After filing a lawsuit, a Catholic community of sisters in New York has won a victory for life and for privacy.
In June 2022, New York passed a law allowing state officials to access pro-life pregnancy resource centers' sensitive information. The state Department of Health was granted permission to investigate pro-life pregnancy centers via demanding access to information about the centers’ policies.
The law was immediately concerning to the Sisters of Life because “It's so important that they feel safe,” Sister Maris Stella says, referring to the women they serve.
Stella, vicar general of the Sisters of Life, says the community of nuns is dedicated to serving women facing unplanned pregnancies, and part of that service often involves having “sacred conversations with them, and we come to know their history, their hopes, their fears, their dreams.”
To protectthe nuns'privacy and the privacy of the women they serve, the Sisters filed a lawsuit asking a federal court for an order to protect them from government investigation. In November, New York agreed to comply with the federal court order.
Stella joins "The Daily Signal Podcast" with Mark Rienzi, president and CEO of Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which litigated the case on the sisters' behalf, to discuss the legal victory. Stella also offers her insights on the future of the pro-life movement.
Jonathan Skrmetti, the Republican attorney general of Tennessee, has pledged that he will sue the Department of Health and Human Services under President Joe Biden if it finalizes a rule forcing gender ideology on foster parents.
Skrmetti laid out the legal arguments against the rule in a conversation Wednesday with "The Daily Signal Podcast."
"This is a federal agency making law, treading on both the prerogatives of Congress and really the prerogatives of the state legislatures," Skrmetti said.
"Family law has always been a state issue," he explained. "The states have developed a rich body of family law dealing with issues like foster care. This is a really heavy-handed intrusion by the federal government in pursuit of a political end but at the expense of kids. So constitutionally, there's a structural problem with a federal agency making law in an area where the states should be making the law and where the states have been making the law."
HHS’ Administration for Children and Families proposed a new rule Sept. 28 on “Safe and Appropriate Foster Care Placement Requirements” and allowed Americans to submit public comments by Nov. 27. Skrmetti submitted a comment as Tennessee's attorney general, and 16 other state attorneys general signed on to it.
"Authentic" is Merriam-Webster’s word of the year. It’s also a good way to describe Fox News contributor and podcast host Lisa Boothe, whose own authenticity is evident whenever she’s on TV or interviewing guests for her show, “The Truth With Lisa Boothe.”
During her frequent Fox News appearances—or stints guest-hosting for Fox anchors such as Laura Ingraham—Boothe brings a straightforward, commonsense approach to viewers.
She spoke with The Daily Signal about the opportunity that led her from Capitol Hill to the media world—and why she believes so many outlets are falling out of favor today.
“I feel like we’ve just lost common sense, period,” Boothe says. “I think we’re a society, and it extends to the media as well, of cowardice, a lack of common sense, probably just intentional lying, and just no morality. There’s no wrong vs. right anymore.”
Hamas’ barbaric attack on Israel—and the surge of antisemitism that followed—are just one example Boothe cites as a failure of the news media to distinguish wrong from right.
“Imagine how insanely frustrating it would be to be Israel. You have the most Jews slaughtered in a single day since the Holocaust, you have babies that were beheaded, you have women who are raped next to the bodies of their dead friends at a concert, completely unarmed,” Boothe said. “Just complete, utter atrocities, right? And then you have the media questioning what happened that day, questioning the beheading of babies.”
Israel, she said, was so compelled to counter pro-Palestinian propaganda that it invited journalists—including The Daily Signal—to view 43 minutes of video depicting Hamas terrorists' brutal atrocities.
“Israel has to confirm things that these Hamas terrorists videotaped themselves and put out to the public, but then the media’s just pushing out Hamas propaganda without question,” Boothe said. “I mean, it’s just disgusting.”
Boothe said she felt a similar frustration during the COVID-19 hysteria that consumed the country beginning in 2020. From the start, she thought the government reaction was overblown—from widespread lockdowns to vaccine mandates.
As a result, she started her own podcast to offer a countervailing narrative.
“I believe I was the first person at Fox to come out and say, ‘I’m not getting the vaccine,’” Boothe said. “I just got frustrated that I didn’t have my own outlet to have these conversations, and interview these types of people, and to have that space of exploring this other side. [It] ended up being the right side, but not at the time—it was very dangerous.”
Today, Boothe’s show features a mix of political and cultural warriors who offer a different perspective from what you’ll hear from legacy media outlets. She posts new episodes every few days.
“The Truth With Lisa Boothe” is syndicated by iHeartPodcasts and available on all major platforms.
Baroness Caroline Cox has a long history of service in public office, but her passion for justice has led her not only to Great Britain's House of Lords but to war-torn, poverty-stricken nations around the world.
“The mission is to work for people who are suffering oppression and persecution in areas which are largely unreached by the major aid organizations like the [United Nations],” Cox says of the Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust, which she leads.
Cox, who joins this episode of "The Daily Signal Podcast,” says her organization intentionally goes where others can’t because the U.N., for example, “can only go places with permission of a sovereign government.”
The work is “risky” but also a “privilege,” says Cox, who is an independent member of the House of Lords who served as deputy speaker there from 1985 to 2005.
“The majority we work with happen to be Christians because Christians are suffering a lot of persecution around the world today,” Cox says.
The Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust also works with Muslims who are suffering in Sudan's Blue Nile State, as well as with Buddhists in Myanmar (formerly Burma), she notes.
On the podcast, Cox also talks about her fight for the rights of Muslim women who are forced to live under Sharia law in the United Kingdom, as well as her advocacy work for persecuted religious groups across the globe. She also describes the response in the U.K. to the Israel-Hamas war.
TOP NEWS | On today’s Daily Signal Top News, we break down:
Hunter Biden announces that he’s willing to publicly testify at a House Oversight and Accountability Committee meeting.
A fifth group of hostages are released, including 10 Israeli citizens and two foreigners.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee announces new legislation to expand school choice in his state.
The Bidens abandon hanging Christmas stockings for their grandchildren at the White House following backlash for leaving their granddaughter Navy off the list the past two years.
Harrison Tinsley’s son, Sawyer, will turn 4 in December. He likes to play hockey and football with his dad and also enjoys singing. According to his father, Sawyer is a happy little boy, but the child’s mother is attempting to raise him not as a boy, or as a girl, but nonbinary.
Tinsley has seen photos of his son in dresses on social media, and Sawyer told his dad that when his mother took him to Disneyland, “she wouldn't let him go on the rides unless he wore princess shoes.”
Tinsley is concerned for his son’s well-being and is seeking seek full legal and physical custody of Sawyer, and arguing that his son should be treated as a male.
