A Texas state lawmaker is openly plotting to revive a punishment not seen since America's earliest days: banishing people from the state entirely, with Muslims as his stated target.
Republican state Rep. Andy Hopper laid out the strategy during a presentation at the "Year of the Patriot" conference hosted by the True Texas Project in Fort Worth, People for the American Way reported. The event also featured former Trump administration staffer William Wolfe and white nationalist writer C. Jay Engel.
Hopper argued Texas once had the power to inspect, quarantine, and deport people during its early statehood, and said reviving banishment as a legal punishment is "winnable" in court.
"We need to make sure that Texas regains its power to define religion," Hopper told the crowd, adding he'd "1,000 percent support" establishing Christianity as the state's official religion.
Hopper also floated legally reclassifying Islam altogether, describing it as "a political ideology that is cloaking itself as a religion" rather than an actual faith — a framing he suggested could sidestep First Amendment protections entirely. He cited an unsubstantiated statistic claiming Muslims could outnumber professed Christians in Texas by 2044, calling the prospect "terrifying."
The Republican lawmaker encouraged supporters to quietly slip anti-Muslim measures into unrelated legislation so they escape scrutiny before passing.
"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," Hopper said.
He went further, suggesting sympathizers try renting property inside Muslim communities specifically to provoke legal disputes, explicitly framing the strategy as making life "very uncomfortable" for Muslim Texans he accused, without evidence, of intending to "overthrow" the government.
Hopper's remarks add to a growing pattern of Christian nationalist rhetoric surfacing among Texas Republicans, as lawmakers increasingly test how far state legislatures can push religious-liberty restrictions targeting Muslim communities ahead of the next legislative session.
In recent years, the Texas GOP has taken aim at any high-profile public expression of faith among the state's Islamic communities, including a water park in Grand Prairie that planned to host an Islamic holiday festival, and the Houston George Bush Airport for installing specialized sinks for Muslim prayer rituals.
