The Montreal EU Summit: What Problem Are They Trying To Solve?

In recent weeks, I've had to educate myself on the UK-Canadian parliamentary system. Now I'm finding I have to learn about governance in the European Union, and as I noted yesterday, the closest parallel I can find is the Holy Roman Empire. As I understand this, the Holy Roman Empire was governed by the Emperor, who was elected by seven prince-electors. He in turn had to negotiate with the Diet, comprised of members of the nobility, on important decisions. The Emperor/Electors and the Diet were separate power centers.

As far as I can tell, Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, is in a position roughly comparable to Holy Roman Emperor. She is nominated by 27 European Commissioners, the heads of government of the EU member countries, who correspond to the Electors. The nomination is confirmed by a vote of the European Parliament, which roughly corresponds to the Diet. No such nomination has ever failed to be confirmed by the European Parliament.

Like the Holy Roman Empire, the EU operates on the principle of collegiality. Discussions among the Electors/Commissioners are private, and decisions are not made public until a consensus is reached. At that point, matters are voted on by the European Parliament. But what we're seeing in the runup to the EU-Canada summit in Montreal tomorrow and Friday is highly unusual public disagreement among the Electors/Commissioners.

Last month, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen made a bombshell offer to Canada: to become the first EU “associate member”. Now the term is proving hard to swallow for several member states, including her own Germany.

Ahead of the EU-Canada summit, meant to chart what many see as the closest partnership between the bloc and a non-member country, European capitals led by Berlin have pushed back against a term that has yet to be clearly defined, five EU diplomats told Euronews.

“The main concern is that this is unknown terminology, it might bring up legal uncertainty and expectations from other third countries,” one of the diplomats said. “This was not communicated previously from the Commission. We don’t know what we are talking about.”

Last week, a revised draft of the joint declaration explicitly mentioned the notion, vowing regular exchanges with Canadian authorities on major policy and regulatory initiatives and to define the full scope of the partnership at the 2027 summit.

. . . The text was due to be adopted on Tuesday through the so-called silent procedure, under which a document passes unless a member state objects. Germany, Italy, France and Greece all raised objections before the deadline.

Elsewhere,

Germany is leading efforts to remove the term "associate membership" entirely from the proposed text, the diplomats said.

The disagreement reflects divisions within the bloc over the proposed status, which European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen suggested to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney during her State of the Union address in Strasbourg last month.

There are subtexts all over the place here. I would surmise that a big issue is that Leyen is trying to redefine EU policy on membership to accommodate a non-member, while not consulting with members on what she's doing. The YouTube commentary embedded above makes the point that EU "associate membership" hasn't been raised in Parliament, and it wasn't an issue in last year's national election, but apparently negotiations have been ongoimg, to the point that Canada advanced a draft, since before Carney and Leyen floated the idea in Strasbourg.

Why are they doing this? What problem are they trying to solve? One answer would be the one Canadian commentator Jasmin Laine suggested in a YouTube video embedded in Monday's post, that she wants Mark Carney to be her successor as President of the European Commission, and Canada would need to be a member of the EU for this to happen.

The YouTube embedded in today's post suggests that the document, however it eventually reads, could also force a widening of Canadian immigration policy. As we've already seen here, this is a particularly sensitive issue in French Canada, where immigration from South Asia is threatening the traditional French culture. The newly elected premier of Quebec, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, is raising this as an issue surrounding tne Montreal summit:

Quebec Premier Paul St-Pierre Plamondon will not be allowed to speak at this week's Canada-EU summit, according to the Parti Québécois (PQ).

The summit is set to take place Oct. 29 and 30 in Montreal.

St-Pierre Plamondon wrote in a statement Tuesday that the federal government refused his request to make a speech at the event, despite the fact that it will be held on Quebec soil.

. . . In a statement released Monday, Quebec's Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs Marie-Claude Sarrazin quoted a phrase from Carney's lauded speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, earlier this year: "If you are not at the table, you are on the menu."

Sarrazin added that the federal government's decision shows a "basic lack of respect for Quebec and a denial of the role of our parliament, which reminds us of the need to be in control of our own destiny."

Both Carney and Leyen look like they're trying to force major policy changes on both Canada and the EU without going through normal consultation. I'm not sure they can succeed with this.

Ilhan Omar Update

Ilhan Omar has finally accepted one piece of Alan Deshowitz's advice to her last week, which was to hire an attorney:

The legal eagles defending embattled “Squad” Rep. Ilhan Omar from prison or deportation include former President Biden’s “autopen” personal attorney and the white-shoe lawyer who quarterbacked both of President Trump’s impeachments.

The Somalia-born Omar’s defense duo boasts impressive lefty legal pedigrees, but neither specializes in immigration law — raising questions about whether the Minnesota Democrat is more concerned about her husband’s alleged $30 million fraudulent windfall than she is about her immigration status.

Amy Jeffress, a partner at boutique DC firm Hecker Fink, became Biden’s personal attorney in 2025, succeeding longtime confidant Bob Bauer.

. . . The other half of Omar’s legal squad is Joshua Matz, also a partner at Hecker Fink, who represented House Democrats during both Trump impeachments and served on the legal team of the House Jan. 6. committee.

He also represented Brown University, New York University and Columbia University, who have all tangled with the Trump Administration on legal matters.

On the other hand, she has yet to follow Dershowitz's other advice, which was to keep her mouth shut.

Leftist gaming site commentator Hasan Piker and Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., met up in Minnesota to cohost a campaign event on Monday night, bashing President Donald Trump's administration as well as Democrats who are willing to work with him.

Piker, who streams his commentary on Twitch, called Republicans "terrorists" during the event, and Omar referred to the party as the "pedophile protection party."

They made the comments during a Q&A session led by failed Minneapolis mayoral candidate Omar Fateh.

"Trump's obsession with us started in 2016, when he arrived at the airport and begged for our vote. We said, no thank you. We continued to say, no thank you. He lies and says he's won Minnesota three times, as if," Omar said.

"This defeat is going to be the fourth time! We remind him that Minnesota is not interested in a pedophile protection party. Minnesota doesn't send people who are corrupt and are interested in enriching themselves. And Minnesota does not come after the refugees, they send one to Congress," she added.

But immigration isn't her only problem. Her husband's "business" ventures are beginning to look more and more sketchy:

Omar's husband's venture capital firm received a mysterious $11.25 million cash infusion from an Indian billionaire in 2024. Then his other businesses settled fraud allegations for millions of dollars.

As Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) tells it, she and her husband, Tim Mynett, are on the precipice of financial ruin. The embattled lawmaker told MSNOW she lives a "basic" paycheck-to-paycheck lifestyle and struggles to pay rent on her two homes[.]

But Omar's financial situation is anything but basic. It includes enviable taxpayer-funded perks that she accepts as a member of Congress to cover her living expenses, millions of dollars that her campaign paid her husband’s former consulting firm, and a mysterious $11.25 million cash infusion that her husband's venture capital company received from an Indian billionaire in 2024. Omar mentioned none of this on Wednesday when sympathetic MSNOW host Chris Hayes inquired about her financial situation.

"I mean, it's, you know, working, working-class, I guess, like paycheck to paycheck still," Omar said. "You know, we've got four kids. And, you know, we live, I think, like a basic life. I have a Toyota Camry that's from 2016. It's our only car. I rent my D.C. place and my Minneapolis place. And so, I mean, I don't know if that sounds like, you know, not majority of Congress, but there's some of us that are, that don't come from wealth and don't have wealth."

Omar's claim that she struggles to keep up with rent on her Washington, D.C., home defies belief. Taxpayers have paid that bill for the past several years. The Minnesota Democrat has received $85,000 in taxpayer funds to cover her D.C. lodging expenses as part of a fringe congressional benefit activated in early 2023. Omar, who earns a base salary of $174,000 before the housing stipend, hasn't had to worry about rising grocery costs either, because taxpayers have taken on that bill as well: She has raked in $33,000 from taxpayers since 2023 from another fringe benefit that covers the cost of her daily meals, according to House spending records.

Buit this leaves aside her husband's ventures. As we've already covered here, Tim Mynett and his partner Will Hailer were sued by investors in their California winery, a South Dakota cannabis distributor, and venture capital firm Rose Lake Capital for not repaying funds. But now it's emerged that, according to the link,

Mynett and Hailer struck gold with Byju Raveendran, the Indian billionaire owner of the now-bankrupt educational technology firm Byju.

Hailer testified in those bankruptcy proceedings that Rose Lake Capital received two wires from Byju in June 2024, totaling $11.25 million, in connection with a failed deal to acquire the $1.2 billion leveraged loan at the center of the bankruptcy case. Hailer testified that the funds were routed to Rose Lake "from Dubai to Mauritius to the UK to the USA" and that, days later, Byju demanded the return of the funds.

It's unclear whether Rose Lake Capital ever returned Byju's $11.25 million. By the end of 2024, Mynett and Hailer's winery and marijuana businesses settled their respective fraud lawsuits with cash settlements, and Rose Lake Capital distributed $213,000 to Mynett, according to records reviewed in April by the Wall Street Journal. One of their investors told the New York Post he was "shocked" Mynett and Hailer obtained the money to settle the lawsuit after claiming financial insolvency just months earlier.

Rose Lake Capital's $11.25 million cash infusion in June 2024 may be the nexus of Omar's infamous $30 million accounting error in her 2024 financial disclosure. She first reported last year that her husband's stake in Rose Lake Capital was worth up to $25 million, and his winery was worth up to $5 million at the end of 2024.

But in April, Omar filed an amended report revising her and her husband's 2024 net worth down to no more than $65,000 and that his companies were worthless on paper. Her office told the Free Beacon that Mynett's accountant made the elementary accounting error of failing to account for business liabilities when calculating their worth.

. . . The criminal investigation isn't limited to Omar's immigration status. U.S. attorney Jeanine Pirro said Monday her office is probing the Minnesota congresswoman's financial disclosures.

"We're looking at the facts. Based upon the facts, we'll follow them wherever they take us," Pirro told Axios as she confirmed Omar's financial affairs are also under investigation.

Finally, a new clue has emerged over her father's actual identity:

A since-deleted tweet in 2013 on Minnesota Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar's social media account appeared to refer to her father by a different name.

"Happy Father’s Day to my aabo Nur Said, I am forever grateful to Allah for giving me the best father …," Omar stated in the June 2013 post, which was deleted in 2019, Fox News reported.

A memorial post in 2020, as well as several other records, refer to Omar's father as "Nur Omar Mohamed."

The deleted post on what was then called Twitter — now called X — refers to Omar's father as "Nur Said," which also appears similar to the name of her former husband, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi.

An archived version of the post, first reported on by the Daily Caller in 2019, has received new attention as a federal investigation has been launched into allegations Omar made false statements on immigration and naturalization documents.

She does seem to be in a great deal of potential trouble.

What If It Is A Deliberate Strategy To Step Into A New Position?

Jasmin Laine, a Canadian commentator, has a theory on Mark Carney that fits some of my own impressions of the guy, notably, that he doesn't have the charisma you'd expect from a national politician. Here's what she thinks is going on (at 6:05):

This sudden frantic push for an associate [EU] membership, which has not been debated in the House of Commons, it's just happened to us, 'cuz that's how democracy works, I guess, it has absolutely nothing to do with defense, security, or trade. So, what on earth does it actually have to do with? It makes no sense, right? Well, there are some numbers here that align in a way that are a little too close for my liking.

Ursula von der Leyen, her final term as the head of the European Commission wraps up in late 2029. The next Canadian federal election, where Mark Carney will be running again, is tentatively scheduled to take place on or before October 15, 2029, which means that unless Mark Carney decides to run again, which I highly doubt, him and Ursula are both scheduled to exit their executive offices within a few months of each other.

Under the old rules of EU and Parliament and how things work there, you cannot be appointed to be head of the commission unless you are a citizen of an EU member state, which is something that Mark Carney currently is not. If we take his word for it, he claims that he [renounced] his Irish ciizenship, and because he got that citizenship through descent, not because he was actually living there, . . . it would be a minimum three-year procerss for him [to regain it].

. . . So, what does that mean? Well, if you cannot run in Brussels unless you are a citizen of an EU member state, which you used to be, until you wanted to be the Prime Minister of Canada, . . . and now you're in a tricky situation where you don't meet that one really important requirement. So then, naybe you and your friend Ursula come together very secretly to all of a sudden spring on us and other European member states a completely unnecessary and unprecedented legal category called associate membership, a blank canvas with no historical definition where you can build the exact legal loophole to transition an international technocrat into being Ursula von der Leyen's successor.

So let's look at how this works. Ursula von der Leyen is President of the European Commission, which is the executive branch and head of government for the European Union. The President of the EU serves five-year terms. The leaders of the 27 EU member states (collectively known as the European Council) meet to propose a candidate for the presidency. By treaty, they must take the results of the Parliament elections into account when choosing their nominee. (Doesn't this sound like the Holy Roman Empire?)

The nominated candidate must then be formally approved by the European Parliament. (Back in the day, the Holy Roman Emperor was crowned by the pope.) In modern times, the candidate needs to secure an absolute majority (50% plus one) of the Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) via a secret ballot. So this sounds like a smoky backroom procedure, not much different from how Mark Carney got to be prime minister.

Justin Trudeau says he plans to resign, the Liberals go into the back room and announce that Carney, never elected for anything, is now their leader. The Liberals get a member of parliament who has a safe seat in Alberta to resign that seat so Carney can run for it. Carney calls a snap national election, and by dint of winning his Alberta seat gets to be prime minister when the Liberals win the election. The EU presidential election is only slightly less democratic. Jasmin Laine continues,

And if you really think about it, and you take a look at some of the places that Mark Carney has prioritized traveling, he's had a hyper-aggressive schedule of diplomatic travel across European capitals. And how he becomes Ursula's successor is that he gets appointed [strictly speaking, nominated by the prince-electors of the EU], and then it has to be voted on [by the European Parliament].

So it almost appears as thpough he could, in theory, be engaging in a calculated backroom lobbying campaign targeting the exact heads of state who would vote on the appointment of the next European Commission President. . . . So, he is in theory doing all the groundwork stuff to buy the political goodwill of the EU's core voting factions.

But don't stop tnere. Carney has met with King Charles fully three times since becoming prime minister, most recently on March 16. Think about that. King Charles, at least for now, has nothing to do with the EU, but recall that Labour is mooting the idea of rejoining the EU without a referendum.

So I kinda go along with Ms Laine, except that Carney doesn't really want to be president of the European Commission, he wants to be the Holy Roman Emperor, except the EU is much bigger than the Holy Roman Empire ever was.

The other necessry thing would be for Canada to agree to become an associate EU member. Under the parliamentary system, all tnis could probably be done with a simple majority in the House of Commons, although depending on what associate memberhip involved, individual provinces could object. What else stands in Carney's way? Superman, Donald Trump, the man with the cape. I'll have thoughts on that.

Eby Loses Snap Election In British Columbia

Ten days ago, I brought up David Eby (pronounced E-B), Premier of British Columbia, who as the commentator in the YouTube embedded above puts it, decided to "copy Mark Carney's homework" and call a snap election in which he ran against Donald Trump. The result from yesterday's votimg was counterintuitive, at least if you think like Mark Carney:

David Eby’s snap election gamble has handed the B.C. Conservative Party a majority government, CTV News declared first Saturday night. /p>

Interim leader Lorne Doerkson’s party was leading or elected in 62 of the province’s 93 ridings when he gave his victory speech to a roaring crowd. /p>

“We are going to super-charge British Columbia,” he said. /p>

Doerkson will lead B.C.’s first Conservative government in nearly 100 years—while Eby announced he would step down as B.C. NDP leader.

Even in the short leadup to the election, the signs of its outcome were visible: Political pundits

are beginning to wonder if British Columbia Premier David Eby’s decision to call an election, to be held on Oct. 24, will rank among the greatest blunders in Canadian political history. That will depend, of course, on what British Columbians decide.

The idea that this may have been one of "the greatest blunders in Canadian political history" is commonplace, but nobody seems to be specifying just what the blunder precisely was. Some point to his clumsy handling of how his kids went to a subsidized $10-a-day daycare not available to most British Columbians, but even an average candidate could probably sweep that aside.

Something more basic was wrong, which so far, even conservative Canadian commentators are missing. Let's look at a recent question posed to Mark Carney, when he was in Turkey of all places:

At 23:50, a reporter asks,

I want to ask you about the repeated allegations from the United States that we are interfering in their elections. This is a serious accusation, and it's not a one-off. We had the fact sheet, we had the envoy, we have Navarro, and there's a risk that this normalizes, that this is a valid concern. I'd like you to address whether there is an ounce of merit to their claims, and if there isn't are you willing to call this ojt as gaslighting or scapegoating? . . . One thing we've seen over the past year is that you can see a narrative starting, and then it has consequences later. Should Canadians be concerned that [if] there's adverse results for the Republicans in the midterms, that somehow we're going to be blamed, and I don't know, tariffed -- like do you think this has serious potential to become a -- justification for more tariffs?

The question itself is the answer. The subtext is the elephant in the room: the reporter is basically asking, "Hey, Mr Prime Minister, you've been tugging on Superman's cape. Do you really tnink this is a good idea?" I tnink this is the one thing behind a lot of Canadian thinking that even conservative Canadians are hesitant to express: if you get the US pissed off, there are consequences, which we're already seeing. Canada lost over 100,000 jobs in August and September, while Ottawa is still out to lunch over the high-profile Stelco layoffs.

Let's localize this to British Columbia. Lumber, much of which is exported to the US, is a major industry there:

More than 20 lumber mills closed across B.C. over the last three years. Billions in wood products affected by U.S. tariffs. Tens of thousands of jobs lost in Canada.

The state of B.C.'s forestry industry is, by most accounts, dire.

While there are many factors driving the decline, recent U.S. tariffs haven't helped.

But Donald Trump is hardly the first U.S. president whose government has imposed steep duties on Canadian lumber. The tariffs are the latest chapter in a dispute that's been going on for more than four decades.

When David Eby tried to call a snap election and make it a referendum on Trump, it blew up in his face. I get the impression that Canadians generally are nervous when politicians, especially Carney, tickle the dragon's tail. Canadians are excessively deferential and polite (except to Americans), and they seem to be uncomfortable about bringing this up, but they're clearly getting nervous, and it looks like tney'll vote nervous when they get a chance.

Add to that the visuals. Eby on TV is a little too gangly. Carney is even worse. His head is a little too big for his body, and he's homorless. The closest he came to a smile in the interview above was the occasional smirk. There's zero charisma. The only thing he has going for him is that the opposition is, if anything, even less charismatic. Poor Canada.

The Ilhan Omar Fraud Goes Deeper And Deeper

Thursday's post focused on just one of Ilhan Omar's potential problems, that she married her brother. The whole story here goes something like this:

The allegation that’s gotten the most attention is that Ilhan Omar married her brother.

The underlying suggestion is that Ilhan’s family split up in the 1990s as it sought refuge from war-torn Somalia. Allegedly, the future congresswoman, her father and one of her sisters used the false name Omar to come to the United States as part of another Somali family getting asylum, while her siblings -under the family’s original name - got asylum in the U.K.

Then, Omar supposedly got her brother into the States, too, via a sham marriage.

If nothing else, she’s had a very odd marital life; she’s almost the Zsa Zsa Gabor of Somali-Americans. Omar was in an Islamic marriage with one man (named Ahmed Hirsi), then married the man believed to be her brother (Ahmed Said Elmi), then divorced Elmi and officially married Hirsi - before divorcing Hirsi and marrying a political consultant who is now her husband.

In her memoir, she says nothing of substance about Elmi. She doesn’t use his name and claims she spent very little time with him. She also doesn’t name any of her siblings. She gives the impression of wanting to provide as little information about her background as possible, and stick to the more important work of maligning her adopted country.

But then we've got another problem right there, that "her father and one of her sisters used the false name Omar to come to the United States". Via Fox News:

Ilhan Omar is not the "real name" of the Minnesota congresswoman, Fox News Digital has learned.

Her real name is Ilhan Nur Said Elmi, according to two people familiar with the ongoing investigation into the Somali-born congresswoman, including a law enforcement source.

And if proven in court that Omar has lived her "entire life under an alias," a former Minnesota federal immigration judge tells Fox News Digital that every single form she ever filled out could be "called into question."

. . . Fox News Digital has now learned from multiple sources familiar with the investigation that Omar is not the congresswoman’s birth name.

Omar has publicly confirmed that she does not have a birth certificate.

In an official U.S. House biography, her birthday is listed as Oct. 14, 1982, and states that she was born in Mogadishu, Somalia. She says she came to the U.S. with her family as refugees fleeing war-torn Somalia in 1995, when she was a minor.

But this links to the problem of her age: the assumptioln is that if she was born in 1982, she would have been 17 in 2000, and she woluld have been naturalized via her father, when he naturalized. But if she was actually born a year earlier, she would not have been a minor and naturalized via her father, except that it's also alleged that her father used a false name to come to the US. So even if she was in fact 17 and a minor when her father was naturalized, her father is now alleged to have committed immigration fraud himself:

Rep. Ilhan Omar’s late father, Nur Omar Mohamed, wasn’t who he purported to be, a source told The Post.

The Minnesota congresswoman — whose home was raided by the feds on Monday as part of an ongoing criminal fraud investigation — has long described her father as an “educator” who fled his country’s devastating civil war alongside millions of others and arrived in America with his family as a refugee in 1995.

But, an expert scholar exclusively told The Post that Nur “misrepresented himself as a refugee” to US authorities when he was really a prominent military commander in the Somalia dictatorship that killed as many as 200,000 people.

“He was a full colonel in Siad Barre’s military regime,” historian and Oxford University doctoral researcher Mohamed Haji Ingiriis told The Post. “Ilhan’s father was never an educator.

He added, “Nur Said was a military officer who was loyal to the regime until the end. He was part and parcel of those who caused and created the mayhem they ‘fled’ to live comfortably in the United States.”

. . . US immigration law strictly forbids granting refugee status to “any person who ordered, incited, assisted or otherwise participated in the persecution of any person on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.”

According to the Fox News link above, the federal investigation into Omar's immiogration fraud isn't yet complete:

On Wednesday, U.S. District Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro filed a motion seeking to prevent the federal search warrant for the congresswoman’s home from being unsealed, which was requested by several media outlets. The motion says the federal government is not yet finished executing the search warrant, and that it shouldn’t be unsealed yet.

"Before the Court are three Applications to unseal ex parte materials and proceedings related to a federal search warrant for the personal residence in the District of Columbia of Congresswoman Ilhan Nur Said Elmi, a/k/a Ilhan Abdullahi Omar…" the motion begins.

"That's not her real name," one source said when asked why the motion used the "a/k/a Ilhan Adbullahi Omar" language.

So it sounds like we don't know the whole story, but what's beginning to emerge is it doesn't matter if she married her brother, it doesn't matter if she's used an alias, it doesn't matter if she was or wasn't a minor, if her father came to the US via fraud, that still makes her naturalization fraudulent. And that leaves aside her financial statments with her third husband, a con artist.

So far, there's no evidence that she's hired an attorney and no evidence that she's keeping her mouth shut.

Kamala Resurfaces

Kamala Harris just spoke in Las Vegas and it seems she's testing out a new oratory style. It's worse than you can imagine. https://t.co/wzglFWAUBJ

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) October 21, 2026

Almost two years ago, in thr wake of the Trump 47 inauguration, I posted on rumors that Kamala Harris's marriage to Doug Emhoff was on the rocks. For whatever reason, it's held together, even though on one hand, she was reported as blaming her loss on her "dead weight" husband, while Emhoff himself claimed he'd put his legal career on hold to support her campaign and come across as a "wife guy".

Still, right now, as Kamala makes campaign-like noises, it looks like Dougie isn't on board:

While former Vice President Kamala Harris may be laying the groundwork for another presidential campaign, her husband is having private reservations amid warnings from Democratic donors that a 2028 White House bid by Harris would face significant obstacles, The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday.

Harris' husband, Doug Emhoff, has privately told some associates he would prefer she not seek the presidency again, while several donors have directly cautioned Harris that another campaign would be a long shot, according to people familiar with the conversations.

Despite those concerns, Harris has been meeting with major donors, expanding her political staff, and traveling to battleground states to campaign for Democratic candidates ahead of November's midterm elections.

. . . Meanwhile, Emhoff's reported reluctance underscores the personal toll another national campaign could carry.

In her memoir, "107 Days," Harris described the strain the 2024 election placed on their marriage, recalling Emhoff telling her during a difficult moment, "We can't turn on each other."

People close to Emhoff nevertheless expect him to support Harris should she ultimately decide to run, according to the Journal.

But a little over a week ago, Politico claimed, ‘She totally blew it’: How Kamala Harris wasted a year to make her case:

Kamala Harris has kept the door open to running for president again in 2028. What she failed to do over the past year, even onetime supporters and allies of the former vice president say, is give voters a reason to reconsider her if she does.

For Harris, according to interviews with nearly 20 Democratic Party donors and strategists in California and across the country, it was a missed opportunity to redefine herself — and ultimately a wasted year.

Kamala Harris has kept the door open to running for president again in 2028. What she failed to do over the past year, even onetime supporters and allies of the former vice president say, is give voters a reason to reconsider her if she does.

For Harris, according to interviews with nearly 20 Democratic Party donors and strategists in California and across the country, it was a missed opportunity to redefine herself — and ultimately a wasted year.

“She totally blew it,” said Doug Herman, who was a lead mail strategist for Barack Obama’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns. “She hasn’t gotten into the mix.”

Harris has offered voters almost nothing in the way of specifics about how she would remake a Democratic Party hungry for change after another term of Donald Trump. She hasn’t spoken to how she would expand her own appeal to the voters who rejected her, and she remains as reticent of media as ever, continuing to favor appearances before friendly audiences and at times drawing fire for limiting access to news organizations altogether. She has entirely sidestepped the ideological civil war consuming the Democrats and has acted more like a party elder at a time when voters and donors are demanding a break with the past.

Rgegarding her latest appearance, Amy Curtis comments at Townhall:

Kamala had to rebrand herself multiple times in the past, and this is just another reboot for a candidate no one wants. There's a reason she dropped out before Iowa in 2020 and why voters rejected her in 2024.

Emhoff has tied his legal csreer, or at least the second phase of it, to being married to Kamala. Presumably that will still count for something, however heavily discounted, whether or not she runs in 2028. He's got to stay married to her no matter what.

Ilhan Omar Is Apparently In Hot Water

In the YouTube excerpt from a News Nation interview embedded above, Alan Dershowitz advises Ilhan Omar,

I would tell her to call me, or a good lawyer, and be quiet, and allow a lawyer to handle the case. She's in deep trouble. I've had a lot of experience with search warrants done against government officials. And before a judge, particularly a DC judge, signs off on a search warrant in Washington, DC, at the home of a member of congress, there has to be something very, very substantial in the affadavit. This is not the case of a judge just signing. I suspect it's a lot more than we know.

So what did she do? Instead of taking Dershowitz's advice, or the advice of almost any lawyer, she did an interview with MS NOW:

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) on Wednesday called allegations that she married her brother “insane” – but didn’t entirely close the door to the possibility of being related to her ex-husband.

“Not to my knowledge,” Omar responded, when asked by MS NOW’s Chris Hayes if there was any “weird kernel of truth” to the claim that she wed her brother.

The decade-old allegations that Omar and her ex, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, got hitched in a failed effort to get him a green card originated on a “Somali blog,” and spread when “right-wing conspiracy theorists” latched onto it, Omar explained in her first interview since federal agents raided her Washington, DC, home last week.

Trump was on it right away:

President Trump on Wednesday said Ilhan Omar’s near-admission that she married her brother, suggesting she didn’t have knowledge of any blood relation, was “not a good answer.”

. . . This comes as the criminal fraud investigation is believed to be using Omar’s DNA to prove she married her own brother and committed immigration fraud.

Regular true crime fans know the one thing that keeps perps from staying silent and letting their attorneys handle their case is their vanity -- they somehow believe they can convince intestigators, a jury, or the public at large that they're innocent, when tbey're only digging themselves a deeper hole. Dershowitz echoes another observer who suspects she's actually in very hot water:

Tim Burchett just SHOCKED our audience and thinks the Ilhan Omar investigation is MUCH DARKER than we realize: There’s a reason Obama came in, it's because she’s going to be deported. Burchett suggests there is far more happening behind the scenes than the public knows. Obama is a the Democrats' "first string" player. That's how you know this is serious. It can't just be immigration fraud. Now they're panicking and doing everything they can before she is deported. She needs to go, @timburchett

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) October 20, 2026

Miranda Devine thinks it's the DNA:

Ahem. Five years ago I wrote a column about DNA test results that showed there was a 99.999998 percent chance that Ilhan Omar and her second husband Ahmed Elmi were siblings. A few hours before we went to press my informant was arrested by Biden's FBI. Funny that. https://t.co/MEBWf5U7pv

— Miranda Devine (@mirandadevine) October 20, 2026

Although DNA is just one line of inquiry, here's more detail from the New York Post:

Federal prosecutors are planning to use DNA evidence to try to prove Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) committed immigration fraud, as part of the sprawling investigation into the congresswoman, sources told The Post.

People familiar with the years-long criminal probe said the feds have made use of whistleblowers, government records and now obtained DNA in an effort to substantiate decade-old allegations that Omar — and possibly members of her family like her father — defrauded immigration authorities.

One source said the DNA evidence was critical to proving an allegation that Omar married her brother when she wed Ahmed Nur Said Elmi in 2009 because she was trying to help him get a green card — which never came to fruition.

It’s unclear whether the DNA was taken before or after Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) searched the congresswoman’s home in Washington, DC, last Monday, when federal agents were seen exiting the bungalow with boxes marked “Seized Property Evidence.”

Another source pushed back on initial reports that investigators had gone “dumpster diving” in order to get DNA swabs of Omar, Elmi, who is currently residing in the UK, or family members.

Two more indicated that the execution of the search warrant on Oct. 12, coupled with the DNA and additional evidence, has provided a solid basis to bring charges of conspiracy to commit some form of immigration fraud before a grand jury, stemming from the probe initiated by the Minnesota US Attorney’s Office.

Given the case is being pursued as a general conspiracy, the evidence will prove useful even if some of the acts fall outside of the statute of limitations.

“If you argue a conspiracy, you can allege overt acts in furtherance of the conspiracy that are outside the statute of limitations,” said Neama Rahmini, a former federal prosecutor.

This also omits questions about her financial disclosures and her potential involvement in her current husband's separate investment frauds. But so far, all anyone can reasonably surmise is that she's likely in a great deal of trouble.