Morning Wire - Nashville Mayor Investigated & Europe’s Speech Police | 5.29.25

Episode Date: May 29, 2025

Nashville’s mayor is under federal investigation for obstructing ICE efforts to arrest criminal illegal aliens, Europe’s crackdown on free speech is in focus at the EU-US Forum in Budapest, and the Government Accountability Office faces GOP backlash after undermining Congress. Plus, Elon Musk steps back from DOGE. Get the facts first with Morning Wire. GABB: Sign up today – no contract required – at https://gabb.com/WIRE Helix Sleep: Go to https://helixsleep.com/wire to get an exclusive discount. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Trouvee to little enterprises like on our own.com. Nashville's mayor is under investigation for obstructing ice. Now, you can have a woke mayor who wants to cry and whine in his cheerios about it, but I'm going to say, we're going to stand with the president, we're going to stand with Pambonty,

we're going to stand with ice. Heck, I'll go out there and I'll help What's ICE's message to other blue cities undermining the law? I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire Executive Editor John Bickley. It's Thursday, May 29th, and this is Morning Wire. As Europe cracks down on free speech, the Trump administration ramps up pressure on leaders across the continent. We have a report from Budapest. President Trump and the administration are calling attention to it, and I think putting the fully pulpit to use.

And Republicans are turning up the heat on Congress's own watchdog agency, accusing the GAO of trying to undermine Trump's agenda. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know. The youth social media mental health crisis dominates headlines. Researchers found teens who spend more than five hours a day on their phones or at double the risk for suicidal thoughts. But here's the good news. Gab has solved the problem by doing something that no one else is doing.

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Trump borders are Tom Homan has been leading ice raids in cities across the country targeting criminal illegals. But some so-called sanctuary city officials are working to hinder the crackdown. Tennessee Congressman Andy Ogles, who sits on the Homeland Security Committee, announced this week that they've launched an investigation into the office of Nashville mayor, Freddie O'Connell. They claim that the city officials are actively obstructing ICE. The congressman joins us now. Congressman Ogles, thank you so much for joining us. Absolutely. I appreciate you having me.

So you've announced an investigation this week. What exactly are you looking into? Yeah, well, so what you've seen across the country is an increased activity and deportations by ICE and Homeland Security. And the mayor of Nashville came out with his executive order, and he's requiring law enforcement to report any interactions with federal. So local law enforcement with federal law enforcement. But he's also encouraged citizens or civilians to report. So there's this community oversight board. He said, hey, if you see Metro Police helping law enforcement,

federal law enforcement, we want you to file a complaint against them. So when these mayors are making local law enforcement, the bad guys, this feeds into that loop where you see more violence against our law enforcement. And as someone who's on the Homeland Security Committee, I just received a classified briefing. And what I can tell you is that MS-13 and Trinderwagwa, they're all over the country, they're in Nashville. They're in our small cities like Columbia and Tullahoma. So we're seeing this across the country, Nashville, obviously a major focus for you being from Tennessee. Have we actually seen officials in Nashville working against ice, obstructing ice to thwart their operations? Absolutely. So that's one of the things we're going to be

looking at. So we're looking at the city of Nashville and the mayor to see if there's been actual actions or federal monies that have flowed through the city to illegals. Then also you saw the state rep, Afton Ben, who used her vehicle. She recorded herself and she put it on social media where she was blocking ice vehicles. She's got our girl squad and we're bullying the ice vehicles. That's a crime, ladies and gentlemen. And so the Homeland Security Committee, which I'm on and the Judiciary Committee, that's Jim Jordan, will be launching a joint investigation into Nashville. If you impede federal law enforcement in their duties, in their directive to follow the

president, President Trump, to say it's time that we start deporting these folks, we're going to be looking into your city and where applicable, we're going to hold you accountable. So there's a lot of work to be done here. And the other thing to keep in mind is Nashville is a through city. So whether it's human trafficking, whether it's drugs, whether it's guns, geographically, we're about six hours from most of the population in the country. So the gangs, the violent gangs in Central and South America, they want strongholds in Nashville. Now, you mentioned an NGO in your order for communications records.

Have you seen NGOs playing a role in general across the country in this effort to shield or enable illegal immigrants? Oh, absolutely. You know, under the Biden administration, there was a whole economy essentially set up by nonprofits who were making money off bringing people into this country. So someone would come across the border, then they would swoop in, get them housing, get them benefits, and then they would profit off of it from the federal government. President Trump is putting an end to that type of nonsense. And I go back to that classified briefing, which I can't give great detail on, but I can tell you that these gangs are sophisticated. They're in every city in our country. They have very sophisticated surveillance equipment, tactical equipment. I mean, this isn't just some thug on the street selling drugs.

are cartels and criminal enterprises that are moving and sweeping across our country. And so when the mayor of Nashville, when this state rep in Nashville is standing up and defending these people, we literally caught rapists and murderers and child traffickers and human smugglers and drug dealers. This is who was caught up by ICE.

This is who we're trying to deport. And I, for one, am going to stand with my community, my state, my country, and these people should not be in our communities. Well, there continues to be very strong support for deporting criminal illegal aliens. So a lot of people backing this effort. Congressman Ogles, thank you so much for joining us.

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which includes a sheet set and mattress protector with any lux or elite mattress order. That's helixleep.com slash wire for 27% off sitewide plus a free betting bundle with any lux or elite mattress order. Head over to helixleep.com slash wire today. The EU-US Forum is taking place this week in Hungary. The goal of the summit is to challenge the leftist ideas put forward by the European Union and unite Western leaders to fight back against the EU's harmful policies.

Joining us now from Budapest, Hungary is Daily Wire White House correspondent Mary Margaret Olihan. Mary Margaret, great to see you. What are conservative leaders discussing across the pond? Good morning, John. So the big topic of conversation over here is Europe's free speech problem. This week, as we exclusively reported, a number of senior State Department officials are heading to Ireland and Paris to push both countries to respect their citizens. A senior State Department official told me that the trip is part of the department's effort to fight back against violations of basic natural rights in Europe, especially freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the right to privacy. In France, they'll be pushing officials on the recent arrest of French politician Marine Le Pen, and in Ireland, they'll be digging into the new European Union law that could be used to censor free speech called the Digital Services Act. As a State Department official told me, it's, quote, obviously being weaponized for political purposes. That official also reminded me that it's not a coincidence that these kinds of global forces are using similar tactics to those that were used on this side of the Atlantic against President Trump and his supporters over the past eight years.

Pointed reference there. How are European nations responding to this type of scrutiny from the U.S.? Well, I'm told that they're really feeling the heat of President Donald Trump's administration. Vice President Vance really laid into the censorship in his remarks at the Munich Security Conference earlier this year, and that laid the groundwork for much more scrutiny of the current situation. Former Trump's senior advisor Jason Miller joined the EU-US summit here in Budapest, ahead of the CPAC Hungary 2025, and they really dug into the censorship going on throughout Europe. Ultimately, when they start putting restrictions on their free speech, then other outlets,

whether it be a social media platform, whether it be technology platforms such as Apple or Google or things of that nature, when free speech is suppressed there, then ultimately what's going to happen with so many of the those same policies will be put in place in the United States. One example Miller gave is the United Kingdom's request for a backdoor to Apple ICloud's encryption to help the UK government access Apple ICloud user data. We broke the news back in February that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was probing the potential implications of such a request, which raised a lot of red flags. They say it's only to stop the worst of the worst.

It's to stop the bad actors. Well, I can tell you that anyone in the U.S. intelligence side will tell you, will say that if you open up people's individual eye clouds, just, you know, and again, they come with a very nice, well-presented cover that it's only the bad people that they're looking at. It'll take hackers and other people five minutes,

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that's jeopardizing security and jobs. He also suggested to me that Trump's impact on Europe this far has been, and I'm quoting, monumental. We're seeing it right now play out in the trade relationship that President Trump has been negotiating with the EU and recent developments that are happening as recently as the last few hours where they're saying that now by early July, they have a goal of getting a framework in place. It's also worth noting Vance's remarks in Munich continue to dominate discussions of free speech across the globe, and they'll likely continue to do so during CPAC Hungary 2025, which will take

place this weekend, where conservative leaders and commentators are gathering. Yeah, obviously a major priority for the administration, as J.D. Vance famously laid out very early on, as you've highlighted here. Mary Margaret, thank you so much for joining us and enjoy Budapest. Thanks so much, John. Republicans have grown frustrated with the independent agency known as the congressional watchdog. They say the government accountability office has too often let politics dictate its findings rather than the facts. Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce is here to talk about the GAO as well as Elon Musk stepping back from his work with Doge. So Tim, first off, what is the GAO and why are Republicans focusing on it now?

It's sort of like Doge before Doge. According to its website, the GAO is an independent, nonpartisan agency that works for Congress. It typically looks at how federal funds are spent and how executive agencies implement certain policies, and it makes reports to inform lawmakers. Recently, Republicans say that the GAO has been infected by politics, and this lack of trust comes as the GAO has probes into dozens of Trump administration spending freezes. Last week, it finished one of them. It said that the Department of Transportation violated the impoundment control act to freeze a Biden-era electric vehicle charging program. That earned a rebuke from Russ Vote. the director of the Office of Management and Budget.

He wrote on X that the GAO is going to call everything in impoundment because they want to grind our work to manage taxpayer dollars effectively to a halt. So the Trump administration has their reasons for being upset with the GAO, but it's technically a Republican-led organization. So why are Republicans in Congress upset with it? Yeah, they were mad last week, too. Congress voted to strip a Clean Air Act waiver from California that would have authorized a state to effectively ban new gas-powered vehicles by 2035.

The GAO said that Congress couldn't use the Congressional Review Act to pull the waiver. That set Republicans in the Senate off. Here's Majority Leader John Thune on the floor of the Senate last week. We are facing something of a novel situation. Because the first time ever, the Government Accountability Office has decided to insert itself into the process and affirmatively declare that an agency rule submitted to Congress as a rule is not a rule. It's an extraordinary deviation from precedent for an agency that should be defending Congress's power instead of constraining it. And frankly, Mr. President, I think we need to act to ensure that this intrusion into the Congressional Review Act process doesn't become a habit.

And that the Senate doesn't end up transferring its decision-making power on CRA resolutions to the government accountability office. In addition to pressure from Congress, Doge has also approached the GAO. The Doge team wanted to meet with GAO officials about downsizing, but the GAO never gave Doge access because it is a legislative, not an executive agency. And the GAO may be one of the few agencies that can avoid Doge. Now, speaking of, Elon Musk said that he was going to be stepping back from his duties at Doge. What do we know about that? Right. Musk is cutting back the work he's doing for the Trump administration. It's been a rough ride for the world's wealthiest man. From the attacks on his companies to the frustration, of government bureaucracy. This week, Musk seemed somewhat bitter about the political process,

especially surrounding the passage of the big, beautiful bill. Here's Musk on CBS Sunday morning. You know, I was, like, disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decrease it,

and it reminds the work that the Doge team is doing. I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful, but I don't know if it can be both. must seems to think that all of his work with Doge was just erased with President Trump's landmark legislation. Well, politics is difficult business. Tim, thanks for reporting. Good to be on.

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