The Daily Signal - Gay Resigns, Hamas Deputy Killed in Blast, Asylum Seekers Using New Method to Enter New York | Jan. 2

Episode Date: January 2, 2024

TOP NEWS | On today’s Daily Signal Top News, we break down: Claudine Gay resigns as the President of Harvard Former President Donald Trump will participate in town hall on Jan. 10. Hamas deputy killed in Lebanon blast New Jersey becomes conduit for illegal immigrants coming to New York City New laws go into effect 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 Tuesday, January 2nd. Here are today's headlines. Happy New Year. We are diving back into the news today after learning that Harvard President Claudine Gay has resigned from her position. This makes the much-criticized Gay the shortest tenured president in Harvard's history. She came under fire after a December 5th House hearing on college campus anti-Semitism, in which she appeared to be unwilling to criticize protests calling for the genocide of Jews on Harvard's campus. Then as she came under increased criticism after extensive reports broke about her plagiarizing other scholars' work.

Gay put out a lengthy statement about her resignation. She said that her commitment to Harvard made it difficult to watch the erosion of trust between members of the community in recent months. she did not apologize for or mention her testimony from the House hearing on anti-Semitism. She also said nothing about the plagiarism accusations. Gay said in the statement, amidst all of this, it has been distressing to have doubt cast on my commitments to confronting hate and to upholding scholarly rigor, two bedrock values that are fundamental to who I am and frightening to be subjected to personal attacks and threats fueled by racial aminous. Despite her resignation as president of the school, Gay said she will remain a member

of the Harvard faculty and continue teaching at the school. Former President Donald Trump says he will participate in a Fox News town hall on January 10th. That means that he will be skipping the scheduled CNN Republican primary debate, which is scheduled for the exact same time. Trump's town hall will be conducted by Fox News anchor Brett Baer and Martha McCallum. According to Politico, the only Republicans who qualified for the CNN debate on January 10th are Trump, Florida Governor Ronda Santis and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley. Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramoswamy says he will also be holding a separate event on January 10th, since he did not qualify for the debate, he will have a live studio audience town hall

hosted by podcaster Tim Poole from Des Moines, Iowa. Ramoswamy told Fox News Digital that establishment insiders will be on the CNN stage and outsiders will be speaking directly to the people. Trump has skipped every GOP primary debate so far. According to a campaign advisor, he doesn't plan to participate in a New Hampshire debate slated for late February either. He has instead done his own events during every single debate, such as a sit-down interview with former Fox host Tucker Carlson. Trump told radio host Hugh Hewitt that he would enter a debate if the presidential race was close, according to reporting from Politico.

Now let's turn to some international news. The deputy head of Hamas has been killed. Thala al-Aul-Aoui and two other Hamas leaders were. killed in an explosion in Lebanon today, according to the New York Times. Hamas has confirmed that he was killed. Hamas said that Al-Aoui was killed in an Israeli air strike in the suburb of Beirut, the capital of Lebanon. A senior U.S. official also confirmed to the times that Israel was responsible for the attack. The New York Times reported that it verified video from the scene of the strike, which showed at least one car engulfed in flames, in front of a high-rise building.

Al-Aoui was one of the founders of the terrorist wing of Hamas. He also worked as an ambassador to Hezbollah, a Lebanese terrorist organization. New Jersey is being used as a transit point for illegal immigrants to skirt New York City law and gain entry into the Big Apple. According to our report by Fox News, illegal aliens are being bused two locations in New Jersey just outside of New York City. Why? Well, they are doing this to get around a December 27th executive order by Democrat New York City Mayor Eric Adams that restricts when buses can drop illegal aliens in the city. The new tactic of dropping illegal aliens in New Jersey has been confirmed by New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, according to Fox.

Murphy's spokesperson said per Politico, our administration has tracked the recent arrival of a handful of buses of migrant families at various New Jersey transit train stations. He continued that New Jersey is primarily being used as a transit point for these families. All or nearly all of them continue with their travels en route to their final destination in New York City. We are closely coordinating with our federal and local partners on this matter, including our colleagues across the Hudson. Adams executive order mandates that operators of any charter buses carrying migrants bound for New York must provide a 36-hour advance notice to New York City government about their intended arrival. It also instructs them to provide a manifest of passengers, including information about how many illegal migrants are traveling as single adults.

The New York City mayor said that the executive order is being done in response to Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who has been sending illegal migrants to the state of New York and other sanctuary cities and states. Finally, today, new state laws went into effect on January 1st. Among them was a Texas law banning DEI initiatives at public universities in the state. Before the ban went into place, many schools already began shifting the names of their programs in an attempt to skirt the law. California put into effect a law mandating gender-neutral toy aisles in large retail stores. State Senator Melissa Melendez, a Republican who voted against the law, said that unlike the author of the bill, she actually had children, and said that she didn't think the government should tell stores or parents what's best for kids.

In Illinois law came into effect preventing libraries from banning books. A number of schools and libraries around the country have. have removed books due to them being deemed age inappropriate for children or even pornographic. In the future, Illinois libraries will lose state funding if they remove materials. And 21 states raise their minimum wage laws this year. Well, that is going to do it for today's episode. Thanks for being with us here in the new year on the Daily Signal Top News Edition. Make sure that you follow along with the Daily Signal every weekday around 5 p.m. for our top news edition.

and be sure to check out our morning edition of the show where we interview lawmakers, experts, and leading conservative voices. This morning we had the newly elected and now official new chairman of the House Freedom Caucus join the show to talk about some of the priorities for conservatives in Congress this year. And for the rest of the week, we are diving into the issue of climate change. I'm really pleased to be sitting down with three experts on the issue of climate change and talking about the big questions surrounding climate change. Is it real and should we be concerned about it? So be sure to catch that conversation and that series kicking off tomorrow morning. And if you have not done so already, take a minute here at the beginning of the year to leave the daily signal a five-star rating and review. It really helps us, especially as we're kicking off a new year to hear your feedback and help spread the word to other listeners. Thanks again for being with us today. Have a wonderful evening.

We'll see you right back here tomorrow morning as we kick off our three-part podcast series on climate change. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation. Executive producers are Rob Luey and Kate Trinko. Producers are Virginia Allen and Samantha Asheris. Sound designed by Lauren Evans, Mark Geinney, and John Pop. To learn more, please visit DailySignal.com.