Representative Ilhan Omar began to fear for her life as soon as the evacuation began.
She had watched from a balcony as a mob of insurrectionists invaded the US Capitol on 6 January, incited by the president of the United States. As she was escorted to a secure area, she made a phone call to her ex-husband, the father of her children.
“I didn’t know if I would make it out that day and [I] just … made a request to him to make sure he would continue to tell my children that I loved them if I didn’t make it out.”
Omar, the Democratic congresswoman from Minnesota’s fifth district, a famed member of the progressive movement, and the first Somali American elected to Congress, has long endured threats and racist abuse from Donald Trump and his supporters. But it’s clear, during an interview with the Guardian on Zoom, that the events of 6 January have left a lasting and unique trauma.
She takes long pauses as she recalls the details.
“It was a very traumatizing experience, and all of us will be traumatized by it for a really long time,” she says. “The face of the Capitol will forever be changed. They didn’t succeed in stopping the functions of democracy, but I do believe they succeeded in ending the openness of our democracy.”
Omar says she was evacuated to a secure location usually reserved only for senior congressional leaders. She says law enforcement believed “my life was at risk in the same way that congressional leadership’s life was at-risk” - citing a significant uptick in death threats in the two months before the presidential election, but adding: “For the better half of the last two years, the president has singled me out and has incited direct death threats against my life.”
The 38-year-old who was first elected in 2018, was placed in the same room as the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and the Republican Senate leader, Mitch McConnell, along with other senior figures from both parties.
“Leaders from both sides seemed to be terrorised by what was taking place,” she says. “I don’t think any of them ever expected to be witnessing an insurrection against our government. And I think that watching the response from the president was completely unsettling for them as well … I think the fear of what we were dealing with grew and you could see that in the faces of all of them.”
The day after the mob violence, Omar was among the first House Democrats to draft articles of impeachment, which were eventually voted through (with only 10 Republicans siding), marking a historic second impeachment of the former president. She is now urging the Senate to begin trial proceedings as top Republicans look to stall the process into next month.
Although Omar is talking through Zoom but it’s clear she is distinctly uneasy as she remembers the events of 6 January, a marked contrast to her affable demeanor on the occasions we have spoken in the past. Is she still in a state of shock?
“I don’t know if I would use the word shock,” she says. “I would say it all feels exhausting.”
She levels this exhaustion not just at Trump but at the many Republicans who have essentially continued to support the former president by voting against impeachment or to challenge the 2020 election result.
“There’s a set of expectations in functioning as a part of a long-existing democracy, and to have allowed a president to degrade our traditions and norms, make a mockery of our laws, our constitution and oaths of office. And then to still deal with people who are ‘two-siding’ every conversation, who don’t have an ability to understand the gravity of what we are dealing with … is pretty exhausting.”
Omar attended Joe Biden’s inauguration on Wednesday in a city under partial military lockdown following the insurrection. Like other colleagues in the progressive caucus of the party, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, she had endorsed Bernie Sanders in the Democratic presidential primary and did not always pull her punches when criticizing Biden’s primary run.
Nonetheless, she expresses resolute optimism about the next four years and beams when discussing Biden’s first 48 hours in office, in which he has rescinded the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline and rejoined the Paris climate agreement.
“There are things we’ve all been fighting for the last couple of years and to see a lot of that get done in the first day makes us all feel very optimistic and excited about what’s to come,” she says. “You know there will be plenty of time for us to disagree and fight some of our policy differences, but at the moment, as a progressive and as Whip of the progressive caucus, most of us are pretty pleased.”
Still, she drifts back to reflections on the events of 6 January and worries about what she believes is potentially irreparable damage to the democratic process.
“It dawned on me that my reality and the reality of many of the people who have served with both in the Minnesota house and in Congress is forever going to be shaped by these events,” she says. “In a free democracy, where we thrive on vigorous debate and discussion, without resorting to violence, [that] was no longer going to be part of our reality and that is truly shocking and disturbing and unsettling.”