Morning Wire - What’s Causing Teen Riots in DC? | 8.1.26

Episode Date: August 1, 2026

Daily Wire Contributor Leona Salinas tells the harrowing story of her time at a "Hype Night" turned riotous in DC. Get the facts first with Morning Wire.- - -Ep. 3016- - -Wake up with new Morning Wire merch: https://bit.ly/4lIubt3- - -Today's Sponsors:Alliance Defending Freedom - For a limited time, every dollar you give to ADF will be MATCHED but only while matching funds last.Go to https://JoinADF.com/WIRE or text WIRE to 83848 to have your gift to ADF doubled. Balance of Nature - Go to https://BalanceofNature.com today and subscribe to the Whole Health System—or any of their other subscriptions—and get an additional 10% off your subscription with promo code WIRE.- - -Privacy Policy: https://www.dailywire.com/privacymorning 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

Colorado is trying to silence free speech again. A state law forces businesses to use customers' preferred pronouns, even if they're biologically inaccurate. With the help of Alliance defending freedom, a Christian bookstore and a sports apparel company are challenging the law, but a court recently ruled against them. They appealed the ruling, and with ADF's help, they'll keep fighting another attempt by Colorado to skirt the First Amendment. Learn more about how you can support free speech by texting Wire to 83848 or going to join ADF.com slash Wire. Did you see what happened? Did someone get shot? Oh, you got out over here.

Yeah, yeah, no, that's what I saw. I saw it, too. That was Daily Wire contributor Leona Salinas reporting on her first-hand experience in a so-called teen takeover in Washington, D.C., that erupted into violence, including shots fired and attacks on National Guardsmen. While the trend of these teen riots is becoming a regular occurrence in many big cities, what Salinas learned has sparked a Daily Wire investigation. The teen takeover she experienced grew out of a hype night event put on by D.C.'s Department of Parks and Recreation.

And participants say every one of these racially charged events put on by the department has likewise devolved into violence. In this episode, Salinas joins us to give her firsthand account of the riot she found herself swept up in and the troubling details she's learned about its origins. I'm Daily Wire Executive Editor John Bickley with Georgia Howe. This is a weekend edition of Morning Wire. Joining us now is reporter and Daily Wire contributor Leona Salinas. Great to have you on the show. Thank you so much. It's an honor to be here.

So we read with interest your report on this teen takeover, which is the euphemism used for these events, that you experienced firsthand in D.C. And we'd like you to just tell us what happened. What did you experience that night? When did this happen? What did you see? So it happened last week, and I was just leaving a dinner with a couple of. couple friends. And I was on the way back to my apartment. I was heading to the metro station. And all of a sudden, I just see hundreds, nearly thousands of teenagers, all African-American,

urban youth, essentially. And what happened was, is I just saw them running, screaming, and most of them were wearing masks and holding signs that were somewhat intelligible. And so immediately, I just went up there and started recording. And I said, why are you here today? What is this for? And they just started yelling obscenities at me and kept running down the streets. And all of a sudden, there were cop cars on my left and right, sirens blaring. And I just decided that, you know, it would be a good idea to probably follow them for a story. So I let a few people know where I was and where I was going, just in case, you know, there was any safety issues. And I followed them. And I immediately went to the end of the very, very long line of teens. And I stuck with this one very sensible young lady. Her name

was Michaela. She was 18 years old. And I started asking her, why are you here? What is this for? And I started interviewing her and a couple of her colleagues and trailing her. And we just had to keep running from alley to alley because fights kept breaking out. People were jumping each other. And I started asking her, how many of these have you been to? What happens? Why are you here? Who coordinated this. And immediately she said, DPR. I said, what is DPR? She said, I actually don't know. But they send us text messages on Instagram and tell us where to meet when and why. And I said, well, why? And she goes, I don't exactly know, but we're supposed to just share a sense of community. I said, what community is that? And she said, black youth. I said, all right, that works. I said,

how often does this end up in violence? She said, every single one that I've gone to, someone jump another. Someone gets robbed. Someone gets shot. She said she's seen multiple individuals be shot. And as I was walking, we started to run from alley to alley, as I aforementioned. Then we went to this one alley and a bunch of teenagers started running towards us. There were cop cars cutting us off on either side. Then I saw a bigger fight breakout. So, you know, working for the Daily Wire, I thought right now, oh, this is. this is great to clip this, you know, my boss would love this. So I started inching closer as much as I possibly could. And then all of a sudden just bam, there was a gunshot. And I saw the person

who shot the weapon. Yes. And so I hesitated, made sure that my hand was decently steady so I could get good footage. And then immediately after that continued to run with the crowd. We appreciate you being bold like this. I'm not going to recommend this going forward. But unbelievable. So you actually saw that. person shooting the gun. Yes, yes, sir. Okay, and then more chaos breaks out. What happens next? I want to tell you about my friends at Alliance Defending Freedom. ADF is dedicated to protecting free speech, religious freedom, the sanctity of life, parental rights, and God's design for males and females. They've scored huge legal victories, like helping to topple Roe v. Wade

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That's Balance of Nature, promo code wire. So essentially I run to the next alley over. I don't want to run away from the crying scene because I still want to keep. continue my report. So I end up calling Mary Margaret and telling her what happened. And she goes, why are you there? You need to leave. And, you know, it's so great that she was trying to keep me safe, but I respectfully was saying, I'm not going to leave. This is the type of field that I'm interested in. Someday I want to be a foreign correspondent and report from war zones. So I was thinking, oh, this is perfect for me. So I stayed back for a couple minutes. And then I ended up calling

Michaela, the girl that I was initially with, and she said she was safe and she was in a different alley. So we decided to both meet back up where the shooting initially occurred. And so I went there, took some more footage because there were still people running around, and then we ended up getting kicked out by the National Guard because they were putting up yellow tape everywhere. And after that, I just started interviewing more attendees and asking why they were a mask, asking if they saw it, I recognized some of the faces of the attendees already as they were there, and they immediately were denying being there at all. They were saying, I didn't see anything. I said, why are you mass? They said, they're going to arrest us, and so many of them just kept

repeating the sentiment that cops were racist, and I just asked why. Very simple question, not trying to portray any bias. And they just said, they just are. They just don't like black kids. that's all. And so I ended up talking to the police and I was the only one at least at the time that I know of who had any footage of the incident. And so they ended up taking a witness statement and I gave them all of the footage that I had acquired from that night. And I stuck around for a little bit and I heard them say that they needed to use pepper balls to fire off into the crowd because it was just getting so rowdy. I even saw the National Guard just standing there. and the teenagers, the youth, were throwing things at them, screaming, cursing, getting into fights, again, right in front of them. As the National Guard were just standing there, idol, not even saying a word. And it was very interesting to me because they were calling all of the National Guardsmen and cops racist while most of them were actually black. Yeah, a trend we've seen again and again. Now, you mentioned a key part of this story.

Michaela mentioned the DPR, and we have since looked into this. And this is a really shocking aspect of this story. Can you unpack that part of it for us? Yes, of course. So basically it seems, because I was looking at their website as well, that they've had these hype night events that have been going on for a very long time, months, at least, and they have them at least once a week. and basically where it's just black teens only get together and they make signs.

What Michaela told me is they make signs to hone their graffiti skills and make them for their loved ones as well as the fact that they just get together and watch movies and go swimming and do a bunch of trivial and at first innocent sounding things like that. but every single one of them, from what the attendees have told me, always end in some form of, some form of very graphic violence. And it's very interesting that DPR is putting this on because after looking at their staff, they have no white staffers at all in their executive or normal staff after looking there. And not only that, we reached out for comment immediately the day the article was released in beforehand, no comment whatsoever at all. And if you look on their website at all, they recognize, that each of these events amount to a thousand kids or more. Minimally, it says that on their bio. And I don't know how they don't correlate the two, especially with the government mandate of curfews in all of these neighborhoods.

These events run really late. So it seems like they are actively trying to diminish the curfew that our government has instilled. And to be clear, this is Washington, D.C.'s official department. of Parks and Recreation. Yes, it is. Their official government page, yes. When they send out their invitations, do they specify that this is for black youth or is it for everyone? Oh, they say black youth explicitly.

You can't go if you're not. So when I was there, I was the only person who wasn't black. There wasn't even actually, and if anything, I'm Hispanic. My family's from Mexico. But even still, I didn't even see any other race that wasn't black. It was very interesting how that was. And again, first-hand accounts, every single one of these devolves into violence. Yet this department continues to put these on and encourage this action, specifically these night hype events.

Yes, they absolutely do condone it. And they condone it to be huge. Because like I said, on their website, it says they regularly accumulate over 1,000 attendees at every single event that they host. What time are they supposed to start at and what time is the curfew? So they vary, but a lot of the curfews, which also vary, depending on the neighborhood. They usually have all teenagers be home by around 11 p.m. at night, but the hype nights also vary, but sometimes they go anywhere from 8 p.m. to 11.30 p.m. So they can break the curfew, and they often do. And obviously, it takes time for these teens to get home. So they are fully aware that they're releasing mass,

amounts of young teenagers into the streets right before the curfew is supposed to be cut off. That seems slightly treasonous to me. Yeah, fascinating. Well, we're very glad you are safe, and thank you so much for coming on and reporting for us. Of course, any time. I want to absolutely continue doing this report. They have multiple events that are going on this week and next week that I absolutely want to pursue as well.

Be safe. Thank you so much. That was Daily Wire contributor, Leona, Solicely. Linus, and this has been a weekend episode of Morning Wire. If you want a $3,000 a month payday for life, what would you feel free to do? Maybe take a long weekend, every weekend, or try a bunch of new hobbies. Would you feel free to upgrade and listen ad-free? Don't worry, we get it.

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