Speaker 1: What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to
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smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for
your support. This story from WBTV headlined Charlotte faith based
organizations joined suit against Trump administration over immigration policies. So
the churches that I assume have been making money with
their programs, and by that I mean, you know, getting
people to come to their churches and donate money to
their coffers. They have opinions on government policy, which is
kind of political, which I thought churches weren't supposed to
be engaged in. But you know it's different when Democrats
do it. And the story from Dalford Jones at WBTV
starts thusly. In response to the Trump administration rescinding a
policy that protected suspected illegal immigrants in places of worship,
to North Carolina, religious organizations have joined a lawsuit. They're
called churches have joined a lawsuit against the Department of
Homeland Security, Customs and Border Protection plus Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
By the way, if you are a member of a church,
are you cool with your tithes going to fund lawsuits
against the federal government. They're just something you should ask
yourself and maybe somebody at your church. On President Donald
Trump's first day in office, a directive was issued giving
Ice and Border Protection agents the power to arrest or
even serve warrants in what were once protected areas. I
know that that gang member from Venezuela is hiding out
in your church, and yes, yes he's you know, a
serial killer, rapist, torturer and all of that. But Ali,
Ali oxen free. I'm inside this building. And that means
no one can come and serve and arrest warrant here.
Haha ha take that, coppers. Two directives were ordered by
the Department of Homeland Security in January to quote end
the invasion of the US southern border and empower law
enforcement to protect Americans. The first directive undoes guidelines set
by President Joe Biden to protect sensitive areas like schools, hospitals,
and places of worship from searches and arrests of suspected
undocumented immigrants. Once again the worst. First, these are the
violent criminals. You are protecting violent criminals. The second directive
gives agents the power to use their common sense for
enforcement on a case by case basis. As we heard
in the last hour in that story at WSOCTV, the
head of the local ice enforcement operations she says, we're
not going into those places. So you have the Western
North Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church. Well, that
didn't take long, did it. Methodists, right, you guys had
your big breakup over your Marxist ideology. Infecting that church
creates the big schism. You have all of these different
congregations and churches and they all start peeling away. You're
losing tons of members and and within I'm trying to
remember when it was that we in I think it
was over the summertime where they had their big conference
here in Charlotte, the National you know, or the United
Methodist Church, right, the National Conference or whatever it was.
They all met in Charlotte and they voted to to
basically pursue a path of progressivism right, to start undoing
all of these things that were the way the church
had operated before. When it comes to gay marriage, transgenderism,
you know, and illegal immigration apparently didn't take long. Right
here they are this is what the people in the
United Methodist Church. This is what they want now because
the people who don't want it, by and large, have
left and they've started, you know, either it was called disaffiliation.
So they're either just like a standalone local church, a
lot of the others have hooked up with a new
entity called the Global Methodist Church and the United Methodist Church.
You could read the writing on the wall. This stuff
has been coming for a long time, and so here
they are, as expected, weighing in on a political matter
and joining twenty six other quote faith based organizations. Okay, okay,
the Western North Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church.
That's the church. Okay, it's not a faith based organization, right.
This is not like some standalone charity or something or
an affiliated with the church charity. This is the church.
This is the United Methodist Church of Western North Carolina,
and they have now you're going to lawsuit against the
Trump administration over its policies. The communications director for the
WNCC United Methodist Church Amy Jaeger is quoted in the piece.
She says, they don't want to stand in the way
of law enforcement doing their jobs and keeping us safe.
Well that's a lie, Amy, Yes you do. You want
to use the church building as a barrier. That is
precisely what you're doing. So look, take your position right,
just stand your ground. Say this is what you want
to do. This is what the church is going to do.
It is going to shield criminal, illegal aliens from deportation.
That's what you want to do, So just say it.
Don't whiz on my boots and tell me it's raining.
Stop gaslighting. We don't want to stand in the way.
I mean inso much as like a stands in the
way of somebody. She says, quote what we are asking
and what we have lost through the recision of this
sensitive location policy is for those agencies to go through
the proper channels to receive a judicial warrant to make
those arrests. This is exactly what Gary not my fault
McFadden used in order to do the very same thing,
which is to stemy efforts to remove criminal aliens from
our country. The quote judicial warrant. These are civil proceedings.
The Ice warrants are civil proceedings, and so by throwing
in this judicial warrant, they're saying you got to go
to a judge and you got to get a judge
do this. Well, they can't do that because this isn't
there's no judge that does this. It's a different track.
By the way, the what is it, the African Methodist
Episcopal Zion. Yeah, so the ame Zion church is also
signed on to this. Get this the Methodist. They state
there has been a decrease in attendance with the new
policies under the new Trump directives, so this is hurting
their till see. So that's why they're filing a lawsuit.
It is because they've noticed a decrease in attendance quote,
which not only prohibits us from being able to minister
and care for our congregations because I guess you can't
go to their homes or something, but it also leads
to a decrease in tithing and monetary donation, which again
decreases our ability to be able to support and care
for our communities and our neighbors. It's a money play.
Keep the law right that said, or keep the directives
that say you can't come into our spaces. So this
way people feel comfortable coming to our spaces, so we
can keep getting their money so we could do the
good work obviously. Like there, I don't know, mate, I
don't even know if faith based organization is an accurate
description anymore for the UMC. All right, I hope you
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The left felt like it had already won the argument
on immigration because they essentially shut down everybody else. And
unfortunately for them and their rude awakening on the election day,
the people do not agree with you. They just don't
agree with you, and that's what they are trying to
wrestle with. And so you can do all of these
marches that you want to do. But the people spoke
at the ballot box and said they want a restoration
from the chaos. Right, they want relief from the chaos
up in Brevard. Message has not been received at the
trend Sylvania Times. You have to say like that it's
Transylvania County in the wake of federal efforts to expel
immigrants lacking permanent legal status. So this was a new one.
I've heard all the different iterations of illegal alien, which
is like, that's the that's the phrase, that's in the law.
That's why the term exists is because that's what's in
the law, because that was, you know, the legal designation
and description and definition of people who come to the
country illegally, not permitted to be here, don't have a visa,
they have no legal status, and so they are illegal aliens.
I have seen the arguments about this, and I said
this years ago, which is probably a better because because
they have not been You know, if you just you
come into contact with somebody and you don't actually know
their legal status. At some point before they are adjudicated
to be an illegal alien, you can then say that
they are an unauthorized alien, an unauthorized immigrant, right because
they don't have they don't have clearance to be here,
they have no authorization to be here. Once they get
adjudicated as yeah, you really don't have any authorization to
be here, you fit this definition. You are now an
illegal alien. Like so I can understand if you wanted
to call them something else, much like you don't call
somebody a murderer if they're simply a defendant, right, they're
an accused murderer, but we don't know yet because they
haven't gone through the trial. Okay, so I understand if
you want to split that here. But then they start,
you know, changing the words to be undocumented immigrant, and
then immigrant somehow became a dirty word, and now it's migrant,
and then it was you know, not unauthorized but undocumented
undocumented migrant. Then they judge, Yeah, then they dropped the
undocumented and it just became migrant. And that's not that.
That is actually another term that describes something else. Migrant farmers, margrreant,
migrant workers. Those are different classifications of people, and it's
not a pejorative. It is a definition of your status.
And so now this is a new one thanks to
the trends Sylvania Times, David Bradley, they're calling it immigrants
lacking permanent legal status. Well, that's not true either. They're
not expelling people who are here on an HB two visa, right,
people who are here on a tourist visa. They're not
expelling people who are not permanent legal status. That's not
that's or or who are lacking permanent legal status. People
who are here legally temporarily. They're not getting deported, right,
So this isn't even accurate. Your attempts to uphemize this
term and to try to pretty this thing up and oh,
I don't want to offend or whatever the reason is
for this to soften this image. It's not even accurate.
And that's your job, David Bradley. Your job is to
tell accurate things in your stories. So this story is
about the Brevard City Council that adopted a statement that
says it is not city policy for the police to
ask about immigration status when officers are involved in enforcement actions.
They want everybody to know we are not cooperating with ice.
If you get arrested for some sort of criminal activity,
we're just arresting you because you were suspected of criminal activity.
We're not arresting you because we're racists or because we
don't have empathy and sympathy for the immigrants lacking permanent
legal status aka illegal aliens. So I got a message
from a listener about this who said that the city
attorney actually the rumor is and according to there were
a foyer requests that were made and then documents were
posted online but have since been taken down on social
media that showed the city attorney advised the council not
to do this, but they did it anyway. Here's a
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and make memories that'll last a life time. I got
a couple of peat tweets. Here's one from d Stewart.
He says, the decrease in the UH the United Methodist Church,
you know they signed onto this lawsuit over Trump's immigration directives.
Talking about how you know they they've noticed a decrease
in their pews. There are fewer people showing up because
they're all scared, and that of course means they're not
getting tithes in the amounts that they used to. And D.
Stewart says the decrease is from UMCS woke policies that
has resulted in approximately twenty five percent of the membership,
including one million Conservative Africans, leaving the UMC. Correct, that
is correct. I didn't I thought twenty five percent was low.
I thought it was more than that. Yeah, they've had
a a they've had quite the exodus. There no pun intended,
Bob said, as ask anybody who has ever coached a
church sponsored youth athletic team about background checks? All right,
has any of you guys coached a youth athletic team either?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 1: Okay, I haven't either. And then Philip says in an
email to Pete at thepetecleanershow dot com regarding sheriff not
my fault, McFadden greatly appreciate your coverage of the shire reeve.
I don't know what that means. Is that a reference?
Is that a reference to Lord of the Rings or something? Anyway,
it is probably best to move on. His ignominious office
performance is just part of local government and there's not
much that can be done. I disagree. I'll come back
to that. His voters are happy with his leadership, and
it is highly unlikely that any judge of Mecklenberg County
would take any action to remove him from office. In
the vernacular, Garry McFadden is better mounted than we are.
Unless there is a better option at the polls, then
it will simply continue. That's well, okay, So I disagree
that it's just part of local government. There's not much
that can be done. In fact, your local government is
where you can do the most. That's where you can
be actually the most effective is at the local level.
And that's why I make a large part of my
show about local and state stuff, because you actually can
move the needle on local stuff way easier than at
the national level. That's harder, way harder. All right, let
me go to Ray, patiently waiting on the phones. Hello, Ray,
Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2: Hey, Pete, Hey, I had a just an assumption, and
I want you to tell me if I'm right or
if I'm missing something. I'll just assume and feel like
the sense the beginning founding of our country. You know,
we started having problems the revolution, then we moved on
up to the Civil War, and then to you know,
various things like the COVID and then these people breaking
the immigration laws. It seemed like we went through cycles
all down through the decades, and every time we come
out of it on the other side, making stronger laws
and getting stronger and these sorts of things. And I
feel like that it's we're becoming a stronger nation as
we go along, and it's even harder for the next
group of people that want to destroy our nation from
within or without to accomplish their task. Am I right
around and missing something?
Speaker 1: No? I mean that's that is one way to look
at I mean, you're constantly battling human nature, right, I mean,
that's that's what we're All of these things are always about.
It's human nature. You know, no system built by humans
is going to be perfect because man isn't perfect, right, right,
and so any system that you build is going to have, uh,
you know, loopholes and problems and blind spots and things
that were not you know, fathomable when laws were you know, written,
and then you know, fast forward one hundred years and
there are new ways to take advantage in a mass
power and that sort of stuff. So yeah, I mean
it's just you're you're in a constant state.
Speaker 2: Of change, right, I guess I guess I kind of
maybe lawed myself into thinking that one day we would
have everything perfected and we wouldn't have to face these shows. Now.
But we I'll see now that you know, we probably
never will.
Speaker 1: No correct, right, there will always be people that come
along and uh and and you know, find ways to
gain the system, find ways to take advantage, find ways
to take power. Right you you always have to be
maintaining it. It is a man made structure, so you
have to maintain it. Right, So, uh, there's never a
point where it's like, oh, thank goodness, that's all done.
And now, ideally what you have is enough people that
tend to the infrastructure at any given time. But you
don't need, you know, somebody to do with their entire life,
you know, like you can just have people that come in,
they can help tend to it and then cycle out.
Like that's the idea. You will always have enough people
that care enough about preserving the infrastructure to maintain it
and to defend it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I appreciate it, all right, Well.
Speaker 1: I'm a giver. I appreciate that.
Speaker 2: Ray.
Speaker 1: That's what I do. You know, I solve the world's
problems here every day from noon to three. So back
to the article out of Brevard, out of the trent
Sylvania Times. The city of Brevard felt compelled to write
a letter publicly after individuals and organizations approached local officials
to voice concerns. So you know they're leftists because leftists
always void concerns, right, They're never like, you know, angry,
protesting and you know whatever, challenging or attacking law enforce
or elected officials. Right, they're just voicing concerns in Yes,
shrill and hysterical ways, but they were voicing concerns about immigration.
This is according to the mayor, Maureen Koppoloff. She told
the council that some immigrants, notably Hispanics, have expressed a
fear of going to school, grocery stores, and even churches,
which kind of seems racisty to me that she identified
them by their race like that. But yeah, okay, we'll
get into it in a minute. All right. If you're
listening to this show, you know I try to keep
up with all sorts of current events, and I know
you do too, and you've probably heard me say get
your news from multiple sources. Why well, because it's how
you detect media bias, which is why I've been so
impressed with ground News. It's an app and it's a site,
and it combines news from around the world in one place,
so you can compare coverage and verify information. You can
check it out at check dot ground, dot news slash pete.
I put the link in the podcast description too. I
started using ground News a few months ago and more
recently chose to work with them as an affiliate because
it lets me see clearly how stories get covered and
by whom the blind Spot feature shows you which stories
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Check dot Ground, dot News slash Pete. Subscribe through that
link and you'll get fifteen percent off any subscription. I
use the Vantage plan to get unlimited access to every feature.
Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it
also supports Ground News as they make the media landscape
more transparent. Reading from the story at the Transylvania Times
by David Bradley about how the Bravard City Council and
mayor wrote a letter open letter, read it into their
meeting minutes at their meeting on Monday, and they're like, look,
the police Department, the Bravard PD. The BPD isn't going
to be asking your immigration status. Okay, We're not doing
the deportations, and we stand with you. There's a quote
from Councilman Gary Daniel who says, quote e pluribus unum
out of many one, to have a large portion of
our population living in fear is terrible. To deny any
group of people, The American dream is to deny the
heritage and history that made this country great. Wait a minute,
to deny any group of people the American Dream. To
deny any any group, so open borders, so we're not
allowed to have any kind of immigration laws at all.
This is always an interesting thought experiment to run with
people who makes statements like this same thing with like
you know, teacher pay or per pupil expenditure. Just ask them, all, right, well,
what's the number, what's the optimal number on immigration? What's
the optimal number? How many people should America take in
every year?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: And the it's been a while since I've seen it,
but the polling that I saw several years ago on this,
when you ask people these kinds of open ended questions,
the majority of people peg the number at somewhere in
like the one or two hundred thousand range. That's what
they think should be the number. They have no idea.
It's like over a million legal that's legal, one million
a year illegal is on top of that. Okay. And
so to say that to deny any group of people
the American dream, you are espousing an open borders philosophy.
So the next question should be is how many people
should we not deny? Right, you can't deny anybody. You
shouldn't deny any group of people the American dream. So
how many is that? Anybody that can get across the border?
What about the people who don't have the privilege of
crossing by land?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, for most of the globe's population, they can't simply
go across our borders on foot. They have to get
on a boat or a plane or something. So should
we be running flights to allow them to get in? Right?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: Where does this stop? What is the limiting principle? Haha,
trick question. There is no limiting principle to leftism? He added,
This town or city councilman Gary Daniel added quote, this
is a small statement from a small town, but it's
something we all have to do to stand up to
protect our neighbors who are breaking the law. I'm just kidding.
I eded that last part. Then there was counsel Lauren
Wise who said, the statement shows that Brevard is a
community quote of one heart, and it doesn't. Actually, it
doesn't say that. Your statement cannot say that because your
statement does not represent every single person's heart in Brevard. Again,
the arrogance to think that you and your six whatever
colleagues on the council speak for every single person in
Brevard that's ludicrous. But he says, Lauren says, shows that
Brevard is a community of one heart and does not
care what someone looks like or about where they came from.
Well wait a minute, who said anything about the way
somebody looks What do you talk? This is what I mean. Like,
there's so much projection on the left on these issues.
They project on to like why do you think that
immigration is only about a racial demographic. This can be
about anybody from any country. The key phrase here is illegal.
That's the point. Doesn't matter from what country they came.
If they are here illegally, they are illegal, and their
race is irrelevant. It does not matter. But you see
illegal alien as some sort of euphemism for what Hispanics
or non white people or what like. I don't even
know what this person is saying. They said, quote, in
our community, we value our citizens. No you don't, No,
you don't. This is oh sorry, this is a councilman
Mac Morrow who said, in our community we value our citizens.
They're not citizens. Like, that's right there in the definition
of the word too, like a citizen is not a
non citizen. A non citizen would fall under the category
of illegal alien. Legal alien, resident alien. Right, there are
all sorts of different categories. People on a tourist visa,
not a citizen. This is very Margaret Brennan. Margaret Brennan,
you know, one of the first examples of the damassary
of the year, and she says that the Holocaust was
created by free speech. That's how that happened. Free speech.
It's stupid, and that's what this is. You don't know
the things that you're talking about, and you're writing statements
saying that you're of one heart and such. It hurts
to think that they local immigrants. It hurts to think
that they are anxious. If they are here legally, they
have no reason to be anxious. If they are breaking
the law, then they might. By the way, one last
point here on the McFadden Gary not my fault McFadden,
the sheriff of Mecklemburg County who says he doesn't need
to call ICE when he's about to release some criminal
illegal alien when ICE makes its detainer request. When they
send the detainer, they say in their write up on
their website, an immigration detainer serves three purposes, and purpose
number two is to request information from a law enforcement
agency about an alien's impending release, so ICE may assume
custody in a safe environment before the alien is released
from the law enforcement agency's custody. That's the purpose. Let
us know before you let them go. That's the reason
for the detainer. And he won't do it, all right,
that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much
for listening. I could not do the show without your
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and don't break anything while I'm gone.