The WallBuilders Show
The WallBuilders Show is a daily journey to examine today's issues from a Biblical, Historical and Constitutional perspective. Featured guests include elected officials, experts, activists, authors, and commentators.
The WallBuilders Show
Cabinets, Faith, and the Filibuster
What if your presidential vote is actually a vote for thousands of voices who shape culture from the inside? We unpack how appointees carry worldview into agencies, the military, and public life—and why a single, striking moment at a national memorial revealed how courage at the top emboldens a team to speak plainly about faith.
From there, we dig into the machinery of power. The Constitution leans on simple majorities, yet the modern Senate stalls under a filibuster born from internal rules, not founding design. We lay out how the rule works, why both parties cling to it, and exactly how it could be scrapped with 51 votes at the start of a session. More importantly, we share how to engage your senators: show up at town halls, cite Washington and Jefferson on majority rule, ask for clear commitments, and keep the tone calm but firm so accountability replaces gridlock.
We then turn to schools and the Supreme Court’s tradition-and-history standard. That shift has reopened doors many assumed were locked: Ten Commandments displays advancing in multiple states, Texas creating space for prayer and Bible time, release-time programs for religious instruction, and after-school Good News Clubs led by teachers on their own time. With 1,400 districts offering for-credit Bible courses to 200,000 students, the bottleneck isn’t law—it’s awareness. We point to practical resources and steps you can take to brief school boards, support teachers, and write policies that reflect current legal protections.
If you care about how values translate into policy, how rules shape results, and how local action changes the map, this conversation is your field guide.
Tim Barton [00:00:07] Welcome to the WallBuilder Show. This is where culture, faith, constitution, the Bible, all those things intersect right here on the WallBuilder Show. This is Tim Barton with my dad, David Barton. We are not in studio together because we are in different states right now. And our good buddy Rick, who's normally with us, is up in the mountains right now. He's chasing elk, I think. I'm a little jealous, kind of want to be there. But today is Foundation of Freedom Thursday, where we answer your questions, we go back and try to analyze from a constitutional, a stork, a biblical perspective to see what is the best answer for the questions you have. We do it every Thursday. And so we're gonna jump right in. The first question we have is from Nathan Pristle. And I'm already gonna acknowledge I might not say these names or pronounce them correctly. If I pronounce it incorrectly, please just forgive me. We're doing the best we can with this. And if you're a friend of the mispronounce your name, it probably was on purpose. But Nathan Pristle, here was his question. Do you think people are starting to make the connection you made during election season last year when you reminded us a vote for president is not just a vote for one person, but the thousands of federal appointees under him? I couldn't help but think of that as we were listening to all the cabinet members boldly and clearly declare the gospel of Jesus Christ with such clarity at Charlie Kirk's memorial. Can you imagine the cabinet members of a Harris administration up there coming even remotely close to anything that was shared? I'm in awe of God's undeserved kindness to our country. Keep up your great work, God bless. All right. So the question, Dad, really is the idea of people understanding that when they vote for president, it's not just the president ultimately they're voting for, it's all the people the president's going to appoint. It's it's the worldview that that's going to represent. Do you think people are starting to catch on to this at this point? And I would say, especially after the Charlie Kirk memorial, when they had a really good display of what that looks like, has it given people a new understanding, maybe different than what they had before? What do you think?
David Barton [00:02:20] Well, you know, the question also Nathan asked and and you read it, can you imagine the cabinet members of a Harris administration up there coming even remotely close? First off, they didn't like Charlie as far as we can tell. Everything we see on that side, they thought Charlie was a really bad guy, so they wouldn't have even been closely remote to to that ceremony.
Tim Barton [00:02:39] Yeah, but but even if it was not even a Charlie memorial, would would a cabinet Harris ever have been vocal and bold about faith? And and of course it's rhetorical, and dad's your point, they wouldn't have probably been a Charlie thing in the first place. But even if it was somebody else, something different, I think the rhetorical question is very grounded that no. We would not have seen anything like this from a Harris administration, like just to begin with. But then, Dad, let's back up to the other part of the question. Are people maybe now catching on at a different level than they had before the Charlie Kirk memorial, or maybe even other examples that there might be in the Trump administration? But I think the Charlie Kirk memorial is the most clear example, the most visible, the most displayed, the most right televised, streamed, whatever else. Are people starting to get it and wake up a little bit now that their vote for president is far more than just the president himself?
David Barton [00:03:41] Yeah, I and and that is I I think we're getting that and I think we've seen that in a real way. And by the way, I have to say w with Harris administration, i if it had been there and if they had been a funeral of someone and if they had gone there and preached the gospel, I can openly acknowledge that that would have been something we would have covered on Good News Friday because it would be so unexpected, so out of the out of the wild that would be our wildest imagination for that to happen because there's no indication. With Marco Rubio, we know he's a Christian. He's he's spoken that way many times. Hedgseth others, we knew they were Christians because they've already proven it. If that were to happen with with what it would have been a Kamala Harris administration, there would have been like no expectation that was happening because there'd been no evidence of it prior to that.
Tim Barton [00:04:32] Well, and I would say not only you know, for us, we've personally known some of the Trump cabinet and team way before they were in his administration. And so we knew there was a faith, and and there've been times when they acknowledged their faith, but none of them have until the Trump administration displayed such courage and boldness that we have seen on this level as far as acknowledging their faith so publicly, being so bold with it. And I think i even some of what Vice President JD Vance said is probably very significant here when you know he's been a Christian, faith has been important to him, but he's never really talked about Jesus in public. But since Charlie's murder, he said, and this was at the memorial, he said, right in the last two weeks, I've talked more about Jesus Christ than I have my entire political career. I I think there's several things we're seeing happen. Not just that Charlie's death has awakened a lot of people on on the faith side that were already there, it's awakened a lot of people, drawing them to the faith side, but it's in the Holy Spirit is emboldening a lot of people right now to stand up with a new resolve, with a new recourage to speak out. But I I think it's also worth acknowledging Pete Hegseth was already doing some of this at the Pentagon with troops. He was already speaking boldly about Jesus, opening meetings with prayer. So some of this was already happening in the Trump administration from these appointees, but certainly it was highlighted and visible on the world stage in a different way at the Charlie Kirk Memorial. So is this something as we're again talking? You think maybe more people are seeing this. Do you think now that this might have a ripple impact on future elections because of what we've already seen to this point in the first right multiple months under the Trump administration?
David Barton [00:06:30] Yeah, I I think already people are seeing I if you've watched football or something your life, you've always seen teams and every once in a while you get a quarterback that makes a difference on a team. Quarterback probably more than any single player on the team is the key player for changing a team from a mediocre team to a great team. You can have a really great quarterback and have a a generally okay team, but if you have a good team and get a great quarterback, you're Super Bowl kind of stuff. And I think that's what happened with Trump. I I think we had understood some of the administration stuff because Cedon Biden, you know there's a team there, but th they certainly have not stood out in the in the way that people Trump has chosen. And you mentioned headshoth and and look at Pete and and dressing down seven hundred generals and saying, Hey, let's remember what we are here. We're we're the war department and and we're gonna have warriors here. And some of you guys aren't warriors. I mean, just changing the whole tone or even a Holman. Look at what Holman is doing to uphold the law, the border. There's so much that's happening now because you have people committed to that on that team.
Tim Barton [00:07:37] And I would say it's probably worth noting that Pete Heggseth didn't dress down 700 generals. It was only the fat out of shape ones that he called out. That's right. You know, there were there were probably many guys in the room who are like, hey, PT, no problem for me, right? Height weight requirements, no problem. But I mean, you're right. He put them on blast. And again, it it's just it's so different. And so I do think that what we are seeing now, we we've talked about it so much over the last many weeks. I mean, really over the last couple of years. We've talked about the fact we think we're probably in the midst of another awakening. We've talked a lot in the last couple of weeks about the the very real revival we are seeing happen in the nation. And how do we take the revival from just being a revival in and of itself into an awakening? And and the biggest thing that m makes a difference is that discipleship idea where there's a biblical worldview that's adopted that it's not just people that love Jesus, but they're gonna do biblical things in their life. And I think we're seeing that exemplified in a lot of ways from the Trump administration. And so I do think that there's going to be impact in future elections because of this. Now, is it the majority of Americans that are awakened and are gonna think and vote differently next time? I I don't know. Although I I wouldn't be I I don't think I would be incorrect to say I think the majority of Americans will vote differently because of this, but I think it's probably because there's 20 or 30 percent on both sides that some of them are gonna say, we never want to see that again. And so they're gonna vote to make sure that they don't have a president who appoints a cabinet like this. But then I think there's gonna be a lot of people and maybe probably more on the favorable side than on the anti-side that would say we want to continue to have leaders in our nation in our cabinet with these values reflected, we're gonna vote that way. And it's it's probably not amiss to draw people's attention to the fact that there are some elections going on right now. There's early voting going on right now in some states. There are midterms elections that are not very far away. Primary is gonna be coming up very soon. And just like it makes a difference who the president is because who's appointed, it also makes a difference who's in Congress and who's in the Senate because they're the ones that can enact legislatively the things that President Trump has done executively to this point. So elections really do matter, and I think more people are starting to see and understand some of the bigger context of what elections can actually do.
David Barton [00:10:08] And you know, you know, Tim, you're mentioned that kind of thirty percent on each side and there's a big group in the middle. And a lot of that group in the middle, some of them are are Republicans, some of them are Democrats, I think there's going to be a fairly significant shift with them, but I think it'll be measured in an unusual way, and just throw it out in the sense that when when Biden was in office this last year, right here around us, gasoline got up to three dollars and sixty nine cents. I saw it yesterday at $2.41. So anybody, Democrat, Republican, should be able to see a significant difference in in what has happened with things around them. Not everything is where we want it, but it's certainly moved that direction. And then certainly when you're seeing what has happened in Washington, DC with several thousand criminals now arrested, they've brought peace back to the city, lowest crime rate in however long, that's happened in a in a matter of weeks, literally, and they're seeing things change very rapidly and very quickly. And if you're a normal, just kind of loyal, not necessarily a philosophical Democrat, but you kind of vote Democrat, I think that what we may see, and I think this next election, I think the election even in Virginia in a couple of weeks is coming up may tell us a lot, but I think that you won't see Democrats start voting Republican. I think you'll see them not vote for a bit, just not vote for their guys. I can't bring myself to vote Republican, but I can't support my team anymore. We got to give a different coach or something. And I'm gonna be real curious to see on election night if the total number of Democrat votes has dropped overall. We're seeing polling just in the last couple days that that gubernatorial race there is now neck and neck, which it was ten point difference just two weeks ago. So we'll we'll see what that means. I think it'll also be interesting too
Tim Barton [00:11:56] W when we look at maybe some of the the voting data, which oftentimes it can take a while before that's really available to analyze, it will be interesting to see, right? If you had, and I'm just using big round numbers to make it easy. If you had 50,000 Democrats vote for governor and 50,000 Republicans vote for governor, but the Republican candidate won 53,000 votes to 47,000 votes, and you go, you know what? There were a lot of Democrats voting that election that their votes did not show up on the Democrat side. It will be interesting to analyze some of this because that I think you're right. I think that for many Democrats, they're gonna maybe just want to sit this out to some extent. But I have seen even on social media, people posting that you know they were Democrat their whole life, but for a multitude of reasons, some of them because they saw the way Democrats celebrated at the death of Charlie Kirk, and they thought, man, I you know, this is crazy. I I don't want to be on the side that celebrates someone's murder, etc. I think there's a whole slew of reasons that that people are waking up, and it will just be interesting to track that. Now, not to digress, we have so many questions to get to. So, first of all, we will say thank you to Nathan for your question. Moving on to the next question, John Naughton, again, probably saying that wrong, John, sorry about that. John from Illinois said, Dear WallBuilders, on your show in the training or and in the training, I've heard it emphasized that the founders intended the Senate to operate on the principles that a majority vote carries a day. With that in mind, I'd like to ask, what specifically does the Senate need to do to remove the filibuster? When will Republican leadership have the courage to move past this obstacle so that real legislation can be passed to support or confirm executive orders in the agenda the American people voted for? I am concerned that there is a or there's little urgency, and it often seems that many in Congress have not read or do not fully grasp Article One of the Constitution. How can we encourage our representatives to return to the founder's design for a functioning Senate where the majority governs? Thank you for your insight and for the work you do in defending America's founding principles, blessings, John. All right, so there was a lot of questions there. I think maybe we could emphasize and focus on the idea of the filibuster. How do we go back to the majority get to win, not sixty forty. Fifty percent plus one or fifty one percent. How do we get back to the founder's idea? We the people are in charge and it's a simple majority, et cetera. Dad, what are your thoughts?
David Barton [00:14:35] Yeah, and first off, let's just set the principle up. Both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson said the fundamental principle of the Constitution requires that the will of the majority shall prevail. So the will of the majority is what's stood up. There's nothing in the Constitution that allows anything less than a majority to win. But currently under the Senate rules, and I'm emphasizing the rules, not the Constitution. The Senate has adopted rules that say, well, we're not going to let anything come to a vote, any substantive issue, non economic issue, unless sixty of us want want want to see it come up for a vote. Well that means forty people have more or actually forty one have more power than fifty-nine in the Senate because they can keep all sorts of things from coming to the vote unless they have that and that's what we call the filibuster. You gotta get that sixty vote threshold before you can vote for fifty-one people to pass something. And that's just almost impossible to do, which is why the the Senate has become kind of log jammed. So that actually happened back under Woodrow Wilson, where the Woodrow Wilson while he was president, the Senate leaders came up with rules that they changed. Now, there's nothing new about rules in the Senate. Thomas Jefferson, he wrote rules in the Senate back when he was the the vice president of John Adams. We actually have his his book of rules that he wrote back in 1801 and it lays out rules for the Senate.
Tim Barton [00:15:53] But you know, Dad, I mean, I was kind of sold when you said this happened under Woodrow Wilson. I thought, well, if Wilson did it, it's gotta be a good thing. I mean, Wilson's not known for doing any ridiculous, bad, harmful things to America, except for almost everything he's known for. Yeah. Most bad things, and I I I don't know if I can go that far, but so many bad things that happened in America, whether it be the tax structure education, I mean, we can go down the list. Woodrow Wilson was a dude behind it. So even hearing that, most people that are educated on Woodrow Wilson, if we hear Woodrow Wilson's the guy that was in charge when this happened, it should already make you go, ooh, I don't think we're gonna like that. Whatever's said coming next, I don't think I'm gonna like this if Woodrow Wilson's part of it.
David Barton [00:16:38] Yeah, that that was the case. Now, Thomas Jefferson wrote rules, and I think of the twenty rules he wrote, I think sixteen are still in use in the Senate today. So those rules have been there. But what happens is every two year session after each election, the Senate votes for the rules that are going to govern what happens inside the Senate. It's kind of their process. Here's what we do internally. And at that point in time, they have the opportunity to say, hey, we're not going to use a sixty vote threshold. We're going to use a simple majority of fifty-one. And if it gets fifty-one, we're going to move forward. And what has happened is both Democrats and Republicans don't want that because they always say, you know, there's gonna be a time when we're in the minority, and if we're in the minority, man, Democrats will just run over us and Bill Clinton or Barack Obama or Joe Biden will get anything that they want because they'll have a majority in the Senate and and it'll just kill Americans. So both sides say that. There are a number in the Senate who want that filibuster gone, but not enough to get the fifty-one votes. And it would only take fifty-one votes to get rid of that filibuster rule. But you have and this is kind of a way i i if you will if I can say it that way, this is a way to protect senators. This will keep them in the Senate if they're in the minority or majority, 'cause they can't ba get past that filibuster and they say, Hey, we just there's nothing we can do about it. The rules are that way. And so this is kind of a way to also protect their hides while they're in the Senate.
Tim Barton [00:18:00] So so what you're saying is this is the way to protect cowards who don't want to leave and take responsibility. I got it. Okay, I'm tracking.
David Barton [00:18:08] And and by the way, I would love to see it come to majority vote, and if bad stuff happens and and the American people don't get riled up about it, that's on the American people. But right now, they're making the system the scapegoat for this thing. And going back to constitutional principles, simple majority is all it needs. Every other vote in America, a majority wins, you know, election night, major unless you have ranked choice voting, and then it really convolutes that. And so ranked choice voting is really an attempt to undermine just the the basic electoral process and some states are trying to move there. That's a different question, but it is related. But real simple, they can get rid of that filibuster rule, and they need to get rid of that filibuster rule, and they just need to be held accountable and the people need to be held accountable for what comes out of the Senate.
Tim Barton [00:18:52] All right, so we do have to take a break, but real quick, what should people do? Because part of the question was how can we encourage our representatives to go this direction? Is this something? Are we calling? Are we emailing? Do we need to have an in meeting person with our senator? How do we proceed? What is the best course of action? Because right now there's people listening going, man, I'm sold. What do I do? What's the best action step for them to take?
David Barton [00:19:18] Well, one of the things you can do is your senators are all over the state having having meetings, town halls. Go to those town hall meetings and say, hey, Senator, George Washington said that all the votes are supposed to be based on the will of the majority, that that's the fundamental principle of the Constitution. And you guys have got this filibuster thing that you can vote out at the beginning of every session. It was Woodrow Wilson who put it in. Don't you want to go back to what George Washington said? Don't you want to go back to the fundamental principle of the Constitution? And I'm going to just about guarantee you that three-fourths of the senators have never heard that George Washington said the fundamental principle of the Constitution is the will of majority. So even using that that town hall as an opportunity to educate your senator. Just remind him of a quote. Remind him of principle. Everything in the Constitution says majority wins. Everything says that. And just do that as an educational thing. You can also do that by calling their offices. Now the staff is going to take the call. You're not going to talk to the senator unless he knows you and a friend or maybe your donor or whatever. He's not going to take that call. But you tell the staff, hey, I'm really concerned over what the Senate's doing here. And back here in the district, we just don't think this is right, that we're not following the fundamental principle. Look, founding fathers laid it out. Majority wins. This filibuster thing is killing us. And and just kind of use that tone going over on it. Don't don't get demanding and don't get threatening or anything. But understand that most of the Senate does not even know that this principle. They need to be re-educated on it or go through co go through the the Constitution courses for sure, but they need to be re- re-educated on it.
Tim Barton [00:20:50] Yeah, and and probably they're gonna say, Well, you know, the filibuster's been in in place a long time, and so this is a long tradition in the Senate. Yeah, you know what's a longer tradition than that? The US Constitution. And George Washington giving the explanation of how that works. He was the chair of the convention, he probably knows. Not to digress. We've got to take a break. Stay with us, we'll be right back on the WallBuilder Show.
Tim Barton [00:22:19] Welcome back to the WallBuilder Show. We are diving back into questions. Foundations of Freedom Thursday. This is Tim Barton joined with my dad, David Barton, our normal co-host, Rick Green, is out in the mountains somewhere chasing elk, I hope. Hopefully we hear from later today, and he shot a big one. All that's unknown to me at the moment. But we want to get to some more questions before the program ends. And the next question comes from Marcy Barton. I don't know if we're related, but Marcy, you have a great last name. Her question is: when will the new guidelines for schools and religion happen? Now that it has to be traditional and historical, can teachers witness and pray in school? Trump said he wanted to bring prayer back in schools. So this is her question. And just to give some context for those listening, when she says now that it's traditional and historic, we're referring to the U.S. Supreme Court. The current standard, according to the U.S. Supreme Court, was if there is a long-standing history and tradition, then there should be a presumption of constitutionality. Meaning, if we're analyzing if something is constitutional or not, the current Supreme Court standard says if we can show that historically this is the norm that we've like always done, then it should be presumed that that's constitutional. Like if the founding fathers did this, that's probably okay to do. Well, when it comes to prayer or religion or the Bible in schools, we can actually show that's been there a long time. So the question is: is this something that's now constitutional? Can can teachers go ahead and do this? Or what should happen now? So, Dad, how would you answer that?
David Barton [00:23:57] So what we've got is with what the courts have given us, states are starting to take action. We talked earlier that twenty-two states this year have introduced laws to to post the Ten Commandments back in classrooms. Three states so far have passed, actually four are doing it. So that's moving forward. Texas this year passed a law to put prayer and bible opportunities back at the start of the school day. So they're they're working that back in little by little. It's not what it was back in the sixties when the court took it out, but it's moving back in that direction. There's all sorts of opportunities moving back into schools. There are now classes that are what they call release time, goes back to Supreme Court decision from nineteen fifty-two. But all over the United States, kids are taking an hour in the school day to actually study religion, even doctrinal teachings of religion. That that's called release time. There's also what are called good news clubs. The courts have dealt with this dozens of times that teachers are able to lead after school clubs doing prayer and Bible or even evangelism after school. So there is so much coming back in. And and it's not that the court is standing in the way of this stuff moving forward. It's that most school boards don't know about it, or most teachers don't know about it. And so they say, you can't do that. We haven't been able to do that in fifty years. And and so what it takes is citizens saying, Hey, school board, hey teacher, hey, this is what the courts have done, and and we're now to a standard that if it's traditional historical, we're back to doing it. And and so kids, I mean, we have right now there's fourteen hundred school districts in America with two hundred thousand kids studying the Bible in school as a credit course in school. So there's a lot that can be done. Doesn't mean everything is back, doesn't mean teachers can do everything they did years ago, but it means that we as citizens need to start talking to our school board and reminding them and helping them understand, telling teachers, telling principals, and there's all sorts of legal writings out there making this really clear. So this is something we can do to kind of move back in a positive direction.
Tim Barton [00:25:55] Yeah, this is something our friends over at First Liberty with Kelly Shagleford have a whole website called Restoring Faith in America. Rfia.org, I believe is a website. But you can just type in Restoring Faith in America, you will find it. It will have guidelines for right now what is legally protected for teachers, for school boards, for students, etc., to do. And it's on the website, it shows what right now it's legally protected, but there are active steps to gain more ground. If you want to find out more about that, keep listening to our show, the WallBuilder Show, or go to our website, wallbuilders.com. And of course, as we're wrapping this up, make sure you join us tomorrow for good news Friday, where all we do is tell good news happening around the nation. Hope you join us tomorrow. Have a great day.
