Barnstorming the country in the final weeks of the midterm campaign, President Donald Trump has unleashed a new tactic in his frustrated effort to overturn the elections: assailing the qualifications of Democratic candidates for Congress.
While baselessly claiming that Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) “used a fake name,” Trump assured supporters in Iowa last week that “she will not be allowed to be a member of that august body any longer,” while falsely claiming the Democratic Party had “conceded her seat.” The president repeated the swipe against Omar in campaign stops in Florida and Mississippi.
Then, while campaigning in Michigan on Sunday, Trump attacked Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed by falsely labeling him a “jihadist Muslim Brotherhood member,” claiming “he would be the only senator that will have to go through a metal detector” and equating him to the Islamic terrorists who hijacked United Flight 93 and attempted to fly it into the U.S. Capitol on Sept. 11, 2001.
Trump’s attack on the two Muslim lawmakers comes at a time when his Department of Justice is suing to block certification of Mary Peltola, a Native American who is the Democratic candidate for Senate from Alaska, should her Republican opponent lose.
Trump’s effort to undermine Omar and El-Sayed’s qualifications to serve in Congress, beyond arguing that voters should reject them at the polls, suggests a tactic Trump deployed in the days following his unsuccessful 2020 reelection campaign. In that election, Trump and his allies leaned on state officials and then federal lawmakers to block certification of his Democratic opponent Joe Biden. In this election, in which Trump is telling supporters to “pretend I’m on the ballot,” democracy defenders are bracing for him to call for blocking certification of Democratic candidates in the event that party wins narrow majorities in either the House or Senate.
Rob Maness, a pro-Trump podcaster, has floated the idea that if Omar is criminally charged before the next House convenes on Jan. 3, 2027, her Republican colleagues should prevent her from being seated. Any effort to refuse to seat Omar would run afoul of the Supreme Court's Powell v. McCormack decision, Brian Kalt, a professor of constitutional law at Marquette State University, told Raw Story.
That decision held that the only qualifications that may be considered in a move to exclude a member from being seated are those set forth in the Constitution: They must be at least 25 years old, a citizen for at least seven years, and a resident of the state they are elected to represent.
The attacks on Omar and El-Sayed come on the heels of a relentless barrage of false claims made by Trump's administration about supposed election fraud, efforts to intimidate voters through the specter of armed federal agents at polling places, and threats against election administrators. Pro-democracy advocacy groups, including the nonprofit Protect Democracy, have flagged refusal to certify results by county and state officials friendly to Trump as a final step to overturn the election. The groups have said they’re prepared to go to court to ensure officials fulfill their ministerial duty to certify the results.
Trump’s efforts to upend the election haven’t worked so far. Despite months of unfounded claims by the president and other members of his administration about rampant fraud and foreign interference, a recent New York Times/Siena poll found widespread trust among voters that the results of the election will be accurate. And despite feared threats from Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents with a track record of racial profiling, arresting citizens and killing Americans in the street, Democratic turnout has surged during early voting.
Meanwhile, Trump is coupling his new tactic of raising doubts about Democratic candidates’ qualifications to hold office with blatantly racist appeals to the electorate. The president has repeatedly disparaged Omar, using a mocking regal affect, for standing up for her constitutional right to participate in the democratic process as a naturalized citizen from Somalia who has been elected to Congress.
“And you know what their number-one industry is? Being pirates and robbing ships,” Trump said about her country of birth, while campaigning for Sen. Ashley Moody and gubernatorial candidate Byron Donalds in Florida last week. “And she came into our country, and she immediately announced that ‘my constitutional rights allow me to tell you how to run the United States of America.’ She comes from a s---house country, and she’s telling us how to run the United States.”
Ben Raderstorf, a writer and policy strategist at Protect Democracy, told Raw Story the blatant racism in Trump’s rhetoric reveals the emptiness of his election fraud claims.
“I think a large part of the reason why the administration has failed to convince even a majority of Republicans of these fraud narratives is that they have gone about it so ham-handedly,” Raderstorf said. “Their own bigotry is leading them to pursue really implausible lines and directions in a way that almost all Americans can see for what it is: rank racism and not a good faith attempt to enforce the law.
“The decision to target someone like Representative Omar, yes, it is intended to spread lies about her and the ability of naturalized citizens to participate in democracy,” Raderstorf continued. “But it’s so transparent that even some Republicans see through the lie.”
The president’s incendiary attacks on Omar and El-Sayed come on the heels of a call for the current Republican House leadership to block Democratic House candidates tied to the Democratic Socialists of America from taking the oath of office. The call was issued in a “primer” published earlier this month by the Center for Renewing America, founded by Trump’s Director of the Office of Management and Budget Russ Vought.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), both members of the DSA, were first elected in 2018. The DSA is poised to expand its presence in the House in the next term, with five candidates who are either members or have received the group’s endorsement running in safe Democratic districts: Claire Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier in New York, Melat Kiros in Colorado, Chris Rabb in Pennsylvania and Donavan McKinney in Michigan.
A poll commissioned by Protect Democracy found that, consistent with their rejection of Trump’s lies about election fraud, “two thirds of voters oppose county officials refusing or delaying certification of votes in attempt to contest results, including a majority of Republicans.”
The poll also found that if “federal officials or state leaders” attempted to prevent duly elected candidates from taking office, almost a third of voters are prepared to take to the streets in protest, while more than half said they would vote against elected officials who tried to overturn election results.
Raderstorf said the public’s rejection of Trump’s efforts to sabotage the elections is cause for optimism, but voters shouldn’t get complacent.
“This is going to be a very dangerous time for democracy,” he said. “We haven’t gone through having the entire federal government weaponized against elections before. That’s unprecedented.
"At least as things stand now, the White House is not accomplishing what it set out to accomplish, which is convincing the American people that elections are threatened with fraud, and that the federal government needs to intervene. In fact, it’s the opposite: The American people are very hostile towards the government trying to insert itself in our elections.”