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Welcome to the Battle Crypodcast with Convention of State's Action President, Mark Metville.
You can watch the original Live Broadcast Sunday nights at 8 p.m. Eastern time on the Convention of State's Facebook and Rumble channels.
Hey everyone, happy Sunday evening and welcome to the Battle Cry. I'm your host, Mark Mechler. Glad to be with you.
It feels like I'm inconsistent lately with the Battle Cry. And I apologize for that. I'm just on the road a lot.
And it's changed for me over the years. When we first started Convention of State's, I would travel a lot from, say, January through May when the Legislators were in session.
And then we used to call it off-season, say, from June to December. The legislators were out of session. I didn't travel as much.
Now it's pretty much never ending. I'm on the road a lot. We'll talk about that more later. But I'm glad to be home and with you for this Sunday night battle cry.
The theme for this week, the Battle Cry, what I'm asking you to do is be in it for the long haul to build a movement.
And I want to talk a little bit about what I mean by that and we'll dig into that more later on.
But basically what I'm pointing out is that Republicans, conservatives, libertarians, people like us who believe in freedom, we tend to be in it cyclically.
We play politics like we play sports. It's like there's a season. And then there's an off-season, the way I was describing legislators and the way we used to do that in Convention of States.
It's every two years you gear up for the legislative seasons. You do the big fight. I mean, for the election seasons, you do the big fight, the midterm, the presidential election.
And then you kick back. You coach soccer or baseball or football, whatever you do at home, you go to church, you're doing your Bible study, you're building your business, you're growing your career, penitentiary family, but you're not paying that much attention to politics.
And you're probably not engaged year-round. And you're not, if you're a normal person, thinking about what's it look like five years from now?
What's it look like 10 years from now, 25 years from now? But if we're going to build a movement, which is what we're actually all about, and if we want to save the country what we have to be about, then we have to be thinking a year, two years, five years, 10 years, 25 years down the line.
And that's the way I think about the movement. So I'm in it for the long haul. I'm building a movement. I can't do it without you, so hope you're in it with me.
We'll go revisit that and talk some more about that before we close out the battle cry tonight. But first, we're going to go to the news of the week. And the news of the week to me is a story you might have missed, but it's really important to me, because it's about a good friend of mine.
A guy by the name of James O'Keefe, the founder of Project Veritas, the single most, I would argue most ethical, most honest, most down the middle journalist, investigative journalist in America.
This is a guy I've known James a long time. I don't even know James's politics. I've been hunting with James. I've been fishing with James. And we don't generally talk what you and I might consider politics. We're not talking Republican versus Democrat conservative versus liberal.
James is out there exposing the truth. He's out there finding people who are lying to us to the American public and exposing those lies to us so that we can see them.
He believes that we are owed the opportunity to see the reality of what goes on behind the scenes so that we can make our own judgments. And I love that about James. He's put it all on the line. He's been rated by the FBI. He's been arrested. He spent time in jail because of what he believes in what he does. He's been sued so many times.
I can't even account. He doesn't lose those lawsuits. But people assume because they don't like what he's doing. And they come after him because they don't like what he's exposing. And they came after him in a big way.
I don't know six, eight months ago. And they took his organization away from him. And it was nefarious. I'm not going to speak to the motives of the people who did it because I don't know their motives. I just knew that they removed the most effective undercover journalist in America.
At a time when he had just broken the biggest story of his entire career, the story of the corruption at Pfizer about the fact that Pfizer knew a bunch of this stuff about that they didn't care what they were doing to the American people.
He had blown that wide open. It was his biggest story ever. And they removed him from the helm of Project Veritas. And at the time that they did it.
I came out in his support immediately. They claimed he had done all kinds of bad stuff. They always do this. I read the stuff they claimed that he had done. And I thought, really, that's it. And they're removing the most effective undercover journalist in America. It was outrageous and ridiculous.
Even if what they said was true. And I don't believe most of it was. But even if it was true, he's still the most effective undercover journalist in America. Nothing warranted his removal from the company that he had built.
Unbelievable. They took it over. I think they had huge egos. I think they believed that they could run Project Veritas without them. In fact, their email saying that that James thought he was Project Veritas, but he wasn't and they could run it without him and they could raise the money without him. Well, the new story of the day.
Project Veritas has crashed and burned. They brought in Hannah Giles, who was James's co-conspirator when he did one of his early stings.
And a very famous sting. She addresses a prostitute. He has a pimp showing that Planned Parenthood was willing to sell out young girls under age girls.
So this was a huge sting at the time. Busted a corn a corn was a huge left wing organizing mechanism ended up disbanding a corn. Hannah Giles was his sidekick in that project.
They brought in Hannah Giles to quote unquote run Project Veritas. Apparently she did straight into the ground.
Today Project Veritas laid off all of their employees. It is no more. It's effectively bankrupt. I don't know whether they will file for bankruptcy protection, whether they need that or not.
But they are no more. And what of James O'Keefe? What of the man who started Project Veritas? What of the one of a kind undercover journalist willing to put it all on the line to expose the truth to the American people from people who are hiding it from us? What of James O'Keefe?
James O'Keefe? Well, he has started O'Keefe Media Group, OMG. And he is kicking butt. He's out there doing incredible investigative journalism, blowing a lid off some of these school boards across the country.
Many other stories coming. He's invented a new brand of citizen undercover journalism. He's training thousands of people with secret cameras with hidden cameras. How to do the kind of work he does all over the country.
So that none of these misdeeds will remain in the shadows or remain in the dark. So congratulations to my good friend, your good friend, America's servant James O'Keefe.
And good riddance to those who tried to take his company from him. Good riddance to those who have now crashed and burned and will find themselves in the ashyp of history of those who just try to destroy great men and women who are willing to put it all on the line.
And there's a theme here that I want you to see that goes way beyond James O'Keefe. And it's been running through the news cycle recently. And that is if you are a successful conservative movement figure, they're coming for you.
They're going to tear you down. And when I say they, I mean nefarious forces on the left. I mean people in our government in the deep state. And I mean even people on the right who should be your allies.
So we saw it with James O'Keefe, people on the right, quote unquote, came after James, as well as people on the left. We're seeing it with Matt and Mercedes Schlapp at CPAC.
These guys have done so much for the conservative movement, not just in America, but worldwide CPAC in Hungary, CPAC in Israel. These guys are globe trotters. They're spreading conservative ideas everywhere CPAC has been the preeminent conservative conference for many, many years.
I know Matt and Mercedes really well. They've been good friends for a long time. Patty and I consider them good friends hard to find a couple in the fight like like me and Patty are.
So we know them and their family and we love these guys and they're under assault. So when you hear these reports when people say bad things about James O'Keefe or bad things about Matt and Mercedes, I would say this.
Don't believe them. That should be your default position. These are leaders in the conservative movement and you should always at worst with whole judgment.
And don't expect people to be perfect. Nobody's perfect. There was one who was perfect. That's Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. But other than that nobody's perfect. I'm not perfect. Matt and Mercedes, James O'Keefe, none of us are perfect.
But people like this are stepping up and doing the hard work of leading the movement. And we've talked earlier about building a long term movement. These people have invested a decade or more more on James and Matt and Mercedes more for me of their lives in the conservative movement.
Don't begrudge them their success. Don't try to tear them down. We all have to link arms together against an existential threat that intends to destroy everything that you hold near and dear about America. And there's another one in this line here that we're seeing over the last week or so.
And that's Tim Beller. Tim is the subject of the movie Sound of Freedom. I think he's a great hero. He's out there doing what so few people are willing to do which is rescuing children from human sexual slavery.
Yeah, it's slavery. That's what I'm saying. And there are young children sold into sexual slavery. We it's too horrible to imagine Tim Beller to stare that in the face in the United States all over the world. I've been willing to go out and fight for these kids and rescue these kids that they're trying to tear him down. There was an article in Vice Magazine. Do you read Vice Magazine? Do you believe Vice Magazine? Do you trust Vice Magazine? See, I don't. And Tim's former organization, which is
hour, which is Operation Underground Railroad, are you owe you are ousted him. And I've heard from good sources that it looks like their interim CEO is now stepped down because he doesn't want to participate in that.
And it looks like this is a hit job on a guy that I think is a good man. Look, I don't know the specifics of charges against him. I don't I'm not even interested in that.
I'm going to presume when I see it in Vice Magazine that it's a hit job until it is proven otherwise. And even then it depends on what the charges are. Nobody's perfect.
And it's important that we stand together in this fight. Benjamin Franklin said after signing the Declaration of Independence, it's important that we all hang together or most assuredly we shall hang separately. And we as conservatives better get that attitude.
And by the way, this isn't just about conservatives. These are people about people who are not conservative. Maybe they're of the left and they've been quote unquote red piled and they're just seeing reality. And maybe they still consider themselves conservatives like Bill Maher or, you know, you see Dave Chappelle gets attacked now and brutalized the latest this this week is Russell brand Russell brand is a
British left wing podcaster known for some really horrible behavior a decade ago was just wildly sexually promiscuous by his own estimation was a terrible person doing terrible things. And but here we are decade later he now has what I would describe as heterodox heterodox political beliefs.
He's coming around to the right. He's married. He has kids. He's become more conservative. He's seeking real meaning in his life. And because of that for those sins. See, he was celebrated when he was a sexual divine. He was celebrated by the left. Now, apparently for women have come out and accused him of rape and sexual assault. Look, I don't know anything about those charges. I'm not talking about those charges are true or false. I find the timing incredibly suspect.
Right. Here's a guy that when he was doing all the horrible stuff nobody on the left attack him for it. But now that he's not doing that stuff anymore. They're not celebrating him anymore. They're attacking him because he's not behaving like a sexual divine. He's behaving like a responsible father and husband. And he's talking common sense. And so they're attacking him.
Look, the same thing when you look at Tim Ballard, right, the timing is suspect. Tim, the movie comes out. He's become internationally famous. He mentions that he might be interested in running for Mitt Romney Senate. See, he's a Utah resident.
And suddenly he's getting attacked. You have to look at those things and you have to question those things. And when people are on our side, you have to start with the premise that these are inappropriate attacks.
Don't believe what you hear in the media. Sit back with whole judgment. I'm just going to tell you right now. I'm standing strong with Tim Ballard. I stood strong the whole time with James O'Keefe. He's a brother of mine. And we've been in this fight together for a long time. I'm standing with Matt and Mercedes Schlapp. These are people that have done good things for the movement. They've done good things for other human beings. And we need to stand with them. We need to understand we are facing an external existential threat. And if we don't stand together.
If we don't hang together, then we will surely hang separately. I know this is something that maybe gets old. We're going to have to do it for a long time. But we're going to do it every week, which is we're going to talk presidential who's hot and who's not.
Because this changes from week to week. There's a lot of stuff that goes on. I want to look at some of the polls. I'm looking at 538, which is a polling site that compiles a whole bunch of polls. You can look at 538.com. That's spelled out.
And I'm looking at polls that ended yesterday. I'm looking at Joe Biden's approval rating. And he is desperately underwater. It looks like American research group has him underwater 56 to 40 to 16 points underwater. He's got another one has him under so 17 points underwater.
So he's way underwater. And if you compare that to Trump, I think this is interesting. Trump's always underwater. He's 14 and 15 points underwater. So actually so Biden 11 and 14 underwater. Sorry. And Trump is 14 and 15 about the same as Donald Trump.
That tells us something right about the potential matchup between them in the Republican party. If you look at DeSantis's favorabilities, he is positive six favorability.
So you got both the presidential folks are underwater. So these are interesting numbers to see the difference. Then if you look at the matchup between the presidential candidates on the right.
It looks like Donald Trump is still just absolutely running away with it. I mean, I hate to say this Trump's up 47 on DeSantis. Trump is up 26 on Rama Swami. He's up 28 on Haley. These are incredible numbers. I mean, they are crushing numbers for these other candidates.
There's another debate coming up. Trump has said he's not going to attend. He's going to go rally with excuse me with the United auto workers. I think from a political perspective, we may not like it. I'd love to see him debate. He's not going to debate. It wouldn't be a smart move for him.
Politically, it's a smart move to go hang out with the UAW instead. Go show that he supports blue collar people. We could talk about whether we support that strike or not, but Donald Trump going there is a smart political move.
I know what these other candidates are going to do. I mean, I don't know what Rama Swami does that's different. He's really kind of in the Trump lane. What does DeSantis do?
I mean, he can attack Trump on what Trump is bad about, I guess, but he's kind of a Trumpian figure. That lane that he's in was opened by Donald Trump. I'm not sure exactly what DeSantis can do. I heard Ben Shapiro say that DeSantis should do kind of what Lincoln did to Douglas follow him around the country gives speeches, challenge him to debate.
I don't know. He's going to have to do something pretty radical if his campaign doesn't fade and it seems like DeSantis's campaign. It's just it's where it was last week, which it doesn't seem to be doing anything interesting, anything new, anything unusual.
One candidate that seems to be getting a little bit of steam. That seems to be Haley. She's now pulling as of September 18th, 46 Trump, 18, Haley. So she's up a little bit from where she has been.
So really interesting to see those matchups. So I would say this week, once again, Donald Trump still hot and the other candidate still not though Haley may be picking up a little bit of steam.
So that's who's hot and who's not for the week. Let's switch over to our Southern border. I don't know if you've been following the video this week. I've been following the video. I live in Texas. The border is open.
When I say open, I mean open. We got video literally of the United States border patrol cutting razor wire put out by the Texas Department of Public Safety, the Texas governor trying to secure the border doing some things to secure the border.
I still don't think everything you can. But you have video literally a border patrol agent CBP cutting the wire, the razor wire and allowing a steady flow of migrants in over 9,000 a day. That doesn't count the Godaways.
And we're talking absolutely incredible numbers pushing towards 10,000 a day. The borders wide open. The Biden administration somehow trying to blame this on Republicans.
That's asinine. It's ridiculous. This is like something out of Orwell's 1984. Look folks, it doesn't make it true just because you say it's true. And I think people are starting to realize this.
You see New York governor, Kathy, hopeful pushing back against it. You see Chicago pushing back against it. You see the mayor of New York, Eric Adams pushing back against it.
I don't know what's going to happen. I don't know if they're ever going to close the floodgates. I don't know if they're going to acknowledge what's actually happening.
But I could tell you we here in Texas are taking the brunt of the federal government's lawlessness. The federal government is now conducting asymmetrical warfare against the American citizenry.
I've never seen anything like it in my life. I don't know how it ends, but I do know it's got to end.
When we talk about the border, I want to make sure that we're entirely clear in the language that we use because what we have going on now is not immigration.
It's not even illegal immigration. We have going on now is a full scale invasion of the United States of America. It's an invasion. It's nothing less.
It's that's the word that fits what's going on tens of thousands of people ultimately hundreds of thousands and into the millions pouring across our border undocumented unchecked the Godaways number in the millions.
We absolutely we know that there are foreign nationals other than Mexicans Central Americans and South Americans and then we know they're Chinese.
There are Indians, there are people from all over the country. We know there are known terrorists coming in. We know there are known criminals coming in.
This is an invasion. This has been used many, many, many times over the decades.
Somebody sent me an email today. Border Patrol agent I communicate with. That's very educated on this stuff. He said this particular methodology of asymmetrical warfare by foreign nations.
By flooding a nation a sovereign nation with immigrants has been used over 51 times since World War II.
This is a known method of warfare and this warfare is being conducted across our southern border by foreign enemies facilitated by our own federal government and the Biden administration.
So I want to make sure that we don't call this illegal immigration. We don't just call it a border crisis.
This is an invasion and open and hostile invasion on our southern border. I want to know what the heck we're going to do about it.
I think ultimately citizens may have to take this into their own hands because I don't know the federal government's going to do anything about it.
This is literally a border that is no longer a border. It's been completely erased.
How we talk about things not just the border but how we talk about everything really matters.
I grew up, I've always loved language. I like to write. I was an English literature major in college. I went on to law school so you learn as a lawyer that language and precision in language really matters.
I think in politics and in media the narrative matters and that means the language that you use about things actually matters.
I'm going to go through a few subjects and talk about how we talk about them. I talked about the border and that we should be calling this an invasion.
This is not illegal immigration. This is not an immigration problem. This is not an immigration crisis. This is an invasion on our southern border.
We should say that over and over and over every chance we get when people say it's not an invasion, we should push back against that.
Number two, when we talk about immigration, I get so tired of hearing this. I was on Victory Television this week and people were talking about illegal immigrants.
These are not immigrants. Immigrants mean that you follow some form of immigration process. These are illegal aliens. These are criminal aliens.
These people are breaking the law. This is not a form of immigration. This is not language we should use.
We should go back to the language that we've always used is which we call them illegal aliens. These are criminal aliens or illegal aliens.
They have broken our laws. They are not sympathetic in that way. I understand we're supposed to be human.
These are people who are pouring across our border in direct violation of our laws. They know they're violating our laws. They don't care that they're violating our laws.
They're being encouraged to violate our laws. They're being aided and abetted in the violation of our laws by our federal government. These people are criminals.
We should call it like it is. Don't buy into the language. It's easy to do because they say it on TV all the time.
We hear people say it on the right all the time. Our media says it all the time. I heard it like I said this week on Victory Television.
I love those guys. I love the Victory Channel. They're friends of mine. But there were other guests on there with me that were calling them immigrants.
They were calling them illegal immigrants. I don't think they're immigrants. I think they're criminals. I think they are illegal aliens or criminal aliens.
We got to be really clear on our language about illegal immigration. It's a border invasion.
There are external enemies, other countries that are voicing this invasion on us as part of asymmetrical warfare.
The federal government is engaged in that warfare. I'm pouring across our border are illegal aliens. Criminal aliens. Use the right language.
Three, let's talk about sex trafficking and human trafficking. This is one that drives me crazy. We talk about trafficking, human or sex trafficking.
That's a very cleansing word to me. When I say the word traffic or trafficking, does it give you bored? Is it filled with dread? Is it discussed to you? No, it doesn't. It's just a word. It's a cleansed word.
Because the right word, the word that describes what's going on or that we're talking about sexual or labor is not trafficking. It's slavery.
This is a form of slavery. Today, there are more slaves, labor slaves, agricultural slaves, industrial slaves, retail slaves, restaurant slaves, sexual slaves.
In the United States of America, then there were in the United States of America when slavery was legal. Let that sink in.
More people living as slaves today in the United States of America stripped of their basic dignity, stripped of all of their human rights, stripped of those by slave traders.
So don't call it human trafficking. Call it slavery. Call it, excuse me, call it out for what it is. I'm for the abolition of slavery.
And those in the federal government that won't stand for this, that won't stand against this. These people are standing for slavery.
They believe in sexual slavery. They won't fight against sexual slavery. They won't fight against labor, labor, labor, agricultural slavery. I'm going to fight against all of those things.
And we should call it what it is. Call it slavery because that horrifies people and ask people how much slavery are you willing to tolerate in the United States of America?
Do you think there should be a hundred thousand slaves, a million slaves? Do you think we should have child sex slaves in America?
One of them, ten of them, a thousand of them, a hundred thousand. How many sexual slaves do you think we should be allowed to have in America?
And the only ethical moral answer is zero. And I'm going to say something that might not be popular.
If you say this, if you say I will stand for zero sexual slaves in America, for zero slave labor in America, that makes you morally superior to the people who won't stand against that.
You know, we're not supposed to say that. It's taboo. No, if you're willing to fight against slavery, you're morally superior to those that aren't willing to fight against slavery right now.
We have people in this country who condemn the history of slavery in America. And we should all condemn that.
And they condemn it as a permanent stain on the United States of America, even though the United States of America was one of the first countries in the world to abolish slavery.
We're the first country in the world to abolish the slave trade. We were just behind England and buy a few months by abolishing slavery entirely.
We condemn the country or these people condemn the country for something that happened hundreds of years ago.
But they won't condemn modern day slavery. That's immoral. It's unethical and it's evil.
And I'm going to say we need to call out for what it is its slavery. Let's move on to fentanyl overdoses.
I hear about the fentanyl crisis in our country. We have the Mexican government is overseeing largest importation of a lethal drug into a country in all of human history.
It's fomented. It's funded by materials are provided by China. These are enemy nations of the United States poisoning American citizens committing murder.
These are not just overdoses. Let's not cleanse it and call them overdoses. These are fentanyl murders. Talk to the parents who've lost children, the wives who've lost husbands and husbands who've lost wives.
These are murders. These are not just overdoses. Most of these people don't know that they're taking fentanyl.
Other drugs are being spiked with fentanyl. This is done with the knowledge of the cartels. Of course, who are murdering thousands and thousands 70,000 a year minimum American citizens.
This is done. They're making money off of those deaths. These are murderers. This is true of the Mexican government.
This government is led by people who know this is going on. They refuse to stop at their murderers. These are fentanyl murders.
These are drug cartel murders. This is China murdering American citizens with the drug and we should talk about this the way it really is.
We got to be blunt. We got to be graphic. They're not fentanyl overdoses. These are murders committed by cartels drug lords committed by China committed by Mexico and aided and abetted by our federal government.
By Joe Biden himself as our president by my orcas secretary of homeland security who should be impeached and in my opinion should be in prison for these deaths or refusing to stop the flow of drugs across our southern border.
Let's go now to transgenderism and all of its crazy subcategories. How do we talk about transgenderism? Here's how I talk about it. There is no such thing as transgenderism.
Do I deny that transgender people exist? I get accused of this all the time. Yes. Yes. Yes. I deny it. There's no such thing. You cannot transition from one gender to another. That's what transgenderism is.
So yes, I deny that there are transgender people. Are there people who genuinely believe that they are the opposite gender?
I have very few of those people. They have a mental illness. We should have sympathy for them. We should have pity for them. We should provide them with the mental health treatment that they need to get over their gender.
Do I believe that there are men who fantasize about being women and women who fantasize about being men to the point where they're willing to dress like them, talk like them, act like them, stereotypically and offensively, of course.
Men and women who are willing to go to doctors and try to have their genitals cut off or modify their breasts cut off because they have this sick twisted fantasy. Do I believe that? Yeah, I do. They're not transgender people. Those are people with sick twisted fantasies and we should call them out for what they are.
I'm not going to buy into it by saying that there's a transgender movement. There's not. There's a movement of people who fantasize about being the opposite sex. And that's what it is. It is a twisted ideology and I'm going to call it out for what it is. I'm going to get slammed for this. People are going to say, I'm mean and I'm harsh. I'm just not going to buy into their language. You're not going to make me talk like you want me to talk just because you think I need to talk that way.
When they talk about gender affirming care, you know what gender affirming care is. I'm going to define gender affirming care for you. If you're a guy and you say to somebody, you know, I think I might be a woman and that person says to you that doctor that psychologist that parent that friend.
No, dude, get over it. Go look at what you have between your legs. You're a guy. Go check your chromosomes. You're a guy. Right. That's gender affirming care. That's caring for somebody.
If a woman says she's a guy, she starts dressing like a guy. Right. She starts trying to pretend she's a guy. She wants to take hormones to make her like a guy.
Gender affirming care is saying, no, look, we love you. How you are. You're a woman. That's how God made you. That is gender affirming care. It's not gender affirming care to give somebody hormones that are going to permanently sterilize them.
Ultimately cause them health issues, probably lead to cancer. That's not care. That's not care at all. That's torture. That's mutilation. And when it's done to kids, it's child abuse.
So let's call it what it is. You want to do that to kids? You say that openly. I'm going to call you what you are. I'm going to call you a child abuser. I'm going to call you a groomer. I'm going to call you exactly what you are. I am not playing into your language.
Do not give in to the language of the radical left in America, whether we're talking about the border immigration, sex and human slavery, whether we're talking fentanyl murders, whether we're talking the sick gender ideology, childhood,
childhood, genital mutilation stuff, don't give in to their language. I know that was a bit of a tirade. I'm on a rip on this one, man. I'm not going to stop. We're going to speak about these things.
As if we're living in reality because you and I we live in reality.
All right, let's switch subjects. Let's talk about what's going on with COS all over the country. I've been traveling a lot.
I was recently in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Man, the weather was so beautiful there. It is the time of year to be in Cheyenne. I was in the state capital. I was there with Senator Evie Brennan, awesome patriot.
COS activists who ran for the Senate, the Senate there in Wyoming became a senator. I was there interviewing her for the new TV show.
A couple of nights ago, I was in West Monroe, Louisiana. Home of Duck Commander, just saying great place to be. Great people. I was in a wonderful church there with Pastor Christopher Miller.
I was there with folks from Victory Television doing their Victory Thon, TeleThon raising money to keep Victory Television on the air and spreading all over the planet, spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, spreading real, true news from a Christian perspective.
So I was great being in West Monroe. And then this week, I was also in one of my favorite places, Omaha, Nebraska, the heartland of the country. And I was there with grassroots activists doing our regional summit. Winston just wandered in because he's got to do that every time I'm on.
And I was there. Winston was not there with me. Neither was Levi. I don't know if you guys can see Levi back on the couch. He's on the floor down here now. You got off the couch, you move.
Anyway, the dogs are here. They're always here. So Omaha, Nebraska, just a lot of travel going on right now. And I love the travel because I get to be out there with folks in the field.
The only legislatures pending right now, Ohio, Ohio just recently introduced the resolution in the house. There hasn't been a vote on it yet. If you're in Ohio, call your representative. Let him know to vote for it. Let him know to bring it up.
And then North Carolina, I don't know, permanent limbo in North Carolina, the legislatures having a big fight over the budget. They're not coming back into session right now. I don't know what's going to happen there.
It's very frustrating. Sometimes COS not passing has nothing to do with COS not passing. It's there having fights over other things.
Before we get a Q&A, I want to close out one thing and that's the big picture of politics. And when I say big, I don't mean just local politics. I don't mean just state level politics. I don't mean your representatives and the House of Representatives in the United States. I don't mean just to send it. I don't mean the presidency. I mean all of it.
I mean the big, big, big picture of politics. And when we're talking about that, I think one of the things that we make the mistake of doing is that every level I just talked about politics, we think of it in terms of electoral cycles.
And elections are important to get me wrong. We're going to hear 2024 is the most important election of your lifetime. And it is. They all are, by the way, every time you get a chance to vote, that's the most important election of your lifetime.
So get out there, vote, participate, register, vote early, be a poll watcher, be an election judge, run your polling place, all this stuff be involved, but that's not the only thing that matters.
And we can't pay attention to politics only every two years. And we can't be engaged in politics only every two years.
Because what we have to build if we're going to be successful in saving this country, and I believe we are, we have to build a conservative political movement that's here for the long haul.
When I say long haul the way I think about politics is I'm always thinking about what's going to happen this year. This year matters because this is what we're in.
I'm always thinking about two year cycles because two year cycles are political cycles midterm and general election cycles, right?
But then beyond that, I'm thinking five years. What does five years from now look like? What do we need to have built to be successful five years from now? I'm thinking ten years from now.
We've been running conventional states for ten years. We've got now over five million people involved. There's an incredible infrastructure that's been built over those ten years.
What does that look like ten years from now? Because I don't trust the Republican Party.
I don't trust the party to be the steward of conservative principles. I don't trust the party to be the steward and the saving grace, the saving army for the United States Constitution.
So if that's not it, it means it's up to you and me. We have to grow the conservative movement, the conservative grassroots army big enough, strong enough, deep enough, long enough for the long enough term perspective to save this country.
And for me, that's looking out even further than 10 to 25 years. That's how invested I am in the conservative grassroots movement.
That's why when I talk about attacks on people like James O'Keefe and Matt and Mercedes Schlapp and Tim Ballard, when I talk about attacks on Tucker Carlson, when I talk about these kinds of attacks that matters to me,
because if we're going to build a movement that's big enough, that's broad enough, that's going to last long enough, that's forward looking enough to save the United States from America, we have to have a 25 year perspective.
I can tell you, here at Convention of States, we have that 25 year perspective. And as we go forward through the end of this year, I'm going to be talking a lot about what does that look like a year from now?
Two years, five years, 10 years, and 25 years from now. Because we are building on that plan. We have a plan for that. We're going to be sharing it with you in stages.
And I think we're going to save the country over the next 25 years. By the way, 25 years from now, I'll be 86 years old.
I hope you guys will have taken over by them because I think I'm going to need to retire from the fight.
All right, let's go to questions. I'm just going to take a few this week or just a couple of this week because I'm running along here.
The first one is from Mark Harris, my old friend in California, says, how do you use amendments to address actions like the Supreme Court's broad interpretation of the Commerce Clause and the Court's interpretation of the general welfare clause?
Well, it's a great question. Mark, the way you do it is you actually define those clauses constitutionally. The Commerce Clause was originally intended to deal only with the shipment of goods across state lines.
It was to prevent terrifords between the states. And so we need to redefine the language. And we need to say the Commerce Clause is intended to give the federal government power over only X or X Y and Z.
We can do the same thing with the general welfare clause. Honestly, nowadays, Mark, the courts have limited the general welfare clause a little bit.
That one's not as important to me. Subquestion, how do you return power back to the states with regard to the power stolen by the ratification of 16th and 17th amendments?
I think over the long haul, we work to repeal those amendments, Mark, or to limit the power of those amendments.
16th is the federal income tax. I think we return the power of taxation to the states, and if the states remit taxes to the federal government on behalf of their people.
I think there's ways to do that, and that needs to be discussed. I think that's a long haul bill.
17th amendment is the direct election of senators. That was a horrible mistake. I think there are ways to limit the direct election of senators.
I don't think we're going to be able to repeal that. People won't like that, but we can give the right of recall to people in the states or perhaps to the state legislatures.
Sam Brent has a question. Has the COS resolution passed in the Ohio House? I mentioned earlier, it's been introduced, but it has not passed.
So, Sam, if you're in Ohio, get involved. Looking forward, I want you guys to remember, COS Live this week is going to feature Congressman Eric Burleson.
He helped Missouri become the 12th state to pass our Article 5 application. That's on Tuesday, 6 p.m. Eastern.
Always remember to join COS Live on Facebook this week with Congressman Eric Burleson.
This week's newest edition of Crossroads, which I co-host with Rita Peters. This is where faith and politics intersect, faith and culture intersect.
Rita is going to be focused on the need to take back school boards. This is something you guys have been doing as COS activists all over the country.
We're going to encourage you to continue doing this. We're going to give you resources for doing it. We're going to connect you to organizations who are doing it.
And don't forget, last week, if you didn't catch it, we celebrated the brilliance of the Constitution that was Rita and myself.
And my co-founder Mike Ferris was a great episode. Crossroads is Thursdays at 6 p.m. Eastern time.
That's it for this week on the Battle Cry. Thank you guys for being patient with me. I think I went over a little bit this week.
I love you guys. I appreciate you. We'll see you next week on the Battle Cry.
This has been the podcast version of the Battle Cry with Mark Mechler. Visit conventionofstates.com slash pod to learn more.
Thank you for listening.