Derrick Van Orden Racist

Derrick Van Orden Spends His Time Smearing Muslims Online. Wisconsin Deserves Better.

Rep. Derrick Van Orden has a documented pattern of amplifying anti-Muslim and racist claims on social media — instead of doing the job western Wisconsin sent him to do.

MAGA Report Cards · Jul 20, 2026

While families in western Wisconsin worry about the price of groceries, their health insurance, and whether their kids can afford to farm the land their parents did, their congressman has been busy on a different project: posting bigoted attacks on Muslims and immigrants.

Derrick Van Orden, who represents Wisconsin's 3rd District, is now facing a wave of backlash over what the Wisconsin Muslim Civic Alliance calls a "documented pattern of anti-Muslim rhetoric." And the record backs it up.

What he actually posted

A June 2026 review of Van Orden's social media by the Milwaukee Courier laid out post after post. This isn't one bad tweet. It's a habit:

In June 2026, Van Orden replied to a post claiming "Muslims struggle to denounce child rape" with: "This is horrible and completely true."
The week before, he agreed with a baseless claim about "grooming gangs," replying "Correct" and "It is shocking and shameful."
On March 13, 2026, he wrote: "It is indisputable that there are radical Muslim sleeper cells here in America murdering American citizens."
In April 2026, after the president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee was arrested, Van Orden mocked him by name, posting that he found it "shocking that someone named 'Salah Salem Sarsour' would be arrested for terrorism. This must be a mistake."
In March 2026, he called it "absolutely unacceptable" that nearly half the doctors in a Texas hospital residency program were Pakistani.

The pattern goes back years. Back in 2024 he repeated the debunked lie that Haitian immigrants in Ohio were eating people's pets.

These aren't policy positions. They're smears — aimed at Muslims, immigrants, and doctors, many of whom are Van Orden's own constituents and neighbors.

Dehumanizing people isn't a job

When the Council on American-Islamic Relations criticized him, Van Orden didn't back down or reflect. He called the nation's largest Muslim civil-rights group "a front for radical Islamist terrorist organizations." That's a sitting member of Congress smearing an entire faith community's advocacy group.

Wisconsin's 3rd District is home to Muslim families, immigrant doctors and nurses, and people of every background who just want their representative to fight for them. Instead, they got a congressman who spends his energy telling his followers those neighbors are terrorists, criminals, and threats.

What he's not doing

Every hour Van Orden spends amplifying conspiracy theories about Muslims is an hour he's not spending on the things his district actually needs — lower costs, protecting rural hospitals, standing up for family farms. His constituents are dealing with real problems. He's picking fights on the internet.

That's the choice he's making. And it tells you exactly where his priorities are.