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Aug. 31, 2022 - Doug Collins Podcast
39:09
Fighting the Good Fight! Winning at the Supreme Court
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You want to listen to a podcast?
By who?
Georgia GOP Congressman Doug Collins.
How is it?
The greatest thing I have ever heard in my whole life.
I could not believe my ears.
This house, wherever the rules are disregarded, chaos and mob rule.
It has been said today, where is bravery?
I'll tell you where bravery is found and courage is found.
It's found in this minority who has lived through the last year of nothing but rules being broken, people being put down, questions not being answered, and this majority say, be damned with anything else.
We're going to impeach and do whatever we want to do.
Why?
Because we won an election.
I guarantee you, one day you'll be back in the minority and it ain't gonna be that fun.
Hey everybody, it's Doug Collins.
Welcome back to the Doug Collins Podcast.
We've got a great time for us today.
We're going to be talking with Kelly Shockford from First Liberty Institute.
This has been a year that will go down in the history books, I believe, as one of the most written about, talked about, We're good to
is I think for the first time in a long time, we're seeing a court that actually is interpreting law as the Constitution we believe intended to.
Now, that's going to be an interesting perspective for most of our liberal friends and from our conservative friends as well.
But one of the leading people that has been pushing the court for years, standing up for religious liberty, standing up for personal freedom, standing up for the Welcome to the podcast.
Welcome to the podcast.
Happy to be on, Doug.
It is good.
All right, let's go back in history a little bit because, I mean, a lot of times people hear First Liberty, it's in the middle of a case.
It's in the middle of something coming up.
They see, you know, the Coach Kennedy case, which we'll talk about later, or the vaccine case with the Navy SEALs, or the main school choice.
That's where they start to hear about it.
But how did it get started?
How did you get involved?
Just tell us a little bit more about the institute itself.
Well, when I was in high school, really, I knew my gifts were in analytical thinking and speaking, and you'll understand this.
I thought, well, I either need to be a pastor or a lawyer.
And people said, that's like a God or Satan choice, isn't it, to be a pastor or a lawyer?
I realized I'd probably do better at law because I'd probably do better at dispensing justice rather than mercy, so law was probably my calling.
I went and got out and finished clerk for a federal judge.
After you do that for a year, it's such a unique experience that you can name your job.
I had all the job offers.
I just sat in my little clerk's office and I thought, boy, I just feel like that's not what I'm supposed to do and work for one of these big law firms.
I remember thinking, well, what do you want to do?
I thought, well, I should use my legal skills because I feel like God's shown me I should do that.
I want to help pastors and churches and religious freedoms and our founding principles.
And I'd even like to go to seminary.
And I laughed because there was no such paying job in the country at the time.
And about two weeks later, two guys called me, never met them, big partners with big national law firms.
They said, look, will you go to lunch?
I said, sure.
They said, you know, We started donating our time for religious liberty, and we're not getting so many calls, it's hurting our ability to make a living.
So we were wondering, would you be willing to come on, do legal cases, help pastors, churches, religious freedoms, and our founding principles, and you can even go to seminary part-time if you want to.
So being maybe a little immature in my faith at that time, in my mid to lower 20s, I said, let me pray about it like that wasn't the answer to prayer.
And when I said yes, they said, how much you need to live on.
And I was, at the time, I was making $28,000 as a clerk for a federal court.
So, I mean, they pitched it out of their pocket.
We started a nonprofit, and that was 33 years ago.
And, you know, 33 years later, First Liberty is the largest legal nonprofit in the country that all we do is religious freedom and And amazingly, and I give God the glory for this because you could never produce this of your own effort.
We just had two landmark victories at the Supreme Court within six days of each other for religious liberty.
So it's amazing how...
It's an American story, right?
Something that didn't even exist, but somebody had a dream and God...
We've carried them along and now we're where we need to be, which is unfortunately really we need to be able to handle last year over 700 legal matters because of what's happening across our country.
Kelly, before we get into the first, you made something I think the listeners of the podcast can relate to this.
You know, it's interesting.
You said you were sitting there in your clerk's office saying, well, here's what I'd like to do.
And here's what, and two people, you know, God provides two people who come and give you exactly what you're looking for.
I love how you said, well, let me go pray about it.
That's right.
I can't tell you how many times I've sort of done the same thing.
And I think sometimes God just looks at us and he says, you know, I go back and I shared it while we were out there in a conference we just had, which was a great leadership conference.
You know, it's that idea that sometimes God just sort of sits, you know, like Gideon sits under this tree and looks at us and says, what are you doing?
I'm giving you these abilities.
Let's go get it.
Before we dig into cases, though, from a First Liberty standpoint, I know people help.
I mean, you're a nonprofit.
You do that.
Is there ways people, aside from bringing cases or talking, how can people help First Liberty?
Yeah, I'd say the main thing is just make sure you go to, just spell it out, firstliberty.org.
And there's a deal called the Insiders Alert.
I would just encourage everybody to sign up for that.
We've got over a half million subscribers.
It doesn't cost anything.
But the things people can do, I say immediately are, number one, people can pray.
You know, when we're standing in the Supreme Court with Coach Kennedy and he's all by himself, boy, he needs some prayer cover.
And so number one, people won't know about a lot of these cases if they're not getting that email every Friday that we send out that says here are the three or four biggest cases.
But the other thing, Doug, is, you know, if we win cases and nobody knows we're winning cases, then what really have we done?
And so people can get these every week and they'll see the victories and what's happening because we're winning over 90 percent of our cases.
What will happen is they can share that.
I want them to sort of be the Paul Revere or the Paula Revere with their friends and take the things that they see that they think their friends will care about and share them.
Because what will happen is people will become more bold in speaking out and in standing for their faith and what they believe.
And free speech and free exercise of religion will all prosper more.
But if people don't know and they're scared and they don't realize what the law is and the victories and the courts and what's happening, then they'll be more timid and we'll lose our freedoms, not even because we're losing cases, but because people are unsure and the media has sort of convinced them that these freedoms no longer exist.
I would encourage people to make sure and get that email every Friday because it's a way for them to pray, it's a way for them to be in the know, and it's a way for them to tell their friends and encourage their friends to stand.
Well, and I think that's something that's really important as we get into this.
The media will not promote the victories for these religious liberties.
They're not out there saying, oh, this is a good thing.
In fact, many times they're actually against us.
And that will sort of lead in, I think, one of the interesting things for...
Our discussion, and let's talk about some of those victories.
Probably one of the biggest in this cycle.
Of course, people are talking about Dobbs.
They're talking about the abortion issue.
They're talking about the gun issue.
But one that really had been floating around for a little while was the Coach Kennedy case.
And I think that is one that is...
And that's how I got to know First Liberty is during the time on these religious freedoms cases in the military and prayer and how we do it.
Coach Kennedy case is an issue, and there may still be because, again, the media wasn't real happy about this.
In fact, it wasn't at Sports Illustrated that said that this was, you know, why even Sports Illustrated commented is the biggest issue.
You know, it's just devastating to society from their perspective.
Talk about the Coach Kennedy game.
Go ahead.
I will.
The words they used at Sports Illustrated was, if Coach Kennedy won, it could be the beginning of the end of democracy.
That's what they said at Sports Illustrated.
So if Coach Kennedy goes to a knee after the game by himself for 20 to 25 seconds to thank God for the privilege of coaching these young men, that could be the end of our country.
If Sports Illustrated had been around at Valley Forge, I'm really wondering what they said.
Well, George Washington blew it now.
I'm sorry.
You know, Doug, it was the first time...
I've been doing this 33 years.
It was the first time a media story was so outrageous and the reaction was so universal that the mockery of the Sports Illustrated story became a huge media story across the country in and of itself.
So we did interviews for two days through all the major media about how ridiculous the Sports Illustrated story was.
So pretty amazing.
Yeah, I'll tell you...
Go ahead.
The amazing thing about, and I just say this, a lot of people know Coach Kennedy won.
The basic facts, if this is the first time you've heard about it, is Coach Kennedy was a Marine for 20 years, got out.
He was asked to coach.
And his coaching wasn't to be the head coach.
He was the motivational guy.
He was the guy, because he grew up in a really tough situation, really with no parents from foster home to foster home.
And he was a troubled kid.
And so he has a heart for reaching out to those kids on the team and motivating them and sort of being a support for them.
And they loved him.
So that was sort of his role in the team.
But when he was asked to do it, he was like, man, I've never done anything like this.
And he was wondering if he should.
And that night he flipped on the TV and there was this movie on called Facing the Giants.
And it's about Christian coaches.
And at the end of the game, they would pray, win or lose, Lord, we thank you.
And that just convicted him.
He said, you know, I'm making a pleasure to you, God.
I'm going to do that after every game.
When everybody's on their phones making reservations at a restaurant and they're chatting and all that, first thing I'm going to do is go to a knee by myself and thank you for the privilege of coaching these men.
And that's what he did for seven years until...
They came to him and they said, hey, look, if you go to one again, we're going to fire you.
And he went to a knee and they fired him.
And so most people are aware of that.
And they know that we won at the Supreme Court, that Coach Kennedy is going back to being a coach, he will be able to go to a knee, and they will not be able to stop him from praying and giving thanks after the game.
But what people really don't know is that decision really is sort of at the same level as the Dobbs decision.
Dobbs overturned Roe v.
Wade.
The Coach Kennedy decision, within the decision, it overturns the Roe v.
Wade of religious liberty, the really bad case of 50 years, called Lemon.
And so it is a massive thing that happened in the middle of that case.
And I'll tell people, You know, Lemon goes back to the same court.
It was within two years of when Roe v.
Wade was in.
So it's the same Supreme Court that was really wreaking mischief on our country by creating things that were not in the Constitution.
What they did is they went to the Establishment Clause Which says, Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion.
What that means is we didn't want there to be an established national church that we all had to support because that would take away for our religious freedom.
But back then, this court said, oh, no, it means a lot more than that.
And the separation of church and state.
And it means that if you're offended by religion, you can bring lawsuits and stop it.
And it just created all the things we've seen our whole lives.
Nativity scenes coming down, menorahs coming down, prayer being banned, kids told they can't do this or that religious thing in the school.
Why?
Because the founders would have had any problem with those things?
No.
It's because of this Lemon case.
And so four years ago, we had the Bladensburg Cross case, which is the big 100-year-old veterans memorial that was put up for mothers who lost their sons in World War I. It was a cross.
And the American humanists filed a lawsuit.
And at the Federal Court of Appeals, the Obama judges on that court said, why don't we just cut the arms off the cross?
That way, nobody will be offended.
We won't have to tear it down.
And so they declared it unconstitutional.
We went to the Supreme Court, and because Kavanaugh and Gorsuch were now in the court, we said, you know, maybe there's a chance for us to get rid of this Lemon case, which has caused all this hostility to religion.
So we asked them to get rid of Lemon.
Well, they ruled in our favor 7-2 in the case, but more importantly, 5-4, they said, we refuse to follow Lemon.
And that was sort of a crack in the armor.
But I sat down with our staff, Doug, and I said, you know, this is really important.
But we have got to move this into the schools where they've created all this hostility.
But I said, I think it'll take us 10 or 15 years to get there.
I mean, you know, these are younger kids.
There's more sensitivity.
There's like 7,000 citations to cases.
And so when we got Coach Kennedy at the Supreme Court, we were like, you know, there's never been a case there.
On the rights of coaches or teachers with regard to their faith.
This is a huge decision.
So for us to go for getting rid of Lemon so quickly, and in this case, it might be going for the Grand Slam where we lose the game when a Bunt single wins.
And so we didn't ask for him to get rid of Lemon.
We didn't.
And so to our surprise, midway through the oral argument, out of nowhere, Justice Kavanaugh and Justice Gorsuch start talking about Hey, maybe it's time to get rid of Lemon.
And our eyes are as big as silver dollars at that point during the oral argument.
And so we never expected it.
But you know what?
It just happened.
You read the decision, and you go in that decision, and just as you're starting, it says, you know, we have abandoned Lemon long ago, is what they say.
And then they say...
They cited the Bladensburg Cross decision.
And then the dissent just goes crazy.
They've overthrown Lemon.
They've overthrown Lemon.
And I just don't know a way to get that across to your audience of how significant that is.
But Hiram, you know, Hiram.
Hiram came running into my office and said, I need $20 million.
And I said, what do you mean?
He said, there's 7,000 citations to Lemon.
Every community now just got its cases overturned.
When those monuments didn't go up, when they pulled that cross down, when they pulled that menorah down, when they said you couldn't pray, when they did every one of these things, we can now go back in those communities and Open those cases.
Put the crosses back up.
Put the monuments back up.
Add prayer back in.
He said, but we need lots of resources to go and do that.
And that is exactly true, though.
Now, I've adjusted Hiram's request because we don't have 20 million.
But I said, you know what?
We can do it for a lot less money if we just get the grassroots to do this.
So we're creating a project right now.
It's called Restoring Faith in America, where every single person out there listening can go into their own community.
We're going to have a list of all the things that were overturned.
And they can go back in themselves and say, hey, we need to put that monument back up or we need to add prayer back before our school board meeting.
And they can do that themselves because the case law is now on their side.
And if there is a legal problem, we can come in and certainly help.
It's a it's it changed everything.
It really did switch everything.
And I just love the idea of when we think of what happened during the pandemic with all the protests and Antifa and all that of tearing statues down.
We can now bring statues back up.
We can bring our religious freedom and our heritage back in.
And it really is a situation where we can go on the offense because the law is on our side.
It is, Kelly.
And I think one of the things that's really interesting here, and you brought this up, there is such, and let's just stick on this for just a minute, whether they understand Lemon or anybody else, everybody is, you know, they go into the public place with this separation of church and state.
You brought it up a few minutes.
And we even had another sitting congressman.
He has issues with, you know, complete justice.
Candor at times, his name was Eric Swalwell, who just, within the last 48 hours or 72 hours, actually tweeted about the simple fact that, you know, undoubtedly you don't understand the Constitution, which says that there's separation of church and state.
It's not in there!
And, you know, so how can we, and I think this case will help that, explain to people who may be sitting out there saying, you know, because here's what I'm seeing, and I see it a lot even among people who, quote, agree with us, Is they've been so indoctrinated, whether they knew it or not, with Lemon.
They've been so indoctrinated.
Whoa, you can't do that.
We've had a lot of deals as an Air Force chaplain.
We've had it in the military.
We've had it in schools.
What can we say to those people now who maybe have went through this 10, 15 years ago, but they're now saying, hey, this gives us an opportunity.
This idea of separation of church and state is not that there are these two blocks that never do meet.
It's going back, and I want to explain that one a little more for folks so that they can, for those who've been indoctrinated saying, oh, you can't have a cross on public property.
You can't pray at a school board meeting.
In terms that now can enlighten them a little bit more, how does this Lemon overturning but this Kennedy case help them?
Yeah, separation, I mean, you know, number one, it's not in the word separation of church and state are nowhere in the Constitution.
And most people think it's in there.
It's not.
The first clause of the First Amendment says, Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.
In other words, we are not going to establish a national church that everyone has to support.
That's what they came from, from the Church of England.
That is it.
I mean, that's all that's in there.
So there's nothing about separation of church.
It's about not having an established church, which I don't think we're in danger of.
The denominational differences and all the diversity out there on that, there is no way we would ever have an established church.
We can't even have two Baptist churches in the same room.
That's exactly right.
First and second can't even come together, right?
So I'd say that first.
It's not in the Constitution.
It's not what the Constitution says.
But the concept, they even violate the whole concept.
The concept of the idea of separation of church and state is that it's an institutional separation.
It's, we don't want the church, one church, to control the government.
We don't want the government to control a church, right?
And so that is an instance, and that's something we could probably all agree with, right?
But they never use it that way.
So when you go into the dissent, in Coach Kennedy's case, it's Sotomayor talking about how damaging this is, the separation of church and state.
And you're sitting there going, excuse me, but I see the state on one side, but on the other side, there's no church.
It's Coach Kennedy.
It's one guy.
And this is the thing I love about our Constitution, is even the powerful state It has to bend its knee to one thing, and that's the United States Constitution.
So one guy, Coach Kennedy, can beat the powerful state because he has rights to free speech and he has rights to the free exercise of his religion.
But they always misuse it.
What they're really trying to say is you can't have any religion around government.
And it's really a sort of a sneaky way to try to shove religious freedom into the corners of society because government is everywhere.
So, I mean, we're dealing with one of these right now in Florida.
We are just filing a federal appeal.
Two Christian schools were in the state football championship in Florida, and the Florida High School Athletic Association refused to let them have a prayer before their game.
Why?
Because they said the microphones they were going to be used, since it was at the facility there, was government-owned.
Those were government microphones.
So if that's true, You can't mention your faith on a public sidewalk.
You can't bow your head over your meal in the park.
That's not America.
It's never been America.
That's a violation of the Constitution.
But this perversion even of the proper understanding of an idea of separation of church and state is how they sort of try to take a wrecking ball to religious expression.
So if you look at our First Amendment though, Doug, it starts out It says, Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, no established church, or the free exercise thereof.
So what they were saying is, we want full and complete free exercise of religion.
And one of the ways we're going to make sure that that occurs is, we don't want any established national church.
And so that's what they're saying.
So this idea of trying to use the government to create hostility to religion or push religion out of the public sphere would have been appalling to the founders.
And what I love is, as you said, is we've now got justices who, instead of doing what they want to do, are looking to what the Constitution says.
They're originalists, which means they actually look to what is the original meaning of the text.
And when they do that, it's taken us back to those founding principles and what it really meant, which is a great thing.
And it's happening in every area.
That's why they looked at Roe v.
Wade and they're like, this is not in the Constitution.
You know, if you want to pass it, pass it.
But it's not in the Constitution.
So people don't understand this, Doug.
It's the first time in 80 years that we've had a majority of justices Who think their job is to find the original meaning of the text.
Now, that's shocking to most people.
But understand, we've been under a majority that thought it's a living, breathing constitution.
We need to look at it and really kind of move it to where things are today.
So really, they were acting more like politicians and legislators overall.
But that's gone now because you've got justices that say, it doesn't matter what I think should happen.
It's a matter of what was the original meaning of the text.
And what I love about that is it's taken us back to those founding principles that are in the Constitution.
Exactly, Kelly.
And it's also taking it back to actually the justice looking at a piece of legislation and saying, how does this relate to the Constitution?
And if the legislation gives you X authority, it doesn't give you more authority.
And I think that's been really one of the biggest keys here.
And looking at that as we go forward here, But the concerning part, I mean, this goes into some other cases.
I know you've got like these little shields of strength, which is a little dog tag, you know, that is amazing that they're now saying is establishment.
Again, I also want to emphasize for folks listening to the podcast, we're not just talking about Christian here.
You know, it's Muslim, Jewish, no religion, other religion.
Under that heading, you have the freedom of religion, expression.
You have that ability.
And so many times this gets locked up, and I've heard some mainstream media talk about this being the Christian right and everything.
No, this is...
If it applies...
Freedom of religion applies to all.
And I think that's the interesting point here that is being set up.
We have synagogue cases, Doug.
We have synagogue cases all over the country where we're defending synagogues.
So the attacks on religious freedom are certainly not just Christian.
Certainly, most people are Christian, and that's where most of the attacks by government come.
But I'm telling you that these synagogue cases, Jewish synagogue cases, they will just blow your mind.
You can't believe what people are doing, what the government thinks it can do to people.
And so, yeah, this is across the board, religious freedom for everybody or for nobody.
Now, some people get nervous sometimes, especially when, you know, you mentioned Muslim, and we've had Muslim cases.
And they're like, oh, are you for religious freedom for Muslims?
And they're thinking like the right to Sharia law or to chop somebody's head off or whatever.
And you're like, hey, look, it's a matter of what activity you're asking for freedom for.
The freedom to pray.
The freedom to have a worship center.
Sure.
The freedom to, you know, subjugate women.
No, that would violate our Constitution.
The freedom.
So we all want religious freedom because they'll always start with the unpopular or the unpowerful.
And if they lose their freedom, then they'll apply that immediately.
And of course, this is what Marxism has to do is it has to remove religious freedom.
The first thing that it does, if you look at throughout history, you know, you go in the Soviet Union, what was the first thing?
They murdered all the priests because...
The idea, I mean, it's its own religion, really, socialism and communism is, and they must rule.
And so the one thing that they can't allow are a bunch of citizens who hold an allegiance to one higher than the government.
So you'll see that clash any time that kind of totalitarianism comes in.
Exactly.
Well, and there's another case, and I want to sort of tie this up a little bit.
You had the Maine School case, which sort of revolved around this whole issue of, and without diving deep into this one, but basically making a religious school different simply because of this standard that, again, and what we're seeing now is, you know, we've talked about this before, Maine is they're now trying to reinvent the laws.
You got New York now, you know, trying to go opposite extreme.
I want to take just a few minutes as we sort of finish up here.
Can you think of another period?
Now, I can think of it in a bad term because you mentioned the Roe, the Lemon, some of these cases.
The courts go through these historical times in which we get bad law.
I mean, we just get courts who are wanting to do what they want to do.
This last couple of years in particular, and especially this year, will be historic.
Law schools, people are going to talk about this one for a long time.
That's a good thing.
Where do you see this court going, Kelly?
That's a curious question.
We talked about this in general terms about what's happened, but where do you see this court going?
And also, are you concerned of...
Kick back in the lower-level courts, the district courts, the circuit courts, saying, you know, it may be what the Supreme Court said, but we're going to keep challenging this.
That you could see some actually coming up with creative arguments against some of this.
How do you see that going along?
Well, if you look at what happened under the Trump administration, and look, we created...
The most extensive vetting division in the country for all the judges because we knew there were so many seats open when Trump came into office.
And, you know, we wanted to make sure there are good judges going to court.
So we just really did a real deep dive vetting on everybody.
And what Trump did because of the numbers, there were 132 seats open when he arrived, which is very unusual.
These are lifetime appointments.
It's going to be hard for Biden to catch up with him.
He would have to have more than four years.
So you're not only going to see the Supreme Court still be overall more judges now who are going to follow the original meaning of the text.
But the lower court's the same overall.
Not everywhere.
Some circuits are bad.
I mean, the Ninth Circuit's been traditionally bad, as everybody knows, out of California.
But the Fourth Circuit, to be honest, is worse.
And it's because Bush didn't fill his slots and they were left open.
And so it's like nine to four.
Liberal to conservative as far as the perspective and the approach they take to judging.
So just realize, I mean, Biden is moving as fast as he can.
It's actually a record number of appointments, but he's going to fill what's there, and then he's still not going to be able to catch up.
It would take a long time.
So what you're going to see, unless something unusual happens, like court packing or these other extreme ideas they have, which would destroy our courts, You're going to see that Supreme Court remain in place for a good amount of time, and you're going to see the lower courts also be similarly, in that the majority of the judges and justices out there will be originalists.
In other words, they'll look to the original meaning of the text.
And so overall, you're going to get that.
But you still are going to have these renegade judges who We'll be willing to be overruled, which is what's going to happen.
I think that's what's going to happen in our Cambridge Christian case we have.
I mean, telling two Christian schools they can't pray before their game, we got a district court judge who thought that was just great.
I think we're going to get that overturned now that we're going to the Federal Court of Appeals.
And I think we're going to see a lot of that.
Like, I don't know what's going to happen with this situation with Biden trying to, you know, wipe out everybody's school loans up to $10,000, you know, a person.
But I think it's probably, you know, if it ever reaches the Supreme Court, I think they're going to say he didn't have that authority, right?
But what will happen below, we don't know.
But you can appeal those up.
And so I think you're eventually going to usually get to a good court that just follows the original meaning of the text.
But definitely you're going to get some different rulings at the district court level especially and at some of these courts of appeals that are pretty radical and pretty out of line with the rest of the country.
Well, I think you made a great point there.
The district court, you know, Biden's been filling a lot of district court judges, but the Court of Appeals, that was the Trump domination there is going to come back in a big way.
Finishing up with this, that's sort of a fun one.
And we've watched this for a while.
I think the emergence, because The court watchers, and I know this is not for everybody.
This is sort of the geeky part of it.
Court watchers have watched for a long time the Roberts-Alito dance.
Alito really came forward in this session and in the last session.
You see him is very powerful.
They've added, of course, Gorsuch, Comey Barrett, Kavanaugh.
But the one that has made me feel good Is this session in particular, a little bit last session, is finally Justice Thomas.
Is seemingly, in many ways, coming forward and putting a stamp on the court that he's been at for many, many years.
But the left just absolutely despises him.
But he just had a great session.
And as a Georgia boy, I was glad to see that.
Did it make you feel good that Thomas is now sort of expressing a lot of what we've known for a long time, but now in a position to actually do it?
Thomas has always been really a leader, but he stood by himself a lot of times in the past, right?
They used to, at the beginning, they tried to make him, again, I think it was really racist.
They tried to make him like he was not a heavyweight and he just followed Scalia.
Then when you looked at the actual stats, it was actually the other way around.
I mean, Scalia is very strong, but he was more likely to join with Thomas.
And one of the things that's fascinating, Doug, if people don't watch this very closely, if you look at the great judges that were appointed under the Trump administration, and I mean not just Supreme Court, but lower court, you'll find that a lot of those leading stars We're people who clerked for Justice Thomas.
And it was fascinating.
If you look at which justice more people came from, it was Justice Thomas.
So he's not only sort of in his intellect and his stance, being more principled and sort of a leader of conservative judges, but he's the one that has sort of mentored all these people who have been his clerks that are now becoming the future.
You know, leading more conservative judges.
So it's it's fascinating to watch.
I mean, some great, great judges out there.
I know I think Judge Hull was one of them that you met recently.
And it's just you start looking at the opinions, the brilliance.
The commitment to the Constitution, boy, it makes you feel really good about the future with those judges.
Although I'll admit the current ones being appointed are not exactly of highest quality.
I think overall we still have great judges across the country and I feel really good about things.
I hope we can all pray for Justice Thomas that his health would remain very strong and good.
Because he's a great leader and he always thinks and says things that are absolutely true, but sometimes people are scared because of politics not to say.
And judges shouldn't be that way.
They should just do their job and lay out what the law is and not get into the politics.
And that's what Justice Thomas, I think, is an example of.
I had the privilege of being sworn into the Supreme Court bar by Judge Thomas and my wife and I. I thought we were going to get to spend about 10 minutes with him.
I was a member of Congress.
It was right after the end of the session in June.
It ended up being almost an hour and a half.
Him and my wife ended up talking more about gardening than anything else.
He's just a great guy.
But he made that comment.
He said, look, the only way to go out as a Supreme Court justice is when they take you out.
And he said literally.
And I see him doing that.
Folks, FirstLiberty.org is where you go to find out more about First Liberty Institute.
Kelly, I am so thankful that you listened to God's call.
As many of us do, we sort of run from that call.
We have...
We want to make our own terms, but God made those terms for you.
And then these 30 plus years since has made a real difference in the life of our country.
We're going to keep having you, also Mike Berry, many others from First Liberty on here on the podcast, talking about what people can do to understand how they protect those first principles and first rights.
So again, thanks for being on it.
Great session on this time.
We've got a lot more to come up.
But Kelly, thanks for being a part of the podcast today.
No, thank you, Doug.
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