Morning Wire XX
[0] New York's legalization of marijuana promised hundreds of millions in tax revenues, but their high hopes are falling far short of their projected goal.
[1] We break down why critics say New York's woke agenda reduced the program to Ash.
[2] I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire Editor -in -Chief John Bickley.
[3] It's June 24th, and this is a Saturday edition of Morning Wire.
[4] Megan Markle and Spotify have announced that they'll be parting ways ending a multi -year, multi -million dollar podcast deal.
[5] People should expect the real me in this and probably the me that they've never gotten to know.
[6] What sunk the Duchess of Sussex?
[7] And the Supreme Court has ruled on who can adopt Native American children, settling a tug of war between native and non -native families.
[8] So this is a case, I think, that pits individual rights of children against the rights of the tribes.
[9] Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire.
[10] Stay tuned.
[11] We have the news you need to know.
[12] New York State is not saying the windfall that it had hoped for what it legalized recreational sales of marijuana in December of last year.
[13] The Empire State is not even projected to raise a predicted $56 million in taxes this year, as illegal sales continue to flourish.
[14] Here to discuss is Daily Wire contributor David Marcus.
[15] What's going on here?
[16] Selling drugs is generally known as a pretty profitable business.
[17] What exactly is New York getting wrong?
[18] Yeah, morning.
[19] It certainly is, and the answer is really everything.
[20] The huge mistake was basically decriminalizing the sale of weed before setting up the licensing system that allowed just a handful of stores to open in December.
[21] In the meantime, thousands of stores, many of which are what in New York City are called bodegas, just started selling wheat, right?
[22] New Yorkers got used to it, and none of that money is taxed.
[23] Now the state is in a position where it has to crack down on these unlicensed sellers when one of the biggest reasons for legalization was to keep police from arresting people for selling marijuana.
[24] The whole thing just went up in smoke, so to speak.
[25] I see what you did there.
[26] How did this happen?
[27] Other states have managed this successfully.
[28] Why are there so few licensed cannabis shops in New York?
[29] Yeah, this is where critics point to what they call the woke element of New York's legal marijuana regime.
[30] The state decided that licenses should only go to people who had previously been convicted on marijuana charges as a kind of reparations for those arrest.
[31] So instead of a straightforward regulatory scheme where anyone could invest in a store, it became a nightmare of applications and decided who had been oppressed enough to qualify.
[32] Ultimately, after more than a year, only about a dozen legal shops were able to open.
[33] All right, so sort of DEI run amok here.
[34] How does the lackluster revenue in New York compare to states that have more successfully regulated retail marijuana sales?
[35] Oh, it's not close.
[36] I mean, this should be a money printing machine.
[37] California raised almost 400 million last year, Illinois, which is closer in size to New York, about 216 million.
[38] So, I mean, 50 million, if they even get there.
[39] That's a joke.
[40] This is like a state losing money on the lottery.
[41] It's almost inconceivable.
[42] And to add insult to injury, New York State is still recovering from the economic disaster that was the COVID lockdowns.
[43] A few extra $100 million in Albany's coffers would go a long way, but apparently that is not to be.
[44] Aside from the fiscal shortfall, has the failure of the state to scale up a legal retail system contributed to quality of life issues that nag the state, especially in New York City?
[45] Absolutely.
[46] Now, I'll tell you a story.
[47] When I was covering the governor's race last fall, Lee Zeldon had an event in Union Square.
[48] He's there flanked by cops, the media, and literally 20 feet behind him was a guy with a folding table selling loose joints.
[49] It's like the wallpaper.
[50] It's just there all around you.
[51] And obviously, this is exactly what legalization was meant to do away with, along with criminal gangs who are still very much in control of this still very illegal weed industry in New York.
[52] I mean, among other things, this is one of the last big moneymakers for the New York City Mafia.
[53] Can this be fixed or is the die cast?
[54] Could a new regulatory regime be put up that can make this work for the state?
[55] Maybe.
[56] I mean, in some sense, they're just starting from scratch, since the vast, vast majority of marijuana sales are still illegal.
[57] Look, the only way to change this is to make it easier, much easier, for individuals or companies to set up shop, even if that means that allegedly historically marginalized people are not centered in the policy, as the left would say.
[58] It just has to be treated like a normal business.
[59] And thus far, that certainly has not been the case.
[60] We want a deeply progressive state like New York.
[61] It's hard to see that happening.
[62] Dave, thanks for joining us.
[63] Thanks for having me. Last week, Spotify and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex announced that they were.
[64] mutually parting ways.
[65] New information is now emerging on why the $20 million deal ended early.
[66] Daily Wire Culture reporter Megan Basham joins us now to give us the inside scoop on Harry and Megan and what this could tell us about the podcasting industry.
[67] So, Megan, this was supposed to be a multi -year deal.
[68] It was announced to huge fanfare back in 2020.
[69] What happened?
[70] Yeah, that is the $20 million question.
[71] So basically, this just looks like an issue of Harry and Megan not providing the content that Spotify thought it was buying.
[72] So they signed this deal in late 2020 and at the time the word was that the first full Archwell audio release, that's the name of their production company, that it would be in 2021.
[73] Well, that never happened.
[74] And during that time, all they produced was this half hour, pretty star -studded holiday special.
[75] So then the word was that Spotify was going to hire a team to help the Sussexes create these podcasts.
[76] Then in late summer of 2022, they did released 12 episodes of Megan's interview style program archetypes, where she would have celebrity guests explore the, quote, labels that try to hold women back.
[77] Paris Hilton was on one of those, breaking down the word bimbo, for example.
[78] Now, initially, it debuted at number one on the podcast charts, and Markle did win a People's Choice Award for it.
[79] But apparently the internal numbers Spotify was seeing weren't especially strong over the length of the series, and then adding a little bit more controversy to this.
[80] The industry publication Pod News published a report on Monday, claiming that Markle didn't actually interview all of her guests.
[81] For some of those episodes, she reportedly had her staff sit in for her, and then she would independently record her questions later, and they would be dubbed in.
[82] Bill Simmons is the head of podcast innovation and monetization at Spotify, and he also has his own podcast.
[83] Well, this was what he said last Friday about the Duke and Duchess.
[84] I'm going to pose this question to you.
[85] You're, you're, do a lot of business deals, a lot of negotiations.
[86] I wish I'd been involved in the Megan and Harry leave Spotify negotiation.
[87] The fifters.
[88] That's the podcast we should have launched with them.
[89] I got to get drunk one night and tell the story of the Zoom I had with Harry to try to help him with a podcast idea.
[90] It's one of my best stories.
[91] Now, Simmons didn't tell any more of that story, but he did later reiterate his view that they were grifters.
[92] And essentially people close to the situation have been telling various news outlets that Harry and Megan likely didn't receive their full payout because they failed to meet their productivity benchmarks.
[93] Now, even if they had produced more content, was it ever realistic to think that it would be worth $20 million just from like a business perspective?
[94] You know, that is a very good question because while there's certainly a gossipy element to this story, it does also point to something that's a little more significant happening in the industry.
[95] To your point, it's that much like Netflix and streamers, Spotify really does seem to have spent too much money on content deals too fast, and now it is having to tighten its belt.
[96] So the company recently laid off about 6 % of its workforce, and a lot of those came from the very podcasting companies and content producers that Spotify spent more than a billion buying up over the last few years.
[97] And really, just like with streaming, the challenge has been how do they monetize all of that podcast content?
[98] During a conference call with financial analysts earlier this year, Spotify chief executive, Daniel Eck, admitted that the company had gone on too much of a spending spree.
[99] He told investors that they were right to call the company out for, quote, overpaying and over -investing.
[100] And he said that Spotify is going to have to be more cautious in how it invests in future content deals.
[101] As for Markle, her team says she is planning to go forward with archetypes on another platform.
[102] All right.
[103] Well, Megan, you know I'm excited to tune in.
[104] All right, Megan, thanks for reporting.
[105] Anytime.
[106] The Supreme Court last week upheld a controversial adoption law that requires states to treat Native American children differently from children of other ethnicities.
[107] Several non -native families are challenging the law.
[108] Daily Wire investigative reporter, Marade Allardy, is here with the details for us.
[109] So Marade, first off, tell us about this law.
[110] Hi, Georgia.
[111] Sure.
[112] So the Supreme Court upheld a law called the 1978 Indian child.
[113] Child Welfare Act.
[114] This law puts Native American families at the front of the line when it comes to adopting Native children.
[115] We spoke to conservative commentator Naomi Schaefer Riley about the circumstances that brought about this law to begin with.
[116] Here's what she had to say.
[117] There was a sense that we were sort of seeing conditions in Indian communities and taking children away from their families because we were so horrified by the conditions that they were living in.
[118] But not that there was anything wrong with the families or the way that they were trying to parent their children.
[119] And many of these kids ended up in Indian boarding schools.
[120] So the purpose of the law was to prevent unnecessary separation of native families and to preserve Native American culture, but critics argue it doesn't actually work in the interest of the child.
[121] For example, the law allows tribal leaders to remove a child who has been living with a caring non -native family and place the child with a native family even if the native family is of a different tribe than the child.
[122] Even the wishes of the child's biological parents can be overridden if they want their child with a specific family that happens to be of another race.
[123] Several couples challenged that law.
[124] Jennifer and Chad Brachene, a white Christian couple from Texas, were one of those couples.
[125] They had fostered a nine -month -old boy and tried to adopt him after a year, which the boy's parents supported.
[126] But his parents' tribes, the Navajo and Cherokee tribes, both opposed the adoption, so the child was ordered to be removed from his foster family and placed with an unrelated native family.
[127] The Brachines filed an emergency stay to keep their son, and ultimately the tribes back down in 2018.
[128] But the controversy continued after the boy's birth mother gave birth to his half -sister and placed her up for adoption as well.
[129] The Brackeens argued that the girl should be kept with her brother, while the Navajo tried to place her with a distant native relative.
[130] The Supreme Court upheld the law in a seven -to -two decision last week with justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissenting.
[131] So this law only applies to children of Native American descent, correct?
[132] That's right.
[133] And Riley did address that part of the issue.
[134] Here's what she had to say.
[135] This law has been challenged a couple of times now, up to the Supreme Court.
[136] And one of the reasons for that is because it treats Indian children differently from other American children.
[137] Indian children are American citizens, just like all Indians are.
[138] And so the question is, could you treat them differently based on their ethnicity or their race?
[139] Now, there are some left -wing groups that are very invested in this case.
[140] why is that?
[141] Why is there so much progressive interest around this?
[142] Well, according to Riley, the progressive activists claim to represent Native American tribal interests because, as I mentioned, they believe the law will prevent Native children from being separated from their culture, but that sometimes comes at the expense of the children.
[143] Here's Riley again.
[144] This is for children who are not even living on a reservation, who may not have ever set foot on a reservation who may have one 128th of their ancestry may be Indian.
[145] And so the tribe is sort of trying to expand its power at the expense of the individual rights and I think the safety of these children.
[146] And so when you want to understand kind of the politics of this, the left -wing groups are are often siding with the racial and ethnic interest groups in our country over the rights of individuals who may or may not feel that they are represented by that leadership.
[147] Riley added that the abuse standard for removing non -Native American children from their homes is much lower.
[148] I think once a state sort of establishes a set of standards, like if we say we really need to like be careful about removing that child because they're Indian.
[149] I mean, this has resulted in dozens, not hundreds of cases of more abuse.
[150] neglect on Indian children and fatalities, frankly, because we have decided these kids need to be left in these homes at all costs.
[151] There is a grand kind of consensus among a lot of social workers and family court judges and lawyers out there that transracial adoption is harmful to kids, and it is essentially better to keep them in the foster care system than having them be adopted by a white family.
[152] The evidence does not support this.
[153] When you compare apples to apples, what you find is that there is nothing about transracial adoption that is more traumatic than same race adoption.
[154] Overall, we should expect more challenges, especially since the Supreme Court's ruling did not answer the question of whether the law discriminates against non -native families based on race.
[155] All right.
[156] Well, Maire, thanks so much for reporting.
[157] Thanks, Georgia.
[158] That's all the time we've got this morning.
[159] Thanks for waking up with us.
[160] We'll be back this afternoon with an extra edition of Morning Wire.