Last weekend, college football helped create a crisis for the Republican Party.
I don’t know about you, but I spend my Saturdays in the fall glued to the television. I’ve got my favorite team — the Kentucky Wildcats, who lost to Alabama (as usual) — but I love the sport and I’ve got ties to many teams. I was born just outside of Auburn University. My cousin played at Mississippi State. My two oldest kids went to the University of Tennessee. So I’ll spend hours flipping from game to game, and I always try to watch the week’s biggest matchup, no matter who’s playing.
Last Saturday’s premier game, a battle between the top-ranked Ohio State Buckeyes and the fourth-ranked Texas Longhorns, was particularly good. Texas mounted a thrilling comeback in front of a frenzied crowd, led by college football royalty — Arch Manning, grandson of the New Orleans Saints legend Archie Manning and the nephew of both Peyton and Eli Manning, is Texas’ starting quarterback.
I’m no fan of either team. True Southerners know that Texas is a pretender. The “real” UT is the University of Tennessee. We also know that the Big Ten, Ohio State’s conference, is our occasionally lucky minor league competitor. It’s the Triple-A ball of college football compared with the major league: the Southeastern Conference.
But Saturday was college football at its finest. The game seemed to offer one of those rare unifying moments. Everyone who was watching, especially in Texas, was having a great time.
Well, it turns out not everybody was happy. I woke up to find that the internet was on fire over a tweet posted by Bo French (no relation that I know of, thank God), the Republican nominee to be Texas railroad commissioner. In Texas, the railroad commissioner exercises extraordinary power over the state’s oil and gas industries, so this is no minor office.
“I heard UT graduation this year looked like this,” his tweet said. “I didn’t believe it. The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined.” He attached a picture to the tweet that showed a group of young Texas fans in the crowd who appeared to be South Asian. They were wearing Texas gear, some sported cowboy hats and some were throwing up the “hook ’em horns” sign.
French’s “problem” was obvious. He wasn’t an Ohio State fan angry that Texas won; he was a Texas fan angry that those students were who they were.
Before I go any further, you need to know that this is nothing unusual from Bo French. He’s one of a seemingly endless number of vicious bigots lurking within the modern right, but he stands out from the rest, even so.
As Robert Downen wrote in Texas Monthly, French has “called for the rounding up of all Muslims.” French has also posted, “OK boys, it’s time to go round up all the Chinese and send them packing!” and has called for America to be like Rhodesia, an African nation every bit as gross, violent and racially repressive as apartheid South Africa.
So, no, Bo French does not merit the benefit of the doubt. Even less so when he followed up his tweet with another one that said, “I weep for the families in Texas who can’t get into UT because they prioritize foreigners over Texans.”
When I saw French’s posts, my first thought was, “Here we go again.” If you follow Republican politics at all, you know that Trump’s Republican Party is plagued with, well, let’s call them periodic bigot eruptions. It seems that every few months exposes more members of MAGA as racists, antisemites and Islamophobes.
Over at CNN, Aaron Blake chronicled a number of these incidents, including a Republican representative from Florida, Randy Fine, who posted, “If they force us to choose, the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one.” Andy Ogles, a Republican representative from Tennessee, posted, “Muslims don’t belong in American society. Pluralism is a lie.”
He later posted, “Muslims are unable to assimilate; they all have to go back.”
If you think I’m just pulling out random fringe Republican figures, we can’t forget the president’s own posts. He’s shared images of Hakeem Jeffries in a sombrero and the Obamas as apes.
I had two responses to French’s tweet. First, the picture itself helps refute one of the most common arguments from the populist right — that immigrants from Asia and the global south can’t assimilate into American culture, that there’s just something about them that’s different from, say, the Irish or, in the president’s famous formulation, Norwegians, that prevents them from becoming truly American.
I’m sorry, but when you’re wearing a cowboy hat, losing your mind at a college-football game and throwing up the (very annoying) hook ‘em horns sign, you’re doing a lot of things and one of them is assimilating.
In fact, anyone who spends five minutes with immigrants knows and sees the power of American culture. It’s a prime reason people come here in the first place. They don’t want to replace Americans; they want to be Americans.
But don’t tell that to MAGA populists. They came out in force to defend French. They’re here to tell you that, regardless of whether the students in that picture were immigrants or natural-born American citizens, there is something about their home countries — or their parents’ home countries — that will always and forever make them different and somehow dangerous for the American experiment.
And also, there is a real victim here: white people, and white men especially.
“Texas politicians rigged the game against their own citizens,” Sean Davis, the co-founder of The Federalist, wrote, “broke the rules to make sure their own children didn’t suffer under the new regime, and then had an absolute meltdown when one guy pointed it [out]. Here are the latest numbers at the University of Texas: only 13% of undergrads are white men.”
Andrew Kolvet, a spokesman for Turning Point USA, the organization Charlie Kirk co-founded, and the executive producer of the Charlie Kirk Show, wrote: “America was ~80% white 40 years ago. Now it’s ~50%. The demographic replacement of America is happening at a historic, truly insane pace. It’s not racist to notice.”
Jack Posobiec, a MAGA influencer with an immense following, posted, “Defend @bofrench like the Alamo.” (Given the fate of the Alamo, I’m not sure that’s the analogy Posobiec wants to use, but never mind about that.)
And if you want to know why South Asians can’t assimilate, then Steve Deace, a Christian talk show host, can tell you: “Why is it a bad idea to import so many people from India? Just 2.3% of India is Christian.”
On that theme, John Daniel Davidson, a senior editor at The Federalist, posted on X, “You know what would be way WAY more Texas-assimilated than wearing a cowboy hat and cheering at a Longhorn game? If Indian immigrants converted to Christianity and tore down the 90-foot demon monkey statue they erected in Sugar Land.”
(Davidson is referring to a statue of Lord Hanuman, a part-monkey, part-human Hindu deity, that was consecrated in 2024.)
These arguments get to my second, deeper response to French’s post. Parts of the populist right are taking aim at the American experiment itself.
Every civic crisis is also an opportunity for civic education, and the populist right desperately needs to be acquainted with the true nature of the country they claim to revere. At important moments in early American history, founders like Washington, Jefferson and Madison openly and explicitly rejected any effort to make America a Christian nation and instead openly and explicitly welcomed people of non-Christian faiths to join our national family.
Writing in 1785, two years before the Constitutional Convention, James Madison wrote against a bill to fund teachers of the Christian religion. “The proposed establishment,” he argued, “is a departure from that generous policy, which, offering an Asylum to the persecuted and oppressed of every Nation and Religion, promised a lustre to our country, and an accession to the number of its citizens.”
Consider those words for just a moment. Even at that early date in American history, Madison could perceive the power of immigration to increase our nation’s strength and numbers. He would have found the Great Replacement language puzzling. No one is being replaced. It’s addition, without any subtraction.
Let’s take George Washington. In his famous letter to a Jewish congregation in Newport, R.I., Washington extended his arms to the Jewish people and said, “May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants — while everyone shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.” These words were written in an era when it would be laughable to say that Christians had historically welcomed Jews.
Writing in 1821, Thomas Jefferson recounted the debates over the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, saying, “Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word ‘Jesus Christ,’ so that it should read, ‘a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;’ the insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and Infidel of every denomination.”
Our founders’ faith in our future immigrants, whatever their religious beliefs, has been vindicated. In fact, one item of evidence in support of that fact is the very presence of a large number of Asian students in the stands of Texas’ flagship university.
Texas has worked to create a colorblind meritocracy in college admissions. Under Texas law, UT-Austin grants automatic admission to Texas students who finish in the top sliver of their class. The school uses automatic admissions to fill 75 percent of available spaces for Texas residents.
And contrary to French’s argument that Texas prioritizes “foreigners,” the school is required to fill 90 percent of its freshman class with Texas residents.
Asians are roughly 7 percent of the Texas population, but they make up about 22 percent of the undergraduate student body. That’s impressive. It’s admirable. And it’s evidence of remarkably successful assimilation into the American school system.
It’s becoming very clear that when the new right praises meritocracy, the last thing they are is colorblind.
Texas has tried to create a meritocracy that rewards academic achievement regardless of race, ethnicity, sex or religion. It’s far from perfect, but one thing is crystal clear — if you do well enough in school you can go to the best university in the state. That’s a promise.
But now the results are in, and white men don’t do well enough for the new right. After spending years and years complaining when the left used admissions statistics to decry disproportionate racial admissions, the new right is now doing the exact same thing — but without having hundreds of years of racial oppression to buttress their argument that the American system isn’t yet as fair as it needs to be.
Thankfully, French’s comments didn’t unite the right. Instead, they triggered a Republican civil war. Many Republican leaders have issued strong denunciations of French. Outgoing Senator John Cornyn called on other Republicans to condemn French’s “intolerance and racism” and said that “this is how great political parties self-destruct.” A number of other state Republican politicians condemned French clearly and unequivocally. Karl Rove, a longtime Texan, is voting for French’s Democratic opponent — the first time that he’s voted for a Democrat in more than 30 years.
The governor, Greg Abbott, gave a more tepid response. In a statement, he said that French’s comments were “not my message” and said “we unite under the brand of Texas.” He also said, “That doesn’t mean that Texas cannot also lead in having the toughest immigration laws of any state in America and freezing H1B visas at our universities.”
The battle lines of the post-Trump Republican Party are being drawn. There will be a renewed push to return the party to a degree of normalcy and integrity. There will be a fight against the racists and bigots of the populist right.
But 10 years of Trump have changed the party, from the grass roots to its think tanks to the White House itself. As Jeremy Carl, a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, wrote on X, Republicans who condemned French “weren’t prepared for the ferocious and justified pushback they got, because the New Right is not willing to assume the supine beautiful losers posture that characterized the American right for decades on questions of immigration and national identity.”
When I look at the picture Bo French hates, I see something beautiful. I do not see anyone losing. I see a nation with a culture created by an idea — that all men are created equal — that serves as a magnet for people all over the world.
And I hear the words of Ronald Reagan’s last speech as president, “I think it’s fitting to leave one final thought,” he said, “an observation about a country which I love. It was stated best in a letter I received not long ago. A man wrote me and said: ‘You can go to live in France, but you cannot become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Turkey or Japan, but you cannot become a German, a Turk, or a Japanese. But anyone, from any corner of the Earth, can come to live in America and become an American.’ ”
Thank God — and Washington and Madison and Jefferson — for that.
Some other things I did
My Sunday column was about one of the first shots in the midterm wars. Thanks to the Supreme Court of Missouri and the Supreme Court of the United States, we narrowly averted a potential constitutional crisis. The Republican secretary of state in Missouri defied the courts and only blinked under the threat of being held in contempt:
Legal gamesmanship is one thing. Outright defiance is another. It raised the nightmare scenario. What do we do when a state government defies a court, and the court has no independent means of enforcing its decision?
And consider this: All of that gamesmanship and all of that defiance were over one House district, and they occurred weeks before the election, without any overt pressure from Trump to break the law.
In other words, prepare yourself.
Whenever I write about potential MAGA efforts to steal the 2026 midterms, I’m assured that those efforts will fail. That the law is against MAGA. That the voters (at this point) seem to be against MAGA. I agree that the law and the voters stand against MAGA, but they did in 2020 as well. As you may recall, that was the year we were one Mike Pence yes away from the gravest constitutional crisis since the South Carolina secession convention of December 1860 effectively launched the Civil War.
The corrupt machinations of the Missouri case reveal that MAGA’s perfidy is limited only by its creativity. And while we keep dodging MAGA’s legal bullets, I fear that it is only a matter of time before one hits.
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The post Watching Bigots Erupt appeared first on New York Times.
