WASHINGTON, D.C. (The Daily Whatever Press) — I hate to start your week off with a dystopian fucking nightmare, but here we go. Early Monday morning, federal agents searched the home of Representative Ilhan Omar, a sitting member of the United States Congress, just three weeks before the midterms, where she’s up for re-election. And the Department of Justice couldn’t even be bothered to say her name.
Here’s what the DOJ gave us: Homeland Security Investigations “executed a judicially authorized search warrant,” and it’s all “part of an ongoing federal criminal investigation.” That’s it. No name, no address, no charge. Not one single fucking word about what Ilhan Omar is supposed to have done.
They didn’t need to name her, because the leaks did it for them. Two people “familiar with the matter” told the AP whose house it was. Sources told ABC it’s about her immigration paperwork. And Tom Homan, the border czar, already did his part weeks ago: in September he went on Fox News to announce there was a criminal investigation into Omar, before she says the feds had so much as contacted her. On Monday, according to CNN, he was back on Fox to confirm the warrant had been executed, and added absolutely nothing else. Why would he? Information was never the point.
The point was the picture: federal agents, a blocked-off street, and the word “criminal” stapled next to the name of a Black, Muslim, Somali-born congresswoman three weeks before her election.
Now connect the dots, because at this point they’re connecting themselves.
Earlier this year, the president of the United States posted that Omar “should be in jail” and should be “sent back to Somalia.” That’s the order, placed publicly, in his own words. In May, JD Vance said something “fishy” was going on, then assured everyone she was entitled to “equal justice under the laws,” which is what you say when you’ve already picked the ending and want credit for doing the paperwork. In August, Minneapolis police searched her son’s apartment and arrested his roommate on a weapons charge. Neither Omar nor her son was implicated in anything. That mattered for about four seconds before Benny Johnson called it “not a good look” and another MAGA commentator demanded we deport Ilhan Omar “and her family.”
And her family. Hang on to that phrase.
Because now it’s October, the midterms are three weeks out, and the agency knocking on her door is HSI — the criminal-investigations arm of the Department of Homeland Security, the people whose actual job is chasing human traffickers, drug smugglers, and child predators across borders. Those are the agents this administration pointed at a woman who arrived here as a refugee kid fleeing a civil war, became a citizen, got elected to the Minnesota House, got elected to Congress in 2018, and has been reelected by her constituents every single time since. Her district keeps saying yes.
The White House keeps asking what it would take to make the question go away forever.
Yes, a judge signed the warrant. That means the DOJ convinced a judge there was probable cause to go looking for something. It doesn’t tell us what, it doesn’t mean a crime happened, and it sure as shit doesn’t explain why the whole operation runs on anonymous leaks and a cable-news cameo instead of an indictment. A warrant is permission to look. When your government only ever looks in one direction, at one woman, after the president publicly requested her jailing and deportation, the warrant isn’t what you should be watching. Watch the hand that keeps pointing.
That hand belongs, in part, to Tom Homan, and Tom Homan has a type. This is the same man who once announced he’d emailed the deputy attorney general to see whether Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had “crossed the line” by hosting a webinar teaching people their rights. A webinar. About rights. Sting spent forty years trying to explain that “Every Breath You Take” was a creepy surveillance song and not a wedding dance; this administration heard it and took notes.
I’m GenX, which means I grew up in the long shadow of a president with an actual enemies list. We were kids when the grown-ups learned that Nixon’s people broke into a psychiatrist’s office to dig up dirt on Daniel Ellsberg, and the whole lesson of the 1970s — the lesson they drilled into us between Schoolhouse Rock and the Pledge of Allegiance — was that this is the thing America doesn’t do. Nixon at least had the decency to be ashamed. He had to sneak. He had to hire burglars and call it a third-rate burglary. This crew doesn’t sneak. They get the paperwork, leak the name, and send the border czar out for a victory lap on morning TV.
So let’s talk about who this is really for.
It’s for every naturalized citizen in this country, and it lands hardest on women. I’m raising two daughters, and here’s the lesson this administration is teaching them in real time: a woman who talks back — who yelled “You’re a liar” at the president during his State of the Union, who refuses to sit down and be grateful — gets her papers pulled, her son’s apartment turned upside down, and federal agents on her street. Every immigrant woman who has ever filled out a federal form with a misspelled name or a wrong date just learned her citizenship is a permission slip the government reserves the right to revisit if she gets loud enough.
And if you’re thinking, “Well, I’m not a congresswoman,” good, you’re paying attention, because that’s the problem. Omar has a staff, a press office, a national platform, and a constitutional job, and she still woke up to this. In January, in Saint Paul, ICE agents forced their way into the home of a naturalized citizen named ChongLy Thao without a warrant and hauled him outside in his underwear. Omar got a judge’s signature. Regular people don’t even get that much.
If they’ll do this to someone the whole country is watching, what the fuck do you think they’ll do to someone nobody’s watching?
This is what it looks like when a government stops pretending the rules are for everyone. They named the target in public. They floated the “fishy” feeling. They piled onto her kid. They waited until three weeks before the vote, and then they sent the trafficking cops.
In August they told us who was next: Omar “and her family.” On Monday, they knocked.
From the bottom of the depths of my Democracy-starved heart: fuck every single one of them.
And vote. For the love of everything, please vote.
Hi, I’m Dana — and I Write Out Loud
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The crime is always the same, opposition to Trump. This is the most outrageous act and if the Democratic House and Senate doesn't shout that out loud, then fuck them!
WTH