You're listening to kf I Am six forty wake Up Call with me Amy King on demand on the iHeartRadio apps. It's time for your morning wake up call. Here's Amy King. This is your wake up call for Tuesday, August fifteen. I'm am King. Good morning. Thanks for waking up with us this morning. Here's what's ahead on the wake up call. The district attorney in Fulton County, Georgia's as former President Trump was part of a criminal conspiracy
to overturn the state's twenty twenty election results. Trump has been indicted on felony racketeering charges and more. Wildfires in Hawaii have now claimed at least ninety nine lives. Governor Josh Green says more than eighty percent of the buildings destroyed in
the fire last week we're homes. Former NFL player Michael Orr, who was the inspiration behind the Oscar winning movie The blind Side, says he was never adopted by the Twoeys and has filed a petition to end the conservatorship they have over him. At six oh five. It's handled on the news. Now you see it, now you don't. When it comes to Trump charges posted
on the Fulton County website. Bill's gonna dig into that, but let's get started with some of the stories coming out of the KFI twenty four hour newsroom. Former President Trump and eighteen others have been indicted in Georgia over alleged efforts to overturn the state's election results in twenty twenty. Fulton County DA Fannie Willis says arrest warrants have been issued for those charged, including former White House Chief
of Staff Mark Meadows and Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani. I am giving the defendants the opportunity to voluntarily surrender no later than noon on Friday, the twenty fifth day of August twenty twenty three, Willis says. The ninety seven page in dipe and includes forty one felony counts. She says each of the defendants have been charged with racketeering. We're gonna dig a little deeper into that with Stephen Portnoy with ABC. He's going to check in with us in just a couple
of minutes. More resources are being sent to the island of Maui to assist in the recovery of human remains. Officials say they didn't really understand the gravity of the damage and destruction until the dust settled. Mauie Police Chief John Pelletier says his officers have been overwhelmed. We started with one dog. We're at twenty. We're calling move as fast as we can, but we've got the right amount of workers, the right amount of team teams doing it could ever.
Dog teams from the Eli County Fire Department and Orange County Fire Authority are among the twenty dog teams deployed to Lahinah. At least ninety nine people have been confirmed killed, with hundreds more unaccounted for. On the island of Maui. Steve Gregory kf I News. Steve just mentioned he is on Maui. We're gonna be checking in with him throughout the day here on KFI, so no need to go anywhere else. Homeowners in wildlife risk areas of Orange County
can't get a discount on homeowners insurance by fireproofing their homes. The Fair Plan has become the first and the only option in some areas. State Insurance Commissioner Michael Saaler says that state insurance plan is offering discounts starting this month for a list of ten protections, including a fire protected roof and clearing vegetation around the house. You see again and again firefighters going into communities having to pull things
away from homes. Saler says the number of homeowners in Orange County who must get the more expensive state insurance is doubled from twenty seventeen to twenty twenty one. He says commercial policies will be required to offer similar discounts by the end of the year in Orange County. Corbin Carson ka if I news so Cal Gas has agreed to pay one hundred and seventy five thousand dollars in penalties for misleading customers about natural gas. Attorney General Rob Bonta says the settlement is tied
to unqualified environmental marketing claims the utility made in twenty nineteen. The company said natural gas is renewable. The Bonta says the claims are misleading because most of the gas distributed by Gas is not It is derived from fossil fuels. The La Hunty Sheriff's Department has asked for the public's help in solving four cold case murders. Sheriff Luna says four men were killed between two thousand and seven and
twenty eighteen in East La Compton and Santimus. For several years, the families of these victims have been looking for closure to the painful nightmare that they have been suffering through, Luna said yesterday. Rewards ranging from ten thousand dollars to twenty thousand dollars have been approved by the Board of Supervisors. Officials say the
department's homicide Bureau is handling about forty five hundred unsolved homicides. Former NFL player Michael Orr says the inspiring story of his life that led to the movie The blind Side is based on a lie. He says, Sean and Lean too, he tricked him into making them his conservators, alleging they've now made millions of his name and likeness. ABC's Brian Clark says Or wants compensation injunction to
block the family from profiting off his name and image. Or was a first round NFL draft pick and Super Bowl champion, but best known for being adopted by the wealthy family in Texas. Let's say good morning now to ABC's Stephen Portnoy. Stephen, another day, another indictment. Let's dig into what he's charged with this time, and this time He's not alone. It's nineteen co
defendants charged an a racketeering scheme. Here a forty one count indictment handed up late last night in Atlanta, Georgia by the Fulton County District Attorney, charging the former president, his former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, John Eastman, Jenna Ellis, and a
raft of others with a raft of crimes. The grand jury here in Fulton County says that these co defendants conspire to have false statements made, to have forgery committed, to have state officials pushed into violating their oaths of office, and some Trump supporters are charged with impersonating public officers for signing the certificates that
claims that they were the state's duly chosen electors. It is a sweeping indictment, and the allegation is that Donald Trump was at the height of a criminal enterprise. This is a racketeering case. Legal experts we've spoken to say that this puts the president in real criminal peril, potential years of jail time, and the district attorney here has said that she is going to give the defendants until the end of next week to turn themselves involuntarily. So that's ten days
from now. I don't know whether all nineteen defendants will be arraigned at the same time, but Fannie Willis did say that she intends to charge them all together and to have this case begin within the next six months. Okay, And so you just mentioned that they're charged together. So the forty one count indictments are against all of them or are there some separate ones for different people.
Well, the way the racketeering law works here, each of the defendants is charged with being part of the scheme, but not each of the defendants is charged with the underlying crime. So, for example, of the forty one counts, I think thirteen of them applied directly to Donald Trump, he, for example, is not charged with impersonating a public officer, but he is charged with conspiring to have a solicit of state officials and to violate their
owns. So you know, inside this indictment, which runs nearly one hundred pages, we were up very late last night reading it, you have one hundred and sixty one individual acts named. Not all of them, by the way, occurred here in the state of Georgia. Some of them occurred in
other states, but Fannie willis it doesn't matter where it happened. It was a multi state conspiracy to violate the laws of Georgia, where certain acts were taken in furtherance of the scheme, which was, in her words, to accomplish the illegal goal of allowing Donald J. Trump to seize the presidential term
of office beginning January twenty twenty one. Now, the defense is going to argue that district Attorney's trying to criminalize the First Amendment rights of the former president, that while he was in office, he was reaching down into the states because he had an interest as a candidate, because he was president of the United States, and the interest in seeing to it that the laws of the
country are faithfully executed. That he was simply trying to not just speak freely under the First Amendment, but in particular pursue his right to have his grievances redressed with government officials. But the prosecution will argue that the former president corruptly schemed with eighteen other people to have false statements made, to have before state legislators, to have false documents signed, to forgery committed, to have state
officials impersonated, particularly the electors. So legal experts say that the former president could be in some serious legal trouble here. And there's nineteen of them, so theoretically, or maybe not theoretically, they're all going to be standing in a courtroom at the same time if the trial gets pulled off in six months like she wants it to. I'm not certain about that. I'm really not sure. Okay, well, I'm sure that we're going to be watching this
one incredibly close. Thank you so much for staying up late, reading through everything and getting us the latest information this morning, Stephen, you're mad. Okay, it's five ten on your wake up call. Got your coffee? I got mine. I'm having an extra this morning. I know that Stephen said he was up late last night. I was up a little late for me because of as this word was coming out that we were going to hear the indictments and we were going to hear it. I wanted to see what
was going to happen. So late for me this now like eight o'clock at night. I know. But anyway, I hope you have your extra coffee too. But let's get back to some of the stories coming out of the KFI twenty four hour newsroom and Orange County Superior Court judge charged with killing his wife at their home in Anaheim Hills is due in court for a bail hearing. Judge Jeffrey Ferguson was released on bail after he was arrested August third.
Prosecutors today are expected to ask for restrictions. The hearing is being held in LA but is still being handled by the Orange County DA's office. Police and Glendale have arrested a Pepperdine Law School employee who allegedly arranged to have sex with a teenage girl. The man was set up in a sting operation by a group known as the Creepcatcher's Unit, who bade and catch alleged child predators online.
The group's founder, who calls himself Ghosts, says using a decoy account, CC unit made it clear the man was talking to a thirteen year old girl. He started talking about your warny little girl, and you know, and then it's really graphic, really really graphic. The group says. Police were called when the man decided to go through with the meetup. Pepperdine says
the man was placed on administrative leave after his arrests. Saturday, Chris Adler KA Fie News a mountain lion's been spotted wandering around a neighborhood in Redlands. This resident says the lion was up a tree just outside her home and he's us up there hanging out. Kind of scary, of course, and we're not a small, you know, little town. We're a pretty big city, so very surprising. He's been here, there, and everywhere in Redlands.
The mountain lion has also been spotted twice in the same neighborhood since Sunday, all also seen near Prospect Park and in an alley outside of Lows. Officials have warned residents to be extra careful, keep an eye out for the mountain lion, and obviously stay away. An LAPD officer has accidentally fired his gun while inspecting the weapon inside the Hollandbeck station east of downtown. The round went into a wall Saturday. No one was hurt. The officer is assigned
to the department's Community Safety Partnership Bureau. The California Hall of Fame at the California Museum and Sacramento is added seven new members. New additions are Carrie Fisher, Maggie Gee, Etta, James Jose, Julio Saria, Vince Scully, Archie Williams, and Shirley Templed Black. Governor Newsom says the inductees were all pioneers in their fields who encapsulated the California Dream through their lives and legacies.
Ceremony will be held virtually next week. I thought we were done with virtual ceremonies. If your car goes away, make sure your data goes with you. A man who works for CNBC says the tesla he totaled started sending him notifications from another country. Jay Yarrows says the electric suv he crashed, totaled and left in a salvage art in New Jersey late last year has ended up
in Ukraine, where the new owner is using Yarrow's streaming music account. Tesla told him how to disconnect the vehicle from his account, so the new owner could no longer use Yarrows logged in apps, but other stuff, including contact lists and driving history could still be accessed. Currently, no car manufacturers offer a remote reset function to wipe out all the electronic data from your old car.
Michael Krozier KFI News Hawaii Governor Josh Green has applauded the people of Maui who've taken survivors of the fire in Lahinah into their homes, saying eighty percent of the buildings destroyed where houses ninety nine people are confirmed dead from the fire. The Trump campaign is fired back following the indictment of the former president in Fulton County, Georgia. The campaign accuses Democrat da Fannie Willis of being an, in their words, rabid partisan. Fifty Cents says he told us LA
was finished his comments. In response to the smash and grab flash mob that stole one hundred thousand dollars worth of merchandise from Nordstrom in Kanoga Park, he says, in his words, they're going to have to lock the doors appointment only shopping. Let's say good morning to ABC's Alex Stone. Well, the pain continues on Maui, Alex, where the official death toll is ninety nine, making it the deadliest natural disaster in Hawaii's history. That's right, Amy,
Good morning. Yeah, this is going to be another somber day today that they're going to begin notifying the families of the dead, those who have been identified, and that's not an easy task in itself based on how they died. That there have been the calls for DNA to help identify some of the remains or many of the remains, but those who they have been able to identify, those families are going to get a phone call, a knock
on the door today. It's going to be Maui Police letting them know that their worst fears that they haven't heard from their loved one and now a week and that today is going to be that day. So there's a lot of anxiety for the families who don't know where their loved ones are that they're going
to get that today. And the mayor here saying this ore deep condolence, is an empathy to the families who will be gaining who will begin to receive notifications from my department of any loved ones who have been who have been identified. And they mean the number at ninety nine today. The governor believes that is going to double, if not more. They've only searched about a quarter of the homes in Lahinah. They've they've got twenty cadaver dogs here right now,
including a couple from La County Fire. That they have a lot of work left to do. That three quarters have not been searched. There are all kinds of estimates on the island of what the numbers may look like at the end. Nobody knows, but the governor is saying that that it could be double. The one thing that the police chief here very forcefully is saying is that it is not just a number. You know, everybody pays attention
to what that number is. How many died here, how many died in Paradise in northern California, how many died in this fire and that fire. And his point is that these are lives, that every one of them is a life. It's not a number. It's a somebody's story, somebody who has loved ones. And he put it this way, there are ninety nine so far. I understand that people want numbers. It's not a numbers game.
Right now, we're ninety nine souls and families, and the shelters are beginning to empty out now because they're finally able to get people into the survivors into hotels that have opened up their doors and essentially kicked out tourists in the Canapally area where and the long term rentals like Airbnb's that have been rented essentially by the state of Hawaii, and the state is saying that those survivors will get at least thirty six weeks of housing, that they will probably get a
lot more than that, but they're going to begin with thirty six weeks and begin going down the road of figuring out long term what this is going to look like. And a lot of those answers they still don't have. But they're they're saying they got to get them out of shelters where they're living in a gymnasium, get them into a hotel room, and they're moving them right
now. Okay, And we were talking about and I know the numbers are numbers, but like you said, and he said, you know, these are these are souls, and these are families waiting to hear if their loved one has died or is still alive somewhere. Originally we were saying, like over a thousand people were still unaccounted for. Do we know if that number has gone down? Are they hearing from people who were missing, or is it just still still too confusing chaos that they don't know. It's a little
bit of all of that. It's come down a little bit. It apparently went up to eighteen hundred two thousand people and they've got it down, they believe, and there's all different lists, and that's where the confusion comes in of how many people are on the list. They don't really know, so they're not giving a number so much as kind of community and you can understand what the island feel and community here where everybody's doing it on their own.
And so you've got this area where people to put up tents and they're helping out victims, and they've got their list, and there's a list over here, and there's one online. So they don't really know, but they think that there are still just shy of about a thousand people on that list.
And while they still believe that some of those people are probably alive but just haven't been in communication with family or their name hasn't been taken off the list, that's a lot of people a week after normally we see it go high and then it quickly comes down as people make communication with their family members. That's still a really high number, and that is creating fear and anxiety for some of the population here of how high is that number going to be.
The number of dead with that number that's still missing. There is a real possibility that it could be in the hundreds. We just don't know, And the governor is saying it could be two hundred or more who died in the fire. They don't know, and we won't know until the teams finish their work. And they think the work is going to speed up now that they've got more cadaver dogs, more states, and more FEMA teams showing up to
offer that. So they may get that up to fifty percent today or maybe just shy of that, or maybe even over that, depending on how much work they can get done today. But they've got a lot of work left to do. Well, for having searched twenty five percent now and the official death toll only going up by three, maybe that's a good sign. Yeah,
maybe it's a good time. I don't know if we're getting a real real time sense of because over these last couple of days, they will put out an official death toll and then the governor at some point will give a much different number. That's my higher and he's made it clear that they are finding more bodies. It may be a thing where later today we get a number from yesterday. Really once they confirm things and the number goes up.
So it's somewhat fluid in that, Yes, the official number is staying steady at ninety nine. That doesn't mean that since they came out with that number what like twelve hours ago, that it's actually stated that number. They're not updating it in real time. They're just kind of giving it out in bulk numbers and waiting with what's confirmed and whatnot. So we'll see, we'll see what they found probably yesterday today when we get an updated number, and hopefully
it doesn't go up much. Okay, And now we're hearing too that the residents are a bit frustrated because they can't get back to where their homes are, and then law lawmakers are pushing or law enforcement is pushing back on that basically saying be careful where you're trying to get to. Yeah, it's an interesting dynamic because you've got many locals who are saying, this is our community. The law enforcement and government, both state and federal, have just shut
down the western side of Maui. Nobody and nobody out. If reporters try to get in, you'll be arrested. If residents try to get in, now as they were sneaking in, they'll be arrested. They arrested somebody yesterday, and the police chief here try to make an example out of them last night by saying, you know, FOYA Freedom of Information Act, request who it was and do a story on that. There's a lot of pushback. Community members are saying, this is our island. We want to know what's
going on in there. They want to see their homes. There was a three mile line yesterday to get placards to get back in, and then they just poof because of the demand. They called off that program and told everybody to go home after they've been waiting in line because they were overwhelmed, and people were angry about that. They want to get in. Not allowing in reporters to see what's going on in that community and what Sir cheffort is going
on, not allowing residents in to see what's going on. There's growing anger here. But officials will push back and get quite angry when you bring it up, saying that nobody understands what's going on and there and everybody understands their
bodies and they're searching that area. But the local community is saying, let us see what's happening in there in our community, let us see our homes, and angry politicians and law enforcement leaders are coming back and saying we are being as transparent as we can be and no, and that's not going over very well here on the island. Well, it's got to be frustrating.
I mean, amid all of this loss and the devastation and the feelings that they're dealing with, then the frustration of not being allowed to either to even go back to see it's got to be really tough on them. Yeah. For many, they can't get back. Yes, some have found ways to go back in, and then there've been little programs here and there to allow them to go in, and then they end that program because they don't like
how it's going. It's been very confusing for everybody, like them sitting in the hours long line yesterday, that three mile line and then police coming by on loudspeakers and saying it's been dissolved. We're not doing this. Everybody leave. People were really angry. Yeah, all right, Alex Stone, thanks so much for the latest from MAUI appreciate all the information that you're sharing with us. You got it. Thanks Jammy, have a good day, all
right, you two. The DA in Fulton County, Georgia's as former President Trump was part of a criminal conspiracy to overturn the state's twenty twenty election results. Trump's been indicted on felony racketeering charges and more. Wildfires in Hawaii have now claimed at least ninety nine lives. Governor Josh Green says more than eighty
percent of the buildings destroyed in the fire last week were homes. Former NFL player Michael Orr, who was the inspiration for the Oscar winning movie The blind Side, says he was never adopted by the Two Eyes that was the family in the movie, and has filed a petition to end their conservatorship over him. At six o five, it's handled on the news. People on Social Security could be facing a seventeen k a year cut if things don't change.
Right now, let's say good morning to ABC's Jim Ryan. Jim used to be fun to see those little white trails left behind by jets. But what's the real story. Well, yeah, they're still kind of fun to look at. These, of course, are the contrails, the condensation trails that trail behind aircraft. Jettercraft traveling at high altitudes generally above about five miles, they get into humid air that they stood from the exhaust and also the fog
that's created in the process of creating lift on the wings. It creates these clouds. Those clouds generally dissipated in a few minutes, sometimes an hour, but they spread out. Well, that's where scientists say there is an issue because as they spread out, they turn into clouds. Essentially, those clouds trap heat in the Earth's atmosphere. That heat should be escaping amy but it
isn't, and that's warming the Earth overall. To what effect. Well, one research piece that came out recently said that aviation contributed about four percent to observed human induced global warming. That is that the aviation overall, that is fuel that's burned, the carbon that's emitted, and the contrails that are created are contributing about four percent to the rise in the Earth's temperature. Okay, but so here's my question, because I don't see contrails very often anymore.
Like I remember as a kid, like I said it was fun to see those little white strikes strip stripes across the sky. It doesn't seem like we see them as much anymore, or maybe I'm just not looking up. You're probably not looking up because they're still there. They're out there, and in fact, in the late evening and at ninth that's when these things are the biggest problem. We don't see them at night, but they're still there.
It's not like a rainbow that exists only at anytime. That contrails are created at night as well, and that's when this radiant cooling or this radiant heating, rather it can be the most intense. That's when the when the hot area is supposed to dissipate out into space. Well, if these contrail clouds are created, they're blanketing the planet or a portion of the planet at least they're holding that hot area in. But yeah, they're they're created, but
typically and primarily at certain levels of the atmosphere. You've ever been flying around amy and a commercial jetliner and the pilot comes on and says, we're hitting some turbulence here. We're going to try for a higher or a lower altitude to get out of it. And they do. They climb or they descend. Well that the same thing can be done to get out of that more humid atmosphere to avoid contrasts. American Airlines was working with Google to see what
could be done about this. Google using mapping and using satellite imagery and all sorts of stuff to predict where a plane might fly to avoid these things, either with rerouting or a different altitude, and they were able to reduce They looked at seventy different flights, and in those seventy flights they reduced the contrail production by about fifty two percent, which is to have to burn about two
percent more fuel to get it done. But they were able to cut the production of potentially dangerous or not dangerous but looting contrails wait by changing their altitude. Yeah, by changing the altitude or maybe slightly altering the route to get the plane out of an area where this humid air might be found. Oh, so that it's not that's maybe why maybe the air is dryer. Maybe that's why I don't see the contrails as much. Who knows. Okay,
so are planes looking do you know if they're looking for alternate propulsion? Like are they Are we going to have electric planes? Yes? Really, yes, we are at some point in the future. That's the goal. Right now, there Several companies are working on this on projects to create engines that have power aircraft without fuel, without fossil fuel. They should be handled electrically. By the way, you'd still have contrails created by them. You know,
it's not just the soot. Again, it's not just the soot. But if you've ever seen a plane landing or taking off in fog or cooler weather, and you see these vortices spinning off the wing tips, right, yeah, that's they product of lift. You've got higher pressure on the wing, lower pressure on top. They come together out at the tip of the wing and create these beautiful little vortices, little tornadoes that come off the back.
And that's still happening up at altitude too. So even without a lot of exhaust coming out of the out of the engines, you still have those contrails being formed by the production of left who knew, I didn't, Yeah, I'm just I would be worried if there was a plane and it was electric and it ran out of charge. You know, like midflight, we've got to get a drop straight out of the sky. You've got, you know, miles and miles of gliding potential before you and you can reach an
airport by then, unless you're you know, find a Hawaiian. Don't sweat it. Yeah, okay, I won't worry about it. Thank you. Jim Ryan, always a pleasure, seem all right. Hey, there's freebees. I love freebees. Guess what it is today? Do you know, Tyler, not a clue. No Taco Tuesday. Oh and it is no longer trademarked that that phrase Taco Tuesday. So Taco Bell is celebrating that by
giving away free tacos. Hey now, hey, so they have free doritos locos tacos today on the fifteenth, also the twenty second, and the fifth of September, and I guess it would be the twenty second, the twenty ninth, and the fifth in addition to today. So apparently if you go into a Taco Bell you can get yourself a free taco. And they are celebrating the liberation because Taco John's was the regional taco chain that had Taco Tuesday
trademarked for thirty four years. Remember we talked about it a couple of weeks ago, and Taco John's finally said, you know, uh, we're not going to fight this anymore. And Taco Bell said, hallelujah, because we love Taco Tuesday. So doritos, locos tacos. I haven't had one of those years. Oh they're so good, Amy it makes me hungry. I love Taco Bell. I grew up in Oregon, so like that was Mexican
food. Dos. We didn't know what real Mexican food was. I don't think I knew until I actually until I moved to Sacramento for the first time, I went, this is not Taco Bell. Yeah, it was a whole new world to me. Former Chapman University Law School dean John Eastman is one of those listed in a grand jury indictment handed down in Fulton County, Georgia that accuses former President Trump and others of racketeering in an alleged scheme to
overturn the twenty twenty presidential election. A heat advisor is going to be up in the Inland Empire from noon today until eight Thursday. Temps are expected to hit up one to one oh four in Riverside, Merino Valley and Corona. Attempts up to one fourteen are expected in the Coachella Valley, Indio and Palm Springs. We're just minutes away from Handle. On the news this morning, as kids get back to class, the LA School District says one of its
top priorities this school year is getting kids to actually go to class. We'll dig into that right now. Let's say good morning to ABC's J O'Brien. Hey, j. The White House is trying to focus on student debt, but people are increasingly curious about what the heck hunter Biden didn't, how his dad may have been tied to it. Yeah, it's interesting. These both
really happened yesterday at different parts of the day. So on the student debt thing, first, if you think back to the Supreme Court tossing out that really sweeping plan from the President to forgive ten thousand dollars for some student borrowers
up to twenty five thousand dollars for others. That was a huge blow to a campaign promise from President Biden, and it left the White House really scrambling to try to figure out how they were still going to get forgive student debt even if they could, and they turned to these idrs, these income driven repayment plans, which is something that the Department of Education has in its quivers.
It's one tool that's existed for a while, And yesterday they started rolling out emails to people who enrolled in those idrs a long time ago, saying that day are going to forgive some of their student debt for other barrowers all of their student debts. So eight hundred thousand people got an email yesterday. According to the White House, six hundred fourteen thousand of those are going to
have all of their debt forgiven. These are folks that paid off their student debt for twenty or twenty five years, which is the terms under the IDR. So what's a more limited way to forgive student debt. It's not going to be as big as the President's student loan forgiveness plan, but it's what the White House is trying to do. Because they can't do what they wanted to do things the Supreme Court stop them. Okay, So on this one,
they're using older student debt that dates back like twenty five years. In a way, they're using people who have been who have already enrolled in this plan, who've paid off for that period exactly. Those are the first people that they can forgive. What they're also doing is tweaking the terms of the IDR going forward, so when people enroll in this plan from now onwards, they can also get their student debt forgiven with a little bit different provisions and
what the White House says are more favorable conditions to the bar wars. So they're trying to look back at previous debt and canceled debt that they can under the terms of this rule they're already allowed to do. And then they're trying to tweak this rule going forward to make it easier for them to cancel student debt again. It only applies to people who enrolled in this program, whereas the Biden student loan forgiveness program that was struck down by the Supreme Courts would
apply to everyone who retroactively applied in this program. And they just said I want to opt in after the President announced it. So again not as big, but it's something the White Has says, And the one that was struck down by the Supreme Court was that one more affecting current students. It was
that, and it was bigger. It was just affecting people who had not just opted into this one unique plan, and also it was people who had enrolled in student debt forgiveness whenever, So if you had student loans, you could go to the Department of Educations website and say I want to opt in.
And it was a huge plan. And also it was done and we're getting a little in the legal weeds, and I apologize, but also it was done in a way that the Supreme Court says was unconstitutional because it was outside the president's authority to just forgive these loans with the stroke of a pen
in a sense. Whereas this plan, again, while it targets fewer people because it's only those who have enrolled in IVRs, this is a rule that the Department of Education has had for quite some time, and so it's less on it's less on a looser legal footing, although the White House would say that their original plan was on a firm legal footing, but it's a little
bit more accepted practice and less likely to face some legal challenges. Okay, And then the current one that he just unrolled or unrolled that he rolled out yesterday, does that affect certain income levels more so, like lower income people are more likely to get the debt forgiveness or you have to just enroll in the IVRs. The various aspects of the DR. You have to qualify, but if you've enrolled in this IDR, then you qualify for this if you've
paid off for a certain number of years. And again the White House is eyeing potentially expanding it. It looks like that would only apply and this is somewhat vague, but it looks like it would only apply going forward rather than looking back, because you can't amend the terms of the IDR for people who have already opted into it. You have to just do it going forward.
But again, they're looking at a lot of different avenues here to try to take a little bit of student debt out here and a little bit of student debt out there, because they can't take the big pie out that they wanted to because for the next campaign they want to say, hey, look we did this. We promised we would do this, and we did. Oh
absolutely, I mean this was a campaign promise. They also don't want to get hit with it, something that progressives repeatedly said after the Supreme Court struck down the President's first students at forgiveness plan, which is what's your plan now? I mean I was talking to progressive members of Congress months before the Supreme Court struck down the plan. When the Supreme Court, which is hearing arguments on this, and they were measuring the White House saying what is your backup
plan? It looks like the Supreme Court might strike this down. Where are you going from here? Because this was such a central promise. So the White House is very much doing this because they say publicly they think it's the right thing to do, but don't mistake the fact that they are under significant pressure from within their own ranks to do something about student deaths. Okay, So as that is rolling out, there's also questions about Hunter and President Biden's
possible involvement in business dealings. Now Biden initially has said repeatedly he didn't know anything about his son's business. That attack has shifted. It's now he's not in business with his son. And then that's the line that the White House delivered yesterday. So the context of all of this leading up to yesterday was, you know, the appointment of that special counsel, and David Weiss gets elevated from the US Attorney in Delaware to special counsel and he continuing now his
years long investigation into Hunter Biden under this new title of Special counsel. But the interesting thing about yes today and why I came back to it, was we heard from the first time from the White House officially about that appointment. We hadn't heard from the Press Secretary or the President about that appointment until yesterday. And the Press Secretary says that line that you just quoted, which is when she gets pressed by reporters on the appointment of this special council, what's
the President's reaction, etc. Etc. She says, quote, the President was not in business with his son. And then she does something that sometimes the Press Secretary doesn't always do to The White House sometimes does this, but they don't do it all the time, which is go on the attack.
Oftentimes when it comes to Hunter Biden, the White House likes to deflect the question to the Department of Justice and say, oh, you have to ask the Department of Justice that, or oh, you'd have to ask Hunter Biden's attorneys that. Yesterday, they made that statement that you and I were just talking about, and then they went on the attack against House Republicans, and Karen John Pierre said, they keep turning out documents and witnesses showing that the
President wasn't involved, never discussed these business feelings and did nothing wrong. There's been zero evidence showing otherwise. So she's said, the House Republicans have not turned up any evidence. In the meantime, we know that Special Counsel David Wife is now still conducting his investigation, and so the question is why does he decide to become special counsel? What else does he need to look into? And when Koreeen Jumpierre says the House Republicans uncovered any evidence, is there
evidence that David Wiss is now chasing in his new title? Well, but the House Republicans have been coming up with bank records and showing that the Biden family has received millions of dollars in payments. Is that not some sort of evidence. Well, it's interesting because the linkage there that James Comer keeps promising is a direct linkage between Hunter Biden going to China, let's say, or Barisma, making money via that business practice, and then that money benefiting the
president. And even in those bank records, there's not a direct link. Those are Hunter Biden's bank records, but it's not President Biden's bank records.
So what the House Republicans have consistently said is these guys were in business together, but they haven't yet presented firm evidence that shows the linkage that and the reason why they heard from this guy, Devin Archer, whose name he might have heard of a while back, is that Devin Archer, they said was the link testimony exactly, and that was a business associate of Hunter Bidens, and they said Archer was going to provide the link that shows that President Biden
was read in on these business deals. That was what House Republicans Alynch and Devin Archer said, that Hunter Biden was selling the Biden brand, that obviously he wouldn't have gotten these positions without his father, and that his father was on the phone with business associates, but there was a question of whether or not those calls were about pleasantries or actually about business. Nobody really could really nail that down. And so that's what the White House is saying, where's
the evidence? And House Republicans say, look, we're still conducting this investigation. We found a lot of evidence, James Cormo would say, and he's not given up anytime soon. Meantime, the Special Council is investigating too. Okay, well, we'll see if where there's smoke, there's fire. Jay O'Brien, thanks for taking some time and explaining things today. I think I might have learned a little something. Have a great rest of your day.
We lead local live from the KFI twenty four hour newsroom. I'm Amy King. This has been your wake up Call, and if you've missed any of wake Up Call, you can listen anytime on the iHeartRadio app. You've been listening to wake Up Call with me, Amy King. You can always hear wake Up Call five to six am Monday through Friday on KFI Am six forty and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.