From Fox News: Sen. Cory Booker and the top U.S. counter-terrorism official sparred Tuesday over DNI Tulsi Gabbard’s reference to Paterson, New Jersey’s Muslim community during her speech to AmericaFest earlier this week.
Booker, D-N.J., took issue with part of director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s speech to AmericaFest in Phoenix over the weekend, where she called out threats to the U.S. homeland from Islamist ideology.
Booker ripped Gabbard for name-dropping his state’s third-largest city, Paterson. The city, between New York City and the Delaware Water Gap, is named for Irish immigrant and Constitution signatory William Paterson, but has a sizable, growing Arab Christian and Muslim community.
“Paterson is one of New Jersey’s oldest cities and has always embodied the best American values — industry, perseverance, and diversity,” Booker wrote in an X post..
“Tulsi Gabbard’s dangerous attempt to sow fear, pit people against each other, and smear the Muslim Americans of Paterson, NJ is dishonest, cruel, and un-American — it endangers an entire community,” said Booker.
“In Jersey, we know our state’s diversity is our strength, and we stand up for our own,” Booker said.
Paterson is one of New Jersey’s oldest cities and has always embodied the best American values – industry, perseverance, and diversity.
Tulsi Gabbard’s dangerous attempt to sow fear, pit people against each other, and smear the Muslim Americans of Paterson, NJ is dishonest,…
— Sen. Cory Booker (@SenBooker) December 23, 2025
“If you fail to comply, if you fail to adhere to this ideology, if you dare to exercise your God-given right to free speech, censorship is not what we face. They will use violence or any means they deem as necessary to silence us,” Gabbard had said during her Phoenix address.
“In places like Dearborn, Michigan, and Minneapolis, Minnesota, Islamist clerics are openly pushing this Islamist ideology, trying to recruit and radicalize young people,” she went on, saying that advocacy-group-backed efforts to institute Sharia law are already in place in Houston, Texas, and Paterson, New Jersey.
“Paterson is proud to call themselves the first Muslim city. They are working to implement in their own governments these Islamic principles that are forced on people through the use of laws or violence,” she said.
Read more at Fox News
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