House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) — who has repeatedly questioned the polls showing Democrats flipping the House of Representatives — insisted Tuesday there will be a “peaceful transfer of power” following the midterm elections.
Johnson called the question asking him to commit to a peaceful transfer of power in January regardless of what the results are “silly,” saying the Constitution will be followed.
President Donald Trump is demanding that Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., immediately resign from Congress, reviving longstanding allegations about her identity and marriage following a Justice Department court filing that referred to the congresswoman by another name.
“It was just revealed that Ilhan Omar’s name is not Ilhan Omar,” Trump wrote Thursday night on Truth Social, claiming the name she used to win election and take the oath of office was fraudulent.
The president alleged that Omar’s name was actually “Ilhan Nur Said Elmi,” a name appearing in a federal court filing connected to an investigation into her immigration history.
Trump also repeated the unsubstantiated allegation that Omar married her brother, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, a claim she has repeatedly denied as Elmi is just Omar’s ex-husband.
“Because she used a fake name to be sworn in, I assume she must IMMEDIATELY resign from Congress,” Trump wrote.
He then addressed House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., claiming the Democratic Party had effectively surrendered Omar’s seat and declaring that she could no longer legally serve in Congress.
Omar fired back Friday on X.
The pedophile protection party’s president is laundering right-wing conspiracy theories through the most corrupt DOJ in American history.
Whenever the news turns bad, this creep reaches for one name: mine. So let’s make it crystal clear. My name has always been Ilhan Omar.
Maybe you should focus on what your VP’s real name is.
“Whenever the news turns bad, this creep reaches for one name: mine,” she wrote. “So let’s make it crystal clear. My name has always been Ilhan Omar.”
She accused the president of using the Justice Department to circulate right-wing conspiracy theories and added a pointed reference to Vice President JD Vance, who was born James Donald Bowman.
“Maybe you should focus on what your VP’s real name is,” Omar wrote.
Federal agents searched Omar’s Washington-area home earlier this month as part of an investigation into possible immigration fraud. Omar has not been charged with a crime, and the court filing’s reference to another name does not establish that she committed fraud. In an interview with MSNOW, Omar expressed her frustration with this latest attack and mentioned that she and her family will be moving from the home that was searched.
Trump’s demand also has no independent legal force. The Constitution gives the House, not the president, authority to expel a member, requiring a two-thirds vote.
The latest confrontation continues Trump’s yearslong campaign against Omar, one of his most outspoken congressional critics.
The Trump Justice Department has mapped out its coming attack on mifepristone — much thirsted for by anti-abortion advocates, but deliberately delayed to avoid midterm backlash — in a new court filing.
The first step to imposing new restrictions (or reimposing ones previously lifted) is to conduct a “safety review.” Experts often point out that there are few drugs that have been studied and scrutinized as much as mifepristone, making the pretense of discovering some heretofore unknown risk factor fairly absurd.
“FDA is on track to obtain study results by mid-December 2026,” DOJ wrote of its review. “FDA will then need to review and evaluate/interpret the results and draft a report. FDA expects to complete that process not later than March 2027.”
The agency will then use those “findings” to justify a change to mifepristone’s REMS — Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy — or restrictions meant to police the use of highly dangerous drugs. Mifepristone’s safety profile has never justified these restrictions, but the anti-abortion movement’s decades of smearing the drug as unsafe has successfully made it harder to get under Republican and Democratic FDAs alike.
The Biden administration took the largest strides yet in removing some of these barriers. Most importantly, it lifted the in-person dispensing requirement, which has allowed patients even in red states to be prescribed the medicine over telehealth by doctors in blue ones, and receive it in the mail. So far, blue state shield laws have protected those providers from prosecution by red states, though a massive legal reckoning on these state jurisdictional issues is certainly coming.
That Biden-era REMS change is the crux of a Louisiana lawsuit against the FDA seeking to restrict mifepristone, with the state arguing that allowing the drug to be remotely prescribed and mailed undermines its abortion ban and forces it to expend money on Medicaid patients that have mifepristone-related complications. This week’s filing is part of that lawsuit. Historically, these lawsuits have struggled to amass legitimate examples of such mifepristone-related injuries, and Louisiana’s complaint leans heavily on state sovereignty.
The DOJ filing stated that the FDA is looking at the in-person dispensing requirement in particular.
“Following completion of its study and review, FDA will decide whether changes to the Mifepristone REMS Program are necessary and, if applicable, initiate any such changes in accordance with established processes,” it said. “FDA anticipates that it will be able to provide an update to its estimated date of completion as more information becomes known, particularly in March 2027 when it expects to complete its report on the final study results.”
This filing is as much a signal to the anti-abortion movement as it is an attempt to get Louisiana to cool it until the midterms are safely finished and the FDA can do the dirty work itself. Activists have been outraged at the lack of movement in President Donald Trump’s second term, though they were somewhat assuaged when he nominated Heidi Overton — who has called mifepristone “dangerous to women” and celebrated Dobbs — as the new FDA commissioner. She has not yet received a confirmation vote.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is being accused of running away from a bipartisan effort to hold an impeachment vote on Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
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