WITNESS: Annie Karni bears witness today!

THURSDAY, JANUARY 29, 2026

On the New York Times front page: For the second time this week, it seems to us that the New York Times might be headed in a new direction.

In a new, encouraging direction! Online, these headlines sit atop two (2) separate reports which appear on the front page of the paper's print editions:

Nervous Allies and Fox News: How Trump Realized He Had a Big Problem in Minneapolis

Attack on Omar at a Town Hall Followed Years of Trump’s Vitriol

Good lord! There you see the Fox News Channel cited on the Times' front page! That said, we direct you to that other report—to Annie Karni's lengthy report about President Trump's endless attacks on Ilhan Omar. 

In our view, Karni's report involves a major act of witness. That said, we also think that the New York Times has at least one more decision to make. 

Karni's report comes in response to Tuesday night's assault on Rep. Omar as she spoke at a town hall event in Minneapolis. In yesterday morning's report, we complained about the lack of background information in that initial report.

We acknowledged that we were doing so "reasonably or otherwise.". This morning, on the paper's front page, Karni performs endless witness with respect to Rep. Omar's life—and with respect to President Trump's never-ending unacceptable behavior.

Karni even addresses the ten-year "rumor" about Rep. Omar to which we linked you yesterday. As we told you yesterday, a disordered star on that same Fox News Channel has been endlessly pimping that rumor as part of the garbage and the swill he provides in prime time every night.

A frightening attack was made against Omar on Tuesday night—but who is Ilhan Omar? Before we show you some of what Karni has written, let's turn to the leading authority! You may not know these things:

Ilhan Omar

Ilhan Abdullahi Omar was born in Mogadishu, Somalia, on October 4, 1982, and spent her early years in Baidoa, in southern Somalia. She was the youngest of seven siblings. Her father is Nur Omar Mohamed, an ethnic Somali from the Osman Mohamud sub-clan of Majeerteen, a clan in Northeastern Somalia. He was a colonel in the Somali Army under Siad Barre, and served in the Ogaden War (1977–78). He also worked as a teacher trainer.

Omar's mother, Fadhuma Abukar Haji Hussein, an ethnic Benadiri, died when Omar was two. Omar was raised by her father and grandfather, who were moderate Sunni Muslims opposed to the rigid Wahhabi interpretation of Islam. Her grandfather Abukar was the director of Somalia's National Marine Transport, and some of Omar's uncles and aunts also worked as civil servants and educators. She and her family fled Somalia to escape the Somali Civil War and spent four years in a Dadaab refugee camp in Garissa County, Kenya.

Omar's family secured asylum in the U.S. and arrived in New York in 1995, then lived for a time in Arlington, Virginia, before moving to and settling in Minneapolis, where her father worked first as a taxi driver and later for the post office. Her father and grandfather emphasized the importance of democracy during her upbringing, and at age 14 she accompanied her grandfather to caucus meetings, serving as his interpreter...Omar became a U.S. citizen in 2000 when she was 17 years old.

And so on from there. 

We often suggest that you "pity the child." Today, we'll also suggest that you marvel at the child who's able to survive a personal history of this type—though always in an imperfect way—as Rep. Omar has done.

(We might also marvel at the family which helped her survive this ordeal.)

At any rate, that's a bit of background on Rep. Omar's life. Karni covers that personal history in her front-page report. Perhaps more importantly, she also reviews the recent history of President Trump's endless attacks on Omar.

Now for a bit of perspective:

In our view, the New York Times still hasn't addressed the basic question of our time. In our view, the Times has endlessly dodged that basic question. That question goes like this:

What does it mean—what can it possibly mean—when the world's most powerful person behaves in the way he does?

The news division had failed to center that behavior—and that question about that behavior—in its front-page reporting. In our view, the editorial board has persistently slip-slid away from that question, dating all the way back to the four or five years when a badly disordered Citizen Trump kept going on the Fox News Channel to spread false and grossly misleading claims about Barack Obama's place of birth.

In our view, the Times has persistently failed to address the central question of the age. The Times has also dogmatically refused to report and discuss the sorts of things which routinely occur on the highly influential Fox News Channel, our failing nation's most-watched "cable news" channel.

In our view, the Times has refused to bear witness down through these many long years. For today, we were especially thrilled by one part of what Karni reported.

We'll show you what we mean down below. For now, here's the start of Karni's report on the president's endless misconduct:

Attack on Omar at a Town Hall Followed Years of Trump’s Vitriol

As President Trump riled up a rally crowd on Tuesday night describing immigrants bent on harming and killing Americans, he singled out one person in particular as an example of a bad actor.

Foreigners coming into the United States, he told his audience in Iowa, “have to show they can love our country; they have to be proud—not like Ilhan Omar.”

The crowd booed. They recognized the name of the Democratic congresswoman from Minnesota, whom the president has demonized and dehumanized for years with racist and xenophobic attacks, venting that she should “go back” to her country, referring to her as “garbage,” and mocking her hijab by calling it a “little turban.”

In our view, the Times has never centered that sort of behavior in its front-page reporting. In fact, the paper routinely disappears the endless supply of bizarre statements and ugly claims the president routinely posts, in manic fashion, on his extremely strange Truth Social site.

In our view, the New York Times editorial board has never been willing to say that the president's endless behavior is completely unacceptable, full and complete total stop. Needless to say, it has never attempted to consider possible medical explanations for this absurd and yet endless misconduct.

In our view, the Times has never been willing to do those things, dating all the way back to the poisonous birther campaign. Today, though, Karni does an excellent job reporting the possible background to Tuesday's attack—reporting the president's conduct.

Three cheers for Karni and three more for her editors! Regarding the president's endless misconduct, the scribe bears such witness as this:

[I]t was difficult to see 'Tuesday's] attack as unrelated to Mr. Trump’s years of insults and slurs that for years have placed a target on Ms. Omar’s back.

At a recent cabinet meeting, the president referred to Ms. Omar as “garbage.” At a December rally in Pennsylvania, he complained that Ms. Omar “does nothing but bitch.”

He added: “Why is it we only take people from shithole countries?”

[...]

At the same time, Mr. Trump has targeted Somalis in general, saying, “I don’t want them in our country,” a refrain he began using during his first term when he would often whip up his rally crowds to cheer and chant for Ms. Omar to be sent back to the country where she came from.

We've omitted a paragraph concerning a financial attack the president recently lodged against Omar. It seems to us that Karni could have done a better job describing the sprawling problems with that attack.

That same baldly distorted financial attack is a never-ending staple of the ubiquitous agitprop now heard on the Fox News Channel. This afternoon, we'll post the paragraph we've omitted as part of a separate report.

We'll review that claim this afternoon. In the passage shown below, Karni reported the most recent example of ludicrous misconduct by President Trump with respect to Rep. Omar:

He has raged against [Omar] using violent language of the sort that can motivate extremists and provoke assaults such as the one that unfolded on Tuesday.

“Ilhan’s toughness in the face of a bully and in the face of threats is what pisses off people like Donald Trump,” Representative Greg Casar, Democrat of Texas, said in an interview on Wednesday.

Her response was so stoic that her political adversaries online used it to back up their conspiracy theory that the attack had been staged, a charge that Mr. Trump quickly leveled.

Ms. Omar “probably had herself sprayed, knowing her,” he told ABC News.

She probably staged the attack, the astonishing president said. In our view, the New York Times has never attempted to come to terms with the stunning disorder put on display by the president's trademark behavior.

On the whole, Karni did an excellent job reporting the sitting president's endless bizarre misconduct. We thought that part of her report was quite good—but we were thrilled to see her comes to terms, quite directly, with one ubiquitous part of the MAGA world's rumor mill:

For years, Mr. Trump has also helped spread the baseless conspiracy theory that she was married to her brother and residing in the United States illegally.

“She should get the hell out,” Mr. Trump said at his December rally in Pennsylvania. “Throw her the hell out! She does nothing but complain.”

The crowd responded by chanting: “Send her back! Send her back!”

That was inexcusable conduct as the president whipped up a crowd. Meanwhile, good for Karni and good for her editors! We refer to the way they dealt with that "baseless conspiracy theory."

In yesterday's report, we linked you to several fact-checks of that ten-year-old "rumor" and claim. Today, Karni and the New York Times simply dismiss it as "baseless." 

News orgs often avoid discussing claims like that for fearing of spreading them further. Given the frequency with which this claim is made within MAGA world, we think the Times took the better course today.

Meanwhile, if the Times had covered the Fox News Channel down through the years, the paper would have reported the fact that Greg Gutfeld persistently pimps that ten-year-old "rumor" on his gruesome prime time program. 

Yesterday, we linked you to the January 15 Gutfeld! program, in which this very strange "cable news" star, backed by a hapless quartet of hand-picked stooges, pretended that everyone agrees that this story is true but agrees not to talk about it. 

Gutfeld pimps this claim on a routine basis, cheered on by the corporate owners who pay him $9 million per year for the messaging service he renders.

In such ways, the nation's most-watched (by far) cable news channel spreads its corporate messaging across the fruited plain. In our view, the Times has never been willing to bear witness to this influential behavior—has never been willing to report and discuss what happens on this "cable news" channel.

On Tuesday, we linked to a surprising news report in which the Times described some recent conduct on the Fox News Channel. This morning, Fox News is named again, this time in the most prominent headline on the print edition's front page.

In our view, the Times has been withholding this sort of reporting over the course of the many long years. The Times would be providing a journalistic service—will be creating a type of "new morning"—if it sets its fears aside and engages in straightforward reporting about this largely ridiculous imitation of a news channel.

In short, it's time to come to terms with president's astounding misconduct. Beyond that, it's time to stop pretending that the Fox News Channel doesn't exist.

Full disclosure! Some of the work on the Fox News Channel has been more accurate than the corresponding work from Blue America's news orgs. 

Blue America needs to know that. It's time for Blue America's major newspaper to report that reality too.

At any rate, Annie Karni began bearing witness today. We hope the Times keeps it up.

Why does President Trump behave that way? When will the New York Times ask?

This afternoon: Rep. Omar's (wholly unknown) net worth