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Jan. 27, 2026 - The Ben Shapiro Show
51:20
COURSE CORRECTION? Bovino OUT, Trump and Walz Make Nice
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ben shapiro
dailywire 41:33
Appearances
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chris van hollen
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harry enten
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jennifer welch
00:44
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jimmy kimmel
01:44
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karoline leavitt
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ro khanna
rep/d 00:04
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tom sharp
00:26
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wes moore
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Speaker Time Text
Trump's Mass Deportation Policy 00:07:14
ben shapiro
The Trump administration shifts tactics in Minneapolis, making nice with Governor Tim Walz, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Fry, and moving Gregory Bovino of Border Patrol out of his position in Tom Holman in.
Plus, Kanye West takes out a full-page ad apologizing for his anti-Semitism and Nazi support and blaming his bipolar disorder.
We'll get into that first.
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It appears that the Democrats' chaos attempt in Minneapolis has now borne fruit.
And that is the result of legacy media coverage.
Of course, it's also the result of a couple of tragic incidents.
And it is indeed the result of mishandling of those tragic incidents by people inside the Trump administration.
That combination meant that the chaos attempt by Democrats in Minneapolis has actually worked to some extent.
It is now driven action by the Trump administration.
The Trump administration yesterday announced that Gregory Bavino has essentially lost his job.
Gregory Bavino is the border patrol chief who is the commander at large and will return apparently to El Centro.
Christy Noam, who's the head of Department of Homeland Security, is also on thin ice at this point, given her mishandling of a couple of tragic cases in which American citizens were shot under disputed circumstances.
One, Renee Good was attempting to obstruct federal operations, and then she hit an agent with her car and was shot to death.
And Alex Predi, who was, again, obstructing federal operations, resisted arrest and was disarmed, but apparently the officers still thought he was armed and shot him to death.
The mishandling of those situations by both Gregory Bovino and Christy Noam has put the administration in a particularly poor position.
But let's not forget that this begins with Democrats attempting to obstruct federal law.
And because Democrats have been obstructing federal law, because they've been attempting to dissuade the administration from enforcing the law, this has meant that the administration has been forced to actually change its tactics with regard to deportations in large measure.
The Wall Street Journal has a really interesting and important piece today talking about the Trump mass deportation policy.
So let's be real.
The Trump mass deportation policy, which has been part of Trump's stump speech since 2015, has suggested that all illegal immigrants have to go.
The reality is that Americans are much more focused when it comes to actual deportation from the United States of America.
They are much more focused and much more on board with deportation of illegal immigrants who have committed independent crimes.
They may be fine with the idea of mass deportation, deportation of people who are illegal immigrants, but have committed no other crime aside from the illegal immigration.
But the place they really want to focus and the easy call for them and the politically easy call is the people who are committing an arson and assault and murder, right?
Those are the people that the American people are positive they want to see gone.
And early on, the administration did an amazing job of targeting specifically those people.
And in red states, they are still targeting those people.
The problem is that blue states have done a good job of not working with ICE and obstructing federal law enforcement.
And that has meant that ICE has become more untargeted in its pursuit of criminal illegal aliens.
So as the Wall Street Journal points out, at the beginning of 2025, 87% of ICE arrests were immigrants with either a prior conviction or a criminal charge pending, according to ICE data obtained by the Deportation Data Project.
Only 13% of those arrested at the beginning of 2025 didn't have either a conviction or a pending charge.
But the criminal share of apprehensions has declined as the months have gone on.
By October 2025, the percentage of arrested immigrants with a prior conviction or criminal charge had fallen all the way down to 55%.
That is a reflection of blue states not working with ICE, because one way you guarantee that people who have been arrested for criminal charges end up out of the country is when you don't have sanctuary states and sanctuary cities refusing to work with ICE and Border Patrol.
Because if you work with ICE, then you pick somebody up for rape, you check their immigration status.
If they are here illegally, you call up ICE and that person ends up being deported.
If you don't work with ICE, maybe that person ends up in jail.
Maybe that person ends up in the system and then is acquitted or is released for lack of evidence and ends up running around the countryside.
And that's what's been happening in blue states.
Since October, 73% taken into ICE custody had no criminal conviction.
Only 5% had a violent criminal conviction, according to a Cato Institute review of ICE data.
Now, again, what this means is that ICE, when it goes to actually try and do deportations, it ends up picking up people who may or may not have committed a crime, but fewer of them will have committed a separate crime than if they were just going into the jails.
And this is a point that's been made by the White House Borders R Tom Homan.
He said, if they let us in their damn jail, we could arrest the bad guy in the safety and security of the jail.
And what that also means is that when ICE does pursue a criminal, illegal immigrant, they now have to go and knock down a door.
They now have to go into a neighborhood in order to do all of that.
This makes ICE confrontations more likely.
It makes protests more plentiful.
It means uglier pictures on your TV.
And this is being facilitated and driven again by Democrat sanctuary city policies.
But what that means is that also those ugly pictures on your TV change how people think of the issue in general.
People like when the law is enforced.
They like law and order.
They just don't like to see law and order in progress.
They don't like to see it happen.
By the way, this is not just true for illegal immigration.
This is true for normal police operations.
Policing is a very messy and difficult job.
This is why you will see many circumstances in which somebody takes a video of a police officer having to do his job and the entire online crowd will jump on the police officer for having to do the kinds of stuff police officers have to do.
Because pretty much every person who is dealing with a cop is experiencing the worst day of their life when they deal with the cop.
And the cop all day long has to deal with people who are experiencing that.
And so he is likely to encounter people in their most violent state.
And that means that the pictures on your TV, when this stuff gets broadcast on your TV, is ugly.
And just like everything else, ugly in life, people don't like to see the ugliness.
They just like to see the result if the result is good.
War, domestic law enforcement, all of these things, when people see ugly pictures on their TV, they get very, very upset, even though they want the results from the ugly pictures.
Well, when those ugly pictures involve American citizens being killed under disputed circumstances, at the very best, very checkered circumstances for the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Predi.
When that happens, that allows legacy media actors to treat all of law enforcement as an exercise in brutal tyranny.
Governor Walls Sleep On Side 00:18:23
ben shapiro
If you want to see how legacy media are twisting this chaos operation into a story about the evils of ICE, all you have to do is look at Jimmy Kimmel.
We'll get to that in a moment first.
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So, just to take an example of this sort of propagandizing, Jimmy Kimmel did this last night.
Here was Jimmy Kimmel going off on pretty much all ICE agents, all border patrol, and suggesting that they are mass thugs, terrorists roaming our streets.
Here he was last night on ABC News.
jimmy kimmel
I spent the weekend, like probably a lot of you did, looking at my phone and just feeling shocked and sick about what is happening in Minneapolis.
These one video after another, screaming people being torn from their families, Americans, people who were born in the United States being pulled out of their cars for the crime of having an accent or whatever, children, small children, babies being tear gassed, taken into custody, separated from their parents.
Just one atrocity after another being committed by this gang of poorly trained, shamefully led mask-wearing goons.
And that is what they are.
They're goons committing vile, heartless, and even criminal acts.
And it's sickening to watch, and it's frustrating to watch.
It's like we're all being forced to play a game that has no rules.
They just make up the rules as they go along.
ben shapiro
When you hear Kimmel label our law enforcement, they are ours, right?
I mean, we pay their salaries, as jackbooted thugs, mass thugs who are out there pursuing atrocities against Americans.
That is the story that the left would like to tell.
And they've facilitated that story by obstructing federal law enforcement.
This is the game.
This is the game.
And then Kimmel goes on to lie about the circumstances under which, for example, Renee Goode was shot.
jimmy kimmel
They won't even admit that it was a mistake.
I mean, they say that the Honda SUV Renee Good was driving was weaponized.
They say the gun Alex Predty had a license to carry in an open carry state.
All right, many of these same people screamed very loudly about when it was Kyle Rittenhouse carrying the gun, a gun that Alex Predty did not even draw, did not touch, a gun that was taken from him by one of the agents before he was shot dead by the other ones.
They fired 10 times on an ICU nurse.
They're telling us, well, it was justified.
You know, is that the law and order that you voted for if you voted for this?
ben shapiro
Notice what he's doing there.
So he takes some fact and then he wraps a giant fiction around it.
So it is true that Renee Good, they claimed that she was a domestic terrorist.
DHS is true.
They did the same thing with Alex Predty.
This is why I said at the very top that failures inside the Trump administration have made Democrats' job easier for them in order to shut down law and order.
But notice how he wraps that into a generalized critique of all law and order in the United States and the suggestion that the only possible solution is to simply allow our immigration law to go unenforced.
jimmy kimmel
My wife and I have family in Minneapolis who are afraid to take their kids to school.
They're afraid to go to work.
And I can only imagine how people who aren't white feel about this.
How does this end?
What's the plan here?
Is the plan to just keep doing this in every city that didn't vote for Donald Trump?
Does anyone on any side believe this is good leadership?
ben shapiro
What he is doing there is also a lie, right?
This is only happening in blue cities because blue cities are the places that are not working with ICE.
Red cities are working with ICE, so it's not a problem.
Blue cities are not working with ICE, so it is a problem.
Okay, now, this is all incredibly frustrating to watch if you are attempting to be objective-minded about the very difficult realities of enforcing the law and you recognize that there has been a mechanism set up by blue states in order to obstruct the enforcement of that federal law and that the people attempting to enforce that law are then blamed when things go wrong.
It's deeply, deeply frustrating.
The problem is that frustration does not change the fact with regard to public opinion.
When it comes to public opinion, because of the ugly pictures on the TV, as I warned last week, when you look at those ugly pictures on your TV, opinions on whether people want to see the operations continue drop.
So CNN's Harry Enton looked at this.
He says this is turning into a political disaster area for President Trump.
harry enten
ICE, DHS, Christy Noam have been a political disaster because just take a look here.
I mean, ICE is not approval rating during Trump's term.
You go back to term number one.
Look, it was pretty even at zero points.
You go to June 2025, right?
That was when all that stuff was going on in Los Angeles.
They dropped down.
Look at this, minus 17 points way in the basement.
But then after Minneapolis, it's even lower, minus 27 points on the net approval rating of ICE.
Of course, this all being done under Christy Noam.
So, no, what's going on in Minneapolis is not popular at all.
What's been going on during this second term under ICE, under the Trump administration, under Christy Noam, has very much not been popular, and it's only begetting more and more unpopular.
ben shapiro
Okay, so this is why yesterday the Trump administration attempted to change course.
The way they attempted to change course is by honestly assessing what has been going on, recognizing that there are people attempting to obstruct the law and also attempting to change some of the staffing decisions that they have made with regards to who heads up very contentious efforts.
And these are the right moves by the Trump administration.
I encourage them to do this actually yesterday on the show.
So yesterday, Caroline Levitt was asked about Alex Pretty because obviously Secretary of Homeland Security Christy Noam had suggested he was a domestic terrorist, who was attempting to inflict mass casualties.
The same line was trotted out by Gregory Bovino, who is the official in charge of border patrol agents in Minneapolis.
President Trump was asked about that earlier in the day yesterday, and he refused to give a green light to that description.
And so Caroline Levitt over at the White House did the same.
unidentified
On Stephen Miller's comments, will Stephen Miller be apologizing to the family of Alex Pritty for calling him, quotes, an assassin who tried to murder federal agents, despite the fact that, as you say, this is still under investigation.
karoline leavitt
Again, this incident remains under investigation, and nobody here at the White House, including the President of the United States, wants to see Americans hurt or killed and losing their lives in American streets.
And we mourn for the parents.
As a mother myself, of course, I cannot imagine the loss of life, especially losing one's child.
And that same empathy from the president goes for the parents of angel families, parents of victims of illegal alien crime across our country as well.
And that's exactly why the president continues to be wholeheartedly committed to deporting the worst of the worst criminals from our country.
ben shapiro
Okay, but the thing she doesn't do there is defend Stephen Miller's language in calling Alex Predi a potential assassin, or the language of Gregory Bavino, or the language of Christy Noam.
And then she says, what is obviously true?
Obeying law enforcement used to be a sort of normally accepted part of American life.
This is true, of course.
karoline leavitt
They have also used their platforms to encourage left-wing agitators to stalk, record, confront, and obstruct federal officers who were just trying to lawfully perform their duties, which has created dangerous situations threatening both these officers and the general public and Minnesotans alike.
This is precisely what unfolded in Minneapolis on Saturday morning.
Obstructing federal law enforcement and inciting violence against officers is wrong and illegal.
This used to be a universally accepted position in the United States.
ben shapiro
So, of course, that is true.
And then she added that President Trump is fulfilling the will of the people when it comes to deporting criminal illegal immigrants.
Again, notice the focus, criminal, illegal immigrants, illegal immigrants who have committed another crime.
karoline leavitt
As the duly elected president, the president is fulfilling the will of the people by arresting and removing these threats from our country in cities from Los Angeles to New York and, yes, Minneapolis.
Yet Democrat leaders in Minnesota with sanctuary city policies have actively defied federal immigration law and the will of the people.
And as a result of that defiance, two Minnesotans have now tragically lost their lives on the streets.
ben shapiro
Okay, again, this description is how the Trump administration should have been covering this in the first place.
And then she laid out President Trump's path to restoring order in Minneapolis, all of which is the policy that should be followed.
karoline leavitt
And he has outlined a clear and simple path to restoring law and order in Minnesota.
Number one, Governor Waltz Mayor Fry and all Democrat leaders should turn over all criminal illegal aliens currently incarcerated in their prisons and jails to federal authorities, along with any illegal aliens with active warrants or known criminal histories for immediate deportation.
Number two, state and local law enforcement must agree to turn over all illegal aliens who are arrested by local police.
And then thirdly, local police must assist federal law enforcement in apprehending and detaining illegal aliens who are wanted for crimes, especially violent crimes.
If Governor Waltz and Mayor Fry implement these common Common sense cooperative measures that I will add have already been implemented in nearly every single other state across the country.
Customs and Border Patrol will not be needed to support ICE on the ground in Minnesota.
ICE and local law enforcement can peacefully work together as they are effectively doing in so many other states and jurisdictions.
Additionally, President Trump is calling on the United States Congress to immediately pass legislation ending sanctuary cities once and for all.
ben shapiro
Hey, this is good policy, and this is the policy the Trump administration should be pursuing.
They're also, again, changing some of the personnel who are in charge of implementing this policy.
Instead of essentially leaving this in the hands of Christy Noam over at DHS, who I think has not done a good job, as I've made clear over and over, or Gregory Bovino, who seems to not be PR wise or capable of handling difficult situations like this, he is sending the person who should have been in charge all along, the Borders Are Tom Homan, who since the beginning of this has been the law and order, let the full investigations take place.
We're enforcing the law guy.
Tom Homan has always been the adult in the room on this policy.
According to the Washington Post, Caroline Levitt said that Trump maintains full confidence in Christy Noam, but he is sending Tom Homan to Minneapolis, and Homan will report directly to the president.
He is taking over from Greg Bovino, the Border Patrol commander, who's been the face of the operation in Minneapolis, as well as previous forays into LA and Chicago.
Levitt said that Bovino will continue to lead operations around the country, but this is pretty clearly a demotion.
According to the Atlantic, Gregory Bovino has been removed from his role as Border Patrol Commander at large and will instead return to his former job in El Centro, California, and he is expected to retire soon.
That's according to the Atlantic.
Again, kind of disputed reports from the Trump administration on all of that.
Now, this also comes amid President Trump changing some of his language with regard to, for example, Tim Walz.
So yesterday, the president put up a statement on Truth Social, quote, Governor Tim Walz called me with the request to work together with respect to Minnesota.
It was a very good call, and we actually seem to be on a similar wavelength.
I told Governor Walls I would have Tom Homan call him and that what we're looking for are any and all criminals that they have in their possession.
The governor very respectfully understood that and I was speaking to him in the near future.
He was happy that Tom Holman was going to Minnesota and so am I.
We have had such tremendous success in Washington, D.C., Memphis, Tennessee, and New Orleans, Louisiana, and virtually every other place that we have touched.
And even in Minnesota, crime is way down.
But both Governor Walls and I want to make it better, President Trump.
So that is President Trump being conciliatory toward Governor Walls.
Now, yesterday on the show, I recommended that actually he throw the issue in Walls' lap and say, listen, it's our job to enforce federal immigration law.
You tell us what we have to do and what you have to do to make sure that federal immigration law is enforced in the most efficient possible way, since you seem to think that you can both obstruct federal law enforcement and encourage people to obstruct federal law enforcement.
The president seems to think that he is going to win over Walls and Democrats more with honey than with vinegar, which is a fair approach.
The president then made a similar statement with regard to Jacob Fry of Minneapolis.
Quote, I just had a very good telephone conversation with Mayor Jacob Fry of Minneapolis.
Lots of progress is being made.
Tom Holman will be meeting with him tomorrow in order to continue the discussion.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Well, Tim Walz, for his part, then put out a statement afterward in which he said, quote, Governor Walls had a productive call with President Trump earlier today.
The governor made the case that we need impartial investigations of the Minneapolis shootings involving federal agents and that we need to reduce the number of federal agents in Minnesota.
The president agreed he would talk to his Department of Homeland Security about ensuring the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension is able to conduct an independent investigation, as would ordinarily be the case.
The president also agreed to look into reducing the number of federal agents in Minnesota and working with the state in a more coordinated fashion on immigration enforcement regarding violent criminals.
The governor reminded President Trump, the Minnesota Department of Corrections already honors federal detainers by notifying ICE when a person committed to its custody isn't a U.S. citizen.
There's not a single documented case of the department's releasing someone from state prison without offering to ensure a smooth transfer of custody.
Now, in a second, we'll get to the lie that is inherent there because there is a lie that is being told by omission in that statement by Governor Walls.
But clearly, what is happening here is the Trump administration is reorienting toward the better parts of the administration in terms of handling this and trying to de-escalate the situation.
Whether that de-escalation is possible is going to be at least in large part up to the state of Minnesota and the city of Minneapolis.
With that said, the Trump administration is doing the right thing by handing more power over to Tom Homan inside the administration.
Apparently, this has been a battle brewing internally inside the administration for quite a while.
According to Jenny Taylor, reporting for our Daily Wire, there have been dividing lines drawn inside the administration already.
On one side, Homeland Security Secretary Christy Noam, Border Patrol Commander Greg Bovino, and Corey Lewandowski, a top Trump advisor and temporary government employee who has had a long-rumored relationship allegedly with Christy Noam.
On the other side, our borders are Tom Homan and acting ICE director Todd Lyons.
Noam's camp is focused on aggressive and showy tactics, fiery press conferences, and Bavino marching through town with a squad of Border Patrol agents in tow and is fixated on increasing arrest numbers.
Homan side is focused on the quality of arrests and getting the worst criminals off the street, which they feel is a job best suited for ICE rather than Border Patrol.
And again, that split into the open when Noam and Bavino started making statements that were not backed by the facts with regard to the killings of Alex Predi and Renee Good.
Officials inside Noam's own department slammed her rush to judgment, according to sources who spoke with the Daily Wire.
One official said it was a horrible response.
Many people I've heard say it was unprofessional.
She doesn't know what she's doing.
The people in DHS are frustrated with Secretary Noam and the way DHS is handling the media.
The employees want a more professional response, not memes and one-liners.
So I highly doubt that the changes at the top of DHS have stopped.
It seems to me that Christy Noam's in a very vulnerable position, given her failures on this topic, among others.
And frankly, I think that that's appropriate.
I think that she has not done a credit to the president as DHS secretary, which is her job.
If you're a secretary working under the president at the pleasure of the president, then you really should be facilitating the success of his administration, not undermining it with photo ops and bad statements.
Noam, for her part, seems to be giving up the ghost to Homan.
She said on X Monday, it's good news for peace, safety, and accountability in Minnesota that Homan is going to Minneapolis.
Funding the Massive Problem 00:14:38
ben shapiro
Quote, I've worked closely with Tom over the last year.
He's been a major asset to our team.
His experience and insight will help us in our wide-scale fraud investigations, which have robbed Americans and will help us to remove even more public safety threats and violent criminal illegal aliens off the streets of Minneapolis.
We continue to call on the leadership in Minnesota to allow for state and local partnership in our public safety mission.
So, again, we'll have to see how far the fallout goes.
House Democrats are looking at Christy Noam for possible impeachment.
Apparently, they are set to open an investigation as early as next week.
Democrats are going to conduct their investigation, according to the Washington Post, without the majority party.
They acknowledge they're unlikely to remove Noam in the short term, but they want to signal, obviously, to their own constituents that they are taking the problems with Noam and with DHS and with this entire illegal immigration cleanup operation seriously.
Which brings us to the Democrats.
So, Democrats are clearly sensing blood in the water here.
They clearly sense momentum.
They do, which is why this entire chaos operation run by the Democrats is a disaster area.
If you can politically win by obstructing federal law, that is a massive problem.
It's a massive problem.
And it's why the president is right to seek conciliation, but obviously conciliation with red lines.
Federal law must be enforced.
And if the state of Minnesota and the city of Minneapolis refuse to allow the enforcement of actual federal law, then we have an impasse.
I think the president is right to replace Noam with Homan in this position.
Homan, again, is the adult in the room.
And I think that the president is not wrong to reach out to Walls, but I think that has to be the predicate to an actual conversation with Walls because Walls is fibbing now.
So Walls put out an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal in which he suggested federal officials are lying.
He said the Trump administration's assault on Minnesota long ago stopped being a matter of immigration enforcement.
It is a campaign of organized brutality against the people of our state.
It isn't just.
It isn't legal.
And critically, it isn't making anyone safer.
Okay, now, again, the notion this is a campaign of organized brutality against all the people of Minnesota is a lie.
It is untrue.
And this sort of posturing from Walls is utterly inappropriate, utterly inappropriate.
Immigration law is enforced or should be enforced.
There's a duty to enforce it under the law by every executive branch head.
Every president has a duty to enforce immigration law.
Just because Joe Biden refused to do it doesn't mean he now duty to do it.
Donald Trump is doing the thing that all these other presidents said they were going to do.
And it is, in fact, the job of state and local officials not to get in the way.
So what Homan does, he says that he's working with the feds, but he isn't really, isn't really, because there is a fundamental lie that is being told here.
So Walls says the pretext for all this is the Trump administration's insistence that our immigration laws would otherwise go unenforced.
This federal occupation of Minnesota is, administration officials insist, about our predilection for releasing violent criminal illegal aliens from state custody.
I can't stress this enough.
The Trump administration has its facts wrong about Minnesota.
And then Walls claims the administration claims that Minnesota jails release the worst of the worst.
In reality, the Minnesota Department of Corrections honors all federal and local detainers by notifying ICE when a person committed to its custody isn't a U.S. citizen.
There's not a single documented case of the department releasing someone from state prison without offering to ensure a smooth transfer of custody.
Yet the lies persist.
This week, ICE tweeted that rural Cottonwood County had refused to honor a detainer for an alleged child.
That's not true.
The county sheriff followed procedure and contacted ICE when the subject posted bail, but ICE agents were too busy wreaking havoc in the Twin Cities to do their actual job and pick the prisoner up.
Some of the administration's claims are ridiculous on their face.
For example, it claims 1,360 non-U.S. citizens are in Minnesota prisons.
The truth, our total state population in the prisons is roughly 8,000.
Only 207 of them are non-citizens.
And then the administration, he says, published what it claimed was a list of people who have been arrested as part of the ICE sweep, asserting this list represents the worst of the worst criminals, implying we have been protecting them from capture.
Minnesota Public Radio investigated and found most had been transferred to ICE custody at the end of their time served in Minnesota prisons.
And then he says, everyone wants to see our immigration laws enforced.
This isn't what's happening in Minnesota.
Okay, so here is the problem.
Here is the lie.
Yes, it is true that Minnesota on the state level, the State Department of Corrections, honors ICE detainers.
But you know who doesn't in Minnesota?
City and county jails.
They do not honor ICE detainers.
So, in effect, Walls is pointing out that if you go to prison having committed a crime and being convicted, then they will honor an ICE detainer.
But if they pick you up for sexual assault before you've gone through all of the rigmarole of a trial, they will not notify ICE.
If they pick you up for an alleged, ICE is not notified.
And so unless the case goes all the way through to conviction and then time in the jail system, ICE is not notified.
Well, there are an awful lot of people who have experiences with law enforcement who don't end up going to jail, who ends up with traffic violations, multiple traffic violations.
This is why you'll see people with a record as long as your arm who've been picked up by the police over and over and over, who never ended up in the State Department of Corrections.
They never went to actual prison.
They were in jail temporarily and then they posted bail or they were released or whatever it is.
That is a much larger number than the number of people who end up in the State Department of Corrections.
President Trump and ICE are asking for people to work with ICE to allow for the deportation of migrants who are arrested for crimes.
According to CBS News, the jurisdictions of Minneapolis and St. Paul will not hold someone for ICE because they say they lack the legal authority to detain people on ICE detainers, which are administrative warrants, not judicial warrants.
But that's not true.
It happens all over the country.
Not only that, the Minnesota Secretary of State, Steve Simon, according to care11.com, has refused all requests for driver records, Medicaid data, at voter rolls, citing privacy laws.
So they're attempting to block fraud investigations, for example, into illegal immigrants.
Meanwhile, Keith Ellison, the attorney general of the state, wrote that DHS's operations in Minnesota were, quote, a federal invasion and cited the administration's fraud claims as a pretext for political targeting because of the viewpoints of the state's leaders.
So Walls is attempting to kind of, you know, edge around the reality of the situation.
Again, this is an issue that came up when I was talking with Governor Gavin Newsom of California.
He made the same claim: oh, no, we work with ICE all the time.
Well, then, what is the point of you being a sanctuary state?
What does that designation mean?
And the answer is: what the designation means is that they will not work with ICE unless the person is full-on in the Department of Corrections.
That's what it means.
And sanctuary cities will not allow, for example, their police departments to gather immigration data on the people that they arrest, which is a massive problem.
It is a huge, huge problem.
And it means that people who are repeat criminals are, in fact, being allowed back onto the streets if they don't do actual hard prison time.
If there's a plea agreement that ends with house arrest, or if there is some sort of fine that is paid, those people just end up back on the streets and ICE is never notified.
So, this is where the Trump administration is going to have to be careful.
Now, maybe they go for the titular victory here.
Maybe they say, well, you know, Tim Walz has given up the ghost.
He's no longer going to pursue his sanctuary state policies with such alacrity.
We seem to have come to an agreement.
They look for an off-ramp.
That's possible politically here.
But again, if the message that comes out of this for Democrats is to obstruct federal law and get away with it, that is going to be a massive problem.
And by the way, that does seem to be what Democrats are aiming for.
So it's quite possible here that Democrats win the battle but lose the war, meaning that if they win the battle against ICE, if they get Americans to briefly see ICE as the problem and illegal immigration as a secondary issue, if they get all of that to happen in the short term, that may not be the result in the long term.
We saw the same exact thing happen in 2020 when the police briefly were treated as an invading army by the Democrats.
And for a moment, the police were wildly unpopular.
And then it turns out that when you do that, crime rates radically skyrocket and people get mad.
And then they don't like the Democrats for that, which is why the Democrats have been underwater on the immigration issue and also on policing for years on end.
So Democrats theoretically here could win the battle against the Trump administration in Minneapolis, but lose the war politically.
So again, Democrats seem to want to take this too far.
As always, when the pendulum swings, it always swings too far in one direction.
RoConna, who wants to run for president for some odd reason, the Democrat from California, he was out there on the streets of Minneapolis pandering.
unidentified
The New York Post is saying this has gone too far.
You know, it's gone too far.
It's never gone too far.
Killing American citizens.
I mean, no one signed up for this.
ro khanna
No one who voted for him thought they would be killing a 37-year-old American nurse.
ben shapiro
It's tiresome.
Again, this is what's so annoying about this situation.
Many things can be true at once.
The Trump administration is right to want to enforce the law.
The Secretary of Homeland Security and the Border Patrol Chief botched the handling of bad situations.
Democrats have set up a chaos operation to obstruct federal law.
Our legacy media and Democratic politicians are attempting to facilitate the obstruction of federal law.
Like all those things can be true at once, and also it can be politically advantageous for Democrats.
I wish that weren't true.
All of that is true.
But are Democrats going to go too far?
Probably.
Probably.
The only sane Democrat, again, is John Fetterman.
Again, I don't agree with Senator Fetterman when Fetterman says that the operations in Minneapolis should end, but he also opposes, for example, a government shutdown over ICE.
He put out a statement saying the operation of Minneapolis should stand down and immediately end.
It has become an ungovernable and dangerous urban theater for civilians and law enforcement that is incompatible with the American spirit.
He says, I believe our nation deserves a secured border and that we should also deport all criminal migrants.
I believe there needs to be a path to citizenship.
But then he says, I will never vote to shut our government down.
And he says that vote to shut our government down will not to fund ICE.
DHS already has $178 billion in funding from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which I did not vote for.
I want a conversation on the DHS appropriations bill and support stripping it from the minibus.
It is unlikely that that will happen and our country will instead suffer another shutdown.
So again, Fetterman is trying to sort of have the baby here.
That is the, I think, most sane Democrat position that I've seen articulated, although obviously I disagree that, quote unquote, all operations should end in Minnesota.
That's just nullification of federal law.
Many more Democrats are going way further than Senator Fetterman.
So Governor Westmore, who wants to run for president, despite all of his protestations to the contrary, the governor of Maryland, he supports a government shutdown over ICE funding.
wes moore
The idea that we should have a government shut down, it hurts my state more than any state in the country.
But I also know this.
We cannot continue to allow this funding of the 13th largest military force by funding in the world to continue to exist.
ben shapiro
Meanwhile, Senator Chris Van Holland says the real domestic terrorists are in the White House.
chris van hollen
This has become part of the disgusting White House cover-up of these killings.
They said the same thing about Renee Goode.
They really think the American people are stupid.
I mean, we can all see the videotapes.
We saw the videotapes with Renee Goode.
We've seen the videotape today with Alex Predi.
It is clear that Stephen Miller and this White House are engaged in a cover-up, and it's criminal to try to cover up a killing like this.
Look, the reality is that the real domestic terrorists, they're in the White House right now.
They're people like Stephen Miller.
They're people like Donald Trump.
They're the ones who are terrorizing the community, these communities, having nothing to do with public safety.
ben shapiro
That's Senator Chris Van Holland of Maryland, who is indeed a stupid person.
He is the same person who went down to El Salvador to visit with Kilmar Obrego Garcia, as you recall, a man who was deported, having allegedly committed a wide variety of crimes, including domestic violence against his spouse.
So that is Chris Van Holland.
Again, Democrats are going to go too far in this direction.
That is very, very likely.
Ilhana Omar of Minnesota, she, of course, is going the furthest of anyone.
She says ICE is beyond reform.
She put out a tweet voting no on the DHS funding bill is the bare minimum.
Backing Christy Noam's impeachment is the bare minimum.
Holding law-breaking ICE agents legally accountable is the bare minimum.
ICE is beyond reform.
Abolish it, right?
So some Democrats, the most radical Democrats, are going all the way here.
Are Democrats going to follow that path, the sort of Zorin mamdonification of their party?
I think it's unlikely.
Instead, Democrats seem to be coalescing around a set of demands for the funding of DHS.
According to Axios, when Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer returns to Washington this week, he will have a growing block of Democrats demanding significant concessions from President Trump.
A group of around 10 Senate Democrats is coalescing around a list of demands for changes to the DHS, including requiring warrants for arrests.
They mean judicial warrants, not administrative warrants, and mandating that federal agents identify themselves.
Multiple sources said they also want to demand that DHS cooperate with state and local investigations into incidents like the shootings of Renee Good and Alex Preddy in Minnesota.
Some moderate Democrats might not be willing to go that far.
Presumably, that would be Senator Fetterman, for example, who doesn't want a government shutdown.
So it'd be interesting to see the Democrats fight it out over what is quote unquote enough for their base on this subject.
It is quite possible, as I said again, that Democrats are going to win the battle in Minneapolis, but lose the war as Americans actually reject their anti-law and order positioning in general, because there are lots of ugly pictures coming out of Minneapolis, and they're not all about ICE or border patrol.
Yesterday, local PD had to arrest protesters at a hotel who decided that they were going to vandalize the hotel, break in, harass people.
People being arrested again.
This is local PD.
Minneapolis PD arresting people.
I will say that one thing that we are watching across the country is a bored society, a truly bored society with a lot of young people with not enough to do, who are spending their days fulminating about basic law enforcement operations and deciding that heroism requires that they stand up in the streets against the allegedly jackbooted thugs.
And Democrats facilitating that sort of stuff will end in more violence.
Deciding to Follow the Crazies 00:04:42
ben shapiro
It just will.
That is the reality.
The sort of unhinged language that's being used about law enforcement will end with more confrontations.
It will end with more death.
And I do not think that that is going to end with the Tom Homan deployment to Minnesota, so long as Democrats see the political gain in attempting to radicalize an entire youth population against law enforcement.
Okay, meanwhile, in cultural news, Kanye West has now apologized for his anti-Semitism in a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal.
He basically says what we all suspected about Kanye and some of us ripped up and down for saying it at the time, which is that he suffers from bipolar disorder.
And because he's bipolar, he says crazy things.
And when he's on a manic high, he says things and he can't be stopped.
This has always been my take on Kanye West's anti-Semitism.
It doesn't justify the anti-Semitism, but his anti-Semitism and his craziness is significantly more justifiable than that of his sane followers, people who are not bipolar, who have decided to follow him down that primrose path because they see the clicks and the giggles and all of it.
Again, whether you choose to forgive somebody for their actions or not is up to you.
Certainly, I've always felt that Kanye West's mental illness, knowing people who are schizophrenic, knowing people who are bipolar, when people are in the throes of this mental illness, they say and do things that are truly unjustifiable, even by them.
That is just a reality of life.
And recognizing that truth doesn't obviate fighting anti-Semitism, obviously.
But again, I actually blame Kanye West a lot less than all the people who decided to host him on their podcast and treat him as a sane and rational human being or chop out sections of his schizophrenic nonsense in order to make him appear more rational to a broader population so that when he actually started spewing his Nazi trash, this suddenly seemed legitimate alongside all of his other commentary.
Or all the people who decided that he had now opened the Overton window to Nazism enough that they were then going to capitalize.
I blame those people much more than I blame a bipolar man who has always suffered with significant psychic breaks.
Again, I think Kanye is less to blame for this than a lot of the people surrounding Kanye, for sure, who continued to make money off of him and make clicks off of him and all of the rest.
His statement in the Wall Street Journal: he says, bipolar disorder comes with its own defense system denial.
When you're manic, you don't think you're sick.
You think everyone else is overreacting.
You feel like you're seeing the world more clearly than ever, when in reality, you're losing your grip entirely.
Once people label you as crazy, you feel as if you cannot contribute anything meaningful to the world.
It's easy for people to joke and laugh it off when, in fact, it's a very serious debilitating disease you can die from.
According to the WHO and Cambridge University, people with bipolar disorder have a life expectancy shortened by 10 to 15 years on average and a two to three times higher all-cause mortality rate than the general population.
So the scariest thing about this disorder is how persuasive it is when it tells you you don't need help.
It makes you blind, but you're convinced.
You have insight.
You feel powerful, certain, and unstoppable.
I lost touch with reality.
Things got worse the longer I ignored the problem.
I said and did things I deeply regret.
Some of the people I love the most, I treated the worst.
You endured fear, confusion, humiliation, and the exhaustion of trying to love someone who was at times unrecognizable.
Looking back, I became detached from my true self.
In that fractured state, I gravitated toward the most destructive symbol I could find, the swastika, and even sold t-shirts bearing it.
One of the difficult aspects of having bipolar type one are the disconnected moments, many of which I still cannot recall, that lead to poor judgment and reckless behavior that oftentimes feels like an out-of-body experience.
I regret and am deeply mortified by my actions in that state and am committed to accountability, treatment, and meaningful change.
It does not excuse what I did, though.
I'm not a Nazi or an anti-Semite.
I love Jewish people.
Again, bipolar people are bipolar, and recognizing that reality means that, yes, we should have sympathy for them.
I have zero sympathy for the people who decided that the worst excesses in which Kanye West was engaging were somehow justifiable or good or brilliant insights.
Those people being sane, cynical, and disgusting.
That's the part that is truly egregious and unforgivable, not the ramblings of somebody who clearly has a mental disorder and who has admitted as much.
Some of us said this at the time, several years ago, I will point out.
And meanwhile, speaking of people who are unhinged, but like, you know, not crazy, just politically unhinged.
I don't know why Democrats have decided that their response to Joe Rogan is an obnoxious white lady who just says crazy shit.
It's confusing to me.
So Jennifer Welch is apparently the hot new thing, I guess.
Hold is Jennifer Welch.
I don't think that any of those descriptors actually apply.
In any case, here she was yesterday suggesting that white evangelical Christianity is a cancer.
Subsidized Programs' Cost Crisis 00:04:25
jennifer welch
White evangelical Christianity is a cancer.
These are the worst of our country.
These are the worst people in our country because they use their religion in two ways as a weapon and as a shield.
They weaponize it whenever they want to and say, we're on the moral high ground.
You're a lesbian.
You deserve to die.
You're a lesbian.
The cops shouldn't have revived you.
Oh, your parents are Mexicans and they brought you over here.
Yeah, you should go to jail and eat worm food.
And then when you call them out on it, oh my God, they're after the Christians.
How dare they?
How dare they?
We're so oppressed.
White Christians are so oppressed in this country.
ben shapiro
God, these obnoxious.
Okay, this is a great way to win back, men.
Great job, Democrats.
Really excellent stuff.
That seems very, very rational and well articulated.
If this is the direction Democrats want to go, if this is their response, which is to, I guess, drive harbor into the wine non-moms with this sort of appeal, good luck to them.
On the economic front, meanwhile, it turns out that Obamacare is a giant fail.
So a brand new article from the Wall Street Journal points out that Obamacare has actually now started to cost people more than their mortgage.
According to the Wall Street Journal, millions of Americans are starting to see their monthly health insurance bills rise, a new pressure point for a nation still frustrated with the high cost of living.
Expanded subsidies, again, for Obamacare expired on December 31st.
Now those newly calculated insurance bills are coming due.
Americans are having to figure out how to pay up or go without.
So Lenny and Mandy Wilson, who are 47 and live in Charleston, West Virginia, paid $255 a month last year for a low-end ACA plan.
Last year, they learned their bill would be going up to $2,155 a month.
That is a sum nearly triple their monthly mortgage payment.
So great job, Obamacare, again, which continues to have to survive on the basis of federal subsidies and taxpayer dollars, gigantic infusions of taxpayer dollars.
Now, will that blow back on Republicans?
Again, this is the beauty of Democratic programs.
When you fail, you simply blame lack of spending on the Republicans, which is why you've seen some Republicans in moderate states call for a temporary revision of the subsidies, at least for a year or two, while other measures are implemented that bring down costs.
That's sort of the transitional plan here.
Suffice it to say, as always, Democratic subsidized programs end up costing people a gigantic sum of money.
And the only way out of it is further subsidization.
That is the only way.
No wonder then that voters feel less and less secure.
According to a brand new New York Times Sienna poll, asked what they feel is affordable.
It's sort of fascinating.
All of the areas that are most subsidized by the government are the areas that are least affordable, according to Americans.
That is not a coincidence because every area of American life subsidized by the government, the price has gone up radically.
Education, 58% say unaffordable.
Housing, largely subsidized by the government, 54% say unaffordable.
Healthcare, subsidized by the government, 47% say unaffordable.
When you get to say groceries, 28% say unaffordable, which, again, groceries are up because of inflation.
But groceries are plentiful and you can still get them.
And again, compared to the sort of cost of food historically, you can get a lot, even though the prices are really, really inflated.
Transportation, 22% say unaffordable, as opposed to 47% who say somewhat affordable, and 28% who say mostly affordable.
So the pressures are all in the areas that the government has stuck its grubby fingers into.
And the Democratic solution, as always, and this is the mistake that you see Republicans making too, is that government solves that problem.
Government does not solve that problem.
Government creates that problem.
Have a transitional plan and get the government out of these programs.
A transitional plan for the people who are in trouble and the people who are reliant on the subsidies, and then create better incentive structures because capitalism makes things more plentiful and cheaper.
And government subsidization makes things more scarce and more expensive.
All right, folks, coming up, we'll get into the great California wealth exodus, people leaving California because of all of the bad policy over there.
Government Creates Problems 00:01:57
ben shapiro
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unidentified
What was it like, Merlin, to be alone with God?
tom sharp
Is that who you think I was alone with?
unidentified
Martin, I knew your father.
I am yet convinced that he was not of this world.
tom sharp
All men know of the great Taliesi.
unidentified
You are my father.
Are the gods of war for my soul?
Princess Garris, savior of our people.
I know what the bull got offered you.
I was offered the same.
tom sharp
And there is a new pirate work in the world.
unidentified
I've seen it.
tom sharp
A god who sacrifices what he loves for us.
We are each given only one life, singer.
unidentified
No, we're given another.
I learned of Yazoo the Christ, and I have become his forward.
He's waiting on a miracle, and I think you can give him one.
Trust in Yezu.
He is the only hope for men like us.
tom sharp
Fate of Britain never rests in the hands of the Great Light.
unidentified
Great Light, Great Darkness.
Such things mattered to me then.
tom sharp
What matters to you now, Mistress of Lies?
unidentified
You, nephew.
The sword of the High King.
How many lives must be lost before you accept the power you were born to wield.
So clinging to the promises of a god who has abandoned you.
tom sharp
I cannot take up that sword again.
unidentified
You know what you must do.
tom sharp
Great Light, forgive me.
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