Morning Wire XX
[0] Blue states across the country are suddenly dropping mask mandates, despite the CDC standing firm in their mask recommendations.
[1] Has the science actually changed, or are politics in low poll numbers prompting the new policies?
[2] I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire editor -in -chief John Bickley.
[3] It's February 12th, and this is your Saturday edition of Morning Wire.
[4] More and more Americans are concerned about the stranglehold big tech companies have over information.
[5] If this doesn't stop now, we're going to end up looking more and more like China.
[6] We speak to an expert about what she's doing to protect free speech and stop big tech's information manipulation.
[7] And is there a boy crisis?
[8] A new kind of gender gap is gaining national attention.
[9] But this time, it's young men who are falling behind.
[10] Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire.
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[20] Democratic governors in several states have announced they are ending or revising their state's mask mandates.
[21] Public health experts say their change of heart is inspired by a change in the science.
[22] But is that true?
[23] Here to fact -check their claims is Daily Wire reporter Ben Johnson.
[24] Ben, good morning.
[25] Good morning, Georgia.
[26] Now, Democratic governors from across the country, from California to Rhode Island, have announced that they're either loosening or planning to suspend their state's mask mandates.
[27] In some cases, they're only loosening the restrictions for adults.
[28] Washington, for example, is just loosening its outdoor mask mandate.
[29] But what many people are pointing out right now is the very different media reception that these states are getting.
[30] You know, when red and purple states did this a little while back, they were criticized for relaxing their rules.
[31] So what's different now?
[32] Well, that depends on whom you ask.
[33] Their defenders say that new scientific data drove these policy changes.
[34] In an interview with CNN Monday, Dr. Lena Wend, who's an advisor to the Biden administration, cited three reasons governors should make mask wearing voluntary.
[35] The science has changed.
[36] We know that vaccines protect very well against Omicrom, which is the dominant variant.
[37] Everyone five and older have widespread access to vaccines.
[38] And we also know about one -way masking, the idea that even if other people around you are not wearing masks, if you wear a high -quality mask, that also protects you, the wearer, too.
[39] But those reasons aren't especially new or persuasive.
[40] The COVID -19 vaccination offered greater protection against previous strands of COVID than it does against the Omicron variant.
[41] And whatever people believe about vaccinations or masks, everyone agrees this is not a pandemic primarily driven by five -year -olds.
[42] Right.
[43] We've known from the outset that healthy children had the lowest likelihood of developing serious illness from COVID.
[44] The government has also said for more than a year that wearing a mask protects the person who's wearing it.
[45] So none of those arguments are particularly new.
[46] Did she cite any changes or recent changes to the science?
[47] Well, in the Washington Post on Wednesday, she wrote that the number of COVID cases are falling rapidly, but that doesn't explain very much either.
[48] The number of average daily cases is about 83 ,000 higher today than it was last September when Dr. Wen said the risk was so severe the government shouldn't let unvaccinated people leave their homes.
[49] We need to start looking at the choice to remain unvaccinated the same as we look at driving while intoxicated.
[50] That you have the option to not get vaccinated if you want, but then you can't go out in public.
[51] measuring cases has problems of its own.
[52] Researchers have warned since at least July of 2020 that hospitalization and death rates were better metrics than the number of positive cases.
[53] In fact, on Wednesday, Dr. Wen told Politico, quote, we should not be using case numbers at all when making decisions about restrictions.
[54] The case numbers are not reliable.
[55] She also wrote that mask wearing can harm children who are learning to speak and that lockdowns increase despair, obesity, and opioid overdoses, all of which are critics have been warning about from the outset.
[56] She's pretty late to that party.
[57] Now, some of these governors' opponents say that this is more of a political decision based on how unpopular mask mandates have become.
[58] What do you make of that claim?
[59] Well, the polling began to change decisively at least by last November.
[60] The average polls at 538 .com show that for the first time in January, a majority of Americans disapproved of the way Biden has been handling the coronavirus.
[61] There's been a particularly noticeable falloff among registered independence.
[62] One of the governors in question, Phil Murphy of New Jersey, nearly lost his reelection bid last year in a deep blue state, and Glenn Yonkin won the Virginia governor's race in part by campaigning against mask mandates.
[63] Some of the Democratic governors have admitted that the polls affected their public health mandates.
[64] For example, last Friday, when Delaware Governor John Carney announced he's ending his indoor mask mandate, he said, quote, a leader without followers is not very effective leadership, so somehow you have to strike the ballot.
[65] there to keep people following you.
[66] Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who's opposed mask mandates all along, said the only science that's changed is political science.
[67] Some suggest the science has changed.
[68] And let me just tell you, the science has not changed one iota.
[69] We knew from the beginning, and that's why Florida never imposed a forced masking policy on school children.
[70] Ben, thanks for doing this fact check for us.
[71] Anytime.
[72] That's Daily Wires, Ben Johnson.
[73] Coming up, a new report alleges collusion between the U .S. government and big tech.
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[80] More Americans are raising the alarm over big tech's monopoly on the flow of information.
[81] With increased efforts to contain so -called misinformation, big tech now sets the parameters for public debate, which some experts say is dangerous.
[82] Joining us to discuss the issue is Kara Frederick, who previously ran Facebook's counterterrorism analysis team for global security, intelligence, and investigations, and now is working with the Heritage Foundation and its reports on Big Tech.
[83] Kara, thanks for coming on.
[84] Of course.
[85] Thanks for having me. So after leaving Facebook, you've done a lot of digging into the issues with big tech, particularly with censorship.
[86] And you say that not only are they consolidating power and weaponizing it against everyday Americans, but they're doing so in coordination with the U .S. government.
[87] Can you explain that for us?
[88] Yeah, I think this is critical.
[89] We've detected an increasing symbiosis between the government and big tech companies.
[90] So they're working hand and glove with the government to police speech.
[91] So Jen Saki in July, she admitted from the White House podium that the government is actively working with Facebook to single out accounts and post for disinformation.
[92] Within a month of her saying that, those 12 users she pointed out, along with the Surgeon General, were taken off of Facebook within 30 days.
[93] Majorcas at DHS, he alluded to similar initiatives when it comes to election security.
[94] Biden called out tech companies to police COVID -related speech just recently.
[95] And then for another example that's in the news now, GoFundMe, Spotify.
[96] If Spotify in particular, Jen Saki, again, you brazenly went up to the podium and said, Spotify can do more.
[97] There's much more to be done to police speech.
[98] And, of course, she was referring to the Joe Rogan controversies.
[99] That's very troubling to me. Now, you mentioned GoFundMe.
[100] We've seen some troubling reports about the fundraising platform, canceling some pretty high -profile accounts, including a fundraiser from the Freedom Convoy, for example.
[101] Did political pressure play a role there?
[102] Well, you did see, even though GoFundMe as an American company, the Trudeau government said that they were pushing GoFundMe to make this decision.
[103] Law enforcement officers in Ottawa were also pushing GoFundMe to make this decision.
[104] So to me, these companies are acting as quasi -state actors when they are directly responsive to that political pressure.
[105] But I think it's really important to note that the constriction of digital life is not just restricted to social media.
[106] This goes far beyond that.
[107] And we saw it with GoFundMe, online fundraising platforms like Kickstarter, ISPs, internet service providers like GoDaddy, email delivery service providers like MailChimp, PayPal, these other companies that are not necessarily these big tech companies or social media companies are getting in the game.
[108] And they are restricting public life for people who effectively have the wrong opinions.
[109] So this report you've cited as part of the Heritage Foundation initiative on the role of big tech.
[110] What is heritage calling for?
[111] Yeah, so frankly, the Heritage Foundation is going to war with big tech.
[112] We're calling for reforms to look like ensuring the government is not using tech companies as agents to chill speech.
[113] We also want to make sure that big tech companies are not working hand in glove with our adversaries as well, like the Chinese Communist Party.
[114] So generally, we really want to give Americans' new ways to fight back when these online rights are infringed upon, give them prompt and meaningful recourse, more transparency, and more user control.
[115] That's what we're calling for.
[116] Well, Kara, thank you so much for joining us.
[117] Thanks for having me. That was Kara Frederick Technology Policy Fellow at the Heritage Foundation.
[118] Fewer young men are enrolling in college, and data shows they appear to be falling behind women in other areas as well.
[119] Here to discuss the boy crisis is Daily Wire's Charlotte Pence Bond.
[120] So Charlotte, tell us what you're finding.
[121] Is there a boy crisis in the U .S.?
[122] Well, it certainly appears so.
[123] This got some attention when former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang posted a lengthy thread on Twitter about the, quote, crisis among American boys and men, a problem that he says is being widely ignored by the mainstream media and policy proposals.
[124] A few weeks ago, the National Student Clearing House showed that U .S. colleges and universities experienced a decline of almost 500 ,000 undergraduate students in the fall of 2021, keeping up with another drop that started the fall prior.
[125] According to the Brookings Institute, overall first -time enrollment for the fall of 2020 was down 13 % compared to the year prior, but the decrease in male enrollment was more than seven times larger than the decline in female enrollment.
[126] The numbers are startling.
[127] In the fall of 2020, only 41 % of students enrolled in a post -secondary establishment were male.
[128] And of those who do enroll in college, they're also less likely to graduate than their female peers.
[129] And the same goes for high school.
[130] And this isn't a new trend.
[131] In the 2018 to 2019 academic year, around 74 men received a bachelor's degree for every 100 women who received one.
[132] In the same time period, women represented 61 % of all associates degrees, 61 % of master's degrees, and 54 % of doctoral girls degrees.
[133] Okay, so men are falling behind in education, but we're also seeing a shift away from that traditional college track.
[134] So are young men seeking alternative career paths?
[135] The jury's still out on that, but there are other concerning data points that suggest men really are lagging behind women in professional achievement.
[136] For example, men ages 18 to 34 are significantly more likely to be living with their parents than their female counterparts.
[137] And you mentioned the alternative career paths, which could be a factor too.
[138] However, there's also been an overall decline in employment for young men.
[139] In 2014, just 71 % of men ages 18 to 34 had a job, compared with a high of 84 % in 1960.
[140] So is this a new issue?
[141] When did this gender achievement gap start to appear?
[142] Well, it certainly wasn't always the case.
[143] When it comes to education and undergraduate degrees, it looks like women started outpacing men starting with the cohort born in 1955.
[144] Prior to that generation, more men were obtaining degrees.
[145] Feminist scholar Christine Hoff Summers, the author of The War Against Boys, has actually been writing about this issue for decades.
[146] This is her back in 2000.
[147] My thesis is simple.
[148] Boys are politically incorrect.
[149] There have been many societies that favored males over females.
[150] That was wrong.
[151] I became a feminist in the 1970s because I didn't appreciate male chauvinism.
[152] But I now believe that we are a society that has thrown the gender switch and that it is females who are preferred over males.
[153] And what are some of the hypotheses about why this is happening?
[154] So there are a variety of reasons, but an important one might be a lack of positive male role models.
[155] According to the Census Bureau, about a quarter of children in the U .S. are living without a father in the home.
[156] And that number has been growing for decades.
[157] Similarly, about 75 % of K -12 teachers are female.
[158] So maybe not a lot of male leadership early in life.
[159] Right.
[160] Right, and that's just one factor.
[161] But at this point, the issue really needs much more attention and research.
[162] Right.
[163] Charlotte, thanks for reporting.
[164] That's daily wires, Charlotte Penn's Bond.
[165] Another story we're tracking this week.
[166] The Department of Homeland Security is warning law enforcement that a Canadian trucker convoy may spread into the United States.
[167] The documents obtained by Yahoo News say the convoy could start as soon as Super Bowl Sunday and will travel from California to Washington, D .C., picking up trucker as they cross the country.
[168] The Canadian truckers have blocked border crossings in protest of COVID policies.
[169] If you like 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.
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