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Authored by Ruy Teixeira via The Liberal Patriot,

Back in 1956, Elvis Presley recorded his massive hit “Don’t Be Cruel.” With all due respect to the King, this great song has many virtues but providing a guide to policy isn’t one of them. Yet it appears to be dictating Democrats’ current approach to the red-hot immigration issue despite its profound inadequacy in the policy realm.

Consider that Democrats have been unremittingly hostile to Trump’s immigration policy since he began his second term, despite its undisputed success in completely shutting down the southern border to illegal immigration. Instead, Democrats have focused relentlessly on the question of interior enforcement—that is, the activities of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) aimed at detaining and deporting illegal immigrants currently living within the United States. The general approach has been to portray all ICE actions as essentially illegitimate, arbitrary and, well, cruel.

Conspicuously lacking has been any recognition that, in fact, interior enforcement against illegal immigration is an entirely legitimate law enforcement operation and that ICE is the government agency charged with these legitimate activities. Therefore, what ICE does is presumptively legitimate not illegitimate.

Democratic treatment of ICE has turned this on its head; their activities are presumptively viewed as illegitimate and if there are any legitimate ICE actions, Democrats are being mighty quiet about it. Instead, characterizations of ICE as a modern-day Gestapo, Nazis, an occupying force, etc have become so common as to be unremarkable. This attitude has led Democrats down a path where their policy on interior enforcement against illegal immigration seems to amount to: “Don’t do it! Don’t be cruel!”

Of course, there is much not to like about how ICE has gone about their business, all of which has been copiously documented. This has been red meat to those sectors of blue America and their political representatives whose revealed preference is not to deport anyone. Think about those ubiquitous “In This House, We Believe” signs in liberal professional-class neighborhoods.

The ICE/interior enforcement issue hits the Daily Double for the “In This House, We Believe” crowd. No human is illegal. Check. Kindness is everything. Check. These may be utterly useless as guides to effective, sustainable immigration policy but they sure do get the juices flowing.

That’s why, from Los Angles to Minneapolis, Democratic activists have felt completely justified in interfering with ICE activities and Democratic politicians in refusing to cooperate with a duly constituted federal law enforcement agency. And that’s why, especially with the tragic recent death of Renee Good, calls of “Abolish ICE!” are beginning to ring out across wide sectors of the Democratic Party. There is no good ICE, only bad ICE. There is no legitimate ICE, only illegitimate ICE.

This is the logical terminus of an attitude that starts with no human being is illegal and kindness is everything. Since ICE’s remit is that illegal immigrants are, in fact, illegal and that the law must be followed, even if the outcome is not particularly kind, it only makes sense to get rid of the agency.

This is a terrible idea in so many different ways. As a very useful new memo from the reform Democratic group Searchlight points out:

[S]aying you want to “Abolish ICE”…means that you support getting rid of the agency responsible for enforcing immigration and customs laws, creating a lawless system where people who enter the country illegally can stay here indefinitely, leaving no agency charged with finding and removing them. This will, inevitably, incentivize others to come to the United States illegally. “Abolish ICE” is not some proxy for more humane immigration enforcement, or to change ICE’s culture to adhere to due process, or to impose accountability on rogue officers. It’s advocating for an extreme.

Unless you truly believe that the United States should not have an agency that enforces immigration and customs laws within our borders, and you want to increase illegal immigration, you should not say you want to abolish ICE…[W]e will always need a federal agency charged with deporting people who are in the United States illegally.

That’s clearly correct as a matter of policy. Democrats need to reflect that in how they talk about ICE or the momentum will continue to shift toward those in the party who simply want to get rid of the agency entirely.

And that would be a disaster. The reasonable—and popular—desire to reform ICE practices would inevitably be subsumed in a contentious debate about abolishing the agency. This is not likely to turn out well for the Democrats despite the solid basis in public opinion for some reform and pullback of ICE activities. Abolishing ICE will likely never be generally popular, despite its sky-high popularity with Democrats where there has been a recent spike in support.

Instead, as the Searchlight memo points out, Democrats will be setting themselves up for a rerun of the “Defund the Police” debacle, also driven by a viral incident (and also in Minneapolis!). A maximalist demand like “Abolish ICE” will serve only to signal a lack of Democratic commitment to immigration enforcement, just as defund the police signaled a lack of Democratic commitment to public safety. This is highly undesirable both for the Democrats politically and for the general cause of reforming ICE practices.

A further lesson from the recent past is provided by the Democratic reaction to Trump’s border crackdowns in his first administration. Seizing on some well-publicized excesses, Democrats pilloried Trump for being cruel and inhumane and promised to be different. And they were! They were kind and humane—and also completely ineffective at controlling the border and preventing abuse of the asylum system once they got back in power, producing the huge wave of illegal and irregular immigration that discredited the Democrats and helped Trump win the 2024 election. “Don’t be cruel” didn’t work out so well then and it won’t work out so well now, either in or out of power.

Democrats instead need to get beyond mindless slogans like “Abolish ICE” and blanket opposition to everything ICE does and embrace what I have termed immigration realism. That approach means taking on board the following realities of immigration into this rich country of ours:

1. Many more people want to come to a rich country like the United States than an orderly immigration system can allow.

2. Therefore, many people are willing to break the laws of our country to gain entry.

3. If you do not enforce the law, you will get more law-breakers and therefore more illegal immigrants.

4. If you provide procedural loopholes to gain entry into the country (e.g., by claiming asylum), many people will abuse these loopholes.

5. Once these illegal and irregular immigrants gain entry to the country, they will seek to stay indefinitely regardless of their immigration status.

6. If interior immigration enforcement is lax, such that these illegal and irregular immigrants do mostly get to stay forever, that provides a tremendous incentive for others to try to gain entry to the country via the same means.

7. If you provide benefits and dispensations to all immigrants in the country, regardless of their immigration status, this further incentivizes aspiring immigrants to gain entry to the country by any means necessary.

8. Tolerance of flagrant law-breaking on a mass scale contributes to a sense of social disorder and loss of control among a country’s citizens, who believe a nation’s borders are meaningful and that the welfare of a nation’s citizens should come first.

9. There is, in fact, such a thing as too much immigration, particularly low-skill immigration, and negative effects on communities and workers are real, not just in the imaginations of xenophobes.

10. If more immigration is desired by parties or policymakers, from whichever countries and at whatever skill levels, then immigration should be regular, legal immigration and approved by the American people through the democratic process. Backdooring mass immigration over the wishes of voters because it is “kind” or “reflects our values” or is deemed “economically necessary” leads inevitably to backlash. Wheelbarrows full of econometric studies on immigration’s aggregate benefits will not save you.

Obviously, the current Democratic vogue for treating all ICE activities as illegitimate and susceptibility to dumb maximalist slogans like “Abolish ICE” points them in precisely the wrong direction for dealing with the thorny and complex realities of the immigration issue. They’re just setting themselves up for future failure.

In short, it’s time to stop coddling the “In This House, We Believe” crowd and adopt a serious, grown-up approach to immigration and immigrants. “Don’t Be Cruel” isn’t gonna cut it.

The Justice Department is investigating leftist Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey over an alleged conspiracy to impede federal immigration agents during deportation operations, sources familiar with the matter told CBS News.

Sources say the probe centers on statements Walz and Frey have made about ICE and Border Patrol agents deployed to the sanctuary city in recent weeks. Subpoenas have not yet been issued, but sources said that could be nearing.

Details remain scant about the specific comments by Walz and Frey that DOJ investigators have focused on, but there is a recent interview in which the mayor acknowledges the existence of a network of left-wing nonprofits organizing pressure campaigns in the city. He stopped just short of identifying which nonprofits were involved.

POLITICAL VIOLENCE: Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey refuses to reveal the identities of the NGOs he's working with to organize protests in his city. The DOJ is investigating the groups with funding and directives from Soros and CCP-linked NGOs. pic.twitter.com/C9cWgIZ5VN

— @amuse (@amuse) January 8, 2026

The focus of DOJ investigators and the White House should be the rapid-response efforts of militant left-wing groups and rogue nonprofits that were quick to activate their foot soldiers to unleash a pressure campaign against ICE agents. It was not just Minneapolis; this dark-money-funded NGO network was activated in other sanctuary cities, like New York City, within hours.

New York City councilwoman Vickie Paladino said it best on X:

ICE is doing what should be very mundane work of deporting people who aren't allowed to be in the country anymore, by law. Just as they have for years.

However, a bunch of lunatics, encouraged by the media and reckless democrat officials, have decided that basic immigration enforcement is 'literally fascism' and declared war, turning routine enforcement activity into dangerous civil war cosplay. And people are getting hurt because of it.

The federal government has every right to enforce immigration law, in every jurisdiction of the country. The legal fiction of the 'sanctuary city' is completely irrelevant.

Municipalities don't get to set their own immigration policy, and they don't get to obstruct federal law enforcement.

And they certainly don't get to foment and deploy an army of dangerous foot soldiers to physically attack federal agents, for no other reason than a political disagreement over immigration law. It's actually insane that this even needs to be said.

These people are coming dangerously close to committing insurrection, and the consequences of that will be monumental. This is not the fight they want, and everyone with even half a brain should be urging these Democrats to seriously back off immediately.

If Democrats believe our immigration laws are wrong, we have an election coming up in November and they can run on an explicit platform of repealing these laws, ending immigration enforcement, and re-opening the border.

But they won't, because they know that platform is a loser outside of a very few very far-left districts. So they'll continue to pretend that routine immigration enforcement is actually a replay of 1939 Germany, and continue to send mentally unwell liberal women and antifa activists out to risk injury and legal peril in order to win a few news cycles.

Very very sad. And it needs to stop.

ICE is doing what should be very mundane work of deporting people who aren't allowed to be in the country anymore, by law. Just as they have for years.

However, a bunch of lunatics, encouraged by the media and reckless democrat officials, have decided that basic immigration… https://t.co/GRNTwTZ1hs

— Councilwoman Vickie Paladino (@VickieforNYC) January 16, 2026

The manufactured chaos in Minneapolis is part of the Democratic Party’s dark-money-funded NGO network that has spent years sparking riots and chaos nationwide - remember the nation-killing days of BLM riots. This network was also part of the Los Angeles riots last summer, where Marxist protesters burned Waymo vehicles.

President Trump has finally received the memo.

And so has Scott Bessent at Treasury.

EXCLUSIVE: Treasury ?@SecScottBessent? tells me that the Trump Administration will launch investigations into left-wing nonprofits that serve as a front for violent protests and criminal obstruction of ICE operations. It’s time to stop left-wing terrorism in America. pic.twitter.com/roorsk4XLA

— Christopher F. Rufo ?? (@christopherrufo) January 9, 2026

It is time for the Trump administration, as General Flynn has said, to address the American people about the Democratic Party’s ongoing color revolution operation that uses the protest-industrial complex to spark riots and chaos.

This is manufactured chaos at its best and really shows Democrats do not actually have a pro-America platform or any economic plan for the working class; they only have protests, riots, and chaos, with an end goal of their Marxist militant faction to loot and destroy.

Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft has evolved into a high-stakes dispute over whether OpenAI stayed true to the mission it was founded on or quietly outgrew it while relying on that original promise.

Musk is seeking between $79 billion and $134 billion in damages, a figure derived from an expert valuation that treats his early funding and contributions as foundational to what OpenAI later became. While the number is enormous, the heart of the case is simpler: Musk argues he helped create and fund a nonprofit dedicated to AI for the public good, and that OpenAI later abandoned that commitment in a way that amounted to fraud.

According to Musk’s filings, his roughly $38 million in early funding was not just a donation but the financial backbone of OpenAI’s formative years, supplemented by recruiting help, strategic guidance, and credibility. His damages theory, prepared by financial economist C. Paul Wazzan, ties those early inputs to OpenAI’s current valuation of around $500 billion.

The claim is framed as disgorgement rather than repayment, with Musk arguing that the vast gains realized by OpenAI and Microsoft flowed from a nonprofit story that attracted support and trust, only to be discarded once the company reached scale, according to TechCrunch. 

Much of the public attention has centered on internal documents uncovered during discovery, particularly private notes from OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman in 2017.

One line has become central to Musk’s argument: “I cannot believe that we committed to non-profit if three months later we’re doing b-corp then it was a lie.”

They openly discuss their conspiracy to commit fraud and steal the charity https://t.co/AI6oFll2yV

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 16, 2026

Musk’s legal team treats this as evidence that OpenAI’s leadership understood the nonprofit commitment was being undermined and worried about how that would look to Musk, the organization’s biggest early backer. In Musk’s telling, OpenAI used the nonprofit identity to get off the ground, then pivoted toward for-profit structures and a deep partnership with Microsoft that fundamentally changed who the company served.

The scale of the damages also feeds Musk’s narrative. Given his immense personal wealth, OpenAI has argued that the lawsuit is about money. Musk counters, implicitly, that the size of the claim reflects the size of what was built on the original promise, not personal need. OpenAI, for its part, has characterized the case as part of an “ongoing pattern of harassment” and a tactic to slow a competitor while Musk builds his own AI company.

Sam Altman had indirect stake in OpenAI through YC fund

Board later learned he also secretly owned OpenAI Startup Fund

All while serving as “independent director” of the non-profit he ran as CEO pic.twitter.com/mzEkycUJqK

— NIK (@ns123abc) January 16, 2026

OpenAI’s response disputes both the facts and the framing. In a blog post responding to Musk’s filings, the company said, “In his latest court filing, Elon cherry-picks and publishes snippets from Greg Brockman’s private journal entries … which, when read with the surrounding context, tell a very different story from what Elon claims.” OpenAI argues that as early as 2017, it was openly discussed that developing advanced AI would require far more capital than a nonprofit could realistically raise, and that Musk was involved in those conversations.

According to OpenAI, Musk agreed that some form of for-profit structure would be necessary, as long as the nonprofit mission continued in some form, OpenAI said in a blog post responding to the lawsuit.

OpenAI also says the relationship unraveled over control, not deception. As the company puts it, “The truth is that we and Elon agreed in 2017 that a for-profit structure would be the next phase for OpenAI; negotiations ended when we refused to give him full control; we rejected his offer to merge OpenAI into Tesla; we tried to find another path to achieve the mission together; and then he quit OpenAI.” From this perspective, Musk left because he could not dictate OpenAI’s future, not because he was misled about it. OpenAI has gone further, calling the lawsuit Musk’s “fourth attempt” at similar claims and “part of a broader strategy of harassment.”

At trial, the fight will hinge on how a jury interprets those internal notes and conversations. Musk says they reveal leaders who knew the nonprofit promise could not survive and worried about admitting it. OpenAI says they show a team struggling honestly with how to fund an ambitious mission without surrendering it, while resisting Musk’s demand for dominance.

The outcome will shape not just who wins or loses billions, but how far Silicon Valley founders can stretch lofty missions before courts decide they crossed the line from evolution into deception.

Authored by Aldgra Fredly via The Epoch Times,

The White House announced on Jan. 16 the names of members appointed to the Gaza Board of Peace, which President Donald Trump created as part of phase two of a U.S.-backed plan to end the war in Gaza.

Among the “founding executive board” members are U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, presidential special envoy Steve Witkoff, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

The board also includes private equity executive Marc Rowan, World Bank President Ajay Banga, and U.S. national security adviser Robert Gabriel, according to a White House statement.

The board, to be chaired by Trump, will oversee the Palestinian technocratic committee—also known as the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG)—which will be led by former Palestinian Authority official Ali Abdel Hamid Shaath.

The White House said each of the members will be tasked with managing Gaza’s “governance capacity-building, regional relations, reconstruction, investment attraction, large-scale funding, and capital mobilization,” which it said are vital to the enclave’s stability and long-term success.

The administration also named Aryeh Lightstone and Josh Gruenbaum as senior advisers to manage the board’s daily strategy and operations, and appointed Nickolay Mladenov, a Bulgarian diplomat and former United Nations envoy to the Middle East, as the high representative for Gaza.

Trump also tapped Maj. Gen. Jasper Jeffers to lead the International Stabilization Force, which will oversee security operations and the safe delivery of humanitarian aid and reconstruction materials to Gaza.

The administration also announced a separate 11-member executive board, comprising some of the founding members, which will support both the technocratic committee and Mladenov’s office.

The executive board includes Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, Qatari diplomat Ali Al-Thawadi, Major General Hassan Rashad - head of the Egyptian General Intelligence Service, UAE minister for international cooperation Reem Al-Hashimy, Israeli-Cypriot billionaire Yakir Gabay, and Dutch diplomat and U.N. envoy Sigrid Kaag.

The White House said more members of both boards will be announced in the coming weeks.

“The United States remains fully committed to supporting this transitional framework, working in close partnership with Israel, key Arab nations, and the international community to achieve the objectives of the Comprehensive Plan,” it said.

In announcing the board’s formation on Jan. 15, Trump said the United States will work with Egypt, Turkey, and Qatar to secure an agreement that will require Hamas to surrender all weapons and dismantle its tunnel network.

“Hamas must immediately honor its commitments, including the return of the final body to Israel, and proceed without delay to full Demilitarization,” the president said.

“As I have said before, they can do this the easy way, or the hard way. The people of Gaza have suffered long enough. The time is now.”

The Gaza peace plan, which began in October 2025, is expected to unfold in three phases to achieve the 20-point plan Trump laid out in September last year to end the war in Gaza.

Witkoff said on Jan. 14 that phase two of Trump’s peace plan has started, which involves the complete demilitarization and reconstruction of Gaza.

Minneapolis has erupted into chaos as anti-ICE mobs rampage through the city. On Wednesday, an ICE agent fired in self-defense after being attacked by three illegal immigrants from Venezuela armed with shovels. Governor Tim Walz and Mayor Jacob Frey have fanned the flames straight out of the 'defund the police' playbook - turning a law enforcement operation into a political flashpoint. The violence has spiraled so far out of control that President Trump has threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807, which would allow him to deploy U.S. troops to Minneapolis to restore order since local leaders won’t.

“If the corrupt politicians of Minnesota don’t obey the law and stop the professional agitators and insurrectionists from attacking the Patriots of I.C.E., who are only trying to do their job, I will institute the INSURRECTION ACT, which many Presidents have done before me, and quickly put an end to the travesty that is taking place in that once great State,” Trump promised in a post on Truth Social on Thursday morning. 

Trump has yet to do so - telling reporters on Friday that he doesn't think "there's any reason right now to use it," 

President Trump: "The Insurrection Act, which has been used by 48% of presidents...It's been used a lot. If I needed it, I'd use it. I don't think there's any reason right now to use it, but if I needed it I'd use it. It's very powerful." pic.twitter.com/YJSIlmARD6

— CSPAN (@cspan) January 16, 2026

That said, Border Czar Tom Homan offered a strategy that could hit those stirring the chaos hard, and of course may set a dangerous slippery-slope precedent for civil rights when the shoe is on the other foot. Appearing on Fox News’ The Ingraham Angle Thursday, Homan made clear that while protesters have the right to demonstrate, crossing the line by interfering with enforcement will carry consequences far beyond a court date.

“This job,” Homan told host Laura Ingraham, “and these people who wanna — you know, follow ICE, film ICE — you know what? You can protest; they have that right.” But, he added, “when you cross a line, and we’ve proven it, if you interfere or impede or assault an ICE officer, you will be prosecuted.”

Homan didn’t stop at the threat of prosecution. He said he is urging the Trump administration to take the next step, which is to “make them famous.”

“One thing I’m pushing for right now, Laura,” he said, “we’re gonna create a database, where those people that are arrested for interference, impediment, assault — we’re gonna make ’em famous. We’re gonna put their face on TV.”

The strategy, he explained, is simple: let employers, neighbors, and schools see who is disrupting federal law enforcement.

“We’re gonna let their employers and their neighborhoods and their schools know who these people are,” Homan said. “’Cause as you said, a lot of these people, they say they’re taking time off work to protest. I bet you a lot of them are calling in sick. I bet you a lot of their employers don’t know what they’re doing. But we’re going — we’re gonna make sure everybody knows who they are.”

Homan framed the policy as a response to activists who have used social media and livestreaming to amplify confrontations with ICE officers. “They wanna broadcast the ICE officer that was nearly killed all over the internet,” he said. “We’re gonna broadcast every one of these people we arrest.”

?? HOLY SMOKES. The Trump admin is creating a database of ALL leftist insurrectionists attacking ICE and will be broadcasting their name and face

They’re also gonna contact employers

TOM HOMAN: “We’re gonna MAKE ‘EM FAMOUS!” ???? pic.twitter.com/rtVZMLF1xC

“We're going to let…

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) January 16, 2026

Homan also revealed that the ICE agent who was ambushed and attacked with shovels is healing and under medical care in a secure location.

“He’s in a secure location not because he's afraid, because of the death threats against his family,” he told Ingraham. “I’m glad he's in a secure location 'cause I myself have seen plenty of intelligence reports that a lot of people want him dead. They want his family dead. So, he's in a safe place right now, healing up, getting the medical attention.”

Full interview below:

According to Homan, neither Mayor Frey nor Gov. Tim Walz has contacted the agent’s family.