The Daily Signal - Israel Agrees to Daily Fighting Pause, US Hits Targets in Syria, Democrats Eye Abortion as Winning Issue in 2024 | Nov. 9

Episode Date: November 9, 2023

TOP NEWS | On today’s Daily Signal Top News, we break down: The White House reports that Israel has agreed to begin daily four-hour pauses on all military operations in Gaza.  Both the U.S. and Israel have carried out separate airstrikes against Iranian-backed groups in Syria. Ukraine takes credit for killing a Putin ally known as “the executioner.”  Axios reports that abortion ballot measures might be democrats’ strategy for the 2024 presidential election. Heritage Foundation military veterans appload the actions of Sen. Tommy Tuberville.  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 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm Virginia Allen. I'm Samantha Sherris. And this is the Daily Signal Top News for Thursday, November 9th. Here are today's headlines. Just hours ago, the White House reported that Israel has agreed to begin daily four-hour pauses on all military operations in Gaza. The central reason for the daily pauses appears to be to allow humanitarian aid to get into Gaza and to allow citizens of northern Gaza. the opportunity to escape to safety. Israel will reportedly announce the time of the daily pause at least three hours beforehand. To be clear, this is not a ceasefire. Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says there will not be a ceasefire without the release of all of the about 240 hostages that Hamas has been holding captive for over a month.

President Biden has also said that there is no possibility of a ceasefire at this time. In related news, we learned today that both the U.S. and Israel have carried out separate airstrikes against Iranian-backed groups in Syria. The attacks reportedly killed 12 Iran-backed fighters. In regards to the strikes the U.S. conducted, CNN reports that two U.S. F-15 fighter jets conducted an airstrike on a weapons storage facility in eastern Syria. The facility is known to have been used by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a statement that the strike was carried out in self-defense. Austin said the strike was carried out in response to the attacks against U.S. personnel in Iraq and Syria. Austin added that the president has no

higher priority than the safety of U.S. personnel, and he directed today's action to make clear that the United States will defend itself, its personnel, and its interests. Austin is urging against any escalation in the region, but says the U.S. will do what it needs to do to protect its soldiers and facilities. The strikes come in response to U.S. and coalition forces having been targeted over 40 times since October 17th by drones or rocket attacks. After the U.S. attack Wednesday, U.S. officials say they were very certain that there were no civilian casualties in the attack. Ukraine has taken credit for killing a Putin ally known as the executioner. The Russian-backed official Mikhail Philipp Onenko was killed by a car bomb in the Ukrainian eastern city of Lujansk that Russia currently occupies. Ukraine has taken credit for the attack.

Philippa Anenko was a lawmaker in the Russian-installed local ruling assembly. Ukraine's military intelligence directorate says that Filiponenko previously organized and participated in the torture of prisoners of war and civilians, earning him the name, the executioner, according to Fox News. A representative of Ukraine's military intelligence directorate told Politico, it was our operation. Ukraine has also issued a warning, saying others who are serving terrorist Russia will receive similar retribution. Now let's turn to some domestic news today. Axios is reporting that abortion ballot measures might be Democrats' strategy for the 2024 presidential election. Ohioans voted on Tuesday to enshrine a right to abortion into their state constitution. The measure, known as Issue 1, passed with 58% of the vote.

But Ohio is far from the first state to vote in favor of abortion. Since Roe v. Wade was overturned in June 2022, voters in California, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Montana, and Vermont have all voted in favor of abortion measures. And the Democratic Party appears to see the issue as one that rallies voters to the polls who may otherwise stay home. Axios is predicting that because abortion appears to be a winning issue for Democrats, Democrats may push for abortion-related measures to be on the ballot in 20. 2014. Abortion remains a top issue for voters. Economic issues are constantly the most important to voters, but with the economy struggling right now, economic issues are harder to campaign on. Axios reports that during a private conversation, second gentleman Doug M. Hoff has described Democrats' path to victory in 2024 as Dobbs and Democracy, according to two people familiar with his comments.

States to keep an eye on where pro-abortion ballot measures might pop up include Arizona, Nevada, Florida, Nebraska, and South Dakota. Saturday is Veterans Day, and so we want to take a moment here on the show. First to say thank you to all of our veterans and their families. We know that your sacrifice is immense, and we truly appreciate and honor it here at the Daily Signal and the Heritage Foundation. And here at Heritage, we're also very proud to have many veterans who serve on our staff, and just today, a group of Heritage Foundation National Security experts, who are all veterans, issued a statement in support of Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama. For months, as you all will remember, Tuberville has been challenging a pro-abortion Pentagon policy.

The Defense Department continues to allow taxpayer-funded travel for social. service members or spouses to obtain an abortion. And Tuberville has made it clear that until that policy is changed, he will not approve any military promotions. If Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin drops the Pentagon abortion policy, Tuberville will approve the promotions. Recently, Tuberville came under fire and criticism from senators in his own party who said he needed to give his efforts up and allow the promotions to move forward to,

despite the pro-abortion Pentagon policy. But the veterans who work here at the Heritage Foundation are standing with Tuberville and applauding his efforts to pressure the Pentagon to change this abortion policy. The Heritage Foundation's Robert Greenway, J.V. Venable, Dakota Wood, Wilson Beaver, James J. Carapano, and Steve Bucci,

write that they stand united in our support of Senator Tuberville's opposition to the Department of Defense's illegal and immoral policies that attempt to bypass U.S. law and which further erode America's trust in the capability of the U.S. armed forces to fulfill its mission. The six veterans add that Senator Tuberville is taking a principled stand that strengthens our constitutional democracy

and as veterans we support his opposition to these policies for the sake of our military, the rule of law, and the unborn. Well, we are going to leave it there for today, but before we go, we have two important announcements. First, in honor of Veterans Day and observing Veterans Day tomorrow, we will not have a top news show, but we are so excited to bring you a beautiful conversation that I recently got to have with Marine Veteran and author Andrew Bidgio. We discuss his new book, The Rifle, Back to the Battlefield. It's his second book that tells really wonderful and powerful stories about World War II veterans.

And secondly, I'm very excited to announce that our Daily Signal team is about to get a little bit bigger. Sam is welcoming a baby into the world literally any day now. So it's possible that today or maybe next week will be one of the final times that you hear her voice on this show for a little while. And Sam, my goodness, we are going to miss having you. you here in studio with this, but could not be more thrilled for you and your husband is to welcome a beautiful baby into the world. Thanks so much, Virginia. I'm certainly going to miss being with you every weekday, and I will certainly be sending a lot of photos, so stay tuned for those. Yeah, well, we look forward to seeing all of those photos, and we're going to hold you to

that. But congratulations to you. It's very exciting news. Well, for all of our listeners, we hope that you have a great rest of your day. Enjoy Friday. If you have it off, enjoy the long weekend. Tell the veterans in your life, thank you. And we will see you here tomorrow morning for my conversation with Andrew Bidgio as we talk about some of the stories of the veterans that he has had the privilege of interviewing. But with that, that's going to do it for today's show. 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 Asheras. Sound designed by Lauren Evans, Mark Geine, and John Pop. To learn more, please visit DailySignal.com.