The President's Daily Brief - January 6th, 2023. President Biden Announces New Immigration Policies, and They Look A Lot Like Trumps.

Episode Date: January 6, 2023

It’s January 6th. You’re listening to the President’s Daily Brief. Your morning intel starts now. ------ A good day to you, ladies and gentlemen. I’ve got four briefs for you this morning that are shaping America — and the world. First, an update on the Drone Wars in Ukraine. Turns out that American-made electronics are helping those Russian drones attack Ukrainian targets. Second, China has created mosquitos that inject vaccines into unsuspecting patients. Oh boy. I’ll explain that science experiment. Third, there’s a new wind farm slated to be installed off the coast of Rhode Island, even though government scientists warned that it shouldn’t happen. Fourth, the US Congress just saved a group of dolphins from being fired from the US Navy. Yes, dolphins. We employ them.  Later, we close out the podcast with my thoughts on the fight in Washington DC over the Speaker of the House. ------ Please remember to subscribe if you enjoyed this episode of the President's Daily Brief. Email: [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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You're listening to the President's Daily Brief. I'm your host and former CIA officer Brian Dean Wright. Your morning intel starts now. A good day to you, ladies and gentlemen. I've got four briefs for you this morning that are shaping America and the world. First, a major arrest in Mexico could actually lead to higher tomato prices in America. I'll explain that strange connection. Second, Joe Biden announced major changes to America's immigration policies yesterday,

and they look a lot like Trump's. Third, a company out of Israel is hoping to address America's mega drought in the southwest. We'll talk about their proposed solution. Fourth, an update on the COVID outbreak in China. We've got some data showing the latest, plus why you should care. Later, we close out the podcast with something unusual. I'm going to talk to you about some training manuals from the U.S. government on diversity, equity, and inclusion. and they include guidance at NASA that personal feelings are more important than data.

But before we get to that, which is crazy, we got to get started with this. A very important Mexican cartel member was captured yesterday in the state of Sinaloa. And depending on how violent the response gets by his fellow cartel members, we could see trade interruptions from that state, which right now is sending large amounts of tomatoes to the United States. Now, more on that in a second. Meanwhile, here's what we know about this arrest. Yesterday afternoon, Mexican Army and National Guard troops surrounded and captured Ovidio Guzman, the 32-year-old son of Joaquin Guzman, who is better known as El Chapo. So that man, El Chapo, headed the Sinaloa cartel for over 25 years until the year 2017, when he, too,

was captured and later sent to the United States. He was then convicted of a slew of a slew of different drug charges and sent to the Supermax prison in Colorado for life. So with good old dad in prison, his two sons took over the cartels lucrative drug trade, mostly methamphetamine, now fentanyl. And I'll tell you, I do mean lucrative. The U.S. government has alleged that the boys oversee at least 11 illegal laboratories that produce over 5,000 pounds of meth a month, say nothing to the fentanyl and other drugs. Well, as you can imagine, for years, the U.S. DEA and FBI have been pushing the Mexican government to arrest these two kids of El Chapo. And actually, they did. They snatched one of them back in 2019. But he was very quickly freed by the Mexicans when his fellow cartel members flooded the streets and threatened to kill family members of military personnel if he wasn't let go.

So he was released and has been on the run ever since. except not any longer. He has been flown to somewhere in Mexico, with federal prosecutors now deciding next steps. Possibly, that could include sending him to the United States, just like his dad a number of years ago. But as of this morning, his cartel is going into overdrive with violence to try to get him back.

The Sinaloa cartel has set up at least 19 roadblocks in the city where he was captured, including near a key airport and outside of a local military base. The state government there has also warned residents to seek immediate shelter and stay there. Schools and local government buildings will be closed until further notice. To give you a sense of just how tense things are down there, a commercial airliner was trying to take off yesterday, but came under fire because the cartel members mistakenly believed that their captured comrade was on that flight.

Thank God no one was hurt except for the plane's bullet-ridden fuselage. So folks, that is the latest on this breaking story with much more to come. In the meantime, let's talk about the three reasons for why we should care about this and what might happen next. First, just some free advice. If you have any travel plan to Mexico, well, maybe don't, at least for a next couple of days anyway, until we get this sorted out. Second, you might be wondering to what extent this will help slow the drugs that are pouring into America. Unfortunately, it won't, not by much. Now, to be clear, it is an important arrest, and the Sinaloa cartel will be distracted and scattered

for a while, but it'll rebound. Meanwhile, and this is the important piece, this arrest gives an opening to their main rival, the notoriously violent cartel called the Halisko New Generation Cartel. I gave you a brief on these guys a long time ago, back on May 13th, but to refresh our memories on these guys, that cartels members will kill and eat the body parts of opposing cartel members or their families all as a warning to back off of their turf. So the bottom line is that this Holisco New Generation Cartel might move pretty quickly in the chaos of this moment to seize more turf or even attack Senaloa members to push them out. And if that does occur, if we see an uptick

and violence, well, that could lead to the third reason for why we should care. And that is trade. The state of Sinaloa exports a bunch of different products to the United States, most especially shrimp, and actually right now, tomatoes. A lot of America's winter supply of tomatoes comes from that region with a harvest that starts in December and goes through May. So we'll keep my eye on the fallout from this arrest to include how it could affect your grocery bill of all things. One other thing, before I let you go on this one, if I could just offer some informed opinion. We should really be asking ourselves, why is this arrest happening? Why right now? Because Reuters News Service is reporting that the son was under surveillance for at least six months.

So as we think about that and ask, well, why didn't they arrest him over the past six months? Consider this. Next week, Mexico's president Lopez Obrador is hosting Joe Biden and Canada's Justin Trudeau for a very big fancy meeting. On the agenda is the drug. The drug trade and cartels. So, this arrest, based on conversations I've had with folks that I trust, it was absolutely planned to give the Mexican president a very strong defense against any criticism on those two issues of drug trade and cartels. In other words, this arrest was really about political theater. But nevertheless, I will still keep you posted. For our second update this morning, we're going to stick with politics and Mexico because Joe Biden made a very important announcement

about America's southern border yesterday as he too is preparing for that big visit to Mexico City next week. Mr. Biden said yesterday at the White House that he was changing the asylum process. And as it turns out, that means he's reverting back to many of the same policies that were embraced under the Trump administration. So let's go through this new list of policies with four key take-war. ways. First, Biden is now embracing Trump's transit ban. And that means that if you're an asylum seeker, you must now stop in the first safe country after you leave your home. You can't just come straight to America. In other words, if let's say you are in Honduras and you'd like to flee to America, uh-uh, you're not allowed. You have to first stop in either El Salvador, Guatemala,

or Belize, and ask for asylum there. And if you don't and you manage to get to America, Well, your asylum application will be immediately rejected. All right. Next, asylum seekers must now go to an official port of entry to apply for asylum. No bum rushing the border and then claiming asylum with a Border Patrol officer. Third, Biden has expanded Trump's policy commonly known as Title 42, which has previously allowed authorities to immediately reject illegal migrants and asylum seekers due to concerns related to public health. In this case, we're talking about COVID.

A lot of irony on this one. Joe Biden previously sued to abandon the use of Trump's Title 42, but now he's expanding it. All right. Fourth and perhaps the most controversial of Biden's decisions is about asylum seekers from the countries of Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. Effective immediately, if you're from any of those countries

and you come to the border, you will be sent back without question. Instead, you must apply for asylum, usually at the U.S. embassy or consulate in your home country, and await a decision. Plus, to qualify, you have to have certain financial support and family connections inside the U.S. By the way, Biden is calling this new system humanitarian parole. Now, here's the especially controversial part. The U.S. will consider upwards of 30,000 of these applications per month. which is still potentially hundreds of thousands of people annually. So, folks, there are your four key takeaways,

which, by the way, takes us to the reactions of Biden's announcement. As you would expect, they're all mixed, although actually mostly negative, even from his own party. For instance, Democrat Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey slammed Biden's new series of policies, saying that they will, quote, exclude migrants fleeing violence and persecution who do not have the ability or economic means to qualify for the new parole process, end quote. He added that, quote, the transit ban erases the words and values etched in the Statue of Liberty,

end quote. All right, there you have it. Those are the facts in the data this morning about the big Biden announcement on the border. Let's now quickly pivot to analysis and my counsel to you. So let's just ask this, why is this happening? Why right now? Because we have had a collaboration, border for several years, record numbers of illegals. Biden could have done this ages ago. Well, let me remind you of how we opened this brief. Joe Biden is traveling to Mexico next week, and probably the southern border too. Well, in both cases, illegal migration will be on the agenda. So by doing this now, it helps him deflect the questions and, frankly, the righteous criticism of his years of open border policies. But I think there's another reason here, too. Biden's been facing

intense pressure from his own party on this issue, though mostly behind closed doors. So do you remember a couple of days ago when I briefed you on Colorado's Democrat Governor Jared Polis announcing that he would bus his state's illegals to the cities of Chicago and New York? And if you recall, the mayors of those towns were not happy. Well, let me give you a couple of new quotes that have come out since I briefed you on that. On Wednesday, New York City's mayor said, quote, at one time we had to deal with Republican governors sending migrants to New York,

but now we're dealing with Democrat governors sending migrants to New York, and that is just unfair, end quote. He then went on to blast the Biden administration too, saying amongst other things, quote, why don't you tell the federal government to fix this mess that they have created? It's unacceptable, end quote.

Meanwhile, Chicago's mayor, Lori Lightfoot, is now on the record saying that she's tired of keeping quiet about this immigration crisis, all to avoid, quote, embarrassing the family, end quote, of course, referring there to Biden and her own party. In other words, folks, Democrat mayors around the country are buckling under the tsunami of illegal migrants. Although, ironically enough, they were formerly very proud to call themselves sanctuary cities or sanctuary states. Oh, but how things have changed. In other words, folks, my analysis here is that Mr. Biden's new policies are not done out of principle. Rather, as we would expect probably from any politician, to be fair, he's doing it because of politics. With that, ladies and gentlemen, let's take a quick break. When we come back, I've got two more critical pieces of news for you.

So hang tight, and we will be right back. Welcome back to the PDB. I've got two more critical pieces of news for you this morning. we're actually going to stay on America's southern border for our third brief, but this one's got some good news to it, a potential solution to the water crisis that's affecting America's southwest, with Arizona in particular focus. So for this brief, you might want to pull out a map,

either on your phones, your computers, or in your mind. And I want you to find a little town in the Sonoran state called Puerto Penaasco, although locals usually call it Rocky Point. And it is there in that small town that an Israeli company has proposed building a massive desalination plant costing $5 billion, all to pull salt water out of the Sea of Cortez and send most of it north to Arizona. The total volume here is pretty substantial, is enough water to service over one million homes annually or even more. Now, there would need to be some new pipelines built to smaller ones to service to Mexican cities. But the main artery would feed north from Rocky Point through what you can see on your maps is the area called Oregon Pipe National Monument, continues north on state route 85 to Buckeye, Arizona.

And then from there, they're going to have to build two big new reservoirs. And those would feed an existing series of canals that would in turn tap into the Greater Phoenix and Tucson communities, along with the agricultural base of Pinal County. So I flagged this development for you because, as PDB listeners know, there is a historic drought affecting the southwest, which has hammered the normal supply of water coming from both the Colorado River and native aquifers. So bringing in this much water would allow some very important breathing room for the Colorado and help replenish those local aquifers. Plus, that agricultural area in Pineau County would get a critical boost of water as they're now scrambling for irrigation to keep, producing the $1 billion annually of fruits and vegetables that they grow in that area. Now, to be fair, there are some pretty reasonable concerns with this plan.

The $5 billion price tag is certainly one. Although this is interesting, the Israeli firm has agreed to finance the entire thing, but the state of Arizona has to agree to a 100-year contract to buy that water at a set price. Which, speaking of, desalinized water is very spendy stuff. Around $2,500 per acre foot, which, to give you some perspective here, fresh water from these same Arizona canals can run you $200 per acre foot. And then there's the issue of the brine. When you take all that salt out of the seawater,

well, you've got to put that salt somewhere. Most of the time, it's dumped back into the sea, which might not seem like that big of a deal, but the amount of salt collected in these kinds of projects can be very damaging to the local water eco-eco, system when it's dumped. Still, all in all, it's an interesting solution to the water crisis in the Southwest because there haven't been too many other great plans. And if this one happens to move forward, well, water could be flowing as early as the year 2027. Both the Mexican government and

Arizona authorities would have to have that authorized, of course, which by the way is starting to happen. Two weeks ago, Arizona's water infrastructure finance authority passed a non-binding resolution agreeing to the project. The Mexican governor of Sonora has agreed in principle too. Finally, an update this morning on how things are going in China with their first big COVID outbreak with a special focus on how that might affect you and consumers around the world. Yesterday, a spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington, D.C. was asked about COVID case counts, and the officials said, well, we don't know. No idea what they are. Instead, the spokesman said, quote, China has started to collect information through questionnaires and surveys

and will continue to disclose information on deaths and severe cases in accordance with the principles of truth, openness, and transparency. All right, sure. CNBC, however, is reporting another more honest metric this morning about case counts, and it gives us a far more honest and concrete answer. CNBC's supply chain heat map is showing that orders for ocean bookings to ship products abroad are falling with pretty considerable speed, all because factories are short of workers to produce products. According to the Hong Kong-based shipping

firm HLS, 50 to 75% of the labor force in their industry is either infected or caring for an infected family member, which removes, of course, all those folks from the factories and the ports and the transportation networks. So when will things get back to normal? Ah, well the firm HLS has spoken with assorted factory owners and the general consensus is probably early to mid-February. That's when factories should be humming right along at normal levels. So that means that you and I could see inventory squeezes here in the United States and globally. And depending on the product, you might see a shortage or two on the shelf. Now, that's probably not a big deal for most U.S. consumers.

And that's because, according to the recent data from the U.S. Commerce Department, consumers are pulling back from purchasing products and instead spending more on services. So all and all, I'm going to keep tabs on this issue given that, well, like it or not, China remains the world's factory. And like it or not, outbreaks there affect us here. Not that we needed a reminder of that. I think we've all lived that nightmare for the past couple years. And with that, ladies and gentlemen, we conclude,

morning brief. But I've got one more thing before I let you go. We'll be right back. Welcome back to the PDB folks. I've got one more thing before I let you go. Last week, the Wall Street Journal published a report on training materials belonging to the U.S. government, all advising the workforce about diversity, inclusion, and equity. It was from multiple departments and agencies, even the U.S. military. So the journal was investigating this because they were curious, how things were going following Joe Biden's 2021 executive order that mandated this training across the entire U.S. government.

So I'd like to give you a few examples of what the journal found, of this new culture that your federal government is creating. In the U.S. Army, just as one example, they provided counsel to commanders and units and soldiers about a bunch of things to include transgender soldiers. And when it came to the very delicate issue, of showering or open locker rooms, here's what they said. Quote, anyone may encounter individuals in barracks or bathrooms or shower facilities with physical characteristics of the opposite sex.

In other words, men may see soldiers in the showers with lady parts, and female soldiers may see other soldiers in the showers with male parts. And in case there were any doubt about how one should handle this experience, transgender soldiers, quote, are not required or expected to modify or adjust their behavior based on the fact that they do not match other soldiers. Meanwhile, at NASA, and I just, I want to say this again, at NASA where they fly things into space,

a common leadership mistake, according to this diversity training manual, is saying that data is king. Let me just expand on this. The training manual says, quote, do not demand data in order to accept a person's individual perspective, end quote. Instead, NASA scientists should, quote, value lived experience, end quote, rather than data. The manual goes on, by the way, to warn people at NASA that they cannot say the following phrase,

America is a melting pot. Also, NASA employees must never say that people are poor. Instead, people are dealing with economic hardship. All right, with that, folks, I'd actually like to do something a little bit unusual. So, since I launched this podcast, I have very intentionally avoided social issues. And that's because, as with the actual president's daily brief, I and it focuses mostly on domestic and international issues with very clear national security, environmental, or economic concerns.

But I'm going to make a rare exception here, although it's not really a total stretch. The actual PDB and this podcast are ultimately about flagging risks and threats to the nation. And what is clear is that this training program is a threat to the nation. because what's happening right now at NASA, for instance, is that we are jeopardizing the world's leading space program and scientific discovery because personal feelings apparently are more important than data. Folks, think about this. NASA is now building a culture where managers who are trying to get us to the moon or Mars

must give lived experience more value than mathematical facts. And I want to be honest, about this. The U.S. Army stuff is also incredibly awful. I think we can all imagine some very bad outcomes from that. But the whole thing is just utter madness. And just to be clear, the U.S. Army stuff is incredibly awful as well. I think we can all imagine some very bad outcomes with that. But this whole thing with NASA is just utter madness. You don't fly space shuttles and satellites without facts and data. And yet, because of Joe Biden's orders,

we're now giving priority to personal feelings at NASA. Come on. Folks, we are living in a time of hysteria. All right. We are living in a time of mass psychosis. And I just want to empower you to state the truth. None of this is normal. None of this is right.

And none of this is acceptable. Folks, if you'd like, I would encourage you to read this training manual or all of the material and do it for yourselves, judge for yourselves. You'll find the ultimate article in the Wall Street Journal entitled The U.S. government's woke training. Follow the hyperlinks to the actual training manuals. And I really hope you do. And I hope that we all consider the magnitude of what is happening in our government right now. Because I'll tell you, it's no way to run a military. And it is no way to run a space agency. And in my view, it is no way to run a nation. And that, ladies and gentlemen, concludes your morning brief. As always, we close out the show

reminding each other of why we are here, talking about our country and our world. It's the creed of every good spy and every smart American. It's from John, chapter 8, verse 32. And you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. Good day.