Hearts of Oak Podcast
Tina Ramirez - The Road to State Senate: CRT, Crime and Election Integrity
2023-05-01
Tina Ramirez has championed religious freedom and human rights all over the world for her whole working life. She now brings that experience, knowledge and passion to the US political scene by standing for The State Senate in Virginia. She has extensive political experience from her role as a foreign policy advisor for numerous Members of Congress. Her boldness in speaking up on issues such as Critical Race Theory, even when she was advised that it was too contentious shows desire to speak truth...
Tina Ramirez has championed religious freedom and human rights all over the world for her whole working life.
She now brings that experience, knowledge and passion to the US political scene by standing for The State Senate in Virginia.
She has extensive political experience from her role as a foreign policy advisor for numerous Members of Congress.
Her boldness in speaking up on issues such as Critical Race Theory, even when she was advised that it was too contentious shows desire to speak truth irrespective of the consequences.
This is one lady who truly believes what she stands for so join us this episode to be inspired as you listen to Tina as she shares how she will make a difference in the Virginia Senate.
Whether crafting legislation, securing the release of imprisoned victims, or engaging foreign dignitaries, Tina Ramirez has worked diligently to bring greater freedom and dignity to people around the world. From her early days as a high school teacher, through recent years in charge of an international non-profit organization, she has committed her entire life to service and to the preservation of human rights for all people.
While working for the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, she developed policies to improve religious freedom in several countries. As a Foreign Policy Advisor for numerous members of Congress, she helped start and direct the bi-partisan Congressional International Religious Freedom Caucus.
In 2013, she used her experience to create Hardwired Global, an organization that addresses the root causes of religious conflict and works to defend the rights of the oppressed. She has since worked in more than 30 countries and trained hundreds of journalists, lawyers, religious leaders, and teachers. Tina’s work has provided a simple, inexpensive way to counter persecution and build respect for religious freedom globally that is working. She has testified before the U.S. Congress, the United Nations, and the African Union, and has published several articles and books related to her work on human rights and religious freedom.
Tina was raised near her mother’s large, extended family in Powhatan County, Virginia where her father founded a medical practice and her mother ran a midwifery practice. Her parents, both second-generation descendants of Mexican and Czech immigrants and both Air Force Veterans, influenced Tina’s passion for service, freedom, and work with people worldwide. For Tina, Chesterfield is more than home: as the birthplace of religious freedom in America, it embodies her life-long work and calling. Tina now lives in Chesterfield with her daughter, Abigail.
Follow and Support Tina...
WEBSITE: https://tinaramirez.com/
TWITTER: https://twitter.com/TinaRamirezVA?s=20
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/TinaRamirezVA/
Hardwired Global...
WEBSITE: https://www.hardwiredglobal.org/
TWITTER: https://twitter.com/HardwiredOrg?s=20
Interview recorded 26.4.23
*Special thanks to Bosch Fawstin for recording our intro/outro on this podcast.
Check out his art https://theboschfawstinstore.blogspot.com/ and follow him on GETTR https://gettr.com/user/BoschFawstin and Twitter https://twitter.com/TheBoschFawstin?s=20
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(Hearts of Oak)
Hello Hearts of Oak, and welcome to another interview coming up with Tina Ramirez, who is a candidate for the Virginia Senate, the 12th district. I first met Tina last year when I was over stateside, and I followed her work on foreign policy, on religious engagement, regarding democracy in many other countries. I mean, she's worked all over the world in training individuals up to try and bring peace and stability to many countries.
And she's bringing that experience to the U.S political environment, to the Senate there, the state Senate in Virginia.
So we talk about a range of issues that she is passionate about.
There's no end to that. But we only took four.
Talk about CRT, critical race theory, why she's been so vocal on this.
Years ago, I remember reading pieces of her discussing this.
She's been warned off it. But no, she's this is vital to speak about this.
So we talk about that and the impact on children in the education system in America.
We talk about the economy, how there are so many issues with the economy and how the Democrats seem to be purposely wanting to destroy it.
We talk about crime, homelessness, drugs and the mess that some of the cities are in America.
So she talks about her passion on fixing that, on addressing some of those underlying issues.
And then we end up with election integrity. and that's one of her issues on her website.
You can click that and get the list, securing elections, making sure they're fair and free.
And she talks about why this is such a vital area and what needs to be done to make sure that elections are free and fair for every US citizen.
I know you'll enjoy listening to Tina. She has inspired me with her foreign policy work and maybe if you're stateside in Virginia, you'll even be able to vote for her.
So here's Tina.
Tina Ramirez, thank you so much for joining us today.
(video plays)
Right. Well, and Martin Luther King taught us to not judge people based on the colour of their skin, to see beyond that, to judge them on the value of their character. And this completely turned that thought out of its head, but it really was just the beginning. So under the Northam administration here in Virginia, a Democrat, the previous governor of Virginia. He started implementing policies where he was promoting this thing called the Critical Inquiry Initiative across Virginia. And so seven different school districts across Virginia or counties adopted critical race theory in the training of their teachers and in their school curriculum.
And the small, very rural country town that I grew up in, Powhatan, right next to where I live right now, adopted this training program and was implementing these really racist ideas and Marxist ideas into their classroom.
So we began to see children extremely confused, but also beginning to lack the ability to have critical thinking about differences of opinion and belief now I fought for religious freedom and the freedom of conscience around the world so my whole my whole life for the last 20 years of my career has been built upon, teaching people how to have very
challenging diverse opinions brought out into open form of a public debate in this marketplace of ideas and not to be afraid of different ideas but to allow them to flourish because that's where freedom and civil society and and civil discourse and and our freedoms really evolve is within that free public space of ideas, But they wanted to shut that down here in Virginia and then people that disagreed with them were being labelled hateful, racist, oppressors essentially and so, you know, that's not that's not what America is all about that's not what a civil discourse is all about. That's how you shut down freedom. That's how you force people to conform and
that's really the end of any kind of civil freedom in our society and so that's why we had to fight against it. But when we started to see what was happening, parents started speaking out in northern, Virginia I helped a woman who's actually, you know a Democrat not even a Republican but she essentially I think saw the light because she was in, she was an Indian woman whose son was going to one of the top schools here in Virginia it was a science and technology school and
the Northam administration wasn't just teaching critical race theory and, that being problematic in the school and as an Indian American she was then put in the category of an oppressor, which was insane. But because her socioeconomic class was higher than Hispanics and Blacks, they then began to put in place equity policies in the schools. And in her school in particular, which was a very advanced governor's school, like a charter school here in Virginia and we only have seven.
The new policies would have promoted Blacks and Hispanics above other categories of, Virginians, so Indian Americans, Caucasian Americans, etc, even if they didn't excel on their on their scores to get into the school as well as the others did so they're basically going to promote people that without merit, Over people that had actually worked so hard to get into these schools like her son so she I helped her and she filed a lawsuit against the state of Virginia for basically a violation of the Civil Rights Code, in title 9 which which goes against any kind of inequalities and racism which is essentially what they were promoting my daughter obviously is black I'm Hispanic and so I don't think that we need them to lower the bar for us to get into a school I find that offensive, I find it offensive for my daughter and I think many people of diverse backgrounds find it offensive and you know Blacks and Hispanics shouldn't be promoted over Indians or Caucasians or vice versa in any way this is racism and that's what the Northam administration was promoting and then as we began to, unpackage not just that but everything else in Virginia we started seeing that they were promoting pornography in the schools and children's books that were promoting paedophilia even as low even into our elementary schools with kindergartners that could have viewed these images, and the democrats in charge here in Virginia were justifying all of this and saying that we as parents didn't have a right to challenge teachers or to challenge what was happening in the classroom and so I fought very hard over the last few years to promote school choice to promote freedom in our education to promote parents rights in our education because I don't think kids and any kids, not just my own, should be taught what to think. They should be taught how to think.
They should be taught critical thinking. And it was all rooted back in this woke Marxist ideology that we've seen just
run rampant here in Virginia and cause so much chaos and confusion amongst our children.
And so that's what we've been fighting here in Virginia.
But I'm sure your viewers have seen this is not just a fight in Virginia.
It's gone all across the United States where parents have woken up and seen what's going on in the classroom and they're fighting against it.
You know, I've seen many of those school board meetings and I wish we had those in the UK, but we don't. That's another story. But there's school board meetings of parents standing up and saying this is not acceptable.
How does it fit in with elected officials? So the position of the Senate there.
Can they then hold those schools to account, those school governors to account? How does it work?
Because it has to be a partnership. It's the parents standing up in those school board meetings, but it's also the parents watching, listening, voting well, so that they get elected officials who can actually stop this happening across the schools.
I think it's vital, again, just to repeat what you said about taking that majority and why exactly it's fallen along party lines so much, similar actually to the UK, across Europe as well, is another conversation.
But it's good to know that parents, as they vote, they can actually make a difference.
Because sometimes I think the public think possibly their vote isn't worth anything and things just happen as normal.
But I think voting correctly and voting for you in the 12th district, And that puts someone in who will stand up for their values.
Let me add there a couple of others. One, of course, is the economy, which affects every American, every Brit, every person, and it's the the cost of items.
Yeah, Peter, every day I talk to people on the phone, at the doors, when I'm door knocking for the campaign, when I'm out about at the grocery store.
Every day I meet people who are really struggling to just pay their bills.
Yesterday I was at an antique store and a gentleman came in and was selling off two of his older electric guitars and I had a conversation with him and he said, look, before we never, my daughter never heard us talk about how we had to strap the belts up a little bit and and save money and struggling to pay for things.
She never heard those conversations, you know, from 2016 to 2020, the economy is great under President Trump.
And in the last couple of years, people like this, like this man have been selling things out of their home to just try to make ends meet and put food on the table to pay for gas.
It's shocking that in a country where we have so much wealth and prosperity and we have so many opportunities that the average American is literally having to sell goods just to pay to put food on a table.
They can't even afford gas to get to work sometimes because gas has gone so high.
It's really hurting the American family. The tax policies are hurting the average American family who don't have places to hide it like big corporations or like, or who are not, or they're just, they're being overtaxed.
I mean, our tax rate is at least 30% in middle America.
And so a third of your income is going out the door, but when prices are twice as high or three times, four times as high as they used to be, you can't afford to live anymore.
And I'm meeting people at every socioeconomic level now that are struggling to make ends meet and to do the just the normal things that they did with their families and so it's really heart-breaking to hear and it's even more heart-breaking then to see the not just the federal government but our local government here in Virginia.
They had a surplus for several years during COVID, and they spent it.
Did they think of saving for the future? Did they think of maybe things wouldn't be as, no, they just spend it.
They spend it as though it's just going to be this constant stream that they can take from us and spend without recourse and responsibility. And the problem is Americans are hurting now.
Virginians are hurting now.
We don't have the resources that we had two to three years ago and our families are hurting and they need a relief.
And when the governor tried to put forward a relief in the tax bill on cars and gas, the Democrats said, no, we're not gonna do it.
And they voted against it. And so, two Democrats to the majority of Virginians voted against any kind of relief on our tax bill this past year.
And this is hurting families. So we see inflation, but every day I'm hearing from people that they really, they can't make their food bills anymore because food is twice as expensive.
I talked to farmers today, I talked to a farmer who was, he's in the middle of his wheat harvest, planting season.
The cost of equipment just to plant has quadrupled. The cost of fertilizer has quadrupled.
I have friends in the tire industry and auto industry. The cost of oil to do oil changes on cars has quadrupled.
The cost of every commodity across the country has gone up two, three, four times.
And they have to begin putting those costs back on customers.
I talked to a restaurateur this week who said, Tina, we're just making ends meet.
We can't continue to survive. I mean, restaurants were shut down during COVID.
They are just trying to get out of it, but they can't afford to raise their cost four times as much for their customer, because then they'll lose all their customers, but they're bearing the cost and they can only survive for so much longer because reality is food is a lot more expensive now.
These are just the everyday things that I'm hearing. And our government seems to have no clue that anyone's hurting and to just keep spending, as you said, like there's no tomorrow.
And that's a major problem because it's not just, we're seeing that that's having an effect on the global situation with China and other countries trying to devalue the dollar and take greater control over other countries and resources globally, and put America and Western countries in a very, very difficult situation.
And this is really a threat to democracy and human freedom everywhere in the world.
And there's so many areas that I was surprised each time of being over the change in fuel costs filling up, but then I was really surprised going to supermarkets and seeing the price of food items. I thought we had it bad in the UK, but it seems to be much higher there.
But again, when you look at the debate, I'm kind of confused. The Democrats don't seem to want to address it at all. And it's happening before your eyes. You drive past the fuel pumps and you can see the prices. You fill up your shopping basket, your shopping trolley, and you realize it's gone up by 10% than it was a month ago. Special offers are not there. And then on top of that, you've got the impact on the economy of, I guess, your southern border and what's happening there. But there's so many issues. And to me, and then on top of that, debt relief the different groups. And then when we mentioned CRT about payments to those who may be affected by slavery hundreds and hundreds of years ago, none of it has joined up thinking it seems to be the Democrats simply are just destroying, crashing the economy and Americans are just, basically cannon fodder. They're just in the middle, they're getting hit. And it's really strange when you look at it from the UK and you look at what's happening policy-wise and you think everything that's being done is just seemingly making the situation worse.
I think the thing that's most frustrating to me is I'm a single mother. I run a business. I have to balance my budget I have to make cuts to provide for my family and to ensure that I can take care of my daughter and I, have to make sure that my business has enough money going for the next year or two years, etc.
Like I have to do this as an average American every American does but the government doesn't seem to think that they need to and when then when they talk about well we want to pay for the student loans of students that can't afford them, or we want to give out more handouts, or we want to let more people across the border to put a burden on our hospital and police system and everything else.
They want to give everything away for free.
They don't, and then they want to hurt the people in the middle like myself and most, average Americans that are the ones footing the bill.
They have no concern for the average family that is struggling just to survive and take care of their family and do the right thing.
I think that's what's so insane. I pay for my student loans.
I am a single mother.
I pay for my daughter. I take care of our family. I'm not looking for a handout.
Why is it that the people that work hard, that pay their taxes, that take care of their families, that are running their businesses and creating wealth and opportunities for others are the ones suffering and struggling so that they can give things out to people that don't want to work, that want to come across the border illegally, that are not willing to go out and get a job, why is it that we're the ones being attacked?
I am pro-family, I am pro-worker, I am pro-people, businesses that want to help the economy grow.
Unfortunately, the Democratic Party has abandoned people that want to work and have merit.
It goes back to the education conversation we just had. Under the Northam administration here in Virginia, we didn't know about this until just this year.
It was exposed that for two to three years now.
Schools were not allowing students that had been given merit awards for their excellence in education. They were they were, hiding their merit awards. They weren't telling the students about them, So they hid them because they thought that it was maybe racist or inequitable I don't know what their word was to tell students that over performed or that performed highly that they were given these merit awards, so these students who excelled were then entering into colleges and and not getting the scholarships or the advancement that they deserved, that they earned in college and paying for it themselves because the government said, well, it's inequitable.
We want to lower the bar for you. We don't wanna give you a merit award.
We've become a society where merit is being devalued. And as soon as that happens, you have an economy that's gonna crumble because who's gonna work in a system where hard work isn't valued anymore.
The American society was built upon hard work and grit and opportunity.
That's what people come here for. And so as soon as we lose that, what do we have as a society? And so I am absolutely fighting against these liberal woke policies that are destroying our country and the idea even that de Tocqueville talked about of the greatness of America.
Tina, when you're talking there, it's the American dream that I'm thinking of.
And of course that's been impacted massively by the financial hit, the economy hit, the debt burdens we talked about, but also it's crime is another way.
I think when I went to LA for the first time back in April, I, it was the one city I felt unsafe in and looking at the homelessness, tent cities everywhere.
Just actually on, yeah, in Europe we use trains, using the underground, the metro system, and there was a fight, bottles getting smashed, and it was just quite alien to me.
And then seeing the drug issue, people lying on the pavements or the sidewalks and high on drugs.
And it's I'm wondering, politicians seem to be oblivious to the the dangerous situation.
And I'm wondering kind of how you see that. Virginia did seem to be safer, certainly I'd be there.
But every state has their issues. And as that is happening in one area in the US, I guess it then spreads out and will affect other parts.
So tell us about your kind of concern about crime and those issues which Americans face.
Well, crime is one of my top concerns here in Virginia and across the United States.
We see cities taken over by liberal policies to defund our police, really destroying the protection of the rule of law, which is really the most fundamental aspect of our society and what allows us to be free, is having a rule of law legal system, a system that people respect and, and live under, because when you don't have the rule of law, you have these, you know, banana republics, like what I work around in all over the world, you have failed democracies, failed States.
When you don't have that rule of law, when you don't have institutions that people respect and protect.
And sadly in America, you know, we've seen this for several years now, but especially in the last few years since COVID and the George Floyd riots, we've seen this defund the police movement, attacking our law enforcement professionals.
I was endorsed by the Virginia Police Benevolent Association here in my race.
And one of the reasons they endorsed me was because of my staunch defence of their right to have the resources that they need to provide a civil defence and the rule of law protection here in our community.
We've seen that police have been defunded, that they have removed police resource officers in schools so that our schools are less safe.
I mean, I don't know why they, you know, they're concerned about gun violence, but they wanna get rid of the school resource officers that actually protect the schools.
It doesn't make any sense.
Police are leaving the forces in droves in different cities, like in the city of Richmond, the capital of Virginia, the police are all leaving.
They're coming to Chesterfield, where I live, because the police department here actually
wants to ensure that they have fair pay that they are that they have the support that they need and that's something that I want to continue expanding on but we see in cities across across the United States like Seattle, Portland you know, Los Angeles you name it and and even more in recent days. We've seen that these young youth groups are coordinating and are just doing flash mobs on on cities attacking businesses.
And in Chicago and in New York, this is happening.
And no one's doing anything about it. It's just, they're letting these young people run rampant and just attack the police, attack businesses.
It happened even here in the city of Richmond during the George Floyd riots, even African-American businesses were attacked.
They were indiscriminately just attacking businesses. There was no moral justification for what they were doing.
It was really just violence gone rampant and there's no there's no protection And so if we if we defund the police, we're not gonna have the protection we need in our communities and that's what's happening another big thing that we see here in Virginia is, that Democrats don't only just want to fight the police and strip away their resources which the police have been fighting against and I'm supporting them in that effort but they've also been trying to strip the gun rights of gun owners. And so, Democrats when they were you know controlling all the houses of legislature and the administration tried to pass these red flag laws.
And the red flag laws would essentially allow gun owners, just normal citizens like you and I to have their guns taken away if a neighbour feels in some way threatened by them, a feeling.
So we based laws based on facts. We don't base laws on feelings.
And the justice system is there to protect, did something happen or did it not happen?
It addresses facts, it doesn't address feelings.
And feelings are subjective. And so under these red flag laws.
That in fact one of my opponents actually voted for, supposedly a Republican and the other opponent actually used the red flag laws that she purportedly is against against her own staff.
People, average normal law-abiding citizens are having their guns taken away by, law enforcement because of some purported fear and I think that this puts law enforcement in a very precarious situation situation. In Chesterfield, they've said they wouldn't enforce these. But it also puts average Americans at risk of losing their constitutional freedoms. The First Amendment protects their freedom of speech and expression. Second Amendment protects their gun rights. The Fourth Amendment protects their right to be free from unwarranted search and seizure. So no one has a right to come into my home and to take my guns away unless there is a reason, a justifiable cause, an objective cause, not a subjective one.
And that's what's happening here in Virginia. So I'm running against two opponents that don't take these things seriously.
And obviously I think that's why the Police Benevolent Association has endorsed me because they understand that they need people that have their back to ensure that police have the support they need to enforce the rule of law, to protect citizens and to ensure that law abiding citizens aren't having their constitutional freedoms taken away.
And that's, you know, that's something I fought for my entire life, but it's something here in Virginia I want to protect and preserve. Because I understand what happens in countries when the government doesn't allow individuals to protect themselves or doesn't have a legal rule of law system where the police can be trusted to defend you. And so we have got to secure
our ability to have police and law enforcement fully supported and respected so that they can operate as they need to.
Maybe you need to learn from the motherland here in the UK. We can do all our voting between 7 a.m and 10 p.m and we can have it all counted by 2 a.m the next morning. And there's a I've been at election, many, many, many election counts and there was a rush from all the areas to get them in to be the first to be counted. It's a competition, a rush, and America seems to be the opposite, where actually you win if you're the slowest. Six weeks later, you're still counting.
It's a strange concept.
Absolutely. I think that we are at a really important juncture here in America and in Virginia.
We see so many of our institutions and processes failing and people not understanding the values that our country was founded upon.
The value of the First Amendment, freedom of speech, of expression, of religion, of conscience, of association, so many of our fundamental rights, now to the point where they don't want to allow police to associate and fight for their ability to have higher pay and have the resources they need to actually protect our rule of law system, protect our Constitution.
We have the Second Amendment under attack.
We have the Fourth Amendment and search and seizures under attack.
So many of our fundamental freedoms that, freedoms that I've fought for around the world for people in places like Iraq, Sudan, Nigeria, I mean, you name it, are now at risk here in America.
And I've seen this, I saw this happen, you know, 10 years ago when we fought Supreme
Court on the Hobby Lobby case just to protect the right of businesses to operate according to their conscience.
These are things that I expect in other countries. They're not the things that I expect here in America.
And so whenever I come back from a country like Iraq or South Sudan where I've been helping them develop an educated public to understand the importance of religious freedom so that a group like ISIS doesn't just re-emerge and brainwash the kids again.
We've been training children in Northern Iraq to become resilient against terrorism and extremism.
In South Sudan, we've been training members of parliament and citizens across the country in how to have agency and how to understand their rights and freedoms in a democratic system so they can actually have a free and fair election.
When I go overseas to do this and I come home, I don't take those kinds of freedoms for granted.
But I do see an American public that is increasingly being taught by woke ideologues to abandon those freedoms, to abandon those principles for ideas that have failed around the world, Marxist ideas that have failed.
And that is very concerning because America cannot be the beacon light of freedom around the world for people that are desperately searching for it if we abandon the principles that made us great as a nation.
And so I, every day as I'm in this race, I'm fighting for the America that I love, the America that I've been blessed to grow up in, the America that has allowed me to fight for freedom people around the world that don't have it.
I'm fighting for the future of my daughter who's eight years old who just because of the colour of her skin shouldn't be turned against her mother or be taught to think of people in a category of oppressors and oppressed based on the colour of their skin.
I'm fighting for her to grow up and to have optimism and hope and to stand up for the values that I've stood up for and to see people based on their character versus on the colour of their skin.
That's the America that I'm fighting for here and the values that I'm fighting for.
And because I've seen what happens when you don't have these freedoms in other countries and what, and how people can suffer. I will fight tooth and nail for it because I know how valuable and how worthwhile it is.
So I just am grateful to be able to be on your show, Peter, and share what we're doing here in Virginia.
There's so much to fight for.
And I don't want people to be discouraged by the elections or by what's happening and just to give up, because it's so easy, I think, to give up.
But when I'm meeting with people around the world that literally are risking everything, to gain the kind of freedom we have, I feel like it's even more incumbent upon us who have the freedom and haven't completely lost it to fight even harder to preserve it and protect it.
So thank you for having me and letting me share. And I look forward to continuing to get to know your viewers and I hope they'll reach out to me on my website and support this campaign however they can so that we can have leaders in office that will stand up for them.
Well, thank you, Tina. I've been in, I think I've been in Virginia more than any other place in America. So it does feel, it actually feels like the nice English countryside driving there. So thank you for coming on. I know our viewers can follow you on Twitter, can go to the website, can sign up, can support you financially, your campaign, can sign up to newsletters and follow what's happening. And I know us in the UK will be wishing you the best, praying for your success. And those watching, listening who are stateside in Virginia can actually use their vote to count if they live in that 12th district. So thank you for your time today, Tina.
Thank you, Peter. Well, I look forward to being with you again. Just appreciate all of your viewers reaching out to us at tinaramirez.com.
We look forward to having you on as a Senator.
And she's bringing that experience to the U.S political environment, to the Senate there, the state Senate in Virginia.
So we talk about a range of issues that she is passionate about.
There's no end to that. But we only took four.
Talk about CRT, critical race theory, why she's been so vocal on this.
Years ago, I remember reading pieces of her discussing this.
She's been warned off it. But no, she's this is vital to speak about this.
So we talk about that and the impact on children in the education system in America.
We talk about the economy, how there are so many issues with the economy and how the Democrats seem to be purposely wanting to destroy it.
We talk about crime, homelessness, drugs and the mess that some of the cities are in America.
So she talks about her passion on fixing that, on addressing some of those underlying issues.
And then we end up with election integrity. and that's one of her issues on her website.
You can click that and get the list, securing elections, making sure they're fair and free.
And she talks about why this is such a vital area and what needs to be done to make sure that elections are free and fair for every US citizen.
I know you'll enjoy listening to Tina. She has inspired me with her foreign policy work and maybe if you're stateside in Virginia, you'll even be able to vote for her.
So here's Tina.
Tina Ramirez, thank you so much for joining us today.
(Tina Ramirez)
Peter, thanks for having me. I'm super excited to be on your show.
Oh, it's great, and I had the privilege of meeting you last year. We'll get into that.
But for the viewers, you can find Tina @TinaRamirezVA. TinaRamirez.com is the website, the campaign website, and we're going to get into that.
But Tina is the founder of Hardwired Global that addresses the root causes of religious conflict trains and equips local leaders around the world and the other part of her many talents that we will focus on today is that she is a senate candidate for Virginia's 12th district. Now Tina I said I had the privilege of spending time with you the end of last year and our US viewers may know you but for the sake of our UK viewers could you just take a moment or two and introduce yourself?
Oh, it's great, and I had the privilege of meeting you last year. We'll get into that.
But for the viewers, you can find Tina @TinaRamirezVA. TinaRamirez.com is the website, the campaign website, and we're going to get into that.
But Tina is the founder of Hardwired Global that addresses the root causes of religious conflict trains and equips local leaders around the world and the other part of her many talents that we will focus on today is that she is a senate candidate for Virginia's 12th district. Now Tina I said I had the privilege of spending time with you the end of last year and our US viewers may know you but for the sake of our UK viewers could you just take a moment or two and introduce yourself?
Absolutely. Thank you, Peter. So I, as Peter mentioned, I run an organization called Hardwired Global. We believe that everyone is hardwired to be free and we fight for religious freedom and the freedom of conscience around the world and helping governments and people that want to have freedom secure that freedom through laws and educational policies that promote their fundamental rights. And so I work all over the world, Iraq, Sudan, Nigeria, many countries that that are failing their people and where the people need to secure their freedom.
But I also work in the United States to help secure freedom here as well.
I train teachers across the United States to counter woke indoctrination and Marxist ideas and to ensure that people have really the constitutional freedoms here in America that we understand preserved and protected in future generations through education.
The religious freedom is something I've built my life upon and I want it secured not just around the world, but I want it to remain protected here in America, and so I've fought throughout my life for that. I worked at the US Congress building a caucus on religious freedom and travel globally, Defending persecuted people and worked for the Becket fund which defended hobby lobby before the supreme court, 90 protecting the rights of conscience of businesses against being forced to provide abortifacient drugs So I have a long history and background, but right now I'm also running for the state senate in Virginia, And this is a critical election because as many of your viewers know the states are really the determiners of fair election laws and, What's going to happen moving forward in our country? And so I am running for a Senate seat That's pivotal to ensuring that we have the majority here in Virginia for the Republican Party to protect those conservative values.
But I also work in the United States to help secure freedom here as well.
I train teachers across the United States to counter woke indoctrination and Marxist ideas and to ensure that people have really the constitutional freedoms here in America that we understand preserved and protected in future generations through education.
The religious freedom is something I've built my life upon and I want it secured not just around the world, but I want it to remain protected here in America, and so I've fought throughout my life for that. I worked at the US Congress building a caucus on religious freedom and travel globally, Defending persecuted people and worked for the Becket fund which defended hobby lobby before the supreme court, 90 protecting the rights of conscience of businesses against being forced to provide abortifacient drugs So I have a long history and background, but right now I'm also running for the state senate in Virginia, And this is a critical election because as many of your viewers know the states are really the determiners of fair election laws and, What's going to happen moving forward in our country? And so I am running for a Senate seat That's pivotal to ensuring that we have the majority here in Virginia for the Republican Party to protect those conservative values.
Excellent. Thank you so much for that before we jump in if I can just play your I think your campaign ad, which I saw on your Twitter feed, just came out earlier this month, but let me play this 30-second for our viewers.
(video plays)
Over 100 years ago, my great-grandparents came to this country legally, the right way, to pursue the American dream.
My grandfather proudly served during World War II to protect American freedom, and it, was my grandfather's service that inspired me to found an organization that defends religious freedom in America and around the world.
Today, do-nothing career politicians are failing to defend our conservative freedoms in Virginia.
I'm Tina Ramirez. Like you, I've had enough.
As your state senator, I'll be your conservative fighter.
Now, there are a whole load of areas we could get into, but I think we'll just aim for maybe three or four issues.
One of them is CRT, critical race theory. And I remember looking back and you'd written a piece saying critical race theory divides families and you're a mom with a biracial child.
And that, I guess, brings a personal concern to this debate.
Maybe you want to tell us why you've been so vocal against CRT.
Yeah, thank you, Peter. Well, I'm a single mother as well. And so, you know, many people saw during COVID and the shutdown of our schools, how parents were becoming more and more aware of what was going on in the classroom because our kids were sitting in front of computer screens. And we were seeing first hand through Zoom classroom sessions that children were essentially being indoctrinated in a woke ideology that was rooted in Marxist theory.
And this is critical race theory. And I've read all of the articles that they were promoting throughout Virginia in our school system on this, and they were very open about the fact that it was rooted in Marxist theory and Marxist ideology, and that they were set on overturning the white heterosexual male Christian establishment to elevate minority people, regardless of any kind of merit or justification just based on the colour of their skin and to suppress the other group really with justification for any violence needed to overthrow the other category of people.
And I just, I saw, I started reading this and seeing it, seeing it in our schools.
I had a local junior high school here where they showed a video of a young boy, a white male child apologizing for his whiteness, apologizing to females, apologizing for so many things that this young student had never been responsible for, but this was part of the indoctrination that was taking place in schools across Virginia.
And that was just the tip of the iceberg. But I was very vocal about this a few years ago when it erupted.
I was one of the first people running for office to expose what was going on and to speak out on the news about it.
And I remember even other Republicans saying to me, don't talk about this. Don't touch it.
It's, you know, it's not a good thing for you to do politically.
And I just thought, are you kidding me? I'm a Hispanic mother of a biracial child.
And yet, because of the colour of my skin, you want me to allow the public school system to teach her
that I am somehow oppressive and an oppressor and need to be violently overtaken within our country because of the colour of my skin, which is essentially what they were teaching.
And they were dividing my family. And I wasn't going to have anything to do with that.
So I did speak out vocally. I think it's a travesty here in Virginia that, this was happening, but it wasn't just happening here. It was happening all across the United States where it really comes out of, I think, a lot of what we saw with the Obama administration where he went on this apology tour around the world saying, I'm so sorry for America being so great, as though we should somehow apologize for our greatness and for the freedom that we've brought millions of people around the world, trillions of people.
It's freedoms that I fought for around the world that we've been given the blessing of being able to fight for because of the freedom we have here.
So to see those freedoms trampled on and then Marxist theory promoted in our classrooms, which I studied human rights as a conservative.
I fought for human rights around the world for people that don't have it. And human rights is based in an idea of inherent human dignity and value. So to see that thrown out the window for Marxism, which we literally fought a world war against, to me, it was just unconscionable. And that's why I've spoken out so much against it.
And there's so much more I can talk about, but I'm sure you've seen it too, Peter. And Virginia really was at the precipice of this fight here in America. And so we had to, as parents, as mothers, as citizens, we had to fight against this.
Well, no, it's a big issue, obviously. It's not as big a concern here in the UK, and I live in London, which is a very mixed city, and you, friends, colleagues, neighbours from all over the world, every background, ethnicity, and my concern, certainly having two children as well, growing up here, is that this divides, is that this puts them and us and makes people see, makes children see their friends through the colour of their skin and not just as being a friend.
My grandfather proudly served during World War II to protect American freedom, and it, was my grandfather's service that inspired me to found an organization that defends religious freedom in America and around the world.
Today, do-nothing career politicians are failing to defend our conservative freedoms in Virginia.
I'm Tina Ramirez. Like you, I've had enough.
As your state senator, I'll be your conservative fighter.
Now, there are a whole load of areas we could get into, but I think we'll just aim for maybe three or four issues.
One of them is CRT, critical race theory. And I remember looking back and you'd written a piece saying critical race theory divides families and you're a mom with a biracial child.
And that, I guess, brings a personal concern to this debate.
Maybe you want to tell us why you've been so vocal against CRT.
Yeah, thank you, Peter. Well, I'm a single mother as well. And so, you know, many people saw during COVID and the shutdown of our schools, how parents were becoming more and more aware of what was going on in the classroom because our kids were sitting in front of computer screens. And we were seeing first hand through Zoom classroom sessions that children were essentially being indoctrinated in a woke ideology that was rooted in Marxist theory.
And this is critical race theory. And I've read all of the articles that they were promoting throughout Virginia in our school system on this, and they were very open about the fact that it was rooted in Marxist theory and Marxist ideology, and that they were set on overturning the white heterosexual male Christian establishment to elevate minority people, regardless of any kind of merit or justification just based on the colour of their skin and to suppress the other group really with justification for any violence needed to overthrow the other category of people.
And I just, I saw, I started reading this and seeing it, seeing it in our schools.
I had a local junior high school here where they showed a video of a young boy, a white male child apologizing for his whiteness, apologizing to females, apologizing for so many things that this young student had never been responsible for, but this was part of the indoctrination that was taking place in schools across Virginia.
And that was just the tip of the iceberg. But I was very vocal about this a few years ago when it erupted.
I was one of the first people running for office to expose what was going on and to speak out on the news about it.
And I remember even other Republicans saying to me, don't talk about this. Don't touch it.
It's, you know, it's not a good thing for you to do politically.
And I just thought, are you kidding me? I'm a Hispanic mother of a biracial child.
And yet, because of the colour of my skin, you want me to allow the public school system to teach her
that I am somehow oppressive and an oppressor and need to be violently overtaken within our country because of the colour of my skin, which is essentially what they were teaching.
And they were dividing my family. And I wasn't going to have anything to do with that.
So I did speak out vocally. I think it's a travesty here in Virginia that, this was happening, but it wasn't just happening here. It was happening all across the United States where it really comes out of, I think, a lot of what we saw with the Obama administration where he went on this apology tour around the world saying, I'm so sorry for America being so great, as though we should somehow apologize for our greatness and for the freedom that we've brought millions of people around the world, trillions of people.
It's freedoms that I fought for around the world that we've been given the blessing of being able to fight for because of the freedom we have here.
So to see those freedoms trampled on and then Marxist theory promoted in our classrooms, which I studied human rights as a conservative.
I fought for human rights around the world for people that don't have it. And human rights is based in an idea of inherent human dignity and value. So to see that thrown out the window for Marxism, which we literally fought a world war against, to me, it was just unconscionable. And that's why I've spoken out so much against it.
And there's so much more I can talk about, but I'm sure you've seen it too, Peter. And Virginia really was at the precipice of this fight here in America. And so we had to, as parents, as mothers, as citizens, we had to fight against this.
Well, no, it's a big issue, obviously. It's not as big a concern here in the UK, and I live in London, which is a very mixed city, and you, friends, colleagues, neighbours from all over the world, every background, ethnicity, and my concern, certainly having two children as well, growing up here, is that this divides, is that this puts them and us and makes people see, makes children see their friends through the colour of their skin and not just as being a friend.
Right. Well, and Martin Luther King taught us to not judge people based on the colour of their skin, to see beyond that, to judge them on the value of their character. And this completely turned that thought out of its head, but it really was just the beginning. So under the Northam administration here in Virginia, a Democrat, the previous governor of Virginia. He started implementing policies where he was promoting this thing called the Critical Inquiry Initiative across Virginia. And so seven different school districts across Virginia or counties adopted critical race theory in the training of their teachers and in their school curriculum.
And the small, very rural country town that I grew up in, Powhatan, right next to where I live right now, adopted this training program and was implementing these really racist ideas and Marxist ideas into their classroom.
So we began to see children extremely confused, but also beginning to lack the ability to have critical thinking about differences of opinion and belief now I fought for religious freedom and the freedom of conscience around the world so my whole my whole life for the last 20 years of my career has been built upon, teaching people how to have very
challenging diverse opinions brought out into open form of a public debate in this marketplace of ideas and not to be afraid of different ideas but to allow them to flourish because that's where freedom and civil society and and civil discourse and and our freedoms really evolve is within that free public space of ideas, But they wanted to shut that down here in Virginia and then people that disagreed with them were being labelled hateful, racist, oppressors essentially and so, you know, that's not that's not what America is all about that's not what a civil discourse is all about. That's how you shut down freedom. That's how you force people to conform and
that's really the end of any kind of civil freedom in our society and so that's why we had to fight against it. But when we started to see what was happening, parents started speaking out in northern, Virginia I helped a woman who's actually, you know a Democrat not even a Republican but she essentially I think saw the light because she was in, she was an Indian woman whose son was going to one of the top schools here in Virginia it was a science and technology school and
the Northam administration wasn't just teaching critical race theory and, that being problematic in the school and as an Indian American she was then put in the category of an oppressor, which was insane. But because her socioeconomic class was higher than Hispanics and Blacks, they then began to put in place equity policies in the schools. And in her school in particular, which was a very advanced governor's school, like a charter school here in Virginia and we only have seven.
The new policies would have promoted Blacks and Hispanics above other categories of, Virginians, so Indian Americans, Caucasian Americans, etc, even if they didn't excel on their on their scores to get into the school as well as the others did so they're basically going to promote people that without merit, Over people that had actually worked so hard to get into these schools like her son so she I helped her and she filed a lawsuit against the state of Virginia for basically a violation of the Civil Rights Code, in title 9 which which goes against any kind of inequalities and racism which is essentially what they were promoting my daughter obviously is black I'm Hispanic and so I don't think that we need them to lower the bar for us to get into a school I find that offensive, I find it offensive for my daughter and I think many people of diverse backgrounds find it offensive and you know Blacks and Hispanics shouldn't be promoted over Indians or Caucasians or vice versa in any way this is racism and that's what the Northam administration was promoting and then as we began to, unpackage not just that but everything else in Virginia we started seeing that they were promoting pornography in the schools and children's books that were promoting paedophilia even as low even into our elementary schools with kindergartners that could have viewed these images, and the democrats in charge here in Virginia were justifying all of this and saying that we as parents didn't have a right to challenge teachers or to challenge what was happening in the classroom and so I fought very hard over the last few years to promote school choice to promote freedom in our education to promote parents rights in our education because I don't think kids and any kids, not just my own, should be taught what to think. They should be taught how to think.
They should be taught critical thinking. And it was all rooted back in this woke Marxist ideology that we've seen just
run rampant here in Virginia and cause so much chaos and confusion amongst our children.
And so that's what we've been fighting here in Virginia.
But I'm sure your viewers have seen this is not just a fight in Virginia.
It's gone all across the United States where parents have woken up and seen what's going on in the classroom and they're fighting against it.
You know, I've seen many of those school board meetings and I wish we had those in the UK, but we don't. That's another story. But there's school board meetings of parents standing up and saying this is not acceptable.
How does it fit in with elected officials? So the position of the Senate there.
Can they then hold those schools to account, those school governors to account? How does it work?
Because it has to be a partnership. It's the parents standing up in those school board meetings, but it's also the parents watching, listening, voting well, so that they get elected officials who can actually stop this happening across the schools.
Right. Well, so we've been very involved in helping to bring together those parent voices and organize and fight back. And so here in my area in Chesterfield County, we were able to organize a rally with over 200 parents overnight that just showed up and ensure that our board of supervisors then issued a vote to, or we put pressure on them, so they issued a vote to overturn critical race theory in our schools. And so at least here in Chesterfield County, we were somewhat protected, but there's so much more work that needs to be done. And then we helped over the last few years identify and support and get candidates to run for school board and the Board of Supervisors across Virginia to to help overturn these really bad decisions at the local level in our schools. And so that's been a critical area that I've been fighting over the last few years. And now obviously I'm running for state Senate. And in the Senate, a lot of these policies have been pushed at the administrative level from the, um, just by government bureaucrats in the Department of Education and elsewhere. And so our job is to hold them accountable and to reverse those policies.
They have policies, for instance, on transgender,
transgender policies in the schools that promote essentially that children can be indoctrinated in a lot of ideologies about their sexuality without parents knowing or having any say over what their, what the children are doing or being taught in schools.
And so there's, there's so much ambiguity in the rules and the laws that the Northam Democratic administration previously had put in place that we have to reverse.
But in Virginia, we won an election in 2021 with Governor Yunkin and the Lieutenant Governor and the Attorney General winning. So we have a Republican administration, we have a Republican House of Delegates, but we do not have a Republican Senate.
And so over the last year and a half, they've been working extremely hard within the Republican Party to pass better laws and to reverse a lot of these bad policies in the schools, but they can't do it because everything gets blocked in the Senate.
Essentially the democrats in the senate have said that there will be a brick wall against these policies that these conservative policies that governor Younkin and our republican majority want to pass and so, this election the reason it's so critical is that when we win this year and win my seat, which is one seat we have to flip and then another seat will need two seats to flip we will have the majority in the house in the senate we can start reversing, so much craziness that's been going on both in our schools, but also with our election system, and our ability to support the police and in so many other areas.
So this election really is critical for that.
And to make sure that we get back on track, you probably, some of your viewers probably saw a man whose daughter was raped in school and he protested at a school board meeting and then was dragged out and then labelled a terrorist by the Biden administration and literally had the FBI going after him to be a domestic terrorist because he was somehow disturbing the peace in the school board meeting.
Well, he wasn't. What came out later was that his daughter had been raped.
The school board tried to cover it up and he was protesting that and, he was, his voice was shut down. And so there's now a lawsuit out over this case I mean this father deserved his right to protect his child and in Virginia schools children aren't being protected and the rights of parents aren't being protected and there are a lot of laws and policies that have put in place under the Democrats that we need to reverse, protecting children from being raped in the schools, it was a transgender person that had gone into the bathroom and had raped his young daughter.
These kinds of things have to stop.
And so until we have people in office that can fight back against that and change or reverse these policies, our children aren't safe.
And we, as parents, we're very concerned.
They have policies, for instance, on transgender,
transgender policies in the schools that promote essentially that children can be indoctrinated in a lot of ideologies about their sexuality without parents knowing or having any say over what their, what the children are doing or being taught in schools.
And so there's, there's so much ambiguity in the rules and the laws that the Northam Democratic administration previously had put in place that we have to reverse.
But in Virginia, we won an election in 2021 with Governor Yunkin and the Lieutenant Governor and the Attorney General winning. So we have a Republican administration, we have a Republican House of Delegates, but we do not have a Republican Senate.
And so over the last year and a half, they've been working extremely hard within the Republican Party to pass better laws and to reverse a lot of these bad policies in the schools, but they can't do it because everything gets blocked in the Senate.
Essentially the democrats in the senate have said that there will be a brick wall against these policies that these conservative policies that governor Younkin and our republican majority want to pass and so, this election the reason it's so critical is that when we win this year and win my seat, which is one seat we have to flip and then another seat will need two seats to flip we will have the majority in the house in the senate we can start reversing, so much craziness that's been going on both in our schools, but also with our election system, and our ability to support the police and in so many other areas.
So this election really is critical for that.
And to make sure that we get back on track, you probably, some of your viewers probably saw a man whose daughter was raped in school and he protested at a school board meeting and then was dragged out and then labelled a terrorist by the Biden administration and literally had the FBI going after him to be a domestic terrorist because he was somehow disturbing the peace in the school board meeting.
Well, he wasn't. What came out later was that his daughter had been raped.
The school board tried to cover it up and he was protesting that and, he was, his voice was shut down. And so there's now a lawsuit out over this case I mean this father deserved his right to protect his child and in Virginia schools children aren't being protected and the rights of parents aren't being protected and there are a lot of laws and policies that have put in place under the Democrats that we need to reverse, protecting children from being raped in the schools, it was a transgender person that had gone into the bathroom and had raped his young daughter.
These kinds of things have to stop.
And so until we have people in office that can fight back against that and change or reverse these policies, our children aren't safe.
And we, as parents, we're very concerned.
I think it's vital, again, just to repeat what you said about taking that majority and why exactly it's fallen along party lines so much, similar actually to the UK, across Europe as well, is another conversation.
But it's good to know that parents, as they vote, they can actually make a difference.
Because sometimes I think the public think possibly their vote isn't worth anything and things just happen as normal.
But I think voting correctly and voting for you in the 12th district, And that puts someone in who will stand up for their values.
Let me add there a couple of others. One, of course, is the economy, which affects every American, every Brit, every person, and it's the the cost of items.
And that's what really surprises people and affects people. And when you have to make those choices and we have sky high inflation, you have it there.
Government spending like there is no tomorrow. How do you approach this issue as a candidate?
Government spending like there is no tomorrow. How do you approach this issue as a candidate?
Yeah, Peter, every day I talk to people on the phone, at the doors, when I'm door knocking for the campaign, when I'm out about at the grocery store.
Every day I meet people who are really struggling to just pay their bills.
Yesterday I was at an antique store and a gentleman came in and was selling off two of his older electric guitars and I had a conversation with him and he said, look, before we never, my daughter never heard us talk about how we had to strap the belts up a little bit and and save money and struggling to pay for things.
She never heard those conversations, you know, from 2016 to 2020, the economy is great under President Trump.
And in the last couple of years, people like this, like this man have been selling things out of their home to just try to make ends meet and put food on the table to pay for gas.
It's shocking that in a country where we have so much wealth and prosperity and we have so many opportunities that the average American is literally having to sell goods just to pay to put food on a table.
They can't even afford gas to get to work sometimes because gas has gone so high.
It's really hurting the American family. The tax policies are hurting the average American family who don't have places to hide it like big corporations or like, or who are not, or they're just, they're being overtaxed.
I mean, our tax rate is at least 30% in middle America.
And so a third of your income is going out the door, but when prices are twice as high or three times, four times as high as they used to be, you can't afford to live anymore.
And I'm meeting people at every socioeconomic level now that are struggling to make ends meet and to do the just the normal things that they did with their families and so it's really heart-breaking to hear and it's even more heart-breaking then to see the not just the federal government but our local government here in Virginia.
They had a surplus for several years during COVID, and they spent it.
Did they think of saving for the future? Did they think of maybe things wouldn't be as, no, they just spend it.
They spend it as though it's just going to be this constant stream that they can take from us and spend without recourse and responsibility. And the problem is Americans are hurting now.
Virginians are hurting now.
We don't have the resources that we had two to three years ago and our families are hurting and they need a relief.
And when the governor tried to put forward a relief in the tax bill on cars and gas, the Democrats said, no, we're not gonna do it.
And they voted against it. And so, two Democrats to the majority of Virginians voted against any kind of relief on our tax bill this past year.
And this is hurting families. So we see inflation, but every day I'm hearing from people that they really, they can't make their food bills anymore because food is twice as expensive.
I talked to farmers today, I talked to a farmer who was, he's in the middle of his wheat harvest, planting season.
The cost of equipment just to plant has quadrupled. The cost of fertilizer has quadrupled.
I have friends in the tire industry and auto industry. The cost of oil to do oil changes on cars has quadrupled.
The cost of every commodity across the country has gone up two, three, four times.
And they have to begin putting those costs back on customers.
I talked to a restaurateur this week who said, Tina, we're just making ends meet.
We can't continue to survive. I mean, restaurants were shut down during COVID.
They are just trying to get out of it, but they can't afford to raise their cost four times as much for their customer, because then they'll lose all their customers, but they're bearing the cost and they can only survive for so much longer because reality is food is a lot more expensive now.
These are just the everyday things that I'm hearing. And our government seems to have no clue that anyone's hurting and to just keep spending, as you said, like there's no tomorrow.
And that's a major problem because it's not just, we're seeing that that's having an effect on the global situation with China and other countries trying to devalue the dollar and take greater control over other countries and resources globally, and put America and Western countries in a very, very difficult situation.
And this is really a threat to democracy and human freedom everywhere in the world.
And there's so many areas that I was surprised each time of being over the change in fuel costs filling up, but then I was really surprised going to supermarkets and seeing the price of food items. I thought we had it bad in the UK, but it seems to be much higher there.
But again, when you look at the debate, I'm kind of confused. The Democrats don't seem to want to address it at all. And it's happening before your eyes. You drive past the fuel pumps and you can see the prices. You fill up your shopping basket, your shopping trolley, and you realize it's gone up by 10% than it was a month ago. Special offers are not there. And then on top of that, you've got the impact on the economy of, I guess, your southern border and what's happening there. But there's so many issues. And to me, and then on top of that, debt relief the different groups. And then when we mentioned CRT about payments to those who may be affected by slavery hundreds and hundreds of years ago, none of it has joined up thinking it seems to be the Democrats simply are just destroying, crashing the economy and Americans are just, basically cannon fodder. They're just in the middle, they're getting hit. And it's really strange when you look at it from the UK and you look at what's happening policy-wise and you think everything that's being done is just seemingly making the situation worse.
I think the thing that's most frustrating to me is I'm a single mother. I run a business. I have to balance my budget I have to make cuts to provide for my family and to ensure that I can take care of my daughter and I, have to make sure that my business has enough money going for the next year or two years, etc.
Like I have to do this as an average American every American does but the government doesn't seem to think that they need to and when then when they talk about well we want to pay for the student loans of students that can't afford them, or we want to give out more handouts, or we want to let more people across the border to put a burden on our hospital and police system and everything else.
They want to give everything away for free.
They don't, and then they want to hurt the people in the middle like myself and most, average Americans that are the ones footing the bill.
They have no concern for the average family that is struggling just to survive and take care of their family and do the right thing.
I think that's what's so insane. I pay for my student loans.
I am a single mother.
I pay for my daughter. I take care of our family. I'm not looking for a handout.
Why is it that the people that work hard, that pay their taxes, that take care of their families, that are running their businesses and creating wealth and opportunities for others are the ones suffering and struggling so that they can give things out to people that don't want to work, that want to come across the border illegally, that are not willing to go out and get a job, why is it that we're the ones being attacked?
I am pro-family, I am pro-worker, I am pro-people, businesses that want to help the economy grow.
Unfortunately, the Democratic Party has abandoned people that want to work and have merit.
It goes back to the education conversation we just had. Under the Northam administration here in Virginia, we didn't know about this until just this year.
It was exposed that for two to three years now.
Schools were not allowing students that had been given merit awards for their excellence in education. They were they were, hiding their merit awards. They weren't telling the students about them, So they hid them because they thought that it was maybe racist or inequitable I don't know what their word was to tell students that over performed or that performed highly that they were given these merit awards, so these students who excelled were then entering into colleges and and not getting the scholarships or the advancement that they deserved, that they earned in college and paying for it themselves because the government said, well, it's inequitable.
We want to lower the bar for you. We don't wanna give you a merit award.
We've become a society where merit is being devalued. And as soon as that happens, you have an economy that's gonna crumble because who's gonna work in a system where hard work isn't valued anymore.
The American society was built upon hard work and grit and opportunity.
That's what people come here for. And so as soon as we lose that, what do we have as a society? And so I am absolutely fighting against these liberal woke policies that are destroying our country and the idea even that de Tocqueville talked about of the greatness of America.
Tina, when you're talking there, it's the American dream that I'm thinking of.
And of course that's been impacted massively by the financial hit, the economy hit, the debt burdens we talked about, but also it's crime is another way.
I think when I went to LA for the first time back in April, I, it was the one city I felt unsafe in and looking at the homelessness, tent cities everywhere.
Just actually on, yeah, in Europe we use trains, using the underground, the metro system, and there was a fight, bottles getting smashed, and it was just quite alien to me.
And then seeing the drug issue, people lying on the pavements or the sidewalks and high on drugs.
And it's I'm wondering, politicians seem to be oblivious to the the dangerous situation.
And I'm wondering kind of how you see that. Virginia did seem to be safer, certainly I'd be there.
But every state has their issues. And as that is happening in one area in the US, I guess it then spreads out and will affect other parts.
So tell us about your kind of concern about crime and those issues which Americans face.
Well, crime is one of my top concerns here in Virginia and across the United States.
We see cities taken over by liberal policies to defund our police, really destroying the protection of the rule of law, which is really the most fundamental aspect of our society and what allows us to be free, is having a rule of law legal system, a system that people respect and, and live under, because when you don't have the rule of law, you have these, you know, banana republics, like what I work around in all over the world, you have failed democracies, failed States.
When you don't have that rule of law, when you don't have institutions that people respect and protect.
And sadly in America, you know, we've seen this for several years now, but especially in the last few years since COVID and the George Floyd riots, we've seen this defund the police movement, attacking our law enforcement professionals.
I was endorsed by the Virginia Police Benevolent Association here in my race.
And one of the reasons they endorsed me was because of my staunch defence of their right to have the resources that they need to provide a civil defence and the rule of law protection here in our community.
We've seen that police have been defunded, that they have removed police resource officers in schools so that our schools are less safe.
I mean, I don't know why they, you know, they're concerned about gun violence, but they wanna get rid of the school resource officers that actually protect the schools.
It doesn't make any sense.
Police are leaving the forces in droves in different cities, like in the city of Richmond, the capital of Virginia, the police are all leaving.
They're coming to Chesterfield, where I live, because the police department here actually
wants to ensure that they have fair pay that they are that they have the support that they need and that's something that I want to continue expanding on but we see in cities across across the United States like Seattle, Portland you know, Los Angeles you name it and and even more in recent days. We've seen that these young youth groups are coordinating and are just doing flash mobs on on cities attacking businesses.
And in Chicago and in New York, this is happening.
And no one's doing anything about it. It's just, they're letting these young people run rampant and just attack the police, attack businesses.
It happened even here in the city of Richmond during the George Floyd riots, even African-American businesses were attacked.
They were indiscriminately just attacking businesses. There was no moral justification for what they were doing.
It was really just violence gone rampant and there's no there's no protection And so if we if we defund the police, we're not gonna have the protection we need in our communities and that's what's happening another big thing that we see here in Virginia is, that Democrats don't only just want to fight the police and strip away their resources which the police have been fighting against and I'm supporting them in that effort but they've also been trying to strip the gun rights of gun owners. And so, Democrats when they were you know controlling all the houses of legislature and the administration tried to pass these red flag laws.
And the red flag laws would essentially allow gun owners, just normal citizens like you and I to have their guns taken away if a neighbour feels in some way threatened by them, a feeling.
So we based laws based on facts. We don't base laws on feelings.
And the justice system is there to protect, did something happen or did it not happen?
It addresses facts, it doesn't address feelings.
And feelings are subjective. And so under these red flag laws.
That in fact one of my opponents actually voted for, supposedly a Republican and the other opponent actually used the red flag laws that she purportedly is against against her own staff.
People, average normal law-abiding citizens are having their guns taken away by, law enforcement because of some purported fear and I think that this puts law enforcement in a very precarious situation situation. In Chesterfield, they've said they wouldn't enforce these. But it also puts average Americans at risk of losing their constitutional freedoms. The First Amendment protects their freedom of speech and expression. Second Amendment protects their gun rights. The Fourth Amendment protects their right to be free from unwarranted search and seizure. So no one has a right to come into my home and to take my guns away unless there is a reason, a justifiable cause, an objective cause, not a subjective one.
And that's what's happening here in Virginia. So I'm running against two opponents that don't take these things seriously.
And obviously I think that's why the Police Benevolent Association has endorsed me because they understand that they need people that have their back to ensure that police have the support they need to enforce the rule of law, to protect citizens and to ensure that law abiding citizens aren't having their constitutional freedoms taken away.
And that's, you know, that's something I fought for my entire life, but it's something here in Virginia I want to protect and preserve. Because I understand what happens in countries when the government doesn't allow individuals to protect themselves or doesn't have a legal rule of law system where the police can be trusted to defend you. And so we have got to secure
our ability to have police and law enforcement fully supported and respected so that they can operate as they need to.
Let me, the one other topic I just wanted to ask you about and it's on your issue, so people go to your website and they click on the issues is securing our elections and I think of kind of election integrity, a lot being discussed of that, massive subject with a wide scale of issues to address. Obviously many people had questions over what happened in 2020, drop boxes, no ID, it goes on and on. But how do you address this issue as someone who's actually standing for public office and going to the electorate?
Well, I think that election integrity is really critical here in America. A lot of countries look to us as kind of the pinnacle of what fair pre-elections should look like, and I think that we've called that into question with, with the way things have been going the last few years.
We have to restore confidence in our election system. And that's only going to happen when we have better laws in place that protect our elections.
And first and foremost, that means that no one should be voting without an ID.
Here in Virginia, you can go and you can vote without having an identity card, without having your driver's license or some other form of physical ID, which is crazy.
So somebody could go and vote for me as long as they know my name and address in my place, and I would have no recourse.
And I think this is a huge threat to free and fair elections I think that every American should be concerned about it. It's not just a republican or democratic issue, so voter id is first and foremost one of the most critical things we also, I mean one thing that I see around the world is you know people go and they vote on one day and they often have a, an ink stamped on their on their finger one person one vote and they'll run they'll walk for miles to go and vote on that day I've been to Iraq and Sudan and so many Nigeria so many countries where I've where I've seen them voting and
having their one vote counted and unfortunately here in Virginia we have 45 days of early voting and..
We have to restore confidence in our election system. And that's only going to happen when we have better laws in place that protect our elections.
And first and foremost, that means that no one should be voting without an ID.
Here in Virginia, you can go and you can vote without having an identity card, without having your driver's license or some other form of physical ID, which is crazy.
So somebody could go and vote for me as long as they know my name and address in my place, and I would have no recourse.
And I think this is a huge threat to free and fair elections I think that every American should be concerned about it. It's not just a republican or democratic issue, so voter id is first and foremost one of the most critical things we also, I mean one thing that I see around the world is you know people go and they vote on one day and they often have a, an ink stamped on their on their finger one person one vote and they'll run they'll walk for miles to go and vote on that day I've been to Iraq and Sudan and so many Nigeria so many countries where I've where I've seen them voting and
having their one vote counted and unfortunately here in Virginia we have 45 days of early voting and..
45 days, wow
45 days of early voting and I find it offensive as an Hispanic woman and as I said as my daughter's is black that they think that somehow minorities like myself of my daughter are too stupid to vote on one day or to know how to fill out an absentee ballot to get it in ahead of time with a justified reason.
You know, that was always the case that we were able to, but to say that somehow, well, we can't vote without our ID or we need 45 days of early voting and anything else would be unfair or discriminatory is just insane.
This is, you know, I work with people all over the world who are minorities from different backgrounds, races, ethnicities, et cetera, who don't have a problem, literally risking their lives to go and vote on one day and get their finger stamped. There is no reason.
That the Democrats are pushing these kinds of policies for any other reason than to cheat and to make, to overburden our registrar system here It not just in Virginia, but around the country and so that's what we see and we need to reduce early voting we need to get back to you know, one day of voting and, the absentee ballots that we used or the you know when people have a justified reason of using an absentee ballot of getting back to that but, but this, this free for all that we see is putting a huge burden on our registrars that are trying to work in counties for six weeks of early voting.
As somebody that's running for office, my election will be on June 20th, but in reality, it starts May 5th, next Friday, because that's when early voting starts.
And so for six weeks, I will be campaigning as though it's election day, which puts also a huge burden on people running for office and getting out the vote.
There's no reason for this. I think that it's an unnecessary burden on every part of the electorate from the registrar down to the voter.
Americans have been blessed with the right to vote, with the ability to vote.
It is our public duty to vote. It is something that we should be grateful for and that we should not think it a burden to go out on that one day and to put aside a little bit of work and to go vote.
That is our public duty. It's our civic duty.
And so, around the world, I've been not just advocating for religious freedom, but I've been working in countries like South Sudan to restore agency in that part of the world and other parts of the world where people haven't had elections held in years and decades and they need the right to vote.
And so I've been training South Sudanese how to prepare for their national election, which hasn't taken place in about 10, 12 years.
And so I come home and I think, gosh, you guys need 45 days to vote and it's still not enough.
And you have every excuse under the sun why you can't have an ID card and you can't have this and you can't have that.
I mean, people die for the kind of freedom that we have. We should be.
We, it's it's embarrassing. It's embarrassing. I mean, I think that's the only way to say it.
And so, yes, in the State Senate, I'm going to be fighting to ensure that we have laws that are that are common sense.
You know, that was always the case that we were able to, but to say that somehow, well, we can't vote without our ID or we need 45 days of early voting and anything else would be unfair or discriminatory is just insane.
This is, you know, I work with people all over the world who are minorities from different backgrounds, races, ethnicities, et cetera, who don't have a problem, literally risking their lives to go and vote on one day and get their finger stamped. There is no reason.
That the Democrats are pushing these kinds of policies for any other reason than to cheat and to make, to overburden our registrar system here It not just in Virginia, but around the country and so that's what we see and we need to reduce early voting we need to get back to you know, one day of voting and, the absentee ballots that we used or the you know when people have a justified reason of using an absentee ballot of getting back to that but, but this, this free for all that we see is putting a huge burden on our registrars that are trying to work in counties for six weeks of early voting.
As somebody that's running for office, my election will be on June 20th, but in reality, it starts May 5th, next Friday, because that's when early voting starts.
And so for six weeks, I will be campaigning as though it's election day, which puts also a huge burden on people running for office and getting out the vote.
There's no reason for this. I think that it's an unnecessary burden on every part of the electorate from the registrar down to the voter.
Americans have been blessed with the right to vote, with the ability to vote.
It is our public duty to vote. It is something that we should be grateful for and that we should not think it a burden to go out on that one day and to put aside a little bit of work and to go vote.
That is our public duty. It's our civic duty.
And so, around the world, I've been not just advocating for religious freedom, but I've been working in countries like South Sudan to restore agency in that part of the world and other parts of the world where people haven't had elections held in years and decades and they need the right to vote.
And so I've been training South Sudanese how to prepare for their national election, which hasn't taken place in about 10, 12 years.
And so I come home and I think, gosh, you guys need 45 days to vote and it's still not enough.
And you have every excuse under the sun why you can't have an ID card and you can't have this and you can't have that.
I mean, people die for the kind of freedom that we have. We should be.
We, it's it's embarrassing. It's embarrassing. I mean, I think that's the only way to say it.
And so, yes, in the State Senate, I'm going to be fighting to ensure that we have laws that are that are common sense.
Maybe you need to learn from the motherland here in the UK. We can do all our voting between 7 a.m and 10 p.m and we can have it all counted by 2 a.m the next morning. And there's a I've been at election, many, many, many election counts and there was a rush from all the areas to get them in to be the first to be counted. It's a competition, a rush, and America seems to be the opposite, where actually you win if you're the slowest. Six weeks later, you're still counting.
It's a strange concept.
It's horrible, but it's not a Republican policy. These are things that have been put in place by Democrats that want to subvert our election integrity and Americans are, you know, over 50% of Americans saw what happened in the last election, and don't feel comfortable with the results.
And, you know, when you lose that kind of confidence in your election system, it puts America in a very different position, you know, internationally and globally.
And so we're not at the forefront, we're not the leader of democracy in this respect.
And we need to get back to a system where our people respect and trust the system, let alone the rest of the world where they're struggling to have free and fair elections.
Just, if I can just, a few minutes, I just wanna just finish off, touch on an area that's not, well, it's not necessarily in terms of you standing as a candidate, but you've touched on it, your work abroad, and your work on foreign policy all over.
And I know you were over in Iraq for their 20th anniversary.
You've talked about teaching others how to vote.
I mean, you bring a wealth of experience from working in other countries on seeing how they do things and seeing transitions to a democratic process.
Just, can we finish on that and how you bring that expertise and experience and knowledge to the Senate?
And, you know, when you lose that kind of confidence in your election system, it puts America in a very different position, you know, internationally and globally.
And so we're not at the forefront, we're not the leader of democracy in this respect.
And we need to get back to a system where our people respect and trust the system, let alone the rest of the world where they're struggling to have free and fair elections.
Just, if I can just, a few minutes, I just wanna just finish off, touch on an area that's not, well, it's not necessarily in terms of you standing as a candidate, but you've touched on it, your work abroad, and your work on foreign policy all over.
And I know you were over in Iraq for their 20th anniversary.
You've talked about teaching others how to vote.
I mean, you bring a wealth of experience from working in other countries on seeing how they do things and seeing transitions to a democratic process.
Just, can we finish on that and how you bring that expertise and experience and knowledge to the Senate?
Absolutely. I think that we are at a really important juncture here in America and in Virginia.
We see so many of our institutions and processes failing and people not understanding the values that our country was founded upon.
The value of the First Amendment, freedom of speech, of expression, of religion, of conscience, of association, so many of our fundamental rights, now to the point where they don't want to allow police to associate and fight for their ability to have higher pay and have the resources they need to actually protect our rule of law system, protect our Constitution.
We have the Second Amendment under attack.
We have the Fourth Amendment and search and seizures under attack.
So many of our fundamental freedoms that, freedoms that I've fought for around the world for people in places like Iraq, Sudan, Nigeria, I mean, you name it, are now at risk here in America.
And I've seen this, I saw this happen, you know, 10 years ago when we fought Supreme
Court on the Hobby Lobby case just to protect the right of businesses to operate according to their conscience.
These are things that I expect in other countries. They're not the things that I expect here in America.
And so whenever I come back from a country like Iraq or South Sudan where I've been helping them develop an educated public to understand the importance of religious freedom so that a group like ISIS doesn't just re-emerge and brainwash the kids again.
We've been training children in Northern Iraq to become resilient against terrorism and extremism.
In South Sudan, we've been training members of parliament and citizens across the country in how to have agency and how to understand their rights and freedoms in a democratic system so they can actually have a free and fair election.
When I go overseas to do this and I come home, I don't take those kinds of freedoms for granted.
But I do see an American public that is increasingly being taught by woke ideologues to abandon those freedoms, to abandon those principles for ideas that have failed around the world, Marxist ideas that have failed.
And that is very concerning because America cannot be the beacon light of freedom around the world for people that are desperately searching for it if we abandon the principles that made us great as a nation.
And so I, every day as I'm in this race, I'm fighting for the America that I love, the America that I've been blessed to grow up in, the America that has allowed me to fight for freedom people around the world that don't have it.
I'm fighting for the future of my daughter who's eight years old who just because of the colour of her skin shouldn't be turned against her mother or be taught to think of people in a category of oppressors and oppressed based on the colour of their skin.
I'm fighting for her to grow up and to have optimism and hope and to stand up for the values that I've stood up for and to see people based on their character versus on the colour of their skin.
That's the America that I'm fighting for here and the values that I'm fighting for.
And because I've seen what happens when you don't have these freedoms in other countries and what, and how people can suffer. I will fight tooth and nail for it because I know how valuable and how worthwhile it is.
So I just am grateful to be able to be on your show, Peter, and share what we're doing here in Virginia.
There's so much to fight for.
And I don't want people to be discouraged by the elections or by what's happening and just to give up, because it's so easy, I think, to give up.
But when I'm meeting with people around the world that literally are risking everything, to gain the kind of freedom we have, I feel like it's even more incumbent upon us who have the freedom and haven't completely lost it to fight even harder to preserve it and protect it.
So thank you for having me and letting me share. And I look forward to continuing to get to know your viewers and I hope they'll reach out to me on my website and support this campaign however they can so that we can have leaders in office that will stand up for them.
Well, thank you, Tina. I've been in, I think I've been in Virginia more than any other place in America. So it does feel, it actually feels like the nice English countryside driving there. So thank you for coming on. I know our viewers can follow you on Twitter, can go to the website, can sign up, can support you financially, your campaign, can sign up to newsletters and follow what's happening. And I know us in the UK will be wishing you the best, praying for your success. And those watching, listening who are stateside in Virginia can actually use their vote to count if they live in that 12th district. So thank you for your time today, Tina.
Thank you, Peter. Well, I look forward to being with you again. Just appreciate all of your viewers reaching out to us at tinaramirez.com.
We look forward to having you on as a Senator.
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