The Know Nothings Never Left— They Just Rebranded as MAGA… The Klansmen In Khakis

The GOP’s War on Legal Immigration Is Nothing Less Than A KKK Dream Deferred

Who would you rather have as a neighbor, Chip Roy or Zohran Mamdani?

As Señor TACO continues to pound Mamdani to entertain his rural MAGA base— and take their minds off the loss of healthcare and SNAP— in New York, it’s almost as though Trump’s animus is boosting the already popular next mayor. A new pol of New York voters from Siena shows that New Yorkers disgree with everything Trump is doing and that they’e not likely to follow his suggestions about anything. It might help if the Democratic Party establishment comes around and embraces Mamdani and his supporters. “For a Democratic Party that has seemed sluggish and out of touch, with poll numbers near record lows, the Mamdani playbook of viral, energetic and proudly partisan politics is no longer an outsider strategy that can be ignored as electorally irrelevant. And with a majority of party infrastructure having clung tightly to a known sexual harasser, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, it is time to take a good hard look in the mirror… [V]oters want leaders with guts— and the new generation has got them… How long can Democrats cling to outdated and unimaginative ideas that alienate their base? How long will it take party leaders to learn their lesson? We have a chance to inject energy and vitality into a party that sorely needs it. The Democrats can harness these young, happy warriors and let them lead from the front— a chance we pass up at our peril.”

The latest MAGA-GOP insanity about using Mamdani as the poster boy for cutting back on legal immigration is just not going to fly in New York (or, for that matter, among Silicon Valley oligarchs), even if it may in Wyoming, Alabama and the Dakotas and rural stretches of Oklahoma and Texas.

Mica Soellner reported that racists and xenophobes like Chip Roy (R-TX), Brandon Gill (R-TX) and Gym Jordan (R-OH) are on the warpath. “In the wake of Zohran Mamdani’s stunning win in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary, Hill Republicans are pondering a new issue— restricting legal immigration. Several conservatives have used Mamdani’s primary victory to argue that mass immigration is causing damaging cultural change, pointing to the 33-year-old’s political rise as an example. Mamdani, a Democratic socialist, was born in Uganda. Mamdani would become the first Muslim and Indian mayor of New York City if he wins the general election in November. ‘We have fifty-one-and-a-half million foreign born people in this country,’ Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) told us. ‘You clamp down on illegal immigration, which is what the president is doing, but you need to limit, slash and refocus legal immigration… legal immigration is part of the problem.’”

While the overall number of immigrants is the highest ever, it’s not a record as a percentage of the U.S. population. The difference now is where immigrants are coming from. In the past, there was mass European immigration. Now immigration is more skewed toward Asian, African and Central or South American migrants.

The Trump administration and Hill Republicans have made cracking down on illegal immigration a key priority in their legislative agenda. But with new calls to turn that focus on those immigrants lawfully entering the country, that can cause some headaches for GOP lawmakers from blue states and districts.

“If we don’t have more people, we have a declining population and an aging population and we need talent,” Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) said. “Legal immigration is good.”

Yet in recent weeks, there’s been increased discussion on the topic, particularly among GOP hardliners and influential conservative commentators.

Rep. Brandon Gill (R-TX) received intense Democratic backlash after he posted a video of Mamdani eating rice with his fingers and said he should “go back to the Third World.”

Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) also joined in, saying Congress must consider “not just ending illegal immigration, but also look at restricting our legal immigration system.”

House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) added that restrictions on legal immigration “might come up in the debate” as his panel prepares to take up H.R.2, House Republicans’ signature legislation, which includes several hardline border security measures.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) called Gill’s remarks “racist.” Any effort by Republicans to tighten legal immigration would also likely be swiftly rejected by Democrats.

White House moves: While President Donald Trump has focused on border security and illegal immigration restrictions, the administration has made changes to curb legal immigration too.

Among Trump’s earliest executive orders was halting all refugee admissions into the United States. The State Department also tightened its policies around mandatory in-person interviews to those applying for nonimmigrant visas.

Last month, the State Department enforced partial or full suspensions on visas for nationals from 19 countries, mostly in Africa or the Middle East. Trump argues these nations have exploited the U.S. visa system and allowing entry to these migrants could become a national security issue.

But Trump has also selectively allowed some foreigners into the country. Trump signed an executive order in February to resettle white South Africans over what the administration argues is racial discrimination they face back home.

Trump also proposed his “Trump Card” visa program aimed at attracting wealthy foreigners who can buy their right to live and work in the United States.

Of course American xenophobia hardly started with MAGA red hats or “build the wall” chants. It’s been baked into the crust of the country since before the ink was dry on the Constitution. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, it was the German immigrants— many of whom brought liberal, anti-slavery, and secular ideals— that sent nativist Anglos into a panic. Then came the Irish, despised for being poor, Catholic, and uncomfortably familiar with the concept of labor organizing. Entire political movements sprang up to resist these newcomers. The most infamous? The Know Nothing Party— a group so hostile to immigrants and Catholics that they tried to erase them from civic life entirely. They didn’t just mutter in corners; they held real power, electing governors, senators, and even putting former President Millard Fillmore on a national ticket in 1856. Their slogan might as well have been “Make America Protestant Again.”

The Know Nothings never fully disappeared— they just changed names, burned new crosses, and updated their talking points. After the Civil War, white resentment curdled into the second coming of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s, a movement that wasn’t just about hating Black people. The Klan 2.0 marched against Jews, Catholics, immigrants, and “foreign ideologies” like socialism and feminism. They wrapped themselves in the American flag and Bible verses, but it was the same rotten core: a demand to freeze America in a mythic past where only white, native-born Protestants held power. Sound familiar? They also successfully captured state legislatures, helped pass vicious anti-immigrant laws, and even influenced national policy, like the draconian Immigration Act of 1924, which virtually shut the door on southern and eastern Europeans— targeting Italians, Jews, Slavs, Greeks… because they weren’t “white” enough.

Fast forward to 2024, and MAGA world is running the exact same playbook. Don’t be fooled by the slick graphics or the billionaire-backed PACs— they’re the Know Nothings with Twitter accounts and AR-15s. Their panic about “cultural change” is just recycled Klan-speak with a Fox News accent. When Chip Roy or J.D. Vance says they want to cut legal immigration to preserve American “values,” they’re not talking about the Bill of Rights— they’re talking about whiteness. They look at the rising numbers of Asian, African, and Latin American immigrants— and they see a threat to their grip on power. You well know that this isn’t about border security. It’s about demographic fear. It’s about rolling back the clock to before civil rights, before multiculturalism, before progress.

And just like in the 1850s, or the 1920s, or the 1950s, we’re watching history repeat— not as farce, but as a very real danger. Because these people vote, they organize, they pass laws, they control a national political party that at the moment controls all three branches of government. And unless we name this for what it is— an age-old American sickness— we’re going to let the Know Nothings keep winning.

Yesterday, Emily Peck reported that Trump’s “immigration crackdown is hitting key pockets of the economy, disrupting workplaces and communities around the country. The sharp fall in immigration this year threatens to slow down economic growth, particularly in the sectors and cities that relied on newcomers to the U.S. in recent years… Smaller cities are feeling the hit from deportations and ICE raids, places like St. Louis, Buffalo and Pittsburgh where immigration had boosted faltering economies. ‘The arrests cast a shadow over the local economy. Restaurant tables emptied. Kitchen workers stayed home. Fruit vendors disappeared from the streets. The number of shoppers at stores shrank, and those who still went didn't linger for long.’ The nation's farms are in a tough spot, too, and employees are fearful of showing up to work. That means crops are not being picked and fruit and vegetables are rotting at peak harvest time.”