What’s at Stake in the Omar Case

Trump’s Attack on Omar is an Attack on America

Yesterday evening, The Wall Street Journal reported “Ilhan Omar Investigation Aims to Build Case for Stripping Her Citizenship.” The repeated failure of this regime to prosecute its enemies—its manifest incompetence in all of its endeavors, really—has perhaps muted the alarm with which the news about Omar’s denaturalization case ought to be greeted.

Consider the gravity of all this: the executive is attempting to cast an opponent out of the political community entirely; this attempted expulsion is undoubtedly driven by racial and religious animus—vicious hostility to Somali-Americans is a central part of MAGA politics. She is not merely a private citizen or even an outspoken critic of the administration: She is an elected representative of the American people. The executive is attempting to deprive a member of an equal branch of government of the status that entitles her to participate in the constitutional order: They are attacking not just her rights, but her very right to have rights.

One’s personal opinion of Omar’s character or her politics is immaterial. This is a serious assault on the constitutional order being carried out through the executive branch’s legal and bureaucratic machinery. Perhaps the reason that the public response is so tepid is that we have so long taken for granted—or simply no longer understand—just how fundamental the questions involved really are. This move strikes at some of the most elementary assumptions of a free and republican government, principles so basic that we scarcely imagined they would need defending: that political opposition is legitimate, that the executive cannot determine the composition of the legislature, and that citizenship is not a privilege held at the pleasure of those in power.

We often hear that we face creeping authoritarianism in this country, but it would be more precise to call this a case of creeping totalitarianism. Authoritarian governments suppress political opposition and deprive their subjects of particular rights. Totalitarian movements aspire to something much more radical: the destruction of the independent political and juridical personhood. They attack not merely the liberties of particular citizens they seek to repress, but the concept of citizenship itself—and then, ultimately, the concept of shared humanity.

In The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt wrote, “One is almost tempted to measure the degree of totalitarian infection by the extent to which the concerned governments use their sovereign right of denationalization.” Pay attention to the word “infection.” Arendt was not suggesting that every government that employed denationalization was necessarily totalitarian. Indeed, she warned elsewhere in the same book that “totalitarian solutions may well survive the fall of totalitarian regimes,” reappearing as “strong temptations” even in societies that remained otherwise free. The point is not that the United States has become a totalitarian state, or that such an outcome is inevitable—in point of fact, it seems highly unlikely at this point. But techniques of totalitarian domination can emerge within a constitutional democracy, undermining its fundamental premises without overthrowing its institutions in one fell swoop.

There is a Schmittian conception of politics at work here. For the Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt, the fundamental political distinction was between friend and enemy, between those who properly belonged to the political community and those whose very presence threatened its existence. In a constitutional republic, political opposition takes place among fellow citizens whose membership in the polity is not at issue. But a Schmittian “sovereign democracy” treats political opponents as enemies of the people, as aliens who must be expelled. This conception is clearly in evidence in Trump’s rhetoric. In 2019, Trump’s supporters notoriously chanted “Send her back!” at a rally as Trump attacked Omar. In 2023, he promised to “root out” his left-wing opponents, whom he described as “vermin,” warning that the threat from within was more dangerous than the threat from abroad. And in January, when New York Times reporters asked him directly whether Omar should lose her citizenship, he replied, “Oh, absolutely.” His reasons included not only allegations of immigration fraud but the fact that she was a “troublemaker” who did nothing but “complain, complain, complain.” When you consider their rhetoric along with their actions, there can be no doubt about what kind of politics they are practicing.

Since the beginning, it’s been my contention that the attack on citizenship itself is both the very essence of the Trump movement and its most dangerous feature. From birtherism to the stolen-election myth, Trumpism can be understood as the notion that some Americans are not really Americans, that their political rights are illegitimate, and that the nation must be purged of these interlopers. This is why I insisted that fascism and totalitarianism were unavoidable examples in judging its political content and direction. The ultimate tendency of this politics is to transform citizenship from an inviolable right into a privilege granted or withdrawn at the sovereign’s discretion. Now that ambition is being directed against a sitting member of Congress. In a constitutional republic, the people choose who governs them; Trump seeks to determine who even belongs to the people.
Our liberty itself is at stake.