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--:-- 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.
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--:-- John Bickley: As Americans in the Southeast are underwater, officials are warning that FEMA funding is drying up. The funding crisis is raising questions about how much taxpayer money the agency has spent on non-citizens. I'm Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's Friday, October 4th, and this is Morning Wire.
--:-- Georgia Howe: The dock worker strike projected to throw international shipping into chaos has ended just as quickly as it began. We were out of work for two months. Now we're out of work for a few more days. We're very excited to be back.
--:-- John Bickley: And a Republican congressional leader sounds the alarm over a new censorship effort. The concern we had, obviously, from a judiciary perspective was this anti-competitive concept that's going on to censor conservative speech.
--:-- 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: Unprecedented levels of immigration since 2020 have placed huge strains on U.S. finances and economic activity. As residents in North Carolina and Georgia struggle in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, Americans are close to losing federal disaster funds. That's on top of immigration-driven inflation that's made goods such as homes harder to buy. Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce is here with more.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Hey, thanks for having me. So Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas had a warning about the government's disaster reserves on Wednesday. This is as residents in the southeast are in crisis right now. What did he say? That FEMA is cash-strapped and doesn't have enough money to make it through the rest of the hurricane season. He said Helene's recovery is covered, but if another storm hits, federal assistance may run out for those victims.
--:-- John Bickley: Here's President Biden earlier this week talking about FEMA assistance for areas hit by Helene. Are there any more resources the federal government could be giving them? No, we've given them, we have pre-planned a significant amount of it.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Now, FEMA has the Disaster Relief Fund, $20 billion allocated only for disaster relief efforts like this hurricane. But it also has the Shelter and Services Program, a separate program that's not directly connected to disaster relief. One of the big ticket items of that Shelter and Services Program happens to be for housing and feeding immigrants in the middle of a record wave of illegal immigration.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Here's Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody calling attention to that on Fox News on Thursday. Mayorkas has come in like a virus and infected these, what need to be healthy, strong, fundamental programs to ensure the stability and safety of Americans in times of disaster So you heard they have taken the FEMA emergency food and shelter program and over time siphoned off hundreds of millions of dollars into basically making it an illegal immigrant resettlement program. And so when you see these states and cities around the nation declaring emergencies, even blue states because of what this administration has done, developing programs to encourage more and more and more people to come here. Biden and Harris are having to fund that on the backs of the American people.
--:-- Tim Pierce: So how much of taxpayer emergency funds have actually been spent on non-citizens? Quite a bit. America First Legal went through the data and over the last two years, the cost is well over $1 billion. FEMA's Shelter and Services Program pays for shelters and services specifically for non-citizens. That program alone has cost $650 million this year. A separate FEMA program, the Emergency Food and Shelter Program, has also supported non-citizens to the tune of about $685 million from 2021 through 2023.
--:-- John Bickley: Now, for context, AccuWeather estimated on Monday that recovery efforts for Helene could top $160 billion. A truly staggering amount. Now, immigration has also impacted housing costs. What can you tell us about that?
--:-- Tim Pierce: Right. That was an issue that was brought up at the vice presidential debate this week between Republican J.D. Vance and Democrat Tim Walz. Here's some of that. We don't want to blame immigrants for higher housing prices, but we do want to blame Kamala Harris for letting in millions of illegal aliens into this country, which does drive up costs, Tim. 25 million illegal aliens competing with Americans for scarce homes is one of the most significant drivers of home prices in the country. It's why we have massive increases in home prices that have happened right alongside massive increases in illegal alien populations under Kamala Harris's leadership.
--:-- Georgia Howe: One of the debate moderators, Margaret Brennan, later asked Vance what evidence he had that immigration drives up housing prices, and Vance has since presented it. He pointed to the fact that Michelle Bowman made that claim. She sits on the board of the Federal Reserve. He also pointed to a July 2024 study by the Congressional Budget Office that found, quote, the research literature has generally found that increases in immigration raise state and local government spending, particularly on education, health care and housing, more than their revenues.
--:-- Tim Pierce: So definitely a valid claim there by the senator. Meanwhile, let's hope the people in these disaster areas get the aid they need.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Tim, thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me.
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--:-- John Bickley: The international longshoreman strike has ended just three days after it began. Daily Wire investigative reporter Maraid Elordi is here with the latest.
--:-- Maraid Elordi: Hi, Georgia. According to a statement from the ILA, they've agreed to a 62% pay increase over six years for their members and will return to work. The hourly base rate will go from $39 to $63 an hour. As of Thursday night details were limited but they are back to work and perhaps most importantly there still time to bargain No details were provided about any of their other sticking points such as the union opposition to any automation But the union says they will return to negotiations for all other outstanding issues.
--:-- Georgia Howe: The massive strike began at midnight Tuesday morning when 45,000 union workers walked off the job, demanding a pay increase and zero automation. 14 East Coast and Gulf ports were affected from Boston all the way down to Miami. So this was a very short strike, only three days. But during that time, the union was really throwing their weight around.
--:-- Maraid Elordi: Yes, the colorful union boss Harold Daggett led his dock workers on the picket line at Port Authority, New Jersey, where he delivered expletive-laden rallying cries and had heated responses for reporters. Previously, Daggett threatened to cripple the economy if the dock workers didn't get what they wanted. Many criticized Daggett as he reportedly earns as much as $900,000 a year. By the way, the dock worker union has donated more than $1.6 million to Democrats on Daggett's watch.
--:-- Georgia Howe: However, there's often a disconnect between union leadership and the membership, as we saw with the Teamsters recently whose bosses opted not to endorse Kamala Harris because a majority of their members support Donald Trump. That disconnect was demonstrated in a moment yesterday when a group of dock workers were asked by a Fox News reporter if they support their boss. Here's their response. You support your president. When I say you, you say power. Union! Power! Union! Power! Union! When the same group was asked if they support Kamala Harris, they were silent.
--:-- Maraid Elordi: Vice President Harris supports the strike, she said. How many folks support Vice President Harris? No hands. So silence speaks volumes there.
--:-- John Bickley: President Biden could have forced the strikers back to work by invoking the Taft-Hartley Act, which requires an 80-day cooling-off period, but he refused to do so. For her part, Kamala Harris did endorse the strike on Wednesday. She put out a statement saying the strike is about fairness, and she blamed foreign-owned shipping companies for their record profits and bigger executive salaries. But Harris is caught between courting the union vote and averting economic disaster.
--:-- Maraid Elordi: Right, well, on that note, can we still expect economic disruptions from this strike? Maybe on some items, but not nearly as severe as it could have been. This strike wasn't a secret, so a lot of the major sellers saw it coming and have been prepping for months. Packaged food maker ConAgra ordered shipments early. Same with many retailers. They know their products can sit in warehouses and don't have a short shelf life, so they were prepared for the strike. More perishable foods like bananas may see shortages for a few weeks, but it should be pretty transient.
--:-- Georgia Howe: There were already some shortages at my local supermarket. Produce, milk, ice cream seemed to take the biggest hit. But most of the empty shelves you see in social media videos were caused by people panic buying. At Costco stores across the country, shoppers emptied the shelves of toilet paper trying to stock up.
--:-- Maraid Elordi: Well, this is a huge relief. The last thing people need right before the holidays is a spike in inflation. Right.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Mara, thanks for reporting. Thanks, Georgia.
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--:-- John Bickley: In August, a group called the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, or GARM, imploded following lawsuits and investigations, alleging that it represented big corporations colluding to censor political opponents. Now, a congressman is warning that the effort may just be shifting to a new vehicle. Daily Wire investigative reporter Luke Rosiak has followed the controversy around GARM and joins us now with his exclusive report.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: Hey, John. So first, give us some context. What do we need to know about where this new effort is coming from?
--:-- John Bickley: So GARM was a membership group through which virtually all major advertising agencies banded together to speak with one voice to insist that news outlets and social media companies adopt stringent censorship standards or risk having essentially zero advertising which would put them out of business Congressman Jim Jordan who leads the House Judiciary Committee accused them of violating antitrust laws and Axe and Rumble sued them, saying they'd coordinated a boycott of Axe. The argument that it's a cartel is basically that some of these companies, they want to push left-wing ideology, but they also don't want to lose out on eyeballs by boycotting a big platform like Twitter, unless they could be assured that their competitors were also boycotting. That's where GARM came in.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: Emails showed that a GARM leader also claimed that the Daily Wire promoted conspiracy theories and admitted to using rules about misinformation as a mere pretext to target sites based on their ideology, including Breitbart. Now, in August, it looked like there had been a victory for free speech, with GARM disbanding, citing legal bills and controversy.
--:-- John Bickley: Right, so these ad-buying firms told their clients they were keeping them off of conservative sites because it would risk damaging their brand, but that wound up potentially alienating a lot of customers too. Yeah, they wound up being embroiled in a big controversy that wasn't good for what they call brand safety.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: But now one of the leaders of GARM, a Japanese PR firm called Dentsu, has created something that looks very similar to GARM, called the Dentsu Coalition. Jordan wrote to it on Thursday, citing materials that said the new group wants to boost, quote, credible news and ensure that journalism thrives by leveraging the collective power of the ad industry's foremost players.
--:-- John Bickley: Now, to any old-fashioned journalist, just those brief quotes alone should cause concern. In the old newsrooms, there was always a strict separation between advertising and news because you don't want companies influencing how news is covered, even more so if they're big international firms. And no reporter worth his salt wants to write things that mirror what a public relations company wants him to write. The fact that we have foreign entities from countries that don't have the First Amendment determining what American news outlets can say should be deeply troubling to everyone.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: That's part of why Congressman Jordan sounded the alarm over this. Here's what he told Morning Wire. The implications for Western culture and for our country, the greatest country ever, if you don't have a robust First Amendment and robust free speech rights, it's really frightening. And more and more people, I think, are understanding this, and that's why they're pushing back.
--:-- John Bickley: How exactly does Dentsu plan to conduct their ratings? What would give media outlets a credible score, according to them?
--:-- Luke Rosiak: Well, GARM had its members use third-party news rating credibility companies, which make money selling lists of who to do business with or not do business with to advertisers. They often have a clear partisan bias, putting center-right news outlets like the New York Post and the Washington Examiner on lists of uncredible outlets. Some of them have taken money from the government. And so it basically turns journalism into this game of you won't be able to pay reporters salaries if you challenge the government's official lines on things like the idea that COVID might have leaked from a Chinese lab. A scary and most importantly, unconstitutional prospect.
--:-- John Bickley: Clearly, the stakes are high for journalism right now.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: Luke, thanks for joining us. Sure thing. Thanks for waking up with us.
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--:-- John Bickley: We'll be back later this afternoon with more news you need to know. Now more than ever, you need the facts. That's why you need to join Daily Wire Plus, and now we're making it easier than ever. For a limited time, we're offering our presidential deal of 47% off new annual Daily Wire Plus memberships. Why 47%, you ask? Because we're fighting to make Trump our 47th president. Get your news from the most trusted names in conservative media with breaking news alerts and live coverage that actually tell you what's happening and not just what the left wants you to think. Plus, you'll get access to unfiltered, uncentered daily shows from Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, and more, as well as our full catalog of groundbreaking entertainment and hard-hitting investigative journalism. Don't miss this opportunity. Head over to dailywire.com slash subscribe and join now at 47% off.
