Evening Wire: Cartel Crackdown Launched & Melania vs. Hunter | 8.14.25
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These are questions that take cultures thousands of years to answer.
During Answer the Call, I take questions from people just like you
about their problems, opportunities, challenges, or when they simply need advice.
How do I balance all of this grief, responsibility?
How do you repair this kind of damage?
My daughter, Michaela, guides the conversations
as we hopefully help people navigate their lives.
Everyone has their own destiny. Everyone.
The U.S. deploys air and naval forces against drug cartels.
The Trump administration makes good on their promise of if you spit, we hit. And a California school board sides with the president on Title IX.
I'm Daily Wire executive editor John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's Thursday, August 14th, and this is Evening Wire.
President Trump says hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens have been booted from Social Security. In Trump's one big, beautiful bill, there's no tax on Social Security for seniors.
The president says making
Social Security great again means stopping those benefits for nearly 275,000 illegal immigrants. These are people, many of them have already left the country, and yet we were sending them checks all the time.
And 275,000, and that number is now even larger than that, Franklin. It's an unbelievable job.
And what that's doing is making the system strong. It's making it strong.
Biden never kicked anybody off. Everybody joined.
And we're carrying out historic deportations to remove many more illegals committing social security fraud. It's the social security fraud that was taking place at levels that nobody's ever seen.
Trump went on to add that the administration has removed 12.4 million names of people listed in the Social Security database who are supposedly over 120 years old. Air and naval forces have been deployed against drug cartels in Latin America and the Southern Caribbean.
Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce has more. Reuters reports the move targets narco-terrorist organizations threatening U.S.
national security, with a focus likely on Central and South America. The Trump administration has already designated multiple cartels and gangs as foreign terrorist groups, including Venezuela's Tren de Aragua and Cartel de los Solas.
This also comes after Attorney General Pam Bondi said 30 tons of cocaine linked to Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro was seized, with seven tons tied to him directly. Trump has ruled out sending troops into Mexico, but says the mission will intensify efforts to dismantle cartels fueling the U.S.
drug crisis. D.C.'s police department is breaking with its longstanding sanctuary city policy to help ICE.
While arrests based solely on immigration warrants remain barred, Police Chief Pamela Smith's directive allows officers to share information with ICE and assist in transportation of detainees. The administration says the policy change is part of restoring law and order in the district, which Trump says should be run directly by the federal government for safety and security.
The Metro PD shift comes amid Trump's crackdown in the Capitol, which includes a federalization of the Metro Police and deploying the National Guard. Tom Homan says this was always the plan.
D.C. under federal control is not going to be sanctuary city.
We're working with the police hand in hand. We encounter a criminal illegal alien that will be turned over the ice.
And that's the way it should be. A man who threw a wrapped Subway sandwich at a federal law enforcement officer is now facing felony charges.
U.S. Attorney Janine Pirro says 37-year-old Sean Charles Dunn hurled the hoagie at a Customs and Border Protection officer in D.C.
late Sunday night, then ran before being caught. Court documents say Dunn, who was also a DOJ employee, did this all while yelling obscenities at officers.
After his arrest, he reportedly told police, quote, I did it, I threw a sandwich. Piro says the case shows her office will back the police to the hilt.
If you spit, we hit. Well, we didn't quite do that the other night when an individual went up to one of the federal law enforcement officers and started jumping up and down, screaming at him, berating him, yelling at him.
And then he took a subway sandwich about this big and took it and threw it at the officer. He thought it was funny.
Well, he doesn't think it's funny today because we charged him with a felony, assault on a police officer. A man accused of being involved in the viral Cincinnati downtown beating is facing a new charge and 15 years behind bars.
Prosecutors say 34-year-old Montanez Merriweather illegally possessed a 9mm pistol on July 2nd, something that federal law prohibits because he's a convicted felon. Meriwether is also in state custody for various charges tracing back to the July 26 attack that injured six.
One of the victims, identified only as Holly, suffered a severe concussion, neurological damage, and vision problems. On the eve of a prospective peace summit between President Trump and Putin, Russia seems to be preparing to test a new missile.
Satellite imagery shows increased activity, including an influx of personnel, equipment, ships, and aircraft at the site of the most recent test. Reports from two U.S.
researchers and an anonymous source from Western Security suggests a test is likely to take place this week. The missile, which NATO calls the SSC-X9 Skyfall, is both nuclear-armed and nuclear-powered.
Putin has described the missile as, quote, invincible to current air defenses. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is raising more questions about her predecessor, James Clapper, and his role in pushing the Russia hoax.
Daily Wire senior editor Joel Needler has more. Gabbard shared a screenshot of an email on X, which was sent in December of 2016 to then-FBI Director James Comey, CIA Director John Brennan, and NSA Director Michael Rogers.
Rogers said that his team raised concerns about having sufficient time to review the intelligence community assessment, which would later become the Russia hoax. Clapper responded by email, saying that he understood the concern, but countered, quote, more time is not negotiable.
We may have to compromise on our normal modalities since we must do this on a compressed schedule. Clapper concluded the email by saying, quote, this is one project that has to be a team sport.
First Lady Melania Trump has threatened to sue Hunter Biden for $1 billion over claims the younger Biden made about Trump regarding the late disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. Biden claimed that Epstein first introduced Melania to President Trump in a video interview published earlier this month.
The first lady's legal team sent a letter demanding Biden retract his statements, which referenced an article published in the Daily Beast. The letter to Biden requested that he issue a public retraction of his comments and an apology to Trump or else face legal action.
Biden responded in an interview this morning. F*** that.
That's not going to happen. And I also think they're bullies.
And they think that a billion dollars is going to scare me. The Daily Beast has retracted its article about the Epstein connection, deleting it entirely.
Wholesale prices rose by 0.9% last month. That's the largest increase in three years.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics released a report this morning revealing the jump in the producer price index, which measures the average change in prices domestic producers receive for their goods and services. The report has reignited concerns about inflation, suggesting it could spread to other sectors of the economy.
The BLS has pared down some detailed reports for the PPI in response to budget cuts. This is the first report released with the abridged structure.
A United Nations-affiliated hunger group has changed its standards for what qualifies as famine, so Israel could be accused of causing famine in Gaza. Daily Wire reporter Cassie Akiva has the details.
The Watchdog Group previously defined a famine by a standard requiring 30% of children in an area to suffer from acute malnutrition. And this standard has been in use since 2004.
But in July, the Watchdog Group changed the standard to 15% of children in an area. As the Washington Free Beacon reports, 16.5% of children in Gaza City reportedly suffer from acute malnutrition.
One aid worker told the Free Beacon the previous standard measured height and weight to determine acute malnutrition. Now, acute malnutrition is determined by upper arm measurements, which are less reliable.
The aid worker said the new standard is, quote, lowering the bar to declare famine in Gaza compared to other previous declared famines. Another United Nations watchdog is demanding that the World Bank fire a senior economist over social media posts.
UN Watch executive director Hillel Noor says the economist's posts violate his neutrality obligations. Noor said Massimiliano Kali incited violence against Jews and promoted Holocaust inversion.
He says Kali has been making statements like this on Facebook for 13 years. In one post, Kali said nations that supported Israel directly support genocide.
Noor said the World Bank should hold Kali accountable for his posts. We're calling for him to be fired.
His words are hate speech against israel against Americans, which he basically accused of being a fascist nation. And he should be removed.
And the World Bank doesn't need to look into it. The evidence is all there.
He should be removed immediately. A federal appeals court says the Trump administration can withhold billions in foreign aid, at least for now.
Grant recipients had sued over money being distributed through USAID. The court ruled in a 2-1 decision that only the comptroller general can sue the executive branch over withholding foreign aid grants.
The grant recipients said they will appeal the decision. The ruling allows Trump officials to continue rolling back previously approved grants.
Ending the grants would save the federal government billions of dollars. A California school board is defying the blue state's leadership by voting to ban trans-identifying male athletes from girls' sports.
The move comes as the Justice Department is suing the state over Title IX violations. The Kern County School Board voted to side with the Trump administration regarding Title IX.
I think the main purpose for writing this resolution is to do our duty, which is to protect students. And we are protecting girls specifically with this resolution in sports.
So we are aligning with the Trump administration and the original intent of Title IX. After Trump signed an executive order in February nationally banning men from women's sports, California was the first state to defy the order.
Athletes and schools have protested California's stance. Now Kern County is the first school board to side against the state.
And a trans-identifying athlete is suing after losing a women's volleyball scholarship. The volleyball player is suing Westcliff University and the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletes.
The athlete said he was offered a scholarship after disclosing his biological sex. The college allegedly revoked the scholarship after the women's volleyball coach said the athlete was ineligible to play.
The athlete's legal counsel says the school and the organization are discriminating against trans-identifying Latino athletes and violating California law.
The NAIA changed its policy to keep men out of women's sports in April of 2024,
almost a year before Trump's executive order. All right, those are your drive home updates.
To learn more about these stories, go to dailywire.com. And in case you missed it this
morning, we covered some major stories, including Trump's D.C. crackdown,
prompting mass arrests, the looming Putin summit in Alaska, and the White House touting more major
immigration milestones. Thanks for tuning in.
We'll be back tomorrow morning with another
full edition of Morning Wire.