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--:-- John Bickley: The Biden administration now admits that thousands of Haitian migrants are being released into the country, all without COVID testing and without a solid way to track them. We'll look at surprising new admissions from the administration about the border crisis that have local and state officials sounding the alarm.
--:-- Georgia Howe: There's total chaos. And the Biden administration, they need to up their game big time.
--:-- John Bickley: I'm John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's Monday, September 27th, and this is Morning Wire. New crime data from the FBI shows that 2020 saw the largest murder increase on record. Which parts of the country were hardest hit? And what are experts blaming for the dramatic rise in homicides?
--:-- Georgia Howe: And a massive global music festival featuring music stars including Billie Eilish and celebrities like Prince Harry and Meghan Markle took place this weekend. But did it meet its lofty goals of defeating poverty, demanding equity, and protecting the planet?
--:-- John Bickley: This is a human rights crisis. Every single person on this planet has a fundamental right to get this vaccine. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.
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--:-- Announcer: This show is sponsored by WyoTech. WyoTech, one of the nation's leading auto and diesel training schools, sees the trades as America's front lines. WyoTech is shaping young men, women, and veterans to build careers and businesses. America is built on the trades, and WyoTech is leading the way in training. Visit wyoTech.edu to subscribe and donate to the future technicians of America.
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--:-- John Bickley: As an illegal immigration crisis continues to unfold at the southern border, the Biden administration is facing heavy criticism over a surge of migrants from Haiti and for where those migrants are ending up. Here to discuss is Daily Wire's Ian Howarth.
--:-- Ian Howarth: So Ian, we've had some new developments on this crisis over the weekend. What do we need to know?
--:-- Ian Howarth: Well, first, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas admitted on Sunday that as many as 12,000 illegal migrants have been released into the country just in the past few weeks alone. Well, first, how many have been released into the U.S.? They're released on conditions and approximately, I think it's about 10,000 or so, 12,000. Have been released? Yes. Mayorkas then said that the number of migrants released into the country could increase. So this is a major admission here.
--:-- Ian Howarth: We had on Congressman Tony Gonzalez last week, and he'd said he'd heard unconfirmed reports of 10,000 Haitian migrants being released into the country. But now we're finding out it's actually probably more. Have we learned any more about what led to the massive surge in Del Rio?
--:-- Ian Howarth: Yeah, the surge of thousands of Haitian migrants occurred after a social media post claimed that the U.S. border in this region was open. The surge took the Biden administration totally off guard, with Border Patrol agents having to be quickly relocated. Texas Governor Greg Abbott said that the Biden administration had, quote, abandoned any pretense of securing the border.
--:-- Ian Howarth: The only thing that they've shown is an incapability of dealing with this crisis candidly in a way where they pretend it doesn't even exist. And we here to tell you it exists. It's total chaos. And the battle between the Biden administration and Governor Abbott only continues to rage with things worsening after President Biden joined those pushing a false narrative that Border Patrol agents were whipping migrants at the border.
--:-- Ian Howarth: To see people treated like they did, horses barely running them over, people being strapped, it's outrageous. I promise you, those people will pay. They will be, there's an investigation underway now, and there will be consequences. Governor Abbott responded to these threats, promising these border patrol agents that they would have a job in Texas.
--:-- Ian Howarth: I will hire you to help Texas secure our border. And then another person facing huge pressure for the ongoing crisis is White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki. On Friday, she claimed that it would not be constructive for the president to visit the border. Then Psaki tried to blame Republicans for failing to offer solutions.
--:-- Ian Howarth: There are a lot of Republicans out there giving speeches about how outraged they are about the situation at the border. Not many who are putting forward solutions or steps that we could take. So we're a little tired of the speeches. We'd like to partner on solutions and working together to address this problem that has not been partisan in the past.
--:-- Ian Howarth: And of course, we shouldn't forget that while the Biden administration continues to claim that ending COVID-19 is a priority, Secretary Mayorkas also admitted that the thousands of migrants at the border were not tested for COVID-19. So there's still no testing going on at the border? Correct. No testing.
--:-- Ian Howarth: He also admitted that they didn't even know if anyone was sick with COVID-19 in these camps. And with many of these people being released into the country, it's becoming difficult to reconcile the Biden administration's rhetoric when it comes to COVID-19 and immigration policy.
--:-- Ian Howarth: Definitely some major questions still to answer for the Biden administration. Thanks for the update, Ian.
--:-- Ian Howarth: No problem. Daily Wire's Ian Howarth.
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--:-- John Bickley: New data from the FBI shows that in 2020, the United States experienced the largest spike in murders since record-keeping began over six decades ago. According to the Federal Uniform Crime Report, 2020 marked a 29% increase in murders compared to 2019. Here are the details of Daily Wire managing editor, Cabot Phillips.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: So Cabot, give us some more context for these numbers.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Yeah, so every year the FBI compiles crime data from every state and issues a definitive report that kind of serves as a final snapshot of the year from a criminal standpoint. And it found that in 2020, there were around 21,500 murders. That's 5,000 more than the year before. The previous record for a one-year murder spike like this was 12%. So this year's 29% increase is two and a half times larger than any on record.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Now, murder rates do often change from year to year, but experts say a spike like this is completely unprecedented. Almost three times the number increase here. Yeah. Did we see any specific trends? What did the data tell us here?
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Well, one interesting note was that the spike wasn't isolated to one specific area. Every single region in the country saw at least a 20% murder increase. A lot of people hear about a story like this and they see a spike and assume it's just in the big cities. But that's not true. If you look at the data mid cities with a population between 100 and 250 actually saw the highest increase with a 40 spike. Really. Yeah. And even smaller cities with populations under 25 saw a 24 percent spike. So this really was felt across the board. It wasn't isolated in any one particular type of city.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: So small cities, middle-sized cities, big cities. All of them. All of them impacted. Yep. Do we have any sense of what caused this spike? So there are a few theories. It kind of depends on who you ask. To start, the one that people on both sides agree played at least some role is unemployment. So typically areas with higher unemployment do experience more crime, and unemployment was up across the country during the lockdowns.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: The disagreements come when you start talking about what other factors played a role. So many on the left have blamed the fact that millions of Americans purchased firearms for the first time during the pandemic. They say that increased gun ownership, along with the stress of lockdowns, caused a spike. Those on the right, as you can imagine, see it differently. They tend to think the increase in gun ownership was more of a response to increased crime, not a cause of it.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: They say the biggest factor here was the defund the police movement. We all remember that rallying cry during the summer of 2020. And many cities did just that, pulling funding from police departments and cutting back on the number of officers on the street. Right, we've tracked some of that. Yeah, and a lot of people on the right say that they think that played a huge role.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: So can you unpack that more for us? Do we have a clear correlation between defund the police and the rising crime numbers? Some of the data does say yes. Obviously, murder was up everywhere, but the data does show that it was up even more in many of the cities that pulled funding from police departments.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Austin, Texas, for example, they implemented the largest police budget cuts in the country. And in 2020, they saw a 55% increase in murder. Yeah, that's almost double the national average of 29. New York City, they did the same, cutting a billion dollars from their police budget. And in 2020, murders were up 40% there. Portland, which a lot of people kind of associate as the epicenter of the defund the police movement, they sliced millions from their police budget and saw a 52% increase in murders.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: I actually spoke to one police officer there who told me the city dissolved a gun violence team and that officers have been stepping down and retiring, quitting at record numbers. And that's a trend that if you actually look at the data, you can see happening nationwide. Yeah, there seems to be a pretty clear pattern there.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Cabot, thanks for the reporting.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Absolutely. Daily Wire Managing Editor, Cabot Phillips.
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--:-- John Bickley: A massive music festival for charity took place in major cities across the world this weekend, including New York, London, Sydney, and Paris. The ninth annual Global Citizen Concert was one of the largest events of its kind, with major artists like Elton John, Lizzo, and Coldplay performing. But some are criticizing the concert for lacking clarity about its purpose.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Here to explain what this concert was and some of the response it's received is Daily Wire entertainment reporter Megan Basham.
--:-- Megan Basham: So Megan, I was reading about the Global Citizen concert, and it seems to have somewhat scattered goals. What are the organizers saying their mission is?
--:-- Megan Basham: You know, I'll be honest, given how broad their stated platform is, it reminded me a little bit of that episode of Seinfeld where George invents a charity called the Human Fund, and he says its purpose is to provide money for people. Because when you go to the Global Citizen website, that's kind of what it felt like. They're just all over the map on their purpose.
--:-- Megan Basham: They say they want to achieve three things. So one, defeat poverty, two, demand equity, and three, protect the planet, small things. So there are portions of the site dedicated to everything from reading racially diverse books, to planting trees to distributing COVID vaccines. To be honest, even some of the music media seem to be rolling their eyes a little bit at the broadness of this year platform.
--:-- Megan Basham: For example, a Rolling Stone review published Sunday called it a save the world pep talk. Now, did anyone talk specifics? I mean, what actions do they want people to take? Yeah, a few people did. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle were there and they spoke about the need for pharmaceutical companies to waive intellectual property rights and share information about vaccines with poor nations.
--:-- Megan Basham: And I would say they were the most on message of anyone who presented. Billie Eilish talked about her hopes that Congress will pass a climate change bill. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio took the stage to talk about climate change too. But in that case, I don't think the crowd likely heard him because he was greeted by a pretty loud chorus of boos.
--:-- Megan Basham: So there were some specifics, they just weren't unified. And the organizers freely admit they're not trying to fundraise here, just raise awareness. So to that end, the tickets were free. And they say their strategy is that massive turnouts at these concerts will prove to political and business leaders around the world that people do really want to see bold action on these issues.
--:-- Megan Basham: Or they want to go to a free concert. Right. There is that. And I do think that was demonstrated by the fact that once some of those major headliners performed, at that point, the crowds began exiting. In New York, Billie Eilish must have been the big draw because once she was finished, a lot of people left.
--:-- Megan Basham: Do we expect anything concrete to come out of this event? You know, I doubt it because, as I said, I think they're suffering from message dilution. When you look back at concerts like Live Aid and Farm Aid in the 80s, those did have some success at raising awareness. Live Aid, which was, like this event, a global concert that took place in multiple cities around the world, well, it was raising money and demanding action on the famine in Ethiopia.
--:-- Megan Basham: Now, Farm Aid, too, had a very specific purpose, to help save American family farms. And in both of those cases, the concerts did fundraise. So I think that probably helped them in achieving some success. I'll be honest, it was hard for me as a reporter to find any consistent, coherent message. So I'm not sure the casual observer is going to be able to pick up on one.
--:-- Megan Basham: Fair enough. Megan, thanks for reporting. Always good to be here. That's Daily Wire entertainment reporter Megan Basham.
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--:-- John Bickley: Other stories we're tracking this week. The Taliban has returned to its gruesome tactic of publicly displaying the bodies of dead citizens. In the city of Harat, Afghanistan, on Saturday, the Taliban brought the bodies of four alleged criminals to a central square, then hanged one of the bodies from a crane. The other three were moved to different parts of the city for public display.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Center-right control of Germany appears to have come to an end. German Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union is projected to lose control of the government to the left-wing Social Democratic Party as a result of Sunday's national election.
--:-- John Bickley: And four Pennsylvania teenagers have been charged with plotting an attack on a high school outside of Scranton in 2024 on the 25th anniversary of the Columbine shooting. Those charges include a 15-year-old girl and a 15-year-old boy, as well as two unnamed teens.
--:-- Georgia Howe: According to the girl's mother, the female teen was, quote, obsessed with Columbine.
--:-- John Bickley: 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. 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.
