The Daily Signal - Arizona Abortion Upheld, House Delays Delivery of Mayorkas Impeachment Articles, Illegal Drivers in DC | April 9

Starting point is 00:00:00 Get you and your crew to the big shows with Go Transit. Go connects to all the main concert venues like TD Coliseum in Hamilton and Scotia Bank Arena in Toronto. And Go makes it affordable with special e-ticket fares. A one-day weekend pass offers unlimited travel across the network on any weekend day or holiday for just $10. And a weekday group pass offers the same weekday travel flexibility from $30 for two people and up to $60 for five. Buy yours at gotransit.com slash tickets. I'm Virginia Allen, and this is the Daily Signal Top News for Tuesday, April 9th. Here are today's headlines.

Starting point is 00:00:51 In an unexpected change this afternoon, Fox News reports that Republican senators were able to convince House Speaker Mike Johnson to delay the delivery of two articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. The articles were expected to be delivered to the Senate tomorrow. But there were concerns that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer was going to dismiss the articles right away and table the trial. A spokesperson for Johnson told Fox News Digital today that to ensure the Senate has adequate time to perform its constitutional duty, the House will transmit the articles of impeachment to the Senate next week. There is no reason whatsoever for the Senate to abdicate its responsibility to hold an impeachment trial. And further understanding why the delay, Fox reports that the benefit of the delay for Republicans is allowing the articles of impeachment against Mayorkas more time for debate without the

Starting point is 00:01:51 pressure of the approaching weekend. You'll remember that two months ago, the House voted to impeach Mayorkas. I actually sat down with Republican Senator Roger Marshall to discuss the articles of impeachment and what to expect in the Senate when they do receive those articles. And he confirmed that at least as of right now, it looks like Schumer is expected to table the articles. I ask him if this had ever happened before, and this is what he said. This has never happened before. There's been 21 impeachment trials over on the House side. Four of those, the person died, they resigned.

Starting point is 00:02:27 But 17 of them had still had the person in office when those impeachment articles were delivered. And every one of those was followed through with the trial. again, this is so toxic that Chuck Schumer is going to table it. That's certainly what it looks like, but we're going to go down screaming and fighting. You'll remember that back in February, the House voted 214 to 213 to impeach Mayorkas. That was after the first vote to impeach him had failed a week prior. The first article of impeachment in the House alleges that the Homeland Security Secretary has failed to secure America's border and enforce immigration laws and has instead executed policy, that actually incentivize illegal immigration.

Starting point is 00:03:08 The second article of impeachment contends that Mallorcas is in breach of the public's trust and has knowingly made false statements both to Congress and to the American people. You can catch my full conversation with Senator Marshall on tomorrow morning's daily signal podcast as we dive a little bit deeper into what to expect from the Senate as these articles of impeachment are delivered. And also, why we are seeing such a dramatic increase in crime, across the nation. The Arizona Supreme Court issued a ruling upholding an 1864 abortion law today.

Starting point is 00:03:46 The law prohibits performing an abortion except to save the life of the mother. Now, the White House says Vice President Kamala Harris is going to visit Arizona on Friday to continue her leadership on the fight for, quote, reproductive freedoms. President Biden issued a statement following the ruling in which he said today, this ruling is a result of the extreme agenda of Republican elected officials who are committed to ripping away women's freedom. Arizona Democrat Governor Katie Hobbs called the ruling a dark day in Arizona. For now, the 1864 law does remain on hold. The Arizona Supreme Court sent the law back to a lower court to hear additional arguments about its constitutionality. The New York Times has explained that what the Arizona Supreme Court did was say that because the federal right to abortion in Roe v. Wade had been overturned, there was no federal or state law preventing Arizona from enforcing the near total ban on abortions, which has sat dormant for decades.

Starting point is 00:04:47 Up until now, abortion has been allowed in Arizona up to 15 weeks of pregnancy. Stay tuned. We'll continue to follow this story as it unfolds. A Daily Signal investigation has found that drivers of two-wheeled motorized vehicles are breaking the law in D.C. And they don't appear to be facing any consequences for doing so. Specifically, individuals are acquiring and driving motorized bikes for food delivery in the District of Columbia. But many of the bikes do not have license plates indicating that they're not properly registered or insured. By law, they're required to both have license plates and have insurance for these vehicles. And one of the most important factors to mention in this story is that the vast majority of those

Starting point is 00:05:37 driving these motorized bikes are illegal aliens. Tim Kennedy is a specialist for digital productions at the Heritage Foundation, and he often also films and produces videos for us here at The Daily Signal. And he was the first one who flagged this situation, and we actually co-authored this piece together at the Daily Signal, along with one of our other colleagues, Christian Last of All. Tim, can you explain, first off, thanks for being here. Oh, thank you so much for having me in Virginia.

Starting point is 00:06:04 My co-author. Yes, yes, fellow co-author. Can you explain how you first noticed this situation? What piqued your interest in what was happening on the streets of Washington, D.C., regarding an increase in motorbikes that were delivering food? Sure. So I commute about eight minutes on a bike to work as is, and I live on. I live in Noma, so I live just off of New York Avenue.

Starting point is 00:06:29 And in my commute to work every morning, I would see on average at least six of these bikes. And I saw no license plate. I saw them, you know, obeying virtually no traffic laws, driving on the sidewalks, running reds, what have you. And we're essentially talking about small motorcycles here, right? We're talking about small motorcycles, yes. So these are vehicles that are around 50 cc's cubic centimeters as engines. Most of them, as we'll get to later, were around like 150 cc's. That's not your average moped going like 20 miles an hour.

Starting point is 00:07:03 That's going like 55 miles an hour. So these are like serious vehicles. And so it definitely piqued my interest that they didn't have license plates. But then I saw a lot of these individuals seem to be presumed migrants. And so I just asked the natural question of, well, I guess you need a license. I guess you need a registration. I guess you need insurance to operate these vehicles. And to the best of my knowledge, these individuals can't obtain it.

Starting point is 00:07:29 So how's this happening? Yeah. So we went out and we talked to some of these drivers on the streets of D.C. Talk us through those conversations. What were these individuals saying? And what did they say when we specifically asked them, specifically our colleague Christian who speaks Spanish, asked them how they were driving these bikes without license plates.

Starting point is 00:07:52 Yeah, so again, very organic in that we went to kind of a central hub for food delivery. We went just south of DuPont Circle. And we just caught a bunch of people coming in and out of places like Chick-fil-A with orders and driving up on their 150-ccc bikes and whatnot. And we initially asked them, did you come, you know, are you here in the country illegally or did you cross the border illegally? How did you get here? and a majority of the people, 10 or so people we interviewed, have come to D.C. in the past year or so, some as soon as three months. They have all purchased their bikes within the past year,

Starting point is 00:08:34 some as soon as that week. And what we found was, an overwhelming majority of them, recognized that they needed registration, insurance, all the proper paperwork, but that since the police were not cracking down on it, they had no incentive to go out and get these forms or do all this registration, maybe even knowing full well that they couldn't qualify for half these things, seeing as they're not citizens as is. And, yeah. No, that was one of, I think, the most interesting factors when we talk about in the article is that many of them said, oh, yes, yes, yes.

Starting point is 00:09:17 the paperwork that I need. Well, per DC law, if you register your bike, you're sent a license plate. So you can't have something registered without having a license plate in your possession, and you can't register a bike without having insurance. So someone driving without a license plates indicates that they don't have insurance. And it was fascinating when we spoke with one individual who was an American citizen. It was the only individual who we spoke with, who was a U.S. citizen and he was driving a 150-cc bike and said that he had previously driven a 50-cc, but then when there was this explosion of all of these bikes, he estimated about an increase of about 1,000 just over the past year.

Starting point is 00:09:55 He opted to get a bike that had a larger motor, larger engine so he could go further faster and essentially keep up with the competition. But even though he was a legal citizen, he still didn't have a license plate either. And his response essentially was, well, like you said, Tim, it was why bother? I mean, they're being emboldened. Yeah. No one's, there's no guardrails. They see a thousand, like that guy's saying, he sees a thousand bikes ahead of him doing it.

Starting point is 00:10:20 Why should he stop? Yeah. And go through, yeah. Well, and we reached out to D.C. police to ask if they were aware of the situation and if they were cracking down. And a spokesperson for the Metropolitan Police Department, which is D.C.'s police department, said that those driving without a license plate are testing their luck. And they explained. I love that.

Starting point is 00:10:41 testing their luck because it's like it's happening in broad daylight in front of the police. If that's like testing my luck, then I don't know like what it is like shooting someone in the city. And apparently that's running rampant too. We have indeed seen a drastic increase in crime in the nation's capital. And we're seeing this across the country as well. But we're going to leave a link in today's show notes for those that want to read this full report and dive a little bit deeper into what Tim, Christian and I found as we love this investigation. But Tim, thank you for your time today and thanks for leading the charge on this investigation.

Starting point is 00:11:14 Thank you for all your help too. A national public radio whistleblower wrote an expose about how the publicly funded news network is deeply biased. In an essay for the free press, Yuri Berliner, who has worked at NBR for 25 years, they explained how the 2016 election of President Donald Trump pushed the already liberal news media network further left. Berliner wrote that the network was obsessed with the Trump-Russia collusion narrative until the story fell apart. MPR then stopped covering the issue entirely as if it never existed. He also explained how the news network has become entirely obsessed with identity politics and that various identity-focused groups through NPR's union has enormous sway over their news coverage.

Starting point is 00:12:09 He wrote that there's an unspoken consensus about the stories we should pursue and how they should be framed, adding it's frictionless one story after another about instances of supposed racism, transphobia, signs of the climate apocalypse, Israel doing something bad, and the dire threat of Republican policies. It's almost like an assembly line. Berliner said he dug into the party affiliation of the people. who run NPR and found that the publication had 87 registered Democrats working in editorial positions and zero Republicans. With that, that's going to do it for today's episode. Thanks so much for joining us for The Daily Signal's top news. If you haven't had the chance, make sure that you check out our morning show. Once again, I am sitting down with Senator Marshall of Kansas tomorrow to talk about those impeachment articles against Mayorkas arriving in the Senate, what to expect,

Starting point is 00:13:07 and we also discuss rising crime in America and what can be done about that. And be sure as well, if you have a moment to leave The Daily Signal a five-star rating and review. And be sure to hit that subscribe button so you never miss out on our new shows. Thanks again for being with us this afternoon. Have a great rest of your Tuesday. We'll see you right back here tomorrow morning. The Daily Signal podcast is made possible because of listeners like you. Executive producers are Rob Bluey and Kate Trinko.

Starting point is 00:13:36 Hosts are Virginia Allen, Brian Gottstein, Mary Margaret O'Lehann, and Tyler O'Neill. Sound design by Lauren Evans, Mark Geiney, and John Pop. To learn more or support our work, please visit DailySignal.com.

The Daily Signal - Arizona Abortion Upheld, House Delays Delivery of Mayorkas Impeachment Articles, Illegal Drivers in DC | April 9

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