--:-- Georgia Howe: Questions mount over the DOJ and FBI's handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case, fueling public suspicion and calls for Pam Bondi to resign. Joke may be too soft of a term. It's really just terrible. It's an absolute disaster.
--:-- [Sound of a podcast theme song fading out]
--:-- Georgia Howe: I'm Georgia Howe. John is on vacation, but we're joined by Cabot Phillips. Today is Thursday, July 10th, and this is Morning Wire.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Thanks for having me on, Georgia.
--:-- Georgia Howe: The Supreme Court clears the way for Trump's mass government layoffs. Will this finally end the so-called deep state?
--:-- Cabot Phillips: They're winning not only in some of the courts of appeal, but they keep winning in the Supreme Court.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And a deadly screw worm is spreading through cattle in Mexico. That screw worm had moved from within 1,100 miles of our border to 700 miles of our border within a matter of weeks.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.
--:-- [Sound of a commercial break]
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--:-- [Sound of a commercial break]
--:-- Georgia Howe: Days after the Trump administration declared the Epstein investigation closed, public outrage continues to grow. Now some Republicans are calling for the removal of Attorney General Pam Bondi.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Daily Wire senior editor Cabot Phillips has the latest. So Cabot, this story continues to dominate. It's not going anywhere. What's the latest?
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Yeah, this is one of those rare stories where the bulk of the outrage going against the White House seems to be coming more from the right than the left.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Trump administration released that now infamous memo Sunday night saying the Epstein case was closed, but that is clearly not what many in the GOP base wanted to hear.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Everyone from conservative radio hosts and influencers to even lawmakers on the Hill have made clear that they are not buying the official story.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And they want to know why the FBI and DOJ are essentially waving the white flag.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Remember, that memo said that they had made this decision after reviewing the existing evidence in FBI possession.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Critics want to know why they did not seek together more evidence.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: One of those critics on the right is Mike Howell, president of the Oversight Project.
--:-- Mike Howell: They looked at the existing evidence gathered by an FBI, which is only one note. It doesn't include the intelligence community.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: I'm not surprised to hear that within the existing case files, they didn't find anything to confirm because I don't think it was there.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: The point is, the FBI didn't fully investigate the Epstein case.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And even in the event they came across incriminating information, which we've already seen over the course of the history of this case, it's the Federal Bureau of Investigations.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: They should have investigated with this new leadership.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And it appears that they just reviewed existing material.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Now, look, there are plenty of Americans who might say that there are more important things to be discussing.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And they're asking, you know, why are we still talking about this creep?
--:-- Cabot Phillips: That was even the message we heard from President Trump during this week's cabinet meeting.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: But here's what Howell had to say when I asked him why this story still matters.
--:-- Mike Howell: You had the richest and most powerful people in the world descending on an island where a known massive sex trafficker was.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: This goes out the nature of the global elites and their relationship with the intelligence community and law enforcement which appears to be very preferential.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: These are massive questions about the functioning of our country and the rule of law, not only the safety of young women.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And so this just doesn't go away because it's over now.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: People have massive questions that'll persist.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And to that point, for many folks, especially in the GOP base. This story, in a lot of ways, cuts to the heart of the Donald Trump campaign, the promise to take on elites and expose what they view as the deep state.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Trump and his allies in particular have, for years now, vowed to present evidence on this case to the American people.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Both Trump and Vice President Pence said on the campaign trail that they would declassify the Epstein files.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: FBI head Cash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino also vowed to do the exact same thing and bring transparency.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And perhaps the most vocal of all was now Attorney General Pam Bondi, who not only promised to release the files, but turned heads with claims like this.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: There are tens of thousands of videos of Epstein with children or child porn.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And there are hundreds of victims.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And from there, she also repeatedly said that there were other co-conspirators whose names would be released.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And if people in that report are still fighting to keep their names private, Sean, they have no legal basis to do so unless they're a child, a victim, or a cooperating defendant.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: But now the attorney general is saying that there's no evidence of co-conspirators, meaning none of those names she alluded to will be released or even existed in the first place.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Now, how much has this damaged Pam Bondi's credibility?
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Well, there's no doubt that she is on the hot seat from a PR perspective.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: It's not an exaggeration to say that this is the most outrage we've seen from the GOP base towards the Trump administration since the election.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And it's worth noting, while the president has come to the defense of Patel and Bongino at the FBI, we have not seen him make similar reassurances regarding Bondi.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: That is never a good sign in Trump world.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Well, you can see why people would feel this is a major broken promise.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Cabot, thanks for reporting.
--:-- [Sound of a commercial break]
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--:-- [Sound of a commercial break]
--:-- Georgia Howe: The Supreme Court this week cleared the way for President Trump to move forward with plans to shrink the federal bureaucracy.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Here with more on the decision and what it reveals about tensions on the high court is Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Hey, Tim.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So let's start with this ruling. What did the court decide?
--:-- Tim Pierce: So first at issue in this case was the Trump administration's plan to reduce the size of the federal government.
--:-- Tim Pierce: And when I say plans, that's exactly what I mean. Just the plans, no actual reductions yet.
--:-- Tim Pierce: President Trump essentially ordered federal agencies to come up with ways to implement those recommendations and to cut the size of the federal workforce.
--:-- Tim Pierce: The federal employees union sued and a district court judge in California issued another one of these broad injunctions that said, you can't do that.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Of course, the Supreme Court disagreed.
--:-- Tim Pierce: We spoke with Heritage Foundation senior legal fellow Hans von Spakovsky about it.
--:-- Hans von Spakovsky: What the Supreme Court has done is say we staying that injunction.
--:-- Tim Pierce: In other words, injunction has no force in effect while this case proceeds in the courts which means they can go forward.
--:-- Tim Pierce: The administration can go forward with its plans for restructuring and reducing the federal workforce.
--:-- Tim Pierce: So it's not the end of the case, but it is a big win.
--:-- Tim Pierce: So talk to us about what this means moving forward. Will the Trump administration now have the path cleared for reducing the federal bureaucracy?
--:-- Tim Pierce: Yes and no. It does clear the way for the Trump administration to move forward, but legal challenges can still be filed, very likely will be filed, over specific reductions.
--:-- Tim Pierce: But Trump will probably eventually carry those challenges.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Here's Von Spakovsky again.
--:-- Hans von Spakovsky: I think there are going to be more lawsuits, but I do think he's got enough running room to really start going forward with this.
--:-- Tim Pierce: You know, what people ought to realize is how stupid so many of these lawsuits are.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Reductions in force, rifts, almost every president has done that.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Heck, Obama did it. And nobody thought it was some kind of legal issue or problem until now, when folks are raving about it and saying that President Trump is somehow doing something wrong.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Von Spakovsky also pointed out that a lot of the rhetoric around these cuts as far as their depth and the supposed damage they could do has been overblown.
--:-- Tim Pierce: At most, Trump's proposed cuts are equivalent to a reduction of just a few percentage points to a nearly three million person federal workforce.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Now, something that really stuck out about this particular ruling is that we saw a split among the more liberal justices.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Tell us about that.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Yeah, Justice Sotomayor signed a concurrence in favor of the decision and the court's most junior member, Justice Jackson, signed a pretty pointed dissent.
--:-- Tim Pierce: And Justice Jackson used some really strong language.
--:-- Tim Pierce: She called the majority decision here, quote, not only truly unfortunate, but also hubristic and senseless.
--:-- Tim Pierce: I asked Von Spakovsky about what this says about the court, and here's what he said.
--:-- Hans von Spakovsky: Well, what it tells me is that Brown Jackson is really at the far end of the spectrum and that the other justices are getting tired of her.
--:-- Tim Pierce: I mean, we've seen that in other cases.
--:-- Tim Pierce: And the thing is, look, I disagree often with what Justice Kagan and Sotomayor put in their decisions.
--:-- Tim Pierce: But they at least try to have a legal basis for what they're saying.
--:-- Tim Pierce: I think it's just another sign that, frankly, she was a big mistake getting put on the court and that she just doesn't have the legal acumen to be on the court.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Sotomayor, Kagan, they do, even though I think they're often wrong, but I don't think she does.
--:-- Tim Pierce: So Jackson appears to be blazing her own trail way out in left field on some of these decisions.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Yeah, certainly noteworthy to see those liberal justices taking aim at Jackson.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Tim, thanks for reporting.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Good to be on.
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--:-- Georgia Howe: A flesh-eating maggot has appeared in Mexico with outbreaks within 700 miles of the U.S. border.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: The pests are now spiking fears about potential devastation to U.S. cattle and other livestock.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Here with more on the pests and the USDA's plan to eradicate them is Daily Wire reporter Amanda Prestigiacomo.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: So Amanda, first off, tell us about this insect and what kind of dangers they present.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: So these parasitic flies are called New World Screwworm, and their larva infests warm-blooded animals like cattle, other livestock, and sometimes even humans.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: So far, there are dozens of human infections.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: They enter a host through open wounds or other openings like eyes or nostrils, and they cause infections that can be deadly if left untreated.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: A screwworm infestation can kill a cow in a matter of days.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: The pest popped up in Mexico late last year after they were eradicated in the U.S. and other areas for decades.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: As Cabot mentioned, the spread has moved northward in Mexico, and outbreaks have happened as close as 700 miles from the U.S. border.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Immediately after those outbreaks were detected the Department of Agriculture suspended live cattle horse and bison imports through U.S. ports of entry along the southern border with Mexico.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: That was on May 11th.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins has repeatedly said that screwworm poses a serious threat to our livestock industry, our economy, and our food supply chain.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Here's Rollins taking questions from Mississippi Rep. Trent Kelly about the screwworm last month.
--:-- Brooke Rollins: We shut down the ports of entry about two to three weeks ago.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: As you know, in the 1950s when it hit, it took 30 years for the livestock community to recover from that.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: After making those restrictions, the USDA announced its next step to eradicate these bugs, which was actually to breed billions of flies, sterilize them, and then release them into Mexico and southern Texas.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Sounds pretty out there, but this is how they were eradicated decades ago.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: And this method is said to be much safer, effective, and more environmentally friendly than spraying the pests.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Here's Dr. Philip Kaufman. He's a professor who heads the Department of Entomology at Texas A&M University explaining this process.
--:-- Dr. Philip Kaufman: We combat the screwworm problem through a number of approaches, including monitoring our animals for infestations of the larvae.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: We set traps for the adult flies, which allow us to reduce the population of the wild flies.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: And most importantly, we release sterilized male flies that mate with the wild females.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: That wild female cannot lay eggs that will hatch.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: And over time, we reduce that population in an area, ultimately eradicating it.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: The USDA is also monitoring Mexico's animal health controls and improving surveillance and detection of screwworm.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: That includes providing traps, lures, and technical expertise to Mexico, among other measures.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Now, the USDA started to relax restrictions with Mexico.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: It reopened a port on July 7th in Douglas, Arizona.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: The department said that these reopenings were starting to happen now since they were consistently conducting sterile fly dispersals, dropping more than 100 million flies each week.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Other ports were set to slowly reopen too.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: However, late Wednesday night, Rollins announced that there was a report of northward spread of the screw worm in Mexico, so she ordered the closure of livestock trade through southern ports of entry effective immediately.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Rollins said, quote, the United States has promised to be vigilant and after detecting this new screwworm case, we are pausing the planned port reopenings to further quarantine and target this deadly pest in Mexico.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Now, this will please ranchers who were concerned about the reopenings.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Before this latest development, 19 cattle groups had sent a letter to Rollins urging her to keep the ban on Mexican imports.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Additionally, RCAF USA, which is the largest cattle producer-only trade association, they say they support Trump, they support Rollins, but they don't want this reopening to happen so soon.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: And they suggest that it's being done to help large agribusiness corporations.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: We see no justifiable reason that our domestic cattle herd should be exposed to any additional risk until we know definitively that the pest can, in fact, be eradicated in Mexico.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Now, a big part of the push to reopen the Mexican border is coming from Big Ag, who wants to achieve trade continuity, also known as trade normalization, which would enable them to regain access to lower cost Mexican cattle despite the higher risk.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: But waiting until the risk is completely neutralized is a better option.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Rollins made this U-turn late last night after this new case was detected.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: And so far, we're seeing a lot of comments online thanking the secretary for closing these ports.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: We'll, of course, continue to monitor the spread of Screwworm and update listeners about any future plans to reopen ports.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Well, hopefully this sterilization method works.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Amanda, thanks for reporting.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: You're welcome. Thanks for waking up with us.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And if you're watching on YouTube, please like and subscribe.
--:-- Georgia Howe: We'll be back later this evening with more news you need to know.
