Mass Deportation Is a Family Values Crisis
Also, 'There's Fun in Fascism': How Extremist Groups Are Exploiting Disasters to Recruit Young Men
Immigration policies are tearing families apart, according to a new report by World Relief and National Association of Evangelicals.
If mass deportation continues as planned, 910,000 U.S. citizen children will be separated from one or both parents, 272,000 U.S. citizen spouses will be separated from their partners, and 150,000 spouses and children abroad will remain separated from their U.S. citizen spouses and children, finds the report, “Joined Together, Torn Apart: How U.S. Immigration Policies Are Separating Families.”
“At World Relief, we believe that, except in grievous exceptions where the safety and well-being of a child is in jeopardy, families should remain together,” said Myal Greene, president and CEO of World Relief. “When our laws or policies separate families, whether by design or by neglect, we cannot remain silent. As Christians, we have a dual responsibility: to honor the law and to petition for the institution of better laws. Whom God has placed in families, let no one tear apart.”
Family values conservatives: This would be a good time for members of Congress to hear from you.
White Supremacists Use Disasters for Recruitment
A 60 Minutes report on Sunday showed how white supremacist and anti-government militia groups are using natural disasters to rehabilitate their image and recruit young men. After a disaster, they’ll show up and film themselves helping people or cleaning up, often including anti-government messaging along the way. This has become so common, critics have dubbed it “disaster tourism.”
As one white supremacist leader put it, “Just us showing up changes somebody’s opinion ... so the next time when they say these evil guys, they say ‘wait a second, that’s the guy who came when my house was on fire and helped me out.’”
And they appeal to young men through fun camaraderie, he added. “We get together with the boys, we box, we travel ... there’s fun in fascism,” he said.
Some of these groups also include unfounded conspiracy theories in their disaster tourism posts, including claims that the government can control the weather and intentionally created the disaster.
Watch the whole thing:
Don’t Criticize Elon Musk on His Free Speech Platform
Our friend Charlie Sykes has been booted off X. While X won’t explain why, this post is the most likely culprit:
Tell Your Pastor About J29!
AVC’s pastor network, J29 Coalition, is taking applications for its next J29 Cohort. Send your pastor this link and encourage them to apply.
Some More Good Reads
Just Security: “The Trump Administration’s Strategy for Reshaping Elections”
The 2026 midterms will be a stress test for whether election outcomes are determined by the will of the voters or by who controls the machinery of elections. President Donald Trump and his allies have pursued a sequence of actions that, taken together, mirror strategies of democratic backsliding elsewhere, reshaping the rules, the referees, and the information environment to tilt the playing field before a single vote is cast.
This playbook is not unique to the United States. I spent more than two decades working on elections in countries where – time and time again – democracy was eroded by those in power and where seizing control of elections was a key feature in the authoritarian playbook. For example, in Hungary, after decades of democratic norms, Viktor Orbán’s government gradually seized control of election administration, the courts, and the media — not in one dramatic move, but step-by-step. Independent election oversight bodies were weakened, the judiciary was stacked with loyalists, media outlets were consolidated under government-friendly ownership, and the rules governing elections were changed to favor the ruling party. Each change alone seemed small, but together they created a system where the playing field was heavily skewed toward the ruling party and voters’ voices were silenced.
The warning from Hungary and other backsliding countries illustrates a consistent pattern: when leaders make their intentions explicit and begin coordinating an election takeover in public view, the window of time to defend democracy rapidly begins to shrink.
PsyPost: “Fox News viewership linked to belief in a racist conspiracy theory”
White Americans who regularly get their political news from Fox News show much higher levels of support for the Great Replacement Theory than those who do not watch the network. By tracking individual viewers over time, researchers found that increases in viewing specific television programs on this network corresponded with an elevated belief in this conspiracy theory. These findings were published in the journal PS: Political Science & Politics.
PolitiFact: “Are Democrats growing more accepting of political violence?”
We looked through recent polling to get a sense of how broad the support for political violence is among Democrats, and other Americans. We found evidence of an increasing tolerance for violence among Democrats and liberals, reversing some previous data showing conservatives more tolerant of political violence. Still, most people, regardless of political affiliation, reject political violence.
WaPo: “Internal ICE records reveal widespread use of force in detention centers”
During the first year of Trump’s second term, detention staff used force 37 percent more times than the previous year, the reports show. The number of people subjected to force rose even more sharply, to 1,330 individuals — a 54 percent increase from the previous year, under President Joe Biden — as officers increasingly used these tactics with groups of detainees, the reports show.
NBC News: “First Amendment advocates blast the FCC’s early review of ABC broadcast licenses”
Free speech advocates sounded the alarm Tuesday over the Federal Communications Commission’s challenge to ABC’s broadcast licenses, with some decrying the move as a threat to the First Amendment and a clear example of federal overreach.
“The FCC is neither the journalism police nor the humor police. This is nothing but illegal jawboning intended to intimidate ABC into kissing the ring,” said Seth Stern, the chief of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, a nonprofit group.
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