New Berlin Mayor Dave Ament is facing calls to resign after sharing a string of anti-Muslim posts on his personal Facebook page in recent weeks, including content calling for mosques to be shut down and Islam to be banned. Ament, who is serving his fourth term leading the city of roughly 40,000 residents, posted the material under a Facebook profile bearing his real name, a profile he also uses to repost official New Berlin city announcements alongside family photos and updates from his wife.
The posts drew public condemnation from the Wisconsin Muslim Civic Alliance, which on Friday called for Ament's resignation, as reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. According to the newspaper's reporting, Ament shared a post on August 13 depicting Muslims with stereotypes involving terrorism, suicide vests, rocket launchers and multiple wives. Days later, on August 16, he shared a post calling for all mosques to be shut down and Islam to be banned, along with a separate post claiming bacon works as a defense against both Judaism and Islam and another suggesting a homeowner could protect against terrorism by placing bacon on a door handle.
A Pattern Spanning Weeks
The posts identified by the Journal Sentinel go beyond a single lapse. Ament also shared a video calling Muslim voters who support a Muslim candidate traitors, along with a post claiming Muslim invaders are taking over the United States and Europe through violence. Another post shared by Ament claimed Europe had fewer than 500,000 Muslims in 2000 — a figure that conflicts with Pew Research Center data cited in the Journal Sentinel's reporting, which found Europe had about 37 million Muslims in 2000, or roughly 5% of the continent's population, rising to about 45 million, or about 6%, by 2020.
Beyond the explicitly anti-Muslim content, Ament also shared videos bearing hallmarks of artificial intelligence production, including AI-generated clips of women described as having overly smooth skin, unnatural expressions and pixelation during movement. Per the Journal Sentinel, those videos included one showing young women in revealing tank tops paired with anti-Muslim text, one in which a woman repeatedly urges women to flash their partners, and another depicting a woman jogging in a bikini top and spandex shorts while an older man makes a crude comment and sprays his wife with a hose. Ament also shared posts depicting wives as overly critical and husbands as sacrificing without appreciation.
Civil Rights Group Demands Accountability
In an official statement published Friday, the Wisconsin Muslim Civic Alliance argued that rhetoric framing an entire faith community as a threat has no place in an elected official's public conduct, according to WisPolitics. The organization said such rhetoric leads to further intolerance of Muslims, immigrants and other marginalized communities, and it said Ament must represent all constituents, including Muslim residents.
Fauzia Qureshi, executive director of the Wisconsin Muslim Civic Alliance, said Ament's engagement with dehumanizing content is deeply disturbing. “New Berlin residents deserve a leader who leads with dignity rather than inciting fear and hatred,” Qureshi said. The organization said Ament should resign, take responsibility, publicly apologize and be held accountable.
Ament did not immediately respond to the Journal Sentinel's requests for comment on the posts. On Friday, in a statement addressing public criticism, Ament and the City of New Berlin sought to draw a distinction between his personal social media activity and municipal policy, with the city noting that Ament's personal posts do not represent official city stance and pointing to its official social media policy governing city business, according to FOX6 News Milwaukee.
Second Waukesha County Official in Months
Ament is now the latest Waukesha County elected official to face scrutiny over racist and anti-Muslim posts, following Brookfield's alderman LinkedIn firestorm just months earlier. Former Brookfield Alderman Kris Seals made at least two dozen hate-speech and violent-call-to-action posts on LinkedIn, including writing that Islam is a sick religion and referencing a need to extinguish people who observe Islam. Seals initially refused to step down after the backlash, before resigning in April and issuing an apology to the Muslim community.
Brookfield sits directly northeast of New Berlin in Waukesha County, and the parallel timing of the two controversies has drawn attention from regional civil rights advocates. Ament was first elected mayor in 2013 after serving 12 years as a New Berlin alderman representing the western portion of the city, and he owned Ament Industrial Truck for 40 years before entering full-time public office. He was most recently reelected in 2025, and his current term runs until 2029.
What Comes Next Legally
Removing Ament from office before his term ends would not be simple under Wisconsin law. Under Wisconsin Statute § 17.12, elected municipal officers can be involuntarily removed either through a voter recall election or by a three-fourths affirmative vote of the entire Common Council for cause, according to the Wisconsin Legislature. Legal analysts note that council-driven removals for cause are extremely rare in state history, with councils typically deferring to recall elections or voluntary resignations when controversies of this scale emerge, as PolitiFact has noted in examining past Wisconsin removal disputes.
A recall campaign would carry its own steep threshold. Under Wisconsin law, as outlined by Axley LLP, electors seeking to force a recall election must collect signatures equal to at least 25% of the total votes cast for governor in that municipality during the last gubernatorial election, and petitions cannot be filed until an official has served at least one year of the current term — a requirement Ament, who began his current term in April 2025, has already satisfied. As New Berlin's chief executive officer under its municipal charter, Ament presides over Common Council meetings, prepares the city's executive budget, and appoints members to city boards and commissions, according to the City of New Berlin.
Whether the Common Council will pursue formal censure, whether a recall petition drive will materialize, or whether Ament's Friday statement will satisfy critics all remain open questions as the controversy unfolds in a city where, according to Data Commons Census Bureau estimates, 82.9% of residents identify as white, 6.3% as Asian, and 5.7% as Hispanic.
