Federal agents searched the Washington, D.C., home of Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, on Monday morning as part of a criminal investigation, following months of public accusations against the congresswoman by President Donald Trump and members of his administration.

Agents from Homeland Security Investigations executed a search warrant authorized by a federal judge, according to the Associated Press and The Washington Post.

“This enforcement action is part of an ongoing federal criminal investigation,” the Justice Department said in a statement.

The department did not disclose the scope of the investigation or what agents were seeking. Fox News reported, citing unidentified sources, that investigators were examining immigration paperwork completed by Omar’s late father when she was a child.

The search follows repeated allegations of immigration fraud from Trump administration officials, including Vice President JD Vance, who previously said he discussed potential legal action against Omar with White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller.

Omar, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Somalia, has repeatedly denied the allegations. Federal officials have not publicly presented evidence substantiating them.

Trump has frequently singled out Omar, an outspoken critic of his administration and one of the first Muslim women elected to Congress. His attacks have included calls for her to leave the United States and repeated references to a Minnesota welfare fraud scandal in which Omar has not been accused of wrongdoing.

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The search comes just three weeks before the Nov. 3 midterm elections — and after voting has already begun in Minnesota.

Absentee voting in the state opened Sept. 18, according to the Minnesota secretary of state’s office. Omar is seeking reelection to Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District, which includes Minneapolis.

The Justice Department has longstanding policies discouraging investigative actions intended to influence elections. Federal officials have not explained whether election-related considerations factored into the timing of Monday’s search.

Omar’s office had not issued a public response to the search as of the latest reporting. No charges have been announced.

The post Federal agents search Rep. Ilhan Omar’s D.C. home appeared first on Salon.com.

An Ugly Hate Campaign Returns

As polls show Republicans doing poorly in safely red states, the party is looking toward blue states in which its candidates might have a chance. One such state is Minnesota, where Senate candidate Michele Tafoya (R), a former sideline reporter for Sunday Night Football, is polling well. And so I can only guess it is with the election in mind that President Trump is trying to stir up some racial tension, going so far as to encouraging Minnesotans to “fight back” against their Somali immigrant neighbors.

The state has been “taken over by Somali Immigrants” he wrote on Truth Social yesterday. “There is Violence, Murder, and Mayhem all over the State. The people of Minnesota must fight back.”

He want on to attack Governor Tim Walz (D) as “an incompetent thief who doesn’t want to get involved” before concluding “The Somalians should not be allowed to get away with what they are doing. They view you as weak and stupid people. Fight back Minnesota, fight back!”

The attacks rest on the same panic about fraud investigations in the state that prompted last winter’s federal invasion of Minneapolis, leaving two American citizens dead. Republicans have returned to those talking points after an 18-year-old American citizen born to Somali immigrant parents was arrested earlier this week after allegedly plotting an attack on the Mall of America with an assault rifle, inspired by ISIS. It’s unclear how realistic his plan was. Tafoya, the Republican Senate candidate, has leaned hard on the details of that arrest, while also describing voter concerns about “crime” and supposed “Somali gangs.”

Elsewhere, Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN), who represents a red seat northwest of Minneapolis, offered the idea that his constituents were facing “enemy combatants.”

“This is another one that you’re going to hear at the ballot box,” he said on Fox Business. “Democrats […] are not talking about it, they are not offering solutions, and they are not holding these fraudsters or these criminal gangsters — which I would argue are enemy combatants, more than anything — they’re not holding them accountable.”

Trump’s comments are reminiscent of the 2024 smear campaign JD Vance employed against Haitian immigrants in Ohio, seizing on an issue that, as TPM reported at the time, neo-Nazi groups including Blood Tribe and Patriot Front had sought to push to the fore. It’s tempting to predict this rhetoric will backfire in the midterms, but it’s hard to say whether that was the case in 2024: after grotesquely and falsely accusing Haitians of eating pets, Trump and Vance won all seven battleground states and won Ohio by 11 points.

I can imagine, however, that Minnesotans, at this point, are getting tired of this.

Trump Tries Last-Minute Gambit to Pay off Americans

• A series of actions by the Republican-led Congress and the Trump administration have dealt significant blows to health care in America — specifically, to Obamacare and Medicaid which, in turn, support rural hospitals.
• As a solution, the White House has unveiled two schemes to send Americans small checks — one for $90 to Medicare Part B enrollees and the other for $500 to Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace enrollees who do not receive premium assistance.
• That first initiative seriously stretches the law, experts told TPM’s Emine Yücel, describing it to her as a “legally dubious” interpretation of how the executive branch may use the pool of funding it’s tapping into.
• This all became an issue in last night’s debate between Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), the head of the Senate Appropriations Committee, and her Democratic challenger Troy Jackson. Emine reports:

Tabs

• Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) tore into Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA) in last night’s Georgia Senate debate, deploying such lines as, “If John Lewis were marching today from Selma to Montgomery, Mike Collins would be grabbing a billy club.” Read Layla A. Jones’ recap for TPM here.
• ICE agents shot a man in New York City multiple times Thursday while he was in his car. According to New York officials, a five-year-old child was in the back seat.
• The Trump administration will livestream the killing by firing squad of the Fort Hood shooter, the first U.S. military execution since 1961. Pete Hegseth is super excited about it.