The Daily Signal - TOP NEWS | Firsthand Account of Ohio Disaster, Biden Meets with Bucharest Nine, LGBTQ Population Doubles, Another Candidate Enters White House Race | Feb. 22

Episode Date: February 22, 2023

On today’s Daily Signal Top News, we break down: Roman Jankowski, an investigative columnist for The Daily Signal and a senior investigative counsel for the Oversight Project at The Heritage Foundation, shares on-the-ground insight into what’s happening in East Palestine, Ohio President Biden says Russia’s decision to end its participation in the New START treaty is a “big mistake” New Gallup polling shows percentage of U.S. adults that identify as LGBTQ Vivek Ramaswamy announces his bid for the White House 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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Get the yes you've been waiting for at Capital One.ca.ca. slash yes. Terms and conditions apply. I'm Samantha Chiris. I'm Virginia Allen. And this is the Daily Signal top news for Wednesday, February 22nd. Here are today's headlines. It's been a few weeks since a cargo train carrying hazardous substances derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, and the fallout from it has been devastating. Transportation Secretary P. Buttigieg announced today he will be heading to Ohio tomorrow while former President Donald Trump visited today. The Associated Press reports that the Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday said Norfolk Southern, the company which the train belonged to, will pay for cleaning up the mess that they created and the trauma that they inflicted on this community. Joining us from on the ground in East Palestine, Ohio is Roman Jankovsky.

Roman's an investigative columnist for the Daily Signal and senior investigative counsel for the Oversight Project here at the Heritage Foundation. Roman, thanks so much for joining us. Yeah, no problem. So I arrived here early this morning to scope out the incidents to figure out exactly what happened. And driving up here, I noticed one thing, you got a lot of rolling, beautiful hills, a lot of streams, a lot of water surrounding this area. and it's also right in between the Pennsylvania and Ohio border. So this is not a disaster that's happening for Ohio. This is a disaster that's happening for Ohio and Pennsylvania.

And so I came to town this morning, and I spoke to a few individuals on the ground, spoke to a couple of locals. And they said on February 3rd, they didn't even hear the incident. It was very, they said usually you'd hear something like this, but they didn't. But they were told right away to evacuate and go to the high school gym. And right after they were in the high school gym, they were later told they had to go and leave for a few days. They all left.

They all came back. And now the situation is constantly changing in the ground. So I spoke to them about, hey, are you, do you feel safe about? drinking the water. Majority of them said they don't drink the water and they never have. They usually always drink bottles water. Other people said, hey, I'm not worried about the water, but I live higher up on the hill, so I don't think it really affected me. But I am kind of worried about exactly what's happening. Yeah, it is really crazy. We've been following your tweets about, you know, what locals are saying, different signs that people are holding.

And I wanted to talk more specifically about the damage that you're seeing. What's it like on the ground from the perspective of, like, what we're seeing damage-wise? So I wasn't able to see any of the damage from the train. I tried to go both ways on the road where that was parallel to the train track. And one side, they blocked me off off. Wow. And so they blocked the entire road off. You couldn't see it.

There was lots of trucks going back and forth. It looked like they were a big dump truck and the water trucks they were going back and forth. So I wasn't able to see it in that side. But while I went to the local McDonald's and I was talking to one of the locals, he said there's something he noticed is that a lot of dead animals on the side of the road. Not from being struck by a car, but he thinks that they died just from this type of poisoning. He says there's also no birds in the air. And usually during this time, you still see a few birds in the air.

And he hasn't seen any in this accident. Wow, that's devastating. I know there's been different reports, like you were saying, of animals dying, of fish turning up dead in streams. So really just devastating for the environment, for the people that are living there. Roman, any final thoughts on, you know, what you think our listeners should know about the situation in Ohio? This is a beautiful little small town, small town USA here. And these people are just like you.

And they were expecting a response by the Biden administration to come here. Like they usually would expect for a huge incident like this. And for more than a few weeks, there was no response. And I think everybody's shocking. I think we all should be shocked about that. Well, Roman, thank you so much for joining us. We'd love to have you back on as you continue to invest. and, you know, explore the situation up there in Ohio. So thank you so much and stay safe out there.

No problem. Thank you. As you all remember yesterday, we discussed Russia suspending its participation in the New Start Treaty. Today, President Joe Biden is labeling the move a big mistake. Biden made an unannounced trip to Ukraine earlier this week, during which Putin made the announcement on the treaty. The Associated Press reports that the move is expected to have an immediate impact on U.S. visibility into Russian nuclear activities. But the pact was already on life support following Moscow's cancellation last year of talks that had been intended to salvage the agreement that both sides have accused the other of violating. Prior to his return to Washington, D.C. on Wednesday, the Associated Press reports that Biden met with Bucharest 9,000. leaders. Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia came together to form the Bucharest 9 in response to Putin's annexation of Crimea from Ukraine. A White House readout of Biden's meeting says they discussed the strengthened defensive posture

on NATO's eastern flank and President Biden reiterated the United States ironclad commitment to NATO's Article 5. Let's take a listen to some of Biden's comments from earlier today via his Twitter. The irony is that one of the last conversations I had with our friend in Russia was, I said you keep asking for the findolization of NATO. you're going to get the NATOization of Finland. Well, it happened. Not only are we as strong as well we're stronger.

And I say to my fellow presidents that I'm honored to be with you here and so many strong NATO allies. A new Gallup poll is providing some insight into U.S. adults who identify as LGBTQ. Last year, 7.2% of U.S. adults identified. as LGBTQ. Back in 2012, when Gallup first started measuring LGBTQ identification, only three and a half percent of U.S. adults said they identified that way. Gallup senior editor, Jeff Jones, told USA today that we've seen a doubling representing a total 3.7 point increase in 10 years. At that rate, in most years, we would expect to see rather incremental changes on the order of tenths of a percentage

point. If you look at it over time, though, the incremental increases add up to something more substantial. Jones continued, I think the data is clear that LGBTQ identification is highest among the younger generations. I don't put much stock in year-to-year increases or decreases that are within the margin of error. But over a longer period of years, you'll see a more definite trend emerge. There's another candidate for the GOP's presidential nomination, entrepreneur and co-founder of Strive Asset Management, Vivek Ramoswamy. Ramoswamy made the announcement Tuesday night on Tucker Carlson's show. Let's take a listen to some of his announcement video via his Twitter.

We're in the middle of a national identity crisis. Faith, patriotism, and hard work have disappeared, only to be replaced by new secular religions like COVIDism, climateism, and gender ideology. We hunger to be part of something bigger than our society. yet we cannot even answer the question of what it means to be an American. Today, the woke left prays on that vacuum. They tell you that your race, your gender, and your sexual orientation govern who you are, what you can achieve, and what you're allowed to think.

This is psychological slavery, and that has created a new culture of fear in our country that has completely replaced our culture of free speech in America. And that is why today, why today I am announcing my run for President of the United States. Ramoswamy joins former President Donald Trump and former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley in the race for the Republican Party's presidential nomination. And that'll be it for today's episode. Thank you for listening to The Daily Signal's top news.

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