Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee used his personal X/Twitter account Sunday night to echo the racist “Great Replacement” conspiracy—writing, “We’ve been invaded… outsiders chosen to replace us. We can’t let them beat us.”

Conservatives spent the weekend fuming after Minnesota Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar referred to the country as the “U.S. god——ed States” during a hearing on the tactics used by ICE agents across the country. On Sunday evening, President Donald Trump called for Omar to either be jailed or deported to Somalia.

That same evening, Lee, posting from his @basedmikelee account, responded to an attack on Omar that called her and other immigrants “Godless, non-assimilated anti-American foreigners” who “infiltrated America.”

“We’ve been invaded by people who let in the outsiders chosen to replace us,” Lee wrote. “We can’t let them beat us.”

Lee’s language tracks directly with the “Great Replacement” conspiracy, which claims “political elites” are engineering the replacement of white Americans through immigration and higher birthrates among nonwhite people. Once a fringe white nationalist idea, it has migrated into mainstream GOP rhetoric on immigration by recasting immigrants as invaders or a hostile force, echoing older white supremacist narratives about racial purity.

Lee’s office did not respond to questions from Utah Political Watch about the post.

The Great Replacement has also been cited by perpetrators in multiple violent attacks:

  • Marchers at the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia used slogans referencing ethnic replacement chanting “You will not replace us,” and “Jews will not replace us.”
  • The 2019 Christchurch mosque attacker wrote a 74-page manifesto titled “The Great Replacement.” It was filled with white supremacist rhetoric and anti-immigrant sentiments.
  • Before the deadly 2018 attack on the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the shooter posted repeatedly promoting the Great Replacement theory.
  • The attacker in the 2019 shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, that killed 23 people authored a manifesto that promoted the Great Replacement. The shooter said he was inspired by the Christchurch mosque shootings in New Zealand.
  • The perpetrator in a 2022 mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, explicitly cited the Christchurch mosque attack as inspiration.

Prominent conservative figures have also referenced the Great Replacement, including Tucker Carlson and a handful of congressional Republicans. Vice President JD Vance accused Democrats of trying to “transform the electorate” during his 2022 U.S. Senate campaign.

A 2022 survey found that nearly seven in ten Republicans believe in the “Great Replacement