Reference #18.c5d07868.1778877741.67f102d0

https://errors.edgesuite.net/18.c5d07868.1778877741.67f102d0

Following a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operation that led to the arrest of a three-time felon in Virginia, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin took aim at Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger.

Mullin spoke exclusively with Fox News Digital after a 4 a.m. trek to Manassas, Virginia, and a moonlit raid resulted in the arrest of Marvin Len Morales, a multiple-time felon who had been deported twice before. Morales had felony drug charges and a misdemeanor DWI charge on his record.

The DHS secretary said the arrest underscored what he views as the consequences of Spanberger and Virginia Democrats limiting cooperation between local law enforcement and federal immigration authorities, arguing the policies make it harder for ICE agents to remove repeat offenders from communities.

“Well, unfortunately, we’re not working with [Spanberger] at all. She’s criminalized us to some degree. She went out there, she’s warned all law enforcement not to work with us,” Mullin told Fox News Digital standing just feet away from the handcuffed migrant. 

“This individual right here that we just arrested, this is his third time to be deported. He self-deported once, he was deported again. He’s snuck back across, he’s been living back here in this country again with a history of criminal activity. This shouldn’t be happening in our streets, in our neighborhood,” Mullin told Fox News Digital.

ICE NABS IRANIAN NATIONAL WITH RAPE, SODOMY CONVICTIONS AFTER VIRGINIA DEMOCRATS MOVE TO CURB COOPERATION

ICE agents arrest a man in Monassas, Virginia, on Fri., May 15, 2026. (Leigh Green for Fox News Digital)

Mullin lamented the lack of local cooperation with federal law enforcement and Virginia’s sanctuary state status, arguing the policies lead to an influx of criminal activity.

“They wanted to cancel all the 287G programs,” he said of Spanberger’s government. “This is where we have local law enforcement that partner with federal to get these criminals off the streets like this.”

A spokesperson for Spanberger punched back in a statement to Fox News Digital, saying that the governor supports prosecution of violent criminals to the fullest extent of the law, and that she is open to working with ICE to apprehend “criminal offenders.”

“Under Governor Spanberger’s leadership, Virginia state law enforcement agencies continue to assist ICE in the apprehension of criminal offenders as part of task forces and ongoing interagency cooperation,” the spokesperson told Fox News Digital. 

“Virginia Department of Corrections also continues the long-standing practice of notifying ICE when individuals born outside of the United States are in state custody,” the spokesperson added. “As a former federal law enforcement officer who served search and arrest warrants alongside local police officers, Governor Spanberger will always prioritize the safety and well-being of Virginia families and communities.”

Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin rides in a secure vehicle during his first ICE operation since taking charge of the agency in Manassas, Va., on May 15, 2026. (Leigh Green for Fox News Digital)

“Just use Fairfax, Virginia, for example. Roughly 50% of the murders in Fairfax, Virginia… the perps are illegal, shouldn’t even be in the country to begin with. That’s just in Fairfax. You think about what’s happening in Virginia. When you make Virginia a sanctuary city, you encourage more illegal activities,” he said.

Law enforcement agents during an immigration raid in Manassas, Va., on May 15, 2026. (Leigh Green for Fox News Digital)

“We want to have local partnership,” he told Fox News Digital. “Ideally I wouldn’t want to be picking this guy up. Ideally we’d want local to pick him up. He’s been picked up for a DUI before. It would have been great to have a detainer on him, go and pick him up and deport him that way without us having to go through the neighborhood.”

‘AMERICANS FIRST’: ICE SWEEPS UP CHILD PREDATORS, RAPISTS ACROSS US AS MULLIN TAKES HELM OF DHS

He also criticized Democratic leaders who he argued are placing political aspirations over following the law.

Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin is briefed at an ICE facility in Manassas, Va., on May 15, 2026, before his first ICE operation since taking charge of the agency. (Leigh Green for Fox News Digital)

“They start causing all the political theater because they’re too afraid of their own base and they’re afraid that they’re gonna get beat in a primary,” he said. “You can’t work that way, I’m sorry. Either we are going to work together to make sure that we have a nation of laws that we’re gonna enforce, that by the way Congress passed, and allow law enforcement to do their job.”

Mullin lauded federal agencies like ICE for their work despite a lack of local and state support.

Law enforcement agents during an immigration raid in Manassas, Va., on May 15, 2026. (Leigh Green for Fox News Digital)

“Right now what you’re seeing is ICE doing their job. I mean, it’s early in the morning and these guys are out there working every day, protecting their roads, protecting their streets,” Mullin told Fox News. “We have 22,000 ICE officers, 80,000 officers throughout DHS, and they’re doing their jobs.”

“They’re doing exactly what President Trump said he wants to. Get America’s streets safe again, the previous administration let them run amok that these are criminals. Even when we have you know politicians that want to protect the criminals, President Trump is still protecting all our neighborhoods and these guys around here doing their job even early in the morning,” Mullin added.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP

Fox News Digital contacted Spanberger’s office for comment but did not receive a response in time for publication.

Reference #18.f3680117.1778877341.344473b5

https://errors.edgesuite.net/18.f3680117.1778877341.344473b5

Democrat Senate candidate Mallory McMorrow accrued nearly a year’s worth of unpaid utility charges on her million-dollar home while campaigning on affordability.

Until Friday, McMorrow and her husband, former Gawker executive Ray Wert, had not paid water or sewer charges on their home in Royal Oak, Mich., since June 2025, according to records reviewed by Fox News Digital. The property had accrued $3,000.37 in unpaid bills and late fees. 

The debt was paid shortly after Fox News Digital reached out for comment. 

“The bills in question have been paid,” the spokesperson said. “We respect the commitment to covering anything other than the fact that every single American’s bills – from gas to groceries to electricity – are going way up because of Donald Trump and his enablers like Mike Rogers.”

Mallory McMorrow campaigns at the Michigan Democratic Nominating Convention in Detroit on April 19, 2026. (Jim West/UCG/Universal Images Group)

DEM SENATE HOPEFUL RIPPED FOR TRASHING MIDDLE AMERICA IN UNEARTHED SOCIAL MEDIA POSTS: ‘TICKS ME OFF’

McMorrow, a state legislator vying for the Democratic nomination in one of the country’s top Senate races, has repeatedly fallen behind on payments in recent years. 

Records show the couple has been fined 10 times totaling more than $400 in late fees for nonpayment since late 2021, when they purchased a $1.28 million home in the Detroit suburb. A report in the Detroit Metro Times that year described the property — with a pool and outside courtyard — as a home “to marvel at.”

McMorrow and Wert also let overdue water bills pile up on the home in the latter half of 2024, when they went five months without making a payment. When the couple finally paid $917 in January 2025, records showed an unpaid balance of $45 in late fees.

Royal Oak Township sends water bills quarterly and assesses a 5% late fee on unpaid balances. If McMorrow had failed to pay the balance by June 1, another 5% penalty would have been added, according to a billing notice.

Under Royal Oak policy, unpaid water and sewer bills can eventually be added to the couple’s property tax bill and prolonged nonpayment can result in water shutoff.

The delinquent payments come as recent disclosures show McMorrow and her husband may be millionaires. 

She estimated her net worth between $588,041 and $1.87 million last year, Michigan Advance reported. Up to $1.15 million was reported under her name or as a joint asset with her husband, according to a financial disclosure filed last year.

McMorrow earned $101,554 from her state senator salary, according to the filing. She also reported just over $106,000 in royalties. 

Michigan State Senator Mallory McMorrow speaks on the first day of the Democratic National Convention (DNC) at the United Center in Chicago on August 19, 2024. (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images)

BLUE STATE DEM CANDIDATE WHO MADE ‘AFFORDABILITY’ A KEY ISSUE IN CAMPAIGN RIPPED FOR CHARGING $13 FOR WATER

While McMorrow and her husband were falling behind on payments, she championed “affordability” legislation that would end water shutoffs for not paying city bills. 

McMorrow cosponsored a measure last year that would cap water bills for qualifying low-income residents and offer debt forgiveness for overdue balances. The program would be funded through a regular surcharge on most Michigan water customers.

She has also backed the Human Right to Water Act, which would recognize access to affordable drinking water as a right and direct the state government to develop “affordability criteria.”

In a March 2021 Facebook post, she advocated for legislation that would “end water shutoffs.”

“Let’s be clear, access to water is a human right, even when there’s not a pandemic,” she wrote.

The late utility payments come as McMorrow is running in a combative three-way Democratic primary to succeed Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., who is retiring. 

The swing seat is a must-win race for Democrats hoping to retake Senate control, but Republicans also view the contest as a top flip opportunity. Former Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., cleared the field last year with President Donald Trump’s backing while the Democratic candidates continue to duke it out ahead of the August primary.

McMorrow is campaigning on a progressive platform that includes calling on the wealthy to pay their “fair share” in taxes. Democrat Sen. Bernie Sanders-backed Abdul El-Sayed is running to her left, and Rep. Haley Stevens, D-Mich., a candidate with support from the party’s establishment swing, has espoused more centrist views.

Controversial streamer Hasan Piker and Abdul El-Sayed, a Democratic primary candidate for U.S. Senate in Michigan, take a selfie with young fans after a campaign event at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor on April 7, 2026. (Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP Photo)

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP

Progressive Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Chris Murphy, D-Conn., have endorsed McMorrow’s campaign.

She recently faced scrutiny for deleting thousands of old social media posts prior to her Senate campaign launch that denigrated “Middle America” and associated Trump and his base with Nazi Germany. CNN first reported on the trove of since-deleted posts. 

The Senate hopeful largely defended her posts in an interview with the network, arguing she “tweeted normal things like a normal person.”

College football recruiting is a 24/7, 365-day endeavor, but during the offseason, the discussion gets turned up another notch entirely.

Some of you more casual college football fans may be thinking May is too early to be grabbing the scalpel and dissecting a recruiting class full of verbal pledges who won’t even sign their papers until December at the earliest, but you could not be more wrong.

Michigan Wolverines and Michigan State Spartans helmets are displayed before a college football game at Spartan Stadium in East Lansing, Mich., on Oct. 21, 2023. (Aaron J. Thornton/Getty Images)

More often than not, how you are recruiting post-spring practice is usually a pretty solid indicator of how your class will finish in the winter.

Be forewarned, though. It takes more than just glancing at the number next to your team’s logo and giving a thumbs up or thumbs down.

HOW NAME, IMAGE AND LIKENESS LAWS HAVE CHANGED COLLEGE SPORTS

Sure, it’s nice to be ranked in the top 10 on recruiting sites in the month of May, but there are other factors involved when breaking down a class. Speaking of which, if you go to your favorite recruiting service and peruse the top 10, you’ll see some familiar names littered throughout the page.

Recruiting mainstays like Ohio State, Notre Dame, Oklahoma and Miami, among others, are humming right along with their 2027 classes, but one logo may have stuck out to you.

That’s right, the UCLA Bruins, fresh off a disastrous 3-9 season where they eventually fired head coach DeShaun Foster, are sitting all the way at No. 6 on the 247Sports composite rankings (they’re 11th on Rivals, but let’s not split hairs).

UCLA quarterback Nico Iamaleava runs past Penn State linebacker Amare Campbell during the first half of an NCAA college football game in Pasadena, Calif., on Oct. 4, 2025. (Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP)

It looks like the boosters finally got serious about dumping some of that money they save for basketball into the football program’s NIL budget, along with the fact that a young, successful coach like Bob Chesney may have injected some optimism into the fanbase.

A top-10 class would represent a nearly historic finish for the Bruins, as I could only find one instance of UCLA finishing in the top 10 (2013) since recruiting rankings became more homogenized.

PENN STATE’S JAMES FRANKLIN FACES SCRUTINY FOLLOWING BAD LOSS TO UCLA

But can they finish strong and bring home a recruiting class that can compete with the big boys of college football?

Let’s start with the positives.

The Bruins have 18 commits in their 2027 class, and 10 of those are four stars. This puts their “blue chip ratio” above 50%, which is considered the baseline for a competitive recruiting class.

UCLA also has three top-100 prospects in their class, a pretty solid mark for any program in May.

A general view of Rose Bowl Stadium in Pasadena, Calif., before the UCLA Bruins season opener against the Hawaii Rainbow Warriors on Aug. 28, 2021. (Will Navarro/Icon Sportswire)

While a decent blue-chip ratio and three top-100 recruits is a great start, there is a problem, and it comes in the form of something I mentioned above.

UCLA’s 18 commits is a fairly high number, even in the NIL era of getting deals done early. This means their class doesn’t have as much room to grow as some other classes with 11 or 12 commits currently in their class.

At 18 commits and a class average below 90 (89.85), the Bruins would have to fill the rest of their class out with top-100 or borderline five-star players to have a chance at finishing where they sit right now.

Take a look at their crosstown rivals for a good comparison.

The USC Trojans have 13 commits in their class currently, but sit two spots above the Bruins.

How is that possible?

ZERO BS. JUST DAKICH. TAKE THE DON’T @ ME PODCAST ON THE ROAD. DOWNLOAD NOW!

Well, the Trojans boast a class average of 93.39, more than 3.5 points higher than UCLA’s class average. For context, a full class of 25 commits from last cycle with a similar average finished 13th (Washington), while everyone in the top five from the ’26 cycle finished with a 91.90 or higher.

USC already boasts double the top-100 pledges in its class and even has a five-star already in the fold.

If I had to bet money on who finishes in the top 10 between the two Los Angeles schools, I’m taking the Trojans every day of the week with the data presented to me.

Is there a path to a top-ten class for UCLA?

Of course.

They could catch fire on the trail this summer and make some inroads with some elite prospects.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP

When you couple that with the possibility of having a stellar first season under Chesney, there’s a chance the Bruins sneak into the upper echelon of recruiting rankings.

It’s just not likely given how far along they are already.

Things change, and this new era of NIL-driven recruiting definitely shifts the timeline. But historical data would indicate the Bruins are more likely to finish in the top 15.

That’s still an incredible class, especially considering the doldrums that have plagued the UCLA football program for the past decade plus.

Regardless, I will have both eyes trained on this Bruins recruiting class for the rest of the year.

It will be fascinating to see if they can buck the historical trends stacked against them, and knowing my reputation, I may have just reverse jinxed them into an elite 2027 class.

You’re welcome, Bruins fans.

Watching Bret Baier live from Beijing this week, you couldn’t help but be stunned at his ‘Special Report’ team’s coverage of the surveillance state in China. It’s scary.

Baier reported that in China, if you jaywalk, or ride a scooter without a helmet, cameras capture it and almost instantly you get a ticket on your phone. In fact, Baier’s own driver received one after illegally parking for just a couple of minutes.

It brings up an important question for Americans, because our government has every bit the capability, and most of the equipment in place to enforce such laws so aggressively. If that happened, would America still be America?

People walk past a screen showing images of Chinese President Xi Jinping in Kashgar, in China’s western Xinjiang region. – A recurrence of the Urumqi riots which left nearly 200 people dead a decade ago is hard to imagine in today’s Xinjiang, a Chinese region whose Uighur minority is straitjacketed by surveillance and mass detentions. A pervasive security apparatus has subdued the ethnic unrest that has long plagued the region.  (GREG BAKER/AFP via Getty Images)

American society has a lot of unofficial wiggle room in such things. No tickets are given for double parking in New York City during street cleaning, even though it’s illegal. Everyone on I-95 is going at least 5-15 miles above the speed limit. And as for jaywalking, most American cities have basically instituted a de facto Manifest Destiny of the intersection.

TOO LOUD? TICKET’S IN THE MAIL

This somewhat gentle and relaxed enforcement of laws that do not pertain to violence or rise to the level of felony, explains why every state has bizarre old laws still on the books that are simply never enforced.

In Delaware, it is illegal to sell pet fur. In Massachusetts, swearing at sporting events is a minor crime. In Minnesota, you can be charged with using a greased pig in a contest. The reason these laws were never repealed is that we just stopped enforcing them and nobody cared.

But what happens if every time a law is passed, it comes with an AI-driven surveillance regime that is capable of detecting almost every violation that takes place? How many speeding tickets did you actually deserve this year, according to the letter of the law?

BRETT TOLMAN: MOUNTAIN RUNNER FACING PRISON FOR USING TRAIL BUREAUCRATS SECRETLY DEEMED OFF-LIMITS

Much of this is cultural. I recall being in Tokyo in 2019, even before tickets could magically appear on your phone, and on a pencil straight, one-lane street, dozens of people on both sides stood waiting to cross. I was mystified, I remember thinking, “It’s right there. We can make it. This isn’t storming Omaha beach.”

But for the Japanese, a rule is a rule. You follow it.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, left, shakes hands with U.S. President Donald Trump at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Thursday, May 14, 2026. (Kenny Holston/Pool Photo via AP)

The concern that we should have about the radical increase in the surveillance state in the United States is that it may make our American culture more like South Asian culture, and that is too high a price to pay for safety and order.

JONATHAN TURLEY: ELITES CALL THE CONSTITUTION ‘BROKEN’ BUT AMERICANS KNOW IT’S OUR GREATEST GIFT

The wiggle room described above along with, let’s face it, a healthy dollop of disdain for authority, is as American as apple pie. In fact, it can almost serve as a kind of fourth branch of government when people en masse just ignore silly laws.

For as bad as the COVID lockdowns were, and for all the horrible calls from progressives at the time for us to be more compliant, like the Chinese, we did see millions of Americans just disobey ridiculous restrictions.

This defiant spirit is central to who we are as a nation, and we need to think about both how much surveillance we have and how our government might choose to use it.

WE COULD WIN THE AI WAR AND STILL LOSE ALL OF OUR FREEDOMS IF WE AREN’T CAREFUL

Given our devices, TVs, Ring door cameras, plus all the state surveillance out there, the tools are in place. So far, our government isn’t using it to control us. They could easily flip a switch and go totalitarian anytime they want.

The means of state surveillance in our society that seemed like science fiction just a generation ago, aren’t going anywhere. That is a losing argument akin to lying in front of a bulldozer to save a tree.

FILE – Recently installed toll traffic cameras hang above West End Ave. near 61st Street in the Manhattan borough of New York, Friday, Nov. 16, 2023. The start date for the $15 toll most drivers will be charged to enter Manhattan’s central business district will be June 30, transit officials said Friday, April 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Ted Shaffrey, File)

The real debate will be over how much latitude we give the state, not just to use technology to surveil us, but to punish us for transgressions of minor laws. This is a real challenge because Black’s Law Dictionary has no definition of “wiggle room.”

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP

Do we want to live in an America where a human cop can make a judgment to give you a warning instead of a ticket, or a one where a Robocop simply enforces the letter of the law?

Americans, it seems to me, prefer the wiggle room. But how to protect it, well, that is a very challenging question.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM DAVID MARCUS