President Donald Trump calls off all meetings with the Islamic regime — suggesting he may come to the aid of Iranian protestors, inflation holds steady as the administration touts an affordability push, and Congress tosses around a funding package to keep the lights on until October.

It’s Wednesday, January 14, 2026, 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:

Trump Puts Iran On Notice

President Trump put Tehran on notice on Tuesday, cutting off discussions with Iranian leaders and telling protesters: “Help is on its way.” Trump posted on Truth Social on Tuesday that “the killers and abusers” in Iran “will pay a big price.” He urged protesters to continue their resistance and to take over institutions. The president also recommended that any Americans in Iran leave as soon as possible. Meanwhile, deaths during the protests appear to have surged past other recent instances of mass demonstrations in Iran. The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency estimates that more than 2,000 people have been killed. The Saudi-funded outlet Iran International estimates a much higher death toll at around 12,000. Thousands more have been arrested. Reports say that 26-year-old Erfan Soltani is expected to be hanged on Wednesday after the government found him guilty of “waging war on God.”

Labor Department Report Shows Inflation Cooling

The latest Labor Department report released Tuesday showed that inflation continues to cool, once again defying expert predictions. The department released its highly anticipated CPI report for December, which showed inflation at 2.7% – tied for the lowest since March 2021. The pace of inflation has fallen dramatically since the 9% peak in 2021. Across former President Joe Biden’s four years in office, the average number was about 5%. The report surprised experts, who had projected a slightly higher number. EJ Antoni, chief economist at The Heritage Foundation, said the report likely understates the cooling, as the indicators used by the Labor Department lag behind reality.

Rep. Brad Finstad Talks Congress’s Latest Funding Package

The House is set to take up a two-bill funding package this week, after the Senate advanced it, as the government faces an end-of-month shutdown deadline. The bipartisan legislation would fully fund agencies like the State and Treasury departments, the IRS, and the federal courts through October, but it currently omits funding for the Department of Homeland Security. Minnesota GOP Rep. Brad Finstad told Morning Wire that one of the priorities of the bills is to “get some fiscal sanity back in our country.” The current version includes a 16% reduction in spending. “It’s an opportunity for us to kind of right-size government,” said Finstad. The package also aims to curb fraud by defunding some USAID programs and increasing reporting standards.

The world today stands at a historical turning point.

Over the past two decades, the West has shown unmistakable signs of decline. Internally, it has lost confidence, been corroded by left-wing Marxist ideology, and been overwhelmed by massive illegal migration. Externally, a new “Axis of Evil” is ascendant, the anti-American alliance of repressive regimes including China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea.

President Donald Trump understands the threat of this alliance — and China in particular — more than his predecessors ever did. And he realizes China cannot be defeated in isolation. It must be strategically surrounded, economically strained, and stripped of its allies.

Armed with this understanding, Trump has moved with speed and clarity so far in his second term. Upon returning to office, Trump reignited the tariff war against China, deliberately targeting Beijing at a moment of extreme vulnerability, after Xi Jinping’s draconian COVID policies had already crippled China’s economy.

Then came decisive blows against China’s key partners.

In late June, Trump authorized the bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities. In September, the U.S. military began striking narco-terrorist vessels operating out of Venezuela. This campaign culminated in the capture of Nicolás Maduro on January 3, 2026, shattering China’s and Russia’s primary foothold in Latin America.

The effects were immediate and dramatic. Thousands of Venezuelan political prisoners were released, achieving in days what decades of U.N. resolutions and human-rights advocacy had failed to accomplish. At the same time, widespread anti-regime protests that erupted in Iran in late December began to intensify.

Reports have emerged that Iranian demonstrators openly appealed to Trump for help. Trump publicly expressed support for the protesters, telling them, “help is on the way,” and warning Iranian leaders, “you better not start shooting because we’ll start shooting too.”

Beijing is watching with horror, knowing the same could one day happen in China. What we are witnessing is the rapid unraveling of the New Axis of Evil.

For the Chinese Communist Party, unrest in Iran and regime collapse in Venezuela represent strategic disasters. China is losing key partners, critical energy access, and geopolitical leverage — along with up to $100 billion in Venezuelan investments that are now effectively unrecoverable. Worse, these crises expose Beijing’s inability to protect or stabilize its allied dictatorships.

The dominoes do not stop there. Without Venezuelan oil subsidies, Cuba — the longest-lasting communist regime in the Western Hemisphere — cannot survive. North Korea, effectively a CCP client state, faces an even grimmer future as China’s own economy deteriorates. Russia, the last major pillar of this bloc, is bogged down in its costly war in Ukraine and increasingly dependent on Chinese economic lifelines — lifelines that are themselves fraying.

After the Maduro capture, the American Left condemned Trump for violating international law. They fail to grasp a fundamental reality: international law has already collapsed. The greatest rule-breaker is Communist China, which violated nearly every international rule and norm on its path to superpower status. Trump does not seek to restrain rule-breakers with fantasies. He seeks to dismantle the ecosystems that sustain them.

This is the essence of the Trump Doctrine: sever the links that allow repressive regimes to support one another, clear hostile powers out of America’s strategic backyard, and prevent regional conflicts from metastasizing into global catastrophe. From Latin America to the Arctic, Trump has moved to block Chinese and Russian encroachment — including openly asserting American strategic interests in Greenland, which Beijing and Moscow had already penetrated while Denmark stood idle.

And the president is just getting started. Days into the new year, Trump proposed the creation of a “Dream Military,” calling for a 2027 defense budget of $1.5 trillion — an increase of more than 66%.

By raising the military and technological bar across the board, the United States forces China into an impossible choice: fall further behind, or attempt to keep pace and cripple itself through runaway military spending, technological isolation, and economic slowdown. The Soviet Union faced this very dilemma — and collapsed.

Trump does not need to defeat the CCP in battle. He only needs to force it into a competition it cannot afford.

And that is how empires fall. From within.

Xi Van Fleet and Yu Jie are authors of the forthcoming book “Made in America: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Enabled Communist China and Created Our Greatest Threat.”