By Mike Howell

We expected all sorts of fits
and furies when Democrats took control of the House, but Speaker Nancy
Pelosi’s unprecedented threat to disinvite President Donald Trump to the State
of the Union sets the bar surprisingly low.

And it makes Trump’s cancellation of her overseas trip all the more sweet.

On Wednesday, citing disingenuous security concerns, Pelosi sent the president the formal equivalent of a lunchtime high school bully’s “you can’t sit with us anymore.”

The irony of the speaker holding up government funding over
border security while simultaneously decrying the lack of security for the
speech was apparently lost on CNN, who praised Pelosi’s gambit as “a major
power move.”

Pelosi fails to recognize that in a partial shutdown,
essential services remain. Protecting the State of the Union is an essential
function, and its execution would be unaffected by the partial lapse in
appropriations funding.

Soon after the ink from Pelosi’s letter was dry, Homeland
Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen corrected
Pelosi by stating that “the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Secret
Service are fully prepared to support and secure the State of the Union.”

Furthermore, Pelosi commands a Capitol Police force with a near
half-billion dollar annual budget. The
Capitol Police would play the largest role in securing the event and are completely
unaffected by the current lapse in appropriations funding. In fact, Pelosi’s
security detail was able to seamlessly accompany her to Hawaii during her
vacation in the early days of the shutdown.

In falsely citing—without evidence—security as the reason
for the disinvitation, Pelosi failed to address what changed from when she
initially invited the president two weeks ago, when the government was in the
same funding predicament.

Perhaps with the weakening of her position, and a reminder
that Trump’s 2018 speech garnered almost 50 million viewers, she decided to do
all she could to deny her political opponent the opportunity to continue to
make …read more

From:: Daily Signal – Feed

By Fred Lucas

President Donald Trump took action to keep House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., in Washington just minutes before she was said to leave for Europe and the Middle East on a military flight.

“Dear Madame Speaker: Due to the shutdown, I am sorry to inform you that your trip to Brussels, Egypt, and Afghanistan has been postponed,” Trump wrote. “We will reschedule this seven-day excursion when the shutdown is over.”

This come one day after Pelosi said Trump should postpone the the State of the Union address until the partial government shutdown is over. The speaker has the formal authority to invite the president to address a joint session of Congress.

The Trump letter on Thursday to Pelosi continues:

In light of the 800,000 great American workers not receiving pay, I am sure you would agree that postponing this public relations event it totally appropriate.

I also feel that, during this period, it would be better if you were in Washington negotiating with me and joining the strong border security movement to end the shutdown. Obviously, if you would like to make your journey by flying commercial, that would certainly be your prerogative.

I look forward to seeing you soon and even more forward to watching our open and dangerous southern border finally receive the attention, funding and security it so desperately deserves!

A congressional delegation, not just Pelosi, was scheduled to take the flight–set to leave at 3 p.m. Thursday. The letter was sent shortly before 2:30.

“We want to keep her in Washington,” White House press secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters. “If she leaves, she guarantees that the second round of paychecks to 800,000 federal workers won’t go out. The deadline to make that deal is midnight on Tuesday.”

Although the Defense Department is not among agencies affected by the shutdown, the president …read more

From:: Daily Signal – Feed

By Daren Bakst

For years, the Environmental Protection Agency has been issuing some of the costliest regulations in U.S. history, especially when it comes to its air-pollution regulations.

The EPA has moved forward with these regulations, even when there have been little to no benefits to achieving the stated objectives of the rules. If this meant there was more harm than good, that was fine to the EPA.

The Trump administration’s EPA is trying to end this abuse.

A few weeks ago, the EPA released a proposed rule addressing the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards rrule for power plants, the so-called “MATS rule.”

When the Obama EPA finalized the MATS rule in 2012, it didn’t bother to consider costs when deciding whether to regulate mercury and other hazardous air-pollutant emissions from power plants.

That led to a Supreme Court case, Michigan v. EPA, challenging the agency’s failure to properly consider whether the rule was “appropriate and necessary,” as required under the relevant section of the Clean Air Act (Section 112).

In 2015, the court held that the EPA, because of that “appropriate and necessary” language, must consider costs.

In 2016, the Obama administration “considered” costs and published a supplemental finding concluding that the MATS rule was “appropriate and necessary.” That was despite the fact that the benefits of reducing mercury emissions as determined by the Obama administration were $4 million to $6 million annually, and the costs of reducing such emissions was $7.4 billion to $9.6 billion annually.

The costs were as much as 2,400 times greater than the benefits.

When the Obama EPA finalized the MATS rule in 2012, it didn’t bother to consider costs when deciding whether to regulate mercury and other hazardous air-pollutant emissions from power plants.

The Obama administration’s EPA justified the rule based on what are called …read more

From:: Daily Signal – Feed

By Rob Bluey

Sen. Mike Braun, R-Ind., joins us to discuss how he’s ready to change Washington, D.C. The businessman-turned-politician shares why he advocates term limits and wants lawmakers to lose pay if they don’t pass a budget on time. Listen to the podcast or read the transcript below.

We also cover these stories:

• Second lady Karen Pence is under fire for teaching at a Christian school that holds traditional values on marriage and sexuality.
• House Speaker Nancy Pelosi asks President Donald Trump to postpone his State of the Union address.
• The Democratic Party has officially withdrawn its endorsement of the Women’s March.

The Daily Signal podcast is available on Ricochet, iTunes, SoundCloud, Google Play, or Stitcher. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. You can also leave us a message at 202-608-6205 or write us at [email protected]. Enjoy the show!

This transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Rob Bluey: We’re joined on The Daily Signal Podcast today by Sen. Mike Braun of Indiana. Senator, welcome.

Sen. Mike Braun: Thank you.

Bluey: You’ve been here in Washington for just about two weeks now, and I want to begin by asking you to share with our listeners your path to Congress because in some ways it’s an unusual path, having started in the private sector. How did those principles that you learned in the private sector motivate you to try to change the things then that are functioning, or not functioning, here in Washington, D.C.?

Braun: Well, I signed a term limits pledge when I did make it as a campaign statement, and of course I will stick with that. … And it’s happened in gubernatorial races where people have come from the outside …read more

From:: Daily Signal – Feed

By Kevin Mooney

America is “the gold standard for environmental progress,” Andrew Wheeler, the president’s nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency, told a Senate committee Wednesday during his confirmation hearing.

Committee Democrats, while accusing him of favoring the fossil fuel industry, avoided personal attacks on Wheeler, who took over as acting EPA administrator after Scott Pruitt’s resignation in July under partisan fire.

Wheeler highlighted the Trump administration’s regulatory reform agenda and its goals in an opening statement to the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.

“In 2018, EPA finalized 13 major deregulatory actions, saving Americans roughly $1.8 billion in regulatory costs,” Wheeler said. “To date, under President [Donald] Trump, EPA has finalized 33 major deregulatory actions saving Americans almost $2 billion. The U.S. is the gold standard for environmental progress.”

Wheeler said policymakers don’t need to make a trade-off between economically damaging government regulations and environmental protection.

“Through our deregulatory actions, the Trump administration has proven that burdensome federal regulations are not necessary to drive environmental progress,” he said. “Certainty, and the innovation that thrives in a climate of certainty, are key to progress.”

Democrats on the committee, however, said Wheeler is biased toward producers of coal and other fossil fuels and ignored the need to protect the environment and for “urgent action” to prevent catastrophic climate change.

They asked Wheeler, 54, to offer his opinion on the recent findings of the National Climate Assessment, an interagency government report, and the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Democrats also pressed Wheeler on his relationship with the coal industry and took the opportunity to comment on the partial government shutdown and its impact on the EPA’s ability to perform vital functions.

Committee Republicans credited Wheeler with working to “provide greater regulatory certainty” while upholding environmental standards. They cited his long record of public service, including work …read more

From:: Daily Signal – Feed

By John Stossel

This government shutdown is now longer than any in history.
The media keep using the word “crisis.”

“Shutdown sows chaos, confusion and anxiety!” says The Washington Post. “Pain spreads widely.”

The New York Times headlined, it’s all “just too much!”

But wait. Looking around America, I see people going about their business—families eating in restaurants, employees going to work, children playing in playgrounds, etc. I have to ask: Where’s the crisis?

Pundits talk as if government is the most important part of America, but it isn’t.

We need some government, limited government. But most of life, the best of life, goes on without government, many of the best parts in spite of government.

Of course, the shutdown is a big deal to the 800,000 people who aren’t being paid. But they will get paid. Government workers always do—after shutdowns.

Columnist Paul Krugman calls this shutdown “Trump’s big libertarian experiment.” But it’s not libertarian. Government’s excessive rules are still in effect, and eventually government workers will be paid for not working. That makes this a most un-libertarian experiment.

But there are lessons to be learned.

During a shutdown when Barack Obama was president, government officials were so eager to make a point by inconveniencing people that they even stopped visitors from entering public parks.

Trump’s administration isn’t doing that, so PBS found a new crisis: “Trash cans spilling … [P]ark services can’t clean up the mess until Congress and the president reach a spending deal,” reported “NewsHour.”

But volunteers appeared to pick up some of the trash.

Given a chance, private citizens often step in to do things government says only government can do.

The Washington Post ran a front-page headline about farmers “reeling … because they aren’t receiving government support checks.”

But why do farmers even get “support checks”?

One justification is …read more

From:: Daily Signal – Feed

By Rachel Greszler

When a couple has a child, the woman’s earnings tend to decrease, while the man’s increases. This is known as the “motherhood penalty” and “fatherhood premium.”

Economists have pegged the resulting gap at about 20 percent of earnings over the long run, due to changes in labor-force participation, hours of work, and wage rates.

Advocates of complete pay parity conjecture that gender-based discrimination is to blame for the gap in pay between mothers and fathers, suggesting that employers wrongly perceive women as less valuable once they become mothers and fathers as more valuable.

Fresh evidence from a study by Valentin Bolotnyy and Natalia Emanuel of Harvard University suggests the “motherhood penalty” and “fatherhood premium”—at least at the level experienced in this study—is the result of choices mothers and fathers make, and not gender-based discrimination.

The study, “Why Do Women Earn Less Than Men? Evidence from Bus and Train Operators,” examined the earnings and hours of male and female operators within the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority.

The unionized environment within the transportation authority prohibits gender-based discrimination. Even if a manager wanted to discriminate, they couldn’t, because pay and workers’ options depend exclusively on tenure.

Despite the rigid pay system, women made 11 cents less, 89 cents on the dollar, compared with men.

The authors concluded that the gap “can be explained entirely by the fact that, while having the same choice sets in the workplace, women and men make difference choices.”

As a whole, women chose to work only half as many overtime hours—80 hours per year, compared with 160 hours for men.

Women also took an average of 17.5 days of unpaid leave (often to avoid undesirable schedules) through the Family and Medical Leave Act, compared with 10 days of leave for men. (The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 requires employers with 50 or more …read more

From:: Daily Signal – Feed

By Katrina Trinko

Ignore the Women’s March: Women are actually hurt by abortion and the sexual revolution. Lila Rose of Live Action joins us to discuss that, why she has hope for Gen Z, and how you can change people’s minds on abortion. Plus: Jarrett Stepman joins us to chat about the controversial view of masculinity in a new Gillette ad.

We also cover these stories:

• A federal judge orders the Trump administration not to ask a question about citizenship in the upcoming 2020 census.
• The Pentagon has decided to keep troops on the border through September.
• There’s a new caravan starting in Honduras, with hundreds headed to Mexico or the U.S.

The Daily Signal podcast is available on Ricochet, iTunes, SoundCloud, Google Play, or Stitcher. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. You can also leave us a message at 202-608-6205 or write us at [email protected]. Enjoy the show!

The post Podcast: Women Are Hurt by Abortion, the Sexual Revolution appeared first on The Daily Signal.

…read more

From:: Daily Signal – Feed

By Jarrett Stepman

For some reason, one of the world’s largest razor companies decided to air a commercial chastising “toxic masculinity.”

Gillette’s commercial, which debuted on Sunday, begins with the flimsy premise that traditional masculine culture promotes unrestrained violence and sexual urges, while other men condone it by shrugging and saying, “Boys will be boys.”

The commercial’s solution is to quote journalists and celebrities scolding men to fix themselves—somewhat ironic, given the fact that the most egregious #MeToo stories have come from journalists and celebrities.

The message is that by curbing traditional masculinity—and, um, by not being jerks—men can somehow become “the best that a man can be.”

That’s hardly a bad message, but doesn’t it seem a bit hollow and even obnoxious?

The commercial concludes: “The boys watching today will be the men of tomorrow.”

This all seems like a strange message for a razor blade company to be sending, but an Axios report may shed some light on why Gillette has suddenly taken the path of corporate virtue signaling.

“Gillette’s share of the U.S. men’s razor business fell to 54 percent in 2016, from 70 percent in 2010,” according to Axios. “Most of the market share has shifted to Dollar Shave Club, Harry’s, etc., according to the [Interactive Advertising Bureau’s] latest brand economy study.”

It’s hard to say what the Gillette commercial has to do with shaving, but it does follow the trend of companies using lame, ham-handed virtue signals—like Nike’s Colin Kaepernick ad from last September—to boost sales with certain demographics, while hoping that the loss of others won’t hurt their bottom line.

Yet one wonders exactly who Gillette is trying to appeal to. Loyal Gillette customers are now boycotting the company left and right.

I’ve used @Gillette razors my entire adult life but this absurd virtue-signalling …read more

From:: Daily Signal – Feed

By Hanna Bogorowski

President Donald Trump celebrated low unemployment numbers for veterans Tuesday on Twitter while simultaneously taking a jab at the media.

“Just announced that Veterans unemployment has reached an 18 year low, really good news for our Vets and their families,” Trump wrote. “Will soon be an all time low!”

The president appears to be referencing recent media reports, including one from the Military Times, which cites data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and claims that “unemployment among post-9/11 veterans is the lowest it’s ever been.”

The unemployment rate for all generations of veterans fell to 3.5 percent in 2018, according to a Jan. 4 press release from the Department of Labor, which is down from 3.7 percent in 2017 and reflects the lowest annual average unemployment rate for veterans since 2000.

December 2018 saw an even lower unemployment rate of 3.2 percent.

Just announced that Veterans unemployment has reached an 18 year low, really good news for our Vets and their families. Will soon be an all time low! Do you think the media will report on this and all of the other great economic news?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 15, 2019

Trump also took the chance to question whether the media would report on the numbers, given that it’s “good news.”

“Do you think the media will report on this and all of the other great economic news?” Trump asked.

Trump subsequently cheered that Volkswagen will be spending $800 million to expand a factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

“They will be making Electric Cars. Congratulations to Chattanooga and Tennessee on a job well done. A big win!”

Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news …read more

From:: Daily Signal – Feed