Democrats spent 2020 insisting Antifa wasn't even real while American cities burned.
Six years later, one of them just said it again on national television.
What Wisconsin Democrat Mark Pocan called Antifa this time will make you furious.
The Prairieland Antifa Cell Just Got 450 Years Combined for Shooting a Cop
Benjamin Song led a group of Antifa operatives who attacked the Prairieland ICE Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas, on July 4, 2025.
They set off fireworks.
They brought guns.
They shot Alvarado Police Lt. Thomas Gross.
Last month a federal court handed Song 100 years in prison for attempted murder of a law enforcement officer.
His co-defendants got sentences ranging from 30 to 70 years.
Combined, the Prairieland Antifa cell is serving 450 years behind bars.
The Justice Department called it the first sentencing of Antifa-affiliated defendants since President Trump designated the group a domestic terrorist organization in September 2025.
Trump followed that designation with National Security Presidential Memorandum 7.
The directive tells federal agencies to treat Antifa-style political violence the way they'd treat any other terror network.
It's already reaching beyond Texas.
In Minnesota, fifteen more people tied to a group called Direct Action Minnesota were indicted this June on conspiracy and assault charges.
Federal prosecutors built a ninety-four-page case there around the group's own words and symbols.
That's the pattern Trump's Justice Department is building case by case, city by city.
That designation is exactly what Mark Pocan went on television to mock.
On Thursday's broadcast of MS NOW Reports, Pocan was asked about a new State Department report tying Cuba to Antifa-linked unrest inside the United States.
His response wasn't concern.
It was a punchline.
"The only Antifa I know is a drag queen with that name."
Pocan said Antifa has no address – just a label he claims Trump invented to shut down his critics.
He brushed the whole report off as nonsense, chalking it up to what he now calls a dysfunctional White House.
Pocan Called the Same Prosecutions a War on Protesters Like Cuba
Here's what Pocan left out.
Song wasn't arrested for a Facebook post.
He was convicted by a jury after a trial built on testimony from investigators and cooperating witnesses.
Prosecutors showed Song recruited members at gun ranges and combat training sessions.
He distributed the firearms himself.
Elizabeth Soto, Ines Soto, and Savanna Batten belonged to a cell that produced what the Justice Department called insurrectionary "zines."
Batten drew 50 years in prison alongside them.
A wounded police officer is the reason this case exists.
Yet in the same MS NOW appearance, Pocan compared prosecuting the Prairieland shooters to Cuba jailing its own dissidents.
He argued Washington was punishing protesters the exact way a Communist regime silences opposition.
A man who shot a cop is not a protester.
Pocan wants you to believe otherwise.
Mocking the label is easier than explaining why members of his coalition keep showing up armed at federal facilities.
Every time a Democrat jokes about Antifa's existence, a jury somewhere is reading ballistics reports and body cam footage that say otherwise.
Pocan can call it ridiculous all he wants.
The judge who sentenced Song to a century in prison clearly didn't see a punchline.
Neither did the officer who took a bullet outside that detention center.
The 2020 denials didn't stop the shooting outside Prairieland.
They didn't stop the guns, the fireworks, or the wounded officer.
They just made it easier for Democrats like Pocan to act stunned when the bill came due in a federal courtroom.
Song is appealing his sentence.
Pocan is still in Congress, still doing cable hits, still daring voters to notice the gap between his punchline and the sentencing docket in Fort Worth.
His constituents deserve better than a congressman treating a shot police officer like material for a bit.
Voters in Wisconsin should ask Pocan directly whether Lt. Thomas Gross agrees the whole thing is ridiculous.
They already know what his answer will be.
Sources:
- Ian Hanchett, "Dem Rep. Pocan: 'Antifa Is Nothing', 'Only Antifa I Know Is a Drag Queen,'" Breitbart, July 24, 2026.
- "Leader of Antifa Cell Members in North Texas Sentenced to 100 Years in Prison for Terrorist Attack on ICE Facility," U.S. Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs, June 23, 2026.
- "Trump Formally Designates Antifa Domestic Terrorist Organization," Fox News, September 22, 2025.
- "15 Antifa Members Indicted for Conspiring to Obstruct ICE in Minneapolis," Fox News, June 20, 2026.
