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South Asians have played a prominent role in President Trump’s universe, especially in his second term.

Second Lady Usha Vance is the daughter of Indian immigrants who came to California to study and never went back. Harmeet Dhillon, born in India and a devout Sikh, is currently his U.S. assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division. And the head of the FBI, Kash Patel, is (like potential New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani,) of Indian descent by way of Uganda.

Some Republicans have taken pride in this kind of diversity, citing it for the gains Trump made in 2024 with Black and Latino voters.

But these days, the MAGA big tent seems to be collapsing fast.

Last week, MAGA had a total anti-Indian meltdown on social media, revealing a deep, ugly racism toward South Asians.

It comes amid the first real rebellion about rampant and increasingly open antisemitism within the MAGAverse, creating a massive rift between traditional conservatives and a younger, rabidly anti-Jewish contingent called groypers whose leader, Nick Fuentes, recently posted that he is “team Hitler.”

Turns out, when you cultivate a political movement based on hate, at some point the hate is uncontrollable. In fact, that hate needs to be fed to maintain power — even if it means feasting on its own.

This monster of white-might ugliness is going to dominate policy and politics for the next election, and these now-public fights within the Republican party represent a new dynamic that will either force it to do some sort of soul searching, or purge it of anything but white Christian nationalism. My bet is on the latter. But if conservatives ever truly believed in their inclusive talk, then it’s time for Republicans to stand up and demand the big Trump tent they were hailing just a few months ago.

Ultra-conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, who opposes much of Fuentes’ worldview, summed up this Republican split succinctly.

Fuentes’ followers “are white supremacists, hate women, Jews, Hindus, many types of Christians, brown people of a wide variety of backgrounds, Blacks, America’s foreign policy and America’s constitution,” Shapiro explained. “They admire Hitler and Stalin and that splinter faction is now being facilitated and normalized within the mainstream Republican Party.”

MAGA’s anti-Indian sentiment had an explosive moment a few days ago when a South Asian woman asked Vice President JD Vance a series of questions during a Turning Point USA event in Mississippi. The young immigrant wanted to know how Vance could preach for the removal of nearly 18 million immigrants? And how could he claim that the United States was a Christian nation, rather than one that valued pluralism?

“How can you stop us and tell us we don’t belong here anymore?” the woman asked. “Why do I have to be a Christian?”

Vance’s answer went viral, in part because he claimed his wife, although from a Hindu family, was “agnostic or atheist,” and that he hoped she would convert to Christianity.

“Do I hope eventually that she is somehow moved by the same thing that I was moved in by church? Yeah, I honestly do wish that,” he said.

Vance later tried to do some damage control on social media, calling Usha Vance a “blessing” and promising to continue to “support her and talk to her about faith and life and everything else, because she’s my wife.”

But many South Asians felt Vance was dissing his wife’s heritage and attempting to downplay her non-whiteness. They vented on social media, and got a lot of MAGA feelings back.

“How can you pretend to be a white nativist politician who will ‘bring america back to it’s golden age’ … when your wife is an indian immigrant?” wrote one poster.

Dhillon received similar feedback recently for urging calm and fairness after a Sikh truck driver allegedly caused a fatal crash.

“[N]o ma’am, it is CRYSTAL CLEAR that sihks and hindus need to get the hell out of my country,” one reply stated. “You and your kind are no longer welcome here. Go the [expletive] home.”

Patel too, got it, after posting a message on Diwali, a religious holiday that celebrates the victory of light over darkness. He was dubbed a demon worshipper, a favorite anti-Indian trope.

Perhaps you’re thinking, “Duh, of course MAGA is racist.” But here’s the thing. The military has been scrubbed of many Black officers. The federal workforce, long a bastion for middle-class people of color, has been decimated. Minority cabinet members or top officials are few. Aside from another South Asian, Tulsi Gabbard, there’s Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez‑DeRemer and HUD head Scott Turner.

South Asians are largely the last visible sign of pluralism in Republican power, an erstwhile proof that the charges of racism from the left are unfair. But now, like Latinos, they are increasingly targets of the base.

At the same time anti-Indian hate was surfacing last week, a whole load of MAGA antisemitism hit the fan. It started when Tucker Carlson, who in his post-network life has re-created himself as a hugely popular podcaster with more than 16 million followers on X, invited Fuentes on his show.

In addition to calling for the death of American Jews, Fuentes has also said women want him to rape them and should be burned alive, Black people belong in prison and LGBTQ+ people are an abomination.

Anyone who is not his kind of Christian “must be absolutely annihilated when we take power,” he said.

Turns out far-right Charlie Kirk was a bulwark against this straight-up American Nazi. Kirk’s popularity kept Fuentes — who often trolled Kirk — from achieving dominance as the spirit guide of young MAGA. Now, with Kirk slain, nothing appears to be stopping Fuentes from taking up that mantle.

After the Fuentes interview, sane conservatives (there are some left) were apoplectic that Carlson would support someone who so openly admits to being anti-Israel and seemingly pro-Nazi. They demanded the Heritage Foundation, historical backbone of the conservative movement, creators of Project 2025 and close allies of Tucker, do something. The head of Heritage, Kevin Roberts, offered what many considered a sorry-not-sorry. He condemned Fuentes, saying he was “fomenting Jew hatred, and his incitements are not only immoral and un-Christian, they risk violence.”

But also counseled that Fuentes shouldn’t be banished from the party.

“Join us — not to cancel — but to guide, challenge, and strengthen the conversation,” Roberts said.

Are Nazis really all bad? Discuss!

The response from ethical conservatives — Jewish and non-Jewish alike — has been that you don’t politely hear Nazis out, and if the Republican Party can’t clearly say that Nazis aren’t welcome, it’s got a problem.

Yes, the Republican Party has a problem.

The right rode to power by attacking what it denigrates at “wokeism” on the left. MAGA declared that to confront fascism or racism or misogyny — to tell its purveyors to sit down and shut up — was wrong. That “canceling,” or banishment from common discourse for spewing hate, was somehow an infringement on 1st Amendment rights or even terrorism.

They screamed loud and clear that speaking out against intolerance was the worst, most unacceptable form of intolerance itself — and would not be tolerated.

You know who heard them loud and clear? Fuentes. He has checkmated establishment Republicans with their own cowardice and hypocrisy.

So now his young Christian white supremacists are empowered, and intent on taking over as the leaders of the party. Fuentes is saying what old guard Republicans don’t want to hear, but secretly fear: He already is dangerously close to being the mainstream; just read the comments.

Roberts, the Heritage president, said it himself: “Diversity will never be our strength. Unity is our strength, and a lack of unity is a sign of weakness.”

Trying to shut Fuentes up or kick him out will likely anger that vocal and powerful part of the base that enjoys the freedom to be openly hateful, and really wouldn’t mind a male-dominated white Christian autocracy.

The far right has free-speeched their way into fascism, and Fuentes is loving every minute of it.

So now this remaining vestige of traditional conservatives — including senators such as Ted Cruz and Mitch McConnell — is faced with a painful reckoning. Many mainstream Republicans for years ignored the racism and antisemitism creeping into the party. They can’t anymore. It has grown into a beast ready to consume its maker.

Will they let this takeover happen, call for conversation over condemnation to the glee of Fuentes and his followers?

Or will they find the courage to be not just true Republicans, but true Americans, and declare non-negotiable for their party that most basic of American ideals: We do not tolerate hate?

OREM, Utah — Authorities said Thursday they have fresh leads in their massive manhunt for a college-age shooter who killed influential right-wing activist Charlie Kirk with a single bullet as he spoke at a Utah college campus.

No suspects were in custody Thursday, more than 20 hours after the shooting, and officials have yet to identify the gunman. However, Robert Bohls, the special agent in charge of the F.B.I.’s Salt Lake City office, said that investigators recovered the weapon they believe was used to kill Kirk — a high-powered bolt-action rifle they found in a wooded area near the campus — as well as the suspect’s footprints and palm prints.

“We are and will continue to work nonstop until we find the person that has committed this heinous crime, and find out why they did it,” Bohls said.

A close ally of President Trump who founded the conservative youth group Turning Point USA, Kirk was killed Wednesday by a single shot fired from the rooftop of a nearby building as he addressed a question about mass shootings at a Utah Valley University campus in Orem.

Investigators are tracking a suspect who appeared to be college age and blended in on campus, Beau Mason, commissioner of the Utah Department of Public Safety, told reporters Thursday morning. They have scoured dozens of feeds from campus security cameras and collected footwear impressions, a palm print and forearm imprints for analysis.

Video of the crowd captured by an attendee shows a lone figure in black dashing across the rooftop of the Losee Center, a building about 150 yards from where Kirk was speaking.

Mason said investigators “are confident in our abilities to track” the shooter and had “good video footage” that they were not ready to release.

“We are working through some technologies and some ways to identify this individual,” he said.

After scouring camera security footage, investigators believe the shooter arrived on campus at about 11:52 am and moved through the stairwells, up to the roof, across the roof to the shooting location, Mason said.

“We were able to track his movements as he moved to the other side of the building, jumped off of the building and fled off of the campus and into a neighborhood,” Mason said. “Our investigators worked through those neighborhoods, contacting anybody they can, with doorbell cameras, witnesses, and have thoroughly worked through those communities trying to identify any leads.”

Bohls said investigators recovered a high-powered, bolt-action rifle in a wooded area where the shooter had fled. A law enforcement source told The Times a Mauser 30-06 was recovered by investigators. Investigators have not said whether the rifle had been traced to an owner.

The Utah Department of Public Safety said Wednesday night its State Crime Lab is working “multiple active crime scenes” — from the site where Kirk was shot to the locations he and the suspect traveled — with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Utah County Attorney’s office, the Utah County Sheriff’s office, and the local police departments.

Hope for a speedy capture of the suspect faded Wednesday night after the F.B.I. released the man its director, Kash Patel, had said was a subject of the investigation. After thanking local and state authorities for taking into custody “the subject for the horrific shooting,” Patel announced that the man had been released after an interrogation by law enforcement.

“Our investigation continues,” Patel said.

Another man who was taken into custody a few hours earlier was later released after being booked by Utah Valley University police on suspicion of obstruction of justice.

Speaking at the Pentagon Thursday at an event commemorating the Sept. 11 attacks, President Trump said he would posthumously award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Kirk.

“Charlie was a giant of his generation, a champion of liberty and an inspiration to millions and millions of people,” Trump said.

The shooter is believed to have fired about 20 minutes after Kirk began speaking Wednesday on a grassy campus courtyard under a white canopy emblazoned with the slogan “PROVE ME WRONG.” The event, attended by about 3,000 people, was the first stop on Kirk’s American Comeback Tour of U.S. campuses.

Some experts who have seen videos believe that the assailant probably had experience with firearms, given the precision with which the single shot was fired from a considerable distance.

Videos shared on social media show Kirk sitting on a chair, taking questions in front of a large crowd of people.

“Do you know how many mass shooters there have been in America over the last 10 years?” an audience member asks.

“Counting or not counting gang violence?” Kirk responds.

Almost immediately, a shot rings out. Kirk falls back, blood gushing his neck. Video show people screaming and fleeing from the event.

The killing — the latest incident in a spate of violent attacks targeting American politicians on the left and the right — led to swift condemnation of political violence from both sides of the ideological divide. But it also led to a blame game.

After President Trump celebrated Kirk as a “patriot who devoted his life to the cause of open debate” and “martyr for truth and freedom,” he said in an evening video broadcast from the Oval Office that “‘radical left” rhetoric was “directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today.”

Trump — who did not mention recent acts of political violence against Democratic lawmakers — called for a crackdown on leftwing groups.

Even as the House of Representatives observed a moment of silence for Kirk Wednesday when he was still in critical condition, the floor descended into chaos when some Democrats pushed back on a Republican legislator’s request that someone lead the group in prayer.

Florida Representative Anna Paulina Luna, a former conservative influencer and close friend of Kirk, pointed angrily at Democrats. “You all caused this,” she shouted.

Kirk, 31, was one of the Republican Party’s most influential power brokers.

The founder of the influential conservative youth organization Turning Point USA, Kirk had a vast online reach: 1.6 million followers on Rumble, 3.8 million subscribers on YouTube, 5.2 million followers on X and 7.3 million followers on TikTok.

During the 2024 election, he rallied his online followers to support Trump, prompting conservative podcast host Megyn Kelly to say: “It’s not an understatement to say that this man is responsible for helping the Republicans win back the White House and the U.S. Senate.”

Just after Trump was elected for a second time to the presidency in November, Kirk frequently posted to social media from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, where he had firsthand influence over which MAGA loyalists Trump named to his Cabinet.

Kirk was known for melding his conservative politics, nationalism and evangelical faith, casting the current political climate as a state of spiritual warfare between a righteous right wing and so-called godless liberals.

At a Turning Point event on the Salt Lake City campus of Awaken Church in 2023, he said that gun violence was worth the price of upholding the right to bear arms.

“I think it’s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the 2nd Amendment to protect our other God-given rights,” he said. “That is a prudent deal. It is rational.”

Kirk also previously declared that God was on the side of American conservatives and that there was “no separation of church and state.” In a speech to Trump supporters in Georgia last year, he said that “the Democrat Party supports everything that God hates” and that “there is a spiritual battle happening all around us.”

Gordon Ramsay has a message for you this holiday weekend: wear sunscreen.

The Michelin-starred celebrity chef posted Saturday on Instagram that he was diagnosed with skin cancer and had the basal cell carcinoma removed from the side of his face.

Ramsay shared two photos, one of a bandage stretching from his cheek to his neck. Another, a close-up, showed stitch marks directly below his earlobe.

“Grateful and so appreciative for the incredible team at The Skin Associates and their fast reactive work on removing this Basal Cell Carcinoma thank you! Please don’t forget your sunscreen this weekend,” Ramsay wrote in the caption.

His post was not without humor: “I promise you it’s not a face lift! I’d need a refund …” he said.

Ramsay — the host, most recently, of the reality TV show “Hell’s Kitchen” — has not been shy about sharing his health issues on social media, as well as offering cautionary advice to his followers. Last year he posted a video on Instagram after he was in a bicycle accident in Connecticut. In the video, the Scottish-born restaurateur lifted his white chef coat and pointed to expansive bruising on his torso. He urged his followers to “WEAR A HELMET.”

Skin cancers are among the most common cancers diagnosed worldwide, according to the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer. More than 1.5 million new cases were estimated in 2022.

Basal cell carcinoma in particular, which Ramsay was diagnosed with, is a type of non-melanoma skin cancer and the most common overall, says Elizabeth Bahar Houshmand, a double board certified dermatologist based in Dallas.

“But the good news,” Houshmand says, “is there’s a less than 1% chance of metastasis, meaning it would spread to other organs, regions. But it is a skin cancer and needs to be addressed promptly. Usually the treatment is surgical excision and that’s what Gordon Ramsay had done.”

Early detection of basal cell carcinoma, Houshmand says, is key. As are preventative measures, such as wearing sunscreen and SPF clothing.

“It’s generally slow-growing and rarely spreads to other parts of the body, and with early detection and treatment the cure rate is very high,” she says. “Always see your dermatologist if you see an irregularity that’s not going away. Don’t wait. And protect yourself — I like an SPF of 50 or greater and apply it 15 minutes before going outside.”

So if you fire up the grill this weekend — even attempting one of Ramsay’s barbecue favorites — still, make sunscreen the main course.

It seems Elmo’s world recently included vitriolic racist, antisemitic and foul-mouthed social media posts.

“Sesame Street’s” perpetually 3½-year-old mascot caught his social media fans off guard over the weekend as he seemingly traded in his wholesome tweets on X for hateful posts, including calling for violence against the Jewish community and others using lewd language to demand that President Trump release Jeffrey Epstein’s “client list,” alleging he was involved in the late financier’s sex trafficking operation. The obscenity-laden posts shared Sunday went viral, with screenshots also making the rounds. As of Monday morning, the posts had been scrubbed from Elmo’s page.

A spokesperson for Sesame Workshop, the organization behind “Sesame Street” and Elmo, told the Associated Press in a statement, “Elmo’s X account was compromised by an unknown hacker who posted disgusting messages including antisemitic and racist posts.”

“We are working to restore full control of the account,” the spokesperson added.

A representative for X did not immediately confirm the alleged hack or provide additional information to The Times on Monday.

In addition to the problematic tweets, the alleged hacker left a mysterious link on the beloved puppet’s page. The link, which has since been removed, redirected followers and internet sleuths to a user’s Telegram channel. On Telegram, the user appears to take credit for the hack. “Thanks Elmo,” reads one Telegram message shared Sunday, the same day Elmo’s odd posts hit the timeline.

In another Telegram message, the user praises Adolf Hitler and rapper Ye (formerly Kanye West), who has his own handful of controversies involving antisemitism and hateful comments.

The since-deleted tweets presented a very dramatic tone shift in the red furball’s online presence. Elmo, whose X activity mostly consists of photos with friends and wholesome greetings, notably broke the internet last year with an innocuous post: “Elmo is just checking in! How is everybody doing?”

The tweet, which is pinned to the top of Elmo’s profile, prompted some brutal honesty from a range of followers. “Resisting the urge to tell Elmo that I am kinda sad,” replied “West Side Story” star Rachel Zegler.

Fielding online confessions of existential dread and general anxiety, Elmo responded to fans that he “learned that it is important to ask a friend how they are doing.”

He added: “Elmo will check in again soon, friends! Elmo loves you.”

In the wake of the viral tweet, Sesame Workshop also offered fans and followers a mental health resource guide on its website, reminding users on X that “Mental health is health!”

Clearly, the alleged hacker didn’t get the memo on Elmo’s longstanding agenda of kindness and compassion.

Former Times staff writer Nardine Saad contributed to this report.