The election order is more about creating a narrative than changing policy.

President Donald Trump issued an executive order Tuesday that tells the DHS in coordination with SSA to create lists of eligible voters, DOJ to prosecute election officials who provide ballots to those not on the lists, and the U.S. Postal Service to deliver mail-in ballots only to voters on state-submitted participation lists.

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There are many problems with this EO. Let’s go over the main ones.

• The EO is an unfunded mandate. It places new requirements on state election officials and the USPS without providing any resources to fulfill those requirements.

• The EO presumes a top-down, centralized power approach to public policy at odds with our decentralized government established by the Constitution and American values.

• The president does not have the authority to change election rules. Article I, Section 4 of the US Constitution clearly places this authority with Congress and the states.

• DHS would need to create these state lists from current federal databases which are notoriously incomplete and inaccurate.

• The EO would create chaos and confusion. It would go into effect for this year’s election and some of the deadlines conflict with established state deadlines.

• The mail-in ballot requirements would be particularly problematic for the eight states that only use mail-in ballots. Voters who move or register close to election day may mistakenly get left off the list and never receive a ballot.

• The EO assumes a problem that doesn’t exist. Mail-in balloting has repeatedly proven a safe and secure voting method and state governments have proven effective at running secure elections. Non-citizen voting is extremely rare and has never changed the outcome of an election.

Given all these problems, what’s the point of this EO?

Our president continues to spread the lie that the 2020 election was stolen by Democrats utilizing mail-in ballots and non-citizen voters. This EO helps him reinforce that false narrative. Additionally, if Republicans lose a lot of seats in this year’s elections, he’ll likely accuse Democrats of election theft again. If the EO is struck down by the courts and the SAVE Act does not become law (both highly likely), Trump can use those failures to sow distrust in our elections and thus reinforce his stolen elections narrative.

What should we be doing?

Reinforce what is true: Our elections are safe and secure. Mail-in balloting works (Trump himself used it). Non-citizen voting is extremely rare and quickly corrected.

Resources:

“Explainer: Executive Order on Mail-in Ballot Rules and Federal Voter Eligibility Lists”

“Cato Experts: Trump Usurps Executive Limits to Alter Election Laws”

“Beware of Novel Claims of 2020 Election Fraud”

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Tell Your Pastor About J29!

AVC’s pastor network, J29 Coalition, is taking applications for its next J29 Cohort. Send your pastor this link and encourage them to apply.

J29 Coalition

What We’re Reading

Newsweek: “Pastor Detained by ICE Denied Bible Delivery in Custody—Church Group”

Salguero added that Cortes Vasquez is a leader in the church who visits the sick, leads Bible studies, and serves the local community. He said Cortes Vasquez was credentialed as a minister about six months ago in recognition of his service.

Under the Trump administration, ICE pledged to target “the worst of the worst” immigrants, focusing on those with criminal records or posing public safety risks. However, multiple cases have emerged of asylum-seekers and other nonviolent individuals being detained, raising concerns among faith and immigrant advocacy groups about the breadth of enforcement.

Salguero said Cortes Vasquez, who was born in Colombia and has been in the United States for over a decade, was working at the time of his arrest. He said ICE agents stopped him while he was on a delivery route, and that the family maintains he has an active asylum case. Salguero said that Cortes Vasquez was taken into custody after officers allegedly cited an issue related to his vehicle registration.

He said Cortes Vasquez has committed no felonies. “This man has no criminal record. He’s never been arrested for anything.”

LINK

Jonah Goldberg: “What the No Kings Protests and Tea Parties Have in Common”

Regardless, what struck me watching the combined segments was how familiar they felt. I thought, “Wasn’t this pretty much exactly how the mainstream media covered the tea party protests?” Instead of George Soros (who was name-checked in the Fox report) the New York Times, MSNBC, et al. harped incessantly about how the tea parties were funded by the Koch brothers and various astroturf right-wing organizations. They’d “question the sincerity” of the tea parties—or outright deny it.

These outlets also focused on the freaks, weirdoes, cranks, and characters who inevitably sign up for any mass movement and suggested they weren’t marginal but representative. As the Los Angeles Times noted back then, “At MSNBC, commentators Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow and Chris Matthews wrote off the demonstrations as the work of nothing more than crackpots or political stooges.” Others insisted that the tea parties literally fit the textbook definition of fascism. Some haven’t let go of this conviction.

…

But the claims that the No Kings protests were a Trojan horse for communists just doesn’t feel all that different from the claims that tea parties were cover for fascists.

As for the scorn for the idea that “No Kings” is a silly slogan—which I’m marginally sympathetic to—I think it’s worth noting that the whole idea behind a movement built around the ideas that inspired the Boston Tea Party is not so very different. The Boston Tea Party was a protest against, well, a foreign king. There was other stuff involved of course, but conceptually the similarities are far more obvious to me than the differences.

And if we’re scoring for hypocrisy and insincerity, where the fudge are all the tea partiers these days? Trump’s fiscal incontinence, crony capitalism, and fetish for bailouts and taxes are certainly no better than Barack Obama’s. I attended many tea party events where speakers waxed eloquent about the Constitution and attendees carried little pocket Constitutions. If the No Kings crowds are hypocrites because they didn’t mind Joe Biden or Obama’s excesses but hate Trump’s, the same charge of hypocrisy works the other way around.

I mean, Trump has literally levied taxes on tea! He’s done so without the consent of Congress. Strictly speaking, this is taxation without representation. That Trump has levied taxes on a bajillion other things without constitutional authority doesn’t lessen the irony. The fact that he’s also launched a couple wars without congressional authority makes the “No Kings” argument stronger, not weaker.

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Matthew Taylor: “Christian Nationalism Is a Spectrum. Here’s Why That Matters.”

I would argue that the best way to broadly conceptualize American Christian nationalism is to think of it as a spectrum: there are mild forms, which are mostly benign, and there are more extreme forms that are quite dangerous. We see this in basically every survey that’s been done on the subject. Whitehead and Perry distinguish between Christian nationalist “Ambassadors” (roughly 20% of the country) who are somewhat interested in sanctifying the nation and Christian nationalist “Adherents” (11%), true believers who are strongly committed to the project. The Public Religion Research Institute has used a similar delineation, except they adopted the more helpful word “Sympathizers” (21% of the country vs. 11% “Adherents”) instead of Whitehead and Perry’s “Ambassadors.”

On the softer, gentler “Sympathizer” side of the Christian nationalism spectrum is what I like to call the “God Bless America” Christian nationalists. They like a little divine blessing seasoning on their patriotism; it feels right to them––like praying before a Thanksgiving meal. They like having an American flag in their church sanctuary. They appreciate that the Pledge of Allegiance says “one nation under God.” They’re proud that our money says “In God We Trust.” If you ask them in a survey, “Should the United States be a Christian nation?”, 45% of the country is going to say Yes. But when you keep asking follow-up questions you discover that the majority of these people just mean something like: America should be moral or we like that our leaders pray. It’s not exactly an active agenda.

LINK

NYT Editorial Board: “The People Trump Pardoned Are on a Crime Spree”

At least 12 of the pardoned rioters have since been charged with other serious crimes, including child molestation, assault, harassment, murder plots and charges related to a vicious dog attack. The outcome was predictable. Critics, including this board, had warned that Mr. Trump’s pardons would embolden the rioters by signaling that crime has no consequences. One does not have to be a criminologist to predict that people who commit a violent act and are absolved of any punishment might become repeat offenders.

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The Dispatch: “The Institutional Rot of the Right’s Youth Politics”

What these choices reveal is that the cultural reference points of the American right no longer lie in conservative intellectual traditions or political theory grounded in argument and debate. Instead, they stem from a loose constellation of streamers, influencers, and online commentators whose audiences are predominantly young men navigating an internet grievance culture organized around attention—earned through spectacle and the continual escalation of rhetorical transgression.

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Learn more about NALEC: https://www.nalec.org/

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Gabriel Salguero and NALEC

01:14 Advocacy for Vulnerable Communities

03:37 Global Health and Immigration Reform

07:13 The Impact of Immigration Policies

10:42 Understanding Latino Evangelical Voting Trends

15:25 We Are Not a Monolith: A Call for Nuance

22:52 Critique of Public Narratives and Policies

27:20 Call to Action for Non-Latino Evangelicals

Using different research methods and metrics, recent reports show our nation moving away from democracy and toward authoritarianism.

V-Dem

V-Dem, or Varieties of Democracy, releases a yearly report ranking democracies around the world. The U.S. ranking went from 20th place last year to now 51st place, out of the 179 countries included in the rankings. According to V-Dem, which is based in Sweden’s University of Gothenburg, the report “produces the largest global dataset on democracy with over 32 million data points for 202 countries and territories from 1789 to 2025. Involving over 4,200 scholars and other country experts, V-Dem measures over 600 different attributes of democracy.”

The report shows an alarming global trend away from democracy and toward autocratization. The Trump presidency in particular is highlighted, noting that, “The speed with which American democracy is currently dismantled is unprecedented in modern history.

The ranking scales nations in one of six categories, from most democratic to most autocratic: liberal democracy, electoral democracy, democratic grey zone, autocratic grey zone, electoral autocracy, and closed autocracy. For the first time in 50 years, the US fell from a liberal democracy to an electoral democracy.

Bright Line Watch

Bright Line Watch asked political scientists in the U.S. to rate our democracy on a 0-100 scale, and compared this to public ratings, controlling for partisanship. Among experts, democracy has hovered between the low 50s and 60 during Trump’s second term, while public opinion is driven by partisanship. Democrats rate democracy under Trump lower than the experts while Republicans rate it higher.

The public survey also found disturbing trends among both Democrats and Republicans: “Democrats are less likely to say preventing political violence is important, while Republicans show significant declines in endorsing the protection of free speech, constitutional and judicial limits on the executive, and responsiveness to public opinion.”

The experts nearly unanimously agreed that three recent events were threats to democracy. “The consensus on the threat was near-unanimous for several events related to the rule of law (96% for Trump directing Attorney General Pam Bondi to prosecute his political enemies); elections (95% for Trump’s call to “nationalize” voting), and speech (93% for Trump’s claim that Democratic lawmakers committed sedition by saying the military should refuse unlawful orders).”

Freedom House

The third report, from Freedom House, found that global freedom has declined for the 20th consecutive year. The U.S. was one of the three nations that saw the largest declines. (Bulgaria and Italy were the other two.)

The report found, “a multiyear rise in threats and reprisals for political speech as well as government efforts to punish nonviolent expression by noncitizens produced a chilling effect on personal expression more broadly. The new presidential administration also disregarded conflicts of interest and weakened both anticorruption safeguards and enforcement practices.”

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What can we do?

For regular readers of this newsletter, these reports are confirming and unsurprising. We’ve been documenting these declines in democracy since Trump’s second inauguration.

But trends need not continue. As Dartmouth Professor Brendan Nyhan, co-director of Bright Line, told NPR, “There’s just no question that what we’re seeing is the authoritarian playbook, but there’s no guarantee that Trump will be able to operate this way after the midterms, let alone a successor after 2028.”

AVC isn’t just here to report on the democratic backsliding, but to do something about it. A helpful step you can take right now is to share these reports, news about them, and this newsletter.

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Help those in your circles of influence understand the urgency of this moment.

What We’re Reading

PBS: “Trump says he’s not mulling a draft executive order to seize control over elections. Here’s what we know”

The 17-page proposal, a working document reviewed in full by PBS News, would give him extraordinary power over the 2026 midterm elections. It claims to address election integrity issues caused by foreign interference. By declaring a national emergency, the document hypothesizes, the president could take control over some voting mechanisms in the country, including requiring hand-counting of ballots and voter identification at the polls.

LINK

Phys: “‘Conflict entrepreneurs’: Examining divisive political rhetoric and the pursuit of celebrity by politicians”

Republican representatives are more likely to be conflict entrepreneurs than Democratic representatives, but the strategy is only pursued by a small minority of both parties. The authors find that although personal attacks do increase media visibility, the enhanced visibility is not associated with enhanced fundraising, electoral margins, legislative productivity, or personal wealth.

According to the authors, the findings suggest that for a subset of legislators, the pursuit of media celebrity has replaced the pursuit of preferred policy, reelection, or even personal wealth as the ultimate motivator for a political career.

LINK

Governing: “Polarization Is Inevitable? Local Government May Be an Antidote.”

Local governments deal with concrete issues — sometimes literally, when it comes to paving roads and fixing potholes. In general, cities and counties handle day-to-day functions, such as garbage pickup, running schools and enforcing zoning rules. Addressing tangible needs keeps local leaders’ attention fixed on specific problems that call out for specific solutions, not lengthy ideological debates.

By contrast, a lot of national political conflict in the U.S. involves symbolic issues, such as debates about identity and values on topics such as race, abortion and transgender rights. These battles are often divisive, even more so than purely ideological disagreements, because they can activate tribal differences and prove more resistant to compromise.

Such arguments at the national level, or on social media, can lead to wildly inaccurate stereotypes about people with opposing views. Today’s partisans often perceive their opponents as far more extreme than they actually are, or they may stereotype them — imagining that all Republicans are wealthy, evangelical culture warriors, for instance, or conversely being convinced that all Democrats are radical urban activists. In terms of ideology, the median members of both parties, in fact, look similar.

These kinds of misperceptions can fuel hostility.

LINK

Chapters

00:00 The State of MAGA and War with Iran

05:09 Divisions Within the MAGA Coalition

10:49 The Never Trump Movement: Evolution and Future

17:53 Democratic Dilemmas and the Future of Politics

Will democracy even be possible given the AI tools now available to bad actors? Will our descendants look back on this moment as the end of democracy’s golden age?

These questions came to mind while reading a new article from the World Economic Forum (WEF): “Cognitive manipulation and AI will shape disinformation in 2026. Here’s how to build resilience.” The piece draws from WEF’s Global Risks Report 2026, which ranked “misinformation and disinformation” as the second greatest global risk for 2026 — after “geoeconomic confrontation.” It held the top spot in both 2024 and 2025.

WEF puts it starkly:

“In 2026, the widespread information disorder is a destabilizing systemic force that has the potential to disrupt democracies, erode social cohesion and make existing problems worse, from economic downturns to climate-related crises. We’re facing elections that could indefinitely entrench criminal autocracies, lingering economic uncertainty, increasingly aggressive polarization and imperialism, and more sophisticated AI-mediated narratives. These dynamics are further shaped by AI-generated deepfakes that have become nearly indistinguishable from reality, making it harder to discern what is accurate and offering opportunists plausible deniability to deflect from what is true.”

Bad actors have always tried to disrupt elections for money, power, or fame. What’s different today is the scale and accessibility of the tools available to them — many free of charge. A single person with a cell phone can now sow chaos at scale. And the systems we’ve built reward agents of chaos more than they reward agents of truth.

Social media companies discovered early that engagement — which for them means revenue — depends on the dopamine hits their platforms deliver. Algorithms don’t reward accuracy; they reward emotional reaction, especially anger.

WEF explains:

“Some AI systems and opportunistic influencers actively manipulate content to provoke strong emotional reactions, using behavioural and psychological profiling to tailor messages that appeal to or instigate a specific reaction from targeted groups... Those susceptible to emotional manipulation can be easily identified with micro-targeting, which uses self-reported online data to reveal personality type. Once identified, targeted messaging is selected because it resonates emotionally and will likely be shared because it affirms prior beliefs, stirs up anger or resentment, or is considered humorous... outrage delivers more quickly as it triggers immediate sharing before fact-checking can occur.”

But this need not be democracy’s epitaph. What comes next depends on the choices we make.

Drawing on research from Demos, WEF offers a hopeful framework:

“Disinformation has been a part of society throughout history, and will likely persist in the future. But its sophistication and degree of reach seem amplified with today’s technology. That’s why we have to build resilience — finding ways to protect ourselves from the fallout without sacrificing our fundamental right to speak our minds. Resilience can arise from community investment in verification, deliberation and accountability systems.”

What’s striking about these recommendations is what they don’t do: they don’t abandon the values of liberal democracy. No censorship. No surrender to cynicism. Instead, they call us to embrace those values — civility, pluralism, free expression — and deploy them as our defense.

That’s a vision AVC can stand behind. And it starts close to home: being thoughtful about your own social media use, being diligent about spreading truth within your circles of influence, and urging your elected representatives to take this challenge as seriously as it deserves.

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Related News

CNN: “Republicans release AI deepfake of James Talarico as phony videos proliferate in midterm races”

Senate Republicans released an online ad this week in which a real-looking but fake version of a Democratic candidate, fabricated with artificial intelligence, appears to speak directly into the camera for more than a minute.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee’s deepfake of James Talarico, the Democratic nominee in the US Senate race in Texas, is only the latest in a series of AI-generated creations from the national GOP campaign organization in the past year. But it’s the first featuring a phony version of a candidate talking in a lifelike manner for so long – an example of how far AI technology has come in a short time and an indicator of the direction attack ads may be heading.

LINK

The Stimson Center: “AI in the Age of Fake (Imagined) Content”

The line between what is real and what is fake is rapidly disappearing. We are at a turning point in the era of misinformation and disinformation, with AI fundamentally reshaping how fabricated content is created and spread. Because this threat is borderless, we urgently need a new framework. A global credibility institute that brings together journalists, researchers, technologists, and policymakers can serve as a shared starting point. Such an initiative can help establish common norms and standards for defining, disclosing, and governing content authenticity. Protecting the truth is a public good problem, and establishing a shared epistemic foundation is critical to preserve trust in the AI era.

LINK

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Some More Good Reads

Pew Research Center: “In 25-Country Survey, Americans Especially Likely To View Fellow Citizens as Morally Bad”

Americans are more likely than people in other countries surveyed in 2025 to question the morality of their fellow countrymen, according to Pew Research Center surveys in 25 countries.

LINK

PsyPost: “American issue polarization surged after 2008 as the left moved further left”

The American public has grown increasingly divided on political issues over the past few decades, but this trend does not appear to be happening on a global scale. A recent paper published in Royal Society Open Science introduces a new way to measure these divisions using machine learning. The results reveal that polarization in the United States spiked heavily between 2008 and 2020, offering a fresh perspective on how political disagreements take shape globally.

LINK

PsyPost: “Trump voters who believed conspiracy theories were the most likely to justify the Jan. 6 riots”

A recent study published in Social Psychological and Personality Science suggests that people who are highly active in politics and also believe in conspiracy theories are the most likely to justify political violence. The findings provide evidence that conspiracy beliefs alone might not lead to violence, but they can become dangerous when combined with active political engagement. This implies that spreading unverified narratives among already mobilized political groups tends to create a volatile environment.

LINK

Phil Williams: “How I Discovered the Nazi Sympathizer Behind U.S. Rep. Andy Ogles’ A+ ‘Remigration Score’”

Who was behind this support for Tennessee’s Trump-loving 5th District congressman?

Here’s what I discovered:

• The only name publicly linked to that “society” appears to be a right-wing Trad Catholic guy who argues “White Christian American Nationalism is the only viable ideology for our people,” that the only true Americans are “White Christians who call this land their Home.”

• He believes it is “necessary” to develop “something resembling” the 25-point party platform of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, although it would need to be “re-tooled for modern Western countries.”

• He says practicing Jews are “wicked servants of Satan,” and he denies the Holocaust, calling it a “lie” that “dies with the boomers.”

• He wants to turn America into a theocracy where even Baptist teachings would be banned. After all, he says, “Jesus is a Catholic.”

• He says Canada and the UK need to “liquidate” their immigrants, and he gets his kicks from watching YouTube videos of cops shooting Black Americans.

And, yes, his society believes Andy Ogles is doing a fantastic job of helping to move the country toward the kind of America they desire.

LINK

Anthony Bradley: “Doug Wilson Didn’t Change, Evangelical Institutions Did”

Doug Wilson has been advocating theonomy, Christian Reconstructionism, Christian Nationalism, “paleo-Confederate” promotion, and strong anti-Catholic views for more than thirty years. Many people warned about this as early as the late 1990s, but those warnings were largely dismissed by evangelicals, especially within Calvinistic Baptist and Young, Restless, and Reformed (New Calvinism) circles, and those raising concerns were often labeled “woke.”

LINK

CBS Texas: “Afghan father, former U.S. military ally, dies in ICE custody in North Texas”

An Afghan father who served with U.S. forces died in immigration custody less than a day after being arrested in North Texas.

LINK

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Jared Stacey and His Work

02:14 The Backstory Behind ‘Reality in Ruins’

05:05 Understanding Post-Evangelical Identity

08:52 Conspiracy Theories in Evangelical Culture

20:36 Impact of Conspiracy Theories on Relationships

28:21 Advice for Those Affected by Conspiracy Theories

Links

Jared Stacy: https://jaredstacy.com/

AVC Bookshop affiliate link: https://bookshop.org/a/95847/9780063453753

Certain MAGA leaders are openly advocating ethnic cleansing in the United States. I’m not exaggerating.

“My boys all look like me, and I want my children to grow up in a country where they’re not minorities,” William Wolfe said at an event hosted by True Texas Project. “I, unapologetically, and I’m sorry if this offends anybody here or anybody who listens to this, I am, actually … not sorry. I want my boys to grow up in a country where they don’t look like they’re the foreigners here.”

Wolfe is executive director of Center for Baptist Leadership, an organization that tries to steer the Southern Baptist Convention in a more MAGA direction. He previously worked in the first Trump administration and got his Master of Divinity from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Desiring an ethnically homogenous nation is biblical, Wolfe claimed. “There’s nothing about my Christian faith that says I can’t want that or desire that for myself and for my children,” he said.

Wolfe’s remarks, including his whole speech, which you can view on Rumble, are both un-Christian and un-American. And he is not a lone Wolfe. More and more MAGA leaders have been openly advocating for turning our country into a white Christian ethno-religious state.

Congressman Andy Ogles, R-Tennessee, posted this week, “Muslims don’t belong in American society. Pluralism is a lie.”

Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Alabama, similarly posted this today:

More importantly, ethnic cleansing appears to be a primary motivation for our current executive branch’s immigration enforcement policies.

The Department of Homeland Security posted this to Instagram in December:

100 million people would be nearly 1/3 of the total population, and far more than the number of immigrants (both documented and undocumented) in the US today. This week I was reminded of this post when Sen. John Kennedy, R-Louisiana, accused David Bier, Director of Immigration Studies at the Cato Institute, of hyperbole for using the term “ethnic cleansing” in reference to the post. (Watch the exchange here.) Here is the definition of ethnic cleansing in the Merriam-Webster dictionary — “the expulsion, imprisonment, or killing of an ethnic minority by a dominant majority in order to achieve ethnic homogeneity.”

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These messages aren’t fringe. Indeed, they’re an accurate reflection of the current administration which,

• seeks to end birthright citizenship

• talks a lot about “denaturalization,” or revoking citizenship (a word that Wolfe also used in his presentation)

• uses racial profiling in its immigration enforcement

• shut down nearly all refugee resettlement except for white South Africans.

God does not desire ethnic cleansing. Throughout the Old Testament, God reminds the nation of Israel that they were once foreigners in a strange land, and immigrants to a new land. God commands his followers to treat immigrants well. And in the New Testament, when Jesus is asked, “who is my neighbor?” He responds by telling the parable of the Good Samaritan. The moral of this story is that our neighbors are not just those who “look like me.” Everyone is my neighbor.

Ethnic cleansing is also antithetical to American values. Our Declaration of Independence declared the divine truth that we’re all “created equal,” and our First Amendment codifies pluralism and freedom of conscience. We haven’t always lived up to these ideals, so later leaders like Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and Martin Luther King Jr. would help us more fully realize these ideals, and we passed laws like the 14th Amendment, which clearly stipulates birthright citizenship, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which banned laws separating us by race. American citizenship is not, and should never be, just a white thing.

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What We’re Reading

Jonah Goldberg: “Cutting Off the Lunatic Fringe: It’s a problem when outliers become the core constituency.”

You know my basic view of both parties. They’re too internally democratic—TLDR: primaries suck—and they are too institutionally weak to do the admittedly hard, but obviously smart, thing: purge or marginalize their fringes in an unapologetic campaign to win over the voters in the middle.

As a purely political matter (we can leave policy and morality out of it for the moment), the reason such a purge would be smart for Democrats—or Republicans—is simply that there are more voters in the middle than there are on the fringes. Moreover, the more “normie” voters you get, the more fringy you make the other party look. Enduring majorities are built on this basic logic.

The main reason it’s hard is that those on the fringe—and the fringe-sympathetic—care more about politics and take politics more seriously than normal voters who, broadly speaking, have more important and rewarding things to do with their time and energy. (The suits at The Dispatch often call these normies, or “our audience.”) The fringers have more internal power within the parties and the network of institutions that fund and support them (with media coverage, donations, organization, and mobilization).

An additional challenge is negative polarization and hyper-partisanship. Attacking members of your own “team” outrages even very moderate members of your coalition. J.D. Vance’s anti-anti-Nazi schtick is one variant of this. The left’s longstanding love affair with popular frontism and its outrage at “hippie punching”—i.e., criticizing the left instead of aiming all hostilities rightward—is another. Lots of normie Democrats and Republicans simply hate the other party so much these days that they confuse internal hygiene and sanity with “divisiveness” and “cancel culture.” This logic is all very stupid, but its practitioners make it sound very sophisticated (charges of hypocrisy and double standards are a key tool for enforcing cohesion: “How dare they criticize our whack jobs when they don’t criticize their own! I won’t give them the satisfaction of denouncing someone on my team.”).

LINK

ABC News: “‘Everything gone’: Venezuelan family says they lost their home and jobs after being detained for 2 months”

Adriana Laya and Miguel Alberto Caicedo thought their worst nightmare was over when they were released with their two children from a family detention center in Dilley, Texas.

But when they returned to their home in Las Cruces, New Mexico, after being detained for two months, they faced a new nightmare. The family claims they were kicked out of their apartment during their detention and that their belongings -- including their life savings and their pet dog -- were taken.

“We started crying,” Laya told ABC News in Spanish. “My kids started crying over their pet, their clothes, their bed. We just held on to each other outside of the apartment.”

The family from Venezuela said they are now living in their car -- the only possession they were able to recover after it was left in a government parking lot outside of where they were detained.

LINK

Matthew Soerens: “Finding Common Ground on Immigration in a Polarized Moment”

If you’re like me, it’s been an exhausting month. Immigration enforcement operations – which already had been intense in places like Los Angeles, Charlotte and my home region of Chicagoland – have dominated national headlines as “Operation Metro Surge” hit Minnesota. Americans of all political orientations have been focused on the deaths of two U.S. citizens, the detention of large number of immigrants (including refugees and asylum seekers who are lawfully present and authorized to work in the United States), and the protests that have followed.

What’s struck me is how wildly far apart Christians of different political perspectives seem to be. We disagree not just over the best policy solution, but on the basic facts of what is happening. We watch the same videos but come to polar opposite conclusions.

And evangelical Christians – whom we would hope would be united by our commitment to the authority of Scripture over every aspect of our lives – often seem to be as divided as our society as a whole.

LINK

NYT: “Slurs Filled a Chat Created by a Republican Party Official in Florida”

A leaked group chat with numerous racist, antisemitic and misogynistic text messages among young conservatives engulfed the Miami-Dade County Republican Party in scandal on Thursday.

The WhatsApp chat, which the party secretary created last fall for students at Florida International University in Miami, quickly devolved into slurs against Black and Jewish people, The Miami Herald reported on Wednesday. Screenshots of some messages were also published by The Floridian, a conservative website. One of the students in the WhatsApp group verified the authenticity of the chat and messages to The New York Times.

The slur-laden chat includes a lengthy message about killing Black people and a separate warning about not getting sexually involved with a Jewish woman, according to the screenshots. The Herald also found messages referencing Hitler’s politics, insulting gay people and referring to women with offensive terms.

GIFT LINK

Chapters

00:00 Turmoil in MAGA World: The Iran Conflict

08:41 The Impact of War on Domestic Politics

17:30 The Epstein Distraction: A Divisive Issue

26:23 Racism and Bigotry in MAGA: A Growing Concern

Some of the same people who tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election now have influential roles in our federal government. This is a big problem.

Temperamentally, I’m not an alarmist. But the reality is, sometimes alarming things happen and we need to take them seriously, and try to avert them.

Government officials and MAGA activists are preparing to disrupt, complicate, and undermine voting in this year’s midterm elections.

ProPublica reports,

Several high-ranking federal election officials attended a summit last week at which prominent figures who worked to overturn Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 election pressed the president to declare a national emergency to take over this year’s midterms.

According to videos, photos and social media posts reviewed by ProPublica, the meeting’s participants included Kurt Olsen, a White House lawyer charged with reinvestigating the 2020 election, and Heather Honey, the Department of Homeland Security official in charge of election integrity. The event was convened by Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, and attended by Cleta Mitchell, who directs the Election Integrity Network, a group that has spread false claims about election fraud and noncitizen voting.

Election experts say that the meeting reflects an intensifying push to persuade Trump to take unprecedented actions to affect the vote in November. Courts have largely blocked his efforts to reshape elections through an executive order, and legislation has stalled in Congress that would mandate strict voter ID requirements across the country.

Read the rest.

My only dispute with the above is that Trump doesn’t need persuading. He’s the original instigator. He tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election. He’s the ringleader. He’s the persuader. In 2020, his own White House officials and Attorney General told him that all the claims related to election problems were false, yet he continued to push false claims anyway. And that continues even today as these false claims are being used to justify taking control of our elections. Unlike 2020, the White House is now staffed with sycophants willing to lie to in order to stay in Trump’s good graces.

There is a lot of chaos in the world right now. Federal law enforcement is in our cities, committing human rights abuses. We’re at war with Iran. AI might be taking our jobs. Government corruption is rampant. I’m sure many of us have outrage fatigue over all of it. But this is not the time to check out. It is our civic duty to remain engaged on this issue, because without free and fair elections, we no longer have a democracy.

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More in Common: “Beyond MAGA: The War Against Wokeness”

A troubling trend has emerged throughout the second Trump presidency: episodes of right-leaning efforts to punish or silence liberal voices, as seen after the killing of Charlie Kirk. The anti-woke backlash risks hypocrisy by mirroring the moral absolutism that it seeks to oppose. The danger is a perpetual cycle in which each side claims to defend freedom while using cultural and political power to silence dissent and enforce conformity.

Americans face a stark choice between two futures. One path leads to a cycle of cultural combat where victory means silencing opponents rather than persuading them—an expectation that whoever holds power determines acceptable speech, belief, and expression. The alternative requires genuine commitment to principles that constrain everyone: defending free expression even when offensive, tolerating disagreement even when frustrating, and maintaining fair competition even when outcomes disappoint.

LINK

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Crisis Magazine: “My Name Is Lazarus: How the Church and Chesterton Rescued Me From Racial Hatred”

My decision to attend the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville was not a single, isolated act; rather, it was the culmination of years of poor choices. Although I was raised in a loving home, it was economically strained, and there was a part of me that understood that there was injustice in the poverty I saw around me. Yet, I did not have the language or moral formation to articulate what made it unjust.

I was not Catholic or religious at all. Both my parents were born Catholic but left the Faith. I was a “none” who was culturally Christian as a vague abstraction. I wanted justice, but I did not know what justice truly was. I enrolled at the University of Nevada, Reno, but I had no plan, no goal, and that absence of direction became the soil in which my radicalization took root.

Over the next two years, my warped sense of justice led me gradually into what can only be described as neo-Nazism, though I did not recognize it as such at the time. The nihilism I had in youth evolved into a zealous rage against the world. I never formally joined a neo-Nazi organization, nor did I desire to, but I increasingly embraced hateful ideas that I justified as necessary to protect what I perceived as my community: the white community.

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Joe Carter: “Edgelords Won’t Inherit the Earth”

Somewhere right now, a young man is watching a 30-second clip of a Christian influencer calling a fellow pastor a coward on a live stream. The clip has 40,000 views. What he didn’t see is that his own pastor posted a thoughtful, Christ-centered reflection that same day. It got 14 likes.

This is the world we’ve built. And a particular kind of man is thriving in it.

You’ll find him on podcasts and in pulpits, but everything he does is for social media. He’s the man who has confused being provocative with being profound, who mistakes the ability to offend for the courage to lead. He is the edgelord. And he’s becoming the dominant model of masculinity for an entire generation of young men.

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NYT: “Judges Grow Angry Over Trump Administration Violating Their Orders: At least 35 times since August, federal judges have ordered the administration to explain why it should not be punished for violating their orders in immigration cases.”

Those so-called “show cause” orders came from judges in California, Texas, Florida, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, West Virginia and Puerto Rico. They all arose from cases in which the government had detained immigrants who had been living in the United States for years after entering the country illegally.

They represent the culmination of weeks of frustration from the bench. Judges have castigated administration officials for testifying dishonestly, representing the law inaccurately, and above all, failing to comply promptly with their orders.

Experts said that judges appeared to be grappling with a key question: Could the violations of court orders be explained merely by the stress on the legal system caused by the recent flood of immigration cases? Or is there a more systematic effort by the government to defy the courts?

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I had the pleasure of taking my yearly trip to D.C. for the Principles First conference last weekend. In recent years, American Values Coalition has been a proud sponsor to the conference, and it has been our privilege to see this movement of principled Americans grow and unite in mission. Last year, I wrote about the surprise bomb threat we encountered, which certainly kept things interesting…this year was less dangerous, but just as meaningful. You can watch the full conference here.

More than anything, this conference is a yearly reminder of the common ground Americans share. It’s always a morale booster to meet people from across the country, dedicated to fairness, equality, the constitution, and the rule of law. Oftentimes in this political climate, it’s easy to forget there are more of us “political normies” than those shouting online into their digital “microphones.” Unfortunately, the extremists who have stolen the stage for the past decade. For those of us who work in politics, that echo-chamber of negativity can seem even louder. But this event always offers alternative hope.

There’s a time to tear down and a time to build up, and in the spirit of the fellowship we shared last weekend, we’d encourage you to check out our fellow sponsors’ work and support their individual causes within our shared pro-democracy space. In no particular order, you may review their efforts here:

• Protect Democracy

• States United Action

• Unite America

• Horizons Project

• No Cap Fund

• The Chamberlain Network

• Issue One

• The Bulwark

• NSL4A

• Our Republican Legacy

• Country First Academy

• Leaving MAGA

• Open Secrets

• Stories Chance Power

• Alliance for American Rule of Law

• Society for the Rule of Law

• Freedom of Mind Resource Center

• Reagan Caucus

• Dream for America

• Center for New Liberalism

• UpVote

• Concord Coalition

• Better Choices for Democracy

• The Week

We wish you all a great weekend and encourage you to take a break from the news cycle to reconnect with friends and family—it’ll bring a new optimism and grounded-ness that’s essential to rebuilding our shared project.

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Washington Post: Trump, seeking executive power over elections, is urged to declare emergency

Pro-Trump activists are circulating a draft executive order alleging Chinese interference in the 2020 election, proposing a national emergency to expand presidential power over voting, like banning mail ballots and voting machines.

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Investigative Post: Blind refugee abandoned by Border Patrol is dead

Nurul Amin Shah Alam, a Rohingya refugee from Burma, was nearly blind and spoke no English. He was dropped off by agents in Buffalo on the other side of town from his home. His family was not notified of his release. Police are investigating.

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New York Times: Epstein Files Are Missing Records About Woman Who Made Claim Against Trump

The Justice Department did not release key records in the Epstein files about a woman who made an unverified accusation against Donald Trump, in which she said Trump assaulted her in the 1980s when she was a minor. This story has also been verified by NPR and CNN.

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Tom Nichols: The Republican Party Has a Nazi Problem

The Republicans have a Nazi problem, yes. But this means that the United States also has a Nazi problem. The responsibility for defeating it in the 21st century falls, as it did in the 20th, to everyone—of any party or creed—who still believes in the American idea.

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NBC News: Texas U.S. citizen was fatally shot by an immigration agent last year during a stop, new records show

The death of Ruben Ray Martinez, 23, would mark the earliest of at least six deadly shootings by federal officers since the start of the Trump administration's nationwide immigration crackdown.

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David French: Christians Against Empathy Aren’t Who They Think They Are

The problem isn’t with empathy, which is a vital human virtue, but rather in its selective application. Just as we wouldn’t call love a sin because we might be stingy in our love, empathy isn’t a sin because its application is incomplete.

Or, put another way, our problem isn’t with too much empathy, but too little.

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What Else We’re Watching:

Our Director, Napp Nazworth, responds to “Trump’s State of the Union Double- Standard”:

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There’s an elite cabal of child sex traffickers, QAnon conspiracies claimed. As more of the Epstein files emerge from the darkness, this scandal certainly appears QAnonish. But unlike QAnon, let us be careful with how we present the facts.

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Some have selectively looked at the Epstein files and concluded there’s nothing to see here.

“The Jeffrey Epstein files were supposed to uncover the financier’s sex-trafficking and blackmail operation. They haven’t, for the excellent reason that there was no such operation,” Barton Swaim wrote in an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal last week.

We shouldn’t give up so easily on seeking justice for the victims. We still don’t have a full picture, given the many redactions in the files. And the fallout has continued apace both before and after Swaim’s op-ed went to print.

• The executive chairman of Hyatt Hotels announced his retirement.

• The CEO of DP World stepped down.

• The CEO of Apollo Global Management stepped down.

• The World Economic Forum will be conducting an internal review of it’s president and chief executive.

• The chair of Paul Weiss resigned.

• The general counsel of Goldman Sachs will step down.

• And just this morning, former prince Andrew was arrested and faces a maximum sentence of life in prison.

The top story in today’s Wall Street Journal (gift link) reports that Epstein accomplice Jean-Luc Brunel was prepared to testify against Epstein in 2016 but suddenly backed out for unknown reasons. The US Justice Department knew about this but didn’t open an investigation until two years later after the Miami Herald brought attention to Epstein’s crimes. Epstein was finally arrested in 2019. Brunel was arrested in France in 2020 and committed suicide in jail in 2022. French prosecutors are now reexamining the Epstein case in light of these new revelations.

And then of course there is our president, who continues to urge us to look away, which inspires me to do the opposite.

Investigative journalist Roger Sollenberger reported this week that the FBI interviewed a victim four times in 2019 who alleged that Donald Trump had sexually and violently assaulted her in the early 1980s. This information has mysteriously disappeared from the FBI website. Further, the allegations match a 2019 lawsuit against Epstein that led to a settlement. (Warning: the details contained in these links are graphic and contain descriptions of rape.)

Russell Moore was right when he wrote last week for Christianity Today. “Despite how much is still confusing, we can also see this: On at least one important point, the most outlandish theories were right. There really is a global conspiracy of wealthy, elite sexual perverts fleecing the masses. And many of them were people building a following by telling others that there is a global conspiracy of wealthy, elite sexual perverts fleecing the masses.”

Keep in mind, however, there are important differences between investigative journalists and QAnon conspirators. In our “Truth Advocates Handbook” (which you can get by signing up for our main email list here), we use this definition of a conspiracy theory: “A conspiracy theory refers to an untrue or unproven accusation that a small group of powerful individuals (cabal) are secretly using their power for their own self interest and against the common good.”

Note, a conspiracy theory isn’t necessarily false, but it is unproven. If a conspiracy theory is proven, it’s no longer a conspiracy theory and becomes a fact. But being partly right about one thing doesn’t make QAnon conspirators any more credible. It’s still a network of fabulists for whom many claims have been not only unproven, but disproven.

So be careful with what you share about this ongoing scandal. Make sure your sources are credible. Care about the truth. Avoid hearsay and share what is proven.

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Justin Giboney: “We Become Our Friends’ Enemies by Telling Them the Truth”

And thou shall not get caught on the wrong side of whatever issue is virusing through social media! Even commercial products like Super Bowl halftime shows can become high-stakes litmus tests where one must assent to a meaning assigned by the mob. Don’t let your tribe take any blame. Always accuse the other side of the most sinister motives. Suppress your deeper questions. Accept lies if that’s what it takes to keep your status in your group.

What does this system of perverse incentives, stereotypes, and partiality look like in practice? It looks like conservative officials and influencers conflating protests with riots and dismissing protesters’ causes out of hand. It looks like progressive custodians of culture comparing every other conflict to Jim Crow and daring anyone to question it. It looks like downplaying the violence done by us to exaggerate the violence done by them. It looks like only selectively recognizing immorality and injustice.

Or ask Beth Moore, Russell Moore, and J. D. Greear what happens when you refuse to condone colorblind and MAGA myths moving among white evangelicals. We become our friends’ enemies by telling them the truth (Gal. 4:16). In some circles, having the right politics or the right race narrative has become more important than right doctrine and right ethics. Religious heretics may be condoned, but cultural dissidents are unforgivable. We pronounce right and wrong according to identity and ideology instead of honestly testing the spirits (1 John 4:1–3) and assessing the fruit (Matt. 7:15–20).

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Bonnie Kristian: “The Popular Progressive Podcast Calling Evangelicals ‘Cancer’”

Scorn heaped on evangelicals is not new. In 1994, Yale University legal scholar Stephen L. Carter wrote that secular progressives saw evangelicals as “wild-eyed zealots.” Since then national polarization has only increased, and all sides of the political debate have vilified their opponents. For the left, evangelicals provide a ready target.

“People on the left side of the political spectrum need an enemy,” political scientist Ryan Burge told me. “They need to personify what the other side is, and because white evangelicals are so prominent in America, they have become the totem for all the liberal ire against conservatives in America,” a “magnet for all this criticism.”

The dynamic this sets up is corrosive to public life, and not just when it comes to religion. The practice of using evangelicals (or any group) as a foil encourages Americans to think about one another not as neighbors but as generalized “forces,” Michael Wear, who directed outreach to faith-based groups in Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign and is now president of the Center for Christianity and Public Life, told me. “The political and social consequences of this kind of rhetoric only increases the distance between people,” Wear said, “and the sense of embattlement they feel.”

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Ian Bassin: “How much money has Trump made as president? The answer should worry us all.”

Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan — the UAE’s national security adviser, a senior royal, and the head of one of the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds — purchased a 49% stake in World Liberty Financial for $500 million. Of that, $187 million reportedly flowed to Trump family entities, with additional tens of millions to entities tied to Steve Witkoff, who had recently been named Middle East envoy.

The reported UAE payment to the Trump family dwarfs the roughly $400,000 involved in Teapot Dome ($5 million in today’s dollars) or the roughly $1.5 million generated by sales of Hunter Biden’s artwork — another episode that raised concerns about the monetization of proximity to power. More troublingly, the UAE transaction involves money from a foreign official flowing into enterprises benefiting the president’s family.

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“American culture is being replaced by Hispanic culture.” This claim appears at the core of arguments against the Super Bowl Halftime Show and arguments for mass deportation.

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“Football is ours,” Megyn Kelly complained on Piers Morgan Uncensored, while specifically citing Hispanics and Muslims as not part of American culture.

Similarly, Brianna Lyman wrote for The Federalist that the Super Bowl is “a shared experience — rooted in common language and culture and tradition. Which is why the Super Bowl half time show this year was a clear display of pure contempt for America.” The audience, she added, was “required to bear witness to the replacement of their own culture.”

As someone who has lived most of his life in Florida and Texas, these are weird things to say. Hispanic culture is a huge part of American culture. In Texas, you can find the influences everywhere. Look at a Texas map, for instance, and you’ll see Spanish words all over the place — San Antonio (St. Anthony), El Paso (The Pass), Corpus Christi (Body of Christ), Amarillo (Yellow), Rio Grande (Big River), Padre (Father) Island, Colorado (Red) River.

Hispanic culture is also a big part of the music and food here in Texas. It’s literally in the name of our cuisine — Tex-Mex. And it’s why I can get fresh made tortillas from my local grocery store. (Jealous? You should be.) And there are other cultures in the mix, which you can see in part through the “Six Flags” that have flown over Texas — Spain, France, Mexico, Republic of Texas, C.S.A., and the U.S.A.

The part of Texas where I live is nicknamed the German Hill Country after the Germans who settled here in the 1800s. Many towns in the area have German names — Fredricksburg, Beorne, New Braunfels, Pflugerville, Schulenburg, and of course the town made famous by Waylon and Willie, Luckenbach.

You can see the mix of Hispanic and German culture at festivals throughout the region, such as Wurstfest, Deutschen Pfest, or the many Oktoberfests. I’ve never heard anyone here complain that this mixing of cultures represents a loss of culture. This is our culture! Tacos and lagers pair well, it turns out, both figuratively and literally.

This isn’t unusual. There are places like this all across the country.

When I lived in Houston, I was next to a Greek neighborhood. Another neighborhood in Houston is called “Little Saigon” and has a strong Vietnamese community. Even some of the street signs are bilingual, English and Vietnamese.

Just last week I was in San Diego, another city with a Spanish name and strong Hispanic heritage, and had a wonderful meal in the Little Italy neighborhood. I noticed a plague honoring the Italian heritage of the neighborhood.

Our mixture of cultures, united by the principles found in the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights, is not a problem that needs fixed. It’s something to celebrate.

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When MAGA influencers call for mass deportation to “preserve our culture” because they’re worried about too many Spanish speakers or too many Muslims and not enough white Christians, they’re actually seeking the opposite — they’re seeking to undo American culture, the wonderful diversity that makes America great, and replace it with an homogenized myth of how they imagined America “used to be” but never really existed.

What Else We’re Reading

ProPublica: “The Children of Dilley”

Fourteen-year-old Ariana Velasquez had been held at the immigrant detention center in Dilley, Texas, with her mother for some 45 days when I managed to get inside to meet her. The staff brought everyone in the visiting room a boxed lunch from the cafeteria: a cup of yellowish stew and a hamburger patty in a plain bun. Ariana’s long black curls hung loosely around her face and she was wearing a government-issued gray sweatsuit. At first, she sat looking blankly down at the table. She poked at her food with a plastic fork and let her mother do most of the talking.

She perked up when I asked about home: Hicksville, New York. She and her mother had moved there from Honduras when she was 7. Her mother, Stephanie Valladares, had applied for asylum, married a neighbor from back home who was already living in the U.S., and had two more kids. Ariana took care of them after school. She was a freshman at Hicksville High, and being detained at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center meant that she was falling behind in her classes. She told me how much she missed her favorite sign language teacher, but most of all she missed her siblings.

I had previously met them in Hicksville: Gianna, a toddler who everyone calls Gigi, and Jacob, a kindergartener with wide brown eyes. I told Ariana that they missed her too. Jacob had shown me a security camera that their mom had installed in the kitchen so she could peek in on them from her job, sometimes saying “Hello” through the speaker. I told Ariana that Jacob tried talking to the camera, hoping his mom would answer.

Stephanie burst into tears. So did Ariana. After my visit, Ariana wrote me a letter.

“My younger siblings haven’t been able to see their mom in more than a month,” she wrote. “They are very young and you need both of your parents when you are growing up.” Then, referring to Dilley, she added, “Since I got to this Center all you will feel is sadness and mostly depression.”

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The Irish Times: “‘Absolute hell’: Irishman with valid US work permit held by Ice since September”

An Irishman living in the United States for more than 20 years has been held by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officials since being arrested last September.

Originally from Glenmore, Co Kilkenny, Seamus Culleton is married to a US citizen and owns a plastering business in the Boston area. He was arrested on September 9th, 2025, and has been in an Ice detention facility in Texas for nearly five months, despite having no criminal record, “not even a parking ticket”. In a phone interview from the facility, he said conditions there are “like a concentration camp, absolute hell”.

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Pete Wehner: “The Evangelicals Who See Trump’s Viciousness as a Virtue”

Evangelical denominations and pastors, though, even those who are not deeply immersed in politics, are generally willing to speak out on culture-war issues that have political and sometimes legislative implications. I’ve seen this happen many times over the years.

So the reluctance to take a prophetic stance in the realm of politics and culture is less a principled unwillingness than a selective one. Ministers, like most of the rest of us, are likely to wade into controversial waters only when it’s safe—in their case, when there is overwhelming agreement within a congregation on a set of issues. They speak out when the response from those in the pews is a resounding “Amen!” rather than even a handful of voices saying, “Oh no you don’t!”

I don’t pretend these are easy matters for pastors to face. A minister of a conservative congregation might tell himself that the downside to speaking out against the sins of the authoritarian right, even judiciously and without partisan rancor, is too costly. They may fear that their ministry will be damaged, that offended parishioners will tune them out, and that they will gain nothing concrete.

But aren’t prophets esteemed precisely for their willingness to tell difficult truths to the people of God? For being steadfast in the face of fierce criticism; for denouncing social injustice and idolatry, including political idolatry, when it’s unfashionable to do so; for issuing warnings when others fall silent; and for calling people to repentance during times of moral blindness?

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The Guardian: “Epstein was not ostracised for his crimes. To some powerful men, he became even more appealing”

new tranche of Epstein files has blasted its way through the worlds of media, politics, tech, academia, finance and Hollywood. High-profile individuals have once again been forced to explain their relationship with the billionaire financier – and why exactly they sent that email, or what they were doing in that photo, in that place, at that time. There have been resignations in Norway, Slovakia, France, the UK and on Wall Street. Each individual scandal matters. But take the files as a whole and a new picture forms: of Jeffrey Epstein as a man who was seen to survive a sexual abuse scandal, and who was then feted as a sexual svengali and a valuable ally in navigating allegations of sexual abuse amid the #MeToo movement.

The 3.5m documents that have thus far been released to the public – out of a reported 6m documents pertaining to Epstein in the US justice department’s possession – paint Epstein as someone for whom elites, and particularly elite men, often felt a sense of camaraderie and affection, maintaining intimate and friendly relationships long after his 2008 conviction on child sexual abuse charges. And their content implies that, in some cases, this was not simply a case of them turning a blind eye to their friend’s sexual crimes: the powerful actively approached Epstein for sexual and romantic advice, and saw him as a thrower of “wild” parties and a listening ear in whom they could confide their anxieties about the excesses of the #MeToo movement.

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In November of 2024, shortly after the U.S. Presidential election, I went to see Wicked in theaters. While expecting a spectacle of familiar songs and storyline, I also found myself deeply moved by the unavoidable political and cultural parallels drawn between that moment in America and the mythical Oz. I was reminded of how helpful art can be in explaining the consistency of human nature while also offering permission to process history’s repeating themes. Most notably was how The Wizard—larger than life and booming with confidence—was selling certainty through smoke and sound, all while hiding behind the curtain. A showman who survived on illusion, but a coward once the curtain is pulled back. Sound familiar?

Over the last week, as Trump’s typical chaotic news cycle continued, something shifted in the air. On Friday, the latest Epstein files dump provided further indisputable evidence of Trump’s allegiance to the corrupt “elite” he claims to detest. While allegations are not necessarily proof of a crime, emails between Trump and Epstein provide a tangible witness that even his most loyal defenders cannot deny. Then on Monday, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene continued her recent crusade against him, calling the MAGA movement itself “all a lie”, which begs the question: What else did she see behind the curtain? Over the years, commentary from podcasters like Joe Rogan and Andrew Schulz have served as indicators to general public opinion and on Wednesday, Shultz admitted he had misjudged the danger Trump poses to America. All of these moments point to a collective awakening: the realization that the man behind the curtain is not a savior, but a deeply flawed participant in the very systems he claimed to fight.

Wicked ultimately isn’t just about exposing a fraud—it’s about what happens after. It asks whether people, once awakened, will choose fear or courage, division or solidarity. That’s where this moment feels pivotal. Ultimately, the power was never behind the curtain; it has always lived within those willing to see clearly and act together (a power the Wizard envied). As more Americans reckon with reality, there is much opportunity is to welcome them to the fold and build a broader coalition, dedicated to truth. If we can meet this moment with unity instead of vengeance, honesty instead of myth-making, this could mark not just the end of an illusion—but the beginning of a more grounded, shared future for our country.

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Upcoming: We will be convening with fellow pro-democracy organizations and grassroots activists in Washington, D.C. at the end of the month (2/20-2/22) for the annual Principles First conference. We are a proud sponsor of the event, and invite you all to join us there! Last year’s conference was full of surprise.

What Else We’re Reading

New York Times: “What’s Really Driving These Bogus Claims of Voter Fraud”

This week, President Trump called on his party to nationalize American elections, an unconstitutional move that he said would be justified because of the danger of noncitizens casting ballots. “These people were brought to our country to vote, and they vote illegally,” he said.

No president has so baldly proposed to intervene in state elections, but the charge that noncitizens are illegally casting ballots is sadly commonplace.

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The Guardian: “Tulsi Gabbard Running Solo 2020 Election Inquiry Separate From FBI investigation”

Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, is running her own review into the 2020 election with Donald Trump’s approval, working separately from a justice department investigation even as she joined an FBI raid of an election center in Georgia last week.

Her presence at the raid drew criticism from Democrats and former intelligence officials, who questioned why the country’s top intelligence officer with no domestic law enforcement powers would appear at the scene of an FBI raid.

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The Dispatch: “Truth and Its Consequences”

The reason anyone does this is that we have bought into a preconceived cultural or political vision of the world and are choosing to interpret everything through that lens. Everything is part of an agenda: Our Agenda or Their Agenda. And to admit you are wrong is more than just to humble yourself, it’s a blow to the Agenda. And we can’t allow the Agenda to be harmed because the Agenda is a way of explaining the world, a way of making moral order of our society, of judging right and wrong, of deciding who the bad guys are, of giving us hope for the future, of understanding why everything is a mess right now and how we can fix it. It’s important to have a cultural/political vision of the common good, but when that vision becomes an all-encompassing agenda that runs over human values and divine laws and even truth, it is no longer for the common good.

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The Hill: Greene: “Authority is a Responsibility, Not an Excuse”

Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) said President Trump’s Make American Great Again slogan was a “lie,” saying his first year back in office was focused on obliging wealthy supporters.

“I think people are realizing it was all a lie. It was a big lie for the people. What MAGA is really serving in this administration, who they’re serving, is their big donors,” Greene said in a Wednesday interview with radio personality Kim Iversen.

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USA Today: Trump says Republicans should ‘nationalize’ elections, take control from states

President Donald Trump said Republicans should “nationalize” the voting process as he continues to level unfounded claims of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election, more than five years after losing to Joe Biden.

Trump called for Republicans at the federal level to seize control of elections from states during an appearance on the podcast of Dan Bongino.

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Religion News Service: Evangelicals Divided Over What Faith Demands As Immigration Tensions Deepen

Public polling shows that evangelicals, in general, support reforms that would lead to secure borders and provide legal pathways to citizenship. But a 2025 study from Lifeway Research, an evangelical firm, showed evangelicals are deeply divided in how they view immigrants. According to the study, 44% of evangelicals said they see recent immigrants as a drain on the country’s resources, while 43% see those immigrants as a threat to the safety of Americans. Over a third (37%) said Christians have an opportunity to show love to immigrants, while the same percentage said recent immigrants are a threat to law and order. Most (80%) wanted Congress to pass immigration reforms last year.

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After the unjust death of Alex Pretti at the hands of the Department of Homeland Security agents last weekend, the President, his stooges, and right-wing media all pounced on the irrelevant fact that Pretti was armed (he never touched his gun or used it to threaten). Before the dust had even settled on the incident, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristin Noem called Alex Pretti a “domestic terrorist.” What she neglected to include was that he was a registered gun owner and had papers to conceal carry legally. He was practicing responsible gun ownership, per Minnesota’s laws.

And yet, even POTUS said:

“I don’t like that he had a gun. I don’t like that he had two fully loaded magazines. That’s a lot of bad stuff. And despite that, I’d say that’s... very unfortunate….

You know, you can’t have guns. You can’t walk in with guns. You just can’t.”

Our Director at American Value Coalition, Napp Nazworth, compiled an important tweet thread last week, highlighting the hypocrisy of Republicans’ evolving stance on the 2nd Amendment. Here are a few of the links included in his coverage:

FBI Director Kash Patel contradicted the Constitutional right to bear arms in this media appearance:

DHS Director Kristin Noem mischaracterized the incident, smearing Petti. He did have ID and kept his gun concealed, not even reaching for it when attacks by agents:

Napp reminded readers of the many armed protesters at the January 6th rally in January 2021, along with at many other right wing-led protests, and how they were hailed as “heroes” and “patriotic protesters” by the President at the time…

Notably, Trump’s Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent seemed to disregard the rights of American citizens this week, on tape:

Another laughable contradiction from the right-wing media this week was their seeming amnesia of the Kyle Rittenhouse incident in 2020. He was hailed a 2A hero, while Pretti was labeled a domestic terrorist:

It’s important and necessary to keep track of these obvious contradictions from the administration. We still have free speech, and we must use it to speak the truth. Two quotes from one of my favorite books (Animal Farm) by George Orwell come to mind regarding these contradictions:

1.) They might think: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

2.) Our response: "If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."

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What Else We’re Reading

New York Times: “What MAGA Sees in the Minnesota Mirror”

The administration’s slander of Pretti may have been even worse. Gregory Bovino, then still serving in Minnesota in his capacity as Border Patrol commander at large, said Pretti (who had a valid firearms permit and was carrying a gun but did not appear to touch it, much less brandish it) looked like he was attempting “to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.” Noem accused him, too, of “domestic terrorism,” and Stephen Miller called him “an assassin” who “tried to murder federal agents.” Vance reposted Miller’s slanderous accusation.

Again, none of those claims were supported by any meaningful evidence.

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The Dispatch: “The Cost of Silence”

Dante put his cowards and opportunists—those who refused to take a stand in life—in the vestibule of his inferno: It isn’t Hell proper, but you can see the rest of the underworld from there. The cowards and opportunists in the United States in 2026 stand at a precipice, too, and have brought our country to the verge of something awful and unspeakable. We got here one step at a time—let us hope that we remember the way back.

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Fox News: “NY Post, WSJ, NY Times and Washington Post align against Trump admin over ICE operation in Minneapolis”

Major newspaper editorial boards all appeared to be in agreement following the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis on Saturday by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent, calling out the Trump administration’s response and demanding de-escalation…"It’s time to de-escalate in Minneapolis, Mr. President…because these enforcement tactics won’t turn the tide, instead they are backfiring."

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Christianity Today: “Authority is a Responsibility, Not an Excuse”

Let’s even say, for the sake of argument, that Trump came in with a mandate for a restrictionist immigration stance.

You can say all that and still say this: What the federal government is doing in Minnesota is intolerable. It is chaotic, reckless, and overbearing. It is a misuse of authority, an incompetent and authoritarian means even insofar as it pursues a democratically invited end…

It requires higher standards, not slapdash work and slipshod ethics. Authority is a duty, not a license. Federal immigration agents have authority to act in Minnesota: That does not justify the way these agents are acting. Their authority makes this heavy-handed bedlam all the more intolerable.

The inextricable link between authority and responsibility is a fundamental principle of good governance, an assumption of our constitutional order. But more than that, it is a note that echoes through Scripture

…So too those who govern. So too those who police. To demand far better of federal immigration agents than what we’ve seen in Minnesota neither ignores real hazards they face, nor debases their authority, nor even necessarily questions the politics that now direct them. It merely demands they wield their power with justice and restraint—and requires an accounting when they fail.

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CATO Institute: “In Minnesota, ICE Is Assaulting the Constitutional Rights of Citizens”

It can be hard to get some Americans interested in the well-documented problem of ICE and Border Patrol abuse, perhaps because they assume that the rights being trampled are “only” those of non-citizens rather than people like them (although every modern justice on the Supreme Court, including Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Antonin Scalia, has taken the view that non-citizens on American soil do have important constitutional rights that are vital to protect).

It is crucial to grasp, though, that ICE and Border Patrol also routinely violate the rights of US citizens, both the naturalized kind and those born right here. With the Minnesota campaign of recent weeks, these assaults on citizens’ rights appear to be multiplying rapidly.

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***Final Note: Please join our friends at the National Latino Evangelical Coalition in demanding change!

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Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Current Global Affairs

01:20 The European Union’s Stance and Relations with the U.S.

08:23 NATO’s Evolution and Future Challenges

15:16 The Importance of Ukraine in Global Geopolitics

22:04 Western Hemisphere Focus vs. Global Engagement

27:10 Hope for Peace in Ukraine and Future Outlook

What happens when law enforcement doesn’t follow the law?

Police are critical for any civil society. When we don’t feel safe, when our lives and property are not protected, much of what enables our flourishing — freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of worship, free enterprise — can quickly disintegrate. Nations with high crime and inadequate law enforcement experience this firsthand but we take it for granted in America.

Protecting those benefits of civil society requires law enforcement we can trust to treat us fairly, and who themselves follow the law and civil norms. Lawless lawmen break this trust. And when that trust is broken, civil society breaks down.

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There have been many recent examples of law enforcement abusing their authority, ignoring civil norms, and breaking the law. Here are just a few of them.

• ICE claims it has the authority to enter your home without a warrant, a clear violation of the 4th Amendment. ICE claims it has the authority to issue an “administrative warrant,” which is the executive branch giving itself the authority to enter your home. This is not what our Founders had in mind. If the judiciary can’t check the power of the executive by holding the authority to issue warrants, the 4th Amendment would essentially be obsolete.

• Federal agents are arresting people for not carrying documentation when they leave their house. To state the obvious, this is not a crime. Yes, we’re now at the “show me your papers” stage of these authoritarian times.

• If you are being questioned by law enforcement, you have the right to record the conversation. If you are a bystander, you have the right to record law enforcement, as long as you’re not interfering. Yet, there have been many reports of ICE officers grabbing and smacking phones out of peoples hands as they record. In a Tuesday press conference, Brooklyn Park Police Chief Mark Bruley said he has heard many complaints from U.S. citizens in their community of civil rights violations, and it even happened to off-duty police officers.

  • “Every one of these individuals is a person of color who has had this happen to them,” he said, “one particular officer ... was stopped by ICE as she went down the roadway. When they boxed her in, they demanded her paperwork, of which she is a U.S. citizen and clearly would not have any paperwork. When she became concerned about the rhetoric and the way she was being treated, she pulled out her phone in an attempt to record the incident, the phone was knocked out of her hands.”

• Protesters are being mistreated. They’ve been apprehended and jailed (but not charged), pepper sprayed in the face, shot directly in the face with pepper balls, and forced into freezing conditions while barely clothed. More than 170 U.S. citizens have been detained, sometimes for days. The Feds claim they were arrested for illegal activity, such as obstructing justice, but in most cases they haven’t been charged with a crime. Watch this interview with Patty O’Keefe, who was detained for 9 hours without food, water, a bathroom break, or a phone call.

• Also check out this video showing a protestor who is already on the ground with hands restrained behind his back. The federal officer sprayed chemical irritant directly into his face.

• A 79-y-o man suffered multiple broken ribs after ICE officers slammed him on the ground.

• ProPublica found 40 cases of federal agents using chokeholds and similar moves that have been banned because they cut off breathing.

• And in the case of Renee Good, the executive branch is now claiming that shoot to kill is justified whenever we do anything an officer deems disobedient. President Donald Trump even claimed her death was justified because she was “very, very disrespectful to law enforcement.”

In a NYT op-ed, Radley Balko writes,

The surge of federal forces into Minneapolis (like smaller, earlier surges into Los Angeles; Portland, Ore.; Washington; and Chicago) isn’t about law enforcement at all. It is about an administration declaring — explicitly, at times — that the purpose of federal law enforcement isn’t to uphold the rule of law or promote public safety but to enforce the will of a single man.

We started to see this in the way the Trump administration responded to previous shootings by immigration officers, including of Carlitos Ricardo Parias in Los Angeles and Marimar Martinez in Chicago. Administration officials quickly declared those shootings justified — and righteous — with hyperbolic language similar to that used after Ms. Good’s killing. Those claims would also later be disproved by witnesses’ accounts and other evidence. The government eventually dropped the charges against Ms. Martinez. A judge dismissed Mr. Parias’s charges with prejudice, meaning they can’t be brought again.

In fact, nearly all of the administration’s responses to deaths in custody, shootings or other accusations of abuses have used maximalist language to venerate immigration officers, dehumanize their victims and villainize anyone who doesn’t support the Trump administration. There are no disinterested parties. No innocent bystanders. People are either criminal immigrants or radical leftists who deserve what happens to them, or they are heroic, patriotic federal cops incapable of mistakes. There is no humanity for the civilians and no humility for the officers.

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American Values Coalition has 5 core values, which you can read on our homepage. Number 5 states, “Liberty and justice for everyone are the bedrock of our core principles that we will promote through fairness, honesty, and clarity.” What is happening in America today is not liberty, because our rights are being trampled, and it’s not justice, because our lawmen aren’t following the law.

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What Else We’re Reading

Pete Wehner: “MAGA Jesus Is Not the Real Jesus”

The message the Trump administration is sending is not subtle: ICE is doing the work of God. The brutal and sometimes lethal tactics being used by a growing number of ICE agents are divinely sanctioned. Come join this holy campaign.
…

Huge numbers of American fundamentalists and evangelicals—not just cultural Christians, but also those who faithfully attend church and Bible-study sessions and prayer gatherings—prefer the MAGA Jesus to the real Jesus. Few of them would say so explicitly, though, because the cognitive dissonance would be too unsettling. And so they have worked hard to construct rationalizations. It’s rather remarkable, really, to see tens of millions of Christians validate, to themselves and to one another, a political movement led by a malignant narcissist—who is driven by hate and bent on revenge, who mocks the dead, and who delights in inflicting pain on the powerless. The wreckage to the Christian faith is incalculable, yet most evangelicals will never break with him. They have invested too much of themselves and their identity in Trump and what he stands for.

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NYT: “Trump Sets Fraudster Free From Prison for a Second Time”

In 2021, a convicted fraudster named Adriana Camberos was freed from prison when President Trump commuted her sentence.

Rather than taking advantage of that second chance, prosecutors said, Ms. Camberos returned to crime. She and her brother were convicted in 2024 in an unrelated fraud.

This week, Mr. Trump pardoned both siblings, marking the second time he had opened the prison gates for Ms. Camberos.

Their pardons were among a handful of clemency grants quietly issued by Mr. Trump on Thursday and Friday.

Among the other lucky recipients: a man whose daughter had given millions to a Trump-backed super PAC, a former governor of Puerto Rico and a former F.B.I. agent — all of whom had pleaded guilty in a political corruption case.

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Politico: “Trump administration concedes DOGE team may have misused Social Security data”

Two members of Elon Musk’s DOGE team working at the Social Security Administration were secretly in touch with an advocacy group seeking to “overturn election results in certain states,” and one signed an agreement that may have involved using Social Security data to match state voter rolls, the Justice Department revealed in newly disclosed court papers.

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Texas Observer: “Revealed: Four Businesses with Ties to Patriot Front Operating in North Texas”

Through an analysis of business records, social media, and publicly available information, in addition to interviews and in-person observation, the Observer has identified Veteran Brothers Roofing & Restoration as one of four businesses in the Dallas-Fort Worth area that are operated either by members of Patriot Front or individuals with multiple connections to Patriot Front. These businesses do roofing, home construction, and junk removal work across several counties.

None appear to feature Nazi imagery or messaging in their public-facing websites or social media. But a 2020 internal Patriot Front document and interviews with experts suggest that the neo-Nazi group is engaged in a strategy to establish an independent ecosystem of businesses that can employ Patriot Front members and insulate them from consequences if their involvement in the group is exposed. In the previously unpublished “Tactics and Strategy” document, which the Observer obtained through researcher Tristan Lee’s past undercover infiltration of the group, Patriot Front internally advocated the creation of “an almost exclusive economy which can greaten the prosperity of the collective and make it increasingly impervious to outside attacks.” This strategy is also apparent in a trove of internal Patriot Front communications published by Unicorn Riot: One chat room, called “#positive-investing,” included a meeting about “The Core Factors of Starting & Running a Business” hosted by a Patriot Front regional leader.

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As the discussion progresses, Rich highlights the internal conflicts within the MAGA community, particularly regarding Trump’s foreign policy decisions and their impact on domestic issues. He expresses hope for a gradual awakening among MAGA supporters, suggesting that many are beginning to question their allegiance. The episode concludes with Rich announcing his upcoming memoir, “One Betrayal Too Many,” which chronicles his experiences within MAGA and the motivations behind starting Leaving MAGA. This conversation provides a nuanced perspective on the complexities of political identity and the potential for change within the MAGA movement.

Learn more at LeavingMAGA.org.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Rich Lojas and Leaving MAGA

01:27 Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Controversial Statements

03:21 The Epstein Story: A Turning Point for MAGA Supporters

07:41 Contradictions in Greene’s Politics

10:14 Support for Leaving MAGA: Community and Resources

12:54 Emerging Issues Splitting the MAGA Coalition

18:18 The Impact of Recent Political Actions

22:08 Looking Ahead: Rich’s Upcoming Memoir

Trump wants power and chaos, not law and order.

Ostensibly, federal officers were sent to Minneapolis to stop welfare fraud. But they aren’t doing anything about those crimes, which were already being investigated and prosecuted by state and federal authorities. Law enforcement officers are trained to deescalate tense situations, but these federal officers are doing the opposite of that. See, for instance, here, here, here, here, and the killing of Renee Good. Also check out The Wall Street Journal’s analysis, “Videos Show How ICE Vehicle Stops Can Escalate to Shootings,” with this gift link.

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This morning, President Donald Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act in Minnesota. We’ve seen how this works before, in LA, Portland, and Chicago — 1) federal agents create chaos, 2) protests over the chaos ensue, 3) Trump uses the protests as an excuse to grab more power.

When it comes to actual crimes, however, Trump is soft.

Trump pardoned all the J6 Capitol rioters, over 1,500 people, including those who convicted for violence and those with prior criminal records.

In fact, this is a great time to be a criminal in America, as long as you have money or connections. Changpeng Zhao, former CEO of crypto exchange company Binance, was convicted of money laundering in 2023. After Binance helped boost Trump’s cryptocurrency company, World Liberty Financial, Zhao was pardoned by Trump.

Former President of Honduras Juan Orlando Hernández was serving 45 years in prison for helping cartels ship 400 tons of cocaine to the U.S. After a months long campaign using his connections to Republican operatives and Mar-a-Lago insiders, Trump pardoned him.

On the world stage, Trump also ignores the law. On his aspirations to “have” Greenland, he hasn’t even offered legal reasoning to do so. Instead, it’s simply ...

A tough-on-crime leader would first need to understand what a law is, but Trump fails that test as well. After announcing a 10% cap on credit card interest rates, a reporter asked Trump what would happen if credit card companies don’t comply. “They are in violation of the law,” Trump replied. But federal laws are made by Congress, not Truth Social posts.

And then there’s Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. While many seek justice for the victims of the notorious sex traffickers, Trump has stonewalled attempts to bring all the criminals involved into the light of day. He labeled these efforts a Democrat hoax and accused journalists who asked questions of being fake news. On November 14, 2025, when Bloomberg News reporter Catherine Lucey asked Trump about Epstein, he pointed a finger at her and said, “Quiet! Quiet, piggy.”

Former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene was one of Trump’s most loyal supporters, but he turned on her for voting in favor of releasing the Epstein files. Trump’s DOJ is now in violation of a law passed by Congress requiring the release of all the files it has related to Epstein.

Maxwell was moved to a minimum security prison and is receiving special privileges. That’s not tough on crime.

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Some More Good Reads

ProPublica: “We Found More Than 40 Cases of Immigration Agents Using Banned Chokeholds and Other Moves That Can Cut Off Breathing”

Reporting Highlights

• Chokeholds: We found over 40 cases of agents using chokeholds and other moves that can block breathing. “I felt like I was going to pass out and die,” said a 16-year-old citizen.

• Former Police Are Appalled: We showed former police and immigration officials videos of incidents. They said agents are out of control. One said it’s “the kind of action which should get you fired.”

• Banned Tactics, No Punishment: There is a federal ban on chokeholds and similar tactics. But there is no sign of punishment for officers who’ve used them.

LINK

Reason: “Texas A&M Removes Plato from Introductory Philosophy Class”

After a student posted a viral video of an argument with a Texas A&M instructor about the content of an English class, Texas politicians went ballistic. Soon the instructor was suspended and the university president was fired. Last month, the university regents adopted a policy banning courses that "advocate race or gender ideology" and requiring university approval for any exemptions for materials that serve "a necessary educational purpose."

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MediaIte: “Professor Fired for Charlie Kirk Post Gets $500,000 From School, Is Reinstated”

Darren Michael, associate professor at Austin Peay State University, has reportedly been reinstated and given $500,000 after being fired over posts about assassinated conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

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Religion in Public: “Calling Charlie Kirk a Martyr is Not Exactly a Unifying Message”

On September 10, 2025, activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated at a Turning Point event at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah. In our view, all political violence is tragic and should be universally condemned. That is no less true for someone who argued that we needed to accept the violent consequences of gun access. But what is interesting about Kirk is the role he played in the conservative movement, which continues to be contested. Whether he was unifying is perhaps less important now than whether his image and legacy is unifying. We’ll take a look here with some new data.

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Dear readers, I trust you had a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. If you stayed away from news coverage, even better! But now that we’re getting back into the swing of things, here are six news stories you may have missed.

Epstein Files Dump

Under the law passed by Congress in November, the US Department of Justice was supposed to release all of the files it had on Jeffrey Epstein by December 19, the Friday before Christmas. Only the identities of victims and information related to ongoing investigations were supposed to be redacted. But the DOJ only released a small portion of the documents in its possession and the released documents are heavily redacted.

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MTG Interview

The New York Times published a fascinating profile of Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene by veteran journalist Robert Draper, including exclusive interviews that provide insight on Greene’s break with President Donald Trump.

Here are a few key quotes:

“Our side has been trained by Donald Trump to never apologize and to never admit when you’re wrong,” she told me in her Capitol Hill office one afternoon in early December. “You just keep pummeling your enemies, no matter what. And as a Christian, I don’t believe in doing that. I agree with Erika Kirk, who did the hardest thing possible and said it out loud.”

…

But Greene — who for years took a back seat to no one when it came to reactionary rhetoric, going so far, before she was in office, as to accuse Democrats, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi, of treasonous conduct and adding that treason was punishable by imprisonment or death — realized that she had suddenly lost all appetite for vengeance. She later told a friend, who confirmed the exchange: “After Charlie died, I realized that I’m part of this toxic culture. I really started looking at my faith. I wanted to be more like Christ.”

…

After the hearing [with Epstein victims], Greene held a news conference at which she threatened to identify some of the men who had abused the women. (Greene says that she didn’t know those names herself but that she could have gotten them from the victims.) Trump called Greene to voice his displeasure. Greene was in her Capitol Hill office, and according to a staff member, everyone in the suite of rooms could hear him yelling at her as she listened to him on speakerphone. Greene says she expressed her perplexity over his intransigence. According to Greene, Trump replied, “My friends will get hurt.”

…

“I had the same caricatured opinion of her as everyone,” [Rep. Ro] Khanna told me. “I saw her heckling President Biden at the State of the Union address. I thought she was a person on the fringes. But my view of her completely changed. At our press conferences, she didn’t even seek to speak. She was genuinely moved by the [Epstein] survivors, so much so that we hugged each other during one woman’s testimony. I found her to be a person of integrity and courage, considering the pressure she faced from the White House.”

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Pipe Bomber Confession

On December 28, the Justice Department released notes on a confession by the alleged J6 pipe bomber. During the Jan. 6, 2021 riots, you may recall, unexploded pipe bombs were planted at the national headquarters of both the Democrat and Republican parties. Brian J. Cole Jr., a 30-y-o Virginia man, was arrested for those crimes in early December.

The pipe bomber has been wrapped up in many conspiracies around J6, often alleging government involvement. But the confession showed a more straightforward motivation.

On Nov. 8, 2025, The Blaze published an article claiming to have identified the J6 pipe bomber as a female former Capitol Police officer based upon “gait analysis,” and even published her name. This article was widely shared across right-wing platforms. After Cole’s arrest, The Blaze retracted the article.

According to the DOJ,

The defendant explained: “I didn’t agree with what people were doing, like just telling half the country that they – that their – that they just need to ignore it. I didn’t think that was a good idea, so I went to the protest.” The defendant “has never really been an openly political person” and does not discuss politics often with his family to avoid conflict. According to the defendant, “no one knows” his political views, including his family. The defendant stated that he does not align politically with his family members and did not tell them that he “was going to a protest in support of [then President] Trump.”

Later in the interview, the defendant explained that after the 2020 election, “when it first seemed like something was wrong” and “stuff started happening,” he began following the issue closely on YouTube and Reddit and felt “bewildered.” In the defendant’s view, if people “feel that, you know, something as important as voting in the federal election is being tampered with, is being, you know, being – you know, relegated null and void, then, like, someone needs to speak up, right? Someone up top. You know, just to, just to at the very least calm things down.” The defendant felt that “the people up top,” including “people on both sides, public figures,” should “fascists.” Instead, “if people feel that their votes are like just being thrown away, then . . . at the very least someone should address it.”

WSJ on Trump Pardons

The Wall Street Journal published an in-depth report on presidential pardons under Trump on December 23. The short version: Just about anyone can get a Trump pardon as long as they are either politically connected or funnel a lot of cash to Trump.

WSJ writes,

Administration officials and lobbyists describe two playbooks that have emerged. There is the official track, which involves pardon czar Alice Johnson, Justice Department pardon attorney Ed Martin and the White House Counsel’s Office. Applicants usually go through one of the three, and ultimately White House counsel Dave Warrington reviews the application and makes a recommendation to Trump. The two men meet every few weeks to discuss pardons, administration officials said.

The second track is riskier but can be much faster. If an applicant can find Trump at Mar-a-Lago or a White House event and ask for a pardon directly, Trump is often inclined to be helpful, administration officials said—particularly if someone says the magic words: “unjust persecution.”

Trump has often claimed that those he pardons were the victims of “witch hunts.”

Read the whole thing with this gift link.

Minnesota’s Fraud Scandal

The fallout from a scandal in Minnesota involving social services fraud is ongoing, including Governor Tim Walz’s decision this week to not run for reelection. Over the Christmas break, this scandal was a case study in how events become hyper-polarized in today’s environment. While the capture of Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro took this story off the front pages, you’ll likely hear more about it, especially as we get closer to the midterm elections. Here are a few bullet points to keep in mind as you learn more:

• This is a Democrat scandal. Minnesota is controlled by Democrats and when there were warning signs of fraud early on, Democrat officials were reluctant to investigate because those involved, Somali immigrants, are a key voting bloc.

• While fraud in government programs is nothing new, the sheer size — $1 billion and counting — makes this scandal particularly newsworthy.

• The fraud was mostly conducted by Somalis, and the Somali community is receiving much of the blame, but the perpetrators are only a small part of the Somali population. 76 Somalis have been charged. 80,000 Somalis live in Minnesota. That’s 0.00095%.

• The Trump administration and MAGA influencers are using this scandal to expand their ongoing xenophobic and racist messages and policies.

• The scandal is not new. While it’s a Democrat scandal, it was also Democrats who helped uncover the scandal. The U.S. Department of Justice investigation began during Biden administration. The first prosecutions came in 2022 under Attorney General Merrick Garland.

• In Minnesota, nonpartisan investigators in the Office of the Legislative Auditor were also key to uncovering part of the scandal and reporting on state Democrats’ reluctance to prosecute due to election considerations.

• A young Youtuber’s video helped this story go viral on the right, which led to Trump freezing child care funding, first nationwide then later narrowed to five states, all Democrat-led. The video’s veracity has been questioned.

• Many right-wing messengers claim the scandal is being ignored by mainstream news. A simple Google search will demonstrate that’s false, but also, this scandal was first reported by mainstream news sources. When I do a Google search for “Minnesota fraud scandal” prior to December 1, the first two pages of news sources include the DOJ releases, The New York Times, and local ABC and Fox channels. The only source on the right reporting on it by then was the Cato Institute.

Trump’s Not-So-Merry Christmas

President Trump spent Christmas Day posting unhinged rants over 100 times to his Truth Social account. Many of the posts included the false assertion that the 2020 election was stolen. One repost said former President Barack Obama should be prosecuted for the 2020 election outcome. Several posts made disparaging remarks about Somali immigrants. Trump finished his Christmas rant fest with a lengthy post about the Epstein scandal.

“Merry Christmas to all, including the many Sleazebags who loved Jeffrey Epstein, gave him bundles of money, went to his Island, attended his parties, and thought he was the greatest guy on earth ....” The effort to release the Epstein files is a “Radical Left Witch Hunt,” he added. He ended his Christmas post with a warning to Democrats: “Enjoy what may be your last Merry Christmas!”

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What Else We’re Reading

KJZZ: “This Phoenix pastor says vilifying Charlie Kirk isn’t the way forward”

And his legacy there will be, I think, you know a example of the virtues of free speech and individual liberty and our capacities to have public disagreement in well-reasoned ways without violence. And I, and for those who see that in him, I honor all those values. My take on him though, is I do see that that was an image that was curated, and he did say that he stood for a lot of those things and gave example of it.

I also see, and this would be the legacy in perhaps a different community, that he leveraged derisive speech, dehumanizing behavior, fear mongering to grow a media empire that made him millions of dollars at the expense of those whose voices are not being platformed or elevated, or those who are at risk, or those who have been pushed to the margins of the community, the communities that we’re in and that he was popular in. And in that sense, I think his legacy will be as a aggressive and divisive political pundit in the lane of Rush Limbaugh. I think that there’s a large shift taking place with inside the American Evangelical Church around our theology of power. Whether or not power and influence is something to be leveraged to dominate over others who we disagree with, or if power is something to be like Jesus, used in service of others in self-sacrificial ways.

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The Chronicle of Higher Education: “Robert P. George and the Great Campus Vibe Shift”

I’ve noticed another phenomenon that I had not experienced until recently, and that is students coming in with minds closed around right-wing ideologies that are unfriendly to the principles of the American civic order. It’s an anti-Americanism on the right. These students arrive with the idea that the seeds of 1968 were planted in 1776. The trouble was that men like Madison and Jefferson were liberals, and the woke ideology that these students are rebelling against was planted by Enlightenment-era liberals like the American founders. That’s a very crude understanding, really a misunderstanding, of the founders. Although there are distinguished academics who, in a much more sophisticated way, hold a version of that view. And I want my students to be exposed to those academics, such as Patrick Deneen. But what I’m seeing is something much cruder, and sometimes, very regrettably, it’s connected to grotesque ideologies such as racism and antisemitism. I don’t want to exaggerate the scope of the problem because it’s a very small number of students. But prior to maybe three years ago, I hadn’t seen it at all.

LINK

NBC News: “Slain Minnesota lawmaker’s children call on Trump to remove social media video amplifying false claims about her death”

The children of slain Minnesota state lawmaker Melissa Hortman are urging President Donald Trump to remove a post on Truth Social that promotes a conspiracy theory alleging the state’s governor, Tim Walz, was involved in Hortman’s death.

LINK

In descending order, here were the top 10 most read AVC newsletters of 2025.

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