Politics

Republicans go all-in on ‘Sharia law’ attacks ahead of Texas primary

Published

1 month ago

January 26, 2026

Anti-Muslim rhetoric has emerged as a potent ingredient in the looming Texas Republican primary while candidates compete to raise fears about the spread of Sharia law in the state and portray themselves as the toughest option to stand against it.

From the state’s white-hot GOP Senate primary down to local races, Republican candidates are pledging to fight the hardest against a proposed residential development of 1,000 homes centered around a Mosque north of Dallas, while issuing dire warnings about the supposed threat of Islam and questioning their opponents’ commitment to the cause.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and his top primary opponent, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, have sparred in attack ads and on the trail over that project and Afghan refugee resettlement program, at times veering into inflammatory anti-Islamic rhetoric. Cornyn called for a federal investigation into the project; Paxton launched several probes and in December sued the development over alleged securities fraud.

Texas is a heavily diverse state, with non-Hispanic whites representing less than two fifths of its total population — a flashpoint for years on the right. The state’s relatively small but fast-growing Muslim population has become a charged issue for Republicans seeking to distinguish themselves in competitive races. This year’s GOP ads – which vary from condemning terror attacks to burning the Quran – represent an escalation of rhetoric the party has long used to rally its voters.

“The Muslim community is the boogeyman for this cycle,” said Texas GOP consultant Vinny Minchillo. “One hundred percent this message works — there’s no question about it. This has been polled up one side and down the other, and with Texas Republican primary voters, it works. It is a thing they are legitimately scared of.”

Muslim advocacy organizations and Democrats decry the ads as racist and grossly inaccurate characterizations of those communities.

“The Texas GOP has declared war on Islam in Texas, claiming that Islamic leaders in the state are implementing Sharia law and using it in court,” said Joel Montfort, a north Texas-based Democratic strategist. “None of it is true, it is just fearmongering and racism to stir up the GOP base and get them to vote.”

A Blue Light News review identified ads in half a dozen races since the start of 2025 that highlighted “Sharia law,” according to data from AdImpact, which tracks political advertising. All were from or backing Republican candidates touting their fights against it, and most were common in Texas.

Last week, Cornyn launched a seven-figure ad buy titled “Evil Face” that declares “radical Islam is a bloodthirsty ideology,” referencing the Oct. 7 Hamas attack against Israel and December Bondi Beach shooting in Australia. The ad also references his bill to revoke the tax-exempt status of Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim advocacy organization.

Paxton has gone after Cornyn’s past support of an Afghan refugee resettlement program. And in his capacity as attorney general, Paxton said the project is an “illegal land development scheme” and its leaders are “engaged in a radical plot to destroy hundreds of acres of beautiful Texas land and line their own pockets.”

In the four-way GOP race for Texas attorney general, candidate Aaron Reitz says in an ad out this week that “Islam is not compatible with Western civilization” and vows to “stop the invasion” of Muslims. Reitz served less than a year in the Justice Department before launching his bid for attorney general. His opponent, state Sen. Mayes Middleton, also has an ad boasting that he’s running to “stop Sharia law” in Texas.

And, most provocatively, Valentina Gomez launched her candidacy in Texas’ 31st Congressional District last year with a video showing her burning a Quran and declaring that “your daughters will be raped and your sons beheaded, unless we stop Islam once and for all.” Gomez, who is challenging President Donald Trump-endorsed Rep. John Carter (R-Texas), is a known conservative activist and provocateur who won just 8 percent of the primary vote when she ran for Missouri secretary of state last year.

Anti-muslim sentiment in the U.S. grew out of the 9/11 terror attacks, which some Republicans used to rally their base for political gain. False rumors on the right that Barack Hussein Obama was a secret Muslim persisted from his rise to the White House and for years after. The planned construction of a mosque blocks from Ground Zero became a right-wing cause celebre early in his presidency, with multiple national Republican figures rallying against it.

Trump intensified those feelings, first by elevating conspiracy theories that Obama wasn’t born in the U.S., then by repeatedly disparaging Muslims, pledging in his 2016 campaign to ban Muslims from entering the country and once he became president implementing travel bans against majority-Muslim countries. On Tuesday, Trump reposted a comment calling Islam a “cult.”

But in recent years Islam hasn’t been as much of a focus within GOP campaigns — until now.

The Texas ads come as Republicans nationwide have placed heightened scrutiny on CAIR, the largest Muslim advocacy group in the U.S. Sameeha Rizvi, CAIR Action Texas Policy and Advocacy Coordinator, called Cornyn’s ad “defamatory and despicable” and borne out of “desperation to compete with Ken Paxton’s anti-Muslim bigotry.”

“CAIR is not going anywhere, American Muslims are not going anywhere, and our community will show its strength at the ballot box, God willing,” Rizvi said in a statement.

Cornyn has co-sponsored legislation with Sen. Tim Sheehy (R-Montana) seeking to revoke CAIR’s tax-exempt status. U.S. Rep Chip Roy, who is also in the Texas attorney general race, introduced a similar bill last year.

When a super PAC on behalf of Cornyn launched an attack against Paxton on Thursday, calling him “weird” and highlighting his divorce and alleged extramarital affairs, Paxton shot back on X : “This desperate hail mary can’t erase the fact that he [Cornyn] helped radical Islamic Afghans invade Texas and that his family’s making a fortune securing visas for foreigners.”

Paxton was referencing Cornyn’s past support for increasing the number of Special Immigrant Visas available to Afghans following the Taliban’s 2021 takeover of the country. Cornyn, who had once been supportive of the program, reversed course along with other Republicans late last year following the shooting of two National Guard members by an Afghan who’d been granted asylum in the U.S., on the basis that the vetting of applicants was inadequate.

Cornyn has responded to Paxton’s attacks with a digital ad stating that Paxton talks tough but he’s actually “soft on radical Islam,” claiming that Paxton directed $2.5 million to resettle Afghan refugees in Texas, and his former attorney who defended him during impeachment proceedings now represents the East Plano Islamic Center.

Several ads from different candidates in Texas use footage of the project from the East Plano Islamic Center, which would also feature a K-12 school and retail. Texas leaders, including Gov. Greg Abbott, have said that the presence of the planned Muslim community raises national security concerns. The East Plano Islamic Center did not respond to a request for comment.

“Texans overwhelmingly care about this – they’re looking at their communities transform in radical ways,” said Reitz, the attorney general candidate.

“You look at the number of mosques that have been built in Texas in just the last 10 to 20 years, and it’s explosive,” he said. “It’s alarming for good reason, and I think that Republican voters in particular are looking for their public office holders to address it, and so it’s such a pressing issue that I chose to really lean into this.”

Cornyn’s ad declares that “Sharia law has no place in American courts or communities,” a reference to the development. Trump’s Justice Department also launched a civil rights investigation into the project last year after Cornyn requested the federal government to investigate “religious discrimination.”

The project was already on the radar of Paxton, who had opened his first of several probes into its construction. In December, Paxton — whose candidacy is boosted by his reputation as an aggressive attorney general who frequently files lawsuits on behalf of MAGA causes — sued the development for alleged securities fraud.

The Justice Department quietly closed its investigation last summer without filing any charges. But Abbott still went forward and signed multiple laws last year that banned “Sharia compounds” and designating CAIR and Muslim Brotherhood as terrorist organizations. CAIR sued Texas in response, arguing the action was unconstitutional and defamatory.

Paxton, in his official capacity as attorney general, said last week that the state comptroller can exclude private schools from the school voucher program if they violate the recently signed anti-terror laws, declaring that “Texans’ tax dollars should never fund Islamic terrorists or America’s enemies.”

Politics

Dems aren’t sure whether to actually spend big to flip Texas

Published

5 minutes ago

March 6, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

It didn’t take long for Democrats’ hopes of flipping Texas to dim.

Enthusiasm remains high for the party’s Senate nominee, James Talarico, but national Democrats aren’t sure how far they should go to support him — particularly if Sen. John Cornyn emerges from the GOP runoff in May. Interviews with nearly a dozen high-dollar donor advisers and strategists poured cold water on the likelihood that the party would fully commit to the staggering price tag it’d take to finally flip Texas.

“No one’s taking Texas seriously,” said a Democratic bundler who, like most others, was granted anonymity to speak candidly about intra-party dynamics.

Among their concerns is that Cornyn did better than expected in the GOP primary against Attorney General Ken Paxton, and with President Donald Trump’s potential endorsement would be able to ease his runoff victory. Democrats planning for Talarico to compete against Paxton, a scandal-ridden MAGA darling, are instead facing the prospect of trying to oust a 24-year moderate incumbent in a state that hasn’t voted for a Senate Democrat in nearly four decades.

There are also competing priorities for national spending — just Wednesday evening, Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) dropped his re-election bid in a state Senate Democrats held as recently as 2018 — potentially elevating it as a target for spending.

Underlying it all, Democrats said, is the reality that contesting Texas would require a massive injection of cash — while there are other, cheaper options on the Senate landscape.

“We have to be practical about how we use our resources,” said Alex Hoffman, a Democratic donor adviser. “You need a perfect storm to kill a white whale, and if it’s going to be Cornyn [in the general election], then it’s not a perfect storm.”

Democrats have long dreamed of turning Texas blue. But the idea of flipping the state — much less retaking the Senate overall — appeared laughable last year, when the party hit new lows in its public polling and sustained sweeping losses in 2024. But a string of overperformances in off-year and special election races, combined with Trump’s own stubbornly low approval rating, have Democrats increasingly bullish about their chances.

“If I’m being super honest, Texas would not be within the reach of our boat here, as fishermen of the white whale, but for the wave moment we’re in,” said Tory Gavito, a Democratic donor who leads the progressive donor network Way To Win.

Tuesday’s results gave them another boost when Talarico, a social media star and prolific grassroots fundraiser, easily dispatched Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas). He now has a head start on Republicans, who after already dropping $70 million to lift Cornyn, must continue battling it out for another two and a half months through a runoff — which some are predicting could cost upwards of $100 million.

Texas Democrats see this as the moment to strike. Gavito said Democrats have built to this moment, cycle after cycle. Back in 2014, when President Barack Obama won with a young, multi-racial coalition, Democrats believed it was just a matter of time before they’d eventually flip Texas, a youthful, diverse state.

But Trump, both in 2016 and 2024, whittled down Democrats’ advantages with young, diverse voters, suggesting Texas was further out of reach than they thought. Then-Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas), boosted by more than $80 million, came the closest in 2018, losing to Sen. Ted Cruz by 2.6 percentage points. When former-Rep. Colin Allred tried to oust Cruz in 2024, he lost by 8.5 points.

Gavito said it would be “important” for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Majority PAC, Democrats’ top Senate super PAC, to invest in Texas to actually flip it because even though “Talarico has proven he can raise a bunch of non-corporate money … leadership, like Schumer, should see that their job is to be bullish.”

She also argued against Democrats having to pick between investing in Texas or other states — “you can do both things,” she said.

That’s a tall ask in a cycle when Democrats are already struggling mightily in the money race.

House and Senate Republicans entered 2026 with more than double the cash equivalent of their Democratic counterparts. The Republican National Committee has a more than $100 million cash advantage over the Democratic National Committee. Should the Supreme Court lift coordination limits, a looming decision cited by several donor advisers, then they believe Republicans will have an even more lopsided advantage.

“If the goal is to win the House and Senate, then there are other, cheaper, more competitive places,” said a Democratic consultant who works on Senate races. “Do you want to try to get another $150 million for Texas or another $50 million to put Iowa or Montana or Nebraska in play? That’s the Schumer calculation.”

Before Tuesday’s primary, Schumer hadn’t placed Texas in the DSCC’s top tier of battleground races. Instead, North Carolina, Maine, Ohio and Alaska ranked highest in his list of offensive targets. That could change, however, should Paxton ultimately emerge from the runoff.

“If Paxton wins the runoff, the race is on the battleground list,” a person familiar with the DSCC’s thinking said, granted anonymity to describe private conversations. “If Cornyn makes it out, I wouldn’t count it out [either].”

When asked about Texas on Wednesday, Schumer said “Tuesday’s results in Texas are a step forward in our quest to win the Senate,” and called Talarico “a great candidate, and we can win.”

SMP spokesperson Lauren French reiterated that “the majority runs through Ohio, Maine, Iowa, Alaska, and North Carolina … but it can also run through Texas.”

Republicans, for their part, continue to scoff at the idea Texas is competitive. In a statement, NRSC Regional Press Secretary Samantha Cantrell said: “James Talarico thinks ‘God is nonbinary,’ wants to lay a welcome mat on our southern border, and would prioritize the rights of our ‘trans community’, all things Texans will never vote for in November.”

Even if Democrats can’t ultimately flip Texas in November, they believe Talarico’s campaign — and a potentially weakened Cornyn — will force the GOP to spend cash to defend it, turning it into “a money sinkhole for Republicans,” said Cooper Teboe, a Democratic donor adviser and strategist.

“Do we win Ohio by one [percentage point] because of this?” Teboe added.

Some Republican strategists are warning of the possibility.

“In every race, from this point until November, there’s going to be the Texas undertones: You spent $70 million there to protect an incumbent,” a GOP strategist said, granted anonymity to discuss the issue candidly. “I think there is some frustration amongst the consulting class of like, all right, can we focus on Georgia and Michigan, some of these other places a little bit more?”

Erin Doherty contributed to this report.

Politics

Top Mamdani aide takes progressive project to the UK

Published

5 minutes ago

March 6, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

NEW YORK — Morris Katz, a top adviser to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, quietly traveled to the United Kingdom last month to meet with local progressive politicians hoping to learn tools of the trade from the young strategist.

Katz’s trip coincided with the rise of a new left-wing challenge to the embattled Labour government from the Green Party, which snatched away a Manchester-area parliamentary seat in a February special election.

One of the architects of Mamdani’s stunning election last year, Katz confirmed to Blue Light News that he had ventured into British politics and described it as part of a global political struggle. He said he was there to offer members of the U.K.’s Labour and Green parties advice on mounting effective campaigns for elected office.

“The fight against the aligned interests of the oligarchy and the far right is an international one, and I’ll try to be helpful wherever I can,” the 26-year-old progressive political strategist said this week when asked about his February trip.

Among the players Katz met with: Rosie Wrighting and Gordon McKee, two Labour members of Parliament, and Rowenna Davis, a Labour politician running for mayor of Croydon, a town in South London. Katz confirmed Labour and Green operatives initiated contact and asked him to come over for the meetings.

Mamdani has emerged as something of a political beacon for progressive parties in other countries, including the U.K. and Canada.

The British left’s overture to Katz highlights how progressive movements around the world are looking at the Mamdani campaign’s populist playbook as ripe for replication. And it speaks to how elements of the American left increasingly see themselves as part of a global project.

Katz said he has continued to hold virtual meetings with members of both parties since returning stateside and plans to speak with Green leadership in the coming weeks.

Top: King Charles III talks to Gordon McKee, one of the politicians Morris Katz spoke with. Katz also spoke with Rowenna Davis (bottom right) and Rosie Wrighting (bottom left). | Aaron Chown-WPA Pool via Getty Images; Jonnyb1234/Wikimedia Commons; Nicky J Sims/Getty Images

The in-person sit-downs in the U.K., Katz said, revolved around his strategy and messaging techniques, with the U.K. politicians seeking to glean more insight into his overall approach. The Mamdani aide has become known for producing made-to-go-viral social media content highlighting progressive policy prescriptions for bread-and-butter issues like childcare costs.

Katz said his engagements in the U.K. were unpaid and that he’s not looking to start running campaigns across the pond this year, in part because he’s busy with the U.S. congressional midterms. But he expressed openness to working with progressives there on a paid basis in the future, opening the door to a key Mamdani adviser becoming an international political fixer.

Katz wouldn’t be the first U.S. progressive to help like-minded British politicians. Advisers to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) helped former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s unsuccessful 2017 campaign for prime minister.

Drawing connections across different countries’ politics can be complicated, and while Mamdani’s high-octane style of campaigning can generate excitement in places other than New York, it’s not clear that everyone he met with on his travels overseas buys into his ideological project. Wrighting and McKee are prolific on social media platforms like TikTok, much like the New York City executive, but are mainstream Labour backbenchers.

Spokespeople for the Green and Labour parties did not return requests for comment about the meetings with Katz.

Morris Katz has been sharing advice with British politicians. | David Dee Delgado/Getty Images

The Labour Party lost a key parliamentary election last week after the Greens, a much smaller party, ran a 34-year-old candidate who focused her campaign on tackling a spiraling cost-of-living crisis. The candidate, 34-year-old former plumber Hannah Spencer, has argued since her victory that it’s a winning message for the Green Party to continue emphasizing.

“We ran a hopeful campaign backed by thousands of volunteers and activists. We defeated the parties of billionaire donors,” Spencer wrote in an op-ed in The Guardian last week.

Sound familiar?

Mamdani defeated Andrew Cuomo, New York’s former governor, in last summer’s mayoral primary after aggressively centering his campaign around proposals aimed at making the city more affordable for working class New Yorkers.

The U.K.’s left-leaning parties, especially Labour following last month’s election setback, likely see Mamdani’s messaging model as something they can harness in future campaigns. That’s where Katz comes in.

Katz, who calls himself a populist politics “believer,” has been credited with spearheading the Mamdani campaign’s laser focus on promising to fight for a more affordable city by raising taxes on the rich to expand social safety nets, including making public transit and child care programs free. Though he hasn’t joined Mamdani’s administration, Katz is seen as very close with the mayor and continues to advise him on both governmental and political matters, joining him, for instance, for both of his high-profile meetings with President Donald Trump.

“The Brits can use some excitement in their politics,” Doug Muzzio, a longtime political scientist in New York who is not affiliated with Mamdani or his team, said when asked to opine on Katz’s U.K. moves. “So if Mamdani’s engaging style is something that can be replicated over there that would probably be very welcome.”

It isn’t unusual for campaign consultants to embark on a traveling road show abroad after successful domestic stints. Political advice is among the most American of exports: Chris LaCivita, Trump’s co-campaign manager, advised Sali Berisha of Albania’s opposition party after his 2024 White House run. Bob Shrum, the former Democratic presidential candidate adviser and speechwriter, advised Ehud Barak in Israel’s 1999 election for prime minister and the British Labour Party under former Prime Minister Tony Blair. And James Carville, the veteran political strategist, also advised Blair, along with having done work in more than 20 countries.

“A guy gets elected and they like you, and somebody calls: ‘Hey, somebody from such and such called us,’ and they’ll recommend people. I mean, it’s a kind of networking thing,” Carville said. “The perception is our political consultants are better than they actually are.”

But Katz’s adventures abroad likely say more about his principal than the consultant. Of Mamdani, Carville says: “He’s an object of curiosity.” In the same way that former President Bill Clinton’s popularity abroad juiced Carville’s prospects, Mamdani and his retinue are drawing longing glances from international compatriots.

“A lot of people hired me just to say we got Clinton’s guy,” Carville said.

And now more than ever, an appetite for progressive insights is sweeping Europe: Just last month, organizers of the Munich Security Conference hosted Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who in her remarks connected income inequality to the global rise of authoritarianism.

“Voters in democracies in Europe and elsewhere are responding to a lot of the same things that American voters are,” said Matt Duss, who advised Ocasio-Cortez on her Munich trip and is executive vice president at the progressive think tank Center for International Policy. “That’s a system of government that has not delivered for them, that they see as captured by special interests that are not responsive to their needs.”

Duss, who also previously served as foreign policy adviser to Bernie Sanders, said there is a global appetite for that brand of progressivism.

“I do think Bernie obviously has inspired a lot of colleagues in other democracies. Mamdani is a name that we hear a lot from our colleagues in Europe on the left,” Duss said. “People are watching and learning from each other. American progressives have things to learn as our colleagues in Europe innovate and vice versa.”

A New York City Board of Elections sticker is seen outside of a polling site at P.S. 20 in the Clinton Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, on Nov. 4, 2025.

Going international is not without risks.

Witness, for example, Ocasio-Cortez’s reception in Munich, on-camera and widely clipped miscues on everything from mislabeling the Trans-Atlantic partnership the Trans-Pacific Partnership to suggesting Venezuela was below not above the Equator. (On the ground, leaders’ embrace of her was warmer than the social media maw.)

Were Katz to get officially involved in the U.S., he may not go at it alone. He is the co-founder of Fight Agency, a consulting firm made up of a number of veterans of the American progressive movement who could also get roped into working with him overseas. Among them: Rebecca Katz, an alum of former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration who has managed a number of successful congressional campaigns in recent years.

Rebecca Katz, who is not related to Morris Katz, did not comment for this story.

Domestically, Morris Katz’s travels abroad posed some obstacles for a candidate in his stable.

“It was very hard to communicate with him and his team during the January, February timeframe, because he was over there,” said Nathan Sage, the former Iowa Senate candidate and Katz client who dropped out of the race in mid-February. “I have no idea what he’s doing. I have no idea what that is, but I do know that it was difficult.”

Despite that, Sage said he would recommend Katz’s firm to others.

John Johnston contributed to this report.