The Daily Signal - TOP NEWS | SCOTUS New Term, Ukraine Gains Territory Against Russia, Death Toll Rises After Hurricane Ian | Oct. 3

Episode Date: October 3, 2022

On today’s Daily Signal Top News, we break down: The Supreme Court justices begin their new term.  Ukraine forces gain new ground against Russia.  Two high school girls in Vermont ask a biological male to leave their locker room. Now, the girls are a part of a harassment investigation. The death toll from hurricane Ian has risen to 88 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm Virginia Allen. And I'm John Pop. And this is the Daily Signal's top news for Monday, October 3rd. Here are today's headlines. The Supreme Court justices begin their new term on Monday, and several big cases lay before the nine justices, which includes the new justice, Katanji Brown-Jackson. The justices will be weighing in on affirmative action,

election law, and voting rights among a number of other big issues. So joining us now to talk about what we can expect is Senior Legal Fellow at the Heritage Foundation and co-host of SCOTUS 101, John Carlo Canaparo. John Carlo, thanks for being here. Thanks for having me, Virginia. So give us just a quick rundown of what these big cases are that the Supreme Court justices are going to be looking at and weighing in on in this next term. Right. So probably one of the highest profile ones is the Harvard and UNC Affirmative Action cases.

Now, as anyone who studies racial preferences will tell you, affirmative action is a bit of a misnomer. when it was first created, that phrase just meant you can't discriminate on the basis of race. Now the left has sort of reinterpreted that phrase to mean you can and should discriminate on the basis of race to give certain minority groups preferential treatment. And what Harvard and UNC have done in their admissions policies is affirmatively discriminate against white people and to a greater extent Asian students as well because the schools feel like they are overrepresented as a proportion of the student body. And so they have, in the case of Asian students, systematically marked them down on personality scores as lacking character, lacking leadership skills, in order to decrease the number of them that get in so that they can give more spots to black and Hispanic students. That's racial discrimination. But the Supreme Court in the past has said that you may consider race as part of a holistic process. But you may not use quotas.

Well, it doesn't look like Harvard is using a holistic process. But also the whole argument behind this holistic process, that diversity is a good, et cetera, doesn't actually really seem to hold up. These policies actually seem to hurt the very people they're meant to help. They don't seem to be creating diversity in any significant kind of way, racial or otherwise. So the Supreme Court's going to take a look at those and those will be a very hot issue. Yeah. And people have been talking about this for a very long time. Correct.

Any, I know it's always hard to make those predictions, but any predictions on what we might see from the justices regarding that case? Well, some justices have been very outspoken in the past about where they fall in this. So Justice Clarence Thomas, for instance, has called racial discrimination in any form divisive and contrary to the 14th Amendment, which guarantees equality. The Chief Justice has said very famously the best way to stop discrimination on the basis of racist to stop discriminatory. to stop discriminating on the basis of race. And the idea, and what he's getting at there is the idea that you can have what's called positive or beneficial discrimination is not positive or beneficial. There's no principle there. It's just a matter of whose ox gets scored today. And so I think my strong sense is that there's a majority there for that proposition. Any other cases that we need to

have our eye on? Yes. So today, in fact, the Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments in a case called Sackett versus the Environmental Protection Agency. If this sounds familiar, it's because this case has been to the Supreme Court before. The case has been going on for about a decade now. And the Sackets are a husband and wife who bought a piece of property. And the government said you can't build anything on your property because it is a navigable waterway within the meaning of the Clean Water Act. Well, the Sackets looked around at their property, which is completely dry, and said, there is no way.

This is a navigable waterway. But the federal government came back and said, well, your property is next to a road. And across that road is a drainage ditch. And that drainage ditch connects to a swamp down the road. And that swamp has a creek which is attached to it. And that creek drains into a lake nearby. So your property has a significant nexus, was the Supreme Court's test, to a navigable waterway so you can't build anything. And they said, you've got to be kidding me.

And so they've been fighting for a decade. The first time, they just had to fight even for the right to get into courts. The government said, no, no, you have to go through us and only us, the administration first. So anyway, what this all stems out of a case where the Supreme Court said, what constitutes a navigable waterway is whether your land has a significant nexus to such a waterway. And the federal government has taken that significant nexus test and just run with it to the most outrageous sort of factual scenarios. So fingers crossed, I don't think the Supreme Court would take. take this case if they weren't going to redo the significant nexus test and say, look, we need to be

grounded in reality a little bit here. So chances are, fingers crossed, for some sane government regulations in the sackets getting to build their house. Yeah, they've waited a long time. Yeah, no kidding. Wow. Now, I do have to ask you while we have you here, do we have any updates on the SCOTUS leaker investigation, the individual that leaked the draft of the Dobbs v. Jackson case? No, we have none. And in fact, none of the associate justices do either. A number of them have been asked about that in public appearances recently. And they have said that they are waiting for the chief justice and the marshal who's leading the investigation to give them some kind of update. But it's bizarre to me that eight of the justices don't know any more about this leak investigation than you or I do. The chief justice might know, I assume, I hope he's in contact with the marshal leading the investigation. but no updates. So Justice Gorsuch recently said that he was hoping for a update soon from the Chief Justice. Whether he got that, whether the other justices got that is unknown.

John Carlo, thank you so much for your time. I know we have only scratched the service this afternoon, so we're excited to have you back on later. But thank you again for your time. Absolutely. Ukraine forces are reported to have gained new ground against Russia over the weekend and into Monday. Russian troops have withdrawn from the key city of Lyman. The withdrawal happened just hours after Vladimir Putin claimed to have successfully annexed the region.

On Monday, Ukrainian forces pushed Russian troops back into an eastern and southeastern region of Ukraine that Putin also claimed to have annexed. On Sunday, Pope Francis gave public remarks in the Vatican City and urged Putin to end the violence, per Bloomberg quicktakes. The Pope says here that his appeal is addressed, first of all, to the President of the Russian Federation. for love of his people, begging him to stop this spiral of violence and death. The Pope also appealed to Ukraine President Volodymyr Salinsky, asking him to be open to serious peace proposals. Two high school girls in Vermont ask a biological male to leave their school locker room.

Now, the girls are a part of a harassment investigation, as the Daily Signals Mary Margaret Ola Hahn reported. Randolph Union High School is an hour south of Burma. Burlington, Vermont. The school says it is launching a harassment investigation following the locker room incident. The Daily Signal spoke with a number of parents at the school and all say that they don't want biological men to be allowed to enter the girls' locker room. This is what one mother had to say. We allowed a child who is biologically the opposite sex, male, to go in a locker room where biological girls were getting fully changed. The biological male child was not changing and sat in the back and watched girls getting changed. That made girls feel uncomfortable,

may girls feel violated and not protected. When parents and kids went to the school principals, they were told it was a law, nothing they could do about it. The law gives them room to protect all, and they did not. This situation is, ongoing. So we will certainly keep you posted on developments of this story. The death toll from Hurricane Ian has risen to 88. 54 of the deaths occurred in Florida's southwestern Lee County, which includes Fort Myers. Almost 600,000 homes and businesses in Florida are still without power. A lot of residents still need clean water.

There are about 100 boil water advisories in places around Florida right now. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said the flooding poses more challenges in some ways. than the high winds did. Rescue crews are continuing to search for survivors in the hardest hit areas. And that'll do it for today's episode. Thanks so much 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 where we interview lawmakers, experts, and leading conservative voices. Join us tomorrow morning for the Daily Signal interview edition. I will be sitting down with Ken Williams and Elizabeth Wawning of the Change Movement

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