by dap | Jan 22, 2025 | Daily Signal
President Donald Trump kicked off his second term this week by pardoning the more than 1,500 Americans charged with crimes in connection with the
, U.S. Capitol protest.
Pardoning the
is “another promise made, promise kept from the president,” Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Ga., told The Daily Signal.
“It is shameful right now to see that there are still people that, four years later, have not had a fair trial, have not had a trial at all,” he said.
All Americans have a constitutional right to a “speedy trial,”
, R-Ga., said, adding: “If you haven’t actually given them a trial in four years … that’s a problem.”
The Daily Signal spoke with Clyde, McCormick, and a number of other Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill on Tuesday regarding Trump’s decision to issue pardons for so many Americans who have sat in prison for four years since the uprising.
“It’s the right thing,” Rep. Marlin Stutzman, R-Ind., said of Trump’s action in pardoning those who entered the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
“The fact that there’s been so little due process for those from Jan. 6th, it says a lot to all of us as Americans that there wasn’t an effort to really find out and get to the bottom of what happened,” he said.
Rep. Brian Babin, R-Texas, called it “heartbreaking” that “people who committed, at the most, misdemeanor trespassing” spent four years in prison.
“At the same time,” Babin added, “you had people who burned whole sections of American cities after the
incident, yet nothing happened to them.” That was a reference to the May 2020 death of Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis.
The pardons are “exactly the right thing to do, to put this long nightmare behind us,” according to Rep. Keith Self, R-Texas.
names 14 specific individuals who were involved in the event inside and around the Capitol four years ago, including Stewart Rhodes, who is the founder of the Oath Keepers, a paramilitary organization whose local affiliates are often made up of military veterans and first responders.
The pardon then declares the release of “all other individuals convicted of offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.”
Rep. Derek Schmidt, R-Kan., said that if he were in the president’s shoes, he would have been hesitant to pardon those who “assaulted law enforcement,” but he “respects the president’s decision.”
“Overall, he moved us in the right direction, to move that piece of history behind us,” he said.
Rep. Mike Haridopolos, R-Fla., said the Jan. 6 prisoners broke the law, but “four years for trespassing is more than enough.”
“This two-tiered system of justice is wrong,” he said, referring to what some Republicans say is the unequal application of the law against friends and foes of the Biden-Harris administration.
When asked about the pardons, Rep. Addison McDowell, R-N.C., pointed to the pardons issued by President Joe Biden shortly before he left office. Biden preemptively pardoned several members of his own family, COVID-19 czar Dr. Anthony Fauci, and notably, members and staff of the Democrat-controlled special January 6 committee.
“At the end of the day, I’m not worried about pardons,” he said. “I’m worried about the border and the economy.”
Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., said a lot of the Jan. 6 protesters were in jail or prison because they were charged with trespassing, while Capitol Police stood by and let people enter the Capitol.
“The president said in his address yesterday there are murderers who have gotten shorter sentences than some of the people on Jan. 6,” said Harris, chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus.
, R-S.C., echoed Harris, promising “a lot of questions will be answered in years to come, because why were some of the police letting protesters in?”
Trump’s pardons are different from Biden’s preemptive pardons of his family members, according to Rep. Bill Huizenga, R-Mich. The Department of Justice failed to distinguish between violent criminals and people who made a mistake on Jan. 6, Huizenga said, adding that he heard of a young mom going to pick up her husband from prison after he was released early Tuesday morning.
“Those kinds of stories are the positive ones, where we’re seeing really nonviolent folks who had been trespassing and maybe made some bad decisions, had a very much overzealous Department of Justice go after them in a way,” Huizenga said, “unlike what they should have done with others that did have violent intent and were violent.”
“He’s not just issuing blanket pardons as well, which I think is a sign of some restraint, as they are going through and trying to distinguish who deserves that,” the Michigan Republican continued.
, R-Miss., said Trump campaigned on pardoning Jan. 6 defendants, so people should not be surprised.
“To hear the moaning on the other side, that they were surprised, that they couldn’t believe he had done this,” Guest said. “He’s been telling people for months this would be one of his actions, and he followed through, and did what President Trump does, which is to honor the promises he makes to the American public.”
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by dap | Jan 22, 2025 | Daily Signal
reporter Reagan Reese says she had more interactions with President Donald Trump in just one day than she did with President Joe Biden over the year and a half she spent covering the Biden White House.
It was not unusual for the
to “call a lid,” a term used to dismiss White House reporters at the end of the news day, around 4:00 p.m., according to Reese. If the first two days in office are any indication, Reese says she expects to be working much longer hours while Trump is in office.
Even after leaving the White House at 7 p.m. Tuesday night, Reese, who has worked as The Daily Caller’s White House correspondent since August 2023, said Trump was still working in the
.
Reese joins this week’s edition of
to discuss the first 48 hours of the Trump administration and Trump’s interactions with the press since he was sworn in on Monday.
Also on today’s show, we discuss the slew of
Trump has already signed on issues ranging from securing the southern border to requiring some federal employees to return to in person work. Plus, we share our favorite fashion looks from Inauguration Day!
Pour yourself a cup of tea and join “Problematic Women” by clicking the video above.
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by dap | Jan 22, 2025 | Daily Signal
Conservative
spoke Wednesday at a luncheon in Washington’s Capitol Hill Club, detailing the harsh stigma involved in writing for a conservative publication on an Ivy League campus.
“The Protecting Conservative Students at Harvard” luncheon featured student editors of The Harvard Salient, the campus’ conservative magazine, including the outlet’s President Sarah Steele, who told the audience about the intense backlash the publication faces from the
“In the past year, professors began to ban The Salient from houses [residence halls] altogether,” said Steele, who is in her senior year. “Students would complain to their house faculty and the faculty said, out of convenience, you are now banned from distributing The Salient in the house.”
In an interview with The Daily Signal, Steele said that irate students have often destroyed print issues of The Harvard Salient.
“We’ve experienced some pretty consistent vandalism with the issues. We find them in the garbage, lots of them. Sometimes they’re maniacally ripped up, up and down the entire dorm hallway,” said Steele.
Steele’s classmate Caleb Chung added that
publicly brag about this vandalism on anonymous forums.
Chung, a sophomore, told The Daily Signal, “There’s an anonymous social media platform where people brag about the different ways they destroy The Salient.”
But this is not the worst response the conservative publication has received, says Steele.
“One of our editors early on received a death threat from a fellow student,” she said to the audience.
But despite their serious discussion of the
for being a conservative in Cambridge, the students remained proud and optimistic about their work with The Harvard Salient.
Among their proudest accomplishments is the “freedom tower,” the publication’s office in Cambridge.
Harvard student Victoria Li, a senior, said that purchasing the office offered them a place where they felt physically safe and among like-minded individuals.
“We can’t host events without a risk of security, and we thought it was important that conservatives have a physical place on campus. What paper on campus lasted for more than a few years without a physical property?” she said. “The [Harvard] Lampoon has a castle in the middle of Harvard Square!”
But The Harvard Salient editors told The Daily Signal that, even outside of their work in conservative journalism, they feel the stigma surrounding their social and political attitudes.
Steele says that this is especially true in classroom settings.
“Just in a seminar class when you’re at a round table, you think the purpose is to get as many conflicting ideas out on the table for the academic exercise. But it’s very hard to put yourself out there, especially if you’re talking about social conservatism,” she said.
Chung agreed, telling The Daily Signal, “Sometimes it’s very explicit. So, my freshman year, I took a seminar. We’re talking about
and the professor was very clear that traditional views would not be accepted. You can’t go and say these things in the classroom. Socially, there’s a stigma.”
Also in attendance at the luncheon was former Trump administration Labor Secretary Alex Acosta, who contributed to the publication during his time at Harvard
Alfredo Ortiz, a board member of The Harvard Salient who assists the students in their mission, urged the audience not to give up on bringing
to Ivy League schools.
“Harvard is still Harvard. Our CEOs and our CFOs and our doctors and our judges and our presidents, leaders, thought leaders still come out of Harvard,” said Ortiz, the CEO of the Job Creators Network. “And the more we kind of let it go, the more this
continues to affect our country.”
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by dap | Jan 22, 2025 | Daily Signal
, the renowned American historian and political commentator, has joined The Daily Signal as a senior contributor. This transcript has been lightly edited.
There’s been a whole change of mentality, from the trivial to the existential. We also learn these disclosures. Why now? Why now? Why did we suddenly learn from the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times that Joe Biden had had cognitive decline all these years, in which, to point that out was blasphemy.
And now, all of a sudden, we hear where we’re right all along. All of you were.
Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. Have you noticed during this transition from the Nov. 5 election to the inauguration of Jan. 20, there’s been a whole change of mentality from the trivial to the existential. We can’t quite believe that. Mika and Joe Scarborough made a religious journey, as it is, to Mar-a-Lago.
Snoop Dogg once cut a film about shooting Donald Trump. Now he has endorsed him. And that is true all over the media. They just fired the head of MSNBC. Now we also learn these disclosures. Why now? Why now? Why did we suddenly learn from the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times that Joe Biden had had cognitive decline all these years in which, to point that out, was blasphemy?
Remember Peter Daszak? He was in Echo Health. He was the one who engaged in forbidden gain-of-function viral research. He was getting money from the NIH [National Institutes of Health], transferring it to the Wuhan Laboratory. But, even to say that was considered heresy. And now all of a sudden, we hear we were right all along. All of you were.
That there was gain of function research. That we did have a role in the Wuhan Lab. And guess what? Peter Daszak is barred now for five years from receiving one dime of federal health care. How about the FBI? They stonewalled, stonewalled, stonewalled. All of a sudden—suddenly, out of the head of Zeus—they tell us they’re going to abandon, abolish, get rid of their diversity, equity, and inclusion department.
And finally, Christopher Wray, in his last address to us, says, well, there are cabals of Chinese espionage activists and they’re in sensitive places. We have to be careful. Why didn’t he tell us that two years ago? Why all of a sudden is Mr. Trudeau stepping down? Why did the Assad dynasty collapse? Why does Hamas want to negotiate?
It’s eerie. We’ve never seen anything like it. Why did Joe Biden suddenly abdicate? He’s kind of abdicated from power. Donald Trump is the de facto—and he has been for weeks—president. We’ve never seen anything like it. The obvious answer is, the king is dead. Long live the king. People gravitate toward power, especially when power is expressed by winning the popular vote, the Electoral College, having control of the House, the Senate, the Supreme Court, and having issues that all polled over 55 to 60%. It was a mandate. And everybody wants to be on the winning side, in the sense, you root for your football team when it’s 10 and zero, and you don’t go to the stadium when it’s zero and 10.
There’s another criteria here and that is, a lot of people as they look back, see that what they did to Donald Trump—the lawfare, the Alvin Bragg, the Fani Willis, the Jack Smith, the Latitia James, the E. Jean Carroll, civil and criminal suits—they really were an aberration. They were a miscarriage of justice.
And when they’re compounded with the two prior impeachments, the trial of Donald Trump as a private citizen, the effort to get him off the ballot, the raid at Mar-a-Lago. A lot of people on the left in the media, in the Democratic Party, in the liberal circle itself are thinking if we were Donald Trump and we had suffered what we did to him and we were in power now, we know what we would do: Revenge.
So, they project that onto Donald Trump, and they try to reach out now, whether it’s the media settling defamation suits, or talk that even CBS will settle with Donald Trump. But I don’t think that’s necessarily explains all of this vast change of heart. This new mindset. I think people, as they look back, they think we were in a coma.
We were drugged. This was an aberration. Maybe it was the COVID lockdown. Maybe it was the George Floyd. Maybe it was the hatred of Donald Trump. Maybe—I don’t know what it was, but it was a four-year aberration. And now they’re coming to their senses and they’re thinking Joe Biden really was cognitively declined. A coup dismissed him.
That was abnormal. The border should be closed. There really is two main sexes, not three. Looting and shoplifting have to be crimes or society will not exist. What happened in Afghanistan, turning over $50 billion to terrorists. That’s not normal. That’s not the United States. Nor is putting “daylight” between us and Israel.
So, there’s a sense now that, Rip Van Winkle, like we’ve woken up. And Donald Trump wasn’t a monster. In fact, Donald Trump has common sense answers to all the things of the last four years. So we’re looking back and we’re saying we were mad. And now there’s a common-sense corrective and we don’t really care if it’s Donald Trump or not, but we’re going to go with the corrective and return America to common sense.
Thank you. This is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal.
We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.
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by dap | Jan 22, 2025 | Daily Signal
has kept his campaign promise to protect American national sovereignty from encroaching global governance bodies by ordering the U.S. to withdraw from the
.
An executive order titled “
” says the United States will leave WHO due to its “mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic that arose out of Wuhan, China, and other global health crises, its failure to adopt urgently needed reforms, and its inability to demonstrate independence from the inappropriate political influence of WHO member states”—presumably China, which
the selection of WHO General-Secretary Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus. The exit order, which will take effect one year after notification, came amidst a
the president signed within hours of taking the oath of office.
“The Trump administration’s announcement that it will withdraw from the WHO is a welcome step toward a healthy ‘reset’ of current global power dynamics,” Travis Weber, vice president for policy and government affairs at Family Research Council, told The Washington Stand exclusively. “The WHO and other U.N. bodies had become swollen with power and gone off-course, steamrolling national sovereignty through bureaucratic and hidden decision-making.”
The World Health Organization has increasingly stated its support for abortion-on-demand and extreme gender ideology. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, WHO has included “comprehensive abortion care” in the list of “essential health services,”
WHO’s March 2022 “abortion care guideline.” WHO also added the abortion pills mifepristone and misoprostol on its “
.” Last June, WHO established “
” with the
at the
.
The World Health Organization’s overreach came to the fore with its attempts to negotiate a
. The controversial pact would limit
, transfer 20% of all U.S. vaccines and medications to WHO, follow a “One Health” philosophy equating human well-being with animal and plant life, and empower
companies to crack down on purported “misinformation.”
Experts branded the pact counterproductive to public health, stating it only served to enhance WHO’s authority over sovereign nation-states. Family Research Council has warned the terms of the WHO Pandemic Agreement create global mechanisms that could one day “function as a
” After scrutinizing the text, a congressional
, “The World Health Organization’s Draft ‘Pandemic Treaty’ Does Not Solve the Organization’s Underlying Problems
.”
After negotiations deadlocked, WHO officials announced last November that the global governance body
the text of the sovereignty-stripping accord during the
, as anticipated.
Under the terms of Trump’s executive order, the U.S. will play no role in its future. The EO states that “the Secretary of State will cease negotiations on the WHO Pandemic Agreement and the amendments to the International Health Regulations, and actions taken to effectuate such agreement and amendments will have no binding force on the United States.”
In May, WHO
for the first time in 19 years to label “misinformation and disinformation” as “public health risks,” which nations must fight as one of their “core capacities.”
Then-candidate Trump
to exit the WHO Pandemic Agreement last May, stating, “
and throw them out on Day One of the Trump administration.” Trump’s nominee for secretary of health and human services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has said the agreement should be “
.”
In his first term, Trump announced his intention to depart WHO in July 2020, but President Joe Biden rescinded his notification on his first day in office. Trump, in turn, erased Biden’s reversal on his first day in office.
An American departure would blow a large hole in WHO’s finances.
are the
to the World Health Organization, giving WHO
over two years in 2022-2023. “The U.S. is a massive funder of the WHO. Their own livelihood is on the line,” Weber
“Washington Watch” guest host Jody Hice on Tuesday.
Yet the World Health Organization
to the news by saying, while it “regrets” America’s decision to leave and hopes “the United States will reconsider,” WHO will change nothing in its ever-expanding reach for global power. “WHO has over the past 7 years implemented the largest set of reforms in its history” to maximize its “impact in countries. This work continues.”
The statement also seemingly claimed a share of credit for U.S.-led improvements in global health. “For over seven decades, WHO and the USA have saved countless lives and protected Americans and all people from health threats. Together, we ended smallpox, and together we have brought polio to the brink of eradication. American institutions have contributed to and benefited from membership in WHO,” the organization asserts.
The executive order paves the way for a global health reset that respects national self-determination while paring back the left-leaning, often imperious views of such global institutions as the WHO. Trump’s executive order appears to envision a transition to doctoring global maladies through robust bilateral and multilateral agreements, ordering federal officials to “identify credible and transparent United States and international partners to assume necessary activities previously undertaken by the WHO.”
Going forward, Americans must ensure that such bilateral agreements “are representative of the will of the American people, and do not also draw us into other relationships that are equally problematic as the WHO,” said Weber, who attended the 77th World Health Assembly in Geneva last May and
on each day’s proceedings for The Washington Stand. It also orders the director of the White House Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy to “review, rescind, and replace” the Biden-era “2024 U.S. Global Health Security Strategy as soon as practicable.”
“While nations need to coordinate to address diseases and other international health crises, they can do so through agreements and relationships that protect their national sovereignty,” Weber told The Washington Stand. While nations need “a mechanism to prevent diseases that cross borders,” Weber warned this accord and others show U.S. national “sovereignty being eroded as global bodies, including the World Health Organization, aggregate power to themselves.”
This decision, and other first-day actions by Trump, constitute a new “America First foreign policy, one that serves our interests, and not the interests of diplomats or elite global circles, to the detriment of the American people,” Weber told Hice, praising a separate Trump executive order that “pauses foreign aid for a period of time until the whole system can be reformed.”
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by dap | Jan 22, 2025 | Daily Signal
DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION—The Trump administration is now criminally investigating sanctuary jurisdictions and will take legal action against any city or state that is in violation of federal laws.
The
(DOJ) has established a Sanctuary Cities Enforcement Working Group that is tasked with identifying state and local laws or policies that are “inconsistent” with federal immigration initiatives and, when necessary, challenging those laws in court, according to a Tuesday
obtained by Bloomberg. The directive marks a dramatic escalation in the fight between the Trump administration and Democrat-led sanctuary cities opposed to immigration enforcement.
“The Supremacy Clause and other authorities require state and local actors to comply with the Executive Branch’s
,” according to a section of the internal memo.
“Federal law prohibits state and local actors from resisting, obstructing, and otherwise failing to comply with lawful immigration-related commands and requests pursuant to, for example, the President’s extensive Article II authority with respect to foreign affairs and
, the Immigration and Nationality Act, and the Alien Enemies Act,” the memo continues.
The memo further stated that the U.S. attorney’s offices and litigating components within the DOJ will investigate “misconduct” by any officials that obstruct federal immigration enforcement and will seek prosecution.
The establishment of the new working group and its new directive follows sharp rhetoric by sanctuary city mayors and the passage of stricter sanctuary policy by lawmakers in Democratic strongholds.
While there is no official definition for a “sanctuary city” law or policy, the label generally describes any rule that restricts local officials from helping or otherwise cooperating with federal immigration authorities. While local and state officials are largely not required to get involved in federal immigration matters, the administration has cautioned that blatant obstruction is against the law.
Following President Donald Trump’s election victory, Los Angeles
sanctuary legislation; San Diego County supervisors
on existing sanctuary policy within their jurisdiction, and Boston council members unanimously voted to
their city’s sanctuary status, among similar actions taken by left-leaning cities. The Chicago City Council earlier in January
an attempt by moderate members to scale back the scope of its sanctuary policy, which would’ve allowed for cooperation only in dealing with certain criminal migrants.
who is tasked with leading the Trump administration’s large-scale deportation efforts, previously told the Daily Caller News Foundation that he will seek prosecution against anyone unlawfully obstructing Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) mission.
“There are federal statutes on the books for knowingly concealing and harboring an illegal alien away from ICE officers,” Homan said to the DCNF. “There are statutes on the books about impeding federal law enforcement officers—they’re all felonies.”
“Now these sanctuary cities cannot assist—ok, that’s fine. They can stand aside, that’s fine, but they cannot cross that line,” he continued. “If they cross that line, we’ll be asking the attorney’s office to consider prosecution.”
The DOJ did not respond to a request for comment from the DCNF.
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by dap | Jan 22, 2025 | Daily Signal
is slated to declassify files and documents relating to the assassinations of famous Americans “in the coming days.”
In a speech shortly before his
, Trump vowed transparency from his administration, pledging to declassify and release to the public information on the deaths of President John F. Kennedy, his brother and U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, and activist Martin Luther King Jr.
The 47th president declared: “As a first step toward restoring transparency and accountability to government, we will also reverse the overclassification
documents, and in the coming days, we are going to make public remaining records relating to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert Kennedy, as well as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and other topics of great public interest. It’s all going to be released, Uncle Sam.”
Following the attempt on his life in July of last year, Trump promised that he would form a commission on assassination attempts, tasked with publishing documents related to John F. Kennedy’s death. The announcement came as Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—whose uncle and father were both
—endorsed Trump for president.
“Soon after I was—I can’t even believe I have to say this—nearly assassinated in Pennsylvania last month, Bobby called me to express his best wishes. He knows firsthand the risks incurred by leaders who stand up to the corrupt political establishment,” Trump stated.
He continued, “And when you stand up, you bring on some trouble for yourself, but you have to do what’s right. You have to do what’s right for the country. I’ll tell you, we are both in this to do what’s right for the country.”
President John F. Kennedy was notoriously assassinated on November 22, 1963, while riding through Dallas in a presidential motorcade. Robert F. Kennedy was slain at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on June 5, 1968, while campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination.
has insisted that the CIA was involved in the assassination of his uncle.
“There is overwhelming evidence that the CIA was involved in his murder,” he said in a 2023 interview. “I think it’s beyond a reasonable doubt at this point.”
However, this is not the first time that Trump has promised to share information related to the Kennedy assassinations. During his first administration, Trump did release a number of documents related to JFK’s death but ultimately acceded to the advice of CIA and FBI officials who claimed that releasing more information to the public could pose a national security risk. CIA spokeswoman Nicole de Haay said at the time, in 2018, that the agency “narrowly redacted information in rare instances only to protect CIA assets, officers and their families as well as intelligence methods, operations and partnerships that remain critical to the security of our nation.”
In 1992, the U.S. Congress passed the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act, which stipulated that all records pertaining to the assassination must be made public within 25 years, or by October 26, 2017. According to the act, the president is given authority to keep certain records sealed past that date.
Trump discussed his decision not to publish all files related to the Kennedy assassination in his appearance on the “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast in November, on the eve of the election.
“I was met with … people that were well-meaning. [Former Secretary of State and CIA director] Mike Pompeo was one of them, he’s a good person. They called me [and] said, ‘Sir, we’d rather have you not,’” Trump recounted of his decision, adding that a “Martin Luther King file” also exists.
He continued, “So I said, ‘Well, we’ll close it for another time.’ But if I win, I’m just going to open them up.”
When asked why he did not declassify the remaining files during his first term but is open to doing so in his second, Trump replied, “People that are still living, there are people that are affected.”
He added, “I think it’s going to be just fine to open it. Let me put it that way, it’s going to be fine. I think it’s time. It’s a cleansing. … So, I’m going to do it, I’m going to do it immediately, almost immediately upon entering office.”
Although the CIA claimed during Trump’s first term that 99% of documents related to the Kennedy assassination had been declassified and released, Trump estimated on Rogan’s podcast that he only declassified 50% of the Kennedy files.
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by dap | Jan 22, 2025 | Daily Signal
Every Senate Democrat on Wednesday afternoon voted against protecting the lives of babies born alive after botched abortions.
The Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, introduced by Sens. James Lankford, R-Okla, and Jim Banks, R-Ind., states that a baby born alive from a failed abortion deserves the same protection and medical care as other newborns.
“Almost every American agrees that a baby that takes their first breath deserves the same right to life as the rest of us do,” Banks said. “I won’t give up this fight for common sense legislation to save the most vulnerable.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., brought the bill to a vote on Wednesday. He spoke on behalf of the bill on the Senate floor prior to the vote, saying he expected Democrats to oppose the bill. He was correct.
Republicans’ motion for cloture on Wednesday failed with a vote of 52-47.
“Democrats are afraid that by recognizing the humanity of the newly born child, they will inadvertently point to the humanity of the unborn child,” Thune said. “And I do understand where they’re coming from. After all, once you recognize the humanity of the newly born baby, it gets a little harder to say that that child wasn’t human just a few minutes ago simply because he or she wasn’t yet born.”
“And so, because there is nothing more important to Democrats than abortion, they will vote against legislation to provide appropriate medical care to babies born alive in an abortion clinic, just in case such a law ends up jeopardizing their cherished, quote, ‘right’ to an abortion,” Thune continued.
In 2023, House Democrats nearly unanimously voted against the bill. It passed the House 220-210, with one Democrat, Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, voting with Republicans in favor of the bill, and Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, D-Texas, voting present.
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by dap | Jan 22, 2025 | Daily Signal
On his first day in office, President
on Monday commuted or pardoned all individuals convicted of offenses related to the “events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.”
Trump’s mass-pardon actions followed then-President Joe Biden’s
. On his last day in office, Biden issued
for the
of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack and for several
.
Trump stated in
that the clemency would start the “process of national reconciliation.” On Tuesday, a crowd gathered outside of the D.C. Central Detention Facility in anticipation of the immediate release of the pardoned individuals held there.
The Daily Signal spoke with people in the crowd, a few of whom had been charged with crimes related to the events of Jan. 6, 2021.
Mike Picciuto had been
related to entering the Capitol that day. He told The Daily Signal that his case had been dismissed at about 1:00 a.m. on Tuesday.
“For the first year, I was pretty scared out of my mind of what was going to happen, and then I kind of forgot about it, because I had kids. I had moved around, started a family. So, you know, life kind of happened, and then I was going to work one morning, in January of last year, and about 15 FBI agents got out of their cars, pointed guns at me, and told me to put my hands up (and dropped everything I had). They threw me in a truck, and you know now, I’m here.”
Picciuto said he had been put in detention for one day before being released pending the outcome of his case. He had not expected to be arrested.
“I was caught, so out of the blue. I thought they had the wrong guy, honestly, when it happened. I mean, it had been three years at that point. I don’t do social media. Not because of January 6. I just thought it was a huge waste of time. And I don’t watch the news. I wasn’t paying attention to everything going on. Obviously, once it happened, it was a very rude wake-up call.”
Picciuto said that he was looking at serving a maximum of 47 years in prison.
“They gave me a plea deal, which was awful. It was basically just the felonies. They took away the misdemeanors, and they were, like, ‘You can take the felonies.’ That’s not a deal. ‘What are you doing?’ So, yeah, I never even considered their plea.”
The Daily Signal asked if he had expected to be pardoned on Trump’s first day in office.
“Well, not at first. No, I thought. I didn’t think my life was over, but I was pretty scared that it was,” he said.
“But yeah, later on, you know, once pardons started becoming a topic, like in the mainstream media, and you know, on Truth Social, and other sources. Yeah, I was definitely hopeful for sure. Because, I mean, I didn’t do anything. They were just overcharging me. My attorney and I have watched all the bodycam footage and everything. My attorney is, like, ‘There is no way in hell. You didn’t assault anybody.’ So, he was hopeful. However, the prosecutor literally said, ‘My boss will not let me drop [the case], because she said you have to take the assault,’ essentially is what she said. She said, ‘I can’t drop that.’”
When asked how the charges affected his life, Picciuto explained that he felt very lucky. “I had full financial support. I had already been working for myself. So, I didn’t lose my job. I didn’t lose my home, you know. I was able to support my family still.”
He stated he had come out to support the other pardoned individuals. “They had it way worse than me,” he said. “You know, me standing out in the cold for a couple hours, it’s nothing.”
The Daily Signal also interviewed Kevin Loftus, who explained that he “was busted out by Trump last from the [
] federal detention center. I still got my prison clothes.”
Loftus said that he had been sentenced in 2022 to
for a crime related to Jan. 6.
“That was the deal I cut with them because I was only
. I definitely lost. I didn’t get violent with anybody. I’m not that person. I’m a Trump guy. Trump people respect the police. They back the plan. So, once I smelled tear gas inside the building, I just exited the building,”
Loftus told The Daily Signal that the
tracked him down because he had put pictures on social media.
“I put the picture up on
and
, and my whole life turned upside down overnight. January 7, I was
. So, if you go to the FBI.gov, and you go to the January 6 thing, and you look at the pictures, you know, the wanted pictures, I’m No. 28 on the list. So, the first day, I was already wanted. Driving home, I knew I was wanted by the FBI, so I turned myself into the FBI because like I said, I’m a law-abiding citizen. We’ve been, we’ve been beat down pretty hard.”
Loftus explained that he plans to restart his life.
“I’m going to try to get my job back. Yeah, my family is always there for me, you know. But I got a ride to Texas, riding to Texas in a truck with a big American flag on the back, all the way to Texas. We drove here from Philly in that same truck, the big American flag on the back. … It’s definitely a victory run.”
Loftus said he never doubted Trump would pardon him.
“I just didn’t think it would be so fast. I thought it would be Wednesday or something. So, promises made, promises kept,” he said, adding:
“I’ve been asked, you know, I’ve been pardoned, how do I feel about people that may have done other things, and they got pardoned. Well, that’s President Trump’s decision. Who he pardoned, he pardoned.
“I don’t have anything to say. I got mine. I’m happy because people like me don’t get them, you know what I mean? Everyday people don’t get presidential pardons. I got one.”
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by dap | Jan 22, 2025 | Daily Signal
DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION—Republican Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa introduced legislation in the
Wednesday to prohibit federal funding for Planned Parenthood after the organization received COVID-19 relief funds.
At least $120 million in Paycheck Protection Program loans were provided to affiliates of
in 2020 and 2021 contrary to “applicable affiliation rules and size standards” during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a Dec. 17
that Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky sent to then-Small Business Administration Administrator Isabel Casillas Guzman. Ernst told the Daily Caller News Foundation that her legislation would ensure that the non-profit organization, known for promoting abortion, would not receive taxpayer funds.
“The nation’s largest abortion provider should not be receiving a dime in federal funding,” Ernst told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Planned Parenthood already got caught with their hand in the cookie jar siphoning off millions in
aid designated for mom-and-pop shops. I am standing up for the most vulnerable among us, the unborn, and ensuring that women and babies are supported instead of abortion.”
The Susan B. Anthony List gave Ernst an A+ grade on its scorecard for
that started on Jan. 3, 2021. She received the same grade for her first term, which started in 2015.
Ernst’s legislation says that “no
funds may be made available to Planned Parenthood Federation of America, or to any of its affiliates, subsidiaries, successors, or clinics.”
Planned Parenthood of Central and Western New York touted receiving a $2.6 million fully forgivable loan via the Paycheck Protection Program in a 2021 newsletter article announcing the loan had been forgiven.
“On May 19, 2020, SBA notified a number of PPFA affiliates that they had wrongfully applied for 38 PPP loans totaling more than $80 million dollars,” Paul wrote in the Dec. 17 letter. “SBA determined that these local affiliates of PPFA were ineligible for PPP loans under the applicable affiliation rules and size standards and that the loans they received should be returned.”
“Despite this determination, the SBA approved further loans in 2021 totally nearly $40 million,” Paul wrote. “Further, you allowed at least 34 Planned Parenthood PPP loans to be forgiven.”
The group has filed legal action against restrictions on abortion in multiple red states, including challenging South Carolina’s “heartbeat” law and has also secured taxpayer funding from Missouri via a court ruling. The state supreme court upheld a lower court’s ruling that the measure to defund Planned Parenthood violated a state constitutional provision and the organization’s right to equal protection.
The organization also called virginity a “made up concept” that was “created simply to control and shame people,” while also claiming the term was not “inclusive” of the LGBT community.
Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, held many racist views and made statements disparaging some minorities, including saying that Australian aboriginals were “the lowest known species of the human family” in her 1913 book “What Every Girl Should Know.” She also stated in a 1939 letter that she didn’t want the fact she sought “to exterminate the Negro population” to “go out.”
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