WHEN TRUMP LEAVES OFFICE, YOU'LL BARELY NOTICE THE DIFFERENCE IN THE GOP

Here's a disheartening headline in The New York Times:

Without a Border ‘Invasion,’ Texas G.O.P. Turns to an Old Enemy, Islam

Republican politicians and strategists in Texas are amping up anti-Muslim rhetoric as a way to energize Republican voters after several elections when the border was the animating force.

As I was saying yesterday, Republicans can't successfully run on their real agenda -- making the rich richer -- so they run on culture-war issues and wager that their voters won't notice that the party never makes their lives better (a successful bet in recent decades, in Texas and many other states). When one issue isn't enraging and motivating voters, there are others waiting in the wings. That's what's happening in Texas now.

The attacks on Islam are a notable shift for a party that has spent the last several election cycles focused on the Mexican border. Warnings of migrant “caravans” and a criminal invasion have lost their sting with a Republican in the White House and new policies that have halted most border crossings.

Attacks such as ...?

Ads for Senator John Cornyn of Texas have touted his fight against “radical Islam.” Texas Republican lawmakers created a “Sharia-Free America Caucus” in Congress. Gov. Greg Abbott has labeled one of the nation’s largest Muslim rights groups a terror organization.

A “Save Texas from Radical Islam” dinner north of Dallas last month featured Steve Bannon, a former adviser to President Trump, the conservative commentator Glenn Beck and the Dutch right-wing leader Geert Wilders — and attracted party activists and Texas House members. The State Senate is weighing legislation requested by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick to ensure Texans “are never held under the heel of ‘Sharia law.’”

Just on Monday, the state’s hard-right attorney general, Ken Paxton, announced he would investigate a proposed real estate development in Kaufman County, east of Dallas, as a “potentially illegal ‘Sharia City.’”

Paxton, of course, is running for Cornyn's Senate seat, and many polls show him beating Cornyn in the primary and winning the general election. But in case you think Cornyn is one of the "good" Republicans, check out this nakedly Islamophobic ad he's running:



Some Republicans in Texas are worse:

Islam came up repeatedly on Thursday night at a gathering of several dozen party activists and voters who had come to a restaurant in The Colony, a suburb of Dallas, to support a far-right challenger to the area’s conservative Republican state representative ... Lt. Col. Larry Brock, an Air Force veteran who served two years in prison for entering the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

Mr. Brock spoke for several minutes about Islam.

“We should ban the burqa, the hijab, the abaya, the niqab,” he said, referring to different head and body coverings worn by some Muslim women. “No to halal meat. No to celebrating Ramadan. No, no, no.”

The author of the Times story, J. David Goodman, doesn't fully understand what Texas Republicans are afraid of:

The state party put a resolution on its primary ballot asking whether Texas should “prohibit Sharia law,” a term that refers to Islamic religious rules but has long served as a catchall to signify expansions of Muslim culture and religion that opponents say threaten American values.

No, this isn't just fear of "expansions of Muslim culture and religion." These people believe that Muslims want to replace current laws in America with Muslim religious law. They think Muslims want to force your wife and daughters to wear burqas, while banning pork and bacon. (They probably believe Muslims want to turn America into an Islamic theocracy because many of them want to turn America into a Christian theocracy.)

Now here's a little perspective, from a Texas Monthly story on the same subject (free to read here):

Conservative Christians run the state government. Muslims in Texas represent an estimated 2 percent of the population. What little political power the community wields is concentrated in a handful of suburban enclaves in North Texas and greater Houston. The Muslim population, if generalizations can be made about such a diverse group, tends to be socially conservative and politically mixed.

Nevertheless:

[Bo] French, who is running for a seat on the Texas Railroad Commission, has called on Donald Trump to “round up every Muslim in America” and deport them. He has warned that if nothing is done, Texas could end up like Dearborn, Michigan, the Arab-majority city. (No matter that it voted for Trump in 2024.)

Valentina Gomez, a twentysomething Colombian immigrant running for a Central Texas congressional seat after moving to the state from Missouri, where she lost an election in 2024, released footage of herself incinerating a Quran with a blowtorch. “Vote for me so we can kick every dirty Muslim out of Texas,” she said in a separate social media post.

And one congressman sees A Conspiracy So Vast:

“We’ve gotta be much more aggressive,” Central Texas Congressman Chip Roy told Glenn Beck in late December, in regard to cracking down on Islamic groups. He mused—vaguely, conspiratorially—that there existed a “criminal organization” connecting antifa, George Soros, and Muslim organizations in Texas. “It’s all connected,” he said, “it’s all connected.”

One thing I'd like you to notice is that this is not being driven by Donald Trump or the White House. As I regularly point out, the GOP wasn't a mellow, moderate party until Trump came along. Trump accelerated the extremism, but it was always there, and it was on the rise independently of Trump. Fox News, talk radio, and newer media and social media outlets have created increasing amounts of ragebait in order to keep voters angry at Democrats and loyal to Republicans. This would have happened even if Trump had never entered electoral politics, and it will keep happening when he's gone, unless we somehow manage to turn the GOP into a pariah party that's shunned by decent people.

What's happening in Texas is in part a reaction to local matters, particularly this:

In September, Abbott signed into law House Bill 4211, which took aim at sharia compounds—fantastical concoctions. This was in response to a ferocious conservative campaign against EPIC City, [a] proposed master-planned community near Dallas.... Created by the East Plano Islamic Center, a prominent Collin County mosque, and rebranded late last year as the Meadow, the residential development would reportedly include more than a thousand homes, a faith-based K–12 school, a community college, and a place of worship. The issue exploded in early 2025, after [right-wing online commentator Amy] Mek labeled the development a “402-acre sharia city.”

... EPIC’s critics didn’t argue for a more inclusive project. Instead, they sought to scuttle the development by creating the impression that it would function as a no-go zone for non-Muslims, a sort of Lone Star caliphate. This was a stretch, to say the least—the developers stressed that the community would comply with Fair Housing Laws and pledged to allow people of any faith. They were flooded by death threats and hate mail.

The Times story reports:

Mohamed Ebeida, a research scientist who immigrated from Egypt, said often when he and his children would go to pray at the Plano center on Fridays, protesters told them they were “going to hellfire.”

“Do you want a society where every group alienates each other?” he said.

No, they want as society where they alienate everyone they don't like, and their enemies don't get to push back. They don't want to share power, but stirring up hate is how they win and retain power.