President Donald Trump's new legal assault on a sitting member of Congress could be driven by any number of reasons, according to New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie, but it ultimately exposes how the president is reacting like a "cornered animal" as he stares down a looming threat he has never had to deal with.

The target of that assault is Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Somali-American progressive Democrat first elected in 2018 who represents a district in Minnesota. She was subjected to the search of her Washington, D.C. residence by Department of Homeland Security agents as part of a potentially criminal investigation into whether her father included incorrect information on her naturalization forms many years ago, grounds that legal experts have widely criticized as flimsy for such a public action. Omar has condemned the search as a blatant act of political intimidation and said she will not back down from the Trump administration's wrath.

In the latest edition of his "Takes" video series on YouTube, Bouie argued that there are "three ways" to understand the raid on Omar's D.C. home, each of which is likely true and working in concert with the others as part of Trump's motivations.

The raid, he explained, can first be seen as part of the "violent rhetorical war" Trump has specifically been waging against Somali-Americans in his second term, a crusade so abjectly racist that Bouie previously suggested it could be grounds for impeachment.

The other motivations, Bouie said, are Trump's crusade of "retribution against his political enemies" and his "continuing assault on Congress" and its authorities. Omar has been an outspoken critic of Trump's agenda since her arrival in Washington, D.C. On that latter point, Bouie argued that Trump's ultimate goal is to find fraud sufficient to strip Omar of her naturalized citizenship, something he is unlikely to manage legally, then expel her from Congress and, finally, deport her. That would also be a tall order for Trump to manage, Bouie added, because only Congress has the authority to determine its members' fitness for office — a constitutional boundary that makes Congress, not the White House, the decisive checkpoint in any bid to unseat a sitting lawmaker.

All of this, Bouie summarized, is the result of Trump feeling an acute sense of desperation, like a "cornered animal," as he faces the real possibility of a completely Democratic Congress working against him after the midterm elections. At the start of both of Trump's terms, he had a GOP trifecta to work with, while after the 2018 midterms, Democrats were only able to retake the House, leaving the Senate in Republican hands. That history is why Bouie frames the next midterms as the timeline to watch: unified Democratic control of Congress would be a first for Trump's presidency and, in his, the very pressure now driving each escalation.

"For the first time, he may actually face a Democratic Congress, not just House, a Democratic Congress as president," Bouie explained. "And he is afraid. He feels fear. And so he's doing what any cornered animal would do. He's lashing out. The announcement of a public execution, his attempt to whip up a race riot, this raid, all can be considered an example of him lashing out because he is cornered. I've said before that so much of this administration makes sense if you think of the president as something like an abuser. And as anyone who studies domestic violence knows, the most dangerous time for someone in an abusive relationship is when they're about to leave."

He concluded: "So it goes for us. We're beginning the process of breaking from this man's grasp, and he is reacting the way you would expect an abuser to react."