Thursday, July 16, 2026
Wednesday, July 15, 2026
Todd Blanche, Trump’s Attorney General Pick, Faces Crucial Hurdle After Rocky Hearing - The New York Times
Blanche Faces Crucial Hurdle After Rocky Hearing
"Even a single Republican “no” vote would block Mr. Blanche’s nomination from consideration by the full Senate, which could sink his confirmation.
The fate of Todd Blanche’s nomination as attorney general remained uncertain on Wednesday after a rocky confirmation hearing in which a Republican senator raised serious questions about his role in creating a $1.8 billion fund for purported victims of Justice Department persecution.
The senator, John Cornyn of Texas, who was defeated by a Trump-backed opponent in a primary election, grilled Mr. Blanche about the fund and a related agreement granting President Trump and his family sweeping immunity from tax investigations.
Mr. Cornyn, a former judge, displayed text of the tax provision on a poster behind him and noted that Mr. Trump “has not agreed in writing” to nixing the fund.
After the hearing, he said he had not made up his mind. “I don’t have to make a decision now, so I’m not,” he said during a brief interview at the Capitol.
Even a single Republican “no” vote on the Judiciary Committee would block Mr. Blanche’s nomination from consideration by the full Senate, which could sink his confirmation. A second lame-duck Republican on the committee, Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, is also undecided but has said he is leaning toward voting “yes.”
Mr. Blanche’s confirmation is somewhat symbolic. He could serve in an acting capacity for the remainder of Mr. Trump’s term. But the referendum on Mr. Blanche is in a broader sense one on the president’s vision of the department as a projection of his power and extension of his will.
The unusual two-part deal approved by Mr. Blanche, intended to resolve Mr. Trump’s lawsuit demanding at least $10 billion from the Internal Revenue Service over the leak of his tax returns, emerged as a major issue in a confirmation already clouded by questions about Mr. Blanche. As a top Justice Department official, he has had a role in protecting the president’s interests in the Jeffrey Epstein case and complying with Trump-ordered investigations of political opponents.
It is not clear when the committee will schedule a vote. First, Republicans must find a replacement for Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican whose death over the weekend cast a shadow on the proceedings.
Mr. Blanche, a former Trump defense lawyer, has served as acting attorney general since the president fired his predecessor, Pam Bondi, in April for not moving quickly enough to prosecute his perceived enemies.
transcript
“Did you talk to the president about the settlement? He originally sued for $10 billion and settled for an apology. And this weaponization fund, and then the release of future liability for tax audits. Did you discuss it with him?” “No — he had outside counsel. I did not discuss it with his outside counsel, either. It was done by other people in the office.” “And — this was a lawsuit brought —” “Can I qualify that?” “Sure.” “After — when we determined not to move forward, as the president has said, that’s the only time that he and I had any conversations about this at all was after when it was dead. When we said we’re not moving forward.” “And this lawsuit was brought against the I.R.S. and Treasury, yet this release purports to — apply to defendants or other agencies or departments. So does this release apply to let’s say, an investigation by the Security and Exchange Commission or some other federal agency?” “No that’s the standard language that we use when we enter into settlements between plaintiffs and the I.R.S. But no, it doesn’t bind. It’s issued by me because statutes require and authorize me to do that as opposed to other cabinet members. And in this case, it binds only the I.R.S. and by extension, the Treasury.” “Well, I hear what you’re saying, but I certainly don’t read that in the agreement.”
Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, questioning Todd Blanche.
Defying a president’s choice for such an important position would be an extraordinary gesture of defiance, even from a senator, like Mr. Cornyn, on his way out.
Justice Department officials have expressed confidence that Mr. Blanche will, ultimately, have the votes in the committee and the Senate at large. After he concluded his appearance, he walked back to a legislative conference room where the din of cheers and applause could be heard through an open door.
It would be the capstone of a career that a few years ago seemed destined to be confined to the middle rungs of the New York-area legal community.
Before joining the president’s legal team a few years ago, Mr. Blanche earned a reputation as a highly competent federal prosecutor in the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office. Democrats turned that perception against him.
Senator Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and a former federal prosecutor whom Mr. Trump has targeted for prosecution, accused Mr. Blanche of abandoning his ethical principles to serve his boss.
“What happened to the Todd Blanche who was a prosecutor in the Southern District of New York?” he asked. “What happened to the prosecutor people had respect for?”
Mr. Blanche, riled up, demanded the right to respond. “I am still here — I am the same exact person I was when I was a federal prosecutor,” he said, adding that his personal credo was “do the right thing, enforce the laws and put bad guys in jail.”
Mr. Blanche, typically a cautious and well-prepared congressional witness, made a significant unforced error that could fuel Democrats’ criticism of him as a Trump loyalist who has continued to act as the president’s personal lawyer in a post that requires a commitment to independence in the public interest.
Senator John Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican known for his folksy asides, asked Mr. Blanche what seemed to be a softball question: Did he consider the president to be his friend?
“I’m his lawyer,” Mr. Blanche replied, instantly correcting himself to add “was his lawyer.”
transcript
“I’m his lawyer — was his lawyer, and now I’m the Deputy Attorney General. So I met him as his criminal defense attorney. I’m not sure there’s very many people who have ever had a criminal defense attorney who calls that person their friend. I now have a —” “Well, let me put it this way: Are you enemies? No, we’re not enemies at all. No.”
Mr. Blanche answering a question from Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana.
When Senator Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat, asked Mr. Blanche whether Mr. Trump was eligible to run again in 2028, Mr. Blanche replied, “I don’t believe he is.”
Later, under questioning from a Democrat on the committee, Mr. Blanche maintained that he was unafraid to push back against Mr. Trump and prided himself on offering dispassionate legal counsel.
“Counsel does not mean yes-man,” said Mr. Blanche, craning forward in the witness chair in a dark navy suit.
Mr. Blanche put a bit of distance between himself and Mr. Trump on the issue of judicial impeachments. He said he did not believe that federal judges should be removed for issuing rulings against the president or the administration, a position counter to the one Mr. Trump has boisterously embraced.
Mr. Blanche said he personally authorized the subpoenas that the Trump administration issued to New York Times journalists over reporting on the insufficient defenses of an airplane donated by Qatar that was retrofitted to serve as Air Force One.
“We’re not targeting reporters — they’re material witnesses, just like a reporter would be a material witness to a car crash,” Mr. Blanche said, adding, “The question we want to ask them is who provided them with classified national security information.”
Mr. Blanche’s comments came in response to questions from Senator Peter Welch, Democrat of Vermont, who emphasized that it was “extremely important to protect the right of the press to have confidential sources.”
Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the committee chairman, sought to fend off criticism of Mr. Blanche in his opening statement, calling investigations of Mr. Trump during the Biden administration an attack on the rule of law.
Senator Richard J. Durbin, the top Democrat on the committee, cast Mr. Blanche as a partisan actor. He said the department had charged James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, “for taking pictures of seashells,” referring to an image of shells arranged on a beach as “86 47” that the Justice Department said constituted a threat against the president.
That elicited scattered laughter in the spectators gallery.
Mr. Blanche was pressed repeatedly on his views about Mr. Trump’s mass clemency for his supporters who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, a presidential action that Mr. Tillis has identified as a potential justification for voting “no” on the nomination.
He trod a gingerly path, dodging the question of his personal feelings about it, saying he was not “celebrating” pardons of about 200 violent rioters while asserting Mr. Trump’s right under the Constitution to pardon whomever he chose.
Mr. Blanche distanced himself from Jared Wise, a Jan. 6 rioter who served on Mr. Blanche’s staff before resigning this year, and whom Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, cited in his questioning. “I did not hire the person referenced,” Mr. Blanche said.
Mr. Blanche was, in general, less voluble and more decorous in his responses than Ms. Bondi, whose reliance on clunky, prepared attacks on Democrats contributed to her dismissal. But he did bare his teeth several times.
After Mr. Whitehouse asked how long he intended to “put up with that Kash Patel character” as F.B.I. director, citing reports of Mr. Patel’s lavish government-funded travel and the use of agents to guard his girlfriend, Mr. Blanche shot back with, “That’s an extraordinarily obnoxious question.”
He became particularly angered when Senator Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey, grilled him about arrests of Mr. Trump’s political adversaries, allegations of ethical impropriety regarding his public appearances and how he had handled aspects of the case against Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted of working with Jeffrey Epstein to sexually exploit underage girls.
“You can ask the questions, but you cannot control my answers,” Mr. Blanche said.
What made the hearing, with all its predictable partisan sniping, different was the acute and persistent questioning by Mr. Cornyn, who arrived in the Senate in 2002 — a year before Mr. Blanche graduated Brooklyn Law School, taking night classes while working as a paralegal.
Mr. Cornyn immediately zeroed in on Mr. Blanche’s refusal to put on paper claims that the $1.8 billion fund was dead, noting that Mr. Trump, as a plaintiff in the lawsuit, had also not signed any document saying it had been killed.
Mr. Tillis was notably less adversarial. But he echoed Mr. Cornyn’s concerns about the fund and said he wanted “to stick a fork in it” by passing a bill to kill it once and for all. Senate Republicans largely rejected a previous effort to use legislation to bar such taxpayer-funded payouts to Jan. 6 defendants and others.
He seemed reassured with the answers he got from Mr. Blanche, suggesting that some of his concerns about the department’s support of Jan. 6 rioters had been allayed.
“You’ve done a great job today,” Mr. Tillis said at the end of his questioning.
Mr. Cornyn also believed that Mr. Blanche did a good job. But he appeared skeptical about his capacity to balance the department’s needs with the president’s demands.
“It’s a very difficult position to be in, as I also said, to be the president’s personal lawyer and then to end up being a member of the cabinet,” he told reporters.
Karoun Demirjian, Andrew Duehren and Carl Hulse contributed reporting.
Glenn Thrush covers the Department of Justice for The Times and has also written about gun violence, civil rights and conditions in the country’s jails and prisons.
Devlin Barrett covers the Justice Department and the F.B.I. for The Times.
Michael Gold covers Congress for The Times, with a focus on immigration policy and congressional oversight.
Alan Feuer is a reporter for The Times who covers the effects President Trump has had on the courts, the Justice Department and the broader rule of law."
Tuesday, July 14, 2026
ICE Shot Lorenzo Salgado Araujo Through Open Passenger Window in Houston, Witnesses Say - The New York Times
Witnesses Say ICE Fired Fatal Shot Into Open Passenger Window in Houston
"A congresswoman and a lawyer relayed witness accounts that diverge from Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s version of the fatal encounter.
The shot that killed a man during an Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation last week in Houston was fired into the front passenger side window, according to a local congresswoman and a lawyer who spoke with witnesses who were in the vehicle.
The precise moment of the shooting of the man, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, 52, remains unclear in video evidence obtained by The New York Times. But witnesses gave firsthand accounts to Representative Sylvia Garcia, a Democrat who represents part of the Houston area, and Ruby Powers, a lawyer representing the victim’s younger brother, who was the front-seat passenger.
Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was driving to work at a construction site with his brother, Victor Hugo Salgado Araujo, and two other passengers when ICE agents began tailing them.
Victor Hugo Salgado Araujo and Daniel Tirado Pantoja, a fellow construction worker, spoke at length this weekend to Ms. Garcia at a detention center about Lorenzo Salgado Araujo’s last moments, on Canal Street in Houston. Ms. Powers spoke with her client, Victor Hugo Salgado Araujo.
The ICE agents did not identify themselves as they approached the van shortly before 7 a.m. on Tuesday after it slowed on Canal Street, Ms. Garcia said.
It is unclear from available video whether ICE agents identified themselves.
The Times obtained footage from earlier in the pursuit — roughly 2.5 miles north of Canal — where the ICE vehicles had flashing emergency lights on. But footage from Canal Street shows no emergency lights were activated during this portion of the events.
Ms. Garcia said, according to her conversations with both men, that after the van came to its final stop, an agent fired a single shot through the lowered front passenger window, striking Mr. Salgado Araujo.
Mr. Salgado Araujo then got out of the van before agents pulled him to the ground, Ms. Garcia added. He died shortly after.
Victor Hugo Salgado Araujo gave his account of this moment to Ms. Powers, his lawyer. He told her that he heard a man on foot yell “Stop!” as he approached the front passenger door of the van on Canal Street. Then the man fired a single shot through the front passenger window, Ms. Powers said.
After Mr. Salgado Araujo was struck, his brother described seeing him in pain and clutching his back, Ms. Powers said.
The brother emphasized, Ms. Powers said, that the men inside the van did not know that law enforcement officials were chasing them.
Victor Hugo Salgado Araujo told Ms. Powers that the van contained only tools and work items. “A cooler, and water and Gatorade,” she said.
All three passengers are undocumented Mexican nationals who had been living in the United States for decades, according to Hugo Balderas-Ibarra, a lawyer for two of them.
The agents had been searching for two other people, including a Guatemalan man they believed was inside the van, when they began trailing Mr. Salgado Araujo, according to two people with knowledge of the investigation who were not permitted to speak about the case. Neither target was in the van. ICE has said that the agents and vehicles involved were not equipped with cameras.
The shooting is one of a growing number of encounters in which immigration agents have fired at civilians during enforcement operations. More than 20 people have been shot at since September, nearly all while inside vehicles, and several have been killed. On Monday, an ICE agent shot a man dead in Biddeford, Maine.
In the Houston encounter, it is difficult to say whether the available video footage from Canal Street, which is low resolution and shows only a partial, obstructed view of the interactions, captured when the fatal shot was fired.
A video filmed by a camera at a nearby gas station shows the moment the van comes to a final and complete stop. One of the side doors opens, and movement is visible on the passenger side of the van. It’s unclear if the source of movement is an agent, someone in the vehicle or both.
Seconds later, the footage shows one agent next to the front passenger side door moving his right arm toward his hip.
The agent then steps toward the van, pointing an object in his right hand in the direction of the vehicle. It is unclear what this object is, or whether it is a weapon. There is also no visible indication of any firing or discharge, but the view is obscured by a telephone pole and passing vehicles.
With legs spread apart, the agent appears to lower his right hand back to his hip as he pulls open the front passenger side door with his left hand. He appears to struggle for several seconds to return the object to his hip.
ICE said in a statement on Monday that agents had tried to pull over Mr. Salgado Araujo’s vehicle as part of a “targeted enforcement operation” and that an agent fired in “self-defense” after Mr. Salgado Araujo “weaponized his vehicle.”
Last week, the agency said that Mr. Salgado Araujo had rammed an ICE vehicle, had not followed orders and had tried to run over an officer, but it has presented no evidence to back up its claims.
The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that it was investigating the shooting, and that the F.B.I.’s Houston office is “leading an investigation into the potential assault on a federal law enforcement officer.”
Ms. Garcia said the accounts of ICE and the two detained witnesses with whom she spoke are “almost like a different event.”
“They both said — and I visited with them independently — that none of them in any way touched, struck or contemplated even approaching the officers because they were inside the car,” she added.
The third witness in the van, José Trinidad Rojas, declined to speak to the congresswoman, but Mr. Balderas-Ibarra, the lawyer representing him and Mr. Pantoja, said that what Ms. Garcia had heard was consistent with what his clients had told him.
Mimi Dwyer contributed reporting. Dmitriy Khavin contributed video production."
Maine ICE Shooting: What We Know About the Death of Joan Sebastian Guerrero - The New York Times
Maine ICE Shooting: What We Know About the Death of Joan Sebastian Guerrero
What We Know About the ICE Shooting in Maine
A federal immigration agent shot and killed a man in a car on Monday morning in Biddeford, Maine. It was the second fatal encounter in a week involving an agent and a person in a vehicle.
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An Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed a man in a vehicle on Monday morning in Biddeford, Maine. It was the second fatal episode in a week, as the Trump administration continues its immigration crackdown, and the latest in a string of encounters between agents and people in cars.
The man was identified as Joan Sebastian Guerrero, according to Matthew Felling, a spokesman for Senator Angus King of Maine.
The Homeland Security Department said in a statement on Monday that ICE agents had been monitoring what they believed to be the residence of someone who was in the country illegally and for whom they had a removal order.
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It was unclear from the department’s statement whether Mr. Guerrero was the person agents had been seeking.
Video recorded early on Monday and posted to social media showed agents surrounding a body next to a car with bullet holes in the windshield.
“I heard agony,” said Mary Hayes, a local resident, who said she saw a screaming woman on her knees, next to a young girl. “I heard a howl that came from your soul, that your whole life had just changed and it was never going to be the same.”
Here’s what we know:
Witnesses heard gunfire early Monday morning.
On Monday morning, agents tried to stop a vehicle that had departed from the residence they were monitoring, D.H.S. said in its statement, which came nearly 12 hours after the shooting.
“The vehicle attempted to flee the scene and, fearing for public safety, an officer discharged his weapon,” the statement continued. The driver was struck and died from his injuries.
In a separate communication received by some members of Congress, the department used more pointed language, saying the driver had “weaponized his vehicle toward law enforcement.”
As of Monday evening, no video evidence confirming the government’s version of events had emerged.
People who live nearby reported hearing gunfire at an intersection at around 7:15 a.m. Several reported seeing a body on the ground next to a car.
Biddeford’s congresswoman, Chellie Pingree, a Democrat, said in a phone interview on Monday that “we have gotten reports that ICE officers shot through a car window, and the individual in the car was killed.”
Immigration officials have said little about the victim.
Though Mr. King’s office named Mr. Guerrero as the victim, the D.H.S. statement did not.
Three advocacy groups released information about the victim in the shooting but did not name Mr. Guerrero. In a joint statement, the Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition and Presente! Maine, identified him as a 26-year-old Colombian man. A third group said he had a partner and a young child. The source of the advocates’ information was unclear, and could not be immediately confirmed with the authorities.
The embassy of Colombia said in a statement on Monday that it was assisting the family of a Colombian national who had died in Biddeford. The embassy said it was also requesting information from D.H.S. “regarding the circumstances surrounding this lamentable death.”
Mr. King, an independent, said on Monday that he had spoken with Markwayne Mullin, the homeland security secretary. Mr. King said that Mr. Mullin had told him that the man had been the target of an arrest warrant “based upon his immigration status.”
But Mr. Felling, the senator’s spokesman, said later that Mr. Mullin called the senator again and told him the driver had not been the target of any warrant. “He said they were looking for someone, essentially, and the person they shot was not the person they were looking for,” Mr. Felling said.
Officials are demanding a full investigation.
Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat, said in a statement that the State Police and other agencies were consulting with federal officials to “determine the facts of what occurred this morning.”
Senator Susan Collins, a Republican, called for a “full and impartial investigation.”
“We will get answers, but we do not have them yet,” said Liam LaFountain, the mayor of Biddeford, who also pushed for an investigation.
This is the second death in a week involving an ICE agent firing into a vehicle.
Amid a national surge in immigration enforcement, a federal agent last week shot and killed another individual in a vehicle: Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Mexican man who died after a traffic stop in Houston.
Mr. Salgado Araujo, a construction worker and father of three who had lived in the country for more than 30 years without legal status, was not the initial target of the officers who pursued his vehicle, according to immigration officials.
The Houston and Maine killings add to a growing list of encounters between immigration agents and people in vehicles.
About 20 people have been shot at in their cars, some of them fatally. Federal officials have in several cases claimed that the agents’ actions were justified because their lives had been endangered by “weaponized” vehicles. Witnesses of the Houston shooting said that Mr. Salgado Araujo had not used his vehicle as a weapon.
As in the shooting of Mr. Salgado Araujo, it appeared that federal agents were not wearing body cameras on Monday, Mr. King said. So “we have no video evidence of what occurred in this case,” he added.
Shootings involving federal immigration officers
The list includes people who were fired upon during immigration enforcement activities in President Trump’s second term. U.S. citizens are noted with an asterisk.
Note: Data includes all shootings involving on-duty federal immigration agents that have occurred in the interior of the United States since January 2025.
Immigration arrests are on the rise nationwide.
Daily arrests of immigrants in the United States doubled in the last week of June and have continued to increase, signaling a reinvigoration of the president’s crackdown after a spring slowdown.
Immigrants make up about 5 percent of Maine’s population and have helped prop up the state’s economy, hampered by its aging population. Over the years, Maine has welcomed waves of refugees fleeing conflict in the Middle East and several African countries.
In January, ICE detained hundreds of immigrants in the state during an enforcement surge the agency called “Operation Catch of the Day” — a reference to Maine’s commercial seafood industry.
Now, locals say agents have returned, making frequent appearances in Biddeford in recent months. Biddeford, a working-class city of roughly 22,000, contains a growing community of Latin American immigrants.
Talla Fall, who is originally from Senegal, lives near where the shooting took place on Monday. ICE agents have been in the neighborhood “every day, every week,” he said.
Reporting was contributed by Jacey Fortin, Heather Beasley Doyle, Miriam Jordan, Hamed Aleaziz, Christina Morales, Aric Toler, Allison McCann, Soumya Karlamanglaand Murray Carpenter."
Monday, July 13, 2026
Sunday, July 12, 2026
Trump’s Posts on Singing Somali Schoolchildren Stir Anger in Minnesota
Trump’s Posts on Singing Somali Schoolchildren Stir Anger in Minnesota
“President Trump reposted a video of Somali American kindergarteners in hijabs, sparking outrage in Minnesota’s Muslim and Somali communities. This act, part of Trump’s ongoing attacks on the Somali community, was condemned as targeting children and normalizing anti-Muslim hate. Critics highlighted the hypocrisy of Trump’s stance on religious discrimination, noting his selective concern for certain groups.
The state’s large Muslim and Somali communities expressed indignation after the president reposted a video of a kindergarten promotion ceremony, including comments noting the girls were in hijabs.
The posts nearly slid by in President Trump’s chaotic social media feed this week, lost in a jumble of boasts about the economy and pictures of Washington landmarks dressed in their Fourth of July best.
But there they were, a video of Somali American kindergartners in blue caps and gowns during their promotion ceremony at their St. Paul, Minn., school, and again the same video punctuated by a comment from an anonymous right-wing account called “End Wokeness”: “Every girl is in a hijab… in kindergarten.” In the 14-second video, the children are singing an upbeat Somali educational song.
If Mr. Trump’s sharing of the video posts did not cause much national furor, they sent shudders through Minnesota’s large Muslim and Somali communities, whose members expressed indignation that the president was again vilifying them, and disbelief that he was doing so by targeting children.
“This was a red line,” said Khalid Omar, a community organizer with the interfaith group Isaiah and Faith, based in St. Paul. “Children who are just celebrating, and wanting to look like their mothers — forget about the hijab — who are just children enjoying themselves, seeing their families, singing. For him to go after those children, it’s awful, it’s dangerous, it’s inhumane, it’s wrong.”
For more than a year, Mr. Trump has relentlessly attacked Minnesota’s Somali community in a series of xenophobic tirades. He has disparaged Somali immigrants as “garbage” who should “go back to where they came from.” He has portrayed their children as a burden on schools. And he has demonizedRepresentative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, a Somali-born Democrat, including by mocking her hijab as a “little turban.”
Seizing on a welfare fraud scandal that was concentrated among Minnesota’s Somali community, his administration launched an immigration crackdown, threatened to cut federal child care funding and started investigations that a judge found were intended to “harass and retaliate against” Democratic officials in the state.
Even after all of that, Mr. Trump’s posts to his nearly 13 million followers on Monday still struck a particular nerve.
“He is a bigoted bully,” said James J. Zogby, the president of the Arab American Institute. “He picks on vulnerable people — women, immigrants — but picking on 5-year-olds, it’s so low, even for him.”
Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, declined repeated requests for comment on the president’s posts. Instead, she defended his previous statements about Somali schoolchildren burdening Minnesota’s public schools.
“President Trump is right,” Ms. Jackson said. “Aliens who come to our country, complain about how much they hate America, fail to contribute to our economy, rip off Americans and refuse to assimilate into our society should not be here. And nothing about that is racist.”
National civil rights organizations and state leaders added to local activists’ condemnation of the posts over the course of the week.
“I am no longer surprised when Donald Trump uses his platform to provoke attacks on Black, brown, or immigrant communities — but I am always disgusted,” said Keith Ellison, the state’s attorney general.
But on the other side, messages supporting Mr. Trump’s postings — in overwhelmingly racist, Islamophobic and anti-Muslim terms — also grew.
In response to the posts, Mr. Trump’s followers called the students “future terrorists” and said the children wearing hijabs were a “disgrace.” They called on him to “deport all Muslims” and to ban Islam. One account with more than a million followers declared that Mr. Trump had exposed a “terrifying reality” and that America was being “conquered.”
This is not the first time Mr. Trump has targeted Somali children.
In April of last year, Mr. Trump said: “You have states like Minnesota, where the school systems are collapsing under the weight of the refugee children, especially from Somalia.”
In November, he bemoaned “a vibrant beautiful community in Minneapolis, gone.”
“It’s not recognizable,” he said. “You have children that are going to school that don’t speak a word of English, they don’t speak a word of anything, and the teachers, they cry themselves to sleep.”
Mr. Trump has long used his social media account to amplify racist imagery and vilify immigrant groups. When he posted a racist video depicting former President Barack Obama and the former first lady Michelle Obama as apesthis year, the backlash was so swift and bipartisan that Mr. Trump removed the post. (He refused to apologize and blamed it on an aide).
This week, Mr. Trump also posted a doctored image of the Obamas waving from Air Force One, which had graffiti that included the acronym “BLM” and Arabic writing. When he speaks about the former president, it is often using his middle name, Hussein.
Some critics of the posts noted that Mr. Trump has made combating anti-religious bias, particularly against Christians and Jews, a cornerstone of his second term. His recent posts, they said, make it clear that concern seems to apply only to certain groups.
State Senator Zaynab Mohamed, a Democrat who is the youngest woman ever elected to the Minnesota Senate and its first female Muslim member, said she did not believe that Mr. Trump would have posted the video if it showed any other religious group.
“Imagine if these kids were children who were wearing yarmulkes,” she said. “Imagine the reaction people would have. We would all be angry because we should be, because they are just as American as anyone else. And these kids who are wearing a hijab are just as American as the child who goes to a Catholic school that wears a particular uniform.”
National advocacy groups that have tracked the rise of Islamophobia said Mr. Trump’s posts were part of a trend of normalizing anti-Muslim hate and demeaning rhetoric that has led to violence and could lead to more.
A poll conducted last year by the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding found that 63 percent of Muslims reported experiencing religious discrimination. And 47 percent of Muslims with children in grades K-12 reported that their children had been bullied for their religious identity in the past year, about twice the rate of the general population. Nearly half of the Muslim families whose children had been bullied said it was by an adult.
“This is the context within which Muslims have been living in the United States for a long time,” said Dr. Saher Selod, the director of research at the institute. “The bar has just been lowered so much in terms of what people can and cannot say about Muslims. We’re waiting for everyone to recognize how dehumanizing this is.”
Imam Yussuf Abdulle, the director of the Islamic Association of North America, which oversees more than three dozen Islamic centers and groups across the country, said that after the “garbage” comment, his young children asked him of Mr. Trump: “Baba, are we OK? What did we do to him? Does he hate us?”
He now knows the answer.
“Our president is not sparing the most vulnerable of our community,” he said. “There’s no mercy for us in his heart.”
“What could make you happy, if not a kindergarten graduation?” he added. “If that makes you angry, there is no happiness left.”
But on that day, he said, the students captured the hope that the community still clings to in the United States.
The song, “I Am a Student,” speaks to cultural pride, educational success and collective responsibility.
I am a student, I am a student
I am the flower (hope) of this nation
I strive, I strive, I go to schools
So that I may repay the debt I owe my father and mother
With all the effort I bring, O Allah, help me, amen, amen
O Allah, support me, amen, amen
I am a student, I am a student, I am the light of the dawn
I run, I run, I go to take exams
So that I may gain knowledge, and benefit my country
With all the effort I bring, O Allah, help me, amen, amen
O Allah, support me, amen, amen.
Ernesto Londoño contributed reporting from Minneapolis.
Erica L. Green is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Trump and his administration.
Dylan Freedman is the A.I. projects editor for The Times, investigating a range of topics. He has experience as both a reporter and a machine-learning engineer.“
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