He Knows Nothing:Stepping up his attacks on four Democratic freshmen members of Congress, President Trump yesterday renewed the rumor that Minnesota’s Ilhan Omar was married her brother in an act of immigration fraud. Trump told reporters before leaving the White House yesterday, “There’s a lot of talk about the fact that she was married to her brother. I know nothing about it.”

  It’s straight out of the Joseph McCarthy book of unfounded slander.

  Omar, who was born in Somalia, is the first Muslim woman to serve in Congress. She has a complicated personal history that includes marriage to two men under both Muslim and US civil law. The rumors about being married to her brother have dogged her since she first got into Minnesota politics. Last week, Minnesota Republicans opened a digital billboard campaign and launched a website highlighting the accusations.

 They are good at promoting the question and short on providing proof.

 The story appears to have originated in a Somali online publication, claiming that the second man Omar married was her brother. No proof has been offered that the man is her brother, but Omar has never offered proof that he isn’t — in this country, at least until recently, she doesn’t have to.

First Attempt:The House yesterday killedan attempt to impeach President Trump for racist statements he’s made during the past week, bringing “ridicule, disgrace and disrepute” to his office. Demonstrating a developing split in the Democratic majority, 95 Democrats supported the measure while 137 were against it. 

  A growing segment of House Democrats wants to take on Trump more directly.

The resolution said the President has “brought the high office of the president of the United States in contempt, ridicule, disgrace, and disrepute, has sown seeds of discord among the people of the United States, has demonstrated that he is unfit to be president, and has betrayed his trust as president of the United States to the manifest injury of the people of the United States, and has committed a high misdemeanor in office.”

  By the way, a USA Today poll says 65 percent of Americans think telling someone to “go back where you came from” is racist.

  The overall vote in the House was 332-95 vote to table the impeachment article drafted by Democratic Rep. Al Green of Texas. 

  Trump tweeted, This is perhaps the most ridiculous and time consuming project I have ever had to work on.”

  That’s interesting, because the impeachment effort barely lasted a couple of hours.

Terminally Ill:The health reform known as Obamacare was administered a potentially fatal amputation yesterday when the house voted to get rid of a tax on high-cost private healthcare plans. The tax was intended to help keep a lid on healthcare costs as well as subsidize the rest of the plan.

  Republicans and unions hated the tax so the House voted nearly unanimously yesterday to get rid of it, potentially ballooning the federal deficit by another $200 billion over the next 10 years.

Cancelled: The US has cancelled sales of the new F-35 fighter jet to Turkey because the Turks are buying a new surface to air missile defense system from Russia. It’s a serious deterioration in relations between two countries that have been stanch allies.

Unplanned:Embroiled in the increasing fight over legal abortion, Planned Parenthood this week suddenly pushed out its president appointed only last fall because she appeared to be steering away from the organization’s primary mission — planning for having babies and healthcare for pregnant women.

  Dr. Leana Wen, who was appointed only eight months ago, was promoting such things as care for women with asthma even as states were more restrictive abortion laws. It appears that Planned Parenthood wants to be led by someone who’s more of a fighter for abortion rights.

  On her departure Wen issued a statement saying, “The best way to protect abortion is to be clear that it is not a political issue but a health care one.”

The News Roundup:A man spread flammable liquid around an anime studio in Tokyo yesterday, igniting a fire that killed 20 people inside. — Prosecutors yesterday dropped the charges against actor Kevin Spacey, who was accused of groping an 18-year-old man at a Nantucket, bar in 2016. The complainant, who’s now 21, stopped cooperating. — The Mexican drug lord known as “El Chapo” was sentenced to life in a US federal prison. The man who made two clever escapes from Mexican prisons has a good chance of being sent to America’s highest-security human storage vault in Florence, Colorado. He blew a kiss to his wife in court. — In the midst of the opioid crisis, some good news: drug overdose deaths in the US dropped 5 percent last year, the first decline since 1990.

A Plan for That:A few days ago we noted that Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren’s talent for having a plan for everything  inspired a genre of Twitter jokes 

  Undaunted, Warren keeps making plans. She said,  “I’ve got a plan to make sure that no president is above the law: Pass a law clarifying Congress’s intent that the Department of Justice can indict the President of the United States. If you agree, sign our petition now.”

 Sounds like a plan.

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