Morning Wire - Thursday Afternoon Update | 2.23.23

Episode Date: February 23, 2023

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This is Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's Thursday, February 23rd, and this is your Morning Wire afternoon update. Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg, traveled to East Palestine, Ohio 20 days after the Norfolk Southern toxic train derailment upended the Ohio town. Buttigieg has received criticism for not responding to the incident publicly, sooner, and for lacking transparency with the press. Here he is defending his response. In retrospect, should you have come a little bit of a little bit of the news?

little sooner? So again, on terms of the timing of the visit, I'm trying to strike the right balance, allowing NTSB to play its role, but making sure we're here in that show of support. Meanwhile, the National Transportation Safety Board released a preliminary report Thursday, saying that the catastrophic derailment was caused by an overheated wheelbearing on the 23rd of 149 railcars. A bill to ban sex change procedures on minors in Tennessee passed in the state house today and now heads to the desk of Republican Governor Bill Lee. If signed, the bill will ban such procedures as mastectomies on minor girls who say their boys and make it illegal to give children cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers for the sake of transgender identity.

These medical procedures cause serious and lifelong harms and carry additional unknown risks. These procedures provided only in the last decade or so on any kind of a large scale. Provide no reliable evidence of any long-term benefit. The bill easily passed the Republican-controlled body by a vote of 77 to 16. The Daily Wire's Matt Walsh is widely credited with bringing attention to the issue. More than 900,000 Americans were without power across six states today, due to a massive winter storm bringing snow and ice to much of the country. By mid-morning, more than 607,000 residents in Michigan alone were without electricity.

Former FDX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried faces four additional charges related to to his allegedly fraudulent cryptocurrency empire. A superseding indictment unveiled on Thursday accuses him of conspiracy to commit bank fraud and conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transfer business. Those charges come in addition to the eight charges to which SBF has already pleaded not guilty. A 19-year-old man is accused of fatally shooting three victims,

including a journalist in Orlando. Police say the suspect was arrested for allegedly killing a woman and then later firing into the home of a mother and daughter, killing a nine-year-old girl, and then later killing a journalist who was reporting on the earlier deaths in Orange County. Two others were injured. According to police, the motive is still unknown. He is being formally charged in the murder from this morning, and we expect additional charges for the shootings of the four people this afternoon. At 19, he has a lengthy criminal history to include gun charges, aggravated battery and assault with a deadly weapon, burglary, and

theft charges. The British government announced Thursday that its subjects could face shortages on salad staples such as cucumbers, lettuce, and tomatoes for at least another month. Industry experts blame supply chain disruptions in northern Africa and southern Europe, along with high energy costs that diminished vegetable producers' ability to fund greenhouse growing. South Carolina attorney Alex Murdoch took the stand on Thursday. He is charged with the double murder of his wife and son. Murdoch denied killing his family but did admit to lying about when he last saw them alive. If convicted, the 54-year-old could face 30 years to life in prison. Alec, why did you lie to Agent Owen, Agent Crawford, and Deputy Rutland?

About the last time you saw Maggie and Paul. As my addiction evolved over time, I would get in these situations or circumstances where I would get paranoid thinking. And it could be anything that triggered it. It might be a look somebody gave me. It might be a reaction somebody had to something I did. Don't talk to anybody without Danny with you. All my partners were just repeatedly telling me that. I had a deputy sheriff taking gunshot test from my hands.

I'm sitting in a police car with David Owen asking me about my relationship with my wife and my son. And all those things coupled together after finding them, coupled with my distrust for sled, caused me to have paranoid thoughts. Well, those are your drive home updates this afternoon. To learn more about these stories, go to Dailywire.com. And for more in-depth discussion of the biggest stories of the day, listen to our latest full episode of Morningwire every morning.