--:-- Georgia Howe: I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley. It's Wednesday, June 21st, and this is your Morning Wire afternoon update.
--:-- John Bickley: As time is running out for the passengers on the Titan submersible that went missing near the wreckage of the Titanic, a last-ditch effort involving heavy machinery and submarines arrived in Newfoundland on Tuesday night.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Daily Wire senior editor Cabot Phillips has more. Officials say they may be closing in on the missing sub after a sonar beacon picked up quote banging sounds underwater, coming in 30-minute intervals from a location near the Titanic wreckage.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Last night, three Air Force C-17s reportedly landed at a cargo terminal in New Finland, carrying heavy-duty search equipment, including unmanned vehicles capable of diving 19,000 feet underwater.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: The journey to the area where Titan is thought to be submerged takes 15 hours. Officials say the craft has under 24 hours of oxygen remaining, with the emergency air supply expected to run out 6 a.m. Thursday morning.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Experts say even if the sub is found, time is running out for a potential rescue. We're hopeful. It's a dangerous situation. There's no light. It's completely black. It's freezing cold down there. The clock is ticking for them.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: That clock ticks whether they're floating on the surface or whether they're on the bottom alive.
--:-- David Pogue: CBS reporter David Pogue descended in the Titan in November of 2022 and commented on how the craft appeared to be MacGyvered.
--:-- David Pogue: I couldn't help noticing how many pieces of this sub seemed improvised. We can use these off-the-shelf components. I got these from Camper World. We run the whole thing with this game controller.
--:-- David Pogue: It seems like this submersible has some elements of MacGyver-y.
--:-- Jerry Rignus: Jerry Rignus. I don't know if I'd use that description of it. The pressure vessel is not MacGyver at all because that's where we work with Boeing and NASA and the University of Washington.
--:-- Jerry Rignus: Everything else can fail. Your thrusters can go. Your lights can go. You're still going to be safe.
--:-- John Durham: Special Counsel John Durham appeared before the House Judiciary Committee to talk about his report criticizing the FBI for how it conducted its investigation into alleged links between Trump's 2016 campaign and Russia.
--:-- John Durham: Durham said there was not enough credible evidence to open an investigation into Trump.
--:-- John Durham: The special counsel received a round of applause when he responded to House Democrat Steve Cohen of Tennessee, who told him his reputation would be damaged by the report.
--:-- John Durham: My concern about my reputation is with the people who I respect and my family and my Lord.
--:-- John Durham: And I'm perfectly comfortable with my reputation with them, sir.
--:-- Ash Short: All said, God bless you.
--:-- Ash Short: Math and reading scores for American school children are at their lowest point in decades.
--:-- Ash Short: Here to tell us more is Daily Wire senior editor Ash Short.
--:-- Ash Short: The National Assessment of Educational Progress released its annual report based on data from the NAP Federalized Standardized Test, which was administered last fall.
--:-- Ash Short: The test focused on basic reading skills, and according to the New York Times, it found that 13-year-olds scored an average of 256 out of 500 in reading.
--:-- Ash Short: Then in math, the same age group scored 271 out of 500.
--:-- Ash Short: The data hasn't been that low for reading since 2004, and the math scores are the lowest they've been since 1990.
--:-- Ash Short: While the pandemic appears to have accelerated this learning loss, the year prior to the pandemic also shows concerningly low test scores for both these categories.
--:-- Zach Jewell: A massive record-setting heat wave is straining the Texas power grid, and now operators are advising Texans and others across the South to conserve energy to avoid blackouts.
--:-- Zach Jewell: The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, has asked its customers to continue to be frugal in their energy use as temperatures top 100 degrees and the heat index skyrockets to 125.
--:-- Zach Jewell: No blackouts have hit the state so far, but the grid has experienced such events in previous extreme weather conditions during both summer and winter.
--:-- Zach Jewell: The high temps are expected to last throughout the week.
--:-- Zach Jewell: According to a new report Hunter Biden settled his child support dispute with a 32 Arkansas woman he met at a Washington, D.C. strip club and fathered a daughter with.
--:-- Zach Jewell: Here are the details as Daily Wire reporter Zach Jewell.
--:-- Zach Jewell: According to the New York Post, a source close to the president's son says, London Roberts, the mother of Biden's four-year-old daughter, Navy, agreed to have her child support payments cut from $20,000 following Biden's deposition last week.
--:-- Zach Jewell: The final terms of the settlement are still being determined, according to Roberts' lawyer, Clint Lancaster, who declined to confirm a report that his client agreed to $5,000 monthly payments.
--:-- Zach Jewell: Lancaster told the Post, quote, the case is sealed and these are financial terms that should never be disclosed.
--:-- Georgia Howe: The national sorority Kappa Kappa Gamma requested this week that a lawsuit be thrown out after seven members at University of Wyoming sued the sorority for admitting a male student to its Wyoming chapter.
--:-- Georgia Howe: The sorority claims that it's a frivolous lawsuit driven in part by anti-transgender sentiment.
--:-- Georgia Howe: All right, those are your drive home updates this afternoon.
--:-- Georgia Howe: To learn more about these stories, go to dailywire.com.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And for more in-depth discussion of the biggest stories of the day, listen to our latest full episode of Morning Wire every morning.
