Morning Wire - California Storm & Gun Law Controversy | 1.12.23

Episode Date: January 12, 2023

Storm-struck California braces for more rain, Several states pull the trigger on new controversial gun laws, and more public schools in Virginia apologize for withholding national merit awards from students. Get the facts first on Morning Wire.  CarZing: Get pre-qualified and find the best deals near you: https://carzing.com/wire Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We're not out of the woods. We expect these storms to continue at least through the 18th of this month. A relentless rainstorm has caused power outages, flooding, and mudslides up and down California. And now residents of the Golden State are bracing for more rain this week. I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief John Bickley. It's Thursday, January 12th, and this is Morning Wire. Second Amendment advocates are sounding the alarm after the Supreme Court declined to hear an emergency challenge to a new gun control law in New York, while in California, another controversial

gun measure goes into effect. And more public schools in Virginia are apologizing for withholding national merit awards from their top performing students. It highlights a growing concern that the public school systems are not placing academic excellence at the core of their mission. Now the state's top legal official is getting involved. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know. Prices are dropping, but before you walk into a dealership, you've got to check out Carzing. Carzing is an online car shopping website with millions of listed vehicles. By partnering with credit agencies, lenders, and dealerships,

Carzing provides you with everything you need before stepping foot into a dealership. Visit Carzing.com slash wire today to skip the guesswork to find the best deals near you. That's carsing.com slash wire. At least 17 people have died and thousands have been evacuated across California this week as the state saw massive flooding on Monday and Tuesday. With more rain expected in the coming days, authorities are warning that the risk for mudslides is extremely high. Joining us to discuss is meteorologist Matthew Capucci.

Matthew, thanks for coming on. My pleasure. So tell us about the storms in California. We're hearing about an atmospheric river that's really slamming northern California, particularly the Bay Area. This has been the wettest stretch for San Francisco since the 1860s, and they've seen about 12.37 inches of

rain in 15 days time. Back on December 31st, they saw their second wettest day on record. Keep in mind records, go back to the 1840s with 5.46 inches in just one calendar day. Their entire average for the month of December is 4.1 inches. So they're like tripling that in a month's time. So needless to say, the ground is absolutely saturated and can't hold any more moisture in the Sierra Nevada. They've seen seven feet of snow so far this month up in the Lake Tahoe area. So really just prolific totals, and that's led to a huge array of issues, whether it be flooding from rivers, saltwater flooding too at the coastline from the winds onshore. We've seen hurricane force wind gusts in some areas, 14 people dead so far from the latest atmospheric river. And unfortunately, at least two or three

more systems were expected through the middle of next week before things finally taper off. And what is an atmospheric river? Well, it's exactly what it sounds like. It's literally a river of moisture in the atmosphere. It might only be 100, 200 miles wide, but it can stretch thousands of miles long, like a conveyor belt all the way from Hawaii. And that fire hose aims at the coastline. Now, these things can pump overhead about a billion pounds of moisture every second. That's how much moisture's inside them, way more than all the world's big rivers combine. The Mississippi, the Nile, the Amazon, whatever. Now, as this moisture's moving overhead, some comes down as rain, but here's the thing. Atmospheric rivers carry the bulk of their moisture about a mile above the ground.

For that reason, you get the highest precipitation totals in the higher terrain, like the Sierra Nevada or the COSA range. I've seen some incredible videos online of the storm surge and flooding. What areas have been evacuated? Yeah, you're exactly right. We saw about 46,000 people evacuated with this latest big atmospheric river Monday into Tuesday, including about 18,000 people in Santa Cruz County and 10,000 in Santa Barbara County. Keep in mind, these are very populated areas that don't always have the perfect road networks to get people out in time. Now, as a rain comes in, it destabilizes the hillside. When you have a lot of rain that loosens the roots, The trees oftentimes come down, and that means the soil can got to be destabilized,

and the whole hill to slide down. The other thing I want to mention, too, in addition to rock slides and mudslides, avalanche potential in the higher terrain, even along Interstate 80, up in the, like, the Truckee-de-Tahoe area where they saw a ton of snow. Because atmospheric rivers are usually warm, that means that you have rain at the higher elevations, but on the backside of the storms, you get the snow to come down, you get the freezing level to drop, and that sort of switched back and forth between the rain and the snow and the rain, means the snow is absorbing all that extra rainfall, like a sponge soaking that up.

And so you get the snow path to just hold a ton of water. And that can destabilize that and cause avalanches. So no matter where you go, you have to be really cautious traveling for at least several more days to come. All right. Well, hopefully our California listeners will keep that in mind. Matthew, thanks for coming on. Thank you for having me. That was Matthew Capucci, meteorologist for the Capitol Weather Gang.

This year, San Jose, California became the first city in America. to require all gun owners to pay for liability insurance for costs related to accidental injuries or deaths related to the firearm. The new law takes effect as the Supreme Court issued a decision on Wednesday on another controversial gun control measure in New York. Here with more on San Jose's new law and the court's order as Daily Wire's senior editor, Cabot Phillips. Cabot first, gun control activists have called for measures like the one in San Jose for some time now, and now we have one in effect in one city. Catch us up here. Sure. On January 1st, a new law went into effect that will require all gun owners in San Jose, a city of a million people, to purchase liability insurance to cover accidental firearm injuries or deaths. This law is also unique in that it applies to all firearm owners, regardless of whether the firearms are kept at home or carried in public.

Now, gun rights groups say that they'll challenge the law in court, but as of January 1st, it is in effect. That means residents in the city will have to have proof of insurance with the firearm at all times, and those found without proof will, trigger a police report and a maximum fine up to $1,000. Supporters of the measure, including the town's mayor, who led the charge for its passage, say it will encourage gun owners to safely store and handle their firearms, because insurance providers will likely offer lower premiums to those who can prove their meeting certain standards. He compares it to how auto insurers give lower rates to drivers with a clean record, but

critics, and there are plenty, disagree. Right. What are they opponents of the law saying? They feel the measure will only punish gun owners who already follow the law, and the criminals will go on ignoring laws in the first place. Their concern is that low-income residents will also be disproportionately affected and that this is a potential financial barrier to self-defense. And above all, though, they say it's unconstitutional.

They say the Second Amendment is clear that the right to bear arms shall not be infringed and that this is an infringement. They argue that you don't have to buy liability insurance before exercising other constitutional rights, and the Second Amendment should be no different. Now, it is worth noting. Many firearm owners already purchased insurance to cover potential legal fees, related to accidental shootings or self-defense cases. But the fact that this insurance is now mandatory is what has gun owners upset.

Right. What sort of precedent is there for a law like this? So while this is the first law of its kind to be implemented, this is not the first time legislators have used legal liability to try and crack down on guns. Last year, for example, California passed another law that allowed private citizens to sue gun manufacturers who violated the state's ban on certain types of firearms. Yeah. Another law passed earlier in the year in the state opened the door for indebted.

to sue anyone who builds, distributes, cells, or even transports what the state considers to be assault weapons. So this latest measure in San Jose is definitely part of a broader trend to use the threat of legal fees and liabilities to implement gun control. And as we talked about on the show, when California passes a law on other issues like omissions and abortion, other blue states almost always follow suit. So don't be surprised if you see this type of measure on guns spread in the coming years. Now, as we've referenced at the top, on the other side of the country, there's another gun control law that's drawing controversy, this time in the Supreme Court. Tell us about that.

So a quick refresher. Back in July, New York passed a controversial gun control law that not only banned guns in a number of public locations, but also required anyone seeking a gun license to prove, quote, good moral character, pretty subjective standard. And it also outlawed guns on private property unless the owner of the property consented to them. Shortly after that law passed, a group of six New Yorkers sued the state, saying it violated their Second Amendment rights. And while that legal challenge is working its way through federal appeals court, gun owners had hoped the law would be put on hold until a verdict was reached. But on Wednesday, the Supreme Court declined their chance to hear an emergency challenge to the law, meaning that New York authorities can enforce that measure in the meantime. While Justice Alito and Thomas did say the law, quote, presents novel and serious questions,

they ended up opting to let the matter be settled in appeals court. So we'll have to wait and see what's decided. But in the meantime, it is an effect. Yeah, some serious legal battles over an issue. important to many Americans. Cabot, thanks for reporting. Anytime. That's DailyWire Senior Editor, Cabot Phillips. An investigation has found that two more Virginia high schools may have withheld national merit awards from students. The state attorney general announced a statewide civil rights investigation into the matter on Monday. Here to discuss the situation is Daily Wire Senior Editor,

Ash Short. So, Ash, we're now learning that this practice of withholding merit awards wasn't just happening at Thomas Jefferson High. Are more parents looking into this? So just to recap for people who haven't been following, a Virginia attorney named Shauna Yashir recently discovered that her son wasn't told about his national merit award until nearly a month after his school was notified.

It was later revealed that he was just one of hundreds of affected students. And because of the late notice, Yashir's son couldn't include the accolade on his early college applications. This may not sound like a big deal, but these awards can be crucially important for college admissions. And more importantly, there are scholarship opportunities associated with these awards.

It later came to light that the school purposefully slow-walked and downplayed National Merit Awards as part of an equity policy. I spoke to Yosher about this incident. Here's what she had to say. Fairfax County Public Schools, frankly, have just lost their way. They have forgotten that the primary mission is academics. Had academics been at the forefront of their minds, it would have never occurred to them to delay the delivery of these commendations.

After Yosher's discovery, ABC News Affiliate 7 News obtained emails showing that two other high schools in Fairfax County also didn't inform students immediately that they had earned National Merit Awards. Those were Westfield High School and Langley High School. Now, in the case of Thomas Jefferson High, administrators actually said that there was a specific policy of downplaying awards and that it was part of a larger. goal of achieving equal outcomes for kids. Did the other two schools have a similar policy? Neither school has given an explanation at this point. Westfield said it would hire an independent investigator, and Langley said it would contact the colleges that students had already applied to to inform them of the awards while also investigating the delay. But I should note that all three of these schools are part of Fairfax County Public Schools. And at least in the case of

Thomas Jefferson High, they claim they were simply conforming to goals. laid out by the district. For example, the FCPS website says they keep equity at the center of the curriculum, and they have a goal to eliminate gaps in opportunity, access, and achievement for students. So it would seem the policy of minimizing awards is in keeping with language on the district website. And just another example of how this plays out, Thomas Jefferson eliminated all D and F grades. So now presumably everyone gets an A, B, or C no matter what. And there was a, was a movement in the administration to eliminate the merit-based admission test. That movement was challenged by a parents group who argued that eliminating the admissions test was just a backdoor way

of minimizing the number of Asian students they let in. Well, and now there is an active investigation into this practice, correct? Right. Virginia State Attorney General Jason Miaris announced on Monday that he would expand his investigation into Thomas Jefferson for withholding the merit awards to include the entire Fairfax County Public School System, saying his office would investigate to, quote, find out if any students were discriminated against and if their rights were violated. But this is a part of a larger issue that parents are calling a war on merit. Here's Azra Nomani, who leads a parent group that has been pushing back against these equity policies. What we face in Fairfax County, Virginia, is a war on merit.

And this war on merit is a war on kids. All right. Well, Ash, thanks so much for reporting. You're welcome. That was Daily Wire Senior Editor, Ash Short. Other stories we're tracking this week. Tennis legend Naomi Osaka announced she was pregnant on Wednesday. Osaka, who is 25, is a four-time Grand Slam singles champion. NFL player Damar Hamlin has returned home to continue his recovery

after being discharged from a Buffalo hospital. The 24-year-old spent a week in intensive care after collapsing during his January 2nd game. Roman Catholic Cardinal George Pell of Australia died Tuesday after complications from hip replacement surgery. The 81-year-old Cardinal was best known for having been chosen by Pope Francis to head investigations into Vatican finances, including a deep-diving external audit of the Vatican Bank by Pricewaterhouse Cupers. His investigation's preceded current reforms being implemented by Pope Francis. The University of Southern California's School of Social Work announced this week in a letter that it will no longer use the word field because, quote, language can be powerful, and phrases

such as going into the field or field work may have connotations for descendants of slavery and immigrant workers that are not benign. The school will instead use the word practicum. The Nassau County Republican Committee and dozens of local elected GOP officials from New York on Wednesday called on, quote, disgraced Republican rep George Santos to resign for breaking the public trust after admitting to not being forthright about numerous aspects of his resume during his congressional campaign. At the federal level, GOP leadership have said they intend to handle the Santos scandal internally. That's all the time we've got this morning. Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back later this afternoon with more news you need to know.