Leading progressive institute says GOP runs midterms on Islamophobia, not record

By Ahmad B.

WASHINGTON (MNTV) – One of Washington’s most influential progressive policy institutes says Republicans are closing their midterm campaigns on a message of bigotry — including Islamophobia — to distract voters from the party’s thin record on the cost of living.

In comments to MNTV, Colin Seeberger, chief strategy officer at the Center for American Progress (CAP) Action Fund, tied the rhetoric directly to what he described as an absence of economic ideas heading into the Nov. 3 elections.

“Many Republican candidates are closing their campaigns on a message of gutter politics and bigotry, including Islamophobia, because they lack an affirmative record in addressing voters’ top concern — the high cost of living — and have detailed few, if any, ideas to address the problem,” Seeberger said.

“By his own admission, House Speaker Mike Johnson admitted that if voters allow Republicans to remain in power, they should [expect more of the same] at a time voters are discontent with their political leaders, the direction of the country, and are desperate for change to a political system that is making their lives materially worse.”

Seeberger’s reference points to remarks Johnson made in a CNBC interview in late September, when the speaker was asked what Republicans would do on affordability if they held their majorities.

“What we would do in the next two years is exactly what we have been doing already,” Johnson said — a line Democrats have since seized on as a promise of continuity at a moment of economic discontent.

Seeberger argued that the distraction extends beyond campaign messaging to the machinery of government itself.

“Because of this, Republicans are desperately trying to scare voters in the hopes of changing the conversation, and we’re seeing that manifest itself in baseless accusations and the weaponization of the Justice Department against President Trump’s political foes on the eve of a midterm election he’s likely to lose,” he said.

Seeberger did not single out individual cases, but his charge echoes a run of prosecutions and inquiries the Justice Department has pursued against figures Trump has publicly attacked.

The most striking for Muslim Americans involves Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, the Somali American Democrat who has been a recurring target of the president.

On Oct. 12, Homeland Security Investigations executed a sealed search warrant at Omar’s Washington home, and the following day the Justice Department issued grand jury subpoenas to relatives, part of an inquiry into whether her 2000 citizenship application was fraudulent — an allegation she has long denied.

Omar, who faces reelection on Nov. 3, condemned the raid as “political intimidation” and said she would “not be silenced.”

The pattern extends well beyond her. Former FBI director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James were both indicted in September 2025 — Comey on charges of making false statements to Congress, James on bank fraud — though federal judges dismissed both cases over the legality of the prosecutor’s appointment, and a grand jury later refused to re-indict James.

Prosecutors have also opened, or been urged to open, inquiries into sitting Democratic lawmakers — including Senator Adam Schiff and Representative Eric Swalwell, both named in mortgage-fraud referrals they deny — as well as Federal Reserve officials.

The targets have uniformly described the moves as political retaliation, and most of the cases remain unresolved.

Leading voice on left

The assessment carries weight in part because of where it comes from. The Center for American Progress, founded in 2003 by John Podesta, a former White House chief of staff and a senior figure in successive Democratic administrations, has long been described as the most influential think tank on the American left — an “idea factory for Democrats” whose policy papers and personnel have repeatedly flowed into Democratic White Houses.

Its former president, Neera Tanden, went on to serve as a senior policy adviser to former president Joe Biden.

The CAP Action Fund is the organization’s affiliated advocacy arm, a 501(c)(4) group that engages more directly in political and electoral debate than its sister research institute.

That standing makes CAP Action less a bystander than a messaging hub for the broader Democratic effort to keep the midterms focused on affordability.

The group has made that case publicly for nearly a year.

In an analysis published in November 2025, drawing on post-election survey work by the CAP Action Fund and Upswing Research, the organization urged Democrats to campaign on “how they are personally going to afford the basics” and to draw an “explicit contrast with Republican policies that have increased the cost of groceries and utility bills.”

Food and energy costs, it argued, would shape how many seats the party could put in play in 2026.

Rhetoric CAP is responding to

Seeberger’s remarks land against a documented pattern of anti-Muslim messaging from Republican candidates and officials this cycle.

Media accounts through the autumn catalogued Trump administration figures and GOP candidates describing Muslim and Arab American politicians in starkly hostile terms — among them Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, who has emerged as a frequent target, and New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, whom Senator Tommy Tuberville cast as evidence that “the enemy is at the gates.”

Other Republicans, including Representative Nancy Mace, have deployed language accusing Muslim candidates of being a “Trojan horse.”

The attacks come as Muslim Americans field a record slate of candidates.

MNTV has identified at least 51 Muslims on the ballot this cycle, from the US Senate to city councils, while the Council on American-Islamic Relations counts 255 Muslims already holding elected office across 26 states.

Civil rights groups say the rising visibility has been met with a parallel rise in bigoted rhetoric.

Republicans have generally rejected the framing, casting their attacks as legitimate scrutiny of individual candidates’ records and foreign policy views rather than appeals to prejudice.

Political scientists remain divided on whether the strategy moves votes; several have noted that surveys consistently show the economy and the cost of living, not cultural grievance, topping voters’ concerns — the same gap Seeberger argues Republicans are trying to paper over.

With the vote days away, CAP Action’s bet is that the closing argument will be decided on groceries and rent, not fear.