Attorney General Pam Bondi fired a warning shot Thursday after a federal three-judge panel ruled, by a 2–1 margin, that California may use its newly minted congressional map — a voter-approved redraw designed to juice Democrats’ prospects in the 2026 midterms. Bondi made clear the fight is far from over, writing on X that California “impermissibly drew its new congressional map based on race,” calling the move unconstitutional and pledging that the Justice Department is reviewing “all legal options.” We disagree with yesterday’s 2-1 ruling on California’s redistricting map. California impermissibly drew its new congressional map based on race. That’s unconstitutional. We are reviewing all legal options. — Attorney General Pamela Bondi (@AGPamBondi) January 15, 2026 The ruling rejected challenges from state Republicans and the DOJ, both of which argued that the map violated the Constitution by using race — particularly to favor Hispanic voters — as a driving factor in redrawing district lines. The panel instead accepted California Democrats’ insistence that the map was drawn for nakedly partisan purposes, a distinction that has become legally decisive since the Supreme Court ruled in 2019 that partisan gerrymandering presents a “political question” beyond the reach of federal courts. Proposition 50, pushed aggressively by California Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom and approved decisively by voters in November, could hand Democrats as many as five additional House seats. Newsom, widely viewed as eyeing a 2028 presidential run, framed the effort as retaliation for a Texas mid-decade redistricting plan backed by President Donald Trump. Republicans currently hold just nine of California’s 52 House seats, making the Golden State a tempting battlefield in the escalating national map war. Democrats celebrated the ruling as a win for voters, with Newsom dismissing the lawsuit as a “weak attempt to silence” them. Republicans were less sanguine. California GOP chair Corrin Rankin vowed an appeal to the Supreme Court, arguing that the dissenting opinion — authored by Trump-appointed Judge Kenneth Lee — more accurately reflected the law and the facts. Lee warned that at least one district was drawn using race “to curry favor with Latino groups and voters,” undercutting the majority’s claim that the map was purely partisan. The decision lands amid an increasingly brazen, state-by-state arms race over redistricting. Missouri, North Carolina, and Ohio have moved to redraw maps mid-decade, while a judge forced Republican-run Utah to adopt a Democratic-leaning district. Notably, the Justice Department has sued only California. The stakes are unmistakable. House Democrats need just a handful of seats to flip control of the chamber, potentially grinding Trump’s agenda to a halt and opening the floodgates to congressional investigations. With Republicans holding a razor-thin majority, California’s maps may prove decisive — or become the next front in a Supreme Court showdown over whether “partisan” gerrymandering is simply racial gerrymandering by another name.

President Donald Trump praised a “highly respected Minnesota judge” on Thursday after she declined to issue a restraining order against Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations in the Democrat-run state. On Wednesday, Kate Menendez, a Biden-appointed U.S. District Court judge, rejected Minnesota’s request to temporarily block ICE from continuing immigration enforcement operations in the state as Minnesota’s lawsuit against the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement moves forward. “A highly respected judge declined to block I.C.E. operations in the very politically corrupt State of Minnesota. I.C.E. will therefore be allowed to continue its highly successful operation of removing some of the most violent and vicious criminals anywhere in the World, many of them murderers, from the State,” Trump said. “The great patriots of Law Enforcement will continue to make our Country safe. RECORD LOW CRIME NUMBERS!!!” Menendez said her decision did not indicate how she would ultimately rule on Minnesota’s lawsuit against the federal government, CBS News reported. “I think the issues are really important and I don’t want to suggest by not acting immediately one way or the other that I think they are unimportant,” Menendez said. “To the contrary, I understand this is important to everybody.” Minnesota argued that a two-week restraining order was needed to give the state time to prepare for the case, arguing that the 3,000 federal agents in Minneapolis and the surrounding areas are violating citizens’ rights. The federal government must respond to Minnesota’s lawsuit by January 19, and Judge Menendez denied a federal prosecutor’s request to postpone the date due to the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. Menendez said the case was too urgent to delay. Leftist Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison announced on Monday that the state filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration in an effort to stop its surge of federal agents into the state. Ellison described Trump’s immigration operation in Minnesota as an “invasion.” The lawsuit was filed just days after Minneapolis resident Renee Good was shot and killed by an ICE agent after she drove her vehicle toward him during a confrontation. The shooting death has sparked massive protests, which have continued for more than a week, and the Trump administration has deployed more federal agents to the city. Another ICE shooting on Wednesday night sparked more outrage in Minneapolis. A federal agent was ambushed and attacked by three people while attempting to detain a suspected Venezuelan illegal immigrant in the city’s Northside, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Trump also threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act on Thursday as demonstrations continued. “If the corrupt politicians of Minnesota don’t obey the law and stop the professional agitators and insurrectionists from attacking the Patriots of I.C.E., who are only trying to do their job, I will institute the INSURRECTION ACT, which many Presidents have done before me, and quickly put an end to the travesty that is taking place in that once great State,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Thank you for you [sic] attention to this matter!” LIVE UPDATES: Minnesota Dems Angry After Second ICE Shooting, Protesters Throw Fireworks At Police

WASHINGTON—The State Department is shutting down a Biden-era program that allowed Afghan allies to enter the United States, citing serious concerns about President Joe Biden’s failure to follow security procedures in vetting Afghans. The Biden administration set up the refugee program at Camp As Sayliyah in Doha, Qatar, to support Afghan allies who fled their country during the botched Afghanistan withdrawal. Around 1,300 Afghans have been waiting at the former American military base for years, in cramped living conditions, to enter the United States. Many of them have feared that they will be returned to Afghanistan, where they will be tortured and killed for working with the United States. As of Wednesday, The Daily Wire can first report, the State Department says that the Biden administration’s failure to properly vet these Afghans, throwing standard security procedures out the window during the withdrawal, will prevent them from ultimately entering the United States. They will be sent to “a third country” — though what country this is, the State Department has not yet confirmed. A State Department spokesperson shared that the Afghan nationals who are currently at Camp As Sayliyah “do not have a viable pathway” to the United States and that hundreds of these nationals have “derogatory information” that presents serious security concerns. But President Donald Trump does not want these vulnerable groups of people to be forced to go back to Afghanistan “under the brutal Taliban regime,” particularly the women and girls, so the United States has presented the Afghan nationals at the camp with a “safe, third-country option for resettlement.” Refugees walk through the departure terminal to a bus at Dulles International Airport after being evacuated from Kabul following the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan on August 31, 2021, in Dulles, Virginia.  (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images) The State Department says that it’s neither appropriate nor humane to keep the Camp As Sayliyah group as is, saying that a large minority of the population are women and children who are living in a confined space without much freedom to move around. According to the Wall Street Journal, residents at the program spend most of their time inside due to the blazing desert temperatures, typically walking around the hangars or scrolling on their phones. State believes that moving the group to “a third country” is a “positive resolution” that will offer the Afghan nationals safety and the opportunity to start new lives — and at the same time, protect the American people. “The United States has kept its promise to those Afghans who risked their lives to support the U.S. government during our attempts to help Afghans build a better country for themselves,” the State Department spokesperson shared. “We have resettled roughly 400,000 Afghans since 2001,” the spokesman added. “It is now more than four and a half years since the United States withdrew from Afghanistan. It is long past time to move past this decades-long conflict, so costly in blood and treasure, and look ahead to the future.” In this handout image, Sgt. Juan Miranda, culinary specialist, 155th Combat Sustainment Support Battalion, files in Afghan Special Immigrants into the dining facility, August 20, 2021, at Camp As Sayliyah, Qatar. (Photo by Sgt. Jimmie Baker / U.S. Army via Getty Images) The move comes on the heels of the tragic Thanksgiving week attack on members of the National Guard in Washington, D.C. Afghan national Rahmanullah Lakanwal, who was brought into the country by the Biden administration in 2021, shot and killed Specialist Sarah Beckstrom and seriously injured Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe in an ambush-style attack on November 26. Lakanwal was one of many thousands of Afghan nationals who were flown out of Afghanistan without proper vetting and put on “U.S.-controlled platforms for an eventual pathway to the United States.” He is not the only Afghan national who has attempted to kill Americans: Abdullah Haji Zada and Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi were sentenced for intent to conduct a terrorist act in Oklahoma in October 2024, and Jamal Wali was killed in Fairfax, Virginia, after opening fire on police officers during a routine traffic stop in April 2025. Two days after Lakanwal’s attack, and about 24 hours after President Trump pledged to dramatically shake up the United States immigration system in response, the State Department directed its posts to refuse visas to Afghan nationals using Afghan passports. Trump argued at the time that the “refugee burden is the leading cause of social dysfunction in America.” “As an example, hundreds of thousands of refugees from Somalia are completely taking over the once great State of Minnesota,” the president said. “Somalian gangs are roving the streets looking for ‘prey’ as our wonderful people stay locked in their apartments and houses hoping against hope that they will be left alone.” On December 3, the president paused the processing of all immigration applications for individuals from 19 “high-risk countries”: Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, the Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela. And in mid-December, the president signed a proclamation expanding and strengthening entry restrictions on nationals from countries with “demonstrated, persistent, and severe deficiencies in screening, vetting, and information-sharing to protect the Nation from national security and public safety threats.”

WASHINGTON—The Department of War will modernize Stars & Stripes, The Daily Wire has learned, refocusing the military news outlet so it better serves “a new generation of service members.” The independent news outlet authorized by the Department of War is meant to provide news for the military community. The publication has been in continuous circulation since World War II and covers the military, veterans affairs, and world events. Until now, it has republished content from the Associated Press and Reuters. This will no longer be the case, War Department officials explained to The Daily Wire. They plan to bring the publication “into the 21st century” and modernize its operations, refocusing content “away from woke distractions that siphon morale.” “The Department of War is returning Stars & Stripes to its original mission: reporting for our warfighters,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell told The Daily Wire. “We are bringing Stars & Stripes into the 21st century. We will modernize its operations, refocus its content away from woke distractions that siphon morale, and adapt it to serve a new generation of service members.” Secretary of War Pete Hegseth (Amanda McCoy/Fort Worth Star-Telegram/Tribune News Service via Getty Images) Parnell said the publication will be “custom-tailored” to the War Department’s soldiers, focused on “warfighting, weapons systems, fitness, lethality, survivability, and ALL THINGS MILITARY.” “No more repurposed D.C. gossip columns,” he added, “no more Associated Press reprints.” “Stars & Stripes has a proud legacy of reporting news that’s important to our service members,” Parnell said. “The Department of War is committed to ensuring the outlet continues to reflect that proud legacy.” It is a move condoned by the White House, which applauded the move as an example of how President Donald Trump’s administration is modernizing institutions across the country. “The Department of War, under the leadership of President Trump and Secretary Hegseth, is continuing to revitalize, restore, and modernize,” White House Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly told The Daily Wire. “Stars and Stripes is just the latest example of a broader effort to adapt long-standing institutions to how today’s service members live, work, and consume information.” Currently, Stars & Stripes has civilian staff who aggregate wire reports and write original stories. Going forward, the War Department officials shared, the publication’s content will be written by active-duty service members. Fifty percent of the website’s content will be composed of War Department-generated materials, including digital or print materials made by War Department writers and images captured by combat cameras.

President Donald Trump said on Thursday that he could invoke the Insurrection Act in Minnesota to stop “professional agitators and insurrectionists” from attacking federal immigration agents. Trump said the Insurrection Act, which would allow him to deploy the military and federalize the National Guard, would quickly “put an end to the travesty that is taking place in that once great State.” The president has threatened to use the act in the past, but his comments on Thursday morning mark the first time he has said the move is a possibility following the fatal shooting of Renee Good by an ICE agent, which sparked massive protests in Minneapolis. “If the corrupt politicians of Minnesota don’t obey the law and stop the professional agitators and insurrectionists from attacking the Patriots of I.C.E., who are only trying to do their job, I will institute the INSURRECTION ACT, which many Presidents have done before me, and quickly put an end to the travesty that is taking place in that once great State. Thank you for your attention to this matter!” Trump wrote on Truth Social. Trump’s threat comes just hours after the Department of Homeland Security said a federal agent shot an illegal immigrant on Wednesday night. According to DHS, a federal agent was ambushed and attacked by three people while attempting to detain a suspected Venezuelan illegal immigrant. The suspects attacked the federal agent with a snow shovel and a broomstick, according to Homeland Security. During the scuffle, the agent fired a defensive shot, which struck a subject’s leg, according to Homeland Security, which added that both the agent and the subject were transported to the hospital, and the two other alleged attackers were arrested. Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara confirmed that a scuffle between a federal agent and another person took place. He did not confirm the federal government’s account that the officer was ambushed and attacked by multiple people. Protesters descended on the area near the shooting shortly after the incident and shouted at law enforcement. Some of the agitators threw fireworks at police officers, according to O’Hara. Following the second ICE shooting in Minneapolis in a week, Minnesota Democratic Governor Tim Walz said he was “angry,” adding, “What Donald Trump wants is violence in the streets.” In a recorded address that was initially plagued by technical difficulties, Walz urged residents to “remain an island of decency, of justice, of community, and of peace” and told Minnesotans, “Don’t give [Trump] what he wants.” Minneapolis Democratic Mayor Jacob Frey also addressed the ICE shooting on Wednesday night and said that ICE and Border Patrol agents are “creating chaos” in the Twin Cities area, and said that residents are asking the Minneapolis Police Department “to fight ICE agents on the street.” “We cannot be at a place right now in America where we have two governmental entities that are literally fighting one another,” he added. LIVE UPDATES: Minnesota Dems Angry After Second ICE Shooting, Protesters Throw Fireworks At Police Trump has suggested numerous times that the anti-ICE demonstrations in Minneapolis are organized and carried out by “professionals.” In at least one protest last week, organizers with the AFL-CIO told demonstrators that they were “moving out” after they hit their “goal time,” The Daily Wire reported. President George H.W. Bush was the last president to invoke the Insurrection Act during the Los Angeles riots in 1992, following the acquittal of police officers who were accused of beating Rodney King. The federal intervention helped restore order within days, but significant destruction had already occurred.