Secretary of State Marco Rubio declares the War Powers Act unconstitutional and the first phase of the Iran conflict officially over. Operation Epic Fury is concluded. We achieved the objectives of that operation. I'm Daily Wire, Executive Editor John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's Wednesday, May 6th, Georgia's birthday, and this is Morning Wire. Key primaries in several states highlight both parties' strategies, including Republicans' increased focus on fraud. I'm doing this because I know we can get this done. This is not complex stuff. You know, fixing the waste, fraud, and abuse. And the discovery of a massive supply of lithium in Appalachia could disrupt China's grip on the crucial resource. Being able to reduce our reliance on China. When we have these own resources within our own country, we should not only be extracting them here. We should be processing them here. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know. 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Mary Margaret, welcome back to the show. Hey, guys. Great to be here. As John said, White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt began her maternity leave yesterday, so we had Rubio in her place. What stood out to you from inside the room? Yeah, so Secretary of State Marco Rubio took the podium yesterday and he gave us our first White House press briefing from the Secretary of State. He was animated. He was excited. He was enjoying himself. The press were all laughing along with him. It seemed like everyone really enjoyed having him there. He was clearly a little overwhelmed by the absolute just packed nature of this room yesterday. So many reporters crowded in there. He joked a couple of times that he had no idea who anyone was, so he was just taking a stab in the dark. So my fellow reporters and I, you know, we were all chomping at the bit trying to get a question. We were really hoping that we did. Not everyone did, obviously, but he did a great job of calling on people all over the room, back, front. Didn't pay too much attention to the front row, which I personally love because it means that he's given all the reporters a chance. And he did, you know, he mixed in some levity with some more serious responses to questions. And he really didn't get mad at anyone, which I found interesting because I've seen him be a little more aggressive with reporters in the past. So I think he came in prepared to be congenial, to give answers to all the questions and to do Caroline's job. That said, he does have some serious content to address. One main focus was Iran. What did we hear from him on that front? So we talked a lot about the Strait of Hormuz, which obviously is one of the biggest issues in the news right now. He talked about how Iran has been planting mines in the Strait of Hormuz and how that's a direct attack on any of the people who are using it. He talked about how Iran has really made themselves the bad guy in this situation. And so places like China he said he hopes that China is encouraging Iran to understand their situation on the global stage and realize that no one really likes him right now He talked about whether or not there is an end to the ceasefire He said that there is not right now. And he kind of echoed what Pete Hegseth told myself and other reporters that the ceasefire is ongoing and that it's up to the president ultimately to decide what will cause that ceasefire to end. He also talked about going to Rome. One of the reporters asked him a question about this. This is something that I covered for The Daily Wire this week for our website. He's heading to Rome to make peace with the Pope after a lot of different confrontation between the president, between Pope Leo, between J.D. Vance, a lot of angst going on all over the world between the head of the Catholic Church and the president and the vice president. Now, Rubio, he didn't really buy into that framing, though we know that that's what's going on. He suggested that it was really the role of the secretary of state to get out there to speak to the Pope, to engage with him on a lot of different matters. But we've been told already by the State Department that this visit is about the Middle East. So they'll be speaking about all of these issues and more, and that will happen actually in the next couple days. Now, you mentioned Hegseth. You attended a press conference yesterday with him and General Dan Cain. They also field a lot of questions from reporters. What did we learn from them yesterday? So I specifically asked General Cain, you know, he mentioned this threshold that the Iranians had not yet reached a threshold that would cause us to end the ceasefire. And I said, okay, so what would necessitate that threshold being crossed? What does it take? He wouldn't really give me any specifics, but he did emphasize again that Iran had not crossed that threshold. So the ceasefire was still in place. My friend, Reagan Reese, also asked Secretary Hegseth, is the ceasefire still in place? And he definitively said, yes, it is ongoing. So they answered a lot of questions on that. I also asked Secretary of War Pete Hegseth about the minds that Iran has been putting in the strait of Hormuz. And I specifically asked him about kind of a funny question, but I think legitimate, about these kamikaze dolphins. that we've been hearing about. I saw an analyst on CNN and Fox News separately talking about these kamikaze dolphins. Supposedly, Iran wanted to use dolphins in order to put explosives in the Strait of Hormuz and attack the United States. I haven't heard the kamikaze dolphin thing. It's like sharks with laser beams, right? I can't confirm or deny whether we have kamikaze dolphins, but I can confirm they don't. So a little bit of levity in a place we weren't expecting. All right, well, Mary Margaret, thank you so much. a lot to keep your eye on. Thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for having me. Raise your hand if you've been putting off a dental cleaning, an annual checkup, or honestly, any kind of doctor's appointment. Yeah, my hand's up too. But now our sponsor ZocDoc is here to help. ZocDoc is a free app and website that helps you find and book high quality in-network doctors so you can find someone you love. We're talking about booking in-network appointments with more than 150,000 providers across all 50 states. Whether you're looking for dermatology, dentistry, primary care, eye care, or one of the other 200 plus specialties offered on ZocDoc, you can easily search by specialty or symptom to build a care team that's right for you. View thousands of verified patient reviews to get a real sense of who your doctor is. Then check their real-time availability and book instantly. 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Vivek Ramaswamy won for the Republicans, the nomination, and then Amy Acton ran uncontested for Democrats. So lock that in. What stood out to you about the focus of their campaigns in Ohio? Well I think that what you saw here was pretty much a playbook for the way that this year is going to go politically In the closing days of the election you saw you know on the Democrat side a focus on affordability, on an emphasis on pushing back against what's viewed as overreach by the Trump administration. And then when it came to the Republican side, Vivek Ramaswamy is someone who has always leaned into fighting against fraud and basically the idea that he brings, you know, a tech entrepreneur's approach to the way that he'd like to reform government. That type of reform candidacy is one that obviously elevated him within the presidential stakes to the point where he was considered for a lot of different positions. He decided instead to run for this office. And I think that what you're going to see across the country is a lot of Republicans embracing the idea that Democrats are the representatives and defenders of waste, fraud, and abuse that is happening on a scale that I think Americans until this year, perhaps, were not as familiar with on a state and local level. They thought of Washington as being the place where your money goes to be wasted. It turns out it can be wasted in your neighborhood and community just as well. Yeah, great point there. And it is notable that Ramaswamy cited Luke Rosiak's report. So fraud clearly becoming a dominant focus. What else are Republicans specifically hitting? Obviously, the economy and the Iran war are kind of hanging over everything. How are Republicans positioning themselves? I think Republican candidates are going to stress that affordability is a situation where Democrats just don't have an answer for it. They don't actually have any solutions, really, when it comes to increasing affordability for Americans. They aren't willing to actually go down the road of cutting government spending in any way or of dealing with the type of regulations they've put into place that increase the cost for the average family. And I think one of the other things that people are really hoping on the Republican side is that if the Iran war and the conflict driven price of gasoline is something that can be addressed in short order, meaning before the summer, that it's something that they can recover from. And then finally, I think the message that they've got is about overall governance and competence. There's an attitude on the Democratic side that they can nominate all of these different radical people who have no record whatsoever in terms of doing anything for the communities that they are trying to represent. And what you can see in certain times like this is that candidates get nominated who don't deserve to be nominated. And if they turn out to be too radical, voters will still reject them. Yeah, I think on this topic of radical candidates, Graham Plattner in Maine certainly stands out, especially with the national attention he's gotten in this Nazi tattoo. Is the Democratic Party coalescing behind him there? And why isn't this seen as a major risk? So that's a great question. Graham Plattner in Maine is one of the most radical people I think you've ever seen nominated for the U.S. Senate. He's somebody who has said crazy things online and also, of course, had to deal with the fact that he had an SS tattoo on his chest, literally. And the thing that is so disturbing about it is all the Democrats are really going to line up lockstep behind this guy because they know there is no path for them taking the Senate without knocking off Susan Collins in Maine. And so because of that, they are willing to swallow a pill this bitter. Clearly, the Democrats very desperate to gain control again of the Senate. And we're seeing that really play out in these campaigns. Ben, thanks for coming on. Great to be with you. The U.S. Geological Survey has announced a potentially game-changing discovery in Appalachia, 2.3 million metric tons of lithium, a large enough deposit to last the U.S. for three centuries. With lithium now crucial to most of our electronic devices, the discovery could disrupt China's near monopoly on the lithium supply chain. Joining us now is Dan Turner, founder and executive director of Power the Future. Dan, thanks for coming on. Great to be with you. Thanks for having me. So we just had this major announcement about this massive lithium deposit found in Appalachia, enough to replace more than 300 years worth of imports. What can you tell us about this discovery? Yeah it a remarkable discovery What valuable about lithium is that like a lot of hard metals it is an amazing energy conductor but it is incredibly malleable You can cut lithium with a knife but you can bring it up to temperatures of a thousand degrees and it doesn lose its shape And that what makes it so valuable is that you can bend it and twist it And when you think of your smart devices and how thin they are, you need lithium that can conduct electricity without getting to that high temperature and also have these very intricate tiny little shapes. And so lithium's use and usage is going to explode tenfold. We need more lithium, not less. The fact that we have found it now in abundance in America is just great news. China dominates this market. Not only they are the third largest lithium producers in the world, but the first and second largest, Australia and Chile, those are all Chinese mines. Most of the Australian mining is owned by communist China. So this is a huge dent into their market share and they have to be petrified. Yeah, and I don't think a lot of people know that, that Australian mines are actually communist China owned. This is a very exciting, you know, announcement from a resource independence standpoint. point, what would it take to get to the point where we're reliably using this lithium in domestic production flows? This is going to be at least, you know, optimistically five, more likely a 10-year plan, right? Mining like this does take an awful lot of time to bring online. They can get shut down really quickly, but to get this operational is going to take some time. But that will be built into market prices and market shares. Kind of similarly the way we're seeing the huge spike in oil, even though we don't have a supply problem here in America, the markets look at what's happening in Iran and they're nervous and that's built into the price. So conversely, lithium markets are going to see this and say, wow, the future is really bright. The future is shifting. And that will have a huge impact on pricing as well. So right now we have a very production and energy friendly administration. If we do end up under a democratic administration next, would you see that putting up roadblocks? Oh, 100 percent. And they will try to reverse this if the White House flips Democrat in 2028. And this will be a campaign speech, right? And mostly because it's funded by those who have interests in overseas lithium. Tom Steyer is one of the largest, his hedge fund is one of the largest investors in overseas mining. And yet he will run on a green platform and say, we need to have no coal in America. Those same forces will come out opposed to this and say, we can't have a lithium mine. What about the climate? What about the environmental impact? But they are funded by groups that have foreign investment interests. Yeah, to put an even finer point on this, is it too far to say that communist Chinese actors will be very much involved in working against this operation? Not at all. Not at all. Similarly, go back to 2015 and 16. And this was proven by the House Committee on Science. The majority of the social media posts on fracking and banning fracking were paid for by the Russians because they did not want fracking to take place in America. They knew Donald Trump would expand fracking, and that's bad for their market share. So foreign interests have always co-opted the environmental movement. And quite frankly, a lot of the environmental activists here in America know they are foreign-funded, but they don't care. But China will absolutely pay groups. They'll use shell corporations and overseas nonprofits, and they'll funnel it through their myriad web of nonprofits to get the money. But they will fund direct campaigns to stop this because they don't want to see their corner of the market disappear. And no doubt we'll be seeing that messaging battle heating up very soon. Dan Turner, thank you so much for joining us. My pleasure. Before you go, we wanted to give you a massive thank you. The Daily Wire just won two trophies from the Media Research Center's annual rewards, and our show was given outstanding podcasts. We wanted to note, too, that Daily Wire's immigration reporter, Jenny Tehr, won the Outstanding Reporter Award. All of this means a lot to us, and we just appreciate you so much tuning in every day and making this possible. Thanks for waking up with us. And if you're listening to the show, now you can watch for free on Daily Wire+. We'll be back later this evening with more news you need to know.
