The Hasan Piker Gavin Newsom Situation Has Divided The Internet & Trump’s Minnesota Surrender
PDS Published 02/12/2026
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ICE is finally getting out of Minnesota… maybe. We’ll see.
Right, where we’ll start is with this announcement from Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, this morning, and I apologize in advance that he has the stage presence of soggy whole grain bread. [Lead B roll into clip]
[Clip, 02:10 - 02:16; Clip, 12:21 - 12:29, 13:27 - 13:28, 13:40 - 13:46] Caption: “As a result of this surge operation we have greatly reduced the number of targets for enforcement action. … I’m also pleased to report that we’re seeing a notable decrease in unlawful agitator activity here in Minneapolis and overall throughout the state. … With that, … I have proposed, and President Trump has concurred, that this surge operation conclude.”
With him saying that a “significant” drawdown” has already begun this week and will continue into next week, though he didn’t specify exactly how many agents are leaving.
Right, at its peak, there were reportedly some 3,000 federal agents there, then recently Homan said 700 would leave immediately, so it’s unclear what number will remain after all’s said and done.
And this comes as the White House quietly finished pulling all federalized national guard troops out of U.S. cities last month, namely from Los Angeles, Chicago and Portland. [Headline]
But let me be clear: this does not mean ICE is disappearing from Minnesota, nor does it mean Trump’s mass deportation campaign is ending, nor does it mean the national guard is gone for good.
Quite the contrary, Homan stressed that authorities will continue enforcing immigration law and prosecuting so-called “agitators” in Minnesota, and as for the national guard, Trump warned:
“We will come back, perhaps in a much different and stronger form, when crime begins to soar again - Only a question of time!” [Post]
Plus there are still over 2,500 guard in D.C., since technically they have a non-federal status, and more guard remain in Memphis and New Orleans, where Trump funds them but the states’ governors control them.
Now as for Minnesota, the Trump regime’s casting its intervention as an unambiguous success, claiming they’ve arrested more than 4,000 people there.
But critics see it differently, arguing that’s not a big number compared to what they’re aiming for, plus we have no idea how many of those people were actually “the worst of the worst,” though the data suggests very few.
Right, CBS just reported that less than 14% of the nearly 400,000 immigrants arrested by ICE during Trump’s first year back had charges or convictions for violent criminal offenses. [Quote, first line]
But also, you’ve gotta ask, were even the arguably good arrests worth all of the chaos, unrest, civil rights violations, and needless deaths and state executions?
Right, I mean, they came in like a tornado, left a beaten and battered city in their wake, and for what?
But whatever the case may be, it looks like the Trump administration is ramping up its war on immigrants in other ways.
With sources telling NBC that over the past several months, DHS has been exploring legal methods of stripping citizenship from naturalized citizens. [Quote, find “several months”]
Now for context, denaturalization has been used only in very rare cases, usually when someone concealed their criminal history or human rights violations during their application.
But one source says the goal now is to supply the office of immigration litigation with 100 to 200 possible cases per month, and that’s backed up by previous New York Times reporting. [Quote same link, find “200 cases”]
Which is crazy high, because throughout Trump’s entire first term, he filed a total of 102 cases. [Quote same link, find “102”]
So to pull this off, reportedly officials are seeking shortcuts to speed up the process, reassigning staff members and sending experts to field offices around the country.
Leading people to fear they’ll have their citizenship stripped based on technicalities or something trivial in their background Trump’s team can use to argue that they don’t meet the “good moral character” standard set by the law.
But advocates warn that even if they don’t succeed, the effort alone could create a climate of fear where even millions of citizens have to think twice about attending a protest, posting on social media or saying something critical of the regime lest they become a target for denaturalization.
Because this administration has made it clear; they don’t care if you’re legal or illegal, criminal or or not, they want you out.
Right, Trump’s asked the Supreme Court to end birthright citizenship, he’s revoked people’s visas, he’s gone after green card holders, he’s halted asylum applications, he’s banned travel from dozens of countries, he’s even apparently singled out specific ethnic groups like Somalis or Haitians for accelerated removals. [Headline, headline, headline, headline, headline, headline, headline]
And of course, Stephen Miller’s known to have pressured DHS staff to deport as many people as possible as quickly as possible, criminals or not, with him setting that infamous “3,000 arrests per day” goal. [Image]
So critics argue that you only take this numbers first, details second approach if you don’t care about actually catching criminals or making people safer; you just wanna scrub the “homeland” of people who don’t look like you.
And certainly both Trump and Miller have at the very least nodded in that direction — right, I don’t need to go down the list of comments they’ve made about the “third world” and “Western civilization.” [B roll, 00:27]
But you can see it even more explicitly in some of their lower-level underlings, especially the folks running their social media accounts.
Right, because we’ve talked before about how different government agencies have been posting a steady stream of content that’s widely seen as Nazi or white nationalist coded.
Like this ICE recruitment ad overlayed with the text “We’ll have our home again,” which is the title of a white nationalist song. [Image]
With DHS mouthpiece Tricia McLaughlin [Mick-lock-linn] claiming that’s just a coincidence, except the Instagram version of the post included audio from the song itself in the background. [Quote, find “Instagram”]
Well now, we know for sure, if we didn’t already, that the people behind this kind of content aren’t just rogue staffers who got their hands on some social media handles.
Because Trump’s team just picked out one of them, a 21-year-old kid named Peyton Rollins, and promoted him to one of its top media communications roles. [Webpage]
Right, for most of the past year, he’s been the digital content manager for the Department of Labor, a relatively small part of the executive branch, but he clearly made a name for himself.
With him taking credit for the massive banner featuring Trump’s face that you’ll find hung over the Department’s headquarters. [Third image from top, the one of the building]
Also, one post he made featured 11 stars, the same number as a Confederate flag, as well as a font known as Fraktur that was used in early Nazi government documents and on the original cover of Mein Kampf. [Post]
Then, by early January, a colleague flagged nearly 20 examples of posts that included phrases associated with QAnon, as well as violent language and a recurrent antisemitic trope. [Quote, find “nearly 20”]
With The Times reporting that more than a dozen internal emails and Microsoft Teams conversations within the department expressed similar concerns to superiors. [Quote, find “dozen”]
But did the leadership fire Rollins, reign him in, hell even just take down the posts? Nah.
Instead, they gave him a huge promotion, plucking him out of the Labor Department and making him digital communications director for DHS.
A Department with nearly fifteen times as many employees and five times the number of social media followers.
So that tells you all you need to know about what “meritocracy” means for this administration, though it really shouldn’t be that surprising.
Right, I don’t think anyone honest who watched the Pam Bondi hearing yesterday would claim that she’s there because she’s the most qualified person for the job.
Speaking of which, there’s one thing many people missed from that clown show that’s now blown up into a scandal around whether she’s a “creep.”
Right, because you may have noticed that her aids had large white binders similar to the one she had in front of her, and they frequently passed her notes or directed her to specific pages in her own materials.
Now most people just saw that as kind of pathetic — right, who brings opposition research to a Congressional hearing? — but then a photographer noticed something.
When Bondi was sparring with Pramila Jayapal, she had a document titled “Jayapal Pramila Search History” that appeared to list things the lawmaker had searched in the DOJ’s secure Epstein files database. [Image]
And you have Nancy Mace, one of the few Republican women who signed onto the petition to release the files early on, confirming that. [Lead B roll into clip]
[Clip, 00:07 - 00:19, 00:30 - 00:41] Caption: “They are tracking every file that we open and when we open it. They are tracking everything. And you can see the way that they’re tracking you when you’re logged in if you know where to look. … They give each of us a log-in with our name attached to it, and every single file that we open, regardless of if we even read it, every single file we open, that file is tagged with our name.”
Now in response to this, we’ve seen Democrats lose their shit, with for example Jamie Raskin calling it outrageous, Orwellian, and a violation of the separation of powers. [Lead B roll into clip]
[Clip, 00:25 - 00:29] Caption: “We have reason to believe that it was happening to everybody that went over there.”
As well as Jayapal herself telling MSNOW: [Lead B roll into clip]
[Clip, 01:14 - 01:28, 02:59 - 03:07] Caption: “Why was it that she brought that in her binder, which we call her burn book? Was she gonna use that against me? Did they get that document for every single person, and what were they gonna do with it? … It’s really creepy, and every American should be creeped out by the fact that the Department of Justice is spying on members of Congress.”
Now when he was asked about it, House Speaker Mike Johnson said it “would be inappropriate” if the DOJ was monitoring Jayapal’s search history, but added that he hasn’t seen the reports and didn’t want to comment on unsubstantiated allegations. [Post]
And as of right now, neither Bondi nor the DOJ have commented on this, though that may be because they’ve got other stuff to worry about.
Right, because now both Pam Bondi and Kristi Noem are being sued for government censorship.
With the suit alleging that last summer, the pair began targeting speech related to the locations of ICE operations and framing the documentation of agents as violence against them. [Quote, find “framing”]
And specifically, Bondi said on Fox News that the developer of ICEBlock, an app that allowed users to report ICE activity, “better watch out” and claimed it wasn’t protected speech. [Quote same link]
Then, just a few months later, Apple removed it and similar apps from its app store, and Bondi publicly boasted that the move was in response to DOJ’s demands, according to the complaint. [Quote same link, find “boasted”]
Also, around the same time, Facebook disabled a similar group called “ICE Sightings—Chicagoland,” and once again both Bondi and Noem allegedly took credit for that. [Quote same link, find “credit”]
So we’ll see how that lawsuit plays out; on one side you’ve got the regime saying its just defending its agents against doxxing, and on the other side you’ve got critics accusing it of killing free speech.
But whoever’s right, one thing’s clear: the Trump regime is losing the narrative war.
Right, poll after poll shows a strong majority of Americans agreeing that ICE has gone too far, that they’re not making people safer. [Quote, first line]
And with so many independents souring on Trump now, it looks like he’s even lost the political advantage he enjoyed over Democrats on immigration.
Because according to this new AP survey, about 30% of people trust Republicans to do a better job on the issue, another 30% trust Democrats more, and the remaining 40% are split. [Quote same link, find “3 in 10”]
But of course, that’s just one issue; if you zoom out and ask about performance as a whole, the picture gets even worse for the president.
Because three separate polls this month have all come to the same conclusion: if an election between Trump and Biden was held again today, Biden would probably win.
Even Rasmussen, the usually Trump-friendly pollster, found that 48% of likely voters think Biden did a better job as president, compared to just 40% who say the same about Trump, an eight-point difference. [Quote, find “48”]
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But when it comes to real potential matchups for 2028, you have tons of people slamming Hasan Piker for how he might be voting.
Because on a recent appearance on Jennifer Welch’s “I’ve Had It” podcast, she brought up some hypothetical presidential tickets, and he said this:
“Let me ask you this. Let’s say that Gavin Newsom becomes the nominee. We make it through midterms…devestating…do you vote for him? Over JD Vance?...Ugh…I don’t know.” (55:32-55:44)
“Well I would have to vote for Gavin Newsom…me too, I wouldn’t blink, what about you?...I would probably vote third party….you would?...Oh yeah, at that point it doesn’t even matter. My policy on this is the same as my refusal to endorse Kamala Harris. The reason I didn’t endorse KH was because she did things that were not only unproductive, but also unconscionable." (56:49-57:14)
And this prompted a ton of outrage from people who thought Hasan should not be encouraging third party votes to his massive following, with some saying:
Tons of people also accusing Hasan of being a grifter, arguing that he:
“wants republicans in office because he gets to cosplay a revolutionary which raises his profile and makes him more money.”[]
And you also have people trying to push back on extreme criticisms of Gavin Newsom, saying that:
“I live in California…my gay friends have basic rights, my girlfriend can access reproductive care, and we've raised the minimum wage for service workers. Spare me the disingenuous bullshit.”[]
Now, Hasan has defended himself in a series of posts, saying:
“do you want free healthcare? do you want free college? do you want to stop israel? i’ll vote for anyone who sincerely believes in making that happen.”[]
“i never said jd vance is better than newsom. you want to believe i said that because you can’t comprehend a world where democracy implies asking for concessions from your elected representatives before doing loyalty pledges to them like a happy serf.”[]
“shitlibs who don’t care about losing to trump now want you to obey in advance to their hypothetical establishment candidate while there isn’t even a guarantee there will be an election 2 years from now. using marginalized ppl as a cudgel as gavin threw trans ppl under the bus.”[]
But a lot of people were still not happy with his response, right, arguing that:
“No one is asking anyone to obey in advance so please come down off the cross. Your fellow panelists recognized the material difference for marginalized communities between a hypothetical Democratic and Republican administration. You repeatedly use your large audience to flatten the difference and it’s abject nonsense.”[]
Others taking issue with how he framed Newsom’s stance on trans rights, saying:
“Actual trans person here: Gavin Newsom made a comment about trans athletes that I don’t agree with but California is still one of the best places to be trans in the country. See the difference? You don’t care about what happens to us, so stop acting like you speak for us.”[]
Though, not everyone is slamming Hasan, right, Jennifer Welch actually ended up posting a video in his defense, claiming:
“What Hasan is saying is we need to build a party that has an FDR style impact, that really impacts the lives of people instead of the slow-moving change the current Democratic party always proposes.” (9:51-10:06)
“Number one, Hasan is not a politician. Number two, Hasan gets to think whatever he thinks. Number three, there is a large growing number of Americans in Gen Z and millennials that have felt completely unseen and left behind by the two party political system who hate and despise how much they suck up to corporations.” (12:51-13:12)
“We have time right now to have these conversations and to move our politicians to a progressive, populist platform.” (13:45-13:54)
With her even going so far as to say one of the reasons Democrats lose is because they do not listen to voices like Hasan Piker’s.
Though, it is also worth noting that during the podcast, Hasan did pre-empt any potential backlash claiming Democrats might lose solely because of him:
“I am incapable. There is no singular force in this country that is capable of making or breaking an election, and if that was real, then it is the most idiotic thing to not listen to my demands, but everyone knows that that’s not real, right?” (57:24-57:39)
But I would love to know your thoughts on this debate, on Hasan’s comments, do you think he is being reckless by saying he would go third party, is it too soon to get mad over a hypothetical scenario over two years away? Any thoughts you have, I would love to hear.
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The House of Representatives just passed a bill that would leave millions of citizens unable to vote in the next election.
And even if it doesn’t pass the Senate, its impact may be massive – especially as Trump takes action on his own to undermine American democracy.
We’re talking about what’s been called the “Save America Act.”
It’s an updated and expanded version of the “Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act” – better known as the Save Act – which has passed the House before but never managed to clear the Senate.
And this time around it made it through the lower chamber with 218 votes for and 213 votes against – with only one Democrat, Henry Cuellar of Texas, joining Republicans in supporting the legislation.
Which would require all Americans to present a government-issued photo ID when they go to vote.
And – more importantly – it would bar states from registering people to vote unless they provide documents or evidence proving their U.S. citizenship.
A driver’s license, for example, would almost never be enough.
Instead, for most people, this would mean having to provide a passport or birth certificate.
But only about half of Americans own a passport and millions lack access to a paper copy of their birth certificate.
And organizations including the Brennan Center for Justice estimate that around nine percent of the country, or at least 21 million Americans, don't have ready access to either document. []
And, notably, these people are more likely to be poor or people of color.
They’re also more likely to be Independents than either Democrats or Republicans.
And they’re reportedly more likely to be young people between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four.
Another group that could be massively affected are married women.
And that’s because millions of them have taken their spouse's surname – meaning their birth certificates may no longer match the legal names they now use.
Now, with all that, there are other documents Americans can use to prove citizenship.
The bill, for example, recommends “a form of identification issued consistent with the requirements of the REAL ID Act of 2005” as long as it also "indicates that applicant is a citizen of the United States.” []
The only problem? REAL IDs are available to both citizens and noncitizens.
And those issued by states don’t explicitly indicate citizenship status. []
But despite all those issues, according to the White House, “voter id is overwhelmingly popular with literally everyone – except Democratic politicians.”
And that’s actually not entirely off-base.
Polls suggest that most Americans from across the political spectrum support requiring photo ID to cast a ballot – and, in fact, voter ID laws already exist in 36 states.
And, going further, you even have a majority from both parties agreeing that people registering to vote for the first time should be required to provide proof of citizenship. []
But you have experts arguing that many people aren’t fully aware of the measures that already exist to prevent noncitizen voting – and that they don’t fully understand how these rules might make it harder without offering any real benefit.
Right, when it comes to noncitizen voting, that’s been the whole justification for this law.
With the official White House account recently posting on X:
“Dozens of major democracies all over the world require VOTER ID to vote in federal elections. Why not the United States?”
“American citizens, and only American citizens, should decide American elections."
But what that post leaves out is that the noncitizen voting is already illegal and is astonishingly rare.
The law already requires that all voters attest under oath that they are citizens – and lying is a crime that can lead to fines, imprisonment, and deportation.
And, ultimately, studies have consistently shown little, if any, evidence that fraud is happening on a large scale.
With even the Trump administration’s own voter verification initiative so far finding no evidence of widespread fraud.
But even still, there might be people who think “why not? Better safe than sorry. What’s the downside?”
And there, you have the head of the University of Maryland's Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement arguing that voter ID "gets such broad support because large majorities of people have these documents and have them ready…”
“ …and they don't quite realize that significant portions of the public don't, or that it's hard to get, or that the information's expired." []
And with all that, it’s also worth noting that strong majorities appear to support measures to make voting easier.
Including sending absentee ballots to all eligible voters, offering early in-person voting, and automatically registering citizens to vote. []
And beyond that, there are also other measures in the SAVE Act that most people might be even less aware of.
For example, it requires mail-in applicants to provide proof of citizenship in person – so that’s just one more hoop people may have to jump through.
It would also require states to share their voter rolls with the Department of Homeland Security, as well as take new steps to remove noncitizens from existing voter rolls – potentially resulting in citizen voters being unknowingly unregistered.
And it would add criminal penalties – up to five years in prison – for any election official who registers an applicant who fails to provide documentary proof of citizenship – even if the applicant is actually a citizen.
With the head of the Bipartisan Policy Center's Elections Project explaining that this “risks creating an environment where election officials are almost overly compliant” – maybe rejecting registrations because they’re scared of being punished. []
With a key point there being that verifying the authenticity of citizenship documents is not always so easy, and election officials and motor vehicle departments often don’t have the resources or training to do so confidently. []
And finally, last thing, the law in its current form would take effect immediately, which experts say wouldn’t leave enough time for it to be implemented by states by the midterms in November – maybe setting the stage for legal fights over the results.
Now, with all that, this bill faces a massively uphill battle in the Senate.
Democrats will filibuster – and there’s no indication that enough Republicans are on board with getting rid of that option as Trump and other hardliners have sometimes demanded.
And, in fact, you’ve even had one Republican Senator opposing the legislation itself: Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.
With her saying election issues should be left to the states – noting that other Republicans have made the same argument to shoot down Democrat-led voting bills.
Right, in 2021 and 2022, Democrats in the House passed the For the People Act, which would’ve banned partisan gerrymandering and made voting easier.
And a majority of senators even supported a slimmed-down version, called the Freedom to Vote Act, but it died because of a Republican-led filibuster.
With people like Mitch McConnell saying at the time:
“There’s nothing broken around the country. The system upheld very well during an intense stress during the latter part of the previous Congress. There’s no rational basis for federalizing this election, and, therefore, there’s no point in having a debate in the U.S. Senate about something we ought not do.”
And of course that’s especially ironic now when you consider that Trump is not only now pushing for the SAVE Act but has explicitly called for the federal government to "nationalize" elections twice.
And that’s as he’s continued to spread falsehoods about voter fraud.
With him writing in a post just a few days ago calling on Republicans to pass the legislation:
“America’s Elections are Rigged, Stolen, and a Laughingstock all over the World. We are either going to fix them, or we won’t have a Country any longer.”
But with that, the fact that we do have state-run elections? It isn’t totally a bad thing for Trump.
Right, because you have experts arguing that even the Save Act ends up dead in the water it’s given Republican-led states a blueprint.
WIth the head of the Voting Rights Lab telling Axios:
The SAVE America Act "sends clear marching orders for state lawmakers to enact Trump's extreme elections agenda — all with an eye toward this year's midterms." []
And with that, there are already a few states with proof of citizenship requirements and we’ve seen what can happen when these laws are introduced at this level.
In Kansas, for example, a law passed in 2011 led to the suspension of cancellation of more than 30,000 voter applications – around 12 percent of all those submitted between when the law was implemented and when it was struck down by a federal judge in 2018. []
In Arizona, a law passed in 2022 was argued all the way up to the Supreme Court, which left new requirements in place only for state and local elections – potentially blocking tens of thousands of citizens from participating.
And, most recently, a law passed in New Hampshire in 2024 reportedly led to more than 200 potentially eligible voters being turned away on state and local election days in 2025.
So you can imagine in a federal election year similar policies in more states could have an even bigger impact.
And, even without all that, the conversation around the Save Act has given Republicans the perfect opportunity to push the unfounded narrative that noncitizens are voting – and that that’s what Democrats want because it will help them win.
So if they perform poorly in the midterms, which seems like a real possibility to say the least, they’d have already laid the groundwork to challenge the results.
And that’s if we don’t see something more direct.
Right, it was just a couple weeks ago that the FBI raided an election office in Fulton County, Georgia.
And the whole thing has sparked fears that Trump might direct the Justice Department to search election centers in other cities or counties as well.
Especially as we’re now learning more about the exact justifications that were used to authorize the operation.
With the now unsealed FBI affidavit that was used to get the search warrant definitively showing that it was largely based on thoroughly debunked claims about election fraud in the 2020 election.
And this affidavit? It came from the desk of a guy named Kurt Olsen – who played a key role in Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election and was reportedly considered by people in the first Trump administration to be a “fringe menace.”
But now, he’s Trump’s “Director of Election Security and Integrity” – one of many election deniers within the administration – although Olsen has reportedly been given access to sensitive information from the nation’s top intelligence agencies to try and produce evidence of cheating.
With one sources telling Politico:
And ultimately, these are all just little pieces that make up a bigger picture.
With the the head of Fair Fight Action, what’s been described as a left-leaning voting rights group, saying:
“Repurposing these conspiracy theories as federal justification is part of a broader campaign to re-litigate the past and lay the groundwork for interference in the 2026 elections.” []
Right, election office raids are one prong, and the Save Act is another.
Although, notably, while the SAVE Act passed in the House, the chamber also handed Trump a pretty big L yesterday [Transition Into Maddie’s Canada Tariffs]
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Because six Republicans joined most Democrats in a 219-to-211 vote to block Trump’s tariffs in Canada.
Right, Trump used a national emergency to apply the tariffs, and the House resolution here terminates that emergency order.
It was brought forward by Democratic Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York, who had been arguing that:
"Canada isn't a threat. Canada is our friend.”
And also adding:
“The question was simple: stand with working families and lower costs, or keep prices high out of loyalty to Donald Trump?”
And among the Republicans who joined the effort, you had Nebraska’s Don Bacon, who thought the most Republican choice was breaking with the President here, writing:
And so you have Reuters calling this an “important symbolic vote in the chamber” because even though it shows some Republicans are willing to rebuke Trump on this issue, the vote likely will not make too much of a difference. []
Right, even if the Senate follows through and passes the resolution too, Trump can just veto it.
So you had Speaker Mike Johnson kind of downplaying the vote, defending Trump’s tariffs, and saying this won’t change the president’s policies. []
But Trump seemed more annoyed, writing on Truth Social that:
“Any Republican, in the House or the Senate, that votes against TARIFFS will seriously suffer the consequences come Election time, and that includes Primaries!...TARIFFS have given us Great National Security because the mere mention of the word has Countries agreeing to our strongest wishes. TARIFFS have given us Economic and National Security, and no Republican should be responsible for destroying this privilege.”[]
Though, no matter what Trump says, his trade policy is deeply unpopular.
Polling from earlier this month shows that 60% of Americans oppose increasing tariffs. []
And estimates show that they are costing U.S. households as much as $1,400 every year.[]
So Republicans likely voted for this measure so that they won’t face consequences when the midterms roll around.
With Bloomberg saying that this:
“signals a growing anxiety over the White House’s economic agenda before elections that are expected to focus heavily on affordability” and “represents an increase in political pressure to change course on Trump’s signature economic policy."[]
And again, even though Trump can just veto this, it seems the House has more plans to stand against these tariff policies.
With Rep. Meeks telling Axios he might try to push votes regarding Mexico and other “Liberation Day” tariffs. []
