American Values Coalition

Where to Find Reliable Election Information

American Values Coalition — Sat, 03 Oct 2026 10:47:48 GMT

In the weeks leading up to the midterm elections, you’ll likely see a lot of “election information”-type posts on social media and digital ads. Not all of these are legit.

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For instance, a website called Vote Safe, at Votesafe.org (I suggest using an incognito window if you want to look at it), is made to look like an official and reliable website to help you register to vote. Instead, it will collect a bunch of your personal information, which it can then sell or share with campaigns, but it will not register you. The site is run by America PAC, Elon Musk’s super PAC.

Instead of that site, go to Vote.gov. This nonpartisan site is run by the federal government. It won’t collect your personal info and it will link you to the official election information in your state. Once at your state’s election website, you can get information like your registration status, polling place, voting hours, and a preview of your ballot.

Another website I sometimes use is Ballotpedia.org, which is run by the nonpartisan, nonprofit Lucy Burns Institute. This website is good for seeing candidate issue positions, which can be especially helpful for the less-publicized races.

As you become inundated with election information, keep in mind that some of these sources will be reputable nonprofits; others will be untrustworthy, angling for partisan advantage. Knowing which is which requires discernment. A site asking for personal information like your name and address isn’t necessarily a bad actor, but it is a red flag. Proceed with caution.

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What We’re Reading

CNN: “Inside the Texas courtroom where toddlers face immigration judges”

Most of the children, dressed formally with neatly styled hair, waited impatiently for the judge. Among the first to appear before the judge was a 13-year-old Honduran boy named Angel. He didn’t have an attorney.
Asked whether there was a reason he couldn’t return to Honduras, Angel told the judge, “My mom and almost my entire family are here. It’s too dangerous to go back.”
But that wasn’t enough for the judge, who told the boy he did not qualify for asylum. “Would you like to request voluntary departure, or should I issue a removal order?” The judge asked.
“I don’t know,” Angel replied before bursting into tears. He stared ahead stoically and continued to cry, eventually saying: “I have no one. I have nothing.”
“I understand, but based on your answers, US immigration laws are very strict,” the judge concluded, and gave Angel until the end of the month to appeal his deportation order.

LINK

The Bulwark: “An Evangelical Kingmaker Is Lost in the Age of Trump”

The Family Research Council’s Pray Vote Stand Summit was once a marquee political gathering for evangelicals and their allies in politics. But at this year’s event in Leesburg, Virginia, decline was evident everywhere, from the downsized venue far outside the Beltway to the sparse attendance and general lack of interest from elected officials. When the organization’s leader, Tony Perkins, addressed the audience, it became clear that he has been relegated to the D.C. sidelines after enjoying years of high-contact play as a leader in the anti-abortion movement.
Perkins’s position had once made him something of an evangelical kingmaker. But those who followed his lead in earlier times now largely get their information and political impetus from a shrinking number of online channels or from Trump himself. Perkins’s voice doesn’t resonate the way it once did with conservative audiences. This became clear from watching the crowd while he spoke.

LINK

Christianity Today: “The Anti-Gospel of American Politics”

This is the story Jesus told his followers to embody. It is the story of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, and, practically speaking, we embody it by obeying the Sermon on the Mount and Jesus’ other teachings. “If you love me,” Jesus said, “keep my commands” (John 14:15), commands of meekness, mercy, purity, peace, courage, and self-sacrificial love, even for our enemies (Matt. 5).
None of that “works” in our political climate. This climate is, in Hauerwas’s words, one of “mendacity and fear.” Our politics lie to us about people who are not like us, making us angry and afraid. Are all Republicans racists and fascists trying to pull this country into tyranny? Are all Democrats Marxists trying to brainwash children and overthrow the family? The answer is obviously no—but lies like this are everywhere in our country. They teach us to “bite and devour each other” (Gal. 5:15), even our siblings in Christ.
It is in exactly this kind of turmoil that the church of Jesus is called to stand as a witness to an alternative story, a story where God makes his enemies his friends and offers them a place at his table (Rom. 5:10). If that is not the story we’re telling—if the loudest thing we’re saying is a Republican story, a Democratic story, or any story from American politics—then the world will not hear the truth of Jesus, nor will we ourselves be able to hear God’s story rightly. We will tickle our own ears and ultimately clog them to the truth.

LINK

WSJ: “Homeland Security Money Financed Pro-Trump Television Ads”

The Trump administration used federal funds from the Department of Homeland Security to finance a set of controversial pro-Trump advertisements that recently began airing on television, according to people familiar with the matter.

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3 Ways You Can Help Protect Democracy

American Values Coalition — Sat, 26 Sep 2026 11:56:43 GMT

Photo by Phil Hearing on Unsplash

Do you want to help defend, strengthen, and promote democracy in America? Here are some resources that can help.

Voting

First, informed voting is a civic duty. The National Latino Evangelical Coalition just released a resource to help you think through this responsibility. It’s called “With Love: A Christian Guide to Faithful Voting.” This isn’t one of those “voter guides” telling you which candidates to support. Rather, it helps you think through voting decisions for yourself. It acknowledges that Christians won’t always agree on voting decisions and provides guidance on what to do when we disagree.

Get the Guide

Elections

Second, you can help strengthen our election system by signing up to become a Trusted Neighbor. Trusted Neighbors is a program of Advancing Liberty Coalition (AVC is a member). Sign up today and you’ll be connected with a local State Lead and offered training and become part of a community of Trusted Neighbors actively working to strengthen elections in their own local communities.

Become a Trusted Neighbor

Extreme Polarization

Third, you can strengthen our democracy by helping to reduce extreme polarization. Common Ground USA has a resource to help you do that: the Peacemaker’s Toolkit. Use this resource in your community groups or organizations. It’s written for use in churches, as well as secular, non-Christian, or multi-faith spaces.

Peacemakers Toolkit

What We’re Reading

Roys Report: “The rise of the Jim Crow theobros”

This group, many of whom fit the Reformed Christian theobro typology — known for their distinctive beards, suits and penchant for exegeting over whiskey — has wedded old-school segregationist theology from the Jim Crow-era South with the hypermasculinity of the manosphere and the savvy of the attention economy to preach white supremacy, antisemitism and patriarchy, mostly to disillusioned young men on the internet.
And along the way, they are turning outrage into cash.

LINK

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Amy E. Black

Navigating the News Media

Most of us learn about politics and campaigns indirectly. On rare occasions, we attend an event and get to experience something firsthand. But most of the time we depend on others, often the news media, to tell us what is happening. Since we must rely primarily or entirely on indirect information, it makes sense to think critically and carefully about t…

11 days ago · 6 likes · Amy E. Black

ConfrontTheHate.com

As CNN, MS NOW, Politico Booted, White Nationalist Outlet Snags White House Press Slot

13 days ago · 78 likes · 2 comments · Phil Williams

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GOP Reckons With Racist Right in Texas

American Values Coalition — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 23:13:57 GMT

Bo French, a candidate for the Texas Railroad Commission, at a CPAC conference in March 2026. Credit...Callaghan O'Hare/Reuters

The Texas Republican’s racism problem may finally be getting some much needed attention.

Thanks to a X post by Bo French, the Republican nominee for Texas Railroad Commissioner, the Texas GOP is grappling with the xenophobes and white supremacists in their tent. The controversy started Saturday after a dramatic come-from-behind victory by the University of Texas over Ohio State.

French became triggered by a photo of students in the stadium celebrating because many in the photo appeared to be of South Asian or Hispanic descent.

“I heard UT graduation this year looked like this. I didn’t believe it. The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined,” French wrote.

French, a UT graduate, later added, “I cheered the win for the team. It was a great game. But I weep for the families in Texas who can’t get into UT because they prioritize foreigners over Texans. Shame on you for ignoring that fact.”

As a community note helpfully pointed out, UT freshmen are at least 90% Texas residents by law. Of the remaining 10%, international students must compete for those spots with out-of-state applicants. Of recent freshmen, they make up only about 4%. But more importantly, we don’t know if they’re international students from a photo. French assumes they’re not Texan, and don’t belong here, because they have brown skin.

This event has become a Rorschach test for Republicans and right-wingers, especially here in Texas. Thankfully, many Republican politicians have flatly condemned it. Others, however, have dodged the question, remained silent, or even worse, defended it.

“Are other Republican elected officials going to condemn the intolerance and racism, or look the other way while it becomes normalized. This is how great political parties self-destruct. Sad,” U.S. Sen. John Cornyn responded.

Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows said, “You can oppose immigration policy without demeaning people because of their race or ethnicity — this post has crossed the line.”

Jeff Leach and Jared Patterson, two Republican members of the Texas House, also condemned French’s post. Leach called it “racist” while Patterson said it’s not “Christian or conservative.”

Texas Governor Greg Abbott delivered a more toned-down rebuke: “That is not my message.”

Republican strategist Karl Rove wrote an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal (gift link) explaining why he would vote for French’s opponent, Jon Rosenthal, which will be only the second time in his life voting for a Democrat.

Rove also warned,

“The GOP has a growing number of Bo Frenches—and not only in Texas. Conservatism and the party it dominates have an increasing number of bigoted advocates of a ‘heritage America’ composed of white descendants of the original European settlers. There are ‘just asking questions’ Jew-haters, misogynists who worship hypermasculinity, conspiracy nuts seeking clicks for profit, and religious bigots who won’t differentiate between Muslim terrorists and Muslim American patriots.”

The UT chapter of Turning Point USA (TPUSA) also condemned French’s remarks, stating in part, “we cannot criticize racial identity politics when it comes from the left while embracing the same framework when it is convenient to do so from the right.”

Other TPUSA figures defended French, however. Chief of Staff Mikey McCoy accused Cornyn and Rove of being closet Democrats. TPUSA podcasters Jack Posobiec and Benny Johnson also defended French. (I wrote about Johnson’s racism just last month.)

The extremist infiltration of the TX GOP has been going on for many years now. Two years ago I wrote about it for this newsletter.

Writing for Texas Monthly, Robert Downen points out that French has been saying things even more racist than that for a long time.

“If you have paid any attention to French, the wave of critical responses may be surprising. For years, he has used social media as a fire hose for blatant racism and xenophobia. He frequently calls his critics ‘gay’ or ‘retarded.’ He wants America to be more like Rhodesia, the former African pseudostate whose white government violently oppressed Black people. French has called for the deportation of 100 million people—roughly a third of the American population—and for several nonwhite elected officials to be stripped of their citizenship. He has argued that McCarthyism and the Christian Crusades didn’t go far enough. He once asked his social media followers whether Jews or Muslims posed a bigger threat to America. And in just the past few months, he has called for the rounding up of all Muslims and Chinese people, cited an obscure white supremacist novel, and routinely flirted with fascist rhetoric and conspiracy theories. As he has done so, his party has largely remained silent, focusing instead on unity ahead of the midterm elections.”

So why are Republicans just now deciding to speak out? Downen wonders if it’s because “they are facing a potential blue wave in November, and so it would be best not to further anger Texas’s massive nonwhite voting population.” NYT columnist David French (no relation, as far as I know), suggested it was because Bo French was caught “desecrating America’s high church — college football.”

Regardless of the reason, it’s better late than never. While I wish they had spoken out sooner, I will applaud and amplify key Republicans who denounce racists among them. Your average Republican voter will be more likely to hear it from them than a Democrat.

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In Other News

Erick Erickson's Show Notes

The Midwestern Führerbunker Driving the Right Off the Cliff

Editor’s Note: I’ve worked on this for weeks. Yes, it is long. I beg you to read it all. I’ve kept it as easy to understand as I can. Please read it. You guys always ask me to “name names.” Challenge accepted…

18 days ago · 416 likes · 146 comments · Erick-Woods Erickson

NBC News: “DHS watchdog finds immigrants were held at ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ in outdoor cages the size of phone booths”

Some immigrants detained at Florida’s now-shuttered “Alligator Alcatraz” were confined in outdoor cages only slightly larger than telephone booths for more than an hour at a time, according to a new report by the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general.
The watchdog report marks the first time a government agency has confirmed the existence of the cramped cages at the South Florida Detention Facility. Amnesty International found in a report published in December, based on interviews with detainees and a tour of the facility, that the cages were used to punish detainees and amounted to torture, sparking a congressional probe.

LINK

ProPublica: “Donald Trump Jr.’s Bahamas Wedding Was Secretly Bankrolled by Russian Oligarch Close to Putin”

On May 24, Donald Trump Jr. was celebrating in the Bahamas, as scantily clad dancers in stilettos and sailor caps performed for him and his guests. It was the last night of his wedding, a lavish, three-day party held across a pair of ultra-exclusive private islands. A five-tier funfetti cake had been airlifted in from Florida, and helicopters and seaplanes descended on the islands before guests settled into their oceanfront villas. That night on the beach, Trump Jr. lifted his bride into the air while fireworks launched from a barge over the sea.
“It was everything we dreamed of and more,” his wife later wrote on Instagram.
That dream was heavily funded by a secret benefactor: Umar Kremlev, a Russian oligarch close to President Vladimir Putin.

LINK

Event

Trinity Forum: The Founders, the First Freedom, and Us, an Online Conversation with David French. September 18, 2026 1:30pm - 2:30pm ET

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Evangelicalism: the Good, the Bad, and the Fringe

American Values Coalition — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 18:56:41 GMT

Bonnie Kristian discusses her new book ‘In Defense of Evangelicalism,’ addressing misconceptions, critiques, and the positive aspects of evangelical culture, especially in the context of politics and society.

Links

In Defense of Evangelicalism: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/818937/in-defense-of-evangelicalism-by-bonnie-kristian/

Bonnie Kristian substack:

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Bonnie Kristian and her book

00:15 Why Bonnie Kristian wrote ‘In Defense of Evangelicalism’

00:52 Historical and current critiques of evangelicals

01:21 The dissonance between evangelical life and public perception

02:48 Critique of Christian nationalism surveys

04:49 High scores on Christian nationalism and what they mean

06:53 Distinguishing between fringe and typical evangelicals

08:31 The good in evangelical communities and their societal impact

12:39 The challenge of defending evangelicals amid criticism

14:17 Acknowledging legitimate critiques of evangelicalism

17:20 The political shift in evangelical attitudes and actions

20:32 How evangelicals can be called to reform and self-critique

23:48 The importance of love and unity within evangelical communities

27:28 Bonnie Kristian’s article on Charlie Kirk and political discourse

32:56 Closing remarks and where to follow Bonnie Kristian

A President Who Promised to Protect Christians Is Shutting Them Out

American Values Coalition — Sun, 13 Sep 2026 11:56:17 GMT

Source: State of the Golden Door Report 2024

The number of persecuted Christians allowed into the United States through the Refugee Resettlement Program has plummeted to zero so far in 2026.

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According to a new report from World Relief and Open Doors, “the U.S. has not been a haven to Christians — or any other religious minority. With less than one month remaining in the federal fiscal year, not a single religious minority refugee has been resettled in 2026 from any of the top countries of concern for religious persecution.”

To be clear, World Relief supports the refugee program for all refugees, not just Christians, but this year’s report, the fourth in a series, is choosing to highlight the impact on persecuted Christians in particular.

“The number of Christians facing persecution on account of their faith is at an all time high: 388 million, representing about 14% of Christians around the world,” the report states.

And while the report says that it “is not intended to endorse or disparage a particular administration or political party,” I can’t help but notice that this stiff-arming of persecuted Christians is being done by a president who promised to protect Christians, and many Christians voted for him.

I worked at The Christian Post during most of the Obama administration and wrote often about our refugee programs. Some of the strongest supporters at that time were Christian Right organizations and conservative Christians. These are exactly the people and groups who should speak up now because they are most able to gain the ears of this administration.

Read the full report here. Near the end you’ll find a page on how you can pray and advocate for persecuted Christians around the world.

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Backroom Deals, Secret Flights: Our Third-Country Deportation Program

American Values Coalition — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 12:55:28 GMT

Photo by Rudy Dong on Unsplash

DHS is secretly sending migrants to foreign countries that received “sweeteners” from the State Department.

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Here’s what we know so far. The U.S. State Department has agreements with at least 20 countries to receive migrants so far, while pursuing dozens of others, in exchange for multi-million dollar foreign aid packages. Previously, so-called “third-country deportations” were intended for undocumented immigrants who could not be safely returned to their home countries. But now the program has been ramped up significantly and includes people who went through the courts and won protection from deportation to their home country.

In other words, migrants who are “doing it the right way” are being apprehended without warning, put on secret flights, and sent to a country where they’re not from and might not even speak the native language. In their new country, they have no long-term legal status, no work permit, and no way to make a living. In many cases, they are detained in converted hotels, military camps, restricted housing blocks, or house arrest. Many of these nations are very poor, with high crime, political instability, and inadequate healthcare.

Our government has kept these deals secret. What little we know has come from court records and congressional reports. This is being done without congressional authorization. The US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants has a “Third Country Deportations Tracker” page where you can learn more.

Right-wing commentators often complain about the “Deep State,” by which they mean government bureaucracies implementing their own agenda out of public view. What is this, if not the Deep State the right claims to be so worried about?

To learn more, check out this report from CNN:

Sources:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ice-deports-venezuelan-father-texas-west-africa/

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/u-s-sends-20-deportees-to-liberia-part-of-1200-migrants-the-country-will-receive-under-new-deal

https://www.indiatoday.in/world/story/us-deportation-central-african-republic-includes-protected-afghan-man-ptag-2982763-2026-08-30

https://refugees.org/tcdtracker/

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Dolly Parton and the Politics of Not Hating Your Neighbor

American Values Coalition — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 11:37:39 GMT

Our nation mourns the death of Dolly Parton, a national treasure known as much for her gracious spirit and humanitarianism as her musicianship.

In November 2023, this newsletter wrote about what may have been her most political song, “World On Fire,” from her Rockstar album. In an NPR interview, she said the song was “not political,” by which I assume she meant not partisan. The song was more about the relationships broken over politics, she explained, “the great divide, I guess, is more what I’m talking about, and what it’s even doing to families, even my own.”

You can read that newsletter here:

Despite her claim that she doesn’t “do politics,” this wouldn’t be the first time Parton had something to say about our national politics. When she was touring for her film “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas,” in 1982 she told an interviewer that she “kinda wanted to make a statement with this picture.”

“It points a finger at a lot of people, and some of ’em ain’t whores. Like people who get fake religion. It’s a shame the title sounds so risqué because certain people in the Moral Majority who should see it may be turned off,” she said. “There are many wonderful people in this world, but there are many more people who just think they’re wonderful,” she continued. “In fact, they are self-righteous hypocrites, sinners because they commit crimes like judging thy neighbor. The truly religious forgive.”

Wise words from a wonderful woman.

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Measles Are Back

The measles outbreak in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, has now led to two deaths. As of Tuesday, there have been 393 confirmed cases and 70 hospitalizations in Pennsylvania alone. According to the CDC, as of August 20, there have been 2,777 confirmed cases in 45 states plus two other jurisdictions nationwide, which has already surpassed the 2025 total of 2,289 confirmed cases. The real numbers in Lancaster County are likely much higher due to the Amish population, which has less engagement with the formal healthcare system.

Vaccine misinformation leading to suffering and death was predictable and predicted. If someone has a sincere ethical or religious objection to taking a vaccine based upon true information, we should respect that. If schools or employers want to require vaccines for their employees or students, we should respect that as well. But by and large, what is happening today is due to people being misled by leaders making untrue claims about vaccines.

In 2021, Robert Kennedy Jr., our current secretary of Health and Human Services, gave a speech in Lancaster County claiming that vaccines cause autism. The 1998 paper making that claim has been retracted and since then several large-scale studies have all come to the same conclusion — there is no relationship between vaccines and autism. The 2002 Danish cohort study published in The New England Journal of Medicine had a sample of 537,303 children. A follow-up to that study tracked 657,461 children over a decade. A 2015 study published in the Journal of American Medical Association looked at 95,000 children. And a 2014 global meta-analysis looked at combined data of over 1.25 million children. The retracted study that led to the myth had a sample of 12 children.

We don’t know if there is a direct connection between Kennedy’s speech and the two deaths. There are certainly many paths to vaccine misinformation. Thankfully, in April 2025, Kennedy called the measles vaccine “the most effective way to prevent the spread of measles.” But it doesn’t help that our own HHS secretary and president have at other times sown doubt about the effectiveness of vaccines.

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In Other News

Bonnie Kristian: “Texas Should Not Define Religion Down”

As my former colleague at The Week Joel Mathis writes of the proposal to restrict Texas Muslims’ worship by fiddling with the definition of religion, it’s easy to imagine a scenario where that redefinition would come back to bite conservative Christians who now support it.
“Islam itself is not just a religion,” Schoolcraft told the Times. “It’s much more than a religion.” But as Mathis observes, Christians talk this way about our own faith. I heard countless times in youth group that “Christianity is not a religion; it’s a relationship.” And many of our own religious liberty arguments—arguments I support, to be wholly clear—rest on the point that Christianity is not and cannot be confined to what we do inside the sanctuary on Sunday morning. Our faith makes claims on the whole of our lives (Rom. 12:1–2).
The argument Schoolcraft is making is in this sense deeply secular: He’s joining other voices in our increasingly religiously ignorant society in speaking about faith as if it’s a hobby, something to be set aside when it conflicts with public goods and squeezed out of sight when it makes other people uncomfortable.
Yet if Texas were to define religion down because of Christians’ discomfort with Muslims, what’s to prevent that same redefinition squeezing Christians in the future?

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NYT: “In Building His Border Wall, Trump May Bring Down a 110-Year-Old Church”

Local volunteers have begun restoring the church, El Corazón Sagrado de la Iglesia de Jesús. They view it as one of the last vestiges of a shared history along a southwestern landscape that is as Indigenous, Spanish and Mexican as it is American. Fortifying its walls and twin towers means that perhaps the bell could ring again.
Now their work faces a new danger: President Trump’s border wall. The church is one of dozens of historical sites across the Southwest threatened by the construction. In Arizona, portions of a 1,000-year-old etching in the earth have been bulldozed. In Texas, work is endangering ancient cave murals and landmarks on the Underground Railroad.
“If you value a people’s worth and contributions, then you preserve their history in textbooks and curriculums,” the historian Trinidad Gonzales said. “You would preserve these physical markers.”
Trump administration officials say the wall will go up yards away from the church and help deter violent drug traffickers in one of the most remote parts of the Chihuahuan desert. Preservationists, though, warn that the relentless vibrations of the construction threaten the church’s fragile structural integrity.

GIFT LINK

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About Those Noncitizen Voters

American Values Coalition — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 17:15:48 GMT

Photo by Ernie Journeys on Unsplash

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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Talkin' TDS Without Killin' Each Other

American Values Coalition — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 22:59:15 GMT

Corey Nathan discusses the concept of Trump Derangement Syndrome, partisanship, and how to foster understanding across political divides, especially within Christian communities. He shares insights from his op-ed and personal experiences on engaging with differing viewpoints.

Links

“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

'You Almost Ran Us Over': The Lie ICE Keeps Telling

American Values Coalition — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 11:44:28 GMT

Screengrab of a cellphone recording posted by Carolina Molina.

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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When 'American Culture' Only Means White America

American Values Coalition — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 19:14:00 GMT

Screengrab, Benny Johnson YouTube channel, July 31, 2026

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.

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.

LINK

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.

GIFT LINK

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.”

LINK

Rap music falling out of the Billboard Hot 100 is partly due to recent Billboard rule changes.

In fact, I wonder if Johnson even paid attention to Langley’s lyrics since he claimed the song is about “loving Texas.” That is not what the song is about.

The Pastors ICE Threatened With Their Own Children

American Values Coalition — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 22:21:48 GMT

Pastors Cinthia Sarai Cardona Otero, left, and Nepthali Zozaya Saucedo address their congregation on Sunday, July 26, 2026, at Comunidad Cristiana Emanuel in Edinburg, Texas. (Photo courtesy of Comunidad Cristiana Emanuel)

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.

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What the White House Documents Really Say

American Values Coalition — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 11:12:07 GMT

The White House published documents refuting claims by the president.

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.

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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A Christian Response to the Global Refugee Crisis

American Values Coalition — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 17:48:44 GMT

Matthew Soerens discusses the global refugee crisis, the role of the church, and the biblical basis for supporting refugees. He highlights recent data, policy challenges, and opportunities for churches to engage in refugee support worldwide.

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

Socialism Having a Moment (in Both Parties)

American Values Coalition — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 22:09:04 GMT

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.

GIFT LINK

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:

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What Trump's Religious Liberty Report Gets Right — and Wrong

American Values Coalition — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 18:34:37 GMT

President Trump signs executive order creating Religious Liberty Commission, May 1, 2025.

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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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.

LINK

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 Declaration Turns 250 — the 14th Amendment Just Kept Its Promise

American Values Coalition — Sat, 04 Jul 2026 11:30:27 GMT

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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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.

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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.

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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…

4 months ago · 5 likes · Michael G. Holzman

What We’re Watching

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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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America 250 and Reclaiming Patriotism

American Values Coalition — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 19:28:10 GMT

Stephen B. Smith, professor of political science at Yale University, discusses the importance of reclaiming patriotism in America amidst extremes on both ends of the political spectrum. He explores the historical roots, challenges, and ways to foster a more enlightened patriotism that unites rather than divides.

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

How Did Hollywood Writers Predict All This?

American Values Coalition — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 13:47:41 GMT

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.

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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.

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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.

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The statue is actually bronze and covered in gold leaf.

These plans have recently been scaled back due to community pushback and legal challenges.

Reflections on the Reflecting Pool

American Values Coalition — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 11:32:30 GMT

The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool at sunset in August 2015

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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Give to J29

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.

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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

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.

American Values Coalition

Where to Find Reliable Election Information

What We’re Reading

CNN: “Inside the Texas courtroom where toddlers face immigration judges”

The Bulwark: “An Evangelical Kingmaker Is Lost in the Age of Trump”

Christianity Today: “The Anti-Gospel of American Politics”

WSJ: “Homeland Security Money Financed Pro-Trump Television Ads”

3 Ways You Can Help Protect Democracy

Voting

Elections

Extreme Polarization

What We’re Reading

Roys Report: “The rise of the Jim Crow theobros”

GOP Reckons With Racist Right in Texas

In Other News

NBC News: “DHS watchdog finds immigrants were held at ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ in outdoor cages the size of phone booths”

ProPublica: “Donald Trump Jr.’s Bahamas Wedding Was Secretly Bankrolled by Russian Oligarch Close to Putin”

Event

Trinity Forum: The Founders, the First Freedom, and Us, an Online Conversation with David French. September 18, 2026 1:30pm - 2:30pm ET

Evangelicalism: the Good, the Bad, and the Fringe

Links

Chapters

A President Who Promised to Protect Christians Is Shutting Them Out

More Good Reads

Russell Moore: “The Trump-Era Laughter at Immigrant Suffering Is Deforming Our Souls”

Richard Hanania: “What Charlie Kirk sowed: He pushed the conspiracism that haunts his death”

Backroom Deals, Secret Flights: Our Third-Country Deportation Program

Sources:

More Good Reads

Amy Black: “Right vs. Left is Too Simplistic”

The Bulwark: “The Cruelty Comes to Springfield”

CATO: “An Ideologically Driven Plan To Target Nonprofits?”

Dolly Parton and the Politics of Not Hating Your Neighbor

Measles Are Back

In Other News

Bonnie Kristian: “Texas Should Not Define Religion Down”

NYT: “In Building His Border Wall, Trump May Bring Down a 110-Year-Old Church”

About Those Noncitizen Voters

More Good Reads

Amy Black: “Christian Political Engagement in Divisive Times”

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

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

Talkin' TDS Without Killin' Each Other

Links

Chapters

'You Almost Ran Us Over': The Lie ICE Keeps Telling

More Recommended Reads

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

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

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

When 'American Culture' Only Means White America

More Good Reads

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

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

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

The Pastors ICE Threatened With Their Own Children

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More Good Reads

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

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

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

What the White House Documents Really Say

Related Articles

Tell Your Pastor About J29!

More Good Reads

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

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

The Flat Hat: “Meditations on patriotism”

A Christian Response to the Global Refugee Crisis

Socialism Having a Moment (in Both Parties)

Tell Your Pastor About J29!

What We’re Reading

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

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

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

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

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

AVC and US Values Alliance

What Trump's Religious Liberty Report Gets Right — and Wrong

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