The Washington Post reports:

Hateful emails and phone calls targeted a Minnesota school serving Somali families after President Donald Trump shared a video of its kindergartners on Truth Social this week, an episode that many Somali Americans see as an escalation of a sustained campaign of political and rhetorical attacks during Trump’s second term, community leaders said.

On Wednesday, Trump reposted a video from a kindergarten graduation ceremony at Gateway STEM Academy, a K-8 charter school in St. Paul. In the clip, children wearing blue graduation gowns, including girls wearing hijabs beneath their mortarboards, sing in Somali as they celebrate the end of the school year.

Trump amplified another user’s caption: “Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”

The faces of the young children were clearly visible in the video shared with Trump’s 12.9 million followers. Members of the Somali community said that exposure could open the door to attacks on some of the community’s most vulnerable members. The replies to Trump’s post quickly filled with anti-Muslim invectives, including one user who called the children “future terrorists.”

For many Minnesotans of Somali descent, the post was the latest salvo in a months-long campaign in which Trump has repeatedly singled them out while his administration has mounted an aggressive immigration and law enforcement operation in the Twin Cities.

“The first term of Donald Trump was a cakewalk compared to this,” said Suleiman Adan, Deputy Executive Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ Minnesota chapter. “In the first term, you saw attacks on equality, belonging and justice. In the second term, it’s an attack on basic human dignity. Right now, the crosshairs are on the Somali community.”

Adan said he and other advocates had been in contact with officials at the school, who told them they have been contending with hateful emails, phone calls and social media posts. [Continue reading…]