As House Republicans gather this week at President Donald Trump’s golf resort in Doral, Florida, one member has ignited outrage with a racist and Islamophobic social media screed that’s drawing sharp condemnation.

“Muslims don’t belong in American society,” declared U.S. Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN). “Pluralism is a lie.”

There are roughly four million Muslims in the United States, including about 40,000 in Ogles’ home state.

U.S. Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-MI) responded, writing: “The founders put freedom of religion in the FIRST Amendment for a reason. Muslims have lived in America since the 1600s. E Pluribus Unum, an ode to our pluralism, has been our country’s traditional motto since 1782.”

“Maybe it’s YOUR values that don’t belong in American society,” he concluded.

The Independent’s D.C. Bureau Chief Eric Michael Garcia called it, “Blatant racism and islamophobia from a sitting member of Congress.”

The Bulwark’s Joe Perticone observed, “It’s wild that the type of things Steve King had his committee assignments stripped for are now almost median House Republican views.”

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Politico’s Carla Marinucci called Congressman Ogles’ remark “Reprehensible.”

HuffPost’s Arthur Delaney posted the text of the First Amendment.

Writer Charlotte Clymer called for Ogles to be expelled from the House

“Ultimately,” warned journalist and attorney John Teufel, “I do believe that either fascism is ascendant in the United States for decades, or there will have to be a civil war or some sort of Balkanization.”

“I don’t think there’s a magic third option of resurgent liberal democracy. Not with elected leaders like this,” he observed.

Calling his statement “hateful, disgraceful, and flatly un-American,” Seth Taylor, a former DNC delegate, slammed Congressman Ogles.

“I’m telling you plainly: you do not get to decide which faiths belong in this country. That is not your job, and it is not your right,” he wrote as part of a lengthy statement. “Pluralism is not a lie. It is one of the core strengths of America. Religious liberty means all of us. It means Christians, Jews, Muslims, and people of every other faith or no faith at all. ”

“People like you love to wrap yourselves in the Constitution while trampling its most basic promises,” he added. “Your rhetoric is bigotry, not leadership. It is division, not patriotism. And it should be condemned without hesitation,” Taylor added.

But far-right influencer Laura Loomer, who at times has had the ear of President Donald Trump, wrote: “Amen. More GOP reps need to start saying this.”

READ MORE: White House Confirms Trump’s Shift That Pushes SAVE Act Further Right

Image: Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Prominent anti-Trump conservatives are speaking out, sensing a weakened president prosecuting an unpopular war as oil prices soar and markets plunge.

“You know, in the end, Trump’s name will be synonymous for the single most evil and destructive person to ever hold the Presidency, and it won’t even be close,” wrote The Lincoln Project’s Rick Wilson.

In a parody of President Trump, Wilson wrote: “I killed 500,000 people by botching COVID, wrecked our economy with a foolish trade war, set loose murderous domestic secret police, ripped off Americans in billion-dollar crypto scams, covered Epstein, sold out our allies, started a second Great Depression and World War III.” He then called it “a hell of a resume.”

Former Trump Homeland Security Chief of Staff Miles Taylor noted, “My former GOP colleagues are still ‘standing by their man’ — the month he starts a war, slaughters civilians, starts a global financial panic, puts Americans in the crosshairs of terrorist attacks, and is accused of raping a 13-year-old girl.”

“Good luck in the midterms,” he added.

READ MORE: White House Confirms Trump’s Shift That Pushes SAVE Act Further Right

Taylor also wrote: “The ‘American experiment’ doesn’t mean what is used to. Now it means testing what happens when you give a senile sociopath nuclear weapons.”

Wilson continued, writing, “At least when we’re paying $8 a gallon for gas, the global economy is in a shambles, World War III is raging, and the living envy the dead, Donald Trump will have a new shiny ballroom.”

Pointing out that the president wore a USA baseball cap when he attended the dignified transfer of American service members killed in Kuwait, Wilson noted, “Trump wearing a ball cap at Dover is repugnant beyond words. He is grotesque. As always, imagine what Fox et al would have done if Biden or Obama did so.”

Predicting a possible Democratic wave in November, The Bulwark’s Bill Kristol noted: “Democrats at +6 on the generic ballot among registered voters. 74% of Dems say they have high interest in the fall’s election, compared to 61% of Rs. So among likely voters probably at something like +7 or 8. On the way to a Dem wave, but not yet there.”

The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols, a retired U.S. Naval War College professor, commented, “It’s almost as if we don’t have a strategy.”

And he warned, “Don’t have a war led by people who are in over their heads.”

And on Saturday, responding to a Trump social media post, Wilson wrote: “Just so we’re quite clear, the President is insane.”

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The White House has confirmed President Donald Trump is moving to push the controversial SAVE America Act further right — which could make it even easier for the left to reject.

Many were confused or critical when President Trump claimed on Thursday that the SAVE Act — a voter ID bill that critics say will disenfranchise millions of Americans — would reshape rules for sports participation and health care access for transgender people, which the current text of the bill does not actually do.

According to Trump’s Truth Social post, the bill requires voter ID and proof of citizenship to vote, and no mail-in ballots except for illness, disability, military, or travel. It also bans “men in women’s sports,” and “transgender mutilation surgery for children, without the express written approval of the parents.”

The president, after uproar from the right, dropped the parental approval portion and called to ban all transgender surgery for children.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked on Friday about Trump’s additions to the legislation.

READ MORE: ‘Pure Amateur Hour’: Trump Slammed for ‘Absolutely Racing to Betray His Voters’

After declaring that he wants the SAVE Act passed “as soon as possible,” Leavitt acknowledged that Trump “has added on some priorities” to the bill in recent days, “namely no transgender transition surgeries for minors. We are not gonna tolerate the mutilation of young children in this country. No men in women’s sports. The president putting all of these priorities together, it speaks to how common sense they are.”

“These are all common sense priorities of this president that are backed by the vast majority of Americans and he wants Republicans to act on them as quickly as possible,” she claimed.

According to Democracy Docket, Leavitt’s comments “mark the first time the White House has publicly confirmed that Trump is pushing to attach anti-transgender policies to the SAVE America Act.”

Noting that even if the Senate were to pass the legislation with Trump’s latest priorities in it, the bill would have to head back to the House, Democracy Docket reported, “for another vote — a potentially difficult hurdle given the narrow margin by which it passed initially.”

But, even “without those additions, the bill faces long odds in the Senate, where most legislation requires 60 votes to pass and where Democrats have vowed to block it.”

Republican Majority Leader John Thune has said he opposes changing the Senate’s filibuster rules to help the bill’s passage.

READ MORE: ‘Dreaming of Gilead?’ WaPo Hit for Op-Ed Mourning Lack of Evangelicals in ‘Halls of Power’

Image via Reuters