Authored by Andrew Korybko,

The overarching trend is that the US is militarily reasserting its historical “sphere of influence” over the Americas, and enforcing the maritime component of “Fortress America” is so important for Trump 2.0 that it’s willing to rubbish the “rules-based order” over it and even risk an accidental war with Russia.

The Russian-flagged Marinera tanker was just seized by the US in the Atlantic. It was earlier named the Bella 1 and is under US sanctions due to connections to Hezbollah. It sailed under the Guyanese flag from Iran to Venezuela and attempted to break the US’ blockade. It failed, turned around, changed its name to the Marinera, and received a temporary permit to sail under the Russian flag before being seized. Russian then demanded that its citizens on board be treated humanely and returned home.

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth posted that “The blockade of sanctioned and illicit Venezuelan oil remains in FULL EFFECT — anywhere in the world.” This preceded Attorney General Pam Bondi threatening that criminal charges might be pursued against the crew. Her tweet and Hegseth’s other one about how the US will only permit “legitimate and lawful” energy commerce with Venezuela shows that it’s once again assuming so-called “police” functions. Here are three takeaways from this incident:

1. The US Is Surprisingly Nonchalant About An Accidental War With Russia

It was brazen even by the US’ standards to seize a Russian-flagged tanker, especially after Western media reported that Russia had dispatched ships and a submarine to escort it, which Russia didn’t confirm and none were nearby during the seizure. Nevertheless, Trump 2.0 calculated that there’d be no retaliation despite the deputy chairman of Russia’s parliamentary defense committee warning that “any attack on our carriers can be regarded as an attack on our territory, even if the ship is under a foreign flag.”

This incident interestingly occurred in parallel with the US backing European ceasefire guarantees for Ukraine that include British and French commitments to deploy troops there during that time even though Russia has repeatedly warned that they’d be legitimate targets. Quite clearly, the US is now surprisingly nonchalant about an accidental war with Russia, whether over seizing one of its flagged ships at sea or over NATO allies getting killed in Ukraine. This observation won’t be lost on Russia.

2. “Fortress America” Also Includes An Important Maritime Component

The goal of restoring the US’ unipolar hegemony over the Americas, which is described as the highest regional priority in its new National Security Strategy, can be referred to as building “Fortress America”. This isn’t being pursued just for reasons of prestige but also pragmatism in the sense of enabling the US to survive and even thrive if it’s ever expelled from the Eastern Hemisphere or decides to retreat from there since control over the hemisphere’s resources and markets would all but ensure this outcome.

As can be seen by this incident as well as Hegseth’s and Bondi’s posts about it, there’s also an important maritime component related to controlling the export of oil from Venezuela, which has the world’s largest reserves. This can only be achieved by maintaining the unilateral blockade and seizing all ships that violate it, both on law enforcement pretexts that embody the concept of extraterritoriality. Without this maritime component, “Fortress America” could never truly be built, but it’s not without some costs.

3. The US Is Dismantling The “Rules-Based Order” That It Built Over The Decades

The abovementioned point segues into the last one about how the US’ militarily enforced extraterritoriality vis-à-vis Venezuela dismantles the “rules-based order” that it built over the decades for maintaining its unipolar hegemony over the world after the end of the Old Cold War. This violates the international laws that the US used to selectively police across the world according to its arbitrary standards. Instead of international ones, the US is now policing its own, but also in pursuit of hegemony.

International law has increasingly become illusory due to the UN’s innate dysfunction, which is related to the deadlock among the UNSC’s five permanent members, with one usually vetoing significant proposals from the others. Even so, if the Great Powers abided by it in their ties with one another, then there’d be more predictability and less risk of war by miscalculation. The US is no longer interested in even that as proven by this incident, however, since building “Fortress America” now takes precedence over all else.

The trend connecting the three aforementioned takeaways is that the US is militantly reasserting its historical “sphere of influence” over the Americas, and this is so important for Trump 2.0 that it’s willing to rubbish the “rules-based order” over it and even risk an accidental war with Russia. The maritime component off of Venezuela’s Caribbean coast that’s been built before all else is justified by the administration as a law enforcement operation that prioritizes domestic laws over international ones.

Since this is taking place on the other side of the world where neither half of the Sino-Russo Entente has any military bases, they can’t challenge this even through indirect means, unlike how the US challenged Russia’s reassertion of its own historical “sphere of influence” in Ukraine through the ongoing proxy war. This doesn’t mean that the US’ grand strategic goal of restoring its unipolar hegemony over the Americas will succeed, just that if it doesn’t, then it’ll be due to intra-hemispheric reasons and not external forces.

A shocking scene played out in a Latin American country Thursday, but this time it’s not Venezuela, but nearby Honduras.

A Honduran legislator from the country’s conservative National Party of president-elect Nasry Asfura was speaking to the press within the halls of the Honduran national congress, or just outside, when suddenly an explosive device was thrown, detonating just behind her head. The disturbing incident, which she survived, was filmed given the many cameras around at the time of the attack.

Deputies had been summoned to meet, and the attack victim – Gladis Aurora López – collapsed to the floor during the explosion, her jacket left torn apart.

Witnesses immediately rushed her to begin giving her medical attention, and authorities in a later update announced that her injuries were thankfully not life-threatening.

Lawmakers had gathered to debate a proposal from LIBRE calling for an election recount, despite electoral officials having already declared a winner in December.

Quickly after, accusations and threats are flying, threatening to unleash severe infighting or instability among rival political factions.

Tomás Zambrano, head of the National Party’s congressional delegation, charged the outgoing governing leftist Liberty and Refoundation Party, known as LIBRE, with being behind the incident.

Zambrano denounced the incident as nothing less than attack on the National Party, and it comes at a sensitive moment, where a fiercely contested presidential election at the end of November led to a vote count that dragged on for weeks and ended in a disputed result.

The National Party’s candidate, Nasry Asfura, was eventually proclaimed the victor nearly a month later.

“Today I speak not as a representative, but as a Honduran,” a fellow conservative deputy, Antonio Cesar Rivera, later stated on social media. “I condemn with absolute firmness the cowardly attack against Gladis Aurora Lopez and I stand in solidarity with her.”

Honduran National Party lawmaker Gladis Aurora López Calderón was injured after far-left protesters hurled an explosive device at her outside the National Congress. pic.twitter.com/YDGuvfUUzQ

— Polymarket Intel (@PolymarketIntel) January 9, 2026

He linked the political violence to attacks on the Right, accusing LIBRE groups of attacking him, too. “Those who promote hatred and intimidation are attacking democracy,” he wrote.

It’s as yet unclear what an ongoing police investigation has uncovered, or just who the culprit was. But clearly the country’s congressional building needs to quickly beef up its security protocol. 

Authored by Dave Mason via The Center Square,

U.S. First Assistant Attorney Bill Essayli Thursday called California Gov. Gavin Newsom “the king of fraud,” accusing him of a lack of oversight on spending to address homelessness.

Essayli made the comments on the “Fox and Friends” telecast, during which he discussed the federal fraud charges that were filed in October against real estate executives Steven Taylor and Cody Holmes for allegedly misusing grant money meant for homeless housing.

Holmes, 31, of Beverly Hills was charged with mail fraud charge that was allegedly linked to millions of dollars in grant money that the state paid Shangri-La Industries to purchase, build and operate homeless housing in Thousand Oaks, just north of Los Angeles. Holmes was Shangri-La’s chief financial officer.

Taylor, 44, of Brentwood, was charged with seven counts of bank fraud, one count of aggravated identity theft and one count of money laundering.

Essayli Thursday said the charges are the “tip of the iceberg” in an investigation he launched with a task force in April. He said more charges would be coming, probably later this month.

The state spent $24 billion in the last five years to address homelessness and can’t account for where the money went, Essayli said on “Fox and Friends.”

President Donald Trump on Tuesday on X said,  “California, under Governor Gavin Newscum, is more corrupt than Minnesota, if that’s possible??? The Fraud investigation of California has begun.”

Newsom’s press office fired back on X. It called Trump a liar and noted Newsom has “BLOCKED $125 billion in fraud, arrested criminal parasites leaching off of taxpayers, and protected taxpayers from the exact kind of scam artists Trump celebrates, excuses, and pardons.”

The Center Square reached out Thursday afternoon to the governor’s office, but did not get a response.

When The Center Square asked the White House Thursday about Newsom, the press office pointed to Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s comments during a press briefing on Wednesday. Leavitt told reporters that Trump has directed all agencies to look at federal spending programs “in not just Minnesota, but also in the state of California, to identify fraud and to prosecute to the fullest extent of the law, all those who have committed it.”

The Center Square also reached out to the U.S. Department of Justice, but spokesperson Ciaran McEvoy said the DOJ had no additional comment.

But two Republican legislators in Sacramento Thursday shared their views about Newsom with The Center Square.

“When you talk about the amounts of billions of dollars the governor’s spent in homelessness, he could almost buy a home for every homeless person,” state Sen. Tony Strickland, R-Huntington Beach, told The Center Square at the Capitol after Newsom’s final State of the State address.

“There’s no question there is waste in there, and certainly, we need to look to see if there’s fraud and abuse,” Strickland said. “So I welcome the investigation, because we need to maximize every dollar that comes into the state coffers.”

Strickland stressed he wants to learn the truth.

“Those who abused the power and those who wasted dollars and abused tax dollars should be prosecuted,” he said. “Then we should root out waste, because every dollar that is wasted is a dollar that we take from a hard-working citizen who is just trying to make it.

“In California right now, we have an affordability crisis and these are precious dollars, and by Gov. Newsom’s own admission, revenues are up, so California doesn’t have a revenue problem,” Strickland said. “It has a wasteful spending problem.”

Izzy Swindler, a spokesperson for Assemblymember Tom Lackey, said the Palmdale Republican has always supported oversight on spending.

“It is his belief that we should be accountable to our dollars and be able to track the results that come from the taxpayer funded programs,” Swindler said, answering The Center Square’s questions by email. “Accountability should always be at the forefront of discussions. Especially when we are referring to homelessness programs that have been allocated billions of dollars over the past few years.”

John Solomon’s Just the News reports that a dark-money NGO network tied to CCP-linked communist billionaire Neville Roy Singham was allgedly activated as a command-and-control support node to organize nationwide anti-ICE protests just hours after the deadly shooting in Minneapolis.

“China may be helping astroturf far-left protests against ICE via a financial network in league with radical-left financier and multi-millionaire Neville Roy Singham. Singham funds a network of groups expressing anti-American sentiment,” Solomon’s team wrote in a note. 

On Wednesday, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) wrote on X, “I have formally made a motion to subpoena Neville Singham, an American billionaire with ties to the CCP.”

During a House Oversight Committee meeting earlier that day, Luna said the China-based Singham “has been funding extremist organizations that fuel division and civil unrest in this country, especially regarding the anti-ICE riots last summer.”

For example, the Los Angeles riots last year.

What we have outlined mere hours after the ICE-related shooting of a left-wing “ICE Watch” activist trained to obstruct federal agents during deportation operations was the well-oiled protest industrial complex machine run by left-wing socialists and Marxists, which quickly mobilized nationwide, from Minneapolis to Portland to Seattle to New York City, or left-wing-controlled cities. 

BREAKING: Tonight, cities across the country erupted in protest against ICEpic.twitter.com/CngPJd6AfE

— Jackson Hinkle 🇺🇸 (@jacksonhinklle) January 8, 2026

Such coordination showed observers just how inorganic the protests were, as the Democratic Party appeared to be hoping for a “George Floyd 2.0” moment to burn city blocks to the ground in an attempt to sway public opinion polls against ICE operations. After all, ICE is deporting the Democratic Party’s illegal aliens, either their current voting bloc in some metro areas and states or a future one.

We also pointed out that Singham’s Party for Socialism and Liberation network was quickly activated in NYC on Wednesday night.

EXPOSED 🚨 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… pic.twitter.com/Fy508FFbqn

— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) January 8, 2026

By Thursday night, unhinged Marxists in NYC were chanting, “Kristi Noem will hang!”

NOW: “Kristi Noem will Hang!” Huge crowd chants in Foley Square NYC, also “Save a life, kill an ICE” as they gather to protest the ICE killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis.

Some in the crowd condemn the talk of killing. pic.twitter.com/ifrXNZB0dz

— Oliya Scootercaster 🛴 (@ScooterCasterNY) January 8, 2026

Luna made her case to the House committee earlier this week for why Singham should testify, and the motion to issue a subpoena passed by voice vote. That vote also included approval of unrelated subpoenas.

“Neville Singham was referred to the Department of Justice, I believe, for FARA [Foreign Agents Registration Act] violations by then-Senator Rubio when he served on the Senate Intelligence Committee,” Luna said. “Neville Singham, regardless of what you might feel about your colleagues, has been a mechanism and funding arm of the Chinese Communist Party.”

Luna added, “He’s not a registered agent under FARA and has been connected to a number of riots, including the anti-ICE riots funded in Los Angeles. He has been avoiding our request to appear before Congress and provide information. He is definitely anti-American ideologically and is funding groups known to sow discord in this country. He is a known foreign agent for China. He should face a subpoena. If he does not comply, I will make a motion for inherent contempt.”

The Trump administration is running out of time in the midterm election cycle to enforce actions against Singham and other left-wing billionaires who operate dark-money-funded NGOs that function as what can only be described as an invisible insurrection against President Trump and the America First agenda. The administration has slow-walked enforcement across the nonprofit universe and, by doing so, should brace for a summer of chaos, with socialists and Marxists once again pushing the nation toward disorder. 

Seamus Bruner, Director of Research at the Government Accountability Institute, commented… 

Great work, @RepLuna! A subpoena is a necessary first step, but it’s not sufficient. If @USTreasury concludes that foreign-aligned money is financing domestic unrest, penalties should be severe — up to and including freezing and seizing assets. If warranted, bring on some… https://t.co/GhldXtWbYI

— Seamus Bruner (@seamusbruner) January 9, 2026

Time is ticking. 

Authored by Joseph Lord and Kimberley Hayek via The Epoch Times,

President Donald Trump announced in an interview aired Jan. 8 that the United States would begin launching strikes on cartels in Mexico.

“We knocked out 97 percent of the drugs coming in by water, and we are going to start now hitting land with regard with the cartels,” Trump told Sean Hannity from Fox News.

“The cartels are running Mexico. It’s very sad to watch and see what’s happened to that country.

“They’re killing 250,000, 300,000 in our country every single year.”

The announcement comes just five days after Trump ordered an operation to capture and remove Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro to the United States to face criminal charges, including narco-terrorism.

Trump gave a warning to several Latin American countries following the U.S. strike on Venezuela and Maduro’s capture.

The president also warned Mexico on Sunday that it needs to “get its act together,” referring to drug cartels operating in the country.

“You have to do something with Mexico,” Trump told reporters during his trip back to Washington from Florida. “We’re going to have to do something. We’d love Mexico to do it; they’re capable of doing it, but unfortunately, the cartels are very strong in Mexico.”

Trump said that he had spoken to Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum on a number of occasions, saying that the United States has offered to send troops into her country. However, he described her as “afraid” and that the “cartels are running Mexico,” not her

Mexico has repeatedly opposed U.S. proposals to fight drug cartels in the country.

“We categorically reject intervention in the internal affairs of other countries,” Sheinbaum said during her daily morning press conference on Monday. “The history of Latin America is clear and compelling: Intervention has never brought democracy, never generated well-being, nor lasting stability.”

Trump’s administration has intensified anti-cartel measures, including designating Mexican syndicates as terrorist organizations, a step he announced years ago. Officials say sea-based trafficking has been nearly halted, prompting a pivot to land operations.

Trump has previously said no formal war declaration is necessary.

“I think we’re just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country,” Trump said on Oct. 23, 2025.

U.S. officials have linked cartels to tens of thousands of American overdose deaths annually. Trump has criticized Sheinbaum for declining U.S. offers to dismantle the cartels.

Trump did not give a timeline for land strikes against cartels.

There are competing narratives about Wednesday’s ICE-involved shooting in Minneapolis. Some left-leaning corporate outlets focused on the fact that a woman was shot and killed by an ICE agent during a federal enforcement deportation operation, while other media, like the New York Post, highlighted that the woman, identified as 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good, was part of a left-wing group “Ice Watch” that mounted pressure campaigns on ICE agents on the ground.

Put aside all those viral videos on X; now Alpha News has obtained cellphone footage from what appears to be one of the ICE agents, and it provides a completely new perspective on what happened and why the ICE agent felt threatened enough to fire several shots at Good, killing the activist.

BREAKING: Alpha News has obtained cellphone footage showing perspective of federal agent at center of ICE-involved shooting in Minneapolis pic.twitter.com/p2wks0zew0

— Alpha News (@AlphaNews) January 9, 2026

The NYPost reported late Thursday night that Good was an anti-ICE “warrior” and part of a network of left-wing activists who worked to “document and resist” ICE operations in Minnesota.

The video from an ICE agent appears to confirm that Good and another individual were obstructing federal agents in the middle of the street.

Vice President JD Vance commented on Alpha News’ report, saying, “What the press has done in lying about this innocent law enforcement officer is disgusting. You should all be ashamed of yourselves.” 

*This is a developing story…. Check back for more updates.

We earlier detailed yet another massive overnight Russian strike on Ukraine – including on the capital and the Western city of Lviv, the latter which was hit with a nuclear-capable hypersonic ballistic missile.

More details have emerged Friday as emergency crews assess the damage in Kiev. Notably the Embassy of Qatar in Kyiv appears to have been directly hit, likely by a drone, or else possibly from missile debris.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha was the first to announce and confirm that the embassy suffered damage, though without casualties to diplomatic staff or personnel. 

Sybiha blasted the Russian attack as a “clear violation of the Vienna Convention” and said Moscow’s “brutality” is without bounds, and offered the Zelensky government’s full support for Qatar. 

Alongside this, Sybiha once again called on NATO to urgently step up support:

“Such a strike close to EU and NATO border is a grave threat to the security on the European continent and a test for the transatlantic community,” Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha said on X.

“It is absurd that Russia attempts to justify this strike with the fake ‘Putin residence attack’ that never happened,” he added.

“Putin uses an IRBM near EU and NATO border in response to his own hallucinations – this is truly a global threat. And it demands global responses.”

As for the Qatari embassy, President Zelensky said on Telegram Friday, “In addition to our civilian infrastructure and energy facilities, a building of the Embassy of Qatar was damaged last night by a Russian drone.”

This after hundreds of drones and missiles pummeled the country overnight, leaving at least four dead.

More interesting has been Qatar’s incredibly meek and muted reaction, a sign that it doesn’t want to damage its important and delicate relations with Moscow. It has long sought to present itself as ‘mediator’ between the warring sides as well. 

“The State of Qatar expressed today deep regret over the damage sustained by its embassy building in Ukraine as a result of the shelling of the capital Kyiv last night, affirming that no diplomats or embassy staff were harmed,” per Qatari media.

“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs stressed in a statement today the importance of sparing embassies, diplomatic missions, headquarters of international organization and civilian facilities from the repercussions of crises, and to protect its members in line with international law,” it added.

This quite muted response quickly transitioned to calling for peace in Ukraine, offering to mediate efforts and international diplomatic action to resolve the conflict peacefully. Clearly Qatar is more concerned with not causing Russia any offensive whatsoever at this delicate moment.

Authored by James Howard Kunstler,

“. . .the Minnesota protests look less like a local eruption and more like the latest deployment of an international revolutionary machine.”

– Insurrection Barbie on “X”

Chrump, Chrump Chrump… He’s come to occupy the Left’s minds like an infestation of weevils chawing away the ligaments of civilized society.

But, of course, the whole wicked, Cluster-B, anomie-driven, insurrectionist extravaganza is a made-for-video production bought and paid for by a tiny coterie of super-wealthy megalomaniacs untouched by consequence — George and Alex Soros (The Open Society Foundations), Shanghai-based American Neville Roy Singham (Codepink and more), Reid Hoffman (funder of Trump prosecutions and more), Lauren Powell Jobs (The Atlantic and the Emerson Collective), Hansjorg Wyss (Berger Action Fund), Bill Gates (of course). . . .

Their main client in all this mischief is the Democratic Party, and the Democratic Party’s chief motivation, its raison d’être going on at least ten years now, has been to hide its multifarious crimes, its vast racketeering operations now garishly on display in the state of Minnesota, where the grift just went too far and was done right in America’s face.

Who can possibly fail to see how it works? Import a bunch of people from a foreign land. . . enable them to set up a vast network of social services frauds. . . organize them for ballot harvesting and election fraud. . . and kick-back bundles of money to Democratic Party politicians. If anybody notices, yell “racist!” Sound the klaxon to turn out a thousand LARPing protesters on the Soros payroll. Provide them with signs, banners, black-bloc outfits, cartoon costumes, pride flags, umbrellas, snacks, bullhorns, pallets of bricks, and hope that some of them get hurt so you can manufacture the next martyr.

The crescendo of this long-running seditious treason was the wide open border during the four-year fake presidency of “Joe Biden,” including the colossal coordinated scam of funding who-knows-how-many NGOs with additional US taxpayer money, funneled through the UN, to process, transport, and outfit with social security numbers and debit cards X-millions of alien mutts, professional terrorists, gang-bangers, mental patients, and actual soldiers from faraway lands, and sprinkle them into every cranny of the republic to queer the next election and otherwise cause as much disruption as possible to the everyday life of actual US citizens.

They flooded the country with millions dependent on the Democratic Party’s largess — your tax dollars — and now they are doing everything possible to prevent the removal of this riffraff back to their countries of origin. Starting a civil war over it, in fact, because that’s what it’s come to. The federal agents tasked with the removal operation are apparenty not allowed to defend themselves when the LARPing street cadres attack them. There have been 66 car attacks against ICE officers since January, 2025. State and local officials in Minneapolis have behaved so dishonestly that federal investigators kicked them off what is now a federal case in the matter of “ICE-tracker” Renee Nicole Good, shot dead at the scene in her car. Minnesota will not be permitted to turn ICE agent Jonathan Ross into another Derek Chauvin. That sort of hustle is over.

What you can now discern in the winter darkness through fog of tear gas is that the Democratic Party will choose to destroy the country rather than face the consequences of its long-running crimes. Everybody knows now that the sort of social services grifts uncovered in Minnesota, with the kickbacks to Democratic politicians, have been going on all over America. The president has ordered an “all-of-government” effort to find the fraud and prosecute it, and you can assume the effort will tend to concentrate on the very states and cities where the Democratic Party dominates. Expect election fraud to bubble up in this cauldron. The evidence of a stolen 2020 election is finally emerging and converging with the larger illegal immigrant story.

It’s also clear now, that the NGO racket associated with all that is going to be dismantled — the money-stream from the likes of Soros & friends. They are going to get RICOed, their assets could be seized, and the public will learn a whole lot more about the damage they have done to the country. The Left’s NGOs not only support the on-the-ground street action, they also provide thousands of “executive” jobs and salaries to the Maoist nose-rings and transy-boys churned out of the higher ed diploma mills who are otherwise unemployable in any real economy with their race-and-gender studies diplomas.

The Democratic Party apparently realizes that the latest round of scandals and crimes might be its last rodeo. After a day of hearings this week, featuring several Minnesota politicos who testified about sketchy goings-on in the state, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FLA) launched criminal referrals against Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and MN Attorney General Keith Ellison. That’s apart from whatever the DOJ has already been working on, and it is probably the beginning of a nation-wide web of prosecutions moving toward the midterm election that will drag in many other big dawgs of the party, including 2028 front-runner Gavin Newsom. The suicide of the Democratic Party has gone live, Donald Trump assisting.

Authored by Aldgra Fredly via The Epoch Times,

Attorneys general in five states filed a lawsuit on Jan. 8 seeking to block the Trump administration from freezing $10 billion in federal funds for child care and family assistance programs.

The move came just two days after the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said it was withholding the funds for California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, and New York, pending further review of state-administered programs due to concerns “about widespread fraud and misuse of taxpayer dollars.”

The freeze applies to $2.4 billion in Child Care and Development Fund, $7.35 billion in Temporary Assistance for Needy Families fund, and $869 million under the Social Services Block Grant, the agency said on Jan. 6.

HHS said its Administration for Children and Families has identified concerns indicating the benefits “may have been improperly provided to individuals who are not eligible under federal law.”

In their lawsuit, the states alleged that HHS exceeded its authority by withholding congressionally approved funds, arguing that the agency failed to provide a “legitimate justification” for the funding freeze or evidence to support its fraud claims.

The states further argued that the freeze was intended to pressure them into turning over documents related to the use of funding for the affected programs within two weeks, including “personally identifying information of millions of their residents.” They said that it was “an impossible timeline.”

The lawsuit seeks injunctive relief to prevent the government from withholding the funds and a court declaration that the freeze is unconstitutional.

“Once again, the most vulnerable families in our communities are bearing the brunt of this administration’s campaign of chaos and retribution,” New York Attorney General Letitia James, who is leading the coalition in pursuing legal action against HHS, said in a statement.

“As New Yorkers struggle with the rising cost of living, I will not allow this administration to play political games with the resources families need to help make ends meet.”

The Epoch Times reached out to the HHS for comment, but did not receive a response by the time of publication.

Prior to the funding freeze on the plaintiffs’ programs, HHS halted federal funding for child care programs in Minnesota amid an ongoing probe into allegations that the state had funneled funds to fraudulent daycares.

Deputy Health Secretary Jim O’Neill stated on Dec. 31 that he had asked Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz to provide a comprehensive audit of child care centers in Minnesota, covering records of attendance, licenses, complaints, investigations, and inspections.

Walz has defended his administration’s handling of fraud in state programs. The governor announced on Jan. 5 that he would not run for a third term in a bid to focus on resolving the issues.

Philadelphia’s top law enforcement officials have drawn a red line with the Trump administration after an ICE agent killed an activist protester this week during in Minneapolis. 

In a Thursday press conference, Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner slammed President Donald Trump as the ‘criminal-in-chief,’ and vowed to prosecute any federal officers who commit crimes in the city. 

Krasner said that widely circulated footage of the Minneapolis shooting of Renee Nicole Good showed that the ICE officer’s actions were unlawful and violated law enforcement protocols. 

“Silence will not protect us from people who trade in violence to achieve their fascist goals. Our voices will,” Krasner said. “The law must apply to everyone, and therefore we have to use our voices to call out people who commit terrible crimes or justify them. We have to use our voices to remind people that it’s not just a question of what you can get away with. It’s a question of right and wrong.”

PHILLY DA Larry Krasner warns ICE agents in wake of the Minneapolis shooting: “If any law enforcement agent, any ICE agent is gonna come to Philly to commit crimes, then you can get the F out of here.”

“I will charge you with those crimes. You will be arrested. You will stand… pic.twitter.com/xYB0yL65GD

— Fox News (@FoxNews) January 8, 2026

Krasner dismissed the idea that the ICE officer fired his weapon in self-defense, saying “Blocking streets is something protesters, suffragettes have done forever. It’s an incredibly minor offense.

“There is no justification whatsoever in the law for shooting to death someone who is leaving having blocked the street, if that’s even what she did. No justification whatsoever under the Constitution, the U.S. Supreme Court, president or the law for doing that.”

Sheriff Rochelle Bilal echoed Krasner’s comments, calling ICE agents “fake law enforcement,” and saying she is “with the DA” when it comes to prosecuting federal agents that commit crimes in the city.

“…law enforcement professionals – real ones, not the fake, made-up ICE, probably Trump’s new army to attack citizens in the United States. Did you hear what I said? No law enforcement professional wears a mask. None. None.”

“Those that come into our communities wearing masks to commit crime – and thank God for our District Attorney Larry Krasner, who says he’s gonna lock them up. And I’m saying now, we are not going to whisk you away for them to hide your identity. Because when you do it here, you’re getting arrested.”

“You don’t want this smoke,” she concluded. 

🔥🚨 BREAKING: Philadelphia Sheriff Rochelle Bilal calls ICE agents “fake law enforcement,” and says she will ARREST them for enforcing federal immigration law.

She then threatens them, saying:

“YOU DON’T WANT THIS SMOKE!” pic.twitter.com/fl5gorX9JO

— The Patriot Oasis™ (@ThePatriotOasis) January 9, 2026

It’s worse than that. More chaotic. It’s blue CITIES. Governors like Walz are really govs of the cities. Because mostly the state is red. The blue cities are the confederates here and that makes the whole situation a lot more complicated

— Kira (@Kiradavis) January 9, 2026