Federal law enforcement devoted tremendous resources in a quixotic attempt to find non-citizen voters.

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Instead of investigating serious crimes, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agents are trying, and failing, to find evidence to justify President Donald Trump’s false stolen election claims.

“Current and former HSI agents say critical investigations — including task forces aimed at drug rings, human trafficking and money laundering — have languished as the agency has pivoted to take on noncitizen voting and immigration enforcement,” ProPublica reported last week.

HSI, a division within the Department of Homeland Security, was created to combat cross-border criminal enterprises. ProPublica interviewed current and former HSI agents for its report, “Inside Trump’s Failed Hunt for Noncitizen Voters,” by journalists Peter Elkind, Jen Fifield, Doug Bock Clark, Ken B. Morales and Andy Mannix. The report details how federal officers meant to keep us safe from drug lords and terrorists were reassigned to Trump’s personal obsession with losing the 2020 election, and in the process ignored privacy protections and civil liberty protections.

Illegal voting is extremely rare. According to the Justice Department’s own data, ProPublica found, only 41 people were charged with election-related crimes between January 2025 and May 2026. That’s roughly 0.000026% of the voting population, or one in every 3.8 million voters, nowhere near enough to swing an election.

Another striking part of the report is the Keystone Cops atmosphere of these investigations. These officers haven’t been trained on election laws and processes, so they end up bumbling through, not understanding the data they have. The result is a lot of false positives.

Read the whole report here.

If you have a friend or family member who believes the stolen election claims, keep this in mind: election process issues and illegal voting are two separate things. Finding an election process problem, of which there are many, is not evidence of a stolen election.

For instance, last month New Jersey revealed that a vendor’s software error had mistakenly registered about 6,600 noncitizens between June 2023 and June 2024. There was no criminal intent and roughly 400 of them voted. This is a major process failure. While NJ officials found and fixed the problem, they didn’t reveal it to the public until two years later. Our government officials should be held accountable, but it’s not evidence of a stolen election.

It’s also helpful to step back and think about the big picture. The false stolen election conspiracy claims that the Democrat Party imported large numbers of undocumented immigrants so they would illegally vote for Democrats and help them steal an election. This claim is based on a couple false premises. First, if you’re an immigrant who entered the country illegally, you don’t want the government to find you. Showing up at an election booth puts you in jeopardy of getting caught. Why put yourself at risk when your one vote won’t make the difference in an election? Second, it assumes that immigrants will automatically vote Democrat. We know that’s not true. Many immigrants are quite conservative, actually, and have no love for the Democrat Party, especially on social issues.

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Amy Black: “Christian Political Engagement in Divisive Times”

Political participation provides a way—not the only way, but an important one nonetheless—for Christians to live out the great commandments to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength and to love our neighbors as ourselves. Given the possibilities to serve the common good, Christians should participate in government, educate themselves on political issues, and advocate for policies they think best.

At the same time, we need to acknowledge that politics is messy, and government is fallen and broken (just like everything in the world, including us). Political solutions are necessarily imperfect and, at best, temporarily achieving partial goals. Ultimately, public policy involves a lot of trial and error, attempting one fix to a problem, seeing how well it works (or doesn’t work), and then trying something new. Sometimes government programs can help; other times solutions may be best found with families, churches, and community organizations.

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NYT: “Colorado Was Targeted as Trump Fumed Over Election Denier, Email Shows”

The goal, outlined in an email sent to officials at five federal agencies, was to “prioritize Colorado for the purposes of ensuring grants and federal support are in line with administration priorities,” the assistant, Emily Underwood, wrote on Dec. 15.

“Please come prepared to discuss immediate actions that your department or agency can take with respect to Colorado,” Ms. Underwood added.

The next day, the Department of Transportation and the Department of Energy, whose representatives were invited to the brainstorm, announced they were canceling hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grants for Colorado projects.

State officials say the email, which was revealed in a federal court hearing on Tuesday, is the clearest evidence yet that the Trump administration marshaled government resources to retaliate against Colorado over its use of mail-in ballots and its conviction of Ms. Peters, a county clerk who was found guilty in a plot to tamper with voting machines after the 2020 election.

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PsyPost: “Doomscrolling political news during your downtime predicts reduced engagement at work”

Consuming political news outside of work is associated with how employees feel and behave once they clock in. A recent study published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior indicates that reading or watching negative political media tends to predict higher anxiety and lower work engagement, whereas consuming positive political content predicts increased hope and helpfulness on the job. These findings suggest that the emotional weight of our daily news diets carries over into the workplace and shapes our professional lives.

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“Does Trump Derangement Syndrome Have a Cure?”

Gift Link: https://thedispatch.com/newsletter/dispatch-faith/maga-christianity-donald-trump/?gift_key=341a795d7c2d7f3b&gift_ref=3933085&utm_source=giftlink&utm_campaign=membergift&utm_medium=copy_link

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to the conversation and guest background

02:10 The civic renewal movement and community dialogues

04:04 Personal experiences with political support and TDS

07:12 What is Trump Derangement Syndrome really?

08:38 Legitimate concerns about extremism and partisanship

12:04 The importance of reading scripture in context

16:29 The danger of dismissing others as extremists

20:20 The brazenness of political corruption and responses

24:23 Understanding collective narcissism and tribalism

28:16 The role of scripture and faith in political identity

31:17 The ideal of civil discourse and Christian community

34:51 Advice for engaging with politically extreme friends

37:20 Practicing empathy and asking sincere questions

39:46 Closing thoughts and future hopes for dialogue

ICE officers lack training and accountability, and that’s how they behave.

“We’re well on our way to becoming a police state if current administration policies are allowed to continue,” I wrote for our April 10, 2025 newsletter, “Making America a Police State.”

This week I was reminded of what I wrote when watching video of an ICE confrontation. The video shows a masked ICE officer pointing his gun at Carolina Molina as she sat in her car recording the incident with her cellphone.

“Are you following us? Stop following us!” the officer yells.1

“You almost ran us over,” the officer then claimed.

That’s a serious charge. If Molina had tried to run over an ICE officer with her vehicle, she would have been be arrested and charged. She wasn’t.

After more exchange between Molina and the officer, Molina said, “Run you over when? I got recording! I got dashcam! I got dashcam! That’s a lie … I never tried to run you over,” at which point the officers quickly returned to their vehicles and drove off.

Molina, a licensed mental health therapist and U.S. citizen, was in the area to visit immigration lawyers for her work when she saw ICE agents taking people into custody. She rolled her window down and yelled at the officers.2 Rather than go to her appointment, she decided to turn around and leave the area. The incident occurred as she was leaving the parking lot.

A couple of points worth noting.

First, properly trained officers are taught to de-escalate situations. Pointing a gun at an unarmed, non-threatening person is the opposite of that. Officers are trained to pull their weapons only when necessary, not as a tool to threaten civilians.

Second, the “you tried to hit me” claim is one we see repeatedly with ICE. This is now one of many cases showing ICE officers make that claim, and use that false claim as justification for the use of force. Of course there is the widely reported killing of Renee Good, but here are some others you may have missed.

• In August 2025, Francisco Longoria was driving with his son and son-in-law when he was pulled over by four masked ICE and CBP agents in an unmarked vehicle. One agent smashed his window (without a warrant) and punched Longoria in the face, while another agent broke the passenger window. With the road ahead clear, Longoria hit the gas. The agents fired three shots at the vehicle. After being accused of trying to hit the officers with his vehicle, the charges were later dropped thanks to video evidence.

• In February 2025, ICE agents in Utah accused Brandon Colin of nearly hitting them with his vehicle. Little did they know that a nearby business had video footage of the incident showing Colin did no such thing.

• In March 2025, ICE shot and killed Ruben Ray Martinez, initially claiming that Martinez “intentionally ran over” an ICE agent. Body cam footage later showed that was false. Martinez was stopped or moving very slowly when he was shot.

• In December 2025, ICE arrested Juan Carlos Rodriguez Romero, accusing him of hitting an officer with his vehicle and ramming into another ICE vehicle, among other assault charges. Romero’s lawyer noted that the dismissal came after the judge in the case ordered DOJ to release evidence of these accusations, including evidence from the officers’ cellphones. The judge dismissed the case “with prejudice,” which means prosecutors agreed to never bring the case again.

A review by The Guardian found that of the 26 cases which DHS accused suspects of vehicle attacks, 15 of them never faced criminal charges, eight had their charges dismissed, one case is pending, one was convicted of “destruction of government property” but acquitted of the assault charge, and one pled guilty.

One likely reason ICE officers behave with impunity is they know they can get away with it. ICE officers who misbehave aren’t being investigated and rarely face consequences. On July 19, 2026, The New York Times reported that federal agents were told that the FBI would no longer investigate incidents of reported violent encounters with civilians. Instead, these encounters would be investigated by a division within ICE, leaving ICE to investigate itself. (DHS and DOJ denied this change has occurred.)

Another contributing factor is the inadequate training ICE officers receive. In February, former ICE instructor Ryan Schwank testified that the training was “deficient, defective, and broken.”

“DHS told the public the new cadets receive all the training they need to perform their duties, that no critical material or standards have been cut. This is a lie,” Schwank said. “ICE made the program shorter, and they removed so many essential parts that what remains is a dangerous husk.”

Folks on my side of the political spectrum tend to distrust government officials unless they’re law enforcement. As a reminder to my fellow conservatives, we should be suspicious of government authority because it can be dangerous when wielded by fallible humans. But there is no law enforcement exception to this guidance, most especially when the law enforcement in question has been caught in so many lies.

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Report: “The Grift Economy: How Young Men Are Being Sold Fake Belonging and Fake Wealth Online”

A joint report by Reset Tech and Equimundo

There is a multi-billion-dollar industry built on the loneliness, economic anxiety, and identity of men. It does not call itself an industry. It calls itself a movement, a brotherhood, a path to success. It presents itself as the antidote to a society that has failed men — and in doing so, it sells them the very things that keep them isolated, financially drained, and psychologically dependent on the young men profiting from their struggle. This report documents the industry: its mechanics, its actors, its revenue, and the young men it targets. It is a report about financial predation, not culture war. It is a report about consumer fraud and how ideology is used to sell a product. It is a report that argues, with evidence, that the most important thing missing from public debate about men online is an honest account of who is making money from their vulnerability, and how. Over the course of this investigation, Reset Tech and Equimundo mapped the commercial infrastructure of what we call the male grievance industry – the ecosystem of online creators, platforms, membership schemes, educational products, and funding networks that monetize male vulnerability at scale.

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Christianity Today: “After Aid Cuts, US Announces $2 Billion for Christian Groups”

Last year Russell Vought, head of the Office of Management and Budget, withheld $3 billion from PEPFAR. Sen. John Cornyn recently placed a hold on two of President Donald Trump’s nominees until the administration agreed to release PEPFAR funds. One mission hospital has seen a 50 percent cut in its PEPFAR funding.

…

In this new initiative, some groups might receive more funding than previously—Samaritan’s Purse, for example, is one of the lead recipients for the $538 million disaster response fund and previously received about $19 million in grants in 2024.

The White House held a private event last week announcing the funding, with remarks from White House Faith Office leader Paula White-Cain about the Christian calling to serve “the last, the least, and the lost.”

According to her prepared remarks, provided to CT by an attendee, White-Cain cited the long leadership of the United States in fighting malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV—through PEPFAR. She also cited the US funding for programs to address malnutrition and to vaccinate children.

“That’s 108 million more birthdays every year worldwide because of our commitment and generosity,” White-Cain said about the HIV and malaria program.

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CNN: “Fact check: Trump makes numerous false and misleading claims about vaccines and autism”

Trump again floated the idea that vaccines cause autism, though that notion has been thoroughly debunked by extensive research in multiple countries. He again baselessly impugned the safety of the combination vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella, which has for decades proven highly safe and highly effective.

He again wildly overstated the size of the vaccine doses children receive, which are nowhere near “the size of a bottle of soda.” He again wildly understated the prevalence of autism 20 years ago. And he again exaggerated the number of injections children have been required to receive.

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When right-wing influencers talk about “American culture,” they’re not talking about all Americans.

“American Culture is winning,” Benny Johnson announced last week. The reason? A country song is #1 on the pop charts.

I share this with you not because his argument is unusual. It isn’t. I’m sharing it because it’s such a clean example of how these influencers use misinformation, manufactured outrage, and tribalism to drive fear and division.

If you want to listen to the full 9 minute, 29 second monologue before proceeding, you can do so here.

First, here’s some context. Ella Langley’s “Choosin’ Texas” has been the #1 song on the Billboard Hot 100 for 16 non-consecutive weeks, which broke the record on August 3 for the longest run by a solo female artist, previously held by the 14-week records of Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” and Mariah Carey’s “We Belong Together.” And it’s breaking other records as well, such as the first song by a woman to ever top the Hot 100, Hot Country Songs, and Country Airplay charts simultaneously. It’s a huge hit. You can watch the official video on YouTube here.

There is nothing in the song or video that is political. Johnson is using the song’s success, and rap music’s current dry spell1, to build his own mythical culture war narrative. According to this myth, country music represents the real America and rap music is anti-America, the success of the song represents the resurgence of conservative values, and liberals are angry at the success of the song.

“Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston dethroned, and libtards are in shambles over this,” Johnson declared.

Johnson doesn’t cite any liberals who actually complained about the song and I couldn’t find any with a Google search. Indeed, for a song to be this successful, it would have to be popular with a broad swath of the public, not just those on the right.

MAGA’s new punching bag, USAID, also comes into the picture. Johnson claims that rap music is not doing well on the pop charts today due to USAID getting defunded.

“USAID gets defunded, and non-gay country music starts dominating the charts,” Johnson said, quoting a post on X.

Rap music wasn’t funded by USAID. That’s absurd. This is one of the newest conspiracies being spread among right-wing influencers. Two unrelated events formed the foundation of this conspiracy. In 2014, an Associated Press investigation found that USAID contractors had tried to infiltrate Cuba’s hip-hop scene to spread anti-communist messages. And in February 2025 there was a controversy about a Palestinian non-profit that received USAID funding but who’s executive director was a rapper who rapped anti-Israel lyrics. Contrary to Johnson’s claim, the USAID funding didn’t fund his music, it funded a program training female entrepreneurs. In Johnson’s fever dream retelling, his “culture” was under attack by dark forces in the government, and this included an attack on country music.

“We were suppressed,” Johnson said, “and our culture was manipulated and scoped by our own tax dollars and intel agencies.”

Country music and rap/hip-hop both originated in America. They’re both part of American culture. But in Johnson’s formulation, country represents the true America while rap/hip-hop do not. He refers to rap as “mumble rap” and “hedonistic garbage.”

Johnson also has something to say about race, associating “real America” with country music and whiteness. By contrast, rap is anti-American and black. He’s not subtle about it. He describes Langley as a “beautiful white woman” and claims liberals dislike her because, quoting another X account, “they hate whites, they hate beauty, they hate everything wholesome; they especially hate America because it is all of those things.”

Johnson implies he’s a recent convert to country music and it shows.2 While it’s true that rap has a strong following among black people and country fans skew white, there are white artists who have found success in rap (Eminem, the Beastie Boys), and there are black artists who have found success in country (Charley Pride, Darius Rucker, Kane Brown). In fact, the two country songs that hold the record for the longest run at #1 (19 weeks) are held by black artists — Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” and Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road.” Additionally, the roots of country music owe much to Southern black blues and banjo styles.

Country music success comes in waves. In the 70’s, we saw the success of Outlaw Country, followed by the hugely popular John Travolta film “Urban Cowboy” in 1980. After a lull, country became popular again with the legendary “Class of ‘89,” led by the mega-stardom of Garth Brooks. After another dry period in the 2000s, country is again seeing the next successful wave. But this new wave is quite the opposite of what Johnson describes.

Rather than distinguishing itself from hip-hop, today’s country embraces it and combines these distinctively American styles of music. It’s hard to miss if you spend a little time listening to a modern country radio station. For the uninitiated, I invite you to check out the music of Kane Brown or Jelly Roll to start. And it’s not just the influence of hip-hop on country artists having an impact. Artists from hip-hop, pop, and R&B have themselves successfully crossed over into country. Witness Post Malone and Beyoncé, whose album Cowboy Carter was created to reclaim the black roots of country.

The current wave of success for country music does show that American culture is winning, but not in the way Johnson thinks. It’s successful because it blends America’s diverse cultures, and in doing that it reflects one of America’s greatest strengths — pluralism.

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More In Common: “Making Sense with More in Common: Trump Voters’ Support for the Iran War Continues to Drop”

Support for the war in Iran has dropped among all segments of Trump voters since April. Less than half of Mainline Republicans and the Reluctant Right support the war, while even among MAGA Hardliners support has fallen 8 points.

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WSJ: “How ICE Is Weaponizing Social Media Against Its Critics”

Tired_Thumb is far from alone.

In recent months, ICE has deployed a round-the-clock digital dragnet to scour the public internet—from Facebook to Instagram to X—for speech that could endanger the agency’s mission. The government has paid millions to private contractors to surface everything from potential threats to agents to activities that could disrupt ICE’s operations, according to federal documents, contractors and former Homeland Security Investigations agents.

The program has ensnared U.S. citizens and activist groups that alert community members about ICE activity. Contractors prepare daily reports and dossiers on threat actors, identifying the poster’s name, location, date of birth, workplace, Social Security number, vehicle registration and criminal history when possible.

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AS: “Umberto Eco, writer: ‘The tragedy of the Internet is that it has promoted the village idiot to the level of bearer of truth’”

Umberto Eco stands among the most influential European writers, thinkers, and philosophers of the 20th century. His work spans groundbreaking essays on semiotics, beauty, language, and philosophy, as well as celebrated novels like The Name of the Rose, Foucault’s Pendulum, Baudolino, and The Prague Cemetery.

But Eco was also known for speaking his mind—fearlessly and often provocatively—on just about any topic, including the rise of social media and its impact on modern life.

Even though he passed away in 2016 at age 84, Eco left behind sharp reflections that feel even more relevant in today’s hyper‑connected world. One of his most quoted lines captures his skepticism perfectly:“The tragedy of the Internet is that it has elevated the village idiot to the status of a bearer of truth.”

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Government officials are using the cruelty of separating kids from their families to achieve their goals. It’s not the first time.

In June of 2018, when I was working as a politics and opinion editor for The Christian Post, I wrote an opinion article, “Trump’s Family Separation Policy Was Cruel by Design.” I pointed out that three different government officials said in speeches and interviews that they were intentionally using family separation to deter immigration. The cruelty itself became a tool of public policy.

Children should only be separated from their family when the family itself presents an unsafe situation. Otherwise, family separation causes trauma that lasts well into adulthood. Our government was committing child abuse to advance its goals. “Cruelty to children wasn’t an accidental feature of Trump’s policy, it was the intended method of Trump’s policy,” I wrote.

There was much pushback within The Christian Post over that article. Some editors thought my tone was too harsh. I thought my tone matched the story. I fought hard just to get it published. This was one of the escalating events that eventually led to my decision to leave The Christian Post. I tell more of that story here.

We’re continuing to see family separation as government policy today.

Last week, Nepthali Zozaya Saucedo and Cinthia Sarai Cardona Otero, assistant pastors in Edinburg, Texas, were detained by ICE. DHS claims they overstayed their religious worker visas while their church claims their visas are valid. The pastors said they were threatened with separation from their children to get them to sign departure papers.

RNS reports, “while in detention, Zozaya had spoken on the phone to reporters, saying that the couple had been ‘pressured’ with prolonged separation from their children — a seven-year-old and nearly three-year-old twins — to sign voluntary departure papers. On Sunday, Cardona, fighting back tears and speaking in Spanish, described in detail the repeated attempts she alleged immigration agents made to coerce them into signing papers: that they would be deported separately to different third countries, not their home in Mexico; that they could not make calls without signing the papers; and that they would face up to six months of incarceration without their sons.”

“It is categorically false,” a DHS spokesperson claimed when asked if they used the threat of prolonged child separation to pressure these pastors into signing departure papers. This might be believable if it were a one-off incident, but many have told a similar story.

Using children as a pawn for political ends has shown itself in other areas as well. This week we also learned that a program in the Office of Refugee Resettlement designed to protect children is being used to find unauthorized migrants. This creates perverse incentives: reuniting with your children can place you in greater danger or further separation from your children.

Government policy should be to protect children, not put them in harm’s way. In a Dallas Morning News op-ed published on Tuesday, I wrote about the estimated 50,000 children, natural born US citizens, who could be separated from their Haitian parents after TPS expired.

“Imagine being a parent in that situation,” I wrote, “faced with the choice of leaving your children in the U.S., with relative safety and security, or keeping them with you but placing them in a humanitarian crisis into which the U.S. Department of State forbids U.S. citizens to travel. Either leave your children behind or place them in harm’s way. What an impossible choice! What would you do?”

Separating children from their families, as a tool of the government, is not pro-family. As I pointed out in the op-ed, “family values” has been a prominent theme for conservative evangelicals like myself. So why aren’t more family values conservatives speaking out about this? In the case mentioned above, conservative evangelical describes the victims as well. Zozaya Saucedo and Cardona Otero are pastors in the Assemblies of God, a denomination that heavily votes Republican. They were detained when boarding a flight to a retreat at the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, which is led by Franklin Graham, one of President Trump’s most vocal evangelical supporters.

Conservative evangelicals don’t agree on everything when it comes to politics, of course, but when the government hurts kids to advance policy goals, this should be a moment of moral courage.

Tell Your Pastor About J29!

J29 Cohort equips pastors and ministry leaders to cultivate a Jesus-shaped political imagination in their congregations. Through high-quality training from experienced leaders and shared learning alongside fellow clergy from across the country, participants will be formed for faithful, thoughtful engagement in their local contexts.

Send your pastor this link and encourage them to apply.

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UC Berkeley: “Your news feed may be making polarization worse”

A new UC Berkeley Economics study finds that online news algorithms can quietly push readers toward more polarized views by reinforcing what they already believe.

The research from Berkeley Economics PhD Student Mingduo Zhao shows that even small differences in opinion can be amplified over time as algorithms learn what users click on and serve them more of the similar content. The result is a feedback loop that can deepen divisions, while also keeping users more engaged.

In his dissertation, paper titled, “News Consumption, Recommender Systems, and Polarization,”(link is external) Zhao examined how recommender systems interact with user behavior. He found that people tend to click on stories that match their views, and platforms respond by recommending similar content, strengthening those beliefs over time.

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NYT: “We Hate to Break It to You, but Maybe We’re Not That Polarized”

Many Americans fear that the country is coming apart.

Approximately half of Republicans and four in 10 Democrats said in 2024 that a civil war in their lifetime was at least somewhat likely. That fear arises from an increasing sense that the people on the other side have become something different from us — dangerous and even a threat to the American way of life, whatever you think that is. That framing is now the familiar refrain of political commentary in the United States.

We have been hearing about partisan animosity for so long that it is hard to see our country through any other lens. But before accepting that irreconcilable differences are a fact of our contemporary politics, try a thought experiment. You are an American who voted for Kamala Harris or for Donald Trump in 2024. You randomly meet one other voter for your candidate and one voter for the other side. Which of the two do you have a lot in common with? Well, it turns out you actually have a lot in common with both.

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The Dispatch: “A Perfect ICE Storm: New Recruits, Less Training, and Deadly Shootings”

Most significantly, ICE cut the length of its training to get people out into the field more quickly. Reports of reductions in training began surfacing last summer. DHS repeatedly denied that any instruction had been cut and claimed that training was expanded to 12 hours per day, six days a week from the previous eight hours per day, five days a week schedule. In February, Ryan Schwank, a lawyer and legal instructor at the ICE training academy, quit the agency and said that he personally witnessed the gutting of the agency’s training, saying that 240 hours of a 584-hour training program had been cut, including classes on use of force and driving tests.

“Deficient training can and will get people killed,” Schwank testified at a Capitol Hill forum organized by Democrats. “It can and will lead to unlawful arrests, violations of constitutional rights, and a fundamental loss of public trust in law enforcement. ICE is lying to Congress and the American people about the steps it is taking to ensure its 10,000 new officers faithfully uphold the Constitution and can perform their jobs.”

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In his July 16, 2026, primetime address to the nation, President Donald Trump attempted to sow doubt about the very election system that made him president and gave control of Congress to Republicans. He announced documents that were published on the White House website, but those documents refute his main claims. Watch the video above to learn more.

Related Articles

Tom Nichols: “Trump Just Did More Damage to American Elections Than China”

NYT: “Trump Exaggerates Claims About Election Vulnerabilities in Speech”

The Dispatch: “Fact-Checking Trump’s Election Security Speech”

The Bulwark: “The Real Threat to Our Elections Is Donald Trump”

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Tell Your Pastor About J29!

J29 Cohort equips pastors and ministry leaders to cultivate a Jesus-shaped political imagination in their congregations. Through high-quality training from experienced leaders and shared learning alongside fellow clergy from across the country, participants will be formed for faithful, thoughtful engagement in their local contexts.

Send your pastor this link and encourage them to apply.

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You can also help pastors participate in this program by giving a tax-deductible contribution today.

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Texas Monthly: “This Texas Nominee Keeps Peddling Fascist Conspiracy Theories. State GOP Leaders Are Silent.”

Citing fears of “gay race communism,” an impending “massacre of heritage Americans,” and the nation ending up like modern South Africa, French has called for the United States to “be Rhodesia,” the African pseudostate in the sixties and seventies in which Black people were violently oppressed by a ruling white minority. Rhodesia has inspired numerous racist killers—most infamously Dylann Roof, the self-described “Last Rhodesian” who massacred nine Black congregants at a South Carolina church in 2015.

“We are all Rhodesians now,” French wrote in January.

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Columbia Political Review: “There is No “Rise” in Political Violence”

Clearly, we have seen political violence before. What makes our era so different?

The first difference is that political violence has become significantly more visible. “Most mainstream politicians in [the late 19th to mid 20th century], outside of the Jim Crow south, avoided violent rhetoric,” Boyle states. “That’s no longer the case.”

Compared to the 1960s, both pundits and politicians today seem much more willing to embrace violent language, particularly along partisan lines. Lilliana Mason of Johns Hopkins University observes that the main shift is that the violence of today is more explicitly partisan. Thus, as figures like Trump point fingers at “the radical left,” increasingly violent rhetoric coupled with intense polarization seems to suggest an exaggerated rise in political violence.

…

Amid widespread fear spanning the political spectrum, the polarization that contributes to the partisan framing of these incidents, perpetuated by prominent political figures and media outlets, amplifies the perception of political violence. This creates a vicious cycle: as the belief in a “rise” in partisan violence grows, it becomes easier to demonize those across the political aisle. This, in turn, can intensify violent rhetoric and heighten the risk of further political violence.

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RNS: “Half of Gen Z says Trump support keeps them out of church”

Is this connection between Christians and the Trump administration having a deleterious impact on the attendance of Gen Z Christians, though?

The answer from this data is: Not really. Or at least there’s no evidence that young Christians who don’t go to church that often are staying away because of the association with Republican politics. The data indicates that 38% of young Christians who go to church every week say Christians’ support for Trump has been a barrier to them attending more often. For those Christians who never attend, it’s 40%.

So, it’s not fair to use this data to make the claim that young Christians would be flocking back into the church if the church would drop politics. However, the other way to interpret this data is that about 40% of young adult Christians see the church’s association with Trump as an impediment to them becoming more involved with their faith community. According to this result, more daylight between the church and the GOP may lead to an uptick in attendance among young Christians at every level of the attendance continuum.

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The Flat Hat: “Meditations on patriotism”

As we prepare to celebrate the 250th anniversary of our country’s founding, I would like to make a call for the return of something which is possibly on the verge of becoming old-fashioned: patriotism.

Polls show that the number of Americans who express pride in their nationality is on the decline, a trend driven in large part by members of Generation Z. I believe we all know the reasons this has occurred: The current structure of the economy locks our generation out of the prosperity our ancestors once enjoyed, our institutions are decaying and our society in general seems headed in the wrong direction. These reasons for the current atmosphere of cynicism toward America are all valid, and I share them. I feel pessimistic about the state of our country and the world, and I think that’s exactly the right outlook to have.

Despite that, I still believe the decay in national pride to be a shame. I think healthy societies need some degree of pride in their accomplishments to function properly, and that the abandonment of such pride will have only negative consequences for our country.

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Links

Seeking Refuge: https://www.amazon.com/Seeking-Refuge-Shores-Global-Refugee/dp/0802432670/

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Refugee Crisis and Guest Matthew Sorens

00:29 The Origin and Purpose of ‘Seeking Refuge’

01:18 The Escalation of the Global Refugee Crisis Over a Decade

02:18 US Refugee Resettlement Policy and Political Volatility

03:29 Updates and New Stories in the Second Edition of the Book

04:28 US Policy on Refugee Resettlement and Immigration

05:29 Historical US Refugee Policies and Christian Contributions

06:43 The Biblical Case for Welcoming Refugees

07:27 Biblical Hospitality and the Great Commission

09:17 The Role of the Church in Global Refugee Support

11:06 Biblical Principles on Immigration and Refugee Policy

12:36 Supporting Refugees Beyond US Borders

13:46 Global Church Collaboration and Humanitarian Efforts

16:57 The Church’s Role in Addressing Global Displacement

17:27 Understanding Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and Policy Updates

19:27 Legal and Moral Implications of TPS Terminations

21:27 Advocacy and Policy Action for Refugees and TPS Holders

23:22 The Impact of Deportations on US Citizens and Families

25:15 The Impossible Choices Faced by Refugee Families

26:29 The Urgency of Compassionate Policy and Church Action

27:01 Meet the Co-Authors and Their Perspectives

Self-avowed socialists are winning Democrat primaries while Republicans behave like central planners. Strange times.

A number of high-profile Democrats identify as democratic socialists, such as U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY), U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (MI), New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, and U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (VT) (technically an independent who caucuses with the Democrats). Plus, a number of socialists upset incumbents in this year’s Democrat primaries.

Generally, democratic socialists want universal healthcare, more public housing, free college, and a massive expansion of renewable energy, paid for by increasing taxes on the wealthy. I wrote about the “purist vs. pragmatist dilemma” for a previous newsletter. This dilemma also helps us understand the divide among democratic socialists today. The pragmatists, like Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez, argue for working within the system, while the purists accuse them of selling out due to their willingness to compromise.

Some right-wing critics call them communists, but as a slur. Most socialists reject the authoritarianism of communist nations, like the former Soviet Union, and point to nations like Norway or Sweden as their model. There is, however, a communist caucus within the Democratic Socialists of America that holds more extreme views.

While a majority of Americans reject socialism and support capitalism, polling shows capitalism decreasing in popularity. Socialism shows a sharp increase in popularity among Gen Z and Millennials.

One of the great ironies of American politics is that the socialist label is unpopular while socialist policies are extremely popular. Free K-12 education, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, progressive income tax — this is socialism. How often do you hear a politician of either party call for getting rid of any of these? The ones that do rarely win.

Added to that, we have a president who condemns socialism while behaving like a socialist. His trademark legislative accomplishment, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, includes “Trump Accounts,” a $1,000 taxpayer-funded contribution to those born between 2025 and 2028. Before Trump, this same idea was championed by Cory Booker (D-NJ) and co-sponsored by Sanders.

President Trump also uses state power to control private companies. Under his presidency, taxpayer money has bought equity in private and publicly held companies. He has blocked mergers and acquisitions. He has redirected industrial planning through tariffs. And he has bullied private companies with threats of regulatory action. This is not free enterprise.

One takeaway here is to be careful with how we use and understand labels. Labels are often essential as a quick shorthand in general conversation, but for a deeper understanding of what people believe, we need to look beyond the labels.

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What We’re Reading

Vox: “ICE arrested a nun on her way to church. Does MAGA care?”

On June 28, Sister Leticia “Letty” Ugboaja, a Catholic nun from Nigeria, stepped out of her home to take the short, one-block stroll to her church in McAllen, Texas. It should have been uneventful: dressed in her white habit and bearing a rosary, Sister Letty was walking to Sunday morning mass at Our Lady of Sorrows.

She didn’t make it — US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents stopped, arrested, and handcuffed the 56-year-old. They took her to a detention facility an hour away, reportedly confiscated her rosary, and declined to bring her the medication she takes. She called her diocese for help — and as news spread, both Republican and Democratic members of Congress appealed directly to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin for details. Hours later, she was released — without explanation.

Plenty of questions surrounding this incident remain. According to her diocese, Sister Letty had worked as a registered nurse in the area for about a decade and entered the country legally.

LINK

Phil Williams: “Another Disturbing Peek Into the Minds of Young Republicans”

Now, Hate Comes to Main Street can link a racist, antisemitic, misogynistic, Christian nationalist X account to another group of Young Republicans—in this case, far-right men associated with a Knox County chapter in East Tennessee.

That X account—calling itself the Tennessee Heritage Association—routinely pushes themes that once would have been more commonplace at cross-burning Ku Klux Klan rallies than in mainstream GOP politics.

…

Yet, rather than being relegated to the extreme, the Tennessee Heritage Association has co-sponsored an event with MAGA Congressman Andy Ogles and produced videos with Christian nationalist candidate for governor Monty Fritts.

The mysterious group has also signed on as one of the backers of the so-called Mass Deportation Coalition, which includes the influential Heritage Foundation, as well as the politically connected Center for Baptist Leadership.

LINK

The Dispatch: “Does Trump Derangement Syndrome Have a Cure?”

There is such a thing as Trump Derangement Syndrome, but it’s not what you think. The term gets thrown around to describe people on the left who can’t hear the name Donald Trump without losing their minds. Fine. Some people like that exist.

But the actual syndrome, the one that does real damage, applies to those who look upon the words and actions of Donald Trump and cannot see them for what they are. On any given day, his conduct exhibits the very antithesis of what Scripture—or anyone with the most basic sense of decency—calls virtue.

How can people I know—some of whom I genuinely love and respect—look upon those words and actions and call them good? That’s the question I keep coming back to. And I honestly don’t know the answer.

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Hoover Institution: “AI, Politically Motivated Violence, And “Conflict Entrepreneurship” In Congress”

The key point is that the tool I built doesn’t require a PhD to produce. I’m a political scientist, and I was able to do it. I have to assume that trained coders in the Russian FSB or in Chinese intelligence can not only do what I’ve done but do it far better and at scale. That means, in effect, that almost anyone can interfere in almost any election—regardless of language or context—if they have enough awareness, motivation, and resources.

The ultimate question is whether this is actually happening. It’s a frustrating question to ask, because these tools are designed to be undetectable. If we can’t detect them, that could mean they don’t exist—or it could mean they’re simply good enough to evade the traps we’ve built. So, I can’t say with confidence that it’s happening.

What I can say is this: American elections are decided by very thin margins, and districts have been gerrymandered so heavily, that even a small number of synthetic poll respondents could matter—in presidential and House elections alike. Are all surveys dominated by these tools? No, absolutely not. Could a poor-quality survey contain a small number of these agents? Yes. And could that be enough to flip the top-line result? Yes.

LINK

NPR: “Supreme Court justices give chilling accounts of threats to their safety”

The justices spoke at length Tuesday about how rising threats impacted their lives. Justice Barrett came prepared with two harrowing stories. First was the day she brought home a bulletproof vest.

“My 12-year-old son was standing in the doorway of my bedroom, and he wanted to know what it was,” she testified. “And I didn’t know how to respond. I didn’t expect that performing this service was going to put me in the position of explaining to my children what a bulletproof vest was and why I had to wear one.”

She also described how just six weeks ago, her house was swatted, with local police responding to a fake emergency call. Local police could have stormed her home, but for the fact that her own security detail was there to prevent it.

LINK

AVC and US Values Alliance

I had a wide ranging conversation with the folks from US Values Alliance this week. You can watch the full session here:

The Religious Liberty Commission’s draft report turned out better than expected.

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The Religious Liberty Commission was created by President Donald Trump last year to make religious liberty policy recommendations. The draft report, created after seven public hearings, was published two weeks ago. After a comment period, which ends on Monday, a final draft will be published. The Commission can only make recommendations, so nothing in the report automatically has the force of law.

The Commission and its advisory boards are not religiously or ideologically diverse. The membership is mostly Christian with a substantial Jewish presence. Other than those two faiths, only one Muslim appears on an advisory board. (This lack of diversity is the subject of a lawsuit, Interfaith Alliance v. Trump.) Plus, no commission members or advisors identify as politically liberal or progressive (though some members would be considered liberal on certain issues, such as Catholics and the death penalty).

The report reflects this lack of diversity. The examples in the report lean heavily toward discrimination against Christians and Jews. Latter-day Saints only appear once, in a footnote, which is odd given their importance in religious freedom court cases and their general support for Republicans. Non-religious people are only mentioned for comparison and to note the benefits they receive living in a nation with religious freedom. There is one reference to religious liberty protecting “believers and nonbelievers alike,” but beyond that, there is no elaboration on the rights of nonbelievers. On the plus side, the report does provide examples of religious discrimination against Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs.

The report is correct to note that “separation of church and state” has been misinterpreted by some to mean government favoritism of secular over sectarian groups. The neutrality principle, that government shouldn’t favor certain religious groups or non-religion over religion generally, best reflects the Founders’ intent. It also has the benefit of enabling the most religious freedom for all and is consistent with where the U.S. Supreme Court has been, more or less, for at least the last couple of decades.

But I take issue with the report’s reframing of church/state separation, which is a key theme of the report. It is true, as the report points out, that the phrase “wall of separation between church and state” does not appear in the Constitution, but the concept is certainly implied by the establishment clause “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion ...” and free exercise clause “or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, ...” of the First Amendment. Our Founders understood the dangers of religious establishment, both for the government and for religion, and wanted each to play its proper role. They were well aware of the dangers of mixing religious authority with state power.

On the plus side, “America’s peaceful religious pluralism” is mentioned in the EO creating the Commission, and pluralism is praised throughout the report. Oddly, however, the report suggests secularism stands in opposition to pluralism. “Though not a religion, secularism, like theocracy, is incompatible with our First Amendment freedoms because it excludes religious voices from the process of self-government,” the report states. A truly pluralistic society would be inclusive of secularism, not in opposition to it. Pluralism means everyone is free to live according to their beliefs. You can reject religious beliefs, even be hostile to them, and your beliefs are still protected.

Nonetheless, the most useful parts of the report, given today’s political environment, are its defense of pluralism, rejection of antisemitism, and condemnation of theocracy. As regular readers of this newsletter are aware, there are growing movements on the right that reject all three of these. So here is my suggestion: use the good parts of this report in your conversations with friends and family members caught up in right-wing extremism. Quoting sources like MSNBC or the New York Times will likely be rejected right away, but if you quote the Trump administration itself, you can gain a sympathetic ear.

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J29 Cohort equips pastors and ministry leaders to cultivate a Jesus-shaped political imagination in their congregations. Through high-quality training from experienced leaders and shared learning alongside fellow clergy from across the country, participants will be formed for faithful, thoughtful engagement in their local contexts.

Send your pastor this link and encourage them to apply.

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What We’re Reading

Caleb Campbell: “Anxiety About Affiliation: Why many pastors are becoming cautious about who they are seen with and what the Church loses because of it.”

Many leaders have grown cautious about relationships outside their theological, political, or cultural tribe because association is often treated as endorsement. Which tribe are you aligned with? What leaders are you platforming? Whose side are you on? These questions increasingly shape pastor’s relational networks.

When I started in ministry in the late 2000s, the atmosphere felt different. Across many parts of the American Church, there seemed to be genuine energy toward widening the tent. Pastors were building friendships across traditions and secondary theological differences. Conversations about racial reconciliation, immigration, justice, and sexuality were often difficult, but many leaders entered them with curiosity and hope.

There seemed to be a growing desire to embody the unity Jesus prayed for.

LINK

The Bulwark: “Why We Won’t Stay Silent About Christian Nationalists in Our Own Churches”

The latest real-world skirmish over the ever-amorphous Christian nationalism erupted this June at a conference in Ogden, Utah, titled “The War for Normal” and organized by fledgling religious publisher New Christendom Press.

The world quickly learned from various posts on X what exactly passes for “normal” in these circles when a self-described Nazi employee of Antelope Hill, a small publishing house infamous as the preeminent North American publisher of fascist texts, was caught hawking pro-Hitler materials, including books published by the Nazi Party’s paramilitary Schutzstaffel, better known as the SS.

Blake Callens, a writer and early public critic of Christian nationalism, has noted that “one can consider authoritarian Christian Nationalism to be fringe enough that it will never gain traction within the broader American system while being keenly aware that it is a growing movement within the conservative church.”

As Christians, we find that Callens’s warning speaks to us directly. One of the presenters at the conference, Zachary Garris, is a minister in our denomination, the Presbyterian Church in America, and we feel a pressing duty to speak out about this malignant ideology. Because if the Nazi materials on the Antelope Hill table can teach us anything about history, it’s the danger of what a fringe movement can do if reasonable people remain silent.

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The Carolina Journal: “Civil discourse and the art of disagreement”

Civil discourse and respectful disagreement are essential to a free and thriving society. The ability to say “I disagree” defines individuality, protects liberty, and drives progress. Throughout history, leaders such as Thomas Jefferson, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr., and Winston Churchill shaped history through principled disagreement.

Today, however, disagreement has become increasingly hostile. Public debates over race, immigration, gender, healthcare, and politics are often marked by shouting, insults, and division rather than thoughtful conversation. We no longer disagree; we demonize. As Proverbs 18:2 reminds us, “Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions.”

LINK

Åbo Akademi University: “Democratic innovations are challenging to implement – but when successful, they strengthen democracy”

Democratic innovations include, for example, deliberative citizens’ panels, participatory budgeting, and digital platforms for citizen dialogue—that is, tools and methods that allow “ordinary” citizens to express their views on societal issues and influence decision-making more actively. Democratic innovations engage people between elections.

…

Fishkin sees two possible paths forward: either creating many smaller citizens’ panels or developing structures that allow many or all citizens to participate. The latter could include digital platforms for public discussion, institutions that spread deliberation more widely throughout society, or initiatives such as Deliberation Day, a kind of national holiday before an election, when citizens are given the opportunity to gather and deliberate.

LINK

Brookings: “That they may thrive: Reimagining purpose, agency, and breadth of skills in education through cross-country collaborative research”

The erosion of democracy, political polarization, and increased conflict require education systems to reimagine the purpose of education and provide students with agency and a breadth of skills for a democratic future.

A generation of children is growing up amid heightened political polarization, and in many contexts, under prolonged forms of authoritarian leadership. In contexts with access to digital technology, these conditions have been reinforced by algorithmic bubbles on digital platforms that promote rigid worldviews, distrust of pluralism, and narrow understandings of identity, power, and belonging.

…

Current education systems often position students as passive recipients of knowledge, while few create learning environments where young people can question, explore, deliberate, and connect what they learn to the realities of their lives. Preparing young people for democratic futures requires learning that develops agency, critical thinking, ethical reasoning, dialogue, collaboration, and the ability to engage with complex ideas. These capacities help students interrogate claims, weigh evidence, recognize multiple perspectives, and participate meaningfully in shaping more just and inclusive societies.

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The same week we’re celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the Supreme Court upheld the 14th Amendment. Fittingly, the ruling fits well with the Declaration’s legacy.

The 14th Amendment was the second of three post-Civil War amendments and was passed as a direct repudiation of the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision, which ruled that no person of African descent can be a citizen.

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States ... are citizens ...,” it states.

In this week’s ruling, Trump v. Barbara, the Court struck down President Donald Trump’s executive order declaring that the 14th Amendment doesn’t apply to people born in the United States to parents who are not citizens or lawful residents.

Conservative judicial reasoning, sometimes called originalism, applies the plain meaning of the text as it was intended when it was written. Liberal judicial reasoning, the “living document” approach, reinterprets the text through a modern lens. This ruling, written by conservative Chief Justice John Roberts, is very much consistent with originalism. If you look at the plain wording of the 14th Amendment, there is no wiggle room for an exception for the newborns of undocumented immigrants. However, the ruling was joined by conservative Trump appointee Barrett and the three liberal justices while the dissents were from three conservatives, Alito, Thomas and Gorsuch.

In a test case, the Supreme Court ruled in Wong Kim Ark (1898) that people born in the U.S. to non-citizen parents are U.S. citizens. So this week’s ruling maintains this status quo we’ve had for over a century, yet many right-wing figures have declared this non-change as the end of America. White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller described it as “national self-obliteration.” Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts called it a “tremendous betrayal of the Republic.” Sean Davis, CEO and co-founder of The Federalist, said the decision allowed “hostile invasion” and listed “dissolution of the union” as a possible remedy. America has never had their policy preference, yet now we’re told that the oldest modern democracy cannot survive without it.

In addition to the intent of the 14th Amendment, there is the question of presidential authority. In a government intentionally designed to avoid concentrated power, the Court recognized that the president doesn’t have the authority to simply overturn over 100 years of legal precedent with the stroke of a pen. While the opinion on the 14th Amendment was 5-4, there were six justices who agreed with limits on the executive. Justice Kavanaugh, concurring in the judgment but not the constitutional reasoning, agreed the order was unlawful, but argued it violated a federal statute rather than the Constitution itself. He noted Congress could pass new legislation, consistent with the 14th Amendment, to create exceptions in the future. Whether that is correct, or a constitutional amendment is required, is a question for a future court. Regardless, Kavanaugh agreed with the majority opinion that the authority does not lie with the president.

Here is another area where right-wing critics show their double standards. When Democrat presidents use executive orders and other means to effectively legislate, conservatives are correct to criticize them for overstepping their authority. A consistent conservative would criticize Trump for doing likewise. Congress creates the law. The president’s job is to execute the laws passed by Congress. If you want to address the problem of “anchor babies,” don’t look to the courts or the president. Look to Congress.

Now let’s take a step back and consider the larger context in which this decision was made. Trump came into office promising mass deportation. While some of his voters thought that meant only criminal undocumented immigrants, that was clearly never the intent. This administration is attempting to rid America of certain immigrant communities altogether. In some cases, like South Florida Venezuelans, it’s even targeting immigrants who voted for him. As pointed out in a previous newsletter, his own DHS suggests deportations should number 100 million. That’s nearly one-third of the country. Big picture, the Court’s decision stands in opposition to this administration’s ethnic cleansing schemes.

Two of the most important ideas put forth in the Declaration of Independence are 1) the inherent dignity of all humans, and 2) a rejection of concentrated executive authority. The Supreme Court helpfully supported these American values in its ruling.

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10 Spots Left! Tell Your Pastor About J29!

J29 Cohort equips pastors and ministry leaders to cultivate a Jesus-shaped political imagination in their congregations. Through high-quality training from experienced leaders and shared learning alongside fellow clergy from across the country, participants will be formed for faithful, thoughtful engagement in their local contexts.

Send your pastor this link and encourage them to apply.

J29 Coalition

You can also help pastors participate in this program by giving a tax-deductible contribution today.

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What We’re Reading

Justin Giboney: “When Despair Becomes Self-Indulgent”

Unfortunately, today extreme voices are dominating important conversations and using drama to make the most sensational opinions seem normal. Our political commentary concerning even the most serious civic issues is often overrun by a Real Housewives of Potomac flair for the theatrical. Leaders of the Civil Rights Movement wisely dramatized their activism to put the injustices of Jim Crow on the nightly news in the living rooms of Americans nationwide. But today, we’re captivated by lesser forms of drama with all the amplification but little of the virtue of that era.

Social media algorithms leave us craving worst-case scenarios, longing for another fix from dramatic accusations hurled at our opponents. Any suggestion that an outcome is harmful but not definitively disastrous is held in contempt. And our rivals must always be viewed in the worst possible light. Social justice activism can’t merely be misguided; its patron saint Rosa Parks must be called a fraud. Justice Amy Coney Barrett can’t simply have a wrong opinion; she must be dubbed a white supremacist.

The more extreme the accusation, the more attractive it is for our embrace. The more provocative the accusers, the more “authentic” they are in our culture. We value contemptuous creativity over credibility or compassion.

LINK

The Argument: “Elon Musk’s zero accountability life: Elon Musk goes berserk if you talk about USAID”

In other words, the toll from USAID cuts seems to be at best around two-thirds of a million people annually¹; that’s about as many people as were killed during the Civil War. At worst, Musk is tied to the deaths of 14 million.

If DOGE had managed to cut tens of billions of dollars from the federal budget, Musk and his defenders would certainly have taken credit. It’s bizarre then to disclaim responsibility for the tragic consequences of the cuts they did make.

LINK

NYT: “MAGA Base Stays Quiet After Trump Reports Billions in Personal Gains”

President Trump’s $2.2 billion in personal earnings during his presidency has been met largely with silence from his MAGA base, which has been increasingly willing to revolt against policies they view as an abandonment of his promises to put everyday Americans first.

Far-right members of Congress, prominent media pundits and grass-roots activists have criticized Mr. Trump’s war with Iran and openly broken ranks to demand the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files. They have accused him of prioritizing his own interests over the needs of the voters who elected him to office.

But few far-right voices aligned with Mr. Trump have criticized him over the scale of his personal haul, reported this week, or the conflict inherent in his status as a major cryptocurrency industry operator and its top policymaker.

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faith250

What about July 5th?

When we began discussing the need for multi-faith, congregation-based, local celebrations of America’s 250th, we had no idea what kind of response we would receive. The initial conversations were with a handful of local clergy friends, and Reform rabbinic colleagues around the country. When we launched on July 4…

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2 months ago · 5 likes · Michael G. Holzman

What We’re Watching

Christian Nationalism Study

AVC is not involved in this study, but for anyone who may be interested …

Do you consider yourself a recovering or former supporter of Christian nationalism? If so, you are invited to participate in a research study on what helps people leave Christian nationalism. Participants will be interviewed on Zoom for about an hour. The research team is from Michigan State, Penn State, and the University of Georgia. Email LeavingChristianNationalism@gmail.com to see if you are eligible for this study.

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Links

Affiliate link for Reclaiming Patriotism in an Age of Extremes: https://bookshop.org/a/95847/9780300258707

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Patriotism and Its Challenges

14:00 Nationalism vs. Patriotism: Understanding the Distinction

20:21 Reclaiming Patriotism: A Path Forward

There have been many striking parallels between current events and fictional TV shows. Incredibly, these shows were written and filmed before the events they mirror.

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Here are three examples.

1) The Boys

In S5E6 of the superhero satire show The Boys, Homelander, the main antagonist, unveiled a golden statue of himself, an expression of his large and growing God-complex. The same week that episode aired, a golden statue of Trump1 was unveiled at Trump National Doral Miami. The Trump ceremony even included a pastor “blessing” the statue, which held similarities to Homelander’s relationship with a super-powered televangelist named Oh-Father, a presumed servant of God who is more interested in serving Homelander.

That was just one of many parallels between the show and real life, which led showrunner Eric Kripke to remark that he is “really tired and weary of the world reflecting the show before we get a chance to do it.”

The episodes were written before the 2024 election. Filming ran from November 2024 to July 2025.

2) Daredevil: Born Again

In Daredevil: Born Again, a convicted felon, Wilson Fisk, aka Kingpin, becomes mayor of New York City. He creates a special task force, selecting the most corrupt cops he can find. The task force ignores civil liberties as it terrorizes the city. Residents of places like Chicago, LA, Portland, and Minneapolis will find some task force scenes eerily familiar. Fisk also creates a secret prison, akin to how the Trump administration planned to create prisons in warehouses without an announcement or community input.2

One of the most striking similarities has to do with Frank Castle, aka The Punisher, an anti-hero who seeks vigilante justice against the mobsters responsible for the death of his wife and children.

Some members of Fisk’s task force begin using Punisher’s symbol, imagining him to be their model. The use of the symbol by officers was already well documented when these episodes were written, likely inspiring the writers. After the episodes aired, media reports surfaced about this phenomenon rising to the highest level. The director of the FBI, Kash Patel, had been handing out challenge coins that used the Punisher symbol.

In S1E9, Castle confronts the officers using his symbol. Patel should consider what he tells the fictional officers: “You think you know my loss? How I see the world? ... You’re a bunch of clowns, you know that?”

Notably, the hero of the show is Daredevil, Matt Murdock, not Castle. The morality of vigilantism is a major theme of the show, and Murdock, a lawyer with a Catholic upbringing, struggles with how to respond when the system fails. On this journey, we see Murdock make poor choices and deal with the consequences. Castle shows us what Daredevil could become if he chooses the wrong path. The show doesn’t present Castle as the hero to emulate. And the dirty cops who admire Punisher just don’t get it. They’re part of the system creating the injustice that both Daredevil and Punisher are fighting.

Season 1 of Daredevil: Born Again was written and filmed entirely before Trump won in 2024. Season 2 was filmed February-July 2025.

3) Andor

When Season 2 of the Star Wars series Andor was released in the Spring of last year, there were many undeniable parallels between currents events and a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

The Empire seeks to expand its hold on power by creating a problem that is then blamed on peaceful protestors. This is similar to the method I’ve written about before in this newsletter: “1) federal agents create chaos, 2) protests over the chaos ensue, 3) Trump uses the protests as an excuse to grab more power.”

Rather than provide a check on Emperor Palpatine, the Senate goes along with the power grab. In one of the most memorable scenes of the series, Mon Mothma delivers a powerful speech to the Senate. It begins,

“I stand this morning with a difficult message. I believe we are in crisis. The distance between what is said and what is known to be true has become an abyss. Of all the things at risk, the loss of an objective reality is perhaps the most dangerous. The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil. When truth leaves us, when we let it slip away, when it is ripped from our hands, we become vulnerable to the appetite of whatever monster screams the loudest.”

The speech was widely shared because of its relevance to current events. It currently has over a million views on Disney’s YouTube channel alone. Season 2 was written in 2022-2023 and filming started in 2022, before Trump’s second term.

Why is this happening?

Why have certain TV show writers been such prescient explainers of our current political moment? I can only speculate. It may be that good writing and good observation go hand-in-hand. These writers could have a rare talent for seeing things in our culture that most of us miss. Or, maybe, in the words of Charlie Cox, the actor who plays Daredevil, it’s “purely coincidental”?

What do you think? Let me know in the comments.

Bridging the Divide

Also, be sure to check out Emily Matthews’ article on her experience working for AVC, “Bridging the Divide: How My Journey Led Me to the American Values Coalition,” published this month at The Vital Center.

She writes,

We use our digital presence to speak out on abuses of power from the federal government, while also speaking up for the vulnerable. With so much misinformation in the digital ecosystem, we aim to be a voice of truth. Through providing resources, skills, and building a community, we hope to counter the extremism and the misinformation we are witnessing in our families and neighborhoods. All these efforts are important to us because as Christians, we believe it’s both wise and biblically sound to “clean up our own house” before we cast judgement on others. How can we be a light to the world if our own affairs are off balance? How can we have a leg to stand on morally if we’re enabling corruption in our own communities?

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Some More Good Reads

WaPo: “Tulsi Gabbard, her guru and the mysterious messages that helped shape her political career”

The documents, together with Saltzburg’s explanation of them, raised remarkable questions: Had a reclusive guru been secretly trying to steer Gabbard’s actions as a public official? And could that shed light on the improbable arc traced by one of the most unconventional shape-shifters in modern American politics?

Gabbard’s career trajectory has taken her from socially conservative Democrat to progressive darling, Bernie Sanders ally and presidential hopeful, and then to Fox News contributor, MAGA Republican and, eventually, Trump’s top intelligence official, a role that granted her access to some of the nation’s most sensitive secrets.

LINK

Cato: “The Freedom to Give Helps Protect Everyone’s Liberty”

When Donald Trump publicly vowed one year ago to revoke Harvard University’s tax-exempt status, a step lacking in any colorable legal basis, he sent a shock wave through America’s nonprofit and philanthropic community. It was part of a multi-fronted onslaught that included investigations, loose talk of confiscating endowments, and even a move to purge ideologically unwelcome nonprofits from the public service loan forgiveness program. In 2021, vice-president-to-be J.D. Vance, then running for an Ohio Senate seat, said that while the Ford Foundation, the Gates Foundation, and Harvard “pretend to be charities” and get corresponding tax treatment, they are “fundamentally cancers on American society.”

There is a contrasting story to be told, though, about how the freedom to give without asking government permission or approval has given America a $600 billion philanthropic sector with unique accomplishments in advancing science, health, education, religion, and culture, among other endeavors – no other country comes anywhere close to matching it.

LINK

The Bulwark: “Oops, We Invited Nazis to Our Christian Nationalist Conference”

Last weekend, roughly 1,500 Christian nationalists from across the country met in Ogden, Utah, for “The War for Normal”—a gathering featuring some of far-right Christianity’s most online thinkers and posters.

…

Fatefully, the event also included a booth for Antelope Hill Publishing—an extremist publishing house that has made its name putting out racist books, as well as translating and reprinting old ones. To give you an idea of what we’re dealing with here, Antelope Hill got its start translating the memoir of an unrepentant commander in the Nazi SS. Their current online store is offering not one but two “Third Reich Bundles”—a collection of books written by prominent Nazis for between $126.89 and $180.49.

Antelope Hill didn’t exactly clean up for the big conference. The press tweeted out a picture of its booth, showing stacks of both the SS memoir, Burning Souls, and other pro-Nazi books like The Essential Speeches of Adolf Hitler.

LINK

Reflecting pool discourse mirrors some important truths about what news spreads, and what doesn’t.

Does it ever feel like there’s an inverse relationship between the importance of a news story and how much we talk about it? It often feels like that to me, especially over the past week. How many posts have you scrolled past that were about the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool or the White House cage match? If you’re not sure what I’m referencing, consider yourself blessed.

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Meanwhile, these much more newsworthy stories have been getting less attention:

• The proposed rewrite of federal grantmaking rules, which I wrote about in the previous newsletter.

• The FCC appears to be pressuring Disney to censor its content, especially Jimmy Kimmel and The View. Even Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, is pushing back.

• The FBI raided the offices of a voter registration organization in Ohio. Critics of the raid argue it’s an abuse of government power and designed to intimidate similar left-leaning groups.

There are exceptions. The Iran peace deal has been getting a lot of well-deserved attention, for instance. But much of our political discourse is filled with news that just doesn’t matter that much to our daily lives. There are many reasons for this. We’re increasingly getting our news from social media, and the social media algorithms that push content to the top of our feeds prefer sensationalism.

There’s another factor that I think particularly helps explain why there has been so much news about the reflecting pool. There’s a phenomenon in committee meetings known as Bikeshedding, or Parkinson’s law of triviality, which states that committees will spend most of their time on the most trivial matters. This happens because the more important questions tend to be more complex, difficult to understand, and harder to resolve, whereas trivial questions are easier for everyone to grasp. Social media has become like one big committee meeting. These “committees” will naturally gravitate to the most trivial matters because they’re easy to understand.

Instead of getting your news from social media, go directly to a reputable news source. (Personally, I like newsletters. I can read the news directly in my email and there are fewer ads and pop-ups to deal with.) You may still get drawn into trivial discussions, but at least you can stay informed about the important stuff along the way.

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Some Other (Non-trivial) Reads

Cambridge U Press: “Moving Away from Extreme Views of Religion and Politics: A Dynamic Civil Religion”

Extreme voices dominate the national public debate in America over the proper role of religion and politics. Christian nationalists call for Christianity to dominate politics and culture. At the other extreme, strict secularists seek to remove all religious influence in the public square.

Unfortunate dynamics in American media coverage make it appear that these views are wider and deeper than they really are. Most Americans are not Christian nationalists, and most are not strict secularists. About one in ten American adults uphold the nativist, state-centric, and antidemocratic views found in pockets of the American right. At the other end of the spectrum, about one in six Americans are strict secularists who seek to remove all religious imprints on public life.

Most Americans reject both extremes, knowing that religion and politics will at times overlap and can do so constructively. As we detail in our recent book, religion and politics are deeply intertwined in American politics and have been for centuries. It is difficult but not impossible for seculars and people from myriad religious faiths to work together in a representative democracy.

LINK

Politico: “The New Right Has a Blueprint for Building a Christian America”

On paper, Brewington Farms will be a neighborhood like any other; in practice, it’s anything but. The development stands as the cornerstone of the Highland Rim Project, an audacious effort to build conservative Christian “charter communities” throughout Appalachia. Backed by the venture-capital firm New Founding, a Dallas-based fund with extensive ties to the ecosystem of conservative intellectuals and activists known as the New Right, the plan embodies that movement’s core conviction: that conservatives need to use the levers of public and private power to remake American life in their own image. As Abbotoy readily acknowledges, the project is as much an ideological experiment as an entrepreneurial one. What would it look like to build a microcosm of the New Right’s ideal society in the middle of central Tennessee?

LINK

Texas Tribune: “A Muslim Texan sought to find his place in the party at the state GOP convention. He left in tears.”

To some extent, Mohamed Hussein knew he was preparing to enter the lion’s den.

But he made the decision to attend the Republican Party of Texas Convention to confirm for himself that he had a place in the GOP, even as members of the party have railed for months about the urgency of ending Sharia Law and the so-called “Islamification” of Texas.

What he found was a party that didn’t want him. He arrived with hope, but left in tears after being told explicitly that he should leave the country.

LINK

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Some Disturbing News

An instructor for AVC’s Mending Division Academy was recently arrested by police and fired from his church. You can read about it here. We decided to remove his content from our sites as we continue to discuss the best path forward.

A new proposal would turn non-partisan government funding for science, health, housing, and transportation into tools of the president.

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According to the proposal, applications for Federal funding would need to “demonstrably advance the President’s policy priorities,” and must not “promote anti-American values.”

These two requirements are at odds with each other. Requiring merit-based awardees to advance the president’s priorities is itself anti-American. Our government was intentionally designed to diffuse power, not concentrate it in the presidency. Power is shared among those who support and don’t support the president’s priorities. In the words of James Madison, “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition” (Federalist #51).

I understand the impulse behind this proposal. During the Obama administration in particular, many sectors of the scientific community would’ve found themselves in hot water if their findings were at odds with progressive orthodoxy. This was a real problem I wrote about a lot at the time. But the answer to the problem of political pressure on scientists is not more political pressure on scientists.

This proposal is top-down, centralized government-style rule making. In other words, it does not reflect American values. More than that, it doesn’t reflect conservative values. This is Big Government — the sort of thing Republicans used to at least say they’re against.

For my Republican friends, here is one more thing to consider: if this proposal goes into effect, it will still be in effect the next time a Democrat enters the White House. Is that what you want?

The proposal is currently open for public comments. For information on how to do that, go here and click on “Public Comments” in the left column.

Sources:

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/05/29/2026-10817/regulation-for-federal-financial-assistance#addresses

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/02/us/politics/trump-budget-grants-omb-vought.html

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/03/trump-public-funding-proposal

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Some More Good Reads

Lawfare: “The Jan. 6 Pardons: How Many Clemency Recipients Have Faced Other Charges?”

At least 97 of the more than 1,500 individuals granted clemency by President Trump for their roles in the January 6 Capitol attack have been arrested for, charged with, or convicted of crimes separate from Jan. 6 since their participation in the Jan. 6 riot.

A Lawfare study reveals that almost one in 16 insurrectionists subject to the president’s clemency order has been arrested for and charged with—and in the vast majority of cases convicted of—other crimes, at least some of which were actively enabled by the clemency actions.

The alleged crimes by Jan. 6 defendants since Jan. 6, 2021, run the gamut from relatively low-grade offenses like property damage, possession of drug paraphernalia, and trespassing to serious felonies like grand larceny, stalking, planning to assassinate law enforcement officials and prominent politicians, and defrauding government agencies. One Jan. 6 pardonee was convicted in February 2026 of child molestation and sentenced to life in prison. Another was convicted in 2025 of reckless homicide.

LINK

ProPublica: “The White House Intervened to Get a $620 Million Deal for a Company Tied to Donald Trump Jr.”

When the Pentagon announced a $620 million loan last year to a small North Carolina startup linked to Donald Trump Jr., defense officials and the company tried to tamp down suspicions of cronyism.

The president’s eldest son said through a spokesperson that he wasn’t involved. The Pentagon said Trump Jr. played no role in the record-setting deal. And the startup’s founder told reporters that his company, Vulcan Elements, received no political favoritism.

But interviews and Defense Department records reviewed by ProPublica show that the request to loan hundreds of millions of dollars to the firm linked to Trump Jr. was made by Peter Navarro, a White House adviser to President Donald Trump and a friend of Trump Jr.’s.

LINK

Report: “Nobody to Call: An exploration of friendship, community, and purpose among men without college degrees”

There is no “male loneliness crisis,” but there is a crisis of men without degrees being “left alone” by society. As the college degree has become the great sorter of American civic life, and as men continue to fall behind in completing college, men without degrees have increasingly found themselves sorted out of economic and social life. The nature of disconnection for these men makes their lives mostly invisible to the outside world. We decided to embark on this research project, Nobody to Call, to make the invisible visible: to humanize and provide texture to the lives of a group of people who are often talked about but are rarely heard from directly.

We interviewed 30 men without degrees, and the story that emerged is at once more despairing and more hopeful than what we expected at the start of this research. More despairing because the men we spoke to are even more disconnected than we anticipated, and a life of renewed connection is seemingly out of reach for many. But more hopeful because the current cultural narrative about these men—that they are nihilistic, resentful, closed-up loners—is almost entirely wrong. Most of these guys want to open up, connect, and contribute, but they need to be called in.

LINK

Phil Williams: “The Fight for the Southern Baptist Convention - and Strange (Racist, Antisemitic) Bedfellows”

Among those leading that effort to push the Southern Baptist Convention even farther to the right is William Wolfe, a first-term Trump administration appointee and now executive director of the Center for Baptist Leadership.

Wolfe recently joined a podcast to discuss “how to deal with being smeared as a racist”—just two days after the pseudonymous host of that podcast openly embraced affiliation with the Ku Klux Klan, affirmed his belief that “races of men are as distinct as breeds of animals,” and decried race mixing as “evil.”

As part of his campaign, Wolfe also took his case before a far-right group whose leaders have been denounced as “antisemites and racists.” At one of the group’s events, the executive director of the Center for Baptist Leadership also found himself in the company of a former neo-Nazi figure who is now pushing what, critics say, amounts to an ethnic cleansing of America.

LINK

This past Memorial Day weekend marked 10 years since I began my journey working in politics professionally. To simply say “It’s been a ride!” would be an understatement like no other. I know I’m not alone in this sentiment—even for those who pay little attention to politics—as America collectively has been on quite the journey this past decade.

With so many reflections floating through my head—the good, the bad, and the unbearably ugly—it’s hard to narrow down the biggest lessons I’ve learned, but I’ll try:

1: America is more fragile than I ever believed.

In the first couple years of the Trump administration, I was working right down the street from the White House. As a political communications professional, I was constantly bombarded with the news of the day and every sensational move President Trump made. It took some time before the shock wore off, but there was a deep, remaining uncertainty about America’s future. My generation had never witnessed a tumultuous political season like this one, and I was reminded daily that our system only holds if we are committed to defending our democratic norms and institutions. I never thought I would witness such blatant, egregious assaults on these systems and it instilled a sense of fear for my country I had never felt before. I simply didn’t ever think this could happen in America.

2: America is more resilient than I ever believed.

Interestingly enough, once enough time had passed and I was able to process the chaos, I gained a new perspective. I saw America fighting for a comeback. Civic engagement skyrocketed: Americans turned out for elections in record numbers, protested peacefully, and talked about politics more in their daily lives. The metaphorical antibodies began multiplying to attack the infection, and I witnessed a recommitment to American values.

3: Our individual strength is found in local communities, and our national strength is dependent upon these bonds.

Moving out of D.C. helped me with this one. I was able to gain a new perspective by grounding myself in a city that didn’t revolve around the chaotic news cycle. I was reminded that most Americans are simply trying to work hard to better their lives for themselves and their loved ones. There is strength in knowing and serving your community. As humans, it’s what we’re built for. Added bonus: It strengthens our minds to be a stronger force against a tyrannical government.

4: Most Americans want the same end goal, but the fringes are currently dominating the national conversation.

Thankfully, the loudest voices (amplified through media and the internet) don’t hold the majority’s opinions; they are simply entertainers. While it is concerning to see the rise of these personalities building large followings, we know through data that extremists from both sides of the political aisle only make up about 30% of the population. Normal people simply have real jobs and responsibilities, so we don’t hear from them in the click-baity media sphere.

5: We can rebuild.

The most surprising macro lesson about this journey has been the enduring hope I still have about what America is capable of becoming. In spite of all the noise and corrupt violations of our system, the center is still holding. More Americans are engaged than they’ve ever been in my lifetime, and if we can get through this decade, we can overcome just about anything. It will take work, but our nation still holds enduring promise and opportunity.

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Some More Good Reads

The Free Press: “How Ben Sasse Raised Me”

“Every single day of my childhood, my parents asked the same question at dinner. Not ‘What did you learn?’ but ‘Who did you serve?’…At 22, I’m profoundly grateful that I get to view my life and work through the lens of service.”

LINK

New York Times: “There Are Scandals. There Is the Law. And Then There’s This.”

“Trump is circumventing Congress’s power of the purse. He’s circumventing the judiciary’s role in adjudicating disputes…he’s circumventing civil and criminal law. This is one of the most purely monarchical moments of a monarchical presidency.”

LINK

KCUR: “Cynicism about the media makes people more likely to fall for misinformation, KU professor finds”

“Wilner’s study found that some skepticism is healthy. However, when questioning turns into automatic distrust, news consumers can become cynical, which actually makes them more vulnerable to misinformation.”

LINK

Gabriel & Jeanette Salguero: “Artificial Intelligence and the Evangelical Test of Moral Leadership”

The deeper issue is not merely whether AI can assist ministry. The question is whether the Church possesses the moral imagination necessary to discern how AI is reshaping humanity itself…The evangelical task, therefore, is not technological enthusiasm nor technological fear. It is ethical stewardship. We must move beyond fascination with utility and toward serious theological reflection about design, deployment, scaling, and consequence.

LINK

Watch:

The Russell Moore Show: “America Needs a Better Gospel Than Christian Nationalism”

LINK

DW News: “Inside the broligarchy: Is big tech running US politics?”

LINK

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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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.

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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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4 months ago · 448 likes · 85 comments · Charlie Sykes

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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