The Vice President either did terrible research, or lied. He said that ICE had no choice but to detain the five year old boy because his illegal father ran and abandoned the child. He failed to mention that another adult living in the home begged ICE to let him stay with them, and that they used the 5-year old as bait to see if they could capture anyone else in the home.
Multiple police chiefs met and said that their off-duty non-white police officers were being harassed by ICE. The Vice President dismissed this as something someone said on the internet, and claimed that they take accusations of discrimination seriously while dismissing credible claims of exactly that.
A parallel between the demographic crisis and global warming is that for each, one side of the partisan divide largely doesn’t think it’s a problem at all. And for each side, the deniers are straight up wrong. Human caused global warming is essentially a fact. Declining demographics and the problems it causes are simply true. Being in denial of either of these is not a difference of opinion, but being wrong about the ample and sufficient evidence. Disagreeing about what to do about these problems once they are recognized is legitimate and complicated, so is disagreeing about some of the consequences, but, denying them as problems is going against reality.
Unfortunately, global warming has been coded as a liberal issue. The demographic crisis has been coded as a conservative issue. But neither of them them should have partisan or ideological coding. They are both real problems that are happening. The only disagreement should be what to do about these problems, not whether they are severe problems with difficult consequences, because that is in the realm of fact.
“”Flexibility at work has the power to drive fertility decisions,” according to researchers running a survey in the U.S. and 38 other countries.
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People who worked from home at least one day per week “had more biological children from 2021 to early 2025, and plan to have more children in the future, compared to observationally similar persons who do not” work from home, according to the August 2025 working paper, “Work from Home and Fertility.”
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Researchers say working from home may make it easier to balance work and family, but note that “it’s also plausible that parents with young children at home may select” work-from-home arrangements more often.
Self-selection seems less of a confounding factor when it comes to future fertility intentions. In both the U.S. and multicountry samples, and for both men and women, working from home at least one day per week increased their preferred number of kids. For women, having a partner who occasionally worked from home was also associated with a desire for more children.
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A study out of Norway published in the December 2025 edition of Labour Economics found the country saw “a significant and persistent” 10 percent increase in births beginning nine months after the first COVID-19 lockdowns started. These “fertility increases were concentrated among women in ‘greedy jobs’ with lower flexibility prior to lockdown,” according to the paper. “The overall birth response was driven by women who retained their job during the lockdown period, consistent with changes in the nature of work (flexibility) being a key mechanism,” rather than increased time due to job loss.
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It also calls into question the wisdom of a professedly pronatalist presidential administration ordering all federal employees to return to the office, as President Donald Trump did in early 2025. Simplifying remote work for both public and private sector employees could be a quicker, cheaper path to more children.”
There was real fraud in Minnesota with a lot of it by Somalis, but Shirley’s “investigation” falsely accused day care centers of being fake without proper evidence, resulting in vandalism and threats to apparently innocent people.
He went to these places with a group of men, some of them wearing masks. His group didn’t look like a parent looking to sign up a child, but a group of thugs.
Lots of people got duped by this incompetent investigation, including Elon Musk and JD Vance who shared the video to their huge audiences. And, the administration began withholding all childcare funding to Minnesota.
“The Minnesota Star Tribune also visited all 10 facilities, and found children inside four of them when invited inside. Six other facilities were either closed or employees did not open their doors.
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Osman said the doors are always locked for safety, and the staff was on high alert following the president’s threats to deport Somali people and escalation of federal immigration enforcement in the Twin Cities.
He said Shirley’s unannounced drop-in was “not intended to be a sincere approach.””
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Director Ahmed Hasan said they’ve had similar visits from other “content creators,” but the others didn’t have enough followers to create the kind of chaos that Shirley did.
Hasan said Shirley, a man identified as “David” and a third man came to the front door while five more men waited in a van and car, some of them wearing masks.
Hasan said there were children inside, but they weren’t about to let strangers inside, given the recent immigration crackdown. They thought the masked men in the vehicles might be ICE agents.
Hasan said Shirley left soon after Hasan arrived, entering through a back door.
On Dec. 30, Hasan invited the Star Tribune and other media outlets into the facility, where about 30 children of varying ages were visible.
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A woman from a neighboring home health care agency showed the Star Tribune video footage of children coming and going on Dec. 16.
Kevin Brown, who lives two blocks away and owns a business next door to ABC Learning Center, said he often sees kids at the center.
He saw Shirley’s video and came over to the daycare Dec. 30 when he saw TV cameras there.
“I don’t like the idea of people coming from out of town, coming into our neighborhood and making assumptions without talking to people and getting the facts,” he said. “That’s the definition of fake news.”
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Part-owner Umi Hassan said she lived here right after 9/11 and didn’t feel as marginalized and fearful as she does today. She’s unable to sleep at night and carries her passport everywhere.
Tears running down her face, she asked, “What else can I do to be an American?””
According to an Epstein email, Trump spent hours at Epstein’s house with a victim. This is where Epstein called Trump “that dog that hasn’t barked”.
In another email between Michael Wolff and Epstein, Wolf suggests that Trump has been on Epstein’s plane and at his house in such a way that Epstein could save Trump by keeping secret about it.
This is all in the context of Trump being uncharacteristically resistant to releasing files about Epstein, even pressuring Republican congress people to not do it; in the context where Trump openly said that Epstein likes them young; in the context where Trump has had many many sex scandals; and in the context where the Trump administration has moved Epstein’s coconspirator to a more comfortable prison.
It looks like Trump was either involved in Epstein’s crimes, or knew about them and kept silent when he should not have. It’s possible that Trump didn’t really do or know anything, and just doesn’t want Epstein or Maxwell to make him look bad.