Trump Laid Groundwork for “Muslim Ban 2.0.” Here’s How Organizers Are Bracing.

Part of the Series

Communities Beyond Elections

In the early hours of New Year’s Day, an individual in New Orleans killed 15 people and wounded dozens of others on the city’s famed Bourbon Street. When reports emerged that the alleged attacker was a Muslim American by the name of Shamsud-Din Jabbar, then President-elect Donald Trump quickly turned the tragedy into fodder for his Islamophobic, racist and xenophobic rhetoric. In the days after the attack, Trump took to social media to condemn the violence caused by “Radical Islamic Terrorism,” which he blamed on Biden’s “Open Border Policy.”

Further reports soon revealed that Jabbar was not, in fact, an immigrant and was a veteran of the U.S. military. Neither of these facts, however, mattered to Trump and the narrative he has sought to cement, framing Muslims as foreign outsiders and claiming that Islam — not for example, Jabbar’s participation in one of the most violent militaries in the world — could have played a part in this violent transgression.

While none of this rhetoric is new, an emboldened Trump promised to unleash even more hateful rhetoric, along with criminalizing and demonizing policies during his term, making these anti-Muslim narratives an important part of his arsenal.

Less than three weeks later, in his inauguration speech, Trump delivered on precisely this promise. Coupled with the over two dozen executive orders that he signed on his first day in office alone — including an order that clearly lays the groundwork for an updated “Muslim ban” — Trump made it clear that when it comes to expanding repression and state violence against Muslims and other marginalized communities, he intends to do so at lightning speed.

In the face of this ongoing precarity — made worse by the violence waged by the Biden administration, Muslim Americans across the country have been bracing for the impact of his second administration. Most importantly, they have been and are continuing to organize their communities to survive and resist his agenda.

When Demonizing Rhetoric Becomes Policy

In a speech that Trump gave to Muslim and Arab leaders in Saudi Arabia in 2017, during his first administration, his then national security advisor, H.R. McMaster, reportedly encouraged him to use the phrase “Islamist extremist” instead of the term “radical Islamic extremism” to avoid demonizing Islam as a faith altogether. Though his written remarks included the theoretically less offensive phrase, his delivery of the speech did not.

When Trump denounced the New Orleans attacker using the same terms, less than three weeks ahead of his inauguration, he once again demonstrated his ideological commitment to synonymizing Islam and terrorism. When condemning the attack, Trump also lamented that “Radical Islamic Terrorism and other forms of violent crime, will become so bad in America that it will become hard to even imagine or believe. That time has come, only worse than ever imagined.” By preemptively blaming Muslims and immigrants for any increase in crime, Trump further laid the groundwork for criminalizing policies, even before assuming the presidency.

Unsurprisingly, a rise in anti-Islam sentiment followed the New Orleans attack. For Trump’s purposes, this was probably a welcome signal to show support for policies and laws in the pipeline designed to target Muslims — which he didn’t waste any time putting into place.

Moreover, if Trump’s last tenure as president is instructive, the impact of this demonizing rhetoric will be felt in Muslim communities across the United States. For example, in 2017, as a result of Trump’s rhetoric, 23 bills banning Sharia law were introduced in 18 states. Though the bills are nonsensical because American law clearly supersedes Sharia law, they serve to promote the idea of Muslims as enemy outsiders whose religious practices are inherently opposed to the values of the United States. Elsadig Elsheikh, director of the global justice program at the Haas Institute, which conducts research on the anti-Sharia movement noted in an article at The Guardian that even if the bills don’t succeed in becoming law, “they help to subject Muslims to surveillance and other forms of exclusion and discrimination.”

The “Nonprofit Killer” Bill

In November 2024, the House passed the Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act, also known as the “Nonprofit Killer” bill. The legislation is based on the false notion that the measures currently available to restrict or shut down organizations supporting “terrorism” were weak. Most dangerously, the bill provides the Treasury secretary the power to revoke the tax status of a nonprofit they unilaterally deem to be “terrorist supporting” through “material support or resources.” With the stigma of a “terrorist-supporting” label, domestic organizations could also lose their ability to function, since banks would be unlikely to maintain any ties with those designated as such.

Marwa, a law student, said many Muslims are “still feeling residual PTSD from 9/11. We’re still scared, we don’t express ourselves.”

Critics of the bill rightfully fear it will give Trump, via his handpicked Treasury secretary, the power to shut down any organization that challenges him without due process. Muslim organizations, including nonprofits and mosques who have long faced intense scrutiny, especially post-9/11, have sounded the alarm in anticipation of the possible weaponization of this bill against their communities. While shutting down organizations remains the most direct consequence of the bill, it would undoubtedly also silence Muslim communities and cultivate more fear of participating in civic life. Given the timing of the bill, it is clearly also a tool to repress activism aimed at challenging Israel’s U.S.-backed genocide of Palestinians.

For many, this renewed environment of repression reinforces the trauma inflicted on Muslim communities after 9/11. Marwa, a law student, who requested that her last name be omitted, said many Muslims are “still feeling residual PTSD from 9/11. We’re still scared, we don’t express ourselves. Even seeing everything that’s happening now — it’s completely ludicrous. We keep our mouths shut because we don’t want to rock the boat. We don’t want to end up in Gitmo. We’re not trying to end up in Florence [an infamous supermax prison in Colorado] for the rest of our lives.” For Marwa, the continuity of this targeting makes her question what might be specific to Trump, and what’s a repackaging of the same violence Muslims faced under Obama, Bush, Clinton or Reagan. “If anything, I think it is validating for a lot of Muslim organizers to know that our work is more important now than ever before.”

The Muslim Ban and Immigration

At a September 2024 campaign event themed around “fighting antisemitism,” Trump emphatically promoted his planned Islamophobic immigration policies, saying his administration wouldn’t accept refugees from “terror infested areas,” that he would reinstate the Muslim travel ban, and that his administration would “deport the foreign Jihad sympathizers and Hamas supporters from our midst.”

A year earlier, shortly after Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel and Israel’s subsequent genocidal onslaught against Palestinians, the Trump campaign announced what they called their plan to keep “Jihadists and their sympathizers” out of the United States. Among the strategies included was the implementation of “strong ideological screening” for anyone seeking to immigrate to the United States. Those with sympathies for “Jihadists, Hamas, or Hamas ideology,” according to the plan, would be automatically disqualified from immigrating.

On Monday, January 20, Trump made good on this promise by signing an executive order that lays the groundwork for a “Muslim Ban 2.0” but that is officially titled “Protecting the United States from Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security and Public Safety Threats.” The executive order references “aliens” who “espouse hateful ideology,” adding a new provision that recommends “any actions necessary to protect the American people from the actions of foreign nationals who have undermined or seek to undermine the fundamental constitutional rights of the American people, including, but not limited to, our Citizens’ rights to freedom of speech and the free exercise of religion protected by the First Amendment, who preach or call for sectarian violence, the overthrow or replacement of the culture on which our constitutional Republic stands, or who provide aid, advocacy, or support for foreign terrorists.”

Considering how the United States has long constructed Muslims as adhering to a religion that’s antithetical to democracy (including most recently in the “war on terror”) and how U.S. discourse often construes Muslims as generally hating the United States for “our freedoms,” this provision opens the door for further targeting Muslims.

“Community members who’ve never organized before are showing up consistently, and asking what they can do, while growing their skills around organizing,”

While the signed executive order does not include specific countries as of yet, it reflects Trump’s stated desire to reinstate what he once called his “wonderful ban” include its expansion to encompass additional Muslim majority countries. “Trump has privately discussed adding more countries, including Afghanistan, to the list of majority-Muslim countries whose citizens he’s seeking to ban from the United States,” Rolling Stone notes.

Ramah Kudaimi, campaign director of the Crescendo Project at the Action Center on Race and the Economy, emphasized the importance of learning from resistance under the first Trump administration to refine organizing strategies under a possible reinstatement of the ban. Kudaimi believes that mass mobilizations such as the widespread airport actions that followed the institution of the first travel ban, “were essential to continue a regular, visible resistance to Trump’s agenda, and also helped impacted communities be able to see that they weren’t alone in these moments — an important component to fighting against state violence.”

Meanwhile Trump’s promise to empower local police with the authority to conduct deportations is already prompting preemptive rollbacks in the protection of immigrants locally. For example, in Chicago, rather than strengthening the city’s existing “welcoming city ordinance,” two local politicians are instead advocating for coordination between the police and federal immigration officials in cases involving arrests or convictions of undocumented residents related to particular gang or drug crimes. Given how much scrutiny and pressure sanctuary cities faced under the first Trump administration, other localities may soon follow in the footsteps of Chicago.

Consider the fact that even before Trump’s inauguration, the organization America First Legal, led by none other than Stephen Miller, sent out letters to 249 state and municipal jurisdictions in addition to NGO’s warning of the consequences of continuing to fail to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement. Those receiving letters, according to America Legal First, including mayors in Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Chicago and Boston, among others, are cities that the organization claims have broken the law. The letter in part, sternly states that, “Your jurisdiction’s sanctuary laws or policies therefore make a mockery of American democracy and demonstrate a shocking disrespect for the rule of law. For these reasons alone, you should abandon them.”

Fatema Ahmad, the executive director of Muslim Justice League, stressed how important deep solidarity building is for resisting this type of crackdown. One of the crucial pieces of this work, according to Ahmad, is “helping people understand how the infrastructure that is targeting Muslims actually goes on to impact all communities.” In this vein, Kudaimi also asserted that “it just isn’t going to be enough for the demands of our movements to be achieved if all that is happening is protests. We need to be building local campaigns, bringing in even more people into our organizing spaces, and disrupting business as usual on a regular basis. And we need to think about all the actors benefitting from our oppression — particularly corporations.”

Enter Project 2025

Project 2025, a right-wing policy blueprint developed by the Heritage Foundation and produced with the support of at least 140 individuals who were previously part of the Trump administration, advises in favor of making “irregular warfare a cornerstone of security strategy.” This includes countering threats from “Islamist terrorism” and “transnational terrorism, from the Middle East.” Coupled with the increased defense spending that Project 2025 advises, it’s clear that the so-called war on terror will continue full speed ahead, with increasing death and destruction in many Muslim-majority countries. This, of course, also has repercussions on communities in the United States who hail from these countries — including demonization and pain from the pillaging of their nations of origin.

While Project 2025 promotes continued support for Israel, Trump has already made his commitment to the settler-colonial state clear, saying that “all hell will break out,” if the Israeli hostages held by Hamas were not released by the time he entered office.

Then, days before Trump was inaugurated, a ceasefire was announced between Israel and Hamas. Trump, who initially took credit for helping to push the ceasefire agreement through, when asked after his inauguration whether he thought the agreement would stay in place in the long-term stated, “That’s not our war; it’s their war. But I’m not confident.” This was in conjunction with his removal of sanctions directed at settlers. While clearly not an about face moment, what Trump was signaling like his predecessors, was that Israel would continue to be given free rein to continue their brutal campaign of apartheid and genocide on Palestinians.

Project Esther, another strategy guide by the Heritage Foundation, was released on October 7, 2024, marking the one-year anniversary of the Hamas-led attacks on Israel. According to the guide, its goal is to provide “a blueprint to counter antisemitism in the United States and ensure the security and prosperity of all Americans.” What the guide actually focuses on, however, is criminalizing anti-Zionism, silencing any critique of Israel, and dismantling what it calls the “Hamas Support Network” — a euphemism for the Palestine solidarity movement — which it asserts is creating internal pressure to change U.S. policy toward Israel.

While this blueprint for repression threatens Muslim and activist communities, it also speaks to the threat our organizing poses. Saqib Ali, co-founder and executive director of the Action Center on Race and the Economy, told Truthout, “As a community we have organized great protests and marches and we have run really smart campaigns to put economic pressure on corporate targets like war profiteers and corporations profiting from Israeli apartheid and genocide.” What we need to do now, according to Ali, is “to organize our people into grassroots organizations and build close alliances with other organized communities so our other tactics have enduring impact that our targets can’t ignore.”

Bracing for and Resisting Trump

While Muslims and Muslim Americans are bracing for the second Trump presidency with fear and trepidation, leaders within the community aren’t backing down from challenging state violence. For example, Rashida James-Saadiya, executive director of the Muslim Power Building Project, told Truthout that “Muslims/Muslim organizers aren’t just preparing to resist — they’re proactively building power,” and that they are “evolving from reactive resistance to proactive community-building.”

This, according to James-Saadiya, means developing independent institutions that are focused on long-term solutions rather than short-term survival, including independent media platforms, organizing and leadership development programs, economic cooperation networks, rapid response systems and mutual aid networks. Importantly, James-Saadiya also noted that the focus on long-term proactive mechanisms and community protection means these efforts will continue irrespective of who occupies the White House. Similarly noting the continuity of violence between administrations, Ahmad stated that Muslim communities have “become so much more outspoken about the fact that Islamophobia is bipartisan and that every administration has perpetrated similar policies.”

While there is “a lot to come under the Trump administration,” Ahmad emphasized that “folks now know that organizing and getting organized and building power is the answer to all of that.” To Ahmad, building power goes beyond our own communities to include the solidarity that has emerged from anti-genocide organizing and other groups under threat. In a hopeful tone, Ahmad also reflected on the presence of community: “Community members who’ve never organized before are showing up consistently, and asking what they can do, while growing their skills around organizing,” she said, “I think there’s been so much growth in the past year, and people taking on roles that they maybe never saw themselves doing before. And so, I think that has made us stronger than before.”

“We are not just planning to endure — but building the foundation to thrive and protect each other regardless of political headwinds,” James-Saadiya said.

“This isn’t just about resisting one administration or policy,” James-Saadiya added. “It’s about transforming resistance into lasting power, ensuring Muslim communities have the tools to rebuild the social-political table that for too often has neglected their lived reality and the voices of so many others impacted both systemic and generational oppression.”