Three sitting members of Congress turned away from a federal building they have a statutory right to enter.

Listen. Listen. I want to walk through this slowly because the words congressional oversight sound like school-house rock and the actual thing on the ground this Saturday morning was three United States Representatives, with their staffs, at the door of a federal building, and a line of federal agents with their hands on their guns.

Reps. Omar, Craig, Morrison. All Democrats. All from Minnesota. All members of the House. Their job description includes oversight of the executive branch. The executive branch operates a detention facility on the Whipple Federal Building campus at Fort Snelling. They went to look at the facility, on a Saturday, after a fatal shooting by an ICE officer earlier in the week, because that is literally what the job is.

DHS told them no. The reason given: they hadn’t given seven days’ notice.

Buddy. That rule was blocked by a federal judge in December. Past tense. With paperwork. The court said the seven-day notice rule, which DHS made up the previous fall, exceeded the agency’s statutory authority and infringed Congress’s oversight role. That is the law on the books on Saturday morning. DHS cited a policy a court had already shelved.

Then. Then. The members of Congress, who Morrison is a doctor by the way, and Omar can see twenty people in the monitoring center through a doorway, were standing in a hallway in their own federal building, and the agents had their long guns up. In a federal building. Pointed at people whose name plates say Member of Congress.

I have run a casino floor. I have had drunks try to walk into the count room. The count-room door is closed because a casino has a reason. The federal building at Fort Snelling does not have a casino’s reason to lock out three United States Representatives on a Saturday. It has a talking point that a federal court already ruled wasn’t a reason.

You ever notice the pattern. I notice the pattern. When the country starts treating elected oversight as an inconvenience, the agency that’s inconvenienced is usually the one with the worst week behind closed doors. There was a fatal shooting on Wednesday. The members at the door on Saturday were trying to find out what happened on Wednesday.

The members filed for an emergency hearing on Monday. The hearing happens because the system still has a hearing. The hearing existing is the part of the country that is still working. The door being closed is the part that is not.

I’m arguing with the television. The television is on and the hallway is empty and three members of Congress are standing in their own building looking at a closed door.