WASHINGTON — Federal authorities investigating Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar seized the Democratic lawmaker’s phone and have issued more than a dozen grand jury subpoenas, including to some of her relatives, according to a person briefed on the probe.
The subpoenas were issued for a grand jury collecting evidence in Minnesota as federal authorities probe potential fraud in Omar’s immigration paperwork, said the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation. The investigation led to federal agents searching Omar’s Washington, D.C. home on Monday just weeks before the November midterms, in which Omar is seeking reelection.
The scope of the investigation into Omar is unclear, though Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has suggested that authorities were examining potential crimes related to her family’s immigration paperwork.
On Tuesday, Washington D.C. U.S Attorney Jeanine Pirro said in a Fox News interview that “there are several investigations going on” related to Omar and that her office is also probing issues concerning the lawmaker’s financial disclosures.
“If there was a crime that was committed, it will be prosecuted,” Pirro said.
The search of Omar’s home so close to next month’s midterm contests that will determine control of the House and the Senate was swiftly condemned by Democrats, who accused the administration of targeting the Democrat for political purposes. Omar, in a statement on X, called the search an “attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement.”
“For 10 years, Trump has targeted me with baseless lies and smear campaigns. This is just the latest escalation in his campaign of political intimidation,” she said. “I will not be silenced.”
A phone message seeking comment was left Wednesday with a representative for Omar.
Though the Republican focus on Omar’s background dates back years, the search notably took place three weeks before the November midterms, in which Omar is seeking reelection. The Justice Department has historically sought to avoid public investigative actions involving a candidate within 60 days of a primary or general election.
Omar, who was first elected to the House in 2018, represents Minnesota’s 5th District, including Minneapolis. She is part of The Squad of progressive lawmakers who are a vibrant political force on the left wing of Congress but have also endured repeated attacks from President Trump, dating back to his first term. She was one of the first two Muslim-American women in the House and the first African refugee to be elected to Congress.
Kansas City have dominated their rivalry with the Raiders in recent years, but Las Vegas are vastly improved after winning only three games last season and pushed the Chiefs all the way.
The Raiders led 13-10 heading into the final quarter in Vegas, which featured three lead changes before Kansas City held on for a 30-27 win.
The turning point came as new running back Kenneth Walker maintained his stunning start by scoring two touchdowns in 19 seconds, with the Chiefs regaining possession immediately by forcing a fumble on the kick-off return.
The Raiders gave themselves hope with a Brock Bowers score and stayed alive until the final play, when Kirk Cousins was tackled as he threw and his wayward pass was intercepted.
Walker finished with 177 yards from 22 carries, while team-mate Tyquan Thornton also had two touchdowns and 111 receiving yards.
After missing last season’s play-offs, the Chiefs look capable of getting back into Super Bowl contention. They next face the Los Angeles Chargers, who are 0-4 after losing 30-23 to defending champions the Seattle Seahawks.
Three weeks is only a sliver of the NFL season; a backsliding team has plenty of time to correct its course.
That said, only seven teams in the Super Bowl era have rebounded from an 0-3 start to make the playoffs.
That’s a sobering statistic for the Chargers, Houston Texans and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, all winless so far. As for the 0-3 Miami Dolphins, well, that isn’t quite as shocking.
“We’re searching for every possible way to give ourselves an advantage,” said Chargers coach Jim Harbaugh, whose team lost at Buffalo last Sunday despite five takeaways and a plus-four turnover differential.
The uphill climb continues for the Chargers, who play at Seattle on Sunday, with the defending Super Bowl champions itching to respond to an upset loss at Washington in Week 3.
So far, the change at offensive coordinator to former Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel has been a bust for the Chargers. Their offense has sputtered and wheezed, even as their defense has done its part to keep them in games.
Elsewhere Sunday, the Texans play host to Dallas, Tampa Bay hosts Green Bay, and Miami plays at 3-0 Minnesota.
Of those seven teams that dug themselves out of a foreboding pit, only the 1992 San Diego Chargers turned their season around after an 0-4 start — so it’s pretty much now or never for this year’s class of Sunday strugglers.
The others to make the playoffs after losing their first three games were the 1981 New York Jets, 1982 Buccaneers, 1995 Detroit Lions, 1998 Buffalo Bills, and the Texans, who pulled off the feat in 2018 and last season… and now find themselves back in that dank basement.
“We’ve been here before,” Houston quarterback C.J. Stroud told reporters this week, “so we know we can get this thing turned around.”
For those who have made that euphoric U-turn, there are life lessons to draw upon. Chief among them, don’t panic.
Chargers coach Jim Harbaugh stands on the field before a loss to the Buffalo Bills on Sept. 27.
(Bryan M. Bennett / Getty Images)
Former Lions linebacker Stephen Boyd recalls the composure and calm of Detroit coach Wayne Fontes, after three losses to Pittsburgh, Minnesota and Arizona — two of those by a field goal.
After the third loss, Boyd said, “Wayne Fontes walks into the meeting room with a big smile on his face and says, `Listen, here’s the deal, we’re going to give the ball to Barry [Sanders] a little bit more, and we’re going to get this turned around.’”
Sure enough, the Lions broke through the following week with a win over San Francisco on Monday night. But there were more bumps in the road for Detroit, which by November was still a dismal 3-6. Few could have predicted the club would win its final seven games.
That set the stage for a strange wild-card game against Philadelphia in which the Eagles built a 51-7 lead and held on despite the Lions scoring 30 points down the stretch. The final score: 58-37.
Three years before Fontes kept his cool under pressure, Chargers coach Bobby Ross did the same.
“There were a lot of grumblings that this was just some college coach that didn’t know what he was doing in the pros,” recalled former Chargers linebacker Gary Plummer of Ross, hired out of Georgia Tech. “There were a lot of guys that were essentially jumping off the ship.”
That team held a players-only meeting after falling to 0-3… then got clobbered, 27-0, by the Houston Oilers in Week 4.
Ross held steady, though.
“He told us that he wasn’t changing,” Plummer said. “We were still going to have physical practices. He said that was the only way he knew how to coach.”
The Chargers responded by winning four in a row. Then, after a hard-fought, two-point loss to Kansas City, the Chargers tore off another seven wins.
Defense led the way for those Chargers, allowing just 241 points that season, the fourth-fewest in the NFL.
So far this season, these Chargers are showing similar tendencies. Last Sunday, the defense played a gem of a game, and certainly through three quarters.
Hope still has a heartbeat, but that grows fainter by the loss.
WASHINGTON — The Department of Justice filed a complaint Wednesday against federal judges in Minnesota over their remarks to the media related to the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement surge.
The complaint escalates the department’s battle with the federal judiciary, which has halted administration priorities, dismissed high-profile prosecutions and accused government lawyers in some cases of failing to comply with court orders.
The department is demanding that the judges recuse themselves from all criminal or civil cases involving the Department of Homeland Security, Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche told reporters, because of what he described as “obvious bias they have shown” in recent remarks to the New York Times.
At issue is a September article in which seven federal judges in Minnesota — nominated by Democrats and Republican presidents — spoke on the record about their experience dealing with a flood of cases during last winter’s immigration crackdown that led to thousands of arrests.
The judge at the center of the story, Patrick Schiltz, accused the government in January of failing to comply with nearly 100 court orders. He said in a ruling that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a part of Homeland Security, “is not a law unto itself.”
Schiltz, who was nominated by Republican President George W. Bush and served as a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, told the newspaper that what happened in Minnesota’s federal court last winter “created a grave threat to the rule of law.”
In a statement Wednesday, Schiltz said he was “acting well within the ethical rules that apply to federal judges in speaking to The New York Times.”
“Indeed, in February of this year, the Committee on Codes of Conduct issued an advisory opinion to emphasize that federal judges” may speak or write “on core judiciary matters such as advocacy for the rule of law and judicial independence,’” Schiltz said. “That is exactly what I did.”
The complaint was filed with the chief judge of the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, which oversees federal judges in Minnesota.
The Republican administration has railed against what it describes as “activist judges” who officials say are intent on thwarting Trump’s agenda. Yet some of the most critical and unfavorable court rulings have come from judges nominated by Trump and other Republican presidents.
WASHINGTON — California is sometimes described as the ATM of Democratic politics.
That’s certainly been the case in the most divisive Democratic races this year.
Donors from California have given more to far-left candidates and their moderate opponents in congressional races and U.S. Senate contests than donors from any other state — more than $17 million combined, according to a Times analysis of the most recently available campaign finance filings.
More of that money — nearly $11 million — went to more progressive candidates. That giving came from more than 95,000 individual donors, which was more than double the number of California donors who gave to their more moderate opponents. That includes 18,000 donors who gave to both progressive and moderate candidates.
There was a geographic divide in giving by Californians. The largest share of cash to progressive candidates came from donors in the Bay Area, while the largest share of financial backing to moderate candidates came from donors in the Los Angeles area.
The Times looked at competitive races outside California in which one of the candidates had been endorsed by either the Justice Democrats or the Democratic Socialists of America, or DSA, as well as key Senate races in Michigan, Minnesota, Florida and Maine that featured a stark ideological divide between top Democratic contenders.
Although these races represent a small fraction of the electoral contests across the country, they were the races in which the future ideological direction of the Democratic Party was most fiercely contested.
Progressive candidates fared better in the majority of these contests.
California donors helped fund the Senate primary victories of progressives Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan and Peggy Flanagan in Minnesota — second only to in-state donors in providing cash to each of those candidates.
Progressive House candidates such as Melat Kiros in Colorado and Darializa Avila Chevalier in New York were able to defeat more moderate incumbents with heavy support from California donors.
Their efforts weren’t always successful, however.
Former Rep. Cori Bush raked in more cash from California donors than in-state supporters in her bid to unseat incumbent Rep. Wesley Bell in Missouri’s 1st Congressional District, the seat she had held previously. But Bell easily cruised to victory in this year’s primary.
And then there was Graham Platner.
California donors gave nearly $2.5 million to his Senate campaign in Maine before he withdrew after he was accused of sexual assault by a former girlfriend. He has denied the accusation.
The Times analysis looked at direct contributions to campaigns, which are capped at $7,000 per election cycle. It did not include contributions to party committees or independent committees that could also be spending in these races. The analysis included both bigger contributions required to be disclosed by campaigns as well as small-dollar contributions through the Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue.
Flipping the script
Progressive donors said they were motivated to give to candidates who would shake up the Democratic Party’s status quo.
“The Democratic Party has to understand that they can’t keep doing the same thing,” said Rehan Alvi, a real estate investor in El Dorado Hills.
He gave the maximum allowable to support the campaigns of El-Sayed and Bush, and also supported Junaid Ahmed’s failed primary bid in the Illinois 8th Congressional District, as well as Platner’s campaign.
Harry Saddler, a retired designer who lives in San Francisco, said that the state of the party is “enraging.”
“That leads me to think about people who can actually flip the script,” he said.
Joshua Saltman, shown in his Los Angeles home, is one of many Democratic donors from California who have given in divisive Democratic races across the country.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Saddler has written checks to a number of more progressive candidates, including Flanagan, Chevalier, Ahmed and Nida Allam, who lost her primary bid to unseat incumbent Rep. Valerie Foushee in North Carolina’s 4th Congressional District, though he has also supported some moderate candidates in other races he sees as crucial to Democrats chances at retaking control of one or both chambers of Congress.
That pragmatic approach is part of the reason Joshua Saltman said he has supported a number of moderate candidates.
“The reality of the map is that if Democrats are going to retake the House, it’s not just winning super blue districts,” said Saltman, a former entertainment industry lawyer who now runs a Broadway music festival.
Saltman said that he considers himself to be a more moderate Democrat and is also inclined to give to moderate candidates who he believes “get a little less love” from other donors, particularly in California.
He has written checks to Rep. Haley Stevens, who lost to El-Sayed in Michigan; Rep. Angie Craig, who lost to Flanagan in Minnesota; Bell in Missouri and Gov. Janet Mills in Maine, who was Platner’s main competition in the Democratic primary before dropping out of the race.
Alan Burye, a retired accountant who lives just outside San Diego, said he prefers more moderate candidates because he thinks they are more productive politicians.
“The ones who are out on the edges, like Bernie Sanders, really don’t get much done,” Burye said.
He cut checks to Craig in Minnesota and Stevens in Michigan.
Israel’s impact
American support for Israel — in the wake of wars in Gaza and Iran — has been a major point of division among more progressive and moderate candidates and is a key fault line among many donors.
Progressive candidates have been increasingly critical of the actions and influence of the Israeli government as the public, broadly, has adopted a more negative view of the Israeli government.
Politicians who have drawn support in the past from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, have been a particular target of progressive challengers.
“The problem with the Democratic Party is that they’re all just beholden to AIPAC and to corporate interests,” said Alvi, the real estate investor in El Dorado Hills. “I want a candidate who has the courage to speak.”
In Michigan, El-Sayed described AIPAC’s support of Stevens, his moderate opponent, as “legalized bribery.”
El-Sayed has made no secret of his criticism of American foreign aid for Israel and said that he “doesn’t believe in ethno-states” in response to a question in the summer about whether he supports the right of Israel to exist.
El-Sayed’s comments and similar sentiments expressed by other more progressive candidates are part of the reason some donors have given to moderate candidates.
“I feel that people who fundamentally aren’t big fans of Israel aren’t necessarily people I want to give money to,” said Saltman, who gave to Stevens.
Saltman, who was born in Michigan, said that he would still vote for El-Sayed if he lived in the state.
Other donors said they were inspired to give to moderate candidates because of concern that anti-Israel rhetoric could veer into attacks on Jews more broadly.
Los Angeles investor Steve Emerson said his motivation in writing checks to moderate Democrats such as Stevens is “to fight antisemitism.”
El-Sayed, for his part, said in the summer that his criticism of Israel is about foreign policy, not Jewish people.
“Judaism and the Jewish people are a light onto the world,” he said.
Christian Moore hit an infield single with two outs and the bases loaded that bounced off reliever Taylor Rogers’ leg to score Zach Neto and give the Angels a 6-5, 11-inning victory over the Minnesota Twins on Saturday night.
Vaughn Grissom hit a solo homer in the ninth off Twins reliever A.J. Minter to tie it at 5.
In the 10th with one out, the Twins’ Royce Lewis hit a shallow flyball out to Angels right fielder Josh Lowe. Ben Ross tagged at third, but Lowe’s strong one-bounce throw got to catcher Moisés Ballesteros in time for a sweeping tag of Ross at home to end Minnesota’s threat.
In the eighth, Angels’ pinch-hitter Adam Frazier doubled down the right-field line against reliever Yoendrys Gomez to drive in two runs to narrow the Twins’ lead to 5-4.
Angels reliever Tayler Saucedo (1-1) got the win an inning of scoreless relief. Rogers (6-4) took the loss in 1⅔ innings of work.
Minnesota remains technically still in the race for the American League wild card, but has almost no chance. The Twins are at least 6½ games behind five teams for the last wild-card spot with seven games remaining.
The Angels’ Jose Siri hit a two-run homer in the fourth and the Twins’ Ryan Kreidler launched a solo shot in the fifth.
Twins starter Joe Ryan gave up two runs and seven hits while striking out five in five innings.
Angels starting pitcher Reid Detmers lasted five innings, surrendering four runs and six hits while striking out five. He has 204 strikeouts this season, the most of any Angels pitcher since Shohei Ohtani had 219 in 2022.
