--:-- [Upbeat music fades out]
--:-- Georgia Howe: The NFL is back, and FanDuel's got everything you need to play your game. From same-game parlays to live betting. Right now, new customers bet $5 and get $300 in bonus bets if you win. 21-plus in president select states. 18-plus in Kentucky and Wyoming. Must be first online real money waging. $5 deposit required. Bonus issued is non-withdrawable bonus bets that expire seven days after receipt. Restrictions apply. See full terms at FanDuel.com slash sportsbook. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER.
--:-- [Music transitions to a more serious tone]
--:-- Georgia Howe: After a three-week standoff that captured the attention of the world, the Canadian Freedom Truckers have been cleared from the streets of Ottawa. But Prime Minister Trudeau says the threat is not over and he will retain emergency powers, which some say go too far. This state of emergency is not over. So what effect, if any, did the truckers have on Canada and COVID policy? I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley. It's Tuesday, February 22nd, and this is Morning Wire.
--:-- John Bickley: The CDC is coming under even more scrutiny over its school masking guidance and its decision to withhold important COVID data. We'll talk about the latest controversies involving the health agency. And as homelessness has increased nationwide, one state, California, bears the biggest homeless burden. What role are the Golden State's policies playing in the crisis? Plus, the latest on Ukraine. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned.
--:-- [Music transitions to a sponsor ad]
--:-- Georgia Howe: This show is brought to you by Good Ranchers. The Daily Wire is proud to announce our exclusive partnership with Good Ranchers, the 100% American meat company. With Good Ranchers, you help support local American farms and ranches while getting steakhouse quality cuts. They win on quality, price, and mission. Head on over to GoodRanchers.com slash wire or use code wire at checkout to get their biggest offer ever. $30 off of your first order plus free express shipping. Visit GoodRanchers.com slash wire today.
--:-- [Music transitions back to a more serious tone]
--:-- Georgia Howe: The streets of Ottawa were cleared of the Freedom Convoy trucker protest over the weekend as police arrested nearly 200 demonstrators on the streets outside of Parliament. This ended a three-week standoff in the Canadian capital that captured the world's attention. Columnist David Marcus was in Ottawa last week to observe the protest that some called an occupation or even a siege. David, good morning.
--:-- David Marcus: Good morning, Georgia.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So, David, the Canadian government has now dispersed most of the protesters. And so now with the dust settling, what are the big takeaways here? Were the protests effective?
--:-- David Marcus: I think they were on at least two levels. First, you know, COVID restrictions were significantly curtailed across Canada. The government says this wasn't because of the protests, but it doesn't look that way. And second, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's invocation of the Emergency Act for the first time ever has created howls of criticism from all over the political map. So in terms of creating sympathy for their cause, Trudeau's actions inadvertently aided the demonstrators.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So what powers did Trudeau grant his government when he invoked the Emergency Act?
--:-- David Marcus: First of all, it empowered police to act more aggressively in dispersing the protests on the streets of Ottawa, which was done quickly and peacefully, at least regarding the protesters, though some of them were injured by police. But more broadly, the Canadian government can now seize the bank accounts of protesters and their supporters without a court order. And they did just that.
--:-- Georgia Howe: In a news conference Sunday Mike Deweem Royal Canadian Mounted Police Deputy Commissioner of Federal Policing proudly rattled off how many accounts they frozen. We are already seeing positive results including the freezing of 206 financial products. And what I mean by financial products would be bank accounts, corporate accounts. The disclosure of 56 entities, vehicles, individuals, companies. The addresses of 253 Bitcoin shared with virtual currency exchangers. and the proactive freezing of an account of a payment processor for a value of $3.8 million by financial institution.
--:-- David Marcus: Because these emergency powers are so new and untested, nobody seems to know what the limits are. And that's led to some fierce criticism of Trudeau, even from some in the Canadian news media, which is controlled by the government and usually sides with Trudeau.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Right. And do you expect this move is going to be a liability for Trudeau politically?
--:-- David Marcus: It really should be. The conservative party kept the protests at arm's length, wisely or not, you know, perhaps because they were cowed by Trudeau's baseless claims that the protesters were white supremacists. But they're firmly opposed to this use of the Emergency Act and going after the prime minister very hard.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So where do you see all of this going from here? Is the protest over at this point?
--:-- David Marcus: Trudeau claims his emergency powers are temporary. A song that we've heard before. Sounds a little bit like two weeks to flatten the convoy. But as of now, he has these powers and he's using them to strip Canadians of some of their civil liberties and as we noted, their bank accounts. That story isn't going away until the emergency powers do. And in the meantime, look for conservatives in Canada and frankly across the world to continue their condemnation of Trudeau's actions.
--:-- Georgia Howe: All right. Well, David, thanks for coming on.
--:-- David Marcus: Sure thing.
--:-- Georgia Howe: That's Daily Wire contributor David Marcus. Coming up, the CDC has been holding back important COVID data. This show is sponsored by Indeed. You trust Morning Wire for the news you need to know, but do you have a trusted source for your day-to-day hiring needs? That's Indeed. Instead of spending hours on other job sites hoping to find qualified candidates, you need one powerful hiring partner that can help you do it all. Start hiring right now with a $75 sponsored job credit to upgrade your job post at Indeed.com slash wire. Offer valid through March 31st. Indeed.com slash wire. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? You need Indeed.
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--:-- Georgia Howe: As Americans wait to hear about renewed guidance from the CDC, particularly on masking and school policies, the agency is facing increased scrutiny, even from those who have been its defenders in the past. Here to bring us the latest is Daily Wire's Charlotte Pence Bond.
--:-- Charlotte Pence Bond: Well, as you noted, the CDC is coming under some pretty heavy fire for a few issues. First is its guidance on school masking. While the CDC has been pretty quick to make a lot of recommendations throughout the pandemic, their reluctance to update masking and school guidance is sparking criticism. As we've covered here, governors and school districts across the country are relaxing their rules, but the CDC hasn't budged yet.
--:-- Georgia Howe: But perhaps the most significant issue is the CDC's transparency with their own data. A new report from The New York Times highlights all the important COVID data the CDC has been withholding from officials and the public.
--:-- Charlotte Pence Bond: Yeah, this is a big story, John. The Times reported this week that while the CDC has gathered data for COVID hospitalizations in the U.S. for over a year and categorized it by race, vaccination status, and age, it hasn't publicized most of that data. They've also not really educated the public in general on these key questions, and that led to a lot of confusion. It seems like the CDC would want to provide the public with more information not less. So this is hard to understand.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Right. That what many are saying. And it would have helped health authorities make effective decisions.
--:-- Charlotte Pence Bond: Okay. So what are some examples of this, the withheld information? That's a good question. So the CDC first put out the main data on boosters in adults younger than 65 a few weeks ago, but it didn't include figures for 18 to 49-year-olds. Since that's the age group least likely to need a booster, it looked a little suspicious. Outside, experts had to use figures from Israel to provide advice on the boosters.
--:-- Georgia Howe: A spokeswoman for the CDC, Kristen Nordland, she said the agency has been slow to put out different data, quote, because basically at the end of the day, it's not yet ready for prime time. She said the CDC's, quote, priority when gathering any data is to ensure that it's accurate and actionable. She also said they're afraid the data could be misinterpreted.
--:-- Charlotte Pence Bond: Misinterpreted. Yeah, and the issue goes to vaccines too. Last year, the CDC was criticized because they weren't looking into breakthrough infections in all vaccinated Americans and only dialed in on people who got sick enough to be in the hospital or die from COVID. They didn't put that hospitalization data into groupings by age, sex, race, and vaccination status in a timely way, but instead made it more of a discussion about the risk compared with unvaccinated adults.
--:-- Georgia Howe: An official told The Times the CDC has been gathering data since the COVID vaccines were first launched last year. But they don't want to make those numbers public because people might think the data means the vaccines don't work. Nordland confirmed this per The Times. She also said that the data only make up 10% of the U.S. population. But The Times pointed out that the CDC has used that same sampling amount to record influenza for years.
--:-- Charlotte Pence Bond: The CDC appears to think that this lack of information will create more public trust. But as the federal agency holds off on aligning with the direction of the rest of the country, it increasingly seems as if that won't be the case.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Well, let's hope we get more transparency going forward.
--:-- Charlotte Pence Bond: Yeah.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Charlotte, thanks for the reporting.
--:-- Charlotte Pence Bond: No problem.
--:-- Georgia Howe: That's Daily Wire's Charlotte Pence Bond. In late January, President Biden appointed Jeff Olivet as his new homelessness czar. Olivet has described homelessness as an issue of structural racism, and he's also a strong supporter of housing-first policies. But critics are raising red flags about the housing-first model, pointing to the growing homeless crisis in California. Here to talk about California's policies, we have back with us Judge Glock, an expert on housing policy from the Cicero Institute.
--:-- Judge Glock: Thanks for having me back.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So by all accounts, California's homelessness problem is getting really out of hand, particularly since COVID. So what do the numbers look like in the past few years?
--:-- Judge Glock: Well, it's gotten much worse. Just in the past three years, California homelessness increased by about 25%. And today, more than one out of every four homeless people in the country live in California, and they're harder to ignore than elsewhere.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Nationwide, the vast majority of homeless are in shelters, but in California, it's just the opposite. 70% of the homeless in the state are out on the streets. In a recent poll, we saw that homelessness is now tied with high housing costs, is the number one issue among Californians. We've never seen homelessness become a major statewide issue anywhere else before.
--:-- Judge Glock: So why did this problem proliferate so much in California compared to other states?
--:-- Georgia Howe: Well, in a way, California made the same mistakes the nation as a whole did. They just doubled down on them. When I was on the show before, I explained two big national problems. The housing first philosophy, or the idea that we should try to get every homeless person in the street a free home, no strings attached, and also the increased tolerance of camping on the street. California basically made both of those ideas into state mandates.
--:-- Judge Glock: So let talk about housing first. How has California implemented those ideas?
--:-- Georgia Howe: So California is the only state in the nation to mandate a Housing First philosophy for all of their state spending which they did back in 2016. And unlike most places, they put a lot of state and local money behind the idea, not just federal funds.
--:-- Judge Glock: The same year as that state mandate, Los Angeles voters passed a referendum, HHH, to spend $1.2 billion on Housing First departments. Yet the same regulatory burdens that made housing tough to build anywhere in California have slowed those funds, too. Today, that money's built only 1,000 apartments at a cost of half a million dollars each. In most of the U.S., you could get two nice suburban homes for that price. But obviously, in L.A., they're not going very far.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Right. And what about street camping? What changed in that regard?
--:-- Judge Glock: Well, until recently, California used to enforce those laws against street camping and street sleeping. In 2006, LAPD Commissioner Willie Bratton, one of the best comps in American history, who also used to run the NYPD, started a program called Safer Cities, which cleaned up L.A.'s infamous Skid Row. The L.A. mayor at the time, Antonio Villaragosa, was a former ACLU lawyer, but he supported Brett and helped clean up the district.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Just to give you an idea of how quick things change in L.A., when Jamie Foxx filmed the movie The Soloist, it was about a homeless violin virtuoso living on Skid Row. They filmed it just two years after Save Your Cities began, but they had to build a fake tent city to recreate what the place looked like before.
--:-- Judge Glock: After 2014, when the new mayor, Eric Garcetti, came into power, he pulled back the program cleaning up Skid Row. And now nobody would have to fake a tent city in the area.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Well, does cleaning up tent cities actually fix the problem or does it just push them into other neighborhoods? It doesn't seem to just push the problem elsewhere.
--:-- Judge Glock: A famous study by two academics, Burke and McDonald, found that the Safer Cities program in L.A. reduced homelessness and cut violent crime on Skid Row by 40 percent. But they didn't find any spillover of homelessness or crime into nearby communities. Apparently, many of the homeless returned to shelters, went back to their homes and families or elsewhere.
--:-- Georgia Howe: One aspect we haven't touched on, though, is mental illness. That, along with addiction, is a huge factor in homelessness. And California is unique and that makes it very, very hard to commit someone for treatment. Recently, they passed a bill that forced someone who'd been picked up for a psychotic break at least six times in a year to get mandatory mental health treatment.
--:-- Judge Glock: That's six times in one year. That bill reduced the previous standard from eight times in a year. This just shows you how incredibly difficult it is to require people in the state to get the treatment they need.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Well, this is obviously a significant issue that's impacting more people every day. So thanks for coming on to talk about it.
--:-- Judge Glock: Thank you so much for having me.
--:-- Georgia Howe: That's the Cicero Institute's Judge Glock. Another story we're tracking, the crisis in Ukraine escalates. On Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said he would recognize two breakaway republics within Ukraine and then sent what he called peacekeeping troops into the regions. The Biden administration responded by ordering sanctions against the pro-Russia republics, but not Russia. This led to a flurry of diplomatic activity aimed at avoiding a full Russian invasion.
--:-- Georgia Howe: If you liked this episode and are interested in hearing more, subscribe to Morning Wire on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening, and give us a five-star review. That's all the time we've got this morning. Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back tomorrow with the news you need to know.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Did you know 85% of the grass-fed beef sold in stores and online is imported from overseas? With Good Ranchers, you help support local American farms and ranches while getting steakhouse quality cuts. Head on over to goodranchers.com slash wire or use code wire at checkout to get their biggest offer ever. $30 off of your first order plus free express shipping. Visit goodranchers.com slash wire today.
