Because you are sane and we have a Constitution that is supposed to rule out such things, you may never have worried about the Sharia-in-America “threat.” But many grassroots Republicans loved it when the background was the administration of a president they claimed was a secret Muslim born in Kenya.

Indeed, it was a classic dog-whistle. The notion of a creepy, creeping Islamist takeover of America was a histrionic refrain from Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and others throughout the 2016 elections, but it started before, and has continued since.

The Sharia “threat” was a great distraction. At the same time that Republican-controlled state legislatures were gerrymandering and vote suppressing, they were scrambling to pass legislation banning “foreign laws,” meaning “Sharia.” By the beginning of this year, 201 such bills had been introduced in 43 states, and 14 legislatures actually passed them, according to numbers compiled by the Southern Poverty Law Center, or SPLC.