Category: Politics
Democrats tried to send $1 million to ‘East African’ addiction center above a Somali restaurant with ties to ISIS, Ernst says
Republican Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa said in a social media post that she stopped Democrats from sending $1 million to an addiction center with ties to ISIS, and has called for a fraud investigation.
She went on to say that Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah helped her stop the funds, but called on the Department of Justice to investigate the alleged fraud scheme.
‘It is undeniable that expressing admiration for someone who sought to commit atrocities against the United States raises most serious concerns.’
The center was located above a Somali restaurant that was run by three people who live in the same house, and they have a relative who tried to join ISIS, according to Ernst.
She posted a letter to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi demanding an investigation into Generation Hope MN that is based in Minneapolis. The organization was established in 2019 and is described as a Somali-led addiction recovery and substance use disorder center.
Ernst said the group lists on their 501(c)(3) non-profit application three people as directors who live at the same address. She documented the organization’s spending profile and said it suggests “minimal direct services, opaque financial reporting, and heavy reliance on contractor payments,” which she said “should trigger immediate scrutiny, not federal taxpayer dollars.”
In addition, Abdirizak Mohamed Warsame was arrested in 2015 along with nine others for preparing to travel to Syria in order to join the ISIS terrorist group. He is the older brother of Generation Hope MN founder Abdirahman Warsame.
The older Warsame agreed to a plea deal that included a 30-month sentence.
“Should someone with such associations be considered worthy of taxpayer funding?” she wrote. “We do not know Abdirizak Warsame’s current views on ISIS or its goals, nor how his influence may shape his brother’s actions and aspirations, but it is undeniable that expressing admiration for someone who sought to commit atrocities against the United States raises most serious concerns.”
RELATED: Minnesota news outlet is getting wrecked online for story on Somali migrants’ economic impact
Abdirahman Warsame responded to the accusations in a post on the Facebook page for the organization and denied many of the claims.
“To be clear, Generation Hope has never committed fraud, or submitted falsified paperwork. In addition, we have not received any federal funding related to this proposed request,” the statement reads.
“Generation Hope is a grassroots organization rooted in the community at large, created from a place of pain and hope for the future,” he added. “We have served the recovery community for nearly seven years, and we plan to continue to do so.”
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Ocasio-Cortez gets crushed online for her comments about ICE — from outraged liberals
Democratic socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.) is facing a wave of backlash for her comments on Immigration and Customs Enforcement — because they were not extremist enough.
Ocasio-Cortez has infamously advocated for abolishing ICE, but many of her critics now claim that she is easing her extreme positions in order to seek higher office.
‘You get screwed over to pay a bunch of thugs in the street that are shooting mothers in the face. That is what this administration is doing, that’s what the Republican party did.’
“My position has always been clear that ICE funding should be cut. We’re seeing what they’re doing with this reckless explosion in funding,” said Ocasio-Cortez to a reporter asking about ICE funding.
“And mind you, just so everybody knows, I want everybody to understand the cuts to your health care are what’s paying for this. All that extra money that everybody’s paying right now in their premiums, all that extra money that you’re paying, it is paid for with — it is all that extra money that the government and [Affordable Care Act] subsidies that was given to nearly a trillion dollars in health care was taken out and given to ICE,” she added.
“So understand how these dots connect,” Ocasio-Cortez concluded. “You get screwed over to pay a bunch of thugs in the street that are shooting mothers in the face. That is what this administration’s doing. That’s what the Republican Party did.”
While many on the right might be offended by her histrionic description of ICE, some on the left were also offended that she was not far-left enough.
“Giving less funding to fascist state agents who abduct people and shoot people in the face doesn’t change their mandate, function and the impunity given to them. You didn’t run on less funding,” responded former Al Jazeera reporter Sana Saeed.
“Don’t trust any politician that doesn’t call for the outright abolition of ICE. ‘Cutting funding’ is bulls**t. ICE is a militarized police force terrorizing American cities and streets. It needs to be completely defunded,” replied social justice activist Anthony Zenkus.
“She’s still selling ‘Abolish ICE’ hats in her store reflective of her former position, a journalist should ask her why she changed her mind,” wrote liberal comedian Kate Willett.
“Abolish ice. Nothing else is acceptable!!” responded another user.
“Abolish ICE is the moderate position. You f**king suck,” said another detractor.
“We recently tested ~ a dozen public statements from a diverse set of Democratic elected officials on the murder of Renee Good and this was the top testing one,” joked one detractor.
A Blaze News request for comment from the congresswoman’s office was not immediately answered.
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Florida woman arrested for punching trooper in the face during ICE operation, AG says: ‘Not today, Jennifer’
A Florida woman was arrested on numerous charges after she allegedly punched a state trooper during an Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation Tuesday.
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier said 40-year-old Jennifer Cruz of Jacksonville objected to the ICE operation on Beach Boulevard but ended up getting arrested herself.
‘The idea that you’re going to assault one of our troopers is unacceptable, and you are going to face consequences as a result of that.’
“This is Jennifer Cruz of Jacksonville. Jennifer disagrees with immigration enforcement and decided to commit a few felonies by getting out of her car and punching a Trooper in the face,” Uthmeier said in a post on social media.
“But unlike Minnesota, we don’t put up with this nonsense. Not today, Jennifer,” he added.
Uthmeier included an image of Cruz’s arrest from a police camera.
The owner of the Mi Pueblo Mexican grocery store spoke to WJXT-TV about the arrest that unfolded in front of his business.
“What I witnessed was a traffic stop by the state trooper,” Juan Alvarez said. “ICE agents showed up with the state trooper. They detained a driver, the person was driving, and so yeah, they had an operation going on, and after that, they had detained another person, but it seems they got into an altercation with that person. It turned violent, and that led to the presence of a lot of more, you know, police, federal enforcement showing up.”
He was also able to record officers taking down Cruz from the window of his shop.
Jail records indicate Cruz was charged with a slew of crimes, including resisting an officer with violence, battery on law enforcement, and driving with a suspended driver’s license.
Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis commented on the arrest during a media briefing.
“This is not Minneapolis. This is not going to end well for you in Florida,” he said. “You have a right to go out there and criticize government policy. You can go out there and protest within respected zones, but the idea that you’re going to assault one of our troopers is unacceptable, and you are going to face consequences as a result of that.”
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Illegal-alien patients drain Texas hospitals, racking up billion-dollar bill — in less than a year
Unsurprisingly Texas bears a disproportionate share of the burden from illegal immigration due to its expansive southern border. Now state leadership has released the numbers to prove the massive financial burden illegal aliens have had on one sector in particular: hospitals.
New data has been released by the Texas Health and Human Services Commission showing a baffling 10-figure financial burden on Texas hospitals in fiscal year 2025, Texas Scorecard first reported.
The total cost tipped over the billion-dollar mark: $1,050,642,864.
According to the new data, the total visits between November 2024 and August 2025 reached 313,742 for those “not legally present.”
Photographer: Desiree Rios/Bloomberg via Getty Images
And the total cost tipped over the billion-dollar mark: $1,050,642,864.
The year-end totals show that the burden is not only on one type of care either.
A large portion of the visits come from the “Emergency Department – Non-Medicaid/Non-CHIP” category, though the lion’s share of the cost comes from the “Inpatient Discharges – Non-Medicaid/Non-CHIP” category, meaning that the hospital system is being burdened by illegal aliens seeking both emergency and long-term care.
This data was collected and released pursuant to an executive order signed by Gov. Greg Abbott (R) in August 2024. The order directed hospitals to begin collecting data on illegal alien patients in Texas hospitals beginning in November 2024.
As Texas Scorecard noted, these numbers are therefore not reflective of the full fiscal year, and the actual totals very likely exceed these figures.
Abbott argued in the executive order that Texans ultimately bear the burden of public financial support through higher taxes and more expensive medical care as well.
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Mamdani housing official decries ‘white middle-class homeowners’ for stalling ‘renter justice’ in resurfaced video
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration got hit with another blow in the form of a resurfaced video of more extremist comments from its top housing official.
Cea Weaver has been previously criticized for her socialist schemes on housing, but the newest video shows her taking aim at “white, middle-class homeowners.”
‘Unless we can undermine the institution of homeownership … it’s a really difficult organizing situation we find ourselves in.’
“I think that United States public policy has done a really, really, really good job of pitting cash-poor homeowners and working-class homeowners and middle-class homeowners against renters, and we need to figure out how to navigate that as organizers,” said Weaver in a video shared by the Free Beacon.
She went on to say that the real threat to “renter justice” was not institutional investors like BlackRock, but rather smaller-scale investors who own numerous housing units.
“It’s just this challenging dynamic,” she continued in the 2021 interview with Briahna Joy Gray. “White, middle-class homeowners are a huge problem for a renter justice movement.
She added, “Unless we can undermine the institution of homeownership and seek to provide stability in other ways, I don’t know — it’s a really difficult organizing situation we find ourselves in.”
Mamdani tapped the socialist housing activist to lead his Office to Protect Tenants, leading many to unearth her previous statements espousing statist schemes to erase private ownership of housing.
“I think the reality is, is that for centuries we’ve really treated property as an individualized good and not a collective good,” Weaver said in one video interview. “And transitioning to treating it as a collective good and towards a model of shared equity will require that we think about it differently. And it will mean that families, especially white families but some [people of color] families who are homeowners as well, are going to have a different relationship to property than the one that we currently have.”
In the latest resurfaced video, Weaver went on to say that massive taxation would be necessary to fund expanded social service programs.
“We need a national movement to pass universal rent control to limit landlords’ ability to endlessly profit on our homes, to give tenants the right to form a tenants’ union where they live, and to really block evictions,” she added. “But rent control is not enough. People need money. We need to tax billionaires and transform that into cash assistance for renters. And we need to chip away at home ownership, and that means — that means Medicare for All, that means, like, a deep investment in real social service programs.”
RELATED: ‘You have to be completely out of your f***ing mind’: Eric Adams rips into Mamdani aide
Even some on the left have recoiled at the extremism from Mamdani’s administration and the comments from Weaver associating homeownership with white supremacy.
“Homeownership is how immigrants, Black, Brown, and working-class New Yorkers built stability and generational wealth despite every obstacle,” said former NYC Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, on social media.
“You have to be completely out of your f***ing mind to call that ‘white supremacy,'” he continued. “That level of thinking only comes from extreme privilege and total detachment from reality.”
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Minneapolis chaos escalates: Federal prison guards in riot gear block hateful mob after another ICE shooting
Tensions are rising rapidly in Minneapolis, Minnesota, after yet another ICE-involved shooting.
On Wednesday night, video footage from journalist Nick Sortor went viral, showing one of the latest developments in the conflict.
‘This federal response is growing every day. Send in the MARINES next!’
The video shows federal officers with identification indicating that they are from the Bureau of Prisons, a major development in the federal government’s efforts to control the situation. The prison guards are wearing riot gear and blockading a street to keep a rowdy crowd of rioters from the DHS agents behind them.
Other videos from the area appear to show rioters breaking into police vehicles and stealing police equipment. Some also reportedly threw rocks, ice, and incendiary devices at officers.
Photographer: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images
“This federal response is growing every day. Send in the MARINES next!” Sortor captioned the BOP video, in part.
Sortor attributed this development to Attorney General Pam Bondi. Blaze News has reached out to the DOJ for comment.
At the end, the video pans around to show a view of dozens of protesters near the line of guards.
One rioter can be heard shouting, “Why the f**k are you here?” and “What more do you f**king want?” before some in the crowd begin chanting, “They’re not qualified!” at the guards.
The video was posted just hours after an ICE agent was “ambushed by three individuals” and was forced to fire a defensive shot at an illegal Venezuelan alien during an attempted arrest, DHS claimed.
The alien suffered a non-life-threatening gunshot wound to the leg and was taken to the hospital, as was the ICE officer.
Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act on Thursday morning given the rising tensions between law enforcement and the increasingly violent rioters.
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Comedian Whitney Cummings mocks liberal hypocrisy: ‘We don’t believe in gender, but we need a female president’
Whitney Cummings mocked and ridiculed the hypocrisy of liberals during her appearance on Joe Rogan’s incredibly popular podcast.
Cummings was explaining how she came to have some conservative beliefs after being liberal and seeing the contradictory claims and beliefs they held.
‘We believe in climate change and the sea is rising, but we live on the coast! Like, would you buy a house on the beach if you truly believe that?’
“I was as liberal — I had blue hair, you guys! I rescue pit bulls. It doesn’t get any more liberal than me!” she joked. “But the whole idea with being liberal is like, you had me at, ‘We’re not racist, everybody’s equal,’ diversity, but then it turns into diversity but not diversity of thought!”
She said that she was not an expert in politics but could easily pick up on hypocrisy.
“So, it just started to just be like, hold on, you know, we don’t believe in gender, but we need a female president. And you’re like, huh?” she said. “And it’s like, ‘My body my choice,’ unless it’s a baby that needs a vaccine for hepatitis B, which comes from butt sex!”
“And sharing needles,” Rogan added.
“And sharing needles!” she agreed. “And then, we believe in climate change and the sea is rising, but we live on the coast! Like, would you buy a house on the beach if you truly believe that?”
Rogan and Cummings were ridiculing a far-left socialist scheme espoused by a housing activist who had been hired by newly inaugurated New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
Photo by Michael S. Schwartz/Getty Images
Video of the interaction was posted to social media, where it garnered millions of views. The entire podcast with Cummings can be viewed on the show’s YouTube channel.
She went on to express support for Democratic politician Beto O’Rourke, which Rogan appeared to oppose. He said that there would likely be a backlash to Mamdani’s policies, and it might lead to Republican control of the city.
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Michigan sandwich shop owner faces backlash for profanity-laced tirade against ICE: ‘F**k your BLATANT fascism’
The co-owner of a Michigan sandwich shop says he doesn’t care about the backlash from his profanity-laced rant against Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations.
The post was addressed to ICE and placed on the official Facebook page for Fatty Lumpkin’s Sandwich Shack in Muskegon, where it received a lot of attention.
‘F**k your BLATANT fascism. You are NOT welcome at Fatty Lumpkins Sandwich Shack.’
“No more quiet today. F**k YOU. NO F**K YOU!!! Do not EVER set foot in this establishment without a warrant. You will be denied service. You will be laughed at and escorted out. We will immediately call 911 the second I see anything resembling your presence on our private property,” read the post from Brett Gilbert.
A screenshot of the screed was posted on social media by the popular “Libs of TikTok” account.
“F**k you. F**k your murderous ways we all saw on full display today,” the co-owner added. “F**k your disregard for due process and our beloved constitution. F**k your lack of humanity based on manmade borders. F**k your dear leader, everything he stands for, and every single person that supports anything he or you do/represent. F**k your bonuses while essential services go unfunded.
“Most importantly … F**k your BLATANT fascism,” the post continued. “You are NOT welcome at Fatty Lumpkins Sandwich Shack. You NEVER will be. Our food is too good for you but beyond that our humanity transcends your callousness. You no longer get to enjoy the delicious food, art, etc. that your chosen enemies produce. We are not you and you are not us. Stay away!!!”
In comments to WWMT-TV, Gilbert said that his business had tripled over people showing their support for his comments.
“A lot of people have talked about the language in the post, and I don’t really care,” Gilbert said. “It’s just not that big of a deal. They’re words. I think the actions that are happening right now are a lot more significant, and something that people should be concerned about.”
RELATED: ‘Nazi trash’: Unhinged outrage ensues after ICE posts video of Santa deporting illegal aliens
Gilbert said he accepted that some people would no longer eat at his shop because of the post.
“Sometimes you have to not care about that stuff,” he added. “Not everything is about money. At the end of the day, I know I’m going to take care of myself and the people I love and this is part of that.”
A sandwich was also used as a weapon by a man against National Guard members in Washington, D.C., but the assault case was tossed out of court by a grand jury in November.
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