A congressman from Texas crushed a Democratic witness in congressional testimony about the effect of large-scale Somali immigration on Minnesota.

Republican Rep. Brandon Gill of Texas questioned former Justice Dept. prosecutor Brendan Ballou during Wednesday’s House Oversight Committee hearing on fraud in Minnesota. Ballou was a witness for Democrats on the committee.

‘It doesn’t sound like something that makes our country stronger to me, and I think most Americans would agree with me on that.’

“Does large-scale Somali immigration make Minnesota stronger or weaker?” asked Gill.

“Certainly stronger,” Ballou responded.

“Certainly stronger,” Gill repeated. “Do you know what percentage of Somali-headed households in Minnesota are on food stamps?”

“No,” Ballou replied.

“Fifty-four percent. Do you know what that number is for native Minnesota-headed households?” Gill asked.

Ballou disputed the term “native households,” which led to Gill interrupting to say that only 7% of non-Somali Minnesotan households were on food stamps.

“What percentage of Somali-headed households in Minnesota are on Medicaid?” Gill asked.

“I don’t know,” Ballou said.

Gill told him the figure was 73% and compared it to the number of non-Somalis on Medicaid.

“The number is 18%. That’s quite an astounding difference, I think we would agree,” Gill said.

Gill went on to say that 81% of Somali-headed households were on welfare in general, a figure Ballou did not know.

“Let me just ask you, after 10 years of being in the United States, what percentage of Somali-immigrant households continue to be on welfare?” Gill asked.

“I don’t know,” Ballou said.

“The number is 78%,” he replied.

Gill said that about half of working-age Somalis who have been in the U.S. for 10 years or more speak English “very well.”

“That seems pretty low, doesn’t it?” Gill asked rhetorically. “It doesn’t sound like something that makes our country stronger to me, and I think most Americans would agree with me on that.”

Video of the exchange was posted to social media by the Oversight Committee.

RELATED: Minnesota news outlet gets wrecked for story on Somali migrants’ economic impact

Ballou asserted in his testimony when questioned by Democrats that the incidents of Somali fraud were low compared to their population in Minnesota. While 82 Somalis have been indicted thus far, Ballou said that this represents about 0.07% of the 108,000 estimated Somalis in Minnesota.

“When you compare that to one-third of all Americans [who] have a criminal record, and I think it’s 40% approximately of white men under the age of 23 have been arrested, I don’t think the statistics really compare,” Ballou said.

Gill also posted the video of the interaction to his social media timeline.

“This Democrat witness claims large-scale Somali immigration makes Minnesota stronger. The numbers tell a different story,” he wrote.

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The Department of Health and Human Services cut off five Democrat-run states’ access to over $10 billion in federal child care and family assistance funds on Tuesday, citing “serious concerns about widespread fraud and misuse of taxpayer dollars in state-administered programs.”

The New York Times joined Democrats in criticizing the Trump administration’s anti-fraud campaign — but bungled its execution.

The Times’ Minho Kim opened his Tuesday piece with the following sentence:

The Trump administration plans to freeze $10 billion in funding for child care subsidies, social services and cash support for low-income families in five states controlled by Democrats, claiming widespread fraud throughout those states, without citing evidence, after a major welfare fraud scheme in one of them.

The sentence was later rearranged without an editor’s note but without any significant alterations.

‘The first response of Democrats to instances like the Minnesota fraud findings should not be to criticize the other side.’

It was not lost on critics that immediately after asserting that the administration claimed widespread fraud “without citing evidence,” Kim himself proceeded to allude to the damning evidence of widespread fraud in one of the states facing the funding pause — fraud that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz acknowledged on Monday when giving up on his ambition of re-election.

Drew Holden, the managing editor at American Compass, suggested that the New York Times perhaps “got so used to saying that the Trump admin did something ‘without citing evidence’ that they didn’t realize they mention the ‘evidence’ in the same sentence.”

RELATED: Trump administration sends Democrats into hysterics by freezing funding to 5 blue states over fraud concerns

Photo by Patrick Smith/Getty Images

Later in the Times article, Kim acknowledged that the funding freeze builds on the HHS’ pause of $185 million in annual childcare funds in the wake of credible allegations of massive fraud in taxpayer-subsidized day care facilities in the Gopher State.

Minnesota has been home to historic fraud committed by members of the Somali community in relation to coronavirus relief funding and allegedly in relation to taxpayer-subsidized day care facilities. The COVID scams in Minnesota have resulted in dozens of criminal convictions and scores of indictments in recent years. Government officials are working to ensure similar graft is not impacting other jurisdictions.

Following the publication of Kim’s piece, American Enterprise Institute fellow Ruy Teixeira stressed that “the first response of Democrats to instances like the Minnesota fraud findings should not be to criticize the other side for attacking them and wave the bloody shirt of racism against President Trump but rather to stress the seriousness of the problem and how it will not be tolerated.”

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There has been a lot of panic, among the conservative commentariat especially, over the growing desire among younger white Americans to receive representation as a collective political bloc. At some level, that reaction is understandable. Race is not the healthiest fixation when it comes to identity.

But the way conservatives have responded to this trend is deeply misguided.

The only way to lower the salience of race is to stop importing ethnocentric cultures and to eliminate political carve-outs for minority communities already here.

For decades, whites have watched every other group in America successfully demand political action as a bloc from both the left and the right. Democrats build their entire coalition around racial grievance, but even conservatives regularly address the needs of minority communities as collective groups. Despite their hostility to “identity politics,” Republicans eagerly cater to it — just not for their core constituency, white Americans.

If conservatives genuinely worry about the rise of white identitarianism, they should stop lecturing young white Americans and start addressing the behavior of the communities they currently pander to.

First, it helps to define terms. “Race” and “ethnicity” are often treated as interchangeable, but they are not. Race is a broad macro category, while ethnicity operates at a more granular level. Swedes, Italians, Irish, and French are all considered white. Ethiopians, Nigerians, African Pygmies, and Somalis are all considered black.

These categories matter, but ethnos is often a more organic and useful way to understand group behavior.

Ironically ethnocentrism varies widely across populations and tends to be particularly low among white Europeans and their descendants. A society composed primarily of people of European extraction, even with some immigration, tends to be relatively tolerant and open. New arrivals who may initially carry ethnocentric instincts are less able to sustain them when they lack a large co-ethnic base.

Assimilation follows naturally under those conditions.

Identity is also not binary. It consists of nested loyalties that rise or fall in importance depending on scale. In small societies, tribe or ethnos dominates. As civilizations expand and absorb new members, identity shifts toward broader categories — often religion or nationality.

White Americans once lived in sharply defined ethnic enclaves. Irish, Italian, Dutch, and German neighborhoods were common. In some cases, the U.S. government actively broke up German-language communities, forcing children into English-speaking schools. Over time, those European ethnoses dissolved into a shared American identity.

That process breaks down when the government imports large, concentrated populations that share a common ethnicity and have not gone through the same scaling process. These groups face no incentive to abandon ethnocentrism because they can successfully deploy it. Co-ethnics ensure access to jobs, education, marriage, and community without assimilation.

In a system where one group must compete on pure individual merit while others are allowed to operate on collective ethnocentrism, tribalism wins. Once it proves effective, the salience of race explodes. When young whites see every other group using the winning strategy, the question becomes unavoidable: Why are we the only group forbidden from doing so?

The problem is not just that tribalism works. The system has been actively rigged against white males.

RELATED: How anti-fascism became the West’s civil religion

Blaze Media Illustration

Jacob Savage’s recent article “The Lost Generation” detailed the extent to which universities, media institutions, and corporations have systematically excluded white men. The piece gained attention partly because it came from the left, but conservatives like Jeremy Carl and Heather Mac Donald have been warning about the same dynamics for years.

Whites — especially young white men — are barred from advocating as a group. At the same time, they are punished as a group. Telling them identity politics is immoral while allowing explicit anti-white discrimination guarantees a predictable response.

The conservative establishment’s answer has been a vague denunciation of ethnocentrism that somehow applies only to whites. Conservatives pay lip service to opposing identity politics while courting explicitly racial organizations. They speak seriously to black, Indian, Hispanic, and Jewish advocacy groups and treat their leaders as legitimate representatives.

Donald Trump recently hosted the American Hindu-Jewish Congress at Mar-a-Lago to discuss combating bigotry. You will not see a dinner honoring representatives of a “White American Congress” to discuss anti-white discrimination — despite overwhelming evidence that such bias is widespread.

That double standard is too obvious for young whites to ignore forever.

If conservatives were serious about halting the rise of collective white identity politics, they would stop scolding young whites for noticing reality. They would confront systemic bias in academia and corporate hiring. To its credit, the Trump administration has signaled an intent to act — but far more is required.

RELATED: Culture’s great subversion machine has broken down at last

Blaze Media Illustration

A serious response would include an immigration moratorium and aggressive prosecution of ethnic cartels. And yes, every tech department staffed entirely by one ethnic group is not evidence that “there were no qualified white applicants.” Conservatives should lecture blacks, Indians, Hispanics, and Jews about ethnocentrism with the same intensity they reserve for whites.

If for no other reason, whites actually vote Republican. Most of the other groups do not.

If conservatives truly fear the rise of collective white politics, they should reduce the number of ethnocentric populations young whites are forced to compete against on pure merit. The only way to lower the salience of race is to stop importing ethnocentric cultures and to eliminate political carve-outs for minority communities already here.

In short, show young whites they can succeed without tribalism by actually punishing the tribalism practiced by everyone else. Summon the courage to confront the behavior you claim to fear — in the groups already practicing it.

​Conservative movement, Race, Ethnicity, Assimilation, American conservatives, Opinion & analysis, Identity politics, White people, Ethnocentrism, Tribalism, Jacob savage, The lost generation, Jeremy carl, Heather mac donald, American hindu-jewish congress, Donald trump, Jews, Germans, Irish, Dutch, Italians, Indians, Chinese 

As the journalist who exposed the rampant Somalian fraud in Minnesota, Nick Shirley, pointed out, he has “ended” Governor Tim Walz’s career after the governor announced he would not be seeking re-election following the media attention.

And BlazeTV host Stu Burguiere couldn’t be happier.

“I think it’s a really positive thing for the nation, for our world. He should go somewhere where we don’t have to see him anymore. Now, his family seems to love him, … but the bottom line here is that he sucks, and I’m glad he’s out of my life,” Stu says, happily.

“Minnesota has to come first — always. Today, I’m proud of the work we’ve done to make Minnesota the best place to live and raise kids,” Walz wrote in a post on X, to which Stu interjects to laugh, “Especially if you need day care.”

“I’ve decided to step out of the race and let others worry about the election while I focus on the work,” Walz added.

And Stu is not surprised that the left’s attempt at pushing what they thought was a more masculine man on the American people failed.

“Someone pointed this out, and I think it’s a great observation, that Tim Walz is the idea that, like, a leftist DEI person would have of what a manly man from the Midwest was, right? Like this person that in their head they’re like, ‘Wow, that guy, he coaches football,’ right?” Stu comments.

Stu also points out that the Harris-Walz campaign also ran an ad that made this belief of theirs crystal clear.

The ad focused on the saying “man enough,” where a group of men talked about what made them “man enough” — like cooking their steak “rare” — before pivoting to what political beliefs they’re “man enough” to hold.

“Woman wants to be president? Well, I hope she has the guts to look me right in the eye and accept my full-throated endorsement,” one man featured in the campaign ad said, adding, “because I’m man enough to support women.”

“If your vision of what men are is that ad, you think that’s going to work, well, yeah, you picked Tim Walz,” Stu laughs. “Unbelievable.”

Want more from Stu?

To enjoy more of Stu’s lethal wit, wisdom, and mockery, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

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Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. momentarily interrupted Wednesday’s White House briefing, revealing his hilarious ringtone.

Kennedy and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins were flanked by other administration officials to announce new and improved dietary guidance for Americans. Reporters and attendees erupted in laughter when Kennedy’s phone rang during the briefing, revealing a duck quack sound effect.

‘Kennedy grinned and quickly silenced his phone.’

While Kennedy’s phone let out some quacks, Rollins quipped that “duck is also high in protein.”

“Duck is a good thing to eat, everybody,” Rollins said.

RELATED: Trump administration finds a creative new way to mock Democrats amid shutdown

Kennedy grinned and quickly silenced his phone, continuing the press conference and addressing the latest changes in health standards from the department.

Kennedy reaffirmed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s amended childhood vaccine schedule, which minimized the number of required immunizations for kids.

Kennedy and his MAHA team also unveiled a new food pyramid that focuses on whole foods, protein, healthy fats, whole grains, and fresh produce. Kennedy’s updated dietary guidance also urges Americans to stay away from “ultra-processed” and refined foods.

“The new guidelines recognize that whole, nutrient-dense food is the most effective path to better health and lower health care costs,” Kennedy said. “Protein and healthy fats are essential and were wrongly discouraged in prior dietary guidelines. We are ending the war on saturated fats.”

RELATED: Vance makes Jeffries a hilarious promise if Democrats end the shutdown

Will Oliver/EPA/Bloomberg via Getty Images

“If a foreign adversary sought to destroy the health of our children, to cripple our economy, to weaken our national security, there would be no better strategy than to addict us to ultra-processed foods,” Kennedy said.

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President Donald Trump said in a statement on social media that he is moving to ban institutional investors from buying single-family homes and that he wants Congress to “codify” the ban into law.

The president has made easing the housing crisis a goal of his second term, and many have pointed to institutional investors as a large source of the problem.

‘People live in homes, not corporations.’

In a post on Truth Social Wednesday, Trump mentioned banning institutional housing purchases and hinted at other solutions to ease the housing crisis.

“For a very long time, buying and owning a home was considered the pinnacle of the American Dream. It was the reward for working hard, and doing the right thing, but now, because of the Record High Inflation caused by Joe Biden and the Democrats in Congress, that American Dream is increasingly out of reach for far too many people, especially younger Americans,” he wrote.

“It is for that reason, and much more, that I am immediately taking steps to ban large institutional investors from buying more single-family homes, and I will be calling on Congress to codify it,” the president added. “People live in homes, not corporations.”

Trump did not provide details about these “steps” in the post.

He went on to say that he would discuss the policy at a speech in Davos, Switzerland, during the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum.

Housing prices skyrocketed during the pandemic, when interest rates were lowered to encourage economic activity and many Americans moved to larger homes to take advantage of work-from-home policies. While interest rates have returned to historic averages, housing prices continued to climb, albeit at a slower pace.

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Many have blamed companies like BlackRock for purchasing single-family homes as part of their investment portfolios, but some say institutional investors make up a small portion of the market.

Others say that encouraging more housing construction would lower housing costs by easing regulations and increasing supply to meet the demand.

BlackRock’s stock slid by 2.3% in the wake of the announcement.

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In the ongoing effort to make America healthy again, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other members of the Trump administration gathered for a special press conference on Wednesday to announce a major overhaul of dietary guidelines

The guidelines, promoted under the simple command to “eat real food,” introduce a “new pyramid” that prioritizes protein, dairy, healthy fats, and fruits and vegetables over whole grains, which is essentially an upside-down version of the conventional food pyramid most people are familiar with.

‘These guidelines replace corporate-driven assumptions with common-sense goals and gold-standard scientific integrity.’

“These guidelines replace corporate-driven assumptions with common-sense goals and gold-standard scientific integrity,” Kennedy said at the press conference.

He added that they will “revolutionize our nation’s food culture and make America healthy again.”

RELATED: Trump administration overhauls childhood vax schedule. Here’s the downsized version

Screenshot of government website

“For decades, we’ve been fed a corrupt food pyramid that has had a myopic focus on demonizing natural healthy saturated fats, telling you not to eat eggs and steak, and ignoring a giant blind spot: refined carbohydrates, added sugars, ultra-processed food,” Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary said.

Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said, “A healthy meal is within reach for all American families. These new dietary guidelines are a framework which is meant to be customized to meet the needs, the preferences, and the financial status of all American families.”

The inverted pyramid is the result of many studies conducted by the government to challenge the current paradigm and address our nation’s health problems. The guidelines were published in multiple documents, including a series of appendices that is over 400 pages long.

Some users on social media joked that HHS was copying a “South Park” bit in which scientists, at the behest of character Eric Cartman, “flip the pyramid” to reveal the “true” nutritional standards.

The old food pyramid originated in Sweden in the 1970s and was later adapted by the United States Department of Agriculture in 1992.

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The far-left mayor of Minneapolis forcefully demanded that federal immigration agents leave his city after a fatal shooting of a woman who obstructed an operation and drove her vehicle into an agent.

Mayor Jacob Frey of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party immediately called for Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to leave in the wake of the shooting and reiterated his demand in a media briefing.

‘They are already trying to spin this as an action of self-defense. Having seen the video myself, I want to tell everybody directly: That is bulls**t!’

“I have a message for ICE. To ICE, get the f**k out of Minneapolis!” said Frey.

“We do not want you here. Your stated reason for being in this city is to create some kind of safety, and you are doing exactly the opposite. People are being hurt. Families are being ripped apart. Long-term Minneapolis residents that have contributed so greatly to our city, to our culture, to our economy are being terrorized, and now somebody is dead,” he added.

“That’s on you. And it’s also on you to leave,” Frey said. “It’s on you to make sure that further damage, further loss of life and injury is not done.”

He identified the deceased protester as a 37-year-old woman, and the DHS said she was a U.S. citizen. Frey put the blame for the shooting on ICE, but Homeland Security Assistant Sec. Tricia McLaughlin contradicted that version of events.

“ICE officers in Minneapolis were conducting targeted operations when rioters began blocking ICE officers and one of these violent rioters weaponized her vehicle, attempting to run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill them — an act of domestic terrorism,” she wrote in a statement.

Video on social media caught the incident and shows the moment she hit the gas and the shots rang out.

“He used his training and saved his own life and that of his fellow officers,” McLaughlin added. “The alleged perpetrator was hit and is deceased. The ICE officers who were hurt are expected to make full recoveries.”

RELATED: Anti-ICE rioter’s deadly mistake: Woman allegedly tried to run over federal agents before she was fatally shot

Frey addressed the statement from the DHS and called that version “bulls**t.”

“They are already trying to spin this as an action of self-defense. Having seen the video myself, I want to tell everybody directly: That is bulls**t!” said Frey. “This was an agent recklessly using power that resulted in somebody dying, getting killed.”

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Smashing Pumpkins lead singer Billy Corgan says he was approached by government entities during the George W. Bush administration.

According to the singer, he is familiar with several instances of musicians being compromised and protected by the industry due to their willingness to play ball.

‘I’ve been approached by elements of the US government.’

The Smashing Pumpkins were among the most popular bands in the 1990s, with three records achieving at least platinum-selling status and 1995’s “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness” reaching diamond status.

Now, among other ventures, Corgan hosts “The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan” podcast and recently had writer Conrad Flynn as his guest. The pair discussed dark influences in Hollywood culture, which led Corgan to reveal that he himself had been approached by the government in past decades.

Siamese scheme

“At different times, I’ve been approached by elements of the U.S. government to be involved in things that were just way above my pay grade,” he explained. “I’ve never talked about them in any depth publicly, but I’ve had experiences where I would find myself in a room with people and think, ‘Why are they talking to me?’ It was something out of, like, ‘Eyes Wide Shut,'” Corgan said, referring to the movie about the occult.

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Corgan explained that his experiences led to interactions with government officials hoping to capitalize on his influence.

“All I can say is I’ve experienced supernatural things and I’ve experienced things where I’ve had elements of the U.S. government reach out to me because they somehow want to hook my influence, which is not that great, into whatever they’re after.”

Chart of the deal

This led the singer to speak on the music industry, which is “certainly [his] area of expertise,” while adding the notion that “there are elements in popular music where people have been compromised, knowingly.”

“They were offered kind of a Faustian bargain. Pick door No .1 and we’re going to push you to the moon. … There are people who are protected, and they get every benefit of that protection, and I know it because I know the game, because I’ve lived it. And there are other people where they just, they decide to press a button and throw them off the ship.”

Some of these musicians may have been dumped for bad behavior, Corgan admitted, but in “other cases,” he said, it was likely because “they won’t do the bidding that people want them to do.”

RELATED: Corporation for Public Broadcasting dissolved by board after 58 years of funding PBS and NPR

Photo by Catherine McGann/Getty Images

Disarmed

The culmination of political influence on music — particularly rock music — resulted in the severe lack of edgy rock artists since the turn of the millennium.

“Here we are 25 years into the 21st century, and rock couldn’t be less of an influence on the on the social political order,” Corgan continued, noting how influential the genre was in the second half of the 1900s.

“Does anybody think that that’s kind of strange? That somebody decided to push a button somewhere and make sure that people like myself don’t say certain things any more?”

Corgan soon cut the conversation short, telling his guest he was not willing to directly state what he was asked and by whom.

​Music, Rock music, Smashing pumpkins, Cia, Government operation, Psyop, Us government, Entertainment