Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos. This content was recorded by Victor Davis Hanson prior to his Dec. 30 medical operation. Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. We’ve talked in the past about the problems with diversity, equity, and inclusion. That’s the rubric for what, I guess, we could call mandated equality of result, rather than of opportunity. But it’s been in the news lately because there’s a common denominator between the $9 to $10 billion, and climbing, fraud among the Somali community—some of them—in Minnesota. Here in California, we’re looking at $60 to $70 billion fraud, involving everything from homeless funds that were misspent through corruption, wasted, and unemployment insurance, etc., etc. We have the problem with the truck drivers. We had 17,000 licenses given to illegal aliens in California and put many of us in danger who drive frequently on the California freeways. That’s true nationwide as well. And then, of course, the unknown number, it’s in the several millions, somewhere between 8 and 12 million, who came in under the Biden administration. But they were all given exemptions, is what I’m trying to say. And the exemptions were subtle and insidious, but they were characterized that they were DEI. In other words, all of these different groups were categorized by officials as on the victimized, oppressed side of the lecture. And therefore, they were not completely audited. Because, if they had been audited, the cries of racism, nativism, etc., prejudice, bias would’ve been voiced. And people didn’t want to be exposed to that. What happens, then, when you have DEI, there is no deterrence. The particular groups that are favored on non-meritocratic grounds feel that if the society, at large, does not audit them the way—whether that’s immigration audits or welfare audits, or unemployment audits—then why would they audit them under further circumstances? So, that creates a self-perpetuating, almost a self-motion machine that they will continue to engage in activity for which they don’t feel there will be any consequences. And deterrence is lost. More importantly, if you are a DEI beneficiary—in other words, you applied to college and your SAT scores or your grade did not otherwise qualify you, or you’re a professor who plagiarized but was given a pass because of DEI grounds—then what happens is you must continually make the case that you are a victim because that alone will explain why you got this position, why you got this admission, when you did not have otherwise standard meritocratic qualifications. And that means you’re always going to be on the hunt for victimization. If you’re Joy Reid and you can’t do a podcast without spouting racist nonsense, and your audience is crumbling and eroding, then you say that you’re constantly a victim of racism. If you’re on “The View,” and you have a one-dimensional view of race, and you’re boring, and you’re losing market share, you say it’s because of yet another incident of racism that you felt. The other thing that’s a problem with DEI, there are no qualifications now. Once you destroy meritocracy for one group, then all groups feel, well, these people were given particular advantages. So, why don’t we get them? And you know, the funny thing about it is we did have a kind of DEI for very wealthy people, very connected people, the children of billionaires, the children of college deans, who were given admission advantages or were hired in what we call the old-boy network. But meritocracy was supposed to be the antidote. So, DEI was, in a very strange, ironic way, just the twin of the old-boy network, substituting race for money and influence that the old-boy network exercised. That was the fuel that drove that. Finally, there’s a couple of final things. It’s costly because once you add layer under layer under layer of nonproductive people, who are not teaching in the university, they’re not doing research, but they’re monitoring everybody’s syllabus, they’re looking for DEI owes among applicants, they are perched on hiring committees, they have a huge bureaucracy, and they’re nonproductive. They’re very similar to the commissar system in the Soviet Union that was very, not just a sin of commission, that they were wasting resources and causing a lot of problems and killing people, but a sin of omission, that by funding the commissars, you were not funding science or you were not funding meritocratic military schools. You were appointing military officers in World War II on the basis of their ideology rather than on their proven excellence on the battlefield. So, it doesn’t have a good history—DEI. And one thing that we’re watching now, as the Trump administration makes a very persuasive case that DEI violated the civil rights laws of the 1960s, specifically ’64 and ’65, and the Supreme Court ruling of 2023, there is no moral, legal support for it anymore. And yet, we have this vast, top-heavy infrastructure—this ossified, calcified, DEI apparat—and it’s not legally or morally justified. So, it’s gonna be very interesting to see what happens to the DEI complex. But let’s hope that it dies on the vine, at last. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Minnesota Somali Fraud, Illegal Trucking Scandals Share One Thing: DEI appeared first on The Daily Signal.

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—After pro-life leaders rejected President Donald Trump’s admonition to be “a little bit flexible” on the Hyde Amendment, some White House officials are looking to walk back that statement, three sources familiar with the administration’s thinking told The Daily Signal. Many pro-life leaders objected to the call to be flexible on Hyde, which bans taxpayer-funded abortion, and the administration has received their message, the sources said. One White House official disputed the idea that the administration is walking Trump’s comment back, but said it is rather clarifying it. The president has delivered the pro-life movement its biggest win in history with the overturn of Roe v Wade, the official said.  The Hyde Amendment is longstanding policy prohibiting funding of elective abortions in federal health care spending. Trump told House Republicans at their Members Retreat Tuesday they need to be a “little bit flexible on Hyde” when making a deal with Democrats on health care. Many Republicans in Congress have said they will not support a health care deal without the policy in place to prevent federal subsidies from funding abortion coverage in health plans. When asked about the president’s statement on Hyde at Wednesday’s briefing, press secretary Karoline Leavitt also clarified the president’s comments. “The president did not change the administration’s policy,” Leavitt said at a press briefing on Wednesday. “It was President Trump who signed an executive order protecting the Hyde Amendment. It’s the Trump administration that has taken multiple actions on various fronts to ensure that taxpayer dollars are not funding the practice of abortion.” Trump signed an executive order titled “Reinforcing the Hyde Amendment” in his fourth day in office, which ends “the forced use of Federal taxpayer dollars to fund or promote elective abortion.” “What the president was saying yesterday was Republicans, and frankly Democrats, too, need to show a little bit more flexibility so we can actually get something done with respect to the issue of health care,” Leavitt continued. After the president’s statement on Hyde, elected officials and pro-life leaders said the policy was a red line for them. “We are not going to change the standard that we’re not going to use taxpayer funding for abortion,” Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said. “I’m just not going to allow that to happen.” “To suggest Republicans should be ‘flexible’ is an abandonment of this decades-long commitment,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of leading pro-life group, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. “If Republicans abandon Hyde, they are sure to lose this November.” One source reported hearing from the administration that it has been “inundated” with messages from the pro-life community in support of Hyde. A source familiar with the White House’s thinking says that now that the administration has received the message that pro-lifers will not compromise on Hyde, the pro-life movement is more concerned about the Senate compromising on the policy. On Thursday, 17 House Republicans joined Democrats to pass a three-year extension on Affordable Care Act enhanced subsidies which do not include Hyde protections against abortion funding. Pro-lifers are concerned that a few Senate Republicans will break ranks to pass a health care deal without Hyde protections. “We’ve got to hit the Senate with everything we’ve got and make them know that we’re going to be strong and be firm on this issue,” a pro-life movement leader said. The post SCOOP: Some White House Officials Want to Walk Back Trump’s Statement on Abortion Funding, Sources Say appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Whistleblowers have accused Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s administration of squashing criminal fraud investigations as far back as 2019, according to a Republican state representative who oversees fraud prevention in state programs. Rep. Kristin Robbins, a Republican and chair of the Minnesota House’s fraud committee, told The Daily Signal that four whistleblowers inside the Department of Human Services’ Office of Inspector General revealed they were ordered to stop investigations after revelations of systemic fraud in the state’s Child Care Assistance Program. The Office of the Legislative Auditor published the revelations in an April 2019 report, citing an Aug. 2018 email by Jay Swanson, manager of the Recipient and Child Care Provider Investigations Unit, that claimed large-scale fraud schemes in child care assistance. “It was after that that his unit was told they can no longer do criminal investigations,” Robbins, who testified in Congress about the fraud on Wednesday, told The Daily Signal in a phone call Friday. “In the summer of 2019 they were told, ‘You can’t do search warrants, you can’t do criminal investigations anymore’.” That order to stop investigations “and switching only to investigating ‘overbilling’ and not fraud shows that they were willfully turning a blind eye to actual criminal fraud,” she argued. ?'YOU CANNOT MAKE THIS UP'Here's @KRobbinsMN's powerful opening statement to @GOPoversight."The Walz administration has been gaslighting Minnesotans on the scale of the problem for years."?https://t.co/Skn2e9SpN1 pic.twitter.com/dctYX2GNh9— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) January 7, 2026 So far, nearly 100 people have been charged with welfare fraud in multiple state scandals. One federal prosecutor has estimated the amount of welfare fraud in the state to have topped $9 billion. Systemic Fraud Uncovered in 2019 According to Swanson, the state human services department created the Child Care Provider Investigations Unit in 2014, staffing it with four investigators and one manager, as well as two special agents from the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, which refers cases to law enforcement. Swanson’s email alleging the fraud notes that his unit found “providers using a similar scheme to successfully steal large sums of taxpayer money from this program.” While he acknowledges that most responsibility for the fraud “rests with sophisticated criminals,” he nonetheless warns that “an equal amount of responsibility rests with the lack of internal controls involving statutes, CCAP policies, and rules that dictate how this program operates.” Swanson cites records showing some program recipients transferred money to the Middle East or Africa, and that federal officials warned—as far back as 2015—that some fraud proceeds end up funding foreign terrorist organizations. He describes a complex system of fraud, where providers engage in “large scale overbilling,” where mothers are pressured to register many children for child care, and where children at child care centers do not eat if their mothers do not work at the same center. “Investigators have repeatedly heard stories of mothers with 8 or 10 children who have gotten into ‘bidding wars’ with various providers wishing to register those children at their center because of the CCAP billing they would generate,” Swanson writes. The overall report also identifies many weaknesses in the way the Office of Inspector General sought to monitor fraud in the child care program. When the legislative auditor “sought to collect basic information about the work of the CCAP Unit,” staff “were unable to easily provide us with information about the number of complaints and fraud case referrals to DHS, or the source, timing, or status of the case referrals.” The Inspector General administrators also wrote that Swanson’s unit “did not have policies or a formal intake process for screening and prioritizing tips or referrals, such as identifying duplicate cases or cases involving the same providers in multiple counties.” As of August 2018, the investigation unit “did not have a case management system for tracking pending or closed referrals and the status of ongoing investigations.” OLA CCAP Fraud Report 2019Download Whistleblower Claims According to whistleblowers, after Swanson’s email was made public, administration staff created a wedge between Swanson’s unit and the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, Robbins said. Administration staff told BCA special agents in Swanson’s unit that “they could no longer communicate with the BCA without prior approval from their supervisor.” “This is not just one whistleblower,” Robbins added. “I’ve talked to four investigators in this unit now and they all say the same thing.” While Robbins noted that many Minnesota Democrats voted to create tools to investigate fraud, she faulted the Democratic Farmer-Labor Party for failing to hold Walz’s administration accountable for the fraud. “Not a single Democrat has still ever called him out for this,” she said. “I think they’re all culpable.” The Daily Signal reached out to Walz’s office, to the state Department of Human Services, and to the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension for comment. None of them responded by publication time. The post ‘WILLFULLY TURNING A BLIND EYE’: Walz Admin Ordered Inspector General Not to Investigate Criminal Fraud, Whistleblowers Say appeared first on The Daily Signal.

One video sank an entire media news cycle of false narratives. On Friday, Alpha News released a video taken by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agent involved in the shooting of a woman in Minnesota by an ICE agent that’s become an international story. The notion that the agent shot her for no reason at all has just gone up in smoke. Not only does it appear the deceased woman, Renee Nicole Good, was being egged on to behave aggressively by her wife, but it’s clear that she hit the gas of her SUV while seeing the agent was directly in front of her. Take a look and judge for yourself. 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 This video blows up all kinds of narratives that have been peddled about the incident as Ryan Girdusky ably laid out on X. This video destroys several liberal narratives:1) they didn't know who the armed men were – they clearly did2) she was just there coming home from driving her kid to school – no, she was intentionally trying to stop ICE agents3) she was confused by all the commands being… https://t.co/9oH0Bi7vwm— Ryan James Girdusky (@RyanGirdusky) January 9, 2026 At the end of the day this is still a tragedy, even if it’s one of Good’s own making. Her partner should have never encouraged her to disobey the authorities, she should never have blocked traffic, and it’s terrible that she lost her life for a very bad judgment call. The officer too will have to live with the fact that he shot someone. But in no way is this story anything like the narrative that’s been generated by much of the legacy media in the last 24 hours. And I’m not even just counting the hot takes. There have been enough bad ones on this incident since Wednesday to blot out the sun. I’m also talking about the reporting. Frankly, I agree with Vice President JD Vance who said at a news conference Thursday, “The way that the media, by and large, has reported this story has been an absolute disgrace, and it puts our law enforcement officers at risk every single day.” Vance read a headline by CNN during the press conference, “Outrage After ICE Officer Kills Citizen in Minneapolis.” JD Vance rips CNN to shreds. This aired on CNN: pic.twitter.com/exijvBcg9R— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) January 8, 2026 That’s the single contextless message the corporate media has collectively wanted the American people to buy since this whole thing began. We are supposed to believe that ICE agents are just going around the country killing American citizens for no good reason. That would be an outrage indeed. But it’s not just a few dubiously worded headlines that have reinforced this message. Some of reports from major outlets have been deceptive at best. For instance, the Washington Post reported that “video footage of the killing does not show an officer being run over by a vehicle but instead shooting toward the driver’s-side window as the driver reverses and pulls away. As many said even before the newest video released by Alpha News, there is no way that’s a reasonable interpretation of even the less clear videos that were released before. However you interpret the videos, there’s just no way this (in the Washington Post) is an accurate account of what happened: pic.twitter.com/hj1lW3OXkE— Steve McGuire (@sfmcguire79) January 8, 2026 As of my writing this, the Washington Post hasn’t issued a correction. The New York Times wasn’t much better. The Times reported, after interviewing President Donald Trump–who said the woman ran the officer over—that according to their “analysis” from three camera angles “the motorist was driving away from—not toward—the federal officer when he opened fire.” Even before this recent video was released it certainly appeared to me that the vehicle was driving toward the officer. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt demanded The New York Times correct this report. I am hereby calling on ?the New York Times to update their reporting on the ICE Agent’s self defense in Minnesota. President Trump was right, again. pic.twitter.com/hv0PmPXFuD— Karoline Leavitt (@PressSec) January 9, 2026 I don’t know where the media goes from here. Maybe they just move on to other things. Hey, there was another incident in Portland they could twist to fit the narrative (though that one is looking even less useful for their purposes). Maybe they focus on the fact that the ICE officer cursed under his breath after firing at Good. Or maybe they just blindly charge ahead as if the most recent video doesn’t exist or that 2+2=5. I really don’t know. What I do know is that this incident highlights just how the legacy media long ago lost the trust of the American people. Hopefully this incident will get the investigation it deserves. There are still many unanswered questions about what led up to this incident. I’m certainly thankful there is a vaster ecosystem, whatever its faults, of alternative media that now exists in this country. The post One Video Blows Up Countless Media Narratives About Minnesota ICE Shooting appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The House of Representatives took a major step toward averting another government shutdown when it passed a funding package Thursday.  But perhaps more importantly, House Freedom Caucus members influenced the process around the bill’s consideration in ways they say could help government spending in the future. The House’s “minibus” package covers three of the 12 funding areas for the federal government: Energy-Water, Interior-Environment, and Commerce-Justice-Science. Appropriators have attempted to reconcile both chambers’ priorities, and the package will be considered in the Senate next week. But fiscal hawks within the Republican party took issue with the Commerce-Justice-Science section, alleging it was full of earmarks, or lawmaker-requested funding for specific pet projects. House Republicans agreed to end the practice of earmarks under conference rules in 2011, but both Democrats and Republicans decided to revive it in the winter of 2021. One earmark in particular—$1 million in funding backed by Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., for a self-described “youth-led East African recovery organization”—drew the ire of caucus members. “Earmarks are the currency of corruption, and they’re coming back in full force in these products,” Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, told reporters Wednesday. I would be remiss if I didn’t note that I am being asked to vote on a CJS appropriations bill TODAY that I saw yesterday and that has significant grant funding & earmarks ripe for fraud, as well as millions to jurisdictions thwarting ICE – without the ability to amend it.— Chip Roy (@chiproytx) January 6, 2026 Roy also complained that he was “without the ability to amend” the package. Some top Republicans began to fear the collapse of the whole package due to earmarks. “I can’t afford to have a million dollar project jeopardize a $184 billion package of bills,” top House appropriator Tom Cole, R-Okla., told reporters, per Politico. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., ranking member on the appropriations committee, also told the press Wednesday she wished to rectify the situation. “It is under discussion and it will be resolved. That’s the way things go with these community projects. If there’s a difficulty, if there’s a problem, we try to work it out. Or it comes out,” said DeLauro. This is an earmark that is IN THE GOP HOUSE BILL and would have passed without a second thought if not for the current MN Somali fraud prompting questions. Earmarks are absolutely corrupt and should be banned. https://t.co/3sli1u407o— Rachel Bovard (@rachelbovard) January 7, 2026 Before the bill came up for a vote, the House Rules Committee worked to address fiscal hawks’ concerns, ultimately striking the Minnesota earmark through a “manager’s amendment.” The Freedom Caucus has two members on the committee, Roy and Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C. The ‘MIRV’ Solution The rules committee also restructured the vote to allow for separate consideration of parts of the Commerce-Justice-Science bill, a practice sometimes known as a “MIRV.” The process allows House leadership to hold individual votes on separate elements of one bill, before those elements are joined again into one package that goes to the Senate. The procedure’s nickname comes from “multiple impact reentry vehicles”—ballistic missiles containing multiple warheads inside of them, each of which separates from the main vehicle and hits its target. MIRV – refers to a Cold War era missile system that deploys different warheads at different speeds, direction at once.Legislatively, it is when the House passes what is called a “bifurcated rule”, which allows votes on diff stand alone ideas. What passes gets in the bill. 2/— Lisa Desjardins (@LisaDNews) December 20, 2024 This maneuver for Thursday’s minibus let House fiscal hawks vote against retaining the Commerce-Justice-Science section, while leadership advanced the whole package using some Democrat votes. The Commerce-Justice-Science division of the bill was ultimately approved by a 375-47 margin, with 40 Republicans and seven Democrats forming the opposition. Only three Republicans and three Democrats voted against the other division of the package, which passed 419-6. “There are some people who would like to have a separate vote. It’s not a big deal,” rules committee chair Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., told The Daily Signal Wednesday before the vote. “It’s been done before. And so we’re going to accommodate that.” Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., told The Daily Signal Wednesday that he preferred holding separate votes. “That’s a better situation than just, you know, jamming it all into one package,” he told The Daily Signal. A Freedom Caucus Win? House Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Harris, R-Md., told The Daily Signal after the vote on Thursday that he views the outcome as a victory for his caucus, which has long called for separate votes on individual appropriations bills. “We’ve already done away with what we call the ‘Christmas omnibus’ [where] you pile all 12 bills together, you work them out in a smoke-filled room, nobody has any chance to say anything about them,” Harris said. “What we did today for the first time ever is say, ‘oh, and by the way, we’re going to have a separate vote on some of the bills,'” he added. Harris also praised the stripping of the “very offensive million-dollar earmark to a Somali led organization where the brother of the organizer was arrested as a terrorist.” In Harris’ view, the process this process should be replicated in the future. “The framework we’ve laid out, especially this past week, allows us to… return to… what we call regular order: Each bill considered separately, amendments allowed on the floor—you know, the way it was when I first came here, and the way we should return to.” The legislation could still face headwinds in the Senate, though, where Paul is complaining of “billions in refugee money” in the bills. The post Is Congress Returning to ‘Regular Order’ In Funding? appeared first on The Daily Signal.