--:-- [Upbeat music fades out]
--:-- John Bickley: The NFL is back, and FanDuel's got everything you need to play your game. From same-game parlays to live betting. Right now, new customers bet $5 and get $300 in bonus bets if you win. 21-plus in president select states. 18-plus in Kentucky and Wyoming. Must be first online real money waging. $5 deposit required. Bonus issued is non-withdrawable bonus bets that expire seven days after receipt. Restrictions apply. See full terms at FanDuel.com slash sportsbook. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER.
--:-- [Music transitions to a news theme]
--:-- John Bickley: Chaos and controversy erupt as anti-Israel protesters clash with police, and both President Biden and former President Trump respond. We have the latest on the escalating situation and its political fallout. I'm Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley with guest co-host Sage Steele, host of the Sage Steele Show. It's Wednesday, April 24th, and this is Morning Wire.
--:-- Sage Steele: Thanks for having me, John.
--:-- John Bickley: Thanks for joining us, Sage. Foreign aid for Israel and Ukraine crosses a critical hurdle in the Senate, despite fervent opposition from one senator. If you support a fair and open amendment process, if you want to improve the bill, you should support my motion to table.
--:-- [Sound effects: Senate proceedings]
--:-- John Bickley: And new investigations uncover more evidence of blatant plagiarism by college academics involved with DEI programs. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.
--:-- [Music transitions to a commercial break]
--:-- Voiceover: Are you tired of navigating financial decisions on your own? Birch Gold understands that it can be daunting. That's why their expertise coupled with their customer care process ensures that your purchase or IRA setup is a breeze. If you're considering converting an existing retirement account into a precious metals IRA, Their dedicated in-house IRA department guides you every step of the way, making the process feel as simple as a walk in the park. Text WIRE to 989898 to talk to one of Birch Gold's experts and claim your free info kit on gold. That's WIRE to 989898 today.
--:-- [Music transitions back to the show]
--:-- John Bickley: Growing anti-Israel protests have taken over some of our nation's college campuses, prompting responses from both leading presidential candidates as well as other high-profile political voices. Here to discuss the political response to the escalating situation on campus is Daily Wire contributor David Marcus.
--:-- David Marcus: Hey, John. So let's start with President Biden. He's been under fire from both sides on this issue. How has President Biden responded?
--:-- John Bickley: Morning, David. So over the weekend, Biden released a strongly worded statement calling the anti-Semitism on display at Columbia and Yale disgraceful. But then a comment on Monday has now really become the focus of headlines.
--:-- David Marcus: Here's Biden addressing a reporter's question as he was leaving an Earth Day event on Monday. I condemn the anti-Semitic protests. That's why I've set up a program to do that. I also condemn those who don't understand what's going on with the Palestinians.
--:-- John Bickley: This immediately drew parallels to Trump allegedly saying that there were very fine people on both sides of the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally in 2017.
--:-- David Marcus: Now, to be clear, Trump at no point was praising neo-Nazis. His very fine description was a reference to some of those who argue against toppling monuments. But in this case, Biden absolutely did condemn both the anti-Semitism on display and people who he deems insufficiently worried about civilians in Gaza in the very same breath.
--:-- John Bickley: Likewise his education secretary Miguel Cardona expressed condemnation for both anti and anti behavior even though there been no example of the latter in these protests.
--:-- David Marcus: Now on the other side we have Trump He also addressed the campus chaos from the courthouse in his hush money trial. Did his comments differ substantially from Biden's?
--:-- John Bickley: They did, yes. Trump's statement notably does not address both sides. This is a full-throated condemnation of the anti-Semitism, which he calls disgraceful, but also a condemnation of Joe Biden, and specifically in regard to his attempt to appease both pro and anti-Israel factions in his party.
--:-- David Marcus: What's going on at the college level and the colleges, Columbia, NYU and others, is a disgrace. It's really on Biden. He has the wrong signal. He's got the wrong tone. He's got the wrong words. He doesn't know what he's backing. And it's a mess.
--:-- John Bickley: Among politicians who are not running for president, there seems to be agreement among Republicans that these protests are unacceptable, but a little more division among Democrats. Where do those breakdowns stand?
--:-- David Marcus: Yeah, that's pretty much spot on, John. Republicans are united in opposition to the protests, and many have now called for the resignation of Columbia University's president, Manoush Shafiq. In fact, the entire GOP congressional delegation from New York, All 10 of them has done so.
--:-- John Bickley: Senator Tom Cotton has also said that any protesters in the U.S. on student visas should be expelled from the country.
--:-- David Marcus: There's Democrats like Senator John Fetterman, Representative Richie Torres, who have been steady and vocal supporters of Israel. And this week also saw Florida Congressman Jared Moskowitz travel to Colombia to stand with Jewish students there as well.
--:-- John Bickley: Of course, at the same time, you have Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez praising the protests at that event with Joe Biden, Ilhan Omar, whose daughter was arrested protesting, and others on the far left who support these campus occupations.
--:-- David Marcus: Joe Biden is between the Dome of the Rock and a hard place here in a way that Donald Trump just isn't.
--:-- John Bickley: Do we have a sense of where this goes from here, how long it might last, or whether it could continue to spread to further campuses or even non-college environments?
--:-- David Marcus: Look, things have been moving fast, so we'll see what happens over the next few hours, but there really is no sign that the encampment at Columbia is going anywhere.
--:-- John Bickley: The university announced classes will be hybrid or maybe even completely remote for the rest of the semester, so that suggests it could really linger.
--:-- David Marcus: It's also leading some students to demand refunds since they thought they were paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for an in-person college education, not a PowerPoint presentation on Zoom.
--:-- John Bickley: NYU is a different story. It's a massive school, but it has very little actual traditional campus. It just kind of snakes through the West Village.
--:-- David Marcus: So the school is putting up walls between private university spaces and public spaces to keep non-students out of the student protests.
--:-- John Bickley: And that's a real fear, John. The NYPD has warned that professional agitators and others are seeking to cause mayhem.
--:-- David Marcus: They cracked down late Monday, arresting some 150 protesters and have made clear they will continue to take action when warranted.
--:-- John Bickley: Yeah. Dave, thanks for joining us.
--:-- David Marcus: Thanks for having me.
--:-- [Music transitions to a commercial break]
--:-- Voiceover: Does your makeup game need a change? Then you need Adele Natural Cosmetics. Their products are made in Texas, and they carry everything for your daily skincare needs, including a full line of color cosmetics. Their cream blush line is so vibrant and light, and all of their cosmetics are made without parabens, synthetic fragrances, or preservatives. So what are you waiting for? Visit adelnaturalcosmetics.com and use code WIRE for 25% off your first order. That's A naturalcosmetics with code WIRE.
--:-- [Music transitions back to the show]
--:-- John Bickley: On this vote the yeas are 80 the nays are 19 The motion is agreed to That was a vote in the Senate Tuesday to advance a $95 billion funding package that will provide military aid to Ukraine. The bill also includes a provision that could ban the popular social media app TikTok. Here with more is Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham.
--:-- Megan Basham: So Megan, with an 80 to 19 vote. It seems pretty likely this bill is going to pass. And President Biden has said he will sign it when it gets to his desk. The big question, important question, what's in it?
--:-- John Bickley: Well, you know, the headline news here is that the package will immediately provide 60 billion in additional military aid to Ukraine for its fight against Russia.
--:-- Megan Basham: So Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that he needs this funding in order to have a chance at victory. And then it also includes $8 billion for Taiwan and the Indo-Pacific and $26 billion for Israel, including humanitarian aid for Gaza.
--:-- John Bickley: Now, that aid has become somewhat controversial. It's faced a lot of criticism because there are increasing reports that Hamas is seizing food and supplies as it enters the region, and it's even killing aid workers reportedly.
--:-- Megan Basham: So critics say that the aid is not getting to the people who need it. And then there's the one of these things is not like the other provisions. And that is the fact that it will also force TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, to sell the social media platform within nine months because of its ties to the Chinese government.
--:-- John Bickley: And if it doesn't sell, the app is then going to be banned in the U.S.
--:-- Megan Basham: Now, the Biden administration has signaled that it might expand that time frame to a year, which would mean it would be less of an issue this election season.
--:-- John Bickley: Probably worth noting that TikTok is extremely popular with young Americans, and they might not respond well if Biden bans their favorite app.
--:-- Megan Basham: But either way, NBC is reporting that it has seen an internal legal memo from TikTok that indicates the company is planning to challenge the law in court if it does ultimately pass.
--:-- John Bickley: This seems unique, maybe, Megan, to say the least. You've got billions of dollars in aid packages for countries, along with albeit a controversial social media app out of left field, maybe?
--:-- Megan Basham: Yeah, a little bit. And the argument is that all of these things are in the interest of U.S. national security, though there are plenty of people, even on the right, who don't actually think that banning TikTok is going to do anything to protect the American public.
--:-- John Bickley: John McEntee, who was a political advisor in the Trump White House and is also a popular conservative TikTok creator, told Morning Wire that the issue was largely solved when TikTok was forced to store all their data with Oracle in Texas.
--:-- Megan Basham: You know who wants to see TikTok gone? Facebook and Google, the people that have been deplatforming conservatives, the people that ban the sitting president of the United States.
--:-- John Bickley: The only app that didn't ban him was TikTok. The only social media company that didn't collude with Biden's government was TikTok.
--:-- Megan Basham: So I think it's more about control than these fake national security concerns.
--:-- John Bickley: But there are plenty of lawmakers who still believe that TikTok poses a security risk as long as it remains in Chinese hands. And at this point, it does look like they're likely to carry the day.
--:-- Megan Basham: Okay, so let's get back to the procedural opposition that this bill faced. A lot of Republicans in the House don't like the legislation. In fact, Mike Johnson's speakership has been threatened over it. And even though it passed handily, the same goes for some Republicans in the Senate.
--:-- John Bickley: Megan, what do they want?
--:-- Megan Basham: Well, their major ask is that they wanted to tie this funding to border security. And a big part of the objection in the Senate in particular is that the senators were not given the chance to vote on amendments that they say would have improved this bill So instead they say they being asked to pretty much rubber stamp the Democrats priorities
--:-- John Bickley: And that led Utah Mike Lee to push to table this bill until amendments could be introduced that he says would prevent taxpayers from having to fund things like gender advisors for the Ukrainian military.
--:-- Megan Basham: An amendment might point to some of the weaknesses in the bill, some of the defects of the bill. It might prompt members to, I don't know, slow down and ask whether this is a prudent idea to send a lot of humanitarian aid to Gaza, up to nine, $9.5 billion of it that could go there with minimal guardrails, where Hamas will with certainty seize it to wage war against Israel.
--:-- John Bickley: Or if the U.S. taxpayer should be footing the bill for quote-unquote gender advisors in Ukraine's military, should they really vote for a bill that does this?
--:-- Megan Basham: But though he's got some surprising support from Vermont Democrat Bernie Sanders, Lee's bid ultimately failed.
--:-- John Bickley: Many very complicated issues involved with this bill. Megan Basham, thank you.
--:-- Megan Basham: Anytime.
--:-- [Music transitions to a commercial break]
--:-- Voiceover: A few months ago, the president of Harvard resigned after she was revealed to have plagiarized. Now, The Daily Wire has teamed up with journalist Chris Rufo and found that the problem is pervasive. Earlier this month, Rufo and Daily Wire investigative reporter Luke Rosiak found plagiarism by Lisa D. Cook, who Joe Biden appointed to a 15-year term on the Federal Reserve Board, Now, Rosiak and Rufo found massive plagiarism by a DEI official at the UCLA School of Medicine. Daily Wire investigative reporter Luke Rosiak joins us now.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: Hey, John. So first, how did you come to look into this, the DEI programs at UCLA?
--:-- John Bickley: Well, the UCLA School of Medicine has been in the news a lot lately for all sorts of DEI escapades. Future doctors were forced to take a class on, quote, structural racism, and a Hamas-praising guest speaker led students in a Free Palestine chant.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: The school made plans to segregate students by race for courses on left-wing ideology. So when students are learning about, quote, indigenous women and two spirits, they're not learning about biology and organic chemistry, the stuff that saves lives.
--:-- John Bickley: So I wondered who was behind all this. The answer is a woman named Natalie Perry, who leads a DEI program at the medical school called the Cultural North Star, which aims to embed into the DNA of the school to change its culture.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: Perry has published just a single academic paper, her 2014 PhD dissertation from the University of Virginia, and it plagiarized thousands of words from 10 different papers.
--:-- John Bickley: Perry copied and pasted entire paragraphs, including the citations from those papers, without acknowledging the paper she was actually copying from even existed.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: Five continuous pages of her thesis, for example, are just one big copy and paste from another paper without attribution or quotes. Occasionally, she would change one or two words, and a lot of the time she did that, she would actually introduce errors by doing so.
--:-- John Bickley: There's a section of the paper that relies on what she calls original qualitative data, which is really just her chatting with UVA diversity officials about their jobs.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: Plagiarism wasn't an option for that section. And at that point, the paper just kind of devolves into typo-ridden nonsense.
--:-- John Bickley: All right. So, and to be clear, UVA greenlit the PhD in UCLA's medical school, hired her as an administrator. Yeah. And despite all these red flags and, you know, prior to that, she got a master's in education from Harvard.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: So this story really raises questions beyond one person or one medical school, at least in the subset where people are really just writing exclusively about race and DEI.
--:-- John Bickley: By the way, what was her dissertation about that you looked into?
--:-- Luke Rosiak: It was about why DEI programs should be expanded at universities.
--:-- John Bickley: Well, it's going to be interesting to see if UCLA decides to keep her on.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: Luke, thanks for reporting.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: Anytime, John. That was Daily Wire investigative reporter, Luke Rosiak.
--:-- John Bickley: Thanks for waking up with us we'll be back this afternoon with more of the news you need to know.
--:-- Voiceover: Morning Wire is presented by Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief, John Bickley, and co-host Georgia Howe. Get daily coverage of the latest developments in politics, culture, education, sports, and more. Wake up with Morning Wire and get the facts first on the news you need to know.
