Federal agents took possession of Rep. Ilhan Omar’s laptop and personal cellphone when they raided her Washington home last week. While some members of the GOP leadership team have taken potshots at the Minnesota Democrat, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., ought to stand up for her rights as a congresswoman — now.

Pay no attention to the flimsy allegations driving the Trump administration’s investigation into Omar’s immigration paperwork. (The Washington Post reported said allegations were investigated and abandoned years ago.) What we have is the executive branch raiding a member of Congress’s home because of her race and politics. And yet, Politico reported Wednesday that Johnson had not instructed the House’s top lawyer, Matthew Berry, to intervene on Omar’s behalf.

What we have is the executive branch raiding a congressmember’s home because of her race and politics.

MS NOW host Chris Hayes, who interviewed Omar for “All In” on Thursday, raised her attorneys’ claim that the Justice Department violated her rights as a member of the House. Article I, Section 6, clause 1 of the Constitution protects all members of Congress from being prosecuted for “any Speech or Debate in either House.” Supreme Court rulings and other precedents have extended that protection to almost all “legislative acts” federal lawmakers undertake when drafting laws and ruled that it shields their staffers and any documents produced as part of their official duties.

Omar said the agents who searched her home asked her to sign a document essentially waiving her rights under the speech and debate clause.

“That was obnoxious,” she said. “I just I couldn’t understand why they would think that I would sign such a thing.”

The legislative branch has an incentive to call out what happened to Omar. Lawmakers need the freedom to openly debate ideas and policies, especially those the president favors, without the threat of the chief executive jailing them for disagreeing. That’s why the House as an institution has often intervened and fought to protect its members from executive overreach — even if it means lawmakers crossing the aisle.

Federal investigators seized the phone of Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., in August 2022 as they investigated President Donald Trump’s role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Perry was one of the House Republicans most involved with Trump’s attempt to discard enough Electoral College votes to triumph after losing the 2020 election.

The House filed a motion in early 2023 to access sealed material case to ensure that Perry’s speech and debate clause rights were protected. Soon after, Berry, the House’s general counsel, filed an amicus brief arguing that the speech and debate clause applied to the contents of Perry’s phone and any “informal fact gathering” he might have been doing. Though Perry’s early involvement with Trump’s scheme to overturn the election made him a valid target for investigation, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., and House Minority Whip Kathleen Clark, D-Mass., signed off on the House’s intervention. According to the rules of the House, their support wasn’t necessary, but a bipartisan front sent a powerful message to the courts.

It’s because of Perry’s case that personal phones are now considered an extension of lawmakers’ offices. Accordingly, Omar is within her rights to review the materials seized to ensure any legislative work stays out of the DOJ’s hands.

Republicans have spent four years hammering special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation, especially his subpoenas of some members’ phone records (though not the actual contents of those calls). Just last month, the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee accused Smith and the Biden-era DOJ of violating the speech and debate clause in the process.

The House GOP should keep that same energy for Attorney General Todd Blanche and the seizure of Omar’s devices. But House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, a fellow Minnesotan, told Fox News that he was all for the investigation without raising any separation of powers concerns. And with a potentially rocky midterms looming, Johnson may be afraid that coming to Omar’s defense will cost him his leadership over the GOP caucus.

But no matter how useful Omar is to the GOP as a foil, Johnson should instruct Berry to ensure that Omar’s rights as a legislator are being protected. Even if Emmer and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise disagree, Johnson voting with Jeffries and Clark would be enough to set the ball rolling. While he may seem to act like a member of the White House staff, Johnson’s responsibility to protect the rights and privileges of Ilhan Omar, House representative, should supersede any misgivings he holds against Ilhan Omar, Democrat.

The post Mike Johnson needs to speak up for Ilhan Omar appeared first on MS NOW.

Journalist Bernard Goldberg criticizes President Donald Trump's perceived affinity for Vladimir Putin and his stance on the war in Ukraine, arguing that such diplomacy undermines American values and harms both nations.

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The reality 40 years later is that Congress made the drug penalties permanent law, while drug treatment was left to be determined during annual budget fights.

The reality 40 years later is that Congress made the drug penalties permanent law, while drug treatment was left to be determined during annual budget fights.

October 18, 2026, marks the 35th anniversary of the full restoration of diplomatic relations between Israel and the Soviet Union, with the Russian Federation acting as its legal successor. Over the last three and a half decades, bilateral ties have fluctuated between periods of convergence, sharp political disagreement, and international crises. Yet diplomatic contact, economic linkage, and security coordination persisted even when the strategic positions of the two states diverged significantly. This anniversary highlights a recurring pattern in Israeli foreign policy: irrespective of the prime minister's party affiliation, successive governments have sought to maintain functional channels with Moscow. Historical Trajectory: From Recognition to Restoration The diplomatic history predates the 1991 normalization. In November 1947, the Soviet Union supported United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 regarding the partition of Palestine. Following Israel's declaration of independence on May 14, 1948, the United States was the first to offer de facto recognition, while the Soviet Union became the first state to extend full de jure diplomatic recognition.

In The Federalist No. 78, Alexander Hamilton famously promised that the federal judiciary would have "neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment." The climate lawfare movement has spent the better part of a decade trying to prove Hamilton wrong.

Earlier this month, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in Suncor Energy v. County Commissioners of Boulder County, in which Boulder seeks to use Colorado public nuisance law to make two energy companies pay for the effects of global climate change.

The case is the culmination of a long campaign.

SUPREME COURT BEGINS NEW TERM WITH HIGH-PROFILE LOOK AT CLEAN AIR AND FEDERAL AUTHORITY

A small, well-funded network of climate activists, convinced that drastic action is needed to save the planet and frustrated that their fellow citizens have not voted to dismantle the fossil-fuel industry, have turned to state and local courts after the Supreme Court unanimously shut down federal climate-nuisance suits in 2011’s American Electric Power v. Connecticut. Their strategy rests on a single premise: When the front door of democracy is closed, try the courthouse back door.

But thanks to documents released September 30 by the House Judiciary Committee, we no longer have to guess. One of the movement’s architects put the strategy in writing.

CLIMATE SEMINARS FOR JUDGES FACE FUNDING TRAIL PROBE AMID FEARS OF OUTSIDE INFLUENCE ON COURTS

"It seemed to me that without legislative or executive action to address the climate problem, real government action might still be derived from court decisions," Paul Hanle wrote in a May 2022 email. Hanle founded the Environmental Law Institute’s Climate Judiciary Project, which has put at least 140 federal judges through its climate "education" seminars. In the same email, he laid out CJP’s strategy to target "key judges" with seminars, hoping to "make a great difference in the final outcome of cases."

The crown jewel was the judges’ own science manual. In December 2022, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine invited Michael Burger to write the climate chapter of the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, the federal judiciary’s go-to science guide. Burger runs Columbia’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law and is of counsel at Sher Edling, a firm representing many of the cities and counties suing oil companies. The Federal Judicial Center balked, citing his litigation work.

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The next day, Burger told his Sabin Center colleagues, the chapter’s eventual named authors, that he’d "be happy to contribute behind the scenes." Within weeks, one of them was circulating a draft with "Mike’s edits" and revising the legal section in response to his comments. Soon after the manual was published, the FJC withdrew the climate chapter. The National Academies finally followed suit in August.

Why all the stealth? Because climate plaintiffs have a causation problem they cannot solve in the open.

SUPREME COURT CAN RESTORE SANITY AND STOP THE LEFT’S RADICAL CLIMATE AGENDA

At the Suncor Energy oral argument, Justice Elena Kagan told the oil companies’ lawyer, "Well, you sound like you have a very good causation argument." She meant it as a brush-off; she immediately questioned why causation should matter for preemption.

But Kagan is right: No climate plaintiff has a good causation argument. Greenhouse gases mix globally, and about 90 percent of emissions occur outside the United States. Tying a drought in Boulder to any particular company’s barrels of oil is simply not possible.

ECO-WARRIORS WANT TO TURN UP THE HEAT ON YOUR WALLET TO FUND THEIR CLIMATE AGENDA

That is why the climate lawfare movement needs judges to swallow "extreme event attribution." Boulder’s trial court has already shown what the endgame looks like, declaring, "in a multiple contributor tort case, there is no need to tie specific injuries to the actions of defendants." If you can’t meet the standard, lower it.

This is precisely what the Constitution’s structure exists to prevent: a small minority weaponizing federalism to impose its policy preferences on the entire nation. One county cannot regulate the world. If Boulder prevails, the companies’ lawyer warned, some 90,000 municipalities could make national energy policy through jury awards. Pressed by Justice Clarence Thomas at oral argument, Boulder’s lawyer conceded that "nothing in our theory" prevents suing retailers too.

WAVE OF OVERLOOKED 'LEFT-WING' LAWSUITS COULD COME WITH AN UNEXPECTED PRICE TAG FOR AMERICANS

And it won’t stop with oil companies. The Climate Judiciary Project’s own curriculum for judges shows where this is headed. One module touts "source attribution" studies tracing nearly two-thirds of all carbon dioxide emitted since the 1750s to 90 fossil-fuel and cement producers. Then it turns to the dinner table: "Though its members have not yet been named as defendants in climate change lawsuits, the heavily concentrated industrial animal agriculture industry also has been subjected to source attribution analysis." Note the word "yet."

The module is candid about the point of the exercise. These studies take an alleged problem that could be attributed to "several billion past and present human individuals" and reduce it "to one driven by a few dozen companies," which makes climate change "appear to be more amenable to traditional tort law adjudication." This is regulation by litigation, pure and simple. Punish the companies that supply Americans’ fuel, food and building materials, and every family pays the bill at the pump and the grocery store. 

Chief Justice John Roberts cut to the heart of the matter: "Isn’t your suit an attempt to evade those decisions?" He meant the Court’s long line of cases treating interstate air pollution as a matter of federal law, which Justice Brett Kavanaugh had called "a wall of precedent." Kavanaugh then read aloud from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s opinion in AEP: Federal judges "lack the scientific, economic, and technological resources" to set emissions policy. If that is true of federal judges, Kavanaugh asked, doesn’t it apply to "a six-person state jury in Boulder?"

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Take it from Ginsburg herself. Greenhouse-gas regulation, she wrote, "cannot be prescribed in a vacuum." It demands weighing environmental benefits against "our Nation’s energy needs and the possibility of economic disruption."

The climate lawfare complex lost at the ballot box. It lost in AEP. So its backers went behind the scenes—into judicial seminars and judges’ own science manual. Enough already. The Supreme Court should shut the courthouse door for good.

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