DHS Secretary: Blame Trump and Congress

Today on Sekulow, it happened this morning, the DHS Secretary blaming Trump, surprise, surprise, and Congress for the crisis at our southern border. Keeping you informed and engaged, now more than ever, this is Sekulow. We inherited a broken and dismantled system that is already under strain.

It is not built to manage the current levels and types of migratory flows. We want to hear from you. Share and post your comments or call 1-800-684-3110. Only Congress can fix this. And now your host, Jordan Sekulow. They broke the system, folks.

Remember that. They broke the system. Donald Trump did not break the system. He started fixing the system, building the wall, remain in Mexico.

Operation Talon to target sex traffickers and human traffickers and to keep the drugs out of the U.S. that are killing Americans. They came in with Mayorkas, who is a radical on this immigration issue, and so is Biden, so is Harris, and the entire Democrat Party. They came in and dismantled every Trump policy they could right off the bat, creating a crisis at our border the moment Joe Biden took the oath of office. We saw it last summer. Can you believe this is just the second summer we're talking about dealing with? And the numbers from March, which are only going to increase because as the weather gets better, warmer, more people go, we're the highest ever. Two hundred and twenty thousand plus people who got encountered. I bet that means that there are another two hundred thousand more who just got right through the border, maybe even higher than that.

We don't know. But to blame President Trump and to blame Congress, that was the other. Remember Kamala Harris, she's the border czar.

She's never even been to the border, and she doesn't do anything with this. Remember, the radicals got into the show. They want the crisis at the border.

They are playing a long game. They think 30 years from now, they'll be the party that legalizes this group of illegal immigrants, and they'll get the votes. So they'll deal with the human atrocities. They'll accept the sex trafficking. They'll accept the drugs from China and Fentanyl. They'll even accept a few terrorists crossing through. They'll accept all of this chaos for politics. It's a long-term political play. It's really disgusting because it's killing Americans in the United States. We saw that a Texas agent died trying to save border crossers, and they call it like a state employee.

That's what they called him. And then second, it really comes down to this, too. The fact that we're allowing their politics and that they're blaming us. We were the ones to say, build the wall.

No one gets in. Now they want to drop Title 42, which even Mayorkas, who's a radical, has told people he's worried about. Yeah, and you've got the Democratic members of the House saying the same thing, and you've got Democratic governors concerned with the same thing.

And then you asked yourself, which is what you did in the beginning of this, why would you remove Title 42? Get rid of Operation Talent, which was aimed at the issues that are causing the problems. The sex trafficking that comes in, the drugs, the Fentanyl that comes in, and then, of course, the impact that it has on the economies throughout the United States, both at the border, of course, but throughout the country. Because once they get in and go, then you give them these cell phones that then they say, well, they're not really phones, but then they are phones of some type.

Who knows? But what we don't have happening is Remain in Mexico. That they don't want to do anymore. So, and then for Mayorkas to come in and blame Congress, say, well, Congress, you've got to fix this, when this President hasn't hesitated like a lot of Presidents in using executive orders. But we want you, if you live in a border state or you're having a situation in your community, we want to hear from you. You could be in the middle of, you know, the heartland and you're having to deal with the border crisis. You may be down in Texas, Arizona, California as well and are dealing with it.

1-800-684-3110, 800-684-3110. Ben Sisney, senior counselor for the ACLJ, is negotiating right now with the Department of Justice and our lawsuit that is getting to the bottom of why they got rid of all these Trump era policies that worked. We filed suit on that to find out what was the reason, which is just because it was, well, we don't want to have any President Donald Trump's policies, which is what I think it is, Jordan, at the end of the day. Absolutely. The Trump Derangement Syndrome now on display at our southern border, and they're blaming you.

They're blaming Americans for that problem. Sportourworkaclj.org. We'll be right back. At the American Center for Law and Justice, we're engaged in critical issues at home and abroad. Whether it's defending religious freedom, protecting those who are persecuted for their faith, uncovering corruption in the Washington bureaucracy, and fighting to protect life in the courts and in Congress, the ACLJ would not be able to do any of this without your support.

For that, we are grateful. Now there's an opportunity for you to help in a unique way. For a limited time, you can participate in the ACLJ's Matching Challenge. For every dollar you donate, it will be matched. A $10 gift becomes $20.

A $50 gift becomes $100. This is a critical time for the ACLJ. The work we do simply would not occur without your generous support.

Take part in our Matching Challenge today. You can make a difference in the work we do, protecting the constitutional and religious freedoms that are most important to you and your family. Give a gift today online at aclj.org. Only when a society can agree that the most vulnerable and voiceless deserve to be protected is there any hope for that culture to survive. And that's exactly what you are saying when you stand with the American Center for Law and Justice to defend the right to life. We've created a free, powerful publication offering a panoramic view of the ACLJ's battle for the unborn.

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Request your free copy of Mission Life today online at aclj.org slash gift. Welcome back to Sec Hill. We're taking your phone calls to 1-800-684-3110. They're blaming you. They're blaming Donald Trump. They're blaming Congress.

They're not taking any responsibility of the executive branch. I want you to take a list of this, too, because the border wall, you know, the wall that was working, but they hated that wall. Oh, that wall was just discriminatory. That was, again, I guess that was white supremacist, too, just to have a secure border, which, by the way, protected a lot of our states and kept out drugs from killing Americans. But no, that was evil because it was Donald Trump's wall. So guess how much money they're spending of your taxpayer dollars to dismantle a wall that was working in the middle of a crisis at our southern border?

Take a listen. The wall projects, the majority of them rest in the jurisdiction of the Army Corps of Engineer. Those that we ourselves control, I believe that the cost of discontinuing them is approximately $72 million.

And I will follow up with you to ensure the accuracy of my statement this morning. I want you to think about this. A border wall that worked, we're going to get rid of so that we could spend another $72 million of your money instead of controlling the situation at the border. And then let's get a Remain in Mexico. Let's move that out.

And then Operation Talent, why do we need that? Are we that concerned about sex trafficking? Well, the American people are. But if it had a stamp of Donald Trump on it, even if it works, we're not going to do it.

That's right. I mean, this has been the going strategy. And right now, as you talked about, we've got one of our ACLJ attorneys, Ben Sisney, he's on the phone with the Department of Justice.

Right now. So we filed a FOIA early on in the administration when they started reversing all these policies like Remain in Mexico, like Operation Talent, like the Trump migrant protocols or Remain in Mexico, and also terrorists at the border. So we filed a FOIA with DHS, CBP, and ICE. We're in court. We have really until today to negotiate the documents with those three government agencies via the Department of Justice, the Biden Department of Justice. If not, we then have to go to the next level in court. So if we're not able to come up with an agreement and they're not able to come up with an agreement, we then have to rely on what a judge determines we should see.

So he's in those conversations right now. So we're talking about these issues on the broadcast. Our team, our attorneys are working it as we speak. Let me put back on the screen for those that are watching on our social media platforms on television, this is the complaint in federal court.

And again, this is how you get to the answer of what's going on here. And that's how you hold your government accountable. And we're doing that. Our government accountability project works.

It works because people like you support the ACLJ. But there it is in action. And like I said, Ben Sisney's literally on the phone with DOJ today. We're taking your calls. 800-684-3110. If you're in a border area, especially we want to hear from you. What is the impact of this in your community?

1-800-684-3110. Yeah, and if your family's been affected by Fentanyl as well, because that's a huge – listen, that doesn't just – it's not just a border issue at all. Neither are the MS-13 gang crimes. I mean, that's all over the country. So while they may originate at the border, we see Americans dying because of who's getting across and what they're getting across with. 1-800-684-3110 to talk to us on air. Let's go to David in Texas on Line 1. Hey David, your state tried to do everything they can.

You even lost the life of a Texas patrol officer who was trying to save the lives of illegal immigrants. But David, welcome to the broadcast. Thank you guys.

I really appreciate what you do. This really hits home. My 19-year-old son has had two of his best friends overdose and die from Fentanyl poisoning. Living here in Houston, every night we watch the news, we see a meteoric rise in our crime rate.

I mean, I think Houston is now in the top two as far as the murder capital of the country. And it's just so unsettling because it's kind of like fighting a storm that you just know you can't battle. So at a citizen level, I mean, what can we be doing because... Yeah. Well, you know, David, you've got a governor that is trying really hard and an attorney general that's fighting back very aggressively.

And I will tell you, we have worked with both. And this is a situation that is affecting every family in the United States. You mentioned the Fentanyl.

Just about everybody has had no somebody or family member. But we're not treating this like what it is. It's an attack on the United States. And if you've got an attack on the United States that's aiming at people in their 20s and 30s, primarily, not exclusively, but that's where a lot of this is going on the drugs. And then you've got the sex trafficking, which is as low as what they say 14 years old is the average, brought into sex trafficking throughout the United States. They go right up the expressway corridors.

They come in through your community in Texas and then they go up Interstate 65 or over a 20 on Highway 10. I mean, this is what's happening. So what we're doing is holding the government accountable. But your voice has to be heard. But elections have consequences too. Policies matter. Yeah.

I mean, I'll say one thing. Don't ever elect these Democrats again. See what they did in just a few months.

They created a drug crisis, a border crisis, a humanitarian crisis. So take it seriously in these elections and stop voting on, oh, I don't like the tone of that person. And start voting on the issues. Start voting for people who pledge to secure the border and will vote in Congress to allow a President to do that and provide the funds to do that. So you can start right now in this midterm making sure there's a Congress because we get a new President after this midterm. So two years later, make sure there's a Congress there who's ready to fund that President's work to get this border secured because it's going to cost even more to do so because they're letting it become a disaster zone. It is an invasion of the United States by drug traffickers, criminal gangs, terrorists and illegal actors. And here's what the attorney general of the United States said moments ago. I think all intelligence suggests that there will be a large increase in the border, yes.

He seems very concerned about that, doesn't he? My point is this. There's no way to tell you elections have consequences, folks, but your voice has to be heard at the ballot box. We've got to fight him in court to get the information because you find things and then you point those things out and things can change. But we've got to really fight back. I see people saying, but the election was a fraud. You've got to be ready to vote in the next election. You better get your friends out to vote.

You better know what your election laws are in your states and get ready. Stop crying about two years ago. Get with the reality now.

I mean, I get it. It was upsetting. It was questionable.

There was a lot of issues. There were ballots flying around. I would show them on the broadcast, all the different live ballots I got.

We've got to move on, though. We've got states that have done really good work getting their voter integrity laws in place. But you've got to show up and vote. If you still sit on your hands and say, I don't trust the system, guess who keeps winning?

Yes, well, here's what you've got. The ballot boxes are rigged. Let me tell you something, okay? If we're going to have this as the attitude of the conservative movement, the ballot boxes are rigged so we're not going to vote, guess what?

Surrender your country because that's what you're doing. That's preposterous. That's why we go to court. Nobody likes what happened in 2020. There's a lot of things that people think were shenanigans. Whether it was outcome-determinative or not, we're never going to know. Do you know that?

Assume it was. At this point, it doesn't matter. You have to be looking forward.

All these videos and things coming out about what happened two years ago, it's, at this point, irrelevant. The left loves you looking, spending your time on that. Of course, because you're keeping off the main problem. And you're not building the grassroots base of the support you need.

I was going to ask you that. We have got to get back to grassroots base politics, get out the vote drives, the old-fashioned way like we used to. Conservatives can win elections. We do a lot. You got to outwork them.

Which we did. And you can't just show up at rallies. That's not enough.

You can't just share videos on social media. That's great, but it's not enough. You've got to get involved and you've got to say, you know what? Maybe some of this feels stacked against me. I'm going to get out as many votes as I can. I'm going to make sure I'm voting and my friends and family are voting and my friends who agree with me are voting. And guess what? We can win all of these races. But if you sit on your hands and just complain, complain, complain, we lose.

They love that you are still obsessing over an election that happened a year and a half ago. At this point, there's nothing you can do about. Please understand that. It's done. So let's focus on, you want the garbage to continue that's going on in Washington? You want to see World War III?

I don't think so. So we've got to get changes. That's only going to happen if you engage the ballot. I'm glad you brought this up because I am so sick of looking back and this was, you know, what they did in Pennsylvania.

You know what? They did it. And no one was able to stop them because whatever the strategies were, it didn't work. So don't do the same thing again. The thing is, when I see comments that say, I'm not voting until I know we have a secure election, as if there's never election fraud in the United States every time. Now, whether it's outcome determined or not, different question. But states have tightened it up, like Jordan said. But if you don't vote, then you have no right to speak. Yeah, I mean, and you see the states have taken action on voter integrity. They've been fighting that out in court. So it's not like everyone just stopped and didn't do something.

They have done things to correct problems. But what Democrats hope is that you all will sit at home, that everybody listening to this will say, oh, you know, I don't trust the system, so it's not worth going. And then guess who what?

They just waltz right in. You know, we've had that in the history of our politics too. It was, I remember after the Watergate break-in and the Watergate affair, and then, you know, ultimately Jimmy Carter wins because the malaise within the Republicans was so, we went through this.

Well, they filed the constitutional process, Nixon was out, Ford was in, and then the Republicans didn't want to show up. And not showing up in Georgia this last time ended up with two senators that are not going to vote in favor of any position you're advocating. No. Not one. Two of the most liberal senators in the country are from a red state.

Yeah. So think about what that means when you don't show up and vote. I mean, this is a message more for people in red and purple states. I know in the blue states you guys have a tough time and you're just fighting out the battles you can fight. You still should. But if you're in a state that is officially red, it was probably, you know, some of your faults. Yeah, you know.

Because you didn't show up. Let's move on. Let's build on. Let's build on what we learned. We learned our lesson there, okay?

Let's move on now. Only when a society can agree that the most vulnerable and voiceless deserve to be protected is there any hope for that culture to survive. And that's exactly what you are saying when you stand with the American Center for Law and Justice to defend the right to life. We've created a free, powerful publication offering a panoramic view of the ACLJ's battle for the unborn.

It's called Mission Life. It will show you how you are personally impacting the pro-life battle through your support. And the publication includes a look at all major ACLJ pro-life cases, how we're fighting for the rights of pro-life activists, the ramifications of Roe v. Wade 40 years later, Planned Parenthood's role in the abortion industry, and what Obamacare means to the pro-life movement. Discover the many ways your membership with the ACLJ is empowering the right to life. Request your free copy of Mission Life today online at ACLJ.org slash gift. At the American Center for Law and Justice, we're engaged in critical issues at home and abroad. Whether it's defending religious freedom, protecting those who are persecuted for their faith, uncovering corruption in the Washington bureaucracy, and fighting to protect life in the courts and in Congress, the ACLJ would not be able to do any of this without your support.

For that, we are grateful. Now there's an opportunity for you to help in a unique way. For a limited time, you can participate in the ACLJ's Matching Challenge. For every dollar you donate, it will be matched. A $10 gift becomes $20.

A $50 gift becomes $100. This is a critical time for the ACLJ. The work we do simply would not occur without your generous support. Take part in our Matching Challenge today. You can make a difference in the work we do, protecting the constitutional and religious freedoms that are most important to you and your family. Give a gift today online at ACLJ.org.

All right, welcome back to Secula. We are taking your phone calls to 1-800-684-3110. That's 1-800-684-3110. I want to go to Sam Bennett in Washington, D.C., because, Dan, Secretary Mayorkas has got two days. We've already played some sound from those hearings, so he's going to be before, right now he's before the Homeland Security Committee, their Appropriations Subcommittee. Then he's going to the Appropriations Committee, and tomorrow he'll be at the Judiciary Committee.

We had Jim Jordan on last week. He has already sent in his questions for Secretary Mayorkas so that he can't claim and have to say 30 times, I've got to go back and get that number from my staff. He wants to know, Dan, not just about the encounters, but the gotaways as well.

Yeah, and obviously he's right to ask about that. I thought he did a great job previewing that. Jordan, this is going to be a gauntlet for Secretary Mayorkas and for good reason. I do think probably the most difficult and the most useful hearing is going to be that one tomorrow in House Judiciary, but the first one is wrapping up. There's another one this afternoon.

Jordan, honestly, already we already have more sound from this hearing than I hardly know where to start with, but I just want to give you two quick takeaways from what we've seen so far, and I know you've played one of these. Secretary Mayorkas is blaming the problem that they have on the border on an inherited problem and that the border was already under strain. Well, Jordan, guess what rescinding Title 42 is going to do?

It's going to add 100,000 people to whatever strain is there already and whoever thinks he's responsible for it. And Jordan, one other thing, he says that Congress has to fix this. Look, maybe there's some things that Congress can do, and by the way, there's some Democrats that are ready to do that.

But Jordan, we throw around this Title 42. Title 42 is a statute. It's 42 USC Section 265. Congress already passed that. The President already signed it. It's already there for the President to use, and they are not using it. So for him to say this is up to Congress to fix when he's not using the statutes that he already has, Jordan, I think it's dereliction of duty.

I want to play the Homeland Security Secretary statement again, exactly what Dan was just talking about, because you need to listen to what the man is saying. We inherited a broken and dismantled system that is already under strain. It is not built to manage the current levels and types of migratory flows. Only Congress can fix this. It's not built to manage the current levels and types of migratory flows because you have removed the Remain in Mexico standard, the law that we had in place that said you're not coming into the United States until it's adjudicated, number one.

Number two, you just said come on in, and number three, you're then dispersing the illegal people that come in throughout the United States. What are they blaming? So it's Putin's inflation, Trump on the border crisis. Yeah, I mean there's everything, even though inflation was happening before, and the reason why there's a border crisis is because they reversed the Trump policies.

Those were horrible and racist and this and that. No, they want the chaos. They thrive under the chaos, and they then try to make federal power grabs when there's chaos. So the idea here, it's a long-term, sick, gross political play because of the humanitarian toll and the amount of Americans that will die because of this play, but it's a play that will get all these people in, ultimately will legalize them as U.S. citizens, and they'll be a strong Democrat voting base because they're losing the current Latino voting base, and they're also losing a lot of African American voting base.

So they're trying to look for their long-term, who's their new base that just votes for them even if they don't line up with their ideology because it's like a thank you vote. And to me, the cost that will cause Americans the harm, the death, the drugs. To me, it's bigger than just these individual people and the toll that takes, but it's what they're bringing with them. It is the crime and of course the fentanyl. I mean, we're all now experts in fentanyl because it's killing people all over the country.

Jordan, it's really crass. I mean, it's using people. It's costing lives for the sake of political expediency.

It just is. I mean, look, we're going to add 100,000 people a month by rescinding Title 42. We're going to spend $72 million to actually take down a wall that was helping this problem.

And Jordan, let me just kind of put one more data point in there to support what you're saying. Behind the scenes, I can't even tell you how upset House Democrat leadership is over how the Biden administration has handled this. Now, is it because they disagree with his policy?

No, it's not. In fact, in large part, they agree with it. But they know, Jordan, that this is a problem inside their caucus when it comes to counting votes. If this came up in the House of Representatives, whether or not Title 42 should stay in place, Jordan, Title 42 would have enough support to stay in place. Now, Speaker Pelosi is never going to schedule that vote. But guess what? Senate Democrats or Senate Republicans can force that vote at some time. So at some point, we're going to see a clash here. And behind the scene, Democrats are actually asking the Biden administration to fix this problem for them.

Now, maybe they will by not appealing this ruling, Jordan, but they sure don't want to. Let's go to Fred in New York on Line 4. Hey, Fred. Hey, how are you?

We're good. Oh, if we took control of the House and the Senate in the midterms, wouldn't it be a good idea to impeach Biden? And have Kamala Harris as the President of the United States?

I think that maybe she might, might learn a lesson and realize that it could happen to her also. OK. Is someone that handled, Jordan, that handled an impeachment? So we will tell you, I'll give you my view, I don't think you impeach Presidents for policy differences.

And that's what these are. They have drastic consequences, but that's policy differences. And I also think the alternative in this situation is not going to be any better than the current occupant. So I don't see that getting anywhere.

That's sounding like, but I'll tell you one thing, there may be other things that lead to that. I mean, if they treated Trump, Biden, the way they treated Trump, it's going to be a whole different world right now. But they're not going to do that. Why?

Jordan will tell you why. They have the House and the Senate. And that's why when we keep seeing these comments, I'm not voting until I know it's fixed, or I'm not voting until Trump tells me to vote. You got to vote. I mean, folks, you got to vote. This is ridiculous.

I think it's a cancer on our society if we start thinking this way. Yeah. I mean, this is, this is my issue. I think if you're talking about impeachment, you're talking about crimes, actual crimes that are committed. So, you know, listen, there's a whole criminal investigation in Hunter Biden right now by the Department of Justice. They keep saying that the Bidens are letting that go. They're not interfering. You know, that's the kind of stuff that impeachments are about. Impeachments are about business deals, not, you know, that shifting money. That's all things, right, foreign influence.

Real foreign influence. To a criminal level. So I'd say, you know, that's unfortunately, though, when you have the Garland DOJ, they didn't appoint a special counsel. They should.

No. I think they should in that case. It's ridiculous about having special counsel from Mueller for a made-up Russian hoax that the CIA said was fabricated, while at the same time not having a special counsel to look into Hunter Biden. But remember, for years, the social media companies wouldn't let you even talk about the Hunter Biden issue. And I want to go back, though, to what is happening on the Hill right now, because you did talk about it. And I do want to give people a glimmer of hope because there is some glimmer.

We like to be honest here. There are more and more Democrats speaking out about this border crisis. Yeah. And in fact, Jordan, there's a bill that we talked about last week on this broadcast.

It's sponsored by James Lankford and Kirsten Sinema. It's got five Democrats co-sponsors that Jordan, it says that you cannot resend Title 42 unless all national emergencies inside the country, Jordan. So all the restrictions that are in place on American citizens, those have to be lifted before you can consider lifting this one for people coming across the border. The other thing, real quickly, Jordan, there are 50 Republicans, House Republicans on a letter, including all three of the top leaders, McCarthy, Scalise and Stefanik, that say that they have lost confidence in Secretary Mayorkas. So I don't know about impeachment, but they do think he has abandoned his oath of office that he took to secure the homeland. Yeah, that applies to those officers as well. So it's interesting to watch that when you see that kind of unity in the Republican Party as well. It's something as controversial as potentially removing a cabinet officer. Folks, we've got a lot more to talk about.

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Give a gift today online at ACLJ.org. Keeping you informed and engaged. Now more than ever, this is Sekulow. And now your host, Jordan Sekulow.

All right, welcome back to Sekulow, folks. It's just outrageous the fact that Secretary Mayorkas begins his congressional testimonies and hearings with blaming Donald Trump. So all of you for electing him. And Congress. Congress, where it's the executive branch who has fought in court for decades to say this is our role, you know, we get to secure the border. Congress, by the way, has given them all the tools that they want. I mean, you could give them more tools if you had more Republicans in Congress. But it wouldn't matter because Joe Biden wouldn't take those tools and use them.

Neither would Mayorkas. They are spending 72 million taxpayer dollars to dismantle the wall. They want to make it easier for the drugs to get here because they don't care. They want to make it easier for human traffickers and sex traffickers because they don't care.

They're making a long term political decision. It doesn't matter about the they don't care about your health. They don't care about how it's going to affect your community. They don't care about the burden on the community.

They don't care about the people dying from overdoses. What they care about is that ultimately we'll get to legalize this group and they're going to vote Democrat. And that has been something the Democrat Party has been working with the border forever. What their problem has been is they have not been able to get one of those legalization bills through. And that's because even our President Trump, when he was willing to legalize the dreamers, the kids in a certain category, about 12 million people who would come here illegally at no fault of their own, they were brought over by their parents. They wouldn't OK it because he said, you first must fund the rest of the border wall and then we will make that will be step two. And they wanted it in reverse. But we knew from Ronald Reagan's example that he tried to do that.

They legalized a bunch of millions of people, but they didn't provide the money for border security. Correct. So you don't make that mistake twice. Let's go ahead and take a call. Paul's calling from Maine on Line 3. Hi, Paul.

Hi, Jay. I'm calling from the state of Maine. And just a concern, this border thing does concern us. Maine is a big chunk of land, but most people don't realize that we have a million people in this entire state. You know, and Governor Mills just dropped off forty thousand and twenty thousand. Another dump of illegal migrants. The largest city in the state of Maine is sixty seven thousand.

That's Portland, Maine. The rest is down from there. Forty thousand, forty thousand, forty thousand. And then you jump to twenty thousand, twelve thousand. But you got but you got that's a huge influx. What what impact does it have on your community so far? Huge.

It's huge. And we already a high unemployment in the state. There's not enough jobs. The mills are closing all over the place. I am a tradesman.

I have many trades and I worked all over the state, but they're closing all these mills and leaving the state because it's just we don't have the resources. There's more people on unemployment and out of work. This is why we're in federal court, Paul, to find out why the government thinks they could just change it. They have the right to change policies. Of course, they're elected.

They can do that. But the impact on these policies, why did they change talent? That that policy, which was involving sex trafficking, why these other policies are changed? Why stay in Mexico and change? But listen to what Mayorkas says.

This is up by 24. We have effectively managed an unprecedented number of non-citizens seeking to enter the United States and interdicted more drugs and disrupted more smuggling operations than ever before. A significant increase in migrant encounters will strain our system even further. And we will address this challenge successfully, but it will take time.

And we need the partnership of Congress, state and local officials, NGOs and communities to do so. So they're never going to get this fix, right? He's just saying it's going to be a disaster. Give us time.

How much time? How many Americans have to die? How many more terrorists do we need to allow in?

How many more sex traffickers, gang members and sex traffickers? I mean, really shut it down. Build the wall. Put thousands of agents down there. Point the guns at the border.

And then you know what? People won't jump in the river because you have a gun pointed at them saying, this is our border. You can't invade. We're not going to save you if you jump in. In fact, we're going to be. And if you can't work out the deal with Mexico, punish Mexico as well.

Use your tool. At the American Center for Law and Justice, we're engaged in critical issues at home and abroad, whether it's defending religious freedom, protecting those who are persecuted for their faith. I'm covering corruption in the Washington bureaucracy and fighting to protect life in the courts and in Congress. The ACLU would not be able to do any of this without your support for that.

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Alright, welcome back to Secular. We are taking your phone calls at 1-800-684-3110. That's 1-800-684-3110. Rick Rinnell joining us now, our senior advisor for foreign policy and national security. Rick, I want to jump to this because it's affecting everybody here in the United States, too, because now that we are no longer energy independent, and we're not an exporter of energy and gas, this also is hurting our allies. And we've seen this move that you wanted to flag for our audience today, that Russia, their energy giant Gazprom, has halted gas supplies to Bulgaria and Poland, they say, for failing to pay for gas in rubles. I mean, I think we can read between the lines there and realize they're beginning to punish countries and then not providing them natural gas. And America can't step up, Rick, and provide it because we're not a net exporter anymore.

And let's add a layer on what we talked about yesterday. Remember that we told the audience that the Biden administration was trying to keep the Germans buying Russian gas and oil. And now what we see today is that the Russians are cutting off Poland and Bulgaria. Now, what that means is they're not cutting off the Germans. The Biden administration is working to make sure that the Germans continue to purchase oil and gas from Russia.

And one has to ask, why is it that Germany, which purchases way more energy from Russia, why do they get to continue while other countries like Poland and Bulgaria are being cut off by the Russians? Now, the Biden administration should be screaming at the top of their lungs about this. But instead, they are secretly telling the Germans keep buying to not impact the global price of oil, at least through the midterm elections. So we've got a lot of politics being played by the Biden administration. I think Jennifer Granholm, former Michigan governor, who is the secretary of energy, needs to answer some very tough questions.

She's certainly not going to get these tough questions from the Washington, D.C. press corps. But our Republican members of Congress need to step up and ask some really tough questions of the secretary of energy. What's going on?

You know, here's the follow up on that, Rick. And that is, if you look at the situation as it's unfolding right now, and we're going to do this next segment, in Russia, in Ukraine and the whole battle that's going on there. I'm trying to figure out what is the endgame here, other than trying to avoid World War Three. The endgame is power, it's power for the Biden administration to stay in power, to keep at least the House of the Senate, to appease the public of not having increased gas prices, pump prices, and continue to blame Putin. Remember, they've said it's the Putin price hike. And also remember that we know that Barack Obama told the Russian leader many years ago when he was the President, just give me a little flexibility on the policy until I get through the election. Once I'm elected, then I can change the policy. This is the Obama-Biden strategy. By the way, if it was Donald Trump that said that, they would have impeached him. And Barack Obama says it and they say, well, that wasn't such a bad thing. Hey Rick, we've been telling people the first half of this broadcast, we've been very concerned about what's going on on the border, but we've also talked about the voting issue.

People need to understand how important it is to vote. Go ahead, Jordan. Yeah, let's take Sandra's call from Minnesota on Line 1. Hey Sandra, welcome to Sekulow, you're on the air. Hi Jordan, thank you for taking my call today.

Thanks for calling. My question for you and your dad, Jay, is that, okay, he's stressing for us to vote, however, how are we guaranteed that our voting machines still aren't rigged to steal this election? Let me ask you this question, so I'm going to have Rick do this too. First of all, there's been a lot of work on voter integrity. So there's been a lot of, a lot of that's gone on in the last year and a half since the election, and a lot more is going on going forward. There was, you know, the evidence on voting machine irregularities just wasn't there, to be blunt, okay?

I think what happened was the old-fashioned way. Ballots, these mail-in ballots were outrageous, these drop boxes were outrageous, the ballot harvesting is outrageous, but let me tell you something. Sandra, the alternative is you do nothing, and the alternative when you do that, Rick, if you do nothing, is we surrender the country, and we can't do that.

Yeah. Look, I've done a lot of international election monitoring, and the reality is, is one of the best ways are eyes and video on the counters, on people who are counting the ballots. We've struggled, to be honest, when we would go out and say, who wants to go to the polls, who wants to watch, who wants to go inside and count for the conservative side? And we've struggled to have people volunteer.

I don't think that's the case anymore. I think we're going to have a whole bunch of mama bears with their cell phones showing up and saying, uh-uh, you're not counting that twice. You're not going to use that ballot.

What are you doing by transferring this or that? I think now we're going to have the eyes, we're going to have the attention, and like you said, Jay, we have been concentrating on the election integrity issue, trying to shrink the voter rolls of all of the violations that are currently there. Dead people, residency violators, all of the old information needs to be purged because that's how they create this chaos of a whole bunch of ballots out there. Everybody knows you're getting nine, ten ballots at apartment complexes for one apartment. Jordan brought them in.

Rick, Jordan brought them in during the last election. Yeah, tons of live ballots. I lived in three places in the last five, six years and had voted in those places, so I was getting live ballots. Live ballots, not requests for ballots.

You don't need a machine to make that messy. There was an opportunity for so much bad activity, but I think, Sandra, what you've got to take away is what Rick just said. One, none of it matters if you don't show up and vote, so that's the first thing you've got to do. Two, we have to do a better job, and I think we will.

I agree with Rick. I think more people are going to be encouraged to volunteer on election day, and it's not just about election day anymore because there's so much early voting that's allowed, to make sure we've got poll watchers in key locations that are connected to a bigger structure who know how to report problems and then can get in touch with a legal team who can then come down. And figure out if they need to file something in court. That is the way it has to work, but you must, you know, the RNC cannot buy that many people. You've got to have volunteers that care deeply enough about the election that they will spend their personal time and organize their schedule to do that job of poll watching and to make sure they know who to contact if they think there's been a problem. And Rick, like you said, internationally, the US does this all over the country, all over the world, so it's something the Republican Party can do.

The other side has been doing it for decades. One point I'd like to just add to Sandra's important call, and I think it's something that we hear regularly and we need to keep thinking about, is that the conservatives, the Republican Party has moved to not rely on volunteer lawyers anymore. We have to pay the lawyers.

You can't have a lawyer that's just going to, you know, maybe give you a couple hours on Thursday. You need to have somebody who works for the organization that will show up and fight, and so that is a positive. We've moved in that direction. We've had to raise a lot of money. It's very expensive to do, but I've been a big advocate for not having volunteer lawyers. I think what happened in the last election cycle, in 2020, was that you had the typical networks of Republican lawyers, but these were highly complicated filings that needed to be made, like in one hour, and what we saw was a lot of cases get tossed out on technicalities. So they weren't necessarily bad lawyers, but they weren't election lawyers. They were Republican lawyers. They weren't experts in election law.

The judge would get the filing, and they couldn't even go past the filing because it was wrong, and then by the time that was wrong, you didn't even have time to refile. We've also been talking about the border, Rick. Let's take Michael's call and help him. Michael's calling from California, where you're dealing with it.

Rick lives in California, too. Go ahead, Michael. Hey, Michael, you there?

Alright, we'll come back to Michael later. So, Rick, that final question, too, the fact that you've got Mayorkas today blaming Donald Trump for the border crisis. I mean, literally, he's blaming Trump and Congress, which Congress has authorized a lot, but the fact that they're blaming Donald Trump and the Trump voters for the crisis, to me, it just makes me so angry because things were going in the right direction, and that was good for people. Yeah, it's spectacularly political for Mayorkas to somehow blame Donald Trump.

Everybody knows this is not true. Everybody knows we had the border completely closed. We were dealing with individuals, and it's now skyrocketed into a crisis, and it's bipartisan concern. I see Democrats all over, and including on border states of Arizona, California, New Mexico. We've got Democrats and independents that are very concerned about what is happening. Mayorkas is a total failure, and Republicans need to act quickly. This is a border.

This is about safety and security and national security. All right, Rick, as always, we appreciate your commentary on all these issues, and Rick is front and center of this, too. He's running the Super PAC or the Trump team.

I mean, so he knows the kind of investments that need to be made to make sure you won. We want to make sure all of you get out and vote. That's priority one.

Priority two is volunteer if you can to help these voter integrity efforts. We'll be right back on Secular. Of course, support our work if you can at ACLJ.org.

You can double your impact right now. That's ACLJ.org. We'll be right back. This is a free, powerful publication offering a panoramic view of the ACLJ's battle for the unborn. It's called Mission Life. It will show you how you are personally impacting the pro-life battle through your support. And the publication includes a look at all major ACLJ pro-life cases, how we're fighting for the rights of pro-life activists, the ramifications of Roe v. Wade 40 years later, the Planned Parenthood's role in the abortion industry, and what Obamacare means to the pro-life movement. Discover the many ways your membership with the ACLJ is empowering the right to life. Request your free copy of Mission Life today online at ACLJ.org slash gift. At the American Center for Law and Justice, we're engaged in critical issues at home and abroad, whether it's defending religious freedom, protecting those who are persecuted for their faith. I'm covering corruption in the Washington bureaucracy and fighting to protect life in the courts and in Congress. The ACLJ would not be able to do any of this without your support.

For that, we are grateful. Now there's an opportunity for you to help in a unique way. For a limited time, you can participate in the ACLJ's matching challenge. For every dollar you donate, it will be matched. A $10 gift becomes $20.

A $50 gift becomes $100. This is a critical time for the ACLJ. The work we do simply would not occur without your generous support. Take part in our matching challenge today. You can make a difference in the work we do, protecting the constitutional and religious freedoms that are most important to you and your family.

Give a gift today online at ACLJ.org. Welcome back to Sekulow. We got into some of these issues that are affecting all of us here in the United States because of moves by Russia on the oil and the natural gas, cutting off Bulgaria and Poland from natural gas. Who's next? We talked yesterday with Rick about the fact that we were pushing the Germans to not cut off Russian oil and gas, but now Russia is starting to do it, making geopolitical decisions. It's a huge threat.

And guess what? The United States, we can't jump in and fix this problem because we're not a net exporter. We have to import our own oil and gas for Americans. And of course we've seen the cost go up. And while I totally disagree with the idea of blame everything on Putin, suddenly when you have a war that continues on in Europe for this long and you have a massive gas exporter like Russia starting to turn it off, of course it's going to have an impact here as well. So don't take the administration blame Trump and Putin for everything.

That's not true. Biden is the majority of the blame. But what's happening and what the Russian decisions that they are making is certainly having an impact. It's exacerbating things. It's making things even worse here in the United States for consumers, for average Americans trying to fill up their car with gas, trying to go to the grocery store, hoping to figure out how to get on a vacation this summer and afford for that.

But Wes, you wrote a piece up at ACLJ.org, which is exactly about that. The war in Ukraine, is it important to the United States and you? And I think this is because people, the further this gets into, I think they get a little less attached to it and they start forgetting that this is impacting them every day. Yeah, yeah.

We have to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. And we need to pay attention to what is going on in Europe and what is going on between Russia and Ukraine because we have actually been drawn in to two world wars because we simply did not react to events that were happening in Europe. So we have to deal with all the domestic issues and they are large and people are struggling and they're very unhappy. But at the same time, we have to pay attention to what's going on there and not give in to the bullying that Vladimir Putin and Lavrov, his foreign minister, are trying to do to the rest of the world because to ignore that, we ignore that to our own detriment because what we're trying to do is to avoid World War III, not get into it. Vladimir Putin, you wrote, is not deterred in his unprovoked and illegal attack on Ukraine. The war rages on. Now, not only is he not undeterred, but he sends Lavrov out to basically threaten nuclear weapon uses. Yeah, what an irresponsible thing for this man to do. This is, again, another attempt at bullying the rest of the world. It's reckless.

But is it working? I don't think so. The jury's still out about the nuclear comment, but here's the thing. Russia knows that no one who supports Ukraine, no nuclear power that supports Ukraine is even thinking about nuclear weapons. So if he's concerned about this danger, as he says, it's the danger that they would create no one else.

But here's the thing. Russia knows that the US and our allies, we are not going to use nuclear weapons. He also knows that if they were to use nuclear weapons, it runs the risk of basically annihilating not only the whole world, but annihilating Russia, too.

So I don't think they're going there. This is the desperate tactic of a bully. And here's the thing. If we give in to this, Jay, if we adjust what we're doing in Ukraine or in Europe because of this threat, then that geopolitical extortion will never end. They will continue to use that if that works for them, and we can't let it work for them. Jay, geopolitical balance is also being impacted here. This was some of the comments that were coming out yesterday. And this is why we have to pay attention to it.

And Wes is right. Two World Wars started because the United States really didn't have their eyes on what was going on in Europe. And I don't want the United States involved in sending troops. I don't want no-fly zones. But I am concerned that the next move in Ukraine appears to be Odessa.

Right. If the Russians take Odessa, and their two-star general last week talked about their ultimate plans, which is to take Odessa and also to invade Moldova, which is just insane. But Putin's appetite for aggression and conquest is not going to be quenched just in Ukraine. But if they take Odessa, this is so significant because that is the last remaining seaport for Ukraine. Ukraine has a huge export business, especially in grain, and this would commercially cripple Ukraine if they lose their last seaport. The good news is that Ukraine has been very effective in pushing the Russian Navy away from the coast, but that is... And sunk a major vessel?

Yeah, it's much more important for the Ukrainians to keep Odessa than it is for them to keep Luhansk and the Donbas region. You know, the nuclear threat that you're hearing... Listen to what Lavrov...

Listen to what he actually said. A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. The danger is serious and real, and it should not be underestimated.

I mean, there you go. It's a threat. It's a threat. It tries to start off as diplomatically as we don't want to do this. No one wants a nuclear war.

But then he says it's real, and you shouldn't underestimate it. And you've got Putin as well today speaking to his Russian audience about saying that if someone intends to interfere with what's going on from the outside, we have weapons. We're not even going to brag about them, but we have the weapons to deal with those people. And we know they have the new Satan-Tumas ICBM, a giant nuclear warhead.

It's pointed at us. I don't think they're going to go there. They do have very, very robust military capabilities. What we've discovered in Ukraine, though, is while they have the ability to have all these weapons in their stockpile, the combined arms effort of taking all of these elements and putting them together effectively on the battlefield is what's not working.

Here's the thing, Jay. When we're dealing with Russia, and this is more important than ever now, we cannot be risk-averse in what we do. Well, we have to be risk-averse to a point. Because if we weren't risk-averse, we would send U.S. troops over. Let me be real clear on that. We should never. I mean, U.S. troops on the ground, or the U.S. enforcing the no-fly zone, or even NATO troops. That is a no-go.

We do not go there. But short of that, we need to get over being risk-averse so that we send a message to Russia that we will support the Ukrainians who will defend themselves. Do you think Ukraine's the good actor here? They were invaded, and that was wrong.

That is wrong. You know, Ukraine was part of Russia until 19, what, 92, 93, 91, yeah. A lot of corruption there. They are not angels. What about these troops that they're using?

And this has been documented. The Ukrainian troops that have the SS insignia from the Nazis. So, you look back into the history of the 20th century, Ukraine was more involved in the persecution of the Jews and what was then the Soviet Union than any other part of the Soviet Union. A lot of anti-Semitic feelings and philosophies in Ukraine that have not gone away. So, you asked the question, Jordan, you know, how does this all play out?

Let's tie it all together. Putin is the bad guy for invading, no question, that Russia invaded. But he's also being blamed for inflation.

You can't blame the border on him, so you blame Trump for the border and Congress. And then we have people that call us up saying, I'm not going to vote because I don't trust the system and I don't trust the voting machines. It plays right into exactly what they want. This is how you get Raphael Warnock, this is how you get Ossoff in Georgia, this is how you could end up with Stacey Abrams as the governor of Georgia. Because there's a runoff there between two candidates for governor, the incumbent governor versus the outside Trump endorsed candidate, former US Senator Perdue. So, if half those voters didn't say, you know what, my guy didn't win this, so I'm not going to show up either. You're giving away states, you're giving away Senate seats, you're giving away House seats, you're giving away governorships. We've got to be able to unite. You can have tough primaries, I like that. But at the end of the day, you've got to kind of figure out and say, you know what, even if my guy didn't win, our side is better than the other side. So, make sure our side gets in there. And again, and then fight out the battles, continue to fight out the battles.

I mean, I think this is the truth. We have to do more than we've ever done in this midterm election to win these seats. Don't just take the news for granted in these generic polls. They don't matter if we don't show up and vote and get our friends to show up. Talk to you next time on Secular. Give a gift today online at ACLJ.org.