--:-- [Theme music fades out]
--:-- Georgia Howe: This episode is brought to you by LifeLock. Between two-factor authentication, strong passwords, and a VPN, you try to be in control of how your info is protected. But many other places also have it, and they might not be as careful. That's why LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats. If your identity is stolen, they'll fix it. Guaranteed or your money back. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit LifeLock.com slash podcast for 40% off. Terms apply.
--:-- John Bickley: Record numbers of illegal immigrants continue to cross our southern border, including dozens of suspected terrorists. Now a group of bipartisan lawmakers, including 10 Democratic senators, are breaking with President Biden to push border security. I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley. It's Thursday, April 21st, and this is Morning Wire.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Were you one of the Americans who picked up a side hustle during the pandemic? If you're taking payments on a platform like Venmo, the IRS may now want a piece of your earnings. I think it'll hinder entrepreneurship with people wanting to start businesses. And homeless deaths in Los Angeles County are rising at an alarming rate, as high as five a day. We'll tell you which factors are contributing to the country's highest homeless death rate. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.
--:-- John Bickley: As record numbers of illegal immigrants continue to flood the southern border, a new report revealed that suspected terrorists are attempting to enter the country. Here are the details on who's been caught and how the White House is responding as Daily Wire's Cabot Phillips.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Cabot, definitely a concerning report here. What do we know about these suspected terrorists?
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Yeah, we've been talking on the show all year about the spike in illegal immigrants attempting to cross the border. And now we're getting more information about exactly who some of these people are. Fox News filed a request through the Freedom of Information Act and obtained a report from Customs and Border Patrol showing that in 2021, there were 23 instances where someone on the federal terror watch list was caught trying to enter the country illegally. For context, people on this watch list have either been suspected of terrorist activity by the federal government or in many cases have been convicted of it.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And what do we know about those who were caught? Well, they were caught across three states, with 11 being stopped along the border in Texas, eight in California, and two in Arizona. Among the 23 were multiple men allegedly associated with the terrorist organization in Yemen, as well as others with ties to terror cells in Saudi Arabia. One man, for example, was reportedly caught posing as a paramedic at the border, while another was caught with phone SIM cards hidden in the sole of his shoe.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Now, when the story broke, critics of the president were quick to point out that these 23 men were obviously only the ones who were caught, and that the number who got through last year without detection was probably a good bit higher, given how high the surge in illegal immigration has been. To that point can you give us an update on the border crisis more broadly?
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Yeah, we been talking about it on the show pretty much every month because every month we get new data It just keeps getting worse We just got the latest figures from March And according to Border Patrol, there were over 210,000 illegal immigrants detained at the southern border last month alone. That is a 24 percent increase from March of last year and the highest one month total in over two decades.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Now, Republicans in Congress have routinely pointed out that for the majority of President Trump's term, the number of illegal border encounters was under 50,000 a month. They say the fact that we're now seeing four times as many illegal crossings each month is a direct result of President Biden's decision to roll back Trump-era immigration policies. Right. One of those policies is Title 42, which President Biden is going to let expire next month. What's the latest on that policy?
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Title 42 is a Trump-era immigration policy that allows border agents to deny entry to illegal immigrants en masse based on public health, in this case COVID. But now President Biden is reportedly planning to let that order expire, which will make it a lot more difficult to deport people once they've been arrested.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: On that note, we talked to Congressman Tony Gonzalez, whose district in southwest Texas borders Mexico. I think you're already starting to see more and more Democratic senators break with it. It's really going to be a sign of two things. Is the Biden administration going to listen to those that live and work along the border as well as pretty much moderate Democrats? And is he going to extend Title 42 or is he going to listen to the progressive side of his caucus? And is he going to deal away with Title 42?
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Now, you bring up some of the politics here. How is the border crisis impacting Democrats ahead of them in terms? Well, if you look at the polling, immigration is right behind inflation when it comes to the most important issues for voters right now. And Democrats are very aware that most Americans are not happy with how President Biden is handling the crisis. Right now, polls show him in the low 30s on his immigration policy. And as a result, many Democrats up for re-election are starting to call for stricter measures at the border. For example, Senator Maggie Hassan from New Hampshire, a Democrat up for re-election in November, opposed Trump's border wall throughout his term. But last week, she went down to the border and actually called for the border wall to be even more secure.
--:-- Georgia Howe: That's Daily Wire senior editor Cabot Phillips. Coming up, a new tax rule requires many Americans to report money received on digital platforms like Venmo. This show is sponsored by Epic Will. Do you have a will? You might be shocked to learn how many people don't. Creating a will is fundamental to protecting yourself and your family. Because if something happens to you and your spouse, the state will decide what happens to your kids and your assets. Take control. Go to EpicWill.com, promo code WIRE. EpicWill.com, where you can secure your future in as little as five minutes with a complete will package starting at $119. And when you use promo code WIRE, you'll save 10%. That's EpicWill.com promo code WIRE.
--:-- Megan Basham: The 2021 tax season may have just ended, but the IRS is introducing new reporting laws that will affect people who receive payments via mobile apps like PayPal, Venmo, and Zelle. Starting from the beginning of 2022, anyone who makes more than $600 selling goods or services via digital payment platforms will have to report it to the IRS.
--:-- Megan Basham: Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham joins us now to give us more details on the new IRS rule and what critics are saying about it. So Megan earning over that seems like it going to cover a lot of people Yeah I think a lot of people You know it not clear yet how many earners are going to fall under this new requirement but tax lobbyists are estimating it could be as many as 20 to 30 million because you have to consider a record number of adults, 5.4 million people applied to form their own businesses last year. And most of them were what you might call micro businesses.
--:-- Megan Basham: So freelancers working for themselves. And that's why a lot of people are characterizing this as the side hustle law. Now, let's say you sell crafts on Etsy or you cut hair in your kitchen or you're a reseller on Poshmark or eBay, you're going to be affected. Basically, any kind of independent venture where customers pay you using one of those very popular and very convenient payment apps like Venmo, well, before you didn't have to report it as long as it was under $20,000 and fewer than 200 transactions.
--:-- Megan Basham: That changed when Congress passed the American Rescue Plan at the height of COVID. So this provision was kind of hidden within the bill and not a lot of people noticed it at the time. The argument for it was based on the government's most recent tax gap study. So it found that of the hundreds of billions of taxes that are owed but not paid each year, about 45% of it falls under income from these kinds of transactions that the IRS doesn't know about.
--:-- Megan Basham: But I mean, just $600, that seems like below the threshold of what most people would consider a business. Yeah, and it would probably be really easy to forget about, but you don't have to worry because Venmo, PayPal, Zelle, all of those apps, they're the ones responsible for sending out the 1099K forms to anyone who's going to be affected.
--:-- Megan Basham: Now, this sounds similar to what the Biden administration was trying to do with bank accounts last fall. Yeah, it does. And in that case, they had a proposal in the budget reconciliation plan that would have required banks to track deposits and withdrawals in any accounts with balances above, again, $600, and then submit that information to the IRS.
--:-- Megan Basham: Well, obviously, that would have included just about everybody, and there was widespread criticism of it at the time. And one of the big complaints was that it would represent a massive breach of privacy by the federal government. So critics say that this law poses the same threat. This was Tennessee Senator Bill Haggerty talking about it back in February.
--:-- Megan Basham: What they want to do is what they couldn't do with individuals. That's to try to access all of our transaction data at $600 or greater. So they're going to force it onto small companies. Again, more invasion of our privacy. So Hagerty really focused on that privacy angle in the bill he's proposed to block this law. He's calling it the SNOOP Act, and that's an acronym for Stop Nosy Obsessions with Online Payments.
--:-- Megan Basham: If passed, it would raise the reporting threshold back to 20,000. And so would another proposal put forward by Republican Congresswoman Carol Miller of West Virginia. She focused on that side hustle angle, though, calling her proposal the, quote, Saving Gig Economy Taxpayers Act. Now, on the other side of the aisle, more moderate Democrats are looking at ways to mitigate the impact of the law. A group that includes Democrat Senators Kristen Sinema of Arizona and Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire are backing a proposal that would put that threshold at $5,000.
--:-- Megan Basham: So what you can clearly see, though, is that there's a lot of bipartisan pushback to this. So we're going to have to see if this law is still standing come next tax season. This is a huge deal for a lot of people. Megan, thanks for reporting.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Of course, anytime. That's Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham. Homeless deaths in Los Angeles County rose last year with an average of five homeless people dying per day Nearly 2 homeless people died in L County last year Here to discuss the situation is Daily Wire senior editor Ash Short.
--:-- Ash Short: So Ash what causing the increase?
--:-- Ash Short: Well, it's a number of factors. Living on the streets is known to shorten a person's lifespan, and the homeless population has aged. And finally, the homeless are dying of treatable chronic illnesses such as heart disease. And who is typically at risk? Men in their 50s and 60s make up the lion's share of homeless deaths, and the problem became much worse during the pandemic when it seemed like everything, including non-COVID-19-related health care, was set aside.
--:-- Ash Short: Men make up 67% of Los Angeles County's homeless population, but account for 83% of homeless deaths in the county. Homeless men who die are also twice as likely as women to have their bodies unclaimed at the morgue. Now, what portion of the deaths were related to substance abuse?
--:-- Ash Short: Definitely a big portion. The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health issued a study that found homeless people are 35 times more likely to die from a drug or alcohol overdose than the general population. But they're also at a greater risk for other issues as well. As I mentioned earlier, they're 16 times more likely to die in a car crash, 14 times more likely to be murdered, 8 times more likely to commit suicide, and 4 times more likely to die of heart disease.
--:-- Ash Short: And how big of a problem is this in California specifically? California, the most populous state in America, has about a quarter of the nation's homeless population. So somewhere around 125,000 homeless people live in California alone. And in just Los Angeles County, the number of people living on the streets has grown about 50% between 2015 and 2020, while homeless deaths in the county have increased even more, 200% over the same time period.
--:-- Ash Short: Of the 4,800 homeless deaths in California last year, nearly 2,000 of them were in L.A. County. So the rate of deaths is outpacing even the rate of homeless growth. Interesting. Yes. So what is being done to address this problem and what can be done? There are numerous programs and shelters to help the homeless, especially in big cities like Los Angeles, New York City, and Washington, D.C.
--:-- Ash Short: The problem is that the vast majority of the homeless have more problems than just being down on their luck. For those who are dependent on alcohol or have substance addictions or have mental health issues, they need different kinds of support than people who are simply trying to find a job. Right. It's a complex problem.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Ash, thanks for reporting. You're welcome. That's Daily Wire senior editor, Ash Short. Another story we're tracking this week. The Florida State Senate voted to strip the Disney Corporation of their special privileges on Wednesday. The bill now moves to the Florida House before being passed to Governor Ron DeSantis.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Thanks for listening to Morning Wire. We created this show to bring more balance to the national conversation. If you love our show and you stand with our mission, consider subscribing, leaving us a five-star rating, and most importantly, sharing our podcast with a friend. That's all the time we've got this morning. Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back tomorrow with the news you need to know.
--:-- John Bickley: Meat and seafood prices are up 20% in the last year. You can combat this out-of-control inflation with a Good Rancher's subscription. When you subscribe, your price is locked in for the life of your subscription. Get American meat sourced from local farms delivered to your door at a consistent, affordable price. Visit goodranchers.com slash wire or use code wire at checkout to get $30 off and free shipping today. Lock in your price today with a Good Rancher's subscription and say goodbye to food inflation.
