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Dana Perino
We're going to unpack lots of weekend maneuvering on the government shutdown. We're going to talk about what President Trump is planning on the Strait of Hormuz and everything you might have missed from the no Kings protest and who paid for it all. Today on a special on the road, 10 minute drill.
Ilhan Omar
Everybody get up. Get up.
Keith Ellison
The story of America is the story of an adventure. I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. We are a nation under God and I believe God intended for us to be free.
Dana Perino
First off today, as you've likely noticed, the Department of Homeland Security is still shut down. But thanks to an emergency executive order from President Trump, some paychecks to TSA agents have started to go out after missing about three due to the Democrats shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security. But to tell you about how we got here first, late last week the Senate passed by unanimous consent a bill that would extend funding for DHS but cutting out extended funding for ICE and the Customs and Border Patrol as Republicans laid out a plan to fund that on a party line basis through a future reconciliation bill. Their goal simply being to get things up and running and get this shutdown over with so that we limit the chaos. Believing that Democrats and the media will blame Republicans no matter what, House Republicans had a different approach to it. They passed a 60 day continuing resolution funding all of the Department of Homeland Security trying to dare Senate Democrats to object to this and prolong the shutdown. One important nuance there is, the biggest difference between the Senate approach and the House approach is that limited amount of funding for Customs and border patrol and ICE. Now it is not for their out front agents. ICE agents are funded through 2029. It's largely administrative staff behind the scenes. Jackie Heinrich, I thought explained this really well. Jackie, responding to a New York Times headline that read House GOP derails deal to reopen DHS prolong shutdown said actually the GOP House passed a bill that would reopen dhs. But okay would be more accurate for New York Times to say House GOP rejected Senate bill that left ICE and CPP unfunded and passed a rival bill. Why does this distinction matter? Ending the shutdown on this deal would come at the expense of ICE and Customs and Border Patrol civilian support staff who are still not being paid despite the frontline law enforcement officers being funded through 2029 under the One Big Beautiful Bill. We will see where this goes between now and Thursday. But one thing that we are seeing is Democrats are in a awkward position objecting to President Trump moving to pay TSA agents. Without them, that should have never happened and the president could have prevented that from happening.
Protester
Right. The president is illegally paying apparently TSA agents.
Dana Perino
The House and Senator gaveled out until Thursday. I believe a deal will likely be struck between now and then. That comes somewhere in the middle of the House Republican plan to fund all DHS for a short time and the Senate bill that will hold out pieces of it with a plan for a future spending bill. That's Republicans only because. Because they're making the calculation that Democrats are arsonists and will object no matter what onto Iran. On Monday, President Trump started talking a little bit more about what he sees as a new reasonable regime that he's attempting to negotiate with right now. He posted on Truth Social, we are in serious discussions with a new and more reasonable regime to end our military operations in Iran. He went on to say, if the Strait of Hormuz is not immediately opened, we will conclude our lovely stay in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their electric generating plants, oil wells and Carg island and possibly all desalinization plants. Now what President Trump is trying to do there is put pressure on Iran to continue negotiating or else he will blow up all the energy infrastructure that's left. The big thing here continues to be the Strait of Hormuz and the idea that as long as Iran has essentially control and veto power over the Strait, they control energy markets and you don't necessarily want to have the world's largest state sponsor of terror in that level of control. It is that special time of year no Kings 3.0. And one thing I would note just at the outset is it's not a coincidence that Democrats shut down the government right around the time of a no Kings protest when they're out there trying to do everything they can to rally their base. But the no Kings protests have been a real double edged sword for Democrats. On one hand, they see it as a huge show of enthusiasm. They're constantly talking about the numbers of protests. For example, you'll see them say we had 25 different protests in the state of Alabama. You don't see pictures from a lot of those. You might see pictures from a few. And for the ones that you see, there are large numbers. But the focus on the quantity over quality of protests there I do think is notable. But the double edged sword there is that energy is one helpful thing that Democrats think they have working for them. The other side is the fact that it shows that all of the energy in The Democratic Party right now is in the radical fringy far left. As you see these clips, you'll see there's a lot of flags for Communist Party usa, flags for Venezuela, flags for Iran, flags for Hamas, not a lot of American flags. And you'll also see people out there marching again on behalf of things like Communist Party usa. We're gonna get into a lot of that. But I always appreciate the easy visuals it creates of just how crazy the left's base that actually controls their elected officials in Washington actually is.
Keith Ellison
It's white sheets in the White House. Everybody sweet and shout, white sheets in the White House. Time to drive them white sheets out.
Dana Perino
We're gonna go through just a couple of highlights here. One of the ones that I wanted to start with started in Minnesota. Here is Keith Ellison speaking at the no Kings protest.
Keith Ellison
Justice is not optional. Accountability is coming.
Dana Perino
Now, imagine getting away with, as it looks like Keith Ellison is doing right now, blessing $9 billion in fraud that went to your voters, including voters who gave you campaign cash after committing fraud, but suggesting that Donald Trump is a king because there's not enough accountability. Now, I think that's pretty crazy. Let's go on to Ilhan Omar.
Ilhan Omar
I arrived here when I was 12 years old. I could have never imagined the day would come when we were staring down at this kind of creeping authoritarianism in the United States of America.
Dana Perino
Now, how bad can the authoritarianism be for Ilhan if she's currently a member of Congress with all sorts of perks and privileges that come with that, but also reportedly made 20 to 30 million dollars in the last few years, likely through companies that are tied to the Minnesota fraud scandal. Again, very interesting for her to be complaining about authoritarianism in a country that appears to be giving her a whole lot. But let's move on to Tim Waltz.
Keith Ellison
Our Somali Minnesotans, your great grandchildren, will still be here when that orange clown is in the dustbin of history.
Dana Perino
But the craziness doesn't end there.
Protester
But I'm also here to demand our trans liberation. And I'm here to demand our liberation for everyone. I don't mean only queer and trans liberation, but all of ours. Immigrants, refugees, undocumented neighbors, our friends with disabilities.
Dana Perino
And again, these were not necessarily peaceful protesters. Here's a look at them. In Los Angeles, we are serving. They're throwing them at the police officers. Some protesters seem to really like making allusions to 1789 and the French Revolution. The problem there is, I think they haven't really researched what happened after that, which was the bloody bloodbath of the French Revolution leading to restoring a constitutional monarchy. So again, you can glamorize the guillotines all you want, but I don't think it necessarily leads to the larger message. The one thing that I've always liked to highlight at these protests is the fact that while Democrats are saying no Kings because they think it's a good rallying crowd, they very much are centering around a small number of left wing oligarchs who are funding these protests as well as some of these sort of left leaning kingmakers who control the Democratic Party. First, let's start with Randy Weingarten who was again speaking about authoritarianism and Americans
Ilhan Omar
don't agree on everything, but we agree that we the people have to have the ultimate.
Dana Perino
Now it's interesting for her to say we the people have the ultimate say when this woman is the person single handedly most responsible for Joe Biden's extended COVID lockdowns. Thanks to groups like Americans for Public Trust. We've seen the emails of her using the power of teachers unions as the Democrats most important political constituency to pressure them to keep schools closed, keep children home, which was a very tyrannical move and also led to a generation of learning loss. So instance you see Randy Weingarten out there preaching about the dangers of authoritarianism. You wonder does she understand the irony there at all? Probably not. But also it's a who's who of left wing dark money groups funded by a small group of left wing billionaires and oligarchs who actually organize this protest. Let's look first at this table by Americans for Public Trust. As you look at that table, you'll see that there's a lot of different political groups like the aclu, Color of Change, Common Cause, all the way down to groups like the Sierra club, groups like MoveOn and Indivisible that are all tied to these different left wing dark money juggernauts like Arabella Advisors, George Soros, the Tides foundation, or Hans Jorg Wyss, who is the, as we've discussed, foreign pervert Swiss billionaire who's spending billions of dollars in the United States to try and influence our politics. You'll also see a lot of them have known foreign funding. Some of them are tied to different European organizations, some of them are tied to the Chinese Communist Party. So as you see these organized marches and as you see people holding professionally printed signs with logos, you even look at the no Kings protest homepage and see that giant list of partners. No, this is about 500 organizations that have billions of dollars between them, largely from a small group of oligarch billionaires. It ties to a lot of the same people. My idea is I would love for these protesters to just be transparent and wear NASCAR style jackets with patches highlighting all of these left wing dark money groups and juggernauts that are actually pulling all of the strings here. I want to take a quick look at the state of New York. We've talked a little bit about this sort of quirky corner that they painted themselves into with some of their climate policy as they're now facing consequences of it. This from the Wall Street Journal editorial board. Hochul wants a climate reprieve as utility costs soar in New York. She seeks a delay in cap and tax. Now I would just note there, the cap and tax that we're seeing in New York is very similar to one that we see in California and a number of these other blue states where left wing climate groups are drawing up model legislation and mod proposals and getting them to reliable Democrat partners in these states to try and push to kill fossil fuels and drive up the cost of normal energy resources to force people into green energy technology, things like that. So back to the Wall Street Journal. Ms. Hochul On Friday called on the Democratic legislature to postpone implementation of the state's cap and tax program and CO2 emissions cuts mandated by New York's 2019 climate law. She warned that regulations could increase upstate utility bills by about $4,000 a year and gasoline prices by $2.23 a gallon. But progressives want New Yorkers to pay even more. It's impossible to have a coherent debate about this if we're not at all on the same page that a carbon price is designed to add costs to a carbon intensive energy uses and that will add cost to consumers, columbia University climate researcher Noah Kaufman, a former Joe Biden hand, told the left leaning Heat Map news site. So again, that story quotes somebody who's talking about the cost of energy and utilities going up as a positive for the climate agenda. They want costs to get higher. The other person who said the quiet part out loud on this was an attorney involved in the Boulder climate lawsuit where they said this will essentially act as a carbon tax. They want costs to get higher to force people off of these reliable energy resources. Meanwhile, other New York Democrats have even more radical ideas for trying to use less energy. This is the New York Post. New York City lawmaker wants to force Big Apple to go dark after 11pm and critical say it's a Criminal's dream bill. A state lawmaker has a dimwitted plan that would force the Empire State Building in nearly all of New York City to go dark after 11pm the dark skies Protection act, sponsored by Manhattan Assemblywoman Deborah Glick, would require Big Apple businesses and residents to hit the off switch between 11pm and 5am to save energy, help migratory birds, and avoid light pollution, according to the proposed bill. So it's important to note that forcing people to turn off their lights and all of their power at night, in this case, she's saying to help migratory birds, a lot of it has to do with climate change. She talks about light pollution. 1 It is a criminal's dream. If you don't have lights off, it's a lot easier to rob people, to rob their houses, and to commit all sorts of violent acts. But you also need to understand that this is not a out of the blue proposal. They're talking about this in a lot of places in Europe. They're talking about it in a lot of blue cities in America to try and force the climate issue by saying living in the dark is actually good for the climate, whether or not it's has all sorts of downsides to it, whether it's your public safety or, you know, being able to refrigerate your food and keep an air conditioner on, things like that. So again, another great window into the future that liberals want for our you can't make it up segment today, we have a genre that I love, which is the here's what Democrats need to do to win this from Axios. Axios. Some top Democrats are quietly debating a fraught question, whether the party's best bet for winning back the presidency in 2028 is to nominate a man, perhaps a straight, white male Christian man. Former first lady Michelle Obama fueled such talk recently, saying the US Is not ready for a woman. Democratic strategists have put it bluntly, with several saying a version of it has to be a white guy. Now, I love this for a lot of reasons, but the one that I think is most important is the fact that Democrats have read this all wrong. It's not that the country isn't ready for a woman. It's just that the two women the Democrats have put forward were incredibly, uniquely terrible candidates. Hillary Clinton had more baggage than anyone we've seen run for office in a very long time. Kamala Harris couldn't string a sentence together to defend her policy position. So Democrats can read that and say, oh, it's just because they're women. But if you look at any kind of study, talked to anyone who actually voted in those elections, they know the issue wasn't that they were women, it was that they were terrible candidates. And so, again, we're going to continue seeing variations of this until 2028, with Democrats trying to read the tea leaves when the answer is quite simple. Put up better candidates who aren't on the wrong side of every 8020 issue and you might have a very different result. That is all the time we have for today. Thank you so much for joining us on 10 Minute Drill on the Road. Please like subscribe, leave a review, tell your friends, catch me on the Dana Perino Podcast Perino on Politics this morning and have a great day.
Podcast Summary: "No Kings: meet the shady funders and organizers; What’s next in the DHS shutdown; Dems new 2028 Plan"
10 Minute Drill with Matt Whitlock | March 31, 2026
This fast-paced episode of the 10 Minute Drill, hosted by Matt Whitlock, covers three major stories shaping U.S. politics: the ongoing shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), deeper investigation into the "No Kings" protests and their funding networks, and a look at Democrats' early maneuvering for the 2028 presidential campaign. The episode combines sharp commentary, notable quotes from lawmakers and organizers, and critical insights into the intersection of protest movements, legislative deadlock, and party strategy.
Sharp, sardonic, closely aligned with right-leaning analysis. Whitlock mixes brisk reporting with pointed asides, using irony and sarcasm (e.g., “NASCAR style jackets” for activist funding sources) and critical assessments especially of left and progressive politics, but without veering into outright invective.
For listeners who missed the episode, this summary captures the fast-moving landscape of current political strategies, protest dynamics, legislative brinkmanship, and the first contours of 2028's presidential battlefield—all with the show’s signature irreverent edge.