Why I am running against Ilhan Omar: America as we know it will cease to exist

I was a young journalist when I immigrated to the U.S. in 1993.

Growing up in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, the idea that I would one day run for office in America never occurred to me.

But I took my oath of U.S. citizenship seriously, which also meant becoming part of America’s rich cultural fabric and giving back to the country I am lucky to call home.

I moved to Minneapolis from Washington, DC in 2019 and I fell in love with the Twin Cities.

You would be hard-pressed to find more open, friendly, and hopeful people.

And yet, most Minnesotans would tell you that Minneapolis was in decline long before the COVID-19 lockdown and the George Floyd riots that engulfed the city in 2020.

Those lockdowns and riots peeled back the curtain on many of the dark forces at play within America.

Suddenly Hollywood, the financial sector, and academia were tripping over themselves to promote social justice causes like Black Lives Matter, an outwardly Marxist and antisemitic organization.

Those who resisted were condemned as racist.

All lives didn’t matter as vogueish fads like identity and intersectionality – rather than intelligence or intent – were suddenly all that really mattered.

Few proved better at harnessing these grievances than my congresswoman, Ilhan Omar, a Black, female, Muslim, immigrant—the Holy Grail of intersectionality.

As our city burned in the aftermath of George Floyd, she led the charges to defund the police, which she saw as the pathway to justice for those she considered  “oppressors.”

I should point out that I have the same intersectional resume as Omar except I am an Arab, while she considers herself “brown.”

But that is not the only key difference between us: Whereas Omar speaks out against core American values, I love America and see identity politics as a toxic effort at tearing our country apart. 

When I announced my decision to run as a Republican against Ilhan Omar for Minnesota’s Fifth Congressional District, my focus was squarely on kitchen table issues: the economy, crime, and education.

My thinking was clear and necessary: Rather than legislate effectively, Omar has been more like an absentee landlord who fails to represent the needs of her district.

Put simply: We deserve better. 

Omar has also been remarkably ineffective.

Most legislation she sponsors is designed to kneecap our long-time allies.

Meanwhile, she’s often the lone congressional voice backing despots like Hamas-supporting Turkish tyrant Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Last year, Hamas-hosting Qatar paid for Omar’s trip to the World Cup in Doha where she continues her cozy relationship with that duplicitous regime.

She’s consistently worked to provide Iran a free hand in its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

Meanwhile, Omar may take pride in her attempts to address the opioid crisis but she still voted against the Secure the Border Act that would keep drugs off of our streets.

She’s called on Biden to declare a “climate emergency,” which would authorize the president to bypass Congress to install the financially reckless Green New Deal.

She seeks to fundamentally transform America at home—using Minneapolis as the nation’s crash test dummy.

Put simply once again: We deserve better. 

In recent weeks I’ve come to see my campaign not just as a vehicle for promoting Minnesota, but as an essential effort to protect the American dream from regressive cultural forces.

This shift resulted from the Hamas-led massacre against Israel on October 7th.

Before Israel had even finished burying its dead, there were pro-Hamas demonstrations in cities across America.

It is unfathomable that 12 hours after George Floyd died, hundreds would gather to wave confederate flags and scream “White lives matter.” 

So unfathomable that It didn’t happen.

Yet, those who find racism lurking under every stone have made one excuse after another to call for the destruction of Israel.

I attended the solidarity rally for the Jewish people held in our district a few days after the attack by Hamas.

Then I flew to Israel to show our support in person.

Omar not only skipped the solidarity rally but while I toured burned and blood-soaked communities near Gaza, she voted against the U.S. House resolution condemning Hamas for its atrocities.

That’s when I realized the evil genius of Ilhan Omar.

The Palestinian nationalist movement she so loudly champions touts the same type of intersectional orthodoxy Omar has long believed.

In this rewriting of history, Jews are white colonialists and oppressors – Palestinians are blameless victims exiled from a land they relentlessly call their own.

It’s all connected and all must end.

Back in 2020, police officers were seen as oppressors and the only progressive solution was to dismantle their forces.

And so their ranks were reduced and guess what: After declining in 2018 and 2019, violent crime surged in Minneapolis in 2020 and 2021 – by nearly 20%.

Similar illogical thinking propels progressives like Ilhan Omar in their quest to denounce American values and replace them with extremism and discord. 

I’ve witnessed unspeakable horrors in my decades of reporting on and from the Middle East.

But never have I seen such a full-throttle embrace of a noxious belief system that justifies barbaric acts of savagery.

And Omar is this system’s chief cheerleader.

I’m running for Congress because if we don’t confront and dismantle this way of thinking, America as we know it will cease to exist.

Dalia al-Aqidi is the Executive Director of the American Center for Counter Extremism and Republican Candidate in Minnesota’s Fifth Congressional District.