Olson: GOP Sen. Jim Abeler broke ranks to defend Somali Minnesotans. Will anyone join him?

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Thank you, Sen. Jim Abeler.

While on vacation in the Florida Panhandle last week, the Anoka Republican senator broke ranks and was moved to speak up in defense of Minnesota’s Somali community.

“I woke up on Thursday morning inspired, maybe by the Lord, to write the president,” Abeler said in an interview Monday.

Last Tuesday after a Cabinet meeting with media present and cameras rolling, Trump tore into Minnesota’s Somali community in stunningly racist, nativist and xenophobic language, saying he wanted them to “go back to where they came from” and calling them “garbage.”

“These are people that do nothing but complain,” Trump said. “We don’t want them in our country. Let them go back to where they came from and fix it.”

But not now, and certainly not under Trump. His cabinet members were complicit, carrying forth and amplifying the vitriol across media channels through the weekend.

It’s not just words. The hostility is intentional and highly exploitative. Trump chose to target the Minnesota Somali community for immigration enforcement at a time that the 80,000-member community is already fighting stereotypes and the drag from the stigma of the Feeding Our Future fraud.

Although DFLers responded swiftly to rebuke the president, reaction from Minnesota Republicans has been tepid to nonexistent.

Republican House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, the highest-ranking member of Minnesota’s House delegation, might have used his lofty perch to defend the St. Cloud-based Somali community he represents.

He did so back in 2015 during a town hall in St. Cloud, saying Somali immigrants were “some of the fastest-assimilating populations.”

Republican legislators in St. Paul were asked last week about Trump’s comments.

House Speaker Lisa Demuth, R-Cold Spring, managed to state the blindingly obvious, that no community is uniformly bad or good.

Demuth wants to be Minnesota’s next governor, the first woman and person of color to ascend to the position. She’s seeking Trump’s endorsement.

But at what cost?

Sen. Eric Pratt, R-Prior Lake and a candidate for Congress, did a little better. “It wasn’t said the way that I would have said it,” he said of Trump’s words. “But what I will say is, I share the president’s frustration in the amount of fraud and corruption that’s effectively gone on in the state.”

As Abeler watched his fellow DFL and GOP senators exchange letters about doing and saying what’s right, he went to the source.

“Part of what I’m trying to do is tone down the rhetoric,” he said. “Everybody just keeps ramping it up.”

Abeler, who barely won re-election in 2022, doesn’t have many Somali residents in his district. Emmer represents him in Congress.

Abeler said he’s an optimist and believes that if Trump could share a hot dish, sit for an hour or two with the wonderful Somalis he knows, the president would see things differently.

“How hard is it to say they’re not garbage?” Abeler asked, but added that he’s not trying to answer that question for anyone.

The heartfelt one-page note poured out quickly, Abeler said. He didn’t publicly distribute the letter; others have done so and thanked Abeler, including his Senate floor seatmate, Sen. Omar Fateh, DFL-Minneapolis.

In response, Abeler said he’s received dozens of supportive emails from around the world. He isn’t reading the online trolls or critics, and he has yet to hear from Trump. (The White House also didn’t respond to a request Monday from the Minnesota Star Tribune.)

“I hope he calls,” Abeler said. “I don’t think he knows the people that I know, and my request was sincere.”

Whatever response may come from Trump, Abeler’s accepting of it and mindful of the words he’s heard repeatedly from his pastor: “It’s never wrong to do the right thing.”

What would it take for other Republican leaders to join Abeler in denouncing Trump’s dehumanizing language that eerily evokes Adolf Hitler referring to Jews as vermin? Would self-interest be a good reason?

“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist,” he began. In the end, Niemöller said they came for him and because he had spoken for no one, there was no one to speak up for him.

Bullies don’t stop until someone stands up to them. “Can one person make a little bit of a difference? That’s what I’m trying to do,” Abeler said.