Category: Daily Musts

A callout to Rep. Ilhan Omar, who has added another stellar first to her distinctive roster of achievements—first woman ever to attempt to revise her birthdate upwards.

“U.S. probe of Rep. Ilhan Omar focuses on birth date, citizenship papers, people familiar say” is the Washington Post headline. Only if the future Minnesota Congresswoman was a minor at the time her father became a naturalized citizen in the U.S. could she piggyback on his application for citizenship. The WaPo reports:

The federal investigation that prompted the search of Rep. Ilhan Omar’s D.C. residence on Monday centers on claims that she or her late father may have lied on decades-old immigration paperwork to secure legal status and eventually U.S. citizenship, three people familiar with the matter said.

Omar — a Minnesota Democrat who was born in Somalia and fled civil war there with her family before eventually immigrating to the United States in 1995 — has repeatedly rejected such allegations, which have circulated in conservative media for years. She dismissed them again in a statement Monday as “baseless lies and smear campaigns.”

The New York Post reports that Rep. Omar’s staff got her birthdate changed officially after she was elected to Congress. Omar’s age at the time of immigration is not the only question that revolves around her father. “Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) has always made one wonder how a person could flee oppression in Somalia, find freedom in the U.S., and somehow end up viewing America as the villain in global affairs. Could it be that in Somalia her father was among those doing the oppressing?” asks James Freeman of the Wall Street Journal.

If Omar’s father, Nur Omar Mohamed, misrepresented his history, that could affect Omar’s claim of U.S. citizenship, too. There appear to be missing immigration records. U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro is investigating Omar’s finances, including curious, multimillion-dollar surges in her businesses tied to her husband. Rep. Omar is fundraising off the crisis. I guess it’s refreshing to be talking about Omar’s father rather than her brother?

The New York Post cover announces: “The Bruce Is Loose!” The Bruce is GOP gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman, who is challenging incumbent Governor Kathy Hochul. They debated last night. Michael Goodwin writes that Blakeman outclassed Hochul on the debate stage—paving the way for him to win on Election Day. Blakeman attacked Hochul for her response to the Cornell rape accusations and her remarks on black kids and computers. A body language expert’s verdict: Hochul “looked like a deer in the headlights.”

Hochul wasn’t the only deer in the headlights yesterday. New White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia was nervous at her first briefing, and the Wall Street Journal described the rollout as rocky. But my gosh, the pile-on was vicious. The MSM has got it in for her. President Trump personally helped Zacharia prepare for the briefing—which possibly explains why Zacharia laid it on extra thick about being pleased to work for the president, and also perhaps why the MSM is so astonishingly hostile to Zacharia.

“Inside Kimberly Guilfoyle’s Final Days as Ambassador to Greece.” Kimberly Guilfoyle is NOT a deer in the headlights. To save her job, the Wall Street Journal reports—in a gossipy, front-page feature—that Guilfoyle claimed incriminating texts are AI-generated.

President Trump held a rally in Alaska yesterday, where he pardoned on stage Alaskan truckers targeted by the Biden administration for trying to fix truck engines. Trump is working hard to get people to the polls, but USA TODAY opinion contributor Merrill Matthews writes soberingly that it’s beginning to look a lot like 2006:

A Republican president is facing his second midterm elections. His popularity is in the tank, in part because he took the country into a costly, unpopular war he thought would end quickly. Inflation is too high and federal spending under his party has exploded. The economy, while reasonably strong, faces headwinds. His party could be headed for a major defeat in November.

“The Wealth Tax Stakes in California.” If Prop. 40 passes, an editorial in the Wall Street Journal argues, it will be part of the 2028 Democratic campaign. The editors write:

Targeted individuals would have to pay tax on nearly all their assets worldwide, including artwork, trusts, yachts, business interests and even a dependent’s assets. A Rembrandt in a Miami penthouse would be taxable in California.

The tax would also apply to a taxpayer’s share of voting control in private companies. So if a startup founder owns 10% of shares that carry 50% of voting rights, he’d have to pay tax as if he owned 50% of shares. This is intended to punish entrepreneurs who exercise control over companies.

Yet they could still be soaked if the state Franchise Tax Board determines based on “all the facts and circumstances” that “a substantial purpose” of their move was to avoid the tax. The wealth tax’s supporters say it won’t spur billionaires to leave, but then why write in this “general anti-avoidance” rule?…

Oh, and don’t believe the claim that this is a one-time tax to deal with federal Medicaid cuts. Federal Medicaid payments to California have increased 14% ($16.4 billion) over the last year and exceed the entire general fund budgets of all 49 other states. The wealth-tax revenue would be baked into California’s Medicaid budget, much of which will go to fraudsters.

Speaking of fraud … “Deep blue Minnesota is fed up with fraud — and may derail Dems’ midterm dreams” is a New York Post headline. Isaac Schorr writes:  

A state that hasn’t delivered its electoral votes to a Republican presidential candidate since 1972 is bucking the prevailing national political winds and contemplating a change after years of progressive mismanagement.

Yes, Minnesota may have some regrets.

Does Israel, also in the midst of elections, have regrets about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu? Yonah Jeremy Bob, writing at The Free Press, suggests that the “Netanyahu era could end this month with a victory by Gadi Eisenkot, the plainspoken former IDF chief who wants to disempower the populist right.” TFP Editors ask how Israel—and history—will judge Netanyahu. Haviv Rettig Gur, Michael Oren, Yossi Klein Halevi, and others weigh in on Netanyahu’s legacy.

Meanwhile, in the same esteemed publication, Douglas Murray weighs in on the “sham” International Criminal Court (which the U.S. has just sanctioned):

Recent years have seen a flourishing of BS institutions. There is the International Association of Genocide Scholars, an organization that suddenly leaped to prominence last year when it was reactivated in order to accuse Israel of “genocide” in Gaza; there is the International Court of Justice (ICJ), a politicized pseudo-court that seems determined to fast-track that same genocide allegation; there is the United Nations Human Rights Council, whose only standing agenda item devoted to a single country is, yes, about the Jewish state; and the list goes on.

But the institution that must win any and all awards for not being what it says on the tin is the International Criminal Court (ICC). Founded in 2002, the ICC has served as a political tool for a quarter century. In the 2000s, European signatories routinely criticized the George W. Bush administration for not signing up the U.S. to be a member of the new institution. But the Bush administration took the view that all Democrat and Republican administrations have taken before and since: No American statesman or soldier should ever find his actions judged under the jurisdiction of a foreign court. American justice is enough.

Just a wee reminder that this year’s Nobel Peace Prize recipient, Navi Pillay, has served as a judge on the ICC.

Whatever France’s shortcomings, it doesn’t deserve this:

Greta Thunberg is in Paris. Yes, as if the French haven’t got enough on their assiettes with ‘youths’ and ‘students’ reducing the cradle of European civilisation to smoking ruins, the overgrown Shirley Temple of Stockholm rocked up this morning outside a school in Saint-Denis. She told the crowd, ‘Young people are not being included in the conversation. Our future is being robbed away from us!’

The clumsy structure of the latter sentence gave me an eerie sensation of an Armageddon-themed ABBA lyric. I can picture a mournful Frida singing it over flickering firelight.

Greta certainly gets around, doesn’t she?

The Spectator calls Greta a “protest addict.”

Oh, brother.

A raid by the feds on a controversial lawmaker’s D.C. residence this close to the midterms can’t help but trigger a firestorm.

The New York Times plays the pre-dawn Monday raid on Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar’s house straightforwardly:

The court-approved search of her Washington-area home comes after Department of Homeland Security officials said in recent months that they were investigating Ms. Omar, a Democrat, over her family’s immigration paperwork. More recently, some federal investigators have also sought to investigate other issues, such as Ms. Omar’s finances, campaign funds and interactions with a foreign citizen, as The New York Times previously reported.

The three people who described the execution of the search warrant spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it.

The search warrant, executed 22 days before Election Day, lists a series of potential immigration crimes under investigation, including false statements and fraud in immigration paperwork, as well as a general conspiracy charge, according to a person familiar with the document.

The New York Post report carried the story forward:

The most likely scenario, multiple people claimed, is that immigration cops are looking into a long-floated rumor that Omar is actually one year older than she has long claimed to be — a tiny detail that may put her citizenship in jeopardy.

“The big picture here is a federal judge in Washington, DC, signed off on a search warrant. That means there’s probable cause that a federal crime was committed, and there would be evidence of that crime in the area to be searched, which in this case was Representative Omar’s home,” former assistant US attorney Jonathan Fahey told The Post.

Rep. Omar, who is running for re-election, charges that the raid was politically motivated and vows, “I will not be silenced.” Meanwhile, “Ilhan Omar’s shady family history gives Trump plenty of reasons to probe her past” is the headline on Rich Lowry’s measured column:

Much of Ilhan Omar’s family story is a black box, but we are presumably about to learn much more about it. 

She has always responded with angry, uninformative dismissals, even when the Minneapolis Star-Tribune — not exactly a right-wing news source — has made inquiries. 

If she’s being smeared, Omar should sit down with a neutral journalist and walk through the details of all this with as many documents as she can muster.

That seems unlikely.

Here is another analysis of questions about Rep. Omar’s immigration history.

In a snub to New York’s large Italian community, Mayor Zohran Mamdani skipped the Columbus Day Parade. Insulting, yes, but not enough to mollify the Democratic Socialists of America, who seem to be flexing their muscles and have a new demand for Hizzoner: Fire NYPD Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch.

Outside perfervid DSA precincts, Tisch is sometimes seen as “Greatest Police Commissioner of All Time,” who presides over record lows in crime. But the DSA has fallen head over heels in love with criminal illegal immigrant Oscar Belgal, who, with his trusty machete, spent his time menacing the residences of a Washington Heights apartment building before the dear boy had the misfortune of being shot in an encounter with ICE. This led to the DSA’s illogical pressure on Mayor Mamdani to fire Tisch, who runs NYPD, not ICE.

A New York Post editorial urges Mamdani to buck the DSA (“Mamdani would be a fool to fire NYPD Commish Jessica Tisch for keeping NYC safe“):

[DSA leaders] apparently expect cops to arrest feds who are lawfully doing their duty, or at least to get out of the way if lefties want to riot over federal law enforcement.

Michigan Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed’s least favorite topic, according to The Free Press, is the Iranian regime. He refuses to answer questions about it. Ms. Must is betting that another not-favorite question is his alleged family ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, which El-Sayed flatly denied—and then old posts from his sister touting the family’s close association with the Islamist organization resurfaced.

Meanwhile, Examiner Chief Political Correspondent Byron York examines “The high cost of Abdul el Sayed“: Medicare for All is the item El-Sayed consistently emphasizes. York writes:

But even though he has been short on details, el Sayed has had one all-purpose answer to the question of how he would pay for his high-priced proposals. He says it slowly and clearly, apparently so everyone will know he really means it: “Tax. Billionaire. Wealth.”

“It’s that simple,” el Sayed said at his recent debate with Republican opponent Mike Rogers. …

In any event, el Sayed cannot solve the massive math problem that his proposal raises. Start with this fact: the total combined net worth of every billionaire in America adds up to somewhere around $8 trillion to $9 trillion. That is everything they own — money, property, investments, etc. And then look at those estimates of the cost of Medicare for All — around $32 trillion over its first decade.

Do the math. What that means is that the government could confiscate every penny that every billionaire in America has, and it would not be enough to pay for more than a few years of Medicare for All. And then, there would be no more billionaires with wealth to confiscate.

Let’s do some more math. “Trump’s Census Proposal Is a Big Step in Restoring National Unity” is a City Journal headline:

Eliminating race and ethnicity tabulation from the decennial questionnaire will help dismantle identity politics and the grievance industry. …

The boldness of the proposal seems to have caught the Left off guard, but the Trump administration should hold the line against the inevitable blowback. The proposal is indispensable to the success of his overall project. It must, of course, be accompanied by a return to assimilation and a more rational immigration policy.

Put Your Hands Together for Tertullian. Acknowledging the high brilliance of Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s address on Western civ in the shadow of the Acropolis last week, the philosopher Wilfrid McClay nevertheless reminds us this morning that “Western Civilization runs Through Jerusalem, too“:

Marco Rubio delivered a truly masterful speech in Athens last week and has won near-universal and deserving acclaim for it. His resounding affirmation of Western civilization—reminding us how much the West owes to the achievements of the ancient Greeks—feels like the beginning of a civilizational rebirth. May it be so.

But there was something important missing from that speech….

Western civilization is far more than the lengthened shadow of the Parthenon. In fact, the civilization of the West is better thought of as a long conversation whose most important constituent elements are called by the names “Athens” and “Jerusalem,” as first expressed by the Church father Tertullian. Athens stands for the spirit of free rational inquiry undertaken in a fully intelligible world whose contours and dimensions are fully commensurable with our powers of understanding. Jerusalem stands for the spirit of piety, which stresses the weakness of human understanding and the inadequacy of unaided human nature.

Beauty is a classical value, too. In “Ugly in the Name of Safety,” Meghan Cox Gurdon deplores a hideous crosswalk safety contraption. The mania for safety above all destroys beauty. Kudos to Ms. Gurdon for invoking the Rubio speech. 

Isn’t it fun to have a witty Secretary of the Treasury? Senator Elizabeth Warren had been writing Secretary Scott Bessent letter after letter on the bond market. Finally, he responded (thanks, Monica Showalter of the American Thinker):

I have received your October 7 letter, which adds to the mounting body of evidence of your complete paucity of knowledge about financial markets. Rather than take my suggestion of studying introductory economics, you have continued your letter-writing crusade and participation in tabloid fodder about the Treasury Department.

Employing Virginia Woolf’s stream of consciousness, Senator Warren naturally makes me think of indigenous peoples, which in turn circuitously reminds me of Christopher Columbus, whom the sane among us celebrated yesterday. Don’t miss “Columbus Deserves His Day,” by Matthew Hennessey in Free Expression.

Brace yourselves.

We’ve entered that stage at which Decisions Must Be Made.

With a mere 25 days to go, GOP calculations are aimed at “avoiding the unthinkable,” according to Examiner Chief Political Correspondent Byron York. York doesn’t have much hope for the Republicans keeping the House, but the Senate might be another story. “GOP strategists have to choose some races for particular focus in the final weeks of the campaign,” writes York. “What standard should they use?” 

There’s this standard, for example:

Obviously, the first priority is to push hard in races that are close and where the Republican candidate has a good chance to win. One under-discussed example of that is Minnesota, where Republican Michelle Tafoya is running a strong campaign against deeply flawed Democratic candidate Peggy Flanagan. A Republican victory there would take away a current Democratic seat and make it much harder for Democrats to win control of the Senate. Victories to keep Republican seats in two other extremely close states, Iowa and Maine, would make it harder still.

And then York hits the reader with this standard:

Finally, Republicans might want to think of one other aspect of unthinkability. Every now and then, there is a candidate who is so unsuited for the Senate and the nation that it would be a disservice not to defeat him. In 2026, one could argue that that candidate is Abdul el Sayed, who is defending a Democratic seat in Michigan.

Senate hopefuls El-Sayed and his Republican challenger Mike Rogers debated each other last night—and wowza. “Personal attacks, Israel, and terrorism define Michigan’s caustic Senate debate” is the Examiner headline:

The barbs were unrelenting, such that, at one point, upon returning from a commercial break, the moderator said “that in 30 years of doing debates, I’ve never seen it continue during the commercial, but it did.”

Throughout the debate, Rogers — as expected — claimed that el Sayed, through people who have contributed to his campaign and family members including his biological mother, is tied to U.S.-designated terrorist organizations, including Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.

“You’re going after my mom,” El-Sayed responded in one of the highlights of the hostile evening. Asked whether Israel or Iran has been more dangerous to the U.S., El-Sayed dismissed the question as “hypothetical” (it is most certainly not) and equivocated that “both of them have proven dangerous in their own way.” The Free Beacon’s Alana Goodman observes of this reply:

The answer marks the latest example of El-Sayed, who has struggled with historically Democratic Jewish voters in Michigan, downplaying Islamic terrorism.

The two Michigan candidates “agreed on virtually nothing.”

Hot Air has all the barbs, big moments and bon mots.

The usually unflappable GOP moderate Senator from Maine, Susan Collins, is outraged and demanding an apology after her progressive challenger Troy Jackson accused her of making money from the Iran war. Also on the campaign—or rather mysteriously MIA from said trail—is Texas Senate hopeful James Talarico, who hasn’t been seen in public for 12 days.

According to the 37-year-old’s campaign, he’s laid up with the flu. PJ Media’s Stephen Krusier slyly suggests that laying low might be a better option for Talarico than actively campaigning.

Meanwhile, New Hampshire senatorial candidate John Sununu wants to save Social Security from insolvency. For proposing measures to steady the entitlement, an editorial in the Wall Street Journal observes, Sununu is being accused of pushing granny off the cliff. Gimlet Eyed: “Democrats talk affordability. They really want impeachment,” is USA TODAY columnist Nicole Russell’s headline this morning.

An ICE officer shot and injured a man described as a “criminal illegal alien” Thursday night. A migrant boy, age five, was unharmed in the back of the automobile. New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani is working to calm the situation—NOT. “Mamdani grandstands over ICE shooting of gangbanger ‘criminal illegal’ migrant as violent protests erupt in Bronx” is the New York Post headline:

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani furiously called for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to be abolished, blasting the federal agency as “rotten to its core” — after agents shot a criminal illegal migrant and alleged gangbanger in the Bronx Thursday.

Mamdani said he even tried to negotiate the release of the criminal — who has already been arrested twice in the city — with President Trump.

We are learning more about the rape allegations at Cornell. CBS News has obtained hundreds of pages of documents that shed light on Jane Doe’s allegations, the Cornell police investigation, and responses of some of the accused Chi Phi fraternity members. The New York Post has screenshots of text messages between Jane Doe and seven men accused in the case. The messages could further cloud the case:

“I don’t think we should feel any shame for the part. our body our choice asf,” [Jane Doe] added, before alluding to other people getting involved in the sex she had with Ingalls and Newell.

“yall were both super out of it and they should have taken it on themselves to leave. at the end of the day you, matt, and i were in your bed and they didn’t need to get up on that,” she wrote, finally consoling Newell again.

Controversial New York AG Tish James, incidentally, was injected into the Cornell case when Governor Kathy Hochul appointed her to investigate the incident, is facing a challenger for her job. Apparently, James’ debate with her rival did not go well:

New York Attorney General Letitia James was ambushed by her well-prepared, locked-in GOP opponent, Saritha Komatireddy, who hammered the incumbent Dem over New York’s bail laws, the rise of antisemitism and massive amounts of Empire State medicaid fraud.

While Komatireddy labeled James a “political hack” for her prosecution against President Trump, the Democrat had few answers to her opponents’ attacks besides repeatedly labeling her a “Trump puppet.”

“Could New York Elect a Republican Attorney General?” asks The Free Press. The tease: “Saritha Komatireddy hopes that New York City’s dysfunction of homelessness, subway violence, and locked-up store shelves will help her topple Letitia James, one of Trump’s biggest enemies.”

President Trump is probably too busy this year to take umbrage at the Norwegian Nobel Committee once again passing over him for the Peace Prize. The winner is Navi Pillay, a South African human rights lawyer and international. She is a supporter of the debunked (but seemingly indestructible) idea of Israeli genocide and a judge on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to which the United States—wisely—does not belong.

“Two States. Two Children. Two Fights Over Gender” in City Journal details the struggles of two families, one in Massachusetts, one in Florida:

Every day, American parents face the challenges that come with a child telling them that he or she identifies as transgender. But how that challenge is handled varies wildly depending on where the parents live. In some states, schools socially transition children in secret or even take children from parents. In others, parental rights are respected. Two such stories show how big of a difference that can make. …

My daughter needed her mother and father. She needed professional help. She needed time. And she got what she needed because our state respects parents’ basic rights. The Kutzkos’ daughter needs the same things, but Massachusetts has stopped her from getting them. Two years later, her parents are still fighting for their rights, and there’s no guarantee they’ll prevail.

I hope they do. I hope their daughter gets the love and help she needs before it’s too late. And I hope that our leaders do whatever it takes to save our children.

Highly Recommended: “Oct. 7 Is Still Testing Us,” by Matthew Continetti at Free Expression:

No, Hamas’s greater ambition was to challenge the very premises of Western civilization—our collective ability to distinguish right from wrong, good from evil, truth from falsehood.

Oct. 7 was a moral test. All too many have failed it.

The flags of the Palestinian Authority and of Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militia, could be seen amid pro-Hamas crowds from Times Square to Trafalgar Square. Pro-Hamas activists occupied campuses and harassed Jewish students. Antisemitic hate crimes spiked in places where Jews had long enjoyed freedom and safety.

The divergence was astonishing. As Israel responded with purpose, resolution and force, Western societies began buckling under domestic and international pressures to reward evil and punish self-defense.