President Donald Trump doesn’t just talk about having monarchical powers, he’s behaving like he already has them.

The $1.776 billion slush fund (gift link) for J6 rioters came from a settlement in which the Justice Department resolved a lawsuit Trump filed against the IRS for the illegal release of his tax returns. Trump is all at once the plaintiff with oversight over both the DOJ and the defendant, the IRS. Added to all that, the case isn’t even related to J6. The fund already has people like right-wing extremist and Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio drooling.

Whether this is legal is still an open question; whether it is ethical is not. Sending taxpayer dollars to people who stormed the Capitol, attacked police officers, threatened to hang the vice president, and attempted to overturn an election, clearly violates the obligations with which presidents are entrusted.

The conservative National Review editorialized:

This is, de facto, a new government program not authorized by Congress, under the fictional pretense of settling lawsuits that have not been proven in court. The fact that (as Blanche recites) such things have been done in the past by Democrats makes this worse, rather than better. Hard-to-supervise slush funds aimed at financing well-connected political allies are exactly the sort of thing a populist presidency is supposed to end.

Additionally, DOJ posted a one-page document tied to the settlement claiming the IRS “is hereby FOREVER BARRED and PRECLUDED” from investigating Trump, Trump’s family, or Trump’s companies (all caps in original). This means Trump, Trump family members, and Trump companies can just do whatever they want tax-related and they’ll never be audited or prosecuted. Further, he presumes this authority lasts “FOREVER”!

Indeed, Trump was already behaving like he can do whatever he wants regardless of the law or ethics.

• He has made over 3,600 stock trades while president, many involving companies whose fortunes are directly tied to his presidential decision-making.

• Trump’s family and company, The Trump Organization, are making business deals that are closely tied to government regulation and foreign policy.

• Trump repeatedly “jokes” about staying in office after his second term.

• And, he has many times claimed to have sole authority over the government. Jonah Goldberg summarized these remarks in a column for the LA Times:

The president recently said that if China invades Taiwan, he alone will determine whether the U.S. will defend Taiwan. “Me. I’m the only person” who decides. Last summer, Trump told the Atlantic that the difference between his first term and his second was that he didn’t have anyone in his administration to hinder him. This time, “I run the country and the world.” Congress and the courts don’t enter into it.

After Trump unilaterally replaced at gunpoint the president of Venezuela with a pliant satrap, without the approval of Congress, the New York Times asked if there were any limits on his will: “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”

As we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence this year, we have president engaged in the sort of behavior that led us to declare independence to begin with. In the words of the Declaration, “A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.”

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Some More Good Reads

The Dispatch: “The Movement to Revamp Civics”

Today the civics space is divided between two extremes. The critical-utopians, embodied by the authors of the 1619 Project and Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, hold that America is “a fraudulent project grounded in racism, inequality, and imperialism at home and abroad,” writes Carrese. On the other hand, a defensive-nostalgic school of civics focuses on American triumphs and folklore, “with minor attention to any failings to live up to the Declaration’s principles of the equal natural rights of all humans to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” A conservative, Carrese prefers the latter camp, but he believes that civics education must not be understood as belonging to these extremes.

“The idea of America, of We the People, always has been a complex blend of ideas, principles, peoples, and traditions; and of triumphs and failings,” writes Carrese. “It therefore always has been an argument.” While civics education must incorporate debate and discussion at age-appropriate levels—kindergartners, for instance, likely should not be debating the morality of the Three-Fifths Compromise—it should not ignore America’s past moral failings nor paint a rose-colored view of our history. It should also teach students to understand these failings as just that: failures to live up to the ideals upon which this nation was founded.

Carrese believes that the French diplomat Alexis de Tocqueville’s “reflective patriotism” is a model for contemporary civic educators to follow. Tocqueville observed that Americans combine “sentiment with argument and questioning,” loving the people and soil they belonged to while also loving the ideals upon which their nation was founded. In other words, Americans of yore loved America because she was creedal—dedicated to human equality—and because she was their country, teeming with people they loved and land they esteemed. This sort of patriotism requires that educators pass on certain virtues to the rising generation of Americans, such as civil disagreement, civic friendship, and reflective patriotism itself. Opting for either the total deconstruction of the American project or an overly simplistic, nostalgic understanding of our past are roads to ignorance or national divorce.

LINK

The Atlantic: “A Department of Justice for an Age of Conspiracy Theories”

DOJ is now very much an active participant in today’s conspiracy-theory ecosystem. On X, official DOJ accounts and those of the department’s leaders produce a steady stream of images, clips, and one-liners in the apparent hope of drawing in MAGA influencers. These posts, light on facts and heavy on exaggeration and outrage, echo far-fetched ideas already popular on the right and help seed new narratives—part of a give-and-take relationship in which DOJ both feeds and responds to conspiracy theories.

LINK

KPBS: “Experts: Mosque shooters followed familiar path of far-right radicalization”

Both suspects appear to have contributed to the manifesto. In it they blame Muslims, Jewish people, immigrants, women, the LGBTQ+ community and the left for seeking to destroy white culture.

They also repeat the white supremacist Great Replacement Theory which says there’s a conspiracy to bring in nonwhite immigrants to end the country’s white demographic majority.

Some conservatives have helped mainstream the theory, including Tucker Carlson and Elon Musk.

LINK

An event on the National Mall today, “Rededicate 250,” seeks the “rededication of our country as One Nation to God.” For participants and attendees, both in-person and virtual, I have three questions.

Who is this for?

Is this event for all Americans or just Christian Americans? The website’s FAQ claims, “All Americans are invited,” which would seem to be a straightforward answer, but that is followed with “—individuals, families, churches, ministries, and communities from every state.” Why no mention of mosques, temples, or synagogues, for example? This event is tied our nation’s 250th birthday. The Declaration of Independence affirmed the equality of all people. Therefore, should an event celebrating that demonstrate pluralism?

Is this a Christian Nationalist event?

I understand this term, “Christian Nationalism,” is overplayed and sometimes confusing. Too many on the left have begun using it as a catch-all term for everything conservative and Christian they oppose. Ignore that for a moment and let’s stick to a standard definition: belief that certain types of Christians should have a privileged place in law, government and culture. Is that what you believe? If so, how does that square with our Founders’ support for religious freedom?

What should a nation dedicated to God look like?

This event is sponsored by Freedom 250, a White House-backed initiative. This begs the question, would God approve of Trump administration actions? I could give many examples, but here are just three: mistreatment of immigrants, getting rich off grifting supporters and fleecing taxpayers, and the creation of Trump idols (both figurative and literal). According to Old Testament prophets, all of these make God angry.

Malachi 3:5 is one of many verses referencing how we treat immigrants:

“So I will come to put you on trial. I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers and perjurers, against those who defraud laborers of their wages, who oppress the widows and the fatherless, and deprive the foreigners among you of justice, but do not fear me,” says the LORD Almighty.”

Micah 2:1-2 has this to say about fraud:

“Woe to those who plan iniquity,

to those who plot evil on their beds!

At morning’s light they carry it out

because it is in their power to do it.

They covet fields and seize them,

and houses, and take them.

They defraud people of their homes,

they rob them of their inheritance.”

And regarding idol worship, Ezekiel 14:7-11, delivers a stern warning to both speakers (prophets) and listeners (“one who consults him”) who use God to validate their selfish desires:

“‘When any of the Israelites or any foreigner residing in Israel separate themselves from me and set up idols in their hearts and put a wicked stumbling block before their faces and then go to a prophet to inquire of me, I the Lord will answer them myself. I will set my face against them and make them an example and a byword. I will remove them from my people. Then you will know that I am the Lord.”

“‘And if the prophet is enticed to utter a prophecy, I the Lord have enticed that prophet, and I will stretch out my hand against him and destroy him from among my people Israel. They will bear their guilt—the prophet will be as guilty as the one who consults him. Then the people of Israel will no longer stray from me, nor will they defile themselves anymore with all their sins. They will be my people, and I will be their God, declares the Sovereign Lord.’”

Why I Ask

Time to put all my cards on the table. If you believe that the U.S. was founded as a Christian nation, and dedicated to God 250 years ago, we can agree to disagree on that. But if that is what you believe, I invite you to consider both 1) how the values upon which our nation was founded might be upheld, and 2) what a nation “rededicated” to God might look like.

Regarding the first, speaking as a fellow citizen, we’re a nation founded upon religious freedom for all. This means everyone, regardless of their religious beliefs (including atheists and agnostics), should be have the freedom to live according to their beliefs, and government shouldn’t privilege certain religions over others.

Regarding the second, speaking as a fellow Christian, the sponsor of “Rededicate 250” is engaged in much of the wickedness that biblical prophets warned us about. What changes, therefore, should you make in your relationship with the current administration?

Recommended Reading

John Inazu: “Political Violence is On the Rise”

Pape also identifies what may be distinctive about the present moment: support for political violence is rising on both partisan extremes at the same time. Earlier periods had a more dominant ideological direction. Today, right-wing violence intensifies left-wing fear and left-wing violence intensifies right-wing fear; each side narrates its own aggression as defensive and the other side’s aggression as proof that normal restraints no longer apply.

Our modes of communication worsen these dynamics, but Pape rightly warns against making modern technology the whole explanation. Americans managed to produce political violence before smartphones, cable news, and social media. The deeper problem is not technology alone; it is existential politics—politics experienced as rejection, humiliation, and loss.

LINK

The Atlantic: “The Assassin’s Delusion: Violence serves an authoritarian agenda.”

The greatest delusion of all—one shared by both the would-be shooter and the president he targeted—is that violence is an expression of strength, and nonviolence a symptom of weakness. Now, I am not a pacifist. I do not believe that violence is always wrong. And I am not arguing that it is always ineffective. But the Trump administration’s greatest failures have been connected to its obsession with violence, and its opponents’ most dramatic victories have resulted from the organized and courageous use of nonviolence.

GIFT LINK

The Guardian: “13 men killed by US military boat strikes identified: ‘These were flesh-and-blood people’”

“Despite the US claim that the strikes are fighting narco-terrorism, what is actually happening is that young people living in extremely precarious conditions, doing whatever work they can to support their families, are being targeted,” said María Teresa Ronderos, director and co-founder of the CLIP.

“The US is not taking down any Pablo Escobar or Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán,” she added.

The investigation also underlined what other reports and security analysts have concluded: that the strikes have not reduced the flow of drugs to the US, but have instead torn apart communities already fractured and weakened by organised crime and state neglect.

“There are communities where they stopped fishing for several weeks – and if they do that, people go hungry – because they were terrified of being bombed,” said Ronderos.

LINK

ABC News: “Judge says DOGE grant terminations are unlawful and ‘troubling’”

“There can be no serious dispute that the review process implemented by DOGE did not conform to, or even resemble, NEH’s ordinary grant-review process,” Judge McMahon wrote.

…

“Treating Black civil-rights history, Jewish testimony about the Holocaust, the oft-forgotten Asian American experience, the shameful treatment of the children of Native tribes, or the mere mention of a woman as a marker of lack of merit or wastefulness is not lawful,” she said.

…

“The humanities are not a luxury. They are how a democracy understands itself. Today’s decision is a step toward honoring the will of Congress and our mission as a nation — to seek the truth, know ourselves, and build a better future on that knowledge,” said the American Council of Learned Societies President Joy Connolly in a statement.

LINK

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

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Chapters

00:00 Hungary’s Political Landscape Before the Election

03:34 Orbán’s Influence and US Conservative Connections

08:25 The Rise of Peter Magar and His Campaign Strategy

12:18 Challenges Ahead for the New Government

19:13 Lessons from Hungary for US Politics

Links

https://www.hudson.org/experts/daniel-kochis

https://x.com/dankochis

Immigration policies are tearing families apart, according to a new report by World Relief and National Association of Evangelicals.

If mass deportation continues as planned, 910,000 U.S. citizen children will be separated from one or both parents, 272,000 U.S. citizen spouses will be separated from their partners, and 150,000 spouses and children abroad will remain separated from their U.S. citizen spouses and children, finds the report, “Joined Together, Torn Apart: How U.S. Immigration Policies Are Separating Families.”

“At World Relief, we believe that, except in grievous exceptions where the safety and well-being of a child is in jeopardy, families should remain together,” said Myal Greene, president and CEO of World Relief. “When our laws or policies separate families, whether by design or by neglect, we cannot remain silent. As Christians, we have a dual responsibility: to honor the law and to petition for the institution of better laws. Whom God has placed in families, let no one tear apart.”

Family values conservatives: This would be a good time for members of Congress to hear from you.

White Supremacists Use Disasters for Recruitment

A 60 Minutes report on Sunday showed how white supremacist and anti-government militia groups are using natural disasters to rehabilitate their image and recruit young men. After a disaster, they’ll show up and film themselves helping people or cleaning up, often including anti-government messaging along the way. This has become so common, critics have dubbed it “disaster tourism.”

As one white supremacist leader put it, “Just us showing up changes somebody’s opinion ... so the next time when they say these evil guys, they say ‘wait a second, that’s the guy who came when my house was on fire and helped me out.’”

And they appeal to young men through fun camaraderie, he added. “We get together with the boys, we box, we travel ... there’s fun in fascism,” he said.

Some of these groups also include unfounded conspiracy theories in their disaster tourism posts, including claims that the government can control the weather and intentionally created the disaster.

Watch the whole thing:

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Don’t Criticize Elon Musk on His Free Speech Platform

Our friend Charlie Sykes has been booted off X. While X won’t explain why, this post is the most likely culprit:

To the Contrary

Elon Musk's Racist Screed-Storm

Rudy Giuliani is in critical condition in a Florida hospital and Donald Trump makes an unexplained, unscheduled visit to the “dentist,” reminding us how much of the breaking news in our gerontocracy will be medical bulletins. Meanwhile, Trump edges toward escalating his quagmire by announcing that the…

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18 days ago · 448 likes · 85 comments · Charlie Sykes

Tell Your Pastor About J29!

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J29 Coalition

Some More Good Reads

Just Security: “The Trump Administration’s Strategy for Reshaping Elections”

The 2026 midterms will be a stress test for whether election outcomes are determined by the will of the voters or by who controls the machinery of elections. President Donald Trump and his allies have pursued a sequence of actions that, taken together, mirror strategies of democratic backsliding elsewhere, reshaping the rules, the referees, and the information environment to tilt the playing field before a single vote is cast.

This playbook is not unique to the United States. I spent more than two decades working on elections in countries where – time and time again – democracy was eroded by those in power and where seizing control of elections was a key feature in the authoritarian playbook. For example, in Hungary, after decades of democratic norms, Viktor Orbán’s government gradually seized control of election administration, the courts, and the media — not in one dramatic move, but step-by-step. Independent election oversight bodies were weakened, the judiciary was stacked with loyalists, media outlets were consolidated under government-friendly ownership, and the rules governing elections were changed to favor the ruling party. Each change alone seemed small, but together they created a system where the playing field was heavily skewed toward the ruling party and voters’ voices were silenced.

The warning from Hungary and other backsliding countries illustrates a consistent pattern: when leaders make their intentions explicit and begin coordinating an election takeover in public view, the window of time to defend democracy rapidly begins to shrink.

LINK

PsyPost: “Fox News viewership linked to belief in a racist conspiracy theory”

White Americans who regularly get their political news from Fox News show much higher levels of support for the Great Replacement Theory than those who do not watch the network. By tracking individual viewers over time, researchers found that increases in viewing specific television programs on this network corresponded with an elevated belief in this conspiracy theory. These findings were published in the journal PS: Political Science & Politics.

LINK

PolitiFact: “Are Democrats growing more accepting of political violence?”

We looked through recent polling to get a sense of how broad the support for political violence is among Democrats, and other Americans. We found evidence of an increasing tolerance for violence among Democrats and liberals, reversing some previous data showing conservatives more tolerant of political violence. Still, most people, regardless of political affiliation, reject political violence.

LINK

WaPo: “Internal ICE records reveal widespread use of force in detention centers”

During the first year of Trump’s second term, detention staff used force 37 percent more times than the previous year, the reports show. The number of people subjected to force rose even more sharply, to 1,330 individuals — a 54 percent increase from the previous year, under President Joe Biden — as officers increasingly used these tactics with groups of detainees, the reports show.

LINK

NBC News: “First Amendment advocates blast the FCC’s early review of ABC broadcast licenses”

Free speech advocates sounded the alarm Tuesday over the Federal Communications Commission’s challenge to ABC’s broadcast licenses, with some decrying the move as a threat to the First Amendment and a clear example of federal overreach.

“The FCC is neither the journalism police nor the humor police. This is nothing but illegal jawboning intended to intimidate ABC into kissing the ring,” said Seth Stern, the chief of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, a nonprofit group.

LINK

Rhetoric from political leaders and cultural influencers can contribute to violence, but criticizing a president’s authoritarianism isn’t a call to violence.

There has been a lot of talk this week about how our words can contribute to acts of violence. An important topic, for sure, but like so much of our debates these days, the discussion is distorted through the lens of tribalism. The horror we recently witnessed should drive us to humble collective action. Instead, we seek to use tragedy for partisan advantage.

Another would-be assassin tried to take the life of our president and other administration officials on Saturday. This is now the third assassination attempt on President Donald Trump.

Here are just a few of the things that happened next.

In left-wing social media spaces, conspiracies about the assassination attempt being “staged” to boost Trump’s approval ratings immediately went viral, even though there is zero evidence. The suspect, Cole Allen, clearly had left-wing beliefs, hatred for Trump, and mental health issues.

The administration claimed those who have raised concerns about the Trump administration’s authoritarian direction are responsible. “Those who constantly falsely label and slander the president as a fascist, as a threat to democracy, and compare him to Hitler to score political points are fueling this kind of violence,” Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed.

Speaking of authoritarian trends, Trump is once again using federal power to target a comedian for a joke he didn’t like. On Thursday of last week, Jimmy Kimmel joked that First Lady Melania Trump looked like an “expectant widow.” In a Truth Social post, Trump absurdly claimed that the joke was a “despicable call to violence.” Now the FCC is threatening to revoke the licenses for ABC’s TV stations unless it fires Kimmel. The joke was tasteless and unfunny, but it wasn’t a call to violence, and in a free society the federal government doesn’t decide what jokes we’re allowed to hear.

Also this week, James Comey, former FBI director, was indicted for threatening the president with a social media post that showed seashells on a beach arranged to form “86 47.” Given that the slang “86” for “remove” or “get rid of” is a common term in politics used by members of both parties, this is a clear case of Trump using the power to the federal government to seek vengeance on his political foes, as he promised to do during his campaign.

This isn’t the first time Trump has used the false claim that speech is violence to justify his abuse of federal power. In an October 2025 newsletter, I pointed out that Trump had directed law enforcement and the IRS to target left-wing groups for speech that opposes him.

After a previous assassination attempt on Trump, I pointed out that political violence undermines our democracy. I leave you with the same advice I offered then:

In a democracy, we resolve to settle our differences through deliberation, persuasion, and elections. Those who use political violence avoid all those norms and seek to impose their will through intimidation and harm. Democracy is hard, and change can often seem slow. Political violence can often be motivated by a desire for political expediency, but it doesn’t work. Since the Civil War, the most lasting changes have happened through nonviolence.

So what can you do, in this situation? Here are just a few suggestions:

• Don’t share or repost messages that simply speculate, without evidence, on the causes or consequences of the assassination attempt.

• Passions are hot right now. You may hear a friend, family member, or co-worker say something that really pisses you off. But don’t add fuel to the fire. Seek to lower, not raise, the temperature.

• Be patient. Remember that much of the media is in a rush to publish as much information as it can on this event. In that rush, it’s likely to get some things wrong. Simply wait and you will learn more accurate information.

• Seek justice and peace. Look for efforts in your own community where you can work to address political violence. There may be some in reaction to yesterday’s events, or programs already in place where you can make a contribution.

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Some More Good Reads

Bonnie Kristian: “Quashing Political Violence Requires We Tame Our Tongues”

This is not how we think about political violence today, nor should it be. These assassination attempts are indefensible, frightening, chaotic—every bad thing. Allen tried to justify his choice in Christian terms, claiming on biblically superficial and ethically ignorant grounds that he had cause to set aside the command of Christ and instruction of Scripture. He was wrong.

Yet his self-justification did not emerge in a vacuum. With a moral imagination furnished by incoherence about political violence and a decade of constant, extravagantly pitched denunciations of Trump, he acted. In a sense, he called the bluff of everyone who speaks as if Trump (or any political figure they deplore) deserves death, despite not really believing it—the kind of fundamentally unserious people who cast, say, stealing four lemons from Whole Foods as a strike against tyranny.

LINK

Stephen Richer: “It’s Good to be the King! Using the Federal Government for Trump’s Personal Interests”

What’s different today is, first, the scope. This week it’s Trump’s face on the US passport. Previously, it was his face outside the Department of Labor. Or the Department of Justice. Or his name on the Kennedy Center. Or this week, it’s using law enforcement to punish Jimmy Kimmel. Previously, it was using the pardon power to exonerate a cryptocurrency criminal who had enriched the Trump family.

It’s also different today because Congress—the branch of government that could effectively check Trump—has zero interest in exercising any constraining authority.

Accordingly, Trump is allowed to use the federal government as he did with many other private businesses he ran throughout his life. He used those private businesses to make money, give friends jobs, and, yes, to boldly thrust his name into your face.

Now he’s doing so with the federal government.

LINK

Jonathan Chait: “Calling Trump a Tyrant Is Not a Call to Violence”

Resorting to violence merely strengthens the forces of illiberalism and sense of disorder upon which Trumpism feeds. The official Democratic Party has understood this, which is why not a single elected Democrat at any level has condoned murder attempts on the president or his allies. Allen apparently believes that if you conclude that Trump is an authoritarian, then violence against him is justified. By conflating antiauthoritarian arguments with incitement, conservatives are making the same error but following it to the opposite conclusion.

The norm that many Trump-supporting conservatives seek to enforce is not a prohibition on violent rhetoric or even limits on attacking politicians who are seen as threats to democracy, but a one-sided ban imposed on Trump’s critics so that the president can do as he wishes. Defining political violence as something that is being wielded primarily or exclusively against Trump is to condone his behavior.

GIFT LINK

The Dispatch: “A State Church Isn’t a Panacea for Cultural Problems”

There are myriad theological and evangelistic reasons for favoring nonestablishment as a framework for church-state relations. But I want to focus on the sociological and cultural reasons for opposing establishment, using the United States as a case study of sorts for why nonestablishment offers a superior environment for the flourishing of true religion, houses of worship, and the spiritual lives of its people. Far from being a benefit solely for secular or nonreligious Americans, nonestablishment improves the conditions for all of us.

GIFT LINK

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Salt and Light Resistance

01:53 Understanding Churches of Christ

03:39 The Open Letter’s Purpose

08:46 Defining Christian Nationalism

12:23 The Role of Christians in Society

17:33 The Danger of Silence

23:09 The Vision for the Future

Resources

Salt and Light Resistance Website - https://saltandlightresistance.com

J29 Coalition - https://j29coalition.com

For those familiar with “Christian Twitter”, you’ve already seen much of the chatter this past week surrounding Relatable podcast host Allie-Beth Stuckey’s most recent recording with guest, author and political commentator, David French. And for fellow “way too online” folks, you’re also familiar with the shared tension the two share regarding their interpretations of the American Constitution and the Christian’s role in civic engagement.

The two sat down for a rare hour and a half conversation, where they aired out their differences in a…dare we say…good faith discussion? The two have shared a history of online bickering, but they kept this discussion respectful and centered around meaningful content instead of “hot takes”. Seated across from each other, there was little room to be petty and a mountain of topics to discuss.

American Values Coalition had our own run-in with Stuckey last year after fellow online personality, Meghan Basham, targeted one of our projects, the j29 Coalition, accusing us of being a front group for leftist ideologues. Stuckey went on the Charlie Kirk Show to echo Basham’s talking points.

Our Director, Napp Nazworth, responded to these accusations in a The Dispatch (Faith) piece, reminding fellow Christians not to place politics over theology—it is not only sinful, but also misrepresents the actual mission of Christ. Jesus didn’t come to overthrow the government of His time. He came to create a future Kingdom that could never be shaken. Christians must learn to engage in the temporary kingdoms of our time with grace and truth. One way to do this is through having collective, good faith conversations around how to solve the cultural and political problems of our time.

And in order for the American experiment to succeed, we must be able to let rigorous, winsome debate win hearts and minds. This style of engagement used to be essential to the success or “reach” of any serious public figure—a benchmark one had to cross in order to earn the approval of the general public. Sadly, in the Trump social media era, civil discourse has eroded.

But this past week, something shifted.

Both French and Stuckey were able to articulate their separate opinions without reaching for the lowest hanging fruit. While we may not agree with many of Stuckey’s takes, we certainly give her credit for hosting French. And while most of her promotional social media posts centered around “gotcha” moments, French respectfully shared a “Thanks for hosting me, Allie Beth!” post…but ya know what? Let’s not digress. We’ll take the progress!

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What We’re Reading

NBC News: “In rare interviews, Bush hails the First Amendment and Obama says America doesn’t have ‘kings’”

Ahead of America’s 250th anniversary this summer, former Presidents Joe Biden, Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton each shared a message about what they value about the country and how it can emerge from a difficult era.

Link

The Free Press: “They Were Ordered Back to Haiti. Then Their Conservative Church Stepped In.”

A deportation order became a test of faith for one rural Texas church. Its members chose to put their neighbors before politics.

Link

VoteBeat: “New voting requirements? Troops at the polls? We asked 37 election experts what could disrupt the 2026 elections.”

37 experts in the field of election administration were surveyed with 26 questions about the upcoming 2026 midterms.

Their answers reflect a general sense of cautious optimism about the most dire scenarios — such as an election getting overturned — and skepticism that the federal government will successfully change voting rules. But they also still believe the election will face serious challenges, including federal agents potentially showing up at polling places.

Link

Miami Herald: “Amid quarrel with pope, Trump strips Miami charity of funding to house migrant kids

The Trump administration has abruptly canceled an $11 million contract with Catholic Charities to shelter and care for migrant children who enter the U.S. alone, ending a relationship between the Catholic Church and the U.S. government dating back to the first arrivals of Cuban exiles in South Florida.

Link

In 1976, an English-dubbed version of the 1973 Japanese martial arts film “Bodyguard Kiba” was released in American theaters. The film begins with a Bible verse, but not a real Bible verse. Roughly based upon Ezekiel 25:17, the fake verse reflects the theme of the film (but not the Bible): a lone hero getting vengeance on his enemies.

A 13-year-old boy in California was a huge fan of martial arts films at the time. That boy really liked the fake Bible verse and when he grew up to become a director, put the fake verse in his own film. So a modified version of the fake verse was made famous in Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction” (1994).

This week, yet another rewrite of the verse was made famous by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. At a Wednesday prayer service at the Pentagon, Hegseth prayed a prayer, which he called “CSAR 25:17,” that he said was recited by Sandy 1, the rescue mission that successfully retrieved a downed pilot in Iran. (CSAR stands for Combat Search and Rescue.) The prayer was a modified version of Tarantino’s fake verse.

Many of our Christian political leaders don’t look to the actual Bible, but a Bible twisted over and over again to fit their own agendas. The current squabble between the Administration and the Vatican also illustrates this well.

Pope Leo XIV said President Donald Trump’s rhetoric was “truly unacceptable” after Trump threatened Iran with war crimes, posting, “an entire civilization will die tonight.” Leo also described the war with Iran as, “a war which many people have said is an unjust war, which is continuing to escalate, and which is not resolving anything.”

In a lengthy Sunday night post, Trump responded that “Pope Leo is WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy,” and falsely claimed that the Catholic Church was arresting people for holding church services during COVID.

Vice President J.D. Vance weighed in as well. “If you’re going to opine on matters of theology, you’ve got to be careful; you’ve got to make sure it’s anchored in the truth,” Vance said about Pope Leo at a Tuesday TPUSA event.

Vance also brought up Just War Theory, a Catholic ethical framework for determining when the use of force is justified, which has been influential in international law.

Together, these stories illustrate how Christian Trump administration leaders appeal to Just War Theory, the Bible, and Tarantino while misrepresenting all three.

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1. Just War Theory

Our war with Iran does not fulfill the requirements of Just War Theory. For instance, war must be only used as a last resort. This conflict has been going on for 47 years and there was no imminent danger that required attacking Iran now. Also, war must be carried out by a legitimate authority. Under our Constitution, only Congress has the authority to declare war. Congress wasn’t even informed. And most importantly, civilians and non-combatants must not be targeted, so Trump is threatening a violation of Just War when he posts, “an entire civilization will die.”

2. The Bible

Hegseth’s prayer praises vengeance and gloats over defeat of enemies. “And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to capture and destroy my brother, and you will know my call sign is Sandy 1 when I lay my vengeance upon thee,” Hegseth prayed.

But in the original verse from Ezekiel, seeking vengeance and gloating over enemies is exactly what God condemns. Writing to exiles in Babylon, the prophet Ezekiel writes about God’s judgement on the enemies of Israel because they gloated, “you have clapped your hands and stamped your feet, rejoicing with all the malice of your heart against the land of Israel” (vs. 6) and “took revenge on Judah and became very guilty by doing so” (vs. 12).

Note the full context of verse 17, which begins with verse 15,

“This is what the Sovereign Lord says: ‘Because the Philistines acted in vengeance and took revenge with malice in their hearts, and with ancient hostility sought to destroy Judah, therefore this is what the Sovereign Lord says: I am about to stretch out my hand against the Philistines, and I will wipe out the Kerethites and destroy those remaining along the coast. I will carry out great vengeance on them and punish them in my wrath. Then they will know that I am the Lord, when I take vengeance on them.’”

The verses show vengeance coming from God, not Israel, which is also consistent with Romans 12:19, “Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ says the Lord.”

3. Quentin Tarantino

Lastly, citing Pulp Fiction’s Jules Winnfield in that way deeply misunderstands the point of the scene. Winnfield, an assassin, first says the fake verse in the opening scene, where we learn that he says that before every assassination.

Winnfield repeats the verse in the final scene, with his gun trained on a robber. He admits he never really thought about what the words meant. “I thought it was just a coldblooded thing to say to a motherf*cker ‘fore you popped a cap in his *ss,” he said.

He had begun rethinking the morality of his career, which made him wonder where he fits in the verse he’d been quoting all this time.

“But I saw some sh*t this mornin’ made me think twice. Now I’m thinkin’, it could mean you’re the evil man. And I’m the righteous man. And Mr. .45 here, he’s the shepherd protecting my righteous *ss in the valley of darkness. Or is could by you’re the righteous man and I’m the shepherd and it’s the world that’s evil and selfish. I’d like that. But that shit ain’t the truth. The truth is you’re the weak. And I’m the tyranny of evil men. But I’m tryin’. I’m tryin’ real hard to be a shepherd.”

Then Winnfield does the opposite of what he’s trained to do, the opposite of what Hegseth praises. He rejects vengeance and lays down his gun.

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What We’re Reading

ProPublica: “Inside Trump’s Effort to “Take Over” the Midterm Elections”

The people we identified as resisting attempts to overturn the 2020 results have been replaced by roughly two dozen people Trump has installed in positions that could affect elections. Ten of them actively worked to reverse the 2020 vote, and the rest are associates of such people. In some cases, ProPublica found, officials have been hired from activist groups that are pillars of the election denial movement. Experts warn that shows the movement has merged with the federal government.

These new officials could influence how Trump reacts to the upcoming midterms as polling shows Republicans are approaching what could be a significant electoral loss, with the president’s approval rating nearing record lows, and public concern growing about the weak economy, the administration’s mass deportation effort and the war on Iran. Seemingly in preparation to head off such a blow, Trump has stepped up his efforts to “nationalize” the 2026 elections, saying that Republicans need “to take over” the midterms. Democrats who monitored Trump’s attempts to block his 2020 loss have begun to question whether he will allow a “blue wave,” particularly if it flips control of a House of Representatives that impeached him twice in his first term.

ProPublica’s examination reveals new details on how the president has unleashed his loyalists to transform elections. This includes the background of this year’s FBI raid in Georgia to seize 2020 election materials and how they are using federal resources to search for noncitizens voting. Ultimately, ProPublica’s reporting shows how thoroughly and expansively the Trump administration has overhauled the federal government into what some fear is a vehicle for making sure elections go his way.

LINK

Mark Tooley: “America’s Most Influential Baptists?”

Basham and Stuckey represent the new face of Christianity in America. They do not have church offices and are not seminary trained. Their denomination prohibits female pastors, but Basham and Stuckey are arguably more influential than any pastor. They are savvy polemicists who fire their arrows ferociously, especially Basham. Her critics say she is unfair and inaccurate in her allegations of gospel betrayal by other Christians whom she deems covertly or overtly progressive. Of course, the controversy only builds her influence and expands her reach. She can say what more judicious clergy, church officers, and institutional heads cannot.

Amid widespread distrust of institutions and conventional expertise, we are in the age of social influencers, and Christianity is not exempted. Evangelicalism has never been very institutional and, unsurprisingly, is especially susceptible to social influencers, who set the tempo for much of its public conversation.

LINK

Jonah Goldberg: “The Decline and Fall of Orbánism”

President Trump, Tucker Carlson, and J.D. Vance (most recently while campaigning for Orbán) have all lavished praise on Hungary. Patrick Deneen, a leading new-right intellectual, saw in Orbán’s Hungary “a model of a form of opposition to contemporary liberalism that says, ‘There’s a way in which the state and the political order can be oriented to the positive promotion of conservative policies.’”

The Heritage Foundation, a once respected conservative think tank that has shed its devotion to the Constitution and traditional conservatism, agrees. Its wayward president, Kevin Roberts, in 2024 called Orbán’s Hungary a “model for conservative governance.”

This mirrors Orbán’s own explanation: “The Hungarian nation is not simply a group of individuals but a community that must be organized, reinforced and in fact constructed,” he explained in 2014. “And so in this sense the new state that we are constructing in Hungary is an illiberal state, a non-liberal state.”

Don’t be put off by the word “liberal” here (or by Deneen’s and Roberts’ tendentious use of “conservative”). Orbán and his fans aren’t talking about mere left-wing policies. The “liberal” here is the liberalism of liberal democratic capitalism, John Locke, Adam Smith, and the American Founding Fathers.

LINK

PsyPost: “Cognitive dissonance helps explain why Trump supporters remain loyal, new research suggests”

“Some people might think that these findings aren’t due to dissonance and that the participants simply did not believe the information,” Harmon-Jones said. “However, in Study 3 was asked people whether the information about the accusations of Trump’s misconduct conflicted with their beliefs and if so, how bothered were they by the information. The more bothered they said they were, the more likely they were to say they didn’t believe the accusations. We interpreted this to mean that those participants were experiencing dissonance and not just coolly disbelieving the information.”

LINK

Study: “Prominent misinformation interventions reduce misperceptions but increase scepticism”

Abstract

Current interventions to combat misinformation, including fact-checking, media literacy tips and media coverage of misinformation, may have unintended consequences for democracy. We propose that these interventions may increase scepticism towards all information, including accurate information. Across three online survey experiments in three diverse countries (the United States, Poland and Hong Kong; total n = 6,127), we tested the negative spillover effects of existing strategies and compared them with three alternative interventions against misinformation. We examined how exposure to fact-checking, media literacy tips and media coverage of misinformation affects individuals’ perception of both factual and false information, as well as their trust in key democratic institutions. Our results show that while all interventions successfully reduce belief in false information, they also negatively impact the credibility of factual information. This highlights the need for further improved strategies that minimize the harms and maximize the benefits of interventions against misinformation.

LINK

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Key Topics:

• The surge in anti-Jewish sentiment among Christian young men and the influence of online platforms like TikTok and podcasts.

• The rise of Christian nationalism, confessional state advocates, and the ideological differences between Catholic integralists and Protestant Christian nationalists.

• The connection between political ideologies, modern eschatology, and the decline of end-times beliefs among younger evangelicals.

• The network of influential figures promoting Christian superiority, anti-Semitism, and anti-democratic ideas online.

• How churches and pastors can counteract these dangerous trends with foundational principles of equality and religious freedom.

Chapters

1. Introduction - 00:00

2. Rise of Anti-Semitism - 02:14

3. Influence of Online Platforms - 02:57

4. Christian Nationalism Explained - 03:40

5. Key Figures and Literature - 04:17

6. Online Radicalization - 06:19

7. Prominent Voices and Their Impact - 07:17

8. Catholic vs. Protestant Dynamics - 09:26

9. Rejection of Liberal Democracy - 10:22

10. Churches’ Role in Counteraction - 11:18

11. Heritage American Identity - 13:15

12. Political Conflicts and Sentiments - 15:32

13. Protestant-Catholic Disputes - 16:28

14. Decline of End-Times Beliefs - 19:40

15. Conclusion and Resources - 26:21

Resources & Links:

• Institute on Religion and Democracy

• Providence Journal - Christian Realism

• J29 Coalition

We all struggle with the purist vs. pragmatist dilemma in political decision-making, but for some, it reveals an incredible double-standard.

How much are we willing to compromise in order to achieve some of what we want? This question lies at the heart of the purist vs. pragmatist dilemma.

Members of Congress, for instance, ask this question when they vote on a bill. Do I oppose the bill, because it contains something I can’t support (purist)? Do I support the bill, because while it has some things I don’t want, it does more good than harm on balance (pragmatist)?

Voters also ask this question when choosing candidates to support. There may be candidates who support many of our positions, yet they have some views we oppose or character defects that we believe make them unsuitable for office. Do we support the candidate anyway (pragmatist) or oppose them (purist)?

Few of us are always pragmatists or always purists. There is a line that must not be crossed, even for the most pragmatic pragmatists among us. On the other hand, a democracy full of purists would be forever deadlocked, incapable of accomplishing even the most routine tasks essential for a functioning government.

Figuring out this dilemma can be a struggle at times. Friends with shared values can come down on different sides. We should strive to be honest and thoughtful about this dilemma in our own decision-making, and recognize that other honest and thoughtful people have the same dilemma and may come to a different conclusion.

Which brings me to one of my biggest frustrations with certain supporters of the MAGA movement. Of course they criticize those of us on the right who don’t fall on the same side of the purist/pragmatist divide as they do, but worse still, they don’t apply the same standards to both political parties.

For Republicans, they’re pragmatists. Republican politicians who betray some principles or who have major character flaws should still be supported. For Democrats, they’re purists. One must never ever support a Democrat politician even if their election would accomplish some of your goals.

We’re told to support President Donald Trump, for instance, despite the meanness, crudeness, cruelty, criminality, and porn-star hush-money (to name a few), because politics is a dirty business and sometimes compromise is necessary. But the script flips for conservatives who support a Democrat for pragmatic reasons, such as checking the power of an authoritarian executive. Then you’re a betrayer, fool, or ignoramus.

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I posted about this double-standard on X this week. One excuse offered in the replies was deeply disturbing. We should flip from pragmatism to purity when considering Democrats, I was told, because Democrats are godless demons.

Dehumanization of political foes hinders democracy. At its worst, it has led to some of the most horrendous state-sponsored human rights abuses.

“But that conversation was just on X, which is full of attention-seeking grifters, not the real world,” you may be thinking. Fair point. Yet, I fear that the dehumanization of political foes is more widespread than that, and it’s not just on the right. An October 2024 SNF Agora/YouGov poll found almost half of the electorate believes the opposing party is “downright evil.”

What can we do? Here are a few starting points:

• Pay attention to how the purist/pragmatist dilemma plays out in your own decision-making. Be respectful of those who come to different conclusions than you. Admit it’s not easy.

• Build relationships with people who disagree with you. Learn to appreciate challenges to your own views.

• Support efforts in your own community that help break people out of their information silos. It’s difficult to demonize people who we know personally. Events that bring people together across partisan, class, and racial divides will help reduce the perception gap.

• Push back against dehumanization. Be willing to defend those outside of your partisan tribe, and criticize those within it.

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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

NYT: “ICE Agents Detain Newlywed Spouse of Soldier Training to Deploy”

A U.S. Army staff sergeant and his wife arrived at his base in Louisiana last week, expecting to begin their life together as newlyweds.

The couple checked in at the visitor center, identification in hand, ready to complete the steps that would allow her to move into his home on the base.

Within hours, that plan had unraveled.

GIFT LINK

Russell Moore: “The Bible Doesn’t Justify War Crimes”

But in line with the Bible, those who wield the sword are held accountable for the use of it. And that means the language of hell is quite relevant. We can do in God’s name what he forbids only if we really do not believe that he is there, that we will stand in judgment before him. In other words, to do this evil, we must be convinced that there is no hell. When we take that bargain, we had better be right. Otherwise, there’s quite literally hell to pay.

LINK

The Roys Report: “Evangelical leaders yawn at Trump’s claim that ‘a whole civilization will die tonight’”

In response, X and other social media platforms were flooded with complaints from faith leaders ranging from liberal Protestants to the Pope Leo XIV. The latter called Trump’s threat targeting “all the people” of Iran “truly unacceptable.”

But one group refused to criticize Trump: America’s evangelical leaders, a key part of Trump’s political base. They winked at his Easter Sunday post and ignored his saber rattling.

LINK

Trevin Wax: “When the Tribe Eats the Church”

The reality is that we’re witnessing the rise of new forms of revisionist Christianity and a resurgence of fundamentalist identity simultaneously—and in both cases, the lines are as often drawn around political views as they are around theological affirmations.

Whether it’s the fundamentalist enclave devolving into an online world of ever more radical right-wing beliefs, or the progressivist mindset devolving into little more than left-wing talking points baptized in Christian rhetoric, the appeal in both cases is the sense of community. It’s the feeling of being beleaguered and outnumbered, pressing up against your compatriots in battle against the bad guys, that generates a sense of significance and purpose.

Exhausted by looking inward to discover and express who we are, we now look around desperately for the affirmation of others—the sense of identity that comes from drawing close to those who share our affinities and outlook.

LINK

Hate Comes to Main Street

'Woah!' Christian Nationalist Podcasters Celebrate Eugenics-Based Essay from 1921

“Any theory which involves the claim that racial or ethnic groups are inherently superior or inferior, thus implying that some would be entitled to dominate or eliminate others, presumed to be inferior, or which bases value judgments on racial differentiation, has no scientific foundation and is contrary to the moral and ethical principles of humanity…

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a month ago · 42 likes · 1 comment · Phil Williams

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.

GIFT LINK

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.

GIFT LINK

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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Jared Stacy: https://jaredstacy.com/

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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.

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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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What Else We’re Reading

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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What We’re Watching

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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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What Else We’re Reading

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.

LINK

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.

LINK

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.

LINK

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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