Morning Wire - British Woman Fights for Life & Marxist Librarian | 9.16.23

Episode Date: September 16, 2023

A woman in Britain pleads for health care, several states part with the American Library association, and Chicago teacher’s union boss sends her child to private school. Get the facts first with Morning Wire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A young woman in the UK is pleading with the country's national health service to be given life-pronging care. But a judge is denying her right to make her own medical decisions. I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief John Bickley. It's September 16th, and this is your Saturday edition of Morning Wire. Several states are cutting ties with the nation's oldest and most influential public library organization, citing its leadership's activist agenda. And accusations of hypocrisy and racism erupt in Chicago amid a scandal involving a powerful teachers' unions' efforts to block school choice. So the real scandal, Abby, is why in 2023, black families in Chicago and across this

country have to deal with such severe inequities and such high stakes. I totally agree that that is the scandal, but I also think that what you just described is choice. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know. A 19-year-old woman has been denied the right to make her own medical decisions after disagreeing with her doctors from the UK's National Health Service.

The teen is currently pleading to stay alive and fight her disease while the NHS is moving to end her care. Here to discuss this controversial case is Daily Wire reporter Amanda Presta Giacomo. Hey Amanda. Good morning, John. So what exactly is going on with this case? What's this teen sick with? And how did we get to this point exactly?

So this young woman who legally we can only identify as ST, she has an extremely rare mitochondrial disease. And this causes chronic muscle weakness, the loss of hearing, and damage to the kidneys. Currently, ST is dependent on regular dialysis, a feeding tube, and other intensive care. But notably, the teen's mental capacity is not affected by her disease. And that's really vital to this case. Okay. ST has already defied her doctor's odds and has survived well past their death predictions,

and she wants to continue to fight for her life and potentially seek out experimental treatment in either Canada or the U.S. Both countries have offered her this option. Her doctors, though, tell her no. They say she has no chance at survival. She's in the process of dying in its best course to take her off life-saving care and let her die. They argue anything else would cause more harm than good. Okay, so she wants to continue to fight for her life, but her doctors are telling her no. How did we go from this to the courts getting involved? Well, this is the NHS we're talking about. It's a single-payer health care system wherein care is rationed, and that is part of the story here.

Basically, an NHS trust was frustrated with ST not taking NHS medical advice. So they took this case to court and successfully argued before a judge that the teen was delusional for not agreeing with her doctors. And the judge declared ST incapable of making her own decisions. Here's what the judge wrote in her decision, and this is a direct quote. ST has enabled to make a decision for herself in relation to her future medical treatment, including the proposed move to palliative care, because she does not believe the information that has been given by her doctors. Keep in mind, two psychologists have determined that ST is in control of her mental faculties and can make these vital decisions for herself. The judge actually read

both of their reports. All right. So the judge is definitely aware of the reports read them in the ruling. Yeah, exactly. And she noted them in her judgment, but decided against them. If you read this whole judgment, it's pretty clear this judge is saying as she is incapable of making her own medical decisions because within this young woman's thought process, she's not agreeing with her doctors. She's not trusting the experts. Okay, so not trusting the experts, not trusting the doctors is their rationale for defining her as not capable of making her own medical decisions. Exactly. So what is the status right now with this girl, ST?

So the judgment handed over decisions about her medical care to the Court of Protection. It's pretty much out of ST's hands right now. Additionally, per this Court of Protection, ST is not allowed to reveal her name, as we've noted. She's not allowed to reveal the names of her doctors or where she's being hospitalized. She recently told the Daily Mail that these conditions, which are supposedly implemented to protect her. They're making it impossible for ST to fundraise for the potential of receiving experimental treatment. Though, you know, at the time, she's barred from even pursuing that option, even if it is on her own dime. So basically being blocked from even raising

money for other medical interventions. Right. And her family notably had to sell their business, and they're pretty financially strapped right now. I'll also note that ST's diagnosis is the same diagnosis as that of London infant Charlie Guard. Our audience might be familiar with that name. In Guard's tragic case, courts ordered that the baby's parents had to bypass possibly life-saving experimental treatment for Charlie, and they were forced to watch their child die in a London hospital. That was back in 2017. Charlie's case had a lot to do with parental rights, but in ST's case, she's a coherent young woman who's speaking on behalf of herself. Right, so a whole other element here at play. Have we heard at all from the NHS about this case? What have they said here?

So the NHS trust that took this case to court, they put out a pretty generic statement saying that their focus is on providing the very best care and support for the patient, her family, and their clinical teams. You know, as for ST, who's a devout Christian, she said from her hospital bed that she's a fighter and she will continue to fight this. A really troubling case here. Thank you for reporting. You're welcome, John. The president of the American Library Association, the oldest and largest public library nonprofit in the world,

is under fire for describing herself as Marxists and for saying in recently leaked audio that libraries need to be a location for socialist organizing. This is leading several states and counties to break ties with the organization. Daily Wire Culture reporter Megan Basham is here now with more. So, Megan, the ALA has become surprisingly controversial over the past couple of years.

The organization has been an ardent defender of sexually explicit content in schools, as well as some of the drag queen events for kids. A number of red states have now cut ties with the organization altogether. When did that trend start? So it started when the ALA's new president, Emily Drabinski, as John noted there, called herself a Marxist lesbian last year. But she denied that libraries have been trying to indoctrinate children with left-wing ideology. And she actually called that accusation an extremist view.

But after that, some social media users dug up interview clips of Drabinski voicing pretty opposite intentions. In my vision of a socialist future, libraries need to be seen as a terrain of struggle for those of us on the left. And for those of us whose queerness includes the subversion of those kinds of normal family types, this ideological story excludes us. It makes it hard to make the decision to buy a book and make the decision to host a Drag-Pie Story. make the decision to include a gay book in your collection, it makes it very, very scary because there have been bills passed to put a bounty on librarians' heads for circulating child pornography. And I'll note there that these circulating clips are fairly short, and some of them are simply discussions of how LGBT material is classified in libraries generally, not necessarily just in children's

sections. Though her comments have touched on that, and she is a proponent of ensuring that libraries are making that kind of content available to kids. And then two weeks ago, Drabinski was recorded at a socialism conference where attendees referred to one another as comrade. Because this was undercover audio, the sound quality is not the best, but this was her saying that libraries need to be used to further, quote-unquote, socialist organizing. So to reiterate, what she's saying there is that publicly funded libraries need to be employed as part of a political agenda specifically to further socialism?

Yes, correct. That is what she said. And though Drabinski just began serving as ALA president in July, she's had important roles in the organization's administration since 2017. For example, she's been the chair of the International Relations Committee, the Information Literacy Frameworks and Standards Committee, and several other committees like that. So she's had a hand in shaping the ALA's agenda for some time. now. And you also have to keep in mind that the ALA's agenda has widespread implications for libraries and schools across the country because it is seen as such a trusted authority. And these are the issues that led first Montana, then Texas and Missouri, and now a county in Wyoming, to announce that they're ending their contracts with the ALA. Montana said that their state constitution forbids

association with an organization led by a Marxist and lawmakers in at least nine other states, including Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, South Carolina are vowing to follow them. So we really are seeing this pick up steam now. A number of Republican senators, for example, are calling to defund the ALA at the federal level, and that includes Marco Rubio of Florida. And then at the state level, the state Freedom Caucus Network, which is very active in at least 11 states, well, it's demanding that their states ensure that no taxpayer money is going to the organization. So they issued an open letter last month that called public libraries local treasures, but they vowed that they would, quote, not let them be overrun and held hostage by a radical organization acting well outside what

its core mission should be. Well, this fight has been long in the making. Megan, thanks for reporting. Anytime. One of the most vocal critics of School Choice, the boss of the Chicago's Teachers Union, is now facing backlash for sending her son to a private school. Meanwhile, school choice is exploding in popularity and has seen some huge wins in the past year. Daily Wire investigative reporter Marade Alorty is here with the details. So Marade, first off, let's talk about the Chicago Teachers Union boss. She made headlines over the past week when it was revealed that she sent her own son to private school. Hi, Georgia. That's right. It was revealed last week that Chicago Teachers Union President Stacey Davis Gates, who has long been a vocal opponent of school choice, is sending her freshman son to a Catholic

school on the south side of Chicago, where the average tuition is $14,750 a year. When asked to defend that decision, Davis Gates blamed school choice for the lack of resources at Chicago's public schools. She told a local outlet that it was a very difficult decision for her family and claimed Chicago's public schools don't have a lot to offer black youth in high school. My son, he has the opportunity to play sports at his school. Sports, by the way, that are not offered at our neighborhood school or any school close to our address. Again, students in Chicago, especially black students, on average, travel almost two hours back and forth to school.

Well, she can obviously relate to parents who don't want to send their kids to public schools. What's her argument for why they shouldn't have that option? Well, last year she called school choice the choice of racists and claimed it was created to avoid integrating schools with black children. Also last year, Davis Gates said, quote, I'm also a mother, my children go to Chicago public schools, arguing that this legitimizes her space within the anti-school choice coalition. Davis Gates also strongly opposed the Illinois Investing Kids Program,

which offers tax credits to people who help fund scholarships for low-income students to attend private schools. And we should note, this activism has been effective. In June, the Illinois legislature opted not to renew the school voucher program, so it'll expire at the end of this year. After Davis Gates' son's private school went viral online last week, she was slammed by critics who accused her of being hypocritical. School choice for her, but not for the rest of Chicago's kids. So it sounds like Illinois took a step backwards when it comes to their school choice program,

but that's not really been the trend we've seen nationwide. School choice has notched some very significant wins over the last year. Tell us a little bit about those. Right, this has been an extremely significant year for school choice. Arizona had one of the most dramatic school choice victories. Last summer, Arizona expanded its school voucher program to allow every Arizona K-12 student to get a taxpayer-funded scholarship account to pay for private school, about $6,500 per child. As of May, about 61,000 Arizona students took advantage of that voucher. Katie Hobbs, Arizona's new Democratic governor, wanted to roll back the voucher program, despite attending private school herself, but was blocked by the GOP-controlled legislature.

At least seven other states have enacted broad education savings. account programs too, Iowa, Utah, Arkansas, Florida, Oklahoma, Ohio, and Indiana. The catalyst for this wave of school choice victories seems to be the pandemic. Many parents became frustrated with public schools over learning loss, political and sexual curriculum content, and school policies that intentionally kept parents in the dark about what was being taught and discussed in school. Well, definitely a banner year for school choice, despite this recent news in Illinois. Maire, thanks for reporting.

Thanks, Georgia. That's all the time we've got this morning. Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back this afternoon with an extra edition of Morning Wire.