In the 1950s, a little-known junior senator from Wisconsin led an intense anti-communist line of questioning of fellow Congress members, well-known celebrities, immigrants, and labor unions. The “second Red Scare” led to the blacklisting of prominent members of society for their alleged associations with communism, anarchy, and radical left ideology, with some being arrested and even deported.
When Rep. Chip Roy introduced the Mamdani Act this week, he may not have been thinking of McCarthyism, but he was making a direct reference to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. The Measures Against Marxism’s Dangerous Adherents and Noxious Islamists (Mamdani) Act is an immigration proposal that would make noncitizens deportable and ineligible for naturalization, and even potentially subject to denaturalization over ties to or advocacy for socialism, communism, Marxism, Chinese communism, or “Islamic fundamentalism.”
