(03/13/2026) When Tennessee Rep. Andy Ogles posted on Monday that “Muslims don’t belong in American society,” it was treated as breaking news. But what followed over the next four days made clear that his words were not an isolated outburst. They were a signal, and his party answered it.

As Time reported this week, Ogles represents one of the largest Muslim populations in the American South. His Middle Tennessee district stretches from the suburbs south of Nashville through Antioch and into Murfreesboro, including a community known as Little Kurdistan. Tens of thousands of Muslim families live there. According to Time, residents responded to their congressman’s words with a mix of anger and exhaustion, and expressed concern that such rhetoric from their own representative could fuel harassment and violence against their communities.

Ogles did not walk it back. He doubled down with additional posts, called for the deportation of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, and continued pushing his bill to ban immigration from Muslim-majority countries.

The Allies Showed Up

By Thursday, other Republican lawmakers had joined in.

Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama shared a post on X that placed an image of Mayor Mamdani hosting a Ramadan iftar at City Hall next to a photo of the Twin Towers burning on September 11, 2001. Tuberville captioned it: “The enemy is inside the gates.” He later posted that Islam “is not a religion. It’s a cult.” Tuberville is currently running for governor of Alabama.

First-term Texas Rep. Brandon Gill posted a separate image of the same iftar dinner and called it “stomach churning” and “truly repulsive.”

Georgia Rep. Andrew Clyde, another Freedom Caucus member, had already posted days earlier: “No more Islamic immigration. Denaturalize, deport, repeat.”

Mamdani, the country’s first Muslim mayor, responded to Tuberville directly: “Let there be as much outrage from politicians in Washington when kids go hungry as there is when I break bread with New Yorkers.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called Tuberville’s post “mindless hate” and said: “Muslim Americans are cops, doctors, nurses, teachers, bankers, bricklayers, mothers, fathers, neighbors, mayors, and more.”

The Infrastructure Behind the Rhetoric

The rhetoric is not happening in a vacuum. It is backed by an organized legislative infrastructure.

Late last year, Texas Reps. Keith Self and Chip Roy founded the Sharia Free America Caucus in Congress. As Rolling Stone reported, the caucus now has more than 40 Republican members. Its members have introduced legislation that would effectively criminalize the practice of Islam in the United States and bar Muslims from entering the country.

According to a Washington Post analysis cited in multiple outlets this week, close to 100 Republican members of Congress, more than 45% of the caucus, have posted about Islam or Muslims on social media. Nearly all of the posts have been negative.

In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis designated a major Muslim civil rights organization as a terrorist organization by executive order, and his own office authored the domestic terrorist designation bill that passed the legislature this week. At the federal level, Rep. Randy Fine of Florida has introduced bills to designate that same organization as a foreign terrorist organization and to ban Shari’a law nationwide.

What Ogles said out loud on social media is what these bills are designed to enforce through law.

The Speaker’s Response

When reporters at the Republican retreat in Miami asked House Speaker Mike Johnson about the anti-Muslim statements from Ogles and Fine, he did not condemn them. He said he had spoken to members “about our tone and our message,” but then added: “There’s a lot of energy in the country and a lot of popular sentiment that the demand to impose Sharia law in America is a serious problem. That’s what animates this.”

No jurisdiction in the United States has considered imposing Shari’a law. No court has applied it. The speaker of the House repeated a manufactured threat to explain why members of his party are telling Muslim Americans they do not belong in this country, and treated it as a legitimate policy concern.

None of the Republican lawmakers who made anti-Muslim statements this week have faced consequences from their party. Ogles remains in office. Fine remains in office. Tuberville is running for governor. The Sharia Free America Caucus continues to grow. And Muslim families in Middle Tennessee, in New York City, and across the country are left to absorb the message that the people who represent them in government consider them the enemy.