EASTORA REPORT | Ilhan Omar had a message for Donald Trump after winning more than 76% of the vote in Minnesota: the voters he had tried to frighten had answered him at the ballot box.
“The bigot in the White House,” the Democratic congresswoman called the president as she celebrated her re-election early Wednesday, turning a victory speech into a warning about what comes next in Washington.
Omar secured a fifth term despite two federal criminal investigations made public just weeks before Election Day. One examines questions surrounding her US citizenship; the other concerns discrepancies in financial disclosures. She denies wrongdoing and has not been charged.
Trump has repeatedly targeted the Somali-born lawmaker, calling her “garbage” and telling her to “go back” to Somalia. Omar, who became a US citizen in 2000, says the investigations are politically motivated.
“When they decided that they were going to come for me, they thought that they were going to find someone who was going to cower,” she told supporters. Instead, she said, her community refused to live in fear.
The confrontation reaches beyond one Minneapolis-area district. Democrats have won control of the House, giving them the power to launch investigations, demand documents and summon witnesses when the new Congress convenes in January.
Omar seized on a warning from fellow Democrat Robert Garcia, the incoming chairman of the House Oversight Committee, to Trump’s family: “You better lawyer up.”
“Your time of harassment is over,” she declared. “It is our time for accountability and transparency.”
Garcia’s committee will have subpoena powers, although Omar’s victory does not end the federal investigations against her. Those proceedings remain separate from the coming congressional battles.
For Trump, the result was another defeat on a night of Republican losses. For Omar, it offered a more personal reversal: a president who questioned her place in America watched voters send her back to Congress with an overwhelming mandate.
The investigations remain open. So does the political fight. But the voters Trump had tried to intimidate showed up to vote.