The Daily Signal - Google Fires Employees Over Anti-Israel Protest, Trump Case Jury Selection Troubles, Issues Grow for Speaker Johnson | April 18

Episode Date: April 18, 2024

TOP NEWS | On today’s Daily Signal Top News, we break down: Google fires 28 employees who were involved in an anti-Israel protest.  Jury selection continues in former President Donald Trump’s criminal case. Congress moves one step closer toward passing the TikTok bill. Challenges continue for House Speaker Mike Johnson.  The Senate impeachment trial against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas ended before it began.  Relevant Links:  https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/04/17/import-a-new-electorate-congress-alarmed-by-flyers-in-mexico-urging-illegal-aliens-to-vote-biden/  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 Sign up for The Agenda newsletter — the lowdown on top issues conservatives need to know about each week: https://www.heritage.org/agenda 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, April 18th. Here are today's headlines. Google fired 28 employees on Wednesday who were involved in an anti-Israel protest. On Tuesday, the group of Google employees held a pro-Palestine sit-in at Google offices in New York and in California. The New York Post was the first to break the story. The Google employees were protesting a $1.2 billion contract that Google has, with Israel to supply both the Israeli government and military with Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services. The Post reports that the protesters wore Arab headscarves and they stormed and occupied the offices

of a top executive in California. And in New York, protesters had occupied the 10th floor of Google's offices in the Chelsea section of Manhattan, also according to the Post. The now-fired employees were reportedly a part of a group called No Tech for a part of a which has criticized Google's relationship with Israel. An internal investigation resulted in the termination of those 28 Google employees, and Google's vice president of global security, Chris Rakow, issued a company-wide memo that said the protesters took over office spaces, defaced our property, and physically impeded the work of other Googlers.

And he added that this behavior was unacceptable, extremely disruptive, and made coworkers feel threatened. Well, today kicked off day number three of former President Donald Trump's criminal case in Manhattan. Jury selection started on Monday in this case, but today was day three because on Wednesdays the case is taking a break throughout the trial. We will see that they will not have proceedings on Wednesdays. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is accusing Trump of orchestrating a scheme to offer hush money payments to Porn Star. me Daniels. You will have heard that name. So the case is significant, obviously, for a number of reasons, but it marks the first time that a former president has ever stood trial in a criminal

case. Jury selection is expected to take one to two weeks. It was going pretty smoothly through Tuesday. They had seven jurors already selected. Things were moving at a good pace. But then as of lunchtime on Thursday, that jury was down to five people. So what happened and how is this process exactly playing out. Here to discuss more is Heritage Foundation, deputy director of Edwin Meese, the Third Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, and Senior Legal Fellow Colley Stimson. Cully, thank you so much for being here. Always a pleasure. So explain what exactly is happening in this jury selection process. We saw, as of the end of the day, Tuesday, there were seven selected. Now we're back down to five. What's going on? There's three big parts to picking a jury.

One is calling tons of folks to the courtroom and panelling them, having them fill out their questionnaires. That has happened. And now we're in phase two, which is called the voir dire, which is a French term meaning to speak the truth section. And so the judge is allowing counsel from either side to question potential jurors. And then think of it also this way, Virginia, is you don't really pick a jury. You deselect people who you don't want on the jury. More a process of elimination. Yes.

And to enable each side to do that, they get what are called preemptory challenges. So they get 10 freebies to say, well, I don't like that person for whatever reason, as long as it's not a prohibited reason, like for race, and you're out. They get unlimited challenges for cause, like, well, we can't have that person judge because he's my brother. or we can't have that person judge because he's the defendant's first cousin. So they impaneled seven. They'll get 12 and they'll probably get six alternates ultimately, so 18 people will sit for the trial. Actually, I think it's going at a relatively decent clip, frankly.

Now, of the seven, two fell off today. One fell off just because she didn't think she could be fair upon further thought about it. And the second is the government started looking into the person's past after they seated this person and came up with something. We don't know what that is. No doubt they brought it to the judge in camera. That means outside the presence of the cameras or other parties. And so that person was excused. That happens.

There's another weird aspect to these high-profile cases is you don't really want somebody who's dying to get on the trial. You don't want that show pony peacock. It's saying pick me. Pick me. Pick me type because then that's sort of weird. It is. Because then they want to be known to have been on the jury. And who knows what they're thinking about after the case is over.

They could have dollar signs in their mind. They could have all sorts of other visions of grandeur in their mind. So they're in this phase, too, the voir dire phase. And assuming they get through, you know, a few dozen more people, Once they expend their remaining four peremptory challenges in each side, it's going to go quickly. Okay. And the judge, I mean, it's sort of a self-licking ice cream cone. Once you get rid of your peremptory challenges, then it's just challenges for cause.

So I don't think it's going to take the two weeks. We've heard that at least, well, so far, two of the jurors that have been selected are lawyers. And I've heard that that's pretty unusual. Well, I've heard that too, and that made me scratch my head because I've impaneled lawyers on juries here in the District of Columbia. when I was an assistant U.S. attorney. And so I don't think that that's abnormal. What I think is abnormal is wanting a lawyer on your case. And you have to put yourself in the mindset of the defense and the prosecution.

If you're the prosecution, why would you want a lawyer? Well, because they're going to follow the rules, right? If you're the defense, you're going to want a lawyer because they're going to follow the rules. And they may subscribe to beyond a reasonable doubt. And so there are obviously strategic reasons that each side will want a lawyer. The other thing you want, when you're the government, you want somebody who's going to be a leader. Somebody who's going to lead the 12 to where you want them to go. And when you're the defense, you want one person, just one, all it takes is one, to be independent enough to say no.

I don't agree with you. And what happens when that happens? If there's out of these 12, if there's just one person that's saying, I do not agree that Trump is guilty here. What happens? Well, if they're hung, which is called it, and the jury's hung, then they'll come back after day two, day three, day four of deliberations. And they'll say to the judge, sorry, Judge, you know, we can't tell you the breakdown here, but we can't tell you what the vote is, but we just can't come to a unanimous agreement because it has to be 12 for guilty. And the judge will give them an instruction that basically says, go back and try harder.

Okay. Every state has their own rule, but you're going to get a couple bites at the apple where they're going to say, go back and try harder. But eventually, the jury, if they keep, that one person keeps saying, look, sorry, there's no amount of talking that's going to get me to get to guilty. The jury's going to come back and the judge is going to declare a mistrial. On that count, they may be able to reach an agreement on other counts. And now if they find, you know, they can find them not guilty on some and guilty on others. And so it's way too early to get there. in phase two of this jury selection. Phase three is the impaneling of the jury and the

swearing end of the jury. It's not abnormal. Let me say it in the positive. It is normal in these long trials, in these high-profile trials for jurors to fall off during the trial. Really? Yeah. And so the reason you set the alternates there with the 12 is so they can hear all the evidence at the same time, it gets a little dicey where if you finish the case and the jury's deliberating, one of the 12 falls out. Then, after the lawyers and the judge talk, then you put one of the alternates in there and they have to start from the beginning in terms of deliberations. But we're way before that phase. And there's six alternates, correct?

Yes, that's what I've heard they're going to impanel. Excellent. Collie, thank you for breaking this down, and we look forward to talking to you again soon. I'm sure. carries on. I appreciate it. Congress moved one step closer this week towards passing the TikTok bill. The bill gives TikTok a choice, either break from their Chinese parent company Bite Dance

or you won't be able to operate in the U.S. Bite Dance is headquartered in Beijing, as we have talked about on this show, and as such, it's subject to Chinese law that requires the company to make their user data available to the Chinese Communist Party. So the bill that's being considered and has just, just been revised, has gained support across Capitol Hill, and the updated version gives TikTok one year to divest from bite dance, up from just six months. Concerns over China having access to U.S. data through TikTok has made the bill very bipartisan, and this week, Washington State

Democrat Senator and Commerce Committee Chair, Maria Cantwell said that she will support the bill with the updates that she recommended. Can'twell said she's very very very important. She's very happy that Speaker Mike Johnson and House leaders incorporated my recommendations to extend the bike dance divestment period from six months to a year. As I've said, she continued extending the divestment period is necessary to ensure there is enough time for a new buyer to get a deal done. While the bill does have bipartisan support, there are some far-left Democrats who criticized it, claiming that it does infringe on free speech.

If the bill does pass, Biden has said he'll sign it. Challenges keep coming for House Speaker Mike Johnson. Johnson is being encouraged by some of his supporters to raise the threshold for triggering removal proceedings of a current speaker. Right now, any single member of the House can force a floor vote on a motion to vacate the chair, ousting Johnson. But Punchball News reported this morning that some of Johnson's allies on Capitol Hill are urging Johnson to change that rule to secure his job.

Johnson is reportedly also being pressured by some conservative lawmakers not to do that, and a conversation on the House floor got pretty heated about it this morning. Johnson is facing the threat of a motion to vacate from Representative Marjorie Taylor Green. Johnson is also under pressure to pass a foreign aid bill for Ukraine, which Green and a number of GOP members adamantly oppose. We'll keep you all up to date on what happens in the House as pressure on Johnson continues to mount and doesn't appear to be going away anytime soon. The impeachment case against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorgas is over. Yesterday, the Senate voted along party lines to dismiss the impeachment case before a trial had even gotten underway.

While this was not a major surprise since Democrats have been critical of the impeachment effort against Mayorkas from the start, the dismissal clearly frustrated many Republicans who see Mayorkas as a facilitator of the current border crisis. The House voted on and passed two articles of impeachment against Mayorkas in February. The first alleges that he failed to secure America's border and enforce immigration laws. The second alleges that he breached public trust and knowingly made false statements to Congress. Those articles were delivered to the Senate on Tuesday and dismissed just about 24 hours later. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said a Senate trial of the case wasn't necessary because it represents the least legitimate, least substantive, and most politicized impeachment trial ever in the history of the United States. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell disagreed with his Democrat colleague during a brief speech on the Senate floor after the articles were dismissed.

Take a listen. Madam President, we've set a very unfortunate precedent here. this means that the Senate can ignore, in effect, the House's impeachment. Texas Senator Ted Cruz gave an impassioned speech on the Senate floor after the vote, accusing Democrats of giving cabinet members permission to ignore the law. By the way, every cabinet member, guess what, you've just been given a blank slate. Ignore the law. When Democrats are in charge of the Senate, the entire cabinet could ignore the law.

It is no longer impeachable in Democrat Wonderland when a member of the executive branch openly defies the law. The Senate's dismissal of the case against Mayorkas comes after Republicans on the House Homeland Security Committee conducted about a dozen hearings examining Mayorkas's handling of border security and published about six reports condemning the Department of Homeland Security over its actions. all occurred over the course of about a year. We have a quick update on the flyers that were found at the southern border telling illegal aliens to vote for Joe Biden. The Daily Signals, Fred Lucas, has been covering this story. Lawmakers decried the flyers posted at a migrant service center that tell illegal aliens reminder to vote for President Biden when you were in the United States.

The flyers were found at the Resource Center, Matamoros, in Mexico. But from the start, it's not been clear if that resource center authorized the flyers or not. The flyers were found by muckraker and shared with the Heritage Foundation's oversight project, and of course we here at the Daily Signal are the news outlet of Heritage. The obvious concern is why would any NGO migrant facility be encouraging illegal aliens to vote when they're not allowed to vote in the U.S.? But the big question is where did the flyers come from, who made them, and who distributed them? Immigration activist Thomas Cartwright is claiming that the flyers are a fake.

He wrote on Twitter that I spoke to the founder of Resource Center, Metamoros, and the flyers are fake. Whether they are fake or not, does remain unclear. But host of the free speech podcast, Joseph Trimmer, shared a video on social media today of the founder of Matamoros Resource Center, Gabriela Zavala, explaining her work. I founded the asylum seeker network of support as an effort to fight policy, U.S. policy. Then that sort of evolved to providing or creating programs that helped provide direct aid to asylum seekers. If you want to dive a little bit deeper into this story and all of its twists and turns, make sure you check out today's show notes for Fred Lucas's reporting.

With that, that's going to do it for today's episode. Thanks so much for being with us here. for the Daily Signals, top news. If you haven't had the chance, make sure that you check out our morning show. Every weekday morning, we bring you interviews with lawmakers, experts, and leading conservative voices.

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