The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum fired off a response on Monday, rebuking Governor Tim Walz (D-MN) after he compared United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to Nazis and claimed the next “Anne Frank” would be a little girl in Minnesota fearing deportation. The statement was posted by the museum’s official X account — and while it acknowledged the difficult situation that has been unfolding in Minnesota, it also said that the clearly political motivation behind Walz’s comparison that suggested American federal agents were no different from the Nazis was a bridge too far. “Anne Frank was targeted and murdered solely because she was Jewish. Leaders making false equivalencies to her experience for political purposes is never acceptable. Despite tensions in Minneapolis, exploiting the Holocaust is deeply offensive, especially as antisemitism surges,” the post read. Walz sparked the backlash during a recent press conference — following a fatal shooting involving Border Patrol agents — where he said, “We have got children in Minnesota hiding in their houses, afraid to go outside. Many of us grew up reading that story of Anne Frank. Somebody is going to write that children’s story about Minnesota.” Walz, who has previously referred to federal immigration officials as “Trump’s modern-day Gestapo,” is not the only Democrat making such comparisons. During a Sunday appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union,” newly-elected Governor Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ) said ICE agents were like the communist Stasi — the East German secret police. Governor Gavin Newsom (D-CA), widely considered to be a leading contender for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination, trashed federal law enforcement while in Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum. Newsom took aim at Border Patrol Commander Greg Bovino in particular, saying, “Greg Bovino is dressed up as if he literally went on eBay and purchased SS garb. Secret police … Private army … Masked men.” Law enforcement officials and leaders within the Trump administration have pushed back, arguing that such rhetoric has been a driving force behind the exponential increase in assaults and death threats against federal law enforcement officers and their families.

CNN anchor Kasie Hunt attempted to use an old tweet from the late Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk to defend protesters coming armed to demonstrations against federal immigration officers, whether they be with Border Patrol or Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Hunt claimed that video from Minneapolis protests — particularly video showing the fatal confrontation between Border Patrol agents and Alex Pretti — was proof that President Donald Trump’s administration had become “tyrannical” and justified civilians taking up arms against the government. WATCH: CNN’s Kasie Hunt suggests people should be pointing guns at the Trump administration because it has become “tyrannical” citing “what we saw on the streets” of Minneapolis: “I want to bring back a tweet from Charlie Kirk in 2018. He says this, ‘The Second Amendment is not for… pic.twitter.com/qZq6Z2qnTu — Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) January 26, 2026 “I want to bring back a tweet from Charlie Kirk in 2018. He says this, ‘The Second Amendment is not for hunting. It’s not for self protection. It is there to ensure that free people can defend themselves if, God forbid, government became tyrannical and turned against its citizens,'” Hunt said, reading the tweet. “And I think a lot of people are pointing to this because, I mean, what — what we saw in the streets.” Hunt did not mention the fact that federal immigration officials had only been sent by the Trump administration to enforce existing federal laws, nor did she address the intentional roadblocks to federal law enforcement — namely sanctuary policies — that have been put into place by Democratic leaders in states like Minnesota. Officials within the Trump administration have repeatedly stated that it would be unnecessary to surge federal resources and personnel to states like Minnesota and Maine — where the next major surge has already begun — if local and state law enforcement would simply cooperate with ICE detainers and coordinate with federal immigration officials to make safe prisoner exchanges at jails or courthouses.

All hell has now broken loose in Minneapolis after another shooting on Saturday involving federal officers and a person who allegedly attempted to interfere with them in the pursuit of their legal duty. That person’s name was Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old Minneapolis man. The Left continues to ramp up this chaos. They are doing this on purpose. There is no question that this is a purposeful attempt to undermine federal law enforcement in their pursuit of duty. And if that ends with ugly images on television, then that is exactly what they want. They are desperate for ugly images on television because they believe the images will undermine the Trump administration’s immigration program and the Trump administration itself. Let us be very clear. More people are being deported from red states than from blue states right now. But you’re not seeing these ugly images happening in red states. Why? Because red states are helping to facilitate the deportation of people who should not be here. Red states are helping to ensure that criminal illegal immigrants are not in the system. And when they arrest somebody for a crime and that person is an illegal immigrant, they then tell federal law enforcement, federal authorities, ICE, and Border Patrol, so the person can be deported. Blue states, sanctuary cities, and sanctuary states are not doing that. That is what necessitates more boots on the ground from the federal government in these areas. And then local and state politicians have suggested that this amounts to a Gestapo-like occupation. They’ve been driving their own supporters out into the streets. Some of those supporters are then obstructing federal law enforcement, committing federal crimes. When that happens, the likelihood of terrible incidents goes way up. That is the simple logic, and that appears to be something that left-wing politicians want and are desperate for. It appears to be something that they think they can run on if they put ugly images on your television of immigration agents in confrontations with Americans. And if some of those incidents end with death, then that means they will be able to undermine their political opposition. That is despicable. It truly is. We should all — Democrats, Republicans, and independents — be in favor of criminal illegal immigrants going home, not being in the United States. WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show This is not a controversial issue. The necessity for a larger federal presence or harder implementation measures is only being made necessary because there are Democratic politicians and members of the legacy media who have decided to ramp up the rhetoric to facilitate the chaos. This is indeed planned. That is a reality. So that ends with bad situations. We’ve been saying this for months. You have the governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, coming out and saying that ICE agents are like the Gestapo or like the KKK. You have Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey saying the same, If you have all Democratic politicians suggesting that protesting ICE agents is not only a decent thing to do, but a positive and good thing to do, and then treating obstruction of federal law enforcement officers as a form of legitimate protest —which is the gray line they always seem to blur — you will end up with more confrontations, more violence, and more possible deaths under disputed circumstances. There should always be a full investigation, not because I believe the officers are guilty of murder or manslaughter, but because I believe that it will exonerate the officers. And if it doesn’t, you need the full investigation to ensure that there’s continued trust in law enforcement. Those investigations should go forward. They should be perfectly objective. They should not be railroading someone, as we have seen in the past with Derek Chauvin and George Floyd. The cases should not be adjudicated in the media. That’s why the best response from everyone in the federal government to Walz to Frey should be a full, thorough investigation. But of course, the biggest issue is why these incidents keep happening in the first place. It is not just a matter of individual incidents that are randomly cropping up. This is not random. It is happening in a specific city at a specific time, in a specific place for a reason.  It is being driven deliberately. I can’t emphasize this enough:  It is being deliberately driven by members of the Democratic higher echelons. It is being specifically driven by the legacy media. I repeat: You are not seeing this in red areas, and more deportations are being carried out in those areas than in the blue areas. That’s a statistical fact. More deportations are taking place in Texas and Florida than are taking place in Minneapolis.  But all the tape you’re seeing is from Minneapolis.  Why is this not happening again in New Orleans? Why is this not happening in Dallas, Texas? Why isn’t this happening in red areas? The answer is obvious. Tim Walz — who’s been absolutely abhorrent throughout this entire debacle, a terrible governor, a disgrace to the country, a man who was nominated for vice president of the United States by the Democratic Party — declared, “Minnesota has had it. This is sickening. The President must end this operation. Pull the thousands of violent, untrained officers out of Minnesota. Now.” The basic idea here is that Walz won’t help by actively facilitating the deportation of criminal illegal immigrants. He’s going to facilitate the obstruction of law enforcement, and then, when things get violent, he’s going to tell federal law enforcement to pull out. “They think they can provoke us into abandoning our values,”  he wrote on Facebook. “They are wrong. We will keep the peace. We will secure justice for our neighbors. And we will see this occupation end.” I don’t think Tim Walz is interested in keeping things peaceful in Minnesota. I see very little evidence that he is. Walz is building an entire permission structure for violence against officers. Over the weekend, he said, “Quit referring to these people as law enforcement. They are not law enforcement.” What do you think he is saying to protesters? What do you think he’s saying when he says they’re not law enforcement? He’s saying if they’re not, then what are they then? They must be lawbreakers because they’re wandering around committing crimes against other American citizens. Thus, he creates a permission structure for all of this. He compared illegal immigrant children in Minnesota to Anne Frank. No. Anne Frank was not attempting to immigrate to the country from which she was deported. Anne Frank was a citizen of the country in which she lived. She was sent to Auschwitz and then transferred to Bergen-Belsen, where she died of typhus. That is not the same thing. American law enforcement agents, ICE officers, and Border Patrol agents are not Nazis. They are not the Gestapo. This is a purposefully driven chaos operation pushed by Democrats for political purposes.

The Department of Education referred its Minnesota transgender athletes investigation to the Justice Department on Monday, a major step toward pulling funding for the Democrat-run state’s education and high school sports agencies. Minnesota has so far refused to negotiate with the Trump administration on the issue after the federal government found that the state violated Title IX by allowing boys to compete against girls. Now, Minnesota is close to losing its federal funding from the Education Department and the Department of Health and Human Services, The Daily Caller reported. The DOJ referral comes as the Trump administration targets Minnesota in its immigration enforcement operation and over allegations of massive fraud. “As Minnesota reels from a fraud scandal, @GovTimWalz is fighting to keep men in women’s sports,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon wrote on X. “Now, he’ll have to make his case in court.” The Education Department and HHS said last September that their investigation found the Minnesota State High School League was in violation of Title IX by allowing boys who identified as girls to compete against girls in high school sports. Minnesota was the center of a sports controversy last spring when a male pitcher dominated the girls’ state softball tournament. The Trump administration also said that Minnesota allowed boys to compete against girls in Alpine skiing, Nordic skiing, lacrosse, track and field, and volleyball. The Minnesota Department of Education has argued that Title IX “requires schools provide transgender students with the right to participate in…athletics in a manner consistent with their gender identity” and that “transgender and gender nonconforming students should be afforded the opportunity to use the restroom of their choice” — positions that directly contradict the Trump administration’s interpretation of the law. “Despite repeated opportunities to comply with Title IX, Minnesota has chosen defiance – continuing to jeopardize the safety of women and girls, deny them fair competition, and erode their right to equal access in educational programs and activities,” McMahon told The Daily Caller. “The Trump Administration will not stop until accountability is delivered for Minnesota’s students,” she added. Minnesota leftist Attorney General Keith Ellison sued the Trump administration over the president’s executive order on keeping men out of women’s sports, arguing that the Trump administration is “bullying vulnerable children.” Ellison said last year that Trump does not have the authority to override Minnesota state law that allows trans-identifying athletes to compete in sports categories that match their gender identities. Trump signed an executive order in February banning boys and men from competing against female athletes, threatening to strip federal funding from states that don’t obey the order. The Trump administration has also gone after Maine and California for violating Title IX protections for women and girls.

Winter Storm Fern is responsible for at least 17 deaths so far, with fatalities reported in Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi, Kansas, Massachusetts, Ohio, and Arkansas. Officials in Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Louisiana have each reported three deaths. Mississippi and Texas have reported two deaths each. The other states have reported one death each, per officials. The Louisiana Department of Health confirmed that an 86-year-old man died from carbon monoxide poisoning. Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves also confirmed two weather-related fatalities from the winter storm, per NBC News. Ohio police announced a tragic incident in which a snowmobiler was struck and killed by a plow truck. Fox Weather reported on the death of a 16-year-old girl in Frisco, Texas. The teenager died after a sledding crash, and another teenager is in critical condition. Local police said the two were being pulled by an SUV when the sled hit a tree. In Pennsylvania, the coroner’s office said three people died in three separate medical incidents while they were cleaning up snow on Sunday, according to Fox Weather. The outlet also reported that a Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority snowplow struck a married couple who were on a walk. The wife died from her injuries. In New York, several deaths are being investigated as potentially weather-related, so the number of dead could rise. The Northeast is getting the last bit of snowfall from the storm, but the bitter cold temperatures aren’t moving out. According to The Weather Channel, the cold could last well into next week. The National Weather Service has issued extreme cold alerts in parts of the Midwest, South, and Ohio Valley as the frigid air arrives. More than a dozen low-temperature records were broken Monday morning. Some of the cities that dropped to their lowest temperatures include: New Orleans at 27 degrees, San Antonio and Austin at 19 degrees, Tulsa at 0 degrees, and Springfield, Missouri, at a record -11 degrees. The Arctic blast will refreeze existing ice and snow, making power outages worse, especially in the South, where ice has been the biggest threat. The cold temperatures are devastating to regions of the country dealing with power outages. There are more than 800,000 people without power, including 250,000 in Tennessee alone. In Mississippi, more than 145,750 people are without power. Louisiana isn’t far behind, with 117,325 customers still in the dark. Texas has nearly 50,000 without power.