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--:-- John Bickley: The Supreme Court has struck down affirmative action in college admissions. It's vindication. All I wanted was for people to be treated on their merits. Is this really the end of race-based college admissions?
--:-- Georgia Howe: I'm Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's Friday, June 30th, and this is Morning Wire. Unprecedented high temperatures gripped the southern U.S. as smoke from Canadian wildfires engulfs northern cities to have this so early in the season so widespread and so prolific is really unprecedented.
--:-- John Bickley: When will the smoke clear and what can we expect for the summer season?
--:-- Georgia Howe: The FDA says it will not amend COVID vaccine labels to add a list of side effects following a request from a group of experts and academics. Just like when you see a TV commercial and they say side effects include nausea, vomiting, fever, we felt that the COVID vaccine should also have the known side effects.
--:-- John Bickley: Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.
--:-- Kenny Hsu: This is a momentous day. Race is like the least important factor about any person's life. What matters more is your abilities, your interests, your ambitions. That's what makes America.
--:-- John Bickley: This is more than just about Asian Americans or a few spots at Harvard. This is about treating people according to the content of their character, not the color of their skin. That was Kenny Hsu, board member of Students for Fair Admission, the group which sued Harvard and the University of North Carolina, reacting to the momentous ruling yesterday just moments after the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in college admissions.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Joining us to discuss is Heritage Senior Legal Fellow Sarah Parshall Perry.
--:-- Sarah Parshall Perry: Hey, Sarah. So major affirmative action rulings yesterday, Students for Fair Admission versus Harvard College and University of North Carolina. Could you outline the arguments on both sides of these cases?
--:-- Sarah Parshall Perry: Yeah, so Students for Fair Admission is an organization that brought suit against both universities. One for a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment and won under Title VI at the Civil Rights Act, which guarantees for both of them a colorblindness, equal protection, promises of equality and colorblindness in both. The claims were different, but they were related. So they combined both, but they ruled separately. The decision in the Harvard case was six to two. And remember, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson had to recuse herself. She's on the board at Harvard, and the decision in the UNC case was six to three. The three liberal justices, Ketanji Brown-Jackson, Sotomayor, and Kagan, dissented, but the conservative majority ruled as a block in both cases, ultimately deciding that, yes, indeed, this was a violation. The Supreme Court's promise of colorblindness, the promises of Brown versus Board of Education, and that the use of race consciousness admission plans had to come to an end.
--:-- Sarah Parshall Perry: What were some of the points that stuck out to you that were the most significant that the majority made?
--:-- Sarah Parshall Perry: Yeah, so there were a couple of points. Now of course the court had been asked to overrule a case called Grutter v Bollinger Grutter dates back to 2003 It was an opinion authored by Sandra Day O'Connor and that was a case in which the court determined that yes race was an acceptable criteria for admission, but only to achieve the educational diversity that might ultimately be subject to beneficial higher education policies. They saw diversity as an end in and of itself, but they were very clear that in 25 years or so, they anticipated that the use of race would come to an end. Well, Students for Fair Admission raised the question of overturning Grutter v. Bollinger, and while the court explicitly declined to say that they were overruling it, Justice Thomas and his separate concurrence actually said, we are, for all intents and purposes, overruling it today. That's a big statement, particularly because Justice Thomas, I think, had one of the most impactful statements of the entire opinion.
--:-- Sarah Parshall Perry: While he joined with the majority, his separate concurrence was beautiful in which he said he is painfully aware of the social and economic ravages of discrimination, but holds out enduring hope that the country will live up to the principles so clearly enunciated in the Declaration and the Constitution. It is a brilliant refutation using race, continuing to use race, which the dissents had argued for, arguing that essentially this was remedying the past societal effects of discrimination. But as the chief wrote for the majority and stressed over and over again, there is no end in sight. The use of race has actually gotten worse and not better.
--:-- Sarah Parshall Perry: So this ruling obviously has some pretty broad implications. What kind of effect do you expect this to have?
--:-- Sarah Parshall Perry: Well, interestingly, they didn't eliminate the use of or consideration of race at all. In fact, one of the things that they said was that universities can consider an applicant's discussion of how race affected their lives. As long as the discussion is tied to, for example, quality of character or a unique ability that that particular applicant can bring to the university.
--:-- Matthew Capucci: Hi, I'm Matthew Capucci, meteorologist for the Capital Weather Gang. So first off, tell us about these Canadian wildfires and how they're affecting air quality in the U.S.
--:-- Matthew Capucci: Most definitely. So one of the issues with this is that these wildfires cropped up during the end of May into very early June. They developed beneath a heat dome or pocket of high pressure, which brought hot sinking air to much of central Canada, which dried out the landscape. Then around June 2nd, 3rd, and 4th, we had a round of thunderstorms ignite those wildfires and they've been burning ever since. So far, they've torched about 19 million acres. So the smoke copious amounts is pouring into the sky. The issue the U.S. has been facing is that periodically when we get north or northwesterly winds, that pulls the smoke down into the lower 48 and degrades our air quality. It's dangerous to breathe in, and a number of cities are seeing their all-time worst air qualities on record.
--:-- Matthew Capucci: You know, to be honest, until this past month, I didn't know in the United States we had such things as a code purple. And since then, I forecast several code purple days here in the nation's capital where I'm based out of. And across the entire northern U.S., folks have had several sort of run-ins with the smoke and more likely to continue throughout the entire summer and perhaps into the fall.
--:-- Matthew Capucci: Now, we're also seeing extremely high temperatures here in the U.S. I don't know if that has anything to do with this heat dome. Is there any connection between the high temperatures down here and what we're seeing in Canada?
--:-- Matthew Capucci: There is. And part of this is due to something called blocking. Essentially, sometimes you have the atmosphere kind of act like a log jam where one weather system will get stopped and prevent the next ones from moving along and moving along and moving along. So in the eastern United States, people may be saying, well, it's been really dry, kind of cool lately. We haven't seen many thunderstorms. Over the central states, they might be saying it's been so hot. It's been so humid. It feels like we're having storms every day. Over the deep south, they've been seeing rounds of severe weather that are more typical of like late March, April into May during peak tornado season. And then the West hasn't really seen a big warm up until this week, thanks to this kind of stagnant, blocked weather pattern.
--:-- Mairead Elordi: Hi, Georgia. The FDA rejected a request from a group of current and former FDA advisors and academics who asked the FDA to update the labels for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines to warn about serious side effects.
--:-- Mairead Elordi: The group made their request in January, and the FDA responded nearly three months later in April with a 33-page response letter that denied almost every single request.
--:-- Mairead Elordi: What were the side effects that this group of FDA advisors were concerned about?
--:-- Mairead Elordi: The most high-profile example the group mentioned is myocarditis. That's a heart inflammation condition that can cause long-term damage and in some cases death. Myocarditis has been associated with the mRNA COVID vaccines, especially among young men. The group of FDA advisors and others also mentioned that heavy menstrual bleeding has been associated with the mRNA COVID vaccines. A European regulator has actually already recommended that heavy menstrual bleeding be added to the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines product information.
--:-- Mairead Elordi: Other serious issues the group wants added to the vaccine labels are multi-system inflammatory syndrome or MIS in children, pulmonary embolism, neuropathic and autonomic disorders, decreased sperm concentration, and mRNA found in breast milk. A separate issue raised with the current vaccine labels is that they don't inform people that the vaccine does not prevent viral transmission, so there can be a false sense of safety.
--:-- Mairead Elordi: The group also requested the FDA to have the Pfizer label warn patients that the vaccine's efficacy fades after about two months. And the FDA rejected all of these suggestions.
--:-- Mairead Elordi: Yes, the FDA declined to update the Pfizer or Moderna labels with any of the risk information. The one request the FDA did grant had to do with adding data from the COVID booster trials.
--:-- Kim Witzak: I will never understand why the FDA hasn't been upfront and transparent with the public. Instead, they're deciding what information we need or don't need. The public deserves the good, the bad, and ugly in real time. Informed consent is not possible when we don't have all the information to make an informed decision.
--:-- Marty McCary: The FDA got back to our petition and basically said that the petition, quote unquote, fails to explain how including the fact that no results have been reported in referring to the vaccine and pregnancy trial, that that would actually contribute to the safe and effective use of the vaccine. In other words, pregnant women don't need to know anything, that there's no good formal randomized trial data in pregnancy. Just get the vaccine. There's never been a randomized control trial of the COVID vaccine in pregnant women. They were excluded from the primary COVID vaccine trials.
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--:-- John Bickley: That's all the time we've got this morning. Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back this afternoon with more of the news you need to know.
