STAND with Kelly and Niki Tshibaka
One grew up in Alaska; the other grew up abroad. One is a Daughter of the American Revolution and a descendant of generations of American veterans; the other, the son of an African immigrant and a descendant of Congolese chieftains. One was a government watchdog; the other, a civil rights activist. Both had parents who were homeless for a while, and both graduated from Harvard Law School.
Like you, they have suffered devastating loss and faced overwhelming challenges. Through it all, they’ve found victory over the hardships of life simply by choosing to Stand. Join Kelly, Niki, and their inspiring guests as they move beyond simply talking about issues and challenges, to exploring how to solve and overcome them. Together, we will build a movement of everyday Americans who courageously take a stand for freedom, truth, and a country led by “We the People.”
STAND with Kelly and Niki Tshibaka
Conviction's Crossroads: Having the Courage to Pivot
Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor and host Kelly Tshibaka share parallel journeys of pivotal life choices—Taylor abandoning his Air Force dreams for law, and Kelly fighting for 9/11 detainees against institutional resistance. Their conversation explores how following convictions at critical moments shapes character and destiny.
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Welcome back to Stand. We're on our last segment. You're with Kelly and Nikki Chewbacca. That was an amazing interview. We just had with Treg Taylor, our current Attorney General for the state of Alaska.
Speaker 1:The part of the interview that stood out to me the most, or that had the biggest impact on me, was when he told his story about that big sacrifice he made at the beginning of his journey, when he gave up on his lifelong dream to go into the Air Force and instead pivoted and became a lawyer and in a sense you know he followed his dream and has become a fighter for all Alaskans and has actually stood up for all Americans in joining these lawsuits against the Biden administration that are going to continue to play out into the Trump administration's tenure, as we set precedent for law across the country. But it was a really hard decision to have to sit there without any cause but follow what he really felt like the Lord was telling him to do and walk away from that dream. And we saw how much emotion he has, even all these decades later, of giving up on a dream like that. How did that affect you?
Speaker 2:You know, it was just a really stirring reminder of the importance of courage to follow through on our convictions and that when we do that, good things happen. It doesn't necessarily mean life is easy, but we can lay our heads on our pillows and our consciences can be at peace about it. And I really appreciated this in particular about it. I appreciated General Taylor's vulnerability, his transparency and, of course, the courage he showed in that decision, because we are all benefiting right from that decision. All these years later I will not say decades, because, general Taylor, you are not that old but I will say all of these years later, alaskans are benefiting from the courage of that decision and in addition to that, you know when we make those little in this case it was a big choice but those decisions to follow our conscience, to follow what we believe we're being led to do and to do what's right it becomes a pattern in our lives and eventually becomes our character and ultimately becomes our destiny.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I think we heard that in General Taylor's story because, like you said, he went from, he always had that fight in him, right where he wanted to do something to serve his country to serve his fellow man, and it was like God just redirected him and said this is where I want you to go and this is what I want you to do.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And he's been doing it ever since, and we just heard about the amazing work that he and the Department of Law have been doing, along with other attorneys general across the country, to not only undo what the Biden administration has done to really unravel the fabric of our democracy in a lot of ways and harm Alaska, but also to take more of a proactive stance, I think, going forward with the Trump administration. We have an administration now that is you can say whatever you think of it, whether you like it or not. One thing you can say about this administration is they are taking incredibly strong, bold, proactive moves to establish the vision that Trump has for America and America's future and that we all voted him into office to execute.
Speaker 1:Those are all hard decisions. I was curious if you had a story about a time you had to make a decision like General Taylor did. I know I have two stories I thought would be interesting to share and I imagine that you have a story or two as well, having shared life with you. I remember at the beginning of our marriage I was accepted to Oxford, which at the time had been my lifelong dream, similar to what Trey Taylor shared with us.
Speaker 2:Well, I was going to say that was my first major courageous decision was choosing to ask you to marry me. That took a lot of courage.
Speaker 1:Actually, that might be a really good story to share.
Speaker 2:I will not share that publicly. Yet Go ahead, our engagement story, our engagement story, that's a really great story. Oh my goodness.
Speaker 1:For another time, maybe? Yeah. So, having gotten into the PhD program at Oxford, we faced a decision where we could have been separated for several years, while Nikki started his law career and I pursued the PhD, or we could have chosen to do what was best for our marriage, and instead I made the choice to do what was best for our marriage, and that required laying down this big dream, and the big dream would have been to have had a PhD in theology and got accepted to one of the colleges at Oxford, and that was all in the bag. But then, all these years later, as Nikki knows, we ended up planting and pastoring a church, and we've now been doing that for 19 years, and so we have all the benefits that would have come with the seminary degree, but without having sacrificed our marriage. So, in the same way that Trey Taylor's story worked out, he ends up fighting for Alaskans and Americans, but in a different way than he thought his path would originally go.
Speaker 1:And another one that I thought that came to mind was just about how, in my first job out of law school, I worked for the Department of Justice and my boss brought a case to me where he asked me to reinvestigate an investigation that had been done by our inspector general's office.
Speaker 1:I was supposed to just edit it and finalize it, make sure it's good for publication. The investigators had looked into allegations that there had been physical abuse by guards at a prison in New York against inmates that had been arrested after September 11th on suspicion that they'd been involved. They hadn't been involved, but they said there had been no abuse and the inspector general thought that there were some holes in the case, so he asked me to reinvestigate it. I was just out of law school and there were some things I thought really needed to be pressed in on and I just you know, like you said, nikki, with that dogged determination, that there was just something here that didn't seem right. I ended up really digging into the case and not letting go until I got to the bottom of it, including finding hundreds of videotapes that the heads of the Department of Justice had said had been destroyed, but they hadn't been, and they showed evidence that the guards badly abused these detainees.
Speaker 2:Was this the Department of Justice or the Bureau of Prisons that said they were destroyed?
Speaker 1:The Department of Justice had said they were destroyed, as well as the Bureau of Prisons. But the BOP is in the Department of Justice and this case involved the FBI, the DOJ, the BOP and people even at the head of the Department of Justice, and so it goes all the way up to the US Supreme Court because of what we found in this investigation that I did and it ends up. I just recently realized it took 20 years for them to resolve and finalize this entire case. Several of the guards ended up getting terminated. Later one of the guards, one of the prison captain, ends up going to jail and they ended up paying out the detainees over a million dollars who were the defendants in the case or who brought the case. So I thought that was an interesting example as well Just things early in my career of you know, taking a stand and taking courage and saying you know there's something here worth fighting for and not backing down. What's a story you have?
Speaker 2:Well, I mean I, you know. I mean I don't like to talk about my stories too much, so I'd like to actually, like I said, my biggest one is and my best and wonderful, most courageous decision was marrying.
Speaker 1:Most courageous.
Speaker 2:That was terrifying, and it takes courage every day to walk along this side, this formidable and amazing woman. But I wanted to get to General Taylor's work as an attorney general. He talked about education being an incredibly important thing. That's near and dear to his heart. Near and dear to the hearts of, I know, of all of us Alaskans and, of course, across the country, because right now we're seeing a huge sea change and a seismic tectonic shift in how education is being handled now, with the Department of Education, effectively, from a practical standpoint, essentially being wound down Right.
Speaker 2:And such, so that the federal monies can actually be placed in the hands of our states, our state leaders, because we're the ones who know best how to take care of and educate our kids. We have a very diverse system across this country, very diverse communities struggling with different kinds of things, and so to have one size fits all kinds of approaches coming up from the federal government has never been the best way.
Speaker 1:And I agree that we will do a better job with determining that if everybody's involved. I'm very concerned about decisions that are being made at the local level in education in Alaska when we have dropped so substantially from ranking pretty high when I was in public school here to now being often number 51 in a United States of 50 states in terms of education scores.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, that's, that's.
Speaker 2:But what I was really gratified and encouraged to hear was General Taylor's passion for that subject and seeing what we can do, you know, from a policy standpoint, what are the things that he can do in his position and in working with the governor and working with the Trump administration to really up our game, because we're denying our kids the future that they all deserve to have when we don't meet our basic responsibilities of just teaching them how to read and do math Rather than some of the other. I'm not even going to get into it, but the other things that we seem to have been focusing on getting back to the basics and the foundations of what are the things that they need to know in order to flourish Succeed.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 2:The things needed for human flourishing, and reading and writing and arithmetic has always been at least a basic foundation of that. Leave the values to the parents.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Focus on the basics of what they need to feed their brains.
Speaker 1:I think that's a wonderful example of how well this attorney general has fought for the values and rights of Alaskans and I appreciate, like you said, the courage that Trey Taylor has demonstrated in taking on the fight with the Biden administration and the overreach of government in Alaska and the overreach of government in Alaska and on behalf of Alaskans, and in partnering with other attorney generals across the United States in order to protect and preserve the rights of all Americans. We are so grateful that Treg Taylor came on the episode. Thank you, treg, and we are looking forward to having another amazing episode of Stand. You were with Kelly and Nikki Chewbacca and we are hoping to make courage contagious. You can find all of our episodes at stanshoworg and we will be happy to see you on our next show. Stand by and stand strong and stand firm.
