There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true. —Soren Kierkegaard. "…truth is true even if nobody believes it, and falsehood is false even if everybody believes it. That is why truth does not yield to opinion, fashion, numbers, office, or sincerity–it is simply true and that is the end of it" – Os Guinness, Time for Truth, pg.39. “He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God’s providence to lead him aright.” – Blaise Pascal. "There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily" – George Washington letter to Edmund Randolph — 1795. We live in a “post-truth” world. According to the dictionary, “post-truth” means, “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” Simply put, we now live in a culture that seems to value experience and emotion more than truth. Truth will never go away no matter how hard one might wish. Going beyond the MSM idealogical opinion/bias and their low information tabloid reality show news with a distractional superficial focus on entertainment, sensationalism, emotionalism and activist reporting – this blogs goal is to, in some small way, put a plug in the broken dam of truth and save as many as possible from the consequences—temporal and eternal. "The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those who speak it." – George Orwell “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” ― Soren Kierkegaard
New York City socialists are organizing thousands of anti-ICE activists in preparation for what they expect will be a major increase in federal immigration enforcement in the city, according to remarks made at a recent meeting of the Democratic Socialists of America, as reported by The New York Post.
Members of the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America outlined the plan Thursday during a monthly meeting of the group’s Immigrant Justice Working Group.
The gathering was held at the People’s Forum in Midtown Manhattan, a venue that has been linked to Chinese Communist Party-affiliated groups and features imagery of communist figures, including Fidel Castro and Che Guevara.
The meeting drew more than 100 attendees. Organizers said the group is preparing for what they described as an imminent crackdown on illegal immigration by federal authorities.
“As we’ve seen in other cities, we still do anticipate a big wave of federal immigration enforcement,” said a DSA leader who identified herself only as Marina.
“It can be confusing, it can be scary, it can be kind of uncertain what’s happening in New York right now. . . . But we want to be on our front foot if and when it does.”
According to speakers at the meeting, the NYC DSA plans to train approximately 2,000 DSA members and another 2,000 non-members to participate in “rapid response” teams designed to confirm ICE sightings and confront agents during enforcement actions.
The group also plans to activate roughly 50 additional trainers and expand staffing of its ICE hotline to operate around the clock.
“If you speak Pular, if you speak Creole, if you speak Fulani – come find us,” one leader told the crowd. “We really want you on the team.”
Organizers did not disclose the cost of the expanded operations but repeatedly solicited donations throughout the nearly two-hour meeting. At one point, a leader circulated the room collecting cash contributions.
Several attendees said they were first-time participants motivated by the death of Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old Minneapolis woman who was fatally shot by an ICE agent earlier this month during a confrontation.
Leaders said the activist tactics used in Minnesota would serve as a model for similar efforts in New York City.
“ICE is a violent organization and has been emboldened to respond to a lot of the work that many of you participated in,” one leader said.
DSA member Landry, a tenant organizer from Crown Heights, criticized federal immigration enforcement, saying, “The immigrant crisis is part of the US imperialist project, and yet we treat immigrants to the experience of ICE.”
The group’s strategy includes showing up in large numbers to swarm ICE agents and use noise to disrupt operations.
Marina described the tactic as “form a crowd, stay loud,” which includes the use of rape whistles to alert neighborhoods.
“If you’re interested in doing this kind of work, we can hook you up with whistles,” Marina said.
“We do have a lot of whistles,” added Leemah Nasrati, a pro bono refugee lawyer who helps lead the group’s “Know Your Rights” trainings.
DSA leaders said whistle signals would carry through neighborhoods to warn residents of ICE presence. The group has been canvassing areas including Chinatown, Bushwick, and Jackson Heights to recruit participants.
“There are more of us than them,” Nasrati said, urging attendees to join a vetted Signal chat to participate in the group’s rapid response efforts.
The organizing push comes as ICE has expanded its workforce and enforcement activity nationwide.
According to reporting by WIRED, a senior White House source said after recent operations in Minnesota that “California and New York are next.”
ICE said a recent nationwide operation resulted in the arrest of criminal illegal migrants convicted of crimes including forcible rape, aggravated sexual assault of a child, and strangulation.
“ICE law enforcement officers are sending criminal illegal aliens where they should have been all along – HOME for the holidays,” Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in December.
Earlier this month, the Department of Homeland Security announced plans to open a new ICE detention facility in Chester, New York, about an hour north of the city.
The facility would hold 1,500 illegal migrants and more than double regional detention capacity.
The only current ICE detention center serving the New York City area is a 1,000-bed facility in Newark, which was reopened last year under President Donald Trump.
Federal officials have said the expanded detention capacity is expected to coincide with increased ICE enforcement across the New York City region.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller has accused Minnesota Democratic leaders of orchestrating an “insurrection” by protecting criminal illegal immigrants and allowing violent mobs to obstruct federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations.
Miller discussed the issue during an appearance on Saturday’s episode of Fox News’ My View with Lara Trump.
Minneapolis has been plagued with protests and riots since December, when ICE agents began a massive operation in the city.
The riots have been escalating in severity since the fatal shooting of 37-year-old Renee Good by an ICE agent as she plowed her car into him earlier this month.
Miller placed the blame for the chaos and violence directly on Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey.
“Foreign illegals who rape children… are protected at every level by Minnesota leadership,” Miller stated during the interview.
Miller continued, “When ICE goes to arrest them, they unleash violent mobs to attack and impede officers!”
He described the actions of Walz, Frey, and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison as a deliberate “violent insurrection” against federal immigration enforcement.
Miller argued that allowing cities and states to nullify federal immigration laws undermines the republic, accusing the leaders of inciting “outside agitators” to violence.
WATCH:
BREAKING: Stephen Miller publicly accuses Tim Walz and Mayor Frey of INSURRECTION
“Foreign illegals who R*PE children… protected at every level by MN leadership. When ICE goes to arrest them, they unleash violent MOBS to attack and impede officers!” pic.twitter.com/CcgpPaoU3k
During the riot on Wednesday evening, militants reportedly destroyed multiple ICE agent cars, stealing items, vandalizing them, and even breaking into an agent’s gun box in the street.
“Anti-ICE rioters tied a TOW ROPE to a weapons locker in a federal vehicle and RIPPED IT OUT with a pickup truck, as Minneapolis PD REFUSED to respond,”
BREAKING: Anti-ICE rioters tied a TOW ROPE to a weapons locker in a federal vehicle and RIPPED IT OUT with a pickup truck, as Minneapolis PD REFUSED to respond
President Donald Trump has threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act if state leaders continue to “obstruct” ICE operations, but has not done so as of Saturday evening.
“If the corrupt politicians of Minnesota don’t obey the law and stop the professional agitators and insurrectionists from attacking the Patriots of I.C.E., who are only trying to do their job, I will institute the INSURRECTION ACT, which many Presidents have done before me, and quickly put an end to the travesty that is taking place in that once great State,” Trump wrote a post on Truth Social on Thursday.
President Trump is looking at dropping the hammer on Minneapolis in the coming days after threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act last week.
As The Washington Post reported, the Trump Administration has ordered roughly 1,500 active-duty soldiers to be on standby for deployment to Minnesota following the massive anti-ICE riots over the past several days.
These riots have reached a new and dangerous level following the ICE self-defense shooting of leftist protester Renee Good.
Here are more details on the possible deployment from The Post:
The soldiers are assigned to two infantry battalions with the Army’s 11th Airborne Division, which is based in Alaska and specializes in cold-weather operations.
The Army placed the units on prepare-to-deploy orders in case violence in Minnesota escalates, officials said, characterizing the move as “prudent planning.”
It is not clear whether any of them will be sent to the state, the officials said, speaking like some others on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military planning.
The Trump White House responded to the report by telling The Washington Post that it’s common for the Department of War “to be prepared for any decision the President may or may not make.”
CBS News and ABC News also reported that Trump was considering preparing to deploy the troops.
The Gateway Pundit’s Cassandra Macdonald previously reported that Trump did not hold back on Thursday morning while responding to the attacks on ICE agents in Minneapolis, warning he will invoke the Insurrection Act if Minnesota politicians fail to rein in the “professional agitators and insurrectionists.”
This warning came after a night of extreme chaos in the city, which included an agent having to fire a defensive round after being attacked with a shovel handle by an illegal alien and rioters robbing paperwork and weapons from an ICE vehicle.
“If the corrupt politicians of Minnesota don’t obey the law and stop the professional agitators and insurrectionists from attacking the Patriots of I.C.E., who are only trying to do their job, I will institute the INSURRECTION ACT, which many Presidents have done before me, and quickly put an end to the travesty that is taking place in that once great State.”
The president added, “Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DJT.”
Invoking the Insurrection Act is generally considered a last resort, but with the nonstop mayhem in Minneapolis, Trump may have no choice.
Minneapolis Misinformation and Gaslighting Nate Jackson Video evidence indicates a justifiable shooting of a radical left-wing activist, despite Democrats’ attempts to cast her as an innocent bystander.
Yes, It’s Insurrection in Minnesota Douglas Andrews Donald Trump is mulling whether to call in federal troops to quell the leftist uprising in Minneapolis, but there’s no question that he has the constitutional authority to do so.
ICE Watch Comes Under Scrutiny Michael Swartz With all the recruiting, training, and money being poured into the “Resistance,” it’s only a matter of time before the Left gets its next martyr.
‘Negative Net Migration for the First Time in 50 Years’ Brian Mark Weber President Trump’s policies of closing the border, deporting criminal aliens, and incentivizing other illegals to leave have been remarkably effective.
Deaths by Fentanyl Are in Decline Emmy Griffin This deadly drug has become harder to find, and there are multiple explanations for this welcome development.
Grok’s AI Tomfoolery Samantha Koch The artificial intelligence brand has an image feature called Imagine that enables “spicy” edits, which users have exploited to create fake nude images of unsuspecting people.
Somali Fraud Exposes Fallacy of Multiculturalism Thomas Gallatin Rampant welfare fraud by Somalis in Minnesota and Maine exposes that culture matters when determining American immigration policies.
Stop the Bleeding! Jack DeVine In the wake of the ICE shooting in Minneapolis, perhaps it’s time to face the reality that political violence is not just a talking point.
Questions About Wreaths Across America Mark Alexander Many of our readers have a connection with WAA and Christmas wreath placements honoring Veterans, but financial issues need to be resolved.
Trump’s Lawfare Push Is Damaging the DOJ Thomas Gallatin Reputable prosecutors are leaving the Department of Justice over concerns the agency is focusing too much on Trump’s enemies.
The Deep Disgrace of Jack Smith Douglas Andrews Even the Trump-deranged enemies of our 47th president now realize that the special prosecutor’s case against him was utterly without merit.
The Credentialed and the Clueless Michael Smith Research shows intelligence makes it easier to defend false beliefs, not correct them.
The World Holds Its Breath on Iran Emmy Griffin The Iranian regime is orchestrating a massacre, crossing President Trump’s red line. The world now waits to see what he will do in response.
What’s in ‘The Great Healthcare Plan’? Nate Jackson President Trump presented the framework of a plan to redirect subsidies, negotiate lower prices, and increase transparency in the market.
QUOTES Incitement to Violence “Armed ICE agents in an unmarked vehicle detained three North Seattle neighbors. … This latest abuse comes on the heels of the murder of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis by federal agents.” —Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson “We can all see that video and come to our own conclusions that that ICE agent murdered a woman in Minneapolis, and it is a glimpse into what has been a year full of cruelty.” —New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani “When I look at that video, I see murder. And I think we should call it that.” —Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA) “ICE has been carrying out state-sanctioned violence in our communities. … And that has tragically led to this murder that we all watched on TV.” —Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) “This has now turned into what our greatest fear is and has been for a long time around ICE — that this will be used as an anti-civilian force that has no accountability. At the end of the day, what we saw [last week] is a murder, and murders in cold blood need to be prosecuted.” —Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) “I understand that Vice President Vance believes that shooting a young mother of three in the face three times is an acceptable America that he wants to live in, and I do not.” —Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez “Every single person in the United States of America … whoever you are, you have to worry now that an ICE agent is going to come and shoot at you and kill you.” —Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) Persona Non Grata “The ICE agent walked away with a hip injury that he might as well have gotten from closing a refrigerator door with his hips. He was not injured. … Give me a break. No, he was not ran over. He walked out of there with a hop in his step.” —Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey “Come on, guys. … I dropped an F-bomb. They killed somebody. Which one of those is more inflammatory? I’m going with the killing somebody.” —Jacob Frey Democrats: The Party of Crime and Chaos “We should not have ICE agents patrolling our streets. They’re not needed, they create chaos, and they even create deaths.” —Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) Straight From the Horse’s Mouth Q: “Do you have a job?” —Fox News’s Laura Ingraham A: “I’m getting paid right now! Shame! Shame! Shame!” —an anti-ICE protester The BIG Lies “[Renee Good was] not involved in protest activity or anything. Seems to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.” —Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) “We have someone dead, in their car, for no reason whatsoever.” —Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz “Let’s be very, very clear: This long ago stopped being a matter of immigration enforcement. Instead, it’s a campaign of organized brutality against the people of Minnesota by our own federal government.” —Tim Walz “You had a person that was definitively trying to just get out of there.” —Jacob Frey “Let’s stick to the fact. The man [ICE Agent Jonathan Ross] shot the woman [Renee Good]. He had no reason to shoot her.” —”The View” co-host Whoopi Goldberg “I remember when Charlie Kirk got killed. … Our response wasn’t to sit there and pretend like it was okay.” —Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) Leftist Hysteria “We should and we can do it all. Use everything we can to say that we want our democracy back, and we’re not going to let these fascist authoritarians take over this country.” —Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-FL) Never Let a Crisis Go to Waste “ICE is beyond reform. ICE is totally out of control. And this week, I intend to introduce a bill to abolish ICE. We need to make ICE go away.” —Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-MI) Braying Jennies “Officials [are] saying [Renee Good] was dangerous, not just some innocent mother of three. Just like they say Kilmar Abrego Garcia isn’t just a Maryland father.” —MS Now’s Katy Tur “The violent criminals seem to be in the agency.” —Whoopi Goldberg regarding ICE False Equivalence “From Tehran to my birthplace of Minneapolis, people are rising up against systems that wield violence without accountability. In Iran, brave protestors confront a far-right theocratic regime that crushes dissent and denies basic freedoms. Here at home, tens of thousands are marching after the fatal ICE shooting of Renee Good — demanding justice, transparency, and an end to an unchecked federal force that takes lives and tears families apart.” —DNC Chairman Ken Martin Demagogue “I get that there are [Venezuelans] that don’t like the leader, but guess what? There are a lot of people that don’t like our leader.” —Jasmine Crockett Spin Doctor “We should spend a lot more time … looking at American citizens, looking at white men.” —Rep. Emily Randall (D-WA) regarding Somali fraud What Could Possibly Go Wrong? “We are not short on good ideas. … Free buses, freeze the rent, and deliver no-cost childcare.” —Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) Non Compos Mentis “For cisginger [sic] girls, they can play consistent with their gender identity. For transgender girls, they can’t.” —Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson “We do not have a definition [of sex] for the Court.” —ACLU attorney Kathleen Hartnett to Justice Samuel Alito “The very fact that we’re talking about the difference between biological males and cisgender males [has] been foisted upon us by a campaign of fear being driven by the Right against some women who want to participate in women’s sports.” —MS NOW senior legal reporter Lisa Rubin Yellow Journalism “U.S. in midst of ‘genocidal process against trans people’: study.” —Washington Blade headline “Mother of 3 who loved to sing and write poetry shot and killed by ICE in Minneapolis.” —CNN headline “Minnesota shooting solidifies the anxieties of people who track ICE.” —CNN headline “Scott Adams, Disgraced Dilbert Creator, Dies at 68.” —People Magazine headline North Is South “You don’t overeat and become obese. Obesity causes you to overeat.” —Oprah Winfrey For more insightful quotes, see our Short Cuts.
“The eyes of the world being thus on our Country, it is put the more on its good behavior, and under the greater obligation also, to do justice to the Tree of Liberty by an exhibition of the fine fruits we gather from it.” —James Madison (1824)
Americans are spending money: Economic news in Donald Trump’s administration has been better than under Joe Biden’s, but it’s not yet the explosive growth many have been hoping for. It’s probably too soon to say “the economy is booming,” but consumer confidence seems high. Retail sales were up 0.6% in November, higher than expected, and holiday sales were up over 1.9% in specialty shops. Another highly positive sign is the economy’s 5.3% annual growth rate in the fourth quarter of 2025. Still, inflation for the past year was down significantly from the Biden era but still hurting Americans’ spending power. 2025 showed signs of an improving economy, and this year began with evidence of consumer confidence and expectations of larger tax refunds in the upcoming season. 2026 may be the year when Americans can finally say, “The economy is booming.”
House passes spending and foreign aid bills: Omnibus congressional spending bills with price tags in the trillions have unfortunately become normalized in recent years. That’s why the House of Representatives’ vote on Wednesday to pass two spending bills totaling only $77 billion deserves some kudos. In a 341-79 vote, lawmakers passed two spending bills for fiscal year 2026 for foreign aid and financial services agencies. “When done the right way, funding the government is not a single vote,” said Appropriations Committee Chair Tom Cole. One bill funds the State Department and foreign aid programs to the tune of $50 billion, while the other funds the Treasury Department and some agencies for $27 billion. With this vote, the House has passed eight of 12 annual spending bills that Congress gave itself until January 30 to pass. The Senate is working more slowly but remains on track for the deadline.
Greenland meeting ends with no deal: A contingent of Danish officials and members of the Trump administration, led by Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, met at the White House on Wednesday to discuss President Trump’s desire for the U.S. to acquire Greenland. Following the meeting, a Danish official observed a “fundamental disagreement” over Greenland, which is currently a semi-autonomous Danish territory. Trump responded to the lack of agreement, stating, “We need Greenland for national security. We’ll see how it all works out. I think something will work out.” Both Danish and Greenlandic officials have expressed resistance to Trump’s aims, with Denmark, a NATO member, planning to increase its military presence around the territory. The two sides have agreed to create a “high-level working group” to continue discussing the issue.
Moratorium on sanctuary city/state funding: “Starting February 1, we’re not making any payments to sanctuary cities or states,” said President Trump to the Detroit Economic Club, “because they do everything possible to protect criminals.” Trump’s announcement comes as a massive fraud scheme in Minnesota is still being uncovered and taxpayers are being ripped off. Blue cities and states will face immediate budget issues if Trump is successful, but this action will certainly face roadblocks from the Left. A Biden-appointed judge just blocked the administration temporarily from stopping subsidies to Minnesota programs involved in fraud. Still, Trump is right — radical action is needed to impose law and order on lawless sanctuary jurisdictions.
Trump meets Machado, Vance tanks War Powers assault: Nobel Peace Prize recipient María Corina Machado will meet with President Trump at the White House today. Machado has led the opposition to Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, only to have the Maduro regime reject election results and retain power. Now, following the U.S. operation to capture, arrest, and remove Maduro from power, Machado is making the case that she should become Venezuela’s new leader. Trump has thus far worked with Maduro’s vice president and current leader, Delcy Rodriguez. Meanwhile, on Wednesday, JD Vance cast the tiebreaking Senate vote against a resolution that sought to limit Trump’s war powers regarding Venezuela. Two of the five Republican senators — Josh Hawley and Todd Young — who had sided with Democrats and initially voted to advance the resolution flipped and voted against it, resulting in a 50-50 tie.
Visa processing suspended for 75 countries: The State Department announced that it will implement a temporary pause on immigrant visa processing from 75 countries, including Somalia, Russia, Afghanistan, Iran, Nigeria, and Yemen. The visa pause is set to begin on January 21. No end date has been established, as the State Department will be engaged in reevaluating and reassessing its visa processing. State Department spokesman Tommy Piggott explained, “The State Department will use its long-standing authority to deem ineligible potential immigrants who would become a public charge on the United States and exploit the generosity of the American people.” The massive welfare fraud scandal in Minnesota, which has primarily been promulgated by Somali immigrants, appears to be a major factor driving this decision.
ICE agent’s wounds: Though the propaganda media would have you believe that the ICE agent who was forced to shoot Renee Good wasn’t even hurt, let alone hit by her car, agent Jonathan Ross did suffer injuries. The veteran ICE agent was able to walk away, but he was hospitalized due to internal bleeding in his torso as a result of the incident. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem told reporters, “He went to the hospital, a doctor did treat him, he has been released, but he’s gonna spend some time with his family.” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey had mocked and lied about the agent’s condition: “The ICE agent walked away with a hip injury that he might as well have gotten from closing a refrigerator door with his hips.” The “refrigerator door” in question weighed 4,000 pounds and was accelerating, ramming into the agent’s body.
HHS sends money back to PP: The Trump administration has quietly restored government funding to Planned Parenthood, despite the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that cut funding to the nation’s leading abortion provider. The news obviously angered pro-life conservatives, but there is more to the story. The ACLU recently dropped a lawsuit against the Department of Health and Human Services, which it had raised over the agency’s withholding of over $65 million in Title X grants to abortion clinics. The issue is that HHS began withholding funding to PP before the law was changed. According to CatholicVote’s Tom McClusky, HHS was “virtually certain to lose the lawsuit, forcing them to repay the full amount plus interest and cover attorneys’ fees.” A former HHS official observed, “HHS was caught in a tough spot because the judge was almost certainly going to rule against them.”
Men don’t get pregnant: Congress called witnesses to a hearing on the use of chemical murder abortion drugs yesterday. One of those witnesses, Dr. Nisha Verma, was called by Democrats as an expert witness. Conservatives used their time to ask Dr. Verma a simple question: “Can men get pregnant?” After Sen. Josh Hawley gave her five chances to answer, the best Nisha could come up with was, “I think yes-no questions like this are a political tool.” Well, she’s right — they have become political tools, but only because leftists have bafflingly decided that the question about men and pregnancy is too difficult for them to answer. Any honest person, even without the aid of a biology degree or a doctorate in medicine, can answer that question: No, men cannot get pregnant. Apparently, a Democrat qualification to be an expert witness is to throw common sense out the window.
Headlines
Kristi Noem faces impeachment effort in House (Fox News)
Who’s funding the aggressive anti-ICE tactics? (Daily Signal)
Undercover video prompts suspension of Secret Service agent (NewsNation)
FBI wrongly questioned agents’ support for Trump, religious beliefs, COVID vaccine status (Washington Times)
Humor: Five-year-old brought in to explain difference between boys and girls to Supreme Court (Babylon Bee)
The Executive News Summary is compiled daily by Jordan Candler, Thomas Gallatin, Sterling Henry, and Sophie Starkova. For the archive, click here.
The FBI searched a home yesterday morning as part of an investigation surrounding illegally kept classified documents. It’s a story we’ve heard all too often in recent years, but since the subject of the raid is not named Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, or Donald Trump, it won’t get the same level of attention.
The subject in this case is Hannah Natanson, a reporter for The Washington Post. She “was at her home in Virginia at the time of the search,” reported the Post. “Federal agents searched her home and her devices, seizing her phone, two laptops and a Garmin watch. One of the laptops was her personal computer, the other a Post-issued laptop.”
Furthermore, “Investigators told Natanson that she is not the focus of the probe. The warrant said that law enforcement was investigating Aurelio Perez-Lugones, a system administrator in Maryland who has a top-secret security clearance and has been accused of accessing and taking home classified intelligence reports from secure government facilities that were later found in his lunch box and his basement, according to an FBI affidavit.”
Traditionally, most people — especially journalists — view journalists as having special protection against such searches because of the “chilling” effect we’re always told such things have on the First Amendment right to freedom of the press. I don’t say it that way to sound dismissive of fundamental rights but to highlight the high regard with which journalists hold themselves. They behave like activists and then expect to be utterly immune from consequences.
They seem to think a former president can be prosecuted for felonies relating to classified information, but that they are immunized from even the inconvenience of a search warrant.
Perez-Lugones was arrested last week for leaks about Venezuela because, as Attorney General Pam Bondi said, “The Trump Administration will not tolerate illegal leaks of classified information that, when reported, pose a grave risk to our Nation’s national security and the brave men and women who are serving our country.”
Just today, our Thomas Gallatin warns that Trump’s Justice Department is crossing some lines to engage in lawfare that looks an awful lot like the efforts of the previous administration. As if to illustrate that point, this raid hearkens back to actions taken by the last two Democrat presidents.
Living in what seems like an alternate reality, an accompanying Washington Post story bears this headline: “Journalists confront new reality in reporting after FBI raid.” The article begins by playing up the fear and butt-covering response of other reporters, who “said they moved swiftly to secure their phones and laptops, reassure confidential sources and consult newsroom leaders as they worried about the federal government’s seizure of devices containing sensitive information.”
Again, I’m not saying that journalists or their sources don’t deserve rights and protections, including, in some cases, anonymity. In fact, quite the opposite. I’m also saying that Democrat administrations did the same thing Trump’s DOJ is doing now.
Ask James Rosen, Catherine Herridge, and Sharyl Attkisson about the experience of having personal tech items seized or otherwise being subject to government pressure. The Post could have asked them, but instead doesn’t name any of them. Its story obliquely mentions Rosen only as “a Fox News reporter,” and the Post’s implication is actually to praise then-Attorney General Eric Holder for his response to that episode.
The Post also brings up other investigations by the first Trump administration, again heroically casting Biden’s attorney general, Merrick Garland, as a stalwart defender of a free press for his subsequent actions that “banned using search warrants and subpoenas to obtain journalists’ materials or compel testimony about their sources.”
Bondi reversed that order, though the Post says she “reinstated much of Holder’s framework.”
Journalists do have enumerated protection in the First Amendment. They do have a duty to hold the government accountable for how it comports with the U.S. Constitution. They do have the right to confidential sources so that appropriate whistleblowing can take place. Any government action against reporters better have rock-solid justification.
The rub with this story is that so many Leftmedia reporters simply have an ax to grind only against Republican administrations and politicians. They’re blind to or utterly shameless in their own hypocrisy because they are effectively agents working on behalf of the Democrat Party. That’s almost doubly true of The Washington Post, which, for example, won a Pulitzer for its bogus reporting on the Russia-collusion hoax. And that’s why I can’t help but roll my eyes at the Post’s outrage here.
Thomas Gallatin: Trump’s Lawfare Push Is Damaging the DOJ — Reputable prosecutors are leaving the Department of Justice over concerns the agency is focusing too much on Trump’s enemies.
Emmy Griffin: Independents Are the Dominant Voter Bloc — Both parties are losing the new generation of voters. The Left’s vision is to keep pushing Democrats further to the left, whereas the Right is too quick to claim victory.
Samantha Koch: Grok’s AI Tomfoolery — The artificial intelligence brand has an image feature called Imagine that enables “spicy” edits, which users have exploited to create fake nude images of unsuspecting people.
Patrick Hampton: The Hypocrisy of American Feminism — As Iranian women bravely fight for their rights, risking everything in the face of oppression, American feminists are caught up in identity politics.
Jerry Rogers: Chaos by Design — How political rhetoric turns routine ICE encounters into flashpoints.
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Editor’s Note: Each week we receive hundreds of comments and correspondences — and we read every one of them. Click here for a few thought-provoking comments about specific articles. The views expressed therein don’t necessarily reflect those of The Patriot Post.
Latest PodcastPopCon #129: Hey ChatGPT, What is a Person?TIME Magazine’s Person of the Year isn’t a person anymore. In this episode of “The Pop Culture Contrarian,” Thomas, Sterling, and Andrew tackle a deceptively simple question that’s about to become unavoidable: What is a person?
“The very fact that we’re talking about the difference between biological males and cisgender males [has] been foisted upon us by a campaign of fear being driven by the Right against some women who want to participate in women’s sports.” —MS NOW senior legal reporter Lisa Rubin
North Is South
“You don’t overeat and become obese. Obesity causes you to overeat.” —Oprah Winfrey
Leftist Hysteria
“We should and we can do it all. Use everything we can to say that we want our democracy back, and we’re not going to let these fascist authoritarians take over this country.” —Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-FL)
The BIG Lie
“Let’s stick to the fact. The man [ICE Agent Jonathan Ross] shot the woman [Renee Good]. He had no reason to shoot her.” —”The View” co-host Whoopi Goldberg
Never Let a Crisis Go to Waste
“ICE is beyond reform. ICE is totally out of control. And this week, I intend to introduce a bill to abolish ICE. We need to make ICE go away.” —Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-MI)
For the Record
“I don’t blame ICE. I don’t blame Rebecca. I don’t blame Renee. … If we’re walking in the Spirit of God, I don’t think she would have been there.” —Timmy Macklin, Renee Good’s former father-in-law
Re: The Left
“Death threats are up over 8,000%, actual assaults up 1,300%. I know because threats against me and my family have tripled in the last couple of weeks.” —Border Czar Tom Homan
“The ‘warmth of collectivism’ fails again and again. It’s failing now in Cuba, North Korea, Nicaragua and Venezuela. It was tried and abandoned in the Soviet Union, Mongolia, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Angola, Mozambique, Benin, the Congo, Somalia, Grenada and Cambodia.” —John Stossel
“Republicans must brand the Democratic Party as what it has become — the vehicle leading our nation to fiscal and social bankruptcy.” —Star Parker
The Bottom Line
“If you tell banks they can only charge 10%, they will stop lending to anyone who presents meaningful risk. … The result would be fewer cards issued, lower credit limits, stricter underwriting and the quiet disappearance of credit for precisely the people Trump claims to be protecting.” —Ian Haworth
Coup de Grâce
“If the regime actually falls and is replaced by an allied or non-hostile government in Iran, it would move a large piece off the strategic chessboard for our enemies, and change the geopolitical balance of the Middle East. As much as the 1979 revolution was a debacle to the West, a favorable 2026 revolution would be a boon — to the Iranians and to us and our allies.” —Rich Lowry
Belly Laugh of the Day
“Our country is under attack by a bunch of bored white lesbians. First we had anarchists, now we have AUNTarchists.” —satirist Jimmy Failla
ON THIS DAY in 1929, Martin Luther King Jr. was born. Nationally, Ronald Reagan signed legislation designating the third Monday in January as the official observance of his birthday. As we note every year now, Democrats have turned King’s dream into a nightmare.
President Donald Trump did not hold back on Thursday morning while responding to the attacks on ICE agents in Minneapolis, warning he will invoke the Insurrection Act if Minnesota politicians fail to rein in the “professional agitators and insurrectionists.”
Trump’s statement comes after a night of extreme chaos in the city, which included an agent having to fire a defensive round after being attacked with a shovel handle by an illegal alien and rioters robbing paperwork and weapons from an ICE vehicle.
🚨 BREAKING: Minneapolis rioters successfully BROKE OPEN a weapons locker in a federal vehicle and STOLE A RIFLE and ammunition before fleeing
I captured the thief’s face and license plate on the getaway vehicle.
“Minneapolis rioters successfully BROKE OPEN a weapons locker in a federal vehicle and STOLE A RIFLE and ammunition before fleeing,” independent journalist Nick Sortor wrote on X, with a video he filmed of the incident.
Trump responded to the mayhem in a post to Truth Social on Thursday morning.
The president wrote:
“If the corrupt politicians of Minnesota don’t obey the law and stop the professional agitators and insurrectionists from attacking the Patriots of I.C.E., who are only trying to do their job, I will institute the INSURRECTION ACT, which many Presidents have done before me, and quickly put an end to the travesty that is taking place in that once great State,” Trump wrote in his post.
The president added, “Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DJT.”
The day before, an ICE agent was forced to shoot an illegal alien in the leg after he and accomplices attacked him.
DHS wrote in a press release:
In an attempt to evade arrest, the subject fled the scene in his vehicle and crashed into a parked car. The subject then fled on foot.
The law enforcement officer caught up to the subject on foot and attempted to apprehend him when the subject began to resist and violently assault the officer. While the subject and law enforcement were in a struggle on the ground, two subjects came out of a nearby apartment and also attacked the law enforcement officer with a snow shovel and broom handle.
As the officer was being ambushed and attacked by the two individuals, the original subject got loose and began striking the officer with a shovel or broom stick.
Fearing for his life and safety as he was being ambushed by three individuals, the officer fired a defensive shot to defend his life. The initial subject was hit in the leg.
All three subjects ran back into the apartment and barricaded themselves inside.
The attacked officer and subject are both in the hospital. Both attackers are in custody.
This attack on another brave member of law enforcement took place while Minnesota’s top leaders, Governor Walz and Mayor Frey, are actively encouraging an organized resistance to ICE and federal law enforcement officers.
During the riot on Wednesday evening, militants reportedly destroyed multiple ICE agent cars, stealing items, vandalizing them, and even breaking into an agent’s gun box in the street.
“Anti-ICE rioters tied a TOW ROPE to a weapons locker in a federal vehicle and RIPPED IT OUT with a pickup truck, as Minneapolis PD REFUSED to respond,”
🚨 BREAKING: Anti-ICE rioters tied a TOW ROPE to a weapons locker in a federal vehicle and RIPPED IT OUT with a pickup truck, as Minneapolis PD REFUSED to respond
More generally speaking, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has reported a jaw dropping 1300% increase in assaults against officers and a 3200% increase in vehicular attacks, attributed to radical rhetoric from sanctuary politicians.
“It should be the highest ambition of every American to extend his views beyond himself, and to bear in mind that his conduct will not only affect himself, his country, and his immediate posterity; but that its influence may be co-extensive with the world, and stamp political happiness or misery on ages yet unborn.” —George Washington (1789)
Inflation holds steady: According to this morning’s report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, December’s 2.7% annualized inflation rate matched expectations, buoying hopes that the Federal Reserve’s long-targeted 2% annual inflation rate may be within reach. Core inflation, excluding volatile food and energy, rose at 2.6% annually. One of the leading elements of inflation — shelter costs — rose by 0.4% in December, the largest increase in three months. Food prices also rose, increasing 0.7% on the month. Recreational costs increased by 1.2%, the largest monthly gain ever recorded dating back to 1993. The issue of housing affordability has yet to diminish. In short, the report is a mixed bag as the inflation Democrats created in 2021 persists.
Credit card interest cap? The current average interest rate on a credit card, according to one study, is 19.65%. President Donald Trump is encouraging credit companies to cap their rates at just 10% for one year, starting on January 20, 2026. The idea has bipartisan congressional support in both the House and Senate, but it’s not without its critics. Advocates point to the massive credit card debt Americans hold, which topped $1.2 trillion in the third quarter of 2025, and to companies’ ability to turn a profit even with lower rates. Critics argue that a rate cut will likely reduce credit availability, especially for risky borrowers and those with credit scores below 600. Government attempts to dictate free-market policies almost never work, yet our credit-based economy has led the average American household to amass over $10,000 in credit card debt.
Minnesota sues feds: If anyone was still wondering if The Gopher State was complicit in the massive fraud schemes that may exceed $9 billion in stolen taxpayer funds, the fact that the state is now suing to stop the deployment of federal law enforcement may clear up the matter. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison argued that his state was being targeted by a surge of law enforcement for its “diversity,” “democracy,” and “differences of opinion.” No, Mr. Ellison, it’s because of the fraud. The suit names the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul as plaintiffs, with DHS, ICE, and Customs and Border Protection officials named as defendants. As a White House spokesman noted, “This pathetic stunt only proves that Democrats will put illegal criminals over hardworking Americans every time.”
Renee Good’s family cashes in: Renee Good’s determination to obstruct law enforcement and striking an ICE officer with her car tragically ended in her death. But for Good’s lesbian “wife,” Becca, the story didn’t end there. Moments before Good’s death, Becca can be heard on video screaming, “Drive, baby, drive,” encouraging Renee in the illegal act that led to her death. Now, Becca and Good’s family have received $1.5 million from a GoFundMe fundraiser. A similar fundraiser for ICE agent Jonathan Ross, who acted in self-defense after being struck by Good’s car, has raised only $175,000. The Good family fundraiser triples that of one set up for the family of Iryna Zarutska, who was slain by a homicidal train passenger for no reason at all while she minded her own business.
Fraud consumes a lot of money: With welfare fraud exposed as a major problem in Minnesota, journalist Christopher Rufo wondered about the cost of fraud to the federal government in a recent interview with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. The government estimates that between $300 billion and $600 billion annually is lost to fraud. “That’s not my number, that’s the General Accounting Office,” Bessent noted. “So, it’s about 10% of the federal budget, 1 to 2% of GDP.” He added, “If we can narrow that number, President Trump asks for a $500 billion increase in the defense budget to fortify the 10, 20 years of neglect. … If we can get rid of this fraud, waste, and abuse, we can finance a safer, sounder U.S. without taking on more debt.” President Trump has made cracking down on fraud a primary focus of his administration.
Democrats finally take a stand against Hamas: When it still seemed possible that Hamas might survive if only Joe Biden could pressure Israel out of fighting back, Democrat denouncements of the terror organization often seemed half-hearted. Now that it’s a moot issue and Hamas is headed the way of the dodo, Democrats have started to sound almost reasonable. “Saying ‘We support Hamas’ is a disgusting and antisemitic thing to do,” said Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez over the weekend, and she was far from alone. Last week, protesters in Queens chanted their support for Hamas, and Kirsten Gillibrand, Letitia James, Kathy Hochul, and Zohran Mamdani were among the chorus that strongly denounced the protesters. If only these folks had found their voices during the disgusting pro-Hamas protests on New York campuses when their denouncements might have meant something.
DOJ charges illegal alien shot in Portland: One of the illegal aliens who was shot in Portland, Oregon, by Border Patrol last week has been charged by the DOJ with assaulting a federal officer. The two illegal aliens, who are both associated with the Tren de Aragua terrorist-designated Venezuelan gang, were in a pickup truck repeatedly ramming a government vehicle when they were shot. Attorney General Pam Bondi stated, “Anyone who crosses the red line of assaulting law enforcement will be met with the full force of this Justice Department.” She noted that these illegal aliens should not have been in the U.S. in the first place. According to the FBI, no body cam footage of the event in question was captured.
Dem states want to tax driving: Under the guise of combating climate change, a number of Democrat-led states are advancing plans to monitor residents’ vehicle usage, with the eventual goal of limiting the mileage allowed. In Massachusetts, State Sen. Cynthia Creem has sponsored legislation to track a vehicle’s emissions and miles traveled to develop “a reasonable pathway” to a restricted-mileage system. Colorado and Minnesota have passed similar legislation. Minnesota is currently piloting a program that would charge fees or a tax on the number of miles a driver puts on their vehicle. Other states are exploring a similar mileage-driven tax to offset revenue lost from the gas tax as EVs increase on the road. As a Massachusetts resident observed, “This is just a money grab. Massachusetts politicians need a way to fill their and their friends’ pockets.”
Oregon to remove 800k inactive voters from rolls: Thanks to multiple lawsuits against Oregon in the last few months over the state’s mismanagement of its voter rolls, Democrat Secretary of State Tobias Read announced that the state will “restart” the “routine cleanup of outdated, inactive voter registration records.” That’s 800,000 inactive voters, or 20% of Oregon’s voter rolls. Although Read claims that “none of the individuals associated with these records will receive ballots, and these inactive records have no impact on Oregon elections,” there’s plenty of reason for skepticism. Jason Snead, executive director of the Honest Elections Project, argued that when states don’t keep up with constant changes, such as deaths and out-of-state moves, voter rolls become bloated and outdated, increasing the risk of errors and abuse. When voter rolls aren’t cleaned, it’s more likely that ballots will be automatically mailed to ineligible voters.
Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams dies after long battle with prostate cancer: Scott Adams, the creator of the long-running Dilbert cartoon, died this morning just before his daily “Real Coffee with Scott Adams” morning video. Adams had been very public about his ongoing battle with prostate cancer after revealing his diagnosis in May 2025. Adams had warned his followers on X that all the news about his illness was bad and that “January will probably be a month of transition.” He had made political comments for years but became much more present in the discourse following an attempted cancellation in 2023. In recent days, Adams had thanked his followers who were encouraging him to find Jesus and announced his intention to convert. We pray that, like the thief on the cross, Adams is even now with his Savior in paradise.
Headlines
Sen. Kelly sues Hegseth over military pension cuts (Fox News)
California wealth tax proposal hemorrhages $1 trillion as billionaires flee (Fox Business)
ACLU unveils ad campaign in support of gender-confused athletes (Washington Times)
Walz admin ordered fraud unit to stand down early in his term, whistleblowers say (Daily Signal)
Keir Starmer and NHS promoting first cousin marriages for Muslims (Hot Air)
Humor: Protesters protest for higher protesting wage (Babylon Bee)
The Executive News Summary is compiled daily by Jordan Candler, Thomas Gallatin, Sterling Henry, and Sophie Starkova. For the archive, click here.
When Renee Good made her fatal mistake of not following the orders of the ICE agents who told her to step out of her car, Democrats and the Leftmedia portrayed her as an innocent bystander. It wasn’t until later that we all found out she was a trained “legal observer” for ICE Watch, a shadowy group dedicated to impeding the progress of immigration enforcement, such as they were doing in the Twin Cities area in the wake of the Somali daycare scandal.
Surprisingly, we learned about the Goods’ involvement with the ICE Watch cause early on, thanks to reporting from the New York Post, which noted that Renee and Rebecca Good learned of the group through the school their child attended. Southside Family Charter School was described as “unabashedly dedicated to social justice education,” according to its founder.
But to hear CNN tell it, ICE Watch is just a group of concerned citizens. “‘I mean, gosh, we’re like, moms in Toyota Corollas,’ said one Minneapolis-area activist who participates in anti-ICE patrols and declined to give her name because she feared retribution from the administration.”
If it were a court case, though, this could be construed as obstruction, as their job isn’t simply to observe but to interfere. “The group aims to do one or both of two things: Make illegal alien roundups harder and provoke headline-grabbing confrontations that ‘discredit’ law enforcement,” said our Nate Jackson on Monday. “And it’s pushing for more recruits after Good’s death.”
Jill Garvey, a trainer for virtual “ICE Watch and Community Defense” programs, insists that they “emphasize documenting ICE’s actions, supporting those being targeted and deescalating to mitigate violence.”
“It’s also not about interference,” she adds. “We’re pretty explicit that we don’t recommend interference. We don’t recommend putting your body between an ICE agent and their target. And certainly, don’t put your hands on any federal agent — that’s incredibly dangerous.” Garvey also conceded that “most people in these situations panic.”
The Minneapolis incident has resulted in a surge of interest in ICE resistance, with training classes reportedly “at capacity,” but that claim about the training not being about interference falls on its face, according to Sarah Bedford of the Washington Examiner. “Immigration authorities have struggled with the spread of ICE Watch networks across the country, some of which used phone apps to track the movement of officers,” wrote Bedford. “Apple and Google removed the most widely used ICE tracking app in October, but crowdsourced networks, such as the one in Minneapolis, continue to complicate immigration enforcement.”
National Review’s Haley Strack also tells us, “The [MN Ice Watch] Instagram account also recently promoted the ‘Stop ICE Plate Tracker,’ just one of many ICE-tracker services that ‘catalogues vehicles identified in public spaces used in raids.’ Although last year the Trump administration pressured Apple to remove from its App Store some of the most popular ICE-tracker apps, many are still available. A cursory search of tracking services after the ICE shooting in Minneapolis on Wednesday shows how activists are using them to monitor officers.”
This understandably frustrates the administration. ”The use of apps to monitor the routines, locations, and happenings of DHS law enforcement strongly resemble obstruction of justice,“ said Assistant DHS Secretary Tricia McLaughlin. “This type of garbage is contributing to our officers facing a more than 1,300% increase in assaults and a more than 8,000% increase in death threats against them as they arrest the worst of the worst offenders, including murderers, sexual predators, terrorists, and gang members.”
Funding has also become a concern. CNN reported that a Bluesky appeal by activist Nick Benson raised enough to fund over 400 dash cams for ICE Watch and others to record encounters. But as columnist Gary Bauer points out, that’s small potatoes. “ICE Watch is part of the vast left-wing network we reported on last week. This network thrives in Democrat-run cities. It is funded largely by communist Chinese operatives, and its purpose is to drive radical socialists, Marxists, and anarchists into the streets in open rebellion against the United States.”
The far-left astroturf group Indivisible is one source of funding for the protests, but other groups considered more mainstream have joined in, at least locally. “A major protest, billed as ‘ICE out of Minnesota,’ in late December was organized by local arms of the national AFL-CIO and the Service Employees International Union, as well as the Minneapolis Federation of Educators, a teachers’ union in the state. Thousands of people joined the protest,” said Bedford. “Unidos MN, which has in recent years taken funding from the Sixteen Thirty Fund, a prominent liberal dark money group, and from a massive progressive advocacy group called the All Hands on Deck Network, was also listed as a sponsor of the protest.”
As written elsewhere, the unrest in Minneapolis spread across the country last weekend, as numerous protests were held around the nation, attempting to create the impression that public opinion is turning against ICE in particular and law enforcement in general. It’s a shame because protesters used to cooperate to some degree with law enforcement, said former Fort Worth Police Chief Jeffrey Halstead to Fox News, but it appears these radical groups are no longer interested in helping out by keeping their protests peaceful.
Given our current trajectory of left-wing opposition to enforcing our immigration law and the money being donated to the cause, it’s only a matter of time before the Left gets its next martyr.
Nate Jackson: Fraud? Newsom Tells Walz to Hold His Beer — California has nearly seven times the population of Minnesota, so it’s not surprising that there’s more fraud, but still — $33 billion is a lot of money.
Emmy Griffin: The World Holds Its Breath on Iran — The Iranian regime is orchestrating a massacre, crossing President Trump’s red line. The world now waits to see what he will do in response.
Jack DeVine: Stop the Bleeding! — In the wake of the ICE shooting in Minneapolis, perhaps it’s time to face the reality that political violence is not just a talking point.
Douglas Andrews: The Deep Disgrace of Jack Smith — Even the Trump-deranged enemies of our 47th president now realize that the special prosecutor’s case against him was utterly without merit.
Michael Smith: The Credentialed and the Clueless — Research shows intelligence makes it easier to defend false beliefs, not correct them.
Gary Bauer: History Is Repeating — Left-wing Democrat governors and mayors are once again defying federal law, the Supreme Court, and our constitutional order.
Reader Comments
Editor’s Note: Each week we receive hundreds of comments and correspondences — and we read every one of them. Click here for a few thought-provoking comments about specific articles. The views expressed therein don’t necessarily reflect those of The Patriot Post.
Stop Making Excuses for Renee Good — The excuse-making for this woman is worse than George Floyd. She tried to hit a cop with her car, and people are acting like she’s the victim.
Reality Star Enters the LA Mayoral Race — Spencer Pratt has officially announced his run for mayor, exactly one year after losing his home in the Palisades fire and spending the year exposing government failures and stalled rebuilding.
“We are not short on good ideas. … Free buses, freeze the rent, and deliver no-cost childcare.” —Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA)
Yellow Journalism
“Minnesota shooting solidifies the anxieties of people who track ICE.” —CNN headline
The BIG Lies
“[Renee Good was] not involved in protest activity or anything. Seems to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.” —Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA)
“We have someone dead, in their car, for no reason whatsoever.” —Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz
“You had a person that was definitively trying to just get out of there.” —Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey
“I remember when Charlie Kirk got killed. … Our response wasn’t to sit there and pretend like it was okay.” —Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX)
Re: The Left
“[Renee] Good was shot while interfering with federal law enforcement. [Charlie] Kirk was shot because he dared to defend conservative views on a college campus. But the Left expects the whole country to stop everything and get on our knees over Good, while Kirk ‘deserved it’ because he was ‘right-wing.’” —Gary Bauer
“What Democrats are doing today is no different than what Democrats like George Wallace did resisting integration.” —Gary Bauer
False Equivalence
“From Tehran to my birthplace of Minneapolis, people are rising up against systems that wield violence without accountability. In Iran, brave protestors confront a far-right theocratic regime that crushes dissent and denies basic freedoms. Here at home, tens of thousands are marching after the fatal ICE shooting of Renee Good — demanding justice, transparency, and an end to an unchecked federal force that takes lives and tears families apart.” —DNC Chairman Ken Martin
For the Record
“Thousands of innocent Iranians have been murdered by the despotic rulers of Iran, yet not one American college or university has had a single protest on behalf of the brave people of Iran. Fascinating, isn’t it?” —Clay Travis
“The leaders of Iran called. They want to negotiate. I think they’re tired of being beat up by the United States. … A meeting is being set up, but we may have to act because of what’s happening before the meeting.” —President Donald Trump
Plain and Simple
“If you are wiring money out of the country, one of two things must be true: You’re either getting too much money and your benefits should be cut, or you’re part of this [fraud] conspiracy.” —Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent
The Monroe Doctrine
“There haven’t been many [drug] boats sunk recently because we can’t find boats to sink because no one wants to get in a narco-boat, which is the whole point.” —Secretary of War Pete Hegseth
Upright
“For more than 20 years I put my hands up in celebration on the gridiron. Now, I put my hands up to the One that gave me all my talents and abilities — the King of my life, Jesus Christ. I’ve never claimed to be perfect, but my aim is for the direction of my life to honor Christ and I pray my faith increases.” —NFL legend Brett Favre
ON THIS DAY in 1794, President George Washington approved adding two stars and two stripes to the U.S. flag to represent Vermont and Kentucky, which became states in 1791 and 1792, respectively. The two additional stripes were removed in 1818, returning to 13, but the practice of a star for every state continued.
Bill O’Reilly recently appeared on NewsNation and said that what we are seeing in Minnesota and other places like Portland, Oregon is not protesting, but rather is open rebellion against the United States government.
It’s an excellent point, because there is a distinct difference between those two things and the so-called ‘protests’ have gone way beyond what is considered acceptable.
To make matters worse, this is all being egged on by elected officials like the mayor and the governor. It’s why Republicans in Minnesota are reportedly preparing to impeach Tim Walz.
O’REILLY: “The problem with the Democrats is that the resistance to so over the top, it’s so blatant ideological to the left, that most Americans, even though they feel very sorry for Renee Good…they reject these people.”
“So I wrote a column on Bill O’Reilly dot com called ‘Rebellion.’”
“This is not a protest in Minnesota or Oregon or California. This is a rebellion.”
VITTERT: “Right, fighting with ICE is different than protesting.”
O’REILLY: “You can protest ICE all day long. Okay. But if you’re not going to obey federal law, as CLEARLY, Minnesota and Oregon are not…they’re not going to obey the law..that is a rebellion!”
“Just as we saw in the south before the Civil War and during the Vietnam War.”
“Those were the only two times that the American people, at least some of them, were in open rebellion against the federal government.”
See the video below:
Bill O’Reilly says what’s happening in Minnesota has gone WAY past protest — it’s now a REBELLION against the federal government.
The only two previous times Americans openly rebelled against federal authority were the Civil War and the Vietnam War.
“A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy. While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue then will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader.” —Samuel Adams (1779)
Welfare recipients to be disallowed from sending money overseas: “The American people, our generosity has been taken advantage of,” summed up Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent as he explained new welfare restrictions. Welfare recipients in Minnesota, especially, are being scrutinized, and the new policies are aimed at reducing fraud in that state. Among several actions, Bessent will use the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network to investigate at least four Minnesota businesses that facilitate money transfers. Transfers over $3,000 to “areas of concern,” which include Somalia, will be reported as part of a “geographic targeting order.” Bessent also added that he will be pushing for welfare recipients to be disallowed from sending remittances overseas. The secretary contends that those on welfare sending money overseas are either receiving too many benefits or are part of the fraud conspiracy.
Omar blames Trump admin for “confusion and chaos” in investigating fraud: The congresswoman from Somalia and Minnesota, Ilhan Omar, opposes the surge of DHS agents to her state to root out fraud. More than 2,400 DHS agents, including ICE and dedicated investigators, are now stationed in the Minneapolis area. Omar says these DHS forces are unnecessary as the fraud is a “serious problem that needs serious people to address it.” The Department of Homeland Security certainly seems serious about rooting out the fraud that some estimate may top $9 billion in stolen funds. White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson retorted that Omar is “more concerned about Somali fraudsters being held accountable for their crimes than she is about the fraud taking place.”
Supreme Court will hear trans sports case: On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear two cases — Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. B.P.J. — concerning prohibiting transgender-identifying males from competing in girls’ sports. The first involves an adult male who sought to compete on the Boise State University girls’ cross-country team and was barred from doing so under Idaho law. The second considers a middle-school-age boy who has been barred from competing on his school’s girls’ track and field team in West Virginia. Appeals courts in both cases have sided with the plaintiffs against the state bans, ironically citing Title IX anti-sex discrimination rules. Twenty-seven states have enacted legislation banning males from competing in girls’ sports. SCOTUS has the opportunity to correct the false notion that there is no biological difference between male and female.
U.S. strikes in Syria: On Saturday, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) announced that the U.S. carried out “large-scale” strikes against ISIS targets in Syria. The reason for the strikes was an “ongoing commitment to root out Islamic terrorism against our warfighters, prevent future attacks, and protect American and partner forces in the region,” CENTCOM said in a statement. “Our message remains strong: if you harm our warfighters, we will find you and kill you anywhere in the world, no matter how hard you try to evade justice.” This represents the second strike against ISIS targets in Syria since December 19. That initial strike was in response to an attack six days prior on U.S. military members in Syria, in which three Americans were killed. No word on whether the current situation in Iran is connected to these strikes.
Judge tosses libel lawsuit against SPLC over its hate map: The Southern Poverty Law Center won a court case allowing it to continue to fraudulently use its “hate group” smear. U.S. District Judge Corey Maze wrote in a decision that the Dustin Inman Society “cannot prove actual malice” in the SPLC labeling an anti-illegal immigration group as an “anti-immigrant” hate group. The society’s leader, D.A. King, had successfully argued in an early stage that the SPLC smear was libelous, as the group is anti-illegal immigration, not anti-immigrant. At that stage, the SPLC let the cat out of the bag with its argument that its “hate group designation is not capable of being proved false, but is an opinion.” The SPLC suffered a blow last year when the FBI cut ties with the increasingly propagandist group that has long outlived its usefulness.
Golden Globes go anti-ICE: Hollywood actors continue to beclown themselves as patsies for the radical Left, with the most recent example coming on Sunday at the Golden Globe Awards ceremony in Beverly Hills. Actors and entertainers such as Mark Ruffalo, Ariana Grande, Wanda Sykes, and others sported small circular pins featuring the words “Be Good” on their lapels. The pins were in honor of Renee Good, the radical left-wing activist killed in Minnesota after she hit an ICE officer with her vehicle. Ruffalo, an avid anti-Trump critic, blasted the president’s actions on enforcing our nation’s immigration laws while falsely asserting, “We’re in the middle of a war with Venezuela that we illegally invaded.” He added, “He’s telling the world that international law doesn’t matter to him. The only thing that matters to him is his own morality, but the guy is a convicted felon, a convicted rapist.”
GM’s EV losses rival Ford’s: It’s not just Ford that has lost big bucks on electric vehicle production. General Motors will be absorbing a $6 billion hit thanks to slumping EV sales. With the EV tax credit ending last year, GM — one of the most ambitious American automakers to lean into EV production — is feeling the sting of its bet on electric. Back in 2020, GM announced its plan to invest $27 billion in EVs over the next five years, with the goal of having the vast majority of the vehicles it produces be electric by 2035 — a nod to the climate cult’s pipe dream of net-zero carbon emissions. The fact of the matter is that efforts to force-feed American consumers a product they don’t want and often can’t afford have had predictable results.
Jew-hatred in Mississippi: John Horhn, mayor of Jackson, Mississippi, says the fire at Beth Israel Congregation Synagogue over the weekend is being treated as an act of terrorism. Firefighters responding to the alarm called in arson investigators and a suspect is in custody, but the attack is still under investigation and no one has been charged at this time. This is not the first time this synagogue has come under attack; it suffered a Ku Klux Klan bombing in the 1960s. No one was harmed in this latest attack, although two Torahs were destroyed and five more were heavily damaged. One Torah came through the attack unharmed due to being stored in a glass case; it had previously survived the Holocaust.
Maritime piracy surging across the globe: Despite increased maritime security measures, a large EU anti-piracy mission, and the recent ceasefire in the Middle East, piracy has been on the rise worldwide. “The U.S. Navy reported four-year highs for piracy in the Gulf of Guinea off the West African coast and in the Singapore Strait,” The Washington Times reports. The Houthi terrorist group continues to be a major contributor to the piracy problem around the Horn of Africa, with Somali pirates often joining them. Incidents of ship attacks have been reported in the Western Hemisphere as well. Gangs in Haiti, Panama, and the Yucatan Peninsula have attacked vessels and abducted crew members for ransom. With all of these being strategic shipping regions, piracy affects trade. As the International Maritime Bureau’s Cyrus Mody confirmed, “When this happens, it has a direct impact on the price consumers find on the shelves.”
Headlines
Trump administration revokes more than 100,000 visas in first year back (Fox News)
Report: Newsom’s lack of oversight cost California $33 billion in fraudulent unemployment payments (Washington Stand)
Barbie with autism being introduced by Mattel (CBS News)
Humor: Liberals begin chugging Everclear at 7 AM to protest RFK’s warning against drinking at breakfast (Babylon Bee)
The Executive News Summary is compiled daily by Jordan Candler, Thomas Gallatin, Sterling Henry, and Sophie Starkova. For the archive, click here.
The misinformation and gaslighting about the ICE shooting in Minneapolis is off the charts. So let’s set the record straight.
I began my article last Thursday with this paragraph:
Renee Nicole Good, 37, was shot and killed in Minneapolis on Wednesday when she accelerated her car and struck an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer. She had already obstructed ICE agents’ work and traffic on a public street and then refused to comply with another officer’s orders to get out of the vehicle.
Those facts remain correct, as further corroborated by two additional videos that emerged in the days that followed. Nevertheless, Democrats and their Leftmedia allies are still deliberately lying about it to foment anger and rebellion against Donald Trump and his administration. Let’s look at this in three parts.
Evidence
This video is cellphone footage recorded by Jonathan Ross, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who shot Good. The video makes several things clear: Good purposefully obstructed traffic and disobeyed direct orders from ICE officers, she struck Ross with her vehicle, and her “wife,” Rebecca, cockily antagonized Ross and the others before yelling “Drive, baby, drive!” a second before Renee accelerated into Ross.
By the way, the first shot went through the windshield, not the side window.
“Put it all together,” says Byron York, “and in the view of a number of experts, it added up to a legally sufficient reason for Ross to fire his weapon.” Ross did not have a duty to wait until Good successfully veered away before deciding whether his life was in danger or not.
This second video shows the three and a half minutes immediately preceding the shots fired. The Goods were obstructing traffic, and Renee was likely the one blaring the car horn for at least that long. Witnesses say they were at it all morning.
What will Rebecca Good’s video show from her perspective? She was later seen sobbing and admitting, “I made her come down here; it’s my fault.”
It is a tragedy that Good is dead, and I’m certainly not saying she intended to kill, harm, or even actually hit Ross with her car. At best, however, Good was reckless, and she deliberately put herself into conflict with federal agents, which can yield harm or death.
It’s also worth noting that Ross is no trigger-happy new recruit. He’s an 11-year veteran who was seriously injured by another car last year.
In a perfect world, that confrontation wouldn’t have happened. Maybe ICE officers could have de-escalated better. Maybe it would be less antagonistic to not wear masks or draw a firearm in that situation. But those are all armchair quarterback questions that I can ask from the comfort of my office, not the cold line of duty that morning.
Unfortunately, they’re also the kinds of questions that might lead Democrat officials in Minnesota to pursue criminal charges against Ross. As Minneapolis Democrat Mayor Jacob Frey falsely asserted, “You had a person that was definitively trying to just get out of there. They were trying to leave the scene. That is not a person who is trying to run an ICE agent over.”
Uh, watch the videos again, Mr. Mayor. In my opinion, the three videos utterly demolish the Left’s narrative.
Radical activism
The Goods were part of a left-wing group called ICE Watch, which trains radical activists to do far more than the name says — they learn how to harass, resist, and obstruct ICE agents in the course of their lawful duties to enforce federal immigration law. “Good was a trained ‘ICE Watch’ activist,” writes David Strom, “and she has spent the morning trailing ICE officers and impeding their efforts. She appears to have recently moved to Minnesota, specifically for this reason, and was leading a caravan of vehicles that morning.”
The group aims to do one or both of two things: Make illegal alien roundups harder and provoke headline-grabbing confrontations that “discredit” law enforcement. And it’s pushing for more recruits after Good’s death. Two sympathizers are U.S. Representatives Ilhan Omar and Angie Craig.
Strom also says, “ICE Watch is funded by major nonprofits such as the Tides Foundation, which got government grants through USAID.”
The line between protest and crime is fairly clear. Holding signs and chanting or even yelling is protected speech. Obstructing traffic and officers is not.
“It’s not okay to impede and interfere with an officer,” argued Border Czar Tom Homan. “These are targeted enforcement operations. They’re arresting bad people. And [interfering is] illegal. Let’s remember what she did was a crime.” Furthermore, “If you look up this definition of terrorism, it could fall within that definition.”
Good was not “unarmed.” She was armed with a 4,000-pound vehicle, weapons that anti-ICE belligerents are using with increasing frequency.
“Saying this officer is a murderer is dangerous. It’s just ridiculous,” added Homan. “It’s going to infuriate people more, which means there’s gonna be more incidents like this.”
Gaslighting
That brings me to the last point — all the gaslighting by Democrats and the Left.
The Goods were not average women “trying to just get out of there,” as Frey claimed. They were not, as California Democrat Senator Adam Schiff argued, merely “at the wrong place at the wrong time.” It flies in the face of the evidence to say, as Democrat Governor Tim Walz did, that Good was shot and killed “for no reason whatsoever.”
For the record, I think Donald Trump is guilty of hyperbole in the other direction, saying that Good “violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE officer.”
Still, the Goods trained for their “operation,” deliberately put themselves in harm’s way, antagonized and disobeyed officers, and behaved recklessly, which resulted in Renee’s death.
The gaslighting also includes outlandish alternate-reality scenarios. One meme depicts ICE vehicles as the tanks in Tiananmen Square, as if Good was the standing protester. Reality was exactly the opposite — the commie lesbian was driving the “tank,” and the ICE agent was standing in front of her.
Texas Democrat Jasmine Crockett, who seems intent on outdoing herself with mindless statements each day, compared the reaction to Good’s death with her own side’s decorum after Charlie Kirk’s assassination. “I remember when Charlie Kirk got killed,” she said. “Our response wasn’t to sit there and pretend like it was okay.” Wrong — the Left’s overall response was to argue that Kirk had it coming.
No, he was sitting down having a conversation when an assassin shot him in the neck. Good was confronting federal law enforcement. Those things are very different.
Conclusion
Most Democrats are demanding that ICE cease its operations in places like Minneapolis. If they were fully honest, they’d insist that we just stop enforcing immigration law at all. That, they claim, is the way to de-escalate and prevent future deadly confrontations.
By contrast, Vice President JD Vance got it exactly right: “Stop assaulting and stop inciting violence against our law enforcement officers. That’s the best way to take down the temperature.”
Douglas Andrews: Powell Gets a Probing — Unelected and unaccountable Fed Chairman Jerome Powell is being investigated for colossal cost overruns to the Fed headquarters’ renovation, but he ought to be probed for monetary malpractice.
Emmy Griffin: Deaths by Fentanyl Are in Decline — This deadly drug has become harder to find, and there are multiple explanations for this welcome development.
Thomas Gallatin: Somali Fraud Exposes Fallacy of Multiculturalism — Rampant welfare fraud by Somalis in Minnesota and Maine exposes that culture matters when determining American immigration policies.
Roger Helle: Bitterness Will Kill You — Holding on to bitterness and hatred is like drinking poison and hoping the other person dies. Forgiveness frees you from that poison.
New York Is Trying the Venezuela Model — New York City’s embrace of “democratic socialism” isn’t some bold new experiment. Mayor Zohran Mamdani is replaying a disaster we’ve seen a hundred times before.
Why Iran’s Protests Are Different This Time — Ben Taleblu of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies discusses why the latest wave of unrest in Iran represents something fundamentally different.
SHORT CUTS
Yellow Journalism
“Mother of 3 who loved to sing and write poetry shot and killed by ICE in Minneapolis.” —CNN headline
Incitement to Violence
“Armed ICE agents in an unmarked vehicle detained three North Seattle neighbors. … This latest abuse comes on the heels of the murder of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis by federal agents.” —Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson
“We can all see that video and come to our own conclusions that that ICE agent murdered a woman in Minneapolis, and it is a glimpse into what has been a year full of cruelty.” —New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani
“When I look at that video, I see murder. And I think we should call it that.” —Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA)
“ICE has been carrying out state-sanctioned violence in our communities. … And that has tragically led to this murder that we all watched on TV.” —Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN)
“This has now turned into what our greatest fear is and has been for a long time around ICE — that this will be used as an anti-civilian force that has no accountability. At the end of the day, what we saw [last week] is a murder, and murders in cold blood need to be prosecuted.” —Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY)
“I understand that Vice President Vance believes that shooting a young mother of three in the face three times is an acceptable America that he wants to live in, and I do not.” —Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
“Every single person in the United States of America … whoever you are, you have to worry now that an ICE agent is going to come and shoot at you and kill you.” —Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA)
Persona Non Grata
“The ICE agent walked away with a hip injury that he might as well have gotten from closing a refrigerator door with his hips. He was not injured. … Give me a break. No, he was not ran over. He walked out of there with a hop in his step.” —Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey
“Come on, guys. … I dropped an F-bomb. They killed somebody. Which one of those is more inflammatory? I’m going with the killing somebody.” —Jacob Frey
Democrats: The Party of Crime and Chaos
“We should not have ICE agents patrolling our streets. They’re not needed, they create chaos, and they even create deaths.” —Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY)
Straight From the Horse’s Mouth
Q: “Do you have a job?” —Fox News’s Laura Ingraham
“[Democrats] could not care less about the Americans who have been victimized by criminal illegal aliens. And when they lose an election, they intentionally set out to create a hostile atmosphere in which events like what happened in Minneapolis Wednesday would take place.” —Gary Bauer
“Biggest difference between right and left… No one on the right wishes that woman were dead. The left would be jubilant if she had run over and killed that ICE agent.” —Virginia House Delegate Nick Freitas
“Only in a broken liberal city can you replace a SNOW DAY with a RIOT DAY.” —satirist Jimmy Failla
Spin Doctor
“We should spend a lot more time … looking at American citizens, looking at white men.” —Rep. Emily Randall (D-WA) regarding Somali fraud
Braying Jenny
“I get that there are [Venezuelans] that don’t like the leader, but guess what? There are a lot of people that don’t like our leader.” —Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX)
Non Compos Mentis
“U.S. in midst of ‘genocidal process against trans people’: study.” —Washington Blade headline
Political Futures
“[Marco] Rubio is what much of the Trump administration isn’t. He has what most of them don’t. He is articulate, polite, experienced, humble and self-possessed. He’s competent. He understands history. He thinks America is a force for good in the world. He’s been married to the same woman for 27 years. He’s never been a Democrat.” —The Wall Street Journal’s Matthew Hennessey
ON THIS DAY in 1737, John Hancock was born in Braintree, Massachusetts. He served as president of the Continental Congress and is perhaps most famous for affixing his very large signature to the Declaration of Independence. “There! His Majesty can now read my name without glasses,” Hancock is said to have remarked. “And he can double the reward on my head!”
August 22, 2025, DHS arrests a U.S. citizen who assaulted ICE officers and threatened law enforcement, yelling at agents, “I’m going to go after your family,” and “I’m going to stab you.” Photo courtesy of the Department of Homeland Security.
Following the fatal shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis on January 7, 2026, protests erupted across multiple cities. On Friday night, January 9, approximately 30 people were arrested during demonstrations outside a downtown Minneapolis hotel where ICE agents were believed to be staying.
Police reported that protesters threw ice, snow, and rocks at officers and vehicles, injuring one officer with a chunk of ice. Some protesters also caused property damage, including broken hotel windows. City crews later removed makeshift barricades erected near the memorial site.
On January 8, protests also occurred outside an ICE facility in Portland following a separate shooting incident in which CBP agents shot two individuals identified by DHS as suspected Tren de Aragua gang members. Officers used sound trucks to warn protesters to stay off roadways, and two officers were injured. Portland police arrested six people during those protests.
In Minneapolis, additional violence occurred on January 7 near Roosevelt High School. Border Patrol agents were conducting immigration enforcement operations when a U.S. citizen rammed a government vehicle. The incident led to a five-mile vehicle chase that ended near Roosevelt High School around 3:30 p.m., during student dismissal.
According to DHS, agents were attempting to arrest the suspect for interfering with ICE operations when, during the removal of the individual from the vehicle, a person identifying himself as a teacher assaulted a Border Patrol agent. A crowd quickly formed and grew in size. Members of the crowd threw objects, sprayed paint on officers and vehicles, and continued hostilities despite repeated warnings to disperse. Officers ultimately employed targeted crowd-control measures.
The media, democrat lawmakers, and liberal protesters have blamed ICE for the increase in violence and chaos. However, the violence is not originating with ICE. It is being driven by suspects who resist arrest or attempt to flee, and increasingly by activists who interfere with ICE operations or directly attack federal agents.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security reported a sharp surge in violence against Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, citing a more than 1,300 percent increase in assaults, a 3,200 percent rise in vehicular attacks, and an 8,000 percent increase in death threats. According to DHS data, from January 20 to December 31, 2025, there were 275 reported assaults on ICE officers, compared to just 19 during the same period in 2024.
Anti-ICE activism has evolved into coordinated resistance networks that employ surveillance, harassment, and interference tactics. Organizations train activists in resistance methods, track ICE agents’ movements through mobile apps and crowdsourced databases, and conduct campaigns designed to obstruct immigration enforcement operations.
These efforts include doxing ICE agents, issuing threats against their homes and families, and running coordinated online propaganda campaigns that rely on altered or misleading videos. Posts may show ICE breaking a window while omitting that the occupant refused to open it, or claim agents “chased” someone without noting the individual was fleeing to evade arrest.
Videos of agents wrestling with arrestees are circulated without acknowledging that the person resisted arrest, and outrage is expressed when a U.S. citizen is arrested while omitting that the citizen assaulted or interfered with federal officers.
Activists also claim there is no due process, despite the fact that a large percentage of deportees have outstanding final orders of deportation that were never enforced. They argue people are being denied access to courts when, in reality, many individuals are already in the country illegally and are arrested after attempting to bypass U.S. law by legalize their status through a green card application or marriage to a citizen.
Activists then claim the individual “showed up for a regular immigration hearing” or was “trying to do it the right way,” even though once someone is in the country illegally, there is generally no legal path to adjust status.
To further vilify ICE and encourage resistance, media figures, activists, and public officials in sanctuary jurisdictions use loaded language such as “abducted” instead of arrested and “whisked away” instead of detained. Elected officials vow to protect constituents from ICE, despite the fact that ICE arrests and deports illegal aliens, not lawful residents or citizens. ICE poses no threat to citizens or those in the country legally.
Against this backdrop of negative framing and propaganda, several activist organizations are coordinating interference with ICE operations, escalating tensions and increasing the risk of unnecessary violence.
According to federal sources and news reports, Renee Nicole Good moved to Minneapolis from Missouri to become involved with the Minneapolis “ICE Watch” network, a group that monitors and attempts to observe or document federal immigration enforcement operations. ICE Watch Minneapolis trains members to monitor, track, and interfere with ICE operations.
Activists are instructed on when to blow whistles to alert communities and are given strategies for “documenting and resisting” federal actions. Members use mobile apps, Signal group chats, social media, and crowdsourced spreadsheets to track ICE vehicle movements, locations, and enforcement activity across the Twin Cities, often patrolling neighborhoods for hours and reporting license plates and sightings to group chats.
Video and official accounts indicate that Good was present during a large federal immigration enforcement operation and was on camera harassing ICE agents. She was told several times to get out of the vehicle, which she refused to do. She then hit the accelerator, striking an agent with her car. The agent fired in self-defense, killing her. These are all facts that were absent from the initial reports and framing of the incident.
The point activists are missing is that the violence originates from people interfering with ICE and from a general refusal to encourage illegal aliens to self-deport.
Photo courtesy of SwissAmish, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
Anti-ICE activism has evolved into coordinated resistance networks that employ surveillance, harassment, and interference tactics. Organizations train activists in resistance methods, track ICE agents’ movements through mobile apps and crowdsourced databases, and conduct campaigns designed to obstruct immigration enforcement operations.
These efforts include doxing ICE agents, issuing threats against their homes and families, and running coordinated online propaganda campaigns that rely on altered or misleading videos. Posts may show ICE breaking a window while omitting that the occupant refused to open it, or claim agents “chased” someone without noting the individual was fleeing to evade arrest. Videos of agents wrestling with arrestees are circulated without acknowledging that the person resisted arrest, and outrage is expressed when a U.S. citizen is arrested while omitting that the citizen assaulted or interfered with federal officers.
Activists also claim there is no due process, despite the fact that a large percentage of deportees have outstanding final orders of deportation that were never enforced. They argue people are being denied access to courts when, in reality, many individuals are already in the country illegally and are arrested after attempting to legalize their status through a green card application or marriage to a citizen. Activists then claim the individual “showed up for a regular immigration hearing” or was “trying to do it the right way,” even though once someone is in the country illegally, there is generally no legal path to adjust status.
To further vilify ICE and encourage resistance, media figures, activists, and public officials in sanctuary jurisdictions use loaded language such as “abducted” instead of arrested and “whisked away” instead of detained. Officials vow to protect constituents from ICE, despite the fact that ICE arrests and deports illegal aliens, not lawful residents or citizens. There would be no violence at all if people stopped interfering with lawful enforcement actions.
Against this backdrop of negative framing and propaganda, several activist organizations are actively coordinating interference with ICE operations, escalating tensions and increasing the risk of unnecessary violence.
According to federal sources and news reports, Renee Nicole Good moved to Minneapolis from Missouri to become involved with the Minneapolis “ICE Watch” network, a group that monitors and attempts to observe or document federal immigration enforcement operations. ICE Watch Minneapolis trains members to monitor, track, and interfere with ICE operations. Activists are instructed on when to blow whistles to alert communities and are given strategies for “documenting and resisting” federal actions.
Body cam footage shows her harassing ICE agents and hitting the accelerator of her car as her wife shouted, “Drive, baby, drive,” striking an ICE agent, which ultimately resulted in her death.
The point activists are missing is that the violence originates from people interfering with ICE operations and from a broader refusal to encourage illegal aliens to self-deport. At the same time, a variety of anti-ICE organizations are actively encouraging this type of disorder.
Several of these groups receive funding from multiple sources, including the federal government, George Soros’ Open Society foundations, and other private donors. In some cases, pass-through funding has been linked to designated terrorist organizations. Additionally, some groups that train activists to interfere with ICE operations are themselves receiving federal funding.
ICE Watch Minneapolis engages in organized activities and tactics aimed at obstructing law enforcement operations. Training materials explicitly instruct activists on blocking police vehicles. Members have used vehicles to block streets and create barricades to impede ICE operations, and activists patrol neighborhoods for hours, tailing suspected ICE vehicles and monitoring agents during downtime by following them to restaurants and hotels.
The group has posted a “de-arrest primer” on Instagram describing how to physically interfere with an arrest, including tactics such as encircling (forming a human wall around an officer and detainee), un-grabbing (pulling the arrestee away from the officer’s grip), and swarming (flooding the area with people to create confusion or obstruction so the officer is forced to let go).
The primer instructs followers on how to physically intervene to free a person from custody, including opening car doors of law enforcement vehicles and applying crowd pressure to force officers to release a detainee. These materials reportedly advise that these actions are often considered “misdemeanor offenses” and may result in “catch and release,” language that appears in some posts associated with the group’s training content.
The group uses Signal group chats for real-time coordination and crowdsourced spreadsheets to document locations, times, numbers of officers, and enforcement activity. Members use mobile apps and social media to track ICE vehicle movements and often patrol neighborhoods for hours, reporting license plates and sightings. ICE Watch Minneapolis has been associated with multiple incidents and arrests.
Twin Cities Ungovernables represents the more confrontational wing of the anti-ICE movement. The anarchist-leaning activist collective, based in the Minneapolis–St. Paul area, describes itself on social media platforms such as Threads and Instagram as focusing on “graffiti, banner drops, protests, and other signs and steps being taken towards becoming ungovernable,” frequently pairing that message with slogans like “The city is yours, take it back,” anarchist symbols, and explicit references to direct action. Multiple sources, including the New York Post, have reported that local ICE Watch groups recently aligned with more radical organizations, including Twin Cities Ungovernables. The group has called on members to block vehicles, confront agents, barricade streets, and bring materials that can be set on fire, writing in one post referencing arson, “Even in the most topical forms of American mythology we have plenty of structures that need burning. It’s easy work, it ain’t nothing to us.” A January 11 post showed a large crowd following an ICE vehicle in Minneapolis, accompanied by the message, “Welcome to the jungle mother—–rs. Wrong city. Wrong state. Wrong country. F– outta here.” The group is not a formal organization with public membership lists but operates as a loose, anonymous collective within the anarchist milieu.
Indivisible Twin Cities is the Minnesota branch of the national Indivisible Project and has played a central role in organizing protests against ICE operations in Minneapolis. Following the Minneapolis shooting, the group helped coordinate and promote protests nationwide, mobilizing hundreds of demonstrations across all 50 states, including Texas, Kansas, New Mexico, Ohio, and Florida.
The Indivisible Project was founded in response to Donald Trump’s election in 2016 and remains one of the most prominent anti-Trump activist networks in the United States, with thousands of local groups nationwide. Public grant records and IRS tax filings indicate that Indivisible’s 501(c)(4) advocacy arm has received between $7.6 million and $9.5 million from George Soros Open Society–affiliated organizations.
In addition to direct Open Society funding, Indivisible has received more than $3 million pass-through funding from the Tides Nexus. The Tides network itself has received extensive funding from Open Society Foundations, including approximately $17.8 million during the 2022–2023 period alone.
Tides operates as a fiscal sponsor and pass-through entity for more than 1,400 social ventures globally. Tides Canada Foundation has previously served as a conduit for U.S. donor funds flowing into Canadian political and advocacy efforts, with an estimated $300 million routed to Canadian environmental groups between 2000 and 2012 to oppose projects such as the Keystone XL pipeline.
Tides has also funded Alliance for Global Justice, providing approximately $286,000 in 2023. Alliance for Global Justice serves as the fiscal sponsor for Samidoun. In October 2024, the U.S. Treasury designated Samidoun a sham charity operating as an international fundraising arm for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a designation mirrored by Canada, which listed Samidoun as a terrorist entity. Samidoun leaders Charlotte Kates and Khaled Barakat have been identified as PFLP operatives. The group has raised funds for the PFLP, which participated in the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel. In August 2024, Kates traveled to Iran to accept an award alongside Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Ziyad Nakhaleh and publicly praised the October 7 attacks as “heroic and brave.”
Other organizations funded through the Tides network include Students for Justice in Palestine, WESPAC, the American Friends Service Committee, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and the National Lawyers Guild. These groups have been associated with campaigns promoting boycotts of Israel, legal warfare against Israeli institutions, or public praise for terrorist organizations including Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the PFLP.
In response to these funding links, Representative Jason Smith stated in 2024 that the Tides Foundation was “at the center of antisemitic incidents” on college campuses. He led a congressional letter to the IRS urging review and potential revocation of Tides’ tax-exempt status, citing concerns over possible material support for terrorism.
The Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR) operates extensive Migra Watch training programs designed to monitor and respond to federal immigration enforcement. The organization is primarily funded by government sources. In fiscal year 2023, ICIRR received $77.7 million in government grants.
These trainings instruct participants on how to identify federal agents such as ICE and CBP, safely document enforcement activity, support immigrants during operations, follow whistle protocols, and use the S.A.L.U.T.E. reporting method to record ICE sightings. In September and October 2025 alone, more than 6,700 people were trained through weekly sessions offered in multiple languages, including English and Spanish. ICIRR-led trainings are conducted through partner organizations such as PUÑO, ONE Northside, We Can Lead Change, Indivisible Chicago Alliance, Mano a Mano Family Resource Center, and the Westside Queer Resource Center.
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem was on “Sunday Morning Futures” with host Maria Bartiromo to talk about ICE and the situations they are facing in sanctuary cities.
“Now Democrats are moving to try to impeach you. What is your response?” Bartiromo asked.
“We are gonna keep doing our jobs. President Trump promised the American people that he would make America safe again, that we would be out there enforcing the laws and that we would apply them equally. That nobody was above the law and that we were going to start putting American citizens first,” Noem said.
“Criminal illegal aliens in this country are going to be brought to justice under his administration, and that’s exactly why we surged resources to Minnesota,” Noem said.
“Their corrupt, elected officials at the city level and at the state level allowed fraud to happen, allowed crimes to happen. We’ve arrested dozens of murderers, rapists, traffickers in that city already and we are gonna continue to do that work to follow through on President Trump’s promises,” Noem continued.
“What more can your officers do to stop the agitators?” Bartiromo asked.
“We are sending more officers today and tomorrow that will arrive. There will be hundreds more in order to allow our ICE and our Border Patrol individuals that are working in Minneapolis to do so safely,” Noem said.
“If they conduct violent activities against law enforcement, if they impede our operations, that is a crime, and we will hold them accountable to those consequences,” Noem explained.
Secretary Noem explained that Governor Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey refuses to cooperate with DHS and ICE so they are taking action to protect their officers and at the same time, enforce the law.
“They have said they are not gonna help us, so we’ll make sure that we protect our officers, but we also follow through on making sure these criminals are brought to justice,” Noem continued.
“It’s ironic to see the Democrats so angry over what ICE is doing when in fact you look back at the policy and how this all started and it was a wide-open border under the Biden administration,” Bartiromo said.
“Every single thing that I’ve said has been factual about what’s been going on in Minneapolis, what’s been going on in Minnesota,” Noem continued.
“These law enforcement officers are trained to be in situations that are dangerous, and they rely on that training each and every day to make the right decisions,” Noem said.
“It is really, really horrific that we have elected officials that are using this as an opportunity to divide, using this to promote an agenda,” Noem said.
“Why Minnesota? What is happening in Minneapolis that you have been as aggressive as you have in terms of sending more officers there?” Bartiromo asked.
“Well, it is ground zero for stealing of taxpayer dollars and protecting criminals,” Noem said.
By Bethany Blankley | The Center Square contributor
(Worthy News) – Assaults against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers are up 1,300%, vehicular attacks are up 3,200% and death threats are up 8,000%, the Department of Homeland Security said after a U.S. citizen was shot and killed during an alleged vehicular attack in Minneapolis this week.
Federal authorities argue the shooting was justified and in self-defense. Local and state officials say otherwise.
One day after the Minneapolis shooting, two Venezuelan nationals were shot by a Border Patrol agent after they attempted to run him over with their vehicle in Portland, Ore., the Department of Homeland Security said. DHS also describes the shooting as self-defense and justified.
The two Venezuelans and alleged Tren de Aragua members “weaponized their vehicle against Border Patrol in Portland. The agent took immediate action to defend himself and others, shooting them,” DHS said.
After the shooting in Portland, the Venezuelans fled the scene, DHS said. They reportedly drove nearly five miles to an apartment complex where they called emergency medical services and were transported to separate hospitals, DHS said.
Venezuelans Luis David Nino-Moncada suffered an injury to his arm and Yorlenys Betzabeth Zambrano-Contreras was hit in her chest. Nino-Moncada is currently in FBI custody.
“Only one day after an ICE officer was almost ran over in Minneapolis, two vicious Tren de Aragua gang members – let loose on American streets by Joe Biden – weaponized their vehicle against Border Patrol in Portland,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said. “The agent took immediate action to defend himself and others, shooting them. Thankfully, no law enforcement was injured as these criminals fled.”
Zambrano-Contreras illegally entered the U.S. in 2023 near El Paso, Texas, and was released into the country by the Biden administration, according to DHS. Since illegally entering, she’s “played an active role in a Tren de Aragua prostitution ring and was involved with a prior shooting in Portland in July,” DHS said.
Nino-Moncada illegally entered the U.S. in 2022 and was released into the country by the Biden administration. Since then, he’s been arrested on a DUI charge and unauthorized use of a vehicle, DHS said. He also has a final order of removal from a federal immigration judge, according to ICE records.
Enforcement actions continue as attacks against ICE officers have increased by unprecedented numbers in less than one year. By November, assaults against ICE officers had increased by 1,000% and death threats by 8,000%, The Center Square reported.
ICE and Border Patrol officers also experienced an historic surge of vehicular attacks. By November, there had been 71 reported vehicular attacks against U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers, including Border Patrol, compared to 45 vehicular attacks during the same period in 2024, a 58% increase, The Center Square reported.
Over the same time frame, 28 vehicular attacks were reported against ICE officers compared to two attacks in 2024, a 1,300% increase.
That percentage has since increased nearly three-fold to 3,200% as of last week, DHS said.
The Minneapolis and Portland shootings are the latest of several that have occurred since last fall.
In September, Mexican national Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez was shot and killed after he “refused to follow law enforcements commands and drove his car at law enforcement officers. One of the ICE officers was hit by the car and dragged a significant distance. Fearing for his own life, the officer fired his weapon,” DHS said.
In October, Mexican national Carlitos Ricardo Parias, a TikTok content creator, was shot after ramming his vehicle into a law enforcement vehicle and then fleeing the scene, DHS said. He was hit in the elbow; a U.S. Marshal’s hand was struck by a ricocheted bullet. A federal judge recently dismissed federal assault charges brought against Parias.
Also in October, U.S. citizen Carlos Jimenez was shot in the shoulder after federal authorities claim he allegedly accelerated towards federal agents during an immigration enforcement operation in Los Angeles.
Constitutional representatives of the United States in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, passed the Homeland Security Act of 2002. The President then signed the act into law. That act created ICE and gave it its legal mandate. It happened long before the presidency of Donald Trump. ICE and its agents have a sworn duty under the Constitution to enforce the country’s immigration laws. Congress also enacted those immigration laws legally and in accordance with the Constitution.
After an ICE agent fatally wounded Renee Nicole Good last week, Governor Tim Walz demanded that ICE leave Minnesota. But governors do not get to decide which federal laws will be upheld in their states. Mr. Walz went so far as to declare Minnesota’s independence — stating, “We do not need any further help from the federal government.” Does that mean he plans to refuse any federal money flowing to his state from this point forward? I don’t think so.
Obviously, ICE was never empowered to murder people, but all citizens have the right to defend themselves when attacked with a deadly weapon, such as a car. Self-defense is not murder.
Shortly after the shooting, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said, “So, they are already trying to spin this as an action of self-defense. Having seen the video myself, I want to tell everybody directly. That is…” (here he used an expletive meaning, “a lie”). The mayor said he had seen “the video,” as if there were only one. From the one video he saw, he claimed to know without a doubt that the ICE officer was guilty of murder. He didn’t use the word “murder,” but if it was neither self-defense nor an accident, what else would you call it?
A thousand miles away, New York Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani declared on X, “This morning, an ICE agent murdered a woman in Minneapolis.” He needed no investigation and no trial. And with that we begin to see what a socialist/communist future looks like. That kind of knee-jerk rush to judgment is fueling the new lynch mob mentality permeating a large portion of American society.
People have long felt frustration with their health insurance providers, but a large portion of society now cheers the alleged stalking and murder of a major insurance company CEO. There are many other examples of the new vigilantism, such as the systematic persecution of Jews on American university campuses, the assassination attempts on Donald Trump, and the successful assassination of Charlie Kirk.
There are complex circumstances surrounding the Minnesota shooting, but most are irrelevant to the main issue. It’s irrelevant that the victim’s “wife” was taunting and harassing the agents prior to the shooting, or whether Ms. Good was a nice person, or how hard her vehicle hit the officer. Even whether or not she intended to harm the agent is irrelevant to the shooting. What matters is that the ICE agent saw a deadly weapon aimed at him, and then accelerating toward him.
A neighbor said, “Verbal abuse… doesn’t warrant shooting at somebody.” Another neighbor said, “Nobody gets a death sentence for a traffic violation.” But the woman in Minnesota did not die because of verbal abuse or for speeding. Either advertently or inadvertently, she hit the accelerator on her car while it was pointed in the direction of a man with a gun. That man had a right to defend himself.
The “wife” told the Washington Post, “We had whistles. They had guns.” But Ms. Good did not just have a whistle. She had under her control a weapon — a motor vehicle — something that kills over 40,000 people every year in the United States. The “wife” screamed, “Drive, baby, drive, drive!” Renee Good obeyed the screaming voice while her vehicle was aimed at an officer. The end-time sign of “lawlessness” took a leap forward, and tragedy followed.
President Trump issued a statement outlining Democratic politicians who attacked and vilified ICE, in many cases encouraging the very resistance that leads to violence. Image courtesy of the White House.
On National Law Enforcement Appreciation Day, the Trump Administration issued a statement outlining how Democratic officials and activists have repeatedly used extreme and inflammatory rhetoric against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and law enforcement more broadly. These attacks represent a sustained campaign by Democratic leaders to delegitimize and demonize federal officers. The administration emphasizes that this rhetoric is reckless and dangerous, and that it contributes to hostility and violence against law enforcement.
The piece lists 57 examples involving governors, senators, members of Congress, mayors, and local officials who compared ICE to Nazis, the Gestapo, secret police, fascists, or terrorists, accused the agency of terrorizing communities, or called for ICE to be abolished or driven out of their jurisdictions. Several officials are quoted encouraging resistance, “pushing back,” or “fighting” ICE, while others are cited for excusing or downplaying violence directed at federal officers.
The administration argues that this rhetoric goes beyond policy disagreement and amounts to incitement, normalizing obstruction of federal law enforcement and encouraging public hostility. The White House concludes that such language undermines public safety, erodes respect for the rule of law, and places ICE agents and their families at risk, particularly when paired with organized activism and sanctuary policies opposing immigration enforcement.
Some of the most egregious attacks on ICE by public officials have come from Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, whose state is now being investigated for widespread fraud, particularly within the Somali community. So far, Walz himself has not been implicated as personally benefiting from the diverted funds, but he has demanded that the investigations be called off, arguing they amount to a demonization of Somalis.
Walz smeared ICE officers as “reckless” and a “threat to the public.” He went so far as to call them the “modern-day Gestapo” and suggested the state was at “war” with federal officers and “under attack.” After an ICE officer was forced to shoot Renee Nicole Good in self-defense, Walz issued a “warning order” to prepare the Minnesota National Guard for deployment and authorized the mobilization of 85 members of the Minnesota State Patrol Mobile Response Team to support law enforcement in the Twin Cities.
Walz stated that “Minnesota will not allow our community to be used as a prop in a national political fight” and warned residents, “Do not take the bait. Do not allow them to deploy federal troops into here. Do not allow them to invoke the Insurrection Act. Do not allow them to declare martial law.” He urged “peaceful resistance” and called protesting the administration “a patriotic duty.” He told President Trump and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, “We do not need any further help from the federal government. To Donald Trump and Kristi Noem, you’ve done enough.” He also characterized Trump administration operations as “dangerous, sensationalized operations” that are “a threat to our public safety.”
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey is another elected official taking an activist stance against federal law enforcement. He called ICE agents’ self-defense narrative “garbage” and “bulls***” in the context of the Renee Nicole Good shooting, despite video evidence showing that she hit an agent with her car. Frey stated, “They want an excuse to come in and show the kind of force that will create more chaos and more despair. Let’s not let them.” This “chaos” narrative is another example of how framing is used to exacerbate the problem.
The chaos does not originate from federal law enforcement but from activists interfering with ICE, illegal aliens refusing to self-deport, individuals resisting arrest, and public officials encouraging resistance. Frey called on ICE agents to leave the city, asserting that federal immigration authorities were “ripping families apart and sowing chaos on Minneapolis streets.” Once again, the “ripping families apart” phrasing is used to vilify ICE.
That narrative stems from one of two situations. In cases where an entire family is arrested, children are often placed in juvenile detention while adults are sent to adult detention, and the family is reunited after deportation. In other cases, the children are legal U.S. citizens and only the parents are deported. Citizens cannot be deported, but parents have the option of taking their citizen children with them. If they exercise that option, the family can be together after deportation. If parents choose to leave their children in the United States, that is their choice and does not constitute “tearing families apart.”
Frey also made the categorically untrue claim that “up until last night we hadn’t had any shootings in this city other than ICE.” Minneapolis experiences crime and shootings on a regular basis. In Democratic jurisdictions, crime rates are often misrepresented by reclassifying offenses or failing to report or prosecute crimes.
Frey, like Walz, also opposes investigations into fraud and appears invested in supporting the Somali community irrespective of documented immigration fraud, welfare fraud, other forms of financial fraud, and links to the transnational terrorist organization al-Shabaab.
Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner called President Trump the “criminal-in-chief” and said federal agents were being ordered to break the law by “a bunch of thugs.” He issued direct threats to ICE agents, stating, “Let me be clear, if any law enforcement agent, if any ICE agent, is going to come to Philly to commit crimes, you can get the F out of here. Because if you do that here, I will charge you with those crimes.” While it is legal to prosecute someone for committing a crime, this framing suggests to the public that ICE enforcement itself is a crime.
Krasner claimed ICE officer behavior violated law enforcement protocols, citing Philadelphia Police Department rules directing officers not to stand in front of vehicles and not to shoot into cars unless being shot at. He emphasized his office’s history of prosecuting police officers for criminal homicide and threatened to do the same to ICE agents. This framing attempts to force ICE agents to follow local police protocols, which is complete nonsense. Federal agencies have their own protocols, as do local police, and there is little precedent suggesting federal law enforcement is required to observe local police procedures during federal operations.
Furthermore, irrespective of Krasner’s claim that the ICE agent violated police protocol, this does not change the fact that Renee Nicole Good intentionally hit him with her car, prompting a response.
City Councilmember Kendra Brooks declared, “We are doing everything in our power to prevent ICE from murdering anyone here in Philadelphia.” Liberals would say this statement is acceptable because preventing murder is good. However, it suggests that ICE has committed murder, which it has not, and further implies that the purpose of ICE is to commit murder in the city. In reality, ICE is present to enforce immigration law in accordance with the Constitution.
Portland, Oregon, a city that allowed rioters to attack federal buildings, burn businesses, terrorize locals, and seize control of a portion of the city following George Floyd’s death, is yet another city where elected officials are fomenting hatred toward ICE. Mayor Keith Wilson called on ICE to “end all operations in the city until a full investigation is completed.” He pledged that the Portland Police Bureau would not support ICE and stated that Portland “has not requested and does not require” intervention from the National Guard, despite widespread unrest. He said the city would fight unwarranted federal intervention in court and characterized the federal presence as “a show of force” and “just a big show.”
Seattle officials called on residents to sign up for “ICE Mobilization Alerts” to track federal operations. They issued executive orders developing new guidance for police responses to ICE activities and drafted ordinances banning the use of face masks by law enforcement and prohibiting the use of city property for federal immigration enforcement. The face-mask ban appears to be central to many of these anti-ICE programs promoted by Democratic politicians. It is well known that if ICE agents’ identities are exposed, they and their families are placed in danger, yet Democratic politicians pretend not to know this, with figures such as Gavin Newsom saying, “Take off the masks. Come on, what are you afraid of?”
The president outlined a much longer list of Democrats attacking ICE in his message. At the same time, social media and even mainstream media are amplifying these messages to the point that some people not only believe ICE has no authority and that it is acceptable to obstruct or attack agents, but also that, as Tim Walz said, doing so is a patriotic duty. Meanwhile, none of these critics have encouraged illegal aliens to self-deport or suggested an alternative means of deporting the approximately 18 million illegal aliens who remain in the country.
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem shuts down Jake Tapper during CNN’s “State of the Union” Show on Sunday. Credit: CNN screenshot
Jake Tapper’s attempt to scold DHS Secretary Kristi Noem on Sunday for her comments following last week’s self-defense shooting in Minneapolis involving an ICE officer.
As The Gateway Pundit reported, chaos erupted on Wednesday after ICE fatally shot a rioter who attempted to run over agents in Minneapolis.
Video posted to X shows the moment an unhinged female was gunned down as she carried out her act of violence. Additional footage clearly shows that an ICE officer was in danger of being run over as Good accelerated.
Noem called the incident an “act of domestic terrorism.” She added that the officer followed his training.
“This is an experienced officer who followed his training, and we will continue to let the investigation unfold into the individual and continue to follow the procedures and policies that happen in these use of force cases,” she stated.
During their interview on CNN’s “State of the Union”, Tapper tried to lecture Noem for jumping to conclusions before the investigation was complete. But his move immediately backfired.
Noem then shut down Tapper with an important reminder: he had given a complete pass to Democrats such as AOC and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey when they slandered the officer and cursed out ICE.
After Tapper tried to interrupt, Noem cut him off by demanding he call out the Democrats as well.
Noem then closed by telling Tapper she had given the public nothing but the truth regarding the investigation, and if he does not like it, too bad.
WATCH:
🚨 HOLY CRAP! Kristi Noem just PUMMELED Jake Tapper for running COVER for violent rhetoric against ICE
TAPPER: Aren't you doing a disservice?
NOEM: "I haven't heard you say ONCE what a DISSERVICE it's done for Mayor FREY to get up and tell ICE 'get the F out!' Or AOC to call… pic.twitter.com/ozmTSu5hB9
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey (bottom left); the SUV driven by ICE Watch member Renee Good; the scales of justice; and an ICE agent. CREDITS: YouTube screenshot/X screenshot/Shutterstock
Christians must recognize that when mayors declare their cities off limits to the rule of law and private citizens take that declaration as a license to try to protect criminals by weaponizing their vehicle against law enforcement, there can be severe and potentially lethal consequences — as seen this week in Minneapolis.
Yesterday in Minneapolis, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents were conducting a lawful immigration operation when Renee Nicole Macklin Good allegedly weaponized her vehicle in an attempt to run over federal agents. An ICE agent fatally shot Macklin in what the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) described as self-defense. The investigation is ongoing, and body camera footage has yet to be released.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey immediately blamed federal agents for the shooting, telling ICE, in an expletive, to “get out of Minneapolis” and accusing them of sowing chaos. This despite the fact that ICE agents were performing their constitutional duty to enforce immigration laws — the same laws that apply in every state, including Minnesota.
The Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association condemned the “irresponsible” and “reckless rhetoric from political leaders attacking law enforcement,” stating it “has real and dangerous consequences for officers on the street” and “fuels hostility.” DHS reports a 1,300 percent increase in assaults and an 8,000 percent increase in death threats against ICE agents — directly linked to the demonization by sanctuary politicians in deep-blue cities and states.
Border Czar Tom Homan refused to pre-judge the incident, emphasizing the need for a full investigation, including body camera footage, before drawing conclusions.
So, how should Christians think about all of this?
First, reckless rhetoric from left-wing leaders is endangering law enforcement and undermining the rule of law.
Mayor Frey’s inflammatory response is dangerous. When elected officials vilify federal agents who are enforcing the law, they create an environment where violence against law enforcement becomes justified in the minds of agitators and anarchists.
Make no mistake: ICE agents risk injury or death while performing their duty. These are not rogue actors. They are federal law enforcement officers executing immigration laws passed by Congress and upheld by the courts. When politicians like Frey demonize them, they fuel the very hostility that leads to incidents like this.
A 1,300 percent increase in assaults and an overwhelmingly increase in death threats against ICE agents didn’t happen in a vacuum. It happened because left-wing politicians and the left-wing media have made federal immigration enforcement a villain rather than recognizing it as the legitimate exercise of governmental authority. When you repeatedly call people Nazis, don’t be surprised when your supporters believe you and act accordingly.
Second, federal agents have a constitutional duty to enforce immigration laws nationwide — no city is exempt.
As Brit Hume observed, “These ICE agents had every right to be there and had a duty to be there. They are this nation’s enforcers of the immigration laws. There’s no evidence here they weren’t doing their job or doing it improperly.”
The same Constitution that governs Texas, Florida, and Georgia also governs California, New York, and Minnesota. Local mayors don’t get to declare their cities autonomous zones exempt from federal law. They don’t get to treat American cities like independent city-states where the U.S. Constitution doesn’t apply.
Mayor Frey’s statement is reckless and irresponsible precisely because it suggests that Minneapolis operates under different rules. It doesn’t. Federal immigration law applies uniformly across all 50 states. When ICE agents enforce that law in Minneapolis, they’re doing exactly what they’re authorized and required to do.
Third, Minneapolis’s history of anti-authority chaos is repeating itself under soft-on-crime leadership.Poll: Do you think young people are becoming more conservative?(Required)Do you think young people are becoming more conservative?(Required)YesNoEmail(Required)
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Let’s not forget: Minneapolis under Mayor Frey was ground zero for the 2020 Black Lives Matter (BLM) riots that metastasized across the country. Over $500 million in property destruction and over $200 million in uninsured losses to small businesses happened in that city, and let’s not forget the burning out of Third Precinct police station that also happened during the BLM riots.
These weren’t federal agents causing chaos. These were Marxists and anarchists who have a problem with any authority, local or federal. Their view of utopia resembles the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror, where violence and anarchy are celebrated as “social justice” in the name of “protest.”
The same anti-authority mindset that burned Minneapolis in 2020 is at work today. When Department of Homeland Security (DHS) describes Macklin Good as “weaponizing her vehicle” to run over an agent and agitators are blocking lawful operations, we’re witnessing opposition to authority itself — not opposition to specific policies.
Fourth, while tragic, Macklin Good’s death is the fault of no one but herself.
When law enforcement of any kind asks you to step out of your vehicle, you obey. This is incredibly basic, but if actually followed, the number of fatalities at the hands of law enforcement would drop to virtually zero. When police stop you, you do not try to run away and you certainly should not try to hit those officers with your vehicle.
This tragedy was entirely avoidable, but because a mother decided her duty to obstruct law enforcement, try to flee, and accelerate straight at them superseded her duty to comply, she is now dead.
Christians must recognize what’s at stake here. Scripture is clear: “Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every human authority: whether to the emperor, as the supreme authority, or to the governors, who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right” (1 Peter 2:13-14).
This doesn’t mean government is infallible or beyond critique. We have critiqued government numerous times. But it does mean that legitimate governmental authority — including federal immigration enforcement — deserves respect and obedience unless it commands us to sin.
The loss of Renee Nicole Macklin Good’s life is tragic. Every human life bears the image of God, and her death should grieve all of us. But we must also recognize that when someone attempts to weaponize a vehicle against law enforcement — whether at a traffic stop or during an immigration operation — there can be severe and potentially lethal consequences. This is not complicated. This is basic cause and effect.
The social justice mindset has rotted people’s minds to the point where they no longer understand truth, justice, consequences, or personal responsibility. Toxic empathy has replaced biblical realism. We feel bad about outcomes while refusing to acknowledge that actions have consequences.
Christians must stop the insanity of toxic empathy. We need a healthy dose of biblical realism: If you attack law enforcement, if you weaponize your vehicle against federal agents, you may be met with lethal force. That’s not injustice. That’s law enforcement protecting their lives while performing their duty.
Politicians who win local mayoral elections don’t have the right to make their own laws that contradict the Constitution. They don’t get to set up independent autonomous zones where federal law doesn’t apply. And Christians cannot side with lawlessness — I don’t’ care who you are — simply because the left frames law enforcement as the enemy.
The full investigation will reveal what happened, and body camera footage will provide clarity. Until then, we should not rush to judgment. But what we can say now is this: ICE agents have every right and duty to enforce immigration laws, even in Minneapolis. Mayor Frey’s inflammatory rhetoric endangers all officers. And Christians must stand for the rule of law while rejecting the toxic empathy that excuses violence against authority.
Pray for law enforcement who risk their lives daily. Pray for Macklin Good’s family. Pray for wisdom for our leaders. And pray for a return to sanity in our cities where the rule of law — not the rule of the mob — prevails.
The left wants to get millions of activists into the streets during the months ahead, and just like last time around they are hoping that an incident in Minnesota will be the spark. Meanwhile, ICE has initiated a “wartime recruitment” strategy and is planning to meet any protests head on. Both sides absolutely hate one another, and we have already seen so many incidents of violence. This is such a tragedy, because none of us should want to see Americans fighting against Americans. Unfortunately, I am convinced that the civil unrest that we are witnessing will greatly escalate as 2026 rolls along.
During an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel’s show, Rachel Maddow revealed what the left’s plan is…
Rachel Maddow Calls for More Protests Against President Trump
“Once you have 3.5% of a population protesting nonviolently against a dictator or an authoritarian, that is essentially an unstoppable force that they can’t oppose.”
If you do the math, that would be more than 10 million people in the United States.
They want to flood the streets with far left activists just like they did in 2020, and they fully understand that there will be widespread violence just like we saw back then.
And now the death of Renee Nicole Good has given them exactly what they needed.
The mainstream media is portraying her as an innocent victim, but the truth is that she had been recruited as an anti-ICE “warrior” and she was simply doing what she had been recruited to do…
Renee Nicole Good, the mom who was killed by a federal agent after veering her car toward him, was an anti-ICE “warrior” and was part of a group of activists who worked to “document and resist” the federal immigration crackdown in Minnesota, The Post can reveal.
Good, who moved to the city last year, linked up with the anti-ICE activists through her 6-year-old son’s woke charter school, which boasts that it puts “social justice first” and prioritizes “involving kids in political and social activism,” multiple local sources said.
“She was a warrior. She died doing what was right,” a mother named Leesa, whose child attends the same school, told The Post at a growing vigil where Good was killed Wednesday.
She never should have been there.
And we all knew that clashes between ICE and anti-ICE radicals would eventually produce this sort of an incident.
Protests have erupted nationwide after an ICE agent fatally shot a woman in Minneapolis Wednesday.
Renee Nicole Good, 37, was killed during an immigration enforcement operation in a residential neighborhood south of downtown.
While heated protests were happening in Minnesota, demonstrations also took place or were expected to Thursday in New York City, Seattle, Detroit, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Philadelphia, San Antonio, New Orleans and Chicago. Protests were also scheduled in smaller cities later this week in Arizona, North Carolina, and New Hampshire.
Needless to say, these protests were very well funded.
The protest tonight in New York City against ICE is being paid for and organized by ‘PSL New York City – Party for Socialism and Liberation’
They are funded by Neville Roy Singham who lives in China and works with the CCP
He donated over $20 million to entities like the Justice and Education Fund, which supports Party for Socialism & Liberation activities like protests
He also funds groups with heavy Party for Socialism & Liberation leadership overlap
In other words in a huge networks of organization of professional protesters working to take down America
If the left thinks that they can get the Trump administration to back down, they are wrong.
According to CBS News, approximately 2,000 federal agents have been deployed to Minneapolis for a 30 day “surge”…
The Trump administration has begun a massive deployment of hundreds of Department of Homeland Security agents to the Twin Cities area as it escalates its federal crackdown amid a widening fraud scandal in Minnesota, multiple law enforcement officials familiar with the plan told CBS News.
The crackdown could involve roughly 2,000 agents and officers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s deportation branch and Homeland Security Investigations, the agency’s investigative arm tasked with fighting transnational crimes, the officials said. They requested anonymity to discuss operations that have not been publicly announced.
The plan is for the agents and officers to oversee a 30-day surge in operations in the Twin Cities area, making the region the first major target of the Trump administration’s expanded immigration crackdown in the new year, officials said.
We heard the word “surge” being used a lot during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Using military terminology is only going to increase tensions.
And the Washington Post is telling us that ICE has begun a $100 million “wartime recruitment” strategy…
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials are planning to spend $100 million over a one-year period to recruit gun rights supporters and military enthusiasts through online influencers and a geo-targeted advertising campaign, part of what the agency called a “wartime recruitment” strategy it said was critical to hiring thousands of new deportation officers nationwide, according to an internal document reviewed by The Washington Post.
The spending would help President Donald Trump’s mass-deportation agenda dominate media networks and recruitment channels, including through ads targeting people who have attended UFC fights, listened to patriotic podcasts or shown an interest in guns and tactical gear, according to a 30-page document distributed among officials this summer detailing ICE’s “surge hiring marketing strategy.”
The Department of Homeland Security has spoken publicly about its fast-tracked effort to significantly increase ICE’s workforce by hiring more than 10,000 new employees, a surge promoted on social media with calls for recruits willing to perform their “sacred duty” and “defend the homeland” by repelling “foreign invaders.” The agency currently employs more than 20,000 people, according to ICE’s website.
If they are preparing for “war”, who do they intend to fight?
I am sure that many of you have seen those ads by now.
There are a lot of unemployed people out there these days, and so I am sure that they are getting a lot of applications.
Vice-President JD Vance says that as ICE hires more people, we will soon see members of ICE going “door-to-door”…
“I think if we’re to see those deportation numbers ramp up as we get more and more people online working for ICE going from door-to-door making sure if you’re an illegal alien you’re going to have to get out of this country and if you want to comeback apply through the proper channels.”
The Trump administration seems to believe that they will be able to get the left to back down.
But instead, the violence just continues to increase.
The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released new statistics Thursday indicating a sharp increase in assaults, vehicular attacks, and death threats against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) law enforcement officers over the past year. According to DHS, assaults against ICE officers rose more than 1,300 percent during the first year of the Trump administration. DHS reported 275 assaults between January 20 and December 31, 2025, compared to 19 assaults recorded during the same time period in 2024, which the department characterized as a 1,347 percent increase.
DHS also reported a significant rise in vehicular-related incidents involving ICE personnel. Between January 21, 2025, and January 7, 2026, ICE officers experienced 66 vehicular attacks, compared to two during the same time span the previous year, an increase DHS calculated as 3,200 percent. In addition, DHS said it has recorded an 8,000 percent increase in death threats directed at ICE law enforcement officers, though the department did not specify the underlying totals in the release.
It is going to get a lot worse.
ICE is ramping up their “wartime recruitment” strategy so that they can conduct more operations in 2026, and the left hopes to mobilize millions of people to oppose them.
New MAHA food guidelines: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has flipped the food pyramid on its head, which aligns with his goal of motivating Americans to eat real food rather than ultra-processed food. The new HHS guidelines promote healthy fats, protein, dairy, vegetables, and fruits as the bulk of what people should eat, in contrast to the old model of bread, cereal, rice, and pasta. “Today our government declares war on added sugar,” RFK declared in yesterday’s announcement. “The new guidelines recognize that whole nutrient-dense food is the most effective path to better health.” This is the first time since 1980, when it was created, that a major change has been made to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA). The American Medical Association agrees with the change, stating, “The Guidelines affirm that food is medicine and offer clear direction patients and physicians can use to improve health.”
Trump’s housing solutions: With housing affordability likely playing a major role in the midterm elections, Donald Trump on Wednesday announced an upcoming action to address the issue. “For a very long time, buying and owning a home was considered the pinnacle of the American Dream. It was the reward for working hard, and doing the right thing, but now, because of the Record High Inflation caused by Joe Biden and the Democrats in Congress, that American Dream is increasingly out of reach for far too many people, especially younger Americans,” Trump wrote. “I am immediately taking steps to ban large institutional investors from buying more single-family homes, and I will be calling on Congress to codify it.” The legality of Trump’s idea is questionable, despite the appeal of protecting family homes for individual private ownership rather than allowing corporations to buy up homes and drive up costs.
Mamdani stooge’s housing hypocrisy: Meanwhile, in New York City, new socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s top housing official, Cea Weaver, has a radically different proposal to address the issue of housing affordability: the elimination of home ownership entirely. In a series of social media posts and video statements over recent years, Weaver has called homeownership a “weapon of white supremacy” and “racist” in advocating for “impoverish[ing] the white middle class.” She wants to expand rent controls with the goal “to have the housing actually be worth less.” The irony is that Weaver’s own parents own multiple properties, with her mother owning a house in Nashville valued at $1.6 million. When Weaver was questioned about this, she broke down in tears and ran away.
U.S. bolts international orgs: In implementing his America First agenda, Donald Trump is clearly determined to reset U.S. foreign policy by reestablishing American sovereignty over and against the leftist Eurocentric globalism. Thus, on Wednesday, the White House announced that the U.S. will be withdrawing from 66 international organizations, 31 of which are associated with the UN. The U.S. funds many of these organizations that “operate contrary to U.S. national interests, security, economic prosperity, or sovereignty,” the White House explained. “Many of these bodies promote radical climate policies, global governance, and ideological programs that conflict with U.S. sovereignty and economic strength.” Included among the organizations slated for withdrawal are the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Global Forum on Migration and Development, and the UN Population Fund, which is the main agency promoting so-called “reproductive rights” globally.
House to vote on expired ObamaCare expanded subsidies: The House will vote today on a Democrat bill to renew the recently expired ObamaCare enhanced subsidies. Democrat and Republican legislators are trying to take action due to the expiration of the subsidies, which no longer mask the doubled costs for 22 million people. The bill is expected to pass the House but is unlikely to pass the Senate, where legislation is being held up by President Trump’s correct insistence that subsidies paid directly to insurance companies should not be supported by Republicans, although he may support a temporary extension to enable a future deal. Trump wants any subsidies to go directly to individual healthcare accounts. States’ use of subsidies to fund abortions has run afoul of the Hyde Amendment, and Republicans are withholding support until those loopholes are closed.
Longtime Dem Rep. Hoyer announces retirement: Maryland Democrat Rep. Steny Hoyer, who has been in Congress since 1981, will officially announce his retirement today. The 86-year-old rose to the second-highest leadership position in the House Democrat caucus, serving as whip behind Rep. Nancy Pelosi both when she rose to the speakership and when she was minority leader. In 2022, Hoyer stepped back from his leadership position to allow for younger leadership. His congressional district, which consists of the eastern suburbs of Washington, DC, is considered safe for Democrats to retain.
House finds Biden admin’s alcohol study was biased against drinking: Alcohol consumption comes with risks. Nevertheless, it has been a constant feature of nearly every human society since the invention of farming. Despite its historical nature, a Biden-era policy developed last year by a group of American and Canadian scientists concluded that even one drink a day increases health risks and that “no amount” is healthy to consume. House Republicans on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee now say that the “Alcohol Intake and Health Study” was biased and intended to bring the U.S. into compliance with Canadian guidelines. The Committee says, “All six study group members are anti-alcohol advocates.” Members of the study have pushed back, saying that some of their studies have concluded that one drink a day actually reduces diabetes risk in women.
LEO deaths fall again:The Patriot Post is a staunch supporter of law enforcement officers, and we believe that 111 line-of-duty deaths nationally is 111 too many. Still, when the number shows a 25% decrease from the 148 on-the-job deaths in 2024 and represents the fewest deaths in 80 years, there is some reason to celebrate. Of the 111 fallen officers, 102 were men and nine were women. Just 44 deaths were firearm-related, 34 were traffic-related, and 33 fell into the “other” category. Having a presidential administration that firmly and vocally stands behind law and order has certainly increased LEO safety.
Company sells for $1.7 billion, divides $240 million in bonuses among employees: In the small town of Minden, Louisiana, the recent sale of Fibrebond to the Eaton power-management company hasn’t resulted in layoffs and a damaged economy. Instead, Graham Walker ensured that when his family-owned company sold for $1.7 billion, 15% of the proceeds, totaling $240 million, would be divided among his 540 full-time employees. Those 540 employees will receive an average of $443,000 in bonuses over the next five years, provided they remain employed at the company. Long-term employees will be rewarded for their loyalty with a bonus significantly above the average. Nearly half a million dollars is a life-changing sum for most Americans, and it’s encouraging to see an employer demonstrate loyalty to his employees. Incidentally, and not at all related, we in our humble shop have been showing extra kindness to Patriot Post publisher Mark Alexander.
Renee Nicole Good, 37, was shot and killed in Minneapolis on Wednesday when she accelerated her car and struck an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer. She had already obstructed ICE agents’ work and traffic on a public street and then refused to comply with another officer’s orders to get out of the vehicle.
“ICE officers in Minneapolis were conducting targeted operations when rioters began blocking ICE officers and one of these violent rioters weaponized her vehicle, attempting to run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill them — an act of domestic terrorism,” said the Department of Homeland Security in a post on X. “An ICE officer, fearing for his life, the lives of his fellow law enforcement and the safety of the public, fired defensive shots.”
It’s a tragedy that Good is dead, but if you play stupid games, you win stupid prizes.
Two quick observations about the video. First, the firing officer was impacted by the car and certainly seems to have had a reasonable fear for his life in a split-second decision. He couldn’t wait to see if she veered away, and she might have done so only after seeing the gun and/or being hit by a round or rounds. In fact, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said that the same officer had been struck and dragged by a protester’s vehicle in June, and that Good had been “stalking and impeding” agents all day. Second, the video doesn’t provide the opening context for the confrontation; it only picks up as the officers stop and exit their vehicle to address the woman’s obstruction. Law enforcement indicated that “agitators” had attempted to ram ICE vehicles earlier that day. It’s happened plenty of other times, too, which is part of a pattern of inflammatory rhetoric and violence aimed at ICE.
All in all, it was an outrageous incident that ought to infuriate every American. Citizens should not be obstructing law enforcement officers conducting lawful operations to detain and deport people who committed the crime of entering the United States illegally.
Democrats are instead outraged at ICE.
Knowing that the internet’s armchair quarterbacks — many of whom incited the Summer of Rage after Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin subdued George Floyd until he died of heart failure and drugs — would join them in their fury, Democrats like Governor Tim Walz and Mayor Jacob Frey directed their ire toward law enforcement and the Trump administration.
Frey was vulgar. “I have a message for ICE,” he said at a press conference. “Get the f**k out of Minneapolis.” He called DHS’s claim of self-defense “bulls**t” and declared that ICE is in Minnesota to “literally kill people.”
After praising all those immigrants who’ve “contributed so greatly to our city, to our culture, to our economy” (by stealing billions in social welfare money), Frey declared that Minneapolis residents “are going to meet that hate with love.” Heh.
As an aside, one of those fine Somali immigrants, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, called the incident “state violence.”
Walz, who just announced that he is dropping his bid for a third term because he got caught allowing immigrant corruption to run rampant in his state, marveled, “We’ve never been at war with our federal government.” (As if they are now.) Even before the shooting, Walz raged about ICE’s “war that’s being waged against Minnesota,” and afterwards, he talked about deploying the Minnesota National Guard against “rogue federal agents.”
Remember when Democrats went into hysterics because Donald Trump used the word “bloodbath” to describe bad economic policies and they pretended he was calling for literal violence? Remember when they feverishly insisted that he “incited an insurrection” that was the “biggest threat to our democracy since the Civil War” because he used the word “fight”?
As The Babylon Bee headlined, “Democrats Once Again Threaten Civil War To Stop Republicans From Taking Away Their Slave Laborers.” I thought the Bee was supposed to be satire.
To be fair, Walz urged January 7 protesters to behave “peacefully, as you always do.” (Please. I’m old enough to remember 2020.) But Trump also urged his January 6 supporters “to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” Democrats didn’t care.
American citizens have the right to voice their opinions, even when using vulgarity or displaying obnoxious signs on the street. They do not have the right to obstruct or attack law enforcement. Unfortunately, though my conclusion is that the ICE agents were correct and the driver was indeed a threat, many Americans will instead decide that ICE now has far worse than an optics problem.
Emmy Griffin: Trump’s Goal With Venezuelan Oil — Up to 50 million barrels of oil are being transported to the U.S. posthaste, but the long-term renewal of Venezuela’s oil industry depends on how the politics there unfold.
Thomas Gallatin: MN Welfare Scandal Reveals Power of New Media — The fall of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz demonstrates that legacy media outlets failed to either do their jobs or to protect another Democrat.
Sophie Starkova: Michael Reagan, RIP — He continued to carry his father’s torch of Liberty as a “steadfast guardian,” a testimony to his strength of character and love for his country.
Patrick Hampton: Prayer for America in 2026 — May our lives bear witness to God’s love, truth, and justice, and may our prayers be a beacon of hope for generations to come.
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Editor’s Note: Each week we receive hundreds of comments and correspondences — and we read every one of them. Click here for a few thought-provoking comments about specific articles. The views expressed therein don’t necessarily reflect those of The Patriot Post.
Latest PodcastPopCon #128: ‘If You Didn’t Know, Now You Know’: Maduro and the Monroe DoctrineIn our first episode of 2026, Thomas, Sterling, and Andrew break down the geopolitics, the precedent, and the meme culture explosion that have followed the U.S. operation to extract illegitimate Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Venezuelan Immigrant Speaks Out — A Venezuelan who fled Nicolás Maduro’s dictatorial rule in order to save herself and her family explains why she’s happy the dictator has been removed.
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SHORT CUTS
Non Compos Mentis
“I have a message for ICE. … Get the f**k out of Minneapolis. We do not want you here.” —Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey regarding yesterday’s ICE shooting
“The presence of federal immigration enforcement agents is causing chaos in our city. We’re demanding ICE to leave the city immediately. We stand rock solid with our immigrant and refugee communities.” —Mayor Jacob Frey
“They are already trying to spin this as an action of self-defense. Having seen the video myself, I want to tell everybody directly: That is bulls**t.” —Mayor Jacob Frey
“I’ve seen the video. Don’t believe this propaganda machine. The state will ensure there is a full, fair, and expeditious investigation to ensure accountability and justice.” —Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz
For the Record
“It was an act of domestic terrorism. … A woman attacked [ICE officers] and those surrounding them and attempted to run them over and ram them with her vehicle. An officer of ours acted quickly and defensively shot to protect himself and the people around him.” —DHS Secretary Kristi Noem
“This is the direct consequence of constant attacks and demonization of our officers by sanctuary politicians who fuel and encourage rampant assaults on our law enforcement. These men and women who are simply enforcing the law on the books are facing [a] 1,300% increase in assaults against them and an 8,000% increase in death threats.” —DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin
Stranger Than Fiction
“Transgender Woman Afraid She’ll Be Deported After Stealing COVID Funds.” —Newsweek headline
Braying Jennies
“Yes, we can all agree [Nicolás] Maduro was an illegitimate president who did horrible things in that country and was corrupt. The way he was removed from that country matters. We are supposed to be a nation of laws. The way we did it was against international criminal law. It’s against the United Nations. We can’t do it.” —”The View” co-host Sunny Hostin
“Maduro is a bad guy. We took him out. So is Kim Jong-un, so is [Vladimir] Putin, so is — what’s that other guy in Hungary? And we’re going to go into all these countries and just kidnap the leaders?” —”The View” co-host Joy Behar
Upright
“The important thing is for Trump to stabilize the situation in Venezuela quickly. If the U.S. intervention leads to chaos and disorder, requiring increasing amounts of American involvement, Trump will face accusations that he has gotten the U.S. into a morass in South America. The sooner Trump can accomplish a ‘safe, proper and judicious transition,’ the better.” —Byron York
“The Venezuelan mission sent a sharp and resounding message to the many points of evil around the world that America is ready to engage.” —Star Parker
Re: The Left
“So, what does the Democrat party prioritize? It is a deranged ideology that is a failed philosophy, a creed of ignorance, and is rooted in hate and envy. They do not prioritize American Independence. Matter of fact, they despise it. They prioritize control, subjugation, and submission.” —Allen West
Belly Laugh of the Day
“The Quality Learing center has permanently closed, making it the only daycare in history to have more TYPOS than KIDS.” —Jimmy Failla
ON THIS DAY in 1790, George Washington delivered the first State of the Union address in New York City. Also on this day in 1815, Andrew Jackson routed the British at the Battle of New Orleans, effectively ending the war.
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz’s 24-year-old daughter, Hope Walz, posted a TikTok video on Christmas Eve extending holiday wishes to those she described as being “terrorized” by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, generating swift and sharp criticism across social media platforms. In the video shared with her 500,000 followers, Hope stated, “I just wanted to say Merry Christmas to all our neighbors who have been terrorized by ICE,” alongside messages of support for unhoused individuals and others facing hardship.
The post prompted thousands of negative responses from social media users, with commenters accusing her of hypocrisy, questioning why she doesn’t personally house undocumented immigrants, and dismissing her message as “woke” activism. Hope’s Christmas message came just weeks after she took a break from social media in early December, citing “really scary” threats against her and her family following her criticism of President Trump’s rhetoric.
Meanwhile, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker disclosed that he is already preparing for potential prosecution of ICE agents should Democrats regain congressional control, stating that his state has established an “Illinois accountability commission” to gather evidence for future accountability efforts. “We have an Illinois accountability commission that just had its first hearing today and that hearing was testimony, video, experts and we’re basically gathering evidence because we are going to hold these people accountable when we can,” Pritzker said in a recent interview.
Pritzker’s defiant stance reflects the escalating conflict between so called Democratic-led states and the Trump administration over immigration enforcement, with the governor having recently signed sweeping legislation restricting ICE operations near courthouses, hospitals, and daycare centers. The Justice Department has challenged Pritzker’s protections by filing a federal lawsuit arguing that Illinois’ sanctuary measures are unconstitutional and impede federal immigration enforcement authority. The conflict between Pritzker and the Trump administration intensified after Trump called for the governor’s imprisonment in October for allegedly failing to protect ICE officers during federal enforcement operations in Chicago.
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