Morning Wire XX
[0] The online payment system PayPal is facing a barrage of criticism.
[1] After the company announced, users could be fined thousands of dollars for spreading misinformation.
[2] We should make that unthinkable, and we're going to make that illegal once we take back Congress in the White House, certainly.
[3] Now PayPal is apologizing for the confusion.
[4] We have the details on the back and forth.
[5] I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire Editor -in -Chief John Bickley.
[6] It's Tuesday, October 11th, and this is Morning Wire.
[7] Carrie Lake is a rising star on the right, but her bold rhetoric is making her a lightning rod on the national stage.
[8] We unpack her background and her platform for Arizona.
[9] This is a grassroots movement in Arizona, unlike anything anyone has ever seen before in this state.
[10] And there is no stopping us.
[11] Rising crime combined with a shrinking police force is forcing Los Angeles to get creative when it comes to officer recruitment.
[12] We'll tell you about the sizable housing bonuses the city is offering.
[13] up with Morning Wire.
[14] Stay tuned.
[15] We have the news you need to know.
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[24] PayPal, which owns Venmo, unveiled a new policy to find users $2 ,500 for spreading misinformation, causing a storm of backlash this weekend and forcing the company to quickly pull the policy and issue a statement.
[25] Here to tell us more about the policy and how PayPal is explaining it is Daily Wire Culture reporter Megan Basham.
[26] So Megan, a payment processing company finding its customers for speech it disapproves of is pretty shocking on its face.
[27] Is that really what the new policy entailed?
[28] Hey, John.
[29] Well, to put it bluntly, yes, the new terms banned sending, posting, or publishing, any of what PayPal is calling messages, content, or materials that promote misinformation.
[30] Now, it didn't define what specifically constitutes misinformation, but if PayPal felt that a user had violated the policy, it could find them $2 ,500.
[31] And that was set to take effect on November 3rd.
[32] Now, their user policy already had some speech prohibitions forbidding hate, intolerance, and discrimination.
[33] But this new updated policy expanded that to specifically address speech directed at what they're calling protected groups, and that would include gender identity and sexual orientation.
[34] So in that case, it would be unclear how, say, Christian users who might express religious convictions would be treated if PayPal felt they were in violation of that policy.
[35] So what's the reaction been to this obviously controversial policy?
[36] Well, not too surprising.
[37] It's been pretty overwhelmingly negative.
[38] A lot of conservatives, as you might expect, have criticized the company.
[39] Tennessee's Republican senator Marsha Blackburn, for instance, commented quoting here, PayPal is censoring speech.
[40] If you don't listen, they will steal your money.
[41] We cannot allow this to happen.
[42] But a lot of people who aren't associated with the right also spoke out against it.
[43] One of PayPal's founders, David Marcus, no relation to our Daily Wire contributor.
[44] Well, he tweeted Saturday, it's hard for me to openly criticize a company I used to love and gave so much to, PayPal's new AUP goes against everything I believe in.
[45] A private company now gets to decide to take your money if you say something they disagree with.
[46] And Elon Musk replied that he agreed with that, by the way.
[47] And Marcus wasn't the only one connected to PayPal out slamming the company.
[48] Blake Masters, who is a Republican candidate for Senate in Arizona, has been famously backed by PayPal founder Peter Thiel.
[49] And here's what he told Fox News on Sunday.
[50] We need a digital bill of rights.
[51] We need to ban companies at that level, at that size, especially if they're touching banking or if they're in social media.
[52] We're going to ban these companies from discriminating against users because of the political content of their speech.
[53] That's how we treat the phone company, right?
[54] So the issue of big business becoming politicized was already a major issue energizing Republicans going into the midterm elections.
[55] This PayPal story is likely to only increase that voter enthusiasm.
[56] But PayPal has issued a statement and says this was a result of an error.
[57] Is this a reversal?
[58] Well, they aren't calling it a reversal.
[59] They're saying that it was a misunderstanding and they are not fining people for misinformation.
[60] The company put out a statement saying that the notice that included information about that fine went out by mistake.
[61] And it said it's working to correct the policy pages and apologize for any confusion.
[62] But so far, it hasn't our.
[63] offered explanation for how or why this $2 ,500 fine was ever proposed in the first place or how it got inserted into the acceptable use policy.
[64] And they haven't said if they're only ditching the misinformation fine or if that new discriminatory speech standard is also going to be withdrawn.
[65] All right.
[66] So some major questions still to be answered.
[67] What has the impact of all this attention been on PayPal?
[68] Well, as you might imagine, it hasn't been good.
[69] people all over social media were posting images showing that they'd close their accounts.
[70] And PayPal's stock price immediately dropped more than 5 % Monday morning, which was an underperformance compared to the rest of the tech market.
[71] It does seem like a startling new development in the financial sector.
[72] Have we seen any similar penalizing policies like this?
[73] I don't think we've seen anything this broad in the U .S., but I wouldn't call it unprecedented.
[74] To give you one example, GoFundMe, notoriously froze millions of money.
[75] of dollars in donations from the Freedom Convoy Truckers in Canada.
[76] And in fact, the Canadian government even froze some of the truckers' bank accounts.
[77] So there is that.
[78] Well, I think a lot of us are going to be taking a little closer look at the terms of service before we click that agree box.
[79] Thanks for the story, Megan.
[80] Any time.
[81] That was Daily Wire Culture Reporter, Megan Basham.
[82] Carrie Lake is vying to be the next governor of Arizona, but she's not without controversy.
[83] The longtime TV news anchor is well known for her charisma and hardline stance.
[84] on illegal immigration, but she's also stirred up debate with her rhetoric around voter fraud.
[85] Here to give us the background on this Arizona firebrand is Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce.
[86] So, Tim, I'm seeing articles about Carrie Lake everywhere.
[87] Just yesterday, the Atlantic referred to her as Trumpism's new leading lady.
[88] Tell us about her background.
[89] Hey, Georgia.
[90] Carrie Lake grew up in rural Iowa, the youngest of nine children.
[91] She studied journalism at the University of Iowa before moving on to work at news stations in Iowa and New York before settling in Arizona.
[92] She joined the team at Fox 10 as a weekend anchor and stayed there for 22 years.
[93] She left the station in early 2021, announcing a retirement in a video posted to the media platform Rumble in March that year.
[94] The video now has close to 2 million views.
[95] Here's a snippet of what that sounded like.
[96] Sadly, journalism has changed a lot since I first stepped into a newsroom, and I'll be honest, I don't like the direction it's going.
[97] The media needs more balance in coverage and a wider range of viewpoints represented in every newsroom at every level and in each position.
[98] Now, what is her political background?
[99] Lake does have a mixed political past.
[100] She was reportedly a member of the GOP up until 2006, at which time she registered as an independent.
[101] Two years after that, she registered as a Democrat and supported then -Senator Barack Obama in his first presidential run.
[102] But according to her colleagues, Lake became more engaged with conservative politics around 2015 when former President Trump first announced his run for office.
[103] She was an early Trump supporter, and by most accounts, a genuine one.
[104] His slogan about fake news resonated with her experience as a news anchor.
[105] She also liked that he was a political outsider who rejected political correctness.
[106] So voters will have to decide whether they buy her authenticity on that.
[107] Right.
[108] So she resigned from local news in March of 2021.
[109] How did she transition into politics?
[110] Yeah, three months after dropping a retirement video, she announced her run for governor.
[111] Due to her name recognition, she had a pretty substantial head start on the campaign trail.
[112] Her main platform from the start was a hardline stance on immigration and skepticism about the fairness of the 2020 election in Arizona.
[113] She branded herself early on as the MAGA candidate and got Trump's early backing pretty quickly.
[114] Now, you hinted at this before, but what are her key issues?
[115] Immigration and election integrity are two big issues.
[116] Lake's immigration plan is one of the most aggressive in the country.
[117] She wants to declare an invasion and use the National Guard to arrest and deport migrants caught crossing the southern border illegally.
[118] I spoke with Lake recently about her immigration plan.
[119] Here's what she had to say.
[120] I don't want to send illegal immigrants and illegal aliens to Martha's Vineyard in Chicago.
[121] It's fun to watch, you know, them complain about 50 illegal aliens.
[122] When we're dealing with hundreds of thousands, if not millions, we want to stop them at the border, which is my right to do as a governor.
[123] Now, the elephant in the room and something that a lot of these publications have been seizing on is Carrie Lake openly questioned the 2020 election in Arizona.
[124] Yeah, here she is in January at a rally with former President Trump.
[125] That election was rotten to the core.
[126] We all know it, right?
[127] You know that, right?
[128] The media knows it and the left knows it.
[129] And they're trying to make us just accept it.
[130] And we will not accept that.
[131] You don't steal our vote.
[132] When I am governor, we will.
[133] will drag that back out into the sunlight, and we will close every single loop hope that allows them to cheat.
[134] We're not going to let them cheat anymore.
[135] So she really goes all in on her positions.
[136] Right.
[137] She's confident, which is part of her appeal to voters.
[138] Most recently, she made some headlines for trying to force her opponent, Katie Hobbs, to debate.
[139] Katie, I'm speaking directly to you.
[140] You claim to care about the people of Arizona.
[141] Prove it.
[142] Debate me. You name the time and you name the place.
[143] I will allow you to choose the moderator.
[144] Hell, I'll even let you write the questions.
[145] Ask me anything.
[146] Hobbs is so far refused.
[147] Here's her explaining why.
[148] I have no desire to be a part of the spectacle that she's looking to create because that doesn't do any service to the voters of Arizona to hear from us where we stand on the issues and how we would govern.
[149] Well, Carrie Lake has been running a Wild West style campaign.
[150] Right now, the race looks like it's neck and neck.
[151] We're just to have to wait and see what Arizona voters think.
[152] Tim, thanks for reporting.
[153] Thanks for having me. That was Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce.
[154] Los Angeles is battling both a crime wave and a police shortage, but the city is struggling to recruit new cops due to the high cost of living.
[155] Local Angelinos are now pooling their own money to offer new cops thousands of dollars in rent subsidies to work in their city.
[156] Daily Wire investigative reporter, Marade Alorty is here with the details for us.
[157] So Marade, tell us about this rent subsidy program.
[158] Hi, Georgia.
[159] So this program is called Housing for Hires.
[160] New LAPD hires can get huge rent subsidies of up to $24 ,000 over two years for housing in Los Angeles.
[161] And this money is not coming out of the LAPD budget.
[162] It's coming from private donations to the LAPD Foundation.
[163] New LAPD officers usually get a starting salary of about $80 ,000, so a $24 ,000 rent subsidy is a significant boost.
[164] That should help with the high cost of living in L .A. According to one analysis, the Los Angeles metropolitan area now has a median rent of over $2 ,200 up from less than $1 ,950 in 2019.
[165] That's a jump of nearly 16%.
[166] Now, how significant is the police shortage in L .A. right now?
[167] Well, in August, police chief Michael Morris said the force was down about 176 officers.
[168] The total police force in L .A. is over 9 ,000.
[169] More concerning, though, the chief said the number of applications coming in has gotten smaller.
[170] In real terms, this has resulted in slower response times across the city.
[171] Meanwhile, violent crime is up significantly.
[172] As of the end of July, homicides in L .A. County had risen 30 % since 2020 to more than 200 homicides so far this year.
[173] Shooting victims are up 43 % since 2020 to nearly 800 victims.
[174] As we've reported before, shoplifting has also become a huge issue.
[175] Police say a big driver of the crime spike is L .A. District Attorney George Gascon's policies, which tend to favor being lenient on criminals, including violent repeat offenders.
[176] Well, it's not just L .A. I understand California is now competing with other states for police officers.
[177] Right.
[178] Even within the state, there's fierce competition for officers.
[179] For example, Redding California, which is north of San Francisco, is offering $40 ,000 signing bonuses for new officers.
[180] So that gives you an idea of how desperate they are.
[181] But other states are vying for officers as well.
[182] Ithaca, New York, is offering $20 ,000 signing bonuses.
[183] Seattle is offering $30 ,000 for experienced officers.
[184] So the big question now is whether these generous perks are going to be enough to offset the frustrations and the dangers of working as a cop in L .A. Right.
[185] Well, we'll continue to follow this.
[186] Marade, thanks so much for reporting.
[187] Thanks, Georgia.
[188] That was Daily Wire investigative reporter Marade Allorty.
[189] Another story we're tracking this week.
[190] North Korean officials say recent missile launches were, in fact, the simulated use of tactical battlefield nuclear weapons, specifically designed to hit potential South Korean and U .S. targets.
[191] North Korean leader Kim Jong -un signaled Monday that he would continue with the provocative missile tests.
[192] Thanks for listening to Morning Wire.
[193] We created this show to bring more balance to the national conversation.
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[195] Well, thanks for a week and up with us.
[196] We'll be back this afternoon with more of the news you need to know.