Trump brings home some major W’s from his Asia trip, the administration looks to crack down on commercial driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants, and South America trends toward the Right. 

It’s Friday, October 31, 2025, and this is the news you need to know to start your day. Today’s edition of the Morning Wire podcast can be heard below, and the video version can be seen on The Daily Wire:

Trump And Xi Reach Agreements

Topline: Following his showdown with Chinese President Xi Jinping, President Trump has returned from his Asia tour with new deals in hand and perhaps most importantly, reduced tensions with China. 

After the meeting, Xi described the feeling as “warm” and Trump touted what he called an “amazing meeting.” Here he is grading the talk aboard Air Force One. 

“Overall, I guess on the scale of 0-10, with ten being the best, I would say the meeting was a 12,” said Trump.

Trump said official terms of a deal are “very close to resolved,” but it appears the big ticket items on his wishlist were met. In a Truth Social post early Thursday, the President said Xi had agreed to “work diligently with us to stop the flow of Fentanyl into our Country.” As a result of those assurances, Trump announced plans to lower the existing tariff that was imposed on China in response to fentanyl trafficking. 

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In addition, Trump said Xi agreed to “purchase American energy,” potentially oil and gas from Alaska. Trump is looking to keep Beijing from buying Russian oil, so that would be a win-win.

On the agricultural front, Trump says China has also agreed to begin purchasing massive amounts of soybeans, sorghum, and other farm products. With that news, he encouraged farmers to “immediately go out and buy more land and larger tractors.” And finally, he said the Chinese would resume the sale of rare earth minerals used for tech products and large magnets.

Trump says the overall tariff rate on Chinese exports will fall from 57% to 47%, leaving significant trade barriers in place, but far lower than the 100% plus rate that was looming without a deal. The two countries also agreed to remove port fees that had been impacting cargo ships from each side. Looking ahead, Trump said the two leaders will continue to meet on a more regular basis — he’ll travel to Beijing in April, and Xi will come to the US shortly after, potentially to Mar-a-Lago.

How Illegals Keep Scoring CDLs

Topline: The Trump administration has pledged to crack down on illegal immigrant drivers, but Americans have been left wondering: why do these crashes keep happening?

An accident in Florida brought this issue into the national spotlight. An accident was allegedly caused by an illegal immigrant identified as Harjinder Singh, an Indian national. Singh allegedly made an illegal u-turn, blocking a highway, and causing a van to careen into Singh’s trailer. Three people were killed in the crash.

Several similar cases have happened since then, often involving illegal immigrants carrying California-issued commercial driver’s licenses (CDLs).

Some of the major contributors to this issue of illegal immigrants obtaining CDLs have been the flood of illegal immigration into the United States under former President Joe Biden, and then the failure of the federal government to ensure that CDL applicants received proper testing before they were handed driver’s licenses.

In Singh’s case, the Indian national failed an English language proficiency test in the aftermath of the fatal collision, “providing correct responses to just 2 of 12 verbal questions and only accurately identifying 1 of 4 highway traffic signs,” according to the Department of Transportation.

A Republican-backed bill in Congress aims to crack down on these holes in the system. Under the legislation, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy would have the authority to revoke a state’s ability to grant “non-domiciled CDLs,” or commercial licenses for applicants who live out of state, if the state were found in violation of federal rules around CDLs.

The bill would also standardize some rules about the CDL process by requiring all testing to be conducted in English and that all CDL applicants hold a driver’s license for at least one year.

The Trump administration is taking steps to ensure that all testing is done in English. Duffy is also conducting a nationwide audit of state CDL permitting programs. The worst offender is California, where more than 25% of non-domiciled CDLs reviewed by the feds were improperly issued, according to the Department of Transportation.

The Trump administration is also restricting who can get a CDL. Foreigners must have specialized work visas. They can’t be border crossers who are awaiting the fate of their asylum cases.

South America Moves Right

Topline: Massive political shifts are taking place in South America – including rightward shifts in multiple countries, such as Bolivia and Argentina – and the Trump administration is playing a key role on several fronts. Morning Wire spoke to Andres Martinez-Fernandez, senior policy analyst for Latin America at The Heritage Foundation, for more on South American governments. (The following interview has been lightly edited.)

Morning Wire: We’ve seen rapidly changing dynamics between the administration and various political leaders in South America. Let’s start with Argentina. We just saw Javier Milei’s party win a landslide victory. How significant is this victory in the country?

Martinez-Fernandez: It’s really significant because President Milei is representing a major departure from what has been for the past couple decades. Argentine leadership is typically Left, far-Left leaning and socialist in its nature for economic policies. That has brought about generally an anti-American bent. But President Milei has brought an agenda which is really the opposite of all those – very pro-market, individual responsibility, cutting government. As far as relations with the United States, we’ve likely never had a more aligned leader in Argentina. This victory really solidified what was, with his victory a couple years back for the presidency, a massive shift. But it really solidifies that with this legislative win, which is going to help him with his agenda.

Morning Wire: The U.S. recently helped Argentina with a $40 billion support package – how much of a role did that play in this election?

Martinez-Fernandez: I think a very significant role, and President Trump deserves a lot of credit for the victory that we saw for Milei’s party. What we saw was, just in the days prior to the election, the White House meeting with President Milei and President Trump and the announcement of this package, which is directly aimed at stabilizing the financial crisis, which was generated by the socialist policies which dominated in Argentina for so long. This is a vital economic stability move, but in addition to that, it’s a major sign of confidence from the United States and from the world, which I think translated into more confidence from Argentines in the president of Argentina’s ability to stabilize the economy and try a new path forward.

Morning Wire: Turning to Bolivia. We recently saw a monumental election there  – the first conservative president in 20 years. What is the significance of the election there and does it fit into a larger trend in South America?

Martinez-Fernandez: Yeah, absolutely. It does seem to be certainly part of a broader trend that we’ve seen. In a lot of ways, President Milei was the start of this as far as the current wave of right-of-center leaders coming to power, Bolivia being the most recent. But before that, we saw elections in Ecuador, which solidified a more conservative leader, and also elsewhere in the region. We have upcoming elections in countries like Chile, Brazil, and Peru, where a conservative candidate is well-poised also for victory there. I do think part of that is centering from the impetus that we see from the successes of Argentina, but more broadly, the Trump administration’s very positive engagement with these partners. The shift in Bolivia specifically is historic. This is a country which has just been completely controlled politically by the socialist movement there, which has dominated institutions and weaponized those to maintain power. The people just overwhelmingly, despite all of that, rejected that movement and now have a more conservative leader who has promised to do a series of shifts – not only as far as domestically aligning with more pro-market economic and stable policies, but also as far as shifting toward the United States and Western alliances.

As history shows, nearly every civilization has progressed and evolved using some form of alcohol. But no civilization in history has ever experimented with the types of industrialized THC products Western countries are now recklessly legalizing, commercializing, and normalizing. We might pause to ask ourselves why zero Asian countries have done so and why China is so anxious to promote this cultural suicide weapon here.

A 2023 global study on life expectancy showed we are back to pre-pandemic levels with one notable exception: Teens and young adults in Western countries are dying at higher rates, driven largely by suicides and substance use.

Traffic fatalities continue to be a major cause of death in young adults, which is one reason The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh has been vocal about his opposition to the legalization of marijuana. In fact, a recent study of dead drivers in a major Ohio county morgue found that 42% of them tested positive for THC. 

Pot apologists quickly jumped to their defense, noting that THC can be detected for up to a month after use. But the national past 30-day marijuana use rate is only 16%, yet these drivers had average THC levels 5 to 10 times the state legal limits.

Some will argue, “Well, it’s no worse than alcohol.”

Marijuana use, however, is associated with more alcohol consumption, and marijuana users are five times more likely to become alcoholics. It has also been reported that up to 40% of marijuana users use daily, and up to 30% meet criteria for addiction — both far higher percentages than for drinkers. Using alcohol to excuse marijuana use or legalization is simply an exercise in lazy whataboutism.

Speaking of which, THC strongly induces suicidality even in patients who were not depressed to begin with, and state legalization has led to sharp increases in youth suicides. Up to 30% of schizophrenia cases in young men are attributable to THC use now.

Marijuana smoke is also causing the same type of cancers as tobacco smoke, while also dramatically increasing the risk of heart attacks and strokes in younger users. Further, as the American College of Cardiology reports, THC has been shown to cause damage to major blood vessels regardless of the mechanism of ingestion.

Add to this the well-known adverse effects on motivation and educational achievement, and the costs of the cannabis culture to government budgets are simply staggering. One study on the costs of legalization in Colorado, for example, conservatively estimated, “For every dollar gained in tax revenue, Coloradans spent approximately $4.50 to mitigate the effects of legalization.” And that’s even at a 15% sales tax rate.

While there is simply no conservative case for the legalization of marijuana, the libertarian case suffers from serious flaws. First of all, the utopian assumption that legalization would lead to a “safe and regulated” product that would eliminate the black market has now gone 0-for-24 in our marijuana legal states. Many legal THC products are more potent than ever before, even more than the now highly potent plant itself. The industry has defied regulation, and the black markets are thriving. Legalizing marijuana to eliminate the black market is like giving your dog ticks to rid it of fleas. You just double the infestation.

More importantly, substances like THC are the exception that proves the libertarian rule. Libertarianism works when people are free to act in their own best interest and, by extension, their family, community, and country. Chemicals like THC are designed to promote the opposite type of citizen. Libertarians should be the most opposed to the drug culture because it undermines the very foundation of their ideology.

The politically driven potential rescheduling of marijuana will only fuel this destructive industry with tax breaks and marketing privileges. Republicans should note that young male voters moved to the Right last November while radical Democrats were still enticing them with more weed.

Much attention has been paid to the influence of transgender ideology on the radicalization of Charlie Kirk’s assassin. But as we saw with the transgender school shooter in Minneapolis, THC may have also played a role. As discussed in a recent episode of the Liz Wheeler show, a close friend of the suspected Utah assassin reported rampant drug use in his apartment and that “We’d have a mostly weekly magic night at the apartment where everyone would come drink, get high and play magic.”

Charlie Kirk gave his generation more credit than some in the GOP. Despite the criticism, he stood up to the lies of the THC industry. Republicans will never outbid Democrats in the race to the drug culture bottom. Nor should they, as polls show we may have already reached the bottom, with public sentiment now turning against marijuana.

Charlie knew that minds can be changed, but facts cannot. Truth and the future of this great country are worth standing for, regardless of the cost.

Principled conservatives should do more than eulogize Charlie. They should emulate him.

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Matt Poling is a physician, Medical Director of Citizens for a Safe and Healthy Texas, and Faculty Advisor for Texas A&M Young Americans for Freedom. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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