The Daily Signal - Trump Documents Case Begins Hearings, New York DA Drops Charges Against Columbia University Protesters, Supreme Court Weighs in on the Second Amendment | June 21

Starting point is 00:00:01 I'm Brian Gottstein, and this is the Daily Signal Top News for Friday, June 21st. Here are today's headlines. A court hearing on former President Donald Trump's handling of classified documents began on Friday. Trump faces 37 felony counts related to his alleged mishandling of classified documents after leaving the White House. He's pled not guilty. The former president's lawyers argued that the Justice Department prosecutor, Jack Smith was illegally appointed and that the case should be dismissed. According to the Associated Press, one of Trump's attorney said on Friday that the Department

Starting point is 00:00:51 of Justice could effectively create a shadow government by appointing its own special counsels. According to NBC News, Trump's lawyers filed a motion saying that the Constitution does not permit the Attorney General to appoint without Senate confirmation a private citizen and like-minded political ally to wield the prosecutorial power of the United States. As such, Jack Smith lacks the authority to prosecute this action. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg dismissed trespassing charges against 30 Columbia University anti-Israel protesters who were arrested in late April. A large group of protesters broke into Columbia's Hamilton Hall. They damaged property and fought with a janitor who was in the building at the time. They were eventually

Starting point is 00:01:42 arrested by the NYPD. According to the Washington Free Beacon, the students and their supporters walked into the New York courtroom wearing face masks and traditional scarves typically worn by Arabs and Palestinians. A prosecutor from Bragg's office said that the students shouldn't face criminal penalties because they didn't have prior criminal records. They should instead be subject to internal penalties from the university. The prosecutor also argued that there wasn't enough evidence to link them to crimes since the protesters wore masks. After the charges were dismissed, the defendants and their supporters held a news conference outside the courthouse. According to the free beacon, one speaker who was in a mask said, resist the pigs, the police in the U.S.

Starting point is 00:02:30 Bragg was the Manhattan District Attorney who brought charges against former President Donald Trump over alleged campaign finance violations, which led to Trump's conviction on 34 counts. The Supreme Court upheld a federal law banning the possession of a gun by those under domestic violence restraining orders on Friday morning. In its U.S. v. Rahimi ruling, the court rejected Zachie Rahimi's claim that the law that prohibits the possession of firearms by person subject to restraining orders violates the Second Amendment. The court issued an 8-1 ruling allowing the law to stand with Justice Clarence Thomas as the only dissenting vote. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority.

Starting point is 00:03:17 Since the founding, the nation's firearms laws have included regulations to stop individuals who threaten physical harm to others from misusing firearms. He said, as applied to the facts of this situation, the federal law fits within that tradition. But in his dissent, Thomas wrote that the decision threatens American Second Amendment liberties. Thomas said that the case doesn't concern the issue of whether someone like Rahimi can be disarmed, but if the government has the right to disarm any person who is only subject to a protective order, whether or not that person has been convicted of a crime. Thomas wrote,

Starting point is 00:03:56 The framers in ratifying public understood that the right to keep and bear arms was essential to the preservation of liberty. Yet in the interest of ensuring the government can regulate one subset of a society, today's decision puts at risk the Second Amendment rights of many more. This is the Supreme Court's second gun-related case this term. Last week, the court decided that the federal government cannot use a decades-old ban on machine guns to ban so-called bump stocks. According to the Department of Defense's Office of the Inspector General, the Pentagon has no idea how much money it's sent to the Chinese institutions

Starting point is 00:04:36 that conduct research on viruses with pandemic. According to the Daily Caller News Foundation, the report found that the DOD has supplied Chinese entities with taxpayer money to study pathogens both directly and indirectly through subgrants. However, the total dollar amount is unknown due to what the report called limitations in the Defense Department's tracking system. U.S. funded pathogen research has come under scrutiny since it was revealed that federal agencies were funding so-called gain of functioning. research in Chinese labs that are studying coronaviruses. Michael Chamberlain, director of Protect the Public's Trust, said in an interview with the daily caller, incompetence, absurdity, insanity, it's hard to find a word that adequately describes this. Of all the things that DOD tracks, funds for dangerous research that could find their

Starting point is 00:05:31 way to a hostile regime should be at the top of the list of those that they keep close tabs on. According to recently released data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, job growth in the United States has been about 80% less than what has generally been reported. The Bureau of Labor Statistics found that job growth in the final quarter of 2023 was 1.6%. However, the Fed of Philadelphia took that data and compared it to a more comprehensive set of labor market information. It found that job growth actually grew at all. only a 0.3% annualized rate, a very weak number. The discrepancy in the numbers represents about half a million jobs, according to the Heritage Foundation's economics expert E.J.

Starting point is 00:06:21 and Tony. He wrote that according to the Philadelphia Fed report, the extra 500,000 jobs never even existed. And that'll do it for today's episode. Thanks for listening to the Daily Signal's top news. If you haven't gotten a chance, be sure to check out our our morning show right here in this podcast feed where we interview lawmakers, experts, and leading conservative voices. Join us Monday morning for the Daily Signal interview edition. Also, make sure you subscribe to the Daily Signal wherever you get your podcasts and help us to reach more listeners by leaving a five-star rating and review. We read all of your feedback. Thanks again for listening. Have a great night and we'll be back with you all Monday morning.

Starting point is 00:07:04 The Daily Signal podcast is made possible because of listeners like you. Executive producers are Rob Blewey and Kate Trinko. Hosts are Virginia Allen, Brian Gottstein, Mary Margaret O'Lehann, and Tyler O'Neill. Sound design by Lauren Evans, Mark Geinney, and John Pop. To learn more or support our work, please visitdailySignal.com.

The Daily Signal - Trump Documents Case Begins Hearings, New York DA Drops Charges Against Columbia University Protesters, Supreme Court Weighs in on the Second Amendment | June 21

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