Morning Wire - Epstein Questions Remain & Deadly Screwworm Dangers | 7.10.25

Episode Date: July 10, 2025

Attorney General Pam Bondi catches flak over the Epstein case, the Supreme Court clears the way for massive government layoffs, and a deadly “screwworm” spreads through cattle in Mexico. Get the facts first with Morning Wire.   - - -   Today's Sponsors:   Pockethose - Text MORNINGWIRE to 64000 to get a FREE pocket pivot and their 10-pattern sprayer with the purchase of ANY size Copper Head hose. Message and data rates may apply.   Shopify - Go to https://Shopify.com/morningwire to sign up for your $1 per month trial period and upgrade your selling today.   - - -   Privacy Policy: https://www.dailywire.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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. 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. The Supreme Court clears the way for Trump's mass government layoffs. Will this finally end the so-called deep state? They're winning not only in some of the courts of appeal, but they keep winning at the Supreme Court.

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. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know. This episode is brought you by pocket hose, the world's number one, expandable hose. If you've ever struggled with traditional garden hoses that constantly kink and crease, right at the spigot connection, you'll appreciate the innovative design

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Again, that's Morning Wire to 64,000 for your two free gifts with purchase. Morning Wire to 64,000. Message and data rates may apply. See terms for details. 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. 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? 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. 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. Everyone from conservative radio hosts and influencers to even lawmakers on the Hill have made clear that they are not buying the official story, and they want to know why the FBI and DOJ are essentially waving the white flag. Remember, that memo said that they had made this decision after reviewing the existing evidence in FBI possession. Critics want to know why they did not seek together more evidence. One of those critics on the right is Mike Howell, president of the Oversight Project. Here's what he told me.

They looked at the existing evidence gathered by an FBI, which is only one note. It doesn't include the intelligence community. 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. The point is, the FBI didn't fulsomely investigate the Epstein. 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. They should have investigated with this new leadership. And it appears that they just reviewed existing No, look, there are plenty of Americans who might say that there are more important things to be discussing, and they're asking, you know, why are we still talking about this creep? That was even the message we heard from President Trump during this week's cabinet meeting. But here's what Howell had to say when I asked him why this story still matters. You had the richest and most powerful people in the world descending on an island where a known massive sex trafficker was. 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. These are massive questions about the functioning of our country and the rule of law, not only the safety of young women. And so this just doesn't go away because it's over now.

People have massive questions that will persist. 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. Trump and his allies in particular have for years now vowed to present evidence on this case to the American people. Both Trump and Vice President Vance, for example, said on the campaign trail that they would declassified the Epstein files. FBI head cash Patel and deputy director Dan Bongino also vowed to do the exact same thing and bring transparency. 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. There are tens of thousands of videos of Epstein with children or child porn. And there are hundreds of victims. And from there, she also repeatedly said that there were other co-conspirators whose names would be released. 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. 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. Now, how much has this damaged Pam Bondi's credibility? Well, there's no doubt that she is on the hot seat from a PR perspective. 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. 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. That is never a good sign in Trump world. Well, you can see why people would feel this is a major broken promise. Cabot, thanks for reporting. Absolutely. If you run a small business, you know there's nothing small about it. Even the smallest decisions can feel massive. That's where Shopify comes in. Shopify is Dcommerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world, from household names to brands that are just getting started. You can tackle all the important tasks all in one place from inventory to

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That's the Shopify advantage. Get all the big stuff for your small business right with shop. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period and start selling today at Shopify.com slash morningwire. Head over to Shopify.com slash morning wire. Again, that's Shopify.com slash morning wire. The Supreme Court this week cleared the way for President Trump to move forward with plans to shrink the federal bureaucracy. Here with more on the decision and what it reveals about tensions on the high court is Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce. Hey, Tim, so let's start with this ruling. What did the court decide? So first at issue in this case was the Trump administration's plan to reduce the size of the federal government.

And when I say plans, that's exactly what I mean. Just the plans, no actual reductions yet. President Trump essentially ordered federal agencies to come up with ways to implement Doge recommendations and to cut the size of the federal workforce. 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. Of course, the Supreme Court disagreed. We spoke with Heritage Foundation's senior legal fellow Hans von Spikovsky about it. Here's what he said. What the Supreme Court has done is say we're staying that injunction.

In other words, injunction has no force in effect while this case proceeds in the courts, which means they can go forward. The administration can go forward with its plans for restructuring and reducing the federal workforce. So it's not the end of the case, but it is a big win. So talk to us about what this means moving forward. Will the Trump administration now have the path cleared for reducing the federal bureaucracy? 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. But Trump will probably eventually carry those challenges. Here's Von Spikovsky again. 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. You know, what people ought to realize is how stupid so many of these lawsuits are. Reductions in force. Rifts, almost every president has done that. 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. Von Spikovsky 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. 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. Now, something that really stuck out about this particular ruling is that we saw a split among the more liberal justices. Tell us about that. 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. And Justice Jackson used some really strong language. she called the majority decision here, quote, not only truly unfortunate, but also hubristic and senseless. I asked von Spakovsky about what this says about the court, and here's what he said. 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. I mean, we've seen that in other cases. And the thing is, look, I disagree often with what Justice Kagan and Sotomayor put in

their decisions, but they at least try to have a legal basis for what they're saying. 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. So do, Cagan, they do, even though I think they're often wrong, but I don't think she does. So Jackson appears to be blazing her own trail way out and left field on some of these decisions. Yeah, certainly no worthy to see those liberal justices taking aim at Jackson. Tim, thanks for reporting. Good to be on.

A flesh-eating maggot has appeared in Mexico with outbreaks within 700 miles of the U.S. border. The pests are now spiking fears about potential devastation to U.S. cattle and other livestock. Here with more on the pests and the USDA's plan to eradicate them is Daily Wire reporter Amanda Presta Giacomo. So Amanda, first off, tell us about this insect and what kind of dangers they present. So these parasitic flies are called New World Screwworm, and their larva infest warm-blooded animals like cattle, other livestock, and sometimes even humans. So far, there are dozens of human infections. 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. A screwworm infestation can kill a cow in a matter of days.

The pest popped up in Mexico late last year after they were eradicated in the U.S. and other areas for decades. As Cabot mentioned, the spread has moved northward in Mexico and outbreaks have happened as close as 700 miles from the U.S. border. 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. That was on May 11th. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins has repeatedly said that screwworm postings. a serious threat to our livestock industry, our economy, and our food supply chain. Here's Rollins taking questions from Mississippi rep Trent Kelly about the screw room last month. We shut down the ports of entry about two to three weeks ago.

As you know in the 1950s when it hit, it took 30 years for the livestock community to recover from that. 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. Sounds pretty out there, but this is how they were eradicated decades ago, and this method is said to be much safer, effective, and more environmentally friendly than spraying the pests. Here's Dr. Philip Kaufman.

He's a professor who heads the Department of Entomology at Texas A&M University, explaining this process. We combat the screw worm problem through a number of approaches, including monitoring our animals for infestations of the larvae. We set traps for the adult flies, which allow us to reduce the population in wild flies. And most importantly, we release sterilized male flies that meet with the wild females, that wild female cannot lay eggs that will hatch. And over time, we reduce that population in an area ultimately eradicating it.

The USDA is also monitoring Mexico's animal health controls and improving surveillance and detection of screw worm. That includes providing traps, and technical expertise to Mexico, among other measures. Now, the USDA started to relax restrictions with Mexico. It reopened a port on July 7th in Douglas, Arizona. 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. Other ports were set to slowly reopen, too. 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. Rollins said, quote, The United States has promised to be vigilant. And after detecting this new screw worm case,

we are pausing the planned port reopenings to further quarantine and target this deadly pest in Mexico. Now, this will please ranchers who were concerned about the reopenings. Before this latest development, 19 cattle groups had sent a letter to Rollins, urging her to keep the ban on Mexican imports. 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,

and they suggest that it's being done to help large agribusiness corporations. 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. Now, a big part of the push to reopen the Mexican border is kind of. 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. But waiting until the risk is completely neutralized is a better option. Rollins made this U-turn late last night after this new case was detected,

and so far we're seeing a lot of comments online thanking the secretary for closing these ports. will of course continue to monitor the spread of screwworm and update listeners about any future plans to reopen ports. Well, hopefully the sterilization method works. Amanda, thanks for reporting. You're welcome. Thanks for waking up with us. And if you're watching on YouTube, please like and subscribe. We'll be back later this evening with more news you need to know.