Morning Wire - Biden-Abbott Border Battle & Navarro Sentenced | Afternoon Update | 1.25.24

Episode Date: January 25, 2024

Developing stories you need to know just in time for your drive home. Get the facts first on Morning Wire. Good Ranchers: FREE chicken for a Year + $20 off your order! Use promo code WIRE at checkout. https://www.goodranchers.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by Good Ranchers. Hurry over to good ranchers.com. Use our code wire to enjoy free chicken in 2024, plus an additional $20 off your first order. Good Ranchers, American Meat delivered. I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief John Bickley. It's Thursday, January 25th, and this is your Morning Wire afternoon update. Following a 5-4 Supreme Court ruling earlier this week that allowed federal authorities to cut through razor wire along the Texas border, The Lone Star State is standing their ground.

Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers are siding with Texas and putting their support behind Governor Greg Abbott. Daily Wire reporter Spencer Lindquist is on the ground in Eagle Pass, where all of this is coming to a head. I'm here on the ground, Shelby Park in Eagle Pass, Texas. Now it appears to be relatively calm here on the ground. National Guardsmen are stationed at the entrances of the park, while others are fortifying barriers on the river, most notably razor wire and shipping containers. Border Patrol agents are not allowed in the... the park, with the exception of federal agents who are allowed to load boats from the area to patrol the

river. The federal government has given the National Guard a deadline of Friday to allow them back into the park, though it isn't clear what will happen if the National Guard does not meet that request. A growing number of Republican governors have come out in support of Governor Greg Abbott, including Ron DeSantis of Florida, Glenn Yonkin of Virginia, Brian Kemp of Georgia, and Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma. Former President Donald Trump will remain on the ballot in Maine for now, after the state's highest court declined to take up an appeal today from Democratic Secretary of State Schena Bellows. After Bellows made the decision to remove the former president from the pine tree state's ballot, the Superior Court put the decision on hold until after the U.S. Supreme Court weighs in.

The U.S. Supreme Court will begin hearing arguments on a similar case in Colorado on February 8th, less than a month before Maine holds its primary on March 5th. The former president took the stand for nearly five minutes today during EG. Carroll's defamation case against him. During that time, Trump called Carroll's accusation false, a comment the judge had stricken from the record. U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan said, quote, there was a trial last year regarding the truth or falsity to Ms. Carroll's claim that Mr. Trump sexually assaulted her. The judge went on to tell the former president, quote, there are no do-overs. Trump's defense rested after the brief testimony in which he reaffirmed

his assertion that Carol's claims were 100 percent a hoax. Closing arguments are scheduled for Friday morning. Former Trump White House advisor Peter Navarro has been sentenced to four months in prison for criminal contempt of Congress. Daily Wire senior editor Cabot Phillips reports. Federal prosecutor said today that Navarro, quote, thumbed his nose at the January 6th committee, which was investigating the events surrounding the U.S. Capitol riots. The ruling came after Navarro was convicted in September on two counts for refusing to testify and provide documents to a House select committee. The charge carries a mandatory minimum sentence of one month in prison.

Federal prosecutors originally sought six months for Navarro, saying he, quote, like the rioters at the Capitol, put politics, not country first, and stonewalled Congress's investigation. In addition to the four-month prison sentence, Navarro has also been ordered to pay a $9,500 fine. Alabama will attempt to execute an inmate tonight using a never-before-used method, nitrogen gas, though the Supreme Court could still bring the execution to a crime. a halt. The state claims the method will be humane, but critics call it cruel and experimental. 58-year-old Kenneth Eugene Smith was convicted in 1988 in the murder for higher slang of Elizabeth

Senate. Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said Wednesday night that he believes the courts will allow the execution to proceed. Smith's 2022 lethal injection was called off last minute because authorities couldn't establish IV access. Meanwhile, anesthesiologists warned the calculations with this execution method may not be complete. If a little bit of nitrogen gas gets out because the mask fit is not perfect, then the time to death will be, of course, prolonged. And so may the suffering. And so whether or not that would be enough nitrogen in the room to actually have an effect on people,

it's not clear. Attorneys representing Smith asked the Supreme Court to halt today's execution to allow time for a review of claims that the new method violates the Constitution ban on cruel and unusual punishment. A new report has found that the U.S. military has seen better days as far as readiness and strength, putting the U.S. at risk of not being able to defend American national interests. Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce reports. The report specifically names foes such as China, Russia, and Iran as potential future threats.

The Heritage Foundation's annual index of military strength gave the U.S. military a weak rating. That comes after last year's index gave the same assessment. dropping down from marginal in 2022. It ranked all branches of the military, but overall reached the conclusion that the U.S. is at significant risk of not being able to meet the demands of a single major conflict while also attending to various presence and engagement activities. The Ohio Senate joined the state House's effort to override Republican Governor Mike DeWine's veto of House Bill 68. With 23 years and 9 days, the bill having received the required constitutional majority passes withstanding the objections of the governor.

The bill which the Senate voted on Wednesday bans transgender medical procedures and treatments for minors and bars biological males from participating in girls' school sports. The move makes Ohio the 22nd state to pass such legislation, which is set to take effect in 90 days. And the economy grew much more rapidly than many forecasters expected over the last three months of 2023, dodging the rest of the rest of the rest. recession that many thought was inevitable. According to the Commerce Department, both GDP and inflation had positive gains. Gross domestic product, which measures goods and services that are

produced, increased by 3.3%. The Wall Street consensus had estimated GDP gains of 2%. In addition to the better than expected GDP move, there was also some progress on inflation. Core prices for personal consumption expenditures rose 2% for that period. All right, those are your drive home updates this afternoon. To learn more about these stories, go to dailywire.com and for more in-depth discussion of the biggest stories of the day, listen to our latest full episode of Morning Wire every morning.