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Join Tony Perkins as he navigates the complexities of modern-day issues from a biblical worldview. From education reforms and the debate over DEI initiatives to the heart-wrenching events in Israel, this episode covers it all. Discussions with experts and policymakers shed light on topics like the spiritual awakening needed in America and the transformative power of embracing God’s design in our lives. The episode also introduces FRC’s new initiatives aimed at empowering believers to stand firm in their faith.
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from the heart of our nation’s capital in Washington, D.C., bringing compelling interviews, insightful analysis, taking you beyond the headlines and soundbites into conversations with our nation’s leaders and newsmakers, all from a biblical worldview. Washington Watch with Tony Perkins starts now.
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We have confirmed Ms. McMahon has the tall task of reforming the Department of Education. That has lost his purpose for the last four years. The department focused on everything but student learning with bureaucracy and red tape standing in the way of student success.
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That was Senator Bill Cassidy, chairman of the Senate HELP Committee, as Linda McMahon’s nomination for secretary of education now advances to the Senate floor. Welcome to Washington Watch and thanks for tuning in. Michigan Congressman Tim Walberg, chairman of the House Education Committee, joins me to discuss the changes already taking place in education at all levels under the Trump administration. And earlier today, Hamas turned over the bodies of four slain Israeli hostages, including a mother and her two children.
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But be in no doubt, the return of our hostages’ bodies is not a gesture of mercy. It’s a reminder of the depth of Hamas’s cruelty. These hostages should have been released alive. They should never have been taken. Instead, they were tormented in their final days. And their families were denied even the dignity of knowing their fate. Unimaginable pain.
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That was Israeli government spokesman David Mincer. We’ll speak with Israeli Knesset member Ohad Tal about the latest developments. Planned Parenthood is in crisis mode after the New York Times exposed internal turmoil within the organization.
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The idea that Planned Parenthood is in crisis without the proper context, cherry picking five anecdotes out of the nine million services and patients that they see all of the time across this country in annual visits, it just really felt, you know, just like an unwarranted attack.
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That was Planned Parenthood President Alexis McGill-Johnson on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. Chuck Donovan, former Executive Vice President of Family Research Council, who wrote a book on Planned Parenthood, will join me to discuss. And Family Research Council has a new resource to help you, help you understand and respond to the destructive transgender ideology dividing families and our nation. The authors of the new book, Dr. Jennifer Bowens and Walt Heyer, will be here later to share with you all about it. And would you like to test your knowledge of government? Well, FRC has a new resource available for you, which includes an interactive 10-question quiz on government. God and Government is the new series that was launched this week, and there’s a quiz attached to it. You can take the quiz and find out whether or not you want to take the course. So just text the word QUIZ to 67742. That’s QUIZ to 67742. All right. As I mentioned earlier today, the nominee for U.S. Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, cleared a major hurdle in her path to become the newest Trump administration secretary. Her nomination passed out of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on a party line vote of 12 to 11. The next step, her nomination will be considered by the full Senate. So how will the Senate and the House partner with the future education secretary to make education great again? We’re here to discuss this. Congressman Tim Wahlberg, he is the chairman of the House Education and Workforce Committee. He represents the 5th Congressional District of Michigan. Chairman Wahlberg, welcome back to Washington Watch. Good to see you. Tony, it’s good to see you. Now, before we get to what the Department of Education may look like under the new secretary, I first want to touch on what the president has already done through executive order as it pertains to education. A lot has already been done.
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Oh, it has. I mean, I feel like a bobblehead at times with all of the action in really less than four weeks that this president has been doing through executive order, pushing us, giving us opportunity to build and plan for what’s going on, passed some legislation already that patterns after his executive orders, such as men and women’s sports, prohibition, and the like. So he is making a fast paced action toward getting control of education and putting it back to an entity that made this country what it is, because education is key to our workforce and our workforce is key to staying ahead of the world. I mean, he’s gone at the higher education saying DEI has to be out of there. And if you have DEI departments, divisions, agencies, or programs, they have to be gone or federal funding may be pulled from you. He’s gone to the K-12 education system and said really exactly what I’ve been pushing out, that there are three key component parts of education, in the K-12 especially, and that’s the student, the parent, and the teacher. And if those three entities are put together in the proper fashion and given the opportunity to do what they do best, things will work. So he said in our school classrooms, this transgender stuff that’s going on, it can’t be allowed. It can’t be part of your setting. You can’t have boys playing in girls’ sports and, worse yet, in locker rooms and the like. And he’s thrown out the fact that we are going to – we’re going to – a push back by removing funding. But I think he’s also talking about choice in education. And I would guess that very shortly we’ll see some effort to promote choice for all young people, all kids, all parents, because they have to be part of that process or guardian. to make choices that are best for their children, their students, and ultimately I think teachers will see again that they are going to be vaulted to the top of the food chain, as it were, as being respected because of what they do in concert with the home, with the community, with administration, with the school board members, but getting the job done in education.
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Chairman Wahlberg, one of the first steps the president took, as you pointed out, was the DEI. How pervasive has that been in education?
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It’s all over the place. And I think just calling attention to it and saying we don’t necessarily have to come in and peruse through your entire chain of command and your core structure, your syllabi. We’re just going to simply put out the fact that if it’s there and we find it’s there, the consequences will be federal funding. And so I’m getting calls from college presidents, both community college, independent colleges, universities, as well as major universities saying, we want to do this. We want to commit ourselves to following the law. But you have to help us to understand what that fully means. I think that’s a good statement that simply by having a new sheriff in town, as it were, that says, listen, There are things we have to have in education, educational freedom and opportunity and choice and diversity. But it can’t be a diversity, equity and inclusion. That’s just the opposite of that with division, inequality and exclusion that goes on. So the president is making that clear, even as he’s made clear at the border now. without doing anything than what he did differently or differently than what he did back in his first term by saying, you’re welcome to come to the United States, we get it, but you’re gonna come legally. And so he’s saying to the education establishment, we want you to educate our students. We want you to have academic freedom, but there are certain things that we don’t want because they destroy individual students’ opportunities with antisemitism, with pushback on traditional value students, breaking down a first amendment liberties and getting away from a meritocracy that says merit means something in education and academia as it does in the rest of society. So it’s a thrilling time to see just by attitude and words, the president is already having some significant impact and then putting through executive orders that says, I’m gonna back this up until Congress is able to get its act together In both the House and the Senate Education Committee Help Committee or or the Ways and Means committees for the for the financial structure to say. The old things are passed. The new things are come getting back to what makes it work.
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Yeah, let’s talk about that, Chairman, because the contrast between the Biden and Trump administration could not be more stark. There could not be a greater contrast between the two. Four years from now, if we were to see another shift in the country, All of these gains that we’re seeing, this common sense that’s returned could be lost. How do we make sure that that doesn’t happen, that our children are not like ping pong balls on a political table that are bounced back and forth depending upon who controls the White House? I mean, common sense has to have an anchor in this country.
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Yeah, no, you’re absolutely right. And that’s the crux of the problem. This president will do what he told the people he would do. And what he told the people he would do got 77 million votes, the largest vote count in history for his presidency. And the two town halls that I hosted today already, and that’s why I’m hoarse right now, we expressed that. So he will do executive orders and it will have the weight of law but only as long as he’s there or another president who will abide by those and continue those policies. That’s why Congress has to step up in both the House and the Senate and find a means by which we can codify some of these wonderful principles and executive orders that this president is putting forward. That’s not gonna be easy to do because of the vote count we have. So let me jump to a second thing if I could, Tony, And that gets into politics, and I recognize that. But the only way this president has four years in office is if he has a majority Republican Congress for two more years after these two. Because if that changes, one house moves to the Democrat side, then all we have is impeachment, impeachment, impeachment again. And it stops… Trump with his ability to make permanent through legislative action. And I think the bully pulpit that will bring some Democrats across. Look at what Fetterman is doing now and a few other Democrat senators who are starting to talk sense seeing that the American people are tired of this progressive socialist philosophy that takes away freedoms from common sense individuals with traditional values and otherwise and think if we give him these two years and two more that’s, that’s, that’s imperative.
SPEAKER 10 :
It is. It’s cultural. It has to be a cultural shift. And obviously the policies help influence that. But as you were talking about earlier, educational heads that have been sold out to the left are saying, yeah, what do we need to do to come in line? We’re seeing this with corporate America dropping DEI and all of these woke policies. So elections matter. They certainly do. And it has a shaping influence upon our culture. It’s not It’s not the anchor that we needed. We’ve got to have a spiritual awakening in this country to return to transcendent truth. But we just have about a minute and a half left. Department of Education, does it go away or does it stay?
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Well, it certainly gets depowered. I’m looking forward to working with Linda McMahon. I was a wrestler, a real wrestler, and I’m not going to pick a bone with her about that. But she does know what a KO is from the World Wrestling Federation. She knows that. We need to do some KOs of agencies, of programs. We need to shift. some of those responsibilities. The Civil Rights Division of the Department of Education did not stop the anti-Semitic activity on campuses. Let’s give that to the Justice Department. They can handle that. The Treasury Department can cut checks for student loans or for our K-12 system until we abolish the Department of Education. They can do it just as well as the Department of Education. And so we have to find means by which we can do what we can do with the votes that we have to start to back down from something that really has hurt us since its inception in 1979 with over a trillion dollars spent and no good outcomes. Absolutely.
SPEAKER 10 :
Without question. Well, it’s going to be very, very interesting and I think encouraging to watch this process unfold. By the way, Tim, did you have a stage name when you wrestled?
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The only thing I didn’t want was fish, and I didn’t want to flop on my back. So we learned how to wrestle and move forward.
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All right, talk to you soon. All right, folks, stick with us. We’re back with more.
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During these challenging times for our nation, Family Research Council continues to serve as a watchman on the wall for faith, family, and freedom. And together, thanks to your support, we’re making an eternal impact. 2024 was a year of shining the light for biblical truth in Washington, D.C. Last fall, over 1,000 spiritually active, governance-engaged conservatives gathered for the Pray, Vote, Stand Summit. to pray for our nation and ensure that the issues impacting Sage cons were understood and advanced. Washington Watch with Tony Perkins marked a major milestone this year, its 900th episode, and added the Washington Watch News Desk, a new production that presents the top news each day from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand published 2,000 articles of news, commentary, and podcasts in 2024, garnering over 5 million views. FRC’s outlet for news and commentary continues to pursue the truth on the issues that matter most to you and your family. And with the launch of the Stand Firm app, you can listen to, watch, and read our content in one simple place. Pray for current issues, stay rooted in the scriptures, and engage the political sphere with the community of believers on our new platform. In 2024, FRC shaped public policy and culture, organizing the National Gathering for Prayer and Repentance where members of Congress and Christian leaders came together to seek God’s intervention in America. In May, FRC called upon believers to pray for and stand with Israel by dedicating a portion of their worship services to pray for Israel’s peace, prosperity, and protection. With Pray, Vote, Stand Decision 2024, FRC and Real Life Network led a powerful evening of election night coverage to analyze the election results and pray that our nation would turn back to God. We also filmed a transformative educational course, God and Government. Available now on the Stand Firm app, this series will explore the biblical and historical foundations of our government, empowering you to stand confidently in your role as a citizen of heaven and earth. Family Research Council thanks you for partnering with us in standing for faith, family, and freedom.
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Looking to grow closer to God in the new year? FRC’s Stand on the Word spiral-bound journal is here to help. Dive deeper into scripture with thought-provoking questions, note-taking space, and context for each book and author. This second edition, covering Isaiah 2 Revelation, will guide you in tracking your journey through God’s word while deepening your faith in Christ. Order now at frc.org slash store or text journal to 67742. Perfect for you and your loved ones.
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Welcome back to Washington Watch. Thanks for tuning in and making us part of your day. Let me encourage you to download the Stand Firm app. You can find it in the App Store or you can text APP to 67742. Why do you want the app? Well, with the app, you can take Washington Watch with you no matter where you go. But there’s more. You’ll also have access to our news and commentary feed, The Washington Stand. And on top of that, you can have my daily Bible devotional. Stand on the Word every morning. So get the Stand Firm app in the App Store. Earlier today, Hamas turned over the bodies of four slain Israeli hostages, including a mother and her two children, more than 500 days after the terrorist October 7, 2023, attack against Israel. Just as they had before, Hamas made a spectacle of the hostage release, displaying the four bodies in black coffins before an assembly of their supporters. Israeli spokesman David Mincer earlier today said the families and the nation, they’ve lived in agony beyond words, end quote. Well, joining me now to discuss this and more is a member of the Israeli Knesset, Ohad Tal. M.K. Tal, thanks so much for joining us. Welcome back to Washington Watch.
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Thank you very much, Donnie, for having me.
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Our deepest condolences go out not only to the families of these hostages whose bodies were released today, but the entire nation, as I know that this week by week release of hostages has kept the nation in a state of really of trauma. And our prayers are with you.
SPEAKER 12 :
Thank you. Thank you, Tony, so much. Indeed, we are in trauma, and I think this day was very, very hard for everybody in Israel. You know what? I think for everybody with a conscience, because what we’ve seen today demonstrate exactly, explain the whole story. We’ve seen on two sides of the borders, parents taking their children to be part of a big event, but only on one side, in Gaza, they were celebrating murder, death. death, the murder of a mother with two children. One of them, when he was kidnapped, was only one year old. And on the other side, in Israel, people were coming with flags to cry, to mourn the loss of our loved ones. And that’s the whole story. One side sanctifies death, one side sanctifies life, one side is good, one side is evil, and that evil should be eliminated.
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I’m not sure what Hamas hopes to accomplish by these weekly spectacles of the release of these hostages in the first phase of this ceasefire deal. But I would think from my conversations and observations that this is solidifying the understanding from Israelis that Hamas has to be eliminated. This evil has to be eradicated. It cannot remain at our doorstep.
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You’re 100% right. And this is exactly what they are trying to do. They’re trying to terrorize Israel. They’re trying to terrorize Jews. They’re trying to terrorize Western society. They’re trying to send a message that what they want is to see destruction. This is what they want to see. And this is why we have to fight together. At the end of the day… Hamas’ goal is not just to terrorize Israel. It’s to send a message to the entire world, and they want to destroy the entire world. And we are at the forefront of this battle, and this is why we have to win. And I must say, we told you that a victory in Gaza will send the opposite message to the entire world. It will send a message to terrorist organizations all over the world. that if you’re fighting with us, you will pay the price. You will not keep existing. You will not be able to keep threatening us. You will not be able to keep terrorizing us and destroy our lives. No, it’s not going to happen. And we are at the forefront of that struggle. And this is why we have to win. We have to win.
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Will there be a second phase of this ceasefire arrangement?
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I don’t think so. I don’t think so. Because, you know, for them, it means to give back all hostages and lose all leverage for the rest of what they’re planning to do. And for us, it means that we will have to withdraw. The idea will have to withdraw from the Gaza Strip. and effectively keep Hamas in power, allow them to rearm, to reorganize, to redo everything, to prepare themselves for another massacre, which, by the way, many of the hostages came back, were telling us that their captor told them that they’re going to repeat the massacre of October 7th again, whenever they have the chance. We cannot allow that to happen. So I don’t see any possible possibility for the second phase of that deal to move forward.
SPEAKER 10 :
I want to shift gears for just a moment, MK Tao, because you live in Judea. The focus, obviously, has been on Gaza. But there’s been a lot happening in Judea and Samaria under the Palestinian Authority, a lot of terrorist attacks there that really haven’t made their way up to the news. You recently, I think just this week, introduced into the Knesset a call for, it’s a sovereignty bill for Judea and Samaria to come under the sovereignty of Israel. This is a big shift in policy focus for the state of Israel.
SPEAKER 12 :
You’re 100% right. And I think that is the approach we need to take, especially now, especially with everything we’re seeing with Hamas, because when they launched the attack on October 7th, they had one goal, and that is to destroy Israel. They had a hope that they can destroy the one and only Jewish state. And I think this is what we should do. We should take away that hope. We should explain, we should make it as clear as possible that there will be, there will not be a Palestinian state. The only thing that we’re going to have, we’re going to see is a Jewish state. That is the right and the most just thing to do. That will be the ultimate victory. And I think, again, the fact that Jews are entitled to apply sovereignty in Judea, I think that’s, again, that’s the most just thing we can do.
SPEAKER 10 :
Well, we just have about a minute left, but you make it the point that this is not just about security. This is about the heart, the Bible heartland. This is where the Jewish people came from. This is where the name Jew came from, Judea. And this would be land that would be given away?
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Exactly. I think after 30 years of trying the left-wing approach of dividing the land, of giving parts of it to the Arabs, hoping that it will achieve peace, of giving the excuse that we need Judea and Samaria, this part of that Part of that, only for security reasons, enough of all these things. We have to say the truth. And the truth is, as you just stated so clearly, the land of Israel belongs to the people of Israel. The Jews belong to Judea more than to any other place in the world. And this is why the next move should be applying Jewish sovereignty in Judea and Samaria.
SPEAKER 10 :
Very interesting times. And M.K. Tal, I want to thank you for joining us. Always great to see you, my friend. Thank you so much, honey. And, folks, we need to be praying. A lot happening. All right, don’t go away. More Washington Watch straight ahead.
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Oh, beautiful for spacious skies.
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For amber waves of grace At the 2025 National Gathering for Prayer and Repentance, hundreds gathered with Christian and government leaders at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., to pray for the nation and ask God to forgive us of our sins.
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For amber waves of grace
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We gather here not to appeal to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. We are appealing to heaven. Today we make our appeal not in the authority of a political party or in the name of a denomination. We come in the name and the authority of Jesus Christ. who has been given all authority in heaven and on earth, and we have been commissioned to operate in that authority.
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Father, we pray in Jesus’ name for our complacency, our greed, our pride, our gluttony, our sloth, and tolerance of sin.
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Lord, your word is the food that can make America healthy again. May your word be exalted and believed in our nation again.
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Lord, we ask that you allow us to become that shining city on the hill once more for your love, your grace, and your mercy.
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I thank you for your love and your grace and your mercy, for the opportunity that you have provided us to heal our land. We ask you to do it, Lord. We ask you for the wisdom, discernment, and stamina to do the thing that you have called each one of us, all of us here, to do. May we be found faithful. We trust it, pray it, believe it all. In Jesus’ name, amen.
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Welcome back to Washington Watch. Good to have you with us. All right. If you’ve not yet taken the quiz, I encourage you to take the quiz. What quiz? The quiz on God and government. What’s your knowledge of our government in the way it should work? We’ve just released this week a new online course, God and Government, and it starts with a quiz. You can take the quiz, kind of gauge your knowledge, just 10 questions. Text the word quiz to 67742. That’s quiz to 67742. A recent New York Times expose offered a surprisingly sober look at Planned Parenthood, highlighting how the number of patients, the clinics and the resources have been declining in recent years. However. abortions have not. Now, some may be inclined to view the piece as the New York Times way of subtly arguing for more funding for Planned Parenthood. But the final analysis of Planned Parenthood’s crisis is not about money, as my next guest, Chuck Donovan, will share. Chuck is the former president of Charlotte Lozier Institute. He served at several pro-life organizations, including Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America and the National Right to Life Committee and the Family Research Council. He also served in the Reagan White House. Chuck, welcome back to Washington Watch. Thanks for joining us. It’s a pleasure, Tony. Good to see you. Now, you wrote a piece in response to this expose that was in The New York Times. And, of course, going back a few years, you pretty much wrote the book on Planned Parenthood. This is not a new topic to you. You’ve been tracking it for years. But it appears that the veneer is coming off and even the left is starting to point to some of the problems.
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Well, Tony, if the New York Times feels compelled to write a story that, as I point out in my piece, could have been written by a right-to-life activist group, we’ve reached a new day. They call it Planned Parenthood in Crisis, Botched Abortions and Tired Staff. There’s a subtitle for it, and it’s extraordinary. You read it through. 50% staff turnover across the country. Conditions that are not even remotely clean in the clinics. Medical tests being conducted or procedures being conducted by people within hours training. Staff was so poorly paid, they’re going off and and have to get Medicaid and food stamps, and they think that this is okay. What I found most fascinating, though, is this is a structural problem. It’s not new. What’s new is the New York Times noticing it.
SPEAKER 10 :
Yeah, exactly. It’s not new. I know when I authored and passed the first… uh… abortion clinic regulation act in louisiana the first in the nation twenty five years ago it was based upon actually uh… work that a young attorney had done to it now happens to be the speaker of the house mike johnson and uh… we had undercover pictures of the the unsanitary conditions in the abortion clinic and all the things really kind of outlined in The New York Times piece. The difference is, The New York Times is talking about it. What’s going on here? Why is the left now even willing to admit these issues?
SPEAKER 08 :
Well, that will require some explanation, but they seem to suggest in the article, although a lot of left-wingers have criticized this piece for being written, that Planned Parenthood has money issues, but that doesn’t add up. They have 43% increased revenue since 2010. And keep in mind, a good portion of the time was under conservative administrations. They have a way of getting more money no matter what happens. And at the same time, Tony, their client base has been sharply declining, except, as you pointed out, in the one area which they are totally dedicated to, which is abortion. Now, they’re also…
SPEAKER 10 :
Yeah, go ahead. Well, they’re shifting now to a lot of the abortion pill. They’re also shifting to hormone treatments, puberty blockers for youth. So overhead is actually coming down. They’re having revenue in the neighborhood of a billion dollars a year. And as a nonprofit, they’ve been having a profit every year. Now, they’re not like the Southern Poverty Law Center sitting on tens of millions of dollars, actually billions of dollars off Sure. But they have a lot of money.
SPEAKER 08 :
Well, they have they have two point five billion dollars in net assets. Now, you mentioned the pro-life groups I worked at. Net asset is not a phrase even employed at those places. Planned Parenthood can can afford things. But what they spend it on is political activism. And the article does kind of point that out. And they also pay enormous salaries to their national figures, but not so much for the clinic staff. And I’m beginning to wonder if one of the reasons for this is the evolution of abortion. Abortion has tossed away the veneer that it’s medical care. It is a pill sent in the mail. And, you know, we’ve got the recent case in your state, Louisiana, where a physician, I don’t know if she’s a Planned Parenthood physician or not, sent a pill and a mother gave unwillingly. The mother was willing, but the child wasn’t. and took the pill and had an abortion just in advance of a reveal party. The daughter wanted the baby. The mother didn’t. And the way abortion is being done, there’s no pretense. This is medicine. And maybe Planned Parenthood isn’t as needed in that world, which is a tragic commentary.
SPEAKER 10 :
Well, I hope that, as you point out in your piece, which, by the way, folks, you can see at TonyPerkins.com, we’ve got a link there for it, is that this would be the time for Doge under the Trump administration to say, you know what, this is not something we need to be funding anymore.
SPEAKER 08 :
Well, no, sir. It’s a perfect storm. The country has a 1.6 child per family birth rate. Birth rates are collapsing around the planet. And of course, we don’t have families for the sake of the government or the economy. The family has its own intrinsic value. So I’m wary of that. But the truth is, we have massive deficits. We’re declining in the number of people we have. We’re aborting a million babies a year. And the government has really no reason to spend on an entity that has medical practices like this.
SPEAKER 10 :
This is the time to pull the plug on that. Chuck Donovan, always great to see you. Thank you so much for joining us. Folks, stick with us. We’re back with more after this.
SPEAKER 06 :
What is God’s role in government? What does the separation of church and state really mean? And how does morality shape a nation? President John Adams said our Constitution was made only for moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. Join Family Research Council for God and Government, a powerful 13-part series that equips you with biblical truth to engage in today’s most pressing debates. From the Ten Commandments in Classrooms to the Immigration Crisis of America, we’ll uncover the foundations of our nation’s history and why it’s relevant for today. Defend God’s plan for government because faith and freedom were never meant to be separate. New episodes available each Monday. To view the series on the Stand Firm app, text COURSE to 67742.
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The world is hurting, streets are filled with crime, families are broken, sin is celebrated, and God is mocked. Everywhere we look, the wages of our sin are on full display. As Christians, we know that surrender to God’s will is the solution to our biggest problems, but not everyone agrees. Even in church, we hear people say the most important thing is to be tolerant, that we shouldn’t impose a morality on other people, and that loving our neighbor means celebrating what they do. But you can’t do that. It’s not that you don’t love your neighbor. You do. But you care about God’s opinion more than your neighbor’s opinion, and this makes you different. In fact, sometimes it makes you feel alone, like you’re the only one. But there is good news. You are not alone, not even close. Research has found that there are 59 million American adults who are a lot like you. There are millions of people around the country who are born again, deeply committed to practicing their faith, and believe the Bible is the reliable Word of God. But that’s not all. They’re also engaged in our government. They’re voters. They’re more likely to be involved in their community, and they’re making a difference in elections. The problem is that a lot of them feel alone, too. We want to change that. FRC wants to connect these 59 million Americans to speak the truth together, no matter the cost. If you want to learn more about this group and what it means to be a spiritually active, governance-engaged conservative, or if you want to find out if you are one of these sage cons yourself, go to frc.org slash sagecon and take the quiz to find out. The world is hurting, and we have the solution. We can’t do it alone, but we can do it if we work together. That’s what we’re working toward every day. Join us. Go to FRC.org slash S-A-G-E-C-O-N, SageCon, to learn more. That’s S-A-G-E-C-O-N, SageCon, to learn more.
SPEAKER 10 :
Welcome back to Washington Watch. Thanks so much for joining us. If you’ve not yet taken the quiz on government, what do you know about government as designed by God? Well, you can take the quiz. Text the word quiz to 67742. That’s quiz to 67742. And it goes along with our God and Government course that was released this week. You can find out more about that by taking the quiz. Well, our word for today comes from Jeremiah 24. Then I will give them a heart to know me that I am the Lord, and they shall be my people, and I will be their God, for they shall return to me with their whole heart. Now, it’s doubtful those carried away from their homes to Babylon saw that as a good development. But look at what God says. I have sent them out of this place for their own good. God’s mercy and care are often seen later emerging from the midst of his judgment for those whose hearts are after him. To find out more about our journey through the Bible, text BIBLE to 67742. Genesis 1.27 says, so God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him, male and female, he created them. But as we know, there are people who refuse to acknowledge God and the differences that he, in terms of his creation of male and female, they refuse to acknowledge those differences. And they’re not only ignoring God and his word, but even basic biology. They follow neither God nor science, but rather the lies of a radical and a destructive ideology. So the question is, in 2025, how should we as Christians think about and respond to this disconnect between God’s design, truth, and man’s false beliefs about reality? Well, Family Research Council has a publication called coming out very soon that answers all of these questions. And here now to preview this exciting new publication, Embracing God’s Design, are the two authors, Walt Heyer, who is a senior fellow at the Family Research Council, and Dr. Jennifer Bowens, the director of the Center for Family Studies here at FRC. Walt joins me in studio and Jennifer by Zoom. Walt, welcome.
SPEAKER 09 :
Thank you. Thank you. It’s good to be on with you, Tony.
SPEAKER 10 :
Dr. Bowens, welcome to you as well.
SPEAKER 17 :
Good to be with you, Tony.
SPEAKER 10 :
I want to start, before we get into the book, Walt, I want to give a little bit of the context of what brought you and Dr. Bowens together, and it starts with your story. Tell us how this became a passion of yours to help people that are struggling with this issue of gender dysphoria and often the destructive environment. remedies, if I can say, that are offered by the world.
SPEAKER 09 :
Yeah. Well, my journey started in 1944 when I started cross-dressing. My grandmother made me a purple chiffon dress, and she was a seamstress, and that’s the way she made money. She made dresses for women, but she decided to make it for her four-year-old grandson and affirmed me in that dress, and it planted that seed that began to… Was that intentional? Well, you know, I showed an interest in what she was doing. And so, you know, she intentionally put me on a cushion and started making me a full-length purple dress. Why she would do that, Tony, I can’t tell you.
SPEAKER 10 :
Did she think maybe it was harmless?
SPEAKER 09 :
I think she thought it was harmless. And I believe many mothers and grandmothers today think it is harmless. And so I’m here to tell you it’s not harmless. It will destroy your life. I’m 84 years old. I’m still talking about what happened when I was four. It can’t be harmless.
SPEAKER 10 :
Now, you just beginning at that point, then you struggled with your sexual identity. You actually later in life as an adult had the therapies, what they call the gender therapies to change your gender.
SPEAKER 09 :
Right. I went to a gender specialist, a guy actually that I went to wrote the standards of care, the WPATH standards of care, Dr. Paul Walker. And he told me that you have gender dysphoria. He said you need hormones and surgery to correct the problem. I was married and had two children and was an executive for American Honda Motor Company at the time. And I said, are you really sure this is what I need? And he said, absolutely, it’s the only treatment. But there were no voices out there in 1981 when he told me that, Tony. So, you know, that’s one of the reasons why I’m speaking out. I’m screaming out, don’t do this. The bridge is out. I didn’t have gender dysphoria. I was an abused child.
SPEAKER 10 :
Yeah. There was abuse there, and there was more to that than just the dressing and address. Yes. It led to your father trying to correct what he saw his mother-in-law do to you, and he took that out on you. And so there was both this emotional and physical abuse that you endured.
SPEAKER 09 :
yes and then his adopted brother when he was a teenager began sexually molesting me so there was psychological emotional physical and sexual abuse to somebody before they’re 10 years old I’m going to go to Dr. Bowens for just a moment but before we do there was something that led you out of this even after the surgeries and the hormones yeah it was Jesus Christ during prayer when I was in a prayer and the Lord came to me in that prayer and He began to come down. I saw him come down. And before me was a little baby. And the Lord came and picked up that baby. And I looked at the baby. I said, that baby’s me. The Lord is coming to redeem and restore my life from the time I was a baby. And he looked at me after he picked up that baby. And he said, you are now safe with me forever. That was the day that he came to redeem my life so that I will stand up and serve the Lord Jesus Christ. Speaking out, don’t do this horrible stuff. The Lord will save you. Come to the Lord, and he will bring you back.
SPEAKER 10 :
And you’ve been sharing that message with thousands of people personally. Yeah, but you’ve ministered to over 4,000 people yourself. I want to go to Dr. Bowens. Dr. Bowens, you are very familiar, obviously, with Walt’s story because it’s a part of the book, By God’s Design. I want to ask you this because your background actually after 9-11 doing clinical work as it pertains to trauma. Is there a connection between this gender dysphoria and trauma?
SPEAKER 17 :
Yeah, there is. And I just want to say as many times as I’ve heard Walt’s story, it just never gets old because it’s You know, it’s all about the redeeming power of Jesus and he stills transforming lives. But, you know, many of the people that are struggling with identity issues, often referred to as gender dysphoria. have real intense underlying conditions. Many have gone through traumatic experiences. Maybe they were bullied in school. Maybe they were sexually abused. We know from some of the research that those who tend to take on a transgender identity, the vast majority of them do experience some kind of abuse, whether it ranges from sexual abuse child sexual abuse to physical or emotional, much like Walt’s story. But there’s… As we’ve heard from Walt, there is hope and there is healing for those people. And that’s really, Tony, that’s why we wrote this book. We wrote it with the expectation that we are going to see a generation truly set free, a generation that has been socialized to believe that this is a pathway to happiness. And eventually that pathway is going to show forth the fruit that is on that road. And it’s destructive. It’s a very destructive road. And so we as the church, we have an opportunity before us where counseling, traditional counseling is not meeting the need of many of these hurting people. The church can step in and be a compassionate, loving, truth bearing force that can bring freedom. We have the answer. And sometimes we just need a little instruction. You know, there’s there’s the equipping part of of the church that we need to help people come alongside. And that’s what that was the heart behind this resource is to get the church ready to to deal with a generation that’s been socialized to believe that a transgender identity is a good path.
SPEAKER 10 :
Dr. Bowens, you mentioned counseling, but the reality is in many places counseling is shut off for those who are dealing with gender dysphoria unless it is affirming of their confusion.
SPEAKER 17 :
Yeah. And that’s what I when I say traditional counseling, I mean, the counseling that follows some of the code of ethics that are in the profession that have veered towards a very liberal standpoint. So you really if you’re going for counseling, you need to be a good consumer. You need to find out what your counselor believes. and understand are they someone who buys into gender ideology or are they clear-minded that the biological reality is we cannot ever change our biological sex. We can appear like the opposite sex, but we cannot change our DNA and our sex.
SPEAKER 10 :
So we just have about five minutes left. I want to go back to how I set this up in terms of answering the question, how should we think about this and how should we respond to it? And how we respond is conditioned by how we think about it. And we have to start with embracing God’s design that God created male and female. Now, that may be offensive to some people today, but it’s truth. And we cannot effectively respond to this unless we’re willing to embrace truth.
SPEAKER 09 :
Yeah. And the way I start, and when I work with anybody, Tony, this will probably surprise you. It may surprise the people listening. But when somebody comes to me, they say I’m a transgender, I transitioned, and I have gender dysphoria. I tell them, you’re not a transgender. You’ve never been one. You never transitioned because it’s not possible. And if you work with me, we will discover that it wasn’t about gender dysphoria. And so when you take those things off the table and you get the individual to start thinking, I am not transgender. and it’s not about gender dysphoria, what is it? And that’s what Jennifer and I have outlined in the book, because it’s underlying issues that no one talks about, that we need in our churches for people to start addressing. And it’s stuff on the internet, you know, they get addicted to the internet, there’s porn, there’s a social contagion, which is huge, people do it because their friends do it, or because they were socially transitioned because they were sexually abused. They’re looking for a place to offload this. The place they need to go is to Jesus Christ in our churches.
SPEAKER 10 :
Well, and Dr. Bowens, I want to ask you this question because if having this conversation, it’s kind of referred to as hate speech by some to say this, that we’re haters when in reality it is the most loving to speak truth. So I want to help people understand, as we were talking about a moment ago, this issue of transgenderism has been caught up in politics and policy and we got to move beyond that. And the church’s response has to understand that there are underlying issues, that this is not a political movement, although it’s manifesting itself in the political, it is a spiritual cry for help. And, and we’ve got to be willing to, to pull back the layers and find out that there is in most cases, trauma. There’s a need here that only the truth of Jesus Christ can solve.
SPEAKER 17 :
Yeah. Um, And we need to understand the root issues and how to minister to someone or just come alongside them individually. But then there’s the macro fight. And I think a lot of times we’re not good at differentiating those. You know, we work at the policy level and we’ll make statements that we might not necessarily make to the person. We need the Holy Spirit to do everything that we do. Without him, we can do nothing. But we need the wisdom of God to get behind each individual’s unique reasons why they’ve chosen this transgender identity. And a lot of times when we’re working in the policy space, we’re making sweeping laws or ideas because we need to cover as many people as possible. So there is a difference in our approach. But nonetheless, the spiritual warfare behind this is what is the same. And that is ultimately this ideology is about undermining God’s design for the individual and for the family. Because if we can get men to appear as women and vice versa, imagine how confusing that would be for a child. We’ll probably unpack some of this in our seminar on Saturday. But when our first interaction with a parent is supposed to be, you know, as psychologists talk about, there’s a oneness there. And that’s where we learn dependence. It’s where we learn a loving embrace. And if that loving embrace is identifying as something other than what God intended, you can imagine already at that young age, that neurological imprint is already shifting. So again, this is not just about Erasing one sex. It’s about erasing the whole family so that we, from an early age, don’t have a clear picture of who God is. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Love that they have between them.
SPEAKER 10 :
And that becomes a… spiritual barrier to coming into relationship with your Heavenly Father. I mean, this is, it really is demonic in this design. All right, we’re almost out of time. We’ve just got a minute left. There is a conference in Baton Rouge on Saturday. Folks, if you’d like to be a part of that, Embracing God’s Design, both Walt and Jennifer will be there. Go to the website, TonyPerkins.com. You can find out more. Book coming out in April, Walt. Yes. You can also order that book. It’s on Amazon, Embracing God’s Design by Walt Heyer and Dr. Jennifer Bowens. Walt, Jennifer, thanks so much for joining us today.
SPEAKER 09 :
Thank you, Tony. It’s been a pleasure. Thank you, Tony.
SPEAKER 10 :
It’s always great to have you guys on. Appreciate so much the work that you’re doing. And folks, I appreciate you for tuning in, but I do encourage you to take advantage of the resources that Family Research Council puts out, Embracing God’s Design. It is going to be a powerful book. I encourage you to get it. We’re out of time for today. Until next time, I leave you with the encouraging words the Apostle Paul found in Ephesians 6, where he says, when you’ve done everything you can do, when you’ve prayed, when you’ve prepared, and when you’ve taken your stand, by all means, keep standing.
SPEAKER 19 :
Washington Watch with Tony Perkins is brought to you by Family Research Council and is entirely listener supported. Portions of the show discussing candidates are brought to you by Family Research Council Action. For more information on anything you heard today or to find out how you can partner with us in our ongoing efforts to promote faith, family and freedom, visit TonyPerkins.com.
