The Dictatorship
Texas Republicans have a new campaign strategy — and a surprisingly retro boogeyman
In the run-up to the Texas primaries, the issue taking center stage in the Lone Star State is not affordability, inflation or the border. It’s religion. Specifically, Islam.
What began as a crowded field of Republican hopefuls jockeying for attention has devolved into a campaign of bigotry.
This isn’t fringe language. It’s now part of the mainstream GOP campaigning strategy.
This isn’t fringe language. It’s now part of the mainstream GOP campaigning strategy.
“The Muslim community is the boogeyman for this cycle,” Texas GOP consultant Vinny Minchillo told Politico with disturbing candor. “One hundred percent this message works — there’s no question about it.”
For Republican candidates, the most effective lever they can pull to draw attention increasingly is fear, not facts.
One GOP candidate for Texas attorney general has ads asserting that politicians have “imported millions of Muslims into our country.” Without citing evidence, the ad links them to crime, terrorism and even claims that Muslims want “illegal cities” in order to “impose Sharia law.”
Another candidate publicly withdrew from a community event at a mosque, saying his security advised him against attending, and later bemoaned “how much more dangerous the Islamization of Texas has made our state.”
Another Republican candidate burned a Quran and declared that “your daughters will be raped and your sons beheaded unless we stop Islam once and for all.”
In state and federal primaries across Texas, Republican candidates are speaking about a Muslim invasion into their communities to impose Sharia law. Many are vowing to “fight radical Islam.”
Even Sen. John Cornyn and his most prominent challenger, state Attorney General Ken Paxton, have invoked fear of Muslims in their campaign ads.
Even Sen. John Cornyn and his most prominent challenger, state Attorney General Ken Paxton, have invoked fear of Muslims in their campaign ads.
Perhaps, on some level, this lowest-common-denominator approach is not surprising. The Republican Party’s standard-bearer, President Donald Trump, is the peddler-in-chief of conspiracy theories and anti-Muslim rhetoric. Immediately upon taking office in 2017, Trump imposed a travel ban from several majority-Muslim countries. He regularly disparages a Muslim congresswoman and attacks the religion of nearly two billion people as incompatible with the West.
To be clear, there are no jurisdictions in Texas — or elsewhere in the United States — where Sharia law is imposed as civil law. Nor have credible experts pointed to anything resembling an organized effort by Muslim Americans to impose such. Yet hate and fearmongering in some GOP races is having an effect.
A January Rasmussen Reports survey found that a staggering 77% of likely voters say they are concerned about the influence of “radical Islam” in the U.S. Of those, 41% say they are very concerned. Only 18% say they are not concerned.
Congress actually has a Sharia-Free America Caucus with more than two dozen members, spearheaded by Texas Republicans Chip Roy and Keith Self. Roy’s declaration that Sharia law is a “direct threat to the Constitution” and that Western civilization must be protected from it isn’t grounded in any evidence.
Along with allies such as Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala. — who has said of radical Islam that “the enemy is now inside the gates” — this caucus embraces language and imagery straight out of the post-9/11 playbook: An external culture is threatening our American way of life.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has moved beyond rhetoric. In November, he declared the country’s leading Muslim advocacy organization — the Council on American Islamic relations (CAIR) — a terrorist organization. Such a designation has real consequences on the organization’s ability to offer services to the 300,000 Muslims in the Lone Star State.
Many Muslims in Texas — a fast-growing segment of the state’s non-white population — are becoming wary of how they are seen by neighbors, co-workers and even law enforcement.
This month, a man in Plano disrupted a student group’s prayer servicesinsulting and harassing worshippers. A project to build a thousand homes around a mosque north of Dallas has drawn legal challenges and anti-Muslim criticism from several local and state officials.
This is what the lived experience of a faith community becomes when politicians paint people as threats or otherwise less than human.
Rep. Randy Fine, R-Fla., drew national attention recently over a social media post in which he wrote that if forced to choose, “The choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one.”
Civil rights groups and prominent Democrats reacted swiftly, calling his remarks Islamophobic, bigoted and deeply damaging to the fabric of American pluralism. Some urged censureremoval from committee assignments or even resignation.
No other religion in America is denigrated so openly by politicians, officials and leaders at every level of society. That must stop.
Equally telling — and far more troubling — was the silence from most GOP leaders. Days after Fine’s comments went viral, House Speaker Mike Johnson was among those who had not publicly condemned or distanced themselves from fellow Republicans’ rhetoric. That absence of rebuke speaks volumes about what has become acceptable in parts of the GOP coalition — not just in one statehouse but nationally.
No other religion in America is denigrated so openly by politicians, officials and leaders at every level of society. That must stop.
This moment should trouble us all. Fear has always been a potent force in politics, but when it is stoked against whole communities on the basis of religion, it betrays a core promise of this country: that no American should be viewed as suspect because of their faith.
Remaining silent in the face of this Republican strategy — ignoring when dog whistles become full-throated campaigns, or when officials dehumanize Americans because of their faith — risks far more than ugly headlines. We risk erosion of the idea that the U.S. is a pluralistic democracy grounded in dignity and equal rights for all.
Ayman Mohyeldin is a host of “‘The Weekend: Primetime” and an MS NOW political analyst.
As President Donald Trump weighs a second major military assault on Iran in less than a year, congressional Democrats are warning a president known for pushing the boundaries of his executive power against unilaterally waging war on the Middle Eastern country.
Rep. Debbie Wassermann Schultz, D-Fla., said Saturday that Trump “must consult with Congress” and make a clear case for why Iran poses an imminent threat to the United States that would warrant U.S. military action. She pointed to the fact that former President George W. Bush sought congressional authorization before he ordered the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.
“We have not seen anything about an imminent threat that would necessitate a significant strike like this,” Wasserman Schultz said on MS NOW’s “Alex Witt Reports.”
“So to think that this would be a walk in the park, the president is really not thinking this through carefully, and needs to consult with Congress,” she said.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement on Friday that the Trump administration has not clarified its strategy or objectives — or solicited congressional approval — as it weighs launching a military campaign against Iran.
“Congress has the sole power to declare war,” Schumer said. “We must enforce the War Powers Act and compel this administration to consult with Congress and explain to the American people the objectives and exactly why he is risking more American lives.”
Trump acknowledged on Friday that he is considering limited military strikes to push Tehran into agreeing to end its nuclear enrichment.
“I guess I can say I am considering that,” Trump told reporters amid a massive buildup of U.S. military forces in the Middle East, including two aircraft carriers and dozens of fighter jets, poised within striking distance of Iran.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told MS NOW’s “Morning Joe” on Friday that there is “no military solution for Iran’s nuclear program.” Trump on Thursday warned “bad things will happen” if Iran does not agree to a nuclear deal.
“The only solution is diplomacy,” Araghchi said. “This is why the U.S. is back at the table of negotiation and is seeking a deal. And we are prepared for that.”
Although he is unlikely to face much resistance from congressional Republicans, Democrats have cautioned against striking Iran. Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, warned of wider implications.
“A preemptive attack against Iran at this time would be a strategic misstep, and I am concerned that such recklessness could spark an uncontrolled conflict,” Reed said in a statement.
The administration has “failed to engage with Congress during this latest military build-up,” he added. “It is easy to start a war; finishing one is much harder.”
Clarissa-Jan Lim is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW. She was previously a senior reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News.
President Donald Trump said Saturday he is raising global tariffs to 15% from the 10% import tax he imposed the day before in response to the Supreme Court’s ruling striking down his sweeping tariffs.
“Based on a thorough, detailed, and complete review of the ridiculous, poorly written, and extraordinarily anti-American decision on Tariffs issued yesterday, after MANY months of contemplation, by the United States Supreme Court, please let this statement serve to represent that I, as President of the United States of America, will be, effective immediately, raising the 10% Worldwide Tariff on Countries, many of which have been ‘ripping’ the U.S. off for decades, without retribution (until I came along!), to the fully allowed, and legally tested, 15% level,” he wrote on Truth Social.
Trump had initially set the global tariffs at 10% in an executive order on Friday evening. Those tariffs, enacted under section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, are in effect for 150 days unless Congress approves its extension.
On Saturday, he upped that figure to 15%. The sudden increase was met with immediate criticism from both sides of the aisle.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called it a “dumb” move. “He’s just making it up as he goes and Americans pay the price,” Schumer said on X.
“Trump’s commitment to pickpocketing the American people is relentless,” House Ways and Means Committee Democrats wrote on X. “A little over 24 hours after his tariffs were ruled illegal, he’s doing anything he can to make sure he can still jack up your costs.”
Scott Lincicome, vice president of general economics at the right-leaning CATO Institute, wrote“Clearly, this is all a very legitimate and rigorous ‘balance of payments’ remedy under the statute here. Yet another reason why congress needs to reform the law.”
Trump has been seething over the Supreme Court’s decision to invalidate the tariffs he imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. Three conservative justices — Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett and Chief Justice John Roberts — sided with their liberal colleagues in the ruling, which The Wall Street Journal’s conservative editorial board called “a monumental vindication of the Constitution’s separation of powers.”
At a news conference on Friday, Trump said he was “ashamed of certain members of the court” and accused the justices of being “unpatriotic and disloyal to our Constitution.” He claimed without providing evidence that the court was “swayed by foreign interests and a political movement that is far smaller than people would ever think.”
He singled out Gorsuch and Barrett, two of his appointees to the high court, in a post on Truth Social later that day, saying that they “vote against the Republicans, and never against themselves, almost every single time, no matter how good a case we have.”
He then continued his streak into Saturday morning, lavishing praise on the conservative justices who disagreed with the majority decision.
“My new hero is United States Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and, of course, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito,” Trump wrote. “There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that they want to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
The additional 5% increase on the tariffs he hastily imposed on Saturday could further shake global markets, which have been rattled by the president’s unpredictable tariff threats.
The Supreme Court ruling raised more uncertainty for consumerswho were left wondering whether they might be reimbursed for all the extra money they paid for goods and products over the past year.
While the court didn’t explicitly address reimbursement, Kavanaugh did in his dissent, saying, “Refunds of billions of dollars would have significant consequences for the U.S. Treasury. The Court says nothing today about whether, and if so how, the Government should go about returning the billions of dollars that it has collected from importers.”
Clarissa-Jan Lim is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW. She was previously a senior reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News.
Almost immediately after federal judges in the Eastern District of Virginia on Friday appointed a veteran litigator as interim U.S. attorney, a position previously held by Lindsey HalliganDeputy Attorney General Todd Blanche shut it down.
James Hundley, a defense attorney with more than 35 years of experience, was unanimously appointed to serve as the top federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia on Friday afternoon.
But shortly after Hundley’s appointment, Blanche sounded off on social media.
“Here we go again. EDVA judges do not pick our US Attorney. POTUS does,” Blanche wrote in a post on X.“James Hundley, you’re fired!”
The top prosecutor position in the powerful Virginia office has been vacant since Halligan — an insurance lawyer personally chosen by President Donald Trump to pursue criminal charges against his perceived political rivals in the role — stepped down last month, after she was chewed out by two federal judges over her unlawful appointment.
Federal judges can appoint a U.S. attorney if a nominee has not been confirmed within 120 days. Justice Department officials have maintained, however, that it should be up to Trump to make those appointments.
Hundley is not the first casualty of the administration’s assertion of authority over the appointment of interim federal prosecutors. Last week, the White House fired Donald Kinsella hours after he was sworn in as U.S. attorney in the Northern District of New York.
“Judges don’t pick U.S. Attorneys, @POTUS does. See Article II of our Constitution. You are fired, Donald Kinsella,” Blanche wrote on X at the time.
In July, Attorney General Pam Bondi fired Desiree Leigh Grace as U.S. attorney for New Jersey the same day she was appointed by federal judges. Grace was tapped to replace Alina Habba, who, like Halligan, is a personal ally of Trump.
Clarissa-Jan Lim is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW. She was previously a senior reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News.
- Democrats warn Trump ‘must consult with Congress’ before striking Iran
- Trump hikes global tariff even higher — to 15% after Supreme Court ruling
- DOJ again swiftly fires a U.S. attorney chosen to replace Trump loyalist
- Trump’s ‘Board of Peace’ is a grim joke
- Texas Republicans have a new campaign strategy — and a surprisingly retro boogeyman
- Trump administration relaxes limits on pollutants that coal plants may emit
- Trump Administration Restores Philadelphia Slavery Exhibition After Court Order
- Trump’s made tariffs central to his presidency. What’s next?
- Trump has other tariff options after Supreme Court strikes down his worldwide import taxes
- Saudi Arabia may enrich uranium under proposed US deal
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