Morning Wire - Recession is Here | 7.29.22

Episode Date: July 29, 2022

Second straight decline in GDP signals that the U.S. is in recession, the Biden administration’s transgender Title IX guidance is in legal limbo, and more women are opting to get sterilized in the wake of the Dobbs Supreme Court descision. Get the facts first on Morning Wire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A second straight decline in the GDP signals that the U.S. is in a recession. I think we are. I think we have been. I've been saying it for a while. I didn't need to wait for today to suggest to me that we're in a recession. We speak to economists who explain what got us here and what to expect next. I'm Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's Friday, July 29th, and this is Morning Wire. A federal judge has blocked the Biden administration's Title IX guidance on gender identity and sexual orientation. We talked to a legal expert about the ruling and the controversial guidance it blocks. And more women are seeking sterilization after the landmark Dobbs decision. We discuss the trend and its implications.

Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know. You can get this show and all of the content you love, wherever you are, all on the Daily Wire app. Even if you're not a Daily Wire member, you'll be the first to know what's trending with mobile notifications for the latest news, and you'll get content from all of your favorite Daily Wire shows. Download the Daily Wire app and keep up with the facts no matter where your day takes you. The U.S. economy declined by 0.9% in the second quarter, the second quarter in a row that saw the country take a step back economically. Joining us now to break it all down is Daily Wire senior editor, Cabot Phillips.

All right, Cabot, so some are trying to dismiss declarations of a recession, but what do the numbers tell us? Well, the widely accepted definition of recession going back decades is two straight quarters of declining GDP. That's exactly what we have here. According to new data, Thursday, the U.S. economy shrank by 0.9% last quarter after falling 1.6% the quarter before. Now, in the past, the federal government has typically waited a few months to officially declare a recession. And the Biden administration is certainly going to do that. By every relevant definition we've got, though, the country has now entered a recession. So what has been the response so far from the White House?

Yeah, their message has really shifted over the last few months because, as you can imagine, they want to do everything possible to avoid using that word. A few months ago, the standard messaging from the White House was that the economy is growing and the recession is not going to happen. But then as inflation continued rising and the economy responded negatively, the message became, yes, the GDP might be shrinking, but the economy is still strong. And now that we've got clear evidence that matches the definition of a recession, the White House message has again shifted to now just outright denying that two quarters

of GDP contraction that we've now seen, even counts as a recession. For example, here's White House press secretary, Corrine Jum Pierre, earlier this week. If things are going so great, though, then why is it the White House officials are trying to redefine recession? No, we're not redefining recession. If we all understand a recession to be two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth in a row, and then you have White House officials come up here to say, no, no, no, that's not what a recession is. It's something else. How is that not redefining recession? Because that's not the definition. No, it's worth pointing out, according to Joe Biden's own chief economic advisor, as well as virtually every economist over the last half century, that is the definition of recession.

So the White House might be playing some semantic games here, but it doesn't change the economic reality. On that note, I talked to Brandon Arnold of the National Taxpayers Union. Of course, the White House is denying this, mainly for political reasons, but at the end of the day, it kind of doesn't matter. When you look at what people say about their own personal finances, it suggests people are not in a great spot. They've dipped into their savings far more than they ought to have. They're concerned about job prospects going forward. They're concerned about their own financial security. And that is what is most important, whether we're in a recession technically or not is really

secondary to how people are feeling about this economy and the direction they see it moving. Now, we saw some action from Congress this week that was aimed at combating inflation. What can you tell us there? Yeah, for the better part of the year, Democrats have struggled to agree on terms for their build back better package. But on Wednesday night, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senator Joe Manchin announced that they'd reached an agreement on a scaled down version of the bill that would still cost around $433 billion. Among other things, the plan would expand funding for the IRS to help build out their auditing capacity. It would offer billions in grants for clean energy and climate initiatives and send billions more towards, quote, neighborhood access and equity programs.

But most notably for a lot of Americans right now, the plan will also raise taxes on many Housework. holds in businesses. Here's Brandon Arnold on that front. Some of the big elements, the things that I'm watching most closely are the corporate minimum tax, the alternative minimum tax at 15% based on book income rather than taxable income. It's a whole other system of taxation that would disincentive investment in the economy. When corporations experience higher taxes, what they do is they reduce the amount of pay that goes to their employees, or even worse, they've raised their prices. Do we really want corporations raising prices at a time when inflation is at 9.1%. It's bad policy. So there is a lot of concern from Republicans that the bill could be coming at the worst possible time as the economy

is now dipping into a recession. Cabot, thanks for reporting. Anytime. That was Daily Wire senior editor Cabot Phillips. Coming up, a legal expert weighs in on the fate of the Biden administration's transgender Title IX guidance. If you like this podcast, subscribe to our Morning Wire newsletter available exclusively to DailyWire members. Get the Morning Wire newsletter delivered straight to your inbox when you join at DailyWire.com slash subscribe. Use code MorningWire to try Reader's Pass membership and get your first month for only 99 cents. A federal judge has temporarily blocked the Biden administration's Title IX guidance on gender identity

and sexual orientation. Released in 2021, the new Title IX rules ensure that students' gender identities are honored by schools with regard to bathroom access and team sports. Heritage Senior Legal Fellow Sarah Partial Perry joins us to explain the recent ruling. So Sarah, there was a group of 20 states led by Tennessee, and they sued the Biden administration over this new technical guidance. And then last week, U.S. District Judge Charles Aitchley ruled in favor of those states. So what is the central legal conflict here and why did the judge block this new guidance?

So the guidance actually came out in 2021, and it was interpretive guidance. It was a document called Technical Assistance, and that's something that an executive agency offers if they are trying to clarify for the public what their rights and responsibilities are without making a formal rule. Generally, it will signal to the public exactly where the department is going to go in the future, but they don't have to go through what's called the Administrative Procedure Act, is just a fancy term for a formal rulemaking process. Well, the judge in Tennessee, Charles Ashley, determined that this was such a significant change in law,

expanding sex to include sexual orientation and gender identity, among other changes in federal law, that they should have followed a formal rulemaking process, and they couldn't skate the congressional responsibility that they had laid out in the Administrative Procedure Act to go through the arduous rulemaking process. In other words, they had tried to do too little when they were required to do so much more. So where does this issue go from here? Schools temporarily don't have to enforce this new interpretation,

but should we expect a formal rule change in the future? So what this will do is actually put a procedural time stamp on the Department of Education. It has pumped the brakes, because when we see guidance statements from an agency that says this is how we plan to enforce the law, you, of course, have to comply, not technically, but it happens to be a bit of a bureaucratic threat. With this ruling, this is essentially revoked that technical assistance. And the interpretation that the Department of Education has been using to include sexual orientation and gender identity has now essentially been erased. And now we're back to the drawing board the way it was under the Trump administration. Now, the 2020 Supreme Court ruling Bostock v. Clayton County found that gender identity does fall under sexual discrimination. So will the Biden administration likely have the court on

their side with this new rule change? Yes. And actually for a couple of different reasons. So the issue at sort of the crux of the matter in Bostock versus Clayton County was employment discrimination. It fell under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits, among other things, any discrimination based on sex in employment. But Title VII's wording and regulations are different than Title IX's wording and regulations. Title IX is a specific prohibition on sex discrimination alone. No other categories are included. But more so than that, Justice Neil Gorsuch in writing the majority opinion, was very careful to say that they were not prejudging any other issues on sex discrimination and mentioned specifically bathrooms and locker rooms as sort of a nod to Title IX.

So there are a number of questions that the Supreme Court left open, and because of the distinct differences between Title VII and Nine, the outcome really remains to be seen. All right, well, Sarah, thank you so much for coming on and explaining that for us. That was Senior Legal Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, Sarah Partial Perry. More women are choosing permanent sterilization in light of the recent Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roevey Wade. OBGYNs say they're seeing an increase in women asking for sterilization in places like Arizona, North Carolina, Texas, and Florida. Charlotte Pence-Bond joins us to discuss.

So Charlotte, what are doctors saying? So sterilization has become more popular among both men and women after the Dobbs' disson. and even right before it came out. The chief healthcare officer of Planned Parenthood, Dr. Diana and Contreras, said that Planned Parenthood saw a massive increase in people coming to its websites, seeking information on how to get sterilized

or get a vasectomy after the ruling was released. One doctor from San Antonio said that she used to have a few patients come in for sterilization from time to time, but now she's doing consultations for the procedure every single day. According to the L.A. Times, if women were already planning not,

to have kids. They decided to get sterilized sooner, or they were thinking more intensely about sterilization after the Supreme Court decision. A lot of women have said that they're doing this in order to keep some control over their bodies since they believe that legislators might try to limit other procedures surrounding reproduction or cut back on the ability to use contraceptives, as you all reported on the show this week. Here's one DC resident talking about her decision to have the procedure. I got my fallopian tooth screwed because I know I don't want children. and I'm doing everything I can to make sure that doesn't happen, but in the case that it does, I don't have bodily autonomy.

Now, what does female sterilization entail and how reversible is it? So the most common procedure is called tubal ligation, and that entails tying off or cutting the fallopian tubes. In some rare cases, it can be reversed with surgery, but even in the cases where the reversal succeeds, the woman is at risk for ectopic pregnancy. So for that reason, it's considered an irreversible procedure. In rare cases, some women can still get pregnant after they have been sterilized, particularly if they're young, but it's generally considered to be almost 100% effective at preventing pregnancy.

And how common is sterilization as a form of birth control? It's actually extremely common. According to the CDC, between 2015 and 2017, about 65% of women ages 15 to 49 in the U.S. were currently using contraception. And of those, the most common form used was sterilization. About 18.6% of women in that age group had undergone the procedure. The second most common form of contraception was the pill at 12.6%. Now, the procedure is most popular with women over 40, with a plurality of women over 40 choosing sterilization as their primary mode of birth control. Now, can any woman opt in for this, or are there certain criteria that have to be met?

Legally, any woman over 18 can pursue it, but in practical terms, it can be difficult to find a doctor who's willing to perform it on young women who have not yet had children. A lot of doctors are only comfortable performing it on women who have already had kids or at least are over the age of 30. There's also a lot of sensitivity around race and class stereotypes that may cause doctors to be more or less willing to perform the procedure on certain women. In the past, some women were forced to have sterilizations by the government against their will. In the 1930s, this practice was at its height as certain groups were thought to be unfit to procreate as part of the eugenics movement. California had the largest eugenics practice, which sterilized over 20,000 people beginning in 1909. Its eugenics law was repealed in 1979, but the sterilizations in state prisons seem to have continued past that. As recently as this past January, the state launched a reparations program for,

people who survived the government-run sterilization. Charlotte, thank you so much for reporting. Thanks for having me. That was Daily Wires, Charlotte Pence-Bond. Other stories we're tracking this week. White House logs reveal that President Biden met with over a dozen of Hunter Biden's business associates while in the Obama White House as vice president.

Fox News Digital reports. Biden has repeatedly denied having any knowledge about his son's foreign business dealings. 58% of Americans agree that Attorney General Merrick Garland should enforce a federal law that bans protesting at Supreme Court Justice's homes. A district just outside of Wuhan, China has locked down almost one million residents after four asymptomatic cases were detected in the district. Thanks for listening to Morning Wire.

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