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Federal agents search Rep. Ilhan Omar’s D.C. home

12 October 2026 at 19:00

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.

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“Very serious threats”: FBI officials demoted after Katie Miller theats probe

27 September 2026 at 21:00

Two veteran FBI counterterrorism officials were demoted after investigators determined allegedly harassing calls to a top White House aide’s wife did not warrant further investigation, according to multiple reports.

Michael Burgwald, who led counterterrorism operations at the FBI’s Washington Field Office, and his deputy, Courtland Rae, were removed from their leadership positions Friday and reassigned to FBI headquarters.

The shakeup followed an investigation into allegedly threatening and harassing calls received by Katie Miller, a conservative podcaster married to White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller.

A field office team reviewed the calls but found they did not meet the threshold for an FBI investigation and identified no connection to terrorism, CNN reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

That conclusion reportedly caused friction with FBI leadership.

Bloomberg Law, which first reported the demotions, said Washington Field Office leadership was dissatisfied with the pace of the investigation and that the Miller family shared those frustrations. FBI Director Kash Patel was also displeased with the office’s progress, according to the outlet.

The FBI and White House have pushed back on suggestions that the Millers or Patel ordered the personnel changes.

Washington Field Office chief Darren Cox said he made the decision himself.

“Director Patel did not order this decision,” Cox said. “This was a personnel decision made at the Washington field office level alone based on our constant evaluation of mission needs.”

White House spokesperson Lauren Bis said the Millers had never met or interacted with Burgwald or Rae.

“Senior leadership at the FBI determined they were stifling investigations into very serious threats and made a unilateral decision to remove them,” Bis said.

Details about the calls themselves have not been made public, leaving unclear what investigators reviewed or why they concluded the messages did not warrant further FBI action.


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The reassignments also remove decades of counterterrorism experience from the Washington office as the United States remains at war with Iran.

Burgwald is a West Point graduate who has received multiple attorney general’s awards. Rae helped oversee the FBI’s response to the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. Both officials also worked on investigations related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

The Millers and their children moved from their Virginia home into military housing last year amid what the White House has described as a campaign of stalking, doxing and threats against the family.

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GOP Candidates Find Creative New Ways to Distance Themselves From Trump

23 September 2026 at 14:17

Pay No Attention to That Man Inside the White House

Florida gubernatorial candidate Byron Donalds, the Miami Herald noticed yesterday, scrubbed his campaign website of almost any mention of Trump’s name. He is, of course, not the first. Mike Beltran, running in Florida for a U.S. House seat, changed his website so that rather than stating he “felt inspired by President Trump’s 2016 victory,” it now explains he felt “called to public service.” Joe Mitchell, running in Iowa, once described himself as a “trusted voice in the MAGA movement” who would “always fight for the hard-working Iowans who have made their support for President Trump loud and clear.” Now, the Washington Post noticed, he promises to “clean up Washington and put working families first.”

The lack of enthusiasm among 2026 candidates for the Trump-headlined Dallas midterm convention was perhaps the canary in the coal mine. Now, amid dismal poll numbers, Republicans candidates are scrambling to put distance between themselves and the president in ways large and small — though the president is quite hard to ignore.

Some have taken a stand against the Iran War, with Ohio Senate candidate Jon Husted calling for it to “come to an end as quickly as possible so that we can lower gas prices.” Just before the House left for recess until November, seven Republicans joined with Democrats to vote to end the war.

My favorite example in this is Rep. Tom Tiffany, running for governor in Wisconsin. At TPM, we’ve highlighted the extent to which his defining characteristic is his election denial and the lengths he went following the 2020 election to keep Trump in office. As recently as May, he was encouraging the FBI to probe how his state conducted the 2020 election, and would not say who won it.

But, asked this month about that election, a spokesperson for Tiffany told a Wisconsin news outlet where he stood: “Joe Biden won.”

State Department Office With White Supremacist Name Does White Supremacist Things

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller takes part in a meeting of the Shield of the Americas on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York on September 22, 2026. (Photo by Brendan SMIALOWSKI / AFP via Getty Images)

A Washington Post investigation earlier this week provided the most extensive detail yet of the Trump State Department’s new Office of Remigration. The office, which takes its name from a European neo-Nazi concept of ethnic cleansing, has been behind the third country removals that have ramped up throughout the Trump administration, depositing immigrants to the U.S. in countries to which they have no connection.

  • The Post obtained documents that detail the deals behind these removals, showing payments of $81 million to 13 foreign governments, many of which are authoritarian regimes.
  • The Trump administration has deported a whopping 25,000 people in this way to at least 28 countries, per the Post.
  • Many of these migrants have described, to the Post and numerous other outlets, inhumane conditions imposed by both the ICE agents who carry out the deportations and the third countries that ultimately receive the deported, including beatings and a lack of access to medical care.
  • I was particularly interested in the details of why and how the term remigration — which comes from the darkest corners of the European right — was given to this office. (I know at this point in the Trump administration this kind of thing can fail to shock, but I really would encourage you to read TPM reporter Chris Mathias’ backgrounder on the term to understand how extreme its origins are, and what the administration is winking at here.) The Post documents how career staffers at the office — which, prior to its Trump administration repurposing, was dedicated to helping refugees — questioned State Department leadership about the name and mission change. “The message we got was that was the exact terminology they wanted,” one staffer told the Post.
  • The office’s work is the brainchild of Stephen Miller and his closest administration allies, the Post reports.
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