Category: Politics
Tim Walz says Minnesota is ‘at war’ with the federal government after fatal ICE shooting
Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz accused the federal government of being at war with his state after the fatal shooting during an Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation.
Tensions with the Trump administration escalated sharply Wednesday when an ICE agent shot a woman who appeared to be interrupting their operation with her vehicle. Video shows her swerving into an agent, who fired at her and killed her.
‘Minnesota will not allow our community to be used as a prop in a national political fight. We will not take the bait.’
Walz blamed the Trump administration for the shooting by claiming the increased immigration enforcement actions were unnecessary.
“I said this yesterday, we’ve never been at war with our federal government,” the governor said during a media briefing.
He went on to suggest that he would order the Minnesota National Guard to oppose the federal government.
“We do not need any further help from the federal government. To Donald Trump and Kristi Noem: You’ve done enough. There’s nothing more important than Minnesotans’ safety,” he said.
“I’ve issued a warning order to prepare the Minnesota National Guard. We have soldiers in training and prepared to be deployed if necessary. I remind you, a warning order is a heads-up for folks,” he added.
“These National Guard troops are our National Guard troops,” he emphasized. “They’re teachers in your community, they’re business owners, they’re construction professionals. They are Minnesotans. Minnesota will not allow our community to be used as a prop in a national political fight. We will not take the bait.”
Homeland Security Assistant Sec. Tricia McLaughlin had previously blamed Democratic rhetoric for the shooting.
“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,” she said. “These men and women who are simply enforcing the law on the books are facing 1,300% increase in assaults against them and an 8,000% increase in death threats.”
Other Democrats are using the shooting to call for the federal government to pull officers out of Minnesota.
“I have a message for ICE. To ICE, get the f**k out of Minneapolis!” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey (D) said during an earlier media briefing.
“We do not want you here. Your stated reason for being in this city is to create some kind of safety, and you are doing exactly the opposite,” he added. “People are being hurt. Families are being ripped apart. Long-term Minneapolis residents that have contributed so greatly to our city, to our culture, to our economy are being terrorized, and now somebody is dead.”
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Trump wants to ban institutional investors from purchasing single-family homes
President Donald Trump said in a statement on social media that he is moving to ban institutional investors from buying single-family homes and that he wants Congress to “codify” the ban into law.
The president has made easing the housing crisis a goal of his second term, and many have pointed to institutional investors as a large source of the problem.
‘People live in homes, not corporations.’
In a post on Truth Social Wednesday, Trump mentioned banning institutional housing purchases and hinted at other solutions to ease the housing crisis.
“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,” he wrote.
“It is for that reason, and much more, that 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 president added. “People live in homes, not corporations.”
Trump did not provide details about these “steps” in the post.
He went on to say that he would discuss the policy at a speech in Davos, Switzerland, during the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum.
Housing prices skyrocketed during the pandemic, when interest rates were lowered to encourage economic activity and many Americans moved to larger homes to take advantage of work-from-home policies. While interest rates have returned to historic averages, housing prices continued to climb, albeit at a slower pace.
Many have blamed companies like BlackRock for purchasing single-family homes as part of their investment portfolios, but some say institutional investors make up a small portion of the market.
Others say that encouraging more housing construction would lower housing costs by easing regulations and increasing supply to meet the demand.
An email to Blaze News from a spokesperson for BlackRock denied that the hedge fund owned any single family homes and linked to their statement online about the issue.
“A number of other large asset managers and private equity firms are very active today in purchasing single-family residences. BlackRock is sometimes confused with them,” the statement reads. “As a fiduciary asset manager, we invest and manage capital on behalf of our clients in a vast array of public and private U.S. real estate markets — but buying individual homes is not one of them.”
The company also referenced an Investopedia report saying many confuse BlackRock with BlackStone, which purchased housing stock after the 2008 financial meltdown.
BlackRock’s stock slid by 2.3% in the wake of the announcement.
Editor’s note: This article has been edited after publication to include a statement from BlackRock and to remove the company from the headline.
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VIDEO: Texas Republican brutalizes Democrat witness arguing that large-scale Somali immigration has strengthened Minnesota
A congressman from Texas crushed a Democratic witness in congressional testimony about the effect of large-scale Somali immigration on Minnesota.
Republican Rep. Brandon Gill of Texas questioned former Justice Dept. prosecutor Brendan Ballou during Wednesday’s House Oversight Committee hearing on fraud in Minnesota. Ballou was a witness for Democrats on the committee.
‘It doesn’t sound like something that makes our country stronger to me, and I think most Americans would agree with me on that.’
“Does large-scale Somali immigration make Minnesota stronger or weaker?” asked Gill.
“Certainly stronger,” Ballou responded.
“Certainly stronger,” Gill repeated. “Do you know what percentage of Somali-headed households in Minnesota are on food stamps?”
“No,” Ballou replied.
“Fifty-four percent. Do you know what that number is for native Minnesota-headed households?” Gill asked.
Ballou disputed the term “native households,” which led to Gill interrupting to say that only 7% of non-Somali Minnesotan households were on food stamps.
“What percentage of Somali-headed households in Minnesota are on Medicaid?” Gill asked.
“I don’t know,” Ballou said.
Gill told him the figure was 73% and compared it to the number of non-Somalis on Medicaid.
“The number is 18%. That’s quite an astounding difference, I think we would agree,” Gill said.
Gill went on to say that 81% of Somali-headed households were on welfare in general, a figure Ballou did not know.
“Let me just ask you, after 10 years of being in the United States, what percentage of Somali-immigrant households continue to be on welfare?” Gill asked.
“I don’t know,” Ballou said.
“The number is 78%,” he replied.
Gill said that about half of working-age Somalis who have been in the U.S. for 10 years or more speak English “very well.”
“That seems pretty low, doesn’t it?” Gill asked rhetorically. “It doesn’t sound like something that makes our country stronger to me, and I think most Americans would agree with me on that.”
Video of the exchange was posted to social media by the Oversight Committee.
RELATED: Minnesota news outlet gets wrecked for story on Somali migrants’ economic impact
Ballou asserted in his testimony when questioned by Democrats that the incidents of Somali fraud were low compared to their population in Minnesota. While 82 Somalis have been indicted thus far, Ballou said that this represents about 0.07% of the 108,000 estimated Somalis in Minnesota.
“When you compare that to one-third of all Americans [who] have a criminal record, and I think it’s 40% approximately of white men under the age of 23 have been arrested, I don’t think the statistics really compare,” Ballou said.
Gill also posted the video of the interaction to his social media timeline.
“This Democrat witness claims large-scale Somali immigration makes Minnesota stronger. The numbers tell a different story,” he wrote.
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‘Eat real food’: Trump administration flips ‘corrupt food pyramid,’ encourages meat and veggies over bread and oatmeal
In the ongoing effort to make America healthy again, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other members of the Trump administration gathered for a special press conference on Wednesday to announce a major overhaul of dietary guidelines
The guidelines, promoted under the simple command to “eat real food,” introduce a “new pyramid” that prioritizes protein, dairy, healthy fats, and fruits and vegetables over whole grains, which is essentially an upside-down version of the conventional food pyramid most people are familiar with.
‘These guidelines replace corporate-driven assumptions with common-sense goals and gold-standard scientific integrity.’
“These guidelines replace corporate-driven assumptions with common-sense goals and gold-standard scientific integrity,” Kennedy said at the press conference.
He added that they will “revolutionize our nation’s food culture and make America healthy again.”
RELATED: Trump administration overhauls childhood vax schedule. Here’s the downsized version
Screenshot of government website
“For decades, we’ve been fed a corrupt food pyramid that has had a myopic focus on demonizing natural healthy saturated fats, telling you not to eat eggs and steak, and ignoring a giant blind spot: refined carbohydrates, added sugars, ultra-processed food,” Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary said.
Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said, “A healthy meal is within reach for all American families. These new dietary guidelines are a framework which is meant to be customized to meet the needs, the preferences, and the financial status of all American families.”
The inverted pyramid is the result of many studies conducted by the government to challenge the current paradigm and address our nation’s health problems. The guidelines were published in multiple documents, including a series of appendices that is over 400 pages long.
Some users on social media joked that HHS was copying a “South Park” bit in which scientists, at the behest of character Eric Cartman, “flip the pyramid” to reveal the “true” nutritional standards.
The old food pyramid originated in Sweden in the 1970s and was later adapted by the United States Department of Agriculture in 1992.
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‘ICE, get the f**k out of Minneapolis!’ Democrat mayor calls ICE’s self-defense claim for deadly shooting ‘bulls**t’
The far-left mayor of Minneapolis forcefully demanded that federal immigration agents leave his city after a fatal shooting of a woman who obstructed an operation and drove her vehicle into an agent.
Mayor Jacob Frey of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party immediately called for Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to leave in the wake of the shooting and reiterated his demand in a media briefing.
‘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!’
“I have a message for ICE. To ICE, get the f**k out of Minneapolis!” said Frey.
“We do not want you here. Your stated reason for being in this city is to create some kind of safety, and you are doing exactly the opposite. People are being hurt. Families are being ripped apart. Long-term Minneapolis residents that have contributed so greatly to our city, to our culture, to our economy are being terrorized, and now somebody is dead,” he added.
“That’s on you. And it’s also on you to leave,” Frey said. “It’s on you to make sure that further damage, further loss of life and injury is not done.”
He identified the deceased protester as a 37-year-old woman, and the DHS said she was a U.S. citizen. Frey put the blame for the shooting on ICE, but Homeland Security Assistant Sec. Tricia McLaughlin contradicted that version of events.
“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,” she wrote in a statement.
Video on social media caught the incident and shows the moment she hit the gas and the shots rang out.
“He used his training and saved his own life and that of his fellow officers,” McLaughlin added. “The alleged perpetrator was hit and is deceased. The ICE officers who were hurt are expected to make full recoveries.”
Frey addressed the statement from the DHS and called that version “bulls**t.”
“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!” said Frey. “This was an agent recklessly using power that resulted in somebody dying, getting killed.”
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Infamous CIA officer turned Soviet spy dies in prison
After more than 30 years since pleading guilty to espionage that reportedly compromised several United States assets during the Cold War, an infamous Central Intelligence Agency officer has died in prison.
Aldrich Ames died on Monday, according to the Bureau of Prisons website.
Ames claimed he needed the money simply to pay debts and relieve ‘financial troubles, immediate and continuing.’
Ames was held in the Federal Correctional Institution in Cumberland, Maryland, where he was serving a life sentence without parole.
Ames, a career CIA agent, was arrested in 1994 on espionage charges years after he began cooperating with KGB agents in 1985. The information he provided to the Soviets is thought to have directly contributed to the compromising of several CIA and FBI sources, some of whom were executed after their discovery.
RELATED: Unveiling ‘Big Intel’: How the CIA and FBI became deep state villains
Photo by Jeffrey Markowitz/Sygma via Getty Images
Over nearly a decade, Moscow paid him $2.5 million in exchange for betraying state secrets to the Soviets during and after the Cold War. Ames claimed he needed the money simply to pay debts and relieve “financial troubles, immediate and continuing.”
“Well, the reasons that I did what I did in April of 1985 were personal, banal, and amounted really to kind of greed and folly. As simple as that,” Ames said in an interview archived by the National Security Archive at George Washington University, according to Fox News.
“I knew quite well, when I gave the names of our agents in the Soviet Union, that I was exposing them to the full machinery of counterespionage and the law, and then prosecution, and capital punishment, certainly, in the case of KGB and GRU officers who would be tried in a military court, and certainly others, that they were almost all at least potentially liable to capital punishment,” he added. “There’s simply no question about this.”
Ames’ wife, Rosario, was sentenced to 63 months in prison on charges of assisting his espionage.
Ames was 84 years old at the time of his death.
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‘Shameful revisionist history’: America250 faces scrutiny after posting ‘progressive propaganda’
As America celebrates its 250th year, the very organization planning the celebration has now been accused of spreading “progressive propaganda.”
On Tuesday, America250 made a post praising former President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his novel list of “freedoms.”
‘Celebrating the socialist campaign positions of FDR as fundamental to American history was not what I expected when I hit the follow button.’
In a graphic, the post says, “On this day in 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt outlined four universal freedoms people the world over ought to enjoy.”
“Spoken during a moment of uncertainty, the Four Freedoms helped define what America stood for — and continues to stand for,” the post reads.
While the list starts with freedoms generally familiar to all Americans, specifically freedom of speech and freedom of worship, FDR also added a couple of novelties: “freedom from want” and “freedom from fear.”
RELATED: Soros-tied No Kings protesters plot to sabotage US Army’s 250th anniversary parade
Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call Inc. via Getty Images
The Federalist’s Brianna Lyman called out what she called America250’s “progressive propaganda”: “‘Freedom from Want’ is not a constitutional freedom nor a natural right. It was invented by FDR and his socialist cohort to justify welfare expansion and redefine rights as government grants — flying directly in the face of what America *actually* stands for.”
“Making up a right like ‘Freedom from Want’ — and then pretending like this is a core American value, is shameful revisionist history from America250,” Lyman added.
At the end of the series of graphics, the America250 post says, “President Roosevelt spoke them. Norman Rockwell painted them. We will strive to live them.”
The Tennessee Star’s Tom Pappert commented, “Celebrating the socialist campaign positions of FDR as fundamental to American history was not what I expected when I hit the follow button.”
According to the America250 website, the “nonpartisan” U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission was established by Congress in 2016 to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
While it is not clear who runs the social media accounts, notable figures on the commission include several members of Trump’s Cabinet, Democrat and Republican congressmen and senators, and 16 private citizens.
The chair of America250, Rosie Rios, was appointed by President Joe Biden and previously served in both the Obama and Biden administrations in some capacity, according to her biography.
Former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama and their spouses are listed as “honorary national co-chairs” of America250.
America250 did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Blaze News.
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‘You have to be completely out of your f***ing mind’: Eric Adams rips into Mamdani aide over white supremacist comment
Just days after the inauguration of democratic socialist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, his administration is having to face damaging accusations from critics.
Mamdani picked housing rights activist Cea Weaver to join his team, but her past comments equating homeownership to white supremacy have led to widespread condemnation.
‘That level of thinking only comes from extreme privilege and total detachment from reality.’
Among those decrying the pick is former New York City Mayor Eric Adams, also a Democrat.
“Homeownership is how immigrants, Black, Brown, and working-class New Yorkers built stability and generational wealth despite every obstacle,” Adams wrote on social media.
“You have to be completely out of your f***ing mind to call that ‘white supremacy,'” he added. “That level of thinking only comes from extreme privilege and total detachment from reality.”
Adams included a screenshot of the questionable post made by Weaver in 2019.
“Private property including and kind of ESPECIALLY homeownership is a weapon of white supremacy masquerading as ‘wealth building’ public policy,” she wrote.
Mamdani rode into the mayor’s office on a wave of residents’ grievances over high housing costs by promising to extend rent control. Critics of the policy, including many economists, oppose rent control because it leads to abandoned rental units and, paradoxically, higher rents.
In other resurfaced comments, Weaver implied that white people would need to change their relationship to private property for the sake of social justice equity.
RELATED: Mamdani makes bizarre promise on World Cup tickets — and gets wrecked in community note
“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 video-recorded comments.
“And transitioning to treating it as a collective good and towards a model of shared equity will require that we think about it differently,” she added. “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.”
Mamdani’s director of appointments has already resigned over comments on social media deemed anti-Semitic.
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