--:-- Georgia Howe: Welcome to Morning Wire. I'm Georgia Howe, and I'm here with Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief John Bickley.
--:-- John Bickley: Thanks for waking up with us, Georgia.
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--:-- John Bickley: Chicago public schools cancel in-person learning after the teachers union voted to stay home. CT leadership is compelling its membership to make a decision that will harm hundreds of thousands of Chicago families. What's behind the late night decision that left parents scrambling? And what are the city's leaders doing about it?
--:-- Georgia Howe: I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley. It's Thursday, January 6th, and this is Morning Wire. The top-ranked hospital in the nation fired 700 employees this week for refusing to comply with its vaccine mandate. Mayo Clinic is holding firm to its strict vaccine order, even as other hospitals loosen their restrictions to alleviate staff shortages. We have the details on the fallout of the mass firing. And are we losing our religion? For decades, the U.S. bucked the trend as wealthy nations became more secular. But now, that may be changing. Should we be concerned? Some research says yes. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know. This show is sponsored by Pure Talk. If you're with Verizon, AT&T, or T-Mobile, you're paying too much. Switching to Pure Talk saves the average family over $800 a year. Go to puretalk.com, find the right plan for you, and enter promo code WIRE to save 50% off your first month.
--:-- Georgia Howe: More than 340,000 students in Chicago have been shut out of their schools after the teachers' union there voted to abstain from in-person learning, citing concerns over the Omicron variant. Now, the city's mayor and public school officials are demanding they return, prompting a standoff in the nation's third largest school district. Here are the details as Daily Wire's Cabot Phillips.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: So Cabot, no school in Chicago. How did we get to this point?
--:-- Georgia Howe: Well, the Chicago Teachers Union, which is among the nation's largest, has been clashing with the city and Mayor Lori Lightfoot throughout this entire pandemic. That's nothing new. For example, last January, they said they'd only return for in-person teaching if they were put at the front of the line for COVID vaccines. So the city responded by doing just that, prioritizing teachers for vaccines at a time when, you remember, availability for everyone else was limited. So they went back to school, but then a few months later, they said they'd go back to remote learning unless the school improved classroom COVID safety. So the city responded by spending millions of dollars on air purification systems, N95 masks, and increased COVID testing.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Right, really meeting their demands there. Definitely. But now, as the far milder Omicron variant has caused case rates to spike, they are once again refusing to teach in person. The union's 25,000 members held a vote late Tuesday night, and 73% voted to return to remote learning immediately, saying they felt unsafe being in school despite all the past measures taken by the city.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So Wednesday morning, hundreds of thousands of families in Chicago woke up to the news that their kids would be staying home for the foreseeable future. Wow, and how did the city respond?
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Well, at the start of the pandemic, city officials, including Mayor Lori Lightfoot, were sympathetic to the teachers. But as things have gone on the city and parents in the district have really tired of their consistent refusal to maintain in teaching despite breaching all of their demands. They say everyone is having to make sacrifices and take some risks and that teachers should be no different. Pedro Martinez, the chief of Chicago Public Schools, responded Tuesday by announcing that teachers would not be paid if they didn't show up.
--:-- Georgia Howe: What are the consequences for not showing up to work? I mean, the simple answer is if people want to be compensated, they have to show up for work. So teachers won't get paid. If you want to be compensated, you have to show up for work.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Now the union is claiming that their teachers have been locked out of their online accounts by the city and that they're unable to get in touch with their students. So kind of a back and forth going on right now.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Do we know how long this shutdown is expected to last? Not really. The union said they'd keep schools closed until at least the 18th. Most holdouts like this have a clear list of demands. But in this case, the teachers union simply said they'd only return once the school district took measures to make them feel safe or the number of COVID cases, quote, substantially subsides.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: How have parents reacted to all this? Yeah, there's been kind of a transformation there in the same way there has with politicians. Many parents were totally caught off guard by the decision Tuesday night because it was made so last minute. The vote didn't actually end until about 10 o'clock at night. And so a lot of parents went to bed thinking everything was normal, and they woke up to learn with little warning that their kids wouldn't have anywhere to go that day.
--:-- Georgia Howe: More broadly, though, parents around the country, not just Chicago, have really soured on remote learning. One poll showed that 81% thought schools should no longer be remote. And numerous other studies have shown the negative impacts remote learning has on students' mental health, as well as their long-term academic development. So the message from a lot of parents is that the risk of COVID, which is overwhelmingly low with Omicron for everyone and especially for young kids, is not worth keeping schools shut down.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: That was also the message from Allison Arwadi. That's Chicago's health department commissioner. This is behaving really like the flu. And we don't close school districts, especially for extended periods of time for the flu.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So we're really seeing a unified front develop here between, you know, parents and politicians against teachers. Yeah, that's what it looks like right now.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Cabot, thanks for the reporting.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Anytime.
--:-- Georgia Howe: That's Daily Wire's Cabot Phillips. Coming up, Mayo Clinic fires hundreds of employees for refusing to comply with its vaccine mandate. Inflation is destroying the dollar. Birch Gold Group can help protect your IRA or 401k with a precious metals IRA. Text WIRE to 989898 to claim a free info kit on physical gold and silver. There's zero obligation. Text the word WIRE to 989898 to protect your savings today.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Mayo Clinic confirmed this week that it fired 700 workers who refused to comply with the medical center's vaccine mandate by Monday. The dramatic move is quite a different approach from other health care providers, which are rolling back some of their strict requirements. Daily Wire investigative reporter Mairet Elordi is here to tell us more about this.
--:-- Mairet Elordi: So Mairet, a controversial move by Mayo Clinic. Tell us about that decision to fire so many workers.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Sure. Well, 700 employees is definitely an eye-popping number. So Mayo Clinic gave its employees until this past Monday to get a COVID vaccine. The 700 workers who got fired made up about 1% of Mayo Clinic's employees, which number around 73,000. Mayo Clinic released a statement about the termination saying that while they're, quote, saddened to lose valuable employees, the move was necessary to keep their patients and workers safe. The medical center also said that if any of the fired workers change their minds and want to get the shot, they can apply to work at Mayo Clinic again.
--:-- Mairet Elordi: Now Mayo Clinic has already faced some strong pushback over its vaccination policy 38 local lawmakers signed a letter last month asking the medical center to change its strict rule even threatening to pull state funding Jessica Moore who worked at Mayo Clinic for 14 years, is one employee who lost her job. She spoke with local news outlet KIMT about her disappointment with her employer's decision. Every decision we make is important, but if you believe in something strongly, you're not, I don't feel like you should have to cave to keep a job.
--:-- Georgia Howe: It's worth noting here too, Mayo Clinic is known for being reliably progressive on most issues. Last year, they introduced a slew of left-leaning policies relating to gender identity.
--:-- Mairet Elordi: So that's Mayo Clinic, but while they're firing employees, we're also seeing some places walking back some of their vaccine mandates, right?
--:-- Georgia Howe: That's right. Mayo Clinic is taking an extreme step at a time when places like Rhode Island are reversing their strict vaccination policies. Rhode Island went from firing health workers for not getting a COVID vaccine to now actually allowing people who are COVID positive to come to work.
--:-- Mairet Elordi: So a significant shift there. Yeah. Last fall, Rhode Island, along with many other states, said all health workers would need to be vaccinated by October 1st in order to continue working. This resulted in hundreds of healthcare workers getting fired because they refused a shot. So after that, at least one state-run hospital started letting unvaccinated health workers keep working. Then right around New Year's Eve, the Rhode Island Health Department released updated guidance allowing even COVID-positive health care workers to come to work due to the state's severe shortage of hospital workers.
--:-- Georgia Howe: One last question before you go. What about the federal vaccine mandate for health care workers? Where does that stand now?
--:-- Mairet Elordi: That's in the Supreme Court's hands now, along with the private employer mandate. The court is currently considering whether to block President Biden's mandate for employees at federally funded health care facilities and the mandate for large companies.
--:-- Georgia Howe: As we've reported here, the Daily Wire was the lead plaintiff in the case against the vaccine mandate for companies with more than 100 employees. Meanwhile, some U.S. troops have sued the Biden administration over the military's vaccine mandate. This week, a federal judge blocked the Defense Department from punishing 35 Navy sailors who refuse to get the shot.
--:-- Mairet Elordi: Well, there's a lot of litigation around this, and we'll see if any of these mandates survive.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Right. Thanks, Mairet.
--:-- Mairet Elordi: And Daily Wire investigative reporter, Mairet Elordi.
--:-- Georgia Howe: A study released in late December showed that fewer Americans identify as religious, with the number of Christians falling from 75% to 63% in just 10 years. Here to give us the details on this research and what it might mean for the country is Daily Wire reporter Megan Basham.
--:-- Megan Basham: So Megan, just how steep of a drop are we talking about when it comes to religious affiliation? And which groups are we seeing driving it?
--:-- Georgia Howe: Well, it's a pretty steep drop. It's one thing to think of a 12% decline in a vacuum, but when you contextualize that, you realize just how secular our culture is becoming. So one of the things that stood out to me is that in 2007, Pew found that U.S. Christians outnumbered the religious nuns that's people who say they're agnostic, atheist, or nothing in particular, by about five to one. Now that's fallen down to about two to one. So just in 14 years.
--:-- Megan Basham: So that's going to have a lot of impact on us politically and culturally. Because what we see from the research is that people who are leaving Christianity, they're not transitioning to some other religion. They're going to nothing. So the majority of that exodus is coming from America's dominant religion, Protestantism. While it claimed 51 of US adults in 2011 only 40 of people describe themselves as some branch of Protestantism today Catholicism experienced a decline as well but it was only about 3 And this study didn track Mormonism or Judaism specifically, but other recent research has shown them holding pretty much steady.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Any indication about what's driving this drop-off? Well, the Pew survey doesn't really delve into that, but historically, research on this topic has shown that economic prosperity tends to equate to secularization. So for decades in the West, the wealthiest nations have also tended to be the most secular, except that is for the United States. We were kind of that lone surprising holdout showing that wealth doesn't necessarily lead to significantly less religious faith. Now we're starting to trend in the same direction Europe and Scandinavia have already gone.
--:-- Megan Basham: So in the last decade, our religiosity has been declining more rapidly than in other rich Western democracies. Though, to be fair, a lot of those nations really didn't have much further to drop. In the UK, for example, the percentage of adults who attend church on any given Sunday is now in the low single digits.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Now, I think some people will hear that and they'll say, so what? Why do we care if Americans are less religious? Well, look, whatever your personal beliefs, declining religious faith naturally corresponds to a decline in church participation. And that's a negative thing for society because church attendance correlates to all kinds of civic good. Just a few examples. Religious people tend to have higher birth rates, which expands the tax base and provides more workers for future economies. They also smoke and drink less, putting less strain on health systems. Regular church attenders divorce much less, causing less disruption to the family structure, which results in statistically much more positive outcomes for children.
--:-- Megan Basham: On a personal level, actively religious people also tend to have much higher community engagement. They're more conscientious about voting and volunteering. A huge percentage of local charity organizations are affiliated with churches and religious denominations. So the amount of care provided in a community for people who are struggling with, say, poverty, addiction, or mental health issues, all of that is strongly connected to the outreach of local churches.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And on an individual level, research shows that people who are active in religious congregations are typically happier. So the takeaway here is go to church. Yes, that's exactly what it is. Go to church.
--:-- Megan Basham: Definitely food for thought.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Megan, thanks for reporting.
--:-- Megan Basham: Sure, anytime.
--:-- Georgia Howe: That's Daily Wire entertainment reporter Megan Basham. And for some significant news in the tennis world, here's sports reporter Joe Morgan.
--:-- Joe Morgan: Thanks, John. The world's number one ranked tennis player, Novak Djokovic, has been denied entry into Australia after his visa was canceled. Djokovic arrived in Australia on Wednesday and after an eight-hour standoff with Australian officials, was told that he would not be allowed into the country on Thursday. His medical exemption from the COVID-19 vaccine, which was granted by the Victorian government on Tuesday, was the reason for the standoff. Djokovic's participation in the 2022 Australian Open has been up in the air over the past few months, as he has not allowed anybody to know whether he was vaccinated or unvaccinated. It is important to note, however, that Djokovic reportedly tested positive for COVID in June of 2020. Djokovic's lawyers plan on challenging the decision.
--:-- Georgia Howe: If you liked this episode and are interested in hearing more, subscribe to Morning Wire on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening, and give us a five-star review. 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. If you like this podcast, get the Morning Wire newsletter delivered straight to your inbox when you join at dailywire.com slash subscribe.
