Common Sense Is Coming Back to Schools And Policy

Common sense is showing up in places we did not expect, and that’s exactly why we love Good News Friday. We kick things off with a story that hits close to home for parents and educators: states across the political spectrum are moving to bring recess back and prioritize physical activity in public schools. We talk about why movement matters for kids’ health, focus, and long term development, and why this shift feels like a quiet win for families who want schools to support the whole child.

Then we dig into a major education policy update: new Department of Education guidance saying schools should neither favor nor disfavor students by race when it comes to discipline. We unpack what race based discipline quotas and “restorative justice” pressures have looked like in practice, why they can undermine safety and fairness, and why accountability should be applied consistently to every student.

From there, we pivot to immigration policy details most people never hear about, including B1 business and B2 tourist visas, visa overstays, and how asylum is meant to be a narrow safeguard rather than a loophole. We also highlight a potential FDA leader, Dr. Heidi Overton, and why her medical credentials and clarity on the science of unborn human life matter. Finally, we test climate catastrophe claims against long term data and end with encouraging news of large prayer gatherings in the UK that point to spiritual hunger beyond the US.

If you found this encouraging, subscribe, share the show with a friend, and leave a review so more people can find Good News Friday.

Transcript

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Rick Green [00:00:07] It's Good News Friday. Welcome to the intersection of faith and culture. Thanks for joining us today on the WallBuilders Show. Taking on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. And Fridays, we get a lot of good news. So we're just going to jump right in. Oh, by the way, website's, wallbuilders.show and wallbuilders.com. We give those out every day. But we're also encouraging you to go to all the different podcast apps. Make sure you're listening to WallBuilders Show and sharing it with your friends and family. Check that out. At all your favorite podcast apps today. Okay guys, let's jump in. I'm looking forward to some good news today. David, what's our first piece of good news? 

David Barton [00:00:41] Guys, this one has kind of a personal bias of worldview in here. In my worldview, just growing up, scripture study, et cetera, I'm a firm believer in physical exercise, just because all the Bible verses talk about how it's good. Our bodies, a temple of the Holy Spirit is probably one that I go to most often, and I want that temple to be in shape. I don't want it being sloppy, out of shape. So I think a degree of physical fitness is good and exercise is good. And I just, I think it's a healthy thing. And in my case, it seems to kind of help sharpness of mind, at least for me. When I move my body, it's feeling pretty good. My mind feels good as well. So all that to say, based on my personal experience, I really like this story. And I know the story is based on more than my experience because nobody talked to me about this, but it's called the push to bring recess time back in public schools. And so what has happened is in the last few years, there's been a surge of both blue states and red states having these medical studies that say, hey, this is not good to not have physical activity with the kids in schools. And so now the HHS has come out with guidance and says, look, you need PE classes every day and you need 60 to 90 minutes to exercise a day kind of thing, just stuff that keep your body stimulated and going. And so I was looking at the states that have done this. And so back in 2024, California, Connecticut, Washington, which all of those are blue states enacted laws. Then last year, Illinois, Kentucky, Texas, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia enacted laws, South Carolina just enacted the law. So we're talking definite blue and definite red. It kind of crosses the spectrum. And in South Carolina, they said, look, 20 minutes of recess a day, in addition to 90 minutes of physical education class per week. So there's this growing movement to get hold of that. I thought it was interesting, they had at Heritage, they had a kind of a seminar, think-tank kind of thing on this. And they talk about how that we've lost recess over recent years because teacher were looking for every opportunity to indoctrinate and having 20 to 60 minutes more a day gets some more social indoctrination in. And they called it social engineering in the conference. And so there's a turn away from that. I just think that's a real good thing for kids. It's a really good thing for everything across the board. I think it helps thinking skills. I think there's so many things that go with this. So for me, that's piece of good news. It's even a better piece of a good news because of my worldview that thinks that some degree of physical fitness is definitely worthwhile. So that's what I'm starting with for today, guys, is the push to bring recess time back to public schools. And that's something that Red and Blue seem to agree on right now which is good. 

Rick Green [00:03:31] Yeah, it used to almost just be common sense, right? That that was good for the kids and, you know, got away from that. And I had not heard that that was part of the reason was they just wanted more, more indoctrination time. So here's a good lesson at recess, run, run from the indoctrination. Tim, what's your first piece of good news, man? 

Tim Barton [00:03:53] Well, this one is coming from the Department of Education. And guys this title really caught me off guard. I had to read through, I, I thought I knew where this article was going. The good news is it's solving some of this problem, but the title says "Department of Education to No Longer Require School Discipline Policies that Discriminate on the Basis of Race". And I thought, wait a second, discipline based on race? What does this mean? And again, I had some ideas of how that might work, but it caught me off guard. So this was last week, the Department of Education issued guidance, Tuesday urging schools to neither favor nor disfavor students based on race when it comes to discipline and reversing Obama era guidelines. Now, what in the world could that have been? And as the article points out, you go back in 2018, there was a report from the Federal Commission on school safety. Due to a 2014 letter. This is the Obama letter that schools ignored or covered up rather than disciplined student misconduct in order to avoid any purported racial disparity in disciplined numbers. Okay, catch that for a second They covered it up or they ignored when there should have been discipline because they didn't want there to be a disparity of the outcome regardless of who was doing bad behavior. So If one white kid gets in trouble, then one brown kid gets in trouble and one black kid gets in trouble whatever it might be but we have to make sure there's equity of distribution, and so we can't have too many kids of one segment or one identity however this intersectionality kind of chart might work. And that was what was encouraged, apparently, from the Obama end of federal government. The article points out that as a result, students who should have been suspended or expelled for dangerous behavior remained in the classroom, making all students less safe. And this is actually now going into Trump's order that they need to adopt racial quotas or it concluded, sorry, this is a 2020 Heritage Foundation report concluded that adopting the racial quota as school discipline is not only illegal and unjustified, it is counterproductive. And part of this goes back to Title VI, which I could not even remember exactly what all was in Title VI, Title VI is part of the civil rights. We know Title IX was about protecting girls’ sports, and now there's confusion of what girls’ sports is and this might be at some point, this might be a Good News Friday program talking about in Enes Kanter Freedom playing in the WNBA, I don't think he will, but I think he's the one that's going to maybe actually challenge them to define what a woman is. That's Title IX is protecting women's sports. Well Title VI that was civil rights issues. And the Department of Education, their Office for Civil Rights also opened two Title VI investigations into school districts that allegedly required personnel to consider race when making disciplinary decisions. Now, these are two examples they're identifying. It's not the only ones, but they're using this to point out why it's wrong and you can't do this. One of them is in Fayetteville, Arkansas. And we got a lot of friends up in that Fayetteville area. But there was a directive from the administration, and the teachers to take students' racial identities into account. And this is the order coming down from administration to teachers. Take students' racial identities into account when issuing discipline as part of an effort to bring about restorative justice to add the disproportionality of discipline of students of color. Now, when you're getting a note from your administrator telling you to make sure that you're considering racial identities, to bring about restorative justice, that is woke nonsense saying that we don't care how a student behaves, we care more what the color of their skin is, right? This is, again, along the lines, we care about what somebody's identity is, where they are on this intersectionality chart, whatever that might be. There's also an example they gave from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, when the teachers of school district reportedly derided school policies, this is for the teachers, that appear to be neutral as reflecting systemic whiteness seemingly encouraging school officials to consider race and disciplinary practice. So in Wisconsin, you need to consider whiteness and how you operate and function in Fayetteville, Arkansas, make sure that you take their racial identities into account for restorative justice, et cetera. So these are examples they gave. Now, guys, the good news is the Department of Education said that, yeah, we're not gonna let schools discriminate and discipline based on race. We're not going to let somebody say, that because a kid is white, you can discipline them, and if they're not white, you can't discipline them. That's crazy. You need to uphold a standard of morality, a standard right and wrong, and it doesn't matter who violates it. If it's a boy or a girl, if they are 14, 16, or 18, if they violate it regardless of their gender, their ethnicity, the race, the color of their skin, however you want to label it, they need to be held accountable. So guys, it's really good news that there is now pressure from the Administration to remove this racial quota, this restorative justice, the whatever kind of woke nonsense was going on. That's really good news. It boggles my mind a little bit that that's what public schools were doing. And yet again, guys, it's one more example where so often we talk about the problem inside of so many public-school systems. And this is not a slight on some amazing public school teachers that are out there. It's recognizing again, the system. There are so many not good people and not good motives that are in the public school system. If you have an option, look for other options than having your kid in public school. And this was just one more example why. But the good news here is that the Trump Department of Education has come out and said, yeah, we're not going to do that anymore. And that is good news. 

Rick Green [00:09:45] Well, Tim, I'm going to sound a lot like David here. Your problem is you've been reading the Bible too much. See you, you just haven't listened to the social justice warriors enough. Cause you actually think that we should have neither Jew nor Greek and that we should treat rich and poor the same in court. I mean, clearly you just been reading the Bible way too much because it's, it's all about color of skin and whether or not, you know, you're part of some previously discriminated against group. So as a country boy I think that, you know, we country boys have been made fun of for too long and that i should be treated different than everybody else and therefore if i commit the crime or the infraction in school or whatever it might be it should be looked over. And anybody that went to Yale or any fancy school they should be prosecuted. Okay, all right, obviously I'm trying to be sarcastic like your dad would be. But It really is a complete difference in worldview these people actually think that's real justice that you don't have enough white kids going to the principal's office got to send more. You don't have enough brown kids. You don't have enough like you said age or whatever So thank the good lord. We've got some common sense at the DOJ now saying that's wrong, it's evil, It shouldn't be allowed. But I think you're right man. Too many schools still doing that. All right, David. Back over to you. I think I think i said what you were probably thinking.

David Barton [00:11:03] Well, you're in the right spot of what I was thinking is, how is it that common sense is now good news? You know, it's like, are we so crazy that when we see an instance of common sense, we have to call it out as something special? And I guess that's part of where we are. So I've got another one that goes with it. Now this one, I will admit that this is good news to me in an area that I had never considered. And I'm with illegal immigration for just a minute. Well, we know there's tens of millions of illegal immigrants here, here not according to the law. But I've got to admit till I read this article I haven't thought I hadn't thought about the different classifications of immigration and the different ways you can come to the United States and the difference reasons and I'll just ask you guys you know what a B1 or a B2 visa is? Either one of you. I'm not getting a response. I'm gonna take that as probably not. So, I- 

Tim Barton [00:12:02] All I could think of was, it seems like there's some kind of bomber we used back in the day that had something similar to that. 

David Barton [00:12:11] That was going to be my joke too. B1 is stealth, B2 is stealth so this must be stealth visas. That was exactly where I was going. So B1, B2. 

Rick Green [00:12:21] My only response would be there's too many of them. 

David Barton [00:12:24] Well there are and I didn't know there were any of them, but a B1 visa is if you're here for a short-term business activity, you're not here for labor and you can't seek employment while you're here, but you're here for short-term business activities. A B2 visa is for tourists, those who want to come visit US or visit friends or relatives, or if you come here to take a vacation or if have to get special medical treatment, that's a B2 visa. Now, as it turns out, there's millions and millions and millions of these just in Biden's last year. The number of those in Biden last year, there were 6.5 million temporary visitor visas and those 6.5 million, some of them now go back over, I'm looking at some of these that were issued 25 years ago they're still here in the United States. So you're here for temporary, for a vacation, or for medical treatment or whatever, and we're talking millions and millions who, and see the deal with the B1, B2 is it's less scrutiny to get in because you're not planning to be here long. We know you're gonna be a citizen, or we used to know that, we used think that, so we don't do all the same background checks that we normally do. It's a less stringent requirement, which is why it appears that many people used to B1, B2. I'm just coming for the weekend. I got to visit parents or whoever, and I stay 25 years. So it's interesting that they are now shutting that down. They've said this is not going to be used. Here's their statement asylum it's supposed to be a loophole to circumvent immigration laws. They're supposed to provide a narrow safe harbor for persons persecuted because of their race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion. But the system has been swamped by frivolous asylum claims And it takes years to adjudicate this stuff. So here's another way of going at getting illegal immigrants out and following the law, we believe in the rule of law, if we're not gonna do that let's get rid of the laws. But as long as we got the law enforce the law and we've not been enforcing this law and now we're seeing enforcement come back to that law. And to me, that's good news. So when you start enforcing, look, if you don't wanna enforce the law, that fine, get it off the books, but don't leave it there for selective prosecution later on when you find somebody you don't like and you dig out a law that nobody else uses, but you're gonna use it against them. That's why you don't want those laws in the books that don't get enforced. If you're not gonna enforce it, get it of the books. If you have it, enforce it. And that's the good news, and I've gotta admit, I had no idea there were so many levels of layers of immigration. Where you can get different kinds of visas and different type of immigration, asylum, et cetera. But it's just, it's good to see that they're looking at all that and starting to close the loopholes and close the doors. I think it's really good to go back to being a nation that enforces the laws it has. 

Rick Green [00:15:18] What a difference it makes to have a good Administration. Quick break, everybody. We'll be back. We've got more good news for you when we return your listing to the 

Rick Green [00:16:34] Welcome back to the WallBuilders Show. Thanks for staying with us. Good News Friday today, and it's back over to Tim. 

Tim Barton [00:16:39] Well guys, this is good news coming again from the Trump administration. This is dealing with somebody who could be the next commissioner of the FDA, the food and drug administration. It's Dr. Heidi Overton. Now President Trump is, they're expecting he is going to nominate her. Actually, that could be really any day, any moment. This article is from last week, but Overton currently serves as deputy director for the White House Domestic Policy Council. She advises the President on health policy. She served as Chief Policy Officer for the American First Policy Institute. She led the Center for Healthy America. And she was also a fellow in the first Trump White House from 2019 to 2020. If that's not enough... she's also board certified in public health and general preventative medicine. She trained in general surgery or as a general surgery resident at John Hopkins Hospital, and she earned a doctorate and clinical investigation from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg school of Public Health. So all of us to say she's got phenomenal credentials when it comes to anything from the medical side. And I say this because the left often likes to pretend like that if you nominate a conservative because they're conservative, they're not qualified, they don't warrant it, et cetera, et cetera. Well, this person is clearly qualified medical personnel, a physician and White House health policy advisor. But here's what's more interesting. She did an article where she was interviewed by Life News and she confirmed that the science is clear, unborn babies are human beings. Now guys, this is huge. You know, the things that sometimes have become controversial that you never would have thought we're controversial or that we should be so excited to have somebody who holds basic scientific views on something. But this is that moment when the left continually goes on about following the science and then they completely ignore the science in matters that don't really benefit their argument. They don't want to talk about the science of gender. And in this case, they don't wanna talk about science of the unborn. The fact that a woman can see the baby inside her womb, watch it move and breathe, they can take home a picture, share with friends on social media. All these are things that happen. The article points out that new ultrasound technology allows doctors and parents to see a baby's development in incredible detail. There's a medical review that states this encourages maternal fetal bonding, which of course makes sense when that mom sees that unborn child in her womb being developed growing inside of her obviously, there's a greater connection. There are now improved treatments for extremely preterm infants who have improved survival with a 2020 academic study finding that 78% of infants born at 22 to 28 gestational weeks, survived to go home with their parents. Incredible stuff. All of this to say, the science is becoming more and more and clear. I mean, really, we would argue it wasn't confusing at the beginning what an unborn child was, or there was value for that unborn child. But the good news now. Is that President Trump is about to nominate someone to lead the FDA who actually holds pro-life views as a highly credentialed medical doctor. It seems that those two things have become contradictory in recent years or decades, but it's really encouraging to have more pro- life people serving at high levels of our nation's government. 

Rick Green [00:20:01] Well, I have to repeat what I said earlier in the program. What a difference an administration makes. It's a very, very good news. Let's see. Okay. We're back over to David. What's your next piece of good news? 

David Barton [00:20:11] Well, guys, this piece of good news is something that has been a big deal with me for a long time. You guys recall back 20 years ago, or 18 or whatever, testified at US Senate on all the global warming stuff that was going on, the climate change. And so this has been real big deal. I've been right in there with all those other climate change deniers. And I don't deny the climate changes. I just don't think it's going in the catastrophic direction they've been predicting for all these years, which has given them license to impose new regulations, new restrictions, new everything. It just gives the government more control to run every aspect of your life, to have auto kill switches on your cars, to tell what kind of gasoline you get. It's crazy nonsense for regulation. And lo and behold, it's interesting on the Biden EPA, they had 80 web pages up there showing all these, I guess the way you describe it is what they see as evidence that they were right. So it lists all these heat waves that come, and coastal floodings that occur, and wildfires, and snowfall, and droughts and all the things that they predicted was going to shut. They give you all the examples of what's happened. Well, interesting the American Enterprise Institute said, yeah, this stuff happens. We've known that it's happened from the beginning of time. The question is, does it happen with more frequency, because that's the argument is global warming that's going to drive us to more and more frequency, back to the time I was testifying they said hey within four to six years we think that the East Coast will be underwater, Washington DC. You'll be able to launch a boat from the Lincoln Memorial and Washington DC. There'll be massive drowning, they predicted one to two billion would drown as a result of the coastal flooding from the melting of the polar ice caps. The polar icecaps are gonna melt because of climates etc. So finally, somebody said, why don't we look at it over time? So the American Enterprise Institute went back and looked at 130 years of data. And what they found was that if you take all the climate prediction stuff that was gonna happen, more floods, they can't find any rise in floods over the last 130 years. Floods happen now, they happen then, but there's been no increase or uptick in the frequency of floods, nor have they been more severe. The same thing with tornadoes, We're supposed to have more severe weather, the amount of tornadoes per year goes up and down from year to year, but over 130 years it's been pretty straight across the deck. And then if you look at things like drought, that was going to be the other thing was we're all going to burn up and we won't be able to supply food because the drought, that has 130 years the same frequency it happens, it doesn't happen cycles, but no change. The same thing with wildfires. Now, this is kind of personal for us because we had a wildfire right around our ranch this weekend. We had to load the stock up and move it out to get away from the fire, but that's the only fire we had around our ranch in maybe a hundred years, but when they looked at 130 years there's no more overall wildfires now than there have been. Same with hurricanes. So all this catastrophic stuff they've been saying is going to get worse and worse and worse and therefore every time we have one, they highlight it. When you go back and look at the chart for 130 years it just doesn't hold up. There hasn't been an uptick in that activity, which is I think part of the reason why we talked good news earlier this year, but over in Europe they've just dropped it over there. It's not what it used to be. Even five years ago they were so phobic on climate change stuff, and now that's no longer part of their agendas for the governments in Europe, which was a real big change. And that's a great acknowledgement that they don't believe it anymore. And now we've got some scientific data to go with that. 

Rick Green [00:23:54] Hopefully we're moving away from worshiping the creation instead of the Creator. Tim, I think we've got time for a final one, man. 

Tim Barton [00:24:01] We absolutely do. This is dealing with what's known as the Battle of Britain. Now, when I saw the title Battle of Britain, I was only thinking of like World War II. I don't know what else we're talking about. But no, the headline says, "Christian Leaders Call Church to Prayer as Thousands Prepare to Gather". They're talking actually about a spiritual battle, the spiritual battle for Britain. And they had an event last weekend; I think it was. Maybe two weekends ago now. Yeah, about two weekends ago. And they had one last year, this is the second time they've done this. Last year they had around 5,000 people in attendance. At this point, they're not releasing any numbers yet. And the reports coming out, they're saying it was at least as large as last year, they think it could have been larger, but it was people that are crying out and asking for God to intervene and intercede in Great Britain, in the UK. And guys, one of the things we've talked about here in the States is, as we have the opportunity and privilege to travel all over the nation, to work with so many pastors, amazing leaders, to meet moms and dads, the grandmas and grandpas, just a normal everyday Americans, we are seeing God on the move in this nation. We are seeing a revival. Arguably and hopefully prayerfully maybe another great awakening that will bring some reformation or restoration in this culture But what is cool is to see that God is literally moving all over the place and there are Christians over in the UK that as we see so many problems they're dealing with that there are Christians recognizing that one of the things they actively need to do is go to God in prayer. So this is really encouraging to me to see what they are doing over in the UK. And actually, Lou Engel, I mean, just some, some of our friends connections were over there. Just again, a lot of great stuff that's gone on. Now there'll be more details coming out from it, but really cool to see stories that around the world, God is on the move. 

Rick Green [00:26:01] Well, guys, that's a lot of good news for one day. We'll have more next week, of course. You know, it's just, it, for those people that they want to disengage because they don't get everything they want, or because we might lose a battle here and there, they need to hear Good News Friday on the WallBuilders Show because there's so many victories happening right now. They just don't be covered by the major media and too often, even from our own media in the, in the conservative, you know, blogosphere and everywhere else. So this is just a really important part of the week. We really encourage you to share it with your friends and family. We're on all the podcast apps. You can go to wallbuilders.show, you can hear us on Bot Radio and lots of stations across the country. But it's the kind of program you have to share with your friends and family. That's how you can be a force multiplier. Have a fantastic weekend and thank you for listening to The WallBuilders Show.