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--:-- John Bickley: A public fight between Elon Musk and Apple could redefine the rules of free speech in America. It is an ideological cartel that punishes the defector. And right now, that defector is Elon Musk.
--:-- Georgia Howe: What actions has Apple threatened to take and how is Musk responding?
--:-- John Bickley: I'm Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's Wednesday, November 30th, and this is Morning Wire.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Who controls immigration law, states or the federal government? That question was argued in front of the Supreme Court on Tuesday.
--:-- John Bickley: We outlined the key arguments on both sides of the issue.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And fashion brand Balenciaga is deflecting blame after critics claim their recent campaign evoked child pornography. We break down the disturbing details of the campaign and the deafening silence from the brand's celebrity partners.
--:-- John Bickley: Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.
--:-- John Bickley: Twitter CEO Elon Musk is making good on his promise to make the platform a friendlier forum for free speech. Meanwhile, the Biden administration says it's monitoring the situation.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And according to Musk, Apple is threatening to drop Twitter from its app store.
--:-- Megan Basham: I'm Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham. So, Megan, there's been a lot of news about Twitter in the last few days, but one of the most significant developments came from the White House.
--:-- Megan Basham: Well, you know, Musk has made it clear since he first made his offer to buy Twitter back in April that one of his key priorities was easing moderation practices and also allowing users to speak more freely on the platform.
--:-- Megan Basham: But then on November 23rd, Twitter officially did away with its COVID misinformation policy. And that was left over from the company's previous leadership.
--:-- Megan Basham: Well, that was the policy that empowered moderators to censor posts that question things like the effectiveness of masks or vaccines.
--:-- Megan Basham: Musk has also now promised to release internal Twitter documentation showing how and why moderators chose to suppress speech like the New York Post's Hunter Biden laptop story.
--:-- Megan Basham: He said the public deserves to know and that it's necessary to restore public trust.
--:-- Megan Basham: Jake Denton, a researcher in the Heritage Foundation's Tech Policy Center, told us that Musk's new policies could actually drastically change the kind of discourse that we're seeing on Twitter.
--:-- Megan Basham: These grassroots, ordinary folks that have been deplatformed are not going to behave in the way that, you know, these activists prefer.
--:-- Megan Basham: They're going to engage with, you know, whether it be tweets from, you know, controversial conservative influencers to just kind of more grassroots journalism.
--:-- Megan Basham: So all of this seems to have caught the attention of the Biden administration.
--:-- Megan Basham: This was White House Press Secretary Corinne Jean-Pierre responding to a question about Twitter new policies on Monday.
--:-- Megan Basham: Look we have always been very clear and that when it comes to social media platforms it is their responsibility to make sure that when it comes to misinformation, when it comes to the hate that we're seeing, that they take action.
--:-- Megan Basham: Musk tweeted shortly after this, and I'm going to quote, quote, this is a battle for the future of civilization.
--:-- Megan Basham: If free speech is lost, even in America, tyranny is all that lies ahead.
--:-- Megan Basham: So possibly a battle brewing there between the Biden administration and Twitter.
--:-- Megan Basham: Well, maybe even more significant is the action we're seeing from Apple.
--:-- Megan Basham: Yeah, that's a good point. So Musk has said that Apple has pulled most of its advertising from Twitter and is even threatening to drop the platform from its app store.
--:-- Megan Basham: Now, that's something we have seen before when Apple and Google Android dropped Parler from their stores, ostensibly once again over content moderation.
--:-- Megan Basham: And that move essentially crippled what was an emerging platform.
--:-- Megan Basham: It's also worth noting that the Apple executive who heads up the App Store, Phil Schiller, deleted his Twitter account last week.
--:-- Megan Basham: So Musk tagged Apple CEO Tim Cook to ask him what's going on.
--:-- Megan Basham: And he later tweeted of Apple, Do they hate free speech in America?
--:-- Megan Basham: So while the White House may be standing against Twitter, the company is finding some support among Republicans.
--:-- Megan Basham: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis had this to say. That would be a huge, huge mistake.
--:-- Megan Basham: And it would be a really raw exercise of monopolistic power that I think would merit a response from the United States Congress.
--:-- Megan Basham: For Musk's part, he said that if Apple tries to remove Twitter from the App Store, he will make an alternative phone.
--:-- Megan Basham: Well, if anyone can do it, I think Elon Musk is the guy.
--:-- Tim Pierce: I'm Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce. So, Tim, give us an overview of the case.
--:-- Tim Pierce: This case centers around a DHS memo that places restrictions on which illegal aliens federal law enforcement should target, arrest, and deport.
--:-- Tim Pierce: In September of last year, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas wrote a memo that directed federal agents, mainly ICE agents, to prioritize aliens that threatened U.S. security and safety for arrest and removal.
--:-- Tim Pierce: The memo says that federal law enforcement should consider mitigating or aggravating factors in each case.
--:-- Tim Pierce: In other words, if someone is found to be in the U.S. illegally, officials should consider whether it's worth it to detain and deport them based off the priorities in the memo.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Mayorkas set out three classes of priority removals threats to national security which are aliens considered to be either spies or terrorists
--:-- Tim Pierce: Then there are threats to border security which the memo defines as aliens who entered the U illegally after November 1st, 2020.
--:-- Tim Pierce: And finally, there are threats to public safety, who are aliens convicted of serious criminal conduct.
--:-- Tim Pierce: So those are the migrants that Mayorkas says should be considered a priority in deporting.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Which migrants are considered low priority? That would be the estimated 11 million migrants who are living in the U.S. illegally and who got here before that November 1st, 2020 cutoff.
--:-- Tim Pierce: All right, so the obvious question then is, why is Mayorkas restricting deportations if those millions of migrants are also in the U.S. illegally?
--:-- Tim Pierce: Well, the Biden administration says it comes down to making the most efficient use of limited resources.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Its basic argument is that federal officials can't remove 11 million aliens from the U.S., so it needs to set these priorities to take care of the highest risk threats first.
--:-- Tim Pierce: The attorneys general of Texas and Louisiana say that Regardless of resources, Congress did not give DHS discretion to decide which illegal aliens to deport and which to avoid.
--:-- Tim Pierce: The states are staking their case on the wording of federal immigration law, which is riddled with the word shall, such as shall take into custody and shall remove.
--:-- Tim Pierce: The states argue that the wording limits discretion in enforcing immigration laws.
--:-- Tim Pierce: The Biden administration argues that the courts have traditionally understood that the federal government has broad discretion to deal with illegal aliens.
--:-- Tim Pierce: And in any event, the federal government can't reasonably be expected to adhere to such a strict interpretation of the statute when it lacks the resources to enforce the law in totality.
--:-- Tim Pierce: All right, so there's a couple of other issues involved in this case.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Tell us about what else is at play here.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Sure, one is standing. The Biden administration says that the states can't meet the threshold of harm necessary to challenge the DHS memo.
--:-- Tim Pierce: The states say that the federal government's selective enforcement has left them on the hook for paying to care for the migrants who won't be deported.
--:-- Tim Pierce: The Biden administration says that those kinds of indirect costs have never been considered a firm foundation for states to sue.
--:-- Tim Pierce: The other issue is whether a U.S. district judge has the authority to freeze the Biden administration's order.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Judge Drew Tipton sided with Texas and Louisiana last year and put the directive on hold.
--:-- Tim Pierce: The Biden administration says that generally, the Supreme Court has the authority to restrict the federal government's immigration enforcement, not lower courts.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Well, we'll have to wait to see how the Supreme Court decides to settle this next year.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: I'm Daily Wire reporter Amanda Prestigiacomo. So, Amanda, let's back up a little bit. We first heard about this scandal last week.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Can you briefly recap what happened?
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Hey, Georgia. Yeah, last week, the luxury brand released its campaign, which featured very young children, maybe as young as four years old.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: They're holding teddy bears and bondage gear. The bears were apparently purses, but they look like children's toys, which was clearly the theme of the ad.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: It was about as bad as it sounds, too. The bears appear to have blackened out eyes, and they're dressed in BDSM gear like fishnet tops and leather harnesses.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: The kids are also surrounded by adult items like wine glasses and leather dog collars, too.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: And just to note, the children in these photos are not smiling. In one case, a young child is lying prone on a couch looking zonked out with wine glasses in the foreground.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: So when these images surfaced online, they were immediately met with a lot of backlash.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Internet sleuths took to the Balenciaga website to look for more examples of this questionable content.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: They quickly found photos from a July campaign featuring a Balenciaga and Adidas mashup purse.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: This purse was rested on top of some court papers that include an excerpt from a U Supreme Court opinion in the United States v Williams.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Now, this particular case ruled on the constitutionality of a law prohibiting the pandering of child pornography.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Kind of an odd thing to have in this fashion shoot.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: And just a side note, the internet sleuths turned up some other strange things too.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: In one example from the spring 2023 campaign, it featured two books in the background.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: One by an artist named Mikael Bormans, which features extraordinarily disturbing images of naked castrated children soaked in blood.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Other images showed mass individuals eating human limbs.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: The other featured book, The Cremaster Cycle, is equally disturbing.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: So unsurprisingly, the backlash online was swift and fierce.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Initially, this was just from the right, but it also got some buzz in the mainstream.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: For example, even Sunny Hostin, she's a liberal host on The View, she offered some mild criticism for the brand.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Although she did stop short of condemning the ad outright.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Now, what has Balenciaga's response been to this criticism?
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Well, initially, the brand just went dark.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: They wiped their Instagram page and they deleted all those images from their website.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: They later offered a lengthy apology online for, quote, any offense their campaign may have caused.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: They also acknowledged that those plush bondage teddy bears should not have been featured with children.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Pretty soon after that, the company seemed to shift the blame to the production company that was contracted for that.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: On Friday, they filed a lawsuit against a production company called North Six, as well as the set designer, Nicholas Desjardins.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: The suit specifically claims that North Six and the set designer are responsible for the child porn-related documents that appeared in the ad from the purse.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Again, that's not the bondage teddy bear ad, so that was from a different campaign.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: The fashion brand claims to be the victim of inexplicable acts and omissions regarding this, at the very least, extraordinarily reckless content, the suit says.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Balenciaga is seeking out at least $25 million in damages for the alleged false association between the brand and the, quote, repulsive and deeply disturbing subject of the court decision.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Now, how is this suit expected to fare in the courts?
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Well, Desjardins has blasted Balenciaga for using him as a scapegoat.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: He claims that the brand was completely in the loop the whole time.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: A statement from his agent says, quote, Everyone from Balenciaga was on the shoot and was present on every shot and worked on the edit of every image in post-production.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: So Balenciaga will have to prove that wasn't the case.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Now, what about the celebrities that have promoted Balenciaga?
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Are they now trying to distance themselves a little bit?
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Yeah, that's a great question since Balenciaga is kind of known for being the celebrity brand.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: You know, for example, we have model Bella Hadid and actress Nicole Kidman.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: They often promote it.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: There are a lot more, too.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Their most famous fan, though, has to be Kim Kardashian.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: And so far, she's the only star to speak out.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: On Monday, she announced she was re-evaluating her partnership with the brand.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: She has not cut ties as of now.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: But for now, it looks like a majority of Balenciaga's celebrity fans are willing to stay loyal despite this.
--:-- John Bickley: Well, that's all the time we've got this morning.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Thanks for waking up with us.
--:-- John Bickley: We'll be back this afternoon with more of the news you need to know.
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