Skip to main content
Thursday, October 29, 2026Oct 29

This story is free to read.

McManus: The GOP’s Anglo-Saxon problem

New York Times photo by Anna Moneymaker / House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-California, walks to the House chamber at the Capitol in Washington on Tuesday.
New York Times photo by Anna Moneymaker / House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-California, walks to the House chamber at the Capitol in Washington on Tuesday. New York Times photo by Anna Moneymaker / House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-California, walks to the House chamber at the Capitol in Washington on Tuesday.

Two of the Trumpiest Republicans in the House of Representatives, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Paul Gosar of Arizona, recently said they were forming a new “America First Caucus” to champion former President Donald Trump’s policies during his exile at Mar-a-Lago.

Among the principles in its draft manifesto was this passage, under the heading of “Immigration”: “America is a nation with a border, and a culture, strengthened by a common respect for uniquely Anglo-Saxon political traditions.”

It said legal immigration should be curtailed because too many recent immigrants have “refused to abandon their old loyalties.”

House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield quickly disavowed the move. “The Republican Party is the party of Lincoln,” he tweeted, “not nativist dog whistles.” Greene and Gosar abruptly announced that they didn’t plan to form a caucus after all.

But don’t expect that to be the last we’ll hear of the sentiments in their abandoned manifesto.