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--:-- Host (Georgia Howe): 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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--:-- Host (Georgia Howe): Voters go to the polls in Wyoming and Alaska today in what some are calling a referendum on former President Trump. Will Liz Cheney's prominent role in the January 6th committee put an end to her congressional career? I have fought for Wyoming, and I will fight for you in Washington, D.C. And I will be taking that fight to D.C. just as soon as I defeat Liz Cheney.
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--:-- Host (Georgia Howe): I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley. It's Tuesday, August 16th, and this is Morning Wire. There are 83 days until the midterms, and Twitter has rolled out new content guidelines aimed at curbing election misinformation. How will the new rules affect discussion in the digital town square? And the one-year anniversary of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan sees the Taliban-controlled country in turmoil? How many American allies still remain in the country? And how is the U.S. maintaining intelligence on the ground to combat terrorism?
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--:-- Host (Georgia Howe): Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.
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--:-- Host (Georgia Howe): One of the best things you can do to prepare for the unknown is to have a will in place. A will is about protecting your loved ones from the really hard decisions they'll face if something happens to you. If you're a parent, A will gives you the power to decide who will raise your kids should something happen to you and your spouse. Do yourself a favor. Go to EpicWill.com and use promo code WIRE to save 10% on Epic Will's complete will package. It's incredibly easy and well worth $119 to secure your family's future. Go to EpicWill.com and use promo code WIRE today.
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--:-- Host (Georgia Howe): Two anti-Trump Republican lawmakers are facing primaries in their respective states today. Voters will decide the political futures of Congresswoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. Here to preview the races is Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce.
--:-- Tim Pierce: So, both of these lawmakers are notable Trump critics, but Liz Cheney is arguably more prominent because of her role as vice chair of the House January 6th committee. How is her race looking?
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--:-- Tim Pierce: Hey, Georgia. So, Cheney spent a lot of political capital on joining House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's special committee investigating January 6th. Of course, that doesn't seem to matter much to Cheney, who has basically said she joined the committee on principle and would do it again even if it cost her a seat, which it very likely will. For context, her home state of Wyoming voted 70 percent for Donald Trump in 2020. A recent University of Wyoming poll showed Cheney's Republican rival attorney Harriet Hageman with a commanding lead. The survey found that 57 percent of likely Republican primary voters support Hageman, nearly 30 points above Cheney's 28 percent.
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--:-- Tim Pierce: So, the January 6th committee is what Cheney is most known for. But what's interesting is she actually voted with Trump pretty consistently when he was in office. How is she squaring that circle with voters? Right. She voted with Trump 90 percent of the time. But since he left office, she's made January 6th the center of her campaign. Even her father, former VP Dick Cheney, cut an ad calling Trump one of the greatest threats the United States has ever faced.
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--:-- Tim Pierce: He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him. He is a coward. So, I want to move on to Alaska. Lisa Murkowski is a centrist Republican in the Senate and she's also a vocal critic of Donald Trump. Alaska is less conservative than Wyoming, but they still went for Trump by about 10 points in 2020. How is Murkowski expected to perform in her primary?
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--:-- Tim Pierce: Better than Cheney's for several reasons. First, as you mentioned, Alaska leans more left than Wyoming. Second, Murkowski isn't the face of anti-Trump sentiment. Her approval rating among Alaska's Republicans has actually been trending up since Biden took office. A recent morning consult poll put her favorability slightly underwater at 46% disapproved versus 41% approved. According to the same poll, though, her net approval, which includes Democrats and independents, is actually positive 46 to 39.
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--:-- Tim Pierce: Finally, and this is the main factor, Alaska restructured its elections two years ago and basically scrapped primary elections. If it hadn't, Murkowski's prospects would look much dimmer. With the new system, Alaska is moving to ranked choice voting. The primary will be a free-for-all where voters list their candidates in order from favorite to least favorite, and the top four move on to the general election. It doesn't matter whether you're a Democrat or Republican, your choices can be for either party. So, someone like Murkowski may not get many first-place votes, but she may receive a ton of second, third, and fourth-place votes, especially due to her name recognition.
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--:-- Host (Georgia Howe): All right. Well, Tim, these are a lot of races to keep an eye on, but thanks for coming on.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Thanks for having me.
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--:-- Host (Georgia Howe): That was Daily Wire's Tim Pierce. Coming up, Twitter rolls out its new election misinformation program. Back to school season is upon us. And while many kids are excited to get back into the classroom, many may not be able to access and afford nutritious meals to fuel their growing minds. That's why Good Ranchers has made it their mission to donate 100,000 high-quality meals this month to children in need. You can help them reach their goal by ordering your next box at GoodRanchers.com slash wire. Help them donate 100,000 meals and get $30 off plus free shipping at GoodRanchers.com slash wire.
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--:-- Host (Georgia Howe): Twitter has announced new content moderation policies for the upcoming midterm elections. It says the rules are intended to crack down on, quote, harmful, misleading information about elections and civic events. Here to give us the details on these new policies and how they may impact midterm races is Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham.
--:-- Megan Basham: So, you know, you have to say that some of these new actions should be pretty non-controversial. What they're going to do is primarily build on the rules that the company first put in place in 2018. They're going to be doing things like labeling or removing misleading posts about where and when to vote or who can vote. And then they're also going to be creating notifications so that users will know when the polls are open in specific states. They're also going to ramp up their verification process so that they can weed out imposter accounts posing as real candidates. Pretty standard stuff there.
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--:-- Megan Basham: However, the company also says it's going to label or remove posts intended to undermine public confidence in an election. And it's also going to boost posts from quote-unquote credible news sources. So, that's the part that's setting off alarm bells. The policy doesn't explain how moderators are going to decide what credible and what undermines public confidence. And when you look at their history and consider that they banned former President Trump and suppressed a legitimate news story from the New York Post about Hunter Biden's laptop, that announcement has some conservatives concerned.
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--:-- Megan Basham: Now, is there any sign that Twitter plans to shift the approach to assuage some of those concerns? You know, Twitter has never officially addressed its decision to censor that Post story or to also lock the newspaper out of its account, though former CEO Jack Dorsey did later call those actions unacceptable. So, I talked to Carl Szabo, who is vice president and general counsel for NetChoice, a tech trade organization. He thinks that Elon Musk's very public battles with the company has taught it some lessons about changes it needs to make to serve users across the political spectrum.
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--:-- Megan Basham: I will say when the White House had put out its statement saying that inflation was at zero percent with zero inflation. Twitter actually had flagged that and was pointing people to other newspapers and sites showing what the real facts are on that data. So, I don't know how they're going to ultimately play it as we go forward. But I will tell you from that one anecdote that I saw, it's clear that they're trying to be politically agnostic. Now, that said, I should add that not every conservative agrees with Zabo on this. Constitutional attorney Harmeet Dillon, who, full disclosure, has represented the Daily Wire before, well, she published an op-ed at Fox News this week warning that Twitter will likely use these policies to benefit Democrats.
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--:-- Host (Georgia Howe): That's Daily Wire culture reporter, Megan Basham. It's been one year since the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, yet many American allies remain in the Taliban-controlled country. Here to discuss is journalist Lynn O'Donnell, former Afghanistan Bureau Chief for AFP.
--:-- Lynn O'Donnell: Yes, there are very many people who are American citizens and passport holders of other countries that are still trying to leave the country. I've heard up to 160,000, so that's mostly Afghans with American citizenship who are still in Afghanistan. Many of them will be very impatient to get out. They are considered enemies of the state. And it is probably because of the Taliban policies towards them and the Taliban's overall administrative incompetence that they are still there.
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--:-- Lynn O'Donnell: A lot of people who are trying to get passports have been trying to do so for a long time. The price of passports is going through the roof. And then once people have the passports they have to get visas. And there's no diplomatic representation of most countries of the world in Afghanistan anymore. So, it is very difficult.
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--:-- Lynn O'Donnell: Now, what kinds of roles would these allies have played as it relates to the U.S. operation there? Yes, they'd be Afghans who worked with the military in very many capacities, but a lot of people who worked alongside American soldiers and Marines and contractors as interpreters, very many of them, other people who worked at the embassy and with the reconstruction effort of the Americans alongside them. So, yeah, there's an awful lot of people. 160,000 sounds like a lot, but it's certainly not outside the bounds of imagination.
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--:-- Lynn O'Donnell: And there would possibly be tens and tens of thousands of people who worked with governments and military of the Allies as well. You've got to remember that there were nearly 50 countries represented in the US-led alliance. So, there were a lot of people working for them and it was 20 years.
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--:-- Host (Georgia Howe): Well, Lynne, thank you so much for talking with us again.
--:-- Lynn O'Donnell: Thanks a lot.
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--:-- Host (Georgia Howe): That was journalist Lynn O'Donnell. Another story we're tracking this week. The effort to recall L.A. District Attorney George Gascon has failed. The group behind the petition submitted 715,000 signatures, but more than 28 percent were ruled invalid.
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--:-- Host (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 you stand with our mission, consider subscribing, leaving us a five-star rating, and most importantly, sharing our podcast with a friend. That's all the time we've got this morning. Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back tomorrow with the news you need to know.
