The Daily Signal - Biden Joins Picket Line, Hunter Biden Sues Rudy Giuliani, Cory Booker Calls on Bob Menendez to Resign | Sept. 26

Starting point is 00:00:01 I'm Virginia Allen, and this is the Daily Seedal Top News for Tuesday, September 26th. Here are today's headlines. Today, President Joe Biden became the first known sitting president to stand on a picket line with protesters. Biden visited Michigan today and joined United Auto Workers Union President, Sean Fane and Auto Workers, in a strike against major carmakers. With a megaphone in hand, Biden spoke out in support. of unions and said the striking workers deserve higher pay per Axios. Everybody said many times.

Starting point is 00:00:51 Wall Street didn't build the country. The middle class built the country. We built the middle class. So let's keep going. You deserve what you've earned and you've earned a hell a lot more than you're getting paid now. Thank you very much. The unionized auto workers are calling on Ford,

Starting point is 00:01:11 General Motors and Stalantis to increase pay, and create better working conditions. White House press secretary, Corrine Jean-Pierre, says Biden's presence at the protests aims to show support for the auto workers, but the White House is reportedly not getting involved in the negotiations between the union and the car companies. The United Auto Workers endorsed Biden for president in 2020, but has not yet endorsed him for 2024. But Biden is not the only politician visiting Motor City, Michigan this week.

Starting point is 00:01:44 former President Donald Trump will be there tomorrow. Instead of joining the debate stage with his fellow Republicans tomorrow night, Trump plans to give an address from Michigan. And as the campaign trail does heat up, Biden's team is focused on an important task, making sure that the president doesn't trip in the public again. Biden tripped over a sandbag in June on stage at the Air Force Academy. The media ran with that footage and, concerns over the president falling raised a lot of questions about Biden's physical health.

Starting point is 00:02:22 Axios reported today that Biden has been working with a physical therapist for months and is doing exercises to improve his balance. The president has also been seen wearing sneakers more often and is using the short set of stairs to board Air Force One. According to Axios, Democrats are terrified that Biden will have a bad fall with a nightmare scenario of it happening in the weeks before the November 24 election. Well, President Biden was not the only Biden making news today. Hunter Biden made headlines today by filing a lawsuit against Rudy Giuliani and his former attorney, Robert Costello.

Starting point is 00:02:59 In the lawsuit, Hunter Biden accuses Giuliani and Costello of hacking information, tampering with, manipulating, copying, disseminating, and generally obsessing over data that they were given that was taken or stolen. from his, meaning Hunter Biden's devices. The lawsuit was filed in federal court in California. In the suit, Hunter Biden demands that Giuliani and Costello cease their unlawful activities with respect to plaintiff's data and return any data in their possession belonging to plaintiff, meaning Hunter Biden.

Starting point is 00:03:36 The suit continues that defendant's statements suggest that their unlawful hacking activities are ongoing today and that unless stop will continue into the future, thereby necessitating this action. The lawsuit comes as Hunter Biden and his father are facing scrutiny and investigation from lawmakers over alleged illegal business dealings. In other news from Washington, D.C. today calls for New Jersey Democrat Senator Bob Menendez to step down are continuing. Reuters is reporting that now one-third of all Senate Democratic. Democrats have called on Menendez to resign. The New Jersey Senator was indicted last week by a jury in the Southern District of New York. He was indicted on charges of corruptly aiding the Egyptian

Starting point is 00:04:25 government in exchange for bribes. The serious charges in that indictment allege that the senator shared highly sensitive information about America's embassy in Cairo, Egypt, and tried to interfere in criminal prosecutions. Among the most serious of the charges are claims that he, He used his power as head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in ways that benefited the government of Egypt in exchange for bribes that included money, gold bars, mortgage payments, and even a luxury car. Senator Cory Booker has joined many of his colleagues in calling for Menendez to resign. Booker is also a New Jersey Democrat senator, and Booker said in a statement today that for

Starting point is 00:05:07 Menendez, stepping down is not an admission of guilt, but an acknowledgement. that holding public office often demands tremendous sacrifices at great personal cost. Senator Menendez has made these sacrifices in the past to serve, and in this case, he must do so again. I believe stepping down is best for those Senator Menendez has spent his life serving. As the pressure mounts, Menendez continues to claim he is innocent, and on Monday said he believes he will be exonerated. And in other news from Capitol Hill today, Republican lawmakers are calling on the Biden administration to provide detailed information on how much U.S. aid money has been sent to Ukraine.

Starting point is 00:05:53 Fox News was the first to report that a group of GOP lawmakers sent a letter to national security advisor Jake Sullivan asking for the precise number regarding aid to Ukraine. Last week, Sullivan said the Biden administration has spent around 79. $9.9 billion in aid to Ukraine since the start of the war. But Republicans like Senator J.D. Vance and representatives Chip Roy and Matt Gates say that figure appears to be inaccurate. Fox News reports that a week before Sullivan gave his remarks, the White House Office of Management and Budget, gave Senator Vance's office a chart showing at least $101 billion has been spent on Ukraine with plans for additional spending. Now the lawmakers are demanding clarity. In the letter to Sullivan, the GOP lawmakers

Starting point is 00:06:44 asked the White House to clarify your remarks and communicate clearly the total budgetary resources across all government departments provided for the war in Ukraine and countries impacted by the situation in Ukraine, as well as any other expenditures made by the U.S. taxpayer in connection with the conflict. The letter also asked for clarification on where all the Ukraine funding has come from. Stay tuned to see if lawmakers receive a response to their request. Finally, today, pronouns have become a hot topic in culture. We all know that. And by now, we've probably all seen it, the email signature with someone's preferred pronouns. Well, a new study has found that having pronouns in your email signature might increase your chances of college

Starting point is 00:07:32 admittance. A study by two economists at West Virginia University called Gender Identity. and access to higher education found that college admissions counselors give preferential treatment to emails from people with pronouns in their signature lines. Heritage Foundation Senior Legal Fellow and co-host of SCOTUS 101 podcast here from the Heritage Foundation. John Carlo Canaparo has been covering this. He wrote a daily signal piece reporting this situation. He joins us now.

Starting point is 00:08:03 John Carlo, thanks for being with us. Virginia, thanks for having me. Okay, so walk us through this study. How exactly was this study conducted? Yes. So what the economists did is they created identical form emails sent by fictitious students or applicants to universities to admissions officers at 500 different universities around the country. They were identical in every single way, except that some of them in the signature lines

Starting point is 00:08:31 had their pronouns, included he, him, she, her, or she, or. Z-Zem, which is spelled X-E-X-E-M. I think it's pronounced Z. Not entirely sure. But what they found was that if you had pronouns in your email signature line, the admissions counselors were 4% more likely to respond to your email. But things got really interested when you looked at the actual linguistic content of those emails. What they found is that the emails to applicants with pronouns in the bios tended to be

Starting point is 00:09:05 much friendlier and much more engaging. They used exclamation marks 10.5% more often. And here's the real kicker. They used like smiley face emojis 141% more often with pronoun users. They would ask questions inviting more feedback and more engagement. Whereas if you didn't have pronouns in your bio,

Starting point is 00:09:29 you tended to just get sort of straight factual answers. So I have a couple of examples. for you if you'd like from the study. So the economist sent an email from a fictitious student named Morgan to admissions officers asking about, so the premise was Morgan is about to move and Morgan needs to know when he or she is going to get the admissions packages and whether they're going to be arriving at home and when she should send things out. You know, very standard questions, but they are identical except that in the first two, there were pronouns in the the signature line, and the third there were not. So for two of them, these were the responses for the two emails that had pronouns. Hi, Morgan, thanks for your message, exclamation mark.

Starting point is 00:10:18 What proceeds then is a long explanation of, you know, here's the first item will be mailed to you at this state. It's going to be sent electronically. If you're admitted, we're going to send you on for the mail. And then will you have moved by February? Like, please respond to me. We're in a conversation, right? The second one, hi, Morgan, how long until you move? Immediately.

Starting point is 00:10:33 Like, we're engaged in a conversation. And then we're going to send you an admissions email, et cetera, et cetera, three weeks, you know, it's depending on this and that, warmest regards. The third one from somebody with no pronouns. I would say to you, use whichever one you want to get your mail sent to because we'll mail your acceptance letter, scholarship certificate to that address. And that was it.

Starting point is 00:10:52 That was it. And this is like these are anecdotal, right? But this was the trend throughout the entire data set. Very fascinating. So what conclusions then should folks be drawing, for one who are applying to schools. I mean, what is the takeaway and what can we learn from this as it relates to where colleges stand?

Starting point is 00:11:15 And specifically admissions boards, especially given that the Supreme Court recently made its ruling as it relates to college admissions and not considering things like race and gender when it comes to college admissions. So here's the really interesting thing about the study is that the type of pronoun used didn't make any significant difference. all that mattered was that their pronouns were present. So the economists draw the conclusion that there isn't discrimination on the basis of gender ideology or gender identity. What's going on is discrimination on the basis of progressive politics. That's what the schools are doing. It makes

Starting point is 00:11:50 perfect sense, right, because the people who tend to be obsessed about gender pronouns tend to be usually well-educated liberals and they tend to be white, right? This is exactly the demographic of college admissions counselors. They are over-educated white liberals who live in bubbles, right? Sure enough, the universities where this tends to happen tend to be big city-based universities, right? So, you know, if you want some advice, I guess, you know, the most sort of mercenary advice is put pronouns in your email, but, you know, if you have some principles, don't do that. Don't do that. The better option is to, you know, maybe target the, well, do you need to. need to go to college at all.

Starting point is 00:12:35 It is something of a racket these days. And luckily, we're seeing a lot of employment, employers sort of reconsidering whether college is necessary and focusing on merit and skills, which is a wonderful backlash that I think the left didn't predict when they sort of created the college monopoly, which, interestingly, follows the Supreme Court's decision in Griggs versus Duke's power. Side issue we can talk about another time. But the better advice, I think, you know, is to pick those schools. that aren't doing that.

Starting point is 00:13:05 One of the outliers in this study were schools that were tended to be small. Some of them didn't have sort of classical indicators that you might think for non-discrimination. Like the conservative schools, the schools that aren't on the government pay, the Hillsdale's, the Grove City colleges of the countries, go there for sure because you also just get a great education. But some of the other outliers just tended to be smaller private colleges, too, even even secular ones. So it just seemed to be size that made a big difference. That's an interesting theme.

Starting point is 00:13:40 And not being based in the city bubble, right? Okay, okay. That makes sense outside of really those bubbles that are created by cities that we often see turns so liberal. And the size, I think the size correlates to, the size of the school is relevant, I think, because a school which is very large is probably going to have a larger bureaucracy. The larger the bureaucracy gets, the less accountable it is, the more, you know, sort of whackadoo it can get. Whereas if a school is operating sort of on a smaller operating in a tight budget, has a smaller bureaucracy, there's going to be more accountability where reasonable minds will have a better chance of prevailing. Jean-Carlo Okinaparo, I appreciate your insight on this. And for folks that want to hear more from you on a regular basis, be sure to check out the SCOTUS 101 podcast and all of Jean-Carlow's research and

Starting point is 00:14:31 reporting can be found at heritage.org as well as this latest report on the DailySignal website. John Carlo, thanks for your time today. My pleasure. Thank you. Well, with that, that's going to do it for today's episode of the Daily Signal's top news. If you haven't had the chance, be sure to check out our morning shows right here in this same podcast feed where we bring you interviews with lawmakers, experts, and leading conservative voices. Join us tomorrow morning for the Daily Signal interview edition.

Starting point is 00:14:58 My podcast co-host, Samantha Asharis, is going to be. sitting down with Chairman Mike Gallagher for a preview of tomorrow's GOP presidential debate. Also, make sure to subscribe to The Daily Signal wherever you like to listen to podcasts. We are across all podcast platforms, and we so appreciate it. It means so much to us when you take just a moment to leave us a five-star rating and review. Thanks again for being with us today. Have a wonderful night. We'll see you right back here tomorrow morning.

Starting point is 00:15:29 The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation. Executive producers are Rob Lewy and Kate Trinko. Producers are Virginia Allen and Samantha Asheras. Sound designed by Lauren Evans, Mark Geiney, and John Pop. To learn more, please visit DailySignal.com.

The Daily Signal - Biden Joins Picket Line, Hunter Biden Sues Rudy Giuliani, Cory Booker Calls on Bob Menendez to Resign | Sept. 26

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