Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed admitted his sister-in-law landed on the federal terrorist watchlist during the Obama years, days before the former president campaigns beside him.
Breitbart reported that Fox News senior correspondent Mike Tobin confronted El-Sayed in a hallway Saturday night with court documents naming Mariam Jukaku, his sister-in-law, as a plaintiff in a 2016 lawsuit over her alleged placement on the Terrorist Screening Dataset.
Tobin put the question directly. El-Sayed did not dodge it.
When asked whether the lawsuit documentation showed Jukaku had been on the terrorist watch list, El-Sayed answered, “Yeah.”
He then insisted she had done nothing wrong, claimed she sued her way off the list, and blamed the screening system itself, including infrastructure he tied to his Republican rival, Mike Rogers.
The acknowledgment lands as former President Barack Obama is expected to appear with El-Sayed in Michigan on October 24. Voters now have a clearer picture of the family history surrounding a Democrat running for the U.S. Senate.
Fox News reported that court documents and related coverage show Jukaku underwent extensive airport screening in 2012 without being told she had been flagged. The 2016 filing said she was believed removed from the watchlist by that year.
El-Sayed framed the episode as a false flagging and a successful fight.
“She did nothing wrong and was captured on that and then sued and got off,”
he told Tobin.
The legal trail did not end cleanly in her favor. A separate lawsuit seeking damages was dismissed in 2017. In 2021, a federal appeals court overturned a ruling that had favored Jukaku and other plaintiffs.
Fox News noted the watchlist lawsuit does not establish wrongdoing by Jukaku or El-Sayed. The FBI, for its part, stuck to policy.
“It is the U.S. government’s policy to neither confirm nor deny a person’s inclusion in the Terrorist Screening Dataset, commonly known as the terrorist watchlist,”
the bureau said.
The New York Post reported additional context on why Jukaku drew scrutiny. She received SSSS secondary screening at Detroit airport in 2012, a designation tied to “known or suspected terrorist” status. She had also served as an editor at UCLA’s Al-Talib publication, whose key advertisers were later shut down by federal authorities over suspected terrorist ties. In 2007, she had a run-in with law enforcement for photographing federal facilities.
That background sits alongside El-Sayed’s own defense of the screening system as biased.
“You’ve got this system where folks are guilty until proven innocent because they’ve got different kinds of names, because of the infrastructure that people like Mike Rogers set up.”
he said, pivoting toward his GOP opponent.
Rogers, on Saturday, called related family allegations “disqualifying.”
El-Sayed has faced other questions about family ties. His campaign has branded those claims “racist and untrue,” even as coverage of his half-sister’s statements on Muslim Brotherhood links continued to dog the race.
The timing is hard to miss. Obama is expected to campaign alongside El-Sayed in Michigan on October 24, the same former president whose administration, per the candidate’s own acknowledgment, oversaw the period when his sister-in-law was on the list.
Senate races turn on trust. A candidate who spends years in progressive politics now wants Michiganders to hand him a six-year term while brushing past a close relative’s federal terror-screening history.
Donor networks have already drawn scrutiny, including reporting on more than $115,000 from CAIR-affiliated donors tied to his campaign.
National progressive money has followed too. Separate coverage showed Ocasio-Cortez steering $1 million toward El-Sayed’s effort.
That coalition is free to back him. Voters are free to ask what else they have not been told.
El-Sayed has also faced pointed questions on foreign policy. One episode captured him refusing to condemn Iran’s regime when pressed by a student whose family was killed.
President Trump has already weighed in on the broader contest, branding El-Sayed a terrorist sympathizer and backing Rogers in the Michigan race.
El-Sayed wants the watchlist episode treated as a closed clerical error. The public record shows a 2012 secondary screening, a 2016 challenge, a 2017 damages dismissal, and a 2021 appellate loss for the plaintiffs’ side.
He answered “Yeah” when asked if his sister-in-law had been on the list. He said she sued and “got off.” The appeals court later wiped out the ruling that had gone her way.
None of that requires inventing motives. It requires reading the timeline the candidate himself confirmed under questioning.
Michigan voters can decide whether a Senate hopeful who blames “names” and “infrastructure” has given a full account, or a convenient one.
Family history is not guilt by blood. But national security screening records, donor patterns, and foreign-policy evasions are fair game in a race for the world’s most powerful legislature. Pretending otherwise is how bad risks get normalized.
Chuck Schumer has said nothing publicly about a Homeland Security search of Ilhan Omar's home, even as House Democrats denounced the move and midterms near.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has not put out a press statement, posted on social channels, or taken a media appearance to defend Rep. Ilhan Omar after Homeland Security Investigations searched her house, Truthout reported.
House Democratic leaders moved fast. Schumer did not. That gap is the story, and it lands weeks before the midterms, with Omar on the ballot in Minnesota and party officials already juggling progressive headaches and swing-voter math.
The search was described as happening on a Monday, about 22 days before the midterm elections. Absolute raid dating, warrant language, seizures, arrests, and charges were not laid out in the available account. What was clear was the political response, and the missing one from Schumer.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and other House Democratic leaders called the search “deeply disturbing” and said it “raises serious questions” about the Trump administration’s “weaponization of the federal government.”
"will deliver full accountability for the rogue abuse of power from the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice."
Jeffries later told MS NOW the Justice Department “is going to be held accountable,” folding Omar into a longer list of Trump targets only when asked near the end of an 11-minute interview. DNC Chair Ken Martin kept it shorter, calling the episode a “new low for the Trump administration.”
Days after the search, Schumer still had not publicly defended Omar. No Senate leadership blast. No carefully staged Capitol camera line devoted to her case.
That silence sits beside a different Democratic project: selling affordability and a midterm rebound while avoiding fights that brand the party as chaotic or extreme. Readers tracking Schumer’s affordability midterm pitch already know the message discipline he prefers when cameras are on.
Omar is a progressive Democrat from Minnesota and a frequent flashpoint inside her own party. Truthout’s account also pointed to reports, described as surfacing the same week, of an administration effort aimed at denaturalizing and deporting her, claims presented as reporting, not as a finished court outcome.
Separate historical context ran through the same coverage. The Washington Post, as cited there, reported that Trump administration officials in 2019 looked at whether they could search Omar’s immigration records and did not find enough evidence to mount a full investigation. That is a prior episode, not proof of today’s case file.
Jeet Heer of The Nation tied Schumer’s quiet posture to an old rupture, not a sudden loss of words.
"Schumer’s silence is hardly surprising."
Heer added that because Omar has been outspoken in her criticism of Israel and the Israel lobby, “establishment Democrats such as Schumer have often kept their distance from her.”
That distance is not abstract party trivia. In 2019, Omar’s criticism of AIPAC, a pro-Israel lobbying group, triggered a blowup with Democratic leaders, including Schumer and then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Coverage described Omar as forced into an apology amid accusations of antisemitism, a wound that never fully closed inside institutional Democratic circles.
The same fault line keeps reappearing in party fights over money, primaries, and outside influence, including when Bernie Sanders targeted AIPAC’s role in Democratic primaries and pressed leaders from the left.
A group of prominent ethics lawyers, including former White House counsels as described in the coverage, went further than Jeffries’ press language. They argued the Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security timing looked political.
"DOJ and DHS’s decision to instigate this raid at this very moment and for these alleged reasons is unexplainable, except for as a politically motivated use of power to influence the Minnesota congressional election in violation of the Hatch Act."
The Hatch Act is the federal law meant to stop official power from being used to swing elections. The lawyers said they believe the DOJ and DHS actions were illegal. Belief is not a verdict. The public package circulating with the controversy did not include a released warrant affidavit, a charging document, or an inventory of what, if anything, agents took from the home.
That hole matters. Democrats called the search a five-alarm abuse story. Voters still have not been shown the basic law-enforcement paper trail that normally anchors a case narrative, probable cause, scope, and results.
Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, far apart from Omar on policy, treated the frenzy as a distraction from kitchen-table costs and said people are “so sick and tired of the bulls***.” Her point was blunt: rage cycles are easier to stage than answers on gas and insurance prices.
Omar’s progressive brand mobilizes one Democratic faction and repels another. Schumer’s job is holding a Senate conference, protecting incumbents, and selling a broad midterm case, not lighting himself on fire for the party’s most polarizing House voices.
That is why coverage of Schumer’s blue-wave midterm bet keeps colliding with progressive demand politics. A quiet leader can look cautious to consultants and disloyal to activists. Both readings can be true at once.
Pressure from the left is not theoretical anymore. Warnings about Democrats drifting toward high-profile progressives, and about Schumer’s own long-term standing, are already part of the party’s internal argument, including in debates over whether leadership is ceding the party’s future to the AOC wing.
Money and messaging point the same direction. Senate Democrats are pouring cash into 2026 positioning while national leaders try to keep the brand coherent. That is the backdrop for Democratic Senate candidates flooding early races with cash as leadership chooses which fights deserve a microphone.
Jeffries and Martin spoke to their base’s expectation of outrage. Schumer’s non-response spoke to another calculation: Omar is a reliable progressive headline machine, and not every headline helps Democrats persuade undecided voters in a compressed midterm window.
Federal agencies answer to statutes on immigration, citizenship, and criminal process. Denaturalization is a legal track with a high bar, not a slogan. If the government has a case, it should show it in filing form. If Democrats have proof of outlawed electioneering under the Hatch Act, they should put that proof on the table too.
Right now the public has leadership statements, lawyer allegations, old 2019 context, and a Senate minority leader who has chosen not to stand at the podium. That is not mystery. It is priorities.
When a party’s top Senate voice will not defend one of its most famous progressives, rank-and-file voters do not need a translator, they can see who the leadership is willing to carry, and who it leaves off the stage.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani and other New York Democrats asked parking garage and lot owners to stop ICE from using private property as staging areas more than a week after an officer shot a Dominican immigrant.
The request came in a letter sent Friday to owners and operators of parking garages and lots across New York City. Washington Examiner reporting described the ask as a direct effort to keep Immigration and Customs Enforcement from treating private lots as staging areas for operations.
The letter arrived after an ICE officer shot a 28-year-old Dominican immigrant in Manhattan’s Marble Hill neighborhood. A privately owned parking lot near that scene had been used by ICE.
Local residents and elected officials had voiced concern about the agency’s activity tied to that lot for months before the shooting. The Friday letter put the mayor and fellow Democrats on record telling private operators to shut the door.
Mamdani joined other New York Democrats in the letter. It went to the owners and operators who control garages and surface lots citywide. The core demand was simple: do not let ICE use those properties as staging areas.
No full text of the letter, list of co-signers, or replies from the parking operators appeared in the available account. The same holds for any formal response from ICE. What is clear is the timing and the target.
The shooting in Marble Hill sat more than a week before the letter. ICE’s use of the nearby private lot formed part of the backdrop. That sequence placed the mayor’s request squarely after a use-of-force incident involving an immigration officer.
Similar pressure on Mamdani has already surfaced from the left, including socialists demanding he fire the NYPD commissioner after another ICE-related wounding.
Federal immigration officers need places to organize before and after operations. Private lots near target areas can serve that purpose when owners allow it. By urging a ban on that access, the Democrats moved to limit the options available to ICE inside the city.
Residents and local officials had flagged ICE activity around the Marble Hill lot for months. The shooting then raised the temperature. Mamdani and the other Democrats answered with a citywide ask aimed at every garage and lot operator they could reach.
The immigrant who was shot remains unnamed in the account, as does the officer. No details on injuries, charges, or the status of any investigation were provided. The letter did not wait for those answers.
Mamdani has drawn national notice on other fronts as well, from Ted Cruz warning Democrats are handing their party to figures like him to ongoing fights over his rhetoric and record.
Parking operators now sit between a mayoral letter and a federal agency with a statutory job to enforce immigration law. Private property rights cut both ways: owners can refuse access, yet city leaders are actively steering them toward refusal specifically against ICE.
High-profile critics have already urged distance from Mamdani on major civic occasions, including Rudolph Giuliani telling him to stay away from the 9/11 anniversary ceremony.
The practical effect of the letter is to make routine staging harder for officers working illegal immigration cases inside New York City. When local Democrats organize to close off private lots, they raise the cost of every operation that follows.
Polling has shown Mamdani holding competitive favorability numbers in some surveys, including a New York Times poll placing him ahead of AOC among likely voters, even as these enforcement fights continue.
City Hall chose to spend political capital telling private businesses to freeze out federal immigration officers. Taxpayers who want laws enforced are left watching the mayor and his allies build new barriers one parking lot at a time.
Tommy Tuberville says booming north Alabama is drawing voters raised on socialist and Communist ideas in government schools, and Republicans must win them over before the culture shifts.
Republican nominee for governor Tommy Tuberville told radio listeners this week that people moving into the Huntsville area arrive carrying political habits formed far from Alabama’s traditions, and that the GOP has work to do if the state is going to stay deep red.
al.com reported that Tuberville made the remarks on “The Jeff Poor Show,” tying the influx to years of growth around federal, aerospace, and defense jobs and warning that turnout and persuasion will decide whether the newcomers absorb Alabama’s constitutional culture or resist it.
Census figures cited in the coverage show the scale. Madison County reached an estimated 433,516 residents in 2025, up 11.7 percent from the 2020 base. Limestone County grew 18.7 percent over the same span to an estimated 122,928 people. Those numbers track the pull of Redstone Arsenal and related employers that keep drawing families from elsewhere.
Tuberville said the pattern is not new.
“That hasn’t just started,” he said. “That’s been going on for 10 or 15 years.”
The core of Tuberville’s argument was blunt. He said many arrivals come from states where public schools taught a worldview he rejects, and that Republicans cannot assume those voters will automatically share Alabama’s priorities.
He put it this way on air:
“You’ve got people coming from other states that were brought up in these government-educated schools that have taught socialism and Communism.”
“It’s hard to get them out of that mindset,” Tuberville added. “And that’s what we have to do. We have to educate them.”
His pitch to those newcomers was direct rather than hostile: “Don’t go out there and fight us. Try to work with us.” He framed the task as bringing people “on the side of freedom and our Constitution,” not writing them off. That same socialist branding now shows up in Democratic primaries elsewhere, including a DSA-backed challenger who ousted a sitting House Democrat in Michigan.
He also pointed to one group already living the contrast. Tuberville said hundreds of FBI personnel and their families moved north for the bureau’s expanding footprint at Redstone Arsenal and found better schools and daily life than they expected.
“We’ve brought six to seven hundred FBI agents and their families to north Alabama in their center up there and they’re shocked at how much better the schools are, how much better living it is, and their minds have even changed.”
The FBI’s own figure is larger in scope: more than 1,300 personnel now work at Redstone Arsenal as the bureau has expanded training, technology, data analysis, and other operations there. Tuberville’s agent-and-family number and the bureau’s total headcount are not the same category, and the reporting does not reconcile them. What he claimed is that some of those families have already shifted their outlook after living under Alabama’s conditions.
Tuberville did not pretend the migration stops at the schoolhouse door. He said more voters from blue states will cast ballots this year and that changing minds takes time.
“I think we’ll have probably a little bit more of the folks from some of these blue states that will come in and vote this year, but it’s just going to take time to get them on the side of freedom and our Constitution.”
He later dialed back the panic. Concerns about political change in north Alabama are “a little bit overblown,” he said. The larger problem is turnout. Midterms usually favor the side out of power, he noted, and he argued Democrats get a built-in assist from national newsrooms.
“It’s easier for the Democrats because they’ve got most of the mainstream media encouraging people to go out and vote for this socialist, Communist nonsense and it’s harder for Republicans,” Tuberville said. Progressive primary shocks keep underscoring that leftward pull, from a self-described Democratic Socialist winning a Florida Senate primary to other races where ideology, not seniority, drives the result.
His closing math was simple. Alabama remains a deep-red state, he said, and Republicans still hold the numbers if they show up.
“We just have to go out and vote because we outnumber them pretty much two-to-one.”
“In our state, we are a deep red state and I just encourage people to go out and vote because times are changing. People are changing. Their ideas are changing,” he said. That pressure on turnout and cohesion is familiar territory for Tuberville, who has also been pressing colleagues over missing Senate votes when the GOP margin is thin.
The region is not abstract for him. In the 2020 Senate race against Democrat Doug Jones, Tuberville said he performed worse in parts of north Alabama than in many other parts of the state, even with President Donald Trump on the ballot. The article does not supply precinct-level margins, only Tuberville’s own assessment of that relative softness.
Jones’ campaign did not respond to a request for comment on the latest remarks. The absence of a reply leaves Tuberville’s diagnosis of schooling, media incentives, and migration unchallenged on the record in the coverage.
Growth itself is not in dispute. Defense and aerospace jobs, the FBI expansion, and the Census counts all point the same direction: north Alabama is absorbing people faster than much of the rest of the state. The political question Tuberville raised is whether those arrivals adopt the state’s constitutional habits or import the left-wing framing he says government schools taught them. Similar leftward primary energy has already pushed Democratic voters to oust aging incumbents at a pace Republicans have not matched.
He cast the remedy as education, persuasion, and ballots, not surrender and not scorched rhetoric aimed at neighbors. Republicans, in his telling, still hold the two-to-one edge if they use it. The open risk is that low enthusiasm and a media climate he calls tilted will leave that advantage sitting unused while new arrivals vote the habits they brought with them.
Alabama stays free only if the people who already live free keep showing up, and keep making the case to the ones still learning what that means.
An 81-year-old Georgia man was shot and killed outside a Walmart, and police say they believe he was an innocent bystander caught in the gunfire.
Channel 2 Action News reported that James McDaniel, 81, of Lula, died after he was shot in the parking lot of the Walmart on Shallowford Road in Gainesville, Ga.
Gainesville Police confirmed his death Thursday morning. Officers had responded to the store around 7 p.m. Wednesday night after reports of gunfire outside the store.
Investigators believe McDaniel was not the intended target. He was an elderly man in a store parking lot who never made it home.
Gainesville Police requested help from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to process the scene. That step usually follows a serious shooting when local departments want extra resources on evidence and forensics.
No suspect has been named. No arrest has been announced. No motive has been made public. Police are still asking the public for help.
Anyone with information is being told to call 911 or submit a tip online. In cases like this, parking-lot cameras, witness phones, and nearby drivers often decide whether a case moves or stalls.
Public violence that snuffs out ordinary life is not abstract for the families left behind, a hard truth also felt in coverage of an Afghan man detained in Athens after a British woman’s body was found stuffed in a suitcase.
McDaniel was 81 and lived in Lula, a small community near Gainesville. The shooting happened outside a big-box store on a Wednesday evening, the kind of errand run millions of Americans make without a second thought.
Gunfire in a retail parking lot puts shoppers, workers, and nearby drivers in the line of fire. When police say the dead man was an innocent bystander, that means someone else brought a gunfight into a public space and an older man paid the price.
Deadly recklessness in everyday places keeps filling the crime blotter, including a Sacramento County drunk driver sentenced to 188 years after a crash killed five passengers.
Channel 2 Action News tried to reach the store about when it would reopen and got no response. Reopen timing was not confirmed.
As of the latest police confirmation, the public still does not know who fired the shots, whether more than one person was involved, or whether any other people were hurt. Charges and custody status have not been released.
The absolute calendar date was not pinned down beyond Wednesday night and Thursday morning. The medical details beyond death after the shooting were not spelled out in the initial report.
That information gap matters. Families deserve a clear account of how an 81-year-old man ended up dead outside a store. Taxpayers deserve a full investigation, not a quiet fade from the headlines.
Crime stories with lasting fallout keep landing in public view, from a woman who vandalized the World War II Memorial now facing federal felony charges to other cases that test whether accountability actually follows the act.
For now, Gainesville Police and the GBI hold the scene work and the tip line. McDaniel’s name is known. The shooter, at last report, is not.
Other painful cases stay with the public for the same reason, an ordinary person is gone and the system is left to catch up, much like the distress surrounding appeals for a missing mother renewed during an Emmy tribute.
An 81-year-old man went to a Walmart and never came home. Law and order means finding who pulled the trigger and making sure a parking lot is not a free-fire zone for the rest of us.
Federal investigators searched Rep. Ilhan Omar’s D.C. home and subpoenaed her relatives in a criminal probe of immigration paperwork, a move she brands political retaliation.
Homeland Security Investigations agents executed a judicially authorized search warrant at the Minnesota Democrat’s Washington residence early Monday morning, the Justice Department confirmed, as part of an ongoing federal criminal investigation tied to immigration records.
Fox News reported that grand jury subpoenas went to family members, including Omar’s sister Sahra Noor, while investigators examine whether her late father, Nur Omar Mohamed, lied or omitted information on forms before he became a citizen.
Omar, a member of the progressive “Squad,” denied wrongdoing and cast the action as political payback. She posted on X that she was unharmed and would not be silenced.
"I’m ok. Make no mistake: this is an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement,"
She added that President Donald Trump had targeted her for a decade with what she called baseless campaigns, calling the search the latest escalation. Her communications director, Jacklyn Rogers, struck the same note after the warrant was carried out.
"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."
Just The News noted the probe’s focus on the father’s citizenship paperwork and the potential exposure that could follow for Omar’s own naturalization status if material falsehoods are proven. The precise statutes and forms under review have not been publicly detailed.
Omar has long said she became a U.S. citizen through her father’s naturalization in 2000, before she turned 18. In a September 2018 interview with The Intercept, she put it plainly.
"I became a citizen actually before I turned 18,"
She continued that her father became a citizen and she obtained citizenship through that process. Opponents have questioned the timing and the age she claimed at naturalization. A federal judge’s approval of the home search means agents presented probable cause that a federal crime occurred and that evidence would be found at the residence, former assistant U.S. attorney Jonathan Fahey told the New York Post.
Fahey said search warrants typically come toward the end of an investigation, after agents have already built a body of evidence. Boxes of materials were removed from the home, according to that reporting. Naturalization fraud carries a statute of limitations, but related new offenses can reset the clock.
Months after Omar entered Congress, her staff contacted the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library. On May 17, 2019, staff told the library her listed birth year was wrong and asked that it be changed from 1981 to 1982. The library director documented the request days later.
"On May 17, 2019, Library staff were informed by Rep. Omar’s congressional staff that her birth year was incorrect and requested that we change it to 1982,"
The director said the 1981 date had been drawn from other reference sources and added without documentation, and that staff were also working with Wikipedia and the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. The discrepancy alone does not prove falsified immigration records, and available reporting has not established that the biography change triggered Monday’s warrant.
Unsuccessful 2022 primary challenger AJ Kern had pressed related questions, filed an FEC complaint, and sued seeking proof of citizenship. A state judge dismissed the lawsuit for lack of jurisdiction. Prior federal looks at Omar’s immigration history did not produce charges, the New York Times has reported.
U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro disclosed a separate examination of Omar’s financial disclosures. Filings showed two businesses tied to husband Tim Mynett, eStCru LLC, a California winery, and Rose Lake Capital LLC, a Washington-based venture firm, jumping from a combined reported value of roughly $15,000 to $51,000 in 2023 to between $6 million and $30 million in 2024.
Omar amended the filings in April, cutting the combined reported assets to between $18,004 and $95,000. Her office said the originals failed to properly account for business liabilities. In September the Office of Congressional Conduct voted 5-1 to recommend that the House Ethics Committee dismiss misconduct allegations, finding no substantial reason to believe she reported false or incomplete information in violation of federal law or House rules. That review is distinct from Pirro’s inquiry, and it remains unclear whether the money questions connect to the immigration search.
President Trump, in a statement the White House shared on X on Tuesday, demanded speed.
"America wants answers, and we want them, NOW!"
Vice President JD Vance said he had no advance knowledge of the search and framed the standard in plain terms: if there is a real case, the facts will be followed; if not, they will not. Vance has previously accused Omar of immigration fraud. The Squad’s record on enforcement already draws heavy pushback, including when Trump DHS officials challenged Delia Ramirez over legislation aimed at abolishing ICE.
Omar moved quickly from defense to fundraising. She sent a text appeal seeking money to “fight back,” describing the search as the latest step in what she called a ludicrous, partisan investigation into her immigration status, the Washington Examiner reported.
Longstanding public claims that she married a relative to help him remain in the country, along with overlapping marriage timelines, have also been raised and may form part of the wider federal review, according to Just The News. Omar and her office reject those allegations. Progressive factions inside the Democratic Party keep testing the same left flank, as when a DSA-backed socialist ousted Michigan Democrat Shri Thanedar in a primary upset.
A judicially authorized warrant is not a conviction. Grand jury subpoenas seek evidence and do not by themselves mean the recipients are suspected of crimes. No injuries, arrests, or charges were announced from the Monday search. The full warrant text, the exact list of items seized, and the complete roster of subpoena targets have not been released.
Still, a federal judge had to find probable cause before agents could enter a sitting member of Congress’s home. That bar matters. So does the decision to pull in relatives and revisit the father’s naturalization file. Immigration enforcement fights elsewhere on the left have followed a similar pattern of claims versus records, including when Sen. Markwayne Mullin rejected Pramila Jayapal’s line that most immigration arrests hit people who pose no public safety threat.
Omar remains a high-profile voice against stricter border and interior enforcement. Her allies treat every investigative step as proof of selective prosecution. Taxpayers and lawful immigrants are entitled to something simpler: clear rules, honest paperwork, and equal application of the law. Squad-adjacent controversies keep piling up, from messaging stumbles that pulled Omar into a social-media clash alongside Summer Lee to the broader socialist pressure campaign that also produced a second wave of coverage when the DSA insurgency rattled Democrats in Michigan.
The Justice Department confirmed the warrant. Investigators are following immigration documents, family testimony, and financial filings. Omar calls it intimidation and asks donors to fund the fight. The public is left with a basic demand that should not be controversial in a country that still expects its elected officials to meet the same entry and disclosure standards as everyone else.
When federal agents show up with a judge’s signature and family subpoenas follow, accountability is not a smear, it is the minimum the law requires.
Minnesota Democratic leaders are casting a federal Medicaid funding freeze as political payback rather than accountability for fraud, even as $550 million stays locked and up to $2 billion hangs over the state.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has deferred $550 million in federal payments to Minnesota since the start of 2026 over allegations of widespread healthcare fraud, Daily Caller reported.
Temporary Minnesota Department of Human Services commissioner John Connolly, appointed by Democratic Gov. Tim Walz in May, sent a five-page letter on Oct. 2 to CMS administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz seeking the money restored.
Connolly argued the freeze feels less like fraud enforcement and more like something else entirely.
In comments carried by the Washington Sun, he said pressures “feel increasingly like a war on Medicaid, not a war on fraud.”
"We are deeply concerned that this would be another step in a retribution campaign for Minnesota that was promised very publicly,"
Connolly wrote in that vein, tying the freeze to politics instead of the state’s own record.
The Oct. 2 letter claimed Minnesota Department of Human Services had already met fraud-reporting duties by identifying 14 “high risk” Medicaid service providers.
It also insisted the department had asked repeatedly for evidence of the fraud claims so it could stop payments where needed.
"Minnesota has repeatedly asked CMS and federal law enforcement to provide evidence supporting public claims of of fraud in Minnesota’s Medicaid programs so the Department of Human Services can stop payments where warranted,"
the letter stated. It continued that no such evidence had been shared and that CMS had not asked the state to impose any payment withhold on a provider.
State officials have leaned hard on the victim framing even while federal dollars make up 64 percent of Minnesota’s total Medicaid spending, or $11.8 billion a year according to a KFF analysis.
Walz himself answered a June referral the same day by saying the move had “nothing to do with fraud” and calling it a “campaign of retribution.”
That posture fits a pattern already visible in Tim Walz’s mounting fraud scandal coverage as the governor faces sustained scrutiny.
CMS first deferred $259 million earlier in 2026. Of that sum, $243.8 million covered unsupported or potentially fraudulent Medicaid claims and $15.4 million involved claims tied to illegal immigrants, according to a February agency press release.
By June, HHS announced it was deferring $1 billion from both Minnesota and California over Medicaid and social-services fraud.
Minnesota DHS’s own website acknowledges the $550 million already deferred in 2026 and the threat to withhold as much as $2 billion.
In March, then-commissioner Shireen Gandhi and Attorney General Keith Ellison sued CMS, claiming the withhold was illegal. A court denied their bid for a preliminary injunction.
Ellison has filed more than 73 lawsuits against the Trump administration. In 2023 he boasted his office ran the “largest-ever Medicaid fraud prosecution” by a state attorney general, three defendants, 24 counts, $11 million.
That figure sits beside larger federal cases, including the Minnesota Medicaid fraud pleas that keep surfacing in the state.
Vice President JD Vance announced on X on June 9 that he had sent the allegations to the Justice Department’s new Fraud Division for criminal investigation.
"I’ve referred these allegations to DOJ’s new Fraud Division for criminal investigation. Minnesota state officials are not above the law, and if they facilitated fraud, lied under oath about what they knew, or harassed and intimated whistleblowers, they must face justice."
Vance posted. The same month DOJ announced charges against 15 defendants in Minnesota for more than $90 million in fraud.
Minnesota DHS told the Daily Caller News Foundation it “is acting aggressively to detect and prevent fraud and shuts off money to providers when credible allegations of fraud come to light” and works “in close partnership with other state agencies and law enforcement.”
Its website adds that since 2020 the department has run over 3,500 investigations, referred over 1,150 cases to law enforcement, and identified more than $56 million for recovery, returning $2.29 for every dollar spent on investigators.
Those numbers look modest next to the federal freezes and the DOJ’s $90 million case load, a gap that also shadows the $9 billion fraud scandal hanging over Minnesota politics.
A CMS spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation the agency “is committed to safeguarding Medicaid by strengthening program integrity, protecting taxpayer dollars, and ensuring benefits are reserved for those who are eligible under the law.”
"The agency does not comment further on matters in pending litigation."
the spokesperson added. Former Obama-era CMS senior advisor Andy Schneider called the steps against Minnesota unprecedented.
“They have done to Minnesota what CMS has never done to any other state. It’s all uncharted territory,” Schneider said.
Walz’s and Ellison’s offices gave no comment before publication. Connolly’s letter and the state’s public statements keep returning to the same theme: the freeze is unfair targeting, not overdue enforcement.
National pressure for stronger tools continues, including the push seen when Senate Democrats faced anti-fraud division votes after the House acted.
Taxpayers did not create Minnesota’s Medicaid mess, and they should not support excuses that treat basic oversight as an attack.
Former UFC fighter and Green Beret Tim Kennedy is recovering at Walter Reed after three gunshot wounds in a Congo ambush that left roughly 20 dead or wounded.
Kennedy took three rounds to the leg during a September 17 attack in South Kivu province in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, Newsweek reported, citing Reuters sources familiar with the incident.
The ambush struck personnel tied to Vectus Global, the security and consulting firm founded by Blackwater founder Erik Prince, while the group traveled between locations in the province. Sources told Reuters that about 20 people were killed or wounded, including a former member of New Zealand’s Special Forces.
Republican Rep. Derrick Van Orden of Wisconsin said late Sunday he had spoken directly with Kennedy and confirmed the fighter was alive.
Van Orden posted on X:
"I just spoke to my dear friend @TimKennedyMMA,"
He added:
"That means he is not dead and that means I am thankful."
Van Orden also asked the public for prayer:
"I am asking everyone to pray for his healing and that his wonderful family find Peace,"
Sources familiar with the operation said the force was ambushed by M23 rebels. Some of those sources described sophisticated planning and suggested possible Rwandan involvement. Rwanda has long denied backing the M23 group, a claim United Nations and Western governments have leveled for years.
One Congolese government source offered a different detail: the attackers may have tracked a surveillance drone. Vectus Global had not previously taken casualties in Congo, according to a source close to the operation.
Prince’s company had been working security around the mineral sector. After diplomatic efforts produced an M23 withdrawal from the strategic city of Uvira, Vectus personnel helped Congolese forces secure the area. The overall size of the Prince operation in Congo remains unknown.
Publicly available information offers no evidence the mission was a U.S. military operation, and it does not explain why Kennedy was moved to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center outside Washington, D.C. Kennedy had not publicly disclosed any planned trip to Congo before the attack.
Serious medical fights demand clear priorities, the same clarity voters have seen when General Mills stripped artificial dyes from U.S. cereal under a broader health push.
Newsweek contacted Prince, Kennedy, Van Orden, the Congo military, and Walter Reed on Monday for comment. No on-record replies appear in the available reporting.
Kennedy’s path is well known to fans of both special operations and mixed martial arts. He served as a U.S. Army Special Forces soldier before competing in the UFC middleweight division. Later he worked as a commentator, author, entrepreneur, and podcast host.
That record places him among Americans who keep showing up in unstable places long after the cameras leave. Private security work in eastern Congo carries real risk; the September 17 toll shows it.
Families watching a wounded veteran fight through recovery also live through other health alarms, including the stretch that saw Pennsylvania report a fifth measles death in the worst U.S. year since 1991.
Blackwater, the earlier Prince firm, no longer exists. Its contractors became infamous during the Iraq War. Vectus Global is the current vehicle. The Congo ambush is the first reported casualty event for that team in-country.
Key details stay unanswered. Kennedy’s exact contractual role with Vectus is not stated. The breakdown of dead versus wounded is not public. No primary incident report or company statement has surfaced beyond the secondary sourcing.
Rwandan involvement remains a suggestion from some sources, not a settled finding. The drone-tracking claim rests on a single Congolese government source. Absolute calendar dates for the Friday Reuters account and the Sunday Van Orden posts are not fixed in the reporting beyond the September 17 ambush date itself.
Medical systems under pressure force hard choices, the kind visible when a federal judge paused a teen pregnancy grant overhaul while leaving terminated funding in place.
What is established is straightforward: a decorated former Green Beret and UFC veteran took three gunshot wounds in an ambush aimed at a private security element in eastern Congo, roughly 20 people were killed or wounded, and Kennedy is now under care at Walter Reed while a sitting member of Congress confirms he is alive and asks for prayer.
Americans tracking recovery stories also watch broader medical policy shifts, including the decision that cut the CDC childhood vaccine schedule from 18 diseases to 11.
Kennedy’s condition update closes one question and leaves others open. The men who still take these contracts understand the cost. The country that trains Green Berets should keep clear eyes on who is fighting, who is bleeding, and who answers for the aftermath.
President Trump has named Katie Zacharia the next White House press secretary, replacing Karoline Leavitt with a longtime MAGA ally and Trump Media adviser.
President Donald Trump told reporters at the White House that he had just hired a new press secretary and that Katie Zacharia would take the job. He framed the pick as a natural fit for the podium and for his team. The New York Post reported the announcement from Washington as Trump moved to fill the vacancy left when Karoline Leavitt stepped away from the role.
Trump also posted the news on Truth Social, stressing Zacharia’s campaign work and her long record of support. The choice puts a familiar conservative communicator in one of the administration’s most visible jobs as the White House heads into a hard political stretch.
Leavitt left the press secretary post in August to spend more time with her family after the birth of her second child on May 1. Zacharia will replace her. That handoff keeps the briefing room in the hands of a loyal Trump ally rather than an outside hire with no stake in the agenda.
Speaking to the White House press corps, Trump cast Zacharia as someone the room already knows.
He told reporters:
"She’s a friend of most of you. I know she likes people. She likes all of you, actually. I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but we just hired a new press secretary. And she’s going to be, I think, terrific."
On Truth Social he went further, tying her résumé to his own winning map. Trump wrote that she had helped in key swing states “where we won 7 out of 7,” called her a “loyal and brilliant supporter,” and said she has been a devoted MAGA member “right from the beginning.” He closed with a simple send-off: “Good luck Katie.”
Fox News reported that Trump named the attorney and TV commentator on Friday, and that two White House officials had confirmed the selection before his public announcement. Fox also carried his formal praise of her current role as senior communications adviser to Truth Social at Trump Media & Technology Group.
That loyalty-first pattern matches other recent personnel moves, including the White House’s emphasis on proven MAGA hires for sensitive jobs.
Trump’s public case for Zacharia was straightforward. He wants a press secretary who already shares the mission, knows the media fight, and will not need on-the-job conversion.
Katie Zacharia is 42 and a mother of four. She has been a fixture on conservative media, especially Fox News, and has written op-eds for the Post. She advises Trump Media & Technology Group and works at Fix California, the group founded by Trump special envoy Ric Grenell to push a conservative agenda in the Golden State.
Just the News reported that she previously served as spokesperson and deputy assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, and that she graduated from Pepperdine University and its Caruso School of Law. Leavitt, who left in August after giving birth, is expected to join Fox News as a contributor.
Zacharia spent about three months at DHS earlier this year and left after Markwayne Mullin took over as secretary in March. She was reported to have been close to then-Secretary Kristi Noem and special adviser Corey Lewandowski while there. She later told Just the News the long commute from California put a strain on her family.
Her earlier résumé is classic Republican farm-system work. She interned for the Republican National Committee while at Pepperdine and served in the White House Office of Political Affairs during George W. Bush’s second term. Trump’s own description puts her in the swing-state trenches of his campaigns. That mix of government, media, and movement work is why the pick landed with little mystery inside MAGA circles.
Trump has kept a heavy public schedule while locking in staff and message discipline, the same posture on display when he said he never gets tired of a packed midterm travel calendar.
Zacharia answered the appointment on X with full-throated thanks and a clear job description.
She wrote:
"President Trump has shown America that we can be great again, and he works to effectuate that greatness every single day. His confidence is a true privilege, and his leadership is a blessing to this country."
She also said she looks forward to working with the White House press corps and reporters across the country “to get that record out,” and called the post “the honor of a lifetime.” Fox carried a parallel line in which she framed service to Trump and the American people at the country’s 250-year mark as that same honor.
The Washington Examiner reported that Trump tapped the conservative commentator and Trump Media adviser as press secretary less than a month before the 2026 midterm elections, and amid lawsuits from Politico, MS Now, and CNN over White House access bans. The timing is not subtle. The briefing room remains a daily battleground over access, framing, and who sets the record.
A press secretary who already knows the media map and the president’s priorities is a practical answer to that fight. Trump said she has the respect of the media, the American people, and his administration, and that she will work “fantastically” with all three. That is the job description in plain English: defend the record, push the facts out, and refuse to let hostile outlets run the room unchallenged.
The same direct public style has marked other recent Trump moves, from hard-edged campaign endorsements in Michigan to sharp responses when critics try to define the story first.
Leavitt’s exit was personal, not political. She left to focus on her family after a second child. The administration did not leave the podium empty of a trusted voice for long. Zacharia’s selection closes that gap with someone who has already worked the DHS beat, the Trump media orbit, and the conservative airwaves.
Voters watching the next year of briefings will judge the results in real time. They will hear whether the White House answers questions cleanly, corrects false frames fast, and keeps the focus on results rather than process theater. Staffing the room with a proven communicator is how an administration prepares for that test.
Trump has also used executive action to deliver concrete relief on costs that hit working Americans, including when he expanded tax-free red diesel for farmers and truckers. Message and policy still have to travel together.
Zacharia now inherits the daily assignment of making that case under lights. Trump’s public bet is that a loyal, media-fluent hire can do it without confusion about whose agenda she serves.
A White House that picks its own messengers, instead of auditioning for hostile approval, is simply doing the job voters hired it to do.
President Trump has picked Katie Zacharia as White House press secretary, rewarding a loyal fighter after higher-profile critics fell out of the running.
President Donald Trump selected Katie Zacharia as his new White House press secretary in a rapid move announced Friday, tapping a conservative commentator and longtime backer who will start Monday.
CNN reported that Zacharia was in the Oval Office with Trump earlier Friday morning and thanked him in a social media post the same day. As of last week, she was not even under consideration.
Trump cast the choice as a vote for proven loyalty. In announcing the selection, he pointed to her work for Truth Social and Trump Media & Technology Group, her frequent appearances on Fox and Newsmax, and a clean record of support from the start.
"She has an unblemished record of support, and has been a loyal and brilliant supporter, right from the beginning."
The hire fills the post left by former press secretary Karoline Leavitt. White House aides had struggled through a search that kept running into higher-profile names who had previously criticized Trump. Lists narrowed, then candidates dropped out over past negative comments.
In recent days, Trump called close allies and advisers for their read on Zacharia. He sought Leavitt’s counsel before making a final decision and offering the job.
Leavitt congratulated the pick on social media and made her backing plain.
"As I told the President, Katie has my full support and I will be cheering for her and the entire team at the White House every day."
Zacharia told Fox News Friday evening how the call landed. She said the president “loved what a fighter I was for him.”
"I got a wonderful phone call from the chief talent recruiter, the president himself, and it turns out that being a huge supporter of all of his policies actually works."
That framing matches the administration’s broader push to staff up with people who will sell results, not undercut them. Readers tracking White House priorities have seen the same pattern in concrete enforcement moves, including how the Trump administration has removed more than 3 million illegal immigrants.
Zacharia first came to Washington in 2006 as an intern for the Republican National Committee during the George W. Bush administration. She later served as legal adviser for Fix California, the conservative group founded by Trump ally Richard Grenell.
She logged a two-month stint as a senior official at the Department of Homeland Security, commuting from California, where she lives with young children. She told a friend that commute was not sustainable. Since June she has worked as a senior communications adviser at Trump Media and Technology Group and Truth Social, work Trump highlighted when he announced the hire.
She has also been a frequent guest on Fox, Newsmax, and CNN. Her DHS background sits alongside other administration actions on borders and workforce rules, such as the decision that pulled 28,000 trucker licenses from non-citizens and opened seats for veterans.
Zacharia said she will start the job Monday. She did not say when her first briefing would occur. On X she framed the assignment as results and communication.
"The work ahead is to continue delivering strong results for our Country and communicating to the American people the major wins that this Administration is making every single day."
She added that she looks forward to working with the White House press corps and reporters across the country “to get that record out,” and said “following the fabulous Karoline Leavitt is a high standard, and one worth meeting.” In a separate social media post Friday she wrote: “Serving President Trump and the American people at this critical 250-year mark is the honor of a lifetime.”
Trump, leaving the White House on Friday, told reporters the new hire already knows the press corps.
“She’s a friend of most of you,” he said. “I know she likes people, she likes all of you. Actually, I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but we just hired a new press secretary, and she’s going to be, I think, terrific.”
While Zacharia was on Fox News Friday evening, Trump delivered remarks in Syracuse, New York. The speed of the selection, from outside the mix last week to Oval Office Friday and a Monday start, underscored how the White House valued a known quantity who had never broken ranks.
That same preference for loyal execution shows up in other recent White House moves, from the deportation of more than 25,000 people to third countries to high-profile economic deals Trump has touted.
Zacharia’s brief now is simple: carry the record into the briefing room every day and keep the focus on what the administration is delivering. After a search that kept discarding critics, Trump chose the fighter who never quit the fight.