Rep. Ilhan Omar describes her late father, Nur Omar Mohamed, as “an educator” in her memoir, according to Snopes. His 2020 Sahan Journal obituary describes a different career. He was a colonel in the Somali National Army who led a regiment in the 1977–1978 war with Ethiopia. His military career ended in 1991, when dictator Siad Barre’s regime collapsed.

A former army comrade told the paper that Nur joined the army after receiving a military education in Russia. The record of the regime he served explains why the distinction matters.

Barre seized power in a 1969 coup and ruled Somalia until 1991, governing it as a one-party state through the Somali Revolutionary Socialist Party. His ruling council aligned itself with the Soviet Union and denounced American policy in Africa as imperialist.

In 1977, Moscow backed Ethiopia in the Ogaden War. That November, Barre abrogated the Soviet friendship treaty, expelled all Soviet military and civilian advisers, and ended Soviet access to Somali military facilities. Nur led his regiment against Ethiopian forces supported by the Soviet Union and Cuba and remained in Barre’s army after the break with Moscow.

After a 1971 coup attempt, Barre executed members of the three leading clans, including the Majerteen. He made clan membership the organizing principle of Somali politics, according to an account drawing on State Department and Africa Watch reporting.

Barre claimed that Islam and socialism were compatible but did not tolerate religious opposition. When 23 shaykhs protested his 1975 family law, his security forces arrested them. Ten were executed for “acting on behalf of foreign powers,” according to a CIA review.

After Majerteen officers attempted a coup in April 1978, the regime punished the entire clan. Africa Watch documented extrajudicial executions, rape, and the killing of livestock as part of a scorched-earth policy intended to cut off civilian support for Majerteen rebels.

Barre’s Red Berets, his presidential guard, destroyed small reservoirs around Galcaio to deny water to Majerteen herders and their animals, according to the Library of Congress country study. Nur was himself Majerteen, and Omar wrote in her memoir that the clan was initially subjected to Barre’s crackdown.

The State Department’s 1989 human rights report on Somalia documented a police state. Citizens had no legal means to change their government. Opposition groups and criticism of the government were illegal. The government owned all radio and television outlets and the country’s six newspapers. Possession of an unauthorized publication carried a prison sentence of 5 to 15 years. Law No. 54 of 1970 made “publishing antistate propaganda” a capital offense. Organizing a strike was also punishable by death.

Security services detained suspected opponents indefinitely, often incommunicado. Military officers heard National Security Court cases behind closed doors, with no right of appeal. Released detainees described torture in the “Mig” position, with their hands and feet bound behind their backs and pulled tight.

By 1989, Barre had appointed his son commander of the armed forces and another relative chief of police. Members of his Marehan subclan commanded most military units.

The worst abuses fell on the Isaaq clan of northern Somalia, the base of the rebel Somali National Movement. A U.S. GAO report found that suspected government opponents were arrested and imprisoned, sometimes tortured and executed. Many civilians had to pay to secure their release.

When the rebels took Hargeisa in May 1988, the army attacked with heavy artillery and aerial bombardment, indiscriminately hitting civilian targets. The Somali air force reportedly attacked survivors gathering outside the city to flee to Ethiopia. Human Rights Watch described the campaign as “savage counterinsurgency tactics.” The Center for Justice and Accountability estimates that the bombing destroyed about 70 percent of Hargeisa and killed more than 5,000 civilians.

After retaking the city, forces under Barre’s son-in-law, Gen. Mohammed Said Hersi “Morgan,” planted thousands of land mines in Hargeisa, often inside homes. Locals call him “the butcher of Hargeisa.”

A State Department-commissioned study, Robert Gersony’s Why Somalis Flee, conservatively estimated that the Somali Armed Forces deliberately murdered at least 5,000 unarmed Isaaq civilians between May 1988 and March 1989. The State Department’s 1989 human rights report found that about 90 percent of Isaaq homes, businesses, and property in Hargeisa were destroyed or severely damaged.

By the end of 1989, an estimated 324,000 Somali refugees, mainly Isaaqs, were in Ethiopia. Experts now count more than 200 mass graves in Somaliland, most in the area known as the Valley of Death. Regime opponents were rounded up, bound, taken to these sites, shot, and buried in unmarked graves. Most of the graves lie at Malko Durduro, near the former headquarters of the Somali National Army’s 26th Division.

The killing continued in the capital. After riots in Mogadishu in July 1989, soldiers took 46 Isaaq men to a beach outside the city and shot them, according to the State Department. Witnesses and a survivor said the victims were selected by their accents. Amnesty International issued an urgent appeal concerning extrajudicial executions in the northern port of Berbera on August 16, 1990, naming more than a dozen victims, including a former police officer.

On July 6, 1990, the Red Berets fired into a crowd at a Mogadishu soccer stadium after fans jeered Barre’s speech. Human Rights Watch reported more than 100 civilians killed and over 300 injured. Hospital counts reported by AP, the Los Angeles Times, and the New York Times confirmed at least 65 deaths. The government initially claimed three deaths and called the shooting “a chance accident,” according to a Canadian government summary.

That same year, the government put 45 people on trial for signing a political manifesto critical of the regime, according to the State Department. Human Rights Watch reported nightly gunfire in Mogadishu, with bodies found in different neighborhoods each morning.

In 2001, a United Nations-commissioned investigation concluded that “the crime of genocide was conceived, planned and perpetrated by the Somalia Government against the Isaaq people of northern Somalia,” according to The Nation. Led by Chris Mburu, the investigation collected more than 150 testimonies and assigned responsibility to the state and its command structure, according to a Factually summary.

In 2014, Somalia’s federal government acknowledged and condemned the regime’s atrocities, particularly those committed against Somaliland, according to the Center for Justice and Accountability. Estimates of the total death toll in the Isaaq genocide range from at least 50,000 to about 200,000.

Nur Omar Mohamed held the rank of colonel throughout this period. No public record documents his activities between 1978 and 1991, and no court or official body has found that he personally participated in atrocities. In March 2026, the government of Somaliland publicly accused him of participating in the Isaaq genocide.

The family fled to a refugee camp in Kenya after the regime fell and arrived in the United States as refugees in 1995. Omar’s description of her father as an educator omits his service as a colonel in Barre’s army until its collapse, including the years when the U.S. government documented the army’s murder of thousands of unarmed civilians, bombardment of its own cities, and execution of men selected by their accents.

The post Siad Barre, the Somali Dictator Ilhan Omar’s Father Served appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Michael Desronvil, the lone black holdout juror in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial sat down with Fox News for an exclusive interview about the tense deliberations.

The full interview conducted by Kayleigh McEnany, will air on Thursday morning at 8 am ET.

Eleven jurors were ready to acquit Lindsay Clancy even though she admitted that she had fatally strangled her three young children.

Lindsay Clancy sent her husband, Patrick Clancy, out of the house to run errands while she strangled their three young children to death in January 2023.

The prosecution argued that Lindsay Clancy should be charged with premeditated murder because she planned the killings and knew what she was doing was wrong at the time of the murders.

Clancy was never diagnosed with postpartum psychosis.

Judge Sullivan last month declared a mistrial after the jury was deadlocked because one lone juror refused to buckle under pressure.

Michael Desronvil, a devout Christian and son of a Haitian immigrant, was doxxed after NBC Boston spearheaded a harassment campaign against him.

In a small teaser clip posted by Fox News, Michael Desronvil said, “I had a lot of evidence to back up my claim.”

Desronvil also said that there wee moments that were tense.

WATCH:

EXCLUSIVE: “I had a lot of evidence to back up my claim.”

For the first time, the lone holdout juror in the Lindsay Clancy trial, Michael Desronvil, is speaking out about the tense deliberations in the high profile case, revealing to @kayleighmcenany that he had no reasonable doubt about his position.

After 38 hours of deliberations, Desronvil found himself at odds with 11 other jurors who believed Clancy was not guilty by reason of insanity.

Now, in an exclusive interview, he opens up about the tension inside the jury room and why he’s keeping some of his evidence to himself.

Kayleigh’s full interview airs tomorrow on @foxandfriends at 8am ET. | @SatAmericaFNC

— Fox News (@FoxNews) October 14, 2026

In a separate teaser clip, Michael Desronvil said Lindsay Clancy was methodical in how she executed her children.

WATCH:

EXCLUSIVE: The lone holdout juror in the Lindsay Clancy case is opening up to Fox News, revealing how some evidence shaped his thinking.

Michael Desronvil says he was struck by how “methodical” he believed Clancy was in the killings of her three young children.

After watching video evidence and listening to courtroom testimony, Desronvil says the thought process behind her actions stood out to him.

Don’t miss @kayleighmcenany full exclusive interview tomorrow on @foxandfriends at 8 a.m. ET. | @SatAmericaFNC

— Fox News (@FoxNews) October 14, 2026

The post Lone Holdout Clancy Juror Speaks Out About Tense Deliberations in Exclusive Interview with Fox (VIDEO) appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Immigrant groups vary widely in their financial success and assimilation into American society. Financial success is easier to measure than assimilation. The Manhattan Institute’s assimilation index, developed by economist Jacob Vigdor, defines assimilation as the degree to which foreign-born adults can no longer be distinguished from the native-born population.

The index combines economic factors such as employment and education, cultural factors such as English proficiency and intermarriage, and civic factors such as citizenship and military service.

Other common measures include movement out of ethnic enclaves, fertility rates approaching native-born levels, and whether later generations still identify with their ancestry.

Two of the largest immigrant groups of their respective eras offer a useful comparison: Italians who arrived during the mass immigration wave of 1880–1920 and Mexicans who arrived in large numbers from the late 20th century onward. Researchers assess assimilation across generations by measuring how closely each group approaches the educational and economic levels of the native-born population.

The Immigration Act of 1924 sharply restricted arrivals from southern and eastern Europe but imposed no quotas on the Western Hemisphere. As Italian immigration declined, community averages increasingly reflected the second and third generations. Continued Mexican immigration adds first-generation arrivals to that community’s averages, but it does not explain gaps among U.S.-born descendants.

Italian Americans, numbering about 16 million, are sometimes considered model immigrants because of their educational and economic integration, English proficiency, patriotism, and adoption of American holidays and customs.

They perform better than national averages on the following economic and educational measures. According to Census Bureau data for 2017–2021, 42.7% of Italian Americans ages 25 and older held a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared with 33.7% of all Americans. Their median household income was $90,487 in 2022, compared with $74,755 nationally.

In 2017–2021, the Italian American poverty rate was 7.7%, compared with 12.6% nationally. Among children, the rates were 7.9% and 17%, respectively. Homeownership stood at 70.3%, compared with 64.6% nationally, while 7.1% of Italian American households received food stamps, compared with 11.4% of all households.

Language assimilation is nearly complete. Only 3.5% of Italian Americans are foreign-born, 93.4% speak only English at home, and 1.5% speak English less than “very well,” compared with 8.2% of all Americans.

This integration was evident decades ago. UCLA sociologist Vilma Ortiz noted that by 1980, Italian Americans had reached the education and occupational levels of other third-generation Europeans.

Although Italian Americans have largely lost their ancestral language, they maintain their heritage through festivals, food, and family traditions. That heritage also has a prominent place in American public life. Italian American leaders lobbied for Columbus Day, which President Roosevelt proclaimed in 1937. New York’s Columbus Day parade, billed as the world’s largest celebration of Italian American heritage, draws nearly one million spectators.

Mexican Americans are the country’s largest Hispanic-origin group, numbering roughly 40 million in 2024. In 2021, 71% were born in the United States. Among Mexican immigrants, 62% had lived in the country for more than 20 years, but only 35% were U.S. citizens, according to Pew Research Center. English proficiency was widespread: 74% of Mexican Americans ages 5 and older spoke only English at home or spoke English at least “very well.”

Educational and economic gaps remain. In 2024, only 10% of Mexican immigrant adults held a bachelor’s degree, compared with 37% of U.S.-born adults. Mexican immigrant households had a median income of $68,700, compared with $81,400 for U.S.-born households. About 16% of Mexican immigrants lived in poverty, compared with 12% of the U.S.-born population.

Among U.S.-born Mexican Americans, only 21% held a bachelor’s degree in 2021, compared with 35% of all Americans. Their poverty rate, at 18%, was slightly higher than the 17% rate among Mexican immigrants.

A March 2026 Center for Immigration Studies analysis of Census Bureau data found that 67% of non-citizen Mexican households use at least one means-tested program or have incomes low enough to qualify for the Earned Income Tax Credit or Additional Child Tax Credit. The comparable figure for U.S.-born households was 31%.

Long-term research tracks these outcomes across generations. UCLA sociologists Edward Telles and Vilma Ortiz followed Mexican American families in Los Angeles and San Antonio from 1965 to 2000. Among the families studied, they found that economic progress halts at the second generation, poverty remains high in later generations, and educational attainment peaks in the second generation before declining in the third and fourth. Most fourth-generation Mexican Americans in the study still lived in Hispanic neighborhoods, married other Hispanics, and identified as Mexican.

Examining foreign-born adults, Vigdor’s Manhattan Institute index found very low rates of economic and civic assimilation among Mexican immigrants, linking their slow progress to the large share living in the country illegally.

The post Immigrants and Assimilation: Some Achieve the American Dream and Some Don’t appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

A guest post by Kristine Christlieb, Editor, MFEI News & Commentary

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel has appealed a judge’s dismissal of all felony charges against former Adams Township Clerk Stephanie Scott, a step prosecutors rarely take.

Nessel filed the appeal on July 24 in the Michigan Court of Appeals, challenging Hillsdale County Circuit Judge Sara Lisznyai’s April 30, 2026, ruling.

Lisznyai dismissed the charges and found the lower court abused its discretion and made an “error of law” by sending Scott’s case to trial.

Prosecutors seldom appeal. National data are limited, but a 2018 peer-reviewed study by law professors Nancy King and Michael Heise found such appeals are rare.

The ruling dismissed every felony count and found both abuse of discretion and legal error. Nessel is appealing anyway.

In a May 8, 2024, press release announcing the charges, Nessel said Scott “intentionally disregarded numerous instructions from the Director of Elections,” referring to Jonathan Brater.

Scott believed those instructions violated the law, instructions which have since become rulesets with the force of law, a subject MFEI News & Commentary has examined in past articles and investigative reports.

Nessel also said in the release: “When elected officials and their proxies use their positions to promote baseless conspiracies, show blatant disregard for voter privacy, and break the law in the process, it undermines the very essence of the democratic process. Those who engage in such reckless conduct must be held accountable for their actions.”

Eaton County Prosecutor Doug Lloyd, the Republican candidate for Michigan attorney general, said in a written statement to MFEI News & Commentary:

“This is another example of Dana Nessel putting partisan lawfare ahead of the facts and evidence. As in the electors case, a judge threw this out for lack of merit. As Attorney General, I will put fair law ahead of lawfare and always base my decisions on facts and evidence.”

Eli Savit, the Democrat candidate for attorney general, did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.

Patrice Johnson, Michigan Fair Elections Institute Co-Founder and Chair, took a different view of Nessel’s motives.

“She is using the Scott case to intimidate and control Michigan clerks,” Johnson said in a telephone interview. “She’s sending a message: ‘If you don’t comply with our rules, this could happen to you.’”

“Nessel’s appeal is an only slightly more civilized version of putting an enemy’s head on a spike,” Johnson said. “Her actions are about psychological deterrence and public humiliation.”

If Nessel’s appeal succeeds — and King and Heise found prosecutors nationally win about 40 percent of the appeals they file — Scott will go to trial on four felonies and a misdemeanor. The most serious felony carries up to seven years in prison; the other four carry up to five years each.

The charges are:

• Using a Computer to Commit a Crime, a seven-year felony
• Computers – Unauthorized Access, a five-year felony
• Conspiracy to Commit the Offense of Computers – Unauthorized Access, a five-year
felony
• Misconduct in Office, a five-year felony
• Disobeying a Lawful Instruction or Order of the Secretary of State as Chief Election
Officer, a 90-day misdemeanor

What Did Scott Do?

In March 2021, Scott was a brand-new township clerk running her first election on a school millage. She was elected in November 2020 and took office that December.

As a new clerk, she consulted veteran Hillsdale County Clerk Marney Kast about the township’s tabulator logic and accuracy testing. “It seemed to me, statistically, there weren’t enough test ballots to perform the test,” Scott told MFEI News & Commentary in a phone interview. She believed the test required 21 ballots, but she was given only seven.

Scott said Kast brushed off her early questions about the tabulators. According to Scott, Kast told her, “Oh Stephanie, you and your math.”

Already concerned about the tabulators’ accuracy, Scott then received instructions to turn over her township’s tabulators for routine maintenance. She refused, saying she did not trust the machines and wanted to preserve their data.

She relied on federal statute 52 U.S.C. § 20701 and state statute MCL Section 168.811 both of which require election officials to keep all records of an election for 22 months. Brater maintained the maintenance did not destroy election data and did not violate the law because the paper ballots were preserved. The law requires keeping all records and papers for 22 months. All records . . . not just the ballots,” Scott said.

Acting as township clerk, Scott hired legal counsel and gave attorney Stefanie Lambert a thumb drive containing the township’s electronic poll book information. Lambert passed the drive to a computer forensics expert for examination. Lambert later faced criminal charges herself.

On Oct. 15, 2021, Brater ordered Scott to correct what he called her false claims and warned her of consequences. On Oct. 25, Director Brater stripped Scott of her election duties.

In May 2024, Nessel filed felony charges against Scott.

By January 22, 2025, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson announced her 2026 gubernatorial candidacy. Six weeks later, on March 5–6, 2025 — more than eight months past the legally required rule announcement deadline of July 1, 2024 — Benson had begun advancing three rule sets — 40 separate rules — governing the conduct of Michigan elections. Rule Set 2025-14 requires clerks to delete electronic poll book data seven days after certification. Nessel’s charges against Scott centered on electronic poll book data.

“There’s a direct line between Stephanie Scott’s refusal to delete her electronic poll book and Benson’s new rule sets,” Johnson said. “When Stephanie stood up and refused to comply, Benson appears to have decided to take action to keep clerks in line.”

The Process Is the Punishment

For more than five years, Scott has lived under the threat of action from the Bureau of Elections. She says she owes her attorney thousands of dollars, and the appeal has only just begun.

Civil and criminal appeals are notorious for dragging on, sometimes for years, and can bankrupt a defendant like Scott.

Then there is the constant psychological weight of criminal charges and possible prison time. People tend to assume the greatest harm in litigation comes from losing. But a 2020 Spanish study of 360 litigants by M. Clemente and D. Padilla-Racero found that those with the longest exposure to litigation reported the worst health.

Court delays, mounting costs, and legal tactics can wear people down long before a case ends, bringing anxiety, insomnia, bankruptcy, and a loss of trust in institutions.

Scott’s supporters have been helping her through a GiveSendGo account.

https://www.givesendgo.com/stephaniescottlegal

“A lot of people don’t realize my case has been appealed and that I now have a new round of legal expenses. This is a situation I never dreamed I would have to face. I was just trying to follow the law and protect the voters in my township,” Scott said.

Nessel’s Next Move

If Nessel loses the appeal, she will likely ask the Michigan Supreme Court to review the case. If she wins, Scott will stand trial in Hillsdale County and face the possibility of prison.

“Nessel wants to make Stephanie Scott the sacrificial lamb,” Johnson said. “A conviction would validate the very ‘instructions’ Benson later wrote into a regulatory rule. It is hard to overstate what is at stake in this case.”

The article in its entirety, can be found at MFEI.

The post Michigan’s Desperate Attorney General Dana Nessel Uses Final Months of Her Lawless Term To FINANCIALLY RUIN Honest Clerk For Refusing “Routine maintenance” On Vote Tabulators Over Security Concerns appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

President Trump will deliver remarks this afternoon for Republicans in Bullhead City, Arizona, before traveling to Montana to hold another rally this evening. 

Trump’s western tour kicked off with a rally in Alaska on Tuesday.

He told reporters while departing the White House on Wednesday, “I’m doing, on average, a rally a day” while previewing his stops and speaking about the midterms. “Do you think that’s easy? It’s not,” he added.

WATCH:

Trump is holding a rally in northwestern Arizona for statewide candidates for governor, attorney general, and secretary of state.

Trump-Endorsed Andy Biggs is running for governor against Democrat Katie Hobbs, who stole the 2022 election from Kari Lake.

Trump recently went off on the state’s largest county, Maricopa, after a so-called error caused thousands of mail-in ballots to be sent to voters by mistake before early voting had even started, another bizarre anomaly that raises concerns about potential cheating. “By the way, there were no errors. You know that, right? There were no errors,” Trump said, suggesting that the Maricopa mail-in voting is rigged. “They got caught,” he added.

Maricopa County Announces Runbeck Mistakenly Sent Out Thousands of Midterm Ballots – Trump Responds to TGP: “There Were No Errors… They Got Caught!” (VIDEO)

Earlier, a massive line of supporters was gathered to get into the rally.

📍Bullhead City, AZ

Huge line for President Trump’s event in Arizona ahead of the midterms https://t.co/bz8yhD7Lrw

— Alex Tabet (@AlexanderTabet) October 14, 2026

Real America's Voice's Ben Bergquam reports that supporters had been waiting in line overnight to see the President speak at 1 pm local time today.

WATCH:

President Trump is scheduled to speak at 4 pm ET.

Watch live below:

The post WATCH LIVE: Trump Speaks at Rally for Andy Biggs in Bullhead City, Arizona – 4:00 PM ET appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

President Trump Targeted “Somali Pirates” at His SOTU Speech This Year and Said to Ilhan Omar – “You Should Be Ashamed of Yourself”

This is really bad.  Omar has lost it.  She’s lied her entire life; now she doesn’t know what is true and what is not.

President Trump knows what’s going on, per a Truth Social post on Tuesday:

Why did Ilhan Omar report a Net Worth of up to 30 Million Dollars just a short time ago, and then immediately say, “Oh, I made a mistake! It’s really $100,000.” Could it be that her highly paid accountant actually reported the money that was stolen from her fraudulent activities in Minnesota? Would something like that be possible? Do you think the accountant actually gave the right number the first time, 30 Million Dollars, and then she was forced to disavow because she never would have been able to report where that much money came from? She must have freaked out when she saw that money! Where did her house come from, where did her cars come from, and what about her lovely place in Washington, D.C.? I didn’t know that Congressmen and women made that kind of money, but I do know her husband, according to information and belief, makes almost nothing, so it couldn’t have come from him. How many people did she illegally bring into our Country from Somalia? America wants answers, and we want them, NOW! President DONALD J. TRUMP

He went after Ilhan Omar and Somali pirates at his State of the Union speech this past year.

President Trump said directly to Omar, “You should be ashamed of yourself!”   (Omar responded by lying and screamed President Trump is killing Americans.”

Omar is nasty and caught.  She shared this on Tuesday.

https://t.co/ONXYvH1Kqj

— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) October 13, 2026

She’s been caught, and she knows it.

The post President Trump Targeted “Somali Pirates” at His SOTU Speech This Year and Called Out Ilhan Omar – “You Should Be Ashamed of Yourself” appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.