Morning Wire - Evening Wire: Trump Rallies House GOP & Minimum Wage Hikes | 1.6.26

Episode Date: January 6, 2026

 President Trump rallies the House GOP as midterms ratchet up, minimum wage hikes up in several states, and Wegovy ditches the needle. Get the facts first with Evening Wire. - - - Ep. 2566 - - - Wake up with new Morning Wire merch: https://bit.ly/4lIubt3 - - - Privacy Policy: https://www.dailywire.com/privacy morning 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

President Trump rallies the House GOP as midterms ratchet up, minimum wage hikes up in several states, and Wagobe ditches the needle. I'm Daily Wire, Executive Editor John Bickley, with Georgia Howe. It's Tuesday, January 6th. This is Evening Wire. President Trump met with House Republicans today as the party heads into a high-stakes midterm year with a narrowing majority. The gathering comes after the death of California Congressman Doug LaMalfa and the resignation of Marjorie Taylor Green, further shrinking Speaker Mike Johnson's margin for error. Trump warned lawmakers that governing with a razor-thin majority makes it harder to push a tough agenda, urging unity as Republicans prepare votes on health care taxes and border policy.

But even as the midterms loom large, the president still struck an optimistic tone. Together we had 12 months of unprecedented success in 2025. And now we're going to make history and break records with the epic midterm victory that we're going to pull off. President Trump has clarified that the U.S. is not at war with Venezuela, but rather with the people who intend to do harm to Americans. He added that while the U.S. is going to help stabilize Venezuela so its people can vote in new leadership, it's going to take some time. The current plan is for

U.S. oil companies to rebuild the oil infrastructure, which he said could take less than 18 months. Politically and racially charged proposals from New York City's new tenant director are drawing attention and raising major legal questions. Daily Wire reporter Amanda Prestige Giacomo has more. Mayor Zoran Mamdani appointed Cia Weaver as director for the newly revived mayor's office to protect tenants. Weaver has outlined plans to transition private property in the city into a collective good, and she's singled out whites in the process. A resurfaced video of Weaver making this point has been making the rounds on social media.

Here's a bit of that. I think the reality is, is that for century, we've really treated property as an individualized good and not a collective good. And we are going to, and transitioning to treating it as a collective good and towards a model of shared equity will require that we think about it differently. And it will mean that families, especially white families, but some POC families who are homeowners as well, are going to have a different relationship to property than the one that we currently have. This is not Weaver's only such statement. A tweet from June 13, 2018, said, quote,

seize private property. And in 2019, Weaver posted that private property, quote, including and kind of especially home ownership, is a weapon of white supremacy masquerading as wealth-building public policy. Beijing says it has banned exports to Japan of goods with potential military uses, ramping up tensions with China's neighbor. The new export controls come after Japan's conservative prime minister, Sunai Tukaichi, made comments about Taiwan that angered Beijing. She said in November that Japan could be dragged into a conflict to defend its allies if China decides to take military action against Taiwan. Meanwhile, Chinese nationalists online are trying to use the U.S. extradition of Nicholas Maduro to their advantage, asking why China couldn't conduct a similar operation in Taiwan.

In another ripple effect from the U.S. action in Venezuela, renewed calls have emerged for the acquisition of Greenland. Top Trump aide Stephen Miller spoke to CNN's Jake Tapper yesterday and affirmed the administration's interest in the island, especially given global security concerns and the Arctic region's strategic importance. Greenland should be part of the United States. The president has been very clear about that. That is the formal position of the U.S. government. There's no need to even think or talk about this in the context of a military operation. nobody's going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland.

The Danish Prime Minister pushed back on Monday, reiterating that Denmark is not interested in relinquishing its territory. However, several figures within the U.S. government, including Miller, have questioned the legitimacy of Denmark's territorial claim. At least 35 people have died in protests against the tyrannical regime in Iran and hundreds more are in government custody. Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce has the latest. According to the U.S.-based human rights activist news agency, the dead included 29 protesters,

four children, and two members of Iran security forces. The continued crackdown comes amid repeated warnings from President Trump that the U.S. would step in if violence persisted. Trump reiterated his threat to intervene against the Iranian regime for attacking protesters on Sunday night. We're watching it very closely. If they start killing people like they have in the past, I think they're going to get hit very hard by the United States. The protesters have adopted a rallying cry from Elon Musk, who replied to a defiant post from the Ayatollon

X with a Persian phrase that translates to wishful thinking or fat chance. New minimum wage hikes are sweeping the country as a mix of red and blue states are set to force new hikes this month. Workers in 19 states will see higher minimum wages, some because of inflation adjusted standards and others because of new laws and ballot measures passed last year. The highest wage floor will be set at 17, 13 an hour in Washington state, the first state with a minimum wage over $17. With the new increases, more than half of states for the first time will have minimum wages higher than the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. The Trump administration said Monday that it will expand a freeze on social service funds to four more blue states, California, Colorado, Illinois, and New York. The Department of Health and Human Services began the freeze last week with funds for many.

Minnesota, where multiple investigations over the past year have turned up massive allegations of fraud. Minnesota's governor Tim Walls on Monday dropped his bid for re-election, citing the allegations of fraud in his state as part of his reason. Meanwhile, the Trump administration is surging roughly 2,000 federal immigration agents to Minnesota as part of a massive month-long crackdown. DeLewire immigration reporter Jenny Tehr has the story. ICE officers from all areas of the country were instructed over the weekend to head to Minnesota ASAP to assist in the operation, Homeland Security sources told the Daily Wire. Homeland Security investigation agents are also expected to conduct fraud investigations

after federal prosecutors found that dozens of Somalis living in Minnesota were allegedly tied to a multi-billion dollar swindling scheme. Investigators believe that the alleged fraudsters stole at least $9 billion in taxpayer funds as they funneled cash from state welfare programs through fake nonprofits and shell companies back to Somalia and even Somali terrorist group Al-Shabaab. Meanwhile, Hotel Chain Hilton has come under fire for one of its franchises turning down DHS agents in Minneapolis. A routine traffic stop in Indiana turned into a multi-million dollar drug bust.

State troopers arrested two men after discovering over 300 pounds of cocaine hidden inside the semi-truck's sleeper berth. Police say the truck was drifting alongside an interstate in Putnam County when a canine search uncovered the drugs. The haul was valued at roughly $7 million. Federal officials say both suspects entered the U.S. illegally and were driving with California issued commercial licenses. Immigration detainers have been filed to keep the suspects in custody as the case moves forward.

As the AI race intensifies, NVIDIA announced Monday that it's about to release newer, faster processorships far ahead of schedule. Daily Wire reporter Breckis Stoll has more on the release. NVIDIA claims their new project known as Vera Rubin will allow developers to train models faster while using a quarter as many chips as their previous servers. NVIDIA's Rubin platform is made up of six new chips that come together and act as one AI supercomputer. The company predicts Rubin will deliver a 10-fold reduction in cost compared to Blackwell, which until Rubin was the company's most advanced technology.

The Rubin platform will be released later this year in what some AI researchers have called a generational leap. Since the dawn of the AI boom, NVIDIA has positioned itself at the forefront of chip development, taking its place not just as the largest AI company, but the world's largest company by market cap. InVIDIA is showing no signs of slowing down. More information has been released about the hammer-wielding Vandal who broke into Vice President Vance's Ohio home last week. 26-year-old William DeFore, the son of a prominent Cincinnati physician, appears to have a history of serious mental health issues. In 2024, he was sentenced to two years of mandatory mental health treatment after vandalizing a local business. He was also charged with trespassing at a health

care facility in 2023, but was declared mentally incompetent by a judge so the case was thrown out. In recent weeks, DeFour appears to have been going by the name Julia. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting voted Monday to dissolve itself. Dalywire assistant editor Nathan Gay has more. The move comes after congressional Republicans rescinded $1.1 billion in funding, cutting off the primary government revenue stream that has long sustained NPR and PBS. The CPB began winding down operations in August and notified 100 employees that most staff positions would be eliminated by the end of the fiscal year. Monday's vote made the closure official. As the Daily Wire previously reported, a study from the Media Research Center found that one taxpayer-funded

PPS program exhibited a consistent 93% negative bias against Republicans in the Trump administration over three months, despite claiming to provide objective political coverage. Over a dozen sanctioned oil tankers left port from Venezuela over the weekend in what appears to be an attempt to evade the U.S. blockade. At least 16 tankers disguised or hid their locations after leaving Venezuelan ports in the wake of the capture of Maduro. Four of the fleeing tankers appeared to leave on Saturday shortly after Maduro's extradition. Some of the tankers have used the tactic called spoofing, which means they use fake ship names

and misrepresent their position. Most of the supertankers that left port typically transport crude oil to China. And a fat shot won't be needed anymore for Wagovi as it's now launched in pill form in the U.S. Daily Wire Assistant editor Andy Valdez has the details. Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk is now offering a once-daily Wagovi pill in the U.S. with one and a half and four milligram doses, as well as higher doses of 9 and 25 milligrams. The pill was approved by the FDA last month, and it's a major boon to Novo Nordisk, which is hoping to regain ground loss to competitor Eli Lilly.

Lily awaits a decision for its own weight loss pill, which is expected in March. Those are your drive home updates this evening. To learn more about these stories, go to DailyWire.com. And in case you missed it earlier today, we covered some major stories, including Nicholas Maduro pleading not guilty in New York City, Tim Walz abruptly ending his reelection bid, and info coming to light in a foiled terror attack in Charlotte. Thanks for tuning in.

We'll be back tomorrow morning with another full edition of Morning Wire. Thank you.