--:-- [Upbeat music fades out, and the host, John Bickley, speaks]
--:-- John Bickley: The Department of Justice has announced that it will investigate threats against teachers and school board members nationwide. Is the DOJ being weaponized against parents who want accountability from their children's schools?
--:-- Georgia Howe: If this isn't a deliberate attempt to chill parents from showing up at school board meetings for their elected school boards, I don't know what is.
--:-- John Bickley: We're talking about the FBI. You're using the FBI to intervene in school board meetings. That's extraordinary.
--:-- [Music transitions to a gentle background]
--:-- John Bickley: I'm John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's Wednesday, October 6th, and this is Morning Wire.
--:-- Georgia Howe: The federal government has sued the state of Texas over its new pro-life law. As arguments in the case begin, we'll take a look at its national implications.
--:-- John Bickley: And a Facebook whistleblower testified before Congress on Tuesday, leveling accusations of a cover-up and calling for more censorship of content. What is the whistleblower alleging, and do her ties to a Democratic PR firm play into her allegations against the social media company?
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- John Bickley: Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.
--:-- [Music transitions to a short commercial break]
--:-- John Bickley: This show is sponsored by WyoTech. Wyo Tech, one of the nation's leading auto and diesel training schools, sees the trades as America's front lines. Wyo Tech is shaping young men, women, and veterans to build careers and businesses. America is built on the trades, and Wyo Tech is leading the way in training. Visit WyoTech.edu to subscribe and donate to the future technicians of America.
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--:-- John Bickley: On Monday, Attorney General Merrick Garland ordered the FBI to investigate an alleged increase in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school board members and teachers. Without citing specific examples, Garland directed the FBI to partner with local law enforcement to develop measures to discourage the alleged threats and prosecute those involved.
--:-- Ash Short: To start, over the summer, we witnessed a surge of parents all over the country attending school board meetings to argue against mask mandates and controversial content in the classroom. The biggest examples being left-wing racial ideology and pornographic content.
--:-- John Bickley: And with that said, have there been incidents of, you know, the harassment, intimidation, threats of violence, as Garland suggested?
--:-- Ash Short: In some cases, groups of parents did become unruly. But in the rare cases where someone was actually arrested, one would have to stretch the definition for their behavior to fit the claims made by the attorney general.
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--:-- Ash Short: So, for example, a parent in Loudoun County, Virginia, was arrested after the group that attended the school board meeting refused to quiet down. The meeting was abruptly ended and people were told to leave, but some parents refused. And as a result, one man was ticketed for trespassing. And another allegedly, quote, displayed aggressive behavior towards another attendee and then, quote, physically resisted arrest. He was charged with disorderly conduct in a resisting arrest.
--:-- John Bickley: So this all happened over the summer and somewhat in last spring. Why is the DOJ taking action right now?
--:-- Ash Short: Well, a few days ago the National School Boards Association demanded the Biden administration step in. They also claimed there had been a rise in quote malice, violence, and threats, which they said could constitute, quote, a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.
--:-- John Bickley: I mean, terrorism and hate crimes, did they give examples of these?
--:-- Ash Short: Sort of. In their letter, the NSBA cited more than 20 incidents as examples, though all but one of them were just examples of parents getting loud and angry without actual threats or intimidation.
--:-- John Bickley: And that one case?
--:-- Ash Short: Well, that was a letter addressed to a school board member that forcefully objected to mask mandates, saying the school board was forcing children, quote, to wear masks for no reason in this world other than control. And for that, you will pay dearly.
--:-- John Bickley: I mean, that could be taken in a few different ways.
--:-- Ash Short: Right. So the School Board Association sent the Biden administration that letter highlighting basically that one example of a threat of violence, and now the DOJ is acting.
--:-- John Bickley: Looks that way. And what are people's reactions to the memo so far?
--:-- Ash Short: Well, you know, it's mixed. Those who support mask mandates and left-wing political content in classrooms are applauding the move. But those on the other side are saying this is the Biden administration attempting to control dissent since Democrats disagree with what the parent protesters are demanding.
--:-- John Bickley: Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri voiced his concerns with the memo during a hearing on Tuesday. And you are attempting to intimidate them. You are attempting to silence them. You are attempting to interfere with their rights as parents and, yes, with their rights as voters. This is wrong. This is dangerous.
--:-- Ash Short: So, Ash, where do we think this is going to lead? I mean, should we expect to see FBI agents showing up at school board meetings?
--:-- Ash Short: What it sounds like is they're going to empower local officials to crack down on dissenting parents and aggressively pursue investigations. It's also striking considering the fact that in the rare incidents where the school board meetings have resulted in people committing crimes, mostly trespassing, the local police handled the situation. Now, suddenly, the FBI, which doesn't handle local affairs, are going to treat this as a multi-state conspiracy? It's quite concerning.
--:-- John Bickley: Sounds like it. Ash, thanks for keeping us informed.
--:-- Ash Short: You're welcome.
--:-- [Music transitions to a commercial break]
--:-- John Bickley: That's Daily Wire senior editor Ash Short. Coming up, the DOJ sues Texas over its new pro-life law. Inflation is destroying the dollar. Birch Gold Group can help protect your IRA or 401k with a precious metals IRA. Text WIRE to 989898 to claim a free info kit on physical gold and silver. There's zero obligation. Text the word WIRE to 989898 to protect your savings today.
--:-- [Music fades back in]
--:-- John Bickley: The Justice Department argued against a new abortion measure on Friday after they sued the state of Texas for its recent pro-life law. The new heartbeat law effectively outlaws abortion once fetal cardiac activity can be detected, which is typically around six weeks of pregnancy. It also allows private citizens to sue abortion providers and people who aid and abet illegal procedures.
--:-- Charlotte Pence Bond: Yeah, so it's difficult to say how this is going to play out. So on Friday, Judge Robert Pittman of a U.S. district court in Texas heard arguments from lawyers from the state and from the Justice Department regarding the lawsuit The judge reportedly questioned the Justice Department on the details of whether it able to sue a state directly in order to stop one of its laws but he also called the private cause of action, quote, very unusual.
--:-- John Bickley: The state's lawyer defended the law, saying it's not some kind of vigilante scheme and it uses the normal and lawful process of justice in Texas.
--:-- Charlotte Pence Bond: The lawyer from the federal government claimed that, quote, women have been left desperate, forced under sometimes harrowing circumstances to get out of Texas if they even can.
--:-- John Bickley: Judge Pittman didn't offer a timeline on when he'd make his decision, but he said they'd get to work on it.
--:-- Charlotte Pence Bond: So no concrete timeline?
--:-- John Bickley: Tell us about the lawsuit itself. What is the DOJ arguing here?
--:-- Charlotte Pence Bond: Yeah, so the federal government essentially sued the state of Texas, saying that Texas acted unconstitutionally by enacting a law that bans abortion before viability. The lawsuit also argued that the law conflicts with federal law by purporting to prohibit federal agencies from carrying out their responsibilities.
--:-- John Bickley: So they're saying that federal workers won't be able to do some of their jobs as it relates to abortion because of this law.
--:-- Charlotte Pence Bond: So remember, the Supreme Court decided not to stay the new law, so they let it take effect, saying it was because it's enforced by private citizens.
--:-- John Bickley: Okay, so that's the latest from Texas. We're also seeing a lot of abortion-related discussion on the federal level. What's going on there?
--:-- Charlotte Pence Bond: Yeah, so the House of Representatives narrowly passed the Women's Health Protection Act last month with a vote of 218 to 211.
--:-- John Bickley: Right now, there's no national legislation securing the right to abortion in this country, so this was trying to change that. It would eliminate states' abilities to regulate abortion before fetal viability and take away lots of the restrictions already in place.
--:-- Charlotte Pence Bond: Fetal viability. So we're talking 20 to 24 weeks.
--:-- John Bickley: The law could also streamline access to late-term abortion by allowing a health care provider to approve it.
--:-- Charlotte Pence Bond: So the goal here is to really restrict states' ability to limit abortion.
--:-- John Bickley: Is there any chance this is actually going to become law?
--:-- Charlotte Pence Bond: Chances are slim, especially in the Senate because it would need 60 votes to get past a filibuster by Republicans. The vote in the House was seen as a mostly symbolic gesture.
--:-- John Bickley: It could have been an attempt to show progressive voters that Democrats are seeking to secure a right to an abortion in light of the highly anticipated Mississippi abortion law case that will be heard in the Supreme Court this year.
--:-- Charlotte Pence Bond: The court's decision on that case could decide the legality of all pre-viability abortion bans across the country, which could allow states to make their own abortion laws again.
--:-- John Bickley: There's been a lot of big developments in recent months on abortion that could really determine the direction on the issue in this country.
--:-- Charlotte Pence Bond: Charlotte, thanks for the reporting.
--:-- Charlotte Pence Bond: Happy to do it.
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--:-- John Bickley: On Tuesday, a former Facebook employee testified to the Senate, saying she thinks the company has allowed people to post too many, quote, hateful and polarizing messages.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: Basically that they're not censoring enough. She says based on her insider knowledge, Facebook only censors about 3% of problematic content when presumably she believes they should be censoring 33 times that much.
--:-- John Bickley: She claims the reason that the company is not censoring more people is because it, quote, puts profits over people.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: She says she became concerned about all this when she saw a friend get so-called radicalized to be far right after seeing misinformation online and that it's what she called dividing America.
--:-- John Bickley: So she's basically saying Facebook is not censoring enough content, but specifically conservative content.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: Yeah, and this is the same Facebook that suppressed the Hunter Biden laptop story right before the election because of fears of misinformation, even though that story was true.
--:-- John Bickley: Right. She also says Facebook is damaging children by luring them in.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: Haugen says the problems at Facebook are unlike previous places she worked.
--:-- John Bickley: But it turns out she also accused previous employers of various forms of bias and failure to live up to woke ideals too.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: When she worked at Pinterest, she added a feature so that people could search by skin color.
--:-- John Bickley: At another employer called Gigster, she steered the company towards inclusion.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: In 2015, she said Google was not inclusive enough of women, saying, quote, the last team I was on at Google, it had a transsexual engineering director. And as a result, we had more transsexual women than cis women on our team.
--:-- John Bickley: Was that a complaint or a boast?
--:-- Luke Rosiak: It was a complaint.
--:-- John Bickley: Okay, so she appears to be sort of a political activist.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: Yeah. She's given at least 20 campaign contributions, all of them to Democrats, including to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
--:-- John Bickley: So as more information has come out about Haugen, you know, the obvious question here is, is this coordinated? Is this politically motivated?
--:-- Luke Rosiak: What we know is this isn't just some tech employee leaking documents. She's working with the Democratic PR firm called Bryson Gillette, actually the PR firm where Jen Psaki worked right until she became Biden's press secretary.
--:-- John Bickley: One of the company's other clients is a nonprofit seeking to regulate Facebook into censoring more political content.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: Haugen is also represented by the same lawyers behind the so-called whistleblower whose allegations led to Trump getting impeached.
--:-- John Bickley: All right, so we've got a politically loaded situation here with heavy Democrat connections.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: Exactly.
--:-- John Bickley: Well, thanks for the reporting, Luke.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: Anytime, John.
--:-- [Music transitions to a closing segment]
--:-- John Bickley: That was Daily Wire investigative reporter Luke Rosiak. Other stories we're tracking this week. Despite existing staffing shortages, the healthcare industry continues to conduct mass firings as major hospitals terminate employees who don't comply with their new COVID vaccine mandates.
--:-- Georgia Howe: New York's largest hospital system, Northwell Health, announced Monday that it has laid off 1,400 employees.
--:-- John Bickley: Northwell defended the move, saying that the mass firing was necessary in order to, quote, enable all our facilities to remain open and fully operational.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And on Monday, 98% of members of one of Hollywood's largest labor unions, IATSE, voted to authorize a strike if necessary.
--:-- John Bickley: The union is pushing for higher wages on streaming projects and for shorter production hours.
--:-- 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.
--:-- John Bickley: 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: If you like this podcast, get the Morning Wire newsletter delivered straight to your inbox when you join at dailywire.com slash subscribe.
--:-- John Bickley: Thanks for listening to Morning Wire.
