Trump’s Venezuela Plans & ICE’s Minnesota Crackdown | 1.7.26

Summary

Morning Wire — Episode Summary

Episode: Trump’s Venezuela Plans & ICE’s Minnesota Crackdown
Date: January 7, 2026
Hosts: John Bickley & Georgia Howe

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Overview

This episode delivers in-depth coverage on two key topics: the Trump administration's post-Maduro strategy for Venezuela and its escalated crackdown on fraud and illegal immigration in Minnesota. There are also updates on broader nationwide fraud investigations, particularly in blue states, and a notable incident involving ICE agents being refused hotel accommodations in Minnesota.

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Main Themes & Discussion Points

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1. Trump’s Plans for Post-Maduro Venezuela

Segment: 02:45–06:50

• End of Maduro’s Rule:

  • Nicolás Maduro’s regime has officially ended with his extradition to stand trial in the U.S.
  • Trump administration outlines its vision for Venezuela’s future, preferring influence without direct military occupation.
  • Main objectives:
    • Crack down on drug cartels
    • Remove Iranian, Cuban, and other foreign operatives
    • Cease sales of oil to adversary regimes; open oil fields to U.S. companies

• Pressure Strategy, Not Invasion:

  • Suggested approach is pressure, not long-term boots on the ground.
  • Tools include naval blockades, economic sanctions, and threats directed at Maduro’s successor, Dilia Rodriguez.

• Oil Ambitions:

  • Venezuela holds 300 billion barrels of crude, roughly 20% of global reserves.

  • Trump intends to give U.S. oil companies access, aiming to reduce reliance on Middle Eastern oil.

  • Industry experts urge caution—rebuilding Venezuela’s oil industry will be a long process.

    Notable Quote:

    “Reality is six months at a minimum. ... It’s going to take big companies, big money, and big projects to get it back up and running.”
    — R.T. Trevino, Pecos County Energy President (05:25)

• Public Opinion Shift:

  • American support for the Venezuela operation has improved post-strike, now nearly evenly split, influenced by successful operations with no U.S. casualties.

  • The political implications are underlined given upcoming midterms.

    Notable Quote:

    “All of this all comes back to midterms.”
    — Gavin (06:46)

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2. ICE Crackdown and Fraud Investigations in Minnesota

Segment: 07:54–12:18

• Increased Federal Law Enforcement Presence:

  • Trump sends 2,000 new ICE and Border Patrol agents to Minnesota, following earlier deployments tied to fraud allegations primarily involving the Somali community.
  • Homeland Security officers now aggressively checking paperwork and ensuring correct allocation of taxpayer funds.

• Hotel Controversy:

  • A Hilton franchise in Minnesota refused to accommodate ICE/DHS agents, leading to national attention. Hilton cut ties with the franchise after an internal investigation.

    Notable Quote:

    “We are not allowing any ICE or immigration agents to stay at our property.”
    — Hilton franchise email, as reported by Jenny Terre (09:10)

• Illegal Immigrants and Commercial Driver's Licenses:

  • Recent incident: Two undocumented immigrants caught in Indiana with 300 lbs of cocaine while holding California-issued commercial driver’s licenses.

  • Trump threatens to withhold federal funds if California doesn’t revoke thousands of licenses wrongly given to non-citizens.

  • California Governor Newsom claims federal failings are to blame.

    Memorable Data Point:

    "$7 million worth of cocaine" found in Indiana truck (12:11)

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3. Broader State & National Crackdown on Fraud

Segment: 12:21–16:56

• Expansion Beyond Minnesota:

  • The administration sets sights on fraud in five blue states, pausing some welfare payments and increasing scrutiny, especially after Minnesota’s high-profile scandal.
  • Notable fraud types: Daycare, housing, and autism treatment scams.

• Root Causes:

  • Lax oversight post-pandemic, with an emphasis on speedy fund distribution, created “a perfect storm” for fraudulent claims.

    Notable Analysis:

    “There were some perverse incentives in place after the COVID pandemic... So this created a perfect storm where agencies dispersed funds as quickly as they could and with very little accountability.” — Alan Mendenhall, Heritage Foundation (13:34)

• State-Level Responses:

  • Texas launches its own probe into childcare payment fraud.

  • California under federal investigation for possible mismanagement; Governor Newsom indicates willingness to cooperate.

    Quote:

    “Can’t stand fraud. Can’t stand waste and abuse.”
    — Gov. Gavin Newsom (15:31)

• Policy Suggestions:

  • Improve nonprofit grant conditions (collateral, bonds) for more accountability.

  • Address perception-based lack of scrutiny for nonprofits.

    Potential Impact:

    • Investigations could involve "billions, hundreds of billions" in taxpayer money (16:45).

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Venezuela Oil Access:
  “American oil companies are, as you can imagine, chomping at the bit to get a piece of that action.”
  — Gavin (04:41)

• On Public Opinion after Venezuela Strike:
  “There was a 25 point swing... now just one point underwater when you ask if Americans support it.”
  — Gavin (06:05)

• On ICE hotel controversy:
  “Hilton now says that they’ve dropped the franchisee from its group that it’s no longer affiliated after they conducted an investigation...”
  — Jenny Terre (09:10)

• On California’s CDL scandal:
  “Newsom, however, defends that it’s the federal government’s issues that cause this.”
  — Jenny Terre (11:46)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Venezuela: After Maduro, U.S. Policy & Oil: 02:45–06:50
• ICE Surge & Hotel Ban, Immigration Fraud: 07:54–12:18
• National Fraud Investigation (States Focus): 12:21–16:56

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Tone & Style

The episode maintains a brisk, fact-driven, and slightly combative tone, typical of The Daily Wire. Influences of skepticism toward the federal bureaucracy, urgency on immigration and fraud, and a pragmatic approach to U.S. international interests are consistent throughout.

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For New Listeners

This summary covers all the substantive reporting and analysis from this Morning Wire episode. If you're interested in U.S. foreign policy, immigration enforcement, and government oversight, you'll find the episode informative, with up-to-date details and direct commentary from government sources and experts.

Transcript

[John Bickley]

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[John Bickley]

As topple dictator Nicolas Maduro heads to trial, the Trump administration sketches out its vision for Venezuela. His priority right now is on security, prosperity, stability. So he is working round the clock to get Venezuela's oil industry up and running to where it needs to be. I'm Daily Wire Executive editor John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's Wednesday, January 7th. This is Morning Wire.

[Georgia Howe]

Trump surges immigration officers to Minnesota as a Hilton franchise gets caught trying to ban ICE agents.

[Gavin]

We're not accepting people from immigration, ICE agents, DHS into our property. It's just our management ownership.

[John Bickley]

And after blockbuster fraud discoveries in Minnesota, lawmakers take a closer look at other states.

[Alan Mendenhall]

Well, however bad it is in Minnesota, we know it's very bad. Seems to be getting worse by the day. It's a thousand times worse here in California.

[Georgia Howe]

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

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[Georgia Howe]

As Nicolas Maduro prepares to stand trial in the United States, President Trump's plan for Venezuela is beginning to take shape.

[John Bickley]

Daily Wire senior editor Cabot Phillips is here to break it down for us. Hey, Cabot. So the reign of Nicolas Maduro is officially over. The big question now, now what? What are we hearing from Washington?

[Gavin]

Yeah, we're starting to get a better idea of President Trump's plan long term for Venezuela. In the immediate aftermath of the operation, he turned heads when he said that the United States planned to, quote, run the country. For a lot of folks, that conjured up images of Iraq and Afghanistan and the long wars that went on there. But it now appears the Trump administration prefers to exert control over Venezuela not with boots on the ground, but through a pressure campaign. The White House reportedly has three main things they now want to see. First, a government led crackdown on drug cartels who for years have acted with impunity throughout the country, often working hand in hand with the Maduro regime. Second, they want Maduro's replacement, that's Dil Rodriguez, to loosen the country's relationship with Iran, Cuba and other adversaries and also remove those countries operatives from Venezuela. And finally, and perhaps most importantly for Trump, they want the regime to stop the sale of oil to countries like Russia, Cuba and others. And then really big part there, open up access to their oil fields for American companies.

[John Bickley]

All right, so the White House pushing for major changes as you've outlined there. How exactly do they plan to actually accomplish this?

[Gavin]

So there's two sides here. First, the military side. The White House is still full steam ahead with their naval blockade trying to block illegal oil tankers from leaving the country. And of course, Trump has threatened Dil Rodriguez with the same fate as Maduro if she continues to defy the US Demands. And then there's the economic side. The administration could offer Venezuela relief on sanctions and then free up billions of dollars in frozen funds that are right now stuck over in the Middle east and elsewhere abroad.

[John Bickley]

Now, you've touched on oil there and that's obviously a huge part of the equation in all of this. What is the latest on that front?

[Gavin]

So first, just for context to understand that element here, keep in mind, Venezuela is sitting on top of an estimated 300 billion barrels of crude oil. For context, that is nearly 20% of the known reserves on planet Earth. American oil companies are, as you can imagine, chomping at the bit to get a piece of that action. And President Trump has made clear that wants them to pour billions of dollars into the country. He wants them to build out new infrastructure and importantly further reduce the US's reliance on the Middle east for oil. Experts have cautioned though, that even if we do gain access to Venezuela's oil fields, which is not a given at this point, it will still take time to see a tangible impact at the pump. For more on that, I spoke with R.T. trevino, President of Pecos County Energy. That's an oil company in Texas.

[R.T. Trevino]

Reality is six months at a minimum. Keep in mind that the infrastructure of Venezuelan oil is basically needing to be rebuilt. They did not know what they were doing, so they just ruined it by just continuing to produce until the systems would would run out and break down. So it's going to take big companies, big money and big projects to get it back up and running. So this is going to take somewhere between six to 18 months to just get back up to somewhere between, you know, a million to 2 million barrels of oil a day.

[Gavin]

And while we have seen continued opposition to the strike, particularly among Democrats, it's worth noting there is a shift in public opinion that appears to be taking place. So according to Reuters polling, before this operation, a wide, wide margin of Americans opposed the idea. It was actually 26 points underwater. But after the strike, which was obviously successful, did not cost any American lives, there was a 25 point swing. And that same poll now shows it's just one point underwater when you ask if Americans support it. So obviously public opinion could shift if this turns into a drawn out conflict. But if the oil starts coming in and relations with Venezuela improve, those numbers are likely to go up even more ahead of the midterms.

[John Bickley]

Somehow I knew you'd mention midterms before.

[Gavin]

All of this all comes back to midterms.

[John Bickley]

It does. Gavin, thanks for reporting.

[Gavin]

Absolutely.

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[John Bickley]

The Trump administration has sent roughly 2,000 immigration agents to Minnesota as it doubles down on its fraud crackdown.

[Georgia Howe]

Daily Wire immigration reporter Jenny Terre joins us now with the latest. So, Jenny, the Trump administration sent a few hundred agents last month in connection with some of the other fraud allegations. So how is this new operation different?

[Jenny Terre]

Well, we know the DHS is sending a much more robust presence of ICE agents and now even Border Patrol agents. There's also reports saying that Chief Gregory Bovino from Border Patrol will be down there, which signifies a really more aggressive approach here. We know that Bovino has been in cities like Charlotte. He's been in New Orleans. We also are seeing reports that agents with Homeland Security investigations are on the ground. They're knocking on doors. They're asking organizations for paperwork to see if they are using taxpayer funds properly. And this comes from those fraud allegations out of Minnesota that have been tied largely to the Somali community.

[Georgia Howe]

So it sounds like a pretty significant escalation from dhs. Now there were some roadblocks at the start of this when agents were trying to book into hotels when they were deployed to various places in the country. What can you tell us about that situation specifically with, I think it was Hilton hotels.

[Jenny Terre]

Right. As we know, with these operations, DHS is flying in ICE agents, HSI agents from all over the country. I've heard from sources within DHS that some of these offices around the country are really depleted of manpower because of how many people are being pulled into this. So basically, DHS posted on Monday screenshots appearing to show a Hilton employee from a franchise in Minnesota saying that the reservation for any DHS or immigration employees was canceled. And then there was another email that appeared to show the property doubling down. And that, read this email is in regards to the reservation you made with the Hampton and Lakeville property. We have noticed an influx of gov reservations made today that have been for dhs and we are not allowing any ICE or immigration agents to stay at our property. Hilton now says that they've dropped the franchisee from its group that it's no longer affiliated after they conducted an investigation and after a video emerged showing independent reporter Nick Sorter going into that facility and being declined rooms when he said that he was booking for dhs.

[Georgia Howe]

Now, another beat that you've been covering for us over the past few months is illegal immigrants obtaining commercial driver's licenses. We recently had another case involving illegal immigrants driving commercial vehicles. Tell us what happened.

[Jenny Terre]

Just this week, this new case that we found out about out of Indiana shows this shift in the commercial driver's license illegal immigrant nexus. Now we're seeing not only are these illegal immigrants involved in fatal or near fatal crashes, but also apparently drug smuggling. The state troopers down there had actually pulled over these two illegal immigrants from India. They found over 300 pounds of cocaine in their truck. These guys said that they were moving an empty truck to an Indian restaurant nearby where they were going to be picking up cargo. It also has been discovered that both of these individuals came here illegally. One in 2017. He was later arrested in California, and ICE tried to detain him. At the time they issued a detainer, they had a hold on his case, but California authorities had ignored that and let him go. And now this is where he's been. He's allegedly been trafficking cocaine in the United States. And both of them were also using commercial driver's licenses that were issued in California. The Trump administration has really scrutinized California and Governor Newsom over this issue. They've threatened to withhold millions of dollars in taxpayer funds if the state does not revoke thousands of these commercial driver's licenses that were issued to foreigners. And Newsom actually didn't make the deadline for this. And now the Trump administration is really doubling down on their threats to withhold that funding. Newsom, however, defends that it's the federal government's issues that cause this.

[Georgia Howe]

Well, that one truck in Indiana, it was reported they had $7 million worth of cocaine in the back. Jenny, thanks for reporting.

[Jenny Terre]

Thank you.

[Georgia Howe]

Following the latest Minnesota fraud revelations, there's now a nationwide push to crack down on fraud in other states.

[John Bickley]

Joining us with the latest is Daily Wire political reporter Cameron Arcan. So, Cameron, it's not just Minnesota that the administration is looking into now. What other states are feeling some heat here?

Well, five blue states, including California, are now among the targets of the Trump administration to potentially look into for potential fraud. Now, Health and Human Services, they said that they are stopping some types of welfare payments while they look into this right now. Obviously, the Minnesota scandal definitely has accelerated a lot of this national interest in cracking down on fraud. We've seen everything ranging from allegations from YouTube videos that went viral regarding daycare centers. Now we're even seeing some tangible charges. We saw that over recent years regarding everything from housing payments to autism fraud treatment scams, as we discussed before. So really a high level of interest in this from the Trump administration. We talked with Heritage foundation economic research fellow Alan Mendenhall. Here's what he told us.

[Alan Mendenhall]

Well, there were some perverse incentives in place after the COVID pandemic. The emphasis was on speed, so people wanted to disperse funds as quickly as possible. And also politicians did not want to look cruel. So this creates a perfect storm where agencies dispersed funds as quickly as they could and with very little accountability.

[John Bickley]

Now, we have seen some states taking action of their own against fraud. Tell us more about that.

So the state of Texas said that they're launching their own, quote, proactive investigation into childcare payments in the state. Now the governor, Greg Abbott, he's asking for a progress report at the end of the month and he wants to see some final answers next month, according to newsn. Now what we're seeing with this is this heightened interest with this, particularly at state government levels to see how this money is spent because typically with these types of payments we see a mix of both federal taxpayer dollars and state taxpayer dollars. So I'm curious to see if we are going to see more states follow suit with this.

Right. We'll see if there's more momentum in other states to take sort of proactive action against fraud. You mentioned California coming under the focus of the Trump administration. What is going on there?

So Trump posted this week that he is having the federal government look into potential fraud and taxpayer money mismanagement in the state of California. We don't have any details on that at this point, but obviously that did ruffle some feathers with Governor Gavin Newsom's press office posting that they've been taking their own action in the state to crack down on fraud. We will see pretty soon if there are any end results that come from this. In fact, here's Governor Gavin Newsom sending off on this.

[Alan Mendenhall]

If he has some unique insight and.

[John Bickley]

Information, I look forward to partnering with him.

[Alan Mendenhall]

Can't stand fraud.

[Gavin]

Can't stand waste and abuse.

[John Bickley]

And the New York Post also reported that candidate for governor Steve Hilton, as well as the candidate for state comptroller Ear Morgan. These two Republicans said that they want Attorney General Pam Bondi to look into whistleblower related tips from their own tip line that they created and they estimate that that would be around $250 billion. We don't know details on that just yet, but obviously a lot of this remains to be seen. Meanwhile, Mendenhall said that going forward, there could be some benefit to investigations like these.

[Alan Mendenhall]

We have to start looking at extendance structures and figuring out, you know, what can we do to change things. For example, nonprofit organizations ought to have some type of skin in the game. They shouldn't be dispersed. You know, millions of dollars right up front, no strings attached. Maybe there's a way to put collateral up, or maybe there was a way to put up bonds, or maybe there's. There's something we can do to make sure that they are more accountable on the front end. The other thing is a lot of these, A lot of these nonprofits get less scrutiny by particular government agencies because they, you know, the perception is they do good things, and we don't want to get in the way of these good things.

[John Bickley]

It's going to be fascinating to watch how these investigations shake out. And like you mentioned, we're talking about billions, hundreds of billions, maybe on the line. So extremely important we get to the bottom of it. Cameron, thanks so much for reporting.

Thank you.

[Georgia Howe]

Thanks for waking up with us. And if you're listening to the show, you can now watch for free on Daily Wire. Plus, we'll be back later this evening with more news. You need to know.