The Daily Signal - #396: What's Good, Bad in the Proposed Border Deal

Episode Date: February 12, 2019

Is 55 miles of border wall or fencing enough? Did liberals get too many concessions? The Heritage Foundation's Hans von Spakovsky joins us to discuss the proposed border deal that, if passed, would avert another shutdown. Plus: We talk about how a journalist got a department store to remove a "Fake News" t-shirt. We also cover these stories:•President Trump is calling for the resignation of Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn. •Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, announces California will abandon a high-speed rail between San Francisco and Los Angeles. •A new study finds that voter ID laws had no negative effect on voter registration or turnout,The Daily Signal podcast is available on Ricochet, iTunes, SoundCloud, Google Play, or Stitcher. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. You can also leave us a message at 202-608-6205 or write us at [e-mail]. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Wednesday, February 13th. I'm Kate Trinko. And I'm Daniel Davis. Well, members of Congress say they've reached agreement in principle on border security, but the president isn't on board, at least yet. Today, we'll talk with Heritage Immigration expert Hans von Spikovsky to unpack what Congress is considering and what it actually needs to do. Plus, journalists got riled up over a fake news t-shirt on sale at a department store. But do they really have the right to complain? We'll discuss. But first, we'll cover a few of the top headlines. Well, on Monday evening, lawmakers reached a preliminary agreement on border security,

including $1.38 billion to build 55 miles of border wall. But it's well short of President Trump's request of $5 billion, and the president didn't seem pleased. Here's what he said on Tuesday during a cabinet meeting. I can't say I'm happy. I can't say I'm thrilled. But the wall's getting built, regardless. doesn't matter because we're doing other things beyond what we're talking about here.

So we'll see what happens. We're having a meeting on it later. It's really obstruction. The Democrats want everybody to be able to come into our country. In that same cabinet meeting Tuesday, President Trump called for the resignation of Representative Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota, who tweeted earlier this week, it's all about the Benjamin's baby before apologizing after a bipartisan uproar and accusations of anti-Semitism.

One other thing I might want to say is that anti-Semitism has no place in the United States Congress. And Congressman Omar is terrible, what she said. And I think she should either resign from Congress or she should certainly resign from the House Foreign Affairs Committee. What she said is so deep-seated in her heart. that her lame apology, and that's what it was, it was lame, and she didn't mean a word of it, was just not appropriate. I think she should resign from Congress, frankly.

But at a minimum, she shouldn't be on committees, certainly that committee. Representative Steve Scalise, a member of GOP leadership, spoke about her committee assignment to Fox News. Right now, she sits on the Foreign Affairs Committee. she's able to get classified briefings on foreign policy, especially as it relates to Israel. And yet she's made statements, anti-Israel, anti-Jewish statements, aligned herself with anti-Semitic people as well. She should be removed from the Foreign Affairs Committee. That's something Nancy Pelosi should do immediately. After apologizing, Omar almost immediately tweeted a thread from a man who claimed that his boss, who is a politician,

that his views were affected by a donation from APEC. Well, Venezuela is at a 10. tipping point, with the economy collapsing under the weight of Nicholas Maduro's socialist regime. The U.S. and a host of allies now recognize Juan Guaido as the nation's president. He's been president of the National Assembly and constitutionally is next in line to assume the presidency, which he did recently in light of Maduro's election fraud, which was widely acknowledged. Senator Marco Rubio has been quite vocal about Venezuela. He spoke Monday at the Heritage Foundation and explained why the U.S. must remain

involved in that country's efforts at transition. So when people ask me, what does this have to do with the United States? Like, number one, I think we always should be on the side of democracy because democracy is morally superior to dictatorship and tyranny. But the second is it's in our national interest. If you look, anything, it's in our own hemisphere. And this is no longer an issue of Venezuela. It is a million and growing number of migrants now in Colombia

are putting tremendous stress on the Colombian health care system in Colombian society. We've seen the same play out increasingly in Peru, somewhat in Brazil, a lot in Ecuador. So what happens is, as these migratory flows continue, it puts stresses on governments, particularly in Colombia, that are already facing other significant challenges.

In that border region alone, between Colombia and Venezuela, you have over a million somewhat vulnerable people, some of whom become prime targets for narco-trafficking networks to prey on, and so forth. And then the societal pressures. We've seen the emergence of some, you know, xenophobic style blowbacks in Ecuador after a murder that occurred there.

So the pressure puts on these countries, threatens to create instability not just in Venezuela, in Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Brazil, in a way that it suddenly becomes a regional crisis. And anytime you have mass migrations and regional crisis in your own hemisphere, it's eventually going to impact you pretty dramatically, not to mention has a direct impact on our counter-narcotic efforts in Colombia that over the last three years has seen record coca production, much of that cocaine ultimately headed to U.S. streets. So there's a lot of reasons to understand why this has, or to explain why this has direct implication on our national interest as a country because a hemispheric continental South American collapse of multiple key partners would ultimately

impact this directly and immediately. And it already started to. And you can listen to the rest of speech on the Heritage Events podcast, which you can find on iTunes, Google Play, and SoundCloud. Well, even California faces its big government setbacks with Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, saying Tuesday in his State of the State address that the Golden State would no longer pursue a high-speed rail between San Francisco and Los Angeles. According to the Associated Press, the high-speed rail between the two cities was estimated to cost $77 billion and would take another 14 years to complete. However, California will still build a high-speed rail between two cities in the state's Central Valley, which as a former Californian I maintain is insane because no one's

going to use it. Former California, huh? You're ditching the label? It's really hard, but I mean, it's been like 10 years. Well, it's been nearly two weeks since Virginia Governor Ralph Northam was put on the hot seat over a racist photo in his medical school yearbook page. He's received wide calls to resign, even from his own party, but he's just not doing it. Instead, he's now launching a listening tour to hear feedback from Virginians and to share what he's learned in recent weeks. According to BuzzFeed, he's also recalibrating his agenda to focus on race and equality and potentially to increase funding for Virginia's historically black colleges and universities. On Monday, a group of black leaders held a press conference at the Capitol in Richmond, saying that they forgive Northam. Well, it turns out most Americans

don't favor killing babies. A new poll out from UGov and Americans United for Life finds that nearly eight out of ten Americans don't support abortion in the third trimester of a pregnancy. Even among pro-choice Americans, two-thirds opposed abortion in the third trimester. Well, voter ID laws have been denounced on the left as a means of voter suppression, but a new study suggests that's just not what it is. The study, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, showed that voter ID laws had no negative effect on voter registration or turnout for any group defined by race, gender, age, or party affiliation. Advocates of voter ID laws say they're necessary to fight against voter fraud, which has been documented in past elections. Currently, 10 states require voters to show ID at the polling place.

So Megan Murphy was banned from Twitter, and now Murphy, a Canadian writer who focuses on gender politics, is fighting back in court, filing a lawsuit. in San Francisco. Murphy alleges that the tweets she was asked to remove were, how are trans women not men? What is the difference between a man and a trans woman and men aren't women? Her lawyer, Nora Peters, told the Wall Street Journal, which broke the news, Twitter claims its policies do not take into account political views. They actually do practice viewpoint discrimination. End quote. Last year, Twitter announced it would not be allowing users to misgender a person or use the name associated with the gender they no longer identify with. An unnamed Twitter spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation that, quote,

Twitter believes Ms. Murphy's claims are meritless and will vigorously defend itself against the suit. Up next, we'll be joined by Hans von Spikovsky to talk about the new congressional border wall proposal. Do you have an opinion that you'd like to share? I'm Rob Bluie, editor-in-chief of the Daily Signal, and I'm inviting you to share your thoughts with us. Leave us a voicemail at 202-608-6205 or email us at Letters at DailySignal.com. Yours could be featured on the Daily Signal podcast. All right.

Well, members of the House of Representatives and the Senate who have been negotiating on a border security package say that they've arrived at a preliminary agreement, which would allocate about $1.38 billion dollars for a border wall. Now joining us in studio to discuss is Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow and immigration expert at the Heritage Foundation. Thanks for being back, Hans. Sure, thanks for having me. So, Hans, is this deal, you know, the president, as we covered earlier in the show, the president is not so enthusiastic about this proposal?

Right. Do you think, first of all, you think it'll pass Congress? Well, it sounds like they've worked out a deal. You know, what's interesting about it is, you know, 1.8 billion, that's 1.3, sorry, 1.38. billion. Numbers. You got to love these. Yeah, all these numbers are running around.

I mean, look, it's not the, you know, 5.7, almost 6 billion the president wanted. But on the other hand, remember the Democrats through now have said they wouldn't give a single penny. Yep. For the wall. So, you know, I suspect part of what's going to happen here is the president is going to look at this, getting this amount for the wall. And we should say, he wanted enough money, I think, for about 200 miles of wall.

in the key places where a lot of aliens come across, this apparently would build about 55 miles. I assume part of his determination on whether to accept this deal is what he's hearing from his advisors on whether once he gets this money, can he then supplement this with other money that has already been appropriated by Congress through a national emergency declaration?

And I would assume that if, for example, his advisors are saying, look, we can get, you know, $2 billion, $3 billion, $4 billion from these other funds. He might take this deal because if he can get that much from already appropriated monies at the Department of Defense or elsewhere and combine it with this, well, then he may get close to what he needs for what he's been promising the American people. So let's talk about that 55 miles. Sure. Now, my understanding is Democrats and Republicans are now squabbling over whether it's a wall or fencing or steel barrier or something, but yes, there is something along those 55 miles. And you, of course, mentioned the president.

Initially, it asked for 200 miles. How many miles of wall or secure fencing do we actually want from a policy perspective along the border? I don't know the answer to that, because remember, we've got a 2,000-mile border. And there are many places where the geography is so tough that if not places where aliens, cross, and we don't necessarily need walls there. On the other hand, the effectiveness of walls has been proven in places like San Diego. You know, San Diego years ago, they started building fencing there. They improved it with the kind of wall that the president wants in recent years.

And the number of alien crossings at San Diego, which used to be the most heavily traveled border district is now a fraction of what it used to be. So what they've got to do is strategic planning and figure out where are the geographic areas where are the most aliens cross, and that's where they need to put in the fencing. Now, you mentioned some supplementary money in addition to this. Where would that come from? Well, for example, I suspect the White House is probably looking at defense budget monies that have already been appropriated like the Army Corps of Engineers. You know, the Army Corps of Engineers budget is part of DOD.

But most people who are familiar with them know that they actually spend most of their money building civilian construction projects. You know, they're the ones they build dams. They do water control along the Mississippi, and they get a very large amount of money every year from Congress, much of it undesignated. You know, it's not money where Congress says this specific amount has to be used for this specific project. A lot of it is given to the core and left to their discretion as to where they think that money is needed. And I think there's probably a pretty good amount there, probably a couple of billion, that the president could possibly use. for this kind of a project. If only heritage budgeted like this, I can do so much with the daily signal.

Okay, well, so another issue of dispute was Democrats wanted to reduce or keep stable the number of beds and these detaining centers. Republicans said that was a bad idea. What is the dispute here and what's the right answer? That was like one of the weirdest demands I've ever seen. They wanted a number of detention beds reduced at ICE facility. You know, the detention beds are what are used when someone illegally crosses the border or in the interior of the United States if, for example, ICE finds a criminal alien.

You know, if they pick up, if they get a call from a local sheriff who says, we have someone who's an illegal alien who is convicted of assault. They're about to finish their sentence. Please come get them. Well, if ICE goes and picks them up, you obviously do. don't want to allow a felon or criminal alien like that back into the community, you want to detain them. And to do that, you need a facility to do that. And yet here, what were the Democrats saying? They want to reduce the ability of ICE to detain aliens, particularly the many

criminal aliens who were around the country. From a public safety standpoint, it made absolutely no sense. Supposedly the deal they've agreed to is that the number of detention spaces will stay at the same level as a previous budget and is not going to be reduced, which again, I mean, that's the Democrats giving up something, although you have to sit and wonder, why did they want that in the first place? So if the president ends up deciding to spend money from the Army Corps of Engineers or someone else, do you expect the Democrats or someone in California would sue? And do you think they would find some judge to block it?

And what would that process look like? Yeah, I have no doubt that there would be a lawsuit filed. And I suspect it would be the entire House of Representatives, at least the Democrats, because they now control it. They can easily get a resolution passed and get the House itself into a lawsuit. Yeah, I think they could certainly find a liberal judge who ignores the law and issues an injunction. But if, look, if the president is using, properly using appropriated funds that were not designated for a particular project, that's within his authority to do that. And I think if a case like that got to the Supreme Court, I think the government would win the same way they won, remember the Trump v. Hawaii case, which was the big lawsuits filed over the travel ban. Yeah, the lower courts, many of them issued injunctions, but ultimately the Supreme Court sided with the Trump administration.

So if that ends up happening, how long do you think we're looking at before this wall actually gets built? Boy, it could be at least a year given, even with the Justice Department asking for expedited hearings and expedited appeal, even when the courts are moving quickly, it takes them a while to do that. So, yeah, it could freeze things for a while. So we don't know right now what President Trump is going to do, whether he's going to go for this deal or not. If he does sign this deal, is this going to have any real impact on the issue of illegal immigration in our country? Well, certainly not reducing the amount of detention space will have an effect, because as the president pointed out in his state of the union address, just in the last two years alone, ICE has arrested more than a quarter of a million criminal aliens who'd be. been convicted of everything from sexual assault to murder.

And keeping those kind of folks who are picked up in detention facilities instead of letting them roam around in the communities, that makes a huge difference to public safety. Every mile of wall that is built adds a security layer to our border and is a way of trying to prevent, you know, large numbers of illegal aliens from coming across. So, yeah, it could make a difference. Is it the only thing that needs to be done? No. There's many other steps that need to be taken to solve this problem.

But this is an important one. If this passes and the president gets his $1.38 billion, I mean, that's kind of an optimistic sign. Wouldn't you say that maybe this kind of thing could pass a second time? I mean, if Democrats were originally totally. against it. They're totally against it. They're giving up over a billion. But I mean, didn't they start with the White House asking for 20 to 25 billion? I mean, if they got a 25th of what they asked for. I don't know. It doesn't seem like a big political victory to me. Well, I think if the president takes this deal, actually, I think he comes out ahead because whether it was 20 billion

or 5.7 billion, which was the latest. Remember, throughout this entire process, the Democrats had said zero billion. So getting almost any kind of amount, any amount of money out of the Democrats on this, I think is actually a win for the president. Okay. Well, thanks so much for joining us today, Hans. Thanks for having me.

Do you own an Alexa? You can now get the Daily Signal podcast every day as part of your daily flash briefing. It's easy to do. Just open up your Alexa app, go to settings, and select Flash Briefing. From there, you can search for the Daily Signal podcast and add it to your flash briefing

so you can stay up to date with the top news of the day that the liberal media isn't covering. On CNN over the weekend, former top New York Times editor, Jill Abramson, author of the new book, Merchants of Truth, discussed with Brian Stelter,

the allegations that she had plagiarized. Just how much truth is there in Jill Abramson's new book, Merchants of Truth. The book has been applauded, it's been praised for capturing how the news business is changing, and the book does do that.

But the book also contains passages that are plagiarized from other sources. Abramson was a former executive editor at the New York Times. So this scandal has sent shockwaves throughout the journalism world. It was Vice News correspondent Michael Moynihan, who first called out these examples of what he called plagiarism, including this passage that seems to have been lifted from the Ryerson Review of Journalism, almost word for word.

There's also another one he spotted that appears to be a passage taken from Time Out magazine. You can see here how it's almost exactly word for word. CNN's Oliver Darcy, also uncovered two. additional examples of text that appear to be lifted from other sources, and he's published those examples on CNN.com. Now, I'm grateful that Jill has agreed to join me here to respond to these allegations. She's here with me on set. Jill, full disclosure to the audience. You and I work together at the New York Times. You were the top editor there. Wouldn't these examples meet the Times definition

of plagiarism? It would mean that it would meet the Times definition of things that should be promptly corrected and sometimes you know a quote isn't attributed correctly in the newspaper and that that's corrected and that's what I have endeavored to do here and Brian you know I would never purposely take credit for the work of another journalist or writer however that's not the only crisis journalists are facing department store Bloomingdale's put out a t-shirt with fake news on it, and a journalist from New York, Alison Kaden, tweeted, Hey, Bloomingdale's, this isn't funny or fashionable. It further delegitimizes hardworking

journalists who bring real news to their communities. Well, Bloomingdale's has now removed the t-shirt, tweeting to Kaden, thank you for bringing this to our attention, and we apologize for any offense we may have caused. We take this feedback very seriously and are working quickly to remove this t-shirt. Again, thank you for taking the time to alert us. So, Daniel, were you offended by this t-shirt? Honestly, I'm just kind of surprised at how quickly Bloomingdale's responded. It's almost like the journalist was holding a gun to their head.

It's like, I am literally going to kill you if you don't get rid of this t-shirt. I mean, it was a Twitter mob potential. Well, there you go. If you see what happens to people these days. Yeah, I mean, look, journalists have incurred plenty of, like, write full criticism over the last few years. And the best journalists will admit that they've had blind spots and that they, you know, didn't understand Trump voters and all kinds of stuff. And, you know, some journalists will even admit that it's very hard to be, very hard to be neutral in reporting

when, you know, you're selecting topics from a limited, you know, you have limited resources and you have to pick and prioritize things. And your biases can come through. So I think the more honest journalists admit that, you know, that that's a, that's an issue. I honestly think this journalist just had just way too easily offended. I mean, I don't even, I agree with her. It's not fashionable. Maybe it wasn't selling well. I don't even, as someone who used to love wearing t-shirts with stuff on them,

I'm actually at a loss as to what point you would exactly be making by wearing this t-shirt. But, I mean, yeah, finding it offensive. Like, presumably if you do real news, you don't. don't like fake, it's not like you're saying fake news does exist. Well, let's remember. It was originally journalists who complained about the existence of fake news. Right. This wasn't originally a Trump thing.

Trump actually pretty smartly hijacked the word and then used it to describe the media. But it was originally journalists who were saying, no, this fake news stuff is actually a problem and, you know, we need to get rid of it. And so there was that debate over censorship and all that. So I guess I don't really understand what, what, what. the issue is for this guy. Is he denying the existence of, like, false reporting? I don't know what. I mean, we only have her thing about, like, you know,

being disrespectful and delegitimizing. Yeah. I mean, I just don't get that. Like, I don't get how the T-shirt says that. I don't get why she cares what a T-shirt says. I don't. But I think it's also sort of typical of this. Journalists take themselves so seriously.

And, I mean, it's kind of ridiculous. It's like, you're not Mother Teresa. I mean, I'm not saying, like, It's an honorable profession, and there's certainly lots of journalists who could make more money in other fields who genuinely see it as a public service, and that's great. But, geez, I just, the self-righteousness. And let's not forget that. I mean, there have been some very serious plagiarism scandals, not just the one that was mentioned in this clip, but also over the recently over in the German leading German magazine, Der Spiegel, where this award-winning journalist just completely made up out of whole cloth stories. and actually some of them were here in the United States during the election.

He made up stories about Trump supporters, and he's just now recently gotten busted for that, and he's admitted it, says, I need help. And so, like, that's a real thing. So, you know, anyone who denies the existence of false reporting and actual fake news, I think is just kidding themselves. Right. And I think, of course, that it wasn't the first time in the early 2000s, both, I believe, the New York Times and USA today, had pretty epic scandals with reporters being revealed to have made up folks and made up quotes, Jason Blair, of course, for the New York Times.

But, you know, I think the other thing about Abramson that actually I wanted to circle back to that troubled me is she gave an interview to New York Magazine, where they're the cut, their blog, where she said that she doesn't record interviews, which is interesting because there have also been allegations that she misquoted people that she quotes in the book. obviously a journalist's best friend is there a recorder there were times you know when I was doing reporting where I would I think actually use more than one recorder for some interviews because I was so nervous that if one didn't work or there was a glitch like there was no way to get that audio back and of course if you quote a politician saying something he is not proud of saying he is going to want to say it's fake news and if you get pressed you know if someone files charges against you for misquoting them

you'd want to have that recording on hand to be able to exonerate yourself. And it's just good practice. It's very hard. I was speaking to young journalist last week. It's very hard to take notes and pay attention and us thoughtful questions. Like it's just a lot.

Technology is amazing that we don't have to do that. But I think the thing here is that the former top New York Dinesperson and fairly recently, as of 2014, I mean, this is some pretty basic journalism stuff. And yeah, I mean, to me this is sort of emblematic of like the mainstream media is so laser focused on what they view as fake news and other issues and, you know, they're all over conservative media and what they think their problems are. But like, are they self-policing at all?

Yeah, I mean, it raises real questions about, frankly, the New York Times just because she worked there and she was the head editor there for so long. So, yeah, who knows. Anyway, we're going to leave it there for today. Thanks for listening to the Daily Signal podcast brought to you from the Robert H. Bruce Radio studio at the Heritage Foundation. Please be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, or SoundCloud, and please leave us

a review or rating on iTunes to give us any feedback. We'll see you again tomorrow. You've been listening to the Daily Signal podcast, executive produced by Kate Trinko and Daniel Davis. Sound design by Michael Gooden, Lauren Evans, and the Leah Rampersad. For more information, visitdailySignal.com.

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