Annabella Rockwell was thrilled when she learned she had been accepted at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, the oldest women's college in America.
“I was so excited,” Rockwell said. “I was so eager to learn.”
But the more she learned in her college classes, the more her joyful personality waned, her mother says.
By junior year, a “serious robot came home” from college, Melinda Rockwell says of her daughter.
In gender studies classes, the college student learned about the “patriarchy and the oppression that we experience in this country,” and she adopted these views as her own.
Melinda Rockwell began to seek professional help from cult specialists to learn she could rescue Annabella from the indoctrination she experienced in college.
Mother and daughter join “The Daily Signal Podcast” to explain how Annabella found a way out of the woke cult, and ultimately became development director for PragerU.
In fiscal year 2022, Customs and Border Protection seized more than 14,000 pounds of fentanyl. The lethal opioid drug has become a leading cause of death in adults ages 18-45.
“The fentanyl seizures continue to increase, each fiscal year, and we know that of those seizures, we're probably only apprehending 5% to 10% of the drugs that are being smuggled into the country,” Rep. Michael Guest, R-Miss., says.
“This is just a commonsense piece of legislation,” Guest says, adding that it should “gain bipartisan support in Washington, D.C., next Congress.”
Guest joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to explain who is making the fentanyl coming across the border and how the drugs are getting into the hands of Americans. Guest also addresses concerns over a worsening border crisis as Title 42, a Trump-era policy that allows Border Patrol to quickly expel illegal migrants from America, is expected to expire in less than a week.
Congressional lawmakers introduced bipartisan legislation Tuesday aimed at banning the social media app TikTok nationwide.
“TikTok is digital fentanyl that’s addicting Americans, collecting troves of their data, and censoring their news," Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., said in a press release. "It’s also an increasingly powerful media company that’s owned by ByteDance, which ultimately reports to the Chinese Communist Party—America’s foremost adversary.”
Gallagher introduced the legislation with Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill.
The language of the bill says its goal is to “protect Americans from the threat posed by certain foreign adversaries using current or potential future social media companies that those foreign adversaries control to surveil Americans, learn sensitive data about Americans, or spread influence campaigns, propaganda, and censorship.”
Jake Denton, a research associate in The Heritage Foundation's Tech Policy Center, weighs in on the legislation and its goal in this episode of "The Daily Signal Podcast." (The Daily Signal is Heritage's multimedia news organization.)
"This bill is essentially building off the momentum that these state governors have had in the last few weeks we've seen. I believe we're close to almost 10 governors now who have banned [TikTok] from government devices," Denton says.
"And I think the question for all these Americans is, well, if it's unsafe for these government employees, right, we don't want it on their phones. [So] why is it OK to be on our phones? And more specifically, why is it OK to be on our kids' phones?" Denton asks.
On the podcast, Denton discusses the legislation to ban TikTok, whether he believes it's likely to become law, and the app's impact on users.
LGBT activist and Biden administration official Sam Brinton no longer is an employee of the Energy Department. The news came Monday after Brinton, who identifies as nonbinary and gender-fluid, was accused in recent days of stealing two suitcases—one each from airports in Las Vegas and Minneapolis-St. Paul.
It wasn't clear whether Brinton, 35, was fired or resigned from his position in the Biden administration, where he was deputy assistant Energy Department secretary for the Office of Spent Fuel and Waste Disposition.
Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., had tweeted Friday: “Sam Brinton, let's call it what it is: a person clearly unfit for a high-level national security role was hired because the [Biden] Admin prioritizes wokeness over competence.”
Tyler O’Neil, managing editor of The Daily Signal, joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to discuss Brinton’s departure from the Energy Department and why the Biden administration should prioritize employees' competence over their sexual identities.
Colder temperatures are just around the corner in Europe as many people there brace for an energy crisis this winter.
"Well, the latest is that temperatures are dropping in Europe, prices of electricity and other heating fuels have quadrupled, and it's very difficult for people to afford these high prices," says Diana Furchtgott-Roth, director of the Center for Energy, Climate, and Environment at The Heritage Foundation. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of Heritage.)
"We've had Benny Peiser, who's head of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, come and speak at Heritage, and he told us that prices in Britain were four times what they had been in previous years," Furchtgott-Roth says. "The government is putting a cap on these prices, so people are not feeling the full effect of the prices until April, but it's very difficult for everybody."
Furchtgott-Roth joins "The Daily Signal Podcast" to discuss more about the energy crisis in Europe, how the U.S. can avoid landing in a similar position, and how Europeans can conserve energy this winter.
