Attack on Ilhan Omar follows years of Trump targeting her

Foreigners coming into the United States, he told his audience in Iowa, “have to show they can love our country; they have to be proud — not like Ilhan Omar.”

The crowd booed. They recognized the name of the Democratic congresswoman from Minnesota, whom the president has demonized and dehumanized for years with racist and xenophobic attacks, venting that she should “go back” to her country, referring to her as “garbage,” and mocking her hijab by calling it a “little turban.”

Not long afterward, at her own event in North Minneapolis, Omar was attacked by a man who rushed the lectern where she was speaking, spraying her with a strong-smelling liquid.

The scene, which unfolded as Omar was calling for the resignation of Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary who has carried out Trump’s immigration crackdown, was shocking but hardly surprising.

It was exactly the type of situation that has caused so many lawmakers to cancel town hall events, in an era when violent threats against public officials have skyrocketed, becoming a chillingly routine part of the job.

But Omar is something of a special case. A Somali-born Muslim woman elected to Congress in an era defined by Trump’s bigoted attacks against immigrants, Omar has in the past seen death threats against her rise to the highest levels among U.S. lawmakers.

When those threats have surged after Trump has targeted her by name, Omar has sometimes been assigned a 24-hour security detail from the Capitol Police. That added protection is available at the discretion of the House speaker.

But for the past year, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has not offered it to her, she noted in an interview last December. After the attack Tuesday, Omar made a formal request for extra Capitol Police protection and Johnson agreed, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Omar’s campaign also sent out a fundraising appeal to help her afford the private security that is often with her when she appears in public, as was the case Tuesday.

Omar knew there was a possibility of violence erupting when she walked into her town hall Tuesday night, prepared to address a community on edge after the killing of Alex Pretti by federal immigration agents.

And when she was attacked, Omar reacted with defiance. She did not cower behind the lectern; she instinctively lunged at the man attacking her and insisted on finishing her remarks even as her security detail and staff tried to persuade her to retreat. She did not cancel other events for the week; she held a news conference at Karmel Mall in Minneapolis on Wednesday.

In short, Omar barely flinched.

“I’m built that way,” Omar said calmly as she left the community room at Urban League Twin Cities after her event, reminding a CNN reporter that she was a survivor of war.

Her reaction to the incident underscored Omar’s identity as a feisty fighter whose grit in the face of years of attacks portraying her as a dangerous political saboteur has only appeared to embolden Trump. He has raged against her using violent language of the sort that can motivate extremists and provoke assaults such as the one that unfolded on Tuesday.

“Ilhan’s toughness in the face of a bully and in the face of threats is what pisses off people like Donald Trump,” Rep. Greg Casar, D-Texas, said in an interview Wednesday.

Her response was so stoic that her political adversaries online used it to back up their conspiracy theory that the attack had been staged, a charge that Trump quickly leveled.

Omar “probably had herself sprayed, knowing her,” he told ABC News.

But it was difficult to see the attack as unrelated to Trump’s years of insults and slurs that for years have placed a target on Omar’s back.

At a recent Cabinet meeting, the president referred to Omar as “garbage.” At a December rally in Pennsylvania, he complained that Omar “does nothing but bitch.”

He added, “Why is it we only take people from shithole countries?”

Earlier this week, Trump announced on Truth Social that the Justice Department was investigating Omar who, he claimed “left Somalia with NOTHING, and is now reportedly worth more than 44 Million Dollars.” Omar’s financial disclosures show that her husband, a venture capitalist, makes millions of dollars in income. But it was not clear how the president arrived at the $44 million figure. An investigation into Omar’s finances begun under the Biden administration appeared to have stalled for lack of evidence.

At the same time, Trump has targeted Somalis in general, saying, “I don’t want them in our country,” a refrain he began using during his first term when he would often whip up his rally crowds to cheer and chant for Omar to be sent back to the country where she came from.

For years, Trump has also helped spread the baseless conspiracy theory that she was married to her brother and residing in the United States illegally.

“She should get the hell out,” Trump said at his December rally in Pennsylvania. “Throw her the hell out! She does nothing but complain.”

The crowd responded by chanting: “Send her back! Send her back!”

After the assassination attempts against Trump during the 2024 campaign, and the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the right-wing influencer, Republicans blamed Democrats’ harsh language about the president and his political followers for causing the violence. But that has not stopped Trump from continuing to fan the flames himself when it comes to his political adversaries.

Omar was 8 when her family fled Somalia because of its civil war. She lived in a refugee camp in Kenya for four years before immigrating to the United States and becoming an American citizen. Elected in 2018 as one of the first two Muslim women ever to serve in Congress, Omar has had her time in the national spotlight overlap completely with her time as a recurring target for Trump.

In response to Trump, she has fought back harder. At one point, she released a timeline of her marital and divorce history, in an attempt to quash the unsubstantiated rumor about marrying her brother.

Nina Jankowicz, a prominent specialist in online disinformation who has studied the attacks against Omar, said that she has been one of the most attacked lawmakers for years, working under a steady stream of accusations about impropriety, corruption and the constant subject of sexualized rumors.

“It’s in some ways the least surprising possible target for an attack,” said Jankowicz, who briefly ran a government board in the Biden administration created to counter disinformation. “Omar and the rest of ‘the Squad’ have proven they are undeterred by the many heinous attacks they have been subject to over the years,” she said, referring to the group of young, progressive women of color in Congress.

“You develop a thick skin,” she added. “You also become a little bit jaded, which can be dangerous.”

After the attack Tuesday night, Omar’s allies blamed Trump, suggesting he had fueled the violence through his racist language.

“It is not a coincidence that after days of President Trump and VP Vance putting Rep. Omar in their crosshairs with slanderous public attacks, she gets assaulted at her town hall,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said online. “Thank God she is okay. If they want leaders to take down the temp, they need to look in the mirror.”

In addition to being a Black woman from Africa and an immigrant, Omar has provided a particularly rich target for Trump and the Republicans in Congress who follow his lead because she has at times made seemingly antisemitic and anti-American comments that have raised eyebrows even among her Democratic colleagues.

In 2019, Democrats joined Republicans in criticizing her for writing online that certain pro-Israel groups were “all about the Benjamins, baby,” seeming to reference an antisemitic trope about Jews and money. She apologized for the comment.

Two years later, Omar appeared to equate terror attacks carried out by groups such as Hamas with actions of the U.S. government when she wrote: “We have seen unthinkable atrocities committed by the U.S., Hamas, Israel, Afghanistan, and the Taliban.” She later said she had not meant to compare them.

In 2023, the House voted along party lines to remove Omar from the Foreign Affairs Committee over her past comments about Israel. Omar reacted with her typical defiance.

“Take your vote or not — I am here to stay,” Omar said on the House floor at the time. “I am Muslim. I am an immigrant. And interestingly, from Africa. Is anyone surprised that I am being targeted? Is anyone surprised that I am somehow deemed unworthy to speak about American foreign policy?”

Still, Tuesday night’s attack appeared to cross a line even for some Republicans who in the past have criticized Omar.

“Regardless of how vehemently I disagree with her rhetoric — and I do — no elected official should face physical attacks,” Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., wrote online. “This is not who we are.”

These days, Omar said she assumes the Somali community in Minnesota has been targeted in part because she has become the president’s personal obsession. Still, she has said she believes that the only way to handle a bully is to continue to get in his face.

“I’m ok,” she wrote online after Tuesday night’s attack. “I’m a survivor so this small agitator isn’t going to intimidate me from doing my work. I don’t let bullies win.”

Omar responded to the announcement of a Justice Department investigation with the same impudence. “Sorry, Trump, your support is collapsing and you’re panicking,” she said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.