SEKULOW

Logan Sekulow: Welcome to Sekulow. Phone lines are open for you at 1-800-684-3110. If you want to have your voice heard on the air today, it is a great time to call. You're probably going to want to call in about this because President Trump announced that there is a red line for our interference in Iran.

How would we get involved? With pretty strong force, it sounds like. This doesn't feel like all bets are off, all options are on the table. We'll hear from President Trump soundbites and that kind of thing later on in the broadcast. How do you feel about this? Do you have flashbacks to Iraq? What do you think about getting involved in what's going on in Iran?

Obviously, there have been people taking to the streets, not only in America but obviously in Iran. There's been the closest thing to a revolution that we've seen. We've had lots of these teases, we talked about that, and now finally we are seeing what could be actual regime change and how the US gets involved is going to be very interesting. Phone lines again are open for you at 1-800-684-3110. Again, President Trump essentially weighing the options of when to get involved in what would essentially be a quote-unquote war.

Will: That's right. When you look at what the President said as well, he said that a red line for action would be the killing of people like they have in the past. We would get involved. That's what the President said.

Now, what we've seen over the weekend is it appears that at least by some of the estimates, and it's probably a conservative estimate, that more than 500 people have been killed by the regime thus far. A lot of reports are probably not able to get out because of the internet issues. We've seen that Elon Musk has deployed Starlink so that has helped a lot of ways to get the message out still, but that internet blackout has been a big issue to try and suppress the voice of the people.

The White House told CBS News, a spokesperson for the White House unnamed here, said that what it would look like is we will be hitting them very hard where it hurts. It doesn't mean boots on the ground, but it means hitting them very hard where it hurts. You can take that to be an assumption, calls back to the summer where air strikes, which were very targeted and precise against the nuclear facilities, maybe something like that is what we could infer could be coming from the United States. Maybe not on their military site, so to speak, like a nuclear facility, but something more that would hurt the IRGC in their attempt to contain what is going on, which is now in its third week, which is going on longer than we've seen in recent history and it seems to still be growing, not be shut down by the regime.

Logan Sekulow: One of the questions that was asked to President Trump was, "Do you think they're going to take you seriously?" He said, "Let's look at the facts. Let's look at what we've done recently. Look at what happened to Venezuela. Look at what happened with Soleimani." This is not an administration that bluffs a lot in terms of their getting involved in these kinds of actions.

Obviously, a lot of times he's pushing them to not do it, but it doesn't seem like President Trump, specifically this go-around, has any problem with getting involved in these kinds of situations. We are seeing some pretty historic action happening whether you like it or not. I do want to hear from you. When you hear this option that maybe the United States of America could get involved in this what could be eventual war in Iran, what do you think about it?

I want to weigh the people. I want to weigh you guys and your voices. I want to hear what you have to say. President Trump definitely ran on a no-wars kind of platform. I think that's become very popular within the United States and this entire movement that they built out of the Republican Party. How do you feel?

Give me a phone call, 1-800-684-3110. Put it in the chat. I'd appreciate that. The ACLJ is still at it as well. We're going to go over what's been going on. We can't miss out that there was a horrific attack on a synagogue in Mississippi. We're going to talk to Jeff Ballabon a little bit later from ACLJ Jerusalem about that and what anti-Semitism looks like as we are seeing for the first time in a long time people like AOC actually calling out anti-Semitism in their own area. What does that mean? Why is it now one of their points? Is it politically motivated? Is there something stronger? Let's get into it. Give me a call at 1-800-684-3110. Support the work of the ACLJ also at ACLJ.org. You can sign our new pro-life petition and become a champion if you can.

Welcome back to Sekulow. We are continuing our discussion on Iran and what it looks like if the American people and the United States get involved and what level you're comfortable with. Phone lines are being screened right now, so we're going to take some calls coming up in just a moment, 1-800-684-3110. When we hear from President Trump making these pretty bold statements saying what this is, let's actually hear. Let's go directly to bite two. This is President Trump speaking to a reporter, I believe on Air Force One.

Donald Trump: It's starting to look like, and there seem to be some people killed that aren't supposed to be killed. These are violent—if you call them leaders, I don't know if they're leaders or just they rule through violence. But we're looking at it very seriously. The military is looking at it. And we're looking at some very strong options. We'll make a determination.

Logan Sekulow: Making very strong options. That is being very clear. That is saying that there could be a lot more to this than just tough talk.

Will: That's right. When you see the response from the Iranians, this is from the Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, he is saying, "We are not warmongers, but we are prepared for war. We are also prepared for negotiations, but fair negotiations with equal rights and mutual respect."

It's an interesting play by the Iranians. One, it shows they know that they're losing grip on this one, that this one is more intense than they've seen at least since 2009. But okay, "we're not warmongers, we're prepared for war." I understand that line coming from the Iranians in response to a red line statement by the President. But "we're prepared for negotiations, but fair negotiations." I don't know what they think they're going to negotiate out on this. The people here negotiate with the US like "we won't kill as many protesters if you do not bomb us"?

Logan Sekulow: President Trump actually right after that quote said we're looking at very strong options. Then he followed that up with, "Some of the protesters were killed through stampeding. Many of them were shot. We're getting a full report. I'm getting an hourly report and we're going to be making a determination." An hourly report. I think a lot of us thought it could have even happened overnight last night.

Will: That's what we've seen. There was another spokesperson I saw this morning on the news that was saying that the President is being constantly updated on this. He says an hourly report. This is something that is at the front of his mind. We know that Iran has been an issue that he's dealt with in his first administration. He had very strong statements in the first administration. We saw that the Biden administration gave back a lot of the issues and tried to get back to the negotiating table for a new Iran deal within the Biden administration.

But here's the other thing too. When he talks about "we're prepared for negotiations, but fair negotiations," we're talking about not just President Trump who is strong on Iran. You're talking about Pete Hegseth, Marco Rubio, Tulsi Gabbard, John Ratcliffe at the CIA. These are individuals whose entire career in the public space has been against the regime in Tehran. Very strongly they have had opinions and developed their foreign policy chops looking at wanting a free Iran, a return to the people, not the theocratic genocidal dictators that run the country since the revolution.

When they say things like "we want negotiations, but fair negotiations," I don't think our Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has been an Iran hawk his entire career, is going to sit there and be like, "You know what, let's sit at the table and say maybe you can stay in power and we'll even back off on our rhetoric and let this fizzle out on the ground." No, Marco Rubio is probably the most clear-eyed on this foreign policy issue than any of the others that we've seen going on. We've also seen he can juggle a lot of jobs and hats. He knows how to handle Venezuela, the Europeans, China. He can take on Iran at the same time.

Logan Sekulow: I want to take some phone calls because I asked what you thought and generally, I'm seeing a very mixed reaction on our social. On YouTube or on Rumble, I'm seeing some people saying we have to get involved, we've already been involved. I see some people saying absolutely not, we shouldn't be.

This is where it gets a little bit blurry because if this was a George W. Bush presidency, when you go back to the last Republican pre-Trump, you go, "Okay, we kind of know what we signed up for." Now, especially in a post-9/11 world, you have a very different Republican, you have a very different conservative. How do they feel about this? I know some of us come from that old school world, so maybe your mind goes to, "Sure, of course, we get involved." But then I'm sure there's a huge group of young people who don't necessarily feel this way. Let's go ahead and take a phone call. Let's go to Mary Ellen in Illinois. Mary Ellen, go ahead.

Mary Ellen: I've been following this very closely over the years, early 2000s, how many times Iran's leadership has said, "Death to the little Satan and death to the big Satan, America." They have funded with their money Hezbollah, Hamas, ISIS, all those other groups. They've even sent people over to our country. We've seen them. They've been arrested already here over the years. They want to—they think—so they've been really at war.

But I say President Trump and we have every right to say no. We will stand with the people. We want free and fair elections that we would oversee and get rid of your IRGC or whatever that group is, the people that go out and assassinate people, and the Basij group. All of that.

Will: Mary Ellen, I think that's why there is an administration now that would support those people. We saw the closest thing within modern political history in 2009, the Green Revolution, where the Obama-Biden administration at the time would do nothing to show even support verbally for what was happening on the ground. We know that this is a brutal regime. We know the evil that they have put across the world. We know that they had very close relations with Venezuela and the way that they both made money off black market oil was enriching themselves to further terror, not to make a better life for their people.

All these things are connected. But you're also starting to see the people on the street that are fed up with it. It needs to be a situation where Iran could be free and the return of the Persian people, that proud history, is what rules Iran, not the theocratic genocidal dictatorship that is the Ayatollah.

Logan Sekulow: I 100% agree. I think that supporting the overthrow of the Ayatollah does not necessarily mean that we are nation-building and getting in there. The Persian people are very smart people, very resourceful. There's actually a lot of wealth within Iran that can help this get back to where it is. That is part of the problem why it's been such a tragedy is the squandering of the wealth of that nation on terror, on Hamas, on Hezbollah, on assassination plots against our President. Things like that. They are not the good guys here and as Mary Ellen said, they've been at war with us for years.

There's actually a clip of Benjamin Netanyahu actually talking about what regime change would mean even within Israel with working with the Persian people, with the Iranian people and how happy they would be there because of the brilliance that has come out. He goes the amount of people that you deal with on a normal day-to-day basis in America or in Israel or wherever it is, the UK, have had to leave and flee Iran. Some of the biggest companies in the world have been created by incredible Iranian people. What does that look like when their world is back open and you're able to actually do that within these major capital cities?

Again, you have to do a little bit of digging. I always say this because I think we put in our heads Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, you start kind of piecing the Gaza even, you start piecing things together in your mind as just the Middle East. That's changed a little bit with how we see Saudi Arabia now. But like we all said, Tehran and these areas were not these desolate places. These were thriving areas of the world in most people's lifetime.

Will: Once again, I see what Lisa on YouTube said. The President told Iran not to kill protesters and he should follow up with what he says. That is true. You think back to the damage that Barack Obama did with Syria with the red line on chemical weapons. If they use chemical weapons on their people, we will intervene. They did and the American people and the US did nothing. Once again, we may not want to get involved, but I think if the President draws a red line, they better live up to their word and follow through with something or else then you do end up with situations like Syria that probably could have been stopped or changed or made better if the President had followed through. Instead, it gave more leeway to the Assad regime to continue that civil war. Now what do you have? A former al-Qaeda leader as the President of Syria. They're hoping to be a better country going forward. We'll find out, but there are a lot of questions still with that. If you can make good on your word, I think that you're in a better spot.

Logan Sekulow: Phone lines are completely jammed right now. We're going to take a bunch of those coming up. Jordan's going to be joining us via phone here in the next segment. He's working on a case that's been pretty interesting. We're going to dive into that. Then later, Jeff Ballabon from ACLJ Jerusalem. Of course, not a quiet week in the world of anti-Semitism once again as we saw even in states like Mississippi. We saw some really horrific attacks. We'll be discussing that and more coming up on Sekulow. With that being said, I want you to support the work of the ACLJ. It's a great time to do it at ACLJ.org. You can go to sign a new petition or you can become an ACLJ Champion even. That's someone who gives financially on a monthly basis. We appreciate that so much. We'll be right back with more on Sekulow.

Welcome back to Sekulow. We do have two lines open for you at 1-800-684-3110. You can speak your mind and your thoughts on what's going on in Iran. We'd like to hear from you. I know that it's a big deal. Jordan is joining us, my brother Jordan Sekulow joining us by phone. Executive Director here. Jordan, I know you've got an update as you are traveling on the road and working on some big cases, so let us know what's going on.

Jordan Sekulow: There's a huge case tomorrow at the Supreme Court of the United States involving this whole sports issue. Can boys play on girls' teams? This issue is really relating to starting even—one of the cases is two cases that are combined. One out of Idaho. We're close, of course, with the West Virginia Attorney General. That's the main case. That's a case involving mostly high school sports, which is the crux of sports anyways when it comes to the state level before you get to the collegiate level where the NCAA would be the one in charge of all those kind of decisions.

People might have already thought that this was decided because of some other moves by President Trump, but in fact, it's still being fought out. It's been fought out for four or five years. West Virginia has the case that just says it's basic. If you're a boy, you play on the boys' team. If you're a girl, you play on the girls' team. There's no crossover. They've taken this now all the way to the Supreme Court. They won at the district court, lost at the appellate court, and so now the Supreme Court has the ability to settle this once and for all for the entire country.

I'm really proud of our Attorney General, who is an ACLJ alumni, JB McCuskey, and his team in West Virginia leading the charge there to finalize this. I think really when you talk to people about this whole issue, it's past this trans politics issue. It's really about kids and sports and safety, and especially women's sports and protecting women's sports from boys or men, and in some cases men, 18-year-olds who might not be good enough or weren't the best on their men's team but could be the greatest and set all the state records if they decided to be on the women's team and all the issues that involve injuries.

So once and for all, the Supreme Court now has a chance before it in a multi-hour oral argument tomorrow to finally make that decision which I know for so many of us who have children, especially daughters, want to know that Title IX was there to protect them and their sports and so that they can play those sports amongst themselves amongst equal athletic ability. It's still very difficult to make those teams. Even in high school, you have to be a great athlete. This is about righting a short-term wrong in our country that has been ridiculous. West Virginia brought the case for West Virginians, but it's made its way all the way to the US Supreme Court. Because of that, the Attorney General JB McCuskey, his Solicitor General, they will set the stage for the future so that this is no longer an issue.

I think that's where the majority of the country is. I think most people take their politics out of it and just think about the sports aspect. They understand the locker room situation. They understand the strength situation, the testosterone situation. They get it. We will give you updates. It's going to be a long case, so we might not have updates from the case on the show until Thursday. If we do get some updates while the show's going on tomorrow, we'll try to get them to you.

Logan Sekulow: I think you bring up an interesting point because President Trump has certainly been one of those presidents that will make some big statements and will call for a lot of things. We saw them over the weekend. We saw even things like we're going to make credit card interest rates no more than 10%. We saw big businesses, the big corporations can't start buying up single-family homes like they've been doing. Whether you agree or disagree on that, I think we can have a whole different discussion on what that looks like and whether the legalities are, but he makes a lot of these big statements and some of them can happen, but some as you say then get fought out after those are made.

Jordan Sekulow: They get fought out after. Remember, this initiated with some of the college funding. Now these cases involve elementary and high school and middle school. So more of what the state controls directly. Colleges and the NCAA have already been implementing their own rules and there was a lot of talk about that with federal funding tied to it with California and Gavin Newsom back and forth there.

On some of these issues, yes, it's been settled, but it has not been settled yet at the high school level and even at the elementary level. I think that this case presents the Supreme Court—that's why they're taking two hours with it tomorrow—the opportunity to finally say, to come down on this. We hope the reason they took the case, which again West Virginia lost on appeal, so the Supreme Court decided to take the case knowing that the lower court decision held would say no, you can't have these boys play on these girls' sports teams.

They took the case, that's always a good sign. It doesn't mean you're a guaranteed win, but we're just proud of our alumni and someone we work with very closely still at the ACLJ with the West Virginia Attorney General's office and his Solicitor General and their whole team, that they are literally leading the charge on this case and can settle it for everyone. As someone with two daughters and Logan, you with two daughters as well, this is something again that just needs to not be an issue. It shouldn't even be a discussion. If you're a boy, you should play on the boys' sports team. If you're a girl, you should play on the girls' sports team. We don't really need to get into the complications of sexuality or anything like that. This is just about sports and fairness.

Will: Jordan, I think once again I want to bring up what you said about the Attorney General of West Virginia JB McCuskey, whom many people on this broadcast have seen many times on this show over the years even before when he was State Auditor out of West Virginia, but also the importance of what we do here at the ACLJ when we have individuals that are ACLJ alumni. They come, they work here, they get those chops, they know about which types of cases to take and how to fight for eventually the people of their state, but how that still ends up leaving a lasting legacy not just on wherever they go next or wherever they serve next, but for the entire country. It's important that strong conservative lawyers like JB who come out of a system like the ACLJ are able to continue to impact the entire country going forward.

Jordan: They know the arguments to make to win. I think that's what we do at the ACLJ. It's not just about getting controversial cases. That's pretty easy to do as a lawyer. You can go and find controversial clients, people do it all the time and they get lots of media attention for it. This is about winning for the right reasons. The right reasons here are not to be nasty to people who may be going through some problems in high school or even lower or whatever their parents are pushing on them. It's about protecting the other people who play on the team.

Your daughter makes sure that if they're at the top level, they're the ones who can set the records and they're not going to have some 18-year-old boy decide he's going to be a girl for next year and set state records that can never be beaten again. This is about righting a short-term wrong in our country that has just been ridiculous. West Virginia brought the case for West Virginians, but it's made its way all the way to the US Supreme Court. Because of that, the Attorney General JB McCuskey, his Solicitor General, they will set the stage for the future so that this is no longer an issue.

I think most people take their politics out of it and just think about the sports aspect. They understand the locker room situation. They understand the strength situation, the testosterone situation. They get it. We will give you updates. It's going to be a long case, so we might not have updates from the case on the show until Thursday. If we do get some updates while the show's going on tomorrow, we'll try to get them to you.

Logan Sekulow: With that, we have a second half hour coming up. Thanks, Jordan, for joining us. Jeff Ballabon from ACLJ Jerusalem is going to be joining us. We also have a packed phone bank right now, so we're going to do our best to get to as many of these calls as we possibly can. So stay on hold if you're on hold. If you want to support the work of the ACLJ, ACLJ.org is a great place to do it. Find all the incredible free content. But of course, if you want to support a great way to do it is by becoming an ACLJ Champion, someone who gives on a monthly basis. We'll be right back.