The Trump administration has desperately searched for evidence that Rep. Ilhan Omar committed fraud, alleging she or her late father are liars for changing her age from 18 to 17 years old on her citizenship application. According to what US officials and other people with knowledge of the federal government’s investigation told the Wall Street Journal, the goal is to construct a case to strip the Minnesota congresswoman of her American citizenship and deport her from the US. Omar became a US citizen in 2000, five years after arriving from a refugee camp in Kenya after she and her family fled the Somali Civil War. Early Monday morning, the Journal reported, Homeland Security agents took Omar’s phone, notebooks, personal computers, and her passport during the raid on her DC home. Authorities have also reportedly handed out more than a dozen subpoenas, which the New York Times wrote Wednesday include Sahra Noor, Omar’s sister, and “at least one other member of her family circle.  On Monday evening, the crowd at an Ohio Republican rally chanted “deport” as President Donald Trump yet again hurled racist rhetoric at Omar, people from Somalia living in Minnesota—whom he called “Somali bandits”—and Michigan Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed (Trump called him “a jihadist”).  On Tuesday, the president suggested on Truth Social that Omar had also committed financial fraud: “Could it be that her highly paid accountant actually reported the money that was stolen from her fraudulent account activities in Minnesota?” The same day, Jeanine Pirro, the US attorney in Washington, said she is looking into Omar’s financial disclosures.  “There are several investigations going on,” she said Tuesday on Fox News. “If there was a crime that was committed, it will be prosecuted.” The US attorney also asserted it “doesn’t matter” that a nonpartisan, independent body found Omar blameless of wrongdoing and recommended the House Ethics Committee withdraw misconduct allegations when she substantially overstated her wealth in documents she submitted to Congress. All of this is happening just three weeks before the November midterms, in which Omar is favored to win reelection.

President Donald Trump said Thursday morning that the government will no longer livestream the execution of Nidal Malik Hasan. The firing squad killing, scheduled for December 3, will be the first such execution carried out by the military since 1945. “I think streaming the execution for all to see might have been a strong deterrent for the World to witness how America deals with Terrorists and SCUM like Hasan but, many very good and well meaning people would rather not watch him die, through streaming, or through any other visual device,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said last week that the execution of Hasan, who opened fire on dozens of people at a military installation in 2009, would be publicly streamable. Since then, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has come out in support of the plan (“no one has to watch it” if they don’t want to, Mullin said). The execution livestream’s supporters also include weapons-tech titans such as Anduril’s Palmer Luckey, who wrote that to “revel in the death of those who truly deserve it…is normal, good, and aligned with our natural and national order.” Eight in ten Americans, according to a poll released by ABC News today, disagree. So do 72 retired US generals, who wrote a letter calling the idea of an execution livestream “barbaric.” Parenting experts have voiced fears that children might inadvertently witness a man’s death via YouTube autoplay or memes. Though Trump called off the Pentagon’s plan to broadcast the shooting, he was clear that Hasan “will die as scheduled” on December 3rd. The United States has executed 31 people in 2026 so far. It’s one of a few dozen nations that have the death penalty on the books—most of which do not actually carry out executions. According to Amnesty International, only 17 countries, including the US, executed anyone in 2025. “The execution may be viewed in person by the immediate families of the victims, if they so choose,” Trump wrote on Thursday. “They deserve to witness JUSTICE!”

During his address to God at the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday, Rep. Jonathan Jackson, a democrat from Illinois, called on President Donald Trump to be “invested in the elevation of suffering” of people in this country, including “the families preparing to bury their loved ones in Minneapolis.”  Rep. Jackson, son of civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson, asked God to “remind” the president “that he has the power to turn mourning into dancing or to reduce the country into a cosmic elegy of chaos and suffering” as Trump stood just feet away, his eyes fluttering open and shut during the prayer.  The representative’s prayer provided an uninterrupted moment in a crowded room to call attention to the ongoing and violent federal immigration operation in Minneapolis, which, as Jackson noted, included agents fatally shooting two US citizens: Renée Good and Alex Pretti.  Both men were on stage for the 74th National Prayer Breakfast, an event that every president has attended since Dwight D. Eisenhauer. It was Trump’s sixth time speaking at the breakfast, and his address lasted over an hour and 15 minutes. In that address, Trump falsely claimed that he won the popular vote in the 2016 election, joked that “I really think I probably should make it” into heaven, and defended his Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, who is facing increasing calls for her to be fired or impeached, among other boilerplate talking points for the president.  Rep. Jackson has been a critic of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s operations and was a part of the group of Illinois lawmakers who were denied entry into an ICE processing facility during the summer, before being granted access late last year. He’s faced pushback, though, for buying stock in Palantir, a major ICE contractor. The representative, according to NOTUS, “regretted buying this stock and that he asked his financial adviser to get rid of his Palantir holdings.” Elsewhere in Rep. Jackson’s prayer about Trump, he asked God to “increase the stature of his wisdom,” to “lead this president into greater levels of compassion,” and to “give him greater clarity, greater courage, and greater capacity to do what is right.” “For the sake of this nation, for the sake of this world, we pray that goodness and mercy would announce themselves in his life in new and powerful ways,” Rep. Jackson said, adding, “remind him that we are all Americans, all made in the image of God and that none of us are free unless all of us have our freedoms protected.”

“No work. No school. No shopping. Stop funding ICE.” That’s the rallying cry behind the campaign for a nationwide general strike on Friday, seeking to galvanize opposition to the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. This week, I went to the University of Minnesota, my alma mater, to speak to some of the students behind the effort that lists hundreds of endorsements from organizations and celebrities like Pedro Pascal and Hannah Einbinder. Events are planned across the country, from New York to San Francisco, where businesses are announcing they won’t open their doors. “We can do even more,” said Austin Muia, the vice president of the Black Student Union. “We want to bring it to the national stage and see it happen all over the country. We want everyone to feel that solidarity that we felt last week.” “Let’s try to get people from the East Coast, West Coast, from the South,” said Pamela Gray, founder and president of the university’s Liberian Student Association. Federal agents shot and killed Alex Pretti, an intensive care nurse and U.S. citizen, a day after the first general strike that sent thousands of Minnesotans marching in the frigid Minneapolis winter. Students began organizing almost immediately for a second general strike, using their website to call on other states to join Minnesota in protesting Trump’s violent and increasingly unpopular immigration crackdown.

Last night, CNN’s Anderson Cooper broadcast an exclusive interview with the woman who was first seen in early videos posted of federal agents killing Alex Pretti last Saturday. Stella Carlson was standing close to the deadly skirmish, and ended up as the citizen with the best vantage point to record the shooting—holding her camera phone through it all, and capturing the now-indispensable video that has ripped to shreds the administration’s lies about what happened. > “I am grateful that I was in a position to be there for my community.” This interview is astonishing. And after watching so many astonishing videos of what has transpired in Minneapolis, this one has stayed with me. Carlson’s bravery is inspiring, as is how she articulates something I hold dear as a journalistic aspiration: the power of bearing witness when no one else will. “I am grateful that I was in a position to be there for my community,” she told Cooper. “To stop the lies and the madness, and allow there to be proof.” “Were you scared?” Cooper asked. “I was terrified, but I was more worried about this not being documented.” Carlson, who was described by Cooper as a children’s entertainer, a face and body painter, and an airbrush artist, didn’t choose this role. She’s not a journalist or a human rights activist. She is a person who cared about her community. Recording this brutality was foisted on her by Trump’s siege of her city, and she described it as something akin to a calling. She was there to protect her neighbors, she said, “as best I can with my whistle and my phone, which really feels not great.” “And yet you stood there with a phone, and you documented this,” Cooper gently pressed. “You didn’t run away.” And then her response, which struck me the most. A gut punch: > “I am not one to run when I’m afraid. I just—no way was I going to leave Alex > by himself undocumented, like, that wasn’t an option. I mean, obviously > somebody was just executed in the street. I knew I was in danger. We all were, > but I wasn’t going to leave… I knew that this was a moment, and we all have to > be brave, and we all have to take risks, and we’re all going to be given > moments to make that decision… I’m grateful to myself, and I’m grateful to > anybody who was supportive to me after to make sure I could get to safety and > get that video uploaded to the right people.” That is heroism, pure and simple. There were other videos of the killing. But Carlson’s was the clearest. What record would have existed had she not been there? And what record would exist without all the journalism happening in Minneapolis. I’ve been moved while reading comments from you, our Mother Jones community, thanking us after watching dispatches by our digital producer Sam Van Pykeren, who has been relentlessly chronicling the reactions and realities on the ground in a set of emotional, viral videos. This is not to show off, but to double down on the importance of showing up, speaking to real people, and yes, bearing witness, like Carlson. “Thank you, Sam, for being there and reporting the truth,” one said. Another: “Thank you for keeping our eyes open.” I hope you can check out not only Sam’s videos, but also the full range of Minneapolis and ICE reporting from the frontlines of Trump’s immigration crackdown on the site right now, documenting both the brutality and the resistance. Here’s just a sampling from our reporters over the last day or so: Kiera Butler’s look at how right-wing influencers are working to make women love ICE. Russ Choma’s revealing article about Tom Homan’s record as he takes over Minnesota operations. From Minneapolis, reporter Julia Lurie filed a stunning dispatch about the community coming together in the wake of Alex Pretti and Renée Good’s killings (with gorgeous photography by Madison Swart), describing a city under assault but also a resilient city creating mutual aid networks that will outlast federal occupation. She also interviewed a US Army vet, outraged by these new attacks on a country he once defended. Samantha Michaels published a devastating story, with a video on a warrantless ICE raid that tore apart a Memphis family. Noah Lanard analyzed how Greg Bovino proved too openly fascistic—even for Trump. There’s much more to read and watch and interact with. And there is more to come. “Nobody’s here for us,” Stella Carlson said during her gripping CNN interview. “So this is what we can do.”

After Congresswoman Ilhan Omar was attacked at a Minneapolis town hall on Tuesday night and sprayed with an unknown substance from a syringe, President Donald Trump suggested that she may have orchestrated the incident.  “No. I don’t think about her. I think she’s a fraud. I really don’t think about that,” Trump said when asked if he had seen the video of the attack. “She probably had herself sprayed, knowing her.”  Oh, but he does think about her. The attack on Omar took place the same night Trump mentioned her while delivering a speech in Iowa ahead of this year’s midterm elections.  “We need people to come in legally, but they have to show that they can love our country—not hate our country,” Trump said Tuesday regarding immigration policy. “Not like Ilhan Omar.” He continued: “She comes from a country that’s a disaster… It’s not even a country, okay. It barely has a government. I don’t think it does. They’re good at one thing. Pirates.”  > Trump on Omar: "She's always talking about 'the Constitution provides me w/ > the following.' She comes from a country that's a disaster. It's not even a > country. They're good at one thing – pirates. But they don't do that anymore > bc they get same treatment from us as the drug dealers. Boom Boom Boom" > > — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-01-27T23:13:41.283Z Omar was born in Somalia’s capital of Mogadishu and fled the country with her family during the Somali Civil War. She spent four years in a refugee camp in Kenya before moving to the US in 1995. Omar and her family eventually settled in Minnesota, home to the largest Somali communities in the country. Trump has targeted Somali immigrants since at least last November when he promised to end Temporary Protected Status for Somalis living in Minnesota, linking all communities to fraud in the state.  But Omar has continued to fight back. “ICE cannot be reformed, it cannot be rehabilitated, we must abolish ICE for good, and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem must resign or face impeachment,” Omar said during the Tuesday town hall, just before the man attacked her. She wound up to strike back at the man before he was subdued by security. Omar was not injured, and, later on Tuesday night, she wrote on X, “I’m ok. I’m a survivor so this small agitator isn’t going to intimidate me from doing my work.”  The man was arrested and booked at the county jail for third-degree assault, according to Minneapolis police spokesperson Trevor Folke. > Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) assaulted during town hall meeting: "Here's the reality > that people like this ugly man don't understand; we are Minnesota strong and > we will stay resilient in the face of whatever they might throw at us." > pic.twitter.com/Ud5l3yP4lQ > > — CSPAN (@cspan) January 28, 2026 And Omar continued her speech after a short break. “I learned at a young age, you don’t give in to threats,” Omar told the audience. “You look them in the face and you stand strong.” The incident involving Omar isn’t the only recent example of heightened threats and attacks. A man allegedly assaulted Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fl.) last week. Frost said that the man punched him after saying that Trump would deport him.  And according to data from the US Capitol Police released on Tuesday, investigated threats—which include “concerning statements, behaviors, and communications directed against Members of Congress, their families, staff, and the Capitol Complex”—rose from 9,474 in 2024 to 14,938 in 2025.

Yesterday I published a story about what was quickly becoming a surprising site of capital R Resistance: the Letterboxd review page for the $75 million documentary film, Melania. Comments were profane, fun, silly, unprintable. I included some of my favorites. The point I was making was this: Even before the movie’s release this Friday, it has become a lightning rod for anger, not least because Melania Trump’s oligarchic private premiere gala at the White House came the same day Alex Pretti was shot dead in the streets of Minneapolis amid her husband’s disastrous siege of the city. A real let-them-eat-cake moment. But as my colleague Arianna Coghill went to promote the story today on our social media channels, she discovered the reviews have been wiped from the site entirely. Wiped clean. Sad. So I sent an email to the Letterboxd press team asking why. What terms were violated? When did that happen? Even though the reviews appeared before the official release of the film, how is Letterboxd to know reviewers hadn’t seen the film itself? They haven’t gotten back to me, and I’ll share their response when they do. But I presume they’ll hit me with their Terms of Service, which prohibit using Letterboxd to “game the Service’s mechanics,” “alter consensus,” or “participate in orchestrated attacks against films or filmmakers.” Letterboxd also asserts the “absolute discretion” to remove any post. Any account can be suspended for “any reason or no reason whatsoever, with or without notice.” Letterboxd is also pretty clear in its FAQ: “Letterboxd is for reviews of films you’ve seen, not those you want to see,” and it encourages people to flag “pre-release reviews,” which, it says, “we’ll remove at our discretion.” It also says its undisclosed platform magic helps ensure its ratings are less vulnerable to being abused in online campaigns “to accurately represent the global consensus for each film”—but says people are welcome to report those suspected of waging such a campaign. I guess we’ll have to wait until Friday, when the “global consensus” will begin to take shape—I suspect somewhat quickly. Meanwhile, as if pocketing $28 million for just 20 days of being followed by filmmakers wasn’t grifty enough, Melania went on Fox News this morning to sermonize about “unity” after the Pretti killing—beneath a banner promoting her new film, bearing her own name. Subtle. > .@FLOTUS: "We need to unify. I'm calling for unity. I know my husband, the > President, had a great call yesterday with the Governor and the Mayor… If you > protest, protest in peace. We need to unify in these times." > pic.twitter.com/oj3skxpAYf > > — Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) January 27, 2026

Jeff Bezos’s $40 million bribe of the Trumps, in the form of his Amazon-MGM-produced Melania documentary, is out in about 2,000 theaters across the country this Friday (5,000 worldwide, according to MarketWatch), backed by an inescapable $35 million advertising assault on the country’s airwaves and commuter transit. The Wall Street Journal reported that Melania will personally pocket $28 million. On the day the nation reeled from her husband’s federal agents shooting and killing Alex Pretti in the streets of Minneapolis, Melania Trump herself hosted a ritzy private White House screening for execs, celebs, and Queen Rania of Jordan. There will also be a premiere at the formerly prominent arts institution once known as the Kennedy Center. All this, and let’s not forget the film’s director Brett Ratner is attempting a comeback after his career imploded in 2017 when he was accused of sexual misconduct (he denied the allegations and no charges were filed, according to People). He also appears in a photo released as part of the Epstein files.  So it was with some solace that I perused the Letterboxd page of Melania, which made for some entertaining reading, as users have pre-swarmed the review section to push the score down and let their voices rip. Here’s a sample of some of my faves. And yeah, there are so many spicier versions on the page itself, not fit for publication here. I’ll leave that to you to scroll through. These are on the PG-rated end: * I really don’t care, do u? ½ star. * ABOLISH ICE. RELEASE THE EPSTEIN FILES * I would, however, love to see a scene-for-scene reenactment by Laura Benanti. * Death of Cinema Death of American Democracy * Lol. No * Nobody asked for this absolute piece of flaming garbage. * I heard all of her lines are taken from a Michelle Obama documentary And my favorite: > ★★★★★ Watched by jbruno7478 > > An astonishing nonfictional rising biopic where an entire life in all its > complications and contradictions is expressed through a series of non-linear, > subjective fragments of storytelling showmanship that simultaneously construct > and deconstruct an enigmatic myth of American empire. Every time I sit down to > watch this I go “ok but is it really that good?” and every single time I am > sucked in by the form which combines expressive deep-focus images with lots of > wide and low-angle compositions that take in the gorgeously-designed, > idiosyncratic interior spaces (including miniatures and optical illusion set > extensions) and serve to heighten the constantly overlapping sound design and > montage that collapses all of the techniques (and the sense of time and space > they establish) into a panoramic stream of memory. This is a triumph in every > sense of the word. I was left speechless, you’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll be > angry. You will get all the feels. It’s criminal that we had to wait this long > for this project.

He helped build the religious right in the United States. Now he’s in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to join the clergy’s fight ICE’s siege of the city. “Being here, in solidarity, is part of the repair work in my own soul,” said Rev. Rob Schenck, an Evangelical minister who spent decades commingling church and state to advance conservative causes like the anti-abortion movement. One example: Schenck’s organization, Faith and Action in the Nation’s Capital, created “Operation Higher Court,” which trained wealthy couples as “stealth missionaries” to befriend Supreme Court justices to preserve, in his words, a Christian nation. Now, he says he must confront the damage he helped cause, including what he believes was his role in delivering “the entities that are now inflicting all of this suffering on so many people”—extending to the rise of President Donald Trump. “We made this terrible deal with Donald Trump because we were already demoralized,” he told Mother Jones in 2018. “He didn’t demoralize us—he is the evidence of our demoralization.” So, here, braving subzero temperatures, Schenck told me, “I have to do the work of repair.” The video above was taken on Friday, during the city’s “Day of Truth and Freedom”—a citywide strike and march in which clergy played a prominent role. “These folks are showing more grace in accepting me than I would have ever extended to them,” he said, flanked by organizers shouting, “Whose streets? Our streets!” The next day, after learning of federal agents shooting and killing Alex Pretti, Schenck extended his stay in the city. I’ve been following Rob on his journey over the last few days and the clergy’s fight against ICE, which we will feature more of in the coming days. “This is redemption,” he told me. “This is redemption.”

President Donald Trump famously doesn’t like to read. And if his increasingly frequent public naps are any indication, his attention span is only getting shorter. But he did claim to watch what one historian praised as a “riveting, extraordinary and brutally honest” speech by Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada yesterday in Davos, Switzerland. And Trump’s reaction was typically petulant. Imploring an audience chock-full of European officials at the annual World Economic Forum to recognize that “nostalgia is not a strategy,” Carney rallied middle powers—countries with economies similar to Canada—to bind together in the face of unilateral military and economic coercion by bigger powers. (Unspoken but clear among them: Trump’s America.) In doing so, Carney painted a stark view of a new world in which old rules have been torn up, and countries should stop pretending otherwise. “We are in the midst of a rupture,” he said. “Not a transition.” His call to the world: Resist subordination to the “great powers” who “have the market size, the military capacity and the leverage to dictate terms.” “The middle powers must act together because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu,” Carney said. Trump was clearly irked. “Canada gets a lot of freebies from us,” he said on Wednesday. “They should be grateful but they’re not.” “Canada lives because of the United States,” Trump said. “Remember that, Mark, the next time you make your statements.” Carney’s speech, which received a standing ovation, is rooted in Carney’s personal experience after winning an election fought on protecting Canada’s sovereignty against economic attack from the United States in the form of tariffs and bellicose threats that Canada should be the 51st state of America. At Davos, Carney framed Trump’s attempts to “buy” Greenland as part of the same intimidation campaign: “Great powers began using economic integration as weapons,” he said. “Tariffs as leverage. Financial infrastructure as coercion. Supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited.” “We know the old order is not coming back,” he added. “But we believe that from the fracture, we can build something better, stronger, more just.” Read the full transcript here. And watch the speech below.