Wisconsin’s Judicial Election Decided & HHS Layoffs Begin | 4.2.25

The most expensive judicial election in U.S. history is over and conservatives come up short.
But Republicans successfully defend two House seats in special elections. Let it be known that this election is a reminder that Florida panhandle will forever be red and it'll be forever Trump country.
We won by double digits. We're super excited.
It was an incredibly powerful victory. I'm Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley with Georgia Howe.

It's Wednesday, April 2nd, and this is Morning Wire.

RFK slashes HHS spending and staff while Democrats sound the alarm and launch lawsuits.

We're not going to cut services. We're not going to cut services.
We're not going to cut Medicaid.

We're not going to cut Medicare. We're going to provide services, but more efficiently.
And new data shows a massive decrease in border crossings and fentanyl trafficking. We secure the border.
We're down the border crossing 96%. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire.
Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.
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That's balanceofnature.com, promo code WIRE. The Wisconsin Supreme Court remains ideologically liberal after Tuesday's election, while Florida voters secured two seats for Republicans in the House.
Here to discuss is Daily Wire reporter Amanda Prestigiacomo. Hey, Amanda.
So let's start with Wisconsin. Republicans appear to have taken a big loss there.
Tell us about that race. Right.
Liberal Judge Susan Crawford bested her conservative opponent, Brad Schimmel, for a seat on the high court. Crawford took an early lead on Tuesday night and she coasted to victory.
Conservatives knew that the odds were against them late in the election, but they really threw everything they had at it, including a lot of money, but still took a loss. Now, there was also a measure on the ballot to enshrine a voter identification requirement into the state's constitution, and conservatives were pleased that that passed very easily.
Right. Now, as to Crawford, what does her win mean for Wisconsin? Well, it means that the court has remained in liberal control.
The court leaned conservative for years, but a 2023 election flipped it to a 4-3 liberal majority. That election was largely impacted by the left's push to make abortion the central issue there right after Roe v.
Wade was overturned. With Crawford's win, the court sustains its four liberal justices and three conservative justices.
All right, so liberals able to maintain the status quo there. Now, this race garnered huge national attention.
What were the key issues driving that? So the main issue was definitely congressional redistricting, and to a lesser extent, abortion came into play. On redistricting, the liberal-leaning court tossed GOP-drawn maps and adopted new ones drawn by Democrat Governor Tony Evers.
That helped Democrats flip a congressional seat in 2024. Conservatives were hoping to get back control of those maps with a shimmo win, but now that Crawford has won the seat, the court will likely strike down the Republican maps again, giving Democrats a greater likelihood of winning more seats in the state.
Our fair elections and our Supreme Court and Wisconsin stood up and said loudly that justice does not have a price. Our courts are not for sale.
Elon Musk, who poured $20 million into this race backing the conservative, he discussed the national implications of this race yesterday on Fox News. They're going to try to gerrymander Wisconsin to remove two Republican seats.
The House is currently Republican by a razor-thin margin, which means that losing this judge race has a good chance of causing Republicans to lose control of the House. If you lose control of the House, there will be nonstop impeachment hearings and subpoenas.
And it's going to be they're going to do everything possible to stop the agenda that the American people voted for. Regarding abortion, Wisconsin had a trigger law on the books after Roe v.
Wade was overturned that outlawed most abortions. That's been a legal battle in the state, and its Supreme Court will likely weigh in on that issue.
So Democrats leaned in hard on that abortion messaging. Right, makes sense.
And last question on this race, how much money ended up being spent there? So early estimates say that more than $100 million was poured into this election, making it the most expensive judicial race in U.S. history.

Billionaires George Soros for Crawford and Musk for Schimmel were key contributors.

Big names, big money.

Okay, shifting gears to the special elections in Florida, Republicans were able to win both seats after those departures for the Trump administration.

Tell us about those elections.

Right.

Republican Randy Fine won a seat in Florida's 6th District. That spot was vacated by Mike Waltz after he was tapped by Trump for National Security Advisor.
And Republican Jimmy Patronus won Matt Gaetz's old C in the 1st District. Gaetz was briefly nominated by Trump for Attorney General before he resigned from Congress.
Those wins were scored in red districts, but this is still really good news for the GOP, who have a slim majority in the House. Democrats significantly outspent Republicans in both races, and both Republicans still won by double digits.
Still, legacy media tried to paint these GOP victories as wins for Democrats. Here's CNN's Jake Tapper.
Patronus is a strong candidate, and he is going to win. We're projecting a win for him.
But Dana, it's not a 35 point win that it should be in ruby red panhandle Florida. Now, Trump nominated a number of congressional Republicans to his cabinet, which was kind of a risky move with such a narrow majority in the House.
In fact, Trump just recently withdrew New York Representative Elise Stefanik as a nominee for ambassador to the United Nations because of that tight majority. Just wasn't worth the risk for Trump.
Well, some wins and losses for both parties yesterday that will have consequences down the road. Amanda, thanks so much for reporting.
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The Trump administration's quest to downsize the federal government continues, and Democrats are voicing their complaints. Here with an update is Daily Wire deputy managing editor Tim Rice.
So Tim, more mass layoffs in federal agencies. What do we know now? Yeah, good morning, Georgia.
Lots of news yesterday, most of it courtesy of RFK Jr. The Department of Health and Human Services announced that it would eliminate 10,000 positions across the agency.
That includes everything from the FDA and CDC to agency communication staffers and more. Now, these layoffs are obviously part of the Trump administration's goal to shrink the federal government, but they also play into RFK's vision specifically for HHS, which he outlined earlier this week.
We're going to streamline HHS to make our agency more efficient and more effective. We're going to imbue the agency with a clear sense of mission to radically improve the health of Americans and to improve agency morale.
In addition to cutting staff, Kennedy slashed around $12 billion in public health funding that had been allocated to state and local entities during the COVID pandemic. In a statement, HHS Communications Director Andrew Nixon said that the COVID-19 pandemic is over and HHS will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a non-existent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago.
In response, the Democratic Attorneys General in 23 states and the District of Columbia announced that they are suing Kennedy and the department, alleging that these cuts were unlawful. Senator Cory Booker also railed against the Trump administration's health care cuts in a 24 hour long floor speech that now broke the record for longest ever floor seat in Senate history.
Yes, I'm a Democrat and I admit that our health care system needs so much help and so much reform. One out of every three of our tax dollars is being spent on health care.
That's ridiculous. And what are we getting from it? A society that's getting more and more sick.
So it sounds like Booker agrees that HHS is bloated and inefficient, but he disagrees with making cuts. Yeah, that's right.
It really all comes down to layoffs.

Booker's speech was broadly about stopping cuts to Medicare and Social Security,

but he used a lot of his time to rail against Trump, Elon Musk,

and Doge's efforts to downsize the federal government.

Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock launched a similar attack when he stepped in to give Booker a break.

The administration is working for billionaires.

They're working for people like Elon Musk. Health care is a human right.
Health care is basic. And while we're speaking about health, we've got to cheer on our federal workers who are keeping us healthy.
And there are folks in this administration who say that they want to make them the villains. That's what Russell Vogt said.
The people who staff our VA hospitals are not villains. The people who keep our food safe and our water clean are not villains.
The people who keep our military bases operating are not villains. And so we stand with them in this moment.
So I think it's fair to say that Democrats are panicking because Doge is working more quickly and effectively than they thought it would. The HHS layoffs bring us to more than 56,000 confirmed cuts, according to the New York

Times. 75,000 federal workers also took buyouts and more than 171,000 have been targeted for

layoffs. If things keep going at this rate, we're looking at around 13 percent of the federal

government being slashed. Well, I think everyone is shocked at both the speed and the scope of Doge's work.
Tim, thanks for reporting. You bet.
Illegal crossings at the southern border continued to plummet last month, hitting the lowest point in decades. The news comes as President Trump continues to deport criminal aliens at a frenetic pace.
Daily Wire senior editor Cabot Phillips is here to break down the numbers and what it means for Americans. So this new data is rather stunning.
What are we looking at here? Yeah, President Trump campaigned on a promise to shut down the southern border, and no one is disputing that he has done just that. In February, his first full month back in office, illegal crossings plummeted to 8,300.
That was the lowest number in modern American history. And according to a new report from Homeland Security, in March, there were barely 7,000 illegal crossings.
For context, during the same month last year, that number was 137,000, so nearly 20 times higher. Zooming out, during President Biden's four years in office, there were about a quarter million illegal border encounters every single month.
If these current numbers hold, President Trump's first year in office will see a 95% reduction in illegal immigration, and the total number of illegal entries would be at its lowest point since at least 1968. President Trump celebrated that news on Truth Social, writing, quote, the invasion of our country is over.
Here's White House Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt. Thanks to President Trump's leadership, Border Patrol agents are now back to doing the jobs they signed up for, securing the border, rather than serving as travel agents for illegal aliens.
Border crossings have fallen so rapidly that multiple shelters serving legal immigrants in California are now sitting empty. A number have even closed down altogether.
And what makes that turnaround even more remarkable is that it came with no new legislation from Congress. The White House was quick to remind folks that Democrats had told the American people the only way to secure the border was by passing comprehensive immigration reform in Congress.
We heard that line a lot. To that point, this clip of President Biden from last February was making the rounds on social media.
Every day between now and November, the American people are going to know that the only reason the border is not secure is Donald Trump. Now, it's not just illegal immigration falling.
It's also a decline in fentanyl. Tell us about that.
Yeah, this is another dramatic drop. So last year, agents at the southern border seized an average of 2,000 pounds of fentanyl every month.
But this February, that number fell 70% to just 590 pounds as traffickers and smugglers were forced to grapple with the fact that they were more likely to be caught. White House says that progress is coming not just because of the influx of agents and military personnel they've deployed to the border, but because agents who are already in place are no longer spending their days processing thousands of illegal aliens who are coming through each day.
According to Derek Maltz, the acting administrator of the DEA, cartels, quote, got very concerned when Trump took office and opted to send fentanyl elsewhere instead of America. In his words, quote, it became a business decision.
And remember, because President Trump designated cartels as terrorist organizations, they now face the threat of direct military action. So, you know, you can see why they would be incentivized to back off.
Yeah, indeed. Now, this all comes as the Trump administration continues to deport criminal illegal aliens, which has drawn a lot of controversy.
What's the latest there? So according to a report in the New York Post, the Trump administration has already carried out more than 100,000 deportations since Inauguration Day. The pace of those removals has been so fast that ICE is now asking Congress for additional funding so they can make enough room for all those awaiting deportation.
For their part, the White House says the majority of those removed from the country had criminal records or were known gang members. But many on the left have criticized that effort, saying some folks have been deported to foreign prisons despite having no criminal record.
That is beyond breaking our immigration laws. Here's Press Secretary Leavitt responding to those allegations.
The president made it incredibly clear to the American public that there would be a mass deportation campaign of not just foreign terrorists, but also illegal criminal aliens who have soured a bit on Trump's economic strategy, but he still remains very strong on this topic. Latest findings from Pew, for example,

show 59% approval for his plan to deport people living in the U.S. illegally.

Certainly the American people are behind him on this effort. Thanks so much for reporting.

Anytime.

Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back later this afternoon with more news you need to know.