Next Friday will mark one year since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a war against Ukraine, a war that many anticipated would end in a matter of days after the invasion. Yet, Ukraine, with the support of America and its European allies, has succeeded in significantly weakening Russia and preventing its victory.
For Putin, the current military campaign in Ukraine is "one of greatly reduced expectations," Victoria Coates, a senior research fellow in international affairs and national security at The Heritage Foundation, says. "He has gone from wanting to capture the entire country to just trying to capture some small chunks of eastern Ukraine, so that is in and of itself something of a victory, for a starter."
Although U.S. support for Ukraine is necessary, Coates says, the Biden administration owes it to the Americans to ensure that the billions of dollars in aid sent to Ukraine is being used as intended, and that a plan exists for how the U.S. will provide assistance moving forward.
Coates joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to discuss the situation on the ground in Ukraine, how long the war that began last Feb. 24 likely will go on, and reports of Russia's stealing Ukrainian children and placing them in “reeducation camps.”
The Heritage Foundation celebrates its 50th anniversary Thursday, and Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts is reflecting on the leading conservative think tank's success over the past five decades.
"There are a lot of ways I would put that, but I think most succinctly it would be [that] Heritage has always been willing without fail to state the truth, even in those times when stating the truth comes with some risk," Roberts says on today's episode of "The Daily Signal Podcast."
"In other words, ... often stating the truth about fiscal restraint or the lack thereof, stating the truth about America's social and cultural weakness, stating the truth about violating federalism," he says.
Roberts became president of The Heritage Foundation in October 2021 after serving for five years as president and CEO of the Texas Public Policy Foundation in Austin, Texas. (The Daily Signal is Heritage's multimedia news organization.)
Roberts joins "The Daily Signal Podcast" to discuss Heritage's success since its founding in 1973, what he hopes to see the think tank accomplish over the next five decades, and how he, as Heritage president, is working to build the think tank's role in the conservative movement as America's outpost in Washington.
Suparna Dutta says she thought the exceptional nature of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence “was common sense,” but her recent experience with the Virginia Board of Education proved otherwise.
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin appointed Dutta—a mother, engineer, and Indian immigrant—to the Virginia Board of Education in July.
“I was thrilled and very honored to be appointed by him as a voice of parent advocacy to the board,” Dutta says.
But the Virginia state Senate blocked Dutta’s appointment to the board just one week after she defended the Declaration of Independence and Constitution and criticized socialism and communism during a board meeting. She was even accused of being "aligned with white supremacists" for her views on America's founding documents.
The Privileges and Elections Committee of the state Senate originally voted to confirm Dutta to the Virginia Board of Education, but after she defended the founding documents, Democratic state Sen. Ghazala Hashmi introduced an amendment to remove Dutta from the board.
“I do believe that the founding of this nation was something remarkable,” Dutta says, adding that “the documents that were drawn up, starting with the Declaration of Independence and then the Constitution, first and foremost, put the unalienable rights and our individual freedom first and foremost.”
Dutta joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to share her story of being kept off the Virginia Board of Education, and to explain the ways in which woke ideology has influenced school boards and education across the country.
More than three decades ago, the U.S. faced the threat of the Soviet Union in the Cold War.
Now, the U.S. might be facing a situation with China that could be more dangerous than at any moment in the Cold War, in the wake of the shooting down Feb. 4 of a Chinese spy balloon after it flew over U.S. territory.
“Well, one of the more concerning reports out of this whole thing is the fact that the Pentagon rang up their buddies over in China, a hotline, and said, ‘We’re concerned about this thing, whatever it is,’ and nobody on the Chinese side answered the phone,” Dakota Wood, senior research fellow in defense programs in The Heritage Foundation’s Center for National Defense, says on today’s episode of “The Daily Signal Podcast.” (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)
“So, even during the heights of the Cold War, our U.S. Pentagon and their counterparts in the Soviet Union would at least keep these communication lines open. We’ve got communication lines with Russia as it continues to be involved in the war in Syria,” Wood says. “So, the ability to talk to each other really helps to mitigate the risk of misinterpreting something or a road to war or something along those lines.”
Wood joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to discuss the Chinese spy balloon, whether we are seeing heightened aggression from China, and how the downed spy balloon compares with the three other downed aerial objects since.
"Whenever you call a book something like 'How to Save the West,' you have a certain imposter syndrome, or it's impossible not to feel a kind of trepidation, but that's actually why I wrote the book in a certain sense, that feeling of just overwhelm and despair that I think we all can relate to," Klavan, associate editor at the Claremont Institute, says on today's podcast.
Klavan adds:
What's the role of a human being? What's our place in the universe? What is good and what is evil? Those sorts of questions actually are human-sized.And so I wanted to give people just a taste of some of the wisdom that we can get if we access these great texts and incorporate their wisdom into our lives, because we think of these things as kind of inaccessible or beyond us, but actually they're there for you, and the book is designed to equip you with some of that.
Klavan joins "The Daily Signal Podcast" to discuss his new book, what he thinks the West needs to be saved from, and what he views as the biggest threat to the West.
