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--:-- Host (John Bickley): This episode is brought to you by LifeLock. Between two-factor authentication, strong passwords, and a VPN, you try to be in control of how your info is protected. But many other places also have it, and they might not be as careful. That's why LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats. If your identity is stolen, they'll fix it. Guaranteed or your money back. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit LifeLock.com slash podcast for 40% off. Terms apply.
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--:-- Host (John Bickley): The online payment system PayPal is facing a barrage of criticism after the company announced users could be fined thousands of dollars for spreading misinformation. We should make that unthinkable and we're going to make that illegal once we take back Congress and the White House, certainly. Now PayPal is apologizing for the confusion.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley. It's Tuesday, October 11th, and this is Morning Wire.
--:-- Host (Georgia Howe): Carrie Lake is a rising star on the right, but her bold rhetoric is making her a lightning rod on the national stage. We unpack her background and her platform for Arizona. This is a grassroots movement in Arizona, unlike anything anyone has ever seen before in this state. And there is no stopping us.
--:-- Host (Georgia Howe): Rising crime combined with a shrinking police force is forcing Los Angeles to get creative when it comes to officer recruitment. We'll tell you about the sizable housing bonuses the city is offering.
--:-- Host (Georgia Howe): Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.
--:-- Host (Georgia Howe): In an economy as volatile as this one, it's important to have control when you're making a big purchase, like a new car. That's where Morning Wire's new partners over at CarZing come into play. CarZing is an online shopping website with millions of listed vehicles. By partnering with credit agencies, lenders, and dealerships, Carzing provides you with everything you need before stepping foot into a dealership. Their innovative technology and financial tools let you instantly pre-qualify online without affecting your credit score. Once you find your dream car at your ideal budget, all you have to do is bring your save deal voucher with you to the dealership to finalize your next ride. All you got to do is visit carzing.com slash wire today to skip the guesswork and find the best deals near you. That's Karzing.com slash wire.
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--:-- Host (Georgia Howe): PayPal, which owns Venmo, unveiled a new policy to fine users $2,500 for spreading misinformation, causing a storm of backlash this weekend and forcing the company to quickly pull the policy and issue a statement.
--:-- Host (Georgia Howe): Here to tell us more about the policy and how PayPal is explaining it is Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham.
--:-- Megan Basham: So, Megan, a payment processing company fining its customers for speech it disapproves of is pretty shocking on its face. Is that really what the new policy entailed?
--:-- Megan Basham: Hey, John. Well, to put it bluntly, yes. The new terms banned sending, posting, or publishing any of what PayPal is calling messages, content, or materials that promote misinformation. Now, it didn't define what specifically constitutes misinformation. But if PayPal felt that a user had violated the policy, it could fine them $2,500. And that was set to take effect on November 3rd.
--:-- Megan Basham: Now, their user policy already had some speech prohibitions forbidding hate, intolerance, and discrimination. But this new updated policy expanded that to specifically address speech directed at what they're calling protected groups. And that would include gender identity and sexual orientation. So in that case, it would be unclear how say Christian users who might express religious convictions would be treated if PayPal felt they were in violation of that policy.
--:-- Megan Basham: So what the reaction been to this obviously controversial policy? Well, not too surprising, it's been pretty overwhelmingly negative. A lot of conservatives, as you might expect, have criticized the company. Tennessee's Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn, for instance, commented, quoting here, PayPal is censoring speech. If you don't listen, they will steal your money. We cannot allow this to happen.
--:-- Megan Basham: But a lot of people who aren't associated with the right also spoke out against it. One of PayPal's founders, David Marcus, no relation to our Daily Wire contributor, well, he tweeted Saturday, it's hard for me to openly criticize a company I used to love and gave so much to. PayPal's new AUP goes against everything I believe in. A private company now gets to decide to take your money if you say something they disagree with. And Elon Musk replied that he agreed with that, by the way.
--:-- Megan Basham: And Marcus wasn't the only one connected to PayPal out slamming the company. Blake Masters, who is a Republican candidate for Senate in Arizona, has been famously backed by PayPal founder Peter Thiel. And here's what he told Fox News on Sunday. We need a digital bill of rights. We need to ban companies at that level, at that size, especially if they're touching banking or if they're in social media. We're going to ban these companies from discriminating against users because of the political content of their speech. That's how we treat the phone company, right?
--:-- Megan Basham: That's how we treat the phone company, right? So the issue of big business becoming politicized was already a major issue energizing Republicans going into the midterm elections. This PayPal story is likely to only increase that voter enthusiasm. But PayPal has issued a statement and says this was a result of an error. Is this a reversal? Well, they aren't calling it a reversal. They're saying that it was a misunderstanding and they are not fining people for misinformation. The company put out a statement saying that the notice that included information about that fine went out by mistake. And it said it's working to correct the policy pages and apologize for any confusion.
--:-- Megan Basham: But so far, it hasn't offered explanation for how or why this $2,500 fine was ever proposed in the first place or how it got inserted into the acceptable use policy. And they haven't said if they're only ditching the misinformation fine or if that new discriminatory speech standard is also going to be withdrawn. All right, so some major questions still to be answered.
--:-- Megan Basham: What has the impact of all this attention been on PayPal? Well, as you might imagine, it hasn't been good. People all over social media were posting images showing that they'd closed their accounts, and PayPal's stock price immediately dropped more than 5% Monday morning, which was an underperformance compared to the rest of the tech market. It does seem like a startling new development in the financial sector.
--:-- Megan Basham: Have we seen any similar penalizing policies like this? I don't think we've seen anything this broad in the U.S., but I wouldn't call it unprecedented. To give you one example, GoFundMe notoriously froze millions of dollars in donations from the Freedom Convoy truckers in Canada. And in fact, the Canadian government even froze some of the truckers' bank accounts. So there is that.
--:-- Megan Basham: Well, I think a lot of us are going to be taking a little closer look at the terms of service before we click that agree box. Thanks for the story, Megan. Anytime. That was Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham.
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--:-- Host (Georgia Howe): Carrie Lake is vying to be the next governor of Arizona, but she's not without controversy. The longtime TV news anchor is well known for her charisma and hardline stance on illegal immigration, but she's also stirred up debate with her rhetoric around voter fraud.
--:-- Host (Georgia Howe): Here to give us the background on this Arizona firebrand is Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce.
--:-- Tim Pierce: So Tim, I'm seeing articles about Carrie Lake everywhere. Just yesterday, The Atlantic referred to her as Trumpism's new leading lady. Tell us about her background.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Hey, Georgia. Carrie Lake grew up in rural Iowa, the youngest of nine children. She studied journalism at the University of Iowa before moving on to work at news stations in Iowa and New York before settling in Arizona. She joined the team at Fox 10 as a weekend anchor and stayed there for 22 years. She left the station in early 2021, announcing a retirement in a video posted to the media platform Rumble in March that year. The video now has close to 2 million views.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Here's a snippet of what that sounded like. Sadly, journalism has changed a lot since I first stepped into a newsroom. And I'll be honest, I don't like the direction it's going. The media needs more balance in coverage and a wider range of viewpoints represented in every newsroom at every level and in each position.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Now, what is her political background? Lake does have a mixed political past. She was reportedly a member of the GOP up until 2006, at which time she registered as an independent. Two years after that, she registered as a Democrat and supported then-Senator Barack Obama in his first presidential run.
--:-- Tim Pierce: But according to her colleagues, Lake became more engaged with conservative politics around 2015 when former President Trump first announced his run for office. She was an early Trump supporter and by most accounts, a genuine one. His slogan about fake news resonated with her experience as a news anchor. She also liked that he was a political outsider who rejected political correctness.
--:-- Tim Pierce: So voters will have to decide whether they buy her authenticity on that. Right. So she resigned from local news in March of 2021. How did she transition into politics? Yeah. Three months after dropping a retirement video, she announced her run for governor. Due to her name recognition, she had a pretty substantial head start on the campaign trail.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Her main platform from the start was a hardline stance on immigration and skepticism about the fairness of the 2020 election in Arizona. She branded herself early on as the MAGA candidate and got Trump's early backing pretty quickly.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Now, you hinted at this before, but what are her key issues? Immigration and election integrity are two big issues. Lake's immigration plan is one of the most aggressive in the country. She wants to declare an invasion and use the National Guard to arrest and deport migrants caught crossing the southern border illegally.
--:-- Tim Pierce: I spoke with Lake recently about her immigration plan. Here's what she had to say. I don't want to send illegal immigrants and illegal aliens to Martha's Vineyard in Chicago. It's fun to watch, you know, them complain about 50 illegal aliens when we're dealing with hundreds of thousands, if not millions. We want to stop them at the border, which is my right to do as a governor.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Now, the elephant in the room and something that a lot of these publications have been seizing on is Carrie Lake openly questioned the 2020 election in Arizona. Yeah, here she is in January at a rally with former President Trump. That election was rotten to the core. We all know it, right? You know that, right? The media knows it and the left knows it. And they're trying to make us just accept it. And we will not accept that. You don't steal our vote. When I am governor, we will drag that back out into the sunlight and we will close every single loophole that allows them to cheat. We're not going to let them cheat anymore.
--:-- Tim Pierce: So she really goes all in on her positions. Right. She's confident, which is part of her appeal to voters. Most recently, she made some headlines for trying to force her opponent, Katie Hobbs, to debate. Katie, I'm speaking directly to you. You claim to care about the people of Arizona. Prove it. Debate me. You name the time and you name the place. I will allow you to choose the moderator. Hell, I'll even let you write the questions. Ask me anything.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Hobbs has so far refused. Here's her explaining why. I have no desire to be a part of the spectacle that she's looking to create because that doesn't do any service to the voters of Arizona to hear from us where we stand on the issues and how we would govern.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Well, Carrie Lake has been running a Wild West style campaign. Right now, the race looks like it's neck and neck. We're just going to have to wait and see what Arizona voters think. Tim, thanks for reporting. Thanks for having me.
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--:-- Host (Georgia Howe): Los Angeles is battling both a crime wave and a police shortage, but the city is struggling to recruit new cops due to the high cost of living. Local Angelenos are now pooling their own money to offer new cops thousands of dollars in rent subsidies to work in their city.
--:-- Host (Georgia Howe): Daily Wire investigative reporter Maraida Lordi is here with the details for us.
--:-- Maraida Lordi: So, Maraida, tell us about this rent subsidy program. Hi, Georgia. So this program is called Housing for Hires. New LAPD hires can get huge rent subsidies of up to $24,000 over two years for housing in Los Angeles. And this money is not coming out of the LAPD budget. It's coming from private donations to the LAPD Foundation.
--:-- Maraida Lordi: New LAPD officers usually get a starting salary of about $80,000. So a $24,000 rent subsidy is a significant boost. That should help with the high cost of living in L.A. According to one analysis, the Los Angeles metropolitan area now has a median rent of over $2,200, up from less than $1,950 in 2019. That's a jump of nearly 16%.
--:-- Maraida Lordi: Now, how significant is the police shortage in L.A. right now? Well, in August, Police Chief Michael Moore said the force was down about 176 officers. The total police force in L.A. is over 9,000. More concerning, though, the chief said the number of applications coming in has gotten smaller. In real terms, this has resulted in slower response times across the city. Meanwhile, violent crime is up significantly.
--:-- Maraida Lordi: As of the end of July, homicides in L.A. County had risen 30 percent since 2020 to more than 200 homicides so far this year. Shooting victims are up 43 percent since 2020 to nearly 800 victims. As we've reported before, shoplifting has also become a huge issue. Police say a big driver of the crime spike is L.A. District Attorney George Gascon's policies, which tend to favor being lenient on criminals, including violent repeat offenders.
--:-- Maraida Lordi: Well, it's not just L.A. I understand California is now competing with other states for police officers. Right. Even within the state, there's fierce competition for officers. For example, Redding, California, which is north of San Francisco, is offering $40,000 signing bonuses for new officers. So that gives you an idea of how desperate they are.
--:-- Maraida Lordi: But other states are vying for officers as well. Ithaca, New York, is offering $20,000 signing bonuses. Seattle is offering $30,000 for experienced officers. So the big question now is whether these generous perks are going to be enough to offset the frustrations and the dangers of working as a cop in L.A. Right.
--:-- Maraida Lordi: Well, we'll continue to follow this. Maraid, thanks so much for reporting. Thanks, Georgia.
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--:-- Host (Georgia Howe): Another story we're tracking this week. North Korean officials say recent missile launches were in fact the simulated use of tactical battlefield nuclear weapons specifically designed to hit potential South Korean and U.S. targets. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un signaled Monday that he would continue with the provocative missile tests.
--:-- 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, please consider subscribing, leaving us a five-star rating, and most importantly, sharing our podcast with a friend.
--:-- Host (Georgia Howe): Well, thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back this afternoon with more of the news you need to know.
