After a tough summer at the ballot box for members of the so-called “Squad,” the group of progressive and diverse House Democrats is facing its final intraparty challenge on Tuesday as four states in the Midwest and New England hold primary elections.

DON SAMUELS

Don Samuels is an American politician, activist, and non-profit executive who served as a member of the Minneapolis City Council from 2003 to 2014. A member of the DFL, Samuels represented the 3rd and 5th wards during his three-term tenure. He also served one term as an at-large representative on the Minneapolis Public Schools Board from 2015 to 2019.

Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota faces voters one week after her fellow Squad member, Rep. Cori Bush of Missouri, lost her bid for re-nomination and nearly two months after another Squad member, Rep. Jamaal Bowman of New York, fell to his primary challenger.

But Omar, who made history as the first Somali American in Congress and the first woman of color to represent Minnesota on Capitol Hill, is the favorite as she faces three primary challengers in the Democrat primary. Omar is seeking a fourth two-year term representing the Minneapolis-anchored 5th Congressional District.

Bush and Bowman faced well-funded challengers and millions in outside spending by United Democracy Project, a super PAC affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. While Omar is also a very vocal critic of Israel, she hasn’t been targeted by any ads from the United Democracy Project.

And Omar is considered to be in a much better political position than she was two years ago when she narrowly defeated Don Samuels, who for a second straight cycle is her top challenger.

But Samuels, in an interview Monday on Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom,” said he’s seen a surge in his fundraising and in volunteers to his campaign in the week since Bush’s defeat. And he said Omar is “divisive and combative. She picks a side including, simply trying to divide her, her constituency, and ignores the other side.”

Minnesota’s primary comes a week after Vice President Harris named the state’s governor, Gov. Tim Walz, as her running mate on the Democrat 2024 ticket. And an old clip of Walz praising Omar has gone viral in recent days.

Tim Walz’s former military superior made claims that called into question the Minnesota governor’s conduct in the U.S. National Guard during a CNN interview.

During his interview with CNN, former Minnesota National Guard Command Sgt. Maj. Doug Julin appeared to bolster criticism that Walz abandoned the unit with his account of the former Guardsman going around him to leave the National Guard before his team went to Iraq.

He relayed to CNN anchor Laura Coates that Walz and the whole unit – “including my boss, commander, and the command team” – had multiple meetings to discuss deployment months before Walz sought retirement.

According to the former sergeant major, Walz was at each of these meetings. Julin also asserted that in the lead up to deployment Walz assured him that he was going to join the battalion in Iraq.

However, he told Coates that in June 2005, he found out that Walz had quit without telling him, having gotten permission to retire from a higher-level officer – a break in protocol, according to Julin.

“Tim Walz knew the process and procedures, he went around me and above and beyond me… basically went in there to get somebody to back him… it was just a backdoor process,” he told Coates.

KAMALA HARRIS’ TREATMENT OF STAFF UNDER SCRUTINY AS REPORTS OF POOR OFFICE CULTURE RESURFACE

Walz’s 24-year National Guard career has been heavily scrutinized since Vice President Harris announced him as her running mate. Critics have accused Walz of abandoning his unit just before it went to Iraq.

In a statement recently given to Fox News, the Minnesota National Guard said that Walz’s unit was not given deployment orders to Iraq until July, and he had put his retirement papers in five to seven months prior to his retirement in May 2005.

Walz’s 24-year National Guard career has been heavily scrutinized since Vice President Harris announced him as her running mate. Critics have accused Walz of abandoning his unit just before it went to Iraq.

A clip of Vice President Kamala Harris from 2017 calling on “everybody” to be “woke” resurfaced on social media, sparking critics and conservatives to lambaste the official Democratic nominee as a “Communist functionary” who is “too radical” to serve as president.

“We have to stay woke. Like everybody needs to be woke. And you can talk about if you’re the wokest or woker, but just stay more woke than less woke,” then-Sen. Harris said in 2017 during Recode’s annual Code Conference, alongside philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, during the conference.

The conference focused on issues such as immigration and the environment, including Harris speaking out against the Trump administration’s drug policies and immigration polices just moments ahead of her call on Americans to be “woke.”

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has reported ties to a Muslim cleric who praised Adolf Hitler online and commended the Islamic terrorist group Hamas for the attacks against innocent Israelis on Oct. 7. 

In the last few years, Imam Asad Zaman has used his Facebook page to share official Hamas press releases, blog posts from antisemitic sites and a 2015 link to a pro-Hitler film, “The Greatest Story Never Told.” Released in 2013, the propaganda film is antisemitic and popular among fringe groups, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

Walz’s administration has also donated over $100,000 to Zaman’s group, Muslim American Society of Minnesota, according to state records reviewed by the Washington Examiner. Federal prosecutors have described the Muslim American Society as “founded as the overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in the U.S.,” according to court records, the outlet first reported.

Designated a terrorist group by the United Arab Emirates in 2014, the Muslim group faced criticism in 2019 when a video emerged of children at a Philadelphia chapter event calling for Jews to be killed.

In reaction to Rep. Katie Porter, D-Calif., condemning the Oct. 7 attack a day later, Zaman asked if she would “reaffirm the right of Palestinians to defend themselves.” Zaman’s Muslim group in a statement on Oct. 7 declared it “reaffirms its unwavering support for the Palestinian people in their struggle against the Israeli occupation.”

In May 2023, Zaman attended a mosque security meeting with Walz’s gubernatorial office.

Social media posts reviewed by the Examiner also indicate Zaman participated in a Ramadan event hosted by Walz in May 2019. A recent Washington Free Beacon report also reported Walz’s appearance at a 2019 event with an antisemitic scholar who supports terrorism against Israel.

Zaman, originally from Bangladesh, expressed solidarity with Palestinians for the Hamas-initiated Oct. 7 terrorist attacks on Israelis. He also shared a Palestinian flag image on Facebook in support of a post criticizing the Biden-Harris administration for its stance on Israel.

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The imam reportedly participated in a May 2020 event with Walz to advocate for peaceful protests during the Black Lives Matter riots in Minnesota following George Floyd’s death. Previously, in April 2019, Zaman delivered an invocation at Walz’s state address and had called for an end to a government shutdown alongside Walz in January 2019, the Washington Examiner first reported.

The Harris-Walz campaign did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment by press deadline.