Morning Wire - Chevron’s $7 Billion Venezuela Bet & UC Berkeley Homeless Camp Goes Viral | 9.3.26

Episode Date: September 3, 2026

Chevron makes a massive investment in Venezuela – doubling production there for the U.S. company – as Trump’s historic oil deal moves forward, the Lindsay Clancy jury returns today with a final chance at reaching a verdict, while the Tyler Robinson case moves to trial phase, and the City of Berkeley finds itself battling on multiple fronts over a massive homeless encampment on the edge of its famous university. Reporting from Tim Rice & Lynden Blake. Plus, we speak to Judge Glock of the Manhattan Institute. Get the facts first with Morning Wire.- - -Ep. 3072- - -Wake up with new Morning Wire merch: https://bit.ly/4lIubt3 - - - Today's Sponsors: Alliance Defending Freedom - Visit https://JoinADF.com/WIRE or text WIRE to 83848. Every dollar you give to ADF will be MATCHED for a limited time. Boll & Branch - Upgrade your sleep with Boll & Branch. Get 15% off your first order plus free shipping at https://BollAndBranch.com/wire with code wire. - - - Privacy Policy: https://www.dailywire.com/privacymorning wire,morning wire podcast,the morning wire podcast,Georgia Howe,John Bickley,daily wire podcast,podcast,news podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What if a few minutes with God could change the direction of your entire day? With pray.com, you can begin each morning with powerful daily prayers, inspiring Bible stories, and messages created to strengthen your faith. Whether you need peace, encouragement, or a fresh start, pray.com helps you make prayer part of your everyday life. Download the pray.com app today. Chevron makes a massive investment in Venezuela, doubling production there for the U.S. company as Trump's historic oil deal moves forward. We have the latest on the foreign policy front. I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire Executive Editor John Bickley. It's Thursday, September 3rd, and this is Morning Wire.

The Lindsay Clancy jury returns today with a final chance at reaching a verdict while the Tyler Robinson case moves to trial phase. I'm going to ask you to come back 9 o'clock and resume your deliberations. And the city of Berkeley finds itself battling on multiple fronts over a massive homeless encampment on the edge of its famous university. These encampments are continuing to grow, and unless cities take some action against them, they will attract more people. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know. Freedom is not guaranteed. In fact, right now, its very survival is in question. We're seeing free speech violated, religious freedom trampled, biological truth rejected. Alliance defending freedom is taking on these threats in courtrooms across the country.

Your gift today powers the legal battles that are defining freedom's future. Every dollar you give to ADF will be matched for a limited time. Visit join ADF.com slash wire or text wire to 83848 to give today. Chevron is making a massive $7 billion investment in Venezuela as the oil giant looks to double its production there over the next five years. This comes after Trump's historic deal with the country, and as oil prices were sent higher just recently by a new exchange of strikes. Joining us with more is our DC bureau chief Tim, thanks for coming on. Of course, Georgia. Glad to be here. So let's start first with this huge investment by Chevron.

Why is this such a big moment? Yeah, so our listeners might recall that a few weeks ago, the United States brokered a deal with the interim government in Venezuela to open for the first time in years, 17 oil fields for use by private companies, right? So remember, under the Maduro regime, these oil fields were all state controlled, right? So this has been a major priority of the Trump administrations dealing with the interim government. So they open these oil fields. The deal is that the United States, the Defense Department, will take a 33% stake in the oil that is produced from these fields. But otherwise, the companies have 100% exclusivity. They get to control the fields, and they get, you know, the majority of the rest of the profits.

Chevron is the first major company to actually sign on and say, we are taking this field, we are expanding our position in this particular basin. And as John said at the top, the goal is to double their oil production, which is currently modest. The goal is, if everything goes according to plan, by 2031, they will be producing 600,000 barrels of oil a day in Venezuela. So this is a good sign. I think it's not as crazy as,

some people are saying it's not going to radically change the oil supply chain. It's not going to send prices plummeting right away. But it's absolutely a step in the right direction, one, for oil prices in general, and two, for the United States dealings and oil companies dealings with this interim Venezuelan government, which at this point, you know, we're approaching, what, six months of this government. So it's seeming increasingly likely that this might just be the Venezuelan government for the foreseeable future. Now, let's turn to the conflict with Iran. Sentcom is saying that U.S. forces struck Iranian tankers on Tuesday night, and Iranians quickly responded with their own missile attacks. They say that that was in response to the U.S. actually allegedly hitting an Iranian wedding, and there were some reports of civilian casualties.

What is President Trump saying about what happened there and what he sees going forward? Yeah. So important to note that the president has not yet acknowledged or commented on the allegations that the United States attacked a wedding. Sentcom has said, of course, that they are looking into these allegations from Iranian state media and that the United States, under no circumstances, targets civilians. So, for what it's worth, the Iranian state media, they do this occasionally. It's often propaganda. It's unclear, again, this is still an emerging situation. So that's that.

Otherwise, yes, hostilities have come back and forth. The president has commented on that. He said that the Iranians gave us a love tap and that we came in and gave them a full-blown strike and that we are prepared and willing to do it again and again as necessary. This is the most re-engaged that the president has been with the war in a while. Obviously, hostilities, as we said, are coming back up. Iran is attacking not just the United States, but also some of our allies. And it's also important to remember that the president, in recent weeks, when he's been asked

about how the ongoing conflict in Iran could affect the midterm elections, has basically said, I am not thinking about this in terms of domestic politics. I don't care what happens. I'm not trying to resolve anything before the midterms, which is probably unwelcome news to a lot of Republicans who are on the ballot, but he's clearly in this for the long haul and how long this current stretch of back and forth goes. Nobody knows. But the president is making very clear to Iran and to anyone else who's listening that the United States will not back down. We also wanted to ask you about reports of a string of recent cyber attacks on U.S. infrastructure linked to Iran. What do we know about those attacks?

Yeah, so very little right now, which is frightening in its own right, another frightening dimension to an already frightening story. But it's exactly what you said, John, apparently an Iranian hacking group. I believe that they're not technically, it's not technically the Iranian government, although, of course, in situations like this, they're probably acting on behalf of the Iranian government, but it's a hacking group tried to hack into America's energy grid, it's water towers, it's broadband and internet, basically all of the infrastructure that we use. use, right? So this is sort of the nightmare scenario from what we can tell. Obviously,

these attacks have been foiled. The Iranians did not successfully hack any of these things, but it's worth noting that another Iranian group did successfully hack into and temporarily disable a water processing plant in the United Kingdom just last week. So this is something that is happening. This is something that clearly whoever these hackers are, whether they are government agents or extra government agents, this is not just a flailing attempt. They've made landfall, with one of our allies, and this is clearly something that they're going to try. So, again, not as much information as I would like to have on this one at the moment, but definitely something that we should keep an eye on.

Hopefully, we won't have to hear too much more about in the future, but something to keep an eye on for sure. All right, well, Tim, a lot of irons in the fire as usual. Thanks for keeping us up to date. Of course, guys. Mornings have a pretty reliable way of telling you how well you slept. If you're already exhausted before that first cup of coffee, suddenly getting better sleep moves pretty high on the priority list. That's why we love Bowlin Branch.

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off your first order, plus free shipping at bolandbranch.com slash wire with code wire. That's Bolandbranch, B-O-L-L-L-A-N-D, branch.com slash wire to unlock 15% off. Exclusions apply. The jury returns today for what is expected to be the final day of deliberations in the Lindsay Clancy trial after twice coming to a deadlock while the Tyler Robinson case moves forward to the trial phase. That's so criminal host Lyndon Blake is here to break it all down. So Lyndon, this jury twice came back deadlocked, twice was sent back to deliberate more. What can we expect from this final phase? Yeah, the judge kind of has his back against the wall right now. And I say that because he can only send the jury back two times.

a third time the jury would have to consent and be like, you know what, okay, we'll go back and talk again. So on this second time when the jury came to him saying, hey, we still cannot get to a unanimous decision is when Judge Sullivan gave this dynamite charge. In Massachusetts, it's called the Tui Rodriguez charge. And basically, to put it in simple terms, he is saying, I need you to consider the majority, consider the other side. Don't go against your personal convictions. This is kind of like the hell marriage. You try to get them to come to unanimous decision on this case. Here's Judge Sullivan giving that charge.

I'm going to ask you to come back tomorrow morning, 9 o'clock, resume your deliberations. Remember my instructions? So I said his backs against the wall, because, again, if they come back and they don't want to consent to go back and continue deliberating, judge will have to call a mistrial. And we discussed this earlier this week. Then the options kind of open to what the prosecution may want to do. Very common in a murder case, which this is a murder case, for the prosecution to say,

let's do this all again. Now there was also some drama outside the courtroom where a woman was charged with supposedly trying to intimidate the jury. Tell us about that. Yeah, just so you think outside this courtroom in Massachusetts couldn't get any more strange, it does. A woman by the name of Dawn Light, this was on Tuesday night. She was trying to take pictures of the jury. Now, she claims she was trying to take pictures of Lindsay Clancy. She was in an area that was restricted access. She was not supposed to be there.

She got arrested, made her appearance Wednesday morning for intensive. intimidating jurors. This could be a pretty heavy sentence for her up to 20 years in prison. There wasn't a bell set. She was indicted, though. But the most bizarre scene was her leaving the courtroom. Just like we've seen with Kevin Redington, the lead defense attorney, she was sworn with reporters. And frankly, some people that are there just filming on their phones, asking questions, why she did what she did. And it looked like to me, and this is my opinion, that she was showing no remorse for her actions. She was enjoying her time in the spotlight. Again, a very strange case.

So much so, I thought on Wednesday morning because of that incident that there was going to be an automatic mistrial when the judge called everyone into the courtroom. I had my phone ready. I was recording it, but he didn't. He sent the jury back to deliberate, which brings us to this morning. They're going to try to go do that again. And from the sounds of it, this might be the final day of deliberations. Yeah, it depends on who you talk to. A lot of experts thought the final day would be maybe two days ago.

After the first deadlock, experts are saying they won't do this again. But here we are. The reason this could be the final day is, again, the judge is out of options. So will today bring a unanimous verdict? Will it bring a mistrial? We will have to wait and see. But the clock is ticking. And like I said earlier, Judge Sullivan has his back against the wall at this point. Meanwhile, we have the Tyler Robinson case moving forward officially to the trial phase. What comes next in that case? Yeah, so Tyler Robinson bound over on all seven charges to a trial. We saw on. Tuesday, his team try to kind of pick away at the aggravated murder charge that carries the greater death penalty. You could see his defense team trying to paint Charlie Kirk in this bad light. Again, at this point, they're just trying to save their client's life. So right now, Tyler Robinson

entered a non-guilty plea. There is still time before a trial date is set that a plea deal could come to the table. I spoke to the experts back in July during this preliminary hearing and I was told by several that they don't think this could even go to trial because they think they'll take a plea deal so you get the death penalty thrown out the window. That is to be determined. As of now, a trial date could be set in October. All right, well, two cases definitely to watch. Linden, thanks for reporting. Thanks, guys. Homeless encampments outside UC Berkeley have sparked growing backlash within the community. But the city says the plans to clean up the area are not so simple. Joining us now to discuss is Judge Glock of the Manhattan Institute.

Great to have you back on. Thank you so much for having me again. So first of all, why is there so much concern about this particular homeless encampment? How bad is this? Well, if you've seen the semi-viral video on social media, it's a pretty bad encampment. And it's also pretty much cheek by jail next to the actual UC Berkeley student housing and offices and so forth. So it's a problem. But also, if you look at it, it looks like a lot of campuses, encampments across America.

There's a lot of bicycle parts, a lot of what looks like stolen goods, and a lot of tents that are covering the sidewalk out into the street. All right. So the general, you know, sort of dangers posed by that, but also some illegal activity likely going on there. Yes, I forget who was the mayor who said this, but a mayor who spent some time in homeless encampment said there should be another name for them. and that is open-air drug markets. That's not the case in every single encampment, but that is unbelievably common with a public encampment. You're going to see drug sales, drug deals, and drug use,

and you're going to see a lot of fairly unsanitary things. One thing we know here is there was something called a leptospirosis outbreak in this encampment that led to a death. This is a sort of disease you typically don't see in the first world, but this encampment is breeding exactly that sort of problem. Wow. Now, there have been some disputes about, what to do with this particular encampment, whether you can do anything about it. Can you explain what each side is saying in this debate? Yeah, so this is America. So almost anything government tries

to do on the streets and on the sidewalks is going to attract some litigation. And there have been many lawsuits to try to prevent the city of Berkeley from removing these encampments. And to my surprise, the U.S. District Judge in this case has been pretty open to those lawsuits and therefore pretty suspicious of the city of Berkeley's ability to clear those encampments. That's despite the fact that we did have a Supreme Court case just a few years ago, known as Grant's Pass, that said that cities across America did have a right to clear these sorts of encampments. So I do hope and imagine that judge at some point will realize that he's going a little far

over his skis here and that this sort of restriction on basic public safety and sort of sanitary clearances probably needs to end. Now, there was a September 8th deadline for the city to remove this encampment. Is that still on? Are they still planning to take action? The city looks like they want to go ahead with that clearance. But it's my understanding, the judge is also considering still whether or not he's going to block that. Again, he's blocked these sort of clearances many times before. The groups that are suing the city continue to claim this.

illegal and it's particularly detrimental to people with disabilities in the camp. Maybe the irony of that, there's been many disabled plaintiffs across the United States have sued cities because of the existence of encampments, precisely because people with wheelchairs or with mobility problems can't get down sidewalks if they're covered with tents. Now, broadening out a bit, California has, of course, been the hub of homelessness in America for several years now. Is it getting any better? Obviously, Berkeley's having its own problems. But what about the other cities. Are they making progress? Unfortunately, it doesn't look so, at least in California. California, according to some of the recent numbers, still has pretty close to half of all the unsheltered

homeless in America. That's the homeless out on the streets, sidewalks, and parks. And yeah, that doesn't look to be changing any time soon. These encampments are continuing to grow. And unless cities take some action against them, they will attract more people as they've attracted people in those that haven't taken any action to clear the encampment. Well, you think some of these lessons would have been learned long ago, but apparently not. Judge, thank you so much for coming on. Thank you so much for having me. Thanks for waking up with us.

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