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--:-- John Bickley: Good morning, I'm Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's Friday, April 11th, and this is Morning Wire.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Thanks for waking up with us. We have the news you need to know.
--:-- John Bickley: Trump's big, beautiful bill takes a major step forward, upping the prospect of making his tax cuts permanent.
--:-- Georgia Howe: We got to get this big, beautiful deal done. We got to get it done. And get it done now. Don't wait two weeks.
--:-- John Bickley: What hurdles remain and where does his tariff war stand now?
--:-- Georgia Howe: I'm Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley with Georgia Howe.
--:-- John Bickley: The FBI is warning Americans about the alarming rise in the sexual exploitation of kids online.
--:-- Georgia Howe: More and more of these sex predators are going online, and they're becoming more sophisticated in the ways that they go after young people, minors that they're trying to exploit.
--:-- John Bickley: And a new investigation raises questions about activist judges' role in padding the social security rules with dubious disability claims.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.
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--:-- John Bickley: The House passed a budget blueprint on Thursday in a critical step toward permanent renewal of President Trump's 2017 tax cuts.
--:-- Georgia Howe: GOP leaders were able to overcome conservative holdouts to push the budget reconciliation process forward.
--:-- John Bickley: Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce is here to talk about Trump's victory in Congress, as well as the latest on the trade deal, say Tim.
--:-- Tim Pierce: So first, what exactly is in this budget blueprint?
--:-- Tim Pierce: Yeah, it makes the 2017 tax cuts permanent and includes funding for Trump's priorities on defense, energy, and immigration.
--:-- Tim Pierce: It also lifts the debt limit for about two years.
--:-- Tim Pierce: What it missed that almost brought it down on the House is deeper budget cuts wanted by House conservatives.
--:-- Tim Pierce: The Senate resolution just approved by the House outlines about $400 billion in budget cuts, whereas the original House blueprint called for at least $1.5 trillion.
--:-- Tim Pierce: But House Speaker Mike Johnson was able to convince conservative holdouts to back the Senate version and open the door to budget reconciliation.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Here's Johnson after the vote.
--:-- Mike Johnson: We adopted the Senate's amendments to the resolution, holding in place all of the commitments and the instructions, the guidelines that the House originally enacted.
--:-- Tim Pierce: And that was a big step because that will allow us now to move forward to have our committees actually drafting the one big, beautiful bill.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Reconciliation is a complicated process, but the short version is that with this House vote, lawmakers in both chambers can now haggle over the final version of the budget reconciliation bill.
--:-- Tim Pierce: The upside here is that the eventual bill to come out of those negotiations will only need 50 votes in the Senate instead of the usual 60 to overcome a filibuster.
--:-- Tim Pierce: But there's always the concern that the gripes from the House conservatives over Thursday's bill could threaten the final bill as well.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Johnson has said he hopes to have a bill on Trump's desk by Memorial Day.
--:-- Tim Pierce: That could be some welcome news amid the turbulence around Trump's tariff policies.
--:-- Tim Pierce: And about that, after Trump paused most of his tariffs on Wednesday, what is the latest there?
--:-- Tim Pierce: The tally of countries that want to negotiate over trade is now up to 75.
--:-- Tim Pierce: That according to Treasury Secretary Scott Besson remarks during Thursday cabinet meeting.
--:-- Tim Pierce: There's a long way to go though. Dozens of trade deals to be negotiated.
--:-- Tim Pierce: And it's worth pointing out that Trump paused all tariffs on Wednesday. There are still heavy tariff rates on China as well as a flat 10% tariff rate across the board.
--:-- Tim Pierce: There are also other tariffs on Canada and Mexico.
--:-- Tim Pierce: So businesses may have to price those in in the coming weeks and months.
--:-- Tim Pierce: But we did see some positive news on inflation yesterday.
--:-- Tim Pierce: What happened there?
--:-- Tim Pierce: Yeah, the consumer price index for March showed that inflation came in under experts' expectations.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Year over year, it increased by 2.4% rather than the expected 2.6%.
--:-- Tim Pierce: While that's good news for Americans, don't expect that to mean much as far as interest rates go.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Experts expect those to stay where they are as the economy adjusts to Trump's fast-moving tariff policy.
--:-- Tim Pierce: The stock market also dipped back down yesterday after Wednesday's record recovery, so still a lot of turmoil there.
--:-- Tim Pierce: But Besson said the U.S. market is now doing okay.
--:-- Tim Pierce: The bond auction went very well yesterday.
--:-- Tim Pierce: We had a lot of foreigners show up, showing that the U.S. is still the best place to invest.
--:-- Tim Pierce: The inflation report was quite good.
--:-- Tim Pierce: And energy prices are down more than 20% since January 20th.
--:-- Tim Pierce: So the economy is showing some good signs, but there is still plenty of unknowns ahead.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Yeah, indeed.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Thanks so much for reporting.
--:-- John Bickley: Thanks for having me on.
--:-- Brandon: Hey, guys, producer Brandon here. By the end of this episode, another family farm in the U.S. will have closed.
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--:-- John Bickley: Before we get started, a quick warning to listeners. The following segment might not be appropriate for younger ears.
--:-- Georgia Howe: The FBI is warning about the sharp rise in the sexual exploitation and extortion of minors online.
--:-- Georgia Howe: It's led to dozens of suicides of teens across the nation.
--:-- John Bickley: Here to discuss is Daily Wire reporter Amanda Prestigiacomo.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: So Amanda, this is an extremely pernicious crime trend. What does it look like?
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Yeah, there are a couple different types of online sexual exploitation that the feds are warning about.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: It's called sextortion or sexual extortion when a predator, usually an adult, either coerces or coaxes a minor into sending sexually explicit images or video footage and then extorts them over it.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Predators will threaten to release that material unless the minor either produces additional explicit content or gives them cash.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: In some cases, the offenders are motivated by sexual gratification, but other times they're primarily after money.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: The FBI posted a video just last week about the sharp rise in sex dorsion, specifically citing a violent online network known as 764.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Members in the U.S. and abroad are coercing minors and other vulnerable people to commit disturbing sex-related crimes or self-harm.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: The special agent in charge of the FBI's St. Louis field office, Ashley Johnson, discussed 764 on Fox 2 earlier this month.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: People have been asked to engage in cruelty to animals, self-mutilation of some sort.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Some cases we've had individuals ask children if they knew they had a sibling to film themselves sexually abusing their sibling.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: There's another subtype of sexual exploitation that primarily targets teen boys.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Offenders will pose as attractive women online and they'll trick the minors into sending them explicit content.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Then they threaten victims tell them that they post the material publicly and send it to their friends and family if they don't send payment.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: One report found that 90% of all financially motivated sexual extortion victims were males between the ages of 14 and 17.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: These schemes have been linked to a string of suicides by young boys.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: A memo from the FBI's Sacramento field office said these extortion offenders are often foreigners and they primarily hail from West African countries like Nigeria and Ivory Coast, or Southeast Asian countries like the Philippines.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: I spoke to Tammy Lee, the CEO of non-profit our rescue.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: And she told me that they're seeing a similar pattern.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Our officers that we partner with in digital forensics are definitely seeing a spike in these crimes originating from some of the African countries.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: They'll post and pretend to be a teenage girl or a teenage boy asking for explicit images.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Once those images are exchanged, then the predator will go in and threaten them.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: So that's extremely disturbing.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: How common is this?
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Well, from October of 2021 to March of 2023, the FBI and Homeland Security investigations received more than 13,000 reports of this activity.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: There were about 12,600 victims who were mostly boys and tragically, at least 20 suicides have been connected to this.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: But those numbers are likely even higher.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: A more recent report from USA Today found that sextortion cases have been tied to at least 30 suicides of teen boys since 2021.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: And this trend is growing.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: In just a six-month period in 2023, for example, the FBI saw a 20% increase in reports of financially motivated sextortion.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: CyberTipline, which is an organization run by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, they received nearly 190,000 reports of online enticement of children for sexual acts.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: That number has quadrupled since 2021, when the Tipline received about 44,000 reports.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Now, which social media platforms should parents be most concerned about?
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Yeah, Instagram and Snapchat are the two most used apps for these types of crimes.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Messages on both of these apps can have messages that disappear.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: That might lead victims to put their guard down before they send over these explicit images that are later used against them.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: We spoke to South Carolina State Representative Brandon Guffey, whose family, unfortunately, has firsthand experience with such crimes.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Guffey's 17-year-old son, Gavin, took his own life after a Nigerian scammer threatened him on Instagram.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Guffey has since become a fierce advocate in this space.
--:-- Brandon Guffey: So July 27, 2022, my son Gavin was contacted by a predator through Instagram messaging.
--:-- Brandon Guffey: He jumped off the video game with friends to have a chat with this female or so he thought.
--:-- Brandon Guffey: They began to share images.
--:-- Brandon Guffey: And within one hour and 40 minutes, Gavin took his life.
--:-- Brandon Guffey: They began to demand money, giving countdowns.
--:-- Brandon Guffey: But even worse than that, after my son took his life, I'd never heard of what sextortion was or had a clue of what it was, they began to extort Gavin's 16-year-old brother, a 14-year-old cousin, and then trying to extort me as well, fully aware that Gavin had taken his life.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: I asked Goughy if he had any advice for teens who might find themselves caught up in such a scheme.
--:-- Brandon Guffey: Don't be scared. Be brave enough to go to your parents, to go to law enforcement, to report this.
--:-- Brandon Guffey: Because if you don't, if you feel like you can just pay them and just go away, they're going to continue to go after, not only you, because it will never stop once you pay them money.
--:-- Brandon Guffey: They're going to continue to go after other teens and make them feel the same way that you feel right now.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: One final note here to listeners. If you or someone you know thinks they're a victim of sextortion, please call law enforcement.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: You can report it to the FBI by calling 1 or visiting tips.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Thanks for reporting.
--:-- John Bickley: Welcome back to Morning Wire.
--:-- John Bickley: A new report finds that judges may be greenlighting fraudulent disability claims in massive numbers.
--:-- Georgia Howe: The Daily Wire's government efficiency reporter Luke Rosiak found that dozens of judges overrule Social Security staff's denials in almost every case they hear, granting what could amount to lifetime disability payments to people ruled ineligible for the benefits.
--:-- John Bickley: Hey, Luke. So first, what exactly is an administrative law judge?
--:-- Luke Rosiak: Hey, John. So 1,200 of these administrative law judges are paid more than $200,000 each to do nothing but hear appeals from people who want to get disability benefits from Social Security despite having been ruled ineligible.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: They're represented, believe it or not, by a union for judges, the Association of Administrative Law Judges.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: That group is suing to prevent does from accessing information about Social Security staff.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: The president of that union, a Democrat donor named Sam Ramrup, overturned the rulings of Social Security's experts to approve payments in 94% of the cases she heard last year.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: Ron Herman, who overhears cases in the Detroit area, approved 95% of the nearly 1,300 cases he heard.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: In another example, Jan Leventer, hearing cases in Queens, approved 94% of 2,200 cases.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: Some, including actually one of the supervisory judges, approved payments in literally 100% of the cases that they heard last year.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: All right, so in nearly every single case they heard, they ruled in favor of the person who wanted government money.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: And by doing that, they ruled against the experts who said they shouldn't be entitled to it, correct?
--:-- Luke Rosiak: Yeah, so some of these rates seem basically mathematically impossible.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: It's evidence that the process is broken.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: This is important because you'll hear that it's a fool's errand to try to cut the federal deficit because so much of it is so-called non-discretionary items like Medicare and Social Security.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: But this is an example of how the Department of Government Efficiency might find waste in those areas too.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: And what is the defense for this? Is this supposed to be judicial independence?
--:-- Luke Rosiak: Yeah, but the problem is these are not real judges.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: They're not members of the judicial branch.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: They work for the Social Security Administration.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: And disability has historically been a pretty fraud-ridden program, with some non-disabled people viewing it as essentially a way to get welfare that isn't subjected to the five-year limit on actual welfare.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: I'm not saying that the judges with those 90%-plus approval ratings are all taking bribes, but a few years back, prosecutors found that one such judge was.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: He single-handedly steered more than half a billion dollars in benefits by ruling favorably in 3,000 cases in exchange for $600,000 in bribes from a lawyer.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: Wow. So this is real money, billions of dollars we're talking about here.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: Yeah, and the process is very one-sided.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: People who are rejected from disability can appeal three times.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: There's nobody in these hearings representing the taxpayer's interest.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: It's usually just a lawyer arguing that the person is disabled.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: One of those lawyers told me that the whole thing is basically just a $200 billion crapshoot.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: He said, quote, I don't think there's any real lawyering to it.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: The game is to get as many hearings as I can because 50% are going to get approved no matter what if I just show up.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: He said the outcome basically came down to the political bent of the judge hearing it.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: One administrative law judge suggested that some of his colleagues viewed disability as essentially a way to give out reparations to minorities.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: Well, Social Security is projected to be insolvent within eight years.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: I know Doge is inside Social Security now, and it'll be interesting to see if they do something here.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: Thanks so much for reporting.
--:-- John Bickley: Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back this afternoon with more news you need to know.
