The Daily Signal - Rep. Andy Biggs Says Follow the Science, Open Schools

Episode Date: March 11, 2021

It’s past time to open schools, Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., says. “The percentages for teachers or students is really, really low,” Biggs says of the risk of contracting COVID-19. “In Florida, they’re playing sports.” “The flip side of it, of course, is this isolation, this online learning, this basic lockdown for these kids is producing greater suicide rates, higher depression rates,” Biggs says. “And something like half of all the adolescents and young adults have experienced some suicidal ideation that they had never had before. That’s a result of these school lockdowns, which don’t follow the science and they don’t make sense.” The third-term congressman from Arizona joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to discuss reopening during the pandemic, as well as to weigh in on the crisis at the southern border. We also cover these stories: The situation at the U.S.-Mexico border isn’t a crisis but a “full-blown disaster,” Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick says.  The Senate votes to confirm Rep. Marcia Fudge, D-Ohio, as secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development.  Arkansas is now of the most pro-life states in the nation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Thursday, March 11th. I'm Virginia Allen. And I'm Rachel Del Judas. Congressman Andy Biggs of Arizona says that half of all the adolescents and young adults have experienced some suicidal ideation that they never had before due to schools being closed for a year because of coronavirus. Congressman Biggs joins me today during a conversation we had at the Conservative Political Action Conference to discuss the impact of indefinite school closures on students. We also touch on the crisis at the southern border and Democrats $1.9 trillion coronavirus bill. Don't forget. If you're enjoying this podcast, please be sure to leave a review or a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and encourage others to subscribe. Now, on top news. The situation at the U.S.-Mexico border is not a crisis, but a full-blown disaster, according to Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick. Governor Patrick joined Fox News on Wednesday to explain that 500 new National Guard troops are being sent to the border to help with the influx of immigrants.

The Texas governor said that anywhere between 1,000 and 4,000 migrants are entering into America every day across our southern border. Let's take a listen to what Governor Patrick had to say in regard to the Biden administration's handling of the situation at the border per Fox News. Bill, I've been working on the border in Dana for nearly 16 years. A lot of trips, I've been all over the border. Day patrols, night patrols, you name it. This is the worst I've seen. We've had some higher peaks at times. This is the worst. And what really makes it bad is that there's no end in sight. There's no end in sight to these people who are coming over the border. We're talking about millions of people who are being victimized by the Biden administration. And by the way, their border patrol agents have not, to my knowledge, been vaccinated. We're vaccinated. our people down there. And so they're susceptible. Their own government employees are susceptible

to getting any disease or illness that's coming over. We know health care is bad in Central America. We've already arrested nearly 1,000 criminals in the first two months of the year, just in the Texas sector. It is absolute disaster. And President Biden is nothing more than a prop of the left. He has no idea what's going on down there. The Senate has confirmed Congresswoman Marsha Fudge, Democrat of Ohio, to be the Secretary of Department of Housing and Urban Development. Democrat Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, chairman of the Senate Banking Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, which passed Fudge's nomination out of committee last month,

said that he can think of no one better to lead us out of this pandemic and create strong communities for the future than Marsha Fudge. Senator Pat Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania, the ranking Republican on the banking panel, said it's most important that cabinet nominees have willingness to listen to members of Congress on both sides of the aisle. Arkansas just became one of the most pro-life states in the nation. On Tuesday, Governor Assa Hutchinson announced he would sign the Unborn Child Protection Act into law, which allows for abortion only to save

the life of the mother in a medical crisis, but not in the case of rape or incest. In a statement, the governor said he was signing the bill because of overwhelming legislative support and my sincere and long-held pro-life convictions. And he added that it is the intent of the legislation to set the stage for the Supreme Court overturning current case law. The American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas said they plan to challenge the bill in court. This extreme abortion ban is cruel and unconstitutional and will have accomplished nothing but cause stress for patience. The American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas said in a statement. of Disney, Bob Chappek, said Tuesday that the firing of Gina Carano, Star of the Mandalorian,

who was fired last month for controversial Instagram posts about the country's polarization, drawing a parallel to Nazi Germany, was in keeping with the company's values. Cheapac said, per the Washington Examiner, that Disney promotes values that are universal and that he does not really see Disney as characterizing itself as left-leaning or right-leaning, but said the company promotes respect, decency, and integrity. and inclusion, and we seek to have the content that we make reflective of the rich diversity of the world we live in. And I think that's a world we should all live in harmony and peace, Chaypec said. The lead guitarist for the band Mumford and Sons announced he's taking a break from

the band after receiving backlash for posting a tweet in support of Antino's new book on Antifa. Andy Noe, who we've had on this podcast a number of times to discuss his reporting on Antifa has just published the book, Unmas, Inside Antifa's Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy. Winston Marshall, the guitarist for Mumford and Sons, wrote on Twitter that he'd read the book and commented to know that he was a brave man. Marshall received harsh criticism for this post, with some Twitter users calling him a Nazi. In response to the backlash, Marshall issued a statement on Tuesday, writing, over the past few days, I have come to better understand the pain caused by the book I endorsed. I have offended not only a lot of people I don't know,

but also those closest to me, including my bandmates. And for that, I am truly sorry. He continued on saying that as a result of my actions, I'm taking time away from the band to examine my blind spots. Now stay tuned for my conversation with Congressman Indy Biggs at CPAC. Never has it been more important for us to fight for America. Each day, we see the penalties of progressive policies across our nation. Our elections are under assault. Our economic freedom is on the decline,

and our culture is turning its back on the founding principles that have made us the freest, most prosperous nation in history. That's why the Heritage Foundation developed a plan to take on the left and take back our country. The Citizens' Guide to Fight for America provides a series of heritage-recommended action items delivered on a regular basis to your inbox. Make an impact in your community and in our country.

Sign up for the Citizens Guide at heritage.org slash citizens guide and join in the fight for America today. I'm joined today on the Daily Signal podcast by Congressman Andy Biggs at Arizona. Congressman Biggs, always great to have you with us on the Daily Signal podcast. Great to be with you, Rachel. Thanks for having me. You just wrote an op-ed for the Washington Examiner about kids going back to school and why this important.

The op-eds called Let Parents, Not Teachers, Decide When Children Should Go Back to School. Can you tell us about the op-ed and why this is important? Yeah, so we wrote the op-ed. I wrote the op-ed because in immediate response to the Chicago School Union stuff, but it isn't just that. I mean, we've been actually talking about schools reopening for many, many months. The data is clear. It was clear from Europe.

It's clear. We're in Florida today, and Florida is successfully, been reopening schools. They're playing sports. But a lot of people say, oh, we worry about the teachers. But the CDC director, who's now the CDC director, before she was the CDC director, said you can actually open up schools. They're not petri dishes.

They're not these super spreader events. You're not going to create a cataclysmat problem. And then when she became the CDC director, she said, okay, well, now maybe we've got to have vaccines or something and all this. The reality is we haven't seen anything like that at all. There's no vector. I mean, the percentages for teachers or students is really, really low. In Florida, they're playing sports.

The flip side of it, of course, is this isolation, this online learning, this basic lockdown for these kids is producing greater suicide rates, higher depression rates, and something like half of all the adolescents and young adults have experienced some suicide ideation that had never had that before. That's a result of these school lockdowns which don't follow the science and they don't make sense. Well, in the op-ed, you make the point that President Biden, in his best imitation of Truth Minister from 1984, has deemed that in-person school for one day a week, even if it is not a full day,

it means schools are, quote, opened up. Why is this not the case? Well, so you can't say that meeting a half a day, in person means that you have an open school. I mean, that's just a lie. And that's what, that was my point there, is that President Biden campaigned, we're going to open up schools.

And then when he found out that teachers unions didn't really want open schools and go back to work, he said, okay, well, we've opened them up. We're going to call it good because some places have half day open. That's ridiculous. And it doesn't change the other negative factors that we talked about.

We've got students that have been out almost a year. And that may mean that they fall behind two, three, four years because they've lost the foundation. And especially, I look at two groups, the young kids, because your ability to read needs to be submitted in by the time you're in third grade. That's what they tell us. It becomes very difficult to learn to read after that.

And we're basically pulling those kids out and really going to cause them massive problems, maybe lose a generation. The other one is the adolescent age kids. who rely on socialization and peers to help them adjust as they're getting ready to leave high school and move to college or trades or whatever. They're being harmed tremendously. Democrats have their $1.9 trillion COVID-19 bill, and I believe about 9% of it goes actually to COVID relief. And so something, this is just an honest question that I have. Is there money in this bill for schools to reopen? Well, there actually is. There's about $6 billion for the schools to reopen.

All the rest of the money that's in for schools is out beginning in 2023 and forward. It's not in this fiscal year. Believe me, we didn't need to do the bill that we did in the middle of the night last night because the previous five bills had a trillion dollars left over, including about $60 billion for public schools. And I guess the third point to make it is if schools aren't going to open up, why in the heck are we giving them more federal dollars? What else is in this bill that has nothing to do?

with COVID-19 since only 9% of it does go to COVID. Well, you have a huge amount of money going to bail out blue states and blue cities and towns who've mismanaged their pension funds or anything else. And by the way, every state's going to get $500 million. That's like the blank check portion of this thing. It's insane. So that's where they're starting out. Then you get bonuses and stuff on that based on having a high unemployment.

So think about it. If you've mismanaged your state, you're going to get more money because you're going to have more people that are unemployed. That's in there. So there's that. You've got money for National Endowments of Art, National Endowments of Humanities, for libraries and museums. That's probably half a billion dollars just with that. We're sending $750 million overseas. You've got $50 million for family planning, including abortions.

You've got $400 million because we're concerned, I say that facetiously, that some people, pets might be more susceptible to COVID. So they're going to go and experiment on COVID. So we're sending vaccines overseas, and we're going to test animals to see if they might get COVID. This is the kind of garbage that is in this bill. You got Nancy Pelosi's getting a subway system out there up in the Bay Area, and Chuck Schumer is getting another bridge in New York.

Rachel, they changed the name of it from the COVID-19 relief package to the America a recovery plan or something like that because they can it's kind of like they went from a global warming to climate change because it wasn't accurate so you can't say it's good it's COVID relief because it's not what it really is is this massive boondoggle of pork and buying up votes around the country that's what that's what it came to mind when you were talking about that when it comes to what nancy Pelosi's wish list is as well as senator schumers it almost seems like earmarks i feel like a case could be made like these are basically earmarks Yeah, there really are basically earmarks, except for with earmarks, I mean, you kind of could identify who the earmarks were going for.

Not always. But yeah, these were earmarks for sure. And they're going to go straight into earmarks. You better believe it. Well, you voted no on Democrats' Equality Act, and I want to talk a little bit about this piece of legislation. There's a lot to it, but one of the components of it is it will allow biological men who identify as women into women's restroom. It will allow boys who are biologically boys into girls' locker rooms to disrobe. It will allow biological men or boys on women's soccer teams or sports teams.

Can you tell us more about this piece of legislation and your perspective of it and how it's going to impact women in just society in general? This may be the worst piece of legislation in the history of the United States of America, quite frankly. What it does, in the guise of equality, I mean, we actually hear people stand up saying, oh you shouldn't vote no we just want to be able to love each other that isn't what this is this is control

this is actually attacking religious freedom it's attacking women so domestic violence shelters if you have a woman who's been abused by a man and they go to the domestic violence shelter and there's some but some guy who is

identifying as a woman that day they get to come into that domestic violence shelter you cannot, any public accommodation, any public entity cannot basically control for biological men and women. So a safe space for a woman might be that domestic violence shelter. It might be the women's locker room. It might be the girls' locker room at school. It might be the girls' bathroom at an elementary school. If a six-year-old guy, kid, says, you know, I'm really identifying as a girl today, you cannot prevent them from going in there. That's how ludic

Chris, this bill is. So you have all of that going on. At the same time, you tell parents and physicians, doctors and counselors, if a child, a minor says, I really want to change my sex, the parents might say, well, we don't think you're ready to make that decision. The counselor agrees, and the physician says, I agree, I agree, this should not happen. If you don't allow the puberty blockers and hormone therapies that go with this, they can take your kid away from you. That's what's in the equality bill, and that's just a small component of the equality bill. When I said they're attacking religion, we debated this last night, and the Democrats were saying, oh, yeah, we're not attacking religion at all. There's a provision right in there that says that RFRA, which is the

religious freedom act of 1993, that says you can have a defense to some of these social issues if you have a sincerely held religious view. They specifically say, it's no defense because they're criminalizing all these things. So if you don't do these things, it becomes a criminal conduct. And Riffer would have allowed protection for religious people of conscience and faith. They specifically said, nope, you can't have those exemptions anymore. You can't have those protections. They are attacking religious freedom, associational freedom, freedom of speech,

and they're interjecting the government between the parent and the child. That makes it the worst bill in the history of this country. In my opinion, unconstitutional. Given the attacks on religious freedom and now that the safety guards for people who have deeply held religious beliefs, those are not going to be available anymore, do you foresee people of faith or people with deeply held religious beliefs going to prison over this?

They will, might. They're trying to put all people of faith into a box. Don't forget, this week, while the Equality Bill was going on, in two different hearings in the House of Representatives, they were holding hearings basically declaring that if you voted for Donald Trump or if you're a Republican, you're a racist, xenophob, white nationalist, domestic terrorist. So at the same time, they're trying to put people of faith in this box. They're basically also saying, and if you wander outside that box and express yourself, you're a domestic terrorist. that's where we've come. And so I've been saying now for about a month and a half, two months now that we've moved into fascism. And we're no longer just kind of a soft socialist nation. We're into fascism because you add the censorship that we're all experiencing. And that's being done not by the government per se, but by the government's encouragement with this federal government's encouragement to go ahead and censor any kind of dissenting or opposing viewpoint.

The heterodox conservative viewpoint is being stifled while you are allowing the orthodox leftist view of collectivism and corporatism. That's what's happening in the United States today. Well, we do have a Democrat House Senate and White House, so the Republicans aren't in the majority, but are there any ways that the Equality Act can be countered? I mean, do you see any opportunity to address any of these issues? Whether it's the Equality Act or even... HR1 or the COVID bill, we have to rely on the Senate because the Senate still has the 60-vote filibuster rules. So that's the first line of defense. And if the Senate can't keep enough Republicans off these bills, or if the Democrats say we're going to change the rules so we

can ram them down your throat, then we have to rely on two other places. The courts, and they're notoriously unreliable, but there are some good places that we can rely. And then the states, So in particular, I think of the state's attorneys general. So if HR1, which is the election bill, gets through, we need the state's attorney's general to immediately file the lawsuits to enjoin that so we can attack that. Same with the Equality Act. They're going to need to bring cases on that.

Same with the immigration abuse. They're going to need to bring the lawsuits. That's the state's attorneys general. Then you need the state legislatures to, like, I'm trying to remember which state did this this week. They passed legislation saying we don't have to comply with. with President Biden's executive orders. So the state legislatures have a role to play in this.

And I'll just tell you, the governors, if they would, could step up and become the most important political force in this country today if the governors were courageous and would do this. Well, another item on Nancy Pelosi's agenda is a $15 minimum wage. What is that going to do to jobs? Well, the CBO has said that that's going to eliminate one and a half million jobs. I think they're overly conservative. We have a lot of hidden jobs as well.

I mean, so restaurants are going to be decimated, unskilled, low-wage people, which are mostly kids coming out and getting their first job, they're not going to be able to get a job because there's going to be fewer jobs available to them. So not only will you have jobs lost, nobody's going to be hired for these jobs. You're going to see a move to automation.

We've already seen that at the fast food places where you go in and there's automated menus, etc. You'll see more automation to replace folks like this. But what exacerbates the loss of jobs is at the same time that's going on, this poorest border, these promises of amnesty where you're bringing in low-wage, low-skilled workers to compete with our low-wage, low-skilled workers, our American kids, that's the problem. Well, it's actually one of my next questions. The Biden administration has said that they plan to give amnesty to 11 million illegal immigrants,

why is this a problem? What will this look like? What would the implications of this be? So, first of all, that 11 million number has been used for 13 years now. It's really closer to 20 million, maybe even north of 20 million. So we have to be honest with that number. The number is probably twice as much as they're saying. So that's number one. But the other thing is, it provides a massive draw factor incentive. So you're going to have lots of folks coming over. They're already messing on the other side of the border. Biden has told them specifically, don't come yet. Don't come yet.

We're not ready for you. He's telling him to wait there just on the other side of the border in Mexico because when he gets his amnesty through, if he does get it through, then it'll be time to come through. And that's what he wants. But what that will do is we know that there's already unaccompanied minors, not six-year-olds, we're talking 15 to 17-year-olds. Oddly enough, MS-13 gangs fit that profile.

I'm not saying all of them are, but we do know that there are gangs coming in. We've got cities along the borders. A liberal Texas mayor said, Mr. Biden, please, please don't release these people into our community. They're starting to release them into the communities again. That's going to bring crime, stress on the social safety nets of those communities. communities, all of these things that are going on. That's what you're seeing happening right now along the border because of Joe Biden. Well, lastly, I wanted to ask you about cancel culture. It's something that's really come up a lot recently when it comes to social media,

different organizations, even nonpartisan organization like the Job Creators Network. Their Twitter has been taken down because of some alleged, you know, broken rule that they violated of Twitters. And so first of all, I wanted to hear your perspective of cancel culture And then secondly, I think the House Street Moucacus kind of had its own cancel culture moment to a degree. So if you're able to address that at all, yeah, we'd love to hear your thoughts. Yeah. So cancel culture is the move to tyranny and fascism that I was talking about earlier. So I will tell you, my wife will tell you, I've harped on this for decades.

The left is inherently tyrannical. I mean, you can't do socialism without coercing people. You can't do fascism without coercing people. And America isn't going to let you nationalize, you know, soda pops and stuff like that, or basically anything. So it becomes a fascism where you're controlling through regulation, you're controlling it through taxation, and they start doing your bidding. That's what cancel culture has become. So all the social media outlets are basically doing the lefts, the hard lefts bidding at preventing the opposition from speaking. And they'll cancel you.

They'll prevent you from doing stuff. I've had my social media taken down. All of this stuff, they want to erase you. I just have to get this off my chest before I go to the HFC moment that you're talking about. They want to have a unitary party. That's what they want. They want, and who has unitary parties? Authoritarian governments.

We have basically an oligarchical fascism in the United States today. I know I'm going to get hassled for saying that. But that's really what you got, and you've got to face the facts because they're trying to constrain your freedom and who you are. So our moment, we were invited to come to an event called Conservative Members Conference in Florida. One of the big hotel chains in the country, the biggest hotel chain in the country, had contracted with the host of that event, which wasn't us. We were just invited to come. Freedom Caucus was invited to come. when this hotel chain found out who was coming, they said, we can't host you guys,

a bunch of conservatives coming into this event. And so they canceled a half a million dollar contracts, my understanding, of what that was, because they didn't want a bunch of conservatives staying at their hotel. And what that means is the host of this event had to scramble to find another place. And by golly, they did find it was a great place. and I'm leery to even say what the name of that place was because they might get canceled, because that's how obscene this is.

I mean, we're seeing conservative actors fired. We're seeing conservative athletes ostracized or cut. We're seeing conservative coaches. We're wearing an O-A-N and T-shirt while he's fishing with his boys. They forced him to apologize to keep his million-dollar-plus year a job. That's the whole thing that we're talking about. It's not enough that Joe Biden was sworn in as the President of the United States.

I've seen this in Congress where a chairman has said to a member of the House Freedom Caucus, I want you to admit that Joe Biden is the legitimate President of the United States. Well, what do you mean? No, he's the legitimate president of the United States. I want you to admit that. Well, he got sworn in. He's sitting in the Oval Office. I want you to admit he's a legal.

That is how insane. saying these people are, and that's a committee chairman for the Democrats. We're not tuck in some Yum Yum who's in the squad. We're talking about the chairman of one of the most powerful committees in Washington, D.C. You must admit that he's the legitimate president. To what end? And my response to that is, I will admit he's a legitimate president. When you admit that you tried to delegitimize Donald J. Trump's presidency for the last four years,

the point is they want obey a sense. They want compliance. This isn't about freedom anymore. This is about control and power and hatred. And that's where the left is today, Rachel. Well, Congressman Biggs, thank you for joining us. Thank you for running through all these issues. We appreciate having with us all the time.

Thanks for being here. You bet. It's good to be with you. And that'll do it for today's episode. Thanks for listening to The Daily Signal podcast. You can find the Daily Signal podcast on Google Play, Apple Podcast, Spotify, and IHeartRadio. please be sure to leave us a review and a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and encourage others to subscribe.

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