Morning Wire - Tuesday | August 24, 2021

Episode Date: August 24, 2021

The FDA gives the Pfizer vaccine full approval, the Taliban gives Biden a deadline for leaving Afghanistan, and the Biden administration defends a Covid relief policy deemed racially discriminatory. Get the facts first on Morning Wire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The FDA has officially given full approval to the Pfizer vaccine. How does the new status affect the debate around vaccine mandates? And what can we expect going forward? I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief John Bickley. It's Tuesday, August 24th, and this is Morning Wire. The Taliban have issued an ultimatum to the West, vacate by August 31st or there will be consequences. If the U.S. or the U.K. wanted to extend the 31st of August deadly,

line, would you agree to that? No, no. Why not? How has the Biden administration responded to the mounting pressure to evacuate the country? And what is the situation like on the ground? And a COVID debt relief package that prioritized minority farmers over white farmers is meeting resistance in the courts. We'll discuss why judges in three states declared the Biden administration's program

unconstitutional and how the administration is responding. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know. Today's episode is sponsored by Legacy Box. With Legacy Box, you can revisit cherished moments from your family's past by having the footage from videotapes, film reels, slides, and other aging formats digitally preserved on a thumb drive, DVD, or the cloud.

Visit LegacyBox.com slash Keep to take advantage of this limited time offer of 40% off. That's Legacybox.com slash keep to save 40%. On Monday, the Food and Drug Administration granted full approval to FISA Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine. Here to discuss the details is Daily Wire's Charlotte Pence-Bond. Charlotte, thanks for coming on. Hi, Georgia. So Pfizer got full approval from the FDA.

Tell us what that means. Yeah, as you said, the FDA gave full approval to the Pfizer Biointech vaccine for people 16 years of age and up. This is a significant development because all the vaccines have been operating under only an emergency use authorization since December. The Pfizer vaccine is still available under that. authorization for people ages 12 to 15, but it's not fully approved for them. So what are the steps for approval? And how is full approval different from the emergency use

authorization? That's a great question. So with an emergency use authorization, a treatment can be used by the FDA during public health emergencies if it appears to be effective and the potential benefits are deemed to outweigh the known risks. Got it. To get full approval for a vaccine so it can be marketed throughout the U.S., a manufacturer has to submit a biologics license application, or a BLA for short, which includes lots of info and really specific requirements. The FDA then reviews that information. For comparison, most drugs take several years to clear the FDA, so it was remarkable that this got to market so quickly. Right. But keep in mind, this was largely due to the massive effort to expedite the process and eliminate administrative

lag time. The FDA explained that the BLA built on the data that supported that emergency use authorization. This included preclinical and clinical data and information, details about the manufacturing process. It also had vaccine testing results and inspections of the sites where the vaccine is made. The vaccine is also getting an official name now. It will be called Comernity in the marketplace. Commernity. It's going to be hard to get people to adopt a new name at this point. Right. And what are experts hoping to see now? Pfizer CEO Albert Berla put out a statement saying that he is, quote, hopeful the approval will help increase confidence in the vaccine since experts are speculating this might persuade some unvaccinated people to get vaccinated.

What other implications could this have? Are we going to start seeing more mandates, you think? It certainly could lead to that. On Sunday, U.S. Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy, said that the full approval might get workplaces in schools to officially mandate the vaccine. There are universities and businesses that have been considering putting in vaccine requirements in order to create a safer workplace or learning environment. And I think that this announcement from the FDA would likely encourage them and make them feel more comfortable in putting such requirements in place. And what about K-12 schools? How is this going to impact them?

Well, currently the CDC does not decide which vaccines are required for schools and child care centers. Each state makes that decision themselves. The federal government has historically been limited in how it can mandate vaccinations. As we discussed last week, the Biden administration is now recommending boosters after eight months. Right. How does the FDA approval play into that? Well, the third shot still doesn't have full approval yet. The FDA has only approved the booster under the emergency use authorization for immunocompromised people.

Okay. And there are a lot of doctors who are against the idea of a booster shot, especially because a lot of people still aren't vaccinated and other countries are trying to get a first dose to people. As of Monday, over 62% of adults in the U.S. were fully vaccinated. So we have yet to see if a full approval leads to more Americans voluntarily getting the vaccine. And, of course, we'll be watching to see what potential mandates come from this. Charlotte, thanks for the reporting. Thanks for having me. Daily Wires, Charlotte Pence Bond.

Coming up, the Taliban issues an ultimatum to the Biden administration. Did you know your internet provider is legally allowed to log your internet activity and sell it to advertisers? We here at the Daily Wire make sure this doesn't happen with ExpressVPN, which secures your online activity from your ISP. Get an extra three months of ExpressVPN free at ExpressVPN.com slash wire. As the evacuation efforts continue in Afghanistan, there have been reports of outbreaks of violence in Kabul.

With thousands of people trapped in the country and the withdrawal deadline approaching, the Biden administration is now under pressure from the Taliban to leave on time. Here to update us on the latest is Daily Wires Ian Howarth. Morning in. Morning, John. Before we discussed the tension between the Biden administration and the Taliban, can you update us on the evacuation efforts? Well, the situation in Afghanistan and around the Kabul airport, more specifically,

is becoming ever more chaotic and in some cases deadly. On Saturday, seven people, including a toddler, were killed outside the airport, bringing the total death count up to well over a dozen so far. How did they die? Well, we don't have that full information yet, but one young girl, the daughter of a woman who worked as an interpreter for an American company, was crushed to death. Yeah, and this isn't the only example of violence we've seen. As we've discussed, there have been reports that Taliban members are assaulting American citizens, as well as threatening them with violence unless they hand over their passports. And on Monday, U.S. and German troops engaged in a firefight at the airport against unidentified attackers.

At least one Afghan guard was killed. So the situation is becoming more fraught by the day. What are we hearing from the Biden administration on this? Well, President Biden is shifting on his earlier rhetoric that his administration had planned for every contingency and is now saying that the evacuation of the thousands of U.S. citizens and Afghans would have been difficult regardless of timing. The evacuation of thousands of people from Kambul

is going to be hard and painful, no matter when it started, when we began. there is no way to evacuate this many people without pain and loss of heartbreaking images you see in television. It's just a fact. And with the evacuation process proceeding slowly, it's looking increasingly unlikely that all U.S. personnel will be withdrawn by August 31st, and that's the deadline President Biden said. Do we expect that he'll extend that deadline? Well, President Biden said he hopes to adhere to his own deadline, but he did admit that an extension might be needed. But the Biden administration's concern that their actions could provoke the Taliban is also playing a part here. In a frankly bizarre interview with Sky News, a Taliban spokesperson effectively threatened the Biden administration,

saying that they would not allow an extension to carry out evacuations. You can say it's a red line. President Biden announced 31st of August they would withdraw all their military forces. So if they extend it, that means they are extending occupation. If they are intent on continuing the occupation, so it will provoke reaction. Now, this comes following news that the United Kingdom's Prime Minister will use the upcoming Emergency G7 Summit to ask President Biden to extend the August 31st deadline. This is after British officials stated that more people died in the crush outside the Kabul airport. It's reported that the number of people outside the airport is now in the tens of thousands.

And we should also note other countries such as the UK and Germany, are sending forces beyond the airport to rescue civilians. For example, a Washington Post reporter was rescued by British troops, and this is all happening while Biden continues to hold back U.S. forces. Truly horrific scenes in Kabul right now. Thanks for the update, Ian. Thanks for having me. Daily Wires, Ian Howarth.

The Biden administration has forged ahead with a COVID-19 debt relief package that prioritized minority farmers to the exclusion of white farmers. Earlier this year, judges in three-sense, states ruled against the administration's farmer relief policy, with one judge calling it, quote, governmentally imposed discrimination based on race. Here to discuss is Daily Wire editor Ash Short. Ash, welcome. Thanks for having me on.

So first, tell us about this policy and the court's rulings about it. Sure. As you know, many aspects of the economy were hit hard by the COVID shutdowns, including farming. Right. As part of President Biden's American Rescue Plan, four billion. billion dollars in COVID-19 debt relief was set aside specifically for, quote, socially disadvantaged farmers. This included black, Hispanic, American Indian, and Asian-American farmers. And even though white farmers were also affected by the pandemic, they were excluded from receiving debt relief.

Quick question. How do they identify who was socially disadvantaged? Is that based just on race? Yeah. And how did the white farmers react to this? They sued. White farmers in at least three states, Florida, Tennessee, and Wisconsin sued the administration alleging discrimination. In each of those states, federal judges sided with the farmers and granted preliminary injunctions against the relief program. A U.S. district judge in Florida tore into the policy saying Congress had a, quote, obligation to do away with governmentally imposed discrimination based on race, and further writing that, quote, Congress moved with great speed to address the history of discrimination, but did not move with great care.

Okay, so the program was ruled unconstitutional. How did the Biden administration respond? Well, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has been pushing back on the rulings, arguing that socially disadvantaged farmers have struggled for generations because of, quote, systemic discrimination and a cycle of debt.

Vilsack also lashed out at the white farmers themselves, asking where they had been for the past century when this discrimination was taking place. place. Vilsack's response didn't acknowledge the challenges that farmers of all races faced during the pandemic, which is what the debt relief program was intended to remedy. Right. So Vilsack is defending the policy, but did the administration really think the program was legally sound? Apparently not. Thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by a civil rights attorney, we know that in a June second email, an advocate for black farmers wrote in a letter to Secretary Vilsack that

President Biden's transition team told them that debt relief for black farmers was, quote, unconstitutional. This would indicate that the Biden administration knew back in November or December that such a policy was unconstitutional, but went ahead with it anyway. Wow. On the other hand, the government has a variety of programs that are designed to aid minority communities. So what made this one unconstitutional? Well, one of the federal judges who ruled in favor of white farmers actually addressed that. Judge William Greasbach in Wisconsin wrote in his ruling that because this was a debt relief program, it should have considered the financial circumstances of the individual farmers, not their race. He added that the government could have implemented a race neutral program and given priority to

farmers and ranchers who had been left out of previous pandemic relief funding. But they couldn't make that determination based on race. Interesting. So what's next for these farmers? Well, things are still up in the legal system. Even though the policy was ruled unconstitutional, that doesn't mean all farmers affected by the pandemic are now able to access the relief funds. Huh. The fact is, we don't know when the money will be released to farmers in need. Well, Ash, thanks for keeping us informed. Anytime. Daily Wire editor, Ash Short. Other stories were tracking this week. On Friday, the Mississippi Department of Health announced that those who test positive for COVID-19 must isolate for 10 days or face up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $5,000.

Massive flooding in Middle Tennessee over the weekend resulted in at least 22 deaths with dozens still missing. The rapid influx of rainwater caused local creeks to swell into dangerous rapids, capable of sweeping up cars and wiping homes off their foundations. And a rural council in Australia has outraged animal activists by allegedly shooting multiple impounded dogs. The council claims the action was taken in order. to prevent volunteers from violating COVID lockdowns in order to come pick them up. According to the Office of Local Government, the incident may have been a violation of animal rights laws and activists are pushing for an investigation.

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