An ugly old white man (I can say it, I’m one of them) took a seat in the front row of an Ilhan Omar speech, and then jumped up, shouted something unintelligible, whipped out a syringe, and sprayed something unpleasant and bad smelling on her. Then he was promptly tackled.
That’s a metaphor for something — ineffectual, horrible person making a stink and trying to disrupt a democratic event. Even more appropriate is the response by Omar.
Omar continued to talk after the disturbance, commenting: “We will continue. These f****** a**holes are not going to get away with it.”
Exactly right. Say it!
“We’re going to keep talking … just give me 10 minutes. Just give me 10 minutes. I beg you,” Omar told a man, who appeared to be security. “Please don’t let them have the show.”
“Here is the reality that people like this ugly man don’t understand. We are Minnesota strong, and we will stay resilient in the face of whatever they might throw at us,” she continued.
“Everybody settle down. I’m going to finish my remarks. It is important for me to continue to lead my Democratic colleagues in demanding her (DHS Secretary Kristi Noem) resignation. And like I said, if she does not resign, we are going to introduce articles of impeachment.”
I like representatives who have a clear idea of what needs to be done, and Ilhan Omar has that power.
Whether it’s Ilhan Omar or Iran, it’s been interesting watching you pivot from skepticism and atheism toward an embrace of whatever religious extremism is endorsed by the progressive movement at the moment. I wonder where the herd will lead you next.
What “religious extremism” are you babbling about? There’s something wrong with your brain.
The clown’s name is Anthony Kazmierzcak. He is 55 years old. He has a history of right wing postings. He is now sitting in jail on third degree felony charges. It is not smart to assault somebody on camera.
My conspiracy theory. He knew he would be immediately arrested. He will go to prison. Somebody will set him up a Go Fund me account and he will walk out of prison wealthy.
sinuousrills, your strawmanning is obvious and boring.
@1. sinuousrills : What’s your view of Ilhan Omar being attacked here? Do you condemn her attacker who appears to be intent on causing her some injury at best? To condemn that violence likely motivated by ideological hatred? The attacker very probabbly isn’t progressive.
What’s your beef with PZ reporting on that (or Iran) exactly? Do you think he shouldn’t have mentioned this story and blogged about it and, if so, why?
I don’t see how religion is involved, much less extremism. Care to draw us a diagram sinuousrills?
Instead of running from him she went after him. I’m impressed.
Huge respect for Ilhan Omar here BTW.
@6. Recursive Rabbit : The man who attacked Omar was pretty extreme…
Every sentence you have ever wrote on here is a lie.
Including this one.
The progressive movement doesn’t endorse any religious extremism.
We and they oppose all religious extremism.
Drive by troll.
This troll just drops off some trash and then runs.
PZ, like many cognitively flexible, open-to-experience people., pivot to and embrace new interests, perspectives, activities. He did that when his focus shifted from squid to spiders. Personal agency does that, no need for a progressive or religious mind melt.
There was also an aggressive attack on Florida representative Maxwell Frost quite recently:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/25/congressman-maxwell-alejandro-frost-attack-police
This was also the second attack by right wingnuts on Democratic congresspeople in 3 days.
The Afro-Latino congressperson from Florida was attacked by a bigot in Utah who claimed that Trump was going to to deport him.
He got that wrong.
He was deported from Park city, Utah to a jail cell somewhere in Utah.
Most terrorist violence by a long ways in the USA comes from right wing fascists.
As they said in “Aliens,” “Why don’t we put her in charge?!“
I find it an interesting experience that I’ve been getting labeled an “extremist” by standing fairly still on my core values. It’s almost as if they’re angry I sincerely believe in anything other than personal convenience.
@11. Hemidactylus : Plus in Australia an Invasion day rally of progresive people was recently attacked with a home made bomb which luckily didn’t detonate :
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-01-28/authorities-investigate-alleged-perth-bomb-as-terrorist-act/106280668
Progressives are being atatcked and killed including politicians – but some seem to think we’re the extremists and problem somehow?
PZ in OP: “An ugly old white man (I can say it, I’m one of them)…”
We’re just glad your ugliness is only on the superficial exterior. That guy has ugliness down to his core.
Randy Fine. I could leave it at that alone, but here’s a link:
https://www.rawstory.com/randy-fine-ilhan-omar/
What a POS.
Ilhan Omar has more intelligence, greater morality, more courage and more caring for people than the orange pile of excrement and all his magat followers that keep slandering her.
NYT’s live posted fragmented details.
“a substance that smelled strongly of vinegar”
“A forensics squad was called to analyze the scene”
“The Minneapolis police identified the man accused of spraying Omar as Anthony J. Kazmierczak, 55.”
“He was arrested and booked into jail on suspicion of assault”
@1, so, if you think someone’s a religious extremist, that makes it OK to spray any unknown chemical on them? I suppose you’d have been fine with him throwing hydrochloric acid in her face as well. You’re not human, you’re a monster.
As a chemist who’s had to obsess about chemical exposure all my life, I am worried. Not everything that isn’t corrosive is safe for skin, eye, and inhalation exposure, or not slowly poisonous. Strong “unpleasant” odor of vinegar, of course it could be acetic acid (which is what’s in vinegar), but he wouldn’t be able to get hold of that. But, there are more that smell of vinegar and unpleasant things, I’ll have to look them up.
Next time, with the next democrat or protestor or “extremist” or “immigrant” or random POC just walking down the street, it will be dangerous or corrosive. The precedent’s been set. And, sinuousrills @1 will be very happy about that.
You don’t have to be chemist to be worried here.
Kim Jong-un killed his half brother with the VX nerve poison, sprayed in his face at a public airport.
The Russians have killed a lot of people this way.
They’ve used Ricin and Polonium-210.
The last incident was another neural poison.
This attack in Minnesota is a variant of the usual “white powder attacks”.
It is a terrorist tactic.
The spray could have been a VX nerve poison, a biohazard agent like bubonic plague or Ebola, methyl mercury which goes right through the skin, fentanyl, or a radioactive isotope. Or it could have been just vinegar.
The whole point is to keep the victims guessing until they either live or die.
…It’s almost as if they’re angry I sincerely believe in anything other than personal convenience.
Libertarians in particular have been pushing just that narrative since the Cold War: “ideology” is Bad, Dangerous and Evil, and is the cause of all the worst wars in history; any person’s idea or vision of a significantly better world than the one we’re in is “ideology” (which is Bad, Dangerous and Evil); and people should never work for any sort of “ideology,” but instead we should all be rational, selfish, profit-maximizing machines (“homo econimicus”) guided by the Magic Invisible Hand of “Market Forces” toward a laissez-faire capitalist paradise of “liberty” without responsibility.
So yes, Rabbit, they really do hate us, on ideological grounds, for having an ideology other than personal greed (and fear). Because according to their ideology, ideology is Bad, Dangerous and Evil.
I don’t think is necessary to invoke scenarios from spy novels. The rotting orange has been saying vile things about Ilhan for a decade now. I am surprised she doesn’t sue him for defamation, and endangering her.
The liquid in the syringe was an amber yellow color. It could be vinegar. The live footage of people gagging at the smell makes it appear that it’s something else, like fox urine. Dude seems pretty unhinged in general, but he isn’t some kind of Russian assassin.
“After questions had been raised about why the alleged act had not yet been labelled a potential terrorist incident”
The way things work in Australia is if a Muslim spits on the sidewalk its a terrorist attack. If a right wing neo-Nazi murders people he’s mentally disturbed. The fact that they are yet to use that excuse shows some progress is being made.
@ 2
He’s talking about the fact that Omar is Muslim and Iran is an Islamic theocracy. Evidently, you can’t be a true atheist/skeptic without wanting to see every Muslim shoved into a camp and ever Muslim-majority nation nuked into radioactive glass.
@ 22
Conservative grand pobah Russel Kirk insists that conservatism isn’t an ideology because it’s not utopian. Conservatives accept the world is shitty and unfair and that any attempts to correct injustice and inequality will inevitably lead to gulags or the guillotine.
@ ^.Akira MacKenzie .. Whilst nations like Denmark, Iceland and the Netherlands and others that regularly lead the list of worlds happiest prove that Konservative view is wrong.
.* See : https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/happiest-countries-in-the-world
Tethys @23, strong-smelling urine is a very good thought, as all urine is full of nitrogen compounds that are very unpleasant in high concentrations (they’re the rotting-fish smell.)
I must try to remember that the guy doesn’t have access to a whole chem lab: probably just household cleaners, hardware store chemicals, or mechanics’ chemicals. Could have concoted his own mix of concentrated white vinegar with a cleaning product containing a lot of ammonia (strong urine-like smell), or some such mix from automotive or other hardware store items.
These are still not safe chemicals for skin absorption or inhalation (not to mention, eye exposure), and, while probably not enough was sprayed on to do damage, chemicals are definitely weapons intended to cause harm. So, now that is a thing, and the chemicals will only get more dangerous as copycat MAGAs pick this up.
@1. sinuousrills again : “been interesting watching you pivot from skepticism and atheism toward an embrace of whatever religious extremism is endorsed by the progressive movement ..”
There’s been NO pivot here. PZ is still both an athiest and a skeptic.
Also, again, what “religious extremism” is endorsed by progressives here? Most of us – all of us (?) – still oppose Islamism and other forms of religious extremism – we just don’t consider all or even most Muslims to be extremists and terrorists because of them being Muslim – since they are NOT – anymore than we consider all Jewish people “well-posioners” and villainous Shylockesque bankers as was done in Shakespearian times because doing so is overgeneralising and demonising which is the trunk of all evil.
@20. garnetstar, #21 raven, #23 Tethys : I really hope they got a sample of that liquid and are doing toxicology tests and have interogated the suspect and determined what exactly was in that syringe and how he obtained it. Hope we find out.
Also thought from back in highschool chemistry class that vinegar was a form of acetic acid?
Couldn’t find any mor enews on what the substance was by goodglke search now but did find this :
Oh and yeah from same & my local radio news
Source : https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/ilhan-omar-attack-anthony-kazmierczak-brother-b2909613.html
So, reichwing hate and death threats including at the brother of the attacker and, no suprise zero empathy from the Stochastic Terrorist in Chief and puppet of Shadow POTUS Miller and demented sociopath.
Yeah, SteveoR @30, vinegar is 5% acetic acid in water plus flavorings.
I was thinking, to produce a very strong vinegar smell, of pure concentrated acetic acid, almost no water (which isn’t an incredibly dangerous acid, but is no fun), which has an overpowering vinegar smell that’ll knock you back. But then, of course, he couldn’t get hold of that, not having a chem lab.
The Majority Report w/ Sam Seder discussion “I Don’t Let Bullies Win” Ilhan Omar Squares Up To Fight Her Attacker After Years Of Trump’s Slander – 20 mins long.
garnetstar, not quite R34, and not starting from vinegar, but…
Doug’s Lab:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejYElsnAZ-w 85,388 views 26 Mar 2015
In this video, I make very concentrated acetic acid from sodium acetate and sulfuric acid.
CNN affiliate KARE11 – Forensics determine source of liquid
Hah, Reply Guy @33 strikes again, scouring the internet to misrepresent my posts just to show me wrong!
Did you purposely leave out, AGAIN, something I wrote? “Not having a chem lab”? The video you post is a chem lab. So, sorry, you struck out again.
Find something better to do with your time.
@21 raven
If VX was in that spray, recombined or otherwise, many people in that room (likely including the attacker) would have died quickly and violently.
It wasn’t VX.
Also, @33, do you really think that I need to be told that acetate and sulfuric form acetic acid? That any base’s reaction with a strong acid protonates the base? I’ve taught acid-base reactions and pH to undergrads for years. That reaction may be news to you, but who’s got the PhD here, you or me?
No, must try to one-up me any pitiful way you think you can. Find something else to obsess over.
@34. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain : Apple Cider Vinegar – thanks.
Confirmed by last night’s Colbert which had a segment on this here starting at he 5 mins 35 secs – 12 mins total – ICE Outrage Goes Viral | White House Blame Game | Ilhan Omar: Tough Under Pressure | Poo-tomac River