In a late night show format, Aaron Withe, CEO of Freedom Foundation, interviewed education leaders fostering faith in all aspects of learning. On the panel were Ryan Walters (CEO, Teacher Freedom Alliance), Michael McCoy (Chief of Staff, Turning Point USA); Dr. Corbin Hoornbeek (President, University of Northwestern St. Paul); Doug Napier (Executive Chairman, 1792 Exchange); and Willy Guardiola (Founder, Christian on a Mission).
Aaron kicked the panel off explaining the top priorities of the Freedom Foundation, which simply stated fights the unions. The goal of the organization is pretty simple, Aaron explained: 1) help government workers leave the unions and stop paying union dues 2) sue unions (for instance in California, the Freedom Foundation sued unions for unfair business practices 3) pass legislation (such as the Education Reform Bill) 4) and started an alternative to the unions, Teacher Freedom Alliance.
Below are some snippets of what was said by each panelist.
3:20 Ryan Walters is now the CEO of the Teacher Freedom Alliance. Ryan served as Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction from January 2023 to September 2025, and as the appointed Oklahoma Secretary of Education from September 2020 to April 2023.
Ryan: Teachers unions are the biggest force of destruction. They push DEI and transgenderism in our schools and shut down schools during Covid. The unions held out for hundreds of millions of dollars as ransom. What they cared about was money going to their union members and using that to push their left-wing agenda. Over 90% of their dues go into Democratic candidates. Teachers don’t support DEI or transgenderism and so why are they part of the Teachers Union? For those who want to opt out of the unions, they can go to: Optouttoday.com TFA also helps teachers once they leave the union.
10:24 Dr. Corbin Hoornbeek is the President, University of Northwestern St. Paul.
Corbin: There’s been no industry in America since Covid that has been more disrupted than higher education. But now is a great time to be in higher education. We need people in Christian higher education. At UNW St. Paul, the second president was the Reverend Billy Graham so I’m standing on the shoulder of giants. Here’s how we describe ourselves: theologically conservative and culturally engaged. It means we believe that the scriptures are true. We believe that we understand the world and how God is working in the world and we understand what is true through the lens of the scripture. That matters. We understand Christian education in lots of different forms. The reality is scripture has something to say about history, economics and every single subject. Scripture isn’t just an add-on, but understands God’s contour in the world. Second part of this - if you look into the scriptures, you will see the call of God in our lives and in every part of culture. We want our students to be culture changers, culture transformers.
18:06 Willy Guardiola is Founder of Christian on a Mission.
Willy: My biggest job is to make the Catholic Bishops and Catholic priests do their job. I serve as the President of the Palm Beach County Right to Life League. I started Pro Lifers for Trump back in 2016. This is important because why did we come so close to almost losing the Vote No on Abortion? To think that 54% of Catholics in Palm Beach County voted for abortion. Think about that. As President we’ve closed three Planned Parenthoods down in this county. It all starts with pro life. I meet with all the Catholic priests and bishops. My best friends are the priests that have been defrocked for speaking the truth. I’m trying to get to seminaries now. We want to get the young seminarians to learn about pro life and teach them what Jesus taught us. So when they graduate, they won’t afraid to talk about pro life at the pulpit.
26:40 Doug Napier is Chairman of 1792 Exchange.
Doug: We are a non-profit focused on primarily on corporate behavior. We were formed around 2021 when we realized how much influence corporations have on culture. There’s billions of dollars that influence our advertising and those advertisements tell a story. They communicate what American values are, but those values are distorted. The universities are the breeding grounds of ideas that make their way to the marketplace. They get incubated in the universities as theory; they get hatched in the marketplace as practice and then they find their way into the handbooks of major corporations. Every idea has consequences and bad ideas have victims. Those ideas get put ito corporations and affects HR department. They have all these DEI objectives that are mandated and corporate executives are getting bonuses and incentives to embrace a model that doesn’t work. We started thinking about how this corrupted the marketplace, and we are undertaking an additional data project with the universities.
36:44 Mikey McCoy is Chief of Staff of Turning Point USA.
Mikey: Since Charlie’s assassination we’ve seen an incredible amount of people who want to get involved in Turning Point. Chapter inquiries (for high school and college programs), we’re sitting at over 130k students who’ve reached out who want to start a chapter - whether it’s high school or college. We started 3k new chapters all since September 10th. We’ve had 115k students for the first time ever come to a chapter meeting. There’s a great harvest. In our TPUSA Faith, we doubled our church affiliates to 8k/ We have 200k people who signed up with TPUSA Faith. People are reaching out getting bibles. Since Charlie’s death, we’ve seen church attendance at an all-time high. But there’s still a lot of questions about what comes next culturally. For GenZ, Charlie was this guiding light, this north star, now with him gone, there’s a lot of questions. Two words come to mind when it comes to Charlie: hope and courage. Hope sees the world as it could be, courage steps into the fire to make it a reality. Courage without hope is reckless, hope without courage, is just a dream.
57:15 Branson Race Roizen started one of the first TP USA middle school chapters in the country.
