Another Arizona Republican keeps retweeting bigoted anti-Muslim posts

As the Trump administration sends its own police force and the U.S. military into American cities to terrorize everyone from journalists to veterans to brown and Black people, right-wing MAGA media agents have been increasingly spreading anti-Muslim content. Arizona state Rep. Joseph Chaplik is going along for the ride.

Chaplik, who is among the throng of Arizona Republicans eyeing a run for Congress after Rep. David Schweikert announced a run for governor, has retweeted a dozen vitriolic anti-Muslim posts on X since the beginning of the month. Chaplik, who represents much of Scottsdale, rarely posts his own original thoughts on the social media site, about Muslims or anything else.

Many of the posts are openly bigoted and factually challenged. One is a meme tweeted by MAGA mouthpiece Mila Joy that reads, “Reinstate the McCathren Warren Act. Get foreigners OUT of our government.” Joy, who managed to completely misspell the McCarran-Walter Act, attached a V for Vendetta meme to her post and claimed the 1952 law forbade Muslims from holding office. 

The post is mind-bogglingly false. The 1952 McCarran-Walter Act — which established a quota system for immigrants — is still the basis of American immigration law. It cannot be reinstated because it is already instated. And it says nothing whatsoever about Muslims holding office.

Chaplik also retweeted MAGA attack dog Laura Loomer, who said, “Keeping Islam out of America is one of the most important issues for me,” and three posts of politicians calling to “stop the advance of Sharia (law) in America.” In one of them, Texas Rep. Chip Roy advocated for passing an act that would prevent people who “observe Sharia law” from entering the United States. Doing any such thing would be a naked violation of the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious freedom. Another tweet reposted by Chaplik was from Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville, who claimed that “Radical Islam has DESTROYED Europe,” which is obviously not the case.

Many posts retweeted by Chaplik concern the city of Dearborn, Michigan, which has the largest Muslim population in the United States. The posts in question seem to take offense at the mere existence of Muslims there. Several feature handwringing about calls to prayer and one, from racist far-right commentator Matt Walsh, simply expresses outrage that many public officials there have Arab- or North African-sounding names.

Chaplik did not respond to New Times’ questions about the posts. He did, however, return a call by accident. 

“Oh shoot, I think I dialed the wrong number. I’m sorry,” he said, adding that his communications adviser Ross Trumble was “supposed to be” contacting New Times. New Times did not hear from Trumble by publication. On whether he’d be running for Congress, Chaplik said, “I’m happy to talk about that later once we make a formal announcement on either decision.”

‘Repulsive’ and ‘alarming’

Prominent Arizona Democrats blasted Chaplik’s amplification of anti-Muslim hate.

“I’m very surprised that Rep. Chaplik is going for this, considering he’s, I guess, trying to win a congressional seat in a very close district,” said Priya Sundareshan, the minority leader of the Arizona Senate. “It’s baffling as to the fact that it’s false information, but it’s also alarming that this is something that he would be pushing for. It’s horrific to think that the law should forbid any person of a religious faith from holding office in this country when the United States specifically protects freedom of religion in our First Amendment.”

State Rep. Oscar De Los Santos, the Democratic leader of the Arizona House, called Chaplik’s comments and retweets “repulsive.”

“Freedom of religion is a sacred American and Constitutional value,” De Los Santos said in a statement. “Arizona’s Muslim community strengthens our state every day — as police officers, teachers, veterans and small business owners.”

Chaplik’s anti-Muslim posting spree isn’t the first time he has spread misinformation about immigration-related matters.

While Republicans were working in February 2024 to pass a new generation of bills aimed at making state officials enforce federal immigration law, he insinuated that the U.S. is being overrun by enemies of the state and criminals. Among them, Chaplik claimed, was Raad Almansoori, who had been recently arrested at Scottsdale Fashion Square in connection with the stabbing of two women in the Valley and another in New York. However, Almansoori is not an immigrant but an American citizen who was born in Arizona, according to police documents.

Nor is Chaplik isn’t the first state Republican in recent months to go on an unhinged anti-Muslim tear. State Rep. John Gillette of Kingman unloaded a series of tweets aimed at Muslims — many of them laced with profanity — that called Muslim people “savages” and made similar claims about Sharia law. Gillette then earned even more widespread condemnation after he called for Washington Rep. Pramila Jayapal to be executed.

“Considering that it is now the second member of the Legislature to do this, this is not an accident — it’s a pattern of behavior from Arizona Republicans,” Sundareshan said, adding that she was “disappointed and frustrated” that Chaplik would dig in further. “Coupled with the authoritarian turn that we’re seeing, the Christian Nationalism and other right-wing tenets that have been adopted by Republicans in power at the federal level, every person should be alarmed at a time like this that any community of people is being othered and targeted.”

The Arizona chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations also condemned Chaplik’s social media posts and reposts.

“It is deeply disturbing to see an elected official in our state amplify dangerous anti-Muslim rhetoric that echoes the same hateful tropes used to marginalize and dehumanize communities across history,” said CAIR-Arizona executive director Azza Abuseif in a statement. “Statements like these do not just hurt Muslim Americans — they erode the foundations of religious freedom, pluralism, and equal representation enshrined in our Constitution.”

Abuseif invited Chaplik to “meet and engage with his Muslim constituents to better understand the people he was elected to serve,” and offered to “coordinate a meeting with Arizona Muslim community leaders so that he may learn why spreading misinformation about Islam and Muslims harms Americans of all faiths and backgrounds.”