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Proverbs chapter 27 warns against pride and boasting about the future
All right. Proverbs chapter 27 is where we are this week. Proverbs chapter 27, verse 1. Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring forth. Proverbs 27, verse 1. Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring forth. And so the lesson here is clear, and that is, we don't know the future and we don't know what tomorrow brings. And so it can be foolish to speak about the future in certain terms as if we're in control of the future. Now, obviously, the Bible also teaches that planning is wise. And so this isn't a proverb against planning, but it is a proverb against boasting in your plans. And, that's what the writer here is talking about, is that we ought not, you know, speak about tomorrow, with, certain terms, as if we are God, as if we are the final authority. and this is where the, the saying lord willing, before you talk about the future. many of you've probably heard that saying, but that's where that sentiment comes from. That's where that thought comes from, that Lord willing we will do X, Y, Z in the future if the Lord tarries is another, saying that's often used amongst the church. And so, the writer here is just warning, against this pride and boasting about the future. and it's really a call towards humility and an understanding and acting in the way, that the Lord would have us speak. And that is, recognizing his authority and his providence in our lives. That's Proverbs chapter 27, verse 1. That's our scripture for the week. Well, I want to spend this segment. We do have a guest in the second and the third. Pretty good guest coming up that we want to get to and cover some of that.
I want to spend this segment talking about the Charlie Kirk Memorial
But I want to, spend this segment talking about the Charlie Kirk Memorial, fabulous memorial in all ways, and ah, very God honoring, yesterday where, both the president and the vice president spoke at the same memorial, which I believe was a first, at least in modern history, where you had both the president and the vice president at the same memorial, both speaking. But, I put out a statement earlier in the day and I called the Charlie Kirk Memorial God honoring, where the gospel of Jesus Christ was clearly and repeatedly conveyed. And I went on to talk about how the Lord, how we should petition the Lord to use this tragedy, to draw broken people, both young and old, to himself. And I talked about how the only transformation, that is lasting is the transformation that comes through the Holy Spirit and Jesus and faith and belief in Jesus. And it's abundantly clear that, Charlie Kirk was mature in his faith. That's clear when you hear testimony of those who were close to him. And it's amazing how God worked in his life because he started out back over a decade ago with Turning Point. And he started out kind of as this quasi, political, cultural type organization mainly aimed at targeting young people on college campuses and having these healthy dialogues and debates and. But what, what Charlie Kirk ended up doing is he ended up, I'm not going to say drifting, because that has a kind of a, it alludes to unintentionality or accident. But that's not, that's not what, what, what happened here. Charlie Kirk was drawn, let's just say that he was drawn towards God and towards his faith as the years went by. And so oftentimes you'll see people start out on a solid footing and then they'll drift into the ways of the world, and they'll let fame and wealth and notoriety draw them away from the faith. But in this instant, Charlie Kirk was drawn toward the faith in deeper ways. And it's just fascinating to see how he was maturing in his faith and he was drawing closer to God and becoming more intentional about how he spoke about his faith as the years went by to such an extent that he wanted people like Frank Turk in his inner circle. I mean, that speaks volumes. And he wanted his pastor, Rob McCoy, in his inner circle. And so that's just a testament to the maturity of Charlie Kirk's faith and his impact. The fact that he was growing closer to Christ, wanted to be more well spoken on his witness, on college campuses. And his organization, Turning Point, was beginning to lean heavily into the, Christian community, into the faith community. I mean, they were having entire events focused on, believers. And so, it's just amazing to see how God worked in his life, even in the midst of such notoriety, if you will, and, fame, for lack of a better word.
The tragedy of Charlie Kirk's death has caused the vice president to speak about Jesus
but I want to play a few clips here in the time we have left. The first one I want to play is of the vice president, J.D. vance, talking about how Charlie Kirk. The tragedy of Charlie Kirk's death has caused the vice president to speak more about Jesus in two weeks than he ever has in his political career.
VP Vance: Cliptube I was telling somebody backstage that I always felt a little uncomfortable talking about my faith in public. As much as I loved the Lord and as much as it was an important part of my life, I have talked more about Jesus Christ in the past two weeks than I have my entire time in public life. And that is an undeniable legacy of the great Charlie Kirk. You know, he loved God, and because he loved God, he wanted to understand God's creation and the men and women made in his image.
Walker Wildmon: There, you have it. That's the vice president talking about how this, this time of grieving and tragedy has led people to talk about the faith that Charlie Kirk had, the faith in Jesus. Charlie Kirk had and displayed and another clip here is the Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, who has once again another individual that has clearly been maturing in their faith. The secretary, consistently talks about his faith in Jesus. and I've seen just, just clip and clip interview, ah, after interview of how God has just got a hold of Pete Hegseth. It's abundantly clear that he is a born again believer. And here was ah, the Secretary Hegseth at the memorial talking about ah, Charlie Kirk, his witness and his faith in Christ. Clip 3 Charlie Kirk.
Secretary Pete Hegseth: A patriot, a conservative, a leader, a builder, an advocate, an lover of freedom, a husband, a father, a Christian and a warrior. You see, Charlie Kirk was a true believer for the cause of freedom, for the power of young people, belief in our republic and our founding principles in America first and make America great again. But more importantly, he was a true believer. Only Christ is king, our Lord and Savior. Our sins are washed away by the blood of Jesus. Fear God and fear no man. That was Charlie Kirk.
Walker Wildmon: Well, there you have it. That's Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. And you know it's, it's Another thing that is abundantly clear is that turning point leadership. I don't know all of them, you know, and this, you know, this is a broad statement but I think it's pretty fair and accurate. But the Turning Point leadership clearly is filled with Christians who are mature in their faith, including Erica Kirk, the now widow of Charlie Kirk. You don't have this memorial and the lineup of speakers that they did with the quality of content that was spoken. This doesn't happen by accident. This happens because whether it's Erica or the executive leadership or the board of directors, probably a combination of all of the above. This is because people in positions of authority at Turning Point knew that this is what Charlie would want and they knew that this was important to Charlie. What is important to Charlie? That we don't spend hours talking about how great the 2024 election was and how Charlie actually played a pivotal role in turning various battleground states towards President Trump in the election. you know, they didn't spend hours talking about how some 20 year old in 2012 took in a matter of a decade, took a non profit from the ground up to now $85 million. organization, one of the most powerful organizations, the most powerful organization on college campuses, speaking to young people and convincing them that Marxism is bad, communism is bad, that truth is real and that God created them in his image. I mean all of these things that would have been viable topics of conversation. I mean, very important things to be said and some of that was said. But the vast majority of this memorial was spent sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ. I mean I've got clip after clip after clip and we don't even have time for all of them. We've got Secretary of State Marco Rubio, as I played, Vice President Vance. We've got President Trump himself. We have Tucker Carlson giving a clear gospel presentation, talking about the need of repentance, the need of salvation, the need of self reflection and our own sin and our own brokenness. it was just one after one. Dr. Frank Turek was there, ah, friend of the ministry, Charlie Kirk's pastor was there, President of Hildale was there speaking. And so it was just very powerful. And so I want to give a shout out to everybody who played a part in that. Over.
Walker Wildmon: Over a million, over over a hundred thousand were there. And over a hundred million people in some way viewed or interacted with this memorial, online throughout the day yesterday. And this was, this was on the same scale. this, I felt like I was watching a Billy Graham crusade. That, that's what, that's the only thing I can compare it to in modern history. when you talk about the sheer number of people reached and the clear and consistent presentation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, there was no mincing words, there was no wasting air. It was very effective, very powerful. And so we praise God for that and we pray that this will continue to move amongst people in our country.
Jeff Chamblee: At the Core podcast are available@afr.net now back to at the Core on American Family Radio.
Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill launches lawsuit against gaming platform Roblox
Walker Wildmon: Welcome back to the second segment of today's program here on American Family Radio. We do have the video up on X and Meta or facebook and stream afa.net so if you want to watch the program, you can go to those places and go to the show page and watch today's program jumping, to our next guest that we're glad to have on the program. The Louisiana Attorney General Liz Merrill is with us on today's program. Attorney General, welcome to the program.
LA AG Liz Murrill: Thank you. It's great to be with you, Walker.
Walker Wildmon: Well, we, wanted to have you on because one of the issues that we talk about frequently at the ministry here and on the program is how we can protect young people, specifically minors, both from a parent responsibility, a mother and a father responsibility, but also as a government. What roles and steps can we take, to protect young people from the harms that are out there on the Internet and social media. you actually launched a lawsuit against a major gaming platform. Well, what really started as a gaming platform has turned into much more than that. Roblox. as Attorney General you launched a civil suit against Roblox, the platform. And a lot of parents, kids play Roblox or on Roblox and they don't even know it. I've heard from parents who say, yeah, I just realized my kid's on this platform, chatting or gaming and doing different things. so tell us, give us a little context, a little backgrounder and tell us why you ended up having to sue Roblox.
LA AG Liz Murrill: Well, you know what I think is surprising to a lot of parents is just how dangerous Roblox is. And that's what drew my attention to it initially was just the almost complete lack of protections for children and the large, large user base of children on this app. And so they market it to, and for children. They market it as a safe product for children. They convince parents that protecting children is their top priority. But we can tell from a lot of different metrics, that that is simply not true and that this is one of the most dangerous platforms for children that, that's out there. they basically have created a, you know, safe haven and open, open access location for sex predators to find kids who can groom them and abuse them or exploit them.
Walker Wildmon: Yeah, this. Anybody who starts looking into Roblox and reading up on it and studying up on it from reputable sources, they're going to quickly realize probably within 10 minutes how bad this is. And because of this, this kind of free for all environment that has been fostered by the company itself and the developers of Roblox. And to your point, it's an environment, an online environment, not necessarily all gaming per se, where adults are allowed to interact with children. And in your, in your lawsuit and specifically in some of your press statements you've put out, some specific examples, where these, these games if you will, such as, Escape, to Epstein Island. one of them is regarding Diddy, like a Diddy party which everybody who reads the news knows what those allegations are and those charges are. so these, these and some of this stuff we probably can't even go into on, on air, we have to be pretty generic. But there's some horrible stuff that children are being exposed to on this platform.
LA AG Liz Murrill: Yeah. And it's not just one walker. It's hundreds of these little experiences which are Like a game within the, within the app where someone can go create it, create this experience and then invite other people to come, come into it. So you have bedroom experiences. You have, I mean, I, I think it's permissible to say that there are orgies on this thing with the, the naked avatars that are created. These P. Diddy, simulations. There's a public bathroom simulator right after the assassination of Charlie Kirk. The simulation of the assassination of Charlie Kirk started to pop up very quickly. they did take those down very quickly, but that's not the same. Can't be said for some of the other, terrible things that have been available and where children have been invited into them and allowed to engage in conduct that is appalling. And I think it's very dangerous. It is as though that they created this gigantic public park, they populated it with sex predators, and then they invited a whole bunch of kids inside.
Walker Wildmon: Yeah. And that's a good, entryway into the legal argument because there's the moral argument which can be made, and it's a very strong argument about how, how terrible this, this gaming platform has become. A lot of immorality taking place. But the legal side of this, there's multiple avenues here, that obviously you're taking. But when, when you, when you position yourself and claim to be protecting users, but, and you have to abide by both state and federal laws because you're operating in the U.S. on the Internet, there's a lot. There actually is responsibility. You can't just have the Wild west, ah, with minors going on here, and then expect there not to be any type of civil or criminal liability involved.
LA AG Liz Murrill: Right. And just to kind of put it into a little bit of, you know, context, this is a platform that has approximately 30,320 million users in their user base. Over 80 million people a day on this app. And about 60% of them are under the age of 16 or 16 and under, and then about 40% of them are 12 and under. So when 40% of your user base is 12 and under and you are out there marketing this both to parents and to kids as safe for children because safety's in your DNA, you know, that's flatly false when we see how little they actually do, to have meaningful protections in place. And it's not hard to tell because you can look at what some other platforms are doing and they aren't doing those things. So, you know, I think that it's false advertising in an extreme, degree. And this is not new for legal Liability. I mean, we went after Big Tobacco years ago because they were marketing their product to children. We go after other people now for selling products in a way that is illegal, but marketed to children. And it is illegal when you're marketing it to children. So, you know, we're looking at all kinds of bad activity that's occurring on this app and a lack of responsibility by the platform to make sure that, that those things can't happen.
The Louisiana Attorney General is suing Roblox over age verification
Walker Wildmon: I want you to. Once again we're talking to the Louisiana Attorney General, Liz Morrell, about her lawsuit, her office's lawsuit against Roblox. On behalf of the State of Louisiana. Attorney General, I want you to talk about, if you will, the, these arguments in favor of. They're not going to position it like this, but they're in favor of roadblocks, basically, or they might call it. There's the Free Speech Coalition, which is all the tech conglomerates. They all fund this basically lobby group and they call themselves the Free Speech Coalition. They sued Texas over some of the age verification stuff. Then there's Net Choice, but there's basically these different lobbying groups that are mostly all funded by major tech companies and websites so that they don't have to do any kind of responsibility or age verification, etc. But just talk about these straw man arguments that are out there that, well, you know, Louisiana shouldn't be, shouldn't be regulating, these websites, et cetera, et cetera.
LA AG Liz Murrill: Yeah, NetChoice, is an organization of tech companies that also sued us over our age verification law. And you know, I've, met with some of the representatives of some of those companies and my answer to their arguments about somebody else should be responsible for age verification is that everybody needs to be responsible for the age verification. That's not the only tool that they can use. But certainly that is the minimal, expectation. And I think that when you know that you have a product that is so susceptible to abuse and predatory behavior, then they have a responsibility to do it too. So I'm just not very sympathetic to these arguments that try to sort of deflect to somebody else the responsibility for, protecting our kids. I think that they all have it, we all have it, and we should do everything we can. Social media has just created this explosion of sex, predatory behavior, and abusive behavior and sextortion that can occur through all of these different media. And I think they all have a responsibility to help stop it.
Walker Wildmon: Absolutely. And to act as if, and some do in their messaging for these companies and these lobby groups to act as if they don't have the ability to, or it's just really difficult to. That's just not the case. I mean we're in 2025, we've got some of the most advanced technology in the world that's ever existed. And to act like we can't verify users age through various means, that's just not an argument that holds water. And so I think most people understand that. But what I think it really gets down to, and I want to get your take on this and some of this is speculating and maybe it'll come out in depositions or court arguments. But ultimately I think this could get down to money. meaning when you've got 60% of your users being minors, which is the statue cited, and then you start asking for their age or their, their id, that could cause a drop in traffic, which then causes a drop in revenue, if you will. So a lot of this could get down to they just don't want to have to cut down how many people are on their website.
LA AG Liz Murrill: Oh, that's right. So you know, if you added these words at the end of every sentence objecting to it, where they say somebody else should do it, it shouldn't be us, or it's too hard for us to do it. And if you just added the words because it's not in our financial best interest to do it, that would probably be accurate. and a fair statement. I mean it's definitely the economics of limiting some of the users are not favorable in this kind of system for them because it potentially limits your user base or it limits what access your user base has to certain things, and certain people on it. So all of that has a financial impact. in Roblox's case, they went for years without providing a single tip to the national center for Missing and Exploited Children. When they did start reporting, they had already bounced their numbers up so high because their reporting is abysmal compared to their user base. If they were to put meaningful protections in place for kids, then it would dramatically affect their user base and their user engagement. so I, there's no doubt in my mind that this is all about money.
Walker Wildmon: You know, it gets to the point where you look at some of these platforms and there might be some, some entertainment, some clean entertainment that comes from it maybe, in certain instances. But the vast majority of these platforms are just used and not necessarily all illegal ways, but just not, not wholesome ways. And I think that's what, whether we're Looking at discord, I know that's in the spotlight with the assassination of Charlie Kirk. these platforms, especially ones that are very unregulated and not verified, with their users and no, really safety measures, they're just becoming very dangerous platforms. That's just all there is to it. And any, any, quote, good that might come out of the platform in the form of entertainment or productivity is far outweighed by the bad and, and the wrongdoing that comes off these platforms.
Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill sues Roblox over child safety concerns
So, last thing I want to ask you, Attorney General. Once again, we're talking to the Louisiana Attorney General, Liz Morrell, about her office's lawsuit against Roblox platform. What are you seeking? what does a win look like for you in court with Roblox and maybe a win broadly when you're talking about these other platforms?
LA AG Liz Murrill: Well, I mean, I think, for starters, I've said they need to fix it or shut it down. So to your point, if it is so dangerous that they can't, if they claim they can't, you know, make these changes, then what they have is an inherently dangerous product for children. And so I think, you know, children shouldn't be allowed to be on a platform that is that dangerous to children. so I would like to see them fix the system. I have not said that I'm trying to destroy the company. I would like them to fix it. At the end of the day, what I want to do is protect children. and so I don't think that it necessarily does that if we shut down one company and another one just pops up in its place with all of the same defects and problems. so we need to find some changes that will be applied in the system that would provide meaningful protections for children. I see no purpose whatsoever in allowing strangers to have access to our children. I think there ought to be much more severely restrictive limitations that block strangers from being able to talk to a child and make sure that they aren't easily circumvented. Right now, the way that system works, a predator can tell a child exactly how to turn off all those protections and they can be disabled. So, you know, I think that needs to change. I think they need to financially contribute to addressing the problem that they've created. they have, they have contributed to an explosion in sex predator traffic. and I think they need to be financially responsible for what they've created.
Walker Wildmon: Couldn't agree more. Louisiana Attorney General, thank you so much for coming on the program and we appreciate your courage in taking up this suit. And we'll keep track and it.
LA AG Liz Murrill: Thanks, thanks for your interest. I appreciate you all.
Walker Wildmon: Absolutely. Thank you so much for coming on.
Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill suing Roblox over child exploitation issues
That's Louisiana Attorney General Liz Morrell talking about her lawsuit on behalf of the State of Louisiana against Roblox platform. And this, this problem is not just limited to Roblox. I mean this is, they're one of the baddest actors in the, in the, in the field, in the arena. But the the topic of child exploitation online and these, on these platforms is rampant. And age verification is the, it's the, it's the easy answer and that's what we're fighting for in states around the country and we've thankfully implemented in various states especially involving pornography. But it's, it should not, this should not be controversial. I mean you got these multi billion dollar tech companies that are building AI bots and you can't verify the age of your users. I mean this is like 1990s stuff. Verify the age of the users. We do it when we fly on airlines, we do it when we register to purchase products on you know, Amazon. You could go down 17 different examples of where we enter in our driver's license number to get a service or a product. And we're talking about protecting children and their innocence. This is a no brainer. So we appreciate the Attorney General will be back.
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Jeff Chamblee: This is @ the Core on American Family Radio with your host Walker Wildmon.
Walker: Last segment we discussed concerns about online platforms that don't verify user age
Walker Wildmon: Welcome back to the program. Well if you missed the last segment, you're going to want, you're going to want to go to the podcast and subscribe to it and listen to the last segment because we had on Louisiana Attorney General Liz Morrell talking about her lawsuit against the Roblox platform. And if you, some of the parents listening are going oh yeah, my kids played that and if so well this is your time to wake up and understand and know what your kids are playing. but furthermore about this lawsuit more broadly it's a very, very fascinating discussion about the dangers of some of these online platforms that don't verify user age. And it really provides full context to why we're pushing age verification for many of these online platforms in every state around the country. And we've succeeded in many regards and but we're continuing to push it because this isn't the case in all states. So we have to ensure that minors are protected from these dangers. And it starts with the companies that are hosting the platforms. They need to be responsible, because they're providing a service and there are certain legal responsibilities surrounding providing services, especially to minors. And so they should be held accountable. That's what that discussion was about. Moving on to our next guest. David Stevenson is with us. David is director of the center for Energy and Environment over at the Cesar Rodney Institute and he's with us now to talk about all things energy. David, welcome to the program.
David Stevenson: Thank you very much, Walker. I'm glad to be here and particularly on your station.
Walker Wildmon: Thank you. Well, we got listeners all around the country and this topic of energy is something that I broach pretty often every other week or so, but never have. it's been a while since I've had on someone such as yourself, just to speak more deeply about this topic, but you've been battling.
David Stevenson says offshore wind energy production is an environmental disaster
One thing I want to start off with is you've been battling these this whole windmill energy production and that's been subsidized and spreading all around the country with these windmills. But give us your take on it and what's, what's led you to really fight back against this form of energy production.
David Stevenson: Yeah, I was primarily focusing on offshore wind. But very similar problems are there for onshore wind. eight years ago there was a project being approved. I live in Delaware, I'm not too far from the beach. And these two projects were going to be built right off the Ghost of Delaware and the Maryland Beach, Ocean City, Maryland. And there wasn't a whole lot of opposition. There wasn't a whole lot of people paying attention at that point. But I started looking at it. I'm an economist, so the first thing I did was look at the cost and the cost is ridiculous. for offshore wind it's like three times as expensive as onshore wind or solar. It's more like four or five times as expensive as new as natural, gas, at least twice as expensive as nuclear. but that doesn't count. Think about offshore wind. It's in the ocean. It's as far on the edge of the electric grid as you can get. And that means there's no transmission lines. So besides building the wind project, you have to build transmission lines and all the other infrastructure that goes with that. And since it only operates less than 40% of the time, you have to pay for backup. So either you have built a natural gas plant to back it up, or you've bought unbelievably expensive batteries. There's one estimate out there by some folks that I, really trust who showed that offshore wind was 12 times more expensive than natural gas, if you consider all those factors. So we're talking about ridiculous amount of money being spent on these things. So that's what caught my attention. But then as I began looking at it further, it's an environmental wrecking ball. We'll go through a list of problems that this is, but, the basic summary is it's an environmental disaster.
Walker Wildmon: M Let me ask you this, David. of all of what you've said, I completely agree with. It makes perfect sense. Anybody who's rational understands what you're saying and why the economics of this just doesn't add up. another argument I've heard that is interesting and very important is a national security argument, and that is that a lot of these offshore wind farms are causing our military issues when it comes to surface radar, in that they're picking up these massive windmills as if their ships are some type of, you know, vessel, when in reality they're not. And so it's caused some complications with the military and the Coast Guard and the commercial side of shipping because they think they're vessels and they're not. is that also something you've looked into and raised a concern on?
David Stevenson: Yes, very much so. I have made public, comments, on as the environmental impact statements got done by the federal agencies. I have made public comments on all this in detail. And yes, there's actually several different studies that have been. The first one was done during Trump 1 back around 2017, that was done by the military that said, yes, there's going to be interference with radar. You're not going to have a clear view, off the coast. What you've done. These towers can be 1,000ft high, they're metal, and, they're, generally put on about a 1 mile by 1 mile grid and you've got hundreds of them out there. So you do get, you get false images, in the radar and you get simple interference. But that's not the end of the story. You also, you could hide a submarine in the middle of the east enemy sub you could also launch a drone attack from inside these lease areas. So, you know, the drone thing is fairly new. but back in 2017, the military actually asked for a 30 to 40 mile exclusion zone. It would have to be that far off the coast. None of these are that far off the coast. They typically are anywhere from 10 to, 30 miles, 25 miles off the coast. So they're really in a problem area. You've probably heard a lot about, the Revolution Wind project lately. It's off of Rhode island, which puts it right next to the Groton Sub Base, our major submarine base on the entire East Coast. So we've seen those early project, concerns. Back in February, the Congress had told the Office of Management and Budget to do a study, about offshore when they came up with a number of problems. But they reinforced this, military security problem. It's a disaster.
Walker Wildmon: It almost sounds. And then I want to get into who's funding this and who's behind it, because the economics don't add up. There's got to be other forces and other motives behind it. But what you just said about the national security concerns almost sounds like cynical, it, almost sinister, rather. It almost sounds like it's intentional. I don't know if it is or not because I'm not an expert on this and I don't know people's motives, in this arena. But like, it doesn't. With the economics not adding up and then the major national security and military concerns, you decided it seems like our adversaries would want these wind farms, like, as close they can to our military bases.
David Stevenson: And some of these are only nine miles off the coast, which is really, really close. one of the big problems with these things is also the visibility. you, the federal agency that's responsible for the permits basically has said that, even at 30, miles, these will dominate the horizon and turn it from pristine into looking like an industrial park. So there's other issues besides that. Commercial fishermen can't, fish in these areas. They have to abandon it. Take all these lease areas on the East Coast. It's three times the size of New Jersey that has to be abandoned for fishing. So you get a federal agency that does an environmental impact statement, and based on that, they are supposed to decide whether to approve a project or not approve a project. Well, the first project that was going to be approved was right before President Trump left office. President Biden had already been elected, but he hadn't been inaugurated yet. And based on all these problems The Secretary of Interior has the final word on signing or not signing. So David Bernhardt, President Trump's, guy was still there, and it was pretty certain that he was going to deny the first permit. So the company that was, applying for the permit pulled the permit so that it wouldn't be denied. inauguration is January 20th. January 23rd, they resubmitted their permit request. And it was different, a little bit different than the one they originally had, which means you have to start this environmental impact process all over again. And, six weeks later, the new Interior Secretary under President, Biden signed off on the permit, didn't do any more work on it, ignored all the public comments, ignored all the problems. It was, you know, you've got the environmental left that said, this is what we want to do. We want to build these things. We've got to get electricity, from renewables, wind and solar. We can't depend on nuclear, we can't depend on coal or natural gas. Those are all bad. And so you had this, really this feeling that they had to do this. The president wanted, gave it executive order and every one of these environmental impact statements. The first paragraph said, the President told us to do this. So we did it. And here's all the major problems with it. And the major problems go. It's like a list of 10 different items that should any one of them sort of stop this development, including. And the military was one of the biggest ones, but the others were as bad. You're looking at lost tourism, you're looking at lost fishing, you're looking at, killing endangered species.
David Stevenson: We successfully fought a project off the Delaware coast
I mean, there were just so many reasons to kill this, but they simply ignored it and said, you know, sue us. So we did one of the things, I did, after 2019, we successfully fought a project off the Delaware coast. And, you know how people are when something's imminent. They get worried about it and you get a lot of noise, you get a lot of involvement. But we beat the project, and now nobody cared, until the next time it comes up. So I started calling people up and down the east coast and out to the Great Lakes and found, a whole bunch of small, fairly, poorly organized groups that wanted to fight this. So I formed them all into a coalition and we helped, turn them into a force to be reckoned with. give you one example. I reached this group, called, M. they were based in Ocean City, New Jersey, protect, our coast. It was a handful of people, maybe six, 10 people that were trying to fight this. They didn't even know how to start a nonprofit to begin raising money for publicity and such. A couple of years later, they had gotten so organized, they got 45 beach communities to sign resolutions opposing it. They got a petition with 550,000 names opposing the project. They got a congressional hearing that was held near their town. that was really the turning point. It really got people's attention and, really started turning things around. So it was working with all these groups together and putting all these coalitions together, that we were able to come up with it. But as we went, we wrote these lawsuits and we would share information. So let's say I, I, actually got the military, the first military study from a commercial fishing group in New England. that was the first time I heard about that one. and as we went along, this group would find something, that group would find something, and this coalition really worked well together. We weren't funding each other, we were just sharing information. But it was absolutely key. And, you know, we end up with thousands of people fighting this in the end. And it's, you know, the way Americans are supposed to react to things that aren't good.
Walker Wildmon: M. Absolutely. We've been talking to David Stevenson with the, with the Cesar Rodney Institute. He's director of center. He's director at the center for Energy and Environment. David, very enlightening discussion. I wish we had more time to talk about nuclear, but we're about to wrap it up. we've got about a minute left. how are we going to power all the data centers?
David Stevenson: Well, we're probably going to do it with nuclear. And the thing I've been working on is we have to solve the nuclear waste problem. Turns out you can recycle it all, which they're doing in Europe using U.S. technology. we need federal legislation. And the quick answer is we have drafted that legislation, hoping to pass it by the end of the year and shovels in the ground for storage areas for nuclear waste, by 2027.
Walker Wildmon: Phenomenal. Hey, David, thanks. So much for coming on the program.
David Stevenson: I'll be happy to do it again.
Walker Wildmon: All right, thank you. Absolutely.
David Stevenson says offshore wind projects do not make economic sense
David Stevenson, director, at the center for Energy and Environment at the Cesar Rodney Institute. Very knowledgeable, and I wish we had more time. We'll bring him back on to talk about nuclear. But, there you have it. The, he, broke down the, the problems with the offshore wind farms, which he said a lot of the problems are the same with on land. but the. The offshore, wind projects are an environmental, disaster and do not make economic sense. It's just. I wish I could have asked him, you know, who's paying for this? Well, we know the taxpayers are, but who's driving this? Like, who is pushing this? Because it doesn't make sense. There's no. It's one thing if you can just make a lot of money off of, of this, like, other, you know, goods and services, but with this, one just doesn't make sense. so, but the Biden administration, they spent hundreds of billions, if not over a trillion, on this Green New Deal garbage. And, now President Trump, thankfully, is rescinding it all, beginning with the offshore wind, rescinding it one step at a time and leaning into nuclear, which is what we have to do. We have to lean into nuclear. We'll see you next time. The views and opinions expressed in this broadcast may not necessarily reflect those of the American Family association or American Family Radio.
