Democrats have worked energetically in recent months to demonize and delegitimize the men and women of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — those whom Democrat Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz branded as “Trump’s modern-day Gestapo.”

This messaging campaign helped set the stage for deadly confrontations such as those that led to Renee Good’s death on Jan. 7 and Alex Pretti’s death on Saturday.

‘I won’t vote to fund murder.’

Now Democratic lawmakers — who wouldn’t dream of letting a crisis go to waste — are threatening to shut down the government in order to starve the Department of Homeland Security of funds.

“What’s happening in Minnesota is appalling — and unacceptable in any American city,” said Democrat U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York. “Democrats sought common-sense reforms in the Department of Homeland Security spending bill, but because of Republicans’ refusal to stand up to President Trump, the DHS bill is woefully inadequate to rein in the abuses of ICE. I will vote no.”

Schumer noted further that Senate Democrats “will not provide the votes to proceed to the appropriations bill if the DHS funding bill is included.”

Minnesota U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar echoed Schumer and signaled opposition to the so-called “ICE funding bill” as well — and numerous other anti-ICE Democrats followed suit.

RELATED: ‘Going to get someone killed’: Democratic AG shocks with talk about shooting ICE agents in ‘stand your ground’ Arizona

Photographer: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Democrat U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona, for example, vowed to “do everything” he can to prevent the deployment of federal law enforcement in American cities, noting “that starts with voting no on DHS’s budget this week.”

Ruben Gallego, another Democratic U.S. senator from Arizona, put it bluntly: “I won’t vote to fund murder in the name of law enforcement.”

Democrat U.S. Sen. Andy Kim of New Jersey said, “I’m not voting to fund this lawless violence. Trump’s abuse of power is tearing us apart.”

“The Senate should not vote to keep funding this rampage,” wrote U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Ct.). “We are not powerless.”

The House of Representatives passed a three-bill minibus appropriations package in a 341-88 vote Thursday, which would fund the Departments of War, Labor, Transportation, Health and Human services, Education, and related agencies. In a separate vote of 220-207, the House reportedly also passed a funding bill for the DHS, which would allocate $64.4 billion to the department, including $10 billion for ICE.

‘The shutdown cost us a lot, and I think they’ll probably do it again.’

The four spending bills were combined with a pair of measures previously passed in the House then sent to the Senate for approval ahead of the Jan. 30 deadline.

A spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader John Thune indicated that the DHS funding measure would not be decoupled from the others, reported NBC News.

While the Senate was expected to vote on the funding package Monday evening, Thune spokesperson Ryan Wrasse indicated the vote would be postponed until Tuesday “due to the impending weather event that is expected to impact a significant portion of the country.”

In order to avoid a filibuster and pass the spending package, Republicans need 60 votes in the Senate where they have only 53 members — including U.S. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, who has a habit of voting against spending bills.

As of Sunday, the likelihood of another U.S. government shutdown by Jan. 31 was 76%, according to Polymarket.

Just days before Pretti’s fatal shooting by a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officer, President Donald Trump told Fox Business, “I think we have a problem because I think we’re going to probably end up in another Democrat shutdown.”

“The shutdown cost us a lot, and I think they’ll probably do it again. That’s my feeling,” continued the president. “We’ll see what happens.”

The most recent government shutdown was the longest in the nation’s history, lasting from Oct. 1 to Nov. 12, 2025 — a total of 43 days.

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​Shutdown, Shut down, Government, Spending, Department of homeland security, Dhs, Ice, Immigration and customs enforcement, Deportation, Immigration, Donald trump, Chuck schumer, Hakeem jeffries, Budget, Politics 

The late, great Angelo Codevilla had a way of cutting through the fog of foreign policy.

In the Claremont Review of Books in 2019, he asked, “What’s Russia to us?” He didn’t ask because he had any special admiration for Russia. He asked because Washington had turned Russia into a utility: a convenient villain that justified budgets, scolded dissent, and kept the governing class in charge. Codevilla’s point was simple but brutal. Strategy begins with interests. Interests require discrimination. Most of what passes for “grand strategy” amounts to habit and vanity.

Greenland touches national defense. Greenland touches Arctic geography. Greenland touches the supply chain for advanced systems. Those facts don’t bend around Davos etiquette.

That question — his question — fits the Greenland uproar better than any of the Davos hand-wringing last week.

European leaders want this story to be about Trump’s manners and apparent recklessness. They want it to be about “norms,” about “tone,” about the precious feelings of the alliance. They want Americans to believe the true scandal lies in a U.S. president speaking too plainly or belligerently.

Trump did speak plainly. In Davos on Wednesday, he pushed for “immediate negotiations” to acquire Greenland and ruled out the use of military force. He also floated a “framework” tied to Arctic security after meeting NATO’s secretary general, while walking back tariff threats that had rattled allies and markets.

Fine. Trump being Trump shouldn’t surprise anyone.

But Europe’s reaction should surprise people, because it revealed how unserious the continent has become — even about something as serious as Greenland.

Instead of handling business like adults — hard bargaining among allies over a piece of real estate that actually matters — European capitals staged indignation, offered lectures, and then produced the usual substitute for seriousness: a symbolic “show of force” meant for domestic consumption.

The numbers tell the laughable story. Sweden sent three officers. Norway sent two. Finland sent two liaison officers. The Netherlands sent one naval officer. The U.K. sent one officer. France sent around 15 mountain specialists. Germany sent a reconnaissance team of 13. Denmark led with about 100 troops. Reuters called it “modest.” That word was kind.

But that’s the European governing class in a nutshell for you: Perform alarm, then perform resolve, then declare victory over a crisis they helped manufacture.

All of this theater tried to sell one idea: Greenland needs protection from the United States.

Preposterous.

Greenland matters because it helps defend the United States. Pituffik Space Base — some Americans may still know it as Thule — sits where U.S. forces can track threats coming over the pole. The Arctic doesn’t care about European speeches. Missiles don’t fly around Greenland out of respect for allied etiquette. Geography dictates capability, and Greenland sits where the map says it sits.

RELATED: Pressed on Greenland, Trump tells Davos the US has weapons he ‘can’t even talk about’

Photo by Fabrice COFFRINI/AFP via Getty Images

Europe’s commissioners understand that. They just hate saying it out loud because it reminds them of the arrangement they prefer to obscure: America provides the real security; Europe provides the indignant boo-hoo commentary.

The Greenland tantrum exposed another reality that should make America’s sensible policy planners sweat, assuming they still exist: The industrial foundations of power have become strategic again, and the West has behaved like an empire that forgot how to build.

Rare-earths sound like an investor pitch until you remember where they go. Modern weapons systems and advanced electronics depend on them. We need minerals you have likely never heard of — neodymium, dysprosium, samarium, and yttrium — to keep our F-35s flying and our missiles precision-guided.

But the supply chain runs through the part nobody wants to talk about: processing and refining. China dominates that bottleneck — especially the heavy rare-earth elements that sit in the highest-end systems. One major estimate put China’s share of global heavy rare-earth processing at more than 90%. That’s a massive national security hole.

Greenland matters because it offers a way out — not a magic wand, but an exit. Greenland holds serious mineral potential. That potential shifts the long-term strategic balance only if development happens.

Greenland’s own politics have made development tricky. In 2021, Greenland reinstated a uranium ban that effectively froze the Kvanefjeld project, one of the world’s most significant rare-earth deposits, because uranium appears alongside rare-earth ore and triggers the political and regulatory trip wires that make major mining projects difficult to sustain.

Greenland’s voters have every right to weigh environmental costs. Strategy still counts consequences. But the practical result of the ban didn’t restrain Beijing. It protected Beijing’s advantage.

The Europeans, of course, love a green virtue-signal that imposes no serious cost on Europe. Through it all, however, the continent remains dependent on America’s military might, dependent on Chinese processing, and increasingly dependent on slogans to conceal both.

So yes — Trump’s aggressive posture creates complications. Acquisition talk puts Denmark in a public box and turns what should be an alliance negotiation into a freak show. It hands European leaders a stage they don’t deserve and an excuse to treat American interests as a moral problem.

RELATED: Trump announces ‘framework’ of ‘great’ deal with NATO on Greenland

Photo illustration by Cheng Xin/Getty Images

But Europe’s leaders made fools of themselves by trying to address a strategic reality through choreography. A reconnaissance team, a few liaison officers, and a weekend of headlines don’t secure Greenland against anyone. Their “show of force” invited contempt, not respect.

Codevilla’s 2019 essay mocked the way our establishment inflates foreign threats to discipline the home front. The Greenland episode shows a mirror image: European elites inflating a U.S. negotiating push into a crisis because they can’t handle an America that talks like a serious country.

Greenland touches our national defense. Greenland touches Arctic geography. Greenland touches the supply chain for advanced systems. Those facts don’t bend around Davos etiquette.

So use Codevilla’s test. Strip away the moral fog. Rank interests and act like the answers matter.

What’s Greenland to us?

A hell of a lot.

​Greenland, Denmark, Opinion & analysis, Donald trump, National defense, Davos, Europe, Nato, China, Rare earth minerals, National interest, Arctic, F-35, America first, Foreign policy, Angelo codevilla 

BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales is sounding the alarm on Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison (D), claiming his political career has been a decades-long scheme to facilitate financial transfers to Somalia.

“It feels a whole lot like Keith Ellison may have been pulling off a long con. I mean, decades long, just to facilitate Somalian fraud. Like it seems like this has been his goal for a very long time,” Gonzales says, pointing out that before he was AG, he served in Congress from 2007 to 2019.

“You would expect that in 12 years serving in Congress, there would be a lot to show for it, right? Like he will have had a bunch of bills that he sponsored that passed … I mean he did turn into the Minnesota AG so like obviously he was successful,” she continues.

“Except, it turns out, there’s only one single solitary bill that he sponsored that ended up becoming law. Just this one,” she says.

The bill is titled Money Remittances Improvement Act of 2014.

“It made it easier for nonbank financial institutions like money-service businesses to provide remittance payments internationally, which of course, you know, is sending American money to foreigners across the world,” Gonzales explains.

And in an interview with the Mogadishu Times, Ellison explained that the primary goal is to keep “the discussion focused on how we can keep money flowing to Somalia.”

“Quite simply, one of the banks that helps to facilitate remittances from the United States to Somalia has now become worried about the degree of risk … they’re worried that they could end up being prosecuted on a criminal basis,” Ellison continued.

“It’s actually so incredible that all of this was out there. All the breadcrumbs were there this entire time. This has actually been in operation for a very long time for Keith Ellison,” Gonzales comments, shocked.

Ellison has also publicly claimed that sending money to Somalia is mutually beneficial for U.S. taxpayers.

“Please give me receipts on how it’s mutually beneficial. This is a third-world country with people who are inbred … so I don’t understand,” Gonzales says.

“On a serious note, lock him up. We need accountability for all of this corruption that has been happening for decades completely unchecked,” she adds.

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​Video, Camera phone, Video phone, Upload, Free, Sharing, Youtube.com, Sara gonzales unfiltered, Sara gonzales, The blaze, Blazetv, Blaze news, Blaze podcasts, Blaze podcast, Blaze podcast network, Blaze media, Blaze online, Blaze originals, Minnesota fraud, Somalian fraud, Keith ellison, Keith ellison fraud, Minnesota