Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts is attacking a Trump administration nominee’s Christian views despite her yearslong partnership with a radical Muslim group.
Warren sent a critical letter to Secretary of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth before he testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday, questioning his fitness based in part on Christian tattoos that she labeled extremist and became a topic of the hearing. However, Warren spent years backing the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which calls itself a Muslim civil rights organization, before she went quiet as the White House denounced CAIR for sympathizing with Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attacks in Israel.
Elizabeth Warren has sent a letter to Secretary of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth in which she claims that having a Deus Vult tattoo, Latin for “God’s will” and a Christian motto that dates back to the First Crusade, makes him a “potential insider threat.” pic.twitter.com/4lySEYI9vn
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) January 7, 2025
A CAIR press release published days after the attacks said Israeli oppression was the “root cause” of Hamas’s violence. The White House condemned the group in December 2023 after National Executive Director Nihad Awad said he was “happy to see” Palestinians breaking their “shackles” when Hamas invaded Israel, killed more than 1,100 people, raped women and took hundreds of hostages. Awad later claimed his words were taken out of context and that CAIR does not approve of Hamas killing civilians.
Zahra Billoo, the executive director of CAIR San Francisco, made headlines last year by saying Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh’s “martyrdom will not be in vain.”
CAIR told the Daily Caller News Foundation that it condemns “terrorism and any violence against civilians, no matter who does it, period” and denied that Awad and Billoo’s comments were praising Hamas. The organization also pointed to its history of official statements against antisemitism, the Oct. 7 attacks and terrorism.
CAIR did not answer whether it still partners with Warren.
Warren’s letter to Hegseth drew attention to the former National Guard officer’s tattoo, citing internal reports from fellow servicemembers that claim the tattoo is linked to “right-wing extremism.”
“You were … removed from President [Joe] Biden’s inauguration because of concerns that you were an insider threat after reports that your ‘Deus Vult’ tattoo ‘was a Christian expression associated with right-wing extremism,’” Warren wrote to Hegseth. “We cannot have a Defense Secretary whose fellow servicemembers feel concerned enough about to report as a potential insider threat.”
Hegseth told senators in the Tuesday hearing that his “Jerusalem cross” tattoo is “a historic Christian symbol.”
“In fact, interestingly, recently I attended briefly the memorial ceremony of former President Jimmy Carter on the floor of our national cathedral,” Hegseth said. “On the front page of his program was the very same Jerusalem cross.”
Warren’s publicly supportive relationship with CAIR went back years.
In 2019, she wrote a letter praising CAIR’s advocacy to honor its 25th anniversary.
“America stands for freedom, justice, and equality, and CAIR helps our nation live up to these values,” the letter reads.
“CAIR has been on the front lines of so many important fights for civil rights and equal justice under the law,” Warren wrote. “I’m glad to count on CAIR as a strong partner in these fights.”
Warren also spoke at a CAIR rally in Massachusetts in 2017 against the first Trump administration’s travel ban for Muslim-majority countries, dubbed a “Muslim ban.” The Supreme Court upheld the policy in 2018.
CAIR’s website mentions instances of its representatives meeting with Warren’s aides since at least 2023. Last November, CAIR and a group of “faith leaders” held a meeting with her office to demand a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, the website states.
Warren’s office has referenced CAIR as a credible source on policy issues and boasted of the group endorsing her legislation aimed at expanding voting access. In a December 2023 letter, she warned federal law enforcement officials about “anti-Muslim discrimination” in the FBI’s terrorist watchlist, citing CAIR eight times — the same year CAIR met with her office to raise the same concern about the watchlist.
Warren’s press secretary did not respond to multiple requests for comment on the senator’s views of extremism, whether she still works with CAIR, or whether she plans to in the future.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) named CAIR as an unindicted co-conspirator in a 2007 terrorism financing trial that led to prison sentences for activists who ran the Holy Land Foundation, a charity funding Hamas, documents show. Investigators found that CAIR belonged to the Palestine Committee, an initiative Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzook led to advance the terrorist group’s agenda in the U.S. in tandem with the foundation.
Like Warren, CAIR spoke out against Hegseth’s nomination, calling him a “warmonger and anti-Muslim extremist” in a November press release.
While maintaining that Israel “has a right to defend itself,” Warren gradually became a vocal critic of Israel’s military operations in Gaza since October 2023, saying there is evidence of a “genocide.” She has called for a ceasefire in the conflict, which Israel and Hamas reportedly reached Wednesday before it became stalled.
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