Morning Wire - ‘No Kings’ Sweeps U.S. & Pentagon Preps Ground Op? | 3.30.26

Episode Date: March 30, 2026

Another wave of “no kings” protests sweeps through major cities, Marines arrive in the Middle East as the Pentagon stands ready for a ground operation, and the Trump Administration works to shorten TSA lines as DHS funding stalls. Get the facts first with Morning Wire. - - - Ep. 2707 - - - Wake up with new Morning Wire merch: https://bit.ly/4lIubt3 - - - Today's Sponsors: Lean - Get 20% off when you enter code WIRE at https://TakeLean.com DeleteMe - Get 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you go to https://joindeleteme.com/WIRE and use promo code WIRE at checkout.  - - - 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

A series of orchestrated and well-funded no-king's protests take over major cities on both coasts and some devolve into violence. Who's behind the protests and how are officials responding to the rioting? I'm Daily Wire, Executive Editor John Bickley, with Georgia Howl. It's Monday, March 30th. This is Morning Wire. As U.S. troops amass in the Middle East, new reports suggest a ground operation could be in the works. Will President Trump order boots on the ground? And what form might that take? I think the president's been very clear about this, that we're not interested in being in Iran a year down the road, two years down the road. We're taking care of business. We're going to be out of there soon.

And what can travelers expect at the airport this week after another House vote and Trump's order to pay TSA? We'll be there as long as they need us until they get back to normal operations and feel like those airports are secure. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know. This episode is sponsored by Brickhouse Nutrition. You've probably heard about those weight loss injections that everyone's been talking about. And for good reason. The results can be pretty incredible. They work by helping regulate blood sugar and keeping your appetite in check.

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The No Kings protests are back, drawing large crowds in cities from Portland to New York. and even overseas in London. And in some places, they've turned violent. Here with more on these protests that have taken over big cities here and abroad is Daily Wire Culture reporter Megan Basham. So, Megan, we first saw these No King's demonstrations last June and then again in October. First, what exactly is this new round of protests about? You know, that's a really good question, John, because it wasn't always entirely clear what

the first round was about. You heard them bring up issues like immigration. They objected to executive orders that required military members not to identify as transgender. And so really just kind of a grab bag of ideas that seem to amount to overall anti-Trumpism. And I would say that that hasn't changed a whole lot as our reporter Breka Stoll found when she spoke to some of these protesters in D.C. who are now bringing up different issues like gas prices and the war in Iran. What makes Trump a king? What makes him a king?

That's what he campaigned on, bringing prices down on everything. Everything has gone up. I mean, you know, the Epstein files. It should be released. I mean, what's holding them up? We don't have to worry about losing our rights as women, as black people, as any marginalized group. Tariffs, the Iran war, oil prices going up. So really just whatever the issues of the day are, they will use those kind of as the impetus of protesting.

And at times, as Georgia mentioned, it's become a little bit comical. For example, when you have no king's protests in places like London, where the protesters do rather famously have a king. Right. So I wanted to drill down on the immigration focus for a moment of some of these protests that have turned into riots. There, it seems like we're increasingly seeing criminal behavior under the banner of no kings like we saw this weekend, correct? Yeah, that's absolutely right, John. Just to give you one example in Portland this weekend, hundreds of protesters broke into an ice facility. Some of the things that happened once they were through the gates is that the crowd threw projectiles at federal agents. They tackled at least one officer. Protesters were also seen scaling the building, kicking out a security camera,

spray painting, graffiti, including threats like death to ice scum, other vulgar messages like that. And you can see a little bit more of that mayhem here. And then meanwhile, Fox News, obtained footage of an ice protester, spray painting, kill ice in Los Angeles in broad daylight. An alarming direct call for violence that unfortunately we're getting used to hearing these days. Now, in a lot of this protest footage, we see flags, communist flags, foreign regime flags, the Iranian regime, the Palestinians. That's prompted more questions about who's really behind all of this. We've talked about the funding behind this movement before, but remind our listeners,

who exactly is bankrolling No Kigs? Yeah, John, so No Kings kind of presents itself as a grassroots organic movement. But if you look beneath the surface as a number of outlets, including the Daily Wire have done, what you find is really a well-funded, well-organized network of organizations that are drawing from an established ecosystem of left-wing groups. The Soros-linked Foundation Indivisible, for example, is a major funder and organizer.

There are also other Soros-backed organizations like the 50-51 movement, MoveOn.org. No Kings protests have also been linked to labor unions like the AFL-CIO and the Federation of Teachers. So I would guess that a big reason that you're starting to see those groups mobilize right now is because, of course, we have midterm elections coming up. Yeah, elections and nice weather have a funny way

of coinciding with these protests that there's nothing funny about the trend towards violence among some of the groups involved. Megan, thanks so much for reporting. Yep, my pleasure. Our sponsor, Delete Me, makes it easy, quick, and safe to remove your personal data at a time when surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make everyone vulnerable. Fortunately, you can take control of your privacy with Delete Me. It's a trusted service for removing your personal data from these broker sites and the New York Times Wirecutter even named to Delete Me their top pick for data removal services. The best part is that Delete Me isn't just a one-time cleanup.

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wire at checkout. The only way to get 20% off is to go to join deleteme.com slash wire and enter code wire at checkout. That's join deleteme.com slash wire code wire. As President Trump weighs whether to deploy ground troops in Iran, new details have emerged regarding a mysterious security breach on a military base within the United States. Wired in live host, Cabot Phillips, joins us now to break it all down. So Cabot, we're starting to get a better idea of what a ground operation in Iran could look like, what are we hearing? Yeah, as we speak, the latest deployment of U.S. Marines has just arrived to the region, bringing the total number of U.S. service members in this conflict up to 50,000, about 5,000 to 7,000 of whom are ground troops. And the Wall Street Journal reports that Trump

administration is currently considering deploying 10,000 more ground troops in the coming weeks. This comes as negotiators from Turkey, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, met in Pakistan for new discussions on Sunday. Pakistan offered to host negotiations between the U.S. and Iran as well. though the two countries still have not sat down. The State Department is also urging citizens to leave Iraq immediately amid Iran-backed terror threats in the country. Now, the White House has repeatedly stressed that President Trump has not yet made up his mind about deploying those ground forces,

but that the Pentagon is ready if the order is given. And that's where these plans come into play. Defense officials have made clear that any such operation, though, would not be a full-scale, years-long invasion like we saw in Iraq or Afghanistan, but a much more limited weeks-long effort. Do we know where those ground forces would potentially be deployed? So among the plans currently being reviewed by the president are the seizure of Karga Island, which is home to crucial oil infrastructure for Iran.

There are also separate plans for raids on the Iranian coast to find and knockout missile systems that are targeting commercial tankers in the Strait of Hormuz. That particular operation would reportedly include Marines and Special Forces units. Now, some in Washington believe this threat of ground troops from Trump has more to do with negotiating leverage than legitimate military plans, but it still looks to be a real possibility. This conflict has so far claimed the lives of 13 U.S. service members and injured more than 300 others. So obviously a ground operation would present a dangerous new front militarily and also politically. Americans are largely split along party lines about airstrikes on Iran,

but polling shows that support for boots on the ground is in the 10 to 20 percent range, so it's not popular. There is a lot for President Trump to balance. For their part, the Iran Iranian military issued a statement saying they are, quote, counting the moments should these threats be carried out to destroy your army. They also said that any boots on the ground would face, quote, captivity, dismemberment, and disappearance. So very menacing threats there. Does Iran have the military capability to actually follow through on that? Well, there's no doubt their military has been severely weakened since this conflict started. Most of the country's largest naval vessels are now at the bottom of the ocean and missile launches are down over 90.

percent since the first day of the war. But that does not mean they aren't still capable of inflicting damage. On Friday, for example, an Iranian missile and unmanned drones struck Prince Sultan airbase in Saudi Arabia that injured at least 12 American troops, some of them severely. It also significantly damaged a number of American refueling planes and an E3 century. That is one of the most important and expensive planes in the U.S. arsenal. The quarter billion dollar craft is basically an airborne command center that helps track drones, aircraft, aircraft, and troop movements from both sides. And on that strike in particular, there's reason to believe that Russia could be providing significant support to the Iranians. Speaking over the weekend, Volodymyr's

Linsky claimed that Ukrainian intelligence showed with, quote, 100% certainty that Russia had taken satellite images of that base, Prince Sultan, in the days just before it was targeted by Iran. Now, all of this comes amid some pretty concerning reports about drone activity over a U.S. base here state side. What have we learned? Yeah, so back on March 9th, Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, not in the Middle East, this is here in the U.S., was temporarily put under a shelter-in-place order after reports of suspicious drone activity over the installation. Keep in mind, this base houses long-range B-52 bombers and is also the headquarters of the Air Force Global Strike Command, which helps oversee our nuclear arsenal. The shelter-in-place order was lifted within 12 hours, but we now know that those drone incursions not only continued over the next week, but expanded. According to a Pentagon report obtained by ABC, throughout March 9th to 15th, sophisticated drones began to appear in swarms of 12 to 15 and operated in a way that implied an attempt to, quote, avoid the operators being located.

And these were not your run-of-the-mill hobbyist drones. The Pentagon report says they possessed, quote, long-range control links and resistance to jamming. And then after entering the base's airspace, quote, dispersed across sensitive locations on the base. And to make this story even more concerning, the drones displayed. blinking lights, meaning they were not trying to be subtle. They wanted to be seen. Officials say they could have been operated and deployed by an adversary looking to test our military and how they would respond, and that these drones are almost certainly beyond the capabilities of Iran. So that leaves Russia and China as obvious potential culprits.

Well, absolutely threatening for sure. Cabot, thanks for reporting. Absolutely. 60% of the vans on Amazon, come to vander independent, like sack magic. Hello, here Camille of Sack Magic. Our compresses chode-frodden are fabriced here even, with the tissues that we're

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another two weeks, as many members of Congress have flown home for Easter and Passover. Meanwhile, President Trump's executive order to pay TSA should get lines moving again. Daily Wire political reporter Cameron Arcan joins us to discuss. Morning Cameron. So let's start with this apparently never-ending funding battle. We had another vote Friday in the House. What's the latest there? Yes, so the House of Representatives voted late on Friday night to fund the entirety of the Department of Homeland Security with a 60-day continuing resolution, rejecting a compromise in the Senate passed

earlier that morning. This vote was largely long party lines. It was 213 to 203, with only three Democrats voting across the aisle. Now, this is a very clear rebuke of the Senate because keep in mind the Senate deal carved out ICE and Border Patrol from that funding. Now, some of that was already funded through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, but there's still a lot of personnel in ICE and Border Patrol that are still not getting paid right now. While House Democrats did approve of the Senate deal, it did seem to be dead on arrival when President Trump publicly expressed his disapproval for the measure. In terms of the House measure, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said it would also be dead on arrival for their solution. All right. So it looked like we're heading to deadlock again. Where does the president stand on all of this?

Now that we have this House bill passed, what is he calling for? So he's not thrilled about where things are right now. Now, the president told Fox News the other day that the Senate deal was not appropriate given the ICE. and Border Patrol callout. And as part of this, he is doubled down on his call to get rid of the Senate filibuster. That's that 60-vote threshold to move forward in most legislation in that chamber. Now, this also ties back to his desire to pass the Save America Act, which is that voter identification bill. Opponents worry that getting rid of the filibuster would make it easier for Democrats to pass some items that they want with some moderate Republican support. However, you have people who want to get rid of the filibuster saying that this is very necessary to pass the rest of President Trump's

legislative agenda. All right, so a major decision really looming for Republicans in the Senate. So this brings us to the airport chaos. We've seen some progress on that front in the last few days, and Trump has now taken action. What should we expect this week? Yes, so obviously people should still be keeping an eye on their flights. Some airports are still dealing with hours-long wait times. However, ICE has done a significant job of cutting back some of those wait times at many airports around the United States while others have still remained calm. Now, the important part here is TSA officers are expected to receive back pay starting this week. Now, the goal with that is to hopefully reduce the number of callouts to make sure that people are now going to get paid once again. And hopefully that will lead to shorter wait times across the board without needing the assistance of extra DHS.

help. But the important aspect of this here, too, is this could create some long-term implications for TSA as 500 agents have fully quit their job. And there also could be some retention and recruitment issues down the road. Well, I think I can safely say Americans are done with these hours-long lines at the airport. So let's hope there is real progress this week. Cameron, thanks so much for reporting. Thank you. Thanks for waking up with us. And for those of you 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.