Morning Wire XX
[0] A public fight between Elon Musk and Apple could redefine the rules of free speech in America.
[1] It is an ideological cartel that punishes the defector, and right now that defector is Elon Musk.
[2] What actions has Apple threatened to take, and how is Musk responding?
[3] I'm DailyWire editor -in -chief John Bickley with Georgia Howell.
[4] It's Wednesday, November 30th, and this is Morning Wire.
[5] Who controls immigration law, states, or the federal government?
[6] That question was argued in front of the Supreme Court on Tuesday.
[7] We outlined the key arguments on both sides of the issue.
[8] And fashion brand Balenciaga is deflecting blame.
[9] After critics claim, their recent campaign evoked child pornography.
[10] We break down the disturbing details of the campaign and the deafening silence from the brand's celebrity partners.
[11] Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire.
[12] Stay tuned.
[13] We have the news you need to know.
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[20] Twitter CEO Elon Musk is making good on his promise to make the platform a friendlier forum for free speech.
[21] Meanwhile, the Biden administration says it's monitoring the situation and, according to Musk, Apple is threatening to drop Twitter from its app store.
[22] Daily Wire Culture reporter, Megan Basham, is here now to give us the latest on the blowback to Musk's new policies at Twitter.
[23] So, Megan, there's been a lot of news about Twitter in the last few days, but one of the most significant developments came from the White House.
[24] What's going on there?
[25] Well, you know, Musk has made it clear since he first made his offer to buy Twitter back in April.
[26] that one of his key priorities was easing moderation practices and also allowing users to speak more freely on the platform, as you noted.
[27] Well, we've already seen him lift suspensions from public figures like former President Trump and the Babylon B, for instance.
[28] But then on November 23rd, Twitter officially did away with its COVID misinformation policy, and that was left over from the company's previous leadership.
[29] Well, that was the policy that empowered moderators to censor posts that question things like the effectiveness of masks or vaccines.
[30] Musk has also now promised to release internal Twitter documentation showing how and why moderators chose to suppress speech like the New York Post's Hunter Biden laptop story.
[31] He said the public deserves to know and that it's necessary to restore public trust.
[32] Jake Denton, a researcher in the Heritage Foundation's Tech Policy Center, told us that Musk's new policies could actually drastically change the kind of discourse that we're seeing on Twitter.
[33] These grassroots, ordinary folks that have been de -platformed are not going to behave in the way that these activists prefer.
[34] They're going to engage with, you know, whether it be tweets from, you know, controversial conservative influencers to just kind of more grassroots journalism.
[35] It's kind of a detachment from what the ruling class would prefer to have on Twitter.
[36] So all of this seems to have caught the attention of the Biden administration.
[37] This was White House Press Secretary Corinne Jean -Pierre responding to a question about Twitter's new policies on Monday.
[38] Look, we, you know, we have always been very clear and that when it comes to social media platforms, it is their responsibility to make sure that when it comes to misinformation, when we come to the hate that we're seeing, that they take action.
[39] Musk tweeted shortly after this, and I'm going to quote, this is a battle for the future of civilization.
[40] If free speech is lost, even in America, tyranny is all that lies ahead.
[41] So possibly a battle brewing there between the Biden administration and Twitter.
[42] Well, maybe even more significant is the action we're seeing from Apple.
[43] Tell us about that.
[44] Yeah, that's a good point.
[45] So Musk has said that Apple has pulled most of its advertising from Twitter and is even threatening to drop the platform from its app store.
[46] Now, that's something we have seen before when Apple and Google Android dropped Parlor from their stores, ostensibly, once again, over content moderation.
[47] And that move essentially crippled what was an emerging platform.
[48] It's also worth noting that the Apple executive who heads up the app store, Phil Schiller, deleted his Twitter account last week.
[49] So Musk tagged Apple CEO Tim Cook to ask him what's going on, And he later tweeted of Apple, do they hate free speech in America?
[50] So while the White House may be standing against Twitter, the company is finding some support among Republicans.
[51] Florida Governor Ron DeSantis had this to say.
[52] That would be a huge, huge mistake.
[53] And it would be a really raw exercise of monopolistic power that I think would merit a response from the United States Congress.
[54] For Musk's part, he said that if Apple tries to remove Twitter, from the app store, he will make an alternative phone.
[55] Well, if anyone can do it, I think Elon Musk is the guy.
[56] Megan, thanks for reporting.
[57] Yeah, anytime.
[58] That was Daily Wire Culture reporter, Megan Basham.
[59] Coming up, the Supreme Court hears arguments in a case pitting Texas against the Biden administration.
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[66] The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case over immigration law and the federal government's authority to direct it on Tuesday.
[67] The case began with a lawsuit, and Louisiana filed against the Biden administration last year.
[68] Here to break down the case and what's at stake is DailyWire reporter Tim Pierce.
[69] Hey, Tim.
[70] So first, give us an overview of the case.
[71] Yeah, sure.
[72] This case centers around a DHS memo that places restrictions on which illegal aliens federal law enforcement should target arrest and deport.
[73] In September of last year, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas wrote a memo that directed federal agents, mainly ICE agents, to prioritize aliens to threaten U .S. security and safe for arrest and removal.
[74] The memo says the federal law enforcement should consider mitigating or aggravating factors in each case.
[75] In other words, if someone is found to be in the U .S. illegally, officials should consider whether it's worth it to detain and deport them based off the priorities in the memo.
[76] Mayork has set out three classes of priority removals, threats to national security, which are aliens considered to be either spies or terrorists.
[77] Then there are threats to border security, which the memo defines as aliens who entered the U .S. illegally after November 1, 2020.
[78] And finally, there are threats to public safety who are aliens convicted of serious criminal conduct.
[79] So those are the migrants that Majorcas says should be considered a priority in deporting.
[80] Which migrants are considered low priority?
[81] That would be the estimated 11 million migrants who are living in the U .S. illegally and who got here before that November 1st, 2020 cutoff.
[82] All right, so the obvious question then is, why is Mayorkas restricting deportations if those millions of migrants are also in the U .S. illegally?
[83] Well, the Biden administration says it comes down to making the most efficient use of limited resources.
[84] Its basic argument is that federal officials can't remove 11 million aliens from the U .S., so it needs to set these priorities to take care of the highest risk threats first.
[85] The attorneys general of Texas and Louisiana say that, regardless of resources, Congress did not give DHS discretion to decide which illegal aliens to deport and which to avoid.
[86] The states are staking their case on the wording of federal immigration law, which is riddled with the word shall.
[87] such as shall take into custody and shall remove.
[88] The states argue that the wording limits discretion in enforcing immigration laws.
[89] The Biden administration argues that the courts have traditionally understood that the federal government has broad discretion to deal with illegal aliens, and in any event, the federal government can't reasonably be expected to adhere to such a strict interpretation of the statute when it lacks the resources to enforce the law in totality.
[90] All right, so there's a couple of other issues involved in this case.
[91] Tell us about what else is at play here.
[92] Sure, one is standing.
[93] The Biden administration says that the states can't meet the threshold of harm necessary to challenge the DHS memo.
[94] The states say that the federal government's selective enforcement has left them on the hook for paying to care for the migrants who won't be deported.
[95] The Biden administration says that those kinds of indirect costs have never been considered a firm foundation for states to sue.
[96] The other issue is whether a U .S. District judge has the authority to freeze the Biden administration's order.
[97] Judge Drew Tipton sided with Texas and Louisiana last year and put the directive on hold.
[98] The Biden administration says that generally, the Supreme Court has the authority to restrict the federal government's immigration enforcement, not lower courts.
[99] Well, we'll have to wait to see how the Supreme Court decides to settle this next year.
[100] Tim, thanks for joining us.
[101] That was Daily Wire's Tim Pierce.
[102] Celebrity -promoted fashion brand, Valencia, is suing an ad production company after the brand's campaign was criticized for being evocative of child pornography.
[103] Here to discuss the controversy is Daily Wire reporter Amanda Presti Giacomo.
[104] So, Amanda, let's back up a little bit.
[105] We first heard about this scandal last week.
[106] Can you briefly recap what happened?
[107] Hey, Georgia.
[108] Yeah, last week, the luxury brand released its campaign, which featured very young children, maybe as young as four years old.
[109] They're holding teddy bears and bondage gear.
[110] The bears were apparently purses, but they looked like children's toys, which was clearly the theme of the ad.
[111] It was about as bad as it sounds, too.
[112] The bears appear to have blackened out eyes, and they're dressed in BDSM gear.
[113] like fishnet tops and leather harnesses.
[114] The kids are also surrounded by adult items like wine glasses and leather dog colors, too.
[115] And just to note, the children in these photos are not smiling.
[116] In one case, a young child is lying prone on a couch looking zonked out with wine glasses in the foreground.
[117] So when these images surfaced online, they were immediately met with a lot of backlash.
[118] Internet sleuth took to the Balenciaga website to look for more examples of this questionable content.
[119] They quickly found photos from a July campaign featuring a Balenciaga and Adidas mashup purse.
[120] This purse was rested on top of some court papers that include an excerpt from a U .S. Supreme Court opinion in the United States v. Williams.
[121] Now, this particular case ruled on the constitutionality of a law prohibiting the pandering of child pornography.
[122] Kind of an odd thing to have in this fashion shoot.
[123] And just a side note, the internet sleuths turned up some other strange things, too.
[124] In one example from the spring 2023 campaign, it featured two books in the background.
[125] One by an artist named Mikhail Bormens, which features extraordinarily disturbing images of naked castrated children soaked in blood.
[126] Other images showed mass individuals eating human limbs.
[127] The other featured book, The Cremaster Cycle, is equally disturbing.
[128] So, unsurprisingly, the backlash online was swift and fierce.
[129] Initially, this was just from the right, but it also got some buzz in the mainstream.
[130] For example, even Sonny Hosten, she's a liberal host on The View, she offered some mild criticism for the brand, although she did stop short of condemning the ad outright.
[131] Now, what has Belenziaga's response been to this criticism?
[132] Well, initially, the brand just went dark.
[133] They wiped their Instagram page and they deleted all those images from their website.
[134] They later offered a lengthy apology online for, quote, any offense their campaign may have caused.
[135] They also acknowledge that those plush bondage teddy bears should not have been featured with children.
[136] Pretty soon after that, the company seemed to shift the blame to the production company that was contracted for that.
[137] On Friday, they filed a lawsuit against a production company called North Six, as well as the set designer, Nicholas DeJarda.
[138] The suit specifically claims that North Six and the set designer are responsible for the child porn -related documents that appeared in the ad from the purse.
[139] Again, that's not the bondage teddy bear ads, that was from a different campaign.
[140] The fashion brand claims to be the victim of inexplicable acts and omissions regarding this, at the very least, extraordinarily reckless content, the suit says.
[141] Valencia is seeking out at least $25 million in damages for the alleged false association between the brand and the, quote, repulsive and deeply disturbing subject of the court decision.
[142] Now, how is this suit expected to fare in the courts?
[143] Well, Desjarda has blasted Balenciaga for using him as a scapegoat.
[144] He claims that the brand was completely in the loop the whole time.
[145] A statement from his agent says, quote, everyone from Balenciaga was on the shoot and was present on every shot and worked on the edit of every image in post -production.
[146] So Balenciaga will have to prove that wasn't the case.
[147] Now, what about the celebrities that have promoted Valenciaga?
[148] Are they now trying to distance themselves a little bit?
[149] Yeah, that's a great question.
[150] since Balenciaga is kind of known for being the celebrity brand.
[151] You know, for example, we have model Bella Hadid and actress Nicole Kidman.
[152] They often promote it.
[153] There are a lot more, too.
[154] Their most famous fan, though, has to be Kim Kardashian.
[155] And so far, she's the only star to speak out.
[156] On Monday, she announced she was re -evaluating her partnership with the brand.
[157] She has not cut ties as of now.
[158] But for now, it looks like a majority of Balenciaga's celebrity fans are willing to stay loyal despite this.
[159] awesome really disturbing stuff Amanda thanks for reporting thanks for having me that was Daily Wire reporter Amanda pressed to Jacamo well that's all the time we've got this morning thanks for waking up with us we'll be back this afternoon with more of the news you need to know