Evening Wire: Coast Guard’s Record Haul & Trump's Cracker Barrel Advice | 8.26.25

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.

Chicago residents call for Trump's help amid the city's crime crisis.

The Coast Guard seizes a record amount of drugs at sea.

Gavin Newsom goes MAGA, sort of, and they're forcing me to add this, Taylor Swift is engaged.

I'm Daily Wire executive editor John Bickley with Georgia Howe.

It's Tuesday, August 26th, and this is Evening Wire.

After yet another bloody weekend in the windy city, some residents say they're ready for help.

This comes after President Trump's federalization of D.C.

and telling Chicago that they're next.

After we do this, we'll go to another location and we'll make it safe also.

We're going to make our country very safe.

We're going to make our cities very, very safe.

Chicago is a mess.

You have an incompetent mayor, grossly incompetent, and we'll straighten that one out probably next.

The president also called Chicago a killing field, and many locals agree.

Local GOP leaders and former prosecutors say federal backing worked before and could work again.

The city recorded six killed and 27 wounded over the weekend, including a five-year-old boy.

The violence in the city came just days before Governor J.B.

Pritzker told Trump to stay out of the city.

Mr.

President, do not come to Chicago.

You are neither wanted here nor needed here.

Threats and violence against public officials are rising sharply, and the toll is turning deadly.

U.S.

Capitol Police say they investigated more than 9,000 threats in in just the last year.

That's an 18% jump.

In Utah, lawmakers report harassment and stalking.

This also follows the shooting death of a lawmaker and her husband in Minnesota.

Experts say attacks like this are forcing states to rethink security for lawmakers.

Utah State Senator Stephanie Pitcher says she's experienced some of this herself.

I've seen some online threats as well.

So I think certainly some of that is just the nature of politics, but it does seem like it's gotten worse over the past year or two.

At least in Utah, our

UHP is the entity that's tasked with providing security to lawmakers.

And even I have received some threats over email and had somebody else on Twitter.

Trump's DC crime crackdown has ensnared yet another alleged Trendy Aragua member.

The alleged gang member was arrested Monday night, one of more than a thousand arrests in less than two weeks.

So far, the DOJ says there have been 1,094 arrests and that they've seized more than 100 100 illegal guns in the district.

The department also says there have been zero murders or carjackings since the president sent in federal forces to clean up the streets of the nation's capital.

Along with the alleged TDA gang member, the feds also say they've arrested a guy who was burning the American flag in Lafayette Park.

In a record-setting haul for the U.S.

Coast Guard, tens of thousands of pounds of drugs have been seized at sea.

Daily Wire reporter Spencer Lindquist has more.

In collaboration with the Pentagon, Coast Guard crews intercepted 19 smuggling boats in the Pacific and Caribbean this past summer, hitting drug runners off the Galapagos, Venezuela, Mexico, and the Caribbean islands.

Crews offloaded more than 76,000 pounds of cocaine and marijuana in Florida, which is estimated to be worth a whopping $473 million.

34 suspected traffickers are now in custody, and the Trump administration says it plans to expand the Coast Guard fleet and workforce to keep the pressure on these types of smugglers.

In an exclusive report from the Daily Wire, Gaza aid truck drivers detail a string of attacks and looting targeting the civilian aid.

Daily Wire reporter Cassie Akiva has the story.

The truck drivers tasked with transporting aid throughout Gaza say that they have been villainized while they put their lives at risk, often attacked by mobs and armed looters as they try to carry out humanitarian missions.

The Daily Wire talked to several drivers near Gaza's Karim Shalom crossing, where thousands of United Nation aid truckloads sit undelivered and rotting in the sun.

One driver explained that the mobs use tools to yank the doors open and assault them.

Another driver said it feels like a thousand people climb onto his windshield, completely blocking his line of sight.

Another pointed to a truck hit by gunfire behind him during the interview.

And one driver said, quote, people make us aid drivers feel like we caused the war and that we cause the hunger in Gaza, that we're thieves, that we run people over.

We have videos to prove that people cause the problems.

Meanwhile, in related news, Egypt has begun training hundreds of Palestinians to take over in Gaza after the war ends.

As reported by the Wall Street Journal, the plan is for the Palestinians to be part of a force of up to 10,000 that would provide security for the Gaza Strip.

Along with Egypt, Jordan has also agreed to train an Arab police force for the embattled region.

While Arab officials are already moving forward with the plan, it's likely to get significant pushback from Israel.

Ukraine appears to be hitting Russia where it hurts, the gas pump.

Daily Wire reporter Zach Jewell has the details.

Ukrainian drones have hit more than a dozen Russian refineries, knocking out roughly 13% of fuel production and forcing rationing in places like Siberia and occupied Crimea.

Prices are rocketing, up 45% for some grades of gasoline, even as crude prices drop worldwide.

Analysts say sanctions and constant strikes are choking repairs.

This all comes as President Trump pressures Kyiv to negotiate while restricting some U.S.

weapons.

But Ukraine is leaning on its own drones and missiles to keep the pressure on Moscow's economy.

Today is the fourth anniversary of the infamous Abbey Gate attack that killed 13 American service members.

President Trump signed a proclamation yesterday commemorating the anniversary in the Oval Office, surrounded by Gold Star families.

We remember these great 13 souls, but we also remember the people that were so badly injured, our soldiers, 32 of them approximately.

It should have never happened, should it never have been allowed to have happened.

The bombing took place during the Biden administration's withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hagseth also spoke at the event and noted that an investigation is underway into the details of the withdrawal.

Vanity Fair staffers are threatening to walk out over their new boss's idea to put Melania Trump on the cover.

The magazine's new editorial director told Semaphore that he was potentially interested in featuring the first lady, leading to widespread staff backlash.

Other Vanity Fair insiders say the backlash is overblown and that few members of the staff would really walk out from such coveted jobs just to protest a cover image.

Despite being a former fashion model, the First Lady was not featured on any of the most prestigious fashion covers during Trump's first term.

Gavin Newsom is trying to steal some pages from the Trump playbook.

Over the weekend, the California governor launched his own Patriot shop with Trump-inspired red hats and other spoof merchandise, including a red hat that says Newsom was right about everything, and a t-shirt showing Tucker Carlson, Kid Rock, and an angelic Hulk Hogan praying over Newsom.

Other items include a Newsom 2026 mug and California flag-inspired lawn signs that say, Don't poke the bear.

Notably, a drop-down menu allows shoppers to navigate to two themes, Pride and the Patriot Shop in all caps.

When you click on Pride, the site says there are no products listed under this category.

President Trump may make the Pentagon the Department of War again.

The president alluded to the name change during a presser in the Oval Office yesterday.

It just sounded bad.

He said, sir, on behalf of the Department of Defense, defense.

I don't want to be defense only.

We want defense, but we want offense too, if that's okay.

So you'll make a decision.

But, you know, as Department of War, we won

everything.

He then doubled down on the idea when asked yesterday afternoon.

We're just going to do it.

I'm sure Congress will go along.

If we need that, I don't think we even need that.

But if we need that, I'm sure Congress will go along.

You know, that was the name when

we won World War I,

we won World War II, we won everything.

The Department of War was created by an act of Congress in 1789 and was renamed the Department of Defense following World War II under the Truman administration.

President Trump weighed in on the Cracker Barrel rebrand with some business advice.

In a post on Truth Social this morning, the president observed the old country store had, quote, a billion dollars worth of free publicity if they play their cards right.

Very tricky to do, but a great opportunity.

He recommended they reinstate the old logo, apologize to their customers, and quote, manage the company better than ever before.

Cracker Barrel attempted to quell concerns in a statement yesterday, but for now is sticking to its guns on the rebrand.

See if that holds up.

In some gross news, the first human case of a horrible-sounding flesh-eating parasite has been detected in the U.S.

HHS said Monday that it has confirmed the first case in a human being of the New World screw worm.

That's a parasitic fly maggot that feeds on living tissue.

As for the name, as ABC explains, it's a reference to how they screw themselves into the tissue of animals with their sharp mouth hooks, causing extensive damage and often leading to death.

The good news, the patient, a resident of Maryland who got it while traveling to El Salvador, has recovered and HHS says there's no evidence of further spread.

In a major blow to young men everywhere, Taylor Swift is now engaged.

The couple shared a romantic garden proposal via Instagram, complete with a vintage-style old mine brilliant cut diamond ring and the playful caption, your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married.

Fans and friends from Brittany Mahomes to Chiefs Insiders are calling it a modern fairy tale, with the post racking up millions of likes almost instantly.

I wasn't one of them.

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 moving to choke off federal funding to cities with cashless bail, the latest chapter in the Abrego Garcia saga, and Cracker Barrel backpedaling after the continued rebrand backlash.

Thanks for tuning in.

We'll be back tomorrow morning with another full edition of Morningwire.