The Daily Signal - TOP NEWS | Looming Railroad Strikes, Candlelight Vigil for Chinese Victims, Update on “Respect for Marriage” Act | Nov. 29

Episode Date: November 29, 2022

On today’s Daily Signal Top News, we break down: President Biden calls on Congress to act and avoid rail strikes  A candlelight vigil held on Monday to honor the victims of China’s “zero-COVID” policy Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis weighing in on Apple potentially banning Twitter from the app store  Rep. Kevin McCarthy discusses on speakership  A non-binary Biden administration official was charged with stealing a woman’s luggage Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm Samantha Charris. I'm Virginia Allen. And this is the Daily Signal Top News for Tuesday, November 29th. Here are today's headlines. President Joe Biden is calling on Congress to intervene with looming railroad strikes. In a statement Monday, the president said, I'm calling on Congress to pass legislation immediately to adopt the tentative agreement between railroad workers and operators without any modifications or delay

to avert a potentially crippling national rail. shutdown. Biden added, this agreement was approved by labor and management negotiators in September. On the day that it was announced, labor leaders, business leaders, and elected officials all hailed it as a fair resolution of the dispute between the hardworking men and women of the rail freight unions and the companies in that industry. According to CNN, an Anderson Economic Group analysis estimates a U.S. freight rail strike could cost the U.S. economy $1 billion in the first week of the strike. Rachel Gressler, a research fellow in economics, budget, and entitlements at the Heritage Foundation,

writes for the Daily Signal that, bound by the terms of a pre-COVID-19 pandemic contract, railroad workers have felt overworked and undercompensated in recent years. Gressler adds, policymakers should protect workers' rights to choose whether or not to join a union via right-to-work laws and should end exclusive representation so that unions do not have to represent workers who don't want their representation. Senator Bernie Sanders also weighed in on the potential railroad strikes and what Congress can do. Let's take a listen to the senator's comments via the Hill. You have workers all over this country who work for the railroads.

People who are working at dangerous jobs and inclement weather have zero paid sick leave. that is outrageous. And I think it's incumbent upon Congress to do everything that he can to protect these workers to make sure that the railroad starts treating them with the respect and the dignity that they deserve.

United States senators voted yesterday on a motion to invoke cloture on an amendment to the so-called Respect for Marriage Act, according to reporting by our colleague Mary Margaret Olahan. Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee has repeatedly raised

concerns about the content of the Respect for Marriage Act, urging Democrats and Republicans to come to an agreement on his amendment creating a strict policy that the federal government can't discriminate on either viewpoint of marriage, whether same-sex or traditional. In a letter sent last week directed at the 12 GOP senators who voted for the legislation, Lee emphasized that his amendment would ensure that federal bureaucrats do not take discriminatory actions against individuals, organizations, non-profits, and other entities based on their sincerely held religious beliefs or moral convictions about marriage by prohibiting the denial or revocation of tax-exempt status, licenses, contracts, benefits, etc.

Last night, I covered a candlelight vigil that was held at George Washington University's Cogan Plaza to honor the victims of the Chinese Communist Party's zero COVID policy. A fire in an apartment building last Thursday, November 24th, killed at least 10 people and injured at least nine others, ultimately triggering days of both national and global protests against the communist regime. Physical barriers that were built as part of pandemic control efforts and abandoned cars belonging to people in quarantine allegedly prevented fire engines from reaching the apartment building. The Hill reports. One attendee for the event told us he has family living in China, who, are now under lockdown. My other families, they're all back in China.

They're in Benchie City in northeast China. All of them have just been placed under lockdown as of yesterday. If anybody gets a positive testing, then it's the entire apartment complex on the lockdown. I'm just really worried. I don't know if they can get enough food. I don't know if they have running water. It's really concerning. And forced to demand an immediate stop of the Chinese, of the overreaching Chinese lockdown policy,

I think it's a, it's the humane thing to do and it's the conscientious thing to do. A non-binary official working for the Biden administration has been charged with stealing a woman's luggage at an airport, according to Fox News. Sam Brinton, who began working as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Spent Fuel and Waste Disposition in the Office of Nuclear Energy in the Department of Energy back in June, was charged with felony theft last month after a federal. allegedly stealing a woman's luggage at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. That's according to Alpha News. Fox News reports that Britain allegedly took a Vera Bradley's suitcase

worth $2,325 from the luggage carousel at the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport on September 16th. That's according to a criminal complaint filed on October 26th in Minnesota State Court and obtained by Fox News Digital. Exchange Monitor.com noted that under Minnesota law, the crime with which Britain was charged carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison, a $10,000 fine, or both. A hearing for the case is scheduled for December 19th. Congressman Kevin McCarthy says there is a possibility of Democrats picking the next House Speaker if the GOP plays games on the floor. McCarthy, who is the current House Minority Leader and was chosen as the party's speaker

nomination about two weeks ago made the comments on Monday. Let's take a listen to McCarthy's interview talking about the speakership position on Newsmax. We got five more weeks. We're working through our conference rules today. We want to make sure that everybody has input, but we have to speak as one voice. We will only be successful if we work together or we'll lose individually. This is very fragile that we are the only stopgap for this Biden administration. And if we don't do this right, the Democrats can take the majority. If we play games on the floor, the Democrats can end up picking who the speaker is. So I think at the end of the day, calmer heads were prevailed.

We'll work together to find the best path forward. And I believe at the end of the day, since I've been leader, all we've done is being able to gain seats. We have not lost seats. We've won seats each and every time where the rest of Republicans have lost. So I think at the end of the day, we'll find the right path and we'll make the American public proud of what we're able to accomplish and turn this economy back around, because we're going to focus on the people, not on politics.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is speaking out about Apple potentially banning Twitter from the App Store. Must tweeted on Monday that Apple has also threatened to withhold Twitter from its app store, but won't tell us why. DeSantis made the comments during a press conference earlier today. Let's take a listen via Forbes breaking news. And then as you've seen that go on in China, you know, there's reports that Apple is not allowed. the protesters to use this airdrop function where they're trying to communicate. That obviously is providing aid and comfort to the CCP. And so you see that report and that's very concerning.

And then when you also hear reports that Apple is threatening to remove Twitter from the App Store because Elon Musk is actually opening it up for free speech and is restoring a lot of accounts that were unfairly and illegitimately suspended for putting out accurate information about COVID. That's like one of the main things that's being reinstated. So many things these experts were wrong at, and you had people on Twitter that were calling that out, and Twitter, the old regime in Twitter,

their response was to try to just suffocate the dissent. And Elon Musk knows that's not a winning formula, and so he's providing free speech. And so if Apple received, to that by nuking them from the App Store, you know, I think that that would be a huge, huge mistake, and it would be a really raw exercise of monopolistic power that I think would merit a response from the United States Congress.

And so don't be a vassal of the CCP on one hand and then use your corporate power in the United States on the other to suffocate Americans and try to suppress their right to express their right to express themselves. And that'll do it for today's episode. Thank you for listening to The Daily Signal's Top News. If you haven't had the chance already, be sure to check out our morning show right here in your podcast feed where we interview lawmakers, experts, and leading conservative voices. Join us tomorrow morning for the Daily Signal interview edition. I'll be sitting down with Missouri State Treasurer Scott Fitzpatrick to discuss his new role as the state's

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