Today in the House Judiciary Committee, we had a key hearing on the issue of free speech on college campuses, and it erupted in an explosive testimony from Jasmine Jordan, a third year student at the University of Iowa, who serves as the Chairwoman of the Young Americans for Freedom chapter, a group whose events have been protested repeatedly by antifa.
00:12:37.200And yeah, doesn't that make obvious sense?
00:12:40.200That we're able to separate the person or their identity from the goals of a political movement?
00:12:46.200That's what is acceptable about criticizing globalists or globalism.
00:12:52.200There are a lot of globalists who I have no idea what their faith or background or ethnicity is.
00:12:58.200I see that what they're trying to do is deprive the American people and frankly other countries from their own sovereignty.
00:13:04.200And I believe that sovereignty is one of the greatest drivers of self-determination ever created on planet Earth.
00:13:10.200In the absence of it, we all just become cogs in a system, producers and consumers.
00:13:16.200Not identified with a common sense of pride.
00:13:20.200Something that allows us to break through some of these disagreements and concerns.
00:13:25.200So, I think that going forward, we have to understand that milquetoast speech and broadly accepted speech
00:13:34.200doesn't need the protection of the First Amendment.
00:13:37.200It is horrid speech, offensive speech, speech that we don't like, that we have to acknowledge has a right to permeate the marketplace of ideas.
00:13:46.200And the best way to confront that and defeat that is with more speech, better speech, and more thorough argument.
00:13:52.200And that is what I try to bring to the House of Representatives.
00:13:55.200Another person who brings that terrific argument is our good friend, Senator J.D. Vance.
00:14:00.200So, let me break down what's going on right now.
00:14:03.200You've got Mitch McConnell in the Uniparty and Joe Biden and Hakeem Jeffries all trying to lash Israel aid to Ukraine.
00:14:14.200And in the House, we passed an Israel aid bill that hollowed the money out of the IRS so that we weren't deficit spending.
00:14:22.200We weren't borrowing money from China so that we could provide aid to Israel.
00:14:26.200We would actually prioritize what we were doing in a fiscally responsible way.
00:14:30.200Well, in the Senate, they are doing everything they can to kill the House bill.
00:14:35.200And one man doing work, leaning in, representing the America First perspective and putting a fly in the ointment for Mitch McConnell just like I knew he would.
00:14:46.200Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio, we bring you now to the Senate floor.
00:14:50.200Many of my colleagues may forget that a matter of weeks ago, a matter of months ago, there were people in this chamber,
00:14:59.200there were people in the United States of America demanding that the State of Israel give money and weapons to the Ukrainians.
00:15:06.200Money and weapons that the Israelis are now using this very moment to defend themselves.
00:15:11.200The idea that these policies are not in tension with one another, the idea that what happens in Russia and Ukraine is separate from what happens in Israel is not just obvious,
00:15:23.200it is common sense and it has been borne out by the reality of the last couple of weeks.
00:15:27.200Now, my colleagues would like to collapse these packages.
00:15:30.200Too many of my colleagues would like to collapse these packages because they would like to use Israel as a political fig leaf for the President's Ukraine policy.
00:15:39.200But the President's Ukraine policy, just like the Israeli policy, should be debated.
00:15:44.200We should talk about it. We should discuss it. We should separate the costs and benefits and analyze them as distinct policies
00:15:51.200because that is what the American people deserve of their legislature.
00:15:55.200Now, there are many questions we could ask about the Ukraine policy, many issues that have gone completely unanswered.
00:16:01.200Number one, what is our end goal in Ukraine?
00:16:05.200You hear commonly that the goal is to throw the Russians out of every ounce of Ukrainian territory.
00:16:11.200And yet, when you talk to the President's own administration in private, they admit that that is a strategic impossibility.
00:16:18.200Let me repeat that. No rational human being in the President's administration believes that it is possible to throw the Russians out of every inch of Ukrainian territory.
00:16:30.200So why is that the public justification offered by many advocates of indefinite, unlimited Ukrainian aid?
00:16:37.200Because this debate is fundamentally dishonest.
00:16:40.200We are not telling the American people the truth because we know that if we did tell them the truth, they would not support an indefinite flow of money to Ukraine.
00:16:48.200What are we doing, ladies and gentlemen?
00:17:00.200Are we monitoring the fact that we have spent nearly $200 billion, if the supplemental passage passes, $200 billion to one of the most corrupt countries in the world?
00:17:12.200Do we have proper assurances that all that money is being spent on the things that we tell ourselves that it's being spent on?
00:17:22.200Because we have not had a real debate in this chamber.
00:17:24.200The American people, I think, should be ashamed of us for that fact.
00:17:28.200Let me offer just one final observation here.
00:17:33.200You have heard in this chamber, you have heard even today, that the Ukraine policy was born of a spirit of bipartisan agreement.
00:17:43.200That we had this moment where Democrats and Republicans recognized that it was very, very important to help the Ukrainians push back against the Russian attack.
00:17:53.200And, of course, we support and praise our Ukrainian friends.
00:17:56.200They've done a lot more than many people gave them credit for.
00:18:00.200But let's also be honest that for 30 years, Washington, D.C. has run on bipartisan foreign policy wisdom.
00:18:08.200And it has run this country to the ground with $1.7 trillion deficits, war after war after war,
00:18:15.200that has killed thousands of Americans, millions of other people, and has not led to the strategic strength of this country.
00:18:22.200It was great bipartisan agreement after September the 11th that threw Saddam out of Iraq.
00:18:28.200And, of course, a lot of people celebrated it until we now realize that Iraq is a client state of Iran.
00:18:34.200We empowered one of the worst regimes in the world with our bipartisan wisdom.
00:18:39.200Maybe what we should have is some bipartisan wisdom that the foreign policy consensus of this country for the last three decades has been a disaster.
00:18:48.200It's been a disaster for this country.
00:18:50.200It's been a disaster for our dead Marines, Army soldiers, Navy sailors, and Air Force airmen.
00:18:57.200It has been a disaster for this country's finances, and it has been a disaster for the entire world.
00:19:04.200Let's have a real debate. We haven't had one in 30 years.
00:19:32.200But as he was speaking, we got breaking news out of NBC.
00:19:38.200House subpoenas James and Hunter Biden in GOP-led probe of the president's family.
00:19:44.200Finally, Hunter Biden got a damn subpoena.
00:19:47.200When we had the California lottery winner instead of a constitutional lawyer in the Speaker's office, we weren't exactly seeing the subpoenas fly in a way that demonstrated sincerity and rigor to a real investigation.
00:20:01.200But now with Mike Johnson in the Speaker's office, we get the news.
00:20:05.200Republicans on Wednesday issued subpoenas to Hunter and James Biden, as well as Biden family associate Rob Walker, marking an escalation of the Republicans' impeachment inquiry into the president.
00:20:16.200The piece continues Comer's office that he plans to send additional subpoenas and transcribed interview requests later this week.
00:20:22.200The subpoenas and interview requests come after the special counsel overseeing the probe into Hunter Biden testified before the House Judiciary Committee behind closed doors earlier this week.
00:20:32.200That was an interview that I was a part of.
00:20:35.200And I can tell you this right now, David Weiss was not entirely forthcoming when it came to his communications with the Department of Justice, with other people who had jurisdictional claims to Hunter Biden matters scattered about the American Northeast and even on the West Coast.
00:21:14.200There are times when subpoenas are altered in scope, where they are negotiated, where they are redrafted.
00:21:23.100So this is a process that, frankly, Kevin McCarthy had blocked for quite some time and were behind as a consequence of Kevin McCarthy's poor leadership.
00:21:34.640But now we are doing what we need to do to get on track.
00:23:00.060Does the Bureau of Prisons retaliate against people based on constitutionally protected speech?
00:23:08.920I have been very clear that retaliation will not be stood for on my watch.
00:23:13.540And you're confident that that's being observed throughout the Bureau?
00:23:18.280I'm confident that message has been delivered, and if anyone engages in retaliation, we will hold them accountable.
00:23:23.840Are you familiar with the matter of John Strand?
00:23:26.020And people were posting on some of his social media platforms as concerns about the treatment he'd received at the Bureau.
00:23:32.340And then I sent a letter to you concerned about that because, like you, I don't want anyone to retaliate it against for constitutionally protected speech.
00:23:39.740And thereafter, I got a letter back from the aforementioned Office of Legislative Affairs in your office.
00:23:45.060And they say, in part, Mr. Strand was moved to a secure housing unit with increased supervision and frequent employee contact on September 26, 2023, pending completion of an investigation.
00:23:56.600So I guess my question is, when someone, is that like akin to what we would normally think about as solitary confinement, those words?
00:24:06.040Secure housing unit with increased supervision and frequent employee contact?
00:24:09.120We would use the word restrictive housing.
00:24:13.340Because this guy's a non-violent, he was never violent toward anyone, so I'm just wondering why the assets that we fund for the highest acuity violent people would be used for this purpose.
00:24:25.020Congressman, we use that special housing unit for individuals that engage in any sort of misconduct inside our institutions.
00:24:33.320I don't know what he was found to be guilty of by our hearings administrative process that would warrant his need to go into restrictive housing.
00:24:45.520But I assure you we have administrative processes that people have to go through before those placements actually occur.
00:24:52.200Yeah, I get that you can't know the conditions of every single prisoner throughout the Bureau.
00:24:56.640This is one I've ripened and sent to you because I am worried that throughout our Department of Justice and what we've endured, that there are some people who are sort of being used as pawns, and they're being mistreated in order to send a message to other people.
00:25:12.860And I'm grateful that you've said here that is not your doctrine, you don't want to see that happen, but you also haven't been able to share with us an entire confidence that that isn't happening in some cases.
00:25:21.940And I'm worried that it's happening here. Have you heard of the matter of Owen Schrayer?
00:25:27.880Very similar fact pattern. You know, somebody who'd sort of spoken out, was prominent in the public, was convicted as a consequence of activities on January 6th, and now feels as though there's specific Bureau of Prison retaliation.
00:25:41.760I don't think any group of people should be retaliated against, so I look forward to taking you up on the offer to perhaps go in and do some site visits and see how people are being treated and get that information directly.
00:25:51.580So I hope I get prompt cooperation from OLA.
00:25:57.460We will seek that cooperation. We will do those site visits, and we will share with you directly what is going on behind bars if there are our fellow patriots, our fellow Americans being mistreated as a consequence of politics,
00:26:09.600and what the Department of Justice is trying to scare everyone into believing that if someone is MAGA or America First or supports gun rights or supports a strong border, that they are somehow dangerous.
00:26:21.640That is what overlays these individual actions against individual people.
00:26:26.840And Owen and John and the many others, many names I'm seeing on the live stream, they should not have to bear a disproportionate brunt for a weaponized government.
00:26:37.780We should stand with them, and we should do more, and Congress should do more, and I should do more.
00:26:41.440That's why, frankly, we told McCarthy if he didn't get with the program on the January 6th tapes that his speakership would face a motion to vacate that ultimately turned out being successful,
00:26:52.680and there will be these tapes on the way.
00:26:54.860I expect them in tranches, and I expect Mike Johnson to get right on it.
00:27:00.700There's other breaking news on something we've talked about a great deal on Firebrand, and that is Senator Tuberville's holds on military promotions as a consequence of the DOD unilaterally without a change in the law,
00:27:13.380deciding that they're going to pay for travel and time off so that service members can have abortions.
00:27:18.460This from Bloomberg government, NDAA emerges as the way out of Tuberville's holds.
00:27:24.120The piece says, Republicans haven't yet found a way out of Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama's blockade of more than 450 promotions of military officers,
00:27:32.380but the must-pass defense policy bill has emerged as an option.
00:27:37.760GOP senators put their heads together in a meeting yesterday to find out a way forward.
00:27:41.720Though they didn't reach an agreement, everyone walking out described it as constructive and positive, including Tuberville himself.
00:27:48.480The defense authorization bill would be a solution, Tuberville told reporters after the meeting.
00:27:52.880The House version carries a prohibition on the Pentagon's travel and leave policy,
00:27:59.000and Tuberville indicated he would accept that as a solution if that prohibition stayed in the final conference bill that would head to President Joe Biden for his signature.
00:28:09.380Ladies and gentlemen, Tommy Tuberville has just given us all a lesson in leverage.
00:28:14.740See, we had this House bill going to explicitly state in policy, in law, actually voted on by our elected representatives,
00:28:23.600that we were not going to allow this type of subsidizing of the abortion industry through the Department of Defense.
00:28:30.940And Tommy Tuberville objected to the fact that in the absence of any change in law,
00:28:38.340any change in the Hyde Amendment that says no public money toward abortion,