SEKULOW

Logan Sekulow: Happy New Year, everyone. Welcome to Sekulow. I'm Logan Sekulow, by the way. Will Haynes is in studio as well. We wanted to first just start this show off and say thank you for an amazing 2025. I know you heard me do that push over and over again for our year-end drive, and thank you again for all who supported the work of the ACLJ, whether that is our legal work, as we are in court rapidly, continually, constantly, and our media work.

Like I always say, we always strive to be the best of the best, to have the best crew, to the best team of lawyers, to have the best media team. None of that happens without you. So I just want to say first and foremost, a big thank you as we head now into a new season for the ACLJ. 2025, we celebrated 35 years of ACLJ, and now we head into our 36th year.

We head into, again, a new chapter for the organization as we look to what the future may hold. 2026, I'm sure just like 2025, will fly by with so much that happens on a continual basis here within the organization and of course within the news.

Will Haynes: That's right, and we have a lot going on even as we speak. We talked about how in December things were so busy for our attorneys. They don't slow down just because it's a new year. Just this month alone in January 2026, which is hard to believe, we've got things like this going on. We have an oral argument on a motion to dismiss on January 29th. That's in Massachusetts. That's regarding our lawsuit against the Commonwealth of Massachusetts with their attacks on the pro-life community.

Logan Sekulow: This is headed into what, the third year I guess of doing this? Two years since we started it, but heading into the third year of actually being involved in what happened in Massachusetts. Of course, there are things like going after Gavin Newsom, the state of California, for what they've done to some of these churches out there trying to collect these insane fines. Or we have other opportunities, specifically with the case that we're going to have against CNN, trying to finally regulate what defamation can look like within this country.

Will Haynes: That's right, and because we filed those cert petitions at the Supreme Court at the end of 2025, we should be getting replies from the other parties, whether it be the state of California or from CNN, towards the end of January, early February. So we get their reply brief, and then our attorneys go right back to work and write our reply to the opposition brief. So then we're still working on those cases.

We have an oral argument in New Orleans coming up on January 9th. So not long into the new year, we have an oral argument and an appeal that the Katy Independent School District in Texas, outside of Houston, put forward. Remember that teacher we told you about that was told you're not able to pray anywhere a student can see you visibly? We won at the lower court level, but now it is at the appeals court, the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans. Oral argument on that, January 9th.

Logan, in court in Chicago, there's a status conference January 20th on street preachers. So a lot going on in the courtroom early this year.

Logan Sekulow: We're also going to be expanding our media operation. You know we did last year. We talked about at the very end of the year one of our new specials that we're working on, *The Chilling Effect: The War on Free Speech*. That'll be coming likely before the end of 2026. We've got a lot going on with that project as well as so many others as the show continues to expand as well. We're going to be on some new networks, going to be in some new places.

Again, we always try to do this entire operation without having to come up with some sort of paywall or something where you have to join to be a part of it. Of course, a lot of you do. A lot of you financially have supported the ACLJ through 2025, and we hope you consider doing that through 2026. All of our ACLJ Champions, the people that give on a monthly basis, we know that you are doing the good work here.

You are really spending your time and your energy to make sure the word gets out there for organizations like ours. So again, as we head now into a new year of 2026, I just wanted to start this off and just spend these first few minutes just saying how appreciative we are. We're not going anywhere. We have a packed year ahead. Of course, we have a packed show as well, and the show's not going anywhere.

Make sure you always stay tuned, make sure you're subscribing on YouTube and doing all of that. Help us out. That's a great free way to just do it. If you haven't subscribed, hit that subscribe button right now on YouTube. We'll be right back.

Welcome back to Sekulow. We are going to take your calls in the next segment. We have a lot of people watching, I know specifically about the Minnesota fraud situation. We're going to discuss that even more when you have calls coming in if that's what you want to talk about or any of the topics that we have here at the ACLJ. Or if you just want to talk about the work of the ACLJ, give me a call at 1-800-684-3110.

We're now joined by Jeff Ballabon from ACLJ Jerusalem. Jeff, some interesting comments that are coming in. We saw this over the Iranians essentially saying, "We're in a full-scale war." Is that really what we're seeing?

Jeff Ballabon: That's right. The full-scale war with the United States, Israel, and Europe, and that was just a few days ago. But now also, we're seeing that he's got trouble at home as some of the largest protests in years have hit the streets of Tehran.

Logan Sekulow: So he knows, how do you win over that crowd? Just say, "We're at war with America and Israel."

Will Haynes: And Jeff, also as we see this, it's because the sanctions seem to be working. The currency is plummeting, the value of the currency in Iran, as prices surge. As we've pointed out for years, it's because when you have lessened sanctions like we saw under the Biden administration, what do they do? They fund terror.

When you tighten down sanctions, their money is not there. They're not funding terror, as we have seen, but also the people start to get restless because they are not helping their own people.

Jeff Ballabon: That's right. The people of Iran understand that their rulers are their enemies. The rulers are not their friends and the rulers have, now that the economy is getting tougher and tougher and sanctions are working, they're not rising up against those imposing the sanctions. They're rising up against those who are the cause of the sanctions: the terrible rulers who've declared war on humanity, declared war on America, on Israel, on Jews, on Christians, and have been striving towards that war and sending all their treasure to funding up this global, literally global, terror war for years and years against America's assets, against Israel.

Now it does look like the sanctions are working. As the economy is falling worse and worse, they're rising up against their leaders. Really, the world is waiting for a regime change there. People are always afraid of regime change. They're always afraid of what's going to happen could be even worse. It's hard to imagine it being worse than what's governed Iran for the last 47 years. Pure evil.

Will Haynes: Well, Jeff, what we saw was a real moment that could have been taken by not another faction of religious radicals back with the Green Revolution back in the Obama days that was ignored by the U.S. It wasn't even as though the U.S. had to send boots on the ground and get involved in that way, but just even give a nod to the people that what they're doing is just and noble. The Obama administration could not bring themselves to do that.

Meanwhile, Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt? Great. Let's go ahead and support the Arab Spring all over the world, and we saw how well that turned out. But you're seeing now even the chants in Iran get more bold. They're not just saying, "Down with the Ayatollah," which they've said in previous ones. They're even explicitly calling on a return of the Shah.

They are getting more bold. They're saying things in the streets that they know their lives are at stake for being bold enough to say in the streets. I know, Logan, you've got something to say.

Logan Sekulow: I think that's something maybe we have to educate people on also. When you think of Iran, I think for a lot of people maybe under the age of 50, you kind of lump in a lot of these Middle Eastern countries as sort of the same concept of what they are, and maybe you have a visual of what it is. Iran, before the revolution, before everything that happened, we are not talking about the same kind of country.

You're talking about a thriving economy, really one of the greatest places to visit, we were told. I obviously didn't go, I was not around then, but in the area, we're not talking about this sort of idea in your head you start have of what some of these Muslim nations look like.

Jeff Ballabon: No, it's true. Iran, first of all, I know many people tend to lump it in as an Arab country. It's not. It's Persian. It's its own culture, it's an old, ancient, venerable culture. It had its own religion which was sort of overwhelmed by Islam. Zoroastrianism was a very big religion. It still exists in some places, but it was overwhelmed by Iran. It had ancient communities. The Jewish community in Persia goes back as we know obviously to biblical times. The story of Esther takes place there in the capital.

So this is an ancient, ancient culture and the current Islamic regime, the Shia regime, is relatively recent. It's 47 years old. When they had their revolution and they overthrew the Shah, the Shah was fairly Western and secular in that respect, and it really changed everything for that regime. So what's fascinating now is that the 20-somethings who grew up only knowing the oppression of an intense Shia Sharia law, they're really rising up because they see what's happening in the rest of the world because they have some visibility into it, and they've had enough.

They want to be open to Israel, for example. We're talking as ACLJ Jerusalem. The Israeli people would desperately love to see the Iranian people be free. It's not like there's a sense of enmity or hostility or anger between the Israelis or the Jews and the Persians themselves, the Iranians themselves. It's this regime. This regime has been chanting "Death to America" from its inception.

It started with it, again, those of us old enough to remember, maybe not everyone here is, when they took Americans hostage and everything changed. Since then, they've been chanting and fighting to destroy America and make no mistake, a threshold nuclear power with the ability to deliver nuclear weapons to America is a genuine threat and that's what they were until moments ago.

It was only this past year when finally Israel responded to their attacks by taking out their defenses and ruling the air over Tehran and then finally America delivering the crushing blow to couple their most fearsome nuclear facilities that we've had a new ability to see this kind of regime change. We're all very hopeful that there will be regime change from within, that the Iranians will finally take back control of their lives and not be our enemies.

Will Haynes: Jeff, you bring up the story of Esther, which also shows that the plot against the Jewish people from within the Persian Empire is ancient as well. What we saw in that story, though, is good conquering the evil of the plot against the Jewish people. Now in modern times, we know what happens when you let that plot take over and rule the empire, and that's what's happened. That's modern-day Iran.

That's what we're seeing, and it's not just a hatred of the Jewish people. As you said, it's a hatred of America and everything that the West stands for, everything that Judeo-Christian values stand for. That is what is being suppressed in their own country from a brilliant people, the Persian people.

If you meet people that are Persian that have moved to America, some of the hardest working, kindest people that you'll meet, and what do they long for? For Persia to be made what it once was again. It would be a wonderful thing for the world to see, not just the fall of Iran, but what that culture in Persia can give to the world if they're able to thrive again, not under the thumb of the theocratic dictatorship.

Jeff Ballabon: In the story of Esther, when there's the big turnaround, first of all, what is it that gets everyone in trouble? That Haman demands that everyone bow to him, and Mordecai the Jew won't bow to him. Well, that is very much a Judeo-Christian concept. We won't bow to tyrants. That's what America was founded on, that idea that we won't bow to tyranny. We only bow to God.

They want us to bow to them and they want their people to bow to them and they're keeping them under their thumb. When there's the reversal, many of the people of the country join in to destroy the enemies, those who were trying to commit genocide against the Jews. So the biblical stories that we have obviously repeat generation after generation, millennium after millennium.

But we see here there's an ancient proud people now being ruled by dictators who have said from the beginning, "Death to America." America is the Great Satan, Israel's just a Small Satan, and we're at this moment now where there's a lot of hope.

Logan Sekulow: As we showcase today a lot of the work that we've been doing here at the ACLJ that we continue to do in this new year, it's important for people to realize that the support they gave in 2025 is the reason that we are on air. We are doing this broadcast, but our legal team that worked throughout the holiday season, that is working on these very cases you're hearing about today, the entire reason that we are able to do this and we are able to move forward in a new year with strength is because of the members and champions of the ACLJ.

So we want to thank them today for the support they showed us in the last year as we finished strong and are able to continue this fight. Because we've got a busy month ahead. Really, January and February are extremely busy for our legal team. We know they're going to be extremely busy for our media team and we are not stopping. We are moving into this year with strength because we know of those ACLJ supporters that supported us this last year.

We have to map out the entire year. That's really what we do here. Obviously there are things that come up, times change, news breaks, things happen, you have to adjust and pivot, but we have to really start planning what 2026 looks like well before we got to 2026. So we're already talking about what happens second, third quarter of the year. What happens at the end of next year? What happens when we get to 2027, which we know is going to be a crazy year?

Then of course coming right after that, it's going to get wild once again. We need you to get engaged in many different ways. We've got the midterms later on this year. Can you believe that's where we're at? And then just a couple years away from what will be a new President of the United States. How does that work in this cultural landscape? Our team is hard at work to plan on that.

Of course, we're now in a big celebratory year also for the United States of America as we celebrate a big anniversary of ours, which will be fun to do when we get to the summertime. But with that, again, we just wanted to say thank you and we'll be right back with more on Sekulow.

Welcome back to Sekulow. I do want to take some time here in this segment to talk about *The Chilling Effect*, the new project that our media team is working on. *The War on Free Speech* is the subtitle, and it is a very important thing here at the ACLJ. The core mission is protecting First Amendment rights here at the ACLJ. So what we have seen over the past few years, this chilling effect because of the heavy hand of government through censorship, through threats of arrest, through any of the other ways that they have gotten in the way of Americans' free speech right, we've been fighting back against.

In this new series that we're working on, it's in production now, but as I said, we started seeing what was being produced already and knew that it could be much bigger, and that's where you come in to join alongside of us. We do this from time to time when we start working on a project and we see what it can be and we know that you, the viewer, the listener of the Sekulow broadcast, you know what we put out as the final product.

We know that you will join with us to make it bigger and better and make everyone that can see it see it. Get it as far and wide as we can. So that's why we decided to turn to this week here in December, the Raise Your Voice Week, because you can stand alongside us as we get this message out, but also continuing the work of the ACLJ. When you raise your voice with us, we are much stronger and that's what we are doing this week.

We are highlighting what you can do, how you can join us by raising your own voice. You can go to ACLJ.org/voice to be a part of this. But I want to play a few clips from this because I think it also ties in here. When you think about what the left has done over the past few years, what they've gotten away with, where when they want to push back and they want to literally create riots in the street, or a judge that takes the law into her own hands, and then you think about the way that conservatives are treated for lawfully exercising their freedom of speech or their freedom of religion.

It's so stark, and that's why we can't give up this fight. Because if you are a Christian or you are a conservative or if you are Jewish in this country, the left is coming after you and they want to silence you and they want to distort what you do and who you are. That's why not only through the work of the ACLJ but our media arm as well, we have to push back. We have to showcase what we are fighting against.

Because some stories you may hear a headline, you may see a blog post on ACLJ.org that someone was arrested for their freedom of speech, and it sounds like we've heard this a thousand times. This is what the ACLJ's been fighting for 35 years. But when you can see and hear the individuals, their courage that you can stand with is remarkable.

Their calling that they are committed to, and they have to have allies like the ACLJ and folks like you, the listener and supporter and the champion of ACLJ that will stand with them in this fight. So first I want to play for you the trailer of this series that has been put together. I called it a teaser trailer, a stinger trailer. It is from the concepts that we have already put together, but there is so much out there that we are working on even currently and look forward to doing in early 2026.

So let's go ahead and run this trailer for folks so they can get a concept of where it is, and then I want to play some from a specific segment right after that and I'll pitch to it. Let's go ahead and play that trailer.

Guest (Male): You look at the First Amendment. We have five liberties under the First Amendment: your right to practice your faith, your right to assemble, your right to petition the government, free press, free speech. All critically important. The most important in my judgment is your right to talk.

Guest (Female): This is your baby girl or your baby boy. This is not a clump of cells. This is not a parasite. This is your baby!

Guest (Male): Today, while we have the time, call upon the name of Jesus Christ for the salvation of your soul.

Guest (Male): If someone believes that government is going to punish them for exercising their First Amendment rights, they might choose not to express themselves at all.

Guest (Male): The FBI will crush you. This government will crush you if you try to expose the truth about things that they are doing that are wrong. He's allowed to come forward under the law and tell us things that he believes that are happening that aren't supposed to.

Guest (Male): Being here in America, I thought that it is our right to go out and share our faith. We're always a little bit fearful that he or I will be taken to jail. Is the government watching? Is there a chance I could face some kind of negative consequence now or down the road?

Guest (Male): I was the one preaching on the mic when the police came. They came to me and said I should shut it down.

Guest (Male): God tells you what to do. You cannot hesitate. How many arrests will it take for you to stop? I can't stop.

Logan Sekulow: Once again, that was kind of the concept trailer that our team put together, which is wonderful. The working title, *The Chilling Effect*, I mean, you get chills watching that. Hearing the stories of these individuals, also seeing people like Senator Mike Lee or Chairman Jim Jordan in those pieces that talk about the very core issues the ACLJ believes in and fights for every single day. We had attorneys in court yesterday, just ahead of Christmas, in Colorado, fighting for our clients.

So the work here does not stop and we have seen this uptick in the heavy hand of government going after religious speech. It's not going after protesters that want to shut down roads and set cars on fire and completely sow chaos in major cities that they seem to be worried about in some of these Democrat cities. Instead, it's the peaceful street preacher, the peaceful person on the sidewalk sharing their faith, sharing the good news. That's who gets arrested.

So I want to play this clip as well. This is about religious speech that we are seeing this attack on, and I will be back right after this short clip, but it is powerful when you watch it.

Guest (Male): Today, while we have the time, call upon the name of Jesus Christ for the salvation of your soul.

Guest (Male): If someone believes that government is going to punish them for exercising their First Amendment rights, they might choose not to express themselves at all.

Guest (Male): Being here in America, I thought that it is our right to go out and share our faith. I was the one preaching on the mic when the police came. They came to me and said I should shut it down.

Guest (Male): Someone on the other side in the exact same location on a public sidewalk wouldn't be arrested, wouldn't be harassed. That's not free speech, that's not fair, that's not the way it's supposed to work. The message gets around. If you street preach, you will face court obligations, fines, fees. We absolutely believe that this is done with that purpose.

At the end of the day, every time we step out into the street, we have to be ready to give our life. How many arrests will it take for you to stop? I can't stop.

Logan Sekulow: That line there at the end, it shows the courage of the clients of the ACLJ. How many arrests will it take to get you to stop? Effectively, how far does the government have to go to get you to stop exercising your freedom of speech, your freedom of religion? And our client responds with, "I can't stop."

That is true courage. That is the hero of these stories, the client that is doing what they are called to do and exercising their constitutional rights, doing it and seeing state governments, city governments come after them with the heavy hand of law enforcement, arresting them, putting them in the back of police cars.

And we have to defend them in court, we have to defend their rights to express their faith. You can join those courageous clients by raising your voice today at ACLJ.org/voice.