Latest / CrossPolitic Show / Gavin Newsom's National Guard Is Firing Christians over Bible Studies (ft. Andrew Garza & Caleb Byrd)
Transcript
- Hey, I'll welcome to Cross Politics 101 with the Water Boy. It's good to be with you on your Monday. I don't record this on Monday, but on your Monday, travel, commute, whatever's going on. And yes, if you are visually watching the show, it's been about two or three years that I've needed glasses and I refuse to do contacts. And so I finally got glasses. So that's what you see. And that's probably what you'll see moving forward. I can actually read the teleprompter without squinting and everything. So, but before I got two guests coming on the show today, you guys want to stick around for this. But before I get into that, I got a couple announcements and plugs for you guys. So here we go. Join Business Maker's Network Uniting Hundreds of Visionary Business Leaders nationwide for Inspiration, Collaboration, Transformation for our first annual national conference April 7th through the night. So when you guys hear the show on Monday, our conference in Dallas, for those listeners who are in Dallas, we'll actually be starting Bearing and Sombs Tuesday night on the 7th. So our conference actually, the Bearing Sombs actually happens at my old church. My old church I grew up in, Lake Presbyterian Church, you can go to the website to check it out. And the rest of the conference on Wednesday and Thursday is going to be at Lake Point Church in Dallas, Texas, for our risk, build, grow the business of work and the wisdom of making money. This conference will ignite your passion and equip you with practical tools for business success and expand your Christian professional network nationally. Expect dynamic keynotes from proven Christian business leaders. Like somehow I'm written into this. I'm a proven Christian business leader, Gabe Rensch, Charlton Halp, Eric Reed, Brett Craig, Sierra Wiley, Michael Foster, David Rees. I mean, there's a whole lineup there. Go to Bismakers.network to check it out. Stay tuned for more speakers. To be announced, I actually already on the website. They're all up. No more announcements. Whether you're an entrepreneur, starting a venture, a corporate leader facing challenges or an employee aligning your career with faith, this conference will challenge you to maximize your impact, apply Christ fully to every area of your work and join a movement of Craig description business leaders reshaping business for the good of America. Join us April 7th. That's tomorrow April 7th through the 9th and Dallas, Texas, as we grow our business for the good of the people in the glory of God, register now at businessmakers.network. One more. And this is this guy is our fight left feast family conference, holy wars. Are you ready for the fight left feast conference? You better read. It's exciting one. The topic is holy wars. We're going to be in the natural area. Actually, we have our buildings in Franklin this year. So Franklin is at the Franklin factory. And this year's theme is holy wars. It's the crossade in the Christian life. Such an important topic we're at right now. As usual, this isn't your typical conference. We're tackling the questions others won't touch. What does scripture say about war? Where the crusades justify? How do we live faithfully as a Christian man in a world hostile to this truth? We're kicking things off Thursday night with Baron Psalms and diving into two days of conference stuff with Pastor Doug, Pastor Rigny, Pastor Toby, Pastor Ben Merkel, Pastor Jared Longshore, Pastor George Grant, all the speakers I think we've got a couple more we still need to announce. So join thousands of Christians in the Nashville area, Franklin, Tennessee. This October, October 1st, 2nd and 3rd for Psalms and fellowship teaching. And you know, of course, we won't pull any punches. So make sure you go to fight left feast calm. It's October 1st, 2nd and 3rd. It's actually our C.R.E.C. Council is that week. And then we're on the tell end of that. So for anybody who is there for Council and wants to stay over and attend our conference, please sign up or reach out to me. Yeah. All right. Finally, let's get to our guest. Caleb Bird, you know, Davis Jans, there are no strangers to the show. He's a partner at Jans Law before joining Davis Jans in 2023. Caleb served as a Jag officer for the US Army. Wow, I didn't know that Caleb. On the Jag core, Caleb served in multiple roles, including attorney for the 18th airborne core at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, as an operational law attorney developed to, and you got deployed to Iraq in 2019 as part of operation in Harret's resolve. And as a trial defense attorney at Fort Bragg, as the special victims prosecutor for Fort Knox in Kentucky. Oh, man, a lot of been around as a partner Jans Law, Caleb practices military law, better in law, class action, religious liberty, and federal litigation. And so you know when I have Caleb on, I almost, there's something going on that you need to know about. I mean, literally when we have Davis Jans and Caleb on from their law from there, constantly doing good work and really defending a lot of Christians, whether it's military or in government and stuff. And so I'm going to bring in the guy he's defending. Andrew Garza is a Christian husband and father with 24 years of military service. He began his career in the Marine Corps in 2000 and deployed to Iraq for the 2003 invasion serving as squad leader. He currently serves in the National Guard as an infantry captain, where he's responsible for training officer candidates at officer candidate school. And throughout his time in the guard, he is held a variety of roles. He's instructed Markmanship and competed in shooting events, mentored at risk youth through a youth challenge program and spent 4.5 years as the officer in charge of the joint task force, Rattlesnake Fire Crew in Redding, California, after being promoted to captain. He was assigned to the task force, to task force training officer. In that role, he implemented a task force wide fitness program developed in Redding resulting in some of the fitness crews in the state to and help establish a California National Guard fire academy while also leading periodic wildland firefighters, new higher certification courses and so forth. Quite the resume and the reason why I wanted to read that whole resume off because it's pretty pertinent to what's going on in the show today. So Andrew and Caleb, thank you guys for both coming on cross-political 101. Thank you. Thank you for having us back. Yeah. So Andrew, my first time to meet you, I followed your story. David's young kept me up on it. Caleb kept me on it, kept forward me emails. So I was able to follow a lot of your story. But I want to before we get into the legal challenge that you're dealing with right now, I just want to give a little context already red, red, red, excuse me, red, some of your bio. But how did you get to just a, you know, Redding, California into, I had no clue that there's this some sort of California military firefighting division and stuff like that. Maybe just give a little context around how you got to Redding. And a little context around that. Sure. So the task force is a, it's a partnership between Cal Fire, the state's firefighting entity and the National Guard. And the National Guard provides National Guard soldiers as hand crew members. So previously, California had a pretty extensive inmate fire crew program. They've gotten rid of a lot of that. And so now Cal Fire has a lot of their own crews. There's also the triple Cs. And then us, joined Task Force Routesnake. So it's National Guard and California State Guard, which is slightly different entity soldiers that provide the members of the hand crew. And we have Cal Fire captains, Cal Fire engineers, Cal Fire buses, Cal Fire equipment. And so we look like a Cal Fire hand crew out there. It's up to we have great helmets. They have yellow. And we go and fight well and fires every, every year, every crew has to get type one certified, which means they're qualified to cut hotline. So there's fuel crews that just do fuel reduction. Honestly, just is a very important job. And it's hard work. But then there's type one crews that actually go directly to the hottest parts of the fire and actually cut the hotline. And that's what Task Force Routesnake does. OK. The way I got on the crew, I was actually a correctional officer at High Desert State prison for only about seven months. I was not cut out for it. Like I said, I've said before, I respect a lot the people that can do that for living for years. It was not a good fit for me. And so I was looking for something else as an officer, actually get paid more. See, CVCR pays a lot for their correctional officers. But as a commissioned officer with as much time as I have been, I make more. So I was looking for a guard gig, essentially, to do kind of what I've always done. And one of my buddies knew of a spot on the Task Force. He was already in OIC of one of the other crews and put me in touch with the commander. And I had a spot. And that spot was up and ready. So I moved my family up there eventually. I've been there for a couple months. And I never look back. I love it up here. It's beautiful. So how long have you been part of writing in the Task Force and all that stuff? Well, I got on the Reading Crew in December of 2020. I spent three months on another crew at Camp Roberts in Central California. That was before my first fire season. My most meaningful experience has been on the Reading Crew. So I got there in December of 2020. And I served as the OIC, the officer in charge until I want to say it really was technically like April of 2025. Okay. And we'll get there. We'll get there. And so California's woke. They don't use this little white button. Yeah. And I don't, I mean, I'm probably going to say things that maybe aren't true. So correct me here. I remember when the leading firefighter chief of the state of California was appointed as a woman. And there was another like it seemed very DEI and how the fire leadership was appointed in California and took over. And then you had the palisades fire that kind of exposed a lot of like weak leadership at the state level and stuff has that affected kind of your firefighting in your story with what's going on up and ready. No, that's like way above us. That's like the 30,000-foot level at the crew level. Okay. I will say at least at our unit, Shastro Trinity unit, the fire chiefs and all the crew captains that I worked with were awesome. Yeah. And I didn't really see much of that if any at all in our specific unit. Okay. Again, that's that's that's way up at the state level. And so now you're you're part of this division, this task, this task force. And you kind of started to run into a buzz saw there with your work in your efforts. Why don't you basically just kind of let's tell the story. Actually, Caleb give us a good two minute summary that you were giving us. I think it's a better place to start and then we'll get back to Andrew here. Summars, why do you represent and why is it why are you here with Andrew? Yeah. So what ultimately ended up happening here is Andrew is a very conservative outspoken Christian at a reform church in Reading, California. And anyone who's meant Andrew could tell you immediately that his leadership style allows him to wear his faith on his sleeve. And so this started becoming very much at odds with where the California National Guard is at in respect to a lot of their diversity equity inclusion programs, the California civil rights equivalent that protects transgender ideology. And Andrew has never been shy about his Christian faith in what he believes. And ultimately what's happened is the state of California through the National Guard targeted Andrew and a group of guys who all went to church together at this reform church in Reading, California and has used pretextual investigations as an excuse to eliminate these guys from these fire, these fire crew positions. These fire crew positions are full time 365 orders. So they're on active duty orders through the state of California National Guard. And those orders have to be renewed every year. So California used the existence of an investigation, not the findings of investigations, but the mere existence as an excuse to terminate all the orders for this group of guys who all go to church together in Reading. Wow. And so Andrew, what did you do that was bad? Well, I mean Caleb, sorry if I'm going too far. It really spans a lot of things. There's a lot of talk of microaggressions. I had the temerity to not allow vulgar women of jetifying music on our crew buses because people think that I'm a misogynist just because I'm a Christian. I'm not. I love women. I want them to be respected. And on my crew, I expected a certain level of decorum from the men. And part of that was, hey, we're not going to listen to degenerate nonsense on the bus, especially when the women are present. And there was a complaint about that. I didn't force them to listen to any kind of music. I told them they can listen to whatever. It's just not going to be music that is glorifying wickedness or objectifying women. That was one of the complaints. Another one was, I don't know, just microaggressions, lots of microaggressions. People felt very microaggress. And so it sounds like a series of complaints against you over time. And that flagged like a higher up to come after you guys. That's part of it. So one person in particular filed what seems to be, I'm not going to say it was, but it appears to be a retaliatory equal opportunity complaint against me. And that started the investigation. And then I never heard anything for months. I was told I was going to hear, so I was told that the investigation started. I was told I was going to hear something 30 days and I never heard anything. And then a couple months later, the annual California sexual harassment prevention training came out when we have to do that every year. And I really looked at it and paid attention this time. And it basically forces you to support all aspects of gender theory. And essentially how those would play out is, you know, saying the OIC of one of these one C wildland firefighter courses and some California State Guard members, just national guard members can't be transgender anymore. But there are other people that can that are on the task force. And so let's say, you know, one of them identifies as the opposite sex. I must, by this policy, allow them to use facilities, sleep in the barracks with the opposite sex. So some do things as a woman. I got a, I got a, I simply, I simply wouldn't. And so what I did was I cleared with my supervisor, I said, hey, I want to, I want to file for a religious accommodation for this training. Because I don't really understand it. To me, at first, in Caleb 70 straight, it seemed like doing the training was going along with it. And I was like, no, I can't, I can't do that. I'm a Christian. I'm simply forbidden to. And I will not because these, these ideals are, are very destructive to civilization, which is incidentally the point of them. And so he said, yeah, go ahead and post your objections. And the leaders group chat and my intent was to kind of do like a survey in like, hey, if there's any other Christians on the task force that have a problem with this, I would like to apply for a religious accommodation. Yeah. Because we just can't go along with this. After telling me that I could send that message in that leadership, pretty much immediately after I did, he went and got an investigation started on me. And this is what brought everything to bear. And so all of the old investigation combined with this new complaint made up the sum of it. And so they were just judging up everything they possibly could. And I didn't have a, I mean, from what I saw, it was, it was four people. And I worked with probably, I probably had over a hundred people working for me during my tenure at the, at the cruise. There were four people over that whole time that joined in and the thing and complained about my microaggressions and my toxic leadership and my Christianity that made everyone feel ostracized and depressed, which is absurd. Yeah. Yeah. I think I'm actually, I know I don't look like it, but I'm actually very kind to people. And it was the same way with the same with the group. It doesn't matter if you're, like, if you're less mean or you're trans, I don't hate you. I'm going to treat you kindly. I'm going to treat you respectfully. I'm not going to affirm your views or your lifestyle or the agenda that typically goes along with it, but, but I'm also not going to be unkind. I'm not going to be cruel to you. I'm not going to discriminate against you. I'm not going to prive you of anything. And that's, and that's how I was. A lot of it is my demeanor. My demeanor gets me in trouble. I look like I want to kill people. I think that has a lot to do with people feeling microaggressed. No, no, I'm actually pretty nice. Okay. So that's what triggered everything was this one message requesting a religious accommodation. Just like, okay, we're opening everything back up and we're going to throw everything out here to try to get you to go away. Okay. So what year did that happen? That that? That. So the, that was 2025. The beginning of 20 or let's say, I want to say March between March and May, the initial complaint was filed. I was no longer on the crew in May. I was doing the training OIC, and that's when I was informed of the initial investigation. I don't hear anything until, I want to say October 16, which is when I shortly after I posted that message in the in the leaders chat. That's when I finally heard like, oh, there's an actual investigation. This is this is moving forward. Yeah. You need to come talk to the investigator and my wife, thankfully, who often supplies wise counsels, like you need to get a lawyer, don't go talk to the investigator. And thankfully, I did. Yeah. And so you obviously flagged the fact that you're a Christian at this, in this chat group, and that you're against the DEI training and trans training for your, your, your squadron. And then they came after you with some sort of investigative process. And so, but they also, it sounds like have looped in men in your church that are under your leadership. Like how do they get tied into this? Well, Caleb, do you want to talk about that? Or do you want me to talk about that? Yeah. Now, I'm happy to explain it. So effectively, what they did once they targeted Andrew is they started targeting everyone on the hand crew who would have sided with Andrew, right? And as it turned out, this hand crew, several of these eyes all go to church together at Chastor Form Church in Reading, California. And so California then started using pretextual investigations as a basis to target all of these guys who were associated with Andrew and his church. And so did they like, I mean, how did they, did they bring in text and emails or like, how did they, like what physical evidence, what they're doing to bring these guys into it? I mean, obviously you have like a tweet and maybe some complaints for not being DEI, whatever, but like, how do they bring them in? So literally, literally, literally what they did with these guys was they invented a completely separate investigation in order to attack these guys. And so their investigation wasn't even the same investigation as Andrews, but effectively what they created was they created new complaints in order to attack these guys. Yeah, it's incredible. The length and the hubris that the California National Guard has gone to in order to attack the specific guys from this specific church. And so to be clear about the jurisdiction side of things here, Gavin Newsom's the head of the California National Guard, right? It's not, not Trump, not Pete Haguezeth. It's Gavin Newsom. Yeah, that's exactly correct. So if you think about your California, your National Guard structure, generally, the governor is the head of the National Guard and the governor of the state typically appoints the Agitant General who is the highest ranking officer over all the National Guard units from all the major branches in the military. So this goes all the way up to the top to the Agitant General in California. And there's no like the war department doesn't really have any authority to step in. Well they do. And this is the most important piece. So all of the state national guards would cease to function and exist but for federal funding. So there is a very important lever that the war department has here, which is to say, hey, state of California, if you're going to illegally persecute and discriminate against Christians in your force, we're going to withdraw federal funding until you correct yourself. And so that's one of the most important checks that the Secretary of War has when it comes to these National Guard units is to be able to withdraw funding to hold funding and say, no, you're not going to persecute and discriminate against Christians and receive federal funding at the same time. Oh, but that's just a funding mechanism. That's not like the mechanism. So there but there's no like trial court authority there. That's strictly National Guard California. That's strictly National Guard California. And I will tell you, I don't know of any state that has successfully pulled off a court marshal at the National Guard level. And so in this case, specifically, we're not overly concerned about, let's say court marshal punishments for like violations of regulations and those kind of things. However, what they have done is they've used this as an administrative tool to effectively fire these guys from their full time position and send them back to the National Guard units as TPU soldiers. These fire crews, you know, when I talk about these being 365 day orders, what that means for your average listeners, this is their full time job. This is what they do for a living. This is how they feed their family. This is their non-devov. They just happen to be doing it in a uniform working with Cal Fire. Yeah, I see. And so Andrew, when did your, I guess the other men from your church get roped in with you on this? Like what point this last year? I want to say it was about a month after my investigation started. As anybody else been roped in from another church or another, is it literally just you and guys from your church that are being targeted with these investigations? I know that there's been other firings or, you know, termination of orders on the task force. Ours is the only one that I know of that is explicitly for matters of religion. I don't know if anybody else has gotten let go simply because they're Christians. We are particularly outspoken about it and we're told numerous times not to be and we didn't listen. Yeah. And so you guys have been at this point officially fired. Technically, we're not fired. Technically, they just didn't renew our orders. The funny thing is they're supposed to go through this process. They're supposed to be like development. They're supposed to be counseling if there's, if there's records of misconduct or poor performance or whatever, there's supposed to be records of this stuff. Like one person that I, I ended up being able to recommend non-renewal for orders was objectively the worst person we ever had on the hand for in my four and a half years being there. And it took me about a year and counseling and chance after chance and trying to develop and doing all this and they would not let me get rid of this person who was an absolute liability out on the fire line and absolute liability. It took me a year and had to jump through all these administrative hurdles or hoops and for us, it was like, yeah, I don't worry about any of that. They're gone. The boiled second. You get rid of some of the best people on a whim. But I have to jump through all these hoops to get rid of the worst. That's kind of crazy. But it shows where the priorities are. I'm going to give you too many details about that one in particular. First of all, let's just say that he, she or it, checked a certain number of boxes that they really like. And I check all the ones that they don't. Wow. Well, and this is, by the way, this is a classic leftist tactic, right? Which is, if you are a card carrying member of the party, we will force you to do all the bureaucratic hurdles and loops and jump throughs before you could ever possibly be terminated. But as soon as you demonstrate any kind of wrong thing, you are immediately terminated. None of the process applies to you. None of the bureaucratic hurdles apply to you. And they run roughshod right to the end to non-renew these guys and kick them off the teams. So what legal remedies is Adam and his crew have here at this point? Well, that's something, yeah, that's something we're still investigating. Right now, we're working to see exactly what our long term options are going to be. And whether that includes something like federal litigation, we think this is a clear case where California has targeted individuals from the same church because of their religious beliefs. This is classic religious discrimination. And we're looking at what our available options are right now and we're working with the guys to decide what that's going to look like. But one thing I would note for you, let me just give you some highlights from this investigation. So in Andrew's case, it's important to know because Andrew is an officer once the investigator finalizes his recommendations, we get an opportunity to review it and respond to it before it ever becomes finalized by a commander. You've heard a lot of talk of microaggressions. This is one of the most absurd investigations I've ever read in all of my years of doing this. The investigator could not point to specific acts of misconduct and rather on multiple times said that Andrew created an environment where people were microaggressed if they were not Christians. For example, one of the things that the investigator highlighted was Andrew hosted a viable study before worked hours that no one was required to attend. People were obviously invited and welcome to attend if they wanted to. The investigator's language in this investigation was although having a viable study isn't technically a violation, it created this environment where you were microaggressed and oppressed if you didn't attend the Bible study. These are the kind of allegations that we're talking about. And so it's one of the most patently absurd investigations I've ever seen. Even Andrew, they gave him a counseling when he was terminated. And the counseling is hysterical to read because it is one of the top firefighters on the crew, one of the best leaders in the crew. Subject matter expert leads from the front, sets the example, does not adhere to the states, the I mandates terminated. Incredible. I mean, like, where in like crazy land? We are in crazy land. Like your words are a world. It's like your words and defense doesn't even matter. Like any of your, it doesn't even sound like anything you guys could say would actually equate some sort of legitimate response to them and their minds. I mean, it seems like no matter what, you were just doomed to fail in this investigation. Yeah, it seems like it. And they didn't account for my record of service, which is pretty good. And even like just on our our crew, it's isn't like my doing, I had a hand in it. We had a great team up there. But like I was on the crew for 1.5 years, they recognized the crew of the year three times during that time. Every single time they recognized crew of the year, it was us. There was a regional fitness competition, team event and individual event. My two crews took first and second place. I was on one of the one of the winning crews. We won the individual event. Undisputed champions, we were crew of the year that year. We got our units, safety award. We were a very decorated crew. We had a very good reputation really throughout the state. There were other units who would be on fire at Southern California. There would be people that were like, hey, we know you guys. We want you guys on this assignment over here. And none of that seemed to matter. They don't care about actual achievement or merit or competence. It's just, hey, do you think the right things? And if not, we don't care what you're capable of. So what about like your other friends and other, you know, leaders that are side by side with you guys and they aren't saying anything and standing up. It seems like you guys, if enough people stand up, they would drop the investigation or drop the silliness. Well, my take on that is one, most people, most people are not the types to stand up and put their necks on the line. And say, hey, the firefighters. Well, so the fire, all the fire captains completely separate entity. You know, they're all extremely angry. All of them are. And especially because the crew has pretty much been gutted. It was a very high functioning, high morale all the time except for a couple of the weak people. It's a very tough job. We had some of the best fire captains in the state. I would argue some of the best fire chiefs, excellent organization. And like I said, morale was high pretty much all the time. And a lot of that was because of the culture that we had there. And yes, I had something to do with that. I'm not going to say it was all me because it certainly wasn't. And now talking to some of the guys that are still on there. Like everybody scared of their shadow. The crew's been gutted. Morales low. And yeah, they can recover from it. They're a great bunch of guys. But the crew has just absolutely been gutted. Some of the fire captains are leaving. And it's like, this is one of the top performing crews in the entire state. We had at our last readiness drill, one of the proctors was a chief that has like 35 years experience. I think something like that, maybe it's 25, whatever was, lots of experience running some of the best hand crews. And he told us he's like, you guys. I've only known one of the fire crew that I would say is better. And that was, you know, their crew were the least experienced firefighter has like six seasons under his belt. Yeah. We're relative. We have high turnover. And so for him to say that, like, we are almost up there with that crew. It's pretty remarkable. He's like, you guys have it for our here. This is incredible. You guys killed that. And now all of that has been, all of that has been gutted. So this one of the things that you like. Like governor knew some could just like put a stop to it. I mean, like, is this like a political problem, political situation that rises to that level? So in my opinion, yes. Right. So when you're working at the National Guard, you, in some respects, you really do serve at the pleasure of the governor, right? The governor can step in and direct policy within the National Guard. Certainly. There's absolutely responsibility to be had here on the political level. But yeah, there's something that Andrew pointed out just a minute ago that I want to highlight for you and the listeners, which is there is a difference between physical courage and moral courage. In my time in the military, I knew a lot of guys who had a lot of physical courage. They were willing to jump out of airplanes. They were willing to repel from helicopters. They were willing to deploy and face gunfire. But the minute you asked them to show moral courage, they folded like a paper tiger. And so part of the problem is there aren't enough people with moral courage willing to stand up and speak out because they're afraid that what's happening to Andrew and his team is exactly what's going to happen to them. Yeah, yeah. You know, I'm reminded of CS Lewis's quote where courage is the testing point of all virtue. And such a great way of looking at it. You know, for us to resist sin, it first takes courage for us to resist temptation, it first takes courage. And of course, trust in Lord, but courage is like the first thing that's tested. And it's amazing how you just kind of put that, you know, how you kind of pin that to like just a difference between that and moral courage. All of a sudden, you know, I can run out and fight a fire. I can face a flame, but I can't face a moral situation that causes that means I need to show a little backbone here. So what is so Andrew, I mean, like what's the next steps for you right now? I mean, obviously you don't have a full time job right now. I think Andrew froze. I think my inner is lagging. You're good. You're back. Go ahead. What's the next step for you, Andrew? I'm still still coming in broke. Okay. Caleb, what, you know, you guys are still, I guess, calculating next steps or, you know, you know, what, what, what are the factors that you're having this sort of here? It seems like to me it's like, well, how do we get a bigger court, a more objective court to hear this? What do you appeal to? Who do you appeal? So it depends, right? Part of unfortunately, and this is the lawyer's perspective is unfortunately sometimes we're stuck in a position where we have to wait for California to do something to create the cause of action for us to move forward. Part of what we were waiting to see is whether California was actually going to terminate these guys and cancel their orders or not. Now that that has happened, that's kind of now the starting gun for us. As far as being, it's like, okay, now we have damages, now we have a cause of action. This is not just theoretical anymore. We actually have something tangible that's happened. So, you know, what we're looking at is, okay, is this going to require a federal lawsuit to resolve? Is this something that potentially, is this going to require a state lawsuit? And so what we're doing now is, you know, we're working with our partners. We're working with Andrew and his team to try to decide what that best path forward is for everyone involved. So Andrew, like, you don't have a job right now. You're not getting paid full time or I don't know. But what are you doing right now? Well, working on a resume and walking by faith. So, one of the things, I've been here for 24 years, I'm a soldier. That's pretty much all I've ever really known. And yeah, I've had various capacities in the guard. This is my first time where I'm really forced to be like, okay, how do my skills transfer to the civilian sector? I've had a number of guys recommend to me that I should look into project management. So there's a couple openings up here. I'm going to apply and hope it works out. But really, I've got nothing. Like I said, welcome by faith. We'll see what the Lord does. Because you literally just got basically fired like last week or two weeks ago. I mean, how recent was this final decision? The 31st was my last day. Wow. Wow. Okay. Any Kayla Andrew, anyway, for people to kind of stay up on the story, reach out to you guys. You know, I assume there's some probably financial support on the legal side of things here. You know, one of our listeners is somewhere. Yeah. So first things first is we would just ask for prayer for wisdom for our legal team and pray to God, but use this as an opportunity for Andrew and the other guys who were terminated from this fire crew. So that's first of all, number two, you can follow me on Twitter at Caleb Inbird or the or at Yancellaw, the military council. That's one of the best places to get updates. And if anyone wants to donate to the legal cause, they can feel free to reach out to either me or Davis via email. We're happy to provide that to you. Because you know, these are, this is one of the things that Davis and I have talked about. We had nauseam really since COVID kicked off is when it comes to fighting these legal battles, we can go out there and we can win and we can fight and we can make a difference, but it does require financial support to do that. And so if you have members who are interested in how they can support, they can feel free to reach out to us. We'd be happy to discuss what that might look like. Yeah. That's super, super helpful. Caleb, when we get off here, if you get text me and Andrew and a thread, that'd be great. Yeah, I'd love to. Thank you so much for coming on Caleb. I know Andrews have an internet problem, so we'll just let him go as is. And for those who are listening, you know, please reach out to me. I can email you and a thread with Caleb and Davis on this project. You know, be sharing and be praying. Your church should be praying about this in California. Anybody in California sounds like there's a couple of good firefighters that could be hired. You know, reach out. So thank you guys for joining Cross Balltick 1-on-1 with The Water Boy. We'll see you guys next week.