Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 1136 | Christianity Today, Be the Bridge, & the Evangelical Underbelly of USAID Funds | Guest: Megan Basham

Episode Date: February 6, 2025

Today, we sit down with our good friend Megan Basham to discuss everything going on with so-called "charitable" Christian organizations supposedly receiving government funding through USAID. We go over Christianity Today taking government grants and the left-leaning publications that followed as well as whether NGOs can truly call themselves Christian if they're taking secular funds to promote overseas abortions. And we also briefly go over Trump's most recent executive order banning men from competing in women's sports. Buy Megan's book, "Shepherds for Sale: How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda": https://a.co/d/6oH2sz0 Buy Allie's new book, "Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion": https://a.co/d/4COtBxy --- Timecodes: (02:10) Trump signs EO protecting women’s sports
 (10:45) USAID funding for Christian organizations (20:40) World Relief and charities promoting birth control overseas (30:43) USAID enabling illegal immigration (40:47) Other charities receiving government funding (49:56) Trump rooting out anti-Christian bias (53:40) How Megan’s doing after her diagnosis ---   Today's Sponsors: Patriot Mobile — go to PatriotMobile.com/ALLIE or call 972-PATRIOT and use promo code 'ALLIE' for a free month of service! America's Christian Credit Union — Switch to America's Christian Credit Union today for faith-aligned banking with exceptional rates and nationwide access. Visit https://www.americaschristiancu.com/allie to get started! --- Related Episodes: Ep 1134 | World Relief, USAID & the Nefarious Network of Humanitarian Aid https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-1134-world-relief-usaid-the-nefarious-network/id1359249098?i=1000689042415 Ep 1044 | Andy Stanley, Francis Collins & the Plot to End Evangelicalism | Guest: Megan Basham https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-1044-andy-stanley-francis-collins-the-plot-to-end/id1359249098?i=1000664069017 ---   Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise – use promo code 'ALLIE10' for a discount: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

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That's fellowship homelones.com slash alley, term supply, see site for details, fellowship home loans, mortgage lending by the book, nationwide mortgage bankers, DBA Fellowship Home Loans, equal housing lender, NMLS, number 819382. Christianity today and other Christian organizations have been revealed to be receiving a lot of money from the very progressive government entity USAID. We talked about USAID and the charity World Relief earlier this week and some of the corruption that these institutions seem to be playing a part of. And now it seems like there are other Christian organizations that are. are all a part of this scheme. Megan Basham, journalist and author, is with us here today to uncover those details. But we've also got some amazing news coming from the Trump administration first. This episode is brought to by our friends at Good Ranchers.

Go to Good Ranchers.com code Alley. That's good ranchers.com code Alley. Hey guys. Welcome to Relatable. Happy Thursday. Hope everyone is having a wonderful week so far. So if you are watching this, you can see that I am. not in studio today. I am recording remotely. I mentioned earlier in the week that all of my kids

have been hit with the flu, which is super sad. They are on the mend. But this morning, when I woke up, I felt like I was starting to get some symptoms. It's not super terrible yet, but I can feel it coming on. And so I just wanted to play it safe and record from home today. But we've got a really big episode for you. I'm going to be joined by one of your favorite guests in just a minute, Megan Basham to talk about all of the craziness with USAID and Christianity today and Be the Bridge and all of those entities that have been railing against conservatism, President Trump, and really forms of conservative Christianity for a long time. But before we get into that, I just want to share some more good news. I'm still just so excited every day by what Trump is

accomplishing and by what he's doing. And this week, he has signed an executive order to protect women's sports. If you go to the White House website, they've got the text of the executive order. It's titled Keeping Men Out of Women's Sports. You can read the whole thing, but just an excerpt from it says this, it is the policy of the United States to rescind all funds from educational programs that deprive women and girls of fair athletic opportunities, which results in the endangerment humiliation and silencing of women and girls and deprives them of privacy. It shall also be the policy of the United States to oppose male competitive participation in women's sports more broadly as a matter of safety, fairness, dignity, and

truth, the rest of the executive order details exactly how that will be accomplished. I just want to play this sweet clip from the moment that President Trump signed this historic executive order. Here it is. You ready? What a nice picture this is, huh, governor? You ready? We'll do a good job. Wait, let me press that. I want to make this a really good signature. Because this is, you know, this is a big one, right? Oh, I think we have a 10. We have a 10. God bless you. Thank you, kids.

Here. Take a pen. I'll give some of these out, okay? Take a pen. Take a pen. It's just so sweet. And right before this, there was another sweet moment. All of the girls and women who were behind him to be a part of the signing of this executive order.

We're kind of off to the side. There's a lot of security concerns when it comes to President Trump in any kind of large crowd. because of those security concerns, I guess Secret Service didn't want them, gathered around him, right behind him. But right before he signed, he looked over to them and said, and said, you know what, y'all can come over here. I think I'm going to be okay. If y'all want to gather in around me, a Secret Service really worried about them, and they all kind of laughed and got to gather around him before this really sweet moment. And it's sad that an executive order like this is necessary, this really shouldn't have to come from the president. You know,

I was talking to Jesse Kelly on his show yesterday, and he made a really good point that the fact that our culture has come to a place where the president of the United States has to issue an executive order saying that delusional, deranged men cannot play in-girls sports. You can't go into their locker rooms. You can't take their scholarships. That's really sad. It should have never got into the place where we said two plus two equals five. A man can become a woman and vice versa. And when it did come to that place, it should have been local communities and fathers all standing up and putting into it right then and saying, no, I am not allowing my daughter to compete in these sports against a boy. It's just not happening. It should have been shut down as soon as it started.

but we live in an age of cowardice and complacency and conformity and compromise. And so we've gotten to a place where from the federal level, we have to have the person in charge saying, stop doing this, allow girls to have their own spaces and sports. And so I'm sad that we're at a point morally and culturally where this is necessary, but I am so thankful that we have a president who has, willing to do what is needed. And the irony in all of this, as we have pointed out before, one of the biggest complaints, indictments of President Trump has been his past with women, his comments towards women. You hear all the time the left-wing feminist saying that he's a

misogynist. And yet, President Trump has done more to advance women's rights and to protect their rights of vulnerable women and girls than any of those left-wing feminists, including people like Kamala Harris, because their only definition of a right that needs to be protected is the right to kill a baby inside the womb, a baby girl inside the womb. And so that's like the dark irony in all of this. And just to contrast, what is happening right here to the last administration? I'd just like to remind us of this from time to time. And even though we talked about it on the show a lot when it happened and also during the campaign, this really is a lot. It's escaped the attention of a lot of people definitely on the left but also on the right.

Just remember, when Biden was president, they pulled school lunches from poor public schools who did not comply with the new rewrite of Title IX, aka they didn't allow boys into girls' restrooms. This is the headline from Washington Free Beacon, but there are lots of outlets that reported on it at the time, and you can check the details. No free lunch. Biden admin pulled funding, meal funding for schools that don't comply with its LGBT agenda. And so through the USDA that helped provide the snap lunches for the poor, low-income students and public schools across the country, they issued this punishment that said, if you do not allow boys into girls' restrooms, they called that discrimination, if you continue to discriminate against these students based on their so-called

gender identity, then you will no longer receive these free lunches. And there are many of you out there who experienced this at the time. I've talked to many parents. You remember at your school, your school was really worried about this and had to all of a sudden create these new rules and allowances for these boys and girls who identified as the opposite sex to go into their own bathroom or to go into the bathroom of the sex that they are now, quote, identifying as. This is a horrible, malicious bullying tactic that if you don't believe a lie, if you don't put girls in danger by allowing boys into their bathrooms, we are going to take away food from poor students. That was the Biden administration. And by the way, like, I don't remember seeing any social

justice Christian who is now crying about things like deportation complaining about that at the time. So, like, give me a break. If you're now like, oh, Micah, 6-8, I'm speaking up for the powerless. And you had nothing to say about all of the injustices of the Biden administration, including an egregious one like that. Like, I don't really want to hear it. Like, I think. that you've probably lost a lot of credibility. Also, don't think it's an excuse to just be like, well, I didn't hear about it. Of course, if you're only consuming the New York Times or Christianity today, you're not going to hear the truth. You're just going to get a biased perspective on reality. And so you really need a wide range of perspectives in order to even start to get at what the truth

actually is. Speaking of Christianity today, their leftward drift seems. to be less of a drift and perhaps more of a pull because of where their funding is coming from. And Megan Basham, the author of the New York Times bestseller, Shepherds for Sale, and a journalist from Daily Wire is here with the details on all of that, all of these progressive Christian entities that have actually been taking our tax dollars to survive. There is a lot here. So without further ado, here is Megan. Megan, thanks so much for taking the time to join us.

Okay, what 24 to 48 hours it has been as we first heard about all of the craziness that our tax dollars are funding through USAID. And then somehow Christianity Today and Be the Bridge and Revoice and the After Party, they all became a part of this story. So how did they get included in all of this? Right. And a lot of this is still unfolding and we're trying to figure out, okay, what are, you know, some of these line items that this new data tool has uncovered. And so for those who aren't familiar, a X account, I still struggle not to say Twitter, an X account created this tool to search through government grants and funding. Basically, they scraped a lot of data from the old USAID website and other government funding. websites and put it all together in this data tool. So, you know, part of this blew up because of the left-wing media's outrage over the shutting down of U.S. aid, which is a bit of a misnomer. People hear that and they think, oh, it's just the U.S. doing, you know, charitable things overseas when in fact, it's not that. It's, it does a little bit of that, but it does a whole lot of other

stuff too. And so what it actually stands for is the U.S. Agency for International Development. and it will work with the State Department and the CIA to ostensibly advance American interests. So it's not just a charitable organization. So when that happened, a lot of people started to look at, okay, well, where has this USAID money been going? And some of the things that turned up were, you know, bizarre projects like LGBTQ dance troops in South America. How is that advancing American interests? And so as people have been searching through this, they found some things. things that look like, okay, that didn't turn out to be anything like it can tell you,

looking at the re-voice. It looks like that was PPP money, so maybe not that interesting. And other things that are not yet really explained, like why did Christianity today show up taking $1.8 million from the federal government in their 2023 tax return? So, you know, I don't have an answer for that yet, but these are the kind of questions that are swirling. and some things turned up that confirmed what we already knew but showed it to be worse than we already knew. So you brought up the after party, Allie. And one thing I can tell you there is that, you know, I knew, and we have talked about in the past, that left-wing foundations were funneling money into this political Bible study that Curtis Chang, Christianity Today, editor-in-chief,

Russell Moore and New York Times writer David French developed to bring on to Christian college campuses and churches. One of the things that was buried in this little data tool is that they got several hundred thousand dollars from Bill Crystal's defending democracy organization, which is a political organization. It is a never-Trump organization. It was named the top source of dark campaign spending in 2020 by the watchdog group Open Secrets. So what we found is that not only were they taking money from left-wing foundations, but now we know they were taking money from explicitly political left-wing foundations. First sponsor for the day is Patriot Mobile. Patriot Mobile is America's only conservative

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really just a win all around. You can use my code Alley. When you switch to PatriotMobil at Patriotmobile.com slash Alley, you will get free activation. They'll make switching really easy. You get a free month of service too with my code Alley. Go to patriotmobile.com slash alley code alley. It just doesn't seem like a coincidence to me that these organizations like the after party, like now Christianity Today and others are taking money from the same government that has been pushing the idea for the past few years that white Christian nationalism is the greatest terroristic threat and threat to democracy that exists because we have seen those ideas echoed in all of these entities including the so-called racial reconciliation group be the

bridge. And so I know that there are other organizations also like Samaritan's purse that has taken money from USAID. And so I'm not saying that all organizations that are taking funding from this entity are pushing this idea. But it doesn't seem, I don't know, it doesn't seem like a coincidence, especially when you see that Christianity today started taking money in 23, over a million dollars, didn't get that in 2022. And I don't know. It seems to me like that was also a big, shift for Christianity today, especially under the leadership of Russell Moore. Well, I'm glad you brought up Be the Bridge because, yes, it was one of the most poisonous curriculums to come into churches. I wrote about that a little bit in my book, but I mean,

it became a tool for abusing white people in your church, quite frankly. I mean, it included groups where people weren't allowed, where the white members weren't allowed to talk for months until they had, quote, unquote, done the work of reading all of this CRT-type material. But I'm glad you brought that up because Christianity today has been very much on the front lines in both their editorial coverage and their news coverage of banging this drum against Christian nationalism, particularly Russell Moore. And what we've seen recently with this USAID revelation is that they have come out strong for their partner in the evangelical immigration table world relief saying it's terrible that the Trump

administration is shutting down this funding that goes to really good groups doing really good things for the least of these overseas. And one thing I have been digging into for the last few days since this became a really hot topic of the news cycle is, okay, what is world relief doing with this money? Because we are seeing these stories where people are saying, hey, it's terrible, that they're shutting down aid to groups like this. Again, we're talking about taxpayer money. And World Relief itself put out a statement saying how much they're grieving the shutting down of U.S. aid and its money coming to them. And so I started looking at what are they doing. And some things they're doing are fine, but some are pretty questionable. And one of those, for example,

is they took in 2019 and it ran through 2024 $29 million from USAID for a program, called scope to encourage contraceptive use and morning after pills in countries like Malawi, Kenya, Haiti. And when you look at the material that they're using on the ground there, it uses pretty surprising language for a Christian organization. It heavily talks about promoting reproductive health and family planning. And I just, I've got this on my phone because I wanted to read directly from it. One of the of the things they do is that they push these village women in these countries to make a commitment at the end of, say, a training session to embrace some kind of family planning via birth control

pills. And they say that they're trying to overcome the local, cultural and religious bias against this kind of family planning. Well, why is World Relief doing that? And even more importantly, why do they have this material promoting morning after pills, which we know has a secondary mechanism to prevent implantation when they're supposed to be a pro-life group? Yes, I mean that the morning after pills and even the hormonal birth control, no matter what someone feels about it, the fact of the matter is, is it always has the potential to be an abortifacient. And I would understand why secular organizations and why the Bill Gates Foundation, why they would be pushing something like that. They don't have any ethical qualms, but for an explicitly

Christian organization to be doing so. It just seems that when you get so much money from a federal government that is run by secular progressivism, that has been very clear, like you said, with USAID and the programs that they're funding all across the world that pushes, you know, that push things like abortion and transgenderism and DEI programs and funding things like in DEI-themed musicals in Ireland, like when you're getting money from an entity that has that kind of ideology, it's hard to imagine that you wouldn't have to make some compromises, that there would be some exchange. You mentioned that World Relief, we talked about this some earlier this week on the show, but that World Relief is receiving a lot of money from USAID. It's not just

a little bit, but it's a lot of money. And you're digging. Have you found that that is normal, like, it is normal for a charitable organization. I speak to a lot of charities, pro-life organizations. And I haven't met any that get tens of millions of dollars from the federal government. I haven't met, you know, people who run pregnancy centers who are getting tens of millions of dollars from USAID. So is this like a normal partnership that we see between the federal government and a Christian organization? Well, and it depends on how you define normal. because as you just said, when you talk to your crisis pregnancy centers on the ground, no, of course, they're not getting funding like that. But when you talk to some of these pseudo-religious, really

large organizations that are helping promote lax border policies, which World Relief does through its partnership with the evangelical immigration table, and which groups like the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops does in a major way, I mean, if you're just wearing your religion as a cloak and you're furthering some of these globalist aims to erase borders to promote this idea that health care means having access to abortion. If you're doing those kind of things, then yes, then they're going to get money because that's their purpose. It's sort of convince you. Well, actually, to take a Christian position means that we can go ahead and adopt some of this left-wing language that they use. And, you know, some of it has been so surprising to me. And I will read you,

this one directly from the World Relief Training module, where it describes a woman who's been working with these village women in these third world countries, and it says she's been able to bring together women of reproductive age who could not speak in public on matters of family planning and sexual reproductive health. These women are further mobilizing other women in their neighborhood to share health messages challenging current culture and beliefs. So they're really acknowledging that we're talking about Christian nations. I mean, Kenya, Malawi, Haiti, the overwhelming on the ground religious belief is Christianity. So they're saying we are having to overcome how their faith is informing their decision whether or not to take birth control and whether or not to limit how many

children they have. So that's the kind of thing that they talk about. And they also talk about equitable gender when they are discussing why these women need to embrace reproductive health in the form of contraceptives. So what we see is that this is very much a ostensibly Christian organization that nonetheless adopts the language of the left when they talk about what does women's health look like. I don't know why women's health means limiting how many babies they want to have by convincing them, gosh, it's better if you have fewer babies if culturally they want more babies. Why is that our baseline assumption when our command is actually to be fruitful and multiply?

And, you know, each couple has to decide what that looks like for themselves. But if you have a culture in Malawi that's pro having lots of babies, why do they feel they need to counter that? And I know that some people will say, well, it's a poor country and there is bad health care there. And maybe some women feel forced to have babies, maybe they're abusive situations. My answer to that would be a Christian organization should then address those issues. Like, that is what both the gospel of Christ allows us to do when we are talking about, like, what marriage should look like, how a husband should treat his wife, but also, like, our compassion that we are compelled to by Christ would have us address the health care needs, address some of the dynamics going on there that might make it dangerous for women to have more children, but to do the exact thing that, like, the Bill Gates Foundation would do, or any secular entity would. would do, the Clinton Foundation would do and say, okay, well, here's some birth control. We're not going to address the root problems, which maybe they are in other ways. But it sounds like from the

progressive language, like, let's just address these problems from a secular perspective and leave the rest up to you. That just doesn't sound very Christian. And they're not just saying, we're going to help you access this birth control if that's what you want. So I want to be very clear about that. In fact, what they're saying is that women who don't really want to access this birth control, what we're doing is implementing training programs. to convince them that they should take it. Like I said, they have one group meeting that says it starts with women who are skeptical of taking this and it leads the training coordinator how to walk them through examining their

bias against it. And at the end, it solicits from them a commitment. It asks the women, it tells the coordinator, ask the women to make a commitment before they leave today. What could you do? Will you start to talk to your husband about family planning? could you commit to taking this birth control pill? So it is something very different than just saying, hey, if you want to have access to it, I think that's a bizarre kind of thing for a Christian foreign aid group

to be doing any way promoting birth control pills. But if you are going to say that, one of the things we're going to do is make it available, that's very different from saying, we're trying to overcome your bias and get you to commit to taking it. Because at that point, it seems very much like we're moving into the realm of pushing population control. And I know, and that's really getting my wheels turning because we know that that is a, and you know, this is just as pushing the pieces together here. I'm not saying that, you know, world relief has said this explicitly, but when you look at the ideology of the people in Davos, the World Economic Forum, Bill Gates, those who are

funding these entities that are then funding these programs abroad, like one of their main priorities is depopulation, is population control. I mean, these foundations have been pushing abortion and abortifacians and birth control pills on young girls around the world for decades. And it would be a real shame if an organization that was started by the National Evangelical Association in the United States, we're also pushing that population control. And when you're explaining, like, the process or the, almost the ceremony that they go through, like, will you take this pill? Will you commit to taking this pill? Will you repeat after me? Like, it almost sounds like an altar call, like a perverse alter call of, like, of population control, which is really

manipulative to me. And even further, they talk about in this training about how, how you can get local faith leaders to also come on board because they said, you know, locally a lot of times faith leaders are the people who are the ones promoting what they would call misinformation against taking, say, the morning after pill. But they said they've had a lot of success in bringing faith leaders on board in order to get them to use their curriculum and to be educated to use their talking points. So when you talk about an altar call, I don't think it's an accident that they are discussing how do we bring faith leaders into this program to distribute these contraceptives and

birth control pills, including the morning after pill and plan B and things like that. Well, that's what Margaret Singer did. I'm sorry, but that's the same thing that she did. In the early 20th century, she started writing the letters to the black faith leaders at the time saying, hey, you're the one that's getting in the way of birth control. And so we don't want the word to get. I'm not, again, I'm just putting pieces together and drawing parallels from my perspective and opinion. But that famous line that a lot of conservatives repeat when Margaret Singer said, we don't want the word to get out that we're trying to control the black population. That was actually in a letter to faith leaders in the early 20th century to tell them to get out of the way when it

came to disseminating birth control to poor populations. I'm just saying it seems to be a similar theme going on. And that's very disturbing coming from a Christian organization funded by our tax dollars, by the way. It's one thing if you want to fund that yourself, like voluntarily, but we are being forced to fund a Christian organization disseminating abortifacient birth control in poor countries. Right. So $29 million went to just this one scope program for world relief. That's just a part of what they've gotten from the U.S. government. And when you look at their funding, it was something like in their last IRS 990, I think, filed for 2022, the vast majority, over two-thirds of their funding comes from government. Only a very small piece comes from private donors. And so when you see them

saying, this is terrible that they're shutting down this government funding, and you did see this, some of their leadership saying, Trump is preventing us from serving refugees. Well, no, he's not. He's saying that right now you're not going to do it with taxpayer dollars, because we're going to to put a pause on that until we look at this program, we start to sift through it, see if there are abuses, see if there are ways that it needs to be reformed. But that is not shutting down their work. They are still free to continue ministering to refugees with private charitable donations, which I would say is actually more in line with a biblical model of how we are to minister as Christians. Yes. And, you know, I'm thinking about all of this is like the USAID is also, it seems,

like how we kind of how the government skirts around the Mexico City policy, which is, you know, the executive order that's put in place by presidents that says, okay, we're not going to fund abortion abroad. But if the USAID is granting taxpayer funds to organizations that are pushing abortion, and I'm not saying World Relief is pushing actual explicit abortion, although we don't know with their euphemisms, like that seems to be a way to get around. that. And it seems like the righteous and reasonable position for a president to say, look, yes, we want refugees to be taking care of, but there's a lot of corruption going on here. A lot of these organizations, possibly also world relief, but Catholic organizations, even Jewish organizations

that have been operating under the guise of refugee resettlement have also been a part of illegal immigration. And you can't be allowed to enable help breaking the law against the interests of the American people. And so to me, it just seems like a common sense thing that President Trump is doing. Right. And I do think when you talked about the jargon, I do think it should be an alarm bell when we hear Christian organizations using terminology like reproductive health and family planning and normalizing that because it does serve to make the local population more. comfortable with those terms when some organization that doesn't have pro-life commitments comes in behind them using the exact same language as a euphemism for abortion. And we see that frequently.

I mean, when you hear reproductive health in the U.S., you typically now think abortion. When you hear family planning, you tend to think abortion because that's how the left uses it. And when you talk about immigration, you see the same sort of trickiness with rhetoric because you will see world relief in its work talk about asylum seekers and they will say, well, they're legal. They're here legally now. They crossed the border illegally. And then these groups, these religious immigration groups, help them apply for asylum so that they can now claim legal status. but they claim, they came illegally, and the majority of those asylum claims will be denied. So it's really abusing what the asylum system is designed for, which is not, if anyone can get across the border,

then they can claim asylum, which is reserved for religious, racial, and ethnic persecution. And to get back to Christian. And I mean, a great example of that, we just saw in Christianity today's coverage, where they did this, you know, very sad story about a man, who was arrested outside of his church in Atlanta, who was an illegal immigrant. And in the story, they say, well, he was, he came illegally, but now he was legal because he applied for asylum. The reason he applied for asylum from Honduras was because he was fleeing gangs, it said. Well, gangs is not actually a legitimate reason to ask for asylum, because that's not religious,

ethnic or political persecution. Gangs are terrible, and I'm sorry that that has happened, but we can't absorb everyone all over the world who may be dealing with a gang problem in their home country. And there were a lot of places that this particular man, like Costa Rica, Belize, could have stopped on the way, and instead they came all the way to the United States. And so that's part of the game that you see in some of this coverage with outlets like Christianity today. And I think that is part of why there's a problem, not just for, you know, what government money they would be taking, but it should also be noted that they took $5 million this year at the beginning of this year from the Lilly Endowment, which is the secular

foundation founded by the Eli Lilly Pharmaceutical Company. And the purpose of that grant was to promote diverse and global storytelling. So, I think that's the kind of thing that we're seeing already in their coverage. And, you know, I don't want to belabor the point, but I did cover that their executive news editor, Marvin Alasky, sent out a request for stories. And he exclusively asked for stories that show how these illegal immigrants and refugees and asylum seekers are being impacted. He said he wanted to know about raids. He wanted to know about churches serving a sanctuary. But he didn't ask, any stories about how American citizens are being impacted by illegal immigration. He didn't ask about

how their services are being stretched to the breaking point. He didn't ask about potential crimes that they may be suffering in their communities. Yes. And, you know, World Relief, specifically, we talked about this on our episode with World Relief this week. But on their site, they say, here are some myths about immigration and they go through five myths, which really aren't myths at all, and they don't even really counter them that well. They basically just say, oh, that's not true. Here's someone saying that's not true. And one of the things that they say is a myth is that refugee populations or immigrant populations that they commit a significant number of crimes. And they use the language. And again, I think language is so important. They use undocumented.

They don't say illegal. And that is a radical ideological word choice because you're saying that basically there's no such thing as citizenship. It just comes down to a piece of paper. It's very arbitrary. Like it's very flippant. And if that's what you think about citizenship and countries and sovereignty, then yes, I'm going to assume that you're progressive. But they cite the Cato Institute, which is very libertarian when it comes to immigration, as you know. But it's also just not true. And we looked at the data from Europe especially. And we also looked at the fact that if you are undocumented, then by definition, you don't have documents that make it possible to track how many crimes you've committed. And also, every single crime, even if it's just one that's committed by

someone who should not be here, is preventable. Laken Riley's murder was preventable. It was a policy choice. So it really doesn't matter if it's a million crimes or one crime. They're all preventable. There's no argument for adding to the criminals that are already citizens in this nation. but it's just very revelatory of where they're coming from. And again, they're not just talking about refugees. They're talking about immigrants in general. They're talking about the quote unquote undocumented, which tells me that they probably are, as you said,

playing that role of enabling, exacerbating illegal immigration, which contributes to human trafficking, to drug trafficking, to gun trafficking, which is destructive and chaotic. and I would just want to know, like, are you taking money from open society? Are you taking money from Bill Gates? Like, where else is this coming from? You just seem to be a part of an agent of chaos, in some ways at least. Well, and that's why I think so much of this USA discussion that we're suddenly having is really important. And I think it's why the Trump administration's approach right now of shock and awe has been really helpful. Because I think so many people didn't realize that these

charitable organizations are in many ways just arms of the U.S. government. So they're facilitators of government contracts. They're not operating with money from churches for the most part, you know, or just operating with a very small sum from that. And I think it's why we need to talk about, okay, it's a problem when our Christian institutions or what we think of as Christian institutions are getting a huge amount of their support from either secular foundations or from the U.S. government. So it's very much worth taking a look at this and asking, okay, if we are doing this much partnering with, say, the Rockefeller Foundation or in Christianity, today's case, the Lilly Endowment, at what point is this not a Christian institution anymore? Because it's primarily

not funded by fellow Christians. It's funded by the U.S. government or by secular foundations. Yep, and we talked about that when you were on last time about organizations like the Ant campaign, I think also took funds from the Rockefeller Foundation. And I just think it's worth asking. That does not automatically mean that an organization is compromised, but it's worth asking what a secular left-wing foundation like that, what interest they would have in funding an organization. Because, again, I go to a lot of pro-life pregnancy centers across the country that are actually doing life-saving work and soul-saving work by the Gospel of Christ, who have never seen a dime from these organizations. They've never heard from the Rockefellers. They've never heard from Bill Gates.

They've never heard from, I think you said it, is the Lilith. Is it Lilith or Lilian? Lily Endowment. They've never gotten money. And in fact, they're just trying to get their community to give the money so they can provide diapers and baby bottles to these pregnant moms in need. And so I think it's at least worth asking, like, what is the interest of the U.S. government and these left-wing organizations and funding things like the after party or Be the Bridge? And I just, I want to go back to Be the Bridge for just a second because you mentioned that this was a very destructive curriculum and you're absolutely right. We talked about it a lot at the time. I also wrote about it in toxic empathy. And by the way, like our books go together so well. And I really, if people have not read one or the other, definitely get Megan's book. If you haven't read mine, like buy them at the same time because they go together so well, all of these are examples of shepherds for sale, but they're also examples of toxic empathy. They are. Like picking a purported victim and ignoring the moral equation on the other side, the other victims on the other side. But Be the Bridge receives

20% was 20% funded by federal grants in 2023, which is so, that's a lot. That's a lot. And what's interesting about that is I think like the grift was up. After 2020, when people joined the Be the Bridge Facebook group, they read the list of rules that said, hey, white people, don't defend yourself. Hey, white people, don't say that you're not racist. Don't yell if someone calls you a name. Don't lash out at them. Just let people of color and women of color basically walk all over you and you go read white fragility. You go read the case for reparations by Tanahisi codes and Ibra Mexicans, how to be an anti-racist, but you need to sit down and listen and learn and completely manipulated

scripture to support this idea that white people today are all responsible for the sins of a group of people that lived 200 years ago that kind of shared our melanin count, like not even our actual ancestors. And somehow equated that to like Israel having to pay for this. I don't know. It just wasn't debacle. And actually it was, and I know there's been some back and forth here, but it was Neil Shenvey who did a really good and like fair critique and review of Be the Bridge at the time. But 20 percent, I feel like that's the only reason Be the Bridge has stayed afloat. 20 percent of their funding came for federal grants in 2023. That's a lot. It is a lot. And as this you said money trail is coming out. And look, people are feverishly right this second as we're talking, digging into all the money trail. So it's all just coming out right now. But, you know, others have shown that the African American Christian Foundation, 95% of its funding came from the U.S. government or Charlie Dates, who we know well, the NGO that he runs, the Together Chicago, it looks like 70% of their income is coming from the U.S. government. So, you know, all of these things, people are going to be digging into it for the next few days going, okay, why is Charlie Dates organization?

who was heavily featured in the after-party curriculum, by the way. And he was used as an example for why Christians need to vote to end systemic racism. Yeah. His organization looks to have been taking 70% from the U.S. government. So, you know, these are things that need to be explored. They need to be exposed. And I think these organizations need to answer some questions. And, you know, when Christianity Day tells you directly the 5 million,

we got from the Lilly Endowment, a secular organization is for global and diverse storytelling, we should have questions. Why does the Lilly Endowment want to see that particular kind of reporting coming from the best known Christian media outlet? Revoiced too. They took a smaller amount, but $40,000 from USAID, it looks like, in 2003 and they are the pro-LGB organization that also claims to be Christian. And again, just some questions there. Is it true that the U.S. government is purposely funding initiatives that are infiltrating the evangelical church in particular in order to make it more progressive? In the name of fighting so-called Christian nationalism, but really in dismantling biblical values when it comes to

the sexual ethic and even ideas about national sovereignty and things like that. Is that an orchestrated purposeful effort that these organizations are knowingly or unwittingly a part of? That's the question. Right. And also, it can get complicated. So just because they're not directly taking money from USA doesn't mean some of these organizations aren't getting government money through pass-throughs like the Rockefeller Foundation. So the Rockefeller Foundation will take money from USAID and then they will give it to some go-between who then gives it to the ostensible Christian organization to push some liberal policy. So, you know, it can get very complicated, but it is why it's important to know. Let me tell you all about America's Christian Credit Union. This is not just a

typical bank or a credit union. This really started as a grassroots movement to create a financial institution that supports Christian values. America's Christian Credit Union was started by pastors for the benefit of their congregants and now it's grown. It's got thousands of branches nationwide. And they still exist to serve people like you. Unfortunately, as we've seen, President Trump even mentioned this. There are some big banks that have debanked conservative Christians because of the values that they publicly espouse. That's a lot of anxiety for us to be carrying around. That is like life ruining stuff. You don't want to have to worry about that.

You want to worry, you want to know that the people that you bank with are supportive of your values and share the beliefs that you have. So that's why you should make the switch to America's Christian Credit Union. They will donate a box of every life diapers to a Christian pregnancy center for every new member who opens up a checking account. And so they also are giving a $100 bonus to your new. account. When you use My Code Alley to sign up, go to America's Christian CEO.com slash Ali Code Alley, America's Christian Credit Union is federally insured by the NCUA. What do you think Christianity today, David French, Russell Moore, what do you think their response is going to be to, for example, Trump saying that he's going to try to root out

anti-Christian bias in the federal government? I mean, they have really had no responsibility. I mean, they have really had no response to these positive things. I mean, we have seen just such tremendous pro-life wins, and I know we were all very disappointed by some of the GOP language and what Trump did with the GOP platform during the campaign. And I was disappointed too. But we have to say that since he has taken office, we have seen some really positive moves ending the Mexico City policy, ensuring that no federal tax dollars are going to fund abortion domestically, sending J.D. Vance, his first public appearance as vice president at the March for Life, making really strong pro-life comments. And I know there's others. So you would think that there would be some commentary on that

from a David French and a Russell Moore. And we have not seen that. We haven't seen it in the act that President Trump just signed to protect women's spaces and to protect children. from transgender mutilation. So, you know, I find that really odd, how they can just entirely ignore it because I will be honest with you, if the Biden administration had done any of those things as much as I was opposed to so many of their policies, I would have been the first one cheering and encouraging them to do more. So I think that's really telling that they've been so silent on so many of these things.

Yeah. I mean, it's just not even debatable some of the moves that Trump has made, especially in contrast to what the Biden administration did, that all Christians, if you're a true Christian, should rejoice over that. I mean, Trump signing that EO versus the, you know, the EO protecting girls' sports versus all of just the abominable things that the Biden administration did to advance the mutilation of children's bodies who are deceived about their gender. Like, even if you just, you're just a Genesis 1 Christian, like you just believe a little bit of the Bible. Of course, doesn't actually exist, but you know what I mean. Even if you were just to buy into the fundamentals

of the Bible, you would have to rejoice over that. And yet we have Russell Moore coming out here writing articles. Yes, Jesus was a refugee. I mean, it's insane. Just what are your priorities, really? Well, and, you know, I do go back to the money a little bit here because seeing that not only were they taking money from left-wing organizations, but from a political dark money organization like Bill Crystal's defending democracy, that should be discrediting for a news organization's editor-in-chief to have been involved in that. So developing a political Bible study that went into churches promoted on Christian College campuses by the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, that as the person overseeing the coverage at Christianity

today was involved with that and took money from an explicitly anti-Trump political organization that donated millions and millions of dollars to defeating him, that should absolutely make you look askance at all of their coverage. Yep, absolutely. So Pam Bondi, she is the Attorney General, the newly confirmed Attorney General, she said at a national prayer breakfast, or President Trump ordered Pam Bondi to set up a task force

to eradicate anti-Christian bias. This includes in the FBI. This includes in the IRS. Unfortunately, this is something that we've seen with the IRS, you know, several years ago, basically targeting Christian or conservative organizations. And then also with the FBI and the DOJ, basically calling every Christian conservative some kind of like Christian nationalist terrorist. Unfortunately, I do think this is something that's necessary. And again, it's hard for me to see how any Christian like couldn't celebrate this or get behind this. You know, it's just ironic in how God sometimes works is that someone like President Trump with the crass personality in the background that he has, that he is plain and simple making righteous decisions that are leading to the prosperity and the goodness of our country. And like, it's just time to put aside your anger and celebrate that. And thank God for that.

But, you know, money, the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. And it can get people to compromise in a lot of ways. Yes, it can. You know, yeah, I'm not tired of the winning yet. I'm seeing so many wins for policies that I wanted for so long. But when I look at it, I go, it's not who I would have expected to do these things, Lord. But maybe it took a particularly, I don't know, pugnacious type of personality to withstand the onslaught of lawfare and really just using every avenue. of government power that they could to try to take this particular man out. I don't think I would have

withstood it. I would have probably pretty early on gone, you know what? I don't need to be in politics. I'm good. Yeah. So I do think you probably needed a unique sort of personality. Yes. Okay, before we end, I just realized that I forgot to say this. And people will remember this Anglican. My notes say Episcopalian, but I'm, is it Episcopalian or Engelkin? I can't remember. The bishop that was preaching at Trump advance and basically said, you know, have mercy on the trans child, which is something that doesn't exist, but also talked about illegal immigration. So we found that her organization, Episcopal migration ministry, so I guess she is Episcopalian, was paid. It earned $53 million from various taxpayer-funded government organizations to resettle 3,600 individuals,

legal, illegal, we don't know. And that was in 2023. alone. And so I don't think it was purposeful of Trump to specifically go after this person, but it all is starting to make sense. Yes. And I do want us to remember that 50 years ago, 60 years ago, there was still a lot of really good preaching and doctrine and strong Christian community coming out of mainline churches. And over time, they have become sort of these liberal, progressive social clubs with crosses and rainbow flags. Yeah. And that's what happens when the church loses sight of its mission because now what it is is it's just a functionary of progressive causes in the U.S. government. And that's why it is so important because

I don't want my church. I don't want my denomination to turn in to what the Episcopalian Church is today. Yep, absolutely right. Well, Megan, I just wanted to ask you one more thing about what you posted publicly just a few days ago, you announced that you have been diagnosed with cancer, that you are currently undergoing treatment. And first of all, I'm just so sorry. I'm just so sorry because I'm sure that that has been very hard and sanctifying and all of those things. But I just want to hear from you how you're feeling and how everyone can be praying for you. Well, thanks for asking. I waited until I knew I was really like, okay, I'm ready to talk about it now. So I first got my diagnosis right after Thanksgiving, you know, it was a long process because you don't expect someone at my

age and I'm in good shape to have colon cancer. And I kind of want to tell everyone, by the way, it's really skyrocketing among younger people, in particular, younger women. So if you have digestive issues, push hard because when I first went to the doctor way back in March, I went to the emergency room for stomach pains. They told me, no, we think this is just colitis. and they kind of blew me off. And I knew something was wrong.

And so time went on. And so finally, right around Thanksgiving, got diagnosed with stage three colorectal cancer. So that is an advanced stage, but we're really grateful that we have caught it before stage four. So, you know, it's not as early as we would have wished, but it is certainly a much better prognosis than if I would have been at stage four, which is the point at which it has metastasized. So, you know, I would pray if you can ask for prayers that it does not metastasize and that the treatment I'm going through right now, right now in radiation and chemo, that it's effective and knocks all

this cancer out. And, you know, we already feel incredibly blessed by the people who've come around us and who are praying for us. And I went through some dark nights of the soul when we first found out. So, I mean, I had some Isaiah 38, Hezekiah turning his story. face to the wall and just crying. I did that for days. But I will say, you know, now I do feel this sense of strength and peace. And sometimes I'm like, is it okay, Lord? That I really feel fine right now. I don't feel this sense of anxiety. So, you know, I have to take that as supernatural peace. I don't

know what else it is. But I'm really touched by all the people who have told me that they're praying and reached out and grateful. Yes, well, now you have even more people praying for you. I'm sure there's a lot of people listening to this and watching this that already knew. They saw your announcement, but I'm sure there are people listening who didn't know. And now you're going on their prayer list. And I'm just so thankful that we serve a God who says that the prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working, which is such a mystery since we serve this sovereign God. Yet, like, he has ordained our prayers to actually do something and accomplish something.

And so I am going to be praying for you I already have and just praying for your sweet kids and your husband and just that you would continue to have that strength and peace that God would be glorified. But for total and quick physical healing and wisdom for doctors and all of that. And so we and all the relatable community will absolutely be praying for you. So thank you so much, Megan, for sharing. And thanks for the hard work that you're doing. Thanks for having me. It's great to be here as always. Thank you.

Thank you.