Transcript of House Scraps Spending Bill & Mangione’s Extradition | 12.19.24

As a potential government shutdown looms, lawmakers in the house are scrambling to come to terms on a continuing resolution.

The fact is is that, look, this is a sandwich. I don't know how to say that. We're being forced into this position.

What are the sticking points and is a solution on the horizon?

I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire editor in chief, John Bickley. It's Thursday, December 19th, and this is Morning Wire. Suspected members of Venezuelan gang, Trende Aragua, are behind bars in Colorado after allegedly breaking into an apartment and torturing its residents.

They were beaten. They were pistol whipped. The man was stabbed multiple times in his leg, and they held the woman down, and they ripped out her fingernail.

And suspected CEO killer Luigi Mangione is set to be extradited to New York today where he faces murder and terrorism charges.

There is no heroism in what Mangioni did. This was a senseless act of violence.

Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.

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Republicans have struggled to come to terms on a continuing resolution to fund the government before the rapidly approaching shutdown date. Now, a bipartisan bill speaker Mike Johnson was backing has reportedly been scrapped. Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham is here now with the budget battle. So Megan, the house has until midnight on Saturday to pass a spending bill. If they don't, the government shuts down.

So give us a breakdown. Why did Johnson's bill die?

Well, you know, essentially, because he was facing a revolt led by Elon Musk and the House Freedom Caucus. They felt that this was a bloated bill, more than 1500 pages that added on tens of 1,000,000,000 in unnecessary new spending. And they said it was being rammed through before anyone could fully review it. Eric Burleson of Missouri called the bill a total dumpster fire. Chip Roy of Texas said passing it would be the equivalent of eating a crap sandwich.

So pretty pointed words there. Then there was Elon Musk. Trump has tasked him and Vivek Ramaswami with finding spending cuts, and Musk clearly wanted Republicans to reject this bill. He'd been posting prolifically against it on X for days, including this clip of Rama Swamy that he shared on Wednesday.

Is about to pass a bill that blows away your taxpayer money, but they made it over 1500 pages long so you wouldn't read it. I did you a favor. I read it for you. It's supposed to be about keeping government operations open and providing disaster relief aid to hurricane victims, which I'm sympathetic to. But if you read the bill carefully, it contains pay raises for members of congress, and I'm not making this up, an expansion of their federal health benefits.

It contains all kinds of special interests and pork funding, including opening up a new stadium in Washington, DC. It renews the Global Engagement Center, which is a key node of the censorship industrial complex. And the worst part is they didn't want you to know about any of it, and that's why they made this a last minute jam job.

Now regular listeners will remember Georgia that we talked about the Global Engagement Center last week. That's a controversial state department agency that is at the center of a joint daily wire and federalist lawsuit alleging widespread censorship efforts against conservatives. Shutting it down has been a top priority for free speech advocates for a while, and its end did look imminent. But this bill extended its life for another year. Well, Musk called that criminal.

And he said he would support primary challenges against any Republican who voted for it.

Now did Johnson or any other Republican leaders indicate why they wanted to preserve that department?

No. Not publicly, but MorningWire has spoken with some sources on the Hill who say that 1 of the concerns is that shuttering the agency means that the center's staffers will be moved to other positions in the state department. They say this would make it harder to root out corruption. So part of the reason some of these GOP leaders might like to see the center stay in place for another year is to allow the fully Republican controlled house, senate, and most importantly, the White House to take action to deal with this agency correctly, whether that's fully shutting it down or rooting out the corruption.

So getting back to the bill more generally, why is Johnson supporting it?

Well, he said on Fox Wednesday that Republicans are in an impossible position where they have a razor thin margin in the house. And he said he didn't like the bill either, but that the house needed to pass it so they could fight for serious cuts after Trump takes office. This was Johnson on Fox talking about his conversations with Musk and Ramaswami.

So any bill has to have Democrat votes. They understand the situation. They said it's not directed to you, mister speaker, but we don't like the spending. I said, guess what, fellas? I don't either.

We gotta get this done because here's the key. By doing this, we are clearing the decks and we are setting up for Trump to come in roaring back with the America First agenda. That's what we're gonna run with gusto beginning January 3rd when we start the new congress when Republicans again were in control. And all of our fiscal conservative friends, I'm 1 of them, will be able to finally do the things that we've been wanting to do for the last couple years.

But the final nail in the coffin likely came when Donald Trump put out a statement Wednesday night saying that he was totally against the continuing resolution and that the Republicans should pass a bill that doesn't include Democrat giveaways. So now Johnson will reportedly be looking to get a much narrower spending bill passed.

Alright. Well, we'll see if he has better luck with that. Meghan, thanks for reporting. Anytime.

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Over a dozen suspected gang members were arrested in Colorado this week after police said they broke into an apartment and tortured its residents. The crime took place at an apartment complex in Aurora previously connected to the Venezuelan gang, Trende Aragua.

Daily Wire reporter, Tim Pierce, is here with more. So, Tim, how many people were arrested and what do we know about the case so far?

So police in Aurora, Colorado arrested 14 suspects in an early morning raid on Tuesday. The suspects are a mix of men and women, but mostly men, and police say they are very likely tied to the Venezuelan gang at Trende Aragua. According to police, the suspects broke into an apartment at The Edge at Lowry Apartment Building in Aurora. That's an apartment already notorious for Trende Aragua activity.

Police said

the suspects broke in, kidnapped the people living there, and took them to another apartment and torture them. Here's Aurora police chief Todd Chamberlain explaining what happened during a press conference on Tuesday.

The victims were held against their will. They were actually bound, both the male and the female. They were pistol whipped. They were beat. They were victimized.

They were terrorized.

The victims got away only after they swore they wouldn't call police, which thankfully, they eventually did.

Now is the federal government expected to get involved here?

Yeah. Authorities say the investigation is underway with help from the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The incoming border czar, Tom Homan, said on Fox News on Wednesday that he wants the suspects eventually handed over to ICE.

I I just saw your your your piece on the the chief of police standing over talking about this issue. What what's lacking is an ICE person standing next to him shoulder to shoulder. So he's talking the talk, but let's hope he walks the walk and and hand these people to ICE when he's done with them because we can remove them not only from the community, but from the country. And and if law enforcement officers don't help us do that, we're certainly going to do that starting January 21st.

Well, that will hopefully be reassuring to residents in Aurora. Now up in New York, we also have a report of an illegal alien who's on the terror watch list that was recently apprehended. What's the story there?

Right. Border patrol this week announced the arrest of an illegal alien from South Africa who is on the US terror watch list. The alien was picked up in New York City, but that was only after he was released into the country by federal authorities. This man was originally detained in Texas by the State Department of Public Safety for trespassing. Texas turned him over to federal authorities along with dozens of others, and the feds released him back into the US.

When it became clear this man had ties to terrorism that obviously set off alarms and authorities rushed to catch him again. They eventually found him in Brooklyn, but they don't yet know how he got there or how long he'd been in New York.

Oh, well, too many close calls like that. Tim, thanks for reporting.

Good to be on.

Suspected UnitedHealthcare CEO assassin Luigi Mangione faces extradition from Pennsylvania today and multiple murder and terrorism charges in New York.

Joining us to discuss the newest developments in the Mangione saga is Daily Wire reporter Zach Jewell. Hey, Zach. So terrorism charges leveled against him, extradition he faces. What's the latest here?

Well, the latest is that Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg has decided to bring several charges against Mangione. 1 count of first degree murder and furtherance of terrorism and 2 counts of second degree murder. 1 of which is charged as killing as an act of terrorism. Bragg announced the charges in a press conference earlier this week. Here's the Manhattan district attorney discussing some of the reasoning behind the charges.

This was a frightening, well planned, targeted murder that was intended to cause shock and attention and intimidation.

Bragg alleges that Mangione killed the UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson to, quote, evoke terror. Authorities say he was found with a notebook that included a passage about taking out Thompson at what he called the, quote, annual parasitic bean counter convention. The CEO was gunned down as he was walking to his company's annual investors conference. Mangione also allegedly raged against the US health care system and specifically cited UnitedHealthcare. At a press conference Tuesday, New York authorities also made a point of condemning those lifting Mangione up as a hero.

Here's NYPD commissioner Jessica Tisch.

In the nearly 2 weeks since mister Thompson's killing, we have seen a shocking and appalling celebration of cold blooded murder. Social media has erupted with praise for this cowardly attack.

Are the charges against Mangione in line with what legal experts expected in this case?

Yes and no. While a first degree murder charge seems obvious for the type of assassination that was caught on video, New York has a different standard than most states for what qualifies as first degree murder. The charge is rare in the state as it only applies to those accused of killing a witness, judge, or first responder, or those accused of killing in a murder for hire plot or through terrorism. Now, after 911, New York also passed a law allowing prosecutors to tack on terrorism charges if the crime intended to intimidate a civilian population and influence the government through murder, assassination, or kidnapping. And that's a paraphrase, but the FBI uses that same definition for domestic terrorism.

Is that charge, the terrorism charge, harder to prove?

There is some precedent on that law that suggests prosecutors will have difficulty proving it. For example, in 2002, a Harlem gangster was charged with terrorism after he opened fire outside of a christening. He ended up killing a 10 year old girl and paralyzing a rival gang member. A decade later though, the state's highest court ruled that he was not a terrorist and he was retried and convicted on other charges. In this case, Bragg alleges that Mangione, quote, intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population and to affect the conduct of a unit of government by murder, assassination, or kidnapping.

But how exactly the murder of Thompson applies to the government wasn't immediately clear as Thompson worked for a private health care company. Anna Kaminsky, she's the director of the Criminal Defense Clinic at New York Law School, she told the New York Times that accusing him of committing terrorism seems unusual. She said, and paraphrasing here, what the prosecutors are saying is because of where and how this murder took place shows that it was intended to scare people, not just kill someone. Jessica Roth, a former federal prosecutor, told CNN that the terrorism charges suggest prosecutors are setting up a plea deal. Mitchell Epner, another former federal prosecutor told Forbes that the terrorism charges are merely performative.

He suggests that a second degree murder charge would have been much easier to argue.

Final question. What's next for this case?

Yeah. The extradition hearing in Pennsylvania is today and Mangione's lawyer says he's not going to fight it. So we'll likely be seeing him move to New York as early as today.

Hi, Zach. Thanks so

much for reporting. Thanks for having me.

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