racist

In the second week of the college football season, in a clash of titans, the University of Texas scored 21 unanswered points to surge past Ohio State in the fourth quarter and win, 24-23.

The comeback, Gov. Greg Abbott decreed, was the greatest home victory in more than 130 years of Longhorn football.

A screen grab of one celebratory moment showed a group of students ecstatic beyond belief. They were clad in the university’s signature burnt orange. Two wore cowboy hats. One flashed “Hook ‘em Horns,” the university’s proud hand signal.

To see the picture earlier this month was to witness pure, untempered joy.

But Bo French, the Republican candidate for Texas Railroad Commission, saw something different.

Most of the students were darkly complected and apparently of South Asian heritage. French posted the photo and wrote on X, “I heard UT graduation this year looked like this. I didn’t believe it. The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined.”

He followed with a second post, doubling down on the racist “Great Replacement” theory.

“Like body-cams exposed criminals, social media is exposing how many Americans have been displaced by foreigners,” French spewed. “It’s everywhere and far worse than any of us could imagine.”

In many places, French’s unapologetic, unvarnished bigotry would be disqualifying. But given Texas’ strong Republican leaning he stands a better-than-even chance of being elected in November to the state Railroad Commission, which, despite its name, oversees Texas’ vast oil and gas industry.

The hateful gibe was perfectly in character. “In some ways in Texas this is old news,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, who teaches political science at the University of Houston.

Last year, as chairman of the Tarrant County GOP, French posted an online poll asking, “Who is a bigger threat to America?” The choice on offer: Muslims or Jews.

Speaking in March at a political conference, he urged President Trump to round up and deport every Muslim in the country, calling the Islamic faith subversive and a clear and present danger to America.

“The Republican Party is used to Bo French making these kinds of outrageous statements,” Rottinghaus said.

Still, the response to French’s latest acrid emission was telling, not least for what it says about reflexive partisanship and today’s political reward structure.

As you’d expect, his Democratic opponent, state Rep. Jon Rosenthal, was scathing. “I spent 25 years as an oil and gas engineer,” he wrote on social media. “Bo French spent Sunday morning sorting our student section by skin color … A man who can’t tell a Longhorn from a foreigner has no business regulating anything in TX.”

The state’s outgoing U.S. senator, Republican John Cornyn, was also quick to denounce French. “This is the Republican nominee for statewide office,” Cornyn said in a post. “Are other Republican elected officials going to condemn the intolerance and racism, or look the other way while it becomes normalized.”

For Abbott and for Ken Paxton, who beat Cornyn in an eye-gouging, rabbit-punching Republican Senate primary, the answer was, for all intents, the latter.

“That is not my message,” Abbott said in a written statement, summoning the moral clarity and political courage of a puff pastry. “We all support our college football teams. The way we win the state is the same way we win football games. We unite under the brand of Texas.”

Then, just to have it both ways, Abbott suggested “that doesn’t mean that Texas cannot also lead in having the toughest immigration laws of any state in America and freezing H1B visas at our universities.” (The overwhelming majority of those holding H1B visas are Asian nationals from India and China.)

Paxton responded by attacking his Democratic opponent, state Rep. James Talarico, for saluting Cornyn for taking a stand against French’s prejudice. “I condemn racism in all its forms,” Paxton wrote on X, adding, “Only one person in this race has a history of dividing Texans by race, and it’s James Talarico.”

A simple, straightforward condemnation shouldn’t have been hard. Lacey Hull, a Republican state representative from Houston, was among those in the GOP who showed how.

“Please delete this,” she urged French on X. “This post breaks my heart. I see college kids cheering on their football team. I see Texans.”

But Abbott, bidding for an unprecedented fourth term, is facing a tougher than expected race against Democratic state Rep. Gina Hinojosa.

Paxton, whose unsavory resume includes impeachment, indictment, petty theft and charges of adultery, has managed the rare feat of turning his race against Talarico into a nail-biter. (It’s been more than three decades since a Democrat won statewide office in Texas.)

Both need a robust GOP turnout to win in November and neither wants to risk alienating too many within the party’s xenophobic, anti-immigrant wing.

“They’re concerned about turnout,” said Mark Jones, a political scientist at Rice University. “Texas is a red state, but one thing that Republicans are concerned about is that the base may not turn out in as large a number as they need.”

Given French’s loathsome history, Abbott and others in the party establishment worked hard to keep him from winning the Republican nomination, Rice noted. But not Paxton. He headlined the kickoff to French’s campaign and has good reason to be glad he won and is now part of the GOP ticket.

His presence means that Paxton is only the second most odious figure seeking statewide office in Texas in November.

As President Trump tries to convince voters that Democrats have let crime run amok, he’s digging into the country’s political past to cite one of the most controversial campaign advertisements that relied heavily on racist tropes.

During a campaign stop Wednesday in Gastonia, N.C., to stump for Republican U.S. Senate candidate Michael Whatley, Trump resurrected a 1988 George H.W. Bush presidential campaign ad featuring Willie Horton, a Black man convicted of rape and assault after his release through a Massachusetts prison furlough program.

A grainy black-and-white prison photo of Horton was used in the ad targeting then-Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, who was ahead of Bush in the polls. On Wednesday, Trump evoked the Horton ad in an effort to convince voters Democratic former Gov. Roy Cooper, Whatley’s opponent in the Senate race, is soft on crime.

“Willie Horton was a bad guy, really bad guy,” Trump said, before comparing Dukakis’s release of Horton to the pretrial release of a Black man who faces a murder charge for last year’s killing of a white Ukrainian refugee in Charlotte, N.C.

But Cooper was not the governor when the man was released or when he was later charged with killing the refugee.

“Same thing as this, same as, same exact thing,” the president told the crowd in Gastonia.

It’s the second time Trump has invoked Willie Horton while campaigning for his party. Last month during a speech in Las Vegas, Trump called the Charlotte killing a “Willie Horton — modern day” tragedy.

“After the Willie Horton ad dropped, Bush established a lead in the polls and never looked back,” said Andra Gillespie, a political scientist at Emory University outside Atlanta. “They showed the picture, and you ascribed race onto it. It wasn’t sufficiently condemned as racism.”

A spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, which organized the Gastonia campaign rally, defended Trump’s reference to Horton.

“Roy Cooper emptied prisons and released thousands of violent monsters onto North Carolina streets,” RNC National Press Secretary Natalie Baldassarre said in a statement to the Associated Press. “The results had deadly consequences, and every Democrat who supports abolishing or defunding the police, paroling criminals, and implementing lax bail policies will have to answer for their dangerous records in November.”

Trump paints North Carolina as a ‘dangerous state’

Wednesday’s rally cited the Aug. 22, 2025, killing of white 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska on a commuter train in Charlotte.

Decarlos Brown Jr., who is Black, faces murder and other charges in Zarutska’s stabbing, which was captured on video. Court records showed that at the time of the attack, Brown had 14 prior cases in Mecklenburg County, including serving five years for robbery with a dangerous weapon. Doctors had diagnosed him with schizophrenia.

Republicans and other influential voices in Trump’s Make America Great Again movement claimed the attack showed how Democratic elected leaders in large cities across the U.S. failed to protect residents, while some conservative commentators suggested Democrats were ignoring an unfounded “black-on-white” crime problem.

“He should have been locked up for many, many years,” Trump said Wednesday of Brown.

“Nobody used to think of North Carolina as a dangerous state, criminally dangerous,” Trump added while blaming Cooper. “It was apple pie, right? Now, it’s one of the most violent, one of the worst in the whole nation.”

According to 2024 FBI crime data, North Carolina ranked 19th for statewide violent-crime rates in a 50-state comparison.

During the Gastonia rally, a mosaic of mug shots was displayed on a large screen for the crowd. Trump claimed Cooper had cut a deal with “radical activists” to release “some of the worst criminals in the nation into North Carolina.”

“He released these people. This is just a small group of them,” the president said, pointing to the mug shots that overwhelmingly featured Black people.

Although it is unclear under what circumstances the people in the mug shots were released, state corrections officials have said Brown was not released early from prison or under Cooper’s COVID-era prisoner-release settlement that Trump referenced.

Before fatally stabbing Zarutska, according to court records, Brown had been on a pretrial release over a misdemeanor offense that was ordered by a magistrate after Cooper left office.

‘Tapping into anger’

Republicans are under pressure to win over swayable voters as the November midterms approach with Democrats pushing to gain control of the House, the Senate, or both. Some political strategists say part of the ploy of adding Horton to the North Carolina Senate campaign is to rile up Trump’s base.

“He’s tapping into the anger to remind Republican voters of what he thinks their first principles are in hopes that will be successful for Republican candidates,” Gillespie said.

“He’s doing this to try and divert attention away from criticism of how he’s governing at the moment,” she added. “Democrats want to make the story of this election Trump’s low approval numbers, the war in Iran, inflation, being preoccupied with things that don’t make a whole lot of sense when there are really serious things going on in the country.”

Dewey Clayton, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Louisville, said Trump and other Republicans may be thinking that what worked before in the 2016 and 2024 elections presumably will work again in this year’s midterms.

“It was very effective,” Clayton said. “You do not necessarily have to look at it as racial, in and of itself, although [race] clearly becomes a component. In 2026, talking about ads going back in the 1980s? I’m sure he had consultants that were basically saying this is tried and true.”

The GOP may need the push in November, Gillespie warns. “I think the motivation by going back to these old strategies is there is real concern about Republican enthusiasm and you might see lower Republican turnout,” she said.

Rhetoric attempts to divert voters’ attention from rising costs

The tactic speaks to desperation by Trump and the Whatley campaign, according to Morgan Jackson, a partner with Nexus Strategies in Raleigh.

“Trump brings up Willie Horton to stoke racial division, something he’s used for the last 10 years,” said Jackson, who is chief strategist for Cooper’s campaign. “It is very clear from the president’s speech last night their only goal is to sow division and hate and lies. Michael Whatley doubles down in support of that effort.”

Jackson also said Trump and Whatley are trying to change the election’s message of “rising inflation and the cost of everything.”

“They want to use inflammatory rhetoric, hate speech and lies to sow division in a chance to win an election,” he said. “By referencing Willie Horton, they are showing their hand very clearly.”

The AP sent an email Thursday seeking comment from Whatley’s Senate campaign.

Williams writes for the Associated Press. Williams reported from Detroit. AP videojournalist Erik Verduzco in Gastonia, N.C., contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — The Department of Homeland Security drew backlash over an AI-generated social media post featuring a Sikh man facing off against a character made to look like Optimus Prime from the movie “Transformers.” The agency later deleted the image.

Posted Wednesday to the official X account for DHS, the image created by artificial intelligence depicted the “Transformers” character opposite a bearded man wearing a bandanna over his hair. The image, made to look like a movie poster, stated, “America for Americans.”

“Get off our roads, you don’t know how to drive Mr. Singh,” it continued.

The post was denounced as “racist propaganda” and “completely unacceptable.”

Other X posts by DHS that reference Transformers remain online.

Sikh Americans and elected officials condemned the image and accused the Trump administration of using racist imagery to stigmatize Sikhs while promoting its deportation campaign.

Hasbro, which owns the franchise, issued a statement saying the posts by DHS were made “without permission and do not represent the Transformers brand or Hasbro.”

Singh, which translates to “lion,” is the most common last name for Sikh men.

DHS said the post depicted Harjinder Singh, an Indian truck driver accused of causing a fatal crash last year that left three people dead after his 18-wheeler collided with their minivan in Florida. He has pleaded not guilty to vehicular homicide charges.

In photos released by DHS, Harjinder Singh wears similar clothes as the man in the now-deleted AI image.

In an emailed statement, a Homeland Security spokesperson, who did not identify themself, called criticism of the post “nonsensical drivel.” The spokesperson did not respond to a question asking why it had removed the post.

“Harjinder Singh is an illegal alien from India who should never have been in our country,” the statement said, adding that he had been granted a commercial driver’s license by California.

In its campaign against immigrant commercial drivers, the Trump administration has repeatedly pointed out Sikh and Indian truckers, who make up about 20% of that industry’s workforce.

The department recently cited California as a problem state that allows drivers who don’t speak sufficient English to obtain licenses. It also started a tip line asking members of the public to report truck drivers they suspect of being undocumented.

The press office of California Gov. Gavin Newsom, which shared the deleted image in its own X post, called the post “disgusting” and “racist propaganda.”

Noting that the Central Valley is home to a large Sikh community, Rep. David Valadao (R-Hanford) called the post “completely unacceptable” and said he’s glad it was removed.

“No American should be targeted because of their faith or their name,” Valadao wrote on X.

The Sikh Coalition noted that the DHS post comes as the country mourns the 25th anniversary of 9/11, after which Sikhs were targeted for hate crimes.

“We remain fearless in identifying as Sikhs — even when our government portrays us as enemies,” the coalition wrote on X.

After LAPD recruitment officers were accused of making racist, sexist and homophobic comments — some of which were caught on tape — department leaders promised to look into whether they improperly disqualified any police applicants.

More than a year and a half later, the city is still waiting on the report.

But the contents of a separate LAPD internal affairs file reviewed by The Times has shed new light on the unit at the center of the scandal and how its officers responded to investigators who were looking into the matter.

No clear explanation has been given for the delay in publicly addressing the scandal’s effect on recruitment efforts.

In response to a records request from The Times, the city’s personnel department, which is conducting the inquiry, said it had not yet finished its review and had no timeline for doing so.

Last month, Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman charged Daniel Flores, the LAPD whistleblower who secretly recorded his colleagues, with 16 felonies, alleging he violated a state eavesdropping law. But, after criticism from Mayor Karen Bass and others, the district attorney downgraded the counts to misdemeanors with a diversion agreement that will probably allow Flores to avoid any time behind bars.

Flores’ recordings captured Los Angeles Police Department recruitment officers referring to Black people as “monkeys,” describing a female job applicant as “rapeable,” and saying “F—ing deport them, call ICE” during a conversation about Latinos, among a long list of other offensive remarks.

Asked about the pending LAPD report into the fallout from the tapes, Bass said in a statement that the review “has gone on too long.” The mayor said she had directed the personnel department to “complete the report and release it without further delay.”

Flores alleged in a complaint he filed with the LAPD in January 2025 that some recruits had been improperly rejected, adding to ongoing concerns about the department’s struggle to replenish its ranks.

As of last week, the LAPD had 8,507 sworn personnel — its lowest total since October 1995.

Even after efforts under Bass to streamline hiring and boost recruitment, Chief Jim McDonnell has warned that the department may not be adequately staffed in time for the 2028 Olympics.

McDonnell said after Flores’ allegations were made public in early 2025 that the personnel department would conduct a “biopsy” to examine “any adverse impacts” of the scandal on recruitment.

In a brief statement, the department said that it wouldn’t comment on what discipline, if any, had been meted out to the officers involved, citing state privacy law.

“The Department takes allegations of discriminatory or biased conduct seriously,” the statement read. “We are committed to ensuring the workplace is professional, respectful and free from misconduct.”

The Police Commission said in a statement that it is still waiting on the report, adding that “fair and equitable hiring of sworn and civilian employees remains a priority.”

The LAPD internal affairs investigative file reviewed by The Times described a frat-like office atmosphere in the Hiring and Evaluation Section in which Flores worked.

According to the internal affairs report, Flores claimed that at least one colleague, Shirley Burgos, had inappropriately disqualified candidates based on their appearance.

The report said that Burgos was captured in several recordings making fun of overweight candidates who were “ugly, creepy” people.

Another officer, Ayron McKay, told internal affairs investigators about an instance in which the unit’s officers were discussing a candidate who they believed was overweight.

Burgos then looked up the woman’s driver’s license picture on the DMV database, which several officers told internal affairs probably violated department policy, according to the report.

Burgos and McKay did not respond to inquiries to their work email accounts.

The internal affairs file said Flores recorded another officer saying he wanted to go to Big Bear, a popular winter sports destination in the San Bernardino National Forest, and roll the candidate down the ski slope. Meanwhile, according to the report, McKay asked the others how much they would pay to sleep with the woman, and referred to her as “Jabba the Hut.”

When asked about the conversation by internal affairs, the report said, McKay told investigators that the conversation started with Burgos venting about an applicant, but acknowledged that it should not have been allowed to continue.

In one recording made on Nov. 13, 2024, the report said, Burgos told her colleagues that she had released information about disqualified candidates to a friend of hers at the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, which is against LAPD policy.

The officers were all required to sign a confidentiality agreement that barred them from discussing candidates’ personal information with anyone outside the office.

During her internal affairs interviews, Burgos denied providing information to other agencies, saying it was clear from her laughter on the recording that she was joking.

Burgos told investigators that the only time she’d ever discussed a candidate with someone outside the department was during a conversation with an unnamed background investigator with the Sheriff’s Department or Santa Monica police — and said that was only to confirm that the candidate had in fact applied to the LAPD, according to the report.

The LAPD investigation noted that she and the other involved officers all denied that their office conversations had ever caused them to inappropriately disqualify a candidate.

The internal affairs report quoted the unit’s supervisor, Sgt. Denny Jong, a 20-year-department veteran, as describing his relationship with the officers under his command as friendly and professional; none of them had ever expressed discomfort about their work environment, he reportedly said.

Jong did not respond to emailed questions from The Times.

Several officers told investigators that they used gallows humor as a way to deal with the stress of working long hours in a small, windowless basement office.

According to the report, some officers, including Jong and McKay, acknowledged that the office banter sometimes crossed the line, but they denied that there was anything malicious about their comments. They also contended that the unit had little authority about which applicants advanced in the recruitment process — decisions, they said, that had to go through several layers of review.

During his internal affairs interviews, Jong often told investigators that he didn’t recall making certain inappropriate comments. The report said he also denied ever making any of the inappropriate comments that were contained in Flores’ complaint.

When he was confronted with audio of comments in which he referred to a candidate of Chinese descent as a terrorist, Jong said he was joking.

“He explained that this was based on current news stories at the time, which involved concerns over Chinese nationals attempting to infiltrate the country,” the internal affairs report said. “Jong was not serious and did not believe the candidate was a terrorist, but admitted the remark was an off-color joke and inappropriate for the workplace.”

If you want proof of the widening chasm between the Trump administration and Latinos, look no further than California state Sen. Suzette Martinez Valladares and White House spokesperson Lauren Bis’ reaction to the same anti-Latino image.

Posted on the White House’s social media accounts this week, it’s a take on the logo for the beloved 1990s PBS cartoon “The Magic School Bus.” Same cheery font, same yellow bus blasting through the cosmos, same depiction of wacky teacher Ms. Frizzle and her cute chameleon sidekick Liz. But instead of a bunch of happy kids off to another adventure, the passengers are five handcuffed, brown-skinned, mustachioed men looking downward and dejected, all identical save for the colors of their T-shirts.

Bracketing this soulless scene are the words “The Magic Deportation Bus” — get it? Har har! The White House released the illustration to accompany an Aug. 24 Fox News headline gushing that Immigration and Customs Enforcement had arrested a “jaw-dropping number” of undocumented immigrants in the D.C. area over the last two weeks.

The post was the latest in a flood of racist, anti-immigrant images that the Trump administration has shared. But this one was so bad that it even offended Martinez Valladares, a Republican whose district stretches from the Grapevine to Victorville.

“Enforcing immigration law and securing the border isn’t anti-Latino. But this image wasn’t necessary or helpful,” she told me. “We can strongly support border security while expecting our government to communicate those policies without reducing a community to a stereotype. Being tough on illegal immigration doesn’t require turning Latinos into a caricature.”

Suzette Martinez Valladares, then a Republican assembly member and now a state senator, is pictured in 2022.

(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

Martinez Valladares isn’t any random Trump supporter. She’s co-chair of the California Hispanic Caucus, which represents the state’s GOP Latino legislators and was founded after a record number of them — nine — were elected in 2024. The group’s creation reflected the tsunami of Latino support for Trump that helped sweep him into the Oval Office for a second round and upended political thinking about America’s largest minority.

Such a critique from a politician of Martinez Valladares’ stature should set off fire alarms in the Oval Office as the midterms loom and the GOP needs Trump’s Latino supporters to hold the party line, right?

Nope!

When I asked the White House whether the “Magic Deportation Bus” was anti-Latino, spokesperson Bis whined in a statement that my query was “more race baiting by the media who are just mad the White House’s social media content is driving conversations with the American people about deporting illegal aliens. Is the L.A. Times really suggesting there has never been a deportation flight of just Guatemalans?”

Who’s doing the race baiting?

Nothing in the gross graphic suggests that Guatemala is the final destination for Migra Ms. Frizzle and her detainees. The men’s appearance is the only indication that they’re Latino — just the type of racial profiling that Trump’s immigration goons swear they don’t engage in, despite ample video and audio evidence to the contrary. While Latinos have long made up the majority of deportees, to portray the bus passengers as interchangeable clones who “look” Latino is as dehumanizing as you can get — but that’s par for MAGA.

Not only that, but the Fox News story that went with the icky illo said that ICE’s D.C. operation nabbed Jamaicans, Hondurans and Salvadorans, in addition to Guatemalans.

Trump and his minions famously never apologize, doubling down on their pendejadas when confronted with facts. Well, if Republicans wants any chance of holding on to Congress in the midterms and winning other key races, they need to beg Latinos for forgiveness, now that Trump has upended the lives of brown-skinned people, immigrants and U.S.-born alike.

A 1949 photo of undocumented immigrants boarding a bus for deportation to Mexico.

(Los Angeles Times)

Nearly half of Latinos voted for Trump two years ago, the best result ever for a Republican presidential candidate. Poll after poll released this year, each more dire for Trump than the last, show that those days are as distant a memory as affordable groceries. His approval ratings — and GOP hopes for the midterms — will continue to wither until he spends more time fixing the stagnant economy, ending the quagmire in Iran and stopping the deportation deluge.

To maintain his grip on power, Trump needs to inspire Latinos to stand by him, vote for his agenda and urge others to follow along. Instead, he faces frustrated supporters like David Hernandez, founder and chair of the Los Angeles County Hispanic Republican Club and host of the club’s weekly talk radio show.

Hernandez said he’s seen the perils of “unchecked” immigration at overcrowded hospitals and clinics. He also feels that in the race for California governor, Republican Steve Hilton’s attacks on Democrat Xavier Becerra’s alleged mishandling of migrant children while Health and Human Services secretary for the Biden administration will stay on the “front burner.”

The “Magic Deportation Bus” does nothing to highlight these issues, Hernandez said, describing it as “an immature cartoon failing to make any valid point.” Worse, the Navy veteran argues, it suggests that immigration agents plan to snatch children from schools.

“There is nothing funny about the issue,” Hernandez added, “that warrants this type of frivolous portrayal.”

I ran Hernandez’s and Martinez Valladares’ thoughts by Bis, noting their GOP bona fides without identifying them by name.

“Take a ride on The Magic School Bus to your home country!” the White House spokesperson began. Only her heart knows whether the line was a callback to the offending social media post or a not-nice suggestion that I self-deport to wherever the hell she thinks I was born (I’m a native Anaheimer, by the way).

Bis went on to repeat her previous line that the Trump administration is just seeking to “innovate” conversations with Americans and that “our efforts to deport criminal illegal aliens are no exception to this.”

Way to listen to the concerns of the front-line soldiers your boss so desperately needs this November, Lauren!

Spending more time crafting weak-salsa anti-Latino jokes than improving the lives of Latinos — that’s the racist swamp the president and his team happily fester in.

But there’s one thing their putrid parody of “The Magic School Bus” got right.

Ms. Frizzle often shrank her steel steed and its occupants to microscopic sizes so they could explore places they’d never seen. That sure sounds like the historic collapse that Trump is experiencing with Latinos, no?

To use Ms. Frizzle’s catchphrase: Bus, do your stuff.

SINGER Miguel has called out abuse and racist attacks on his partner and child in a furious online rant.

The record producer, 40, has been in a relationship with former Vogue China editor-in-chief Margaret Zhang for three and a half years.

The couple are parents to a son named Angel and are currently expecting their second child together.

However, the performer has claimed that he and his family have been subjected to racism and harassment.

Taking to his Instagram feed, he began: “Over the past year, my family and the people I love have been subjected to racism, harassment, stalking, invasions of privacy, and false allegations.

“Recent racist and anti-Asian attacks directed at my partner – including comments and DMs, as well as abusive comments about my child – crossed a line that should require no explanation.

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“People can have opinions about me, about the music, about the work.

“I accept the realities that come with doing anything in public but racism, threats, harassment, stalking, invasions of privacy, and targeting of children are abuse. not opinion.”

The Adorn singer continued: “It doesn’t become acceptable because someone dresses it up as criticism, fandom, speculation, or “concern.”

“Responsibility also lies with organizations and individuals that knowingly amplify or enable racism, harassment, or false allegations for attention and engagement.

“If you participate in this behavior, you are not supporting me, you are not part of this community.

“Where legal and ethical lines have been crossed, action has been and will continue to be taken,” he warned.

“To everyone who has treated my family with kindness, dignity, and respect: we see you. we deeply appreciate you,” Miguel signed off.

His loyal fans rushed to the comments section as one said: “This makes me really sad. People just need to let people LIVE!

“Praying for you and your family @miguel and continue to make great music!”

Another penned: “You have a beautiful family and no one deserves the hate ya’ll receive.

“Children are to be celebrated no matter their ethnic background. We love you Miguel and fam.”

He went on to write in the comments: “Overwhelmed reading your comments of support loved ones, thank you.”

Miguel and Margaret began dating in 2022 and quietly welcomed their son in 2024.

He was previously married to his high-school sweetheart Nazanin Mandi but they got divorced in 2022, shortly before he met Margaret.