Obama takes the fight to TRUMP COUNTRY

Homeland Security Investigations agents searched Rep. Ilhan Omar’s Washington home early Monday morning. The street was blocked off for hours.

The Justice Department said only that agents executed a “judicially authorized search warrant.” It hasn’t said what they were looking for, and no charges were announced.

Omar is on the ballot in 21 days. The Justice Department has long avoided overt investigative steps involving a candidate within 60 days of an election.

“For ten years, Trump has targeted me with baseless lies and smear campaigns,” Omar said.

“I will not be silenced.”

Last month, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin promised “something’s going to happen.”

Hours after the raid, Trump told reporters he had “nothing to do with it.” In the same breath, he called her “totally crooked” and said she “comes from a country that is a non-country.”

Hasan Piker called out the double standard. Piker called the Omar probe “nonsense,” said there’s more evidence to deport Elon Musk, and offered: “Make me DHS Secretary, I’ll do it.”

As for Trump having nothing to do with it: at a rally in Tennessee this weekend, he suggested “our people” were investigating her.

Ukrainian drones hit three data centers run by Yandex, the tech giant known as “Russia’s Google,” in four days. After Sunday’s strike in the Vladimir region, Yandex said the data center was shut down.

Ride-hailing, payments, food delivery and cloud services went down across Russia. Then Cloudflare data showed automated traffic from Yandex’s network falling to about 0.4% of its recent peak.

Zelensky took a victory lap at the Warsaw Security Forum on Monday.

“It suddenly became a little easier to breathe on many social media platforms,” he said. “There was less hate, less division, and fewer provocations. Because there were fewer bots.”

To be fair to the data, researchers say the Cloudflare numbers mostly reflect Yandex’s search crawlers, so the bot theory isn’t proven yet.

Lithuania’s prime minister isn’t waiting. Asked at the same forum how to protect elections from interference, Mindaugas Sinkevičius said allies should ask Zelensky to strike more data centers.

Then on Sunday, Trump announced an “ENERGY CEASEFIRE” between Russia and Ukraine, effective immediately.

“Both parties have agreed,” he wrote. “Do not break it!”

Zelensky told Axios it was “news for me.” Russia wasn’t any clearer. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov wouldn’t say whether Moscow had agreed, only that “contacts are ongoing.”

Zelensky says Russia hit a power plant in Kharkiv, a gas production facility and a civilian gas station after Trump’s post.

“It was clear that Putin does not read Truth Social,” Zelensky said.

Barack Obama cut a new ad for Scott Colom, the Democrat running for Senate in deep-red Mississippi.

“Mississippi, it’s time for a change,” Obama says. “That’s why you need to send Scott Colom to the U.S. Senate.”

Colom is the district attorney Joe Biden twice nominated for a federal judgeship. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, the Republican he’s running against, helped block it.

Semafor reports the campaign is running the spot statewide on digital and radio as part of a seven-figure buy.

He’s the underdog. Mississippi hasn’t elected a Democratic senator since 1982, and the last public poll, from Democratic pollster Data for Progress in August, had Hyde-Smith up 44 to 38.

That Obama is spending time there at all tells you how far the map has moved. Republicans hold 53 seats and Democrats need to flip four. Decision Desk HQ gives Democrats a 56% chance.

One party is sending Obama to Mississippi. The other is buying ads in the wrong Portland.

Elon Musk has given more than $276 million to Republican groups and his own super PAC since July. That makes him the biggest known donor of the midterms.

The biggest checks: $158 million to the Senate Leadership Fund, $76 million to his America PAC, $20 million to the House GOP’s super PAC, and $10 million to a PAC backing Ken Paxton in Texas.

His total this cycle is $366 million. He spent about $290 million in 2024 putting Trump back in the White House.

In May of last year, Musk said he planned to pull back on political spending. “I think I’ve done enough,” he said.

His spokesman’s explanation for the change of heart: the money gives Republicans “a fighting chance to defy history.”

At 4:55 p.m. on the Friday before a holiday weekend, the government told a federal judge it planned to cut down as many as 529 trees at East Potomac Golf Links, the public course in D.C. that Trump wants rebuilt into a championship venue.

By Monday, about 400 were already gone.

U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes had told the government to give notice before cutting more than 10. At an emergency hearing Monday, she ordered the cutting to stop.

“I’m furious,” Reyes told a Justice Department lawyer. “I trusted you all not to do precisely what you have done.”

“What has happened has caused the government to lose all credibility in this case,” she said.

But she’s just giving a warning for next time. “If that is violated by even two seconds, there will be contempt proceedings.”

It is well past time for consequences.