On this day last year, Hamas returned hostages to Israel and Israel freed around 2,000 Palestinians under a ceasefire agreement. A year on, ignoring that deal, Israel has killed more than 1,400 Palestinians in Gaza, stoking widespread condemnation.
Good morning all, and welcome to Tuesday’s ‘First Draft.’ It’s our first newsletter of the week because Monday was the Indigenous Peoples’ Day holiday, but it wasn’t a quiet day for news.
Before dawn, agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement raided the DC home of Minnesota Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar, as part of a criminal investigation into her immigration status. Transparently political, utterly hypocritical, and close to high-stakes elections, it was the act of an openly fascist regime.
Elsewhere, the man at the top of that regime, Donald Trump, did his best to help Kansas Senator Roger Marshall, whose actions as a doctor who had his own patients arrested are dragging him towards a surprise midterms defeat. Trump’s illegal Iran war, of course, dragged on. Let’s read in.
‘Promise Made, Promise Kept’
Rep. Ilhan Omar came to the U.S. from Somalia as a refugee in the mid-1990s. More than 25 years ago, when she was still a child, just shy of 18, her father filed for U.S. citizenship.
Elon Musk, the SpaceX billionaire, Twitter owner, champion of the global far-right, and GOP megadonor ($276 million and counting in these midterms alone), also came to the U.S. from Africa in the mid-1990s. In 2013, in an interview at the Milken Institute, his brother Kimbal Musk said that at the start of their careers in U.S. tech the two South Africans “were illegal immigrants.” Elon Musk protested, “I’d say it was a gray area.” Kimbal Musk repeated: “Yes, we were.” Reporting by outlets including the Washington Post – headline, “Elon Musk, enemy of ‘open borders,’ launched his career working illegally” – seems to have backed up Kimbal’s claim.
On Monday, before dawn, agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement raided a home in Washington, DC. Guess the owner.
Omar has long been the target of foul racist invective from Donald Trump and MAGA, who reserve particularly disgusting animus for Somali Americans, as demonstrated just last week by the president’s clear call for racial violence ahead of the midterm elections. For years, Trump has attacked Omar in terms notably stringent even compared to attacks on other prominent progressive women of color, stoking right-wing conspiracy theories about her immigration status and threatening to deport her.
But Trump has also mused about deporting Musk. In July last year, as the two men feuded following Musk’s time leading Trump’s DOGE attack on the federal government, and Musk’s consequent threat to expose Trump’s links to the late financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Trump told reporters “We’ll have to take a look” at deporting Musk, thereby sending him “home to South Africa.”
So, who got raided? Hint: It’s not the guy who was also pals with Jeffrey Epstein.