Texas has accounted for 25% of all ICE arrests since enforcement ramped up. The state has processed thousands upon thousands of deportations. No riots. No mob violence against federal officers. No churches stormed during worship services. Minnesota represents less than 1% of ICE arrests. And Minneapolis is on fire. How do you explain that gap? The answer has nothing to do with immigration policy and everything to do with where Americans get their information. What the Polling Actually Shows At Cygnal, we recently surveyed voters on whether the Trump administration’s deportation efforts have gone too far, are about right, or haven’t gone far enough. The results: 50% said too far, 48% said about right or not far enough. That’s a statistical tie. A country split down the middle. But if you only consumed legacy media coverage, you’d assume 80% of Americans are horrified by what’s happening. You’d think the deportation efforts represent some unprecedented crisis of conscience for the nation. They don’t. Nearly half the country supports the policy or wants it to go further. You just wouldn’t know that from watching the evening news. The real divide isn’t about what Americans believe. It’s about where they get the information that shapes those beliefs. Inside the Information Bubbles The data gets interesting when you cross-reference policy views with media consumption patterns. Among voters who believe deportation efforts have gone “too far,” 51% get their news primarily from national broadcast television: NBC, ABC, CBS. Compare that to 36% of all voters and just 14% of those who think enforcement hasn’t gone far enough. The “too far” crowd also over-indexes on newspaper consumption compared to the general voter population. These are the legacy media institutions, the ones that dominated American information for decades. On the flip side, voters who believe deportation efforts haven’t gone far enough slightly over-index on cable news (45% vs. 40% overall) and dramatically over-index on X, formerly Twitter (16% vs. 9% overall). The “about right” middle? They’re slightly more likely to get news from cable and Facebook than the average voter. No real drastic differences outside the fact they they also don’t get as much of their news from legacy media. What emerges is a clear pattern: liberals cluster heavily around broadcast television and print newspapers, while conservatives spread across cable, social media, and newer digital platforms. These groups are consuming different facts, different story selections, different framings of what matters … and what doesn’t. The Amplification Machine As said at the beginning, Minnesota represents less than 1% of ICE enforcement activity, but it’s receiving wall-to-wall national coverage. Every confrontation, every protest, every dramatic standoff gets the full treatment—helicopter shots, breathless correspondents, the works. Texas is processing 25 times the enforcement activity with minimal national attention. Why? Because compliance doesn’t generate clicks. Orderly deportations don’t drive ratings. A state that implements federal policy without mass unrest isn’t a story anyone wants to tell. More importantly, it doesn’t make Trump look bad in their minds like Minneapolis does. The editorial choice to focus on Minnesota is about feeding an existing narrative to an audience that wants that narrative confirmed, not informing the public. And the consequences are tangible. When broadcast networks run continuous coverage of “resistance” to immigration enforcement, they’re sending a signal to activists in other cities: this is how you get attention. This is how you become part of the story. This is how you “fight Trump.” The coverage doesn’t just reflect the violence. It incentivizes it. The Death of Shared Reality For most of American history, we argued about policy while agreeing on basic facts. Democrats and Republicans watched the same evening news, read the same wire service reports, saw the same footage. They disagreed about what to do, not about what was happening. That’s over. And I wrote about in “America’s Emotional Divide,” we’ve entered an era where Americans increasingly inhabit separate factual universes. The “too far” voter and the “not far enough” voter are watching different incidents, hearing different statistics, encountering different human-interest stories designed to trigger different emotional responses. When I conduct focus groups, I see this constantly. Voters will cite “facts” that are genuinely news to voters on the other side—not because anyone is lying, but because their individual media ecosystems simply never surfaced that information. This is what called tribal epistemology. Your tribe determines not just your values but your evidence. What counts as a credible source, a significant event, a representative example—all of it filters through group identity before it reaches individual judgment. What’s Actually at Stake The Minneapolis situation illustrates the real danger. You have a city tearing itself apart over enforcement activity that represents a statistical rounding error nationally. You have activists storming churches, attacking federal officers, setting fires. And the coverage of that chaos generates more chaos elsewhere. Meanwhile, the state handling a quarter of all enforcement activity does so with minimal drama. But nobody’s running prime-time specials on “How Texas Implemented Immigration Policy without Burning Down.” The question for us is straightforward: Are you going to let your media diet determine your reality? Or are you going to actively seek out primary data, diverse sources, and information that challenges your existing beliefs? Democracy requires a shared factual foundation. When half the country thinks we’re in a humanitarian crisis and half thinks we’re finally enforcing laws that went ignored for decades—and both sides can cite “evidence” for their position—we have a collective epistemological breakdown. The information bubble doesn’t just distorting immigration. Everything is distorted. And the only people who can pop it are the ones willing to step outside their comfortable media habits and ask what they might be missing. The post You’re Not Crazy: Why the Media’s Immigration Coverage Feels Like Propaganda appeared first on The Daily Signal.

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL–The Department of Homeland Security in the past year has arrested multiple illegal aliens it says have known ties to terrorist organizations including ISIS and Al-Qaeda. According to the agency, the illegal aliens include members of Al-Qaeda, ISIS, the Islamic Republic Guard Corps of Iran, and MS-13, which Trump designated a foreign terrorist organization when he returned to office.   “Just a year ago, under [President] Joe Biden, our border was wide-open and criminals, gang members, and terrorists were released into our communities,” Tricia McLaughlin, DHS assistant secretary, stated.   Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem have “unleashed” Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents “to target the worst of the worst, including national security threats,” McLaughlin said, adding that the Trump administration is “delivering on the American people’s mandate to make America safe again, and we’re just getting started.”  One of the detainees is Chasib Hafedh Saadoon Al Fawadi, identified as a member of the Iraqi Shia militant group Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq.   The first Trump administration designated Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq a foreign terrorist organization in 2020. Then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo refered to the group as “violent proxies of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”   Al Fawadi, an illegal alien from Iraq, has a criminal history that includes charges for rape and criminal obstruction of breathing or blood circulation. He has been convicted on federal charges of making false statements on an immigration application about his membership in Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq.  He was given a deportation order in 2022, but ICE arrested him in the U.S. in November 2025.   Chasib Hafedh Saadoon Al Fawadi. (DHS) Mahmoud Amin Mohamed Elhassan, originally from Sudan, was convicted on federal charges of attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization. ICE arrested him in June.   Mahmoud Amin Mohamed Elhassan. (DHS) Fares Abdo Al Eyani, a criminal alien from Yemen, was previously convicted “for conspiracy to unlawfully export defense articles in violation of the Arms Export Control Act and the International Traffic in Arms Regulations,” DHS reports.   Jordanian Ashraf Farhan Husny Sulaiman, has a record that includes conviction for conspiracy to defraud the U.S.   Majid Ghorbani served in the Iranian military and was “charged with acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government and convicted for violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and petty theft.”   Illegal aliens Fares Abdo Al Eyani, Ashraf Farhan Husny Sulaiman, and Majid Ghorbani. (DHS) Additionally, DHS reported arrests of MS-13 gang members Gaulner Uliel Pineda Castillo, a Guatemalan who was previously arrested for a kidnapping plot, and Leonel Alexander Velasquez-Hernandez, an illegal alien from El Salvador with a criminal history that “includes arrests for murder, assault, dangerous weapons with intent to injure, conspiracy to commit murder, conspiracy assault, and stalking.”   Illegal aliens Leonel Alexander Velasquez-Hernandez and Gaulner Uliel Pineda Castillo. (DHS) The Department of Homeland Security faces criticism and backlash following a Border Patrol-involved shooting in Minneapolis on Saturday that left 37-year-old Alex Pretti dead.   Two and a half weeks before that, an ICE agent shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Good in Minneapolis.   Both shootings took place amid anti-immigration enforcement operation protests in Minneapolis and are currently under investigation.   The post EXCLUSIVE: ICE Arrests Foreign Terrorists Living in US appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Noncitizens demonstrating against the United States and Israel at U.S. campuses scored a legal victory over the Trump administration last week, as a Massachusetts federal judge halted the deportation of international students and faculty. The case of American Association of University Professors v. Rubio, naming Secretary of State Marco Rubio as the lead plaintiff, concerns a State Department policy that allowed for the deportation of international students and academic faculty involved in pro-Palestinian demonstrations that often involved anti-American and anti-Israeli sentiment.  U.S. District Judge William G. Young held Thursday that a change in immigration status, or arrest, could not be based on viewpoints. He determined that the administration implemented its orders against the students in “‘a viewpoint-discriminatory way to chill protected speech’ that ‘violated the First Amendment.'” The lawsuit also named several other top administration officials, as well as President Donald Trump. The Middle East Studies Association was among the plaintiffs. This marks Young’s second ruling in the case that undermines two Trump executive orders. In January 2025 Trump directed federal agencies to enhance immigration vetting procedures to prevent the entry of individuals who may pose a national security threat. That same month, he issued a separate order directing authorities to combat antisemitism on college campuses, amid an outpouring of demonstrations against Israel that intimidated Jewish students.  The plaintiffs in the case sued over the orders, asserting that enforcement amounted to viewpoint discrimination and violated the First Amendment.  The Trump administration argued that noncitizens do not have the same First Amendment rights as American citizens. But in a separate September ruling in the case, Young held that international students and faculty have the same First Amendment rights as citizens.  Young is an appointee of President Ronald Reagan.  Last year, Young ruled against the Trump administration on National Institutes of Health funding for research related to racial minorities and Americans identifying as LGBTQ. Young called the funding cuts “appalling” discrimination. One of Young’s most high-profile cases was that of Richard Reid, the convicted “shoe bomber” who boarded a passenger plane with a bomb in his shoe. After the 2003 conviction, Young sentenced Reid to life in prison. The post Pro-Palestianian Agitators Score Win Against Trump in Court appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Multiple Trump administration agencies are investigating the circumstances surrounding the shooting of 37-year-old nurse Alex Pretti by Border Patrol agents in Minnesota, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said. “I would just remind all of you in the media, because I’ve seen the lack of reporting on this fact,” Leavitt said at a White House press briefing on Monday. “There are investigations into what took place on Saturday.” “Homeland Security and the FBI have teamed up for an investigation, and there’s also an internal [Customs and Border Patrol] investigation and internal review of what is happening on the ground in Minnesota,” she said. “The president believes that these investigations are credible,” Leavitt continued. “They are continuing, they are active, and he wants to let them play out.” President Donald Trump had previously told The Wall Street Journal his administration is “reviewing everything” about the shooting. “Nobody, including President Trump, wants to see people get shot or hurt,” Leavitt said. U.S. Border Patrol agents shot and killed Pretti while he was filming federal officers during a Minneapolis immigration enforcement operation. The agents were seeking to arrest illegal immigrant Jose Huerta-Chuma, whose criminal history includes domestic assault for intentional conflict bodily harm, driving without a valid license, and disorderly conduct. White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller referred to the nurse as “an assassin” who “tried to murder federal agents.” Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said Pretti attacked law enforcement while “brandishing” a gun. However, Pretti’s family claims that he was “clearly not holding a gun” when he was “attacked” by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The shooting has sparked bipartisan calls for congressional oversight. Rep. Bill Huizenga, R-Mich., said, “A congressional hearing is a place where federal, state, and local community leaders can be heard.” “There must be a thorough and impartial investigation into yesterday’s Minneapolis shooting,” Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., wrote. The post What Karoline Leavitt Says the Press Is Missing About ICE Shooting appeared first on The Daily Signal.

With Democrats pushing a number of progressive policies now that they are in control of Virginia, a Virginia state Democrat is working to ban immigration agents from operating near polling places. Democrat Virginia Del. Alfonso H. Lopez introduced the bill, which has been described as a “safeguard.” The bill, HB 1442, would amend the Code of Virginia to prohibit law enforcement from “any act for the purpose or in furtherance of enforcement of federal immigration laws” within 40 feet of a polling place. The move has left Republicans wondering why a Democrat would move to prevent immigration law enforcement at polling places if Democrats believe illegal immigrants are not voting in Virginia elections. “My Republican colleagues and I were shocked at the brazenness of this bill,” Virginia Del. Anne Ferrell Tata told The Daily Signal.   “First, states can’t restrict the actions of the federal government. But more importantly, what’s the purpose behind this bill? Democrats tell us illegal aliens aren’t voting. It’s quite a coincidence,” Tata continued. HB 1442Download This is not the only election integrity bill Virginia Democrats have pushed since taking the majority this month.   Democrat Virginia Del. Marcia S. Price introduced HB 968 to ban hand-counting paper ballots, and Democrat state Sen. Barbara Favola introduced SB 58 to extend the deadline for accepting absentee ballots.   “I think they owe the people an explanation of the logic behind these bills,” said Dave Brat, a former Virginia congressman and Virginia state delegate. He spoke with The Daily Signal about his frustration with this bill and the many more that would impact voter and election integrity.   “I don’t think anybody ran on these things. I have never heard anything about that,” Brat continued. “Virginians have to look at the whole package. There’s five or six [introduced bills] and all have to do with making voting less transparent and more problematic,” Brat said.  “All these bills are a march to the left, and all you have to do is take a look at the left states and their performance,” Brat continued. “Minneapolis right now is rioting all across the streets because local law enforcement won’t cooperate with the federal. Everywhere where the local does cooperate with the federal, there’s peace and quiet and harmony,” Brat added. Lopez did not provide a comment to The Daily Signal. The post If Illegal Aliens Don’t Vote in Virginia Elections, Then Why Are Democrats Trying to Ban ICE From Polling Places? appeared first on The Daily Signal.