So you know that mural up in Rhode Island? I just want to touch on this quickly. Got to get it off my desk. It's been bothering me for the last couple of days. There's a mural of the woman that was killed on the train. Remember, she was stabbed violently on the train, died and nobody did anything about it. Well, an artist decided he was going to paint a mural on the side of a building. And it's beautiful, Beautiful mural up on the side of a building in Rhode Island. Well, the mayor is all upset about it and they're shutting it down and they don't want it anywhere in their city. And he said this has not brought us closer together as a community. In fact, it's been quite divisive and a little bit ugly. Wait, a picture of a woman who came here from Ukraine legally and was stabbed by a madman. And you don't want justice for that? That's not something worth remembering. What about all the George Floyd murals that were everywhere? Everywhere? How about BLM on the streets of the Capitol? That's okay, but this isn't. He went on to say, this is a movement that was funded by some right wing billionaires, unlike the left wing billionaires. Can we, can we stop playing this game, please? Can we stop playing this game of my team? Your team? We have to agree on fundamental principles of right and wrong. Let me give you one. And because America, and quite honestly, me too, there's a story out by Christopher Rufo that is in our show prep today. If you don't get my stack of show prep, you need to get it every day. It's free. Just go to glenn beck.com, sign up for the free email newsletter. You'll get it every morning. And it has all the news that I look at every day and I think are important. And we cover, I mean, just, we scratch the surface of it, but it'll give you an in depth understanding of the news you need to know about. There's a story in there from Christopher Rufo about corruption in California. And quite honestly, I looked at it. I have the attention span of a goldfish and maybe even a mentally deficient goldfish with addiction. Okay. This Story is very long. And. And exposing corruption, massive corruption, is really hard if you're trying to explain it to a bunch of goldfish. So most people will just tune it out. They won't, because too many numbers, too many programs. It's really complicated. So I spent some time this morning trying to figure out, how can I explain this to you and give you a good deep dive on it? But. Because if I can't explain, if we can't make this understandable to the average person, then, you know, it's hiding there in plain sight and everybody will sure shrug their shoulders. So here's what Christopher Rufo and his colleagues at the City Journal have been digging into. And this is not isolated waste, but it is, again, a pattern. Remember, AI, artificial intelligence. It doesn't think all it does because this is intelligence. It recognizes patterns. So look for patterns. If everything. No, I'm sorry. If a portion of what they have documented here is accurate, it is staggering. So let me make it really simple. First, let me give you the scale. This is according to interviews with officials, audits and public records that are reviewed in the report, California may have lost as much as $180 billion to fraud and improper payments across multiple state programs. Now, what I just said, I'm going to come back, and that probably didn't shock you at all. But when I go through this, I'm coming back to that number, and I think you'll go, holy crap. Now this is an important distinction and something that most people on either side won't do. This number is an estimate. It's built from multiple sources and it is not a single confirmed audit line. Okay. But even the confirmed numbers underneath it are enormous. Let me just start with what's been confirmed. Start with unemployment. During COVID California alone, rapidly expanded unemployment payments. What Rufo is now reporting, based on state admissions and audits, is that roughly $20 billion of that was confirmed as fraud and 55 billion of that was classified as improper payments overall. So let me just take the 55 billion. Not even the 20. Just the 55 billion. How big is that? If you spent $1 million every day, it would take you 150 years to spend $55 billion. That is more than the entire annual budget of many US States. You could build dozens and dozens, I'm sorry, hundreds of high schools and dozens and dozens of major hospitals. With $55 billion, you could fund tens of thousands, armies of teachers, police officers and nurses. And you could fund it for years. $55 billion equals about $150 taken, stolen from every man, woman and child in America. Not taxpayers. Every single person in America. For a family of four, that somebody coming into your house, the Average American has $500 saved in the bank account. $500 is the average cushion. This is, this is this one program. One program in one Blue State stealing $600 from every family of four. $55 billion. If you stacked it in $1 bills, a million dollars is 4 inches high. A billion stacked in $1 bills is 358ft. That's taller than the Statue of Liberty. How big is a stack of $1 bills? At 55 billion, it would stretch 3.7 miles into the sky. That's how much money this one program in one state has paid out in fraud. That is something we should be able to see from a distance. But because these numbers are so big and it's going to get even worse, people won't understand it. I mean, the fraud is unbelievable. Payments were sent in the name of prisoners, including death row inmates, international fraud rings filing claims from overseas, criminals bragging about it online. We saw it. This is not speculation. This is all documented. That's one. Then comes healthcare, medical. Here are the things that are confirmed fraud and then estimates and warnings. Experts cited in the reporting suggest fraud rates could range from 15 to 25% of total spending, which applied over time, could mean tens of billions of dollars lost. Again, this is not a confirmed total. You then have welfare and homelessness spending. California has spent roughly $24 billion on homeless programs. What Rufo's team documents now, specific criminal cases, including nonprofit leaders siphoning millions of dollars, developers accused of misusing public housing funds, fraud rings exploiting food assistance systems. How bad of a person do you need to be to take food out of people's mouths that are hungry and take it for yourself? And here's the key point. Auditors have said in multiple cases they couldn't fully track the outcomes or spending effectiveness. Not they didn't like it, they couldn't track it. So what's the pattern? What Rufo is arguing in this report now very directly is this. This is not bad luck. This isn't just a few bad actors. This isn't just. Well, it was Covid. This is an entire system where oversight was weak to begin with, safeguards were removed or people told to ignore and massive amounts of money pushed out quickly. This, this is an environment where fraud isn't just possible, it's inevitable and they knew it. Now, to be fair, I'll again do something that Nobody else will do. To be fair, Newsom has come out and said fraud happened everywhere during COVID And I'm sure it did. Emergency speed requires rapid payments. But what I want to ask you is was that a bug in the system or was that a feature? How much was actually lost? Not just in California, in the red states as well. How much is still being lost? Where were the systems? Where were they? If all of this feels abstract, let me bring it down to one single case. There's another story in today's show. Prep comes from San Francisco. A woman whose job was to defend human rights and oversee taxpayer funded programs. Human rights. All we keep hearing about are human rights. Make sure that it's justice and fairness, right? She's now facing 17 felony charges, including conflict of interest, perjury, and misappropriation of public funds. Prosecutors are alleging now that Cheryl Davis, who helped manage tens of millions of dollars, not from the state, but from the city. The city. The Dreamkeeper initiative, diverted money meant for vulnerable communities, and it went right directly into her bank account. Everybody in the city of San Francisco should be enraged. How much money do you pay in taxes? How come things aren't getting better in my city? Well, this is why. Let me give you the facts. Nonprofit tied to her received $3.5 million in city funds intended to help homeless children. The money, according to the prosecutors, redirected through organizations all connected to her. In fact, her son allegedly received $140,000 deposited into an account she controlled. A co conspirator ran another nonprofit that's accused of helping facilitate the scheme. And this wasn't uncovered by routine oversight. This one came from a whistleblower. Thank God for whistleblowers. And it went on long enough that investigators had to execute more than 50 search warrants and over 18 months just to piece it together. These are all allegations. They'll be tested in court. I want to remind you of that. Her. Her attorney is denying any wrongdoing. But prosecutors are clear these are not routine charges. And here is why this matters. This was not a back office clerk. And this isn't isolated. This and the other programs were done by people who were entrusted with public money, public trust, and a mission rooted in justice. And when people hear billions lost, it feels distant. Billion. Corruption doesn't start at $55 billion. And when you hear $55 billion, remember you have five. The average American has $500 saved as a cushion. They stole from your family and every family of four in one state on one program. $600. One program, one gatekeeper one decision to look the other way, or worse. Multiply that across systems with weak oversight. Multiply it not just from San Francisco, but cities all through California. Then multiply it for all of the blue states, then add in all of the red states. Do you think this is just a blue state problem? This is going to hit red states as well. The numbers are going to be astronomical. And if we don't fix this, that's how the whole thing goes apart. One small abuse at a time until it's not small anymore. But let me give you some good news. I believe the president put J.D. vance in charge of this because J.D. vance's whole career is going to depend on the end. Did you find anything and did you put them in jail? And I will tell you, if J.D. vance is smart, he will simultaneously do a red state as he does a blue state. And he shows we're talking justice, not political payback. We are talking, this is the American money. This is the American taxpayer. This is about our very survival. When you are stretched so thin, you have a hard time making money, enough money to buy your food for your kids at the grocery store, I don't care who did it, they're going to jail. And I think you're going to see that. I think you're going to actually see interest on action on this one because it is in the best interest of a guy who's very, very sharp and wants to be the next President of the United States. This is the best of the Glenn Beck program, and we really want to thank you for listening. All right, let me take you quickly to Jason, who's going to give us an update on what is happening with the shot down. I believe it's an F15. What do you have confirmed and where are we, Jason?
Jeremiah Johnston (21:47)
Absolutely. We're doing the. More Glendy Anna Jones right now. Isn't it fun that the Christian faith unlike any other religion, certainly not Islam, unlike any other religion in the world. Glenn, you know this archeology is Christianity's closest cousin because Christianity is based in facts, real people, real places, real events. You know that. I have a bunch of kids, I have nine year old triplets, I have two teenagers, I haven't slept in nine years since my triplets were born. And at dinner my kids challenged me, they said, dad, right, what can you tell us about Jesus but you can't use the Bible now. Hey, we love our scriptures, right? But this, the fact is all of us listening right now, we need to know how to pass the faith on to our kids and to do it in two minutes or less. And so I wrote a book, Glenn, about all the things we can prove about Jesus. From the evidence we can build 65 facts, 65 about the birth, the death, the life, the miracles, the burial, the death and yes, the resurrection of Jesus from extra biblical sources before we ever crack open the New Testament. Now here's the problem. Most people are 98% of people listening right now, they don't know what these discoveries are. And so I wanted to write it in a way my 9 year old who I dedicated the book to, Abel was reading it to me. I paid off, Glenn, I paid off every archeologist I could to get permission to use photos. So we actually have images of all these books, discoveries and this will give you that X factor when you're talking about your faith that Jesus is based in evidence. But here's the cool thing, Glenn, I talk. I don't know if you've read the chapter yet where I talk about you, Glenn. I actually talk about you in my book. Here's what I write. I will never forget my dear friend Glenn Beck, through tears giving testimony in the holy chapel of the Shroud and Turin. And you said it's one thing to see it on television, it's a whole nother thing to witness it firsthand. You were doing. Doing experiential archeology. That's what your audience loves. That's what you do. That's what Tanya and you and me did together. Experiential archeology. And here's one thing I do need to correct, Glenn. A lot of fine Christians, they think, oh, I just need faith. I don't need proof. Can I just tell you something, Glenn? If Jesus did not walk out of that grave alive on April 5, 2000 years ago, physically alive, from the dead, the Bible wouldn't exist. Am I making myself clear? That he said in Acts 1:3, he appeared with many infallible proofs, and so faith is always based in evidence. Does that make sense?
Glenn Beck (29:40)
So atheists are not happy because I posted something on X and it actually became a community note. I. I witnessed the. The launch of Artemis. And the entire time, as I think many Americans were doing, I was saying a prayer for their safety because I witnessed the Challenger. And until they had all the separation, until they were actually, you know, past that moment of launch, and they were really on their way with no more go with throttle up. I was nervous and praying and. And so when they finally did it, Ricky said to me, she said, what are you feeling? And she was rolling, you know, her phone, you know, to capture the moment. And she said, what are you feeling? And I was so overwhelmed with emotion that what had just happened, but also that they were safe, that I looked at her and I just said, God is great. And I couldn't. That's all I could utter. I had a lot of things I wanted to say, but all I could utter without blubbering like a baby, was, God is great. God is great. So she posted the launch and that moment, and next thing we know, we have people coming after me. God is not great. Really? Who is arguing this? God's not. God's not great. Science is great. Okay. I want to. I want to talk to you about science and the difference between science and faith. But before I do that, I want to show you something else that just came out in the Washington Post today. The more people use social media, the less likely they are to believe that democracy is the best form of government. This is a survey of over 20,000Americans. The same heavy users are far less likely to believe democracy is the best form of government. 53. Sorry, 57% of heavy users, people who use the Internet five, you know, or social media about five hours a day. Whereas 73% of people who use social media for an hour or less say democracy is the best form of government. That is crazy. So if you're a heavy social media user, you are more open to political violence. You are less open to compromise. This is what the survey has just found posted in the Washington Post today. They find it hard to get along with people who don't share their belief, and they are less likely to believe that everyone should have the right to vote. That's incredible. That's incredible. Which brings me to something that Thomas Jefferson said about newspapers, but I just replaced the word newspaper with social media. He said, the man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but social media. He said, newspapers, but that is our newspaper. The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but social media. It's true. It is true. So let. Let me take you to science, but I want to take you through science by looking at the calendar. Today, it's Passover. Sorry, Wednesday was Passover. Today is Good Friday. Easter is on Sunday. These are three markers in time, separated by centuries, but all. All bound by one single idea. Deliverance as an event. For a long time now, for a very long time, we've been told something that is not true. We have been told quietly at first, then loudly, and then confidently, then beating the chest and then told, shut up, sit down. Faith belongs in one corner and facts belong in another. That science only advances when belief retreats. That the old stories, the ones that built civilizations, have to be discarded if we're to be considered modern, rational and enlightened people. I just want to ask you the question, what if that assumption is wrong? Remember this. We're talking about the same people who told us that butter is good, then butter is bad, then butter is good again, it's going to be bad, and then it'll be good again. Science is constantly changing. Truth never changes. But what if the. What if the separation between science and religion, there was no, there was no dividing line there. The dividing line is between open minds and closed minds. And that could be on either side. You can be religious and totally closed minded to science. You could be a scientist and you're totally closed minded to religion. But piece by piece, layer by layer, something remarkable is happening. And it's happening in the dirt, in excavation sites, in burial grounds, in fragments of papyrus and the ruins of ancient cities, places. Places like where the Bible calls Goshen avarice. Archaeologists have uncovered something that they weren't looking for. And this is amazing. This is a story in the Glenn Beck Show Prep. You can also get it@glenn beck.com today. It's a free article. Ryan Morrow wrote this and he's been looking at this for a while. What we found in the dirt was a massive Semitic population. A Jewish population foreign to Egypt. They were all living together, but they were not equals. They were laborers, they were slaves. Remember, everybody has said, oh, that whole Passover story, that whole story of the Bible, that's all false. We can't prove that. Well now wait a minute, hold on. These were people that did not belong to the ruling class. They were part of the system. Then there's another site. I think it's Kuhon. Same story, same Jewish kind of people, same conditions. Slaves for Egyptians, two separate places. And here's where it gets really strange. The archaeologists have found that suddenly these people just vanished. It wasn't through assimilation, it wasn't through war or genocide. It wasn't through illness. They just vanished, just gone. What's interesting is it's happening. It happened at the exact same time Egypt was hit by catastrophic calamities. Massive death, sudden devastation. They have found burial pits not filled with soldiers, but with civilians. And not just civilians, but children, male sons. So it was an outbreak, targeted, it seems, in a way that even modern researchers struggle to explain. Burial pits with sons. Egyptian sons died of something, they don't know what. And an enslaved population that at the same time just disappears. That population was spared or passed over. After they're passed over, they immediately leave. And there's no record of the destruction, no evidence of their collapse. Just they depart. An exodus. Now stop for just a minute. Because this is the part where modern thinking is supposed to kick in and say it's a coincidence, it's legend, it's myth wrapped around natural events. Okay, maybe, but you don't know that and neither do I. I can tell you what I believe, but that doesn't necessarily make it True, but we're starting to find evidence that leans that way, not the other way. If you read some ancient Egyptian papyrus that has been found, an ancient document, it's not in Hebrew, and it describes Egypt at the same time in chaos, blood, plagues, death, social collapse, children dead in the streets. You read the records from that second ancient town they found. It refers to an evil hour, a time of devastation that was marked by disease and loss suddenly, overnight. Now, the question isn't, can this be proven? The question is now, why does this line up at all? Why does archaeology begin to echo what was written thousands of years ago? Why do independent records, hostile sources, start to resemble the same exact pattern? Maybe. Maybe because the truth leaves fingerprints over time. If you're willing to look, if you have an open mind, if in an open mind, means I'm willing to consider it, doesn't mean I believe it. I'm willing to consider it. And if you can make the case, then I will believe it. But you got to make the case. But if you start to look, you begin to see that. Now bring all this forward from Passover to Good Friday, another moment where the world thought it understood the story. Man executed, movement crushed, hope buried. The end. That's what it looked like. But in about 12 minutes, I have a guest who is going to show you the evidence that is now because of science beginning to mount up, that it's not what people are dismissing it as, it's what the book says
Glenn Beck (39:50)
happened on Good Friday. And then comes Easter. And everything that looked settled now suddenly isn't settled. Everything that looked dead is suddenly becoming alive. Everything that seems like the end was something else entirely, a turning point, a reversal, a deliverance that no empire could stop. And so here we are today, thousands of years later, still arguing whether these things are real, as if reality is something we vote on, as if truth depends on a poll or consensus. But history doesn't work that way. And by the way, this isn't new. I can guarantee you that if the story in the Bible is true, Moses said, these things are going to happen to you. And when they started to happen, the people in Egypt went, that's a coincidence. I mean, this is human nature. But truth comes out in the end. That's the way it works. That's the way God is. What we're learning now through science, through archeology, through the slow uncovering of the past, is not that faith was wrong. It's that we're perhaps too quick to dismiss it, too eager to believe that modern means superior Too willing to close the book before we've read all the pages or pondered, could this be explained some way or another? Is there any evidence of this? Because now the evidence is mounting. And to me, what this says, the most important thing is science and religion are not enemies. When I said God is great, I didn't mean that God put the rocket into the sky. Man did that. Man used eternal principles. Mathematics, not common core, math, not math that man's making up, but math that has been there since the beginning of time. We just had to understand it. And when you use those eternal principles, you can call it science, but it's eternal principles. And you're able to do remarkable things. But that's man choosing to apply those eternal principles. And God is great because it's his design. And then he created us and he's given us this. This desire to find truth, to explore. And when we actually come together and put our differences aside and look for common truths, look at what we can do. God is great because he created us. But here we're finding ourselves in a situation where two languages are describing the same language or same reality. One measures one, means one tells you what happened, the other tells you why it matters. And when they begin to align, which science is starting to align, it doesn't diminish faith and it doesn't diminish science. It deepens it. This weekend is not just a remembrance, it is a reminder. It's a reminder that deliverance is not a myth. Do you want to live in a world where there is no deliverance? That you have to depend on me or you or some system to deliver you from whatever it is? I don't. I want truth that survives skepticism. I want truth that is actual truth. History, real history, that has a way of resurfacing even when the best of intentions and the best of people have tried to bury it. No matter how dark that moment might appear, there's always morning coming. And science will back that up eventually. But faith gets you there. The God in the Old Testament was the God of deliverance of a whole people. And the God of the New Testament is the same God, unchanging. But this time he offered personal deliverance. And I have to tell you, I don't care what science tells me about personal deliverance, but I have. I have turned my life over to him when I had wrecked everything in my life and it was impossible to fix. And I surrendered to him and I asked for forgiveness and I tried to correct my ways and I haven't corrected all of them. I've tried and I try. I try to be a more perfect person every day and I fail every day. But he is so good that he helps me. And I don't care what science says. I am an entirely new man than I was 35 years ago. God is great. How many discounts does USAA Auto Insurance offer? Too many to say here. Multi vehicle discount Safe driver discount New vehicle discount Storage discount How many discounts will you stack up? Tap the banner or visit usaa.com autod Discounts restrictions apply.
