Daily Signal

The Heritage Foundation announced Thursday that Kevin Roberts will serve as the organization’s next president. 

Roberts says he is eager to advance the conservative movement and address some of the most pressing issues facing our nation today. 

"The top three [critical issues that we are facing right now] are education, education and education,” Roberts says, adding that conservatives will miss an “opportunity of a lifetime” if we cannot come together and address what is “broken about the education system.”  

The immigration crisis at America’s southern border and the “administrative state, the power of the executive branch to do the legislating rather than the legislative branch [doing it]” are also critical issues Roberts says he looks forward to working to fix. 

Roberts is coming to the Washington, D.C. based think tank after serving as president and CEO of the Texas Public Policy Foundation in Austin, Texas. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)

He joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to discuss his vision for the future of The Heritage Foundation and the conservative movement. 

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Cancel culture is endemic on college campuses. Every day come stories of professors, speakers, and students who run afoul of the radical left and suffer the consequences. With the frequency of these incidents, it can be difficult to keep track.

The College Fix, the news site dedicated to providing a conservative perspective on news from campuses across the nation, now offers what it calls the Campus Cancel Culture Database to document many examples.

"If you want to know the truth, if you want to know how America really used to be ... come to the database and we'll list everything that used to be there," says Jennifer Kabbany, editor-in-chief of The College Fix.

Kabbany joins "The Daily Signal Podcast" to talk about the database as well as offer solutions for those getting canceled at their universities.  

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Blacks who don’t adopt the doctrines of victimhood or critical social justice erode the narrative promoted by woke activists, Erec Smith, a professor of rhetoric at York College of Pennsylvania and co-founder of Free Black Thought, says. 

“The illogic that is inherent in a lot of anti-racist activism ... is absurd," Smith says.

Smith doesn't like how The New York Times' 1619 Project, authored by Nikole Hannah-Jones, only has furthered division within the nation.

As a professor of rhetoric, Smith, who is black and the author of “A Critique of Anti-Racism in Rhetoric and Composition: the Semblance of Empowerment,” says he is concerned that anti-racist dogma contains “no sincere attempt to persuade” but is instead “an attempt to intimidate." 

Smith joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” from the Parents Unite conference in Boston on Oct. 1 to discuss why blacks who oppose critical race theory are being “erased.” Smith also explains what he would talk about discuss Ibram X Kendi, author of “How to Be an Antiracist,” if he were given the opportunity. 

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What does it mean to be an American citizen today?

Victor Davis Hanson, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a professor emeritus at California State University, joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to talk about citizenship and other topics covered in his new book, “The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America.”

A bestselling author and one of The Daily Signal’s most popular columnists, Hanson’s latest book serves as a wake-up call for citizens to take their responsibility seriously.

“I think we have to just take a deep breath and say, ‘We have to reassert citizenship,'” Hanson says. “We’re starting to see it with local school boards, where somebody, somehow, thought that either school bureaucrats or locally elected people are not responsible for the will of the voters who either elected them or they were hired by elected officials through that vote. And yet parents are starting to object and hold them accountable.”

Hanson also reflects on historical comparisons to the tumultuous year 2020. And he explains why, despite the challenges we face today, he remains optimistic about America’s future.

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In a decision representing the triumph of anti-Columbus sentiment, President Joe Biden announced Friday he plans on officially commemorating Indigenous Peoples Day, rather than Columbus Day, on Monday.

The controversy surround Christopher Columbus has spanned decades. To some, Columbus serves as a symbol of bloodthirsty colonial expansion, a petty tyrant hellbent on pillaging native lands. To others, Columbus is a misunderstood and unjustified target of anti-American scorn who should be praised for his tolerance and kindness towards indigenous people.

Jarrett Stepman, a Daily Signal contributor and author of the book "The War on History: The Conspiracy to Rewrite America's Past," falls squarely in the latter camp.

Stepman joins "The Daily Signal Podcast" to discuss the long-running controversy surrounding the much maligned Columbus and to share the true story of the man who discovered America.

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Rhode Island mom Nicole Solas says she is just one of many parents “with legitimate concerns about our kids’ education.”

Solas drew national attention earlier this year when her local school board in South Kingstown, R.I., threatened to sue her over public record requests she made to learn what her local school district was teaching students. The school board ultimately opted against taking legal action against her. 

But Solas made headlines again in August, when a teachers union, the National Education Association Rhode Island, filed a lawsuit against her over the records requests. 

Solas made the requests to determine whether her child would be taught about gender identity and critical race theory ideology, two controversial issues that have led to an increase in parental attendance at school board meetings across the country this year. 

Parents “simply want to know what their kids are learning, and they want to have a say if what their kids are learning is not appropriate,” she says. 

Solas is actively speaking out against Attorney General Merrick Garland's order to the FBI and federal prosecutors to meet with federal, state, and local leaders to look into a “disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence” allegedly being made against “school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff.” 

Garland’s directive came less than a week after the National Association of School Boards asked President Joe Biden for assistance looking into whether threats against school board members and other school leaders could be classified as "domestic terrorism.”

Solas joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to share her personal story of speaking out against her local school board, and to discuss Garland’s order. 

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Northern Virginia continues to be a battleground between school boards and parents over what should be taught in public schools. The latest incident involves a series of books in Fairfax Public School libraries containing graphic depictions of sex between children and adults.

Stacy Langton, a mom from Fairfax County, Virginia, made headlines after she read aloud and showed images from those books, “Gender Queer” by Maia Kobabe and “Lawn Boy” by Jonathan Evison, during a School Board meeting.

While the books have been temporarily removed from the Fairfax County Public School libraries, Langton is still concerned that a child will be permanently affected by the obscene pictures.

"You're going to accidentally have your child stumble across this and open up. And once you see this, you can't unsee these images," she says.

Langton joins "The Daily Signal Podcast” to talk about that School Board meeting, and the larger issue of such books being in public school libraries in the first place.

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Small businesses around the country are attempting to bounce back from the devastating effects of the pandemic. But vaccine mandates imposed by the Biden administration, critics say, threaten to crater the progress made by small companies just as they’re starting to get back on their feet.

Alfredo Ortiz is president and CEO of Job Creators Network, an organization representing small businesses that is suing the Biden administration over its vaccine mandates.

"[Small businesses] were the ones that really particularly got hit hard," Ortiz says. "[W]hen we all look back now, it looks like big businesses just continue to get bigger, but our small businesses just really suffered."

"Whether it was mandate regulations in terms of the masks, whether it was seating arrangements, capacity, I mean you name it. They were just getting hit hard left and right," he says.

Ortiz joins "The Daily Signal Podcast" to talk about that lawsuit and the impact of government policies on small businesses.

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We’re in the middle of Hispanic Heritage Month, yet another 30 days of identity-focused celebration, following on the heels of Black History Month in February or Gay Pride Month in June.

But while the ubiquity of the terms "Hispanic” and "Latino” might make it seem that they've always been there, Heritage Foundation senior fellow Mike Gonzalez contends that those terms were invented by Marxist activists attempting to persuade so-called Hispanics that they were oppressed.

"I'm very proud of [my heritage], but this amalgamation, this artificial label that is created, the officiality of it is what I'm opposed to, because I know that it is done on purpose and with malice and forethought towards the country of the United States," Gonzalez says.

He joins "The Daily Signal Podcast" to discuss the Marxist history of terms like "Hispanic” and "Latino,” and to detail the radical left's plans to use identity politics to seize power.

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Greg Wrightstone, a geologist and expert reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has posted content on LinkedIn for years. It would often spark discussions and debates among his followers—and the occasional trolls.

That changed last month. Wrightstone, who serves as executive director of the CO2 Coalition, says he was banned from LinkedIn for posting factual information related to climate change. His appeal was denied, leaving him without a voice on a platform where he had cultivated a significant following.

Having been stripped of his ability to communicate on LinkedIn, he’s now speaking out and sharing his story publicly with The Daily Signal. Wrightstone warns others about social media censorship and the consequences of limiting discussion and debate.

Also on today's show, a conservative activist calls out Facebook for suppressing his posts.

For more than a decade, Texas native Don Kirchoff has used Facebook to share news and information with fellow conservatives. The longtime Heritage Foundation supporter and Heritage Action Sentinel frequently posts Daily Signal stories as well as content from other conservative organizations and media outlets.

But is anyone seeing them?

Many of his Facebook posts that have zero likes or comments, prompting Kirchoff to take his case directly to Facebook. While that has worked in the past, he’s noticed the problem more often.

Kirchoff captured screenshots and shared them with The Daily Signal as well as Facebook. (The Daily Signal is the multimedia news organization of Heritage.)

Kirchoff joined the podcast to explain the situation and raise awareness for other conservatives.

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