Morning Wire - Activists Target Twitter | 5.6.22

Episode Date: May 6, 2022

Major companies pressured to defund Twitter, the political response to the leaked Supreme Court ruling, and Harvard pledges to pay millions to make up for its legacy of slavery. Get the facts first on Morning Wire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Some of the nation's biggest brands are being pressured by activist groups, demanding they pull their ads from Twitter over Elon Musk's plans to promote free speech. Who's behind the pressure campaign? And how are the companies responding? I'm John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's Friday, May 6th, and this is Morning Wire. Fences are going up around the Supreme Court, while the political responses to the leaked draft ruling striking down Roe v. Wade have escalated.

We take a look at the fallout. And Harvard University pledges $100 million to make up for the role the university played in slavery. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know. This show is sponsored by Epic Will. Do you have a Will? You might be shocked to learn how many people don't. Creating a will is fundamental to protecting yourself and your family. Because if something happens to you and your spouse, the state will decide what happens to your kids and your assets.

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So, Megan, this campaign seems to be a part of a trend we've discussed before on this show, and that's companies being pressured to get involved in politics. Yeah, this does seem like a perfect example of that. So what you had here was about two dozen activist groups sending a letter to major corporations arguing that Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter is a threat to public safety. Those were their words. Now, those groups included Glad, Nayroll, Media Matters, Black Lives Matter, Friends of the Earth, so really just the gamut of high-profile organizations and causes on the political left. Now, this letter said if Musk is able to finalize his purchase of the platform,

his plans to ease content moderation rules will, quoting here, toxify our information ecosystem. The letter went on to claim that under the guise of free speech, his vision will silence and endanger marginalized communities. Okay. So it then asked the companies to stop advertising on the site if Musk attempts to allow public figures who have been banned back on the platform. So think of someone like former President Trump. And it warned that if these companies don't hold Musk to account, that's their words,

their brands risk association with a platform that amplifies hate extremism, health misinformation and conspiracy theorists. Now, while Musk has said that he's not interested in buying Twitter for economic reasons, you have to assume he does not want to see a mass exodus of big advertisers. Ads account for roughly 90% of the platform's revenues, and those are heavily weighted towards those major brands. So this really does look like an attempt to intimidate him into changing his planned policies. Yeah, it sure does.

Have any of these companies responded? Not that I've seen, and I've been looking pretty closely, and it's a bit surprising because this kind of pressure has had a lot of success in the past. Now, the reason we're hearing nothing could be because Musk hasn't completed the purchase yet and hasn't had the chance to implement any policies. But in the past, you might have at least expected some comments from C-suite executives responding to the letter. We're not seeing it here. Now, could be because of something like Disney, which has become a cautionary tale. Or it could also be because Musk is giving no hint of being intimidated himself. He's really living up to his maverick reputation out there. His response to this

story was to ask, where else, on Twitter, who is funding this campaign? And he got an answer, correct? He did. He did indeed. And it was a very interesting answer. So the Guardian pretty quickly dug up that most of the nonprofits behind this letter received funding from what news outlet called Dark Money Groups. So by that they meant George Soros, charities funded by former Clinton and Obama staffers, well-known Democrat donors, and some big labor unions. And then this one is pretty interesting. Also, European governments like Denmark, Germany, Sweden, and the Netherlands, all nations that have much stricter speech laws than the United States, you kind of have to note. So what is the latest on when Musk will take over? At that point,

we'll get to actually see how serious he is about these changes. Well, we don't have a firm date for when the deal will close yet, but what we do know is that Musk has secured another $7 billion from investors that he reportedly hand-picked. And we're hearing that he will be the new temporary CEO of the platform once he completes the purchase. So I'm going to guess that will mean the end of current CEO Parag Agraw-Agrawal's tenure with the company. Well, one thing you can say for Musk News, it's never dull.

No, it isn't. Thanks, Megan. Anytime. That was Daily Wire Culture Reporter, Megan Basham. Coming up, the political response to the Supreme Court leak. You can get this show and all of the content you love, wherever you are, all on the Daily Wire app. Even if you're not a Daily Wire member, you'll be first to know what's trending with mobile notifications for the latest news. And you'll get content from all your favorite Daily Wire shows.

Download the Daily Wire show. wire app and keep up with the facts no matter where your day takes you. Days after leaked documents revealed that the Supreme Court is poised to overturn Roe v. Wade, Democrats have announced their intentions of making abortion the law of the land before it's repealed. Here with the latest political fallout and how the White House has responded is Daily Wire senior editor Cabot Phillips. So Cabot, tell us first about the legislative effort from Democrats in response to this potential ruling. Yeah, conservatives almost universally celebrated the news of the ruling, calling it a victory for human rights.

They say that states should have had the power all along to decide their own laws on abortion and that this is simply writing a wrong and reversing a ruling that they felt was unconstitutional to begin with. But obviously, pro-abortion rights members of the Democrat Party feel differently. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer held a press conference this week, calling the decision a despicable attack on women's rights before announcing the Democrat Party's intention to make abortion legal nationwide, regardless of state law. It's our intention in the Senate to hold.

the vote on legislation to codify the right to an abortion in law very soon, and they won't stop there, this right-wing retrograde court put in by our Republican Senate, many other rights are at risk. President Biden also responded Wednesday, offering his support to that idea of codifying abortion access, but it's unlikely at this point that the vote would pass in the Senate because Democrats, Joe Manchin and Bob Casey oppose it. In D.C., from the moment the news came out, there were a series of intense protests outside the Supreme Court. We saw footage showing pro-life demonstrators shoved and harassed,

while other groups in support of Roe called for protesters to demonstrate outside the homes of conservative justices. And on Wednesday, the Capitol Police actually responded by erecting a massive security fence around the premises of the court. So no surprise, but things are definitely getting contentious in D.C. Now, you touched a bit on President Biden. How has the White House responded this week? Well, President Biden first addressed the reported ruling on Tuesday, denouncing it as a radical attack on women's rights. and a, quote, fundamental shift in American jurisprudence. But he went to step further the next day

and implied that if states are granted the right to make their own laws on things like abortion, it could, in his words, set a dangerous president. He also caused quite a stir by calling people who supported the ruling, in his words, the MAGA crowd, the most extreme political organization in American history. Listen. What happens if you have a state changes the law

saying that children who are LGBTQ can't be included classrooms with other children? Is that legit under the way the decision is written? What are the next things that are going to be attacked? Because this mega crowd is really the most extreme political organization that's existed in American history. Now, more broadly, what's been the general reaction among voters? Yeah, if you ask people the question, do you support overturning Roe v. Wade? The majority of Americans in most polls do say that Roe should stand. For example, in one Fox News poll this week, 63% of Americans supported keeping it in place.

And Democrats have really pushed that message to say the Supreme Court is reversing the will of the people. But it's interesting, if you look at public opinion on abortion itself, the majority of Americans actually support more conservative views on abortion in practice and in law. For example, that same Fox poll found that 54% support an abortion ban after 15 weeks with just 41% of Americans supporting abortion after that point. And then when asked about a ban on abortion after six weeks, which is similar to what we've seen in Texas with that pro-life law that garnered quite a bit of reaction, Americans still support a ban there by a measure of 50 to 46.

So there actually appears to be a good bit of public support for the types of abortion laws that most Republican states would likely pass if Roe is in fact overturned. Now one final question. Back to the leak. Do we have any new details on how that could have happened? Yeah, Chief Justice Roberts announced that he'd launched an investigation into how it got. out, and right now that investigation will fall on the court's Marshall, who's basically their chief security officer. Initially, some had thought the FBI might get involved, but officials with the Justice Department say the leak did not constitute a federal crime. So they'll be staying out of it for the time being.

But obviously, that could change in the future, but bottom line, they want to get to the bottom of this. Right. And definitely a lot of Americans want to find out, too. Cabot, thanks for reporting. Anytime. That's Daily Wire senior editor, Cabot Phillips. Harvard released a report last week about the school's

legacy of slavery and racism, as well as a pledge to spend $100 million to fund programs to address past wrongs. Here to discuss the findings, as well as Harvard's plans moving forward, is Daily Wire's Charlotte Pence Bond. So Charlotte, Harvard wants to spend $100 million on addressing historical wrongs. How was that decided? This has actually been in the works for a while. Harvard President Larry Backout originally began this initiative back in 2019, and on April 26, he announced the findings as well as some sweeping recommendations. Veritas is more than our motto. It's our reason for being. The truth is that slavery played a significant part in our institutional history. The truth is that the legacy of slavery continues to influence

the world in the form of disparities in education, health, wealth, income, social mobility, and almost any other metric we might use to measure. equality. The report found that between 1636 when the school was founded to 1783, which is when slavery ended in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, leaders and workers at the school enslaved over 70 people, although it added that the number is almost certainly an undercount. The report also included the names of some of the slaves, as well as the people who enslaved them. It said the university profited from slavery and had financial connections to it in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries through its donors. This includes donors who got rich through the slave trade, as well as connections to

plantations in the South. It also pointed out how the remains of thousands of people are in Harvard's museum collections, and a lot of them are believed to be from indigenous people, with at least 15 of them from Africa that could have been enslaved. The report recommended that the school engaged with descendant communities and honor enslaved people through memorialization, research, curricula, and knowledge dissemination. They also said the school should create partnerships with black colleges and universities. Now, a term we've heard before from politicians and activists is reparations.

Is Harvard referring to this $100 million as reparations? The committee is calling it reparative, but didn't actually call for direct payments to slave descendants. But they did recommend that Harvard should try to find the direct descendants of slaves associated with the school. They also said the responses to the report would be voluntary and not done because of a legal requirement.

As for legally mandated reparations, the idea has circulated for a while, but it's had a hard time getting off the ground. A bill to create a commission to study and develop reparation proposals for African Americans was introduced in the House last year. It was first introduced in the 80s. On various occasions, initiatives geared towards helping the black community have been referred to as reparations, including programs like affirmative action. But direct payments to slave descendants based purely on genealogy has not really been tried on a large. scale. It's worth pointing out this isn't Harvard's only scandal with racist allegations. Remember, Harvard is still embroiled in a lawsuit that will soon appear before the Supreme Court where they're being accused of discriminating against Asian Americans in admissions.

In the 1920s, Harvard College also had an admissions policy limiting the number of Jews. Right. And Harvard is also hundreds of years old, so inevitably there's going to be all kinds of history. Charlotte, thanks for bringing us this story. Anytime. That's Daily Wire's Charlotte Pence Bond. Thanks so much for listening to Morning Wire. We created this show to bring more balance to the national conversation. If you love our show and you stand with our mission,

consider subscribing, leaving us a five-star rating, and most importantly, sharing our podcast with a friend. That's all the time we've got this morning. Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back tomorrow with the news you need to know.