Morning Wire - Walt Disney Layoffs & Alaska Mine Shutdown | 2.10.23

Episode Date: February 10, 2023

Disney CEO Bob Iger announced that the company will layoff 7,000 people,  the EPA has officially shut down hopes of mining a vast gold reserve in Alaska, and what do we know about the Penn Biden Center? Get the facts first with Morning Wire. PajamaGram: "Order today and SAVE 25%, use code ‘NUDE’ https://www.pajamagram.com/" Nugenix: Get a complimentary bottle of Nugenix Total T when you text ‘WIRE’ to 231-231. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Despite a better-than-expected quarterly earnings report, Disney CEO Bob Eiger is telling 7,000 employees to clean out their desks. We have to have the right pricing. We have to have the right marketing. We have to have the right contact. We look at Disney's rationale for the layoffs and how things stand as a whole in the House of Mouse. I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief John Bickley. It's Friday, February 10th, and this is Morning Wire. After years of consideration, the EPA has officially shut down hopes of mining a vast gold reserve in Alaska. We discussed the EPA's decision and how the tradeoff affects Alaska's economy. And the Penn Biden Center has been at the center of President Biden's classified document scandal. What is the center's mission, who funded the think tank, and who was on their hefty payroll?

Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know. This Valentine's Day, give her the gift of silky, naturally nude pajamas available exclusively at Pajagram. Even more alluring than lingerie, the texture and touch of these pajamas are so soft that you'll both love the way they feel. Go to Pajamagram.com right now and use code nude to save 25% off your order of naturally nude pajamas. That's Pajamagam.com. Use code nude, N-U-D-E for 25% off. Don't forget to tell them we sent you. Disney announced its latest quarterly earnings on Wednesday, and while the numbers were better than expected, poor performance in some divisions prompted the company to announce it will be laying off 7,000 employees.

Here to catch us up on how things stand at Disney is Daily Wire Culture reporter, Megan Basham. So, Megan, I know Disney's been struggling for a little while, and that led the board to push out its last CEO, Bob Chapic, and bring back its former longtime CEO, Bob Iger. Does it look like Iger's been able to turn the ship around? You know, actually, given that Iger only came back a couple of months ago, I think, it would be fair to say that he's benefiting somewhat from some of Chapix efforts. Now, the Parks Division delivered the best numbers with a pretty healthy $2.1 billion in operating profit, and that's an increase of 36% from last year, and that's due largely to Chapix raising

ticket prices and adding on some additional fees. Well, Iger actually criticized that and said he thought it was the wrong thing to do. So I think a lot of this optimism is actually based on Iger's promises to restructure. As John mentioned there, the first thing he's going to do is cut 7,000 jobs. And then the company's going to restructure into three divisions that will allow heads of each division to have more decision-making power. So we'll see an entertainment segment that covers film, television streaming, another one that covers parks and cruise lines, and then ESPN will be off on its own. And what else is going to be included in that restructuring? So Iger's also promising to reduce costs by $5.5 billion, and he particularly zeroed in on Disney's

studios and streaming. He admitted that the company's content has become what he called extraordinarily expensive, and they have to find a way to maintain quality without blowing out those budgets. So the big drag on the company is Disney Plus, which has never been profitable. We've talked about this before, about how its subscription rate was slowing. Well, this quarter, for the first time, the service debuted, it actually saw a net loss in subscribers. And so I think we can expect the lion's share of job cuts to come out of that entertainment division. Now, there has been a perception in the past couple of years that Disney's brand is hurting with parents due to their insertion of gender and politics into their content. Do you think they're going to back off some of those themes?

You know, I really don't think so. I spoke to a number of sources within the company, some of them at the executive level, and they tell me that they don't really see any plans to reverse course. In fact, I'm being told that Marvel fans are going to see that franchise leaning further into what some might call wokeness. This particular source believes it's going to be damaging to the brand's profitability, which has already been suffering somewhat. And we've also seen some massive flops in what were once Disney's most popular brands. Marvel movie The Eternal's, which was heavily marketed as a celebration, of racial and sexual diversity tanked. So did the Toy Story sequel Lightyear,

which included a lesbian romance. And then just last week, this scene from the Disney cartoon series, The Proud Family, drew a lot of ire on social media. The slaves built this country. And we, the descendants of slaves in America have earned reparations for their stuff

and continue to earn reparations every moment we spend submerged in the systemic prejudice, racism, and right supremacy. But Iger did announce Failed with and still has not a tone for. Slaves built this country. But Iger did announce more sequels for Toy Story, Frozen and Zootopia. So we'll probably be able to tell quite a bit from the content of those films.

All right. Well, it'll be interesting to see how families respond. Megan, thanks for reporting. Yeah, my pleasure. That was Daily Wire Culture Reporter, Megan Basham. Coming up, the EPA shuts down a highly lucrative mine. Guys, as we age, do you feel like it's getting harder to get shape and stay in shape.

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Text 231, 231, and enter the keyword. wire. That's 231-231 keyword wire. The Environmental Protection Agency effectively vetoed a highly lucrative proposed copper in gold mine in Alaska last week. Alaska's Governor Mike Dunleavy has promised to fight the decision in court. Here to talk about the battle over Alaska's pebble mine is Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce. So Tim, first off, what is the pebble mine project? So this mineral deposit is in a rural area of the southern part of the state, and it contains vast amounts of rare minerals, particularly gold and copper. The fight over pebble has been going on for about two decades now, but the effort to

develop the area has been going on a lot longer. The state of Alaska acquired the pebble mine area from the federal government in a land swap in the 1970s, and development of that area has been under consideration for about half a century. And now the EPA has vetoed the plant. Is this the end for the Pebble Mine Project? Well, it's at least a major setback, but Governor Mike Dunleavy has promised legal action. He's been pushing the project since taking office in 2018. He even met with former President Trump about it and seemed to make some progress with federal regulators before backsliding. We'll see what Dunleavy's options are. He said during a radio interview after the EPA's decision that he hasn't ruled anything out. We're going to do everything we can to make sure

that Alaskans determine Alaskan's destiny and that we have the opportunity to develop our resources responsibly. And the developer behind the proposed mine is taking a similar tech. Executives at Northern Dynasty Minerals based in Vancouver called the EPA's action illegal. They said the company would pursue legal action to get the EPA's ruling reversed. Now, what was the basis for the EPA's decision? The EPA used a rarely exercised power under the Clean Water Act to unilaterally block development because of the risk to the environment. This is just the third time in 30 years that the EPA has used that authority. The EPA blocked Pebble because of the risk it poses to a nearby sock-eye salmon fishery. The fishery in Bristol Bay is the largest salmon fishery in the world,

and the Pebble Project's plan involved sending discharge from the mine into Bristol's watershed. Now, that water would have been treated before its release and dispersed across three locations, all monitored for their water quality. But the EPA said, even with those precautions, those discharges posed an unacceptable risk to Bristol Bay's salmon population. EPA administrator Michael Reagan called the fishery irreplaceable and a natural wonder. Reagan also touted the economic benefits of the fishery to the surrounding area. It is about a $1.5 to $2 billion a year business. The mineral deposit, though, is estimated to be worth around $400 billion.

So in financial terms, the mine is a better deal for the state. That, of course, would take decades to extract, but supporters say it could be done without disrupting the fishery. It's the precedent, but it's also the death of an opportunity that could have employed thousands of Alaskans in various jobs, directly in ancillary jobs, and the wealth that it would produce for the area out there. You've got some small villages. The irony of a lot of these projects that are trying to be shut down is that they're located in some of the poorest areas of our state. What's the alternative for them? A check from the government? That being said, the project is probably dead unless Alaska can figure out a way to save it in court or until a new

administration takes over. All right. Well, Tim, thanks so much for reporting. Thanks for having me. wires, Tim Pierce. When Vice President Joe Biden left the White House in early 2017, it wasn't long before he landed a position as an honorary professor at the University of Pennsylvania. A year later, the university opened the Penn Biden Center, a think tank in D.C. touted as a Beltway hub for advancing diplomacy by bringing together staff, students, and leaders all across the global stage. After classified documents were discovered at the center, concerns have been raised about the influence of foreign donors, particularly those from China, and the revolving door of university employees who made their way into President Biden's administration. Joining us to discuss as Daily Wire senior reporter

Daniel Chaiton, who's been covering this story for us. Hey, Daniel, what can you tell us about this think tank and the people who work there? Hey, John, thanks for having me. In a way, this think tank gave us all a bit of a preview for the Biden team that we see today. Now, a number of people who worked at UPenn and the Biden Center made the jump to government, including UPenn President Amy Gutman, who is now U.S. ambassador to Germany, Anthony Blinken, who is Secretary of State. He served as managing director of the Penn Biden Center. And of course, there's Biden himself.

How long did Biden spend there and how much money did he make off his role there? Quite a bit, actually. UPenn reportedly paid Biden more than $900,000. He stayed with the university until April 2019. At that point, he took unpaid leave upon announcing his campaign for president. So not a bad deal there. What exactly did Biden do during his tenure? It doesn't appear he did all that much.

His honorary professorship did not involve regular classes, though he did show up for about a dozen public appearances on campus. The Philadelphia Inquirer published an investigative report in 2019 that surmised Biden probably wasn't paid so much for his lectures as he was, and I'm quoting here, for something less tangible, the prestige of associating with a former vice president and senator who had burnished his reputation as a global figure. But that didn't stop Biden from exclaiming last year that he worked as a, quote,

full professor at UPenn for four years. That was a claim which Politifact determined was half true. Okay, now let's turn to the document scandal, which of course started with the discovery at the Pinn-Biden Center. There's been a lot of questions about how donations to UPenn from foreign countries reportedly tripled in the two years after the Pinn-Biden Center opened. How much money are we talking about there? Well, we're talking about $61 million in gifts and contracts. That's between 2017 and 2019. Most of that money came from China. That's according to Education Department records, reported by the Washington Free Beacon. It's unclear now how much of that money went to the center during that time. But UPenn spokesperson told me that Think Tech never solicited or received

any gifts from any Chinese or other foreign entity. Still, you see Republicans and others warning of Biden's potential for conflicts of interest, especially dealing with the multi-million dollar dealings of the President's Sun Hunter involving China and other countries. In light of the classified documents discovery, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer recently sent a letter to UPenn, demanding records and communications, particularly those related to Chinese donors. Now, the Attorney General appointed a special counsel last month to examine if anyone involved broke any laws. Do we have any idea yet who investigators are looking at? Actually, yeah, we do. In fact, one person who was reportedly interviewed was a long-time Biden aide.

Her name is Kathy Chung. She's been interviewed as an assistant who held packed folders in the boxes that made their way to the Penn Biden Center. The Washington Post recently reported that Chung told investigators she was surprised any classified records would have been hanging around in Biden's office. But an insider said she did not check the folders upon packing them, although she had a top secret security clearance at the time. By the way, Chung appears to have gotten the job with the help of Hunter Biden. That's what we've gleaned anyway from emails from that famous laptop.

She's now deputy to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin over at the Pentagon. Well, a lot of threads here are still to pull. Danny, thanks for reporting. That was Daily Wire's senior reporter, Daniel Chayden. Other stories we're tracking this week. In an emotional testimony before Congress on Thursday, former FBI special agent Nicole Parker testified that she personally witnessed the Bureau become, quote, politically weaponized over the course of her career as an agent.

It was physically taxing and emotionally jarring. But I believed I was making an impactful difference. And every day, I woke up and I embraced being. an FBI special agent until things changed. Over the course of my 12-plus years, the FBI's trajectory has transformed. The Bureau's mission remained the same, but its priorities and governing principles shifted dramatically. The FBI became politically weaponized, starting from the top in Washington and trickling down

to the field offices. Parker's testimony came during the first hearing conducted by the new GOP-led select subcommittee on the weaponization of the federal government, which is investigating political bias. in federal agencies. Missouri's Attorney General announced on Thursday that he's launched an investigation into the pediatric transgender center at St. Louis Children's Hospital.

The announcement came after a whistleblower alleged that the facility's practices are unsound and causing serious harm to children. The AG's office said that they've received a sworn affidavit from the whistleblower and documents that support her claims. That's all the time we've got this morning. Thanks for waking up with us.

We'll be back later this afternoon with more news you need to know. now.