Morning Wire - Hezbollah Threats & 911 Response Times | 3.16.24

Episode Date: March 16, 2024

Morning Wire contributor David Marcus reports from the northern border of Israel, Biden’s administration spends millions on DEI, and 911 response times reach dangerous lengths. Get the facts first with Morning Wire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Much of the focus on the Israel-Ghaza war centers on the southern border, but tensions at the northern border are now escalating. Our mission here is to defend the kibbutz in the surrounding areas to make sure that if there's any infiltration by Hezbollah, then we'll be quick to neutralize that threat. How big of a threat to Israel is Lebanon's Hezbollah? I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire, editor-in-chief John Bickley. It's March 16th, and this is a Saturday edition of Morning Wire.

A Daily Wire exclusive shows millions of taxpayer dollars going toward DEI and LGBT initiatives worldwide. We break down just how those funds are being spent. And response times for 911 calls in some cities have reached over two hours. What's causing the long lag times? Not only extremely frustrating and emotionally distressing, but it can also have life and death consequences. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know. As Israel's ongoing war with Hamas rages in the south of the country, there are growing concerns about escalating tensions in the north.

Daily Wire contributor David Marcus traveled to the Israel-Lebanon border this week, and he's here to describe what he saw. So David, with so much devastation in Gaza and southern Israel, why are so many experts now warning that the north could be the new flashpoint or a second front in the war? Morning, Georgia. Most of the attention on the conflict has been focused on. the south, where the fighting is most severe. But in the north, along the border with Lebanon, over 60,000 Israelis were evacuated from towns and kibbutzs on October 7th, including the Hanita Kabuts, which I visited on Wednesday. They still can't go home. Some I talked with have actually been at my hotel in Tel Aviv for five months now. Rocket fire has been steady between the Israeli

Defense Force and Hezbollah in Lebanon since the Hamas attack on October 7th. I saw one home that was devastated by a mortar attack just two months ago. It's important to understand that Hezbollah is far stronger than Hamas, and that was part of why the IDF was caught flat-footed on the 7th, according to intelligence officials I spoke with. Put simply, they were expecting the attack to come from the north. Interesting. So what is it that makes the threat from Hezbollah even more dangerous than Hamas? So they have a lot more weapons, including over 65,000 precision-guided missiles. Many of the capable of hitting Tel Aviv, where the Israeli Defense Force, headquarters is located. Additionally, just as in Gaza, there is significant military infrastructure in southern Lebanon.

Hezbollah has tunnels buried as much as 80 feet underground. And finally, the IDF is very busy, obviously, in Gaza right now, which could provide an opportunity for Hezbollah. The good news is that because Israel knows the threat, the military was also deployed to the north on October 7th. Here's the commander of the forces in Hanita describing that activation. By the 9th of the 7th of October, we were full force ready here defending the border. So I think that unless they were 100% ready, you know, at the moment of 7th of October,

by that point we were already way too strong on the border for them to attack because we had the full reserves kind of come in and other forces. Now, you also traveled to the Gaza border where some tens of thousands were evacuated and they've now begun returning home. Is there a sense of normalcy coming back? Absolutely not. I was in the town of Kfarjah, which is about two football fields from the Gaza border, and where over 60 people were murdered by Hamas in their homes. Only one family has returned, and they gave us a tour of the devastation. Bullet holes everywhere, some houses destroyed.

It is a surreal nightmare of a place that feels haunted by the events. That having been said, I did have to wear a flack jacket. helmet in the north, and the IDF was aware of specific threats. That was not the case in the South, mainly because Israeli forces have driven Hamas out of the immediate area. Some residents want to return to their lives, partly as a show of defiance. Others, they never want to see the place again. Both sentiments seemed to me perfectly understandable.

Certainly. Now, did you hear any specific responses to Senator Chuck Schumer's speech yesterday? That's the one where he called for new elections in Israel and criticized. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's handling of the crisis? So I was able to speak only off the record with officials because the last thing they want to do is get involved in American domestic politics, even though increasingly it's obvious that American domestic politics are involved with them. What I can say is that polling shows that BB Netanyahu's policies on fighting Hamas

and rejecting calls for ceasefire without getting back the hostages are very popular, according to polls, with 70 to 80 percent in agreement. with the war cabinet. And I also spoke to some everyday Israelis. And even those who don't like Netanyahu or didn't vote for him told me they don't want elections in the middle of this major crisis. And once again, there are issues with Netanyahu predate October 7th and are not directly tied to his response to it.

All right. Well, David, thank you so much for your field reporting and for coming on with us today. Thanks for having me. An executive order from President Biden's first year in office directed agencies throughout the federal government to embrace diversity, equity, and inclusion policies, commonly referred to as DEI. An exclusive report from Daily Wire found that the State Department spent at least $77 million on DEI policies in just two years, with the total figure potentially being even higher. Daily Wire reporter Spencer Lindquist broke the story and he joins us now. So Spencer,

where are we getting this data? So Congress mandated that the State Department sent a report outlining the agency's DEI spending. While the figures had been seen by members of Congress, it hadn't been reported to the public. We obtained the report, which explained that the State Department spent about 33 million in 2022 and 45 million in 2023 on DEI initiatives. That includes recruitment, hiring, promotions, and retention, bringing the total to over 77 million taxpayer dollars in just those two years. There weren't any records maintained for DEI spending in 2021, but we do know that the money went to the Department's Bureau of Global Talent Management, which says that its primary goal is to, quote,

sustain a diverse, talented, and inclusive workforce. The State Department also requested another $83 million for DEI initiatives in fiscal year 2024. It isn't clear exactly how much of that has been approved. Now, where exactly does this money go? Are these salaries for diversity officers, events, trainings? So the State Department does have an Office of Diversity and Inclusion, although it's not clear exactly how much money they spent on it. The State Department's report to Congress says that the office has the equivalent of 12 full-time employees and that it's funded through the department's

central fund. We do know that the State Department's chief of diversity and inclusion, Constance Mayor, makes about $180,000 a year. Obviously, that doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of the tens of millions spent each year. Now, what are some of the line items on their fund requests? So the State Department has made a number of different funding requests, particularly for fiscal year of 2024 that pertain to DEI. But it can be hard to tabulate the exact figures because some Sometimes the agency groups multiple funding requests into one, obscuring how much exactly will go to the DEI aspect. For example, the State Department requested $435 million for what they called central support. That request includes IT services, office base, and diversity, equity, and inclusion activities.

It isn't clear how much is intended to go specifically towards DEI. So that $77 million is just the State Department, but other government agencies are also rolling out very similar programs. What do we know about those? Yeah, that's exactly right. So like you mentioned, President Biden signed an executive order his first year in office, institutionalizing DEI throughout the federal bureaucracy. So we've seen pretty elaborate DEI initiatives throughout the government. The Department of Defense, for example, requested about 270 million for DEI initiatives,

which covers costs for things like unconscious bias training. This is a point of contention that will likely come up during the 2024 election because Trump has signaled that he will use executive orders to close down DEI. offices if he's reelected. Well, I think a lot of people are picturing things like HR trainings for government employees, but according to your reporting, this initiative goes much farther than that. Can you talk about the Global Equality Fund? Sure. So one of the most notable undertakings from the State Department on this front is called the Global Equality Fund. It's a public-private partnership that funds LGBT activism across the globe. The State Department committed $10 million a year

to the fund starting in 2021. But I also recently reported on Jessica Stern. She's the State Department's special envoy to advance the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex persons. Stern makes about $180,000 a year, and she travels the world advocating for LGBT causes on behalf of the State Department. She's been to at least 22 different countries on all six habitable continents, meeting with LGBT activists and attending transgender pride for AIDS, all as a part of her role. So the takeaway is a big investment in DEI by the Biden administration. Spencer, thanks for reporting. Thank you for having me. Police response times in major cities are getting much longer if they're able to respond at all.

A 2023 study found that police response times are increasing in 15 major cities across the country. Here to discuss is Daily Wire Senior Editor Ash Short. So Ash, just for some context, how long is the average wait time for a police response in the U.S.? While we actually don't have national statistics on that, and it varies a huge amount between cities. some cities don't track it at all, but in general, it can be anywhere from a few minutes to more than an hour, depending on the severity of the crime. It also depends on things like how stretch the police force is, how large the patrol area is, and the severity of the emergency. But we do know that those wait times are growing. Yes, so police are taking much longer to respond to emergency calls than they were several years ago.

For example, response times in New Orleans tripled between 2019 and 2022, from 51 minutes to 100. 46 minutes. In Nashville, the time increased from 44 minutes to 73 minutes. Portland, Oregon also saw a major increase in response times from 26 minutes in 2019 to 48 minutes in 2022. So 146 minutes, that's more than two hours. Right. And those are just the average times. For high priority incidents, though, response times also increased. With New Orleans, again, seeing the largest jump from 15 minutes in 2019 to 32 minutes in 2022. Portland's high-priority response times doubled in that same period, from eight minutes to 16 minutes.

And that's when they are able to respond at all. Pittsburgh recently announced that police were no longer going to respond to calls that weren't in-progress emergencies between the hours of 3 a.m. and 7 a.m. During those times, no desk officers will be present at any of the city's six police stations. That means that only 20 officers will be working overnight shifts for the entire city, which has a population of more than 300,000. Crimes that police will no longer respond to during those hours include theft, harassment, and burglary alarms. Now, what's causing the delays? Is this primarily just a staffing issue? Yes, staff shortages. We reported previously that New York City has the smallest number of cops in decades.

That comes after more than 2,500 police officers retired in 2023. Many have retired or considering retiring for many reasons, including an increase in attacks on police officers. We're seeing the same pattern in other cities as well. Austin, Texas, for example, had no police at all for an entire neighborhood within the city for a period in February. Response times in the city are also getting longer. One mother told Fox News that she had to call a ride-sharing company for help after a major car accident that left her and her young children injured because no one answered when she called. 911. Now, which cities are seeing the largest increases in wait times? Are these primarily defund cities, or is this a nationwide trend? Well, since we don't have comprehensive data, it's hard to draw

firm conclusions, but in general, these are major cities, many of which did slash police funding after the riots in 2020. Austin, for example, went all in on the defund the police movement, cutting the police budget by $150 million, although they eventually reversed this course of action. And in 23, the City Council approved record high police funding. The city cited in the study were New Orleans, Nashville, Portland, Oregon, New York, Seattle, San Francisco, Sacramento, Detroit, Virginia Beach, Gilbert, Arizona, Montgomery County, Boise, Chandler, Arizona, Mesa, Arizona, and Cincinnati. Well, I was disturbed to learn that it was more than an hour of a wait time in Nashville. That's frightening. Ash, thanks for reporting. Anytime. That was Daily Wire Senior Editor, Ash Short.

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