Morning Wire XX
[0] The new year is bringing new tax hikes, increasing costs for employers amid fears of a looming recession.
[1] Who will be affected by the new taxes and what do they mean for consumers?
[2] I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire Editor -in -Chief John Bickley.
[3] It's Thursday, January 5th, and this is Morning Wire.
[4] A sitting congressman is facing calls to resign after newly published Twitter documents reveal he attempted to silence a journalist.
[5] We have the details.
[6] And Kim Jong -un has ordered an exponential expansion of North Korea's nuclear program.
[7] The last several years, they've had very high success rates with their missiles.
[8] We speak to an expert who warns about the real dangers of the North Korean threat.
[9] Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire.
[10] Stay tuned.
[11] We have the news you need to know.
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[17] As the new year kicks off, a series of new tax hikes will take effect, raising costs for employers at a time when inflation and recession woes are already signaling a grim economic outlook for the year.
[18] Here with more on who will be impacted by the tax hikes and what it means for consumers is Daily Wire Senior Editor Cabot Phillips.
[19] So, Cabot, what can you tell us?
[20] Well, unfortunately, this latest hike is sort of a double whammy caused by two things.
[21] First, Democrats are allowing provisions from the 2017 GOP tax plan to phase out.
[22] And at the same time, a series of tax hikes to fund the Democrats' so -called Inflation Reduction Act will also go into effect.
[23] As part of that legislation, larger businesses will be subject to a new 15 % corporate minimum tax.
[24] that raises the floor for what they can pay.
[25] The bill also implements a new stock buyback tax for publicly traded companies that will apply to the repurchase of stock.
[26] Now, President Biden says these measures will ensure businesses pay their fair share, but critics say those tax acts will inevitably be passed on to consumers through higher prices, and that businesses won't be the ones who actually end up putting the bill.
[27] Now, what are the provisions that are going to be phased out?
[28] Yeah, so back in 2017, the GOP tax reform bill allowed businesses to immediately deduct to the entire cost of certain important expenses, like large vehicles and other machinery and things used for manufacturing, which gave business owners more capital to work with and also encouraged investments in their own business.
[29] But starting this year, the maximum early deduction will drop to 80 percent and then decrease annually until it disappears altogether in 26.
[30] That's in addition to other new provisions that will also cap the amount people can deduct from their interest expenses, as well as their research and development expenses.
[31] 2023 is going to be a bit more complicated for businesses and business owners.
[32] So if you own a business, definitely look into what's changing this year.
[33] And that's got a lot of people upset.
[34] For example, a group of 36 CEOs at large companies penned a letter to Congress saying that the cap on research and development deductions alone will cost American businesses $29 billion annually.
[35] And remember, that's just a small part of the whole equation.
[36] Tax experts say that hundreds of billions of dollars in new taxes will eventually be levied as a result of these changes, which obviously comes at a bad time for many businesses and Americans.
[37] Now, speaking of timing, how will these new taxes affect our ability to bounce back from recession?
[38] Well, if you ask most Americans, there's never a good time for a tax hike.
[39] But the direction we're heading, the timing is definitely terrible.
[40] As we've discussed on the show, by the technical definition, two consecutive quarters of GDP contraction, we are in a recession right now.
[41] And now, even those who disagree and say that we're not in one at the moment, almost universal agree that we're heading that way shortly.
[42] For example, almost two -thirds of the economists at America's largest banks say we'll face a recession this year, and the other third mostly say it'll be the year after, so not a lot of optimism.
[43] They point to the decrease in consumer spending, the fall of the housing market, stubbornly high inflation, and skyrocketing interest rates as reason for pessimism.
[44] And these new tax hikes are not likely to help quell those fears.
[45] Right, I can see why.
[46] Cabot, thanks for reporting.
[47] Anytime.
[48] That was Daily Wire's senior editor, Cabot Phillips.
[49] Coming up, the latest edition of the Twitter files, shine a light on Democratic rep, Adam Schiff.
[50] A group of independent journalists with access to thousands of internal Twitter documents continue to release new reporting about the platform's suppression of speech.
[51] The latest drop of the Twitter files on Tuesday focused on Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff.
[52] Daily Wire Culture reporter Megan Basham is here to brief us on the latest revelations to come out of these records.
[53] So, Megan, what did we learn in this latest drop?
[54] So this was the fifth report from former Rolling Stone editor and author Matt Taibi, and it's the 11th overall.
[55] And while the previous installments have focused, as you said, on how much the FBI and the DOJ and even the White House were pressuring Twitter, this one brought the scope of it into even greater focus.
[56] So this time, Taibi underscored just how pervasive the government's involvement with Twitter was.
[57] And just to give you one direct quote, he said this, Twitter was taking requests from every conceivable government body, beginning with the Senate Intel Committee.
[58] Requests arrived and were escalated from all over, from Treasury, the NSA, virtually every state, the HHS, from the FBI and DHS, and more.
[59] And this was where Taibi posted records revealing that then House Intel Committee Chief Adam Schiff asked Twitter to ban a journalist by the name of Paul Sperry.
[60] Now, it's important to note that in addition to being a New York Post columnist, Sperry was also a former Washington Bureau chief for Investors Business Daily.
[61] He's written for the Wall Street Journal for the New York Times, The Houston Chronicle.
[62] He's a media fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution.
[63] So all that to say that this was not a fringe figure.
[64] And the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee was pressuring Twitter to silence him at the same time that Sperry was reporting damaging information about Schiff's office.
[65] Now, why did Schiff say he wanted Sperry's account suspended?
[66] Well, in the internal memo, a Twitter staffer said that Schiff's office claimed Sperry was promoting, quote, false QAnon conspiracies and that these were leading to Schiff and his staff getting harassed.
[67] But some key context here is that Sperry had been reporting at real clear investigations about a whistleblower who contributed to the launch of Trump's first impeachment.
[68] Now, we'll all remember that that was over a phone call that Trump had made to Ukraine.
[69] The Democrats claimed that what Trump was doing was threatening to withhold aid from Ukraine unless leaders provided information about Hunter Biden's business deals in that country.
[70] Well, that whistleblower that Sperry was reporting on was a CIA analyst named Eric Charmella.
[71] A source told Perry that long before Trump's call to Ukraine, in fact, right after Trump was sworn in as president, the source overheard Charimela talking with a former Obama staffer named Sean Misk.
[72] and they were planning to orchestrate some grounds for impeachment.
[73] Now, by the time of Sperry's report, MISCO was an aide to Congressman Schiff as he was chairing the House Intelligence Committee, which meant he was in charge of those impeachment proceedings.
[74] So Schiff not only asked Twitter to suspend Perry, he also asked the platform to remove any and all content related to House Intelligence Committee staffers, and he specifically asked for material about MISCO to be removed.
[75] So what that looks like is that Schiff didn't want Sperry publishing stories about him or MISCO and his involvement with the impeachment.
[76] Now, at that point, Twitter said no, but Sperry was later kicked off the platform and he says Twitter would never tell him why.
[77] So now what you're hearing are calls for Schiff to resign.
[78] Have Sperry or Schiff made any public comments about this?
[79] Nothing from Schiff yet, but Sperry has made it clear that he believes, the reason he was later suspended was because of political pressure.
[80] He said, and I'm quoting here, I have never promoted any Q &on conspiracies ever, not on Twitter, not anywhere.
[81] So you said this is the 11th drop.
[82] Is there any sense of how many more Twitter files drops we're going to get?
[83] That's not entirely clear, but Elon Musk has promised that we will be getting one specifically focused on Dr. Anthony Fauci.
[84] So we do know that there will be at least one more.
[85] All right, well, we're going to continue to monitor.
[86] Megan, thanks for reporting.
[87] That was Daily Wire Culture reporter, Megan Basham.
[88] As nuclear tensions around the world rise, North Korean leader Kim Jong -un kicked off the new year by ordering an expansion to the country's nuclear program, something that has put other nations around the world on high alert.
[89] Joining us to discuss is Bruce Klinger, senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, who spent two decades with the CIA.
[90] and Defense Intelligence Agency.
[91] Welcome, Bruce.
[92] First, what have we seen from North Korea in terms of its nuclear program over the last few years?
[93] During the last several years, North Korea has really expanded its nuclear and missile programs.
[94] On the nuclear side, they are continuing to build weapons as well as fizzile material, but they haven't done an actual test since 2017.
[95] That said, Washington and Seoul have been saying since March that a seventh nuclear test is imminent.
[96] And we expect that one will be much smaller than the last one, which was a large hydrogen bomb.
[97] We think this will be the testing of a new generation of tactical nuclear warheads that are so small they may be use on the battlefield.
[98] When we think of nukes, we think of large intercontinental missiles.
[99] What kinds of new weapons are we talking about here?
[100] Well, they've tested six before, and those were mostly in the range of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs of 1945.
[101] But in 2017, they did one which we assess as a hydrogen bomb or a thermonuclear bomb, and that had the explosive yield at least 10 times the 1945 bombs.
[102] So that would likely be on an ICBM that can target all of the continental United States.
[103] But the next test is likely to be a smaller tactical battlefield use weapon, which would go on the dozen or so new weapons that we've seen them developing in the last four or five years.
[104] And those are short -range or medium -range missiles which can target all of South Korea and Japan.
[105] Now, we've seen reports in the past about failed weapons tests by North Korea.
[106] Is there a reason, though, to really fear the threat of this new arsenal?
[107] Very much so.
[108] Their first test back in 2006 may have been a failed or a fizzled nuclear test, but since then, all the others have been successful.
[109] What we saw this year with their new, very large multi -warhead ICBM, which is the largest road mobile ICBM in the world, they had a failed test, which was their first time trying to fly that back in March.
[110] And then more recently in November, they did have a successful test.
[111] So we now know they have several ICBMs that can reach all the way down to Florida and beyond, and presumably with very large nuclear warheads.
[112] What do we think are North Korea's end goals in all of this?
[113] Well, it's a matter of debate.
[114] North Korea has said that their nuclear program is both for deterrence as well as retaliation.
[115] And they also announced that they retain the option.
[116] of preemptive strikes.
[117] So the concern is that they've lowered the threshold for the use of their nuclear weapons.
[118] And when they complain about allied combined military exercises as being preparations for an attack on them, we know we're not preparing to attack.
[119] And we don't know if they are just looking for an excuse to complain and try to get us to stop doing our exercises, or do they really perceive that we are preparing to attack them.
[120] So that's a concern that we may have an inadvertent military clash, including nuclear weapons on the peninsula.
[121] Speaking of U .S. allies in the region, what are we orchestrating in terms of response?
[122] I assume we see South Korea playing a major role here.
[123] Very much so.
[124] We have a combined military command with South Korea that during wartime would be headed by a U .S. general.
[125] But South Korea in the last several years have really up their game on their military capability.
[126] A very impressive, very extensive military capability.
[127] That would also need the involvement of Japan, not only the bases in Japan that the U .S. and U .N. forces would go through, but also Japan playing a significant role on anti -submarine warfare or ballistic missile defense.
[128] And what we're seeing recently is both Japan and South Korea announcing they will play a larger security role throughout the Indo -Pacific, which is against the China threat.
[129] Right, that Japanese military buildup is significant on multiple fronts.
[130] Fascinating stuff.
[131] Bruce, thanks for joining us.
[132] That was Heritage Senior Research Fellow, Bruce Klinger.
[133] Other stories were tracking this week.
[134] President Biden announced Wednesday that he intends to visit the southern border.
[135] The president has not yet visited the border during his first two years in office.
[136] Forecasters are warning that a storm being dubbed a bomb cyclone could cause catastrophic damage in San Francisco.
[137] Experts predict that the Bay Area could see winds as high as 80 miles per hour, Wednesday into Thursday morning.
[138] The National Weather Service said the winds alongside torrential rain could result in immediate disruption to commerce and, worst of all, likely loss of human life.
[139] Thanks for waking up with us.
[140] We'll be back later this afternoon with more news you need to know.
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