The Daily Signal - Harris Campaign Raises $310 Million, Immigration Program Paused Amid Fraud Concerns, Lavish Spending at LGBTQ Organization | Aug. 2

Episode Date: August 2, 2024

TOP NEWS | On today’s Daily Signal Top News, we break down: Vice President Kamala Harris has enough delegates to secure the 2024 Democratic nominee, and her presidential campaign has broken a fundraiser record. The Biden administration pauses an immigration program over fraud concerns. A groundbreaking New York Times report reveals that one of the nations leading LGBTQ groups has some lavish spending habits.  A ruling out of the Michigan Supreme Court indicates that the state’s minimum wage is about to rise.  Olympics boxing match draws outrage.  Is “Twisters” worth seeing? We review the summer blockbuster.  Relevant Links 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's week three of Canadian tires early Black Friday sales. These prices won't go lower this year. Maybe too long. Freezing. Save up to 50% November 20th to 27th. Conditions apply, details online. Kamala Harris has enough delegates to secure the 2024 Democratic nomination. I'm Virginia Allen, and this is the Daily Signal Top News for Friday, August 2nd.

Vice President Kamala Harris has received enough delegates in order to lock in that 2024 for Democratic nomination for president. And her presidential campaign, meanwhile, has broken a fundraising record. In July, the campaign reported raising $310 million. In the first week after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race for president and endorsed Harris, the campaign raised $200 million alone. Harris's campaign says that two-thirds of the donations came from first-time donors. While Harris is raking in some big cash numbers, the Trump campaign continues to also have some strong fundraising numbers.

The Trump campaign raised $139 million in July, $112 million in June, and $141 million in May. May, of course, was the month that Trump was convicted on felony charges in New York. According to NPR, Harris and Trump have about the same amount of money in the bank. With three months until the election, the Harris campaign has 376. million and Trump has 327 million. The Biden administration has paused an immigration program over fraud concerns. That's according to an exclusive report from Fox News. Under the Biden administration, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced a new immigration

program for a select group of foreign nationals. The program granted advanced travel authorization for up to 30,000 individuals from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to come to the U.S. each month and seek parole. But the Department of Homeland Security confirmed to Fox News Digital that out of an abundance of caution, it has temporarily paused the issuing of these advanced travel authorizations for the program. The program was allowing illegal aliens to fly directly into the U.S. But Fox reports that that program was put on pause in mid-July after an internal U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services report unearthed large amounts of fraud in applications.

As part of the program, nationals from Cuba, Venezuela, Haiti, and Nicaragua had to have a sponsor here in the U.S. in order to qualify for the program. The Conservative Immigration Group Federation for American Immigration Reform found that among more than 100,000 forms, those forms appear to have been filled out by 3,218. sponsors. Well, what does this mean? This means that sponsors were filling out at least 20 or more forms. The Federation for American Immigration Reform calls the results of the investigation astounding. The internal investigation found the use of fake social security numbers, including social security numbers of deceased individuals and the use of false phone numbers. Furthermore, the Federation for American Immigration Reform says that many applicants listed the same physical

address. In fact, 100 addresses were listed on over 19,000 forms, and many parole applicants applied from a single property, including a mobile home park, warehouse, and storage unit, and many applications were submitted by the same IP address. Suspiciously, the exact same answer was also often used on one of the required forms. The Conservative Immigration Group says that in some instances, the same answer was used by over 10,000 applicants. A spokesperson for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, Ira Melman, told Fox that the investigation reveals that the Biden administration was willing to cut every corner and endanger public safety in order to bring in as many illegal aliens as they could. For now, the program does remain on pause. A groundbreaking

New York Times report out this week reveals that one, One of the nation's leading LGBTQ groups has some lavish spending habits. Glad is a nonprofit organization focused on LGBTQ advocacy and cultural change. That's according to its website. Its mission is to ensure fair, accurate, and inclusive representation and to create national local programs that advance LGBTQ acceptance. Glad's president is Sarah Kate Ellis. The New York Times reporter, Emily Steele.

writes that in January of 2023, Ellis flew first class to Zurich was picked up from the airport in a Mercedes and driven to the Swiss Alps, where she and her colleagues would stay in the Tivoli Lodge, a seven-bedroom chalet, that cost nearly half a million dollars to rent for a week. The organization's president was traveling to the World Economic Forum in Davos and Glad paid for the trip. But this trip was not a one-time instance. The Times reports that this lavish spending has been a pattern at Glad. The Times reviewed Glad's financial records and tax filings between the start of 2022 and 2023 and found that when Miss Ellis traveled for work, there were first class flights, stays at the Waldorf Astoria, and other luxury hotels and expensive car services, not to mention a Cape Cod's summer rental in nearly

$20,000 to remodel her home office, which was outfitted with. with a chandelier and other accoutrements. These expenses are on top of Ellis's salary that is expected to fall between the high six-figure and low seven-figure range. As the Times points out, this would be maybe normal for a for-profit company, but not for a non-profit with about 60 employees. The lavish spending may violate the group's own policies as well as IRS rules. For now, there are no reports that Ellis has any plans to step down as head of the LGBT

A ruling out of the Michigan Supreme Court indicates that the state's minimum wage is about to rise. In 2018, there was a petition in Michigan for a ballot measure that would allow voters to weigh in on raising the minimum wage. But instead of putting the measure on the ballot after it received the signatures that it required, the state legislature chose to adopt the law to raise the minimum wage and also another law about paid sick leave. But then the legislature reportedly watered those laws down, and before leaving office, Republican governor, Rick Snyder, took action to roll back the legislation. This spurred a long legal battle that landed at the Michigan Supreme Court. While the court ruled this week that legislators in Michigan had unconstitutionally subverted the will of voters in Michigan who backed that proposal, now the minimum wage in the state is expected to increase at least $2. by early next year.

You've probably seen the controversy by now over the boxing match at the Olympics. Algeria's Amin-Khalif and Italy's Angela Karini competed against each other in the ring on Thursday, but after less than a minute, Karini quit the fight. The fight inspired outrage because the Algerian fighter failed a gender eligibility test

in 2023 for the World Championships, specifically he was deemed to have male chromes. zones. Despite this, Algeria's Caliph was still allowed to compete as a woman in the Olympics. To be clear, Caliph is not transgender, but intersex. Heritage Foundation's senior legal fellow Sarah Partial Perry explained the situation on X. She writes, Caliph likely has a disorder of sexual development, and countries like Algeria do not regularly test for these conditions at birth. Perry went on to explain that with an XY chromosomonal structure, high natural-produced testosterone levels and obvious physical advantages. It's clear he eventually experienced male pupital development.

In biology and blood, things that matter in sports, Khalif is male, according to Sarah Partial Perry. But in Algeria, she continues, there is no option to alter sex classification on official documents like birth certificates or power. For purposes of that nation, he is still officially female, but only as far as official documents are concerned. Perry argues that consistency is key. The Olympics has banned or stripped medals from dozens of female Russian athletes for less after it discovered they were doping with performance-enhancing hormones. The same rules should have applied here, according to Perry. Head of the Safe Sports Unit

at the International Olympics Committee, Kirsty Burroughs, has touted that the Paris Olympics has prioritized mental and physical health. About safe sport, we're talking about physically and psychologically

safe, athletic environment, so both mental health and also safeguarding. We're really pleased that the Olympic Games, Paris 2024, has the most comprehensive package of mental health and safeguarding,

so safe sport, initiatives, services, infrastructure, than any other Olympic all-sporting event in history. Harry Potter author and women's sports defender, J.K. Rowling, responded to the video on X, writing, a young female boxer has just had everything she's worked for and trained for snatched away because you allowed a male to get in the ring with her. Your disgrace, your safeguarding is a joke, and hashtag Paris 24,

will forever be tarnished by the brutal injustice done to Karini. Now it is that time for our summer Friday film review. And one of the biggest films out in the box office right now is Twisters. The film is a remake of the 1996 film that was directed by Jan de Bond. And the new film is out in theaters right now. And it was directed by Lee Isaac Chung. It's rated PG-13. It has an audience score of 92% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Heritage Foundation advisor to Coalition's Communications, Kristen I-Cammer, has seen the film. She joins us now to give a review. Kristen, thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. Okay, so who are the big names in this movie? The biggest name is Glenn Powell, obviously. He has taken over every social media

platform, and he's been in a few films this year on Netflix. I can't remember the name, but Twister is definitely his claim to fame. He's iconic for the line. If you can feel it, chase it. And if you feel it in that movie, you chase him too. So,

He's a great big name. But then there's also Kiernan Shipka. She is the female lead. And honestly, like, what a cool, powerful woman. She is a woman of science, whereas Glenn is more of the, you know, bad boy. Adventurous. Adventurous tornado chaser, which is, you know, arguably not the smartest thing to do. But she is the one with a scientific brain.

She has modeling techniques that, you know, where she's trying to study the behavior of tornado. She gets the science of it. She's really just a powerful female figure in this. film. Very cool. Now, don't give any spoilers, but if you would, just briefly give us the premise of the movie. For sure. So it's almost like a sequel in a way people are saying to Twister 1996 where they're following the same kind of storyline. There's someone that's chasing, someone that's trying to study the Twisters. However, in this film, not only the budget was twice as much. So the filming and the interesting science type technical things they can do with the film are much more intricate,

much more detailed. We also know a lot more about tornado behavior, you know, in 2024 compared to 1996. So what they're kind of doing plot-wise is there's this need where a Kiname comes in and she wants to be able to model the strength of a tornado and learn how you can shut a tornado down. She's from Oklahoma. For those of you who aren't from Oklahoma, tornadoes are devastating there. The former NASA administrator was super passionate about tracking tornadoes because of how damaging they can be. And that's, I mean, they get up to 200 miles per hour, I believe. And so the film really opens with this really powerful tornado. They're trying to figure out how to tame it. That's what they're calling themselves tornado tamers. But obviously, it's being in the film, and there's some

challenges. So the rest of the film is kind of Kiernan, her character, getting back into this whole scientific tornado situation. And it really becomes, you know, this almost fight between the chaser and the tamer and who's going to win and who's going to, you know, overcome the challenges that they're trying to overcome all while explaining the science, which is incredibly interesting. A classic man versus nature story. So then the question is, is it worth it? Movie tickets are upwards of $15 these days. This film is two hours long. Is it worth it to see it in the theaters? I mean, if you've ever been curious about tornadoes, I would definitely say yes. I firmly say yes as a whole, even if you're not interested in tornadoes.

I mean, Glenn Powell's in it. What else do you need? But truly, they do such a good job. Like I said, their budget is more than double the last time. They have new CGI effects. And you really do learn a lot about tornadoes. I went into this movie and I was terrified from the 1996 version. Granted, I saw that when I was maybe 10 years old.

I was very young. But this movie, it's less about the scary, you know, cows flowing through the wind. And it's more about the science. And I just think it's so interesting. So if you have any curiosity, if you like learning about nature, I would say definitely go. But if you also like action movies, it's definitely going to keep you on the edge of your seat. Not the entire time.

It is a thriller. But it's not, you know, you're going to be able to watch the whole thing and get through it. But it's just such an interesting film. Well, an exciting film. It has a good balance. I love it. Kristen, thank you for your time today. We appreciate it. Of course. Thanks so much for joining us here on the Daily Signal's top news. We're going to leave it there on this Friday afternoon. Have a wonderful weekend and be sure to catch our show on Monday morning as my colleague Elizabeth Mitchell sits down for an interview with Emily Aaron Davis. Have a wonderful weekend and take a little time this weekend if you would to leave the Daily Signal podcast a five-star rating and review. We love hearing your feedback and would love to know what you want to see more of on this show or what you like.

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