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“Some Folks Need Killing!” Mark Robinson, David Lane, and the CNP’s American Renewal Project

Did you hear? Project 2025 is no more and Don­ald Trump had noth­ing to do with it. He did­n’t even know what it was. Yep. That’s the laugh­able mes­sage we’ve been get­ting from the Trump cam­paign over the last month.

It’s not a secret as to why the Trump cam­paign feels the need dis­tance itself from the plot. The dis­tanc­ing came just days after Project 2025 leader Kevin Roberts dropped the mask dur­ing a July 2 inter­view when he declared the Sec­ond Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion was under­way and “will remain blood­less if the left allows it to be.” It was polit­i­cal poi­son. Trump had to claim igno­rance at that point. Sure, many of Trump’s ardent fans were act­ing livid over Trump’s dis­avowals, but it was obvi­ous­ly just the­atrics. You can’t actu­al­ly sep­a­rate the Trump agen­da from Project 2025. They are the same. But that does­n’t mean Trump can’t pre­tend.

But it’s also worth keep­ing in mind the oth­er injec­tion of polit­i­cal poi­son into the 2024 elec­tion that took place just two days before Robert­s’s dec­la­ra­tion of a Sec­ond Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion: “Some folks need killing! ... It’s time for some­body to say it. It’s not a mat­ter of vengeance. It’s not a mat­ter of being mean or spite­ful. It’s a mat­ter of neces­si­ty!

Keep in mind that Robin­son won the pri­ma­ry for the gov­er­nors race large­ly due to an endorse­ment from Trump.

It’s not the polit­i­cal mes­sage one nec­es­sar­i­ly expects to hear from can­di­dates run­ning for office in a democ­ra­cy. But that’s the mes­sage that North Car­oli­na vot­ers got from their lieu­tenant gov­er­nor Mark Robin­son dur­ing a half-hour-long speech. At a church. Even worse, the pas­tor of the church, Rev­erend Cameron McGill, dis­missed the com­ments as “non-con­tro­ver­sial” and informed reporters that he ful­ly expect­ed in advance for Robert­son to make those com­ments and that he agreed with them. McGill even pre­ced­ed Robert­son’s speech with com­men­tary of his own about how the Biden admin­is­tra­tion is direct­ed by Satan.

Yes, Mark Robin­son called for ‘some peo­ple’ to be ‘killed’ as a mat­ter of ‘neces­si­ty’ at a ‘killing friend­ly’ church. And then two days lat­er Kevin Roberts declared his Sec­ond Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion. It was a Robertson/Roberts joint threat. And days lat­er, Don­ald Trump sud­den­ly had no idea what Project 2025 is all about. Before going on to select JD Vance — who wrote the for­ward for the Project 2025 book — as his vice pres­i­den­tial run­ning mate.

Now, on one lev­el, Robin­son’s ‘some peo­ple need killing’ com­ments are exact­ly what we might expect. As we’ve seen, Mark Robin­son polit­i­cal rise isn’t sole­ly based on endorse­ments from Don­ald Trump. Robert­son’s open embrace of QAnon-style pol­i­tics and calls for an end to the taboo on quot­ing Hitler at the 2023 Moms for Lib­er­ty Sum­mit are exact­ly the kind of pol­i­tics that will res­onate with today’s Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry vot­ers. Back in 2019, before get­ting elect­ed to office for the first time as Lt. Gov­er­nor, Robert­son joined none oth­er than Sean Moon on Moon’s pod­cast where they exchanged all sorts of ideas about how Satanists run world. This would be the same Sean Moon who hap­pens to be the son of Rev­erend Sun Myung Moon of the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church and who went on to start his own far right con­gre­ga­tion that appears to quite lit­er­al­ly wor­ship AR-15 rifles as a divine gift to god’s cho­sen peo­ple. Mark Robin­son is exact­ly the kind of nut­ty politi­cians we should expect to rise rapid­ly in today’s Repub­li­can cir­cles. The fact that he’s a black man in in an over­whelm­ing­ly white par­ty makes him all the more allur­ing a politi­cian for the con­ser­v­a­tive estab­lish­ment to ral­ly behind.

But as we’re going to see when we take a clos­er look at the con­text of Robin­son’s ‘some peo­ple need killing’ speech, it becomes clear that Robin­son owes his polit­i­cal rise to far more than just Trump’s endorse­ment and his knack from tap­ping into the GOP’s con­tem­po­rary zeit­geist. It turns out Robin­son is like the star fig­ure at a num­ber of events put on by a large­ly obscure, but deeply influ­en­tial, orga­ni­za­tion known as the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project. Rev­erend McGill is part of the project too.

The American Renewal Project, Mark Robinson’s Biggest fan

And as we should expect by now, the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project is one of the many groups work­ing towards a domin­ion­ist theo­crat­ic cap­ture of gov­ern­ment under the umbrel­la of the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy (CNP). What does the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project do? Well, its stat­ed goal is recruit­ing con­ser­v­a­tive pas­tors to run for pub­lic office. As of 2015, the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project claimed to have already recruit­ed a net­work of 100,000 pas­tors with the goal of recruit­ing 1,000 pas­tors to run for elect­ed office in 2016. But while recruit­ing pas­tors to run for office is the state goal of the group, its activ­i­ties also include hold­ing all sorts of ‘Renew­al’ ral­lies through state based branch­es — like the Texas Renew­al Project or Iowa Renew­al Project — that basi­cal­ly serve as polit­i­cal orga­niz­ing events for the domin­ion­ist far right.

Start­ed in 2005 by evan­gel­i­cal polit­i­cal activist David Lane, the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project has long been housed by the Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Asso­ci­a­tion (AFA), a Chris­t­ian fun­da­men­tal 501(c)(3) tax-exempt orga­ni­za­tion set up in 1977 by CNP mem­ber Don Wildon and cur­rent­ly led by Wild­mon’s son, CNP mem­ber Tim Wild­mon (Don died in 2023). Recall how Tim Wild­mon was among the group of CNP lead­ers who effec­tive­ly gave their bless­ings to the can­di­da­cy of Don­ald Trump in June of 2016. And as we’ve seen, Tim Wild­mon’s “Today’s Issues” AFA radio show was filled with so much extrem­ist con­tent that the Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Asso­ci­a­tion shows up on the SPLC’s list of hate groups, along with Tony Perkin­s’s Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil (FRC) and Michael Far­ris’s Alliance Defend­ing Free­dom (ADF). As we should expect, David Lane is an open domin­ion­ist. In fact, he penned a piece pub­lished in World Net Dai­ly in 2013 call­ing for a vio­lent domin­ion­ist rev­o­lu­tion that we’re going to exam­ine below. Lane real­ly does­n’t like ‘pagans’.

But while the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project is effec­tive­ly a branch of the AFA, that does­n’t mean it’s an exclu­sive­ly AFA oper­a­tion. For exam­ple, in 2015, Lane to have raised $50 mil­lion over the years, with $10 mil­lion com­ing from the Texas bil­lion­aire Wilks broth­ers. Recall how the bil­lion­aire Wilks broth­ers are key part­ners with Tim Dunn in the theo­crat­ic cap­ture of the Texas Repub­li­can Par­ty. Also recall how Far­ris Wilks is such a staunch advo­cate of the Old Tes­ta­ment that he actu­al­ly oppos­es the cel­e­bra­tion of Christ­mas and East­er, argu­ing that are “root­ed in pagan­ism”. Yep, one of the major financiers of the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project hates Christ­mas and East­er. And he’s one of this theo­crat­ic move­men­t’s biggest donors.

And as we’re going to see with a close look at the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project polit­i­cal orga­niz­ing in 2011, the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project should real­ly just be seen as anoth­er CNP front group. It’s the same net­work. A net­work that, as of 2011, seemed to have cho­sen a Repub­li­can can­di­date of choice to take down then-Pres­i­dent Oba­ma in the 2012 elec­tion: Texas Gov­er­nor Rick Per­ry. As we’re going to see, Per­ry effec­tive­ly launched his cam­paign dur­ing an August 2011 prayer ral­ly host­ed by The Response, for which Dave Lane serves as the nation­al finan­cial direc­tor. It was a ral­ly for Per­ry filled with so many far right evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers that it actu­al­ly result­ed in a num­ber of alarmed media about about the rise of domin­ion­ism in GOP. In par­tic­u­lar, alarm over the num­ber of fig­ures asso­ci­at­ed with the New Apos­tolic Ref­or­ma­tion (NAR) at the ral­ly, includ­ing ‘prophet’ Cindy Jacobs. As we’ll see in a piece penned by Sarah Pos­ner at the time, while some of labels used by the NAR domin­ion­ists — like the “Sev­en Moun­tains” man­date — may have been rel­a­tive­ly new at the time, it should still all be seen as the same domin­ion­ism that helped ush­er in the Rea­gan admin­is­tra­tion in 1980. And the same domin­ion­ism that formed the CNP in 1981. This is a good time to recall Pos­ner’s warn­ings from July of 2011 about how Rick Per­ry was­n’t just close­ly allied with domin­ion­ist but also neo-Con­fed­er­ates and how much over­lap there is between the­ol­o­gy and neo-Con­fed­er­a­cy.

That August 2011 prayer ral­ly Lane helped orga­nized where Per­ry launched his cam­paign was pre­ced­ed by a close-door two day meet­ing of around 80 far right pas­tors and Chris­t­ian lead­ers with the focus on deter­min­ing how they were going to defeat then-pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma. The list of report­ed atten­dees includ­ed one CNP mem­ber after anoth­er: Richard Land, Richard Lee, Vonette Bright, Jer­ry Boykin, Har­ry Jack­son, Don Wild­mon, Tony Perkins, Bob McEwen, and Bob Rec­cord, who was lead­ing the CNP at the time. Davis Lane was also in atten­dance.

The gath­er­ing was by orga­nized by South­ern Bap­tist evan­ge­list James Robi­son, and was actu­al­ly a fol­low up meet­ing to a Sep­tem­ber 2010 meet­ing. And as we’re going to see, part of what made this meet­ing notable is the his­toric par­al­lels it had with anoth­er meet­ing James Robi­son orga­nized 32 years ear­li­er. It was Robi­son who arranged sim­i­lar secret meet­ings in 1979 that cul­mi­nat­ed in a series of prayer ral­lies in 1980 boost­ing Ronald Rea­gan’s can­di­da­cy. Includ­ed an August 1980 ral­ly attend­ed by Rea­gan where he iron­i­cal­ly told the audi­ence of 15k, “You can’t endorse me, but I endorse you.”

Fig­ures fea­tured at the August 1980 ral­ly includ­ed key CNP mem­bers Bill Bright, Tony Perkins, Tim LaHaye, And James Dob­son. Along with Paul Pressler and Paige Pat­ter­son. As we’ve seen, Paige Pat­ter­son and Pressler were the fig­ures behind the South Bap­tist Con­ven­tion’s “Con­ser­v­a­tive Resur­gence” in the 1970s. Pressler was also a ser­i­al sex­u­al abuser rou­tine­ly pro­tect­ed by Pat­ter­son. Not that Pat­ter­son was only pro­tect­ing Pressler. Instead, Pressler was just the most promi­nent and scan­dalous exam­ple of what had become a pat­tern of endem­ic sex­u­al abuse and cov­er up inside the SBC denom­i­na­tion. In the end, Pressler’s lega­cy was in such tat­ters that his death ear­li­er this year did­n’t even get acknowl­edged at the SBC despite hap­pen­ing just four days before. Key Repub­li­can polit­i­cal strate­gist Paul Weyrich also spoke at the ral­ly. Even Mike Huck­abee — then Robison’s 26 year old aide — and Rafael Cruz — father of Ted Cruz — attend­ed the ral­ly.

Short­ly after they ral­ly, Weyrich went on to assem­ble a net­work that would become the Coun­cil on Nation­al Pol­i­cy the next year. Ini­tial­ly, the CNP con­sist­ed of the Her­itage Foun­da­tion, the Repub­li­can Study Com­mit­tee, the Amer­i­can Leg­isla­tive Exchange Comit­tee (ALEC, found­ed by the Koch Broth­ers), the Moral Major­i­ty and Robison’s “Reli­gious Round­table” of polit­i­cal­ly active pas­tors. A list that had enor­mous over­lap with the enti­ties behind Project 2025 today.

That’s the con­text of the Mark Robin­son’s “Some Folks Need Killing!” com­ments. Not only did Robin­son make these com­ments at a church, and not only did the pas­tor of the church endorse the com­ments, but both Robin­son and Rev­erend McGill hap­pen to be key oper­a­tives in an orga­ni­za­tion ded­i­cat­ed to recruit far right pas­tors to run for office. An orga­ni­za­tion that ulti­mate­ly oper­a­tives as just one more arm of the domin­ion­ist Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy. As bad as those “Some Folks Need Killing!” com­ments were on their own, their much worse when placed in their that his­toric con­text. Because don’t for­get, this con­text does­n’t just include the real­i­ty that the Repub­li­can Par­ty has been allied with theocrats for decades. There’s also the con­text of their incred­i­ble suc­cess­es over the years in real­iz­ing those goals. Suc­cess that is on the cusp of cul­mi­nat­ing in Project 2025 and the planned “Sec­ond Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion”.

Ok, here’s a sum­ma­ry of the arti­cle excerpts below:

* August 2, 2024: Lt. Gov. Mark Robin­son piv­ots on abor­tion in a new cam­paign ad

In keep­ing with spir­it of Don­ald Trump’s new dis­avowals of Project 2025, Mark Robin­son’s Guber­na­to­r­i­al cam­paign now declares that Robin­son will sup­port a 12 week abor­tion ban. As the arti­cle notes, this new posi­tion comes despite Robin­son’s his­to­ry of call­ing abor­tion “mur­der” and “geno­cide”. Along with com­ments about how abor­tion is about “killing the child because you weren’t respon­si­ble to keep your skirt down” and how “there can be no com­pro­mise on abor­tion.”

* August 1, 2024: Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ists Pur­sue State Cap­ture — and North Car­oli­na Is Exhib­it A

A warn­ing from Truthout about how far along North Car­oli­na already is in cur­rent serv­ing as a kind of canary in the coal mine (and tem­plate) for an ongo­ing “state cap­ture” far right agen­da. An agen­da focused on tac­tics like ger­ry­man­der­ing and vot­er sup­pres­sion to achieve pow­er under the guise of “Chris­t­ian pop­ulism”. The kind of ‘pop­ulism’ that isn’t actu­al­ly shared by a major­i­ty of the state’s pop­u­la­tion. But North Car­oli­na isn’t alone in this state cap­ture. States like Texas, Flori­da, South Car­oli­na, and Okla­homa are in the process of com­plete cap­ture too. That’s part of the con­text of the rise of Mark Robin­son and his calls for killing: this is just one facet of a much larg­er sto­ry.

* July 5, 2024: MAGA Gov Candidate’s Ugly, Hate­ful Rant: “Some Folks Need Killing!”

In a clos­er look at Mark Robin­son’s “Some Folks Need Killing!” com­ments, we find that no only did he say this at a church, but that the church’s pas­tor, Rev­erend Cameron McGill, both endorsed and down­played Robin­son’s com­ments. He did­n’t just admit to know­ing Robin­son was going the killing com­ments but went on to defend them by insist­ing that Robin­son did­n’t mean killing inno­cent peo­ple. “With­out a doubt, those he deemed wor­thy of death [were] those seek­ing to kill us,” accord­ing to the pas­tor.

* July 6, 2024: In speech about free­dom ‘slip­ping away,’ Mark Robin­son talks about ‘wicked peo­ple,’ killing

In anoth­er look at the con­text of Mark Robin­son’s “Some Folks Need Killing!” speech, we find that this was actu­al­ly the sec­ond year in a row that Robin­son gave an Inde­pen­dence Day-themed speech at the same church. We also learn that in Rev­erend McCil­l’s speech pre­ced­ing Robin­son, McGill told the audi­ence he thinks the dev­il is behind Joe Biden. McGill also shared how he had the same ‘the dev­il is behind Biden’ mes­sage last week at his con­gre­ga­tion. “I said here last week, and I know it’s offen­sive, probably...But peo­ple ask me all the time, Who’s behind Pres­i­dent Biden, and that admin­is­tra­tion? Is it Oba­ma, is it Clin­ton? Read your Bible. It is the dev­il. He is the father of lies. He is the deceiv­er. He is the divider. He is the manip­u­la­tor.” We also learn that McGill isn’t just a pas­tor. He’s an elect­ed offi­cial who serves on the Bladen Coun­ty Board of Com­mis­sion­ers.

* Novem­ber 4, 2022: The Amer­i­can Renew­al Project wants to mobi­lize pas­tors for the Repub­li­can Par­ty

An arti­cle from back in Novem­ber 2022 about the Amer­i­can Renew­al Pro­jec­t’s efforts to mobi­lize con­ser­v­a­tive pas­tors to run for office. As the arti­cle notes, Mark Robin­son had made speech­es at Amer­i­can Renew­al Project gath­er­ings at least eight time in the pri­or sev­er­al months. He’s the group’s star. But Robin­son isn’t the only fig­ure play­ing a recruit­ment role for the group. As arti­cle also notes, Rev­erend McGill had joined Amer­i­can Renew­al Project founder David Lane in a 2019 trip to Israel focused on recruit­ing US pas­tors to run for office and McGill was plan­ning on return­ing that year to con­tin­ue the effort. So when Mark Robin­son made those “Some Folks Need Killing!” com­ments at McGill’s church and McGill went on to defend the com­ments, it was basi­cal­ly two of the Amer­i­can Renew­al Pro­jec­t’s recruiters behind that call for killing. At a church.

* Decem­ber 11, 2015: For God and coun­try: more U.S. pas­tors seek polit­i­cal office in 2016

A Reuters report from Decem­ber 2015 about the Amer­i­can Renew­al Pro­jec­t’s then-efforts to recruit 1,000 pas­tors to run for elect­ed office in 2016. At the time, Lane claimed the group already had a net­work of 100,000 pas­tors. Lane also claimed to have received $50 mil­lion for the project over the years, with $10 mil­lion donat­ed by the bil­lion­aire Wilks Broth­ers. Recall how the bil­lion­aire Wilks broth­ers are key part­ners with Tim Dunn in the theo­crat­ic cap­ture of the Texas Repub­li­can Par­ty. Also recall how Far­ris Wilks is such a staunch advo­cate of the Old Tes­ta­ment that he actu­al­ly oppos­es the cel­e­bra­tion of Christ­mas and East­er, argu­ing that are “root­ed in pagan­ism”. As we’re going to see, a fix­a­tion on the threats posed by “pagan­ism” is an obses­sion Lane shares with Wilks.

* June 29, 2013: David Lane Calls for Domin­ion­ist Rev­o­lu­tion

To get a bet­ter idea of the kinds of end goals David Lane has in mind for the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project, all we have to do is read a 2013 screed penned by Lane in 2013 call­ing for a vio­lent domin­ion­ist rev­o­lu­tion. As we’ll see in Fred­er­ick Clark­son’s review of Lane’s piece, this call from domin­ion­ism came after the 2012 elec­tion. An elec­tion where Lane played a lit­tle noticed but sig­nif­i­cant role in the launch of domin­ion­ist-friend­ly Texas gov­er­nor Rick Per­ry’s ill-fat­ed pres­i­den­tial cam­paign. In addi­tion to run­ning the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project, housed in the Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Asso­ci­a­tion, Lane served at the nation­al finan­cial direc­tor for The Response prayer ral­ly where Per­ry launched his cam­paign. As Clark­son also notes, Lane’s domin­ion­ist screed was large­ly ignore by the broad­er media. It just flew under the radar, like almost all of Lane’s work.

* June 5, 2013: Wage war to restore a Chris­t­ian Amer­i­ca

A look at David Lane’s 2013 World Net Dai­ly screed call­ing for a vio­lent domin­ion­ist rev­o­lu­tion. As we’ll see, the big theme of the piece is both the pow­er of mar­tyr­dom and the neces­si­ty for mod­ern mar­tyrs. The piece is also filled with ref­er­ences to the ‘pagan media’ and ‘pagan schools’. Lane clear­ly hates ‘pagans’ as much as Far­ris Wilks.

* Sep­tem­ber 30, 2011: Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Asso­ci­a­tion Tar­gets Radio Hosts Over Asso­ci­a­tion With Crit­ic

Tak­ing a clos­er look at the nature of the prayer ral­ly, The Response, co-orga­nized by David Lane in 2011 that served as the launch point for Rick Per­ry’s 2012 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, we’re going to look at an inter­est­ing Sep­tem­ber 2011 piece under­scor­ing just how rad­i­cal the the­ol­o­gy behind this move­ment real­ly is. So rad­i­cal that pop­u­lar reli­gious broad­cast­er Bran­non Howse — who is an extreme­ly con­ser­v­a­tive evan­gel­i­cal him­self and a close ally of Mike Lin­dell — made a point of rou­tine­ly attack­ing the forces behind that prayer ral­ly for the hereti­cal nature of their teach­ings. In par­tic­u­lar, Howse took issue with the many fig­ures asso­ci­at­ed with the New Apos­tolic Ref­or­ma­tion (NAR), a strain of domin­ion­ism that emerged in the 1990 and con­tin­ues to ani­mate this move­ment. Howse was espe­cial­ly crit­i­cal of the invi­ta­tion of Cindy Jacobs, a self-pro­claimed ‘prophet’ with a habit of mak­ing pre­dic­tions. In response to Howse’s cri­tiques, the AFA end­ed up kick­ing two of its radio show hosts who were friend­ly with Howse off their radio net­work. The AFA also went on to insist that it was­n’t involved with Jacob­s’s invi­ta­tion and sug­gest­ed maybe the Per­ry cam­paign was behind it. As we’re going to see, Jacobs has a remark­able abil­i­ty to show up at these kinds of events.

* May 24, 2016: Don­ald Trump To Court Anti-LGBT Hate Groups, ‘Prophets’ And Tel­e­van­ge­lists

Just a quick look back at that fate­ful June 2016 meet­ing between then-can­di­date Don­ald Trump and a del­e­ga­tion of key CNP lead­ers, includ­ing the AFA’s Tim Wild­mon. As we’re going to see, that meet­ing also includ­ed a num­ber of promi­nent NAR lead­ers includ­ing Jim Gar­low and ‘prophet’ Cindy Jacobs.

* April 2, 2011: An Iowa Stop in a Broad Effort to Revi­tal­ize the Reli­gious Right

Anoth­er look at the kind of forces behind David Lane and the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project. The April 2011 New York Times piece describes the key role the Iowa branch of the project — the Iowa Renew­al Project — plays in the Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry process. At the time, the Iowa Renew­al Project was orga­niz­ing an event attend­ed by near­ly 10,000 pas­tors and fea­tures speak­ers like David Bar­ton (key domin­ion­ist pseu­do-his­to­ri­an for the move­ment), Mike Huck­abee, and Newt Gin­grich. As the arti­cle notes, when a sim­i­lar event was held by the Iowa Renew Project in 2007 weeks before the Iowa cau­cus­es, then-can­di­date Huck­abee was the only can­di­date to attend. He went on to earn a sur­prise vic­to­ry in the cau­cus­es weeks lat­er. The arti­cle also men­tions how Lane first began his efforts to recruit pas­tors to run for office in the 1990s, but it was ‘in the last five years’ that the project had grown sub­stan­tial­ly. That, of course, coin­cides with the launch of the project under the ban­ner of the Wild­mons’ AFA.

* June 22, 2011: Con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian Group Plots Polit­i­cal Revival

In anoth­er look at the net­works back­ing the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project, we’re going to take a look at a June 2011 piece in Ethics Dai­ly describ­ing a two-days closed door event of a group of about 80 pas­tors and oth­er evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian lead­ers. As we’re going to see, the list of atten­dees includ­ed one CNP mem­ber after anoth­er: Richard Land, Richard Lee, Vonette Bright, Jer­ry Boykin, Har­ry Jack­son, Don Wild­mon, Tony Perkins, Bob McEwen, and Bob Rec­cord, who was lead­ing the CNP at the time. The gath­er­ing was called by South­ern Bap­tist evan­ge­list James Robi­son in order to ham­mer out their plans for defeat­ing then-Pres­i­dent Oba­ma, and was actu­al­ly a fol­low up meet­ing to a Sep­tem­ber 2010 meet­ing. As the arti­cle notes, these secret gath­er­ings were some­what rem­i­nis­cent of sim­i­lar secret meet­ings in Dal­las Robin­son arranged in 1979 to strate­gize how to defeat Jim­my Carter. An effort that ulti­mate­ly man­i­fest­ed as an August 1980 meet­ing with Ronald Rea­gan that helped mobi­lize pas­tors for his pres­i­den­tial cam­paign. And, the next year, the for­ma­tion of the CNP.

* August 21, 2011: The Chris­t­ian right’s “domin­ion­ist” strat­e­gy

As a fur­ther look at the broad­er con­text of this domin­ion­ist move­ment, we’re going to take a look at an August 2011 piece by Sarah Pos­ner, writ­ten a few weeks after Rick Per­ry’s domin­ion­ist-tinged pres­i­den­tial cam­paign launch. As Pos­ner reminds us, while much of the media cov­er­age at the time was treat­ing this move­ment as some­thing new in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics, the fusion of domin­ion­ist forces with the Repub­li­can Par­ty goes back decades, since at least 1980. Sim­i­lar­ly, with the New Apos­tolic Ref­or­ma­tion (NAR), which only emerged in the 90s, might use new jar­gon and labels like “Sev­en Moun­tain”, it’s real­ly just an exten­sion of the same kind of domin­ion­ist forces James Robi­son was orga­niz­ing around Ronald Reagon. Forces that cul­mi­nat­ed in the 1981 for­ma­tion of the CNP.

* Feb­ru­ary 7, 2020: The secret net­work that threat­ens democ­ra­cy

Anoth­er look at the role James Robison’s orga­niz­ing played in Ronald Rea­gan’s 1980 cam­paign and how that cul­mi­nat­ed in the for­ma­tion of the CNP the fol­low­ing year. As the arti­cle describes, one of the ral­lies Robi­son helped to orga­nize for Rea­gan in August of 1980 where Rea­gan told the audi­ence of 15,000, “You can’t endorse me, but I endorse you.” Boy how times change. Some of the fig­ures fea­tured at the real­ly includ­ed promi­nent CNP mem­bers like Bill Bright, Tony Perkins, Tim LaHaye, And James Dob­son. Along with Paul Pressler and Paige Pat­ter­son. As we’ve seen, Paige Pat­ter­son and Pressler were the fig­ures behind the South Bap­tist Con­ven­tion’s “Con­ser­v­a­tive Resur­gence” in the 1970s. Pressler was also a ser­i­al sex­u­al abuser rou­tine­ly pro­tect­ed by Pat­ter­son. Not that Pat­ter­son was only pro­tect­ing Pressler. Instead, Pressler was just the most promi­nent and scan­dalous exam­ple of what had become a pat­tern of endem­ic sex­u­al abuse and cov­er up inside the SBC denom­i­na­tion. In the end, Pressler’s lega­cy was in such tat­ters that his death ear­li­er this year did­n’t even get acknowl­edged at the SBC despite hap­pen­ing just four days before. Key Repub­li­can polit­i­cal strate­gist Paul Weyrich also spoke at the ral­ly. Even Mike Huck­abee — then Robison’s 26 year old aide — and Rafael Cruz — father of Ted Cruz — attend­ed the ral­ly. Short­ly after­wards, Weyrich went on to assem­ble a net­work that would become the Coun­cil on Nation­al Pol­i­cy. Ini­tial­ly, it con­sist­ed of the Her­itage Foun­da­tion, the Repub­li­can Study Com­mit­tee, the Amer­i­can Leg­isla­tive Exchange Comit­tee (ALEC, found­ed by the Koch Broth­ers), the Moral Major­i­ty and the Reli­gious Round­table. A list that had enor­mous over­lap with the enti­ties behind Project 2025 today.

* Jan­u­ary 11, 2021: The Roots of Josh Hawley’s Rage

As a reminder of the exten­sive role played by the CNP in the orga­niz­ing lead­ing up to Jan­u­ary 6 Capi­tol insur­rec­tion, we’re going to take a look at a piece pub­lished days after the insur­rec­tion try­ing to make sense of Sen­a­tor Josh Haw­ley’s then-endur­ing sup­port for the nar­ra­tive about a stolen elec­tion. This is the same sen­a­tor who famous­ly ‘fist pumped’ the insur­rec­tionary crowds hours before being caught on video inside the Sen­ate flee­ing from those same mobs. As the piece notes, Haw­ley has made his domin­ion­ist ide­ol­o­gy quite clear, espe­cial­ly dur­ing a 2017 speech to the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project where Haw­ley described how he viewed the roots of soci­ety’s cur­rent prob­lems back to the Pelag­ius, a British monk who taught 17 cen­turies ago. Accord­ing to Pelag­ius, human beings have the free­dom to choose how they live their lives and that grace comes to those who do good things, as opposed to those who believe the right doc­trines. Haw­ley views this as hereti­cal. As Haw­ley sees it, Chris­tians have a divine man­date to impose their vision of right and wrong all over the world. As Haw­ley put it in his speech, “There is not one square inch of all cre­ation over which Jesus Christ is not Lord....We are called to take that mes­sage into every sphere of life that we touch, includ­ing the polit­i­cal realm...That is our charge. To take the lord­ship of Christ, that mes­sage, into the pub­lic realm, and to seek the obe­di­ence of the nations. Of our nation!”

* March 23, 2023: This ris­ing GOP star embod­ies the Chris­t­ian right’s big­otry

Final­ly, bring­ing this back to mark Robin­son, we’re going to look at anoth­er piece by Sarah Pos­ner, this one from March of 2023, describ­ing how the sud­den rise of Robin­son’s polit­i­cal star was in no small mea­sure thanks to the spon­sor­ship from pow­er­ful domin­ion­ists. And as Pos­ner warns, Robinson’s rapid ascent from polit­i­cal new­com­er to top statewide offi­cial isn’t just a remark­able sto­ry for Robin­son. It’s a mod­el for oth­er domin­ion­ists seek­ing high­er office and the pow­er to impose their views on soci­ety.

That’s all just some of the incred­i­bly dis­turb­ing con­text sur­round­ing Mark Robin­son’s “Some Folks Need Killing!” com­ments. Com­ments made at church as this polit­i­cal new­com­er makes his bid for the North Car­oli­na gov­er­nor’s office. Robin­son isn’t a polit­i­cal ris­ing star sole­ly thanks to his bom­bas­tic rhetoric. He’s a polit­i­cal rise thanks to the fact that his bom­bas­tic rhetoric is exact­ly the kind of rhetoric the domin­ion­ist net­work that have spent decades orga­niz­ing want to hear from politi­cians. “Some Folks Need Killing!” was­n’t an throw­away line from a moment of pique. It’s the unspo­ken slo­gan of domin­ion­ism. Except now it’s spo­ken.

Mark Robinson’s Sudden ‘Moderation’ On Abortion. Because Elections Still Matter. For Now.

Ok, first, let’s start off with a recent piece in Axio describ­ing a rather sur­pris­ing piv­ot from the Robin­son cam­paign: the ardent abor­tion foe is sud­den­ly fine with the state’s exist­ing 12 week abor­tion law. Sur­pris­ing because, until now, Robin­son has been pret­ty unequiv­o­cal about his com­plete­ly oppo­si­tion to abor­tion, includ­ing state­ments like “there can be no com­pro­mise on abor­tion.”

Now, it also turns out that Robin­son and Wife decide to get an abor­tion 30 years ago, some­thing they’ve dis­closed in the past. So on one lev­el this flip flop may just an attempt to pre­emp­tive­ly thread the nee­dle on an issue that could be very dam­ag­ing to Robin­son’s prospects. And then there’s the fact that Robin­son is tech­ni­cal­ly only pledg­ing to let the state leg­is­la­ture deter­mine the abor­tion laws. Repub­li­cans have a super-major­i­ty in North Car­oli­na’s leg­is­la­ture so it should­n’t be too hard to imag­ine stricter laws com­ing under a Project 2025 theo­crat purge sce­nario. Plus, com­plete abor­tion bans just don’t poll well. It real­ly is a drag on his chances.

But while there may be some sort of polit­i­cal strat­e­gy that explains the Robin­son cam­paigns deci­sion to back flip on his abor­tion stance, it’s still pret­ty sur­pris­ing. After all, this was the same guy who declared “Some folks need killing!” bare­ly a month ear­li­er and has spent years serv­ing as a domin­ion­ist super­star. It’s a time­ly reminder that were still in the ‘have to get elect­ed first’ phase of this domin­ion­ist rev­o­lu­tion. Grant­ed, pre­sum­ably near the end of that phase:

Axios

Lt. Gov. Mark Robin­son piv­ots on abor­tion in a new cam­paign ad

Lucille Sher­man
Aug 2, 2024 -

North Car­oli­na’s Lt. Gov. Mark Robin­son, the Repub­li­can nom­i­nee for gov­er­nor, released a TV ad Fri­day in which he and his wife tear­ful­ly describe their deci­sion to get an abor­tion 30 years ago.

Why it mat­ters: Robin­son has pre­vi­ous­ly rebuked abor­tions and expressed sup­port for a ban with no expres­sions, equat­ing the pro­ce­dure to “mur­der” and “geno­cide.”

* But with three months to go before the elec­tion, he says in the ad he stands by the state’s cur­rent 12-week ban, with excep­tions.

Dri­ving the news: “It pro­vides com­mon-sense excep­tions for the life of the moth­er, incest and rape, which gives help to moth­ers and stops cru­el late-term abor­tions,” Robin­son said in the ad.

What they’re say­ing: Asked about Robin­son’s rever­sal on his posi­tion, his cam­paign spokesper­son said “the leg­is­la­ture has already spo­ken on the issue.”

...

Catch up quick: Robin­son’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic oppo­nent in the gov­er­nor’s race, Attor­ney Gen­er­al Josh Stein, aired an ad ear­li­er this sum­mer fea­tur­ing a com­pi­la­tion of state­ments Robin­son has made on abor­tion, includ­ing one in which Robin­son said abor­tion is about “killing the child because you weren’t respon­si­ble to keep your skirt down.”

* He also said “there can be no com­pro­mise on abor­tion.”

* Robin­son’s cam­paign respond­ed, say­ing Stein was “twist­ing words,” CBS17 report­ed.

Between the lines: Elec­tions in North Car­oli­na are won on the mar­gins, often by just a few points.

* That means both can­di­dates tend to have to walk a fine line on issues like abor­tion, to appeal to as many vot­ers as pos­si­ble.

* The num­ber of Amer­i­cans who sup­port abor­tion is at record highs, with around 54% of those polled by Gallup in May say­ing they iden­ti­fy as “pro-choice.” Around 41% iden­ti­fy as “pro-life.”

* Robin­son’s lat­est ad appears to an attempt to thread the nee­dle of appeal­ing to more mod­er­ate vot­ers, along with the more con­ser­v­a­tive Repub­li­can base.

The oth­er side: Stein has said that if he’s elect­ed, he would veto any attempts by the leg­is­la­ture to fur­ther restrict abor­tion or “crim­i­nal­ize wom­en’s free­dom over their own bod­ies.”

...

* The cam­paign also point­ed to Robin­son remov­ing ref­er­ences to abor­tion from his cam­paign web­site, as NBC report­ed, say­ing he stopped using the “a‑word.”

...

———–

“Lt. Gov. Mark Robin­son piv­ots on abor­tion in a new cam­paign ad” by Lucille Sher­man; Axios; 08/02/2024

Why it mat­ters: Robin­son has pre­vi­ous­ly rebuked abor­tions and expressed sup­port for a ban with no expres­sions, equat­ing the pro­ce­dure to “mur­der” and “geno­cide.””

It’s quite the flip flop. Not nec­es­sar­i­ly unex­pect­ed giv­en the extreme nature of Robin­son’s pre­vi­ous stance on abor­tion and the fact that he’s already secure the GOP nom­i­na­tion and is the mid­dle of the gen­er­al elec­tion. Flip­ping flop­ping on pre­vi­ous­ly held extreme posi­tions is a clas­sic polit­i­cal. But it’s some­what notable giv­en the recent vibe shift of the Repub­li­can Par­ty since the Democ­rats swapped out Joe Biden for Kamala Har­ris and the 2024 pres­i­den­tial race start­ed look­ing a lot more like a toss up. First we had Don­ald Trump’s laugh­able attempts to dis­as­so­ci­ate him­self with Project 2025, and now this. What’s next? Will JD Vance endorse child­less cat ladies next week? We can’t rule it out at this point. It’s that ‘week of the mega-flop’ tim­ing that is a big part of what makes this not just a sto­ry about the North Car­oli­na gov­er­nor’s race but a nation­al polit­i­cal sto­ry. Mark Robin­son is try­ing to tamp down the crazy. When the crazy was more or less all he had. The crazy was his brand:

...
* But with three months to go before the elec­tion, he says in the ad he stands by the state’s cur­rent 12-week ban, with excep­tions.

Dri­ving the news: “It pro­vides com­mon-sense excep­tions for the life of the moth­er, incest and rape, which gives help to moth­ers and stops cru­el late-term abor­tions,” Robin­son said in the ad.

What they’re say­ing: Asked about Robin­son’s rever­sal on his posi­tion, his cam­paign spokesper­son said “the leg­is­la­ture has already spo­ken on the issue.”

...

Catch up quick: Robin­son’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic oppo­nent in the gov­er­nor’s race, Attor­ney Gen­er­al Josh Stein, aired an ad ear­li­er this sum­mer fea­tur­ing a com­pi­la­tion of state­ments Robin­son has made on abor­tion, includ­ing one in which Robin­son said abor­tion is about “killing the child because you weren’t respon­si­ble to keep your skirt down.”

* He also said “there can be no com­pro­mise on abor­tion.”

* Robin­son’s cam­paign respond­ed, say­ing Stein was “twist­ing words,” CBS17 report­ed.

...

* Robin­son’s lat­est ad appears to an attempt to thread the nee­dle of appeal­ing to more mod­er­ate vot­ers, along with the more con­ser­v­a­tive Repub­li­can base.
...

Was this a pre­dictable ‘mod­er­at­ing for the gen­er­al’ tonal shift or a sign of a more sig­nif­i­cant strate­gic rebrand­ing? We’ll see. There’s still plen­ty of time for Robin­son to revert back to his ultra-extreme abor­tion stance. But, for now, it looks like we’re going to get ‘mod­er­ate’ Mark Robin­sons.

And don’t for­get that when the Robin­son cam­paign deflects ques­tions by insist­ing that “the leg­is­la­ture has already spo­ken on the issue,” the GOP has a super-major­i­ty in North Car­oli­na’s leg­is­la­ture. What are the odds a gov­er­nor Robin­son does­n’t get a more extreme law hand­ed to him to sign over the next four years if he wins?

Some Folks Need Killing!

It’s also worth not­ing that, as a rel­a­tive­ly inex­pe­ri­enced politi­cian, it’s poten­tial­ly eas­i­er for Robin­son to make major pol­i­cy piv­ots. He has less of a track record to turn his back on. So if it seems like we could be a look­ing at a real shift of Robin­son’s pol­i­cy stance on abor­tion, it’s impor­tant to keep in mind that Robin­son’s rapid­ly ris­ing polit­i­cal star has­n’t actu­al­ly been some inde­pen­dent rise. He’s has sup­port, and not just from Trump. Robin­son has had insti­tu­tion­al exten­sive sup­port. Because of course he has. Mark Robin­son car­ry­ing out the Repub­li­can estab­lish­men­t’s bid­ding. A bid­ding that hap­pens to be Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist state cap­ture:

Truthout

Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ists Pur­sue State Cap­ture — and North Car­oli­na Is Exhib­it A

North Car­oli­na guber­na­to­r­i­al hope­ful Mark Robin­son exem­pli­fies the Chris­t­ian right’s sin­is­ter agen­da.

By Lewis Raven Wal­lace, Truthout
Pub­lished
August 1, 2024

North Car­oli­na guber­na­to­r­i­al hope­ful Mark Robin­son exem­pli­fies the Chris­t­ian right’s sin­is­ter agen­da.

The Chris­t­ian right has a new charis­mat­ic leader: Repub­li­can Lt. Gov. Mark Robin­son of North Car­oli­na, who is run­ning a bone-chill­ing cam­paign to become the state’s next gov­er­nor. Most recent­ly, he made news when he deliv­ered a speech in a church say­ing some peo­ple who are “evil” or “wicked” might just “need killing.”

North Car­oli­na is among the south­ern states that should be regard­ed as canaries in the coal mine for “state cap­ture”: the process by which the far right is wrest­ing con­trol of U.S. pol­i­tics in spite of rep­re­sent­ing a minor­i­ty of the population’s views.

...

Right-wing state cap­ture is increas­ing­ly a threat with­in U.S. states, which are sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly being tak­en over by Chris­t­ian right lead­ers and their cor­po­rate and wealthy sup­port­ers through a com­bi­na­tion of ger­ry­man­der­ing, vot­er sup­pres­sion, orga­nized and coor­di­nat­ed pro­pa­gan­da, and pri­va­ti­za­tion. Pub­lic insti­tu­tions that often serve as venues for free debate and social change — such as libraries and uni­ver­si­ties — are under aggres­sive attack.

North Car­oli­na has been among the test­ing grounds for this approach, along­side states like Texas, Flori­da, South Car­oli­na and Okla­homa (just to name a few). Now Mark Robin­son pos­es an immi­nent threat of push­ing the state’s unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic poli­cies to a new lev­el.

Robin­son came onto the polit­i­cal scene rel­a­tive­ly recent­ly, catch­ing people’s atten­tion with a fiery speech he gave on gun rights at a Greens­boro City Coun­cil meet­ing in 2018. Since then, he’s been a splashy fig­ure with a fast rise to fame: He is a Black arch-con­ser­v­a­tive known for call­ing edu­ca­tion about sex­u­al­i­ty and gen­der iden­ti­ty “filth,” call­ing Mus­lims “invaders,” tweet­ing about Holo­caust denial and pro­mot­ing anti-Jew­ish tropes, and spread­ing coro­n­avirus con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries. Robin­son, a for­mer fac­to­ry work­er and army reservist, ran a suc­cess­ful cam­paign to become North Carolina’s first Black lieu­tenant gov­er­nor in 2020.

Robin­son is in some ways low-hang­ing fruit for lib­er­al pun­dits, and an exam­ple of what our pol­i­tics in 2024 have boiled down to: inflam­ma­to­ry, viral and uncom­pro­mis­ing. But more impor­tant than his atti­tude and style is Robinson’s actu­al pol­i­cy and plat­form. The prob­lem is not just his words, but the actions they lead to: state cap­ture dressed up as right­eous Chris­t­ian pop­ulism.

Robinson’s vision for North Car­oli­na is a kind of Gilead from The Handmaid’s Tale: He dreams of Chris­t­ian suprema­cy, open­ly enforced by both police and armed civil­ians. This brand of Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism would mean rolling back abor­tion rights even fur­ther; defund­ing pub­lic schools and severe­ly restrict­ing all school-based dis­cus­sions of race, gen­der and sex­u­al­i­ty; pre­vent­ing trans people’s access to health care; deport­ing immi­grants; increas­ing polic­ing; and even tak­ing up arms against what he describes as anti-patri­ot­ic and anti-Chris­t­ian forces.

Robin­son may seem like a loose can­non, but with him as a spokesman, the state’s Repub­li­can Par­ty is in fact pur­su­ing most of these goals sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly. After the Dobbs deci­sion in the Supreme Court, the Repub­li­can-run leg­is­la­ture passed a ban on abor­tions after 12 weeks, over­rid­ing cur­rent Demo­c­ra­t­ic Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto with their pow­er­ful super­ma­jor­i­ty vote. If Robin­son is elect­ed, he plans to fur­ther those goals: He sup­ports a total ban on abor­tions except in cas­es of rape, incest or endan­ger­ing the life of the par­ent.

“Abor­tion in this coun­try is not about pro­tect­ing the lives of moth­ers,” he said in a video that his Demo­c­ra­t­ic oppo­nent Josh Stein has made a key part of his cam­paign ads. “It’s about killing a child because you weren’t respon­si­ble enough to keep your skirt down.”

Just last year, Robin­son also sup­port­ed a “Par­ents’ Bill of Rights” passed by the North Car­oli­na leg­is­la­ture that restricts young peo­ple from access­ing sex­u­al and gen­der iden­ti­ty edu­ca­tion or chang­ing their names or pro­nouns with­out parental con­sent, and makes it impos­si­ble for trans youth to get health care or even men­tal health sup­port at school if their par­ents do not approve. Teach­ers essen­tial­ly become manda­to­ry reporters of children’s trans iden­ti­ties, a prospect that has both LGBTQ advo­cates and edu­ca­tors con­cerned.

This bill came on the heels of a per­for­ma­tive attack on pub­lic edu­ca­tion that Robin­son spear­head­ed over sev­er­al years. Robin­son led a task force that claimed to be inves­ti­gat­ing “indoc­tri­na­tion” in schools — he called it the Fair­ness and Account­abil­i­ty in the Class­room for Teach­ers and Stu­dents (F.A.C.T.S.) Task Force. After a brief peri­od of “inves­ti­ga­tion” with no pub­lic meet­ings or even min­utes regard­ing the process, the task force pro­duced a report base­less­ly claim­ing that kids in the state were being indoc­tri­nat­ed with “crit­i­cal race the­o­ry” and exposed to so-called white sham­ing and sex­u­al­iza­tion of kids, among oth­er things.

In real­i­ty, the report cher­ry-picked sub­mis­sions from con­ser­v­a­tive par­ents and teach­ers whose com­plaints includ­ed teach­ers post­ing Black Lives Mat­ter signs, chil­dren being required to learn about racial dis­crim­i­na­tion and racial equi­ty, coun­selors being giv­en instruc­tions on how to sup­port trans kids, and even — gasp — a teacher telling his fifth-graders about hav­ing “two daddy’s and two mommy’s [sic] and how that was okay.”

“There’s no rea­son any­body any­place in Amer­i­ca should be telling any child about trans­gen­derism, homo­sex­u­al­i­ty, any of that filth,” Robin­son quipped on a church stage the year the task force launched.

Edu­ca­tion advo­cates are angry about this infringe­ment on their free­dom to teach and sup­port stu­dents as they see fit — and equal­ly con­cerned about the GOP’s under­ly­ing agen­da of increas­ing school vouch­ers and offer­ing them to wealthy fam­i­lies while shift­ing fund­ing out of the pub­lic school sys­tem. A bill that would shift hun­dreds of mil­lions in school funds from pub­lic schools to vouch­ers is cur­rent­ly stalled in the state leg­is­la­ture.

While right-wing politi­cians are shroud­ing all these actions in preachy moral­i­ty, their long-term impact is actu­al­ly to defund pub­lic schools, cre­at­ing — over time — an ill-informed and dis­em­pow­ered elec­torate with lit­tle pow­er.

...

Lt. Gov. Mark Robin­son tends toward the flashy and apoc­a­lyp­tic, imply­ing that “Chris­t­ian patri­ots” ought to take up arms. “Our gov­ern­ment is out of con­trol,” he told a crowd in Raleigh. “But I can assure you, just as the bare­foot­ed patri­ots who stood on Bunker Hill got the British under con­trol, the angry and indig­nant patri­ots of the Unit­ed States and North Car­oli­na are going to rein this gov­ern­ment back in con­trol.”

Pro-democ­ra­cy activists in North Car­oli­na are right­ly point­ing out that the state pro­vides a blue­print for state cap­ture by the Chris­t­ian right. This process is already well under­way in North Car­oli­na, and a Robin­son win would only accel­er­ate it. The via­bil­i­ty of his cur­rent cam­paign should be a warn­ing to all who care to pro­tect both states and the nation from a future in which more and more of us live under regimes of Chris­t­ian suprema­cy.

———–

“Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ists Pur­sue State Cap­ture — and North Car­oli­na Is Exhib­it A” By Lewis Raven Wal­lace; Truthout; 08/01/2024

“Robin­son is in some ways low-hang­ing fruit for lib­er­al pun­dits, and an exam­ple of what our pol­i­tics in 2024 have boiled down to: inflam­ma­to­ry, viral and uncom­pro­mis­ing. But more impor­tant than his atti­tude and style is Robinson’s actu­al pol­i­cy and plat­form. The prob­lem is not just his words, but the actions they lead to: state cap­ture dressed up as right­eous Chris­t­ian pop­ulism.

Mark Robin­son might wear pop­ulist robes. But he’s a polit­i­cal sol­dier an army direct­ed by very pow­er­ful elite forces. Forces who may not be God but could be effec­tive­ly kings and queens once they’re done with their cap­ture of the state. Or states, rather. North Car­oli­na is just one of the states expe­ri­enc­ing Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist insti­tu­tion­al cap­ture. And when these forces have suc­ceed­ed, you can be con­fi­dent the Old Mark Robin­son’s com­plete abor­tion restric­tions will be back on the agen­da. Because it was nev­er actu­al­ly off the agen­da. The end goal real­ly is some­thing like Gilead:

...
Right-wing state cap­ture is increas­ing­ly a threat with­in U.S. states, which are sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly being tak­en over by Chris­t­ian right lead­ers and their cor­po­rate and wealthy sup­port­ers through a com­bi­na­tion of ger­ry­man­der­ing, vot­er sup­pres­sion, orga­nized and coor­di­nat­ed pro­pa­gan­da, and pri­va­ti­za­tion. Pub­lic insti­tu­tions that often serve as venues for free debate and social change — such as libraries and uni­ver­si­ties — are under aggres­sive attack.

North Car­oli­na has been among the test­ing grounds for this approach, along­side states like Texas, Flori­da, South Car­oli­na and Okla­homa (just to name a few). Now Mark Robin­son pos­es an immi­nent threat of push­ing the state’s unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic poli­cies to a new lev­el.

...

Robinson’s vision for North Car­oli­na is a kind of Gilead from The Handmaid’s Tale: He dreams of Chris­t­ian suprema­cy, open­ly enforced by both police and armed civil­ians. This brand of Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism would mean rolling back abor­tion rights even fur­ther; defund­ing pub­lic schools and severe­ly restrict­ing all school-based dis­cus­sions of race, gen­der and sex­u­al­i­ty; pre­vent­ing trans people’s access to health care; deport­ing immi­grants; increas­ing polic­ing; and even tak­ing up arms against what he describes as anti-patri­ot­ic and anti-Chris­t­ian forces.

Robin­son may seem like a loose can­non, but with him as a spokesman, the state’s Repub­li­can Par­ty is in fact pur­su­ing most of these goals sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly. After the Dobbs deci­sion in the Supreme Court, the Repub­li­can-run leg­is­la­ture passed a ban on abor­tions after 12 weeks, over­rid­ing cur­rent Demo­c­ra­t­ic Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto with their pow­er­ful super­ma­jor­i­ty vote. If Robin­son is elect­ed, he plans to fur­ther those goals: He sup­ports a total ban on abor­tions except in cas­es of rape, incest or endan­ger­ing the life of the par­ent.

“Abor­tion in this coun­try is not about pro­tect­ing the lives of moth­ers,” he said in a video that his Demo­c­ra­t­ic oppo­nent Josh Stein has made a key part of his cam­paign ads. “It’s about killing a child because you weren’t respon­si­ble enough to keep your skirt down.”
...

And as we were remind­ed of less than two weeks before the assas­si­na­tion attempt on Trump, those extrem­ist forces behind him were per­fect­ly fine with his oth­er extrem­ist views. Like the view that “Some Folks Need Killing!” A view Robin­son shared dur­ing a June 30 speech at a church. “It’s time for some­body to say it. It’s not a mat­ter of vengeance. It’s not a mat­ter of being mean or spite­ful. It’s a mat­ter of neces­si­ty!” Robin­son actu­al­ly said that. At a church.

Some Folks Need Killing. It’s a Non-Controversial Church-Approved Message

How was this mes­sage of killing received at this church? Well, as Rev­erend Cameron McGill, the Pas­tor of Lake Church, con­firmed, these com­ments about the neces­si­ty for killing were expect­ed to be “scru­ti­nized,” but McGill defend­ed them as in no way meant to imply inno­cent peo­ple be killed. Robin­son only meant that those “seek­ing to kill us” should be killed, accord­ing to McGill. It was real­ly “non-con­tro­ver­sial” words, as McGill put it jour­nal­ists after­wards:

The New Repub­lic

MAGA Gov Candidate’s Ugly, Hate­ful Rant: “Some Folks Need Killing!”

Mark Robin­son, the GOP nom­i­nee for gov­er­nor in North Car­oli­na, has a long his­to­ry of incen­di­ary com­ments. But he may have topped him­self this time.

Greg Sar­gent
July 5, 2024

Mark Robin­son, the extrem­ist GOP nom­i­nee for gov­er­nor in North Car­oli­na, appeared to endorse polit­i­cal vio­lence in a bizarre and extend­ed rant he deliv­ered on June 30 in a small-town church.

“Some folks need killing!” Robin­son, the state’s lieu­tenant gov­er­nor, shout­ed dur­ing a rough­ly half-hour-long speech in Lake Church in the tiny town of White Lake, in the south­east cor­ner of the state. “It’s time for some­body to say it. It’s not a mat­ter of vengeance. It’s not a mat­ter of being mean or spite­ful. It’s a mat­ter of neces­si­ty!”

Robinson’s call for the “killing” of “some folks” came dur­ing an extend­ed dia­tribe in which he attacked an extra­or­di­nary assort­ment of ene­mies. These ranged from “peo­ple who have evil intent” to “wicked peo­ple” to those doing things like “tor­tur­ing and mur­der­ing and rap­ing” to social­ists and Com­mu­nists. He also invoked those sup­pos­ed­ly under­min­ing America’s found­ing ideals and left­ists alleged­ly per­se­cut­ing con­ser­v­a­tives by can­cel­ing them and doxxing them online.

In all this, Robin­son appeared to endorse lethal vio­lence against these unnamed ene­mies, par­tic­u­lar­ly on the left, though he wasn’t exact­ly clear on which “folks” are the ones who “need killing.”

Robin­son, a self-described “MAGA Repub­li­can,” has a long his­to­ry of wild­ly rad­i­cal and unhinged moments. He has linked homo­sex­u­al­i­ty to pedophil­ia, called for the arrest of trans women, pushed hal­lu­cino­genic anti­se­mit­ic con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries, endorsed the vile “birther” con­spir­a­cy about Barack Oba­ma, described Michelle Oba­ma as a man, hint­ed at the need to vio­lent­ly oppose fed­er­al law enforce­ment and the gov­ern­ment, and post­ed memes mock­ing and deny­ing the bru­tal, vio­lent assault on Nan­cy Pelosi’s hus­band, among many oth­er things.

...

Here’s what Robin­son said (bold mine):

We now find our­selves strug­gling with peo­ple who have evil intent. You know, there’s a time when we used to meet evil on the bat­tle­field, and guess what we did to it? We killed it! … When the Japan­ese bombed Pearl Har­bor, what did we do? We flew to Japan! And we killed the Japan­ese Army and Navy! … We didn’t argue and capit­u­late and talk about, well, maybe we shouldn’t fight the Nazis that hard. No, they’re bad. Kill them. Some lib­er­al some­where is going to say that sounds awful. Too bad. Get mad at me if you want to.

Some folks need killing! It’s time for some­body to say it. It’s not a mat­ter of vengeance. It’s not a mat­ter of being mean or spite­ful. It’s a mat­ter of neces­si­ty! When you have wicked peo­ple doing wicked things, tor­tur­ing and mur­der­ing and rap­ing. It’s time to call out, uh, those guys in green and go have them han­dled. Or those boys in blue and have them go han­dle it.…

We need to start han­dling our busi­ness again.… Don’t you feel it slip­ping away? … The fur­ther we start slid­ing into mak­ing 1776 a dis­tant mem­o­ry and the tenets of social­ism and com­mu­nism start com­ing into clear­er focus. They’re watch­ing us. They’re lis­ten­ing to us. They’re track­ing us. They get mad at you. They can­cel you. They dox you. They kick you off social media. They come in and close down your busi­ness. Folks, it’s hap­pen­ing … because we have for­got­ten who we are.

Robin­son might try to argue that he only meant that our ene­mies dur­ing World War II—and tor­tur­ers and mur­der­ers and rapists today—deserve “killing.” But the sum total of his remarks plain­ly sug­gests oth­er­wise. He seemed to analo­gize the need to kill World War II ene­mies to the need to kill ene­mies in the present, ene­mies who har­bor “evil intent,” ene­mies con­ser­v­a­tives are strug­gling against “now.”

What’s more, Robin­son described those ene­mies in very broad terms. He sug­gest­ed that con­ser­v­a­tives will lose the spir­it of 1776 (mean­ing their coun­try) to ene­mies who harass them on social media and else­where unless they are pre­pared to unleash the army and cops to “han­dle” (i.e., kill) them. These appear to be the “folks” who “need killing.”

...

The Rev­erend Cameron McGill, the Pas­tor of Lake Church, con­firmed to me that he and Robin­son expect­ed these remarks about “killing” to be “scru­ti­nized,” but defend­ed them.

“With­out a doubt, those he deemed wor­thy of death [were] those seek­ing to kill us,” Pas­tor Cameron said in an email, adding that Robin­son “cer­tain­ly did not imply the tak­ing of any inno­cent lives” and that the rest of his speech was “non-con­tro­ver­sial.” There was no for­mal media pres­ence dur­ing the speech, the Pas­tor con­firmed.

Video of the speech was clipped by a Demo­c­rat, who took it off Lake Church’s video of the event on Face­book, which is still there in full. The Demo­c­rat flagged it for The New Repub­lic. You can watch it here:
[See video]

This ten­den­cy on the right to invoke an infi­nite­ly hal­lu­cino­genic and mal­leable left­ist ene­my to jus­ti­fy in advance the polit­i­cal vio­lence that the right itself wants to unleash on its ene­mies is a near-dai­ly occur­rence. Anoth­er ripe exam­ple came just this week from Kevin Roberts, pres­i­dent of the Her­itage Foun­da­tion, the brain trust behind Project 2025’s rad­i­cal blue­print for MAGA author­i­tar­i­an rule under a sec­ond Trump pres­i­den­cy.

“We are in the process of the sec­ond Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion, which will remain blood­less if the left allows it to be,” Roberts declared.

In this, Roberts essen­tial­ly said that if lib­er­als and Democ­rats too vehe­ment­ly resist MAGA’s intent to stock the gov­ern­ment with cor­rupt loy­al­ists to Trump and unleash mass per­se­cu­tion of the oppo­si­tion, vio­lence will be nec­es­sary to crush them—and if so, it will be their fault for not meek­ly accept­ing what they have com­ing to them. Mean­while, Trump him­self recent­ly sug­gest­ed that polit­i­cal vio­lence may erupt if the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion isn’t con­duct­ed with “fair­ness” and is stolen from him, by which he real­ly means, “if I don’t win.”

...

———-

“MAGA Gov Candidate’s Ugly, Hate­ful Rant: “Some Folks Need Killing!”” by Greg Sar­gent; The New Repub­lic; 07/05/2024

“Some folks need killing!” Robin­son, the state’s lieu­tenant gov­er­nor, shout­ed dur­ing a rough­ly half-hour-long speech in Lake Church in the tiny town of White Lake, in the south­east cor­ner of the state. “It’s time for some­body to say it. It’s not a mat­ter of vengeance. It’s not a mat­ter of being mean or spite­ful. It’s a mat­ter of neces­si­ty!”

He was­n’t minc­ing words. Some folks just need killing as a mat­ter of neces­si­ty. It’s not about spite. It’s about neces­si­ty. That was Rob­sin­son’s mes­sage in a church just two weeks before the assas­si­na­tion attempt on Don­ald Trump by a young man who by almost all accounts appears to have been a far right gun nut.

So who were these peo­ple who need killing? Well, Nazis. At least Nazis back dur­ing WWII. Today it’s peo­ple ‘can­cel­ing’ con­ser­v­a­tives on social media, for exam­ple. Those kind of ene­mies:

...
Robinson’s call for the “killing” of “some folks” came dur­ing an extend­ed dia­tribe in which he attacked an extra­or­di­nary assort­ment of ene­mies. These ranged from “peo­ple who have evil intent” to “wicked peo­ple” to those doing things like “tor­tur­ing and mur­der­ing and rap­ing” to social­ists and Com­mu­nists. He also invoked those sup­pos­ed­ly under­min­ing America’s found­ing ideals and left­ists alleged­ly per­se­cut­ing con­ser­v­a­tives by can­cel­ing them and doxxing them online.

In all this, Robin­son appeared to endorse lethal vio­lence against these unnamed ene­mies, par­tic­u­lar­ly on the left, though he wasn’t exact­ly clear on which “folks” are the ones who “need killing.”

...

Here’s what Robin­son said (bold mine):

We now find our­selves strug­gling with peo­ple who have evil intent. You know, there’s a time when we used to meet evil on the bat­tle­field, and guess what we did to it? We killed it! … When the Japan­ese bombed Pearl Har­bor, what did we do? We flew to Japan! And we killed the Japan­ese Army and Navy! … We didn’t argue and capit­u­late and talk about, well, maybe we shouldn’t fight the Nazis that hard. No, they’re bad. Kill them. Some lib­er­al some­where is going to say that sounds awful. Too bad. Get mad at me if you want to.

Some folks need killing! It’s time for some­body to say it. It’s not a mat­ter of vengeance. It’s not a mat­ter of being mean or spite­ful. It’s a mat­ter of neces­si­ty! When you have wicked peo­ple doing wicked things, tor­tur­ing and mur­der­ing and rap­ing. It’s time to call out, uh, those guys in green and go have them han­dled. Or those boys in blue and have them go han­dle it.…

We need to start han­dling our busi­ness again.… Don’t you feel it slip­ping away? … The fur­ther we start slid­ing into mak­ing 1776 a dis­tant mem­o­ry and the tenets of social­ism and com­mu­nism start com­ing into clear­er focus. They’re watch­ing us. They’re lis­ten­ing to us. They’re track­ing us. They get mad at you. They can­cel you. They dox you. They kick you off social media. They come in and close down your busi­ness. Folks, it’s hap­pen­ing … because we have for­got­ten who we are.

Robin­son might try to argue that he only meant that our ene­mies dur­ing World War II—and tor­tur­ers and mur­der­ers and rapists today—deserve “killing.” But the sum total of his remarks plain­ly sug­gests oth­er­wise. He seemed to analo­gize the need to kill World War II ene­mies to the need to kill ene­mies in the present, ene­mies who har­bor “evil intent,” ene­mies con­ser­v­a­tives are strug­gling against “now.”

What’s more, Robin­son described those ene­mies in very broad terms. He sug­gest­ed that con­ser­v­a­tives will lose the spir­it of 1776 (mean­ing their coun­try) to ene­mies who harass them on social media and else­where unless they are pre­pared to unleash the army and cops to “han­dle” (i.e., kill) them. These appear to be the “folks” who “need killing.”
...

And in case it was­n’t clear the leader of the Church, Rev­erend Cameron McGill, ful­ly endorsed this mes­sage of the neces­si­ty for killing, he cleared that up with an email argu­ing the words were “non-con­tro­ver­sial” and only meant to be applied to the peo­ple who deserve it. The peo­ple “seek­ing to kill us.” Not the inno­cent:

...
The Rev­erend Cameron McGill, the Pas­tor of Lake Church, con­firmed to me that he and Robin­son expect­ed these remarks about “killing” to be “scru­ti­nized,” but defend­ed them.

With­out a doubt, those he deemed wor­thy of death [were] those seek­ing to kill us,” Pas­tor Cameron said in an email, adding that Robin­son “cer­tain­ly did not imply the tak­ing of any inno­cent lives” and that the rest of his speech was “non-con­tro­ver­sial.” There was no for­mal media pres­ence dur­ing the speech, the Pas­tor con­firmed.

Video of the speech was clipped by a Demo­c­rat, who took it off Lake Church’s video of the event on Face­book, which is still there in full. The Demo­c­rat flagged it for The New Repub­lic. You can watch it here:
[See video]
...

And as this arti­cle reminds us, far right threats of vio­lent, implied or very explic­it, has become a near dai­ly occur­rence in the age of Trump. Includ­ing the threat of vio­lence from Trump if does­n’t win issued dur­ing an April inter­view with Time Mag­a­zine. ‘Tis the sea­son of threats of vio­lence:

...
This ten­den­cy on the right to invoke an infi­nite­ly hal­lu­cino­genic and mal­leable left­ist ene­my to jus­ti­fy in advance the polit­i­cal vio­lence that the right itself wants to unleash on its ene­mies is a near-dai­ly occur­rence. Anoth­er ripe exam­ple came just this week from Kevin Roberts, pres­i­dent of the Her­itage Foun­da­tion, the brain trust behind Project 2025’s rad­i­cal blue­print for MAGA author­i­tar­i­an rule under a sec­ond Trump pres­i­den­cy.

“We are in the process of the sec­ond Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion, which will remain blood­less if the left allows it to be,” Roberts declared.

In this, Roberts essen­tial­ly said that if lib­er­als and Democ­rats too vehe­ment­ly resist MAGA’s intent to stock the gov­ern­ment with cor­rupt loy­al­ists to Trump and unleash mass per­se­cu­tion of the oppo­si­tion, vio­lence will be nec­es­sary to crush them—and if so, it will be their fault for not meek­ly accept­ing what they have com­ing to them. Mean­while, Trump him­self recent­ly sug­gest­ed that polit­i­cal vio­lence may erupt if the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion isn’t con­duct­ed with “fair­ness” and is stolen from him, by which he real­ly means, “if I don’t win.”
...

And as the fol­low­ing arti­cle notes, while the speech came on June 30, it was a real­ly writ­ten for July 4. This was the sec­ond year in a row Robert­son gave an ‘Inde­pen­dence Day’-themed speech at this same church. That’s part of the con­text of the ‘killing’ talk. Which, puts it square­ly in the con­text of Project 2025 leader Kevin Robert­s’s July 2 threats of a ‘Sec­ond Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion’ which will “remain blood­less if the left allows it to be.”. That’s near dai­ly.

Mark Robinson and Reverand Cameron McGill: American Renewal Project Favorites

And in case it seems like Robert­son’s call for killing was lim­it­ed to the gen­er­al cat­e­go­ry of ‘peo­ple try­ing to kill us’, as Rev­erend McGill put it, note the per­son who McGill declared was work­ing for the dev­il before Robert­son’s speech: Joe Biden. Do pres­i­den­t’s work­ing the dev­il deserve to be killed? We did­n’t get that clar­i­fi­ca­tion from McGill. And now Kamala is run­ning. Although we can be pret­ty con­fi­dent McGill is con­fi­dent Kamala also works for the dev­il. It would almost be weird at this point if he did­n’t:

The News & Observ­er

In speech about free­dom ‘slip­ping away,’ Mark Robin­son talks about ‘wicked peo­ple,’ killing

By Dawn Baum­gart­ner Vaugh­an

Updat­ed July 06, 2024 4:31 PM

RALEIGH

North Carolina’s Repub­li­can can­di­date for gov­er­nor used a recent speech about free­dom to talk about how he sees the Unit­ed States “slip­ping away” from the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence and how he thinks “wicked peo­ple” should be pun­ished by the mil­i­tary and police.

This is the sec­ond year in a row that Lt. Gov. Mark Robin­son has giv­en an Inde­pen­dence Day-themed speech at an ultra-con­ser­v­a­tive church and made con­tro­ver­sial com­ments. In 2023, he talked about “hell’s gates” and tar­get­ed teach­ers and LGBTQ+ peo­ple. Before a speech June 30 at Lake Church in Bladen Coun­ty cel­e­brat­ing the Fourth of July, the pas­tor host­ing Robin­son said he thinks the dev­il is behind Pres­i­dent Joe Biden.

...

Robin­son spoke dur­ing the church’s two-hour ser­vice. Before his speech, he had a con­ver­sa­tion in rock­ing chairs by the pul­pit with Lake Church pas­tor, the Rev. Cameron McGill. The church, which also has a lake­front retreat camp, is in White Lake, and is affil­i­at­ed with the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion.

McGill also serves on the Bladen Coun­ty Board of Com­mis­sion­ers. McGill said the church will also host U.S. Rep. Dan Bish­op, who is run­ning for attor­ney gen­er­al, and Dave Boliek, who is run­ning for state audi­tor.

...

Robin­son thinks free­dom is ‘slip­ping away’

By say­ing “han­dling our busi­ness again,” Robin­son explained by ref­er­enc­ing some­thing he said at the begin­ning of his speech, about peo­ple on their way to the church hav­ing the free­dom to dress how they like and lis­ten to what they want on the radio. He thinks those free­doms are “slip­ping away.”

“Keep think­ing about it. Don’t you feel it slip­ping away? Don’t you feel it slip­ping away?” he repeat­ed. “The fur­ther away we get from the con­cept of 1776 and why we declared our inde­pen­dence and how we declared our inde­pen­dence. The fur­ther we start slid­ing into mak­ing 1776 a dis­tant mem­o­ry, and the tenets of social­ism and com­mu­nism start com­ing into clear­er focus.”

Robin­son claimed “they” are watch­ing, track­ing, lis­ten­ing to, can­cel­ing, doxxing and mad at “you” and “us.”

He also used his speech to preach about sal­va­tion through Jesus Christ, how he didn’t want to wear a mask in a store dur­ing COVID-19 restric­tions and why he doesn’t cel­e­brate June­teenth.

Robin­son is North Carolina’s first Black lieu­tenant gov­er­nor, and if he wins in the fall will be the state’s first Black gov­er­nor. For June­teenth, Robin­son said he isn’t from Galve­ston, Texas, which was the loca­tion where news of the Eman­ci­pa­tion Procla­ma­tion last reached enslaved peo­ple, not­ing that slav­ery was not end­ed until the 13th Amend­ment was rat­i­fied. Rat­i­fi­ca­tion was on Dec. 6, 1865. Con­gress passed it on Jan. 31, 1865.

White House reac­tion

Robin­son, who is part of the MAGA wing of the Repub­li­can Par­ty, has been endorsed by for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump. Dur­ing his vis­it to the Lake Church, McGill showed the con­gre­ga­tion a pho­to of Robin­son with Trump. Before Robinson’s speech, McGill also talked about Pres­i­dent Joe Biden.

“I said here last week, and I know it’s offen­sive, prob­a­bly,” McGill said. “But peo­ple ask me all the time, Who’s behind Pres­i­dent Biden, and that admin­is­tra­tion? Is it Oba­ma, is it Clin­ton? Read your Bible. It is the dev­il. He is the father of lies. He is the deceiv­er. He is the divider. He is the manip­u­la­tor.”

...

———-

“In speech about free­dom ‘slip­ping away,’ Mark Robin­son talks about ‘wicked peo­ple,’ killing” By Dawn Baum­gart­ner Vaugh­an; The News & Observ­er; 07/06/2024

This is the sec­ond year in a row that Lt. Gov. Mark Robin­son has giv­en an Inde­pen­dence Day-themed speech at an ultra-con­ser­v­a­tive church and made con­tro­ver­sial com­ments. In 2023, he talked about “hell’s gates” and tar­get­ed teach­ers and LGBTQ+ peo­ple. Before a speech June 30 at Lake Church in Bladen Coun­ty cel­e­brat­ing the Fourth of July, the pas­tor host­ing Robin­son said he thinks the dev­il is behind Pres­i­dent Joe Biden.”

The sec­ond year in a row an Inde­pen­dence Day themes speech by Robert­son. It’s a lit­tle scary to imag­ine what last year’s speech was like.

And note the oth­er rhetor­i­cal repeat in this sto­ry: The com­ments Rev­erend McGill made about Joe Biden have the dev­il behind his admin­is­tra­tion, he pref­aced those com­ments with “I said here last week, and I know it’s offen­sive, prob­a­bly,” before mak­ing those asser­tions about Biden’s dev­il-dri­ven admin­is­tra­tion. ‘Joe Biden does the dev­il’s work’ is appar­ent­ly a theme in McGill’s teach­ings:

...
Robin­son spoke dur­ing the church’s two-hour ser­vice. Before his speech, he had a con­ver­sa­tion in rock­ing chairs by the pul­pit with Lake Church pas­tor, the Rev. Cameron McGill. The church, which also has a lake­front retreat camp, is in White Lake, and is affil­i­at­ed with the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion.

McGill also serves on the Bladen Coun­ty Board of Com­mis­sion­ers. McGill said the church will also host U.S. Rep. Dan Bish­op, who is run­ning for attor­ney gen­er­al, and Dave Boliek, who is run­ning for state audi­tor.

...

Robin­son, who is part of the MAGA wing of the Repub­li­can Par­ty, has been endorsed by for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump. Dur­ing his vis­it to the Lake Church, McGill showed the con­gre­ga­tion a pho­to of Robin­son with Trump. Before Robinson’s speech, McGill also talked about Pres­i­dent Joe Biden.

“I said here last week, and I know it’s offen­sive, prob­a­bly,” McGill said. “But peo­ple ask me all the time, Who’s behind Pres­i­dent Biden, and that admin­is­tra­tion? Is it Oba­ma, is it Clin­ton? Read your Bible. It is the dev­il. He is the father of lies. He is the deceiv­er. He is the divider. He is the manip­u­la­tor.”
...

But Rev­erend McGill should­n’t be seen as a lone killing-friend­ly preach­er. He’s part of an orga­ni­za­tion: The Amer­i­can Renew­al Project. As the fol­low­ing arti­cle describes, the Amer­i­can Renew Project oper­ates as a net­work of pas­tors ded­i­cat­ed to the Repub­li­can Par­ty. But it’s not just ded­i­cat­ed to get­ting Repub­li­cans elect­ed to office. It’s ded­i­cat­ed to recruit­ing pas­tors to run for office. A net­work ded­i­cat­ed to con­vinc­ing con­ser­v­a­tive pas­tors to run for pub­lic office. With Cameron McGill serv­ing as one of its recruiters and Mark Robin­son as some sort of star sales­man:

Reli­gion News Ser­vice

The Amer­i­can Renew­al Project wants to mobi­lize pas­tors for the Repub­li­can Par­ty.

The goal is to bring Chris­tian­i­ty back into the pub­lic square.

by Yonat Shim­ron
Novem­ber 4, 2022

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (RNS) — North Car­oli­na Lt. Gov. Mark Robin­son has a mes­sage for the state’s evan­gel­i­cal pas­tors: Run for office.

Robin­son has repeat­ed his mes­sage at least eight times over the past few months at church lun­cheons across North Car­oli­na host­ed by the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project, a group ded­i­cat­ed to mobi­liz­ing evan­gel­i­cal pas­tors to run for school boards, city coun­cils, coun­ty com­mis­sions, the state leg­is­la­ture and beyond.

The project, which has host­ed sim­i­lar events in Iowa, Mis­souri, South Car­oli­na and Texas, takes the now decades-long effort to get evan­gel­i­cals engaged in elec­toral pol­i­tics one step fur­ther. It seeks to bring pas­tors into elect­ed office.

Robin­son, a 54-year-old Repub­li­can and a first-time office­hold­er him­self, said the nation needs pas­tors will­ing to fight a spir­i­tu­al war in the halls of pow­er.

...

If Jer­ry Fal­well Sr. found­ed the Moral Major­i­ty to get evan­gel­i­cals to lob­by Con­gress on issues of moral­i­ty, and if the Chris­t­ian Coali­tion mobi­lized Chris­tians to cast bal­lots, then the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project wants pas­tors to run as can­di­dates on the Repub­li­can Par­ty tick­et up and down the bal­lot.

Now in its 17th year, the project reor­ga­nized two years ago to focus on region­al pas­tor lun­cheons in a hand­ful of states. This year, eight of its 19 lun­cheons were held in North Car­oli­na, draw­ing more than 1,500 pas­tors and their wives. The events were free, and no offer­ings were tak­en.

In addi­tion to the lieu­tenant gov­er­nor, each lun­cheon fea­tured North Car­oli­na Repub­li­can Par­ty Chair­man Michael What­ley, who promised the pas­tors that if they run, the par­ty will pro­vide them the logis­ti­cal sup­port they need.

...

Dri­ving the project is the Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist notion that Amer­i­ca has strayed from its ori­gins and needs to be restored to its Chris­t­ian foun­da­tions.

“Amer­i­ca was found­ed on the Judeo-Chris­t­ian her­itage and estab­lished a bib­li­cal­ly based cul­ture,” said David Lane, a Dal­las, Texas, polit­i­cal oper­a­tive who found­ed Amer­i­can Renew­al Project. “We no longer have that. Sec­u­lar­ism was offi­cial­ly crowned in the mid-20th cen­tu­ry.”

Lane said evan­gel­i­cal donors have giv­en him near­ly $50 mil­lion since 2005 to sup­port his project and con­vince pas­tors to take up the cause.

Those invit­ed to recent lun­cheons come from var­i­ous denom­i­na­tions. Most are South­ern Bap­tist, charis­mat­ic or Pen­te­costal. The men — there are few, if any, women pas­tors — are over­whelm­ing­ly white. And despite the com­mon­ly used term Judeo-Chris­t­ian, there are hard­ly any Catholics, and cer­tain­ly no Jews.

Among those who spoke at most of the eight events across the state were two Bap­tist pas­tors on the Nov. 8 bal­lot. One is run­ning, unop­posed, for com­mis­sion­er in Bladen Coun­ty; the oth­er is run­ning for the North Car­oli­na House in heav­i­ly Repub­li­can-lean­ing Ran­dolph Coun­ty. Bar­ring a dis­as­ter, both will win.

The two pas­tors pep­pered their on-stage appeals with bib­li­cal ref­er­ences. One cit­ed Peter, Jesus’ dis­ci­ple, find­ing the courage to get out of the boat dur­ing the storm. The oth­er para­phrased the Book of Esther so beloved by evan­gel­i­cals: “You’ve been brought into the king­dom for such a time as this.”

A com­mon refrain at the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project is that Jesus’ say­ing, “Upon this rock I will build my church,” is com­mon­ly mis­con­strued. The Greek word “eccle­sia,” often trans­lat­ed as “church,” actu­al­ly means “assem­bly.” Amer­i­can Renewal’s sup­port­ers take this as a sign that Jesus want­ed Chris­tians to have influ­ence in the pub­lic square, not just inside the walls of a church.

Project lead­ers think the strat­e­gy is work­ing. They claim 50 pas­tors ran for var­i­ous North Car­oli­na offices in this year’s pri­maries, and 25 won their nom­i­na­tions and will appear on this November’s bal­lots.

The Renew­al Project did not, how­ev­er, pro­vide a list of those vying for pub­lic office, and only a hand­ful could be inde­pen­dent­ly ver­i­fied. The group does not fund any the pas­tors’ cam­paigns.

...

It wasn’t until 1978 that it was even pos­si­ble for pas­tors in all states to run. His­tor­i­cal­ly, some states had claus­es in their con­sti­tu­tions pro­hibit­ing cler­gy from run­ning for office, a holdover from Eng­lish com­mon law. In McDaniel v. Paty, the Supreme Court struck down the last of those claus­es, rul­ing that a Ten­nessee law pro­hibit­ing cler­gy mem­bers from serv­ing as polit­i­cal del­e­gates vio­lat­ed the free exer­cise clause of the First Amend­ment.

“For much of the 19th and 20th cen­turies there was a gen­er­al idea that min­is­te­r­i­al ser­vice was a sep­a­rate pro­fes­sion from pol­i­tics and it was incom­pat­i­ble with run­ning for office,” said Daniel K. Williams, pro­fes­sor of his­to­ry at the Uni­ver­si­ty of West Geor­gia.

Black pas­tors have, at times, been the excep­tion, and almost exclu­sive­ly on the Demo­c­ra­t­ic tick­et. Adam Clay­ton Pow­ell Jr., one­time pas­tor of Harlem’s Abyssin­ian Bap­tist Church, served as a Demo­c­ra­t­ic U.S. con­gress­man from 1945 until 1971. The Rev. Jesse Jack­son ran unsuc­cess­ful­ly for pres­i­dent in 1984 and 1988. The Rev. Raphael Warnock, pas­tor of Atlanta’s Ebenez­er Bap­tist Church, is now run­ning for reelec­tion to the U.S. Sen­ate. In local races there have undoubt­ed­ly been many more.

Robin­son, North Carolina’s lieu­tenant gov­er­nor, who is Black, is an excep­tion. He cap­tured the state’s sec­ond-high­est elect­ed office after a 2018 video that cap­tured him admon­ish­ing the Greens­boro City Coun­cil for attempt­ing to can­cel a bian­nu­al gun show went viral. Since win­ning office in 2020, he has defined him­self as a cul­ture war­rior, decry­ing “trans­gen­derism and homo­sex­u­al­i­ty” as “filth,” call­ing for elim­i­nat­ing the state Board of Edu­ca­tion and oppos­ing abor­tion (though he acknowl­edged that he and his future wife ter­mi­nat­ed a preg­nan­cy in 1989).

...

Robin­son, who is not a pas­tor, shares with the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project a myth­i­cal vision of America’s founders. At this week’s pastor’s lun­cheon at a church in Jamestown, near Greens­boro, he rhap­sodized about the faith of the Mayflower Puri­tans and the pio­neers who trav­eled west in cov­ered wag­ons in search of land. There was no men­tion of the dis­place­ment of Native peo­ple or the enslave­ment of Blacks.

“Those peo­ple were made of some­thing dif­fer­ent,” Robin­son bel­lowed. “Look at us now. You got peo­ple that can’t get around the cor­ner of Wal­mart with­out GPS. We have lit­er­al­ly for­got­ten how to do any­thing.”

At the end of Robinson’s 15-minute tes­ti­mo­ny, Gary Miller, the project’s direc­tor, asks pas­tors to get up and lay hands on the lieu­tenant gov­er­nor and pray for him. For about two min­utes, the pas­tors crowd around the stout, broad-chest­ed Robin­son. They lay hands on his back or lift their arms up in the air and pray out loud — a moment rem­i­nis­cent of Trump’s Oval Office prayer cir­cles.

Renew­al Project lead­ers do not take a pub­lic stand for for­mer Pres­i­dent Trump or unfound­ed claims that the 2020 elec­tion was stolen. Lane, the group’s founder, said he is not involved in help­ing reelect Trump and does not believe the elec­tion was stolen.

His fight, as he wrote in his week­ly email, which he says is emailed to 80,000 pas­tors, is against “pro­fane sec­u­lar­ists and cul­tur­al Marx­ism.”

“If North Car­oli­na Chris­tians stay home on elec­tion day, then those in active rebel­lion against God will get the chance to elect their rep­re­sen­ta­tives,” he wrote in a recent email to fol­low­ers, in which he also cas­ti­gat­ed the Bap­tist State Con­ven­tion of North Car­oli­na for hold­ing its annu­al meet­ing on Elec­tion Day.

The last of this year’s lun­cheons were held this week. But Lane’s work is not done. Imme­di­ate­ly after Elec­tion Day, Lane is head­ed for Israel with a del­e­ga­tion of pas­tors he wants to con­vince to run for office. A fre­quent trav­el­er to Israel, Lane has tak­en Huck­abee and Ken­tucky Sen. Rand Paul along on these trips.

Cameron McGill, the Bap­tist pas­tor and Bladen Coun­ty com­mis­sion­er who trav­eled to Israel with Lane in 2019, is return­ing this year to help con­vince a new crop of pas­tors to step up and run for office.

“God has called us not just to build our church but to impact the cul­ture,” McGill said. The trip to Israel, he said, may help U.S. pas­tors see how Jesus him­self did so.

———–

“The Amer­i­can Renew­al Project wants to mobi­lize pas­tors for the Repub­li­can Par­ty” by Yonat Shim­ron; Reli­gion News Ser­vice; 11/04/2022

Robin­son has repeat­ed his mes­sage at least eight times over the past few months at church lun­cheons across North Car­oli­na host­ed by the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project, a group ded­i­cat­ed to mobi­liz­ing evan­gel­i­cal pas­tors to run for school boards, city coun­cils, coun­ty com­mis­sions, the state leg­is­la­ture and beyond.”

Eight speech­es by Robin­son at Amer­i­can Renew­al Project over the course of just a few months. And that was back in late 2022. As we can see, Robin­son is quite a pop­u­lar fig­ure with the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project. Mark Robin­son isn’t just a ran­dom politi­cian with respect to the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project. He’s their star politi­cian. Which is rather iron­ic giv­en that the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project is ded­i­cat­ed to con­vinc­ing pas­tors to run for office and Robin­son is now pas­tor:

...
Now in its 17th year, the project reor­ga­nized two years ago to focus on region­al pas­tor lun­cheons in a hand­ful of states. This year, eight of its 19 lun­cheons were held in North Car­oli­na, draw­ing more than 1,500 pas­tors and their wives. The events were free, and no offer­ings were tak­en.

In addi­tion to the lieu­tenant gov­er­nor, each lun­cheon fea­tured North Car­oli­na Repub­li­can Par­ty Chair­man Michael What­ley, who promised the pas­tors that if they run, the par­ty will pro­vide them the logis­ti­cal sup­port they need.

...

Dri­ving the project is the Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist notion that Amer­i­ca has strayed from its ori­gins and needs to be restored to its Chris­t­ian foun­da­tions.

...

Those invit­ed to recent lun­cheons come from var­i­ous denom­i­na­tions. Most are South­ern Bap­tist, charis­mat­ic or Pen­te­costal. The men — there are few, if any, women pas­tors — are over­whelm­ing­ly white. And despite the com­mon­ly used term Judeo-Chris­t­ian, there are hard­ly any Catholics, and cer­tain­ly no Jews.

...

Project lead­ers think the strat­e­gy is work­ing. They claim 50 pas­tors ran for var­i­ous North Car­oli­na offices in this year’s pri­maries, and 25 won their nom­i­na­tions and will appear on this November’s bal­lots.

The Renew­al Project did not, how­ev­er, pro­vide a list of those vying for pub­lic office, and only a hand­ful could be inde­pen­dent­ly ver­i­fied. The group does not fund any the pas­tors’ cam­paigns.

...

It wasn’t until 1978 that it was even pos­si­ble for pas­tors in all states to run. His­tor­i­cal­ly, some states had claus­es in their con­sti­tu­tions pro­hibit­ing cler­gy from run­ning for office, a holdover from Eng­lish com­mon law. In McDaniel v. Paty, the Supreme Court struck down the last of those claus­es, rul­ing that a Ten­nessee law pro­hibit­ing cler­gy mem­bers from serv­ing as polit­i­cal del­e­gates vio­lat­ed the free exer­cise clause of the First Amend­ment.

“For much of the 19th and 20th cen­turies there was a gen­er­al idea that min­is­te­r­i­al ser­vice was a sep­a­rate pro­fes­sion from pol­i­tics and it was incom­pat­i­ble with run­ning for office,” said Daniel K. Williams, pro­fes­sor of his­to­ry at the Uni­ver­si­ty of West Geor­gia.
...

So who is behind the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project? Well, as we can see, it was found­ed by Dal­las-based polit­i­cal oper­a­tive David Lane, which claims to have received near­ly $50 mil­lion from donors for the project since 2005. And look who was attend­ing Lane on a planned trip to Israel to help con­vince more pas­tors to run for polit­i­cal office: Cameron McGill, who also trav­eled with Lane there in 2019 as part of the pas­tor recruit­ment agen­da:

...
“Amer­i­ca was found­ed on the Judeo-Chris­t­ian her­itage and estab­lished a bib­li­cal­ly based cul­ture,” said David Lane, a Dal­las, Texas, polit­i­cal oper­a­tive who found­ed Amer­i­can Renew­al Project. “We no longer have that. Sec­u­lar­ism was offi­cial­ly crowned in the mid-20th cen­tu­ry.”

Lane said evan­gel­i­cal donors have giv­en him near­ly $50 mil­lion since 2005 to sup­port his project and con­vince pas­tors to take up the cause.

...

The last of this year’s lun­cheons were held this week. But Lane’s work is not done. Imme­di­ate­ly after Elec­tion Day, Lane is head­ed for Israel with a del­e­ga­tion of pas­tors he wants to con­vince to run for office. A fre­quent trav­el­er to Israel, Lane has tak­en Huck­abee and Ken­tucky Sen. Rand Paul along on these trips.

Cameron McGill, the Bap­tist pas­tor and Bladen Coun­ty com­mis­sion­er who trav­eled to Israel with Lane in 2019, is return­ing this year to help con­vince a new crop of pas­tors to step up and run for office.

“God has called us not just to build our church but to impact the cul­ture,” McGill said. The trip to Israel, he said, may help U.S. pas­tors see how Jesus him­self did so.
...

Robin­son and McGill are clear­ly impor­tant fig­ures in the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project. But as we’re going to see, the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project has been around for a lot longer than Mark Robin­son’s polit­i­cal career. And it has about as much insti­tu­tion­al sup­port as a far right Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist enti­ty can receive.

The American Renewal Project’s Texas Patrons (who also want to ban Christmas and Easter)

For exam­ple, let’s take a look at the fol­low­ing Reuters arti­cle from Decem­ber of 2015 about the Amer­i­can Renew­al Pro­jec­t’s then-near­ly-decade old efforts to recruit more pas­tors to run for office. Recall how this was the peri­od not long before Don­ald Trump’s for­mal cap­ture of the Repub­li­can Par­ty, when Ted Cruz was still the can­di­date of choice among these pow­er­ful theocrats. It was also a month after the high­ly con­tentions polit­i­cal fight over the Hous­ton ‘bath­room bill.’ A fight that served as an ear­ly tem­plate for the GOP’s embrace of ‘anti-trans’ pol­i­tics and by key Texas theo­crat­ic polit­i­cal oper­a­tives Jared Wood­fill and Steven Hotze, with groups like the Alliance Defend­ing Free­dom (ADF) and Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil (FRC) help­ing to pro­pel the sto­ry to a nation­al audi­ence. Sev­er­al pas­tors described as instru­men­tal in that efforts are also part of the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project.

And as the fol­low­ing Reuters arti­cle describes, David Lane was hold­ing gath­er­ings across the US at this time as part of his Amer­i­can Renew­al Project efforts, claim­ing to have a net­work of 100,000 pas­tors already at that point. Gath­er­ings financed in part by the pow­er­ful Texas bil­lion­aire Wilks broth­ers, who chipped in $10 mil­lion for the effort. Recall how the bil­lion­aire Wilks broth­ers are key part­ners with Tim Dunn in the theo­crat­ic cap­ture of the Texas Repub­li­can Par­ty. Also recall how Far­ris Wilks is such a staunch advo­cate of the Old Tes­ta­ment that he actu­al­ly oppos­es the cel­e­bra­tion of Christ­mas and East­er, argu­ing that are “root­ed in pagan­ism”. Yes, it turns out the Texas bil­lion­aire who is such a giant theo­crat he actu­al­ly hates East­er and Christ­mas for being un-Chris­t­ian also hap­pens to be one of the major financiers of the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project:

Reuters

For God and coun­try: more U.S. pas­tors seek polit­i­cal office in 2016

By Michelle Con­lin
Decem­ber 11, 2015 9:22 AM CST
Updat­ed

NEW YORK (Reuters) — One Sun­day two years ago, Pas­tor Rob McCoy, who believes in ban­ning abor­tion and gay mar­riage and putting prayer back in schools, stood at the pul­pit of his Cal­i­for­nia mega church and announced he was endors­ing a polit­i­cal can­di­date: him­self.

“Every sin­gle per­son in this room has been incul­cat­ed and trained to think that any time a pas­tor opens his mouth to talk about pol­i­tics from the pul­pit, some­how that’s wrong,” said the 51-year-old McCoy. “You’ve been taught incor­rect­ly. There should be no oth­er place that you should speak of it but from the pul­pit.”

McCoy lost his bid for the Cal­i­for­nia State Assem­bly but, with the help of 650 vol­un­teers, most­ly from his church, he lat­er won a seat on the Thou­sand Oaks, Cal­i­for­nia, city coun­cil.

McCoy rep­re­sents a tac­ti­cal shift with­in a Chris­t­ian far right seek­ing to regain its polit­i­cal influ­ence after los­ing sev­er­al big bat­tles in the so-called cul­ture wars, includ­ing the Supreme Court rul­ing this year allow­ing gay mar­riage. That shift is being brought into sharp focus as activists pre­pare the bat­tle­ground for the 2016 gen­er­al elec­tion.

Aim­ing to moti­vate con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians, they are focus­ing on small­er polit­i­cal races, local bal­lot ini­tia­tives and com­mu­ni­ty vot­er reg­is­tra­tion dri­ves.

At the cen­ter of the effort is the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project, an umbrel­la group that says it has a net­work of 100,000 pas­tors. It is head­ed by evan­gel­i­cal Repub­li­can polit­i­cal oper­a­tive David Lane, who wants to recruit 1,000 pas­tors to run for elect­ed office in 2016.

So far, rough­ly 500 have com­mit­ted to run­ning, Lane told Reuters.

...

In some instances, pas­tors are trum­pet­ing their can­di­da­cies or those of oth­er evan­gel­i­cals direct­ly from the pul­pit, in vio­la­tion of Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice rules gov­ern­ing tax-exempt church­es. Some are launch­ing church-wide vot­er reg­is­tra­tion dri­ves.

One, Brad Atkins, pas­tor of South Car­oli­na’s Pow­der­sville First Bap­tist Church, said he has just fin­ished reg­is­ter­ing every eli­gi­ble vot­er in his church of 300. “I even lick the enve­lope and stick on the stamp for them,” said Atkins.

Sev­er­al of the pas­tors in Lane’s net­work were instru­men­tal in last month’s defeat of Hous­ton’s “trans­gen­der bath­room bill,” the local ordi­nance that banned dis­crim­i­na­tion against sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion and gen­der iden­ti­ty in pub­lic places. The pas­tors unit­ed to decry the mea­sure and encour­age con­gre­gants to sign a peti­tion that even­tu­al­ly put the new law to a bal­lot ini­tia­tive, where it was vot­ed down.

...

In the runup to Novem­ber 2016, Lane says he is hold­ing con­fer­ences in hotels across the coun­try near­ly every week, bring­ing togeth­er thou­sands of far right pas­tors and their wives for two-day, all-expens­es paid retreats. There are lec­tures on run­ning polit­i­cal cam­paigns, turn­ing out vot­ers, and inject­ing ser­mons with a healthy dose of pol­i­tics.

...

Help­ing fund the events are polit­i­cal donors like the bil­lion­aire Wilks broth­ers, who have giv­en up to $10 mil­lion accord­ing to sources close to the fam­i­ly. The Wilks, togeth­er with their wives, have also giv­en $15 mil­lion to a Super PAC sup­port­ing the pres­i­den­tial cam­paign of Texas Sen­a­tor Ted Cruz, a favorite of evan­gel­i­cals.

“THE LORD IS LEADING ME”

Cruz, who has shown up at about 10 of the events this year alone, appears to be the can­di­date who may ben­e­fit most from Lane’s dri­ve. He attend­ed a recent gath­er­ing at a hotel in Chan­til­ly, Vir­ginia, where about 200 pas­tors and their wives lis­tened to a series of speak­ers.

...

Crit­ics say open­ly dis­cussing pol­i­tics from the pul­pit — even announc­ing plans to run for office — threat­ens the con­cept of sep­a­ra­tion of church and state. It is also pro­hib­it­ed by the IRS, if church­es want to remain tax exempt.

Since 2012, about 900 preach­ers from evan­gel­i­cal fun­da­men­tal­ist church­es across the Unit­ed States have made record­ings of polit­i­cal­ly infused ser­mons and sent them to the IRS. The fed­er­al tax agency, which declined to com­ment, has yet to take any action.

Lane and his net­work of pas­tors say they are well with­in their rights to bring pol­i­tics into the church. “The found­ing fathers nev­er meant for the church not to par­tic­i­pate in gov­ern­ment,” said Lane. “They meant for the gov­ern­ment not to inter­fere with the church.

———–

“For God and coun­try: more U.S. pas­tors seek polit­i­cal office in 2016” By Michelle Con­lin; Reuters; 12/11/2015

“At the cen­ter of the effort is the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project, an umbrel­la group that says it has a net­work of 100,000 pas­tors. It is head­ed by evan­gel­i­cal Repub­li­can polit­i­cal oper­a­tive David Lane, who wants to recruit 1,000 pas­tors to run for elect­ed office in 2016.’

As we can see, the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project was already well under­way by 2015, with Lane claim­ing a net­work of 100,000 pas­tors. Again, this was 2015. It’s pre­sum­ably a much larg­er net­work by now. And as the arti­cle points out, sev­er­al of the pas­tors in the net­work were “instru­men­tal” in the defeat of the Hous­ton ‘bath­room bill’, the polit­i­cal fight led by Jared Wood­fill and Steven Hotze that served as the GOP’s tem­plate for anti-trans pol­i­tics. But it’s the $10 mil­lion from the Wilks broth­ers that under­scores the impor­tance of Tex­as­’s pow­er­ful theocrats in this net­work:

...
Sev­er­al of the pas­tors in Lane’s net­work were instru­men­tal in last month’s defeat of Hous­ton’s “trans­gen­der bath­room bill,” the local ordi­nance that banned dis­crim­i­na­tion against sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion and gen­der iden­ti­ty in pub­lic places. The pas­tors unit­ed to decry the mea­sure and encour­age con­gre­gants to sign a peti­tion that even­tu­al­ly put the new law to a bal­lot ini­tia­tive, where it was vot­ed down.

...

In the runup to Novem­ber 2016, Lane says he is hold­ing con­fer­ences in hotels across the coun­try near­ly every week, bring­ing togeth­er thou­sands of far right pas­tors and their wives for two-day, all-expens­es paid retreats. There are lec­tures on run­ning polit­i­cal cam­paigns, turn­ing out vot­ers, and inject­ing ser­mons with a healthy dose of pol­i­tics.

...

Help­ing fund the events are polit­i­cal donors like the bil­lion­aire Wilks broth­ers, who have giv­en up to $10 mil­lion accord­ing to sources close to the fam­i­ly. The Wilks, togeth­er with their wives, have also giv­en $15 mil­lion to a Super PAC sup­port­ing the pres­i­den­tial cam­paign of Texas Sen­a­tor Ted Cruz, a favorite of evan­gel­i­cals.

...

Cruz, who has shown up at about 10 of the events this year alone, appears to be the can­di­date who may ben­e­fit most from Lane’s dri­ve. He attend­ed a recent gath­er­ing at a hotel in Chan­til­ly, Vir­ginia, where about 200 pas­tors and their wives lis­tened to a series of speak­ers.
...

And, again, this was 2015. It’s not hard to imag­ine the Wilks broth­ers have giv­en a lot more since.

David Lane’s Call for Violent Dominionist Revolution. Which is Just Fine With His American Family Association Patrons

But the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project isn’t just anoth­er Wilks broth­er project. It has much broad­er theo­crat­ic insti­tu­tion­al sup­port. Plus, tech­ni­cal­ly it’s an exten­sion of the Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Asso­ci­a­tion, found­ed by Don Wild­mon (who died in 2023) and now led by his son Tim Wild­mon. Both CNP mem­bers.

Recall how Tim Wild­mon was among the group of CNP lead­ers who effec­tive­ly gave their bless­ings to the can­di­da­cy of Don­ald Trump in June of 2016. And as we’ve seen, Tim Wild­mon’s “Today’s Issues” AFA radio show was filled with so much extrem­ist con­tent that the Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Asso­ci­a­tion shows up on the SPLC’s list of hate groups, along with Tony Perkin­s’s Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil (FRC) and Michael Far­ris’s Alliance Defend­ing Free­dom (ADF).

It’s the kind of con­text that should make us utter­ly unsur­prised to learn that David Lane penned a piece for World Net Dai­ly in 2013 call­ing for a vio­lent domin­ion­ist rev­o­lu­tion. Because as should be clear by now, David Lane and his Amer­i­can Renew­al Project is a domin­ion­ist project sup­port­ed by this much larg­er domin­ion­ist net­work led by fig­ures like Wild­mons and their fel­low domin­ion­ists at the CNP:

Talk To Action

David Lane Calls for Domin­ion­ist Rev­o­lu­tion

Fred­er­ick Clark­son
Sat Jun 29, 2013 at 07:55:25 PM EST

The theo­crat­ic inten­tions of Chris­t­ian Right lead­ers some­times sur­face in unex­pect­ed ways. Most recent­ly David Lane, a top Chris­t­ian Right polit­i­cal oper­a­tive and long­time behind-the-scenes ““pow­er bro­ker”” called for vio­lent domin­ion­ist rev­o­lu­tion in an essay pub­lished (and then tak­en down) by World Net Dai­ly.

Lane has, among oth­er things, been the nation­al finance direc­tor for The Response, the 2011 prayer ral­ly that served as the de fac­to launch of Texas Gov. Rick Per­ry’s ill-fat­ed run for pres­i­dent, as well as the orga­niz­er of the Texas Restora­tion Project, which had boost­ed Per­ry’s polit­i­cal career. He has worked with and for such GOP pols as Newt Gin­grich, Mike Huck­abee and Michelle Bach­mann, and most recent­ly, Sen. Rand Paul (R‑KY). Lane cur­rent­ly leads the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project of Don Wild­mon’s Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Asso­ci­a­tion which is tar­get­ing twelve states for polit­i­cal devel­op­ment towards the 2014 elec­tions.

Such nuts and bolts elec­toral work not with­stand­ing, Lane called in his essay for Chris­tians to “Wage war to restore a Chris­t­ian Amer­i­ca.” The depth and feroc­i­ty of Lane’s vision is so remark­able that it can­not be explained away by the pun­dits of pooh pooh. Per­haps that is why it has gone unmen­tioned in the main­stream press. But Lane’s words tak­en togeth­er; in the con­text of the pol­i­tics of the moment as he under­stands it; and in set in the series of epochal his­tor­i­cal and bib­li­cal moments he invokes — his mean­ing is unam­bigu­ous.

He opens by quot­ing Chris­t­ian Recon­struc­tion­ist author Peter J. Lei­thart:

“Through­out Scrip­ture, the only pow­er that can over­come the seem­ing­ly invin­ci­ble omnipo­tence of a Babel or a Beast is the pow­er of mar­tyr­dom, the pow­er of the wit­ness to King Jesus to the point of loss and death.”

Lane goes on, still quot­ing Lei­thart, to denounce Amer­i­can Chris­tian­i­ty for fail­ing to pro­duce mar­tyrs and for sub­sti­tut­ing a “hereti­cal Amer­i­can­ism for Chris­t­ian ortho­doxy.” He insists that to put things right “Chris­tians must risk mar­tyr­dom” to force peo­ple to either “acknowl­edge Jesus [as] an imper­a­tor and the church as God’s imperi­um or to begin drink­ing holy blood.”

Lane express­es frus­tra­tion with what he regards as the super­fi­cial pol­i­tics of press releas­es of “inside the Belt­way” Chris­t­ian Right­ists. He calls for “cham­pi­ons of Christ to save the nation from the pagan onslaught impos­ing homo­sex­u­al mar­riage, homo­sex­u­al scouts, 60 mil­lion babies done to death by abor­tion and red ink as far as the eye can see.” The cham­pi­ons for Christ of his vision will “wage war for the Soul of Amer­i­ca and trust the liv­ing God to deliv­er the pagan gods into our hands and restore Amer­i­ca to her Judeo-Chris­t­ian her­itage and re-estab­lish a Chris­t­ian cul­ture.”

“Amer­i­ca’s sur­vival is at stake,” he declares, “and this is not tall talk or exag­ger­a­tion.”

...

“You ask,” Lane con­tin­ued, “What is our goal?” To wage war to restore Amer­i­ca to our Judeo-Chris­t­ian her­itage with all of our might and strength that God will give us. You ask, “What is our aim?” One word only: vic­to­ry, in spite of all intim­i­da­tion and ter­ror.”

Final­ly, he calls for a con­tem­po­rary “Gideon” and a “Rahab the Har­lot” to rise to the occa­sion. Gideon is the Bib­li­cal fig­ure who as a young man leads an Israelite army against the oppres­sive Mid­i­an­ites, who wor­shiped false gods. Rahab is revered for shel­ter­ing two Israelite spies in prepa­ra­tion for the sack­ing of the city of Jeri­cho by Joshua’s army, which result­ed the mas­sacre of every­one but Rahab and her fam­i­ly. That Lane is call­ing for a net­work of spies to inform an army aimed at destroy­ing an oppres­sive, “pagan” gov­ern­ment, is also unam­bigu­ous.

Almost as rev­e­la­to­ry as the con­tent of Lane’s essay is the lack of a response from the media and the polit­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty. Even as it was cov­ered a bit in the blo­gos­phere, notably by Denise Oliv­er Velez, a fea­tured writer at Dai­ly Kos and by Right Wing Watch and The New Civ­il Rights Move­ment, its been pret­ty much crick­ets every­where else.

———–

“David Lane Calls for Domin­ion­ist Rev­o­lu­tion” by Fred­er­ick Clark­son; Talk To Action; 06/29/2013

“Such nuts and bolts elec­toral work not with­stand­ing, Lane called in his essay for Chris­tians to “Wage war to restore a Chris­t­ian Amer­i­ca.” The depth and feroc­i­ty of Lane’s vision is so remark­able that it can­not be explained away by the pun­dits of pooh pooh. Per­haps that is why it has gone unmen­tioned in the main­stream press. But Lane’s words tak­en togeth­er; in the con­text of the pol­i­tics of the moment as he under­stands it; and in set in the series of epochal his­tor­i­cal and bib­li­cal moments he invokes — his mean­ing is unam­bigu­ous.”

A call for a vio­lent Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist rev­o­lu­tion. That was the sub­stance of David Lane’s World Net Dai­ly piece in June of 2013. Keep in mind this was just three months after the GOP’s ‘autop­sy’ exam­in­ing the par­ty’s 2012 fail­ures that rec­om­mend­ed the par­ty take a more inclu­sive approach to win­ning future elec­tions. An ‘autop­sy’ that was famous­ly tossed out the win­dow with Don­ald Trump’s nom­i­na­tion in 2016. In that sense, Lane’s calls for a vio­lent Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist rev­o­lu­tion were pret­ty pre­scient:

...
He opens by quot­ing Chris­t­ian Recon­struc­tion­ist author Peter J. Lei­thart:

“Through­out Scrip­ture, the only pow­er that can over­come the seem­ing­ly invin­ci­ble omnipo­tence of a Babel or a Beast is the pow­er of mar­tyr­dom, the pow­er of the wit­ness to King Jesus to the point of loss and death.”

Lane goes on, still quot­ing Lei­thart, to denounce Amer­i­can Chris­tian­i­ty for fail­ing to pro­duce mar­tyrs and for sub­sti­tut­ing a “hereti­cal Amer­i­can­ism for Chris­t­ian ortho­doxy.” He insists that to put things right “Chris­tians must risk mar­tyr­dom” to force peo­ple to either “acknowl­edge Jesus [as] an imper­a­tor and the church as God’s imperi­um or to begin drink­ing holy blood.”

Lane express­es frus­tra­tion with what he regards as the super­fi­cial pol­i­tics of press releas­es of “inside the Belt­way” Chris­t­ian Right­ists. He calls for “cham­pi­ons of Christ to save the nation from the pagan onslaught impos­ing homo­sex­u­al mar­riage, homo­sex­u­al scouts, 60 mil­lion babies done to death by abor­tion and red ink as far as the eye can see.” The cham­pi­ons for Christ of his vision will “wage war for the Soul of Amer­i­ca and trust the liv­ing God to deliv­er the pagan gods into our hands and restore Amer­i­ca to her Judeo-Chris­t­ian her­itage and re-estab­lish a Chris­t­ian cul­ture.”

“Amer­i­ca’s sur­vival is at stake,” he declares, “and this is not tall talk or exag­ger­a­tion.”
...

As anoth­er exam­ple of Lane’s ties to Texas pol­i­tics, note how Lane’s orga­niz­ing in Texas — like orga­niz­ing the Texas Restora­tion Project and serv­ing as the nation­al finance direc­tor for The Response prayer ral­ly where Per­ry launched his cam­paign — was instru­men­tal in for­mer gov­er­nor Rick Per­ry’s polit­i­cal career. So when we see how the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project was found­ed as a project of the Wild­mons’ Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Asso­ca­tion, it’s an indi­ca­tion of how much influ­ence Tim Wild­mon pre­sum­ably wields in Tex­as­’s Repub­li­can pol­i­tics. Domin­ion­ist influ­ence:

...
Lane has, among oth­er things, been the nation­al finance direc­tor for The Response, the 2011 prayer ral­ly that served as the de fac­to launch of Texas Gov. Rick Per­ry’s ill-fat­ed run for pres­i­dent, as well as the orga­niz­er of the Texas Restora­tion Project, which had boost­ed Per­ry’s polit­i­cal career. He has worked with and for such GOP pols as Newt Gin­grich, Mike Huck­abee and Michelle Bach­mann, and most recent­ly, Sen. Rand Paul (R‑KY). Lane cur­rent­ly leads the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project of Don Wild­mon’s Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Asso­ci­a­tion which is tar­get­ing twelve states for polit­i­cal devel­op­ment towards the 2014 elec­tions.
...

And as Fred­er­ick Clark­son observes, the lack of any main­stream recog­ni­tion of Lane’s call for a vio­lent domin­ion­ist rev­o­lu­tion is also very much part of this sto­ry. We can’t under­stand the rise of orga­nized Domin­ion­ism with­out rec­og­niz­ing the extent to which it’s been allowed to large­ly fly under the radar:

...
Almost as rev­e­la­to­ry as the con­tent of Lane’s essay is the lack of a response from the media and the polit­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty. Even as it was cov­ered a bit in the blo­gos­phere, notably by Denise Oliv­er Velez, a fea­tured writer at Dai­ly Kos and by Right Wing Watch and The New Civ­il Rights Move­ment, its been pret­ty much crick­ets every­where else.
...

And as we’ll see when we take a look at Lane’s domin­ion­ist screed below, part of what made the main­stream medi­a’s ignor­ing of Lane’s open call for polit­i­cal vio­lence so note­wor­thy is that the screed is filled with terms like the “pagan media” and “the pagan, lib­er­al media elite.” Which is a reminder that any sort of theo­crat­ic pow­er grab along the lines of Lane was call­ing would­n’t just include a purge of the gov­ern­ment (like Project 2025). It will be a purge of all major insti­tu­tions, includ­ing, and espe­cial­ly, the media with all those influ­en­tial ‘pagan elites’:

World Net Dai­ly

Wage war to restore a Chris­t­ian Amer­i­ca

Exclu­sive: David Lane rejects inef­fec­tive ‘press release’ tac­tics of Belt­way believ­ers

By David Lane
June 5, 2013

The last para­graph of Peter J. Lei­thart’s “Between Babel and the Beast” frames prop­er­ly the bat­tle fac­ing Amer­i­ca:

Through­out Scrip­ture, the only pow­er that can over­come the seem­ing­ly invin­ci­ble omnipo­tence of a Babel or a Beast is the pow­er of mar­tyr­dom, the pow­er of the wit­ness to King Jesus to the point of loss and death. Amer­i­can Chris­tian­i­ty has not done a good job of pro­duc­ing mar­tyrs, and that is because we have done such an out­stand­ing job of nur­tur­ing Amer­i­can­ists who regret that they have only one life to give for their coun­try. Amer­i­can­ists can­not break Babel­ic or bes­tial pow­er because they can­not dis­tin­guish hereti­cal Amer­i­can­ism from Chris­t­ian ortho­doxy. Until we do, Amer­i­ca will lurch along the path that leads from Babel to Beast. If Amer­i­ca is to be put in its place – put right – Chris­tians must risk mar­tyr­dom and force Babel to the crux where it has to decide either to acknowl­edge Jesus an imper­a­tor and the church as God’s imperi­um or to begin drink­ing holy blood.”

Where are the cham­pi­ons of Christ to save the nation from the pagan onslaught impos­ing homo­sex­u­al mar­riage, homo­sex­u­al scouts, 60 mil­lion babies done to death by abor­tion and red ink as far as the eye can see on Amer­i­ca? Who will wage war for the Soul of Amer­i­ca and trust the liv­ing God to deliv­er the pagan gods into our hands and restore Amer­i­ca to her Judeo-Chris­t­ian her­itage and re-estab­lish a Chris­t­ian cul­ture?

Let’s make it crys­tal clear: Those who embrace homo­sex­u­al mar­riage and homo­sex­u­al Scout­ing – or homo­sex­u­al­i­ty in gen­er­al – know lit­tle and prac­tice noth­ing of Chris­tian­i­ty. Notwith­stand­ing Sen. Rob Port­man – or the 1,400 Boy Scout del­e­gates who buck­led – Chris­t­ian love is reg­u­lat­ed not by impulse, but by prin­ci­ple. “We hence con­clude, that not only the repro­bates ought to be reproved, severe­ly, and with sharp earnest­ness, but also the elect them­selves, even those whom we deem to be chil­dren of God.” [John Calvin]

As to the future of Amer­i­ca – and the col­lapse of this once-Chris­t­ian nation – Chris­tians must not only be allowed to have opin­ions, but polit­i­cal­ly, Chris­tians must be retrained to war for the Soul of Amer­i­ca and quit believ­ing the fab­ri­cat­ed whop­per of the “Sep­a­ra­tion of Church and State,” the lie repeat­ed ad nau­se­um by the left and lib­er­als to keep Chris­t­ian Amer­i­ca – the moral major­i­ty – from impos­ing moral gov­ern­ment on pagan pub­lic schools, pagan high­er learn­ing and pagan media. Bill Ben­net­t’s insight, “… the two essen­tial ques­tions Pla­to posed as: Who teach­es the chil­dren, and what do we teach them?” requires deep thought, soul-search­ing and a response from Chris­t­ian Amer­i­ca to the sec­u­lar, polit­i­cal­ly cor­rect and mul­ti­cul­tur­al false gods impos­ing their reli­gion on Amer­i­ca’s chil­dren.

...

Polling shows that of the 65–80 mil­lion evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians who read their Bible, attend church and pray, half of those are not reg­is­tered to vote, half of that half don’t vote, and of the 25 per­cent who vot­ed in 2012, 22 per­cent of them vot­ed for Pres­i­dent Oba­ma.

Whether the mobi­liza­tion of pas­tors and pews to save the nation goes against the grain of the pagan, lib­er­al media elite is not rel­e­vant. Amer­i­ca’s sur­vival is at stake, and this is not tall talk or exag­ger­a­tion.

Men of Issachar – “who under­stand the times and know what Amer­i­ca should do” – with imag­i­na­tion, insight, com­pe­tence and resource­ful­ness are required to turn Amer­i­ca from ruin and death back to Him.

Let me be clear. The cur­ren­cy used by the present gen­er­a­tion of Chris­t­ian “inside the Belt­way” D.C. lead­ers – press con­fer­ences, press releas­es and get­ting a shout-out on the evening news – is no longer viable; polit­i­cal action by spir­i­tu­al polit­i­cal oper­a­tives and can­di­dates is required. The old mod­el used by the pol­i­cy boys – seem­ing­ly sane and skill­ful a gen­er­a­tion or two ago – has tak­en us over the cliff. Chris­t­ian Amer­i­ca is in ruins.

As demon­strat­ed by the give-and-take with the pagan media elite and pagan Nation­al Edu­ca­tion Asso­ci­a­tion, it is impos­si­ble to hold a con­ver­sa­tion with some­one bent on deliv­er­ing a mono­logue. Chris­t­ian Amer­i­ca must war to make our nation a bet­ter place for our kids and grand­kids.

If the Amer­i­can exper­i­ment with free­dom is to end after 237 years, let each of us com­mit to brawl all the way to the end because, “Upon this bat­tle depends the sur­vival of Chris­t­ian civ­i­liza­tion.” [Win­ston Churchill]

...

———

“Wage war to restore a Chris­t­ian Amer­i­ca” By David Lane; World Net Dai­ly; 06/05/2013

“As to the future of Amer­i­ca – and the col­lapse of this once-Chris­t­ian nation – Chris­tians must not only be allowed to have opin­ions, but polit­i­cal­ly, Chris­tians must be retrained to war for the Soul of Amer­i­ca and quit believ­ing the fab­ri­cat­ed whop­per of the “Sep­a­ra­tion of Church and State,” the lie repeat­ed ad nau­se­um by the left and lib­er­als to keep Chris­t­ian Amer­i­ca – the moral major­i­ty – from impos­ing moral gov­ern­ment on pagan pub­lic schools, pagan high­er learn­ing and pagan media. Bill Ben­net­t’s insight, “… the two essen­tial ques­tions Pla­to posed as: Who teach­es the chil­dren, and what do we teach them?” requires deep thought, soul-search­ing and a response from Chris­t­ian Amer­i­ca to the sec­u­lar, polit­i­cal­ly cor­rect and mul­ti­cul­tur­al false gods impos­ing their reli­gion on Amer­i­ca’s chil­dren.”

As we can see, David Lane’s ver­sion of the Unit­ed States will be a ‘No Pagans Allowed’ ver­sion. Where pret­ty much every­one who isn’t a fun­da­men­tal­ist Chris­t­ian is a pagan.

But it was­n’t just an anti-pagan screed. It was a call for Chris­t­ian mar­tyr­dom. This is a good time to recall the evi­dence sug­gest­ing the assas­si­na­tion attempt on Don­ald Trump could have had a ‘make Trump a mar­tyr’ motive car­ried about by a far right Thomas Matthew Crooks. Or the CNP’s eager embrace of insur­rec­tionary tac­tics to keep Don­ald Trump in office on Jan­u­ary 6, 2021. This is a move­ment look­ing for mar­tyrs:

...
The last para­graph of Peter J. Lei­thart’s “Between Babel and the Beast” frames prop­er­ly the bat­tle fac­ing Amer­i­ca:

Through­out Scrip­ture, the only pow­er that can over­come the seem­ing­ly invin­ci­ble omnipo­tence of a Babel or a Beast is the pow­er of mar­tyr­dom, the pow­er of the wit­ness to King Jesus to the point of loss and death. Amer­i­can Chris­tian­i­ty has not done a good job of pro­duc­ing mar­tyrs, and that is because we have done such an out­stand­ing job of nur­tur­ing Amer­i­can­ists who regret that they have only one life to give for their coun­try. Amer­i­can­ists can­not break Babel­ic or bes­tial pow­er because they can­not dis­tin­guish hereti­cal Amer­i­can­ism from Chris­t­ian ortho­doxy. Until we do, Amer­i­ca will lurch along the path that leads from Babel to Beast. If Amer­i­ca is to be put in its place – put right – Chris­tians must risk mar­tyr­dom and force Babel to the crux where it has to decide either to acknowl­edge Jesus an imper­a­tor and the church as God’s imperi­um or to begin drink­ing holy blood.”

Where are the cham­pi­ons of Christ to save the nation from the pagan onslaught impos­ing homo­sex­u­al mar­riage, homo­sex­u­al scouts, 60 mil­lion babies done to death by abor­tion and red ink as far as the eye can see on Amer­i­ca? Who will wage war for the Soul of Amer­i­ca and trust the liv­ing God to deliv­er the pagan gods into our hands and restore Amer­i­ca to her Judeo-Chris­t­ian her­itage and re-estab­lish a Chris­t­ian cul­ture?

Let’s make it crys­tal clear: Those who embrace homo­sex­u­al mar­riage and homo­sex­u­al Scout­ing – or homo­sex­u­al­i­ty in gen­er­al – know lit­tle and prac­tice noth­ing of Chris­tian­i­ty. Notwith­stand­ing Sen. Rob Port­man – or the 1,400 Boy Scout del­e­gates who buck­led – Chris­t­ian love is reg­u­lat­ed not by impulse, but by prin­ci­ple. “We hence con­clude, that not only the repro­bates ought to be reproved, severe­ly, and with sharp earnest­ness, but also the elect them­selves, even those whom we deem to be chil­dren of God.” [John Calvin]
...

And there’s the repeat­ed ref­er­ences to the pagan media and the pagan, lib­er­al media elite. Along with all the pagan teach­ers. It’s reminder of how the ‘Sched­ule F+’ insti­tu­tion­al purge envi­sioned by Cur­tis Yarvin — a purge that goes far beyond gov­ern­ment insti­tu­tions and includes the pri­vate sec­tor — is very much in line with the kind of domin­ion­ist vision laid out by Lane:

...
Whether the mobi­liza­tion of pas­tors and pews to save the nation goes against the grain of the pagan, lib­er­al media elite is not rel­e­vant. Amer­i­ca’s sur­vival is at stake, and this is not tall talk or exag­ger­a­tion.

Men of Issachar – “who under­stand the times and know what Amer­i­ca should do” – with imag­i­na­tion, insight, com­pe­tence and resource­ful­ness are required to turn Amer­i­ca from ruin and death back to Him.

Let me be clear. The cur­ren­cy used by the present gen­er­a­tion of Chris­t­ian “inside the Belt­way” D.C. lead­ers – press con­fer­ences, press releas­es and get­ting a shout-out on the evening news – is no longer viable; polit­i­cal action by spir­i­tu­al polit­i­cal oper­a­tives and can­di­dates is required. The old mod­el used by the pol­i­cy boys – seem­ing­ly sane and skill­ful a gen­er­a­tion or two ago – has tak­en us over the cliff. Chris­t­ian Amer­i­ca is in ruins.

As demon­strat­ed by the give-and-take with the pagan media elite and pagan Nation­al Edu­ca­tion Asso­ci­a­tion, it is impos­si­ble to hold a con­ver­sa­tion with some­one bent on deliv­er­ing a mono­logue. Chris­t­ian Amer­i­ca must war to make our nation a bet­ter place for our kids and grand­kids.
...

David Lane real­ly does­n’t like ‘pagans’, where ‘pagans’ are defined as every­one who isn’t a Chris­t­ian fun­da­men­tal­ist. Or rather, the right kind of Chris­t­ian fun­da­men­tal­ist.

AFA Fellow Traveler, and Prophet, Cindy Jacobs

As we’re going to see, there are plen­ty of Chris­t­ian fun­da­men­tal­ist lead­ers who don’t see eye to with Lane and the Wild­mons. For exam­ple, recall above how Lane played an impor­tant role in help­ing to launch­ing Texas Gov­er­nor Rick Per­ry’s 2012 pres­i­den­tial run, serv­ing as the nation­al finance direc­tor for The Response prayer ral­ly where Per­ry launched his cam­paign. As the fol­low­ing Reli­gion Dis­patch­es excerpt from Sep­tem­ber of 2011 describes, that pro-Per­ry ral­ly end­ed up elic­it­ing some harsh crit­i­cism of the AFA from pop­u­lar reli­gious broad­cast­er Bran­non Howse, with Howse accus­ing the AFA of form­ing improp­er alliances with lead­ers in New Apos­tolic Ref­or­ma­tion (NAR) such as Cindy Jacobs, a self-pro­claimed Chris­t­ian ‘prophet’. Howse had appar­ent­ly also been attack­ing oth­er promi­nent fig­ures at Per­ry’s event like Jim Gar­low, Tony Perkins, and James and Shirley Dob­son.

As we’ve seen, the NAR is one of the more promi­nent strains of domin­ion­ist “Sev­en Moun­tains” the­ol­o­gy. A very QAnon-friend­ly the­ol­o­gy. The NAR is also lead by fig­ures like Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Matt Shea, who secret­ly penned a man­i­festo call­ing for the wag­ing of Bib­li­cal War to takeover the US in 2016? Recall how Shea’s man­i­festo called for the exe­cu­tion of any adult males who refused to sub­mit to the new theoc­ra­cy and he was even plot­ting with oth­er local mil­i­tants in com­ing up with a assas­si­na­tion list of left-wing lead­ers. The plan to was kill the Antifa lead­ers in their homes. And as we’ve also seen, Shea is not only deeply tied to the same group of theocrats behind Project Blitz but also close to Ken Peters and his net­work of “Patri­ot­ic Church­es” along with mili­tia groups like the Oath Keep­ers. In oth­er words, Shea is some­one who would have no prob­lem with the notion that ‘some peo­ple need killing’. He penned a whole man­i­festo about it.

And then there’s Repub­li­can House Speak­er Mike John­son’s ties to the NAR. Recall John­son’s ties to NAR lead­ers like Jim Gar­low. As well as chief pseu­do-his­to­ri­an for this move­ment, David Bar­ton. Also recall John­son’s ties to the Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Chris­t­ian Law­mak­ers (NACL) and how John­son gave the 2023 keynote address and the NACL’s annu­al event. The NACL is basi­cal­ly an orga­ni­za­tion for push­ing the NAR polit­i­cal cap­ture at the state lev­el. The NAR is a big part of this broad­er sto­ry of the­o­log­i­cal cap­ture that we’re look­ing at here. And, at least in 2011, Bran­non Howse was alarmed to see all the NAR fig­ures and allies involved with the launch of Rick Per­ry’s 2012 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign. A launch David Lane played a key role in orga­niz­ing.

Howse’s crit­i­cism of the AFA’s spon­sor­ship of Per­ry’s launch-event end­ed up get­ting a pair of radio show hosts on the AFA’s radio net­work kicked off the net­work. Why? Well, accord­ing to Tim Wild­mon, the two hosts, John Loef­fler and Todd Friel, had also appeared at Howse-spon­sored events where Howse was attack­ing the AFA and its allies over their NAR ties. That was the trans­gres­sion.

Inter­est­ing­ly, as a sign of just how tox­ic Cindy Jacobs is, even the AFA was deny­ing it played any role in invit­ing her to Rick Per­ry’s pres­i­den­tial cam­paign launch event, with Wild­mon sug­gest­ing that “maybe it was some­one from Gov­er­nor Perry’s office.” In oth­er words, Cindy Jacobs is so ‘out there’ the­o­log­i­cal­ly that even a domin­ion­ist like Tim Wild­mon does­n’t want to admit she’s a fel­low trav­el­er:

Reli­gion Dis­patch­es

Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Asso­ci­a­tion Tar­gets Radio Hosts Over Asso­ci­a­tion With Crit­ic

By War­ren Throck­mor­ton
Sep­tem­ber 30, 2011

The Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Asso­ci­a­tion has tak­en aim at fel­low reli­gious con­ser­v­a­tive Bran­non Howse over his crit­i­cism of the AFA’s recent spon­sor­ship of GOP pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Rick Perry’s The Response prayer meet­ing. Ear­li­er this week, Jim Stan­ley, pro­gram direc­tor of AFA’s radio net­work, Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Radio, sent notices to two talk show hosts who are asso­ci­at­ed with Howse, inform­ing them that con­tin­ued pres­ence on the AFA’s radio net­work was con­di­tioned on sev­er­ing ties with Howse.

The talk show hosts, John Loef­fler and Todd Friel, have shows aired by Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Radio and also speak at Howse spon­sored events. Accord­ing to Tim Wild­mon, pres­i­dent of the AFA, “we iden­ti­fied two peo­ple with pro­grams on our net­works and told them, ’you have to make a choice.’” In defense of the move, Wild­mon said “AFR is under no oblig­a­tion to run pro­grams of indi­vid­u­als who are going to help Bran­non when he is attack­ing our friends. We make pro­gram­ming deci­sions all the time.”

Howse heads World­view Week­end, a social­ly con­ser­v­a­tive min­istry which espous­es sim­i­lar con­ser­v­a­tive views as the AFA on cul­ture war issues as abor­tion and homo­sex­u­al­i­ty. How­ev­er, Howse charges that reli­gious right lead­ers have formed improp­er reli­gious alliances with lead­ers in the New Apos­tolic Ref­or­ma­tion such as Cindy Jacobs in order to pro­mote a con­ser­v­a­tive polit­i­cal agen­da. About his stance, Howse said, “Chris­tians must defend the gospel when we believe Chris­t­ian lead­ers are giv­ing cred­i­bil­i­ty to what the Bible describes as false teach­ing. About Wildmon’s con­cerns, Howse added, “I have avoid­ed nam­ing this radio net­work or pro-fam­i­ly group and I have avoid­ed nam­ing sev­er­al of the pro-fam­i­ly groups hop­ing they would repent.”

Wild­mon acknowl­edged that Howse had not named the AFA in his arti­cles but “every­body knows who he’s talk­ing about.” In an email, Wild­mon told me that Howse had tried to “sab­o­tage The Response that we were spon­sors of and has gone after our friends and asso­ciates like Jim Gar­low, Tony Perkins, James and Shirley Dob­son, etc., by name.” He explained that the net­work had received calls from lis­ten­ers and that the sit­u­a­tion had been “a headache.”

Wild­mon also point­ed to an arti­cle on the World­view Week­end web­site titled, “Pro-Fam­i­ly and Chris­t­ian Lead­ers Unite with ‘Prophet’ Cindy Jacobs” and which includ­ed a link to the spon­sors of The Response. Wild­mon said, “The head­line was unfair. We did not unite with Cindy Jacobs.” Asked who invit­ed her to endorse the event, Wild­mon respond­ed that he did not know, say­ing “maybe it was some­one from Gov­er­nor Perry’s office.”

...

Friel and Loef­fler are both slat­ed to speak at World­view Week­end events in 2011 and 2012. Until recent­ly, they have host­ed shows broad­cast on the AFR. Friel’s show is called Wretched Radio and airs on Sat­ur­day evenings. Loeffler’s show, Steel on Steel, will con­tin­ue to broad­cast on oth­er sta­tions. Friel did not want to com­ment for this arti­cle.

———–

“Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Asso­ci­a­tion Tar­gets Radio Hosts Over Asso­ci­a­tion With Crit­ic” By War­ren Throck­mor­ton; Reli­gion Dis­patch­es; 09/30/2011

“Howse heads World­view Week­end, a social­ly con­ser­v­a­tive min­istry which espous­es sim­i­lar con­ser­v­a­tive views as the AFA on cul­ture war issues as abor­tion and homo­sex­u­al­i­ty. How­ev­er, Howse charges that reli­gious right lead­ers have formed improp­er reli­gious alliances with lead­ers in the New Apos­tolic Ref­or­ma­tion such as Cindy Jacobs in order to pro­mote a con­ser­v­a­tive polit­i­cal agen­da. About his stance, Howse said, “Chris­tians must defend the gospel when we believe Chris­t­ian lead­ers are giv­ing cred­i­bil­i­ty to what the Bible describes as false teach­ing. About Wildmon’s con­cerns, Howse added, “I have avoid­ed nam­ing this radio net­work or pro-fam­i­ly group and I have avoid­ed nam­ing sev­er­al of the pro-fam­i­ly groups hop­ing they would repent.””

That’s quite warn­ing. Not just Howse’s words but the fact that it’s some­one as staunch­ly con­ser­v­a­tive as Howse issu­ing the warn­ing. Bran­non Howse is an extreme­ly con­ser­v­a­tive reli­gious fig­ure. So it’s quite notable that he was­n’t just crit­i­cal of the pres­ence of ‘prophet’ Cindy Jacobs but also has appar­ent­ly been attack­ing key lead­ers in this move­ment by name like Jim Gar­low, Tony Perkins, James and Shirley Dob­son:

...
Wild­mon acknowl­edged that Howse had not named the AFA in his arti­cles but “every­body knows who he’s talk­ing about.” In an email, Wild­mon told me that Howse had tried to “sab­o­tage The Response that we were spon­sors of and has gone after our friends and asso­ciates like Jim Gar­low, Tony Perkins, James and Shirley Dob­son, etc., by name.” He explained that the net­work had received calls from lis­ten­ers and that the sit­u­a­tion had been “a headache.”

Wild­mon also point­ed to an arti­cle on the World­view Week­end web­site titled, “Pro-Fam­i­ly and Chris­t­ian Lead­ers Unite with ‘Prophet’ Cindy Jacobs” and which includ­ed a link to the spon­sors of The Response. Wild­mon said, “The head­line was unfair. We did not unite with Cindy Jacobs.” Asked who invit­ed her to endorse the event, Wild­mon respond­ed that he did not know, say­ing “maybe it was some­one from Gov­er­nor Perry’s office.”
...

This was not crit­i­cism from some pro­gres­sive pas­tor. So when some­one like Howse is rais­ing warn­ing signs about the cor­rupt nature of this move­ment, that’s the kind of warn­ing that every­one might want to pay atten­tion to. And when a group like the AFA can’t even admit to an asso­ci­a­tion with Jacobs, that’s an even big­ger warn­ing.

So giv­en how touchy every­one was about Cindy Jacobs attend­ing Rick Per­ry’s 2012 launch event orga­nized by David Lane, it’s worth not­ing anoth­er impor­tant polit­i­cal even where Jacobs made an appear­ance: that June 2016 gath­er­ing where then-can­di­date Don­ald Trump met a del­e­ga­tion that was like a ‘Who’s Who’ of CNP lead­ers. Includ­ing Tim Wild­mon. And as the fol­low­ing Rightwing Watch report observes, oth­er atten­dees includ­ed NAR leader Jim Gar­low and ‘prophet’ Cindy Jacobs:

Rightwing Watch

Don­ald Trump To Court Anti-LGBT Hate Groups, ‘Prophets’ And Tel­e­van­ge­lists

By Bri­an Tash­man | May 24, 2016 3:10 pm

Next month, Don­ald Trump will host a meet­ing with some of the country’s most rad­i­cal anti-LGBT and anti-choice lead­ers in New York City.

Trump, who has already recruit­ed a vari­ety of far-right activists and con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists to his cam­paign, is set to take part in a con­ven­ing orga­nized by Ben Car­son, a for­mer rival turned cam­paign sur­ro­gate, aimed at bring­ing reluc­tant Reli­gious Right lead­ers to his side.

Accord­ing to a copy of the invi­ta­tion to the event obtained by the Nation­al Review, Trump will be joined by Reli­gious Right activists includ­ing Tony Perkins, James Dob­son, Pen­ny Nance, Jim Gar­low, Rick Scar­bor­ough, Phil Bur­ress, Ken Cuc­cinel­li, Lila Rose, E.W Jack­son, Har­ry Jack­son, Tim Wild­mon, Ralph Reed, Pat Robert­son and Cindy Jacobs.

The meet­ing will be cohost­ed by the Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil, Vision Amer­i­ca and AFA Action, the polit­i­cal arm of the Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Asso­ci­a­tion, three of the most vicious anti-LGBT hate groups in the coun­try.

Trump has already pledged to use nom­i­nees to the Supreme Court to pave the way for the rever­sal of the land­mark rul­ings on abor­tion rights and mar­riage equal­i­ty and has vowed to defund Planned Par­ent­hood, key pri­or­i­ties of right-wing activists.

...

———–

“Don­ald Trump To Court Anti-LGBT Hate Groups, ‘Prophets’ And Tel­e­van­ge­lists” By Bri­an Tash­man; Rightwing Watch; 05/24/2016

“Accord­ing to a copy of the invi­ta­tion to the event obtained by the Nation­al Review, Trump will be joined by Reli­gious Right activists includ­ing Tony Perkins, James Dob­son, Pen­ny Nance, Jim Gar­low, Rick Scar­bor­ough, Phil Bur­ress, Ken Cuc­cinel­li, Lila Rose, E.W Jack­son, Har­ry Jack­son, Tim Wild­mon, Ralph Reed, Pat Robert­son and Cindy Jacobs.”

This was the del­e­ga­tion that effec­tive­ly embraced Don­ald Trump that year. Some­how Cindy Jacobs keeps get­ting invit­ed to these events. She must have some awe­some prophe­cies to share. It’s also worth keep­ing in mind that this isn’t the only time we’ve heard about Don­ald Trump meet­ing with Chris­t­ian prophets.

American Renewal Project’s Profound Primary Influence

As we just saw, the Texas Renew­al Project — Tex­as­’s branch of the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project — played a cen­tral, if con­tro­ver­sial, role in the 2011 launch of Rick Per­ry’s 2012 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign. But that was­n’t the only state branch to make polit­i­cal waves that year. As the fol­low­ing New York Times arti­cle excerpt from April 2011 describes, the Iowa branch of the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project — the Iowa Renew­al Project — was hold­ing an event attend­ed by near­ly 10,000 pas­tors fea­tur­ing speak­ers like David Bar­ton, Mike Huck­abee, and Newt Gin­grich and oth­er GOP pres­i­den­tial con­tenders. And Gin­grich was­n’t just a speak­er. The event was paid for with hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars from the polit­i­cal action com­mit­tees of Gin­grich along with the Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Asso­ci­a­tion. Mike Huck­abee also appears to be a reg­u­lar co-spon­sor for these events. Huck­abee is also an exam­ple of the influ­ence pas­tors can have on pol­i­tics: Huck­abee was the only GOP pres­i­den­tial can­di­date to show up at an Iowa Renew­al meet­ing in Decem­ber of 2007, weeks before the Repub­li­can cau­cus­es, and went on to win that key pri­ma­ry. It turns out hav­ing the back­ing of a large net­work of pas­tors is extreme­ly help­ful in pol­i­tics. Espe­cial­ly in Iowa.

As the arti­cle men­tions, David Lane actu­al­ly first start­ed arrang­ing pas­tor con­fer­ences in Texas and Cal­i­for­nia in the 1990s, but the project has grown in “the last five years” — which would coin­cide with when the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project was launched — with the Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Asso­ci­a­tion large­ly foot­ing the bills for the gath­er­ings. Keep in mind what we saw about about Lane claim­ing in 2015 that he had raised $50 mil­lion for the project over the year, includ­ing $10 mil­lion from Wilks Far­ris. It’s con­text to keep in mind regard­ing who is behind the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project: while the Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Asso­ci­a­tion appears to be the pri­ma­ry bene­fac­tor, there’s been a vari­ety of sources have been financ­ing the effort. In oth­er words, the Amer­i­can Renew Project is far from just an Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Asso­ci­a­tion project. It’s a group effort:

The New York Times

An Iowa Stop in a Broad Effort to Revi­tal­ize the Reli­gious Right

By Erik Eck­holm
April 2, 2011

WEST DES MOINES, Iowa — Hun­dreds of con­ser­v­a­tive pas­tors in Iowa received the entic­ing invi­ta­tion. Signed by Mike Huck­abee, a for­mer Arkansas gov­er­nor and 2008 pres­i­den­tial con­tender, it invit­ed the pas­tors and their spous­es to an expens­es-paid, two-day Pas­tors’ Pol­i­cy Brief­ing at a Sher­a­ton hotel.

Near­ly 400 Iowa min­is­ters and many of their spous­es accept­ed, fill­ing a ball­room here on March 24 and 25. Through an evening ban­quet and long ses­sions, they heard speak­ers deplore a sec­u­lar assault on evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian ver­i­ties like the sanc­ti­ty of male-female mar­riage, the human­i­ty of the unborn and the divine right to lim­it­ed gov­ern­ment.

The pro­gram, spon­sored by a tem­po­rary enti­ty called the Iowa Renew­al Project, fea­tured sev­er­al super­stars of the Chris­t­ian right as well as four pos­si­ble Repub­li­can con­tenders for pres­i­dent. It was the lat­est of dozens of free, two-day con­ven­tions in at least 14 states over the past sev­er­al years, usu­al­ly with Mr. Huck­abee list­ed as a co-spon­sor, that have been attend­ed by near­ly 10,000 pas­tors who have spread the word in their church­es and com­mu­ni­ties.

...

The Iowa pas­tors heard David Bar­ton, a Chris­t­ian his­to­ri­an, argue that the coun­try was found­ed as explic­it­ly Chris­t­ian and lament that too few evan­gel­i­cals get out and vote. They heard Newt Gin­grich, a for­mer House speak­er and like Mr. Huck­abee a pos­si­ble 2012 pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, say that con­sti­tu­tion­al lib­er­ties like the right to bear arms were ordained by God. They heard how to pro­mote “bib­li­cal­ly informed” polit­i­cal advo­ca­cy by church­go­ers with­in the con­fines of fed­er­al tax law.

The oth­er pos­si­ble can­di­dates who spoke were Gov. Haley Bar­bour of Mis­sis­sip­pi and Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Michele Bach­mann of Min­neso­ta.

Sup­port from many of the pas­tors in the audi­ence here helped Mr. Huck­abee, an evan­gel­i­cal min­is­ter, win the Iowa Repub­li­can cau­cus­es in 2008. He had been the only can­di­date to appear at a pas­tors’ meet­ing before the Repub­li­can cau­cus­es and went on to gain a sur­prise vic­to­ry, with 60 per­cent of the cau­cus vot­ers describ­ing them­selves in exit polls as evan­gel­i­cals..

...

He and the oth­er Repub­li­can speak­ers were care­ful not to sound too much like can­di­dates in this offi­cial­ly non­par­ti­san forum, instead empha­siz­ing the threats to con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian val­ues and the need for church­es to be engaged. Mr. Gin­grich, for one, described the “Redis­cov­er­ing God in Amer­i­ca” films he has made with his wife, Cal­lista, and said Amer­i­ca is excep­tion­al because its found­ing doc­u­ments enshrine rights “endowed by our cre­ator.”

He told the crowd that it was their Chris­t­ian duty to fight for the “truth,” expos­ing threats like over­reach­ing by the Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency and the Oba­ma health care law that may put the coun­try “on the road to dic­ta­tor­ship.”

Mr. Bar­bour pledged relent­less oppo­si­tion to abor­tion and accused lib­er­als of try­ing to remove reli­gion from pol­i­tics. Ms. Bach­mann chal­lenged the pas­tors to “be the voice of free­dom.”

The orga­niz­er and, to many, the unsung hero of this effort to mobi­lize pas­tors is David Lane, a 56-year-old born-again Chris­t­ian from Cal­i­for­nia.

“What we’re doing with the pas­tor meet­ings is spir­i­tu­al, but the end result is polit­i­cal,” Mr. Lane said in a rare inter­view, out­side the doors of the Iowa meet­ing. “From my per­spec­tive, our coun­try is going to hell because pas­tors won’t lead from the pul­pits.”

Mr. Lane shuns pub­lic­i­ty as he cross­es the coun­try form­ing local coali­tions under names like Renew­al Project and secur­ing out­side financ­ing to put on the pas­tor con­fer­ences. Some­thing of a stealth weapon for the right, he has also stepped in to assist in spe­cial-issue cam­paigns, like the suc­cess­ful effort in Iowa last year to unseat three State Supreme Court jus­tices who had vot­ed to allow same-sex mar­riage.

Mr. Lane first start­ed arrang­ing pas­tor con­fer­ences in Texas and Cal­i­for­nia in the 1990s, but the effort has grown in the last five years. The meet­ings, which cost many tens of thou­sands of dol­lars, have been large­ly paid for by the Mis­sis­sip­pi-based Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Asso­ci­a­tion, he said.

The asso­ci­a­tion, found­ed by the Rev. Don­ald E. Wild­mon, is known for its stri­dent con­dem­na­tion of same-sex mar­riage and con­sid­ers homo­sex­u­al­i­ty to be “immoral, unnat­ur­al and unhealthy,” said Bryan Fis­ch­er, its direc­tor of issue analy­sis. Mr. Fis­ch­er said the asso­ci­a­tion was a co-spon­sor of the pas­tor meet­ings and main­tained e‑mail con­tact with 40,000 to 60,000 pas­tors nation­wide, a list that is expand­ing.

In 2010, Mr. Lane said, he orga­nized pas­tor meet­ings in Neva­da, New Hamp­shire, Ohio, South Car­oli­na and Ten­nessee, as well as two in Iowa. He expects to revis­it some of the same states this year, sev­er­al of which are impor­tant bat­tle­grounds in pres­i­den­tial pol­i­tics.

Com­pared with the 1980s, when it was dom­i­nat­ed by promi­nent lead­ers like the Revs. Jer­ry Fal­well with his Moral Major­i­ty and Pat Robert­son with the Chris­t­ian Coali­tion, the reli­gious right is now decen­tral­ized, said Mark DeMoss, who was a close aide to Mr. Fal­well.

“But it’s not true to sug­gest that it’s dead and gone,” he said. Mobi­liz­ing pas­tors has remained impor­tant, with “peo­ple out there like David Lane, whose names we may not know, who are con­tribut­ing to a large fab­ric of involve­ment,” said Mr. DeMoss, who runs a Geor­gia pub­lic rela­tions com­pa­ny for Chris­t­ian caus­es.

...

In per­haps no state has the mobi­liza­tion of church­es paid off more than in Iowa, where evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians now dom­i­nate the state Repub­li­can Par­ty and pres­i­den­tial cau­cus­es even though their share of the pop­u­la­tion, one in four, is at the nation­al aver­age.

Repub­li­can lead­ers and pas­tors call Mr. Lane the unher­ald­ed mas­ter­mind of the cam­paign last year to unseat the State Supreme Court jus­tices. The Rev. Jef­frey Mullen, 47, the pas­tor of Point of Grace Church in Wau­kee, Iowa, had not been involved polit­i­cal­ly, he said. But he was jolt­ed by the court’s 2009 deci­sion per­mit­ting same-sex mar­riage, which he called not only moral­ly wrong but also a usurpa­tion of pow­er.

“God used David Lane and his sphere of influ­ence to bring togeth­er all the ele­ments” of the cam­paign to oust the jus­tices, Mr. Mullen said. Mr. Lane secured hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars from the polit­i­cal action com­mit­tees of Mr. Gin­grich and the Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Asso­ci­a­tion and devised a broad strat­e­gy, bring­ing togeth­er the Iowa Faith and Free­dom Coali­tion, which pro­vid­ed vot­er guides to church­es, and the Iowa Fam­i­ly Pol­i­cy Cen­ter, which got 834 min­is­ters to sign a let­ter stat­ing that mar­riage was estab­lished by God as between a man and a woman.

Beyond pres­i­den­tial pol­i­tics, the main focus of Iowa con­ser­v­a­tives next year, many said, will be tak­ing con­trol of the State Sen­ate, which has blocked their dri­ves for a con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment ban­ning same-sex mar­riage and stronger anti-abor­tion laws.

Like all the pas­tor meet­ings, the recent one in Iowa was not adver­tised and was closed to the news media. But the speech­es were streamed on the Web site of the Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Asso­ci­a­tion, and high­lights were broad­cast online on March 26 to crowds gath­ered in 177 church­es around the coun­try by a Cal­i­for­nia-based group called Unit­ed in Pur­pose, which shares the goal of draw­ing pas­tors into pol­i­tics.

Speak­ers at the con­fer­ence described what they called the bib­li­cal roots of Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment and a rich ear­ly his­to­ry of polit­i­cal engage­ment by the cler­gy. They exhort­ed the pas­tors and their flocks not only to fight hard­er to have same-sex mar­riage and abor­tion banned but also to fol­low God’s word by oppos­ing activist judges, high tax­es, explic­it sex edu­ca­tion and assaults on pri­vate prop­er­ty rights.

A pas­tor from Louisiana described the polit­i­cal costs of sex­u­al scan­dals in the church and rec­om­mend­ed that pas­tors avoid temp­ta­tion by nev­er being alone in a room with women who are not their wives.

The audi­ence heard how to push their flocks to reg­is­ter and vote along “bib­li­cal prin­ci­ples” with­out run­ning afoul of tax laws against endors­ing can­di­dates from the pul­pit.

...

———-

“An Iowa Stop in a Broad Effort to Revi­tal­ize the Reli­gious Right” By Erik Eck­holm; The New York Times; 04/02/2011

“Mr. Lane shuns pub­lic­i­ty as he cross­es the coun­try form­ing local coali­tions under names like Renew­al Project and secur­ing out­side financ­ing to put on the pas­tor con­fer­ences. Some­thing of a stealth weapon for the right, he has also stepped in to assist in spe­cial-issue cam­paigns, like the suc­cess­ful effort in Iowa last year to unseat three State Supreme Court jus­tices who had vot­ed to allow same-sex mar­riage.”

A stealth weapon for the right. That’s how this NY Times piece described David Lane’s efforts back in 2011. A stealth effort com­prised of many sep­a­rate “Renew­al” Projects. Like the Iowa Renew­al Amer­i­can Renew­al Project, which man­aged to throw an event with super­stars of the Chris­t­ian right, includ­ing co-spon­sor Mike Huck­abee, and four pos­si­ble GOP pres­i­den­tial con­tenders. It’s the kind of atten­dance that under­scores just how influ­en­tial this net­work inside the Repub­li­can Par­ty:

...
The pro­gram, spon­sored by a tem­po­rary enti­ty called the Iowa Renew­al Project, fea­tured sev­er­al super­stars of the Chris­t­ian right as well as four pos­si­ble Repub­li­can con­tenders for pres­i­dent. It was the lat­est of dozens of free, two-day con­ven­tions in at least 14 states over the past sev­er­al years, usu­al­ly with Mr. Huck­abee list­ed as a co-spon­sor, that have been attend­ed by near­ly 10,000 pas­tors who have spread the word in their church­es and com­mu­ni­ties.

...

The Iowa pas­tors heard David Bar­ton, a Chris­t­ian his­to­ri­an, argue that the coun­try was found­ed as explic­it­ly Chris­t­ian and lament that too few evan­gel­i­cals get out and vote. They heard Newt Gin­grich, a for­mer House speak­er and like Mr. Huck­abee a pos­si­ble 2012 pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, say that con­sti­tu­tion­al lib­er­ties like the right to bear arms were ordained by God. They heard how to pro­mote “bib­li­cal­ly informed” polit­i­cal advo­ca­cy by church­go­ers with­in the con­fines of fed­er­al tax law.

The oth­er pos­si­ble can­di­dates who spoke were Gov. Haley Bar­bour of Mis­sis­sip­pi and Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Michele Bach­mann of Min­neso­ta.

Sup­port from many of the pas­tors in the audi­ence here helped Mr. Huck­abee, an evan­gel­i­cal min­is­ter, win the Iowa Repub­li­can cau­cus­es in 2008. He had been the only can­di­date to appear at a pas­tors’ meet­ing before the Repub­li­can cau­cus­es and went on to gain a sur­prise vic­to­ry, with 60 per­cent of the cau­cus vot­ers describ­ing them­selves in exit polls as evan­gel­i­cals.
...

And as we can see, David Lane’s orga­niz­ing activ­i­ties aren’t lim­it­ed to ‘Renew­al’ meet­ings. He’s been described as a kind of unher­ald­ed mas­ter­mind in the suc­cess­ful effort to unseat three Iowa Supreme Court judges who vot­ed in favor of gay mar­riage, and was instru­men­tal in devel­op­ing strate­gies like bring­ing togeth­er the Iowa Faith and Free­dom Coali­tion and the Iowa Fam­i­ly Pol­i­cy Cen­ter. With the help of hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars from sources like New Gin­grich’s polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee:

...
The orga­niz­er and, to many, the unsung hero of this effort to mobi­lize pas­tors is David Lane, a 56-year-old born-again Chris­t­ian from Cal­i­for­nia.

“What we’re doing with the pas­tor meet­ings is spir­i­tu­al, but the end result is polit­i­cal,” Mr. Lane said in a rare inter­view, out­side the doors of the Iowa meet­ing. “From my per­spec­tive, our coun­try is going to hell because pas­tors won’t lead from the pul­pits.”

...

Mr. Lane first start­ed arrang­ing pas­tor con­fer­ences in Texas and Cal­i­for­nia in the 1990s, but the effort has grown in the last five years. The meet­ings, which cost many tens of thou­sands of dol­lars, have been large­ly paid for by the Mis­sis­sip­pi-based Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Asso­ci­a­tion, he said.

The asso­ci­a­tion, found­ed by the Rev. Don­ald E. Wild­mon, is known for its stri­dent con­dem­na­tion of same-sex mar­riage and con­sid­ers homo­sex­u­al­i­ty to be “immoral, unnat­ur­al and unhealthy,” said Bryan Fis­ch­er, its direc­tor of issue analy­sis. Mr. Fis­ch­er said the asso­ci­a­tion was a co-spon­sor of the pas­tor meet­ings and main­tained e‑mail con­tact with 40,000 to 60,000 pas­tors nation­wide, a list that is expand­ing.

...

Repub­li­can lead­ers and pas­tors call Mr. Lane the unher­ald­ed mas­ter­mind of the cam­paign last year to unseat the State Supreme Court jus­tices. The Rev. Jef­frey Mullen, 47, the pas­tor of Point of Grace Church in Wau­kee, Iowa, had not been involved polit­i­cal­ly, he said. But he was jolt­ed by the court’s 2009 deci­sion per­mit­ting same-sex mar­riage, which he called not only moral­ly wrong but also a usurpa­tion of pow­er.

“God used David Lane and his sphere of influ­ence to bring togeth­er all the ele­ments” of the cam­paign to oust the jus­tices, Mr. Mullen said. Mr. Lane secured hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars from the polit­i­cal action com­mit­tees of Mr. Gin­grich and the Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Asso­ci­a­tion and devised a broad strat­e­gy, bring­ing togeth­er the Iowa Faith and Free­dom Coali­tion, which pro­vid­ed vot­er guides to church­es, and the Iowa Fam­i­ly Pol­i­cy Cen­ter, which got 834 min­is­ters to sign a let­ter stat­ing that mar­riage was estab­lished by God as between a man and a woman.
...

As we can see, David Lane already had a remark­able lev­el of clout back in 2011. Clout that rou­tine­ly puts him shoul­der to should with one polit­i­cal­ly con­nect­ed theo­crat after anoth­er. For exam­ple, just two months after the above NY Times, we can anoth­er update on David Lane’s polit­i­cal strate­giz­ing: as the fol­low­ing Ethics Dai­ly arti­cle describes, it turns out Lane was one of the atten­dees at a two-day closed door meet­ing of a group of about 80 pas­tors and oth­er Chris­t­ian lead­ers. As we’re going to see, the named atten­dees includ­ed one CNP mem­ber after anoth­er. CNP mem­bers list­ed in the arti­cle include Richard Land, Richard Lee, Vonette Bright, Jer­ry Boykin, Har­ry Jack­son, Don Wild­mon, Tony Perkins, Bob McEwen, and Bob Rec­cord, who was lead­ing the CNP at the time. NAR leader Jim Gar­low was also in atten­dance as chair­man of Newt Gingrich’s orga­ni­za­tion, Renew­ing Amer­i­can Lead­er­ship.

The gath­er­ing was called togeth­er by South­ern Bap­tist evan­ge­list James Robi­son in order to ham­mer out their plans for defeat­ing then-Pres­i­dent Oba­ma, and was actu­al­ly a fol­low up meet­ing to a Sep­tem­ber 2010 meet­ing. As the arti­cle notes, these secret gath­er­ings were some­what rem­i­nis­cent of sim­i­lar secret meet­ings in Dal­las Robin­son arranged in 1979 to strate­gize how to defeat Jim­my Carter. An effort that ulti­mate­ly man­i­fest­ed as an August 1980 meet­ing with Ronald Rea­gant that helped mobi­lize pas­tors for his pres­i­den­tial cam­paign. It’s a reminder that David Lane was­n’t the first per­son to come up with the strat­e­gy of mass mobi­liz­ing pas­tors for pol­i­tics. He’s just the guy who has been the lead­ing the con­tem­po­rary ver­sion of that effort for the past few decades now. An effort that he’s clear­ly doing in close coor­di­na­tion with the GOP, the CNP and its theo­crat­ic fel­low trav­el­ers:

Ethics Dai­ly

Con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian Group Plots Polit­i­cal Revival

by Bri­an Kay­lor | Jun 22, 2011 | News

Editor’s note: This is the first part of a two-part series about this week’s closed-door meet­ing by a group of con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians, called togeth­er by South­ern Bap­tist evan­ge­list James Robi­son, to plot its behind-the-scenes strat­e­gy to defeat Pres­i­dent Oba­ma.

A group of about 80 pas­tors and oth­er con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian lead­ers from across the coun­try met this week in a two-day closed-door meet­ing to dis­cuss the need for spir­i­tu­al and polit­i­cal change in the nation.

The meet­ing was a fol­low-up ses­sion to one last Sep­tem­ber as the group plans its behind-the-scenes strat­e­gy to defeat Pres­i­dent Oba­ma.

“This nation right now is fac­ing a tremen­dous cri­sis, and it’s as though Chris­tians have buried their head in the sand and not rec­og­nized that we were placed here on earth to be over­seers of what he entrust­ed to our watch­care,” South­ern Bap­tist evan­ge­list James Robi­son told EthicsDaily.com as he expressed his hopes for the gath­er­ing.

“One of the points that I’ve made that the lead­ers agree with is that … the vast major­i­ty of those who pro­fess faith are unin­spired, unin­formed and unin­volved,” he added. “With the priv­i­lege of choos­ing our lead­er­ship and putting in place those who estab­lish the poli­cies that gov­ern our lives and affect us comes the respon­si­bil­i­ty to choose right. And cor­rect choic­es will always be based upon prin­ci­ples that are con­sis­tent with bib­li­cal truth and the views of our founders – the prov­i­den­tial per­spec­tive of our founders.”

Last year, EthicsDaily.com broke many of the details of a secret Sept. 8–9, 2010, meet­ing at the Grand Hyatt DFW Hotel in Dal­las where about 40 con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian lead­ers gath­ered at the request of Robi­son. The June 21–22, 2011, meet­ing at the cam­pus of Robison’s LIFE Out­reach Inter­na­tion­al in Euless, Texas, was a con­tin­u­a­tion of that effort.

In 1979, Robi­son led a sim­i­lar secret meet­ing in Dal­las to plot how to defeat then-Pres­i­dent Jim­my Carter. That effort cul­mi­nat­ed in an August 1980 ral­ly with Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial hope­ful Ronald Rea­gan that helped Rea­gan mobi­lize pas­tors for his pres­i­den­tial cam­paign.

Fol­low­ing up on his Sep­tem­ber 2010 meet­ing, Robi­son held two con­fer­ence calls in March with 35 con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian lead­ers.

...

On Tues­day and Wednes­day of this week, 76 con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians gath­ered for anoth­er meet­ing to con­tin­ue their dia­logue and plan­ning. Robi­son told EthicsDaily.com that the group plans to release a video of high­lights of the event to send to pas­tors across the coun­try and invite them to join the effort.

Accord­ing to a list obtained by EthicsDaily.com, among the atten­dees at the meet­ing were sev­er­al South­ern Bap­tist lead­ers: Robert Jef­fress, pas­tor of First Bap­tist Church of Dal­las who recent­ly sug­gest­ed on Fox News that Oba­ma was a Mus­lim; Richard Land of the South­ern Bap­tist Convention’s Ethics and Reli­gious Lib­er­ty Com­mis­sion; Richard Lee, pas­tor and the edi­tor of the con­tro­ver­sial The Amer­i­can Patriot’s Bible; and for­mer North Amer­i­can Mis­sion Board head Bob Rec­cord, who now heads the semi-secre­tive group the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy, found­ed by Tim LaHaye. Jer­ry Fal­well Jr., pres­i­dent of Lib­er­ty Uni­ver­si­ty and son of the late founder of the Moral Major­i­ty, was sched­uled to attend but couldn’t make it.

Also attend­ing the meet­ing were: Jacob Aran­za, a min­is­ter who in the 1980s helped pop­u­lar­ize the the­o­ry that rock ’n’ roll music includ­ed back­masked mes­sages pro­mot­ing drug use and sex; Vonette Bright, wid­ow of Cam­pus Cru­sade for Christ founder Bill Bright, who played a key role in con­ser­v­a­tive reli­gious-polit­i­cal efforts that birthed the so-called “Reli­gious Right”; Jer­ry Boykin, a for­mer Pen­ta­gon offi­cial rebuked for vio­lat­ing poli­cies by speak­ing in church­es in uni­form; Jim Gar­low, chair­man of Newt Gingrich’s orga­ni­za­tion, Renew­ing Amer­i­can Lead­er­ship; Ruth Gra­ham, daugh­ter of evan­ge­list Bil­ly Gra­ham; Har­ry Jack­son, a polit­i­cal­ly active con­ser­v­a­tive pas­tor; David Lane, who has led sev­er­al efforts to polit­i­cal­ly mobi­lize pas­tors; Ron Luce of Teen Mania Min­istries; for­mer Repub­li­can U.S. Rep. Bob McEwen; Rod Pars­ley, a con­tro­ver­sial megachurch pas­tor who endorsed John McCain in 2008 before being reject­ed by McCain; Samuel Rodriguez of the Nation­al His­pan­ic Chris­t­ian Lead­ers Con­fer­ence; and Don Wild­mon of the Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Asso­ci­a­tion.

Also attend­ing the meet­ing was Rab­bi Daniel Lapin, whom Robi­son described to EthicsDaily.com as some­one who is “con­vinced that Chris­tians hold the hope for sta­bil­i­ty on earth.” Lapin, who has been heav­i­ly involved in var­i­ous Repub­li­can efforts, was part of dis­graced lob­by­ist Jack Abramoff’s financ­ing work that land­ed Abramoff in prison.

...

Over the past few months, Robi­son has wel­comed sev­er­al par­tic­i­pants from the Sep­tem­ber meet­ing in Dal­las on his TV min­istry show, “Life Today.” Dur­ing some of the dis­cus­sions, he and his guests have made vague ref­er­ences to the Sep­tem­ber meet­ing. Although the com­ments shed lit­tle insight into the plan, they do show part of Robison’s vision for the effort.

Dur­ing the April 4 broad­cast, Robi­son talked with evan­ge­list and author Tony Evans, who was at both the Sep­tem­ber and June meet­ings. As the two talked about the impor­tance of Chris­tians being involved in pol­i­tics and the need to “put prin­ci­pled peo­ple” who are “under God’s con­trol” in office, Robi­son ref­er­enced the Sep­tem­ber meet­ing.

...

One of the guests on the pro­gram, Craig Groeschel, quick­ly affirmed Robison’s vision. Groeschel, who attend­ed the Sep­tem­ber meet­ing, is the pas­tor of LifeChurch.TV and was on the pro­gram with his wife to pro­mote their new book, “Weird.”

“I don’t know any­body else that could have brought togeth­er that diverse group of lead­ers,” Groeschel said as he praised Robi­son after Robi­son asked for affir­ma­tion. “I believe what you’re doing is one of the most impor­tant things on plan­et earth. I believe you’re hear­ing from God. I believe you’re call­ing togeth­er amaz­ing lead­ers.”
“I think what hap­pened in prayer that day was big, and I think the foun­da­tion that was built to move for­ward togeth­er with lead­ers from all dif­fer­ent groups of Chris­tian­i­ty, I think it was a pro­found­ly spe­cial meet­ing,” Groeschel added.

Tony Perkins, pres­i­dent of the James Dob­son-found­ed Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil, sim­i­lar­ly praised Robi­son dur­ing the June 2 broad­cast. Perkins attend­ed both the Sep­tem­ber and June meet­ings.

“I sensed a new lead­er­ship that the Lord has called you to, in that there is a clear recog­ni­tion that Amer­i­ca needs to turn to God,” Perkins said. “But I think what you’re able to do as kind of a senior states­man of the church is to call togeth­er those lead­ers today that are emerg­ing, and those that are present, to bring them togeth­er because uni­ty is the key. I know one of the con­ver­sa­tions we had is that you prayed for that uni­ty among us. I think if we could ever be uni­fied and we could walk togeth­er as a body of believ­ers in this coun­try that we could pro­found­ly impact this nation.”

...

———-

“Con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian Group Plots Polit­i­cal Revival” by Bri­an Kay­lor; Ethics Dai­ly; 06/22/2011

““This nation right now is fac­ing a tremen­dous cri­sis, and it’s as though Chris­tians have buried their head in the sand and not rec­og­nized that we were placed here on earth to be over­seers of what he entrust­ed to our watch­care,” South­ern Bap­tist evan­ge­list James Robi­son told EthicsDaily.com as he expressed his hopes for the gath­er­ing.

James Robi­son had a call to action. The action being get­ting Chris­tians to rec­og­nize that “we were placed here on earth to be over­seers of what he entrust­ed to our watch­care.” Which sure sounds like domin­ion­ist lan­guage. Domin­ion­ist lan­guage that was pre­sum­ably shared with the numer­ous CNP mem­bers who attend­ed these closed-door events: Richard Land, Richard Lee, Vonette Bright, Jer­ry Boykin, Har­ry Jack­son, Don Wild­mon, Tony Perkins, Bob McEwen, and Bob Rec­cord, who was lead­ing the CNP at the time. NAR leader Jim Gar­low was there as chair­man of Newt Gingrich’s orga­ni­za­tion, Renew­ing Amer­i­can Lead­er­ship. Those were just some of the fel­low atten­dees David Lane was net­work­ing with rough­ly a month before the prayer ral­ly orga­nized by Lane that launched Rick Per­ry’s 2012 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign:

...
Last year, EthicsDaily.com broke many of the details of a secret Sept. 8–9, 2010, meet­ing at the Grand Hyatt DFW Hotel in Dal­las where about 40 con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian lead­ers gath­ered at the request of Robi­son. The June 21–22, 2011, meet­ing at the cam­pus of Robison’s LIFE Out­reach Inter­na­tion­al in Euless, Texas, was a con­tin­u­a­tion of that effort.

...

Fol­low­ing up on his Sep­tem­ber 2010 meet­ing, Robi­son held two con­fer­ence calls in March with 35 con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian lead­ers.

...

On Tues­day and Wednes­day of this week, 76 con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians gath­ered for anoth­er meet­ing to con­tin­ue their dia­logue and plan­ning. Robi­son told EthicsDaily.com that the group plans to release a video of high­lights of the event to send to pas­tors across the coun­try and invite them to join the effort.

Accord­ing to a list obtained by EthicsDaily.com, among the atten­dees at the meet­ing were sev­er­al South­ern Bap­tist lead­ers: Robert Jef­fress, pas­tor of First Bap­tist Church of Dal­las who recent­ly sug­gest­ed on Fox News that Oba­ma was a Mus­lim; Richard Land of the South­ern Bap­tist Convention’s Ethics and Reli­gious Lib­er­ty Com­mis­sion; Richard Lee, pas­tor and the edi­tor of the con­tro­ver­sial The Amer­i­can Patriot’s Bible; and for­mer North Amer­i­can Mis­sion Board head Bob Rec­cord, who now heads the semi-secre­tive group the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy, found­ed by Tim LaHaye. Jer­ry Fal­well Jr., pres­i­dent of Lib­er­ty Uni­ver­si­ty and son of the late founder of the Moral Major­i­ty, was sched­uled to attend but couldn’t make it.

Also attend­ing the meet­ing were: Jacob Aran­za, a min­is­ter who in the 1980s helped pop­u­lar­ize the the­o­ry that rock ’n’ roll music includ­ed back­masked mes­sages pro­mot­ing drug use and sex; Vonette Bright, wid­ow of Cam­pus Cru­sade for Christ founder Bill Bright, who played a key role in con­ser­v­a­tive reli­gious-polit­i­cal efforts that birthed the so-called “Reli­gious Right”; Jer­ry Boykin, a for­mer Pen­ta­gon offi­cial rebuked for vio­lat­ing poli­cies by speak­ing in church­es in uni­form; Jim Gar­low, chair­man of Newt Gingrich’s orga­ni­za­tion, Renew­ing Amer­i­can Lead­er­ship; Ruth Gra­ham, daugh­ter of evan­ge­list Bil­ly Gra­ham; Har­ry Jack­son, a polit­i­cal­ly active con­ser­v­a­tive pas­tor; David Lane, who has led sev­er­al efforts to polit­i­cal­ly mobi­lize pas­tors; Ron Luce of Teen Mania Min­istries; for­mer Repub­li­can U.S. Rep. Bob McEwen; Rod Pars­ley, a con­tro­ver­sial megachurch pas­tor who endorsed John McCain in 2008 before being reject­ed by McCain; Samuel Rodriguez of the Nation­al His­pan­ic Chris­t­ian Lead­ers Con­fer­ence; and Don Wild­mon of the Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Asso­ci­a­tion.

Also attend­ing the meet­ing was Rab­bi Daniel Lapin, whom Robi­son described to EthicsDaily.com as some­one who is “con­vinced that Chris­tians hold the hope for sta­bil­i­ty on earth.” Lapin, who has been heav­i­ly involved in var­i­ous Repub­li­can efforts, was part of dis­graced lob­by­ist Jack Abramoff’s financ­ing work that land­ed Abramoff in prison.

...

Tony Perkins, pres­i­dent of the James Dob­son-found­ed Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil, sim­i­lar­ly praised Robi­son dur­ing the June 2 broad­cast. Perkins attend­ed both the Sep­tem­ber and June meet­ings.
...

And this was James Robison’s first secret meet­ing ded­i­cat­ed to top­pling a pres­i­dent. 1979 saw a sim­i­lar secret meet­ing to take down Carter:

...
In 1979, Robi­son led a sim­i­lar secret meet­ing in Dal­las to plot how to defeat then-Pres­i­dent Jim­my Carter. That effort cul­mi­nat­ed in an August 1980 ral­ly with Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial hope­ful Ronald Rea­gan that helped Rea­gan mobi­lize pas­tors for his pres­i­den­tial cam­paign.
...

And let’s not for­get: the CNP was formed in 1981 by this same net­work of theocrats.

How Did We Get Here? Decades of Dominionist Organizing Going Back to the CNP’s Origins

And as we also saw, it was just a cou­ple of months after that secret June 2011 meet­ing orga­nized by James Robi­son that Rick Per­ry effec­tive­ly launched his 2012 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign at a ‘The Response’ ral­ly, orga­nized in par­ty by David Lane who was serv­ing as The Respon­se’s nation­al finan­cial direc­tor. A ral­ly filled with “Sev­en Moun­tains” preach­ers affil­i­at­ed with the New Apos­tolic Ref­or­ma­tion (NAR). And as Sarah Pos­ner remind­ed us at the time, while the open domin­ion­ism behind Rick Per­ry’s pres­i­den­tial run was cer­tain­ly high­ly dis­turb­ing and seem­ing­ly a new trend in US pol­i­tics, it was any­thing but new. As Pos­ner described, the ‘NAR’ is real­ly just the lat­est label for a coali­tion of domin­ion­ist move­ments that been aggres­sive­ly polit­i­cal­ly orga­niz­ing with the Repub­li­can Par­ty for decades. Since at least 1980, as Pos­ner put it, although as we just saw, there was plen­ty of orga­niz­ing in 1979:

Salon

The Chris­t­ian right’s “domin­ion­ist” strat­e­gy

The emer­gence of Rick Per­ry and Michele Bach­mann as top pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates is a sto­ry 30 years in the mak­ing

By Sarah Pos­ner
Pub­lished August 21, 2011 1:01PM (EDT)

An arti­cle in the Texas Observ­er last month about Texas Gov. Rick Per­ry’s rela­tion­ship with fol­low­ers of a lit­tle-known neo-Pen­te­costal move­ment sparked a fren­zied reac­tion from many com­men­ta­tors: Domin­ion­ism! Spir­i­tu­al war­fare! Strange prophe­cies!

All the atten­tion came in the weeks before and after “The Response,” Per­ry’s high­ly pub­li­cized prayer ral­ly mod­eled on what orga­niz­ers believe is the “solemn assem­bly” described in Joel 2, in which “end-times war­riors” pre­pare the nation for God’s judg­ment and, ulti­mate­ly, Christ’s return. This “new” move­ment, the New Apos­tolic Ref­or­ma­tion, is one strand of neo-Pen­te­costal­ism that draws on the ideas of domin­ion­ism and spir­i­tu­al war­fare. Its adher­ents dis­play gifts of the spir­it, the reli­gious expres­sion of Pen­te­costal and charis­mat­ic believ­ers that includes speak­ing in tongues, prophe­cy, heal­ing and a belief in signs, won­ders and mir­a­cles. These evan­ge­lists also preach the “Sev­en Moun­tains” the­o­ry of domin­ion­ism: that Chris­tians need to take con­trol of dif­fer­ent sec­tors of pub­lic life, such as gov­ern­ment, the media and the law.

The NAR is not new, but rather deriv­a­tive of charis­mat­ic move­ments that came before it. Its founder, C. Peter Wag­n­er, set out in the 1990s to cre­ate more church­es, and more believ­ers. Wag­n­er’s move­ment involves new jar­gon, notably demand­ing that believ­ers take con­trol of the “Sev­en Moun­tains” of soci­ety (gov­ern­ment, law, media and so forth), but that’s no dif­fer­ent from oth­er iter­a­tions of domin­ion­ism that call on Chris­tians to enter these fields so that they are con­trolled by Chris­tians.

After Per­ry’s prayer ral­ly, Rachel Mad­dow fea­tured a seg­ment on her MSNBC show in which she warned,

“The main idea of the New Apos­tolic Ref­or­ma­tion the­ol­o­gy is that they are mod­ern day prophets and apos­tles. They believe they have a direct line to God ... the way that they’re going to clear the way for it [the end of the world] is by infil­trat­ing and tak­ing over pol­i­tics and gov­ern­ment.”

Mad­dow’s ahis­tor­i­cal treat­ment of the NAR, how­ev­er, over­looked sev­er­al impor­tant real­i­ties. For any­one who has fol­lowed the growth of neo-Pen­te­costal move­ments, and in par­tic­u­lar the coali­tion-build­ing between the polit­i­cal oper­a­tives of the reli­gious right and these less­er-known but still influ­en­tial reli­gious lead­ers, the NAR is just anoth­er devel­op­ment in the com­pet­i­tive, con­tro­ver­sial, out­ra­geous, author­i­tar­i­an and often cor­rupt tapes­try of the world of charis­mat­ic evan­ge­lists.

Before the NAR came along, plen­ty of charis­mat­ic lead­ers believed them­selves to be prophets and apos­tles with a direct line to God. They wrote books about spir­i­tu­al war­fare, under­gird­ed by con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries about lib­er­als and Satan and homo­sex­u­al­i­ty and fem­i­nism and more (my own book­shelves are filled with them). They preached this on tele­vi­sion. They preached it at con­fer­ences. They made mon­ey from it. They all learned from each oth­er.

Before the NAR, Chris­t­ian right fig­ures pro­mot­ed domin­ion­ism, too, and the GOP court­ed these reli­gious lead­ers for the votes of their fol­low­ers. Despite a recent argu­ment by the Dai­ly Beast­’s Michelle Gold­berg that “we have not seen this sort of thing at the high­est lev­els of the Repub­li­can Par­ty before,” it’s been there since at least 1980. Michele Bach­mann is a prod­uct of it; so was Mike Huck­abee. Ronald Rea­gan pan­dered to it; so did both Bush­es; so does Per­ry.

In 2007, I saw Cindy Jacobs and oth­er “apos­tles” lay hands on Shirley Forbes, wife of Rep. Randy Forbes, the founder of the Con­gres­sion­al Prayer Cau­cus, which boasts some Democ­rats as mem­bers and many of the GOP’s lead­ing lights. “You are going to be the moth­er of an army,” they told Forbes, proph­esy­ing that she would “speak the pow­er of the word into pol­i­tics and gov­ern­ment. Hal­lelu­jah!”

...

A few days ago, the Wash­ing­ton Post’s reli­gion colum­nist, Lisa Miller, took Gold­berg and Mad­dow to task for over­hyp­ing domin­ion­ism as a plot to take over the world. Miller, though, miss­es the boat, too, by neglect­ing to acknowl­edge and describe the infra­struc­ture the reli­gious right has built, dri­ven by the idea of domin­ion­ism.

Oral Roberts Uni­ver­si­ty Law School, where Bach­mann earned her law degree, was found­ed with this very notion in mind: to cre­ate an explic­it­ly Chris­t­ian law school. Herb Titus, the lawyer con­vert­ed by Chris­t­ian Recon­struc­tion­ism who was instru­men­tal in its launch, describes his mis­sion in devel­op­ing a Chris­t­ian law school as a ful­fill­ment of a “domin­ion man­date.” After ORU was absorbed into Regent Uni­ver­si­ty in the 1980s, Titus was the men­tor to Vir­ginia Gov. Bob McDon­nell, who last week was ele­vat­ed to chair of the Repub­li­can Gov­er­nors Asso­ci­a­tion and is wide­ly spec­u­lat­ed to be a pos­si­ble vice-pres­i­den­tial pick.

Chris­t­ian Recon­struc­tion­ists, and their acolytes of the Con­sti­tu­tion Par­ty, believe Amer­i­ca should be gov­erned by bib­li­cal law. In her 1995 book, “Roads to Domin­ion: Right Wing Move­ments and Polit­i­cal Pow­er in the Unit­ed States,” Sara Dia­mond describes the most sig­nif­i­cant impact of Recon­struc­tion­ism on domin­ion­ism:

“the dif­fuse influ­ence of the ideas that Amer­i­ca was ordained a Chris­t­ian nation and that Chris­tians, exclu­sive­ly, were to rule and reign.” While most Chris­t­ian right activists were “not well-versed in the arcane teach­ings” of Chris­t­ian Recon­struc­tion­ism, she wrote, “there was a wider fol­low­ing for soft­er forms of domin­ion­ism.”

For the Chris­t­ian right, it’s more a polit­i­cal strat­e­gy than a secret “plot” to “over­throw” the gov­ern­ment, even as some evan­ge­lists describe it in terms of “over­throw­ing” the pow­ers of dark­ness (i.e., Satan), and even some more rad­i­cal, mili­tia-mind­ed groups do sug­gest such a rev­o­lu­tion. In gen­er­al, though, the Chris­t­ian right has been very open about its strat­e­gy and has spent a lot of mon­ey on it: in the law, as just one exam­ple, there are now two ABA-accred­it­ed Chris­t­ian law schools, at Regent (which absorbed the ORU law school) and Jer­ry Fal­well’s Lib­er­ty Uni­ver­si­ty. There are a num­ber of Chris­t­ian law firms, like the Alliance Defense Fund, formed as a Chris­t­ian coun­ter­weight to the ACLU. Yet out­siders don’t notice that this is all an expres­sion of domin­ion­ism, until some­one from that world, like Bach­mann, hits the nation­al stage.

John Turn­er, Uni­ver­si­ty of South Alaba­ma his­to­ri­an and author of “Bill Bright and the Cam­pus Cru­sade for Christ: The Renew­al of Evan­gel­i­cal­ism in Post­war Amer­i­ca,” said that the NAR’s “Sev­en Moun­tains” domin­ion­ism is “just a catchy phrase that encap­su­lates what Bright and many oth­er evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers were already doing — try­ing to increase Chris­t­ian influ­ence (they would prob­a­bly use more mil­i­tant phras­es like ‘cap­ture’) in the spheres of edu­ca­tion, busi­ness and gov­ern­ment.”

Bright, like Per­ry’s prayer cohorts, believed Amer­i­ca was in trou­ble (because of the sec­u­lar­ists) and need­ed to repent. One of the most well-known evan­gel­i­cals in the coun­try, Bright had agreed to let Vir­ginia Beach preach­er John Gimenez, a charis­mat­ic, orga­nize the ral­ly, despite evan­gel­i­cal dis­com­fort with charis­mat­ic reli­gious expres­sion. In his book, Turn­er describes the Wash­ing­ton for Jesus ral­ly of 1980:

From the plat­form, Bright offered his inter­pre­ta­tion of the source of the coun­try’s prob­lems, assert­ing that “[w]e’ve turned from God and God is chas­ten­ing us.” “You go back to 1962 and [196]3 [when the Supreme Court banned school-spon­sored prayer and Bible-read­ing],” Bright argued, “and you’ll dis­cov­ered a series of plagues that came upon Amer­i­ca.” Bright cit­ed the Viet­nam War, increased drug use, racial con­flict, Water­gate, and a rise in divorce, teenage preg­nan­cy, and alco­holism as the result of those deci­sions. “God is say­ing to us,” he con­clud­ed, “ ‘Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!’ ” ... “Unless we repent and turn from our sin,” warned Bright, “we can expect to be destroyed.”

Unlike Per­ry’s ral­ly, Ronald Rea­gan the can­di­date was­n’t present at the Wash­ing­ton for Jesus ral­ly. At a 2007 gath­er­ing at his church, Gimenez recount­ed how he and Bright lat­er met with Pres­i­dent Rea­gan, and Bright told him, “You were elect­ed on April 29, 1980, when the church prayed that God’s will would be done.”

In August 1980, though, after Rea­gan had clinched the nom­i­na­tion, he did appear at a “Nation­al Affairs Brief­ing” in Texas, where tel­e­van­ge­list James Robi­son (also instru­men­tal in orga­niz­ing Per­ry’s event) declared, “The stage is set. We’ll either have a Hitler-type takeover, or Sovi­et dom­i­na­tion, or God is going to take over this coun­try.” After Robi­son spoke, Rea­gan took the stage and declared to the 15,000 activists assem­bled by Moral Major­i­ty co-founder Ed McA­teer, “You can’t endorse me, but I endorse you.”

That was also a big moment for Huck­abee, who worked as Robison’s advance man. It was even imi­tat­ed by then-can­di­date Barack Oba­ma, who met with a group of evan­gel­i­cals and charis­mat­ics in Chica­go and repeat­ed Rea­gan’s infa­mous line. Oba­ma’s group includ­ed pub­lish­er Stephen Strang (an ear­ly endors­er of Huck­abee’s 2008 pres­i­den­tial bid) and his son Cameron, whose mag­a­zines Charis­ma and Rel­e­vant help pro­mote the careers of the self-declared mod­ern-day prophets and apos­tles. Huck­abee appeared with Lou Engle at his 2008 The Call ral­ly on the Nation­al Mall (like Per­ry’s, billed as a “solemn assem­bly”) in which Engle exhort­ed his prayer war­riors to bat­tle satan­ic forces to defeat “Antichrist leg­is­la­tion.”

...

In my book, I exam­ined the the­ol­o­gy and pol­i­tics of the Word of Faith move­ment (also known as the pros­per­i­ty gospel) and how Repub­li­cans cul­ti­vat­ed the lead­ing lights of the move­ment. Pri­mar­i­ly because of tele­vi­sion, but also because of the robust (and prof­itable) speak­ing cir­cuit these evan­ge­lists main­tain, they have huge audi­ences. All that was in spite of — just as the scruti­ny of NAR fig­ures now is reveal­ing — out­landish, strange and even hereti­cal the­ol­o­gy. What’s more, Word of Faith fig­ures have end­less­ly been embroiled in dis­putes not just with their the­o­log­i­cal crit­ics, but with watch­dogs and for­mer parish­ioners who charge they took their mon­ey for per­son­al enrich­ment, promis­ing that God would bring them great health and wealth if they would only “sow a seed.”

At Gimenez’s 2007 event, Engle and the oth­er “apos­tles” were not the stars; rather, the biggest draw was Word of Faith tel­e­van­ge­list Ken­neth Copeland. In 1998, writ­ing to Karl Rove, Wead called Copeland “arguably one of the most impor­tant reli­gious lead­ers in the nation.” At Gimenez’s church, Copeland, who has boast­ed that his min­istry has brought in more the $1 bil­lion over his career, preached for two hours. The sanc­tu­ary was packed, with the audi­ence hang­ing on every word. Gimenez intro­duced him as “God’s prophet,” and Copeland urged them to “get rid of the evening news and the news­pa­per,” study “the uncom­pro­mised word of the Holy Ghost,” and take “con­trol over prin­ci­pal­i­ties.”

The com­menters who have jumped on the NAR fre­quent­ly over­state the size of its fol­low­ing. Engle’s events, for exam­ple, are often small­er than adver­tised, includ­ing a poor­ly attend­ed revival at Lib­er­ty Uni­ver­si­ty in April 2010, where one would expect a ready-made audi­ence. When I’ve cov­ered these sorts of events, includ­ing small­er con­fer­ences by local groups inspired by fig­ures they see on tele­vi­sion, it’s often hard to see how the often mean­der­ing preach­ers are going to take over any­thing, even while it’s clear they cul­ti­vate an author­i­tar­i­an hold on their fol­low­ers. I meet a lot of sin­cere, fre­quent­ly well-inten­tioned peo­ple who believe they must be “obe­di­ent” to God’s word as impart­ed by the “prophets.”

Most chill­ing, though, is the will­ing­ness to engage in what’s known in the Word of Faith world as “rev­e­la­tion knowl­edge,” or believ­ing, as Copeland exhort­ed his audi­ence to do, that you learn noth­ing from jour­nal­ism or acad­e­mia, but rather just from the Bible and its mod­ern “prophets.” It is in this way that the self-styled prophets have had their great­est impact on our polit­i­cal cul­ture: by pro­duc­ing a polit­i­cal class, and its foot sol­diers, who believe that God has impart­ed them with divine knowl­edge that super­sedes what all the evil sec­u­lar­ists would have you believe.

Last week CNN’s Jack Caf­fer­ty asked, “How much does it wor­ry you if both Michele Bach­mann and Rick Per­ry have ties to domin­ion­ism?” That wor­ry crops up every elec­tion cycle. If peo­ple real­ly under­stood domin­ion­ism, they’d wor­ry about it between elec­tion cycles.

————

“The Chris­t­ian right’s “domin­ion­ist” strat­e­gy” By Sarah Pos­ner; Salon; 08/21/2011

All the atten­tion came in the weeks before and after “The Response,” Per­ry’s high­ly pub­li­cized prayer ral­ly mod­eled on what orga­niz­ers believe is the “solemn assem­bly” described in Joel 2, in which “end-times war­riors” pre­pare the nation for God’s judg­ment and, ulti­mate­ly, Christ’s return. This “new” move­ment, the New Apos­tolic Ref­or­ma­tion, is one strand of neo-Pen­te­costal­ism that draws on the ideas of domin­ion­ism and spir­i­tu­al war­fare. Its adher­ents dis­play gifts of the spir­it, the reli­gious expres­sion of Pen­te­costal and charis­mat­ic believ­ers that includes speak­ing in tongues, prophe­cy, heal­ing and a belief in signs, won­ders and mir­a­cles. These evan­ge­lists also preach the “Sev­en Moun­tains” the­o­ry of domin­ion­ism: that Chris­tians need to take con­trol of dif­fer­ent sec­tors of pub­lic life, such as gov­ern­ment, the media and the law.

Rick Per­ry’s cam­paign launch filled with NAR lead­ers and themes sure got a lot of atten­tion. Alarmed atten­tion. But as Pos­ner remind­ed us at the time, while the NAR and “Sev­en Moun­tains” lan­guage may have only start­ed in the 1990 and was, at that time, a rel­a­tive­ly new phe­nom­e­na in US Chris­tian­i­ty, it was­n’t actu­al­ly new. It was just the lat­est deriva­tion of domin­ion­ism in Amer­i­can Chris­tian­i­ty. The jar­gon is new but the goals and the­ol­o­gy are not. Nor is the court­ing of domin­ion­ist by the Repub­li­can Par­ty new. It’s been going on since at least 1980:

...
The NAR is not new, but rather deriv­a­tive of charis­mat­ic move­ments that came before it. Its founder, C. Peter Wag­n­er, set out in the 1990s to cre­ate more church­es, and more believ­ers. Wag­n­er’s move­ment involves new jar­gon, notably demand­ing that believ­ers take con­trol of the “Sev­en Moun­tains” of soci­ety (gov­ern­ment, law, media and so forth), but that’s no dif­fer­ent from oth­er iter­a­tions of domin­ion­ism that call on Chris­tians to enter these fields so that they are con­trolled by Chris­tians.

After Per­ry’s prayer ral­ly, Rachel Mad­dow fea­tured a seg­ment on her MSNBC show in which she warned,

“The main idea of the New Apos­tolic Ref­or­ma­tion the­ol­o­gy is that they are mod­ern day prophets and apos­tles. They believe they have a direct line to God ... the way that they’re going to clear the way for it [the end of the world] is by infil­trat­ing and tak­ing over pol­i­tics and gov­ern­ment.”

Mad­dow’s ahis­tor­i­cal treat­ment of the NAR, how­ev­er, over­looked sev­er­al impor­tant real­i­ties. For any­one who has fol­lowed the growth of neo-Pen­te­costal move­ments, and in par­tic­u­lar the coali­tion-build­ing between the polit­i­cal oper­a­tives of the reli­gious right and these less­er-known but still influ­en­tial reli­gious lead­ers, the NAR is just anoth­er devel­op­ment in the com­pet­i­tive, con­tro­ver­sial, out­ra­geous, author­i­tar­i­an and often cor­rupt tapes­try of the world of charis­mat­ic evan­ge­lists.

Before the NAR came along, plen­ty of charis­mat­ic lead­ers believed them­selves to be prophets and apos­tles with a direct line to God. They wrote books about spir­i­tu­al war­fare, under­gird­ed by con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries about lib­er­als and Satan and homo­sex­u­al­i­ty and fem­i­nism and more (my own book­shelves are filled with them). They preached this on tele­vi­sion. They preached it at con­fer­ences. They made mon­ey from it. They all learned from each oth­er.

Before the NAR, Chris­t­ian right fig­ures pro­mot­ed domin­ion­ism, too, and the GOP court­ed these reli­gious lead­ers for the votes of their fol­low­ers. Despite a recent argu­ment by the Dai­ly Beast­’s Michelle Gold­berg that “we have not seen this sort of thing at the high­est lev­els of the Repub­li­can Par­ty before,” it’s been there since at least 1980. Michele Bach­mann is a prod­uct of it; so was Mike Huck­abee. Ronald Rea­gan pan­dered to it; so did both Bush­es; so does Per­ry.
...

As Uni­ver­si­ty of South Alaba­ma his­to­ri­an John Turn­er notes, the NAR’s lan­guage about the divine man­date for Chris­tians to cap­ture the gov­ern­ment is real­ly just a descrip­tion of of what evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers like Bill Bright were already doing since Rea­gan. Recall how, as we saw above, Bright’s wid­ow, Vonette Bright, was one of the atten­dees of Robison’s June 2011 gath­er­ing where they plot­ted their strat­e­gy for defeat­ing Barack Oba­ma. A strat­e­gy that appears to have includ­ed boost­ing Rick Per­ry’s cam­paign with domin­ion­ist bless­ings. Much like what Bright helped orga­nize for Ronald Rea­gan in 1980, includ­ing the “Wash­ing­ton for Jesus” ral­ly of 1980 orga­nized by charis­mat­ic Vir­ginia Beach preach­er John Gimenez. Flash for­ward to 2007, and Gimenez is hold­ing a gath­er­ing of at his church where he recounts meet­ing Rea­gan with Bright in 1980. And the big draw to that gath­er­ing at Gimenez’s church was promi­nent NAR preach­er Ken­neth Copeland. Recall how Glo­ria Copeland, co-founder of the Ken­neth Copeland Min­istries in Texas, became Don­ald Trump’s Evan­gel­i­cal advi­sor duing his term in office. It’s a move­ment that’s been work­ing on build­ing deep polit­i­cal con­nec­tions for decades now, before the NAR event exist­ed, with decades of wild suc­cess:

...
John Turn­er, Uni­ver­si­ty of South Alaba­ma his­to­ri­an and author of “Bill Bright and the Cam­pus Cru­sade for Christ: The Renew­al of Evan­gel­i­cal­ism in Post­war Amer­i­ca,” said that the NAR’s “Sev­en Moun­tains” domin­ion­ism is “just a catchy phrase that encap­su­lates what Bright and many oth­er evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers were already doing — try­ing to increase Chris­t­ian influ­ence (they would prob­a­bly use more mil­i­tant phras­es like ‘cap­ture’) in the spheres of edu­ca­tion, busi­ness and gov­ern­ment.”

Bright, like Per­ry’s prayer cohorts, believed Amer­i­ca was in trou­ble (because of the sec­u­lar­ists) and need­ed to repent. One of the most well-known evan­gel­i­cals in the coun­try, Bright had agreed to let Vir­ginia Beach preach­er John Gimenez, a charis­mat­ic, orga­nize the ral­ly, despite evan­gel­i­cal dis­com­fort with charis­mat­ic reli­gious expres­sion. In his book, Turn­er describes the Wash­ing­ton for Jesus ral­ly of 1980:

From the plat­form, Bright offered his inter­pre­ta­tion of the source of the coun­try’s prob­lems, assert­ing that “[w]e’ve turned from God and God is chas­ten­ing us.” “You go back to 1962 and [196]3 [when the Supreme Court banned school-spon­sored prayer and Bible-read­ing],” Bright argued, “and you’ll dis­cov­ered a series of plagues that came upon Amer­i­ca.” Bright cit­ed the Viet­nam War, increased drug use, racial con­flict, Water­gate, and a rise in divorce, teenage preg­nan­cy, and alco­holism as the result of those deci­sions. “God is say­ing to us,” he con­clud­ed, “ ‘Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!’ ” ... “Unless we repent and turn from our sin,” warned Bright, “we can expect to be destroyed.”

Unlike Per­ry’s ral­ly, Ronald Rea­gan the can­di­date was­n’t present at the Wash­ing­ton for Jesus ral­ly. At a 2007 gath­er­ing at his church, Gimenez recount­ed how he and Bright lat­er met with Pres­i­dent Rea­gan, and Bright told him, “You were elect­ed on April 29, 1980, when the church prayed that God’s will would be done.”

In August 1980, though, after Rea­gan had clinched the nom­i­na­tion, he did appear at a “Nation­al Affairs Brief­ing” in Texas, where tel­e­van­ge­list James Robi­son (also instru­men­tal in orga­niz­ing Per­ry’s event) declared, “The stage is set. We’ll either have a Hitler-type takeover, or Sovi­et dom­i­na­tion, or God is going to take over this coun­try.” After Robi­son spoke, Rea­gan took the stage and declared to the 15,000 activists assem­bled by Moral Major­i­ty co-founder Ed McA­teer, “You can’t endorse me, but I endorse you.”

...

At Gimenez’s 2007 event, Engle and the oth­er “apos­tles” were not the stars; rather, the biggest draw was Word of Faith tel­e­van­ge­list Ken­neth Copeland. In 1998, writ­ing to Karl Rove, Wead called Copeland “arguably one of the most impor­tant reli­gious lead­ers in the nation.” At Gimenez’s church, Copeland, who has boast­ed that his min­istry has brought in more the $1 bil­lion over his career, preached for two hours. The sanc­tu­ary was packed, with the audi­ence hang­ing on every word. Gimenez intro­duced him as “God’s prophet,” and Copeland urged them to “get rid of the evening news and the news­pa­per,” study “the uncom­pro­mised word of the Holy Ghost,” and take “con­trol over prin­ci­pal­i­ties.”
...

Also, just quick­ly note who was seen lay­ing hands on pub­lic offi­cials dur­ing a 2007 Con­gres­sion­al Prayer Cau­cus: Cindy Jacobs, the same ‘prophet’ whose pres­ence at the “The Response” in 2011 raised the ire of Bran­non Howse for pro­mot­ing false teach­ings. And the same ‘prophet’ who attend­ed that June 2016 gath­er­ing where this net­work first for­mal­ly met then-can­di­date Don­ald Trump. Cindy Jacobs has quite a knack for appear­ing around politi­cians:

...
In 2007, I saw Cindy Jacobs and oth­er “apos­tles” lay hands on Shirley Forbes, wife of Rep. Randy Forbes, the founder of the Con­gres­sion­al Prayer Cau­cus, which boasts some Democ­rats as mem­bers and many of the GOP’s lead­ing lights. “You are going to be the moth­er of an army,” they told Forbes, proph­esy­ing that she would “speak the pow­er of the word into pol­i­tics and gov­ern­ment. Hal­lelu­jah!”
...

Again, let’s not for­get that Jacobs isn’t the only ‘prophet’ we’ve seen palling around with politi­cians. Julie Green has been attend­ing the ‘ReAwak­en Amer­i­ca’ events orga­nized by Michael Fly­nn and Clay Clark.

We just saw how James Robi­son helped to orga­nize what looks like an ear­ly domin­ion­ist plan for Ronald Rea­gan’s suc­cess in 1979. Not Robi­son alone. He had exten­sive help from fig­ures like Bill Bright and a num­ber of oth­er major reli­gious lead­ers who went on to help found the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy in 1981. Lead­ers like Bill Bright, as we saw above. Or the fig­ures who attend­ed the August 1980 ral­ly that Rea­gan actu­al­ly attend­ed, where Rea­gan told the crowd of 15,000, “You can’t endorse me, but I endorse you.”.

And as the fol­low­ing Wash­ing­ton Dai­ly News piece from 2020 describes, that August 1980 ral­ly fea­tured a num­ber of now famil­iar names who went on to form the CNP in 1981. Fig­ures like Tony Perkins, Tim LaHaye, And James Dob­son. Along with Paul Pressler and Paige Pat­ter­son. As we’ve seen, Paige Pat­ter­son and Pressler were the fig­ures behind the South Bap­tist Con­ven­tion’s “Con­ser­v­a­tive Resur­gence” in the 1970s. And, of course, Pressler was also a ser­i­al sex­u­al abuser rou­tine­ly pro­tect­ed by Pat­ter­son. Not that Pat­ter­son was only pro­tect­ing Pressler. instead, Pressler was just a shin­ing exam­ple of what had become a pat­tern of endem­ic sex­u­al abuse and cov­er up inside the SBC denom­i­na­tion. In the end, Pressler’s lega­cy was in such tat­ters that his death ear­li­er this year did­n’t even get acknowl­edged at the SBC despite hap­pen­ing just four days before. Oth­er young, up and com­ing, fig­ures involved with this event includ­ed Rafael Cruz — father of Ted Cruz — and Mike Huck­abee. In fact, Huck­abee was then Robison’s 26-year-old assis­tant.

Key Repub­li­can strate­gist Paul Weyrich also spoke at that August 1980 ral­ly. Short­ly after­wards, Weyrich went on to assem­ble a net­work that would become the Coun­cil on Nation­al Pol­i­cy. Ini­tial­ly, it con­sist­ed of the Her­itage Foun­da­tion, the Repub­li­can Study Com­mit­tee, the Amer­i­can Leg­isla­tive Exchange Com­mit­tee (ALEC, found­ed by the Koch Broth­ers), the Moral Major­i­ty and the Reli­gious Round­table. So when Sarah Pos­ner describes how domin­ion­ist move­ments have been active­ly coor­di­nat­ing with the Repub­li­can Par­ty since at least 1980, this is the net­work she’s talk­ing about. The net­work that went on to form the CNP dur­ing Rea­gan’s first year in office and con­tin­ued to grow its influ­ence and ties to the GOP ever since:

The Wash­ing­ton Dai­ly News

The secret net­work that threat­ens democ­ra­cy

Pub­lished 6:45 pm Fri­day, Feb­ru­ary 7, 2020
By Polk Culpep­per

In 1980, a 39-year-old fire­brand South­ern Bap­tist TV evan­ge­list named James Robi­son called togeth­er a group of con­ser­v­a­tive pas­tors based in Dal­las. Robi­son had ear­li­er made a name for him­self by call­ing “for God’s peo­ple to come out of the clos­et” and take back the nation.

Robison’s group named them­selves the Reli­gious Round­table. The Round­table sought to con­vince the nation that homo­sex­u­al­i­ty was a grave, unfor­giv­able sin which was rot­ting the nation from with­in.

In August, Robi­son per­suad­ed his group to team up with like-mind­ed Chris­t­ian fun­da­men­tal­ists like Jer­ry Fal­well and his Moral Major­i­ty and Repub­li­can polit­i­cal oper­a­tive Paul Weyrich. The group ini­tial­ly came togeth­er to spon­sor a ral­ly in Reunion Are­na, a new sports sta­di­um in Dal­las shaped like a fly­ing saucer. It was a huge suc­cess, draw­ing more than 15,000 Chris­t­ian lay and ordained pas­tors.

The only 1980 pres­i­den­tial can­di­date to speak at the event was Ronald Rea­gan. He received a stand­ing ova­tion. Those applaud­ing includ­ed men who would lead the move­ment for decades to come: Mike Huck­abee, then Robison’s 26-year-old assis­tant; Rafael Cruz, who would become an influ­en­tial Domin­ion­ist pas­tor and father of a U.S. Sen­a­tor; Paul Pressler, who helped launch the South­ern Bap­tist Convention’s Con­ser­v­a­tive Resur­gence in the 1970s; Paige Pat­ter­son, pres­i­dent of the South­ern Bap­tist Sem­i­nary in Fort Worth; Adri­an Rogers, pres­i­dent of the Con­ven­tion; Tony Perkins, pres­i­dent of the Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil; Tim LaHaye of the famous Left Behind series; James Dob­son, founder of Focus on the Fam­i­ly; and Weyrich.

Weyrich was more of a polit­i­cal oper­a­tive, but he quick­ly grasped the poten­tial of join­ing fun­da­men­tal­ist Chris­tian­i­ty to con­ser­v­a­tive polit­i­cal move­ments. Or, as Bill Moy­ers lat­er put it: “In Dal­las, the reli­gious right and the polit­i­cal right for­mal­ly wed.”

“We are talk­ing about Chris­tian­iz­ing Amer­i­ca,” Weyrich explained. Democ­ra­cy was not as impor­tant as vic­to­ry. “I don’t want every­body to vote,” he explained. “Elec­tions are not won by a major­i­ty of peo­ple … our lever­age in the elec­tions goes up as the vot­ing pop­u­lace goes down.”

Short­ly after the 1980 ral­ly, Weyrich began to con­struct the net­work that would become the Coun­cil on Nation­al Pol­i­cy. At that time, it con­sist­ed of the Her­itage Foun­da­tion, the Repub­li­can Study Com­mit­tee, ALEC (a group of con­ser­v­a­tive leg­is­la­tures orig­i­nal­ly called togeth­er by the Koch broth­ers), the Moral Major­i­ty and the Reli­gious Round­table.

Through the years, CNP oper­a­tions have been fund­ed by right-wing financiers like Joseph Coors, Richard Scaife, Richard DeVos and his chil­dren, Richard and Bet­sy, Edgar Prince and his son, Erick, Robert Mer­cer and his daugh­ter Rebekah, and Charles and David Koch.

...

Coun­cil mem­bers in the polit­i­cal sphere have includ­ed Ed Meese, Kellyanne Con­way, Ralph Reed, the poll­ster George Bar­na and Mike Pence.

The CNP is not well known, because it likes to oper­ate in the shad­ows. But its accom­plish­ments are sig­nif­i­cant. The Coun­cil helped elect state and fed­er­al rep­re­sen­ta­tives who sup­port the agen­das of fun­da­men­tal­ist Chris­tians and inter­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions. The for­mer want to see the nation gov­erned accord­ing to the dic­tates of the Old and New Tes­ta­ments. The lat­ter want gov­ern­ment to sim­ply dis­ap­pear and take its reg­u­la­tions and tax­es with it.

To accom­plish these ends, the CNP com­bines the pow­er of unique­ly effec­tive polit­i­cal log­a­rithms and oth­er tech­niques to con­vince mil­lions of con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians to vote for right-wing can­di­dates. Sup­port for can­di­dates select­ed by the Coun­cil is rein­forced by the broad­casts of evan­gel­i­cal radio and TV sta­tions.

...

————

“The secret net­work that threat­ens democ­ra­cy” By Polk Culpep­per; The Wash­ing­ton Dai­ly News; 02/07/2020

Robison’s group named them­selves the Reli­gious Round­table. The Round­table sought to con­vince the nation that homo­sex­u­al­i­ty was a grave, unfor­giv­able sin which was rot­ting the nation from with­in.”

The “Reli­gious Round­table”. That was the name Robi­son gave to his group of influ­en­tial pas­tors he had assem­bled in 1980 to help ensure Ronald Rea­gan wins the White House. By August of 1980, Robison’s group had teamed up with Jer­ry Fal­well’s Moral Major­i­ty to put on a large ral­ly fea­tur­ing speak­ers like Tony Perkins, Tim LaHaye, and James Dob­son. Along with key GOP polit­i­cal strate­gic Paul Weyrich. And then there’s Paul Pressler and Paige Pat­ter­son of SBC infamy. Even Rafael Cruz — father of Ted Cruz — and Mike Huck­abee were there, with Huck­abee then serv­ing as Robison’s 26-year-old assis­tant:

...
In August, Robi­son per­suad­ed his group to team up with like-mind­ed Chris­t­ian fun­da­men­tal­ists like Jer­ry Fal­well and his Moral Major­i­ty and Repub­li­can polit­i­cal oper­a­tive Paul Weyrich. The group ini­tial­ly came togeth­er to spon­sor a ral­ly in Reunion Are­na, a new sports sta­di­um in Dal­las shaped like a fly­ing saucer. It was a huge suc­cess, draw­ing more than 15,000 Chris­t­ian lay and ordained pas­tors.

The only 1980 pres­i­den­tial can­di­date to speak at the event was Ronald Rea­gan. He received a stand­ing ova­tion. Those applaud­ing includ­ed men who would lead the move­ment for decades to come: Mike Huck­abee, then Robison’s 26-year-old assis­tant; Rafael Cruz, who would become an influ­en­tial Domin­ion­ist pas­tor and father of a U.S. Sen­a­tor; Paul Pressler, who helped launch the South­ern Bap­tist Convention’s Con­ser­v­a­tive Resur­gence in the 1970s; Paige Pat­ter­son, pres­i­dent of the South­ern Bap­tist Sem­i­nary in Fort Worth; Adri­an Rogers, pres­i­dent of the Con­ven­tion; Tony Perkins, pres­i­dent of the Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil; Tim LaHaye of the famous Left Behind series; James Dob­son, founder of Focus on the Fam­i­ly; and Weyrich.
...

And the arti­cle reminds us, Paul Weyrich isn’t just famous for being a top Repub­li­can strate­gist. He’s also famous for mak­ing com­ments like, “I don’t want every­body to vote...Elections are not won by a major­i­ty of peo­ple … our lever­age in the elec­tions goes up as the vot­ing pop­u­lace goes down.” Which is more or less the ral­ly­ing cry of the GOP today. Short­ly after the ral­ly, Weyrich goes on to help orga­nize the for­ma­tion of the CNP, ini­tial­ly con­sist­ing of the Her­itage Foun­da­tion, the Repub­li­can Study Com­mit­tee, ALEC, the Moral Major­i­ty and the Reli­gious Round­table. Which is a reminder that the CNP has been a joint effort between the Repub­li­can Par­ty and domin­ion­ists from its very incep­tion:

...
Weyrich was more of a polit­i­cal oper­a­tive, but he quick­ly grasped the poten­tial of join­ing fun­da­men­tal­ist Chris­tian­i­ty to con­ser­v­a­tive polit­i­cal move­ments. Or, as Bill Moy­ers lat­er put it: “In Dal­las, the reli­gious right and the polit­i­cal right for­mal­ly wed.”

“We are talk­ing about Chris­tian­iz­ing Amer­i­ca,” Weyrich explained. Democ­ra­cy was not as impor­tant as vic­to­ry. “I don’t want every­body to vote,” he explained. “Elec­tions are not won by a major­i­ty of peo­ple … our lever­age in the elec­tions goes up as the vot­ing pop­u­lace goes down.”

Short­ly after the 1980 ral­ly, Weyrich began to con­struct the net­work that would become the Coun­cil on Nation­al Pol­i­cy. At that time, it con­sist­ed of the Her­itage Foun­da­tion, the Repub­li­can Study Com­mit­tee, ALEC (a group of con­ser­v­a­tive leg­is­la­tures orig­i­nal­ly called togeth­er by the Koch broth­ers), the Moral Major­i­ty and the Reli­gious Round­table.

Through the years, CNP oper­a­tions have been fund­ed by right-wing financiers like Joseph Coors, Richard Scaife, Richard DeVos and his chil­dren, Richard and Bet­sy, Edgar Prince and his son, Erick, Robert Mer­cer and his daugh­ter Rebekah, and Charles and David Koch.

...

Coun­cil mem­bers in the polit­i­cal sphere have includ­ed Ed Meese, Kellyanne Con­way, Ralph Reed, the poll­ster George Bar­na and Mike Pence.
...

And as the arti­cle also reminds us, it’s not a secret as to why we would see such an enthu­si­as­tic and endur­ing alliance between domin­ion­ist theocrats and the indus­tri­al inter­ests like the Koch Broth­ers. An Old Tes­ta­ment ver­sion of gov­ern­ment has very low tax­es and reg­u­la­tions. Mis­sion accom­plished:

...
The CNP is not well known, because it likes to oper­ate in the shad­ows. But its accom­plish­ments are sig­nif­i­cant. The Coun­cil helped elect state and fed­er­al rep­re­sen­ta­tives who sup­port the agen­das of fun­da­men­tal­ist Chris­tians and inter­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions. The for­mer want to see the nation gov­erned accord­ing to the dic­tates of the Old and New Tes­ta­ments. The lat­ter want gov­ern­ment to sim­ply dis­ap­pear and take its reg­u­la­tions and tax­es with it.

To accom­plish these ends, the CNP com­bines the pow­er of unique­ly effec­tive polit­i­cal log­a­rithms and oth­er tech­niques to con­vince mil­lions of con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians to vote for right-wing can­di­dates. Sup­port for can­di­dates select­ed by the Coun­cil is rein­forced by the broad­casts of evan­gel­i­cal radio and TV sta­tions.
...

It’s been quite an endur­ing lega­cy. Not a pos­i­tive lega­cy, but endur­ing. Flash for­ward to 2011, and it was Robi­son who was help­ing to assem­ble the group of pas­tors who end­ed up help­ing to launch Rick Per­ry’s ill-fat­ed 2012 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign with a rap­tur­ous The Response ral­ly. David Lane was The Respon­se’s nation­al finance direc­tor at the time as well as the orga­niz­er of the Texas Renew­al events that fur­ther boost­ed Per­ry’s cam­paign. Now, Rick Per­ry obvi­ous­ly did­n’t have a suc­cess­ful cam­paign. It was more of an ‘oops’ endeav­or. Still, it’s remark­able just how endur­ing the influ­ence of Robison’s net­work has been over the years. David Lane’s decades of orga­niz­ing under the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project is effec­tive­ly an exten­sion of the effort Robi­son helped launch in 1979.

Josh Hawley’s Insurrectionary Allegiance to the America Renewal Project

Flash for­ward again to Jan­u­ary of 2021, and we can see how this move­ment has­n’t just been endur­ing but mak­ing alarm­ing progress in its attempts to replace democ­ra­cy with a theoc­ra­cy. After all, while the Jan­u­ary 6 Capi­tol insur­rec­tion may not have suc­ceed­ed in keep­ing Don­ald Trump in office, it was still an incred­i­ble suc­cess of sorts. Suc­cess in the sense that it rep­re­sent­ed a very real ide­o­log­i­cal cap­ture of the Repub­li­can Par­ty. Thanks to Don­ald Trump’s cor­rupt nature, the par­ty was ready to aban­don democ­ra­cy. And as we’ve seen, Jan­u­ary 6 and the months of orga­niz­ing that went into it was very much a CNP-backed effort. And effort that remains wild­ly suc­cess­ful in its ide­o­log­i­cal cap­ture of the Repub­li­can elec­torate as exem­pli­fied by Don­ald Trump’s vengeance-based 2024 run and the open plans for a sweep­ing far right purge under the Sched­ule F/Project 2025 plot, which is yet anoth­er prod­uct of the CNP and its allies.

And that brings us to the fol­low­ing New York Times excerpt from Jan­u­ary 11, 2021, about Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor Josh Haw­ley, who famous­ly ‘fist pumped’ the insur­rec­tionary crowds hours before being caught on video inside the Sen­ate flee­ing from those same mobs. As the fol­low­ing piece describes, despite active­ly flee­ing for his safe­ty that day, Haw­ley remained adamant in stick­ing with the nar­ra­tive about a stolen elec­tion in the speech­es he deliv­ered on the Sen­ate floor in the wake of the attack. Why was Haw­ley, and so many of his peers, seem­ing­ly at war with democ­ra­cy? Well, as the piece describes, Haw­ley has been a pret­ty open theo­crat his entire polit­i­cal career. Haw­ley has repeat­ed spo­ken and writ­ten about how the roots of soci­ety’s ills go back to Pelag­ius, a British monk who taught that human beings have the free­dom to choose how they live their lives and that grace comes to those who do good things, as opposed to those who believe the right doc­trines. Haw­ley views this as hereti­cal. As Haw­ley sees it, Chris­tians have a divine man­date to impose their vision of right and wrong all over the world. And an exam­ple, we can look at a 2017 speech Haw­ley gave to the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project where Haw­ley declared “There is not one square inch of all cre­ation over which Jesus Christ is not Lord....We are called to take that mes­sage into every sphere of life that we touch, includ­ing the polit­i­cal realm...That is our charge. To take the lord­ship of Christ, that mes­sage, into the pub­lic realm, and to seek the obe­di­ence of the nations. Of our nation!” Haw­ley’s eager embrace of nar­ra­tives that could top­ple what’s left of the US’s demo­c­ra­t­ic insti­tu­tions isn’t a mys­tery. We just need to lis­ten to the domin­ion­ist lan­guage what Haw­ley has been say­ing for years:

The New York Times

The Roots of Josh Hawley’s Rage

Why do so many Repub­li­cans appear to be at war with both truth and democ­ra­cy?

Jan. 11, 2021
By Kather­ine Stew­art

Ms. Stew­art has report­ed on the reli­gious right for more than a decade. She is the author of “The Pow­er Wor­ship­pers: Inside the Dan­ger­ous Rise of Reli­gious Nation­al­ism.”

In today’s Repub­li­can Par­ty, the path to pow­er is to build up a lie in order to over­turn democ­ra­cy. At least that is what Sen­a­tor Josh Haw­ley was telling us when he offered a clenched-fist salute to the pro-Trump mob before it ran­sacked the Capi­tol, and it is the same mes­sage he deliv­ered on the floor of the Sen­ate in the after­math of the attack, when he dou­bled down on the lies about elec­toral fraud that incit­ed the insur­rec­tion in the first place. How did we get to the point where one of the bright young stars of the Repub­li­can Par­ty appears to be at war with both truth and democ­ra­cy?

Mr. Haw­ley him­self, as it hap­pens, has been mak­ing the answer plain for some time. It’s just a mat­ter of lis­ten­ing to what he has been say­ing.

In mul­ti­ple speech­es, an inter­view and a wide­ly shared arti­cle for Chris­tian­i­ty Today, Mr. Haw­ley has explained that the blame for society’s ills traces all the way back to Pelag­ius — a British-born monk who lived 17 cen­turies ago. In a 2019 com­mence­ment address at the King’s Col­lege, a small con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian col­lege devot­ed to “a bib­li­cal world­view,” Mr. Haw­ley denounced Pelag­ius for teach­ing that human beings have the free­dom to choose how they live their lives and that grace comes to those who do good things, as opposed to those who believe the right doc­trines.

The most elo­quent sum­ma­ry of the Pela­gian vision, Mr. Haw­ley went on to say, can be found in the Supreme Court’s 1992 opin­ion in Planned Par­ent­hood v. Casey. Mr. Haw­ley cit­ed Jus­tice Antho­ny Kennedy’s words reprov­ing­ly. “At the heart of lib­er­ty,” Jus­tice Kennedy wrote, “is the right to define one’s own con­cept of exis­tence, of mean­ing, of the uni­verse, and of the mys­tery of human life.” The fifth-cen­tu­ry church fathers were right to con­demn this ter­ri­fy­ing vari­ety of heresy, Mr. Haw­ley argued: “Replac­ing it and repair­ing the harm it has caused is one of the chal­lenges of our day.”

In oth­er words, Mr. Hawley’s idea of free­dom is the free­dom to con­form to what he and his pre­ferred reli­gious author­i­ties know to be right. Mr. Haw­ley is not shy about mak­ing the point explic­it. In a 2017 speech to the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project, he declared — para­phras­ing the Dutch Reformed the­olo­gian and one­time prime min­is­ter Abra­ham Kuyper — “There is not one square inch of all cre­ation over which Jesus Christ is not Lord.” Mr. Kuyper is per­haps best known for his claim that Chris­tian­i­ty has sole legit­i­mate author­i­ty over all aspects of human life.

“We are called to take that mes­sage into every sphere of life that we touch, includ­ing the polit­i­cal realm,” Mr. Haw­ley said. “That is our charge. To take the lord­ship of Christ, that mes­sage, into the pub­lic realm, and to seek the obe­di­ence of the nations. Of our nation!”

Mr. Haw­ley has built his polit­i­cal career among peo­ple who believe that Shari­ah is just around the cor­ner even as they attempt to secure priv­i­leges for their pre­ferred reli­gious groups to dis­crim­i­nate against those of whom they dis­ap­prove. Before he won elec­tion as a sen­a­tor, he worked for Beck­et, a legal advo­ca­cy group that often coor­di­nates with the right-wing legal jug­ger­naut the Alliance Defend­ing Free­dom. He is a famil­iar pres­ence on the Chris­t­ian right media cir­cuit.

The Amer­i­can Renew­al Project, which host­ed the event where Mr. Haw­ley deliv­ered his speech in 2017, was found­ed by David Lane, a polit­i­cal orga­niz­er who has long worked behind the scenes to con­nect con­ser­v­a­tive pas­tors and Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist fig­ures with politi­cians. The choice Amer­i­ca faces, accord­ing to Mr. Lane, is “to be faith­ful to Jesus or to pagan sec­u­lar­ism.”

...

At the heart of Mr. Hawley’s con­dem­na­tion of our ter­ri­fy­ing­ly Pela­gian world lies a dark con­clu­sion about the achieve­ments of mod­ern, lib­er­al, plu­ral­is­tic soci­eties. When he was still attor­ney gen­er­al, William Barr artic­u­lat­ed this con­clu­sion in a speech at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Notre Dame Law School, where he blamed “the grow­ing ascen­dan­cy of sec­u­lar­ism” for ampli­fy­ing “vir­tu­al­ly every mea­sure of social pathol­o­gy,” and main­tained that “free gov­ern­ment was only suit­able and sus­tain­able for a reli­gious peo­ple.”

Chris­t­ian nation­al­ists’ accep­tance of Pres­i­dent Trump’s spec­tac­u­lar turpi­tude these past four years was a good mea­sure of just how dire they think our sit­u­a­tion is. Even a cor­rupt sociopath was bet­ter, in their eyes, than the hor­ri­fy­ing free­dom that reli­gious mod­er­ates and lib­er­als, along with the many Amer­i­cans who don’t hap­pen to be reli­gious, offer the world.

That this neo-medieval vision is incom­pat­i­ble with con­sti­tu­tion­al democ­ra­cy is clear. But in case you’re in doubt, con­sid­er where some of the most mil­i­tant and coor­di­nat­ed sup­port for Mr. Trump’s post­elec­tion assault on the Amer­i­can con­sti­tu­tion­al sys­tem has come from. The Con­ser­v­a­tive Action Project, a group asso­ci­at­ed with the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy, which serves as a net­work­ing orga­ni­za­tion for America’s reli­gious and eco­nom­ic right-wing elite, made its posi­tion clear in a state­ment issued a week before the insur­rec­tion.

It called for mem­bers of the Sen­ate to “con­test the elec­toral votes” from Geor­gia, Penn­syl­va­nia, Michi­gan and oth­er states that were the focus of Repub­li­cans’ base­less alle­ga­tions. Among the sig­na­to­ries was Cle­ta Mitchell, the lawyer who advised Mr. Trump and par­tic­i­pat­ed in the president’s call on Jan. 2 with Brad Raf­fensperg­er, Georgia’s sec­re­tary of state. Cosig­na­to­ries to this dis­in­for­ma­tion exer­cise includ­ed Bob McEwen, the exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy; Mor­ton C. Black­well of the Lead­er­ship Insti­tute; Alfred S. Reg­n­ery, the for­mer pub­lish­er; Tony Perkins, the pres­i­dent of the Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil; Thomas Fit­ton of Judi­cial Watch; and more than a dozen oth­ers.

Although many of the foot sol­diers in the assault on the Capi­tol appear to have been white males aligned with white suprema­cist move­ments, it would be a mis­take to over­look the pow­er­ful role of the rhetoric of reli­gious nation­al­ism in their ranks. At a ral­ly in Wash­ing­ton on Jan. 5, on the eve of Elec­toral Col­lege cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, the right-wing pas­tor Greg Locke said that God is rais­ing “an army of patri­ots.” Anoth­er pas­tor, Bri­an Gib­son, put it this way: “The church of the Lord Jesus Christ start­ed Amer­i­ca,” and added, “We’re going to take our nation back!”

In the after­math of the Jan. 6 insur­rec­tion, a num­ber of Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist lead­ers issued state­ments con­demn­ing vio­lence — on both sides. How very kind of them. But few if any appear will­ing to acknowl­edge the instru­men­tal role they played in per­pet­u­at­ing the fraud­u­lent alle­ga­tions of a stolen elec­tion that were at the root of the insur­rec­tion.

They seem, like Mr. Haw­ley, to live in a post-truth envi­ron­ment. And this gets to the core of the Haw­ley enig­ma. The brash young sen­a­tor styles him­self not just a deep thinker who rumi­nates about late-Roman-era heretics but also a man of the peo­ple, a cham­pi­on of “the great Amer­i­can mid­dle,” as he wrote in an arti­cle for The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive, and a foe of the “rul­ing elite.” Mr. Haw­ley has even man­aged to turn a few pro­gres­sive heads with his eco­nom­ic pop­ulism, includ­ing his attacks on tech monop­o­lies.

Yet Mr. Haw­ley isn’t against elites per se. He is all for an elite, pro­vid­ed that it is a reli­gious­ly right­eous elite. He is a grad­u­ate of Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty and Yale Law School, and he clerked for John Roberts, the chief jus­tice. Mr. Haw­ley, in oth­er words, is a suc­cess­ful mer­i­to­crat of the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety vari­ety. His great­est rival in that depart­ment is the Prince­ton debater Ted Cruz. They are résumé jock­eys in a sys­tem that rewards those who do the best job of mobi­liz­ing fear and irra­tional­ism. They are what hap­pens when cal­low ambi­tion meets the grotesque inequal­i­ties and injus­tices of our age.

...

Make no mis­take: Mr. Haw­ley is a symp­tom, not a cause. He is a prod­uct of the same under­ly­ing forces that brought us Mr. Trump and the present cri­sis of Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy. Unless we find a way to address these forces and the fun­da­men­tal patholo­gies that dri­ve them, then next month or next year we will be forced to con­tend with a new and per­haps more suc­cess­ful ver­sion of Mr. Haw­ley.

———-

“The Roots of Josh Hawley’s Rage” By Kather­ine Stew­art; The New York Times; 01/11/2021

“In oth­er words, Mr. Hawley’s idea of free­dom is the free­dom to con­form to what he and his pre­ferred reli­gious author­i­ties know to be right. Mr. Haw­ley is not shy about mak­ing the point explic­it. In a 2017 speech to the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project, he declared — para­phras­ing the Dutch Reformed the­olo­gian and one­time prime min­is­ter Abra­ham Kuyper — “There is not one square inch of all cre­ation over which Jesus Christ is not Lord.” Mr. Kuyper is per­haps best known for his claim that Chris­tian­i­ty has sole legit­i­mate author­i­ty over all aspects of human life.”

The only real free­dom humans have is the free­dom to con­form to the dic­tates of the theocrats who have assumed the respon­si­bil­i­ty to impose God’s will on every square inch of cre­ation. That’s the vision of free­dom Sen­a­tor Josh Haw­ley shared in 2017. At an Amer­i­can Renew­al Project gath­er­ing, appro­pri­ate­ly:

...
“We are called to take that mes­sage into every sphere of life that we touch, includ­ing the polit­i­cal realm,” Mr. Haw­ley said. “That is our charge. To take the lord­ship of Christ, that mes­sage, into the pub­lic realm, and to seek the obe­di­ence of the nations. Of our nation!”

Mr. Haw­ley has built his polit­i­cal career among peo­ple who believe that Shari­ah is just around the cor­ner even as they attempt to secure priv­i­leges for their pre­ferred reli­gious groups to dis­crim­i­nate against those of whom they dis­ap­prove. Before he won elec­tion as a sen­a­tor, he worked for Beck­et, a legal advo­ca­cy group that often coor­di­nates with the right-wing legal jug­ger­naut the Alliance Defend­ing Free­dom. He is a famil­iar pres­ence on the Chris­t­ian right media cir­cuit.

The Amer­i­can Renew­al Project, which host­ed the event where Mr. Haw­ley deliv­ered his speech in 2017, was found­ed by David Lane, a polit­i­cal orga­niz­er who has long worked behind the scenes to con­nect con­ser­v­a­tive pas­tors and Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist fig­ures with politi­cians. The choice Amer­i­ca faces, accord­ing to Mr. Lane, is “to be faith­ful to Jesus or to pagan sec­u­lar­ism.”
...

And as the piece reminds us, we can­not sep­a­rate the events that led up to the Jan­u­ary 6 Capi­tol Insur­rec­tion from the CNP. Jan­u­ary 6 was a CNP-lead polit­i­cal pro­duc­tion. Sure, keep­ing Trump in office was part of the goal. But the end goals were so much big­ger:

...
Chris­t­ian nation­al­ists’ accep­tance of Pres­i­dent Trump’s spec­tac­u­lar turpi­tude these past four years was a good mea­sure of just how dire they think our sit­u­a­tion is. Even a cor­rupt sociopath was bet­ter, in their eyes, than the hor­ri­fy­ing free­dom that reli­gious mod­er­ates and lib­er­als, along with the many Amer­i­cans who don’t hap­pen to be reli­gious, offer the world.

That this neo-medieval vision is incom­pat­i­ble with con­sti­tu­tion­al democ­ra­cy is clear. But in case you’re in doubt, con­sid­er where some of the most mil­i­tant and coor­di­nat­ed sup­port for Mr. Trump’s post­elec­tion assault on the Amer­i­can con­sti­tu­tion­al sys­tem has come from. The Con­ser­v­a­tive Action Project, a group asso­ci­at­ed with the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy, which serves as a net­work­ing orga­ni­za­tion for America’s reli­gious and eco­nom­ic right-wing elite, made its posi­tion clear in a state­ment issued a week before the insur­rec­tion.

It called for mem­bers of the Sen­ate to “con­test the elec­toral votes” from Geor­gia, Penn­syl­va­nia, Michi­gan and oth­er states that were the focus of Repub­li­cans’ base­less alle­ga­tions. Among the sig­na­to­ries was Cle­ta Mitchell, the lawyer who advised Mr. Trump and par­tic­i­pat­ed in the president’s call on Jan. 2 with Brad Raf­fensperg­er, Georgia’s sec­re­tary of state. Cosig­na­to­ries to this dis­in­for­ma­tion exer­cise includ­ed Bob McEwen, the exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy; Mor­ton C. Black­well of the Lead­er­ship Insti­tute; Alfred S. Reg­n­ery, the for­mer pub­lish­er; Tony Perkins, the pres­i­dent of the Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil; Thomas Fit­ton of Judi­cial Watch; and more than a dozen oth­ers.

...

Make no mis­take: Mr. Haw­ley is a symp­tom, not a cause. He is a prod­uct of the same under­ly­ing forces that brought us Mr. Trump and the present cri­sis of Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy. Unless we find a way to address these forces and the fun­da­men­tal patholo­gies that dri­ve them, then next month or next year we will be forced to con­tend with a new and per­haps more suc­cess­ful ver­sion of Mr. Haw­ley.
...

It’s kind of sad to grim pre­dic­tion at this end: “Unless we find a way to address these forces and the fun­da­men­tal patholo­gies that dri­ve them, then next month or next year we will be forced to con­tend with a new and per­haps more suc­cess­ful ver­sion of Mr. Haw­ley.” Yep. And here we are, with Trump threat­en­ing and vengeance-filled return to pow­er with the Sched­ule F/Project 2025 plot wait­ing in the wings. All the pieces are in place for the kind of future Haw­ley and his fel­low trav­el­ers envi­sion. A future where you are free to obey them or face the con­se­quences.

Mark Robinson: the Christian Nationalist Celebrity Who Says the Right Things.

And that all brings us back to Mark Robin­son, the Amer­i­can Renew­al Pro­jec­t’s ‘pop­ulist’ politi­cian of choice. The kind of leader who isn’t afraid to declare that “Some peo­ple need killing!” At a church. As we’ve seen, Robin­son isn’t some lone nut. Robin­son is a foot sol­dier in a decades old move­ment on the cusp of its biggest vic­to­ry yet. Or in the words of Tony Perkins, Robin­son is “tru­ly a tro­phy of God’s grace, a man to be admired for his courage, right­eous­ness and jus­tice”:

MSNBC

This ris­ing GOP star embod­ies the Chris­t­ian right’s big­otry

North Car­oli­na Lt. Gov. Mark Robin­son is a reli­gious con­ser­v­a­tive favorite because of his deroga­to­ry com­ments, not in spite of them.

March 23, 2023, 6:50 PM CDT
By Sarah Pos­ner, MSNBC Colum­nist

North Car­oli­na Lt. Gov. Mark Robin­son, accord­ing to a report from Talk­ing Points Memo, has for years used his Face­book feed to pro­mote racist, anti­se­mit­ic, homo­pho­bic and trans­pho­bic view­points and memes. Elect­ed in 2020, the Repub­li­can is report­ed­ly con­sid­er­ing a run for gov­er­nor next year. He is a ris­ing star on the Chris­t­ian right, and his cache of appalling social media posts is fur­ther evi­dence that there is no day­light between the move­ment that bills itself as being com­mit­ted to “fam­i­ly val­ues” and “reli­gious free­dom” and the swamps of the big­ot­ed far right.

The lieu­tenant governor’s pro­lif­ic Face­book posts pro­mot­ed a hodge­podge of famil­iar right-wing con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries, blam­ing “glob­al­ists,” the “occult” and “the New World Order” for America’s woes. He used racist epi­thets against the Revs. William Bar­ber and Al Sharp­ton, the civ­il rights activists, and claimed expres­sions of “white pride” aren’t racist. He reject­ed his own mem­ber­ship in the Black com­mu­ni­ty, writ­ing, “Why would I want to be part of a ‘com­mu­ni­ty’ that sucks from the putrid tit of the gov­ern­ment and then com­plains about get­ting sour milk?” He dab­bled in anti­se­mit­ic con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries and reg­u­lar­ly post­ed homo­pho­bic and trans­pho­bic state­ments, among them call­ing homo­sex­u­al­i­ty “a FILTHY ABOMINATION, that sat­is­fies your degen­er­ate, un-nat­ur­al lust.” (Robin­son hasn’t respond­ed to requests for com­ment from Talk­ing Points Memo or oth­er out­lets cov­er­ing the sto­ry.)

...

Like his Face­book posts, Robinson’s more pub­lic hatred doesn’t stop with LGBTQ Amer­i­cans. He has indulged anti­se­mit­ic con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries. He has told an audi­ence that “we are called to be led by men,” not women. And he has equat­ed abor­tion with mur­der, even though he and his future wife got one in 1989, before they were mar­ried.

Robin­son has risen in promi­nence thanks in no small part to hav­ing attained celebri­ty sta­tus on the Chris­t­ian right. Tony Perkins, the influ­en­tial pres­i­dent of the Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil, Washington’s top Chris­t­ian right polit­i­cal advo­ca­cy group, called him “tru­ly a tro­phy of God’s grace, a man to be admired for his courage, right­eous­ness and jus­tice,” in an endorse­ment of his 2022 book. He has been a speak­er at the Faith and Free­dom Coalition’s Road to Major­i­ty con­fer­ence, a who’s who of GOP stars. My Faith Votes, a lead­ing orga­ni­za­tion that mobi­lizes evan­gel­i­cals to vote, has pro­mot­ed Robinson’s polit­i­cal rise. He has appeared on the pop­u­lar Trin­i­ty Broad­cast­ing Net­work pro­gram of for­mer Arkansas Gov. Mike Huck­abee, who told him, “God has giv­en you an abil­i­ty to com­mu­ni­cate.”

That sup­port springs from his pub­lic pro­nounce­ments of faith and his adher­ence to the Chris­t­ian right’s talk­ing points, includ­ing oppo­si­tion to abor­tion and LGBTQ rights, and his dem­a­goguery about sup­posed bogey­men like social­ism, crit­i­cal race the­o­ry and “indoc­tri­na­tion” in pub­lic edu­ca­tion. Robin­son also ardent­ly pro­motes of the myth that Amer­i­ca was found­ed as a Chris­t­ian nation and the idea that Chris­t­ian patri­ots must seize it back from anti-Chris­t­ian forces. Last year, at the Con­ser­v­a­tive Polit­i­cal Action Con­fer­ence in Orlan­do, Flori­da, Robin­son opened his speech by declar­ing, “The Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca is a Chris­t­ian nation, found­ed on the prin­ci­ples and wis­dom of Jesus Christ,” and he called on “patri­ots to stand up and reclaim who we are as Amer­i­cans.”

At the 2022 Con­ser­v­a­tive Polit­i­cal Action Con­fer­ence in Dal­las, he told the audi­ence they were “the sol­diers” hold­ing the line against “a whole horde being led by Jim Crow Joe, Nasty Nan­cy and Chump Schumer,” refer­ring to Pres­i­dent Joe Biden, for­mer House Speak­er Nan­cy Pelosi, D‑Calif., and Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader Chuck Schumer, D‑N.Y. He closed his speech with elim­i­na­tion­ist fer­vor, implor­ing the audi­ence to “sweep this social­ist horde off of this blessed land we call the shin­ing city on the hill.”

Evan­gel­i­cals’ admi­ra­tion isn’t in spite of Robinson’s deroga­to­ry com­ments but because of them. After his trans­pho­bic com­ments in the Bap­tist church sparked an uproar, Perkins laud­ed Robin­son for tak­ing a coura­geous stand against “can­cel cul­ture” and for “not apol­o­giz­ing for telling the truth.” Right-wing fire­brand Char­lie Kirk host­ed him as a “coura­geous” guest on his radio pro­gram to dis­cuss “how con­ser­v­a­tives can con­front the rad­i­cal trans­gen­der agen­da that is attempt­ing to infil­trate Amer­i­can schools.”

Robinson’s rapid ascent from polit­i­cal new­com­er to top statewide offi­cial is a mod­el for oth­er right-wing activists who aspire to wage a spir­i­tu­al bat­tle to save Chris­t­ian Amer­i­ca. Last year, he was a fea­tured speak­er at a North Car­oli­na gath­er­ing of the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project, which recruits and trains pas­tors and oth­er evan­gel­i­cals to run for office. David Lane, who spear­heads the effort, has long claimed his goal to be “the mobi­liza­tion of pas­tors and pews to restore Amer­i­ca to her Judeo-Chris­t­ian her­itage.” These gath­er­ings are typ­i­cal­ly closed to the media, but Reli­gion News Ser­vice report­ed that in his appear­ance, Robin­son called on the 200 atten­dees: “Join the fight. Don’t join the fight under man’s pow­er. Join the fight under God’s pow­er.”

...

————–

“This ris­ing GOP star embod­ies the Chris­t­ian right’s big­otry” By Sarah Pos­ner; MSNBC; 03/23/2023

Robinson’s rapid ascent from polit­i­cal new­com­er to top statewide offi­cial is a mod­el for oth­er right-wing activists who aspire to wage a spir­i­tu­al bat­tle to save Chris­t­ian Amer­i­ca. Last year, he was a fea­tured speak­er at a North Car­oli­na gath­er­ing of the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project, which recruits and trains pas­tors and oth­er evan­gel­i­cals to run for office. David Lane, who spear­heads the effort, has long claimed his goal to be “the mobi­liza­tion of pas­tors and pews to restore Amer­i­ca to her Judeo-Chris­t­ian her­itage.” These gath­er­ings are typ­i­cal­ly closed to the media, but Reli­gion News Ser­vice report­ed that in his appear­ance, Robin­son called on the 200 atten­dees: “Join the fight. Don’t join the fight under man’s pow­er. Join the fight under God’s pow­er.””

Robin­son’s polit­i­cal rise isn’t a flash in the pan fluke. It’s a mod­el for oth­er right-wing activists who aspire to wage a spir­i­tu­al bat­tle to save Chris­t­ian Amer­i­ca. A mod­el that finds fig­ures like Robin­son will­ing to say the ‘right’ things (like how some peo­ple need killing) and ele­vat­ing them to high­er office with robust theo­crat­ic insti­tu­tion­al sup­port. The kind of robust theo­crat­ic insti­tu­tion­al sup­port Don­ald Trump has rely­ing on increas­ing­ly over the years as he becomes more and more of a ‘divine­ly inspired’ fig­ure in the eyes of his fol­low­ers:

...
Robin­son has risen in promi­nence thanks in no small part to hav­ing attained celebri­ty sta­tus on the Chris­t­ian right. Tony Perkins, the influ­en­tial pres­i­dent of the Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil, Washington’s top Chris­t­ian right polit­i­cal advo­ca­cy group, called him “tru­ly a tro­phy of God’s grace, a man to be admired for his courage, right­eous­ness and jus­tice,” in an endorse­ment of his 2022 book. He has been a speak­er at the Faith and Free­dom Coalition’s Road to Major­i­ty con­fer­ence, a who’s who of GOP stars. My Faith Votes, a lead­ing orga­ni­za­tion that mobi­lizes evan­gel­i­cals to vote, has pro­mot­ed Robinson’s polit­i­cal rise. He has appeared on the pop­u­lar Trin­i­ty Broad­cast­ing Net­work pro­gram of for­mer Arkansas Gov. Mike Huck­abee, who told him, “God has giv­en you an abil­i­ty to com­mu­ni­cate.”

That sup­port springs from his pub­lic pro­nounce­ments of faith and his adher­ence to the Chris­t­ian right’s talk­ing points, includ­ing oppo­si­tion to abor­tion and LGBTQ rights, and his dem­a­goguery about sup­posed bogey­men like social­ism, crit­i­cal race the­o­ry and “indoc­tri­na­tion” in pub­lic edu­ca­tion. Robin­son also ardent­ly pro­motes of the myth that Amer­i­ca was found­ed as a Chris­t­ian nation and the idea that Chris­t­ian patri­ots must seize it back from anti-Chris­t­ian forces. Last year, at the Con­ser­v­a­tive Polit­i­cal Action Con­fer­ence in Orlan­do, Flori­da, Robin­son opened his speech by declar­ing, “The Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca is a Chris­t­ian nation, found­ed on the prin­ci­ples and wis­dom of Jesus Christ,” and he called on “patri­ots to stand up and reclaim who we are as Amer­i­cans.”

...

Evan­gel­i­cals’ admi­ra­tion isn’t in spite of Robinson’s deroga­to­ry com­ments but because of them. After his trans­pho­bic com­ments in the Bap­tist church sparked an uproar, Perkins laud­ed Robin­son for tak­ing a coura­geous stand against “can­cel cul­ture” and for “not apol­o­giz­ing for telling the truth.” Right-wing fire­brand Char­lie Kirk host­ed him as a “coura­geous” guest on his radio pro­gram to dis­cuss “how con­ser­v­a­tives can con­front the rad­i­cal trans­gen­der agen­da that is attempt­ing to infil­trate Amer­i­can schools.”
...

Don’t for­get: Char­lie Kirk is a CNP mem­ber too. The CNP clear­ly loves Mark Robin­son. And why would­n’t it? He’s effec­tive­ly the mod­ern man­i­fes­ta­tion of their decades long invest­ments. A politi­cian will­ing to open­ly make domin­ion­ist procla­ma­tions.

Well, at he least he was open­ly mak­ing domin­ion­ist procla­ma­tions. And then we got his sud­den ‘mod­er­a­tion’ on the abor­tion ques­tion after years of “no com­prise” stances. But we can be con­fi­dent the CNP and its oper­a­tives at the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project will be more than hap­py to for­give Robin­son for his sud­den ‘mod­er­a­tion’. After all, like vam­pires, domin­ion­ists still need an invi­ta­tion into pub­lic office. For now. Bar­ring the vio­lent rev­o­lu­tions they keep talk­ing about.

Discussion

10 comments for ““Some Folks Need Killing!” Mark Robinson, David Lane, and the CNP’s American Renewal Project”

  1. Mark Robin­son is a demon­stra­bly tal­ent­ed politi­cian. Or at least that’s one way of inter­pret­ing his mete­oric rise. After all, he only won his first polit­i­cal office, Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor of North Car­oli­na, in 2020. And here he is in 2024 as the GOP’s guber­na­to­r­i­al nom­i­nee. And, of course, he’s the dar­ling of the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project, focused on recruit­ing pas­tors to run for office. The “Some Folks Need Killing!” guy is great for recruit­ing pas­tors. Now you know.

    But it’s worth keep­ing in mind that it could be argued Robin­son’s polit­i­cal career start­ed long before that. As TPM doc­u­ment­ed, Robin­son had been a pro­lif­ic pur­vey­or of far right con­tent on social media for over a decade and effec­tive­ly became a right-wing star after a pro-gun speech he gave at a city coun­cil meet­ing in 2018 went viral. And as we also saw, it was 2019 when Robin­son appeared for an extend­ed con­ver­sa­tion with Sean Moon, son of Rev­erend Sun Myung Moon who now runs his own church in Penn­syl­va­nia that treats AR-15 rifles as divine tools for God’s cho­sen peo­ple. The next year, he goes on to win his first polit­i­cal race. Weeks lat­er, the Jan­u­ary 6 Capi­tol insur­rec­tion tran­spires, with Sean Moon there at the Capi­tol among the pro-Trump mob. And where do we find Don­ald Trump on Sep­tem­ber 11, 2021, the 20th Anniver­sary of the 9/11 attacks? At a Uni­fi­ca­tion Church event. The CNP may be the dom­i­nant theo­crat­ic enti­ty in the US, but the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church is no slouch. It still has clout.

    And that brings us to the fol­low Covert Action Intel­li­gence Bul­letin from back in the Spring of 1987 about the fas­ci­nat­ing ties between the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church and the domin­ion­ist forces behind the CNP. Ties that were on full dis­play at the time. The piece, by Fred Clark­son (who cov­ered David Lane’s open calls from a vio­lent domin­ion­ist rev­o­lu­tion in 2013), cov­ers the his­to­ry of the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church’s then-decades-long invest­ments in acquir­ing pow­er and influ­ence inside the Unit­ed States. A his­to­ry that obvi­ous­ly cen­ters around snug­gling up to the Repub­li­can Par­ty. But as we’re going to see, Moon had some major allies in this effort. Allies who made their affil­i­a­tion with Moon’s agen­da abun­dant­ly clear after Moon was sen­tenced to an 18-month prison sen­tence in 1984 over sys­tem­at­ic tax fraud. And as we’re going to see, these allies were more or less the same net­work of evan­gel­i­cal reli­gious lead­ers who ral­lied around Ronald Rea­gan in 1980 and went on to form the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy (CNP) the fol­low­ing year.

    The sup­port for Moon pri­mar­i­ly man­i­fest­ed through the DC-based Coali­tion for Reli­gious Free­dom (CRF), itself formed in 1984 as a project by the Asso­ci­a­tion of Con­cerned Tax­pay­ers, head­ed by Repub­li­can rep­re­sen­ta­tive George Hansen. On the board of the CRF was a list of now famil­iar names: Tim LaHaye, Jer­ry Fal­well, James Robi­son, Rex Hum­bard, D. James Kennedy, and Jim­my Swag­gart. As we saw, it was James Robi­son who played a key role in 1979 bring­ing togeth­er the group of evan­gel­i­cal domin­ion­ists who ral­lied behind Ronald Rea­gan’s cam­paign the fol­low­ing year. Includ­ing Tim LaHaye, one went on to become one of the CNP’s found­ing mem­bers in 1981 and group’s first pres­i­dent.

    Also note that, not only do Fal­well and Dr. D. James Kennedy also show up on the CNP list, but so does William T. Allen (Chair­man of the Board, D. James Kennedy Min­istries) and Dr. Frank Wright (Pres­i­dent & CEO, D. James Kennedy Min­istries). In oth­er words, CRF board was stacked with CNP heavy­weights. And that’s the group that was wag­ing

    Moon’s legal plight was­n’t the only issue the CRF and Hansen were upset about that year. The loss of tax-exempt sta­tus for Bob Jones Uni­ver­si­ty over its racist poli­cies out­raged Hansen. Keep in mind that Bob Jones III is anoth­er promi­nent CNP mem­ber.

    But the CRF’s ties to Moon aren’t just found in their vocif­er­ous defense of Moon fol­low­ing his sen­tenc­ing. CRF pres­i­dent Don Sills took $500,000 from Moon sources. Beyond that, CRF spokesper­son and exec­u­tive com­mit­tee mem­ber Joseph Paige was active in key Uni­fi­ca­tion Church enti­ty CAUSA.

    Anoth­er exam­ple the ties between Moon and this pow­er­ful net­work of evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers can be found in the right-wing lob­by Chris­t­ian Voice, found­ed in 1978 by CNP mem­ber Robert Grant. While Chris­t­ian Voice char­ac­ter­izes itself as a lob­by for all evan­gel­i­cals, that was a char­ac­ter­i­za­tion that did­n’t sit well with then-direc­tor of the Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Evan­gel­i­cals Robert P. Dugan, who described Chris­t­ian Voice as “not con­struct­ed to be a rep­re­sen­ta­tive orga­ni­za­tion and its polit­i­cal posi­tions may well be deter­mined by a hand­ful of activists meet­ing over lunch. They are account­able to no one but them­selves.” Even Paul Weyrich anoth­er CNP founder — described the group as “con­ser­v­a­tive first and Chris­t­ian inci­den­tal­ly, as opposed to oth­er groups that are Chris­t­ian first, and con­ser­v­a­tive inci­den­tal­ly.”

    What are the ties between Chris­t­ian Voice and the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church? Well, it turns out the group’s leg­isla­tive direc­tor, Gary Jarmin, was a long-time Uni­fi­ca­tion Church activist in the 1970s. And while Jarmin claimed to have left the group after join­ing the CRF, it also turns out he helped to orga­nize the first CAUSA North Amer­i­ca con­fer­ence in 1983, along with Chris­t­ian Voice Advi­so­ry Board mem­bers W. Steuart McBir­ney and Ray Allen. Jarmin and Grant went on to attend CAUSA’s 1985 con­fer­ence too.

    So that’s the very inter­est piece of his­to­ry to keep in mind when we’re look­ing at this his­toric arc of how the same net­work behind rise of the ‘Reli­gious Right’ in the 1980s and the for­ma­tion of the CNP has grown to the point where its on the cusp on imple­ment­ing that long sought theoc­ra­cy. On the cusp of win­ning that pow­er demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly or on the cusp of a vio­lent rev­o­lu­tion. Either way, they are on the cusp. Which means their fel­low trav­el­ers, like the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church and its AR-15-wor­ship­ping off­shoots, are on the cusp too:

    Covert Action Infor­ma­tion Bul­letin
    No 27, Spring 1987

    “Moon’s Law: God Is Phas­ing Out Democ­ra­cy”

    by Fred Clark­son

    Over the years, Rev­erend Sun Myung Moon, the founder, spir­i­tu­al leader, and tit­u­lar head of the vast Uni­fi­ca­tion Church con­glom­er­ate, has repeat­ed­ly declared that his goal is glob­al theoc­ra­cy. He has expressed his desire for polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic con­trol orig­i­nat­ing from cen­tral­ized reli­gious pow­er. Moon and his orga­ni­za­tion have been con­sis­tent in their efforts to car­ry out this vision. They are not always suc­cess­ful, but they per­sist. What is essen­tial to under­stand about the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church and its relat­ed oper­a­tions is that its reli­gion and its pol­i­tics are vir­tu­al­ly insep­a­ra­ble. Equal­ly impor­tant to under­stand is that the Moon orga­ni­za­tion [see note 1 below] is an inte­gral part of the World Anti-Com­mu­nist League (WACL), which in turn has played a piv­otal role in the devel­op­ment and activ­i­ties of the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church.

    In the U.S. the Moon orga­ni­za­tion has sought allies on many fronts, notably the New Right, and par­tic­u­lar­ly the reli­gious Right. These efforts have met with mixed suc­cess, but there is no doubt that it has made deep inroads into Amer­i­can polit­i­cal life. Where they intend going may be gauged by Moon’s ser­mons. In 1973, for exam­ple, he declared, “My dream is to orga­nize a Chris­t­ian polit­i­cal par­ty, includ­ing the Protes­tant denom­i­na­tions and Catholics, and all the oth­er reli­gious sects.2

    The pur­pose of this arti­cle is to detail the reli­gious and polit­i­cal ori­gins of the Moon phe­nom­e­non in the U.S. in order to clar­i­fy the more con­fus­ing elements.3

    Inside the League

    The World Anti-Com­mu­nist League (WACL) is an inter­na­tion­al coali­tion of fas­cist and con­ser­v­a­tive groups and polit­i­cal par­ties found­ed in 1966 by agents of the gov­ern­ments of Tai­wan and South Korea.4 One of the orig­i­nal groups was the Asian People’s Anti-Com­mu­nist League (APACL). Its Japan­ese affil­i­ate, Shokyo Ren­go, became a WACL chap­ter in 1968. Shokyo Ren­go (Vic­to­ry Over Com­mu­nism) began after a 1967 meet­ing between Sun Myung Moon, Ryoichi Sasakawa, Yoshio Kodama, and two of his lieu­tenants. Kodama was the head of Japan­ese orga­nized crime, the Yakuza. One of [Moon’s] lieu­tenants, Osa­mi Kubo­ki, became head of the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church in Japan, as well as a leader in WACL. Soon after­ward, WACL began indoc­tri­nat­ing young Yakuza gang mem­bers in anti­com­mu­nist ide­ol­o­gy sim­i­lar to what the Moon orga­ni­za­tion was already doing in Korea with gov­ern­ment offi­cials. Sasakawa, an impor­tant World War II Japan­ese fas­cist leader, became the head of Shokyo Ren­go, and Kodama its chief advi­sor.

    Sasakawa’s rela­tion­ship to the Moon orga­ni­za­tion, which dates back to 1958, con­tin­ues to this day, includ­ing ongo­ing financ­ing of both the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church and Shokyo Ren­go, which is con­trolled by the Church.

    Sasakawa, Kodama, and oth­er impor­tant “Class A” war crim­i­nals were mys­te­ri­ous­ly released from Sug­amo prison only a year and a half after World War II. They went on to found the rul­ing Lib­er­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty and have played promi­nent roles since. One fel­low inmate, Nobusuke Kishi, became a prime min­is­ter. In 1959, Kishi helped estab­lish a qua­si-gov­em­men­tal, boat-rac­ing/gam­bling fran­chise, which he gave to Sasakawa, who grew fan­tas­ti­cal­ly rich from the pro­ceeds. Kishi was also the prime mover in estab­lish­ing APACL in Japan and remained active in WACL through­out the 1960s, serv­ing as chair­man of the plan­ning com­mit­tee in 1970.

    Sasakawa was described by U.S. Army intel­li­gence as “one of the most active fas­cist orga­niz­ers pri­or to the war.” In the 1930s both Sasakawa and Kodama were jailed: Sasakawa for plot­ting the mur­der of a for­mer pre­mier, and Kodama for plot­ting the mur­der of a prime min­is­ter. Kodama was a noto­ri­ous war prof­i­teer and Japan­ese intel­li­gence agent in Chi­na. “His long and fanat­ic involve­ment in ultra-nation­al­ist activ­i­ties, vio­lence includ­ed, and his skill in appeal­ing to youth make him a man who, if released from intern­ment, would sure­ly be a grave secu­ri­ty risk.”5

    Mean­while, the first Moon mis­sion­ar­ies arrived in the U.S. in 1959. By the ear­ly 1960s, Moon fronts had been estab­lished and were work­ing in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Kore­an Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency (KCIA). Indeed, short­ly after the mil­i­tary coup which ele­vat­ed Park Chung Hee to pow­er in 1961, his KCIA direc­tor (and founder), Kim Jong Pil, stat­ed that he intend­ed to “orga­nize and uti­lize” the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church as a “polit­i­cal tool” (see side­bar), accord­ing to the Octo­ber 31, 1978 Report of the Sub­com­mit­tee on Inter­na­tion­al Orga­ni­za­tions of the House For­eign Affairs Com­mit­tee, known as the Fras­er Report.6

    The Fras­er Report, a House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives inves­ti­ga­tion into Kore­an covert oper­a­tions in the U.S., chaired by Don­ald Fras­er (Dem.-Minn.), reveals that one of the ear­ly KCIA/Moon projects was the Kore­an Cul­tur­al Free­dom Foun­da­tion (KCFF). The osten­si­bly non-prof­it orga­ni­za­tion quick­ly turned from a “cul­tur­al” to a polit­i­cal oper­a­tion under the influ­ence of “Hon­orary Chair­man” Kim Jong Pil, who want­ed the “Free­dom Cen­ter” in Seoul, South Korea to be its prin­ci­pal project. Thus, by the spring of 1964, KCFF was rais­ing funds from Amer­i­cans for the Free­dom Cen­ter, which was, in fact, an APACL project pro­mot­ed and sub­si­dized by the Kore­an gov­ern­ment with at least $796,231.,7 The Free­dom Cen­ter serves as the “sec­re­tari­at” of WACL to this day.

    In 1966, KCFF launched anoth­er KCIA project, Radio Of Free Asia (ROFA), which broad­cast anti­com­mu­nist pro­gram­ming to the region. The Kore­an gov­ern­ment pro­vid­ed the broad­cast facil­i­ties, and the KCIA con­trolled the pro­gram­ming through their psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare sec­tion, called the “7th Bureau.”8 Dur­ing its peri­od of orga­ni­za­tion, Lt. Col. Bo Hi Pak, a mil­i­tary attaché at the Kore­an Embassy in Wash­ing­ton, actu­al­ly ran KCFF, despite a series of Amer­i­can fig­ure­heads fronting the Free­dom Cen­ter and ROFA fundrais­ing cam­paigns. Pak had been giv­en a spe­cial dis­charge from the Kore­an Army, appar­ent­ly to devote full time to KCFF in Wash­ing­ton. He was among Moon’s prin­ci­pal oper­a­tives as well, and used KCFF for Church pur­pos­es. KCFF hood­winked a num­ber of promi­nent Amer­i­cans, includ­ing for­mer pres­i­dents Eisen­how­er and Tru­man to serve on its advi­so­ry board. Using their names, KCFF raised funds for their projects and some mon­ey was appar­ent­ly skimmed to fund the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church.9

    The Inter­na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tion for Vic­to­ry Over Com­mu­nism (IFVC) was formed in 1968 in Seoul. This was Moon’s prin­ci­pal polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tion. Shokyo Ren­go, the Japan­ese affil­i­ate, was also formed in 1968. The Amer­i­can affil­i­ate was incor­po­rat­ed in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. in 1969 as the Free­dom Lead­er­ship Foun­da­tion (FLF). Shokyo Ren­go host­ed the 1970 WACL Con­fer­ence in Tokyo, for which Moon claimed to have raised $1.4 million.10 FLF Pres­i­dent Allen Tate Wood attend­ed as a “youth del­e­gate” with sev­er­al Amer­i­can Moonies. He lat­er broke with Moon, gave press con­fer­ences denounc­ing Moon, and tes­ti­fied before the Fras­er Com­mit­tee. While vis­it­ing Korea on the same trip, Wood was instruct­ed by Moon to “win the pow­er cen­ters” of the U.S. for him, begin­ning with academia.11 Moon also told him that “part of our strat­e­gy in the U.S. must be to make friends in the FBI, the CIA and police forces, the mil­i­tary and busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty… as a means of enter­ing the polit­i­cal are­na, influ­enc­ing for­eign pol­i­cy, and ulti­mate­ly of estab­lish­ing absolute domin­ion over the Amer­i­can peo­ple.”12

    Accord­ing to the Fras­er Report, polit­i­cal oper­a­tions in the U.S. were at first opposed by reli­gious “purists” in the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church. How­ev­er it was “point­ed out to them that the Church in Japan and Korea car­ried exten­sive anti­com­mu­nist polit­i­cal pro­grams. They were told it was Master’s expressed desire to begin polit­i­cal work in the Unit­ed States. There­after, a member’s objec­tion to polit­i­cal activ­i­ties was con­sid­ered infi­deli­ty to Mas­ter and was like being dis­obe­di­ent to God.”13 In 1971, Moon came to the U.S. after his immi­gra­tion dif­fi­cul­ties were over­come through the inter­ven­tion of Sen­a­tor Strom Thur­mond (Rep.-S.C.), who had spo­ken at Moon’s 1970 WACL con­fer­ence in Tokyo. Based on inter­views with ex-Moonies, Robert Boettch­er, the staff direc­tor of the Fras­er Com­mit­tee, wrote that Moon was “appalled” by Amer­i­can indi­vid­u­al­ism, and he con­sid­ered relo­cat­ing to Ger­many, where peo­ple “were trained in total­ism.” Some for­mer mem­bers recall that Nazi films on orga­niz­ing Hitler Youth were shown as exam­ples to Moonie lead­ers. Noth­ing was more impor­tant than devel­op­ing a cadre of strong lead­ers total­ly sub­servient to his will.”14

    Wood has said that “[u]nder the aegis of Amer­i­can Youth for a Just Peace (AYJP)…set up by myself and a man named Charles Stephens, the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church car­ried out exten­sive lob­by­ing in the spring of 1970. This lob­by­ing was car­ried out by church mem­bers under orders from their superiors…to try to indi­cate to Congress…strong grass­roots sup­port for a hard line in Viet­nam.” He also empha­sized that because “the church’s tax exempt sta­tus would be threat­ened if we car­ried out our polit­i­cal activ­i­ties open­ly, we were care­ful to hide our real iden­ti­ty behind the guise of AYJP. Dur­ing this time, AYJP received ‘anony­mous’ dona­tions from ‘friends of the Pres­i­dent’ [Nixon] through con­nec­tions with Charles Col­son and Jeb Magrud­er. So the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church in the 1970s was the recip­i­ent of mon­ey to car­ry out the pro­grams of the gov­ern­ment.”

    “Mr. Moon has said,” con­tin­ued Wood, “that ‘God is phas­ing out democ­ra­cy.’ Well, whether or not God is doing it, it is clear that Sun Myung Moon wants to do this… so right now, the Unit­ed States is act­ing as a seedbed for fas­cist reli­gious cults whose objec­tive is in the end to destroy the Con­sti­tu­tion, and remake Amer­i­ca in the image of an auto­crat­ic hier­ar­chi­cal fas­cist state.”15

    In 1975, Moon pub­licly denounced WACL as “fas­cist” and pur­port­ed­ly with­drew; how­ev­er, this was most like­ly sim­ply an effort to keep a low­er pro­file. The Wash­ing­ton Post, cov­er­ing the 1978 WACL con­fer­ence in Wash­ing­ton, report­ed that the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church was absent and no longer involved.16 How­ev­er, a Uni­fi­ca­tion Church min­is­ter hired bus­es for CIA-con­nect­ed Cuban exiles to attend, accord­ing to inter­views with the Cubans by Jeff Stein, writ­ing in New York mag­a­zine.17 It is clear that the Moon orga­ni­za­tion nev­er real­ly left WACL. Osa­mi Kubo­ki has been a mem­ber of the WACL exec­u­tive board for many years, and even host­ed the 1982 WACL con­fer­ence in Japan.

    Sig­nif­i­cant­ly, the youth sec­tion of WACL, cur­rent­ly head­ed by David Finzer18 of the Wash­ing­ton-based Con­ser­v­a­tive Action Foun­da­tion, has report­ed­ly received a grant from the South Kore­an WACL chapter.19 Finzer’s group is pro­vid­ing sem­i­nars on “polit­i­cal tech­nol­o­gy” for WACL Youth, and orig­i­nat­ed the Chevron/Gulf boycott—a cam­paign which received sup­port from the RAMBO Coali­tion (see side­bar in “Shep­herd­ing,” in this issue)—designed to high­light the efforts of Jonas Savimbi’s UNITA to over­throw the gov­ern­ment of Ango­la.

    “An Auto­mat­ic Theoc­ra­cy”

    While WACL gen­er­al­ly pro­motes fas­cist polit­i­cal pro­grams, when the Moon orga­ni­za­tion is involved, the mes­sages released are more explic­it­ly theo­crat­ic. Essen­tial­ly, Moon’s fol­low­ers believe he is the new Mes­si­ah, the sec­ond com­ing, not of Jesus but of the Mes­si­ah. Moon says that God told him: “You are the son I have been seek­ing, the one who can begin my eter­nal history.”20 He says that God has revealed his plan to him and that he has spo­ken with Jesus, Moses, and oth­er great his­tor­i­cal reli­gious fig­ures.

    Moon intends to bend the U.S. to “God’s will,” which will lead to a final war with Sovi­et com­mu­nism, and final­ly to the King­dom of Heav­en on Earth. Accord­ing to The Divine Prin­ci­ple, the basic the­o­log­i­cal work of Uni­fi­ca­tion­ism, World War III is “inevitable”. This war may be fought with weapons, or with “ide­ol­o­gy,” in order to “sub­ju­gate and uni­fy the Satan­ic world.” The orga­ni­za­tion cre­at­ed to refine and pro­mote this ide­ol­o­gy appears to be CAUSA (see side­bar) which the Uni­fi­ca­tion News describes as an “ide­o­log­i­cal move­ment,” which “unites all reli­gious peo­ple as a God-accept­ing force against the God-deny­ing forces such as communism.”21

    The Divine Prin­ci­ple denounces the tri­par­tite con­sti­tu­tion­al sys­tem of west­ern democ­ra­cies, stat­ing that “Since the Con­sti­tu­tion is not made of God’s words” the three branch­es of gov­ern­ment “can­not help oppos­ing and con­flict­ing with one anoth­er, and lack mutu­al har­mo­ny and order.”

    More­over, in 1973, Moon said that “Amer­i­can style democ­ra­cy” is ‘‘a good nurs­ery for the growth of communism.”22 Ten years lat­er he told his annu­al Inter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence for the Uni­ty of the Sci­ences (ICUS) that ‘‘nei­ther Democ­ra­cy nor Com­mu­nism pro­vides the means to cure the ills of soci­ety…. Not only has Democ­ra­cy been unsuc­cess­ful at this task, but it has proved itself unable to resist and over­come the destruc­tive­ness of Com­mu­nism…. What is need­ed is a third alter­na­tive, a move­ment based on a new under­stand­ing of truth…this is the Uni­fi­ca­tion Move­ment, with Uni­fi­ca­tion ideology.”23

    ...

    Thus the Moon orga­ni­za­tion has been con­sis­tent over the years, from their basic book through the speech­es of the Mas­ter and his most promi­nent dis­ci­ple. One for­mer mem­ber observed that Moon’s teach­ings “were often referred to by oth­er mem­bers as an ‘ide­ol­o­gy’ that would change the polit­i­cal sys­tems of the world. It was made clear to me that so long as the church-relat­ed aspects of the group were empha­sized, Moon’s fol­low­ers would be in a pro­tect­ed posi­tion as far as first amend­ment reli­gious free­dom was con­cerned, and be able to take advan­tage of the tax laws as well.”24

    Moon’s theo­crat­ic aspi­ra­tions are well doc­u­ment­ed in a series of speech­es and ser­mons from the 1970s, com­piled under the title Mas­ter Speaks. In 1973, for exam­ple, Moon declared that “[w]hen it comes to our age, we must have an auto­mat­ic theoc­ra­cy to rule the world. So we can­not sep­a­rate the polit­i­cal field from the reli­gious…. Sep­a­ra­tion between reli­gion and pol­i­tics is what Satan likes most.” In Moon’s king­dom, Korea would be the cen­tral nation; the Rome of a new Empire. What is more, “In the ide­al world cen­tered upon God, every­one will speak only Kore­an, so no inter­preter will be necessary.”25

    Moon’s reli­gion-is-every­thing ide­ol­o­gy includes the econ­o­my. He says that under his sys­tem, “even in Japan and Ger­many, the peo­ple will not buy prod­ucts from their own coun­try, but will buy accord­ing to cen­tral­ized instruc­tions. What kind of sys­tem of thought or econ­o­my can func­tion to give these cen­tral­ized instruc­tions? Reli­gion is the only sys­tem that can do that.”26

    ...

    “A Move­ment Like Le Pen’s”

    Moon’s polit­i­cal oper­a­tions have tak­en many forms. In Brazil, for exam­ple, CAUSA/Brazil has orga­nized a long-term cam­paign to col­lect eight mil­lion sig­na­tures on an “anti­com­mu­nist man­i­festo.” They plan to use these peti­tions to pres­sure the Brazil­ian Congress.28 At stake is the Brazil­ian Con­sti­tu­tion, which is to be draft­ed by the new Con­gress. The head of CAUSA/Brazil says 57 can­di­dates received “logis­ti­cal but not finan­cial sup­port.” He said “we are form­ing the future base for a large par­ty, though at present we are still apo­lit­i­cal” and “we want­ed to form a move­ment like Le Pen’s in France.”29

    Le Pen is the leader of the fas­cist Nation­al Front which, accord­ing to the British jour­nal Search­light, has close ties to the Moon orga­ni­za­tion. Search­light report­ed that “accord­ing to Le Pen’s estranged wife, CAUSA is an impor­tant financier of the Nation­al Front.” The head of CAUSA in France was a mem­ber of the French del­e­ga­tion to the 1986 WACL con­fer­ence in Luxembourg.30

    ...

    The Moon orga­ni­za­tion has a long his­to­ry of elec­toral activism. The Fras­er Report not­ed that they, in alliance with “pow­er­ful rightwing fig­ures in Japan, such as Ryoichi Sasakawa,…openly par­tic­i­pat­ed in elec­tion cam­paigns there.”33 Even before Moon came to the U.S., he had high ambi­tions. Allen Tate Wood told the Fras­er com­mit­tee that the Moon orga­ni­za­tion sought to gain enough influ­ence in the U.S. to be able to “dic­tate pol­i­cy on major issues, to influ­ence leg­is­la­tion, and to move into elec­toral politics.”34

    After Amer­i­can Youth for a Just Peace was dis­band­ed in 1971, its co-founder Charles Stephens moved to New York, and ran (unsuc­cess­ful­ly), first for the State leg­is­la­ture in 1972, and for Con­gress in 1974. In both cam­paigns, FLF pro­vid­ed “vol­un­teers.” Also in 1974, the Moon orga­ni­za­tion pro­vid­ed con­sid­er­able sup­port for Repub­li­can Louis Wyman in his unsuc­cess­ful bid for the U.S. Sen­ate seat from New Hamp­shire. Wyman report­ed­ly promised to hire a church mem­ber for his staff if he won.35 Venge­ful Moonies con­verged on Min­neso­ta in 1978 in a suc­cess­ful effort to defeat Rep. Don Fras­er, the spon­sor of the con­gres­sion­al inves­tiga­tive report on Kore­a­gate, in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­ate primary.36 Moon called Fraser’s defeat an “act of God.”

    The Moon organization’s par­ty of choice has always been the Repub­li­cans, and the New Right of the GOP in par­tic­u­lar. This rela­tion­ship, epit­o­mized by Moon’s VIP seat at the first Rea­gan inau­gur­al, has been denounced repeat­ed­ly by the mod­er­ate Repub­li­can Ripon Soci­ety. Ripon pres­i­dent Rep. Jim Leach (Rep.-Iowa) wrote that the “ties between the New Right and Moon under­cut the New Right’s rai­son d’être. A polit­i­cal move­ment bas­ing its appeal on old-fash­ioned patri­o­tism and fam­i­ly val­ues sim­ply can­not jus­ti­fy alliance with a cult that preys on the dis­in­te­gra­tion of the Amer­i­can fam­i­ly and advo­cates alle­giance to an inter­na­tion­al social order oper­at­ing with cell-like secrecy.”37

    The FLF, though appar­ent­ly sup­plant­ed by CAUSA as Moon’s U.S. polit­i­cal arm, is still occa­sion­al­ly active. In May 1984 FLF paid for three Repub­li­can Sen­ate staff mem­bers, rep­re­sent­ing Sen­a­tors Robert Kas­ten (Rep.-Wisc.), Steve Symms (Rep.-Idaho), and William Arm­strong (Rep.-Colo.), to “fly to Cen­tral Amer­i­ca where they met with gov­ern­ment lead­ers and U.S. Embassy offi­cials in Hon­duras and Guatemala and joined the offi­cial U.S. observ­er del­e­ga­tion to the Sal­vado­ran election.”38

    Con­vict­ed Felons

    In 1984, Moon entered Dan­bury Fed­er­al Prison to serve an 18-month sen­tence for con­spir­a­cy to file false tax returns, to obstruct jus­tice, and to com­mit perjury.39 The Moon orga­ni­za­tion claims that Moon and his co-defen­dant Takeru Kamiya­ma were unfair­ly pros­e­cut­ed due to racial and reli­gious intol­er­ance on the part of the U.S. gov­ern­ment. Remark­ably, the Moon orga­ni­za­tion has used the dis­as­ter of Moon’s impris­on­ment to ben­e­fit its pub­lic image. Across the polit­i­cal spec­trum, many peo­ple offered grudg­ing sup­port for Moon because they believed he was mis­treat­ed by the judi­cial sys­tem. The Moon orga­ni­za­tion has skill­ful­ly exploit­ed these sen­ti­ments, and indeed, had a major role in cre­at­ing them. What began as a cam­paign for “reli­gious free­dom” has become a mul­ti-faceted strat­e­gy to fur­ther the Moon­ist agen­da. In 1984, Bo Hi Pak said that “free­dom of reli­gion has become a major issue in Amer­i­ca, and Rev­erend Moon is the ral­ly­ing point.”40 Echo­ing this theme. New York Uni­fi­ca­tion Church leader Ken Sudo told fel­low Moonie lead­ers in May 1985 that, “Father went to Dan­bury as the leader of the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church, but when he comes out, he must be the leader of the Free World.”41

    If Moon had only failed to pay income tax on $160,000 he would not ordi­nar­i­ly have been pros­e­cut­ed on crim­i­nal charges. But evi­dence of will­ful vio­la­tion of the law made crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion inevitable. In 1973, tax lawyers and accoun­tants told Moon’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives to keep his per­son­al assets sep­a­rate from those of the Church. Kamiya­ma ignored this advice and pre­pared Moon’s tax­es under Master’s per­son­al super­vi­sion. They forged and back­dat­ed ledgers to hide Moon’s assets with­in the Church’s. The pros­e­cu­tion proved, among oth­er things, that the paper used to fal­si­fy the 1973 records was not even man­u­fac­tured until 1974.42

    Moon’s defense on appeal, (known as the “Mes­si­ah defense”) is con­sis­tent with his theo­crat­ic ambi­tions. Moon claimed that some of his fol­low­ers believed he is “poten­tial­ly the new Mes­si­ah,” the “embod­i­ment” of the Church, and thus exempt from per­son­al income tax­es. The court held, how­ev­er, that even Mes­si­ahs are not exempt from tax­es, and have a sta­tus as an indi­vid­ual dis­tinct from the church. Free­dom of reli­gion is “sub­or­di­nate to the crim­i­nal laws of the coun­try.” The court ruled that “To allow oth­er­wise would be to per­mit church lead­ers to stand above the law.”

    Moon as Mar­tyr

    The Moon-as-mar­tyr cam­paign has been orches­trat­ed by the Moon orga­ni­za­tion, pub­lic rela­tions firms, and grantees. The most promi­nent exam­ple is the Wash­ing­ton-based Coali­tion for Reli­gious Free­dom (CRF) which, accord­ing to CRF pres­i­dent Don Sills, has received at least $500,000 from Moon sources.43 A promi­nent CRF spokesper­son and exec­u­tive com­mit­tee mem­ber is Joseph Paige. As Exec­u­tive Vice Pres­i­dent of the Black Bap­tist Shaw Divin­i­ty School, Paige received $60,000 from the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church for his school, which in turn gave Moon a much pub­li­cized hon­orary doc­tor­ate. Paige is also active in CAUSA.44

    In 1984, the Asso­ci­a­tion of Con­cerned Tax­pay­ers, head­ed by then Rep. George Hansen (Rep.-Idaho), start­ed CRF.45 A CRF fundrais­ing let­ter signed by Hansen declared that “a dead­ly gov­ern­ment assault against reli­gion has erupt­ed in Amer­i­ca [and] pow­er­ful gov­ern­ment forces are mov­ing quick­ly to smash the great con­sti­tu­tion­al guar­an­tees pro­tect­ing the free­dom of reli­gion.” Hansen strong­ly object­ed when the IRS with­drew tax-exempt sta­tus from Bob Jones Uni­ver­si­ty because of racial dis­crim­i­na­tion and poli­cies against inter­ra­cial dat­ing. He also con­demned the state of Nebras­ka for arrest­ing fun­da­men­tal­ist Everett Sileven after Sileven refused to allow teach­ers at his pri­vate school to be cer­ti­fied by the state as required by state law.46

    The obsta­cle to “reli­gious free­dom” as defined by Moon and much of the Chris­t­ian Right, is “sec­u­lar” gov­ern­ment, which they see as a step­ping stone to “Satan­ic, athe­is­tic, Com­mu­nism.” Bo Hi Pak declared that the world is a bat­tle­ground between “God and no God.”47 CRF claims that the Moon pros­e­cu­tion and the alleged attack on reli­gion by gov­ern­ment “is large­ly the result of the ungod­ly sec­u­lar human­ist phi­los­o­phy that has con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed our schools, the media, and the var­i­ous lev­els of gov­ern­ment.” The 1985 CAUSA Lec­ture Man­u­al stat­ed that “in the Unit­ed States, an inter­me­di­ary stage pri­or to com­mu­nism may be sec­u­lar humanism.”48

    The CRF exec­u­tive com­mit­tee has devel­oped rapid­ly since 1984, to include most of the major tel­e­van­ge­lists, such as Tim LaHaye, Jer­ry Fal­well, James Robi­son, Rex Hum­bard, D. James Kennedy, and Jim­my Swag­gart. Recent­ly, the Moon orga­ni­za­tion opened an inter­na­tion­al front in its “reli­gious free­dom” cam­paign. Accord­ing to Moon’s New York City Tri­bune, the World Coun­cil on Reli­gious Lib­er­ty (WCRL) was found­ed in Decem­ber 1986 at a con­fer­ence in Gene­va, Switzer­land. The Chair­man of WRCL is Joseph Paige, and its “Chair­man of the North Amer­i­can Cau­cus” is Don Sills. They have recruit­ed Dr. Robert G. Muller, assis­tant Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the Unit­ed Nations, as chair­man of the Council’s Inter­na­tion­al Advi­so­ry Com­mit­tee. The Council’s head­quar­ters are in Raleigh, North Car­oli­na, which is also home to Paige’s Shaw Divin­i­ty School.49

    Gray Areas

    While “Father” Moon served time, his fol­low­ers orga­nized an elab­o­rate pub­lic rela­tions cam­paign which includ­ed the reli­gious free­dom cam­paign, efforts to get Supreme Court review of the Moon case, and final­ly a cam­paign to get Moon par­doned. The Moon orga­ni­za­tion hired, among oth­ers, the pub­lic rela­tions firm of Gray and Co., head­ed by Robert Kei­th Gray, a for­mer Rea­gan cam­paign offi­cial. In ear­ly 1984, accord­ing to sources famil­iar with the inci­dent, Gray and Co. direc­tor Robert B. Ander­son solicit­ed the sig­na­ture of promi­nent Wash­ing­ton Rab­bi Joshua Haber­man for Hansen’s reli­gious free­dom peti­tion to Pres­i­dent Rea­gan. The peti­tion was gen­er­al in nature, but was then used in CRF’s direct mail blitz. Haber­man with­drew, say­ing he had been deceived and that his name was being used to advance caus­es which he did not sup­port.

    Robert Ander­son, a for­mer Trea­sury Sec­re­tary in the Eisen­how­er admin­is­tra­tion, was already involved with the Moon orga­ni­za­tion at the time. He spoke at the found­ing con­fer­ence of CAUSA North Amer­i­ca in Mon­tego Bay, Jamaica in 1983. He also head­ed a Moon-fund­ed front known as the Glob­al Eco­nom­ic Action Insti­tute from 1983 to 1986. He was suc­ceed­ed in this post by for­mer Sen­a­tor Eugene McCarthy.

    Gray, who co-chaired the 1981 Rea­gan Inau­gur­al Com­mit­tee, was the first Pres­i­dent of the George­town Club, an elite social club financed by his friend, KCIA oper­a­tive Tong­sun Park (see side­bar). Accord­ing to a for­mer KCIA direc­tor, the George­town Club was a KCIA front used by Park to facil­i­tate “lob­by­ing activ­i­ties” in the 1970s.50 For at least the past few years, Gray and Co. has been reg­is­tered as a for­eign agent for Japan and South Korea.

    The par­don cam­paign failed. How­ev­er, four months after his release from prison, Moon vis­it­ed Korea where, in the Olympic sta­di­um, a ral­ly of about 30,000 peo­ple was host­ed by his orig­i­nal polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tion (still a part of WACL), the Inter­na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tion for Vic­to­ry over Com­mu­nism (IFVC). Accord­ing to the Lon­don Times, no senior Kore­an gov­ern­ment offi­cials were present. How­ev­er, Osa­mi Kubo­ki read a mes­sage of sup­port from Japan­ese Prime Min­is­ter Naka­sone. Kubo­ki said both Naka­sone and for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Kishi had “inter­ced­ed on Moon’s behalf with Pres­i­dent Rea­gan.” Accord­ing to the Times of Lon­don, Naka­sone “tele­phoned the Pres­i­dent because of Mr. Moon’s sta­tus as an inter­na­tion­al leader, while Mr. Kishi, a sup­port­er of the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church in Japan, had writ­ten to the Pres­i­dent three times.”51

    Kishi, who was a WACL leader in the late 1960s, is also involved with CAUSA’s Inter­na­tion­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil (ISC). ISC’s pur­pose includes orga­niz­ing retired mil­i­tary offi­cers of the West­ern Alliance, and hold­ing anti­com­mu­nist con­fer­ences. Kishi also co-chaired Moon’s 1984 World Media Con­fer­ence in Tokyo.

    Kishi’s involve­ment under­scores the impor­tance of Japan to the Moon orga­ni­za­tion. Despite its Kore­an roots and the his­tor­i­cal ani­mos­i­ty between Korea and Japan, the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church has had a lim­it­ed pop­u­lar fol­low­ing in Korea and very large sup­port in Japan. Indeed, its pre­dom­i­nant source of fund­ing has been Japan. The Wash­ing­ton Post, quot­ing a for­mer rank­ing Japan­ese Moon offi­cial, report­ed that some $800 mil­lion had flowed from Japan to the U.S. Uni­fi­ca­tion Church over the pre­ced­ing nine years (1975–1984).52 Where the mon­ey went is a mat­ter of intense spec­u­la­tion. Some was invest­ed in busi­ness­es and real estate. Hun­dreds of mil­lions have by now spent on Moon’s major pub­li­ca­tions, notably the Wash­ing­ton Times, the New York City Tri­bune, and the newsweek­ly Insight mag­a­zine. But clear­ly too, Moon mon­ey has been invest­ed in domes­tic Amer­i­can pol­i­tics; and the funds doc­u­ment­ed here are but the tip of the ice­berg. (See side­bar.)

    Inside the New Right

    Part of Moon’s U.S. strat­e­gy has been to seek alliances with the reli­gious Right. How­ev­er, the rela­tion­ship has been high­ly con­tro­ver­sial with­in the move­ment. While Moon mon­ey is wide­ly rumored to be a major finan­cial under­pin­ning of the New Right, it is often kept secret because so many con­ser­v­a­tives find the Moon orga­ni­za­tion repug­nant.

    Jer­ry Fal­well of the Moral Major­i­ty, and one of the founders and exec­u­tive com­mit­tee mem­bers of the Coali­tion for Reli­gious Free­dom, dropped his sup­port for Moon in ear­ly 1984. His spokesper­son, Ron God­win, denounced as “pecu­liar” those who take mon­ey from a church whose “founder believes he’s divine…. They’re tak­ing mon­ey from a cult whose doc­trines are 180 degrees opposed. It’s a lit­tle like the Jew­ish Nation­al Fund accept­ing mon­ey from Arafat.”53

    But by August 1985, Fal­well had cut short a tour of South Africa to appear at a press con­fer­ence at Moon’s God and Free­dom Ban­quet. Both events were orga­nized by CRF. God­win lat­er became the busi­ness man­ag­er of Insight.

    In a let­ter to Bo Hi Pak, taped onto a cas­sette by Rev. Tim LaHaye of the Amer­i­can Coali­tion for Tra­di­tion­al Val­ues (ACTV is a polit­i­cal coali­tion of tel­e­van­ge­lists), LaHaye thanked Pak for pro­vid­ing “time­ly” and “gen­er­ous help” in con­nec­tion with an “extreme­ly expen­sive” move of ACTV’s head­quar­ters from Cal­i­for­nia to Wash­ing­ton, DC.54 Like Fal­well, LaHaye was one of the founders and exec­u­tive com­mit­tee mem­bers of CRF. LaHaye lat­er denied receiv­ing mon­ey from the Moon orga­ni­za­tion.

    Whose Voice Is Chris­t­ian Voice?

    The rightwing Chris­t­ian Voice claims 350,000 mem­bers, includ­ing 40,000 min­is­ters who become mem­bers by virtue of hav­ing respond­ed to direct mail fund­ing appeals. The orga­ni­za­tion, which employs 17 field orga­niz­ers, stepped into the void left by the depar­ture of the Moral Major­i­ty and ACTV from sig­nif­i­cant polit­i­cal activ­i­ty. How­ev­er, they may have over­stepped their posi­tion.

    Chris­t­ian Voice has come under fire recent­ly for mis­rep­re­sent­ing itself, and for its ties to the Moon orga­ni­za­tion. Its claim to rep­re­sent 45 mil­lion Chris­t­ian evan­gel­i­cals has been chal­lenged, notably by Robert P. Dugan of the Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Evan­gel­i­cals. He told Chris­tian­i­ty Today mag­a­zine that Chris­t­ian Voice is “not con­struct­ed to be a rep­re­sen­ta­tive orga­ni­za­tion and its polit­i­cal posi­tions may well be deter­mined by a hand­ful of activists meet­ing over lunch. They are account­able to no one but them­selves.” New Right leader Paul Weyrich char­ac­ter­ized Chris­t­ian Voice as “con­ser­v­a­tive first and Chris­t­ian inci­den­tal­ly, as opposed to oth­er groups that are Chris­t­ian first, and con­ser­v­a­tive inci­den­tal­ly.”55

    The rela­tion­ship between Chris­t­ian Voice and the Moon orga­ni­za­tion has plagued them for some time. At the cen­ter of this con­tro­ver­sy is lob­by­ist Gary Jarmin, a Moonie from 1967–1973 who was active in Moon’s Free­dom Lead­er­ship Foun­da­tion and who many sus­pect may be a Moon agent in the New Right. A May 1981 arti­cle in Moth­er Jones raised this ques­tion. Jarmin, who was the leg­isla­tive direc­tor of Chris­t­ian Voice at the time, insist­ed, ‘Tm no longer affil­i­at­ed with the church; I’m not a mem­ber of it and I don’t con­sult with their peo­ple. This orga­ni­za­tion, [Chris­t­ian Voice] is run by a board of direc­tors for whom I work, which is not in any way affil­i­at­ed with or con­trolled by the church. I think my actions speak loud­er than my words.”56 Nev­er­the­less, by Feb­ru­ary 1983 Jarmin had helped orga­nize the first CAUSA North Amer­i­ca con­fer­ence, held in Jamaica. Also in atten­dance were Chris­t­ian Voice chair­man Robert Grant and Advi­so­ry Board mem­bers W. Steuart McBir­ney and Ray Allen, and polit­i­cal strate­gist Colonel V. Don­er.

    The rela­tion­ships go even deep­er. The three-mem­ber board of Chris­t­ian Voice’s polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee is chaired by Jarmin, and includes Rev. Don Sills of the Moon-fund­ed Coali­tion for Reli­gious Free­dom. In August of 1985, Jarmin helped orga­nize CRF’s God and Free­dom Ban­quet held in cel­e­bra­tion of Moon’s release from jail. He also led leg­isla­tive work­shops at secre­tive CAUSA indoc­tri­na­tion ses­sions for Amer­i­can state leg­is­la­tors dur­ing 1986. These events drew about 100 con­ser­v­a­tive leg­is­la­tors from both par­ties to all-expense-paid jun­kets, osten­si­bly to dis­cuss the Con­sti­tu­tion. A more elite ver­sion of these meet­ings is the CAUSA-spon­sored Amer­i­can Lead­er­ship Con­fer­ence, where Jarmin has also spo­ken. Jarmin has been joined at oth­er CAUSA events by Robert Grant, who addressed the 1985 CAUSA Nation­al Con­fer­ence in San Fran­cis­co. Grant cur­rent­ly chairs the Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee of the Coali­tion for Reli­gious Free­dom.

    Although CRF declares its inde­pen­dence from the Moon orga­ni­za­tion (despite the Moon fund­ing), the cur­rent exec­u­tive direc­tor of CRF is Dan Hold­grei­we, a long­time Moon oper­a­tive who worked for Moon’s Free­dom Lead­er­ship Foun­da­tion from the late 1970s to the ear­ly 1980s.57

    The Moon rela­tion­ship with Chris­t­ian Voice sur­faced as a last-minute issue in the 1986 Col­orado Sen­ate race between Rep. Ken Kramer (Rep.) and Rep. Tim Wirth (Dem.). Kramer, who is a mem­ber of the Chris­t­ian Voice Con­gres­sion­al Advi­so­ry Board, claimed not to know of the Moon con­nec­tion. He told the Den­ver Post, “I’m not a Moonie,”58 and assert­ed to the Rocky Moun­tain News that the Moon con­nec­tion, if proven, would “be a mat­ter of great con­cern to me, and I would have to take a new look at the sit­u­a­tion…. I do not sup­port the Moonies in any way.”59 Nev­er­the­less, Wirth won the race.

    CAUSA and the Catholic Church

    While best known for its grow­ing rela­tion­ship with Protes­tant fun­da­men­tal­ism, the Moon orga­ni­za­tion has active­ly sought close links with the Catholic Church, par­tic­u­lar­ly in Latin America.60 Their suc­cess has been decid­ed­ly mixed. The Bish­ops of Hon­duras, El Sal­vador, Pana­ma, and Japan have all denounced the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church in pas­toral let­ters. While this has put a crimp in their oper­a­tions, Moon­ism is not with­out allies. The Arch­bish­op of La Pla­ta, Argenti­na, spon­sored the first CAUSA sem­i­nar in that coun­try, and lat­er award­ed an hon­orary doc­tor­ate to Moon from the Catholic Uni­ver­si­ty, while he was in jail.

    Accord­ing to an inter­nal strat­e­gy doc­u­ment dat­ed Jan­u­ary 1985, CAUSA views its rela­tion­ship with the Catholic Church as “extreme­ly impor­tant…. One [pas­toral] let­ter of the Bish­ops in any coun­try will con­sid­er­ably dam­age our activ­i­ties. If it hap­pens in a Third World coun­try, all the faith­ful Catholics will go away, leav­ing us with ‘non-faith­ful’ ones, mak­ing our sit­u­a­tion even more miserable.”61

    Indeed, the Hon­duran Bish­ops denounced CAUSA as “anti-Chris­t­ian” and declared that the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church “cre­ates a species of mate­r­i­al and spir­i­tu­al slav­ery” that pos­es “seri­ous dan­gers to the psy­cho­log­i­cal, reli­gious, and civic integri­ty of any­one who yields to its influence.”62 The Japan­ese Bish­ops, not­ing major the­o­log­i­cal dif­fer­ences with the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church, also “dis­cour­age all Catholics from any col­lab­o­ra­tion with it. While the Holy See is con­trary to any par­tic­i­pa­tion by the faith­ful, it is even more opposed to what­so­ev­er [sic] atten­dance and col­lab­o­ra­tion on the part of Catholic priests.”63

    The prin­ci­pal Moon advo­cate with­in the Church appears to be Father Sebas­t­ian Matczak, a Pol­ish priest who has spo­ken fre­quent­ly at CAUSA con­fer­ences, and who teach­es phi­los­o­phy at the Uni­fi­ca­tion Sem­i­nary in Bar­ry­town, New York. The CAUSA paper notes that “Dr. Matczak, in his lat­est vis­it to Rome the past Jan­u­ary [1984] could ver­i­fy that the bad rep­u­ta­tion of our move­ment is main­ly com­ing from Latin Amer­i­ca, while there they say that offi­cial doc­u­ments from the Vat­i­can pre­vent them from any rela­tion with us.”64

    Despite seri­ous obsta­cles to Moon­ist advances on the Catholic Church, the orga­ni­za­tion claims that CAUSA has a “strong con­nect­ing point” with the Church in most Latin coun­tries. The inter­nal report notes, how­ev­er, that the strat­e­gy of seek­ing rela­tion­ships with the hier­ar­chy, and invit­ing priests to CAUSA con­fer­ences, has gen­er­al­ly failed. As a result, “it seems that we have to open two fronts, one in Rome, one in Latin Amer­i­ca.” The lat­ter option empha­sized secret and high­ly selec­tive CAUSA con­fer­ences with priests as a way to build a core of sup­port­ers, whose favor­able reports would per­co­late up to the Vat­i­can. Dr. Matczak report­ed­ly “finds this strategy…the only way and an absolute neces­si­ty.” The twin goals of this plan were to “STOP THE NEGATIVITY FROM WITHIN” (the Catholic Church) and to “Declare war to the Lib­er­a­tion theology.”65

    It is pos­si­ble that the Rome option is still viable. A new Moon unit called AULA (Asso­ci­a­tion for the Uni­fi­ca­tion of Latin Amer­i­ca) was formed in Rome in Decem­ber 1984.66 AULA’s sec­ond annu­al con­fer­ence, in Decem­ber 1985 in Rome, was attend­ed by a dozen for­mer pres­i­dents of Latin Amer­i­can coun­tries and was received by the Pope. The Moon orga­ni­za­tion is skilled at using the pres­tige of out-of-pow­er politi­cians. Two weeks lat­er three for­mer pres­i­dents of Colom­bia, and two of Cos­ta Rica rep­re­sent­ed AULA at Moon’s wel­come home ral­ly in Seoul, South Korea.67

    Accord­ing to Uni­fi­ca­tion News, AULA is draft­ing a pro­posed con­sti­tu­tion for a “Unit­ed States of Latin America.”68 AULA’s con­sti­tu­tion­al spe­cial­ist is Cleon Skousen, head of the Nation­al Cen­ter for Con­sti­tu­tion­al Stud­ies, who worked close­ly with CAUSA in 1986, orga­niz­ing con­fer­ences of con­ser­v­a­tive U.S. state leg­is­la­tors. Accord­ing to Church and State mag­a­zine, Skousen is not only far-right but “believes Amer­i­ca is a ful­fill­ment of Mor­mon proph­esy regard­ing the pre-mil­len­ni­al prepa­ra­tion of the Earth.”69

    Pri­or to becom­ing the cur­rent “prophet” of the Mor­mon church, Ezra Taft Ben­son endorsed Skousen’s work as hav­ing “the Lord’s approval” and appeared at many Skousen events. Benson’s son Mark, is on Skousen’s board of direc­tors. Skousen is the most vis­i­ble link in an appar­ent Moon/Mormon alliance. Anoth­er impor­tant link is U.S. Sen­a­tor Orrin Hatch (Rep.-Utah), who is a Mor­mon Bish­op and has spo­ken at sev­er­al CAUSA/Skousen con­fer­ences in the past year which have had a dis­pro­por­tion­ate num­ber of Mor­mon politi­cians from Utah and Ida­ho in atten­dance.

    ...

    ————

    “Moon’s Law: God Is Phas­ing Out Democ­ra­cy” by Fred Clark­son; Covert Action Infor­ma­tion Bul­letin; No 27, Spring 1987

    “Accord­ing to the Fras­er Report, polit­i­cal oper­a­tions in the U.S. were at first opposed by reli­gious “purists” in the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church. How­ev­er it was “point­ed out to them that the Church in Japan and Korea car­ried exten­sive anti­com­mu­nist polit­i­cal pro­grams. They were told it was Master’s expressed desire to begin polit­i­cal work in the Unit­ed States. There­after, a member’s objec­tion to polit­i­cal activ­i­ties was con­sid­ered infi­deli­ty to Mas­ter and was like being dis­obe­di­ent to God.”13 In 1971, Moon came to the U.S. after his immi­gra­tion dif­fi­cul­ties were over­come through the inter­ven­tion of Sen­a­tor Strom Thur­mond (Rep.-S.C.), who had spo­ken at Moon’s 1970 WACL con­fer­ence in Tokyo. Based on inter­views with ex-Moonies, Robert Boettch­er, the staff direc­tor of the Fras­er Com­mit­tee, wrote that Moon was “appalled” by Amer­i­can indi­vid­u­al­ism, and he con­sid­ered relo­cat­ing to Ger­many, where peo­ple “were trained in total­ism.” Some for­mer mem­bers recall that Nazi films on orga­niz­ing Hitler Youth were shown as exam­ples to Moonie lead­ers. Noth­ing was more impor­tant than devel­op­ing a cadre of strong lead­ers total­ly sub­servient to his will.”14

    Rev­erend Moon final­ly arrived in the US in 1971, thanks to the inter­ven­tion Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor Strom Thur­mond. Five years after the found­ing of the World Anti-Com­mu­nist League and three years after Moon’s Shokyo Ren­go orga­ni­za­tion was made a WACL chap­ter. And while Moon’s plans for the US had a large ‘anti-Com­mu­nist’ com­po­nent, it went much fur­ther. In a theo­crat­ic direc­tion. Accord­ing to The Divine Prin­ci­ple — the basic the­o­log­i­cal work of Uni­fi­ca­tion­ism — “Since the Con­sti­tu­tion is not made of God’s words,” the US’s sys­tem of sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers, “can­not help oppos­ing and con­flict­ing with one anoth­er, and lack mutu­al har­mo­ny and order”:

    ...
    The World Anti-Com­mu­nist League (WACL) is an inter­na­tion­al coali­tion of fas­cist and con­ser­v­a­tive groups and polit­i­cal par­ties found­ed in 1966 by agents of the gov­ern­ments of Tai­wan and South Korea.4 One of the orig­i­nal groups was the Asian People’s Anti-Com­mu­nist League (APACL). Its Japan­ese affil­i­ate, Shokyo Ren­go, became a WACL chap­ter in 1968. Shokyo Ren­go (Vic­to­ry Over Com­mu­nism) began after a 1967 meet­ing between Sun Myung Moon, Ryoichi Sasakawa, Yoshio Kodama, and two of his lieu­tenants. Kodama was the head of Japan­ese orga­nized crime, the Yakuza. One of [Moon’s] lieu­tenants, Osa­mi Kubo­ki, became head of the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church in Japan, as well as a leader in WACL. Soon after­ward, WACL began indoc­tri­nat­ing young Yakuza gang mem­bers in anti­com­mu­nist ide­ol­o­gy sim­i­lar to what the Moon orga­ni­za­tion was already doing in Korea with gov­ern­ment offi­cials. Sasakawa, an impor­tant World War II Japan­ese fas­cist leader, became the head of Shokyo Ren­go, and Kodama its chief advi­sor.

    Sasakawa’s rela­tion­ship to the Moon orga­ni­za­tion, which dates back to 1958, con­tin­ues to this day, includ­ing ongo­ing financ­ing of both the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church and Shokyo Ren­go, which is con­trolled by the Church.

    Sasakawa, Kodama, and oth­er impor­tant “Class A” war crim­i­nals were mys­te­ri­ous­ly released from Sug­amo prison only a year and a half after World War II. They went on to found the rul­ing Lib­er­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty and have played promi­nent roles since. One fel­low inmate, Nobusuke Kishi, became a prime min­is­ter. In 1959, Kishi helped estab­lish a qua­si-gov­em­men­tal, boat-rac­ing/gam­bling fran­chise, which he gave to Sasakawa, who grew fan­tas­ti­cal­ly rich from the pro­ceeds. Kishi was also the prime mover in estab­lish­ing APACL in Japan and remained active in WACL through­out the 1960s, serv­ing as chair­man of the plan­ning com­mit­tee in 1970.

    Sasakawa was described by U.S. Army intel­li­gence as “one of the most active fas­cist orga­niz­ers pri­or to the war.” In the 1930s both Sasakawa and Kodama were jailed: Sasakawa for plot­ting the mur­der of a for­mer pre­mier, and Kodama for plot­ting the mur­der of a prime min­is­ter. Kodama was a noto­ri­ous war prof­i­teer and Japan­ese intel­li­gence agent in Chi­na. “His long and fanat­ic involve­ment in ultra-nation­al­ist activ­i­ties, vio­lence includ­ed, and his skill in appeal­ing to youth make him a man who, if released from intern­ment, would sure­ly be a grave secu­ri­ty risk.”5

    ...

    In 1975, Moon pub­licly denounced WACL as “fas­cist” and pur­port­ed­ly with­drew; how­ev­er, this was most like­ly sim­ply an effort to keep a low­er pro­file. The Wash­ing­ton Post, cov­er­ing the 1978 WACL con­fer­ence in Wash­ing­ton, report­ed that the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church was absent and no longer involved.16 How­ev­er, a Uni­fi­ca­tion Church min­is­ter hired bus­es for CIA-con­nect­ed Cuban exiles to attend, accord­ing to inter­views with the Cubans by Jeff Stein, writ­ing in New York mag­a­zine.17 It is clear that the Moon orga­ni­za­tion nev­er real­ly left WACL. Osa­mi Kubo­ki has been a mem­ber of the WACL exec­u­tive board for many years, and even host­ed the 1982 WACL con­fer­ence in Japan.

    ...

    While WACL gen­er­al­ly pro­motes fas­cist polit­i­cal pro­grams, when the Moon orga­ni­za­tion is involved, the mes­sages released are more explic­it­ly theo­crat­ic. Essen­tial­ly, Moon’s fol­low­ers believe he is the new Mes­si­ah, the sec­ond com­ing, not of Jesus but of the Mes­si­ah. Moon says that God told him: “You are the son I have been seek­ing, the one who can begin my eter­nal history.”20 He says that God has revealed his plan to him and that he has spo­ken with Jesus, Moses, and oth­er great his­tor­i­cal reli­gious fig­ures.

    Moon intends to bend the U.S. to “God’s will,” which will lead to a final war with Sovi­et com­mu­nism, and final­ly to the King­dom of Heav­en on Earth. Accord­ing to The Divine Prin­ci­ple, the basic the­o­log­i­cal work of Uni­fi­ca­tion­ism, World War III is “inevitable”. This war may be fought with weapons, or with “ide­ol­o­gy,” in order to “sub­ju­gate and uni­fy the Satan­ic world.” The orga­ni­za­tion cre­at­ed to refine and pro­mote this ide­ol­o­gy appears to be CAUSA (see side­bar) which the Uni­fi­ca­tion News describes as an “ide­o­log­i­cal move­ment,” which “unites all reli­gious peo­ple as a God-accept­ing force against the God-deny­ing forces such as communism.”21

    The Divine Prin­ci­ple denounces the tri­par­tite con­sti­tu­tion­al sys­tem of west­ern democ­ra­cies, stat­ing that “Since the Con­sti­tu­tion is not made of God’s words” the three branch­es of gov­ern­ment “can­not help oppos­ing and con­flict­ing with one anoth­er, and lack mutu­al har­mo­ny and order.”

    More­over, in 1973, Moon said that “Amer­i­can style democ­ra­cy” is ‘‘a good nurs­ery for the growth of communism.”22 Ten years lat­er he told his annu­al Inter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence for the Uni­ty of the Sci­ences (ICUS) that ‘‘nei­ther Democ­ra­cy nor Com­mu­nism pro­vides the means to cure the ills of soci­ety…. Not only has Democ­ra­cy been unsuc­cess­ful at this task, but it has proved itself unable to resist and over­come the destruc­tive­ness of Com­mu­nism…. What is need­ed is a third alter­na­tive, a move­ment based on a new under­stand­ing of truth…this is the Uni­fi­ca­tion Move­ment, with Uni­fi­ca­tion ideology.”23
    ...

    But Moon’s orga­niz­ing in the US did­n’t start with his arrival in 1971. The Amer­i­can affil­i­ate of Shokyo Ren­go, the Free­dom Lead­er­ship Foun­da­tion, was incor­po­rat­ed in 1969 in Wash­ing­ton DC, with the mis­sion of win­ning the “pow­er cen­ters” and guid­ed by the advice from Moon, “part of our strat­e­gy in the U.S. must be to make friends in the FBI, the CIA and police forces, the mil­i­tary and busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty… as a means of enter­ing the polit­i­cal are­na, influ­enc­ing for­eign pol­i­cy, and ulti­mate­ly of estab­lish­ing absolute domin­ion over the Amer­i­can peo­ple”. Absolute domin­ion is a com­mon theme in this milieu:

    ...
    The Inter­na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tion for Vic­to­ry Over Com­mu­nism (IFVC) was formed in 1968 in Seoul. This was Moon’s prin­ci­pal polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tion. Shokyo Ren­go, the Japan­ese affil­i­ate, was also formed in 1968. The Amer­i­can affil­i­ate was incor­po­rat­ed in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. in 1969 as the Free­dom Lead­er­ship Foun­da­tion (FLF). Shokyo Ren­go host­ed the 1970 WACL Con­fer­ence in Tokyo, for which Moon claimed to have raised $1.4 million.10 FLF Pres­i­dent Allen Tate Wood attend­ed as a “youth del­e­gate” with sev­er­al Amer­i­can Moonies. He lat­er broke with Moon, gave press con­fer­ences denounc­ing Moon, and tes­ti­fied before the Fras­er Com­mit­tee. While vis­it­ing Korea on the same trip, Wood was instruct­ed by Moon to “win the pow­er cen­ters” of the U.S. for him, begin­ning with academia.11 Moon also told him that “part of our strat­e­gy in the U.S. must be to make friends in the FBI, the CIA and police forces, the mil­i­tary and busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty… as a means of enter­ing the polit­i­cal are­na, influ­enc­ing for­eign pol­i­cy, and ulti­mate­ly of estab­lish­ing absolute domin­ion over the Amer­i­can peo­ple.”12

    ...

    The Moon orga­ni­za­tion has a long his­to­ry of elec­toral activism. The Fras­er Report not­ed that they, in alliance with “pow­er­ful rightwing fig­ures in Japan, such as Ryoichi Sasakawa,…openly par­tic­i­pat­ed in elec­tion cam­paigns there.”33 Even before Moon came to the U.S., he had high ambi­tions. Allen Tate Wood told the Fras­er com­mit­tee that the Moon orga­ni­za­tion sought to gain enough influ­ence in the U.S. to be able to “dic­tate pol­i­cy on major issues, to influ­ence leg­is­la­tion, and to move into elec­toral politics.”34

    After Amer­i­can Youth for a Just Peace was dis­band­ed in 1971, its co-founder Charles Stephens moved to New York, and ran (unsuc­cess­ful­ly), first for the State leg­is­la­ture in 1972, and for Con­gress in 1974. In both cam­paigns, FLF pro­vid­ed “vol­un­teers.” Also in 1974, the Moon orga­ni­za­tion pro­vid­ed con­sid­er­able sup­port for Repub­li­can Louis Wyman in his unsuc­cess­ful bid for the U.S. Sen­ate seat from New Hamp­shire. Wyman report­ed­ly promised to hire a church mem­ber for his staff if he won.35 Venge­ful Moonies con­verged on Min­neso­ta in 1978 in a suc­cess­ful effort to defeat Rep. Don Fras­er, the spon­sor of the con­gres­sion­al inves­tiga­tive report on Kore­a­gate, in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­ate primary.36 Moon called Fraser’s defeat an “act of God.”

    The Moon organization’s par­ty of choice has always been the Repub­li­cans, and the New Right of the GOP in par­tic­u­lar. This rela­tion­ship, epit­o­mized by Moon’s VIP seat at the first Rea­gan inau­gur­al, has been denounced repeat­ed­ly by the mod­er­ate Repub­li­can Ripon Soci­ety. Ripon pres­i­dent Rep. Jim Leach (Rep.-Iowa) wrote that the “ties between the New Right and Moon under­cut the New Right’s rai­son d’être. A polit­i­cal move­ment bas­ing its appeal on old-fash­ioned patri­o­tism and fam­i­ly val­ues sim­ply can­not jus­ti­fy alliance with a cult that preys on the dis­in­te­gra­tion of the Amer­i­can fam­i­ly and advo­cates alle­giance to an inter­na­tion­al social order oper­at­ing with cell-like secrecy.”37

    The FLF, though appar­ent­ly sup­plant­ed by CAUSA as Moon’s U.S. polit­i­cal arm, is still occa­sion­al­ly active. In May 1984 FLF paid for three Repub­li­can Sen­ate staff mem­bers, rep­re­sent­ing Sen­a­tors Robert Kas­ten (Rep.-Wisc.), Steve Symms (Rep.-Idaho), and William Arm­strong (Rep.-Colo.), to “fly to Cen­tral Amer­i­ca where they met with gov­ern­ment lead­ers and U.S. Embassy offi­cials in Hon­duras and Guatemala and joined the offi­cial U.S. observ­er del­e­ga­tion to the Sal­vado­ran election.”38
    ...

    But by 1984, Moon’s US activ­i­ties man­aged to land him an 18-month prison sen­tence over tax fraud. Some­how, Moon’s defense team did­n’t find suc­cess with their “Mes­si­ah defense”:

    ...
    In 1984, Moon entered Dan­bury Fed­er­al Prison to serve an 18-month sen­tence for con­spir­a­cy to file false tax returns, to obstruct jus­tice, and to com­mit perjury.39 The Moon orga­ni­za­tion claims that Moon and his co-defen­dant Takeru Kamiya­ma were unfair­ly pros­e­cut­ed due to racial and reli­gious intol­er­ance on the part of the U.S. gov­ern­ment. Remark­ably, the Moon orga­ni­za­tion has used the dis­as­ter of Moon’s impris­on­ment to ben­e­fit its pub­lic image. Across the polit­i­cal spec­trum, many peo­ple offered grudg­ing sup­port for Moon because they believed he was mis­treat­ed by the judi­cial sys­tem. The Moon orga­ni­za­tion has skill­ful­ly exploit­ed these sen­ti­ments, and indeed, had a major role in cre­at­ing them. What began as a cam­paign for “reli­gious free­dom” has become a mul­ti-faceted strat­e­gy to fur­ther the Moon­ist agen­da. In 1984, Bo Hi Pak said that “free­dom of reli­gion has become a major issue in Amer­i­ca, and Rev­erend Moon is the ral­ly­ing point.”40 Echo­ing this theme. New York Uni­fi­ca­tion Church leader Ken Sudo told fel­low Moonie lead­ers in May 1985 that, “Father went to Dan­bury as the leader of the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church, but when he comes out, he must be the leader of the Free World.”41

    If Moon had only failed to pay income tax on $160,000 he would not ordi­nar­i­ly have been pros­e­cut­ed on crim­i­nal charges. But evi­dence of will­ful vio­la­tion of the law made crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion inevitable. In 1973, tax lawyers and accoun­tants told Moon’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives to keep his per­son­al assets sep­a­rate from those of the Church. Kamiya­ma ignored this advice and pre­pared Moon’s tax­es under Master’s per­son­al super­vi­sion. They forged and back­dat­ed ledgers to hide Moon’s assets with­in the Church’s. The pros­e­cu­tion proved, among oth­er things, that the paper used to fal­si­fy the 1973 records was not even man­u­fac­tured until 1974.42

    Moon’s defense on appeal, (known as the “Mes­si­ah defense”) is con­sis­tent with his theo­crat­ic ambi­tions. Moon claimed that some of his fol­low­ers believed he is “poten­tial­ly the new Mes­si­ah,” the “embod­i­ment” of the Church, and thus exempt from per­son­al income tax­es. The court held, how­ev­er, that even Mes­si­ahs are not exempt from tax­es, and have a sta­tus as an indi­vid­ual dis­tinct from the church. Free­dom of reli­gion is “sub­or­di­nate to the crim­i­nal laws of the coun­try.” The court ruled that “To allow oth­er­wise would be to per­mit church lead­ers to stand above the law.”
    ...

    And it was dur­ing Moon’s prison sen­tence when we got to see the fruits of Moon’s years of cul­ti­vat­ing influ­ence inside US cen­ters of pow­er. In par­tic­u­lar, theo­crat­ic cen­ters of pow­er, with the DC-based Coali­tion for Reli­gious Free­dom (CRF) play­ing a lead­ing role. Only formed in 1984 itself, the CRF was an off­shoot of the Asso­ci­a­tion of Con­cerned Tax­pay­ers, head­ed by Repub­li­can rep­re­sen­ta­tive George Hansen. But Moon’s legal plight was­n’t the CRF’s only ral­ly­ing cry. Hansen was also out­raged over loss of tax-exempt sta­tus by Bob Jones Uni­ver­si­ty over its racial dis­crim­i­na­tion poli­cies. And yes, as we should expect, Bob Jones III is a CNP mem­ber. But the CRF was­n’t just Hansen’s pet project. Its board host­ed most of major tel­e­van­ge­lists at the time, includ­ing Tim LaHaye, Jer­ry Fal­well, James Robi­son, Rex Hum­bard, D. James Kennedy, and Jim­my Swag­gart. As we saw, it was James Robi­son who played a key role in 1979 bring­ing togeth­er the group of evan­gel­i­cal domin­ion­ists who ral­lied behind Ronald Rea­gan’s cam­paign the fol­low­ing year. Includ­ing Tim LaHaye, one went on to become one of the CNP’s found­ing mem­bers in 1981 and group’s first pres­i­dent. Also note that, not only do Fal­well and Dr. D. James Kennedy also show up on the CNP list, but so does William T. Allen (Chair­man of the Board, D. James Kennedy Min­istries) and Dr. Frank Wright (Pres­i­dent & CEO, D. James Kennedy Min­istries). In oth­er words, CRF board is stacked with CNP heavy­weights. So when we find how, not only did the CRF jump to Moon’s defense, but that CRF pres­i­dent Don Sills was tak­ing large dona­tions from Moon sources and promi­nent CRF spokesper­son and exec­u­tive com­mit­tee mem­ber Joseph Paige was active in CAUSA, it’s pret­ty unam­bigu­ous that the CRF viewed Moon as an impor­tant ally. And why not? This is a net­work of theocrats with a shared goal:

    ...
    Moon as Mar­tyr

    The Moon-as-mar­tyr cam­paign has been orches­trat­ed by the Moon orga­ni­za­tion, pub­lic rela­tions firms, and grantees. The most promi­nent exam­ple is the Wash­ing­ton-based Coali­tion for Reli­gious Free­dom (CRF) which, accord­ing to CRF pres­i­dent Don Sills, has received at least $500,000 from Moon sources.43 A promi­nent CRF spokesper­son and exec­u­tive com­mit­tee mem­ber is Joseph Paige. As Exec­u­tive Vice Pres­i­dent of the Black Bap­tist Shaw Divin­i­ty School, Paige received $60,000 from the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church for his school, which in turn gave Moon a much pub­li­cized hon­orary doc­tor­ate. Paige is also active in CAUSA.44

    In 1984, the Asso­ci­a­tion of Con­cerned Tax­pay­ers, head­ed by then Rep. George Hansen (Rep.-Idaho), start­ed CRF.45 A CRF fundrais­ing let­ter signed by Hansen declared that “a dead­ly gov­ern­ment assault against reli­gion has erupt­ed in Amer­i­ca [and] pow­er­ful gov­ern­ment forces are mov­ing quick­ly to smash the great con­sti­tu­tion­al guar­an­tees pro­tect­ing the free­dom of reli­gion.” Hansen strong­ly object­ed when the IRS with­drew tax-exempt sta­tus from Bob Jones Uni­ver­si­ty because of racial dis­crim­i­na­tion and poli­cies against inter­ra­cial dat­ing. He also con­demned the state of Nebras­ka for arrest­ing fun­da­men­tal­ist Everett Sileven after Sileven refused to allow teach­ers at his pri­vate school to be cer­ti­fied by the state as required by state law.46

    The obsta­cle to “reli­gious free­dom” as defined by Moon and much of the Chris­t­ian Right, is “sec­u­lar” gov­ern­ment, which they see as a step­ping stone to “Satan­ic, athe­is­tic, Com­mu­nism.” Bo Hi Pak declared that the world is a bat­tle­ground between “God and no God.”47 CRF claims that the Moon pros­e­cu­tion and the alleged attack on reli­gion by gov­ern­ment “is large­ly the result of the ungod­ly sec­u­lar human­ist phi­los­o­phy that has con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed our schools, the media, and the var­i­ous lev­els of gov­ern­ment.” The 1985 CAUSA Lec­ture Man­u­al stat­ed that “in the Unit­ed States, an inter­me­di­ary stage pri­or to com­mu­nism may be sec­u­lar humanism.”48

    The CRF exec­u­tive com­mit­tee has devel­oped rapid­ly since 1984, to include most of the major tel­e­van­ge­lists, such as Tim LaHaye, Jer­ry Fal­well, James Robi­son, Rex Hum­bard, D. James Kennedy, and Jim­my Swag­gart. Recent­ly, the Moon orga­ni­za­tion opened an inter­na­tion­al front in its “reli­gious free­dom” cam­paign. Accord­ing to Moon’s New York City Tri­bune, the World Coun­cil on Reli­gious Lib­er­ty (WCRL) was found­ed in Decem­ber 1986 at a con­fer­ence in Gene­va, Switzer­land. The Chair­man of WRCL is Joseph Paige, and its “Chair­man of the North Amer­i­can Cau­cus” is Don Sills. They have recruit­ed Dr. Robert G. Muller, assis­tant Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the Unit­ed Nations, as chair­man of the Council’s Inter­na­tion­al Advi­so­ry Com­mit­tee. The Council’s head­quar­ters are in Raleigh, North Car­oli­na, which is also home to Paige’s Shaw Divin­i­ty School.49

    ...

    Inside the New Right

    Part of Moon’s U.S. strat­e­gy has been to seek alliances with the reli­gious Right. How­ev­er, the rela­tion­ship has been high­ly con­tro­ver­sial with­in the move­ment. While Moon mon­ey is wide­ly rumored to be a major finan­cial under­pin­ning of the New Right, it is often kept secret because so many con­ser­v­a­tives find the Moon orga­ni­za­tion repug­nant.

    Jer­ry Fal­well of the Moral Major­i­ty, and one of the founders and exec­u­tive com­mit­tee mem­bers of the Coali­tion for Reli­gious Free­dom, dropped his sup­port for Moon in ear­ly 1984. His spokesper­son, Ron God­win, denounced as “pecu­liar” those who take mon­ey from a church whose “founder believes he’s divine…. They’re tak­ing mon­ey from a cult whose doc­trines are 180 degrees opposed. It’s a lit­tle like the Jew­ish Nation­al Fund accept­ing mon­ey from Arafat.”53

    But by August 1985, Fal­well had cut short a tour of South Africa to appear at a press con­fer­ence at Moon’s God and Free­dom Ban­quet. Both events were orga­nized by CRF. God­win lat­er became the busi­ness man­ag­er of Insight.

    In a let­ter to Bo Hi Pak, taped onto a cas­sette by Rev. Tim LaHaye of the Amer­i­can Coali­tion for Tra­di­tion­al Val­ues (ACTV is a polit­i­cal coali­tion of tel­e­van­ge­lists), LaHaye thanked Pak for pro­vid­ing “time­ly” and “gen­er­ous help” in con­nec­tion with an “extreme­ly expen­sive” move of ACTV’s head­quar­ters from Cal­i­for­nia to Wash­ing­ton, DC.54 Like Fal­well, LaHaye was one of the founders and exec­u­tive com­mit­tee mem­bers of CRF. LaHaye lat­er denied receiv­ing mon­ey from the Moon orga­ni­za­tion.
    ...

    And then there’s the ties between Moon and Chris­t­ian Voice, a rightwing group that claims to be Chris­t­ian lob­by for all evan­gel­i­cals. It was a self-char­ac­ter­i­za­tion that faced some push­back from fig­ures like Robert P. Dugan of the Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Evan­gel­i­cals, who described the group as “not con­struct­ed to be a rep­re­sen­ta­tive orga­ni­za­tion and its polit­i­cal posi­tions may well be deter­mined by a hand­ful of activists meet­ing over lunch. They are account­able to no one but them­selves.” Inter­est­ing­ly, Paul Weyrich — anoth­er CNP founder — described the group as “con­ser­v­a­tive first and Chris­t­ian inci­den­tal­ly, as opposed to oth­er groups that are Chris­t­ian first, and con­ser­v­a­tive inci­den­tal­ly.” And as we can see, Gary Jarmin — a for­mer Moonie activist — was Chris­t­ian Voice’s leg­isla­tive direc­tor. Jarmin even helped to orga­nize the first CAUSA North Amer­i­ca con­fer­ence in 1983 while serv­ing in that role. Also in atten­dance at the CAUSA con­fer­ence were Chris­t­ian Voice chair­man (and CNP mem­ber) Robert Grant and Advi­so­ry Board mem­bers W. Steuart McBir­ney and Ray Allen. Grant and Jarmin also addressed the 1985 CAUSA con­fer­ence. Grant was, at the time of this 1987 piece, chair­ing the Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee of the CRF. It’s quite a tight net­work:

    ...
    Whose Voice Is Chris­t­ian Voice?

    The rightwing Chris­t­ian Voice claims 350,000 mem­bers, includ­ing 40,000 min­is­ters who become mem­bers by virtue of hav­ing respond­ed to direct mail fund­ing appeals. The orga­ni­za­tion, which employs 17 field orga­niz­ers, stepped into the void left by the depar­ture of the Moral Major­i­ty and ACTV from sig­nif­i­cant polit­i­cal activ­i­ty. How­ev­er, they may have over­stepped their posi­tion.

    Chris­t­ian Voice has come under fire recent­ly for mis­rep­re­sent­ing itself, and for its ties to the Moon orga­ni­za­tion. Its claim to rep­re­sent 45 mil­lion Chris­t­ian evan­gel­i­cals has been chal­lenged, notably by Robert P. Dugan of the Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Evan­gel­i­cals. He told Chris­tian­i­ty Today mag­a­zine that Chris­t­ian Voice is “not con­struct­ed to be a rep­re­sen­ta­tive orga­ni­za­tion and its polit­i­cal posi­tions may well be deter­mined by a hand­ful of activists meet­ing over lunch. They are account­able to no one but them­selves.” New Right leader Paul Weyrich char­ac­ter­ized Chris­t­ian Voice as “con­ser­v­a­tive first and Chris­t­ian inci­den­tal­ly, as opposed to oth­er groups that are Chris­t­ian first, and con­ser­v­a­tive inci­den­tal­ly.”55

    The rela­tion­ship between Chris­t­ian Voice and the Moon orga­ni­za­tion has plagued them for some time. At the cen­ter of this con­tro­ver­sy is lob­by­ist Gary Jarmin, a Moonie from 1967–1973 who was active in Moon’s Free­dom Lead­er­ship Foun­da­tion and who many sus­pect may be a Moon agent in the New Right. A May 1981 arti­cle in Moth­er Jones raised this ques­tion. Jarmin, who was the leg­isla­tive direc­tor of Chris­t­ian Voice at the time, insist­ed, ‘Tm no longer affil­i­at­ed with the church; I’m not a mem­ber of it and I don’t con­sult with their peo­ple. This orga­ni­za­tion, [Chris­t­ian Voice] is run by a board of direc­tors for whom I work, which is not in any way affil­i­at­ed with or con­trolled by the church. I think my actions speak loud­er than my words.”56 Nev­er­the­less, by Feb­ru­ary 1983 Jarmin had helped orga­nize the first CAUSA North Amer­i­ca con­fer­ence, held in Jamaica. Also in atten­dance were Chris­t­ian Voice chair­man Robert Grant and Advi­so­ry Board mem­bers W. Steuart McBir­ney and Ray Allen, and polit­i­cal strate­gist Colonel V. Don­er.

    The rela­tion­ships go even deep­er. The three-mem­ber board of Chris­t­ian Voice’s polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee is chaired by Jarmin, and includes Rev. Don Sills of the Moon-fund­ed Coali­tion for Reli­gious Free­dom. In August of 1985, Jarmin helped orga­nize CRF’s God and Free­dom Ban­quet held in cel­e­bra­tion of Moon’s release from jail. He also led leg­isla­tive work­shops at secre­tive CAUSA indoc­tri­na­tion ses­sions for Amer­i­can state leg­is­la­tors dur­ing 1986. These events drew about 100 con­ser­v­a­tive leg­is­la­tors from both par­ties to all-expense-paid jun­kets, osten­si­bly to dis­cuss the Con­sti­tu­tion. A more elite ver­sion of these meet­ings is the CAUSA-spon­sored Amer­i­can Lead­er­ship Con­fer­ence, where Jarmin has also spo­ken. Jarmin has been joined at oth­er CAUSA events by Robert Grant, who addressed the 1985 CAUSA Nation­al Con­fer­ence in San Fran­cis­co. Grant cur­rent­ly chairs the Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee of the Coali­tion for Reli­gious Free­dom.

    Although CRF declares its inde­pen­dence from the Moon orga­ni­za­tion (despite the Moon fund­ing), the cur­rent exec­u­tive direc­tor of CRF is Dan Hold­grei­we, a long­time Moon oper­a­tive who worked for Moon’s Free­dom Lead­er­ship Foun­da­tion from the late 1970s to the ear­ly 1980s.57
    ...

    How deep does the rela­tion­ship between the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church and this CNP net­work of domin­ion­ists go? Well, as we can see, it was quite deep in the 1980s. Open­ly so, despite the denials. And that deep rela­tion­ship has had four decades to fes­ter. So, you know, ‘way too deep’ is the like­ly answer. We’ll pre­sum­ably find out more about this ongo­ing rela­tion­sh­iop after the theoc­ra­cy gets imposed. Or rather, those not killed dur­ing the theo­crat­ic rev­o­lu­tion will get to find out more.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | August 9, 2024, 6:20 pm
  2. As we’ve seen, the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project is mas­sive mul­ti-state effort that’s been oper­at­ing for years now. Since 2005. And as we’ve also seen, the project has a num­ber of state-based spin offs — the Texas Renew­al Project, the Iowas Renew­al Project, etc — with major financ­ing com­ing from the Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Asso­ci­a­tion (AFA) run by CNP mem­bers Don and Tim Wild­mon. But as we’re going to see in the fol­low­ing report from Novem­ber 2011, there’s anoth­er sig­nif­i­cant enti­ty behind the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project: The Niemoller Foun­da­tion.

    Found­ed in 2005 by San Anto­nio tycoon James Leininger, the Niemoller Foun­da­tion was formed as a 501(c)(3) tax exempt non-prof­it enti­ty. As part of that tax-exempt sta­tus, the foun­da­tion was sup­posed to avoid par­tic­i­pat­ing in direct sup­port of, or attacks against, an par­tic­u­lar can­di­dates for office. As we’ll see, it was the Niemoller Foun­da­tion that was financ­ing an ear­ly iter­a­tion of the Texas Renew­al Project — then known as the Texas Restora­tion Project — that was effec­tive­ly oper­at­ing as a sophis­ti­cat­ed get-out-the-vote effort tar­get­ing church­es in sup­port of then-Texas Gov­er­nor Rick Per­ry’s 2006 re-elec­tion cam­paign.

    As we should expect, Leininger hap­pens to be an ardent theo­crat. He’s also described as Rick Per­ry’s Sven­gali. And As we’ve seen, Leininger isn’t just a major con­ser­v­a­tive donor in Texas. He’s the founder of a Texas enti­ty that has repeat­ed­ly popped up in rela­tion to theo­crat­ic ini­tia­tives not just in Texas but nation­al­ly: the Texas Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Foun­da­tion (TPPF). Yep.

    This is the same ‘think tank’ where where fel­low Texas theo­crat­ic bil­lion­aire Tim Dunn has served as a board mem­ber since 1998. Dunn still serves as the TPPF’s Vice Chair­man. As we also saw, for­mer TPPF pres­i­dent and CNP mem­ber Kevin Roberts went on to become the cur­rent pres­i­dent of the Her­itage Foun­da­tion. This is the same Kevin Roberts who leads the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project 2025 scheme and recent­ly declared the Sec­ond Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion is under­way and will remain blood­less “if the left allows it to be.” Also recall how the TPPF and the Clare­mont Insti­tute ran the “79 Days Report ‘sim­u­la­tions in 2020 imag­in­ing con­test­ed elec­tion sce­nar­ios. Kevin Roberts, John East­man, and fas­cist busi­ness­man Charles Hay­wood all par­tic­i­pat­ed in the sim­u­la­tions.

    And, of course, Leininger is a mem­ber of the CNP, as we should expect giv­en Leininger’s clear theo­crat­ic ambi­tions. But he’s not the only CNP mem­ber cit­ed as a major fun­der. Wealthy busi­ness­man Bob J. Per­ry — also a financier of the “Swift Boat Vet­er­ans for Truth” smear cam­paign — was also an ear­ly donor Niemoller foun­da­tion donor as the group was financ­ing the Texas Restora­tion Project to oper­ate as a Rick Per­ry get-out-the-vote oper­a­tion. In addi­tion, key CNP mem­bers Kel­ly Shack­elford and David Bar­ton were orga­niz­ing pro-Per­ry events in asso­ci­a­tion with the project. Recall how not only did Mike John­son call Shack­elford his men­tor but Shack­elford served as the CNP’s vice pres­i­dent in 2020. He was also part of the del­e­ga­tion of CNP mem­bers who met with Don­ald Trump back in June of 2016 to give the Trump cam­paign their bless­ing.

    It’s also note­wor­thy how Leininger and his fel­low theocrats eager­ly viewed the Great Reces­sion that was still play­ing out back in 2011 as an incred­i­ble oppor­tu­ni­ty to return the US to God. Gov­ern­ment could not be part of the solu­tion for the Great Reces­sion. Only God. Evan­ge­list James Robi­son was a cham­pi­on of this view and had been search­ing for a politi­cian to push this idea with the pub­lic. Rick Per­ry — the first major politi­cian to embrace the then-nascent Tea Par­ty move­ment — was Robison’s choice.

    That’s all part of the con­text, and rel­e­vance, of the now infa­mous 2011 domin­ion­ist orga­niz­ing in asso­ci­a­tion with the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project around Rick Per­ry’s 2011 pres­i­den­tial run: The whole ‘Renew­al’ ini­tia­tive effec­tive­ly start­ed off as a 2006 Rick Per­ry guber­na­to­r­i­al re-elec­tion effort with exten­sive fund­ing from one of Tim Dun­n’s long-time fel­low theocrats:

    The Amer­i­can Prospect

    God Help Us

    Will Rick Perry’s blend of Chris­t­ian-right, small-gov­ern­ment, and pro-cor­po­rate fer­vor land him in the White House?

    by Bob Moser
    Novem­ber 28, 2011

    In April, Rick Per­ry trav­eled to North Texas for a tap­ing of tel­e­van­ge­list James Robison’s TV show, Life Today. For six months, start­ing as soon as he was re-elect­ed Texas gov­er­nor in Novem­ber 2010, Per­ry had been criss­cross­ing the coun­try to pro­mote his sec­ond book, Fed Up!, while test­ing the pres­i­den­tial waters with poten­tial donors and con­ser­v­a­tive activists. His vis­it with Robi­son, a hell­fire-breath­ing pas­tor known as “God’s hit man” (for “giv­ing ’em so much hell nobody will ever want to go there”), had the poten­tial to pay seri­ous div­i­dends. Robi­son had led the Chris­t­ian-right cam­paign that helped lift Ronald Rea­gan to the White House in 1980, and he was re-emerg­ing as the chief insti­ga­tor of a nation­al effort to mobi­lize evan­gel­i­cals to defeat Barack Oba­ma in 2012. With for­mer Arkansas Gov­er­nor Mike Huck­abee-who left divin­i­ty school in 1976 to work for Robi­son-hav­ing for­gone the race, the pas­tor was search­ing for a can­di­date the resur­gent evan­gel­i­cal right could anoint.

    Per­ry, who has spent more time evan­ge­liz­ing about his faith than any gov­er­nor in the his­to­ry of Texas, was ready for his audi­tion. Beam­ing, he gazed up into the stu­dio lights. “I think we’re in a time of great revival­ness in this world,” he declared.

    “I think it’s an awak­en­ing,” Robi­son agreed.

    “I know there’s a lot of con­cern,” Per­ry said. “I think in Amer­i­ca, that from time to time, we have to go through some dif­fi­cult times, and I think we’re going through those dif­fi­cult eco­nom­ic times for a pur­pose-and that’s to bring us back to those bib­li­cal prin­ci­ples … not spend­ing all of our mon­ey, not ask­ing for Pharaoh to give every­thing to every­body and to take care of folks, because at the end of the day, it’s slav­ery. And we become slaves to gov­ern­ment.”

    The idea that the reces­sion was a blessed oppor­tu­ni­ty to turn Amer­i­cans against gov­ern­ment and toward “bib­li­cal prin­ci­ples” was already a famil­iar one for Robison’s fol­low­ers. It was a mes­sage that Per­ry was poised to car­ry into the main­stream. Robi­son had been look­ing for a promi­nent pub­lic offi­cial to con­vene a large-scale prayer and fast­ing ral­ly to spread the word. Per­ry took up the call. He would soon be invit­ing Chris­tians and polit­i­cal lead­ers to a Hous­ton sta­di­um ral­ly, The Response, explain­ing that while the coun­try was fac­ing grim eco­nom­ic times, “There is hope for Amer­i­ca. It lies in heav­en, and we will find it on our knees.”

    Only God, not gov­ern­ment, could heal the bro­ken econ­o­my. It was a theme that knit togeth­er all three of Per­ry’s core con­stituen­cies: right-wing evan­gel­i­cals, who had mobi­lized behind Per­ry’s 2006 re-elec­tion; anti-tax Tea Partiers, who had helped him to a third term as gov­er­nor in 2010; and cor­po­rate con­ser­v­a­tives, who have bankrolled his rise from the begin­ning. Per­ry’s mes­sage was a nat­ur­al out­growth of the resur­gence in recent years of “bib­li­cal cap­i­tal­ism,” an idea that first sprung up in the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry as a coun­ter­weight to the social gospel, which used scrip­ture to sup­port labor reforms and pro­gres­sive tax­a­tion. In recent years, the tenets of bib­li­cal cap­i­tal­ism have been spread most famous­ly by David Bar­ton, for­mer vice chair­man of the Texas GOP and the reli­gious right’s favorite his­to­ri­an. Bar­ton, a long­time Per­ry ally whom Glenn Beck calls “the most impor­tant man in Amer­i­ca,” has been tour­ing the coun­try for years, not only preach­ing that the Unit­ed States was found­ed by and for Chris­tians but also cher­ry-pick­ing scrip­ture to assert that the Bible oppos­es capital–gains and estate tax­es, unions and min­i­mum-wage laws.

    For Robi­son and Bar­ton, the reces­sion offered the ide­al oppor­tu­ni­ty to spread that word and argue that big gov­ern­ment had caused the eco­nom­ic calami­ty because it was “against God.” “Depend­ing on the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment is idol­a­try,” as Robi­son put it in June. “We must con­trol it, or it will con­trol us. Stop the mad­ness! Hitler believed that Ger­many need­ed a gov­ern­ment over the peo­ple, not of the peo­ple. God deliv­er us from that kind of insan­i­ty.” Get­ting more spe­cif­ic, Robi­son inveighed against “intru­sive reg­u­la­tion,” while call­ing for the tax code to be revised “so we can rejoice togeth­er because it would stim­u­late eco­nom­ic growth.”

    In May, meet­ing with Robi­son, Bar­ton, and a large group of evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers to orga­nize The Response, Per­ry echoed the mes­sage. Amer­i­cans’ “pur­suit of hap­pi­ness” was “in jeop­ardy,” he said. “It’s in jeop­ardy because of tax­es. It’s in jeop­ardy because of reg­u­la­tion. It’s in jeop­ardy because of a legal sys­tem that’s run amok. And I think it’s time for us to just hand it over to God and say, ‘God, you’re going to have to fix this.’ ”

    While Per­ry insist­ed that The Response was an “apo­lit­i­cal” event, its orga­niz­ers were dozens of evan­gel­i­cal heavy­weights whom Robi­son brought togeth­er, in the spring and sum­mer, for a series of meet­ings to mobi­lize for 2012. Pub­licly, they claimed to be strate­giz­ing to defeat Oba­ma-to use the polit­i­cal moment to “help inspire … a restora­tion of free­dom’s foun­da­tion,” as Robi­son explained. “I don’t think we’re ever going to solve the eco­nom­ic cri­sis with­out hav­ing a king­dom men­tal­i­ty.”

    As Per­ry moved toward announc­ing his can­di­da­cy, the evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers decid­ed that he had the “king­dom men­tal­i­ty” they were look­ing for-and, unlike Michele Bach­mann, a chance to win. It was­n’t just that Per­ry was the only major politi­cian in Amer­i­ca auda­cious and faith­ful enough to con­vene his own mega-prayer ral­ly. It was­n’t just that he claimed to be “called” by God to run. It was­n’t just that he slashed bud­gets and stripped reg­u­la­tions. It was­n’t just that he had pro­mot­ed absti­nence-only sex edu­ca­tion, cam­paigned suc­cess­ful­ly for a gay-mar­riage ban, defund­ed Planned Par­ent­hood, and signed some of the coun­try’s most restric­tive abor­tion laws. It was that he did all this while he called for “restor­ing Amer­i­ca to its Chris­t­ian prin­ci­ples.”

    The Response drew 30,000 peo­ple to Hous­ton’s Reliant Sta­di­um on the first Sat­ur­day in August. Per­ry ser­mo­nized along with John Hagee, the Chris­t­ian Zion­ist mega­pas­tor who blamed gays for Hur­ri­cane Kat­ri­na and once called Catholi­cism a “god­less the­ol­o­gy.” While Per­ry’s mes­sage most­ly con­sist­ed of long pas­sages of scrip­ture, his clos­ing prayer rein­forced the idea that only God, not gov­ern­ment, could solve the nation’s woes: “Lord, you are the source of every good thing. You are our only hope. … Father, our heart breaks for Amer­i­ca. We see dis­cord at home. We see fear in the mar­ket­place. We see anger in the halls of gov­ern­ment. As a nation, we have for­got­ten who made us, who pro­tects us, who bless­es us. And for that, we cry out for your for­give­ness.”

    Ten days lat­er, Per­ry announced his pres­i­den­tial bid in South Car­oli­na, promis­ing to “make Wash­ing­ton, D.C., as incon­se­quen­tial in your life as I can.” Almost overnight, he emerged as the Repub­li­can right’s lead­ing alter­na­tive to for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts Gov­er­nor Mitt Rom­ney. Just as quick­ly, he became the most mis­un­der­stood con­tender for the White House.

    ...

    In ear­ly debates-includ­ing his dis­as­trous per­for­mance in Orlan­do that led to a sec­ond-place fin­ish well behind Her­man Cain in the straw poll-Per­ry’s oppo­nents took aim at his few con­ser­v­a­tive here­sies, most notably sign­ing a bill to allow in-state col­lege tuition for some undoc­u­ment­ed stu­dents. Per­ry’s fum­bling retort-accus­ing those who dis­agreed with his posi­tion of not hav­ing “a heart”-made mat­ters worse. As nation­al reporters rushed to knock out pro­files of the mete­or ris­ing on the Repub­li­can right, a nar­ra­tive was emerg­ing: Per­ry was paint­ed as a say-any­thing sort who had shift­ed with the polit­i­cal winds to win eight elec­tions in Texas with­out suf­fer­ing a defeat. The new meme was summed up by a Politi­co head­line: “Rick Per­ry’s non-ide­ol­o­gy.”

    It is an easy but mis­lead­ing sto­ry to tell. Per­ry was first elect­ed to the Texas House in 1984 as a Demo­c­rat. He switched par­ties in 1989, as Repub­li­cans began to chip away at Democ­rats’ cen­tu­ry-old dom­i­na­tion of Texas pol­i­tics, in order to run against lib­er­al pop­ulist Agri­cul­ture Com­mis­sion­er Jim High­tow­er. Hand­picked by Karl Rove, Per­ry rode Gov­er­nor George W. Bush’s coat­tails to become lieu­tenant gov­er­nor in 1998, suc­ceed­ing to the gov­er­nor’s office when Bush left for Wash­ing­ton in Decem­ber 2000. When Bush and Rove man­u­fac­tured a revival of evan­gel­i­cal pol­i­tics, Per­ry became a “faith-based” politi­cian when he ran for gov­er­nor in 2002 and 2006. Then, fac­ing a tough re-elec­tion chal­lenge in 2010 from Sen­a­tor Kay Bai­ley Hutchi­son, he embraced the Tea Par­ty.

    This nar­ra­tive makes a good yarn-yet anoth­er sto­ry of yet anoth­er politi­cian who pre­tends to stand for some­thing but only cares about win­ning elec­tions. But it miss­es the heart, and the threat, of Per­ry’s pol­i­tics. While it’s true that he has cal­i­brat­ed his cam­paigns to fit the moment, Per­ry is an ide­o­logue. Indeed, he is the bold­est cham­pi­on of a new con­ser­vatism that draws its pow­er from blend­ing the most rad­i­cal wings of the GOP: those who believe that Chris­tians are Amer­i­ca’s cho­sen lead­ers, that cor­po­ra­tions should be unfet­tered, and that the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment should shrink and cede pow­er back to the states. His pol­i­tics have indeed evolved-in con­cert with that of the Repub­li­can right, as it’s hard­ened from a move­ment that saw gov­ern­ment as “the prob­lem,” in Rea­gan’s words, to one that views gov­ern­ment as the ene­my. Per­ry, far from being a fol­low­er in that shift to the hard right, has long been one of its prime insti­ga­tors.

    When Per­ry first mate­ri­al­ized in Austin in the mid-’80s, he imme­di­ate­ly estab­lished what kind of politi­cian he was. The swag­ger­ing, glad-hand­ing ten­ant farmer’s son from West Texas became part of a bud­get-cut­ting gang on the Appro­pri­a­tions Com­mit­tee, deemed the “Pit Bulls” because they sat on the low­er dais in the hear­ing room as they pushed for aus­ter­i­ty in Tex­as­’s state gov­ern­ment. “Then and there,” says long­time Demo­c­ra­t­ic state Sen­a­tor Eliot Shap­leigh, “he and his band of Pit Bulls put Texas on a path toward his lega­cy project of cut­ting tax­es for the wealthy and mak­ing gov­ern­ment work only for a select few.”

    ...

    As agri­cul­ture com­mis­sion­er, Per­ry’s main accom­plish­ment was in line with Rea­gan Repub­li­can­ism-fight­ing and gut­ting reg­u­la­tions on farms and agribusi­ness. In the months after he became gov­er­nor, Per­ry behaved in some respects like his pre­de­ces­sor, who was known for work­ing cor­dial­ly with Texas Democ­rats and for court­ing the state’s ris­ing Lati­no vote. Per­ry signed the now-con­tro­ver­sial tuition bill. But at the end of the 2001 leg­isla­tive ses­sion, he threw down a gaunt­let; in one day in June, in what became known as “the Father’s Day Mas­sacre,” he vetoed 78 bills, includ­ing a ban on exe­cut­ing the men­tal­ly retard­ed and a num­ber of non­con­tro­ver­sial appro­pri­a­tions. It was a loud and star­tling rebuke, and it set a pat­tern. Per­ry’s goal as gov­er­nor would be to do what he now says he’d do as pres­i­dent: make gov­ern­ment “incon­se­quen­tial.”

    In late August, two weeks after he launched his pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, Per­ry was back in Texas, 70 miles west of Austin on a ranch owned by San Anto­nio tycoon James Leininger. Known in Texas as Per­ry’s Sven­gali, Leininger made a for­tune sell­ing hos­pi­tal beds. Their rela­tion­ship dates back at least to the 1990s, when Leininger helped Per­ry buy his first cam­paign plane. In 1998, Per­ry ran for lieu­tenant gov­er­nor against pop­u­lar Demo­c­ra­t­ic state comp­trol­ler John Sharp; Per­ry looked like a like­ly los­er in a tight race-until Leininger stepped up and helped guar­an­tee a $1.1 mil­lion loan that fund­ed a last-minute media blitz for the cam­paign. “I con­grat­u­late Leininger,” Sharp said after Per­ry edged him out with 50.04 per­cent of the vote. “He want­ed to buy the reins of state gov­ern­ment, and by God, he got them.”

    An evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian, Leininger was then the largest sin­gle donor to con­ser­v­a­tive Repub­li­cans in Texas and a major con­trib­u­tor to the nation­al par­ty. He embod­ied a new kind of Repub­li­can estab­lish­ment fig­ure. Like Domi­no’s Piz­za founder Tom Mon­aghan and Home Depot founder Bernie Mar­cus, Leininger gives huge sums to can­di­dates not just in exchange for favors but also to advance right-wing social and eco­nom­ic poli­cies. Leininger was the Koch broth­ers before the Koch broth­ers. In Per­ry’s three guber­na­to­r­i­al races, Leininger has donat­ed near­ly $250,000. In 2004, he sub­si­dized a trip to the Bahamas that brought Per­ry togeth­er with his oth­er great polit­i­cal influ­ence, anti-gov­ern­ment cru­sad­er Grover Norquist of Amer­i­cans for Tax Reform.

    In a pat­tern that has char­ac­ter­ized his polit­i­cal career, Per­ry has more than repaid Leininger’s gen­eros­i­ty. Two “eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment” funds con­trolled by Per­ry have giv­en near­ly $6 mil­lion to two biotech­nol­o­gy firms in which Leininger holds a sig­nif­i­cant share. Per­ry has suc­cess­ful­ly pushed one of Leininger’s pet projects, tort reform-an inter­est spurred by a spate of law­suits brought against his com­pa­ny, which has been repeat­ed­ly accused of man­u­fac­tur­ing hos­pi­tal beds that dropped and injured nurs­es and patients. Ear­li­er this year, Per­ry capped off a series of tort-reform mea­sures with a “los­er pays” bill that forces lit­i­gants who lose a law­suit to pay the legal expens­es of the com­pa­nies they’ve sued.

    That kind of give-and-take between Per­ry and big-mon­ey Repub­li­cans has not been lim­it­ed to Leininger. Near­ly half of the cor­po­ra­tions Per­ry has reward­ed from his eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment funds have been owned by major donors to his cam­paigns. Per­ry’s two largest con­trib­u­tors-Bob Per­ry (no rela­tion to the gov­er­nor) and Harold Sim­mons-have seen their gen­eros­i­ty repaid. In 2006, when Per­ry ran for re–election, Bob Per­ry, a home­build­ing mag­nate whose pet issue is dereg­u­la­tion, gave the gov­er­nor $275,000; he also donat­ed $2 mil­lion to the Repub­li­can Gov­er­nors Asso­ci­a­tion-which, in turn, gave Per­ry $1 mil­lion in the clos­ing weeks of the cam­paign. Dur­ing his tenure, Per­ry has stripped numer­ous envi­ron­men­tal, finan­cial, and work­place rules from the books. The gov­er­nor’s sec­ond-largest bene­fac­tor is Sim­mons, known in Texas as the “buy­out king” and best known nation­al­ly for help­ing fund the Swift Boat Vet­er­ans for Truth cam­paign against Sen­a­tor John Ker­ry in the 2004 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion (Bob Per­ry was the oth­er major fun­der). He has con­tributed $1.2 mil­lion to the gov­er­nor over the years. Sim­mons stands to make mil­lions by build­ing a mas­sive waste dump in West Texas to house the coun­try’s radioac­tive trash‑a project approved by Per­ry-appoint­ed reg­u­la­tors, though state sci­en­tists have deter­mined the site is unsafe.

    Per­ry’s rela­tion­ship with Leininger is of a dif­fer­ent order. The gov­er­nor has lent his full weight to the San Anto­ni­an’s social cru­sades. Leininger chipped in the bulk of funds for a cam­paign to enact an anti-gay-mar­riage amend­ment in Texas, backed by Per­ry. But Leininger’s over­whelm­ing inter­est has been in fight­ing “sec­u­lar” pub­lic edu­ca­tion, pour­ing mil­lions into pri­ma­ry chal­lenges to Repub­li­cans who oppose school vouch­ers and putting mil­lions more behind state school-board can­di­dates who sup­port the teach­ing of cre­ation­ism, absti­nence-only sex edu­ca­tion, and a ver­sion of Amer­i­can his­to­ry that pro­motes Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism. Per­ry has appoint­ed three state edu­ca­tion-board chairs backed by Leininger.

    Now, as Per­ry seeks the pres­i­den­cy, Leininger is doing his part again. On the week­end of August 27, he brought togeth­er some 200 evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers and pas­tors for a pri­vate retreat-and anoth­er major audi­tion for Per­ry. Accord­ing to the Los Ange­les Times, the atten­dees includ­ed David Bar­ton, James Robi­son, Richard Land of the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion, Tony Perkins of the Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil, and James Dob­son of Focus on the Fam­i­ly. “The Texas gov­er­nor … was grilled about his beliefs and his record in extra­or­di­nar­i­ly frank ses­sions,” the Times report­ed. “He respond­ed by describ­ing his rela­tion­ship with Jesus and pledg­ing to pur­sue the anti-abor­tion and anti-gay mar­riage agen­da cham­pi­oned by the evan­gel­i­cal right.”

    An effort to mobi­lize the nation’s pas­tors behind Per­ry was already under way, mod­eled on a Leininger-fund­ed project that helped the gov­er­nor win re-elec­tion in 2006. That year in the gen­er­al elec­tion, Per­ry faced a dif­fi­cult four-way field that includ­ed Demo­c­ra­t­ic Con­gress­man Chris Bell, cig­ar-chomp­ing satirist Kinky Fried­man, and Car­olyn Kee­ton Stray­horn, the Repub­li­can state comp­trol­ler who ran as an inde­pen­dent. With both Fried­man and Stray­horn appeal­ing to inde­pen­dents and mod­er­ate Repub­li­cans, the cam­paign was sure to be a tough one-Per­ry’s clos­est since 1998. But Leininger had the answer. Along with sev­er­al oth­er wealthy con­ser­v­a­tives, he helped cre­ate the Texas Restora­tion Project.

    The Restora­tion Project invit­ed thou­sands of Texas min­is­ters to six “Pas­tors’ Pol­i­cy Brief­in­gs,” closed-door events fund­ed by the Niemoller Foun­da­tion, a Hous­ton non­prof­it bankrolled by Leininger and friends. The pas­tors and their spous­es were urged to orga­nize their church­es behind Per­ry; lat­er, as the cam­paign revved up, they were called upon to get out the vote. “The mis­sion is the mobi­liza­tion of pas­tors and pews as a way to restore Texas and Amer­i­ca to our Judeo-Chris­t­ian her­itage,” said David Lane, chief orga­niz­er of the events and one of Per­ry’s most ardent allies on the evan­gel­i­cal right. At the end of each brief­ing, Per­ry offered a ser­mon. “This I know,” he told atten­dees at one gath­er­ing. “He who counts every hair on our heads and every drop in the oceans; He who knows the num­ber of our days and every thought before it enters our heads; this all-know­ing, all-pow­er­ful Cre­ator loves us so much that there is not a mat­ter so triv­ial or so small that we can’t sur­ren­der it to Him and say, ‘Father, your will be done!’ I cer­tain­ly know this to be the heart­felt prayer of a gov­er­nor.”

    “For us, it seemed like clas­sic machine pol­i­tics,” says Dan Quinn of the Texas Free­dom Net­work, a non­prof­it that sup­ports church-state sep­a­ra­tion. “Some of Per­ry’s biggest donors gave mon­ey to a non­prof­it that then fun­neled it into these events around the state where pas­tors attend­ed for free and heard one speak­er after anoth­er speak in praise of the gov­er­nor-and then the gov­er­nor comes out at the end. It seemed naked­ly par­ti­san and polit­i­cal.” An Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice com­plaint filed by Quin­n’s group went nowhere, with the agency say­ing it did not have suf­fi­cient evi­dence that the mon­ey was being chan­neled direct­ly into Per­ry’s cam­paign.

    Per­ry’s cam­paign sent Christ­mas cards to the pas­tors who’d attend­ed the Texas “brief­in­gs,” using the Restora­tion Pro­jec­t’s list. A week before the 2006 elec­tion, David Bar­ton and oth­ers made calls to the thou­sands who’d attend­ed, encour­ag­ing them to mar­shal their flocks behind Per­ry. It worked. Per­ry nar­row­ly won re-elec­tion with 39 per­cent of the vote.

    In 2008, Lane, with finan­cial back­ing from Leininger and the anti-gay evan­gel­i­cal group Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Asso­ci­a­tion, began to expand the Restora­tion Project into polit­i­cal­ly impor­tant states around the coun­try. Near­ly 10,000 pas­tors have attend­ed all-expens­es-paid two-day “brief­in­gs” in Neva­da, New Hamp­shire, Ohio, South Car­oli­na, Col­orado, Ten­nessee, Cal­i­for­nia, Flori­da, and Iowa. Speak­ers have includ­ed sev­er­al poten­tial pres­i­den­tial con­tenders and can­di­dates such as Michele Bach­mann, Haley Bar­bour, Newt Gin­grich, and Mike Huck­abee. This year in Flori­da, Per­ry was the fea­tured speak­er.

    “Per­ry and Lane have tru­ly mas­tered the tac­tic that Rove used for W. in Ohio in 2004,” Quinn says. “They’ve tak­en that strat­e­gy and real­ly honed it in Texas, more so than I’ve seen any­where else, and now they’ve export­ed that mod­el to most of the pres­i­den­tial bat­tle­ground states.”

    On April 15, 2009, the typ­i­cal­ly dap­per gov­er­nor of Texas strode onto a makeshift stage out­side Austin City Hall wear­ing an unfa­mil­iar cos­tume-hunt­ing jack­et, jeans, boots, and base­ball cap-and deliv­ered the most impor­tant speech of his life. “I got­ta say it gives me that thrill up my leg when I see all these peo­ple stand­ing out here,” he told the 1,000 plac­ard-wav­ing cit­i­zens who’d come out on a blus­tery morn­ing to rail at Oba­ma and stim­u­lus spend­ing and to wit­ness Rick Per­ry’s Tea Par­ty debut. He’d been viewed with sus­pi­cion by some small-gov­ern­ment purists in Texas, not only for his exec­u­tive order to man­date HPV vac­cines but also for his ambi­tious (and unsuc­cess­ful) pro­pos­al to launch a mas­sive infra­struc­ture project called the Trans-Texas Cor­ri­dor. One Tea Parti­er car­ried a sign that read “Big Gov­ern­ment Per­ry,” hand­ing out leaflets on the theme.

    But as the gov­er­nor blast­ed Oba­ma’s “social­ism” and railed at the main­stream medi­a’s deroga­to­ry cov­er­age of “tea bag­gers,” his recep­tion went from warm to hot. “I’m just not sure you’re a bunch of right-wing extrem­ists,” he hollered. “But if you are, I’m with you! ‘Cause you are a true patri­ot today in this coun­try. And I might add, you’re sur­round­ed by fel­low patri­ots-indi­vid­u­als who embrace the con­cepts like low­er tax­es and small­er gov­ern­ment and free­dom for every indi­vid­ual. I’m talk­ing about states’ rights! States’ rights! States’ rights!”

    “Secede!” one hoarse voice called out over the clam­or of whoops and cheers. “Seceeeeede!” Per­ry nev­er used the word him­self but did say: “Since the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion was first rat­i­fied, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment has slow­ly, steadi­ly, and suc­cess­ful­ly erod­ed the notion of states’ rights. … I hap­pen to agree with the sev­enth gov­er­nor of this great state, Sam Hous­ton. He once said, ‘Texas has yet to learn sub­mis­sion to any oppres­sion, come from what source it may!’ ”

    As Per­ry left the stage, bask­ing in his foot-stomp­ing recep­tion, ral­ly orga­niz­er Jason Moore, a local talk-radio host, hal­looed, “Maybe it’s Per­ry for pres­i­dent now!”

    As the first major Amer­i­can politi­cian to embrace the nascent Tea Par­ty, Per­ry had found a way to over­come a dan­ger­ous chal­lenger, three-term Sen­a­tor Kay Bai­ley Hutchi­son, in the 2010 Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry-and simul­ta­ne­ous­ly to launch him­self into the nation­al spot­light. Soon he was writ­ing op-eds in The Wall Street Jour­nal, get­ting glow­ing reviews from Glenn Beck and Rush Lim­baugh, and tour­ing the coun­try non­stop to preach about the virtues of the “Texas mod­el”: low tax­es, light reg­u­la­tions, and a fron­tier men­tal­i­ty of self-depen­dence. “There is still a land of oppor­tu­ni­ty, friends-it’s called Texas,” Per­ry said. “We’re cre­at­ing more jobs than any oth­er state in the nation.” He then pro­vid­ed one more rea­son for Tex­as­’s suc­cess: “Would you rather live in a state like this or in a state where a man can mar­ry a man?”

    Rail­ing at Wash­ing­ton was noth­ing new for him; the gov­er­nor had built his career on oppos­ing gov­ern­ment spend­ing. In 2003, when Texas faced a $10 bil­lion short­fall, he seized the moment. With help from Grover Norquist, who came to Texas to per­suade waf­fling Repub­li­cans to bal­ance the bud­get with cuts alone, Per­ry held the line on tax­es-even though it meant drop­ping more than 200,000 chil­dren from the Chil­dren’s Health Insur­ance Pro­gram and anoth­er 500,000 from Med­ic­aid. He also pushed the nation’s most aggres­sive round of dereg­u­la­tion and tort reform. “Texas is open for busi­ness,” he pro­claimed.

    Ear­ly this year, per­fect­ly timed to suit his pres­i­den­tial ambi­tions, came anoth­er oppor­tu­ni­ty to show small-gov­ern­ment con­ser­v­a­tives he was the real deal. In Jan­u­ary, the state comp­trol­ler announced that Texas had a $27 bil­lion bud­get hole for the next two years-rep­re­sent­ing near­ly one-quar­ter of the state’s already-lean spend­ing. The deficit was the direct result of a mas­sive prop­er­ty-tax cut Per­ry cham­pi­oned in 2006. It was Norquist’s favorite strat­e­gy: Cut tax­es, and spend­ing reduc­tions will have to fol­low.

    “Now is not the time to get wob­bly,” Norquist said as he toured the state with Per­ry in March, urg­ing the gov­er­nor and leg­is­la­tors to stand firm against grow­ing anx­i­eties about huge cuts to schools and social pro­grams. “Do more tort reform, more tax reduc­tion, more spend­ing restraint.” Invok­ing “polit­i­cal philoso­pher Rahm Emanuel,” Norquist told an audi­ence that includ­ed Per­ry, “Some­times the only way to get the bureau­cra­cy to rethink what it’s doing is to tell them there’s a cri­sis.”

    Per­ry insist­ed that the leg­is­la­ture close the bud­get gap with no new rev­enues-and with­out touch­ing the state’s $9 bil­lion Rainy Day Fund. He sup­port­ed a bud­get that cut $4 bil­lion from pub­lic schools and $2 bil­lion from Med­ic­aid. “I don’t think there is any­thing that is so impor­tant that [it] can­not be cut,” he said.

    The only large pro­gram that did not fall vic­tim to the bud­getary blood­let­ting was Per­ry’s most cher­ished ini­tia­tive: the Texas Enter­prise Fund and the Emerg­ing Tech­nol­o­gy Fund, which have doled out more than $600 mil­lion in tax­pay­er mon­ey to cor­po­ra­tions of his choos­ing. “He takes from us so that he can play with his cor­po­rate slush fund and award his friends’ busi­ness­es,” Debra Med­i­na, Per­ry’s lib­er­tar­i­an chal­lenger in the 2010 Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry, said in a debate.

    When asked about his gov­ern­ing prin­ci­ples in an inter­view last year, Per­ry respond­ed: “I’m a big believ­er in wealth first. You can­not have expand­ed edu­ca­tion pro­grams, you can­not take care of health and human ser­vice needs of those who can’t take care of them­selves, you can­not have the infra­struc­ture in your state that will dri­ve your econ­o­my, unless you have wealth to pay for it.”

    Per­ry’s eco­nom­ic approach is the purest ver­sion of trick­le-down that the Unit­ed States has ever seen. That’s made Texas a case study of what hap­pens when wealth is first. Despite the nation’s high­est rate of job cre­ation, more than one-quar­ter of Tex­ans have no health insur­ance, a high­er per­cent­age than in any state. Home­own­ers’ insur­ance pre­mi­ums are the nation’s high­est. Texas ties with Mis­sis­sip­pi for the top per­cent­age of min­i­mum-wage jobs. Under Per­ry, Texas school fund­ing and achieve­ment have plum­met­ed to near the bot­tom of nation­al rank­ings; the state has the coun­try’s high­est per­cent­age of cit­i­zens with­out high-school diplo­mas. Tex­as­’s Med­ic­aid reim­burse­ments are the sec­ond low­est in the coun­try. Child pover­ty and hunger, along with incar­cer­a­tion rates, are among the high­est.

    While his Tea Par­ty rhetoric made Per­ry famous, his lead­er­ship of an often over­looked orga­ni­za­tion-the Repub­li­can Gov­er­nors Asso­ci­a­tion (RGA)-made him a major play­er in nation­al Repub­li­can cir­cles. He has been both its finance chair and chair. The RGA’s stat­ed pur­pose is to elect Repub­li­can gov­er­nors. But under Per­ry and Mis­sis­sip­pi Gov­er­nor Haley Bar­bour, the group has become a pow­er­ful force tug­ging Repub­li­cans toward the far right. Its ide­o­log­i­cal mis­sion is reflect­ed in the agen­das of its most gen­er­ous donors: Koch Indus­tries, which gave $1.1 mil­lion in 2010; Bob Per­ry, who gave $6 mil­lion; and Rupert Mur­doch’s News Cor­po­ra­tion sub­sidiary News Amer­i­ca, which donat­ed $1.25 mil­lion.

    ...

    The Repub­li­can right has been a fick­le beast in 2011, first swoon­ing over Michele Bach­mann before dis­card­ing her, day­dream­ing in vain of Paul Ryan and Mar­co Rubio, and-when the ear­ly debates kept Per­ry from cement­ing his posi­tion as Mitt Rom­ney’s only viable foe-tak­ing up with Her­man Cain and chant­i­ng “9–9‑9.” But no pres­i­den­tial can­di­date is bet­ter suit­ed to the cur­rent Repub­li­can moment than Rick Per­ry. He has always spe­cial­ized in anger and out­rage. He exem­pli­fies a move­ment that sees no gray areas. Almost every­where he goes, Per­ry quotes Ronald Rea­gan: “We need bold col­ors, not pale pas­tels.” At a stop in New Hamp­shire, Per­ry made sure the point was­n’t missed: “I am that bright col­or.”

    If he can regain his foot­ing and ham­mer home the con­sid­er­able gray areas in Rom­ney’s record, Per­ry may yet prove the Bar­ry Gold­wa­ter of 2012. After all, as he told a packed house of 10,000 at Lib­er­ty Uni­ver­si­ty in mid-Sep­tem­ber, God “does­n’t require per­fect peo­ple to exe­cute his per­fect plan. Moses was this hot­head­ed mur­der­er who was afraid to speak in pub­lic. God used him to lead the Israelites to free­dom. ... Paul was a per­se­cu­tor of Chris­tians; God used him to spread the gospel to the ends of the uni­verse.”

    Now, Per­ry implied, God was using him to bring his mes­sage to ear­ly-21st-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca. The stakes, he said, were clear: “Amer­i­ca is going to be guid­ed by some set of val­ues. The ques­tion is gonna be, whose val­ues?”

    Dur­ing the fall, as Per­ry floun­dered, it was easy to for­get how many times he has risen from the grave. He was giv­en lit­tle chance of win­ning his first statewide race, against the beloved cow­boy pop­ulist Jim High­tow­er; in 1998, run­ning for lieu­tenant gov­er­nor, Per­ry was tied in the polls up to Elec­tion Day; a year before his re-elec­tion as gov­er­nor in 2010, Repub­li­cans pre­ferred Kay Bai­ley Hutchi­son by a seem­ing­ly insur­mount­able mar­gin, 56 per­cent to 31 per­cent. He won them all. One rea­son: his pugilis­tic cam­paign style, which Per­ry intro­duced to the coun­try in the late-Octo­ber Las Vegas debate and which left Rom­ney’s aides call­ing him a “bul­ly.” Per­ry does not defeat his oppo­nents; he oblit­er­ates them.

    Per­ry also wins because of his fundrais­ing abil­i­ties and con­nec­tions to ide­o­log­i­cal­ly dri­ven big donors, which he devel­oped at the Repub­li­can Gov­er­nors Asso­ci­a­tion. His evan­gel­i­cal net­work has been instru­men­tal in his vic­to­ries, and clear­ly Per­ry hopes the orga­niz­ing efforts of James Robi­son and David Lane will boost his chances in the pri­maries. While he has infused his cam­paign mes­sage with bib­li­cal cap­i­tal­ism, he has also avoid­ed alien­at­ing the Chris­t­ian right by reject­ing calls to dis­as­so­ci­ate him­self from Texas pas­tor Robert Jef­fress, who called Mor­monism a “cult” at the Val­ues Vot­ers Sum­mit in Octo­ber. Although his debat­ing skills have nev­er been sharp-he’s avoid­ed debates in Texas as much as pos­si­ble-Per­ry is a retail politi­cian of the first order. As Iowans and New Hamp­shirites are dis­cov­er­ing, he small-talks, back-slaps, and baby-kiss­es his way through a crowd with relish‑a qual­i­ty that will help in the small ear­ly-pri­ma­ry states, includ­ing South Car­oli­na and Neva­da.

    ...

    The debate in Orlan­do was Per­ry’s low­est moment-the nation­al press was soon writ­ing him off-but ear­li­er that same day, he dis­played all the qual­i­ties that make him a for­mi­da­ble cam­paign­er. He bound­ed onto the stage at a ral­ly for Ralph Reed’s Faith & Free­dom Coali­tion, wear­ing an open ging­ham shirt and jack­et, wife Ani­ta on his arm. Per­ry has long been lam­pooned back home for an antic, arm-flap­ping style of tel­e­van­ge­lis­tic speechi­fy­ing, but he’s calmed down his style con­sid­er­ably. Stand­ing still at the podi­um, Per­ry clinched his hands prayer­ful­ly. As always, his words had the old evan­gel­i­cal fer­vor.

    “I’m cam­paign­ing the only way I know how,” he said. “That’s as a true believ­er.” The crowd whooped and cheered and sur­round­ed the stage six deep, as Per­ry moved seam­less­ly into his mes­sage, mix­ing small-gov­ern­ment and Chris­t­ian-right ortho­doxy. “Our founders did­n’t need a nan­ny state to carve out the great­est civ­i­liza­tion known to man. We did­n’t need a nan­ny state to win the Sec­ond World War and then the Cold War. And we did­n’t need a nan­ny state to revive our econ­o­my, to cre­ate jobs, and to renew our nation’s promise.” In clos­ing, to wild cheers and amens, Per­ry invoked Abra­ham Lin­coln: “My con­cern is not whether God is on my side. My great­est con­cern is to be on God’s side.”

    ———–

    “God Help Us” by Bob Moser; The Amer­i­can Prospect; 11/28/2011

    The idea that the reces­sion was a blessed oppor­tu­ni­ty to turn Amer­i­cans against gov­ern­ment and toward “bib­li­cal prin­ci­ples” was already a famil­iar one for Robison’s fol­low­ers. It was a mes­sage that Per­ry was poised to car­ry into the main­stream. Robi­son had been look­ing for a promi­nent pub­lic offi­cial to con­vene a large-scale prayer and fast­ing ral­ly to spread the word. Per­ry took up the call. He would soon be invit­ing Chris­tians and polit­i­cal lead­ers to a Hous­ton sta­di­um ral­ly, The Response, explain­ing that while the coun­try was fac­ing grim eco­nom­ic times, “There is hope for Amer­i­ca. It lies in heav­en, and we will find it on our knees.””

    The Great Reces­sion was a blessed oppor­tu­ni­ty to turn Amer­i­cans against gov­ern­ment and towards “bib­li­cal prin­ci­ples”. That was the great hope of pow­er­ful pas­tors like James Robi­son as the finan­cial cri­sis was play­ing out. And oppor­tu­ni­ty to show­case the prin­ci­ples of the kind of ‘Bib­li­cal cap­i­tal­ism’ pro­mot­ed by fig­ures like Glenn Beck and David Bar­ton. Two of Rick Per­ry’s long-time key allies. Only God could heal the econ­o­my. Slash­ing the size of gov­ern­ment was a bib­li­cal­ly ordained response to the cri­sis. A cri­sis caused by a gov­ern­ment that was “against God”:

    ...
    Only God, not gov­ern­ment, could heal the bro­ken econ­o­my. It was a theme that knit togeth­er all three of Per­ry’s core con­stituen­cies: right-wing evan­gel­i­cals, who had mobi­lized behind Per­ry’s 2006 re-elec­tion; anti-tax Tea Partiers, who had helped him to a third term as gov­er­nor in 2010; and cor­po­rate con­ser­v­a­tives, who have bankrolled his rise from the begin­ning. Per­ry’s mes­sage was a nat­ur­al out­growth of the resur­gence in recent years of “bib­li­cal cap­i­tal­ism,” an idea that first sprung up in the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry as a coun­ter­weight to the social gospel, which used scrip­ture to sup­port labor reforms and pro­gres­sive tax­a­tion. In recent years, the tenets of bib­li­cal cap­i­tal­ism have been spread most famous­ly by David Bar­ton, for­mer vice chair­man of the Texas GOP and the reli­gious right’s favorite his­to­ri­an. Bar­ton, a long­time Per­ry ally whom Glenn Beck calls “the most impor­tant man in Amer­i­ca,” has been tour­ing the coun­try for years, not only preach­ing that the Unit­ed States was found­ed by and for Chris­tians but also cher­ry-pick­ing scrip­ture to assert that the Bible oppos­es capital–gains and estate tax­es, unions and min­i­mum-wage laws.

    For Robi­son and Bar­ton, the reces­sion offered the ide­al oppor­tu­ni­ty to spread that word and argue that big gov­ern­ment had caused the eco­nom­ic calami­ty because it was “against God.” “Depend­ing on the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment is idol­a­try,” as Robi­son put it in June. “We must con­trol it, or it will con­trol us. Stop the mad­ness! Hitler believed that Ger­many need­ed a gov­ern­ment over the peo­ple, not of the peo­ple. God deliv­er us from that kind of insan­i­ty.” Get­ting more spe­cif­ic, Robi­son inveighed against “intru­sive reg­u­la­tion,” while call­ing for the tax code to be revised “so we can rejoice togeth­er because it would stim­u­late eco­nom­ic growth.

    In May, meet­ing with Robi­son, Bar­ton, and a large group of evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers to orga­nize The Response, Per­ry echoed the mes­sage. Amer­i­cans’ “pur­suit of hap­pi­ness” was “in jeop­ardy,” he said. “It’s in jeop­ardy because of tax­es. It’s in jeop­ardy because of reg­u­la­tion. It’s in jeop­ardy because of a legal sys­tem that’s run amok. And I think it’s time for us to just hand it over to God and say, ‘God, you’re going to have to fix this.’ ”

    While Per­ry insist­ed that The Response was an “apo­lit­i­cal” event, its orga­niz­ers were dozens of evan­gel­i­cal heavy­weights whom Robi­son brought togeth­er, in the spring and sum­mer, for a series of meet­ings to mobi­lize for 2012. Pub­licly, they claimed to be strate­giz­ing to defeat Oba­ma-to use the polit­i­cal moment to “help inspire … a restora­tion of free­dom’s foun­da­tion,” as Robi­son explained. “I don’t think we’re ever going to solve the eco­nom­ic cri­sis with­out hav­ing a king­dom men­tal­i­ty.”

    ...

    Per­ry also wins because of his fundrais­ing abil­i­ties and con­nec­tions to ide­o­log­i­cal­ly dri­ven big donors, which he devel­oped at the Repub­li­can Gov­er­nors Asso­ci­a­tion. His evan­gel­i­cal net­work has been instru­men­tal in his vic­to­ries, and clear­ly Per­ry hopes the orga­niz­ing efforts of James Robi­son and David Lane will boost his chances in the pri­maries. While he has infused his cam­paign mes­sage with bib­li­cal cap­i­tal­ism, he has also avoid­ed alien­at­ing the Chris­t­ian right by reject­ing calls to dis­as­so­ci­ate him­self from Texas pas­tor Robert Jef­fress, who called Mor­monism a “cult” at the Val­ues Vot­ers Sum­mit in Octo­ber. Although his debat­ing skills have nev­er been sharp-he’s avoid­ed debates in Texas as much as pos­si­ble-Per­ry is a retail politi­cian of the first order. As Iowans and New Hamp­shirites are dis­cov­er­ing, he small-talks, back-slaps, and baby-kiss­es his way through a crowd with relish‑a qual­i­ty that will help in the small ear­ly-pri­ma­ry states, includ­ing South Car­oli­na and Neva­da.
    ...

    That ded­i­ca­tion to “Bib­li­cal cap­i­tal­ism” and shrink­ing the size of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment is a big part of con­text of Rick Per­ry emerg­ing as the polit­i­cal avatar of this net­work: Per­ry was­n’t just an advo­cate of Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism. He’s a “wealth first” ide­o­logue and he’s not afraid of admit­ting it:

    ...
    The only large pro­gram that did not fall vic­tim to the bud­getary blood­let­ting was Per­ry’s most cher­ished ini­tia­tive: the Texas Enter­prise Fund and the Emerg­ing Tech­nol­o­gy Fund, which have doled out more than $600 mil­lion in tax­pay­er mon­ey to cor­po­ra­tions of his choos­ing. “He takes from us so that he can play with his cor­po­rate slush fund and award his friends’ busi­ness­es,” Debra Med­i­na, Per­ry’s lib­er­tar­i­an chal­lenger in the 2010 Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry, said in a debate.

    When asked about his gov­ern­ing prin­ci­ples in an inter­view last year, Per­ry respond­ed: “I’m a big believ­er in wealth first. You can­not have expand­ed edu­ca­tion pro­grams, you can­not take care of health and human ser­vice needs of those who can’t take care of them­selves, you can­not have the infra­struc­ture in your state that will dri­ve your econ­o­my, unless you have wealth to pay for it.”

    Per­ry’s eco­nom­ic approach is the purest ver­sion of trick­le-down that the Unit­ed States has ever seen. That’s made Texas a case study of what hap­pens when wealth is first. Despite the nation’s high­est rate of job cre­ation, more than one-quar­ter of Tex­ans have no health insur­ance, a high­er per­cent­age than in any state. Home­own­ers’ insur­ance pre­mi­ums are the nation’s high­est. Texas ties with Mis­sis­sip­pi for the top per­cent­age of min­i­mum-wage jobs. Under Per­ry, Texas school fund­ing and achieve­ment have plum­met­ed to near the bot­tom of nation­al rank­ings; the state has the coun­try’s high­est per­cent­age of cit­i­zens with­out high-school diplo­mas. Tex­as­’s Med­ic­aid reim­burse­ments are the sec­ond low­est in the coun­try. Child pover­ty and hunger, along with incar­cer­a­tion rates, are among the high­est.
    ...

    So it should come as no sur­prise to see how Rick Per­ry was effec­tive­ly the first major politi­cian to embrace the Tea Par­ty. His ide­ol­o­gy was effec­tive­ly a theo­crat­ic ver­sion of Grover Norquist’s ide­ol­o­gy:

    ...
    As the first major Amer­i­can politi­cian to embrace the nascent Tea Par­ty, Per­ry had found a way to over­come a dan­ger­ous chal­lenger, three-term Sen­a­tor Kay Bai­ley Hutchi­son, in the 2010 Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry-and simul­ta­ne­ous­ly to launch him­self into the nation­al spot­light. Soon he was writ­ing op-eds in The Wall Street Jour­nal, get­ting glow­ing reviews from Glenn Beck and Rush Lim­baugh, and tour­ing the coun­try non­stop to preach about the virtues of the “Texas mod­el”: low tax­es, light reg­u­la­tions, and a fron­tier men­tal­i­ty of self-depen­dence. “There is still a land of oppor­tu­ni­ty, friends-it’s called Texas,” Per­ry said. “We’re cre­at­ing more jobs than any oth­er state in the nation.” He then pro­vid­ed one more rea­son for Tex­as­’s suc­cess: “Would you rather live in a state like this or in a state where a man can mar­ry a man?”

    Rail­ing at Wash­ing­ton was noth­ing new for him; the gov­er­nor had built his career on oppos­ing gov­ern­ment spend­ing. In 2003, when Texas faced a $10 bil­lion short­fall, he seized the moment. With help from Grover Norquist, who came to Texas to per­suade waf­fling Repub­li­cans to bal­ance the bud­get with cuts alone, Per­ry held the line on tax­es-even though it meant drop­ping more than 200,000 chil­dren from the Chil­dren’s Health Insur­ance Pro­gram and anoth­er 500,000 from Med­ic­aid. He also pushed the nation’s most aggres­sive round of dereg­u­la­tion and tort reform. “Texas is open for busi­ness,” he pro­claimed.

    Ear­ly this year, per­fect­ly timed to suit his pres­i­den­tial ambi­tions, came anoth­er oppor­tu­ni­ty to show small-gov­ern­ment con­ser­v­a­tives he was the real deal. In Jan­u­ary, the state comp­trol­ler announced that Texas had a $27 bil­lion bud­get hole for the next two years-rep­re­sent­ing near­ly one-quar­ter of the state’s already-lean spend­ing. The deficit was the direct result of a mas­sive prop­er­ty-tax cut Per­ry cham­pi­oned in 2006. It was Norquist’s favorite strat­e­gy: Cut tax­es, and spend­ing reduc­tions will have to fol­low.

    “Now is not the time to get wob­bly,” Norquist said as he toured the state with Per­ry in March, urg­ing the gov­er­nor and leg­is­la­tors to stand firm against grow­ing anx­i­eties about huge cuts to schools and social pro­grams. “Do more tort reform, more tax reduc­tion, more spend­ing restraint.” Invok­ing “polit­i­cal philoso­pher Rahm Emanuel,” Norquist told an audi­ence that includ­ed Per­ry, “Some­times the only way to get the bureau­cra­cy to rethink what it’s doing is to tell them there’s a cri­sis.”

    Per­ry insist­ed that the leg­is­la­ture close the bud­get gap with no new rev­enues-and with­out touch­ing the state’s $9 bil­lion Rainy Day Fund. He sup­port­ed a bud­get that cut $4 bil­lion from pub­lic schools and $2 bil­lion from Med­ic­aid. “I don’t think there is any­thing that is so impor­tant that [it] can­not be cut,” he said.
    ...

    And that all brings us to the key role of San Anto­nio tycoon James Leininger, described as Rick Per­ry’s Sven­gali. As we’ve seen, Leininger isn’t just a major con­ser­v­a­tive donor in Texas. Leininger found­ed the Texas Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Foun­da­tion (TPPF), the ‘think tank’ where fel­low Texas theo­crat­ic bil­lion­aire Tim Dunn has served as a board mem­ber since 1998. Dunn still serves as the TPPF’s Vice Chair­man. As we also saw, for­mer TPPF pres­i­dent and CNP mem­ber Kevin Roberts went on to become the cur­rent pres­i­dent of the Her­itage Foun­da­tion. This is the same Kevin Roberts who leads the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project 2025 scheme and recent­ly declared the Sec­ond Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion is under­way and will remain blood­less “if the left allows it to be.” Also recall how the TPPF and the Clare­mont Insti­tute ran the “79 Days Report ‘sim­u­la­tions in 2020 imag­in­ing con­test­ed elec­tion sce­nar­ios. Kevin Roberts, John East­man, and fas­cist busi­ness­man Charles Hay­wood all par­tic­i­pat­ed in the sim­u­la­tions. And, of course, Leininger is a mem­ber of the CNP, as we should expect giv­en Leininger’s clear theo­crat­ic ambi­tions:

    ...
    In late August, two weeks after he launched his pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, Per­ry was back in Texas, 70 miles west of Austin on a ranch owned by San Anto­nio tycoon James Leininger. Known in Texas as Per­ry’s Sven­gali, Leininger made a for­tune sell­ing hos­pi­tal beds. Their rela­tion­ship dates back at least to the 1990s, when Leininger helped Per­ry buy his first cam­paign plane. In 1998, Per­ry ran for lieu­tenant gov­er­nor against pop­u­lar Demo­c­ra­t­ic state comp­trol­ler John Sharp; Per­ry looked like a like­ly los­er in a tight race-until Leininger stepped up and helped guar­an­tee a $1.1 mil­lion loan that fund­ed a last-minute media blitz for the cam­paign. “I con­grat­u­late Leininger,” Sharp said after Per­ry edged him out with 50.04 per­cent of the vote. “He want­ed to buy the reins of state gov­ern­ment, and by God, he got them.”

    An evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian, Leininger was then the largest sin­gle donor to con­ser­v­a­tive Repub­li­cans in Texas and a major con­trib­u­tor to the nation­al par­ty. He embod­ied a new kind of Repub­li­can estab­lish­ment fig­ure. Like Domi­no’s Piz­za founder Tom Mon­aghan and Home Depot founder Bernie Mar­cus, Leininger gives huge sums to can­di­dates not just in exchange for favors but also to advance right-wing social and eco­nom­ic poli­cies. Leininger was the Koch broth­ers before the Koch broth­ers. In Per­ry’s three guber­na­to­r­i­al races, Leininger has donat­ed near­ly $250,000. In 2004, he sub­si­dized a trip to the Bahamas that brought Per­ry togeth­er with his oth­er great polit­i­cal influ­ence, anti-gov­ern­ment cru­sad­er Grover Norquist of Amer­i­cans for Tax Reform.

    In a pat­tern that has char­ac­ter­ized his polit­i­cal career, Per­ry has more than repaid Leininger’s gen­eros­i­ty. Two “eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment” funds con­trolled by Per­ry have giv­en near­ly $6 mil­lion to two biotech­nol­o­gy firms in which Leininger holds a sig­nif­i­cant share. Per­ry has suc­cess­ful­ly pushed one of Leininger’s pet projects, tort reform-an inter­est spurred by a spate of law­suits brought against his com­pa­ny, which has been repeat­ed­ly accused of man­u­fac­tur­ing hos­pi­tal beds that dropped and injured nurs­es and patients. Ear­li­er this year, Per­ry capped off a series of tort-reform mea­sures with a “los­er pays” bill that forces lit­i­gants who lose a law­suit to pay the legal expens­es of the com­pa­nies they’ve sued.

    That kind of give-and-take between Per­ry and big-mon­ey Repub­li­cans has not been lim­it­ed to Leininger. Near­ly half of the cor­po­ra­tions Per­ry has reward­ed from his eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment funds have been owned by major donors to his cam­paigns. Per­ry’s two largest con­trib­u­tors-Bob Per­ry (no rela­tion to the gov­er­nor) and Harold Sim­mons-have seen their gen­eros­i­ty repaid. In 2006, when Per­ry ran for re–election, Bob Per­ry, a home­build­ing mag­nate whose pet issue is dereg­u­la­tion, gave the gov­er­nor $275,000; he also donat­ed $2 mil­lion to the Repub­li­can Gov­er­nors Asso­ci­a­tion-which, in turn, gave Per­ry $1 mil­lion in the clos­ing weeks of the cam­paign. Dur­ing his tenure, Per­ry has stripped numer­ous envi­ron­men­tal, finan­cial, and work­place rules from the books. The gov­er­nor’s sec­ond-largest bene­fac­tor is Sim­mons, known in Texas as the “buy­out king” and best known nation­al­ly for help­ing fund the Swift Boat Vet­er­ans for Truth cam­paign against Sen­a­tor John Ker­ry in the 2004 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion (Bob Per­ry was the oth­er major fun­der). He has con­tributed $1.2 mil­lion to the gov­er­nor over the years. Sim­mons stands to make mil­lions by build­ing a mas­sive waste dump in West Texas to house the coun­try’s radioac­tive trash‑a project approved by Per­ry-appoint­ed reg­u­la­tors, though state sci­en­tists have deter­mined the site is unsafe.

    Per­ry’s rela­tion­ship with Leininger is of a dif­fer­ent order. The gov­er­nor has lent his full weight to the San Anto­ni­an’s social cru­sades. Leininger chipped in the bulk of funds for a cam­paign to enact an anti-gay-mar­riage amend­ment in Texas, backed by Per­ry. But Leininger’s over­whelm­ing inter­est has been in fight­ing “sec­u­lar” pub­lic edu­ca­tion, pour­ing mil­lions into pri­ma­ry chal­lenges to Repub­li­cans who oppose school vouch­ers and putting mil­lions more behind state school-board can­di­dates who sup­port the teach­ing of cre­ation­ism, absti­nence-only sex edu­ca­tion, and a ver­sion of Amer­i­can his­to­ry that pro­motes Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism. Per­ry has appoint­ed three state edu­ca­tion-board chairs backed by Leininger.
    ...

    And as we can see, it was James Leininger’s Niemoller Foun­da­tion that helped launch the ini­tial “Texas Restora­tion Project” (even­tu­al­ly renamed the Texas Renew­al Project), with an ini­tial goal of help­ing Rick Per­ry’s 2006 re-elec­tion cam­paign. So while the Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Foun­da­tion (AFA) may be the enti­ty that has long housed the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project, it sounds like a lot of the mon­ey for the effort came for Leininger’s Niemoller Foun­da­tion. Also note how the goal of the Texas Restora­tion Project was­n’t real­ly to encour­age pas­tors to run for office them­selves. The mis­sion was get­ting those pas­tors to ral­ly their con­gre­ga­tions around Rick Per­ry. It’s a reminder that, while the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project claims to be focused on recruit­ing pas­tors to run for office, the orga­ni­za­tion dou­bles as as church-based get-out-the-vote oper­a­tion:

    ...
    Now, as Per­ry seeks the pres­i­den­cy, Leininger is doing his part again. On the week­end of August 27, he brought togeth­er some 200 evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers and pas­tors for a pri­vate retreat-and anoth­er major audi­tion for Per­ry. Accord­ing to the Los Ange­les Times, the atten­dees includ­ed David Bar­ton, James Robi­son, Richard Land of the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion, Tony Perkins of the Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil, and James Dob­son of Focus on the Fam­i­ly. “The Texas gov­er­nor … was grilled about his beliefs and his record in extra­or­di­nar­i­ly frank ses­sions,” the Times report­ed. “He respond­ed by describ­ing his rela­tion­ship with Jesus and pledg­ing to pur­sue the anti-abor­tion and anti-gay mar­riage agen­da cham­pi­oned by the evan­gel­i­cal right.”

    An effort to mobi­lize the nation’s pas­tors behind Per­ry was already under way, mod­eled on a Leininger-fund­ed project that helped the gov­er­nor win re-elec­tion in 2006. That year in the gen­er­al elec­tion, Per­ry faced a dif­fi­cult four-way field that includ­ed Demo­c­ra­t­ic Con­gress­man Chris Bell, cig­ar-chomp­ing satirist Kinky Fried­man, and Car­olyn Kee­ton Stray­horn, the Repub­li­can state comp­trol­ler who ran as an inde­pen­dent. With both Fried­man and Stray­horn appeal­ing to inde­pen­dents and mod­er­ate Repub­li­cans, the cam­paign was sure to be a tough one-Per­ry’s clos­est since 1998. But Leininger had the answer. Along with sev­er­al oth­er wealthy con­ser­v­a­tives, he helped cre­ate the Texas Restora­tion Project.

    The Restora­tion Project invit­ed thou­sands of Texas min­is­ters to six “Pas­tors’ Pol­i­cy Brief­in­gs,” closed-door events fund­ed by the Niemoller Foun­da­tion, a Hous­ton non­prof­it bankrolled by Leininger and friends. The pas­tors and their spous­es were urged to orga­nize their church­es behind Per­ry; lat­er, as the cam­paign revved up, they were called upon to get out the vote. “The mis­sion is the mobi­liza­tion of pas­tors and pews as a way to restore Texas and Amer­i­ca to our Judeo-Chris­t­ian her­itage,” said David Lane, chief orga­niz­er of the events and one of Per­ry’s most ardent allies on the evan­gel­i­cal right. At the end of each brief­ing, Per­ry offered a ser­mon. “This I know,” he told atten­dees at one gath­er­ing. “He who counts every hair on our heads and every drop in the oceans; He who knows the num­ber of our days and every thought before it enters our heads; this all-know­ing, all-pow­er­ful Cre­ator loves us so much that there is not a mat­ter so triv­ial or so small that we can’t sur­ren­der it to Him and say, ‘Father, your will be done!’ I cer­tain­ly know this to be the heart­felt prayer of a gov­er­nor.”
    ...

    By 2008, the “Texas Restora­tion Project” had expand­ed to oth­er states like Neva­da, New Hamp­shire, Ohio, South Car­oli­na, Col­orado, Ten­nessee, Cal­i­for­nia, Flori­da, and Iowa, thanks to fund­ing from the Niemoller Foun­da­tion and the AFA. And as Dan Quinn of the Texas Free­dom Net­work reminds us, the Niemoller Foun­da­tion is osten­si­bly a non-par­ti­san non-prof­it group that engages in bla­tant par­ti­san­ship like putting on pro-Rick Per­ry events. That was mod­el expand­ed to oth­er states thanks to all that Niemoller/AFA fund­ing and David Lane’s orga­niz­ing efforts:

    ...
    “For us, it seemed like clas­sic machine pol­i­tics,” says Dan Quinn of the Texas Free­dom Net­work, a non­prof­it that sup­ports church-state sep­a­ra­tion. “Some of Per­ry’s biggest donors gave mon­ey to a non­prof­it that then fun­neled it into these events around the state where pas­tors attend­ed for free and heard one speak­er after anoth­er speak in praise of the gov­er­nor-and then the gov­er­nor comes out at the end. It seemed naked­ly par­ti­san and polit­i­cal.” An Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice com­plaint filed by Quin­n’s group went nowhere, with the agency say­ing it did not have suf­fi­cient evi­dence that the mon­ey was being chan­neled direct­ly into Per­ry’s cam­paign.

    Per­ry’s cam­paign sent Christ­mas cards to the pas­tors who’d attend­ed the Texas “brief­in­gs,” using the Restora­tion Pro­jec­t’s list. A week before the 2006 elec­tion, David Bar­ton and oth­ers made calls to the thou­sands who’d attend­ed, encour­ag­ing them to mar­shal their flocks behind Per­ry. It worked. Per­ry nar­row­ly won re-elec­tion with 39 per­cent of the vote.

    In 2008, Lane, with finan­cial back­ing from Leininger and the anti-gay evan­gel­i­cal group Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Asso­ci­a­tion, began to expand the Restora­tion Project into polit­i­cal­ly impor­tant states around the coun­try. Near­ly 10,000 pas­tors have attend­ed all-expens­es-paid two-day “brief­in­gs” in Neva­da, New Hamp­shire, Ohio, South Car­oli­na, Col­orado, Ten­nessee, Cal­i­for­nia, Flori­da, and Iowa. Speak­ers have includ­ed sev­er­al poten­tial pres­i­den­tial con­tenders and can­di­dates such as Michele Bach­mann, Haley Bar­bour, Newt Gin­grich, and Mike Huck­abee. This year in Flori­da, Per­ry was the fea­tured speak­er.

    “Per­ry and Lane have tru­ly mas­tered the tac­tic that Rove used for W. in Ohio in 2004,” Quinn says. “They’ve tak­en that strat­e­gy and real­ly honed it in Texas, more so than I’ve seen any­where else, and now they’ve export­ed that mod­el to most of the pres­i­den­tial bat­tle­ground states.”
    ...

    Now let’s take a clos­er look at the non-prof­it fraud the TFN accused the Niemoller Foun­da­tion of per­pe­trat­ing under the guise of ‘non-par­ti­san’ activ­i­ties. AS the TFN described, the Texas Restora­tion Project masked a sophis­ti­cat­ed vot­er iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and mobi­liza­tion strat­e­gy intend­ed to ben­e­fit the Per­ry cam­paign in 2006. A strat­e­gy with the CNP’s fin­ger­prints all over it: In addi­tion to Leininger, CNP mem­ber Bob Per­ry also made major dona­tions to the effort, with CNP mem­bers Kel­ly Shack­elford and David Bar­ton help­ing to orga­nize the oper­a­tion:

    Texas Free­dom Net­work

    TFN Asks IRS to Inves­ti­gate Foun­da­tion Linked to Texas Restora­tion Project

    Uncov­ered Tax Records Show Major Fun­ders Were Also Rick Per­ry Back­ers; Sim­i­lar Groups Back­ing Mike Huckabee’s GOP Pres­i­den­tial Bid

    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
    Jan­u­ary 10, 2008

    The Texas Free­dom Net­work is ask­ing the Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice to inves­ti­gate whether a Hous­ton-based non­prof­it foun­da­tion and its back­ers improp­er­ly sought to drag church­es into Gov. Rick Perry’s reelec­tion cam­paign in 2006.

    “It’s bad enough when politi­cians and their finan­cial back­ers mis­use faith by drag­ging our hous­es of wor­ship into par­ti­san cam­paigns,” TFN Pres­i­dent Kathy Miller said today. “It’s even worse if they break the law to do so. It now appears that the orga­niz­ers of the Texas Restora­tion Project may have done both to sup­port Gov. Perry’s reelec­tion, and by fun­nel­ing the mon­ey through a pri­vate foun­da­tion hid the source of its financ­ing from vot­ers.”

    Tax records just uncov­ered by TFN indi­cate that a Hous­ton-based 501(c)(3) non­prof­it called the Niemoller Foun­da­tion, cre­at­ed in May 2005, spent about $1.26 mil­lion in 2005 to fund the activ­i­ties of the Texas Restora­tion Project. The foundation’s list of four “sub­stan­tial con­trib­u­tors” includ­ed three major donors to Rick Perry’s polit­i­cal cam­paigns over the years: San Anto­nio busi­ness­man Jim Leininger, Hous­ton home­builder Bob Per­ry, and East Texas chick­en tycoon Bo Pil­grim. The fourth donor list­ed by the foun­da­tion, beer and wine dis­trib­u­tor Don O’Neal of Col­leyville, has also giv­en small­er amounts to Per­ry cam­paigns.

    The Texas Restora­tion Project host­ed thou­sands of pas­tors and their spous­es at six “Pas­tors’ Pol­i­cy Brief­in­gs” in 2005, at a time when Repub­li­cans Sen. Kay Bai­ley Hutchi­son and state Comp­trol­ler Car­ole Stray­horn were con­sid­er­ing seek­ing their party’s nom­i­na­tion for gov­er­nor. They spon­sored a sev­enth event to cel­e­brate Gov. Perry’s inau­gu­ra­tion in 2007. Gov. Per­ry spoke at all sev­en “brief­in­gs.” No oth­er can­di­dates or poten­tial can­di­dates for gov­er­nor in 2006 received invi­ta­tions to speak.

    Orga­ni­za­tions sim­i­lar to the Texas Restora­tion Project have cropped up in oth­er states. The South Car­oli­na Renew­al Project and Iowa Renew­al Project have host­ed speech­es by Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Mike Huck­abee. Speak­ers at those have includ­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the Texas group. The Amer­i­can Prospect is report­ing that new pas­tors’ brief­in­gs have been set for this month in advance of pri­ma­ry elec­tions in South Car­oli­na, Cal­i­for­nia and Flori­da.

    In Texas, speak­ers and orga­niz­ers were enthu­si­as­tic in their praise for Gov. Per­ry at each of the events. They also encour­aged pas­tors at the gath­er­ings to mount vot­er reg­is­tra­tion dri­ves and turn con­gre­gants out at the polls. The group’s osten­si­ble goal was to win vot­er approval in Novem­ber 2005 for a state con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment bar­ring same-sex mar­riage and civ­il unions. Those efforts, how­ev­er, appear to have masked a sophis­ti­cat­ed vot­er iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and mobi­liza­tion strat­e­gy intend­ed to ben­e­fit the Per­ry cam­paign in 2006, Miller said.

    ...

    To qual­i­fy for tax exemp­tion under the fed­er­al tax code, a 501(c)(3) orga­ni­za­tion like the Niemoller Foun­da­tion must not par­tic­i­pate or inter­vene in any polit­i­cal cam­paign on behalf of or in oppo­si­tion to any can­di­date for pub­lic office. In a 2006 speech, the IRS com­mis­sion­er said his agency had found nine non­prof­its, includ­ing church­es, had bro­ken the law by “giv­ing improp­er pref­er­en­tial treat­ment to cer­tain can­di­dates by per­mit­ting them to speak at func­tions.”

    The Rev. Lau­rence White and his wife are two of three direc­tors on the Niemoller Foundation’s gov­ern­ing board. White is also chair­man of the Texas Restora­tion Project. The foun­da­tion report­ed income of about $1.3 mil­lion in 2005 and spent all but about $29,000 in that year. Expen­di­tures cov­ered Texas Restora­tion Project activ­i­ties includ­ing more than $700,000 for the six pas­tors’ events and pay­ments to orga­ni­za­tions tied to the Texas Restora­tion Project.

    Oth­er ties between the Per­ry cam­paign and the Niemoller Foundation/Texas Restora­tion Project include the fol­low­ing:

    * The Niemoller Foundation’s expen­di­tures in 2005 includ­ed near­ly $475,000 paid to San Jac­in­to Pub­lic Affairs, an Austin-based firm that orga­nized the Texas Restora­tion Project’s events. The firm earned at least $4 mil­lion from work for the Repub­li­can Par­ty of Texas and elec­toral can­di­dates between July 2003 and Novem­ber 2007.
    * The Per­ry cam­paign sub­se­quent­ly com­mu­ni­cat­ed direct­ly with thou­sands of pas­tors recruit­ed by the Texas Restora­tion Project, sug­gest­ing coor­di­na­tion between the cam­paign and the Restora­tion Project.
    * Press reports in 2005 indi­cat­ed at least one of Gov. Perry’s pas­tors’ brief­ing speech­es was con­sid­ered a cam­paign event, with the Per­ry cam­paign releas­ing the tran­script of his speech. (“Per­ry mobi­lizes evan­gel­i­cals as gov’s race heats up,” Matt Cur­ry, Asso­ci­at­ed Press, June 11, 2005)
    * The Niemoller Foun­da­tion doled out $200,000 to Plano-based Free Mar­ket Foun­da­tion and San Anto­nio-based Jus­tice at the Gates in 2005. The two groups helped recruit pas­tors to Texas Restora­tion Project events. Free Mar­ket Foun­da­tion pres­i­dent Kel­ly Shack­elford and Jus­tice at the Gate direc­tor Susan Wed­ding­ton served on Gov. Perry’s reelec­tion steer­ing com­mit­tee.
    * Days before the guber­na­to­r­i­al elec­tion in Novem­ber 2006, the Texas Restora­tion Project sent e‑mails to pas­tors on its mail­ing list, encour­ag­ing them to par­tic­i­pate in a statewide con­fer­ence call (which took place the fol­low­ing week) to “dis­cuss what we can do this elec­tion cycle to moti­vate our pews to vote their val­ues.” Shack­elford and David Bar­ton, who until June 2006 had served as vice chair of the Texas Repub­li­can Par­ty, were among the orga­niz­ers and promi­nent speak­ers on the call.

    ...

    ———

    “TFN Asks IRS to Inves­ti­gate Foun­da­tion Linked to Texas Restora­tion Project” ; Texas Free­dom Net­work; 01/10/2008

    To qual­i­fy for tax exemp­tion under the fed­er­al tax code, a 501(c)(3) orga­ni­za­tion like the Niemoller Foun­da­tion must not par­tic­i­pate or inter­vene in any polit­i­cal cam­paign on behalf of or in oppo­si­tion to any can­di­date for pub­lic office. In a 2006 speech, the IRS com­mis­sion­er said his agency had found nine non­prof­its, includ­ing church­es, had bro­ken the law by “giv­ing improp­er pref­er­en­tial treat­ment to cer­tain can­di­dates by per­mit­ting them to speak at func­tions.””

    As the TFN found, the Niemoller Foun­da­tion claims to be a 501(c)(3) non-prof­it, mean­ing it could­n’t engage in any polit­i­cal cam­paign direct­ly on behalf or against a can­di­date while main­tain­ing its tax-exempt sta­tus. As the TFN describes it, those ear­ly pas­tor events of the “Texas Restora­tion Project” were effec­tive­ly mask­ing a sophis­ti­cat­ed vot­er iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and mobi­liza­tion strat­e­gy intend­ed to ben­e­fit the Per­ry cam­paign in 2006. That’s the mod­el that was expand­ed to oth­er states:

    ...
    The Texas Restora­tion Project host­ed thou­sands of pas­tors and their spous­es at six “Pas­tors’ Pol­i­cy Brief­in­gs” in 2005, at a time when Repub­li­cans Sen. Kay Bai­ley Hutchi­son and state Comp­trol­ler Car­ole Stray­horn were con­sid­er­ing seek­ing their party’s nom­i­na­tion for gov­er­nor. They spon­sored a sev­enth event to cel­e­brate Gov. Perry’s inau­gu­ra­tion in 2007. Gov. Per­ry spoke at all sev­en “brief­in­gs.” No oth­er can­di­dates or poten­tial can­di­dates for gov­er­nor in 2006 received invi­ta­tions to speak.

    ...

    In Texas, speak­ers and orga­niz­ers were enthu­si­as­tic in their praise for Gov. Per­ry at each of the events. They also encour­aged pas­tors at the gath­er­ings to mount vot­er reg­is­tra­tion dri­ves and turn con­gre­gants out at the polls. The group’s osten­si­ble goal was to win vot­er approval in Novem­ber 2005 for a state con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment bar­ring same-sex mar­riage and civ­il unions. Those efforts, how­ev­er, appear to have masked a sophis­ti­cat­ed vot­er iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and mobi­liza­tion strat­e­gy intend­ed to ben­e­fit the Per­ry cam­paign in 2006, Miller said.
    ...

    And as we should expect, the list fig­ures involved with the those 2006 efforts to re-elec­tion Rick Per­ry includes a num­ber of CNP mem­bers. On top of Jim Leininger, we find “Swift Vote Vet­er­ans for Truth” financier Bob Per­ry serv­ing as a major donor and Kel­ly Shack­elford and David Bar­ton help­ing to orga­nize pro-Per­ry events. Recall how not only did Mike John­son call Shack­elford his men­tor but Shack­elford served as the CNP’s vice pres­i­dent in 2020. He was also part of the del­e­ga­tion of CNP mem­bers who met with Don­ald Trump back in June of 2016 to give the Trump cam­paign their bless­ing. In oth­er words, Rick Per­ry’s 2006 re-elec­tion effort was effec­tive­ly a CNP Rick Per­ry re-elec­tion effort. Before it became a tem­plate to export to oth­er states:

    ...
    Tax records just uncov­ered by TFN indi­cate that a Hous­ton-based 501(c)(3) non­prof­it called the Niemoller Foun­da­tion, cre­at­ed in May 2005, spent about $1.26 mil­lion in 2005 to fund the activ­i­ties of the Texas Restora­tion Project. The foundation’s list of four “sub­stan­tial con­trib­u­tors” includ­ed three major donors to Rick Perry’s polit­i­cal cam­paigns over the years: San Anto­nio busi­ness­man Jim Leininger, Hous­ton home­builder Bob Per­ry, and East Texas chick­en tycoon Bo Pil­grim. The fourth donor list­ed by the foun­da­tion, beer and wine dis­trib­u­tor Don O’Neal of Col­leyville, has also giv­en small­er amounts to Per­ry cam­paigns.

    ...

    The Rev. Lau­rence White and his wife are two of three direc­tors on the Niemoller Foundation’s gov­ern­ing board. White is also chair­man of the Texas Restora­tion Project. The foun­da­tion report­ed income of about $1.3 mil­lion in 2005 and spent all but about $29,000 in that year. Expen­di­tures cov­ered Texas Restora­tion Project activ­i­ties includ­ing more than $700,000 for the six pas­tors’ events and pay­ments to orga­ni­za­tions tied to the Texas Restora­tion Project.

    Oth­er ties between the Per­ry cam­paign and the Niemoller Foundation/Texas Restora­tion Project include the fol­low­ing:

    * The Niemoller Foundation’s expen­di­tures in 2005 includ­ed near­ly $475,000 paid to San Jac­in­to Pub­lic Affairs, an Austin-based firm that orga­nized the Texas Restora­tion Project’s events. The firm earned at least $4 mil­lion from work for the Repub­li­can Par­ty of Texas and elec­toral can­di­dates between July 2003 and Novem­ber 2007.
    * The Per­ry cam­paign sub­se­quent­ly com­mu­ni­cat­ed direct­ly with thou­sands of pas­tors recruit­ed by the Texas Restora­tion Project, sug­gest­ing coor­di­na­tion between the cam­paign and the Restora­tion Project.
    * Press reports in 2005 indi­cat­ed at least one of Gov. Perry’s pas­tors’ brief­ing speech­es was con­sid­ered a cam­paign event, with the Per­ry cam­paign releas­ing the tran­script of his speech. (“Per­ry mobi­lizes evan­gel­i­cals as gov’s race heats up,” Matt Cur­ry, Asso­ci­at­ed Press, June 11, 2005)
    * The Niemoller Foun­da­tion doled out $200,000 to Plano-based Free Mar­ket Foun­da­tion and San Anto­nio-based Jus­tice at the Gates in 2005. The two groups helped recruit pas­tors to Texas Restora­tion Project events. Free Mar­ket Foun­da­tion pres­i­dent Kel­ly Shack­elford and Jus­tice at the Gate direc­tor Susan Wed­ding­ton served on Gov. Perry’s reelec­tion steer­ing com­mit­tee.
    * Days before the guber­na­to­r­i­al elec­tion in Novem­ber 2006, the Texas Restora­tion Project sent e‑mails to pas­tors on its mail­ing list, encour­ag­ing them to par­tic­i­pate in a statewide con­fer­ence call (which took place the fol­low­ing week) to “dis­cuss what we can do this elec­tion cycle to moti­vate our pews to vote their val­ues.” Shack­elford and David Bar­ton, who until June 2006 had served as vice chair of the Texas Repub­li­can Par­ty, were among the orga­niz­ers and promi­nent speak­ers on the call.
    ...

    And what hap­pened to the TFN’s calls for the IRS to revoke the Niemoller Foun­da­tion’s tax-exempt sta­tus? The IRS ruled in the Niemoller Foun­da­tion’s favor in 2009. That’s also part of the con­text of the broad­er Amer­i­can Renew­al Project active today. This church-focused get-out-the-vote mod­el may have start­ed as a Rick Per­ry re-elec­tion effort but it was the kind of mod­el these theocrats were eager to export to one state after anoth­er. Which is exact­ly what they’ve done, thanks, in part to the IRS’s unwill­ing­ness to address this bla­tant abuse of tax exempt non-prof­it sta­tus. But also thanks to the seem­ing­ly end­less financ­ing finances from peo­ple with more mon­ey than God and plans to reshape soci­ety to ensure they get even more.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | August 14, 2024, 10:23 pm
  3. Oh look, the CNP had anoth­er group exposed. This time it was ProP­ub­li­ca, report­ing on a new domin­ion­ist mega-donor orga­niz­ing enti­ty: The Zik­lag group. It’s anoth­er 501(c)(3) tax-exempt ‘char­i­ty’ that in real­i­ty exists to help Repub­li­cans win elec­tions. As the founder of the group, Ken Eldred, puts it, he want­ed to want­ed to cre­ate a donor net­work like the one cre­at­ed by Charles and David Koch but for Chris­tians. Real­ly wealthy Chris­tians. Aspir­ing mem­bers need a net worth of $25 mil­lion to even apply. And if they aren’t Domin­ion­ist evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians they prob­a­bly aren’t going to want to apply any­way. The Zik­lag group is like the Koch net­work but specif­i­cal­ly for Domin­ion­ists.

    This isn’t the first time we’ve seen reports on a ‘Zik­lag’ domin­ion­ist ini­tia­tive in recent years. As we’ve seen, Eldred also found­ed Unit­ed in Pur­pose, an orga­ni­za­tion that appears to large­ly exist to pro­mote domin­ion­ist projects. Recall how Unit­ed in Pur­pose’s for­mer direc­tor, CNP Mem­ber Bill Dal­las, co-orga­nized the big gath­er­ing of evan­gel­i­cals in New York City in June of 2016 to effec­tive­ly give their bless­ings to the then-nom­i­nat­ed Don­ald Trump. Then, in Feb­ru­ary of 2020, Eldred played a key role in orga­niz­ingthe for­mu­la­tion of CNP plans to deal with the results of the 2020 elec­tion in the event of an pop­u­lar or elec­toral vote loss. They devel­oped a three-pronged strat­e­gy: The first prong was an expan­sion of the use of vot­er data to turn out the GOP vote and sup­press the Demo­c­ra­t­ic vote. The sec­ond was to mobi­lize sup­port­ers in swing states to ignite Tea Par­ty-like protests against COVID lock­downs. The third was find­ing physi­cians will­ing to pub­licly dis­miss the dan­gers of COVID in a media blitz. Unit­ed in Pur­pose called the cam­paign “Oper­a­tion Zik­lag”.

    We’ve also seen Eldred’s Unit­ed in Pur­pose show in rela­tion to a num­ber of oth­er key CNP orga­niz­ers, like Ralph Reed and Gin­ni Thomas. For exam­ple, Unit­ed in Pur­pose part­ners with Ralph Reed’s Faith and Free­dom Coali­tion in GOTV efforts. And then there’s the fact that Gin­ni Thomas start­ed emcee­ing an annu­al Impact Awards awards cer­e­mo­ny cel­e­brat­ing some of the best-known Trump allies, put on in con­junc­tion with Unit­ed in Pur­pose. Plus, when Gin­ni Thomas tried to per­suade state leg­is­la­tors in her efforts to over­turn the 2020 elec­tion results uti­liz­ing the web­site everylegalvote.com to reach out to the leg­is­la­tors, she was using a web­site built by Unit­ed in Pur­pose. And then there’s the fact that Unit­ed in Pur­pose’s board mem­bers include CNP exec­u­tive direc­tor Bob McEwen and has a net­work of allies and clients that include the Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Asso­ciate, the Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil, and Reed’s Faith & Free­dom Coali­tion. And as we’ll see in the fol­low­ing ProP­ub­li­ca report, it was CNP mem­ber Char­lie Kirk who was invit­ed to the 2023 Zik­lag gath­er­ing where he made the pitch that Zik­lag was the counter to George Soros and oth­er lib­er­al bil­lion­aires. Kirk, McEwen, Reed, and Thomas all very active CNP orga­niz­ers, which is what Unit­ed in Pur­pose appears to be designed to facil­i­tate. Inter­est­ing­ly, Eldred, the osten­si­ble leader of the group, stands out for not show­ing up on the leaked CNP mem­bers lists. Almost every­one else involved with this sto­ry is a CNP mem­ber.

    The group appears to made copi­ous use of the ‘Sev­en Moun­tains’ domin­ion­ist ter­mi­nol­o­gy. The chair of the ‘edu­ca­tion moun­tain’ is CNP mem­ber Peter Bohlinger. As we’re going to see, whip­ping up hys­ter­ics over edu­ca­tion is one of the prongs in the groups three-pronged strat­e­gy for 2024. Specif­i­cal­ly, whip­ping up hys­ter­ics over trans­gen­der chil­dren. That ini­tia­tive is dubbed “Watch­tow­er”, along with the “Check­mate” prong — focused on ‘elec­tion integri­ty’ efforts — and the “Steeple­chase” prong ded­i­cat­ed to polit­i­cal­ly mobi­liz­ing con­ser­v­a­tive pas­tors. While there’s no indi­ca­tion David Lane’s Amer­i­can Renew­al Project is involved with the Steeple­chase efforts, it’s hard not to notice the enor­mous over­lap.

    As we should prob­a­bly expect, the ‘Check­mate’ ini­tia­tive cen­ters around anoth­er major CNP fig­ure: Cle­ta Mitchell. As we’ve seen, it was Mitchell who played a key orga­niz­ing role in the CNP efforts to over­turn the 2020 elec­tion, cul­mi­nat­ing in the Jan­u­ary 6 Capi­tol insur­rec­tion. An insur­rec­tion with the CNP’s fin­ger­prints all over it. Notably, the sup­port from Zik­lag for Mitchell appears to have been chan­neled through a $600,000 dona­tion in 2022 to the Con­ser­v­a­tive Part­ner­ship Insti­tute (CPI). Recall how the CPI serves as a kind of CNP orga­ni­za­tion­al moth­er­ship, spin­ning off all sorts of new groups and deeply involved with the Sched­ule F/Project 2025 plot. It’s a reminder that, while this Zik­lag Group is por­trayed as a kind of inde­pen­dent domin­ion­ist orga­niz­ing enti­ty, it’s real­ly just anoth­er CNP front group. Albeit one that is more explic­it­ly ‘Sev­en Moun­tains’ ori­ent­ed than usu­al.

    Fit­ting­ly, it sounds like one of the lead­ing fig­ures in the pop­u­lar­iza­tion of the Sev­en Moun­tains man­date, Lance Wall­nau, is also play­ing a lead­ing role in this Zik­lag Group. In 2013, Wall­nau co-authored the book Invad­ing Baby­lon: The 7 Moun­tain Man­date. And as we also saw, Wall­nau was push­ing the idea that Don­ald Trump is a God-ordained change agent anal­o­gous to the Bib­li­cal fig­ure King Cyrus in the first year of Trump’s pres­i­den­cy. Wall­nau sits on the board of the Truth and Lib­er­ty Coali­tion, along­side David Bar­ton. The group tar­gets pub­lic schools and col­lab­o­rates with the CNP’s Moms for Lib­er­ty. In March 2022, Wall­nau bragged that “we” had “flood­ed” South­lake, Texas with “one thou­sand peo­ple” who “took over the school boards… the city coun­cil… the mayor’s office.” He added that, “The media doesn’t know it because we nev­er said it was a church ini­tia­tive. We called it a com­mu­ni­ty ini­tia­tive.”

    And yes, the Zik­lag Group claims to be a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt non-par­ti­san char­i­ty despite hav­ing three major ini­tia­tives focused on par­ti­san elec­tion results. As mul­ti­ple tax experts tell ProP­ub­li­ca, this appears to be a gross mis­rep­re­se­n­a­tion for an enti­ty blant­ly engaged in par­ti­san orga­niz­ing. But as we’ve also seen, trolling the IRS with bla­tant­ly fraud­u­lent claims of non-par­ti­san­ship is a long-stand­ing pas­time of this domin­ion­ist net­work. As the ProP­ub­lic report points out, while con­fi­den­tial donor net­works reg­u­lar­ly chan­nel hun­dreds of mil­lionos of dol­lars into polit­i­cal and char­i­ta­ble groups — like the lib­er­al Democ­ra­cy Alliance to the Koch-affil­i­at­ed Stand Togeth­er orga­ni­za­tion — those groups don’t claim to be 501(c)(3) char­i­ties like this Zik­lag is claim­ing. As experts describe, Zik­lag appears to be the first coor­di­nat­ed effort to get wealthy donors to fund an overt­ly Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist agen­da. This is also a good time to recall how two of the key enti­ties back­ing the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project — the Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Asso­ci­a­tion and the Niemoller Foun­da­tion — bothclaim to be and 501(c)(3) char­i­ties. In oth­er words, Zik­lag isn’t the first domin­ion­ist 501(c)(3). But it does appear to be nov­el in its focus on mega-donors-only for domin­ion­ist orga­niz­ing.

    So that’s all part of the back­ground of this seem­ing­ly ‘new’ domin­ion­ist net­work ProP­ub­li­ca report­ed on last month. And in a tech­ni­cal sense it is rel­a­tive­ly new. Or new-ish. And yet, it’s also obvi­ous­ly just one more enti­ty in this same old CNP domin­ion­ist net­work that has been accru­ing pow­er, and ambi­tion, for decades. For char­i­ty, of course:

    ProP­ub­li­ca

    Inside Zik­lag, the Secret Orga­ni­za­tion of Wealthy Chris­tians Try­ing to Sway the Elec­tion and Change the Coun­try

    The lit­tle-known char­i­ty is backed by famous con­ser­v­a­tive donors, includ­ing the fam­i­lies behind Hob­by Lob­by and Uline. It’s spend­ing mil­lions to make a big polit­i­cal push for this elec­tion — but it may be vio­lat­ing the law.

    by Andy Kroll, ProP­ub­li­ca, and Nick Surgey, Doc­u­ment­ed
    July 13, 5 a.m. EDT

    A net­work of ultra­wealthy Chris­t­ian donors is spend­ing near­ly $12 mil­lion to mobi­lize Repub­li­can-lean­ing vot­ers and purge more than a mil­lion peo­ple from the rolls in key swing states, aim­ing to tilt the 2024 elec­tion in favor of for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump.

    These pre­vi­ous­ly unre­port­ed plans are the work of a group named Zik­lag, a lit­tle-known char­i­ty whose donors have includ­ed some of the wealth­i­est con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian fam­i­lies in the nation, includ­ing the bil­lion­aire Uih­lein fam­i­ly, who made a for­tune in office sup­plies, the Greens, who run Hob­by Lob­by, and the Wallers, who own the Jock­ey appar­el cor­po­ra­tion. Recip­i­ents of Ziklag’s largesse include Alliance Defend­ing Free­dom, which is the Chris­t­ian legal group that led the over­turn­ing of Roe v. Wade, plus the nation­al pro-Trump group Turn­ing Point USA and a con­stel­la­tion of right-of-cen­ter advo­ca­cy groups.

    ProP­ub­li­ca and Doc­u­ment­ed obtained thou­sands of Ziklag’s mem­bers-only email newslet­ters, inter­nal videos, strat­e­gy doc­u­ments and fundrais­ing pitch­es, none of which has been pre­vi­ous­ly made pub­lic. They reveal the group’s 2024 plans and its long-term goal to under­pin every major sphere of influ­ence in Amer­i­can soci­ety with Chris­tian­i­ty. In the Bible, the city of Zik­lag was where David and his sol­diers found refuge dur­ing their war with King Saul.

    ...

    Ziklag’s 2024 agen­da reads like the work of a polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tion. It plans to pour mon­ey into mobi­liz­ing vot­ers in Ari­zona who are “sym­pa­thet­ic to Repub­li­cans” in order to secure “10,640 addi­tion­al unique votes” — almost the exact mar­gin of Pres­i­dent Joe Biden’s win there in 2020. The group also intends to use con­tro­ver­sial AI soft­ware to enable mass chal­lenges to the eli­gi­bil­i­ty of hun­dreds of thou­sands of vot­ers in com­pet­i­tive states.

    In a record­ing of a 2023 inter­nal strat­e­gy dis­cus­sion, a Zik­lag offi­cial stressed that the objec­tive was the same in oth­er swing states. “The goal is to win,” the offi­cial said. “If 75,000 peo­ple wins the White House, then how do we get 150,000 peo­ple so we make sure we win?”

    Accord­ing to the Zik­lag files, the group has divid­ed its 2024 activ­i­ties into three dif­fer­ent oper­a­tions tar­get­ing vot­ers in bat­tle­ground states: Check­mate, focused on fund­ing so-called elec­tion integri­ty groups; Steeple­chase, con­cen­trat­ed on using church­es and pas­tors to get out the vote; and Watch­tow­er, aimed at gal­va­niz­ing vot­ers around the issues of “parental rights” and oppo­si­tion to trans­gen­der rights and poli­cies sup­port­ing health care for trans peo­ple.

    ...

    But Zik­lag is not a polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tion: It is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt char­i­ty, the same legal des­ig­na­tion as the Unit­ed Way or Boys and Girls Club. Such orga­ni­za­tions do not have to pub­licly dis­close their fun­ders, and dona­tions are tax deductible. In exchange, they are “absolute­ly pro­hib­it­ed from direct­ly or indi­rect­ly par­tic­i­pat­ing in, or inter­ven­ing in, any polit­i­cal cam­paign on behalf of (or in oppo­si­tion to) any can­di­date for elec­tive pub­lic office,”accord­ing to the IRS.

    ProP­ub­li­ca and Doc­u­ment­ed pre­sent­ed the find­ings of their inves­ti­ga­tion to six non­par­ti­san lawyers and legal experts. All expressed con­cern that Zik­lag was test­ing or vio­lat­ing the law.

    The report­ing by ProP­ub­li­ca and Doc­u­ment­ed “casts seri­ous doubt on this organization’s sta­tus as a 501(c)(3) orga­ni­za­tion,” said Roger Col­in­vaux, a pro­fes­sor at Catholic University’s Colum­bus School of Law.

    “I think it’s across the line with­out a ques­tion,” said Lloyd Hitoshi May­er, a Uni­ver­si­ty of Notre Dame law pro­fes­sor.

    Zik­lag offi­cials did not respond to a detailed list of ques­tions. Mar­tin Nuss­baum, an attor­ney who said he was the group’s gen­er­al coun­sel, said in a writ­ten response that “some of the state­ments in your email are cor­rect. Oth­ers are not,” but he then did not respond to a request to spec­i­fy what was erro­neous. The group is seek­ing to “align” the cul­ture “with Bib­li­cal val­ues and the Amer­i­can con­sti­tu­tion, and that they will serve the com­mon good,” he wrote. Using the offi­cial tax name for Zik­lag, he wrote that “USATrans­Form does not endorse can­di­dates for pub­lic office.” He declined to com­ment on the group’s mem­bers.

    There are no bright lines or mag­ic words that the IRS might look for when it inves­ti­gates a char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tion for engag­ing in polit­i­cal inter­ven­tion, said May­er. Instead, the agency exam­ines the facts and cir­cum­stances of a group’s activ­i­ties and makes a con­clu­sion about whether the group vio­lat­ed the law.

    The biggest risk for char­i­ties that inter­vene in polit­i­cal cam­paigns, May­er said, is loss of their tax-exempt sta­tus. Donors’ abil­i­ty to deduct their dona­tions can be a major sell, not to men­tion it can cre­ate “a halo effect” for the group, May­er added.

    “They may be able to get more mon­ey this way,” he said, adding, “It boils down to tax eva­sion at the end of the day.”

    “Domin­ion Over the Sev­en Moun­tains”

    Zik­lag has large­ly escaped scruti­ny until now. The group describes itself as a “pri­vate, con­fi­den­tial, invi­ta­tion-only com­mu­ni­ty of high-net-worth Chris­t­ian fam­i­lies.”

    Accord­ing to inter­nal doc­u­ments, it boasts more than 125 mem­bers that include busi­ness exec­u­tives, pas­tors, media lead­ers and oth­er promi­nent con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians. Poten­tial new mem­bers, one doc­u­ment says, should have a “con­cern for cul­ture” demon­strat­ed by past dona­tions to faith-based or polit­i­cal caus­es, as well as a net worth of $25 mil­lion or more. None of the donors respond­ed to requests for com­ment.

    Tax records show rapid growth in the group’s finances in recent years. Its annu­al rev­enue climbed from $1.3 mil­lion in 2018 to $6 mil­lion in 2019 and near­ly $12 mil­lion in 2022, which is the lat­est fil­ing avail­able.

    The group’s spend­ing is not on the scale of major con­ser­v­a­tive fun­ders such as Miri­am Adel­son or Barre Seid, the elec­tron­ics mag­nate who gave $1.6 bil­lion to a group led by con­ser­v­a­tive legal activist Leonard Leo. But its fund­ing and strat­e­gy rep­re­sent one of the clear­est links yet between the Chris­t­ian right and the “elec­tion integri­ty” move­ment fueled by Trump’s base­less claims about vot­ing fraud. Even sev­er­al mil­lion dol­lars fund­ing mass chal­lenges to vot­ers in swing coun­ties can make an impact, legal and elec­tion experts say.

    Zik­lag was the brain­child of a Sil­i­con Val­ley entre­pre­neur named Ken Eldred. It emerged from a pre­vi­ous orga­ni­za­tion found­ed by Eldred called Unit­ed In Pur­pose, which aimed to get more Chris­tians active in the civic are­na, accord­ing to Bill Dal­las, the group’s for­mer direc­tor. Unit­ed In Pur­pose gen­er­at­ed atten­tion in June 2016 when it orga­nized a major meet­ing between then-can­di­date Trump and hun­dreds of evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers.

    After Trump was elect­ed in 2016, Eldred had an idea, accord­ing to Dal­las. “He says, ‘I want all the wealthy Chris­t­ian peo­ple to come togeth­er,’” Dal­las recalled in an inter­view. Eldred told Dal­las that he want­ed to cre­ate a donor net­work like the one cre­at­ed by Charles and David Koch but for Chris­tians. He pro­posed nam­ing it David’s Mighty Men, Dal­las said. Female mem­bers balked. Dal­las found the pas­sage in Chron­i­cles that ref­er­ences David’s sol­diers and read that they met in the city of Zik­lag, and so they chose the name Zik­lag.

    The group’s stature grew after Trump took office. Vice Pres­i­dent Mike Pence appeared at a Zik­lag event, as did for­mer Hous­ing and Urban Devel­op­ment Sec­re­tary Ben Car­son, Sen. Ted Cruz, then-Rep. Mark Mead­ows and oth­er mem­bers of Con­gress. In its pri­vate newslet­ter, Zik­lag claims that a coali­tion of groups it assem­bled played “a huge­ly sig­nif­i­cant role in the selec­tion, hear­ings and con­fir­ma­tion process” of Amy Coney Bar­rett for a Supreme Court seat in late 2020.

    Con­fi­den­tial donor net­works reg­u­lar­ly invest hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars into polit­i­cal and char­i­ta­ble groups, from the lib­er­al Democ­ra­cy Alliance to the Koch-affil­i­at­ed Stand Togeth­er orga­ni­za­tion on the right. But unlike Zik­lag, nei­ther of those orga­ni­za­tions is legal­ly set up as a true char­i­ty.

    Zik­lag appears to be the first coor­di­nat­ed effort to get wealthy donors to fund an overt­ly Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist agen­da, accord­ing to his­to­ri­ans, legal experts and oth­er peo­ple famil­iar with the group. “It shows that this idea isn’t being dis­missed as fringe in the way that it might have been in the past,” said Mary Ziegler, a legal his­to­ri­an and Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Davis law pro­fes­sor.

    ...

    One the­ol­o­gy pro­mot­ed by Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist lead­ers is the Sev­en Moun­tain Man­date. Each moun­tain rep­re­sents a major indus­try or a sphere of pub­lic life: arts and media, busi­ness, church, edu­ca­tion, fam­i­ly, gov­ern­ment, and sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy. Ziklag’s goal, the doc­u­ments say, is to “take domin­ion over the Sev­en Moun­tains,” fund­ing Chris­t­ian projects or installing devout Chris­tians in lead­er­ship posi­tions to reshape each moun­tain in a god­ly way.

    To address their con­cerns about edu­ca­tion, Ziklag’s lead­ers and allies have focused on the pub­lic-school sys­tem. In a 2021 Zik­lag meet­ing, Ziklag’s edu­ca­tion moun­tain chair, Peter Bohlinger, said that Ziklag’s goal “is to take down the edu­ca­tion sys­tem as we know it today.” The pro­duc­ers of the film “Sound of Free­dom,” fea­tur­ing Jim Caviezel as an anti-sex-traf­fick­ing activist, screened an ear­ly cut of the film at a Zik­lag con­fer­ence and asked for funds, accord­ing to Dal­las.

    The Sev­en Moun­tains the­ol­o­gy sig­nals a break from Chris­t­ian fun­da­men­tal­ists such as Jer­ry Fal­well Sr. and Pat Robert­son. In the 1980s and ’90s, Falwell’s Moral Major­i­ty focused on work­ing with­in the demo­c­ra­t­ic process to mobi­lize evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers and elect politi­cians with a Chris­t­ian world­view.

    The Sev­en Moun­tains the­ol­o­gy embraces a dif­fer­ent, less demo­c­ra­t­ic approach to gain­ing pow­er. “If the Moral Major­i­ty is about gal­va­niz­ing the vot­ers, the Sev­en Moun­tains is a rev­o­lu­tion­ary mod­el: You need to con­quer these moun­tains and let change flow down from the top,” said Matthew Tay­lor, a senior schol­ar at the Insti­tute for Islam­ic, Chris­t­ian and Jew­ish Stud­ies and an expert on Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism. “It’s an out­lined pro­gram for Chris­t­ian suprema­cy.”

    “The Amor­phous, Tumul­tuous Wild West”

    The Chris­t­ian right has had com­pelling spokes­peo­ple and fierce com­mit­ment to its caus­es, whether they were end­ing abor­tion rights, allow­ing prayer in schools or dis­play­ing the Ten Com­mand­ments out­side of pub­lic build­ings. What the move­ment has often lacked, its lead­ers argue, is suf­fi­cient fund­ing.

    ...

    Speak­ing late last year to an invi­ta­tion-only gath­er­ing of Zik­lag­gers, as mem­bers are known, Char­lie Kirk, who leads the pro-Trump Turn­ing Point USA orga­ni­za­tion, named left-lean­ing phil­an­thropists who were, in his view, fund­ing the destruc­tion of the nation: MacKen­zie Scott, ex-wife of Ama­zon founder Jeff Bezos; bil­lion­aire investor and lib­er­al phil­an­thropist George Soros; and the two founders of Google, Lar­ry Page and Sergey Brin.

    “Why are sec­u­lar peo­ple giv­ing more gen­er­ous­ly than Chris­tians?” Kirk asked, accord­ing to a record­ing of his remarks. “It would be a tragedy,” he added, “if peo­ple who hate life, hate our coun­try, hate beau­ty and hate God want­ed it more than us.”

    “Zik­lag is the place,” Kirk told the donors. “Zik­lag is the counter.”

    Sim­i­lar­ly, Pence, in a 2021 appear­ance at a pri­vate Zik­lag event, praised the group for its role in “chang­ing lives, and it’s advanced the cause, it’s advanced the king­dom.”

    A dri­ving force behind Ziklag’s efforts is Lance Wall­nau, a promi­nent Chris­t­ian evan­ge­list and influ­encer based in Texas who is described by Zik­lag as a “Sev­en Moun­tains vision­ary & advi­sor.” The fiery preach­er is one of the most influ­en­tial fig­ures on the Chris­t­ian right, experts say, a bridge between Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism and Trump. He was one of the ear­li­est evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers to endorse Trump in 2015 and lat­er pub­lished a book titled “God’s Chaos Can­di­date: Don­ald J. Trump and the Amer­i­can Unrav­el­ing.” More than 1 mil­lion peo­ple fol­low him on Face­book. He doesn’t try to hide his views: “Yes, I am a Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist,” he said dur­ing one of his livestreams in 2021. (Wall­nau did not respond to requests for com­ment.)

    Wall­nau has remained a Trump ally. He called Trump’s time in office a “spir­i­tu­al war­fare pres­i­den­cy” and pop­u­lar­ized the idea that Trump was a “mod­ern-day Cyrus,” refer­ring to the Per­sian king who defeat­ed the Baby­lo­ni­ans and allowed the Jew­ish peo­ple to return to Jerusalem. Wall­nau has vis­it­ed with Trump at the White House and Trump Tow­er; last Novem­ber, he livestreamed from a black-tie gala at Mar-a-Lago where Trump spoke.

    Wall­nau did not come up with the notion that Chris­tians should try to take con­trol of key areas of Amer­i­can soci­ety. But he improved on the idea by intro­duc­ing the con­cept of the sev­en moun­tains and urged Chris­tians to set about con­quer­ing them. The con­cept caught on, said Tay­lor, because it empow­ered Chris­tians with a sense of pur­pose in every sphere of life.

    As a preach­er in the inde­pen­dent charis­mat­ic tra­di­tion, a fast-grow­ing off­shoot of Pen­te­costal­ism that is unaf­fil­i­at­ed with any major denom­i­na­tion, Wall­nau and his acolytes believe that God speaks to and through mod­ern-day apos­tles and prophets — a ver­sion of Chris­tian­i­ty that Tay­lor, in his forth­com­ing book “The Vio­lent Take It By Force,” describes as “the amor­phous, tumul­tuous Wild West of the mod­ern church.” Wall­nau and his ideas lin­gered at the fringes of Amer­i­can Chris­tian­i­ty for years, until the boost from the Trump pres­i­den­cy.

    The Zik­lag files detail not only what Chris­tians should do to con­quer all sev­en moun­tains, but also what their goals will be once they’ve tak­en the sum­mit. For the gov­ern­ment moun­tain, one key doc­u­ment says that “the bib­li­cal role of gov­ern­ment is to pro­mote good and pun­ish evil” and that “the word of God and prayer play a sig­nif­i­cant role in pol­i­cy deci­sions.”

    For the arts and enter­tain­ment moun­tain, goals include that 80% of the movies pro­duced be rat­ed G or PG “with a moral sto­ry,” and that many peo­ple who work in the indus­try “oper­ate under a biblical/moral world­view.” The edu­ca­tion sec­tion says that home­school­ing should be a “fun­da­men­tal right” and the gov­ern­ment “must not favor one form of edu­ca­tion over anoth­er.”

    Oth­er inter­nal Zik­lag doc­u­ments voice strong oppo­si­tion to same-sex mar­riage and trans­gen­der rights. One reads: “trans­gen­der accep­tance = Final sign before immi­nent col­lapse.”

    Head­ing into the 2024 elec­tion year, Zik­lag exec­u­tive direc­tor Drew Hiss warned mem­bers in an inter­nal video that “loom­ing above and beyond those sev­en moun­tains is this evil force that’s been man­i­fest­ing itself.” He described it as “a con­trol­ling, evil, dia­bol­i­cal pres­ence, real­ly, with tyran­ny in mind.” That pres­ence was con­cen­trat­ed in the gov­ern­ment moun­tain, he said. If Zik­lag­gers want­ed to save their coun­try from “the pow­ers of dark­ness,” they need­ed to focus their ener­gies on that gov­ern­ment moun­tain or else none of their work in any oth­er area would suc­ceed.

    “Oper­a­tion Check­mate”

    In the fall of 2023, Wall­nau sat in a gray arm­chair in his TV stu­dio. A large TV screen behind him flashed a sin­gle word: “ZIKLAG.”

    “You almost hate to put it out this clear­ly,” he said as he detailed Ziklag’s elec­toral strat­e­gy, “because if some­body else gets ahold of this, they’ll freak out.”

    He was joined on set by Hiss, who had just become the group’s new day-to-day leader. The two men were there to record a spe­cial mes­sage to Zik­lag mem­bers that laid out the group’s ambi­tious plans for the upcom­ing elec­tion year.

    The forces arrayed against Chris­tians were many, accord­ing to the con­fi­den­tial video. They were locked in a “spir­i­tu­al bat­tle,” Hiss said, against Democ­rats who were a “rad­i­cal left Marx­ist force.” Biden, Wall­nau said, was a senile old man and “an emp­ty suit with an agen­da that’s writ­ten and man­aged by some­body else.”

    In the files, Zik­lag says it plans to give out near­ly $12 mil­lion to a con­stel­la­tion of groups work­ing on the ground to shift the 2024 elec­torate in favor of Trump and oth­er Repub­li­cans.

    A promi­nent con­ser­v­a­tive get­ting mon­ey from Zik­lag is Cle­ta Mitchell, a lawyer and Trump ally who joined the the Jan­u­ary 2021 phone call when then-Pres­i­dent Trump asked Georgia’s sec­re­tary of state to “find” enough votes to flip Geor­gia in Trump’s favor.

    Mitchell now leads a net­work of “elec­tion integri­ty” coali­tions in swing states that have spent the last three years advo­cat­ing for changes to vot­ing rules and how elec­tions are run. Accord­ing to one inter­nal newslet­ter, Zik­lag was an ear­ly fun­der of Mitchell’s post-2020 “elec­tion integri­ty” activism, which vot­ing-rights experts have crit­i­cized for stok­ing unfound­ed fears about vot­er fraud and seek­ing to unfair­ly remove peo­ple from vot­ing rolls. In 2022, Zik­lag donat­ed $600,000 to the Con­ser­v­a­tive Part­ner­ship Insti­tute, which in turn funds Mitchell’s elec­tion-integri­ty work. Inter­nal Zik­lag doc­u­ments show that it pro­vid­ed fund­ing to enable Mitchell to set up elec­tion integri­ty infra­struc­ture in Flori­da, North Car­oli­na and Wis­con­sin.

    Now Mitchell is pro­mot­ing a tool called EagleAI, which has claimed to use arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence to auto­mate and speed up the process of chal­leng­ing inel­i­gi­ble vot­ers. EagleAI is already being used to mount mass chal­lenges to the eli­gi­bil­i­ty of hun­dreds of thou­sands of vot­ers in com­pet­i­tive states, and, with Ziklag’s help, the group plans to ramp up those efforts.

    Accord­ing to an inter­nal video, Zik­lag plans to invest $800,000 in “EagleAI’s clean the rolls project,” which would be one of the largest known dona­tions to the group.

    Zik­lag lists two key objec­tives for Oper­a­tion Check­mate: “Secure 10,640 addi­tion­al unique votes in Ari­zona (mir­ror­ing the 2020 mar­gin of 10,447 votes), and remove up to one mil­lion inel­i­gi­ble reg­is­tra­tions and around 280,000 inel­i­gi­ble vot­ers in Ari­zona, Neva­da, Geor­gia, and Wis­con­sin.

    In a record­ing of an inter­nal Zoom call, Ziklag’s Mark Bour­geois stressed the elec­toral val­ue of tar­get­ing Ari­zona. “I care about Mari­co­pa Coun­ty,” Bour­geois said at one point, refer­ring to Arizona’s largest coun­ty, which Biden won four years ago. “That’s how we win.”

    For Oper­a­tion Watch­tow­er, Wall­nau explained in a mem­bers-only video that trans­gen­der pol­i­cy was a “wedge issue” that could be deci­sive in turn­ing out vot­ers tired of hear­ing about Trump.

    The left had won the bat­tle over the “homo­sex­u­al issue,” Wall­nau said. “But on trans­gen­derism, there’s a prob­lem and they know it.” He con­tin­ued: “They’re gonna wan­na talk about Trump, Trump, Trump. … Mean­while, if we talk about ‘It’s not about Trump. It’s about par­ents and their chil­dren, and the state is a threat,’” that could be the “tar­get on the fore­head of Goliath.”

    The Zik­lag files describe tac­tics the group plans to use around parental rights — poli­cies that make it eas­i­er for par­ents to con­trol what’s taught in pub­lic schools — to turn out con­ser­v­a­tive vot­ers. In a fundrais­ing video, the group says it plans to under­write a “mes­sag­ing and data lab” focused on parental rights that will sup­ply “win­ning mes­sag­ing to all our part­ner groups to cre­ate uni­fied focus among all on the right.” The goal, the video says, is to make parental rights “the dif­fer­ence-mak­er in the 2024 elec­tion.”

    Accord­ing to Wall­nau, Zik­lag also plans to fund bal­lot ini­tia­tives in sev­en key states — Ari­zona, Col­orado, Flori­da, Michi­gan, Mon­tana, Neva­da and Ohio — that take aim at the trans­gen­der com­mu­ni­ty by seek­ing to ban “gen­i­tal muti­la­tion.” The sev­en states tar­get­ed are either pres­i­den­tial bat­tle­grounds or have com­pet­i­tive U.S. Sen­ate races. None of the ini­tia­tives is on a state bal­lot yet.

    ...

    The last prong of Ziklag’s 2024 strat­e­gy is Oper­a­tion Steeple­chase, which urges con­ser­v­a­tive pas­tors to mobi­lize their con­gre­gants to vote in this year’s elec­tion. This project will work in coor­di­na­tion with sev­er­al promi­nent con­ser­v­a­tive groups that sup­port for­mer pres­i­dent Trump’s reelec­tion, such as Turn­ing Point USA’s faith-based group, the Faith and Free­dom Coali­tion run by con­ser­v­a­tive oper­a­tive Ralph Reed and the Amer­i­ca First Pol­i­cy Insti­tute, one of sev­er­al groups close­ly allied with Trump.

    Zik­lag says in a 2023 inter­nal video that it and its allies will “coor­di­nate exten­sive pas­tor and church out­reach through pas­tor sum­mits, church-focused mes­sag­ing and events and the cre­ation of pas­tor resources.” As preach­er and activist John Amanchuk­wu said at a Zik­lag event, “We need a church that’s will­ing to do any­thing and every­thing to get to the point where we reclaim that which was stolen from us.”

    Six tax experts reviewed the elec­tion-relat­ed strat­e­gy dis­cus­sions and tac­tics report­ed in this sto­ry. All of them said the activ­i­ties test­ed or ran afoul of the law gov­ern­ing 501(c)(3) char­i­ties. The IRS and the Texas attor­ney gen­er­al, which would over­see the South­lake, Texas, char­i­ty, did not respond to ques­tions.

    While not all of its polit­i­cal efforts appeared to be clear-cut vio­la­tions, the experts said, oth­ers may be: The stat­ed plan to mobi­lize vot­ers “sym­pa­thet­ic to Repub­li­cans,” Zik­lag offi­cials open­ly dis­cussing the goal to win the elec­tion, and Wallnau’s call to fund bal­lot ini­tia­tives that would “deliv­er swing states” while at the same time voic­ing explic­it crit­i­cism of Biden all raised red flags, the experts said.

    “I am trou­bled about a tax-exempt char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tion that’s set up and its main oper­a­tion seems to be to get peo­ple to win office,” said Phil Hack­ney, a pro­fes­sor of law at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Pitts­burgh and an expert on tax-exempt orga­ni­za­tions.

    “They’re plan­ning an elec­tion effort,” said Mar­cus Owens, a tax lawyer at Loeb and Loeb and a for­mer direc­tor of the IRS’ exempt orga­ni­za­tions divi­sion. “That’s not a 501(c)(3) activ­i­ty.”

    ———–

    “Inside Zik­lag, the Secret Orga­ni­za­tion of Wealthy Chris­tians Try­ing to Sway the Elec­tion and Change the Coun­try” by Andy Kroll and Nick Surgey; ProP­ub­li­ca; 07/13/2024

    “Accord­ing to the Zik­lag files, the group has divid­ed its 2024 activ­i­ties into three dif­fer­ent oper­a­tions tar­get­ing vot­ers in bat­tle­ground states: Check­mate, focused on fund­ing so-called elec­tion integri­ty groups; Steeple­chase, con­cen­trat­ed on using church­es and pas­tors to get out the vote; and Watch­tow­er, aimed at gal­va­niz­ing vot­ers around the issues of “parental rights” and oppo­si­tion to trans­gen­der rights and poli­cies sup­port­ing health care for trans peo­ple.”

    A triple-pronged strat­e­gy for win­ning elec­tions in 2024: Watch­tow­er, Check­mate, and Steeple­chase. In oth­er words, mon­ster­ing trans­gen­der kids, deny­ing elec­tions in the same man­ner that result­ed in the Jan­u­ary 6 Capi­tol insur­rec­tion, and engag­ing in Amer­i­can Renew­al Project-style ‘pas­tor out­reach’ efforts. And it’s about as unpop­ulist a move­ment as one can imag­ine: only Domion­in­sts ded­i­cat­ed to the “Sev­en Moun­tains” Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist cap­ture of soci­ety, and worth at east $25 mil­lion, need apply. So of course we’re see­ing CNP mem­ber Peter Bohlinger serv­ing as Zik­lag’s ‘edu­ca­tion moun­tain’ chair. Zik­lag has all the hall­marks of a clas­sic CNP oper­a­tion. And while it’s fair to char­ac­ter­ize the ‘Sev­en Moun­tains’ the­ol­o­gy as a ‘break’ from the kind of Chris­t­ian fun­da­men­tal­ism as a ‘break’, rhetor­i­cal­ly speak­ing, from the kind of Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism ped­dled by CNP founders like Pat Robert­son and Jer­ry Fall­well in the 1980s, as Sarah Pos­ner has point­ed out, the under­ly­ing theo­crat­ic ambi­tions aren’t real­ly dif­fer­ent. ‘Sev­en Moun­tains’ is more of drop­ping of the mask for the same move­ment than a real change in ambi­tions:

    ...
    Zik­lag has large­ly escaped scruti­ny until now. The group describes itself as a “pri­vate, con­fi­den­tial, invi­ta­tion-only com­mu­ni­ty of high-net-worth Chris­t­ian fam­i­lies.”

    Accord­ing to inter­nal doc­u­ments, it boasts more than 125 mem­bers that include busi­ness exec­u­tives, pas­tors, media lead­ers and oth­er promi­nent con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians. Poten­tial new mem­bers, one doc­u­ment says, should have a “con­cern for cul­ture” demon­strat­ed by past dona­tions to faith-based or polit­i­cal caus­es, as well as a net worth of $25 mil­lion or more. None of the donors respond­ed to requests for com­ment.

    Tax records show rapid growth in the group’s finances in recent years. Its annu­al rev­enue climbed from $1.3 mil­lion in 2018 to $6 mil­lion in 2019 and near­ly $12 mil­lion in 2022, which is the lat­est fil­ing avail­able.

    The group’s spend­ing is not on the scale of major con­ser­v­a­tive fun­ders such as Miri­am Adel­son or Barre Seid, the elec­tron­ics mag­nate who gave $1.6 bil­lion to a group led by con­ser­v­a­tive legal activist Leonard Leo. But its fund­ing and strat­e­gy rep­re­sent one of the clear­est links yet between the Chris­t­ian right and the “elec­tion integri­ty” move­ment fueled by Trump’s base­less claims about vot­ing fraud. Even sev­er­al mil­lion dol­lars fund­ing mass chal­lenges to vot­ers in swing coun­ties can make an impact, legal and elec­tion experts say.

    ...

    One the­ol­o­gy pro­mot­ed by Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist lead­ers is the Sev­en Moun­tain Man­date. Each moun­tain rep­re­sents a major indus­try or a sphere of pub­lic life: arts and media, busi­ness, church, edu­ca­tion, fam­i­ly, gov­ern­ment, and sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy. Ziklag’s goal, the doc­u­ments say, is to “take domin­ion over the Sev­en Moun­tains,” fund­ing Chris­t­ian projects or installing devout Chris­tians in lead­er­ship posi­tions to reshape each moun­tain in a god­ly way.

    To address their con­cerns about edu­ca­tion, Ziklag’s lead­ers and allies have focused on the pub­lic-school sys­tem. In a 2021 Zik­lag meet­ing, Ziklag’s edu­ca­tion moun­tain chair, Peter Bohlinger, said that Ziklag’s goal “is to take down the edu­ca­tion sys­tem as we know it today.” The pro­duc­ers of the film “Sound of Free­dom,” fea­tur­ing Jim Caviezel as an anti-sex-traf­fick­ing activist, screened an ear­ly cut of the film at a Zik­lag con­fer­ence and asked for funds, accord­ing to Dal­las.

    The Sev­en Moun­tains the­ol­o­gy sig­nals a break from Chris­t­ian fun­da­men­tal­ists such as Jer­ry Fal­well Sr. and Pat Robert­son. In the 1980s and ’90s, Falwell’s Moral Major­i­ty focused on work­ing with­in the demo­c­ra­t­ic process to mobi­lize evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers and elect politi­cians with a Chris­t­ian world­view.

    The Sev­en Moun­tains the­ol­o­gy embraces a dif­fer­ent, less demo­c­ra­t­ic approach to gain­ing pow­er. “If the Moral Major­i­ty is about gal­va­niz­ing the vot­ers, the Sev­en Moun­tains is a rev­o­lu­tion­ary mod­el: You need to con­quer these moun­tains and let change flow down from the top,” said Matthew Tay­lor, a senior schol­ar at the Insti­tute for Islam­ic, Chris­t­ian and Jew­ish Stud­ies and an expert on Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism. “It’s an out­lined pro­gram for Chris­t­ian suprema­cy.”
    ...

    And Bol­hinger being just the first of string of CNP fig­ures run­ning or coor­di­nat­ing with Zik­lag, with for­mer Unit­ed in Pur­pose direc­tor Bill Dal­las being a notable exam­ple. It’s Unit­ed in Pur­pose’s founder, Ken Eldred, who appar­ent­ly found­ed Zik­lag in the spir­it of ‘like the Koch Broth­ers’ influ­ence net­work but just for super-rich Domion­ists’ fol­low­ing Trump’s win in 2016. Recall how it was Unit­ed in Pur­pose’s then-direc­tor and CNP Mem­ber Bill Dal­las who co-orga­nized the big gath­er­ing of evan­gel­i­cals in New York City in June of 2016 to give their bless­ings to the then-nom­i­nat­ed Don­ald Trump. Eldred went on to orga­nize the for­mu­la­tion of CNP plans in Feb­ru­ary of 2020 to deal with the results of the 2020 elec­tion in the event of an pop­u­lar or elec­toral vote loss. They devel­oped a three-pronged strat­e­gy: The first prong was an expan­sion of the use of vot­er data to turn out the GOP vote and sup­press the Demo­c­ra­t­ic vote. The sec­ond was to mobi­lize sup­port­ers in swing states to ignite Tea Par­ty-like protests against COVID lock­downs. The third was find­ing physi­cians will­ing to pub­licly dis­miss the dan­gers of COVID in a media blitz. Unit­ed in Pur­pose called the cam­paign “Oper­a­tion Zik­lag”.

    And then there’s all the CNP mem­bers we’ve seen pop up in rela­tion to Unit­ed in Pur­pose activ­i­ties. For exam­ple, Unit­ed in Pur­pose part­ners with Ralph Reed’s Faith and Free­dom Coali­tion in GOTV efforts. Also recall how Gin­ni Thomas start­ed emcee­ing an annu­al Impact Awards awards cer­e­mo­ny cel­e­brat­ing some of the best-known Trump allies, put on in con­junc­tion with Unit­ed in Pur­pose. Plus, when Gin­ni Thomas tried to per­suade state leg­is­la­tors in her efforts to over­turn the 2020 elec­tion results uti­liz­ing the web­site everylegalvote.com to reach out to the leg­is­la­tors, she was using a web­site built by Unit­ed in Pur­pose. And then there’s the fact that Unit­ed in Pur­pose’s board mem­bers include CNP exec­u­tive direc­tor Bob McEwen and has a net­work of allies and clients that include the Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Asso­ciate, the Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil, and Reed’s Faith & Free­dom Coali­tion. And as we can see, it was CNP mem­ber Char­lie Kirk who was invit­ed to the 2023 Zik­lag gath­er­ing where he made the pitch that Zik­lag was the counter to George Soros and Google bil­lion­aires. Kirk, McEwen, Reed, and Thomas all very active CNP orga­niz­ers, which is what Unit­ed in Pur­pose appears to be designed to facil­i­tate. It’s anoth­er CNP ini­tia­tive, found­ed by Eldred, who stands outs in this group by not show­ing up on the leaked CNP mem­ber­ship lists:

    ...
    Zik­lag was the brain­child of a Sil­i­con Val­ley entre­pre­neur named Ken Eldred. It emerged from a pre­vi­ous orga­ni­za­tion found­ed by Eldred called Unit­ed In Pur­pose, which aimed to get more Chris­tians active in the civic are­na, accord­ing to Bill Dal­las, the group’s for­mer direc­tor. Unit­ed In Pur­pose gen­er­at­ed atten­tion in June 2016 when it orga­nized a major meet­ing between then-can­di­date Trump and hun­dreds of evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers.

    After Trump was elect­ed in 2016, Eldred had an idea, accord­ing to Dal­las. “He says, ‘I want all the wealthy Chris­t­ian peo­ple to come togeth­er,’” Dal­las recalled in an inter­view. Eldred told Dal­las that he want­ed to cre­ate a donor net­work like the one cre­at­ed by Charles and David Koch but for Chris­tians. He pro­posed nam­ing it David’s Mighty Men, Dal­las said. Female mem­bers balked. Dal­las found the pas­sage in Chron­i­cles that ref­er­ences David’s sol­diers and read that they met in the city of Zik­lag, and so they chose the name Zik­lag.

    The group’s stature grew after Trump took office. Vice Pres­i­dent Mike Pence appeared at a Zik­lag event, as did for­mer Hous­ing and Urban Devel­op­ment Sec­re­tary Ben Car­son, Sen. Ted Cruz, then-Rep. Mark Mead­ows and oth­er mem­bers of Con­gress. In its pri­vate newslet­ter, Zik­lag claims that a coali­tion of groups it assem­bled played “a huge­ly sig­nif­i­cant role in the selec­tion, hear­ings and con­fir­ma­tion process” of Amy Coney Bar­rett for a Supreme Court seat in late 2020.

    ...

    Speak­ing late last year to an invi­ta­tion-only gath­er­ing of Zik­lag­gers, as mem­bers are known, Char­lie Kirk, who leads the pro-Trump Turn­ing Point USA orga­ni­za­tion, named left-lean­ing phil­an­thropists who were, in his view, fund­ing the destruc­tion of the nation: MacKen­zie Scott, ex-wife of Ama­zon founder Jeff Bezos; bil­lion­aire investor and lib­er­al phil­an­thropist George Soros; and the two founders of Google, Lar­ry Page and Sergey Brin.

    “Why are sec­u­lar peo­ple giv­ing more gen­er­ous­ly than Chris­tians?” Kirk asked, accord­ing to a record­ing of his remarks. “It would be a tragedy,” he added, “if peo­ple who hate life, hate our coun­try, hate beau­ty and hate God want­ed it more than us.”

    “Zik­lag is the place,” Kirk told the donors. “Zik­lag is the counter.”

    Sim­i­lar­ly, Pence, in a 2021 appear­ance at a pri­vate Zik­lag event, praised the group for its role in “chang­ing lives, and it’s advanced the cause, it’s advanced the king­dom...
    ...

    And then we get to /lance Wall­nau, described as as dri­ving force behind the Zik­lag efforts. As we’ve seen, Wall­nau is an NAR leader who has played a big role in pop­u­lar­iz­ing the ‘Sev­en Moun­tains Man­date’ Domin­ion­ist the­ol­o­gy. In 2013, Wall­nau co-authored the book Invad­ing Baby­lon: The 7 Moun­tain Man­date. And as we also saw, Wall­nau was push­ing the idea that Don­ald Trump is a God-ordained change agent anal­o­gous to the Bib­li­cal fig­ure King Cyrus in the first year of Trump’s pres­i­den­cy. Wall­nau sits on the board of the Truth and Lib­er­ty Coali­tion, along­side David Bar­ton. The group tar­gets pub­lic schools and col­lab­o­rates with the CNP’s Moms for Lib­er­ty. In March 2022, Wall­nau bragged that “we” had “flood­ed” South­lake, Texas with “one thou­sand peo­ple” who “took over the school boards… the city coun­cil… the mayor’s office.” He added that, “The media doesn’t know it because we nev­er said it was a church ini­tia­tive. We called it a com­mu­ni­ty ini­tia­tive.” Wall­nau is a lead­ing domin­ion­ist and Zik­lag is a domin­ion­ist effort, like the most of the CNP does:

    ...
    A dri­ving force behind Ziklag’s efforts is Lance Wall­nau, a promi­nent Chris­t­ian evan­ge­list and influ­encer based in Texas who is described by Zik­lag as a “Sev­en Moun­tains vision­ary & advi­sor.” The fiery preach­er is one of the most influ­en­tial fig­ures on the Chris­t­ian right, experts say, a bridge between Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism and Trump. He was one of the ear­li­est evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers to endorse Trump in 2015 and lat­er pub­lished a book titled “God’s Chaos Can­di­date: Don­ald J. Trump and the Amer­i­can Unrav­el­ing.” More than 1 mil­lion peo­ple fol­low him on Face­book. He doesn’t try to hide his views: “Yes, I am a Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist,” he said dur­ing one of his livestreams in 2021. (Wall­nau did not respond to requests for com­ment.)

    Wall­nau has remained a Trump ally. He called Trump’s time in office a “spir­i­tu­al war­fare pres­i­den­cy” and pop­u­lar­ized the idea that Trump was a “mod­ern-day Cyrus,” refer­ring to the Per­sian king who defeat­ed the Baby­lo­ni­ans and allowed the Jew­ish peo­ple to return to Jerusalem. Wall­nau has vis­it­ed with Trump at the White House and Trump Tow­er; last Novem­ber, he livestreamed from a black-tie gala at Mar-a-Lago where Trump spoke.

    Wall­nau did not come up with the notion that Chris­tians should try to take con­trol of key areas of Amer­i­can soci­ety. But he improved on the idea by intro­duc­ing the con­cept of the sev­en moun­tains and urged Chris­tians to set about con­quer­ing them. The con­cept caught on, said Tay­lor, because it empow­ered Chris­tians with a sense of pur­pose in every sphere of life.

    As a preach­er in the inde­pen­dent charis­mat­ic tra­di­tion, a fast-grow­ing off­shoot of Pen­te­costal­ism that is unaf­fil­i­at­ed with any major denom­i­na­tion, Wall­nau and his acolytes believe that God speaks to and through mod­ern-day apos­tles and prophets — a ver­sion of Chris­tian­i­ty that Tay­lor, in his forth­com­ing book “The Vio­lent Take It By Force,” describes as “the amor­phous, tumul­tuous Wild West of the mod­ern church.” Wall­nau and his ideas lin­gered at the fringes of Amer­i­can Chris­tian­i­ty for years, until the boost from the Trump pres­i­den­cy.

    ...

    In the fall of 2023, Wall­nau sat in a gray arm­chair in his TV stu­dio. A large TV screen behind him flashed a sin­gle word: “ZIKLAG.”

    “You almost hate to put it out this clear­ly,” he said as he detailed Ziklag’s elec­toral strat­e­gy, “because if some­body else gets ahold of this, they’ll freak out.”

    He was joined on set by Hiss, who had just become the group’s new day-to-day leader. The two men were there to record a spe­cial mes­sage to Zik­lag mem­bers that laid out the group’s ambi­tious plans for the upcom­ing elec­tion year.

    The forces arrayed against Chris­tians were many, accord­ing to the con­fi­den­tial video. They were locked in a “spir­i­tu­al bat­tle,” Hiss said, against Democ­rats who were a “rad­i­cal left Marx­ist force.” Biden, Wall­nau said, was a senile old man and “an emp­ty suit with an agen­da that’s writ­ten and man­aged by some­body else.”

    In the files, Zik­lag says it plans to give out near­ly $12 mil­lion to a con­stel­la­tion of groups work­ing on the ground to shift the 2024 elec­torate in favor of Trump and oth­er Repub­li­cans.

    ...

    And as evi­dence of the Zik­lag group’s ongo­ing focus on over­turn­ing unfa­vor­able elec­tion results through any means nec­es­sary, here’s show­ing as a recip­i­ent of the Zik­lag group’s giv­ing. The same elec­tion refut­ing spe­cial­ist Cle­ta Mithell who played a key orga­niz­ing role in the large-scale CNP effort to over­turn the 2020 elec­tion, cul­mi­nat­ing in the Jan­u­ary 6 Capi­tol insur­rec­tion. It’s worth not­ing how that sup­port from Zik­lag for Mitchell appears to have been chan­neled through a $600,000 dona­tion in 2022 to the Con­ser­v­a­tive Part­ner­ship Insti­tute (CPI). Recall how the CPI serves as a kind of CNP orga­ni­za­tion­al moth­er­ship, spin­ning off all sorts of new groups and deeply involved with the Sched­ule F/Project 2025 plot. So when we see large dona­tions from a Domin­ion­ist group like Zik­lag get­ting chan­neled to Mitchel­l’s elec­tion-over­turn­ing efforts via the CPI, it’s a reminder that the CPI isn’t just a tool of the con­ser­v­a­tive move­men­t’s mega-donors. It’s a tool of the domion­in­ist mega-donors who helped orga­nize Jan­u­ary 6, as is the Zik­lag group:

    ...
    A promi­nent con­ser­v­a­tive get­ting mon­ey from Zik­lag is Cle­ta Mitchell, a lawyer and Trump ally who joined the the Jan­u­ary 2021 phone call when then-Pres­i­dent Trump asked Georgia’s sec­re­tary of state to “find” enough votes to flip Geor­gia in Trump’s favor.

    Mitchell now leads a net­work of “elec­tion integri­ty” coali­tions in swing states that have spent the last three years advo­cat­ing for changes to vot­ing rules and how elec­tions are run. Accord­ing to one inter­nal newslet­ter, Zik­lag was an ear­ly fun­der of Mitchell’s post-2020 “elec­tion integri­ty” activism, which vot­ing-rights experts have crit­i­cized for stok­ing unfound­ed fears about vot­er fraud and seek­ing to unfair­ly remove peo­ple from vot­ing rolls. In 2022, Zik­lag donat­ed $600,000 to the Con­ser­v­a­tive Part­ner­ship Insti­tute, which in turn funds Mitchell’s elec­tion-integri­ty work. Inter­nal Zik­lag doc­u­ments show that it pro­vid­ed fund­ing to enable Mitchell to set up elec­tion integri­ty infra­struc­ture in Flori­da, North Car­oli­na and Wis­con­sin.

    Now Mitchell is pro­mot­ing a tool called EagleAI, which has claimed to use arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence to auto­mate and speed up the process of chal­leng­ing inel­i­gi­ble vot­ers. EagleAI is already being used to mount mass chal­lenges to the eli­gi­bil­i­ty of hun­dreds of thou­sands of vot­ers in com­pet­i­tive states, and, with Ziklag’s help, the group plans to ramp up those efforts.

    Accord­ing to an inter­nal video, Zik­lag plans to invest $800,000 in “EagleAI’s clean the rolls project,” which would be one of the largest known dona­tions to the group.

    Zik­lag lists two key objec­tives for Oper­a­tion Check­mate: “Secure 10,640 addi­tion­al unique votes in Ari­zona (mir­ror­ing the 2020 mar­gin of 10,447 votes), and remove up to one mil­lion inel­i­gi­ble reg­is­tra­tions and around 280,000 inel­i­gi­ble vot­ers in Ari­zona, Neva­da, Geor­gia, and Wis­con­sin.

    In a record­ing of an inter­nal Zoom call, Ziklag’s Mark Bour­geois stressed the elec­toral val­ue of tar­get­ing Ari­zona. “I care about Mari­co­pa Coun­ty,” Bour­geois said at one point, refer­ring to Arizona’s largest coun­ty, which Biden won four years ago. “That’s how we win.”
    ...

    So giv­en the domin­ion­ist nature of this group’s ambi­tions, we should­n’t be sur­prised the third prong in the Zik­lag group’s strat­e­gy is a con­ser­v­a­tive pas­tor mobi­liza­tion effort, coor­di­nat­ed with groups like Char­lie Kirk’s Turn­ing Points USA, Ralph Reed’s Faith and Free­dom Coali­tion, and the Amer­i­ca First Pol­i­cy Insti­tute, one of the enti­ties play­ing an impor­tant role in the Sched­ule F/Project 2025 plot. Is there any coor­di­nat­ing with the effort Amer­i­can Renew­al Project? There does­n’t appear to be any indi­ca­tion of that yet but it’s hard not to notice the enor­mous over­lap in shared inter­ests and efforts. In oth­er words, what are the odds the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project fun­ders aren’t also Zik­lag donors? It’s the same CNP-orga­nized domin­ion­ist effort. The same one:

    ...
    The last prong of Ziklag’s 2024 strat­e­gy is Oper­a­tion Steeple­chase, which urges con­ser­v­a­tive pas­tors to mobi­lize their con­gre­gants to vote in this year’s elec­tion. This project will work in coor­di­na­tion with sev­er­al promi­nent con­ser­v­a­tive groups that sup­port for­mer pres­i­dent Trump’s reelec­tion, such as Turn­ing Point USA’s faith-based group, the Faith and Free­dom Coali­tion run by con­ser­v­a­tive oper­a­tive Ralph Reed and the Amer­i­ca First Pol­i­cy Insti­tute, one of sev­er­al groups close­ly allied with Trump.

    Zik­lag says in a 2023 inter­nal video that it and its allies will “coor­di­nate exten­sive pas­tor and church out­reach through pas­tor sum­mits, church-focused mes­sag­ing and events and the cre­ation of pas­tor resources.” As preach­er and activist John Amanchuk­wu said at a Zik­lag event, “We need a church that’s will­ing to do any­thing and every­thing to get to the point where we reclaim that which was stolen from us.”
    ...

    Final­ly, there’s the glar­ing tax code vio­la­tion for Zik­lag’s ‘char­i­ta­ble’ tax-deductible efforts that’s anoth­er par­al­lel with the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project — housed by the ‘char­i­ta­ble’ Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Asso­ci­a­tion and financed by the ‘char­i­ta­ble’ Niemoller Foun­da­tion. All 501(c}(3) enti­ties, alleged­ly engaged in non­par­ti­san tax deductible activ­i­ties:

    ...
    In a record­ing of a 2023 inter­nal strat­e­gy dis­cus­sion, a Zik­lag offi­cial stressed that the objec­tive was the same in oth­er swing states. “The goal is to win,” the offi­cial said. “If 75,000 peo­ple wins the White House, then how do we get 150,000 peo­ple so we make sure we win?”

    ...

    But Zik­lag is not a polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tion: It is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt char­i­ty, the same legal des­ig­na­tion as the Unit­ed Way or Boys and Girls Club. Such orga­ni­za­tions do not have to pub­licly dis­close their fun­ders, and dona­tions are tax deductible. In exchange, they are “absolute­ly pro­hib­it­ed from direct­ly or indi­rect­ly par­tic­i­pat­ing in, or inter­ven­ing in, any polit­i­cal cam­paign on behalf of (or in oppo­si­tion to) any can­di­date for elec­tive pub­lic office,”accord­ing to the IRS.

    ProP­ub­li­ca and Doc­u­ment­ed pre­sent­ed the find­ings of their inves­ti­ga­tion to six non­par­ti­san lawyers and legal experts. All expressed con­cern that Zik­lag was test­ing or vio­lat­ing the law.

    The report­ing by ProP­ub­li­ca and Doc­u­ment­ed “casts seri­ous doubt on this organization’s sta­tus as a 501(c)(3) orga­ni­za­tion,” said Roger Col­in­vaux, a pro­fes­sor at Catholic University’s Colum­bus School of Law.

    “I think it’s across the line with­out a ques­tion,” said Lloyd Hitoshi May­er, a Uni­ver­si­ty of Notre Dame law pro­fes­sor.

    Zik­lag offi­cials did not respond to a detailed list of ques­tions. Mar­tin Nuss­baum, an attor­ney who said he was the group’s gen­er­al coun­sel, said in a writ­ten response that “some of the state­ments in your email are cor­rect. Oth­ers are not,” but he then did not respond to a request to spec­i­fy what was erro­neous. The group is seek­ing to “align” the cul­ture “with Bib­li­cal val­ues and the Amer­i­can con­sti­tu­tion, and that they will serve the com­mon good,” he wrote. Using the offi­cial tax name for Zik­lag, he wrote that “USATrans­Form does not endorse can­di­dates for pub­lic office.” He declined to com­ment on the group’s mem­bers.

    There are no bright lines or mag­ic words that the IRS might look for when it inves­ti­gates a char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tion for engag­ing in polit­i­cal inter­ven­tion, said May­er. Instead, the agency exam­ines the facts and cir­cum­stances of a group’s activ­i­ties and makes a con­clu­sion about whether the group vio­lat­ed the law.

    The biggest risk for char­i­ties that inter­vene in polit­i­cal cam­paigns, May­er said, is loss of their tax-exempt sta­tus. Donors’ abil­i­ty to deduct their dona­tions can be a major sell, not to men­tion it can cre­ate “a halo effect” for the group, May­er added.

    “They may be able to get more mon­ey this way,” he said, adding, “It boils down to tax eva­sion at the end of the day.”

    ...

    Con­fi­den­tial donor net­works reg­u­lar­ly invest hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars into polit­i­cal and char­i­ta­ble groups, from the lib­er­al Democ­ra­cy Alliance to the Koch-affil­i­at­ed Stand Togeth­er orga­ni­za­tion on the right. But unlike Zik­lag, nei­ther of those orga­ni­za­tions is legal­ly set up as a true char­i­ty.

    Zik­lag appears to be the first coor­di­nat­ed effort to get wealthy donors to fund an overt­ly Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist agen­da, accord­ing to his­to­ri­ans, legal experts and oth­er peo­ple famil­iar with the group. “It shows that this idea isn’t being dis­missed as fringe in the way that it might have been in the past,” said Mary Ziegler, a legal his­to­ri­an and Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Davis law pro­fes­sor.

    ...

    Six tax experts reviewed the elec­tion-relat­ed strat­e­gy dis­cus­sions and tac­tics report­ed in this sto­ry. All of them said the activ­i­ties test­ed or ran afoul of the law gov­ern­ing 501(c)(3) char­i­ties. The IRS and the Texas attor­ney gen­er­al, which would over­see the South­lake, Texas, char­i­ty, did not respond to ques­tions.

    While not all of its polit­i­cal efforts appeared to be clear-cut vio­la­tions, the experts said, oth­ers may be: The stat­ed plan to mobi­lize vot­ers “sym­pa­thet­ic to Repub­li­cans,” Zik­lag offi­cials open­ly dis­cussing the goal to win the elec­tion, and Wallnau’s call to fund bal­lot ini­tia­tives that would “deliv­er swing states” while at the same time voic­ing explic­it crit­i­cism of Biden all raised red flags, the experts said.

    “I am trou­bled about a tax-exempt char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tion that’s set up and its main oper­a­tion seems to be to get peo­ple to win office,” said Phil Hack­ney, a pro­fes­sor of law at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Pitts­burgh and an expert on tax-exempt orga­ni­za­tions.

    “They’re plan­ning an elec­tion effort,” said Mar­cus Owens, a tax lawyer at Loeb and Loeb and a for­mer direc­tor of the IRS’ exempt orga­ni­za­tions divi­sion. “That’s not a 501(c)(3) activ­i­ty.”
    ...

    Don’t hold your breath wait­ing for the IRS to final­ly crack down on this bla­tant trolling that’s been going on for decades. Trolling that dou­bles as effec­tive tax eva­sion. To help finance a move­ment ded­i­cat­ed to the com­plete cap­ture of soci­ety. It’s hard to get more par­ti­san than that. And yet this is all for ‘char­i­ty’. LOL. The joke is on us.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | August 26, 2024, 4:28 pm
  4. “You won’t have to do it any­more. Four more years, you know what? It’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine. You won’t have to vote any­more, my beau­ti­ful Chris­tians.” That was the high­ly dis­turb­ing mes­sage deliv­ered by Don­ald Trump a lit­tle over a month ago at the Turn­ing Point Action’s “Believ­ers Sum­mit” in West Palm Beach, Flori­da. Chris­tians just had to vote this one last time and they could be done with vot­ing for­ev­er. It was a mes­sage that was under­stand­ably inter­pret­ed as just one more open hint at plans to effec­tive­ly end what’s left of the US’s demo­c­ra­t­ic insti­tu­tions. An inter­pre­ta­tion that log­i­cal­ly fol­lows the ongo­ing Sched­ule F/Project 2025 Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist plot.

    And while it’s cer­tain­ly very pos­si­ble Trump real­ly did intend to send a mes­sage of “I’ll per­ma­nent­ly ‘fix’ democ­ra­cy so you nev­er lose again” mes­sage to this audi­ence, it’s worth not­ing how that rhetoric syn­er­gizes with the mes­sag­ing tar­get­ing evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers com­ing from anoth­er keen­ly inter­est­ed group: David Lane and his claims over the years that only around a quar­ter of evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers even both­er vot­ing in pres­i­den­tial elec­tions. It’s a mes­sage Lane has appar­ent­ly been shar­ing with audi­ences at his var­i­ous Amer­i­can Renew­al Project ‘pas­tor events’ for years. Nor is Lane the only one to make this claim. Mike Huck­abee, for exam­ple, has made the same claims.

    It’s not a par­tic­u­lar­ly sur­pris­ing mes­sage to hear com­ing from some­one in Lane’s posi­tion. He’s lead­ing a group ded­i­cat­ed to polit­i­cal­ly orga­niz­ing pas­tors and, in turn, their con­gre­ga­tions. A mes­sage about a vast untapped pool of vot­ers sit­ting in these con­gre­ga­tions has a lot of obvi­ous appeal. And yet, as we’re also going to see, it’s not actu­al­ly true. Evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers in US vote at rough­ly the same lev­els as oth­er demo­graph­ics, con­sis­tent­ly hov­er­ing some­where around 50 per­cent vot­ing rates.

    But there’s anoth­er very inter­est­ing polit­i­cal sto­ry relat­ed to this quest to increase the evan­gel­i­cal vote: before Don­ald Trump came along to con­quer the Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry in 2016, it was Ted Cruz who was not only lead­ing the Repub­li­can pack but did so through a high effec­tive strat­e­gy of tar­get­ing pas­tors. A strat­e­gy that not only had par­al­lels with David Lane’s Amer­i­can Renew­al Project but was lit­er­al­ly part of it. As we’re going to see, Cruz was a reg­u­lar attendee at Lane’s var­i­ous ‘pas­tor events’ going back to 2013, along with Cruz’s father, Rafael Cruz. It turns out Rafael is also quite close to Lane and a reg­u­lar speak­er at these events. Along with chief domin­ion­ist pseu­do-his­to­ri­an David Bar­ton. This is a good time to recall how, back in 1980, both Mike Huck­abee and Rafael Cruz were involved with the orga­niz­ing of the Jame Robison’s “Reli­gious Round­table” that whipped up major evan­gel­i­cal enthu­si­asm for Ronald Rea­gan’s pres­i­den­tial run. Rafael Cruz has been a key dri­ving force behind the politi­ciza­tion of the evan­gel­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty for decades, effec­tive­ly groom­ing his son to be ‘God’s pres­i­dent’ some­day.

    And that brings us to anoth­er aspect of Rafael’s activism that should be kept in mind: recall those sto­ries in 2022 about how the domin­ion­ist Moms for Lib­er­ty and the Truth and Lib­er­ty Coali­tion — run by Lance Wall­nau and David Bar­ton — work­ing to suc­cess­ful­ly take con­trol of school boards in Texas by focus­es on anti-tran­s/an­ti-LGBTQ hys­te­ria. Wall­nau is the promi­nent New Apos­tolic Ref­or­ma­tion (NAR) leader who co-authored of a pop­u­lar 2013 book pro­mot­ing the idea of domin­ion­ism. Fol­low­ing Trump’s elec­tion in 2016, Wall­nau start­ed push­ing the idea back in 2018 that Trump was a God-ordained change agent anal­o­gous to the Bib­li­cal fig­ure of King Cyrus. A “mod­ern-day Cyrus”, as Wall­nau described Trump. This was a sto­ry about a domin­ion­ist cap­ture of school boards in Texas. A high­ly suc­cess­ful cap­ture that had them plan­ning a nation­al roll­out of the strat­e­gy.

    As we also saw, one of the groups also work­ing on that effort was Patri­ot Mobile, a con­ser­v­a­tive chris­t­ian cell­phone com­pa­ny with a busi­ness mod­el that pledges to spend some of the prof­its on con­ser­v­a­tive caus­es. It’s worth tak­ing a clos­er look at the group and its efforts in those school board cap­tures. Found­ed in 2012, the com­pa­ny ini­tial­ly boast­ed of a busi­ness mod­el that pledged to sup­port groups that opposed abor­tion, defend reli­gious free­dom, pro­tect gun rights and sup­port the mil­i­tary. After Trump’s elec­tion, Patri­ot Mobile became much more overt­ly domin­ion­ist. By 2022, it was one of the enti­ties deeply involved this this school board cap­ture effort, includ­ing coor­di­nat­ing with the True Texas Project on the effort. As we’ve seen, the True Texas Project is one of those groups heav­i­ly reliant on the finances of Texas theo­crat­ic bil­lion­aire Tim Dunn through his Defend Texas Lib­er­ty PAC. And also infest­ed with Nazis. As we saw, not only is the group found­ed by Julie McCar­ty, who open­ly sym­pa­thized with the motives of El Paso shoot­er Patrick Cru­sius. But just three weeks before that now-infa­mous Octo­ber sev­en hour long meet­ing with Nick Fuentes at the head­quar­ters of Dun­n’s Pale Horse Strate­gies polit­i­cal group held in ear­ly Octo­ber 6 2023, the True Texas Project held a ‘pass­ing the torch’ event in Dal­las that fea­tured John Doyle and Jake Lloyd Col­glazier. Doyle has fre­quent­ly appeared along­side Nick Fuentes at events. For exam­ple, Doyle and Fuentes co-led a Lans­ing Michi­gan “Stop the Steal” ral­ly in the lead up to the Jan­u­ary 6 Capi­tol Insur­rec­tion. Col­glazier was one of the most promi­nent mem­bers of Fuentes’s ‘groyper army’. In 2019, Col­glazier, Fuentes, and Patrick Casey — the leader of Iden­ti­ty Evropa, since rebrand­ed as the “Amer­i­can Iden­ti­ty Move­ment” — were the head­lin­ers at a white nation­al­ist con­fer­ence where they advo­cat­ed a strat­e­gy of pulling the Repub­li­can Par­ty fur­ther to the right with a strat­e­gy of attack­ing Repub­li­cans for issues like being weak on immi­gra­tion or sup­port for Israel. In 2018, Casey was open­ly telling NBC News he was plan­ning on infil­trat­ing the Repub­li­can Par­ty, with an empha­sis on befriend­ing and win­ning over young col­lege Repub­li­cans. The True Texas Project was list­ed as an affil­i­at­ed on Patri­ot Mobile’s own web­site as one of its affil­i­ate. So when we see Patri­ot Mobile coor­di­nat­ing with the True Texas Project, keep in mind that it’s one of mul­ti­ple Nazi-friend­ly groups close­ly asso­ci­at­ed both Nick Fuentes and Tim Dunn who have a youth-focused strat­e­gy of rad­i­cal­iz­ing Repub­li­cans even more.

    Dur­ing this school board cap­ture cam­paign in 2022, none oth­er than Rafael Cruz was giv­ing week­ly Bible study class­es at the Patri­ot Mobile head­quar­ters. The lec­tures, broad­cast on Youtube, were domin­ion­ists lessons in how the sep­a­rate of church and state should real­ly only be seen as ‘one-way’, with gov­ern­ment pro­hib­it­ed from med­dling with church but church­es free to wield what­ev­er influ­ence they deem appro­pri­ate over gov­ern­ment. Not only is it a reminder that Rafael Cruz’s decades of polit­i­cal activism is still very much active today, but it rais­es the ques­tion as to who is more influ­en­tial these days when it comes to mobi­lizes con­ser­v­a­tive vot­ers: Ted Cruz or his dad? Rafael is clear­ly very influ­en­tial with this com­mu­ni­ty and has been since before Ted Cruz first got elect­ed.

    It’s also worth keep­ing in mind that it was Rafael Cruz who Don­ald Trump sug­gest­ed may have played a role in the JFK assas­si­na­tion back dur­ing the GOP pri­ma­ry race of 2016, when Ted was his only remain­ing obsta­cle to the nom­i­na­tion. It’s a fas­ci­nat­ing win­kle to this ongo­ing sto­ry of Rafael Cruz’s decades of domin­ion­ist activism, which includ­ed groom­ing his son to be “God’s pres­i­dent” some day. A role his son could have secured in 2016 had Trump not charmed the par­ty with his fas­cist mad­ness. We can only assume Rafael’s activism has a ‘Trump is a divine­ly inspired actor’ mes­sage since that’s the mes­saged embraced by the rest of this move­ment. But it was sup­posed to be his son. Instead it was Trump, who accused him of being involved in the JFK assas­si­na­tion, which is all the more fas­ci­nat­ing because we can’t real­ly rule out the pos­si­bil­i­ty he worked with Lee Har­vey Oswald’s Fair Play for Cuba leaflet­ing activ­i­ties.

    So while Trump’s “you won’t have to do it any­more” mes­sage to evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers cer­tain­ly has an air of omi­nous­ness due to the theo­crat­ic author­i­tar­i­an per­ils posed by a sec­ond Trump admin­is­tra­tion, it’s worth keep­ing in mind that focus­ing on surg­ing the evan­gel­i­cal vote is the same strat­e­gy the GOP has been rely­ing on for decades. It was the same strat­e­gy Rafael Cruz has been help­ing David Lane cul­ti­vate for years through the Amer­i­can Renew­al Pro­jec­t’s numer­ous ‘pas­tor gath­er­ings’, and the same strat­e­gy that was sup­posed to secure the GOP nom­i­na­tion for Ted Cruz in 2016 before Trump came along. And it’s ulti­mate­ly the same strat­e­gy at the heart of the anti-tran­s/an­ti-LGBTQ pan­ics get­ting whipped up at the local lev­el.

    In oth­er words, if the prospect of a sec­ond Trump term — with all of the asso­ci­at­ed Project 2025 theo­crat­ic ambi­tions — almost sounds like what we might expect from a Ted Cruz pres­i­den­cy, that’s because that’s sort of what Trump’s pres­i­den­cy real­ly was: the theo­crat­ic poli­cies that appeal to Ted Cruz vot­ers, but deliv­ered with that dement­ed Trumpian flare that seems to have more pop­u­lar appeal. When we see Don­ald Trump active­ly dis­tanc­ing him­self from the polit­i­cal­ly tox­ic nature of Project 2025’s theo­crat­ic agen­da, he’s not just run­ning away from his own agen­da. He’s run­ning away from the Cruz agen­da. An Rafael Cruz groomed Ted to exe­cute at the exec­u­tive lev­el. But Trump is the one God chose instead. Either way, it’s domin­ion­ist agen­da, MAGA pati­na or not. An agen­da designed to appeal to the core of evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers that David Lane and Rafael Cruz have been cul­ti­vat­ing for decades and that was sup­posed to pro­pelled Ted Cruz into the White House in 2016, before Don­ald Trump hijacked it:

    Yahoo News

    Ted Cruz’s con­tro­ver­sial super-PAC leader divides evan­gel­i­cals

    Jon Ward·Chief Nation­al Cor­re­spon­dent
    Jan­u­ary 29, 2016

    Last Sat­ur­day night in north­east­ern Iowa, moments before Glenn Beck deliv­ered a 56-minute speech in which he even­tu­al­ly got around to endors­ing Sen. Ted Cruz for pres­i­dent, a wil­lowy man with pow­der puff white hair strolled to the lectern and said a few words.

    Not once did the man — who spoke of Beck as “a vision­ary” and who laid his hands on Beck in prayer before­hand — men­tion Cruz’s name.

    David Bar­ton also nev­er told the crowd inside the Five Sul­li­van Broth­ers Con­ven­tion Cen­ter his name, even though he intro­duced oth­er speak­ers and served as the event’s de fac­to mas­ter of cer­e­monies.

    Barton’s anonymi­ty was fit­ting. It was some­thing of a metaphor for the rela­tion­ship between Cruz and Bar­ton, both of whom hail from Texas. Cruz has main­tained a del­i­cate bal­ance in his asso­ci­a­tion with Bar­ton, a fig­ure who is a hero to some evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians, and a fraud to oth­ers.

    Few fig­ures rep­re­sent the split run­ning down the mid­dle of Amer­i­can evan­gel­i­cal­ism bet­ter than Bar­ton, a 62-year-old self-taught his­to­ri­an (crit­ics call him a pseu­do-his­to­ri­an) who has for more than two decades stumped across the coun­try telling con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians that their nation’s reli­gious her­itage has been cov­ered up and stolen from them by god­less sec­u­lar pro­gres­sives.

    Many in the crowd doubt­less knew who Bar­ton was even with­out an intro­duc­tion. He is some­thing of a celebri­ty to those who have viewed his videos at church events or online, or who saw him on Fox News when he reg­u­lar­ly appeared on Beck’s show. But Barton’s rep­u­ta­tion has tak­en some big hits in the last few years, and the integri­ty of his arti­cles, videos and books has been wide­ly called into ques­tion, most aggres­sive­ly by some con­ser­v­a­tive evan­gel­i­cal schol­ars and writ­ers. One his­to­ry pro­fes­sor at a Chris­t­ian uni­ver­si­ty said Bar­ton was the con­ser­v­a­tive ver­sion of left-wing aca­d­e­m­ic Howard Zinn.

    “Nei­ther of them are his­to­ri­ans. They just want to use and manip­u­late the past to serve their own polit­i­cal or ide­o­log­i­cal agen­das in the present,” wrote John Fea, chair of the his­to­ry depart­ment at Mes­si­ah Col­lege in Mechan­ics­burg, Pa.

    Yet Bar­ton is help­ful to Cruz because the pres­i­den­tial can­di­date has built his strat­e­gy for win­ning the Repub­li­can nom­i­na­tion around win­ning in Iowa, the first state to vote in the pri­ma­ry process, and a place where 60 per­cent of the GOP elec­torate iden­ti­fies as evan­gel­i­cal. Too close an asso­ci­a­tion with Bar­ton, how­ev­er, would open Cruz up to ques­tions about the influ­ence on his think­ing of a man whose views about faith and pol­i­tics can often sound like Chris­t­ian recon­struc­tion­ism — the belief that gov­ern­ment laws and poli­cies should be drawn explic­it­ly from the Bible.

    Bar­ton argued in 2011 that the pro­gres­sive income tax, cap­i­tal gains tax and the estate tax (or death tax), are all con­trary to the Bible. “Jesus has two entire teach­ings on the cap­i­tal gains tax,” Bar­ton claimed, cit­ing Luke 19:13–26 and Matthew 25:14–29. And, he added, “Jesus did not like the min­i­mum wage.”

    The Bible does not address any of these issues explic­it­ly. Bar­ton was tak­ing para­bles told by Jesus in the New Tes­ta­ment and inter­pret­ing them quite lib­er­al­ly. Bar­ton said in an inter­view that his crit­ics often mis­in­ter­pret or exag­ger­ate his many claims. “I like the Con­sti­tu­tion we’ve got. I’m not try­ing to replace it with the Bible,” he said. When asked about his com­ments about Jesus’ views on tax pol­i­cy, Bar­ton deflect­ed the ques­tion. “What I often say in report­ing his­to­ry doesn’t mean that’s what I’m advo­cat­ing for pol­i­cy right now,” he said.

    Bar­ton may say state­ments about Jesus’ view of tax­es aren’t pre­scrip­tive, but for Chris­tians who believe the Bible should gov­ern all aspects of their lives, Barton’s com­ments pro­vide a the­o­log­i­cal jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for ignor­ing their tax bill that takes high­er prece­dence than the law. If the word of God is explic­it­ly opposed to what the Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice is doing, such a believ­er might rea­son with him­self, then he or she is in fact bound to oppose and defy the IRS.

    These are not the types of state­ments the Cruz cam­paign wants their can­di­date being ques­tioned about on the cam­paign trail. In Sep­tem­ber Bar­ton was named as the leader of a pro-Cruz super-PAC, Keep the Promise, mak­ing him an offi­cial sup­port­er of Cruz’s but with­out any offi­cial con­nec­tion to Cruz’s cam­paign. Of course, if Cruz world was uncom­fort­able with Barton’s endorse­ment, they wouldn’t have want­ed him involved with the super-PAC at all.

    One of Barton’s most notice­able projects so far in the cam­paign was to gath­er rough­ly 300 pas­tors and “faith lead­ers” at the Texas ranch of frack­ing bil­lion­aire Far­ris Wilks dur­ing the week after Christ­mas for a day of dis­cus­sion and prayer. (Wilks had giv­en $10 mil­lion to Keep the Promise III, one of three super-PACs under the umbrel­la of the one run by Bar­ton.)

    ...

    Some in the sprawl­ing world of the mul­ti­ple Cruz super-PACs have tak­en pot­shots at Bar­ton. “David Bar­ton is known among evan­gel­i­cal pas­tors but he’s not known as a polit­i­cal strate­gist or a fundrais­er,” said an offi­cial from one of Cruz’s super-PACs. “He’s prob­a­bly one of the least active peo­ple on the whole team.”

    But pri­vate con­ver­sa­tions with those who know the PAC’s work­ings sug­gest Bar­ton is a cen­tral fig­ure, mak­ing key hires and man­ag­ing deci­sion mak­ing and strat­e­gy. In Novem­ber, Bar­ton was the per­son who hired Drew Ryun, a for­mer Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee oper­a­tive who in recent years has worked in grass­roots pol­i­tics out­side Wash­ing­ton, often tak­ing on the estab­lish­ment.

    Barton’s hir­ing for the PAC last Sep­tem­ber was anoth­er nod to old­er evan­gel­i­cals that Cruz should be their man. Cruz had appealed to the Jer­ry Fal­well wing of evan­gel­i­cal­ism since announc­ing his can­di­da­cy last spring at Lib­er­ty Uni­ver­si­ty, the Chris­t­ian col­lege found­ed by the late Fal­well, whose son Jer­ry Jr. now runs the school (and who endorsed Don­ald Trump this week). Cruz has worked hard to build a net­work of pas­tors and Chris­t­ian activists across Iowa who are key to high turnout on the night of the cau­cus­es.

    Barton’s endorse­ment, said Iowa Repub­li­can oper­a­tive Ann Trim­ble-Ray, is “prob­a­bly more impact­ful with the con­sis­tent cau­cus-goer” than an endorse­ment from some­one like for­mer Alas­ka Gov. Sarah Palin, who last week came out for Trump. He’s not the only Chris­t­ian activist with more sway than Palin, said Trim­ble-Ray, who serves as Iowa Rep. Steve King’s point per­son in west­ern Iowa. Phyl­lis Schafly, the nona­ge­nar­i­an but still-ven­er­at­ed con­ser­v­a­tive activist, is also influ­en­tial among old­er reli­gious vot­ers, Trim­ble-Ray said, and she has endorsed Trump as well.

    ...

    Cruz is smart enough to know that if he remains com­pet­i­tive in the Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry beyond Iowa, he will need sup­port from evan­gel­i­cals who think Bar­ton is an embar­rass­ment. One of the more robust fac­tions inside Amer­i­can evan­gel­i­cal­ism is this set: a most­ly younger group who reject the cul­ture war approach of Falwell’s Moral Major­i­ty. (I’ve dubbed them the “Keller wing,” after New York city pas­tor and author Tim Keller.)

    These faith vot­ers are not yet as reli­able a vot­ing bloc as the old­er faith vot­ers in states like Iowa, who have been con­di­tioned to orga­nize polit­i­cal­ly around faith issues. But there are influ­en­tial evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers — some of them more polit­i­cal­ly active than oth­ers — who have no time for a fig­ure like Bar­ton.Rus­sell Moore of the South­ern Bap­tists, megachurch pas­tor Rick War­ren, who is on a faith advi­so­ry board for Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Mar­co Rubio, and even Keller him­self employ a style that takes a dif­fer­ent approach to post-Chris­t­ian Amer­i­ca than some­one like Bar­ton.

    Bar­ton argues that Amer­i­ca was found­ed as a Chris­t­ian nation, though he insist­ed to me that he defined this only as “a nation that was influ­enced by Chris­t­ian prin­ci­ples and cul­ture.” He says that much of America’s found­ing doc­u­ments — in par­tic­u­lar the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence — and its laws were derived from the Bible. The impli­ca­tion, despite his denials, is that this is what it should be again.

    To many, Barton’s argu­ment that Amer­i­ca was a Chris­t­ian nation at its found­ing is, as jour­nal­ist Julie Inger­soll put it, vital to old­er Chris­tians’ “myth­ic under­stand­ing” of them­selves. It is a vital com­po­nent of their iden­ti­ty that they are part of the nation’s true her­itage.

    Many younger evan­gel­i­cals, even those who wish for greater spir­i­tu­al vital­i­ty in the nation and for more Chris­t­ian influ­ence in cul­ture and pol­i­tics, don’t have or seek the same iden­ti­ty. They embrace the notion of being pil­grims, sojourn­ers, even aliens in a strange land, as a way of life and iden­ti­ty that lines up more close­ly with their faith and the teach­ings of the Bible. In oth­er words, they’re more com­fort­able being a cul­tur­al minor­i­ty, and advo­cat­ing for their beliefs and poli­cies based on their beliefs from such a posi­tion. For old­er evan­gel­i­cals, who grew up at a time when Amer­i­can cul­ture endorsed and affirmed their way of life and their beliefs, this is a more fright­en­ing propo­si­tion.

    And old­er evan­gel­i­cals like Bar­ton often see the younger gen­er­a­tion as cow­ards, shrink­ing away from the nec­es­sary cul­tur­al com­bat, afraid of the slings and arrows of stand­ing up for what is right. In this world­view, crit­i­cism and oppo­si­tion is a badge of hon­or, and can be viewed as val­i­da­tion that one is on the right track.

    ...

    Barton’s cred­i­bil­i­ty has been called into ques­tion more than once since he self-pub­lished his first book in 1989, “The Myth of Sep­a­ra­tion.” In the mid-90s he had to retract a dozen quotes he had used from his­tor­i­cal fig­ures, most­ly the Found­ing Fathers, after his­to­ri­ans found errors and inac­cu­ra­cies. Nonethe­less, his pop­u­lar­i­ty with fun­da­men­tal­ist Chris­tians con­tin­ued to grow. Much of Barton’s allure is based on his col­lec­tion of what he says is more than 100,000 orig­i­nal doc­u­ments that date back to the pre-1812 Amer­i­can rev­o­lu­tion­ary era, which he stores in a vault at the head­quar­ters of his orga­ni­za­tion, Wall­Builders, in Ale­do, Texas. He pep­pers his pre­sen­ta­tions or talk­ing points with a dizzy­ing num­ber of ref­er­ences and quo­ta­tions.

    Bar­ton became a nation­al fig­ure dur­ing George W. Bush’s pres­i­den­cy. He was elect­ed co-chair of the Texas GOP and by 2004 he had been hired by the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee to help get social con­ser­v­a­tives to the polls to reelect Bush. In 2005, Time Mag­a­zine named Bar­ton one of the most influ­en­tial evan­gel­i­cals in Amer­i­ca. Bar­ton was an advis­er to for­mer Arkansas Gov. Mike Huck­abee, who won the Iowa cau­cus­es in 2008 before his pres­i­den­tial can­di­da­cy lost steam.

    In May of 2012, Bar­ton was inter­viewed by a puz­zled but impressed Jon Stew­art on “The Dai­ly Show.” But around that same time, Barton’s lat­est book on Thomas Jef­fer­son came under heavy scruti­ny from a group of evan­gel­i­cal schol­ars. The same week in August that Bar­ton was skep­ti­cal­ly pro­filed by Nation­al Pub­lic Radio, Thomas Nel­son, the book’s pub­lish­er, pulled the book from stores and ceased pub­li­ca­tion, even though the book had hit the New York Times best­seller list. The pub­lish­er had “lost con­fi­dence” in Barton’s book based on inquiries from con­ser­v­a­tive his­to­ri­ans.

    “The with­draw­ing a book from the mar­ket is extreme­ly rare. It’s so rare I can’t think of the last time we’ve done this,” said Thomas Nelson’s pub­lish­er, Bri­an Hamp­ton.

    The flame wars between Bar­ton and his crit­ics have con­tin­ued to this day, as Barton’s book, “The Jef­fer­son Lies,” was repub­lished ear­li­er this month by World Net Dai­ly. Even among some Bar­ton friends and sup­port­ers, his cred­i­bil­i­ty has been hurt, in large part because the crit­i­cism of his work came not from lib­er­al aca­d­e­mics but from his­to­ri­ans and oth­er aca­d­e­mics who are Chris­tians and work at Chris­t­ian insti­tu­tions.

    “That’s what scared me,” said Don McEl­roy, the for­mer chair­man of the Texas Board of Edu­ca­tion, who was at the cen­ter of a major fight over cur­ricu­lum stan­dards in 2010 and who praised Barton’s input as a mem­ber of a six-per­son review board. “I can’t imag­ine [Bar­ton] mak­ing mis­takes, but I was stunned by the crit­i­cism.”

    “Most of the time I find him to be right as rain,” McEl­roy said of Bar­ton.

    Bar­ton remains defi­ant. “Lib­er­als will fight the truth with lies, good with evil, hon­esty with deceit,” he wrote on Twit­ter this week with a link to his book. Ear­li­er this month he was on Beck’s show on the TV net­work that Beck start­ed and owns, The Blaze, argu­ing that Thomas Jef­fer­son “came out very clear­ly” against gay rights.

    ...

    Cruz told Politi­co ear­li­er this year that Bar­ton is “a good man, a coura­geous leader and a friend.”

    “David’s his­tor­i­cal research has helped mil­lions redis­cov­er the found­ing prin­ci­ples of our nation and the incred­i­ble sac­ri­fices that men and women of faith made to bequeath to us the freest and most pros­per­ous nation in the world,” Cruz said.

    Some spec­u­late that Bar­ton is a Cruz-whis­per­er push­ing him toward theoc­ra­cy, but — set­ting aside the ques­tion of what exact­ly Bar­ton wants the gov­ern­ment to look like — there’s lit­tle evi­dence that the two men are close.

    How­ev­er, Bar­ton has deeply influ­enced Raphael Cruz, the candidate’s father, who spent much of the last year trav­el­ing across Iowa speak­ing in church­es about his son. Raphael Cruz’s world­view is sim­i­lar to Barton’s, and Barton’s his­tor­i­cal research has giv­en Raphael Cruz more fod­der to believe that Amer­i­ca is los­ing its soul, and that Chris­tians must “take this coun­try back.” Raphael Cruz has pub­lished a new book, “A Time for Action: Empow­er­ing the Faith­ful to Reclaim Amer­i­ca,” in which he quotes and cites Bar­ton.

    “Rafael and David are extreme­ly close,” said Gary Miller, who runs a group called “Talk Less! Pray More!” and also works with oper­a­tives like David Lane who orga­nize events to bring politi­cians to speak to groups of Chris­t­ian pas­tors across the coun­try.

    “When it comes to Ted, there is a friend­ship, but I get the dis­tinct impres­sion that Ted Cruz is his own man,” Miller said. “He cer­tain­ly rec­og­nizes that David Bar­ton has a voice among evan­gel­i­cals, but you also would have to know that David Bar­ton dri­ves some evan­gel­i­cals crazy. I’m not one of those, but I have friends of mine who are.”

    “There’s a wider range of evan­gel­i­cals that have to be embraced,” he said.

    Ted Cruz strad­dles the worlds inside con­ser­v­a­tive evan­gel­i­cal­ism. At 45, he is young enough to under­stand the men­tal­i­ty of the Keller wing. But he was raised by a strong-willed polit­i­cal refugee from Cuba who came to fierce­ly embrace the com­bat­ive cul­ture war approach of the Fal­well wing. And he knows that the “take back Amer­i­ca” crowd is for the moment the dom­i­nant vot­ing bloc in Repub­li­can pol­i­tics.

    And thus, he wel­comes the embrace of a fig­ure like Bar­ton, but at arms length.

    ———-

    “Ted Cruz’s con­tro­ver­sial super-PAC leader divides evan­gel­i­cals” by Jon Ward; Yahoo News; 01/29/2016

    Barton’s anonymi­ty was fit­ting. It was some­thing of a metaphor for the rela­tion­ship between Cruz and Bar­ton, both of whom hail from Texas. Cruz has main­tained a del­i­cate bal­ance in his asso­ci­a­tion with Bar­ton, a fig­ure who is a hero to some evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians, and a fraud to oth­ers.”

    The anony­mous ‘Ted Cruz whis­per­er’. That’s how David Bar­ton was depict­ed in this piece of Jan­u­ary of 2016. Bar­ton’s form of Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism has clear­ly had a pro­found influ­ence on Cruz, serv­ing as a kind of the­o­log­i­cal men­tor. And yet, thanks to the con­tro­ver­sial nature of Bar­ton’s the­ol­o­gy, it’s a men­tor­ship that could end up becom­ing a polit­i­cal lia­bil­i­ty out­side of the­o­log­i­cal­ly-friend­ly cir­cles. So when we see Bar­ton was act­ing as the de fac­to mas­ter of cer­e­monies at this Cruz cam­paign event with­out ever intro­duc­ing him­self, we can see how Bar­ton’s polit­i­cal endorse­ments sort of oper­ate in a ‘If You Know, You Know’ man­ner:

    ...
    David Bar­ton also nev­er told the crowd inside the Five Sul­li­van Broth­ers Con­ven­tion Cen­ter his name, even though he intro­duced oth­er speak­ers and served as the event’s de fac­to mas­ter of cer­e­monies.

    ...

    Few fig­ures rep­re­sent the split run­ning down the mid­dle of Amer­i­can evan­gel­i­cal­ism bet­ter than Bar­ton, a 62-year-old self-taught his­to­ri­an (crit­ics call him a pseu­do-his­to­ri­an) who has for more than two decades stumped across the coun­try telling con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians that their nation’s reli­gious her­itage has been cov­ered up and stolen from them by god­less sec­u­lar pro­gres­sives.

    ...

    Yet Bar­ton is help­ful to Cruz because the pres­i­den­tial can­di­date has built his strat­e­gy for win­ning the Repub­li­can nom­i­na­tion around win­ning in Iowa, the first state to vote in the pri­ma­ry process, and a place where 60 per­cent of the GOP elec­torate iden­ti­fies as evan­gel­i­cal. Too close an asso­ci­a­tion with Bar­ton, how­ev­er, would open Cruz up to ques­tions about the influ­ence on his think­ing of a man whose views about faith and pol­i­tics can often sound like Chris­t­ian recon­struc­tion­ism — the belief that gov­ern­ment laws and poli­cies should be drawn explic­it­ly from the Bible.

    Bar­ton argued in 2011 that the pro­gres­sive income tax, cap­i­tal gains tax and the estate tax (or death tax), are all con­trary to the Bible. “Jesus has two entire teach­ings on the cap­i­tal gains tax,” Bar­ton claimed, cit­ing Luke 19:13–26 and Matthew 25:14–29. And, he added, “Jesus did not like the min­i­mum wage.”

    The Bible does not address any of these issues explic­it­ly. Bar­ton was tak­ing para­bles told by Jesus in the New Tes­ta­ment and inter­pret­ing them quite lib­er­al­ly. Bar­ton said in an inter­view that his crit­ics often mis­in­ter­pret or exag­ger­ate his many claims. “I like the Con­sti­tu­tion we’ve got. I’m not try­ing to replace it with the Bible,” he said. When asked about his com­ments about Jesus’ views on tax pol­i­cy, Bar­ton deflect­ed the ques­tion. “What I often say in report­ing his­to­ry doesn’t mean that’s what I’m advo­cat­ing for pol­i­cy right now,” he said.

    Bar­ton may say state­ments about Jesus’ view of tax­es aren’t pre­scrip­tive, but for Chris­tians who believe the Bible should gov­ern all aspects of their lives, Barton’s com­ments pro­vide a the­o­log­i­cal jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for ignor­ing their tax bill that takes high­er prece­dence than the law. If the word of God is explic­it­ly opposed to what the Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice is doing, such a believ­er might rea­son with him­self, then he or she is in fact bound to oppose and defy the IRS.

    These are not the types of state­ments the Cruz cam­paign wants their can­di­date being ques­tioned about on the cam­paign trail. In Sep­tem­ber Bar­ton was named as the leader of a pro-Cruz super-PAC, Keep the Promise, mak­ing him an offi­cial sup­port­er of Cruz’s but with­out any offi­cial con­nec­tion to Cruz’s cam­paign. Of course, if Cruz world was uncom­fort­able with Barton’s endorse­ment, they wouldn’t have want­ed him involved with the super-PAC at all.

    ...

    Some in the sprawl­ing world of the mul­ti­ple Cruz super-PACs have tak­en pot­shots at Bar­ton. “David Bar­ton is known among evan­gel­i­cal pas­tors but he’s not known as a polit­i­cal strate­gist or a fundrais­er,” said an offi­cial from one of Cruz’s super-PACs. “He’s prob­a­bly one of the least active peo­ple on the whole team.”

    But pri­vate con­ver­sa­tions with those who know the PAC’s work­ings sug­gest Bar­ton is a cen­tral fig­ure, mak­ing key hires and man­ag­ing deci­sion mak­ing and strat­e­gy. In Novem­ber, Bar­ton was the per­son who hired Drew Ryun, a for­mer Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee oper­a­tive who in recent years has worked in grass­roots pol­i­tics out­side Wash­ing­ton, often tak­ing on the estab­lish­ment.
    ...

    Sim­i­lar­ly, we can see how Bar­ton was instru­men­tal in orga­niz­ing the Decem­ber 2015 gath­er­ing at the Texas ranch of Far­ris Wilks, who turned out to be a major Cruz donor. Recall how the bil­lion­aire Wilks broth­ers are key part­ners with Tim Dunn in the theo­crat­ic cap­ture of the Texas Repub­li­can Par­ty. It’s a reminder that, while Bar­ton serves as a poten­tial­ly potent, but also poten­tial­ly con­tro­ver­sial, spokesper­son for Cruz when deal­ing with the pub­lic, he’s a theo­crat­ic mega-donor super-star in the right cir­cles:

    ...
    One of Barton’s most notice­able projects so far in the cam­paign was to gath­er rough­ly 300 pas­tors and “faith lead­ers” at the Texas ranch of frack­ing bil­lion­aire Far­ris Wilks dur­ing the week after Christ­mas for a day of dis­cus­sion and prayer. (Wilks had giv­en $10 mil­lion to Keep the Promise III, one of three super-PACs under the umbrel­la of the one run by Bar­ton.)
    ...

    And as the arti­cle describes, while Ted Cruz and David Bar­ton may not be par­tic­u­lar­ly close per­son­al­ly, it’s a very dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tion when we’re talk­ing about Bar­ton and Rafael Cruz, who are described as extreme­ly close:

    ...
    Some spec­u­late that Bar­ton is a Cruz-whis­per­er push­ing him toward theoc­ra­cy, but — set­ting aside the ques­tion of what exact­ly Bar­ton wants the gov­ern­ment to look like — there’s lit­tle evi­dence that the two men are close.

    How­ev­er, Bar­ton has deeply influ­enced Raphael Cruz, the candidate’s father, who spent much of the last year trav­el­ing across Iowa speak­ing in church­es about his son. Raphael Cruz’s world­view is sim­i­lar to Barton’s, and Barton’s his­tor­i­cal research has giv­en Raphael Cruz more fod­der to believe that Amer­i­ca is los­ing its soul, and that Chris­tians must “take this coun­try back.” Raphael Cruz has pub­lished a new book, “A Time for Action: Empow­er­ing the Faith­ful to Reclaim Amer­i­ca,” in which he quotes and cites Bar­ton.

    “Rafael and David are extreme­ly close,” said Gary Miller, who runs a group called “Talk Less! Pray More!” and also works with oper­a­tives like David Lane who orga­nize events to bring politi­cians to speak to groups of Chris­t­ian pas­tors across the coun­try.

    “When it comes to Ted, there is a friend­ship, but I get the dis­tinct impres­sion that Ted Cruz is his own man,” Miller said. “He cer­tain­ly rec­og­nizes that David Bar­ton has a voice among evan­gel­i­cals, but you also would have to know that David Bar­ton dri­ves some evan­gel­i­cals crazy. I’m not one of those, but I have friends of mine who are.”
    ...

    And as the fol­low­ing Boston Globe arti­cle, also from Jan­u­ary of 2016, describes, it’s not just that Rafael Cruz and David Bar­ton are long­time close asso­ciates. Rafael was seen by many as his son’s ‘secret weapon’ in the GOP pri­mar­i­ly pre­cise­ly because the elder Cruz has so much sway with evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers. Beyond that, as the arti­cle also describes, Ted Cruz has effec­tive­ly been groomed by his father to run for pres­i­dent since he was a child. So when we see how David Bar­ton was play­ing a key role ral­ly evan­gel­i­cals around Ted Cruz’s 2016 pres­i­den­tial bid, keep in mind that this was a moment Rafael had been plan­ning on for a very long time. Per­haps longer than Ted had been:

    The Boston Globe

    Ted Cruz’s father gives him edge among con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians

    By Tra­cy Jan Globe Staff,
    Jan­u­ary 26, 2016, 8:45 p.m.

    MARION, Iowa — The Texas pas­tor paced before the wood­en cross in a rur­al church, point­ing toward the heav­ens as he lament­ed the sor­ry state of the coun­try.

    Cast your vote in the Iowa cau­cus, he exhort­ed the con­gre­ga­tion, and reclaim Amer­i­ca!

    “If the right­eous are not run­ning for office and not even vot­ing, what is left?” he asked dur­ing Sun­day morn­ing ser­vice at Grace Bap­tist Church in Iowa. “The wicked elect­ing the wicked. And we get what we deserve.”

    Meet Rafael Cruz, Ted Cruz’s 76-year-old father, a cru­cial — if some­times divi­sive — ele­ment of the Texas sen­a­tor’s cam­paign to win over con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian vot­ers. The senior Cruz’s cru­sades at church­es across Iowa have paid big div­i­dends; with strong sup­port among evan­gel­i­cals, Cruz has pulled with­in strik­ing dis­tance of front-run­ner Don­ald Trump in next week’s first-in-the-nation cau­cus.

    Rafael Cruz has drawn crit­i­cism for mak­ing incen­di­ary state­ments: He has com­pared Pres­i­dent Oba­ma to Fidel Cas­tro and advo­cat­ed that the pres­i­dent be sent “back to Kenya.” He accus­es gay activists of try­ing to legal­ize pedophil­ia. He con­tends pub­lic schools are brain­wash­ing chil­dren with sec­u­lar­ism. But among many Chris­tians here, he’s preach­ing to the choir, draw­ing cries of “Amen!” “Preach!” and “C’mon!” from the pews.

    For more than a year, Rafael Cruz, a trim, spry man with a ring of white hair, has been preach­ing the same fire and brim­stone ser­mon at church­es and in pri­vate meet­ings with pas­tors all over Iowa and the coun­try, on a mis­sion to ral­ly this crit­i­cal demo­graph­ic toward polit­i­cal activism — and sup­port his son for the pres­i­den­cy.

    ...

    When Rafael Cruz was asked by a reporter to respond to crit­ics who dis­miss his views as extrem­ist, a cam­paign aide hov­er­ing near­by whis­pered to him not to answer. The advice was ignored.

    “If they don’t agree, they don’t agree,” said an unapolo­getic Cruz. “But my son is try­ing to be pres­i­dent to all Amer­i­cans.”

    Ted Cruz said in an inter­view that his father is a pow­er­ful voice for free­dom and that his mes­sage should res­onate deeply even among non-Chris­tians.

    Chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tives say they are par­tic­u­lar­ly drawn to Rafael Cruz because of his dra­mat­ic life sto­ry. He was an active oppo­nent of Cuba’s Batista dic­ta­tor­ship who fled to the Unit­ed States in 1957 on a stu­dent visa and $100 sewn into his under­wear. He stud­ied math at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas Austin, learn­ing Eng­lish by watch­ing movies and sup­port­ing him­self by wash­ing dish­es.

    He and his sec­ond wife, an Amer­i­can, even­tu­al­ly moved to Cana­da, where Ted Cruz was born in 1970. But Rafael Cruz, an alco­holic, aban­doned his wife and tod­dler son and returned to Texas. It was there that he found God, lead­ing him to rec­on­cile with his fam­i­ly in 1975 and bring­ing them back to the Unit­ed States.

    By the time Ted Cruz was 9, his father was pro­vid­ing heavy dos­es of con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian pol­i­tics at the din­ner table. By 13, the younger Cruz had mem­o­rized the Con­sti­tu­tion and through high school toured the state of Texas, deliv­er­ing speech­es on free mar­ket eco­nom­ics and the Con­sti­tu­tion.

    “Essen­tial­ly his father groomed him for this moment,” said Steve Deace, a con­ser­v­a­tive Iowa radio talk show host who has endorsed Cruz. “That back­sto­ry was cru­cial in influ­enc­ing a lot of peo­ple.”

    Empha­siz­ing the fam­i­ly’s reli­gious ties with­in Iowa’s Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ty seems to be work­ing. While Trump is hold­ing on to a lead of around 5 points, Ted Cruz remained the favorite among evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians, accord­ing to the lat­est Des Moines Reg­is­ter poll: 37 per­cent of self-iden­ti­fied evan­gel­i­cals or born-again Chris­tians sup­port­ed Cruz, com­pared to 17 per­cent for Trump.

    Of Iowans who have said they plan to cau­cus next week, between 40 and 50 per­cent iden­ti­fy as evan­gel­i­cals, said J. Ann Selz­er, poll­ster for the Des Moines Reg­is­ter.]

    “Rafael is an amaz­ing clos­er,” said Bryan Eng­lish, Cruz’s Iowa state direc­tor and a for­mer pas­tor who shut­tled Rafael Cruz all over the state in his Dodge Dako­ta last year to more than 1,000 meet­ings. “Too many politi­cians over the years come in, wave a Bible, quote a cou­ple of vers­es, and think they’re a part of our move­ment. We’ve been burned.”

    The elder Cruz, many evan­gel­i­cals say, speaks to the authen­tic­i­ty of Ted Cruz’s rela­tion­ship with God. That’s a key rea­son he won the sought-after endorse­ment last month of Bob Van­der Plaats, pres­i­dent of The Fam­i­ly Leader, an influ­en­tial Chris­t­ian advo­ca­cy group.

    “He’s a clar­i­fy­ing check that Ted’s the real deal,” said Van­der Plaats dur­ing an inter­view from his Urban­dale office, half a mile from Cruz’s Iowa head­quar­ters.

    Pas­tor Joseph Brown, head of Mar­i­on Avenue Bap­tist Church in Wash­ing­ton, Iowa, leads 99 Pas­tors for Cruz, a grass-roots effort to secure an endorse­ment from a pas­tor in each coun­ty and use their built-in audi­ences every Sun­day to pro­pel Cruz to a win. Brown, who had not pre­vi­ous­ly insert­ed him­self in pol­i­tics, said he came up with the idea after lis­ten­ing to Rafael Cruz chal­lenge pas­tors to get involved.

    ...

    On Sat­ur­day, as Ted Cruz held a ral­ly with radio host Glenn Beck at a Bap­tist col­lege in a Des Moines sub­urb, Rafael Cruz and Deace auto­graphed copies of their new books at a church 16 miles away.

    “We have to get the right­eous involved in the polit­i­cal process,” Rafael Cruz told a cou­ple in their ear­ly 70s. He flipped to Chap­ter 13 of his book “A Time For Action.”

    “I give action steps here, what peo­ple need to do to get involved,” Cruz said.

    The cou­ple, Cheryl and Dave Kutsch­er, bought two copies, so they could read it simul­ta­ne­ous­ly. They said they sup­port Ted Cruz, in large part because of his father.

    “If Ted ever got out of line, Rafael would put him back in place,” said Dave Kutsch­er, a land devel­op­er.

    The next day, at the Mar­i­on church, Cruz, dressed in a blue suit, railed against the abo­li­tion of prayer and Bible read­ing in schools as the cause of sky­rock­et­ing teen preg­nan­cy, dropout rates, and van­dal­ism. Now, he said, “homo­sex­u­al mar­riage” is the lat­est “frontal attack on reli­gious lib­er­ty.”

    “The dev­il over­played his hand because this deci­sion has act­ed as a cat­a­lyst to awak­en the sleep­ing giant,” Cruz said, his voice boom­ing through the church. He nev­er men­tioned his son’s name.

    On Mon­day, about 150 Iowa pas­tors attend­ed a pri­vate din­ner at a Des Moines air­port hotel host­ed by David Lane, a Chris­t­ian activist from Cal­i­for­nia whose group, Amer­i­can Renew­al Project, mobi­lizes pas­tors to run for polit­i­cal office.

    The din­ner served as a final oppor­tu­ni­ty for pas­tors to hear from Ted Cruz him­self. Lane, who allowed the Globe to attend the closed event with the agree­ment of the cam­paign, has host­ed sim­i­lar din­ners for oth­er can­di­dates, includ­ing Mike Huck­abee, Rand Paul, and Mar­co Rubio. But Cruz has drawn the largest crowd by far, dou­ble that of Rubio’s, Lane said.

    As guests dined on hon­ey pecan chick­en and straw­ber­ry cheese­cake par­faits, Ted Cruz deliv­ered his father’s mantra of the impor­tance of vot­ing on bib­li­cal val­ues.

    “What mat­ters in the next 167 hours is who shows up on cau­cus night,” Cruz said. “This is entire­ly about turnout. And the men and women in this room have the pow­er to change the elec­tion and the course of his­to­ry.”

    Sit­ting a few feet away, Rafael Cruz looked up at his son and beamed.

    ———-

    “Ted Cruz’s father gives him edge among con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians” By Tra­cy Jan Globe Staff; The Boston Globe; 01/26/2016

    “Meet Rafael Cruz, Ted Cruz’s 76-year-old father, a cru­cial — if some­times divi­sive — ele­ment of the Texas sen­a­tor’s cam­paign to win over con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian vot­ers. The senior Cruz’s cru­sades at church­es across Iowa have paid big div­i­dends; with strong sup­port among evan­gel­i­cals, Cruz has pulled with­in strik­ing dis­tance of front-run­ner Don­ald Trump in next week’s first-in-the-nation cau­cus.

    Rafael Cruz is quite the crowd pleas­er. At least for the right kind of crowd. Like an Iowan Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry audi­ence.

    But as we can see, Rafael has­n’t just been meet­ing with church­go­ers to pro­mote his son’s pres­i­den­tial bid. He had been meet­ing in pri­vate with pas­tors all over the US for at least a year at that point. And had been prepar­ing Ted for this role since child­hood:

    ...
    Rafael Cruz has drawn crit­i­cism for mak­ing incen­di­ary state­ments: He has com­pared Pres­i­dent Oba­ma to Fidel Cas­tro and advo­cat­ed that the pres­i­dent be sent “back to Kenya.” He accus­es gay activists of try­ing to legal­ize pedophil­ia. He con­tends pub­lic schools are brain­wash­ing chil­dren with sec­u­lar­ism. But among many Chris­tians here, he’s preach­ing to the choir, draw­ing cries of “Amen!” “Preach!” and “C’mon!” from the pews.

    For more than a year, Rafael Cruz, a trim, spry man with a ring of white hair, has been preach­ing the same fire and brim­stone ser­mon at church­es and in pri­vate meet­ings with pas­tors all over Iowa and the coun­try, on a mis­sion to ral­ly this crit­i­cal demo­graph­ic toward polit­i­cal activism — and sup­port his son for the pres­i­den­cy.

    ...

    Chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tives say they are par­tic­u­lar­ly drawn to Rafael Cruz because of his dra­mat­ic life sto­ry. He was an active oppo­nent of Cuba’s Batista dic­ta­tor­ship who fled to the Unit­ed States in 1957 on a stu­dent visa and $100 sewn into his under­wear. He stud­ied math at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas Austin, learn­ing Eng­lish by watch­ing movies and sup­port­ing him­self by wash­ing dish­es.

    He and his sec­ond wife, an Amer­i­can, even­tu­al­ly moved to Cana­da, where Ted Cruz was born in 1970. But Rafael Cruz, an alco­holic, aban­doned his wife and tod­dler son and returned to Texas. It was there that he found God, lead­ing him to rec­on­cile with his fam­i­ly in 1975 and bring­ing them back to the Unit­ed States.

    By the time Ted Cruz was 9, his father was pro­vid­ing heavy dos­es of con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian pol­i­tics at the din­ner table. By 13, the younger Cruz had mem­o­rized the Con­sti­tu­tion and through high school toured the state of Texas, deliv­er­ing speech­es on free mar­ket eco­nom­ics and the Con­sti­tu­tion.

    “Essen­tial­ly his father groomed him for this moment,” said Steve Deace, a con­ser­v­a­tive Iowa radio talk show host who has endorsed Cruz. “That back­sto­ry was cru­cial in influ­enc­ing a lot of peo­ple.”
    ...

    And when we see how Rafael sought out the endorse­ment of key Iowa con­ser­v­a­tive king-mak­er, Bob Van­der Plaats, recall how Van­der Plaats end­ed up endorse Ron DeSan­tis in the 2024 Iowa cau­cus, trig­ger­ing a big fight for Van­der Plaats with the ‘Pas­tors for Trump’ group that’s emerged in recent year. In fact, Pas­tors for Trump was start­ed not long after Van­der Plaats began open­ly crit­i­ciz­ing Don­ald Trump fol­low­ing Trump’s now-infa­mous din­ner at Mar-a-Lago with Kanye West and neo-Nazi leader Nick Fuentes. It’s a reminder that the race of evan­gel­i­cal endorse­ments has become more com­pli­cat­ed since Trump’s cap­ture of the Repub­li­can Par­ty:

    ...
    Empha­siz­ing the fam­i­ly’s reli­gious ties with­in Iowa’s Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ty seems to be work­ing. While Trump is hold­ing on to a lead of around 5 points, Ted Cruz remained the favorite among evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians, accord­ing to the lat­est Des Moines Reg­is­ter poll: 37 per­cent of self-iden­ti­fied evan­gel­i­cals or born-again Chris­tians sup­port­ed Cruz, com­pared to 17 per­cent for Trump.

    Of Iowans who have said they plan to cau­cus next week, between 40 and 50 per­cent iden­ti­fy as evan­gel­i­cals, said J. Ann Selz­er, poll­ster for the Des Moines Reg­is­ter.]

    “Rafael is an amaz­ing clos­er,” said Bryan Eng­lish, Cruz’s Iowa state direc­tor and a for­mer pas­tor who shut­tled Rafael Cruz all over the state in his Dodge Dako­ta last year to more than 1,000 meet­ings. “Too many politi­cians over the years come in, wave a Bible, quote a cou­ple of vers­es, and think they’re a part of our move­ment. We’ve been burned.”

    The elder Cruz, many evan­gel­i­cals say, speaks to the authen­tic­i­ty of Ted Cruz’s rela­tion­ship with God. That’s a key rea­son he won the sought-after endorse­ment last month of Bob Van­der Plaats, pres­i­dent of The Fam­i­ly Leader, an influ­en­tial Chris­t­ian advo­ca­cy group.

    “He’s a clar­i­fy­ing check that Ted’s the real deal,” said Van­der Plaats dur­ing an inter­view from his Urban­dale office, half a mile from Cruz’s Iowa head­quar­ters.
    ...

    And then we get a ref­er­ence to one of David Lane’s Amer­i­can Renew­al Project events, fea­tur­ing Ted Cruz. An event attend­ed by Rafael too:

    ...
    On Mon­day, about 150 Iowa pas­tors attend­ed a pri­vate din­ner at a Des Moines air­port hotel host­ed by David Lane, a Chris­t­ian activist from Cal­i­for­nia whose group, Amer­i­can Renew­al Project, mobi­lizes pas­tors to run for polit­i­cal office.

    The din­ner served as a final oppor­tu­ni­ty for pas­tors to hear from Ted Cruz him­self. Lane, who allowed the Globe to attend the closed event with the agree­ment of the cam­paign, has host­ed sim­i­lar din­ners for oth­er can­di­dates, includ­ing Mike Huck­abee, Rand Paul, and Mar­co Rubio. But Cruz has drawn the largest crowd by far, dou­ble that of Rubio’s, Lane said.

    As guests dined on hon­ey pecan chick­en and straw­ber­ry cheese­cake par­faits, Ted Cruz deliv­ered his father’s mantra of the impor­tance of vot­ing on bib­li­cal val­ues.

    “What mat­ters in the next 167 hours is who shows up on cau­cus night,” Cruz said. “This is entire­ly about turnout. And the men and women in this room have the pow­er to change the elec­tion and the course of his­to­ry.”

    Sit­ting a few feet away, Rafael Cruz looked up at his son and beamed.
    ...

    And that brings us to the fol­low­ing April 2015 piece from the Wash­ing­ton Times describ­ing a rela­tion­ship we should more or less expect at this point: it turns out David Lane and Rafael Cruz have a long­stand­ing work­ing rela­tion­ship. The kind of rela­tion­ship that could have been very help­ful had Ted won the pri­ma­ry. Because as the Cruz cam­paign explained at the time, Ted Cruz’s path to the White House was pred­i­cat­ed on acti­vat­ed two dif­fer­ent groups of evan­gel­i­cals: reg­u­lar evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers and non-reg­u­lar evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers. And as David Lane explained, one of his goals was get­ting preach­ers to ener­gize the then 30-to-40 mil­lion evan­gel­i­cals not reg­is­tered to vote. It’s a reminder that, while the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project might have a pub­lic focus on recruit­ing pas­tors to run for office, at its core the project appears to be more about using pas­tors to con­vert non-vot­ing evan­gel­i­cals into vot­ers:

    The Wash­ing­ton Times

    Evan­gel­i­cal pas­tors descend on Las Vegas to learn to moti­vate Chris­tians to vote

    By Kel­ly Rid­dell
    Wednes­day, April 22, 2015

    Hun­dreds of Evan­gel­i­cal pas­tors and their wives will descend on Las Vegas Thurs­day to learn how to moti­vate their con­gre­ga­tions to get out and vote, prefer­ably for social con­ser­v­a­tives.

    David Lane, an evan­gel­i­cal polit­i­cal activist and event spon­sor, is eager to get preach­ers to tack­le gov­ern­ment poli­cies from the pul­pit and ener­gize the esti­mat­ed 30 to 40 mil­lion evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians who are not reg­is­tered to vote.

    “Somebody’s prin­ci­ples are going to reign supreme, it’s either our prin­ci­ples or some­body else’s prin­ci­ples,” said Mr. Lane. “By us stay­ing home, we’re elect­ing peo­ple who oppose our val­ues. Evan­gel­i­cal believ­ers and pro-life Catholic Chris­tians, our con­stituen­cy, has to engage if we’re going to save Amer­i­ca.”

    There are about 65 to 80 mil­lion evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians in Amer­i­ca, half of those are not reg­is­tered to vote, and only about 25 per­cent of the ones who are reg­is­tered do, accord­ing to Mr. Lane.

    Repub­li­can Sen. Ted Cruz, who announced his pres­i­den­tial bid at the Chris­t­ian-found­ed Lib­er­ty Uni­ver­si­ty last month, is depend­ing on these votes. He’s also look­ing to defy some estab­lish­ment Repub­li­cans and those in the media who say he’s on a fools errand.

    “Today, rough­ly half of born-again Chris­tians aren’t vot­ing. They’re stay­ing home,” said Mr. Cruz, a Texas Repub­li­can, in the speech announc­ing his can­di­da­cy at Lib­er­ty. “Imag­ine instead mil­lions of peo­ple of faith all across Amer­i­ca com­ing out to the polls and vot­ing our val­ues.”

    Mr. Cruz detailed to the Nation­al Jour­nal this month his plan to take the White House, which con­sists of two parts. The first is moti­vat­ing Chris­tians who stayed at home in the 2012 elec­tion to vote. The sec­ond is to be so true to his evan­gel­i­cal, con­sti­tu­tion­al val­ues that he pulls in peo­ple who have nev­er vot­ed before or sways oth­ers to chose him regard­less of polit­i­cal par­ty.

    ...

    But Philip Bump, a polit­i­cal blog­ger at the Wash­ing­ton Post, has mocked Mr. Cruz’s evan­gel­i­cal strat­e­gy.

    “Sen. Ted Cruz is a demon­stra­bly smart man, hav­ing grad­u­at­ed from both Prince­ton and Har­vard. It is easy to see, how­ev­er, that his degrees were not in math­e­mat­ics or sta­tis­tics,” Mr. Bump wrote in an April col­umn, argu­ing get­ting some­one who has no vot­ing his­to­ry to vote is an uphill climb, and by Mr. Cruz not mov­ing to the cen­ter, he won’t attract the inde­pen­dent vot­ers he’s plan­ning on.

    ...

    George Will, a con­ser­v­a­tive colum­nist wrote on April 1: “Cruz, like Shakespeare’s Glen­dow­er (’I can call spir­its from the vasty deep’), hopes his rhetor­i­cal pow­ers can sub­stan­tial­ly change the com­po­si­tion of the Repub­li­can nom­i­nat­ing elec­torate. Skep­tics of Cruz’s sum­mon­ing respond like Hot­spur: ’But will they come when you do call for them?’”

    Mr. Lane found­ed the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project, the spon­sor of Thurs­day and Friday’s Las Vegas pas­tor con­fer­ence, and start­ed this evan­gel­i­cal mod­el with for­mer Texas Gov. Rick Per­ry in 2005, He has held sev­er­al events since then fea­tur­ing Mr. Cruz, his father and pas­tor Rafael Cruz, South Car­oli­na Gov. Nik­ki Haley, Louisiana Gov. Bob­by Jin­dal, 2016 poten­tial can­di­dates Mike Huck­abee and Rick San­to­rum and Sen. Rand Paul, among oth­ers.

    In 2014, his group ded­i­cat­ed $2 mil­lion to a ground game in four embat­tled states with Sen­ate races with the aim of turn­ing out evan­gel­i­cals. The Amer­i­can Renew­al Project held “pas­tors and pews” events speak­ing about the need for preach­ers to engage their con­gre­ga­tions, did vot­er reg­is­tra­tion dri­ves, gave out vot­er guides and launched a dig­i­tal strat­e­gy. The group iden­ti­fied 75,000 low propen­si­ty vot­ers in each state, and tar­get­ed them with phone calls, knock­ing on doors, and mail.

    Over­all, the group esti­mates it turned out 141,151 votes in North Car­oli­na, Col­orado, Iowa and Arkansas com­bined. Repub­li­can sen­a­tors won each of those con­tests, and over­all, only 324,146 votes decid­ed them.

    ...

    The goal of the pas­tor con­fer­ences is to show preach­ers how Amer­i­can his­to­ry and the pul­pit inter­twine and the only way to get Chris­t­ian val­ues reflect­ed in nation­al pol­i­cy is to get Chris­tians to par­tic­i­pate in it, said Rafael Cruz.

    “There is a lot of peo­ple who are total­ly unaware of the Chris­t­ian his­to­ry of the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion,” said the elder Cruz, who gives a Pow­er­Point pre­sen­ta­tion to oth­er pas­tors dubbed “Reclaim­ing Amer­i­ca: Why Pas­tors and Chris­tians in Gen­er­al Need to be Involved in the Polit­i­cal Are­na.”

    “If we look at the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence there are sev­en­teen griev­ances list­ed against King George, but what most peo­ple don’t know is that each and every one of those griev­ances were preached in the church­es of Amer­i­ca before they were com­plied in the dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence,” said the elder Cruz. “My friend David Bar­ton has said that the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence could be con­sid­ered a series of ser­mon sum­maries. So it was preach­ers from the pul­pit call­ing out King George for the atroc­i­ties the British were per­pe­trat­ing on the Amer­i­can peo­ple. That is our his­to­ry.”

    Still, skep­tics are wary any­thing can be done to mobi­lize a base that his­tor­i­cal­ly hasn’t come out to vote or are even reg­is­tered.

    “If Cruz wants to count those, good luck to him,” wrote Mr. Bump.

    ———-

    “The Wash­ing­ton Times” By Kel­ly Rid­dell; The Wash­ing­ton Times; 04/22/2015

    “There are about 65 to 80 mil­lion evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians in Amer­i­ca, half of those are not reg­is­tered to vote, and only about 25 per­cent of the ones who are reg­is­tered do, accord­ing to Mr. Lane.

    Only around half of the 65–80 mil­lion evan­gel­i­cals in Amer­i­ca are even reg­is­tered to vote and, only around a quar­ter of those who are reg­is­tered vote at all. In oth­er words, a clear major­i­ty of Amer­i­can evan­gel­i­cals don’t vote. Or at least that was claim David Lane was mak­ing in 2015. As we’re going to see below, it was a wild­ly exag­ger­at­ed claim that oth­ers in Lane’s orbit also like to repeat. Still, it’s a reflec­tion of the intense focus in Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry pol­i­tics on mobi­liz­ing evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers in par­tic­u­lar. As Ted Cruz was describ­ing at the time, ener­giz­ing and mobi­liz­ing the evan­gel­i­cal vote was at the core of his pres­i­den­tial cam­paign strat­e­gy. It’s not clear the strat­e­gy would have worked, as plen­ty of skep­tics point­ed out. But that was the plan:

    ...
    David Lane, an evan­gel­i­cal polit­i­cal activist and event spon­sor, is eager to get preach­ers to tack­le gov­ern­ment poli­cies from the pul­pit and ener­gize the esti­mat­ed 30 to 40 mil­lion evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians who are not reg­is­tered to vote.

    ...

    Repub­li­can Sen. Ted Cruz, who announced his pres­i­den­tial bid at the Chris­t­ian-found­ed Lib­er­ty Uni­ver­si­ty last month, is depend­ing on these votes. He’s also look­ing to defy some estab­lish­ment Repub­li­cans and those in the media who say he’s on a fools errand.

    “Today, rough­ly half of born-again Chris­tians aren’t vot­ing. They’re stay­ing home,” said Mr. Cruz, a Texas Repub­li­can, in the speech announc­ing his can­di­da­cy at Lib­er­ty. “Imag­ine instead mil­lions of peo­ple of faith all across Amer­i­ca com­ing out to the polls and vot­ing our val­ues.”

    Mr. Cruz detailed to the Nation­al Jour­nal this month his plan to take the White House, which con­sists of two parts. The first is moti­vat­ing Chris­tians who stayed at home in the 2012 elec­tion to vote. The sec­ond is to be so true to his evan­gel­i­cal, con­sti­tu­tion­al val­ues that he pulls in peo­ple who have nev­er vot­ed before or sways oth­ers to chose him regard­less of polit­i­cal par­ty.

    ...

    But Philip Bump, a polit­i­cal blog­ger at the Wash­ing­ton Post, has mocked Mr. Cruz’s evan­gel­i­cal strat­e­gy.

    “Sen. Ted Cruz is a demon­stra­bly smart man, hav­ing grad­u­at­ed from both Prince­ton and Har­vard. It is easy to see, how­ev­er, that his degrees were not in math­e­mat­ics or sta­tis­tics,” Mr. Bump wrote in an April col­umn, argu­ing get­ting some­one who has no vot­ing his­to­ry to vote is an uphill climb, and by Mr. Cruz not mov­ing to the cen­ter, he won’t attract the inde­pen­dent vot­ers he’s plan­ning on.

    ...

    George Will, a con­ser­v­a­tive colum­nist wrote on April 1: “Cruz, like Shakespeare’s Glen­dow­er (’I can call spir­its from the vasty deep’), hopes his rhetor­i­cal pow­ers can sub­stan­tial­ly change the com­po­si­tion of the Repub­li­can nom­i­nat­ing elec­torate. Skep­tics of Cruz’s sum­mon­ing respond like Hot­spur: ’But will they come when you do call for them?’”
    ...

    And not how these Amer­i­can Renew­al Project events at the time did­n’t just fea­ture pres­i­den­tial hope­fuls like Nik­ki Haley or Ted Cruz. Rafael Cruz him­self was fea­tured guest at some of these events, giv­ing Pow­er­Point pre­sen­ta­tion to oth­er pas­tors dubbed “Reclaim­ing Amer­i­ca: Why Pas­tors and Chris­tians in Gen­er­al Need to be Involved in the Polit­i­cal Are­na”:

    ...
    Mr. Lane found­ed the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project, the spon­sor of Thurs­day and Friday’s Las Vegas pas­tor con­fer­ence, and start­ed this evan­gel­i­cal mod­el with for­mer Texas Gov. Rick Per­ry in 2005, He has held sev­er­al events since then fea­tur­ing Mr. Cruz, his father and pas­tor Rafael Cruz, South Car­oli­na Gov. Nik­ki Haley, Louisiana Gov. Bob­by Jin­dal, 2016 poten­tial can­di­dates Mike Huck­abee and Rick San­to­rum and Sen. Rand Paul, among oth­ers.

    In 2014, his group ded­i­cat­ed $2 mil­lion to a ground game in four embat­tled states with Sen­ate races with the aim of turn­ing out evan­gel­i­cals. The Amer­i­can Renew­al Project held “pas­tors and pews” events speak­ing about the need for preach­ers to engage their con­gre­ga­tions, did vot­er reg­is­tra­tion dri­ves, gave out vot­er guides and launched a dig­i­tal strat­e­gy. The group iden­ti­fied 75,000 low propen­si­ty vot­ers in each state, and tar­get­ed them with phone calls, knock­ing on doors, and mail.

    ...

    The goal of the pas­tor con­fer­ences is to show preach­ers how Amer­i­can his­to­ry and the pul­pit inter­twine and the only way to get Chris­t­ian val­ues reflect­ed in nation­al pol­i­cy is to get Chris­tians to par­tic­i­pate in it, said Rafael Cruz.

    “There is a lot of peo­ple who are total­ly unaware of the Chris­t­ian his­to­ry of the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion,” said the elder Cruz, who gives a Pow­er­Point pre­sen­ta­tion to oth­er pas­tors dubbed “Reclaim­ing Amer­i­ca: Why Pas­tors and Chris­tians in Gen­er­al Need to be Involved in the Polit­i­cal Are­na.”

    “If we look at the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence there are sev­en­teen griev­ances list­ed against King George, but what most peo­ple don’t know is that each and every one of those griev­ances were preached in the church­es of Amer­i­ca before they were com­plied in the dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence,” said the elder Cruz. “My friend David Bar­ton has said that the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence could be con­sid­ered a series of ser­mon sum­maries. So it was preach­ers from the pul­pit call­ing out King George for the atroc­i­ties the British were per­pe­trat­ing on the Amer­i­can peo­ple. That is our his­to­ry.”
    ...

    Next, let’s take a quick look at this Novem­ber 2013 piece in the Wash­ing­ton Month­ly about Lane’s Amer­i­can Renew­al Project events, fea­tur­ing David Bar­ton, that were already under­way for the 2014 elec­tion cycle. And as it notes, Ted Cruz was already attend­ing these events. Keep in mind that he was first elect­ed to the Sen­ate in 2012, so he was­n’t actu­al­ly fac­ing any elec­tions in the 2014 elec­tion cycle. In oth­er words, Ted Cruz was already start­ing the process of win­ning over evan­gel­i­cal pas­tors for his 2016 pres­i­den­tial race in 2013, with the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project as his venue of choice:

    Wash­ing­ton Month­ly

    Wacko Birds of a Feath­er

    by Ed Kil­go­re
    Novem­ber 4, 2013

    Those who mar­veled at my ear­li­er post about David Barton’s belief that legal­ized abor­tion is the cause of cli­mate change should be aware that the “his­to­ri­an” is not only the chief inspi­ra­tion for the whole “Chris­t­ian Nation” meme that has large­ly been accept­ed as a tru­ism by much of the Amer­i­can Right, but swims in some of the same waters as reg­u­lar old Repub­li­can pols.

    This becomes appar­ent if you look at one of ol’ David’s favorite orga­ni­za­tions, the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project, the very insid­er Chris­t­ian Right group close­ly aligned with the aggres­sive­ly homo­pho­bic Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Asso­ci­a­tion, and run by the famous­ly influ­en­tial David Lane, whose main vehi­cle is the “Pastor’s Pol­i­cy Brief­in­gs” that bring pols in on the car­pet to be instruct­ed by cler­gy in an off-the-record con­text.

    Bar­ton was present at the first such event of the 2014 elec­toral cycle in Iowa back in July. So, too, were Rand Paul, and the man who stole the show, Ted Cruz (per this account from the Des Moines Reg­is­ter‘s Jen­nifer Jacobs:

    This morn­ing, Cruz spoke for near­ly an hour at the Iowa Renew­al Project, a two-day, all-expens­es-paid forum orga­nized by David Lane, a polit­i­cal activist from Cal­i­for­nia who has been qui­et­ly mobi­liz­ing evan­gel­i­cals in Iowa for six years. Two top-name GOP politi­cians who are like­ly 2016 pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates – Cruz and U.S. Sen. Rand Paul of Ken­tucky, both born-again Chris­tians – are the stars of today’s ses­sions.

    Cruz lec­tured for 30 min­utes, his voice at times ris­ing to a shout. He answered ques­tions for anoth­er 20 min­utes, then stood at the cen­ter of a cir­cle as pas­tors laid their hands on him and the whole audi­ence – a pre­dom­i­nant­ly white group with about 20 black pas­tors – bowed heads to pray for him.

    Then there was this tid­bit, which is even more inter­est­ing now that David Corn has drawn atten­tion to a cer­tain rev­erend close to the junior sen­a­tor from Texas:

    Cruz, who told The Des Moines Reg­is­ter he has nev­er been to Iowa before, laid out his social con­ser­v­a­tive cre­den­tials in some detail, explain­ing all the reli­gious issues he defend­ed in court cas­es he worked on as a pri­vate lawyer and as solic­i­tor gen­er­al in Texas. He intro­duced his Cuban immi­grant father, Rafael Cruz, who sat in the audi­ence.

    That was then. This is now, today, per Andrew Shain of The State:

    Repub­li­can U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas is reach­ing out Mon­day to the same audi­ence of South Car­oli­na pas­tors that for­mer House Speak­er Newt Gin­grich vis­it­ed twice before his sur­prise vic­to­ry in the state’s 2012 pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry.

    Cruz, an expect­ed White House hope­ful who was the light­ning rod dur­ing last month’s 16-day par­tial fed­er­al gov­ern­ment shut­down, will speak at a Colum­bia hotel. It is one of many events that evan­gel­i­cal polit­i­cal oper­a­tive David Lane has orga­nized in key bat­tle­ground states since 2005.

    Lane’s Amer­i­can Renew­al Project is financed by the Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Asso­ci­a­tion, the Mis­sis­sip­pi-based Chris­t­ian orga­ni­za­tion that advo­cates on social issues. Lane’s goal is to get more evan­gel­i­cals to the polls via the “pas­tors’ pol­i­cy brief­in­gs’’ that he has held over the years, includ­ing a half-dozen in South Car­oli­na.

    ...

    I could go on and on (anoth­er speak­er at the SC event, Dr. Lau­rence White, deliv­ered a blood-cur­dling speech I hap­pened to hear in Iowa last year attack­ing Chris­tians who tol­er­ate “the per­vert­ed stan­dards of the ungod­ly who live around us” and damned any­one who would in any way com­pro­mise with baby-killing pro-choicers). But you get the point. Pun­dits who casu­al­ly talk about pols in both par­ties pan­der­ing to “extrem­ists” or “inter­est groups” clear­ly don’t get it. There is no ana­log among Demo­c­ra­t­ic politicians–certainly those con­sid­ered pos­si­ble seri­ous can­di­dates for president–consorting with peo­ple as “out there” as Bar­ton and Fed­er­er and White and AFA founder Don Wild­mon (anoth­er speak­er in Colum­bia) and Lane and Lord knows who else. For Repub­li­cans, it’s not only busi­ness as usu­al, but essen­tial to good rela­tions with “the base” and an oblig­a­tory chore on the road to the pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion.

    ———-

    “Wacko Birds of a Feath­er” by Ed Kil­go­re; Wash­ing­ton Month­ly; 11/04/2013

    “Bar­ton was present at the first such event of the 2014 elec­toral cycle in Iowa back in July. So, too, were Rand Paul, and the man who stole the show, Ted Cruz

    Look who stole the show at the ‘first’ Amer­i­can Renew­al Project event of the 2014 elec­tion cycle, back in July of 2013 in Iowa. And then, in Novem­ber of that year, he attend­ed anoth­er such event, this time South Car­oli­na. That’s part of the con­text of all these reports we were get­ting 2015 and 2016 about how Cruz was rely­ing on Lane’s net­work to secure his pri­ma­ry vic­to­ry and go on to win the White House: Ted Cruz has appar­ent­ly been attend­ed a large num­ber David Lane’s events.

    And note when we see the ref­er­ence to Dr. Lau­rence White deliv­ered a blood-cur­dling speech at a 2012 Amer­i­can Renew­al Project event, recall how White and his wife were two of three direc­tors on the Niemoller Foundation’s gov­ern­ing board. In oth­er words, White is an Amer­i­can Renew­al Project mega-donor. He could pre­sum­ably give as many blood-cur­dling speech­es at he want­ed at these kinds of events:

    ...
    I could go on and on (anoth­er speak­er at the SC event, Dr. Lau­rence White, deliv­ered a blood-cur­dling speech I hap­pened to hear in Iowa last year attack­ing Chris­tians who tol­er­ate “the per­vert­ed stan­dards of the ungod­ly who live around us” and damned any­one who would in any way com­pro­mise with baby-killing pro-choicers). But you get the point. Pun­dits who casu­al­ly talk about pols in both par­ties pan­der­ing to “extrem­ists” or “inter­est groups” clear­ly don’t get it. There is no ana­log among Demo­c­ra­t­ic politicians–certainly those con­sid­ered pos­si­ble seri­ous can­di­dates for president–consorting with peo­ple as “out there” as Bar­ton and Fed­er­er and White and AFA founder Don Wild­mon (anoth­er speak­er in Colum­bia) and Lane and Lord knows who else. For Repub­li­cans, it’s not only busi­ness as usu­al, but essen­tial to good rela­tions with “the base” and an oblig­a­tory chore on the road to the pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion.
    ...

    Final­ly, let’s take a look at the fol­low­ing March 2015 Wash­ing­ton Post piece explor­ing these claims we’ve heard from Lane about how only a quar­ter of evan­gel­i­cals vote in pres­i­den­tial elec­tions. Note the piece is by Philip Bump, who , as we saw in the above Wash­ing­ton Times piece, was active­ly mock­ing Ted Cruz’s strat­e­gy at the time of rely­ing pret­ty much exclu­sive­ly on gen­er­at­ing turnout from non-vot­ing evan­gel­i­cals to secure his path to the White House. Mock­ery based, pre­sum­ably in part, on the fol­low­ing analy­sis exam­in­ing just how accu­rate this ’25% of evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers actu­al­ly vote’ claim real­ly is. Sur­prise! It’s not a very accu­rate claim:

    The Wash­ing­ton Post

    Ted Cruz under­sells evan­gel­i­cal turnout. But he has a good rea­son.

    In a speech at Lib­er­ty Uni­ver­si­ty in Lynch­burg, Va., Sen. Ted Cruz (R‑Tex.) out­lined his vision for the U.S. and announced his can­di­da­cy for pres­i­dent. Here’s the full speech. (Video: AP)

    By Philip Bump
    March 23, 2015 at 1:39 p.m. EDT

    “Today,” Ted Cruz said dur­ing his pres­i­den­tial announce­ment Mon­day, “rough­ly half of born-again Chris­tians aren’t vot­ing. They’re stay­ing home.” Con­tin­u­ing his cen­tral theme — imag­ine! — Cruz offered an alter­na­tive: “Imag­ine instead mil­lions of peo­ple of faith all across Amer­i­ca com­ing out to the polls and vot­ing our val­ues.”

    Get­ting votes from con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian vot­ers is crit­i­cal to Cruz’s chances of win­ning the nom­i­na­tion, as we’ve not­ed. And it’s always the case that get­ting out more of your base is crit­i­cal to suc­cess. But is it true that half of born-again Chris­tians don’t vote?

    ...

    After the 2000 elec­tion, a sur­vey from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Akron put evan­gel­i­cal Protes­tant turnout at 50 per­cent, as Cruz stat­ed. But by 2004, evan­gel­i­cal turnout was at 63 per­cent, accord­ing to the next iter­a­tion of that same sur­vey. What’s more, that turnout isn’t abysmal­ly low rel­a­tive to oth­er groups. In the 2000 sur­vey, Catholics also turned out at 50 per­cent. In 2004, main­line Protes­tants turned out at 69 per­cent — the same as the more con­ser­v­a­tive sub­set of evan­gel­i­cal Protes­tants in the sur­vey.

    In the wake of the 2012 Mitt Rom­ney loss, there were var­i­ous analy­ses of Chris­t­ian turnout that point­ed to weak con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian turnout in some states as being a cause of the loss. Our crack poll­ster team looked at data from the 2012 Amer­i­can Nation­al Elec­tion Stud­ies to esti­mate evan­gel­i­cal turnout. More peo­ple in the study report vot­ing than actu­al­ly do. Once cor­rect­ed for that over-report­ing, we esti­mate that 62 per­cent of evan­gel­i­cals went to the polls in 2012. It’s down from the 2004 esti­mate cit­ed above, but it’s also using dif­fer­ent data. And that 62 per­cent is about four points high­er than the over­all pop­u­la­tion.

    The idea of low turnout in the group isn’t unique to Cruz. Last year, for­mer Arkansas gov­er­nor Mike Huck­abee — who would very much like to absorb those same reli­gious votes in next year’s pri­maries — artic­u­lat­ed a more extreme ver­sion of Cruz’s math. At the Val­ue Vot­ers Sum­mit, Huck­abee said that there are about 80 mil­lion evan­gel­i­cals, half of whom are reg­is­tered to vote — and a quar­ter of whom actu­al­ly vote in pres­i­den­tial elec­tions. And in midterms? Only half of those who vote in pres­i­den­tial races!

    That’s pret­ty clear­ly not true. A sur­vey from Pew Research puts the per­cent­age of the pop­u­la­tion of U.S. adults that is evan­gel­i­cal at 26.3 per­cent. (This may be high, as is argued here.) The Cen­sus Bureau tracks reg­is­tra­tion and vot­ing over time, allow­ing us to see what the num­bers would look like if Huck­abee were cor­rect.

    Turnout accord­ing to Mike Huck­abee

    Year Adult U.S. pop­u­la­tion Total vot­ers Evan­gel­i­cal adults (per Pew) Reg­is­tered evang. Vot­ed evang. Per­cent of all vot­ers
    2008 225.5 mil­lion 131.2 mil­lion 59.3 mil­lion 29.7 mil­lion 14.8 mil­lion 11.3 per­cent
    2010 230 mil­lion 96 mil­lion 60.4 mil­lion 30.2 mil­lion 7.5 mil­lion 7.9 per­cent
    2012 235.2 mil­lion 132.9 mil­lion 61.9 mil­lion 30.9 mil­lion 15.5 mil­lion 11.6 per­cent

    Before we get any fur­ther, notice the over­all turnout rates in 2008 through 2012, accord­ing to the Cen­sus Bureau: 58.2 per­cent, 41.8 per­cent, 56.5 per­cent. Turnout of 50 per­cent, then, isn’t any­thing par­tic­u­lar­ly unusu­al, depend­ing on the elec­tion.

    But we can eval­u­ate Huck­abee’s claim against exit polling. Since 2004, 25 per­cent of the elec­torate has iden­ti­fied itself as evan­gel­i­cal in exit polling, vot­ing heav­i­ly for Repub­li­cans. In 2008, the fig­ure was 26 per­cent; in 2010, 25; in 2012, 26 again. That’s much high­er than Huck­abee’s esti­mates, and it’s pret­ty con­sis­tent.

    You might notice that it’s also about in line with the Pew find­ings that 26 per­cent of the coun­try is evan­gel­i­cal. That’s a dif­fer­ent thing than say­ing that a cer­tain per­cent­age of the evan­gel­i­cal pop­u­la­tion came out to vote, but it does mean that turnout is about where you’d expect.

    Which was­n’t Cruz’s point, real­ly. In the same way that the 2008 and 2012 cam­paigns of Barack Oba­ma put an empha­sis on boost­ing African-Amer­i­can turnout — suc­cess­ful­ly — Cruz’s goal isn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly to say that evan­gel­i­cals are under-per­form­ing; rather, that he needs them to over-per­form, and prefer­ably on his behalf. Today, rough­ly half of every­body isn’t vot­ing. But Cruz is not ter­ri­bly inter­est­ed in see­ing more turnout from mod­er­ate Repub­li­cans or Democ­rats.

    ———–

    “Ted Cruz under­sells evan­gel­i­cal turnout. But he has a good rea­son.” By Philip Bump; The Wash­ing­ton Post; 03/23/2015

    “The idea of low turnout in the group isn’t unique to Cruz. Last year, for­mer Arkansas gov­er­nor Mike Huck­abee — who would very much like to absorb those same reli­gious votes in next year’s pri­maries — artic­u­lat­ed a more extreme ver­sion of Cruz’s math. At the Val­ue Vot­ers Sum­mit, Huck­abee said that there are about 80 mil­lion evan­gel­i­cals, half of whom are reg­is­tered to vote — and a quar­ter of whom actu­al­ly vote in pres­i­den­tial elec­tions. And in midterms? Only half of those who vote in pres­i­den­tial races!

    As Bump points out, Mike Huck­abee was mak­ing the same claim we heard from David Lane: only a quar­ter of evan­gel­i­cals actu­al­ly vote in pres­i­den­tial race. And yet, as Bump’s team found, evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers appear to vote rough­ly in line with oth­er demographics...something around half vote, like every­one else in the US:

    ...
    After the 2000 elec­tion, a sur­vey from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Akron put evan­gel­i­cal Protes­tant turnout at 50 per­cent, as Cruz stat­ed. But by 2004, evan­gel­i­cal turnout was at 63 per­cent, accord­ing to the next iter­a­tion of that same sur­vey. What’s more, that turnout isn’t abysmal­ly low rel­a­tive to oth­er groups. In the 2000 sur­vey, Catholics also turned out at 50 per­cent. In 2004, main­line Protes­tants turned out at 69 per­cent — the same as the more con­ser­v­a­tive sub­set of evan­gel­i­cal Protes­tants in the sur­vey.

    In the wake of the 2012 Mitt Rom­ney loss, there were var­i­ous analy­ses of Chris­t­ian turnout that point­ed to weak con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian turnout in some states as being a cause of the loss. Our crack poll­ster team looked at data from the 2012 Amer­i­can Nation­al Elec­tion Stud­ies to esti­mate evan­gel­i­cal turnout. More peo­ple in the study report vot­ing than actu­al­ly do. Once cor­rect­ed for that over-report­ing, we esti­mate that 62 per­cent of evan­gel­i­cals went to the polls in 2012. It’s down from the 2004 esti­mate cit­ed above, but it’s also using dif­fer­ent data. And that 62 per­cent is about four points high­er than the over­all pop­u­la­tion.

    ...

    Which was­n’t Cruz’s point, real­ly. In the same way that the 2008 and 2012 cam­paigns of Barack Oba­ma put an empha­sis on boost­ing African-Amer­i­can turnout — suc­cess­ful­ly — Cruz’s goal isn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly to say that evan­gel­i­cals are under-per­form­ing; rather, that he needs them to over-per­form, and prefer­ably on his behalf. Today, rough­ly half of every­body isn’t vot­ing. But Cruz is not ter­ri­bly inter­est­ed in see­ing more turnout from mod­er­ate Repub­li­cans or Democ­rats.
    ...

    Again, it’s not real­ly a sur­prise to find the claims of a vast evan­gel­i­cal under-vot­ing cri­sis are basi­cal­ly a fab­ri­ca­tion. It’s a very con­ve­nient fab­ri­ca­tion for fig­ures like Mike Huck­abee or David Lane. Or Rafael and Ted Cruz. Fig­ures who have built entire careers cen­tered around ener­giz­ing this vot­ing demo­graph­ic. Just as it’s not sur­pris­ing to find that a sec­ond Trump admin­is­tra­tion is pred­i­cat­ed on pla­cat­ing this same demo­graph­ic. The path to the White House for Repub­li­cans has long been on the backs of evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers and that remains the case today.

    But it’s not just that Trump is rely­ing on this same evan­gel­i­cal-heavy mod­el for vic­to­ry that Repub­li­cans have long pred­i­cat­ed their White House bids on. Trump’s ‘Make Amer­i­ca Great Again’ pol­i­tics — and his demon­strat­ed will­ing­ness to cater to the domin­ion­ist crowd when it comes to Supreme Court jus­tices — real­ly has ampli­fied the domin­ion­ist move­ment in large part because it’s so com­pat­i­ble with it. ‘Make Amer­i­ca Great Again’ is music to the ears of those argu­ing con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians should force­ful­ly seize the reigns of gov­ern­ment and use that gov­ern­ment pow­er to active­ly impose ‘god­ly’ poli­cies. As the fol­low­ing August 2022 NBC report describes, that was the sen­ti­ment dri­ving many of the groups push­ing for the domin­ion­ist cap­ture of local school boards across Texas that year. A wild­ly suc­cess­ful cap­ture, as we’ve seen. Recall how the South­lake school board takeover effort was a major focus of the CNP’s Moms for Lib­er­ty, along with the Truth and Lib­er­ty Coali­tion run by David Bar­ton and Lance Wall­nau. Also recall how Wall­nau — the co-author of a pop­u­lar 2013 book pro­mot­ing Domin­ion­ismwas push­ing the idea back in 2018 that Trump was a God-ordained change agent anal­o­gous to the Bib­li­cal fig­ure of King Cyrus. A “mod­ern-day Cyrus”, as Wall­nau described Trump.

    And as we also saw with those South­lake school board efforts, anoth­er group assist­ing in that effort was Patri­ot Mobile, a con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian cell­phone com­pa­ny that spends a por­tion of its funds on con­ser­v­a­tive polit­i­cal caus­es. Rafael Cruz was giv­ing week­ly Bible study class­es for Patri­ot Mobile’s employ­ees dur­ing this peri­od. Note that Patri­ot Mobile’s co-founder and CFO, Glenn P. Sto­ry, shows up on the CNP mem­bers list.

    So let’s take a clos­er look at Rafael Cruz’s Bible study teach­ings to the Patri­ot Mobile employ­ees dur­ing this joint cap­ture of the local Texas school boards. As we’ll see, the lessons were effec­tive­ly that there should be an end to the sep­a­ra­tion of church in state. Instead, it should be a “one-way wall”, where church­es are allowed to direct­ly inter­fere with the state but not the oth­er way around.

    And as the arti­cle also points out, there’s anoth­er we’ve seen before that was direct­ly involved in the school board cap­ture. The group asked its fol­low­ers to show up to pub­lic hear­ings and loud­ly sup­port the array of new pro­pos­als that soon inun­dat­ed the school boards this move­ment took over. The group hap­pens to be the True Texas Project. As we’ve seen, this is one of those groups in the direct orbit of Texas bil­lion­aire theo­crat Tim Dunn where domin­ion­ism and overt Nazis min­gle. One of many polit­i­cal enti­ties with Tim Dun­n’s Defend Texas Lib­er­ty as its pri­ma­ry donor. As we saw, not only is the group found­ed by Julie McCar­ty, who open­ly sym­pa­thized with the motives of El Paso shoot­er Patrick Cru­sius. But just three weeks before that now-infa­mous Octo­ber sev­en hour long meet­ing with Nick Fuentes at the head­quar­ters of Dun­n’s Pale Horse Strate­gies polit­i­cal group held in ear­ly Octo­ber 6 2023, the True Texas Project held a ‘pass­ing the torch’ event in Dal­las that fea­tured John Doyle and Jake Lloyd Col­glazier. Doyle has fre­quent­ly appeared along­side Nick Fuentes at events. Recall how Doyle and Fuentes co-led a Lans­ing Michi­gan “Stop the Steal” ral­ly in the lead up to the Jan­u­ary 6 Capi­tol Insur­rec­tion. Col­glazier was one of the most promi­nent mem­bers of Fuentes’s ‘groyper army’. In 2019, Col­glazier, Fuentes, and Patrick Casey — the leader of Iden­ti­ty Evropa, since rebrand­ed as the “Amer­i­can Iden­ti­ty Move­ment” — were the head­lin­ers at a white nation­al­ist con­fer­ence where they advo­cat­ed a strat­e­gy of pulling the Repub­li­can Par­ty fur­ther to the right with a strat­e­gy of attack­ing Repub­li­cans for issues like being weak on immi­gra­tion or sup­port for Israel. In 2018, Casey was open­ly telling NBC News he was plan­ning on infil­trat­ing the Repub­li­can Par­ty, with an empha­sis on befriend­ing and win­ning over young col­lege Repub­li­cans. The True Texas Project was list­ed as an affil­i­at­ed on Patri­ot Mobile’s own web­site as one of its affil­i­ate. So when we see Patri­ot Mobile coor­di­nat­ing with the True Texas Project, keep in mind that it’s one of mul­ti­ple Nazi-friend­ly groups close­ly asso­ci­at­ed both Nick Fuentes and Tim Dunn who have a youth-focused strat­e­gy of rad­i­cal­iz­ing Repub­li­cans even more. Nazis and Domin­ion­ists. And Rafael Cruz. Amped up more than ever on domin­ion­ism thanks to Don­ald Trump:

    NBC News

    How a far-right, Chris­t­ian cell­phone com­pa­ny ‘took over’ four Texas school boards

    Patri­ot Mobile mar­kets itself as “America’s only Chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tive wire­less provider.” Now the Trump-aligned com­pa­ny is on a mis­sion to win con­trol of Texas school boards.

    Aug. 25, 2022, 7:00 AM CDT
    By Mike Hix­en­baugh

    DALLAS — A lit­tle more than a year after for­mer Trump advis­er Steve Ban­non declared that con­ser­v­a­tives need­ed to win seats on local school boards to “save the nation,” he used his con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry-fueled TV pro­gram to spot­light Patri­ot Mobile, a Texas-based cell­phone com­pa­ny that had answered his call to action.

    “The school boards are the key that picks the lock,” Ban­non said dur­ing an inter­view with Patri­ot Mobile’s pres­i­dent, Glenn Sto­ry, from the floor of the Con­ser­v­a­tive Polit­i­cal Action Con­fer­ence, or CPAC, in Dal­las on Aug. 6. “Tell us about what you did.”

    Sto­ry turned to the cam­era and said, “We went out and found 11 can­di­dates last cycle and we sup­port­ed them, and we won every seat. We took over four school boards.”

    “Eleven seats on school boards, took over four!” Ban­non shout­ed as a crowd of CPAC atten­dees erupt­ed in applause.

    It was a moment of cel­e­bra­tion for an upstart com­pa­ny whose lead­ers say they are on a mis­sion from God to restore con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian val­ues at all lev­els of gov­ern­ment — espe­cial­ly in pub­lic schools. To car­ry out that call­ing, the Grapevine-based com­pa­ny this year cre­at­ed a polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee, Patri­ot Mobile Action, and gave it more than $600,000 to spend on non­par­ti­san school board races in the Fort Worth sub­urbs.

    This spring, the PAC blan­ket­ed the com­mu­ni­ties of South­lake, Keller, Grapevine and Mans­field with with thou­sands of polit­i­cal mail­ers warn­ing that sit­ting school board mem­bers were endan­ger­ing stu­dents with crit­i­cal race the­o­ry and oth­er “woke” ide­olo­gies. Patri­ot Mobile pre­sent­ed its can­di­dates as patri­ots who would “keep polit­i­cal agen­das out of the class­room.”

    Their can­di­dates won every race, and near­ly four months lat­er, those Patri­ot Mobile-backed school boards have begun to deliv­er results.

    The Keller Inde­pen­dent School Dis­trict made nation­al head­lines this month after the school board passed a new pol­i­cy that led the dis­trict to abrupt­ly pull more than 40 pre­vi­ous­ly chal­lenged library books off shelves for fur­ther review, includ­ing a graph­ic adap­ta­tion of Anne Frank’s “The Diary of a Young Girl,” as well as sev­er­al LGBTQ-themed nov­els.

    In the neigh­bor­ing city of South­lake, Patri­ot Mobile donat­ed framed posters that read “In God We Trust” to the Car­roll Inde­pen­dent School Dis­trict dur­ing a spe­cial pre­sen­ta­tion before the school board. Under a new Texas law, the dis­trict is now required to dis­play the posters promi­nent­ly in each of its school build­ings. After­ward, Patri­ot Mobile cel­e­brat­ed the dona­tion in a blog post titled “Putting God Back Into Our Schools.”

    And this week at a tense, eight-hour school board meet­ing, the Grapevine-Col­leyville Inde­pen­dent School District’s board of trustees vot­ed 4–3 to imple­ment a far-reach­ing set of poli­cies that restrict how teach­ers can dis­cuss race and gen­der. The new poli­cies also lim­it the rights of trans­gen­der and non­bi­na­ry stu­dents to use bath­rooms and pro­nouns that cor­re­spond with their gen­ders. And the board made it eas­i­er for par­ents to ban library books deal­ing with sex­u­al­i­ty.

    ...

    Patri­ot Mobile offi­cials didn’t respond to mes­sages request­ing com­ment. Leigh Wamb­s­ganss, exec­u­tive direc­tor of Patri­ot Mobile Action and vice pres­i­dent of gov­ern­ment and media affairs at Patri­ot Mobile, declined to speak with a reporter at CPAC, say­ing she did not trust NBC News to accu­rate­ly report on the company’s polit­i­cal activism. In a social media post days lat­er, she called the journalist’s inter­view request harass­ment, adding, “I don’t inter­view with reporters I don’t trust.”

    In recent inter­views with con­ser­v­a­tive media out­lets, Wamb­s­ganss has said that Patri­ot Mobile’s goal is to install school board mem­bers who will oppose the teach­ing of “LGBTQ ide­olo­gies,” fight to remove “porno­graph­ic books,” and stand against school anti-racism ini­tia­tives, which she and her sup­port­ers have argued indoc­tri­nate chil­dren with anti-white and anti-Amer­i­can views.

    “You know, the sad thing is there is real racism, and that is real­ly a ter­ri­ble thing,” Wamb­s­ganss said in a June appear­ance on the Mark Davis Show, a con­ser­v­a­tive talk radio pro­gram that broad­casts in the Dal­las region. “But they’re water­ing down and devalu­ing that word so bad that it’s become mean­ing­less.”

    In that same inter­view, Wamb­s­ganss made clear that Patri­ot Mobile views its polit­i­cal activism as a reli­gious call­ing — and that the group’s elec­toral suc­cess this spring was just the begin­ning.

    “We’re not here on this earth to please man — we’re here to please God,” Wamb­s­ganss said, adding lat­er in the inter­view, “Ulti­mate­ly we want to expand to oth­er coun­ties, oth­er states and be in every state across the nation.”

    ‘Make Amer­i­ca Chris­t­ian Again’

    Found­ed about a decade ago, Patri­ot Mobile mar­kets itself as “America’s only Chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tive wire­less provider,” which includes a pledge to donate a por­tion of users’ month­ly bills to con­ser­v­a­tive caus­es.

    Ini­tial­ly, Patri­ot Mobile’s founders said their goal was to sup­port groups and politi­cians who promised to oppose abor­tion, defend reli­gious free­dom, pro­tect gun rights and sup­port the mil­i­tary.

    After the 2016 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, the company’s brand­ing shift­ed fur­ther to the right and embraced Trump’s style of pol­i­tics. One of Patri­ot Mobile’s most famous adver­tise­ments includes the slo­gan “Mak­ing Wire­less Great Again,” along­side an image of Trump’s face pho­to­shopped onto a tanned, mus­cled body hold­ing a machine gun.

    That approach has drawn the sup­port of some big names on the right.

    “You can give your mon­ey to AT&T, the par­ent com­pa­ny of CNN, and you can pay the salary of Don Lemon, or you can sup­port some­one like a Patri­ot Mobile and give back to caus­es that they believe in,” Don­ald Trump Jr. said from the stage at a CPAC gath­er­ing in Feb­ru­ary. “That’s not can­cel cul­ture, folks. That’s using your damn brain.”

    Patri­ot Mobile has also aligned itself in recent years with polit­i­cal and reli­gious lead­ers who pro­mote a once-fringe strand of Chris­t­ian the­ol­o­gy that experts say has grown more pop­u­lar on the right in recent years. Domin­ion­ism, some­times referred to as the Sev­en Moun­tains Man­date, is the belief that Chris­tians are called on to dom­i­nate the sev­en key “moun­tains” of Amer­i­can life, includ­ing busi­ness, media, gov­ern­ment and edu­ca­tion.

    John Fea, a pro­fes­sor of Amer­i­can his­to­ry at the pri­vate, Chris­t­ian Mes­si­ah Uni­ver­si­ty in Penn­syl­va­nia, has spent years study­ing Sev­en Moun­tains the­ol­o­gy. Fea said the idea that Chris­tians are called on to assert bib­li­cal val­ues across all aspects of Amer­i­can soci­ety has been around for decades on the right, but “large­ly on the fringe.”

    Trump’s elec­tion changed that.

    “It fits very well with the ‘Make Amer­i­ca Great Again’ mantra,” Fea said. “‘Make Amer­i­ca Great Again’ to them means, ‘Make Amer­i­ca Chris­t­ian Again,’ restore Amer­i­ca to its Chris­t­ian roots.”

    Patri­ot Mobile appears to have embraced that shift, Fea said.

    Begin­ning a year ago, one of the lead­ing pro­po­nents of the Sev­en Moun­tains world­view, Rafael Cruz, a pas­tor, began lead­ing week­ly Bible stud­ies for employ­ees at Patri­ot Mobile’s cor­po­rate office, which the com­pa­ny films and posts on YouTube.

    In a recent Patri­ot Mobile ser­mon, Cruz — the father of U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R‑Texas — dis­missed the con­cept of sep­a­ra­tion of church and state as a myth, argu­ing that America’s founders meant that ide­al as a “one-way wall” pre­vent­ing the gov­ern­ment from inter­fer­ing with the church, not pre­vent­ing the church from influ­enc­ing the gov­ern­ment.

    He then called on peo­ple who “are root­ed in the right­eous­ness of the word of God” to run for pub­lic office.

    “If those peo­ple are not run­ning for office, if they are not even vot­ing, then what’s left?” Cruz said. “The wicked elect­ing the wicked.”

    ...

    Begin­ning last year, after oppo­si­tion to “crit­i­cal race the­o­ry” emerged as a polit­i­cal attack on the right, Fea said he began to observe anoth­er shift in the Chris­t­ian Domin­ion­ism move­ment.

    Rather than focus­ing pri­mar­i­ly on win­ning fed­er­al elec­tions, these groups start­ed talk­ing about the need to take con­trol of pub­lic schools — “the ide­al bat­tle­ground,” Fea said, “if you’re look­ing to fight this bat­tle.”

    “This is a spir­i­tu­al war, they believe, against demon­ic forces that under­mine a god­ly nation by teach­ing kids in school that Amer­i­ca is not great, Amer­i­ca is not a city on the hill or that Amer­i­ca has flaws,” Fea said. “If you can get in and teach the right side of his­to­ry, and social stud­ies and civics lessons about what Amer­i­ca is, you can win the next gen­er­a­tion and save Amer­i­ca for Christ.”

    ‘Sav­ing our pub­lic schools’

    Patri­ot Mobile’s uncon­ven­tion­al busi­ness strat­e­gy appears to be pay­ing off.

    With­out pro­vid­ing spe­cif­ic num­bers, the com­pa­ny said it dou­bled its sub­scriber base in 2021, and as a result, it planned to give more than $1.5 mil­lion to con­ser­v­a­tive caus­es in 2022, triple the amount from the year pri­or.

    In Jan­u­ary, the com­pa­ny filed doc­u­ments to estab­lish Patri­ot Mobile Action and brought on Wamb­s­ganss to lead it — a strong sig­nal that the com­pa­ny was plan­ning to get involved in school board pol­i­tics.

    Wamb­s­ganss, a long-time polit­i­cal activist, had earned nation­al acclaim among con­ser­v­a­tives in 2021 for her work as one of the co-founders of South­lake Fam­i­lies PAC, anoth­er group that pro­motes itself as “unapolo­get­i­cal­ly root­ed in Judeo-Chris­t­ian val­ues.” When the Car­roll school sys­tem in South­lake unveiled a diver­si­ty plan to crack down on racism and anti-LGBTQ bul­ly­ing in the major­i­ty white school dis­trict, South­lake Fam­i­lies, under Wamb­s­ganss’ lead­er­ship, raised hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars to sup­port a slate of school board can­di­dates who promised to kill the plan.

    After win­ning every race by a land­slide, the PAC’s suc­cess was cel­e­brat­ed on Fox News and in The Wall Street Jour­nal, prompt­ing for­mer Texas GOP Chair­man Allan West to urge South­lake Fam­i­lies lead­ers to “export this to every sin­gle major sub­ur­ban area in the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca.”

    At the helm of the new­ly estab­lished Patri­ot Mobile Action, Wamb­s­ganss got to work achiev­ing that goal this spring, start­ing first with some sub­ur­ban school sys­tems close to home.

    In inter­views with con­ser­v­a­tive out­lets, Wamb­s­ganss has said she and her team zeroed in on four North Texas inde­pen­dent school dis­tricts — Keller, Grapevine-Col­leyville, Mans­field and Car­roll — that had imple­ment­ed or con­sid­ered poli­cies deal­ing with race, sex­u­al­i­ty and gen­der that she and oth­er Chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tives found objec­tion­able.

    After inter­view­ing can­di­dates in each dis­trict, Patri­ot Mobile Action set­tled on a slate of 11 who pledged to sup­port con­ser­v­a­tive caus­es. Fol­low­ing the play­book from South­lake, the PAC hired a pair of heavy-hit­ter GOP con­sult­ing firms that had worked on cam­paigns for Ted Cruz and Vir­ginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin — bring­ing sophis­ti­cat­ed nation­al-lev­el polit­i­cal strate­gies to local school board races.

    Patri­ot Mobile paid Van­guard Field Strate­gies near­ly $150,000 to run get-out-the-vote can­vass­ing oper­a­tions across the four school dis­tricts, accord­ing to finan­cial dis­clo­sures. The PAC paid anoth­er $240,000 to Axiom Strate­gies to pro­duce and send tens of thou­sands of polit­i­cal mail­ers to homes across North Texas.

    One fly­er sent to Mans­field res­i­dents base­less­ly blamed a recent class­room shoot­ing at a local high school on crit­i­cal race the­o­ry-inspired dis­ci­pli­nary poli­cies and accused the dis­trict of putting “woke” pol­i­tics ahead of the safe­ty of chil­dren.

    A Patri­ot Mobile mail­er sent in Grapevine and Col­leyville endorsed two board can­di­dates who the PAC said would oppose crit­i­cal race the­o­ry, an aca­d­e­m­ic study of sys­temic racism that, accord­ing to the fly­er, “vio­lates every­thing patri­ots believe in.”

    ...

    At CPAC in August, Ban­non asked Wamb­s­ganss and Sto­ry on his “War Room” TV show whether they had start­ed to see changes in the four school dis­tricts.

    “Oh, tremen­dous,” Wamb­s­ganss said. “Those 11 seats in four ISDs means that now North Texas has over 100,000 stu­dents who, before May, had left­ist lead­er­ship. Now they have con­ser­v­a­tive lead­er­ship.”

    Ban­non replied, “Amen.”

    ‘This is not love’

    On Mon­day night, North Texas res­i­dents got a front-row seat for what it looks like when Patri­ot Mobile takes over a school board.

    Just 72-hours before the meet­ing, the Grapevine-Col­leyville school dis­trict had unveiled a sweep­ing 36-page pol­i­cy touch­ing on vir­tu­al­ly every aspect of the cul­ture wars over race, gen­der and sex­u­al­i­ty that have dom­i­nat­ed school pol­i­tics since last year.

    Under the pol­i­cy, teach­ers are pro­hib­it­ed from dis­cussing any con­cepts relat­ed to or inspired by crit­i­cal race the­o­ry or what the pol­i­cy refers to as “sys­temic dis­crim­i­na­tion ide­olo­gies.” The pol­i­cy gives school employ­ees the right to refer to trans and non­bi­na­ry stu­dents by pro­nouns and names match­ing the ones they were assigned at birth — a prac­tice known as mis­gen­der­ing or dead­nam­ing — even if the student’s par­ents sup­port their child’s gen­der expres­sion. And the pol­i­cy pro­hibits any read­ing mate­ri­als and class­room dis­cus­sions deal­ing with “gen­der flu­id­i­ty,” which the doc­u­ment defines as any belief that “espous­es the view that bio­log­i­cal sex is mere­ly a social con­struct.”

    Tam­my Naka­mu­ra, one of the board mem­bers backed by Patri­ot Mobile, said the board’s 4–3 vote to adopt the pol­i­cy ful­filled her cam­paign promise “to put an end to adults push­ing their world­views, whims and fan­tasies onto unsus­pect­ing chil­dren.”

    Although some mem­bers of the board major­i­ty and their sup­port­ers argued that the pol­i­cy mere­ly brought the dis­trict in line with state and fed­er­al laws, Kate Hud­dle­ston, a staff attor­ney with the Amer­i­can Civ­il Lib­er­ties Union of Texas, said the plan goes well beyond the state’s anti-CRT law and appears to be in vio­la­tion of fed­er­al civ­il rights statutes that pro­tect stu­dents from dis­crim­i­na­tion on the basis of their gen­der and sex­u­al­i­ty.

    “This is the most extreme board pol­i­cy that we have seen relat­ed to class­room cen­sor­ship,” Hud­dle­ston said.

    Debate over the pol­i­cy turned Monday’s school board meet­ing into a polit­i­cal cir­cus.

    The Patri­ot Mobile-aligned True Texas Project, which has been labeled as an anti-gov­ern­ment extrem­ist group by the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter, called on its sup­port­ers to pack the meet­ing and turn it into a par­ty cel­e­brat­ing the new pol­i­cy. The group set up tents hours before­hand and tail­gat­ed in the park­ing lot, along with an anti-trans activist group whose leader was sus­pend­ed from Twit­ter this year after she wrote, “Let’s start round­ing up peo­ple who par­tic­i­pate in pride events,” refer­ring to LGBTQ rights cel­e­bra­tions.

    Near­ly 200 peo­ple signed up to speak dur­ing pub­lic com­ments pri­or to the board vote.

    One man who spoke in sup­port of the new pol­i­cy urged the board major­i­ty to “fight like hell” and “hold the ground against the LGBT mafia and their dang pedo fans” — echo­ing false claims by some Chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tives in recent months that queer edu­ca­tors have been try­ing to sex­u­al­ly groom chil­dren.

    “And guess what,” the man shout­ed into the micro­phone, “teach­ers shouldn’t be forced to use your freakin’ made up fan­ta­sy pro­nouns!”

    Anoth­er res­i­dent who spoke in sup­port of the pol­i­cy said one of the things that made Amer­i­ca great was “schools that taught kids to read and know the Bible, and recite the Con­sti­tu­tion.” She com­mend­ed the school board for work­ing to restore those ideals.

    “Our kids have to be taught our foun­da­tion,” she said. “Our foun­da­tion of God-giv­en inalien­able rights, reli­gious free­doms, indi­vid­u­al­ism, democ­ra­cy and a free mar­ket.”

    Lat­er, a mom told the board she sup­port­ed ban­ning class­room dis­cus­sions of “gen­der flu­id­i­ty” because, she said, when her child start­ed iden­ti­fy­ing as a girl, Grapevine-Col­leyville teach­ers pro­vid­ed the stu­dent with infor­ma­tion affirm­ing that gen­der expres­sion. As a result, the moth­er said, chok­ing up as a beep­er sig­naled that her time had expired, “I lost my son.”

    Nobody from Patri­ot Mobile spoke at the meet­ing. In a recent talk radio inter­view, Wamb­s­ganss said she and her team were busy map­ping out their plans for repli­cat­ing what they achieved in dis­tricts like Grapevine-Col­leyville in com­mu­ni­ties across Texas.

    A major­i­ty of those who did com­ment dur­ing Monday’s meet­ing said they opposed the pol­i­cy changes, includ­ing one father who accused Grapevine-Col­leyville board mem­bers of being behold­en to Patri­ot Mobile. “The result,” he said, “is our kids are being forced to act as pawns in their polit­i­cal game.”

    ...

    ———-

    “How a far-right, Chris­t­ian cell­phone com­pa­ny ‘took over’ four Texas school boards” By Mike Hix­en­baugh; NBC News; 08/25/2022

    “We’re not here on this earth to please man — we’re here to please God,” Wamb­s­ganss said, adding lat­er in the inter­view, “Ulti­mate­ly we want to expand to oth­er coun­ties, oth­er states and be in every state across the nation.”

    Patri­ot Mobile isn’t here to please the pub­lic. They are here to please God. Start­ing with get­ting domin­ion­ists elect­ed to school boards. It start­ed in Texas but they have nation ambi­tions. It’s not to see why. They won every race by a land­slide. The mod­el works fan­tas­ti­cal­ly. At least fan­tas­ti­cal­ly in these 2022 tri­al runs:

    ...
    It was a moment of cel­e­bra­tion for an upstart com­pa­ny whose lead­ers say they are on a mis­sion from God to restore con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian val­ues at all lev­els of gov­ern­ment — espe­cial­ly in pub­lic schools. To car­ry out that call­ing, the Grapevine-based com­pa­ny this year cre­at­ed a polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee, Patri­ot Mobile Action, and gave it more than $600,000 to spend on non­par­ti­san school board races in the Fort Worth sub­urbs.

    This spring, the PAC blan­ket­ed the com­mu­ni­ties of South­lake, Keller, Grapevine and Mans­field with with thou­sands of polit­i­cal mail­ers warn­ing that sit­ting school board mem­bers were endan­ger­ing stu­dents with crit­i­cal race the­o­ry and oth­er “woke” ide­olo­gies. Patri­ot Mobile pre­sent­ed its can­di­dates as patri­ots who would “keep polit­i­cal agen­das out of the class­room.”

    Their can­di­dates won every race, and near­ly four months lat­er, those Patri­ot Mobile-backed school boards have begun to deliv­er results.

    ...

    Begin­ning last year, after oppo­si­tion to “crit­i­cal race the­o­ry” emerged as a polit­i­cal attack on the right, Fea said he began to observe anoth­er shift in the Chris­t­ian Domin­ion­ism move­ment.

    Rather than focus­ing pri­mar­i­ly on win­ning fed­er­al elec­tions, these groups start­ed talk­ing about the need to take con­trol of pub­lic schools — “the ide­al bat­tle­ground,” Fea said, “if you’re look­ing to fight this bat­tle.”

    “This is a spir­i­tu­al war, they believe, against demon­ic forces that under­mine a god­ly nation by teach­ing kids in school that Amer­i­ca is not great, Amer­i­ca is not a city on the hill or that Amer­i­ca has flaws,” Fea said. “If you can get in and teach the right side of his­to­ry, and social stud­ies and civics lessons about what Amer­i­ca is, you can win the next gen­er­a­tion and save Amer­i­ca for Christ.”

    ...

    After win­ning every race by a land­slide, the PAC’s suc­cess was cel­e­brat­ed on Fox News and in The Wall Street Jour­nal, prompt­ing for­mer Texas GOP Chair­man Allan West to urge South­lake Fam­i­lies lead­ers to “export this to every sin­gle major sub­ur­ban area in the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca.”
    ...

    But as we’ve seen, they haven’t been win­ning these school board races on their own. First, as we’ve seen, the 2022 South­lake school board takeover effort was a major focus of the CNP’s Moms for Lib­er­ty, along with the Truth and Lib­er­ty Coali­tion run by David Bar­ton and Lance Wall­nau. Also recall how Wall­nau — the co-author of a pop­u­lar 2013 book pro­mot­ing Domin­ion­ismwas push­ing the idea back in 2018 that Trump was a God-ordained change agent anal­o­gous to the Bib­li­cal fig­ure of King Cyrus. A “mod­ern-day Cyrus”, as Wall­nau described Trump. Patri­ot Mobile Action was just one of the many CNP-con­nect­ed groups focused on Texas school boards in 2022.

    And then there’s the True Texas Project, one of many polit­i­cal enti­ties with Tim Dun­n’s Defend Texas Lib­er­ty as its pri­ma­ry donor. As we saw, not only is the group found­ed by Julie McCar­ty, who open­ly sym­pa­thized with the motives of El Paso shoot­er Patrick Cru­sius. But just three weeks before that now-infa­mous Octo­ber sev­en hour long meet­ing with Nick Fuentes at the head­quar­ters of Dun­n’s Pale Horse Strate­gies polit­i­cal group held in ear­ly Octo­ber 6 2023, the True Texas Project held a ‘pass­ing the torch’ event in Dal­las that fea­tured John Doyle and Jake Lloyd Col­glazier. Doyle has fre­quent­ly appeared along­side Nick Fuentes at events. Recall how Doyle and Fuentes co-led a Lans­ing Michi­gan “Stop the Steal” ral­ly in the lead up to the Jan­u­ary 6 Capi­tol Insur­rec­tion. Col­glazier was one of the most promi­nent mem­bers of Fuentes’s ‘groyper army’. In 2019, Col­glazier, Fuentes, and Patrick Casey — the leader of Iden­ti­ty Evropa, since rebrand­ed as the “Amer­i­can Iden­ti­ty Move­ment” — were the head­lin­ers at a white nation­al­ist con­fer­ence where they advo­cat­ed a strat­e­gy of pulling the Repub­li­can Par­ty fur­ther to the right with a strat­e­gy of attack­ing Repub­li­cans for issues like being weak on immi­gra­tion or sup­port for Israel. In 2018, Casey was open­ly telling NBC News he was plan­ning on infil­trat­ing the Repub­li­can Par­ty, with an empha­sis on befriend­ing and win­ning over young col­lege Repub­li­cans. So when we see Patri­ot Mobile coor­di­nat­ing with the True Texas Project, keep in mind that it’s one of mul­ti­ple Nazi-friend­ly groups close­ly asso­ci­at­ed both Nick Fuentes and Tim Dunn who have a youth-focused strat­e­gy of rad­i­cal­iz­ing Repub­li­cans even more:

    ...
    Debate over the pol­i­cy turned Monday’s school board meet­ing into a polit­i­cal cir­cus.

    The Patri­ot Mobile-aligned True Texas Project, which has been labeled as an anti-gov­ern­ment extrem­ist group by the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter, called on its sup­port­ers to pack the meet­ing and turn it into a par­ty cel­e­brat­ing the new pol­i­cy. The group set up tents hours before­hand and tail­gat­ed in the park­ing lot, along with an anti-trans activist group whose leader was sus­pend­ed from Twit­ter this year after she wrote, “Let’s start round­ing up peo­ple who par­tic­i­pate in pride events,” refer­ring to LGBTQ rights cel­e­bra­tions.

    Near­ly 200 peo­ple signed up to speak dur­ing pub­lic com­ments pri­or to the board vote.

    One man who spoke in sup­port of the new pol­i­cy urged the board major­i­ty to “fight like hell” and “hold the ground against the LGBT mafia and their dang pedo fans” — echo­ing false claims by some Chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tives in recent months that queer edu­ca­tors have been try­ing to sex­u­al­ly groom chil­dren.

    “And guess what,” the man shout­ed into the micro­phone, “teach­ers shouldn’t be forced to use your freakin’ made up fan­ta­sy pro­nouns!”

    Anoth­er res­i­dent who spoke in sup­port of the pol­i­cy said one of the things that made Amer­i­ca great was “schools that taught kids to read and know the Bible, and recite the Con­sti­tu­tion.” She com­mend­ed the school board for work­ing to restore those ideals.

    “Our kids have to be taught our foun­da­tion,” she said. “Our foun­da­tion of God-giv­en inalien­able rights, reli­gious free­doms, indi­vid­u­al­ism, democ­ra­cy and a free mar­ket.”

    ...

    Nobody from Patri­ot Mobile spoke at the meet­ing. In a recent talk radio inter­view, Wamb­s­ganss said she and her team were busy map­ping out their plans for repli­cat­ing what they achieved in dis­tricts like Grapevine-Col­leyville in com­mu­ni­ties across Texas.

    A major­i­ty of those who did com­ment dur­ing Monday’s meet­ing said they opposed the pol­i­cy changes, includ­ing one father who accused Grapevine-Col­leyville board mem­bers of being behold­en to Patri­ot Mobile. “The result,” he said, “is our kids are being forced to act as pawns in their polit­i­cal game.”
    ...

    And last, but cer­tain­ly not least, in the long list of Domin­ion­ist groups work­ing on those 2022 school board races we find Rafael Cruz, who began hold­ing week­ly Bible stud­ies for Patri­ot Mobile employ­ees where he advo­cat­ed for an end to the sep­a­ra­tion of church and state while implor­ing con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians to run for office:

    ...
    Begin­ning a year ago, one of the lead­ing pro­po­nents of the Sev­en Moun­tains world­view, Rafael Cruz, a pas­tor, began lead­ing week­ly Bible stud­ies for employ­ees at Patri­ot Mobile’s cor­po­rate office, which the com­pa­ny films and posts on YouTube.

    In a recent Patri­ot Mobile ser­mon, Cruz — the father of U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R‑Texas — dis­missed the con­cept of sep­a­ra­tion of church and state as a myth, argu­ing that America’s founders meant that ide­al as a “one-way wall” pre­vent­ing the gov­ern­ment from inter­fer­ing with the church, not pre­vent­ing the church from influ­enc­ing the gov­ern­ment.

    He then called on peo­ple who “are root­ed in the right­eous­ness of the word of God” to run for pub­lic office.

    “If those peo­ple are not run­ning for office, if they are not even vot­ing, then what’s left?” Cruz said. “The wicked elect­ing the wicked.”
    ...

    And as the arti­cle describes, while Patri­ot Mobile was found­ed in 2012 and polit­i­cal­ly active from the begin­ning, it was only after the elec­tion of Don­ald Trump in 2016 that the group began open­ly embrac­ing Domin­ion­ist stances. At the same time it became rapid­ly pro-Trump. “Make Amer­i­ca Great Again” was domin­ion­ist code. At least to the domin­ion­ists:

    ...
    Found­ed about a decade ago, Patri­ot Mobile mar­kets itself as “America’s only Chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tive wire­less provider,” which includes a pledge to donate a por­tion of users’ month­ly bills to con­ser­v­a­tive caus­es.

    Ini­tial­ly, Patri­ot Mobile’s founders said their goal was to sup­port groups and politi­cians who promised to oppose abor­tion, defend reli­gious free­dom, pro­tect gun rights and sup­port the mil­i­tary.

    After the 2016 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, the company’s brand­ing shift­ed fur­ther to the right and embraced Trump’s style of pol­i­tics. One of Patri­ot Mobile’s most famous adver­tise­ments includes the slo­gan “Mak­ing Wire­less Great Again,” along­side an image of Trump’s face pho­to­shopped onto a tanned, mus­cled body hold­ing a machine gun.

    That approach has drawn the sup­port of some big names on the right.

    “You can give your mon­ey to AT&T, the par­ent com­pa­ny of CNN, and you can pay the salary of Don Lemon, or you can sup­port some­one like a Patri­ot Mobile and give back to caus­es that they believe in,” Don­ald Trump Jr. said from the stage at a CPAC gath­er­ing in Feb­ru­ary. “That’s not can­cel cul­ture, folks. That’s using your damn brain.”

    Patri­ot Mobile has also aligned itself in recent years with polit­i­cal and reli­gious lead­ers who pro­mote a once-fringe strand of Chris­t­ian the­ol­o­gy that experts say has grown more pop­u­lar on the right in recent years. Domin­ion­ism, some­times referred to as the Sev­en Moun­tains Man­date, is the belief that Chris­tians are called on to dom­i­nate the sev­en key “moun­tains” of Amer­i­can life, includ­ing busi­ness, media, gov­ern­ment and edu­ca­tion.

    John Fea, a pro­fes­sor of Amer­i­can his­to­ry at the pri­vate, Chris­t­ian Mes­si­ah Uni­ver­si­ty in Penn­syl­va­nia, has spent years study­ing Sev­en Moun­tains the­ol­o­gy. Fea said the idea that Chris­tians are called on to assert bib­li­cal val­ues across all aspects of Amer­i­can soci­ety has been around for decades on the right, but “large­ly on the fringe.”

    Trump’s elec­tion changed that.

    “It fits very well with the ‘Make Amer­i­ca Great Again’ mantra,” Fea said. “‘Make Amer­i­ca Great Again’ to them means, ‘Make Amer­i­ca Chris­t­ian Again,’ restore Amer­i­ca to its Chris­t­ian roots.”

    Patri­ot Mobile appears to have embraced that shift, Fea said.
    ...

    Trump tur­bo-charged Amer­i­can domin­ion­ism. It’s one of the most under­ap­pre­ci­at­ed and like­ly con­se­quen­tial aspects of the whole Trump ‘expe­ri­ence’ for the Unit­ed States. Of course, it was­n’t just Trump’s pres­i­den­cy that tur­bo charged this agen­da. His ‘stolen elec­tion’ nar­ra­tive has been instru­men­tal in shift­ing the dis­cus­sion from how to win the next elec­tion to how to seize pow­er per­ma­nent­ly. A ‘Sec­ond Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion’, as Kevin Roberts infa­mous­ly put it. The move­ment is ready to drop the pre­tense of democ­ra­cy, and just might get an oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­firm that, should Trump win or lose. Don’t for­get, the insur­rec­tion was a CNP project too. You can’t real­ly sep­a­rate the mad­ness of the Trump years from the CNP. Which is why any attempts to sep­a­rate Trump from the CNP’s Project 2025 is noth­ing more than sil­ly the­atrics. Along with any attempts to seri­ous­ly dif­fer­en­ti­ate the kind of poli­cies we’d get get a sec­ond Trump pres­i­den­cy from what we could expect from Ted Cruz’s first term. The one Rafael has been plan­ning for Ted’s whole life. Same diff. On one lev­el, Trump is a wild phe­nom­e­na that cap­ture the Repub­li­can Par­ty and is per­ma­nent­ly shap­ing it in his image. But from the per­spec­tive of the CNP’s long-stand­ing agen­da that Rafael has been work­ing on for decades, Trump just Ted with the fas­cist charis­ma nec­es­sary to pull it off. They hope.

    It’s also all a reminder that, should Trump lose and not man­age to drag what’s left of US democ­ra­cy down with him in the process and there’s still elec­tions in the future, the ‘post-Trump’ GOP sort of has default leader. Ted Cruz. The same guy who was prob­a­bly going to win the nom­i­na­tion through an evan­gel­i­cal-focused pri­ma­ry strat­e­gy in 2016 before Trump came along. Which means we should prob­a­bly brace our­selves for the new and improved Trumpian ‘charis­mat­ic’ MAGA Ted, ready and eager to claim Trump’s man­tle. It can always get worse. Ted Cruz worse, in this case.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | September 9, 2024, 1:52 am
  5. Tuck­er Carl­son still has it. “It” being the abil­i­ty to troll­ish­ly plat­form Nazis and their fel­low trav­el­ers while act­ing like he did noth­ing wrong. In this case, the Nazi hap­pened to be Dar­ryl Coop­er, who Carl­son described as “the best and most hon­est pop­u­lar his­to­ri­an” in Amer­i­ca. Coop­er hap­pens to be the kind of his­to­ri­an who has con­clud­ed the chief vil­lain of WWII was Win­ston Churchill and that the Holo­caust was just an acci­den­tal con­se­quence of poor Ger­man plan­ning.

    Carl­son’s recent inter­view of Coop­er gen­er­at­ed the kind of out­cry we might expect. But adding to the out­cry is the fact that both Don­ald Trump and JD Vance have appear­ances sched­uled on Carl­son’s show lat­er this month. And so far there’s no indi­ca­tion those inter­views have been can­celed. In fact, the Trump cam­paign has already issued the state­ment declar­ing that Vance “obvi­ous­ly does not share the views of the guest inter­viewed by Tuck­er Carl­son” but that he also “does­n’t believe in guilt-by-asso­ci­a­tion can­cel cul­ture.”

    It’s also worth recall­ing last year’s ‘Hitler con­tro­ver­sy’ sur­round­ing Moms for Lib­er­ty. Or rather, con­tro­ver­sies. It start­ed when the Indi­ana chap­ter of the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy (CNP)-backed ‘grass roots’ group decid­ed to include a Hitler quote in one of its newslet­ters. “He alone, who OWNS the youth, GAINS the future.” Fol­low­ing the pub­lic out­cry led by the SPLC’s report­ing on the top­ic, the group issued the defi­ant state­ment that “Moms for Lib­er­ty will not be intim­i­dat­ed by hate groups.” Weeks lat­er, Moms for Lib­er­ty held its annu­al sum­mit fea­tur­ing none oth­er than North Car­oli­na Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor Mark Robin­son. As Robin­son declared, “Whether you’re talk­ing about Adolf Hitler; whether you’re talk­ing about Chair­man Mao; whether you’re talk­ing about Stal­in; whether you’re talk­ing about Pol Pot; whether you’re talk­ing about Cas­tro in Cuba; or whether you’re talk­ing about a dozen oth­er despots all around the globe; it is time for us to get back and start read­ing some of those quotes.” Robin­son then went on to imply Hitler was a left-wing dic­ta­tor by adding, “It’s time for us to start teach­ing our chil­dren about the dirty, despi­ca­ble, awful things that those com­mu­nist and social­ist despots did in our his­to­ry.” Now, obvi­ous­ly, Robin­son’s com­ments weren’t as ‘pro-Hitler’ as Coop­er’s. But the trend is clear. The idea that ‘you know, there’s a lot to be learned from Hitler’ just keeps get­ting more and more main­stream.

    As we’re going to see, anoth­er part of what makes the Carl­son’s Coop­er inter­view such a polit­i­cal light­ning rod for the Trump cam­paign is the real­i­ty that JD Vance lit­er­al­ly “fol­lows” Dar­ryl Coop­er on Twit­ter. And Coop­er is far from the only white nation­al­ist account Vance is fol­low­ing. As one observ­er describes, Vance is open­ly fol­low­ing many of the lead­ing fig­ures in what is now called the ‘post-Alt-Right’. A ‘post-Alt-Right’ that has been down­right gid­dy fol­low­ing his selec­tion as Trump’s VP. From their per­spec­tive, ‘one of their own’ is about to be vice pres­i­dent. It’s not exact­ly clear what dis­tin­guish­es the ‘Alt-Right’ from the ‘post-Alt-Right’, except per­haps the mask has been dropped quite a bit more.

    But as we’re also going to see, Vance’s extrem­ist appeal isn’t lim­it­ed to the ‘post-Alt-Right’. He’s the mem­ber of anoth­er impor­tant ‘post-’ move­ment: ‘postlib­er­al’ Catholi­cism, a grow­ing Catholic move­ment that could almost be seen as the Catholic ana­log to protes­tant Domin­ion­ism. Less a Catholic phi­los­o­phy and more a polit­i­cal move­ment, ‘postlib­er­al’ Catholi­cism appears to have at its foun­da­tion the con­clu­sion that mod­ern lib­er­al­ism is a scourge that must be rolled back, with Catholic doc­trines sort of tacked on as a jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for what is ulti­mate­ly a polit­i­cal project. A polit­i­cal project that is very much aligned with the Sched­ule F/Project 2025 scheme to purge soci­ety’s insti­tu­tions of lib­er­als and use those insti­tu­tions to impose an extreme­ly con­ser­v­a­tive vision of soci­ety. A scheme that JD Vance has open­ly endorsed.

    And guess who hap­pens to be the indi­vid­ual Vance attrib­ut­es with his con­ver­sion to ‘postlib­er­al’ Catholi­cism: Peter Thiel. Accord­ing to Vance, it was a talk Thiel gave in 2011 while Vance was a stu­dent at Yale Law School that plant­ed the seed of Vance’s con­ver­sion. At that point, Vance was an athe­ist going along with the Ivy League crowd. Vance, of course, went on to a career as a Sil­i­con Val­ley ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist with Thiel as his chief busi­ness patron. And by 2019, Vance for­mal­ly con­verts to Catholi­cism. Which also hap­pens to be right around the time when he formed his Narya Cap­i­tal ven­ture cap­i­tal fund with heavy financ­ing from Thiel. A com­pa­ny that went on to fund the ‘Alt-Right’ friend­ly social media start­up Rum­ble.

    Inter­est­ing­ly, while Thiel has clear­ly played a major role in Vance’s con­ver­sion to ‘postlib­er­al’ Catholi­cism, Thiel isn’t exact­ly aligned with ‘postlib­er­al’ Catholics, who tend to view mod­ern soci­etal ills as being root­ed in West­ern pri­or­i­ti­za­tion of indi­vid­ual lib­er­ty and expec­ta­tions of con­tin­u­al eco­nom­ic growth over the ‘com­mon good’. Instead, as we’ve seen, Thiel actu­al­ly feels that the prob­lem with mod­ern soci­ety is not near­ly enough tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ment, which Thiel blames on lib­er­al democ­ra­cy. Tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ment in the area of tran­shu­man­ism have been espe­cial­ly. As Thiel argues, Chris­tian­i­ty is fun­da­men­tal­ly a tran­shu­man­ist phi­los­o­phy and has been a dri­ving force for tech­no­log­i­cal and sci­en­tif­ic advance­ments. Until democ­ra­cy got in the way. This is a good time to recall Thiel’s many invest­ments in longevi­ty tech­nolo­gies and his quest to live for­ev­er that includes hav­ing his body cryo­geni­cal­ly frozen after he dies. He’s very seri­ous about his tran­shu­man­ism.

    Anoth­er aspect to keep in mind with this ‘postlib­er­al’ Catholic net­work is the real­i­ty that today’s far right Supreme Court major­i­ty is over­whelm­ing­ly Catholic: Jus­tices John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Ali­to, Neil Gor­such, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Bar­rett. As we’ve seen, Amy Coney Bar­rett hap­pens to be a mem­ber of the “Peo­ple of Praise”, the group that served as the real life inspi­ra­tion for Mar­garet Atwood’s The Hand­maid­’s Tale. And then there’s the fact that the indi­vid­ual long tasked with select­ing Repub­li­can admin­is­tra­tion Supreme Court nom­i­nees, Leonard Leo, is not just Catholic but also heav­i­ly financed by the bil­lion­aire Cork­ery fam­i­ly who are Opus Dei mem­bers. In oth­er words, a sig­nif­i­cant ele­ment of the con­tem­po­rary author­i­tar­i­an-lean­ing con­ser­v­a­tive grip on insti­tu­tion­al pow­er hap­pens to be Catholic at the same time the Repub­li­can Par­ty is increas­ing­ly in the grip of an evan­gel­i­cal-dom­i­nat­ed Domin­ion­ist move­ment cul­mi­nat­ing around the Sched­ule F/Project 2025 agen­da. That’s all part of the rel­e­vance of Vance’s ‘postlib­er­al’ affil­i­a­tions. The Catholic and Protes­tant wings of this fun­da­men­tal­ly polit­i­cal move­ment need a shared agen­da. ‘Postlib­er­al’ Catholi­cism is a part of that ide­o­log­i­cal cohe­sion.

    So we’ll see what kind of grotes­queries emerge from Vance’s upcom­ing inter­view with Carl­son. We can be pret­ty con­fi­dent Vance won’t make any claims about why the Nazis were actu­al­ly right. But it’s going to be worth keep­ing in mind that Vance isn’t just a fan favorite for the ‘post-Alt-Right’ and its dreams of over­throw­ing democ­ra­cy and ush­er­ing in a post-demo­c­ra­t­ic order. He’s the fan favorite for all sorts of groups that want to see the emer­gence of a post-demo­c­ra­t­ic order, includ­ing Domin­ion­ists and their Catholic ‘postlib­er­al’ fel­low trav­el­ers:

    The Week

    Tuck­er Carl­son’s WWII inter­view frac­tures con­ser­v­a­tives

    Holo­caust revi­sion­ism forces ‘intro­spec­tion’ in right-wing media

    By Joel Math­is, The Week US
    pub­lished 11 Sep­tem­ber 2024

    You think you know the his­to­ry of World War II: The Nazis were the bad guys and Adolf Hitler was prob­a­bly the great­est vil­lain the world has ever known — the author of a Holo­caust that killed 6 mil­lion Jews. End of sto­ry, right? Tuck­er Carl­son isn’t so sure.

    The for­mer Fox News host sparked a right-wing “media melt­down” after inter­view­ing a Holo­caust-deny­ing pod­cast­er on his new online plat­form, Axios said. Carl­son called Dar­ryl Coop­er “the best and most hon­est pop­u­lar his­to­ri­an” in Amer­i­ca. Coop­er in turn called Win­ston Churchill the “chief vil­lain of the Sec­ond World War,” said CNN. Coop­er also sug­gest­ed that the Holo­caust was an inad­ver­tent con­se­quence of poor Ger­man war plan­ning, in which “mil­lions of peo­ple end­ed up dead.”

    ...

    Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee Don­ald Trump must “dis­avow” Carl­son, con­ser­v­a­tive com­men­ta­tor William Gal­ston said at The Wall Street Jour­nal. Don­ald Trump Jr. and J.D. Vance, the vice pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee, are both sched­uled to join Carl­son on tour lat­er this month. That can’t hap­pen. Trump must “draw a bright line between what’s accept­able and what isn’t, Gal­ston added.” What isn’t: “Bla­tant anti­semitism.”

    ...

    “Dubi­ous charges of Nazism are a dime a dozen in U.S. polit­i­cal rhetoric,” Sohrab Ahmari said at The Free Press. But there is no oth­er way to describe Coop­er’s ideas, nor Carl­son’s pro­mo­tion of them. The “obvi­ous fact” is that the Nazis were evil — and that Coop­er’s cast­ing of Churchill as the war’s vil­lain is a “per­verse moral inver­sion.”

    ‘We believe in free speech’

    “Is Vance still going to hang out with Tuck­er Carl­son, even now?” the con­ser­v­a­tive Jim Ger­aghty said at The Wash­ing­ton Post. Carl­son has caused headaches for Vance before: The nom­i­nee’s infa­mous “child­less cat ladies” com­ment came on Carl­son’s Fox News show in 2021. The lat­est con­tro­ver­sy is worse. An “ordi­nary cam­paign” would avoid send­ing its vice pres­i­den­tial can­di­date to hang out pub­licly with a “Putin-ador­ing nutjob con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist” ahead of the elec­tion, but Trump and Vance aren’t run­ning an ordi­nary cam­paign. “Let’s see whether Vance final­ly draws the line at hang­ing with the guy who hosts a revi­sion­ist his­to­ri­an with a blind spot for Adolf Hitler,” Ger­aghty said.

    It does not look like Vance will skip out on Carl­son, said The New York Times. “We believe in free speech and debate,” Vance said dur­ing a cam­paign stop. The cam­paign lat­er issued a state­ment declar­ing that Vance “obvi­ous­ly does not share the views of the guest inter­viewed by Tuck­er Carl­son” but that he also “does­n’t believe in guilt-by-asso­ci­a­tion can­cel cul­ture.” Vance is sched­uled to appear onstage with Carl­son on Sep­tem­ber 21.

    ———–

    “Tuck­er Carl­son’s WWII inter­view frac­tures con­ser­v­a­tives” By Joel Math­is; The Week; 09/11/2024

    “The for­mer Fox News host sparked a right-wing “media melt­down” after inter­view­ing a Holo­caust-deny­ing pod­cast­er on his new online plat­form, Axios said. Carl­son called Dar­ryl Coop­er “the best and most hon­est pop­u­lar his­to­ri­an” in Amer­i­ca. Coop­er in turn called Win­ston Churchill the “chief vil­lain of the Sec­ond World War,” said CNN. Coop­er also sug­gest­ed that the Holo­caust was an inad­ver­tent con­se­quence of poor Ger­man war plan­ning, in which “mil­lions of peo­ple end­ed up dead.”

    For­get Hitler. The chief vil­lain of WWII was Win­ston Churchill. It’s the kind of per­spec­tive one might expect to hear on a neo-Nazi pod­cast. And, sad­ly, it’s now also the kind of con­tent we should expect on Tuck­er Carl­son’s show. The once-lead­ing Fox News anchor is now run­ning what amounts to an inter­net neo-Nazi pod­cast. A pre­sum­ably very pop­u­lar inter­net Nazi-friend­ly pod­cast with enor­mous reach and influ­ence. So when we see how Don­ald Trump and JD Vance are both sched­uled to join Tuck­er Carl­son lat­er this month, keep in mind that they’re going to be com­mu­ni­cat­ing with an audi­ence that is, at this point, famil­iar with pro-Nazi con­tent. In oth­er words, Vance will be lucky if he does­n’t say end up say­ing some­thing a lot more inflam­ma­to­ry than his now-infa­mous “child­less cat ladies” com­ment from his 2021 Carl­son inter­view. These could be some wild inter­views:

    ...
    Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee Don­ald Trump must “dis­avow” Carl­son, con­ser­v­a­tive com­men­ta­tor William Gal­ston said at The Wall Street Jour­nal. Don­ald Trump Jr. and J.D. Vance, the vice pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee, are both sched­uled to join Carl­son on tour lat­er this month. That can’t hap­pen. Trump must “draw a bright line between what’s accept­able and what isn’t, Gal­ston added.” What isn’t: “Bla­tant anti­semitism.”

    ...

    “Is Vance still going to hang out with Tuck­er Carl­son, even now?” the con­ser­v­a­tive Jim Ger­aghty said at The Wash­ing­ton Post. Carl­son has caused headaches for Vance before: The nom­i­nee’s infa­mous “child­less cat ladies” com­ment came on Carl­son’s Fox News show in 2021. The lat­est con­tro­ver­sy is worse. An “ordi­nary cam­paign” would avoid send­ing its vice pres­i­den­tial can­di­date to hang out pub­licly with a “Putin-ador­ing nutjob con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist” ahead of the elec­tion, but Trump and Vance aren’t run­ning an ordi­nary cam­paign. “Let’s see whether Vance final­ly draws the line at hang­ing with the guy who hosts a revi­sion­ist his­to­ri­an with a blind spot for Adolf Hitler,” Ger­aghty said.

    It does not look like Vance will skip out on Carl­son, said The New York Times. “We believe in free speech and debate,” Vance said dur­ing a cam­paign stop. The cam­paign lat­er issued a state­ment declar­ing that Vance “obvi­ous­ly does not share the views of the guest inter­viewed by Tuck­er Carl­son” but that he also “does­n’t believe in guilt-by-asso­ci­a­tion can­cel cul­ture.” Vance is sched­uled to appear onstage with Carl­son on Sep­tem­ber 21.
    ...

    Also note one of the con­ser­v­a­tive crit­ics of Tuck­er for the Coop­er inter­view: Sohrab Ahmari. As we’re going to see below, Ahmari hap­pens to be a lead­ing thinker in the ‘postlib­er­al’ Catholic move­ment. In oth­er words, while Ahmari might be decry­ing the invi­ta­tion of a Nazi apol­o­gist on Carl­son’s show, he also hap­pens to be part of fun­da­men­tal­ly unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic move­ment with its own predilec­tions for author­i­tar­i­an­ism:

    ...
    “Dubi­ous charges of Nazism are a dime a dozen in U.S. polit­i­cal rhetoric,” Sohrab Ahmari said at The Free Press. But there is no oth­er way to describe Coop­er’s ideas, nor Carl­son’s pro­mo­tion of them. The “obvi­ous fact” is that the Nazis were evil — and that Coop­er’s cast­ing of Churchill as the war’s vil­lain is a “per­verse moral inver­sion.”
    ...

    And as we’re going to see in the fol­low­ing piece in The Inde­pen­dent, the crit­i­cisms of Trump and Vance for being will­ing to appear ar Carl­son’s pro­gram short­ly after the Coop­er inter­view isn’t real­ly com­plete with­out rec­og­niz­ing that Vance actu­al­ly ‘fol­lows’ Coop­er on Twit­ter. One of many Nazi-adja­cent social media accounts Vance open­ly fol­lows. It’s why the selec­tion of Vance as Trump’s VP had so many in the ‘Alt Right’ world gid­dy with excite­ment. Or rather, the ‘post-AltRight’ world. Yes, we’ve been in the ‘Alt Right’ era for so long now, we’ve already made it to the ‘post-Alt Right’ era. And JD Vance is one of post-Alt Right’s favorite politi­cians:

    The Inde­pen­dent

    White nation­al­ist body­builders and lib­er­al elites: Here’s who JD Vance is fol­low­ing on X

    JD Vance, who was cho­sen as the Repub­li­can vice pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee this week, fol­lows accounts on X that pro­mote white nation­al­ist views.

    Richard Hall, Isaac Lozano
    Sat­ur­day 20 July 2024 13:27 BST

    Repub­li­can vice pres­i­den­tial can­di­date JD Vance fol­lows sev­er­al accounts on X that espouse far-right and white nation­al­ist views, accord­ing to an analy­sis by The Inde­pen­dent.

    ...

    Among them are two of the most pop­u­lar fig­ures in the Right Wing Body­builders scene — an online com­mu­ni­ty in which many share a world­view that com­bines white nation­al­ist ideas with anti-glob­al­ism, weight-lift­ing and nutri­tion.

    One of them is Raw Egg Nation­al­ist, an account that has shared Adolf Hitler memes, quot­ed Mein Kampf and pro­mot­ed the ‘Great Replace­ment’ con­spir­a­cy — a the­o­ry posit­ing that West­ern elites are inten­tion­al­ly replac­ing White pop­u­la­tions with migrants — to its 200,000 plus fol­low­ers.

    Vance also fol­lows Bronze Age Per­vert, believed to be run by far-right body­builder Costin Ala­mar­iu. That account has also pro­mot­ed the racist Great Replace­ment the­o­ry and eugenic breed­ing. His self-pub­lished book, Bronze Age Mind­set’ is con­sid­ered a foun­da­tion­al text for the scene, and was said to be cir­cu­lat­ing among younger mem­bers of the Trump White House.

    He wrote in a 2021 essay: “I have said for a long time that I believe in rule by a mil­i­tary caste of men who would be able to guide soci­ety toward a moral­i­ty of eugen­ics.”

    Joshua Far­rell-Mol­loy, an extrem­ism researcher at the Accel­er­a­tionism Research Con­sor­tium, described the two accounts as belong­ing to a “post-alt-right move­ment” that is “pret­ty much at the van­guard of white nation­al­ism.”

    “They are one of the main cen­ters of grav­i­ty with­in the con­tem­po­rary far right in the US,” he told The Inde­pen­dent.

    Since Vance received the nom­i­na­tion on Mon­day, Mol­loy said there has been a “buzz of excite­ment” in the com­mu­ni­ty, which is some­times referred to as “anon Twit­ter” or “Frog Twit­ter,” in ref­er­ence to the alt-right meme Pepe the Frog.

    ...

    Vance has described anoth­er con­tro­ver­sial fig­ure, polit­i­cal sci­en­tist Richard Hana­nia, as a “friend” and a “real­ly inter­est­ing thinker.” A Huff­Post inves­ti­ga­tion revealed Hana­nia as hav­ing writ­ten for sev­er­al white nation­al­ist web­sites under a pseu­do­nym in the ear­ly 2010s — where he expressed sup­port for eugen­ics, opposed “race-mix­ing” and cit­ed neo-Nazis — although Vance con­tin­ues to fol­low him on X.

    Hana­nia lat­er dis­avowed the views he expressed while writ­ing under a pseu­do­nym, writ­ing in an essay titled ‘My Jour­ney Out of Extrem­ism’ last year: “I tru­ly sucked back then.”

    Just a cou­ple of months before the pub­li­ca­tion of the essay, Hana­nia used his account on X to call for “more polic­ing, incar­cer­a­tion, and sur­veil­lance of black peo­ple.”

    Far-right social media influ­encer Lau­ra Loomer is also on Vance’s fol­low list. Loomer has described her­self as a “proud Islam­o­phobe.”

    Vance also fol­lows pod­cast host Dar­ryl Coop­er, who said that the 2017 Char­lottesville ‘Unite The Right’ ral­ly includ­ed “a bunch of good peo­ple and wrote in a since-delet­ed tweet that “FDR chose the wrong side in WW2,” The Atlantic report­ed.

    It is not clear how long Vance has fol­lowed each account, or if he has ever seen or inter­act­ed with any of their post­ed con­tent, but Coop­er con­grat­u­lat­ed his “long­time mutu­al” Vance after he was cho­sen as the Repub­li­can vice pres­i­den­tial can­di­date.

    Fol­low­ing a per­son on X does not imply that the per­son agrees with the views shared on the account, but a review of Vance’s fol­low­er list does pro­vide some insight into what the poten­tial future vice pres­i­dent sees online.

    ...

    Vance notably fol­lows a rel­a­tive­ly large num­ber of jour­nal­ists from lib­er­al insti­tu­tions, despite spend­ing much of his time rail­ing against the “lib­er­al elite.”

    He fol­lows nine jour­nal­ists from The Atlantic, one of America’s lead­ing estab­lish­ment lib­er­al mag­a­zines, as well as an assort­ment of New York Times reporters.

    Vance addressed the Repub­li­can Nation­al Con­ven­tion on Wednes­day evening as he accept­ed the party’s nom­i­na­tion for vice pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, shar­ing the sto­ry of grow­ing up poor in Ken­tucky and Ohio.

    “I will be a vice pres­i­dent who nev­er for­gets where he came from,” he told the crowd.

    ———-

    “White nation­al­ist body­builders and lib­er­al elites: Here’s who JD Vance is fol­low­ing on X” by Richard Hall, Isaac Lozano; The Inde­pen­dent; 07/20/2024

    “Since Vance received the nom­i­na­tion on Mon­day, Mol­loy said there has been a “buzz of excite­ment” in the com­mu­ni­ty, which is some­times referred to as “anon Twit­ter” or “Frog Twit­ter,” in ref­er­ence to the alt-right meme Pepe the Frog.”

    As we can see, the ‘Alt-Right’ was pal­pa­bly excit­ed with the selec­tion of Vance as Trump’s vice pres­i­dent. And why would­n’t they be? Vance is an open ‘Alt-Right’ fan. Or, rather, the ‘post-Alt-Right’. The ‘Alt-Right’ is yes­ter­year, appar­ent­ly. But ‘Alt-Right’ or ‘post-Alt-Right’, the affec­tion between Vance and this move­ment appears to be mutu­al:

    ...
    One of them is Raw Egg Nation­al­ist, an account that has shared Adolf Hitler memes, quot­ed Mein Kampf and pro­mot­ed the ‘Great Replace­ment’ con­spir­a­cy — a the­o­ry posit­ing that West­ern elites are inten­tion­al­ly replac­ing White pop­u­la­tions with migrants — to its 200,000 plus fol­low­ers.

    Vance also fol­lows Bronze Age Per­vert, believed to be run by far-right body­builder Costin Ala­mar­iu. That account has also pro­mot­ed the racist Great Replace­ment the­o­ry and eugenic breed­ing. His self-pub­lished book, Bronze Age Mind­set’ is con­sid­ered a foun­da­tion­al text for the scene, and was said to be cir­cu­lat­ing among younger mem­bers of the Trump White House.

    He wrote in a 2021 essay: “I have said for a long time that I believe in rule by a mil­i­tary caste of men who would be able to guide soci­ety toward a moral­i­ty of eugen­ics.”

    Joshua Far­rell-Mol­loy, an extrem­ism researcher at the Accel­er­a­tionism Research Con­sor­tium, described the two accounts as belong­ing to a “post-alt-right move­ment” that is “pret­ty much at the van­guard of white nation­al­ism.”

    “They are one of the main cen­ters of grav­i­ty with­in the con­tem­po­rary far right in the US,” he told The Inde­pen­dent.
    ...

    And then there’s Vance’s descrip­tion of Richard Hana­nia as a “friend” and “real­ly inter­est­ing thinker”. As’ve we’ve seen,Hana­nia was basi­cal­ly post­ing as a Nazi pseudonony­mous­ly for years before get­ting exposed and declar­ing him­self reformed (a sto­ry with a num­ber of par­al­lels with con­ser­v­a­tive lawyer (and clos­et Nazi) Christo­pher Roach). Along with Lau­ra Loomer — who recent­ly attend­ed a 9/11 memo­r­i­al cer­e­mo­ny as one of Don­ald Trump’s guests — and Dar­ryl Coop­er. These are Vance’s fel­low trav­el­ers:

    ...
    Vance has described anoth­er con­tro­ver­sial fig­ure, polit­i­cal sci­en­tist Richard Hana­nia, as a “friend” and a “real­ly inter­est­ing thinker.” A Huff­Post inves­ti­ga­tion revealed Hana­nia as hav­ing writ­ten for sev­er­al white nation­al­ist web­sites under a pseu­do­nym in the ear­ly 2010s — where he expressed sup­port for eugen­ics, opposed “race-mix­ing” and cit­ed neo-Nazis — although Vance con­tin­ues to fol­low him on X.

    Hana­nia lat­er dis­avowed the views he expressed while writ­ing under a pseu­do­nym, writ­ing in an essay titled ‘My Jour­ney Out of Extrem­ism’ last year: “I tru­ly sucked back then.”

    Just a cou­ple of months before the pub­li­ca­tion of the essay, Hana­nia used his account on X to call for “more polic­ing, incar­cer­a­tion, and sur­veil­lance of black peo­ple.”

    Far-right social media influ­encer Lau­ra Loomer is also on Vance’s fol­low list. Loomer has described her­self as a “proud Islam­o­phobe.”

    Vance also fol­lows pod­cast host Dar­ryl Coop­er, who said that the 2017 Char­lottesville ‘Unite The Right’ ral­ly includ­ed “a bunch of good peo­ple and wrote in a since-delet­ed tweet that “FDR chose the wrong side in WW2,” The Atlantic report­ed.

    It is not clear how long Vance has fol­lowed each account, or if he has ever seen or inter­act­ed with any of their post­ed con­tent, but Coop­er con­grat­u­lat­ed his “long­time mutu­al” Vance after he was cho­sen as the Repub­li­can vice pres­i­den­tial can­di­date.
    ...

    But as we’re remind­ed of in the fol­low­ing AP piece, Vance’s extrem­ist admir­ers isn’t lim­it­ed to his many ‘post-Alt-Right’ fans. He also hap­pens to be a mem­ber of the ‘postlib­er­al’ Catholic move­ment. A move­ment that sounds more or less like the Catholic ver­sion of Domion­ism. An extreme­ly Sched­ule F/Project 2025-friend­ly move­ment with ambi­tions of tak­ing over soci­ety’s insti­tu­tions and wield­ing that pow­er for the “com­mon good”, where “com­mon good” is defined under an extreme­ly con­ser­v­a­tive lense. And as we’ve seen, this ‘postlib­er­al’ move­ment has one very promi­nent con­ser­v­a­tive mega-donor fel­low trav­el­er: Peter Thiel. In fact, accord­ing to Vance, it was a 2011 talk by Thiel while Vance was a Yale Law School stu­dent that put Vance on the path towards his con­ver­sion to Catholi­cism and embrace of a ‘postlib­er­al’ world­view.

    Now, as we’ve also seen, Thiel isn’t quite a ‘postlib­er­al’ Catholic. Because while most postlib­er­als raise harsh cri­tiques on mod­ern soci­ety for cre­at­ing exis­ten­tial dread by plac­ing an empha­sis on per­son­al lib­er­ties and eco­nom­ic growth, Thiel actu­al­ly feels that the prob­lem with mod­ern soci­ety is not near­ly enough tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ment, which he blames on lib­er­al democ­ra­cy. Tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ment in the area of tran­shu­man­ism, in par­tic­u­lar. At Thiel argues, Chris­tian­i­ty is fun­da­men­tal­ly a tran­shu­man­ist phi­los­o­phy and has been a dri­ving force for tech­no­log­i­cal and sci­en­tif­ic advance­ments. Until democ­ra­cy got in the way and derailed all that advance­ment. And Thiel is, of course, JD Vance’s chief patron in both busi­ness and pol­i­tics. So when we see all of these ‘postlib­er­al’ Catholic lead­ers declar­ing Vance as one of their own, keep in mind that Peter Thiel has his own tran­shu­man­ist ver­sion of ‘postlib­er­al’ Catholi­cism that is pre­sum­ably influ­enc­ing Vance too:

    Asso­ci­at­ed Press

    JD Vance’s Catholi­cism helped shape his views. So did this lit­tle-known group of Catholic thinkers

    By MICHELLE R. SMITH and PETER SMITH
    Updat­ed 1:36 PM CDT, Sep­tem­ber 4, 2024

    By his own account, Ohio Sen. JD Vance’s 2019 con­ver­sion to Catholi­cism pro­vid­ed a spir­i­tu­al ful­fill­ment he couldn’t find in his Yale edu­ca­tion or career suc­cess.

    It also amount­ed to a polit­i­cal con­ver­sion.

    Catholi­cism pro­vid­ed him a new way of look­ing at the addic­tions, fam­i­ly break­downs and oth­er social ills he described in his 2016 best­selling mem­oir, “Hill­bil­ly Ele­gy.”

    “I felt des­per­ate for a world­view that under­stood our bad behav­ior as simul­ta­ne­ous­ly social and indi­vid­ual, struc­tur­al and moral; that rec­og­nized that we are prod­ucts of our envi­ron­ment; that we have a respon­si­bil­i­ty to change that envi­ron­ment, but that we are still moral beings with indi­vid­ual duties,” he wrote in a 2020 essay.

    His con­ver­sion also put Vance in close touch with a Catholic intel­lec­tu­al move­ment, viewed by some crit­ics as hav­ing reac­tionary or author­i­tar­i­an lean­ings, that has been lit­tle known to the Amer­i­can pub­lic until Vance’s rise to the nation­al stage as the Repub­li­can vice pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee.

    These are not your father’s Catholic con­ser­v­a­tives.

    The pro­fes­sors and media per­son­al­i­ties in this net­work don’t all agree on every­thing — even on what to call them­selves – but most go by “postlib­er­al.” Vance has used that term to describe him­self, though the Trump-Vance cam­paign did not respond to ques­tions about where Vance sees him­self in the move­ment and whether he shares some of the beliefs pro­mot­ed by many postlib­er­als.

    Postlib­er­als do share some long­stand­ing Catholic con­ser­v­a­tive views, such as oppo­si­tion to abor­tion and LGBTQ+ rights.

    But where Catholic con­ser­v­a­tives of the past have seen big gov­ern­ment as a prob­lem rather than a solu­tion, the postlib­er­als want a mus­cu­lar gov­ern­ment — one that they con­trol.

    They envi­sion a coun­ter­rev­o­lu­tion in which they would take over gov­ern­ment bureau­cra­cy and insti­tu­tions like uni­ver­si­ties from with­in, replac­ing entrenched “elites” with their own and act­ing upon their vision of the “com­mon good.”

    “What is need­ed … is regime change — the peace­ful but vig­or­ous over­throw of a cor­rupt and cor­rupt­ing lib­er­al rul­ing class and the cre­ation of a postlib­er­al order,” wrote Patrick Deneen, a promi­nent author in the move­ment, in his 2023 book, “Regime Change.”

    Vance has sig­naled his align­ment with some of what Catholic postlib­er­als advo­cate. He’s said the next time his allies con­trol the pres­i­den­cy or Con­gress, “ we real­ly need to be real­ly ruth­less when it comes to the exer­cise of pow­er” and said Repub­li­cans should seize insti­tu­tions, includ­ing uni­ver­si­ties “to make them work for our peo­ple.” He’s advo­cat­ed for gov­ern­ment poli­cies to spur child­bear­ing, a notion reflect­ed in his digs at “child­less cat ladies” with alleged­ly no stake in America’s future.

    ...

    At an Ohio con­fer­ence fea­tur­ing a who’s who of Catholic postlib­er­als in 2022, he told fel­low speak­ers he has “admired a lot of you from afar” as “some of the peo­ple who I think are most inter­est­ing about what’s going on in this coun­try.”

    Vance praised Deneen’s book at a 2023 pan­el dis­cus­sion with the author, a pro­fes­sor of polit­i­cal sci­ence at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Notre Dame.

    Vance has also met pri­vate­ly with lead­ing postlib­er­als, who have post­ed pho­tos of their gath­er­ings on social media and cheered his vice pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion.

    Catholic jour­nals for years have bris­tled with debates about postlib­er­al­ism, but with lit­tle pub­lic atten­tion — in part because its adher­ents are few and its views are far from main­stream.

    But now, postlib­er­als have an avid lis­ten­er in Don­ald Trump’s run­ning mate.

    “You can go from peo­ple writ­ing on an unusu­al Catholic the­ol­o­gy blog to the vice pres­i­den­tial can­di­date in the course of less than a decade,” said James Pat­ter­son, pro­fes­sor of pol­i­tics at Ave Maria Uni­ver­si­ty in Flori­da.

    ...

    “Most ordi­nary Amer­i­can Catholics would not treat a child­less sin­gle woman with cats with this kind of con­tempt,” Pat­ter­son said. Even if Vance is not steeped in the phi­los­o­phy, Pat­ter­son added, “he is pick­ing up on the postlib­er­al vibe.”

    Some Catholics, includ­ing con­ser­v­a­tives, have raised alarms about the com­pa­ny Vance has kept, say­ing postlib­er­al­ism has his­tor­i­cal con­nec­tions to 20th cen­tu­ry Euro­pean move­ments that are asso­ci­at­ed with author­i­tar­i­an regimes like Fran­cis­co Franco’s in Spain.

    “We’re talk­ing about peo­ple that pre­fer right-wing author­i­tar­i­an regimes,” Pat­ter­son said.

    In a postlib­er­al soci­ety, Pat­ter­son wrote in an August com­men­tary in the online jour­nal The Dis­patch, cit­i­zens become “sub­jects” and per­son­al lib­er­ties sub­ject­ed to “admin­is­tra­tive despo­tism.”

    Vance has recent­ly tried to down­play his Catholicism’s impact on pol­i­cy-mak­ing.

    Trump’s Supreme Court appointees pro­vid­ed the cru­cial major­i­ty to over­turn Roe v. Wade, which had legal­ized abor­tion nation­wide. But the issue has become a polit­i­cal lia­bil­i­ty, with vot­ers in sev­er­al states reject­ing abor­tion restric­tions.

    Vance had strong­ly opposed abor­tion, in the runup to his 2022 sen­a­to­r­i­al win, say­ing at one point that “two wrongs don’t make a right” when refer­ring to excep­tions for rape and incest. The cam­paign said in an email Wednes­day that he sup­ports “rea­son­able” excep­tions for rape, incest, and life of the moth­er.

    But Vance has aligned with the Repub­li­cans’ first post-Roe plat­form in 2024, in which it backed off from its long­stand­ing sup­port for nation­wide abor­tion restric­tions. He pledged he could “absolute­ly com­mit” that a Trump-Vance admin­is­tra­tion would not impose such an abor­tion ban.

    Trump has spo­ken incon­sis­tent­ly about a bal­lot mea­sure repeal­ing Florida’s ban on abor­tions after six weeks of preg­nan­cy.

    After fac­ing back­lash from anti-abor­tion activists for seem­ing to indi­cate he would sup­port the mea­sure, Trump said he would oppose it.

    The Catholic Church’s U.S. bish­ops declared oppos­ing abor­tion “our pre-emi­nent pri­or­i­ty.”

    Vance told the New York Post in August that Catholic social teach­ing “cer­tain­ly influ­ences how I think about issues.” But he acknowl­edged “there are a lot of things the Catholic Church teach­es that frankly, Amer­i­cans would just nev­er go for.”

    He added that in a democ­ra­cy, “you have to give peo­ple their abil­i­ty to have their own moral views reflect­ed in pub­lic pol­i­cy. There are a lot of non-Catholics in Amer­i­ca and I accept that.”

    Julian Waller, a polit­i­cal sci­ence pro­fes­sor at George Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty, said Vance has numer­ous influ­ences out­side of Catholic postlib­er­al­ism — from Trump-style pop­ulists to his men­tor, tech bil­lion­aire Peter Thiel.

    It remains to be seen whether Catholic postlib­er­als would get promi­nent appoint­ments in a Trump-Vance admin­is­tra­tion — or even how often they’d get their calls returned.

    ...

    For an exam­ple of what an admin­is­tra­tion using state pow­er for postlib­er­al ends might look like, Waller point­ed to Flori­da and Gov. Ron DeSan­tis’ efforts to rid pub­lic high­er edu­ca­tion of diver­si­ty ini­tia­tives and crit­i­cal race the­o­ry.

    “If you want the mod­el for what some­one like JD Vance is real­ly inter­est­ed in, it’s prob­a­bly the Flori­da mod­el, force­ful­ly chang­ing insti­tu­tions, cap­tur­ing insti­tu­tions,” Waller said.

    Postlib­er­als’ ideas vary, but there are com­mon themes, said Kevin Val­li­er, author of “ All the King­doms of the World,” a 2023 book on the mod­ern postlib­er­al and inte­gral­ist move­ments and their cen­turies-old roots.

    Depend­ing on who’s talk­ing, a postlib­er­al regime change could involve encour­ag­ing child­bear­ing, eas­ing or remov­ing church-state sep­a­ra­tion, ban­ning pornog­ra­phy for adults and chil­dren alike, reim­pos­ing laws lim­it­ing busi­ness on the Sab­bath, sup­port­ing pri­vate-sec­tor unions and strength­en­ing safe­ty nets for the mid­dle class.

    It’s com­mon to hear postlib­er­als prais­ing Hungary’s nation­al­ist prime min­is­ter, Vik­tor Orban, par­tic­u­lar­ly for his use of finan­cial incen­tives for fam­i­lies that have more babies. Orban has cham­pi­oned an “illib­er­al democ­ra­cy,”  which includes restric­tions on  immi­gra­tion and LGBTQ+ rights.

    Vance has praised Orban for Hungary’s sub­si­dies to mar­ried cou­ples with chil­dren and for “smart deci­sions” in seiz­ing con­trol of uni­ver­si­ties.

    Vance has echoed the regime-change rhetoric of using gov­ern­ment, staffed by like­mind­ed offi­cials, for postlib­er­al goals.

    “You need to have a func­tion­al state that accom­plish­es some of the things that we care about. You need good peo­ple to go and work in that func­tion­al state,” Vance said a 2022 con­fer­ence at Fran­cis­can Uni­ver­si­ty of Steubenville, Ohio. It fea­tured promi­nent postlib­er­als like Deneen and Har­vard Law School pro­fes­sor Adri­an Ver­meule.

    Ver­meule has advo­cat­ed for “com­mon-good con­sti­tu­tion­al­ism,” in which the gov­ern­ment enacts “strong rule in the inter­est of attain­ing the com­mon good.”

    ...

    Vance’s choice to speak at Steubenville under­scored his affin­i­ty with postlib­er­als, Val­li­er said.

    “He could have giv­en that talk any­where,” said Val­li­er, a pro­fes­sor at the Insti­tute of Amer­i­can Con­sti­tu­tion­al Thought and Lead­er­ship at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Tole­do in Ohio. “Why is he appear­ing with these intel­lec­tu­als if he’s not sym­pa­thet­ic to their ideas?”

    Vance’s reli­gious jour­ney began in a fam­i­ly that rarely went to church when he was young, he wrote in “Hill­bil­ly Ele­gy.” But he said his grand­moth­er — the most sta­ble adult in his tur­bu­lent house­hold — reg­u­lar­ly read the Bible and taught a Chris­tian­i­ty that demand­ed hard work, for­give­ness and hope.

    For a time, the young JD embraced the strict bib­li­cal lit­er­al­ism of his father’s Pen­te­costal church, cred­it­ing it as a sta­bi­liz­ing force, he wrote.

    But in col­lege, Vance embraced what he lat­er viewed as an arro­gant and fash­ion­able athe­ism.

    Even­tu­al­ly, he wrote in a 2020 essay for the Catholic jour­nal The Lamp, he con­clud­ed he “need­ed grace” to pro­vide him the virtues to be a good hus­band and father.

    “I need­ed, in oth­er words, to become Catholic,” he wrote.

    ————

    “JD Vance’s Catholi­cism helped shape his views. So did this lit­tle-known group of Catholic thinkers” By MICHELLE R. SMITH and PETER SMITH; Asso­ci­at­ed Press; 09/04/2024

    The pro­fes­sors and media per­son­al­i­ties in this net­work don’t all agree on every­thing — even on what to call them­selves – but most go by “postlib­er­al.” Vance has used that term to describe him­self, though the Trump-Vance cam­paign did not respond to ques­tions about where Vance sees him­self in the move­ment and whether he shares some of the beliefs pro­mot­ed by many postlib­er­als.”

    JD Vance isn’t just a Catholic con­vert. He’s a ‘postlib­er­al’ Catholic con­vert. And as we can see, this ‘postlib­er­al’ move­ment just hap­pens to be high­ly ide­o­log­i­cal­ly aligned with the sen­ti­ment dri­ving the Sched­ule F/Project 2025 plot to purge all major US insti­tu­tions of the influ­ences of ‘the left’ and then using those hijacked insti­tu­tions to impose of far right vision of soci­ety on a major­i­ty that does­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly agree with this agen­da. The ‘postlib­er­al’ move­ment is ulti­mate­ly post-demo­c­ra­t­ic. So when we see Vance prais­ing promi­nent ‘postlib­er­al’ author like Patrick Deneen, who open­ly calls for a Sched­ule F‑style impo­si­tion of postlib­er­al goals on soci­ety, it’s impor­tant to keep in mind that the whole Sched­ule F/Project 2025 agen­da for a sec­ond Trump admin­is­tra­tion is effec­tive­ly the real­iza­tion of this move­men­t’s goals:

    ...
    His con­ver­sion also put Vance in close touch with a Catholic intel­lec­tu­al move­ment, viewed by some crit­ics as hav­ing reac­tionary or author­i­tar­i­an lean­ings, that has been lit­tle known to the Amer­i­can pub­lic until Vance’s rise to the nation­al stage as the Repub­li­can vice pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee.

    These are not your father’s Catholic con­ser­v­a­tives.

    ...

    Postlib­er­als do share some long­stand­ing Catholic con­ser­v­a­tive views, such as oppo­si­tion to abor­tion and LGBTQ+ rights.

    But where Catholic con­ser­v­a­tives of the past have seen big gov­ern­ment as a prob­lem rather than a solu­tion, the postlib­er­als want a mus­cu­lar gov­ern­ment — one that they con­trol.

    They envi­sion a coun­ter­rev­o­lu­tion in which they would take over gov­ern­ment bureau­cra­cy and insti­tu­tions like uni­ver­si­ties from with­in, replac­ing entrenched “elites” with their own and act­ing upon their vision of the “com­mon good.”

    “What is need­ed … is regime change — the peace­ful but vig­or­ous over­throw of a cor­rupt and cor­rupt­ing lib­er­al rul­ing class and the cre­ation of a postlib­er­al order,” wrote Patrick Deneen, a promi­nent author in the move­ment, in his 2023 book, “Regime Change.”

    Vance has sig­naled his align­ment with some of what Catholic postlib­er­als advo­cate. He’s said the next time his allies con­trol the pres­i­den­cy or Con­gress, “ we real­ly need to be real­ly ruth­less when it comes to the exer­cise of pow­er” and said Repub­li­cans should seize insti­tu­tions, includ­ing uni­ver­si­ties “to make them work for our peo­ple.” He’s advo­cat­ed for gov­ern­ment poli­cies to spur child­bear­ing, a notion reflect­ed in his digs at “child­less cat ladies” with alleged­ly no stake in America’s future.

    ...

    At an Ohio con­fer­ence fea­tur­ing a who’s who of Catholic postlib­er­als in 2022, he told fel­low speak­ers he has “admired a lot of you from afar” as “some of the peo­ple who I think are most inter­est­ing about what’s going on in this coun­try.”

    Vance praised Deneen’s book at a 2023 pan­el dis­cus­sion with the author, a pro­fes­sor of polit­i­cal sci­ence at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Notre Dame.

    ...

    “Most ordi­nary Amer­i­can Catholics would not treat a child­less sin­gle woman with cats with this kind of con­tempt,” Pat­ter­son said. Even if Vance is not steeped in the phi­los­o­phy, Pat­ter­son added, “he is pick­ing up on the postlib­er­al vibe.”

    Some Catholics, includ­ing con­ser­v­a­tives, have raised alarms about the com­pa­ny Vance has kept, say­ing postlib­er­al­ism has his­tor­i­cal con­nec­tions to 20th cen­tu­ry Euro­pean move­ments that are asso­ci­at­ed with author­i­tar­i­an regimes like Fran­cis­co Franco’s in Spain.

    “We’re talk­ing about peo­ple that pre­fer right-wing author­i­tar­i­an regimes,” Pat­ter­son said.

    In a postlib­er­al soci­ety, Pat­ter­son wrote in an August com­men­tary in the online jour­nal The Dis­patch, cit­i­zens become “sub­jects” and per­son­al lib­er­ties sub­ject­ed to “admin­is­tra­tive despo­tism.”
    ...

    And when we see how Vance’s path to Catholi­cism was appar­ent­ly deeply influ­enced by Peter Thiel — Vance’s chief polit­i­cal patron — at the same time Thiel is described as a Catholic who is ‘out­side of Cathol postlib­er­alis’, it’s impor­tant to keep in mind how Thiel’s world­view aligns with that of promi­nent postlib­er­al thinkers like Deneen. As we saw, Thiel large­ly agreed with Deneen’s con­clu­sion that mod­ern soci­ety’s woes are a result of lib­er­al­ism. But where Deneen saw lib­er­al­is­m’s empha­sis on per­son­al lib­er­ty and eco­nom­ic growth as the root of this malaise, Thiel saw a lack of mate­r­i­al sci­en­tif­ic progress as the under­ly­ing issue. Beyond that, Thiel seemed to embrace a kind of tran­shu­man­ist phi­los­o­phy that he argued was very much in keep­ing with the true nature of Chris­tian­i­ty. So yes, tech­ni­cal­ly, Thiel isn’t com­plete­ly aligned with the ‘postlib­er­als’, but they do share the under­ly­ing goal of over­throw­ing soci­ety and impos­ing some­thing rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent, under the ban­ner of Chris­tian­i­ty:

    ...
    Julian Waller, a polit­i­cal sci­ence pro­fes­sor at George Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty, said Vance has numer­ous influ­ences out­side of Catholic postlib­er­al­ism — from Trump-style pop­ulists to his men­tor, tech bil­lion­aire Peter Thiel.

    ...

    Vance’s reli­gious jour­ney began in a fam­i­ly that rarely went to church when he was young, he wrote in “Hill­bil­ly Ele­gy.” But he said his grand­moth­er — the most sta­ble adult in his tur­bu­lent house­hold — reg­u­lar­ly read the Bible and taught a Chris­tian­i­ty that demand­ed hard work, for­give­ness and hope.

    For a time, the young JD embraced the strict bib­li­cal lit­er­al­ism of his father’s Pen­te­costal church, cred­it­ing it as a sta­bi­liz­ing force, he wrote.

    But in col­lege, Vance embraced what he lat­er viewed as an arro­gant and fash­ion­able athe­ism.

    Even­tu­al­ly, he wrote in a 2020 essay for the Catholic jour­nal The Lamp, he con­clud­ed he “need­ed grace” to pro­vide him the virtues to be a good hus­band and father.

    “I need­ed, in oth­er words, to become Catholic,” he wrote.
    ...

    Final­ly, as we’re going to see in the fol­low­ing piece in The Atlantic, the ‘postlib­er­al’ move­ment is per­haps sur­pris­ing­ly not very focused on the tra­di­tion­al of Catholic phi­los­o­phy. Instead, it appears to be a move­ment root­ed in a con­vic­tion that lib­er­al­ism is bad and must be repealed, with Catholic argu­ments then glommed on as part of the move­men­t’s jus­ti­fi­ca­tion. And as the arti­cle also notes, while Peter Thiel shares many of ‘postlib­er­al’ Catholi­cis­m’s crit­i­cisms of mod­ern soci­ety, Thiel does­n’t advo­cate a ‘postlib­er­al’ solu­tion. Instead, he advances a kind of hyper-tech­nol­o­gy-focused goal of tran­shu­man­ism as a kind of sacred mis­sion for human­i­ty. That’s also part of the con­text of Vance’s 2019 con­ver­sion to Catholi­cism, to appears to have hap­pened right around he formed his Narya Cap­i­tal ven­ture cap­i­tal fund with heavy financ­ing from Thiel. A com­pa­ny that went on to fund the ‘Alt-Right’ friend­ly social media start­up Rum­ble. That’s all part of the con­text of Vance’s ‘postlib­er­al’ the­ol­o­gy: it’s a the­ol­o­gy that has polit­i­cal goals as its core objec­tives and under­ly­ing motives and Vance hap­pened to have his con­ver­sion to this move­ment right around the time he start­ed a new ‘Alt-Right’-friendly ven­ture cap­i­tal fund with Thiel’s patron­age:

    The Atlantic

    The Post-lib­er­al Catholics Find Their Man

    As vice pres­i­dent, J. D. Vance would ele­vate their dis­dain for Amer­i­can lib­er­al­ism to the high­est lev­els of gov­ern­ment.

    By Damon Link­er
    August 8, 2024
    Updat­ed at 10:24 p.m. ET on August 8, 2024

    When jour­nal­ists write about ties between Don­ald Trump and the reli­gious right, they usu­al­ly focus on evan­gel­i­cal Protes­tants. That empha­sis makes sense, giv­en that evan­gel­i­cals make up a siz­able por­tion of the GOP’s elec­toral coali­tion, and their endur­ing devo­tion to the moral­ly and reli­gious­ly louche Repub­li­can nom­i­nee remains more than a lit­tle shock­ing.

    But Trump’s choice of J. D. Vance as his run­ning mate puts a spot­light on a dif­fer­ent fac­tion of the reli­gious right: the so-called post-lib­er­al Catholics, who have been Vance’s friends, allies, and inter­locu­tors since his 2019 con­ver­sion to Catholi­cism (he was raised Protes­tant) and trans­for­ma­tion into a MAGA Repub­li­can short­ly after.

    This group of Catholic intellectuals—which includes Patrick Deneen of Notre Dame, Adri­an Ver­meule of Har­vard Law School, and Sohrab Ahmari, a founder and an edi­tor of the eclec­ti­cal­ly pop­ulist mag­a­zine Com­pact—is known for its sweep­ing attack on clas­si­cal lib­er­al­ism. It claims that a long list of con­tem­po­rary prob­lems (ris­ing rates of eco­nom­ic inequal­i­ty, drug addic­tion, sui­cide, home­less­ness, child­less­ness) can be traced back to moral-philo­soph­i­cal errors made cen­turies ago by the Amer­i­can Founders and their ide­o­log­i­cal prog­en­i­tors. In place of our polity’s com­mit­ment to indi­vid­ual rights, auton­o­my, and plu­ral­ism, the post-lib­er­als aim to cre­ate a soci­ety uni­fied around the com­mon good, which is itself fixed on a the­o­log­i­cal vision of the High­est Good.

    Hence the need for what Deneen calls “regime change” in the title of his most recent book. In con­crete terms, this means replac­ing the peo­ple and insti­tu­tions that dom­i­nate America’s cul­tur­al, eco­nom­ic, and polit­i­cal life with a new elite will­ing to eschew lib­er­al norms in ser­vice of sup­pos­ed­ly high­er ideals. In this respect, Vance is the man the post-lib­er­als have been wait­ing for—a self-iden­ti­fied mem­ber of the “post-lib­er­al right,” and now a con­tender for one of the country’s high­est polit­i­cal offices.

    ...

    These ambi­tions mark a sig­nif­i­cant change in the Catholic right com­pared with its most recent moment of max­i­mal influ­ence, dur­ing the admin­is­tra­tion of George W. Bush. Then, writ­ers such as Richard John Neuhaus, Michael Novak, and Robert P. George argued that, when prop­er­ly under­stood, Catholic Chris­t­ian rev­e­la­tion, Amer­i­can his­to­ry and ideals, and the Repub­li­can Party’s plat­form were per­fect­ly har­mo­nious. These thinkers made their case by con­tend­ing that Amer­i­can lib­er­al­ism was root­ed in the­o­log­i­cal sources, that Catholic ortho­doxy was essen­tial­ly lib­er­al and that the GOP was tai­lor-made to unite the two.

    Things feel very dif­fer­ent on the Catholic right today. Set­backs at home and at the Vatican—including the elec­tion (and reelec­tion) of Barack Oba­ma, Pope Francis’s efforts to push back against the con­ser­v­a­tive lega­cies of his pre­de­ces­sors, and the Oberge­fell deci­sion by the U.S. Supreme Court declar­ing same-sex mar­riage a con­sti­tu­tion­al right—discredited the idea that lib­er­al­ism and tra­di­tion­al Catholi­cism could go togeth­er. One rad­i­cal response to these devel­op­ments can be found on the fur­thest extreme of the Catholic right, among a group called the inte­gral­ists. Despite their name, they aim to sub­or­di­nate the state to the Church, not inte­grate them.

    Vance hasn’t gone that far in his pub­lic state­ments. Yet his account of his con­ver­sion to the Catholic Church, pub­lished in 2020 in the mag­a­zine The Lamp, marks him as very much a man of our post-lib­er­al moment. In his essay, Vance explains the intel­lec­tu­al influ­ences on his spir­i­tu­al evo­lu­tion. Some are con­ven­tion­al, such as St. Augus­tine, the the­olo­gian and bish­op who has been an inspi­ra­tion to Chris­t­ian con­verts down through the cen­turies. But one is decid­ed­ly less ortho­dox: the bil­lion­aire ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist Peter Thiel.

    Before Thiel spent rough­ly $15 mil­lion on Vance’s suc­cess­ful 2022 Sen­ate cam­paign in Ohio, Vance worked as a prin­ci­pal for Mithril Cap­i­tal, one of Thiel’s many firms. Their first encounter, how­ev­er, came back in 2011, when Thiel deliv­ered a talk at Yale Law School, where Vance was then a stu­dent. As Vance recalls in his essay, Thiel, who has described him­self as Chris­t­ian, observed that the mer­i­to­crat­ic striv­ing of smart young peo­ple (like Vance) often results in both per­son­al exis­ten­tial empti­ness and soci­etal stag­na­tion. That’s a vari­a­tion on a cri­tique of lib­er­al democ­ra­cy that Thiel has been devel­op­ing for much of his career. In his idio­syn­crat­ic read­ing of West­ern his­to­ry, the the­o­log­i­cal pre­cepts of Chris­t­ian civ­i­liza­tion are what inspired the great sci­en­tif­ic and tech­no­log­i­cal achieve­ments of the past sev­er­al cen­turies. The ideals of lib­er­al democ­ra­cy, by con­trast, are respon­si­ble for the mean­ing­less­ness and iner­tia that sup­pos­ed­ly plague the present.

    Over the decade fol­low­ing his meet­ing with Thiel, Vance remained broad­ly com­mit­ted to a Bush-era vision of con­ti­nu­ity between Chris­tian­i­ty and the moral out­look and pol­i­cy agen­da of the pre-Trump Repub­li­can Par­ty. That ear­li­er Vance favored pro-busi­ness eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy and saw democ­ra­cy pro­mo­tion as a cru­cial ele­ment of Amer­i­can for­eign pol­i­cy. He also empha­sized the impor­tance of per­son­al char­ac­ter in pub­lic life: Pover­ty could be explained, in part, by moral deprav­i­ty, and hold­ing polit­i­cal office required integri­ty. But around the time that he decid­ed to run for the Ohio Sen­ate seat vacat­ed by the retir­ing Rob Port­man in 2021, Vance under­went a sec­ond con­ver­sion—to the ideas of the post-lib­er­al Catholics and the right-wing pop­ulism asso­ci­at­ed with Don­ald Trump.

    ...

    Most strik­ing­ly, after more than four years of con­demn­ing Trump, Vance began defend­ing the for­mer president’s most reck­less acts and ambi­tions. He start­ed denounc­ing the Amer­i­can “regime” and, in Sep­tem­ber 2021, told a far-right pod­cast­er that “we are in a late repub­li­can peri­od” in which it would be nec­es­sary to “get pret­ty wild, pret­ty far out there, and go in direc­tions that a lot of con­ser­v­a­tives right now are uncom­fort­able with.” This includ­ed “a de-Ba’athification pro­gram” with the fol­low­ing direc­tives: “seize the admin­is­tra­tive state for our own pur­pos­es … fire every civ­il ser­vant in the admin­is­tra­tive state [and] replace them with our peo­ple.”

    The post-lib­er­al Catholics, includ­ing Deneen, in his book on regime change, insist that the moral and polit­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion they seek can be accom­plished peace­ful­ly. But Vance appears ready to excuse some dan­ger­ous polit­i­cal brinkman­ship. In a recent inter­view with The New York Times’ Ross Douthat, Vance defend­ed the idea of states across the coun­try appoint­ing alter­na­tive slates of elec­tors after the 2020 elec­tion. He seemed to con­cede that such actions could have pre­cip­i­tat­ed a “con­sti­tu­tion­al cri­sis.” So be it.

    What might be most strange about this unapolo­get­i­cal­ly rad­i­cal style of pol­i­tics is how ten­u­ous its ties are to the Catholic Church as an insti­tu­tion and even Chris­tian­i­ty as a his­tor­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty of faith. Where­as the Bush-era Catholics reg­u­lar­ly cit­ed the New Tes­ta­ment, Thomas Aquinas, and John Court­ney Mur­ray, today’s post-lib­er­als rarely invoke the Bible or the­olo­gians in their polit­i­cal com­men­tary. They don’t base their pol­i­cy com­mit­ments on the Cat­e­chism of the Catholic Church. They aren’t in the habit of refer­ring to the social teach­ings in papal encycli­cals. (As with any group, there are excep­tions. Ahmari, for exam­ple, has cit­ed Catholic teach­ing in sup­port of polit­i­cal argu­ments in some works.)

    Rather, their the­o­log­i­cal con­vic­tions tend to remain in the back­ground, serv­ing as fuel for some­thing more cen­tral to their pub­lic thought: a pol­i­tics of reac­tionary nega­tion. Their faith con­firms that lib­er­al­ism is the great ene­my that must be fought and defeat­ed so that some­thing more whole­some and spir­i­tu­al­ly invig­o­rat­ing can take its place. But until lib­er­al­ism has been expunged from the world, Chris­tian­i­ty remains main­ly a civ­i­liza­tion­al sym­bol or iden­ti­ty mark­er whose pub­lic sub­stance is held in abeyance.

    That’s quite a shift for the Catholic right in a sin­gle gen­er­a­tion. Not long ago, the group insist­ed on a near-per­fect iden­ti­fi­ca­tion between the Church and Amer­i­can lib­er­al­ism as expressed by the Repub­li­can Par­ty. Now it insists on the dis­con­ti­nu­ity between Chris­tian­i­ty and America’s rul­ing ide­ol­o­gy, which requires noth­ing short of polit­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion to over­come.

    ...

    ———–

    “The Post-lib­er­al Catholics Find Their Man” By Damon Link­er; The Atlantic; 08/08/2024

    ” This group of Catholic intellectuals—which includes Patrick Deneen of Notre Dame, Adri­an Ver­meule of Har­vard Law School, and Sohrab Ahmari, a founder and an edi­tor of the eclec­ti­cal­ly pop­ulist mag­a­zine Com­pact—is known for its sweep­ing attack on clas­si­cal lib­er­al­ism. It claims that a long list of con­tem­po­rary prob­lems (ris­ing rates of eco­nom­ic inequal­i­ty, drug addic­tion, sui­cide, home­less­ness, child­less­ness) can be traced back to moral-philo­soph­i­cal errors made cen­turies ago by the Amer­i­can Founders and their ide­o­log­i­cal prog­en­i­tors. In place of our polity’s com­mit­ment to indi­vid­ual rights, auton­o­my, and plu­ral­ism, the post-lib­er­als aim to cre­ate a soci­ety uni­fied around the com­mon good, which is itself fixed on a the­o­log­i­cal vision of the High­est Good.

    A ‘postlib­er­al’ purge pred­i­cat­ed on impos­ing their idea of the ‘com­mon good’, whether the major­i­ty likes it or not. It’s a vision that isn’t just rad­i­cal but also rel­a­tive­ly new. And not real­ly based on a tra­di­tion of Catholic phi­los­o­phy. Instead, it appears to be a branch of Catholi­cism that has, at its root, a polit­i­cal rejec­tion of mod­ern lib­er­al­ism:

    ...
    Hence the need for what Deneen calls “regime change” in the title of his most recent book. In con­crete terms, this means replac­ing the peo­ple and insti­tu­tions that dom­i­nate America’s cul­tur­al, eco­nom­ic, and polit­i­cal life with a new elite will­ing to eschew lib­er­al norms in ser­vice of sup­pos­ed­ly high­er ideals. In this respect, Vance is the man the post-lib­er­als have been wait­ing for—a self-iden­ti­fied mem­ber of the “post-lib­er­al right,” and now a con­tender for one of the country’s high­est polit­i­cal offices.

    ...

    These ambi­tions mark a sig­nif­i­cant change in the Catholic right com­pared with its most recent moment of max­i­mal influ­ence, dur­ing the admin­is­tra­tion of George W. Bush. Then, writ­ers such as Richard John Neuhaus, Michael Novak, and Robert P. George argued that, when prop­er­ly under­stood, Catholic Chris­t­ian rev­e­la­tion, Amer­i­can his­to­ry and ideals, and the Repub­li­can Party’s plat­form were per­fect­ly har­mo­nious. These thinkers made their case by con­tend­ing that Amer­i­can lib­er­al­ism was root­ed in the­o­log­i­cal sources, that Catholic ortho­doxy was essen­tial­ly lib­er­al and that the GOP was tai­lor-made to unite the two.

    Things feel very dif­fer­ent on the Catholic right today. Set­backs at home and at the Vatican—including the elec­tion (and reelec­tion) of Barack Oba­ma, Pope Francis’s efforts to push back against the con­ser­v­a­tive lega­cies of his pre­de­ces­sors, and the Oberge­fell deci­sion by the U.S. Supreme Court declar­ing same-sex mar­riage a con­sti­tu­tion­al right—discredited the idea that lib­er­al­ism and tra­di­tion­al Catholi­cism could go togeth­er. One rad­i­cal response to these devel­op­ments can be found on the fur­thest extreme of the Catholic right, among a group called the inte­gral­ists. Despite their name, they aim to sub­or­di­nate the state to the Church, not inte­grate them.

    ...

    What might be most strange about this unapolo­get­i­cal­ly rad­i­cal style of pol­i­tics is how ten­u­ous its ties are to the Catholic Church as an insti­tu­tion and even Chris­tian­i­ty as a his­tor­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty of faith. Where­as the Bush-era Catholics reg­u­lar­ly cit­ed the New Tes­ta­ment, Thomas Aquinas, and John Court­ney Mur­ray, today’s post-lib­er­als rarely invoke the Bible or the­olo­gians in their polit­i­cal com­men­tary. They don’t base their pol­i­cy com­mit­ments on the Cat­e­chism of the Catholic Church. They aren’t in the habit of refer­ring to the social teach­ings in papal encycli­cals. (As with any group, there are excep­tions. Ahmari, for exam­ple, has cit­ed Catholic teach­ing in sup­port of polit­i­cal argu­ments in some works.)

    Rather, their the­o­log­i­cal con­vic­tions tend to remain in the back­ground, serv­ing as fuel for some­thing more cen­tral to their pub­lic thought: a pol­i­tics of reac­tionary nega­tion. Their faith con­firms that lib­er­al­ism is the great ene­my that must be fought and defeat­ed so that some­thing more whole­some and spir­i­tu­al­ly invig­o­rat­ing can take its place. But until lib­er­al­ism has been expunged from the world, Chris­tian­i­ty remains main­ly a civ­i­liza­tion­al sym­bol or iden­ti­ty mark­er whose pub­lic sub­stance is held in abeyance.

    That’s quite a shift for the Catholic right in a sin­gle gen­er­a­tion. Not long ago, the group insist­ed on a near-per­fect iden­ti­fi­ca­tion between the Church and Amer­i­can lib­er­al­ism as expressed by the Repub­li­can Par­ty. Now it insists on the dis­con­ti­nu­ity between Chris­tian­i­ty and America’s rul­ing ide­ol­o­gy, which requires noth­ing short of polit­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion to over­come.
    ...

    And then we get more info on the role Thiel played in Vance’s con­ver­sion away from athe­ism to Catholi­cism. As Vance tells it, a talk from Thiel dur­ing Vance’s time at Yale Law School includ­ed a cri­tique by Thiel about per­son­al empti­ness and soci­ety stag­na­tion. As Thiel appar­ent­ly argues, the the­o­log­i­cal pre­cepts of Chris­t­ian civ­i­liza­tion are what inspired great sci­en­tif­ic achieve­ments and that’s been lost under lib­er­al democ­ra­cy. Again, don’t for­get how Thiel appears to argue that Chris­tian­i­ty is inher­ent­ly a tran­shu­man­ist reli­gion and the solu­tion to soci­ety’s woes is mas­sive tech­no­log­i­cal leaps. So when we see Thiel lament­ing the lack of sci­en­tif­ic progress, keep in mind that he’s like lament­ing the lack of tran­shu­man­ist tech­no­log­i­cal leaps. Specif­i­cal­ly, the tran­shu­man­ist tech­no­log­i­cal leaps that might allow oli­garchs like Thiel to live for­ev­er:

    ...
    Vance hasn’t gone that far in his pub­lic state­ments. Yet his account of his con­ver­sion to the Catholic Church, pub­lished in 2020 in the mag­a­zine The Lamp, marks him as very much a man of our post-lib­er­al moment. In his essay, Vance explains the intel­lec­tu­al influ­ences on his spir­i­tu­al evo­lu­tion. Some are con­ven­tion­al, such as St. Augus­tine, the the­olo­gian and bish­op who has been an inspi­ra­tion to Chris­t­ian con­verts down through the cen­turies. But one is decid­ed­ly less ortho­dox: the bil­lion­aire ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist Peter Thiel.

    Before Thiel spent rough­ly $15 mil­lion on Vance’s suc­cess­ful 2022 Sen­ate cam­paign in Ohio, Vance worked as a prin­ci­pal for Mithril Cap­i­tal, one of Thiel’s many firms. Their first encounter, how­ev­er, came back in 2011, when Thiel deliv­ered a talk at Yale Law School, where Vance was then a stu­dent. As Vance recalls in his essay, Thiel, who has described him­self as Chris­t­ian, observed that the mer­i­to­crat­ic striv­ing of smart young peo­ple (like Vance) often results in both per­son­al exis­ten­tial empti­ness and soci­etal stag­na­tion. That’s a vari­a­tion on a cri­tique of lib­er­al democ­ra­cy that Thiel has been devel­op­ing for much of his career. In his idio­syn­crat­ic read­ing of West­ern his­to­ry, the the­o­log­i­cal pre­cepts of Chris­t­ian civ­i­liza­tion are what inspired the great sci­en­tif­ic and tech­no­log­i­cal achieve­ments of the past sev­er­al cen­turies. The ideals of lib­er­al democ­ra­cy, by con­trast, are respon­si­ble for the mean­ing­less­ness and iner­tia that sup­pos­ed­ly plague the present.

    Over the decade fol­low­ing his meet­ing with Thiel, Vance remained broad­ly com­mit­ted to a Bush-era vision of con­ti­nu­ity between Chris­tian­i­ty and the moral out­look and pol­i­cy agen­da of the pre-Trump Repub­li­can Par­ty. That ear­li­er Vance favored pro-busi­ness eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy and saw democ­ra­cy pro­mo­tion as a cru­cial ele­ment of Amer­i­can for­eign pol­i­cy. He also empha­sized the impor­tance of per­son­al char­ac­ter in pub­lic life: Pover­ty could be explained, in part, by moral deprav­i­ty, and hold­ing polit­i­cal office required integri­ty. But around the time that he decid­ed to run for the Ohio Sen­ate seat vacat­ed by the retir­ing Rob Port­man in 2021, Vance under­went a sec­ond con­ver­sion—to the ideas of the post-lib­er­al Catholics and the right-wing pop­ulism asso­ci­at­ed with Don­ald Trump.
    ...

    Final­ly, recall how we saw Sohrab Ahmari decry­ing Tuck­er Carl­son’s deci­sion to invite Dar­ryl Coop­er on for an inter­view. As we can see, Ahmari is a ‘postlib­er­al’ lead­ing intel­lec­tu­al. Sure, it’s very pos­si­ble that Ahmari real­ly is gen­uine­ly appalled by Nazi apol­o­gists like Coop­er. But it’s impor­tant to rec­og­nize that such crit­i­cisms are com­ing from the leader of a move­ment that appears to be the author­i­tar­i­an Catholic ana­log of domin­ion­ism:

    ...
    This group of Catholic intellectuals—which includes Patrick Deneen of Notre Dame, Adri­an Ver­meule of Har­vard Law School, and Sohrab Ahmari, a founder and an edi­tor of the eclec­ti­cal­ly pop­ulist mag­a­zine Com­pact—is known for its sweep­ing attack on clas­si­cal lib­er­al­ism. It claims that a long list of con­tem­po­rary prob­lems (ris­ing rates of eco­nom­ic inequal­i­ty, drug addic­tion, sui­cide, home­less­ness, child­less­ness) can be traced back to moral-philo­soph­i­cal errors made cen­turies ago by the Amer­i­can Founders and their ide­o­log­i­cal prog­en­i­tors. In place of our polity’s com­mit­ment to indi­vid­ual rights, auton­o­my, and plu­ral­ism, the post-lib­er­als aim to cre­ate a soci­ety uni­fied around the com­mon good, which is itself fixed on a the­o­log­i­cal vision of the High­est Good.
    ...

    It’s going to be inter­est­ing to hear what Ahmari has to say fol­low­ing Vance’s upcom­ing Tuck­er Carl­son inter­view. We can be con­fi­dent Vance is pre­sum­ably going to avoid com­pli­ment­ing Hitler. But at the same time, we can also be con­fi­dent that the inter­view with be filled with Vance and Carl­son mutu­al­ly com­mis­er­at­ing over their shared cri­tique of the mod­ern world that will include a num­ber of ‘postlib­er­al’ argu­ments very much in line with not just the Domin­ion­ists lead­ing Sched­ule F/Project 2025 effort but also the kinds of cri­tiques of mod­ern soci­ety we might expect to hear from the likes of Dar­ryl Coop­er and the rest of Vance’s ‘post-Alt-Right’ fel­low trav­el­ers.

    It’s also worth keep­ing in mind in all of this that there real­ly is an array of very valid extreme crit­i­cisms of the mod­ern world that absolute­ly have to be grap­pled with. A rejec­tion of the ‘postliberal’/‘post-Alt-Right’ post-demo­c­ra­t­ic move­ments should­n’t be mis­con­strued as some sort of hap­py embrace of our col­lec­tive state of affairs. Moder­ni­ty real­ly is in a state of per­il. Thanks, in part, to the endur­ing nature of human author­i­tar­i­an impuls­es. In that sense, Peter Thiel’s tran­shu­man­ist ambi­tions should­n’t be dis­count­ed entire­ly. There real­ly would be immense good that could be achieved if human­i­ty could some­how rid itself of the com­pul­sion to dom­i­nate and sub­ju­gate. For­tu­nate­ly, how­ev­er, we don’t actu­al­ly need to change human biol­o­gy to achieve that. We just need to be dili­gent­ly mind­ful and com­mit­ted to resist­ing those impuls­es. Dif­fi­cult, but pos­si­ble, with fail­ure ever loom­ing as a pos­si­bil­i­ty too. Oth­er­wise known as progress. It’s long been one of the under­ly­ing mes­sages of Chris­tian­i­ty and pret­ty much every oth­er major reli­gion once you cut through the chaff, which is why it’s worth keep­ing in mind that a col­lec­tive rejec­tion of the kinds of tox­ic world­views cham­pi­oned by JD Vance real­ly would rep­re­sent the kind of ‘tran­shu­man­ist’ advance­ment Thiel longs form. Long over­due advance­ment con­sis­tent­ly held back by these stub­born post-demo­c­ra­t­ic author­i­tar­i­an impuls­es that con­tin­ue to plague the mod­ern world.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | September 14, 2024, 7:27 pm
  6. “I’m a black Nazi!” Famous last words? We’ll see. But there’s no deny­ing Mark Robin­son’s already trou­bled guber­na­to­r­i­al cam­paign is fac­ing its biggest chal­lenge so far fol­low­ing a dev­as­tat­ing CNN report detail­ing Robin­son’s years-old anony­mous inter­net posts, most­ly made to online pornog­ra­phy forums. But it’s not the fact that these posts were made on pornog­ra­phy forums that has Robin­son’s cam­paign hem­or­rhag­ing staffers. It’s the con­tent of those posts. Con­tent like “I’m a black Nazi!”, all made by a ‘min­isol­dr’ online moniker wide­ly used by Robin­son for years.

    Robin­son has already denied the report, vague­ly insist­ing that he’s the vic­tim of some sort of hack that also includ­ed arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. As we’re going to see, it would be effec­tive­ly impos­si­ble for hack­ers to have some­how cre­at­ed retroac­tive­ly cre­ate this con­tent, much of which are online posts dat­ed between 2010–2012. Because while it’s pos­si­ble for a hack­er to pos­si­bly hack into the data base of an indi­vid­ual forum’s con­tent to inject new con­tent that looks like it was post­ed by ‘min­isol­dr’ back in 2010, the CNN report isn’t based on a sin­gle web­site. It draws on a num­ber of sources, includ­ed the 2017 pub­lic leak of con­tent from the Dis­qus com­ment­ing plat­form where Robin­son’s name is asso­ci­at­ed with both the ‘min­isol­dr’ moniker and also the same email address used for those pornog­ra­phy forum posts years ear­li­er. Not that this has stopped Robin­son for insist­ing on an ‘nefar­i­ous AI’ expla­na­tion.

    There’s also a very real AI angle to this sto­ry. It’s not nec­es­sar­i­ly nefar­i­ous AI, but it’s eth­i­cal­ly com­pli­cat­ed: it turns out a pro­gres­sive activist group real­ly has been using AI to gen­er­ate audio clips that seem to be Mark Robin­son’s voice say­ing absolute­ly out­ra­geous things and put those clips in ads. The thing is, while the absolute­ly out­ra­geous things may not be things Robin­son has said, they are things Robin­son has writ­ten. In oth­er words, this group is sort of putting Robin­son’s writ­ten words into his own mouth.

    As we’re also going to see, while Robin­son’s cam­paign may be los­ing staffers, the North Car­oli­na GOP appears to be stick­ing with him. Along with the Trump cam­paign. And plen­ty of Trump vot­ers. As one Trump sup­port­ing North Car­oli­na vot­er put it to a reporter, “We’ve all done things in our past that we’re sor­ry for. Some of the things are crazy....I mean, if we just went on that, we wouldn’t be here for Trump, would we?”

    So on one lev­el, this is just the lat­est sto­ry about Mark Robin­son mak­ing news for say­ing some­thing out­ra­geous and obscene. But on anoth­er lev­el, this is very much a mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy sto­ry, with jour­nal­ists piec­ing togeth­er online clues left by Robin­son — or by the 2017 pub­lic Dis­qus leak — to effec­tive­ly ‘out’ the guy as a clos­et Nazi. Grant­ed, Robin­son has bare­ly been in that clos­et for years, but he obvi­ous­ly did­n’t want his “I’m a black Nazi!” com­ments dis­cov­ered and out­ed.

    And that brings us to anoth­er sto­ry that should also be seen as part of the con­text of this Robin­son’s out­ing as a Nazi. Because let’s not for­get that Robin­son also hap­pens to be the favorite speak­er in recent years for David Lane’s Amer­i­can Renew­al Project, a fun­da­men­tal­ly domin­ion­ist project with a goal of enforc­ing a theo­crat­ic world­view on the Amer­i­can pub­lic. At the same time, Robin­son was effec­tive­ly hand-picked by Don­ald Trump for the 2024 North Car­oli­na guber­na­to­r­i­al race. And should Trump win back the White House, we can ful­ly expect the domin­ion­ist Project 2025 scheme to not just exe­cute a deep ide­o­log­i­cal purge of the fed­er­al work­force but a purge of the pri­vate sec­tor too. And as we’re going to see, we got a kind of pre­view last year of what a theo­crat­i­cal­ly dri­ven pri­vate purge might look like: a secret Catholic non-prof­it group fig­ured out how to iden­ti­fy priests using gay ‘hookup’ dat­ing apps like Grindr, with a goals that includ­ed out­ing the priests or per­haps qui­et­ly ruin­ing their careers.

    The data was pur­chased from the large­ly unreg­u­lat­ed online data bro­ker­age indus­try. Specif­i­cal­ly, it was data sold by adver­tis­ers who sold ads on gay ‘hook up’ apps like Grindr. That data includ­ed loca­tion data. As we’ve seen, immense amounts of data is avail­able for sale in the large­ly unreg­u­lat­ed data bro­ker­age space, includ­ing loca­tion data. And while the data was anonymized, rei­den­ti­fy­ing the data turns out to be fair­ly triv­ial when the loca­tions are asso­ci­at­ed with, for exam­ple, a priest’s home or office.

    The Den­ver-based non­prof­it behind the effort, Catholic Laity and Cler­gy for Renew­al, has three phil­an­thropist trustees: Mark Bau­man, John Mar­tin and Tim Reichert. As we’re going to see, Reichert’s polit­i­cal ‘activism’ isn’t lim­it­ed to secret­ly out­ing gay priests. Reichert ran in the GOP pri­ma­ry for a Col­orado con­gres­sion­al seat in 2022. And while he did­n’t win that pri­ma­ry, the race end­ed up expos­ing the extreme­ness of Reichert’s world­view. As Reichert sees it, not only is every abor­tion an act of child sac­ri­fice on the altar of Baal, but the great­est threat fac­ing the West is con­tra­cep­tion.

    Sin­gle women using ‘hookup apps’ are also a prob­lem, in Reichert’s view. Did Catholic Laity and Cler­gy for Renew­al make any attempts to iden­ti­fy oth­er peo­ple using the var­i­ous hookup apps they had data on? We have no idea, but that’s part of what makes this sto­ry about the secret out­ing of gay priests using com­mer­cial­ly avail­able inter­net data a sto­ry to watch. And that’s also why we should view the out­ing of Mark Robin­son as ‘min­isol­dr’ as a sim­i­lar ‘signs of the times’ kind of sto­ry to the out­ing of the gay priests. In both cas­es, pub­licly avail­able data was used to legal­ly expose some­one’s secrets. Except, of course, in one case we’re talk­ing about the expo­sure of clos­et­ed gay priests and in anoth­er case we’re talk­ing about a clos­et­ed Nazi run­ning to be gov­er­nor of North Car­oli­na. These are remote­ly the same when it comes to the ethics of expos­ing the tar­get­ed indi­vid­u­als, but they’re both a sign of what’s pos­si­ble with today’s oceans of ‘big data’ read­i­ly avail­able for who­ev­er wants to pay. Because we can be pret­ty con­fi­dent the folks behind Project 2025 are going to be very eager to pay for as much data on as many Amer­i­cans as pos­si­ble that could be used to dif­fer­en­ti­ate between the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Amer­i­cans. And they aren’t going to be hunt­ing for black Nazis:

    CNN

    ‘I’m a black NAZI!’: NC GOP nom­i­nee for gov­er­nor made dozens of dis­turb­ing com­ments on porn forum

    By Andrew Kaczyn­s­ki and Em Steck, CNN
    Pub­lished 3:21 PM EDT, Thu Sep­tem­ber 19, 2024

    (CNN) — Mark Robin­son, the con­tro­ver­sial and social­ly con­ser­v­a­tive Repub­li­can nom­i­nee for gov­er­nor of North Car­oli­na, made a series of inflam­ma­to­ry com­ments on a pornog­ra­phy website’s mes­sage board more than a decade ago, in which he referred to him­self as a “black NAZI!” and expressed sup­port for rein­stat­ing slav­ery, a CNN KFile inves­ti­ga­tion found.

    Despite a recent his­to­ry of anti-trans­gen­der rhetoric, Robin­son said he enjoyed watch­ing trans­gen­der pornog­ra­phy, a review of archived mes­sages found in which he also referred to him­self as a “perv.”

    The com­ments, which Robin­son denies mak­ing, pre­date his entry into pol­i­tics and cur­rent stint as North Carolina’s lieu­tenant gov­er­nor. They were made under a user­name that CNN was able to iden­ti­fy as Robin­son by match­ing a litany of bio­graph­i­cal details and a shared email address between the two.

    Many of Robinson’s com­ments were gra­tu­itous­ly sex­u­al and lewd in nature. They were made between 2008 and 2012 on “Nude Africa,” a porno­graph­ic web­site that includes a mes­sage board. The com­ments were made under the user­name min­isol­dr, a moniker Robin­son used fre­quent­ly online.

    Robin­son list­ed his full name on his pro­file for Nude Africa, as well as an email address he used on numer­ous web­sites across the inter­net for decades.

    ...

    Many of Robinson’s com­ments on Nude Africa stand in con­trast to his pub­lic stances on issues such as abor­tion and trans­gen­der rights.

    Pub­licly, Robin­son has fierce­ly argued that peo­ple should use bath­rooms only that cor­re­spond to the gen­der they were assigned at birth. He’s also said trans­gen­der women should be arrest­ed for using women’s restrooms.

    “If you’re a man on Fri­day night, and all the sud­den Sat­ur­day, you feel like a woman, and you want to go in the women’s bath­room in the mall, you will be arrest­ed, or what­ev­er we got­ta do to you,” Robin­son said at a cam­paign ral­ly in Feb­ru­ary 2024. “We’re going to pro­tect our women.”

    Yet pri­vate­ly under the user­name min­isol­dr on Nude Africa, Robin­son graph­i­cal­ly described his own sex­u­al arousal as an adult from the mem­o­ry of secret­ly “peep­ing” on women in pub­lic gym show­ers as a 14-year-old. Robin­son recount­ed the sto­ry as a mem­o­ry he said he still fan­ta­sized about.

    “I came to a spot that was a dead end but had two big vent cov­ers over it! It just so hap­pened it over­looked the show­ers! I sat there for about an hour and watched as sev­er­al girls came in and show­ered,” Robin­son wrote on Nude Africa.

    ...

    “I went peep­ing again the next morn­ing,” Robin­son wrote. “but after that I went back the lad­der was locked! So those two times where [sic] the only times I got to do it! Ahh­h­hh mem­o­ries!!!!”

    In oth­er com­ments on Nude Africa, Robin­son dis­cussed his affin­i­ty for trans­gen­der pornog­ra­phy.

    “I like watch­ing tran­ny on girl porn! That’s f*cking hot! It takes the man out while leav­ing the man in!” Robin­son wrote. “And yeah I’m a ‘perv’ too!”

    In an inter­view with CNN on Thurs­day, Robin­son repeat­ed­ly denied that he made the com­ments on Nude Africa.

    “This is not us. These are not our words. And this is not any­thing that is char­ac­ter­is­tic of me,” Robin­son said. Pre­sent­ed with the litany of evi­dence con­nect­ing him with the min­isol­dr user name on Nude Africa, Robin­son said, “I’m not going to get into the minu­tia of how some­body man­u­fac­tured this, these sala­cious tabloid lies.”

    CNN first reached out to Robin­son Tues­day morn­ing with evi­dence con­nect­ing him to the com­ments on Nude Africa. It took his cam­paign two days to respond and issue a denial.

    ...

    A his­to­ry of con­tro­ver­sial state­ments

    Cam­paign­ing for lieu­tenant gov­er­nor in 2020, Robin­son advo­cat­ed for a com­plete abor­tion ban with­out excep­tions. He lat­er expressed regret in 2022 for pay­ing for his now-wife to have an abor­tion in the 1980s.

    Now cam­paign­ing for gov­er­nor, he says he sup­ports a so-called “heart­beat” bill that would ban abor­tion when a heart­beat is detect­ed – approx­i­mate­ly six weeks – with excep­tions for rape, incest and health of the moth­er.

    But writ­ing as min­isol­dr on Nude Africa in Decem­ber 2010, Robin­son said he did not care about a celebri­ty hav­ing an abor­tion.

    “I don’t care. I just wan­na see the sex tape!” Robin­son wrote.

    In anoth­er thread, com­menters con­sid­ered whether to believe the sto­ry of a woman who said she was raped by her taxi dri­ver while intox­i­cat­ed. In response, Robin­son wrote, “and the moral of this sto­ry….. Don’t f**k a white b*tch!”

    Robin­son, who would become North Carolina’s first Black gov­er­nor if elect­ed, also repeat­ed­ly maligned civ­il rights leader Mar­tin Luther King Jr., attack­ing him in such intense terms that a user accused him of being a white suprema­cist.

    “Get that f*cking com­mie bas­tard off the Nation­al Mall!,” Robin­son wrote about the ded­i­ca­tion of the memo­r­i­al to King in Wash­ing­ton, DC, by then-Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma.

    “I’m not in the KKK. They don’t let blacks join. If I was in the KKK I would have called him Mar­tin Lucifer Koon!” Robin­son respond­ed.

    CNN’s report­ing on Robinson’s com­ments comes a few weeks after The Assem­bly, a North Car­oli­na dig­i­tal pub­li­ca­tion, report­ed that Robin­son fre­quent­ed local video pornog­ra­phy shops in the 1990s and 2000s. The sto­ry cit­ed six peo­ple who inter­act­ed and saw him fre­quent the stores in Greens­boro, North Car­oli­na. A spokesper­son for Robin­son called the sto­ry false and a “com­plete fic­tion.”

    ...

    Robinson’s his­to­ry of con­tro­ver­sial remarks, includ­ing mock­ing school shoot­ing sur­vivors, his past sup­port for total abor­tion bans with­out excep­tions for rape or incest and dis­parag­ing the civ­il rights move­ment have been a con­sis­tent theme in the race. Recent pub­lic polling shows Robin­son is los­ing to Stein.

    Iden­ti­fy­ing min­isol­dr as Robin­son

    On the Nude Africa web­site in both com­ments and his pro­file, min­isol­dr offered numer­ous details that align pre­cise­ly with Robinson’s per­son­al his­to­ry.

    In his pro­file, min­isol­dr list­ed his full name as “mark robin­son” and dis­closed a pri­vate email address Robin­son used else­where online. In 2012, a user respond­ed to a com­ment by call­ing min­isol­dr “Mark.”

    Min­isol­dr men­tioned in 2008 being mar­ried for 18 years, which cor­re­sponds with Robinson’s mar­riage to Yolan­da Hill in 1990. In 2011, min­isol­dr wrote he had been mar­ried 21 years. Min­isol­dr wrote in a 2011 post that he lived in Greens­boro, North Car­oli­na, the same town where Robin­son lived at the time and cur­rent­ly lives.

    In a post in 2012, min­isol­dr said he served in the Army in the 1980s, dur­ing the same time peri­od as Robin­son. In his sex­u­al­ly graph­ic com­ments detail­ing watch­ing women in the show­ers in 2011, min­isol­dr wrote that his moth­er worked at an His­tor­i­cal­ly Black Col­lege and Uni­ver­si­ty (HBCU). Robinson’s moth­er worked as a cus­to­di­an at North Car­oli­na A&T State Uni­ver­si­ty, an HBCU locat­ed in Greens­boro.

    Both min­isol­dr and Robin­son often post­ed about the same top­ics online, includ­ing reviews for remote-con­trolled heli­copters, their attrac­tion to spe­cif­ic celebri­ties and their favorite “Twi­light Zone” episode.

    The email address asso­ci­at­ed with min­isol­dr on Nude Africa was also used by Robin­son else­where online and social media. On the com­ment­ing plat­form Dis­qus, a user who joined in April 2011 fea­tures Mark Robinson’s pho­to under the user­name min­isol­dr.

    User­names and email address­es from Dis­qus were pub­licly leaked online in 2017, accord­ing to the com­pa­ny. CNN con­firmed that Robinson’s user­name min­isol­dr on Dis­qus shared the same email address as the one used on Nude Africa.

    Robinson’s Dis­qus page is also linked to the Black social net­work­ing site Black Plan­et. The Web Archive shows a user named “min­isol­dr” described them­selves as 40 years old in Feb­ru­ary 2009 – the same age as Robin­son at the time – and liv­ing in Greens­boro, North Car­oli­na – Robinson’s home­town.

    A user­name often used by Robin­son

    Robin­son has fre­quent­ly used the user­name “min­isol­dr” else­where on the inter­net. On X, the plat­form for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter, Robin­son once used the min­isol­dr user­name, accord­ing to a screen­shot he shared on Face­book in 2018 and data in Robinson’s old tweets.

    A YouTube playlist for a user named “min­isol­dr” fea­tures exclu­sive­ly videos of Robin­son. On Pin­ter­est, a user “min­isol­dr” lists his name as “Mark Robin­son.”

    The “min­isol­dr” user­name has also post­ed reviews of prod­ucts and places Robin­son has also pub­licly rec­om­mend­ed. On Ama­zon, a user named “min­isol­dr” reviewed prod­ucts fre­quent­ly shared by Robin­son on Face­book, includ­ing remote-con­trolled heli­copters. And the same email address and user­name used on Nude Africa also left reviews on Google for two local busi­ness­es Robin­son lat­er post­ed on Face­book that he used.

    Robinson’s unique choice of lan­guage fur­ther links him to the “min­isol­dr” alias on the porno­graph­ic forums. Uncom­mon phras­es such as “gag a mag­got,” “dun­der head,” “I don’t give a frogs a**,” and “I don’t give two shakes of it” were used both by min­isol­dr on Nude Africa and by Robin­son on his per­son­al Face­book page.

    Robin­son as min­isol­dr ‘Slav­ery is not bad’

    ...

    Writ­ing in a forum dis­cussing Black Repub­li­cans in Octo­ber 2010, Robin­son stat­ed unpro­voked: “I’m a black NAZI!”

    That same month, Robin­son wrote in anoth­er post that he sup­port­ed the return of slav­ery.

    “Slav­ery is not bad. Some peo­ple need to be slaves. I wish they would bring it (slav­ery) back. I would cer­tain­ly buy a few,” he wrote.

    In March 2012, Robin­son wrote that he pre­ferred the for­mer leader of Nazi Ger­many Adolf Hitler over the lead­er­ship in Wash­ing­ton dur­ing the admin­is­tra­tion of Barack Oba­ma.

    “I’d take Hitler over any of the sh*t that’s in Wash­ing­ton right now!” he wrote.

    Robinson’s com­ments on Nude Africa often fre­quent­ly con­tained deroga­to­ry and racial slurs direct­ed at Black, Jew­ish and Mus­lim peo­ple.

    In a series of sev­en posts in Octo­ber 2011, Robin­son dis­par­aged Mar­tin Luther King in such intense terms, call­ing him a “com­mie bas­tard,” “worse than a mag­got,” a “ho f**king, pho­ny,” and a “huck­ster,” that a user in the thread accused him of being in the KKK. Robin­son respond­ed by direct­ing a slur at King.

    In Octo­ber 2010, Robin­son used the anti­se­mit­ic slur “hebe” when dis­cussing how he liked the show “Good Times” devel­oped by Nor­man Lear, say­ing “the show itself was a bunch of heb [sic] writ­ten lib­er­al bull­shit!”

    While dis­cussing the Tal­iban, he referred to Mus­lims as “lit­tle rag-head­ed bas­tards” and said that “if Mus­lims took over lib­er­als would be the 1st ones to be behead­ed!”

    Robin­son also used homo­pho­bic slurs fre­quent­ly, call­ing oth­er users f*gs.

    In a large­ly pos­i­tive forum dis­cus­sion fea­tur­ing a pho­to of two men kiss­ing after one returned from a mil­i­tary deploy­ment, Robin­son wrote the sole neg­a­tive com­ment.

    “That’s sum ole sick a** f*ggot bullsh*t!” he wrote.

    ———–

    “‘I’m a black NAZI!’: NC GOP nom­i­nee for gov­er­nor made dozens of dis­turb­ing com­ments on porn forum” By Andrew Kaczyn­s­ki and Em Steck; CNN; 09/19/2024

    “The com­ments, which Robin­son denies mak­ing, pre­date his entry into pol­i­tics and cur­rent stint as North Carolina’s lieu­tenant gov­er­nor. They were made under a user­name that CNN was able to iden­ti­fy as Robin­son by match­ing a litany of bio­graph­i­cal details and a shared email address between the two.”

    It’s a con­ver­gence of evi­dence scat­tered across the web that, tak­en togeth­er, make the iden­ti­ty of the “I’m a black NAZI!” author abun­dant­ly clear. Mark Robin­son, the “Some folks need killing!” guy, is a self-declared Nazi. Who could have seen that com­ing:

    ...
    Writ­ing in a forum dis­cussing Black Repub­li­cans in Octo­ber 2010, Robin­son stat­ed unpro­voked: “I’m a black NAZI!”

    That same month, Robin­son wrote in anoth­er post that he sup­port­ed the return of slav­ery.

    “Slav­ery is not bad. Some peo­ple need to be slaves. I wish they would bring it (slav­ery) back. I would cer­tain­ly buy a few,” he wrote.

    In March 2012, Robin­son wrote that he pre­ferred the for­mer leader of Nazi Ger­many Adolf Hitler over the lead­er­ship in Wash­ing­ton dur­ing the admin­is­tra­tion of Barack Oba­ma.

    “I’d take Hitler over any of the sh*t that’s in Wash­ing­ton right now!” he wrote.
    ...

    But it’s not just the scan­dalous nature of Robin­son’s online anony­mous com­ments that make this the kind of sto­ry that like­ly won’t just grace­ful­ly fade away amid the din of dai­ly news. There’s also the fact that the Robin­son cam­paign has arrived at a strat­e­gy of insist­ing it’s all a hoax, despite the fact that it would be effec­tive­ly impos­si­ble to arrange for the array of years-old evi­dence this sto­ry is based on:

    ...
    Many of Robinson’s com­ments were gra­tu­itous­ly sex­u­al and lewd in nature. They were made between 2008 and 2012 on “Nude Africa,” a porno­graph­ic web­site that includes a mes­sage board. The com­ments were made under the user­name min­isol­dr, a moniker Robin­son used fre­quent­ly online.

    Robin­son list­ed his full name on his pro­file for Nude Africa, as well as an email address he used on numer­ous web­sites across the inter­net for decades.

    ...

    In an inter­view with CNN on Thurs­day, Robin­son repeat­ed­ly denied that he made the com­ments on Nude Africa.

    “This is not us. These are not our words. And this is not any­thing that is char­ac­ter­is­tic of me,” Robin­son said. Pre­sent­ed with the litany of evi­dence con­nect­ing him with the min­isol­dr user name on Nude Africa, Robin­son said, “I’m not going to get into the minu­tia of how some­body man­u­fac­tured this, these sala­cious tabloid lies.”

    CNN first reached out to Robin­son Tues­day morn­ing with evi­dence con­nect­ing him to the com­ments on Nude Africa. It took his cam­paign two days to respond and issue a denial.
    ...

    Com­pound­ing the evi­dence against Robin­son is the fact that the evi­dence includes infor­ma­tion released in a 2017 leak of infor­ma­tion from the com­ment­ing plat­form Dis­qus which fur­ther con­firms the use of the “min­isol­dr” user­name with Robin­son’s email address. It’s worth recall that this isn’t the first time a Dis­qus leak was used to out a promi­nent con­ser­v­a­tive as an anony­mous online Nazi. Richard Hana­ni­a’s online per­sonas were also revealed thanks to a 2012 Dis­qus leak. Was the 2017 leaked Dis­qus data­base pre­emp­tive­ly hacked to impli­cate Mark Robin­son in 2024? Because that’s what would have been required for this to have been a real hack­ing oper­a­tion:

    ...
    The email address asso­ci­at­ed with min­isol­dr on Nude Africa was also used by Robin­son else­where online and social media. On the com­ment­ing plat­form Dis­qus, a user who joined in April 2011 fea­tures Mark Robinson’s pho­to under the user­name min­isol­dr.

    User­names and email address­es from Dis­qus were pub­licly leaked online in 2017, accord­ing to the com­pa­ny. CNN con­firmed that Robinson’s user­name min­isol­dr on Dis­qus shared the same email address as the one used on Nude Africa.

    Robinson’s Dis­qus page is also linked to the Black social net­work­ing site Black Plan­et. The Web Archive shows a user named “min­isol­dr” described them­selves as 40 years old in Feb­ru­ary 2009 – the same age as Robin­son at the time – and liv­ing in Greens­boro, North Car­oli­na – Robinson’s home­town.
    ...

    The ‘I was hacked’ defense may be an absurd ali­bi for Robin­son but it’s clear­ly the ali­bi he’s going with. And giv­en the pre­pon­der­ance of the evi­dence against him, ‘I was hacked!’ might be his best defense, if only to give sup­port­ers some­thing to pre­tend to believe. But as the fol­low­ing WaPo piece by Philip Bump notes, Robin­son isn’t just claim­ing to have been hacked. That’s old school. Instead, he’s mak­ing some sort of neb­u­lous ‘AI did it’ defense. Mark Robin­son can’t explain how AI did it, but he’s con­fi­dent AI is some­how the cul­prit:

    The Wash­ing­ton Post

    Mark Robin­son offers up the 2024 ver­sion of the I‑was-hacked defense

    “AI” is the new “hack­ers.”

    Col­umn by Philip Bump
    Sep­tem­ber 20, 2024 at 12:33 p.m. EDT

    One of the least cred­i­ble ways in which North Car­oli­na Lt. Gov. Mark Robin­son ® attempt­ed to dis­miss Thursday’s report about wild­ly offen­sive com­ments he made on the mes­sage board of a porno­graph­ic site years ago was that it didn’t sound like him.

    “This is not my voice,” he told CNN’s Andrew Kaczyn­s­ki, whose team uncov­ered the com­ments. “These are not things that we would ever say or even think.”

    The com­ments, Robin­son refer­ring to him­self as a “black NAZI” fore­most among them, are very much in keep­ing with his voice — at least, his voice before he became his party’s guber­na­to­r­i­al nom­i­nee. Robinson’s anti­se­mit­ic com­ments are well doc­u­ment­ed; oth­er pri­or report­ing offered insights into his pro­cliv­i­ty for adult enter­tain­ment. The CNN report, if any­thing, was sim­ply tying threads togeth­er.

    What’s more, the report was robust. CNN’s team not only uncov­ered the com­ments, pub­lished more than a decade ago on a site called “Nude Africa,” but showed how details from that and oth­er sites tied Robin­son to the account and to the user­name “min­isol­dr,” under which the com­ments were post­ed. It’s a dig­i­tal trail that would be all but impos­si­ble to cre­ate arti­fi­cial­ly.

    Yet that’s exact­ly what Robin­son sug­gest­ed had hap­pened.

    “I’m not going to get into the minu­ti­ae of how some­body man­u­fac­tured these sala­cious tabloid lies,” he said. “But I can tell you this: There’s been over $1 mil­lion spent on me through AI by a billionaire’s son who’s bound and deter­mined to destroy me. The things that peo­ple can do with the inter­net now is incred­i­ble. But what I can tell you is this: Again, these are not my words.”

    Kaczyn­s­ki pushed back: Was he sug­gest­ing some­one had invent­ed these com­ments and pinned them to Robin­son?

    “Look,” Robin­son replied, “I have no idea how this was done.”

    For years, the default response from politi­cians and pub­lic fig­ures dig­i­tal­ly linked to mis­takes or scan­dals was to assert they had been hacked. For­mer New York con­gress­man Antho­ny Wein­er sent a lewd pho­to to a young woman? Hack. A sports ana­lyst posts an incor­rect his­tor­i­cal point? Hacked.

    ...

    Now, as reflect­ed in Robinson’s com­ments, there’s a new boogey­man: arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. We have all seen the way AI can be used to gen­er­ate star­tling­ly real­is­tic images and text; we know major insti­tu­tions are invest­ing bil­lions in ampli­fy­ing the technology’s capa­bil­i­ties. Those capa­bil­i­ties are still more lim­it­ed than the public’s imag­i­na­tion, in the same way that “hack­ing” has been mis­un­der­stood, mean­ing AI is an appeal­ing new vehi­cle for claims that a pri­mar­i­ly dig­i­tal scan­dal some­how stems from devi­ous robot influ­ence.

    Before Robin­son, there was Don­ald Trump, claim­ing that Democ­rats used AI in prepar­ing videos for the House hear­ing on Pres­i­dent Joe Biden’s han­dling of clas­si­fied mate­r­i­al or that a years-old pho­to of him was some­how per­haps gen­er­at­ed through arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. Trump has also claimed that Vice Pres­i­dent Kamala Har­ris used AI to inflate the size of her crowds in pho­tos, some­thing that only some­one strange­ly obsessed with crowd size might enter­tain.

    Seek­ing to rebut the CNN report­ing, Robin­son took the same tack. It is true, as he notes, that he has been the tar­get of AI-gen­er­at­ed imagery from a wealthy oppo­nent. But the use of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence in that case isn’t to man­u­fac­ture false asser­tions from Robin­son. Instead, it’s to present writ­ten state­ments from the Repub­li­can can­di­date as spo­ken ones. This can be eval­u­at­ed on its own eth­i­cal mer­its, but it isn’t real­ly what Robin­son is try­ing to sug­gest hap­pened with the Nude Africa posts.

    Robin­son waves away ques­tions about how this would work for the sim­ple rea­son that it wouldn’t. It is per­haps pos­si­ble that some­one went into the Nude Africa data­base of past com­ments and insert­ed ones attrib­uted to “min­isol­dr.” It’s pos­si­ble that an AI bot could be trained on Robinson’s past com­ments, mean­ing they would use sim­i­lar phras­es as ones he used in pub­lic posts, as CNN doc­u­ment­ed. (Which, by the way, severe­ly under­cuts the idea that the posts were not in his voice.)

    This isn’t as easy as it seems, giv­en that the com­ments were part of ongo­ing inter­ac­tions, includ­ing respons­es from oth­er users. You’d have to cre­ate those, too, and inject them into the data­base — but then you’re mak­ing it rel­a­tive­ly easy to val­i­date those users and their dig­i­tal trails. Oh, what a tan­gled web we weave when first we train an algo­rithm to deceive.

    And all of this to what end? To put slight­ly more out­ra­geous words in Robinson’s mouth? To tie him to a slight­ly more sala­cious com­mu­ni­ty? It seems clear that one rea­son the CNN report was such a sen­sa­tion was that there had been hours of hints that it was com­ing — hints cen­tered around the North Car­oli­na Repub­li­can Party’s obvi­ous inter­est in find­ing a last-minute replace­ment for their already-trail­ing-bad­ly can­di­date. This became a big thing in part, it seems, because some Repub­li­cans want­ed it to be a big thing.

    ...

    ————

    “Mark Robin­son offers up the 2024 ver­sion of the I‑was-hacked defense” by Philip Bump; The Wash­ing­ton Post; 09/20/2024

    “What’s more, the report was robust. CNN’s team not only uncov­ered the com­ments, pub­lished more than a decade ago on a site called “Nude Africa,” but showed how details from that and oth­er sites tied Robin­son to the account and to the user­name “min­isol­dr,” under which the com­ments were post­ed. It’s a dig­i­tal trail that would be all but impos­si­ble to cre­ate arti­fi­cial­ly.

    As Philip Bump describes, you real­ly can’t fea­si­bly arti­fi­cial­ly cre­ate the dig­i­tal trail this sto­ry is based on. The incrim­i­nat­ing data is tri­an­gu­lat­ed across too many dif­fer­ent web­sites. But that impos­si­bil­i­ty isn’t pre­vent­ing the Robin­son cam­paign from insist­ing that ‘AI’ is some­how behind it. A claim con­sis­tent­ly with the ‘AI did it’ theme we’ve been hear­ing com­ing out of the Trump cam­paign already this year. In oth­er words, expect more ‘It was AI’ claims in the face of future sor­did sto­ries like this:

    ...
    Yet that’s exact­ly what Robin­son sug­gest­ed had hap­pened.

    “I’m not going to get into the minu­ti­ae of how some­body man­u­fac­tured these sala­cious tabloid lies,” he said. “But I can tell you this: There’s been over $1 mil­lion spent on me through AI by a billionaire’s son who’s bound and deter­mined to destroy me. The things that peo­ple can do with the inter­net now is incred­i­ble. But what I can tell you is this: Again, these are not my words.”

    Kaczyn­s­ki pushed back: Was he sug­gest­ing some­one had invent­ed these com­ments and pinned them to Robin­son?

    “Look,” Robin­son replied, “I have no idea how this was done.”

    ...

    Now, as reflect­ed in Robinson’s com­ments, there’s a new boogey­man: arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. We have all seen the way AI can be used to gen­er­ate star­tling­ly real­is­tic images and text; we know major insti­tu­tions are invest­ing bil­lions in ampli­fy­ing the technology’s capa­bil­i­ties. Those capa­bil­i­ties are still more lim­it­ed than the public’s imag­i­na­tion, in the same way that “hack­ing” has been mis­un­der­stood, mean­ing AI is an appeal­ing new vehi­cle for claims that a pri­mar­i­ly dig­i­tal scan­dal some­how stems from devi­ous robot influ­ence.

    Before Robin­son, there was Don­ald Trump, claim­ing that Democ­rats used AI in prepar­ing videos for the House hear­ing on Pres­i­dent Joe Biden’s han­dling of clas­si­fied mate­r­i­al or that a years-old pho­to of him was some­how per­haps gen­er­at­ed through arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. Trump has also claimed that Vice Pres­i­dent Kamala Har­ris used AI to inflate the size of her crowds in pho­tos, some­thing that only some­one strange­ly obsessed with crowd size might enter­tain.
    ...

    But then there’s this unfor­tu­nate com­pli­ca­tion: it real­ly is the case that a group actu­al­ly has used AI to cre­ate qua­si-fake Mark Robin­son audio clips. Fake in the sense that these audio clips are all AI gen­er­at­ed voic­es intend­ed to sound like Mark Robin­son, but real in the sense that these are all things Robin­son has writ­ten. So this group effec­tive­ly put Robin­son’s own writ­ten words into his mouth, thanks to AI:

    ...
    Seek­ing to rebut the CNN report­ing, Robin­son took the same tack. It is true, as he notes, that he has been the tar­get of AI-gen­er­at­ed imagery from a wealthy oppo­nent. But the use of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence in that case isn’t to man­u­fac­ture false asser­tions from Robin­son. Instead, it’s to present writ­ten state­ments from the Repub­li­can can­di­date as spo­ken ones. This can be eval­u­at­ed on its own eth­i­cal mer­its, but it isn’t real­ly what Robin­son is try­ing to sug­gest hap­pened with the Nude Africa posts.
    ...

    Will the Robin­son cam­paign suc­cess­ful­ly dis­si­pate this scan­dal through an ‘AI did it!’ deflec­tion? That’s clear­ly the strat­e­gy the cam­paign is deploy­ing. And as the fol­low­ing arti­cle notes, the group behind those AI ads had more ads in mind:

    Indy­Week

    Raleigh Mil­lion­aire Launch­es AI Attack Cam­paign Tar­get­ing Mark Robin­son

    Todd Stiefel’s satire PAC is launch­ing a mobile and dig­i­tal cam­paign fea­tur­ing the Repub­li­can guber­na­to­r­i­al can­di­date speak­ing in an AI-gen­er­at­ed voice.

    by Chase Pel­le­gri­ni de Paur 09/12/2024

    Any­one strolling through Raleigh this week­end may hear the voice of Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor Mark Robin­son blast­ing from an elec­tron­ic bill­board on the side of a truck.

    “MLK was a com­mu­nist,” Robinson’s voice says, speak­ing over an image of him­self point­ing into the face of the revered leader. “And the Civ­il Rights Move­ment was CRAP!” he adds, edit­ed into the bus seat next to Rosa Parks.

    On anoth­er slide, his voice calls the afford­able care act “an effort to enslave every­body” while he pos­es, tin hat perched on his bald head, in front of an Illu­mi­nati con­spir­a­cy board.

    But Robin­son, Repub­li­can can­di­date for gov­er­nor, didn’t sit down to record those lines for the ads. The sounds weren’t even spliced togeth­er from past clips. Instead, his voice was dig­i­tal­ly created—to read quotes and beliefs tak­en from his old Face­book posts, ral­lies, and media appearances—with AI.

    The cam­paign is the lat­est from Amer­i­cans for Prospar­o­dy (not to be con­fused with Koch broth­ers-backed con­ser­v­a­tive Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty), a satire polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee (PAC) found­ed and fund­ed by Raleigh mil­lion­aire and activist Todd Stiefel.

    ...

    Even by the stan­dards of a polit­i­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tions world rav­aged by Don­ald Trump and the Supreme Court’s Cit­i­zens Unit­ed deci­sion, the ads run­ning in Raleigh are pret­ty wild. But the Amer­i­cans for Prospar­o­dy ads that didn’t make it onto the truck are even more jaw-drop­ping.

    In one, Robin­son, in a red one­sie with dev­il horns and wings, con­fess­es that he is a mur­der­er because he paid for his now-wife’s abor­tion. In anoth­er, he holds a sev­ered head and a cross and tells the view­er to “take the head of your ene­my in God’s name!”

    ...

    Dur­ing the spring’s pri­ma­ry, Amer­i­cans for Prospar­o­dy ran sev­er­al sim­i­lar ads focused on Robin­son before he was offi­cial­ly the Repub­li­can nom­i­nee. Those ads fea­tured the more car­toon­ish “Mark Rot­ten­son” char­ac­ter, with a vil­lain­ous mus­tache and an old-timey hat. (Accord­ing to PAC fil­ings, those mobile bill­boards cost $66,000).

    “I want­ed it to be as obvi­ous as pos­si­ble that [Rot­ten­son] was par­o­dy and satire,” says Stiefel. But the PAC quick­ly ran into anoth­er problem—lieutenant gov­er­nor isn’t exact­ly a posi­tion with a lot of star pow­er, so many peo­ple didn’t know who Robin­son was, or wouldn’t have rec­og­nized his like­ness, to begin with.

    That’s why the cur­rent cam­paign fea­tures Robin­son with­out any props. It also means the PAC has to be more care­ful about the script it writes for the AI voice, as the imi­ta­tion is cer­tain­ly good enough to make a passer­by stop and won­der if Robin­son real­ly said that.

    For the most part, Robin­son did. But by using some real quotes along­side some satir­i­cal con­tent, all in Robinson’s AI voice, some of the ads blur the line between real­i­ty and par­o­dy.

    In March, that debat­able dis­tinc­tion had both Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans speak­ing out against the Rot­ten­son cam­paign.

    Demo­c­ra­t­ic guber­na­to­r­i­al can­di­date Josh Stein’s cam­paign told WRAL that “any use of AI to mis­lead vot­ers is unequiv­o­cal­ly wrong and has no place in this cam­paign,” while Robin­son cam­paign spokesper­son Michael Lon­er­gan told INDY that “Stiefel’s low-rent web­site is full of fake clips and out­ra­geous lies. North Car­oli­na vot­ers will see right through it.”

    Lon­er­gan also called the site “a typ­i­cal Demo­c­rat smear cam­paign,” and point­ed out that Stiefel is a major Stein donor. (Stiefel is an unaf­fil­i­at­ed vot­er, but has donat­ed at least $40,000 to Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates and PACs in 2024 alone and at least $18,000 to Stein since 2016.)

    For one 2023 dona­tion, Stiefel list­ed his occu­pa­tion as “provo­ca­teur.”

    Stiefel says the cur­rent bill­board cam­paign cost $23,000, and will run through the month. The press release not­ed that the ads are “part of a larg­er buy to be announced in the com­ing days.”

    ———–

    “Raleigh Mil­lion­aire Launch­es AI Attack Cam­paign Tar­get­ing Mark Robin­son” by Chase Pel­le­gri­ni de Paur; Indy­Week; 09/12/2024

    “But Robin­son, Repub­li­can can­di­date for gov­er­nor, didn’t sit down to record those lines for the ads. The sounds weren’t even spliced togeth­er from past clips. Instead, his voice was dig­i­tal­ly created—to read quotes and beliefs tak­en from his old Face­book posts, ral­lies, and media appearances—with AI.

    Yes, AI was used to put words in Mark Robin­son’s mouth. Except they hap­pen to be Robin­son’s own words. Unless, of course, we assume all of the sala­cious com­ments this group attrib­uted to Robin­son were actu­al­ly the result of some sort of hack­ing oper­a­tion. A sil­ly assump­tion but one the Robin­son cam­paign is obvi­ous­ly hap­py to encour­age:

    ...
    The cam­paign is the lat­est from Amer­i­cans for Prospar­o­dy (not to be con­fused with Koch broth­ers-backed con­ser­v­a­tive Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty), a satire polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee (PAC) found­ed and fund­ed by Raleigh mil­lion­aire and activist Todd Stiefel.

    ...

    Dur­ing the spring’s pri­ma­ry, Amer­i­cans for Prospar­o­dy ran sev­er­al sim­i­lar ads focused on Robin­son before he was offi­cial­ly the Repub­li­can nom­i­nee. Those ads fea­tured the more car­toon­ish “Mark Rot­ten­son” char­ac­ter, with a vil­lain­ous mus­tache and an old-timey hat. (Accord­ing to PAC fil­ings, those mobile bill­boards cost $66,000).

    “I want­ed it to be as obvi­ous as pos­si­ble that [Rot­ten­son] was par­o­dy and satire,” says Stiefel. But the PAC quick­ly ran into anoth­er problem—lieutenant gov­er­nor isn’t exact­ly a posi­tion with a lot of star pow­er, so many peo­ple didn’t know who Robin­son was, or wouldn’t have rec­og­nized his like­ness, to begin with.

    That’s why the cur­rent cam­paign fea­tures Robin­son with­out any props. It also means the PAC has to be more care­ful about the script it writes for the AI voice, as the imi­ta­tion is cer­tain­ly good enough to make a passer­by stop and won­der if Robin­son real­ly said that.

    For the most part, Robin­son did. But by using some real quotes along­side some satir­i­cal con­tent, all in Robinson’s AI voice, some of the ads blur the line between real­i­ty and par­o­dy.
    ...

    Of course, as the fol­low­ing arti­cle notes, it’s not like Mark Robin­son’s sup­port­ers are hav­ing a hard time dis­miss­ing all of these reports as just ‘fake news’. Or even just ‘old news’ that might be true but isn’t real­ly rel­e­vant. It’s the oth­er side of this wild sto­ry: the ques­tion of whether or not the Robin­son cam­paign can defuse this issue isn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly the pri­ma­ry ques­tion fac­ing the cam­paign. Instead, the big ques­tion is whether or not vot­ers will even care. This is the polit­i­cal era of Trump, after all. Do enough North Car­oli­na vot­ers even care of Mark Robin­son is a self-declared Black Nazi? It remains an open ques­tion. Either way, the North Car­oli­na GOP and Trump cam­paign are stick­ing with Robin­son:

    The Wash­ing­ton Post

    Mark Robinson’s porn site scan­dal greet­ed with shrugs by some Trump back­ers

    The rev­e­la­tions sur­round­ing the N.C. guber­na­to­r­i­al can­di­date mark a test of vot­ers’ tol­er­ance for dis­turb­ing alle­ga­tions in the Trump era.

    By Han­nah Knowles
    Updat­ed Sep­tem­ber 22, 2024 at 6:37 p.m. EDT|Published Sep­tem­ber 22, 2024 at 1:30 p.m. EDT

    WILMINGTON, N.C. — The scan­dal engulf­ing Mark Robinson’s cam­paign for North Car­oli­na gov­er­nor seems career-end­ing to many in pol­i­tics. At Don­ald Trump’s ral­ly here this week­end, how­ev­er, plen­ty of peo­ple weren’t both­ered.

    So what if Robin­son, the Repub­li­can nom­i­nee for gov­er­nor, is linked to the account of a porn site user who once argued for the rein­state­ment of slav­ery, detailed an affair with his wife’s sis­ter, called him­self a “black NAZI” and praised Adolf Hitler’s book “Mein Kampf” as “a good read”?

    “I didn’t put much cre­dence in it,” Bob Jud­son, a 70-year-old unaf­fil­i­at­ed vot­er, said of the alle­ga­tions against Robin­son. “We’ve all done things in our past that we’re sor­ry for. Some of the things are crazy.”

    “I mean,” he added, “if we just went on that, we wouldn’t be here for Trump, would we?”

    Robinson’s con­test has become a remark­able test case of vot­ers and GOP lead­ers’ tol­er­ance for dis­turb­ing alle­ga­tions against can­di­dates in the Trump era — when news is deeply dis­trust­ed, scan­dals car­ry less weight and no offense seems to be enough to rat­tle Trump’s base.

    Still, the accu­sa­tions about Robin­son are dam­ag­ing enough that Trump steered clear of the can­di­date at his Wilm­ing­ton, N.C., ral­ly on Sat­ur­day, mak­ing no men­tion of his long­time ally days after CNN report­ed that Robin­son made shock­ing com­ments on a porn forum more than a decade ago. Some Repub­li­can offi­cials, such as Sen. Thom Tillis (R‑N.C.), have said the report­ing rais­es seri­ous con­cerns if true. Robinson’s cam­paign announced Sun­day evening that four senior staffers, includ­ing the cam­paign man­ag­er, had resigned.

    ...

    But Robin­son, the lieu­tenant gov­er­nor of North Car­oli­na, has respond­ed with Trump-like defi­ance, deny­ing any involve­ment and rail­ing against “sala­cious tabloid lies.” The North Car­oli­na GOP fol­lowed suit, issu­ing a state­ment of sup­port and sug­gest­ing the polit­i­cal left is “try­ing to demo­nize [Robin­son] via per­son­al attacks.” Trump has not denounced Robin­son or the com­ments attrib­uted to him, and the gen­er­al strat­e­gy at Trump’s ral­ly seemed to be to ignore the issue.

    On Sat­ur­day, Sen. JD Vance (R‑Ohio), Trump’s run­ning mate, dodged ques­tions from an NBC reporter on whether he believed Robinson’s claim that the offen­sive posts weren’t his.

    “I don’t not believe him, I don’t believe him — I just think you have to let these things play out some­times in the court of pub­lic opin­ion,” Vance respond­ed.

    Dan Bish­op, the Repub­li­can nom­i­nee for North Car­oli­na attor­ney gen­er­al, was the out­lier. He spent much of his ral­ly speech denounc­ing “white suprema­cist Democ­rats” from the 1890s before blam­ing Democ­rats for the Robin­son dra­ma and sug­gest­ing, inac­cu­rate­ly, that hack­ing was required to obtain the porn site posts.

    “This week in North Car­oli­na, Democ­rats sud­den­ly aban­doned their aver­sion to hack and dump, rolled out a metic­u­lous­ly timed and coor­di­nat­ed char­ac­ter assas­si­na­tion, and then moved imme­di­ate­ly to smear by asso­ci­a­tion,” Bish­op said. “Their aim, they say, is to dis­grace not just one but all Repub­li­can can­di­dates, in the name of decen­cy, they say.”

    ...

    Trump ral­ly­go­er Con­nie Wittmer said she was will­ing to look past Robinson’s past con­tro­ver­sies — like his com­ment that women get abor­tions because they couldn’t keep their “skirt down” — but hes­i­tat­ed when a reporter described the porn site posts. “That dis­turbs me,” she said. She would have to think about her vote.

    Yet the range of reac­tions to the past week’s bomb­shells reflect the dif­fi­cul­ty of pierc­ing par­ti­san loy­al­ty — and echo years of dis­mis­sive respons­es to con­tro­ver­sies around Trump, who won in 2016 despite a record­ing in which he bragged that he could grab women by their gen­i­tals.

    Kirk Giles, 50, down­played the alle­ga­tions against Robin­son as nor­mal male behav­ior.

    “There’s not a man alive that’s nev­er looked at porn or did some­thing stu­pid on porn because we’re men,” he said at the Wilm­ing­ton ral­ly. “That’s what men do.” Beside him, his friend Don Bussey said he was still vot­ing for Robin­son, too.

    A reporter sug­gest­ed that most men on porn sites don’t praise “Mein Kampf.”

    “There’s a lot of men that say some stu­pid stuff on those porn sites,” Giles said. “The thing is, you say some stu­pid stuff just to get atten­tion. Peo­ple strive for atten­tion. There’s atten­tion-seek­ers out there.”

    Oth­ers cast doubt on the report­ing about Robin­son, bol­stered by years of Trump and oth­er Repub­li­cans decry­ing “fake news.” Allen Can­non, 70, said he doesn’t trust CNN and not­ed, “It was 10 years ago.” His wife, 69-year-old Rose Can­non, thought of all the alle­ga­tions against Trump they believed were unfair.

    There was E. Jean Carroll’s alle­ga­tion that Trump sex­u­al­ly assault­ed her in a depart­ment store in the 1990s; Trump was found liable for sex­u­al abuse last year in civ­il court and ordered to pay more than $80 mil­lion in dam­ages. “And then all these charges,” Rose Can­non said. “It’s just, I don’t believe all that. I think all that is wrong.”

    “When I hear him talk … he’s a very pos­i­tive, strong man,” she said of Robin­son. “Now that this has hap­pened, I don’t know. We’ll hear through it, and see what we think.”

    ....

    ———–

    “Mark Robinson’s porn site scan­dal greet­ed with shrugs by some Trump back­ers” By Han­nah Knowles; The Wash­ing­ton Post; 09/22/2024

    “Dan Bish­op, the Repub­li­can nom­i­nee for North Car­oli­na attor­ney gen­er­al, was the out­lier. He spent much of his ral­ly speech denounc­ing “white suprema­cist Democ­rats” from the 1890s before blam­ing Democ­rats for the Robin­son dra­ma and sug­gest­ing, inac­cu­rate­ly, that hack­ing was required to obtain the porn site posts.”

    As we can see, the North Car­oli­na GOP is ral­ly­ing around Robin­son, echo­ing the ‘hack­ing’ alle­ga­tions. And then there’s the Trump vot­ers who point out that, if they were to turn on Robin­son for say­ing out­ra­geous things, “we wouldn’t be here for Trump, would we?” It’s a pret­ty suc­cinct way to put it:

    ...
    “I didn’t put much cre­dence in it,” Bob Jud­son, a 70-year-old unaf­fil­i­at­ed vot­er, said of the alle­ga­tions against Robin­son. “We’ve all done things in our past that we’re sor­ry for. Some of the things are crazy.”

    “I mean,” he added, “if we just went on that, we wouldn’t be here for Trump, would we?”

    ...

    But Robin­son, the lieu­tenant gov­er­nor of North Car­oli­na, has respond­ed with Trump-like defi­ance, deny­ing any involve­ment and rail­ing against “sala­cious tabloid lies.” The North Car­oli­na GOP fol­lowed suit, issu­ing a state­ment of sup­port and sug­gest­ing the polit­i­cal left is “try­ing to demo­nize [Robin­son] via per­son­al attacks.” Trump has not denounced Robin­son or the com­ments attrib­uted to him, and the gen­er­al strat­e­gy at Trump’s ral­ly seemed to be to ignore the issue.

    On Sat­ur­day, Sen. JD Vance (R‑Ohio), Trump’s run­ning mate, dodged ques­tions from an NBC reporter on whether he believed Robinson’s claim that the offen­sive posts weren’t his.

    “I don’t not believe him, I don’t believe him — I just think you have to let these things play out some­times in the court of pub­lic opin­ion,” Vance respond­ed.
    ...

    And that’s all why it remains to be seen just how much dam­age this sto­ry is ulti­mate­ly going to do to Mark Robin­son’s can­di­da­cy. The guy was a rav­ing lunatic long before this sto­ry, after all.

    But as we’re going to see in the fol­low­ing pair of arti­cles, part of what makes the lat­est Robin­son scan­dal so fas­ci­nat­ing is that it’s kind of an inver­sion of the kind of ‘big data’ fueled ‘analy­sis’ that we should prob­a­bly expect from the theo­crat­ic far right should Don­ald Trump return to the White House. Project 2025 is a plan for a nation­wide domin­ion­ist purge, after all. And that brings us to the fol­low­ing sto­ry from March of 2023 about a theo­crat­ic ‘big data’ project that could be seen as a kind of ‘proof of con­cept’ ini­tia­tive: a secret group armed with data pur­chased from the large­ly unreg­u­lat­ed online data bro­ker­age indus­try fig­ured out how to iden­ti­fy priests using gay ‘hookup’ dat­ing apps like Grindr. It was­n’t a par­tic­u­lar­ly tricky method. All they did was use com­mer­cial­ly avail­able infor­ma­tion from adver­tis­ers that includ­ed loca­tion data on where the ads were served (for exam­ple, the approx­i­mate loca­tion of the phones receiv­ing ads deliv­ered through Grindr) and com­bined that with pub­licly avail­able address infor­ma­tion. So if a bunch of ads on Grindr are seen in the area of, say, a priest’s home or office, you can be at least some­what con­fi­dent about the iden­ti­ty of the per­son using that Grindr app.

    Then there’s the inter­est the­ol­o­gy found with the phil­an­thropist trustees: Mark Bau­man, John Mar­tin and Tim Reichert. As we’re going to see below, Reichert ran in the GOP pri­ma­ry for a Col­orado con­gres­sion­al seat in 2022. And while he did­n’t win that pri­ma­ry, the race end­ed up expos­ing the extreme­ness of Reichert’s world­view. As Reichert sees it, not only is every abor­tion an act of child sac­ri­fice on the altar of Baal, but the great­est threat fac­ing the West is con­tra­cep­tion.

    Sin­gle women using ‘hookup apps’ are also a prob­lem, in Reichert’s view. Did Catholic Laity and Cler­gy for Renew­al make any attempts to iden­ti­fy oth­er peo­ple using the var­i­ous hookup apps they had data on? We have no idea, but that’s part of what makes this sto­ry about the secret out­ing of gay priests using com­mer­cial­ly avail­able inter­net data a sto­ry to watch. Because if we do end up see­ing Project 2025 put into action, odds are it’s going to be a ‘big data’ project that tar­gets a lot more than just gay priests:

    The Wash­ing­ton Post

    Catholic group spent mil­lions on app data that tracked gay priests

    A group of phil­an­thropists poured mon­ey into a Den­ver non­prof­it that obtained dat­ing and hookup app data and shared it with bish­ops around the coun­try, a Post inves­ti­ga­tion has found

    By Michelle Boorstein and Heather Kel­ly
    March 9, 2023 at 8:52 a.m. EST

    A group of con­ser­v­a­tive Col­orado Catholics has spent mil­lions of dol­lars to buy mobile app track­ing data that iden­ti­fied priests who used gay dat­ing and hookup apps and then shared it with bish­ops around the coun­try.

    The secre­tive effort was the work of a Den­ver non­prof­it called Catholic Laity and Cler­gy for Renew­al, whose trustees are phil­an­thropists Mark Bau­man, John Mar­tin and Tim Reichert, accord­ing to pub­lic records, an audio record­ing of the nonprofit’s pres­i­dent dis­cussing its mis­sion and oth­er doc­u­ments. The use of data is emblem­at­ic of a new sur­veil­lance fron­tier in which pri­vate indi­vid­u­als can poten­tial­ly track oth­er Amer­i­cans’ loca­tions and activ­i­ties using com­mer­cial­ly avail­able infor­ma­tion. No U.S. data pri­va­cy laws pro­hib­it the sale of this data.

    The project’s aim, accord­ing to tax records, is to “empow­er the church to car­ry out its mis­sion” by giv­ing bish­ops “evi­dence-based resources” with which to iden­ti­fy weak­ness­es in how they train priests.

    In response to requests for com­ment and a detailed list of ques­tions, a spokesper­son for Catholic Laity and Cler­gy for Renew­al ini­tial­ly said the group’s pres­i­dent, Jayd Hen­ricks, would agree to an inter­view at a cer­tain time, but Hen­ricks did not call or return sev­er­al mes­sages seek­ing com­ment. After The Wash­ing­ton Post reached out again, Hen­ricks on Wednes­day post­ed a first-per­son piece on the site First Things, say­ing he was proud to be part of the group, whose pur­pose was “to love the Church and to help the Church to be holy, with every tool she could be giv­en,” includ­ing data. He wrote that the group has done oth­er research, in addi­tion to the analy­sis of dat­ing and hookup apps.

    The Post inter­viewed two peo­ple with first­hand knowl­edge of the project, heard an audio record­ing of Hen­ricks dis­cussing it, and reviewed doc­u­ments that were pre­pared for bish­ops as well as pub­lic records. One of the two peo­ple works for the church and spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty because they were not autho­rized to talk about it. The sec­ond per­son is active in the church in Col­orado, knows some of the project’s orga­niz­ers, and spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty because the project is not sup­posed to be pub­lic. Both dis­ap­prove of the project because they see it as spy­ing and coer­cive in ways that are dam­ag­ing to priest-bish­op rela­tions and to the rep­u­ta­tion of the Catholic Church and thus its abil­i­ty to evan­ge­lize. They also see the project as tak­ing a sim­plis­tic approach to moral­i­ty that they call un-Catholic.

    Some of the men who are part of the Renew­al project were also involved in the July 2021 out­ing of a promi­nent priest, Mon­sign­or Jef­frey Bur­rill, accord­ing to the two peo­ple with first­hand knowl­edge of the project and com­ments by the group’s pres­i­dent on the audio record­ing. Bur­rill, who declined to com­ment for this sto­ry, resigned from his post as the top admin­is­tra­tor at the U.S. Con­fer­ence of Catholic Bish­ops (USCCB) after a Catholic news site, the Pil­lar, said it had mobile app data show­ing he was a reg­u­lar on Grindr and had gone to a gay bar and a gay bath­house and spa. The Pil­lar did not say where its data came from.

    ...

    Until now, the peo­ple behind Burrill’s out­ing and the extent of the project were not pub­lic, nor was the fact that the effort con­tin­ued — for at least anoth­er year after that inci­dent, accord­ing to the peo­ple famil­iar with it and doc­u­ments.

    “The pow­er of this sto­ry is that you don’t often see where these prac­tices are linked to a spe­cif­ic per­son or group of peo­ple. Here, you can clear­ly see the link,” said Justin Sher­man, a senior fel­low at Duke University’s pub­lic pol­i­cy school, who focus­es on data pri­va­cy issues. The num­ber of data pri­va­cy laws in the coun­try, he said, “you can count them on one or two hands.”

    Accord­ing to two sep­a­rate reports pre­pared for bish­ops and reviewed by The Post, the group says it obtained data that spans 2018 through 2021 for mul­ti­ple dat­ing and hookup apps includ­ing Grindr, Scruff, Growlr and Jack’d, all used by gay men, as well as OkCu­pid, a major site for peo­ple of var­i­ous sex­u­al­i­ties. But most of the data appears to be from Grindr, and those famil­iar with the project said the orga­niz­ers’ focus was gay priests.

    ...

    One report pre­pared for bish­ops says the group’s sources are data bro­kers who got the infor­ma­tion from ad exchanges, which are sites where ads are bought and sold in real time, like a stock mar­ket. The group cross-ref­er­enced loca­tion data from the apps and oth­er details with loca­tions of church res­i­dences, work­places and sem­i­nar­ies to find cler­gy who were alleged­ly active on the apps, accord­ing to one of the reports and also the audio­tape of the group’s pres­i­dent.

    Sher­man said police depart­ments have bought data about cit­i­zens instead of seek­ing a war­rant, domes­tic abusers have accessed data about their vic­tims, and antiabor­tion activists have used data to tar­get peo­ple who vis­it clin­ics.

    But Ben­nett Cyphers, a spe­cial advis­er to the Elec­tron­ic Fron­tier Foun­da­tion, a dig­i­tal rights orga­ni­za­tion, said the Bur­rill sto­ry was the first time he had heard of a pri­vate group buy­ing com­mer­cial data and using it against a spe­cif­ic indi­vid­ual.

    “It was the first nee­dle-in-a-haystack case, where some­one sifts through mil­lions of loca­tions in apps and looks for one per­son and then tries to use that info to impeach them,” Cyphers said. “It was a char­ac­ter assas­si­na­tion of a pri­vate cit­i­zen for some kind of polit­i­cal rea­son based on infor­ma­tion [the cit­i­zen] didn’t know they were being tracked on.

    ...

    The Rev. Ger­ald Mur­ray, a New York City canon lawyer who offers church com­men­tary on the Catholic chan­nel EWTN and Fox News, said Bur­rill being a priest in a promi­nent role makes any mis­be­hav­ior “a much greater scan­dal” and essen­tial­ly elim­i­nates his right to pri­va­cy.

    “The promise of celiba­cy is a pub­lic act, it’s not a pri­vate com­mit­ment. It’s of pub­lic inter­est when those are vio­lat­ed in a scan­dalous way,” he said.

    The Renew­al group has spent at least $4 mil­lion, accord­ing to the record­ing of Hen­ricks, and approached more than a dozen bish­ops with the infor­ma­tion. It’s not clear what impact the project is hav­ing on cler­gy who the data sug­gests have active­ly used a dat­ing or hookup app on their phone. Except for Bur­rill, it is not known whether the data has led to the res­ig­na­tion or ter­mi­na­tion of any oth­er priests or sem­i­nar­i­ans. One of the two peo­ple famil­iar with the project said peo­ple may be kept from pro­mo­tions or wind up in ear­ly retire­ment but not know why.

    The project’s exis­tence reflects a new­ly empow­ered Amer­i­can Catholic right wing that sees enforc­ing its inter­pre­ta­tion of church teach­ing on sex­u­al­i­ty and gen­der as an exis­ten­tial issue for the church and that no longer trusts bish­ops to do so. It is a flip of tra­di­tion­al church pow­er dynam­ics, with the Col­orado laypeo­ple in a posi­tion to pres­sure bish­ops.

    At the most inti­mate lev­el, it shows a new gen­er­a­tion of sur­veil­lance tech­nol­o­gy mov­ing into dif­fer­ent realms, now includ­ing the reli­gious.

    “Reveal­ing infor­ma­tion that harms a person’s rep­u­ta­tion with­out an objec­tive­ly valid rea­son — even if it’s true — is con­sid­ered a sin,” said a mem­ber of the USCCB who knows Bur­rill and watched the mon­sign­or expe­ri­ence “intense emo­tion­al dis­tress” when his ori­en­ta­tion and use of Grindr were made pub­lic in 2021. This per­son spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty because of their work­ing rela­tion­ship with bish­ops. This per­son had heard about the data project before the Bur­rill news from anoth­er per­son who was approached by the non­prof­it who told the USCCB mem­ber the effort was main­ly focused on expos­ing gay priests.

    A data project

    In 2018, a man “con­cerned with reform­ing the Catholic cler­gy” approached a few Catholic orga­ni­za­tions, includ­ing the Catholic News Agency, accord­ing to a cryp­tic arti­cle CNA pub­lished the day before the Bur­rill sto­ry broke.

    That 2018 pitch, CNA report­ed, “was to pro­vide this infor­ma­tion pri­vate­ly to Church offi­cials in the hopes that they would dis­ci­pline or remove those found to be using these tech­nolo­gies to vio­late their cler­i­cal vows and pos­si­bly bring scan­dal to the Church.” CNA had declined the man’s offer, the sto­ry said, “but there are reports this week that infor­ma­tion tar­get­ing alleged­ly active homo­sex­u­al priests may become pub­lic.”

    Catholic Laity and Cler­gy for Renew­al opened for busi­ness in June 2019, incor­po­ra­tion records show. The non­prof­it was cre­at­ed to “sup­port the com­mit­ment of Roman Catholic cler­gy to liv­ing the teach­ings of the church,” its 2019 tax fil­ing states. Its pur­pose is “to work sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly with bish­ops, priests, reli­gious and sem­i­nar­i­ans to … pro­vide evi­dence-based resources to bish­ops that enable them to effec­tive­ly judge and sup­port qual­i­ty for­ma­tion prac­tices, and [to] iden­ti­fy weak­ness­es in cur­rent for­ma­tion prac­tices and priest­ly life.”

    It’s not clear if or how the Renew­al group is con­nect­ed to the man who approached CNA.

    Bau­man, Mar­tin and Reichert are list­ed as trustees on the nonprofit’s tax fil­ings for the two years they are pub­licly avail­able.

    Mar­tin is a co-founder of one of the largest nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­ers in the west­ern Unit­ed States, McMur­ry Oil Co. He sup­ports many char­i­ta­ble efforts through his and his wife’s Mar­tin Fam­i­ly Foun­da­tion. Those include his co-found­ing of the Amaz­ing Parish, a nation­al con­sult­ing firm to help improve parish­es, and major dona­tions to the caus­es of cam­pus evan­ge­liza­tion, antiabor­tion, anti-pover­ty and reli­gious edu­ca­tion. He con­tributed $555,000 to Catholic Laity and Cler­gy for Renew­al over two years, tax records show.

    Bau­man is a for­mer enter­tain­ment com­pa­ny exec­u­tive who is now pres­i­dent of the board of Christ in the City, a non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion that trains mis­sion­ar­ies and serves the home­less. He is a bene­fac­tor of some of the same Den­ver-area groups as Mar­tin and Reichert, includ­ing Catholic Char­i­ties and Focus cam­pus min­istry. He did not donate mon­ey to the Renew­al group in 2019 or 2020, accord­ing to tax doc­u­ments.

    Reichert is the founder of Eco­nom­ics Part­ners, a con­sult­ing firm that employs dozens of econ­o­mists. He ran unsuc­cess­ful­ly for Con­gress last year in the cen­tral 7th Dis­trict as a Repub­li­can. With his wife, he gives major gifts to Catholic Char­i­ties, Moth­er Teresa’s order Mis­sion­ar­ies of Char­i­ty and col­lege evan­ge­liza­tion. The cou­ple also gave $600,000 to Catholic Laity and Cler­gy for Renew­al over two years, accord­ing to the group’s tax returns.

    In a speech last year giv­en to a Catholic Char­i­ties men’s break­fast, Reichert said Chris­tians need to oppose false ideas like “post-Chris­tian­i­ty” or “plu­ral­ism,” which he calls a “fool’s errand.” Instead, he said, they need to bold­ly pros­e­ly­tize and not wor­ry about being unpop­u­lar or can­celed. “To be free, one has to be will­ing to lose one’s rep­u­ta­tion. That’s the way they’ve set up the game.”

    Accord­ing to two peo­ple with knowl­edge of the project, the phil­an­thropists hired Hen­ricks, the for­mer head of gov­ern­ment rela­tions for the USCCB, the orga­nized body of Catholic lead­ers in the Unit­ed States. Hen­ricks by then had moved from D.C. to Den­ver to work for the Augus­tine Insti­tute, a Catholic grad­u­ate school. Mar­tin and Bau­man have donat­ed to the school. Reichert’s wife, Martha, is list­ed as a staff mem­ber there.

    Tax doc­u­ments for Catholic Laity and Cler­gy for Renew­al show rev­enue of $1.5 mil­lion in 2019 and $1.8 mil­lion in 2020, the most recent year infor­ma­tion is pub­lic. Most of the mon­ey each year was spent on “data and com­put­ing,” staff salaries and attor­neys’ fees.

    The law firm rep­re­sent­ing the group is D.C.-based Schaerr-Jaffe, found­ed by Gene Schaerr, a mem­ber of the Church of Jesus Christ of Lat­ter-day Saints who has called fight­ing same-sex mar­riage “a reli­gious duty.” Schaerr advis­es evan­gel­i­cal col­leges on how to pro­tect their gov­ern­ment fund­ing while uphold­ing prac­tices such as bar­ring LGBTQ stu­dent clubs.

    ...

    Oth­er donors to the non­prof­it include the Catholic Foun­da­tion of North­ern Col­orado, which works in tan­dem with the Arch­dio­cese of Den­ver to sup­port its min­istries and parish­es. The foun­da­tion gave the Renew­al group $400,000 in the two years for which tax forms are avail­able.

    ...

    Hen­ricks knows many bish­ops from his pre­vi­ous job with the bish­ops’ con­fer­ence. Accord­ing to the per­son who works for the church and to the audio record­ing, Henricks’s role has been to take the data sets to var­i­ous bish­ops and use their knowl­edge of priests’ and sem­i­nar­i­ans’ loca­tions to match the known device loca­tions with actu­al peo­ple.

    Hen­ricks wrote in First Things that he shared this infor­ma­tion with “a hand­ful of rec­tors and bish­ops” and did not make the infor­ma­tion avail­able for pub­lic use, so as to be able to “have hon­est and frank con­ver­sa­tions with Church lead­ers, and pro­tect the pri­va­cy of those affect­ed.”

    How­ev­er, one of the peo­ple with knowl­edge of the project said some bish­ops felt pres­sure from the group to take action.

    The Post has seen copies of two dif­fer­ent reports pre­sent­ed to bish­ops. One is from the Renew­al group to a dio­cese and the oth­er is the one that the Pil­lar pre­sent­ed to the USCCB about Bur­rill. The infor­ma­tion in both is most­ly about Grindr, although the reports also say they have used data from oth­er gay dat­ing apps Growlr, Scruff and Jack’d, as well as OkCu­pid.

    These dat­ing and hookup apps let peo­ple cre­ate pro­files, search for oth­er users and send pri­vate mes­sages back and forth. The apps can use a person’s exact loca­tion to show them poten­tial match­es near­by, in real time, for in-per­son mee­tups.

    The data cov­ers peri­ods from 2018 to 2021 and the reports include images of cer­tain address­es with loca­tion pings marked on top, such as parish­es, rec­to­ries and sem­i­nar­ies.

    The doc­u­ments The Post reviewed do not name the ad bro­kers and exchanges where they say the data came from. It isn’t clear whether the Renew­al donors pur­chased data direct­ly from bro­kers, or from some­one else who had, or a com­bi­na­tion of the two.

    ...

    Some want­ed to out the men, like Bur­rill, believed to have the apps on their phones, the per­son said.

    Oth­ers want to use data to work behind the scenes, to mon­i­tor the men, per­haps con­fronting them with­out say­ing how their app use was known, or maybe keep­ing such men from ris­ing in their careers, the per­son said.

    Vul­ner­a­ble tech

    The dig­i­tal adver­tis­ing indus­try has com­piled and sold such detailed data for years, claim­ing that strip­ping away infor­ma­tion like names made it anony­mous. Researchers have long shown, how­ev­er, that it is pos­si­ble to take a large amount of data for a spe­cif­ic loca­tion and re-iden­ti­fy peo­ple using addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion such as known address­es, and the out­ing of Bur­rill showed the prac­tice in action. This buy­ing and sell­ing of data — from demo­graph­ics and polit­i­cal beliefs to health infor­ma­tion — is a multi­bil­lion-dol­lar, almost unreg­u­lat­ed indus­try, said Sher­man of Duke Uni­ver­si­ty.

    Although no names were in the orig­i­nal data from bro­kers, it includ­ed enough iden­ti­fy­ing details and loca­tion pings that the group was able to ana­lyze it for spe­cif­ic loca­tions and nar­row down like­ly peo­ple using the apps. The infor­ma­tion the group told bish­ops they had includ­ed: the type of device, the loca­tion, the device ID and the inter­net ser­vice provider being used, among oth­er char­ac­ter­is­tics, accord­ing to the reports.

    The group also focused on devices that spent mul­ti­ple nights at a rec­to­ry, for exam­ple, or if a hookup app was used for a cer­tain num­ber of days in a row in some oth­er church build­ing, such as a sem­i­nary or an admin­is­tra­tive build­ing. They then tracked oth­er places those devices went accord­ing to loca­tion infor­ma­tion and cross-ref­er­enced address­es with pub­lic infor­ma­tion.

    Hen­ricks said in his First Things piece that they were “metic­u­lous” about com­ply­ing with all applic­a­ble laws, includ­ing data and pri­va­cy ones.

    The app com­pa­nies say they have changed what infor­ma­tion they share.

    Grindr spokesman Patrick Leni­han told The Post that the com­pa­ny stopped shar­ing loca­tion infor­ma­tion in ear­ly 2020. The com­pa­ny says it only shares lim­it­ed infor­ma­tion with ad part­ners now. Grindr has said it asked the Pil­lar sev­er­al times to see the data to ver­i­fy it came from the app but no data was pro­vid­ed.

    Growlr said it pre­vi­ous­ly shared loca­tion data with adver­tis­ers but stopped in May 2022, “in light of poten­tial vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties that could lead to unin­tend­ed mis­use,” said a spokesper­son for its own­er, the Meet Group.

    ...

    Match Group, which owns OkCu­pid, says the app did not share that kind of loca­tion data dur­ing that time and does not cur­rent­ly. “Loca­tion data is obfus­cat­ed with­in a kilo­me­ter for safe­ty rea­sons,” said Match Group spokes­woman Jus­tine Sac­co.

    Per­ry Street Soft­ware, which owns Jack’d and Scruff, said in a state­ment Thurs­day that it removed third-par­ty ad net­works from Scruff in August 2018 and did the same in Feb. 2020 after it acquired Jack’d.

    ...

    Buy­ing and sell­ing pre­cise loca­tion data is still com­mon in the dig­i­tal ad indus­try, despite a few big­ger apps chang­ing their own poli­cies, said Matt Voda, chief exec­u­tive of mar­ket­ing ana­lyt­ics com­pa­ny Opti­Mine.

    Regard­less, the data used by the Den­ver group shows only when and where dat­ing apps have been acti­vat­ed on a phone; they don’t prove con­ver­sa­tions or in-per­son meet­ings took place. That lack of infor­ma­tion was cit­ed by crit­ics of the Pillar’s 2021 report­ing, which said Bur­rill was guilty of “ser­i­al sex­u­al mis­con­duct.” The Pil­lar also described Grindr, which is used by 11 mil­lion peo­ple around the world each month, as a tool of child preda­tors. The site did note that there was no sug­ges­tion or evi­dence Bur­rill was in com­mu­ni­ca­tion with minors.

    In 2021, Pil­lar edi­tor JD Fly­nn defend­ed their report­ing, say­ing a priest shouldn’t be on Grindr for the same rea­son a priest shouldn’t ride alone in a car with a child.

    “It seems total­ly rea­son­able to say the Church must ask: ‘Is there a sim­i­lar tech­no­log­i­cal ana­log where no cler­ic would use such an app because of the way in which an infin­i­tes­i­mal­ly small num­ber of cler­ics have already been demon­strat­ed to use the app inap­pro­pri­ate­ly?’”

    ...

    After the Pillar’s report­ing in 2021 on Bur­rill, it ini­tial­ly seemed as though the then-anony­mous project was about to explode in pub­lic across the coun­try.

    Three days after the Pil­lar wrote about Bur­rill, it pub­lished a sto­ry say­ing its analy­sis of sig­nal data with­in the Arch­dio­cese of Newark showed “pat­terns of loca­tion-based hookup app use” at var­i­ous church res­i­dences. It said it did not de-anonymize the Newark data.

    A few days lat­er, the Pil­lar report­ed that its data analy­sis showed that 32 devices in the Vat­i­can com­plex put off sig­nals in 2018 from hookup apps.

    A Newark spokesper­son told The Post that the Pil­lar pro­vid­ed no actu­al data or evi­dence of mis­con­duct and that the mat­ter was being reviewed. The Vat­i­can com­plex in Rome declined to com­ment to the Pil­lar.

    After that, the sto­ries stopped.

    A Catholic debate

    The top­ic of cler­gy sex­u­al­i­ty has vexed the U.S. Catholic Church for decades. Sev­er­al promi­nent experts on cler­gy sex­u­al­i­ty esti­mate a third of U.S. priests are gay men, who serve a church that teach­es being gay is “dis­or­dered,” in oppo­si­tion to God’s plan. Social con­ser­v­a­tives have not­ed that abuse vic­tims of Catholic cler­gy in recent decades were most­ly male and have tried to paint gay priests as the prob­lem. But pro­fes­sion­al advo­cates for abuse sur­vivors say the prob­lem isn’t gay priests, but instead a silence and sim­pli­fi­ca­tion around the top­ics of celiba­cy and cler­gy sex­u­al­i­ty that in a minor­i­ty of cas­es allows secrets to fes­ter.

    The Catholic Church teach­es that priests make promis­es of “celiba­cy,” which falls under the Sixth Com­mand­ment (in Catholi­cism the Sixth Com­mand­ment calls for per­ma­nent fideli­ty to your spouse) and lit­er­al­ly means they will not mar­ry. Celiba­cy, Catholi­cism teach­es, is also con­sid­ered a spir­i­tu­al dis­ci­pline cre­at­ed for the good of the church. Church law requires priests not to have sex, but church lead­ers have long dis­agreed about what that lit­er­al­ly means, long before the com­plex dig­i­tal era. Experts dis­agree whether actions such as hav­ing a hookup app on your phone, engag­ing in sex­u­al talk on an app or watch­ing peo­ple have sex at a bath­house qual­i­fy under church law as sex.

    “These aren’t new issues; the inter­net is just a new tool. There is a ten­sion between these poli­cies about sins involv­ing the Sixth Com­mand­ment, and the fact that [the Church] has nev­er defined that in law. It always shifts and is up to the opin­ions of moral the­olo­gians,” said Jen­nifer Hasel­berg­er, a canon lawyer in pri­vate prac­tice who worked for sev­er­al dio­ce­ses, includ­ing Min­neapo­lis-St. Paul, where she was head of the canon­i­cal depart­ment.

    Sim­ply hav­ing Grindr on a phone, as a priest, is not against the Sixth Com­mand­ment, she said. Church law “isn’t there at all.”

    Mon­sign­or Fred Eas­t­on, a canon lawyer who was top judge for the tri­bunal of the Arch­dio­cese of Indi­anapo­lis, said there is no auto­mat­ic penal­ty under the code of canon law against a priest for hav­ing a dat­ing app on his phone, but bish­ops have dis­cre­tion.

    In Burrill’s case, after an extend­ed leave, his bish­op, William Calla­han of La Crosse, Wis., in June appoint­ed Bur­rill to serve as the parochial admin­is­tra­tor of a parish there.

    Mur­ray, the New York City priest, not­ed that church law calls for cler­ics to “behave with due pru­dence toward per­sons whose com­pa­ny can endan­ger their oblig­a­tion to observe con­ti­nence or give rise to scan­dal among the faith­ful.”

    The track­ing and out­ing of Bur­rill was “a very good thing,” he said.

    Mur­ray, like many Catholic con­ser­v­a­tives, is con­cerned about increased accep­tance of LGBTQ rela­tion­ships in the church. That said, it’s “gaslight­ing” to call sto­ries focused on Grindr anti-gay, he said. “The issue is unchasti­ty and the scan­dal giv­en to the peo­ple in the pews.”

    ———-

    “Catholic group spent mil­lions on app data that tracked gay priests” By Michelle Boorstein and Heather Kel­ly; The Wash­ing­ton Post; 03/09/2023

    The secre­tive effort was the work of a Den­ver non­prof­it called Catholic Laity and Cler­gy for Renew­al, whose trustees are phil­an­thropists Mark Bau­man, John Mar­tin and Tim Reichert, accord­ing to pub­lic records, an audio record­ing of the nonprofit’s pres­i­dent dis­cussing its mis­sion and oth­er doc­u­ments. The use of data is emblem­at­ic of a new sur­veil­lance fron­tier in which pri­vate indi­vid­u­als can poten­tial­ly track oth­er Amer­i­cans’ loca­tions and activ­i­ties using com­mer­cial­ly avail­able infor­ma­tion. No U.S. data pri­va­cy laws pro­hib­it the sale of this data.”

    An secret group has made it its mis­sion to out gay priests using legal­ly avail­able com­mer­cial inter­net data. A ‘big data’ approach to ‘moral­i­ty polic­ing’ con­duct­ed by the pri­vate­ly fund­ed Catholic Laity and Cler­gy for Renew­al. It’s not the same as the Mark Robin­son sto­ry, but boy are there a lot of par­al­lels. A big dif­fer­ence, of course, being that these gay priests aren’t self-declared Nazis run­ning to be gov­er­nor. And as the pres­i­dent of the group, Jayd Hen­ricks, warns, they haven’t just been look­ing at dat­ing app data. Because of course they aren’t just look­ing at that data. As we’ve seen, there’s a uni­verse of data avail­able for sale in the data bro­ker­age space. In oth­er words, we should­n’t assume this 2023 report is the last time we hear about this group and don’t assume future sto­ries will nec­es­sar­i­ly just rely on dat­ing app info:

    ...
    The project’s aim, accord­ing to tax records, is to “empow­er the church to car­ry out its mis­sion” by giv­ing bish­ops “evi­dence-based resources” with which to iden­ti­fy weak­ness­es in how they train priests.

    In response to requests for com­ment and a detailed list of ques­tions, a spokesper­son for Catholic Laity and Cler­gy for Renew­al ini­tial­ly said the group’s pres­i­dent, Jayd Hen­ricks, would agree to an inter­view at a cer­tain time, but Hen­ricks did not call or return sev­er­al mes­sages seek­ing com­ment. After The Wash­ing­ton Post reached out again, Hen­ricks on Wednes­day post­ed a first-per­son piece on the site First Things, say­ing he was proud to be part of the group, whose pur­pose was “to love the Church and to help the Church to be holy, with every tool she could be giv­en,” includ­ing data. He wrote that the group has done oth­er research, in addi­tion to the analy­sis of dat­ing and hookup apps.

    The Post inter­viewed two peo­ple with first­hand knowl­edge of the project, heard an audio record­ing of Hen­ricks dis­cussing it, and reviewed doc­u­ments that were pre­pared for bish­ops as well as pub­lic records. One of the two peo­ple works for the church and spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty because they were not autho­rized to talk about it. The sec­ond per­son is active in the church in Col­orado, knows some of the project’s orga­niz­ers, and spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty because the project is not sup­posed to be pub­lic. Both dis­ap­prove of the project because they see it as spy­ing and coer­cive in ways that are dam­ag­ing to priest-bish­op rela­tions and to the rep­u­ta­tion of the Catholic Church and thus its abil­i­ty to evan­ge­lize. They also see the project as tak­ing a sim­plis­tic approach to moral­i­ty that they call un-Catholic.
    ...

    And note how the group was eas­i­ly rei­den­ti­fy­ing the anonymized loca­tion-based ad infor­ma­tion it was pur­chas­ing with pub­licly avail­able address data, a sim­ple tech­nique that is obvi­ous­ly avail­able to plen­ty of oth­er actors. This is a good time to recall how one of the strug­gles US spy agen­cies are now deal­ing with is the sheer vol­ume of com­mer­cial­ly avail­able infor­ma­tion. Sift­ing through it all is appar­ent­ly a chal­lenge. How many oth­er sim­ple rei­den­ti­fi­ca­tion tech­niques are there avail­able for use by any­one who gets their hands on this kind of data? And note how it’s not like the vic­tims of these spy­ing tech­niques even know it hap­pened. Maybe they just have their careers qui­et­ly thwart­ed, which may have hap­pened to some of these priests?

    ...
    One report pre­pared for bish­ops says the group’s sources are data bro­kers who got the infor­ma­tion from ad exchanges, which are sites where ads are bought and sold in real time, like a stock mar­ket. The group cross-ref­er­enced loca­tion data from the apps and oth­er details with loca­tions of church res­i­dences, work­places and sem­i­nar­ies to find cler­gy who were alleged­ly active on the apps, accord­ing to one of the reports and also the audio­tape of the group’s pres­i­dent.

    Sher­man said police depart­ments have bought data about cit­i­zens instead of seek­ing a war­rant, domes­tic abusers have accessed data about their vic­tims, and antiabor­tion activists have used data to tar­get peo­ple who vis­it clin­ics.

    But Ben­nett Cyphers, a spe­cial advis­er to the Elec­tron­ic Fron­tier Foun­da­tion, a dig­i­tal rights orga­ni­za­tion, said the Bur­rill sto­ry was the first time he had heard of a pri­vate group buy­ing com­mer­cial data and using it against a spe­cif­ic indi­vid­ual.

    “It was the first nee­dle-in-a-haystack case, where some­one sifts through mil­lions of loca­tions in apps and looks for one per­son and then tries to use that info to impeach them,” Cyphers said. “It was a char­ac­ter assas­si­na­tion of a pri­vate cit­i­zen for some kind of polit­i­cal rea­son based on infor­ma­tion [the cit­i­zen] didn’t know they were being tracked on.

    ...

    These dat­ing and hookup apps let peo­ple cre­ate pro­files, search for oth­er users and send pri­vate mes­sages back and forth. The apps can use a person’s exact loca­tion to show them poten­tial match­es near­by, in real time, for in-per­son mee­tups.

    The data cov­ers peri­ods from 2018 to 2021 and the reports include images of cer­tain address­es with loca­tion pings marked on top, such as parish­es, rec­to­ries and sem­i­nar­ies.

    The doc­u­ments The Post reviewed do not name the ad bro­kers and exchanges where they say the data came from. It isn’t clear whether the Renew­al donors pur­chased data direct­ly from bro­kers, or from some­one else who had, or a com­bi­na­tion of the two.

    ...

    Some want­ed to out the men, like Bur­rill, believed to have the apps on their phones, the per­son said.

    Oth­ers want to use data to work behind the scenes, to mon­i­tor the men, per­haps con­fronting them with­out say­ing how their app use was known, or maybe keep­ing such men from ris­ing in their careers, the per­son said.
    ...

    But also note that, while this entire project is clear­ly pret­ty sleazy, it’s also legal under US law. In part because there’s so few data pri­va­cy laws to begin with:

    ...
    The dig­i­tal adver­tis­ing indus­try has com­piled and sold such detailed data for years, claim­ing that strip­ping away infor­ma­tion like names made it anony­mous. Researchers have long shown, how­ev­er, that it is pos­si­ble to take a large amount of data for a spe­cif­ic loca­tion and re-iden­ti­fy peo­ple using addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion such as known address­es, and the out­ing of Bur­rill showed the prac­tice in action. This buy­ing and sell­ing of data — from demo­graph­ics and polit­i­cal beliefs to health infor­ma­tion — is a multi­bil­lion-dol­lar, almost unreg­u­lat­ed indus­try, said Sher­man of Duke Uni­ver­si­ty.

    Although no names were in the orig­i­nal data from bro­kers, it includ­ed enough iden­ti­fy­ing details and loca­tion pings that the group was able to ana­lyze it for spe­cif­ic loca­tions and nar­row down like­ly peo­ple using the apps. The infor­ma­tion the group told bish­ops they had includ­ed: the type of device, the loca­tion, the device ID and the inter­net ser­vice provider being used, among oth­er char­ac­ter­is­tics, accord­ing to the reports.

    The group also focused on devices that spent mul­ti­ple nights at a rec­to­ry, for exam­ple, or if a hookup app was used for a cer­tain num­ber of days in a row in some oth­er church build­ing, such as a sem­i­nary or an admin­is­tra­tive build­ing. They then tracked oth­er places those devices went accord­ing to loca­tion infor­ma­tion and cross-ref­er­enced address­es with pub­lic infor­ma­tion.

    Hen­ricks said in his First Things piece that they were “metic­u­lous” about com­ply­ing with all applic­a­ble laws, includ­ing data and pri­va­cy ones.
    ...

    Final­ly, here’s an April 2022 piece in the Huff­in­g­ton Post that gives us a bet­ter idea of the kind of the­ol­o­gy moti­vat­ing this effort. Because it turns out one of three phil­an­thropic trustees for the group, Tim Reichert, also made a 2022 con­gres­sion­al run for office in Col­orado’s 7th Dis­trict. Reichert did­n’t end up win­ning the GOP pri­ma­ry. But the race still shined some light on Reichert’s views, which include view­ing all abor­tions as a form of child sac­ri­fice on the altar of Baal. But abor­tions aren’t the biggest threat fac­ing the US, accord­ing to Reichert. That would be con­tra­cep­tion:

    The Huff­in­g­ton Post

    GOP Con­gres­sion­al Can­di­date Believes ‘Abor­tion Is A Human Sac­ri­fice’ To Demons

    Econ­o­mist Tim Reichert has also argued that birth con­trol con­tributes to rape.

    By Alan­na Vagianos
    Apr 1, 2022, 04:58 PM EDT

    Tim Reichert, a busi­ness­man who has described abor­tion as “the sac­ri­fice of a child at the altar of Baal,” is run­ning for Con­gress in Colorado’s 7th Dis­trict, and is so far the only can­di­date who has qual­i­fied for the Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry bal­lot.

    Reichert, an econ­o­mist from Gold­en, Col­orado, threw his name into the com­pet­i­tive pri­ma­ry in Jan­u­ary, com­mit­ting half a mil­lion dol­lars of his own mon­ey to the cam­paign. Rep. Ed Perl­mut­ter (D) cur­rent­ly rep­re­sents the dis­trict, but has said he will not seek re-elec­tion in the fall. Although Democ­rats usu­al­ly have an advan­tage in the region, the dis­trict was redrawn last year, shift­ing west, which experts believe will make it a slight­ly more com­pet­i­tive race.

    Reichert, who has a doc­tor­ate in eco­nom­ics, has spent much of his career doing finan­cial con­sult­ing. He says he is run­ning to help strength­en the mid­dle class or “the lit­tle guy” — a term that appears sev­er­al times on his cam­paign web­site.

    But Reichert also holds extreme views on abor­tion, birth con­trol and oth­er repro­duc­tive health care issues, argu­ing in pub­lished arti­cles and pre­sen­ta­tions that con­tra­cep­tion irrev­o­ca­bly harms women by destroy­ing the insti­tu­tion of mar­riage.

    ...

    “Every abor­tion is a human sac­ri­fice,” Reichert said last year in an accep­tance speech for an award from Catholic Char­i­ties of Den­ver, a min­istry-based char­i­ty that oppos­es abor­tion rights. “Every abor­tion feeds the demon­ic and there­by con­tributes direct­ly to the demise of the church, the demise of Amer­i­ca and the demise of the West.”

    “Every sin­gle abor­tion is not just a trag­ic loss with two vic­tims,” he went on. “It is much more than that — it’s fuel. Fuel for the demon­ic, because it is the sac­ri­fice of a child at the altar of Baal.” (Watch the video in full below.)

    ...

    As an econ­o­mist, Reichert has giv­en pre­sen­ta­tions and writ­ten sev­er­al opin­ion arti­cles argu­ing that con­tra­cep­tion harms women eco­nom­i­cal­ly and psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly because birth con­trol makes it hard­er for women to get mar­ried. In a 2010 opin­ion arti­cle titled “Bit­ter Pill,” Reichert wrote that con­tra­cep­tion is “social­ly dam­ag­ing,” “increas­es the inci­dence of infi­deli­ty” and is “deeply sex­ist in nature.”

    “Arti­fi­cial con­tra­cep­tion sets up what econ­o­mists call a ‘prisoner’s‑dilemma’ game, in which each woman is induced to make deci­sions ratio­nal­ly that ulti­mate­ly make her, and all women, worse off,” he wrote in the arti­cle, which was pub­lished in a Chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tive jour­nal.

    Reichert lat­er turned that piece into an hour­long lec­ture, “Bit­ter Pill: Con­tra­cep­tive Tech­nol­o­gy and the Decline of Women,” which he pre­sent­ed at a con­fer­ence host­ed by the Catholic Med­ical Asso­ci­a­tion in 2017 and 2018. Reichert repeat­ed­ly referred to the work of soci­ol­o­gists — or “intel­lec­tu­al giants,” as he called them — who believed that “the most fun­da­men­tal threat to the West” was con­tra­cep­tion.

    In his pre­sen­ta­tion, Reichert argued that con­tra­cep­tion caus­es gen­der scarci­ty, which leads to rape and vio­lence against women. In response to a ques­tion fol­low­ing his lec­ture, Reichert point­ed to research show­ing that “women who engaged in hookup cul­ture tend to divorce more than women who are chaste.” He added: “I think that’s prob­a­bly true.”

    ...

    Reichert and his wife donat­ed to for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s 2020 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, con­tribut­ing just over $30,000. The cou­ple also donat­ed about $20,000 to the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee. Reichert is expect­ed to fund most of his cam­paign him­self.

    Reichert is up against two oth­er Repub­li­can can­di­dates in the pri­ma­ry, which is set for June 28. If elect­ed to Con­gress, Reichert would like­ly con­tribute to the fed­er­al attacks on abor­tion care. The con­sti­tu­tion­al right to abor­tion, estab­lished in the land­mark Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade, is now in per­il, since a 2018 Mis­sis­sip­pi law is like­ly to gut or over­turn Roe in the com­ing months.

    ———–

    “GOP Con­gres­sion­al Can­di­date Believes ‘Abor­tion Is A Human Sac­ri­fice’ To Demons” By Alan­na Vagianos; The Huff­in­g­ton Post; 04/01/2022

    Reichert, an econ­o­mist from Gold­en, Col­orado, threw his name into the com­pet­i­tive pri­ma­ry in Jan­u­ary, com­mit­ting half a mil­lion dol­lars of his own mon­ey to the cam­paign. Rep. Ed Perl­mut­ter (D) cur­rent­ly rep­re­sents the dis­trict, but has said he will not seek re-elec­tion in the fall. Although Democ­rats usu­al­ly have an advan­tage in the region, the dis­trict was redrawn last year, shift­ing west, which experts believe will make it a slight­ly more com­pet­i­tive race.”

    Tim Reichert was­n’t just secret­ly fund­ing a project to out gay priests. He has much big­ger ambi­tions, includ­ing a con­gres­sion­al seat. And while Reichert ulti­mate­ly lost his pri­ma­ry race, it’s hard to ignore just how much his ide­ol­o­gy has won. In par­tic­u­lar his extreme anti-abor­tion ide­ol­o­gy that views every abor­tion as a child sac­ri­fice at the altar of Baal. After all, this report came just two months before the over­turn­ing of Roe v Wade. States are now free to treat abor­tions like child sac­ri­fices if they choose to do so:

    ...
    “Every abor­tion is a human sac­ri­fice,” Reichert said last year in an accep­tance speech for an award from Catholic Char­i­ties of Den­ver, a min­istry-based char­i­ty that oppos­es abor­tion rights. “Every abor­tion feeds the demon­ic and there­by con­tributes direct­ly to the demise of the church, the demise of Amer­i­ca and the demise of the West.”

    “Every sin­gle abor­tion is not just a trag­ic loss with two vic­tims,” he went on. “It is much more than that — it’s fuel. Fuel for the demon­ic, because it is the sac­ri­fice of a child at the altar of Baal.” (Watch the video in full below.)
    ...

    But Reichert isn’t just an anti-abor­tion extrem­ist. Con­tra­cep­tion is the biggest threat soci­ety faces, in his view. A fun­da­men­tal threat to the West. Along with the ‘hookup cul­ture’ that con­tra­cep­tion enables:

    ...
    As an econ­o­mist, Reichert has giv­en pre­sen­ta­tions and writ­ten sev­er­al opin­ion arti­cles argu­ing that con­tra­cep­tion harms women eco­nom­i­cal­ly and psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly because birth con­trol makes it hard­er for women to get mar­ried. In a 2010 opin­ion arti­cle titled “Bit­ter Pill,” Reichert wrote that con­tra­cep­tion is “social­ly dam­ag­ing,” “increas­es the inci­dence of infi­deli­ty” and is “deeply sex­ist in nature.”

    “Arti­fi­cial con­tra­cep­tion sets up what econ­o­mists call a ‘prisoner’s‑dilemma’ game, in which each woman is induced to make deci­sions ratio­nal­ly that ulti­mate­ly make her, and all women, worse off,” he wrote in the arti­cle, which was pub­lished in a Chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tive jour­nal.

    Reichert lat­er turned that piece into an hour­long lec­ture, “Bit­ter Pill: Con­tra­cep­tive Tech­nol­o­gy and the Decline of Women,” which he pre­sent­ed at a con­fer­ence host­ed by the Catholic Med­ical Asso­ci­a­tion in 2017 and 2018. Reichert repeat­ed­ly referred to the work of soci­ol­o­gists — or “intel­lec­tu­al giants,” as he called them — who believed that “the most fun­da­men­tal threat to the West” was con­tra­cep­tion.

    In his pre­sen­ta­tion, Reichert argued that con­tra­cep­tion caus­es gen­der scarci­ty, which leads to rape and vio­lence against women. In response to a ques­tion fol­low­ing his lec­ture, Reichert point­ed to research show­ing that “women who engaged in hookup cul­ture tend to divorce more than women who are chaste.” He added: “I think that’s prob­a­bly true.”
    ...

    How wide­spread is Reichert’s ‘hookups are an exis­ten­tial threat’ per­spec­tive among his fel­low theocrats? What steps will they take to crack­down on ‘hookups’ giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty and what kind of big data will they use to iden­ti­fy the ‘offend­ers’? These are the kinds of ques­tions that should loom large over US vot­ers in 2024. Because whether they real­ize it or not, they are vot­ing on whether or not theocrats should assume the pow­er to engage in mass moral­i­ty polic­ing of the pub­lic. That’s ulti­mate­ly what Project 2025 is all about. The impo­si­tion of a far right theoc­ra­cy. Sure, busi­ness­es will get their tax breaks and reg­u­la­tions will get gut­ted too. But the theocrats aren’t going to be sat­is­fied with tax cuts. This is a plan for deep social con­trols, with a fix­a­tion on sex­u­al­i­ty and female sex­u­al­i­ty espe­cial­ly. The kind of deep social con­trols Mark Robin­son the can­di­date would be proud to impose in pub­lic, even if ‘min­isol­dr the Nazi’ has a dif­fer­ent pri­vate per­spec­tive.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | September 23, 2024, 9:03 pm
  7. Recent­ly there was some incrim­i­nat­ing infor­ma­tion about Mike Lin­dell, the MyP­il­low guy, who was close to Trump and pro­vid­ed sug­ges­tions as to what to do next after the Insur­rec­tion failed includ­ing who to appoint as a Trump friend­ly CIA Direc­tor. He changed his pil­low price to $14.88 which is the 14 Nazi words “We must secure the exis­tence of our peo­ple and a future for white chil­dren.” Along with 88 where “H” is the 8th let­ter in the alpha­bet so 88 is HH or Heil Hitler. The ques­tion to ask is, Lin­dell a deep cov­er Nazi or Fas­cist Agent?

    Trump ‘shut down talks with Mike Lin­dell with­in min­utes’ after the MyP­il­low CEO was seen at White House bran­dish­ing notes about ‘mar­tial law’ and Insur­rec­tion Act Jan­u­ary 16, 2021 Dai­ly Mail UK

    • Sum­ma­ry of the key points of Arti­cle: My MyP­il­low CEO Mike Lin­dell appeared at White House on Fri­day (Jan­u­ary 15, 2021) car­ry­ing a set of notes. A Wash­ing­ton Post pho­tog­ra­ph­er obtained a close-up of papers car­ried by Lin­dell. The notes:
    • ref­er­enced mar­tial law and Insur­rec­tion Act. The blacked-out part of his notes sup­pos­ed­ly ref­er­enced fir­ing Cipol­lone.
    • One line said ‘mar­tial law if nec­es­sary upon the first hint of any....’
    • The term does not come with­out prece­dent. For­mer Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Advi­sor Mike Fly­nn spoke open­ly about it while par­rot­ing Trump’s claims of a ‘rigged’ elec­tion – and scored his own White House meet­ing after­ward.
    • Anoth­er line, part­ly obscured by Lin­del­l’s hand, most like­ly ref­er­enced the ‘Insur­rec­tion Act’ – the sub­ject of dis­cus­sion before after the elec­tion about use of forces inside the coun­try. It said to ‘Act now as a result of the assault on the ...’
    • Oth­er lines ref­er­ence Fort Mead and a top cyber­se­cu­ri­ty lawyer, which could iden­ti­fy Frank Colon, who accord­ing to his LinkedIn page is an attor­ney with Cyber Oper­a­tions 780th Mil­i­tary Intel­li­gence Brigade.
    • There are also ref­er­ences to ‘Krak­en’ lawyer Sid­ney Pow­ell, who over­saw failed elec­tion chal­lenges in court and who has been at the White House post-elec­tion.
    • Anoth­er line stat­ed ‘Move Kash Patel to CIA Act­ing,’ with an indi­ca­tion to oust CIA Direc­tor Gina Haspel, and put in her place a Trump loy­al­ist recent­ly moved to the Pen­ta­gon. Note that Patel wrote in an op-ed post­ed by Fox News Thurs­day – after the Biden tran­si­tion com­plained for weeks it was not get­ting the brief­in­gs it request­ed. that ‘I ordered the DOD to ful­ly coop­er­ate with Pres­i­dent-elect Joe Biden,’
    • It also had some state­ment ‘For­eign Inter­fer­ence in the elec­tion Trig­ger ... pow­ers, make clear this is a China/Iran ... domes­tic actors. Instruct Frank,’
    • Lin­dell also appears to have devel­oped a rela­tion­ship with Mike Fly­nn, the nation­al secu­ri­ty advi­sor who lied to the FBI, got a par­don, then went to the Oval Office and advo­cat­ed mar­tial law.
    • Lin­dell, 59, was a small-time Min­neso­ta busi­ness­man who became addict­ed to crack cocaine and alco­hol, los­ing his wife with whom he had four chil­dren to divorce because of it, but — accord­ing to his often-told sto­ry — still man­aged to invent his MyP­il­low in 2004 and turn it into a suc­cess. The pil­low itself is a patent­ed foam design and from the begin­ning Lin­dell man­u­fac­tured it in his native state and put its Made in Amer­i­ca cre­den­tials in the pitch
    • So dis­cred­it­ed were Lin­del­l’s fraud claims that News­max had to cut him off live on air but he was unstop­pable: on the day of the MAGA riots he was in D.C., then after they hap­pened he spout­ed claims that the whole event was staged by Antifa.

    This sug­gests he was an agent involved in a con­spir­a­cy out­side of Trump’s plans. He was affil­i­at­ed with Mike Fly­nn whose broth­er Charles was a Gen­er­al in the Army who slow walked a response to the Jan­u­ary 6, 2021 insur­rec­tion. Who might this Chris­t­ian Patri­ot be work­ing for? Anoth­er arti­cle in Newsweek pub­lished on Sep­tem­ber 23, 2024 by Sophie Clark may shed some light on this titled “Mike Lin­del­l’s New MyP­il­low Price Sparks ‘Nazi’ Claims”.
    MyP­il­low post­ed an adver­tise­ment that marked down the pil­lows from its sale price of $29.99 to an even low­er price of $14.88. This spe­cif­ic price of $14.88 raised eye­brows as, to keen observers, it is affil­i­at­ed with white suprema­cists and online neo-Nazi groups. Accord­ing to the Anti-Defama­tion League (ADL), the num­ber 88 is used in white suprema­cist cir­cles as short­hand for Heil Hitler. The let­ter H is the eighth let­ter of the alpha­bet, so two Hs togeth­er are “Heil Hitler”. Addi­tion­al­ly, the num­ber 14 refers to the “14-word slo­gan,” a phrase coined by white suprema­cist David Lane who was the get­away dri­ver of the peo­ple who killed Alan Berg a lib­er­al Jew­ish radio talk show host in 1984.
    One neo-Nazi account by the name of Bal­k­nom­ic repost­ed the ad, say­ing: “14.88? How could you pass up such a great deal?”

    Anoth­er account called Chud Post­ing that fre­quent­ly posts neo-Nazi and Alt-Right memes, repost­ed the ad say­ing: “Pil­lows at an Aryan price. Bil­lions must buy. Total­ly nice dreams.” Inci­den­tal­ly, The phrase “bil­lions must buy” is a play on words of the alt-right meme “bil­lions must die,” which is a main­stay of neo-Nazi forums.

    Lin­dell is also cur­rent­ly involved in a suit led by Domin­ion Vot­ing Sys­tems for alleged­ly libel­ing their com­pa­ny. He denies any wrong­do­ing.

    Lin­dell feigned igno­rance about the issue and tried to ratio­nal­ize his pric­ing scheme to the Rupert Mur­doch Owned New York Post. Mur­doch owns the right wing media out­let Fox News.

    https://mol.im/a/9153263
    By GEOFF EARLE, DEPUTY U.S. POLITICAL EDITOR and KEITH GRIFFITH FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
    PUBLISHED: 17:41 EDT, 15 Jan­u­ary 2021 | UPDATED: 02:02 EDT, 16 Jan­u­ary 2021

    Trump ‘shut down talks with Mike Lin­dell with­in min­utes’ after the MyP­il­low CEO was seen at White House bran­dish­ing notes about ‘mar­tial law’ and Insur­rec­tion Act
    • MyP­il­low CEO Mike Lin­dell appeared unex­pect­ed­ly at White House on Fri­day
    • He was bran­dish­ing sheaf of notes ref­er­enc­ing mar­tial law and Insur­rec­tion Act
    • Lin­dell claims notes were from a lawyer work­ing to prove Trump won elec­tion
    • He said Trump appeared ‘dis­in­ter­est­ed’ and quick­ly sent him away
    • Lin­dell demand­ed to see White House Coun­sel Pat Cipol­lone after­wards
    • The blacked-out part of his notes sup­pos­ed­ly ref­er­enced fir­ing Cipol­lone
    • Mike Fly­nn pre­vi­ous­ly called for Trump to impose mar­tial law and rerun elec­tions
    • It comes as 25,000 Nation­al Guards­men descend on DC for inau­gu­ra­tion
    • Secu­ri­ty fears run high after a mob of Trump loy­al­ist stormed the US Capi­tol

    Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump report­ed­ly cut short his meet­ing with MyP­il­low CEO Mike Lin­dell with­in min­utes, after the entre­pre­neur was spot­ted at the White House bran­dish­ing notes ref­er­enc­ing mar­tial law, the Insur­rec­tion Act and a CIA lead­er­ship shake­up.
    Lin­dell said that Trump appeared ‘dis­in­ter­est­ed’ in his notes, and offi­cials say Trump quick­ly dis­missed him and sent him to the White House Coun­sel’s office, accord­ing to New York Times reporter Mag­gie Haber­man.

    Lin­dell, an infor­mal Trump advi­sor who enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly backed con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries about mas­sive elec­tion fraud, appeared unex­pect­ed­ly at the White House Fri­day after­noon. A Marine was sta­tioned out­side the West Wing, indi­cat­ing Trump was most like­ly there.

    The MyP­il­low CEO claimed to Haber­man that the notes he was car­ry­ing were on behalf of an unnamed attor­ney he’s been work­ing with to ‘prove’ that Trump real­ly won the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion.

    Lin­dell denied that the notes ref­er­enced ‘mar­tial law,’ but an admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial said that they def­i­nite­ly con­tained the phrase, and pho­tos of his notes appear to show it.

    Once Trump dis­missed him, Lin­dell insist­ed on meet­ing White House Coun­sel Pat Cipol­lone, and the meet­ing turned awk­ward in part because the blacked-out part of his notes relat­ed to call­ing for Cipol­lone to be fired, Haber­man report­ed.

    Amid a huge Nation­al Guard pres­ence in D.C. after last week’s MAGA riots in the Capi­tol, close-up of Lin­del­l’s notes revealed some bizarre snip­pets about what may be on his mind.

    Lin­dell, like Trump, spoke to the Jan­u­ary 6 ral­ly crowd out­side the White House before Trump sup­port­ers stormed the U.S. Capi­tol.

    A Wash­ing­ton Post pho­tog­ra­ph­er obtained a close-up of papers car­ried by Lin­dell.

    One omi­nous line said ‘mar­tial law if nec­es­sary upon the first hint of any....’ The term does not come with­out prece­dent. For­mer Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Advi­sor Mike Fly­nn spoke open­ly about it while par­rot­ing Trump’s claims of a ‘rigged’ elec­tion – and scored his own White House meet­ing after­ward.

    Anoth­er line, part­ly obscured by Lin­del­l’s hand, most like­ly ref­er­enced the ‘Insur­rec­tion Act’ – the sub­ject of dis­cus­sion before after the elec­tion about use of forces inside the coun­try. It said to ‘Act now as a result of the assault on the ...‘Oth­er lines hint­ed at rec­om­mend­ed staff moves. One reads ‘Colon NOW as Act­ing Nation­al Secu­ri­ty...’ – sug­gest­ing a staff move atop the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Agency or a new Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Advi­sor.
    The fol­low­ing lines ref­er­ence Fort Mead and a top cyber­se­cu­ri­ty lawyer, which could iden­ti­fy Frank Colon, who accord­ing to his LinkedIn page is an attor­ney with Cyber Oper­a­tions 780th Mil­i­tary Intel­li­gence Brigade.

    Colon said he had nev­er met Lin­dell and was baf­fled by the pro­pos­al to install him in a high-rank­ing posi­tion, accord­ing to New York Mag­a­zine.

    He described him­self as ‘just a gov­ern­ment employ­ee who does work for the Army.’

    There are also ref­er­ences to ‘Krak­en’ lawyer Sid­ney Pow­ell, who over­saw failed elec­tion chal­lenges in court and who has been at the White House post-elec­tion.
    ‘Move Kash Patel to CIA Act­ing,’ it says, in a line which could indi­cate a pro­pos­al to oust CIA Direc­tor Gina Haspel, and put in her place a Trump loy­al­ist recent­ly moved to the Pen­ta­gon.

    ‘I ordered the DOD to ful­ly coop­er­ate with Pres­i­dent-elect Joe Biden,’ Patel wrote in an op-ed post­ed by Fox News Thurs­day – after the Biden tran­si­tion com­plained for weeks it was not get­ting the brief­in­gs it request­ed.
    Oth­er lines are mere snip­pets, but they sug­gest Trump’s obses­sion with a ‘stolen’ elec­tion – although Joe Biden beat him by 7 mil­lion votes, or 306 to 232 in the Elec­toral Col­lege.

    ‘Been with get­ting the evi­dence of ALL the ... as the elec­tion and all infor­ma­tion regard­ing ... among peo­ple he knows who already have secu­ri­ty ... done mas­sive research on these issues,’ the notes say.
    ‘For­eign Inter­fer­ence in the elec­tion Trig­ger ... pow­ers, make clear this is a China/Iran ... domes­tic actors. Instruct Frank,’ it says.

    The meet­ing comes days after Trump took part in a script­ed video where he final­ly said: ‘A new admin­is­tra­tion will be inau­gu­rat­ed on Jan­u­ary 20.’ But he has­n’t said out­right that Joe Biden won, even as Vice Pres­i­dent Mike Pence final­ly called Vice Pres­i­dent-elect Kamala Har­ris and began what appears to be a farewell tour.

    Trump has been hun­kered down in office, with bizarre White House sched­ules say­ing only that: ‘Pres­i­dent Trump will work from ear­ly in the morn­ing until late in the evening. He will make many calls and have many meet­ings.’

    A mes­sage to Lin­dell was not imme­di­ate­ly returned. The White House did not imme­di­ate­ly respond to a request for com­ment about the meet­ing.

    Trump’s obses­sion with over­turn­ing the results are also reflect­ed in charts that could be seen as trade advi­sor Peter Navar­ro walked on White House grounds. It said ‘Vote Irreg­u­lar­i­ties and Ille­gal­i­ties by Cat­e­go­ry and State.’

    Trump him­self is expect­ed to leave D.C. on Jan­u­ary 20th, with no plans for the tra­di­tion­al meet­ing with Pres­i­dent-elect Joe Biden.

    The omi­nous snip­pets in Lin­del­l’s notes about the elec­tion were con­tra­dict­ed by real­i­ty on the ground at the White House Fri­day after­noon. A pro­ces­sion of aides left the build­ing with box­es, even pack­ing away large framed pho­tos that have adorned the build­ing.
    HOW MIKE LINDELL WENT FROM CRACK ADDICT TO CHRISTIAN PILLOW PITCHMAN TO QANON SPOUTING TRUMP ADVISER

    With his preter­nat­u­ral­ly dark hair and mus­tache, ubiq­ui­tous TV ads and tri­umph-over-tragedy per­son­al sto­ry, Mike Lin­dell should be the per­fect pitch­man for his pil­lows.

    But his advo­ca­cy of Don­ald Trump appears to have tak­en him into dark­er and more dan­ger­ous ter­ri­to­ry, car­ry­ing notes about ‘mar­tial law’ to the Oval Office for a meet­ing with Trump on his last Fri­day in the White House.
    Lin­dell, 59, was a small-time Min­neso­ta busi­ness­man who became addict­ed to crack cocaine and alco­hol, los­ing his wife with whom he had four chil­dren to divorce because of it, but — accord­ing to his often-told sto­ry — still man­aged to invent his MyP­il­low in 2004 and turn it into a suc­cess.

    The pil­low itself is a patent­ed foam design and from the begin­ning Lin­dell man­u­fac­tured it in his native state and put its Made in Amer­i­ca cre­den­tials in the pitch.
    In its first years Lin­dell sold it at mall kiosks and state fairs but his own life had a dra­mat­ic change, he says, in 2009, when he became sober, putting it down to the pow­er of prayer.

    Cleaned up, he record­ed a 30-minute live-audi­ence infomer­cial at the cost of $500,000 in 2011 and watched the suc­cess take off — with Lin­dell the focal point as much as the pil­lows.

    With tranch­es of TV ads Lin­dell made a for­tune — not with­out bumps on the way includ­ing set­tling a law­suit for claims the pil­lows helped with snor­ing and divorc­ing his sec­ond wife after less than two months of mar­riage — and made his evan­gel­i­cal faith and then his alle­giance to Trump as much part of his pitch as his prod­ucts.
    They appear to have first met in August 2016 and he jumped on the Trump train, going to the first pres­i­den­tial debate in Octo­ber, and speak­ing at a ral­ly that Novem­ber.

    Since then he has become a reg­u­lar ral­ly per­former, even pitch­ing a run for Min­neso­ta gov­er­nor in 2022 — which he has not men­tioned recent­ly — and chair­ing the state’s Trump cam­paign.

    At the ral­lies he would be intro­duced as ‘the MyP­il­low guy’ to cheers and describe Trump as ‘cho­sen by God,’ tout his own faith and soak up the applause.
    A fair­ly reg­u­lar White House pres­ence, he tout­ed to Trump an unproven COVID ‘cure,’ ole­an­drin, whose man­u­fac­tur­er he had a stake in.

    Ben Car­son, a dis­tin­guished neu­ro­sur­geon turned Trump cab­i­net mem­ber, took it. He suc­cumbed bad­ly to the infec­tion; Car­son has not main­tained a med­ical reg­is­tra­tion for some years.

    Lin­dell devot­ed him­self to Trump in the weeks before the 2020 elec­tion, appear­ing at mul­ti­ple ral­lies and con­vinc­ing the pres­i­dent he would win Min­neso­ta, which he lost hand­i­ly.

    But after the elec­tion defeat Lin­dell became obsessed by Trump’s claims of vot­er fraud and has pushed them at every turn, includ­ing on the Right Side Broad­cast­ing Net­work YouTube chan­nel which he has a finan­cial stake in.

    He lam­bast­ed Fox News for its cov­er­age even though he is thought to be its biggest sin­gle adver­tis­er, and he pushed the out­er fringes of con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries from dis­cred­it­ed ‘Krak­en’ attor­ney Sid­ney Pow­ell.

    He appears to have fund­ed the Right Side Broad­cast­ing Net­work, a YouTube chan­nel which aired ral­lies from the March for Trump bus tour whose speak­ers includ­ed Lin­dell and Lin Wood, the even more fringe attor­ney who sug­gest­ed Mike Pence should be exe­cut­ed.

    Among the cast of ‘reporters’ on RSB­N’s cov­er­age were oth­er Trump ral­ly reg­u­lars includ­ing the ‘wall guy’ who wears a suit which rep­re­sents the Mex­i­can bor­der wall. The suit is designed to look like it is made of bricks, when the wall is in fact steel and rebar. The ads were inevitably for MyP­il­low.

    Lin­dell also appears to have devel­oped a rela­tion­ship with Mike Fly­nn, the nation­al secu­ri­ty advi­sor who lied to the FBI, got a par­don, then went to the Oval Office and advo­cat­ed mar­tial law.

    So dis­cred­it­ed were Lin­del­l’s fraud claims that News­max had to cut him off live on air but he was unstop­pable: on the day of the MAGA riots he was in D.C., then after they hap­pened he spout­ed claims that the whole event was staged by Antifa.

    From a pri­vate jet a few days lat­er he record­ed a mes­sage that ‘Don­ald Trump will be our pres­i­dent for the next four years.’

    On Jan­u­ary 20 his faith in Trump was not reward­ed: his claims got the same F rat­ing from real­i­ty which his com­pa­ny did from the Bet­ter Busi­ness Bureau.
    A view­ing plat­form for the inau­gu­ra­tion already has print­ed sig­nage for Joe Biden and Kamala Har­ris. Biden spoke in Delaware about changes he plans to insti­tute for vac­cine roll­out, fol­low­ing reports that the Trump Admin­is­tra­tion Oper­a­tion Warp Speed name will be one of the first things jet­ti­soned.

    Even low­er lev­el aides in the West Wing have already depart­ed, leav­ing a skele­ton crew – even as the nation faced a relent­less surge of coro­n­avirus infec­tions and deaths.

    Lin­dell post­ed even after the riots with claims about ways to ‘sup­press the evil’ and ‘beat the evil’ with claims that Trump sup­port­ers ‘broke the algo­rithms.’
    He post­ed brief com­ments, which appear to be made aboard a pri­vate jet, where he wrote that ‘Don­ald Trump is going to be your pres­i­dent for the next 4 years.’
    Lin­dell retweet­ed a tweet by Right Side Broad­cast­ing Net­work Jan­u­ary 10 which bashed the idea of impeach­ment as point­less. ‘Seems like a whole lot of trou­ble to go through to impeach some­one who, if tra­di­tion has its way, will be gone from office in 10 days. What is going on here, Nan­cy? Seems a lit­tle des­per­ate. There must be...other fac­tors at play,’ it said.

    https://www.newsweek.com/mike-lindell-baffled-nazi-claims-my-pillow-priing

    Mike Lin­dell Baf­fled by ‘Nazi’ Claims About MyP­il­low Pric­ing — Newsweek

    By Sophie Clark Pub­lished Sep 24, 2024 at 9:19 AM EDT Updat­ed Sep 24, 2024 at 2:09 PM EDT

    Mike Lin­dell has hit back against the claims that his new MyP­il­low price is inad­ver­tent­ly linked to neo-Nazi pro­pa­gan­da.

    Lin­dell spoke to the New York Post fol­low­ing Newsweek’s report on Lin­del­l’s MyP­il­low adver­tise­ment that prices his Stan­dard Clas­sic Pil­low at a num­ber that is affil­i­at­ed with neo-Nazi slo­gans. Lin­dell told The Post: “I have no idea what this is all about.”

    On Sep­tem­ber 20, MyP­il­low post­ed an adver­tise­ment that marked down the pil­lows from its sale price of $29.99 to an even low­er price of $14.88.

    This price came to the atten­tion of both his­to­ri­ans and online neo-Nazis as the num­bers 14 and 88 are dog-whis­tles in white suprema­cist cir­cles.

    The num­ber 88 is used as short­hand for Heil Hitler, as “H” is the eight let­ter of the alpha­bet. The num­ber 14 refers to the “14-word-slo­gan” by David Lane, a mem­ber of white suprema­cist group The Order. Lane, who died in prison serv­ing 190 years for rack­e­teer­ing and vio­la­tion of civ­il rights, said: “We must secure the exis­tence of our peo­ple and a future for white chil­dren.”

    Lin­dell told The Post that the 88 cents price point is a com­mon price used by com­pa­nies such as Wal­mart.
    Mike Lin­dell speak­ing at a Trump ral­ly on July 27, 2024 in St Cloud, Min­neso­ta. He has denied his price point has any­thing to do with white suprema­cist pro­pa­gan­da. Stephen Maturen/Getty images

    He added: “[The price point] had noth­ing to do with what­ev­er you guys are try­ing to make it out to be.” He then insist­ed that attacks on his price point were ret­ri­bu­tion for his elec­tion claims.

    “This whole thing is anoth­er attack on Mike Lin­dell and MyP­il­low because I want to go to paper bal­lots, hand-count­ed in our coun­try.”

    Mike Lin­dell has been con­tact­ed by Newsweek via email for com­ment.

    Lin­dell has fre­quent­ly denied the results of the 2020 elec­tion to the point that he lost $5 mil­lion after say­ing he would pay that sum to any­one who could dis­prove his claims that the elec­tion was “rigged” in favor of Joe Biden.

    Com­put­er foren­sics expert Robert Zied­man suc­cess­ful­ly proved that Lin­del­l’s account of the elec­tion being “rigged” was incor­rect and Lin­dell was forced to hand over the mon­ey in 2024.

    Lin­dell is also cur­rent­ly involved in a suit led by Domin­ion Vot­ing Sys­tems for alleged­ly libel­ing their com­pa­ny. He denies any wrong­do­ing.

    The num­bers 1488 tat­tooed on the hand of a far right pro­test­er at the U.S. Supreme Court, Wash­ing­ton, D.C., April 1, 2023. The exact same num­bers fea­ture in a MyP­il­low advert. Andrew Caballero-Reynold­s/Get­ty images

    When the MyP­il­low price was list­ed, his­to­ry pro­fes­sor Seth Cot­lar at Willamette Uni­ver­si­ty in Ore­gon wrote on his Bluesky account: “I doubt Lin­dell is behind this or would even get the ref­er­ence, but that does­n’t real­ly mat­ter.”

    Despite Lin­dell insist­ing that he knew noth­ing about the price point’s links to white suprema­cy, the ad has been liked and repost­ed by a num­ber of neo- Nazi accounts online, mean­ing that even if it was a com­plete acci­dent it has been picked up by white suprema­cist cir­cles.
    One neo-Nazi account by the name of Bal­k­nom­ic repost­ed the ad, say­ing: “14.88? How could you pass up such a great deal?”

    Anoth­er account called Chud Post­ing that fre­quent­ly posts neo-Nazi and Alt-Right memes, repost­ed the ad say­ing: “Pil­lows at an Aryan price. Bil­lions must buy. Total­ly nice dreams.”

    The phrase “bil­lions must buy” is a play on words of the alt-right meme “bil­lions must die,” which is a main­stay of neo-Nazi forums.

    The sale adver­tise­ment is still list­ed on MyP­il­low’s social media accounts. It has been post­ed twice on their X and Face­book accounts.

    The sec­ond ad on Face­book appeared 20 hours ago, the sec­ond ad on X appeared at 9:27 a.m. EDT on Sep­tem­ber 23, 20 min­utes after Newsweek pub­lished the ini­tial arti­cle detail­ing the price affil­i­a­tion with white suprema­cist groups.

    Posted by Socrates | September 25, 2024, 8:02 pm
  8. @Socrates: That’s def­i­nite­ly one of those ‘signs of the times’ kinds of sto­ries. Our trolling times. And as you point out, Lin­del­l’s close ties to Jan­u­ary 6 and key orga­niz­ers like Michael Fly­nn make clear that he isn’t just a sim­ple Trump-lov­ing lunatic. The guy has turned him­self into a polit­i­cal oper­a­tive with sub­stan­tial finan­cial resources to throw around. He has both a pub­lic pres­ence and, now, expe­ri­ence as a back­room schemer. In one sense, Lin­dell has come a long way from his time as a crack head. But at the same time, it’s like he nev­er changed and soci­ety just got cracked out enough to catch up with him. And here we are, with $14.88 get­ting trot­ted out by far right busi­ness­es as if it was noth­ing at all. Overt Nazi trolling as a form of polit­i­cal aggres­sion is just nor­mal these days.

    And that brings us to anoth­er recent sto­ry that touch­es on many of the same themes: it turns out an open Nazi who was jailed over his Jan­u­ary 6 actions has been cel­e­brat­ed repeat­ed­ly at Trump’s Bed­min­ster coun­try club over the past cou­ple of years. The Nazi, Tim­o­thy Hale-Cusanel­li, is a for­mer mem­ber of the US Navy who report­ed­ly told his cowork­ers at a naval weapons sta­tion that “Hitler should have fin­ished the job” and “babies born with any defor­mi­ties or dis­abil­i­ties should be shot in the fore­head.” He was wear­ing a Hitler mus­tache dur­ing Jan­u­ary 6, and even­tu­al­ly sen­tenced to four years in prison, although he was released back in Decem­ber.

    The cel­e­bra­tions of Hale-Cusanel­li were tech­ni­cal­ly real­ly cel­e­bra­tions for the Patri­ot Free­dom Project, a group set up to cham­pi­on those jailed for their Jan­u­ary 6 activ­i­ties. But in effect the group is real­ly most­ly about Hale-Cusanel­li. In fact, the founder of the group, Cyn­thia Hugh­es, calls her­self Hale-Cusanel­li’s “adop­tive aunt”. Hugh­es has also gone on to become a reg­u­lar guest on Steve Ban­non’s “War Room” pod­cast.

    Trump him­self donat­ed $10k to Patri­ot Free­dom Project back in Decem­ber of 2022, the same month Trump attend­ed and spoke at a Decem­ber 1 “open house” event held by the group. Keep in mind the tim­ing of this. It was Novem­ber 22, 2022, when Trump had his infa­mous din­ner with Nick Fuentes and Kanye West at Mar a Lago, lead­ing a peri­od of harsh crit­i­cism of fel­low Repub­li­cans. So Trump was speak­ing at events for the Hitler Mus­tache Naz­i’s free­dom fund and even mak­ing large dona­tions at the same time he was fac­ing major crit­i­cism for din­ner with a Nazi.

    Fol­low­ing his release from prison back in Decem­ber of last year, Hale-Cusanel­li has also been mak­ing appear­ances at these Patri­ot Free­dom Project events, includ­ing events at Bed­min­ster. In fact, it was dur­ing an event at Bed­min­ster back in August that Hale-Cusanel­li was giv­en an award for pro­mot­ing “God, fam­i­ly and coun­try.” And it was none oth­er than Ed Mar­tin giv­ing the award. This is the same Ed Mar­tin who, like Steve Ban­non, hap­pens to be a Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy (CNP) mem­ber. But beyond his CNP ties, recall how Mar­tin has long been a major boost­er of the ‘Stop the Steal’ nar­ra­tive. On Jan­u­ary 5, 2021, Mar­tin gave a speech out­side the Capi­tol that involved Mar­tin start­ing the chant “stop the steal”. Mar­tin went on to implore the audi­ence to be pre­pared to fight to their last breath the next day. “No mat­ter what hap­pens tomor­row, or the next day, or the day after, we still need to be in the fight. There’s no sum­mer sol­diers and spring­time patri­ots here. There’s the die-hard true Amer­i­cans,” Mar­tin said. “We start today, go through tomor­row and every day till we have a last breath and go home to the Lord because we will stop the steal.” On Jan 6, Mar­tin attend­ed Don­ald Trump’s speech in the VIP sec­tion before march­ing off to the Capi­tol. Lat­er in 2021, Mar­tin was sub­poe­naed by the House­’s Jan­u­ary 6 com­mit­tee, which said it had evi­dence that he was “involved in the logis­ti­cal plan­ning” of the “Stop the Steal” ral­ly on Jan. 6. Mar­tin did not com­ply with the sub­poe­na. Mar­tin has since attend­ed a num­ber of events along­side Michael Fly­nn and Ali Alexan­der. This year, Mar­tin served as one of three mem­bers of the RNC’s offi­cial 2024 plat­form com­mit­tee. Yes, a CNP mem­ber of the RNC’s exec­u­tive plat­form com­mit­tee award­ed the Hitler mus­tache Jan 6 guy with a “God, fam­i­ly, and coun­try” award at a Patri­ot Free­dom Project event at Bed­min­ster this year. Oh, and it turns out Trump held an anti-anti­semitism event at Bed­min­ster the very next day. It’s like Trump’s ver­sion of “$14.88? What’s that?” Full spec­trum Nazi trolling.

    But Ed Mar­tin isn’t just a big Hale-Cusanel­li fan and ‘Stop the Steal’ pro­mot­er. He’s also on the Patri­ot Free­dom Project board of trustees. It’s not clear when exact­ly Mar­tin joined the board. But as we’re going to see, hav­ing Mar­tin join the board helped the group with a legal prob­lem that arose from the fact that Patri­ot Free­dom Project claims to be a 501(c)(3) non­prof­it char­i­ty. The prob­lem being that the group’s orig­i­nal board of trustees con­sist­ed of Hugh­es, Hugh­es’ sis­ter-in-law, and Hugh­es’ 24-year-old son. An ‘all in the fam­i­ly’ board of trustees is gen­er­al­ly seen as a red flag for char­i­ties. But that was­n’t the only red flag. Some Jan­u­ary 6 defen­dants and their fam­i­lies accuse the group of be very selec­tive in which defen­dants its cham­pi­ons, and ques­tions about whether or not the Hugh­es fam­i­ly is self-enrich­ing from dona­tions con­tin­ue to linger.

    Beyond that, the group oper­ates in bla­tant vio­la­tion of the non-par­ti­san­ship rules 501(c)(3) char­i­ties are sup­posed to abide by, so much so that mul­ti­ple mem­bers of Con­gress have called on the IRS to inves­ti­gate the group. But the IRS isn’t the only agency with over­sight over the char­i­ty. State reg­u­la­tors also have a role. And yet, despite all those calls for inves­ti­ga­tions into what appears to be a shady ‘char­i­ty’ that exists large­ly to raise funds and cel­e­brate a Nazi, the group still has its 501(c)(3) tax-deductible char­i­ta­ble sta­tus to this day. As of Jan­u­ary of this year, the group had raised over $2 mil­lion since its found­ing. That’s all part of the con­text of Mike Lin­del­l’s ‘$14.88’ pil­low trolling. Every­one knows what’s going on. The absurd denials are just part of the fun. The kind of Nazi ‘fun’ that can also make a lot of mon­ey. For ‘char­i­ty’.

    But Hale-Cusanel­li isn’t the only fig­ure cham­pi­oned by the Patri­ot Free­dom Project. For exam­ple, at a June 2023 Patri­ot Free­dom Project event at Bed­min­ster that includ­ed a speech by Don­ald Trump, a dif­fer­ent Nazi-adja­cent fig­ured was fet­ed: Der­rick Evans, then the pri­ma­ry chal­lengers for West Vir­gini­a’s 1st Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict. Evans also hap­pened to spent a few months in jail after livestream­ing his time storm­ing the Capi­tol on Jan­u­ary 6. And guess who hap­pened to also be at that Bed­min­ster event to give their full throat­ed endorse­ment of Evan­s’s can­di­da­cy: Mike Lin­dell! Yep. It turns out Lin­dell is no stranger to Patri­ot Free­dom Project events.

    So did Evans win his pri­ma­ry race? Nope. He lost, much to the relief of Jew­ish Repub­li­cans. Yes, it turns out Evans isn’t just a pre­vi­ous­ly jailed Jan 6 riot­er. He also hap­pens to be a fan of the idea that “the Jews” stole in 2020 elec­tion and that Israel was the true cul­prit behind Jan­u­ary 6. At least those were the view Evans shared back in Feb­ru­ary dur­ing an appear­ance on the far right “Stew Peters” pod­cast. As Evans put it, ques­tions about the Jew­ish role behind Jan­u­ary 6 were “good ques­tions”.

    That’s all part of the con­text of Lin­del­l’s ‘$14.88’ stunt. Lin­dell lit­er­al­ly endorsed a Nazi Jan 6 riot­er for Con­gress just last year. At Bed­min­ster. With Don­ald Trump stand­ing next to him. At an event for a group most­ly ded­i­cat­ed to the Jan 6 guy who was sport­ing a Hitler mus­tache that day.

    Ok, first, here’s a look at this year’s Patri­ot Free­dom Project Bed­min­ster events. Events that includ­ed Hale-Cusanel­li in per­son since he was already out of prison, allow­ing him to receive an award back in August from Ed Mar­tin, one of the mem­bers of the RNC’s 2024 plat­form com­mit­tee:

    Nation­al Pub­lic Radio

    Trump’s Bed­min­ster club host­ed an alleged Nazi sym­pa­thiz­er who stormed the Capi­tol

    Sep­tem­ber 12, 2024 3:00 PM ET
    Heard on All Things Con­sid­ered
    Tom Dreis­bach

    Twice this past sum­mer, Don­ald Trump’s golf club in Bed­min­ster, N.J. has fea­tured speech­es from a riot­er con­vict­ed of par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capi­tol, who has a well-doc­u­ment­ed his­to­ry of extreme anti­se­mit­ic and racist rants.

    One of those events — a fundrais­er for a con­tro­ver­sial non­prof­it group that sup­ports Capi­tol riot defen­dants — was per­son­al­ly endorsed by Trump him­self in a video mes­sage that was played for the room.

    “All of the peo­ple there, you’re amaz­ing patri­ots,” Trump said in the video. “Have a great time at Bed­min­ster.”

    As part of his crim­i­nal case over Jan. 6, fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors described the riot­er, Tim­o­thy Hale-Cusanel­li, as a “white suprema­cist and Nazi sym­pa­thiz­er,” who told his cowork­ers at a naval weapons sta­tion that “Hitler should have fin­ished the job” and “babies born with any defor­mi­ties or dis­abil­i­ties should be shot in the fore­head.”

    Court fil­ings fea­tured mul­ti­ple pic­tures of Hale-Cusanel­li at work with a “Hitler mus­tache.” A lengthy online video he post­ed in 2020 attacked what he called a “Hasidic Jew­ish inva­sion” of New Jer­sey and com­pared ortho­dox Jews to a “plague of locusts.”

    Accord­ing to report­ing in the Asbury Park Press and Gothamist, Hale-Cusanel­li antag­o­nized a Jew­ish man in Ocean Coun­ty, N.J. online pri­or to Jan. 6. Both news orga­ni­za­tions report­ed that Hale-Cusanel­li pub­lished the man’s address on social media and indi­cat­ed that he would go to his house on the Sab­bath, though no charges were filed.

    In response to NPR’s report­ing, Jew­ish orga­ni­za­tions raised con­cerns about Hale-Cusanelli’s appear­ances at Trump’s golf club.

    “As an orga­ni­za­tion rep­re­sent­ing the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty, we believe that those who pro­mote anti­semitism — or prej­u­dice or racism or big­otry in any form — should not be giv­en a plat­form and encour­aged to share their views,” said Kei­th Kriv­itzky, the man­ag­ing direc­tor of the Jew­ish Fed­er­a­tion of Ocean Coun­ty. “We also believe that it is vital that those in posi­tions of lead­er­ship stand up to hate and extrem­ist views.”

    “We hope that the Trump cam­paign will dis­avow this indi­vid­ual and his anti­se­mit­ic views if in fact he was giv­en a plat­form at a Jan. 6 defen­dants fundrais­ing event,” said a spokesper­son for the Anti-Defama­tion League.

    “For­mer Pres­i­dent Trump has­n’t sim­ply ignored or giv­en a pass to these anti­se­mit­ic extrem­ists,” said Amy Spi­tal­nick, CEO of the Jew­ish Coun­cil for Pub­lic Affairs, “In many ways, he’s embraced them and helped main­stream their ideas in our polit­i­cal rhetoric.”

    ...

    A Trump cam­paign offi­cial told NPR that the for­mer pres­i­dent is “not even aware of this indi­vid­ual.”

    NPR point­ed out that Trump has repeat­ed­ly endorsed the non­prof­it Patri­ot Free­dom Project, a group found­ed in direct response to Hale-Cusanelli’s arrest. The group’s founder, Cyn­thia Hugh­es, calls her­self an “adop­tive aunt” to Hale-Cusanel­li and spoke about his case at a Trump cam­paign ral­ly. In 2023, Trump spoke at anoth­er Patri­ot Free­dom Project event at Bed­min­ster along­side Hugh­es.

    The Trump cam­paign offi­cial clar­i­fied that Trump has “not been made aware of the com­ments that [Hale-Cusanelli’s] made.”

    Regard­ing Hale-Cusanelli’s speech­es at the for­mer president’s Bed­min­ster prop­er­ty, press sec­re­tary Karo­line Leav­itt said, “Pres­i­dent Trump did not attend these events, and, of course, he absolute­ly con­demns big­otry and hatred of any kind.”

    Hale-Cusanel­li did not respond to NPR’s requests for com­ment sent through Hugh­es and his attor­ney. In the past, Hale-Cusanel­li has referred to the Anti-Defama­tion league as “par­a­sitic oppor­tunists and Jew­ish suprema­cists.”

    On Jan. 6, Hale-Cusanel­li stormed the U.S. Capi­tol, but was not accused of phys­i­cal vio­lence against police. Video evi­dence pre­sent­ed at his crim­i­nal tri­al showed him mov­ing bar­ri­ers pro­tect­ing the build­ing, wav­ing in fel­low riot­ers, inter­fer­ing with an attempt­ed police arrest and scream­ing at offi­cers, “the rev­o­lu­tion will be tele­vised, c***.”

    Pros­e­cu­tors pre­sent­ed text mes­sages he sent about the 2020 elec­tion, where he used an anti­se­mit­ic slur and accused Democ­rats of “n***** rig­ging”.

    The jury found him guilty of four mis­de­meanors, as well as one felony, obstruc­tion of an offi­cial pro­ceed­ing. The Supreme Court has since lim­it­ed the use of the felony obstruc­tion charge in Jan. 6‑related cas­es, and Hale-Cusanel­li is appeal­ing his con­vic­tion. If he wins his appeal, he could regain his gun rights.

    At Hale-Cusanelli’s sen­tenc­ing hear­ing, Judge Trevor McFad­den, a Trump appointee, cit­ed his his­to­ry of anti­se­mit­ic remarks.

    “State­ments and actions like yours make [Jew­ish peo­ple] less safe and less con­fi­dent they can par­tic­i­pate as equal mem­bers of our soci­ety,” McFad­den said.

    Hale-Cusanel­li, a for­mer U.S. Army reservist, apol­o­gized at the hear­ing to mem­bers of Con­gress and the Capi­tol Police.

    “My behav­ior that day was unac­cept­able,” he told Judge McFad­den. “I dis­graced my uni­form and I dis­graced the coun­try.”

    Judge McFad­den sen­tenced Hale-Cusanel­li to four years in prison. Hale-Cusanel­li was able to secure release from cus­tody in Dec. 2023, accord­ing to the Bureau of Pris­ons.

    Since then, he has called him­self a polit­i­cal pris­on­er and embraced con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries that the Jan. 6 attack was a “set­up” by gov­ern­ment provo­ca­teurs. He also claimed that his extreme rants amount­ed to inter­net trolling to pro­voke a reac­tion, and said that he has Puer­to Rican and Jew­ish ances­try, telling one inter­view­er “I don’t hate Jews.” He has denied that he’s a Nazi sym­pa­thiz­er or white suprema­cist.

    ...

    In 2022, the for­mer pres­i­dent had din­ner at his Mar-a-Lago estate with Nick Fuentes, a white nation­al­ist and Holo­caust denier, who used a bull­horn to urge Trump sup­port­ers on Jan. 6 to “break down the bar­ri­ers and dis­re­gard the police.” (Fuentes did not per­son­al­ly breach the build­ing and has not faced crim­i­nal charges.) Trump told the extrem­ist group the Proud Boys, whose founder has a his­to­ry of anti­se­mit­ic remarks, to “stand back and stand by” at a 2020 pres­i­den­tial debate. Dur­ing the 2016 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, Trump ini­tial­ly declined to dis­avow an endorse­ment from David Duke, a for­mer grand wiz­ard of the Ku Klux Klan.

    ...

    Trump has made sup­port for the Jan. 6 defen­dants a cen­tral plank of his 2024 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign. His first offi­cial cam­paign ral­ly opened with a ren­di­tion of “The Star-Span­gled Ban­ner” sung by Jan. 6 defen­dants in jail. He has referred to the defen­dants as “patri­ots” and “hostages,” and promised to issue par­dons to con­vict­ed riot­ers, includ­ing those who assault­ed police offi­cers. Approx­i­mate­ly 140 offi­cers were injured in the attack on the Capi­tol.

    The two events at Trump’s Bed­min­ster prop­er­ty fea­tur­ing Hale-Cusanel­li both took place over the sum­mer.

    In June, Hale-Cusanel­li spoke at a Patri­ot Free­dom Project fundrais­er.

    In August, Hale-Cusanel­li received an award for pro­mot­ing “God, fam­i­ly and coun­try.” Con­ser­v­a­tive activist Ed Mar­tin, a leader of the 2024 Repub­li­can Nation­al Convention’s plat­form com­mit­tee, praised Hale-Cusanel­li as an “extra­or­di­nary man” and an “extra­or­di­nary leader.” (Among the oth­er award recip­i­ents were for­mer New York May­or Rudy Giu­liani, Trump advis­er Boris Epshteyn and sev­er­al oth­er fig­ures close­ly tied to the for­mer pres­i­dent.)

    In an email to NPR, Mar­tin did not address Hale-Cusanelli’s past anti­se­mit­ic remarks.

    “NPR, the gov­ern­ment-fund­ed pro­pa­gan­da out­let that has lied at every turn about what hap­pened on J6 is at it again,” he wrote.

    As he received his award from Mar­tin at Bed­min­ster, Hale-Cusanel­li attacked the Biden admin­is­tra­tion.

    “We’ll nev­er make Amer­i­ca great again, unless we acknowl­edge the true depth and scope of this tyran­ni­cal and despot­ic regime,” he said, “[and] the extent to which they will go to destroy this coun­try and every­thing that we hold dear.”

    The fol­low­ing day, Trump held an event at Bed­min­ster ded­i­cat­ed to fight­ing anti­semitism, where he said, “we believe that this vicious out­break of mil­i­tant anti­semitism — it’s very mil­i­tant — must be giv­en no quar­ter, no safe har­bor, no place in a civ­i­lized soci­ety.”

    Hale-Cusanel­li has hailed Trump as a “God Emper­or,” post­ed pho­tos from near the front of a Trump ral­ly and showed off a MAGA hat that was appar­ent­ly signed by the for­mer pres­i­dent.

    After his sec­ond appear­ance at Trump’s club, he post­ed on social media, “Great time at Trump Bed­min­ster YET AGAIN!”

    ———–

    “Trump’s Bed­min­ster club host­ed an alleged Nazi sym­pa­thiz­er who stormed the Capi­tol” by Tom Dreis­bach; Nation­al Pub­lic Radio; 09/12/2024

    Trump has made sup­port for the Jan. 6 defen­dants a cen­tral plank of his 2024 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign. His first offi­cial cam­paign ral­ly opened with a ren­di­tion of “The Star-Span­gled Ban­ner” sung by Jan. 6 defen­dants in jail. He has referred to the defen­dants as “patri­ots” and “hostages,” and promised to issue par­dons to con­vict­ed riot­ers, includ­ing those who assault­ed police offi­cers. Approx­i­mate­ly 140 offi­cers were injured in the attack on the Capi­tol.”

    Jus­tice for the ‘Jan 6 patri­ots’ isn’t just a Trump ral­ly ral­ly­ing cry. It’s a cen­tral plank of the Trump agen­da. Keep­ing Trump out of jail is kind of the whole point of him run­ning again, after all. Sure, it’s pos­si­ble Trump would have decid­ed to run again in 2024 had he not put him­self in so much legal per­il dur­ing in time in the White House. But there’s no ques­tion at this point regard­ing Trump’s pri­ma­ry motive today for regain­ing the pres­i­den­cy. He needs that par­don pow­er back for is own sake. Promis­ing to par­don the rest of the Jan­u­ary 6 con­victs is just part of the sales pitch to make that hap­pen.

    But when we see these Patri­ot Free­dom Project gath­er­ings at Bed­min­ster, it’s impor­tant to keep in mind that the Patrio Free­dom Project isn’t a gener­ic ‘pro-jail Jan 6ers’ group. It was specif­i­cal­ly found­ed in response to Hale-Cusanel­li’s arrest and the group’s founder, Cyn­thia Hugh­es, calls her­self Hale-Cusanel­li’s “adop­tive aunt”. So when we see Trump mak­ing speech­es along­side Hugh­es at a Patri­ot Free­dom Project event held at Bed­min­ster, this is effec­tive­ly a Trump event for Hale-Cusanel­li:

    ...
    “All of the peo­ple there, you’re amaz­ing patri­ots,” Trump said in the video. “Have a great time at Bed­min­ster.”

    ...

    A Trump cam­paign offi­cial told NPR that the for­mer pres­i­dent is “not even aware of this indi­vid­ual.”

    NPR point­ed out that Trump has repeat­ed­ly endorsed the non­prof­it Patri­ot Free­dom Project, a group found­ed in direct response to Hale-Cusanelli’s arrest. The group’s founder, Cyn­thia Hugh­es, calls her­self an “adop­tive aunt” to Hale-Cusanel­li and spoke about his case at a Trump cam­paign ral­ly. In 2023, Trump spoke at anoth­er Patri­ot Free­dom Project event at Bed­min­ster along­side Hugh­es.

    The Trump cam­paign offi­cial clar­i­fied that Trump has “not been made aware of the com­ments that [Hale-Cusanelli’s] made.”

    Regard­ing Hale-Cusanelli’s speech­es at the for­mer president’s Bed­min­ster prop­er­ty, press sec­re­tary Karo­line Leav­itt said, “Pres­i­dent Trump did not attend these events, and, of course, he absolute­ly con­demns big­otry and hatred of any kind.”
    ...

    And note that not only did Hale-Cusanel­li post a video on Twit­ter of his speech at the June Patri­ot Free­dom Project event at Bed­min­ster, but he starts off his speech (at 1:35 in in video) thank­ing Ed Mar­tin, who went on to give Hale-Cusanel­li an award for pro­mot­ing “God, fam­i­ly and coun­try” at the August Bed­min­ster event. Yes, Hale-Cusanel­li has been at two Bed­min­ster events just since his release from prison in Decem­ber, and at one of those events he was award­ed by key CNP pro-insur­rec­tion oper­a­tive Ed Mar­tin:

    ...
    Judge McFad­den sen­tenced Hale-Cusanel­li to four years in prison. Hale-Cusanel­li was able to secure release from cus­tody in Dec. 2023, accord­ing to the Bureau of Pris­ons.

    ...

    The two events at Trump’s Bed­min­ster prop­er­ty fea­tur­ing Hale-Cusanel­li both took place over the sum­mer.

    In June, Hale-Cusanel­li spoke at a Patri­ot Free­dom Project fundrais­er.

    In August, Hale-Cusanel­li received an award for pro­mot­ing “God, fam­i­ly and coun­try.” Con­ser­v­a­tive activist Ed Mar­tin, a leader of the 2024 Repub­li­can Nation­al Convention’s plat­form com­mit­tee, praised Hale-Cusanel­li as an “extra­or­di­nary man” and an “extra­or­di­nary leader.” (Among the oth­er award recip­i­ents were for­mer New York May­or Rudy Giu­liani, Trump advis­er Boris Epshteyn and sev­er­al oth­er fig­ures close­ly tied to the for­mer pres­i­dent.)

    In an email to NPR, Mar­tin did not address Hale-Cusanelli’s past anti­se­mit­ic remarks.

    “NPR, the gov­ern­ment-fund­ed pro­pa­gan­da out­let that has lied at every turn about what hap­pened on J6 is at it again,” he wrote.

    As he received his award from Mar­tin at Bed­min­ster, Hale-Cusanel­li attacked the Biden admin­is­tra­tion.

    “We’ll nev­er make Amer­i­ca great again, unless we acknowl­edge the true depth and scope of this tyran­ni­cal and despot­ic regime,” he said, “[and] the extent to which they will go to destroy this coun­try and every­thing that we hold dear.”

    ...

    Hale-Cusanel­li has hailed Trump as a “God Emper­or,” post­ed pho­tos from near the front of a Trump ral­ly and showed off a MAGA hat that was appar­ent­ly signed by the for­mer pres­i­dent.

    After his sec­ond appear­ance at Trump’s club, he post­ed on social media, “Great time at Trump Bed­min­ster YET AGAIN!”
    ...

    And then, to top it all, fol­low­ing the August Patri­ot Free­dom Project event where Hale-Cusanel­li gets his award from Ed Mar­tin, Trump holds a Bed­min­ster event ded­i­cat­ed to fight­ing anti­semitism:

    ...
    The fol­low­ing day, Trump held an event at Bed­min­ster ded­i­cat­ed to fight­ing anti­semitism, where he said, “we believe that this vicious out­break of mil­i­tant anti­semitism — it’s very mil­i­tant — must be giv­en no quar­ter, no safe har­bor, no place in a civ­i­lized soci­ety.”
    ...

    Was that just a ran­dom coin­ci­dence? An anti-anti­semitism event held just one day after a Nazi was giv­en an award at the same prop­er­ty? If so, it sounds a lot like the $14.88 ‘coin­ci­dence’.

    But as we’re going to see in the fol­low­ing arti­cles, the rela­tion­ship between the Patri­ot Free­dom Project and Trump White world isn’t lim­it­ed to the events at Bed­min­ster over the sum­mer and last year. For exam­ple, Cyn­thia Hugh­es has become a “War Room” reg­u­lar on Steve Ban­non’s pod­cast. Beyond that, Trump and Hugh­es have repeat­ed­ly made appear­ances at each oth­er’s events. For exam­ple, in Sep­tem­ber 2022, Hugh­es spoke at a Trump ral­ly. Video of the event was fea­tures promi­nent­ly on Patri­ot Free­dom Pro­jec­t’s home­page. On Decem­ber 1, Patri­ot Free­dom Project held an “open house” that includ­ed a talk by Trump. Lat­er that month, Trump donat­ed $10k to the group. Keep in mind that Decem­ber 2022 an espe­cial­ly tumul­tuous month for Trump after the Novem­ber 22, 2022, din­ner with Nick Fuentes and Kanye West at Mar-a-Lago. And he not only gave a talk at an “open house” but also donat­ed $10k.

    And the entire time, Patri­ot Free­dom Project has been claim­ing non-par­ti­san 501(c)(3) tax deductible sta­tus. A bla­tant­ly false sta­tus that is nonethe­less still tol­er­at­ed by the IRS. Despite mul­ti­ple Demo­c­ra­t­ic mem­bers of Con­gress open­ly call­ing on the IRS to crack down on this spe­cif­ic group. But as the fol­low­ing Feb­ru­ary 2022 NPR arti­cle describes, there’s one oth­er major area where Patri­ot Free­dom Project and MAGA world over­lap: being self-enrich­ing scams:

    Nation­al Pub­lic Radio

    A con­tro­ver­sial non­prof­it for Capi­tol riot defen­dants makes changes after crit­i­cism

    Feb­ru­ary 10, 2022 6:01 AM ET
    Tom Dreis­bach

    The non­prof­it Patri­ot Free­dom Project became one of the most promi­nent groups sup­port­ing the “polit­i­cal pris­on­ers” crim­i­nal­ly charged in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capi­tol. Now — after fac­ing crit­i­cism from some on the pro-Trump right, fam­i­ly mem­bers of defen­dants and experts in char­i­ty law — the con­tro­ver­sial group has announced it is replac­ing mem­bers of its board of trustees and “revamp­ing” its web­site.

    In Jan­u­ary, NPR first report­ed that fam­i­ly mem­bers of Capi­tol riot defen­dants felt the Patri­ot Free­dom Project was not trans­par­ent enough about how it was spend­ing the rough­ly $900,000 it had received in dona­tions. Char­i­ty experts also told NPR they saw “red flags” in the group’s prac­tices, such as the fact that the orga­ni­za­tion’s board of trustees con­sist­ed of three peo­ple: group pres­i­dent Cyn­thia Hugh­es, Hugh­es’ sis­ter-in-law, and Hugh­es’ 24-year-old son.

    ...

    Since NPR’s sto­ry, how­ev­er, Hugh­es has said pub­licly said that her fam­i­ly mem­bers are no longer on the board.

    The Patri­ot Free­dom Pro­jec­t’s web­site also now fea­tures an updat­ed doc­u­ment enti­tled “State­ment of Activ­i­ties.” The doc­u­ment was first uploaded to the group’s site in Decem­ber, but the con­tent of the doc­u­ment has changed since NPR’s sto­ry. (Despite the mod­i­fi­ca­tions, it still bears the date of Dec. 9, 2021.)

    Among those changes: the doc­u­ment pre­vi­ous­ly includ­ed a sen­tence that stat­ed, “No one is going to get rich off the Foun­da­tion.”

    That sen­tence no longer appears in the doc­u­ment on the group’s web­site.

    The doc­u­ment cur­rent­ly on the group’s web­site also fea­tures a cau­tion to poten­tial donors that the group “can­not guar­an­tee” the IRS will grant the Patri­ot Free­dom Project tax-exempt sta­tus, so their dona­tions may not be deductible at tax time. The ear­li­er ver­sion of the doc­u­ment stat­ed the group was prepar­ing its appli­ca­tion for tax-exempt sta­tus and “con­tri­bu­tions are deductible.”

    Some Capi­tol riot defen­dants and their fam­i­lies tell NPR they remain skep­ti­cal of Hugh­es and her orga­ni­za­tion. Con­cerns high­light­ed by char­i­ty experts have not all been addressed. And gov­ern­ment author­i­ties in four states told NPR they were exam­in­ing whether the Patri­ot Free­dom Project was com­ply­ing with their state’s laws on char­i­ta­ble reg­is­tra­tion.

    A spokesper­son for the Patri­ot Free­dom Project did not respond to NPR’s detailed ques­tions for this sto­ry. Instead, the orga­ni­za­tion sent the same state­ment it pro­vid­ed in Jan­u­ary, which said, in part, “We will nev­er stop fight­ing for these peo­ple, their fam­i­lies and chil­dren, and if the gov­ern­ment fund­ed media does­n’t like it will do it even more.”

    Chang­ing the board

    After NPR’s ini­tial sto­ry on the Patri­ot Free­dom Project, Steve Ban­non invit­ed Hugh­es to respond on his pop­u­lar pro-Trump show, “War Room,” which is avail­able nation­wide as a pod­cast, online video stream, and even on satel­lite TV. Hugh­es has become a “War Room” reg­u­lar and Ban­non has pledged that a por­tion of “trans­ac­tion fees” from his lat­est cryp­tocur­ren­cy ven­ture will be donat­ed to the Patri­ot Free­dom Project.

    In her inter­view, Hugh­es sug­gest­ed the deci­sion to install her fam­i­ly mem­bers on the three-mem­ber board of trustees was the result of mov­ing to set up the orga­ni­za­tion quick­ly.

    “I had to come up with board mem­bers,” Hugh­es told Ban­non. “I put my son, my sis­ter-in-law — who is a Demo­c­rat, by the way — on the board.”

    In gen­er­al, non­prof­it boards are sup­posed to pro­vide inde­pen­dent over­sight of the group’s activ­i­ties. Char­i­ty experts say hav­ing a board made up exclu­sive­ly of fam­i­ly mem­bers can cre­ate con­flicts of inter­est.

    “They’re not on the board now,” Hugh­es told Ban­non. “We have diver­si­fied the board. We have two board mem­bers that are not relat­ed to me that will be released very soon.”

    Since that inter­view on Ban­non’s show, which aired on Jan. 31, the group does not appear to have pub­licly iden­ti­fied the new board mem­bers, and did not pro­vide their names when NPR asked.

    In her inter­view with Ban­non, Hugh­es also allud­ed to oth­er grow­ing pains for the group, which formed last sum­mer.

    “In the begin­ning of this process, I did­n’t have good peo­ple around me,” Hugh­es said. “I had peo­ple who were not so hon­est with me. Now I have great peo­ple in my camp.”

    ...

    The spokesper­son for the Patri­ot Free­dom Project pre­vi­ous­ly declined to com­ment to NPR regard­ing Hugh­es’ finan­cial sit­u­a­tion. On Ban­non’s show, Hugh­es said that her ear­li­er bank­rupt­cy stemmed from what she char­ac­ter­ized as an abu­sive pre­vi­ous mar­riage. “I had to file bank­rupt­cy because of the finan­cial prob­lems that this man brought to my life,” Hugh­es told Ban­non.

    Now, Hugh­es said, “I don’t have finan­cial prob­lems.”

    Hugh­es did not address the law­suits she has filed in recent years, in which she pub­licly dis­closed more cur­rent mon­ey trou­bles. For exam­ple, in 2018 she stat­ed in court doc­u­ments that her fam­i­ly had expe­ri­enced “seri­ous finan­cial hard­ship” in a law­suit against cred­it rat­ing agen­cies, demand­ing changes to her cred­it rat­ing and $15,000 in dam­ages. That law­suit result­ed in a set­tle­ment with one par­ty, and out­right dis­missal with the oth­ers.

    Reg­is­ter­ing with state char­i­ty reg­u­la­tors

    In her inter­view with Ban­non, Hugh­es also did not address the fact that the Patri­ot Free­dom Project, which is head­quar­tered in New Jer­sey and oper­ates under the legal name Hugh­es Advo­ca­cy Foun­da­tion, had not reg­is­tered with the state Attor­ney Gen­er­al’s office. Under New Jer­sey law, char­i­ties are gen­er­al­ly required to reg­is­ter with the state with­in 30 days of rais­ing $10,000 in a fis­cal year.

    Because the group solic­its dona­tions online and on nation­al plat­forms like Ban­non’s “War Room,” experts said the group also has to be mind­ful of char­i­ty reg­is­tra­tion require­ments in oth­er states, too.

    Most states have some require­ment of reg­is­ter­ing with­in their state,” said Philip Hack­ney, an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Pitts­burgh School of Law and an expert in non­prof­it law. “If you are solic­it­ing across radio and TV or even the inter­net, you’re pret­ty quick­ly solic­it­ing across 50 states.”

    In some cas­es, those reg­is­tra­tion require­ments kick in before an orga­ni­za­tion starts rais­ing mon­ey. Reg­u­la­tors often “require advanced reg­is­tra­tion pri­or to solic­it­ing char­i­ta­ble dona­tions or hold­ing funds for char­i­ta­ble pur­pos­es in that par­tic­u­lar state,” said Erin Bradrick, an attor­ney with the NEO Law Group, who has worked in non­prof­it law for near­ly a decade.

    “I think that we’re see­ing state Attor­neys Gen­er­al increas­ing­ly step into an expand­ed role in terms of data col­lec­tion and enforce­ment with respect to char­i­ties,” said Bradrick.

    NPR checked with gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tors in places where the group appears to have solicit­ed or received dona­tions from local res­i­dents: Cal­i­for­nia, the Dis­trict of Colum­bia, Flori­da, Illi­nois, and New York.

    ...

    In Cal­i­for­nia, the state’s Depart­ment of Jus­tice issued a “Notice to Reg­is­ter” to the group on Feb. 1, request­ing that the orga­ni­za­tion pro­vide a set of detailed records with­in 30 days. The offices of attor­neys gen­er­al in Illi­nois and New York said they were exam­in­ing whether the group was com­ply­ing with state law. In Flori­da, the Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture and Con­sumer Ser­vices over­sees char­i­ties, and they said they were also eval­u­at­ing whether the orga­ni­za­tion need­ed to file a reg­is­tra­tion.

    As for the orga­ni­za­tion’s home state of New Jer­sey, a spokesper­son for the Divi­sion of Con­sumer Affairs at the state Attor­ney Gen­er­al’s office said the agency was “aware of reports regard­ing Patri­ot Free­dom Project,” but could nei­ther con­firm nor deny the exis­tence of an inves­ti­ga­tion, cit­ing gen­er­al pol­i­cy.

    ...

    Polit­i­cal state­ments

    There may be anoth­er obsta­cle to the Patri­ot Free­dom Project receiv­ing the IRS’ bless­ing as a tax-exempt enti­ty: its state­ments about pol­i­tics.

    The IRS has “an absolute pro­hi­bi­tion” on 501(c)(3) tax-exempt orga­ni­za­tions inter­ven­ing in par­ti­san polit­i­cal cam­paigns, said Bradrick.

    On Jan. 26, the group’s twit­ter account said “We need to...take down Chris Smith and the alleged [R]epublican Van­Drew!” Chris Smith and Jeff Van Drew are both Repub­li­can mem­bers of Con­gress from New Jer­sey and are cur­rent­ly run­ning for re-elec­tion.

    We need to do the same here in NJ and take down Chris Smith and the alleged repub­li­can Van­Drew! Chris Smith claims he is for vet­er­ans but yet refus­es to lift a fin­ger to help the 3 NJ men being held against their will at DC GITMO! We will nev­er achieve change with these RINOS! https://t.co/Q9SiC1T8ok— Real Cyn­thia Hugh­es (@realpfp) Jan­u­ary 26, 2022

    “That’s exact­ly the type of thing that vio­lates the pro­hi­bi­tion on polit­i­cal cam­paign inter­ven­tion,” said Hack­ney.

    The group has also tweet­ed state­ments sug­gest­ing Trump should run for Pres­i­dent again.

    Because Trump has not offi­cial­ly declared that he is run­ning for office, Hack­ney said, it’s less clear whether those state­ments vio­late the law. Either way, the IRS may give those state­ments a close look when eval­u­at­ing whether to grant the Patri­ot Free­dom Project tax-exempt sta­tus.

    “The IRS might say, ‘Sor­ry, you appear to be engaged in polit­i­cal cam­paign inter­ven­tion’ and deny your appli­ca­tion as a result,” Hack­ney said.

    If the IRS does deny the group’s appli­ca­tion, the Patri­ot Free­dom Project may have to pay tax­es, and donors would not be able write off their con­tri­bu­tions to the group.

    Response from Capi­tol riot defen­dants and their fam­i­lies

    The Patri­ot Free­dom Project has received nation­al promi­nence and sup­port from lead­ing pro-Trump fig­ures such as Ban­non, U.S. Sen­ate can­di­date J.D. Vance, author and film­mak­er Dinesh D’Souza and radio host Clay Travis. But opin­ions of the group among actu­al Capi­tol riot defen­dants and their fam­i­lies remain divid­ed.

    Some, such as Trish Priller, have pub­licly vouched for the group. Pros­e­cu­tors have said Priller’s hus­band, Christo­pher Wor­rell, is a mem­ber of far-right group the Proud Boys, and that he attacked police guard­ing the U.S. Capi­tol on Jan. 6, 2021 with a can of “pep­per spray gel.” Wor­rell has plead­ed not guilty. Priller told NPR in a mes­sage that the group “helped many wives & chil­dren pay their bills, home repairs, food, car repairs, dia­pers, Christ­mas and has also secured lawyers. If Cyn­thia did­n’t cre­ate the Patri­ot Free­dom Project many fam­i­lies would have suf­fered.”

    Bon­nie Nichols, whose hus­band Ryan has plead­ed not guilty to alle­ga­tions that he used a chem­i­cal spray to assault police on Jan. 6, 2021, told the con­ser­v­a­tive web­site The Fed­er­al­ist that the group pro­vid­ed finan­cial assis­tance and emo­tion­al sup­port to her fam­i­ly. “I don’t know where we would be if we did­n’t have that sup­port,” she said.

    Oth­er fam­i­ly mem­bers remain high­ly crit­i­cal of the group. “I real­ly am pissed off,” said the fam­i­ly mem­ber of one defen­dant, who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty due to fear of back­lash from the group. They were par­tic­u­lar­ly upset that the group said it may use a por­tion of the hun­dreds of thou­sands of donat­ed funds to hire employ­ees, rather than direct­ly sup­port defen­dants.

    On its most recent “State­ment of Activ­i­ties” the group said that while, “no one has tak­en a salary” yet, “we will poten­tial­ly hire sev­er­al employ­ees, all of whom will be paid rea­son­able salaries for the work they are doing.”

    ...

    Troy Smocks did not go to the Capi­tol on Jan. 6, but was present in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. that day. He plead­ed guilty to send­ing threats against pub­lic offi­cials on the social media plat­form Par­ler, and was recent­ly released from the D.C. jail. He said the Patri­ot Free­dom Project only seemed to sup­port a small frac­tion of all defen­dants.

    “More than half of the guys [in jail] are not list­ed on their site,” he said. In fact, out of more than 700 Capi­tol riot defen­dants, only 40 are cur­rent­ly list­ed on the group’s web­site along with their indi­vid­ual fundrais­ing pages.

    As of last Decem­ber, the group stat­ed that it held more than $500,000 that it had not yet spent. Though Smocks said he is deal­ing with seri­ous mon­ey trou­ble from being locked up, he said he had not received any sup­port from the Patri­ot Free­dom Project, and ques­tioned why the group had not pro­vid­ed aid to more defen­dants.

    Smocks said he felt like groups like the Patri­ot Free­dom Project and oth­ers rais­ing mon­ey for these cas­es were more in it for them­selves than the defen­dants.

    “They use the events of Jan. 6 and the detainees in order to pad their own resumes and enrich them­selves,” said Smocks.

    ...

    ———–

    “A con­tro­ver­sial non­prof­it for Capi­tol riot defen­dants makes changes after crit­i­cism” by Tom Dreis­bach; Nation­al Pub­lic Radio; 02/10/2022

    “In Jan­u­ary, NPR first report­ed that fam­i­ly mem­bers of Capi­tol riot defen­dants felt the Patri­ot Free­dom Project was not trans­par­ent enough about how it was spend­ing the rough­ly $900,000 it had received in dona­tions. Char­i­ty experts also told NPR they saw “red flags” in the group’s prac­tices, such as the fact that the orga­ni­za­tion’s board of trustees con­sist­ed of three peo­ple: group pres­i­dent Cyn­thia Hugh­es, Hugh­es’ sis­ter-in-law, and Hugh­es’ 24-year-old son.

    Yes, there’s no short­age of “red flags” when it comes to the char­i­ta­ble sta­tus of the Patri­ot Free­dom Project. Start­ing with the fact that the orig­i­nal board of trustees con­sist­ed of Cyn­thia Hugh­es, Hugh­es’ sis­ter-in-law, and Hugh­es’ 24-year-old son. But that ques­tion­able lead­er­ship com­po­si­tion is just the start of the red flags. As Jan­u­ary 6 defen­dants and their fam­i­ly mem­bers charge, the ‘char­i­ty’ is real­ly more of an exer­cise in self-enrich­ment:

    ...
    A spokesper­son for the Patri­ot Free­dom Project pre­vi­ous­ly reject­ed any crit­i­cism of the group. The spokesper­son, who would only com­ment to NPR on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, insist­ed that the group was a mod­el of trans­paren­cy and argued that it was an asset that fam­i­ly mem­bers made up the Patri­ot Free­dom Pro­jec­t’s board, liken­ing it to a mom-and-pop oper­a­tion.

    Since NPR’s sto­ry, how­ev­er, Hugh­es has said pub­licly said that her fam­i­ly mem­bers are no longer on the board.

    The Patri­ot Free­dom Pro­jec­t’s web­site also now fea­tures an updat­ed doc­u­ment enti­tled “State­ment of Activ­i­ties.” The doc­u­ment was first uploaded to the group’s site in Decem­ber, but the con­tent of the doc­u­ment has changed since NPR’s sto­ry. (Despite the mod­i­fi­ca­tions, it still bears the date of Dec. 9, 2021.)

    Among those changes: the doc­u­ment pre­vi­ous­ly includ­ed a sen­tence that stat­ed, “No one is going to get rich off the Foun­da­tion.”

    That sen­tence no longer appears in the doc­u­ment on the group’s web­site.

    The doc­u­ment cur­rent­ly on the group’s web­site also fea­tures a cau­tion to poten­tial donors that the group “can­not guar­an­tee” the IRS will grant the Patri­ot Free­dom Project tax-exempt sta­tus, so their dona­tions may not be deductible at tax time. The ear­li­er ver­sion of the doc­u­ment stat­ed the group was prepar­ing its appli­ca­tion for tax-exempt sta­tus and “con­tri­bu­tions are deductible.”

    ...

    Bon­nie Nichols, whose hus­band Ryan has plead­ed not guilty to alle­ga­tions that he used a chem­i­cal spray to assault police on Jan. 6, 2021, told the con­ser­v­a­tive web­site The Fed­er­al­ist that the group pro­vid­ed finan­cial assis­tance and emo­tion­al sup­port to her fam­i­ly. “I don’t know where we would be if we did­n’t have that sup­port,” she said.

    Oth­er fam­i­ly mem­bers remain high­ly crit­i­cal of the group. “I real­ly am pissed off,” said the fam­i­ly mem­ber of one defen­dant, who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty due to fear of back­lash from the group. They were par­tic­u­lar­ly upset that the group said it may use a por­tion of the hun­dreds of thou­sands of donat­ed funds to hire employ­ees, rather than direct­ly sup­port defen­dants.

    On its most recent “State­ment of Activ­i­ties” the group said that while, “no one has tak­en a salary” yet, “we will poten­tial­ly hire sev­er­al employ­ees, all of whom will be paid rea­son­able salaries for the work they are doing.”
    ...

    But the Patri­ot Free­dom Project has­n’t just been a fam­i­ly affair. Beyond the wide expo­sure giv­en to the group by Trump world icons like CNP mem­ber Steve Ban­non or Dinesh D’Souza, the group has been pro­mot­ed by JD Vance and Trump him­self. Patri­ot Free­dom Project is a Trump endorsed affair:

    ...
    After NPR’s ini­tial sto­ry on the Patri­ot Free­dom Project, Steve Ban­non invit­ed Hugh­es to respond on his pop­u­lar pro-Trump show, “War Room,” which is avail­able nation­wide as a pod­cast, online video stream, and even on satel­lite TV. Hugh­es has become a “War Room” reg­u­lar and Ban­non has pledged that a por­tion of “trans­ac­tion fees” from his lat­est cryp­tocur­ren­cy ven­ture will be donat­ed to the Patri­ot Free­dom Project.

    In her inter­view, Hugh­es sug­gest­ed the deci­sion to install her fam­i­ly mem­bers on the three-mem­ber board of trustees was the result of mov­ing to set up the orga­ni­za­tion quick­ly.

    “I had to come up with board mem­bers,” Hugh­es told Ban­non. “I put my son, my sis­ter-in-law — who is a Demo­c­rat, by the way — on the board.”

    In gen­er­al, non­prof­it boards are sup­posed to pro­vide inde­pen­dent over­sight of the group’s activ­i­ties. Char­i­ty experts say hav­ing a board made up exclu­sive­ly of fam­i­ly mem­bers can cre­ate con­flicts of inter­est.

    “They’re not on the board now,” Hugh­es told Ban­non. “We have diver­si­fied the board. We have two board mem­bers that are not relat­ed to me that will be released very soon.”

    Since that inter­view on Ban­non’s show, which aired on Jan. 31, the group does not appear to have pub­licly iden­ti­fied the new board mem­bers, and did not pro­vide their names when NPR asked.

    ...

    The Patri­ot Free­dom Project has received nation­al promi­nence and sup­port from lead­ing pro-Trump fig­ures such as Ban­non, U.S. Sen­ate can­di­date J.D. Vance, author and film­mak­er Dinesh D’Souza and radio host Clay Travis. But opin­ions of the group among actu­al Capi­tol riot defen­dants and their fam­i­lies remain divid­ed.

    Some, such as Trish Priller, have pub­licly vouched for the group. Pros­e­cu­tors have said Priller’s hus­band, Christo­pher Wor­rell, is a mem­ber of far-right group the Proud Boys, and that he attacked police guard­ing the U.S. Capi­tol on Jan. 6, 2021 with a can of “pep­per spray gel.” Wor­rell has plead­ed not guilty. Priller told NPR in a mes­sage that the group “helped many wives & chil­dren pay their bills, home repairs, food, car repairs, dia­pers, Christ­mas and has also secured lawyers. If Cyn­thia did­n’t cre­ate the Patri­ot Free­dom Project many fam­i­lies would have suf­fered.”
    ...

    And as we should expect from all this Trump World-relat­ed, Patri­ot Free­dom Project is kind of a scam and only real­ly seems to sup­port a small frac­tion of the Jan­u­ary 6 defen­dants. That’s part of the con­text of Tim­o­thy Hale-Cusanel­li’s star­dom in this cir­cle. The Hitler looka­like was one of the few cham­pi­oned by the group. Which should make one won­der about the rest of defen­dants the group is cham­pi­oning:

    ...
    Troy Smocks did not go to the Capi­tol on Jan. 6, but was present in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. that day. He plead­ed guilty to send­ing threats against pub­lic offi­cials on the social media plat­form Par­ler, and was recent­ly released from the D.C. jail. He said the Patri­ot Free­dom Project only seemed to sup­port a small frac­tion of all defen­dants.

    Troy Smocks did not go to the Capi­tol on Jan. 6, but was present in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. that day. He plead­ed guilty to send­ing threats against pub­lic offi­cials on the social media plat­form Par­ler, and was recent­ly released from the D.C. jail. He said the Patri­ot Free­dom Project only seemed to sup­port a small frac­tion of all defen­dants.

    “More than half of the guys [in jail] are not list­ed on their site,” he said. In fact, out of more than 700 Capi­tol riot defen­dants, only 40 are cur­rent­ly list­ed on the group’s web­site along with their indi­vid­ual fundrais­ing pages.

    As of last Decem­ber, the group stat­ed that it held more than $500,000 that it had not yet spent. Though Smocks said he is deal­ing with seri­ous mon­ey trou­ble from being locked up, he said he had not received any sup­port from the Patri­ot Free­dom Project, and ques­tioned why the group had not pro­vid­ed aid to more defen­dants.

    Smocks said he felt like groups like the Patri­ot Free­dom Project and oth­ers rais­ing mon­ey for these cas­es were more in it for them­selves than the defen­dants.

    “They use the events of Jan. 6 and the detainees in order to pad their own resumes and enrich them­selves,” said Smocks.
    ...

    Even Cyn­thia Hugh­es her­self seems to admit she “did­n’t have good peo­ple around me” when the group was first formed. Which appears to be a ref­er­ence to her ex-hus­band. But she assured the pub­lic that every­thing was cleaned up by that point:

    ...
    In her inter­view with Ban­non, Hugh­es also allud­ed to oth­er grow­ing pains for the group, which formed last sum­mer.

    “In the begin­ning of this process, I did­n’t have good peo­ple around me,” Hugh­es said. “I had peo­ple who were not so hon­est with me. Now I have great peo­ple in my camp.”

    ...

    The spokesper­son for the Patri­ot Free­dom Project pre­vi­ous­ly declined to com­ment to NPR regard­ing Hugh­es’ finan­cial sit­u­a­tion. On Ban­non’s show, Hugh­es said that her ear­li­er bank­rupt­cy stemmed from what she char­ac­ter­ized as an abu­sive pre­vi­ous mar­riage. “I had to file bank­rupt­cy because of the finan­cial prob­lems that this man brought to my life,” Hugh­es told Ban­non.

    Now, Hugh­es said, “I don’t have finan­cial prob­lems.”

    Hugh­es did not address the law­suits she has filed in recent years, in which she pub­licly dis­closed more cur­rent mon­ey trou­bles. For exam­ple, in 2018 she stat­ed in court doc­u­ments that her fam­i­ly had expe­ri­enced “seri­ous finan­cial hard­ship” in a law­suit against cred­it rat­ing agen­cies, demand­ing changes to her cred­it rat­ing and $15,000 in dam­ages. That law­suit result­ed in a set­tle­ment with one par­ty, and out­right dis­missal with the oth­ers.
    ...

    And than we get to the bla­tant­ly ille­gal part of this oper­a­tion. Typ­i­cal­ly ille­gal in the world of polit­i­cal ‘non-prof­its’: a 501(c)(3) char­i­ty like this can’t legal­ly advo­cate for can­di­dates. Some­thing Patri­ot Free­dom Project has been doing rou­tine­ly:

    ...
    There may be anoth­er obsta­cle to the Patri­ot Free­dom Project receiv­ing the IRS’ bless­ing as a tax-exempt enti­ty: its state­ments about pol­i­tics.

    The IRS has “an absolute pro­hi­bi­tion” on 501(c)(3) tax-exempt orga­ni­za­tions inter­ven­ing in par­ti­san polit­i­cal cam­paigns, said Bradrick.

    On Jan. 26, the group’s twit­ter account said “We need to...take down Chris Smith and the alleged [R]epublican Van­Drew!” Chris Smith and Jeff Van Drew are both Repub­li­can mem­bers of Con­gress from New Jer­sey and are cur­rent­ly run­ning for re-elec­tion.

    We need to do the same here in NJ and take down Chris Smith and the alleged repub­li­can Van­Drew! Chris Smith claims he is for vet­er­ans but yet refus­es to lift a fin­ger to help the 3 NJ men being held against their will at DC GITMO! We will nev­er achieve change with these RINOS! https://t.co/Q9SiC1T8ok— Real Cyn­thia Hugh­es (@realpfp) Jan­u­ary 26, 2022

    “That’s exact­ly the type of thing that vio­lates the pro­hi­bi­tion on polit­i­cal cam­paign inter­ven­tion,” said Hack­ney.

    The group has also tweet­ed state­ments sug­gest­ing Trump should run for Pres­i­dent again.

    Because Trump has not offi­cial­ly declared that he is run­ning for office, Hack­ney said, it’s less clear whether those state­ments vio­late the law. Either way, the IRS may give those state­ments a close look when eval­u­at­ing whether to grant the Patri­ot Free­dom Project tax-exempt sta­tus.

    “The IRS might say, ‘Sor­ry, you appear to be engaged in polit­i­cal cam­paign inter­ven­tion’ and deny your appli­ca­tion as a result,” Hack­ney said.

    If the IRS does deny the group’s appli­ca­tion, the Patri­ot Free­dom Project may have to pay tax­es, and donors would not be able write off their con­tri­bu­tions to the group.
    ...

    That was the state of affairs in Feb­ru­ary of 2022. The Patri­ot Free­dom Project is anoth­er bla­tant MAGA world adja­cent scam. Per­son­al­ly endorse by Steve Ban­non and JD Vance and Trump. And that brings us to the fol­low­ing NPR piece from Jan­u­ary of 2024 updat­ing the sit­u­a­tion. Except there isn’t real­ly any­thing to update. It’s the same sit­u­a­tion. The only thing that’s new is Ed Mar­tin joined the board of trustees at some point. And mem­bers of Con­gress have been call­ing for the IRS to inves­ti­gate it:

    Nation­al Pub­lic Radio

    Law­mak­ers call for IRS scruti­ny of Trump-backed non­prof­it that aids Jan. 6 riot­ers

    Jan­u­ary 17, 2024 12:43 PM ET
    Tom Dreis­bach

    Con­gres­sion­al Democ­rats are rais­ing alarms about a non­prof­it group that pro­vides finan­cial sup­port for defen­dants charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capi­tol, ques­tion­ing whether the orga­ni­za­tion’s appar­ent sup­port for Don­ald Trump’s pres­i­den­tial cam­paign may vio­late fed­er­al tax law.

    The group, known as the Patri­ot Free­dom Project, launched in response to the arrest of a Jan. 6 riot­er known for pro­mot­ing extreme racist, anti­se­mit­ic and pro-Nazi views. The group’s lead­ers describe Jan. 6 defen­dants as “polit­i­cal pris­on­ers” and have devel­oped a close rela­tion­ship with Trump and his 2024 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign. The for­mer pres­i­dent has embraced defen­dants charged in the attack on the U.S. Capi­tol, call­ing them “hostages” and promis­ing to issue par­dons to defen­dants if he wins the 2024 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion.

    ...

    Because the Patri­ot Free­dom Project is orga­nized as a non­prof­it char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tion under sec­tion 501(c)(3) of the tax code, it is “absolute­ly pro­hib­it­ed” by fed­er­al law from “direct­ly or indi­rect­ly” tak­ing part in par­ti­san polit­i­cal cam­paigns or endors­ing or oppos­ing can­di­dates.

    As NPR pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed, the founder and pres­i­dent of the Patri­ot Free­dom Project, Cyn­thia Hugh­es, encour­aged peo­ple to vote for Trump at one of the group’s events held at Trump Nation­al Golf Club Bed­min­ster in August 2023.

    “When you go to the bal­lot box, don’t wor­ry about what you hear in the media. Wor­ry about what’s right for this coun­try. And the only thing that’s right for this coun­try is this gem,” said Hugh­es as she point­ed to Trump, who was stand­ing beside her, accord­ing to video of the event post­ed online.

    NPR found oth­er instances in which the group expressed sup­port for Trump’s reelec­tion, took part in par­ti­san cam­paign events and encour­aged peo­ple to vote against polit­i­cal can­di­dates.

    Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr. of New Jer­sey over­sees the Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice as the top Demo­c­rat on the House Ways and Means Sub­com­mit­tee on Over­sight. In response to NPR’s report­ing, Pascrell called on the agency to open an inves­ti­ga­tion into the Patri­ot Free­dom Project

    “If this pur­port­ed non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion is using its pul­pit to pro­mote Don­ald Trump, the group is not just sup­port­ing the same author­i­tar­i­an­ism espoused by an insur­rec­tion­ist – it is also break­ing fed­er­al tax law and must be held account­able,” said Pascrell in a state­ment to NPR. “The IRS should inves­ti­gate this case imme­di­ate­ly and crack down on those poten­tial­ly abus­ing our tax code.”

    Pascrel­l’s Repub­li­can coun­ter­part on the Sub­com­mit­tee on Over­sight, Rep. David Schweik­ert of Ari­zona, did not respond to NPR’s request for com­ment.

    Sen. Shel­don White­house, D‑R.I., raised con­cerns about what he views as lax IRS enforce­ment of non­prof­its involved in polit­i­cal activ­i­ty.

    “There are 501(c)(3) orga­ni­za­tions that open­ly flout the law and solic­it tax-deductible dona­tions to fund polit­i­cal activ­i­ties,” White­house told NPR in a state­ment. “These polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tions mas­quer­ade as char­i­ties and brazen­ly ignore the law, because they don’t think the IRS will enforce it. Too often, they’re right. It’s long past time that the IRS crack down on these abus­es.”

    Rep. Jamie Raskin, D‑Md., said in an inter­view that NPR’s report­ing had raised con­cerns for him about the Patri­ot Free­dom Pro­jec­t’s polit­i­cal activ­i­ty.

    “I’m cer­tain­ly alarmed to learn that a 501(c)(3) orga­ni­za­tion is send­ing out direct polit­i­cal advo­ca­cy — mean­ing mes­sages telling peo­ple to vote for this can­di­date or vote against that can­di­date,” said Raskin, who served on the Jan. 6 select com­mit­tee in Con­gress. “That clear­ly cuts against the let­ter of the law. The resources and the pres­tige of the orga­ni­za­tion can­not be used for elec­toral pur­pos­es in any way.”

    ...

    An IRS offi­cial declined to com­ment. Because the group is based in New Jer­sey, it is also reg­u­lat­ed by that state’s author­i­ties. A spokesper­son for the New Jer­sey Divi­sion of Con­sumer Affairs told NPR, “We can­not com­ment on hypo­thet­i­cal vio­la­tions of the law,” but not­ed that vio­la­tions of fed­er­al law could also lead to reper­cus­sions at the state lev­el.

    What does the law say?

    Non­prof­it char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tions that are rec­og­nized by the IRS under sec­tion 501(c)(3) of the tax code are exempt from cer­tain fed­er­al, state and local tax­es. The gov­ern­ment allows donors to 501(c)(3) non­prof­its to deduct their char­i­ta­ble con­tri­bu­tions at tax time, which helps incen­tivize dona­tions. The Patri­ot Free­dom Project touts that perk on its web­site.

    ...

    As the IRS puts it on the agen­cy’s web­site, “all sec­tion 501(c)(3) orga­ni­za­tions are absolute­ly pro­hib­it­ed from direct­ly or indi­rect­ly par­tic­i­pat­ing in, or inter­ven­ing in, any polit­i­cal cam­paign on behalf of (or in oppo­si­tion to) any can­di­date for elec­tive pub­lic office.”

    That means fed­er­al law pro­hibits 501(c)(3) groups from endors­ing or oppos­ing polit­i­cal can­di­dates and from mak­ing or dis­trib­ut­ing state­ments for or against polit­i­cal can­di­dates.

    ...

    The IRS also instructs non­prof­its to tread care­ful­ly if they hold events with a polit­i­cal can­di­date. If the orga­ni­za­tion invites a can­di­date to speak, then it must take steps to ensure that it pro­vides “an equal oppor­tu­ni­ty to par­tic­i­pate to all polit­i­cal can­di­dates seek­ing the same office,” the IRS states, and the orga­ni­za­tion must ensure that it “does not indi­cate any sup­port for or oppo­si­tion to any can­di­date (includ­ing can­di­date intro­duc­tions and in com­mu­ni­ca­tions con­cern­ing any can­di­date’s atten­dance).”

    The Patri­ot Free­dom Project acknowl­edged these legal require­ments when it applied for tax-exempt sta­tus, and it declared in its IRS paper­work that it would not “sup­port or oppose can­di­dates in polit­i­cal cam­paigns in any way.”

    What has the Patri­ot Free­dom Project done?

    NPR found sev­er­al speech­es, events and social media posts in which the Patri­ot Free­dom Project and its lead­er­ship took actions that raise ques­tions about whether the group may have vio­lat­ed the ban on polit­i­cal cam­paign activ­i­ty by 501(c)(3) non­prof­its.

    Take, for exam­ple, the Patri­ot Free­dom Pro­jec­t’s home­page, which promi­nent­ly fea­tures a video of Trump at a cam­paign ral­ly in Sep­tem­ber 2022.

    Hugh­es, the Patri­ot Free­dom Pro­jec­t’s pres­i­dent and founder, spoke at that ral­ly, which was held in sup­port of Repub­li­can U.S. Sen­ate can­di­date Mehmet Oz and guber­na­to­r­i­al can­di­date Doug Mas­tri­ano, both of Penn­syl­va­nia. (Both Oz and Mas­tri­ano sub­se­quent­ly lost in the 2022 elec­tions.) At the event, Hugh­es iden­ti­fied her­self specif­i­cal­ly as the leader of the Patri­ot Free­dom Project and encour­aged peo­ple to sup­port the group.

    Hugh­es went on to hold mul­ti­ple Patri­ot Free­dom Project events either fea­tur­ing Trump or where speak­ers pro­mot­ed Trump’s polit­i­cal cam­paign:

    * In Decem­ber 2022, the Patri­ot Free­dom Project held an “open house” event where a senior advis­er to Trump’s Save Amer­i­ca polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee as well as Trump him­self spoke. That same month, Trump’s PAC donat­ed $10,000 to the Patri­ot Free­dom Project.

    * In June 2023, the Patri­ot Free­dom Project held an event at Trump Nation­al Golf Club Bed­min­ster. Video of the event shows that Trump gave a speech in which he said, “We’re gonna win an elec­tion in 2024,” as Hugh­es and Patri­ot Free­dom Project board mem­ber Ed Mar­tin applaud­ed. Anoth­er speak­er at the said, “We have got to reelect Pres­i­dent Trump into the White House.”

    * Lat­er that sum­mer, in August 2023, the Patri­ot Free­dom Project held anoth­er event at Trump Nation­al Golf Club Bed­min­ster where Hugh­es encour­aged peo­ple to vote for Trump and the for­mer pres­i­dent also spoke.

    * At a Patri­ot Free­dom Project event to mark the third anniver­sary of the attack, on Jan. 6, 2024, the group fea­tured a speech from a pro-Trump attor­ney who said, “We need to keep the momen­tum strong behind Pres­i­dent Trump” in the 2024 elec­tion. Pho­tos and video of the event show a large table fea­tur­ing a “TRUMP 2024” flag, along­side flags depict­ing Trump as Super­man and Cap­tain Amer­i­ca.

    On the social media plat­form X (for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter), the group’s offi­cial account also veered into pro­mot­ing and attack­ing polit­i­cal can­di­dates:

    * The group’s offi­cial account post­ed the hash­tag “#Trump2024three times.

    * One post stat­ed, “we need to ... take down” mul­ti­ple “RINOS” (an acronym for “Repub­li­cans in name only”) in Con­gress run­ning for reelec­tion.

    * The account attacked the Demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­er­nor of New York and added, “Vote these rad­i­cals out!”

    * The group repost­ed mes­sages from the offi­cial cam­paign account for a con­vict­ed Jan. 6 defen­dant now run­ning for Con­gress.

    ...

    Accord­ing to finan­cial doc­u­ments post­ed on its web­site, the Patri­ot Free­dom Project has raised more than $2 mil­lion since its found­ing.

    ———–

    “Law­mak­ers call for IRS scruti­ny of Trump-backed non­prof­it that aids Jan. 6 riot­ers” by Tom Dreis­bach; Nation­al Pub­lic Radio; 01/17/2024

    “Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr. of New Jer­sey over­sees the Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice as the top Demo­c­rat on the House Ways and Means Sub­com­mit­tee on Over­sight. In response to NPR’s report­ing, Pascrell called on the agency to open an inves­ti­ga­tion into the Patri­ot Free­dom Project”

    As the top Demo­c­rat on the House Ways and Means Sub­com­mit­tee on Over­sight who over­sees the IRS points out, IRS isn’t doing its job when it comes to the Patri­ot Free­dom Project. And Rep Pascrell isn’t the only mem­ber of Con­gress ask­ing the IRS to do its job. That’s part of the sto­ry here. This isn’t just a sto­ry about a sleazy MAGA non-prof­it. It’s also about the blank check effec­tive­ly issued to these orga­ni­za­tions by the IRS with its refusal to enforce the laws:

    ...
    “If this pur­port­ed non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion is using its pul­pit to pro­mote Don­ald Trump, the group is not just sup­port­ing the same author­i­tar­i­an­ism espoused by an insur­rec­tion­ist – it is also break­ing fed­er­al tax law and must be held account­able,” said Pascrell in a state­ment to NPR. “The IRS should inves­ti­gate this case imme­di­ate­ly and crack down on those poten­tial­ly abus­ing our tax code.”

    Pascrel­l’s Repub­li­can coun­ter­part on the Sub­com­mit­tee on Over­sight, Rep. David Schweik­ert of Ari­zona, did not respond to NPR’s request for com­ment.

    Sen. Shel­don White­house, D‑R.I., raised con­cerns about what he views as lax IRS enforce­ment of non­prof­its involved in polit­i­cal activ­i­ty.

    “There are 501(c)(3) orga­ni­za­tions that open­ly flout the law and solic­it tax-deductible dona­tions to fund polit­i­cal activ­i­ties,” White­house told NPR in a state­ment. “These polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tions mas­quer­ade as char­i­ties and brazen­ly ignore the law, because they don’t think the IRS will enforce it. Too often, they’re right. It’s long past time that the IRS crack down on these abus­es.

    Rep. Jamie Raskin, D‑Md., said in an inter­view that NPR’s report­ing had raised con­cerns for him about the Patri­ot Free­dom Pro­jec­t’s polit­i­cal activ­i­ty.

    “I’m cer­tain­ly alarmed to learn that a 501(c)(3) orga­ni­za­tion is send­ing out direct polit­i­cal advo­ca­cy — mean­ing mes­sages telling peo­ple to vote for this can­di­date or vote against that can­di­date,” said Raskin, who served on the Jan. 6 select com­mit­tee in Con­gress. “That clear­ly cuts against the let­ter of the law. The resources and the pres­tige of the orga­ni­za­tion can­not be used for elec­toral pur­pos­es in any way.”

    ...

    An IRS offi­cial declined to com­ment. Because the group is based in New Jer­sey, it is also reg­u­lat­ed by that state’s author­i­ties. A spokesper­son for the New Jer­sey Divi­sion of Con­sumer Affairs told NPR, “We can­not com­ment on hypo­thet­i­cal vio­la­tions of the law,” but not­ed that vio­la­tions of fed­er­al law could also lead to reper­cus­sions at the state lev­el.
    ...

    And note just how many events there have been on the last cou­ple of years, includ­ing a Decem­ber 1, 2022 “open house” Trump spoke along with a senior advis­er to Trump’s Save Amer­i­ca polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee. And lat­er that month Trump donat­ed $10k to the group. This is, of course, right when Trump was fac­ing scathing crit­i­cism even from Repub­li­cans over his deci­sion to have din­ner Nick Fuentes and Kanya West at Mar-a-Lago on Novem­ber 22 (the 59th anniver­sary of the JFK assas­si­na­tion). This was also short­ly after Trump announced his 2024 White House bid. So Trump was cud­dly up to the Patri­ot Free­dom Project while he was fac­ing the out­cry over Nick Fuentes:

    ...
    NPR found sev­er­al speech­es, events and social media posts in which the Patri­ot Free­dom Project and its lead­er­ship took actions that raise ques­tions about whether the group may have vio­lat­ed the ban on polit­i­cal cam­paign activ­i­ty by 501(c)(3) non­prof­its.

    Take, for exam­ple, the Patri­ot Free­dom Pro­jec­t’s home­page, which promi­nent­ly fea­tures a video of Trump at a cam­paign ral­ly in Sep­tem­ber 2022.

    Hugh­es, the Patri­ot Free­dom Pro­jec­t’s pres­i­dent and founder, spoke at that ral­ly, which was held in sup­port of Repub­li­can U.S. Sen­ate can­di­date Mehmet Oz and guber­na­to­r­i­al can­di­date Doug Mas­tri­ano, both of Penn­syl­va­nia. (Both Oz and Mas­tri­ano sub­se­quent­ly lost in the 2022 elec­tions.) At the event, Hugh­es iden­ti­fied her­self specif­i­cal­ly as the leader of the Patri­ot Free­dom Project and encour­aged peo­ple to sup­port the group.

    Hugh­es went on to hold mul­ti­ple Patri­ot Free­dom Project events either fea­tur­ing Trump or where speak­ers pro­mot­ed Trump’s polit­i­cal cam­paign:

    * In Decem­ber 2022, the Patri­ot Free­dom Project held an “open house event where a senior advis­er to Trump’s Save Amer­i­ca polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee as well as Trump him­self spoke. That same month, Trump’s PAC donat­ed $10,000 to the Patri­ot Free­dom Project.

    * In June 2023, the Patri­ot Free­dom Project held an event at Trump Nation­al Golf Club Bed­min­ster. Video of the event shows that Trump gave a speech in which he said, “We’re gonna win an elec­tion in 2024,” as Hugh­es and Patri­ot Free­dom Project board mem­ber Ed Mar­tin applaud­ed. Anoth­er speak­er at the said, “We have got to reelect Pres­i­dent Trump into the White House.”

    * Lat­er that sum­mer, in August 2023, the Patri­ot Free­dom Project held anoth­er event at Trump Nation­al Golf Club Bed­min­ster where Hugh­es encour­aged peo­ple to vote for Trump and the for­mer pres­i­dent also spoke.

    * At a Patri­ot Free­dom Project event to mark the third anniver­sary of the attack, on Jan. 6, 2024, the group fea­tured a speech from a pro-Trump attor­ney who said, “We need to keep the momen­tum strong behind Pres­i­dent Trump” in the 2024 elec­tion. Pho­tos and video of the event show a large table fea­tur­ing a “TRUMP 2024” flag, along­side flags depict­ing Trump as Super­man and Cap­tain Amer­i­ca.

    ...

    Accord­ing to finan­cial doc­u­ments post­ed on its web­site, the Patri­ot Free­dom Project has raised more than $2 mil­lion since its found­ing.
    ...

    $2 mil­lion raised since the group’s found­ing. And that was Jan­u­ary of this year. How much more mon­ey has Patri­ot Free­dom Project raised in this pres­i­den­tial elec­tion year? It’s pre­sum­ably been a ban­ner year of fundrais­ing for the group. All tax deductible. For char­i­ty, of course. Char­i­ty most­ly for the Hitler mus­tache guy, although his “adop­tive aunt” and her fam­i­ly has pre­sum­ably man­aged to eek out a bit of char­i­ty for them­selves. Cer­tain­ly enough to afford a few pil­lows on a spe­cial sale.

    And that brings us to anoth­er Nazi-friend­ly indi­vid­ual who was also cel­e­brat­ed at the June 2023 Patri­ot Free­dom Project event at Bed­min­ster where Trump spoke: Der­rick Evans, a Repub­li­can can­di­date for West Virginia’s 1st Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict who also spent sev­er­al months in prison after livestream­ing him­self storm­ing the Capi­tol on Jan­u­ary 6. Guess who else attend­ed the event: Mike Lin­dell:

    WV Statewide News

    Der­rick Evans & Trump Speak at Patri­ot Free­dom Project Event

    on June 29, 2023
    By Staff Writer

    Last week Der­rick Evans, can­di­date for West Virginia’s 1st Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict trav­eled to Bed­min­ster, NJ to speak along­side the for­mer Pres­i­dent. Pres­i­dent Trump spoke at an event for the Patri­ot Free­dom Project which was being held at his Trump Nation­al Golf Club.

    Also attend­ing the event was Mike Lin­dell, CEO of My Pil­low. Lin­dell has been a long ally and friend of Don­ald Trump and an out­spo­ken cham­pi­on of elec­tion integri­ty and crit­ic of the 2020 elec­tion. After the event, Lin­dell issued a pub­lic endorse­ment of Evans’ can­di­da­cy for Con­gress.

    “I’m hon­ored to have Mike Lindell’s sup­port in this fight,” Evans said. “He’s a true war­rior who under­stands that we’re going to have to stand and fight on our front foot rather than back on our heels like the RINO who cur­rent­ly rep­re­sent this dis­trict in D.C.”

    ...

    ———–

    “Der­rick Evans & Trump Speak at Patri­ot Free­dom Project Event” By Staff Writer; WV Statewide News; 06/29/2023

    As we should expect, Lin­dell is a big Patri­ot Free­dom Project fan. Imag­ine that.

    So did Evans end up win­ning his pri­ma­ry race? Nope. He was defeat­ed by the incum­bent, Car­ol Miller, much to the plea­sure of Jew­ish Repub­li­cans. Why were Jews hap­py to see Evans lose? Well, it turns out Evans is kind of a Nazi. Or at least he’s the type of per­son who thinks it’s “good ques­tion” to ask “whether the Jews stole” the 2020 elec­tion and were actu­al­ly behind the Jan­u­ary 6 Capi­tol insur­rec­tion:

    The Times of Israel

    GOP Jews hap­py as Capi­tol riot­er accused of anti­semitism defeat­ed in WV pri­ma­ry

    15 May 2024, 5:00 am

    The Repub­li­can Jew­ish Coali­tion is cel­e­brat­ing after a can­di­date it endorsed in West Virginia’s con­gres­sion­al pri­ma­ry beat out a chal­lenger accused of anti­semitism.

    Car­ol Miller, who has rep­re­sent­ed West Virginia’s first dis­trict since 2019, man­aged to stave off a chal­lenge from Der­rick Evans, who served a three-month jail sen­tence after livestream­ing him­self par­tic­i­pat­ing in the storm­ing of the US Capi­tol.

    “Repub­li­can vot­ers in West Vir­ginia and Nebras­ka sound­ly reject­ed extrem­ist can­di­dates,” the RJC says in a state­ment.

    While the state­ment does not men­tion Evans by name, it appears to allude to past com­ments he has made ques­tion­ing if Jews were behind the Jan­u­ary 6 insur­rec­tion.

    In Feb­ru­ary, Evans appeared on the show of far-right stream­er Stew Peters and appeared to endorse the idea that Israel may have “been behind Jan­u­ary 6.” He added that “whether the Jews stole the elec­tion” was a good ques­tion to ask.

    ...

    ———-

    “GOP Jews hap­py as Capi­tol riot­er accused of anti­semitism defeat­ed in WV pri­ma­ry”; The Times of Israel; 05/15/2024

    “In Feb­ru­ary, Evans appeared on the show of far-right stream­er Stew Peters and appeared to endorse the idea that Israel may have “been behind Jan­u­ary 6.” He added that “whether the Jews stole the elec­tion” was a good ques­tion to ask.”

    That’s Mike Lin­del­l’s endorsed can­di­date for West Vir­gini­a’s 1st dis­trict. The “Israel was behind Jan­u­ary 6” guy. He did­n’t win his pri­ma­ry, but not for lack
    help. Der­rik Evans has influ­en­tial fans with deep pock­ets. Pock­ets that are going to be a lit­tle bit deep­er by the end of the $14.88 pil­lows sale.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | September 30, 2024, 5:30 pm
  9. Not all Bibles are equal, at least when it comes to their edu­ca­tion­al val­ue. That’s the appar­ent log­ic under­ly­ing a new edu­ca­tion pol­i­cy out of the state of Okla­homa as part of the state’s new man­date to put a Bible in every pub­lic class­room in the state. In fact, just two Bibles make the cut based on the weird cri­te­ria set out by the state: Lee Greenwood’s ‘God Bless the U.S.A.’ Bible and the ‘We The Peo­ple’ Bible. Both Bibles sell for much more than a typ­i­cal Bible, $60 and $90, respec­tive­ly. Oh, and it turns out both Bibles hap­pen to be endorsed by Don­ald Trump. Trump even received $300,000 in roy­al­ties from the God Bless the U.S.A. Bible already. Imag­ine that.

    The bid­ding for the con­tract to sup­ply the Bibles also appears to have been rigged. Instead of a stan­dard min­i­mum four week win­dow to sub­mit bids, the state left it open for just two weeks, cit­ing an urgency to get the Bibles into the class­room.

    So is Okla­homa plan­ning on pay­ing those pre­mi­um prices for these Trump-endorsed Bibles? Appar­ent­ly so. At least that’s what we can con­clude from the fact that Okla­homa’s super­in­ten­dent of schools, Ryan Wal­ters, has already request $3 mil­lion to pur­chase 55,000 Bibles, which trans­lates to about $55 allo­cat­ed per Bible.

    Beyond that, we’re told that Wal­ters has been pro­mot­ing the ‘Bible in every class­room’ ini­tia­tive with nation­al groups. And that brings us to the fact that Wal­ters just hap­pens to have major nation­al aspi­ra­tions includ­ing the goal of get­ting tapped to join Don­ald Trump’s cab­i­net in the next Trump admin­is­tra­tion. Keep in mind this isn’t the first sto­ry we’ve seen involv­ing Wal­ter­s’s loy­al­ty to the MAGA agen­da. Recall how it was Wal­ters who ruled that stu­dents in Okla­homa could­n’t be taught about the 1921 Tul­sa race mas­sacre unless they were taught that it was­n’t about race. This was part of the ‘anti-CRT’ hys­te­ria that has gripped the GOP in recent years.

    Nor is the Trump Bible sto­ry the only exam­ple of Wal­ters cozy­ing up to the Trump cam­paign in antic­i­pa­tion of his nation­al ambi­tions. Wal­ter­s’s state agency has also been issu­ing some rather ques­tion­able con­tracts to two groups asso­ci­at­ed with none oth­er than Russ and Mary Vought. As we’ve seen, the Voughts are key play­ers in the CNP’s Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist agen­da, espe­cial­ly the ongo­ing Sched­ule F/Project 2025 scheme. Or as Her­itage’s Kevin Roberts put it, the “sec­ond Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion”: Recall how Russ Vought was the only depart­ment head­er under the first Trump term to actu­al­ly attempt to imple­ment the Sched­ule F ini­tia­tive Trump enact­ed two weeks before the 2020 elec­tion day. Months lat­er, in March of 2021, Vought penned a piece of Newsweek where he defend­ed the con­cept of Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism and decried how it was being smeared by detrac­tors. Flash for­ward to Feb­ru­ary of this year, and we got Politi­co reports about how the Cen­ter for Renew­ing Amer­i­ca (CRA) — head­ed by Vought — was active­ly plan­ning on imple­ment­ing Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist poli­cies under the next Trump admin­is­tra­tion. As we’ve seen, the CRA is one of the many think tanks active­ly par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Project 2025 schem­ing. Also this year, Russ Vought was one of three peo­ple tapped to craft the offi­cial RNC plat­form. Russ Vought is a key play­er in the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy’s (CNP) theo­crat­ic ambi­tions. And, of course, Mary Vought is an assumed CNP mem­ber.

    Mary Vought’s con­sult­ing firm, Vought Strate­gies, was hired this by Wal­ter­s’s state agency, osten­si­bly for the pur­pose of recruit­ing teach­ers. In real­i­ty, the firm appears to have focused on secur­ing nation­al media appear­ances for Wal­ters, espe­cial­ly in con­ser­v­a­tive media. And like the trun­cat­ed bid­ding win­dow for the Bible ven­dors, the bid­ding for this media con­sult­ing con­tract was also short­er than the state’s guide­lines (3 weeks instead of a min­i­mum of 4 weeks), with Vought Strate­gies sub­mit­ting the sole bid. The con­tract has unsur­pris­ing­ly received crit­i­cism. What’s more sur­pris­ing is that much of that crit­i­cism has come from Wal­ter­s’s fel­low elect­ed Repub­li­cans, includ­ing the Speak­er of the Okla­homa House Charles McCall. As McCall put it, “you should not be spend­ing state funds, tax­pay­er dol­lars, for per­son­al pro­mo­tion.”

    Anoth­er Vought-con­nect­ed ques­tion con­tract involves the com­pa­ny Pre­ci­sion Out­reach, which also received a con­tract from Wal­ter­s’s agency around the same time Vought Strate­gies won its con­tract. Pre­ci­sion Out­reach had pre­vi­ous­ly worked for the agency prod­uct con­tent includ­ing an anti-teacher-union that was shown at a State Board of Edu­ca­tion meet­ing this year. The video infu­ri­at­ed teach­ers and par­ents. Anoth­er video pro­duced by the com­pa­ny implied trans­gen­der stu­dents are a threat to school safe­ty. The head of Pre­ci­sion Out­reach, Jess Fields, actu­al­ly ran for office in 2016, using the same cam­paign man­ag­er who man­ages Wal­ter­s’s cam­paigns: Matt Langston. Both Langston and Mary Vought have been polit­i­cal pals since the two worked in Sen­a­tor Ron John­son’s office back in 2011. Langston also cur­rent­ly serves as the chief pol­i­cy advi­sor for Wal­ter­s’s state edu­ca­tion agency.

    That’s all part of the con­text of the ‘Trump Bible’ sto­ry. This isn’t just a sto­ry about a rogue state super­in­ten­dent try­ing to cozy up to Trump. This is a sto­ry about one of the lead­ing can­di­dates for Trump’s Sec­re­tary of Edu­ca­tion who has appar­ent­ly teamed up/bought off the Voughts, them­selves key play­ers in the ongo­ing CNP theo­crat­ic agen­da on the cusp of get­ting put into action under the Sched­ule F/Project 2025 scheme:

    The Okla­homan

    ‘Trump Bible’ one of few that meet Wal­ters’ cri­te­ria for Okla­homa class­rooms

    Jen­nifer Palmer, Paul Monies, Heather War­lick
    Okla­homa Watch
    Pub­lished 6:33 am CT Octo­ber 4, 2024 | Updat­ed 12:51 pm CT Oct 4, 2024

    Super­in­ten­dent Ryan Wal­ters isn’t just talk­ing about buy­ing Bibles for schools.

    Bids opened Mon­day for a con­tract to sup­ply the state Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion with 55,000 Bibles. Accord­ing to the bid doc­u­ments, ven­dors must meet cer­tain spec­i­fi­ca­tions: Bibles must be the King James Ver­sion; must con­tain the Old and New Tes­ta­ments; must include copies of the Pledge of Alle­giance, Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence, U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion and the Bill of Rights; and must be bound in leather or leather-like mate­r­i­al.

    A sales­per­son at Mardel Chris­t­ian & Edu­ca­tion searched, and though they car­ry 2,900 Bibles, none fit the para­me­ters.

    But one Bible fits per­fect­ly: Lee Greenwood’s God Bless the U.S.A. Bible, endorsed by for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump and com­mon­ly referred to as the Trump Bible. They cost $60 each online, with Trump receiv­ing fees for his endorse­ment.

    Mardel doesn’t car­ry the God Bless the U.S.A. Bible or anoth­er Bible that could meet the spec­i­fi­ca­tions, the We The Peo­ple Bible, which was also endorsed by Don­ald Trump Jr. It sells for $90.

    “The RFP on its face seems fair, but with addi­tion­al scruti­ny, we can see there are very few Bibles on the mar­ket that would meet these cri­te­ria, and all of them have been endorsed by for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump,” Okla­homa Apple­seed Cen­ter for Law and Jus­tice Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Colleen McCar­ty said.

    For­mer Okla­homa Attor­ney Gen­er­al Drew Edmond­son said the request for pro­pos­als might vio­late state law.

    “It appears to me that this bid is any­thing but com­pet­i­tive,” Edmond­son said. “It adds to the basic spec­i­fi­ca­tion oth­er require­ments that have noth­ing to do with the text. The spe­cial bind­ing and inclu­sion of gov­ern­ment doc­u­ments will exclude almost all bid­ders. If the bid specs exclude most bid­ders unnec­es­sar­i­ly, I could con­sid­er that a vio­la­tion.”

    Sep­a­ra­tion of church and state con­cerns aside, much less expen­sive Bibles are read­i­ly avail­able. +, less than 5% of what the Trump-endorsed Bible would cost. There are many free Bible apps, too.

    Though Wal­ters has fre­quent­ly said he wants Bibles in every class­room, he has also clar­i­fied pub­licly that he wants them in class­es where the Bible might apply to aca­d­e­m­ic stan­dards, such as his­to­ry or lit­er­a­ture. The request for 55,000 copies doesn’t fit either sce­nario; there are only 43,000 class­room teach­ers in the state, and many few­er teach­ing just his­to­ry or lit­er­a­ture.

    If the Bibles cost $60 each, and the state buys 55,000, that’s $3.3 mil­lion.

    Wal­ters: No ‘extra things’

    On Sept. 26, Wal­ters asked for $3 mil­lion to pur­chase Bibles for Okla­homa class­rooms as part of his agency’s fis­cal year 2026 bud­get request to the Okla­homa Leg­is­la­ture.

    “We have talked about ensur­ing that our his­to­ry cours­es include the role the Bible played through­out Amer­i­can his­to­ry,” Wal­ters said. “We’ve talked about the efforts of left-wing groups and the teach­ers’ unions to dri­ve the Bible out of school. I believe it’s impor­tant for his­tor­i­cal con­text for our kids to under­stand the role the Bible played.”

    ...

    “We don’t want extra things in there; his­tor­i­cal doc­u­ments are fine,” Wal­ters said. “If it’s the King James ver­sion and the Con­sti­tu­tion, the Magna Car­ta, things like that, that are also in statute that can be used in the class­room, that’s fine. But we don’t want com­men­tary around the Bible because this is to serve as a his­tor­i­cal ref­er­ence doc­u­ment.”

    Bid­ding opened to fast-track Okla­homa class­room Bibles

    Wal­ters said find­ing a Bible ven­dor should go through the com­pet­i­tive bid­ding process because that would be the clean­est, eas­i­est way to choose.

    The board did not dis­cuss pur­chas­ing Bibles with the cur­rent bud­get year appro­pri­a­tion. How­ev­er, the state issued the solic­i­ta­tion Mon­day, and it’s open for just two weeks. The Office of Man­age­ment and Enter­prise Ser­vices typ­i­cal­ly rec­om­mends at least four weeks.

    Dan Isett, Wal­ters’ spokesman, said their inten­tion with the RFP is to get Bibles dis­trib­uted to class­rooms as quick­ly as pos­si­ble.

    ...

    At least 130 peo­ple have resigned or been fired since Wal­ters took office in 2023, accord­ing to The Okla­homan.

    ‘Trump has praised our efforts’

    In June, Wal­ters announced a man­date that a Bible should be in every Okla­homa class­room, though it’s unlike­ly he would have the author­i­ty to enforce that. The Okla­homa Supreme Court affirmed that school dis­tricts main­tain local con­trol over cur­ric­u­la. Some super­in­ten­dents across the state have said they do not intend to add the Bible to their cur­ricu­lum.

    “We will not be forc­ing our teach­ers to do this,” Bix­by Super­in­ten­dent Rob Miller said on News Nation on Aug. 12. “As a Chris­t­ian myself, the idea of dimin­ish­ing the word of God to a mere class­room prop is a lit­tle repul­sive to me, so we will not be com­ply­ing with that direc­tive of hav­ing a phys­i­cal Bible in every class­room.”

    Wal­ters has been tout­ing his Bible plan to local and nation­al groups. In these inter­views, he talks more about Chris­tian­i­ty than his­to­ry.

    In one inter­view this week, Wal­ters claimed Democ­rats plan to teach kids to hate their coun­try as well as Chris­tian­i­ty and Judaism and said his Bible ini­tia­tive is an anti­dote to that.

    “We are going to be so proud here in Okla­homa to be the first state in the coun­try to bring the Bible back to every sin­gle class­room and every state should be doing this.… Pres­i­dent Trump praised our efforts. Pres­i­dent Trump has been the leader on this issue.”

    Wal­ters is a fre­quent guest on con­ser­v­a­tive pod­casts, radio shows and TV sta­tions. His agency has a $60,000 per year con­tract with D.C.-based Vought Strate­gies to book him for nation­al inter­views week­ly.

    Wal­ters endorsed Trump, and many onlook­ers sur­mise he’s angling for a cab­i­net posi­tion if Trump wins in Novem­ber.

    Trump licens­es his name, image and like­ness to be used in the Green­wood Bible’s mar­ket­ing. The company’s web­site says it has no con­nec­tion to the Trump cam­paign.

    Finan­cial dis­clo­sure forms filed by Trump at the Office of Gov­ern­men­tal Ethics show he does ben­e­fit from Green­wood Bible sales through a Trump com­pa­ny, CIC Ven­tures LLC. His lat­est dis­clo­sure, obtained by Cit­i­zens for Respon­si­bil­i­ty and Ethics in Wash­ing­ton, shows Trump received $300,000 in roy­al­ties from the God Bless the U.S.A. Bible.

    ...

    ———–

    “ ‘Trump Bible’ one of few that meet Wal­ters’ cri­te­ria for Okla­homa class­rooms” by Jen­nifer Palmer, Paul Monies, Heather War­lick; The Okla­homan; 10/04/2024

    In June, Wal­ters announced a man­date that a Bible should be in every Okla­homa class­room, though it’s unlike­ly he would have the author­i­ty to enforce that. The Okla­homa Supreme Court affirmed that school dis­tricts main­tain local con­trol over cur­ric­u­la. Some super­in­ten­dents across the state have said they do not intend to add the Bible to their cur­ricu­lum. ”

    A ‘Bible in every class­room’ man­date by Okla­homa’s super­in­ten­dent. That alone is con­tro­ver­sial enough. But it’s the details of the man­date to expose just how cor­rupt this deci­sion real­ly was: the only Bibles that fit the stat­ed require­ments are Trump-endorsed Bibles. It’s a peek into the Trumpi­fied Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist theoc­ra­cy in store for the US. Deep bla­tant cor­rup­tion under the guise of pub­lic pious­ness:

    ...
    A sales­per­son at Mardel Chris­t­ian & Edu­ca­tion searched, and though they car­ry 2,900 Bibles, none fit the para­me­ters.

    But one Bible fits per­fect­ly: Lee Greenwood’s God Bless the U.S.A. Bible, endorsed by for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump and com­mon­ly referred to as the Trump Bible. They cost $60 each online, with Trump receiv­ing fees for his endorse­ment.

    Mardel doesn’t car­ry the God Bless the U.S.A. Bible or anoth­er Bible that could meet the spec­i­fi­ca­tions, the We The Peo­ple Bible, which was also endorsed by Don­ald Trump Jr. It sells for $90.

    “The RFP on its face seems fair, but with addi­tion­al scruti­ny, we can see there are very few Bibles on the mar­ket that would meet these cri­te­ria, and all of them have been endorsed by for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump,” Okla­homa Apple­seed Cen­ter for Law and Jus­tice Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Colleen McCar­ty said.

    For­mer Okla­homa Attor­ney Gen­er­al Drew Edmond­son said the request for pro­pos­als might vio­late state law.

    “It appears to me that this bid is any­thing but com­pet­i­tive,” Edmond­son said. “It adds to the basic spec­i­fi­ca­tion oth­er require­ments that have noth­ing to do with the text. The spe­cial bind­ing and inclu­sion of gov­ern­ment doc­u­ments will exclude almost all bid­ders. If the bid specs exclude most bid­ders unnec­es­sar­i­ly, I could con­sid­er that a vio­la­tion.”
    ...

    And note how it’s not just that the only Bibles that meet in man­date hap­pen to be Trump endorsed Bibles. They’re also wild­ly over­priced Bibles that cost $60 each. A price Wal­ters appears to be plan­ning on hav­ing the state pay based on the $3 mil­lion request he made a cou­ple of weeks ago:

    ...
    Sep­a­ra­tion of church and state con­cerns aside, much less expen­sive Bibles are read­i­ly avail­able. +, less than 5% of what the Trump-endorsed Bible would cost. There are many free Bible apps, too.

    Though Wal­ters has fre­quent­ly said he wants Bibles in every class­room, he has also clar­i­fied pub­licly that he wants them in class­es where the Bible might apply to aca­d­e­m­ic stan­dards, such as his­to­ry or lit­er­a­ture. The request for 55,000 copies doesn’t fit either sce­nario; there are only 43,000 class­room teach­ers in the state, and many few­er teach­ing just his­to­ry or lit­er­a­ture.

    If the Bibles cost $60 each, and the state buys 55,000, that’s $3.3 mil­lion.

    Wal­ters: No ‘extra things’

    On Sept. 26, Wal­ters asked for $3 mil­lion to pur­chase Bibles for Okla­homa class­rooms as part of his agency’s fis­cal year 2026 bud­get request to the Okla­homa Leg­is­la­ture.

    “We have talked about ensur­ing that our his­to­ry cours­es include the role the Bible played through­out Amer­i­can his­to­ry,” Wal­ters said. “We’ve talked about the efforts of left-wing groups and the teach­ers’ unions to dri­ve the Bible out of school. I believe it’s impor­tant for his­tor­i­cal con­text for our kids to under­stand the role the Bible played.”

    ...

    Trump licens­es his name, image and like­ness to be used in the Green­wood Bible’s mar­ket­ing. The company’s web­site says it has no con­nec­tion to the Trump cam­paign.

    Finan­cial dis­clo­sure forms filed by Trump at the Office of Gov­ern­men­tal Ethics show he does ben­e­fit from Green­wood Bible sales through a Trump com­pa­ny, CIC Ven­tures LLC. His lat­est dis­clo­sure, obtained by Cit­i­zens for Respon­si­bil­i­ty and Ethics in Wash­ing­ton, shows Trump received $300,000 in roy­al­ties from the God Bless the U.S.A. Bible.
    ...

    And then there’s the cor­rupt nature of the bid­ding process. A fast-tracked bid­ding process that only went for a cou­ple of weeks under the pre­tense that the state was in a huge rush:

    ...
    “We don’t want extra things in there; his­tor­i­cal doc­u­ments are fine,” Wal­ters said. “If it’s the King James ver­sion and the Con­sti­tu­tion, the Magna Car­ta, things like that, that are also in statute that can be used in the class­room, that’s fine. But we don’t want com­men­tary around the Bible because this is to serve as a his­tor­i­cal ref­er­ence doc­u­ment.”

    Bid­ding opened to fast-track Okla­homa class­room Bibles

    Wal­ters said find­ing a Bible ven­dor should go through the com­pet­i­tive bid­ding process because that would be the clean­est, eas­i­est way to choose.

    The board did not dis­cuss pur­chas­ing Bibles with the cur­rent bud­get year appro­pri­a­tion. How­ev­er, the state issued the solic­i­ta­tion Mon­day, and it’s open for just two weeks. The Office of Man­age­ment and Enter­prise Ser­vices typ­i­cal­ly rec­om­mends at least four weeks.

    Dan Isett, Wal­ters’ spokesman, said their inten­tion with the RFP is to get Bibles dis­trib­uted to class­rooms as quick­ly as pos­si­ble.
    ...

    But then we get to the gross nation­al angle to the this sto­ry: Ryan Wal­ters is wide­ly seen as angling for a Trump cab­i­net posi­tion. Along those lines, he’s not only pitch­ing his Bible plan to nation­al groups but his agency has hired Vought Strate­gies to man­age his nation­al media expo­sure. This is, of course, the con­sult­ing firm of CNP mem­ber Mary Vought, wife of Russ Vought, a key play­er in the Sched­ule F/Project 2025 plot. In March of 2021, Vought penned a piece of Newsweek where he defend­ed the con­cept of Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism and decried how it was being smeared by detrac­tors. This year, Politi­co report­ed on how the Cen­ter for Renew­ing Amer­i­ca (CRA) — head­ed by Vought — was active­ly plan­ning on imple­ment­ing Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist poli­cies under the next Trump admin­is­tra­tion. As we’ve seen, the CRA is one of the many think tanks active­ly par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Project 2025 schem­ing. Also this year, Vought was one of three peo­ple tapped to craft the offi­cial RNC plat­form. So Wal­ter­s’s office hired Vought Strate­gies for con­sult­ing work at the same time Wal­ters is rig­ging the ‘Bibles in the class­room’ process to ensure only Trump Bibles can be used. Wal­ters real­ly wants that Trump cab­i­net position...presumably Edu­ca­tion Sec­re­tary, at which point we’ll pre­sum­ably seen plans for Trump Bibles in every class­room in the US:

    ...
    “We will not be forc­ing our teach­ers to do this,” Bix­by Super­in­ten­dent Rob Miller said on News Nation on Aug. 12. “As a Chris­t­ian myself, the idea of dimin­ish­ing the word of God to a mere class­room prop is a lit­tle repul­sive to me, so we will not be com­ply­ing with that direc­tive of hav­ing a phys­i­cal Bible in every class­room.”

    Wal­ters has been tout­ing his Bible plan to local and nation­al groups. In these inter­views, he talks more about Chris­tian­i­ty than his­to­ry.

    In one inter­view this week, Wal­ters claimed Democ­rats plan to teach kids to hate their coun­try as well as Chris­tian­i­ty and Judaism and said his Bible ini­tia­tive is an anti­dote to that.

    “We are going to be so proud here in Okla­homa to be the first state in the coun­try to bring the Bible back to every sin­gle class­room and every state should be doing this.… Pres­i­dent Trump praised our efforts. Pres­i­den