Texas Weekly Online

Texas-trans-white
Menu
Menu

Author: shailender

Dem rep opens House hearing by telling Noem to resign in fiery statement

Dem rep opens House hearing by telling Noem to resign in fiery statement

Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., called on Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to resign Thursday during opening remarks at a House Homeland Security Committee hearing on “Worldwide Threats to the Homeland.” “You have systematically dismantled the Department of Homeland Security, put your own interests above the department, and violated the law. You are making America less safe,” said Thompson. “So rather than sitting here and wasting your time and ours with more corruption, lies and lawlessness, I call on you to resign. Do a real service to the country and just resign. That is, if President Trump doesn’t fire you first.” As Noem was giving her opening statement, several protesters against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) interrupted, yelling, “Get ICE off our streets,” and, “Stop terrorizing our community.” The protesters were escorted out by Capitol police and detained outside the hearing room. NOEM SAYS ZOHRAN MAMDANI COULD BE ‘VIOLATING THE CONSTITUTION’ WITH ADVICE ON EVADING ICE AGENTS Noem, who was joined at the hearing by National Counterterrorism Center director Joe Kent and Michael Glasheen, the operations director of the National Security Branch of the FBI, said one of her grandchildren who was in the audience was crying a little during Thompson’s remarks. “I don’t think she agreed with him,” Noem said jokingly. She touted the work DHS has done to secure the southern border and protect the U.S. “DHS is eradicating transnational organized crime and the stopping of deadly drugs from continuing to be funneled into our communities,” she told lawmakers. “We’re ending illegal immigration, returning sanity back to our immigration system, and we’re defending against cyberattacks against our critical infrastructure.” NOEM CALLS FOR ‘FULL TRAVEL BAN’ ON COUNTRIES ‘FLOODING’ US WITH IMMIGRANTS AFTER DC ATTACK The former South Dakota governor, speaking about the global threats facing the country — including those posed by domestic extremists and radical Islamic terrorism — said the U.S. should brace for heightened risks as it prepares to host major events in 2026 such as the World Cup and the nation’s 250th birthday. “These large-scale events will be potential targets for a range of bad actors, and they come with an increased level of risk. DHS is using every tool and authority we have to ensure the safety of U.S. citizens, and our visitors can enjoy next year’s events,” Noem added. Rumors had swirled in recent days that President Donald Trump was considering replacing her as head of DHS. Trump pushed back on those rumors on Wednesday, telling reporters that Noem has been “fantastic.” Noem also addressed the rumors, speaking to Fox News prior to Thursday’s hearing. “Oh, that’s absolutely not true,” she said. “President Trump and I are doing wonderfully. I’m so proud to work for him, and I’m going to continue to serve at his pleasure.” Fox News’ Bill Melugin contributed to this report.

Republican rift puts spotlight on high-stakes showdown over Trump-driven red state redistricting

Republican rift puts spotlight on high-stakes showdown over Trump-driven red state redistricting

President Donald Trump and allied groups are turning up the heat on Indiana Republican state senators who are resisting the president’s push for the red state to pass congressional redistricting. The Indiana Senate reconvenes Thursday afternoon to vote on a new map championed by Trump that would create two more right-leaning congressional districts in the solidly red Midwestern state, where the GOP currently controls seven of Indiana’s nine U.S. House seats. The districts of Democratic Reps. Frank Mrvan and Andre Carson would be eliminated. The showdown in Indiana comes a week after the Supreme Court cleared the way for Republican-dominated Texas to use its newly redrawn map, which creates five more right-leaning House seats. Indiana is the latest battleground in Trump’s aggressive national campaign to reshape congressional districts ahead of the 2026 midterms, when Republicans, as the party in power, will likely face traditional political headwinds as they defend their razor-thin House majority. BIG WIN FOR TRUMP AS SUPREME COURT GREENLIGHTS TEXAS’ NEW CONGRESSIONAL MAP And for Trump, who recently emphasized “we must keep the majority at all costs,” the vote is viewed as a key test of his immense clout over the GOP. The redistricting bill passed the Indiana House 57-41, with a dozen GOP lawmakers voting against the measure. But the stakes are much higher this week in the state Senate, where the GOP also holds a super majority. That’s because Republican leaders in the chamber have resisted Trump’s efforts to draw new congressional maps. Indiana Senate Republican leader Rodric Bray had repeatedly said there wasn’t enough support in the chamber to move forward with redistricting. The state Senate split 19-19 last month in a proxy vote. RED STATE MOVES FORWARD ON TRUMP CHAMPIONED CONGRESSIONAL MAPS Trump repeatedly blasted Bray, warning in a recent social media post, “A RINO State Senator, Rodric Bray, who doesn’t care about keeping the Majority in the House in D.C., is the primary problem. Soon, he will have a Primary Problem, as will any other politician who supports him in this stupidity.” Changing course, Bray announced last week that the state Senate would reconvene to vote on redistricting, adding “the issue of redrawing Indiana’s congressional maps mid-cycle has received a lot of attention and is causing strife here in our state.” Trump has kept up the pressure on Bray and others on the fence, highlighting in a social media post this past weekend the nine state Senate Republicans who have yet to announce their position on the new map, saying they “need encouragement to make the right decision.” And on the eve of the vote in the state Senate, the president, in a lengthy post, once again blasted Bray as “either a bad guy, or a very stupid one!” He also vowed to “do everything within my power” to oust Bray and others who vote against the redistricting bill in GOP primaries next year. TRUMP TARGETS RED STATE REPUBLICAN LAWMAKERS IN PUSH FOR CONGRESSIONAL REDISTRICTING The latest attacks are part of a months-long effort by Trump to twist elbows in his attempt to make Indiana the latest Republican-controlled state to change their congressional maps. The president has called state lawmakers, and Vice President JD Vance visited the state twice earlier this autumn to discuss redistricting. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a top Trump ally, has also called Indiana lawmakers as part of the full-court press. Meanwhile, the Trump-aligned conservative outside political organization the Club for Growth Action and other groups have dished out big bucks to run ads in Indiana supporting redistricting, and along with Turning Point Action, will target Republican state lawmakers opposed to the new map. Club for Growth President David McIntosh last week sent out a “FINAL WARNING” to Bray, warning that “failure to get this done means you and any other opposition will be defeated and removed from office in your next election.” And Turning Point Action, the political wing of the influential political group founded by the late Charlie Kirk, last week held a rally at the state Capitol. “This is a super high priority, and we’re going to be working with the local, grassroots to make sure their voices heard, and their priorities are not steamrolled by an out-of-touch elected class,” Turning Point Spokesman Andrew Kolvet told Fox News Digital. HOUSE GOP CAMPAIGN CHAIR WANTS TRUMP ‘OUT THERE ON THE TRAIL’ IN MIDTERM BATTLE FOR MAJORITY Trump, by championing rare but not unheard of mid-decade redistricting, is aiming to prevent what happened during his first term in the White House when Democrats reclaimed the House majority in the 2018 midterm elections. Texas, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio have drawn new maps as part of the president’s push. State lawmakers in GOP-dominated Florida recently took the first steps towards passing a redistricting measure, and right-leaning Kansas is also mulling redrawing its map. Two federal judges in Texas last month delivered a blow to Trump and Republicans, by ruling that the state couldn’t use the newly drawn map in next year’s elections. But the Supreme Court last week gave a big thumbs up to the Lone Star State’s new congressional map. Democrats are fighting back. California voters a month ago overwhelmingly passed Proposition 50, a ballot initiative that will temporarily sidetrack the left-leaning state’s nonpartisan redistricting commission and return the power to draw the congressional maps to the Democrat-dominated legislature. That is expected to result in five more Democratic-leaning congressional districts in California, which would counter the passage earlier this year in Texas of a new map that aims to create up to five right-leaning House seats.  California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is considered a likely 2028 Democratic presidential contender, steered his state’s push for redistricting. Illinois and Maryland, two blue states, and Virginia, where Democrats control the legislature, are also taking steps or seriously considering redistricting. Meanwhile, opponents of redistricting in Missouri submitted thousands of petition signatures calling for a statewide referendum vote on the new maps. And in another blow to Republicans, a Utah district judge last month rejected

Chaos erupts at Noem hearing as anti-ICE protesters interrupt testimony: ‘The power of Christ compels you!’

Chaos erupts at Noem hearing as anti-ICE protesters interrupt testimony: ‘The power of Christ compels you!’

No sooner had DHS Secretary Kristi Noem started briefing lawmakers on the greatest threats facing the U.S. on Thursday, two protesters launched into a disturbance that briefly held up the committee’s discussions. “End deportations!” yelled the protester, who was dressed like a priest and carrying a crucifix. “The power of Christ compels you!” The protester was briefly reminded that interruption of congressional business is a criminal offense, but the protester continued. KRISTI NOEM FACES FIRST MAJOR HOMELAND SECURITY GRILLING AS LAWMAKERS PRESS HER ON TERROR THREATS Security soon escorted the disrupter from the room, but before they had left the room, a second protester began shouting. “Get ICE off our streets! Stop terrorizing your community!” the second disrupter said, standing and waving a sign. Security also escorted him out of the room. Noem brushed off the moment before continuing with her opening statement. “Under President Trump’s leadership, DHS is securing our borders. We’re restoring the rule of law and we’re protecting the homeland. DHS is eradicating transnational organized crime and the stopping of deadly drugs from continuing to be funneled into our communities. We’re ending illegal immigration [and] returning sanity back to our immigration system,” Noem said. WALZ URGES NOEM TO ‘REASSESS’ IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT STRATEGY IN MINNESOTA AFTER ALLEGED CITIZEN ARRESTS The House of Representatives’ hearing on Thursday, titled, “Worldwide Threats to the Homeland,” provided lawmakers the opportunity to ask Noem and other administration officials about the country’s greatest security threats. Noem, who has spearheaded the country’s efforts to secure the border, has said that one untracked illegal immigrants who entered the country under the Biden administration pose a major threat. Other officials reinforced that belief on Thursday.  “The No. 1 threat that we have right now, in my view, is the fact that we don’t know who came into our country in the last four years of Biden’s open borders,” National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent told the committee. NOEM SAYS ZOHRAN MAMDANI COULD BE ‘VIOLATING THE CONSTITUTION’ WITH ADVICE ON EVADING ICE AGENTS Under the Trump administration, the U.S. has deported over two million illegal immigrants, according to DHS tracking.

Minnesota’s fraud scandal was ‘shockingly easy’ to pull off, is likely worse than reported: ex prosecutor

Minnesota’s fraud scandal was ‘shockingly easy’ to pull off, is likely worse than reported: ex prosecutor

Minneapolis has been at the center of national headlines in recent weeks over a massive fraud scandal that experts say will cost taxpayers over a billion dollars. Fox News Digital spoke to a former prosecutor who worked on one of the central cases in the controversy. Former federal prosecutor Joe Teirab, who served nearly four years in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minneapolis and briefly worked on the Feeding Our Future case, says the public still doesn’t grasp the scale, speed and simplicity of the fraud that unfolded, or how deeply government failures contributed to it. “I think you generally have a sense that your government is gonna be fighting for you and spending your money just generally OK, and that was absolutely not the case,” Teirab told Fox News Digital. “The amount of fraud was rampant, it was staggering, and happened really, really quickly. Just over the course of a couple years, the amount of fraud that happened in Minnesota is maybe in excess or probably in excess of a billion dollars, and one of the main prosecutors in a lot of the fraud, the former acting U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson, said the number was likely over $2 billion. So that is what we’re dealing with. It’s a travesty that our hard-earned taxpayer dollars are being wasted away.” MN FRAUDSTERS BLEW TAXPAYER CASH ON LUXURIES OUT OF REACH FOR MOST AMERICANS, FEDS SAY The scheme that has garnered most of the national attention involved the nonprofit Feeding Our Future, which misappropriated $250 million in COVID-19 funds. But the fraud within various government agencies in Minnesota goes far deeper, Teirab explained. He asserted that the system was set up in a way that made it possible, and relatively simple, for various nonprofits to scam the government out of over $2 billion when it’s all said and done. “When I was on the Feeding Our Future case, the big thing that jumped out to me was, honestly, how easy this fraud was to do,” Teirab told Fox News Digital. “I mean, these fraudsters were just saying that they were spending all this money on feeding kids, and they were just making up these PDFs, putting false names into Excel sheets. I could do that in five minutes on a computer if I had absolutely no conscience.” Ultimately, Teirab explained, the social services system in Minnesota was set up in a way where it was designed to fail. “So the bottom line of this scandal was this: that there were supposed to be these different organizations, like Feeding Our Future, they were supposed to be a sponsor of different food sites that would give out food to kids who purportedly need it,” Teirab said. “And so this Feeding Our Future was supposed to be the watchdog of these food sites. But they were not doing that at all. They were basically getting kickbacks from these sites that were supposed to be giving up food. That was totally false. And they were ginning up the numbers and saying that they fed 3,000 kids a day when they actually maybe fed zero or maybe three kids.” ‘HE HAD YEARS TO STOP THIS’: GOP LAWMAKERS BLAST WALZ OVER MASSIVE MINNESOTA FRAUD SCHEME The fraudsters, largely but not exclusively consisting of the city’s Somali population, coordinated casually as they discovered how effortless government reimbursement could be, Teirab explained. “These people were chatting with each other, and figured out, ‘Hey, I can get this free money,’” Teirab said, while explaining that the fraudsters and over 70 people facing indictment were the main perpetrators but that government officials also deserve blame. “Tim Walz was responsible for putting into place the commissioners of the different departments who are allowing all this money to go out, and then you had Keith Ellison, who not only should have done something about stopping the fraud once he had a sense that things were happening, he should have started to investigate it. He now tries to say that he was working hand in hand with the federal government… absolutely false, lying about what he did, what he knew and when he knew it,” Teirab said. Walz’s office, in a statement to Fox News Digital this week, said the governor “views addressing fraud as a top priority” and touted his work over the last three years making “systematic changes to state government” to stop it, including hiring investigators, auditors and law enforcement.  HOW A SINGLE DISCRIMINATION CLAIM HELPED MINNESOTA’S LARGEST FOOD-AID FRAUD SLIP PAST STATE WATCHDOGS “The Governor has brought in an outside firm to audit payments to high-risk programs at the Department of Human Services (DHS) and created a specialized fraud fighting law enforcement unit at the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension,” Walz’s office said. “He has installed new leadership at DHS with a single-minded focus on stopping fraudulent payments. Many of the changes have not been flashy or headline-grabbing, but rather just the hard work of building stronger safeguards throughout state government.” Teirab, who ran for Congress in 2024, told Fox News Digital he takes issue with elected officials who have presided over the fraud situation, which has been developing and reported on since at least 2020, telling the public they are on top of it.  “On the Democrat side, they’re trying to deflect and say it’s not a big deal, or we were actually working with you the whole time, and we’re taking this very, very seriously,” Teirab said. “And it’s absolute hogwash.” “Tim Walz didn’t do enough, Keith Ellison didn’t do enough, and Ilhan Omar didn’t do enough either, because she for sure knew what was going on. She was actually in one of the government’s exhibits, I believe, in one of the trials,” Teirab continued. “She had one of her political victory parties at one of the main restaurants at the heart of the Feeding Our Future scandal in 2018. It’s just ridiculous, and hopefully we should all come together and say this kind of fraud shouldn’t happen.”