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--:-- Host: Roald Dahl's classic children's books are getting an overhaul after sensitivity readers at Puffin Books deemed the works too offensive for modern readers. How are readers reacting to the edits? And could the changes ruin the popular works? I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley. It's February 25th, and this is your Saturday edition of Morning Wire.
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--:-- Host: A California bill is seeking to severely restrict the use of police dogs. Why are canine officers under scrutiny? And how is law enforcement responding? And Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has launched a nationwide tour to support law enforcement. There's no way Florida could have done what we've done if it wasn't for our commitment to law and order. Is the popular governor dipping his toe into the presidential ring? Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.
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--:-- Host: Children's book publisher Puffin is changing classic works from the late author Roald Dahl to make them more, quote, sensitive. The move has critics accusing the company of censorship. Here to tell us why Puffin decided to make these changes and how the company is responding to the backlash is Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham.
--:-- Megan Basham: So, what specifically does Puffin mean when they say they want to make these books more sensitive? You know, I don't think there's any other way to really describe it than to say they want them to be more politically correct. So, Puffin, which is a subsidiary of Penguin Random House, employed what are known as sensitivity readers. And these are analysts who read through a work pinpointing material that people might find offensive. They've actually been around the publishing world for quite a while, but what they typically do is work with current authors who can, of course, reject or accept their suggestions.
--:-- Megan Basham: In this case, Puffin employed an organization called Inclusive Minds. It describes itself as a collective for people who are passionate about inclusion, diversity, and equality. And it says it's, quote, committed to changing the face of children's books. So, these revisions include a lot of shifts to gender-neutral language. Mothers and fathers, for example, has been changed to just a generic parents. They also swapped out a reference to Rudyard Kipling and they put in Jane Austen, a passage that describes hypothetical working women as supermarket cashiers or letter writers for businessmen, now describes them as top scientists or business owners. And then descriptions like fat and ugly were removed all throughout the books. And they also added some passages like in the book The Witches a character explains that witches wear wigs because they bald. Well, Puffin has now added a line of dialogue that reads there are plenty of other reasons why women might wear wigs and there are certainly nothing wrong with that. So maybe somewhat changing the intent of the passage.
--:-- Megan Basham: And it's also worth noting here that the doll estate would have had to sign off on all this. Now, what kind of reaction is Puffin getting for these changes? You know, it's interesting. A lot of the time, these kinds of culture stories can seem to take on a pretty familiar dividing line of right versus left. I would say that's not so much the case here, as the company is being pretty universally criticized. The CEO of PEN America, which is a free speech nonprofit that a lot of people tend to perceive as leaning more left, actually called the move dangerous. And she also said, and I'll just quote, Those who might cheer specific edits to Dahl's work should consider how the power to rewrite books might be used in the hands of those who do not share their values and sensibilities.
--:-- Megan Basham: And then there's author Salman Rushdie. He, of course, faced a fatwa from the Iranian government over his work and actually had two different extremist groups put multimillion-dollar bounties on his head. He said what Puffin is doing is absurd censorship and that the company should be ashamed of itself. And then finally, Dahl's biographers say that the author would be horrified to know that this was being done to his work. They say he was known for having at times contentious battles with editors who wanted to alter his text, and he was very particular about his choice of language.
--:-- Megan Basham: How is Puffin responding? Are they backing down at all? No, not really. They put out a statement basically arguing that this is common practice with older works, saying it's not unusual to review the language. And they also said they made changes so Doll's books can, quote, continue to be enjoyed by all today. But meanwhile, Penguin is trying to tamp down on the backlash by announcing Friday that they're also going to be publishing the unedited versions. So clearly they're feeling the heat.
--:-- Megan Basham: Now, to Puffin's point, we have seen publishers make similar changes when issuing new editions of classic books like, say, Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn. In that case, the N-word was replaced with the word slave. The publisher then said that they did it as a response to the book being taken out of so many schools. So basically, they're arguing they were trying to protect students' access to Twain's works. Well, it does seem like a slippery slope.
--:-- Host: Thanks for reporting, Megan. Anytime.
--:-- Host: That was Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham. Coming up, California moves to restrict the use of police dogs. Do you love Morning Wire? Well, you can shop the collection at dailywire.com slash shop. Start today with your favorite podcast and coffee from your very own Morning Wire mug, or rep the news you need to know with Morning Wire t-shirts, hoodies, and toe bags. That's dailywire.com slash shop.
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--:-- Host: Democrats and racial activists in California are working to outlaw some uses of police canines, citing claims of present and historical racism. But critics of the social justice efforts say canines can keep officers safe and often protect suspects by limiting use of potential lethal force. Here to discuss is Daily Wire reporter Amanda Prestigiacomo.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Hey, Georgia. So, Assembly Bill 742, introduced on February 13th, seeks to end the use of canine units for arrest, apprehension, and crowd control, citing supposed racial injustice. Democratic Assemblyman Corey Jackson, who authored the bill, argues that these police dogs disproportionately victimize Black and brown people and claims this stems all the way back to the days of slavery.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Here Jackson at a press conference this month announcing the legislation: From the brutal attempts to quell the civil rights movement Black Lives Matter protests and their day-to-day use in law enforcement, police canines remain a gross misuse of force, victimizing Black and brown people disproportionately. What's really prominent here is this element of so-called social justice. Jackson did claim during the conference that current data supports the bill, but what he really emphasized was the bill's role of remedying past wrongs.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: He also quoted Malcolm X, saying that the white man has traded in white sheets for police badges and canines. So again, a really strong racial emphasis. Now, this bill has garnered some pretty significant support, correct? Yeah, that's right. Factions of both the ACLU and the NAACP are supporting the bill. So even if AB 742 doesn't go anywhere in California, it does seem to be an issue activists, particularly racial activists, will continue to pursue.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Now, what does the actual data say when it comes to police dogs? Is there reason to believe that they disproportionately target certain groups of people? So it's hard to find national data on police canines since there's no centralized database tracking this stuff. But investigations have shown that thousands of Americans are bitten by police dogs each year, sometimes causing serious injury.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Jackson cited research that shows Black and Latino individuals are more likely to be involved in canine apprehensions. So basically, there are two types of apprehension techniques taught in police service dog training, and those are the bite and hold and the circle and bark, which are pretty self-explanatory. According to Jackson, 65% of those seriously injured by police dogs in 2021 were, quote, people of color.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Now, when we're talking about deaths stemming from police canines, those are thought to be extremely rare. As in only a handful of cases. An investigation conducted by the Marshall Project, a nonprofit focused on criminal justice reform, found only three cases where police dog attacks led to the victim's death since 2010.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Now, what is law enforcement saying about this bill? Unsurprisingly, there's been a lot of pushback against the bill. Basically, officials have underscored the important role police dogs play in keeping law enforcement safe and protecting suspects from potential deadly force. They see this bill as counterproductive.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Here's Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb speaking to OAN last week about the bill: I have absolutely seen cases where lethal force would have been justified and was likely going to be used. Next, had the dog not been effective, but the dog is very effective in neutralizing threats. The dog is extremely valuable. And the fact that they would want to take this away seems to be contradicting what they want across this country, which is more and more reforms.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: And what we don't have, of course, is the data on how many instances where lethal force did not happen because of police dogs or how many officers these dogs have effectively saved. What's the status of the bill? It's pending referral in the Assembly right now and could be heard in committee as early as next month. All right, well, we'll keep tabs on it.
--:-- Host: Amanda, thanks for reporting. Thanks for having me.
--:-- Host: That was Daily Wire reporter Amanda Prestigiacomo. The reason why you have crime that has spiraled out of control in so many of these different areas is because you have politicians putting woke ideology ahead of public safety. That was Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who launched a national tour to discuss law enforcement. And it has many wondering if it's the start of something much bigger. Here to discuss is columnist David Marcus.
--:-- David Marcus: Okay, Dave, lay it on us straight. Is he running?
--:-- Host: Morning What did I knew my friend The conventional wisdom is that he's running. He's enormously popular in the right and there's a feeling that this is his moment and that if he waits four years that moment will have passed as many politicos think it did for Chris Christie when he declined to run back in 2012.
--:-- David Marcus: In addition, he's got lots of money and support in the donor and media class. The two arguments that you hear against Iran are, one, that Trump will blow the whole thing up if he loses and tank DeSantis' general election run by telling his own base not to vote for him. And also that it could take focus from the work he's doing in Florida, which is having real and important national repercussions.
--:-- David Marcus: Trump has already begun attacking DeSantis, referring to him as Ron DeSanctimonious. Is this a sign that Trump is worried about him, and does it give us a sense of what his attack against him will be? Yes, it's pretty clear that Trump and Trump world are worried about DeSantis, and that's why these attacks are picking up.
--:-- David Marcus: Trump and his surrogates want to paint him as a wolf in sheep's clothing who is beholden to the very establishment and moneyed interests that Trump claims to be independent from. The problem is that DeSantis has gotten huge wins that GOP voters love on COVID, on education. They like the way he took on woke Disney. So it's not clear that Trump can convince them that he's really some return to the bad and boring old days of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan.
--:-- David Marcus: That's not going to stop him from trying. Is there something that DeSantis has as a candidate that sets him apart from Republicans who ran against Trump in 2016? Is he bringing a new or different dynamic? He is. DeSantis, largely because of his bold and brash wins, has a set of fans who are what we might call true believers. These are people who not only like him and his policies, but who think he is the one, right, in a way that's similar to how Trump's base felt about him in the 2016 primary.
--:-- David Marcus: No huge swaths of people felt that way about Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio, let alone John Kasich. So Trump has never faced somebody with this kind of rock star appeal and voter loyalty. It helps DeSantis a lot, but it also could lead to a very ugly fight between those loyal to him and those loyal to the Donald.
--:-- David Marcus: Has DeSantis given us any indication of when he might announce his candidacy, if that's actually his intention? DeSantis has suggested that he's going to wait a few months. He's mentioned May, and that does a few things. The DeSantis camp can watch and see if candidates who do announce pick up steam. Does someone else jump up 10 points and change the dynamic? Or is this really a one-on-one between DeSantis and Trump, which is what they want?
--:-- David Marcus: It also allows him to stay away from thorny foreign policy issues like Ukraine. At a time when attitudes there are shifting, he may not want to lay down a marker. Finally, how many more candidates might we expect in this primary field? And how could that number shape the race? There's a lot of names that Pence, Pompeo, Bolton, Hogan. And look, as far as Trump is concerned, the more the merrier. He benefited from the fact that a widescreen lens was needed to capture the field in the cast of thousands GOP debates back in 16.
--:-- David Marcus: Right. It let him win many states with only 40 to 45 percent of the vote. The DeSantis camp and many in the party want this field winnowed quickly. But there's a danger because if Trump's biggest supporters sense a thumb on the scale against him, they're going to be very hard to bring home to the farm.
--:-- Host: Dave, thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me.
--:-- Host: That was Daily Wire contributor, David Marcus. Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back later this afternoon with a Saturday afternoon extra episode.
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