Morning Wire - Obamacare Battle Brews & Hollywood Suffers Slump | 11.14.25

Episode Date: November 14, 2025

Congress gears up for a fight over the fate of Obamacare, Hollywood suffers a monstrous October slump, and a federal contracting program aimed at minority-owned businesses fields fraud accusations. Get the facts first with Morning Wire. - - - Wake up with new Morning Wire merch: https://bit.ly/4lIubt3 - - - Today's Sponsors: Chevron - Build a brighter future right here at home. Visit https://Chevron.com/America to discover more. Quince - Go to https://Quince.com/WIRE for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. - - - Privacy Policy: https://www.dailywire.com/privacy morning wire,morning wire podcast,the morning wire podcast,Georgia Howe,John Bickley,daily wire podcast,podcast,news podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Via Raille, Embarked and Profite, Embarked and Celebrate, Riggolet, Publié, Savoye, Admirae, Admirate and Profite. Viarai, the Vois The Voice Kornem. The End of the Shutdown sets the stage for a new battle on Capitol Hill, the fate of Obamacare. As pandemic-era subsidies head toward expiration, why are Democrats so insistent on saving them? The people that are watching, it's like the Democrats, we, we, we, We designed these to expire. This wasn't something the Republicans are taking.

That's how we designed this. I'm Daily Wire, Executive Editor John Bickley, with Georgia Howl. It's Friday, November 14th. This is Morning Wire. 49.8 million for the entire Halloween weekend domestically. You have to go back to the 90s again to find a box office that low for Halloween. Hollywood suffers a monstrous slump in October. As big-name directors sound the alarm over what they say has become a broken

system. And a federal contracting program meant to lift up minority-owned businesses finds itself in a swamp of fraud accusations. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know. America is built on hard work and powered by American energy. Chevron has spent $44 billion with local businesses across all 50 states since 2022, fueling infrastructure and communities, all while strengthening local economies. Last year, Chevron increased U.S. production nearly 20% powering communities and businesses from the heartlands to the coast. We're helping to fuel America's energy advantage, building a brighter future right here at home. Visit chevron.com slash America to discover more.

With the shutdown finally ended, the fight between Democrats and Republicans over health care subsidies and the fate of Obamacare is only ramping up. Here are the latest on the health care battle raging in D.C. As daily wire reporter Amanda Presta Jacamo. Hey, Amanda. So Democrats largely blame their unwillingness to reopen the government on health care. Republicans won that first round, but were nowhere near or done. So first, walk us through these Obamacare subsidies, which are really at the heart of this issue. Yeah, so these Affordable Care Act, often called Obamacare subsidies, were expanded during COVID in 2021.

The subsidies, which are technically tax credits, they were only supposed to last two years, but Democrats extended them once again, and now they're expiring at the end of this year. Currently, there are about 24 million Americans who are on ACA plans. That's up from 11 million at the start of the pandemic, so a huge increase due in large part to these subsidies. It's estimated that about 42% of 2025 ACA enrollees pay less than $10 a month with a vast majority paying nothing at all. Notably, Democrats remove the income cap for subsidy eligibility. So people who are earning over 400% of the federal poverty level, they qualify for these subsidies as well. Now, as for the costs of all of this, the Congressional Budget Office says that extending the subsidies through 2035, that would increase the federal deficit by about $358 billion.

Why are Democrats so insistent that these subsidies are the answer? Yeah, well, Democrats have been reports that they really want to make the midterms all about health care. And their message is that inaction from Republicans here will drive up health care costs for millions of Americans. I spoke to Ryan Long, a senior research fellow at Paragon Health Institute to explain all of this. And he said that if these subsidies expire as scheduled, people on ACA plans will once again return to paying something, even if it's just a very small amount instead of having access to these $0 plans. He said that those $0 plans actually have led to a lot of widespread fraud and abuse. At Paragon, we believe that there's upwards of 6 million people that aren't actually within that income category.

that are claiming credits as if they were in that income category. In certain states, there are three to four times as many people enrolled in 100 to 150% of poverty, these $0 plans, then there are people actually in those income brackets. So these COVID credits have just produced massive amounts of fraud. And Republicans, they generally don't want to extend these subsidies. What are their arguments? Yeah, they want them to expire when the Democrats scheduled them to expire. They argue that Obamacare is a failure, it's in need of serious reforms, or a whole new system.

Premiums, for example, they rose 143% in the first six years after the ACA took effect, and next year, premiums are set to rise another 26%. CMS administrator, Dr. Mehmet Oz, for example, he just recently went off on the many problems with Obamacare and how he sees American taxpayers effectively being cheated. Today, it's over 11 million people who, who have Obamacare never use their policies, which means they often don't know they have it.

And yet we're still stuck with the bill. When Obamacare was created, they take a step back because this is the original vision. 50% of the people on Obamacare were supposed to be paid for by the government. 50% were supposed to be spending their own money. Now it's 95% government funded because we drove out all the private sector people

by overpaying. As for the fate of Obamacare, President Trump has really amped up his calls to move on from the, quote, Obamacare madness. Here's Trump on Wednesday. I'm calling today for insurance companies not to be paid, but for the money, this massive amount of money,

to be paid directly to the people of our country so that they can buy their own health care. Trump already seems to be getting a lot of support from congressional Republicans. In fact, Florida Senator Rick Scott says that he's writing up legislation to put this HSA-style account idea into action. All right, so maybe witnessing the beginning of the end of Obamacare here. We'll see.

Amanda, thanks so much for reporting. You're welcome. Hold mornings, holiday plans. This is when I want my wardrobe to just be simple. Stuff that looks sharp, feels good, and things all actually wear. For me, that's Quince. This season's lineup from Quince is refreshingly simple but smart. We're talking $50 Mongolian cashmere sweaters that feel like an everyday luxury

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so I know exactly what I'm giving people as gifts this holiday season. Give and get timeless holiday staples that last this season with Quince. Head over to quince.com slash wire for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com slash wire, free shipping, and 365-day returns. Again, that's quince.com slash wire today. Hollywood is in a major slump with October marking the worst box office revenues in nearly 30 years. Even Halloween weekend, usually a horror cash machine failed to draw audiences.

Here to explain what's ailing Tinsletown as Daily Wire Culture reporter, Megan Basham. So, Megan, not great news on the horizon for Hollywood right now. what's going on? Yeah, Georgia. So as John said, this has been the worst October on record since 1997, with the exception, of course, of that COVID pandemic year when the theaters were all closed. But perhaps even more alarming is the fact that this was the worst Halloween weekend in 31 years. So really, nobody came out to theaters. Nobody got any of that box office revenue up. And I think a big culprit here is the fact that there were simply no must-see movies. even those movies that had big stars and where Hollywood tried to generate a lot of buzz,

well, audiences weren't really interested and the reviews were pretty mediocre. So just to go through some of them, Disney's Tron Aries opened to only 38 million. That was the franchise's worst debut. A24's The Smashing Machine with Big A-Lister, Dwayne Johnson. You would expect that to go big? It didn't. It made only 11 million. And then there was the Bruce Springsteen biopic.

A lot of people were excited for that, we thought, but it only made 9 million. So the total October take here was only 425 million. By comparison, the Joker made more than double that for the month of October alone just six years ago. That's how bad things are. Now, the first couple of releases that we're seeing in November aren't faring much better. A lot of people thought that Christy starring It Girl, Sidney, would blow up the box office, but turned out to be a major flop. You do have some people blaming politics on that,

but I think that's probably a stretch. I would say more likely the explanation here is that Sydney's Sweeney's core fan base of young men who like to see her looking young and gorgeous were not so interested in seeing her play an unattractive tomboy-type boxer. Veteran comm score analyst Paul de Garibidian told finance outlet Cheddar News

that without a couple of Japanese anime movies that actually outperformed expectations, the story here would be even worse. There was just nothing commercially exciting enough to mainstream audiences to drive them in huge numbers. And, you know, last year, there was a Venom movie that opened a $50 million in October.

We didn't have that this year. And so I think that definitely hurt the box office. Also, August was down about 25% over August of last year. September down only about 2%. You had the conjuring in the mix there. Again, if not for those anime movies, we'd be looking at an even worse situation. So is this just the ongoing disruption we've talked about from streaming and or social media? Or is there something more fundamental going on? I mean, yes. Obviously, that kind of creative destruction is always playing a role,

but not necessarily in the way that we think. So you're hearing from a lot of veteran filmmakers that are complaining that the way Hollywood does business is no longer the same, and it is much harder to get creative ideas greenlit than it was in the past. So because of that, what we're seeing is audience is getting kind of tired of seeing the same old safe scripts. So you have these well-known, well-established filmmakers, people like Michael Bay and James Cameron complaining that creative ideas just aren't able to get across the finish line anymore. And they say that something bigger may be broken in Hollywood. In an interview just a few months ago, Bay voiced frustration over what he called a system afraid of risk. Now, we're talking about somebody who is the king

of big blockbusters, and even he now says that he's turning to independent filmmaking so that he can be more creative. He said that Cameron told him that no individual executives are empowered to greenlight those creative ideas anymore. And so the result is too many sequels, too few original ideas and a growing reliance on the algorithm to decide what gets made. Well, and if you look at social media comments, it's all about the lack of creativity. Megan, thanks for reporting. Yeah, my pleasure. The Trump administration is turning its eye on a long-running DEI program that may be one

of Washington's most corrupt. The federal government awards a percentage of contracts based on the company's owners being, quote, socially disadvantaged, but they may not even be the ones doing the work. Daily Wire investigative reporter Luke joins us to discuss, A, Luke. So you've been digging into this. What exactly is going on here? Hey, John. So this is a program called 8A contracting or set aside contracting, where certain contracts, which could be tens of millions of dollars, are either given to one company with no competition outright or limited so that only, quote,

disadvantaged companies are eligible to bid on that. And so basically racial minorities and also women-owned companies. So right off the bat, when you're not competitive, competing for contracts, you're not getting the best price or the most qualified company. So this lessens competition and potentially quality of the work that's produced. Exactly. In fact, I'd argue that a lot of the poor performance we see in the federal government, like websites that seem like they're out of the 1990s, is because of this. This has been the way that things worked in Washington for decades. Everybody kind of gets their peace. Disabled veterans, which veterans like, Alaska Native corporations, which shores up support from Republican long. from that state, and then the big non-minority-owned companies who wind up actually doing a lot of the work as subcontractors or like 49% owners. So James O'Keefe had a great expose last month, you might have seen, where an official from one such company called ATI Government Solutions seemed to admit to just that.

So the new contract is basically close to a hundred million. What's the percentage that ATI will retain from that $100 million? 65 for us being a prime. And you pay these like ascentures to do the job. And so it's really minimal work. Yes. Yes.

Honestly, that's really in reality that's what's happened. So this is a company that gets contracts because it's owned by Native Americans in part. But of course, the guy we just heard speaking, well, he's the wrong kind of Indian. If you look at ATI's website, all the executives actually seem to be white. The website is almost entirely

focused on selling the idea that it's easier for government officials to just skip the annoying parts of their job, running a competition to find the best company to do something. And also it's good for big companies because they can have a shortcut to getting these big contracts by working with or partnering with this Indian company, which basically has an automatic in because of its part ownership. All right, so the Verrain is sort of a perfect little loop here where everyone seems to benefit. So what are officials saying about this? So Kelly Loughler, the head of the Small Business Administration, said there's a full review of the 8-A program underway, and that it's already found institutionalized abuse to the tune of billions of dollars.

She said that ATI's CEO, a guy named Fermage Crutchfield, has a network of seven different companies, all of which has been suspended from receiving new contracts, and she says their names have been provided to law enforcement. Senator Joni Ernst, whose chair of the Senate Small Business Committee, said the Biden administration tripled the goal for minority set-asides from 5 to 15 percent and did little to make sure those companies were actually doing the work instead of serving as what they call pass-throughs. Ernst said, quote, small businesses contracting programs were never intended to function as welfare systems for favored classes or give no-bid contracts to do-nothing companies. Over the decades, penalties against rule breakers have not been swiftly and resolutely imposed.

I will say I've been documenting these pass-through schemes and these problems with minority contractor for more than a decade, and they continued to go on even in the first Trump administration. In my opinion, there wasn't much deterrence. Now, the Trump administration is also rewriting the federal acquisition regulations, which is a big deal, even though it's kind of wonky inside Washington stuff. But so far I haven't seen anything in those rewrites that would abolish this category outright. Well, 5 to 15% of all federal contracting dollars is a big number. So I'm glad they're at least taking a look at fraud.

Luke, thanks so much for digging into this and coming on. Any time. Thanks for waking up with us. And if you're listening to the show, now you can watch us for free on Daily Wire Plus. We'll be back later this evening with more news you need to know. There are now fewer than 2,000 Daily Wire Lifetime memberships remaining. Turns out having all access benefits for life with no renewals is something everyone wants. If you still want one, here are your options. You could buy one while they're still available.

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