Daily Signal

Rob O’Donnell is a former New York City Police Department detective who was involved with the response to, and rescue efforts in, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, as well as the response to 9/11.

He joins "The Daily Signal Podcast” to talk about the 4th of July, patriotism, the contempt some show for the American flag, and how he would encourage Americans to embrace patriotism. 

"We promised on the 4th of July to become a more perfect union, and each American owes it to this nation to do their part to make this country a better union, to make us a better nation, to make us a better people, to make us the shining light of the world, which we are," O'Donnell says.

"There's no doubt we are. It falls on dark times lately with all the rhetoric that goes on, but it's up to the individual citizen of America, the person who lives here, the people who came here to make this their country, to pay into that philosophy that we are a more perfect union and we strive to be more perfect union."

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Loudoun County, Virginia, has become the nucleus of a growing movement of parents and educators united against teaching Critical Race Theory, a philosophy that categorizes individuals into groups of oppressors and victims based on their race, in school.

Michael Rivera, a father of two from Loudoun County, is an outspoken advocate against Critical Race Theory and other proposed leftist policies coming from the Loudoun County school board.

"As I delve more into the actual academic writings of critical race theory, it gets more and more concerning and scarier because it doesn't seem like there is any point at which there is atonement for being an oppressor," Rivera says "or if there is any way to resolve the issues that are supposed to be systematic without essentially tearing down all of the social constructs and all of the norms and government and education."

Rivera joins The Daily Signal Podcast to discuss how leftist policies have affected him and his children, as well as what he and other parents are doing to fight back.

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As the media goes, so goes the nation, to borrow from the old adage. 

The cultural influence of media—including movies, TV shows, and YouTube videos—is being felt with greater significance today than arguably any other time in history. James Fitzgerald founded ColdWater Media to promote the values so many Americans hold dear. 

The political “left has done a really good job of building business models around indoctrinating our kids,” Fitzgerald says. 

Fitzgerald uses film to explore some of the biggest issues and questions facing culture today, covering topics ranging from history and philosophy to education and economics. He joins "The Daily Signal Podcast" to discuss the mission of ColdWater Media and some of the company's latest projects, including a series sharing the history of all the American holidays.

Today's show also features an interview with John Papola, the CEO, creative director, and cofounder of the media company Emergent Order. Papola explains how he uses rap, humor, and storytelling to communicate American values through film.

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As a teenager, Ken Williams walked into a Christian bookstore looking for resources to help him overcome his same-sex attraction. He found none. 

Now, years later, Williams has authored “The Journey Out: How I Followed Jesus Away From Gay” to help other individuals seeking to leave homosexuality or struggling with same-sex attraction. 

The “book is for those that want a way out … ,” Williams says. “I'm not speaking to the people that are content with an LGBTQ life. But there are so many that are not fulfilled with that. It doesn't scratch the itch. And so for those that it's like, ‘This feels impossible. I feel disconnected from God over it,’ I'm telling you, it does not have to be that way.” 

Today, Williams is married with four children and is passionate about helping others find the freedom they desire. 

Williams is also a pastor at Bethel Church in Redding, California, and leads the Changed Movement with Elizabeth Woning, a Christian organization that works with people who are seeking to leave a homosexual lifestyle.

Williams joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to share his personal story and to explain how Christians can support those struggling with same-sex attraction. 

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Growing up in Silicon Valley, Martin Avila taught himself how to be a computer programmer and started a website development company when he was in high school. Even then, his politics didn't mesh with the dominant far-left ideas of California's tech hub.

Today, he's offering customers an an alternative in the marketplace of internet services—from application development to web hosting. His company is called RightForge, and it's a much-needed alternative at a time when Americans increasingly find themselves deplatformed and censored by Big Tech.

"I've got friends who are like, 'We need to rebuild Salesforce. We need to rebuild MailChimp.' And I said, 'That's exactly right. We do.' But in order to stand up those things, we needed the hard infrastructure," Avila says. "And that's what RightForge is. It's the ability for those companies to be created on the hard assets distributed across the globe."

Avila spoke to The Daily Signal about his plans for RightForge and why he's optimistic about marketplace solutions to Big Tech behemoths.

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How can the culture of the current news cycle—never ending and never positive—be tempered?

Jonathan Grella, the founder of JAG Public Affairs and Daily Malarkey, has some ideas.

"We really think that there is a place in the market for 'snark brevity,' as we call it. Like Axios coined the phrase, 'smart brevity,' and we do 'snark brevity,'" Grella said.

"There's a lot of competition for people's attention nowadays. So, you've got to be quick and to the point and in order to get and keep people's attention, you have to be creative and clever. So, we bring those couple of things together."

"It's not terribly difficult to come up with inspirations for our daily email blast because there's just a deluge of malarkey out there that we can opine on and poke fun at," Grella adds.

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It is no secret that the far left has infiltrated higher education. But Peter Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars, says his organization is doing all it can to expose the spread of woke ideology on America's college campuses.

The National Association of Scholars operates a cancel culture tracker to document each time a faculty member at a college or university is canceled by his or her employer. The group now has tracked hundreds of cases, Wood says.

"We decided once the numbers started to pile up that it would be a good thing to have one place where we can go to see how often this is happening," Wood says. "Virtually every week we get approached by another faculty member at some college or university saying, 'What can I do?'"

Wood joins "The Daily Signal Podcast" to explain the biggest issues he sees in higher education and what can be done to resolve them. He also discusses why the University of North Carolina denied tenure to Nikole Hannah-Jones, author of The New York Times' controversial 1619 Project.

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What is “wokeness” in America today? How did we get here? 

Are "woke" corporations a threat to this country? What risk do we run if we don’t push back? 

Vivek Ramaswamy, the author of the forthcoming book "Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America's Social Justice Scam," joins "The Daily Signal Podcast" to discuss wokeness and the dangers it poses to American society and beyond.

"If wokeism is a religion, then an employer can no longer force that religion down the throat of their employees any more than they could force down Christianity or Islam or any other religion. So, then, that raises the question of, well, 'Is wokeism a religion or not?'" Ramaswamy said.

"And I think on the facts, the answer is abundantly clear ... . There are certain words you can't say, certain clothes you can't wear, certain apologies you must recite, and an excommunication that follows, whether or not you recite it," he added.

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Amy Lannom Wilhite is executive director at 2ndVote, which keeps track of major companies' positions on social issues such as the transgender agenda.

"You wouldn't support [certain positions] at the ballot box with a candidate that you vote for, so why would you spend your dollars there?" asks Wilhite, who joins "The Daily Signal Podcast" to talk about how her organization helps Americans make consumer decisions based on their convictions.

"We say your first vote is at the ballot box and your second vote is with your wallet," Wilhite says. "It's the power of what you have in your pocket and with the money that you spend. And we want to educate consumers so that they can shop their values [and] so that we can make change with all the corporate activism that's going on."

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Last August, as Americans watched the fallout from a police shooting in Kenosha, Wis., pastor James E. Ward Jr. found himself in a position to help. The victim, Jacob Blake, had been shot seven times in the back. Violence erupted in Kenosha. Ward, pastor and founder of INSIGHT Church in the north Chicago suburb of Skokie, Ill., turned to prayer.

“I get this phone call on my cellphone from Julia Jackson,” Ward tells The Daily Signal. “Julia Jackson is one of our faithful intercessory-prayer team members in our church. Julia happens to be the mother of Jacob Blake Jr. … And we prayed that Jacob would live and not die. And we’re thankful that he’s alive today, and he’s doing well.”

The shooting left Blake paralyzed below the waist. Yet both Jackson, Blake’s mother, and Ward, her pastor, decided “to speak a different narrative. We weren’t calling for a hatred. We weren’t calling for destruction. We’re calling for peace and speaking the love of God over the city. And it really went viral.”

Ward rejects “victim mentality” and ideologies like critical race theory. He purposefully took a different approach from Black Lives Matter and found himself working with President Donald Trump last year. Now, he’s preaching this “new attitude” in a book called “Zero Victim.”

Ward visited The Daily Signal to discuss “Zero Victim: Overcoming Injustice With a New Attitude” and his experience in Kenosha last year. 

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