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--:-- Georgia Howe: This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible. Financial geniuses. Monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Visit Progressive.com to see if you could save. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations.
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--:-- Georgia Howe: Inflation data comes in higher than expected again in March, making a Fed rate cut highly unlikely. A rate cut in June, it seems to me, would be a dangerous and egregious error. How damaging are the high inflation figures to the Biden economy? I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley.
--:-- John Bickley: It's Thursday, April 11th, and this is Morning Wire. A new abortion ruling in Arizona has reignited the debate over the polarizing issue and prompted some surprising political responses. And a small group of Republicans block reauthorization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, FISA. Why do we have a provision in there that exempts congressmen but not all of America? Why has the issue driven a wedge through the GOP?
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--:-- Georgia Howe: The Labor Department announced Wednesday that inflation continued to rise faster than expected last month, dampening hopes of rate cuts and a soft landing for the economy. Here to break it all down is Daily Wire's senior editor, Cabot Phillips.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Hey, Cabot, so another disappointing report on inflation. What did we learn from this report?
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Well, stop me if you've heard this before. The all-important consumer price index, which tracks the overall cost of goods and services across the economy, rose 3.5% compared to the same month last year. Not only was that higher than what economists had projected, it also represented an increase from both January and February. Those were two months in which the numbers were also higher than expected.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Now, at the time, Fed officials had expressed optimism that those reports were nothing more than seasonal anomalies and that inflation was still heading in the right direction. But this week's news makes it clear once again that inflation is not going away. Yeah, a reality going back three years now.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: So which goods in particular are seeing the highest price jumps? Yeah, it's everywhere, to put it frankly. Economists may have been caught off guard by those numbers, but most Americans probably were not too surprised to hear that prices are still going up. Those spikes, though, were most pronounced last month for insurance costs. Auto insurance last month was, get this, 22% more expensive than in March of last year. That is the largest annual increase in nearly half a century.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Car repairs are also up 12% since last year, while veterinarian costs and baby formula are each up 10%. Oil and gas prices have also played a major factor in keeping inflation high. The cost of gas is now up more than 20% since the start of the year after going down a bit in 2023. Zooming out though if you take a look at since President Biden took office gas prices are up a stunning 47 percent Groceries in that time frame 21 percent Rent 21 percent Used cars, 20 percent. Airfare, 32 percent. Again, the list goes on and on.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And all of that comes as real average weekly earnings, when adjusted for inflation, have gone down nearly 4 percent. Yeah, brutal combination there.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: So what does this latest report mean for potential rate cuts in the future? There had been optimism coming into the year that if inflation slowed, the Fed would cut interest rates, which now sit at 22-year highs. But the latest data throws cold water on that idea.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: For more on that, I spoke with Mark Goldwine, the Senior Policy Director for the Nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Here's what he had to say when I asked what this week's report means for rate cuts.
--:-- Mark Goldwine: It means don't count on them. I think the Federal Reserve was already looking at the employment numbers and thinking, well, the job market is strong. We might not want to cut. Now that they're seeing inflation is definitely still elevated, I'd say there's an extremely low chance they're going to cut in June. And it's possible there won't even be any cuts this entire year.
--:-- Mark Goldwine: And for years now, the White House has displayed optimism that a soft landing was coming, where the economy slows down to ease inflation but avoids a recession in the process. But according to Goldwine, that optimism may be misplaced.
--:-- Mark Goldwine: You know, I've been predicting for a while a bumpy landing, meaning I do think we will get inflation back to the 2% target. I think we can do it without a recession, but not without pain. That's looking less and less likely every day. Where we seem to be now is sort of more in a hovering situation where inflation is down. We're not at 7% where we used to be, but it's not clear to me we're actually going to be able to land at that 2% without causing a recession.
--:-- Mark Goldwine: And we may just not try. We may be satisfied at keeping inflation in this 2.5% to 3.5%, working it down little by little and accepting that higher inflation in exchange for keeping the job market under control.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Now, for his part, President Biden did acknowledge Wednesday that, quote, prices are still too high, but encouraged Americans to look on the bright side. Biden has consistently touted the overall strength of the economy, pointing to low unemployment and record-breaking numbers on Wall Street. But poll after poll shows that voters simply are not buying it.
--:-- Georgia Howe: The latest from The New York Times, for example, found that two in three Americans say the economy has gotten worse in the last year, while the Wall Street Journal found that 75% of Americans say inflation is outpacing wage growth in their household. All told, there has not been a single month where inflation has fallen since President Biden took office. And if this month is any indication, it does not look like that's going to change anytime soon.
--:-- Georgia Howe: No, it does not. Cabot, thanks for reporting.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Anytime.
--:-- Georgia Howe: The Arizona Supreme Court says a law that outlaws all abortion in the state except to save the life of the mother is enforceable. The reaction of GOP candidates, including former President Trump, has surprised some political observers and stymied some pro-life leaders. Here with more is Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham.
--:-- Megan Basham: So Megan, this law was passed in 1864. The Dobbs decision allowed it to take effect. Before we get into some of the possibly unexpected political reactions, what are the specific parameters of this law?
--:-- Megan Basham: Well, the parameters are incredibly broad. I think you can say the broadest in the country right now. As you noted, this law has been on the books for 160 years, though unenforced since Roe, and it supersedes a previous 2022 law that limited abortion in Arizona to 15 weeks. So it bans all abortion at any stage of gestation except for when the mother's life is at risk. And that includes cases of rape and incest. And it carries a two to five year prison sentence for providers.
--:-- Megan Basham: So the law was challenged by Planned Parenthood And I spoke to Jake Warner the attorney for the Alliance Defending Freedom who defended the law before the Arizona Supreme Court Here what he said about claims that the law is too extreme
--:-- Jake Warner: The common sense solution is protecting life from the moment of conception And we think this law gets it exactly right. Life is a human right.
--:-- Megan Basham: Now, that said, right now, the court has put a two-week stay on its order to allow for some challenges. And the state attorney general is promising not to prosecute anyone under this law. So now let's get to the political realities. It seems pretty clear that we're hearing a shift in messaging, at least from some corners of the GOP.
--:-- Megan Basham: Yeah, we definitely are. And now for context, we do have to remember that Arizona is a purple battleground state, and it could very well decide which party controls the Senate next year. So on Tuesday, GOP Senate candidate Carrie Lake disavowed this law entirely almost. And she called on the state legislature to replace it with a quote unquote common sense solution.
--:-- Megan Basham: So that's quite a turnaround from two years ago when she praised this very same law for its potential to make Arizona, again, quoting a state where we will not be taking the lives of our unborn anymore.
--:-- Megan Basham: And then you have President Trump. Here's what he said Wednesday when asked if the law goes too far.
--:-- President Trump: And I'm sure that the governor and everybody else are going to bring it back into reason, and that will be taken care of, I think, very quickly.
--:-- Megan Basham: Now, if you couldn't quite hear that because he was on a tarmac, he said that he's certain Arizona's governor, Katie Hobbs, who is a Democrat, is going to issue an order to set a more reasonable abortion policy.
--:-- Megan Basham: I can tell you that remarks like that are coming as something of a shock to the system of the pro-life movement. Warner told me that the ADF believes that this law is reasonable. All life is worth protecting. Think about these unborn children, what we've learned over the past 50 years. These unborn children develop heartbeats at six weeks. They develop fingers and toes at eight weeks. They develop unique fingerprints at 10 weeks. We applaud states that protect unborn life from the moment of conception. It's a good thing.
--:-- Megan Basham: Yeah, you know, so am I. To give you one example, Christian author David Limbaugh, brother of the late Rush Limbaugh, told me even if Trump wants to embrace a pragmatic position, he didn't need to gratuitously forfeit the moral argument in the process.
--:-- Megan Basham: And these are people who have been vocal Trump defenders. And I do think we have to remember the transactional nature of his win in 2016. There has been enormous coverage, a lot of books written, about how his promise to appoint justices who would overturn Roe won over evangelical voters who were pretty skeptical of his personal history.
--:-- Megan Basham: So in his gambit to win over moderates, he could very well be depressing some percentage of his base. Well, these are just the kind of risks that candidates calculate when they make it to the general.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Megan, thanks for reporting.
--:-- Megan Basham: Anytime.
--:-- Georgia Howe: time. House conservatives blocked a bill to reform and reauthorize the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, on Wednesday. The failed vote is Speaker Mike Johnson's third attempt to reauthorize the program. Here to talk about the path forward for the controversial law is Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Hey, Tim, so where did this latest attempt to reauthorize the law, get off track?
--:-- Tim Pierce: FISA reauthorization has driven a wedge in the House GOP between intelligence-minded Republicans and more libertarian, privacy-minded Republicans. That divide remained in place on Wednesday, and it led to this bill's failure in the House. The chamber voted against a rule to bring the reauthorization bill to the floor 228 to 193, with 19 conservatives voting along with Democrats to block it It a loss for Speaker Johnson who has been under pressure from his right flank recently That same group could force a vote to remove him It also set the FISA program in an uncertain spot FISA is due to statutorily expire next week on April 19th, though that could be a soft deadline. Some officials believe that an earlier ruling will keep the FBI surveillance authority alive for another year. All right, so it might just be mostly dead.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Why has this become such a wedge issue, as you put it? Why has FISA split House Republicans so much?
--:-- Tim Pierce: The main issue has to do with whether or not the FBI needs a warrant to search Americans' information in the FISA database. For context, FISA authorizes the FBI to collect data and communications, essentially spy on foreigners deemed to be threats to the United States. This covers officials of hostile governments, terrorists, smugglers, radicals, people like that. There are limits, for instance, on Americans and any data generated on American soil that is protected. But sometimes Americans' data is caught up in the FISA net anyway. That's typically because an American has been communicating with a foreigner under FISA surveillance.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Conservatives such as Jim Jordan and Chip Roy say the FBI must get a warrant before searching the database for Americans' information. Here's Jordan explaining that to Dan Bongino.
--:-- Jim Jordan: You can do all the stuff you want with foreigners. In fact, we want you to. But when it comes to Americans and you're going to do a query, you've got to go get a warrant. And here's why. Because 278,000 times they searched that database and didn't even follow their own rules, their own procedures in place. So we're saying, oh, new rules and procedures aren't going to be enough. We think you should go get a warrant. And we even put some exceptions in there, Dan, which says if it's an emergency, if you see that there's a communication that there's an imminent terrorist threat here, you can go ahead and search that and bypass the warrant. And we think it's consistent with how we always do things in this great country.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Now, FISA authority has been prone to abuse, the most high-profile example being the FBI spying on Trump campaign aide Carter Page. That later became part of the pretext for the Crossfire Hurricane investigation that a special counsel later determined never should have been launched.
--:-- Tim Pierce: More intelligence-minded Republicans in the House are sensitive to those concerns and have offered their own fixes. But they say the warrant requirement is too burdensome. Here is Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner.
--:-- Mike Turner: This bill provides 55 reforms, both to the FISA court process, to the FBI's processes, and to the use and the collection of 702 data that go right to the heart of the actual abuses. They're not stabs into the dark. They are actual definitional responses to each of the abuses that we've found.
--:-- Tim Pierce: The bill that failed yesterday was Turner's version, and it did not have the warrant requirement. That was a breaking point for the 19 conservatives who voted against it.
--:-- Georgia Howe: What's next for FISA? We'll see soon. Speaker Johnson said he would bring a clean reauthorization bill to the floor. That would guarantee FISA for another five years, though it would be stripped clean of all the reforms in Turner's bill. Johnson had warned yesterday that that's likely what the House would end up with from the Senate if the vote failed.
--:-- Tim Pierce: All right, well, we'll see what the House decides.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Tim, thanks for joining us.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Thanks for having me.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back later this afternoon with more news you need to know.
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