Author: The Daily Signal

Thousands of Cubans took to the streets in July to protest the county's communist government. But since then, two months later, we have heard very little about the pro-democracy movement in Cuba. 

Many of the individuals who led the protests are now in prison, says John Suarez, executive director at the Center for a Free Cuba. Despite that, Suarez says he remains hopeful for Cuba’s future. 

“[T]here's a profound desire by Cubans for change,” Suarez says, adding that what is needed now “is international solidarity, not just in the United States, but from the democratic world more broadly.”  

Suarez joins “The Daily Signal Podcast" to discuss the strength of the pro-democracy movement in Cuba and how America can play a role in moving the Caribbean island nation toward freedom.  

Also on today’s show, we read your letters to the editor and share a good news story about a simple way you can say thank you to two U.S. military veterans. 

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President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate is unconstitutional, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich says. 

Brnovich filed a lawsuit against the president and other Biden administration officials on Tuesday, arguing that the vaccine mandate is an assault on state sovereignty. 

"[W]e know from reading Federalist 45 and Federalist 51 that people like James Madison, who wrote the Constitution, expected the states to push back against the federal government," Brnovich says.

The attorney general, a Republican, also says, “Nowhere in the Constitution does it provide or does it allow the president or the federal government to require any sort of vaccines."

Last week, Biden signed an executive order mandating the vaccination of all federal employees and contract workers. The president also directed the Department of Labor to write a rule mandating all organizations with 100 employees or more to require all their employees be vaccinated or tested weekly. 

Brnovich says the president’s actions not only violate American freedoms, but also the equal protection clause of the Constitution.

The Arizona attorney general joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to explain what he hopes to accomplish through the suit.

We also cover these stories:

• Idaho puts in place crisis standards of care throughout the state, citing the number of COVID-19 patients requiring hospitalization.
• After an article from The Daily Signal and a press release from The Heritage Foundation, online retailer Amazon rescinds an ad ban for a new book released by Heritage Foundation scholar Mike Gonzalez. 
• According to a report by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General, migrants, staff, and border communities were exposed to greater risks of COVID-19 infection by the department’s failure to adequately screen incoming migrants for the disease.

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As debate rages in Congress over spending packages and election reform bills, Senate confirmations for President Joe Biden's executive branch nominees continue to move forward.

Some higher profile nominees—such as Neera Tanden as director of the Office of Management and Budget and David Chipman as director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives—attracted enough critical attention to sink their nominations.

But Biden nominees such as Tracy Stone-Manning, his choice to run the Bureau of Land Management, have flown largely under the radar.

"I think she's indicative of this pattern in the Biden administration of where they're just not bothering [to vet nominees] and they're just pushing [them] through," says Tom Jones, co-founder of American Accountability Foundation, a nonpartisan educational organization that highlights the administration's appointments.

Jones joins "The Daily Signal Podcast" to discuss some of Biden's most problematic nominees and why Americans should keep a close eye on the process.

We also cover these stories:

• Biden says he has "great confidence" in Gen. Mark Milley to continue as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff despite published reports that Milley secretly spoke with a Chinese counterpart near the end of the Trump administration.
• Former President Donald Trump criticizes Milley's reported actions, as do Sens. Marco Rubio and Rand Paul.
• Republican governors accuse the Biden administration of playing politics with the COVID-19 pandemic after the White House announces it will restrict distribution of an effective treatment to fight the coronavirus. 

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After President Joe Biden finished his speech last Thursday evening announcing new COVID-19 vaccine mandates, a reporter called out, “Is this constitutional?” Biden, leaving the room, did not stop to answer. 

The president’s new vaccine mandate directs the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, part of the Labor Department, to require all organizations with 100 employees or more either to test their employees weekly for COVID-19 or ensure they are vaccinated. Biden also signed an executive order requiring that all federal employees and contract workers be vaccinated. 

One of the most important questions to ask is whether OSHA "has the statutory authority ... to issue a rule of this type,” Heritage Foundation legal scholar John Malcolm says. 

Biden’s requirements likely will affect between 80 and 100 million Americans, some of whom now face the choice of taking a COVID-19 vaccine or losing their job. 

Malcolm, who is a senior legal fellow at Heritage and directs its Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to explain the constitutionality of vaccine mandates and the likelihood that litigation over a new OSHA rule will rise to the Supreme Court. (The Heritage Foundation is the parent organization of The Daily Signal.)

We also cover these stories:

• Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich announces the filing of a lawsuit against the Biden administration in response to proposed vaccine mandates.
• Secretary of State Antony Blinken appears before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to face questions about the hasty U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
• Senate Democrats unveil legislation to change federal election law in response to new Republican-led election reforms in Texas and Florida.

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The left is the dominant force in media today. Leftists control all the levers of cultural power, from the TV writers' room to the film sets in Hollywood. These leftists use their cultural power to dictate what you can and can't see.

The latest casualty is an episode of the hit sitcom "The Office," which aired on NBC from 2005 to 2013. Without explanation, Comedy Central removed an episode titled "Diversity Day" from rotation, likely in an attempt to avoid offending some viewers.

The episode mocks lead character Michael Scott (played by Steve Carell) as he makes a fool of himself by using various racial stereotypes, employing satire to illustrate just how terrible Scott’s racism is.

Emily Jashinsky, culture editor at The Federalist, joins "The Daily Signal Podcast" to talk about the new censorious left, as well as how conservatives can claim their place in the media landscape.

We also cover these stories:

• The House Foreign Affairs Committee holds its first hearing examining the rushed U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the fallout from it.
• House Democrats say they intend to raise taxes on corporations and the wealthy to finance their $3.5 trillion spending proposal.
• An upstate New York hospital system will have to "pause" delivering babies because of a staff shortage caused by some employees' refusal to get a COVID-19 vaccination.

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Judge Michael Warren felt conviction after his daughter asked him why there wasn't a specific time each year dedicated to remembering American history and celebrating the nation's founding. 

"We need to start a new celebration for America," Leah, only 10 at the time, told her father.

Warren, a judge on the 6th Circuit Court in Oakland County, Michigan, says he determined that he couldn't complain about that lack and then not do anything about it.

"So we decided to be audacious and to do a week," he recalls.

In 2012, father and daughter formally co-founded Patriot Week. Every Sept. 11-17, they invite all Americans to join them in remembering the patriots who founded our country, the documents that established our government, and the history we must never forget. 

Warren joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to share the history of Patriot Week and the resources offered by their website for families, schools, and communities to take part in the celebration. 

Also on today’s show, we read your letters to the editor and share a good news story about a police officer who saved nine lives during her first year of service. 

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Twenty years ago today, Islamist terrorists struck America. Across the country and around the world, Americans were left battered and broken in the aftermath of the first significant attack on U.S. soil since Pearl Harbor. Life could never be the same after Sept. 11, 2001.

But life didn't stop after that terrible day. Survivors had to go on, amid immense pain and suffering inflicted by those who would destroy our way of life. The question is how?

Tim Brown is a retired New York firefighter who survived 9/11. He's also a motivational speaker who uses his grief and trauma from that day as a tool to help others work through their own issues.

“For every person who was obese, pregnant, injured, disabled, there were four or five office workers, not cops or firemen, helping that person," Brown says of what he witnessed that day. "And it made me proud of humanity, because we help each other. That's what we do.”

Brown, 59, joins this bonus episode of "The Daily Signal Podcast" to discuss what he experienced on 9/11 and share how others can push past their own awful circumstances.  

 

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Sept. 11, 2001, is a date that looms large in the American psyche. For many of us, the horrific images on TV of burning and collapsing towers, civilians jumping to their deaths, and endless seas of rubble are forever etched in memory.

But for Americans born after 9/11, it can be difficult to fully comprehend the impact of a horrific event they didn't witness.

Niels Jorgensen is a retired New York City firefighter who helped dig through the debris at ground zero in search of the injured and missing. He is also the host of the "20 For 20" podcast, a show highlighting 20 heroic stories about 9/11 for the 20th anniversary of that horrible day.

Jorgensen joins "The Daily Signal Podcast" to share his stories, as well as some ways that we can honor the victims of 9/11 and keep their memories alive.

We also cover these stories:

• President Joe Biden requires all federal employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19.
• Some 200 non-Afghans, including Americans, fly out of Afghanistan on a Qatar Airways commercial flight, marking the first large-scale departure since the hasty U.S. withdrawal.
• Press secretary Jen Psaki defends Biden’s decision to ask former Trump administration officials to resign from advisory boards at military service academies.
• U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland announces that the Justice Department will go to court to challenge Texas' new pro-life law.

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Voters in 20 states have the option of tossing their governor out of office before the end of his or her term.

Still, since 1921, gubernatorial recalls have made it to the ballot in only three states—North Dakota, California, and Wisconsin. However, recalling local officials and state legislators has been more common.

The concept of recalling politicians commonly is thought of as part of the progressive movement of the early 20th century. But the debate over recall goes back much further, and states do it differently.

"Some have what's called a political recall law, like California, like Wisconsin, like Arizona, where you could do it for whatever reason you want to," Joshua Spivak, an authority on recall elections, says. "Other states have a very severe limit and those states ... rarely have recalls or have many fewer recalls, and then have almost none on the state level."

Spivak, senior fellow at the Hugh L. Carey Institute for Government Reform at Wagner College in New York, joins "The Daily Signal Podcast" to discuss the history of recall elections just days before California holds another one. Spivak is the author of a new book on the topic, "Recall Elections: From Alexander Hamilton to Gavin Newsom."

We also cover these stories:

• America is on track to default on the national debt if Congress doesn't raise the debt ceiling by mid-October, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warns. 
• Top Republicans on the House Homeland Security Committee express concern over the fate of Americans and Afghan allies stranded in Afghanistan.
• Workers remove a large statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in Richmond, Virginia, capital of the Confederacy.

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At Thomas Aquinas College, students study the original works of the great thinkers of Western civilization, among them Aristotle, St. Augustine, Chaucer, Descartes, Newton, Locke, Lincoln, Einstein, and Dostoevsky.

After reading these influential scholars, students engage in small group discussions about the works, their conversations guided by a professor.

But it's not just the curriculum and the classroom methodology that make Thomas Aquinas College different. Despite having campuses in liberal California and Massachusetts, this small Catholic college is bucking trends in higher ed.

As students across America must obtain higher and higher loans to pay for higher education, Thomas Aquinas College is committed to ensuring that no student needs to take out more than $19,000 in loans. It encourages religious practices by making Mass available daily. And it offers only single-sex dorms.

Paul O'Reilly, incoming president of Thomas Aquinas College, joins "The Daily Signal Podcast" to discuss the college's approach and results.

We also cover these stories:

• The Taliban announce formation of an interterm government in an attempt to formalize control over Afghanistan.
• Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., says new documents prove that Dr. Anthony Fauci lied to Congress about government funding for coronavirus research at a lab in Wuhan, China. 
• Texas Gov. Greg Abbot signs election reform legislation despite opposition from the left.

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