The Daily Signal - Speaker Johnson Rejects Comprehensive Immigration Reform, Cruz Endorses Trump | Jan. 17

Episode Date: January 17, 2024

TOP NEWS | On today’s Daily Signal Top News, we break down: Speaker Mike Johnson says he wouldn’t discuss comprehensive immigration reform and that the border must be secured. Sen. Ted. Cruz endorses Trump after Iowa caucus China knew Covid-19 sequence weeks before telling the world about it. China’s population continues to shrink. 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

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I'm Brian Gottstein, and this is the Daily Signal Top News for Wednesday, January 17th. Here are today's headlines. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, said on Wednesday that now is not the time for comprehensive immigration reform. According to the news outlet, The Hill, he said it's not the right time because of how complicated of an issue it is. Johnson said that the border still needs securing and that it's past time the government does so. The House passed a significant Republican border security bill called H.R. 2 in the spring. Among its provisions were more funding for the border wall and increased funding for border surveillance technology. It would also restrict the Biden administration's lax asylum policies that have allowed illegal immigrants to stay in the U.S.

In addition, the bill mandated that the Department of Homeland Security track numbers like known gotaways and suspected terrorists apprehended at the border. The bill failed to pass the Senate. According to the Hill, a bipartisan group of senators have been working to pair border security measures with aid to Ukraine in a single bill. However, Johnson noted that removing parts of the HR2 border security legislation to merge it into a combined bill would make it ineffective. You can't choose from among the provisions in HR2 like a menu and assume that you're going to solve the problem, Johnson said. The House Speaker has been opposed to further increases in Ukraine, and has insisted that the border be prioritized. Before we even talk about Ukraine,

I'm going to tell the president what I'm telling all of you and what we've told the American people. Border, Border, Border, Johnson said. We have to take care of our own house. We have to secure our own border before we talk about doing anything else, he said. China mapped out the COVID-19 virus weeks before it told the world about its existence.

According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, a Chinese researcher in Beijing uploaded a nearly complete sequence of the virus's structure to a U.S. government-run database on December 28, 2019. However, Chinese officials at the time were calling the outbreak in Wuhan a viral pneumonia of unknown cause. China shared the virus sequence with the World Health Organization on January 11, 2020. It was nearly identical to the one uploaded on December 28th, according to the report. According to the Wall Street Journal, the timeline of events was uncovered by Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee,

after the committee threatened to subpoena the Department of Health and Human Services. Texas Senator Ted Cruz endorsed Donald Trump for president on Tuesday, a day after Trump won the Iowa Republican presidential primary race by a wide margin. I am proud to endorse Donald Trump for president of the United States, Cruz said to Fox News host Sean Hannity. he said he looks forward to supporting Trump enthusiastically. Cruz had opposed Trump in the 2016 Republican presidential primary. Last night was decisive. It was a dominating victory for Donald Trump.

I got to say, there's no place like the Iowa caucuses. I know it intimately. The men and women of Iowa, they take their responsibility incredibly seriously. They scrutinize the candidates. It's an amazing process, and I'm a big believer in letting democracy play out. Last night it played out, and I got to say, Trump's victory was across the board. He won 51% of the vote. He won 98 of the counties.

Congratulations to President Trump on that dominating victory. And at this point, I believe this race is over. So I am proud to endorse Donald Trump for president of the United States. Trump took 51% of the votes in the Iowa caucuses on Monday, giving him a 30-point victory over the second-place finisher, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. After generations of enforcing a one-child policy on families in China, the Chinese Communist Party reversed itself in 2015. As a result of the policy, China's population had been skewing heavily male. According to a New York Times report, China has failed to increase its birth rate, despite the creation of policies to boost it,

and leader Xi Jinping's calls to promote, quote, a marriage and childbearing culture. China said on Wednesday that 9.02 million babies were born in 2023 down from 9.56 million in 2022. That's the seventh year in a row that the number has fallen, according to the Times. The report said that China's population stood at 1.4 billion at the end of 2023, but it's seen a decline of 2 million people, according to China's National Bureau of Statistics. The nation now has a large, rapidly aging population that's straining the country's health care and pension systems. And that'll do it for today's episode. Thank you for listening to The Daily Signal's top news. If you haven't gotten a chance, be sure to check out our morning show right here in this podcast feed,

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