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ilhan omar
'Not Another Penny for Another Endless War,' Ilhan Omar Says as Trump Seeks $200 Billion
One advocacy group leader highlighted that "$200 billion is enough to materially change the lives of Americans," from establishing universal pre-K education to building over 100,000 housing units.
Mar 19, 2026
As US President Donald Trump on Thursday confirmed reporting that he's seeking $200 billion more from Congress to continue waging his unpopular war of choice on Iran, Rep. Ilhan Omar was among those forcefully pushing back.
"We're told there's no money for universal healthcare or to end hunger in this country. But somehow $200 billion more for war will likely move through Congress without question," said the progressive Minnesota Democrat, who fled civil war in Somalia as a child. "Not another penny for another endless war."
Since Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu started bombing Iran late last month—creating a spiraling crisis that has now killed and injured thousands of people across the Middle East, plus damaged civilian infrastructure in multiple countries—anti-war lawmakers and organizations have delivered similar messages.
"While they kick 17 million Americans off their healthcare, Republicans want to spend billions on Trump's reckless war of choice," Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said in early March. "Hell no."
Last week, shortly after Pentagon officials told Congress that just the first six days cost Americans more than $11.3 billion, over 250 groups collectively told lawmakers on Capitol Hill to "vote against any additional funding for Trump's unconstitutional war."
At the time, the reported figure was a quarter of what it is now: $50 billion. The coalition noted that the funding "would be enough to restore food assistance for 4 million Americans that was taken away in the tax and budget reconciliation bill, establish universal pre-K education, and pay for the annual construction of more than 100,000 units of housing, among other possible priorities."
After Trump confirmed that he wants four times more than expected, one coalition member, the Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) Policy Project, took to social media to highlight other ways the money could be spent to improve the lives of working Americans, from school meals and paid leave to funding all levels of education.
Another coalition member, Public Citizen, released a Thursday statement in which co-president Robert Weissman ripped Trump's spending request as "grotesque beyond words."
According to Weissman:
It should properly be understood not just as a request to replenish supplies, but to expand, escalate, and perpetuate the illegal, unconstitutional, unpopular and devastating war on Iran. Congress should understand that approving any portion of this funding opens the gates for one, two, and potentially many more war funding requests in the future.
How dare the administration propose this gargantuan sum to expand an illegal war of choice at the same time it has rammed through deep cuts in healthcare and food assistance, refuses to spend foreign assistance at a cost of millions of lives, and has cut spending on protecting clean air, maintaining our national parks, investing in health research, protecting consumers from fraud, and so much more.
$200 billion is enough to materially change the lives of Americans and truly make our country stronger. It would be enough to restore food assistance to the 4 million Americans and Medicaid to the 15 million Americans who will lose those crucial supports under the Republican reconciliation bill; establish universal pre-K education; pay for the annual construction of more than 100,000 units of housing; double the budget of the Environmental Protection Agency; and expand Medicare to cover dental, vision, and hearing.
Weissman argued that "every member of Congress should announce, right now, that they will reject this monstrous war funding proposal, before it is formalized."
Despite rising casualties across the Middle East and polls showing that the US assault on Iran is unpopular, even with Trump voters, a few Democrats voted with nearly all Republicans in the Senate and House of Representatives earlier this month to reject war powers resolutions intended to end Trump's Operation Epic Fury. The upper chamber blocked a similar effort late Wednesday.
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Omar Condemns Trump Oil Blockade of Cuba as 'Cruel and Despotic' Regime Change Ploy
"Innocent civilians will pay with their lives to force regime change," warned US Rep. Ilhan Omar.
Feb 12, 2026
US Rep. Ilhan Omar on Wednesday condemned the Trump administration's oil blockade against Cuba as part of an "economic war designed to suffocate an island" and force regime change, a longtime goal of Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other right-wing American officials.
"The US oil blockade on Cuba is cruel and despotic," Omar (D-Minn.), the deputy chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, wrote in a social media post as fuel and food shortages and public health outcomes in Cuba continued to worsen due to the Trump administration's ramping up of the decades-long strangulation of the island nation's economy.
Omar, who visited Cuba along with other progressive lawmakers in 2024, warned that "innocent civilians will pay with their lives to force regime change," and called for the immediate lifting of the US blockade, which most of the international community views as illegal.
Omar's demand came after the Wall Street Journal reported that "children are being sent home from school early, people can barely afford basic food like milk and chicken, and long lines have sprung up at gas stations" as the Cuban people reel from the Trump administration's decision to deprive the country of oil from Venezuela—previously Cuba's largest supplier—and threaten economic retaliation against any nation that sends fuel to the Caribbean island.
"The last oil delivery to the country was a January 9 shipment from Mexico, which has since halted supplies under US pressure," the Journal noted. "President Trump’s executive order on January 29 called Cuba 'an unusual and extraordinary threat' and warned of new tariffs for any country that supplies oil to the island. The new measures go on top of a comprehensive set of US sanctions on Cuba that began in the early 1960s."
One Cuban, 36-year-old Raydén Decoro, told the Cuba-based Belly of the Beast that "the future is extremely uncertain, but something has to happen, somehow, because we’re the ones suffering the most."
"Electricity is impossible to get, food is getting more and more expensive," said Decoro. "Right now, fuel is only available in dollars, and inflation keeps rising."
Earlier this week, Omar joined other progressives in the US House in introducing a resolution calling for the annulment of the Monroe Doctrine, an assertion of US dominance of the Western Hemisphere that the Trump administration has openly embraced and expanded.
The resolution, led by Reps. Nydia Velázquez (D-NY) and Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.), calls for "the termination of all unilateral economic sanctions imposed through executive orders, and working with Congress to terminate all unilateral sanctions, such as the Cuba embargo, mandated by law."
“This administration's aggressive stance toward Latin America makes this resolution critical," said Velázquez. "Their 'Donroe Doctrine' is simply a more grotesque version of the interventionist policies that have failed us for two centuries."
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'This Occupation Has to End!' Omar Argues After Homan Says Most Agents Will Stay in Minnesota
"Every single ICE and CBP agent should be out of Minnesota," the congresswoman said. "The terror campaign must stop."
Feb 04, 2026
President Donald Trump's "border czar," Tom Homan, announced Wednesday that 700 immigration agents are leaving Minnesota, but with around 2,000 expected to remain there, Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, whose district includes Minneapolis, declared that the drawdown is "not enough."
As part of Trump's "Operation Metro Surge," agents with Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have invaded multiple Minnesota cities, including Minneapolis and Saint Paul, and committed various acts of violence, such as fatally shooting Alex Pretti and Renee Good.
In a pair of social media posts about Homan's announcement, Omar argued that "every single ICE and CBP agent should be out of Minnesota. The terror campaign must stop."
"This occupation has to end!" she added, also renewing her call to abolish ICE—a position adopted by growing shares of federal lawmakers and the public as Trump's mass deportation agenda has hit Minnesota's Twin Cities, the Chicago and Los Angeles metropolitan areas, multiple cities in Maine, and other communities across the United States.
In Congress, where a fight over funding for CBP and ICE's parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, is playing out, Omar has stood with other progressives in recent votes. The bill signed by Trump on Tuesday only funds DHS through the middle of the month, though Republicans gave ICE an extra $75 billion in last year's budget package.
During an on-camera interview with NBC News' Tom Llamas, Trump said that the reduction of agents came from him. After the president's factually dubious rant about crime rates, Llamas asked what he had learned from the operation in Minnesota. Trump responded: "I learned that maybe we can use a little bit of a softer touch. But you still have to be tough."
"We're really dealing with really hard criminals," Trump added. Despite claims from him and others in the administration that recent operations have targeted "the worst of the worst," data have repeatedly shown that most immigrants detained by federal officials over the past year don't have any criminal convictions.
Operation Metro Surge has been met with persistent protests in Minnesota and solidarity actions across the United States. Jaylani Hussein, executive director of the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said Wednesday that "the limited drawdown of ICE agents from Minnesota is not a concession. It is a direct response to Minnesotans standing up to unconstitutional federal overreach."
"Minnesotans are winning against this attack on all our communities by organizing, resisting, and defending our constitutional rights. But this moment should not be a victory lap," Hussein continued. "It must instead be a call to continue pushing for justice. The deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti at the hands of federal immigration agents remain uninvestigated, and communities and prosecutors alike have raised grave concerns about violations of their oaths and the Constitution. This is not the time to pull back, it is the time to deepen our resilience, increase our support for one another, and keep fighting for our democracy and accountability until justice is served."
The Not Above the Law coalition's co-chairs—Praveen Fernandes of the Constitutional Accountability Center, Kelsey Herbert of MoveOn, Lisa Gilbert of Public Citizen, and Brett Edkins, of Stand Up America—similarly said that "Tom Homan's announcement that 700 federal immigration agents will be withdrawn from Minnesota is more a minor concession than a meaningful policy shift."
"The vast majority—approximately 2,000 federal agents—remain deployed in the state, and enforcement operations continue unabated," the co-chairs stressed. "This token gesture does nothing to address the ongoing terror families face or the constitutional crisis this administration's actions have created."
“The killings of Minnesotans demand real accountability," they added. "Families torn apart by raids and alleged constitutional violations deserve justice. Real change means the complete withdrawal of all federal forces conducting these operations in Minnesota, full accountability for the deaths and violations that have occurred, and congressional action to restore the rule of law. The American people deserve better than political theater when constitutional rights hang in the balance."
On Tuesday, the state and national ACLU asked the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination to "use its early warning and urgent action procedure in response to the human rights crisis following the Trump administration's deployment of federal forces" in the Twin Cities.
"The Trump administration's ongoing immigration enforcement operations in Minnesota are being carried out by thousands of masked federal agents in military gear who are ignoring basic constitutional and human rights of Minnesotans," said Teresa Nelson, legal director of the ACLU of Minnesota. "Their targeting of our Somali and Latino communities threatens Minnesotans’ most fundamental rights, and it has spread fear among immigrant communities and neighborhoods."
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