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Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey
Ep 1331 | Ron Answers Your Questions About Iran, Autism, and Birthright Citizenship
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Foreign. It's good to be back with you. I'm Ron Simmons. I'm Ali's dad. And I really enjoy doing these episodes occasionally. In fact, we had a question is why are you doing so many episodes for Ally? Well, we're doing two episodes a month, but these are in addition to what Allie already does three times a week. Occasionally she'll be out of town like she was a few weeks ago and couldn't get one of those during the week recorded, and she'll ask me or someone to do it for. So occasionally I might be on a little bit more than that. But these are just two episodes a month which come out on the weekend. And on the other weekends, Ali has an episode that generally is one that's been very popular in the past that maybe you missed or you want to listen to again. That comes out. So before we get started, I wanted to remind you, if you haven't got your tickets to share the Arrows and guys, Mother's Day is coming up. What a great Mother's Day present along with something else that you could give her. But a great Mother's Day present would be a ticket and a trip to share the Arrows in October. It's going to be another great event that Allie and her team are putting on. And if you hear all the comments from last year's and the year before, you'll want to get your wife or girlfriend or mom or daughter there if you can. So just encourage you to do that. Tickets are going fast, so you want to go ahead and get yours. Now. We're going to talk about a couple of things today, a couple of key things. Today we're going to talk about the Iran war. And then we're also going to talk about autism. It's Autism Awareness Month, and that's very important to our family. As you know, Ali's brother is on the autism spectrum and we also have a nephew on the spectrum as well. So it's something that's been near to our hearts for, well, for 41 years. Daniel's next older brother is 41 years old. So it's something we've been talking about dealing with for 41 years. So we're going to, we're going to talk about that a little bit today since it is Autism Awareness Month. But first, let's talk a little about the Iran war. Give a little update on that. Oh, one thing before we get started on that. You'll notice that I have my master shirt on. It's Masters weekend. The greatest weekend of golf all year is Masters Weekend. And I don't know if you're golfers or not, but, ladies, if your husband's a golfer and he likes watching golf, give him a little grace this weekend, if you don't mind. You probably already do that. But if he wants to spend a few hours on Saturday and Sunday afternoon in front of the TV watching golf, that's okay. It's okay if he does that now, if he did that every weekend, that'd be a problem. But this weekend, give him a little grace on that. It's one of the great places in the world. I've been fortunate enough to go there a few times, and it's even prettier in person than it is on television, which is hard to imagine. Cause it's beautiful on television. But I wore this in honor of Masters Weekend, so I hope you're okay with that. But let's talk about the Iran war. It's been going on about a month now, and as you probably have heard, that we have entered into a ceasefire period. And it's a dual ceasefire, meaning that both sides have agreed to no more bombs or attacks for at least two weeks. And during that time period, there are going to be negotiations going on. Our entourage is led by J.D. vance, Vice President J.D. vance. And he has some other people with him also that will be in Pakistan. Pakistan's kind of serving as the neutral location where both sides are going to go meet. So that actually starts on Saturday. So by the time this episode comes out, they will have started discussing points to hopefully put an end to the war and also put an end to the nuclear threat, the very real nuclear threat that Iran exists for us. And we want to make sure that that's taken care of. So that's going to happen. We should be praying for that. We should be praying for discernment and for wisdom. And, you know, God uses all sorts of people to accomplish his goals. Allie just talked about that this week, that I was listening to one of her podcasts. And sometimes he uses people that you and I wouldn't want to have dinner with. Right? That's just the way it works. That's what he does. Because he is all powerful. He's omnipotent. And we just need to pray that he gives a special sense of wisdom to both sides of this. All right? And we realize that some of those people don't believe in the God that maybe you and I believe in. But that doesn't mean God can't use them to come to his right conclusions. Also, there's been some Reports out there that Iran put out this 10 point proposal that we don't even know if the leadership actually put that out. It's kind of like J.D. vance dismissed the version of that plan as little more than a random yahoo in Iran submitting it to the public access television. Who knows where it came out. But it was just ridiculous stuff, basically saying we're not going to give up anything, we still want to have enriched uranium, all that type. And it's not a serious. Even if it did come from the government, that's not a serious proposal. Here's what the proposal outlined. At least what's been reported is the key things for the United States. I want to read those to you. That Iran commits to never developing nuclear weapons. That Iran must also no longer enrich uranium within the country. They have to hand over its stockpile of already enriched uranium to the International Atomic Energy Agency. That's called the iaea, which is kind of hard to say. And Tehran would also commit to allowing the IAEA to monitor all elements of the country's remaining nuclear infrastructure. That's important because in the past they have not allowed inspectors to come in. And the only reason you wouldn't allow inspectors to come in is because you're trying to hide something. And we know now for sure that they've been hiding enriched uranium. Another thing is reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. And we'll talk about that a little bit later. That's very important also. Then we need to end Iran's support for regional proxies such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen and then Hamas that is in Gaza, that is part of the deal. You know, people talk about Iran wasn't a threat to us. Well, Iran through its, through these organizations, these terrorist organizations, they have killed Americans. They have killed Americans. All of you that are, you know, were born before 1983 should probably remember that they bombed the marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon. And that was a organization that was supported. The money came from Iran. And that's what went on in Gaza when Hamas attacked Israel. That what goes on in the Houthis that attacked people in the outside of Yemen and what have you. So it might, it might as well be Iran themselves. So to say Iran hasn't caused damage to America and our allies is just not a true story. It's not true. And how many of you can remember those hostages they took in the 70s and they were there for, forget the name, how long they were there, but they were there for like a year and just released when President Reagan became president. It's unbelievable. So for people to say that Iran's not a threat, I just don't understand that when people have been claiming, at least the regime, maybe not the everyday Iranian person, but the regime has been claiming that they want death to America and death to Israel, at some point in time, you have to believe them. If someone in your city. If someone in your city, okay, said that they wanted to kill you and they were building a stockpile of arms that would allow them to do that, and you're just. Are you just going to say, oh, it's okay, it's no big deal, that type of thing? No, you're going to do something about it, as we should. And that's what we're doing today. Now, you can. You can argue, and I get it, okay? Nobody likes loss of life. We don't like our soldiers to be killed and grieve for the parents of those people. I can't imagine what that's like. I haven't ever gone through that, so I really can't imagine. But I know it has to be heartbreaking. Also, we don't want Iranian civilians killed either. We don't. We don't want that to happen. Now, sometimes that does happen because evil people like Iranians will hide their evilness behind good people, and that causes sometimes some casualties on that side as well. However, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't still do the right thing. If you remember back, and we don't remember it, but if you've watched any television, you know what went on in World War II. At the end of World War II, we tried to get Japan to surrender. We did everything we could in negotiations, and they kept saying, no, no, no. And remember, Japan at that stage was a lot like Iran today. They had a leadership that basically thought they were infallible and they were godlike. In fact, they thought their emperor was a God. And so that small group of people didn't really care about their own people. They only cared about staying in power. And so the only way that we got them to surrender and save more American lives and more lives of other countries of which were our allies, was we had to, unfortunately, drop an atomic bomb on a couple of their cities. And it killed a bunch of innocent people. And there's no way we're going to do that in Iran. But I promise you that if we did not take out their nuclear weapons and their capabilities, that at some point in time, Iran was going to use that as leverage against us or leverage against our allies and might even have used the bomb itself, maybe not against us, but maybe against one of our allies, even some of our NATO allies that, that don't seem to understand that they were at risk as well. They're a whole lot physically closer to Iran than we are. So anyway, we just need to understand that this war is something that nobody wants, but sometimes things are necessary. Let's go on now. Let's talk about kind of how Iran exists. The oil industry is the most important industry in Iran. That's where they make their money. It has massive reserves. About 208 billion barrels of crude oil as of the end of 2024 is in reserve. So that is a huge, huge amount of oil. And their exports in 2026 alone, even though there's a lot of sanctions against them, were 4.27 billion, which means probably the sanctions weren't working very well. President Obama wants you to understand that all the stuff that you told us you were going to do to keep them from enriching Raymond, all that, all that did to them was actually make them more lethal and very, very disappointing. A lot of people think or think that, well, we can't really do anything to their oil industry because China gets so much of their, you know, get so much of the oil that China uses from Iran. Now make sure you don't mess these statistics up. 80% of Iran's oil does go to China. However, that only represents about 13% of what China imports for oil. So they import a lot more from Saudi Arabia and other countries. So if Iran did not have any oil capabilities or they were greatly reduced, that's not going to put China in a tailspin. There are other resources for that. And again, we're not trying to stoke China's ire as a result of this, but it's not quite as big of a concern as some people want to make it out to be. The US doesn't partner with Iran on any oil anymore, not since 1973 when they nationalized all the oil companies over there. We used to have a lot of oil companies over there. In fact, we were the ones that basically discovered US And British and French companies were the ones that discovered the oil in the Persian Gulf. But we don't have nothing to do with them anymore. A think tank called the center for Strategic and International Studies has written that hitting export infrastructure could cripple Iran's revenue, which we think is important. Now that will cause a spike short term in oil and gas prices. And I'm going to talk a little bit more about that in a minute. But. But we have to be able. The way you cut off a regime is we cut off the head already. Right. But now we have to cut off their power supply, and their power supply is tied to money. And the way we have to be able to cut off their money. What they're doing right now in the Strait of Hormuz, where they are trying to charge a toll for ships going through that strait, and they want it in Bitcoin. Now, why do you think they want it in Bitcoin? But Bitcoin is a lot harder to trace. That's why they want that. And so I read this morning that there are 3,200 ships that are sitting ready to go through the Strait of Hormuz, but they haven't gone through because either they're not willing to pay. And therefore, if they're not willing to pay the toll, which I hope they never would, their insurance companies, unless they know there's going to be safe passage, aren't going to insure the cargo. And that. That can be a problem. That can be a problem. So President Trump said today they better open up the Strait of Hormuz and not try to basically blackmail countries and companies to send them money. But 3200 ships, I can't imagine what that looks like. I need to look at a satellite photo of that, but it's interesting. Okay, let's talk about enriched uranium and what 60% enriched uranium means. On March 15th of 2026, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Aragichi told Face the Nation prior to the strikes that Iran had offered to dilute the uranium as a concession to show they didn't have plans for a nuclear weapon. Listen, though, real closely to what he said. I said, I offered actually, that we are ready to dilute those enriched material or down blend them, as they say, into lower percentage. So that was a big offer, a big concession in order to prove that Iran has never wanted nuclear weapons and would never want them. Are you willing to give that up now? Well, there is nothing on the table right now. Okay, now you got to unpack that a little bit. First of all, for the last, I don't know, maybe 20 years, certainly since Obama did the, the deal that gave them all their money and kind of, you know, untied the, the sanctions we had on them, they have said they're not enriching uranium, but in this alone, the gentleman said that we're willing to reduce the enrichment to dial it back. Now, if they haven't been enriching it, then why do they need to dial it back? That's a, you know, so it tells me that in fact they have been enriching uranium and at the 60% level. Now let's take a look at what actually 60% means. According to the center for Arms Control and Non Proliferation, which is another kind of think tank, the International Atomic Energy Agency calculated in its September 25 report, so less than a year ago verification and monitoring report that on the eve of June 25 attacks into Israel and the United States, what we did to remember when we went in to Iran and bombed their nuclear facilities, that Iran had in its possession, had in its possession 440 kg of uranium enriched up to 60% of the explosive uranium isotope U235. And basically what a rich enriched uranium does, it allows there to be an atomic reaction that causes the lethal ness of an, of a nuclear bomb, okay, that cause a molecular reaction. When you get it to 90% it's ready to be put into a warhead and when it impacts it causes that reaction. The IAEA notes that 60% enrichment accomplishes most of the work for 90% weapons grade uranium. Most of the separative work effort measured in swu, which is called separative work unit occurs in the very early stages. So the early stages of enrichment are kind of what gets everything ready from natural uranium to 20% or so. So that's where most of it gets started. Once at higher levels like 60, the remaining work to reach 90% is minimal, often described as only about 1% of the total effort for the stockpile. So if it only takes another 1% effort to get from 60 to 90, you can imagine that it doesn't take very long to get there. As a matter of fact, as you will see in this next video, that the enrichment that they had up to 60 was enough to create several nuclear bombs. But here is sat two. I think it's important that this material is checked, that is that we can see it soon so that we can confirm that there hasn't been any diversion. Deviation of part of this material is a lot. So even if you move part of it, you could still have amounts that would be enough to manufacture a few warheads. All right, so now this. The IAEA is affiliated with the United nations. And you know from your, from the conversations we've had or Ali's had or other things you've watched that United nations is not necessarily always friendly to the United States. And so the IAEA is not an organization that we control. And for them to say they had 60%. And that for them to say, that's enough for several nuclear bombs. I am really confused at why people want to continue to deny that Iran was and is a threat, because they are. Now, we think that most of that uranium was probably in the facility that we bombed in June. However, it's still there. And so we need to be able to go in and get that out. And that's going to be important to be able to do that. That was IAEA chief Rafael Grassi. That's who that was, that you just saw in that video or just heard speaking. Now, there were some questions that y' all had, and I wanted to answer some questions on the Iran war that specifically you had. I have to put my glasses on. Cause I can't read the small print on these. So excuse me for that first question was, and this has come from one of Ali's listeners, do you believe Iran is truly going to cooperate? I feel like that'll never happen. Well, I understand why you feel like that. But I do think. Here's what they do. I do think that they'll cooperate, at least temporarily. And what I mean by that, the people that believe that Americans and Israelis should die are probably going to continue to believe that. However, because we've crippled their capabilities so much. And if we're able to get the uranium out of the country that they've enriched and able to monitor the fact that they won't enrich it in the future, then their capabilities to cause harm to us and others are going to be severely reduced for decades. And so I think that's a win. I think we'll force them to cooperate in some way. The next question one, is Ali going to condemn the genocide that Trump proposed in his True Social on Easter? Well, Ali talked about this in a episode that she had earlier this week. You know, it's interesting to me is that some people want to believe. They pick and choose what they want to believe. When Trump says something, when he says something that they, you know, want to say, oh, that doesn't mean anything, or I don't agree with that. And then they say this, they want to take it literally. Trump is, is, does a lot of blustery and very bombastic, has a lot of hyperbole. And I think we just have to understand that that's just who he is. And, you know, we don't agree with everything. As Ali told you earlier this week, we don't agree with everything that he does. We don't agree with his stance on, you know, abortion pills. We don't agree with his stance on ivf, but there are some things we do agree with and we do agree with his policy. I agree with his policy that we're taking now and in Iran and doesn't mean that you have to agree with everything that somebody does. But I don't think he was saying that we're going to kill a bunch of Iranian citizens and wipe out their society. What I believe he meant by that is that we are going to, if we have to, that we would attack their infrastructure. And yes, that would have negative consequences on some of the civilization, some of the citizens of Iran. But attacking their power grid, attacking some of their other infrastructure, that would essentially make that whole society take a large step backwards, which nobody wants to have happen. But it wasn't about putting a nuclear bomb into Iran and killing tens of thousands of citizens or anything like that. I mean, in fact, the only people that are doing that are the Iranian regime themselves, who killed more than 30,000 of their own citizens back in January. If you remember the it says next question is when will the war be over unless talks break down. In other words, if they can get a solution based on during the ceasefire, then the, the bombing will probably be, will have already been over. We won't do that again. However, there are two flashpoints that we have to make sure that we do. We have to open the Strait of Hormuz. That's a non negotiable and we have to remove their enriched uranium and keep them from being able to do that in the future. Those are non negotiables on our part. My opinion, obviously President Trump hasn't asked my opinion, but that's what I think that most of us, if we've gone this far, let's go ahead and finish the job. All right. Where in the scripture does God condone war? Well, it's all throughout the New Testament, whether it's about Gideon or Joshua, David. Even in the New Testament, in Revelations, Jesus, as you remember, returns as a warrior and he's leading the heavenly armies to defeat the beast and the false prophet. Now, I certainly don't equate Donald Trump to Jesus, okay? But the question was, where does the Bible talk about war? God condoning war. And it's all throughout the Bible. And again, it has to be a just war. There's actually something called the just war theory. And the just war theory has six elements. I want to read them to you. You have to have a just cause. In other words, why are you doing this? There needs to be a just cause. We Believe a lot of people believe this was a just cause, that Iran was a threat to our allies and to America. You can argue whether or not you believe that or whether it was an imminent threat. And you know, for me, if there's 60% enriched uranium and only 1% more effort to get to 90, that's a significant threat. Number two, there's legitimate authority. In other words, you can't get a bunch of street gang people together and say you have the legitimate authority. It has to be an established government to have legitimate authority. Number three, it has to have the right intention. What's our intention? We're not trying to take territory from Iran. We're not trying to steal their oil. We're not trying to get any of their resources. All we're trying to get them to do is, is do not be a threat to your neighbors or to us. So I think that certainly is the right intention and it has to be the last resort. Well, we've been negotiating with Iran for 47 years and we haven't been able to convince them that not having a nuclear weapon is the right thing to do. So I absolutely think this is our last resort. And what's the probability of success? You know, that's probably the hardest one. You never know 100% in anything that you're doing. But the fact that we have been able to essentially dismantle their military capabilities other than some drones that they're still doing at the Strait of Hormuz, which we need to figure out how to take care of, then the probability of success is pretty high for us. Now, the last part of it is the hardest. Opening up the strait, getting the uranium out, that'll be the hardest part for sure. And does the good outweigh the cost? Again, go back to World War II and you know, when 100,000 civilians and military people too, but a lot of civilians were killed in the atomic bombs that we dropped, that's a lot of people. However, if we wouldn't have stopped that war when we did, there could have been hundreds of thousands of more killed. And so you have to think about does the long term good outweigh the short term consequences? And you know, I personally believe that this does. Well, see, I don't want my grandkids to have to go through another World War II scenario. What about if we never would have been able, if we wouldn't have gotten the war stopped in Japan? And we just did think about Japan today versus Japan during World War II. I mean, they were beasts. I mean, some of the if you read some of the books on the way they treated prisoners and whatever, just unbelievable. What if we're still having to deal with that? We don't want our grandkids to have to deal with what our grandparents had to deal with in World War II. And that's what happens if you don't put a stop to this. Right. We should have put a stop to Hitler. Winston Churchill. If you read any history about Winston Churchill, he was the lone voice that was saying, this guy is a problem. And we should have, we should have done something with them. Europe should have for sure, a lot earlier than they did. It cost millions of lives by not, by not doing that. So I hope that you are at least open minded about it, if you can be. All right, there's another question that came up, and it's a fair question and it's a sad scenario, but it's Christians are being bombed in Lebanon by Israel. And how we as US Christians should respond. Well, it is true that some Christians have been killed in Lebanon as a result of strikes from the Israelis. They're not being targeted. But the way Hezbollah works, that they, you know, they hide behind a lot of their innocent civilians and some of the rockets that we fired to get to Hezbollah have killed some civilians in the area. About 1800 people have been killed in Lebanon since the conflict started. About what we can figure out is somewhere less than 20 of those have been confirmed as Christian. As of now, 30% of the Lebanon's population is Christian. So it's sad, but it is a small percentage. And so I don't know that you can consider that a genocide, but it is something that, as you know, Israel and the US Tries their best not to have an impact on the civilians. All right, how do I feel about the mandatory draft and war Trump started? I think, you know, it's easy for me to say this because I didn't have to do it, but I think military service is a part of a requirement or some type of public service after someone reaches a certain age, whether that's out of high school or out of college, whatever, I think that's actually a good thing. We don't have that here, but I'm not sure that's not a good thing. And it doesn't always have to be military. Maybe there's other types of public service that people could get into and actually allow them to mature a little bit more before they head out into the world, but I don't know that that'll happen. I mean, that requires an act of Congress And I do not believe that that could happen. Secondly, how do you think the Iran war is going to affect the midterms? Well, I think it depends. If we can get a ceasefire and get what we want out of the deal, then I think it'll actually have a positive effect for Republicans. If we don't get that or it drags on, then I think it could have a negative effect because the polls show that there are a lot of people that are not in support of this action. I disagree with them, but there are a lot of that are showing that. So it just, just kind of depends on how it goes the rest of the way. Trump claims that the US has had enough of, has enough of its own oil. So why are gas prices so high? I explained this a few weeks ago. You might have missed that episode. But the way oil prices are determined, it is a worldwide market. And so the price of, for example, West Texas crude oil, which is considered one of the premier oils that are out there, is determined by supply and all over the world, not even that they're necessarily buying our oil, but also sets the price of oil that's refined and produced in other parts of the world as well. And so unfortunately, that's the way it works. Now, do I think oil and gas companies take advantage of that? Do they have to charge that price? No. To the U.S. consumer and to the U.S. refiners? No, they don't have to. Now remember, we do have to export some of our oil, all right? And again, you can blame our far left liberals on this. We have to export some of our oil to get refined and then bring back in as gasoline because we don't have enough refinery capacity because it's because of the environmental regulations that have that make it so hard to build new refineries here in the United States. Hopefully some of that's being taken care of, but that's one of the reasons. So we have to sell it on the, we have to send it out in the world market and then buy it back, which is not fun. So, but anyway, it's a world market and that's where the world prices get set. All right, so that's enough about the Iran war. Let's spend the last minutes that we have on talking about some other things. I'm going to answer some more listener questions, which I so much appreciate you sending those, but I'm also going to talk about autism. And because this is April is Autism Awareness Month and just want to kind of give you a few facts. In 2000, autism diagnosis was 1 in 150 children, 1 in 150 children born were eventually given an autism diagnosis. Look at how it's changed, though. Now it's 1 in 31, which is incredible. 1 in 31. I mean, that's what, five times? That's a 5x in less than 25 years. Something's going on. I don't know what it is. You know, Lisa and I, our middle child, Daniel, is on the autism spectrum. We did not know exactly what it was. Lisa knew she was at least. Well, first of all, she has a very good sense, as most mothers do of their children. Right. And she was also a teacher, so she knew development pretty well as to how kids should develop. And we'd already had one child, so we'd watch Justin develop, and so we could tell the differences that were in Daniel. And we, you know, went from doctor to doctor to therapist to diagnostics diagnosis, diagnostic test and things like that. And finally. And one of the worst things is not getting a diagnosis because you want to say, okay, well, let's find out what it is and then we can deal with it. Now, luckily for us, Lisa, even though we didn't have a diagnosis early on, from about the age of three or four on, she began working and doing the extra stuff that needed to be and looking for teachers that could specifically or schools that could specifically, you know, educate Daniel and what have you. But it's just gotten more and more prevalent and really don't know why. It's also more prevalent in boys than girls. About 1 in 20 boys are identified with autism, compared to 1 in 70 girls, making it roughly three times more common in boys. I don't know why that is. And again, we don't know 100% if it's genetic, if there's some environmental causes or if it's lays inside of a lot of people and then there's something environment that triggers it. Because a lot of people will say, you know, my child was developing perfectly normal until just pick an age, say age 4. And then all of a sudden, things change. Either they even went nonverbal, they started having huge behavioral issues and what have you. So we don't know. We just don't know the answer to that. But there is a lot of research going on. There's a lot more awareness of it today than there was when I was in the legislature. One of the things that we do know is that if you can get a diagnosis early and begin treating it through different types of therapy, like aba, which is applied behavioral therapy, if you can get to treating it early on that their success and being able to accomplish more and more in their life is much, much greater. So we passed a bill when I was in the legislature that would make sure that insurance companies pay include as covered ABA therapy, which is generally the best therapy to start with if your person's on the spectrum. And a lot of insurance companies were denying that therapy, but at least in Texas, if you live in Texas, your insurance company should be covering that therapy. And I would encourage you to make sure. Don't a lot of people take it as shame too, in that, in that, oh, you know, I don't want to admit it. Well, that's the worst thing you can do. Okay. There's no, I mean, you don't control whether your child has autism or whether your child has this or that, just like we don't control if our child ends up being a great athlete. Those things just, it just happens to some, some people. Good, bad, whatever. So don't. I would just encourage you not to avoid it, right? Or not to say, well, there's just a little something here. And maybe it is just a little something. And every, you know, it'll all just, you know, he's neurotypical or she's neurotypical. But you can't, you, if you wait long, if you wait until they're in the fourth, fifth, sixth grade, now that's better than nothing. But if you wait and you're, you denied until then, and then you finally admit that there's something going on as you diagnose, it's much, much harder to reach their maximum capacity. And so I just encourage you to, if you see something again, like if you see something, say something. If you see something, then get involved with experts that know what to look for. It's pretty easy to test for autism. It's non invasive. They can basically do some testing that will give you an idea whether or not they are on the spectrum and what types of therapy they might need. A couple of other things, you know, you might remember. In 2025, the FDA discussed a medication that would be a possible treatment for people with autism. But what they have since found out, and they just put this out this past month, is that leucovorin was approved only for rare genetic orders that affects how folate is transported to the brain, but not for the more general treatment of autism. Some people, autism is affected by this, this, how this folate is transmitted in the brain. And that medicine might work for them, but it's not a general. Everybody with autism should, should Take that. So we got some questions on autism, which I want to make sure that I get to and answer number one, how to talk to your in laws. How are we to. To care or pay for their autistic son when they can't someday? Man, that's, you know, that's the biggest challenge that parents have is if, if they have a child that's autistic, it's likely, unless there's some other comorbidities, that that child is going to live longer than the mom and the dad. And what happens after that? Gone. We think about that with Daniel all the time. Now we have set up a supplemental trust that will help pay for his care. But Justin and Allie, his two brother and sister, are going to have to be involved in that and they're going to have to help make sure he has the right care at this time. Daniel, because of his. He also has epilepsy. He can't live alone because it creates a physical danger. If he just had autism and he had the right type of safety net around him, then he could probably live pretty independently. Not 100%, but pretty independently. But there are a lot of people on the autism spectrum that are non verbal or they have huge behavioral issues where they can be violent if not handled in the proper way. And so I think that what you have to do, you can't worry about hurting somebody's feelings. You have to talk to them about how that's going to work and who's going to play what role. And I get it. You may have your own family dynamics that you're having to deal with, but if you're a sibling and your parents pass away and you have a sibling that's on the spectrum or some other type of disability, I absolutely believe that God calls us to care for those people. You and I both, we don't want to get to heaven's gate and say, hey, you didn't take care of your disabled brother or sister, man, I tell you what, I got a lot of other issues I'm going to have to deal with. I don't want to have to deal with that one, that's for sure. How do you foster deep sibling relationships with your kids while also dealing with special needs? That's a good, that's a really good question. My wife wrote a book, self published it, and it's called I Would have said yes. And if you want a copy of that, we've got a few left. It's not in print anymore, but I'm happy to send you one if you email me ronsimmons.com, no cost to that if you have someone on the spectrum in your family. Because it's interesting, in that book, Allie and Justin both wrote a chapter. Now, the book was written probably 10 years ago, so a lot of things gone on since then, but they wrote a chapter about how it affected them. And some of the stuff we didn't know until we read the book. And you do have to be aware of that. You can't have everything in your life center around that one issue. You have to try to be as normal as you can be in a family unit. And that might mean you have to take the, the person with the challenge along with you on some things that you wouldn't normally do if it was just them. Or you may have to get some type of care for them while you're taking your other children out for other types of issues. But you can't just shut everything else down and everything revolves around that one child. It's hard not to do that because you care for them and you hurt for them and you want things to be better for them. But you have to make sure that your other children, and they need to have empathy. And I think they will have, although sometimes they may be angry about it. But over the long run, I believe that they'll understand that it's a situation that you and your spouse can't control. They can't control, and that they'll understand that. But you still have to do whatever you can to make sure that you are working with your, what we call neurotypical children in this in as neurotypical way as possible. And the other question that we have here, that again, this print's too small. It says this is a, it says, does. Do I have any advice on encouraging words for those of us that are raising children with autism? My little one will likely be diagnosed this year. And finding Christian perspectives on the topic can be difficult. Difficult sometimes. Well, yeah, it really can be. And I hate to even say this, but I'll tell you, some of the most disappointment that Lisa and I have had has been in the Christian community. And it's not that Christians don't care. They do care, but they just sometimes don't know how to deal with it. And what I would say is that you have to be a strong advocate for your child, even in Christian environments, even in your church or in your Christian school or in your community. You have to be an advocate. And you, while you need to be kind in how you advocate, you don't need to worry about whether or not that's going to hurt somebody's feelings or not. All right? At the end of the day, it's how your opportunities, you give your child. And that might definitely cause some concerns inside your church that aren't providing what they need, what you need. You know, if you know someone that has kids that are on the spectrum, here's the best thing you can do for them. Let's say that you don't have any. Okay. Your kids are all neurotypical. I'm sure they've got their own challenges, but they don't have this challenge. The best thing you can do for a family that you know that has a childhood and autism, in addition to praying for them, is being able to be there, giving them some respite, saying, hey, can we. Can we come over and keep your son or daughter while you go out to dinner? Give them some respite care. Because it's very difficult on relationships. Some 75 to 80% of families who have children with autism, those marriages end in divorce. 75 to 80% because it's a strain. I'll tell you, it's a strain sometimes. On mine and Lisa's relationship now, we've been dealing with it through a long time, so we figured out how to adjust for it. But it's not something that we still don't think about and we still don't deal with every day. And it puts a strain. It's an abnormal strain. Just like any disability is when you have a child that's disabled. So I would just say, as a parent, advocate for your child, as a friend, step in there and do something. Don't just sit back and, oh, I'm sorry. I wish it wasn't that way. Step in there and do something. Get active. Be a real friend. Okay. Be a real brother, be a real sister, be a real uncle, be a real aunt and do something to help out that family, if you can. All right, we're going to speed through some of these questions. So, anyway, the autism. Let me finish up on autism real quick. Autism Awareness Month is, Is a month that, you know, we hope more people are thinking about. You'll see a lot of stories come out on that. There's a great video that Ali reposted on X the other day. That was where this. One of the ESPN announcers, I think it was espn, their child. They brought their child with autism on the set, and he's a big Philadelphia Eagles fan. So just, just, just Google autism, Philadelphia Eagles, and you'll see this video. It's incredible. And the dad who's one of the, one of the commentators for ESPN just, I mean, he can't keep it together, which I couldn't hardly keep it together watching it. So I understand how that is. All right, here's some questions. Rebuttal for Democrats. How has Trump made our lives better? Immigration. Okay, We've got millions of people that were here illegally that are not here anymore. And he's continuing to try to clean that up. That in itself is as big a win. If that would have been all he had done, that would have been a. That is a huge win for America. All right, the DEI rollback, all this mess about diversity, equity and inclusion rather than equality. Rolling back all those programs within the federal government. Remember shutting down the US Aid program that was funding all of these liberal causes around the world that were going against traditional values in America. I believe that making us safer, this Iran thing, I think we're a safer country today than we were. We've got good relationship in the Middle east now that we didn't have with places like Bayran and UAE and Saudi Arabia. I think that the real wages for people have grown. In other words, the average wage in America has grown faster than inflation has. Now, there's probably a little bit of a diversion in that now while the oil prices are higher. But in 2025, the average wage was up about 4% and inflation was up about 2.6 or 7%. So. So you had a real growth in your spend, in how much you could afford by a full 1%. And that hadn't happened in the last four years. So that's a very good thing. All right, I'm 15 year old but want to start investing. How do I go about that? Just, you can go with Fidelity or Schwab or any of those and just set up an account. And I would recommend that you put it in AN S&P 500, which is diversified stock portfolio of the largest 500 companies in the United States. Just put your money in there. You can put a little bit each time. There's no minimum amount. I would recommend that you do that. I just met your dad on my flight. I'd love to hear more about his healthcare work. I was on a flight yesterday coming home from Birmingham, Alabama. Young lady that sat by me, she would fit the demographic primarily of Ally's show. So we got to talking a little bit about what she did. She was a healthcare consultant and I, I sit on the board of a healthcare company and she. Anyway, so somewhere around the flight, I Thought, you know what? I need to see if I need to introduce her to Ally's podcast. So I said, hey, my daughter has a podcast that you might like. And I showed her on my phone what it looked like with Allie's picture on there. And so she looked it up on Instagram and saw that 42 of her friends were already following Allie. And she said, oh, I've got to check this out. And she's really interested in healthcare. And her name was Lainey. And so, Lainey, I hope you're watching this this weekend, but we're going to end up talking about healthcare in the future because actually, there's another question about that, which hopefully we'll have an episode on healthcare in the future, because that is a real cost issue for most Americans. As Lainey and I talked about yesterday on the airplane, what can be done about Minnesota? People have to elect new leaders. You have to elect new leaders in Minnesota. Those of you that are in Minnesota, if you don't like what's going on there, which you shouldn't, and the federal government's doing the best they can to try to clear up the fraud. In fact, they just, you know, a judge just approved the fact that the Trump administration was going to withhold $240 million of Medicaid funding. And they. They sued the Trump administration over that, but the judge just ruled that they could withhold that for now. So hopefully. But you got to elect new leaders. Let's see here how to move from a budget based on this month's earnings to last month's earnings. Amanda, you sent me this. Email me more details on that because I'm not sure I understand your question, if you don't mind. Whatever happened to Nancy Guthrie disappearance? She's still missing. Unfortunately, it's unlikely that she's alive. I don't think there's anything come out in the last 24 to 48 hours on that. How does it make you feel as dad to have your daughter sharing the gospel to the world? It just makes me feel very thankful for her mom. It really, really does. And of course, for Allie, too. But she watched her mom and she talked about this on an episode recently. She watched her mom on her knees and in the Word every day of her life and her grandmother as well. So I'm very appreciative, very much appreciative of that. Only real option for private education in my area is Catholic school. Is Catholic school or public school? I think it depends on the school itself. I do think some of what they would learn in a Catholic school about the Bible and about Jesus, and those things are positive. If you have a good public school and it's a conservative public school, which are harder and harder to find, then I would be okay with the public school. But that's up to you. You might want to think about starting your own private Christian school. You know, maybe that's what God's calling you to do. Who knows? What is God's. What. When is God okay with divorce? Well, that's a good question. You know, my mom and dad went through divorce, so we lived through that. I don't think divorce is the unpardonable sin. But I do believe that the only biblical reason for divorce, in my opinion, is abuse. If you're suffering abuse, you shouldn't stay in a relationship where it's abusive. You shouldn't. And sometimes it's physical abuse. Sometimes it's very much mental and emotional abuse. I do not believe that God would honor staying in a marriage that has that. What about birth? Birthright citizenship? Thoughts? I don't believe in birthright citizenship for people that come just to do that or are what they call anchor babies. They come in, have the baby, and go home. That happens. There's a lot of. I forgot how many. I heard a stat the other day on how many Chinese babies have been born here and then taken back home. But it's hundreds of thousands, maybe more than that. And so I don't think that they will, but I hope that they would better define what it means to be born in America and subject to our laws and regulations and what have you. Hopefully that Supreme Court would be right on that, but I don't have a good feeling about that. Your thoughts on spanking as a discipline for children? I think everybody's different on that. You know, I think that abusing children is absolutely incorrect. I think a swat on the behind with a wooden spoon when they need it when they're little, like our kids got. I think that's okay. But you. You should never. And I wasn't always good at this, but you should never spank your child in anger. You got to go cool down before. If you decide to spank, you got to go cool down before you do that. Every child is different. You know, Daniel probably hardly ever got a spanking because all you had to do was look at him like you were disappointed and he was as remorseful as you could be and would never do that again. Our other two kids weren't exactly like that. So it depends on the child. But I don't Think there's. There's something wrong with it if that's something that you believe in. But just remember, you have to be measured in that. And do not do that when you're angry. Do not do that when you're angry. Let's see here. Define the confusing tax return terminology again. Email me on that specifically, if you don't mind, Jackie, and I'll give you specific questions. I'll be happy to do that. What was the one thing that you're most proud that you taught your daughter to pass down? I think the one thing that I'm most proud of is I taught her to ask the next uncomfortable question. And I taught her, I mean, to take the next uncomfortable step. And I also taught her to question. To question things. Don't just believe things as you read them or see them. Question them. Dig into that. And she's really naturally good at that anyway. But I think she did get some of that from her mother and myself. All right, what is unlimited atonement from a biblical standpoint and Christian standpoint? What unlimited atonement essentially means is that everyone that wants to become a Christian, that accepts Jesus as their savior, can be a Christian. That's called unlimited atonement. Now, universal atonement, which this is what you need to find out from your church that you're asking about. Universal atonement means that everybody's gonna be saved, okay? And that's just not biblical. Now, there are also people that believe in limited atonement. Limited atonement is more of a Calvinistic approach, is that it's already been preselected that who's going to be saved, and we just have to find who those people are. Again, you could be on both sides of that. Here's what I'll tell you, is that if you know somebody that needs Christ, lead them to Christ. It's not your job to determine whether or not they're going to be saved. It's your job to open up the door for them. And don't try to think you know who. If there is an elect, don't think. You don't think. It's your job to try to know who the elect are. We should be living our faith into everybody. But you do need to know whether or not your church believes in universal atonement versus unlimited atonement. Okay, That's. That would be important. How would you counsel a family where the Christian dad left for a homosexual lifestyle? And so I tell you one thing, I wouldn't want my kids around him. He's Your dad. So, you know, however you decide to have relations, your business. But I would not want him having influence on my children, his grandchildren, unfortunately. Just. Just not. I mean, you can. You can love the person but not be exposed to the lifestyle. And that's probably where I would. Where I would be. All right. Should we try for kids after being married two years? Yes, yes, absolutely. Have kids now. I don't know your whole situation. Obviously, I'm not your dad, but I think you've been married two years. You guys know each other. You know what your scenario is. But yeah, we need more good people to have children. No question about that. We need more good people to have children. So the Lord has used Allie to change my heart on having children, but has not yet changed my husband's heart. How to pray for and encourage him on this. Well, I do think that you're on the right track. I think you just want to pray, Lord, if you will soften his heart, if you will soften my husband's heart, and that he will not want to have children, because he knows I want to, but because he knows that is within your will for us. And I think if you push too hard, then it will damage you and your husband's relationship. But I think that you have to just. Just pray they'll soften your heart. If there are other people that you know, men that could counsel him and talk to him, and he would be open to talk about why he's resistant to that, then I think having those people in front of him and him spending time with them would be important as well. But I know that's tough on you. But just be patient, okay? Be patient. The Lord's probably working on him. If I had to guess, is it difficult for you to see your daughter attacked in the media? Absolutely. I don't like it at all. I want to go hit people. I don't, but I want to. I do not. You know, I don't. I wouldn't like it. It was my son either. But your daughter, you're especially as a dad, certainly more protective of them as well. So, anyway, I just. I just hope that you enjoy these sessions and you have some great questions. Again, you can email me anything specifically RonSimmons.com and happy to answer you. Also, if you want one of my books, Life Lessons from the Little Red Wagon, you can order that off of Ally's merchandise site or you can email me ronsimmons.com and I will sign it for you and then you can send me a check. I think it's 20 bucks for it after you get the book. Don't send me anything before you get the book because I want to make sure that I remember to send it to you. Sometimes I forget. And again, if you've asked me a question and I've forgotten or I haven't answered you back, please email me again because it kind of got through the bottom of my email chain. And then also, if you haven't had Ali's book, Toxic Empathy, How Progressive Exploit Christian Compassion. This is a great book. New York Times bestseller. Another great gift you could give on Mother's Day. It's incredible book. So appreciate y' all listening again and we look forward to seeing you next time. Have a good day.