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--:-- John Bickley: Good morning, I'm John Bickley, and this is Morning Wire. It's Friday, September 10th.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And I'm Georgia Howe. Thanks for waking up with us.
--:-- John Bickley: President Biden announced a COVID vaccine mandate for all U.S. companies with 100 employees or more.
--:-- Georgia Howe: That's right, John. The Department of Labor is developing an emergency rule to require all employers with 100 or more employees that together employ over 80 million workers to ensure their workforces are fully vaccinated.
--:-- John Bickley: The announcement is part of the Biden administration's aggressive new plan to pressure more Americans to get vaccinated.
--:-- Georgia Howe: But how does the president plan to enforce this mandate? And what else is in his new COVID plan?
--:-- John Bickley: Daily Wire investigative reporter Maraid Olorty has the details for us. So, Maraid, the federal government is now going to mandate the COVID vaccine for private sector workers.
--:-- Maraid Olorty: That's correct, President Biden has directed his Labor Department to come up with a sweeping new vaccine mandate rule for private employers.
--:-- John Bickley: This is an unprecedented move, correct?
--:-- Maraid Olorty: Right, it is. This is the federal government inserting itself into how private companies handle COVID vaccinations.
--:-- Georgia Howe: This is the first mandate of its kind for COVID. How does the administration plan to enforce this?
--:-- Maraid Olorty: Well, Biden's rule will force all employers with more than 100 workers to require them to get vaccinated or get tested at least once a week for the virus.
--:-- John Bickley: Businesses that don't comply would face fines of up to $14,000 per violation.
--:-- Maraid Olorty: This is expected to affect 80 million American workers in the private sector.
--:-- Georgia Howe: 80 million. Does the president even have the authority to enact this kind of thing?
--:-- Maraid Olorty: Well, some legal experts think he does, like Georgetown University global health law professor Lawrence Gostin.
--:-- John Bickley: But a flood of legal challenges are expected, and several Republican governors have already issued statements declaring that they will fight these mandates tooth and nail.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Georgia Brian Kemp said he will pursue every legal option available to stop this blatantly unlawful overreach by the Biden administration.
--:-- John Bickley: Mississippi Tate Reeves said the president has no authority to require that Americans inject themselves because of their employment at a private business.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And the Biden administration is also mandating vaccines for federal workers, correct?
--:-- Maraid Olorty: That's right. Biden announced that all federal workers and even all federal contractors must receive a vaccine or face disciplinary action.
--:-- John Bickley: This mandate applies to not just the 2.1 million White House employees and federal agency workers, but also the millions of contractors that do business with the government.
--:-- Georgia Howe: The vaccine mandate does not apply to people who work for Congress or in the federal court system.
--:-- Maraid Olorty: Really? Yeah. But the federal workers who are required to get the shot won't have the option to test out.
--:-- John Bickley: There will be some medical and religious exemptions, but it's unclear how easy those will be to get.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So why now? I mean, what's the timing here for the Biden administration in doing something so extreme?
--:-- Maraid Olorty: Well, first, it's the FDA fully approving the Pfizer vaccine. And then it's Delta. The Biden administration has pretty much blamed the spread of the more contagious Delta variant on people not getting the shot.
--:-- John Bickley: So basically, the Biden administration sees the vaccine as its key to ending COVID.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And now that it's FDA approved, Biden is pushing the shots as much as he possibly can.
--:-- Maraid Olorty: It's also worth noting that this is a significant flip-flop for Biden. The president himself said last year that coronavirus vaccines would not be made mandatory for Americans.
--:-- John Bickley: I don't think it should be mandatory. I wouldn't demand it be mandatory, but I would do everything in my power. Just like I don't think masks have to be made mandatory nationwide.
--:-- Georgia Howe: We're bound to see some significant pushback and legal challenges to this.
--:-- Maraid Olorty: Thanks, John and Georgia, for having me on.
--:-- John Bickley: Anytime, Maraid. Investigative reporter Maraid Olorty.
--:-- John Bickley: Inflation is destroying the dollar. Birch Gold Group can help protect your IRA or 401k with a precious metals IRA.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Text WIRE to 989898 to claim a free info kit on physical gold and silver. There's zero obligation.
--:-- John Bickley: Text the word WIRE to 989898 to protect your savings today.
--:-- John Bickley: The White House has sent letters to Trump appointees at numerous government boards demanding their immediate resignation.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Daily Wire's Luke Rosiak broke the story on Wednesday, and he's here to tell us more.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: So President Biden just cleared out a lot of advisory board positions. Is that normal?
--:-- John Bickley: Well, yes and no. Of course, every president puts his own people into the cabinet and other top positions.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: But this is totally different. This is a purge of small independent agencies, governing boards, and the many advisory commissions that are across the federal government.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And that's totally unprecedented.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: In these positions, presidents typically appoint people to fix terms like three years. And those terms are staggered so that they don't align with presidential elections.
--:-- John Bickley: So what are some positions that were affected by this? Can you give us some examples?
--:-- Luke Rosiak: Yeah. One is the boards that oversee the military service academies like West Point.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Those are groups that have historically prided themselves on being bipartisan and for good reason.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: You can't have the military turned into a force pushing the politics of the day.
--:-- John Bickley: Biden purged every single official named by Trump. The White House suggested that they were getting rid of what they claim were unqualified appointees.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: Purged Service Academy board members included Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster and Sean Spicer, a Naval War College graduate and former Trump press secretary.
--:-- Georgia Howe: We spoke to Spicer about the force resignations President Obama had his picks President Bush President Clinton all the way back Not one president in the history of our nation has dismissed anybody based on that
--:-- Luke Rosiak: The academies, the service academy boards, and frankly, the services have been devoid of politics until yesterday.
--:-- John Bickley: Now, the White House has tried to make it seem like most of these are well-known political figures like Spicer, but that's really not the case.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: A lot of these boards are pretty in the weeds, It's full of experts in particular niche fields.
--:-- Georgia Howe: One example is a little group called the Arctic Research Commission.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: Trump appointed several people, such as Thomas Emanuel Danz, whose term was set to expire in 2023.
--:-- John Bickley: Danz is a decades-long expert in the field, and he told me the commission is an independent federal agency set up by Congress.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: The best evidence of its political independence is actually that during the Trump administration, the commission consisted almost entirely of Obama appointees.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Its chair was even outspoken against Trump.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: Trump didn't fire them because that would have been a pretty brazen departure from norms.
--:-- John Bickley: Now, you mentioned that this is unprecedented, but is it illegal? For most positions, it may violate the spirit of the law, but it doesn't violate the letter of the law.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: But there are positions where it very well could be illegal. For example, Biden fired the general counsels of the National Labor Relations Board and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Those are independent, bipartisan government agencies set up explicitly to have separation from presidential administrations.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: It's a legal gray area, and it's never been tested, partly because other presidents haven't done this.
--:-- John Bickley: So President Biden has been in office for about eight months. Why is this happening now?
--:-- Luke Rosiak: It's funny because initially the Biden administration tried to avoid these unusual firings by just not having committees meet.
--:-- Georgia Howe: The calculus was basically, yeah, we have to conduct these operations of government, but if we have to do it with a Trump guy in the room, maybe it's better to just do nothing at all.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: And that was kind of an issue. I mean, there's one of these committees is within the Department of Education, and it's tasked with overseeing questions around science as it relates to schools.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And that group just didn't meet all year.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: So this was 2021 with the school shutdowns for COVID, and this science in education board didn't meet at all?
--:-- John Bickley: Wow. And that meant there was no quorum. So they couldn't meet, even though the law requires them to meet.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: Now, during the Trump presidency, we were warned frequently that he would do something like this.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Exactly. There was a lot of fear that Trump would, quote, violate norms and politicize the bureaucracy.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: In Trump's case, he retained Obama's appointees.
--:-- John Bickley: You have to assume that what Biden's doing here is setting a new precedent, that every future president, including Republicans, is going to do the same thing.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: Is undermining bipartisanship and continuity a good thing for the country? Probably not.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Luke, thanks for breaking this story. And thanks for coming on to share it.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: Of course. That's Daily Wire investigative reporter Luke Rosiak.
--:-- John Bickley: China has been making a number of policy changes that affect the entertainment industry and how citizens consume culture.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Last Thursday, it announced a ban on, quote, effeminate men on television.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: Here to discuss exactly what Chinese officials mean by effeminate and how this policy will play out is Daily Wire entertainment reporter Megan Basham.
--:-- Megan Basham: So, Megan, what exactly is this new ban?
--:-- John Bickley: Well, you know I think it's important to point out that the broadcasting regulators didn't just mean gay men when they issued this ban, because I think that's what a lot of people are going to hear.
--:-- Megan Basham: But depictions of homosexuality have been illegal in China since 2016.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So this is really something more.
--:-- Megan Basham: What the National Radio and Television Administration said was, quote, TV broadcasters must resolutely put an end to sissy men and other abnormal aesthetics.
--:-- John Bickley: Sissy men, that's the actual quote?
--:-- Megan Basham: That's the actual quote. That's not me speaking. The Chinese government used sissy men.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And then they used a Chinese slur for feminine-looking men that literally translates to girly guns.
--:-- Megan Basham: Now, one of the genres they're specifically disallowing is talent competition shows.
--:-- John Bickley: So think American Idol. These are very popular with Chinese youth and they often feature young male pop stars or boy bands.
--:-- Megan Basham: And you should picture the K-pop band, BTS, very androgynous, sort of thin and delicate looking.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Well, that's not the model that the Communist Chinese Party officials want their young men emulating.
--:-- Megan Basham: The idea is that effeminate men won't form stable marriages that produce children and lead to a stable society.
--:-- John Bickley: So this ban only applies to Chinese broadcasters, obviously, but do we expect it to have any impact on American entertainment?
--:-- Megan Basham: Now, that is a fascinating question.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Because, of course, we all know that Hollywood prides itself on inclusivity and LGBT representation.
--:-- Megan Basham: But the dirty little secret is that studios don't want those quote-unquote gay moments to be so big that they keep them out of the Chinese market, which, if you have not heard, is now the biggest movie market in the world.
--:-- John Bickley: China's box office passed ours late last year.
--:-- Megan Basham: So typically, when it comes to movies with big international potential, studios want to keep those moments small enough and in the background enough that Chinese censors are willing to overlook them.
--:-- Georgia Howe: An example would be that very quick lesbian kiss in The Rise of Skywalker in 2019.
--:-- Megan Basham: If you blinked, you missed it, and you probably didn't remember who those women were anyway.
--:-- John Bickley: I can't say that I do.
--:-- Megan Basham: Exactly, and that was the point.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Now, China didn't say that this ban will apply to movies, but it has significantly curtailed the number of Hollywood movies it approved this year.
--:-- Megan Basham: So we're talking about half the usual number.
--:-- John Bickley: And if the CCP is unwilling to let its own production companies put effeminate men in front of Chinese eyes, well, it's highly unlikely it's going to welcome Hollywood in to do it for them.
--:-- Megan Basham: Yeah, that makes sense.
--:-- Georgia Howe: It'll be fascinating to see how this plays out.
--:-- Megan Basham: Thanks for being here, Megan.
--:-- Megan Basham: Yeah, my pleasure. That was Daily Wire entertainment reporter Megan Basham.
--:-- John Bickley: Another story we're tracking this week. The Biden administration is suing Texas over its new pro-life law.
--:-- Georgia Howe: The Justice Department said in a lawsuit that the bill banning most abortions after six weeks was made into law, quote, in open defiance of the Constitution.
--:-- John Bickley: If you like 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.
--:-- Georgia Howe: That's all the time we've got this morning. Thanks for waking up with us.
--:-- John Bickley: We'll be back tomorrow with the news you need to know.
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--:-- John Bickley: Morning Wire is presented by Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief, John Bickley, and co-host Georgia Howe.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Get daily coverage of the latest developments in politics, culture, education, sports, and more.
--:-- John Bickley: Wake up with Morning Wire and get the facts first on the news you need to know.
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--:-- Georgia Howe: Thanks for listening to Morning Wire.
--:-- John Bickley: We'll see you tomorrow.
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