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[0] While the Biden administration faces an ongoing crisis in Afghanistan, another crisis continues on the southern border.
[1] We'll look at the latest on the administration's struggle to handle the record number of migrants crossing the border, including its new approach to asylum claims.
[2] I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire, Editor -in -Chief John Bickley.
[3] It's Saturday, August 28, and this is Morning Wire.
[4] A Canadian pastor faces four years of jail time for failing to comply with COVID -Bicely.
[5] restrictions.
[6] What policies does the state say the pastor violated?
[7] And what is his message to fellow Canadians?
[8] And Andrew Cuomo's Emmy Award has been revoked.
[9] Amid an unfolding sexual harassment scandal in yet more revelations of thousands of unreported COVID deaths, what was the final straw for the International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences?
[10] Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire.
[11] Stay tuned.
[12] We have the news you need to know.
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[17] As the crisis in Afghanistan continues, with the ongoing U .S. evacuation effort and the threat of more terror attacks looming, the crisis at the U .S. southern border has not gone away.
[18] Migrants are still crossing the southern border at a rate not seen in decades, and the Biden administration is struggling to respond.
[19] Investigative reporter, Marade McCartle, is here with the details.
[20] Marade, thanks for coming on.
[21] Thanks for having me. So Afghanistan has taken up a lot of the news cycle lately.
[22] In the meantime, what's been going on at the border?
[23] Well, the crisis is still ongoing, and it hasn't gotten much better.
[24] Border crossings have increased every month since the president took office.
[25] In July, border authorities encountered a grand, total of 212 ,000 migrants, including 19 ,000 unaccompanied children.
[26] That's a 13 % increase from the 189 ,000 migrants' authorities encountered the previous month.
[27] So far this year, border agents have apprehended over a million border crossings.
[28] Wow.
[29] The last time border agents made this many stops was in 2006, but they didn't reach the one million mark until much later in the year.
[30] Over a million stops.
[31] That's pretty unbelievable.
[32] So how is the administration handling this?
[33] The administration still doesn't appear to have a coherent plan.
[34] Even the Washington Post editorial board criticized President Biden over the border earlier this month, calling on him to come up with a, quote, coherent strategy to handle the crisis.
[35] Also this month, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas was caught on leaked audio saying that, if our border is our first line of defense, we're going to lose and this is unsustainable.
[36] So even Biden administration officials are admitting privately at least that this is a huge problem.
[37] That's right.
[38] What about COVID concerns?
[39] Is the administration doing anything to mitigate the spread of COVID at the border?
[40] Not really.
[41] In fact, the administration is releasing thousands of COVID -positive migrants into U .S. communities.
[42] This month, the Texas border city of McAllen said that more than 7 ,000 migrants who tested positive for the virus have been released into the city since February.
[43] This includes more than 1 ,500 migrants in one week this month.
[44] Single adults and some families have been sent back over the border under tight.
[45] Article 42, which allows migrants recently in a country where a contagious disease was present to be expelled.
[46] But unaccompanied children and migrant families with young children are being processed and then release into the U .S. How are border authorities keeping up with processing so many people?
[47] Well, the administration has streamlined the way migrants are processed.
[48] Last month, the White House announced that it would speed up asylum claim processing, saying it wants a, quote, fair, orderly, and humane immigration system.
[49] The new policies allow asylum officers, officers to rule quickly on asylum claims, meaning migrants get to bypass the federal immigration courts, which are extremely backlogged.
[50] What's interesting is that the administration has not done the same for U .S. allies in Afghanistan, specifically interpreters and their families who are desperate to evacuate and escape the Taliban.
[51] Really?
[52] So people crossing the border illegally get the convenient process, but Afghan interpreters who risked their lives working with the U .S. don't.
[53] That's right.
[54] They still have to file for their special visas.
[55] That's often an extremely slow process.
[56] So look, when President Biden is finally done handling the crisis abroad in Afghanistan, he'll still have a domestic crisis at the southern border to deal with.
[57] Marade, thanks for the reporting.
[58] Anytime.
[59] Investigative reporter Marade McCartle.
[60] Coming up, a Canadian pastor faces jail time for violating COVID policies.
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[66] A Canadian pastor has gained international attention for telling state officials enforcing strict COVID orders to get out of his church.
[67] Soon, the pastor, Archer Polowski, could be sentenced to four years in jail.
[68] Here to tell us the details is Daily Wires Ben Johnson.
[69] Morning, Ben.
[70] Morning, Georgia.
[71] So catch us up.
[72] How did Polowski first get in the news?
[73] Sure.
[74] The pastor first made news in 2020 when police arrived at his church in Alberta, Canada to enforce the province's public health act.
[75] That restricted outdoor church services to 10 people due to COVID -19.
[76] He refused to comply.
[77] He's now in legal jeopardy for refusing to limit his church attendance.
[78] Of course, Pastor Polowski became most famous for ejecting police officers from his church's Easter services.
[79] Please get out.
[80] Get out of this property.
[81] Immediately get out.
[82] Get out.
[83] He said he objected to government officers bringing guns into the sanctuary.
[84] So they came armed.
[85] Right.
[86] Since then, Canadian authorities have arrested Pastor Polowski and his brother David for violating the limits on congregational attendance and for not observing social distancing requirements.
[87] Calgary police charged the brothers in May withholding an illegal church service end with, quote, requesting, inciting, or inviting others to attend church.
[88] Insiding others to attend a church.
[89] Yeah.
[90] A judge convicted the two in June, and Pastor Polowski could serve four years in prison.
[91] He says he feels singled out because the police did not apply the law equally to Alberta's Muslim community when it celebrated Ramadan.
[92] In that viral clip, Pastor Polowski likened police to Nazis and communists.
[93] It's a pretty visceral claim there.
[94] Right.
[95] that came from his family history.
[96] He was born in communist Poland.
[97] He immigrated to Greece in 1990, then to Canada five years later.
[98] Now the behaviors he's seeing have him worried that freedom is slipping away in Canada and in the U .S. He has a bit of a history with the Canadian police.
[99] Can you tell us about that?
[100] Absolutely.
[101] His clashes with the government go back more than a decade.
[102] The Daily Wires John Brown has reported extensively on his story.
[103] Pastor Polowski began preaching the gospel on the streets of Calgary and feeding the homeless, he says his church fed up to 150 ,000 people a year.
[104] The authorities repeatedly cited him and his parishioners for preaching and feeding the hungry without a government permit.
[105] They even confiscated his Bibles.
[106] In 2009, a provincial court judge overturned many of those infractions saying they bordered on an abuse of power.
[107] And just to clarify, what was he charged with?
[108] You have to have a permit to offer communal meals to the homeless in some jurisdictions in Canada, and he was cited for a noise complaint for reading the Bible out loud during a street festival.
[109] The same year, the Canadian version of the IRS stripped his non -denominational church of its tax -exempt status.
[110] They said he and other church board members held strong negative views of abortion, homosexuality, and divorce, and they spent more than 10 % of their time focusing on social issues.
[111] Now he wants people to hear that Western politicians are erasing religious liberty in the name of fighting COVID -19.
[112] Because in order to implement what they want, They have to eliminate the opposition.
[113] And opposition are small and medium -sized businesses, middle class, and clergy.
[114] Christians.
[115] Christians are their opposition.
[116] That's why they're doing what they're doing.
[117] He encouraged people to imitate nonviolent leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi.
[118] He said, as a father, as a patriot, as a lover of my country, Canada, I want to stand up and say, hey, I've seen this movie before.
[119] It does not end well.
[120] Wake up.
[121] He's not the only one giving that warning.
[122] No, he's not.
[123] Thanks for sharing the story, Ben.
[124] It's a pleasure.
[125] Daily Wires, Ben Johnson.
[126] Less than a day after Andrew Cuomo stepped down from his role as governor of New York, the International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences announced they were revoking the Emmy Award they gave him last year.
[127] Here to give us the details as Daily Wire Entertainment reporter Megan Basham.
[128] So, Megan, tell us about Cuomo's Emmy.
[129] What was it for?
[130] Well, you know, everyone will probably remember last spring.
[131] Cuomo started doing these daily press briefings where he would take a lot of questions from journalists about COVID.
[132] Right.
[133] Well, if you remember back then, Hollywood could not praise Cuomo enough.
[134] Just a few details of it.
[135] You had talk show hosts like Ellen DeGeneres and Stephen Colbert throwing around terms like Cuomosexual.
[136] Now, that was a joke that they were attracted to him because he handled the virus so well.
[137] Chelsea Handler said she wanted to be his first lady.
[138] Cher said she was in love with him.
[139] Well, then in November, the Emmys gave him.
[140] something called the Founders Award.
[141] Now, that's typically reserved for television professionals.
[142] Okay.
[143] So they gave it to Cuomo because of his, and I'm just going to quote this here, leadership during the COVID -19 pandemic and his masterful use of TV to inform and calm people around the world.
[144] So here was what president and CEO Bruce Paisner said then.
[145] He said, the governor's 111 daily briefings worked so well because he effectively created television shows with characters, plot lines, and stories.
[146] success and failure.
[147] People around the world tuned in to find out what was going on.
[148] So they gave him the award for creating a narrative.
[149] Yes, that's exactly what they did.
[150] And what's their reason for rescinding it?
[151] Well, they're saying it's because of the AG's finding that Cuomo sexually harassed these 11 women and then his resignation.
[152] But to me, this is the weird thing about that.
[153] So New York had one of the highest COVID death totals in the country.
[154] I know, for example, we at Morning Wire had a segment earlier this week, that another 12 ,000 deaths were just added to that.
[155] Right.
[156] So we know that Cuomo's office covered up the true number of deaths because they were worried that it would be used as a political weapon against him.
[157] So to me, if you're going to rescind an award for Cuomo's press conferences on COVID, that would seem like the most logical reason.
[158] There was no mention of that, though, from the Academy.
[159] They only talked about the allegations that he inappropriately touched these staffers and tried to kiss one.
[160] But on the flip side, the industry deciding to pull this award for sexual harassment carries some pretty awkward optics.
[161] Hollywood has done far less to people who committed quite a bit worse.
[162] To give you an example, in 2017 at the height of the Me Too movement, the Emmys revoked that same award from actor Kevin Spacey, and then, of course, the Oscars revoked Harvey Weinstein's membership.
[163] Yet Roman Polansky admitted to unlawful sexual intercourse with a 13 -year -old girl, and he's still a revered member.
[164] You take Bill Cosby, they kind of split the difference.
[165] He's still in the Hall of Fame.
[166] He still has his Emmys, but they did remove his name from the website.
[167] Okay.
[168] Yeah, so it's all very disjointed.
[169] And I'd say, really, it speaks more to their embarrassment than any kind of, say, new formal standard.
[170] So how has Hollywood reacted to Cuomo getting his Emmy pulled?
[171] Well, you know, for the most part, aside from a few of those known conservatives, it's been pretty quiet.
[172] except for Sex and the City actress Cynthia Nixit.
[173] Yeah, she played Miranda for those who don't remember their early 2000s television very well.
[174] She also famously ran against Cuomo for Governor of New York in 2018.
[175] Well, she tweeted quite the little zinger.
[176] She said, the difference between me and Andrew Cuomo, neither of us is governor, but I still have my Emmys.
[177] Oof.
[178] Right.
[179] We probably can't top that, so we'll leave it there.
[180] Yeah, I think that's a good call, John.
[181] Thanks for being here again, Megan.
[182] Always happy to be here.
[183] Thanks.
[184] That was Daily Wire Entertainment reporter, Megan Basham.
[185] Other stories we're tracking this week.
[186] The governor of Illinois announced new vaccine requirements in the state on Thursday.
[187] The Democratic governor said that effective September 5th, the vaccine will be required for P through 12 teachers and staff, higher education personnel, students in higher education, and health care workers in some settings.
[188] Those who don't get vaccinated will need to get tested for COVID at least once per week.
[189] And for a weekend sports update, Daily Wire Sports Reporter, Joe Morgan.
[190] College football has finally arrived, with week zero of the college football season starting today.
[191] There are five games on the slate, highlighted by Nebraska at Illinois, kicking off at 1 p .m. Eastern.
[192] In sports media news, ESPN NBA reporter Rachel Nichols will no longer be part of the network's NBA coverage, and her show, The Jump, has been canceled.
[193] The news comes close to two months after a private conversation was inadvertently recorded in which Nichols has heard complaining that she lost a job due to ESPN's quote, crappy long -time record on diversity.
[194] Her colleague, Maria Taylor, who is black, was given a position over her.
[195] 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.
[196] That's all the time we've got this morning.
[197] Thanks for waking up with us.
[198] We'll be back Monday with the news you need to know.
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