Michigan Leaders Raise Alarm Over “Christian Crusader March”

A group of religious extremists are planning a “Christian Crusader March” in  Dearborn, Michigan, Tuesday evening, and Democratic Representative Rashida Tlaib, whose district includes Dearborn, called out the lack of response to the demonstration, noting the relentless Islamophobic attacks on the city.

“Islamophobia is a problem among both Democrats and Republicans,” Tlaib posted on X Monday night. “The silence in Michigan among state leaders while one of the largest cities in the state is being terrorized by Islamophobes is shameful.”

The march is being led by extremist and provocateur Jake Lang, a January 6 rioter pardoned by President Trump who keeps returning to the city to harass its large Muslim and Arab community. In November, he tried to lead another march and got punched in the face. He was also arrested in June for “terroristic threats” in Texas and in February in Minnesota for destroying an anti-ICE ice sculpture. 

Senator Elissa Slotkin stepped up following Tlaib’s post, saying Tuesday morning that “The people of Dearborn are once again under attack from an out-of-state influencer looking for controversy.

“The Mayor [Abdullah Hammoud], the Police Chief, and religious leaders of all faiths are again showing leadership and demonstrating that Michigan is united against hate and Islamophobia,” Slotkin posted. “Dearborn is as Michigan as it gets, and as Police Chief Issa Shahin said, these individuals are coming for one reason and one reason alone: To provoke a reaction. The most powerful thing this community can do is give them an audience. Don’t give them the satisfaction.” 

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, who is the Democratic nominee for governor, also spoke up for Dearborn, saying Tuesday afternoon that “It’s a city full of hardworking, proud, patriotic Michiganders — and hard as they might try, these out-of-state agitators cannot change that. And we will not let their hate drive us apart.”

Whitmer issued a statement Tuesday calling Lang and his supporters “a group of agitators” who are “traveling to Dearborn for the sole purpose of intimidating that community and provoking a reaction,” urging local residents not to engage with them.   

Attorney General Dana Nessel hasn’t issued a statement over the march. On Monday, Hammoud responded to a reporter’s question by calling on Nessel to consider hate crimes charges against Lang. 

“I would take that question and actually channel it towards our attorney general to see what she may do with her hate crimes unit to see if there’s anything that can be levied against these agitators and provocateurs that come to Dearborn time and time again,” Hammoud said.

Outside of Michigan, national Democratic figures such as House Speaker Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer are silent. Meanwhile, Dearborn’s Christian and Muslim faith leaders are uniting against the hatred directed at their city. 

Just a reminder: No, President Donald Trump did not save Natalie Harp’s life.

As the president’s close relationship with his female aide has come under scrutiny, a litany of MAGA social media accounts have jumped to her defense. Notably, numerous accounts have claimed their relationship is nothing if not honorable—after all, Harp credits Trump’s 2018 Right to Try Act with saving her life.

In an emotional address at the 2020 Republican National Convention, Harp claimed that after she was diagnosed with stage 2 bone cancer, she was a beneficiary of Trump’s policy intended to give patients access to experimental medical treatments.

“When I failed the chemotherapies that were on the market, no one wanted me in their clinical trials,” Harp said. “They didn’t give me the right to try experimental treatments, Mr. President. You did, and without you, I’d have died waiting for them to be approved.”

But experts have long cast doubt on Harp’s supposedly heartwrenching story.

Harp claimed she received “an FDA-approved immunotherapy drug for an unapproved use,” but Trump’s Right to Try law only applies to drugs that have not been approved by the FDA. Healthcare providers were already allowed to prescribe FDA-approved drugs for off-label uses long before Trump ever entered office.

In reality, Trump’s Right to Try was a massive failure—a repackaging of the expanded access that patients already had with decreased federal oversight. The president’s claims that the program has saved thousands of lives couldn’t be further from the truth. The most recent report shows the policy supported access to only six drugs in 2025.

Years after helping him sell his lame duck policy, Harp is still glued to Trump’s side. After the president tapped his “human binkie” to join him on his secret flight out of Turkey last month, people are starting to suggest there may be more to the story—and the White House’s wild reaction did little to ease concerns.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth used an anti-LGBTQ slur completely unprompted at an Iowa State Fair on Monday, referring to transgender people as “trannies.”

“At the Department of War, we do training, not trannies,” he said at a Salute to the Troops military fundraiser at the fair, the Iowa Capital Dispatch reported. The event was initially supposed to be in March, but was delayed when two Iowa service members were killed in an Iranian airstrike that Hegseth downplayed at the time

“It is a day and night difference,” he continued. “Training, lethality, accountability, discipline, readiness—the bedrock of what it means to be an American warrior—is the only focus of our department. Colorblind, gender-neutral, merit-based. That’s it.”

Transgender people have become a constant target of the right’s outrage machine. The Trump administration has made them the focus of many of its cultural attacks in the war on “woke,” casting trans people as an imminent threat to Western values even as they make up less than 1 percent of the U.S. adult population. That political disdain is embodied in perhaps no one more than Hegseth, who casually tosses out slurs and recently introduced mandatory testosterone screening for older soldiers.

Last year, President Trump signed an executive order banning transgender and nonbinary people from the military, calling them purveyors of “radical gender” ideologies that were “not honorable,” “truthful,” or “disciplined.” The Supreme Court upheld the order in May, though legal challenges continue in the lower courts.

“A man’s assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honor this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member,” the order read—equating gender dysphoria with mental illness and moral deficiency, and assuming that your assigned gender at birth has something to do with how well you can fight a war.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison is suing Texas Governor Greg Abbott to compel the extradition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Christian Castro, who faces charges of assault and falsely reporting a crime during the Trump administration’s crackdown in Minnesota earlier this year. 

Castro was arrested in Cameron County, Texas, in May for his involvement in the January 14 shooting of Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis. Minneapolis prosecutors allege that Castro shot at the front door of a home, hitting Sosa-Celis in the leg and lodging a bullet in a child’s bedroom wall, before giving false information to an officer about it. 

Castro was arrested in Texas in May, but under Texas law, he could be released next week as he can only be held for 90 days. He could then potentially leave the U.S. since he’s being held near the Mexican border.  

“Christian Castro has been charged with breaking the law in Minnesota,” Ellison said at a news conference Tuesday. “He must face justice in Minnesota. Governor Abbott should have granted Governor Walz’s extradition request long ago and is required to do so now.”

“Christian Castro is not above the law and Greg Abbott isn’t either,” Ellison added. “We have to take the position that they are refusing to honor the extradition request.”

This “should be a completely unnecessary lawsuit,” Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said at the press conference, noting that local prosecutors and officials at the jail were “very cooperative” and that Texas has extradited three unrelated criminal defendants to Minnesota at the state’s request.

Abbott, a Republican, is a staunch supporter of President Trump and the administration’s mass deportation agenda. He could very well be holding off on the extradition because the White House doesn’t want ICE agents to face prosecution, no matter what crimes they commit. 

A federal judge has allowed President Trump to end Temporary Protected Status for Ethiopians, placing 5,000 people who immigrated to the United States at risk of deportation. 

Ethiopians first received TPS designation in 2022—in the midst of a war between the Ethiopian government and the people of the northern Tigray region. Any Ethiopians under TPS must now leave the country in 60 days or risk being deported. 

The decision follows a 6–3 June Supreme Court decision that federal courts do not have the ability to review TPS decisions made by the Department of Homeland Security.

U.S. District Court Judge Brian E. Murphy lifted the last remaining block on the Trump administration’s termination of TPS for Ethiopians. The case is expected to continue, however, as defendants try to prove DHS’s decision was motivated by racial or nation of origin animus.  

This is yet another attack on Black and African immigrants, as the Trump administration ended TPS for Haitians earlier this month, placing over 300,000 people at risk of being deported back to an untenable situation in Haiti. 

These people have been in the U.S. for years, have established lives, and have worked in their communities. Now they are being forced to return to a region the U.S. still advises its own citizens to “reconsider” traveling to.

People from Ethiopia, Haiti, South Sudan, Burma, Somalia, Cameroon, Syria, Yemen, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Nepal, and Honduras have now all had their TPS protections revoked.