Earlier this month, the True Texas Project held a Year Of The Patriot conference in Fort Worth that was heavily focused on the issues of immigration and Islam. Joining the likes of radical Christian nationalist former Trump administration staffer William Wolfe and white nationalist C. Jay Engel was Texas state Rep. Andy Hopper, who delivered a presentation on various ways to use the state legislature to "make life very uncomfortable" for Muslims.
"Switzerland just voted to ban the burqa, but we're told in America that, 'Oh, that's a First Amendment right,'" Hopper griped. "Do you think that anyone that ratified the First Amendment thinks that they voted to ratify women covering their bodies like this, covering their face, they have a little slit? That's crazy. So, we need to push back against that. That's a sound constitutional argument we can make. That's not covered by the First Amendment. That's crazy."
"We need to make sure that the banking and financials inroads that they've made, that we come up with creative ways [to stop them]," he continued. "I'm not going to share it here, but there are some really creative things I think that a lot of us have come up with that we can push back on this. I'll just put it this way: Government has—and especially state government—we have a lot of tools in the toolbox that we just haven't used in a long time. Some of the ideas that we have and we're talking about; they're just old ideas that we need to bring back."
Among the ideas that Hopper wants to "bring back" is the practice of banishment.
"We should protect America for Americans," Hopper said. "We need to make sure that we as a state don't cede power to the federal government—which we already have—to enforce all immigration policy. So, one of the things that I think that we really need to talk about—not only when we're dealing with criminal cartels or millions of people coming across the border, or terrorist networks that are existing within Texas—we don't need to put ourselves in a position where the only people who can enforce those laws are the federal government."
Hopper complained that various Supreme Court rulings have largely stripped the states of their ability to enforce their own immigration laws and those needs to be challenged so that Texas can begin banishing Muslims from the state.
"Up until that time, for the first few decades of Texas, we enforced immigration law," Hopper declared. "We had the ability to inspect. We had the ability to quarantine. We had the ability to deport. If we could banish you—how many of y'all think that we need to bring banishment back as a punishment in Texas? It's a weak decision.[From] the research I've done, that's a weak decision, and I think that we can turn the clock back on that. ... I think it's winnable by the states. Who's supposed to tell Texas that they were once a country, and we can't make sure that people that are working against us seditiously cannot be put out of this state by the authorities? Of course we can. We're Texas. We should be able to do that. So, we need to regain that power."
"We need to make sure that Texas regains its power to define religion," Hopper added. "We actually had the right as a state through most of American history to have our established religions in our state, which is not what you've been taught in school, I'm sure. I'm sure you guys have been taught in school about separation of church and state, and that's [it's been] long held and practiced across the country. It's just absolutely a lie. Through much of the 19th century, many states actually had defined religions, which is not, again, what you were taught in school. I'm not necessarily suggesting that we have to go and establish Christianity as the official state religion, but I would 1,000 percent support that."
Hopper again suggested that Supreme Court rulings to the contrary can be "easily overturned" if only state legislators and activists will press the issue.
"I think that we could put ourselves in a position over the next few years where we could actually make the case that [Islam] is a political ideology that is cloaking itself as a religion," Hopper proclaimed. "That's a big idea that we need to kind of address because ... we have a very narrow window to address this issue. I saw a stat recently that said by the year 2044, that at the current rate of expansion that Muslims will outnumber Christians in this state. Not outnumber Texans but will outnumber professed Christians. That's terrifying. We can't have that. Just absolutely can't. We can't kick the can this session and fail and say, 'I'm sorry, we just ran out of time.' That's not an option."
"The reality is that there's lots of ideas that seem crazy," Hopper said. "We should try to pass those. There's a lot of ideas that are like, 'Yeah, I think we could get that passed, and I think it'll pass court muster.' Absolutely, let's pass those. And there's a lot of ideas out there that you're going to see that never get earmarked as an Islam bill until after they pass. And we'll be like, 'Yeah, we got that through. They didn't even notice.' All of those things have to be done. Every single thing, every dial, every knob, every switch we have to flip on this session. There is no option for failure."
Hopper then assured the audience that "there's a lot of things that you all can do" to advance the anti-Islam agenda in the state, such as attempting to rent land in Muslim "enclaves."
"Maybe some Texans need to go try to do that and see what happens and be willing to go to court and fight it," he advised. "The more that we can do to make things uncomfortable for people who have no intention of abiding by our laws, have every intention of overthrowing our government, we need to make life very uncomfortable for them."
