'In the now-viral video, we see a young white man in a gray long-sleeve shirt standing up in a crowd and shouting a question: "Will you disavow the Muslim Brotherhood?" He aimed his question at Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed at a town hall event in Caro, Michigan, on Saturday. From the stage, El-Sayed met it with steely resolve. "Why are you asking the question?" he replied. "What are you implying?"' But all was not as it seemed. Tommy was a plant.

Marisa Kabas: 'The Handbasket is first to report that Tommy is Thomas Teepell, who, according to his X and Facebook profiles, currently lives in Detroit. Teepell served as Operations Director for Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley until February of this year, according to Legistorm. [...] Tommy's father is Timmy Teepell, a Republican strategist who worked for congressman and then Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal from 2004 to 2011; he also ran Jindal's ill-fated presidential primary campaign in 2015. [...] What brought the younger Teepell to the small town of Caro and his viral moment with El-Sayed? An October 2nd story in the University of Michigan student newspaper, The Michigan Daily, revealed that a conservative PAC called America Next offered College Republicans $200 to travel to an upcoming El-Sayed town hall in Flint to "boo" him and ask him inflammatory questions—hoping to spark embarrassing viral moments for the candidate.'

"Feds" raid Ilhan Omar's home in effort to deport her. Federal agents seized the phone of Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., when they searched her Washington, D.C., home this week as part of a federal investigation into potential immigration-related crimes, and they have sent roughly a dozen subpoenas out in the case, according to two people familiar with the investigation.

The possible charges cited by federal officials included conspiracy and making false statements in immigration paperwork, one of the people said. The search came just three weeks before the midterms, within the window of time when the Justice Department has typically avoided overt actions in criminal cases that could affect an election. And the seizure of the phone of a sitting member of Congress would typically trigger a set of law enforcement protocols meant to ensure investigators aren't infringing upon the "speech or debate" clause of the U.S. Constitution, which protects members of Congress from being questioned for their legislative acts. On Friday, roughly a dozen subpoenas were sent out in the case, including to her family members, the second person familiar with the investigation told NBC News. WSJ: The Trump administration's investigation into Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) is aimed at building a case to strip her of her U.S. citizenship and ultimately deport her, according to U.S. officials and other people familiar with the probe. ... The Trump administration has made an unprecedented effort to denaturalize U.S. citizens by proving they lied in the process of obtaining citizenship, filing dozens of lawsuits. Omar's case, if it proceeds, could become the highest-profile—and most controversial—part of that effort. The president has long called for Omar's deportation, using her as a rallying point for the GOP's anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim wings. On Monday evening, an Ohio audience Trump was speaking to chanted "deport" after he talked about Omar and other Somalis. "They cheat on everything," he said. "We're not going to stand for it." Omar, 44 years old, has long been a top target for GOP-led investigations. A welfare-fraud scandal in Minnesota—heavily tied to defendants of Somali descent—has added fuel to the fire. At the center of the immigration investigation is whether Omar or her father changed her age on her citizenship application to show she was 17 years old rather than 18, according to people familiar with the probe. If Omar was 17 at the time her father applied for citizenship, she would have qualified automatically rather than needing to pursue her own immigration process. She became a citizen in 2000. Officials at Homeland Security Investigations looked into a similar tip under the Biden administration, according to people familiar with those efforts, but they decided not to move forward because they lacked evidence of fraud. The government can't simply strip a person of their U.S. citizenship. The Justice Department must file a lawsuit in federal court and prove that the person lied in a material way to gain their citizenship. Most of the cases the Justice Department has filed this term haven't yet been decided. One thing that I find somewhat conspicuous is that in any of the reporting I have read so far, the actual authority of the agents raiding her home has not been named. It is always "feds" or "federal agents." Not that it makes a huge difference, but I would very much like to know if those are FBI, DOJ or ICE agents. Regardless, this is extremely explicit weaponization of the criminal justice system for nakedly political ends, and represents a significant development in our ongoing Constitutional crisis.

The U.S. plans to livestream an execution. Here's how that compares to global practice. (CBC News)

Amnesty International weighs in. Medieval' and 'disturbing' (The Guardian) US to livestream Fort Hood shooter's execution: Is that legal (Al Jazeera) Somewhat potentially related Imposing Sanctions on the International Criminal Court (US Department of State)

From the NYT: "In the latest sign that artificial intelligence is fueling higher health care costs, a group of insurers released a report Thursday claiming that hospitals' use of A.I. was responsible for nearly $1 billion in additional expenses over two years."

(Archive link.) From the report: "Patients often fell into a higher-cost billing category after a secondary diagnosis, a condition identified in addition to the patient's primary reason for receiving care. This secondary diagnosis may be derived from single laboratory values, making it particularly well-suited for detection by AI tools. Approximately 70% of the additional costs, more than $650 million, were tied to secondary diagnoses."