--:-- 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.
--:-- John Bickley: Republicans call foul after Democrats killed the impeachment trial of the Homeland Security Secretary before it begins. The loon wing of the Democratic Party does not want the United States Senate to present evidence of how the Biden administration has screwed up royally the Southern board.
--:-- John Bickley: I'm Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley. Georgia Howe is off this week. It's Thursday, April 18th, and this is Morning Wire.
--:-- John Bickley: In a reversal, President Biden announces that he's raising tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum. Why do Republicans say Biden is just riding Trump's coattails? And a U.S. senator calls for defunding NPR after a veteran editor details the government-funded organization's political bias. It's all pre-digested and spit out to you. And I think it's ultimately unsatisfying. And for a vast part of this nation, they don't want it.
--:-- John Bickley: Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.
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--:-- Tim Pierce: Senate Democrats broke with over 200 years of congressional history and refused to hold a trial on impeachment articles against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Democrats and their independent allies voted yesterday to make a quick end of the proceedings.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Here with more is Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Hey Tim, so a historic move yesterday. What happened?
--:-- Tim Pierce: Well, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer wanted the articles dealt with expeditiously, and they were. The Senate skipped the trial and voted along party lines to kill the articles 51-48 in the first vote. Republican Lisa Murkowski voted present and 51-49 in the second.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Here's Schumer before the votes calling to dismiss the articles. Today, the trial will commence, and we will be in our seats as jurors for the third time in four years. But this time, senators will provide as jurors in the least legitimate, least substantive, and most politicized impeachment trial ever in the history of the United States. And that's where the first impeachment of a cabinet secretary in nearly 150 years ends.
--:-- Tim Pierce: So before the trial began, why didn't Schumer want to bring these articles up for trial? The official decision of the Senate was that the articles were unconstitutional, but some in Congress say Democrats didn't want to air days of damning testimony over Biden's border failures.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Republicans pushed back pretty aggressively against Schumer's bid to kill the articles. Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Mike Lee of Utah tried to use a few procedural moves to get to a trial, but they were stopped at every turn by the Democrat majority.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Here just some of that pushback on the floor from Senator Lee. Article 2 accuses him of knowingly making false statements. This is a violation of 18 U Section 1001 a felony offense. If this is not a high crime and misdemeanor, what is? If this is not impeachable, what is? What precedent will be setting?
--:-- Tim Pierce: For context, the articles against Mayorkas charged him with willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law and breach of public trust. Those charges are essentially due to the chaos at the border.
--:-- Tim Pierce: As we've documented here, we've seen historically high numbers of illegal immigrants since Biden took office. In total, U.S. Border Patrol has reported somewhere around 7.3 million encounters since January 2021.
--:-- Tim Pierce: That doesn't take into account known gotaways, another roughly 2 million, and then unknown gotaways, which could be hundreds of thousands more.
--:-- Tim Pierce: And then on Wednesday, CBP released new demographic data on the last six months of immigration. It shows Border Patrol apprehended over 24,000 illegal Chinese nationals at the border in the first six months of fiscal year 2024.
--:-- Tim Pierce: That's a 7,000 percent increase over fiscal year 2021. Eighty-five percent of those Chinese nationals were single adults.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Now, in a new wrinkle to this, we have reports that an NGO in Mexico is trying to lure immigrants to the U.S. to cast votes for President Biden. What have we learned about that?
--:-- Tim Pierce: Right. Our friends at Muckraker were at an immigrant camp run by Resource Center Matamoros, and they found flyers littered all over the location that read in part, Reminder to vote for President Biden when you are in the United States. We need another four years of his term to stay open.
--:-- Tim Pierce: The Resource Center Matamoros has denied that these flyers are theirs, though they did have the Resource Center's logo on them.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Mayorkas was on Capitol Hill Tuesday for a budget hearing in the House Homeland Security Committee, and he was asked about these flyers. Here's that exchange with North Carolina Republican Dan Bishop.
--:-- Tim Pierce: What actions is the Department of Homeland Security taking to ensure that non-citizens are being prevented from registering and voting unlawfully?
--:-- Tim Pierce: Congressman, individuals who are not citizens of the United States cannot vote in federal elections.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Ah, but that's not what I asked. I asked what actions DHS is taking to ensure that that doesn't occur.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Well, I believe that it is state and local election officials that monitor the eligibility of individuals. We do not oversee the election enrollment process. What we do is enforce our borders.
--:-- Tim Pierce: So you can hear there Republicans once again not impressed with responses from Mayorkas on the border crisis.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Well, Senate Democrats saved him the pain of a trial yesterday. We'll see what moves Republicans make next.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Tim, thanks for joining us.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Good to be on.
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--:-- Cabot Phillips: On Wednesday, President Biden called for the U.S. to more than triple tariffs on steel and aluminum products from China, a reversal of his past stance and a move that critics have dismissed as more symbolic than economic.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Here are the details as Daily Wire Senior Editor Cabot Phillips.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Hey Cabot, so break it down for us. What did we hear from Biden Wednesday?
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Yeah so yesterday President Biden appeared before union members at the United Steelworkers headquarters in Pittsburgh to call for a nearly 20 increase on new tariffs for Chinese steel and aluminum products.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: All told when combined with separate Trump tariffs the new rate will sit around 50% for steel and more than 30% for aluminum.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: The president also announced that he'd ordered an investigation into Chinese shipbuilding practices. At the moment, about half of all merchant ships currently being produced come from a Chinese shipyard.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Finally, President Biden announced new initiatives that he said will prevent China from avoiding American tariffs by routing their cargo through Mexico.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Here he is making the announcement. U.S. Steel has been an iconic American company for more than a century, and it should remain a totally American company. American owned, American operated by American Union steel workers, the best in the world. And that's going to happen, I promise you.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Now, this all comes amid allegations that China is engaging in unfair business practices.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: According to U.S. officials, Beijing has in recent years spent billions of dollars on subsidies to artificially prop up their manufacturing industry. That has flooded the global market with cheap goods that ultimately manipulate demand and cripple domestic production.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: The concern there is that the Chinese government could keep their prices artificially low in order to drive American manufacturers out of business. And then once that happens, they could raise their prices and leave the West unable to go elsewhere.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And then there have been those who say the timing here raises a lot of questions about the motives of this move.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Yeah, that is an important factor here. Plenty of folks on the right say it's no coincidence that Biden waited to unveil this plan until six months before Election Day.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And the fact he chose to make the announcement in Pennsylvania, a battleground state where he's currently trailing in the polls in front of union workers, a voter bloc where he's hemorrhaging support this year, gives an idea of the political aspect.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: But when he arrived in Pittsburgh for his event, a large protest was waiting for him, with hundreds of protesters chanting, quote, Bidenomics has got to go, among other things.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Now, Biden critics point to the fact that Chinese steel imports fell considerably following Trump's tariffs, and now actually account for less than 1% of America's steel consumption. A lot less than people think.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: In their view, Biden is looking to capitalize on a trade war that they say Donald Trump already won.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: For their part, the RNC responded to the move by posting a clip of then-candidate Biden in 2019 speaking out against tariffs on China.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Iowa farmers have been crushed by his tariff war with China. He thinks that being tough is great. Well, it's really easy to be tough when someone else absorbs the pain.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: So this move, even if symbolic, shows they are aware they're struggling with union members. It's also a clear response to concerns voters have expressed over Biden's foreign policy chops, an issue where he consistently scores low approval ratings.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: For their part, Biden officials have said behind closed doors that they want to outflank Trump on China and be the candidate viewed as the toughest on Beijing. This week gives insight into what that strategy will look like. A lot of effort now to win back support by the president, it seems.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Cabot, thanks for reporting.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Anytime.
--:-- Megan Basham: an NPR editor who blew the whistle on the outlet's left-wing political bias has resigned after the company's new ceo suspended him now some lawmakers are calling for the public broadcaster to be defunded here with more is daily wire reporter megan basham
--:-- Megan Basham: Hey Megan, so NPR editor or now former editor Ori Berliner wrote an expose in the free press where he said NPR is suffering from a lack of ideological diversity.
--:-- Megan Basham: First, remind us what evidence did he provide for that?
--:-- Megan Basham: Well he pointed out that NPR ignored the Hunter Biden laptop scandal and he said that was because staffers were worried that it might help Donald Trump right before that 2020 election
--:-- Megan Basham: He also called the debunked Russia collusion story another NPR black guy, saying that they bought into that narrative when they really shouldn't have and quoting from him that they hitched their wagon to Trump's most visible antagonist by whom he meant Congressman Adam Schiff.
--:-- Megan Basham: He also said he found 87 registered Democrats working for NPR in the D.C. area, but zero Republicans.
--:-- Megan Basham: So this is what he told News Nation about his concerns. When I started, there was a liberal orientation, but I think we were more guided by curiosity, open mindedness.
--:-- Megan Basham: I think that's evolved over the years into a much narrower kind of niche thinking, a group think that's really clustered around very selective, progressive views that don't allow enough air, enough spaciousness to consider all kinds of perspectives.
--:-- Megan Basham: So ultimately, Berliner said NPR has lost the public's trust, which is, of course, a pretty serious problem for a news company that is publicly funded.
--:-- Megan Basham: Right. And NPR's response to that was to deny it and suspend it.
--:-- Megan Basham: Correct. So they suspended him for five days last Friday. And then NPR's new CEO, Catherine Marr, who took over in January, sent out a memo where she called Berliner's claims profoundly disrespectful, hurtful and demeaning.
--:-- Megan Basham: And then on Wednesday, Berliner announced that he was resigning after 25 years at NPR. And he said this, I cannot work in a newsroom where I am disparaged by a new CEO whose divisive views confirm the very problems at NPR that I cite in my free press essay.
--:-- Megan Basham: Now regarding Mars divisive views, Berliner seemed to be referencing a number of her past statements that have resurfaced on social media in the last few days.
--:-- Megan Basham: And I'm just going to read a few posts from Mar here. So in May, 2020, she said of President Trump, what is that deranged racist sociopath ranting about today?
--:-- Megan Basham: She also called him a racist in 2018.
--:-- Megan Basham: And then later that month, in reference to the George Floyd riots, she said, I mean, sure, looting is counterproductive, but it's hard to be mad about protests not prioritizing the private property of a system of oppression founded on treating people's ancestors as private property.
--:-- Megan Basham: All right. So lending some further credence to Berliners claims.
--:-- Megan Basham: Right, exactly.
--:-- Megan Basham: And conservative journalist Chris Rufo also found an interview that Marr gave when she was the head of Wikimedia, which is the parent company of Wikipedia.
--:-- Megan Basham: And she sort of lamented that the First Amendment has been an obstacle to censorship.
--:-- Megan Basham: The number one challenge here that we see is, of course, the First Amendment in the United States is a fairly robust protection of rights.
--:-- Megan Basham: And that is a protection of rights both for platforms, which I actually think is very important that platforms have those rights to be able to regulate what kind of content they want on their sites.
--:-- Megan Basham: But it also means that it is a little bit tricky to really address some of the real challenges of where does bad information come from and sort of the influence peddlers who have made a real market economy around it.
--:-- Megan Basham: So naturally, that's a somewhat alarming point of view for someone who is now running a news outlet and a taxpayer-funded one that.
--:-- Megan Basham: Yeah.
--:-- Megan Basham: And that's where these calls for defunding are coming from. Who's making those calls?
--:-- Megan Basham: Well, Donald Trump, for one, but also Senator Marsha Blackburn.
--:-- Megan Basham: She said she'll pursue legislation to defund NPR.
--:-- Megan Basham: And she told Morning Wire via email, it makes no sense that the American people are forced to fund a propagandist left-wing outlet that refuses to represent the voices of half the country.
--:-- Megan Basham: NPR should not receive our tax dollars.
--:-- Megan Basham: Well, NPR has faced such calls in the past and they've managed to survive. We'll see what happens this time.
--:-- Megan Basham: Thanks, Megan.
--:-- Megan Basham: Anytime. Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back this afternoon with more news you need to know.
