Republican Forced to Answer How Many Somalis He Represents Are Garbage

Minnesota Republican Representative Tom Emmer was asked directly if he agreed with President Trump’s assessment that the thousands of Somali residents he represents are “garbage.” He couldn’t give a straight answer. 

“Mr. Emmer, do you agree with President Trump that say[s] 5,000 Somali residents in your district in St. Cloud are garbage?” Migrant Insider’s Pablo Manríquez asked Emmer while he walked down a hallway. 

The Republican majority whip offered a weak, political nonanswer. 

“I think what President Trump has done is raise an issue that is something that we’ve been trying to raise for almost three years,” he replied. “The press refuse to cover things that are right in front of them—”

“Donald Trump said that the Somalis are garbage, that’s what I’m asking you about,” Manríquez replied. 

“If you could let me finish, I’d love to answer your question,” Emmer said. “But apparently you wanna have an argument.” 

“Well, it’s a yes or no.” 

“Maybe you can find someone else that you can have the argument with. ‘Cause I’m tellin’ ya, not all Somalis are bad—”

“Thank you.” 

“90 percent of the … crimes that have been charged are from the Somali community, and there’s nothing wrong, and nothing racist, about calling out crime.” 

There is no evidence that 90 percent of the crimes in Emmer’s district are committed by Somalis. Perhaps Emmer was trying to pivot to the scandal in Minnesota in which the state’s social services system was defrauded out of more than $1 billion in taxpayer dollars. Federal prosecutors allege that nearly all of the perpetrators came from Minnesota’s Somali community. So far, prosecutors have convicted 59 people. There are about 80,000 Somali Americans in Minnesota.

Trump did much more than just “call out crime.” He smeared an entire group of people simply based on their origin, something he’s made a career out of.  

“When you look at what [Minnesota Governor Walz has] done with Somalia, which is barely a country … they have no anything, they just run around killing each other,” Trump said earlier this month. “I hear [Somalians] ripped off that state for billions of dollars … I don’t want ’em in our country, I’ll be honest with you. Somebody’ll say ‘Ooh that’s not politically correct.’ I don’t care. I don’t want ’em in our country. Their country’s no good for a reason. Their country stinks, and we don’t want ’em in our country.”

“We’re gonna go the wrong way if we keep taking garbage into our country. Ilhan Omar is garbage. Her friends are garbage.… When they come from hell, and they complain, and do nothing but bitch? We don’t want ’em in our country. Let ’em go back to where they came from and fix it.” 

Representative Ilhan Omar just called the Department of Homeland Security’s bluff after it denied that ICE agents had ever pulled over her son.

DHS claimed Tuesday that the agency had “absolutely ZERO record” of federal agents pulling over Omar’s son, after the Minnesota Democrat revealed over the weekend that her son had been in the crosshairs of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown targeting the Somali American community in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area.

“With no evidence, it is shameful that Congresswoman Omar would level accusations to demonize ICE as part of a PR stunt,” DHS said in a statement on X. The department denied that it had committed racial profiling, and said that federal law enforcement uses “reasonable suspicion” to make arrests.

But the Somali-American congresswoman doubled down—and told DHS to bring receipts.  

“The congresswoman’s son and others were pulled over by ICE, racially profiled, and forced to prove their citizenship with a passport. ICE has long operated as a rogue agency beyond reform,” she said in a statement. “It’s no surprise that an agency known for disappearing people also can’t keep its records straight. ICE now claims it has records of all the stops, and our office would welcome the opportunity to review them.”

It’s pretty ironic that ICE would balk at claims that they’d engaged in racial profiling after they begged the Supreme Court to allow them to profile individuals based on race, ethnicity, and language in their efforts to detain immigrants. And of course, there are also plenty of well-documented reports of ICE and Border Patrol agents racially profiling people.

Earlier this month, a federal judge ruled that the Trump administration had illegally lowered the standard for making immigration arrests when it instituted a policy of “reasonable suspicion” instead of “probable cause.” The judge barred federal officers from making warrantless arrests unless the person was in the country illegally and a flight risk.

Donald Trump has totally embraced the eyebrow-raising label given to him by his own Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.

In a sprawling interview Vanity Fair published Tuesday, Wiles described the president as having “an alcoholic’s personality.” Trump, in turn, apparently agrees with that assessment.

“No, she meant that I’m—you see, I don’t drink alcohol,” Trump told the New York Post later Tuesday, defending Wiles comments. The 79-year-old routinely toasts with Diet Coke and claims that he doesn’t touch liquor due to his older brother, Fred Trump, who struggled with alcoholism for years before he died from a heart attack in 1981.

“So everybody knows that—but I’ve often said that if I did, I’d have a very good chance of being an alcoholic. I have said that many times about myself, I do. It’s a very possessive personality,” Trump continued.

“I’ve said that many times about myself. I’m fortunate I’m not a drinker. If I did, I could very well, because I’ve said that—what’s the word? Not possessive—possessive and addictive type personality,” he said. “Oh, I’ve said it many times, many times before.”

Trump reiterated his faith in Wiles’s ability as his chief of staff, and suggested that if there was any fault to be had for the shocking value judgement, it would be on the interviewer. Trump claimed the reporter was “very misguided” even as he admitted that he did not read the piece.

The wide-ranging profile on Wiles’s first year atop the Trump administration sent shockwaves through the political establishment Tuesday, and offered many Americans their first intimate glimpse into the inner machinations of Trump’s White House. Over the course of “many on-the-record conversations,” several of which took place after church on Sundays, documentary filmmaker and author Chris Whipple depicted a Cabinet structure that could not exist without the “ice maiden”’s direction and her unparalleled knack for translating the president’s agenda.

But, since he didn’t read the piece, Trump had no idea about its contents.

“Yeah, deceived—and he didn’t have great access, a couple of very short interviews,” Trump told the Post. “And Susie generally doesn’t do interviews.”

“If anybody knows the interviewer, and if they know Vanity Fair, Vanity Fair is a totally—it’s lost its way,” he said. “It’s also lost its readers, as you know. No, she’s fantastic.”

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is being sued by the Council on American-Islamic Relations after he signed an executive order last week labeling the civil rights group a “terrorist organization.” 

In a statement, CAIR Litigation Director Lena Masri said, “This is still America, where due process, free speech and other rights guaranteed by the Constitution matter.”

“We look forward to once again protecting the rights of all Americans—liberal and conservative, religious and secular—to engage in activism without fear of illegal government retaliation,” the statement read.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court, alleges that DeSantis is violating the Constitution, specifically the First Amendment. In his executive order, DeSantis accused CAIR of being “founded by persons connected to the Muslim Brotherhood” and claimed that people associated with the organization have been convicted for “conspiring to provide” support for terrorist organizations. 

In the lawsuit, CAIR wrote that “[t]he Executive Order identifies no criminal charges or convictions, relies on no federal designation, and inaccurately invokes statutory authority. It rests on political rhetoric and imposes sweeping legal consequences on a domestic civil rights organization because of its viewpoints and advocacy.”

DeSantis’s order prohibits CAIR, a national organization with chapters in states across the country, from receiving contracts, employment, or funding from state agencies. When asked for comment, a DeSantis spokesperson directed Politico to DeSantis’s posts on X, including one where he said legislation was being drafted “to stop the creep of sharia law, and I hope that they codify these protections for Floridians against CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood in their legislation.”

DeSantis is following the example of Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who declared CAIR a terrorist organization in November, only to be sued by the nonprofit a few days later. In both cases, the motives appear to be based on bigotry, with DeSantis’s order claiming that through its supposed Muslim brotherhood connections, CAIR is seeking to establish “a world-wide Islamic caliphate.” 

CAIR is also being attacked for allegedly supporting Hamas, but the organization said in its lawsuit that it has condemned Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel as well as Hamas’s other attacks. The use of the term “sharia law” evokes a conspiracy that right-wing groups have pushed for decades, claiming that Muslims are trying to set up a religious legal system. 

The sharia conspiracies have been repeatedly debunked, and laws targeting sharia and Islamic practices have repeatedly failed in court. CAIR’s lawsuits seem to have the Constitution behind them, especially since CAIR is not a proselytizing organization, but one working towards civil rights. Right-wing politicians and their allies in the courts will try to say otherwise, and scapegoat the estimated 4.5 million Muslims in the U.S.  

New York Representative Elise Stefanik is trying to completely erase her history with the New York Young Republican Club after they invited racists and German white supremacists to their annual party.

It became clear on Saturday that the club was willing to welcome even the fringest members of the far-right when white nationalists and Nazi slogan-chanting far-right German leaders attended the New York Young Republican Club’s annual gala.

In the days since, Stefanik—who “formally joined” the group in 2022, per a club announcement—has claimed that she was never affiliated with the group to begin with, according to Politico’s Jason Beeferman.

But that’s just not true. The club’s website listed Stefanik’s name on its member page as of October, though that no longer appears to be the case. It is unclear when her name was removed from the site.

She’s also supported the Young Republican cohort financially. In an August 2021 post, the official New York Young Republican Club X account thanked Stefanik for being a “generous donor to our Clubhouse Fund,” referring to her as a “staunch supporter of the NYYRC’s activism.”

Even the people around her have profound ties to the organization, including her longtime senior adviser, Alex deGrasse, who wrote on X in 2021 that he was a “a proud member” of the club.

The convenient rebrand could be the result of Stefanik’s political ambitions: The 41-year-old Albany native is vying to become the state’s first Republican governor in two decades. Peeling away from the club’s caustic beliefs could make her more palatable to the large liberal population in New York City required to win the gubernatorial race.

Albany’s current leadership—and Stefanik’s 2026 Democratic opponent—was unimpressed with the effort.

“This is not the first time Stefanik has been caught palling around with hateful antisemites, and it won’t be the last,” Kathy Hochul Campaign Spokesperson Ryan Radulovacki told The New Republic.

Stefanik was also affiliated with another youth Republican group bearing a strikingly similar name—the New York State Young Republican Club—which made national headlines in October when leaked screenshots from a private group chat revealed the race-based vitriol amongst its top members. In it, Young Republican leaders referred to Black people as monkeys and joked about rape, slavery, and the gas chamber.*

* This piece originally misstated which organization had the leaked group chat.

White House chief of staff Susie Wiles seems to have been caught lying about her statements regarding Elon Musk’s ketamine use, leading us to question everything else she denies from her series of interviews with Vanity Fair’s Chris Whipple.

“The challenge with Elon is keeping up with him,” Wiles told Whipple, in part one of the article. “He’s an avowed ketamine [user]. And he sleeps in a sleeping bag in the [Executive Office Building] in the daytime. And he’s an odd, odd duck, as I think geniuses are. You know, it’s not helpful, but he is his own person.”

While Musk’s drug use has been previously reported on, Musk had only admitted to casual and infrequent use of ketamine specifically. Wiles’s comments blow that notion up entirely.

Wiles, of course, profusely denied that she said this.

“That’s ridiculous,” she told The New York Times. “I wouldn’t have said it and I wouldn’t know.”

But Whipple’s reporting comes from a series of sit-downs that Wiles did with him, and The New York Times confirmed that Whipple played them a recording in which the White House chief of staff is heard making the ketamine comment.

This interview was a disaster for Wiles. She inexplicably gave Vanity Fair—and the general public—even more fodder against an already tumultuous administration. She said that Trump “has an alcoholic’s personality,” that Attorney General Pam Bondi “whiffed” on her handling of the Epstein files, and that Vice President JD Vance was a conspiracy theorist, among other things. And it seems that Whipple has solid ground to stand on, given his recordings of her, no matter how much she and her administration deny it.

The Trump administration is trying to claim that the FBI believed it didn’t have probable cause to search Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in 2022, citing a Fox News article claiming to have declassified emails. 

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt posted the article on X Tuesday, calling it a “story that matters.” The article claims that the FBI was hesitant to search the estate of the then-former president for missing classified documents, but was pushed by the Department of Justice at the time. 

One email reportedly states that at one point, the FBI’s Washington Field Office did “not believe (and has articulated to [DOJ]), that we have established probable cause for the search warrant for classified records at Mar a Lago.” Another email states that the bureau thought a raid would be “counterproductive,” suggesting “alternative, less intrusive and likelier quicker options for resolution” to recover the documents at the heart of the case.

It’s not surprising that the White House would want to highlight this article, because it makes the Biden administration look like it was pushing for a raid over the objections of federal law enforcement. But the search of Mar-a-Lago, which a federal judge signed a warrant for, ultimately undermines that argument. 

Classified documents were found all over the estate, including in the ballroom, bathroom and shower, an office, Trump’s bedroom, and a storage room, according to special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment. Agents allegedly found documents from seven government agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency, Department of Defense, National Security Agency, and State Department. 

The August 2022 search recovered 102 documents, including 17 classified as “Top Secret,” 54 as “Secret,” and 31 as “Confidential.” The indictment at the time quotes one of Trump’s attorneys saying that Trump allegedly said, “I don’t want anybody looking, I don’t want anybody looking through my boxes, I really don’t,” and, “What happens if we just don’t respond at all or don’t play ball with them?” 

One of Trump’s own lawyers specifically brought on to handle the classified documents case, Evan Corcoran, quit his job while the case was still ongoing in April last year. Trump and his aides allegedly misled Corcoran and encouraged him to lie to the DOJ. 

All of this may have been damning for Trump had the case actually gone to trial instead of being repeatedly undermined by Trump-appointed Judge Aileen Cannon, who ultimately dismissed the case in July 2024 on the spurious grounds that Smith’s appointment was unconstitutional. Following Trump’s election victory, Smith moved to have the case dismissed without prejudice, meaning it can be reopened once Trump leaves office in 2029. 

That might be why the Trump administration is trying to undermine what at one point seemed like the clearest case of Trump breaking the law. Trump not only wants to escape justice, but also wants anyone who prosecuted him punished and his record completely clean. Unfortunately for Trump, the evidence against him is well-documented, no matter how much he wants to whine about it.  

It’s official: House Speaker Mike Johnson is letting the Affordable Care Act subsidies expire—and Republicans are pissed. 

Speaking to reporters Tuesday, Johnson said that Republican leadership just couldn’t get on the same page about extending Obamacare tax credits. “In the end, there was not an agreement,” he said.

This is an apparent reversal after one Republican aide indicated last week that GOP leadership “would allow” for a floor vote on extending subsidies, at the behest of moderate Republicans who wanted the opportunity to voice their support for an extension. 

Representative Mike Lawler, one of those moderate Republicans, was furious over Johnson’s decision.  

“I think it’s idiotic not to have an up-or-down vote on this issue,” Lawler fumed after Tuesday morning’s House Republican Conference, arguing that Johnson was committing “political malpractice.”

“I am pissed for the American people. This is absolute bullshit,” he said. 

After this week, Congress is out of session until 2026, and the enhanced tax credits expire on December 31. Starting in January, insurance premiums are set to skyrocket, and premiums for some individuals will increase by as much as double. 

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise told reporters that Republicans had chosen another path. “I think after everybody talked, they decided they didn’t want to go forward, you know, with the options that were out there,” he said. “So, you know, in the end we have a bill that lowers premiums for 100 percent of Americans. Democrats are only focused on bailing out insurance companies for less than 10 percent of Americans.”

Last week, Republican leadership unveiled their own disastrous plan to lower health care costs, which did not include extending subsidies. 

Instead, they proposed that Americans be given cash directly into health savings accounts paired with high-deductible health plans, meaning higher insurance premiums would theoretically be replaced by higher out-of-pocket costs. 

Donald Trump was apparently tricked into giving Ghislane Maxwell better prison conditions, according to his chief of staff.

Susie Wiles told author Chris Whipple in a Vanity Fair interview that neither she nor the president were consulted about Maxwell’s transfer to a cushier prison earlier this year following her meeting with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.

“The president was ticked,” Wiles said. “The president was mighty unhappy. I don’t know why they moved her. Neither does the president.” Wiles added to Whipple, “If that’s an important point, I can find out.”

Wiles never got back to Whipple on that point, even as the author reached out to her just before Vanity Fair published their interview.

Blanche’s meeting with Maxwell was itself unusual, and Whipple asked Wiles why it was conducted.

“It’s not typical, is it, to send the number two guy in the DOJ and the president’s former defense lawyer to interview a convicted sex trafficker?” Whipple asked. Wiles replied that the interview was Blanche’s suggestion.

If Wiles’s comments are to be believed, it’s easy to trick the president of the United States. In another reading, Wiles’s comments are a revelation by omission. Maxwell was moved to a federal facility that gave her all kinds of special treatment, such as the ability to have visitation rights for long periods of time in the prison’s chapel. She also receives unlimited toilet paper, meal service in her cell, and immediate responses to requests to have other inmates moved away from her.

Maxwell supposedly exonerated Trump from any wrongdoing in her interview with Blanche’s interview, claiming he had never even been to Epstein’s house, but emails released this fall from Epstein’s estate by the House Oversight Committee contradict her testimony. Trump is mentioned as a frequent visitor to Epstein’s home, who “knew about the girls,” which creates the impression that Maxwell was simply telling Blanche and the Trump administration what they wanted to hear.

Do Trump and Wiles really have no idea why Maxwell has an easy prison life right now? It certainly doesn’t seem that way, but based on Wiles’s negative reaction to her published remarks, she’s not going to go out of her way to clear things up.

Maybe the United States should try to be more like Australia.

The day after a mass shooting at a Jewish gathering killed 15 people at Bondi Beach Sunday, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese wasted no time in moving to tighten gun laws.

“The consideration that will take place includes limiting the number of guns an individual can own, the type of guns that are legal, whether gun ownership should require Australian citizenship, and accelerating work on the national firearms register,” he said during a press conference Monday.

“The government is prepared to take whatever action is necessary.”

The United States, on the other hand, seems to have its own way of dealing with mass shootings—and it’s worse than doing nothing.

Here in the land of the free and home of the brave, our lawmakers don’t draft gun control legislation. They draft posts on X spreading baseless conspiracy theories.

Representative Michael Rulli, a MAGA acolyte from Ohio, posted about the weekend shooting at Brown University, claiming that Ella Cook, one of the victims and the vice president of the Brown chapter of College Republicans of America, had been targeted for her conservative beliefs.

“They tried to kill Trump. They killed Charlie Kirk. Now they’ve killed Ella Cook. The left wants all of us dead, and there’s no denying it anymore,” he wrote.

And Rulli wasn’t alone: Multiple right-wing figures pushed the narrative that Cook had been targeted.

Of course, none of them could be bothered to mention Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, an Uzbek neuroscience student who was also killed Saturday, or the eight others who were injured in the shooting. Meanwhile, the gunman has not yet been taken into custody or identified.

At the same time, Yahoo News circulated an unsourced story, cooked up by right-wing media, that the shooter at Brown University had declared “Allahu Akbar” before open firing on a group of students studying for their economics final.

But at least we have our freedom, right?