--:-- [Theme music fades out]
--:-- Georgia Howe: Welcome to Morning Wire, I'm Georgia Howe.
--:-- John Bickley: And I'm John Bickley, Editor-in-Chief of Daily Wire. It's Tuesday, September 27th.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Iranian women are taking to the streets and burning their headscarves to protest the death of a young woman who was punished for not wearing the hijab properly. How is the West responding and what effect will this have on the pending Iran nuclear deal?
--:-- John Bickley: You will have a wealthy Iran with the capacity to conduct terror around the world.
--:-- Georgia Howe: I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley.
--:-- John Bickley: That's right.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Italy is the latest European country to elect a conservative populist leader. What was Giorgia Maloney's winning message, and what's behind the rightward shift across Europe?
--:-- John Bickley: It's important to understand that if we are called to govern this nation, we will do it for all Italians, with the aim of uniting all the people. We will focus on what unites us, not what divides us.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And dozens have been indicted for stealing hundreds of millions of dollars in food aid during the pandemic. We'll look at what's turned out to be the largest pandemic fraud case in the country.
--:-- John Bickley: Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned.
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--:-- Georgia Howe: Press reports say that more than 40 people have been killed in Iran's ongoing protests, sparked by the alleged killing of a 22-year-old woman on September 16th by the so-called morality police for not wearing her hijab properly.
--:-- John Bickley: There have now been more than 10 days of protests, which have involved women ripping off and burning their headscarves.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Iranian critics say the repressive regime is overbearing, beating, and killing protesters, and that the nuclear deal that America is trying to reignite with Iran should be completely off the table.
--:-- John Bickley: Here to tell us more is Carrie Sheffield, Senior Policy Analyst with Independent Women's Voice.
--:-- Carrie Sheffield: Thanks for having me, John.
--:-- John Bickley: So Carrie, tell us more about what sparked these protests.
--:-- Carrie Sheffield: On September 16th, a 22-year-old Iranian woman named Masha Amini, who belonged to the ethnic Kurdish minority in Iran died under suspicious circumstances, allegedly due to police brutality.
--:-- Georgia Howe: The Morality Police of Iran's Law Enforcement Command arrested Amini for not wearing the hijab in accordance with government standards.
--:-- Carrie Sheffield: Police claimed that she had a heart attack at a station, fell on the floor, and died after two days in a coma.
--:-- Georgia Howe: But eyewitnesses and women who were detained with Amini said she was severely beaten, which in addition to her leaked medical scans, led independent observers to diagnose cerebral hemorrhage and stroke.
--:-- Carrie Sheffield: Amini's death sparked protests around Iran. Right. And as we've noted, those have gone on for more than 10 days at this point.
--:-- John Bickley: And this has already begun to have some political fallout, correct?
--:-- Carrie Sheffield: Right. It has.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Just days later here on Wednesday at the United Nations General Assembly, the U.S. and Iran clashed on security and human rights, with Iran's president demanding U.S. guarantees to revive the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal and President Biden vowing Tehran would never get an atomic bomb.
--:-- John Bickley: We will not allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon. I continue to believe that diplomacy is the best way to achieve this outcome.
--:-- Georgia Howe: The Biden administration has been trying to revive the Iranian nuclear deal after then-President Trump pulled the U.S. out of the agreement, citing concerns with Iranian compliance and funding used for various Iranian terrorism projects.
--:-- John Bickley: Iranian President Ibrahim Raisi struck a defiant tone at the U.N. by decrying what he called double standards on human rights after Amini's death.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who served under President Trump, spoke with Morning Wire about the Iranian nuclear deal and why he believes it should be a nonstarter.
--:-- John Bickley: The Biden administration made a commitment to Congress and to the American people that if they reentered the crappy deal between the United States and the Russians and the Chinese and European countries, that it would be stronger and more imposing.
--:-- Georgia Howe: They're about to sign one that is shorter and weaker. Most of the major provisions expire very, very quickly, and Iran will not only have a clear, unambiguous pathway to obtaining a nuclear weapon, but they'll have hundreds and hundreds of millions more dollars by which to continue their terror campaigns across the world.
--:-- John Bickley: And as we've seen recently, their efforts to conduct terror right here at home in the United States.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Right. He's referencing reports that Iran allegedly hired a hitman who went to an Iranian dissident's Brooklyn home in late July in an apparent assassination attempt.
--:-- John Bickley: How does Pompeo think the rest of the Middle East will respond if this nuclear deal is signed?
--:-- Georgia Howe: Pompeo said he thinks if the U.S. helps broker this agreement, it will have a domino effect in the area and that other nations will follow suit.
--:-- John Bickley: Other critics say by removing sanctions under the deal, it will enrich Iran's ties with China.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Here's Pompeo again.
--:-- John Bickley: This is a recipe for massive proliferation because make no mistake, If the Iranians end up with a nuclear weapons program, they will not be the last nation in the Middle East to deem it necessary to build their own.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Other countries will say, if they've got one, we need one to defend ourselves and we will start a massive chain of proliferation throughout the Middle East.
--:-- John Bickley: Reports also indicate that Pompeo faces an ongoing credible Iranian assassination threat for his role in the killing of Quds Force Commander Qasem Soleimani.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Meanwhile, the protests have spread across the country to at least 40 cities and include large numbers of men across Iran.
--:-- John Bickley: The government has said it will restrict Internet access until calm is restored.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Well, this is a story we'll definitely keep tracking.
--:-- John Bickley: Carrie, thanks for reporting.
--:-- Carrie Sheffield: Thank you.
--:-- Georgia Howe: That was Carrie Sheffield, Senior Policy Analyst at Independent Women's Voice.
--:-- John Bickley: Italy elected its first female prime minister on Sunday, and she's being described as a conservative firebrand.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Giorgia Maloney campaigned on a platform of securing Italy's borders and resisting global bureaucracy.
--:-- John Bickley: Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham joins us now to tell us more about Maloney and what her victory signals about European political trends.
--:-- Megan Basham: Hey, Georgia.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Well, essentially, you're seeing a lot of the same issues that have been driving the populist agenda on the American right.
--:-- Megan Basham: As John mentioned, a key part of Maloney's pitch to Italians was that she would tighten border restrictions and reject the energy policies that many Italians feel are being dictated to them from Brussels.
--:-- Georgia Howe: That's the seat of the European Union.
--:-- Megan Basham: The Italian economy, which is the fourth largest in Europe, has also been struggling.
--:-- John Bickley: And Maloney is promising an Italy-first agenda on that front.
--:-- Megan Basham: But beyond all of those kitchen table issues, she also promised to protect Italy cultural heritage and religious traditions.
--:-- Georgia Howe: That something that she talked about at a national conservatism conference in Rome in 2020.
--:-- Megan Basham: John Paul II the Patriot Pope knew perfectly well that there is no Europe without Christianity, a teaching which is more topical than ever today.
--:-- Georgia Howe: When the Christian identity of Europe is under attack by a distorted secularism that even attacks the symbol of the Christian tradition.
--:-- Megan Basham: So this message clearly resonated with Italians as the center-right coalition took about 44 percent of the vote and it won both houses of parliament.
--:-- Georgia Howe: By contrast, the center-left Democratic Party and its coalition only took about 26 percent of the vote.
--:-- Megan Basham: Now, we're seeing a lot of media descriptions of Maloney as fascist.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Is that a fair description?
--:-- Megan Basham: You know, that's a pretty loaded term.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And I asked author and political economist Sven Larson about the veracity of those accusations.
--:-- Megan Basham: He said that we need to understand that historical realities mean that many European political parties have either fascist or communist connections in their distant past.
--:-- Georgia Howe: But he said it's not accurate to associate those parties with such ideologies today.
--:-- Megan Basham: You have a slew of parties in Europe that have an origin in Stalinist communism.
--:-- Georgia Howe: I can't think of a single party in Europe off the top of my head that would today say, yes, we want to introduce Stalinist communism in Europe.
--:-- Megan Basham: Likewise, I think you can find maybe one party somewhere on the fringe that would maybe advocate fascism today.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So I know we've seen other European nations tacking to the right in recent years.
--:-- Megan Basham: The UK with the Brexit vote may be the most notable.
--:-- Georgia Howe: But of course, there's Hungary, there's Poland.
--:-- Megan Basham: And most surprising to a lot of people was Sweden, which just saw a coalition of conservative groups winning the election just a couple weeks ago.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Do these elections signal a change in Europe overall?
--:-- Megan Basham: Yeah, I think they really do because there does seem to be a large trend pulling European nations to the right.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And it is coalescing around a number of common issues that Larsson, who is originally from Sweden, highlighted.
--:-- Megan Basham: So immigration is a big one that played a significant role in the election in Sweden two weeks ago.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Resistance to international interference is another.
--:-- Megan Basham: There's a sense that the EU has assumed a much bigger role in setting national policies than it should have, particularly when it comes to environmental regulations.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Europeans and a number of nations now have a sense that their national economies are being sacrificed to a green agenda.
--:-- Megan Basham: And then there's also the fear that European nations are losing their cultural identity and being subsumed into some sort of homogenized global secularism.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Now, Hungary may be the most striking example of that, but even in Sweden, which, as we know, is pretty secular by American standards, you're hearing these calls to promote a traditional ideal of family and to re-embrace Christianity as part of their cultural heritage.
--:-- Megan Basham: That issue of natural family is something Maloney spoke to very forcefully on the Italian campaign trail.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So I think it's really hard to say that what we're seeing isn't a trend with some pretty tectonic implications all across Europe.
--:-- Megan Basham: Right, and certainly a big topic that we'll have to devote more attention to another time.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Megan, thanks for reporting.
--:-- Megan Basham: Yeah, my pleasure.
--:-- Georgia Howe: That was Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham.
--:-- John Bickley: A federal jury has indicted 48 people on fraud charges for allegedly stealing million in food aid during the pandemic.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Daily Wire investigative reporter Mairead Alordi is here with more details for us.
--:-- Mairead Alordi: Hi, John.
--:-- John Bickley: Well, the investigation is still ongoing, but the Justice Department announced last week that 48 people have been indicted by a federal grand jury on fraud charges.
--:-- Mairead Alordi: Here's Andy Lugar, the U.S. attorney from Minnesota, at a press conference announcing the charges.
--:-- John Bickley: The defendants are charged with federal crimes including conspiracy, wire fraud, money laundering, and paying and receiving illegal kickbacks.
--:-- Mairead Alordi: This was apparently a brazen fraud scheme where the fraudsters billed the government for $250 million in meals they never bought and never fed to needy children who did not even exist.
--:-- Georgia Howe: The pandemic was definitely fertile ground for fraud because federal spending exploded and oversight struggled to keep up.
--:-- Mairead Alordi: And this scheme seems to be the biggest pandemic relief fraud scheme we know of in the country.
--:-- John Bickley: So how did they get away with this? How did the scheme work exactly?
--:-- Mairead Alordi: Well, according to prosecutors, the conspirators weren't even particularly careful in their attempts to cover up the plot.
--:-- Georgia Howe: One accused fraudster told the government he was feeding 5,000 children a day in his second-story apartment.
--:-- Mairead Alordi: Other alleged conspirators used the website listofrandomnames.com to make a fake list of non-existent children they claimed to be feeding.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And others used a number-generating program to come up with ages for the fake children they were supposedly feeding.
--:-- Mairead Alordi: This led to the children's ages fluctuating wildly every time the fraudsters updated their list of children, according to court documents.
--:-- John Bickley: The conspirators allegedly faked receipts and scammed the government out of money for 125 million meals.
--:-- Mairead Alordi: Prosecutors said that those charged used the money to buy luxury cars, jewelry, international travel, and real estate in Minnesota, Kenya, and Turkey.
--:-- Georgia Howe: But the scheme was also so successful because the conspirators had someone helping them whom the Minnesota government trusted.
--:-- Mairead Alordi: Right. This is another troubling element in this case.
--:-- Georgia Howe: What was their connection on the inside?
--:-- Mairead Alordi: Well, according to prosecutors, it was a woman named Amy Bach, who is the founder of the nonprofit Feeding Our Future.
--:-- John Bickley: Minnesota was actually relying on Feeding Our Future to make sure no fraud happened with the food aid program.
--:-- Mairead Alordi: Instead, though, when the program received waves of pandemic aid money, Bach allegedly plotted with the fraudsters and brought in almost 200 new feeding operations that she knew were submitting fake or inflated invoices.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Bach herself is one of the people charged in this case.
--:-- Mairead Alordi: One noteworthy detail is that when Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who's a Democrat, raised questions about Bach and Feeding Our Future, Bach reacted by essentially accusing state officials of racism, saying they were discriminating against the East African immigrants her group serves.
--:-- John Bickley: Well, this appears to be a really egregious example of criminality, thanks to the upheaval caused by COVID.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Great. Thanks for coming on.
--:-- Mairead Alordi: Thanks, John.
--:-- Georgia Howe: That was Daily Wire investigative reporter Mairead Alordi.
--:-- John Bickley: Other stories we're tracking this week.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Hundreds of thousands of Floridians have been ordered to evacuate as Hurricane Ian approaches the west coast of the state.
--:-- John Bickley: President Biden's plan to wipe out significant amounts of student loan debt for tens of millions of borrowers could cost about $400 billion.
--:-- Georgia Howe: That's according to a report released Monday by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
--:-- John Bickley: Thanks for listening to Morning Wire.
--:-- Georgia Howe: We created this show to bring more balance to the national conversation.
--:-- John Bickley: If you love our show and you stand with our mission, please consider subscribing, leaving us a five-star rating, and most importantly, sharing our podcast with a friend.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Well, thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back this afternoon with more of the news you need to know.
