Federal agents raided the home of a sitting member of Congress and seized her phone — and the same Republicans who spent years howling about the weaponized DOJ are now cheering it on. That should stop you cold.

DHS investigators searched Rep. Ilhan Omar's Washington-area home on Oct. 12 as part of a criminal probe into her immigration history. According to Fox News, citing sources, the investigation relates to possible immigration fraud involving paperwork her late father filed when she was a child. The Associated Press reported that authorities seized Omar's phone and that a Minnesota grand jury has issued more than a dozen subpoenas, including to relatives. The Justice Department confirmed agents "executed a judicially authorized search warrant."

Here is the problem: that phone almost certainly contains legislative work product — communications with aides about votes, committee hearings, drafting legislation, conversations with constituents and legal experts. The Constitution's Speech or Debate Clause makes that material absolutely immune from executive scrutiny, with few exceptions. The founders adopted those protections for a reason: to prevent the executive branch from using law enforcement to punish or coerce legislators. Politico reported that even in this hyperpolarized era, that principle has united Democrats and Republicans.

Until now, apparently.

House Republicans have publicly cheered the Trump administration's investigation. But underneath the posturing, as Politico noted, the raid raises "thorny nonpartisan questions about how aggressively Congress wants to defend itself from encroaching federal prosecutors." Speaker Mike Johnson has not weighed in on the Speech or Debate implications. The House's official legal positions are set by the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group, which has sometimes drawn unanimous agreement on speech-or-debate issues.

There is direct precedent. When the FBI seized Rep. Scott Perry's phone in 2022, House leaders of both parties demanded access to the sealed proceedings. In 2023, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Minority Whip Katherine Clark joined GOP leaders in backing a 36-page brief by House General Counsel Matthew Berry demanding protection for materials seized from lawmakers' phones. Sen. Marsha Blackburn is currently suing former special counsel Jack Smith over his subpoena of her phone records.

So where are those voices now?

Omar called it "the latest escalation in his campaign of political intimidation." D.C. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro stated flatly: "If there was a crime that was committed, it will be prosecuted." Maybe a crime was committed. Maybe it wasn't. That is not the point. The point is that when federal law enforcement can walk into a sitting congresswoman's home and walk out with the device that carries her legislative business, every member of that body — and every citizen they represent — has been stripped of a constitutional protection the founders considered essential.

The same Republicans who rightly screamed about the DOJ targeting Perry, about Jack Smith's overreach, about the FBI's politicized raids, cannot go silent just because this time the target is a Democrat they despise. The Speech or Debate Clause does not care about party. The Fourth Amendment does not pause for partisan convenience.

If Congress does not act to protect its own constitutional prerogatives now, it will have conceded that the executive can raid any one of them, at any time, for any reason — and the only question is who's next.