--:-- Georgia Howe: A group of veterans are calling for top military brass to be court-martialed over their handling of COVID-era policies. Individuals are extremely concerned about the recruiting numbers and about what's going on within the military, that we're weeding out really amazing Americans that are wanting to serve this country.
--:-- John Bickley: What is the group advocating for and what are their chances of success? I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley. It's January 6th, and this is a Saturday edition of Morning Wire.
--:-- Georgia Howe: After years of spiking home prices and mortgage rates, are housing costs finally heading down in 2024? Even though there are very few buyers, the scarcity of sellers is even stronger. So it's been a really frozen market in 2023 with sales volume at historic lows.
--:-- John Bickley: And a new report follows the dark money in efforts to block former President Trump from the ballot. I would say our biggest donors are the Open Society Institute is a very big donor. And whose organization is that? It's well known to be George Soros is the one who funds it.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Over 230 current and former U.S. service members have signed an open letter condemning military leaders for their handling of COVID-19. They're calling for all military leaders involved to be court-martialed for violating the constitutional rights of service members.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce is here to discuss the effort. So, Tim, who is behind this letter? It's an open letter that was posted online this week. It's signed by about 230 current and former service members, including at least two veterans who are running for office.
--:-- Tim Pierce: The signers say that the Pentagon botched how it handled the pandemic and vaccine mandate. They say that impacted service members, whether they were forced into retirement, were harmed by the vaccine or something else, deserve payment for damages. The letter says, quote, military leaders broke the law, trampled constitutional rights, denied informed consent, permitted unwilling medical experimentation and suppressed the free exercise of religion.
--:-- Tim Pierce: For those leaders, the letter actually says they should be court-martialed and face punishment under the military code of justice. Now, what are the signatories asking for? Accountability. The letter includes a pledge by the signers to do everything morally permissible and legally possible to hold leadership accountable.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Now, it's hard to gauge how possible that may be. There have been a few civil lawsuits over the vaccine mandates, and those have had mixed results. But this letter ups the ante and calls for criminal trials and some form of punishment for military leadership.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Morning Wire spoke to one of the signatories, Cameron Hamilton, a former Navy SEAL running for Congress in Virginia. Here's what he said about it.
--:-- Cameron Hamilton: I think ultimately we need a full admission of fault by the Department of Defense all the way up at the Secretary of Defense's office. And then I think we need full restitution of damages that were conducted against individuals. And then lastly, formal disciplinary action against those who enforced it.
--:-- Cameron Hamilton: And it probably will come in phases. There's no way it'll come all at the same time but that the ultimate goal that we seeking to achieve so that it a deterrent for future actions such Now do they have a legal case assuming they were active duty at the time Right It a harder legal case because the military is a bit different from other sectors.
--:-- Cameron Hamilton: When you join, you agree to sacrifice some of your civil rights and you agree to take a whole host of vaccines. But they say the COVID-19 vaccine is a bit different. The difference with this particular vaccine is that it was under an emergency use authorization, which by law cannot be compelled.
--:-- Cameron Hamilton: The implementation of this mandate was on a medical procedure, which was not legally authorized to be initiated without consent of the individual. And the consent of the individuals at the time requested by many was, okay, if I have to obtain this vaccine, then I willfully will obtain the emergency use authorization vaccine, which was not currently in production.
--:-- Cameron Hamilton: So therefore, the alternatives, such as those produced by Pfizer or Moderna or Johnson & Johnson, none of those were authorized vaccines under the emergency use authorization. So to enforce a mandate based upon a vaccine that wasn't physically in production was an unlawful order.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So, Tim, thanks for joining us. Good to be on.
--:-- Georgia Howe: After climbing mortgage rates forced many Americans out of the housing market over the last two years, recent weeks have seen rates going down and optimism for prospective buyers going up. Joining us to discuss is Kenny Polcari, CEO of Case Capital Advisors and the Senior Market Strategist of Slate Stone Wealth.
--:-- Kenny Polcari: Hey, Kenny, thanks for joining us. So mortgage rates have come down a bit in recent weeks. Is there reason for optimism for those hoping to buy a home in 2024?
--:-- Kenny Polcari: Right. So we've already seen mortgages come back in from 8% where they were at the end of, you know, like kind of an October when the 10 year was ticking it a little bit better than 5%. So we've seen mortgages go from 8% back down to 6.5% now for 30 year conforming money.
--:-- Kenny Polcari: So that's been a positive. And actually, again, you know, anywhere between 5% and 7% is also historically normal for mortgages, right? Mortgages at 2% or 2.5%, once again, were at normal.
--:-- Kenny Polcari: And so housing prices took off as a result of money clopting. So geez, what's going to have to happen is if mortgage rates stay where they are, you're going to have to see some contraction in housing prices. You have to. They're just unsustainable.
--:-- Kenny Polcari: People are not going to be able to afford it. You're not going to be able to afford the rising taxes, the increased cost to own a home, and plus the cost to carry the home. The other issue that no one really wants to talk about in terms of the housing market.
--:-- Kenny Polcari: Remember when it collapsed in 2007 and eight, nine, when it was all falling off the edge, they were the big private equity companies and they were the big black rocks of the world that went around scooping up scores of residential homes, right? They just scooped them up and they turned them into rental properties.
--:-- Kenny Polcari: And so when they argue about, you know, there's no housing, there's a shortage of housing because a lot of the big firms out there scooped up all these houses for pennies on the dollar and have now turned it into a business. It's a very profitable business for them.
--:-- Kenny Polcari: So that's also got to change. I think you got to see those firms start to liquidate those holdings And I think that should be something the government kind of forces on them because it was the government that went to them and said we need help All these houses sitting out there doing nothing We need guys like you to come in and take these all off the market
--:-- Kenny Polcari: So what I think should happen, what I think will happen, is I think you're going to see housing prices stabilize right in here. I don't think you're going to see them shoot higher. But what they need to do is they need to come in a little bit to adjust because I think there's still parts of it are still very bubblish, right?
--:-- Kenny Polcari: I think some of these prices for some of these houses that you see are very much in a bubble. Prices, in my mind, are still very high for what you're getting, you know, in terms of the size of the house, the quality of the house, where you're living, all that stuff.
--:-- Kenny Polcari: And I think you're going to have to see that come in. You mentioned a housing bubble. Do you fear a true housing bubble or not in 2024?
--:-- Kenny Polcari: So I think that that has a couple of ways to answer because I think there are parts of the market that are in a housing bubble for sure, right? When I look at what's happening in places like New York City, it's crazy what apartments in New York City are going for.
--:-- Kenny Polcari: I don't see how they're even sustainable. They're renting apartments in New York City, one-bedroom apartments for $7,000 a month. It's unsustainable. So yes, in parts of the country, I think there is a housing bubble.
--:-- Kenny Polcari: Other parts of the country, I don't think ever, ever really got out of whack. So there's less of a housing bubble. So I think you have to look at where that action is. So again, I think it's in some of the big cities and in places where you've seen a mass migration.
--:-- Kenny Polcari: So whether it's Texas, whether it's Florida, whether it's the Carolinas, where people moved away from either the Northeast or high tax states during COVID, whatever, that they moved to these other parts of the country. That's where you see more of a housing bubble because there was actually this no demand in housing.
--:-- Kenny Polcari: But I think that's going to start to settle down as well, because I know certainly down here, they're starting to build once again like crazy. I don't think it's going to pop and crash like it did in 2007 and 2008.
--:-- Kenny Polcari: But I do think in parts of the country, there are certainly bubbles in housing. Kenny, thank you so much for talking with us today.
--:-- Gabe Kaminsky: A new investigation found that the left wing watchdog group behind the Colorado Supreme Court's move to kick former President Trump off the state's primary ballot has been funded by dark money. That's despite this group's publicly condemning this type of practice in the past.
--:-- Gabe Kaminsky: Joining us now is Gabe Kaminsky, investigative reporter for the Washington Examiner who broke the story. Hey, Gabe. So you've done some digging into this self-styled watchdog group behind the effort in Colorado to remove Trump from the ballot.
--:-- Gabe Kaminsky: First, tell us who this group is. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. It's a progressive charity watchdog group based in Washington, D.C., that notably filed a lawsuit that then led actually culminated in Colorado's Supreme Court ruling four to three in December that former President Donald Trump would be kicked off the state's primary ballot for allegedly inciting the January 6th Capitol riot.
--:-- Gabe Kaminsky: Now, what our story details is that Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, while this organization has long positioned itself as an ethics group that aims to fight, quote, secret money and influence in the United States. It actually has also taken dark money over the years, something the left often is sales.
--:-- Gabe Kaminsky: It taken millions of dollars from groups linked to George Soros the wealthy philanthropist and also millions of dollars from donor funds which are essentially entities that allow wealthy liberal donors to pour money into charities that have sort of opaque funding structures.
--:-- Gabe Kaminsky: Now, you've characterized CRU as a liberal or left-leaning entity. Can you tell us a little bit more about its founding and what it's intending to do?
--:-- Gabe Kaminsky: Yeah, CRU was founded in 2001 by a pair of Democratic lawyers. Its first executive director was a woman named Melanie Sloan, who was a former prosecutor and worked in the House and Senate Judiciary Committee, including for actually then Chairman Joe Biden.
--:-- Gabe Kaminsky: But I think another thing to note about CRU for your listeners is CRU is actually one of the main groups trying to pressure Clarence Thomas and other conservative Supreme Court justices to disclose more about their finances. It's part of this left-leaning, quote-unquote, ethics campaign to call on Thomas and Justice Alito to have to disclose certain gifts or trips that actually at the time they took those trips or received those gifts, there are actually no laws on the books requiring disclosure.
--:-- Gabe Kaminsky: So CREW is involved in various efforts. Their main thing is they file ethics complaints against Republican lawmakers. They file lawsuits. They definitely position themselves as one of the most staunch anti-Trump, left-leaning advocacy groups out there.
--:-- Gabe Kaminsky: You also detail how not just CREW, but other organizations that have been targeting Trump are, quote, deeply connected to Democrat allied entities. Can you expand on that for us?
--:-- Gabe Kaminsky: Yeah, so certain groups that are calling for former President Donald Trump were trying to find legal avenues for the former president to not be able to run in 2024. Really, the main thing that we found is they take cash from some of the largest and most influential left-leaning entities that certainly share significant ties in Democratic Party.
--:-- Gabe Kaminsky: I mean, being one, New Venture Fund, which is one of the largest 501c3 charities currently under investigation by the Washington, D.C. Attorney General. It is managed by an LLC called Arabella Advisors, one of the largest Democratic-linked dark money networks in the United States.
--:-- Gabe Kaminsky: Actually, the largest Democratic-linked dark money network in the United States. It's obviously a partisan play to get Trump off the ballot. And we just wanted to make sure that people were aware of kind of some of the major players behind this.
--:-- Gabe Kaminsky: Some of the major cash flowing towards this effort, which, you know, relates to billionaires like George Soros. And also, Cruz received money from the Democracy Alliance, a powerful membership group of wealthy liberals that also includes climate activist Tom Steyer.
--:-- Gabe Kaminsky: So there's various players, but it's certainly progressive play that even the Biden White House reportedly wasn't actually too pleased about this because they want to be able to compete against Trump on fair ground.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Always important to follow the money. Gabe, thanks for coming on.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Thanks. That was Washington Examiners' Gabe Kaminsky. Thanks for listening to Morning Wire. We created this show to bring more balance to the national conversation.
--:-- Georgia Howe: 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: That's all the time we've got this morning. Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back this afternoon with an extra edition of Morning Wire. Thank you.
