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Aug. 4, 2022 - The Ben Shapiro Show
47:23
The Democrats’ Abortion Celebration | Ep. 1549
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The media celebrate as Kansas votes to keep its state constitutional protections for abortion.
Top House Democrats refuse to endorse Joe Biden for re-election.
And Texas Governor Greg Abbott invites the mayors of D.C.
and New York to the southern border.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
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The dawn holds new hope for the Democrats.
Their new hope is really not rooted in, I think, any political reality, but it is growing in tenor and in light.
And what that hope is, is that abortion is going to somehow jog Democrats out to the polls, and this is going to swamp Republicans in 2022.
This is a theory that I think is incorrect, but it is indeed what Democrats are hoping.
They're pegging those hopes to the slim read of what just happened in Kansas.
So in Kansas, in a 60-40 outcome that was sort of a shock, considering that Kansas is a pretty red state, the voters of Kansas decided to uphold state constitutional protections for abortion.
There's a referendum.
The referendum said that we are going to take the issue of abortion out of the hands of the state courts, and we're going to put it in the hands of the legislature by taking it out of the Constitution.
The wording of the actual amendment was incredibly difficult to read.
It was confusing.
There were misspellings in it.
It's just a bad piece of text, but that's not enough to explain why exactly this thing went down to flaming defeat 60-40.
And so the media have decided that what really happened here is people are so excited about abortion, they're going to show up and they're going to vote for Democrats.
Now, there are a few problems with this particular theory.
One is the voting constituency in Kansas, and in this particular primary race, basically 15 to 20 percent of the Republican base voted in favor of keeping abortion in the state constitution.
Which means those are not people who are going to start voting for Democrats.
Those are just people who don't want abortion radically curbed in the state of Kansas.
Not quite the same thing.
The second issue is somewhat related, which is that when it comes to abortion, abortion is a one-off.
It is a single issue.
When it comes to voting for your congressperson, when it comes to voting for your senator, it's a bundle of issues.
It's a bundle of positions.
And so you might not be totally on board with your congressperson or senator's position when it comes to abortion, but you might be on board with everything else, and so you vote for them anyway.
There actually is a third issue here too, which is that federal abortion law is very different from state abortion law.
It's one thing for people to vote in the states to uphold abortion, it's another thing.
To suggest that they are then going to elect Democratic Congress people who are going to enshrine Roe nationally.
Because again, that's not a top priority.
If you've already protected it in your state, why is it a top priority to protect it quote-unquote nationally?
Nonetheless, the Democrats are feeling their oats this morning.
They are very, very excited about the possibility that maybe they'll have a comeback here.
Politico is driving that sort of excitement.
They say, in Kansas, a political earthquake by a stunning roughly 20 point margin, Kansas voters rejected a constitutional amendment that would have given state lawmakers the chance to either further restrict or ban abortions in the state.
Turnout swelled, approaching what's typical for a fall election for governor, per the AP.
And the no vote did well, not just in Democratic strongholds, but in conservative and rural areas, outperforming Joe Biden's 2020 vote share there.
It marked the first time since the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade that voters had a chance to directly weigh in on abortion rights.
Now again, it was kind of, they weighed in almost indirectly.
The reason I say that is because this referendum was not on, for example, an abortion ban at 15 weeks.
I believe in Kansas, the statute currently is about 22 weeks, thanks to the protections in the state constitution.
Let's say that a piece of legislation had come up.
It was a referendum.
It had come up and it said two things.
One, the state constitution will be amended.
Two, it will be amended and will be replaced, this particular law, with a 15-week abortion ban.
I have a feeling that it wouldn't have gone down to 60-40 defeat.
I think one of the things that a lot of people who are quote-unquote moderate on the issue of abortion were worried about is that they would strike down the state constitutional abortion protections and then the state legislature would come in and they'd put in very, very heavy abortion restrictions.
So it's quite possible that the voters on abortion in Kansas are actually moderate and that they were afraid of a very hardcore pro-life position coming from the state legislature.
The result is a political earthquake with the potential to reshape the entire midterm campaign, write David Siders, Adam Wren, and Zac Montalero in their Runtown of Election Takeaways.
Reporting from Kansas, Alice Miranda Olstein writes, the vote also countered the narrative that the abortion issue is a bigger motivator for conservative voters and may signal a warning to Republican lawmakers across the country That the Roe decision may generate considerable backlash over the coming months and years.
Politically, the outcome is sure to reverberate around the country and buoy the Democrats' bid to capitalize on the overturning of Roe in the midterm battle for Congress this fall.
It will lift the party's hopes that anger over the Supreme Court decision will matter more than concerns about inflation and presidential Biden's leadership, allowing Democrats to maintain their narrow majorities on Capitol Hill.
So, in response to all of this, Joe Biden then issued a statement trumpeting the Kansas result and talking about how wondrous it is.
He wrote, quote, Again, it did not put women's health and lives at risk.
Put aside the fact that The vast, vast, vast majority of pregnancies in the United States will come healthily to term.
Put aside the fact that you are attempting to protect the unborn.
Put aside the fact that the Supreme Court really is not even taking a position on protecting the unborn versus protecting the quote-unquote health and lives of women.
They're just relegating it back to the states.
Joe Biden is lying about this. He says, Okay, that's actually not what the vote makes clear.
Okay, so it depends on where you draw the line.
What the polls show is that Americans are a halfway people, as they are on most issues.
They're a halfway people when it comes to abortion.
You have some people, maybe 20% on the right, who say that abortion should be banned in nearly all circumstances.
You have maybe 10%, 15% of people on the left who say that abortion should be available up to point of birth, no matter what the circumstances.
And then the vast majority of people are in the middle, and the line seems to fall for most people somewhere between 12 and 15 weeks in the United States.
But says Joe Biden, Congress should listen to the will of the American people and restore the protections of Roe as federal law.
While that is the only way to secure a woman's right to choose, my administration will continue to take meaningful action to protect women's access to reproductive health care.
We'll continue to act where we can protect women's reproductive rights and access to care.
The American people must continue to use their voices to protect the right to women's health care, including abortion.
So a lot of redundancy in this particular statement from Joe Biden, but I guess when you get very, very excited and your Adderall kicks in, then magically you put out statements like this one.
But no question that the Democrats are really, really excited this morning about everything abortion related.
And this is leading them to overplay their hands just a little bit.
It's leading them to overplay their hands again because, as I say, a huge number of people who are actually in red areas voted in favor of upholding the state constitutional quote-unquote right to abortion.
Well, if you're a conservative, maybe all of this is causing you some heartburn, causing you to lose some sleep.
Supposed revitalization of the Democratic Party here?
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As the New York Times reports, consider far western Kansas, a rural region along the Colorado border that overwhelmingly votes Republican.
In Hamilton County, which voted 81% for Trump in 2020, less than 56% chose the anti-abortion position on Tuesday.
In Greeley County, which voted more than 85% for Trump, only about 60% chose the anti-abortion position.
There were swing areas that swung left.
Cities and suburbs.
There were some people who showed up.
Turnout was pretty high.
It is also true, however, that the turnout being this high was for a single issue, not necessarily for a presidential election or for a gubernatorial election.
So a lot of people voted on this particular referendum who did not vote in the Democratic primaries, for example.
And so you could see something very similar happen.
Let's say the Democrats try to stack state ballots with Abortion referenda in an attempt to get people out to the ballot box.
Well, it's quite possible people split their ticket and they vote in favor of the things the Democrats are proposing, if people agree with what voters just did in Kansas.
And then at the same time, they don't vote for the actual Democrats.
The notion that this is going to provide some sort of inflection point for Democrats going forward, I think is wrong.
And I think it's even more wrong because the federal Democrats feel the necessity to get out over their skis on this thing.
And what this did, what the overturning of Roe v. Wade did, is it relegated this back to the states.
What we just saw is a state like Kansas, sort of unpredictably, decided that it was further left on the issue of abortion than people thought it was.
How exactly does that mean that Roe being overturned was a massive problem for the states?
Obviously it is not.
Now Kansas is actually getting to decide for itself what it wishes to do on abortion, which is called federalism.
But Joe Biden is trying to re-federalize the issue.
He's trying to take it up again, re-centralize the issue.
Which I think is actually not going to be particularly popular.
And the reason I think that's not going to be particularly popular is because, again, people in Kansas may be worried about what happens to them in Kansas.
But why exactly do you think that that's going to motivate them to vote on federal abortion legislation that applies to people in Alabama?
What makes you think that everybody wants this to be a national issue predominantly when the Supreme Court is very unlikely to allow it to become a national issue in the first place?
So Joe Biden is jumping on this thing with both feet.
He is now pushing an executive order aimed at federally funding abortions.
Remember the Hyde Amendment, which said that the federal government would not fund abortion care?
Well, that is no longer.
Joe Biden used to be an advocate of that.
Now he's essentially saying that he wants to fund abortions federally.
Here is Joe Biden talking about his new executive order.
No, today I'm signing the second executive order I'm about to sign that responds to the healthcare crisis that has unfolded since the Supreme Court overturned Roe.
And that women are facing all across America.
Healthcare crisis is, you know, it's just so hard for me to even understand how they think this.
Healthcare crisis is women can't get, can't choose.
Can't get an abortion, even in the case of incest, even in the case of rape.
But it goes beyond that.
There are a lot of women who take prescriptions prescribed by their doctors and we're taking for some time for other conditions.
For arthritis, for epilepsy, for Crohn's disease and in many cases these prescriptions are not being filled.
I don't know what he's talking about.
I don't think he knows what he's talking about.
My favorite thing is when our senile president of the United States just loses his train of thought in the middle of the sentence and starts saying, That's what I'm saying.
I don't know what you're saying, sir.
But if he believes that signing executive orders promoting abortion across the land are going to be any more popular than state pro-life provisions in the Kansas Constitution, for example, I think he's got another thing coming.
Again, the American people happen to be halfway on this issue.
Joe Biden is not halfway on this issue.
The more he makes it a top issue and he promotes his own positions as opposed to just opposing the Republican ones, the bigger a problem he's going to have.
According to the Washington Post, Biden signed an executive order Wednesday directing his health secretary to consider actions to assist patients traveling out of state for abortion.
The order's travel-related provision calls on the HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra to consider inviting states to apply for Medicaid waivers when treating patients who cross state lines for reproductive health services.
The executive order, the second Biden has signed on reproductive health since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, follows the administration's call for HHS to explore all options to support Americans who live in states that have severely limited abortion access.
Biden said Republicans don't have a clue about the power of American women.
Last night in Kansas, they found out.
I wasn't aware that only women voted in Kansas, but okay.
In the aftermath of the Supreme Court decision, both Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland vowed to protect Americans' abilities to cross state lines to seek abortions and other reproductive health services.
Well, I wasn't aware that there was any state trooper on the line in, for example, Oklahoma, telling people who are pregnant, you need to stop.
You need to go back.
We're not allowing you to leave the state.
That would be illegal.
Biden, who's continuing to isolate, which is probably why his presidency is seeing a slight political rebound.
The more he is dead, the better he does.
The executive ordered Rex Bacera to consider actions to ensure healthcare providers comply with federal non-discrimination laws to help ensure women receive medically necessary care.
So, what that is, is an attempt to pretend that the Civil Rights Act of 1965, which you'll note by the date, came before Roe vs. Wade, somehow enshrines a woman's right to obtain a federally funded abortion, which it does not.
Well, Joe Biden's DOJ is now opening up its guns on pro-life states.
Oh, we'll get to that in a moment.
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So, Joe Biden is pushing very hard on this particular issue.
Meanwhile, The DOJ is suing the state of Idaho over its abortion ban.
According to the Washington Post, the Justice Department has filed its first lawsuit in the wake of a historic Supreme Court decision allowing states to outlaw abortion, arguing a new Idaho law that would impose a near-total ban on the procedure violates a federal requirement to provide medical care when a pregnant person's life or health is at stake.
Attorney General Merrick Garland said that the lawsuit filed Tuesday is aimed at stopping Idaho's trigger ban, which is set to take effect August 25th, yet Idaho law allows doctors to be criminally prosecuted for providing abortions.
He argued that that could conflict with federal law that says patients seeking emergency medical care at a hospital accepting Medicare funds are entitled to any life-saving treatment.
Um, well, under what rubric?
The Idaho law does not prevent doctors from providing life-saving treatment that necessarily includes the end of the life of the child.
Again, the doctrine of double effect is well-known in pro-life circles.
So this is Merrick Garland just using a pretext to go after pro-life states.
The lawsuit cites several medical conditions that could require a doctor to perform an abortion for life-saving reasons, including septic infections and ectopic pregnancies.
But, again, there's nothing in the Idaho law that suggests that you would not be able to actually get treated for these particular conditions.
The state's governor, Brad Little, called the lawsuit an overreach.
He said our nation's highest court returned the issue of abortion to the states to regulate.
End of story.
Well, that's obviously true.
So again, the relegation of the federal issue back to the states makes it a state election issue.
And yet Joe Biden is trying to make it a federal election issue, and so are Democrats.
That is unlikely to work.
And so what this means is that Democrats are going to have to come up with some alternative strategies.
So those alternative strategies have come in two forms.
One successful, one, I think, largely unsuccessful.
The successful version is get Republicans to elect a bunch of unelectable candidates in primaries.
And so you've seen Democrats sinking actual cash into The most radical candidates they hope are on the ballot on the Republican side of the aisle.
So, for example, in Peter Mayer's district in Michigan, they sank millions of dollars behind ads that essentially promoted John Gibbs in that primary.
John Gibbs is a very Trumpy candidate in this primary.
Peter Mayer is a Republican who voted in favor of impeachment, although his voting record is pretty conservative in virtually all other areas.
He is in a Biden plus eight district.
So Democrats believe that Mayer, who's the incumbent, was significantly less beatable than Gibbs.
So they put out a bunch of ads promoting Gibbs to the primary base by calling him, quote unquote, too extreme for the Republican primary base.
Well, this resulted in Mayer losing.
And Adam Kinzinger, who is another Republican who voted for impeachment, he went on TV yesterday ripping the Democrats for funding Mayer's opponent.
You've called it disgusting here on this program that Democrats were helping elevate election deniers in the hopes that they would be easier to defeat in a general against a more moderate Republican.
One of the moderates in the race is Peter Meyer, lost his primary.
What's your reaction?
If Peter's opponent wins and goes on to November and wins, the Democrats own that.
Congratulations.
I mean, here's the thing.
Don't keep coming to me asking where are all the good Republicans that defend democracy and then take your donors' money and spend half a million dollars promoting one of the worst election deniers that's out there.
Okay, well, again, Democrats are going to continue to do this because when Democrats say we need to protect democracy, what they really mean is elect us.
They don't care whether an election denier Republican runs or whether an election supporter Republican runs.
They don't care about that.
They care about winning.
And so what that means is that they are perfectly willing to undermine what they supposedly believe are the interests of the country by getting people nominated who they think are directly antithetical to the functioning of democracy simply to give themselves a, what, 5-10% better shot at winning a particular seat?
Pretty ugly stuff, but they're doing this all over the country.
That's been somewhat successful, right?
The Senate right now looks as though it may be retained by the Democrats specifically because of all of the extraordinarily poor candidates that Republicans have been running nearly everywhere.
The Republicans have made the mistake of, again, everyone does this, just as Joe Biden is doing with abortion, people mistake Individual instances for trend lines.
And so, or trend lines for individual instances.
So, Republicans will say, okay, well the trends are in our direction, therefore we can run any bad candidate we want and they'll probably win.
Wrong.
Democrats will say, oh look, there's an individual instance that doesn't change the underlying trend line.
We'll pretend it's a trend line and that will probably carry us to victory.
Wrong.
And none of this works that way.
But the Democratic strategy of trying to promote opponents who are more beatable seems to be bearing some polling fruit.
The other tactic the Democrats are trying is to separate off from Joe Biden.
I think it is very unlikely they're going to be able to separate off from the incumbent president of the United States, the current office holder.
That is extraordinarily difficult.
In fact, I've never seen it in my lifetime.
I don't think anybody's ever seen it.
Where the party in power shared across the legislature and the executive, the legislature is able to run separately from the executive.
I don't think that's going to happen, but Democrats who are desperate to keep their seats are trying to separate as far as they can from Joe Biden, which tells you that a lot of Democrats in Congress Should President Biden run again in 2024?
presidency the way Joe Biden seems to be saying what about it.
Yes.
Top House Democrats, Jerry Nadler and Catherine Maloney and Carolyn Maloney, they were asked yesterday if Joe Biden should run for re-election.
Both of them basically ran screaming from the room with their hair on fire.
Should President Biden run again in 2024?
Yes.
Mr. Nadler?
Too early to say it doesn't serve the purpose of the Democratic Party to deal with that until after the midterms.
Ms.
Maloney?
I don't believe he's running for re-election.
Wow.
Wow.
By the way, Nadler and Maloney are both sitting congresspeople right now.
They just happen to be redistricted together.
So both of them are basically saying we're not interested in seeing Joe Biden run for re-election.
So despite all of the media headlines about how Joe Biden has revitalized his presidency, how he's back on the road to victory, how he has discovered new wellsprings of strength electorally, Democrats aren't buying it.
Nobody's buying it.
Again, Republicans can clutch defeat from the draws of victory.
They certainly are capable of doing that.
They've done it many times before.
But If the idea here is that Joe Biden is somehow revitalizing the party, I think that's wrong.
And Joe Biden is politically inept.
Again, when it comes back to that issue of abortion, what Joe Biden really should do is he should sit back and shut up.
And again, he is incapable of sitting back and shutting up.
So he's attempting to promote abortion as a federal issue that is not going to bear the fruit that he thinks that it is going to bear.
Particularly because, again, there are just too many questions about the way the economy and the foreign policy and the immigration status of the United States are being run right now.
Joe Biden is running things horribly and everybody knows it.
And so you end up with this bizarre spectacle of Joe Biden having to re-embrace policies promoted by Donald Trump and then deny that they were promoted by Donald Trump.
So, for example, Joe Biden is now building border wall.
I know you weren't told about this, but it actually happens to be the case.
So it turns out that the Biden administration has been extending border wall in Arizona.
The same border wall that was terrible and no good and very bad and horrible.
And that, of course, is Donald Trump's policy.
Karine Jean-Pierre, who is extraordinarily untalented.
I mean, Jen Psaki was actually good at her job.
I disagreed with her.
I thought that she lied a lot.
But that's sort of part and parcel of the job, because you're spinning on behalf of the president.
Karine Jean-Pierre is just incapable.
She's really bad at this.
And I understand that she's very historic and that she's historic because she's historic and all of that.
But her historicity means very little to whether she can do the job.
Here she was yesterday pretending that the reason they are building more wall along the southern border is to clean up Donald Trump's mess.
Why is the Biden administration building a border wall in Arizona?
So we are not finishing the wall.
We are cleaning up the mess the prior administration left behind in their failed attempt to build a wall.
And I just want to be very, very clear here.
On day one, we returned the money, the $8 billion the prior administration took from our military.
We gave that back.
To the military, for military families, for schools, for bases.
That's what that money was being used.
That's what it was taken away from.
And so again, what we're doing is cleaning up the mess that the Prye administration has done.
It was a mess, but I was made aware by you guys that border wall itself was a bad idea and evil.
By the way, that is a radical switch from Joe Biden's position circa about 2006 when he was a big promoter of the idea that we needed a fence between the United States and Mexico.
But pretty impressive stuff there from Corinne Jean-Pierre.
And of course, she's going to have to, I mean, there's no way to square that circle.
Because again, the border crisis continues to just grow and grow.
The number of illegal immigrants who are crossing the border every day is higher than it has ever been.
And that has effect not only in terms of illegal immigration and illegal immigrants being shipped to the center of the country and hundreds of thousands of so-called gotaways, people who were brought into the country and then just left, right?
Just absconded from custody or were handed a...
There are also some 500,000 people who actually just got through the border that they estimate we don't even know about, who never even had any interface with the Border Patrol.
Put all those people aside, put all the costs of that, put all the associated welfare costs and medical costs, many of which do exist on the state level, if not on the federal level, put that aside.
The drug crisis that has existed in the United States via the shipping of fentanyl over the border is extraordinary.
So, for example, when you look at the statistics on fentanyl seizures at the southwest U.S.
border, you can see that they absolutely start to just skyrocket at the very end of 2020, and then they just continue all the way till now.
It is a massive, massive differentiator between most of the Trump administration, and the very tail end of the Trump administration, and the entirety of the Biden administration.
In April of 2022, for example, over 1,200 pounds of fentanyl were seized at the southwest United States border.
These are huge, huge numbers.
As for 2021, there were 10,586 pounds of fentanyl seized in the Southwest border region in fiscal year 2021.
That was about 132% more than the 4,558 pounds seized by Border Patrol in fiscal year 2020.
2021. That was about 132% more than the 4,558 pounds seized by Border Patrol in fiscal year 2020.
So year on year, under Joe Biden, fentanyl seizures jumped 132%. As for fiscal year 2022, through April, there had already been 6,237 pounds of fentanyl seized.
Which is slightly more than the same amount seized in fiscal year 2021 over the same period.
These are massive amounts of fentanyl.
Overall, about 13,000 pounds of fentanyl were seized during Biden's first 15 months in office.
70% more than the 7,677 pounds of fentanyl that were seized during Trump's last full 15 months as president.
That is a massive increase under Joe Biden.
And it's a lot of dead Americans, because a lot of people are dying of fentanyl overdoses.
And Republicans along the border, they are not happy with this.
And so what they've been doing is they've been saying, you guys like to posture a lot about illegal immigration in the desperate hope that this will win you Hispanic votes, despite the fact that polling shows Hispanic voters are not particularly warm on illegal immigration.
And so governors along the southern border have started to basically say to mayors and governors in the Northeast, if you love illegal immigration so much, then why don't you take the illegal immigrants in?
On August 1st, Governor Greg Abbott of Texas sent a letter to New York City Mayor Eric Adams and Washington, D.C.
Mayor Muriel Bowser inviting them to visit Texas' southern border to see the humanitarian crisis in person.
Abbott wrote, quote, as you know, our nation's southern border has become both a humanitarian and security crisis. This crisis created by President Biden is one that requires immediate and decisive action to be stopped. As governor of a southern border state, I've watched illegal crossings hit record highs over and over again since President Biden took office. In the absence of federal action, I've deployed unprecedented resources to prevent, deter and interdict illegal immigration and transnational criminal activity that threatens our citizens. Texas has spent over three billion dollars in the past 18 months to curtail the devastation felt by our
communities large and small.
In March 2021, I launched Operation Lone Star in partnership with the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Texas National Guard.
These state agencies have deployed thousands of troopers and guardsmen to combat the smuggling of people and deadly drugs like fentanyl from Mexico into Texas.
To date, Texas' multi-agency mission has led to more than 290,000 migrant apprehensions and more than 18,000 criminal arrests, with more than 15,000 felony charges filed.
As law enforcement agents along the Texas-Mexico border respond to thousands of illegal crossings each and every day, putting their lives on the line for Texans and for all Americans, this crisis demands the attention not only of the Biden administration, but of leaders across the country.
Unfortunately, Joe Biden and Border Czar Vice President Harris have refused to see this crisis for themselves, remaining willfully ignorant of the crisis they have created.
In fact, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas recently testified the border is safe and secure.
It is neither safe nor secure, as you can both attest to.
And the reason he is calling on them is because he has been giving people bus tickets from the southern border to Washington, D.C.
and New York, prompting spasms of outrage.
from these mayors.
So Abbott is saying, you know, why don't you come down and visit?
Since you keep saying that everything is hunky-dory down here on the border and you like illegal immigration.
Well, Eric Adams, for his part, rejected the border tour invite.
So Adams' spokesperson, Fabian Levy, he said, quote, Well, no, actually, you've been bitching and moaning about taking in some 5,000 people from the border.
energy and resources on providing support and resources to asylum seekers in Texas.
As we have been hard at work doing in New York City, well no actually you've been bitching and moaning about taking in some 5,000 people from the border.
Hundreds of thousands of people are crossing the border every single month.
Levy said we continue to work with federal partners to receive additional financial resources immediately, but we will never turn our backs on those in need who are arriving here.
I mean, I'm sorry, that is weak tea.
Adams has been appealing to the federal government for more money.
Adams announced an emergency procurement of shelter and other services for people seeking asylum in New York City.
He noted about 4,000 asylum seekers have entered the city's shelter system since late May, which is the primary driver of the approximately 10% increase in the city's Department of Homeless Services Census.
That's just an addition of 4,000 people.
Try Bangaloreto, Texas, where you have 15,000 people being added to a city of maybe 60,000 people total.
Adams said in a statement, New York City is a city of immigrants.
We will always welcome newcomers with open arms.
Over the past two months, we've seen a significant increase in the number of asylum seekers arriving in our city's shelter system.
To fulfill our city's legal and moral mandate to provide quality shelter to anyone experiencing homelessness, we are immediately issuing an emergency procurement declaration to rapidly procure additional shelter and services to serve these individuals and families.
Again, Adams keeps calling these people asylum seekers, as opposed to illegal immigrants, despite the fact that the vast majority of these people do not actually have legal asylum claims.
They don't want to solve the crisis.
In other words, they also don't want to deal with the effects of the crisis.
So good for Governor Abbott for saying to Democrats who are very much in favor of the crisis, well, maybe you guys ought to pay the price for the crisis.
And meanwhile, Governor Ron DeSantis in Florida, he says, you know, it's kind of interesting how now New York City and Washington, D.C.
are getting a little hot and bothered about illegal immigration now that they actually have to see the cost of it.
Having a flood of people is a huge problem.
It's interesting.
They're fine doing it when it's affecting people they don't like.
In red states, for example.
But when you bring that to their doorstep in Washington DC or New York City, they don't like that very much.
Obviously true.
So democratic attempts in places like New York City to divide off from Joe Biden.
Once people feel the effects of Joe Biden's policy, it's a lot more difficult to separate off from that.
The same thing happens to be true on the economy.
The economy continues to stagnate according to Chip Cutter writing for the Wall Street Journal.
The era of the kinder, gentler CEO is fading.
Corporate chiefs who spent much of the pandemic patiently answering questions in town halls, sending reassuring notes to staff members, and projecting a softer image are shifting their tone as signs emerge that the economy is worsening.
The CEO of Google's parent company told staff last month to work with greater urgency, sharper focus, and more hunger than we've shown on sunnier days.
MetaPlatform Inc.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in late July that Facebook must operate with greater intensity and quote, I expect us to get more done with fewer resources.
Beyond tech, CEOs are warning of tougher times.
Others are telling employees to reconsider spending on trips, business meals, or even corporate swag like t-shirts and coffee mugs.
The shift in messaging reflects increasing anxiety in the C-suite about where the economy is headed.
Again, when the economy goes the wrong direction, everybody feels it.
And so Democrats attempting to run away from Joe Biden on this thing is not going to work.
A survey released in June by the Conference Board, a business research firm, found the majority of CEOs think a recession is coming or already here.
When leaders face a downturn, their talk and actions change, say executives, board members, and corporate advisors.
Ellen Coleman, chairwoman of 3D printing company Carbon Inc.
And former CEO of DuPont said, quote, in the good times, we want to focus people on the growth aspects.
When the economy appears to have the potential for a downturn, its fundamentals 101.
It's how do I conserve cash?
How do I focus the team to emerge from whatever this is stronger?
So many CEOs are done hiding their dislike for remote work.
They're telling people to come back in the office.
They're saying that you've been wasting all of our time for a long time here.
Metta's head of remote presence and engineering, Meher Sabah, told managers this summer to identify and report low performers within the company.
Quote, if a direct report is coasting or a low performer, they're not who we need.
They are failing this company.
A Metta spokesman, Tracy Clayton, said that any company that wants to have a lasting impact, quote, must practice discipline, prioritization, and work with a high level of intensity to reach goals.
This, of course, happens to be true.
And so, all of these sort of happy-dappy due times, with regard to this economy, are coming to an end.
Meanwhile, Democrats are pushing bills that raise spending and raise taxes.
And this is putting some Democrats in a rough position, even in races that are somewhat winnable for them.
Tim Ryan, who's running a very competitive race in the Ohio Senate against J.D.
Vance, he was asked yesterday about whether he wants to raise taxes in a recession.
He refused to answer the question.
Congressman Ryan, do you support Joe Biden's new reconciliation bill?
Bill, do you oppose Biden's plans to raise taxes during a recession?
He's not going to answer that particular question because, again, the simple problem for the Democrats is that all of the things they are touting as achievements make people very upset.
According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, the bill that Tim Ryan refuses to answer about would raise taxes on Americans earning less than $200,000 to the tune of $16.7 billion in 2023.
to the tune of $16.7 billion in 2023.
It would generate $14.1 billion from those making between $200,000 and $500,000 a year.
Mark Thiessen of The Washington Post writes, Indeed, Biden may be the first president to announce a major tax hike the same week the economy entered its second straight quarter of negative growth, a traditional definition of recession.
So Democrats are trying to hide the fact that they are raising taxes and that they're spending oodles of money.
But again, you can't hide from the realities here.
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Alright folks, it's hard to believe that in a few weeks summer will be over.
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Meanwhile, speaking of effects of the Biden administration that are obvious to everyone with a functional prefrontal cortex, the gas prices continue to be very high, despite the fact that Joe Biden is out there talking about how the gas prices are down.
Down from what and to what would be the major answer?
They're down from maybe $5 a gallon to about $4 a gallon.
Well, I mean, it's better than nothing, but remember that when Joe Biden took office, gas was about $2.25 a gallon.
Now it's about $4 a gallon.
Well, one of the reasons for that is because of Joe Biden's garbage energy policy, in which he has essentially made it very, very difficult to drill for more oil, invest in oil and gas companies so as to provide for future supply, and then beg.
Beg, borrow, and steal oil wherever he can, but there just ain't that much oil out there.
The largest oil producer on planet Earth remains the United States, not, in fact, Saudi Arabia.
And yet, Joe Biden has to beg from Saudi Arabia, and what he receives in return is essentially nothing.
Which is what everyone who knew anything about oil supplies knew was happening.
It wasn't as though Saudi is holding back tons of oil in red hot market.
Emmanuel Macron said as much directly to Joe Biden.
Joe Biden visiting at one of these international conferences.
He was brought aside by Macron.
Macron was like, dude, you can go ask the Saudis for more oil.
They don't have more oil to give.
Well, now OPEC has put out a communique confirming that they have increased their supply of oil by 100,000 barrels a day, which is a very, very small amount when you're talking about global oil supply.
And their statement says this, quote, the meeting noted that the severely limited availability of excess capacity necessitates utilizing it with great caution in response to severe supply disruptions.
So in other words, we don't have excess capacity.
The meeting noted that chronic underinvestment in the oil sector has reduced excess capacities along the value chain.
Right, so basically your long-term environmental policy has made it very, very difficult for us to ramp up production when you need it.
The meeting noted that the chronic underinvestment in the oil sector has reduced excess capacity.
Then they say, the meeting highlighted with particular concern that insufficient investment into the upstream sector will impact the availability of adequate supply in a timely manner to meet growing demand beyond 2023 from non-participating, non-OPEC oil-producing countries, some OPEC member countries, and participating non-OPEC oil-producing countries.
So what they're saying is that the long-term policies that you guys have pursued have completely destroyed our ability to up the amount of gas and oil that we produce.
And then you come begging to us?
Well, good luck with that.
This has prompted, by the way, some people in Europe to actually get realistic about energy supply, which is why you're starting to see Germany, which was very anti-nuclear energy for quite a while, starting to say, well, man, you know, we're thinking about taking those nuclear power plants offline.
Maybe we'll wait on that for just a moment.
According to the Wall Street Journal, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said for the first time his government could postpone the planned closure of its remaining nuclear reactors, as he criticized a decision by Russia to constrain gas flows to Germany, a move that could deal a severe blow to Europe's largest economy.
Last month, Russia shut down for maintenance its giant Nord Stream pipeline, which connects Russia and Germany under the Baltic Sea and is operated by Gazprom.
After the maintenance ended, Gazprom restored the flow.
But only to 40% of the pipeline's capacity.
It has since cut that to 20%.
They're basically holding Europe hostage.
They're pretending that it's because of engineering failures.
It is not.
The looming gas shortage has now forced the German government to trigger emergency measures, raising the specter of gas rationing over the winter that could force factories to shut down and push Europe's powerhouse economy into a recession.
On Tuesday, the Chancellor broke with a long-standing policy and said for the first time it could make sense to keep Germany's last three nuclear reactors online.
They were due to be shut down in December as part of the country's transition to renewable energy.
Again, bad international environmental policy, continuously promoted by people like Joe Biden and John Kerry, our climate envoy, have led to dramatic energy shortages.
And so now you're starting to see more realistic countries like Germany saying, hey, we're not going to let our citizens freeze.
Meanwhile, in the United States, Joe Biden keeps trotting out Jennifer Granholm to talk about the magic of green energy.
Germany had decided to phase out nuclear power two decades ago.
That was accelerated by former Chancellor Angela Merkel, who's going to go down in history as one of the least successful world leaders ever to be proclaimed a successful world leader.
The three remaining reactors generate 6% of Germany's electricity.
Plans to replace them with gas were upset by the economic war with Russia, Germany's main energy supplier.
In Germany, long-standing opposition to nuclear power generation is actually starting to shift.
The original decision to phase out nuclear power was made 20 years ago by a coalition of Scholz's own Social Democrats and the Greens.
The energy crisis triggered by the Ukraine conflict has promoted a shift among German parties as well as the population.
70% of Germans are now in favor of extending the life of nuclear reactors.
A proposal to put off the shutdown has been gaining traction within Scholz's own government, which is composed of Social Democrats and Greens.
The Greens are a key obstacle to the proposal still because, as always, as always, this is, they're going to oppose what is best for the humans.
Germany is coming under pressure from the other European Union allies to prolong the life of the nuclear plans because Germany also exports a lot of energy to other countries.
Germany's environment and economy ministries in March recommended against extending the plant's lifetime due to legal and safety issues and lack of fuel rods.
They said an extension wouldn't help the country's electricity output in the coming winter.
But Scholz's government is commissioning a stress test for the nuclear plants to determine whether they can indeed continue.
Everybody's gonna have to meet with reality real faster, apparently, except for Joe Biden.
Meanwhile, the United States continues to Promote a war in Ukraine that it seemingly has no off-ramp for?
There doesn't seem to be any sort of plan here.
I've been saying from nearly the beginning that defending Ukraine against Russia's full-scale invasion was worthwhile, but there had to be some sort of off-ramp provided to Putin here or this was just going to continue forever.
And forever wars do not benefit democracies.
Forever wars tend to end with the democracies destroying their own credibility and undermining their own commitments and then running away, which is exactly what you saw in Afghanistan.
Dictatorships can maintain forever wars literally forever, because the dictator just says, I'm not giving up, that's the end of the story.
Well, the war in Ukraine is continuing apace.
According to the Wall Street Journal, when Ukrainian troops deployed on the Kherson front line in April, the village's empty homes provided some protection from relentless Russian shelling.
Now there aren't many places left to hide anymore, said a soldier who goes by his callsign Kulak, pointing to a landscape of craters and twisted trees.
Most houses have burned down from incendiary shells the church has gone to.
It's never quiet down here.
No civilians live in this area anymore.
A white goat wandered from one wrecked house to another looking for food.
Russian drones with motion detectors frequently hover over the spot from which Kulak observes Russian movements about a mile away and directs artillery strikes.
The unit's mission, he said, is to hold firm.
The Russians shoot left and right, into the steppe, anywhere.
As for us, we have to economize the ammunition, so we only fire according to precise coordinates.
The situation for now is similar across the Kheroshen front line that stretches for more than 100 miles.
The strategic terrain represents Russia's only foothold on the western bank of the Dnipro River and a potential avenue of advance on to the ports of Mykolaiv, Odessa, and the rest of Ukraine's remaining Black Sea shoreline.
Major Roman Valkyov, the executive officer of the Ukrainian battalion, said, quote, neither side has the forces or the equipment to begin a decisive operation here, so both are preparing for positional warfare so far.
So basically, stalemate has now ensued.
So what exactly is going to happen here?
Well, the longer that the time goes on, the better it is for the Russians.
Time is a factor.
Moscow-appointed authorities are planning a mid-September referendum on annexing Kherson and other parts of occupied southern Ukraine to Russia, a move that would formalize a land bridge from the Russian border to the Crimean Peninsula that Russia absorbed in 2014.
The referendum represents a big threat.
We need to ruin the plans of the occupiers, said Sergei Klon, a member of the Kherson regional legislature who escapes to Kiev-controlled areas and serves in the Ukrainian military.
The focus of the war is increasingly shifting to the south.
Russia has begun transferring some of its best units from Donbass to Kherson.
They're trying to solidify what they can.
They're trying to make aggressive moves before the winter and prevent the Ukrainians, more importantly, from making aggressive moves before the winter.
But come the winter, Joe Biden's energy policy is going to come to a crashing halt either in Ukraine, where he's going to have to stop the Ukraine war, or he's going to have to figure something else out because otherwise half of Europe is going to freeze.
So again, are Democrats going to be able to run away from this?
That's going to be doubtful.
Are Democrats going to be able to run away from the failures of Joe Biden in other areas of foreign policy like, for example, Afghanistan?
And it is amazing that the gall of Joe Biden In suggesting that the killing of Ayman al-Zawahiri in Kabul was somehow a magical masterstroke demonstrating his victory in Afghanistan, it's obviously not true.
In fact, John Kirby, the National Security Council spokesperson, He said yesterday that we now know that Zawahiri was in Kabul since last year.
Now, I may not be any sort of expert in chronology, but I do know that last year was like a couple of months after we left Afghanistan.
So within a few weeks of us leaving Afghanistan, the leader of Al Qaeda was living in the home of one of the members of the government of the Taliban we had just surrendered to.
Here's John Kirby explaining.
How long was Zawahiri in Kabul?
We think that he was in Kabul since, if not late last year, early this year, and that was based on information that we had by being able to track his family's movements there, and then him wanting to reunite with them.
So initially the reporting is that he was there at least four months ago, which would have put it around April.
You're saying that he may have been in Kabul as long as last year?
Well, late last year.
We think maybe as late as December.
I don't mean a whole year ago.
Probably even over the last six, seven months.
Oh, well, you know, no big deal.
Just like five minutes after we left, the place had been taken over.
If you think Democrats aren't going to feel the burden of that when it comes to the election, you have another thing coming.
All of this stuff is gonna come up.
Remember, we are still months away from this election.
There's a lot of time for people to be reminded of just how bad Democrats have done here, just how much terrible stuff they've done here.
Alrighty, guys, we have a lot more news to cover, but I'm out of time here on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and the like, so if you wanna enjoy the rest of the show, become a Daily Wire Plus member.
Head on over to dailywire.com slash Ben, become a member today.
All right, so meanwhile, the tensions continue to rise in Taiwan over Nancy Pelosi's trip.
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