The budget battle reaches a head in the House, a new report exposes extreme DEI initiatives within a federal agency, and corrections officers remain on strike in New York State. Get the facts first with Morning Wire.Beam: Head to https://shopbeam.com/WIRE and use code WIRE at checkout for up to 40% off.Old Glory Bank: Go to https://oldglorybank.com/wire today to open your account and put your money in the hands of people you can ACTUALLY trust.
Chapter 1: What is the main issue in the House budget battle?
The ayes are 217, the nays are 215. Majority voting in the affirmative. The concurrent resolution is adopted. The budget battle comes to a head on Capitol Hill with Trump ramping up pressure on House members.
What are the issues driving a wedge between lawmakers?
I'm Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's Wednesday, February 26th, and this is Morning Wire. A new bombshell report on the NSA's controversial DEI initiatives heightens scrutiny on the federal agency.
If you were at any private corporation, if you were doing this in the work chat, you would be packed up and gone within hours.
And New York's governor sends in the National Guard to run the prisons as thousands of corrections officers hit the picket lines.
The general public does not know how dangerous this job has become.
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Chapter 2: What are the key components of the new budget resolution?
First, it calls for four point five trillion dollars in tax cuts. including renewing President Trump's 2017 tax cuts and also paving the way to eliminate taxes on Social Security payments, tips, and overtime. Next, it includes a $300 billion increase in spending for defense and the southern border.
Finally, in its current stage, the resolution calls for around $1.5 trillion in future cuts to the federal budget, though it's not yet clear exactly where those cuts would come from.
Right. Now, the big struggle here, of course, is within the GOP itself with its razor thin majority. Tell us about the fight to get this across the finish line.
Chapter 3: Why is there internal conflict within the GOP over the budget?
Yeah, because Republicans hold such a small majority, they could only afford to lose a few votes to get this thing passed. That left Speaker Johnson scrambling to appease each wing of the GOP. The budget hawks want more cuts. The moderates support cuts, but want to protect Medicaid. The foreign policy hawks want cuts, just not for defense spending. You get the idea.
Supporters of the resolution are basically saying, don't make perfect the enemy of good. This moves us in the right direction. I spoke with Brandon Arnold, executive director of the National Taxpayers Union. He's in that camp. Here's what he had to say.
In terms of what's achievable... in Congress and gets this process going of locking in Trump's tax cuts, most of which are going to expire at the end of the year. This is a fantastic approach to doing so because it not only marries that important concept of getting taxes done, it also begins to chip away at the federal bureaucracy, at the waste, fraud, and abuse within the federal government.
Now, coming into Tuesday morning, it looked like everyone in the GOP caucus was finally getting on board. But a handful of hardline conservative members put their foot down, saying the plan was a good starting point, but did not offer enough guaranteed cuts.
Leading the charge was Kentucky Republican Thomas Massey, who said there weren't enough assurances that the resolution would actually cut spending.
If the Republican plan passes under the rosiest assumptions, which aren't even true, we're going to add $328 billion to the deficit this year. We're going to add $295 billion to the deficit the year after that, and $242 billion to the deficit after that, under the rosiest assumptions. Why would I vote for that?
In the end, though, Massey was the only Republican who voted no. All the other GOP members who were on the fence got on board and the measure was passed 217 to 215. It was a major victory for Speaker Mike Johnson and for Donald Trump. It's worth noting the president was on the phone all day calling Republicans on the fence, telling them to fall in line. That pressure campaign continued.
obviously helped. Now that the resolution has passed the House, the Senate will also have to approve it with a simple majority vote. And again, that could be difficult. Here's Arnold explaining why.
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Chapter 4: How is the National Security Agency involved in DEI controversies?
Right now, there's a lot of space between where the House is at and where the Senate is. The reason they're doing this kind of obscure, arcane song and dance is because it obviates the need for a 60 vote threshold in the Senate. They can bypass the filibuster and and get a bill to the president's desk with a simple majority in both the Senate and the House.
So that gives us a lot more flexibility in a Senate, of course, that has 53 Republicans and would be really, really hard to find seven Senate Democrats that want to see Trump's policies enacted into law.
Well, a lot to keep an eye on in Washington. Cabot, thanks so much for reporting. Anytime.
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Chapter 5: What are the implications of DEI initiatives on federal agencies?
Newly disclosed documents reveal the extent to which DEI initiatives in the federal government have shifted the mission of key agencies, pushing radical ideology and political targeting, including even agencies tasked with national defense.
In an exclusive interview this week with Daily Wire editor Emeritus Ben Shapiro, the Manhattan Institute's Chris Ruffo detailed evidence of troubling mission shift at the National Security Agency. Joining us to discuss is Daily Wire deputy managing editor Tim Rice. So Tim, another bombshell report from Ruffo, this time with co-author Hannah Grossman of the Manhattan Institute.
What exactly are they alleging?
Yeah. Hey, Georgia. So this is another rather shocking report about how government resources are being used or in this case abused. And as usual, Ruffo and Grossman have the receipts. So as you noted, this has to do with the NSA, the National Security Agency, which is supposed to be dedicating all of its time to the crucial job of, well, national security. Mm hmm.
But as Ruffo and Grossman found, the agency has been officially allowing and even endorsing extremely radical and politically biased groups, and that includes chat groups. Some whistleblowers with access to these chats, one current and one former NSA employee, provided Ruffo's team with evidence of their content. And frankly, some of it is too not safe for work to detail on this show.
But let's just say that it includes graphic discussions about gender transition surgeries, so-called bottom and top surgeries, specifically discussing them in terms of fetishes. And again, this is under officially endorsed chat rooms, and these conversations are taking place while the federal employees are supposedly working.
Now, are these discussions themselves actually endorsed by higher-ups?
Yes, and Shapiro and Rufo underscore to that point.
Here's Shapiro. The sex chats were legitimized as part of the NSA's commitment to, quote, diversity, equity, and inclusion. Activists within the agency used LGBTQ plus minus divided by sign employee resource groups to turn their kinks and pathologies into official work duties.
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