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Grand Prairie has canceled a private event for muslims at a public water park after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott threatened to withhold state funding.
Scheduled to be held at the Epic Waters Indoor Waterpark, the event in question drew controversy on social media after a flyer circulated advertising it as “Muslims only.” Abbott took to X Wednesday to demand that the city call off the event by May 11. That evening, Grand Prairie officials announced the event’s cancellation.
The event’s organizer told The Dallas Morning News that she did not intend to exclude anyone and has since updated the flyer to replace earlier language with “all are welcome.” Organized as a celebration for Eid al-Adha, a Muslim holy day, the event’s updated flyer advertised halal food and encouraged modest dress.
In his X post, Abbott threatened to withhold $535,000 in state grants unless the event was canceled and Grand Prairie committed to “never allowing something like it again.”
“Let this be a lesson to local officials: Facilities funded by ALL taxpayers are not just for a subset of Texans,” the post reads.
On Thursday, 41 state lawmakers sent a letter to Abbott demanding he “withdraw his threat” to Grand Prairie.
“Faith communities rent city-owned facilities for private events across Texas every day,” an X post from Texas state Rep. Salman Bhojani reads. “No governor has threatened funding over any of them. The difference here is not the structure of the event. It is who is gathering.”
Abbott and other top Texas GOP officials have ramped up rhetoric against Muslim organizations and so-called “sharia cities” since early 2025. The three-term governor signed a bill in September that prevents sharia law from being implemented in residential communities and bans religious requirements for property sales. He also designated the Council on American-Islamic Relations as a terrorist organization in November 2025.
In a statement, Grand Prairie officials said the cancellation was made “after further review and in the best interest” of the city.
Abbott has increasingly used state funding to pressure municipalities into adopting certain policies in recent months. Dallas recently changed its police policies on cooperating with federal immigration agencies after Abbott said he would withhold $32 million in public safety funding, a threat Houston and Austin leaders also received. In March, the city of Dallas removed Black Lives Matter and LGBTQ+ rainbow crosswalks after Abbott said cities displaying “political” messages could face the loss of “state and federal road funding and suspension of agreements with TxDOT.”
Looking to Trump
Cal Jillson, a professor of political science at Southern Methodist University who has written about Trump’s use of executive powers, said Abbott appears to be taking his cue from the White House.
“I do think that Gov. Abbott and other Republican governors, in particular, have learned from Donald Trump that whether or not you have explicit authority to act, if you act decisively, then it’s up to someone else to check you and to stop you,” Jillson said. “Oftentimes, they decide not to do that or can’t.”
It took roughly one week for Dallas police officials to revise departmental policies following Abbott’s demand that they work more closely with agencies like ICE. While the city did appeal to TxDOT to keep its LGBTQ+ and Black Lives Matter crosswalks, a state judge ultimately denied the appeal. Cities may be less likely to challenge executive actions, Jillson said, as doing so could lead to broader, continual conflict with the governor’s office.
In January, Trump threatened to withhold federal funding from sanctuary cities and the states in which they are located, though the amount was unspecified. And in February, he threatened over $600 million in CDC grants from four heavily Democratic-leaning states: California, Colorado, Illinois and Minnesota. A federal judge eventually overturned the order.
Jillson said that Trump has grown increasingly brazen in his use of executive power in his second term and attributed the shift to his appointment of more partisan federal officials, who are less likely to push back against him on policy decisions. He also said Abbott has become bolder as he likely nears an unprecedented fourth term as governor and maintains solid GOP majorities in both houses backed by an overwhelmingly Republican judiciary.
“Abbott, in particular, has leaned increasingly on executive action that is sometimes followed up by the Republican majorities in the legislature producing legislation,” he said. “But I do think that the state pushing back on counties and municipalities and school districts is much more common than it was just a couple of decades ago.”
The trend toward unilateral decision-making by Trump and governors like Abbott points to the ever-growing divide in U.S. politics, he said, and a growing shift toward hardline partisanship.
“It just makes our elections more deeply contested and more unpleasant, and people oftentimes decide just to let it go and leave it alone,” Jillson said. “And I think it does not bode well for democracy.”
