Happy Wednesday, and welcome to Tangle. This is Senior Editor Will Kaback. Today we’re turning our attention to Minneapolis, Minnesota, my hometown and a frequent subject of national news over the past six years. Our main topic today is Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar and federal agents’ search of her D.C. home. It’s a story that delves into her refugee background, Minnesota’s Somali-American community, and the rising tide of politicized investigations. 

Later on, a question about press bans under previous administrations. Then, the story of a special track meet in Colorado.

It’s a 13-minute read.

Ari Weitzman, Isaac Saul, Carina Pacheco, Russell Nystrom, Isaac Wood, and Bailey Saul edited or contributed to today’s newsletter.

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Quick hits.

1. Kimberly Guilfoyle resigned as the U.S. ambassador to Greece amid corruption allegations. (The resignation)
2. The Supreme Court agreed to hear a case involving requests for public records about the Department of Government Efficiency’s operations. (The case)
3. Federal filings showed that Elon Musk has donated approximately $276 million to Republican groups since July and $366 million for the overall 2025-26 election cycle, making him the largest known donor in the midterms. (The filings) 
4. The Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested an OpenAI employee, a Saudi national, in connection with a recording device found hidden in the company’s executive conference room. (The arrest)
5. The Vatican announced that Pope Leo XIV was diagnosed with lung cancer following an operation to remove a nodular lesion from his right lung. (The diagnosis)

Today’s topic.

The Ilhan Omar investigation. On Monday, federal agents from Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) searched Rep. Ilhan Omar’s (D-MN) Washington, D.C. residence as part of an immigration investigation. The Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security have shared minimal information about the cause and outcome of the search, but the probe is reportedly related to paperwork Omar’s father filled out when applying for legal status for their family in the United States. The congresswoman denied any wrongdoing and accused the Trump administration of targeting her for political reasons.

Back up: Omar was born in Somalia and fled the country as a child after the outbreak of civil war in the 1990s. She spent four years in a refugee camp in Kenya before coming to the United States at age 12 in 1995, and she eventually settled in Minneapolis, Minnesota, becoming a U.S. citizen in 2000. Omar served in the Minnesota House of Representatives before winning election to the U.S. House in 2018. She is the first Somali-American elected to Congress. 

President Donald Trump and Rep. Omar have an adversarial relationship; Trump has questioned her loyalty to America, while Omar has been an outspoken critic of the Trump administration and accused him of racism. The president has also linked Omar to his broader criticisms of Minnesota’s Somali-American community, which he claims is responsible for widespread fraud and other criminal activity. 

On Monday, Trump claimed that he is not involved in the investigation into Omar but called her “totally crooked.” Several outlets have reported that federal agents are looking into whether her late father, Nur Omar Mohamed, deliberately misstated her birth year to make her eligible for citizenship at the time he was naturalized. Federal agents are also reportedly investigating whether Mohamed lied on his own immigration paperwork. 

Following the HSI search, Rep. Omar’s office said in a statement, “This raid by Trump’s DHS is an outrageous abuse of power and an unprecedented escalation in the weaponization of federal law enforcement to target political enemies. For a decade, Donald Trump has relentlessly targeted Congresswoman Ilhan Omar with inflammatory rhetoric, repeatedly putting a target on her back.” House Democratic leadership also condemned the search, saying it is “deeply disturbing and raises serious questions about the continued corrupt weaponization of the federal government against Donald Trump’s adversaries.”

Below are views from the right and left on the investigation into Omar. Then, Senior Editor Will Kaback’s take.

In the New York Post, Rich Lowry suggested there are “plenty of reasons to probe [Omar’s] past.”

“Much of Ilhan Omar’s family story is a black box, but we are presumably about to learn much more about it,” Lowry wrote. “She has always responded with angry, uninformative dismissals, even when the Minneapolis Star-Tribune — not exactly a right-wing news source — has made inquiries… She gives the impression of wanting to provide as a little information about her family background as possible, and sticking to the more important work of maligning her adopted country.”

“If she’s being smeared, Omar should sit down with a neutral journalist and walk through the details of all this with as many documents as she can muster,” Lowry said. “That seems unlikely. But it’s a certainty that she’ll continue to excoriate the United States — whether it’s the country that welcomed her as a penniless refugee, or the one that tries to denaturalize her for alleged immigration fraud.”

In the Boston Herald, Joe Battenfeld asked “will Trump now turn up the heat on Omar?”

“An embattled President Trump is undertaking a risky gambit raiding the home of controversial ‘Squad’ member Rep. Ilhan Omar just seven weeks before the election,” Battenfeld wrote. “The liberal media is already raising questions about Trump and the DOJ’s political motivations in launching the early morning raid on Omar’s DC residence on Monday. But if the feds do file charges and find Omar is in the country illegally or filed false immigration paperwork it would be a big blow to Democrats and the progressive movement.”

“There is a possibility Omar could be in serious legal jeopardy. An arrogant Omar until now has failed to address her immigration and tax status. She exudes [a] ‘How dare you’ vibe,” Battenfeld said. “Will there be strategic leaks in the investigation? Will Omar’s brother talk? Or will Omar come up with conclusive evidence that she has done nothing wrong?”

In National Review, Andrew C. McCarthy said “I find myself rooting against both sides.”

“I find Omar a detestable figure and have long suspected she may have been complicit in immigration fraud,” McCarthy wrote. “On the other hand, the Trump Justice Department lawfare is revolting: Regardless of whether she’s guilty, Omar is under investigation solely because she is a Trump political enemy. That’s obvious — and not just because of the Trump DOJ’s extensive track record of hounding the president’s nemeses. 

“The DOJ is pursuing an immigration fraud case, and a criminal prosecution arising out of any fraud in Omar’s admission to the United States and subsequent naturalization as a citizen would be long time-barred under the applicable statutes of limitations,” McCarthy said. “Ordinarily, the DOJ would not bother investigating crimes too stale to prosecute, but because Omar is a Trump foe, that protocol has gone by the boards.”

In Esquire, Charles P. Pierce said there are “many things wrong with what the DOJ is doing.”

“Representative Omar came to this country as a refugee from Somalia when she was 12. Whatever her father may have done — and I’m going to need a truckload of evidence that he did anything at all — I don’t know what it has to do with her,” Pierce wrote. “Except that she has been the target of abject racial xenophobia ever since she came to Washington.” 

“This is another example of the president weaponizing law enforcement to play out the demonology in his increasingly superfluous brainpan,” Pierce said. “It also is a shocking violation of separation of powers… But many of the Republicans in Congress are just as rabid about Representative Omar as the president is. Their bigotry cannot replace the constitutional order, even under this president.”

In Common Dreams, Robert Reich called the investigation an “abuse of power.”

“In a democracy, the highest officials of one party do not ‘build cases’ to pursue legislators from the opposing party. Nor do they investigate their political opponents within days of an election, in violation of explicit Department of Justice rules,” Reich wrote. “The Department of Justice guidance for protecting election integrity explicitly states that the department should not engage in investigative measures that might ‘chill legitimate voting and campaign activities’ or ‘interject an investigation itself into ongoing campaigns.’”

“The Justice Manual further states that federal prosecutors and agents ‘may never select the timing’ of investigative steps, charges, or public statements for the purpose of affecting an election or giving an advantage or disadvantage to a candidate or political party,” Reich said. “If Democrats regain control of the House, they must investigate this flagrant abuse of power by Trump, Vance, and the Department of Justice.”

In MS NOW, Zeeshan Aleem suggested Omar is “the latest scapegoat.”

“The reality, it should be easy to deduce, is that Trump sees Omar as a convenient target for his white nationalist agenda… He describes Somali immigrants as ‘garbage’ and ‘low-IQ people’ who ought to be kicked out,” Aleem wrote. “While it’s not clear what the potential outcomes of the investigation are, it fits into the Trump administration’s stated agenda to denaturalize citizens more aggressively than any other in history. 

“It’s yet another way for Trump to peddle the fiction that immigrants are the source of our national problems,” Aleem said. “Omar is also a prominent target because she’s a vociferous progressive who is aligned with democratic socialists in Congress on issues such as supporting Medicare for All and cutting off aid to Israel… Trump and his allies, like many reactionaries before them, appear particularly keen on commingling their targeting of people of color with their attacks on left-wing politics.”

My take. Will Kaback Senior Editor

I grew up in the district Omar represents, so I’m familiar with her and the state’s Somali immigrant population. President Trump is clearly overstating the issues with that community as part of a broader anti-immigrant agenda. Omar has her own issues, but they don’t justify a politicized investigation, let alone deportation.

Reminder: This is where we share a personal opinion. If you have feedback, criticism or compliments, leave a comment or reply to this email.

Monday’s raid of Rep. Ilhan Omar’s residence is the latest example of the Trump administration’s investigations into political opponents. And just like the targets of those other probes — like James Comey, Letitia James, and Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) — Omar’s feud with President Trump is grounded in both ideological and personal grievances.

I grew up in the suburbs of Minneapolis, in the district Omar represents, MN-05. She was never my representative (I was in college when she won the seat in 2018), but I have a good understanding of the district’s political makeup from working on local campaigns in high school and from family and friends who remain her constituents. 

Somali-Americans have an outsized influence in MN-05 and state politics writ large. Growing up, first- or second-generation immigrants from Somalia were my classmates, friends, and teammates. I never really perceived them as a distinct group; they were just classmates, friends, and teammates. If differences existed between us at home, they were rarely present at school or on the field. 

But even though it didn’t register with me as a kid, Minnesota’s Somali community is unique — it’s the largest Somali population in the United States, and MN-05 has the largest Somali population within the state. Many, including Rep. Omar and her family, resettled in the Twin Cities after fleeing the Somali Civil War of the 1990s. The community is still a relatively small part of the overall population (even in MN-05, Somalis make up just 3.4% of residents), but they’ve amassed considerable political influence — similar to other immigrant communities throughout U.S. history (and Minnesota history).

And like those other historical immigrant communities, Somali immigrants’ integration hasn’t been seamless — tensions were brewing long before YouTuber Nick Shirley showed up to document claims of fraud. Now, those tensions are ratcheting up: Just this month, alleged members of a Somali gang were charged in connection with a shooting at a homecoming football game, and the FBI arrested a U.S. citizen of Somali descent for allegedly plotting a mass shooting at the Mall of America. After a separate incident linked to Somali gangs in which over 100 rounds were fired in a suburban area, Bloomington Police Chief Booker Hodges said, “I'm not going to sugarcoat it. We're dealing with Somali-American gangs right now.” Meanwhile, many Somali-Americans in Minnesota report feeling increasingly ostracized and scapegoated for the actions of a few.

Somali-American leaders have spoken openly about how issues like fraud can seem endemic to their group. But Somalis themselves are most often the targets of these bad actors in the community. In 2024, Kayseh Magan, a former Medicaid fraud investigator and Somali-American, explained, “The conduit for fraud in publicly funded programs are the recipients, who require services. Somali recipients face language and cultural barriers. In an unfamiliar country, they lean heavily on other Somalis. Somali providers are in a position of trust, and some have taken advantage.”

As the face of the Somali-American community in Minnesota (and, really, the United States), Ilhan Omar has become an avatar for these problems. For the Trump administration, targeting Omar clearly communicates its broader agenda: push people like her out of the United States.

It’s hard to say if the investigation has merit based on the limited information currently available. We know that agents from Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) had a search warrant to carry out Monday’s raid and that their investigation is probing whether Omar’s father falsified her paperwork when applying for legal status. We also know that the Trump administration has been promising to go after the congresswoman for immigration-related offenses — DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin told conservative podcaster Benny Johnson last month that “something’s going to happen” in relation to Omar, adding, “If we can prove it, that you shouldn't have been here in the first place, we'll deport you.” 

Whatever comes of this investigation, the administration faces an uphill battle on any immigration-related criminal charges. As National Review’s Andrew McCarthy noted under “What the right is saying,” even if investigators found evidence that Omar’s father made misrepresentations in his immigration applications, the statute of limitations for prosecuting immigration crimes expired years ago. Not to mention, any theoretical charges would implicate her father, not Omar herself. In sum, the congresswoman almost certainly can’t be criminally charged for immigration offenses, though a civil denaturalization case is possible but unlikely based on what we know now. And the likelihood that she is denaturalized is slimmer still.

With that said, Omar’s backstory is convoluted. After fleeing Somalia, she spent four years in a refugee camp in Kenya before coming to the U.S. at age 12. In 2018, she told The Intercept that she became a U.S. citizen alongside her father through a process called derivative citizenship. However, just this week, The New York Post reported that Omar’s staff had her birth year changed from 1981 to 1982 after she was elected to Congress. That’s a critical change, because derivative citizenship is only available to minors; and if Omar was born in 1981, she would have already been an adult when her father was naturalized. 

Questions about Omar’s immigration history extend to other rumors about her family. President Trump and conservative activists have alleged that Omar improperly obtained legal status for her brother in the U.S. by marrying him. As documented by Snopes, the rumor originated from a post on an online Somali community discussion forum and has never been substantiated. Still, the saga is complex — Omar says she married a different man (Ahmed Hirsi) in 2002 but did not complete the application process for a civil marriage. She and Hirsi separated in 2008, and she formally married Ahmed Nur Said Elmi (the man said to be her brother) the next year. Omar and Elmi separated in 2011, but did not legally divorce until 2017. Between those two dates, she reconciled with Hirsi. That marriage also failed, and she is now married to political consultant Tim Mynett. It’s a fairly fraught relationship history (fraught enough to help these rumors persist), but still: No evidence has emerged that Ahmed Nur Said Elmi is Omar’s brother. 

Other rumors like this one have also largely been disproven, but I can accept that a narrow immigration investigation into Omar’s citizenship paperwork might have merit (remember, a court had to sign off on HSI’s search). Even accepting that, the Justice Department’s and DHS’s decision to pursue this raid, in spite of the statute of limitations and the proximity to the midterms, screams ill intent — particularly given the DOJ’s traditional (though not explicit or binding) practice of avoiding public actions involving political candidates within 60 days of an election. I don’t think the Trump administration is trying to derail Omar’s chances of reelection — MN-05 is deep blue, and she’s going to win. Rather, this investigation is about sending a message: We’re fighting to push people like Omar out of the U.S. 

It’s a playbook we’ve seen Trump run many times, including his 2024 remarks about Haitian migrants in Ohio eating cats and dogs. These days, he’s saying that Somali immigrants are responsible for “Violence, Murder, and Mayhem all over [Minnesota]” and calling on “the people of Minnesota [to] fight back.” 

Now, in targeting Omar (someone he’s openly fantasized about sending back to Somalia), Trump is acting on personal grievance but also a collective grievance shared by many in the MAGA movement: People like Omar are taking over this country; we need to push them back. It’s a politically salient message, and its power comes from real frustrations. But I draw the line at casting an entire group of people (most of whom are naturalized or native-born U.S. citizens!) as violent criminals who should be forcibly removed.

I’ve held off on sharing my own views on Omar, but now I’ll show my cards: I’m not a fan. She’s made a slew of objectionable remarks in the past — mostly criticisms of Israel that veered into antisemitism — but I’m more opposed to her political style that emphasizes hollow clapbacks tailored for social media clips, personal digs, and attempted gotchas (even when she’s the one in the wrong). This style isn’t unique to Omar; I’m against it in all cases.

It might feel nice for a moment to imagine someone like this getting a degree of comeuppance, but it’s a fleeting, sickly high. Barring an unforeseen development, Omar is not going to be imprisoned or deported — the big “win” will be a dramatic raid that leads to nothing. We’ve seen this enough in the second Trump administration to call it what it is: wielding the power of the executive branch to target political opponents. Any personal qualms I have with Omar pale in comparison to this abuse of power. 

Take the survey: What do you think of the claims against Rep. Omar? Let us know.

Disagree? That’s okay. Our opinion is just one of many. Write in and let us know why, and we’ll consider publishing your feedback.

Your questions, answered.

How does Trump’s attempt to ban certain media outlets from the White House differ from Obama’s attempts to ban Fox News in 2009?

— Anonymous from San Bernardino, CA

Managing Editor Ari Weitzman: The two events start with a lot in common, but they quickly diverge. 

In 2009, President Barack Obama was losing patience with Fox News, one of the five broadcast news stations in the White House media pool along with ABC, CBS, CNN, and NBC. Fox had been devoting much of its nightly coverage to criticism of the Obama administration, to the frustration of many senior officials. White House Communications Director Anita Dunn called Fox “opinion journalism masquerading as news” and an “arm of the Republican Party.” Senior White House Advisor David Axelrod called the network “not really news“ and said, “Our concern is other media not follow their lead.”

That quote from Axelrod seemed to indicate intent when, in October 2009, the Obama administration made the Treasury Department’s “pay czar” Kenneth Feinberg available to every network in the broadcast pool except Fox. Republicans criticized the administration, and the five networks in the pool banded together to collectively pass on interviewing Feinberg. The administration reversed course, granting Fox an interview with Feinberg and admitting it made a mistake.

The first significant difference between this event and President Trump’s attempt to ban CNN, MS NOW, and Politico is that Obama denied Fox one interview; Trump denied three outlets access to the White House, indefinitely. 

The differences continue from there. Trump himself called the networks “fake news” that published “lies,” tied the decision to the launch of his own “Trump TV” channel on YouTube, and did not back down to initial pressure from lawmakers or the banned networks’ sister channels. Instead, the administration relented only after the networks sued and were granted an injunction, which Trump vowed to fight (the Justice Department is now investigating whether the networks violated antitrust law when they banded together to revoke their coverage).

Obama and Trump may have both acted on frustration with coverage from outlets in the press pool, but the actions they took are in totally different categories. If Obama’s spat with Fox was a high school drama, Trump’s battle with CNN, MS NOW, and Politico is a street fight.

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The extras.

• One year ago today was the Supreme Court case on conversion therapy.
• The most clicked link in our last regular newsletter was the Friday edition on Hasan Piker.
• Nothing to do with politics: Play a reimagined version of The Oregon Trail as a worker who’s just been laid off.
• Our last survey: 5,121 readers responded to our survey on plans to livestream the execution of the Fort Hood shooter, with 93% saying the public should not be able to view the government carrying out death sentences. “To have this administration seriously consider such a thing is just one more alarming signal of how far from decency our leaders have fallen,” one respondent said. “The public viewing would only give more attention to the convicted killer,” said another.

Have a nice day.

Children who are deaf or hard of hearing can’t always participate in athletic endeavors their peers enjoy, but the Marion Downs Center in Aurora, Colorado, has created a space for them to gather for fun and competition. In September, the nonprofit hosted its annual track and field day, bringing together school-age kids with hearing challenges for a day of sack races, long jump, egg-and-spoon races, and sprints. In addition to providing a physical outlet, the event offers a chance for kids to connect with others from across the state who live with similar disabilities. “I'm really excited to be here,” fifth-grader Angie Mast said. “I like to meet other kids who have hearing loss and get to know them.” Colorado Public Radio has the story.