The Daily Signal - Heritage Scholar Ryan Anderson Takes the Helm at Ethics and Public Policy Center

Episode Date: February 1, 2021

For more than nine years, Ryan Anderson helped The Heritage Foundation confront some of the biggest cultural issues facing America. Today, he embarks on a new endeavor as president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center.    Anderson, the former William E. Simon senior research fellow at Heritage, joins The Daily Signal Podcast to talk about his vision for EPPC and why it’s important for conservative to speak up and not back down to the left. He also talks about President Joe Biden’s rhetoric vs. the reality of his policy agenda.   Throughout his tenure at Heritage, Anderson authored or co-authored books on religious liberty and marriage and even had his work cited by Supreme Court justices. One of his most memorable experiences came during a debate with Piers Morgan on same-sex marriage: https://youtu.be/vrk1R-3X9Hc   Learn more about Anderson and read his Daily Signal contributions below. https://eppc.org/news/ryan-t-anderson-to-become-next-eppc-president/ https://www.dailysignal.com/author/randerson/ Also on today's show, we read your letters to the editor and share a good news story about one way in which the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews is helping the needy across Israel this winter. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Visit square.ca to get started. This is the Daily Signal podcast for Monday, February 1st. I'm Robert Glewy. And I'm Virginia Allen. On today's show, Rob talks with Heritage Foundation Senior Research Fellow Ryan Anderson about the new role he will be stepping into as president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Ryan's work and research on issues related to the family is truly groundbreaking. He's authored a number of books, including when Harry became Sally,

responding to the transgender moment. We will certainly miss Ryan here at Heritage, but we wish him all the best as he moves on to this new role at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Also on today's show, we read your letters to the editor and share a good news story about the one way in which the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews is helping the poor and elderly across Israel this winter.

Before we get today's show, we want to tell you about the most popular resource on the Heritage Foundation website. The Guide to the Constitution. More than 100 scholars have contributed to create a unique line-by-line analysis of our Constitution. The guide is intended to provide a brief and accurate explanation of each clause of the Constitution as envisioned by the framers and as applied in contemporary law. If you want to gain a deeper understanding of our founding document,

visit heritage.org slash constitution or simply search for Heritage Guide to the Constitution. Now stay tuned for today's show coming up next. We are joined on the Daily Signal podcast today by Ryan Anderson. He's my longtime colleague at the Heritage Foundation, who today starts a new role as president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Ryan, welcome and congratulations on your new position. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be on the podcast. It's a little sad to no longer be an official member of the Heritage Family, but the Heritage Family is a forever family.

So I feel like even if my email address has a different, you know, at, I'm still part of the same team. So it's a pleasure to be with you. Well, that's well said. And you've been a longtime supporter of The Daily Signal and our work. So we are certainly grateful. Can you tell us to begin a little bit more about the Ethics and Public Policy Center for listeners who might not be as familiar? And what you hope to accomplish there is its president. Sure.

So, EPPC, figuratively it goes by the acronym, EPPC. It was started three years after Heritage was. So Heritage was founded in 1973. EPPC was founded in 1976. And it's an explicitly Judeo-Christian think tank. Right in the mission statement, it says, you know, it's the nation's premier Judeo-Christian public policy think tank dedicated to applying the Judeo-Christian moral tradition to contemporary questions of public policy.

And EPPC has played a role in foreign policy. Back during the Cold War, they were very involved in the Reagan administration and defending America's interest. They played a huge role in some of the bioethics debates during the Bush administration. Many of the President's Council on Bioethics staff members decamped to EPPC after their service in the government. Ed Whalen has been the president for the past 17 years, and I think no one does more as like a court watcher than Ed. maybe besides John Malcolm and our Meese Center colleagues, but they've been very much on top of judicial appointments, judicial activism. And what I hope to accomplish at EPPC is just to continue building on the strong foundation

that my predecessors created, there are going to be huge challenges for people who take the Judeo-Christian moral tradition seriously in the Biden administration. While Biden, you know, professes to be a devout Catholic, we're, you know, a week into his, now I guess what, a week and a half into his administration, and he doesn't seem to be governing how like it about Catholic. In fact, he seems to have already issued some executive orders and, you know, rescinded some policies that would have upheld truths about human dignity, truths about creation, truths that we can know both through revelation and through reason.

So the last thing I'll say about this is that EPPC is also a natural law think tank. So even for, you know, listeners of the Heritage podcast who aren't. particularly religious themselves, you can know many of these things through reason. And what I've done for the past nine years at Heritage has been showing, I hope, how faith and reason go together on so many of these issues of public policy, whether it was about marriage or about life or about religious liberty, now most recently about gender identity. And I hope to continue doing that work just with a different email address.

Ryan, it's so important that you stay engaged and focused on those issues, and I'm so glad to hear you say that. Also, at the time of the announcement, you spoke about helping to shape the future of conservatism. And obviously, there's so much at stake in this day and age, where do you see conservatism heading in the future? And what do you hope to bring to that discussion at EPPC? Sure. So it strikes me that one of the important lessons to learn from the Trump administration was Trump's willingness to defend the basket of deplorable. right, to use Hillary Clinton's language for, you know, the millions of Americans that she thought were deplorable. And Trump, you know, so many Republicans, so many conservatives run away from those sorts of battles.

They're embarrassed by their base. They're embarrassed by ordinary Americans who believe what Americans had always believed about life, about marriage, about gender, about all these issues. And it strikes me that Trump was, you know, willing to defend them. And if you look at what his administration did, what, you know, with so many, you know, former heritage colleagues who went into the administration, something like Roger Severino did at HHS, was that they stood up and defended those citizens and their values. And it strikes me that that needs to be a central part of any conservatism that has a future, that if we give up on, you know, some basic truths, declaration truths,

that were created equal and endowed by our creator, a certain unalienable rights, and that first among those is the right to life, right? If conservatism gives up on any of the so-called social issues, right, whether it's life, whether marriage, religious liberty, sexuality, it's not going to have the future. You might remember shortly after the 2016 election, there was that scatter plot that everyone was sharing on social media.

And all of the red dots were firmly above the top, bottom, dividing line. They were firmly in the kind of like socially, culturally conservative segment. And so the idea of, you know, socially liberal but fiscally conservative, which so many conservative leaders and kind of inside the Beltway pundits embrace, there's no voter base there. And there's just, it's just also, it's just not true to what conservatism is. So that's going to be part of it. And then I think the other thing is when you look at that scatter plot on the right to left axis,

they were right in the middle. And so I think here's going to be the challenge of how do conservatives embrace markets, embrace property rights, embrace trade, while without going to kind of any extremes, I like to quote George Will in a book that he wrote back in the early 1980s, state craft as soul craft. He said the four most important words in politics are up to a point. And so I think that's going to be the challenge for conservatives to say, all right, we embrace markets, we embrace trade, we embrace private property, but all of those things up to a point. And then the real debate's going to be, what is that point? I had written a dissertation

while at Heritage titled neither liberal nor libertarian. And I think thinking through what is a conservative approach to supporting families, to supporting blue-collar workers, to supporting kind of a working-class agenda, which is the other side of Trump that I think resonated. When he spoke of the forgotten Americans, I don't think he delivered very many policies on that, right? And so that's why it really is a question of, you know, which policies are best going to serve working-class Americans are best going to promote family formation, et cetera, et cetera. But especially that those two parts need to be there. A working class economic agenda with a conservative social agenda.

That that's a winning conservatism. Well, Ryan, over the course of your nine years and heritage, we've had a lot of these conversations and debates. You also worked on so many important issues. You authored or co-authored books. You even had your work cited by Supreme Court justices. And on issues that you mentioned earlier, like religious liberty and marriage, we saw some some big decisions in our society. What message do you have for our listeners, given the threats that we do see from the left today? I mean, that's a big question because the threat from the left today,

no one should in any way minimize them. They're very serious threats. President Biden, back when he was campaigning, said after the Little Sisters of the Poor won their third Supreme Court victory that if he were elected president, he'd take us back to where we were before the Hobby Lobby decision. President Biden, when he was campaigning, said that transgender rights are a fundamental human right, and there's no room for compromise. And he's governing this way. And so, you know, I think my message for listeners is don't allow the left to bully you into silence because this is one of their tactics, right? They call you a hater. They call you a bigot. They say you're a basket of deplorable.

They say that you're a bitter clinger, right? They try to intimidate you to silence you, to cancel you. And it only works if you go silent, right? And this is what I loved about Heritage is no one ever silenced me. No one ever censored me. I was told that so long as what I said was true, accurate, you know, I didn't manipulate the facts or the data, cook, the books, whatever, that I would never run into problems. And I never did.

Like, Rob, you never, you know, no one from the comms department, the development department, the coalitions, no one ever said you can't say that. And I think that's what we need. That would be the message to our listeners is don't allow someone to tell you you can't say that. If what you're saying is true and you're saying it in a charitable spirit, have at it. What we need right now are people who will witness to the truth, people who will not go silent, people who will not be intimidated. and realize that this is a generational struggle. It's not going to be decided within the next four years. It's not going to be decided by the next election, the next vote on Capitol Hill. We're talking about our children and our grandchildren.

And, you know, I take, you know, last Friday was the virtual March for Life. It wasn't held in person this year because of COVID. But there were people 40 some years ago. who committed to bearing witness to the truth about the dignity of unborn human life, and they made it easier for me to be pro-life, right? It wasn't easy to be pro-life in the 70s. And they committed themselves to the difficult work of building a culture of life. And now you see that it's much easier today to be pro-life than it is to be, for example,

pro-traditional marriage or pro-kind of biological sanity on some of the gender identity questions. So that would be my message to, to our listeners. Don't go silent. Don't be intimidated. Don't allow yourself to be canceled. And focus on the long game. I think that that's so important, Ryan. Thank you for giving us that perspective and advice. That's really helpful. You know, in this culture we do live in, though, which is, you know, the 24-7 news cycle. You know, we've seen so much just happened in the last week and a half under the Biden administration. You've written a piece for the Daily Signal about executive orders and how some of those executive orders, maybe most of those executive orders,

run counter to the message of unity that he ran on. Can you speak to the one that you specifically wrote about and explain why Americans should be concerned about these changes that he's made with regard to transgender individuals? Sure. I mean, so on day one, you know, he gives a an inauguration speech, stressing unity and healing, and then that very afternoon, he issues an executive order instructing all of his agencies, all of the various departments of the executive branch of government to interpret sex to mean gender identity, and then to have all of their policies follow in line. And he explicitly said this should apply to school bathrooms, school locker rooms, and school athletic programs, it should apply to housing, and it should apply to

medicine. Now, what does that actually mean? This means that we're going back to where we were in the Obama administration. In the very last months of the Obama administration, they said the word sex, now means gender identity. The Department of Justice and the Department of Education sent a dear colleague letter to all of the nation's schools saying that they had to do their bathroom, locker room, and sports policies based on subjective identity rather than objective biology, meaning a high school boy who identifies as a girl had a civil right to go into the girls' locker room to play on the girls' sports teams.

One of the things that I'm most proud about during my time at Heritage were the events that we were able to host where we brought in people who disagreed with us on so many issues but said we can partner, we can work together on the gender identity issue. And we had people who identified as radical feminists. We had LGBT leaders who said that the LGBT is different than the T.

Speaking at the heritage podium, the heritage platform. And I think those alliances are going to be important. And they could see people who disagree with us about taxes and trade and foreign policy, people who disagree with us about marriage, could see the threat of these gender identity policies, the threat to women's privacy, to women's safety, to women's equality, and then also the threat to children. And so that's where I want to mention, you know,

health care part of this is that I remember one time we had someone speak at Heritage and see she was the first lesbian readmitted to the military after Don't Ask Don't Tell was lifted and she said my being a lesbian never did anything to the body of a child and what she was concerned about was the transgender part when you get to the medical aspect puberty blocking drugs for kids double mastectomy is being performed on teenage girls uh testosterone therapy for teenage girls um This is all going to be part of the Biden agenda right now. And so it's a very extreme, very radical policy proposal that the vast majority of the Americans are not on board with. And you need not be a conservative and you need not be religious to see that.

Heritage partnered with atheists, with radical feminists, with LGBT leaders. And I think we're going to have to continue doing that. That's important work. I have full confidence that Heritage will continue doing that. The other thing I'll mention is that at the end of last week, on St. Thomas Aquinas' Feast Day, last Thursday, our Catholic president rescinded the Mexico City policy. And the Mexico City policy was a policy that every Republican administration,

pro-life administration, has put in place saying that you can't use taxpayer money to help pay for abortion overseas. and President Biden rescinded that policy. So on both the abortion issue and on some of the sexuality and gender issues, we're seeing a pretty radical agenda coming out of our current administration. We certainly are, Ryan. That is so true. And thank you for explaining a couple of those issues in more detail.

One of the things that I admire about you is a willingness to engage directly, whether it's on social media, TV, or college campuses, and also to look for others who may not agree with us 100% on all the issues, but on particular things do understand and are willing to come together and have those important conversations. Can you speak about why that is important to you and why other conservatives should embrace that same kind of approach when it comes to dealing with some of these public policy issues? Sure. I mean, so this is, I mean, I just think this comes out of my upbringing. I'm one of five boys, and my brothers and I, you know, we would argue about stuff at the dinner table. We still do. We have a family text message list. And we have at it on the,

it's actually a signal list so that it's encrypted. But you know, one of my brothers voted for Bernie Sanders. You know, one was a Jeb supporter. One was a Rubio supporter. One was a Trump. Like we, during the primaries, like, we don't see eye to eye on everything moral and political, but we love each other. And we're able to have conversations with each other. I went to a a very progressive K-12 Quaker school in Baltimore. And the vast, vast, vast, vast majority of my friends were left-leaning socially progressive. Once we were seniors in high school, they registered as Democrats. But we were still friends up until a couple years ago.

You probably remember that at a certain point, the Washington Post did a front-page profile of me in the run-up to the Obergefell decision. and then my high school more or less canceled me. The high school had posted a link to the story on their Facebook page, and then by the end of the day, they took it down and they apologized because of the criticism they received. And to a certain extent, it's kind of like water off a duck's back. It doesn't get to me. It is a little sad just in the sense of I want to do my part to say, look, we can disagree without being disagreeable. We can be friends.

We can be neighbors. My next door neighbor, I live on a gravel road now. My next door neighbors, they were flying a resist banner all throughout the Trump presidency. They had a bumper sticker on their car that said, no more fake presidents. When I went to vote, they were working the Democrat table outside of our polling station. But we've been great friends. I've been living here now for a year and a half. And every time I get my tractor stuck in the mud, they tow me out.

Every time I have a question about how to actually take care of animals, they're there. They're great neighbors. And we've been able to share meals and share drinks. And it just strikes me that that's so important. And what this means is that as a policy person, I mean, you and I work in the policy world, that we have to present ideas and arguments in a way that is accessible to people who might not agree with us. And we have to do it in a spirit of charity, you know, where we're trying to be persuasive, not just trying to own the libs, right? I mean, there's a difference between just throwing red meat at your base and actually trying to persuade people who might not agree with you. And I think a lot of this just comes out of having a family that argues with each other, disagrees at each other, but loves each other, having gone to a school where, you know, everyone didn't think the way I thought, but still being good friends with those people and now having neighbors where it's the same situation.

And so I also think just, you know, a last thought on this is that this is going to be vitally important for the future of our country. It just strikes me that we're more polarized, more divided than ever. And we need to be able to appreciate the commonalities that we do have and not politicize everything, not turn everything into you're either 100% with me or you're 100% against me. Amen to that because I think that not growing up with exactly the same circumstance, but certainly growing up with a family that had diverse political viewpoints, it also pains me to see some of the challenges that we face, not only with our friends and neighbors and even family members, but, you know, and I think this is why so many of us,

when we heard President Biden speak about unity and healing, we were hopeful, but as you yourself said, I mean, actions speak louder than words. And so it does require, you know, some tough conversations, but it also requires sincerity and, and not just, you know, getting up and talking on these, these, these great platitudes, but also actually following through. And so I applaud you for for engaging in those, those types of conversations. And I, you know, agree with you that there's, there's much work that we can do. And I think, conservatives in many respects are going to be the ones that have to lead on this issue because we come at it with, I think, a sincere and genuine approach that treats people with dignity and

respect. And so thank you for doing that. And Ryan, one of my favorite memories of your time at the Heritage Foundation is when you have the courage to step into a forum with Pierce Morgan and Susie Ormond to debate marriage. And obviously that stands out as a moment where I thought, here is somebody who really can talk about what he believes in and the traditional values that we as conservatives support so much. And do so in a forum respectfully, even if you don't necessarily on the other side,

you know, have that same respect. But I wanted to ask you, as you're parting words here on this, interview, any memories or things that you'd like to share with our listeners about your time at Heritage or words of wisdom as you had head forth to this new role at EPPC? Sure. So actually, that is my favorite memory from my time at Heritage as well. And so, I mean, let me, I mean, kind of share something with our listeners about that because, you know, some people, they look at Heritage and, you know, there are all these, like, brilliant scholars who, you know, go on TV and do interviews and, you know, write articles and books.

And what they don't realize is that, like, we have an entire team of people who are supporting us and equipping us to do that. That, you know, when I got to Heritage, I was ABD, all but dissertation in my graduate program. I had never spoken to a senator or a member of the House of Representatives before. I'm not even sure I knew the difference between a Senator and a House member. And it was our government relations team and Heritage Action for America that, you know, first took me to walk the halls of Congress to meet with. members of Congress and their staff. I remember one time speaking with Senator Mike Lee while he was in his little bunker preparing to go on the Senate floor to give a speech. And he and I were talking about all the intricacies of the marriage litigation cases. And that just doesn't happen. It's because we have an entire

team of government relations people and heritage action people. The same thing's true for coalitions. Bridget Wagner, you know, got me to speak in front of like every conservative group in America, right? And that just doesn't happen. It's because we have a great coalitions team. that can connect you with the different other groups in our movement. And then the same thing's true for communications. The Pierce Morgan interview, the backstory on that, it was my second time ever going on TV. And the only reason it went well was that prior to that, my boss, Jennifer Marshall, said, you're used to speaking in paragraphs and pages, but when you do media, you're going to have

to speak in sound bites. Part of radios that they only give you 20 to 30 seconds to answer before. where they cut you off. TV, they give you 10 to 15 seconds. And so, you know, Rob, as part of your team, you had Beverly Hallberg at the time as like our media coach. And I spent hours working with Beverly during doing media training. And then Jackie Anderson was the kind of in-house person who prepared me specifically for the Pierce Morgan interview. And I remember there was, you know, questions, you know, is he ready for this? You know, can we put, you know, I was, I think I had only been at heritage for less than a year at that point. And it's precisely because,

of all the stuff that goes on behind the scenes, right, that our listeners, our supporters, you know, wouldn't necessarily know about that then, you know, allows, you know, some of the, the research fellows to shine in this way. And all I remember that is Mike Gonzalez was the, was the VP of Coms at this point. And, you know, he signed off in the interview. I think it was Michelle Cordero who had booked it. Jackie Anderson and I then, you know, spent a little bit, you know, that afternoon doing kind of like mock interviews where she would pretend to be, both Susie Orman and Pierce Morgan. And then I took a train up to New York City.

And as the train was pulling into Penn Station, I got a phone call from the producer saying, just so you know, there's going to be another guest tonight. And so you're not going to be seated at the table with peers and Susie. You're going to be seated in a featured audience seat. But don't worry, no one from home will know that you're not seated at the table. It'll look like you're right next to them. And then as you know how it played out, like it was obvious. is that the two of them were seated, like, up on a platform at the table,

and they were, you know, kind of like talking down to me, seated in the audience. At one point, they got the entire studio audience to boo me. And I thought that it had gone terribly. When I was done, I had my phone in airplane mode. And so when I finished, I was like, oh, my gosh, I just embarrassed the Heritage Foundation. I'm going to get fired. Like, this was terrible. And then once I take my phone off of airplane mode, it starts blowing up with text messages

and emails congratulating me. And I'm like, did they watch a different interview? And I remember I got, you know, a nice phone call from my boss saying, you can never go back to academia. And I was like, oh, no, no, did I mess it up? And she's like, no, no, no, you got to stay in the fight. You can't just be a pure academic. I think my position at the time was it was like a one year visiting fellowship.

She's like, we're going to get this permanent. You're going to be, you know, at heritage for as long as you want. And the rest was history, right? I mean, I think to a certain extent, Pierce Morgan did more to help my career than anyone else. But I just remember the outpouring of support from within the building. You know, the next day I got emails from, you know, our president at the time, Ed Fulner, the EVP, Phil Truluck. People who I had never even met before, because I still was in my first year at Heritage. Rob, you wrote something like that very night for the predecessor of the Daily Signal,

the foundry, kind of like defending me. And it was just real, that was when I kind of like first knew, like, yep, I'm part of the heritage family and, you know, this is going to be something that lasts for a while. So that's really still my favorite memory. And I guess like, you know, the parting word of advice there is just for our listeners is just realize that behind every kind of like expert at heritage, there's an entire team that's equipping them and supporting them, you know, whether it's the comms people, the government relations people, the coalitions people, none of us do this on our own. And I just think that's

really important to stress kind of like the unsung heroes who don't have their name kind of in marquee, their face being placard on stuff. But, you know, that's what I'm going to miss most. I guess is another way of saying it is all of the great colleagues. You have been a great colleague. And thank you so much for recounting that story. We will make sure that our listeners can go and watch that interview with Pierce Morgan. We'll put a link in the show notes and also link to EPPC so they can find out a little bit more about the work that you'll be doing heading forward. Ryan Anderson, thank you so much for all of the contributions you've made and for writing for the Daily Signal over these past almost seven years now that we've had the Daily Signal. It's been great to work alongside you and look forward to keeping in touch and continuing to

stay in the fight for the foreseeable future. It's going to be a challenge, but we look forward to having strong partners like you to be able to be successful. Thank you. And just on the Daily Signal note, you know, I've told the editors there that so long as they're willing to still publish my stuff, you know, I fully intend to continue writing for the Daily Signal. It's a great outlet. It's a great publication. And so even though I won't be a full-time.

Heritage Staffer, you know, I fully continue to be writing for you guys. Absolutely, we will. And Ryan, I know our audience will be excited to hear that. So thank you for your generosity in that. And best wishes at EPPC and the team that you will be leading there. We wish you all the best. Thank you, Rob. If you're tired of high taxes, fewer health care choices, and bigger and bigger government,

it's time to partner with the most impactful conservative organization in America. We're the Heritage Foundation, and we're committed to solving the issues America faces. Together, we'll fight back against the rising tide of homegrown socialism, and we'll fight for conservative solutions that are making families more free and more prosperous. But we can't do it without you. Please join us at heritage.org. Thanks for sending us your letters to the editor. Each Monday, we feature our favorites on this show.

Virginia, who do you have first? Sid Sokol writes, Dear Daily Signal, in my view, the primary catalyst for the ever-increasing deterioration of Western civilization and Judeo-Christian values is the phenomenon of social justice. The prevailing culture historically is the concept of legal justice. This is widely accepted as it should be. Social justice is a socialist concept based in abstract conjecture. And Stan Wickman of Westland, Michigan writes, Dear Daily Signal, in my humble opinion, the 1776 report by the President's Advisory 1776 Commission should also be inserted in every journalism curriculum in every college and university in the United States of America.

The reporters, headline writers, and others who are tasked with creating sentences that will appear in print or on the air should be aware of the truth of our history. They must be made aware of our true history, so it is in their minds however they decide to slant their reports and headlines. If you haven't read the report, please do. President Biden has to be inundated with request to reinstall the commission by whatever name he thinks will save face so that the work they began can thrive and grow. I don't see it as a partisan issue. He should not either.

Our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution are under a severe threat. Your letter can be featured on next week's show. So send us an email at letters at daily signal.com. What the heck is trickle-down economics? Does the military really need a space force? What is the meaning of American exceptionalism? I'm Michelle Cordero. I'm Tim Desher, and every week on the Heritage Explains podcast,

we break down a hot button policy issue in the news at a 101 level. Through an entertaining mix of personal stories, media clips, music, and interviews, we help you actually understand the issues. So do this. Subscribe to Heritage Explains on iTunes, Google Play, or wherever you get your podcast today. Virginia, you have a good news story to share with us on this Monday. Over to you.

Thanks so much, Rob. Today's good news story takes us across the ocean to the nation of Israel. Winter is a challenging time for many of Israel's elderly who live in public housing. Some are faced with choosing to pay for heat or buy food. And this year is especially challenging as the pandemic is keeping many of the elderly living. in isolation. The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, also known as the Fellowship, saw the need across the nation of Israel to launch an operation to distribute winter kits to 10,000 elderly residents living in public housing. I recently spoke with Yael X-Deen, president of the

fellowship, and she explained that as the largest philanthropic organization in Israel, the fellowship is committed to uniting Christians and Jews around the mission of serving. those in need just as they are doing this winter. So this winter heating program, we're providing to 10,000 of Israel's poorest elderly who live in public housing, who oftentimes have to decide between paying for food or paying for medicine or paying for rent, that we're giving them a heated blanket, scarf, all different things, $100 to pay the heating bill. Because so often it's not only that they don't have a heater, but they can't afford the

heating bill, so that they can just get through this winter not only by staying alive, but also with some dignity. As X-Steen and the staff and volunteers of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews have delivered packages to the elderly across Israel, they have discovered that many of these men and women are blessed to receive the kits and financial support. But they're even more blessed to know that there are people who truly care about them and have taken the time. to visit them and listen to their stories. So many of these elderly are feeling so lonely. They haven't had any visitors in some of them over a year,

that they haven't left their house, that they are on their last foot of despair. And so we decided to do that when we went into these very poor cities and to these housing projects of very poor, where poor elderly in the public housing, we'd go in with a van. That's, we call it our happiness van. And we're blasting,

happy music and we have oftentimes a singer, which is an elderly who has a good voice and like singing, we'll be singing some of the songs and they'll go to their windows and they'll be singing with us and clapping and we'll go and distribute the aid that way. And so it's really also about volunteers who are going and of course following all guidelines, sitting with them on their porch while wearing masks, hearing their stories, hearing their struggles and just giving them that will to continue and to survive. And so recently one of our, one of our, one of our staff visited somebody named Rosanna, who's a 68-year-old woman living alone. She has no family, no one to be with her. And with tears in her eyes, she said to us, thank you so much for the

beautiful winter gift and the shopping vouchers that will help me especially during this time. But most importantly, I want to give a huge thanks and a personal hug to all the people for the visits and all the sacrificial giving, which means so much to me because I'm all alone. And to me, that sums it up, just all the different parts of how impactful this program is. So powerful. It's just so good to hear about the good news that's happening all over our world. If you would like to learn more about the work of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, you can visit IFJC.org.

Virginia, thanks so much for sharing that story. We certainly appreciate it. And we're going to leave it there for today. You can find the Daily Signal podcast. the Rikishay Audio Network. All of our shows are available at daily signal.com slash podcasts. You can also subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or your favorite podcast app. And be sure to listen every weekday by adding the Daily Signal podcast as part of your Alexa Flash breathing.

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