Texas Weekly Online

Texas-trans-white
Menu
Menu

Year: 2025

Trump’s election win filled Hamas with ‘fear,’ hostage held like ‘slave’ for 505 days recounts

Trump’s election win filled Hamas with ‘fear,’ hostage held like ‘slave’ for 505 days recounts

Omer Shem Tov was dancing with friends at the Nova Music Festival in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas terrorists launched a devastating attack, killing hundreds and loading Shem Tov and dozens of others onto the backs of pickup trucks bound for Gaza. The 20-year-old Israeli spent the next 505 days in Hamas captivity, serving as a slave in the terrorist group’s elaborate tunnels until “fear” filled their eyes on Nov. 5, 2024 — when President Donald Trump won the presidential election, he told Fox News Digital. Shem Tov recounted his months living in Hamas’ captivity in Gaza as war raged between the terrorist group and Israel, during a recent Zoom interview with Fox News Digital. He was released from captivity in February and traveled to the U.S. shortly afterward to meet with Trump in the Oval Office. “As soon as Trump was elected, I saw the fear in their eyes,” Shem Tov said. “They knew that everything on ground is gonna change, that something else is gonna happen, and they were scared. They were very scared.” AMERICAN-ISRAELI HELD HOSTAGE IN GAZA FOR OVER 580 DAYS SENDS MESSAGE TO HAMAS: ‘I’LL GIVE YOU HELL’ Shem Tov said that for roughly the last five months of his captivity, he lived in Hamas’ tunnel system beneath the Gaza Strip, where he was worked mercilessly. “I was digging for them, and I was cleaning for them, and I was moving around bombs from place to places, and (carrying) food. I can tell you, just so you know, crazy amounts of food. Amounts of food that I’ve never seen before,” he recounted.  Shem Tov learned about the American presidential election from his Hamas captors, who watched Al Jazeera on a TV kept in the tunnels. “The last five months, the terrorists, they brought TV to the tunnel and most of the time they watched Al Jazeera. That’s the only thing they watch. And… they wouldn’t let me watch TV, yeah, but sometimes I would overhear the TV,” he said. He said he overheard the terrorists discussing the election and “how they want Kamala to win.” Once the election was decided, Shem Tov said, the terrorists changed the way they treated him, even offering him more food. He said he mostly survived on small biscuits throughout his captivity, despite Hamas controlling large amounts of food. IDF ANNOUNCES TRANSFER OF DECEASED ISRAELI HOSTAGE REMAINS THROUGH RED CROSS “So everything changed,” he said of how Hamas reacted to Trump’s win. “The amount of food that I got changed. The way they treated me changed. I could see just them preparing for something bigger.” Shem Tov recounted that he spent his 21st birthday in captivity, just weeks after he was first kidnapped. He said that between Oct. 7 and Oct. 30 of 2023, he did “not cry once,” but that he felt a swell of emotion when remembering his family on his birthday.  “At my birthday, it was the 31st of October, it was the first time that I broke down, I cried. It’s for me, thinking of my family, that’s something that really hits me. Understanding that my family, they’re back home, they’re safe, yeah, but they have to worry about me.… They don’t know if if I’m alive, if I’m starving… they had no idea. And I can tell you that while I was there, I suffered. I truly suffered. I was abused, I was starved in the most extreme way,” he said.  Since his release, Shem Tov has praised Trump for his role in freeing the hostages and pursuing peace in the Middle East. He told Fox News Digital that he had long heard Trump’s name and knew he was a “big supporter of Israel,” but had largely stayed out of politics before his kidnapping. There is currently a cease-fire between Israel and Gaza after Trump rolled out a 20-point plan to secure peace in the region in September. The plan included the release of all the hostages. All hostages have been released from Hamas captivity except one, slain police officer Ran Gvili, whose body remains in Gaza. TRUMP MEETS FREED ISRAELI HOSTAGES, CALLS THEM ‘HEROES’ IN WHITE HOUSE CEREMONY Shem Tov was among a handful of hostages who traveled to the White House to meet with Trump earlier in 2025, where he relayed that he and other hostages are “so grateful to him.” “I personally told him that me and my family, and I would say all of Israel, believe that he was sent by God to release those hostages and to help Israel,” Shem Tov recounted of what he told Trump during his meeting in February. “And he made that promise. He made that promise, he said that he will bring back all the hostages.” For Shem Tov, freedom after captivity has meant keeping close ties with fellow hostage survivors. “I would say they become like my family, like my brothers and sisters. We have many group chats and we see each other every once in a while and there are some who really become like brothers of mine,” Shem Tov said. 

How fears of being labeled ‘racist’ helped ‘provide cover’ for the exploding Minnesota fraud scandal

How fears of being labeled ‘racist’ helped ‘provide cover’ for the exploding Minnesota fraud scandal

MINNEAPOLIS, MN – In the aftermath of the massive Feeding Our Future scandal and broader allegations of systemic fraud in Minnesota’s social programs, a troubling theme has emerged: accusations of racism repeatedly used to deflect scrutiny, intimidate investigators and stall accountability.  Rumors and reports of fraud in Minneapolis, primarily within the city’s exploding Somali community, have been circulating for at least a decade, but criticism of the fraud has been largely dismissed by elected Democrats as “racist” or being underpinned by animosity toward foreigners. News stories focused on Somali fraudsters in recent years were shot down as “racist.” “The whole story kind of died under these accusations that people were being racist,” Bill Glahn, policy fellow with Center of the American Experiment, told Fox News Digital. “Oh, maybe somebody stole a little bit here, a little bit there, but there’s nothing systemic going on.” Former assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Teirab, who helped take on federal prosecutions in the Feeding Our Future case, described to Fox News Digital how individuals implicated in fraud leaned on racial accusations as a shield. According to Teirab, suspects explicitly invoked race during a secretly recorded meeting with Attorney General Keith Ellison, asserting that investigators were targeting them “only because of race.” OMAR ACCUSED BY GOP OPPONENT OF OPENING UP THE DOOR TO MASSIVE MINNEAPOLIS FRAUD: ‘DEEP, DEEP TIES’ Teirab called this tactic both deliberate and cynical. In one trial, a juror was even approached with a $120,000 cash bribe, allegedly accompanied by messaging intended to frame the investigation as racially motivated. The goal wasn’t just to escape prosecution, it was to taint the system itself by threatening anyone pursuing the truth with the specter of racial bias. “It provided cover,” Teirab told Fox News Digital. “Fraudsters knew the issue of race and racism was something they could use as a cudgel… It’s disrespectful to use those terms when they’re not appropriate, especially in a case where fraud clearly happened.” Minnesota Republican State Sen. Mark Koran echoed Teirab’s concerns, emphasizing that investigators followed the evidence, not demographics. Fraud prosecutions disproportionately affected one community simply because that’s where significant fraud was uncovered, not because investigators targeted anyone based on race. “The average Minnesotan, average legislator, doesn’t care who’s committing the fraud,” Koran said. “All right, the evidence will lead you either to or from the perpetrator. And so, if the evidence leads to the perpetrator, we need to prosecute all of them.” Koran noted that public officials and agencies pursuing fraud were routinely branded racist for doing so. Some perpetrators were so “emboldened,” he said, that they sued the state to force the continuation of payments, even after red flags signaled massive irregularities. The scale, Koran argued, dwarfs what many Minnesotans understand. While federal authorities may ultimately prosecute around $2 billion in fraud, he suggested that the true annual losses across state programs could reach much higher when factoring in both blatant fraud and poor service delivery. Meanwhile, many families participated in related schemes by receiving kickbacks from fraudulent autism service providers, further complicating enforcement. Investigators simply lack the resources to chase every case, creating an environment where fraud becomes a low-risk, high-reward enterprise. MINNESOTA’S FRAUD SCANDAL WAS ‘SHOCKINGLY EASY’ TO PULL OFF, IS LIKELY WORSE THAN REPORTED: EX PROSECUTOR “For the average hardworking legal U.S. citizen doing everything right,” Koran said, “it’s a disgusting disservice… knowing there’s such blatant disregard for the value of that dollar.” Koran suggested that the racism claims so emboldened supporters of the status quo that it contributed to Feeding Our Future suing the state of Minnesota, accusing state officials of racism for investigating the alleged fraud. Glahn told Fox News Digital that state agencies were “cowering in fear” over being called racist and local politicians were acutely aware that the “racist label” is a “career kiss of death.” A legislative auditor’s report found Minnesota Department of Education officials felt they had to handle the nonprofit “carefully” because of these racism allegations and the risk of negative media coverage, and that this influenced which regulatory actions MDE did or did not take, CBS News reported. Political commentator and Townhall columnist Dustin Grage highlighted another factor enabling the fraud: media hesitation. Conservative reporters, he said, described to him hitting internal roadblocks when pitching stories about the Feeding Our Future scandal because editors feared being accused of racism. “In newsrooms, they’re told, ‘We can’t run that because we’re going to be accused of being racist,’” Grage explained. That fear, combined with political pressure, allowed the scandal to grow largely unchecked until federal indictments forced it into the spotlight. MINNESOTA LAWMAKERS VOW NEW CRACKDOWN AFTER $1B FRAUD MELTDOWN THEY SAY WALZ LET SPIRAL Grage pointed to an early pivotal moment: Minnesota’s Department of Education detected signs of fraud and briefly halted payments. Immediately, Minneapolis political figures Omar Fateh and Jamal Osman pushed back, claiming the stop was racially motivated. They even took the state to court, though their case was eventually thrown out. Yet the damage was done. Payments resumed, and crucially, Gov. Tim Walz declined to use his subpoena power to obtain Feeding Our Future’s bank records, despite having the authority to do so. That inaction, Grage noted, further delayed the exposure of the fraud. Glahn told Fox News Digital that in addition to fear of the “racist” label, politicians in Minnesota understand that it is difficult to win elections without the support of the Somali community. “The Somali community is very concentrated in Minnesota and very concentrated in Ilhan Omar’s congressional district, and a few other pockets where the Somali vote swings elections, and at the state level, they’re big enough that we’ve had some super close elections at the state level, and the Somali vote is very monolithic, votes Democrat,” Glahn explained. “They provided the difference in statewide elections, and then in local elections, where it’s all Democrats, they’re providing the difference in the primary. So if you’re running in a primary against other Democrats, if you don’t have the Somali vote on

FBI ousts reinstated whistleblower over unauthorized media talks, ‘poor judgment’

FBI ousts reinstated whistleblower over unauthorized media talks, ‘poor judgment’

A former FBI agent and COVID-era whistleblower who was recently reinstated under President Donald Trump was fired Friday, according to a report. The FBI dismissed Steve Friend for “unprofessional conduct and poor judgment,” according to a copy of a termination letter posted on X by New York Post columnist Miranda Devine.  An FBI source confirmed the firing but would not elaborate, saying it was a personnel matter. The FBI stated in the letter that Friend “participated in unauthorized interactions with the media, publicly disseminated media sources, and commented publicly on FBI matters and ongoing FBI investigations.” HOUSE REPUBLICANS ACCUSE BIDEN’S FBI OF RETALIATING AGAINST WHISTLEBLOWER WHO EXPOSED MISCONDUCT Friend was first suspended by the FBI in August 2022 and resigned in February 2023. He was reinstated in September. In the letter, the FBI stated that, in November, Friend “disseminated media sources and photographs identifying an alleged subject and discussed the alleged subject on your podcast, despite the lack of credible, verifiable evidence necessary to publicly identify the subject.” When reached for comment by Fox News Digital, Friend said his ouster was retaliation by FBI Director Kash Patel. EX-FBI AGENTS SAY BUREAU USED INTERNAL PROBES TO PUNISH WHISTLEBLOWERS Friend’s dismissal from the bureau came after his attorneys at Empower Oversight Whistleblowers & Research dropped him as a client Dec. 5.  The nonprofit organization said in a letter to Friend that he had ignored its advice by commenting publicly on FBI matters, “risking further adverse administrative action” by the bureau. “In light of your apparent unwillingness to follow the free professional advice we have given you, we are even more convinced that our previously expressed inability to represent you regarding any legal matters other than your reinstatement was warranted,” the nonprofit wrote.  “We are no longer willing or able to expend further time and resources representing your interests or providing counsel moving forward.”