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UNBIASED Politics
January 8, 2026: ICE Shooting in Minneapolis, What We Know About the Fraud in Minnesota, CDC Changes Childhood Vaccine Schedule and Dietary Guidelines, and More.
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Welcome back to Unbiased, your favorite source of unbiased news and legal analysis. Welcome back to Unbiased Politics. Today is Thursday, January 8th. Let's talk about some news. My voice is a little better from Monday, but honestly, so many of you liked my voice in the last episode that I'm, I'm kind of worried for when my voice goes totally back to normal. Hopefully you guys don't ditch me. Just kidding. I know you, I know you would never do that. Now I did have some exciting personal news that I wanted to share with you on Monday, but I held off because I, I needed to save the little voice that I did have for the episode. So today I can finally share that I am having a baby. I have been keeping keeping this secret for quite a while now, but it's time I share because come March, which is just a couple of months away at this point, and it's honestly blowing my mind when I think about it, I'll be entering a whole new phase of life. And I know some of you are thinking, oh no, what does this mean for the podcast? Are we going to have to go without you for months? And I totally get that concern. And while I can tell you that the last thing I'm going to want to do when I have this baby is look at the news, I do still have to earn an income. So what I am going to do, and I'll remind you of this as we get closer to But I did want to give you a heads up now I am going to be releasing a six week unbiased education series. So episodes will still go out on Mondays and Thursdays. But instead of being current events based, each episode will be dedicated to a specific educational topic. So one episode will cover the First Amendment and what it, you know, what it protects and what it doesn't protect. Another episode will cover the separation of church and state and what it actually means. Another one will cover elections and lobbying and, and so on and so forth. I might, I'm, I'm, I might even, I'm contemplating throwing in some psychological episodes as well, like the science of polarization and why we're so divided. Something like that. So there's, there's definitely a ton to look forward to this year despite my upcoming temporary absence. It is going to look a little different than what you're used to, of course, but still just as valuable in my opinion, possibly even more valuable because this, this is knowledge that you can take with you and actually use when analyzing current events in the future. And when I'm back, you'll be even more educated to kind of look, look at these current events that we talk about through a different lens, having all of the knowledge that you learned as part of this six week series. As for current events, I won't be leaving you hanging on that front either because my second piece of big news is that 20, 2026 is the year I am expanding my substack. Starting next week, I will officially be launching a premium paid tier on Substack where you will be able to access written articles about current events. And those written articles will continue even after I give birth while I'm on maternity leave.
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I have already published a couple of.
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Articles just to kind of give you an idea of what you can expect if you do pay for that premium subscription. I know not everyone loves listening to a podcast. Some people absorb information better when they read it versus listen to it. So I'm really excited about this launch and to give you guys another, you know, pathway to get unbiased news outside of just this podcast. If you don't want to pay for the premium tier on Substack, you can still subscribe for free. If you are a free subscriber, you'll still get one newsletter a week and then one to two articles a week. If you're a paid subscriber, you'll get two newsletters a week and five exclusive articles each week. And again, that paid tier will be launching next week. But all of this to say that come March, you'll still be getting your fix of unbiased. One way or the other. I won't be leaving you in the dust. And yeah, I'm really excited about it. I think it'll be a great, you know, six weeks. Even though I'm not going to be on the MIC reporting on current events, I'm still going to have options for you. So with those things out of the way, let's talk about some news, starting with this Minnesota fraud scandal. This is a story that you guys have been asking me to talk about for weeks and I did talk about it back in December, but there have been some developments since then and so we'll talk about it again. Back when we talked about this in December, I had mentioned that the investigations into fraud in Minnesota did date back years, back to 2021. So this is not new, but there are a few reasons why this story is, is in, in the national spotlight right now. So the first sort of development that caused this story to come into the light was back in November when President Trump announced on Truth Social that he was going to be revoking TPS status for Somalis in Minnesota due to Franklin fraud. He wrote in that post, quote, minnesota under Governor Walls is a hub of fraudulent money laundering activity. I am as President of the United States, hereby terminating, effective immediately, the TPS program for Somalis in Minnesota. Somali gangs are terrorizing the great state or the terrorizing the people of that great state. And billions of dollars are missing. Send them back to where they came from. It's over. And if you want to know more about that part of it, like the termination of TPS status and the legalities and everything, you can, you can go ahead and listen to my December 4th episode. I did cover all. I actually did a whole Q and A about this whole fraud in Minnesota thing in that episode. And I touch on the legalities of the President terminating TPS status. Then more recently, the day after Christmas, a creator by the name of Nick Shirley posted a now viral video to YouTube titled I Investigated Minnesota's Billion Dollar Fraud Scandal. He also ended up sharing clips from that 40ish minute video to Instagram, TikTok and X where he's actually accumulated most of his views. That is where most people have seen his investigation. And we'll talk more about his video shortly. But that was the second development that kind of brought this story more into the light. And then the third development just happened. Earlier this week, in the wake of Nick Shirley's videos, the federal government announced a freeze on certain federal child care funds to Minnesota pending additional verification and documentation related to how those funds were being used. So between those three developments, everyone is talking about this fraud scandal in Minnesota and wanting to know what is actually going on. Now, what I will say at the outset is that the frame phrase Minnesota fraud scandal can be a bit misleading because there, there's no single fraud case or, you know, one coordinated fraud scheme that's driving all of this. Instead, it's multiple separate public assistance programs that are under investigation. And while these programs serve different populations and different purposes, a lot of them share a similar funding structure. And that funding structure is as follows. And the federal government provides most of the funding. The state administers the program, and the funds and providers are paid through reimbursement and just to clarify here, when I say the state administers the program and the funds, I mean that the state sets up the rules. It enrolls the providers, it processes the payments, it manages oversight. So under this reimbursement system, the providers first deliver the services. They then submit claims describing the services that they provided. The state, in this case Minnesota, then reviews those claims and pays the providers using federal or state funds. The audits and inspections usually occur later, sometimes months. It could even be years after after payments are made to the providers. So the benefit of this system is that these services can continue without delay, even during emergencies such as the pandemic. But because the system relies on documentation and honest reporting, payments are often issued to providers before detailed verification happens, which means that public assistance programs that operate under this model are more vulnerable to fraud. Now, that's not to say that reimbursement systems are inherently fraudulent. It's just to say that reimbursement systems make it easier for providers to submit false or inflated claims. And that is the issue that federal investigators are looking into in Minnesota. Now, the earliest and most widely known case in Minnesota is Feeding Our Future. Feeding Our Future was a nonprofit that administered federally funded child nutrition programs during the pandemic. Federally funded child nutrition programs are designed to reimburse organizations for meals that are served to children, typically when schools are closed and, you know, kids aren't being fed through their schools. So during breaks and over the summer. But obviously during the pandemic, schools were closed for a long time, right? So there were these emergency waivers that allowed meals to be distributed outside of traditional school settings and through non profit organizations. And Feeding Our Future was one of those nonprofit organizations. But federal prosecutors allege that Feeding Our Future and more than 200 associated meal sites submitted more than $250 million in fraudulent meal claims. So, according to the court filings, the Minnesota Department of Education was the one that first raised concerns about. About the plausibility of reported meal numbers. This was back in 2021, and that prompted an FBI investigation. Prosecutors say the organization claimed to serve tens of millions of meals across nearly 300 meal sites. But surveillance and site visits showed far less activity. Federal filings allege that only a small portion of the federal funds distributed to Feeding Our Future actually went toward food, and that most of the money went to the people that were running this organization. And, you know, the funds were used to buy nice cars and houses and all these personal items. As of late 2025, approximately 90 people had been indicted in the Feeding Our Future case, more than 60 of those people had pled guilty and multiple defendants had had been convicted at trial. They had been found guilty and that case became the starting point for additional investigations into Minnesota's public assistance programs. So investigators ended up finding fraud in several other programs, including Early Intensive Developmental and Behavioral Intervention, or eidbi, as well as Housing Stabilization Services. And these are public assistance programs that serve different purposes but operate under that same reimbursement model that we've been talking about. So we'll start with the autism services under eidbi. EIDBI is a Minnesota healthcare program that provides therapy and behavioral services to individuals that are under the age of 21 and have been diagnosed with autism. And and the program is funded through Medicaid, which is jointly funded by the federal government and the state. Prosecutors allege that this scheme involving EIDBI involved recruiting children, helping them obtain autism diagnoses, and then paying parents cash kickbacks based on the number of authorized services that those children were able to obtain through their diagnosis. According to a DOJ press release, at least one provider allegedly used unqualified behavioral technicians to care for and evaluate children, often younger relatives of the provider who lacked adequate training or certification. The DOJ alleges that claims were either inflated or just simply submitted for services that were never provided and that these false and inflated claims resulted in more than $6 million in improper payments. Prosecutors say these reimbursements were used for personal spending similar to Feeding Our Future, as well as overseas money transfers. And at least one defendant in the Autism Services investigation has also been linked to the Feeding Our Future case. The next example is Housing Stabilization Services. Housing stabilization Services, or HSS, is a Medicaid benefit launched by Minnesota in 2020. It was designed to help people with disabilities, mental illnesses or substance substance use disorders find and maintain housing. The program does not pay for housing itself, but it pays for certain services that that are that are utilized in finding housing. So housing consultations. For example, federal prosecutors alleged that out of state actors enrolled as providers for HSS traveled to Minnesota to recruit beneficiaries, created false documentation and submitted false claims totaling approximately three and a half million dollars. According to DOJ filings, providers allegedly created fake housing plans, inflated time logs and double billed for services that were not placed plausible. And Minnesota, by the way, has since shut down that HHSS program. Now let's talk about the child care component and the viral clips or the viral video that that Nick Shirley posted. So the day after Christmas, Nick Shirley posted this 40ish minute video to YouTube where he can be seen visiting various daycare facilities in Minnesota, as well as some autism centers. And in approaching most of the facilities, he uses the same approach. Right. He'll show a paper to the camera detailing how much money that facility has received in federal funding. And then he goes to the door of the facility and attempts to speak with someone at each facility during normal daycare hours. In some cases, no one answers the door at all. In other cases, they do answer the door. In, in. In the instances where someone answers the door, he will ask various questions. So. And the questions differ based on where he goes. So in one instance, when someone answers the door, Shirley attempts to enter the daycare. He wants to look around, and he's denied. In another instance, when someone answers the door, he asks if he can enroll his son in the daycare, and he's told that he has to talk to a manager. He. He asks if he can at least have the paperwork to start the enrollment process, but he's told he can't. At one of the autism centers that he went to, he asks how many kids are enrolled at the center. And the man who answered the door can't give a definitive answer. So according to Shirley, and the case that Shirley's making in this documentary is that these interactions are evidence that the centers are not providing services despite receiving federal funding. And just to be clear about how Minnesota's child care funding works, Minnesota's Child Care Assistance Program, or CCAP, as it's called, is supported by federal funds, and it subsidizes child care for low income families so that parents can work or go to school themselves. And program providers have to be licensed or registered with the state. Payments to those providers are typically based on reports, reported attendance and eligibility, and providers are subject to licensing, inspections, audits, and compliance reviews. But as I said earlier, these inspections, audits, and compliance reviews can take months, sometimes years to happen after payment has been issued. So CCAP operates mostly on that reimbursement model that we've now talked about a couple of times, which means providers are paid first and reviewed later. And again, this helps childcare remain accessible, but it also means that these kinds of programs are vulnerable to fraud. Now, Shirley's video and the accompanying clips that have been posted to social media really got people talking even more than they had been before about Minnesota. And in response to those videos, Minnesota regulators went ahead and conducted on site compliance checks at the centers that Shirley had visited. And state officials noted that most of these centers that they had conducted these compliance checks at were operating as expected and had children present. They noted that one center was closed but had an active license. They noted that several centers had prior safety or administrative citations. And then finally that some, some investigations are ongoing, that while the inspections did not find evidence of criminal wrongdoing, they are merely preliminary compliance tools, and that these, these facilities will essentially need to be looked into. More. At the federal level, the response to Shirley's video was the freezing of funds. So the HHS went ahead and froze certain federal childcare funds to Minnesota pending further verification and review. And also alongside that, announced new verification request requirements. So that is what, you know, what's developed on the fraud front since we last talked about it in December. Now, where does the Somali community fit into this? Because as we know, Trump's truth Social post said that Minnesota was a hub of fraudulent money laundering and that Somali gangs were involved in that. Minnesota is the it's home to the largest Somali population in the United States. Today, it's estimated that around 80,000 Somali immigrants live in Minnesota. And many of these Somali immigrants are US Citizens, and a large share of them were born in the United States. Nationally, according to the Census Bureau, about 73% of Somali immigrants are naturalized U.S. citizens. What we know from court records is that a substantial number of individuals charged in the various Minnesota fraud cases are of Somali descent. According to the U.S. attorney's office for Minnesota, among defendants accused in fraud in child nutrition, housing services, and autism programs, 82 of the 92 defendants are Somali Americans. So obviously, 82 Somalis is a small, small, small fraction of the entire Somali population in Minnesota. But because most of those indicted for fraud are of Somali descent, that is why Somalis are being highlighted. Let's take our first break here. When we come back, we'll talk about the changes to the childhood vaccine schedule as well as the new dietary guidelines and more. Okay, listen, I know, even though sometimes.
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On Tuesday, the CDC director signed what's called a Decision Memorandum and accepting updates to the US Childhood Immunization Schedule. Now the the Childhood Immunization Schedule is the federal government's set of recommendations for which vaccines children should receive and when they should receive them. These are recommendations. They are not mandates. And if we were to summarize what what the CDC changed here, it would be this. So the CDC essentially reduced the number of vaccines that it universally recommends for all children from 17 down to 11. However, no vaccines were eliminated. No vaccines were banned. No vaccines were removed from insurance coverage. Instead, the schedule was reorganized. Now, before we go any further into this, one important reminder is this. While the federal government issues vaccine recommendations, state governments control vaccine requirements. And this includes what's required for public school attendance for kids. Those state requirements do not automatically change when the CDC updates its guidance so as far as vaccine requirements for children, nothing has changed there. I just want to be clear on that. But let's talk about what prompted this CDC change and then we'll eventually get into what has officially changed. Back in December, President Trump issued a presidential memo directed to the HHS secretary as well as the director of the cdc. And the memo argued that the United States had become an outlier among peer nations because it it was recommending vaccines for 18 diseases as part of its routine childhood schedule. And just a quick note here about the numbers. So some reports are describing the change as a reduction from 17 vaccines to 11. Others are describing it as a reduction from 18 to 11. So as an example, we just saw President Trump in his memo cited 18 vaccines. And this discrepancy stems from whether the COVID vaccine is counted as part of the routine childhood schedule. And as of October 2025, the CDC did away with the universal recommendation for the COVID vaccine. So technically, this latest update from the cdc, this update from this week, reduced the number of universally recommended vaccines from 17 to 11, not 18 to 11, because the 18th vaccine, the COVID vaccine, has not been universally recommended since October. So I hope that makes sense. But I did want to clear up why you'll see some reports saying 17 to 11, others saying 18 to 11. Getting back to Trump's memo, though, in referencing the United States as a global outlier compared to peer countries, the memo cited Denmark, for example, which recommends vaccines for 10 diseases, Japan, which recommends vaccines for 14 diseases, and Germany, which recommends vaccines for 15 diseases. Based on those numbers. The memo directed the HHS secretary and CDC director to conduct this review of the vaccination practices in peer countries and evaluate whether those countries approaches were supported by stronger scientific evidence than the evidence the US Was using, and if so, to update the US Schedule accordingly. So that review was completed and ultimately published on January 2. We know that the review compared the United States to 20 peer developed nations, including but not limited to Denmark, Japan, Germany, Austria, Spain and the UK and that the review examined several specific factors, like the number of diseases targeted, the total number of recommended vaccine doses, vaccine uptake rates, public confidence in immunization, clinical evidence, data gaps, as well as the role of vaccine mandates. And one of the key conclusions after this review was that the United States had in fact become this global outlier in both the number of diseases included in its routine vaccine schedule and the number of recommended doses without consistently achieving higher vaccination rates than countries with smaller schedules. And these are some of the numbers that the assessment relied so in 1980, the United States childhood vaccine schedule included 23 total doses covering seven diseases. By 2024, that schedule had expanded to at least 84 total doses covering 17 diseases. In 2024, the United States recommended vaccines for 18 diseases, which was more than any of the 20 peer nations reviewed. And at the same time, the review states that public trust in healthcare declined in the United States. So as evidence, the review site's data that shows between 2020 and 2024, trust fell from 71 and a half percent to 40.1%. And the assessment noted that this decline coincided with COVID era policies like school closures, lockdowns, mandatory face masks, vaccine mandates and, you know, just other public health directives surrounding the pandemic. During that Same time period, 2020 to 2024, MMR vaccine rates dropped from 95.2% to 92.7%, which the authors of the review attribute to a lack of public trust in healthcare. The assessment also found that many peer nations with fewer recommended vaccines still maintain strong child health outcomes and high vaccination rates, which suggested to the authors that a larger schedule doesn't automatically lead to better uptake or better outcomes. It also noted that unlike the United States, most peer nations do not rely heavily on vaccine mandates yet still achieve high voluntary vaccination rates. So based on those findings that we just went over, the assessment recommended reorganizing the childhood immunization schedule into three categories. And again, this is important. The assessment did not recommend eliminating any vaccines. So the first category is vaccines recommended for all children. These are referred to as consensus vaccines and these include the vaccines for measles, mumps, rubella, polio, pertussis, tetanus, diphtheria, hemophilus, influenza type B, pneumococcal disease, HPV and chickenpox. The second category includes vaccines recommended for certain high risk children. This is based on health status, environment or exposure. And then the third category includes vaccines recommended through shared clinical decision making, meaning the decision is made through discussions between families and healthcare providers and it's based on individual risk factors. So vaccines like hepatitis A, influenza, menggal disease, rotavirus, RSV and Covid were placed either in the high risk category or the shared decision making category. The hepatitis B birth dose, because there are two doses of that, so there's a birth dose and then a two month dose. The hepatitis B birth dose for babies born to Hep B negative moms was also moved into that shared decision making category and then the assessment also recommended certain dosing changes. So one example of this is moving to a single dose HPV schedule instead of two separate doses. And again, that's just a dose change. The HPV vaccine is still recommended for all children. So after reviewing that assessment, CDC Director Jim o' Neill adopted the recommendations on Tuesday. As a result, the CDC now universally recommends 11 vaccines for all children, and that's down from 17. And again, those 11 vaccines recommended for all children are measles, mumps, rubella, polio, pertussis, tetanus, diphtheria, hemophilus, influenza, type B, pneumococcal disease, HPV and chickenpox. The six vaccines that are no longer universally recommended but are still recommended for higher risk children or through shared decision making are rsv, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, menococcal disease, rotavirus and influenza. Now, some healthcare professionals have criticized the updated recommendations, arguing that comparing the United States to smaller countries like Denmark fails to account for differences in things like population size, healthcare systems as well as disease dynamics. Others worry that reducing universal recommendations could increase the risk of outbreaks for certain diseases. The American Medical association issued a statement expressing concern that changes of this scale typically require broader scientific review, expert input as well as public engagement. And public health experts at institutions like John Hopkins have raised similar concerns. Supporters of the update, on the other hand, argue that it restores clinical discretion, it encourages individualized care, and it might help rebuild trust in vaccination following declines that were seen between 2020 and 2024. So what happens next? Well, the CDC's updated recommendations are now in effect, right? But again, these are recommendations. They are not mandates. And state vaccine requirements remain unchanged unless those states choose to revise their own policies. From a financial standpoint, federal health officials have said that vaccines currently recommended by the CDC will continue to be covered by insurance without cost sharing and that families will not lose access or face new out of pocket costs as a result of this change. So in short, these changes affect how vaccines are recommended and categorized by the government, not whether they are available to all children or how much they cost. Speaking of the cdc, the updated dietary guidelines were also released this week, and they didn't really change as much as some expected. But the new recommendations do represent some of the biggest changes to federal dietary guidelines since they were first issued in 1980. Basically, the Dietary Guidelines for Americans are it's the government's official nutrition recommendation for the public, like the vaccine schedule. These are just recommendations. They're not mandates. However, they are used to shape various federal feeding programs like Head Start, which provides millions of school lunches every day and lunches for active duty service members as well as veterans. The guidelines are jointly issued by the Department of Agriculture as well as the HHS and they are updated every five years. And that is by law they have to be updated every five years. So the previous guidelines were issued in 2020 and they provided guidance through 2025 and these new guidelines will provide guidance through 2030. Let's talk about what changed. The previous guidelines from 2020 recommended eating roughly equal parts grains, actually not even roughly equal parts grains and proteins and then slightly more vegetables than fruits. The government also previously recommended eating mostly low fat or fat free dairy, milk or yogurt. The new recommendations focus mainly on protein and vegetables, saying those things should make up the biggest portion of the American diet. Then healthy fats, dairy and fruit and then whole grains should make up the smallest portion of the American diet. The new guidelines say, quote, we are ending the war on protein. Every meal must prioritize high quality, nutrient dense protein from both animal and plant sources paired with healthy fats and from whole foods such as eggs, seafood, meats, full fat dairy, nuts, seeds, olives and avocados, end quote. The guidelines also put the protein target at around 0.54 to 0.73 grams per pound of body weight per day. So if you weigh 150 pounds, it's recommended that you eat between 81 and 110 grams of protein each day. For fruits and vegetables, it's now recommended that everyone has three servings of vegetables per day and two servings of fruits, fruit per day, regardless of how much you weigh. And then for whole grains, it's recommended that everyone has two to four servings per day. And you might remember this is very different from that traditional food pyramid that we're used to from the 90s, which by the way, I don't think it's been in effect since for at least the last 10 years. But you know the food pyramid I'm talking about where it had the breads and the whole grains at the very bottom, the base of the pyramid, which was supposed to make up the bulk of the American diet. Now it's kind of flipping that on its head and saying, no, no, no, whole grains should, should make up the least of the American diet. The guidelines say, quote, whole grains are encouraged, refined carbohydrates are not prioritize fiber rich whole grains and significantly reduce the consumption of highly processed refined carbohydrates that displace real nourishment, end quote. So whole grains are things like Whole wheat, oats, brown rice, quinoa, barley. Whereas refined carbs are things like white bread, white rice, most cereals, pasta, you know, the more processed things. So in a nutshell, no pun intended, the new guidelines put more of an emphasis on protein and more of an more of an emphasis on full fat dairy. They also recommend limiting alcohol consumption for quote, unquote, better overall health, which is actually a much more generalized recommendation than the previous recommendation of limiting consumption to one drink per day for women and two drinks per day for men. Per the new guidelines, no amount of added sugar is healthy and adults should limit their intake to no more than 10 grams per meal. The previous recommendation was to limit added sugars to less than 10% of daily calories. And then finally, the new guidelines recommend cooking with healthy fats, quote, unquote, like olive oil, butter and beef tallow. Butter and beef tallow have specifically drawn some criticism because they're both high in saturated fat, which is known to raise the risk of heart disease and weight gain. But supporters of butter and beef tallow argue that these both have important vitamins. Beef tallow, for example, has vitamins A, D, E and K plus monounsaturated fats and conjugated linoleic acid, or cla, which has been shown to have anti inflammatory benefits. Butter similarly has vitamins A, D, E and K2. So you have people on both sides of that debate. Notably, while the American Medical association questioned the CDC's changes to the childhood vaccine schedule, it applauded the CDC's new dietary guidelines. So the president of the American Medical association said in a statement, quote, the American Medical association applauds the administration's new dietary guidelines regulation for spotlighting the highly processed foods, sugar, sweetened beverages and excess sodium that fuels heart disease, diabetes, obesity and other chronic illnesses. The guidelines affirm that food is medicine and offer clear direction to patients of clear direction patients and physicians can use to improve health, end quote. A former FDA commissioner also came out in support of the new guidelines saying, quote, there should be broad agreement that eating more whole foods and reducing highly processed carbohydrates and is a major advance in how we approach diet and health, end quote. But of course, there are also critics. As with anything, some health organizations and nutrition researchers argue that the new guidelines focus on red meat and saturated fats. Butter, beef tallow goes against decades of evidence linking high saturated fat intake with heart disease and elevated LDL cholesterol levels. So like I said, these are simply recommendations, not mandates. The new guidelines will have the biggest impact on the National School Lunch Program, which is required to follow the guidelines. But even when it comes to school lunches, it can take years for the Agriculture Department to actually, you know, translate the new recommendations into specific requirements for schools. So how much these new guidelines actually affect school lunches is, you know, it remains to be seen. Let's take our second and final break here. When we come back, we'll talk about what we know about the ice shooting in Minneapolis and then we'll finish with quick hitters and critical thinking. Some of us like to kick off.
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The new year with a nice little wardrobe refresh.
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Right?
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Okay, on the break, my voice started to get a little. I, I don't, I'm like going through, I was going through a coughing fit on the break. So I'm gonna hope hopefully get through this last third of the episode just fine. But we will see how this goes. All right. A 37 year old woman named Renee Nicole Good was shot and killed by an ice agent in Minneapolis on Wednesday. Conflicting narratives have arisen over what led to the shooting. So we'll first talk about what we can say see from the at least three different video angles that are available to us. We'll also talk about what each side is alleging and Then I will, of course, encourage you to watch the videos for yourself so you can actually come to your own conclusion. So we know that ICE officers were conducting operations in Minneapolis when the shooting happened. We don't know exactly what operation ICE was conducting, but it was an operation of some kind. According to the Minneapolis police chief, the victim does not appear to have been the target of the operation, but. But it is unclear at this time why she was where she was at the time of the shooting. In the clearest video of all three angles that we have, you can see a burgundy Honda SUV parked perpendicular in the street, blocking the street. Essentially, that is the car that Renee Goode was in. Goode can be seen waving cars to go around her. And one gray suv, presumably an ICE vehicle, does drive around her car. But then this gray pickup truck pulls up to the Honda and parks. Two law enforcement agents get out of the pickup truck, and they both start walking toward the Honda. As the agents approach the Honda, one of the agents starts pulling on the driver's door handle, telling the driver to get out of the car. Meanwhile, there's two other agents on the other side of Good's car. And when. When the one agent starts pulling on the driver's door handle, that's when Goode reverses her car before starting to pull away. Now, when the Honda reverses, when Goode reverses her car, one of the agents that was standing on the passenger side of the car ends up in front of the car. So as Goode pulls forward to drive off, the agent standing in front of her car appears to either move backwards slightly or fall backwards slightly. And that is when the agent fires the shots and ultimately kills Good. The car then rolls to a stop, crashing into a parked car and a light pole on the side of the street. And the agents can be seen running towards the car. Now, I want you to notice how I said that the agent was. The agent that was in front of the car, the one that ultimately fired the shots, either moved backwards or fell backwards slightly before firing. The video quality isn't great, so we can't definitively tell what happened. We can tell, though, that the wheels, the front wheels of Goode's car, were turned away from the agent as if she was steering in the opposite direction of him or trying to avoid him. And all of these facts matter because both sides are telling their own story. So it matters whether Good's wheels were turned away from the agent. It matters whether the agent was slightly hit by the car, you know, as the car was pulling away, or instead if the agent voluntarily moved out of the way and was never hit. Because the administration is relying on the fact that the agent was hit or at least was in fear of being hit, saying the shots were fired in self defense, whereas those on the other side of this are saying it doesn't look like he was hit, but even if he was hit, the wheels were turned away from the agent and the impact was so minimal that it wouldn't justify multiple shots being fired. As always, I do recommend that you watch the videos for yourself so you can come to your own conclusion on this. And as I said, there are multiple different angles. So in the Sources section of this episode, I have linked a couple of different YouTube links just to kind of make sure you see all of those angles. Since the shooting, the administration and Minnesota state officials have had very different takes on this. Just to illustrate, DHS Secretary Noem called the victim a domestic terrorist, while Minnesota Governor Walz called the administration a propaganda machine. So Noem gave the administration's version of the facts during Wednesday's press conference and said, quote, at 10:25am Central Time, immigration and Customs Enforcement were carrying out lawful operations. And here in Minneapolis, because of the adverse weather that Minneapolis has seen and recent snow, one of the vehicles became stuck and ensnared in the snow. It's unclear which vehicle she's referring to. Law enforcement were attempting to push out this vehicle when a mob of agitators that were harassing them all day began blocking them in, shouting at them and impeding law enforcement operations. ICE officers and agents approached the vehicle of an individual in question of the individual in question who was blocking the officers in with her vehicle and she had been stalking and impeding their work all throughout the day. ICE agents repeatedly ordered her to get out of the car and to stop obstructing law enforcement, but she refused to obey their commands. She then proceeded to weaponize her vehicle and she attempted to run a law enforcement officer over. This appears as an attempt to kill or cause bodily harm to agents in act of domestic terrorism. The ICE officer, fearing for his life and the other officers around him as well as the safety of the public, fired defensive shots. He was treated at a local hospital and has been released and is now with family. I encourage the American people at this time to pray for him, but also pray for the deceased family and her loved ones. End quote. President Trump similarly wrote in his own post on Truth Social in part, quote, I've just viewed the clip of the event which took place in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In a horrible thing to Watch the woman driving the car was very disorderly, obstructing and resisting, who then violently, willfully and viciously ran over the ICE officer who seems to have shot her in self defense, end quote. By contrast, Governor Walz said at his press conference, quote, we've been warning for weeks that the Trump administration's dangerous, sensationalized operations are a threat to our public safety, that someone was going to get hurt. Just yesterday I said exactly that. What we're seeing is a consequence of governance designed to generate fear, headlines and conflict. It's governing by reality tv. And today that recklessness cost someone their life, end quote. In a subsequent post on X, Walls replied to the DHS's account of the facts, writing in part, quote, I've seen the video. Don't believe this propaganda machine, end quote. Minneapolis Police Chief Brian o' Hara gave his account of the incident, saying, quote, the preliminary information that we have indicates this woman was in her vehicle and was blocking the roadway. At some point, a federal law enforcement officer approached her on foot and the vehicle began to drive off. At least two shots were fired. The vehicle then crashed on the side of the roadway. There is nothing to indicate that this woman was the target of any law enforcement investigation or activity. The woman was in her car and appears, and it appears then blocking the street because of the presence of federal law enforcement, which is obviously something that's been happening not only in Minneapolis, but around this country, end quote. Now, was this shooting legally justified? Per the DHS Use of Force policy? To justify the use of deadly force, an agent has to have the reasonable belief that the subject, in this case the driver, poses an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury either to the agent or to someone else when it comes to moving vehicles. Specifically, the policy says, quote, dhs agents are prohibited from discharging firearms at the operator of a moving vehicle unless the use of deadly force is justified under the standards articulated elsewhere in this policy, end quote. So in other words, DHS agents cannot fire at the driver of a moving vehicle unless they have the reasonable belief that the driver poses an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury. So whether the shots were justified here, whether the use of deadly force was justified, comes down to whether this agent had a reasonable belief that Renee Goode posed an imminent threat of death or bodily injury either to him or someone else. Now you might ask, okay, what does reasonable belief mean? And according to the Supreme Court, when it comes to deadly force, this is an objective standard, meaning the reasonableness of an agent's use of deadly force has to be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene rather than with the 2020 vision of hindsight. The question is at the moment that the shots were fired, regardless of what happened leading up to that moment, regardless of the actions the officer took beforehand, regardless of the actions that the subject took beforehand, would a reasonable officer have believed in that moment that the shots were fired, that the driver posed an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury? That's the question. And in answering that question, courts do allow for the fact that agents are usually forced to make split second decisions in situations that can be tense, that can be uncertain, that can be rapidly evolving. So there is quite a lot of difference given to law enforcement officers. Quickly before we jump off to quick hitters, the latest update in this story is that Minnesota state officials have said that they have been forced off this case and are unable to investigate the shooting because the FBI has taken over the investigation. I have not had a chance to look into this development, nor have I had a chance to look into the legalities of what this means. So I will continue to look into that over the weekend and if there's more to report on, I will include it in Monday's episode. Let's now do some quick hitters. A 26 year old named William DeFore is facing federal and local charges after allegedly vandalizing Vice President Vance's home in Cincinnati. The incident happened around 12:15am Monday while the Vice president and his wife were in Washington, D.C. and because Vance's home is protected by federal authorities, the suspect first tried breaking the windows of a Secret Service car that was blocking Vance's driveway. An agent allegedly ordered the suspect to stop and to drop all of his weapons, but the suspect ignored those commands and then proceeded to use a hammer to break glass windows across the front front of Vance's home. The suspect ultimately dropped the hammer and ran off before being taken into custody. And the suspect. The suspect did make his first court appearance on his local charges Tuesday. His bond was set at $11,000, but then hours later. So the same day he appeared in federal court and was ordered to remain in custody until a detention hearing on Friday. Minnesota Governor Walls has ended his bid for a third term less than four months after announcing his reelection campaign. He said on Monday, quote, I came to the conclusion that I can't give a political campaign my all. Every minute I spend defending my own political interests would be a minute I can't spend defending the people of Minnesota against the criminals who prey on our generosity and the cynics who prey on our differences. So I've decided to step out of the race and let others worry about the election while I focus on the work. End quote. President Trump has called on Congress to ban large institutional investors from buying single family homes, saying corporations are putting homes out of reach for first time buyers. Large firms really started buying homes after the 2008 financial crisis. It's estimated that they currently own about 4% of the homes on the market. But importantly, in order for this to take effect, Congress would have to pass a law so nothing changes just because the President says so. This is something that would require an act by the legislature. Five Republicans joined all Democrats in advancing a Senate bill to limit US Military action in Venezuela. The bill would essentially end any additional military operations involving Venezuela without explicit congressional approval. Now, this advancement simply begins debate in the Senate. It still has to pass both the Senate once it gets debated on, or I should say still has to pass the Senate once it gets debated on as well as the House if it passes the Senate, and then it'll go to President Trump's desk for signature. If Trump is unwilling to sign the bill into law because obviously it's, you know, a limitation on his, his war powers, the House and Senate would need a two thirds vote to override his veto. And a federal judge said today that the Trump Administration's pick for U.S. attorney for the Northern District of New York was appointed unlawfully and must stop his work on two ongoing criminal investigations in to New York Attorney General Letitia James. This ruling does follow similar decisions from courts in New Jersey, Nevada, California and Virginia. All right, we're going to finish this episode with critical thinking per usual. Just as a reminder, this segment is not meant to be too complex. It is not meant to say stump you. It's just to, you know, challenge you, get you using parts of your brain you might not use as often as you should. So for today's segment, let's revisit the incident in Minneapolis. DHS Secretary Noem referred to Renee Good's actions as an act of domestic terrorism. What we're going to do here is we're going to play a game of lawyer up. Okay? These are the rules. I'm going to give you the definition of the crime. You have to play the government's lawyer and the victim's lawyer, not simultaneously take one at a time. So pick whichever side you want first, but you have to ultimately represent both sides. This is the federal government's definition of domestic terrorism. Domestic terrorism involves ideologically driven crimes committed by individuals in the United States that are intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population or influence the policy or conduct of of a government. I'll repeat that. Ideologically driven crimes committed by individuals in the United States that are intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population or influence the policy or conduct of government. So as the government's lawyer, you need to make the case for why Renee Goode's actions constituted domestic terrorism per this definition. And then as Good's lawyer, you need to make the case for why her actions did not meet the definition of domestic terrorism. And keep in mind, we do not know for certain what this woman's ideological views are. But you can take that, that piece of this that we don't know for certain into consideration as you think about this. That is what I have for you today. Thank you so much for being here. Have a fantastic what is it? Weekend, I guess, right? Last episode of the week. Have a great weekend and I will talk to you again on Monday. RA.