You have to give it to Minnesota Democratic state Rep. Kaohly Vang Her: For someone who holds a rather minor position in our national political discourse, she’s managed to score the biggest self-own since Sen. Cory Booker’s “Spartacus moment.”

For those of you who who have forgotten, during Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination hearings in 2018 — before the Democrats unleashed a specious, unsupported allegation of sexual assault against him — the New Jersey senator attempted to stall the nominee by calling for the release of classified documents regarding what he had written on racial profiling at airports in the wake of 9/11.

Booker said that he would risk getting kicked out of the Senate for releasing the documents before declaring, “This is the closest I’ll get to an ‘I am Spartacus’ moment,” referencing a scene in the 1960 film of the same name.

As the New York Post noted, this backfired spectacularly; the emails showed that he “generally favored” profiling procedures that were race-neutral. Oh. However, even to this day, people who have no idea what Booker was whining about or when it happened use “Spartacus” as a nickname for the lawmaker or “Spartacus moment” as shorthand for rhetorical bombast in a legislative session that backfires.

Rep. Her is nowhere near the national name that Booker is, but the lawmaker’s “I am illegal in this country” speech has given her at least some brief, if well-deserved, attention for her antics — as well as two new major legal headaches if she is what she says she is.

As the social media account Libs of TikTok noted, the Minnesota legislator — who represents St. Paul — not only would have committed immigration crimes if her speech was accurate, she also would have committed legislative fraud and campaign finance fraud.

Her went viral on Monday during a debate over whether illegal immigrants should be denied access to MinnesotaCare, a state-run, taxpayer-funded public health insurance program.

As a bid to generate sympathy and attention, Her claimed she was an illegal alien herself.

“I am illegal in this country. My parents are illegal here in this country. I tell you this story because I want you to think about who it is that you are calling illegal,” she said.

Meet Spartacus, 2025 edition:

????Democrat State Rep Kaohly Vang from Minnesota just admitted while on live television that she is an illegal alien.

I’m tagging @DHSgov @ICEgov so everyone can help notify them to go arrest her and deport her out of the country. pic.twitter.com/8N7x3K66xP

— Derrick Evans (@DerrickEvans4WV) June 9, 2025

And, if that’s true, Libs of TikTok noted, Rep. Her would be guilty of two crimes — since non-U.S. citizens can’t run for election in Minnesota or donate to political candidates. She’s allegedly done both, as well as committing voter fraud (which had already been noticed):

SHE IS BREAKING MULTIPLE LAWS https://t.co/wCgbz8CgWa

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) June 9, 2025

Wow. Minnesota Rep Kaohly Her also contributed to a Democrat PAC as an illegal. She committed so many crimes. How much longer will she get away with it? @FBIDirectorKash @ICEgov @DHSgov @TheJusticeDept @AGPamBondi https://t.co/i2ED7NIuzc

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) June 9, 2025

Whoopsie there, Spartacus!

So, which is it? Is she fishing for attention or is she really in this country illegally?

As you may not be surprised to learn, in a damage control interview with the Minnesota Reformer, Her stated that she wasn’t really illegal; she’d just lied for effect, although she dared not call it an actual lie.

Her clarified that she and her parents are U.S. citizens. Her is a refugee from Laos and moved to the U.S. when she was three. Her’s parents took their U.S. citizenship test, and Her became a citizen as a minor when she was in middle school, she said.

Her said her father technically broke the law when he filled out paperwork for the family to come to the U.S. as refugees. He did so to expedite the process to come to the U.S., though they would have come to America anyway … 

Her’s father worked at the U.S. consulate, and he processed their family’s paperwork in a way to expedite their timeline to immigrate to the U.S. as refugees. People who were set to come to the U.S. as refugees could do so quicker if they had family connections to the military, CIA or USAID.

Her said her family didn’t qualify for those pipelines, but an uncle — in the Hmong familial sense of the word, i.e., a family friend — worked for USAID. When Her’s father processed the refugee paperwork, he claimed familial connection to the friend that worked for USAID, which wasn’t accurate.

Ah, it’s dad’s fault. Those good ol’ fashioned Democrat family values: Throw your father under the bus to make your story sound more plausible! Also, gotta love everyone’s favorite rhetorical trick rearing its head here — using some tense of the verb “clarify” to worm your way out of what you said. Whenever someone has to try and forge some untenable middle passage between their words being either uncomfortably true or demonstrably and self-evidently false, watch how quickly they will issue a “clarification.”

“Technically, you would say my father broke the law, right? But we would have come anyway,” Her said.

“Technically,” if American immigration authorities knew her father was lying on his application, that’s very much in doubt. But this isn’t really what she said, nor what she is referring to.

Her got the attention she wanted, and now she doesn’t want it — because the adulation she imagined she’d be basking in wasn’t there, and the backup she thought she had from the left wasn’t forthcoming.

Instead, she’s learning that Americans want very real consequences for illegal immigration and aren’t going to subsidize people who break the law to get here with taxpayer-subsidized benefits that are intended as a safety net for those who aren’t here unlawfully.

Rep. Her likely isn’t an “illegal” in any sense of the word — although there’s one way to find out, and that’s an investigation. If she is, then it’s time for some serious charges. If not, no more of this “clarification” nonsense: Rep. Her lied to gin up support, and one hopes she’s willing to stand up and own it the same way she sauntered into her own version of the “Spartacus moment.”

Then again, since we’re all still waiting for Sen. Booker to apologize for his ridiculousness, prepare to be disappointed.

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