The Daily Signal - CIA Operation in Venezuela, Ketanji Brown-Jackson Says All Black People are Disabled | Oct. 16, 2025

Starting point is 00:00:00 Major military operations are underway in the Caribbean as the press bars with the Pentagon. The Supreme Court hears oral arguments on racially drawn districts, and a federal district court judge rules the Trump administration can't fire federal workers during the shutdown. I'm Tony Kennett, host of the Daily Signals Tony Kenned cast, syndicated nationally at 7 p.m. Eastern. It is Thursday, October 16, 2025. This is the Daily Signals, top news in 10. After a series of requirements from the Pentagon and Secretary of War, Pete Hegeseth for press stationed at the Pentagon, many of the media outlets in the country have turned in their press badges, citing a violation of the First Amendment,

Starting point is 00:00:44 due to requirements to submit everything they might have heard or reported on in the Pentagon to be reviewed for approval or possible national security concerns. Since then, the New York Times has reported on a series of leaks from senior leaders inside the Pentagon, talking about the Trump administration's decision to use the central intelligence agency for on-the-ground operations in Venezuela. Here was the president answering a question on that yesterday afternoon. Why did you authorize the CIA to go into Venezuela? And is there more information you can share about these strikes on the alleged? Well, I can't do that, but I authorized for two reasons, really.

Starting point is 00:01:24 Number one, they have emptied their prisons into the United States of America. they came in through the, well, they came in through the border. They came in because we had an open border policy. And as soon as I heard that, I said a lot of these countries, they're not the only country, but they're the worst abuser. And they've entered their, they've allowed thousands and thousands of prisoners, mental institution, people from mental institutions, insane asylums, emptied out into the United States.

Starting point is 00:01:54 We're bringing them back. But that's a really bad thing. And they did it at a level that, Probably not. Many, many countries have done it, but not like Venezuela. They were down and dirty. And the other thing of drugs, we have a lot of drugs coming in from Venezuela. The president also answered questions as to whether or not the United States would continue fire missions against Venezuelan narco-terrorist boats and why? On Venezuelan's votes, I want to ask you, why not have the Coast Guard stop them, which is empowered by law to do? You know, this way you can confirm who's on the boat and ensure that they're doing what they suspect.

Starting point is 00:02:28 Because we've been doing that for 30 years, and it has been totally ineffective. They have faster boats. Some of these boats are seriously, I mean, they're world-class speedboats, but they're not faster than missiles. But we've been trying to do that for years, and so much of the drugs, 25, 30 percent, would come in through the seas. Right now, we have, I would say, none coming in through the seas. I don't know about the fishing industry. If you want to go fishing, a lot of people aren't deciding to even go fishing. We've almost totally stopped it by sea.

Starting point is 00:03:02 Now we'll stop it by land. But it never worked. It never worked when, you know, when you did it in a very politically correct manner. And lastly, the president of the United States seemed to indicate that he was considering whether or not the United States would, quote, bomb Venezuela, end quote. The next step in this war on cartels, and are you considering options, are you considering options, are you considering? I'm sitting strikes on land. Well, I don't want to tell you exactly, but we are certainly looking at land now,

Starting point is 00:03:28 because we've got the sea very well under control. We've had a couple of days where there isn't a boat to be found. And I view that as a good thing, not a bad thing, but we had tremendous amounts coming in by boats, by very expensive boats. You know, they have a lot of money, very fast, very expensive boats that were pretty big. And the way you look at it is every boat that we knock out,

Starting point is 00:03:49 we save 25,000 American lives. So every time you see, see a boat and you feel badly, you say, well, that's rough. It is rough. But if you lose three people and save 25,000 people, these are people that are killing our population. And yesterday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Louisiana versus Callais regarding the second clause of the Voting Rights Act, which allows states to draw congressional districts based on racial makeup. This, in contrast with the 14th Amendment, which guarantees that no major government decisions, This is in contrast with the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which bans racial discrimination from government.

Starting point is 00:04:27 The lead lawyer from the NAACP, arguing in favor of the Second Clause of the Voting Rights Act, suggested that this was necessary because white Democrats don't vote for black Democrats. That's right. And in the state of Louisiana, that that analysis was conducted in the Nairn case. And it was clear that regardless of party, white Democrats were not voting for black candidates, whether they, were Democrats or not. And we know that there is such a significant chasm between how black and white voters vote in Louisiana, that there's no question that even if there is some correlation between race and party, that race is the driving factor. Liberal Supreme Court Justice Katanji Brown Jackson made considerable controversy after claiming that all black Americans are either mentally or physically disabled.

Starting point is 00:05:19 A kind of paradigmatic example of this is something like the ADA. Congress passed the Americans with Disabilities Act against the backdrop of a world that was generally not accessible to people with disabilities. And so it was discriminatory in effect because these folks were not able to access these buildings. And it didn't matter whether the person who built the building or the person, person who owned the building intended for them to be exclusionary, that's irrelevant. Congress said the facilities have to be made equally open to people with disabilities, if

Starting point is 00:06:00 readily possible. I guess I don't understand why that's not what's happening here. The idea in Section 2 is that we are responding to current-day manifestations of past and present decisions that disadvantage. minorities and make it so that they don't have equal access to the voting system, right? They're disabled. The Supreme Court is expected to rule against racial congressional district lines, meaning that several states would be in line for a possible congressional redistricting

Starting point is 00:06:36 before midterms in 2026. That coupled with continual Democrat disaster messaging surrounding the government shutdown shows a rather stormy midterm outlook for retaking the House of Representatives for the opposition party, the Democrats. Here's Harry Enton citing the poll data on CNN. Okay, so, you know, if you go back six months ago, you go back to April Cape Baldwin,

Starting point is 00:06:58 what were we looking at? Well, we were looking at the Democrats with a very clear shot of taking control of the U.S. House of Representatives according to the Kalshi prediction market odds. We saw them in an 83% chance, but those odds have gone plummeting down. Now we're talking about just a 63%.

Starting point is 00:07:14 percent chance, while the GOP's chances up like a rocket, up like gold, up from 17 percent to now a 37 percent chance. So we'll look like a pretty clear, likely Democratic win in the House come next year, has become much closer to a toss-up at this point, although still slightly leaning Democratic. What's changed? What do you think? Okay, what has changed? Well, why don't we just take a look at the national picture first?

Starting point is 00:07:36 Take a look at voters and how they're feeling about things. And we can take a look at the generic congressional ballot, and I want to take a look and compare it to 2017. 2018, right? Because that's sort of the baseline. That was, of course, the first Trump term. That was where Democrats were sort of keeping pace. You go back to April. Look at the generic congressional ballot. What did you see? You see plus three Democrats in 2025 in April. You see plus three Democrats back in April of 2017. Now jump over to this side of the screen. What happens? Well, the Democrats are no longer keeping pace with the pace that they were setting

Starting point is 00:08:06 back in 2017, 2018. You look back in 2017, you saw that the Democrats had leaped up to an eight-point advantage. I remember covering this. I remember a lot of folks, including myself, saying, you know what, Republicans look pretty decent right now in terms of the fact that they had the House, they had the Senate, they had the presidency, but things were likely going to flip. And I was looking for the same signs this year. The bottom line is it hasn't happened, Kate Ball, when it hasn't happened. Democrats have stayed basically steady. They have fallen off the pace. Democrats were way out ahead back in 2017 on the generic congressional ballot. And now we're basically looking at Democrats ahead. But again, they are

Starting point is 00:08:43 so far in back of the pace that they set back there. And so I think what a lot of folks are seeing, folks like myself are saying, wait a minute, given what we might be seeing in redistricting, is this plus three going to be enough Cape Baldwin? That's what I was going to ask. One change from that cycle is also this mid-decade redistricting effort that we've been covering so much. Add that in and what do you get? Okay. So we add that and we take a look at the national picture, but then we, of course, taking a look at the state legislators, right? They are potentially changing things. And there are two things that are going on here. First off, mid-decade redistricting gains, if both sides max out at this point, there are

Starting point is 00:09:18 more Republican gains possible than Democratic gains. Yes, the Democrats might try to counter a Texas and a California, but you go along in the different states and basically Democrats run out a room where Republicans are able to gain and gain and gain. If both sides max out, we're probably looking at a GOP gain of plus seven house seats. That doesn't even take into account the potential gutting of the VRA that is right now going to be in front of the Supreme Court. If you add that in, you could be looking. The Voting Rights Act. Yes, exactly right. The Voting Rights Act. If you add that in, then you

Starting point is 00:09:52 could be looking about adding 10, 12, 15, 17 on top of this seven seats. So I think a lot of folks like myself are looking at this, we're seeing, hey, wait a minute, those national polls are, Democrats are not gaining the way that we expect it. Then you add in the fact that the state legislators are adding potentially more GOP seats like they've already done down in Texas, like they've done in Missouri. and then you add in the potential gutting of the VRA, and all of a sudden it becomes much more difficult for Democrats to gain, especially given that they are not keeping up

Starting point is 00:10:21 with their 2017-2018-18-pacing. And as you said, that also makes it difficult to compare it to past examples in history because this is such a different new landscape that we're looking at, right? It's a different new landscape, and we're not quite sure how much Democrats will have to be ahead in the National House vote in order to gain control.

Starting point is 00:10:37 All right. Thank you, Harry. Thank you. And lastly, weeks after the Supreme Court of the United States, ruled that the Trump administration and any presidential administration has the authority under Article 2 of the U.S. Constitution to fire federal workers, again, because the chief executive is in charge of the executive branch. U.S. District Judge Susan Ilston, a Clinton appointee based in California, ruled from the bench in an afternoon hearing yesterday that the Trump administration is not following legal requirements for conducting redoubt.

Starting point is 00:11:12 reductions in force or RIFs or firing federal workers during the government shutdown. Why? Because she claims that because President Trump and members of his administration had made statements about firing individuals in particularly useless or left-wing perceived departments, i.e., departments that are particularly important on the left side of the political aisle for primarily social reasons. She reasoned that this met the layoffs appeared to be unlawfully targeted at Democrats, then blocked the officials in the administration from taking any actions to issue any RAF notices to federal workers represented by the American Federation of Government employees. This is not likely to stand any kind of scrutiny at the appellate level. Before you go,

Starting point is 00:12:00 head down to the description and make sure you're subscribed to the Tony Kinnettcast. And join us tonight for an exclusive report from the Blaze Julio Rosas and Nick Sodor from Chicago covering the riots and growing tension between federal law enforcement and the Illinois government. I'm Tony Kinnett, and this has been the Daily Signals. Top News in 10. Take care.

The Daily Signal - CIA Operation in Venezuela, Ketanji Brown-Jackson Says All Black People are Disabled | Oct. 16, 2025

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