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It's Wednesday, April 29, 2026. I'm Albert Mohler, and this is the Briefing. A daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview history was made yesterday as King Charles III of the United Kingdom stood in the U.S. house of Representatives speaking to what is defined as a joint meeting of Congress. And that's only the second time in all of American history that a British monarch has done so. So let's just do a little bit of math here. So going back to 1776 and going forward, how many British monarchs have actually ruled during that time? The magic answer is 10. There have been 10 crowned heads of Europe between George III in 1776 and Charles III in 2026. Okay, another number. How many reigning monarchs, how many kings or queens of England have visited the United States of America in person? The magic answer is three. Only three. King George vi, his daughter, Queen Elizabeth ii, and her son, King Charles iii. And so one of the things we need to note is that throughout most of American history, there was no British monarch who set foot on American soil. Now, you can understand some historical reasons why that might be the case, but one of the things that simply has to be remarked as a matter of historical consequence is that during the period between the last part of the 19th century and the middle of the 20th century, the United States of America and the United Kingdom grew together into what was understood as to be an absolutely vital political and cultural union, described by the late British Prime Minister Winston Churchill as the English speaking peoples. Now, the technical term for that is the Anglosphere. That is the sphere in which English is spoken, the English speaking peoples. Once again, as I mentioned, Winston Churchill had an American mother. He had an aristocratic British father. He was actually born in Blenheim Palace. Speaking of Winston Churchill, as a descendant of the Duke of Marlborough, it is the only house in Britain that is called a palace. That is not a royal residence. That tells you something about the significance of the Duke of Marlborough and his house. And so it is just really important to recognize that what we take for granted right now, and that is the incredibly close relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom, that's actually something that was produced by history, and it was produced after, let's just state, the unpleasantness of a Revolutionary war and then continued war, including the War of 1812. So fast forward. And now you have the United States and the United Kingdom. And even as there are some very difficult spots right now in the road, some potholes in the road of that relationship, President Trump clearly does not believe that British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has given adequate support to the American and Israeli effort against Iran. And I think the. The President is right in that the reality is that the relationship goes deeper than this president and this prime minister. And there's also a bit now of historical necessity that pulls the United States and the United Kingdom together. And by the way, also about a trillion. That's with a t. A trillion dollars of common annual financial interest and exchange. That's very, very significant. But all right, there's another very interesting factor here that Americans usually don't have to think about, and that is because our president is head of government and head of state, constitutionally we don't have a monarch. As a matter of fact, the monarchy is basically considered anathema to the American constitutional order. However, we could arguably have substituted an inherited monarch, a hereditary monarchy, with an elected monarchy of sorts. That's exactly what some European authorities, including British authorities, said of the American presidency once it became developed. But here's the crucial difference. The American president is both head of state and head of government, the chief executive officer of the nation. In the United Kingdom, you have two different offices, two different roles, and that is the monarch who is the head of state. Thus, all the state occasions, speaking from the throne, the state events, state dinners, are hosted by the monarch, head of government, that is the prime minister. And that has now a very long history in the United Kingdom. And so when you have a British prime minister show up in the United States of America, he is unquestionably the head of government. And he's the head of government in a way that there is no actual analogy in the United States in our constitutional order. And that's because the prime minister, though appointed to the role by the monarch, is actually, in effect, the leader of the largest political party in terms of the number of seats in Parliament, or at least the head of a coalition of multiple parties. But whoever is at the top of that political heap is almost always invited by the monarch to become the prime minister. And then, at least in theory, the prime minister can't lose a vote in Parliament. And that's because he only becomes, or she only becomes prime minister because of having the majority of the votes. Now, that means a party policy is enforced. Then the prime minister can't lose a vote in Parliament if there is a free vote. Things could be different. But as you can understand, it is to the party's advantage, the majority party's advantage, to maintain the discipline. The point is that the king or queen of England, whichever is the crowned Head. And that's another thing to remember. When Elizabeth II was the queen, she had inherited the throne from her father, King George vi. She was married to Philip, who was, in hereditary terms, the prince of both Denmark and Greece. But she's the one who inherited the throne. And he was referred to as the consort, the prince consort. By the way, he wasn't officially a prince for part of that period because in order for the marriage to take place, he had to renounce. That's his princely status, only to be given a British princely status a matter of time thereafter. So here's the thing. This is a state visit. When the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom or the Prime Minister or the person who holds a similar office comes to the United States, the Prime Minister is not making a state visit. That's referred to as an official visit. So he's an officer, or she's an officer, but not the crowned head, not the head of state. And so it is really interesting that the prime minister cannot host a state dinner, only the monarch can. And the monarch makes the state visit. And by the way, this is something Americans love. So, you know, Americans supposedly will not have a king, we won't have a king. But we really like them to visit. We really like kings or queens to visit. And in particular, we really want the British king or queen to visit because we do feel a commonality, we do feel a continuity. And, you know, as much as we don't want a king, we really like the show. We really do, and we like the show here in the United States. And there is something, let's just be honest about this. There's something deeply American about welcoming the monarch, the king or queen of Great Britain, to visit the United States in order more or less to say, hey, see what we've done? And so, to put it another way, the one historian has put it, for much of the history of the United States of America, the US Was the junior partner to Britain, which, after all, was the nation that possessed an entire empire. But by the time you come to the end of World War II, the junior partner has become the senior partner. And let's just state that it is a matter of democratic reality. It's a matter, we ought to note, that Britain, once adjusted to this position, has maintained it with a great deal of dignity. And I think that's something that is missing in many analyses looking at this. It has been a very constructive relationship. But Britain also feels like it is in the position to speak the truth to the United States when other nations may not feel that they have that privilege. And thus there has been a special relationship. It's special in more ways than one. One of the things I love showing people in London is the private bathroom, the private toilet of Prime Minister Winston Churchill down in the Cabinet War Rooms where he was hidden and basically running the government there, underneath the City of London. Feet, feet, cement, asphalt protecting. And as we now know, it wasn't going to be adequate if there was a direct hit by a Nazi bomb. Nonetheless, that's where Prime Minister Winston Churchill convened his government, there in that underground bunker. And there was this private toilet to which the Prime Minister would go. And he had spent some time in there. Only later was it discovered that the plumbing wasn't even connected. There was a secret phone line in that place for the Prime Minister of Britain to speak on a direct line to the President of the United States. And the deepest issues of state consequence during one of the darkest periods of human history came down to the ruse of having the British Prime Minister sitting in a room on a toilet, disconnected from any plumbing, in order to sit there talking to the President of the United States under conditions of maximum secrecy. And you can look at the visit now of King Charles iii, and, you know, a lot of this is known only to people who are fascinated with such things. But, you know, in Washington and in London, there are a lot of people fascinated with such things, and one of them happens to be the current President of the United States. President Donald Trump, who often speaks of his mother's Scottish origins, has a very strong feeling of affinity with the British throne. And this is a big moment, this royal visit, the state visit's a big moment for President Donald Trump, and he appears to be enjoying every minute of it. Meanwhile, it is also important to recognize that this is a state visit, and that what King Charles said yesterday there to this joint meeting of Congress was not so much his personal opinion, even though those were his personal words. The message was something that represented the government of the United Kingdom. And. And so it is the government of the United Kingdom, it's the prime minister, Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who's kind of out of step with the president, and vice versa at the moment. And so the king, as the head of state, would not get up and say anything contrary to the will of the government that would break Britain's constitutional order. But he did put the message in his own words. And one key to looking at this was how King Charles III made such a positive statement about NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and its indispensability to holding peace and defending democracy. So it is interesting. All of this is a part of the pageant of government. And here's something Christians need to think about. Government is going to have some kind of pageant. Government is going to have a military parade in terms of tanks on the streets. Government is going to have some massive show of force. Government's going to make a statement about the importance of government. It is absolutely refreshing and something we should recognize. When you have two constitutional forms of government, basically from one tree of liberty able to celebrate something like this together, that's a remarkable achievement. It's a remarkable moment in human history. And even though, yeah, there's a lot of attention to the celebrity part of it, the substance underneath is something that's very much more important. Okay, next, looking at developments here in the United States, big headline story yesterday. Here's the headline in the New York Times. I mentioned that because the headline and the way a paper puts the headline forward tells you a lot about the story. Here's the headline. Trump administration secures new indictment against Comey. That means former FBI Director James Comey. And the interest in that headline is the fact that the editorial intention behind that headline is to say not that the Department of Justice secured a new indictment, not that justice is served by a new indictment, but rather that the Trump administration secured a new indictment. Now, here we have to just be intellectually honest and say this is a very mixed up situation. But here's the point. When it comes to Donald Trump and James Comey, we have a very, very understandable political standoff. It's basically shootout at the OK Corral. And when you're looking at President Trump, he has a long memory and he remembers the direct obstruction that was offered by James Comey when he was director of the FBI. And President Trump blames James Comey for complic in the Russiagate situation. And so you very clearly here have animosity between the two men, okay? So that animosity is not, it's not politically equal because one is a presidential appointee and the other is president of the United States. That's a very different position. So Donald Trump in his first term terminated James Comey as director of the FBI. And James Comey has sought some form of political revenge ever since. And here's where this issue comes up. Now, I just want to point out, before we get to any of the politics of it, and the politics are convoluted, let's just say that right up front, you're dealing with two titanic political personalities. But one of them, and Only one of them is President of the United States. The other one in this case was indicted for basically making a threat to the life of the President of the United States. That is a very serious criminal charge. And of course, that comes up this week because of what happened last Saturday night at the White House Correspondence association dinner, where you had a man who entered planning to kill members of the Trump administration and later, by his own words, also intending to kill the President of the United States. This is not just some kind of idle language we're talking about here. And you would think that the director of the FBI would know it. I raised that because the specific indictment is traced to something that happened about a year ago when James Comey, who was then vacationing on the Atlantic coast, was posted a photograph on social media in which he had arranged. He himself had arranged seashells that said. 86. 47. Okay, so that was interpreted as in remove that, terminate. 86. That's a term pretty well known to people. 47. Donald Trump is the 47th president of the United States. It certainly looked like a threat to the President of the United States. Did James Comey, the former director of the FBI, intend that literally as a threat in terms of something he was going to carry out? I think almost assuredly not. From that perspective, it was a very dangerous posting, nonetheless, simply because it was made in public. This is a former director of the FBI. It seemed to be, as the Justice Department has successfully argued in getting this indictment, it seemed to be a direct threat to the health and even to the life of the President of the United States. I think most people do not believe that James Comey personally intended to bring anything like that about. The point is that he is the former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He is a former senior executive in the US Department of Justice. This is a man who has no excuse for not knowing what he was doing. That's the truly fascinating part of all this. Of course, Mr. Comey and his legal team are going to say this is a political prosecution. And you know what? It, in terms of some factors might be, let's just say might be. But when he himself admits that he put those numbers into shape and he took the photograph and he posted it on social media, and he is the former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, it's really hard to say, oh, he hadn't thought about that before. Next, we need to turn to a very important story here in the United States, and this has to do with the fact that official federal charges have now been brought against the group known as the Southern Poverty Law center, splc, and the SPLC has been one of the most effective left wing organizations in this country. And it has had a particularly perverse effect on the culture because it has addressed itself, claiming that it exists now basically in order to go after what are described as hate groups. And these are groups that have to do with violating the moral judgments of the Southern Poverty Law Center. So let me be really clear about how all this came about. And I want to just remind Christians, this is really, really important to us because many Christian organizations have been targeted as hate groups by this organization. And that's a part of what's going on here. Now, that is not what why the indictments were handed down. They've been charged with wire fraud and with other very serious criminal charges, and that also includes conspiracy to commit money laundering. And what it amounts to, by the way, just to fast forward, is that the Southern Poverty Law center is now basically caught. And to some extent they've admitted doing this, having sources inside organizations they describe as hate groups. And some of them undoubtedly would correctly be identified that way, such as the KKK and other groups like that. They were paying people inside those organizations. And we're not talking about a little bit of money, we're talking about a lot of money. And so it really does become a matter of fraud. And it becomes also a matter in many cases, you look at this and you say, well, you know, these transactions raise giant moral questions. And of course they do. But the moral questions go all the way back to 1971, when the Southern Poverty Law center was put in place. No one can doubt that there was a very legitimate problem in the civil rights era of all kinds of groups violating the civil rights of African Americans. There's no doubt about that. The Southern Poverty Law center was at least explicitly, by claim, put into place in order to mobilize a legal effort to support those who were being oppressed and discriminated against. The point is that the Southern Poverty Law center, established in Montgomery, Alabama in 1971, has now, and over the course of the last several decades, it became something far beyond and far different than what it advertised itself to be in 1971. And it came about largely because the Southern Poverty Law center became an extremely, and I mean extremely rich organization. So rich that as a matter of fact, they have a current endowment. Endowment. And this is as of figures in 2024, so we're talking, you know, already outdated figures. They had an endowment of $822 million when they came up with just one program to oppose what they described as the radical right. Just years ago, they raised unbelievable amounts of money, in some ways just multiplying their annual income and they were paying fat salaries. Now, this organization has been very controversial even on the inside. There have been charges about discrimination and all kinds of injustices inside the movement. Morris Dees, who was the co founder of the organization, basically the head of the organization for years, was fired by the organization without any real adequate explanation. And furthermore, the organization transformed itself into a radical engine on the left. And here's what they did. They would identify what they called hate groups, and then they would publicly warn people not to participate in these organizations, not financially, to support these organizations. They went after the donor list of some of these organizations. They used bare knuckle tactics. And we now know they were doing so even as they were paying informants in these hate groups. And again, the charges are denied, but the actions aren't denied. In other words, they're not saying they didn't take place. They're saying they were justified. They were basically funding some of the very things they were raising money against. And to state the very least, that's morally wrong. It's going to be up to the lawyers to decide if it also amounted to criminal conspiracy. At the very least, it really exposes this group for who they are and who they've been for a very long time. Now, here's some of the things that you need to know. Groups such as the Family Research Council and Focus on the Family, I was on the board of Focus on the Family during the these years. They came right out and identified them as hate groups. And they did so in order to create disincentives financially to support these Christian ministries. And they went after them because they said, look, they oppose people based upon intrinsic characteristics. And that's when they included LGBTQ issues within all of this. Basically, it just became a giant engine for the far left for trying to silence and cancel anyone who did not go along with their program. And this included Christian organizations. So I can tell you I witnessed this firsthand. I also know that they were involved in individual targeting in the sense that they would go after people who were appointed to positions or people were making arguments, and they would just say, look, this person represents a hate group or a hate speech. And here's something else, and this is something I called out about 10 or 15 years ago when it came to the Southern Poverty Law Center. They said, any organization that teaches, for example, that there's something intrinsically wrong with homosexuality, with Homosexual behavior. Someone who says the same sex couple shouldn't be married, they should be identified as a hate group. Basically, they should be silenced. And they came up with a list of the naughty, their hate group list. And listen, a lot of companies use that in terms of the corporate matching gifts programs. They would say, well, we don't allow matching gifts to hate groups. And those groups would include, again, Focus on the Family, Family Research Council, et cetera. But when I had an opportunity to speak about this in the press, I said, look, here's what, where you discover their hypocrisy, okay? So let's just state they are hypocrites. They're not only manipulators and not only an extremist group from the left, they're absolute hypocrites. Because by their definition, the largest organization that fits as a hate group would be the Roman Catholic Church. And right behind that would be the Southern Baptist Convention. But you know what? Politically, the Southern Poverty Law center couldn't afford to accuse the entire Roman Catholic Church of hate speech or being a hate group. So it just shows you that they were choosing their victims very carefully. And now the Department of Justice has filed these charges. I don't know where the charges are going to go. And no one should predict the course of a criminal prosecution in a situation like this. But you know what? The group is exposed. And I think right now that's a matter of justice. The group is exposed and they're going to come out with a legal defense for the fact that they supposedly, you know, had legal cover for doing this. I don't think it's going to work. Let me just point out that there are others who are also very happy to see this development. That includes the editorial board, the Wall Street Journal. They refer to the Southern Poverty Law indictment, as they say. And they go on to say this, quote, the donations to hate groups are all the more suspect because in recent years the SPLC has itself spread hate. The outfit has diversified its definition of extremist groups to include mainstream and non threatening conservative groups like the Alliance Defending Freedom, the Family Research Council, and Do no Harm, which works against race preferences in medicine. The editorial board of the Wall Street Journal gets it exactly right with this sentence. Quote, to the extent the money encouraged or sustained the racist groups, tacitly or otherwise, the Southern Poverty Law center benefited from perpetuating racial division. Again, that's the very thing I insert here. They said they were opposed to. Then the editorial book goes on to say, and I quote, a court will decide if that's legal, but it's certainly disreputable. Again, I say this exactly right, except for one thing. I don't think the word disreputable in this context is strong enough. And finally, sometimes we are just confronted with a parable that gets our attention. Truth is stranger than fiction. A 91 year old woman in Ohio went silent. Her family was very concerned. They had not heard from her. Eventually they called authorities to do a safety check. The authorities knocked at the door, there was no answer. They called her phone, there was no answer. They became very concerned. After all, this was a 91 year old woman living by herself. They forcibly, in order to find out her condition, they forcibly entered the home and they found her in a bedroom playing a video game, locked and loaded. So as we're thinking about the attractiveness of these games, the hold these games have in a way that's unique in terms of the meeting of technology and opportunities. It's a development with great concern. I think a lot of parents are concerned about it and you know, parents. Here's the odd thing. It turns out that given the power and the seduction of these video games, you not only have to worry about your children, it's not just the kid down the hall, it could be your mother. Yeah. Oddly enough, 91 years old found alive playing video games hours after hours. Once again, she was found. Let's be thankful for this. This 91 year old woman was found alive playing a constant video game. She was in it hour after hour. Thanks for listening to the briefing. For more information go to my website@albertmuller.com you can follow me on X or Twitter by going to x.comalbertmoeller for information on the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu. for information on Boyce College, just go to boycecollege.com I'll meet you again tomorrow for the briefing.