Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times,

A suspected leader of the criminal gang MS-13 has been arrested in Nebraska, FBI Director Kash Patel said in a Dec. 9 post on X.

Gerson Cuadra Soto, a Honduran national, “is believed to be responsible for overseeing one of their major kill squad units—and suspected of executing the assassination of the son of the former President of Honduras,” Patel wrote.

“This is part of the FBI’s Joint Task Force Vulcan investigation out of @FBIHouston to locate, indict, and arrest members of MS-13 leadership ‘La Mesa.’”

On July 14, 2022, Saíd Omar Lobo Bonilla, son of former Honduran President Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo Sosa, and three other men were killed outside a nightclub in Honduran capital city Tegucigalpa.

Joint Task Force Vulcan is an initiative launched in August 2019 under the first Trump administration that aims to disrupt and eliminate MS-13.

La Mesa, or “The Table,” is a group of senior MS-13 gang leaders who allegedly authorize murders throughout the United States.

Patel commended FBI Omaha, Nebraska, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), the Drug Enforcement Administration, and other partners for their work that resulted in Soto’s arrest.

“This admin is taking a whole of government approach to dismantling MS-13 and their presence within the country,” he said. MS-13, also known as Mara Salvatrucha, was designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the State Department in February.

In a Dec. 9 statement, Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen welcomed the arrest of Soto, who he said was illegally in the country and living in the city of Grand Island.

“Cuadra Soto, a leader of the terrorist MS-13 gang and Honduran assassin, entered the United States illegally in 2022 under Biden’s watch—eventually obtaining a California driver’s license before establishing a residence in Grand Island,” Pillen said.

“Here’s the simple truth: Weak borders put our families at risk. Thankfully, under conservative Republican leadership, our border has never been more secure.”

Expanding Scope

Under the Trump administration, the FBI has intensified its targeting of foreign criminal groups.

In March, the FBI announced that it was expanding its counterterrorism mission to aggressively battle transnational organized crime.

The announcement was made after the State Department designated several international cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations and Specially Designated Global Terrorists.

The FBI changed the name of its Terrorist Screening Center to the Threat Screening Center, saying that the updated name expands the scope of national security screening to cover groups such as MS-13 and Tren de Aragua that operate in the United States.

U.S. military personnel escort alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua and the MS-13 gang recently deported by the U.S. government to be imprisoned in the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) prison, as part of an agreement with the Salvadoran government, in San Luis Talpa, El Salvador, on March 30, 2025. Secretaria de Prensa de la Presidencia/Handout via Reuters

“Border security is essential to protecting our country and providing safer communities for our citizens,” Patel said in a statement at the time.

“We’re expanding the watchlist to include cartel and gang members from newly designated foreign terrorist organizations. This change will assist our law enforcement and Intelligence Community partners as we all work together toward the goal of crushing violent crime within our borders.”

In a Dec. 3 statement, the Department of the Treasury said that its Office of Foreign Assets Control has sanctioned key affiliates of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization.

“Under President Trump, barbaric terrorist cartels can no longer operate with impunity across our borders. The Tren de Aragua network’s narcotrafficking and human smuggling operations have long posed a grave threat to our nation,” Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent said in the statement.

A March report from the State Department detailed the threats posed by transnational criminal organizations. It specifically highlighted Mexican criminal organizations as “one of the greatest threats” to the United States.

Mexico was deemed to be the most significant source of illicit fentanyl and fentanyl analogues, with Mexican groups Sinaloa Cartel and New Generation Jalisco Cartel the primary distributors of these drugs in North America, the report said. Mexico is also the source of most of the heroin and meth seized in the United States.

Palantir Technologies is becoming a deeper partner to the US military as the Navy launches ShipOS, a $448 million effort to use the company’s AI and data tools to improve submarine production, according to a new report from Bloomberg.

The deal will provide Palantir’s Foundry and Artificial Intelligence Platform across select shipyards and suppliers.

The Navy wants to fix chronic delays and overruns affecting its Virginia- and Columbia-class programs. Secretary of the Navy John Phelan said the goal is to speed up an industry that has struggled with labor issues and subcontractor delays: “By enabling industry to adopt AI and autonomy tools at scale, we’re helping the shipbuilding industry improve schedules, increase capacity, and reduce costs.”

Palantir CEO Alex Karp emphasized the scale of the challenge, saying, “It takes 10 million man hours to build a submarine. There are 2,000 businesses involved. Every single one of these components is specialized.” He added that tracking parts through software is vital because “that’s exactly why you need software” to remove bottlenecks, arguing that “already that problem’s gone.”

Bloomberg writes that two major shipbuilders and three public shipyards will receive the software first, and Phelan said the same system could later support carriers, the fleet, and even fighter jets.

The Navy expects the Palantir approach could “significantly” reduce the Columbia-class delay, currently projected to push delivery to March 2029. The contract uses a new “shared risk” model. Phelan said, “If they perform well…they’re going to do well and they should.” Karp responded, “You’re forcing us to absorb risk,” adding, “We get paid as we perform…This is not your typical ‘you get paid after everything fails’ kind of contract…We want to change contracting across the US government to ‘you get paid when it works.’”

Among names worth watching in the submarine space are Kraken Robotics, which has signed cooperative R&D agreements with the U.S. Navy for next-generation sonar systems, Huntington Ingalls Industries, the parent of Newport News Shipbuilding, and General Dynamics, which owns Electric Boat, builder of the Virginia- and Columbia-class nuclear submarines.

Palantir, meanwhile, is expanding its work with the U.S. Navy, using AI and data management platforms to support fleet readiness, logistics, and complex maintenance programs across submarine and surface operations.

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

A group of more than 1,000 American Christian Zionist pastors and influencers has spent a week in Israel on an all-expenses-paid trip that was funded by the Israeli Foreign Ministry, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported on Tuesday.

“This is the first time in history that the state of Israel has officially partnered with 1,000 strategic pastors to commission them as ambassadors to combat antisemitism and reach the youth of their generation,” Mike Evans, an evangelical pastor who helped organize the trip, told CBN News. “Right now there’s an ideological war that Israel is losing, so they need the evangelicals, they need the Zionists to fight an ideological war,” Evans added.

Christian Zionists like Evans believe that the modern state of Israel has the right to all of the land in historic Palestine, including the Israeli-occupied West Bank, based on the Bible, a view that has its roots in dispensationalism, a Christian theology developed in the US in the 19th century.

The view runs counter to thousands of years of Christian tradition, as it’s rejected by the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, and many Protestant denominations, yet it has significant influence on US foreign policy. During a speech to the crowd of pastors at the Shiloh archeological site in the West Bank, Evans addressed recent remarks from Vice President JD Vance and President Trump about not supporting the Israeli annexation of the Palestinian territory, which he calls Judea and Samaria.

“You said that the policy of the administration is that the West Bank will not be annexed by Israel. Mr. Vice President, we love you, and we love America, but the policy of the God who birthed America and the policy of the God who gave these people this land is in fact that Judea and Samaria is Bible land,” Evans said.

“Eighty percent of Bible stories come out of Judea and Samaria. So don’t pressure Israel to give illegal, radical Islam Jew-haters Judea and Samaria,” he said, adding that the MAGA movement is based on the Bible and “upon the God of this book, the God of Israel.”

While American evangelicals have always comprised a solid base of support for Israel, that support has been declining, part of an overall trend among Americans due to Israel’s brutal campaign in Gaza.

“There is a growing cancer within the evangelical movement in America, where people are thinking Israel doesn’t matter and there’s nothing biblical about our relationship with Israel. This is very dangerous,” US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee told CBN News during the summit.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry has taken other steps to influence American Christians, including spending millions on a propaganda campaign targeting evangelical churches in the US that is being called the “largest Christian Church Geofencing Campaign in US history” – a project that was revealed by a federal filing under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

The pastors’ summit in Israel concluded with Huckabee “commissioning” the attendees as “ambassadors” to stand with the state of Israel. During their time in Israel, the pastors were addressed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who told them, “Stand up and be counted. Tell the truth. Speak to young people. Speak up to be counted. I’m counting on you, and I know you’ll do what has to be done. That’s what our destiny calls for.”

The film industry has really been scraping the bottom of the barrel over the past few years to find “inspirational” LGBT stories to appease their DEI overlords in Hollywood.  Without a significant American audience the production of woke films is beginning to fade; no one wants to watch these movies.  However, some distributors can’t help themselves as they search foreign markets to purchase far-left content and get their ideological fix. 

The newest foreign art house slop making it’s way to Netflix audiences in the US this month is a movie called “Queen Of Coal”, originally titled “Miss Carbon” in Argentina where the flick was originally released.  Pedro Pascal plays a role in the film (of course he does), and it’s set to hit Netflix on December 19th.  

The story is a docudrama based on the true story of an 18-year-old man named Carlos Antonella Rodríguez who gets work as a coal miner in 2011.  He then “transitions” over the course of a few years to become a transgender woman named “Carlita” (take note of the almost worshipful manner in which the trans character is portrayed). 

Carlos is officially recognized as a woman under an Argentina law enacted on May 23, 2012.  It was the world’s first legislation to allow legal gender recognition based on self-identification, without requiring medical interventions, psychological diagnoses, or judicial approval (this might be something that Javier Milei should look into).  The man was then declared the “first woman coal miner” in Argentina’s history. 

That’s right, a man dressed up as a woman defeated the patriarchy for all women because he is now legally considered a real woman in Argentina.  In other words, this is a lot like Bruce Jenner (now Caitlyn Jenner) winning Glamour Magazine’s “woman of the year.” 

Netflix describes the movie as:

Carlita, a trans woman, dreams of working in the coal mines but faces superstitions and a ban on female workers, forcing her to fight for her place and disrupt the system.

Some might wonder why anyone would “dream” of becoming a coal miner.  No one does, but in Argentina in 2012 coal mining was considered a higher paying job ($1500 per month US).  Carlos does not actually extract coal, he repairs machinery that helps in the mining of coal, but is technically considered a “coal miner”.

Some people might remember the explosive controversy over Netflix’s distribution of the 2020 film “Cuties” – A French movie featuring 11-year-old girls in a highly sexualized dance troupe.  Critics accused the filmmakers of creating thinly veiled child pornography disguised as feminist empowerment.  The film’s director is a female Muslim feminist from Senegal who grew up in a polygamous family.  Around 10% of Senegalese Muslim marriages involve minors under the age of 15. 

The foreign feature did not go over well with American audiences, except for leftist activists who widely defended the movie and even argued in favor of the child dance scenes.  Much was revealed about the political left in 2020.  

There has been a similar reaction with the announcement of Queen Of Coal:  Audiences are laughing at the concept while rejecting the basic premise that a man can become a women and then be declared the “first woman coal miner”.  It does not appear that the film will draw many viewers for Netflix, but it does showcase why Netflix’s attempted purchase of Warner Bros. is very bad for movie goers. 

Authored by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times,

A federal judge on Dec. 10 blocked President Donald Trump’s use of the National Guard in Los Angeles to deal with civil unrest.

U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer rejected the Trump administration’s argument that protests against federal immigration authorities constituted a rebellion that warranted the president’s federalization of California National Guard troops.

Breyer had previously blocked the deployment. On Sept. 2, he found the federal government had violated the Posse Comitatus Act.

The federal government has argued that the sometimes-violent protests against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement were interfering with the government’s ability to enforce federal immigration law.

Although the federal Posse Comitatus Act restricts the ability of the federal government to use military resources for domestic law enforcement, a president may take over, or federalize, state National Guard troops on an emergency basis in certain circumstances.

“The Founders designed our government to be a system of checks and balances. Defendants, however, make clear that the only check they want is a blank one,” Breyer wrote in the court order.

“Six months after they first federalized the California National Guard, Defendants still retain control of approximately 300 Guardsmen, despite no evidence that execution of federal law is impeded in any way—let alone significantly.”

The judge also rejected the administration’s argument that the court system has no authority to review a president’s takeover of state National Guard troops in an emergency situation.

Breyer wrote that it was “nonsensical to suggest that the law would permit a president to … send Guardsmen wherever he wanted for as long as he wanted.”

After California Gov. Gavin Newsom sued to block the deployment, the Trump administration took the position that “after a valid initial federalization, all subsequent re-federalizations are completely, and forever, unreviewable by the courts,” the judge wrote.

“Defendants’ position is contrary to law,” and, coupled with the Trump administration’s deployment of California National Guard troops to other states, is “effectively creating a national police force made up of state troops,” the judge added.

Breyer stayed his preliminary injunction until noon on Dec. 15, presumably to give the federal government an opportunity to appeal.

Newsom hailed the ruling.

“Today’s ruling is abundantly clear – the federalization of the National Guard in California is illegal and must end,” the governor said in a statement.

“The President deployed these brave men and women against their own communities, removing them from essential public safety operations. We look forward to all National Guard servicemembers being returned to state service.”

The Epoch Times reached out to the Department of Justice for comment. No reply was received by publication time.

Separately, on Sept. 8 the Supreme Court stayed a lower court order restricting immigration stops in Southern California. Three justices dissented.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement started operations in the Los Angeles area on June 6. Local and state officials strongly criticized the effort, saying the federal government was overstepping its legal authority.

The high court order paused a temporary restraining order that Judge Maame Frimpong of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California issued on July 11 that limited the factors that law enforcement officials may use when making immigration-related stops and arrests.

Specifically, Frimpong barred the Department of Homeland Security from stopping or arresting individuals based exclusively on factors such as the language the person speaks or where the person works.

In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote, “We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job.”

Justice Brett Kavanaugh filed a concurring opinion.

“Apparent ethnicity alone” is not enough to establish the reasonable suspicion needed to justify an immigration stop, but it may be relevant to the issue,” he wrote.

Congress this week has been threatening to withhold travel funds for Pentagon leadership as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has refused to turn over videos of strikes against suspected drug-smuggling boats off the coast of Latin America, amid the ongoing debate over their ‘legality’ of the actions.

The demand, which would significantly reduce Hegseth’s own travel budget, has been quietly tucked into the final draft of the annual defense policy bill. Congressional leaders called for “unedited video of strikes conducted against designated terrorist organizations in the area of responsibility of the United States Southern Command” to the House and Senate Armed Services Committees.

Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, has expressed new frustration on Wednesday over Hegseth’s refusal to release a Sept. 2 video which shows strikes on men who survived the first round of a drone attack.

“I’m going to stay hopeful for a couple more days. But the idea that he’s going to try to simply drag this out until Congress breaks for the holidays is outrageous, and folks ought to be pretty damn pissed off,” said Warner.

Hegseth earlier said the request to release the video is still under review, and that his office is mulling it. While top national security officials have seen it, Warner said further that “There were other members of the administration in that briefing who understood that Congress has an oversight responsibility to see this video.”

The so-called Gang of Eight were allowed to view it in a closed session. These are the eight leaders within Congress who are briefed on classified intelligence matters.

However, there are signs that Congressional leaders could back down, as CNN newly reports on Wednesday: 

House Armed Services Chairman Mike Rogers is prepared to end his panel’s investigation into the September double-tap strike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean, a committee aide tells CNN.

Rogers received a classified briefing last week to view the video footage and is now pushing for the rest of his panel to be able to see the video.

The committee aide said, “The video and classified briefings from the Pentagon were sufficient to convince him this was a legal action. But he’s also been clear that we need a classified briefing where the rest of HASC’s members can see the video, and we expect that to happen next week.”

Some lawmakers have disagreed, calling it an appalling act and war crime, while others said the video showed the survivors trying to salvage the drugs…

Lawmakers were shocked and appalled Thursday after they were shown video footage of the September 2 double tap that killed two survivors of an airstrike in the Caribbean. https://t.co/tNPk6tioJ5 pic.twitter.com/LgWC183iJe

— The New Republic (@newrepublic) December 4, 2025

Some conservatives have decried the whole saga as but a carefully orchestrated plan of character assassination campaign targeting Hegseth.

But Trump has been sticking by him. The last word Hegseth gave on releasing the video was as follows: “We’ve got operators out there doing this right now, so whatever we were to decide to release, we would have to be very responsible about, so we’re reviewing that right now.”

Authored by Sam Dorman via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Supreme Court is set to hear oral argument on Dec. 10 in a case that could impact how prisoners attempt to prove the type of intellectual disability that would allow them to avoid a death sentence.

In 2002, the court held in Atkins v. Virginia that sentencing intellectually disabled convicts to death violated the Eighth Amendment’s bar on “cruel and unusual punishment.” How prisoners go about proving that disability can vary, but doing so may involve showing that their IQ falls below a particular threshold.

The case currently before the court—Hamm v. Smith—focuses on how the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit weighed multiple IQ scores in a murder case.

Joseph Clifton Smith was sentenced to death after a jury found him guilty of brutally murdering a man. Under Alabama law, Smith could demonstrate low intellectual functioning with an IQ of 70 or below and substantial deficits in adaptive behavior.

According to court filings, Smith received five IQ scores: 75, 74, 72, 78, and 74. When the case reached the 11th Circuit in 2023, the appeals court upheld a lower court decision vacating his death sentence.

The more controversial part of its decision was how it weighed Smith’s IQ scores. Although each of the scores was above the 70-point threshold, the court said it wouldn’t rule out the possibility that Smith was intellectually disabled. Given the margin of error for IQ tests, the court said Smith’s score could actually be as low as 69.

It pointed to another Supreme Court decision—Hall v. Florida—which said that courts must consider the standard error of measurement when an IQ score is close to, but above, 70. It has also said that courts should move beyond IQ and consider “adaptive deficits,” or things like changing behavior with different circumstances, when IQ scores are close to but above 70.

Considering those deficits, the appeals court said Smith shouldn’t receive the death penalty.

Alabama told the Supreme Court that this was the wrong approach and that Smith had a burden of proving disability by a preponderance of the evidence. Instead of focusing on the error range for a lower IQ score, courts should instead weigh the cumulative effect of multiple scores, Alabama said.

Katherine Robertson, an attorney with the Alabama attorney general’s office, told The Epoch Times that courts had strayed from the actual meaning of the Eighth Amendment.

“I think what we’re looking for is just a return to what the Eighth Amendment actually requires, and a move away, ultimately, from all this judge-made precedent,” she said. She add that “our position in our office philosophically has always been: if you’re competent enough to stand trial, then … how do you get special treatment when it comes to the penalty phase?”

While she wasn’t asking the Supreme Court to overrule its precedent in Atkins, she said it would have to revisit it.

“I think they’re going to have to revisit it,” she said, suggesting that it could foster a return to the true meaning of the Eighth Amendment.

In the Atkins majority opinion, Justice John Paul Stevens said that society viewed mentally challenged individuals as less culpable than the average criminal. Among other things, he said that those individuals may be less able to give meaningful assistance to attorneys defending them.

“Mentally retarded defendants in the aggregate face a special risk of wrongful execution,” he said.

It’s unclear how the Supreme Court will rule but Justice Clarence Thomas dissented from the decision in 2002.

The Trump administration has also intervened in support of Alabama. It argued that the decision in Atkins broke from the Eighth Amendment’s original meaning but also afforded states flexibility in determining intellectual disability.

Smith’s attorneys, meanwhile, defended the appeals court decision and said courts should take a “holistic approach” to evaluating intellectual disability. Regardless of whether IQ scores are conclusive, they said, defendants should be able to present additional evidence surrounding their intellectual functioning.

Elon Musk joined Katie Miller’s podcast for a wide-ranging interview, opening with a question about his time at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and whether the effort was worth it.

Musk said DOGE’s push to cut waste, fraud, and abuse from the federal government was “somewhat successful,” but cautioned he wouldn’t take on that role again given the backlash from what he described as the DC swamp.

Miller asked Musk:

“Would you do DOGE again knowing what you know now?”

Musk responded:

“I mean, the thing is, I think in terms of instead of doing DOGE, I would have basically built you know, worked on my companies essentially. So and not and the cars would they wouldn’t have been burning the cars…”

Miller noted:

“You gave up a lot to DOGE.”

Musk said:

“Yes.”

He continued:

“They really want the money to keep flowing. Um, so if you stop it from flowing, there’s like a very strong reaction to to stopping the money flowing.”

The backlash Musk faced originated from left-wing NGOs and activist groups that targeted Tesla showrooms, progressive politicians openly rooting for the stock to crash, and a sustained pressure campaign by the broader Democratic Party machine, which, he argues, sought to damage the Tesla brand. Let’s not forget that militant leftists firebombed Tesla vehicles at showrooms.

It really depends on how one measures success. Musk told Miller the cost-cutting effort was “somewhat successful,” but noted that, given the response from Deep State-aligned activist groups that targeted Tesla, he wouldn’t do it again. 

“We were a little bit successful. We were somewhat successful. We stopped a lot of funding that really just made no sense, that was entirely wasteful,” he said. Miller if he would go back to lead the organization again, he said: “No, I don’t think so.”

Absolutely surreal to interview one of the greatest minds of our time, a friend, and boss.

Thank you, @elonmusk 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸pic.twitter.com/vbYlZTTaBf

— Katie Miller (@KatieMiller) December 9, 2025

As of early December, DOGE claims on its website to have slashed $214 billion in estimated savings. However, this figure is far from the $2 trillion in savings Musk pitched during the presidential election. 

Perhaps not measured in total dollar amount, some of the success came from dismantling corrupt USAID funding pipelines into NGOs and rooting out other fraud, waste, and abuse that funneled into the Democratic Party’s machine; then maybe the true nature of DOGE’s successes emerges. The lashing out by left-wing activist groups and progressive politicians against Tesla is exactly the response one would expect if you stopped their years of taxpayer looting sprees.

Let’s revisit what we said very early in DOGE’s noble efforts, noting that while Musk’s foray into the DC swap to drain it to the degree pitched would not be attainable. 

Here’s the bigger play at hand, and why there is only token pushback to DOGE.

You cut enough spending – even if it’s all grift and fraud – you eventually get a recession, guaranteed. That’s all Congress is waiting for cause then they use the “emergency” to vote through a far…

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) February 8, 2025

What the DOGE effort revealed was that Democrats and their unhinged left-wing groups would pursue violence to stop Musk. This is the same political machine attacking Trump and ‘America First’… 

A Minnesota State University student has sparked outrage and a federal investigation after posting a video on TikTok in which he explicitly threatened to shoot Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.

“ICE, I actually heard you guys pulled up to Owatonna, the big O, and you pulled up when I was not there? Y’all so p–s-ass s–t, boy. You’re gonna get popped next time I see you,” the student, identified by the New York Post as Hasan Mohamed, said in the clip, which was later deleted. “Bring the whole cavalry. Yeah, boy, you guys are scared.”

Somali man in Minnesota claims that ICE showed up to near him, threatens to “pop” them the next time they show up.

“They’ll have to bring the Calvary.” pic.twitter.com/7lbdU0BsHW

— ICE of TikTok (@ICEofTikTok) December 9, 2025

Only after the video went viral and outrage ensued did Mohamed post a video expressing any kind of regret.

“I don’t expect to be forgiven. I’m just here to apologize,” the student claimed. “I truly did not mean what I said. I was just trying to be funny.”

The episode unfolded against the backdrop of an intensified federal enforcement operation in the Twin Cities area. Last week, ICE concluded “Operation Metro Surge,” arresting nearly a dozen criminal aliens in Minneapolis, including five Somali nationals, several Mexicans, and one individual from El Salvador, according to Fox News.

In a statement, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin linked the arrests to Minnesota’s sanctuary policies.

“Sanctuary policies and politicians like Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey allowed these pedophiles, domestic terrorists, and gang members to roam the streets and terrorize Americans,” McLaughlin said. “ICE law enforcement are risking their lives to protect Minnesotans while their own elected officials sit by and do nothing. No matter when and where, ICE will find, arrest, and deport ALL criminal illegal aliens.”

The arrests and the subsequent threat come weeks after a bombshell investigation by journalists Christopher Rufo and Ryan Thorpe exposed systemic fraud in Minnesota’s social-safety-net programs, much of it allegedly involving members of the state’s large Somali community.

The report focused particular attention on the Feeding Our Future case—prosecutors have called it the largest pandemic-era fraud scheme in the country—with defendants accused of diverting at least $250 million to $300 million in federal child-nutrition funds. More than 70 individuals, predominantly Somali-Americans, have been charged, while dozens have already been convicted or pleaded guilty. Investigators say proceeds were used to purchase luxury vehicles and real estate in the U.S. and abroad. Most shockingly, Rufo and Thorpe cited federal counterterrorism sources who alleged that millions in fraud proceeds were transferred to al-Shabaab in Somalia through informal hawala transfers.

President Donald Trump responded by revoking Temporary Protected Status for certain Somali nationals and, in a Thanksgiving-week Truth Social post, referred to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) as “seriously retarded.”

Walz responded by whining that people had begun shouting the slur while driving past the governor’s residence.

“This creates danger,” Walz claimed. “We know how things go. They start with taunts, they turn to violence.”

People are driving by Tim Walz and calling him “retarded” 🤣

pic.twitter.com/FbcMR2rnGn

— ALX 🇺🇸 (@alx) December 4, 2025

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), who was born in Somalia, also jumped on the victimhood bandwagon, telling CNN’s Jake Tapper last week that Trump’s rhetoric was stoking fear in the Somali community.

“It creates fear. And there is a possible danger that a lot of the people who follow the president have exhibited violence in many cases,” Omar said. “There are so many people that have been incarcerated over the years that have been encouraged by the president’s words.”

Republicans looking for hints on how midterms might go need look no further than Miami, Florida – where Democrat Eileen Higgins won the mayor’s race, becoming the first woman to lead the city – and the first Democrat to take the helm in nearly 30 years. 

The 61-year-old campaigned on opposition to the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration, saying many in Miami have voiced concerns over family members being detained. 

Higgins beat Trump-backed former city manager Emilio Gonzales by roughly 19%. That said, there are a few caveats:

– The race was supposed to be nonpartisan, meaning voters didn’t see party labels when they cast their ballot.

– It’s an off-year election, and the first Miami mayoral runoff since 2001.

– It’s the first time the mayor’s race has ever been decided in December, while people are preparing for the holidays. 

Yet, since Republicans have held the seat for so long, and because Higgins won by nearly 20 points, Democrats get to add Miami to their list of wins in 2025. 

“We are facing rhetoric from elected officials that is so dehumanizing and cruel, especially against immigrant populations,” Higgins told AP following her victory speech. “The residents of Miami were ready to be done with that.”

RESULT: D+19 pic.twitter.com/etROjOCyqZ

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) December 10, 2025

While the Miami race might be an outlier when it comes to predicting midterms, the victory gives Democrats some momentum heading into midterm elections, where the GOP is looking to keep Florida red – including a Hispanic-majority district in Miami-Dade county that has been shifting increasingly conservative in recent years. 

“Tonight’s result is yet another warning sign to Republicans that voters are fed up with their out-of-touch agenda that is raising costs,” said DNC chair Ken Martin following Higgins’ win. 

Conservative activist Scott Pressler sounded the alarm, writing on X: “Republicans are completely squandering all of the work we did to win the 2024 elections.”

Yep. Leave it to the GOP to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

— Tomi Lahren (@TomiLahren) December 10, 2025

As Politico notes, Higgins’ campaign is likely to be carefully studied by other Democratic hopefuls in Florida – after she ran “not on social justice or culture war issues, but on improving affordability and making government work better. She agreed with Republicans that the city’s finances needed a careful look.” 

Republicans will certainly face questions after Tuesday’s result – including whether they’re losing ground with Latinos, and whether it will continue to be effective to call Democrats “socialists” at every turn given that it didn’t work whatsoever with Higgins. 

“Donald Trump got involved in this election. Ron DeSantis got involved in this election. Every statewide elected Republican got involved in this election,” said Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried. “They knew this was an important race, and them blowing it off today is why we’re going to be able to win some really big races next year — because they think they just have Florida in the bag.”