, manufacturing restaurants.
[00:07:15]  Give us a little bit of a window into the types of businesses you're helping in our audience.
[00:07:20]  You hit the nail right on the head.
[00:07:21]  All the above, really.
[00:07:23]  We've helped trucking companies.
[00:07:24]  We've helped private schools.
[00:07:26]  We've helped the private hospital and everything in between.
[00:07:30]  The business owners typically on average have eight employees that come through our door.
[00:07:35]  We've helped companies that have upwards of 400 employees.
[00:07:38]  But it's really the sweet spot to get somebody in that just skated by COVID, four or five employees, and to inject $100,000, $150,000 worth of capital into their business in this type of an economy is huge.
[00:07:52]  And we love helping those type of businesses.
[00:07:55]  I love it.
[00:07:55]  It's covidtaxrelief.org.
[00:07:57]  And look, can you just one last time tell them, you guys just take a percentage of what you're able to get back?
[00:08:02]  No upfront fees, none of that stuff.
[00:08:03]  Tell us about that, covidtaxrelief.org.
[00:08:06]  Yeah, absolutely.
[00:08:07]  So once we figure out what you're qualified for, we will not charge you a dime until the money is in your hands, meaning that we will do all the work.
[00:08:16]  We will go through all the legislation for you.
[00:08:18]  We'll make this as simple as possible.
[00:08:20]  At the very end of the process, when the checks are in your hand, our firm will send you an invoice here that would be a 15% commission to our company to be upfront and transparent.
[00:08:29]  That's what that would look like.

=== The First Amendment Fight (14:55) ===

[00:08:30]  Very good.
[00:08:31]  All right, Derek, thank you.
[00:08:32]  Everyone, check it out, covidtaxrelief.org.
[00:08:34]  Thanks so much.
[00:08:35]  Thank you, Charlie.
[00:08:38]  I want to talk about ReliefFactor.com.
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[00:09:00]  We're all about helping people live lives that are filled with connection, exploration, passion, and emotion.
[00:09:05]  That is what his life is all about.
[00:09:07]  Make sure you guys are sleeping well.
[00:09:08]  It's a major part of life.
[00:09:10]  Check it out right now, relieffactor.com, relieffactor.com.
[00:09:16]  Okay, several stories I want to get to here, and we have some really exciting guests coming up later in the hour.
[00:09:21]  I want to play a clip from my friend, Vivek Ramaswamy, debating Chuck Todd on gender.
[00:09:28]  He missed one of the great comebacks.
[00:09:30]  It was right there.
[00:09:30]  He could have done it.
[00:09:32]  But play cut eight, please.
[00:09:34]  But below the age of 18, I think it's perfectly legitimate to say that we won't allow genital mutilation or chemical castration through puberty blockers.
[00:09:40]  You're calling it that transition.
[00:09:42]  But how do you know it's that?
[00:09:43]  Again, how do you know?
[00:09:44]  Are you confident that you know that gender is as binary as you're describing it?
[00:09:51]  Are you confident that it isn't a spectrum?
[00:09:52]  I am.
[00:09:53]  Do you know this as a scientist?
[00:09:54]  Well, there's two X chromosomes if you're a woman, an X and a Y.
[00:09:57]  That means a lot of scientific research out there.
[00:10:00]  There's a lot of scientific research out there that says gender is a spectrum.
[00:10:03]  Chuck, I respectfully disagree.
[00:10:05]  Gender dysphoria for most of our history, all the way through the DSM-5, has been characterized as a mental health disorder.
[00:10:11]  And I don't think it's compassionate to affirm that.
[00:10:13]  I think that's cruelty.
[00:10:16]  Look, Vivek should have just said, listen, you don't have to be a meteorologist to see that it's raining.
[00:10:25]  It would have been a good comeback.
[00:10:26]  His comeback was great.
[00:10:26]  Vivek did wonderful, though.
[00:10:28]  Lots of scientific research.
[00:10:29]  And no, there isn't.
[00:10:30]  No, no, there's scientific pontification.
[00:10:34]  There's scientific conjecture of these radical academics.
[00:10:41]  And again, he said, how can you know for certain?
[00:10:43]  And Vivek could have leaned in.
[00:10:44]  Chuck, can you tell me what a woman is?
[00:10:46]  Because until you can tell me what a woman is, I ain't going to play your silly little game.
[00:10:50]  XX, X, Y, end of story.
[00:10:54]  And you wonder why Hispanics are becoming Republican.
[00:10:58]  They look at that and they say, I don't know what that is, but that is some sort of weird pagan cult calling themselves the Democrat Party.
[00:11:06]  I want to play Cut 16.
[00:11:07]  Elon Musk says it's bizarre that we've come to this point where free speech used to be a liberal value, and yet we see from the left a desire to censor.
[00:11:14]  Play cut 16.
[00:11:17]  It's bizarre that we've come to this point where, like, free speech used to be a left or liberal value, and yet we see from, you know, the in quotes left, a desire to actually censor.
[00:11:32]  That seems crazy.
[00:11:33]  I mean, I think we should be extremely concerned about anything that undermines the First Amendment.
[00:11:41]  There's a reason for the First Amendment.
[00:11:42]  The First Amendment is because people came from countries where they could not speak freely and where saying certain things would get you thrown into prison.
[00:11:52]  And they were like, well, we don't want that here.
[00:11:54]  Joining us now is Kelly Shackelford.
[00:11:56]  You guys can check out the very important organization, firstliberty.org.
[00:12:00]  Kelly, welcome to the program.
[00:12:02]  Thanks, Charlie.
[00:12:03]  Happy to be on.
[00:12:04]  So, Kelly, let's just riff a second on the First Amendment.
[00:12:08]  The attack on speech is significant.
[00:12:10]  Elon Musk is coming on the right side talking about freedom of discourse and dialogue.
[00:12:14]  Just any thoughts off the top on that short little riff that you had?
[00:12:19]  You know, it's rare to see what we've been seeing in the last maybe, I don't know, it's five years, however many years.
[00:12:26]  I mean, the one thing that all Americans agreed upon was that whether you agree with somebody's speech or not, we don't censor other people's speech.
[00:12:36]  But obviously, as this sort of Marxist approach has begun to seep into our country, we've got all these people, including young people, who don't think you should protect all free speech.
[00:12:48]  That goes against our country as great as almost anything I can think of.
[00:12:53]  Freedom of religion, freedom of speech are kind of the cornerstone of this country.
[00:12:59]  And it's under attack.
[00:13:00]  And we're seeing our courts under attack.
[00:13:02]  We're seeing a lot of things we've never seen right now by people who want to somewhat destroy our country and what it's all about.
[00:13:11]  It certainly feels that way.
[00:13:12]  So I want to get into the story here.
[00:13:14]  Ted Cruz decries political smear job against Clarence Thomas for ethics questions.
[00:13:20]  Kelly, your thoughts?
[00:13:23]  Well, what's been happening is, you know, they started, the left started with this extreme attempt to court pack to add four justices to the Supreme Court.
[00:13:33]  This is the institution they do not totally control.
[00:13:36]  They control about everything else.
[00:13:38]  That's exactly right.
[00:13:39]  And so they can't stand it.
[00:13:41]  So the court packing was first, which would have destroyed not only the courts, it would have destroyed our country.
[00:13:47]  It's how most countries are lost.
[00:13:49]  And so that didn't succeed.
[00:13:52]  And so their new approach, and there's been a bunch of articles on this, Charlie.
[00:13:56]  They just had 30 of the leading progressive groups meet.
[00:13:59]  This was in the Washington Post to figure out how they're going to change the courts.
[00:14:03]  And what they've been doing recently is they want to criticize the court.
[00:14:08]  They want to say they're unethical with the most baseless arguments you've ever seen.
[00:14:14]  But the press just reads the headlines.
[00:14:16]  And I saw a poll that they've already got 62% of the country thinking that the court only issues decisions based upon its politics.
[00:14:25]  And so this ethical charge against Thomas is just bizarre.
[00:14:29]  There have been rules about what justices have to report, and they just changed the rules recently to allow for more reporting.
[00:14:39]  What they're doing is they're attacking Justice Thomas because in the past, before the rule changed, he didn't report things that he didn't have to report.
[00:14:50]  And so it's just bizarre.
[00:14:52]  There's another one in the last few days attacking Justice Gorsuch because he actually taught some at a law school, the Scalia Law School.
[00:15:03]  And by the way, you look at any of these things, Charlie, and you apply these to the liberal justices.
[00:15:09]  It's all there too.
[00:15:10]  But they don't talk about that.
[00:15:12]  It's not in any of the reports.
[00:15:14]  One of the attacks on Justice Thomas was that in one of his reports, he reported a defunct group as receiving, as his wife receiving, income from.
[00:15:26]  And they made it seem like there's some weird, you know, horrible, unethical thing.
[00:15:31]  It just turned out they changed the name of the group from one year to the next.
[00:15:35]  And so we're seeing, I could go through a litany.
[00:15:38]  And they don't want to actually go through the potential ethics violations of Kagan or Sotomayor, right?
[00:15:44]  This is directed just on the conservatives on the court.
[00:15:48]  And it is going to be an interesting issue because the Senate says, hey, Supreme Court, listen to us.
[00:15:52]  And they just are like, no, no.
[00:15:55]  And I'm actually pleased to see all nine justices do this because, look, we don't want justices above the law.
[00:16:01]  At the same time, we do not want a legislative body to be able to tell the Supreme Court what to do.
[00:16:07]  That's never been part of the founders' intent.
[00:16:09]  Kelly, I'm hearing in kind of SCOTUS blog and kind of in the inside community, also in some op-eds, that the Chevron deference, the Chevron doctrine, might be up and might actually be repealed.
[00:16:23]  This is kind of a nerdy, wonky thing, but it's actually really important towards holding the administrative state accountable.
[00:16:31]  Explain, please.
[00:16:34]  This is a huge deal.
[00:16:36]  If it's what we think it is, and they're about to throw out the Chevron deference approach, what it is is for years, and even the conservatives went along with this for a while and made, I think they eventually realized that was a mistake.
[00:16:53]  But what it says is that, look, if you've got one of these unelected bureaucrats from these agencies or administrative state, that if they interpret a rule in a certain way, then unless it's just really unreasonable, the court's not allowed to mess with it.
[00:17:11]  Well, I mean, that just gives them all this power to ruin people's lives and their businesses and everything else.
[00:17:20]  And it's not something that Congress did.
[00:17:23]  And all of a sudden, the court is not allowed to fix it.
[00:17:26]  And it has created all this power in these unelected bureaucrats.
[00:17:32]  And again, they've realized since this is not right.
[00:17:35]  There's a separation of powers that make sense.
[00:17:37]  The court is not going to disagree with Congress on a piece of legislation.
[00:17:41]  They got to, you know, there's some deference there, but not to unelected bureaucrats.
[00:17:47]  And what they've done is they've created this powerful administrative state as a result.
[00:17:52]  And so when this gets flipped, which I think it will next term, we'll see.
[00:17:56]  I mean, this is a major, major return of power to the people and away from these government bureaucrats.
[00:18:04]  So, and I would tell people, this is like, you know, a lot of people get frustrated because the court's not doing what it wants to do, you know, really quickly or whatever.
[00:18:12]  These are major things that the court's doing.
[00:18:15]  I mean, you know, we have a case that's going to be decided in later June that I think is going to be a huge change on religious freedom in the workplace.
[00:18:23]  We want some major.
[00:18:25]  Tell us about that.
[00:18:27]  What it is, is the quick summary is we've had a protection in the law for 50 years that is supposed to protect religious freedom in the workplace.
[00:18:36]  But 46 years ago, a liberal Supreme Court just completely redefined the words in the statute in a way that's not honest.
[00:18:45]  And the court all admitted in our oral argument a couple of weeks ago that it wasn't honest.
[00:18:51]  And so they're about to restore a proper protection for people in the workplace.
[00:18:57]  And think of what's going on all over the country because we're seeing these cases.
[00:19:00]  We're getting lots of them.
[00:19:02]  People are coming into these woke corporations.
[00:19:04]  They've been there for 30 years.
[00:19:05]  They've done great work.
[00:19:07]  Now they're being called into the DEI office and told, you either sign this, which violates your faith, or you're fired.
[00:19:15]  And they're getting fired.
[00:19:16]  Well, this will provide protection for every person of faith who has a different belief than the new woke beliefs to be able to stand on those beliefs.
[00:19:26]  So the case is called Groff versus United States Postal Service.
[00:19:31]  It's about a guy wanting to take a Sabbath day, but the implications are much bigger because it's about the definition of the protection we give people on religious freedom in the workplace.
[00:19:42]  And so think of that.
[00:19:43]  Think of the Second Amendment case that came down this summer, the Coach Kennedy case about religious freedom.
[00:19:49]  Huge victory.
[00:19:50]  Massive victory.
[00:19:51]  And now, now, did the Kennedy case reverse Lemon?
[00:19:53]  Was that the Kennedy case?
[00:19:55]  Yes.
[00:19:55]  Lemon is the precedent that's been there for 50 years that has created all this hostility to religion that we've seen our whole lives, or even those of us who are older, our whole lives has been going on for 50, 60 years.
[00:20:10]  And, you know, we asked them to reverse that.
[00:20:13]  And it had been cited over 7,000 times, Charlie, in the last 50 years.
[00:20:18]  Everything you've seen that has been sort of... government hostility to religion has been linked back to that lemon case.
[00:20:25]  They just threw it out last summer.
[00:20:28]  And so everything just flipped, literally.
[00:20:30]  I mean, everywhere that crosses went down, they come back up.
[00:20:33]  Everywhere that menorahs were banned around Hanukkah, they come back up.
[00:20:38]  Everywhere the Ten Commandments were put in closets, they come back out.
[00:20:43]  You know, they used to freak out because there was religion around a school.
[00:20:48]  And you know what?
[00:20:50]  Not anymore.
[00:20:51]  I mean, people have religious freedom as part of our country.
[00:20:54]  So this is going to be a major shift that people are just going to start to see because they don't, 50 years of case law just got changed.
[00:21:01]  So I just want people to remember when they think about the court, why is the left on such a jihad against the court?
[00:21:09]  It's because they're really taking us back to our foundations as a country constitutionally.
[00:21:15]  The Second Amendment and the New York case that they upheld last summer, the coach, everybody's so focused on Roby Wade, they've missed all these other things.
[00:21:25]  And we're about to see Chevron deference, which is going to return all this power to the people and away from these unelected bureaucrats.
[00:21:32]  So just realize the court is doing some major work and they're focusing on the Constitution, not the evolving Constitution that's this living document that they just make things up.
[00:21:44]  That's what we've had in the past.
[00:21:46]  They're actually going to what does it say?
[00:21:48]  What did the founders put in place?
[00:21:50]  And they're enforcing that.
[00:21:52]  And it's making a big change.
[00:21:55]  And it's really causing the left to want to do everything in their power to delegitimize our courts and possibly even really destroy our courts and to put all the power into politics.
[00:22:07]  Kelly, I think you said it perfectly.
[00:22:09]  This is one of the only institutions the Marxists don't control.
[00:22:13]  And there are a lot of reasons for that.
[00:22:15]  Donald Trump deserves a lot of credit for doing what he said he's going to do and putting good judges and getting those judges confirmed.
[00:22:23]  And so can you add a little bit more depth to this, Kelly?
[00:22:27]  Because you had a great presentation in Houston.
[00:22:30]  I loved the event together.
[00:22:32]  But you said we're now living through one of the most exciting moments of religious liberty.
[00:22:36]  We have a lot of pastors that watch this show.
[00:22:39]  We have a lot of churchgoers that watch this show.
[00:22:42]  Just really broaden it even more of this moment, the excitement that we should be feeling where we're having religious liberty momentum that wouldn't have been unheard of 20 years ago.
[00:22:54]  Yeah, I've been doing this, all religious liberty cases for 34 years.
[00:22:58]  And what we're living through now is not even just historic.
[00:23:01]  It's never happened.
[00:23:05]  Going back to Lemon, just to help people understand, our founders didn't want there to be a nationally established church that we all had to support.
[00:23:13]  So there is a clause, one of the religion clauses, to make sure that doesn't happen.
[00:23:18]  But this court 50 years ago said, no, it means a lot more than that.
[00:23:22]  It means separation of church and state.
[00:23:23]  So wherever government is, religion can't be.

=== Separation of Church and State (05:48) ===

[00:23:26]  Well, government's everywhere.
[00:23:28]  It means that if you're offended by religion, you can bring a lawsuit.
[00:23:32]  Well, you can't bring lawsuits because you're offended.
[00:23:35]  But our whole lives, the last 50 or 60 years, you could only against religion.
[00:23:40]  And so we've seen all these attacks on nativity scenes at Christmas and you name it, right?
[00:23:45]  Why?
[00:23:46]  Because any of these things were in the Constitution?
[00:23:49]  Because of the Lemon case.
[00:23:51]  And, you know, there are about 7,000 to 8,000 requests a year for the court to take the case.
[00:23:57]  They took 67 last year.
[00:24:01]  If my goal in life had been for them to take two of my cases sometime in my life, that would be a really stupid goal because it does not happen.
[00:24:08]  Well, they didn't just take two of our cases.
[00:24:10]  We won two landmark religious liberty cases within six days of each other.
[00:24:15]  And we just argued another one two weeks ago that's going to be probably a change of a 46-year-old precedent that's been crushing religious freedom.
[00:24:25]  So, what I said, and it's just objectively true.
[00:24:28]  Every American alive right now has more religious freedom than they've ever had in their lifetime.
[00:24:35]  And we're just at the beginning of this.
[00:24:37]  This is like nothing we've ever seen.
[00:24:40]  And now it's up to people to take the freedom they have and begin to live it out.
[00:24:45]  And so every community in the country now can go, why are we having a prayer at our school board meeting?
[00:24:52]  Because it's totally allowed.
[00:24:55]  And so, I mean, they ought to force the city council to vote on whether they want prayer if they're not having prayer.
[00:25:01]  And let's put people on there who believe in a country with religious freedom and that we don't, religion is not some new pornography that can't be practiced in public.
[00:25:11]  All these things can change now.
[00:25:14]  Texas is on its way to passing a new law that's going to put a 10 commandments in every classroom to help remind people the foundation of our Western civilization that they feel like now, oh, you can't talk about it.
[00:25:30]  You can't talk about these parts of our history that are religious.
[00:25:33]  Well, that's all going to change.
[00:25:34]  And so I just want people to be empowered because a lot of times, Charlie, it's like we're always on the defensive.
[00:25:41]  We're always reacting.
[00:25:42]  We've won this.
[00:25:44]  We won the case.
[00:25:45]  Lemon is over.
[00:25:46]  It was repealed at the Supreme Court in the Coach Kennedy case.
[00:25:51]  People now, it's like the freedom is there.
[00:25:54]  God blew a hole open in the wall.
[00:25:56]  And now it's just a matter of people going into their own community and taking the ground that they've been given.
[00:26:01]  Amen.
[00:26:02]  And they can all check it out at firstliberty.org, right, Kelly?
[00:26:04]  Firstliberty.org?
[00:26:06]  Absolutely.
[00:26:07]  You guys have some exciting petitions as well.
[00:26:09]  And, you know, Kelly, I think we're in such an amazing thing.
[00:26:13]  Tell us about the Alaska Airlines case, by the way.
[00:26:17]  Alaska Airlines is an example of the kind of really horrible stuff that's going on to people around the country.
[00:26:22]  Alaska Airlines sent out a message to all their employees saying there's this thing called the Equality Act.
[00:26:32]  And I know you know what that is, which it's basically the most extreme LGBT federal law you can imagine.
[00:26:39]  It goes into every federal statute and says that whenever there's an LGBT issue, you strip away religious freedom from everybody.
[00:26:47]  And it's never going to pass.
[00:26:48]  It's not going to pass.
[00:26:49]  It doesn't have the votes to pass.
[00:26:50]  But Alaska thought it was great.
[00:26:52]  And they sent it out.
[00:26:54]  And they told their employees, we love your feedback.
[00:26:57]  Well, two of the flight attendants sent in and said, you know, I have real concerns about this because this would take away religious freedom, maybe even for my church or other organizations.
[00:27:06]  And so what did Alaska Airlines do?
[00:27:09]  They fired both of them.
[00:27:12]  And so this is a great example of this whole DEI approach where we want your opinions unless they're Christian opinions and then you're fired.
[00:27:21]  Well, again, that is illegal.
[00:27:24]  There are federal laws on religious freedom in the workplace, and we are going after Alaska Airlines.
[00:27:29]  And our goal isn't just to win for these two flight attendants, which certainly that's a huge goal.
[00:27:34]  We want to leave a mark on these corporations so that they know you don't do this to people in this country.
[00:27:41]  And so that litigation is ongoing.
[00:27:43]  And there's a bunch others just like it.
[00:27:46]  And again, this case we argued two weeks ago at the Supreme Court, which will probably be handed down in June, could really increase the protection for religious freedom in the workplace and allow even more people to have protection from this type of abuse.
[00:28:02]  Kelly, God bless you.
[00:28:03]  Firstliberty.org.
[00:28:04]  You guys do great work.
[00:28:05]  I'm 100% behind you.
[00:28:06]  Kelly, thanks so much.
[00:28:07]  Thank you, Charlie.
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[00:28:55]  Maybe this month you could provide an ultrasound in honor of your mom.
[00:28:59]  Go to preborn.org, call 833-850-BABY.
[00:29:03]  That is 833-850-2229, or go to preborin.org.
[00:29:07]  That is preborin.org.
[00:29:09]  Great organization.
[00:29:09]  I'm a donor.
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[00:29:11]  Preborn.org.

=== Race Hoaxes Destroy Lives (04:40) ===

[00:29:15]  Lawrenceville School in New Jersey is now admitting that it had fallen tragically short in its obligation to protect a young man, Jack Reed, who killed himself.
[00:29:26]  Again, if our leaders were serious about problems happening in our country, they'd be talking about why are so many young people killing themselves?
[00:29:32]  Now they're more worried about Ukraine and trans stuff.
[00:29:36]  The school has acknowledged that bullying and unkind behavior and actions taken or not taken by the school likely contributed to Jack's death.
[00:29:43]  But it wasn't just bullying.
[00:29:45]  No, no, no, no.
[00:29:47]  It's more than that.
[00:29:48]  This is the New York Times, by the way.
[00:29:49]  He committed suicide about a year ago.
[00:29:51]  And I mean, this is just so sad.
[00:29:52]  The details make you sick to your stomach.
[00:29:55]  He tucked a Bible into his gym shorts and a note into his pocket directing his parents to a Google document explaining his feelings of despair.
[00:30:02]  It's just like hard to even say those words.
[00:30:05]  Committed suicide because here's why.
[00:30:08]  During a secret Santa gift exchange among his classmates, Jack was given a rape whistle together with a book of How to Make Friends.
[00:30:14]  The school secretly investigated these rumors, determined they were completely false, but took no action at all to prevent the bullying or the lies being told because there were made-up rumors that he was a campus rapist.
[00:30:28]  The school, because he's obviously a white male, why would they go out of their way to try to exonerate him?
[00:30:34]  They drugged their feet and he killed himself in Lawrenceville, New Jersey.
[00:30:40]  I mean, a lawsuit could probably destroy the school.
[00:30:43]  I hope it does.
[00:30:44]  I hope his parents ask for a billion dollars and raid the endowment.
[00:30:49]  If you tell lies from the right side of politics, you are nearly immune, especially against white people.
[00:30:58]  There's a similar story from the University of Virginia, which thankfully I do not think includes anybody killing themselves, but you wouldn't be shocked if it did.
[00:31:08]  So a black BLM activist who looks like Job of the Hutt named Zianna Bryant falsely accused a white girl at the University of Virginia.
[00:31:17]  And again, I'm not trying to like trivialize the weight here.
[00:31:20]  This person's a disgusting person.
[00:31:22]  This person is a really nasty individual.
[00:31:25]  And let me tell you.
[00:31:27]  So she falsely accused a white UVA student named Morgan Bedtinger of wanting to run over BLM protesters while her car was surrounded by a mob at a BLM protest in the summer of 2020.
[00:31:41]  She was formerly sanctioned by UVA, expelled in because of it from the university, but two separate investigations concluded a year later that it never happened.
[00:31:50]  So, this white girl gets expelled from UVA because of a lie of an obese black person.
[00:31:58]  Ziana went on to have a successful career in glowing profiles in media outlets, while Morgan's life was completely destroyed, including her plan to attend law school.
[00:32:08]  This came six years after her father, a former police officer, died of cancer.
[00:32:14]  This black person gets away with the whole thing and destroys it on a total hoax.
[00:32:19]  Not to mention, in Stanford, there's another Stanford race hoax.
[00:32:26]  So, a year ago, you might remember, Stanford University investigates noose found on campus, on campus tree, as hate crime.
[00:32:33]  Remember that?
[00:32:34]  A year ago, it was on NPR and on the Associated Press.
[00:32:38]  Turns out the entire thing was a hoax.
[00:32:42]  Turns out there is nothing to it.
[00:32:44]  In fact, there were administrators at Stanford University that were just making stuff up.
[00:32:55]  You see, when you subsidize something, you get more of something.
[00:33:01]  We have a supply and demand problem with racism, but it just so happens the upside of being a victim of racism or being a victim of a white male rapist is very high.
[00:33:13]  So, they just make it up, Jussie Smollett style.
[00:33:17]  So, we have race hoax after race hoax, and it targets innocent young people that are never able to defend themselves.
[00:33:24]  And Jack Reed is dead because of it, killed himself.
[00:33:29]  UVA, they nearly destroyed her life, took years for her to get her record straight, and the black activist gets away with it.
[00:33:40]  This is only accelerating in its ferocity: the end of due process, the end of checks and balances, the complete erosion and deterioration of decent norms.

=== End of Due Process (00:49) ===

[00:33:55]  Wokeness elevates the most disgusting, dishonest people because wokeness itself is dishonest and disgusting.
[00:34:04]  In the simplest way, we now have ideology that is consistent with the people pushing the ideology.
[00:34:12]  When you have sick and disgusting ideology, you're gonna have sick and disgusting people, and that's what props it up.
[00:34:17]  And they have to fight fiercely for it because what other system would ever give these people money and status?
[00:34:25]  The answer is nothing, but they call it equity.
[00:34:29]  Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
[00:34:31]  Email us your thoughts as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.
[00:34:34]  Thanks so much for listening, and God bless.
[00:34:40]  For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.