President Donald Trump's push to remove Rep. Ilhan Omar from Congress is heading toward a constitutional collision at the Supreme Court — and the landmark case Democrats would reach for to protect her may actually give Republicans the opening they need.
Federal investigators are examining whether the Minneapolis Democrat improperly obtained U.S. citizenship through allegedly fraudulent immigration paperwork involving her late father, according to Fox News. Omar has denied wrongdoing, and no finding that she lacks citizenship has been established. Homeland Security Investigations agents searched her Washington, D.C., home earlier this month, and the Wall Street Journal reported that the probe is aimed at building a denaturalization case, though federal officials have not confirmed that goal. A warrant in the matter listed potential immigration crimes including fraud, Fox News reported.
At the center of the legal fight is Powell v. McCormack, the 1969 Supreme Court ruling that barred the House from refusing to seat Adam Clayton Powell Jr., a New York Democrat accused of misusing congressional funds and improperly paying his wife from the congressional payroll. The House voted to exclude him in 1967 despite his reelection, and the Court ruled Congress could not refuse to seat a duly elected member who met the Constitution's qualifications.
That precedent is usually described as a shield for incumbents. Two legal scholars say it may work the other way.
"Powell essentially means that Congress cannot add on to the minimum qualifications set out in the Constitution," former Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo told Fox News Digital. "Since citizenship is set out in the text of the Constitution as a qualification, it clearly can be enforced by Congress. Powell in fact would support a congressional decision to oust Congresswoman Omar if she was in fact not a citizen."
Constitutional scholar Cully Stimson made the same point to Fox News: the ruling does not prevent Congress from enforcing constitutional qualifications.
The first route for Republicans would be to challenge whether Omar satisfies the Constitution's citizenship requirement for House members. A second possibility — reportedly floated but not confirmed — would be to seat her and later move to expel her under the House's disciplinary power. Expulsion requires a two-thirds vote, a far higher bar than a seating challenge.
Omar, who is up for reelection next week, has not been charged with any crime. MPR News spoke with Mark Osler, a University of St. Thomas law professor and former federal prosecutor, who said the timing of the raid weeks before an election broke with the Justice Department's usual interpretation of its rules. "What is constant is that the president of the United States seems to be a little bit obsessed with Ilhan Omar and wants her to leave the country," Osler said.
The case has drawn attention far beyond Minnesota. The New Yorker reported that a dozen federal agents searched her home around six in the morning, taking seventeen items including her phones and a Somali-language phrase book, after she had returned from a trip hours earlier — a detail her allies have used to argue the probe is political.
At a rally in Lubbock, Texas, this week, Trump mocked Omar's invocation of constitutional rights. "She was from Somalia and she came over and right away she started opening her mouth, 'I have constitutional rights,'" he said, according to remarks reported by Truthout.
The remarks drew criticism because constitutional protections like free speech and religious liberty apply to everyone in the United States, not only citizens. The White House has not backed away from the broader deportation campaign: Trump has targeted Somali immigrants in Minnesota before, and days ahead of the raid he urged "the people of Minnesota" to "fight back" against Somali immigrants in a Truth Social post.
For Republicans, the political math is simple. Omar is one of the loudest voices on the left, and the citizenship question has shadowed her since her first campaign. For Democrats, the stakes are equally plain: if Congress can police citizenship qualifications, every member's paperwork becomes fair game. The Supreme Court has never ruled on a sitting member's removal on these grounds, and it is not yet known whether the justices would take the case or how they would frame the question.
What is known is that the fight is no longer confined to a House floor or a Minnesota district. It is headed to the same building where Powell v. McCormack was decided more than half a century ago — and the answer may not be the one Omar's defenders expect.
Our Take
Here's the irony Democrats can't escape: the case they'll cite to protect Ilhan Omar says Congress cannot invent new qualifications for its members — not that Congress must ignore the ones already written into the Constitution. Citizenship is right there in Article I. If the evidence shows Omar obtained hers through fraud, Powell doesn't save her. It convicts her.
Republicans should be careful and methodical. This cannot look like a vendetta; it has to look like the rule of law. If the administration has the goods, produce them in court, not at a rally. Every American — including Omar — deserves due process, and the Left will use any shortcut to paint this as persecution. Do it by the book, and the book is on our side.
For ten years, Omar has treated this country as a platform for attacking it. If she is not a lawful citizen, she has no business legislating from the people's House. And if she is, the voters of Minnesota's Fifth District will decide next week. Either way, the Constitution wins — and that's a victory patriots should cheer.
