Europe Reverses Course As America’s Culture Fights Heat Up

Europe is changing course, Hollywood is unexpectedly saying the quiet part out loud, and a few long-running legal fights just took a dramatic turn. We kick off Good News Friday by looking at the European Parliament’s move toward deportations and detention centers for illegal immigration, a major shift after years of open-border ideology. If you care about immigration policy, national sovereignty, and public safety across Western civilization, this story is hard to ignore.

Then we jump into culture with American Idol’s Faith Night. We talk through Luke Bryan’s reflections on growing up around a Baptist church, how gospel preaching and youth group shaped him, and why Carrie Underwood’s bold, consistent Christian faith still stands out. We also name the tension you probably felt too: sometimes “faith” means worship, and sometimes it gets reduced to self-confidence. That difference matters, especially when the whole country is listening.

From there, we get practical and constitutional. A new Department of Defense policy allows commanders to approve service members carrying personal firearms on U.S. military bases, a shift framed around self-defense and lessons from past base shootings. We also cover the dismissal of the last charge against David Daleiden after years of prosecution tied to exposing Planned Parenthood’s alleged fetal tissue sales, plus the first Antifa terrorism convictions in Texas. We close with a hopeful call from South Carolina to rededicate the state to the Lord through prayer, repentance, and moral renewal as the 250th anniversary approaches.

If you found value here, subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a review so more people can find conversations on faith and culture grounded in history and the Constitution.

Transcript

Rick Green [00:00:07] It's Good News Friday. Welcome to the intersection of faith and culture here on the WallBuilders Show, taking on the hot topics of the day from a biblical historical and constitutional perspective. And today we've got good news about those hot topics. I have no idea what the good news is going to be, but David and Tim have been collecting it and I've seen a lot of good news lately anyway. So, if you haven't been listening to WallBuilders for very long, this is a fun tradition we've had now for years and years and years, where throughout the week things happen or maybe even stuff happened in weeks and months before, and we didn't get a chance to cover it. And on Friday, we just compile as much of the good news as we possibly can and catch up on some of those stories. So, David and Tim, appreciate you doing that. Let's jump right in. Oh, well, by the way, website, wallbuilders.com and wallbuilders.show. If you want more good news there at wallbuilders.show, you can go back to previous Friday programs as well. David and Tim Barton, bringin' the good news today. David, get us started, man. 

David Barton [00:00:56] You know, I'm going to make an observation on something. When you look at America and you look at Europe, Europe is kind of like America with all the progressive professors running it. I mean, Europe takes all the progressive ideas that we have in our universities that have not quite fully penetrated government and everything else. And they're doing them over there. So, in Europe, they're actually doing the stuff that professors over here want us to be doing here that we haven't gotten around to yet. Europe, as a result, has become a pretty good laboratory for showing what doesn't work. We're talking about just, I think, last week, one of the good news items was that the fact that Europe has now completely abandoned all that global warming nonsense, all the stuff that went with that. They recognized there's no science for it, that it's been billions of dollars spent, and it hasn't made a single change, all of the temperature change. It's not there. And that stuff we knew and we're talking about 25 years ago, 20 years ago. It just, it's not there because the science does not hold up what they believe, but they have all these progressive scientists who come up without science about saying, let's change the culture. Well, the same thing has gone Europe they, they've been real anti-religious and that still concerns me, but we are seeing a turnaround in that. We're seeing Bible sales go back up. But with that anti- religion stuff, what we're seeing up in Canada, particularly just unbelievable now and their hate crimes. They're taking hate crimes. Finland, by the way, just imposed a fine on a member of parliament for two decades ago saying that marriage between a man and a woman is a proper thing. This is two decades ago, their church put out a pamphlet on the importance of marriage and the importance of a traditional family and that that legislator now has been convicted and has to pay a fine for what happened to... I mean that's how crazy it is in Europe. So having said that... I saw this article this week and here's something else where Europe is finally getting around to what we've all known and you know fortunately, thank God, we haven't had the professors running America fully. They're running the Democrat Party pretty fully but not all of America fully. But in Europe now, lawmakers voted the European lawmakers and you've got the European Parliament and it's made up of about 600 members. So, they've got all the different nations in Europe that are part of it. And so, the European lawmakers voted last Thursday, they're going to start deporting immigrants that are there illegally. They're going set up migration detention centers. They're gonna start cleaning up all this stuff where they've had open borders in Europe and it has not worked for them. It's destroying their country. I remember, man, this has got to be 15 years ago when I was asked to speak at military bases in Europe and in England and Germany etc. American military bases that I got there. I was in London two different times and each time an explosion happened just before we got there one was at the airport they tried to blow up Gatwick airport and the other they tried blow up subways in London and it was Muslim terrorists. And there were so many Muslims in England at the time that they started doing these polls and asked Muslims living in England, would you be willing to blow up the country you live in? Would you willing to be willing blow-up England? And about 23% of Muslims said, absolutely and it's kind of why we're here. And so that should have been enough red flag to say, hey, immigration’s broken. But because they're part of the EU, the EU said you're going to have open borders and you can't have, you know, control of your borders. And we talked about how that even the new nations like Poland and Hungary and others told the EU they can go jump in the lake over that because we are going to control our borders. Those young Christian nations have done a good job of that, but all that to say, Europe, the European Parliament voted 389 to 206 to start deportations out of their countries in Europe. It may be too late, too little too late. But they're at least getting back to recognizing that open borders was a really, really, bad idea. And again, Europe tends to be about 20 years ahead. Of where America is because what they do over there is what our professions over here are advocating to universities that hadn't just made policy yet. So, I think that's a great story, the fact that it shows another failure of progressive thought and hopefully Europe can right itself still yet. They've got a long way to go. They gave so much over to progressives, but hopefully this is a step in the right direction for them and maybe they'd come back to bein' a powerhouse. 

Rick Green [00:05:35] Yeah, you know, it's been surprising to me, some of the speeches from new prime ministers or even members of parliament and some of these countries, man, they've been stronger on their immigration language than, than, you know, even well as strong as President Trump, I guess I should say. So yeah, I mean, maybe there's a real turn happening across the entire nation, not even just Europe, as they've seen the, I mean, across the whole world. Any Western civilization nation for sure has been the target of massive immigration and it's had just an incredibly bad effect. So, this is really good news to hear, David, for sure. Tim, how about you man where we're headed? 

Tim Barton [00:06:12] Well, this one is from American Idol. And Rick, I know I don't, this is not going to be news to you. You know exactly, watching this show on the daily. 

Rick Green [00:06:21] Yeah, right. 

Tim Barton [00:06:22] I mean, this is... 

Rick Green [00:06:24] Okay, Tim, you know, this is so unfair because I haven't watched American idol in 15 years, but goodness gracious, you would bring this up. And I watched it last week. I have to be honest with the audience. I can't lie to the audience. Only because my kids were all over to the house and they were watching it. And I was like, why are we watching American idol? And I think I know where you're going. And the audience will understand why I was willing to watch at least one episode of American Idol. 

Tim Barton [00:06:50] Well, I love that you just outed yourself a little bit because I was clearly joking. I had no idea this was gonna land. That's awesome. 

Rick Green [00:07:00] I could have just stayed quiet. My wife would say Rick, you know, sometimes you just need to keep your mouth shut. That's what she would say. Yeah 

Tim Barton [00:07:06] Well, that's probably a different context than here, but that's fine. Yes. So, so Rick, you know, that there was a faith night last week.. 

Rick Green [00:07:18] Very cool. 

Tim Barton [00:07:19] And Christian songs. And so, after it happened, the headline of the article says Luke Bryan reflects on how church roots shaped his career during American idol faith night. It was a blessing. And so, this is a little bit from his perspective. There's certainly more than. Just his perspective that happened. But in the interview, he had with Christian Post, he said, growing up, I could take a step out my back door and hit the Baptist church, waking up on Sunday mornings, hearing the gospel, hearing a Southern Baptist preacher deliver the sermons, really shaped a lot of things in my life. He said, singing in the choir, going to youth group on Wednesday nights, that really shaped me as a young person, a young man, and a young singer. He goes on to talk about how faith influenced him. Now, with this being said... I, I don't listen to much of his music. I definitely know a couple of his songs, but I don, I don't, listen to, much outside of like Christian music. And now I have little girls. And so, there's a lot of young kid Christian music as well. I'm trying to teach them some great old 80's and 90's Christian stuff. They're getting a good kind of cultural experience with earlier versions of Christian music, but, all this is said, he's not someone that I think I would point to and say, Hey guys, right? Follow him as he follows Christ. I don't know if that's who he is, but it is still great that on kind of a center stage area, he talked about faith very openly, and then he also praised Carrie Underwood. He said, when you look at Carrie Underwood and how she has really vocalized her faith, I think she's very inspiring in that when you hear people praising Jesus in this light, it's something that I feel like maybe this country has gotten away from for many, many years. So it's a great platform. And the fact he's even identifying that our country's gotten away from that foundational thing and we probably should get back to it was very encouraging. And they did have a list in this article of some of the songs that were there that night. And there were some songs from Brandon Lake from Maverick City Music. So some, some kind of noted Christian worship people that they, their songs were being sung on American Idol. So Rick. Now, I mean, not joking, apparently you and your kids did watch this. I didn't see it. I'm only reading the article. What, what was it like? Did they do a good job? Did you feel like maybe that the faith moments God was honored? Did it feel a little Hollywood along the way? What did you see from it? 

Rick Green [00:09:43] The answer to that is yes, it was both. It really was. There was a couple of the singers that, this one girl sang "At the Cross" and it was powerful, man. I mean it was, you could just, people were crying. It was, she was clearly worshiping the Lord. It was really, really good. One guy sang, I'm a big Cody Johnson fan, he's a country artist that is a Christian and he's got a Christian song called By Your Grace. And, but then there were some, and it so funny, man, there was a couple of them that sang songs. Because it was faith night, the songs had faith, the word faith in them, but it was like faith in me, faith in, you know, and I was just laughing, I was going, okay, they clearly don't understand what faith actually is, they have faith in themselves. So anyway, so it was a mix, it was definitely a mix of both, but it’s really cool to see the ones that sang those songs, and you could tell it was from the heart, being able to worship the Lord on such a big stage, that was awesome. All right, so let's see. We've been around to Europe on, on, stopping immigration insanity. We've been to Hollywood and American Idol. David, where are we going next? 

David Barton [00:10:44] Across the United States by way of all the military bases, posts, forts, garrisons, etc. Secretary of War Hegseth made an announcement this week that he is lifting the ban on service members carrying personal firearms on U.S. Military bases. This has always been one of the great enigmas to me that the guys who are best trained in arms are not allowed to carry arms. Where they live and where they're around. I remember back with the Fort Hood shooting. What was that a dozen years ago? A Major Hassan went wild on Fort Hood. He killed 13 and injured 32 more because all the people around him didn't have guns to fire back. It was just a shooting ducks in a gallery for him. And so, Pete Hegseth mentioned just over the last few years three other incidents; Fort Stewart, there was not only Fort Stewart but there was Holloman Air Force Base and Pensacola Naval Air Station all had shootings kind of like that. The most recent one, Fort Stewart was last August where an Army Sergeant opened fire with his personal handgun. He hit five other soldiers before they tackled him, took him down. You had the Naval Air Station Pensacola, where Saudi trained carried out a terrorist attack. He killed three service members, wounded eight others, and nobody could defend themselves. I mean, the bad guys have the guns, the good guys don't. And so, Hegseth has now announced that on military basis, subject to the approval of that military commander, it's not that everybody can now bring all their guns out and start walking around with them, but the base commander can now authorize... People to carry guns on the basis, and that's a new policy for the military. I think that's your really good policy. Now granted, when you're in the military, you lose a lot of your basic Bill of Rights. You can't file suit over basic things. Now you can in a lot ways, but you just give up some of your rights as a soldier. You're a government issue. You are a GI. You belong to the government. So, the government can't openly violate all your rights, but it can do things that it can't do with other citizens. But taking away your right of self-defense is never one of those options. And I love the fact that Hegseth has now said that service members can carry firearms on a military basis. That's great news. 

Rick Green [00:13:06] Yeah, of all people to not have their constitutional rights, the very people that are tasked with defending the Constitution more than, than any of us. So yeah, good news there. Let's take a quick break guys. We'll be right back. We've got more good news for you when we return. You're listening to the WallBuilders Show. 

Rick Green [00:14:26] Welcome back to The WallBuilders Show. Thanks for staying with us on this Good News Friday. David had it right before the break, so Tim's up. 

Tim Barton [00:14:32] Well guys, this is from California, but it's specifically dealing with someone who was in one of the craziest, dumbest lawsuits there's been, and he had to navigate this for 10 years. This is that the article says; "Final Charge Dismissed Against David Daladin for Exposing Planned Parenthood Aborted Baby Part Sales". Now for those that don't remember back in 2015, there was a more or less, a journalist who went undercover, and he wasn't exactly a journalist, but he was doing journalism in this regard, and a little bit like what James O'Keefe has kind of done, for those that might know some of his undercover journalism and investigating, where they will go talk to people that are doing very explicitly wrong or illegal things, they get them to admit it on camera, and then they will submit that video evidence at times to authorities, and at times they release it so that people can see what's really going on behind the scenes in some of these agencies, institutions, businesses, et cetera. Well, that's kind of what David did. He exposed Planned Parenthood for selling aborted baby parts. And like as horrific as that sounds, that exactly what they were doing. They were harvesting organs among other things from these aborted babies and they were selling them to whatever, research facilities, whatever it was, all that's incredibly illegal, not to mention evil and demonic. Well, when he did this, instead of Planned Parenthood being targeted for doing something that vile, that evil, that demonic, of literally selling aborted baby parts. No, no, no. The California, at this time, Attorney General targeted this young man, David, I say young man. Relative he's not that young anymore, but targeted this individual, this man David Daladin, guys, do you remember who the attorney general of California was in 2015? 

David Barton [00:16:33] Not me, I don't remember. 

Rick Green [00:16:35] Wow, let's see, I think they might have decided to run for president. 

Tim Barton [00:16:39] And maybe vice president as well. Like, oh, Kamala Harris. Oh yeah. That's the one! 

David Barton [00:16:44] Oh yeah!

Tim Barton [00:16:45] Kamala Harris is the one that decides instead of going after Planned Parenthood, let's go after the guy who recorded them admitting to selling baby parts from these aborted babies and come up with some of these crazy charges that because he didn't identify, he was filming them because he doesn't have their consent, that's illegal, so we're going to target him. And they brought 14 different charges against him. And this, this has gone on now, literally 2015 is when they finally agreed to drop some of the last charges, but it's been a process that they didn't complete it until just recently, literally in the last couple of weeks. He is finally free and clear of all of these charges. The guy who was his defense attorney, Steve Cooley, he was a former Los Angeles County District Attorney. And he came out and explained how crazy this is. He said, in my five decades as an attorney, 40 years of which were as a prosecutor, and I remember he was the Los Angeles County District Attorney. So, he has some clout. He's, he's a known guy. He said I've never seen such a blatant exercise of selective investigation and vindictive prosecution, the California Attorney's General who initiated this case, by the way, that's Kamala Harris, and pursued it for nearly 10 years, and that's after she's gone, but she initiated it. They continued it for 10 years. They should be ashamed for weaponizing their office to pursue people who were merely exposing illegality associated with the harvesting and sale of fetal baby parts. Now the really, really good news is, praise God, that this guy is finally in the clear. And God bless him, right, for having to go through this for a decade, actually now more than a decade for just trying to expose the evil of what Planned Parenthood was doing. So, the really, really good news is that he did get a victory and as corrupt as California has been, they made this miserable on him and arguably quite intentionally. It was very vindictive as the, his defense attorney identified, but the great news is he has now been vindicated. But maybe this is yet again, another indication that shows it does matter, elections have consequences. It does matter who we vote for. It does not matter who our leaders are. And also, it matters that Christians and churches get activated, wake up and get engaged. And Rick, I know this week you've been in California pretty much the whole week working with pastors, encouraging them on some of these very thoughts that we have to get engaged. We, we, we can't sit on the sidelines. And I guess probably for some of those people, like maybe even some of those pastors in California, it's when you're in the middle of the fire, it's probably a little harder for some them to sit on the sideline, but not to digress too much overall, really good news for David. That he is finally vindicated after a decade dealing with this felonious prosecution and charges coming against him. 

Rick Green [00:20:00] I can't think of a more real example of calling good evil and evil good. I mean, that's literally what they did. They went after the people that were doing good, exposing evil. So yeah, good news that they finally got this, you know, at least for him, even though that was 10 years of, of trials and, and tough times. And let's pray that God uses it for him, raises his platform. He's able to go out and continue to fight for life. Could turn out it to be even better news in the long run. All right, David, what's next for you, man? 

David Barton [00:20:31] This one comes out of Texas, but it has national implications. This is the first time ever that ANTIFA members have been convicted of terrorism charges. What happened in Texas last July was; outside one of the immigration facilities they opened fire on an officer, wounded an officer, shot him in the neck. They were there, they were carrying explosives, carrying weapons, guns, etc. And they attacked this immigration facility and went after the police officers there. So... Texas Attorney General Paxton went after them and has taken, took them into court and eight of them were convicted. So, this is the first time we have any ANTIFA members being convicted of terrorism and it's this this is part of what happened when Trump said, hey ANTIFA is a terrorist group, now being called a terrorist groups so a way to go after them. So, I mean there's no really no question about what happened there. Here's what I thought was really interesting; the defense attorneys did not call a single witness in defense of the ANTIFA members. So, you're here to put on the best defense you possibly can and you do not call the single witness. So, what happened was the ANTIFA members showed up with AR rifles, showed up with pistols, handguns, explosives, et cetera. And the defense attorneys, now again, they didn't call the signal witness. But the defense attorneys argued that their clients were simply conducting a noise demonstration at the immigration facility, and they were having a noise demonstration to show their solidarity with the illegal immigrants inside, and they argued that the defendants were there peacefully to protest, they weren't there to shoot officers, and that they brought the AR rifles with them to protect themselves from counter protesters who might be there. And they also said, by the way, ANTIFA is an ideology. It's not a group. You can't, you can't characterize an ideology as terrorism. I mean, if that's the best arguments that the defense team has, this was a losing case from top to bottom. So what happened was the date members were convicted, the guy who shot the officer faces a minimum of 20 years in prison, a maximum of life, the others face from 10 to 60 years for their part in it. I mean, these are not short sentences. These are not easy sentences. And I am really glad to finally see somebody go after lawbreakers and take these guys down as we've watched them burn cities and terrorize people all across the nation for several years. It's nice to have this happening after Trump has declared them a terrorist organization. And in Texas, that's just, you know, don't bring your stuff here because this is not a place that puts up with this kind of nonsense. 

Rick Green [00:23:21] I may not have the timeline right, but it seems like even the beginning of prosecuting them began to quiet down a lot of those protests, other than Minneapolis and some of the ICE stuff. It just seemed to have a really good effect. And now this, this, that should definitely have a good effect and it's just law and order, right? It's just, it's actually prosecuting these people that, like you said, have been burning cities across the country for the last five years and doing things that many of them got away with without even having to face the consequences of their actions at all. Well Tim, take us into the weekend man, what's our last piece of good news today? 

Tim Barton [00:23:53] Well, this one's coming out of South Carolina and something that I think we might see some more of this action as we get a little closer to, this summer, the 250th. But the headline says "South Carolina General Assembly Asks the State to Rededicate Themselves to the Lord". What happened is they came out on March 11th with a concurrent resolution; it's House Resolution 5302. It was bipartisan. They say broad bipartisan support. And their encouragement, their goal is on May 1st through 3rd to have a Charleston Crusade, 2026, and they're inviting everybody to come to a voluntary rededication of South Carolina to God through prayer, repentance, and moral renewal. That they acknowledge this is something connected hopefully to 250th that one of the things that they're encouraging people to do for the 250th is to have a rededication to God. And guys, as we talk about all of the ways to celebrate the 250th, Dad, this reminded me a little bit of what John Adams wrote Abigail when America had voted and agreed to declare independence and he writes Abigail, how incredible this is going to be. And what does he encourage Abigail is the way they should celebrate? Not just with pomp and parade and fireworks. He said... Actually, something even more specific, what did he tell Abigail? 

David Barton [00:25:25] Okay, Tim, I don't remember the exact words, but it was a time of devotion to God, as I recall. You remember the exactly words in the letter? 

Tim Barton [00:25:37] Well I was deferring to you. I can pull it up really quick. So, he said this should be by acts of devotion to God Almighty, is the phrase you're looking for. It's obviously a longer clause but he said they ought to be commemorated by acts of sovereign devotion to Almighty God. I think that's the actual phrase is what he used. But the reason like, Dad, we’ve talked about one of the things that we are encouraging people to do, we're going to be part, actually, just in a week or two of America Reads the Bible up in Washington, D.C., encourage anybody that can come be a part of this. There's a lot of prayer services, of repentance services, revival things, Bible things. There's not a better thing, really, we could be doing to rededicate ourselves and this nation to God in celebration of the 250th. And it's really similar to things that John Adams told Abigail was the way he thought we really ought to be commemorating Independence Day. 

Rick Green [00:26:31] Well guys, we're out of time for good news today. By the way, folks, there's more good news at our web site as I mentioned at the top of the program, wallbuilders.show. Just look for those Friday programs. Appreciate you listening. Have a fantastic weekend. You've been listening to The WallBuilders Show.