Government Shutdown Countdown & EPA Makes Historic Cuts | 3.14.25

The countdown to government shutdown is underway as Senate Democrats threaten to sink the spending bill. If the government shuts down, it will be average Americans who suffer most.
Who wins and who loses in the high-stakes gamble. I'm Daily Wire, Editor-in-Chief John Bickley with Georgia Howe.
It's Friday, March 14th, and this is Morning Wire. The EPA's new administrator takes historic action declaring the death of what he calls the Green News scam.
You're talking about hundreds of millions, billions, and sometimes into the trillions when you're looking at the impact of each of these regulations. And Utah is set to become the first state to ban fluoride in its water, as the Maha movement gains even more momentum.
You know, it's one of the easiest things you can do to start restoring American health is just get the fluoride in the water. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire.
Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.
Hey guys, producer Brandon here.

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The federal government is on the verge of a shutdown as Congress debates a spending package in Washington. Here with the latest is Daily Wire senior editor Cabot Phillips.
A. Cabot, so a politically precarious situation on Capitol Hill, particularly for Democrats coming down to the wire here.
First, how did we get to this point? Yeah, Republicans and Democrats in Congress have until midnight tonight to come to an agreement on a spending bill that will keep the government running. Otherwise, there will be a shutdown.
For context, on Tuesday, Republicans in the House passed a

continuing resolution, or CR, that will keep the lights on until September 30th,

with spending levels staying put. Now it has to make it through the Senate, which

is a tall order. That's because 60 votes are required for legislation to make it to the floor

for a final vote. And as we know, there are only 53 Republican members, 52 of whom are on board.
Kentucky's Rand Paul is out. That means they'll need at least eight Democrats to get on board, or we could be heading for a shutdown.
So the big question here, obviously, does it look like enough Democrats will actually go along here? Well, from what we're hearing out of Washington, no one really knows what to expect. It's going to be a crazy morning, but things shifted in the CR's favor yesterday evening.
As of Thursday afternoon, Pennsylvania's John Fetterman had been the only Democrat to cross the aisle and give support to the resolution, saying a no vote would be, quote, chaos, and I will never vote for chaos. He went on to refer to the Democrat strategy of blocking the CR as, quote, total theater that is neither honest with constituents nor a winning argument.
Now, one reason more Democrats weren't getting on board is because minority leader Chuck Schumer was urging them to stand firm, voting no. Schumer spent the week saying Democrats were unified against the Republican bill and would only vote to support a 30-day

stopgap measure that will keep funding levels steady and then allow for more time to negotiate a larger, longer agreement. Here he is making that point Wednesday.
Our caucus is unified on a clean April 11th CR that will keep the government open and give Congress time to negotiate bipartisan legislation that can pass.

We should vote on that. But in a stunning about-face Thursday night, Schumer reversed course and announced that he would support the Republican resolution, saying it was the only way to avoid the chaos of a government shutdown.
Either proceed with the bill before us or risk Donald Trump throwing America into the chaos of a shutdown. This, in my view, is no choice at all.
While the CR bill is very bad, the potential for a shutdown has consequences for America that are much, much worse. Schumer faced immediate backlash from Democrats over that flip.
Some called him the capitulator in chief, while others vowed to fund primary challenges against him. Now, publicly, Schumer is saying that he will not be pressuring other Democrats to join him, but it's all but certain that he is working behind the scenes to get other Dems on board.
It'll take at least six more yes votes. And some folks say that he would not have come out in support if he did not think he had those votes.
That's a major shift there from Schumer. Now, what exactly are the Democrat holdouts looking for? So first, they're outraged that the resolution would give Republicans and the Trump administration the ability to slash billions of dollars in federal spending.
Democrats are essentially arguing that Congress should have the final say on how much money is allocated and where those cuts come from. To that point, they're calling for explicit language in the bill that will bar Trump and the Department of Government efficiency from slashing certain federal agencies or workforces.
And look, Democrats admit they're in a tough spot here. They can either approve the bill and risk angering their base, who does not want them doing anything to help advance Trump's agenda, or they can vote no and take the blame for shutting the government down, pleasing their base, but angering a lot of other people, including the majority of Americans who voted for Trump and his promise to cut spending.
Democrats in the hardest position are those from swing states like Michigan, Arizona, and Pennsylvania, all places that voted for Trump and gave a clear mandate that they want his agenda enacted. As Maine's Angus King put it, quote, it is a choice between two terrible alternatives.
On Thursday, President Trump said he believes Democrats will ultimately get on board because they know they'll be blamed for a shutdown if not.

If there's a shutdown, even the Democrats admit it'll be their fault.

And I'm hearing a lot of Democrats are going to vote for it, and I hope they do.

Republican Majority Leader John Thune has said the vote to advance the measure will take place today.

If it gets to 60 votes, a final vote will be held hours later and a shutdown will be avoided. If they cannot get over that 60-vote threshold by midnight, a shutdown will begin.
We'll soon see if he can get those votes that he needs. Kevin, thanks so much for reporting.
Anytime. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin announced the biggest deregulatory action in U.S.
history this week. The radical restructuring of U.S.
environmental policy has signaled the death of Democrats' dreams of a Green New Deal. Here to talk about the future of environmental policy is Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce.
So, Tim, Zeldin is touting a full restructuring of the EPA. What exactly does that entail? Hey, Georgia.
Administrator Zeldin said Wednesday that the EPA would take 31 historic actions to shrink the scope of federal environmental policy and unleash American energy. Here's Zeldin.
EPA will be reconsidering many suffocating rules that restrict nearly every sector of our economy and cost Americans trillions of dollars. Our actions include the Biden administration's deeply flawed Clean Power Plan 2.0, medium and heavy car and truck rules, and the so-called social cost of carbon.
Alongside this announcement came an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. Zeldin wrote that the Trump administration is driving a dagger through the heart of climate change religion, and he declared it the death of the Green News scam.

So a massive shift in how we approach climate policy, it sounds like.

Now, Administrator Zeldin has also been busy on another issue, which is getting back $20 billion that the Biden EPA handed out in grants ahead of the election.

Zeldin terminated those grants on Wednesday.

Did he actually get that money back? Not yet. There are still legal challenges to sort through and litigate.
But Zeldin's announcement does give us an idea of how he plans to get that money back. It's not just that the money is what Zeldin calls a green slush fund.
Here's him explaining that on Fox News. Out of nowhere, they would create these NGOs and they were getting billions of dollars.
I mean, it's not like they were creating an entity and then getting $100,000 or getting $5 million. They were getting $2 billion, $5 billion, $7 billion.
And they were doing it in a way where they were deliberately restricting oversight from the federal government so that I, as EPA administrator, sit before you today, unable to answer a whole lot of very simple questions that should be required whenever the federal government is spending even a dollar. Essentially, he suspects that the Biden administration bent or broke laws to get that much money paid out that quickly.
It's worth noting that these grants are part of the largest green fund that the EPA has ever controlled, the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. And these grants that it gave out went to recipients who also had never handled that much money.
It's not hard to see why Trump officials are skeptical about how these grants were paid out. So major reforms underway at the EPA, which is in keeping with how Trump is approaching the rest of the federal government.
Right. This is how the Trump operation is moving right now.
Outside of the EPA, there is a big shakeup going on at the IRS where the Department of Government Efficiency has proposed cutting a fifth of the agency's workforce. Of course, this kind of major restructuring is facing roadblocks and legal challenges in the courts.
A Clinton-appointed federal judge on Thursday ordered the administration to hire back tens of thousands of probationary employees. The judge called their removals a sham that violated rules around terminating federal employees.
So a bit of whiplash for those workers. Tim, thanks for coming on.
Thanks for having me. Utah is set to become the first state in the nation to ban fluoride in public drinking water.
Here to discuss is Daily Wire reporter Amanda Presta-Jacamo. Hey, Amanda.
So we have a first-ever ban here. Tell us about this legislation in Utah.
Hey, John. Yeah, this bill would ban the fluoridation of public water statewide.
Now, currently, two counties in the state add fluoride to its water supply, but nearly half of all state residents live in those counties. The legislation is sponsored by Republican Representative Stephanie Grecious, who argues that it's expensive to add fluoride, and nixing this addition is about promoting individual choice.
The bill actually moves to allow pharmacists to prescribe fluoride tablets to those who need it. Republican Governor Spencer Cox has said that he will sign the bill into law, and that would take effect on May 7th.
And also, I'll note that while Utah is poised to be the first state to implement this ban, Hawaii does not fluoridate its water, though there is no ban in place there. Got it.
Now, this has become an increasingly debated topic nationally. Tell us about that, this movement behind the push to ban the addition of fluoride.
Right. So, of course, this has definitely gained a lot of traction following Robert F.
Kennedy Jr.'s endorsement of Trump in this last election. RFK, who's now the Secretary of Health and Human Services and the figurehead of the Make America Healthy Again movement, he said just before the election that on day one, he would advise that all U.S.
water systems remove fluoride from public water. He's called fluoride an industrial waste, and he says that it's associated with numerous negative effects like arthritis, IQ loss, and thyroid disease.
Also, back in October, an Obama-appointed federal judge ruled that fluoride in drinking water presents an unreasonable risk and ordered the EPA to respond. RFK has highlighted that ruling as well as other recent studies.
But it's not just Kennedy and Maha figures debating this. Dr.
Lena Nguyen, for example, has said that this policy of adding fluoride to our drinking water must be re-evaluated. Nguyen is the former president of Planned Parenthood, and she strongly opposed Kennedy as HHS secretary.
She called him a conspiracy theorist. But on this issue, she agrees.
Here she is on ABC. There are still Americans living in areas, about 3 million Americans living in areas where the fluoride level is above 1.5, where harm has been associated.
And so I think there's a good question about what should the level be? Maybe the EPA's maximum level should be lowered. So I definitely think that more studies are needed.

Proponents of water fluoridation argue that it's safe in drinking water at low levels, and it's important for oral health, which can also impact your overall health. Now, shifting gears a bit, there are more developments related to this Maha movement that's behind this.
What's the latest coming out of HHS? Well, there are major updates related to both vaccines and food. On vaccines, the National Institutes of Health will stop spending money to find out why Americans are hesitant to take vaccines.
The NIH, which is part of HHS, is terminating or scaling back more than 40 related grants, and they say that this spending no longer aligns with NIH priorities. The CDC is also reportedly studying if there's any link between vaccinations and the rise in autism.
A CDC study from 2020 found that 1 in 36 children in the U.S. have been diagnosed with autism.
Now on food, RFK has directed the FDA to revise a rule that allows companies to self-affirm the safety of food ingredients. Under the revision, manufacturers will have to publicly submit safety data for new ingredients.
HHS says that such enhanced oversight will bring transparency to American consumers. Also on Monday, Kennedy met with executives from major food companies, including Pepsi, General Mills, and Kellogg's, and he urged them to eliminate certain dyes from their recipes.
And final note here, I have to add that the Maha movement has tremendous support from the American public. Morning Wire spoke to Kansas Senator Roger Marshall about that.
I saw some today that over 90, 95 percent of Americans support Make America Healthy Again. Think about this.
My grandma always said, if you have your health, you have everything. But 60 percent of Americans have a chronic disease.
20 percent of our children are on a prescription drug. 30%, 40% of our adolescents are pre-diabetic or diabetic as well.
So America is very sick. And what I look forward to doing is working with Secretary Kennedy now and trying to make America healthy again.
As we said, a lot going on with this movement and RFK's initiative. Amanda, thank you so much for reporting.
You're welcome. Thanks for waking up with us.

We'll be back later this afternoon

with more news you need to know.