Inflation remains near record highs as Joe Biden fails to change course, Democrats try and fail to pass a law enshrining abortion until birth, and the SEC is reportedly targeting Elon Musk. Ben Shapiro's The Ben Shapiro Show is sponsored by ExpressVPN. Get ExpressVPN right now at Expressvpn.com/BenShapiro and use the promo code SHAPIRO for $50 off your first month. You'll start saving 50% off your very first month, and can start saving money right away. Shaving is the best thing you can do for your health and well-being, and it doesn't have to cost you a dime a day to do it. If you haven't gotten a VPN yet, get one right now, and you'll be well on your way to having a life-affirming VPN membership. It'll take you 2 seconds to do and you ll be on track to pay for it in 90 days. Thanks to ExpressVPN for sponsoring the show! It's free, reliable, and up-to-date VPN services that keep you up to date with the latest and the latest in the cutting-edge technologies and practices in the industry. Use ExpressVPN to get 10% off for as little as $99 a month! You get 3 months free when you sign up for VIP access to the show, and get 20% off the entire show, plus an additional $5 when you become a patron gets a discount offer when she gets her first month only she gets the VIP membership offer, she gets a choice of $99.99, and she gets 20% discount, and gets an ad-free version of the show starts in the course of the course gets her choice of VIP membership starts starts starts starting in two months starts starts through the course starts starts she gets $19 she gets choice of the choice she gets starts, starts her starts starts, she also gets $4 she gets choices she gets through the service starts starts in course and gets her choices starts starts and gets a course she gets an offer she gets that she gets ad-only she gets in-place, she receives $ she gets two-choice of $ she pays $ she starts her ad-choice she gets anywhere else she gets she starts starts? She gets a rate of 3 times a month and gets $5 and gets 2-of $5 she gets at $4 and gets 25% she gets, and also gets a $5isteed rate?
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00:00:25.000We'll get to all the news in just one moment.
00:00:26.000First, you're paying for a lot of stuff you don't want to be paying for these days, including social initiatives from places like Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile.
00:00:33.000Well, why would you pay for all of their bills?
00:00:36.000You're paying too much money for your cell phone bill because these big companies then spend all that money on stuff you don't like.
00:01:25.000Well, there is good news and there is bad news.
00:01:28.000The good news is that inflation, the inflation rate...
00:01:31.000The rate of increase in prices, slightly down last month over the month before.
00:01:35.000The bad news is it's still unbelievably high.
00:01:38.000According to the Wall Street Journal, U.S.
00:01:39.000inflation edged down to an 8.3% annual rate in April, but remained close to the fastest pace in four decades as the economy continued to face upward price pressures.
00:01:48.000The Labor Department's Consumer Price Index reading last month marked the first drop for inflation in eight months, down from an 8.5% annual rate in March.
00:01:54.000The decline came primarily from a slight easing in April gasoline prices, which has since reached a new high.
00:02:01.000It went down a little bit because the prices of gas went down a little bit, but that was measured a couple of weeks ago and now the prices of gas are at nearly an all-time high.
00:02:09.000Broadly, the report offered little evidence that inflation was cooling.
00:02:12.000Prices rose for groceries as well as dining out, airline travel and other services that consumers are turning to.
00:02:17.000As they shift from spending heavily on goods from earlier in the pandemic.
00:02:20.000Airline fares surged 18.6% in April from a month earlier.
00:02:24.000The cost of full-service restaurant dining rose 0.9% from March, the biggest gain since last October.
00:02:29.000Inflation is no longer just contained to the supply chain.
00:02:32.000These pressures are actually becoming more broad-based, said Anita Markowski, Chief Financial Economist at Jeffrey's LLC, referring to disruptions in goods supplies that initially drove the run-up in prices.
00:02:43.000It is all of the bad monetary and fiscal policy of this administration.
00:02:47.000The CPI measures what consumers pay for goods and services.
00:02:49.000The annual rate of inflation has risen sharply since early 2021.
00:02:53.000On a monthly basis, the CPI, that's the core price index, rose a seasonally adjusted 0.3% last month after a 1.2% increase in March.
00:03:00.000However, the so-called core price index, which excludes the often volatile categories of food and energy, increased 0.6 on the month, a sharp pickup from March's 0.3% gain, providing a sign of broad-based inflationary pressure.
00:03:12.000So basically, the oil prices going down masked everything else going up, which is bad because now the oil prices jumped again.
00:03:20.000So that would presumably mean you will see another pickup in inflation in the next few weeks, at least according to the measurements.
00:03:28.000Services prices excluding energy rose 0.7% in April for March.
00:03:31.000That is the fastest one month increase since 1990.
00:03:33.000The Fed has, of course, tightened on interest rates a little bit, but probably not enough to actually tamp down the inflation.
00:03:42.000And the longer they take doing this, the worse things are going to be.
00:03:47.000As the Wall Street Journal editorial board points out, The more important news may be that core inflation rate, sans food and energy, rose 0.6% in April, faster than both in March and February.
00:03:56.000It has now climbed 6.2% in the last year.
00:03:58.000Consumers don't eat or drive based on core prices in any case, and food prices are up 9.4% over the last year.
00:04:05.000Recall that the transitory crowd said goods inflation was caused by supply chain issues related to the pandemic and would ease over time.
00:04:11.000Rising inflation in services shows it has spread across most of the economy and is now becoming embedded in business pricing and expectations.
00:04:17.000That makes inflation harder for the Federal Reserve to reduce, even without even tighter monetary policy.
00:04:22.000The good news, limited though it is, is that real average hourly earnings for all workers fell only 0.1% in April, but Real hourly wages have nonetheless fallen for seven straight months.
00:04:40.000Average weekly earnings are down even more, 3.4% thanks to a decline in the average work week.
00:04:45.000Nominal wage gains are vanishing thanks to inflation.
00:04:48.000The bad inflation report turned what looked like a rally in equities on Wednesday into another down day.
00:04:52.000Investors are probably concluding that with peak inflation more durable than expected, the Fed may have to raise interest rates even higher than it has already estimated.
00:04:58.000That increases the odds of recession unless the Fed loses its anti-inflation nerve.
00:05:02.000As I've said before, I think that all of these polls of economists showing only 28% think that there's going to be a recession inside the next six months.
00:05:09.000I think that is closer to 50% whether we get a recession or not over the course of the next six months.
00:05:16.000All of this exposes the fantasy that the Biden-Pelosi-Schumer policy mix of blowout spending and easy money is good for working Americans, as the Wall Street Journal points out.
00:05:23.000Modern monetary theory combined with new entitlements were supposed to produce record growth and security.
00:05:26.000Instead, they produced the highest inflation in 40 years and a falling standard of living.
00:05:31.000Americans learned this lesson the hard way in the 1970s.
00:05:34.000A new generation is having to learn it again.
00:07:37.000According to the Wall Street Journal, stock futures declined, pointing to a second day of turbulence in markets driven by stronger-than-expected U.S.
00:07:43.000Futures tied to the S&P 500 fell 0.5 percent after the index closed sharply lower on Wednesday.
00:07:48.000NASDAQ 100 futures retreated 0.9 percent, suggesting more losses for technology stocks after the opening bell.
00:07:54.000Bitcoin plunged to its lowest level since December 2020, as a cryptocurrency sell-off gathered steam on Thursday.
00:08:01.000By the way, again, to speak about Bitcoin, it is well worth pointing out here that while Bitcoin's price is going down, the notion that Bitcoin is going to zero is unsubstantiated.
00:08:10.000If you look at the five-year Bitcoin price, what you're seeing right now is that Bitcoin is still doing better than at any time before December of 2020.
00:08:21.000And before December 2020, you had Bitcoin that was priced around, you know, anywhere from $5,000 to $9,000 for, like, years on end.
00:08:27.000And then you saw a massive run-up during 2021, during the inflationary cycle, and now you're starting to see Bitcoin go down again.
00:08:33.000But the notion that Bitcoin is going to be completely debased as a cryptocurrency or something, I don't think that that support is there.
00:08:42.000I think that people bought Bitcoin basically on margin, and now they are selling in order to get access to their cash.
00:09:01.000I have no plans on selling either one of those.
00:09:03.000The bottom line is that for Joe Biden, this is all bad news.
00:09:07.000Bad economic news trumps everything else that is going on.
00:09:09.000There is not a president In memory, who has suffered from bad economic circumstances going into a midterm and hasn't gotten absolutely clocked.
00:09:18.000And that is exacerbated by the fact that Joe Biden is not trusted by the American people, that he is doddering and dithering, that every policy that he has undertaken with the possible exception of his policy in Ukraine has been a full-scale disaster on the global stage, and that the Ukrainian invasion was at least in part caused by Russian perception of American weakness after the American withdrawal from Afghanistan, which again, was Joe Biden.
00:09:39.000You know Joe Biden is in serious trouble when late night comics are finally starting to mock him.
00:09:43.000Now, it is kind of incredible, by the way.
00:09:45.000In the entertainment sphere, it takes a president with 40% approval ratings among Democrats, a Democratic president with 40% approval ratings, 38% approval ratings, to draw like one line of mockery from late night comics.
00:09:57.000That's how deeply they're up the colon of whoever is the Democrat in power.
00:10:02.000Which means that there is a wide open space for any comic to take advantage of, who's willing to actually make jokes about people from both sides.
00:10:09.000Jimmy Fallon dipped his toe into the water last night, mocking Joe Biden over inflation.
00:10:14.000President Biden spoke about the economy and he said that addressing inflation is his top domestic priority.
00:10:20.000Yep, Biden knew it was time to act when milk and gas both hit $9 a gallon.
00:10:27.000But while Biden was speaking about the economy, he really tried to express to Americans that he feels their pain when it comes to inflation.
00:10:34.000Although I'm not sure about his choice of words.
00:11:11.000So Joe Biden, for his part, is still out on the 2022 campaign trail, or at least they're kind of rolling him out, Bernie style, like Weekend at Bernie's.
00:11:19.000They're like stapling him to a gurney and then they're turning it upright.
00:11:22.000And then he's attempting to have words come out of his face hole.
00:11:26.000And here he is trying to explain that none of this is his fault.
00:11:29.000We inherited an economy on the brink of the Great Depression.
00:11:34.000So Barack Obama did this in 2009, right?
00:11:37.000He took over the economy when the economy was in a recession.
00:11:40.000So he got to play on that for eight long years.
00:11:42.000For eight years, he got to claim that everything bad that happened was the fault of George W. Bush because I inherited an economy in recession.
00:11:48.000The problem for Joe Biden is that that's not true.
00:11:54.000It had been put into an artificial coma at the beginning of COVID.
00:11:57.000And in fact, the quarter right before Joe Biden took over, if you look at the GDP stats, the quarter before he took over was not a negative growth quarter.
00:12:10.000Okay, quarter three of 2020 is what you'd be looking at because you took over in quarter one of 2021.
00:12:17.000Look at the percent change from the preceding quarter.
00:12:19.000So quarter one in 2020, you had a drop off.
00:12:22.000That was because COVID started to hit in February, March.
00:12:24.000Then you had a massive drop in quarter two when we shut down the economy.
00:12:27.000Then you had a massive real GDP increase of like 30% in quarter three.
00:12:32.000And then you had like a 5% increase in quarter four.
00:12:35.000In quarter one of 2021, which includes January when he wasn't president yet, he had a 6% increase in seasonally adjusted GDP annualized rate.
00:12:45.000So what you see here is not him taking over an economy that was in recession, but he's just going to lie about it because this is the only thing he can do.
00:12:51.000He can't tell the truth, which is that he's been a horrifyingly bad president.
00:12:54.000Here is the president of the United States babbling nonsensically about how it's all Donald Trump's fault.
00:13:50.000So if you just take his sentences and you just pronounce the vowels, it sounds...
00:13:53.000Shouting at clouds, the president of the United States.
00:14:03.000Well, Joe Biden wasn't done shouting at you.
00:14:06.000Well, if watching an old man yell through his face hole puts you in mind of your looming death, perhaps you should think about getting some life insurance.
00:14:13.000I mean, while you're at it, simple fact of the matter is, all of us, I know this is bad news, breaking, we are all going to die.
00:14:18.000When that happens, you want to make sure that your family is taken care of.
00:14:21.000So if you keel over while shouting about Greg McIntyre, You might want to make sure that everybody is still doing okay financially.
00:14:36.000You can compare personalized quotes from top companies to find your lowest price.
00:14:40.000You could save 50% or more on life insurance by comparing quotes with PolicyGenius.
00:14:43.000The licensed agents at PolicyGenius are on hand throughout the entire process to help you understand your options, make decisions with confidence.
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00:14:58.000And again, they've helped over 30 million people shop for insurance and placed over $150 billion in coverage since 2014.
00:15:04.000Head on over to PolicyGenius.com slash Shapiro.
00:17:13.000Like in the last week, because he thinks, as I said before, that if you just dust a light sprinkling of Trump over everything that people go, ugh!
00:17:20.000And then they run screaming to Joe Biden's terrible positions.
00:17:37.000He also is increasing the deficit just at a slightly lower rate than during the biggest spending binge we have ever seen in world history in 2020 during the pandemic.
00:17:46.000But Great Maga King is pretty weird branding?
00:17:55.000Again, like now, like I say, it's going to be Whoa, like Great Maga King and two other kings bringing myrrh to the baby in the manger.
00:18:06.000Now, that's our new Christmas song under Joe Biden.
00:18:19.000Right now, America's fighting on two fronts.
00:18:23.000At home, it's inflation and rising prices.
00:18:27.000Abroad, it's helping Ukrainians defend their democracy and feeding those who are left hungry around the world because Russian atrocities exist.
00:18:34.000And Jeff and the American farmers understand Putin's war has cut off critical sources of food.
00:19:06.000So, Hakeem Jeffries, who, believe it or not, is the heir apparent to Nancy Pelosi as the Speaker of the House or as Minority Leader, which she's going to be in approximately five months here, six months.
00:19:17.000Hakeem Jeffries, he's blaming Republicans for inflation, which is weird because Republicans are not in charge of any of the elected branches of government right now.
00:19:26.000We are going to work and focus like a laser beam on dealing with the inflationary pressures that the American people are experiencing in terms of food prices, certainly in terms of gas prices, and every other day-to-day kitchen table pocketbook issue that Democrats work on, Republicans talk about but do nothing about.
00:20:56.000NBC News, Jonathan Allen and Natasha Korecki reporting, quote, top Democrats jockey for 2024 presidential campaign position.
00:21:02.000And Joe Biden's over here like, guys, I'm still basically alive.
00:21:06.000Like I have functioning parts of my of my medical system aggie.
00:21:11.000According to NBC News, quote, in recent months, Senator Bernie Sanders' political team has noticed a marked shift in the 80-year-old former presidential candidate.
00:21:27.000You know, you can be 80 years old, and it's basically like you're a five-year-old, because you're as dumb as a five-year-old.
00:21:31.000So you're basically like a five-year-old, because you just run forever.
00:21:33.000We need to replace this octogenarian with that octogenarian, and I will be a better octogenarian.
00:21:39.000Meanwhile, Elizabeth Warren, who's also 97 years old, she's also thinking about running for President of the United States.
00:21:46.000According to NBC News, Sanders is just the most openly ambitious of an emerging field of Democratic hopefuls positioning themselves to run if Biden doesn't.
00:21:53.000More than a dozen Democratic insiders said in interviews, this would be Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg, and Gavin Newsom.
00:22:03.000But, wow, things are going well, guys.
00:22:06.000Already coming up, Democrats, they keep talking about abortion, but they can't really stick with their abortion arguments, because the abortion arguments are really, really, really bad.
00:22:12.000Okay, but, well, they are worried about abortion.
00:22:14.000You are worried about the fact that you are spending $1 million every time you go to the gas tank.
00:22:18.000Like, you used to be rich like Elon Musk, and now you are just an impoverished citizen, thanks to Joe Biden's giant gas inflation.
00:22:24.000Well, why not at least save some money with your free Upside app?
00:22:27.000There's an incredible app everybody who buys gas needs to know about right now, Upside.
00:22:31.000My listeners are earning cash back for every gallon of gas every single time they fill up.
00:22:34.000Just download that free Upside app in the App Store or Google Play right now.
00:22:38.000Use promo code SHAPIRO for 25 cents per gallon or more on your first fill up.
00:23:14.000Again, use that Upside app, use promo code SHAPIRO, get 25 cents per gallon or more cash back on your first tank of Joe Biden's extraordinarily expensive gas.
00:23:22.000In the meantime, they think that Joe Biden is doing great.
00:23:25.000They think Joe Biden is doing just great.
00:23:27.000Well, now they are attempting to swivel to abortion because, of course, the economy is a disaster for them.
00:23:33.000It's not going to work because their arguments are really, really ugly, as I keep mentioning.
00:23:37.000Democrats have to keep shifting the abortion argument from everything but abortion.
00:23:41.000They can't talk about abortion because it turns out the Democratic Party position is the most extreme immoral position it is possible to have.
00:23:48.000It is more extreme than any European country.
00:23:49.000It is more extreme than the vast majority.
00:23:52.000Like, nearly all Americans are willing to countenance.
00:23:54.000And that is their hardcore position that 49 Democrats in the Senate just voted for.
00:24:00.000So instead, they have to pick a bunch of ancillary arguments off the tree.
00:24:02.000Again, when they do make arguments, the arguments are so morally hideous.
00:24:08.000That, I mean, it's hard to describe how ugly these arguments are.
00:24:11.000So for example, Katie Porter, much beloved of the far left, Democratic congressperson from California, she was talking about abortion.
00:24:19.000And once again, she's basically arguing we need to kill babies in order to feed the economy, which, what?
00:24:27.000So we need to soil and green the babies because after all, we have to make this economy run, guys.
00:24:33.000So the fact that things like inflation can happen and it can become more expensive to feed your kids and to fuel your car is exactly why people need to be able to be in charge of how many mouths they're going to have to feed.
00:24:47.000So I think the fact that we're seeing this jump in expenses, that we're seeing people having to pay more in the grocery store, pay more at the pump, pay more for housing, is a reason that people are saying, I need to be able to make my own decisions about when and if to start a family.
00:25:04.000So your plan is you crap out the economy and then people need to kill their unborn babies in order so that they can avoid your crapped out economy.
00:25:14.000I wonder why they're losing the support of the majority of Americans on key issues, including issues like abortion.
00:25:20.000Hakeem Jeffries, for his part, he's now blaming the radical Supreme Court majority for, you know, allowing people to vote on the issue.
00:25:27.000We had a very robust discussion earlier today within the caucus on Two pressing issues that need to be dealt with decisively as it relates to freedom both here in America and freedom abroad.
00:25:45.000The freedom for a woman to make her own health care decisions, which is being threatened by a runaway, radical, right-wing Supreme Court majority that's shameful.
00:26:01.000We need to fight for freedom abroad by repelling Vladimir Putin's invasion of a sovereign country.
00:26:05.000And that's exactly the same as making sure that you can kill your unborn baby all the way up till the point of birth.
00:26:16.000The Democrats decided that they were going to vote and force everybody to vote on a Senate bill that would have essentially allowed abortion up till point of birth.
00:26:24.000It banned things like parental notification laws.
00:26:27.000It got rid of all sorts of exceptions In terms of abortions.
00:26:31.000So basically it said, our new position is not codifying Roe, right?
00:26:34.000Roe allows for some pretty significant abortion restrictions on the state level, in particular the third trimester.
00:26:41.000And then under Planned Parenthood versus Casey, there have actually been some pretty significant restrictions even in the second trimester.
00:26:47.000But they wanted to, in the Senate, the Democrats did, they wanted to get everyone on record not just codifying Roe, Which would have been bad enough.
00:26:54.000They wanted everybody on record endorsing full-fledged abortion all the way until the baby is out of the birth canal.
00:27:00.000That is what the actual bill suggested.
00:27:02.000And Dick Durbin was like, we need to put everybody on record.
00:27:18.000If you want to vote that way, be my guest.
00:27:21.000But to put us in a situation where we're taking away a basic freedom that has been guaranteed by the Constitution in the court for 50 years is significant, historic, and Senators should be on the record.
00:27:38.000And when I say completely failed, I mean every Republican voted against it and Joe Manchin voted against it.
00:27:42.000According to the Wall Street Journal, Senate Democrats failed to advance a bill seeking to ensure women's access to abortion in a vote designed to draw a clear contrast with Republicans ahead of a potential Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, looming just months before the midterms.
00:27:55.000The vote was 49 in favor to 51 against, falling short of the 60 votes necessary to advance the Women's Health Protection Act.
00:28:01.000Now notice, This is not about the filibuster.
00:28:12.000Democrats held the vote despite knowing it was certain to fail in the 50-50 Senate, where abortion stances split almost entirely along party lines.
00:28:20.000Centrist Democrat Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia broke with his party and opposed the bill.
00:28:25.000Here is Joe Manchin explaining why he did not support the bill.
00:28:29.000The bill we have today to vote on, the Women's Health Protection Act, and I respect people who support, but make no mistake, it is not Roe v. Wade codification.
00:28:55.000It's bad policy, obviously, but it's really, really bad strategy.
00:28:58.000Getting every Democrat on record, supporting the most extreme abortion position, is kind of crazy.
00:29:04.000And Joe Biden is now attempting to blame Republicans for this, despite the fact that, again, it's your own party that put forward a bill that couldn't even get majority support.
00:29:12.000He said, quote, once again, as fundamental rights are at risk at the Supreme Court, Senate Republicans have blocked passage of the Women's Health Practice Amendment, a bill that affirmatively protects access to reproductive health care.
00:31:00.000Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin actually is now requesting that Fairfax police place security perimeters around the homes of Supreme Court justices.
00:31:08.000Governor Glenn Youngkin of the Commonwealth of Virginia has reached out in a letter to the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors saying that he is writing to request that the Fairfax County Police Department establish an expanded security perimeter around the homes of the three current justices from the Supreme Court who reside in Fairfax County.
00:31:30.000So, you know, that is the right policy.
00:31:32.000However, you have a bunch of Democrats out there who are like, no, no, no, this is good.
00:31:49.000She says, when I hear people freaking out about Saturday's peaceful protests in front of the Chevy Chase Maryland homes of Justice John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh, or a vigil Monday evening in front of Justice Samuel Alito's home in Virginia, I can't get too worked up about it.
00:32:00.000Sure, it's unnerving to be picketed at home, but that's life in a mostly free society.
00:32:04.000Really, being picketed at home is life in a mostly free society?
00:32:08.000Truly, it seems like that's life in a mostly unfree society, is where people show up outside your front like a mob with pitchforks, shows up outside your front door.
00:32:19.000She says, on Alito's block, protesters were lighthearted, with some trolling him by chanting, I bet he likes Nickelback.
00:32:25.000If they'd been able to protest outside the Supreme Court itself, perhaps the protesters would not have targeted the justices' neighborhoods in the first place, but that was not an option.
00:32:32.000That's because the court was encircled by an eight-foot, non-scalable fence.
00:32:35.000Well, I wonder why that was necessary.
00:32:38.000God forbid Americans should exercise their right to protest on the very site where women are being deprived of the right to control their bodies.
00:32:43.000Man, amazing how all the standards shift when you agree with the protesters, according to the left.
00:32:49.000Meanwhile, the DOJ, it now appears, is not even going to investigate this leak, this leak of the draft opinion.
00:32:57.000So I spoke with former Attorney General William Barr the other day, and I asked him about this.
00:33:01.000He said, no, there are various federal laws that have been violated here, including attempts to intimidate is a possibility, attempts to obstruct justice, because if you're attempting to leak draft opinions in order to craft pressure, To move the court?
00:33:18.000There are various statutory provisions that are possibly violated here by the leaker.
00:33:22.000We don't know until we know who the leaker is.
00:33:24.000But according to the New York Times, Merrick Garland's DOJ has no interest in investigating this.
00:33:28.000After a leak of a draft opinion showed the Supreme Court was poised to end women's constitutional right to abortion, some Republicans and conservative commentators called for a criminal investigation.
00:33:36.000But even as Chief Justice John Roberts condemned the disclosure by Politico as egregious, he instead directed the Supreme Court Marshal to lead an internal investigation.
00:33:43.000The court apparently has not asked the DOJ to open a criminal investigation or to lend the Marshal support and resources.
00:33:48.000I wasn't aware that the court had to do that.
00:33:50.000Since when does the court have to request that?
00:33:53.000Can't the DOJ just investigate on its own?
00:33:56.000Do they have to have like a signed engraved invitation from Justice Roberts to investigate the leak?
00:34:01.000A Supreme Court spokeswoman this week declined to answer questions about the status of the inquiry, including the number of people assigned to it and what the rules are.
00:34:08.000Like whether it's up to each justice to decide whether to make themselves, clerks, or relatives available.
00:34:13.000The Justice Department does have a cadre of agents with experience investigating leaks.
00:34:17.000By contrast, the Supreme Court Marshal, Gail Curley, is a former national security lawyer for the Army, whose office of about 260 employees primarily provides physical security for the justices in the court building.
00:34:28.000It's far from clear justices want agents of the executive branch grilling their clerks and relatives and going through their computers in their chambers and the cell phones of their associates.
00:34:35.000As a matter of constitutional principle, they're a co-equal branch of government.
00:34:38.000None can be sure whether the leaker, if identified, will turn out to be a liberal or a conservative.
00:34:44.000Apparently, under a policy imposed by Attorney General Merrick Garland last year, prosecutors and agents are broadly prohibited from using subpoenas, warrants, or court orders to compel reporters to testify or to seize reporters' records.
00:34:54.000The FBI might not be authorized to start using tools like grand jury subpoenas without formally opening an investigation.
00:35:02.000So you could treat this as a theft of government property, but they're saying that they may not do this.
00:35:07.000So again, if this were truly suspected to be a conservative, and let's say that the Supreme Court decision were going to go the other way, and it was suspected that a conservative were going to leak that, how long do you think it would take Merrick Garland to launch an investigation?
00:35:27.000And one of the great ironies of the American political scene right now is that the more we distrust the institutions, the more we think we can make them better if we control them, as opposed to just limiting their power entirely.
00:35:38.000Alrighty, in just one second, we will get to the Biden administration going after Elon Musk.
00:36:01.000Not only does XChair's patented Dynamic Variable Lumbar Support, or DVL, offer the ultimized customized support, but my XChair can even give me a massage, heat up, or cool down now thanks to the XChair's new Fs360 armrests.
00:36:12.000I can even adjust my armrests to the perfect position because let me tell you it's super annoying to sit in other chairs and the armrests sometimes too high sometimes they're too low it's really irritating so being able to adjust the armrests so that they actually fit your arms is pretty fantastic.
00:36:24.000All these unique extra features help the hours at my desk fly by in complete comfort I love my ex chair.
00:36:51.000All right, folks, it's the most infamous Supreme Court case in memory and the deadliest decision in history.
00:36:56.000But even 50 years after Roe versus Wade, few know the truth behind the landmark decision, a decision that's enabled the destruction of over 64 million babies since 1971.
00:37:04.000Well, tomorrow, May 13th, The Daily Wire will take a wrecking ball to the four big lies the abortion industry is built upon.
00:37:11.000Tune in to the world premiere of our original documentary, Choosing Death, The Legacy of Roe, and uncover the inside story of how Roe v. Wade came to pass and why it needs to pass away now.
00:37:21.000You'll hear the facts and stories the abortion regime has suppressed for generations.
00:37:24.000Get a clear-eyed view at the brutal reality they desperately do not want you to see.
00:37:27.000Some of this content is hard to take because it turns out abortion is really hard to take for everyone, but few subjects are more important.
00:38:22.000And we were literally giving them a check for $800.
00:38:23.000for $800, and for a poor woman, $800 is a lot of money.
00:38:28.000I mean, there have been so many moments in the last decade plus of going undercover in abortion clinics myself and seeing just heartbreaking things.
00:38:42.000Women vomiting in the hallway of an abortion clinic, crying out in pain.
00:38:46.000The late-term abortionists talking casually about how they would literally leave a born-alive baby to die, or if you deliver the baby in the toilet, then you pick it up and stuff it in a plastic bag and bring it to us.
00:38:59.000Babies are being born alive and the backs of their necks are being slit.
00:39:09.000It's happening more often than people want to think about.
00:39:13.000These abortion facilities, these abortion providers, these doctors, they don't care about these women.
00:39:22.000And you're just, you're realizing you're watching in front of your own eyes play out America's greatest horror story, which is how we butcher children in the name of choice.
00:39:47.000This is super important stuff, so please help us expose the truth.
00:40:15.000Tell your friends and family to watch.
00:40:17.000If you're not already, become a Daily Wire member.
00:40:19.000Tune in Friday to our documentary on abortion, Choosing Death, The Legacy of Roe, and make sure that all of your left-leaning friends who don't want to face up to the realities of abortion see it too.
00:40:27.000Go to dailywire.com slash choosing and join the fight today.
00:40:30.000You're listening to the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.
00:40:37.000Meanwhile, the government under Joe Biden is targeting Elon Musk.
00:40:44.000Again, he's been the subject of more investigations than somebody who just leaked a majority Supreme Court opinion, for sure.
00:40:50.000Well, now, according to the Wall Street Journal, federal regulators are investigating Elon Musk's late disclosure last month of his sizable stake in Twitter, according to people familiar with the matter, a lag that allowed him to buy more stock without alerting other shareholders to his ownership.
00:41:04.000The SEC is probing Musk's tardy submission of a public form investors must file When they buy more than 5% of a company's shares, the people said.
00:41:11.000The disclosure functions as an early sign to shareholders and companies that a significant investor could seek to control or influence a company.
00:41:17.000The Tesla chief executive made his filing April 4th, at least 10 days after his stake surpassed the trigger point for disclosure.
00:41:22.000Musk hasn't publicly explained why he didn't file in a timely manner.
00:41:25.000The SEC investigation hasn't previously been reported.
00:41:29.000An attorney for Musk didn't respond to a message on Wednesday seeking comment.
00:41:32.000Musk likely saved more than $143 million by not reporting that his trades had crossed the 5% threshold, said Daniel Taylor, University of Pennsylvania accounting professor, since the share price could have been higher had the market known of the billionaire's growing stake.
00:41:45.000Yes, I'm sure that Musk was looking at violating the law to save $143 million.
00:41:51.000Reminder, Elon Musk's net worth right now is somewhere on the order of $240 billion.
00:41:55.000Okay, just to make clear what we're talking about here, $143 million is about 1,678th of Elon Musk's total wealth.
00:42:00.000make clear what we're talking about here.
00:42:03.000143 million is about 1,678th of Elon Musk's total wealth.
00:42:12.000So I'm sure that's what he was thinking when this happened right here.
00:42:14.000The case is easy, it's straightforward.
00:42:17.000Whether they're going to pick that battle with Elon is another question, said Dr. Taylor.
00:42:20.000Referring to the prospect of a regulatory lawsuit against the outspoken entrepreneur, the SEC could drop its investigation without bringing civil claims, as not every probe results in formal action.
00:42:28.000An SEC lawsuit against Musk would be unlikely to derail the Twitter deal because the company's board of directors has already endorsed it, and the SEC generally lacks the power to stop mergers or take private transactions, according to Jill Fish, a securities and corporate law professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School.
00:42:42.000Regulators could seek a court order preventing Musk from voting shares he acquired without proper disclosure, but the SEC generally hasn't pursued that remedy.
00:42:50.000I suspect that the SEC might pursue that remedy, because again, the Biden administration is deeply afraid that Elon Musk is about to take over Twitter, and that is why every five seconds, apparently, a different agency of government is now investigating the world's richest human being.
00:43:05.000Meanwhile, and speaking of people attempting to crack down on Twitter, According to the Wall Street Journal, other countries are now taking more steps to compel social media platforms to shield users from material they deem harmful through standards that could affect Twitter.
00:43:18.000Regulators from Australia to the EU, India, Canada, and the UK have recently introduced or are considering new rules for policing online content.
00:43:24.000Which isn't scary at all, having these governments determine what can and cannot be on Twitter.
00:43:28.000They include a coming EU requirement for major platforms to conduct annual risk assessments And a new obligation in Australia to swiftly remove content, whether illegal or not, upon notice from the country's e-safety commissioner.
00:43:42.000I mean, when Australia decides that they are going to have their e-safety commissioner tell Twitter to just pull down material, and if Twitter doesn't, they just dump legal liability on them, that's an amazing violation of basic Western free speech principles.
00:43:57.000Musk signaled Monday his plans for the platform would be compatible with the new EU rules because basically they're just requiring you to conduct an annual risk assessment.
00:44:05.000He says, I think we're very much of the same mind.
00:44:07.000Anything my companies can do that would be beneficial to Europe, we want to do that.
00:44:10.000But the fact that all of these governments are now deeply concerned about Twitter, this is a far cry from the days when liberals ruled the roost in sort of world politics.
00:44:19.000When Democrats are perceived to be in solid control of the levers of power, then it's like, well, aren't these social media companies great?
00:44:24.000When Barack Obama was president, you remember, social media was the greatest thing since sliced bread.
00:44:34.000And then, all over the world, the left started to lose power, and suddenly it was, well, the only way we can maintain power is to shut off all this misinformation and disinformation.
00:44:43.000And that is the way that an enormous amount of content dissemination works in the United States.
00:44:52.000So, according to the Daily Wire, for example, Tim Peirce reporting, an economist who formerly worked with the fact-checking site PolitiFact as one of the company's go-to sources for fact-finding says he quit over the company's left-wing bias.
00:45:05.000Brian Riedel, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, said he worked with PolitiFact over a decade ago when the fact-checking site had first launched.
00:45:11.000He said the PolitiFact journalists consulted him on dozens of articles and ratings before he stopped working with them because they were clearly looking for him to give them material to nail Republicans, which of course is not a shock at all.
00:45:22.000All of our fact-checking institutions are dedicated to the proposition that everything that the right ever says is false.
00:45:29.000I mean, there's an entire fact check today on Twitter that was disseminated by PolitiFact that was basically just rebutting any sort of Right-wing narrative that they could because this is all that PolitiFact does on a daily basis.
00:45:46.000The fact that they're now extending that logic to places like Twitter should not be much of a shock.
00:45:53.000And it shouldn't be much of a shock that you're seeing the Biden administration pursue similar sorts of restrictions.
00:45:57.000So Joe Biden's new disinformations are the weirdo theater kid.
00:46:01.000She says that verified people on Twitter should be able to add context to other people's tweets. So if there is a tweet from the Daily Wire, if you are a verified user, a blue check, you should be able to go in and add context to the tweet, which is amazing, amazing stuff here from the people who are supposedly pro-free speech.
00:46:20.000So verified people can essentially start to edit Twitter the same sort of way that Wikipedia is, so they can add context to certain tweets.
00:46:33.000If President Trump were still on Twitter and tweeted a claim about voter fraud, someone could add context from one of the 60 lawsuits that went through the court or something that an election official in one of the states said perhaps Your own Secretary of State and his news conferences, something like that.
00:47:10.000And when they quote a bunch of left-wing experts to suggest there's nothing wrong with indoctrinating small children about gender identity and sexual orientation.
00:47:16.000And they said, this is not grooming because quote, it is done without intent to sexually abuse a child.
00:47:20.000I don't know, telling a little boy that he could be a little girl sounds like a pretty significant sexual abuse of a child to me.
00:47:24.000The notion that, this is my favorite part, quote, experts in psychology and child development said they are not aware of any evidence that shows that increased exposure to LGBTQ people or topics makes children more likely to join the LGBTQ community.
00:47:37.000Instead, they said, it is likely an environment of increased acceptance that allows people to more openly consider whether they might be part of the LGBTQ community.
00:47:44.000So in other words, the stats show that the more you teach kids about this, the more they identify with this community.
00:47:48.000And their argument is, it's not because of the teaching, it's because just the world is more open and broad and wonderful.
00:47:54.000So then why do you insist on teaching it to kids?
00:48:19.000The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Bradford Carrington, Executive Producer Jeremy Boren, Supervising Producer Mathis Glover, Production Manager Pavel Wydowski, Associate Producer Savannah Dominguez-Morris, Editor Adam Ciewiec, Audio Mixer Mike Coromina, Hair and Makeup Artist in Wardrobe Fabiola Cristina, Production Coordinator Jessica Grant.
00:48:44.000The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.