--:-- Host: Why shop at Burlington? Maybe it's the deals that are new each time you drop by. Maybe it's the brand names you'll be shocked Burlington has in store. Or maybe it's the quality of the items, the amazing selection, and the newest trends. If you like to save, but also like to stay in style, Burlington is your answer. And the question you'll be asking yourself is, why go anywhere else? Burlington. Deals. Brands. Wow.
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--:-- Host: President Trump shakes up Capitol Hill while pushing forward on his tax cuts and budget. I think we have unbelievable unity. I think we're going to get everything we want. And I think we're going to have a great victory. Did the president convince the GOP holdouts? I'm Daily Wire, executive editor John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's Wednesday, May 21st, and this is 21. A new bombshell Senate report claims federal health agencies were aware of COVID vaccine dangers, including myocarditis, but intentionally delayed alerting the public. Once the COVID injections hit the market, the adverse event reporting just skyrocketed, and it was summarily dismissed, just disregarded by federal health officials. And Gavin Newsom is blaming Trump for California's $12 billion deficit. but are the governor's own spending decisions to blame? We were off. We were significantly off. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know. You didn't get here by accident. You got here because a man, a real one, raised you right. Honor him this Father's Day with Jeremy's Razors. With five stainless steel blades, a precision trimmer for clean lines, anti-corners, Jeremy's Razors are built to a racist stubble, not his masculinity. And with up to 40% off for Father's Day, now's the perfect time to find the perfect gift made for men who raised winners, not winers. Head over to jeremysrazors.com right now. That's jeremysrazors.com today.
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--:-- Host: President Trump traveled to Capitol Hill Tuesday where he pushed GOP Congress members to pass his big, beautiful budget bill. Daily Wire senior editor Cabot Phillips is here with the latest. Hey, Cabot, we've been watching this big budget bill. I know you love saying that. I love saying it over and over again. But remind us first, what's all at stake here?
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Well, at stake is President Trump's budget. Remember, rather than breaking up this bill into smaller pieces, we voted on piecemeal. The president has urged Congress to push all of it through at once, thus the big, beautiful language. This law would amount to what the White House calls the largest tax cut in American history. Among other things, it would codify his plan for no taxes on tips, overtime, or Social Security payouts. It would also increase child tax credits, remove over a million illegal immigrants from Medicaid, increase funding for border wall construction, overhaul the FAA, and perhaps most importantly for most folks, it would make Trump's 2017 tax cuts permanent. Without this bill, they would expire later this year.
--:-- Host: At the moment, the plan is for the House to vote on this thing by Thursday, but we're still not sure if it'll actually pass. And that's where Trump comes in. Exactly. Remember, because Republicans hold such a slim majority in the House and Senate, they've got to have almost total unity to get anything passed. That slim margin is a big reason that Trump has only signed five new laws since taking office. That's the fewest for any president at this point in their term since 1953.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: So on Tuesday, Trump took a rare trip across town to the Capitol, where he delivered a blunt message to House Republicans, get in line. I spoke with Congressman Blake Moore, who sits on the powerful ways and means and budget committees. He was in the room with President Trump. Here's how he described his message. There was holdouts across the board, and his message to all of them was don't let perfect be the enemy of good. If we stall on getting this done, the outcomes that will come will be far worse. If you wanted some changes to Medicaid, if you force this perfect world that you have in your vision, you'll actually get nothing. Let go out and move the ball forward get something I love a stand up double I don have to have a home run on every single at So Trump really leaning on Republicans pretty hard there
--:-- Host: What are the holdups so far? So there are two main factions pushing back right now on the right. First, you've got a few hardline conservative members of the House Freedom Caucus. They want to see more cuts to federal spending, Medicaid in particular. Those holdouts say the bill will increase the federal deficit and ultimately make inflation worse. For his part, according to multiple sources, President Trump reportedly told those budget hawks, quote, don't F around with Medicaid. He also took AIM Tuesday at some of the ringleaders on the right, including, in particular, Kentucky's Thomas Massey.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Do you think that Thomas Massey is correct in saying that this is a very inviting most No, I don't think Thomas Massey understands government. I think he's a grandstander, probably. He'll probably vote. We don't even talk to him much. I think he should be voted out of office.
--:-- Host: And on the other side of the opposition are more moderate members from the Northeast who say the bill does not do enough to fund Medicaid. They also want to see higher caps on the amount of state and local taxes that Americans can write off.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: I think anybody that didn't support it as a Republican, I would consider to be a fool. It's a great bill. Now, it's worth noting, while the bill will offer tax cuts to millions of Americans, there are skeptics, some within the GOP, who say that it'll increase the federal debt over the next decade.
--:-- Host: I asked congressman more about that. Here's his take. One, when you do tax policy, it gets scored as a deficit creator. But we're offsetting that with two factors. One, a conservative growth estimate within the economy. And we think that that growth estimate will cut half of that away. And then there's an enormous amount of spending cuts that we're making, as well as what you would call revenue raisers.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Now, regardless of who's right there, it's worth noting a recent poll from Marquette found that 60% of Americans support lowering taxes even if the deficit increases. So something to keep in mind there. Yeah, and lower taxes doesn't always mean lower revenues. Yeah, but thanks so much for reporting.
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--:-- Host: A bombshell report released from the Senate says federal health agencies were aware of severe COVID vaccine risks for months prior to alerting the American people. Here with more is Daily Wire reporter Amanda Prestigiacomo. So Amanda, a lot of COVID news this week. Let's start with this recent report on vaccines. What exactly did it say?
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Yeah, well, Morning Wire was able to get an early look at this report. It was conducted by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. It claims that Biden-era federal health agencies, they were aware of severe adverse health reactions associated with these COVID vaccines but they downplayed health concerns and they delayed alerting the public about these risks for months. Republican Senator Ron Johnson, the chairman of the subcommittee, he'll hold a full hearing today at 2 p.m. Morning Wire spoke exclusively with Senator Johnson about their findings.
--:-- Host: The federal government was very well aware of the myocarditis signal, particularly in young men, as early as February when they were warned by or asked, inquired by the Israeli Ministry of Health about the large number of cases of myocarditis, again, primarily in young men in Israel. And for a number of months, they were talking about these things. At some point in time, they actually internally said, is there a signal of myocarditis, a safety signal? And the answer was yes. And yet a couple of days later, they decided not to issue a warning on the health alert network Now around the same time that this report is coming out The FDA has just revised its COVID vaccine guidance What are the changes?
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Yeah the FDA says that they continue to approve COVID vaccines for seniors and people who are at high risk, but the agency is now requiring vaccine makers to conduct new clinical trials before they approve this vaccine for the wider public. These companies are going to have to conduct randomized placebo-controlled trials before the FDA will approve their shots for healthy Americans between the ages of six months and 64 years old.
--:-- Host: Okay, now shifting gears a bit, NIH Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya made some news this week when he discussed the origins of the COVID pandemic. What happened there?
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Yeah, Dr. Bhattacharya, who leads NIH, he upset a lot of bureaucrats at the agency when he said at a town hall event that he believes the COVID pandemic was likely started by research that was funded by NIH. It's possible that the pandemic was caused by research conducted by human beings. And it's also possible that the NIH partly sponsored that research. At that point, dozens of employees can be seen walking out. Notably, some of them are wearing masks. Dr. Bhattacharya acknowledged them by making a comment about free speech, and then he continued. It's nice to have free speech. Welcome, you guys. If it's true that we sponsored research that caused a pandemic, and if you look at polls of the American people, that's what most people believe. And I've looked at the scientific evidence, I believe it. What we have to do is make sure that we do not engage in research that's any risk of opposing any risk to human populations.
--:-- Host: HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., he also made news this week when he was talking about the origins of COVID. He scolded the World Health Organization at the group's annual meeting over their ties to China. Here's a video of that message. The United States has provided the lion's share of the organization's funding historically. Other countries, such as China, have exerted undue influence over its operations in ways that serve their own interests and not particularly the interests of the global public. This all became obvious during the COVID pandemic when the WHO, under pressure from China, suppressed reports at critical junctures of human-to-human transmission and then worked with China to promote the fiction that COVID originated from bats or pangolins rather than from a Chinese government-sponsored research at a biolab in Wuhan.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Well, amazing that it's taken five years for all of this to come out.
--:-- Host: Last week, California Governor Gavin Newsom announced his state will be facing an astounding budget deficit next year, $12 billion. Here to talk about California's budget problems is Judge Glock, Director of Research at the Manhattan Institute. Judge, thanks for coming on.
--:-- Judge Glock: Thanks so much for having me back.
--:-- Host: So Newsom is blaming the budget hole on Trump slump as well as Washington's attack on California's economy. That's what he's calling it. Is he right?
--:-- Judge Glock: First, Newsom is right that the outlook for the state has darkened a lot since back in January, where the budget looked just about balanced. The tariffs, a more volatile stock market means California is going to be bringing in less funds than expected. But if you look at the actual budget document that Newsom released, it looks like half of this new deficit, less than half, is from reduced tax revenue coming in. So what is actually driving this new deficit?
--:-- Host: Well, the big difference now is that California is increasing their spending a lot faster than they expected. And the big driver of that is increased spending on Medicaid or Medi-Cal, as it's known in California. That's the health insurance program for the poor. In the rest of the country, Medicaid covers about 20 percent of people. But in California, it's more than a third. And it's been growing very rapidly. And one of the reasons Medi-Cal has been growing very rapidly is that it has more coverage for illegal immigrants and asylum seekers So the state of California provides health insurance for illegal immigrants It something we covered in the past Is that typical in the rest of the country
--:-- Judge Glock: The short answer is no The Medicaid program is this joint federal state program and the federal government has made it clear it doesn't want to pay for health insurance for illegal immigrants. But starting in 2010s, a handful of progressive states, including California, of course, began using their own money as a sort of top off to cover illegal immigrants. And these states kept expanding that coverage. And just last year, California became the first state to offer Medicaid coverage to all illegal immigrants of any age. Just a few months ago, Newsom announced the state needed to borrow an extra $2.7 billion because more immigrants were enrolling in the new program than he expected. The previous estimate was the program for illegal immigrants would cost about $10 billion a year. And now that estimate's gone up again.
--:-- Host: So one could say this entire budget deficit could be solved just by stopping this one program. That's incredible. And Governor Newsom has signaled that it might be on the table to actually to eliminate this program. Is that correct?
--:-- Judge Glock: That's right. So a few months back when the state announced that extra borrowing for the Medicaid for immigrants program, Newsom said he wouldn't cut it back. He said, no, no, no. Medical insurance for the undocumented was a real duty of Californians and so forth. But this time, when he made his announcement, he pointed the fingers at the Trump tariffs, talked a lot about the national economy going south. But then his big change, his announcement for how to solve the budget deficit was restricting new illegal immigrant enrollment and starting to charge a modest premium. I think Newsom had to recognize the program had gotten out of control. And this time he wanted to just blame the circumstances on the general economy.
--:-- Host: The state population shrank after COVID for the first time in history. And the only reason it hasn't shrunk more is because of these migrants coming in from other countries. But California can't keep losing taxpayers to other states while they offer more rewards to illegal immigrants and others who consume a lot of taxpayer funds. So nuisance proposed cuts, even if they pass, won't fix that long term problem caused by the shifts in the state's population. It really sounds like the state's heading straight for the cliff financially.
--:-- Judge Glock: Judge, thanks so much for coming on.
--:-- Host: Thanks again for having me. Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back tomorrow with more news you need to know.
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--:-- Host: Trust and safety is becoming a key driver of customer experience. influencing how users engage, how safe they feel, and ultimately how likely they are to return. Because I don't know about you, but if I've had too many bad experiences on a platform, I'm definitely not rushing back for more. This is the intersection we're here to explore today. Tap to keep listening to how Trust and Safety redefined CX for brands like TikTok, Trustpilot, and more. A conversation with InTouchCX.
