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Using Bigotry to Hide an Authoritarian, Christian Nationalist Agenda

Republicans invent an Islamophobic threat while undermining the Constitution.

President Donald Trump shakes hands with Speaker of the House Mike Johnson during the Republican Members Issues Conference at Trump National Doral in Miami, Florida, on March 9, 2026.

Earlier this week, as the Trump administration ramped up its Iran war and as a growing number of soldiers complained that their Christian nationalist commanders were essentially describing the fight as a Holy War against non-believers, Tennessee Representative Andy Ogles announced on social media that “Muslims don’t belong in American society.” Not to be outdone, his colleague Florida Representative Randy Fine, compared Muslims unfavorably to dogs, writing on X, “If they force us to choose, the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one.”

Condemning the remarks of Ogles and Fine ought to be low-hanging fruit. It’s not as if you need to hack through a jungle of ambiguity to understand either comment. In a functioning multiethnic, multiracial democracy, the leaders of all major political parties should be able to instantly disavow such flame-throwing without worrying about a backlash from their base. But this is Trump’s authoritarian United States, and in such a landscape, the congressional leaders of the GOP have more than made their peace with evermore extreme racial and religious bigotries.

When challenged by Democratic leaders to condemn Ogles and Fine—and maybe even to censure them—Speaker Mike Johnson put on a master class of evasion. Johnson said that he had spoken to the pair about their “tone,” as if it would have been perfectly acceptable to advocate the expulsion of Muslims had the language just been a little more polite. The real issue, Johnson then announced, is that “the demand to impose Sharia law in America is a serious problem.”

Um, no. The risk of Sharia law being imposed on the United States is probably smaller than the risk of a civilization-destroying asteroid crashing into Earth; it’s certainly lower than the risk of AI—pushed, without limits, by Trump and his oligarchic wingmen—running roughshod over US workers and the democratic political system.

Think about it: Nowhere in the United States is subject to Sharia law—though plenty of places are being taken over by Christian nationalists, with their vision of religious rule that is shockingly, depressingly similar to Sharia law. I can’t think of an elected official in the country advocating for the imposition of Sharia law, though there are large numbers who subscribe to end-time visions and Christian nationalist extremism.

Nonetheless, earlier this month, the Texas GOP put to its primary voters a nonbinding resolution on whether to ban Sharia law. It was an obvious stunt to drive the base to the polls this primary season. There’s zero evidence that the Lone Star State, in which more than one in four residents are evangelical Protestants, is about to fall to Taliban-style Islamic fundamentalism. Of course, to no one’s surprise, GOP voters overwhelmingly........

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