The Daily Signal - TOP NEWS | TikTok to Testify, Gas May Hit $4, Tyre Nichols Horrific Death | Jan. 30

Starting point is 00:00:01 I'm Virginia Allen. I'm Samantha Sherris. And this is the Daily Signal Top News for Monday, January 30th. Here are today's headlines. A total of six Memphis police officers have now been taken off duty following the death of Tyre Nichols. Five of those officers have been fired from the Memphis Police Department and charged with second-degree murder. Today, the Memphis Police Department has confirmed that a sixth officer was pulled from his post. The officer's name is Preston Hemphill. The body camera footage labeled Video 1 that was released on Friday came from Hemphill's body camera. But Hemphill was only present at the first site where police originally stopped Nichols. He was not present at the second location where Nichols fled on foot and where the situation escalated even further.

Starting point is 00:01:04 Officer Hemphill has not been fired but has been placed on administrative leave. After Memphis police beat Nichols severely and pepper sprayed him multiple times on January 7th, he was taken to the hospital. Nichols died from his injuries three days later. He was only 29 years old. In response to the horrific incident, some lawmakers are calling on Congress to pass police reform. But Republican Ohio Representative Jim Jordan said on NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday that he's not sure anything can be done to state. the kind of evil that we saw in that video. So I don't know that any law, any training, any reform is going to change, you know, this man was handcuffed, they continued to beat him.

Starting point is 00:01:52 Jordan added, while there are things lawmakers can do to try and prevent another incident like this one, it's unlikely a new law will solve the problem. Democrats are continuing to say they won't negotiate over the debt ceiling, but Republicans say they won't agree with. they won't agree to raise the debt ceiling unless Democrats agree to cut spending. Right now, both sides appear to have their heels dug in. America's current debt ceiling is $31.4 trillion. We reached that ceiling earlier this month. The Treasury Department says lawmakers have until June 5th to reach an agreement and raise the debt ceiling or risk default. So far, negotiations don't

Starting point is 00:02:36 appear to be going anywhere. President Biden said he won't negotiate on the debt ceiling, and last week, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer echoed the sentiment during a press conference. We have a plan past the debt ceiling without hostage taking, without any brinksmanship. Democrats may be refusing to negotiate with Republicans because, as NBC reported, Biden is remembering back to a stressful situation over the debt ceiling in 20. Back in 2011, when Barack Obama was president and Joe Biden was vice president, Republicans used the debt ceiling as a negotiation tool to cut federal spending. A former Obama official involved in the fiscal discussions told NBC News that Biden and

Starting point is 00:03:23 Obama agreed after the fact that nobody can use the threat of default or not increasing the debt limit as a negotiating tool. Because both sides are so dug in, it will likely be a while before an agreement. on the debt ceiling is reached. The CEO of the popular video app, TikTok, will testify before Congress on March 23rd, as lawmakers consider a national ban on the app. This will be the first time TikTok CEO Show Chu will testify before Congress. Here with us to explain more is the Heritage Foundation's Research Associate in the Tech Policy Center,

Starting point is 00:04:01 Jake Denton. So, Jake, can you explain what the goal is of, TikTok testifying. Why do lawmakers want to hear from TikTok? Well, it's been a crazy couple of years, and there remains a lot of very kind of serious unanswered questions in terms of what TikTok has been doing as a platform. Forbes has reported on several occurrences now that, you know, they've been collecting all sorts of data, unbeknownst to the user, and that it's been being accessed from the Beijing side of the business, which isn't supposed to be happening. And, you know, while lawmakers

Starting point is 00:04:33 have all these kind of reports, there's no better way to get answers than to have the CEO come before Congress, testify under oath, and actually get to the bottom of what's been going on. So I'm sure we would all love to be a fly on the wall at TikTok HQ right now and see how they're preparing. Any guesses on, you know, what is happening inside TikTok and what that preparation to come to Washington, D.C., and testify before Congress entails? Well, they're one of the most active lobbying operations in all of D.C. You know, I believe they spent upwards of $5.5 million in the last year lobbying different members of Congress. and trying to avoid this essentially U.S. sale versus complete federal ban kind of dynamic, right? We have to pick a path at this point.

Starting point is 00:05:17 And I think, you know, they started out in 2020, saying under no circumstance, would they ever sell to a U.S. company? They would rather shut the thing down. And now you're seeing them come out in their press consultants and all these people are saying, you know, a U.S. sale wouldn't be that bad. And maybe is the preferred outcome. And so I think, you know, they're doing a lot of war gaming, right? They're trying to determine, you know, their best path forward what this hearing could potentially amount to. And really, their way to survive, right? I mean, a lot of these people came over from very prominent organizations.

Starting point is 00:05:48 They have had run-ins with Congress previously. And it's pretty much all hands on deck from my understanding. So how will they survive? What is the likely outcome from these hearings? Well, it all comes down to whether or not lawmakers accept a U.S. sale as an acceptable outcome. You know, we've been put on this collision course to determine, you know, what TikTok's future is going to be. But I think we've all kind of agreed that it can't go on in its current state, right? We can't allow for the Chinese side of the business to still host the data, to still have access.

Starting point is 00:06:19 You know, we've seen a lot of the state legislatures make moves to try and ban this from state devices. But it really highlights that the consumer is still at risk. And even much of the state legislature, if it's still on your personal device, they know that it, you know, between their usage, rates of the work device and the personal device, they can kind of pair them. The geolocation data allows them to know if two devices are related to each other. So state legislatures are still at risk. And at what point are we okay with that, right? I mean, we have to decide as a country when we're going to step in and make sure our national security is put first. Yeah. The Heritage Foundation's Jake Denton. Jake, thanks for your time. Absolutely. Thanks for having me. Pro-abortion protests

Starting point is 00:07:00 continued this weekend. A group of about 10 protesters marched outside the home of Justice Amy Coney-Barritt on Sunday. This is now the ninth month of on and off protests outside Barrett's home in Northern Virginia. The Daily Signal's Mary Margaret O'Lahan was on the scene. Here's what the protesters sounded like. Protesters also shouted, cut her time short and my body my choice. My body belongs to me. Police were present along with two U.S. Marshal but no arrests were made despite a federal law prohibiting protests outside the home of a sitting judge or justice with the intent of intimidating them. You may have noticed that gas prices are rising, and unfortunately, reports indicate that they're going to continue to rise. The AAA reported today that the average gas price in America is $3.50.

Starting point is 00:08:00 That's up about $8 from last week and $33 from a month ago. News Nation spoke with GasBuddy lead petroleum analyst Patrick Deann about the rise in gas prices, and he said the winter weather was one of the reasons for the price spike. Thanks to the Arctic blasts that hit much of the country all the way down into Texas, the extremely cold weather caused equipment failures at refineries. So as a result, gasoline production was disrupted. But GasBuddy projects that gas will likely rise to $4 a gallon in the coming months. And that's going to do it for today's episode. Thanks so much for joining us on the Daily Signal's top news.

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The Daily Signal - TOP NEWS | TikTok to Testify, Gas May Hit $4, Tyre Nichols Horrific Death | Jan. 30

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