Transcript of Senate Targets Extremism & ICE Leadership Shake-Up | 10.29.25

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 comments, New York mayoral candidate Zora Mandani 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.

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

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The federal government must act now to stop the consistent and accelerating trend of leftist terrorism. For a legislator to deny the threat 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 is Daily Wire Culture reporter, Megan Basham. Hey, Megan. We reported yesterday about this event. It's an 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?

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 logical 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 threats that they were investigating and discussing there in that Senate hearing.

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-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. 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 Management.

Then this was what Tennessee Senator Marsha 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 Now, while there's over counting on the right, there is a vast under counting 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. He says that he thinks that, 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 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.

As Noel said, Antifa has played a very prominent role in a lot this violent protesting that we have seen coming now at pretty regular intervals. Just one poll last month from YouGov 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. 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 reporting.

Yeah, my pleasure.

A major leadership shakeup at ICE is exposing internal divides of the Trump administration's mass deportation effort.

Here with more is Daily Wire immigration reporter, Jennie Tear. So, Jennie, 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 shift 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 in a grouping 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?

There's been a lot of internal division right now within the Department of Homeland Security over how they should conduct the operations, the mass deportation arrest. So the division exists between Cory 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. Lewandowski is at odds with the head of ICE and with border Tsar Tom Homan over how and who they should be arresting. So for example, Cori 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 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 Bovina 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 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 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 US. His camp is really winning this fight from what we can tell. We've even been told by sources that Lewandowski has, in some ways, more power than Secretary Noem. His control at DHS has really become a point of contingent for a lot of sources that we've talked to. And now we're seeing that come to fruition, that he is 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. Jennie, 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 chip away at that lead.

Here with the latest on that mayoral race is DailyWire reporter Amanda Presta Giacomo. Hey, Amanda. So early voting has begun for this New York City mayor's race. Mamdani 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 Mamdani by 20 points, but he recently cut that lead in half to 10 points. A A Suffolk University poll released Monday shows Mamdani 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. There's also the Republican candidate in this race, Curtis Sliwa. He's the founder and CEO of the Guardian Angels. He's in third place with 11% of the vote. Opponents of Mamdani, who view him, frankly, as a Communist, they've pressured Sliwa Sliwa publicly to drop out of this race and give 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 Mamdani'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 fourth, so just days away now.

It's coming quick. Now, let's get into some of these controversies surrounding Mamdani. 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 Mamdani.

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 Mamdani was pressed about that, he actually admitted that the story was It 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 resurface from 2023, where he's really going after the NYPD, that's a common target of Mamdani's. He ties that criticism to Israel and the IDF.

We have to make clear that when the food of the NYPD is on your neck, It's been laced by the ideas, 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 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 Antisemitism They offered help to relocate people who want to leave the city if Mamdani does win. That group told the Daily Wire that they've been inundated with requests, hundreds and hundreds of requests from people who want to leave. 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 Mamdani does become mayor. But as for the front runner successes in this campaign, Mamdani 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.

The changing The graphics 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 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. 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.