The Daily Signal - Text Messages Show Authorities Flagged Trump Shooter, Biden Proposes Big Changes to Supreme Court, Venezuelan Election Results Questioned | July 29

Episode Date: July 29, 2024

TOP NEWS | On today’s Daily Signal Top News, we break down: Fox News Digital obtained text messages that show that law enforcement flagged Thomas Crooks as suspicious at least 90 minutes before he fired at former President Donald Trump.  President Joe Biden has proposed sweeping changes to the Supreme Court, including ending lifetime appointments. Iowa’s heartbeat law protecting the unborn goes into effect.   Venezuelan elections officials claim that President Nicolás Maduro has won reelection.  Following a strike in Israel over the weekend that left 12 children and teens dead, Israel says Hezbollah will be held "responsible." 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

Text messages indicate that law enforcement flagged the shooter at the Trump rally 90 minutes before he opened fire. I'm Virginia Allen, and this is the Daily Signal Top News for Monday, July 29. There is new information related to the assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump just over two weeks ago. Fox News Digital obtained text messages that show that law enforcement flagged Thomas Crooks as suspicious at least 90 minutes before he opened fire. on Trump. A text was sent in a group chat to Beaver County, Pennsylvania emergency services officers. The text message to the group read, I did see him with a rangefinder looking towards the stage, FYI. If you want to notify SS snipers to look out, I lost sight of him. A follow-up message said, call it into command and have a uniform check it out, uniform referring to a uniform police officer.

That text was sent over an. hour before the gunmen opened fire. Another text warned that the young man had parked close to the law enforcement vehicles. An hour before the shooting, officers flagged that Crooks was on the move and had positioned himself near the American Glass International Building. Tomorrow morning, the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing examining the security failures that led to this assassination attempt on Trump. Acting Director of the United States Secret Service, Ronald Rode Jr. will testify, along with deputy director of the FBI, Paul Abate. And no doubt, this breakdown of communication in these text messages is going to be at the center

of the senator's questions during tomorrow's hearing. President Joe Biden has proposed sweeping changes to the Supreme Court, including ending lifetime appointments. Instead, Biden argues that justices should serve an 18-year term. Here with us to discuss more is Heritage Foundation Senior Legal Fellow and host of the SCOTUS 101 podcast. Jean-Carlo, thanks for being with us. Thank you for having me. So why exactly is President Biden proposing term limits? And what exactly would the implications of term limits be on the Supreme Court?

So the reason he is setting or wants to set term limits and the reason he's picked 18 years is because that would get rid of the twoest, longest survey. Republican appointees on the Supreme Court, Justice Thomas and the Chief Justice, so that the court would go from a 6-3 Republican-appointed majority to a 5-4 Democrat-appointed majority. This reminds me, there's an old quote from somebody much wiser than I who said, if a thing doesn't need to be changed, it needs to not be changed. And I think that sort of, that quote sort of explains what's going on here. There's no reason to impose term limits on the Supreme Court except for the fact that it isn't doing what liberals wanted to do.

There has been no allegation that any justice has ever changed his or her vote because of some interested party. There has been no allegation that anybody that the justices associate with or are friends with or travel with has had a case. of the Supreme Court or that a justice has in any way responded because of those relationships. This is pure partisanship that is trying to get the Supreme Court to flip politically. Why did the founders establish that the justices should serve lifetime appointments? precisely because they knew that there would be politicians in the future like Joe Biden

who can't resist the temptation to exert political influence over the judiciary. And it is essential that the judiciary be free from that sort of influence for two reasons. Number one, the sort of day-to-day reason, which is that if you have a case before a court, you have to trust that the court is impartial. The biggest risks of partiality is what the founders would have called faction, what we today would call political ideology. And the second reason is that the Supreme Court is an important check on the other two branches of government.

The other two branches of government are majoritarian. They respond to the will of the majority. But in America, you have rights which cannot be touched by a majority. And so you need a branch of government that is counter-majoritarian that can tell the other ones, look, I know you all really want to stop people from saying conservative things online, but they have a First Amendment right, which no matter how big your majority is, you don't get to trample on. And so the most important way of making the Supreme Court immune from majoritarian political influence is. by giving judges life tenure. Jean-Carlo, Biden has also proposed a code of ethics for the court, but it's my understanding that the court already has a code of ethics, does it not?

Yes, the Supreme Court already has a code of ethics. Once again, let me return to my top point. There is no allegation, no fact that any justice has violated their ethical obligations in any case. Now, they have disclosure obligations. It happens all the time that justices find that, you know, they should have disclosed something that they didn't. Every year, at least one justice, usually quite a few, makes updates. They self-report. They self-enforce. And that system is working just fine. Again, there is no allegation that any justice has ever, in effect, sold a vote because of any financial or personal interest. Now, the president is also pressing lawmakers to ratify a

constitutional amendment that would limit presidential immunity. And this, of course, follows the court's ruling on presidential immunity earlier this year. Would this be a good idea? Well, one of the things which I find remarkably surprising about the president's proposal is it's just a couple lines, right? Just a couple of lines, which goes, which tells me that he, that this is pure politics, and he hasn't thought about this at all. The reason is the Supreme Court's decision on presidential immunity was really long, and for good reason, these are really complicated questions. One of the most glaring questions that President Biden doesn't answer is for official acts and

unofficial acts when he's in office, only when he's out of office. There's all these complicated questions, which, you know, think of it this way. Imagine yourself in the worst possible scenario. You have a state attorney general with a favorable state legislature that will criminalize anything he wants, and they make it a crime for the president to, I don't know, arden somebody. That is entirely within the president's power, but they could make it a crime and without any sort of immunity, even for core constitutional functions, the president could be tried, arrested, tried in state court during his tenure as president, if not afterwards. I mean, there's all of these complicated questions

that demand some kind of an answer. And now, you know, you could, reasonable minds can disagree about the Supreme Court's decision. I mean, the justices amongst themselves disagreed, even though they all seem to agree that some amount of immunity is required. But to just say, abolish all immunity, and we're not even going to bother answering all these complicated questions that go to the very core of the president's ability to do his basic function is, it's in a word, imbecilic, but it just goes to show this is pure rank partisanship. Jean-Carla, before we let you go, can you explain how hard it would be for, these proposals to go into effect?

Well, sure. I mean, for presidential immunity, you'd need a constitutional amendment, which is an enormous and involved process, never going to happen, especially because, you know, there are no details here. It's just this broad partisan statement. So even if you wanted to do it, you couldn't do it without ironing out the details. And people aren't going to take seriously this silly proposal. Term limits could theoretically be imposed by Congress. I mean, that's what Biden says here, just pass a law. But in truth, there are all sorts of constitutional questions that raises that the justices themselves will have to decide. And then a binding code of ethics, again, Biden will claim that Congress can just do that by passing a law. But the Supreme Court is its own branch of government. It's not at all clear to me.

why on earth Congress has the authority to pass such a law. And again, the Supreme Court itself would have to weigh in on that. And I just can't imagine that the justices would agree that Congress could do that. John Carlo, thank you so much for more legal analysis from Jean-Carlo-Cannaparro. Be sure to subscribe to the SCOTUS 101 podcast that he hosts with Zach Smith. John Carlo, thanks for being here. My pleasure, Virginia. As of today, the unborn in the state of Iowa received new protections with one of the nation's strictest pro-life laws taking effect.

In 2018, the Iowa legislature passed a law banning abortion when a baby's heartbeat can be detected at about six weeks of pregnancy. Last year, Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds signed that bill into law. Lawsuits were filed to block it, but last month, the Iowa Supreme Court reversed a temporary injunction that was blocking it. And the Iowa Supreme Court denied Planned Parenthood's petition to rehear the case. Now, life in the womb is protected in Iowa beginning at six weeks, with exceptions for rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother. Following the Supreme Court's decision last week, Governor Kim Reynolds said, Today is a victory for life. There is nothing more sacred and no cause more worthy than protecting innocent unborn lives. previously abortion was permitted in Iowa up to about 22 weeks now let's turn to some international news

Venezuelan election officials have claimed that president nicholas maduro has won re-election but the Washington Post reports that exit polls in venezuela indicate otherwise Maduro is an authoritarian socialist and Venezuela's national electoral council is a council that Maduro controls. That counsel claimed earlier today that Maduro had won 51% of the votes, as opposed to the candidate who was opposing him, Amundo Gonzalez, who reportedly only won 44% of the votes. Now the U.S. and a number of other countries are casting doubt on those election results. U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken expressed his lack of confidence in the results earlier today. Take a listen.

We have serious concerns that the result announced. does not reflect the will or the votes of the Venezuelan people. It's critical that every vote be counted fairly and transparently, that election officials immediately share information with the opposition and independent observers without delay, and that the electoral authorities publish the detailed tabulation of votes. Colombia, Brazil, Spain, and Italy are among the nations to also question the election results,

while Russia, China, Iran, and Cuba have congratulated Maduro on his alleged victory. Following a rocket strike inside Israel over the weekend that left 12 children and teens dead, Israel says Hezbollah will be held responsible for the attack. A rocket landed on a soccer field in the Golan Heights in northern Israel over the weekend, and in addition to killing 12, the blast injured many others. Hezbollah has denied that it carried out the attack. Israeli defense minister Yoav Galant has told U.S. Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, that Israel will hold Hezbollah responsible.

The New York Times reports that Israel's security cabinet has approved a military response to the rocket attack. At the scene of the strike today, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, these children are our children, the children of all of us. Israel will not and cannot let this pass and carry on as usual. Our response is coming. It will be severe. We are continuing to monitor what exactly that response will be, and we will keep you all updated

here on top news this week. With that, that's going to do it for today's episode. Thanks so much for joining us here for the Daily Signal's top news. Be sure to catch our morning interview show. Tomorrow morning, I am sitting down with California Father Harrison Tensely for a follow-up conversation and some joyful news for this father. Harrison was in a long legal fight to win custody of his son whose mother was raising as non-binary.

Well, Harrison has some good news to share on the show tomorrow morning, so be sure to catch that conversation. Also make sure to subscribe to the Daily Signal wherever you like to get your podcast, and if you would, leave us a five-star rating and review. Thanks again for joining us this Monday. We'll see you right back here tomorrow morning for my conversation with Harrison Tensley.

The Daily Signal podcast is made possible because of listeners like you. Executive producers are Rob Lewy and Katrina Trinco. Hosts are Virginia Allen, Brian Gottstein, Tyler O'Neill, Mary Margaret O'Lehand, and Elizabeth Mitchell. Sound designed by Lauren Evans, Mark Geinney, John Pop, and Joseph Von Spakovsky. To learn more or support our work, please visit DailySignal.com.