Ted Cruz Tells the Republican Midterm Convention America Faces a "Red-Green Alliance" and That Islam "Produces Murder and Oppression" — and as He Names Mamdani, El-Sayed and Talarico From the Stage, Someone in the Dallas Crowd Shouts "He Should Be Shot"
On the final night of the Republican midterm convention in Dallas, Sept. 10, 2026, Sen. Ted Cruz built a speech around what he called "a new and dangerous red-green alliance. Communists and Islamists coming together." He said "Sharia law has no place in America. Sharia law is fundamentally inconsistent with the Constitution, and we need to stand together and stop it now," and said Islam "produces murder and oppression." He named three Democratic candidates from the stage: New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Michigan Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed and Texas Senate nominee James Talarico. As he did, a voice in the American Airlines Center crowd shouted "He should be shot." Cruz's charge against El-Sayed traces to a 2009 New York Times interview in which El-Sayed, then a medical student, described an "obligation" to comply with Sharia in financing his first home — a reference to an Islamic prohibition on interest, not to civil law. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott followed with a pledge to "fully ban Sharia law" in Texas, a law that has no legal force in the United States. Vice President JD Vance, delivering the keynote, said the Democratic Party would attack him for so much as questioning Sharia. El-Sayed responded the next night on CNN that the shout was now unremarkable: "This is what has become the norm in our politics." Rep. Debbie Dingell of Michigan said threats of political violence "have no place in our democracy," and the Council on American-Islamic Relations said leaders have "a responsibility to forcefully reject incitement to violence, racism, and bigotry."
“Political violence is a big problem. Rather than egging on, real leaders call it out.”