Federal Agents Conduct Search at Ilhan Omar's Residence in Immigration Probe

The takes

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  Adam Smith

  1723–1790, Scotland (the Scottish Enlightenment: Kirkcaldy, Glasgow, Edinburgh)

  Public Money, Private Glory, and the Peril of Political Justice

  When the treasury buys praise for rulers and the police knock at a legislator’s door, the impartial spectator must ask the same question: who really pays, and by what rules are they governed?

  I am told that the government has spent millions on advertisements promoting a president, and that these payments continue even after he has announced a distinct political enterprise of his own. In the same season, federal agents, armed with a judicial warrant and under the authority of the Department of Justice, have raided the home of a sitting legislator, reportedly in an inquiry concerning immigration paperwork. The two stories appear, at first sight, to belong to different worlds: one of flattering images and purchased applause, the other of stern officials and seized documents. Yet they are in truth but two faces of the same power, and must be judged by the same principles of justice and economy.

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  John Locke

  1632–1704, England (writing amid the Exclusion Crisis and the Glorious Revolution)

  Raids, Campaign Ads, and a Government Becoming Judge in Its Own Case

  When the same hand that wields the warrant also buys the praise, power is no longer held on trust but begins to slide toward usurpation.

  I am told that federal agents have entered a representative’s home under a “judicially authorized search warrant,” approved by the Department of Justice, in an investigation said to concern immigration paperwork; and, at the same time, that the government continues to pay for ads promoting the sitting president, even after he has announced some separate political vehicle of his own. I will not pretend to know more than this sparse record yields. Yet even these few facts are enough to raise a question that has followed princes and parliaments for centuries: is this power still exercised as a trust for the public, or has it begun to serve the particular advantage of those who hold it?

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  Niccolò Machiavelli

  1469–1527, Florence (republican secretary and diplomat, then exile, amid the Italian Wars)

  Raids, Ads, and the Arms of the Modern Prince

  When the same state that breaks down your door also buys your hero’s billboards, you are not watching chaos; you are watching a competition over who gets to wield the republic’s sword and speak in its name.

  The scene is plain enough. Federal agents raid the home of a sitting representative, Ilhan Omar, in Washington, executing what the Department of Justice insists is a judicially authorized warrant, part of an ongoing criminal investigation said to touch her immigration paperwork. On the same stage, the government continues to pay for ads promoting Donald Trump even after he declares his own political vehicle. One hand of the state knocks, the other flatters. You call this contradiction. I call it the normal condition of a republic whose factions have captured different nerves of the same body and are now testing how much they can make it twitch.

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