Morning Wire - Senate Targets Extremism & ICE Leadership Shake-Up | 10.29.25

Episode Date: October 29, 2025

A Senate hearing on political violence highlights radical Left ideology, a brewing power struggle within DHS shakes up ICE leadership, and NYC mayoral front-runner Zohran Mamdani maintains the lead amid criticism for his polarizing policies and past comments. Get the facts first with Morning Wire. - - - Wake up with new Morning Wire merch: https://bit.ly/4lIubt3 - - - Today's Sponsor: 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 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 Senate hearing on the growing trend of political violence points the spotlight on radical left ideology. It turns out the left commits relatively little political violence when you don't count the political violence that the left commits. I'm Daily Wire, Executive Editor John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's Wednesday, October 29th. This is Morning Wire. A power struggle is brewing within the Department of Homeland Security, shaking up ICE leadership in several major cities. And facing new accusations over his polarizing policies and past. past comments, New York mayoral candidate Zoran Mamdani seeks to hold on to his lead. For the takeaway from my more than 10-minute address about Islamophobia in this race and in this city, to be the question of my aunt, tells you everything about Andrew Cuomo.

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and neglect the remedy might once have been chalked up to ignorance, today it is nothing less than complicity. That was Daily Wire host Michael Knowles, testifying in front of members of the Senate Tuesday about the growing trend of ideologically motivated violence and its threat to the First Amendment. Joining us now to discuss as Daily Wire Culture reporter, Megan Basham, hey, Megan.

So we reported yesterday about this event. event, frankly, the legacy media would rather not cover. So we're covering it here for sure. First, set the stage for us. What was the purpose of the proceedings? Yeah, John, so Senator Schmidt told us that he and his Republican colleagues on the subcommittee are very aware of the growing problem of political violence, particularly coming from the left. And so what they wanted to do was hold this hearing to shine a spotlight on it because their concern is that if they don't, our political leadership and our media will continue to ignore it. and this will force them to confront what's happening.

So really, the purpose of the hearing was to present the evidence for this. And as we highlighted yesterday, the assassination of Charlie Kirk prompted this hearing, and it's made the issue of political violence just impossible to ignore. But even with legacy media outlets covering his death, they've still worked somewhat hard to bury evidence pointing to the ideological motives of the suspect in this case. So as Schmidt said, there's really a strong need still. to take a look at the motives behind some of this left-wing violence. So inviting a high-profile figure like Michael Knowles makes a lot of sense because, of course,

he is someone who has a large platform. He has been the recipient of death threats from people like Antifa. So he has a lot of experience with the exact kind of threats that they were investigating and discussing there in that Senate hearing. Right. In fact, Knowles talked about one of the alarming incidents targeting him at the University of Pittsburgh a couple of years ago. Now, he argues that the left.

left-wing violence has been effectively erased as a category that allows Democrats to downplay it effectively. Did that come up in the hearing? Yeah, that was definitely something that Knowles spoke about somewhat extensively. He highlighted the fact that violence coming from groups like Antifa or Black Lives Matter have not been officially recorded in government documentation as left-wing violence. So that's something that we've seen past administrations do. This was what Noel said. The Covenant School Massacre in Nashville, in which a trans-identifying shooter murdered Christian schoolchildren after outlining her ideological motivations.

According to authorities, there was no ideological motive there. Go figure. The Black Lives Matter riots overtly leftist demonstrations that left dozens of people dead and over a billion dollars worth of property damage. Likewise, those fail to show up on registers of left-wing political violence. Even an attack by Antifa that targeted me personally, as well as conservative college students for our political views, appeared in official records and data sets as nothing more than obstructing law enforcement. And then this was what Tennessee Senator Marcia Blackburn told us weighing in on that. What they're not doing is counting Antifa and strikes against ICE at protest and things like that. So while there's overcounting on the right,

there is a vast undercounting that is on the left. So Knowles did also say that he sees the tide turning somewhat with the assassination of Charlie Kirk and two attempted assassinations on Donald Trump. And he says that he thinks that, you know, quote unquote, honest liberals even can acknowledge from which political direction this is coming. But unfortunately, he says not everyone is honest. On September 23rd, no less an emblem of American liberalism than the Atlantic magazine published an article citing a recent study from the Center for Strategic and International

Studies, admitting that the left is more violent today than the right. Less honest liberals, including members of Congress, continue to deny this fact. Democrat Congressman Seth Moulton, for example, reacted to Charlie's assassination by blaming the right. So as NOLS said, Antifa has played a very prominent role in a lot of this violent protesting that we have seen coming now at pretty regular intervals. Just one poll last month from UGov showed that 26% of young liberals say that they believe violence is sometimes permissible to pursue political goals. Only 7% of young conservatives said that. So there's a lot of research and studying that we can see that supports all of these findings. Well, let's hope this hearing did help to put a spotlight

on the issue of political violence. And we see this trend start to reverse. Megan, thanks so much for reporting. Yep, my pleasure. 60% of the vans on Amazon come to vendor independent like SAC Magic. Hello, here Camille, of SACMagic. Our compresses chode-fraud are

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Trouve of new new enterprises like the on-o-N-O-C-A. A major leadership shake-up at ICE is exposing internal divides over the Trump administration's mass deportation effort. Here with more is Daily Wire Immigration Reporter, Jenny Tare. So Jenny, how significant are these

changes? Right. So ICE leadership is being moved out of multiple offices across the country, and they're being replaced with border patrol agents that are in leadership within that agency. So we're seeing this in Los Angeles, Phoenix, Philadelphia, Denver, El Paso, San Diego, Seattle, and Portland, and New Orleans. And we've already seen the Trump administration kind of show the gears when it comes to who's in charge of the mass deportation campaign. We've already seen Border Patrol commander Chief Gregory Bovino. He's put in charge of the operations in places like Los Angeles and Chicago now where Border Patrol agents are now making arrests too, alongside ICE, of course. But we're seeing those operations being done now in a very sweeping manner by Border

Patrol. And now the Trump administration wants more of that influence in this operation. Now, why do they think that Border Patrol agents are more suited for these roles than the ICE leadership that was previously there? So there's been a lot of internal divisions right now within the Department of Homeland Security over how they should conduct the operations, the mass deportation arrest. So the division exists between Corey Lewandowski, a senior advisor over there, who's actually in a position that's a temporary position. He's in a position that's similar to what Elon Musk was serving as at the White House. Loundowski is at odds with the head of ice and with borders are Tom Holman over how and who they should be arresting. So, for example, Corey Lewandowski's camp really wants to drive up the numbers of how many people they're arresting and how many people they're deporting, while people in the camp of the head of ice and Tom Homan really want more quality arrests. Now, when you say higher quality arrests, what do you mean by that?

They're really concerned about the public's perception of all this. As you see Border Patrol out there and ICE out there, obviously they're under a lot of scrutiny. So they want to show the public that they're getting really bad guys, really hardened criminals off the streets and keeping, you know, the American communities, the American people safe. So it's really a lot of it is about the perception, but also about making sure that those ICE officers are really feeling good about the work they're doing. and that they're making targeted arrests. And that would be versus just getting as many numbers as possible, as many Home Depot raids, for example, as possible? Right.

So Bovino was involved in some of these more controversial raids, such as at Home Depot parking lots and at car washes. Those really drew some of those big protests that we saw in places like Los Angeles and now in Chicago. And he's faced a lot of scrutiny for this. He even was testifying in court on Tuesday about his, his alleged use of tear gas during an arrest operation in Chicago. So he's facing backlash for what Border Patrol has been doing. ICE is also obviously facing backlash, but they want to kind of

minimize that and also get those officers back to doing really quality work. So which camp is prevailing here when it comes to the takeover and the new direction they're going? So I think the announcement of this that came out internally really speaks to this because it came from Lewandowski himself. He notified Homeland Security officials about the leadership changes at ICE, and he's the one that really wants, again, those numbers to be driven up over anything, over the quality of for us. His camp is really winning this fight from what we can tell. And we've even been told by sources that Lewandowski has, in some ways, more power than Secretary Noam. So his control at DHS has really become a point of contention for a lot of sources that we've talked to. And now we're seeing that come to fruition, that he is kind of at the reins of this effort now to change who's in charge and to make it so that this is more about numbers.

Well, it'll be interesting to see where President Trump falls on this because surely he is advising all of the camps involved. Jenny, thanks for reporting. Thank you. Socialist candidate for New York City mayor, Zoran Mamdani, continues to hold a commanding lead. But Andrew Cuomo's attacks and other controversies are beginning to change. ship away at that lead. Here with the latest on that mayoral race is Daily Wire Reporter Amanda Presta Giacomo. Hey Amanda. So early voting has begun for this New York City mayor's race. Mom Dani has long been the favorite of this race, as we've documented. But is his lead

slipping somewhat? Well, he's up by 10 points right now. Andrew Cuomo, who's running as an independent, he was polling behind Mom Dani by 20 points, but he recently cut that lead in half to 10 points. A Suffolk University poll released Monday shows Mom Dani leading Cuomo 44 to 34%. Current New York City Mayor Eric Adams, he dropped out of the race and endorsed Cuomo this past Thursday. That gave Cuomo a little bit of a boost. And there's also the Republican candidate in this race, Curtis Slewa. He's the founder and CEO of the Guardian Angels. He's in third place with 11% of the vote. Opponents of Mom Doni, who view him, frankly, as a communist, they've pressured Slewa, you know, publicly to drop out of this race in Cuomo, a fighting chance here. That includes President Donald

Trump, by the way. But it doesn't look like Sliwa is going anywhere. Odds are still in Momdani's favor, but it is a much closer race than it once was. In-person, early voting started on Saturday, and Election Day is on November 4th, so, you know, just days away now. Yeah, it's coming quick. Now, let's get into some of these controversies surrounding Mom Dani. More have arisen. He recently made some comments about Islamophobia in 9-11 that drew some blowback. What did he say on that? Yeah, Mamdani really raised some eyebrows when he tearfully spoke about his aunt saying that she was victimized in the wake of 9-11 because she's Muslim and she was wearing a hijab. Here's Mom Donnie. I want to speak to the memory of my aunt who stopped taking the subway after September 11th

because she did not feel safe in her hijab. When Mom Doni was pressed about that, he actually admitted that the story wasn't apparently about his aunt, but a different relative. And he suggested that questioning the story is actually Islamophobic. Mamdani has also been accused of being anti-Semitic just days ago, a clip of Mamdani resurfaced from 23, where he's really going after the NYPD. That's a common target of Momdani's. And he ties that criticism to Israel and the IDF. We have to make clear that when the move of the NYPD is on your neck,

it's been laced by the idea, especially in New York City. You have so many opportunities to make clear the ways in which vast trouble over there is tied to capital's interest over here. Now, there's definitely a segment of the city's population that, you know, they're not happy about Mamdani likely becoming mayor. The city is, of course, liberal, but Mamdani is viewed as radical and outside of the mainstream. His proposals include massive tax hikes, a freeze-the-rent policy, replacing cops with social workers in some cases, government-run grocery stores, support for decriminalizing sex work, and the list goes on. A couple of weeks ago, actually, a watchdog group called Stop Anti-Semitism. They offered help to relocate people who want to leave the city if Mom Dani does win. That group told the Daily Wire that they've been inundated with request.

hundreds and hundreds of requests from people who want to leave. And, you know, more generally, there was a survey released Friday from Victory Insights that found that as much as a quarter of all New York City residents would consider fleeing the city if Mom Dani does become mayor. But, you know, as for the frontrunner's successes in this campaign, Mom Dani is doing very well with people under 40 years old, and he's made real efforts to reach out to the immigrant communities in the city. The latest numbers show that nearly 40% of all New York City residents are foreign-born. And, you know, the changing demographics of the city are definitely playing a major factor in this election. We're less than a week now out from this election. One of the most, you know, watched races nationally

I've seen for mayor in recent elections, probably because the stakes are so high in this case. Amanda, thanks for reporting. You're welcome. Thanks for waking up with us. And for those listening to the show, you can now see our smiling faces on Daily Wire Plus. John, sometimes smiling at least. I'm doing better with that. Baby steps, John. We'll be back this evening with more news you need to know.