A majority of Muslim-Americans voted for Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein in this week’s election, while just 21 percent supported Republican Donald Trump and 20 percent voted for Vice President Kamala Harris, according to newly released data.
The survey, conducted by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and released on Friday, polled 1,575 verified Muslim-American voters nationwide.
CAIR also released exit polling results from Michigan and Maryland voters. Out of the 502 Muslim-Americans surveyed in Michigan, 59% supported Dr. Stein, 22% voted for Trump, and 14% pulled the lever for Harris. Stein received 81% of the vote from Muslim-Americans in Maryland with Harris earning 12% and Trump around 4%.
The results stand in stark contrast to results from previous cycles. CAIR found that in 2020 President Biden had support from 69% of those surveyed, with Trump earning 17%, and other candidates 3%. Additionally, a study released in October of 2016 found that 72% of Muslim-American voters supported Hillary Clinton, while 4% voted for Trump, and 5% chose other candidates.
CAIR says the dramatic shift away from the Democratic Party candidate can be explained in large part by President Biden’s Middle East policy. ”Our final exit poll of American Muslim voters confirms that opposition to the Biden administration’s support for the war on Gaza played a crucial role,” CAIR National Government Affairs Director Robert S. McCaw said, “leading to a sharp drop in support for Vice President Harris compared to the support President Biden received from Muslim voters in 2020, and a sharp rise in support for third party candidate Jill Stein. President-Elect Trump also managed to make in-roads with Muslim voters.”
Aaron is a reporter for Responsible Statecraft and a contributor to the Mises Institute. He received both his undergraduate and masters degrees in international relations from Liberty University.
Top Photo: Green Party presidential nominee attends a rally in Dearborn, Michigan (REUTERS)
Top photo credit: U.S. Marines infiltrate the beach head as part of an amphibious demonstration at Hat Yao Beach, Kingdom of Thailand, during Cobra Gold 2014, Feb. 14 (US Marine Corps photo)
Maximum pressure has long been President Donald Trump’s stance towards the government of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela — he slapped crippling sanctions on the country during his first term — but in recent days the administration has pushed the stakes even higher.
The Caribbean is currently hosting an astonishing quantity of American naval and air assets, including four Arleigh Burke–class destroyers, a guided missile cruiser, an attack submarine, a Marine Amphibious Ready Group, and a flight of F-35 multirole fighters.
These are ostensibly deployed as part of an antinarcotic and drug interdiction operation, but the volume of firepower employed for what is normally a relatively sedate task has created broad suspicion at home and in Venezuela that a military intervention against the Bolivarian Republic is on tap. Maduro recently sent a letter to the United Nations stating that he expected an “armed attack” against his country in “a very short time.”
His concerns have probably not been assuaged by the formation of a new Joint Task Force last week (again ostensibly for anti-narcotics operations) in SOUTHCOM under the II Marine Expeditionary Force, precisely the kind of unit that would be deployed in a Venezuelan military intervention, still less by the recent New York Times report that Trump has authorized lethal covert operations by American intelligence agents within his borders.
The administration has made its interest in removing Maduro quite clear: it views him as the head of a narcoterrorist organization that is responsible for exporting crime, drugs, and illegal immigrants to the United States. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has declared that Maduro is not the legitimate president of the country, due to his government’s obvious falsification of results in the 2024 election, and the Justice Department doubled the bounty for his capture to $50 million.
But while Maduro is, without a doubt, a usurper of the presidential office and a tyrannical dictator, he is no less the president and head of state of Venezuela. Ideological harangues about the sanctity of democracy will no more remove him from power or render his government moot than American disapproval of the Chinese Communist Party could affect the democratization of Red China, something both sides are well aware of. Removing Maduro will require more than sanctions, threats, or pressure: it will require war, and that possibility looks increasingly likely with each passing day.
While ending Maduro’s dictatorship would certainly be a boon to the Venezuelan people, the intervention comes with a number of costs and risks American policymakers should bear in mind and carefully weigh against the potential benefits of intervention. There is no free lunch in geopolitics.
The most obvious costs are those of the initial invasion. The American invasion of Panama in 1989, to overthrow the government of General Manuel Noriega, was carried out by a force of some 27,000 U.S. troops, 23 of which were killed and hundreds more wounded. Venezuela is vastly larger than Panama, and while its military is very poorly equipped, it likewise dwarfs the forces that were available to Noriega. The Center for Strategic and International Studies estimates an invasion of Venezuela would require nearly 50,000 troops, some of which will not return home. Any American government should be extremely conscientious about the causes on which it spends the lives of American soldiers.
The real risks of such an operation, however, come after the invasion. Toppling Maduro’s government is one thing; there is no real chance that the impoverished and corrupt Venezuelan armed forces can put up a serious fight against the American military. But occupying and rebuilding the country is another, as the U.S. learned to its chagrin in the Middle East.
While Venezuela is no Afghanistan — it has a relatively unified population, an organized opposition, and a prominent leader in María Corina Machado capable of stepping in and assuming the reins of government — there are still very serious challenges an incoming government will face.
The largest risk are the cartels operating in the region. While Maduro does strategically permit cartels to operate within Venezuela at times, Venezuela does not have the entrenched cartel problems of neighboring Colombia. Cartels operate networks that transport drugs through Venezuela to the U.S. and elsewhere, but control little territory and do not produce a significant amount of drugs in the country. The Venezuelan government continues to crack down on cartels that appear to be making themselves overly comfortable; Maduro has no interest in permitting the growth of significant challenges to his authority, including cartel quasi-states like those in Colombia and Mexico.
Once a U.S. invasion takes place, however, the enforcement power that limits cartel activity in Venezuela will vanish in an instant. One of the foundations of Maduro’s political power is his iron grip of the country’s military, law enforcement, and intelligence services. All are regularly and thoroughly purged of disloyal and seditious elements, and their leadership bought off with positions of power and lucre in government and industry. An American invasion would shatter them as institutions, and an incoming government would need to reconstruct them basically from scratch. Occupying U.S. troops could help fill the gap, but they are unlikely to be able to project power and enforce the laws far beyond major urban areas, a situation that could allow cartels to massively expand their power in the rural areas of the country, especially in the Amazon and the regions bordering Colombia.
Worse still, an American invasion offers the cartels the opportunity to posture themselves as anti-imperialist resistance movements and absorb elements of Maduro’s support in the country — support they are often already tapped into through networks of patronage and corruption. Units from the ostensibly Marxist National Liberation Army, a major drug cartel in Colombia, already frequently travel through Venezuelan territory in between fights with other cartels and the Colombian military; a regime change risks plunging Venezuela into the same permanent drug war Colombia has been embroiled in for decades — one American forces are likely to be personally engaged in during the occupation and reconstruction of the Venezuelan government.
Given that the stated objective of the Trump administration’s military expansion in the Caribbean is to crack down on the drug trade into the U.S. from Venezuela, few things would be more counterproductive than feeding cartel expansion in northern South America.
An intensified Venezuelan drug war could also contribute to the flow of Venezuelan illegal immigration, another major complaint the U.S. has had against the Maduro government. Cartel brutality and conflict has been a major driver of illegal immigration all over central and south America, and it would be a cruel irony if narcos in Amazonas replaced narcos in Caracas as major contributors to the American illegal immigrant population.
The Trump administration is approaching a decisive moment in its Western Hemisphere policy. Eventually it will have to settle American relations with Venezuela. Policymakers must weigh carefully the costs and benefits of military intervention and take into account the serious risks inherent to occupation and nation-building — because if we muck it up this time, we can’t just pull out and leave the Taliban to their own devices. This one’s in our own backyard, and we’ll be paying the cost of any missteps for years to come.
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Syrian security forces walk together along a street, after clashes between Syrian government troops and local Druze fighters resumed in the southern Druze city of Sweida early on Wednesday, collapsing a ceasefire announced just hours earlier that aimed to put an end to days of deadly sectarian bloodshed, in Sweida, Syria July 16, 2025. REUTERS/Karam al-Masri
In March of this year, Laya’s world came crashing down.
Following a series of skirmishes in the coastal region of Syria, the country’s transitional government had mobilized forces to put down what it saw as a brewing rebellion among Alawites, a minority offshoot of Shia Islam and the religion of former President Bashar al-Assad. The operation quickly turned into a bloodbath.
Government-affiliated militants and non-state actors swept through coastal towns, going door to door and killing any Alawite men they could find. Hundreds of bodies were dumped in the sea or in mass graves. “They killed my cousin,” recalled Laya, who lost several relatives in the attacks. “They came to his door and killed him there, in front of his wife and children.” His family survived but was too afraid to go outside in order to bury him. “His body remained in the house for four days,” Laya told RS, adding that “there are mothers who lost four or five children” in the killings.
After four days of massacres, Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa put a stop to the brutality carried out by his loosely organized forces. But not before at least 1,400 civilians, including roughly 100 women and children, were killed, according to a United Nations investigation. (Laya, who has worked to gather testimonies of the attacks, believes that the real number is much higher.)
Today, Laya and many of her fellow Alawites have resigned themselves to staying holed up in their homes, fearful of harassment or violence that they could face outside. “I left my work because I'm afraid to come and go from the house at the same time [every day],” she said. “I could be kidnapped.”
Ten months after the fall of the Assad regime, sectarian and ethnic tensions have come to represent a ticking time bomb at the heart of the new Syria. Sharaa may publicly call for creating a “Syria for all Syrians,” but minority groups, which represent roughly 35% of Syria’s population, remain unconvinced. While 81% of Sunnis believe the new government represents their interests, only 23% of respondents from minority religions can say the same, according to a recent poll.
Many of these problems were to be expected. During the brutal 14-year civil war, the Assad regime often inflamed sectarian divisions in order to bolster support for it among minority groups. But the new government has exacerbated these tensions by refusing to pursue a serious process of transitional justice, in which people are held accountable for atrocities related to the civil war, according to experts and regular Syrians who spoke with RS.
“The majority don't see justice being carried out because it's not being processed in a formal way,” said Joshua Landis, a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute and professor at the University of Oklahoma. The result is an escalating cycle of violence. Vigilantes and militants harass or kill people over alleged support for the Assad regime, then members of aggrieved minority groups strike back, leading to further reprisals. The open wounds of the civil war continue to fester.
So far, the U.S. has largely ignored this cycle of violence. Rather than pressing Sharaa to pursue transitional justice, American officials have set the question aside in order to focus on economic questions, according to Landis. But without foreign pressure, Sharaa is unlikely to do much more to heal the wounds of the civil war. And without steps toward reconciliation, fighting could return at any moment.
A State Department official told RS in a statement that the U.S. is pushing for the protection of all groups in Syria. "We support Syria’s national unity and a peaceful and inclusive integration of all its constituents, including religious and ethnic minorities," the official said. "We continue to call on the Syrian government to hold all perpetrators of violence accountable for their actions."
Signs of trouble have already started to appear in the northwest, where some Alawites are attempting to launch an insurgency. Anti-government militants remain weak, but they may not stay that way for long. “The Alawites can maybe endure for a year or two, but in the end, oppressed people can't remain unarmed,” Laya told RS.
An 'existential threat'
Transitional justice in Syria was never going to be easy. More than 600,000 Syrians died during the 14-year-long civil war, and at least 6 million of the country’s 22 million people fled the country and became refugees. Atrocities were commonplace, from the barrel bombings and chemical weapons attacks perpetrated by the Assad regime to the mass killings and public executions carried out by ISIS and other jihadist groups.
In May, Sharaa’s government announced efforts to pursue justice for crimes committed by the Assad regime, and authorities arrested at least 600 former officials on accusations of war crimes. But Damascus has largely kept this process out of the public eye, and it has shown no interest in investigating crimes committed by militants, according to Radwan Ziadeh, the chairman of a leading Syrian news channel and a prominent expert on transitional justice. “What concerns me the most is that this file is not a priority for the current government,” Ziadeh said, adding that Sharaa’s transitional justice commission has “zero experience” in the field. (Note: This reporter briefly worked for Ziadeh as an intern at the Arab Center in 2019.)
Sharaa has also attempted to strike a difficult balance with Syrian business leaders, many of whom built their empires on corruption and favors from the Assad regime. In order to raise funds, the new government has allegedly offered amnesty to some of these tycoons in exchange for large portions of their ill-gotten assets, sparking controversy among many in Syria, who want to see Assad allies punished for their crimes.
In the absence of visible transitional justice, some have attempted to take matters into their own hands. Revenge attacks against former regime officials have become commonplace, and the government remains unwilling or unable to stop them. Misinformation campaigns have made matters worse, as some viral posts scare minorities with false stories of sectarian attacks and others inflame anger at minorities with lurid stories of anti-Islamic acts.
More challenging yet has been the question of violations committed after the fall of the regime, like the massacres of Alawites in March. Many Syrians now view Alawites as an internal enemy. Assad’s military and government employed a disproportionate number of Alawites, some of whom contributed to the regime’s horrific human rights violations, including the torture and killing of thousands of prisoners both before and during the civil war. Many Alawites at least tacitly supported the government during the war, in part due to their fear of jihadist groups fighting on the other side.
When the regime fell, the Alawites were left exposed, with no domestic or international backer to protect them. As tensions with authorities grew, some Assad loyalists launched attacks on forces associated with Sharaa’s government, which helped spark the crackdown that descended into massacres in March. “Alawite civilians who had nothing to do with the Assad regime paid the price of others because Assad used the Alawites as a way of governing Syria,” Ziadeh told RS.
Under Ziadeh’s recommendation, Sharaa launched a commission to investigate the attacks, which led to the arrest of 232 people, according to Ziadeh, who described the commission’s report as “fantastic.” But many Alawites feel that these efforts didn’t go far enough.
Further complicating the transition has been the government’s uneasy relationship with the Druze, followers of an esoteric Abrahamic faith with a sizable population in southern Syria. Tensions had grown in the months following the fall of the Assad regime as Israel crossed into Syria and took up positions in Druze-majority regions, where some local leaders welcomed Israeli troops.
In July, clashes erupted in which government-affiliated militants and local Bedouin groups fought Druze militants, resulting in the deaths of at least 539 civilians. Israel joined the fray, launching airstrikes against the Syrian Ministry of Defense building in Damascus. The government attempted to impose a ceasefire, but a local notable named Hekmat al-Hijri rejected it, leading to a standoff that continues today. Many Druze who previously opposed Hijri now back him because of what they see as an “existential threat” from Damascus, according to Nanar Hawach of the International Crisis Group.
These fatal skirmishes have also factored heavily into the thinking of Syria’s Kurds, who lead the government in the country’s northeast under the banner of the Syrian Democratic Forces. SDF leader Mazloum Abdi has engaged in protracted negotiations with Sharaa’s government aimed at incorporating the northeast and the SDF’s military into the Syrian state. But fears of reprisals against Kurds — and a hunch that the Sharaa government could lose control at any moment — have led Abdi to slow roll the implementation of any plans.
But Sharaa isn’t the only one dealing with a restive population. The SDF rules over a territory in which Kurds are vastly outnumbered by Sunni Arabs, many of whom are anxious to bring their region under the control of Damascus. If Abdi continues to drag his feet, he could face uprisings of his own, according to Ziadeh. “If they continue to go this way I'm actually concerned [about the possibility of] political and maybe social unrest there,” he told RS.
Washington’s Goldilocks option
The Trump administration has played a major, if somewhat controversial, role in Syria’s transition. On the positive side, U.S. envoy Tom Barrack has helped to mediate talks between Damascus and the SDF while also throwing his support behind efforts to lift U.S. sanctions, which continue to strangle Syria’s economy.
But many experts fear that Barrack is ignoring the concerns of Syria’s minorities — an omission that could help exacerbate cycles of violence in the country. Analysts are also worried about Sharaa’s decision to fire all of the soldiers and officers from Assad’s army, leaving some 500,000 trained fighters, most of whom are Alawites, without jobs or life prospects. After all, when the U.S. implemented a similar policy in Iraq, it helped lead to the rise of ISIS.
“The international community at large, and the U.S. specifically, are incredibly well positioned to nudge Damascus to take bold steps,” Hawach said, noting the Syrian government’s strong desire for Western support. Hawach argues that U.S. leaders should urge Damascus to pursue accountability for atrocities and reform security institutions to better protect minorities.
Barrack has also sparked controversy by rejecting calls for some level of federalism in Syria. "As Ambassador and Special Envoy Barrack has affirmed, a unified Syria under 'one army, one government, one state' is pivotal to national and regional stability," a State Department official told RS. On this point, he has the support of many within the country. “A federal system based on ethnicity or religious sectarian lines is a recipe for civil war,” Ziadeh said, adding that he supports “administrative” decentralization but would otherwise want a strong central government.
But many minorities fear that a centralized system will leave them vulnerable to discrimination by the government in Damascus. In order to balance these interests, Steven Simon and Adam Weinstein of the Quincy Institute have suggested a Goldilocks solution. “The United States would be wise to stop rejecting federalism and encourage the transfer of some power to local or regional authorities,” Simon and Weinstein wrote in Foreign Affairs, cautioning that key issues like “monetary policy, foreign relations, and defense of Syria’s borders should remain with the central government.”
Such an approach could help push the new government toward a stable transition despite the concerns of minorities. “Ultimately, Syrians will determine their own system of government, and that is how it should be,” Simon and Weinstein wrote. “Yet the Trump administration must recognize the weight of its words and ensure that it is not inadvertently encouraging the interim government’s worst inclinations.”
A newly-created firm called Show Faith by Works is embarking on a “geofencing” campaign to target Christian churches and colleges across the American Southwest with pro-Israel advertisements. The pastors and congregations themselves are seemingly unaware of this campaign, and some have concerns with Israel’s methods to target Christians.
According to the firm’s filing under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), Show Faith by Works will “geofence the actual boundaries of every Major (sic) church in California, Arizona, Nevada, and Coloardo (sic) and all Christian Colleges during worship times” and then “track attendees and continue to target [them] with ads” on behalf of Israel. The geofencing campaign is part of a larger $3.2 million contract that also includes trying to hire celebrity spokespeople and paying pastors to produce content.
RS reached out to hundreds of churches in California, Arizona, Nevada, and Colorado that were listed as potential targets of the geofencing campaign. None that responded were aware of the campaign. “We were not aware of that, no—you are the first to bring that to our attention,” said the press office for Bethel Church in Redding, California.
The project manager of the operation, Chad Schnitger, explained in an email to RS that the ads may include “invitations for Christians to visit one of our upcoming Mobile Museum exhibits, or to go to our website to learn more about the program, or to visit Israel with your church.” The firm’s pitch deck describes the ads as “pro-lsreal (sic) and anti-Palestinian.”
The “Mobile Museum” Schnitger is referring to is a mobile trailer coordinated by his firm that will visit Christian colleges and churches highlighting atrocities from the Hamas attack on October 7, as well as “footage of IDF explaining the difficulty of fighting bad guys in hostile territory with civilians.” Schnitger confirmed the firm currently has one mobile museum exhibit, and that it would be ready to start travelling to churches and colleges in about a month.
Geofencing has long been a way for corporations to capture audiences by using their location services. It allows corporations to market their products using the location of mobile devices, triggering texts, in-app notifications, or mobile ads when users enter a certain physical boundary.
In an interview with RS, Megan Iorio, Senior Counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information, described geofencing as a “privacy nightmare.” Iorio explained that data brokers vacuum up data from various applications that use location services, and then will either sell that data to marketing firms or offer marketing tools themselves. Then, users with location services enabled might, for instance, see an H&M advertisement if they walk within a certain radius of an H&M store.
Schnitger said that media reports covering the geofencing campaign have been “sensationalized” and pointed out that it’s a common marketing tool; “It is not sending information back to a foreign entity; it's a way to deliver ads…This is a 1-way ad push using marketing tools that have been in place for over 10 years.” Iorio explained that while it is commonplace, the technique is “incredibly invasive.”
“The fact it has become so common and that foreign governments are now using it for targeted, precise influence campaigns shows how much we need regulation to stamp down on the practice. Today, it's the Israeli government looking to curry favor among Christians, but tomorrow it could be a foreign adversary looking to foment discord in a specific US city, and that has broad national security implications.” she added.
Some members of the communities listed as potential targets of Israel’s geofencing campaign share these concerns about Israel using this marketing technique.
Micah, a mechanical engineer in Colorado Springs, has been conducting outreach to pastors and local newspapers in order to raise awareness that seven local churches were listed in the document as targets of the geofencing campaign. Micah circulated a document outlining his concerns, which RS obtained a copy of.
“What jumps out immediately is how the entire document talks about Christians as targets to be manipulated. This isn't respectful outreach - it's warfare language,” he wrote.
One of Micah’s main concerns is that the firm is paying pastors on behalf of Israel. Show Faith by Works’ pitch deck includes a plan to give stipends for “individual guest pastors, bilingual pastors, or pastors who match target demographics to record messages based on content creation targets.” Micah says that this “creates financial conflicts of interest where religious leaders become financially dependent on foreign government messaging, compromising their independence and integrity.”
Asa, Micah’s brother, attends Scottsdale Bible Church in Arizona, one of the churches listed by Show Faith by Works. Asa said that Show Faith by Works’ campaign is a reaction to Israel losing the support of America's youth. “This entire project is an attempt to regain the attention and hearts/support of Gen Z through the use of religious manipulation,” he said. Micah and Asa requested that RS exclude their full names to discuss the matter freely.
Schnitger is optimistic about swaying Christians’ views on Israel. “For those who dislike Israel, maybe some of these exhibits and materials will change your mind.” Part of that effort is to stress anti-Palestinian talking points. The firm’s pitch deck includes talking points about how “[P]alestinian and Iranian goals are not land-focused, but genocidal.”
Timothy Feldman, a software engineer in Plano, Texas, explained in an email to RS that he was upset to see his church listed as a potential target for Israel’s geofencing campaign. “I am disgusted that a genocidal apartheid state is attempting to whitewash its atrocities by propagandizing the good people of Christ United Methodist Church,” said Feldman.
Despite the inclusion of Texas churches like the one in Plano in the pitch deck, Schnitger clarified in an email that the firm is currently not doing anything in Texas.
A church worker in Prescott, Arizona, saw his church on the list too and explained to RS in a phone interview that it’s unclear how the pastors will respond. “The demographics in Prescott tend to be pro-Israel, so it’s hard to know how the church leadership will react to this. All we can do is make people aware of it,” he said, requesting anonymity to speak freely about the issue.
The geofencing campaign will be overseen by Eran Shayovich, the Chief of Staff at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Israel. Shayovich is spearheading an initiative called “project 545,” which he describes as a campaign to “amplify Israel’s strategic communication and public diplomacy efforts.” Shayovich is also the point of contact for Brad Parscale, Trump’s former campaign manager who is coordinating efforts to train ChatGPT on behalf of Israel and integrate pro-Israel messaging into conservative media.
Some states have taken action against geofencing as a practice. In June, Oregon passed a law that prohibits the sale of precise geolocation information, following a similar provision passed by Maryland last year.
Lina Khan's FTC bannedseveral data brokers from collecting and selling data from sensitive locations such as churches and military installations. While these companies — including Gravy Analytics and Mobilewalla — have attracted significant media attention over the last several years, there is an extensive industry of data brokers that continue to operate in the shadows buying and selling location data at places of worship.
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