The Daily Signal - Chinese Nationals Crossing Border, Biden Acts to Save Garland From Being Held in Contempt of Congress, Dinosaur Costume World Record Flop | May 16

Episode Date: May 16, 2024

TOP NEWS | On today’s Daily Signal Top News, we break down: House Republicans want the audio of Special Counsel Robert Hur’s interview with President Joe Biden. Chinese nationals are crossing America’s southern border at abnormally high rates.  The Daily Caller launched an investigation into the World Professional Association for Transgender Health and found that behind closed doors, the group’s top doctors discussed, and at times seemed to challenge, the organization’s own published guidelines for sex change procedures. The Supreme Court announces a major ruling today on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.  Michael Cohen is back on the stand during Trump’s criminal trial.  An attempt to break a Guinness World Record on the largest gathering of people in dinosaur costumes recently failed in the town of Drumheller, Alberta.  Relevant Links:  Daily Caller Report: https://dailycaller.com/2024/05/14/wpath-tapes-gender-doctors-recordings-sex-changes/  Daily Signal Report: https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/05/16/breaking-supreme-court-upholds-financial-agencys-funding-scheme-insulating-congress/  Listen to other podcasts from The Daily Signal: https://www.dailysignal.com/podcasts/ Get daily conservative news you can trust from our Morning Bell newsletter: DailySignal.com/morningbellsubscription Listen to more Heritage podcasts: https://www.heritage.org/podcasts Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm Virginia Allen, and this is the Daily Signal Top News for Thursday, May 16th. Here are today's headlines. House Republicans want the audio of Special Counsel Robert Hur's interview with President Joe Biden. You remember that Her interviewed Biden during his investigation over Biden's handling of classified documents. Ultimately, Her found through his investigation earlier this year that while Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his. vice presidency, Her said Biden should not be charged. And one of the reasons why her gave that recommendation against charging Biden was that a jury would be unlikely to convict Biden because of his diminished faculties and advancing age. GOP lawmakers received a transcript of hers interview with

Biden, but not the audio. And today, the Justice Department told House Republicans that Biden had asserted executive privilege over that audio of his interview with her. House Republicans were reportedly preparing to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress for refusing to release the audio, but Biden's decision to use executive privilege over that audio protects Garland. White House counsel Ed Siskel wrote a letter to the GOP-controlled House Committee on Oversight and Accountability and the Committee on Judiciary today in the letter, Siskel accused the GOP members of wanting the audio files of Biden to chop them up, distort them,

and use them for partisan political purposes. Representative James Comer is chair of the Oversight Committee, and he responded to the news on X, writing, The White House is now asserting executive privilege over the her audio recordings. Clearly, the president and advisors fear releasing the recordings because it will reaffirm that Joe Biden's message. state is in decline. Chinese nationals are crossing America's southern border at abnormally high rates. And today, the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Oversight, investigations, and accountability held a hearing on why this is happening.

The hearing was titled Security Risk, the unprecedented surge of Chinese illegal immigration. The numbers themselves are surprising. Already in fiscal year 2024, more Chinese nationals have crossed America's southern border than the three previous fiscal years combined. Simon Hankinson serves as Senior Research Fellow in the Border Security and Immigration Center here at the Heritage Foundation. He's been on this podcast before, and he was one of the expert witnesses to testify before Congress today. Here's what he had to say. In January 2021, the Border Patrol encountered 17 Chinese between ports of entry.

This year in January, it was 3,700. I won't repeat the rest of the numbers who were close to 50,000 all resources. this fiscal year. Nearly all of them are being released into an asylum process that will take years to conclude. And then those eventually ordered removed are unlikely to be deported because the Chinese government does not cooperate in accepting their nationals. In fact, in fiscal year 2023, ICE removed a total of 288 Chinese, leaving up to 100,000 still in the U.S. despite final orders of removal. The hearing comes days after the Marine Corps Times reported that two individuals had attempted to break into a marine base in Virginia on May 3rd.

The two individuals were apprehended and handed over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, also known as ICE. One of those individuals who was arrested was reportedly on the U.S. government's terrorist watch list, though the Daily Signal has not been able to confirm that. And yesterday, Fox News's Bill Malugin reported that he has obtained the numbers of the known godaways that have come through the border since 2010. Border Patrol defines a known gotaway as an illegal alien who Border Patrol knows cross the border, but who authorities failed to apprehend. Maybe they were detected by Border Patrol on a camera or a sensor, but Border Patrol was not able to reach them in time to apprehend them. Well, in fiscal year 2010, there were over 155,000 known gottaways. Fast forward to

2023 fiscal year, and there were over 670,000 known godaways. So going from 2010, 155,000 to last year, $670,000. For more on the congressional hearing today, be sure to check out the DailySignal website, dailysignal.com, where you will find the latest reporting. The Daily caller launched an investigation into the World Professional Association of Transgender Health. The group, known by the acronym W-Path, is often cited as the authority on gender identity medicine. But the caller reports the behind closed doors the group's top doctors discussed and at times seemed to challenge the organization's own published guidelines for sex change procedures. The doctors even acknowledge that pushing experimental medical interventions can have lasting

and devastating consequences. W. Path held a summit in September of 2022 in Montreal, Canada. During that summit, a doctor told attendees that children should be informed that cross-sex hormones will likely make them infertile, but admitted that he will prescribe them anyway, according to the caller. Let's take a listen. But an adolescent who says, I'm just going to adopt, leave me alone, is different than an adolescent who says, I don't really care about this right now, but I realize I'm a teenager, maybe when I'm older, I could change my mind, but I don't think I will. That shows, that second group shows that that adolescent is capable of understanding that they don't know what their

life may be like. That's the type of young person that understands that their decisions that they're making now are impacting them, and they could be appropriate for. for their future or they might not be. And it's not up to us to say, well, if your thing is going to change in time, if your priorities change in time, well, then we shouldn't do this. No, it's to say, great, you understand that. Now let's move forward with what you feel you need. Check out today's show notes for the Daily Caller's full investigative piece into the

World Professional Association for Transgender Health. The Supreme Court announced a major ruling today on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The court ruled seven to two to uphold a funding scheme that is apparently meant to insulate the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from future congressional oversight. The Daily Signal's Tyler O'Neill has been covering this story, and he joins us now. Tyler, thanks for being here. My pleasure. So what does this ruling from the Supreme Court mean specifically for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau? It means that this agency, which essentially was set up to be insulated from Congress will continue to operate.

And the really shocking thing is that this is an agency created by Congress that's well and good. But almost every single part of the administrative state of the executive branch has to go to Congress to get funding every year. The CFPB, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, never has to go to Congress ever. So they were created and then the law, and they're a brainchild of Elizabeth Warren, but the law says that they can just take money from the Federal Reserve and they don't have to go to Congress for oversight or accountability. So who sets their budget? So the director of, I don't remember if it's the director of the Federal Reserve or the director of the CFPB, but they set their own budget.

It's not a lot of oversight. Yeah, no, exactly. That's the big problem. And that's why it raises such a huge flag. And Justice Samuel Alito in his dissent made a really excellent point when he quoted Modiskew, the spirit of the law, saying, you know, you don't have power of the purse if Congress can create an ongoing funding, an ongoing appropriation that never ends. Like, you've given up all your authority to oversee this agency. What is the original intent of that agency of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau? So it's a noble intent.

And, I mean, I'm looking at CFPP's website right now. Their goal is to protect consumers from financial fraud, abuse, you know, that kind of thing, which is, of course, a noble goal. But when you're talking about providing accountability for the financial sphere of the economy, the idea that you can have an unchecked regulatory apparatus like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and not have to go to Congress for funding every year like everybody else does, it's really kind of scary because we'd love it if everybody at this agency was, you know, If angels could govern men, we wouldn't need to have checks and balances in our government. Sure. But I dare say that the people in these federal agencies, you know, some of them may be fine people, but they're not angels and I want them to be held accountable. So why did the Supreme Court rule that they are not subject to that oversight?

That's an excellent question. Justice Thomas, and I mean, this is the weird. thing is that Clarence Thomas is usually a straight arrow on a lot of these things. He wrote the opinion here. And he said that the appropriation power that Congress has can be like a once, you know, it reminds me of what they say about Hamas, once elected, always elected sort of thing, where, you know, one election, one time Hamas is in control. Here, you have one appropriation, one time, the CFPB can exist forever. That's essentially what Thomas said.

And he's not like, you can see an argument from a clear textualist perspective that he's not necessarily wrong that the text of the Constitution taken by itself might enable something like this. But if you look at the broad scheme of history, if you look at the English Civil War, which was fought over precisely this question. If you look at the glorious revolution, if you look at the way that the founders would have interpreted the Constitution, this is so far outside the norm of anything they would have envisioned. It undermines the basic precept that you have checks and balances, that the power of the purse is the most important power. I mean, the Federalist

papers go into this in great detail, and they're following off of Moniskew, who, and they're following off of who, you know, Alito rightly cited here. And it's just, it boggles my mind that Clarence Thomas would rule in this way. But I think what ended up happening was the people who filed the challenge when they were in court in the oral arguments, they failed to present a comprehensive way that the Supreme Court could have a checklist of, you know, what sort of appropriate. fits the Constitution, what sort of appropriation doesn't fit. And so essentially what the Supreme Court had to do in this case was say how Congress couldn't give away its power by creating an appropriation without limit like this. And so the Supreme Court essentially had to say, Congress, you can only do this for five years,

you can only do this for one year, you can have limitations, you can do X, Y, Z. And I think what ended up happening was Thomas looked at the proposals and said, there isn't a clear proposal. There isn't a natural way for us to rule on this that isn't creating a new schema. Therefore, I'm just going to go where the easiest argument is. And that's that this is okay because Congress did actually pass the law. The Daily Signal's Tyler O'Neill. Tyler, thank you for your reporting on this. We'll be sure to leave a link in today's show notes

if anyone wants to check out that full piece. Appreciate your time. Yeah, my pleasure. Today in the courtroom in Manhattan, where Trump's criminal trial is playing out, Michael Cohen was back on the witness stand. Cohen is Trump's former attorney and is the lead witness against Trump

in the case involving hush money payments to Porn star Stormy Daniels. Today, Trump lawyer Todd Blanche cross-examined Cohen and Fox News reports that Blanche repeatedly questioned Cohen about alleged lies that he has made under oath in the past. For example, Fox reports that Blanche highlighted several instances where Cohen lied under oath,

including to Congress about a Trump Tower Moscow project and federal investigations from special counsel Robert Mueller's office. The Trump lawyer was clearly trying to undermine Cohen's testimony that he gave on Monday and Tuesday. Fox reports that while under oath last October, Cohen said he lied under oath, more than once in front of the judge who sentenced him to three years in prison in 2018. This happened after Cohen pled guilty to charges that included campaign finance fraud and lying to Congress. Cohen is set to be the prosecution's last witness. It remains to be seen if Trump's lawyers are going to call any witnesses themselves. They will not be meeting tomorrow, so we'll pick back up with the court case next week.

While we're ending with a little bit of lighthearted news out of Canada today, an attempt to break a Guinness World Record recently failed in the town of Dumbheller, Alberta. And what record exactly was trying to be set? The largest gathering of people dressed as dinosaurs. They failed not because turnout was too low, but because it was too high. And therefore, the officials could not get an accurate count. But officials said that at least 3,000 people showed up to the event, and they were just not prepared to count that many people in dinosaur costumes. The city is reportedly hoping to make drastic jamboree an annual event, so maybe next year they can get an accurate count and set that world record. Stay tuned. With that, that's going to do it for today's episode.

Thanks so much for being with us here on the Daily Signal's top news. If you haven't had the chance, make sure to check out our morning show right here in this same. podcast feed. Tomorrow morning, I am delighted to be sitting down with Corey DeAngelis, author of the brand new book, The Parent Revolution. We discuss the movement of school choice across America and why the teachers' unions have actually become the biggest advocates for school choice. Stay tuned for that conversation tomorrow morning. Also, make sure to hit that subscribe button so you never miss out on new shows from The Daily Signal. And if you would, help us out by leaving us a five-star rating and review.

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