A third of Minnesota's non-domiciled commercial driver’s licenses (CDLs) reviewed in a recent audit by the Department of Transportation (DOT) were illegally issued, Sec. Sean Duffy announced Monday.

The post Trump Admin Uncovers Massive Foreign Trucker Illegal License Operation in Minnesota appeared first on Breitbart.

Nearly 500 employees in Minnesota's state government say Democrat Governor Tim Walz ignored their constant warnings about massive fraud by Somalis of the state's aid programs.

The post Hundreds of Minnesota Gov’t Staffers Say Gov. Tim Walz Hid Somali Fraud and ‘Attacked Whistleblowers’ appeared first on Breitbart.

SPRINGFIELD, VA — As the Department of Homeland Security sought to tighten security across the board for travelers around the country, the Transportation Security Administration announced that anyone who doesn't acquire a Real ID by the appointed deadline will be sent to a screening line manned by Creepy Kevin.

Supreme Court justices seemed skeptical of arguments from the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office justifying subpoenas of a network of pro-life pregnancy centers on Tuesday. 

New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin claimed First Choice Women’s Resource Centers may have made misleading comments about abortion and issued broad subpoenas to force the group to provide donor information, along with other documents.  

The justices are weighing whether New Jersey’s subpoena discouraged the group and donors from exercising their rights under the First and 14th amendments, which can be challenged in federal court, or whether the group must instead litigate its claims in state proceedings. 

Erin Hawley of Alliance Defending Freedom represented First Choice, while Sundeep Iyer, chief counsel for the Attorney General’s Office, argued for New Jersey.

Here are four key takeaways from the oral arguments Tuesday.

1. ‘Suppression by Subpoena’

The American Civil Liberties Union, which consistently champions abortion access, sided with First Choice. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a Trump appointee, asked about the ACLU’s amicus brief that warned of “suppression by subpoena and censorship by intimidation.”

Iyer argued that the issuance of a subpoena is not enough to chill free expression.

“You could have situations where there are other government statements or other government actions that themselves create an objective chill that might, together with the subpoena, be sufficient to establish standing,” Iyer said. 

However, Hawley argued that Platkin’s office had established a threat. 

“This is the context of a hostile attorney general who has issued a consumer alert, urged New Jerseyans to beware of pregnancy centers, and assembled a strike force against them,” Hawley said. 

The ACLU’s brief demonstrates that the question before the court is not a partisan or ideological matter, said Thomas Jipping, a senior legal fellow with The Heritage Foundation. 

“The fact that the ACLU is on the pregnancy center’s side shows that a decision in this case will affect the First Amendment rights of groups across the ideological spectrum,” Jipping told The Daily Signal. 

“Conservative and liberal justices seemed interested in the same issues, and their questions suggest that First Choice is likely to prevail,” Jipping added. “The broader impact of the case will depend on how the Court resolves some of the technical questions that dominated the argument.”

2. ‘Ordinary Person’

First Choice has argued state’s subpoenas for donor and other information violated its First and 14th Amendment rights. Core to the state’s defense is that an attorney general’s subpoena is not “self-executing,” meaning it is effectively a request for documents until a court enforces it. 

Justice Elena Kagan, a Barack Obama appointee, said being told a subpoena had to be stamped by a judge would not be reassuring to an organization or a donor.

“What’s an ordinary person supposed to think? And what’s an ordinary person supposed to do based on what an ordinary person is supposed to think?” Kagan asked.

Iyer replied that the state court has not enforced the subpoena.

“You could look at the facts of this very case to see that the state has sought an enforcement order from this state court for more than two years. The state court has repeatedly declined to enforce production,” Iyer said. “My friends on the other side haven’t alleged anything about success rates, for example, for subpoena enforcement.”

3. ‘No Complaints’

Justice Clarence Thomas, a George H.W. Bush appointee, asked, “Did you have complaints that form the basis of your concern about the fund-raising activities here?”

Iyer responded, “We certainly had complaints about crisis pregnancy centers.” But, when pressed, he admitted, “We haven’t had complaints about this specific center.”

Thomas replied, “So, you had no basis to think that they were deceiving any of their contributors?”

Iyer argued, “We had carefully canvassed all of the public information that is provided on the website, of First Choice, in making a determination that we wanted to initiate an investigation.” 

“State governments, federal government, initiate investigations all the time in the absence of complaints where they have a reason to suspect that there could be potential issues of legal compliance,” Iyer later said. 

Later, Trump-appointed Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked, “I gather that you think that website might have made them think that this was an entity that provided abortion care, as opposed to a pro-life entity.”

Iyer said, “That’s right, your honor.”

During the rebuttal at the end of the arguments, Hawley said the donor website has “pictures of smiling faces of babies and their families.” She added no one would question that the donor page belongs to a pro-life group and not Planned Parenthood.

4. ‘That’s Not How This Works’

In November 2023, Platkin’s office began targeting First Choice, demanding 10 years of documents.

“It commands it to produce 28 different categories of documents, including every solicitation, email, and text message it sent to its donors,” Hawley explained. “It commands it to produce donor names, addresses, phone numbers, as well as places of employment, Your Honor, and it also chilled First Choice and its donors’ First Amendment rights.” 

Plaintiffs point to precedent from the 1958 case NAACP v. Alabama, and the 2021 case of Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Bonta, which affirmed that organizations did not have to make public the name of their donors, out of fear of potential retaliation.

Arguing for the state, Iyer insisted that the attorney general’s office was trying to protect donors, not out their names. 

Chief Justice John Roberts, a George W. Bush appointee, expressed doubts.

“You think it might have an effect on future potential donors to the organization to know that their name, phone number, address, etc. could be disclosed as a result of the subpoena?” Roberts asked. 

Iyer said, “It certainly has not, in this case.” 

Iyer said the plaintiffs produced no evidence of a donor afraid to donate to First Choice because of the attorney general’s action.

Roberts seemed unconvinced.  

“Somebody comes in and says, ‘I’m chilled. I don’t want to reveal my name, address, phone number, etc. Here’s my affidavit.’ That’s not gonna work, is it?” the chief justice asked. 

Iyer replied, “That is something they could have pleaded here, but they did not plead it.”

The post 4 Takeaways From Supreme Court First Amendment Case on Pro-Life Pregnancy Centers appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth defended the Department of War’s second strike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean, citing the “fog of war.”

Hegseth said during the second strike on Sept. 2, the boat “was on fire,” so he didn’t personally see survivors, and he said he “didn’t stick around” for the remainder of the mission following the first strike. He said Adm. Frank Bradley “made the correct decision” in sinking the boat, which he “had complete authority to do.”

“This is called the fog of war,” Hegseth said at Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting. “This is what you in the press don’t understand. You sit in your air-conditioned offices up on Capitol Hill and you nitpick. You plant fake stories in The Washington Post about ‘kill everybody,’ based on anonymous sources, not based in anything, not based in truth at all.”

Hegseth said reporters were throwing out “really irresponsible terms about American heroes, about the judgment that they made.”

“I wrote a whole book on this topic because of what politicians and the press does to war fighters,” he said. “President [Donald] Trump has empowered commanders—commanders—to do what is necessary, which is dark and difficult things in the dead of night on behalf of the American people. We support them, and we will stop the poisoning of the American people.”

A reporter asked Trump if he supported the second strike to kill survivors of the Venezuelan boat strike.

“All I know is this, every boat that’s blown up that you see, we save 25,000 lives,” Trump said, adding that he still hasn’t gotten a lot of information.

“To me, it was an attack,” he said. “It wasn’t one strike, two strikes, three strikes.”

The president said he wants the drug boats taken out, and he is willing to attack on land if necessary.

“These people have killed over 200,000 people last year,” he said. “We’re taking those sons of b—- out.”

The post ‘Fog of War’: Hegseth Tells Press What They ‘Don’t Understand’ About Strikes on Narco-Terrorists appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Ricardo Perez Castillo pleaded "no contest" to charges after being held at gunpoint by a homeowner in a June 15, 2024, assault/home invasion.

The post Marine Recruiter Pleads ‘No Contest’ After Being Held at Gunpoint by Homeowner appeared first on Breitbart.

An Afghan national accused of shooting two National Guard members near the White House has pleaded not guilty to all charges, according to new reports. The Wall Street Journal reported […]

The post BREAKING: Afghan Shooter Pleads Not Guilty to All Charges in National Guard Murder Case appeared first on The Western Journal.

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth declared Tuesday that the United States military has "only just begun" its campaign against suspected narco terrorists.

The post Pete Hegseth: ‘We’ve Only Just Begun Striking Narco Boats’ appeared first on Breitbart.

Lawmakers in Washington are contemplating an artificial intelligence provision that could have wide ranging ramifications for how states and localities regulate the emerging technology and protect the vulnerable online.

The provision could be added to the National Defense Authorization Act that will direct how nearly $1 trillion will be spent on national defense for Fiscal Year 2026, The NDAA text is expected to be released this Thursday. While the precise language of the AI provision remains unknown, it could likely entail efforts to prevent states or localities from regulating AI and possibly even render many state laws to protect children moot.

According to a report from Axios, Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., have shopped language around Capitol Hill that would preempt or override state-level AI regulations. Some of the bills that would come to regulate AI on the federal level would likely pass through Cruz’s Senate committee as the Texas senator eyes another White House bid in 2028.

The White House has supported efforts by Congress to get such AI provisions into law.

If Congress does decide to slip the AI provision into the NDAA, it would be the second time this year Congress has tried to add an AI provision of this nature to a large legislative item.

The Senate debated adding a 10-year AI regulation moratorium for states in the One Big Beautiful Bill that was signed into law in July. That AI provision mulled by the Senate would have withheld federal broadband funding to states if sought to enforce the laws passed by the duly elected representatives of their American citizens. Furthermore, federal broadband funds would have also been withheld if states and localities dared to address new concerns about AI for the 10 years following the enactment of the provisions. Cruz was a proponent of placing the AI provision in the reconciliation package signed by President Donald Trump in July.

Proponents of the previously debated AI provision expressed concerns that America’s patchwork of AI regulations would hinder American technology companies’ abilities to compete with China and other rivals of the U.S. The provision as written would therefore have affected red and blue states alike including the technology hubs of Texas and California. It was ultimately removed in the final version of the budget bill by a vote of 99 to 1 in the Senate.

Some Republicans in Congress, however, are throwing cold water on putting an AI provision into the NDAA.

House Armed Services Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Ala., has reportedly said he does not think a moratorium on individual state regulation of AI will be included in the final version of the NDAA. 

“From what I hear, it’s kind of lost its momentum. It doesn’t have enough support,” Rogers said according to Politico. 

As The Daily Signal previously reported, Texas has already passed legislation regulating the utilization of AI in censoring viewpoints on the Internet as well as user privacy protections from AI-empowered data harvesting, allowing Americans to opt-out of being profiled. Such laws are widely supported by the chief law enforcement officers of dozens of states as demonstrated by a National Association of Attorneys General letter to congressional leadership in May that came out against the 10-year moratorium.

The letter noted the absence of federal action addressing the potential harms of AI, which has required states to step up and protect their residents themselves by passing laws. 

“These include laws designed to protect against AI-generated explicit material, prohibit deep-fakes designed to mislead voters and consumers, protect renters when algorithms are used to set rent, prevent spam phone calls and texts, require basic disclosures when consumers are interacting with specific kinds of AI, and ensure identity protection for endorsements and other AI-generated content,” the attorneys general letter explained.

The moratorium was also opposed by one of the most prominent Republican state executives in the country, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Sanders. 

“Congressional Republicans like Sen. [Marsha] Blackburn, Sen. [Josh] Hawley, and members of the House Freedom Caucus are right: The One, Big, Beautiful Bill will be a huge win for the American people, but can’t include a provision that strips states of their right to regulate AI,” Sanders said to The Daily Signal in June about the moratorium. 

When asked about the return of the potential regulatory ban, Sanders’s office told The Daily Signal that, “Governor Sanders supports President Trump’s leadership to unleash American AI dominance and looks forward to working with his administration and other stakeholders to make sure we win the race against China and also protect Americans.”

The post Congress Could Slip a Major AI Regulation Change Into the NDAA appeared first on The Daily Signal.

President Donald Trump called affordability “a hoax that was started by Democrats who caused the problem of pricing.”

“Look, affordability’s a hoax that was started by Democrats who caused the problem of pricing. And they didn’t end it when, look, they lost it in a landslide,” Trump said during a Cabinet meeting at the White House on Tuesday.  

Trump bashed Democrats for using the word “affordability” as a “con job.”  

“But the word affordability is a Democrat scam,” Trump said, adding that the Biden administration “had the worst inflation in the history of our country.” 

Trump called it a “fake narrative that the Democrats talk about affordability. They just say the word. It doesn’t mean anything to anybody. You just say it—affordability.”

Trump claimed that Democrats don’t know that prices were “much higher” under President Joe Biden, pointing to the prices of gas as an example. Today, the average price for a gallon of gas in the U.S. is $2.99. One year ago, the average price was $3.047, according to AAA.  

“But our prices now for energy, and for gasoline are really low. Electricity is coming down, and when that comes down, everything comes down,” Trump said.

“Beef is coming down now. We’ve done certain magic and beef is coming down,” the president said, adding, “we fixed inflation.”

“We’re gonna get prices down still further, but we brought them down,” he said. “The reason that they had the highest inflation in the history of our country is because they had the highest prices. But we brought them down, and now we have normal inflation.”

The U.S. inflation rate hit a 30-year high at 8% in 2022 under the Biden administration. The inflation rate today is 3.01%.  

Politicians in Washington and around the country have talked more about the issue of affordability following the elections in November. Affordability surfaced as the key issue voters cared about in Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial races, and the mayoral race in New York. Republican losses in those elections, and the margins by which the GOP candidates lost, is partially being attributed to a failure to address the affordability crisis in America.  

Since taking office, Trump has pushed for a decrease in interest rates. Trump has continued to call on the Federal Reserve to decrease them following the recent elections.

In November, the White House said Trump plans to ramp up domestic travel ahead of midterms as he sells voters on his affordability accomplishments.  

The post ‘HOAX’?: Trump Changes Tune on Affordability appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Rep. Chip Roy, a Republican from Texas, did not hold back Monday as he warned that Congress may need to step in and fix what he called a growing mess […]

The post Chip Roy Floats Congressional Action on College Football After Lane Kiffin Fiasco: 'Isn't Supposed to Be an NFL Lite' appeared first on The Western Journal.

Minnesota whistleblowers went viral on X over the weekend after accusing Gov. Tim Walz of enabling fraud by retaliating against whistleblowers, and the social media platform suspended their account in a move conservatives suggest may represent another form of retaliation.

“Tim Walz is 100% responsible for massive fraud in Minnesota,” the X account posted on Saturday. “Tim Walz systematically retaliated against whistleblowers using monitoring, threats, repression, and did his best to discredit fraud reports.”

The whistleblower account claimed that Walz’s appointed leaders had threatened the families of whistleblowers to keep the fraud hidden, and it claimed that “no single agency leader has been held responsible for their role in fraud.”

The post came amid increased national attention to the fraudsters who stole hundreds of millions from U.S. taxpayers in the last few years. The office of U.S. Attorney Daniel N. Rosen has charged 78 defendants connected to the $250 million Feeding Our Future fraud scheme, and 56 of them have pleaded guilty. Last month, conservative journalist Christopher Rufo highlighted how many fraudsters sent cash to the Somali terrorist group Al-Shabaab.

By Monday, the whistleblower’s X post garnered nearly 37 million views. Suddenly, the entire account disappeared.

Retaliation?

“Certainly it was retaliation, the question is by whom?” Bill Glahn, a policy fellow with the Center of the American Experiment, told The Daily Signal in an interview Monday.

Glahn had been following the fraud stories for years, and he said the X account gave him information that only insiders in the Minnesota bureaucracy would know.

State Rep. Kristin Robbins, a Republican and chair of the committee on Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight Policy, told The Daily Signal that she has spoken with the whistleblowers behind the X account on the phone and in person.

She suggested that “someone went to X and said, ‘They’re not who they say they are,’ which just is not true.”

“I and many of my colleagues went on X and asked Elon Musk and X to reinstate them, because we know they are a legitimate whistleblower account,” Robbins explained. She said the account has been “regarded as legitimate in Minnesota for a long time.”

Rep. Marion Rarick, another Republican on the committee, told The Daily Signal, “I have spoken with them directly, including in person, and yes, verified their identities as current or previous [Department of Human Services] employees.”

The account, @Minnesota_DHS, had a blue check mark and went by the name “Minnesota Department of Human Services Employees,” claiming to represent 480 staff at the department. After X suspended the account, it reemerged as a “commentary account” named “Minnesota Staff Fraud Reporting Commentary” and claims to represent “over 480 Minnesota State Stewards.”

“The Minnesota Department of Human Services did not take any steps yesterday to have the account suspended,” the department told The Daily Signal.

Walz’s office did not respond to a request for comment about whether the governor played any role in the suspension. X also did not respond to a request for comment.

Walz Admin Pushback

The Department of Human Services noted that the whistleblower account “does not represent the views of the agency,” and denied accusations of retaliation.

“Any perception that employees are being discouraged from raising issues, or that efforts are being made to identify those who speak up, is false and runs counter to our values and expectations,” the department told The Daily Signal. “Retaliation of any kind is strictly prohibited.”

The department says it “is fighting fraud in our state day-in and day-out.”

Walz’s office declined to comment for this story, but it directed The Daily Signal to an executive order Walz issued in September, and a message he sent to all state government employees.

The order directs state agencies to “intensify efforts to prevent, detect, and combat fraud across Minnesota government programs.”

“We have no tolerance for fraud in the State of Minnesota,” Walz said at the time. “If you commit fraud in Minnesota, you will be prosecuted and held accountable to the fullest extent of the law.”

The message to government employees highlighted signs of suspicious activity to monitor.

“It is particularly important that supervisors and agency leaders work diligently to build a culture of compliance in our agencies so that employees trust that their concerns are valued and taken seriously,” Walz wrote.

Fraud Should Not Be Partisan

Robbins, who is running for governor in 2026, agreed with whistleblowers in blaming Walz, particularly for allowing agency heads to retaliate against whistleblowers.

“He’s certainly heard about it and allowed his commissioners, his people in these agencies, to continue it,” Robbins said. “He rolled out a very late fraud crackdown in the fall, because there’s so much pressure for him to do something and he has done nothing for 7 years.”

“I think these whistleblowers are heroes,” she added. “They have tried to go through the internal channels for flagging things, and they have been ignored, retaliated against.”

The representative credited the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the FBI, along with her own fraud committee, which first met in February, for exposing the fraud. She also addressed the Somali community.

“Two things can be true at the same time: Most of the fraud of the people so far indicted and prosecuted has been from the Somali community. Also, some of the best whistleblowers have come from the Somali community,” Robbins said.

“For too long, people were afraid to identify that a lot of the fraud came from the community,” fearful of racism accusations. “That was one of the reasons it was allowed to go on for so long.”

The post RETALIATION? Minnesota Whistleblowers Who Blamed Tim Walz for Enabling Fraud Get Suspended on X appeared first on The Daily Signal.

House Democrats recently blamed the Trump administration’s efforts to rein in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for poor information security. But the agency was fully staffed during the Biden administration when a massive–and still unresolved–data breach occurred. 

In February 2023, CFPB experienced a data breach that forwarded the confidential information of 256,000 consumers to a personal email address. The CFPB fired the staffer who emailed a spreadsheet with the names, transactions, and account numbers. 

The breach may have contained customer information from more than 50 financial institutions.

Protecting data of consumers compromised in this breach is a separate issue from whether the CFPB should continue to exist in its current state, Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, a member of the House Financial Services Committee, told The Daily Signal.

He said he intends to find out directly from the agency.

“I have not blown off or forgotten about this,” Sessions noted. “The big question that needs to be answered is when were notices given to consumers?”

“If the CFPB has followed the law, people who were affected have been notified,” he said. “I will go directly to the CFPB and ask questions to be sure they follow the law.”

Trump named Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought acting director of the CFPB, which falls under the Federal Reserve. Vought eliminated the agency’s budget request for the next quarter and ordered about 1,700 employees not to perform any work.

Vought has proposed cutting the CFPB workforce by as much as 90%. 

“CFPB is an unaccountable agency that DC bureaucrats have weaponized to the detriment of consumers,” Rep. Andy Barr, R-Ky., chairman of the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Financial Institutions, told The Daily Signal. 

“Under Democrat control, the bureau was responsible for one of the biggest data breaches in recent American history,” Barr said. “I commend Director Russ Vought and President Trump for cleaning up the rogue CFPB, empowering consumers and financial institutions.” 

In November, Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., the ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee, pointed to an audit by the Federal Reserve’s Office of Inspector General that said staffing and funding cuts at the CFPB were to blame for lack of information security. 

“To put it bluntly: consumers and their data are more at risk than ever and more vulnerable to bad actors due to the Trump Administration’s harmful actions,” a Waters press release says. “The continued dismantling of the CFPB will only worsen this crisis.” 

A Waters spokesperson did not respond to inquiries for this story on Tuesday.

The IG report says security issues were “compounded by the loss of contractor resources supporting information security continuous monitoring and testing activities and the departure of agency personnel.” 

Experts have noted that personal financial information stored at the agency has been in jeopardy since the agency’s beginning. 

A CFPB spokesperson did not immediately respond to The Daily Signal for this story on Monday or Tuesday.

After the 2023 breach happened, a CFPB spokesperson said in a statement at the time, “The CFPB takes data privacy very seriously, and this unauthorized transfer of personal and confidential data is completely unacceptable.” 

The CFPB was established by the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation to regulate banks, credit card companies, lenders, and other financial services companies. It receives funding through the Federal Reserve.

The post House Republicans Seek Answers on Biden-Era Data Breach of 256,000 Consumers appeared first on The Daily Signal.