Jun. 26, 2026, 9:03 PM EDT<\/time><\/p>\n

By<\/span>Michael Tisserand<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

There was a time when President Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans didn’t think House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn., had a sufficient understanding of who his enemies ought to be. But in remarks he made Wednesday at a Capitol Hill event sponsored by Ralph Reed’s Faith & Freedom Coalition, Emmer did his best to signal that Trump’s enemies are his enemies, too.<\/p>\n

Emmer’s 11-minute talk, during which he expressed racism and transphobia and railed against abortion, also served as yet another contrast to the memory of what Republicans in Minnesota used to be. The name of the state party used to be Independent-Republicans<\/a>and the late U.S. Sen. Dave Durenberger<\/a> used to describe the state party’s worldview, without irony, as progressive Republicanism<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Emmer’s talk served as yet another contrast to the memory of what Republicans in Minnesota used to be. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n
That party is long gone. At Wednesday’s event, Emmer theatrically dismissed a few sheets of paper he said were his talking points and proclaimed, Trump-like, that he was going rogue. He took aim at transgender youth (“there’s a reason why Sodom and Gomorrah was destroyed”), at “elite radical lefties,” at “evil Marxists,” at the media, called his state’s abortion laws “as bad as North Korea” and called the state itself the “People’s Republic of Minnesota.”<\/p>\n
But Emmer earned some of the most enthusiastic applause in his racist rant against the state’s large Somali American population. “Sometimes Minnesotans are so afraid that you’re going to call us a racist, you’re going to call us an Islamophobe,” he said, before saying, “But I’m done being careful. Even the least bit careful.”<\/p>\n
He said, “I don’t really care where you come from. But if come to this great country, you have to understand, you’re coming here to be an American.” Somalis “don’t assimilate,” he said, “And if they don’t assimilate, then they should go the hell back to where they came from.”<\/p>\n
Among the people who responded angrily to Emmer’s slander of Somalis was Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn<\/a>., who was born in Somalia. “I assimilated all the way to Congress and this idiot still tells me to go back to where I came from,” she wrote on X.<\/p>\n
In the debacle that followed Kevin McCarthy being voted out of the House speakership in 2023, Emmer was not elected to replace him because, by MAGA standards, he was too moderate. Trump called him a “Globalist RINO” and was still fuming that after Joe Biden won the race for president in 2020, Emmer voted to certify that election.<\/p>\n
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Emmer has worked harder to be seen as MAGA since then. In December, he appeared on “Varney & Co.” on Fox Business to support an Immigration and Customs Enforcement surge that made Somalis among its primary targets and became known as Operation Metro Surge. He offered up conspiracy theories and lies about Somali Americans committing 80% of the crime in the Twin Cities. He said money was being stolen from Minnesota state and federal programs to fund the Somali-based terrorist group al-Shabab.<\/p>\n
When he signed up with the so-called Sharia Free America Caucus<\/a> in February, he railed against letting “anti-American ideologies take root in our communities” and said he had been fighting against the nonexistent threat of Sharia law since he was a state legislator. I was unable to find stories of Emmer as a state legislator fearmongering about Sharia law. However, in 2015, when one of Emmer’s fellow Republicans was being rightly rebuked for attending an anti-Muslim event in St. Cloud, Emmer was a voice of reason and tolerance. He wanted his constituents to know that Somali Americans were contributing to the Minnesota communities they had made home and that they were “some of the fastest-assimilating populations.<\/a>”<\/p>\n
That same year, Emmer joined then-Rep. Keith Ellison, the Democrat who’s now the state’s attorney general, to found the Congressional Somalia Caucus<\/a>: to help Somali Americans here and to promote peace and stability in Somalia.<\/p>\n
Now Ellison is taking the lead in legal challenges against the ICE assaults Emmer champions.<\/p>\n
This is the ticket into MAGA world: an embrace of abdication of decency and a necessary rejection of the spirit of welcome and tolerance one once held.<\/p>\n
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This is the ticket into MAGA world.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n
In April, a west central Minnesota event called “Understanding Immigration: A Community Conversation,” included Ayan Omar, a Somali American from St. Cloud, as a speaker. She works as equity director for the public schools and has been active in interfaith dialogues in the city.<\/p>\n
Omar spoke of coming to the U.S. as a child, learning English by watching “The Simpsons” and learning self-value by watching “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.” The message from Mr. Rogers, she said, was especially important because “I just wanted to cower and hide away because I stood out. Not only because I was a Somali-American refugee, but I was also poor.” It was learning about Frederick Douglass that inspired her to become a teacher.<\/p>\n
What she was describing was the process of her becoming more and more American. Countless other Somali Americans have had similar experiences. OEmmer knows that.<\/p>\n
And not so long ago, he wasn’t afraid to say it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Michael Tisserand<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Michael Tisserand is a Minnesota-based writer whose works include “Krazy,” a biography of cartoonist George Herriman, and Sugarcane Academy, a memoir of his family’s experiences of Hurricane Katrina. With support from a Guggenheim Fellowship, he is currently writing a book about Charlie Chaplin and “The Great Dictator,” for Oxford University Press.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n
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