The President's Daily Brief - May 10th, 2022. White House Claims 100m COVID Cases Incoming...

Episode Date: May 10, 2022

It’s May 10th. You’re listening to the President’s Daily Brief. I’m your host and former CIA Officer Bryan Dean Wright. Your morning intel starts now. First up, The Biden Administration is forecasting 100M new COVID cases this winter. And that could mean very bad news for America’s kids. We’re going to talk about why. Your second brief, The Governor of Texas says that his state shouldn’t have to pay for the schooling of children here illegally. We’ll talk about why he’s making that case. And as always, I’m keeping an eye out for developing stories. Put this one on your radar. Inflation is up, no surprise there. But how we’re paying for it is, and it’s very bad news. We’ll dive into the numbers. All up next on the President’s Daily Brief. ------ Please remember to subscribe if you enjoyed this episode of the President's Daily Brief. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's May 10th. 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. The reef you're about to hear is in the same spirit of the actual President's Daily Brief, which is a top secret summary of the most critical events in the past 24 hours, all delivered to the president each day by the nation's spymasters. And so, ladies and gentlemen, I am your spy, and this is your brief. Here's what we're going to be talking about this morning. First up, the Biden administration is forecasting 100 million new COVID cases this winter, and that could mean very bad news for America's kids. We're going to talk about why. Your second brief, the governor of Texas says that his state shouldn't have to pay for the schooling of children here illegally. We're going to talk about why he's making that case.

And as always, I'm keeping an eye out for developing stories. Put this one on your radar. Inflation is up, no surprise there, but how we're paying for it is, and it's very bad news. We'll dive into the numbers. All up next on the President's Daily Brief. Your first piece of intel this morning. The White House is warning of a pretty sizable COVID surge starting this fall through the winter. That could mean some serious restrictions are coming back with very disastrous consequences for our kids.

But more on that in a second. So here's what the White House is saying. On Sunday, their COVID coordinator said that the U.S. could see upwards of a hundred million COVID infections through the winter, although their estimates are basically just guesses, depending on which forecast they used. Now, their assumption is that we're going to be hit by one of the two current variants that are floating around the country right now. But those two variants are actually variants of the Omicron variant.

A lot of variants there. But actually, that's precisely what epidemiologists have long predicted. They said that there would be lots of variants for three or four years until the virus settles down into one primary variant. It's going to be looking for its sweets, where on one hand, it infects a lot of people and survives, but on the other hand, it doesn't kill them. It doesn't kill their host. So that's basically the balance that most viruses try to find. At any rate, the reason that this matters is not so much the bug itself or that 100 million

people could be infected, but rather our reaction to all of it. So if you were the president this morning, I would be briefing you on one particular overreaction, and that's shutting down schools and putting kids into remote learning. Because there's a study out this morning from the Nonpartisan Bureau of Economic Research, and my goodness, the results are ugly. Researchers looked at data from 2.1 million students in 10,000 schools in 49 states plus D.C. Now, that is a national survey. So what they found was that when school districts went remote, academic achievement fell a lot. Now, the study got into standard deviations and used a lot of fancy language that you'd have to have a PhD to understand. But here's the key takeaway. The academic scores fell for all students in remote learning,

regardless of race or class. In other words, there isn't much learning in remote learning, as you'd hope. And that really hurts some kids more than others. You see, the study found that the poorest kids in our country suffered the most because the school districts that they were in, kept them in remote learning five and a half weeks longer than kids from wealthier families. And that makes sense because of what we all know what happened. If mom or dad could afford a tutor or private school or one of those fancy teaching pods, or maybe they organized with other parents and demanded the teachers return to the classrooms, well, those kids of active and wealthy parents managed to do much better than the poor kids.

Now there's another sad outcome that I need to report from this study. Black and brown kids, which made up a majority of the students from the high poverty school districts, their test scores were especially bad because of remote learning. Now, there were lots of reasons for that, from lack of good computer equipment to consistent internet access to, well, some of those kids had single-parent families, and they weren't able to create that consistent home life that kids really need. So all in all, this study left us with some very important lessons. First, locking down schools is bad, right? Remote learning is bad. That's not an opinion. That's pretty good science. Second, when you lock down schools, you lock out the poorest kids from getting a good education.

And that has huge implications for our society. And that's what we need to talk about next. And it's important even if you don't have kids. You see, if kids from impoverished homes don't get a good public education, they tend to struggle as they move on in life. There are a lot of good data to support that. And basically, they don't end up in trade schools or colleges, which helps them in turn to earn more money and get out of poverty. And that ultimately is really the goal of public education, to break that cycle of poverty, to strengthen the economy by strengthening individuals who go on to raise strong families. And that really underscores the second reason that you should care of come next fall with all those rising COVID infections. Your governor or president locks down schools again. You see, there are some very good, if very heartbreaking data from Duke and Columbia universities, in fact,

that show that the pandemic made kids increasingly uncooperative and unruly in their homes. Their mental health suffered because of isolation or lack of friends and social connectivity. And that unrulyness, by the way, didn't just end at the home. When schools eventually did open back up, those kids, well, a lot of them turned into little monsters. We have data on that in terms of how kids behaved once they went back to school. But I can tell you that personally I know that to be true from feedback from my brothers who teach in public schools. One teaches in a low-income school, in fact, and both in Oregon. And actually, speaking of Oregon, there's one final takeaway that you need to know from this

big study of 49 states. There's a political connection to the lower test scores. You see, the states that had the worst test scores were states run by Democrats. And here's the reason. Those liberal governors in Oregon and California, New York, they shut down their schools for the longest period of time, whereas Republican-run states, like Florida, Texas, and Arizona, they showed the least amount of troubled students and poorer scores because they've open up their schools the fastest. The point of this brief, ladies and gentlemen, is to remind us that as the White House warns of a big COVID wave this fall, the data suggests one very important thing. We can't go back to doing what we did. No more lockdowns. No more harming our kids with remote learning.

Now, that doesn't mean that we just ignore the threat, because we know that COVID is a serious virus and that it hits the elderly and the obese hardest. I've briefed you on that data before and how best to protect those folks. But what we also know is that the vast majority of people who get COVID, upwards of 99% of people, in fact, never go to the hospital and weather the viral storm without issue. But the problem's going to be when all those COVID infection numbers come out and the headlines and the hysterical responses say that we need to shut things down

and we need to go back to remote learning. But there's going to be a problem when all those COVID infection numbers start coming out, and the headlines and the hysterical responses that come out with them. People are going to stop being reasonable. But what this study shows, and my counsel to you this morning, is that we must continue to be reasonable. We must keep our schools open. And if you agree, that means that you may well have to fight.

And by that, I mean, you're going to have to exercise your constitutional rights. You get organized. You get loud. you stay peaceful, but you remain firm and committed to the science. And the science tells us that we have to keep the schools open. I think that our country and our kids are sure hoping that you do. Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is California's number one entertainment destination for today's superstars. Catch the Jonas Brothers return to the Yamava Theater stage on April 30th,

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million-plus illegals who have crossed over into America, mostly through his state, ever since Joe Biden became president. And he also referenced the 18,000 illegals that are forecasted to come across the border each day if Joe Biden rescinds that Title 42, which I previously briefed you on. Now, Abbott's logic here is that the federal government is responsible for policing the border. And since they're failing in that duty, well, and that's certainly what the numbers would suggest, it's not right that states like his have to carry the resulting burden like paying to educate the children here illegally. His argument wasn't and isn't that illegals shouldn't get an education,

but rather that the feds should pay for it because it's a result of their border failures. So I'm going to defer to you on what you think of his argument and the logic behind it. And by the way, if you want to dig into the Supreme Court case that he's referencing to understand the ruling, you should. It's called Plyer v. Doe. and it was a five to four decision in the court. But in the meantime, what I want to focus on is the response by the White House, specifically Jen Saki, the press secretary, because she was asked what she thinks of Abbott's statements

about potentially challenging the Supreme Court case. Here's what she said. Well, that's ultra-maga right there. Now, I want to do a special brief on what exactly ultra-maga is, and I don't want to focus on it today, but I do want to begin the conversation, by asking this. Should Americans be financially responsible for taking care of illegal immigrants?

The numbers here are pretty stark. There are upwards of 22 million illegal immigrants living in America, and they cost the country at least $143 billion annually. And now that's up $9.5 billion from just last year because of the additional 1 million illegals that have come under Joe Biden. but to answer the question of should Americans be financially responsible for taking care of illegal immigrants, I actually want to go back to that Plyer versus Doe case that Abbott wants to appeal. In the ruling, all the way back in 1982, the court said, quote,

education has a fundamental role in maintaining the fabric of our society. Thus, we have to provide illegal immigrants the right to an education. Now, that's a perfectly reasonable argument in the way. logic is sound, even if you disagree. And some folks might say that that's the morally correct response. But there's an unintended consequence to this. It creates an incentive. In other words, if you can get to the United States, you can stay here. And here's the point, you get a free education. Well, it's not free. Taxpayers pay for it, don't they? But for the illegal immigrant and their family, it's free. But that's not where it stops, because states and the federal government,

have added other incentives too. We've talked previously on the PDB about free phones and free housing and free health care. In other words, America has created a massive system of incentives to break America's laws and come here illegally. And people are. In fact, when Governor Abbott was speaking of challenging this plier versus dough ruling, he said that Texas schools have to resource kids who speak 120 different languages. Look, yes, that is a tremendous financial, burden and logistical challenge, but that's also a pretty clear indicator that the word is out globally that America is the place to be, and no small part because, well, you get a bunch of free stuff. So as you wrestle with Governor Abbott's decision this morning, I challenge you to think about

two things. The first is whether states should have to pay the price for when the federal government fails to secure the border. But the second question is asking ourselves whether we've gone too far as a country in creating this system of incentives that maybe for good-hearted reasons, well, they haven't just ended up supporting the poorest of immigrants, but it's actually encouraged them to come here illegally in the first place. Kayak gets my flight, hotel, and rental car right, so I can tune out travel advice that's just plain wrong. Bro, Skycoin, way better than points.

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Your life deserves music. Your music deserves Bose. Find your perfect product at Bose.com. As always, I'm watching a few other stories. Put this one on your radar. Inflation numbers are going up, up, up, and the way that we're paying for it is bad, bad, bad. But more on that in a second.

Here on the PDB, we've talked about inflation many times, and frankly, I could fill up your ears with awful data every morning, which I try not to. But I do want to add this. Just a small example from yesterday, Tyson food said the price of its beef was up 23% year-over-year last month. Chicken was up over 14% and pork was 10%. But rather than make your ears bleed with more and more of this terrible inflation data, the issue that I want to flag for you today is what I warned you about several weeks ago,

that folks are probably going to use their credit cards to pay for all this inflationary pressure. And boy are we. The Federal Reserve released data on Consumption. debt levels for March, and the amount climbed up by $52.4 billion. That's an annual increase of 14%. Now, revolving credit, which includes credit cards, that surged by 21%. Now, we all know that credit card debt is about the worst debt that you can have, and that's because interest rates are so incredibly high, 15, 20, 30% or more. Well, those numbers are going to get worse, too. That's because the Federal Reserve last week increased...

interest rates by a half a point. And that's just the start. Rates are supposed to go up another one to two percent. And that means the credit card rates, which are already some of the highest in the banking industry, are going to go way up as well. Now, in past briefs, I've offered up some solutions that are within your immediate control to address inflation. So one of the biggest ones is building out that social circle of yours. Now, and I'm not talking about social media and Facebook and such. I mean the old-fashioned stuff, like going to church and a veterans group, a bowling, club, all of that. At those places, you build relationships, and then you can lean on those relationships, your friends to help you find a new job that pays more, for instance. So that advice

still stands. But frankly, I think we're going to need something far more drastic. And so if you were the president and I were briefing you this morning, my counsel to you would be to adopt this solution. It's time to put a cap on credit card interest rates. Now, what that exact number should be, or that exact percentage, well, hey, reasonable people can debate this. But with 50 billion in debt that is likely to grow because of high grocery bills and gas bills, all that going on in a credit card, we need to start talking about managing this debt crisis. Because if forgiving billions, if not a trillion dollars, a student loan debt is on the table, then there's no reason that we shouldn't be talking about capping credit card interest rates too. And that, ladies and gentlemen,

concludes your morning brief. A little fun update for everybody. Yesterday's brief was our best yet in terms of listeners and downloads. So whatever fever you have going on listening to this podcast, well, I don't want that fever to break. So please keep it up, share the good PDB news, and send me some emails. That email address, as always, is PDB at thefirsttv.com. That's P as in presidents, D is in daily, and B as in brief, at thefirsttv.com.

And with that, we close out our 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. Spring is the season everyone refreshes everything except their blinds. People put it off because they think it's complicated.

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