Morning Wire - Gangster Takedown In California & Airfare Soars Nationwide | 4.24.26

Episode Date: April 24, 2026

Political pressure mounts as Trump and Republicans stare down the midterm elections, the Administration commences massive anti-gang sweeps in California, and airfare prices soar as the war with Iran continues. Get the facts first with Morning Wire. - - - Ep. 2750 - - - Wake up with new Morning Wire merch: https://bit.ly/4lIubt3 - - - Today's Sponsor: Ethos - Protect your family with life insurance from Ethos. Get up to $3 million in coverage in as little as 10 minutes at https://ethos.com/WIRE Application times may vary. Rates may vary. - - - 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

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free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. As the standoff with Iran continues, political pressure mounts here at home, with Trump and Republicans working to keep control in D.C. come November. You saw what happened in this Virginia contest, and Republican voters and independent voters actually came out to a surprising extent. I'm Daily Wire, Executive Editor John Bickley, with Georgia Howe. It's Friday, April 24th. This is Morning Wire. Operation Gangsta's Paradise leads to the arrest of dozens of gang members in California. We have the latest on the immigration front. The Mexican mafia is a prison gang.

Despite being incarcerated, they're still running the gangs out in the communities. And inflated fuel costs are showing up not just at the pump, but at airports, where Americans are paying 25% more to travel. We're going to recover, but key to that is to stay. supply and demand balance. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.

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Choose Activia. Feel good from the inside out. Visitactivia.ca for more details. Though the tenuous ceasefire continues with Iran, the tensions on the Hormuz Strait continue to escalate. The conflict is ratcheting up the political pressure on the White House and Republicans to fend off Democrats, who are increasingly confident that they'll win big in November.

Joining us now as Daily Wire opinion editor, Ben, Dominic, host of the Big Ben Show. Ben, great to have you back on. Yeah, it's always great to be with you. And this is an interesting time in politics in America, so it's great to have this conversation. With the midterms looming under 200 days, we wanted your perspective on this,

and what is the latest on Republicans' efforts to keep power in D.C.? Well, this was one of the questions that I was putting to people just the other day, and unfortunately, I think that a lot of these House Republicans don't have a very good answer for it. House Republicans just do not have a lot to run on. They were counting on the big beautiful bill,

which they passed over a year ago to be something that would make a big day difference when it came to people's pocketbooks. Now I think instead of having that kind of confidence, they're looking at a situation where six months out, effectively, from the next midterm election, they don't have a lot to run on. They don't have a lot to point to that they're getting done or that they're planning to get done for the American people. I think that the president's supporters, diehard supporters, are very much still with him. But there were so many different groups that he added to that core group when it came to winning in 2024 that I think have really open questions

about whether they're going to be midterm voters or not. Typically, they are not. And at the same time, we see just incredible radicalism, though, on the Democratic side, them endorsing all sorts of crazy things and crazy people, too, by the way. And that's one of the things that I think has Republicans feeling like they might be able to pull off something. But I personally, think that that's just, it's noise. If your family is facing significant costs right now, do you really feel like the Republican Party is talking about your needs as a family? I'm not sure that you do. You mentioned some of the radical positions of Democrats. We just had this gubernatorial debate in California. So a lot of those positions front and center there. We've also

seen Mondani come into power. There's already some backlash against him from Democrat. voters, is there a chance that some of that messaging really does make it out to the public and the recognition of what's on the other side is enough to help the Republicans? Republicans certainly hope that the fact that you've got a number of candidates and figures within the Democratic Coalition who are embracing people like Hassan Piker, who are endorsing the public murder of insurance executives, stealing from grocery stores. all manner of different crazy things. They want to make sure, I think, that the American people don't pay attention to that

while also playing the game of footsy with these radicals who are, frankly, embracing Bolshevik ideas, if you really get down to it. And for Republicans, I think they want to highlight those things, but they shouldn't allow it from my perspective to distract from the priorities of the average American. The average American doesn't really care whether Hassan Piker is doing some of the horrible or not. They probably don't even know who he is if you look at the polling data. But at the same time, I think that type of radicalism is a liability for the Democratic Party, and Republicans are going to try to play it up.

So the one thing that could save Republicans in a very real way would be if we see an improvement with the economy, if we see oil prices dropping. Right now, what's the prospect of that? Well, I think that that's something that the president certainly hopes is going to be achieved, and certainly Republicans on Capitol Hill think is the key, basically, to them holding on. But personally, I think a big part of this problem now is you have warring factions within the Iranian government that are not clear about who's actually in control. You can be negotiating with one person one day, and then they're not in charge the next day. That's a real problem, and it's an outcome of what happens when you cut off the head of the snake. But I think, unfortunately, for this administration, the timing

really couldn't be worse in terms of when they've chosen to do this. It sets them up for a situation where even as I think you will eventually see these oil prices rebound in a way that Americans find beneficial, it may not come in time for people to give credit to the president or to his party. Yeah, the clock is running out. It goes very, very rapidly on these election years. It really does. Ben, thanks so much for coming on. Great to be with you. Let's talk about life insurance. Yes, I know it's everybody's favorite. topic right now after airline middle seats and group texts that refuse to die, but one thing that actually will die is all of us at some point. Which is why our sponsor, Ethos, is here to help.

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on Trust Pilot, backed by thousands of satisfied reviews. Take 10 minutes and get covered today with life insurance through ethos. Get your free quote at ethos.com slash wire. That is eth-h-h-os.com slash wire application times and rates may vary. The Trump administration has commenced massive anti-gang sweeps in California, targeting a notorious prison gang. Daily Wire Immigration reporter Jenny Terr joins us now with the latest morning, Jenny.

So a major operation yesterday in California. What have we learned so far? What went down at this raid? Before the sun came up yesterday morning, that's when FBI agents went out in Orange County and swept the area, swept neighborhoods for members of the Mexican mafia. This is part of an ongoing operation dubbed Operation Gangsta's Paradise that the Trump administration has been carrying out against the gang operating in California.

In total, federal authorities made 37 arrests of members and associates of the gang, which is also known as La M.A., and they made those in residences across Orange County. What do we know about this particular gang? So the allegations in this case are that there was a leader who is currently incarcerated in a California state prison. His name is Luis Cardenas, that he was directing some of those members that have been arrested by the federal authorities allegedly to carry out operations for the gang to carry out crimes. So kidnappings, killings, they operated illegal gambling rings in strip malls. There were a lot of different criminal enterprises going on. And he, would be essentially on the phone with them. He would be messaging them through encrypted chats. There was even an incident where one of them had a run-in with the cop's wall on the phone with this incarcerated shot caller and listened to what the U.S. attorney overseeing this case had to say about it. When one of the out-of-custody associates was moving $20,000 in cash for

Cardenas, Cardinus instructed her to break her phone and she poured water on it. So it just gives you a little, just a little taste of how much control he exerts. He's literally on the phone with criminal actors as you're engaged in crime in our streets. And to clarify, this gang is not directly affiliated with the cartels, but does have some possible connections. Is that correct? Right, exactly. They are a really huge and powerful gang. They essentially control a lot of the Latin gangs that operate here. So this is a huge target of the FBI, and this is a huge, get to get, you know, dozens of arrests in this case, and the Trump administration sees them as a huge threat. Like I said, they operate inside prisons, and some of their operations are pretty

savvy. Like, they use conjugal visits and they use phone calls and all the things they're afforded in prison to call the shots, to tell members what to do that are out on the streets. So, again, it's very well organized. So a major win here then for the administration. You've also been been reporting a lot on the denaturalization effort from the Trump administration. There's some more developments on that front. Can you tell us about that? Right. So as you noted, we've talked a lot about this issue here, the denaturalizations and the Trump administration has really prioritized this because of their crackdown on not only fraud, but also just national security concerns. There There have been a slew of attacks by immigrants who became naturalized citizens of the United States.

So according to the New York Times, there's some new data. The Department of Justice has identified 384 people who obtained citizenship through the naturalization process. They flagged them for potentially qualifying for denaturalization. Now, we don't know how many of those people will actually be denaturalized. It's a pretty complicated process, as we've already. discuss on the show to secure denaturalization and to compare some of the numbers from previous years, the U.S. had secured on average about 11 denaturalizations per year between 1990 and 2017. Under the Biden administration, they secured about 54 denaturalizations.

The Trump administration has already secured about 15 of these. So they're on pace to really hit some high numbers. and with these new referrals and just an emphasis on auditing the system, this could really become a record situation. Well, it's always a busy news cycle on the immigration front. Jenny, we always appreciate you coming on and keeping us up to date. Thank you. Travel costs, including airfare prices, are soaring to new heights as the conflict with Iran continues.

Daily Wire reporter Lyndon Blake is here now with more. So, Lyndon, we're going to talk about airfare, but all travel costs are up right now. correct? Oh yeah, like we immediately saw the impact from this conflict in the Middle East at the pump. Now gas prices are still hovering at $4.3 a gallon. That's the nationwide average. Here in Tennessee, they're still hovering around the high $3 between $75 to $3.99. So again, you can see that at the pump, but now we're really feeling it is the airfare prices. So the lowest priced economy tickets right now are costing 24% more on average than they did, just a year ago, that's according to new research.

A flight from Nashville to Milwaukee, nearly $700, and that is cheap, basic airfare. The report on the airfare spike is coming from this consultant agency to NAO, and they're saying that it's airspace restrictions, that is caused by the conflict in the Middle East, that is forcing airlines to reroute a lot of the flights, which means more fuel, more fuel, more money, everything is going up. And obviously, fuel prices, as we mentioned on the gas side, have gone up itself because of disruptions to oil suppliers. So jet fuel prices have soared from about 85 to 90 a barrel to 150 to 200 a barrel in recent weeks. Fuel accounts are up to a quarter

of airlines operating expenses. And with summer travel coming up, people are starting to notice that this is a problem. In Seattle, that's a big Alaskan Airlines hub. This is kind of insane. The airline costs are expected to rise significantly. Alaska Airlines specifically, is saying that rising fuel prices are likely to add an extra 600 million in expenses from their airline alone from April to June. Now, we've reported before that the cost per barrel of oil is sky high right now, and that causes a ripple effect that we don't even see in the airline prices just yet. So are we looking at no end in sight for these high prices for summer travel? Yeah, I even went out a couple of months, and I was looking at plane take a stay, and it looks like they are staying high. On Tuesday,

say he had President Trump say that he would extend that ceasefire in Iran until peace talks between the two countries have progressed. So again, that's just pushing out this conflict in the Middle East even further. Now, some possible relief that we reported on in one of our afternoons this week, there's a deal to possibly bail out Spirit Airlines. What do we know about that? Yeah, Spirit working very closely with the federal government right now. The airline, in fact, is close to getting a bail out from them. An attorney for Spirit said during a bankruptcy hearing on Thursday, So what does this mean? Well, the deal would have the federal government actually take a stake in Spirit Airlines,

which has been struggling to make money ever since the COVID pandemic. So this could include $500 million in federal assistance. That's according to a source familiar with the discussions. The Spirit attorney didn't really disclose any terms of the possible deal. This is big news for an airline that would avoid becoming the first significant United States airline in 25 years, forced to completely halt operations because of financial problems. And we all know Spirit is known for being a more affordable airline here in the United States. So right now in Spirit, you're going to even struggle to find a round-trip flight for under $400.

All right. Looking forward to some staycations this summer. Lyndon, thanks for reporting. Thanks, guys. Thanks for waking up with us. And if you're listening to the show, now you can watch for free on Daily Wire Plus. We'll be back later this evening with more news you need to know.