First posted on Instagram
Ohio Democratic State Representative Ismail Mohamed of Columbus, who represents the 3rd House District and is one of the first Somali-Americans elected to the Ohio General Assembly, said in a Somali-language video message to supporters that "our main objective is to discuss things that concern Somalia. It's our country. It's our people" and that "our aim as united front is to lobby for Somalia."
In the same message he pointed to more than 20 Somali-American elected officials at federal, state and local level, naming Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota at the federal level, and spoke of lobbying over Somalia's national debt and its maritime crisis, urging people in Columbus to vote and knock on doors.
This is not a new recording. The video was a roughly 90-second constituent update in which Mohamed told constituents that Columbus had temporarily and ceremonially renamed a street after Sayid Mohamed Abdullah Hassan, a Somali national icon. As he does with his video updates, Mohamed recorded it twice, once in English and once in Somali. The controversy arose in August 2025 when the accounts End Wokeness and Libs of TikTok shared only the Somali-language version, captioned that the goal was to elect Somalis across the United States to unite to lobby for Somalia. Signal Ohio reported the episode on August 20, 2025.
Mohamed, an attorney who came to Columbus from Somalia with his family when he was about 12, graduated from Ohio State University's law school and became the first Somali-American to practise law in Ohio, told Signal Ohio he was being singled out because of his ethnicity, saying the attacks amounted to targeting ethnicities and saying "this is not the kind of immigrant that we want" based on ethnicity.
Ohio Republican State Representative Jennifer Gross shared the End Wokeness version of the video and asked her followers for their thoughts. The Ohio House Democratic Caucus called for a public apology from Gross, saying the amplification of the post posed risks to Mohamed's safety in a heated political environment and that he serves his district with honour and distinction.
The clip has circulated again in October 2026, in the run-up to Tuesday's November 3 midterm elections, after investigative journalist Laura Loomer linked it to Mohamed's endorsement of Democratic gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton. Mohamed has also drawn attention this cycle for House Bill 562, which would create a grant programme to help Ohio public schools and universities provide halal meals, and for legislation seeking to restrict immigration enforcement in sensitive locations such as schools. Those bills are attributed claims about his record, not findings about the video.
The video itself, and the words in it, are not in dispute; what is disputed is what they mean — his critics present them as proof that his loyalties lie with Somalia, while Mohamed says the message was a routine update to constituents in his Columbus district, many of them Somali immigrants, about a local street honour and shared advocacy.