Runoff between John Cornyn and Ken Paxton features ads and legal disputes targeting Texas Muslims

In the bitter and expensive US Senate runoff between John Cornyn, the incumbent, and Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, the state’s Muslim community has been a frequent target for campaign ads and legal challenges.

Both candidates have tried to portray the other as either too soft on the supposed threat of Islam or insufficiently aggressive toward Muslim institutions.

The difference in framing around antisemitism and anti-Muslim hatred distorts public understanding, inflames tensions and makes both Jewish and Muslim communities less safe

The horrific terrorist attack on the Islamic Centre of San Diego in California has been reported by many news outlets over the past few days. Yet as the story travelled across screens and news feeds, something more subtle unfolded: the language of reporting. Some outlets spoke of “teen suspects” and “three deceased” rather than murdered worshippers or a terrorist attack on a mosque. Words matter. They shape sympathy, urgency, and influence how violence is understood. Too often, the vocabulary of terror and extremism appears unevenly distributed; sharpened for some perpetrators but softened for others.

There is a growing sense that the world is slipping backwards – not through dramatic rupture, but through the steady normalisation of hate, the coarsening of public discourse and politicians increasingly fuelling division and racism.