The Daily Signal - TOP NEWS | North Carolina Governor Declares State of Emergency, Debt Ceiling Debate Continues, TikTok Sues Montana, DeSantis Inches Closer to White House Bid | May 23

Episode Date: May 23, 2023

On today’s Daily Signal Top News, we break down: Our colleague Tony Kinnett is reporting that North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, who is a Democrat, declared a state of emergency Monday because the state Legislature is expected to override his veto of a school choice bill. Tony’s article: https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/05/22/nc-governor-declares-emergency-over-school-choice-bill/ The FBI has reportedly failed to provide a document subpoenaed by the House Oversight and Accountability committee.  Debt ceiling negotiations continue as the clock ticks closer to a potential default The Chinese-owned app TikTok has filed a lawsuit on Monday against Montana following the state’s ban of the app last week.  The driver of a U-Haul truck who slammed into security barriers near the White House on Monday evening is facing charges.  Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, says that the next president might have the opportunity to appoint two Supreme Court Justices.  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

I'm Samantha Sherris. I'm Virginia Allen. And this is the Daily Signal Top News for Tuesday, May 23rd. Here are today's headlines. Our colleague Tony Kinnett is reporting that North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, who is a Democrat, declared a state of emergency on Monday because the state legislature is expected to override his veto of a school choice bill. Cooper said during an address in the state capital of Raleigh, I'm declaring the state of emergency because you need to know what's happening. If you care about public schools in North Carolina, it's time to take immediate action and tell them to stop the damage that will set back our schools for a generation. By them, Cooper apparently was referring to Republican lawmakers and other supporters of school choice for parents. Cooper then ascribed this generation-sized damage to providing education opportunities to parents, which would allow them to choose where to send their child by sending state education funds to a school of their children. The Democratic governor described this as a scheme, saying their private school voucher scheme will pour your tax money into private schools that are unaccountable to the public and can decide which students they want to keep out. They want to expand private school vouchers so that anyone, even a millionaire, can get taxpayer money for their child's private academy tuition.

North Carolina's Senate bill 406 named the Choose Your School Choose Your Future Bill would eliminate income requirements for any student to apply for a scholarship, covering up to 45% of tuition at a school of his choice. The governor also claimed that when students leave public schools or private schools, the public schools lose hundreds of millions of dollars. No evidence supports this claim. In 2021, North Carolina spent almost $11,000 a year per student. We'll include a link to Tony's full story in today's show notes. The FBI has reportedly failed to provide a document subpoenaed by the House Oversight and Accountability Committee. The Washington Examiner reports that the document allegedly details a criminal scheme involving then-Vice President Joe Biden and an unnamed foreign national. House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer wrote a letter to FBI Director Christopher Ray on Friday.

He referenced a previous letter that he and Senator Chuck Grassley sent to Ray on May 3rd. Comer wrote as Senator Grassley and I described to you, the whistleblower discloses involve the possession by the FBI and Department of Justice of an FD-1023 form describing an alleged criminal scheme involving then-Vice President Biden and a foreign national relating to the exchange of money for policy to. decisions. Comer also wrote in the Friday letter, the FBI's delay in producing a single FD-1023 form is unacceptable. The committee has already offered a reasonable accommodation to address the FBI's stated confidentiality concerns, but the FBI to date has refused to meaningfully engage

in decisions about how the committee can obtain the information that it needs. Congress is working against the clock as the deadline for potential default on the national debt approaches. President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy resumed talks on Monday, but no deal has been reached yet. Joining us in studio now to discuss is Richard Stern, director of the Grover M. Herman Center for the Federal Budget here at the Heritage Foundation. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me on today. So as of this recording, where do the debt ceiling negotiations stand? It's anybody's guess at this moment.

So obviously both Biden McCarthy have said they've had productive conversations. It's the both their incentive to say they've had productive conversations. But I think the thing that's really telling is that Biden is no plan. The Democrats have laid it out. They've made it abundantly clear that they have no plan. They have no idea what they're doing. They didn't think that conservatives, frankly, we're going to have the resolve that we've had. And so they thought they were going to run the table, do what they always do, which is steal more of your money,

bloat the government and write a check with your name at the bottom. And finally for once, Conservatives said, no, we won't let you keep stealing for the American public. We are going to demand a government that respects us, respects the hard-earned dollars of American families. And so it's anybody's guess what happens at this point. It's been really interesting to watch all of these meetings that have been happening. I believe yesterday it was just the Speaker and the President. I don't think the other congressional leaders were also at the meeting. With that in mind, what are Republicans pushing for?

What are Democrats pushing for? But I think the important part of that is those other congressional leaders were there in spirit in the sense that, you know, there's a group of conservatives in the House that have been pushing McCarthy to hold the line to do the right thing and their work that we've seen this Congress so far that's gotten sweeping reforms of the inside baseball of how Congress works, but in a way that makes it more account with the American public. They're in that room in spirit, right? And I think that's a lot of the winds we've seen. Now, to your question on that, I think what conservatives are pushing for, Republicans are pushing for, is a smaller government, a government that doesn't continue to add to the inflation, interest rate crisis, a government that was respectful of our God-given rights and freedoms, what the left is pushing for is more of the same. It's more favors for their friends. It's more regulation. It's more theft of your hard-earned dollars to fund corporations that donate to them.

And that is, frankly, why I think they're losing ground. It's now laid bare for the American public to see how self-serving, how corrupt what the left is pushing for, and the Republicans are pushing for, what conservatives are pushing for, is to save our economy. To get back to an economy, that works for everyone. We've been hearing this June 1st X date for a while now. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen sent another letter yesterday about, you know, this potential default essentially on June 1st. What happens if a deal isn't made by then?

So this is one of those kind of squirrely things that Yellen's putting out, right? So, you know, that X date of June 1st isn't a real date. In fact, everyone actually knows it isn't. So, typically speaking, the X state is when the government runs out of money. It's when we only have tax revenue, when we would have to hit the brakes, cut spending, because the government can't go into debt. Treasury is going to have money on hand. What Yellen is saying is, the amount of money is going to be so low that she's not comfortable

of that amount of money. Now, you ask most American households, they're living paycheck to paycheck. They're not comfortable either. So why does Yellen get to steal more of their money just to have cash sitting around so she's comfortable with the cash flow. So everyone knows that X-State isn't really the date that the government would need to to borrow money or we'd need to have a deal that increases the debt ceiling. So this is really just more of their fearmongery. This is more of their political posturing to force Congress, the force the American people, just giving them another blank check without real concessions, without anything that's real, that would save the economy. I mean, the inflation interest rate crisis we're having is a direct 100% result of government spending,

the size of the government deficit and the policies of this administration, we absolutely shouldn't give them that blank check. Richard Stern, thank you so much for joining us today. We would love to have you back on as this debt ceiling debate continues here in Washington. Thanks so much for joining us. Thanks again for highlighting the issue. The Chinese-owned app TikTok filed a lawsuit on Monday against Montana. The lawsuit challenges Montana's new law aiming to block TikTok across the state. The lawsuit seeks to prevent the the state of Montana from unlawfully banning TikTok. The lawsuit argues that Montana's ban abridges

freedom of speech in violation of the First Amendment, violates the U.S. Constitution in multiple other respects, and is preempted by federal law. CNBC reports that Montana's ban, which takes effect on January 1st of 2024, prevents Apple and Google App Stores from legally offering TikTok to users in Montana. Republican Governor Greg Gianforte said on May 17th that the Chinese Communist Party using TikTok to spy on Americans violate their privacy and collect their personal, private, and sensitive information is well documented. Today, Montana takes the most decisive action of any state to protect Montana's private

data and sensitive personal information from being harvested by the Chinese Communist Party. According to the governor's office, the Montana Department of the state, the Montana Department of justice will enforce penalties. The driver of a U-Haul truck who slammed into security barriers near the White House on Monday night is facing charges. The 19-year-old driver has been identified as Cy Varsleeth Kandula of Chesterfield, Missouri. According to the United States Park Police, Kandula has been charged with assault with a dangerous weapon, reckless operation of a motor vehicle, threatening to kill, kidnap, inflict harm on a president, vice president or family member, destruction of federal property, and trespassing.

Anthony Gugley-Emily, the chief of communications for the U.S. Secret Service, said in a statement on Monday night that shortly before 10 p.m. Monday, Secret Service uniform division officers detained the driver of a box truck after the vehicle collided with security barriers on the north side of Lafayette Square at 16th Street. The statement continued, there were no injuries to any Secret Service or White House personnel, and the call. cause and manner of the crash remain under investigation. Road closures are in effect and pedestrian walkways are closed as we investigate. We will keep you updated as this story develops. And finally today, Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis says that the next president might have the opportunity

to appoint two Supreme Court justices. DeSantis made the remarks on Monday while speaking at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention in Orlando, Florida. Let's take a listen to the governor's remarks via the Epic Times YouTube channel. The U.S. Supreme Court with some of the recent appointments is in a much better spot than it's been in a long time. But I think if you look over, you know, the next two presidential terms, there is a good chance that you could be called upon to seek replacements for Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito. And the issue of that is you can't really do better than those two. They are the gold standard for jurisprudence. And so you've got to make sure that we're appointing people who are going to be as close to that standard as possible.

If you replace a Clarence Thomas with somebody like a Roberts or somebody like that, then you're going to actually see the court move to the left, and you can't do that. I also think if you, if you look over those eight years, you very well could be called upon to replace Chief Justice John Roberts and perhaps even someone like Justice Sotomayor. So it is possible that in those eight years, we'd have the opportunity to fortify justices Scalia and Alito and Thomas, as well as actually make improvements with those others. And if you were able to do that, you would have a 7-2 conservative majority on the Supreme Court that would last a quarter century. In other DeSantis-related news, Fox News reports that more than 100 former Trump administration, officials are backing DeSantis for president. The group known as the eight-year alliance includes former acting associate attorney general Jesse Pinucchio, former special assistant to the Secretary of Defense, Will Bushman, and former counselor to the secretary and White House House liaison of the

Department of Labor, Pedro Allende, among others. Fox reports that it hasn't yet been provided the full list of signatories. It is also being reported that DeSantis will, announce his presidential campaign on Wednesday evening during a conversation with Elon Musk. And that's going to do it for today's episode. Thank you for listening to The Daily Signal's top news. If you haven't had a chance, be sure to check out our morning show right here in this podcast feed where we bring you interviews with lawmakers, experts, and leading conservative voices. Tomorrow morning, our colleague Tyler O'Neill is sitting down with Dave Rubin, who is the former mayor of Shiloh. Also, make sure you subscribe to The Daily Signal wherever you get your podcast and help us reach even more listeners by leaving a five-star rating and review.

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