Wednesday | October 6th, 2021
It’s Wednesday, October 6th, and this is your Morning Wire. Listen to the full podcast here.
1) FBI To Investigate School Board Meetings
The Topline: On Monday, Attorney General Merrick Garland ordered the FBI to investigate an alleged “increase in harassment, intimidation and threats of violence” against school board members and teachers.
Matthew Hatcher/Stringer/Getty Images
Background
Over the summer, a surge of parents attended school board meetings to argue against mask mandates and controversial content in classrooms, including Left-wing racial ideology and pornographic content.
Biden Administration
A few days ago, the National School Boards Association (NSBA) demanded the Biden administration get involved in investigating those who’d attended some of the more rowdy school board meetings, claiming there had been a rise in “malice, violence, and threats,” which they said could constitute “a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.”
The NSBA cited over 20 incidents as examples, though all but one of them were examples of parents becoming loud and angry without actual threats or intimidation.
Reactions
Many on the Left, including those who support mask mandates and political content with elements of critical race theory in classrooms are applauding the move, but those on the other side are saying this is the Biden administration attempting to control dissent.
What Now?
The FBI is likely going to empower local officials to crack down on dissenting parents and pursue investigations.
Yana Paskova/Stringer/Getty Images
2) Judge Considers Texas Abortion Lawsuit
The Topline: The Justice Department argued against a new abortion measure on Friday, after they sued the state of Texas over its recent pro-life law.
The Lawsuit
The federal government essentially sued the state of Texas, saying they’d acted unconstitutionally by enacting a law banning abortion before viability.
The lawsuit argued the new law “conflicts with federal law” by “purporting to prohibit federal agencies” from carrying out their responsibilities.
The Law: The new Texas “heartbeat law” effectively outlaws abortion once fetal cardiac activity can be detected, which is typically around six weeks of pregnancy. It also allows private citizens to sue abortion providers and people who “aid and abet” illegal procedures.
The Hearing
On Friday, Judge Robert Pitman of a U.S. District Court in Texas heard arguments from lawyers from the state and from the Justice Department regarding the lawsuit.
The judge reportedly questioned the Justice Department on the details of whether it’s able to sue a state directly in order to stop one of its laws, but he also called the “private cause of action,” “very unusual.”
The state’s lawyer defended the law, saying it’s “not some kind of vigilante scheme” and “uses the normal and lawful process of justice in Texas.”
The lawyer from the federal government claimed “women have been left desperate, forced under sometimes harrowing circumstances to get out of Texas, if they even can.”
Capitol Hill
The House of Representatives narrowly passed The Women’s Health Protection Act last month with a vote of 218 to 211. The measure would eliminate the ability of states to regulate abortion before fetal viability and take away many restrictions already in place. It could also streamline access to late-term abortion by allowing a health care provider to approve the procedure.
Matt McClain-Pool/Pool/Getty Images
3) Facebook Whistleblower Revealed To Be Political
The Topline: On Tuesday, former Facebook employee Frances Haugen testified to the Senate, saying she thinks the company has allowed people to post too many “hateful and polarizing messages.”
Quote Of The Day: “Yesterday, we saw Facebook get taken off the internet. I don’t know why it went down, but I know that for more than five hours, Facebook wasn’t used to deepen divides, destabilize democracies, and make young girls and women feel bad about their bodies.”
– Frances Haugen, former Facebook employee
Haugen’s Claims
Haugen claimed Facebook isn’t censoring enough, and based on her insider knowledge, she said Facebook only censors around 3% of problematic content.
She claimed the reason the company is not censoring more people is because it puts “profits before people.” She said she became concerned about this when she saw a friend become “radicalized” to the far-Right after seeing “misinformation” online.
Haugen
Haugen accused previous employers of various forms of bias and failure to live up to “woke” ideals, as well.
When she worked at Pinterest, she added a feature allowing users to search by skin color, and at another employer, she steered the company towards what she called “inclusion.”
In 2015, she said Google was not inclusive enough of women, claiming “the last team I was on at Google, it had a transsexual Eng[ineering] director, and as a result we had more transsexual women than cis women on our team.”
She’s given at least 20 campaign contributions, all of them to Democrats, including to Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-NY) and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
Political Side
Haugen is working with a Democratic PR firm called Bryson Gillette, where Jen Psaki worked until she became President Joe Biden’s press secretary. One of the company’s other clients is a nonprofit seeking to regulate Facebook into censoring more political content.
Aleksandr Zubkov/Getty Images
Other Stories We’re Tracking
Hospital Firings
Despite existing dire staffing shortages, the healthcare industry continues to conduct mass firings, as major hospitals terminate employees who don’t comply with their new COVID-19 vaccine mandates. New York’s largest hospital system, Northwell Health, announced Monday it fired 1,400 employees. Northwell defended the move, saying the mass firing was necessary in order to “enable all our facilities to remain open and fully operational.”
Hollywood Strike
On Monday 98% of the members of one of Hollywood’s largest labor unions, IATSE, voted to authorize a strike if necessary. The union is pushing for higher wages on streaming projects and for shorter production hours.
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