Ilhan Omar's childhood paperwork draws a federal raid and the right's own concession it changes no votes.

…(cont) Here's what I've got written down, more or less, off the wire and off the DOJ's own statement: agents in HSI jackets went through Ilhan Omar's house Monday morning, on a warrant a judge signed. Nobody's arguing that part. What they were there for, according to CBS, is paperwork — not last year's paperwork, paperwork her father filled out when she was a kid, whatever a family fills out coming into this country in whatever year that was. That's the file under investigation.

I've got a shoebox on the shelf above my workbench with every title and registration going back to a Buick I don't even own anymore. There's a form in there I know I filled out wrong, in a year I couldn't tell you offhand. If somebody in a jacket came up my porch steps tomorrow with a warrant for that shoebox, I expect they'd find something. I don't know what. I'm saying there's probably something, the way there probably is in most shoeboxes, most garages, most families that have been filling out forms for forty years.

So I asked the people who'd know, and the Daily Caller — not exactly her corner on a good day — told me the part I actually needed, which answers my own question better than I could: even if this paperwork case goes all the way, even if she's deported over it, every vote she's cast on that floor stays exactly where it was. The acts stand. Nothing about the record moves. I wrote that down twice because I didn't believe it the first time.

Which is what I need the favor on. If the floor record doesn't change — if nothing she's done as a sitting member of Congress gets touched no matter which way the paperwork case comes out — what does Monday morning change? Common Dreams has this raid landing after years of Trump and other Republicans saying, out loud, more than once, that they wanted her deported. Did the warrant come after those years of saying it, or before? The timeline's right there if somebody wants to check it; I did, and it comes after.

I drove the Buick through the toll plaza this morning. The transponder's been iffy since spring, and I always brace a little going through, waiting on the red light, somebody somewhere deciding to open a file on four dollars and an E-ZPass. Nothing happened. It never does. That's the whole arrangement at a toll plaza — you go through, the gate lifts, and the record just sits there, closed, not doing anything to you one way or the other.

Hold on, actually — one more thing, before you put this down. The investigation is into paperwork from when she was a child. The outcome, by the Daily Caller's own account, leaves every vote she's cast as a grown woman in Congress exactly where it was. So whatever Monday morning was about, does the floor record, by their own word, stay undisturbed?