Nasra Ahmed, a 23-year-old St. Paul resident, was among 16 people arrested Wednesday in Minneapolis on federal charges of assaulting or impeding law enforcement officers, according to Attorney General Pam Bondi’s announcement on X (formerly Twitter). Ahmed had recently gained national attention after a January 21 press conference where she described her Somali-American identity using the metaphor “It’s kind of like bananas and rice,” a phrase that sparked widespread online mockery and became a viral sensation across social media platforms. Bondi’s X post stated, “I am on the ground in Minneapolis today. Federal agents have arrested 16 Minnesota rioters for allegedly assaulting federal law enforcement — people who have been resisting and impeding our federal law enforcement agents.”
The arrests were made under 18 U.S. Code § 111, a federal statute that criminalizes assaulting, resisting, or impeding federal officers while performing their official duties. Ahmed’s case became particularly hilarious as her viral “bananas and rice” comment triggered a flood of online ridicule on Reddit, Instagram, and Facebook, with critics sarcastically mocking the apparent circular logic of her explanation. The social media backlash intensified when Ahmed alleged in the January 21 press conference that she was wrongfully detained by ICE for two days, called a racial slur by agents, and assaulted so severely that she suffered a concussion.
However, her “bananas and rice” quote, eclipsed her allegations of mistreatment and she was reduced to a meme. Now, as of Wednesday, the Department of Homeland Security maintained that Ahmed assaulted federal agents, directly contradicting her account of being a victim in the incident. AG Bondi publicly shared the names and images of all 16 arrested individuals including a defeated looking Nasra Ahmed, which got mocked too.
Sponsor | https://www.purgestore.com | Use promo code DREW for 20% off and support The Gateway Pundit today!
(Note: Thank you for supporting businesses like those presenting a sponsored message below and ordering through the links below, which benefits Gateway Pundit. We appreciate your support!)
by Jim Rickards
It’s no secret that 2026 will be a very special year for American patriots like you…
But what most people don’t know is that…
This coming May, just a few weeks before America’s 250th anniversary…
President Trump is planning to use executive powers granted by Public law 63-43…
To make a critical move that I predict will unleash a historical supercycle of wealth…
ICE Special Agents (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) arresting suspects during a raid. (Photo Courtesy of ICE)
A vile medical professional who wanted to see ICE agents suffer and possibly die has learned to FO part of FA.
As The Gateway Pundit previously reported, a nurse who worked for Virginia Commonwealth University’s hospital named Malinda Cook shared a series of videos on TIkTok encouraging people to inject ICE agents with a temporary paralysis drug and spray poison on them.
She also encouraged women to seek out ICE agents for dates and then drug their food.
In one video, she stated, “I thought of something good. I think it’s something weird. Sabotage tactic, or at least scare tactic. All the medical providers grab some syringes with needles on the end.
Have them full of saline or succinylcholine. You know, whatever. That will probably be a deterrent. Be safe.”
In another, Cook shared, “Okay, for today’s resistance tip, I vote…anybody got me Poison Ivy, Poison Oak in their yard? Get some of that up with gloves, obviously. Get it in some water, like a gallon of water. Get the Poison Ivy Oak water, and I’m going to put it into a water gun. Aim for faces, hands.”
A third called for drugging ICE agents, suggesting targeting them on dating sites.
“Alright, the single ladies where these ICE guys are going have a chance to do something, you know, not without risk, but could help the cause for sure. Get on Tinder, get on Hinge, find these guys. They’re around. They’re an ICE agent? Bring some Ex-lax and put it in their drinks. Get them sick. Nobody’s going to die. Just enough to incapacitate them, get them off the street for the next day.”
VCU initially responded by placing Cook on leave pending an investigation. Now, they have announced she is no longer employed.
“Following an investigation, the individual involved in the social media videos is no longer employed by VCU Health,” the hospital told Fox News in a Tuesday night statement.
“In addition, VCU Health has fulfilled its reporting requirements under Virginia state law.”
Do No Harm, a medical watchdog group which focuses on removing DEI and other identity politics from the medical field, told Fox News on Thursday that the move by VCU was a face-saving measure.
Do No Harm’s Executive Director Kristina Rasmussen said that VCU has a lengthy history of pushing extremely woke politics in the medical field.
“As we’ve documented at Do No Harm, VCU has a long history of pushing extreme identity politics into medical education and clinical treatment,” Rasmussen explained. “Now, they act surprised when radicalism sprouts from a ground seeded with toxic ideology.”
Rasmussen went on to say that just because VCU fired Cook does not mean patients should feel safe frequenting its hospital.
“When medical schools and hospitals allow radical politics to shape curriculum, they end up training harmful activists rather than skilled medical professionals,” Rasmussen stated. “VCU Health firing this nurse is the bare minimum response.
“Unless they clean up their act, how will any patient feel safe walking through their doors?”
A 39-year-old woke librarian from Ripley, West Virginia, was arrested on Sunday, January 25, 2026, following an investigation into social media posts that sought to recruit individuals to assassinate President Donald Trump. Morgan Leigh Morrow worked at the Jackson County Public Library and was detained after authorities identified threatening content on her publicly accessible TikTok account.
Morrow posted multiple videos on TikTok that authorities interpreted as advocating for the assassination of the President. One video, which gained significant attention after being shared by the account “Libs of TikTok,” contained the caption: “Surely a sniper with a terminal illness cannot be a big ask out of 343 million.” Law enforcement characterized these posts as part of what they described as a “social media recruitment of individuals to pursue and assassinate President Trump.”
When confronted by officers from the Jackson County Bureau of Investigations and Ravenswood Police Department at her residence, Morrow was transported to the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office for questioning. After being informed of her Miranda rights, which she acknowledged and waived, Morrow admitted to authoring the post and confirmed that the threat was directed at President Trump.
The threatening content attracted additional harmful responses in the comments section. On her Instagram video, other users proposed assassinations of Stephen Miller, the White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, as well as tech executive Larry Ellison and entrepreneur Peter Thiel. These responses demonstrated that Morrow’s initial posts had generated a broader conversation encouraging violence against multiple government and private figures.
Morrow was charged with one count of making a terroristic threat under West Virginia Code 61-6-24(b). The criminal complaint documented that Morrow’s statements constituted “a communicated threat of a terrorist act, made publicly through social media, and (is) reasonably capable of causing fear, alarm or disruption.” While Morrow stated during her interview that she did not personally intend to carry out the threat, the complaint noted this did not negate the serious nature of the public threat she had communicated.
Jackson County Sheriff Ross Mellinger commented on the case, noting that “some of the posts were pretty graphic” and that Morrow “was rather proud of her work.” Mellinger emphasized to the public that while “we all have our opinions,” citizens cannot legally make threats against anyone’s life.
The sheriff’s department took steps to notify federal authorities immediately, with Mellinger confirming that both the FBI and Secret Service were contacted on Monday morning regarding Morrow’s arrest. The sheriff’s office released a statement clarifying that the announcement and investigation “is not meant to be a political-oriented statement” but rather represented “an active criminal investigation with documented and troubling concerns.
Sponsor | https://www.purgestore.com | Use promo code DREW for 20% off and support The Gateway Pundit today!
With the clock ticking down to a potential government shutdown this Friday, Senate Republicans are reportedly considering a move that could leave the southern border wide open to invasion.
A group of Republican senators is now openly discussing whether to split the Homeland Security appropriations bill away from a six-bill funding package in order to avert a partial government shutdown that would impact the Pentagon and several other major federal departments, according to The Hill.
The six-bill package includes funding for the Departments of Defense, Health and Human Services, Labor, Education, Transportation, State, and financial services-related agencies.
DHS, the very agency responsible for border security, immigration enforcement, and counterterrorism, is at risk of being left behind.
Rep. Andy Ogles wrote on X:
Democrats are trying to defund ICE, Border Patrol, FEMA, TSA, the Coast Guard, and the Secret Service because Donald Trump is president. America voted for mass deportations, and DHS is delivering.
I stand with [Freedom Caucus] and will not bend when it comes to fully funding DHS, defunding sanctuary cities, and crushing the coordinated attacks on our federal agents by Soros-backed insurrectionists. Democrats have called for total war against the law of the United States. We must fight it in Congress.
Democrats are trying to defund ICE, Border Patrol, FEMA, TSA, the Coast Guard, and the Secret Service because Donald Trump is president. America voted for mass deportations, and DHS is delivering.
Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA), a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, bluntly admitted that many Republicans see the writing on the wall.
“A bunch” of GOP senators, Kennedy said, would be willing to set aside DHS funding if that’s the only way to move the other bills forward.
“Sen. Thune can’t admit it because he’s got to act like a tough guy and the White House is negotiating and all of that, but most of you have been around here for a while and most of us have seen this vampire movie before,” Kennedy said on Wednesday.
Kennedy hit the nail on the head regarding the Democrat obstructionism that has brought the Senate to this brink.
“I think the Democrats don’t want to vote for a Homeland Security bill,” he said. “If that’s the case, then what are our choices? To throw out all the bills? Or one?”
While Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) claims his preference is to move all six bills together, especially since the House is currently on recess and cannot ratify changes, he is already signaling that he might cave.
Thune has not ruled out stripping the DHS funding and replacing it with a weak “Continuing Resolution” (CR) if Democrats continue to block the package.
“Government shutdowns don’t benefit anyone. We ought to pass the bill on the floor, FULLY FUND the government, and move on to other things the American people expect us to work on!” Thune told reporters.
One senior Republican senator, speaking anonymously to The Hill, admitted the GOP conference would likely capitulate if Democrats dig in their heels. “If that was all that was left, we’d probably do it,” the lawmaker said.
If the DHS funding is severed from the main package, it risks leaving border enforcement in limbo while the rest of the government gets funded.
FBI Agents seized over 700 boxes worth of documents and brought them north to Virginia in two tractor trailers
On Wednesday, The Gateway Pundit reported that the FBI executed a search warrant against Fulton County, and also that the likely target of that warrant pertained to reports filed by citizen investigators whose persistence since the 2020 election was finally acknowledged by federal investigators.
The warrant was later made public and should be of grave concern for those responsible for administering and retaining records related to the 2020 election.
The warrant was issued by a magistrate judge in Atlanta on Wednesday at 2:31p.m. for evidence of violations of 52 U.S.C 20701 and 52 U.S.C 20511. The former, 20701, is the federal records retention law related to elections that requires states to “retain and preserve, for a period of twenty-two months” all records “requisite to voting.”
The latter, 20511, is a statute related specifically to fraud. The statute makes illegal the “procurement, casting, or tabulation of ballots that are known by the person to be materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent under the laws of the State in which the election is held.”
The attached affidavit that outlines materials and items to be seized includes all physical paper ballots and envelopes, all tabulator tapes for every voting machine used, all ballot images created during the initial count on November 3, 2020, and the following recounts, and the voter rolls used during the 2020 election to issue ballots.
Several of these items will be difficult to produce, considering sworn declarations submitted in the federal case Curling v Raffensperger and responses given to open records requests submitted by citizens and journalists beginning almost immediately after the 2020 election.
Dr. Philip Stark, a UC Berkeley professor, submitted a sworn affidavit that stated there were 376,863 missing ballot images from the original count in Fulton County, which, according to Dr. Stark, makes it impossible to audit the 2020 election.
In Georgia, the original machine count conducted on November 3, 2020, was not the certified count. The ensuing machine count reported on December 3, 2020, was used to certify the vote. Stark stated that 17,852 votes were missing ballot images from the certified count in his declaration.
The 17,852 missing ballot images were corroborated by SEB Complaint 2023-025, which is what then-Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene used to call for a formal investigation in Fulton County in September 2025.
Further, each ballot image created by the Dominion tabulator creates a SHA file, a hash validation code that can be used to authenticate that a ballot image is the original unedited image. Of the 148,318 ballot images created from mail-in ballots in Fulton County, only 16,034 SHA files were retained.
Physical Ballots
The physical paper ballots have been a mythical creature in Georgia, especially in Fulton County, eluding investigation since 2021. Garland Favorito’s VoterGA.org filed a lawsuit in Georgia shortly after the 2020 election. The case was abruptly dismissed on procedural grounds, specifically claiming the plaintiffs did not have standing.
Following a December 2022 decision from the Georgia Supreme Court that granted the plaintiffs standing and remanded it back to the lower courts, the case sat in limbo for over 1,130 days waiting to be assigned to a judge.
The Georgia State Election Board has submitted several subpoenas seeking to obtain the physical ballots for investigation. It wasn’t until a decision last month from Judge Robert McBurney that records sought in the subpoena were ordered to be turned over to the Board. However, physical ballots were notably absent from the order.
The Gateway Pundit also reported that in May 2021, the warehouse that was storing the physical paper ballots under the guard of the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office was left wide open for two hours. Twenty minutes after the sheriff’s two patrol cars left the parking lot, the facility’s alarm went off.
Tabulator Tapes
The Gateway Pundit has also reported on the missing tabulator tapes throughout Fulton County. The Dominion Voting tabulators and scanners create several poll tapes throughout the voting process. The first tape produced is called a “Zero Tape” and is used to ensure that there are no ballots currently stored in the system’s memory prior to an election event beginning.
Of the 148 tabulators used for advance voting, only nine Zero Tapes were produced. The Deputy County Attorney, Steve Rosenberg, claimed that the Zero Tapes were “old-style receipts” and had become “almost completely faded” due to a number of open records requests for them.
He also claimed that the Secretary of State’s Office maintained the originals (it is actually required to be held by the Superior Court, not the Secretary of State).
The “completely faded” claim fell short on two fronts. First, if the tapes faded because of being handled to fulfill other requests, the files/images shared in those fulfilled requests could have simply been forwarded or reused to fulfill future requests.
Second, if the Secretary of State (or Superior Court) had the originals, Fulton County likely maintained a photocopy or digital copy for its own record retention.
In addition to the Zero Tapes, none of the closing tapes produced had the required signatures from the poll manager and two witnesses. This accounted for over 315,000 ballots in Fulton County with a crucial link missing in the chain of custody.
Further, the closing tapes that were provided, unsigned, were created on just 16 tabulators that were not deployed for advance voting, and done so at the English Street warehouse. That warehouse, at the time, was filled with Dominion employees that were contracted to conduct a Logic and Accuracy test following a COVID outbreak in the warehouse in mid-October 2020 and were retained for the remainder of the election and beyond.
The FBI concluded its search warrant Wednesday evening and began to transport over 700 boxes of material north to Virginia. Notably, State Election Board Vice Chair Dr. Jan Johnston and Salleigh Grubbs, the newest member of the Board, were forbidden access to the warehouse during the execution of the warrant as impartial observers.
BREAKING NEWS: The FBI just seized 2020 election ballots from the Fulton County, Georgia Election Center.
The Deputy Director of the FBI is on scene,and DNI Tulsi Gabbard is expected to arrive soon, according to Heather Mullins @TalkMullins.
Border czar Tom Homan announces agreement with Minnesota Democrat officials on ICE and CBP during a Thursday press conference in Minneapolis. Credit: Fox News screenshot
President Trump’s decision to send Border Czar Tom Homan has paid dividends that should ease tensions and enable ICE and CBP agents to focus us their attention elsewhere.
During a press conference in Minneapolis on Thursday, Homan announced that he had reached an an agreement with state officials such as Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison.
Homan told reporters that Minnesota officials have agreed to hand over criminal aliens to ICE.
“What we did agree upon is not to release public safety arrests back into the community, and they can be lawfully transferred to ICE,” Homan explained to reporters.
BREAKING: Tom Homan STRIKES AGREEMENT with Minnesota Democrat officials to hand over public safety threat illegal aliens to ICE
“What we did agree upon — is NOT to release public safety arrests back into the community, and they can be lawfully transferred to ICE.”
Homan went on to explain that Minnesota officials will also notify ICE when dangerous criminal illegals are being released so that ICE can pick them up.
“Attorney General Keith Ellison clarified for me that county jails may notify ICE of the release dates of criminal public safety risks so ICE can take custody of them, upon their release from the jail,” the Border Czar said.
Due to this agreement, ICE agents will now begin pulling back in Minnesota so they can focus on other targets elsewhere.
“Yes, I said it, Draw down,” Homan quipped.
WATCH:
JUST IN: Tom Homan confirms DRAW-DOWN of ICE and CBP in Minnesota because they have gained access to illegal aliens in the jails
Funding Disparities Rebrands American Gifted Children as Mentally Ill & Paris Hilton Doesn’t Help Republished with permission from AbleChild. America is starving for gifted education while financially rewarding psychiatric labeling. … Read more
Saturday’s fatal of shooting of 37-year-old Alex Pretti by Border Patrol officers in Minneapolis, Minnesota, has prompted former President Barack Obama to weigh in.
His statement speaks volumes to his bias in favor of Democratic leadership in that state, despite their seemingly boundless incompetence.
On Sunday, Obama shared a letter from his official account on social media platform X, where he completely misrepresented who needs to work with whom.
“Federal law enforcement and immigration agents have a tough job. But Americans expect them to carry out their duties in a lawful, accountable way, and to work with, rather than against, state and local officials to ensure public safety,” the president wrote.
“That’s not what we’re seeing in Minnesota. In fact, we’re seeing the opposite.
“For weeks now, people across the country have been rightly outraged by the spectacle of masked ICE recruits and other federal agents acting with impunity and engaging in tactics that seem designed to intimidate, harass, provoke and endanger the residents of a major American city.”
The president added in another sentence, “I would hope that after this most recent tragedy, administration officials will reconsider their approach, and start finding ways to work constructively with Governor Walz and Mayor Frey as well as state and local police to avert more chaos and achieve legitimate law enforcement goals.”
The killing of Alex Pretti is a heartbreaking tragedy. It should also be a wake-up call to every American, regardless of party, that many of our core values as a nation are increasingly under assault. pic.twitter.com/0JmEsJ1QFW
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey have been the ones unwilling to work constructively with the Trump administration.
On Jan. 6 and 7, Walz referred to his situation as a “war” with the federal government.
Frey bluntly and profanely told ICE to “get the f*** out of Minneapolis.
Fortunately, some progress has been made since Obama’s message. The Hill reported Monday that President Donald Trump and Walz had what the president called a “very good call.”
“I told Governor Walz that I would have Tom Homan call him, and that what we are looking for are any and all Criminals that they have in their possession. The Governor, very respectfully, understood that, and I will be speaking to him in the near future.”
News of that call was followed by ICE Commander-at-Large Greg Bovino’s withdrawal from Minnesota, with “border czar” Tom Homan stepping in.
One would say Obama’s advice was taken, but again, note who the former president puts the onus on: Trump.
Conservatives are expected to be the adults.
Trump is expected to cross the aisle and calm down the children throwing a temper tantrum.
Obama is inadvertently admitting is party is full of overgrown babies who need real adults to step in and soothe them when things aren’t going their way.
With Winter Storm Fern wreaking havoc across the country, New England women are worried about energy affordability. Yet many do not connect rising energy costs to the state policy decisions that invited them.
According to new polling from Independent Women, 82% of New England women say they’re paying more for their electricity bills, compared with five years ago. This is the first comprehensive poll exclusively asking women—who primarily handle their household electricity bills—their attitudes on energy issues.
New England has enacted the nation’s most aggressive climate policies to phase out oil, gas, and coal and achieve a 100% renewable energy target by 2050. While it’s easy to blame utility companies and the federal government for exacerbating the electricity crisis, state policies—namely, New England’s decarbonization plans—bear more responsibility for inviting energy insecurity and associated higher costs.
Congress gave states near-exclusive power, under the Federal Power Act, to create electricity generation portfolios, determine electricity prices, and establish mandates for renewable energy generators. In the past 20 years, New England states adopted radical climate mandates to force a transition to 100% renewable energy, ban gas-powered cars, and adopt energy efficiency standards to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG).
In the last five years, costs have skyrocketed across all six New England states. Between 2019 and 2024, electricity prices across the region soared 29%—the highest regional rates in the Lower-48. The average household paid $250.82 per month in utility bills as of last November—up 50.5% from 2024, when the average regional bill was only $166.48 per month. New England rates are 67% higher compared to the national average.
New England states were early adopters of aggressive green mandates like renewable portfolio standards (RPS) and membership in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). States with RPS report higher electricity rates compared to non-RPS states. All six New England states belong to RGGI, a cap-and-trade program that has a negligible impact on carbon emissions reductions. It’s no wonder that 53% of poll respondents admitted they feel misled by state politicians about the cost and effectiveness of 100% renewable energy policies.
Independent Women’s poll also found that New England women support reliable energy sources. A plurality of New England women (42%) support an electric grid powered by both conventional and renewable energy sources.
An overwhelming majority support expanding geothermal energy (68%) and natural gas (61%), a clean-burning fuel, in the region. Support for natural gas is encouraging, despite decades’ long regional policies that discouraged or blocked new natural gas infrastructure projects.
Natural gas is a reliable, clean-burning fuel that supplies the majority of net-electricity generation in the U.S., and in New England. The recently revived Constitution Pipeline, first approved in 2014 and cancelled in 2020, is expected to deliver natural gas to New England states by 2027. A new report warned that a lack of new natural gas capacity will stress New England’s energy infrastructure and could invite “electricity reliability challenges” ahead of Winter Storm Fern.
Despite its strict green mandates, New England is still heavily reliant on natural gas, nuclear energy, and electricity imports from Canada (9%)—not renewables (12%).
Last fall, the CEO of ISO New England, the regional transmission organization overseeing the region’s electric grid and transmission, warned that wind and solar aren’t dependable sources during winter, remarking: “We cannot operate the system in the wintertime without a dependable energy source that can balance the system when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow.”
By continuing down its decarbonization path, New England, save for New Hampshire, would see energy costs spike $815 billion through 2050 over the cost of operating the current grid. But there’s a solution to the region’s self-inflicted energy crisis. A new report by Always On Energy Research and a coalition of Northeastern think tanks, “Alternatives to New England’s Energy Affordability Crisis,”argues that building natural gas and nuclear power, rather than costly, unreliable offshore wind and solar projects, will save New Englanders upwards of $700 billion in energy costs.
New England women overwhelmingly respond positively to affordable, reliable, and scalable messaging. But the poll also finds they currently trust elected Democrats on affordability issues. Democrats know they have to deliver, which is why they’re disavowing the same climate pledges that they previously championed. Conservatives, however, are uniquely positioned to appeal to women on energy issues, if they get this moment right.
Due to deregulation and abundance policies, energy inflation is down nationally. For electricity prices to decrease in New England, states must repeal expensive policies that solely push wind and solar at the expense of reliable, affordable energy sources.
Gabriella Hoffman is director of the Independent Women’s Center for Energy and Conservation. Follow her on X at @Gabby_Hoffman
This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.
