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--:-- Host: President Biden is racing to Trump-proof much of his policy in the months leading up to the election, signing several final regulations in the past few weeks. What would this mean for an incoming Trump administration? And how do most Americans say Biden is doing economically?
--:-- Host: I'm Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley with guest host Bhatia Ungar-Sargon, opinion editor at Newsweek. It's Thursday, May 9th, and this is Morning Wire.
--:-- Host: The influx of illegal immigrants is straining the U.S. health system. Now, one of the nation's largest hospital networks has filed for bankruptcy. And will it be Biden or Trump in November? Experts say only a small percentage of the American electorate will decide. Although Biden won the popular vote by 7 million, he won the Electoral College by fewer than 44,000 votes. It's a minuscule number.
--:-- Host: Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know. extended 30-day free trial at monarchmoney.com slash wire. That's M-O-N-A-R-C-H money.com slash wire for your extended 30-day free trial.
--:-- Host: With the 2024 election looming, President Biden is scrambling to Trump-proof his agenda in an attempt to make his policies harder to undo in the future. Here are the details and the latest on how Americans feel about Biden's handling of the presidency is Daily Wire's senior editor, Cabot Phillips.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Yeah, with November approaching and a second Trump term now a very real possibility, officials in the Biden administration are racing to cement a slew of new regulations that would be difficult to overturn should Trump take office again.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: For context, back in 2017, when Trump first took office, he immediately began signing resolutions and working with Congress to wipe out Obama-era regulations on everything from education and the environment to healthcare and energy. Those close to Trump say that he plans to go even further should he win this November, and that has Biden world in a frenzy.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Keep in mind, because Republicans gained control of the House in 2022, President Biden has not been able to get much legislation through Congress the last two years. That has left him to implement his agenda largely through executive action, which is easier to overturn by a future president.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Right. So what exactly is the administration trying to do to prevent that? Well, it's a bit complicated, but this all centers around the Congressional Review Act, which essentially gives Congress the power to quickly overturn regulations passed by a president just before they leave office.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Under the law if Trump were to win a second term in November and Republicans won the Senate and held control of the House any regulation passed in the last 60 working days of this session of Congress could be overturned by a simple majority and then presidential signature So looking ahead that 60 loopback window as they call it would begin at the end of May when you take into account recess.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: With that deadline looming, President Biden is now scrambling to push through as many regulations as possible. Last month, his administration had its busiest regulatory month on record, pushing three dozen new regulations through the FTC, EPA, HHS, Labor Department, And the list goes on.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: But it's worth noting, new regulations often take months or even years to be fully implemented. And if Trump does take office, he could sign an order freezing all regulations that have not yet gone into place entirely. So he'd have a number of options at his disposal.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Now, this all comes as Biden faces some strengthening headwinds, including public opinion. We've seen new polling showing Americans are more pessimistic than ever about his handling of the economy. And this is at the same time as he's trying to cement his policy agenda.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Yeah, he may be trying to cement his legacy, but the reality is most Americans are already less than fond of that legacy, especially on the economy. According to Gallup, during his first year in office, nearly 60 percent of Americans said they had confidence in Biden to do the right thing on the economy.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Today, just 38 percent of Americans say the same. That is one of the lowest marks recorded for any president in modern political history. And if you look at just independents, that number drops even further to 34%. And even among his own party, nearly one in five Democrats say they do not have confidence in Biden's economic leadership.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Those numbers would be bad enough on their own, but they get even worse for the White House when you look at Trump's standing on the topic. The same poll found that 47% of Americans say they're confident in Trump's economic leadership, while very importantly, 45% of independents say the same. That gives him an 11-point lead over Biden among independents there.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Yeah, significant. Yet the president was in battleground state Wisconsin yesterday promoting his economic achievements. Tell us about that.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Yeah, this marked Biden's fourth trip this year to Wisconsin, a state he won by less than a point in 2020 and obviously views as critical to his reelection odds. Speaking yesterday in the town of Racine, the president touted the supposed strength of the economy under his watch, particularly in Wisconsin.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: We're seeing a great American comeback story all across Wisconsin and, quite frankly, the entire country. The bottom line is we're doing what's always worked in this country, giving people a fair shot, leaving nobody behind and grow the economy in the middle, out of the bottom, up, not the top down. When that happens, everybody does what.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Biden went on to urge voters to reelect him so he could, quote, finish the job. But again, poll after poll, especially in battlegrounds, shows that voters don't really seem to want him to finish the job and would prefer Trump's economic policies.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: In Wisconsin, for example, polling shows the economy is far and away the number one issue among voters. And President Trump leads by 18 points when folks there were asked which candidate they trust more on the topic. A separate poll in Wisconsin found that just 42% of voters think the economy is strong under Biden. When asked how it was under Trump, 62% said it was strong. So a 20-point disparity.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And it's worth noting, we see similar numbers in other battleground states. In Michigan, for example, just 38% gave the Biden economy a thumbs up, while 62% approved of Trump's handling. And those exact same numbers were seen again in Pennsylvania, another crucial battleground.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: So more broadly, as Biden rushes to sort of codify his economic policies, the majority of Americans appear to simply not want them. We continue to see the national debate return to inflation.
--:-- Host: Cabot, thanks for reporting. Anytime.
--:-- Host: The largest privately owned hospital network in the U.S. has filed for bankruptcy. Years of controversial financial decisions and mounting medical costs from uninsured immigrants drove the company into insolvency risking access to health care for millions of Americans Here to talk about the fate of Stewart Health Care and the strain illegal immigration has put on the American health care system is Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Hey Tim, so a major collapse here. What do we know?
--:-- Tim Pierce: It looks like this was years in the making. Stewart has a history of questionable financial decisions, such as selling the land its hospitals are located on and signing long-term leases instead. Its financial problems may also have been exacerbated by the pandemic.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Company executives said that the smaller community hospitals it operates aren't reimbursed by Medicare and Medicaid at the same rates as large hospitals. And finally, executives said that increasing costs from serving uninsured immigrants cut into the company's finances as well.
--:-- Tim Pierce: The last reason is part of a trend we've seen at hospitals across the country. So as much as Stewart's bankruptcy is a product of its own poor decisions, it could also be a warning sign that there are larger problems within the healthcare sector.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Yeah. How much stress is this current immigration crisis putting on the healthcare system? Do we have numbers on that?
--:-- Tim Pierce: We do, and we're hearing complaints about it from New York to Houston to Los Angeles. Here's the president and CEO of Arizona's Yuma Regional Medical Center back in February of last year. We tracked our uncompensated care over a period of six months, and we've calculated that we've providing over $20 million in uncompensated care to the migrants crossing the border.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Republicans on the House Homeland Security Committee looked into this and published what they found late last year. According to figures from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Medicaid costs for illegal aliens in fiscal year 2022 were about $5.4 billion. The cost was even higher the year before, exceeding $7 billion.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Those figures are far higher than any of the previous five years, which never topped $3.5 billion. And keep in mind that those are costs of the federal government. Those figures don't include costs to state, cities, or the individual hospitals that are required by law to provide care in emergencies.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Right. And common sense says that someone will pick up the tab for all of these unpaid bills, whether that's hospitals, taxpayers, or someone else. Now, these are just healthcare expenses. Are we seeing similar costs to other sectors?
--:-- Tim Pierce: Yeah, immigration has increased costs of law enforcement, schools, welfare, and housing. A 2023 report from the Federation of American Immigration Reform found that illegal immigrants cost Americans about $182 billion annually, while only contributing about $31 billion in taxes.
--:-- Tim Pierce: That's a net cost of about $150 billion every year. The Homeland Security Committee report states that the, quote, net cost of illegal immigration is greater than the annual GDP of 15 different states. It's equivalent to a bill of about $950 each year to each American taxpayer.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Certainly not insignificant amounts.
--:-- Host: Tim, thanks for reporting. Thanks for having me on.
--:-- Host: According to political experts, the 2024 presidential race is likely to be decided by a very specific and very small portion of the American electorate. Axios reported this week that many Democrats and Republicans believe that about 6% of the voters in six states will determine the outcome in November. Here to break down the numbers is Daily Wire contributor David Marcus.
--:-- David Marcus: Hey, Dave. So which six states are we talking about here?
--:-- David Marcus: Morning, John. Technically, one of them is a Commonwealth. But the six in question here are Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada. If you don't live in one of these places, political experts say your vote for president just won't matter very much.
--:-- David Marcus: But in fact the cohort of people who they say will actually decide the outcome may be much much smaller than that As little as 6 of the voters in those six swing states are actually considered persuadable To put this in perspective these six states have a combined population of about 50 million. 6% of that is 3 million. If half those people vote, we're down to 1.5 million souls, roughly the population of San Antonio, who will be effectively choosing the next president of a country of 330 million.
--:-- David Marcus: The priority of both the Biden and Trump campaigns is to find out exactly who these people are, what they want to hear, and to get them out to vote.
--:-- David Marcus: I just wanted to appreciate your pretty nifty math there, Dave. So what do we know about who these people are? These are states that span four regions of the country and they have their own identities. Who will each campaign be targeting?
--:-- David Marcus: A lot of the focus in these states are on voters without a college degree, a group with whom Donald Trump performs much better than GOP presidential candidates before him. This is an advantage that increasingly cuts across racial lines with Trump doing much better this year among black and Latino voters than in 2020 and across age lines where Trump has actually taken a lead among young voters in some polls.
--:-- David Marcus: Unions could play a big role here in states like Michigan and Pennsylvania with big industry and also Nevada in regard to hospitality. And while Biden tends to have an edge in terms of endorsement from organized labor leadership, Trump is certainly competitive among the actual membership.
--:-- David Marcus: In Michigan, Biden also faces the problem of pro-Palestinian voters who see him as too pro-Israel. And when we're talking about an election that, again, is to be decided by a million and a half people, a few tens of thousands who boycott Biden, that could prove decisive.
--:-- David Marcus: Yeah, indeed. If these are, in fact, the six states that will seal the fate of this presidential race. How are they looking right now in the polls? Trump holds a slim lead nationally. Is that true in the state contests as well?
--:-- David Marcus: Yes, although things may be tightening some. According to FiveThirtyEight's average of polls, Trump holds leads in all six of these, ranging from five or six point leads in Nevada and Georgia and slimmer leads under two points in Pennsylvania and Michigan.
--:-- David Marcus: It's better to be leading than trailing, of course. But This comes at a time when Decision Desk HQ, another highly regarded aggregator of polls, had Biden slipped just ahead of Trump nationally for the first time since October.
--:-- David Marcus: And then, of course, there's Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is consistently polling between about 12 and 14 percent. How does he potentially fit into all of this?
--:-- David Marcus: Of all the seminal six, so to put it, Kennedy is only on the ballot in Michigan so far. He has enough signatures in Nevada. And look, he's working to get access in all of these battleground states. In general, he's been more of a drag on Biden, but not always and not everywhere.
--:-- David Marcus: You look at a state like Pennsylvania, and the question is whether RFK Jr. is more of a landing spot for left leaning voters frustrated with Biden or more of a landing spot for Mickey Haley Republicans who aren't crazy about Trump.
--:-- David Marcus: Look, you got Bobby Kennedy. You got the potential for chaos at the Chicago convention. things are getting very 1968.
--:-- Host: Dave, thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me.
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