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--:-- Georgia Howe: Jesus Revolution, a film about the Jesus movement of the 1970s, racked up big numbers at the box office last weekend. I guess Jesus is making a comeback. We discussed the rise of Christian content in pop culture. I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley. It's March 4th, and this is your Saturday edition of Morning Wire.
--:-- John Bickley: Desperate to quell gang violence, El Salvador unveiled the world's largest prison last week, with the capacity to hold 40,000 inmates. Is the country's crackdown on crime working? And why are human rights organizations raising red flags about the project?
--:-- Georgia Howe: And dozens of whales have washed up along the Atlantic coast since December, leading to an unlikely coalition of environmentalists and conservatives. Stop all of the sonar, stop all of the pre-construction activity offshore right now until we can determine whether or not that has had any impact or any part of the cause for all these whales washing up.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.
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--:-- Georgia Howe: Jesus Revolution, a film about the hippie-led Jesus movement of the 1970s, scored big at the box office last weekend. The movie is part of a resurgence of Christian content breaking into the mainstream thanks to premium production value. Here to tell us more about Jesus Revolution and how it managed to outperform expectations is Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham.
--:-- Megan Basham: So Megan, to start, how much did Jesus Revolution end up making at the box office? So industry prognosticators had forecasted that the film would land somewhere in the range of six to seven million. Well, it more than doubled those expectations. It actually earned more than 15 million, and it came in third at the box office behind the latest Marvel movie, Ant-Man and the Wasp, Quantumania, and the comedy horror, Cocaine Bear. But it's also important to note that Jesus Revolution played on a lot fewer screens. And it does seem to be picking up steam now. For the last few days, it's actually been number one in per theater averages. So yeah, that means it's actually beating the Marvel machine.
--:-- Megan Basham: I asked writer John Irwin about what being called the surprising success of Jesus Revolution and we shared a little bit of a laugh because essentially I asked the same question about his last film I Can Only Imagine It also massively outperformed expectations, but that was before the pandemic pretty profoundly disrupted the theater model. Why does Hollywood have short-term memory loss over and over again? It's like we keep surprising them because our audience is very large and very hungry, you know? I think, honestly, there's a reason. It's just because of COVID. And, you know, there's been a massive question mark of what kind of films work in theaters after this gigantic disruption. And so this is such a huge win, not only for this movie, but for this kind of movie. It's such a statement that says, you know, our audience is still hungry and eager if the product is right and ready to go to the theater.
--:-- Megan Basham: So the conventional Hollywood wisdom has been shaping up that only the big event films like, say, Avatar or your superhero movies were going to draw audiences. What Jesus Revolution does is prove that they will also come out for those smaller faith-based movies. Well, we talked a few months ago about The Chosen, which also did really well, despite the fact that it was hosted on this totally unknown streaming app. Yeah, it did. And Erwin actually brought up The Chosen, as well as the revival at Asbury College that has really sort of captured the attention of the news media and America at large, you have to say, in the last month. I was talking to Dallas Cheek as the creator of The Chosen, and I was like, we did not get in a room and plan this. Like, okay, Dallas, you anchor the first week of the month, and then we'll make sure some Super Bowl commercials are bought, you know, that have the name of Jesus in it, and then we'll do the end of the month and we'll schedule a revival in between.
--:-- Megan Basham: I mean, nobody, we didn't plan this February to be like the month of Jesus, you know? I feel like a part of something really big, and that's an amazing feeling. So certainly there seems to be something of a renewed interest in Jesus culturally. But then you also have to think about the quality of this content. One thing you hear a lot about with The Chosen and Jesus Revolution is just how well done the writing, the acting, and the production values are compared maybe to some of the earlier days in the Christian film industry. Jesus Revolution was produced by Lionsgate, which is a very mainstream studio, and both have earned praise even in the secular press.
--:-- Megan Basham: Well, I enjoyed The Chosen, so I'm looking forward to Jesus Revolution.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Megan, thanks for reporting.
--:-- Megan Basham: Anytime.
--:-- Georgia Howe: That was Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham. Coming up, El Salvador gets aggressive in its crackdown on gang members. Do you love Morning Wire? Well, you can shop the collection at dailywire.com slash shop. Start today with your favorite podcast and coffee from your very own Morning Wire mug, or rep the news you need to know with Morning Wire t-shirts, hoodies, and tote bags. That's dailywire.com slash shop.
--:-- John Bickley: Last weekend, El Salvador said it bussed thousands of inmates into what could become the world's largest prison. This so-called mega prison is El Salvador's latest tool in its furious battle against international gangs. Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce is here to talk about this crackdown on organized crime.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Hey, John. Last week, El Salvador began to move inmates into its new terrorism confinement center. That center is a massive complex that's capable of holding 40,000 inmates. For comparison the current Guinness World Record holder for the most populated prison is in India and it at one point held at just 22 Now everything we know about El Salvador mega prison comes from the government Outside of guided tours journalists haven been allowed on the property and the prison's blueprints and finances are not publicly available. El Salvador's government has even changed the country's laws to protect the prison's secrecy.
--:-- Tim Pierce: That said, the government has provided some information on its facilities. The grounds are surrounded by a concrete wall 36 feet high and a mile long, and that's covered by electrified fencing. Inside, there are some 32 barred cells that can hold over 100 prisoners. Each cell has sheet metal racks that can sleep 80 people. For disobedient inmates, it has isolation cells where prisoners will have to sit in complete darkness.
--:-- Tim Pierce: All right, so a massive prison with cells that hold 100 prisoners. Why build something so big? Well, El Salvador needs the space. El Salvador's president, Nayib Bukele, has made stopping gang violence a top priority since he was elected in 2019, and for good reason. El Salvador has been torn apart by gang violence, especially from the rival cartels MS-13 and the 18th Street Gang. In 2015, the country had one of the highest homicide rates in the world. But Bukele has made an aggressive push to get gang members off the streets.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Last year, he had the legislature declare a state of emergency that essentially suspended civil rights and due process across the country. El Salvador security forces have used their new powers to imprison tens of thousands of suspected gang members. Police have imprisoned roughly 60,000 people since the crackdown, roughly doubling the size of El Salvador's prison population within just one year.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Wow. So he seems to be getting results, but how are Salvadorians responding to this? So it is heavy-handed, but most seem to think the trade-off is worth it to control the gangs. And as you said, Bukele is getting results. In fact, the murder rate across the country dropped by half from 2021 to 2022 when the state of emergency went into place. But Bukele isn't without his critics. Human rights organizations and activists say that Bukele's tactics cross a line and place El Salvador at a big risk of falling into authoritarianism.
--:-- Tim Pierce: They point out that without a proper trial, it's hard to know how many innocent people have been swept up in these mass arrests. There are also reports that hundreds of minors have been arrested and are now housed with hardened criminals. According to the government's own numbers, 90 inmates died in custody within about seven months after the state of emergency was declared.
--:-- John Bickley: Sounds like Salvadorans have few good options here.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Tim, thanks for reporting.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Anytime.
--:-- Georgia Howe: That was Daily Wire's Tim Pierce. Over the last few months, roughly two dozen whale corpses have washed up on the Atlantic coast of the U.S. The unexplained increase in fatalities is happening as the state of New Jersey is constructing a massive offshore wind farm, which some conservationists claim is affecting whale navigation. Federal scientists insist that no evidence has directly linked the construction to the spike in beached whales, but some local lawmakers, environmentalist groups, and conservative commentators have insisted that wind turbines are the obvious culprit and are demanding action. Here with the details is Daily Wire's Michael Whitaker.
--:-- Michael Whitaker: So, Michael, 23 whales have washed up in the last few months. Is that a big increase from before? Well, some whales wash up every year, but this year the rate has been noticeably higher. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has tracked 184 mortality events for humpback whales in the area since 2016, about 25 per year. But over the past few months, we've seen at least 20 free dead whales, most of them humpbacks, so this is a concerning uptick About a third of the corpses have washed up in New Jersey and that significant because a massive wind farm is being constructed off of New Jersey coast The state has committed billion to the project which they hope will generate 11 gigawatts of power by 2040. But now there's a growing effort to stop the project.
--:-- Michael Whitaker: Now, what evidence is there connecting the wind turbines to the whale deaths? Well, technically there isn't any yet. Last week, the Marine Mammal Commission put out a statement saying that there was, quote, no link between the wind turbines and the increase in deaths. But environmentalists argue that all offshore construction impacts the marine environment in some way. The noise created by the surveying process, the construction of the turbines, and ships moving materials to and from the site could interfere with the whales' ability to navigate.
--:-- Michael Whitaker: Whales and other cetaceans often rely on echolocation, a sort of natural sonar, to sense their surroundings. And excess noise could distort their perceptions and lead them into dangerous waters. Advocates of the turbines have argued that the ships involved only account for about 2% of total traffic in the area. These are some of the busiest shipping lands in the United States, after all. And whatever minor marine disruptions are created would be offset by the general decline in greenhouse emissions.
--:-- Michael Whitaker: Now, there are some pretty active protests. Tell us about that. Right. Thousands of protesters gathered on February 19th, International Whale Day, to lobby for a moratorium on offshore wind developments. The group spearheading this effort, Clean Ocean Action, was initially supportive of smaller wind projects, but has expressed concern over the impact larger developments could have. We've had more beached whales in a month than in a year on average. So we're very concerned about the unprecedented number of whales being washed up dead on our beaches in a short period of time. Until we know if those activities are being harmful or not, we need to stop those activities until the cause of death is determined.
--:-- Michael Whitaker: Dozens of officials from coastal city mayors to sitting members of Congress have expressed support for the moratorium. and prominent conservative commentators with large national audiences, such as Tucker Carlson of Fox News, have picked up the story. But I assume you also have conservationists who want the wind turbines.
--:-- Michael Whitaker: Oh, absolutely. The issue has deeply divided environmentalists. While some groups are on board with the protests, others say that no evidence has established any connection between the turbines and the deaths. Greenpeace called the efforts to halt the project a cynical disinformation campaign. New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy put out a statement saying that while he respects the genuine concerns of environmentalists, he intends to move forward with the project, and he believes that many of the movement's supporters are unconcerned with the whales and simply have an ideological axe to grind.
--:-- Michael Whitaker: There are other long-standing objections to the project, its high cost, its potential effect on tourism, etc. I do think it's important to stress that we don't know what's going on here. The evidence linking the wind turbines to whale deaths is purely circumstantial. Some researchers have suggested that a growing whale population or migration patterns among their preferred prey species may explain the increase, but those explanations are still tenuous.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Well, something worth looking into.
--:-- Michael Whitaker: Michael, thanks for reporting.
--:-- Michael Whitaker: That was Daily Wire's Michael Whitaker.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Thanks for listening to Morning Wire. We created this show to bring more balance to the national conversation. If you love our show and stand with our mission, consider subscribing, leaving us a five-star rating, and most importantly, sharing our podcast with a friend. And if you're a Morning Wire super fan and you want to represent our show, You can shop our merch selection at dailywire.com slash shop. We have a pretty elite Morning Wire mug. We have t-shirts. We have tote bags. Pretty soon we're restocking our hoodies. And you can find all of that at dailywire.com slash shop.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Well, that's all the time we've got this morning. Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back this afternoon with a Saturday extra edition of Morning Wire.
