NEW EVIDENCE SHOWS TRUTH BEHIND ICE SHOOTING

How the Right-Wing Outrage Machine Prompted the Conflagration in Minnesota

I would like to thank https://personnelente.wordpress.com/2026/01/08/causing-problems-on-purpose/ for the link to the story.  I am listening to congressional republicans drown on about the US being the apex predator so our country has the right to do what ever we wish to on the world stage.  Our country has the right to take what we want because Nazi Stephen Miller who seems to be running the country because that might makes right and the US has the military might.  Every time I listen to Miller punch his words out like a poor imitation of Hitler and his entire mocking of anyone in the media or that disagrees with his stance I get a sick horrible feeling in my core being.  He is unhinged and the most powerful person next to tRump.   Hugs


https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/how-the-right-wing-outrage-machine-prompted-the-conflagration-in-minnesota

Protesters clash with law enforcement outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility on January 8, 2026. (Photo by Mostafa Bassim/Anadolu via Getty Images)

More than 2,000 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are on the ground in Minnesota in what President Donald Trump’s administration officials have called the “largest immigration operation ever.” Deployed just days ago by Trump, one agent has already shot and killed a person and federal law enforcement has deployed tear gas and pepper spray against protesters.

The massive operation and subsequent violence in Minneapolis comes against the backdrop of Trump’s announcement Tuesday that he’s freezing $10 billion in federal funds approved by Congress for child welfare programs, including Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, foster care, and childcare subsidies in Minnesota and four other blue states. 

This sharp escalation in action has its roots in a yearslong law enforcement investigation into widespread fraud and misuse of federal funds in Minnesota that in late 2025 was seized upon by the right-wing misinformation machine and, this week, reached a screeching fever pitch. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz announced Monday he would not be running for reelection, in part so he could devote his time to addressing the crisis. 

The journey from legitimate local and federal investigations into fraud to the so-called largest ICE operation in history, the pausing of federal funds to blue states and the end of Walz’s gubernatorial tenure is a long and tangled one. As has become common in the Trump era, a serious situation was dispersed throughout the unserious realm of right-wing media and content creation, catching the attention of the president and yielding very real consequences. 

Here’s the backstory you need to understand these events.

How the Scandals Started

Amid the right-wing uproar, there are elements of truth: Minnesota has grappled with Medicaid fraud for more than a decade, which has been the focus of federal and state investigations and local news reporting. The schemes were further fueled by the COVID-19 pandemic, during which an influx of federal funding for social programs came with relaxed vetting standards in an effort to allow speedy access for vulnerable populations. 

Republican furor over widespread fraud has also flared up periodically over the years. But it reached new heights in recent months after a wave of new claims — ranging from the well-founded to the baseless to the entirely histrionic — caught the attention of the president. 

Some of the first claims of fraud arose in 2015, and focused on day care centers that local authorities accused of overbilling state welfare agencies. This gave rise to an early instance of right-wing outrage, when a local Fox affiliate in 2018 speculated that hundreds of millions of dollars were being stolen from the program and sent to terrorists in Africa. State officials found that claim to be baseless. 

In 2021, feds began investigating fraud claims connected to a child nutrition program. By early 2022, the FBI seized property from a nonprofit called “Feeding Our Future.” The revelation of the investigation prompted bipartisan outrage toward the fraudsters; Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), for example, questioned the U.S. Department of Agriculture about the misuse of funds, asking about the investigation and steps that could be taken to prevent “fraudulent misuse of federal funding meant to feed hungry children” in the future. 

In September 2022, the Department of Justice announced federal criminal charges against a network of people connected to Feeding Our Future, alleging they defrauded the government of $250 million in federal child nutrition funding, using the funds instead for mansions, cars and other lavish personal expenses. Former Attorney General Merrick Garland said the indictments represented “the largest pandemic relief fraud scheme” to date. At the time, 47 people were indicted, many, but not all of whom, were members of the Minnesota Somali community. State Republicans began pointing a finger at the governor.

The scandal continued to unfold. Even the ensuing criminal proceedings were rife with corruption, with one juror dismissed after fraud defendants tried to bribe the juror with a literal bag of cash. The Feeding Our Future scheme has proven vast and deep. Between 2023 and 2025, more indictments came down connected to the case, with the 78th person indicted this past November. It has become the poster child for Minnesota’s tangled fraud network that has so far extended to autism services, Medicaid fraud, addiction services and housing..

The state has also investigated the network. In August 2023, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison charged 18 people with defrauding Medicaid of $9.5 million with fake home health care businesses. Ellison in December 2023 announced charges in what his office called the largest Medicaid fraud case it had investigated. Three people were charged in an $11 million prosecution. A June 2024 state audit found the Minnesota Department of Education had received dozens of complaints about the nonprofit and failed to oversee the distribution of the $250 million at the heart of the case.

The Politics of the Scandals

State Republicans continued to use the fraud investigations and indictments as evidence of Walz’s unfit leadership. When Walz became Kamala Harris’s vice presidential candidate in August 2024, the governor became a punching bag for Republicans in the state running for local and national office. On the Hill, House Republicans subpoenaed Walz for information about his actions and responsibilities related to the Feeding Our Future scheme.

ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA – JANUARY 5: Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz speaks during a press conference at the State Capitol building on January 5, 2026 in St. Paul, Minnesota. Walz announced today that he is abandoning his re-election campaign for governor, blaming scrutiny from President Donald Trump for his decision. (Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)

In September 2025, eight people were charged in a multi-million dollar housing fraud scheme for a state program that used Medicaid funds for certain housing services. Then-Acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Minnesota Joseph Thompson called the indictments “the first wave of charges in a massive fraud” program. The abused housing program was dissolved in late October.

In addition to the political advantages of blaming the Democratic governor, some conservatives exploited the fact that most of the people implicated in each of the fraud investigations were members of Minnesota’s Somali community. That became paramount when Trump and prominent members of the MAGA-sphere got involved. 

Trump Grabs the Story

On Nov. 19, City Journal, a publication produced by the conservative New York think tank The Manhattan Institute published a post co-authored by Chris Rufo, the notorious anti-woke crusader who is also a fellow at the think tank. The report alleged Minnesota fraudsters were wiring their spoils to a Somalia-based terrorism organization called Al-Shabaab, citing “federal counterterrorism sources.” Two days later, news website and television station The National News Desk — owned by the conservative Sinclair Broadcast group — covered the City Journal report. Those posts may have been what caught the president’s eye. Two hours after The National News Desk report was published, Trump posted about the Minnesota fraud investigations on Truth Social. “Minnesota, under Governor Waltz, is a hub of fraudulent money laundering activity,” Trump wrote, misspelling the governor’s name. In the same post, he said he was removing a special immigration status that covers about 700 Somalian people in the U.S., and introduced the idea that “Somali gangs are terrorizing” Minnesotans.

The Truth Social posts marked the beginning of a far-right frenzy that has seen the president and extremist influencers feed off of one another, spinning narratives and pushing policies pulsating with outrage, xenophobia and Islamophobia. On Nov. 29, the New York Times echoed Republican talking points blaming the Somali community for federal funds theft, saying that the “fraud took root in pockets of Minnesota’s Somali diaspora as scores of individuals made small fortunes.” On Dec. 1, the White House issued a one-pager about the Minnesota situation, repeatedly highlighting the ethnicity of most of the people who had been federally charged and blaming Walz.

Trump on Dec. 2 deployed a first round of ICE agents — about 100 — to Minneapolis and St. Paul to target the Somali community, an official told the New York Times. All the while, legitimate federal investigations continued to play out.

Prosecutor Thompson is now the First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Minnesota. Appointed by Trump, Thompson has served as a longtime prosecutor. On Dec. 18, he charged five new people in the housing program Medicaid fraud scheme. Thompson said more than $9 billion in federal funds may have been stolen from Minnesota.

“The magnitude cannot be overstated,” Thompson said. “What we see in Minnesota is not a handful of bad actors committing crimes. It’s staggering, industrial-scale fraud.”

Following this announcement, the total number of people indicted in Minnesota fraud schemes reached 92. Eighty-two of those were of Somali descent, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Minnesota, PBS reported. While a significant share of the scammers are Somali, the number is less than 0.1% of the entire Somali population in Minnesota, where the majority are U.S. citizens, and just about 0.03% of the Somali population nationwide, according to U.S. Census Bureau data cited by PBS.

Six days later, a 23-year-old content creator dropped a 43-minute YouTube video that had the effect of planting dynamite in a minefield. In a vague Dec. 26 video, former prankster turned anti-immigrant influencer Nick Shirley visited Minnesota day care and health care centers, demanded people who appeared to work at the centers show him children, and accused the businesses of fraud. Shirley in the video is flanked by two masked men, whom he identifies as his security, and is following a man called David who purports to have papers showing evidence of fraud. The Intercept identified David as 65-year-old David Hoch, an eccentric, far-right political operative in the state.

That late December YouTube video was also lauded by Elon Musk, reposted by the Department of Government Efficiency and led Vice President JD Vance to declare Shirley deserving of a Pulitzer Prize. Trump then unleashed a torrent of retribution against Minnesota, Somalians, and Democratic states in general. 

It doesn’t matter that claims made in Shirley’s video remain unfounded, and that it documents nothing untoward.

It also doesn’t seem to matter that the initial, 2018 report linking fraud in Minnesota to a Somalia-based terrorist group was debunked by the state, or that the only named source for the article told the Minnesota Star Tribune he was misquoted. (City Journal told the Star Tribune it stands by its reporting.)

Trump has since early December used the fact that the majority of the defendants in each of these fraud cases were members of the Minnesota Somali community as ammunition, opening a dark new chapter in his signature anti-immigration crackdown.


Layla A. Jones is a reporter for TPM in Washington, D.C., with experience covering government and economic policy, race, culture, and history. She has written for the Philadelphia Inquirer, Billy Penn, WHYY, NPR, and the Philadelphia Tribune, and participated in the Knight-Bagehot Fellowship at Columbia University. She attended Temple University for undergrad.

Minnesota officials forced out of ICE shooting investigation as public trust erodes

Live updates: ICE officer who shot Renee Good identified in court records as Jonathan Ross

I want to thank Mock Paper Scissors for the link. https://mockpaperscissors.com/2026/01/08/246190/

So much of what is reported is the tRump people trying to hide the truth.  The fact is true it seems the US tRump government doesn’t want the truth to come out, they don’t want rogue officers investigated, they want to keep lying to the public and running illegal thug operation over the US people.  There must be some way the local police can find evidence to send to a prosecutor over this event.    Hugs

https://apnews.com/live/minneapolis-ice-shooting-updates-1-8-2026

Updated 6:24 PM EST, January 8, 2026

A day after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot and killed 37-year-old mother of three Renee Good as she tried to drive away on a snowy Minneapolis street, tensions remained high, with dozens of protesters venting their outrage outside of a federal facility that’s serving as a hub for the Trump administration’s latest immigration crackdown on a major city.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has not publicly identified the officer who shot Good. But she spoke of an incident last June in which the same officer was injured when he was dragged by another driver’s fleeing vehicle. A Homeland Security spokesperson confirmed Noem was referring to an incident in Bloomington, Minnesota.

Court records from that case identify the officer who was dragged and injured as Jonathan Ross.

Court documents say Ross got his arm stuck in a vehicle’s window as a driver fled arrest in Bloomington, Minnesota. The officer was dragged 100 yards (91 meters) and cuts to his arm required 50 stitches.

The Associated Press wasn’t immediately able to locate a phone number or address for Ross, and ICE no longer has a union that might comment on his behalf.

Here’s what we know:

  • Videos of the shooting: Footage shows an officer approaching an SUV stopped across the middle of the road, demanding the driver open the door and grabbing the handle. The Honda Pilot begins to pull forward, and a different ICE officer standing in front of it pulls his weapon and immediately fires at least two shots at close range, jumping back as the vehicle moves toward him. It is unclear from the videos whether the vehicle makes contact with the officer, and there is no indication of whether the woman had interactions with ICE agents earlier. After the shooting, the SUV speeds into two cars parked on a curb before crashing to a stop.
  • Renee Good: She was a U.S. citizen born in Colorado and appears to have never been charged with anything beyond a traffic ticket. In social media accounts, Macklin Good described herself as a “poet and writer and wife and mom.” Public records show she had recently lived in Kansas City, Missouri, where she and another woman with the same home address had started a business last year called B. Good Handywork. Trump administration officials painted Good as a domestic terrorist who had attempted to ram federal agents with her car.
  • Who will investigate? The Minnesota agency that investigates officer-involved shootings said it was informed Thursday that the FBI and U.S. Justice Department would not work with the agency, effectively ending any role for the state to determine if crimes were committed. Noem said the state has no jurisdiction. Gov. Tim Walz pushed back against the Trump administration’s decision to keep the investigation solely in federal hands, emphasizing that it would be “very, very difficult for Minnesotans” to accept that an investigation that excludes the state could be fair. Mary Moriarty, the prosecutor in Hennepin County, which includes Minneapolis, said her office is “exploring all options” to determine if a state investigation can proceed.

 

Murder in Minnesota

ICE shooting in Minneapolis

The ICE truck could easily have gone around the womans car as another vhicail did 

Prosecutor issues MUST-SEE response to ICE shooting in Minneapolis

 

BREAKING: Outrage In Minneapolis After ICE Shooting

 

Ex-FBI supervisor rejects Kristi Noem’s ‘domestic terrorism’ claim in MN ICE shooting

 

Jake Tapper tears into Kristi Noem’s ‘abjectly false’ claim: ‘Clear to anyone with eyes’

 

‘The truth matters here’: Minneapolis mayor REJECTS Trump narrative on deadly ICE shooting

 

“A Cold-Blooded Murder” – Chris Hayes Reacts To Video Of The Deadly ICE Shooting In Minneapolis

 

‘They decided on a narrative’: Hayes rips DHS ‘lies’ after deadly ICE shooting

 

 

IHIP News: 🚨 ICE Shoots Woman IN COLD BLOOD and Trump Gives HORRID Response!

 

 

Trump’s Dangerous Jan6 History Rewrite

ICE Kills Woman With Gunshots To The Face

The middle of the video shows the ICE thug not giving the woman time to do as ordered.  She was told to move her car and leave she was trying but got cut off by another auto, the ICE thug grabbed the door handle as she was starting to pull out and he already had his gun out.  He stuck the gun into the open window and shot her point blank.  He was in no danger as he was beside the car not in front of it.  When Ron saw the video as I was watching the show on the kitchen TV while doing dishes and he broke down in tears over it.  I was also very upset.  Gang thugs rampaging in cities with no restraint on what they are allowed to do.  These are gang members, militia members, and Jan 6th insurrectionists.  They are Stephen Millers brownshirts and Gestapo.  You know Miller the guy who said on national TV that the president must never be questioned and is a white supremacist Jewish Nazi.  He has claimed he doesn’t consider him self a Jew but I be the Nazi’s do.   Hugs

Man Detained by ICE Found Dead, Hanging With Hands and Feet Tied—Attorney

The man was found with his hands and feet tied behind his back.  That is what hog tied means.  Please explain to me how he could then put a noose around his neck and hang himself?  And it has happened more than once according to this?  Some people are killing the detainees and ICE is covering up for it.  Hugs


https://www.newsweek.com/ice-detainee-death-family-questions-hands-feet-tied-11066992

Nov 18, 2025 at 04:04 PM EST

updated

Nov 20, 2025 at 07:16 AM EST

By 

Politics Reporter

A Chinese immigrant was found dead in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention, with his hands and feet tied behind him, an attorney has alleged.

Chaofeng Ge died four days after entering ICE custody in Pennsylvania on August 5, with an agency report stating he was found by agents with “a cloth ligature around his neck”.

After an autopsy report, his family is calling for more answers from the Department of Homeland Security.

“I am devasted by the loss of my brother and by the knowledge that he was suffering so greatly in that detention center,” Yanfeng Ge, the brother of Chaofeng, said in a statement shared with Newsweek. “He did not deserve to be treated that way. I want justice for my brother, answers as to how this could have happened, and accountability for those responsible for his death.”

Why It Matters

As detention numbers have spiked within ICE facilities under the Trump administration, deaths have also begun to rise. At least 15 immigrants died within ICE facilities, or while under their care, under this administration, compared to 12 for the entire fiscal year 2024. Advocacy groups and attorneys have repeatedly warned that ICE detention conditions are poor, but DHS has said otherwise.

Chaofeng Ge, 32, died while in ICE detention in Pennsylvania in August 2025. | Ge family handout

What To Know

Ge, 32, arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border near Tecate, California, on November 22, 2023, and was arrested by the Border Patrol for unlawful entry. Officers released him into the U.S. with a Notice to Appear for a hearing at a later date.

The records from ICE went quiet for over a year before agents encountered Ge in Lower Paxton Township, Pennsylvania, in January 2025. He was accused of accessing a device issued to another who did not authorize its use, conspiracy – accessing a device issued to another who did not authorize use, theft by deception—false impression, conspiracy—theft by deception, criminal use of a communication facility, and unlawful use of a computer—access to disrupt function.

Ge, who lived in Queens, New York, was convicted of the first two of these charges by the Court of Common Pleas in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, on July 31, and he was sentenced to six to 12 months with credit for time served, so he was released from local custody and ICE agents detained him.

ICE is required to issue reports on all deaths within its custody, including Ge’s. The report states he was assessed with the help of a Mandarin interpreter on August 1, when he denied any past medical or mental health issues.

Four days later, on August 5 at around 5:20 a.m., officers at the Moshannon Valley Processing Center (MVPC) in Philipsburg say they found him in a shower stall with the cloth around his neck. Despite getting him onto the ground and attempting lifesaving measures, including CPR, Ge was pronounced dead roughly 40 minutes later.

For Ge’s family, this does not answer all their questions, and they have filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security in the Southern District of New York.

An autopsy report seen by Newsweek showed Ge was found tied with a bedsheet, with linens around his wrists and ankles in what the report described as a “hog-tied” position. The medical examiner noted that there had been other reported incidents of people who had hung themselves having done something similar, and that there were no obvious defense wounds.

These details were also laid out in the criminal complaint filed by the family’s attorney, David Rankin, a partner at Beldock Levine & Hoffman LLP in New York City. The complaint alleges that ICE denied Ge the mental health care he needed and ignored requests for more details on the conditions at the MVPC.

Newsweek asked DHS whether Ge had been tied up and whether it was cooperating with the lawsuit filed in New York. Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin did not answer these questions, but repeated similar messaging on detention deaths: that ICE takes each one seriously and thoroughly investigates them all.

What People Are Saying

David B. Rankin, the family’s attorney, in a statement to Newsweek: “It is truly mystifying how any detention facility can let someone leave their room, create three nooses and then hang themselves without anyone knowing. What’s worse is the lack of mental health care which could have prevented this tragedy. Mr. Ge’s death represents a totally failure on the part of the GeoGroup and the DHS.”

DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin, in a statement to Newsweek: “Chaofeng Ge passed away at the Moshannon Valley Processing Center. All in-custody deaths are tragic, taken seriously, and are thoroughly investigated by law enforcement. ICE takes its commitment to promoting safe, secure, humane environments for those in our custody very seriously.”

What’s Next

The lawsuit is asking for a judge to force DHS and ICE to release the details on Ge’s case.

If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by dialing 988, text “988” to the Crisis Text Line at 741741 or go to 988lifeline.org.

Minnesota day care hoax is fueled by MAGA psychosexual weirdness

OK let’s discuss the hidden thing here.  A 20 plus year old claims he has never had sex.  I remember being a 16 yr old newly inducted into the SDA church.  Any touching of your male members was a huge sin they constantly harped on.  I did try, but seriously, a teen boy with my history but any normal teen boy is going to do the deed to get off.  And for many of them it leaves them with after crippling guilt of not pleasing their god who watched them do it.  God is a perv.   I can’t tell you the number of boys in that church school I hugged with and they cuddled with me … but we never had sex.  Two wanted to but if I got thrown out of the school I had to return to the brutal home I was using the school to escape from.  But the idea of just ignoring one’s hormone driven sex drive is not healthy and the religious leaders pushing that all did it when they were teens.  But the grift has to be kept up.  Hugs

https://www.salon.com/2026/01/05/minnesota-day-care-hoax-is-fueled-by-maga-psychosexual-weirdness/

The racism underlying MAGA’s latest obsession is intertwined with misogyny

Senior Writer
MAGA influencer Nick Shirley speaks during a roundtable discussion on antifa at the White House on Oct. 8, 2025. ( Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
MAGA influencer Nick Shirley speaks during a roundtable discussion on antifa at the White House on Oct. 8, 2025. ( Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Nick Shirley really wants the world to know that he’s never had sex. The YouTuber who moved from “prank” videos to the more lucrative world of creating MAGA disinformation apparently believes that sexual inexperience is an armor against accusations that he’s a liar. “I’m a virgin. I don’t have sex with random girls. You’re not gonna catch me on those sexual allegation charges,” he rambled on “PBD Podcast,” insisting that he is “religious” and doesn’t “have any vices.”
 

A deeper dig shows even more how ridiculous this situation is. Shirley has a history of dishonesty, which includes paying immigrant laborers to hold pro-Biden signs, clearly hoping voters would think they were self-motivated. In another video, he claimed Portland had “fallen” and “antifa” had taken “control of the city,” an unvarnished lie.

CNN verified that children were being dropped off at a day care center Shirley had targeted. The Minnesota Star Tribune visited the day cares in question and found, when they were allowed access, children playing and napping peacefully. CBS News reviewed security footage showing kids being dropped off at one targeted center. Others were indeed empty; they had gone out of business before Shirley filmed outside the buildings.

Shirley stands accused of lying for racist reasons, so his “but I’m a virgin” defense is irrational — at least on the surface. But it makes more sense, in a psychosexual way, in light of the right’s long-standing fear and loathing of day cares.

Shirley stands accused of lying for racist reasons, so his “but I’m a virgin” defense is irrational — at least on the surface. But it makes more sense, in a psychosexual way, in light of the right’s long-standing fear and loathing of day cares. After all, the scandal Shirley is exploiting isn’t really about day cares. It’s about a larger case in Minnesota of Feeding Our Future, a fraudulent food pantry that was run by Aimee Bock, a white woman who was convicted in March of cheating taxpayers out of nearly $250 million of pandemic funds. While Bock was the mastermind, other defendants in the case are Somali American. On Dec. 30, a federal judge cleared the way for the government to seize $5.2 million in assets from Bock.

If Shirley was only interested in building his hoax on that existing and very real case, he could have targeted anti-hunger charities for his fake sting. Instead, he went after day cares, which are only tangentially related insofar as they are — along with churches, mosques, schools and community centers — sites that were supposed to get assistance from the fraudsters but never received it.

These businesses were picked almost certainly because Shirley and his colleagues have tapped into the long-standing tendency of paranoid reactionaries to make day cares the subject of conspiracy theories. Along with birth control and abortion — whose providers are also smeared constantly with right-wing lies — day care is loathed on the right for allowing women to work instead of being financially dependent on a husband. In the 1980s, day care workers were accused of being Satanists. Now, during the MAGA era, the scapegoat for men’s fears of female independence has shifted from imaginary devil-worshippers to real immigrants. White women are implicitly accused of using immigrant labor as a cheat to avoid their god-given duty to quit work to stay home and raise babies. Vice President JD Vance has been especially loud with his belief that day care is pushing women away from their supposedly inherent desire to be housewives.


Want more Amanda Marcotte on politics? Sign up for her free newsletter, Standing Room Only, now also on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.


Vance almost certainly doesn’t believe his own narrative. For one thing, it’s illogical to believe women would think, “Gosh, I want nothing more than to stay at home, but if there’s a day care down the street, I guess I have to use it.” His own wife has been outspoken about how much she loved working at her law firm that offered on-site childcare — and how much she misses it. But Vance has apparently decided that the bulk of support for his 2028 presidential bid will be rooted in the world of extremely online, sexually dysfunctional misogynists that love shady influencers like Shirley. The vice president’s messaging strategy has long been focused on this loose conglomerate known as the “manosphere”: bitter divorced men, “incels” (involuntarily celibates) and devotees of the “red pill,” an ideology that holds that dating and marriage aren’t about love but about men tricking or forcing women into submission.

The manosphere isn’t just deeply misogynist; it’s also incredibly racist. For liberals taking a cursory glance into that world, it can be very confusing how MAGA men can somehow blame immigrants for their own dating woes. But in the cesspool of incoherent resentment that Vance is clearly absorbing, the alleged evils of feminism and immigration are seen as part of a larger “woke” conspiracy against the white man. Before he died, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk often posted about how “who we actually can’t stand are angry, liberal, white women.” He would portray white women as idiots for not perceiving immigrants as a threat. “If woke is a mind virus,” he posted, “then white college indoctrinated women are the most susceptible hosts.” Influencers like LibsofTikTok hold up white women who resist mass deportations as selfish ninnies who just want to keep their babysitters.

Shirley has engaged in this rhetoric himself. “White liberal women tend to support the people that steal and rob from them,” he claimed in one post. Another was more ominous: “Liberal white womens [sic] logic and empathy will get them killed eventually.”

In this toxic stew of sexual resentment, misogyny and racism, it makes more sense that Shirley thinks his virginity is relevant. Anti-immigrant sentiment is woven into a larger MAGA narrative about expelling allegedly decadent and foreign influences. White male dominance, people like Shirley believe, can be restored by adhering to strict sexual and social mores prescribed by right-wing Christianity. Abstaining from sex until marriage is part of a larger program meant to produce male-dominated marriages,  where wives are too busy with large broods of white children to hold jobs. Attacking Black immigrants at a day care center has powerful symbolic resonance; it’s seen as an important front in a war both to make America whiter and to restore white women to a submissive role in the home.

The irony is that Shirley’s diatribe about his sexual status only underscores how much the attack on the day cares is not, contrary to his claims, driven by a nonpartisan, disinterested desire to end fraud. That much was always obvious. Shirley loves Donald Trump, who is himself a convicted fraudster who continues to use his office to enrich himself in blatantly corrupt ways. Shirley has followed the president’s lead — he, too, has a long history of posting racist vitriol about immigrants.

But bringing his sexuality and views on gender relations into the discussion — when no one else has done so — suggests that those issues aren’t far from mind, either. The fixation on “purity” is a common fascist obsession, manifesting in backwards fantasies of racial and sexual purity. None of this has any relation to the real world where people of all races and genders are just trying to do their jobs, raise their children and live their lives.