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--:-- John Bickley: The Biden administration is reportedly preparing to pay what could amount to millions of dollars to illegal immigrant families separated at the border under President Trump. What's behind the decision and how are leaders on both sides reacting? I'm John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's Monday, November 1st, and this is Morning Wire.
--:-- Georgia Howe: The state of Texas is in a legal battle with the Biden administration over the ongoing crisis at the southern border. We'll talk with the state's attorney general about the legal disputes between Texas and the federal government and potential solutions on the table.
--:-- John Bickley: In an effort to promote his climate change agenda, President Biden is exploring new ways to push more Americans to buy electric vehicles. We'll take a look at the proposals.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And we'll run through the latest polls and developments in tomorrow's election for governor in Virginia. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned.
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--:-- John Bickley: As the border crisis continues to worsen, the Biden administration may soon be offering hundreds of millions of dollars in payouts to illegal immigrant families who were separated at the border during the Trump presidency. According to a new report from The Wall Street Journal, the White House is considering a financial settlement with those separated at the border, potentially offering $450,000 per person.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: So when President Trump was in office, there was a brief period where families entering the country illegally were deliberately separated after being detained. Children were kept in government facilities while parents waited in detention centers to face charges for breaking U.S. immigration law. Now, under the Biden administration, criminal charges against illegal immigrants are almost non-existent, so families are mostly kept together at this point.
--:-- John Bickley: The migrant separation under President Trump triggered a series of lawsuits by groups like the ACLU against the federal government on behalf of those families who were separated. The families argue they were traumatized by the experience and say they suffered emotional and physical distress as a result.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: So now the Biden administration is reportedly looking to strike a deal with the families, hoping it'll make the lawsuits go away. So under the current plan, each person who was part of a family separated at the border under President Trump will get up to $450,000 in payments. So a family of six could be getting $3 million.
--:-- Georgia Howe: The number's really out of quick. And how many families would be eligible for these payments? Most estimates say there were around 4,000 or 5,000 children separated from their parents while Trump was in office. But it's not clear yet how many of those individuals would be eligible for these payments.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And there's also the logistical element here that has people wondering how it's going to work. Under the plan payments would reportedly be made to the migrants whether they're currently living in the U or not. And experts say that opens up a whole new set of legal issues, as the U.S. government would be wiring millions of dollars to people living in South and Central America with little guarantee it actually gets to the right people.
--:-- John Bickley: And what sort of reaction are we seeing to this? As you might imagine, that depends on which side you're asking. A lot of Democrats say this is righting a wrong. They say President Trump's zero-tolerance border policy, which resulted in some families being separated, was overly cruel and in some cases unlawful.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: They also claim paying out a settlement now could protect the U.S. from potential legal action down the road if more families try to sue.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Okay, and what are Republicans saying? They see this very differently. First, they dispute the claim that any laws at the border were broken under President Trump. And they say offering millions of dollars to those who came here illegally will send a dangerous message and incentivize more illegal immigration in the future.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Many have also pointed out that $450,000 is more than most Gold Star families get after their loved ones are killed in action.
--:-- David Horton: And to just say, oh, well, you know, the value is more for someone who has broken our walls. And as a result, there's consequences. And now to say, oh, OK, well, now we owe you money and it's more money than we would pay a patriot. I just I am outraged.
--:-- Georgia Howe: We heard similar messages from Gold Star parents across the country, as well as leading Republican officials.
--:-- John Bickley: So now the question turns to what the final payment number will be and how it will be implemented. Well, regardless, it sounds like we're kind of opening a financial Pandora's box.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Yeah. Thanks for reporting. Anytime.
--:-- Georgia Howe: That's Daily Wire's Cabot Phillips. Coming up, we'll talk to the Attorney General of Texas about the state's legal battles with the Biden administration over the border crisis.
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--:-- John Bickley: Texas officials are engaged in a legal battle with the Biden administration over the crisis at the southern border, where more migrants have crossed illegally over the last fiscal year than at any point in American history. Joining us to discuss the border crisis and the legal actions Texas has taken to address it is Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
--:-- Ken Paxton: Well, so it's having a really large impact on our state. No one can absorb that number of people without having consequences for it. And, you know, this is being controlled by the cartels. And so we are, these people are not being vetted and their background, criminal background, their health background, whether they have COVID or not, whether they're drug traffickers, whether they're human traffickers, none of that is being taken into account.
--:-- Georgia Howe: They're all equally invited to the country to stay. And then they're moved all around the country. But it has an inordinate effect on our state because we have to deal with the consequences of the crime, the drugs, the fentanyl, which kills people, the COVID spread which kills people And the expense of law enforcement who are spending billions of dollars on the border and the expense of taking care of these people once they're in our state
--:-- Ken Paxton: And that expense is ultimately carried by Texas as a state itself. There's not help from the Biden administration? No, they turned us down for help. The governor has asked for help, and they've explicitly said no.
--:-- Georgia Howe: They say, no, we're going to keep doing these things that harm your state. They don't say it like that. The fact is all of these things are very harmful to our state, very harmful to the country and cause people, you know, not just little harm, some of it's, you know, death. And they're not only inviting it, but they're spreading it.
--:-- Ken Paxton: And you have sued the Biden administration, I think, seven times over border-related issues. Can you tell us about those lawsuits?
--:-- Georgia Howe: Yeah, so they're in different stages. The original one was the deportation freeze in the first 100 days. We got that stopped. We won a lawsuit and they are supposedly stopped. They have to start detaining people who are released from prison and send them back to other countries because the Biden administration was trying to keep as many released prisoners and criminals as possible in the country.
--:-- Ken Paxton: And we have stopped that. We have the Remain in Mexico program that the Supreme Court has agreed with a district judge and ordered the Biden administration to follow the Remain in Mexico program. They have failed to even follow court orders, let alone federal laws. We have a motion to enforce on that one and asked the court to give us deadlines for getting things done and for discovery so we can know exactly what they're doing.
--:-- Georgia Howe: We just sued over the wall and forcing the Biden administration to follow a congressional appropriation instead of wasting the money by giving contractors money who are not doing anything, but actually requiring them to follow the contracts.
--:-- Ken Paxton: You mentioned the wall. We spoke to Governor Abbott a few weeks ago, and he told us about building efforts from private funds and donations. Do you know where that stands?
--:-- Georgia Howe: So I know that the legislature has provided funds. I think they're in acquisition mode right now. They're meeting with private property owners. Some are agreeing to allow their property to be used to have some type of fence on it or barrier. Others, we may have to deal with them in the domain. Who knows? It's going to be a long process.
--:-- Ken Paxton: It's unfortunate because the federal government, when Trump was in office, they were moving rather quickly at finishing various parts of the wall. I know in El Paso, there's only, you know, like eight miles left to be built. However, there's a bunch of like fences or like open areas that they could fill in rather easily. And the Biden administration has said, no way, don't do that.
--:-- Georgia Howe: We're doing our best, given that we are fighting against our own government to protect our own state and our own country.
--:-- Ken Paxton: Well, Attorney General, thank you so much for talking with us today.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Absolutely. Glad to do it.
--:-- John Bickley: That was Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Last week, the White House announced that it believed it was moving toward passing the latest version of a multi-trillion dollar spending bill. A significant element of this latest effort relates to the subject of climate change and more specifically electric vehicles.
--:-- Ian Howarth: A number of things, but zooming out first, there have been a ton of Build Back Better announcements in the past few days. The White House announced that it was confident that a reduced version of the earlier bill, costing just under $2 trillion this time, could pass the House and the Senate.
--:-- Georgia Howe: The tone the Biden administration is trying to strike with this latest push is heavily focused on, as they put it, meeting our climate goals. They're describing their latest trillion-dollar spending drive as, quote, the largest effort to combat climate change in American history.
--:-- Ian Howarth: They're claiming that the framework will cut gas pollution, reduce consumer energy costs, provide cleaner air and water all while creating jobs And setting aside the debate over whether these jobs will actually materialize or if low energy costs are possible through alternative sources other than nuclear power one interesting part of the Biden administration strategy has been to push electric vehicles or EVs.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Yeah, and how exactly are they pushing them? Well, on the consumer side, they're increasing the electric vehicle tax credit from $7,500 to $12,500. Okay. This only applies vehicles that are made in America with American materials and union labor.
--:-- Ian Howarth: In terms of the made in America requirement, it looks like Tesla is the only carmaker which claims that 100% of the cars it sells in the US are built in the US. And we should also note that this is the same Tesla that moved its headquarters from California to Texas and also appears to oppose unionization. So it's not even clear whether this credit would be fully applicable for American consumers.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Oh, that's interesting. But President Joe Biden seemed to be somewhat confused on the capability of electric vehicles as a replacement for gas vehicles. We'll build out the first ever national network of 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations all across the country. So when you buy an electric vehicle and you get credit for buying, you buy an electric vehicle, you go all the way across America on a single tank of gas, figuratively speaking. It's not gas. You plug it in.
--:-- Ian Howarth: Now I did the math and the average electric vehicle has a range of around 194 miles on one charge. So it would actually take at least 14 charges to cross the country. Okay. So I'm not really sure what the president is trying to say here.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And in the meantime, Nancy Pelosi is now spearheading negotiations in Congress on this Build Back Better agenda, which includes massive electric vehicle incentives, which has, in part, pushed the valuation of Tesla up to more than $1 trillion. That's a lot of money.
--:-- Ian Howarth: Thanks for the update, Ian.
--:-- Georgia Howe: No problem. Daily Wire's Ian Howarth.
--:-- John Bickley: The highly anticipated election in Virginia for governor takes place tomorrow, and the final polls are showing some surprising results. Though Joe Biden won the state by 10 points in 2020, the highly favored Democratic candidate, Terry McAuliffe, has seen his once sizable advantage collapse in the final weeks of the campaign.
--:-- Georgia Howe: The most recent polls show McAuliffe and Republican Glenn Youngkin deadlocked, with RealClearPolitics average of the most recent polls showing the candidates in a statistical tie. A Washington Post poll released Friday shows McAuliffe edging Youngkin 49% to 48% among likely voters, while a Fox News poll found Youngkin leading by eight points.
--:-- John Bickley: Most polls now show Youngkin with a significant advantage among independents, a reversal from two months ago. The election is widely seen as a referendum on public schools and school board policies, with voters in Virginia ranking education as their number one concern.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Recent headlines regarding transgender bathroom policies and school safety have revealed stark differences between McAuliffe and Youngkin and have overwhelmingly benefited Youngkin, according to recent polling.
--:-- John Bickley: The recent surge of education to the top of voters' lists of concerns is a national trend, with many viewing the Virginia race as a bellwether for the direction of public education debate nationwide.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Head to dailywire.com for the latest developments in the race. If you liked this episode and are interested in hearing more, subscribe to Morning Wire on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening, and give us a five-star review.
--:-- John Bickley: 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.
--:-- Georgia Howe: If you liked this podcast, subscribe to our Morning Wire newsletter, available exclusively to Daily Wire members. Get the Morning Wire newsletter delivered straight to your inbox when you join at dailywire.com slash subscribe. Use code MORNINGWIRE to try a Reader's Pass membership and get your first month for only 99 cents.
