The Briefing with Albert Mohler - Friday, April 17, 2026

Episode Date: April 17, 2026

This is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.On today’s edition of The Briefing, Dr. Mohler discusses California taxpayers footing the bill for so-called sex changes for illegal aliens, an unexpected hero in Cambodia, Trump’s blasphemy post, abstaining from Hungary’s election, using creation order to argue against women in combat, and interplanetary habitation.Part I (00:14 – 10:16)So-Called ‘Sex Changes’ for Illegal Aliens? California Taxpayers Foot the BillCalifornia Provides Sex-Change Procedures to Homeless Illegal Aliens by City Journal (Christopher F. Rufo and Jonathan Choe)Part II (10:16 – 13:16)Magawa, Cambodian Hero: Cambodia Unveils Statue Honoring Landmine-Sniffing RatCambodia unveils statue to honour famous landmine-sniffing rat by BBC News (Claire Keenan)Part III (13:16 – 16:23)Why Didn’t You Call Trump’s Post Earlier This Week Blasphemy? — Dr. Mohler Responds to Letters From Listeners of The BriefingPart IV (16:23 – 20:18)I’m From Hungary But Didn’t Vote. Should I Have Voted and Chosen the Lesser of Two Evils, Or Was It Right to Abstain? — Dr. Mohler Responds to Letters From Listeners of The BriefingPart V (20:18 – 23:31)Was It Illogical For You to Use Creation Order to Argue Against Women in Combat? — Dr. Mohler Responds to Letters From Listeners of The BriefingPart VI (23:31 – 26:52)How Should We View Interplanetary Habitation? — Dr. Mohler Responds to Letters From Listeners of The BriefingSign up to receive The Briefing in your inbox every weekday morning.Follow Dr. Mohler:X | Instagram | Facebook | YouTubeFor more information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu.For more information on Boyce College, just go to BoyceCollege.com.To write Dr. Mohler or submit a question for The Mailbox, go here.

It's Friday, April 17, 2006. I'm Albert Mueller, and this is the briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview. As we are considering our responsibility in this increasingly confused age, one issue of Christian responsibility is to continually ask ourselves the question, how important is this? Here's something that lands on our table. Here's something that we hear in a new story. Here's something, perhaps a fellow brother or sister in Christ, comes to us and says, hey, did you hear this? Sometimes you look at social media and all the rest and you see just so much coming out of you. Well, what's important and what's not? Well, I think at times you have to understand that there are things that land on us and you say, I think that's big. You think about it

for five minutes and you say, okay, now I think it's bigger. You think about it for 10 more minutes. Oh, this is really big. All right. So here's a headline coming from City Journal. And it's by Christopher F. Rufo and Jonathan Cho. Christopher Rufo, very well known for exposing so much of the rot going on across the United States, particularly under the category of what you would just call woke. He's been incredibly effective and revealing an awful lot of this. Here's the headline at City Journal. City Journal, Manhattan Institute, really credible news source.

Quote, California provides sex change procedures to homeless illegal aliens. You know, at times you look at something and you say, well, is this a joke? Is this for real? Is this some kind of, you know, satirical headline? No, it's not. This is the truth. Every word in that headline is true, and every word in that headline is reported in the story is important. California, the state of California.

And so this is the state of California's basic health care system for California citizens. California provides sex change procedures. Okay, so you know what we're talking about here. in one sense you should put quotation marks around that because we don't actually leave someone's sex or gender can be changed by surgery or hormones. We just believe they can claim and maybe even in some sense believe that it can be. We don't believe that's actually how it works. But nonetheless, you do know what someone's talking about when they say sex change procedures or gender reassignment.

You know the euphemisms now. Gender affirmation surgeries. By the way, in that kind of term, affirmation you can almost assuredly know is a whole. affirming the wrong thing. All right, procedures to homeless illegal aliens. Well, you know, those are three words that are interesting together. Homeless illegal aliens, so that means illegal aliens, those who are here without legal entry into the United States. That's how the word alien comes about. They're not either citizens of the United States, nor are they here as recognized guests or visitors under some kind of official program or official recognition with some kind of visa or

similar permission to entry the country. Homeless illegal aliens, California provides sex change procedures. Okay, so here's what Christopher F. Rufo and Jonathan Cho write, quote, last month we received a report from a whistleblower who claimed that illegal aliens were staying in San Francisco's homeless shelters, period. Okay, so that's all that's there in the first sentence. Those who are here without legal status, illegal aliens staying in San Francisco's homeless shelters. Picking up again, quote, following up on the tip, we visited numerous publicly funded shelters in San Francisco, and spoke to employees and residents about their policies sometimes through a translator. Listen to this. Quote, we discovered not only that the shelters were housing illegal immigrants,

but also that they were apparently housing a population of male-to-female, transgender illegal aliens, who had hoped to obtain, quote, gender-affirming care put in quotation marks, and to our shock, state and local governments apparently are providing it, end quote. All right, sometimes you just have to wonder, are we living in a sane world? So here's the bottom line. I'll just cut through. and give you the summary of the investigative report. There are people who are coming into the United States illegally from other countries in order to show up homeless in our cities and thus to come under California's tax-supported care. And when they do so, the state of California, in all of its progressive identification,

has said that it is going to provide medical care, which includes this so-called gender-affirming care. Put quotation marks around it. Understand what we're talking about. the taxpayers of California are paying for people to come into the country illegally and then to undergo sex change procedures and treatments while in homeless shelters under their government-sponsored care. Wow. These two investigators tell us, quote, among the shelter's residence was a group of Hondurans who identified as transgender during our visit to this facility, whose executive director did not respond to a request for comment.

Surprise there, huh? Quote, we spoke with 200 men, Leica and Alondra, those are quotation marks, who identified as transgender women both indicated that the local government gave them shelter and food. One of them, quote, who wore long hair and red lipstick, was candid about this arrangement. He confirmed he was an illegal immigrant and that the shelter doesn't ask questions about immigration status. He referred to the California state system and said the state health care program, which under Governor Gavin Newsom, quote, began providing full. scope coverage to illegal aliens, which includes transgender procedures or gender affirming care, quote, he said he was receiving cross-sex hormone therapy and bore the physical signs of having done so. And quote, well, that's a discrete way of describing it. We're then told, quote,

Alondra, a muscular man in a camouflage shirt, and dyed hair tied behind his head, said he'd been in the United States after claiming asylum. According to the translator, the city government had offered to pay first and second month's rent on private apartments for him and LICA, but neither accepted the offer. in like his case because he might not be able to pay for the apartment after the second month. The article then tells us about a man claiming to be a woman, quote, wearing rouge on his cheeks and a low-cut red shirt claiming the name Jacqueline. We're told that this individual was showing off the results of hormonal and even surgical changes that have been paid for by the taxpayers of California in a homeless shelter. We're told that this self-identified, quote, trans woman from Mexico was living at the shelter and indicated that there were others in a similar situation there in the shelter.

Quote, he said that he had gotten transgender hormone treatments and confirmed that he had received, let's just say, organ implants from the state Medi-Cal program. Quote, though Jacqueline claimed to be a legal resident, he suggested the state also provides implants to illegal immigrants. Quote, even though you're undocumented, you can get them. End quote. All right, one of the big things in worldview terms is not just the scandal of all of this, the irrationality of all of this, the wrongness of all of this. It's the way the argument is made.

So there's a later part in this article that in worldview terms, I think, becomes really, really important because we are told here that the state of California, at least according to this report, provides to Medi-Cal recipients, this kind of hormonal and surgical and not to say other kinds of. of interventions. I am not about to go into the detail. This article gives us here. But we are told that San Francisco has multiple clinics to offer these kinds of procedures. And when it comes to the surgical procedures, here's what's really important in a worldview terms. Under the Medi-Cal arrangement, they're paid for, quote, under the theory that it can be a medical necessity,

as put in quotation marks for those whose gender identity does, quote, not match their gender assigned at birth, end quote. Okay, so don't worry. I'm not going to go into the details here. I will just tell you the article does. I'm not going to go into the details. I'm simply going to say, in worldview terms, that's the big thing. That is it right there. I think some people are going to look at this and say, it's a scandal just from the taxpayer funding here. Of course, it is. I think some people are going to say, this is irrational. It's incentivizing people to come in the country illegally. Yeah, well, it's not the only thing that is. Okay. The big thing is that this extension of the state's medical program is justified under the theory that it is a, quote, medical necessity to offer these

hormonal and surgical interventions for those whose gender identity, and this is the phrase used by the government, does, quote, not match their gender assigned at birth, end quote. So that is a government basically completely subverting creation order. That's a government creating an entire new, let's just say, you know, unbelievably expensive coverage for people who just by common sense shouldn't be covered in the first place. So we're not talking about someone just being given food and drink who is hungry and thirsty, not just someone being given shelter in a situation of need. We're talking about people coming for the free gender reassignment, gender-related surgeries

and hormonal treatments. And let's just say that helps to just fill out the picture of what we're up against and what Christians need to understand. And, you know, state by state, you might say this is not the issue. And thankfully, it probably isn't exactly as is reported here. But state by state, the arguments are becoming more and more clear that when you look at the idea that someone can simply demand, though he is biologically male, to be recognized as a woman, and now to have hormonal and surgical treatments, and for someone, the taxpayer to pay for

it, realize all the worldview ramifications of accepting that argument. And of course, it goes the other way. A woman claimed to be a man, et cetera. In either case, we are talking about the direct subversion of creation order with the government paying for it, officially encouraging it and saying we're even going to pay for it if you can just get yourself here even illegally. Yeah. As we say over and over again, worldviews have consequences. Some of them hormonal and surgical and legal, most importantly. moral. So I'm going to turn to questions in just a minute, but first I have to tell you about a hero.

And I'm going to be very careful in how I describe this. But trust me, you're going to find this very interesting. This is a hero now dead named Magawa. And Magawa is a hero because Magawa helped to sniff out more than 100 landmines and other explosives in Cambodia beginning in 2016. There is now a statue unveiled to Magawa there in Cambodia, and it's simply because this individual helped to save so many lives. We're talking about individually. This one explosives expert found more than 100 landmines and directed people to how just an incredible number of lives could be saved by unearthing those landmines. We are told that this particular landmine expert had an acute sense of smell and training to detect a chemical compound within explosives. The BBC, the British Broadcasting Corporation, is responding this.

And then he would alert others of the mines that could be then safety removed. We're told that during his time, quote, Magawa cleared more than 141,000 square meters. That's 1,517, 711 square feet. of land, the equivalent of 20 football fields, and could search a field the size of a tennis court in just 20 minutes. In 2020, Magawa was awarded the PDSA gold medal that is one of the highest awards given for his life-saving devotion to duty. Okay, he retired due to old age. He died in 2022. The statue was unveiled just days ago. Why is this so interesting? It is because Magawa was a rat. Okay, let's be honest. There's some folks out there who don't think anything good should be

said about a rat. And I'll just say that's a credible argument. We think about rats have done in terms of spreading plague and all the rest. And, oh, I can tell you, my wife would be first in line to tell you that they are just really detestable little creatures. However, it is interesting that we have proof positive here that rats can exist to the glory of God. And they have a sense of smell that's absolutely remarkable. But here's the thing. And I hadn't thought of this. Do you know why rats trained this way are so effective? It is because they weigh so little. They don't set off the landmines that they find under the ground.

Any creature larger than a rat would set off the explosive, killing not only the rat, but the humans around the rat seeking to find the landmines at that time. I don't know. I just find this oddly affirming of the glory of God in all of creation, even in Magawa, a rat. And I guess it tells us a lot that a statue has been raised in honor of this rat, simply because of the recognition that finding all those minds saved a lot of lies. All right, now let's turn to questions. As always, I appreciate the questions sent in by listeners.

And I'll just say this week's some statements as well as questions. So I'm glad to hear in any event. And sometimes it's just helpful for us to listen to each other and speak to one another. So I received a good number of people who were pushing back on comments I made about the post made by President Trump in which he says he thought he was posing as a doctor. And I very quickly looked at it and I saw it as another sign of bad leadership and misjudgment and frankly of self-aggrandizing kinds of publicity. No real surprise there. And I mean, that's not new. I do think that the point I made is quite legitimate. We're just talking about a recklessness in terms of leadership and all.

It's because, honestly, I don't know how to categorize many things coming from the White House and directly from the president because I don't know how much of it is reflecting deep thought and intentionality and how much of it is just, quite frankly, this looks interesting and I'll repost it. I wouldn't pretend to be in the president's mind. Several people said, why didn't you say it was blasphemous? Well, I should have. Frankly, it was over a headline having to do with President Trump in conflict with the Pope, and I'll come back to that later. And it appears in one light there, but, you know, when you do look at the robes and all the rest, let's just say it was blasphemous.

Whether it was intended or not, it was blasphemous. And if it was intended as blasphemous, that's just all the worse. And when we're talking about President Trump, we're talking about someone who's just, again, on Easter Sunday, an absolutely profane, profane posting in social media. and also the comment about Allah. It's just, you know, I honestly understand. I don't know what to do with it. Here's the thing. President Trump is president of the United States.

He is not eligible for a third term. He's not going to be up for election again. For Christians, and I'll say for those of us who voted for President Trump, certainly there's some moral responsibility in just looking at how all these things happen. But if I went back to the 2024 election again, I certainly could not vote under any circumstance for the person running against President Trump. And so one way or the other, you bear, we all bear some responsibility for him being president of the United States. I'm very thankful for many of the things he's done, many of the policies he's put in place.

I'm not thankful for the chaos that has entered in here, nor for the issue like this. There's so many big issues in the world. This is morally a problem just because it's a distraction even from all those other things. For Christians, it's a deeper issue than that. I can't judge the president's heart, so I do not know the extent to which it was intentional blasphemy. I'll just say, in terms of the image itself, yes, it was blasphemous. So anyway, those who wrote, thank you, thanks for listening. And I mean this honestly, I'm glad to hear from you. And sometimes it takes a lot of us as Christians trying to think together to figure out how we can think better about all these things.

Okay, a fantastic question coming in from a listener in Hungary. given the giant headlines coming out of Hungary, the recent election, this is a really good question. He's a listener. He tells us that when I mentioned Hungary's election, he says that he as a Hungarian citizen did not participate. He didn't vote. He says, quote, there are multiple reasons why, but my main problem was that neither party wanted to do anything against abortion in the slightest. My question is, he says, when is it wrong to choose the lesser of the evil of the two, the lesser of two evils. He says, surely there must come a point when it's wrong to choose either party, but I feel like this one was an overreaction from my side. Okay, what a kind question, how honestly put

forward. And I deeply respect the Christian conviction of this list. They're trying to struggle with this issue. I think it's not coincidental. It's in God's Providence that I'm talking about this right after talking about President Trump and recent headlines as well. I just want to say, are messy. And that's because human nature is messy. And even when you have two people, even when the issues are abundantly clear, let's just say the policy issues, let's just take the abortion issue. Let's say that that issue is abundantly clear. One candidate is going to lead to a greater number of abortions. One candidate is likely to lead to a reduction in abortions, but not a total abolition of abortion or not even a clearly pro-life statement. I'll simply say from a pro-life

calculus, if one of those individuals is going to be elected president of the United States or prime minister of Hungary, I feel the responsibility to try to make the better happen rather than the worse. And I love the way you ask the question, and that is, is it wrong to choose the lesser of two evils or the lesser evil of the two? I love the way it's put there. And I'll simply say, I think we just need to be honest and say we do that every single time. Now, we may not honestly confront the fact or even obviously confront the fact that that's what we're doing. but rarely in a political context, do you have someone who has all the character issues,

all the policy issues, all the moral conviction issues, let's just say even the larger worldview issues with absolute consistency. Politics is a very messy, messy process. This is not to say that we celebrate the mess. We certainly do not. This is not to say that we vote against our convictions.

We should not. But we are going to be in situations where we have to weigh things. And I think the most important Christian principle there is we have to know what priorities and principles are non-negotiable and unbreakable. And then we have to know, number one, that we need to be open in how we make these considerations, open in the decision process, open about our priorities and our commitments, and hope that we can honestly and openly do the right thing. And here's the

other thing. Do the right thing more often than not. I think it's a great question. And on the pro-life question, I'm not satisfied with anything less than someone who wants to abolish the totality of abortion and protect every unborn life. I'm not satisfied with that. But in terms of especially national elections, I'm not even presented with that choice. And yet the elections have big consequences. And I think there's some people making arguments as if simply exiting that process means there is no moral responsibility. Now, I would feel a greater moral responsibility in allowing something to happen that would lead to more abortions rather than fewer abortions. I'm not satisfied with that, nor am I ever going to indicate that I'm satisfied with that.

I hope there is a day in which the elections are between one pro-life candidate and an even more pro-life candidate, one pro-life candidate and an even more consistent pro-life candidate. But let's just be brutally honest. We're a long way from that. We also need to be very clear. We're not satisfied in moral terms of anything short of that. Okay, I got a very interesting question from an intelligent young man. And I use all three of those words.

I think this is a man question. It's a young question. It's an intelligent question. It's about women in combat. And this listener says, in regard to your September the 3rd, 2025 episode, well, you know, God bless you for listening back on September the 3rd, 2025. About pregnant women in combat, he then asked the question, how can you use creation order to argue against women in combat when combat itself is a violation of creation? order. In other words, how can you say whether men or women should be on the front lines when there are no front lines in creation order? He says, I agree it doesn't seem right for a woman

to fight in a war, but I want to make sure I use logical argument against this. He says, I can't quite follow your logic on this issue. Would you please expound? Oh, I can and I appreciate it. I love questions like this where someone presses and says, let's think about this further. Let's define the terms better. Let's find out what we're really talking about here. Okay, so creation order in combat. This young man says, combat itself is a violation of creation order. Well, you know, in one sense it is. It is a violation of God's of God's peace. But on the other side of creation order, here's the thing.

And this is what makes the most important issues in creation order all the more important is because they are recapitulated on the other side of the fall, even when we do have to deal with sin and death and murder and war, which is to say that there is a clear understanding of the distinction between men and women in their roles, even in a fallen world. even in a context of war, in which it is extremely, let's just say, unusual for a woman to show up appropriately in a context of combat. And yet you also have to recognize that even as, yes, combat is a rejection of creation order and the peace of God that was abundant in the garden, we also have to recognize that

God sent his people into war and even valorized men of war in the Old Testament who, for the cause of righteousness and justice and obedience to God and his law. And in defense of God's people and the nation did take military action. And they're not only not criticized for that, they're valorized for that. So I want to come back to this young listener and say, thank you for the question. If it's up to me to try to figure out just on my own, you know, how to think about these things on the other side of the fall after creation order, I would just say, I'm not even sure where to begin. Thankfully, given the Holy Scriptures, we don't have to worry about where to again. And all I want to say by that is that Genesis 3 is followed by four, five, six, seven.

You just go on in which these issues are made abundantly clear. Creation order is reasserted in a fallen world for our protection, for God's glory, and for our good. But on the other side of the fall, combat itself is always rooted in sin. But fighting in the combat where necessary, defensively is is not sin but can actually be righteousness. I also think in the in the Old Testament and also implicit in the New Testament is a very clear affirmation of the same creation order where a soldier or centurion shows up. It's a man, not a woman. All right, I also heard from a young father with children who have been following together as a family, the Artemis II mission to the dark side of the moon. This father then writes, quote, this prompted a question from our

children about humans living on the moon with the long-term goal of colonizing and exploring Mars. These are smart kids. As Christians, he says, how should we view interplanetary habitation? Okay. He writes more, but I think the question, we got the question. So here is the thing. I am not at all confident that interplanetary human habitation is going to happen. I'm not saying, I'm in no position to say it can't happen. But the sheer immensity of the challenge goes beyond. Just to understand, let's just say how honest American space officials were and how much was required to do this much. 50 plus years after we landed man on the moon and we had to get them off within hours and get them safely home. The fact is we're not a lot closer to having anybody on the moon, either in the lighter part of the moon or the dark face of the moon.

It's just not, it's a giant quantum leap and all kinds of things that are being done in terms of technology. you know, trying to create a way to get an ongoing hydrogen source, ongoing energy source, and ongoing all the rest. There are other problems, too. I mean, there is no hospital up there. You know, just look at this. You can say, well, okay, science fiction, you can have all these cities and, you know, you can have the Jetsons, you know, but right now that is science fiction. And, you know, right now they're talking about what it's going to take to do the next thing, which they want to be a landing on the moon. But it's not going to be for the establishment, an ongoing habitation. You know, I'm certainly not saying it can't happen. I'm simply saying,

hey, I was told it was going to happen tomorrow in 1972. And that hasn't happened. Fifty years later, we found it, we found it a remarkable achievement just to send human beings around the moon. So I think with answers to your children here, I think that if the Lord allows interplanetary rehabilitation, they're still going to be human beings made in the image of God, and they're still going to be tied essentially to this planet, to planet Earth, because after all, this is going to be their home, regardless of where they go and how long they can stay there. They are still human beings. They're still a part of the species that God created here on Earth, and this is still their identity. I agree with this, Father, that exploring space is like exploring the ocean, another amazing wonder

of God's creation, but the fact is we don't have cities underwater either. We do have science fiction. I think sometimes it's important to recognize, at least for now, that's what we've got. Thanks for listening to the briefing. For more information, you go to my website at Albert muller.com. You can follow me on X or Twitter by going to X.com forward slash Albert Moller. For information on the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbtsbtsd.U. For information on Boyce College, just go to voicecollege.com. I'm speaking to you decidedly. from planet earth and i'll meet you again on monday for the briefing