The saga of federal benefits fraud in Minnesota is still being told. Democrat Gov. Tim Walz dropping out of his bid for reelection to a third term is only the latest chapter.  Reports of fraud in child care operations, and the connection to Twin Cities’ Somali immigrants, go back almost a decade. But state politicians and the legacy media initially ignored or downplayed the story, probably because most of the perpetrators were from a minority that carries “intersectional” clout in woke circles and electoral clout for Democrats.  In 2025, the magazine County Highway reported in depth on the scam, followed by the City Journal, and finally even The New York Times. Walz, who has been in power for nearly eight years, tried to shift blame away from himself and from Somalis on to President Donald Trump and conservatives for noticing. It didn’t work.  But there’s an underlying story that is no less important: the much larger cost of absorbing millions of low-skilled immigrants. Back in 2016, George Borjas of Harvard wrote that, “the higher cost of all the services provided to immigrants and the lower taxes they pay (because they have lower earnings) inevitably implies that on a year-to-year basis immigration creates a fiscal hole of at least $50 billion.”  Because most Somali immigrants came to the U.S. as refugees or on family reunification visas thereafter, they are an interesting subset to examine. At a press conference, Minnesota Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar said of her Somali constituents that “we have … become nurses and doctors and engineers.”  Some, but not many. From 2019 to 2023, the median Somali household in Minnesota had an income of $43,600, compared to a national median of $78,538. That means that they will qualify for many federal benefits available to citizens and some immigrants. In a 2024 report, Daniel Di Martino of the Manhattan Institute looked at the net lifetime fiscal impact of immigrants. Immigrants without a college education are a net fiscal burden of up to $400,000, DiMartino estimates, while “each immigrant under the age of 35 with a graduate degree reduces the budget deficit by over $1 million in net present value during his lifetime.”  Somali refugees fall more into the former category. According to a recent Center for Immigration Studies report, 58% of them do not speak English well, and 39% have no high school diploma. That translates into a heavy use of welfare programs.  Of Somali immigrant households with children, CIS reports, 89% use some kind of welfare—86% of such families are on Medicaid, compared to only 28% of Minnesota households headed by a native-born citizen. More than one in five Somali men of working age are unemployed. More than half of children in Somali-immigrant households are below the poverty line, compared with only 7.6% of those in native-headed homes. Studies in Europe have shown that, on average, immigrants from certain countries are net takers from the fiscal pot over their lifetime, while others are net givers.  In Denmark, the net fiscal contribution of the average native Dane over a lifetime is positive. In their working years, native Danes pay into the system more than they take. That’s the only way the fiscal equation can balance. But their average immigrant from the Middle East, North Africa, Turkey, and Pakistan never pays more to the government than they take in benefits.  From 2019 to 2023, the median Somali household in Minnesota had an income of $43,600, compared to a national median of $78,538. That means that they will qualify for many federal benefits available to citizens and some immigrants. A Finnish study had similar results. On average, people from Somalia and many other places were net lifetime losses. Mass migration was sold to Europeans as a solution to their plummeting fertility rate. To pay for wraparound socialist benefits, the thinking went, they needed to import millions of younger workers. Unfortunately, they weren’t getting the kinds of migrants who are net contributors.  The countries that produce the most economically desirable immigrants have low fertility and don’t export people. Meanwhile, emigrants from the countries whose populations are burgeoning and are on average a lifetime fiscal drain are the ones that do export people.  Liberals love to quote a line from Emma Lazarus’ poem on the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor. Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” This is a sentimental expression from a 19th century context very different from today. Notice she doesn’t say yearning to eat free, sleep free, educate your kids free and get free healthcare, legal aid and a raft of other benefits unavailable in 1890. The Trump administration has lowered refugee numbers for fiscal year 2026 to 7,500. But a future president might choose to ramp up refugees and also open the spigots with other Biden-era tools to facilitate mass migration.  American voters need to understand that accepting refugees and low-skilled migrants means taxpayers write a check for hundreds of thousands of dollars to support them for life. Their children? Some will succeed and help balance the budget. Others will not. It will take generations to find out the long-term results of America’s mass migration binge.  But in the short-term, our fiscal hole will get much deeper, and the politics of refilling it will be impossible. Accepting the fiction that all migrants are the same, and that mass migration is always a net benefit to the receiving population, will leave us with a staggering bill we may never be able to pay.  Originally published in Fox News The post Why Refugee Flood Isn’t a Smart Policy appeared first on The Daily Signal.

There is still chaos surrounding Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations, and nowhere is the anger more palpable than in cities like Minneapolis. Protesters insist they are exercising their rights, even as some cross legal lines. The distinction matters. Observing ICE is lawful. Obstructing ICE is not. And when citizens interfere with a federal operation, they risk serious consequences under federal law. According to The Washington Post, “The fatal shooting of Renee Good last week, as ICE officers and residents faced off on a residential street here, has brought new attention to these activities. … Federal court rulings say citizens can observe and record police activity in public areas as part of their First Amendment rights, and many of the observers are doing nothing more than that. “They say that they believe authorities are less likely to use force if someone is recording and that they are providing a public service by letting their communities know when federal immigration officers are nearby. “But as officers and agents employ aggressive tactics, some activists have blown whistles to warn community members of approaching law enforcement, tried to follow immigration enforcement vehicles or used their own cars to block the roadways—entering murkier legal territory. “Some legal experts said such behavior could in theory justify obstruction-of-justice charges, but they added that any such prosecution would be unusual.” Against that backdrop, I spoke with Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security. She emphasized that ICE’s “top priority” remains violent offenders. “I see the reports every single day,” McLaughlin said. “And what we’ve seen is just flabbergasting as far as the number of criminals who have been allowed to walk around with impunity in this country.” She cited arrests of more than a thousand known or suspected terrorists in the past year, along with 3,500 members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. “That’s why we have been flooding the zone,” she said, “to get these individuals out of our country.” Critics argue that ICE’s visibility escalates conflict. But McLaughlin said the scale and openness of enforcement in cities like Minneapolis, Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles is a direct result of sanctuary policies. “What exactly does [a sanctuary city] mean?” she asked. “It means that these sanctuary city politicians are harboring these criminal illegal aliens, but it also means that our law enforcement is not permitted to work with them. … ICE law enforcement is not allowed into the jails. “So if Chicago picks up a criminal illegal alien—maybe they picked up somebody who was convicted of rape and that person is in their jail—they’re not allowed to release them to ICE or coordinate their eventual release to ICE for eventual deportation. … So the reason that we have such a large law enforcement presence,” she said, “is because we can’t go into those jails to target those criminals, and so we have to really sweep the city.” McLaughlin rejected claims that ICE enforcement represents authoritarian overreach. “This was the mandate President Trump was given,” she said, pointing to rising crime rates. In Minneapolis, she noted, homicides have increased roughly 50% since Gov. Tim Walz took office. Turning to the Good shooting itself, McLaughlin stressed that context matters. “At 10:25 a.m. Central time on Wednesday, January 7, what happened was this individual had been impeding and blocking, in our eyes, law enforcement officers,” she said. “She had been doing that throughout the day, obstructing lawful operations, which is a felony.” When officers attempted to arrest Good and ordered her to exit her vehicle, she refused, McLaughlin said. “She hits the gas,” McLaughlin said, “and [the officer] was in fear of his own life, and he was in fear for the law enforcement who were around him. She weaponized her vehicle she used as a deadly weapon on an officer. He responded as his training instructs him to do. And unfortunately, there was a loss of life there. But our officer conducted himself in the way he should have. And he did save his own life.” Democratic leaders have compared ICE to the Gestapo and warned of a creeping police state. McLaughlin dismissed those claims as reckless and legally unfounded. “They’re clearly legally illiterate,” she said. “If people don’t like ICE enforcing the rule of law … these politicians should change the law. They can lobby Congress to change the law.” Demonizing law enforcement, McLaughlin warned, has real-world consequences. According to her, DHS has seen a reported 1,000% increase in assaults on officers, including multiple vehicle rammings in just the past week. “These vehicles are deadly weapons,” she said. “And one of our law enforcement officers could easily end up killed if we don’t see a stop to this.” McLaughlin also suggested that politics plays a role in Minneapolis becoming a “flashpoint,” citing large-scale fraud investigations underway by Homeland Security Investigations. “There is a part of this where they’re trying to circle the wagons and really use this as a smokescreen so people stop talking about the fraud,” McLaughlin said. What often goes unmentioned is that red states frequently deport more noncitizens than blue states. The difference, however, is cooperation. In states that work with ICE, operations tend to proceed with far less confrontation—and with sizable results. Deportations are not confined to blue cities, despite the rhetoric. That rhetoric persists nonetheless. For many on the left, opposing the Trump administration takes precedence, even if it means vilifying federal law enforcement officers. In the process, nuance is lost, laws are ignored, and the risks—for officers and civilians alike—continue to grow. COPYRIGHT 2026 CREATORS.COM We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.  The post Tricia McLaughlin Defends ICE’s Visible Presence appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., is in a very special category: black, Muslim, and a refugee from Somalia. It’s a triple-banger, like Karine Jean-Pierre, always touted as black, lesbian, and Haitian. Never question their prominence on the merits. It’s a born-on-third-base situation in national politics and media. So, when Omar submits herself to television interviews from liberal networks, she knows she can say inflammatory things and not be seriously challenged. On CBS’ “Face the Nation,” the topic was Renee Good being shot after she drove into an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent with her SUV. Omar claimed Good was “sitting in her car peacefully,” and then the ICE agent “shouldn’t be trying to get in front of a moving car.” Good was right whether she was in park or in drive. On top of that, Team Trump shouldn’t defend the ICE agent, because “we can see in the videos that have been produced so far that what they are describing is really not what is taking place.” This is engaging in denialism. It’s obvious from the ICE agent’s video that he was struck by Good’s car. CBS host Margaret Brennan didn’t challenge Omar on that, or anything else about the incident. She only pushed back by vaguely stipulating there has been violence against ICE agents. This agent was previously run over by a car in his official capacity. That’s not relevant when you’ve decided that in every instance, ICE and President Donald Trump are the villains. That wasn’t as outrageous as Omar’s appearance later on MS NOW’s “The Weekend: Primetime.” Over half an hour, all the questions were designed to elicit her talking points. Co-host Antonia Hylton asked: “In the wake of someone being shot and killed, are you worried that more of your constituents’ lives will be at risk? Are you worried at all as they pull out their cellphones, as they interact with these officers, that that might just, frankly, not be safe?” Omar broke out the conspiracy theories: “What this administration is looking for is for there to be deadly encounters so that they can invoke the Insurrection Act and have martial law. And it is a dangerous, dangerous escalation that they’re looking for.” But it’s the second segment of this interview that shocked the conservative world, when they asked Omar about fighting welfare fraud, as if Omar isn’t connected to Somalis who benefited from fraud schemes, including employees of her campaigns. MS NOW star Ayman Mohyeldin disparaged “conservative YouTuber” Nick Shirley and complained, “We have politicians making decisions based off of conspiracy theories. I’m just wondering what you make of that and how dangerous that is, that our politicians are falling for this.” Omar lamented that anyone would fall for the idea that “Democrats condone this fraud,” and suggested all the fraud prosecutions occurred under the Biden administration. That’s not true. But Omar was on a roll, attacking Team Trump: “I’m so exhausted in trying to ask what any of this, you know, information has led to you finding any criminals that you have indicted, that explains why you are wasting so much of our taxpayer resources.” U.S. attorneys under President Joe Biden achieved about 60 fraud convictions, many of them Somalis, and that effort continues under Trump. That’s not “wasting” taxpayer dollars. It’s trying to punish people who stole money from social programs. Shameless Ilhan Omar doesn’t have to worry about journalists bothering her with challenging questions about her conspiracy theories or her connections to fraudsters, or her booming net worth and if that was ethically gained. “Diversity, equity, and inclusion” goals translate to media coddling, polishing, and defusing. COPYRIGHT 2026 CREATORS.COM We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Shameless Ilhan Omar Accuses Trump of Wasting Taxpayer Dollars appeared first on The Daily Signal.

As Iranians take to the streets amid persistent inflation and a regime crackdown, President Donald Trump told protesters that “help is on its way“—but he has already given the poor people oppressed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei critical aid by enabling the conditions for their revolt. Protesters took to the streets amid extremely high inflation on Dec. 28, and by this past Saturday, the rallies had grown to 574 locations in 185 cities across all 31 provinces, according to CNN. The regime has responded with its customary ruthlessness, shutting down the internet and killing an estimated 12,000 protesters. The regime has successfully quelled protests in previous years, from the 2009 Green Movement (sparked by a disputed presidential election) to the 2019-2020 protests (also triggered by economic conditions) to the 2022-2023 protests after Mahsa Amini died in morality police custody after she refused to wear a hijab. What’s different this time? The economic conditions are even worse, and the regime has lost its moral and military credibility. Iran’s currency—the rial—lost nearly all its value. Last week, one U.S. dollar traded for 1.47 million rials. The economic crisis comes after President Trump re-imposed maximum pressure on Iran last February, after he announced an all-of-the-above energy strategy that does not move away from oil, and after a series of devastating military defeats for the Mullahs. Iran’s theocratic regime rests its legitimacy on its ability to fight the “little Satan,” Israel, and the “great Satan,” the United States of America. The Islamic Republic came to power after the revolution ousted the U.S.-backed shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Iran has declared its intention to wipe Israel off the map. Its harsh enforcement of the Shia version of Sharia law is only possible because the regime unites its people against common enemies. Trump’s Role Former President Barack Obama thought the regime would soften if he offered compromise, and he hoped to create regional stability in the Middle East by pitting a stronger, more moderate Iran against Saudi Arabia. President Trump rightly threw out this flaccid approach, using maximum pressure sanctions in his first term and showing an even more aggressive support for Israel in his second. Former President Joe Biden loosened the sanctions on Iran, leading the regime to gain approximately $71.02 billion more than it otherwise would have ahead of the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. This extra cash likely enabled Iran to provide more support to its proxies in the region, including Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthi rebels in Yemen, and Iran-backed militias in Iraq. Iran uses these proxies, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, to project power against Israel and America outside its borders. Yet Oct. 7 set in motion a chain of events that crippled Iran’s power in the Middle East. Israel responded with force, dismantling Hamas. In September 2024, Israel effectively eviscerated Hezbollah by rigging the terrorist group’s pagers to explode. President Biden pledged to support Israel, but his support proved tepid at best. By contrast, Trump stood by America’s ally, providing the cover Israel needed to carry out its mission. Trump also bombed the Houthis in Yemen last year after the Iranian proxy repeatedly attacked international shipping. Last June, Israel directly attacked Iranian nuclear sites, and U.S. forces under Trump provided crucial assistance in destroying the key nuclear sites of Natanz, Isfahan, and Fordow. Rather than engage in regime change or a protracted war, President Trump urged Iran to make peace, ending the Twelve Day War with a massive victory for America and Israel. In a masterstroke, Israel and the U.S. had dismantled Iran’s proxies and the rogue regime’s nuclear program—the Mullahs’ greatest hope for a decisive victory against Israel. Yes, the Protests Really Are Different This Time Iran’s crippled role in the Middle East doesn’t just make Israel and America’s allies in the region safer—it also undermines the Islamic Republic’s reason for existence. Whatever Iran’s troops believe, the clerical authorities aim to spread their version of Islam across the globe, and if they can’t fight the two regimes they consider the most evil—America and Israel—they lose their key justification for rule. The protests may not succeed, and even if they do, it is possible the resulting regime will not represent much of an improvement. However, Trump and Israel have done the people of Iran a great service by eviscerating the Mullahs’ military might, and it just might be enough to end the Islamic Republic’s despotic rule, once and for all. Even if it survives, the crippled regime will remain a pale shadow of its former self. As an admirer of ancient Persia, I can’t help but hope that Iran’s best days are ahead—and if they are, the Persian people will have Trump to thank for it. The post Why Is the Iran Regime on the Verge of Collapse? appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The following is a preview of Daily Signal Politics Editor Bradley Devlin’s interview with Oversight Project President Mike Howell on “The Signal Sitdown.” The full interview premieres on The Daily Signal’s YouTube page at 6:30 a.m. Eastern on Jan. 15. Oversight Project President Mike Howell joined “The Signal Sitdown” this week to discuss a new force analysis conducted by The Oversight Project into the ICE-involved shooting of a woman in Minnesota. “Our team of career law enforcement has carefully reviewed all available evidence and has cleared the officer,” the force analysis reads from the Oversight Project, which has more than 60 years of law enforcement experience on its team. “The ICE officer in question is not only innocent, but was entirely justified in his actions.  We pray that the far-left comes to their senses and ends this violence.” Renne Good, 37, was shot last week by an ICE officer after allegedly attempting to run him over in Minneapolis. Within hours, thousands of protestors gathered, and local lawmakers called for ICE to leave the city. “Immediately after that event, every anti-American liberal wacko became a ‘use of force’ expert, right? You have a lot like Omar [Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn.] and others saying this is murder and all the Democrats saying this is murder,” Howell said. “It’s just incredibly frustrating to watch that because of the effect it has on a population.” Through these claims’ lawmakers, like Omar, have made, they have convinced this “mentally ill and unhinged population” that you can attempt to block a federal officer from doing their job. Omar did not respond to a request for comment from The Daily Signal. “They’ve called for the violence against the ice officers,” Howell said. “And now they’re use of force experts too.” “This isn’t going to fly with us. The Oversight Project is unique amongst organizations in that we have over 60 years of very sensitive and senior law enforcement experience from the FBI intelligence community to elsewhere,” continued Howell. Howell explained they have a team who have “wielded weapons for a living and been in law enforcement for a long time at the highest levels.” “It’s indisputable that he was acting within his rights,” Howell claimed of the ICE officer. “He was justified not only legally, but in everything beneath that,” Howell answered. The Daily Signal reached out to DHS but did not receive comment. The post ‘Indisputable’: ICE Officer Involved in MN Shooting Was Within His Rights, Watchdog Group Concludes appeared first on The Daily Signal.