UNBIASED - Appeals Court Lifts Trump's Gag Order, TikTokers Show Support for Bin Laden's Message, CBP October Border Encounters, Rep. Santos Not Seeking Re-Election After Ethics Report.

Episode Date: November 17, 2023

1. Continuing Resolution to Keep Government Open Passes Congress; Here's Where the Appropriations Bills Stand (2:41)2. NY Appeals Court Temporarily Lifts Trump's Gag Order in Civil Fraud Trial (4:32)3. President Biden and Xi Meet; Major U.S. CEOs Attend Gala in Honor of Xi (7:43)4. CBP Releases October Border Encounter Statistics (12:30)5. Rep. George Santos Announces He Won't Run for Re-Election Following Release of Ethics Report; Here's What the Ethics Report Says (17:44)6. TikTok Users Voice Support for Osama Bin Laden's 2002 'A Letter to America' (26:21)7. NEW SEGMENT: Not Everything Is Bad (32:48)If you enjoyed this episode, please leave me a review and share it with those you know that also appreciate unbiased news!Subscribe to Jordan's weekly free newsletter featuring hot topics in the news, trending lawsuits, and more.Follow Jordan on Instagram and TikTok.All sources for this episode can be found here.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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You are listening to the Jordan Is My Lawyer podcast, your favorite source of unbiased news and legal analysis. Enjoy the show. Welcome back to the Jordan is my lawyer podcast. Happy Friday. We have a lot going on today, a lot of ground to cover. So let's just jump right into it. The first story I want to talk to you guys about is the bill that passed both the House and the Senate that'll avoid a government shutdown. The second story is about Donald Trump's gag order that was temporarily lifted from an appellate court. The third story will recap President Biden and President Xi's meeting,

as well as a dinner that was hosted for President Xi that was attended by many, many big CEOs in the United States. The fourth story will be an update on border numbers. So Border Patrol just released the October numbers. So I want to fill you in on that. The fifth story will be about this ethics report that came out about Representative George Santos, which triggered him to change his mind on running for re-election in 2024. And for the sixth and final story, I want to talk about this current thing that's happening on TikTok, where users are seemingly voicing support for Osama bin Laden and the message that he had for America about a year after the 9-11 attack. So I want to walk through that so

we have the background on that as well. And then I'm also introducing a segment for Friday called Not Everything is Bad. And it's exactly what it sounds like. Not everything is bad in the world. So I want to talk to you guys about a few good stories that have happened this week that will leave you feeling a little bit lighter going into the weekend. Don't forget tomorrow is Saturday, which means my weekly newsletter will be going out. It's a free newsletter, an extra source of news for you. If you're interested in subscribing, go ahead and go to jordanismylawyer.com slash subscribe, enter your email address, and you will receive the newsletter when it goes out,

so long as you are subscribed before it goes out. As always, please don't forget to leave my show a review if you haven't already and you love what you hear. If you have, thank you so much. And as my legal disclaimer, yes, I am a lawyer. No, I am not your lawyer. So without further ado, let's get into today's stories. First and foremost, we obviously need to mention the fact that the government will not be shutting down on Friday at midnight. Last episode, I filled you in on Speaker Johnson's two-part plan, which essentially kept certain agencies funded through January 19th and the rest of the government funded through February 2nd. It does not provide for any spending cuts. It does not

provide aid for Ukraine or Israel. It simply just keeps the government funded at the current level. So it's what's called a clean continuing resolution. It passed the House on Tuesday in a bipartisan 336 to 95 vote. More specifically, when you break down the numbers of who voted in favor of this bill, it was 209 Democrats and 127 Republicans. It went to the Senate from there, where it passed in a 87 to 11 vote on Wednesday, with again, more Democrats than Republicans voting in its favor. So now it'll head to the president's desk where it will get his signature. He already confirmed that. And Congress will just have to work over the next few months to get these appropriations bills passed for fiscal year 2024.

And just to give you an update on where those stand, 12 appropriations bills are needed. The House has passed seven. The Senate has passed three, but none of them have been passed by both chambers. So how this works is the House Appropriations Committee and the Senate Appropriations Committee come up with their own 12 appropriations bills. Then they will get together, they'll negotiate, find a middle ground for each appropriations bill, and that's what will go to the president for signature. So the House still has five more to go, the Senate still has nine more to go, and from there, once those are wrapped up by each individual chamber, they'll get together and

negotiate each of their 12 to find that middle ground. So that is what's going on in Congress. Now let's move on to Trump's gag order. This was a last minute story because the story was breaking shortly before I hit record on this episode. So I just kind of want to give you a background, fill you in on what's going on, what the gag order was even about, and why the appellate court decided to temporarily lift it. Here is what happened. Previously, the judge that is overseeing Donald Trump's civil fraud case in New York, because remember this is different than the federal election interference case he has where there's also a gag order ordeal happening, but this is the New York civil case. The judge overseeing the New York civil case imposed a gag

order on Donald Trump, which prevented him from making comments about court staff. Before we get into the details of that, let's take this a step back. A gag order is basically an order from a judge that prohibits either a party in the lawsuit or a witness or even the attorneys in the case from doing something. Now, that can be a general gag order preventing these people from discussing the case to the public or something more specific like what happened in Donald Trump's case. Now, because gag orders quite literally prevent people from talking, they are scrutinized heavily, and there is a strong presumption against the constitutional validity of these gag orders. The reason that the judge issued a gag order against Trump in this case specifically is because Trump had posted to Truth Social about the judge's law clerk. The law clerk is basically the person who helps the judge with all of his cases. But anyway, when he posted it, the judge ordered not only that the post be deleted,

but issued a gag order preventing Trump from making any public statements about his staff. The post was deleted off of Truth Social in accordance with the order, but it wasn't deleted off of Donald Trump's website, which was donaldjtrump.com, until weeks later. The judge said this was a blatant violation of the gag order. He got fined, and the order was then extended to include Donald Trump's attorneys. So previously, the gag order only pertained to Donald Trump, but it was then extended to include Donald Trump's attorneys. So previously, the gag order only pertained to Donald Trump, but it was later extended to Donald Trump's attorneys to prevent them from talking about the court staff. Long story short, Donald Trump's attorneys asked a

New York appeals court for emergency relief, essentially asking them to lift the gag order, arguing that it is infringing on Donald Trump's right to free speech. And on Thursday, the appeals court did seem to agree and lifted the gag order, citing constitutional and statutory concerns. Now, what that means is that from here, Donald Trump and his attorneys are free to say what they want about court staff so long as this gag order doesn't get reinstated or, you know, something contrary to this appeals decision happens. Now, as I said, this story was just breaking as I was getting ready to hit record on this episode, so more may come out, but now at least you have some background information as to what a gag order is, why it was imposed in this case, and why it was

lifted. That takes us into our third story, which is this meeting that President Biden and President Xi had in San Francisco. It was on Wednesday, and it was only the second time in three years that these two had met, because as we know, relations between the United States and China are a bit rocky, but they did get together, and they talked about a wide variety of things from opening up the lines of military communication to Taiwan, to AI, to fentanyl, to trade and sanctions. And then after that meeting, President Xi actually headed to a dinner that was put on, you know, in his honor, he was the guest of honor, and tons of tech CEOs and really not even just tech, big CEOs showed up to this dinner. So you had Tim

Cook, Elon Musk, and the like attending this dinner. First, I want to talk about the meeting between President Biden and President Xi, though. The main takeaway from this meeting, or I guess the most notable component of the whole meeting, was the opening of military communication lines. Because if you didn't know, not only do the United States and China have a bit of a rocky relationship, but the United States and China haven't been communicating militarily. China is not exactly happy with our support of Taiwan here in the United States. And following Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan last year, China effectively stopped communicating with us on the military front. Then things got a little worse when that whole spy balloon incident happened. You may

remember it from a few months ago, Chinese military officials would not pick up the phone for incoming calls from the United States. So that was really like them agreeing that, you know, they're going to get back to open communication was really the most notable component of the whole meeting. However, President Biden did reiterate to President Xi that the United States does support Taiwan's sovereignty, which obviously China does not agree with. They also discussed AI and fentanyl. According to President Biden, the two of them agreed that the fentanyl production needs to be curbed substantially. They recognized the need to address the risks of AI and improve AI safety. They also discussed Israel and Gaza, as well as Ukraine and Russia a little bit.

President Biden reiterated support for both Israel and Ukraine, noting that the United States supports Israel's right to defend itself against terrorism, as well as the desire for Ukraine to come out of its war with Russia as democratic and independent. According to a White House readout of the meeting, President Biden emphasized that the United States and China are in competition. He said that the United States would continue to invest in the sources of American strength here at home and align with allies and partners around the world. And if you want to read more about their meeting, I do have the White House readout linked in the sources section. Right after the meeting, President Xi headed to this gala that was put on by the United States-China Business

Council and the National Committee on the United States-China Relations, where Apple CEO Tim Cook, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman were a few of the guests in attendance. Also there, and this is not an exhaustive list by any means, the CEO of Salesforce, Boeing, FedEx, ExxonMobil, Microsoft, Citigroup, Visa, Pfizer, MasterCard, BlackRock, tons of CEOs were in attendance at this gala in San Francisco. The Commerce Secretary for the United States stated during her speech that those who were in attendance were there because they are keenly interested in doing business with China and finding ways to advance the bilateral economic relationship.

President Xi spoke as the keynote speaker. He asked the crowd, are we adversaries or partners? And he said that was the number one question for China. He continued on by saying, if one sees the other as a primary competitor, the most consequential geopolitical challenge and a pacing threat, it will only lead to misinformed policymaking, misguided actions, and unwanted results. He also said he wants the partnership between the United States and China to be a win-win relationship. And while Xi was heading to the gala, President Biden was holding a solo news conference where he was basically recapping the meeting, and he called it, quote, the most productive and constructive discussions they've had. When he was asked if he still thought Xi was a dictator, Biden said, quote, look, he is. He's

a dictator in the sense that he's a guy who runs a country that is a communist country that's based on a form of government totally different than ours, end quote. When the Chinese foreign ministry heard this, they said they strongly opposed the remark, and they called the statement extremely wrong and irresponsible political manipulation. U.S. Customs and Border Protection released these stats for October on Tuesday, so every month we get the report for the month prior, and typically people are looking at a few numbers, right? There's encounters between ports of entry along the southwest border.

There's encounters at the southwest border generally. And then there's total encounters. This is inclusive of the southwest border, the northern border, air, sea, whatever it might be where people are coming into this country and being encountered. Then there's other numbers too, but those are typically the numbers that people are looking at just to kind of gauge the immigration trend. Are numbers going up? Are numbers going down? That kind of thing. Before we get into the numbers though, let me just quickly talk about what an encounter is so this makes sense because all of the numbers in the report are encounters,

but I don't think I've really ever gone into detail about what that's inclusive of, so let's go over that first. The Department of Homeland Security, they basically break border encounters down into two categories. So you have apprehensions and you have inadmissibles. Think of apprehensions as encounters where the people are detained and taken into custody. They can file for asylee status, but they are taken into custody by the United States. Whereas inadmissibles are people who are encountered that are ineligible to come in under Title VIII and they are turned away. So apprehensions, you're in custody. Inadmissibles, you're turned away, but both are encounters. So keep that in mind as we run through this. But also take into account that this number, the encounters, doesn't factor in those who

are able to get into the country without being encountered, right? They kind of fly under the radar. They get in. They're never encountered by officials. Nonetheless, these numbers still give us a pretty good idea and allow us to see the trend. So now let's talk about the numbers. Ports of entry at the southwest border. So this is going in through the ports of entry at the southwest

border only. October saw roughly 188,000 of this particular type of encounter, which is a decrease of about 14% from September. So the numbers are down. Now you have encounters at the southwest border generally. So this isn't just ports Now you have encounters at the southwest border generally. So this isn't just ports of entry. This is also between ports of entry. The number of these encounters for October is roughly 240,000, which is down 11% from September. Then you have total nationwide encounters. And again, this is not just the southwest border as the last two numbers we went over. This is the northern border. This is air. This is sea. This is anyone trying to get into the country. And for October, there were roughly 309,000 of these types of encounters. Now that's down from roughly 341,000

in September, and it almost matches the number in August, which was roughly 304,000. So July, August, and September, we saw the numbers going up. And now this month, October, we're seeing the numbers going slightly back down to August, the August level. Another number that also dropped is the number of Venezuelan encounters. This has been a topic of conversation because in September, towards the end of September, the Department of Homeland Security granted roughly 500,000 Venezuelans temporary protected status. What that essentially did is it protected those 500,000 Venezuelans from deportation and made it easier for them to get work visas. So the thought was that that move could incentivize other Venezuelans to come over

to the United States. But then about two weeks later, on October 5th, the Department of Homeland Security announced that the United States is actually starting to return Venezuelans to Venezuela. And on October 18th, the first removal flight to Venezuela left the United States and regular flights have been taking place since. So while we don't know for sure if that is what has led to this decrease in Venezuelan encounter numbers specifically, the acting CBP commissioner Troy Miller does seem to think it's playing a big role. And just to give you a number and kind of put this into perspective, Venezuelan encounters at the southern border dropped to about 29,000 in October, which is almost half of the record high of 54,000 that was set in September, just the month prior. The last two weeks specifically of October really saw

the biggest drop, but the number did significantly go down in the month of October. If you want to pull up the website and statistics, you can actually look at all of this data. You can look at far more than just border encounters. You can look at things like drug seizures, how many pounds of drugs have been seized month by month, broken down by drug. It is pretty interesting. I, of course, do have it linked for you. So if you are interested, go ahead and check that out there. Let's take a quick break. When we come back in 10 seconds, we'll talk about Representative George Santos, and we will talk about this Osama bin Laden letter on TikTok. Now on to Representative George Santos.

In a turn of events, Representative George Santos, he had just said two weeks ago that he planned to run for reelection in 2024. Obviously, you know, he was indicted in May. He got a superseding indictment in October. And still, even in light of all of that, he did say he was planning to run for re-election. But as of Thursday, he says he is no longer running for re-election. And this change of heart came after this ethics report was released by the investigative subcommittee and the Committee on Ethics on Thursday. And before we really go into

what the findings of the report say, let me give you a little bit of background as to who the report was done by and what each committee, what the role is of each committee. So there's two reports circulating right now, and you'll see two of them linked in the sources section if you go check it out. But one of them is from the Committee on Ethics. That's a shorter report. That's eight pages. The other report is from the Investigative Subcommittee. That report is longer, it's 56 pages. The Investigative Subcommittee, as the name implies, is the investigating committee for the Committee on Ethics. The Committee on Ethics then adopted the findings of the Investigative Subcommittee, which is why their report is so much shorter than the Investigative Subcommittee, because the

Investigative Subcommittee is really who did all the digging. They are who came to all of these findings, and then the Committee on Ethics adopted those findings. So as I said, George Santos was originally indicted in May of this year. He then got a superseding indictment in October, which added on a few additional charges. But even before he was indicted the first time in May, the investigative subcommittee had already been impaneled to investigate him. The investigative subcommittee was impaneled on February 28th of this year, so about three months after the 2022 general election and about three months before he was indicted for the first time. The reason that the investigative subcommittee was impaneled by the Committee on Ethics was to review whether or

not George Santos had engaged in any sort of illegal activity with respect to his 2022 congressional campaign, to determine if there was any failures to disclose information on financial statements filed with the House, to determine whether he violated any federal conflict of interest laws, and to determine whether he had engaged in sexual misconduct towards someone in particular that was seeking employment in his congressional office. Then, once he was indicted in May, the investigative subcommittee had to expand its jurisdiction to look into those allegations because the allegations set forth in the indictment went further than what the investigative subcommittee had original jurisdiction over.

So once he was indicted, the House actually has a rule. So in the House rules, there is this rule that says when a member of the House is indicted or formally charged with criminal charges, the Committee on Ethics has to either impanel an investigative subcommittee to look into that member, or they have to submit a report to the House explaining why they chose to not impanel an investigative subcommittee. In this case, because the investigative subcommittee had already been impaneled months prior, the committee simply expanded the investigative subcommittee's jurisdiction to specifically investigate whether he had fraudulently obtained unemployment insurance

benefits because that wasn't included in the subcommittee's initial jurisdiction. So since February, the investigative subcommittee has met nine times, they've authorized 37 subpoenas, 43 voluntary requests for information, and they've gathered more than 170,000 pages of documents. So now that we have a little bit of background, let's get into the findings. And I will be paraphrasing this. I will be summarizing it because if you are familiar with the indictment and his charges, you probably already know a decent chunk of this, but I think it's worth talking about a little bit just in case you don't. So what the findings of the investigative subcommittee say is that Santos had run for his office on this backstory of being a grandson of

Holocaust survivors, a graduate from NYU, a beneficiary of this family trust worth millions of dollars, which was actually left by his mother, who died years after the 9-11 attacks because of long-term health effects from being in one of the towers. And that was really his story. Since he won the election, he's admitted part of his background was embellished so that he would be taken seriously. But aside from that, while he's campaigning for the 2022 election, his staff had gotten worried about the amount of lies he was telling. And according to the findings of the investigative subcommittee, his staff wrote a 141-page vulnerability report in December of 2021 that they gave to him, which raised all of these potential issues surrounding his campaign.

Things like there was no evidence to support he had graduated from NYU with an MBA. There were questions about how he had loaned his campaign the amount of money that he did. There were questions about failing to report his salary. There were questions about his failure to file a financial disclosure statement in 2021. So basically this report that his campaign staff gave to him was like, look at all of these potential issues that you could face, you know, just given the nature of your campaign. And his campaign staff allegedly tried to get him to drop out of the race. He didn't.

So then three of his staffers quit. The investigative findings also found that he filed false financial disclosure statements with the House, which we already knew from the indictment, that he had falsified some reports saying he loaned money that was never actually loaned. Again, something we knew from the indictment. And that he would allegedly lie to donors to get them to donate money to his campaign and then transfer that money to his personal accounts and use that money for personal expenses. Again, this is something we knew from the indictments. Something we didn't necessarily know from the indictments is what the money was used for. So the investigative

subcommittee actually listed certain purchases that were found from his bank statements that included things like Botox, OnlyFans, an Hermes purchase, Sephora purchases, and it doesn't list exactly what was bought, but it does reference certain transactions from his bank statements and cites to the bank statements themselves. So that part was new. And that's really the general gist of the findings. Following the release of the report, Santos took to X to write a fairly lengthy post that said in part, quote, if there was a single ounce of ethics in the ethics committee, they would have not released this biased report. It is a disgusting politicized smear that shows the depths

of how low our federal government has sunk. Everyone who participated in this grave miscarriage of justice should all be ashamed of themselves. I will remain steadfast in fighting for my rights and for defending my name in the face of adversity. I will, however, not be seeking re-election for a second term in 2024, as my family deserves better than to be under the gun from the press all the time." End quote. And again, that was just a portion of his statement. I do have his full statement linked for you. Sources have said that there will be another motion to expel George

Santos from Congress forthcoming. This would be the House's third attempt to expel him. The most recent attempt was just a couple of weeks ago. That motion failed because a lot of the representatives that voted against it cited a presumption of innocence. In other words, he had only had charges brought against him. He hadn't been found guilty, so they didn't feel that expelling him was the right thing to do. But the thought now is that, you know, now that this report is out and the Committee on Ethics adopted it and the motion to expel him would be brought by a fellow Republican, the thought is that there's a little more credibility to this one and it has a higher likelihood of passing. So it's possible that that is brought Friday, but maybe it's not brought till next week. Maybe it's never brought. Who knows? But a source does say it is forthcoming.

The sixth and final story. Earlier this week, a number of people took to TikTok to say that they had read Osama bin Laden's 2002 letter titled A Letter to America, and that after reading it, they realized Osama bin Laden may have not been that bad of a guy after all. Potentially, he's just a freedom fighter. Now, of course, you have the other side where I would venture to say a majority of the people stand that are outraged at this new perspective from some of these users on TikTok. To give you some background, Osama bin Laden penned this eight-page letter to America back in 2002. It was about a year after 9-11. The letter basically focuses on two points. One, the reason that Al-Qaeda was

fighting the United States and opposing the United States. And two, what Al-Qaeda was calling on the United States to do and what they wanted from us. Now, as to the first point, why they were fighting and opposing the United States, the letter says, the answer is, whenever this letter references you or your, it's addressing the United States. So the letter continues on. It says, The British handed over Palestine with your help and support to the Jews who have occupied it for more than 50 years. Years overflowing with oppression, tyranny, crimes, killing, expulsion, destruction, and devastation. The creation and continuation of Israel is one of the greatest crimes, and you are the leader of its criminals. Each and every person whose hands have become polluted in the contribution towards this crime must pay its price and pay for it heavily. It brings us both laughter and tears to see that you have not yet tired of repeating your fabricated lies that

the Jews have a historical right to Palestine as it was promised to them in the Torah. Anyone who disputes with them on this alleged fact is accused of anti-Semitism. This is one of the most fallacious, widely circulated fabrications in history. The people of Palestine are pure Arabs and original Semites. And the letter carries on with all of these various allegations of things that the United States has done to interfere with the Muslim people. The letter accuses the United States of hypocrisy for allowing Israel to occupy Palestinian territories for decades despite being against UN law, as well as violating its own law by imprisoning people in Guantanamo without charges or trials. And of course, that's in relation to the 9-11 conspirators, coordinators, attackers who the United States imprisoned in Guantanamo, who some are still there. Now, the whole letter is not just about Palestine and Israel. The letter also accuses

the United States of influencing the governments that control Muslim countries and using these governments to attack the Muslim people and steal their wealth. It blames the United States for starving Muslims in Iraq because of sanctions, and it goes on and on. The basic message of the letter from Osama bin Laden is that the United States is to blame for all that Muslim people have suffered, whether it be by supporting Israel and not Palestine, or controlling the governments or sanctioning the governments, whether it be by supporting Israel and not Palestine or controlling the governments or sanctioning the governments, whatever it might be, the United States is at fault. That is the general message. However, some people picked up this letter for the first time,

they read it for the first time, and given what's currently going on between Israel and Gaza, decided that Osama bin Laden is actually, you know, he was fighting for the freedom of the Palestinian people. One TikToker who made a video that got over a million views before it was ultimately deleted said, quote, everything we have learned about the Middle East, 9-11, and quote-unquote terrorism was a lie, end quote. Another user in a video that got over 100,000 views said, quote, if we're going to call Osama bin Laden a terrorist, end quote. Another user in a video that got over 100,000 views said, quote, if we're going to call Osama bin Laden a terrorist, so is the American government, end quote. Now, obviously, this, you know, this isn't everyone. It's not even the majority of people,

but it's some people. And some people think that this type of content is being promoted by TikTok because who owns TikTok? China. And their thought is that China is intentionally promoting this content to try to further divide people here in America. When TikTok was asked to comment on the matter, a TikTok spokesperson said, quote, content promoting this letter clearly violates our rules on supporting any form of terrorism. We are proactively and aggressively removing this content and investigating how it End quote. And as of Thursday afternoon, because I did try myself to search a letter to America to see what came up, and nothing comes up. Nothing at all. Not even suggested content like it usually would. It's just a message that says, no results found. This phrase may be associated with behavior or content that violates our guidelines.

Promoting a safe and positive experience is TikTok's top priority. Now, I had said earlier that The Guardian was the outlet that originally had it up. They actually first posted it back in 2002 when Bin Laden wrote it, but it was apparently taken down on Wednesday. And now when you go to type in a letter to America on Google, The Guardian is one of the first links that shows up, but when you click on it, it doesn't have the letter. Instead, it says this message. It says, this page previously displayed a document containing in translation the full text of Osama bin Laden's letter to the American people, which was reported on in the Observer on Sunday,

November 24th, 2002. The document, which was published here on the same day, was removed on November 15th, 2023. The transcript published on our website had been widely shared on social media without the full context. Therefore, we decided to take it down and direct readers instead to the news article that originally contextualized it. And that is what I have for you on that. Now, I would like to end this episode with a new segment called Not Everything Is Bad. And this is basically where I would like to take a moment at the end of each week to remind you that not everything is bad. So let's do it. Claudia Stevenson, she is a blind woman from Australia, and she's obviously never been

able to compete in any sort of marathons or anything like that, despite enjoying running, because she can't see. But she was able to complete the New York City Marathon last weekend, thanks to her running guides. So these two people ran with her the entire way through the New York City Marathon to help her get across the finish line. And not only that, but one of her running guides had to drop out last minute. And so she reached out to this instructor on this virtual workout platform called iFit. And she asked her instructor to help her run it and he agreed to do it. So she had these two

guides running next to her the entire race and she was able to finish the New York City Marathon. It's pretty incredible. The second story is about this 63-year-old man from France. His name is Mark and he is able to walk again after being diagnosed with Parkinson's disease nearly 20 years ago. Mark received an implant that restores normal signaling to the leg muscles from the spine. And because of this implant, he is now able to take a three-mile walk without stopping. He can stand up out of a chair by himself with ease. And before this, he had lost his ability to walk and he would often fall several times just in one day because his body would freeze up and he would fall down. He is the first person to receive this spinal implant. And, you know, of course this implant needs to be

tested long-term, but it is an incredible step in the right direction. And the third and final nice story I have for you today is to spread a little holiday cheer here at home. The Rockefeller Center Christmas tree arrived on the plaza this past Saturday and is getting ready for the tree lighting on November 29th. This tree came from a couple's home in New York. They said that a man pulled into their driveway, he hopped out of his truck, and he said, my name's Eric. I'm the head gardener from Rockefeller Center, and I'm here to look at your tree. And they were shocked. They didn't really believe him. And they did some research and realized Eric has been picking out the Rockefeller trees for the last 30 years. They

were honored that he came to look at their tree. And the best part is that the McGinleys said that they were happy to donate their tree and they hoped that donating their tree would bring joy to others during the holiday season. And we could all use a little joy around here. So I hope that you have joy going into this weekend. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Thank you so much for being here. As always, I will talk to you next week.