Ms. Rachel was pulled into a new backlash after Trump posted a video of Somali American kindergarteners from St. Paul and added the caption, "Every girl is in a hijab... in kindergarten." The post put children from a K-8 school at the center of a broader fight over anti-Somali and anti-Muslim rhetoric.
Karmel Mall in Minneapolis
On Wednesday morning, faith and community leaders gathered at Karmel Mall in Minneapolis to condemn what they called the politicization and public targeting of Somali students. Yusuf Abdulle said, "The highest level of our government is attacking children. Imagine that," and Malika Dahir said, "We are here not because of one incident, but a pattern."
Dahir added that the community had already been through similar fear. "We have stood at podiums like this before. Just a couple of months ago we stood right here after a school bus was set on fire, yet here we are again because this has become a pattern, a pattern that should trouble every one of us." That is the practical effect of a post like this: it turns children into symbols and pushes the school into a security conversation it did not ask for.
Abdisalam Adam on naming Somali
Abdisalam Adam, principal at East African Elementary Magnet School in St. Paul, said lumping the Somali community together and naming everything Somali is a big problem that needs to be called out. His warning landed beside a sharper accusation from Minnesota's chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which said the president put lives at risk by posting the photo on a global platform.
On Tuesday, Minneapolis City Council Vice President Jamal Osman responded to Bob Fletcher's comments and said they were disappointing. Osman said Somali youth deserve investment, dignity, opportunity and respect, not public officials using their platform to stereotype them.
Bob Fletcher and the split
Bob Fletcher said a small number of Somali youths in gangs were responsible for over a dozen homicides, while other leaders argued that tying ethnicity to crime is the bigger problem. The split matters because it shows how quickly a public safety argument can slide into a community-wide label, especially when the president has already pushed the image into the national conversation.
WCCO blurred the children's faces in the attached video, but the broader damage was already done by the caption and its reach. For families at the school, the immediate issue is not politics; it is whether the adults in charge understand that a kindergarten graduation is not a campaign prop.
Back in May, the climate around Somali and Muslim families had already turned tense after a federal raid of daycares and autism resource centers and a school bus fire, so this latest post sits on top of an already strained community response. Ms. Rachel's name is now part of that conversation, but the real test is whether schoolchildren are left to carry the weight of public rhetoric aimed at them.
